XVI
It was a sordid little scene that followed, but for the sake of the good woman whose unaffected charity and kindly feeling illumined its murky darkness, it shall be recorded here....
Mr. Knewbit, arriving at Miss Morency's door, thumped on it, receiving no answer beyond the hurried shooting of the bolt, and the scuffling of slippered feet across the carpet. Roused by the meaningful silence to indignation, he delivered himself in the following terms:
"You inside there—and you're aware why I don't address you as a young lady!—I'm going to trouble you to unfasten that door!"
"No, you ain't!" said a feminine voice from within, defiantly. "Go downstairs and shave yourself, you silly old man!"
A thickish masculine chuckle greeted this sally.
"When we have got you and your companion out of this respectable house," quoth the wrathful Mr. Knewbit, "I may have time to attend to my Sunday twylett. Not before! Are you a-going to undo this door? Because, if you won't, I am a-going to bust it with the poker! Once!" He applied the end of the weapon named to a panel with a crack in it. "Twice!——"
"Stop!" cried Miss Ling, and Mr. Knewbit lowered the poker. "One moment, Solomon!—I want to speak to her!"
Forgetful of her neat Sabbath attire, she went down upon her knees before the door, as Mr. Knewbit joined P. C. Breagh upon the staircase, and laid her work-worn hand as gently and persuasively upon the threatened panel, as if it had been a human bosom housing an obdurate heart.
"Miss Morency! Don't be afraid, my dear! Maria Ling it is a-speaking to you!" She waited an instant, and receiving no response, went on.
"Mr. Knewbit has got it in his head—he best knows why!—that you're not Alone in that room, in a manner of speaking.... Open the door and prove to him he's wrong; or tell me on your solemn honor—before the God who made you and me both women!—that he's mistaken, and I'll believe you—and ask your pardon—and we'll all go downstairs again!"
There was a silence within the room, and then a thick whispering voice and a thin whispering voice held indistinct colloquy. P. C. Breagh and Mr. Knewbit exchanged looks, Miss Ling grew pale, rose, and withdrew from the door. Her clean Sunday handkerchief was in her hand and the hand shook, and her mouth was shut tightly, as, with much shuffling, an obstacle—probably a chest of drawers—was removed from the other side, the key was turned, and the bolt withdrawn.
The door opened. The defiant figure and the angry painted face of a good-looking young woman were revealed beyond the threshold. She wore a gaudy dressing-gown trimmed with cheap lace, and a butterfly cap in the prevailing mode was set upon her mound of dyed hair. Her companion might have been the manager of a restaurant, or a West End shopwalker. His face was sallow with debauch, and his eyes were red from liquor or sleeplessness. With the rosebud of the previous night still drooping in the buttonhole of his fashionably cut frock-coat, and the mud of the previous night soiling his trouser-ends and his shiny boots and drab spats, and his silk hat fixed firmly on his head as though in anticipation of a scuffle, he stood behind the woman; maintaining a sulky silence, gripping his cane in a hand that was mottled and shaky. And the roll of his eyes said "Two of 'em!" as his glance took in Mr. Knewbit and P. C. Breagh.
Said the rouged, defiant young woman in the flyaway cap, turning a glare of defiance upon her landlady:
"You see now whether that"—she employed a term reflecting on the moral character of her assailant—"was mistaken, or whether he wasn't, I hope?"
Returned Miss Ling, looking mildly at the brazen countenance:
"I see! May the Lord forgive you, poor ruined young creature. But for Him having given me a good, good mother, I might be standing where you are now!"
"Never!" said Mr. Knewbit under his breath. The kind soul went on without heeding him:
"Were you led away? ... Was it the first time? ... Whether or no, it's not too late to change, and lead a life of decency. As for this—man...."
The young woman interrupted, with lowered eyes shunning her:
"We're to be married! He's promised me upon his oath!"
Her companion purpled furiously, and broke out:
"You're lying, you——! I picked you up in the Haymarket! Do you think I'm afraid of you and your bullies there? Stand back!"
Fulminating threats, he thrust roughly past Miss Ling, driving her, possibly not with intention, against the landing wall. She gave a little cry, and the poker fell.... He bellowed:
"—— you! You've broken my arm, you—blackguard! Where's the police?"
A grip of steel shut upon his scruff, and the voice belonging to the grip said cheerfully:
"In the street. Come down and look for 'em, my man!"
His protests were drowned in the rattling of his boot-heels on the oil-cloth-covered staircase, in the violence of his transit to the ground-floor. There, as Mr. Knewbit, dodging past, opened the hall door, he was shot from its threshold as a human bullet from a spring-cannon, even then supplying a sensational turn at the Royal Alhambra Theater—rolled down the steps, gathering momentum, and colliding with a late milk-truck that happened to be passing, suffered abrasions and the ruin of his smart frock-coat. Leaving the victim of righteous judgment to appease the justly-indignant milkman with some of the silver shed from his trousers-pockets in the transit, Mr. Knewbit slammed the door, and crowed, slapping P. C. Breagh heartily upon the back.
"Neatly done! You could get a well-paid job as pitcher-out at a West End bar, if you'd nothing better than your muscles to rely upon.... Wait a bit!" He vanished upstairs, walking as softly as a cat does, to return and explain:
"The pumps are at work up there! Both of 'em crying—Rahab's Daughter and Solomon's Virtuous Woman, I mean.... You remember the text? 'Her price is above rubies.' I remembered it when I saw her sitting dropping tears upon that trollop's head, that was a-lying in her lap. Well, well!" He led the way down into the kitchen, muttering, "'As golden pillars upon bases of silver, so are the firm feet upon the soles of a steady woman....' and 'Her husband's heart delighteth in her!' Sit down, you must want a breather ... 'Delighteth in her'—or would have if she'd married one capable of appreciating a character like hers."
Seeing that the mind of Mr. Knewbit was still running upon Miss Ling, P. C. Breagh ventured to ask:
"And has she never entertained any intention of——"
Mr. Knewbit nodded sagely.
"Once. You might say—there has been a Romance in her life, without exaggeration. When in service with that family of Nobs you've heard her mention,—about twenty-four years ago, when she was a strapping young woman of twenty-six—she got engaged to an underbutler—a young man with an affectionate nature and a changeable disposition, in conjunction with weak lungs. Weak lungs——"
Mr. Knewbit opened the oven-door and looked in to ascertain how the mutton and Yorkshire pudding were getting on. "I've had weak lungs myself, but never found 'em an excuse for villainy! Mph! ... Don't smell like burning—pretty right, it seems to me!"
He sat down in his Windsor arm-chair near the hearth, stretched out his carpet-slippered feet, and broke out:
"So—in the interests o' them weak lungs of his, his master's son, Lord Wallingbrook—to whom he sometimes acted as valet, took him in that capacity on a steam-yacht-trip from Plymouth, via Trinidad to the Southern Seas. And they cruised among the Islands of the Pacific for months—a gay party of bachelors amusing themselves!—and—in the Paumotu Group—this precious young man of Maria's up-stick and took French leave.... And that's all. And whether his master knew more than he'd tell—that's uncertain. Anyhow, a letter arrived six months after the steam-yacht dropped anchor at Plymouth, to say that he was safe and well and happy—but was never coming Home any more. And she believes ... 'Ssh! Here she is!"
It was Miss Ling, who had been crying, undoubtedly, for her Sunday bonnet-strings were spotted as with rain, and her clean handkerchief was reduced to a damp wad. Said she:
"I have talked to that poor thing upstairs, as a woman of my age is privileged to do. And she has softened wonderful, Solomon, and from what she has owned—has seen the shame and wickedness of her life clear, and longed to be delivered from it—this many and many a day, I'm sure! So if you'll kindly whistle up a four-wheeler, I'll make bold—being late for the speaking at the Judd Street Branch Hall!—to take her down to the Christian Mission Army Headquarters in the Whitechapel Road. Where I shall find not only the General, as they call Mr. Booth, but Mrs. Booth, ready and willing, please Heaven! to help the poor soul to a better life! And though Lilla has gone home to spend Sunday with her mother at Southampton Mews, I'll stop there passing and send a note in, and she'll come round and dish up dinner—and don't you, either of you, dream of waiting a minute for me! Now, I'm going back to Miss Morency—though her real name is nothing like so grand as that, poor creature!"
She turned at the door to nod and smile and say: "And her and me will carry down her box between us, so don't show yourselves to shame her poor swelled face before the cabman."
"There's a woman!" said Mr. Knewbit exultantly, a few minutes later, as the hall-door shut and the cab-door banged, and the vehicle containing the Daughter of Rahab and the Woman Above Rubies rattled away in the direction of Holborn Circus.
"I wonder you——" P. C. Breagh was beginning, when he stopped himself on the brink of an indiscretion.
"Eh?..." interrogated Mr. Knewbit. "What? ... Oh, but I did, though!"
Mr. Knewbit rubbed his chin, which needed shaving, and shook his head in a despondent way.
"I did. She was thirty-one when the Earl and Countess pensioned her—thirty-one pound a year For Life they promised.... And it's been paid regularly, going on for nineteen year now. And in the second year I came to lodge here early in January, and finding her a comfortable, cleanly, kindly creature, I stopped on—and all but asked her to marry me next time New Year came round. On the following anniversary I took the plunge! after reading a passage of Solomon's peculiarly applicable to my case. 'He that hath found a good wife hath found a good thing,' it was. Turned it up by accident, and showed it to her, and asked her. And she said No! And goes on saying it—though I ask her for the last time regularly every year. Here's the gal coming down the area-steps. Now that meat and pudding's off my conscience, I shall put on my boots for an airing before dinner. And while I'm gone—try your hand at a neat article in moderate paragraphs describing the methods of that"—Mr. Knewbit cast about for a new term—"that Man-eating Alligator in the Euston Road. What was the name of the place? 'Royal Copenhagen Hotel!' ... Why, it fairly smells of roguery! 'Royal Greenhorn' would be pretty well up to the mark."
Mr. Knewbit returned, just as the little servant pronounced dinner to be in danger of spoiling—in a cab; and thereupon ensued much jolting and bumping, suggestive of the conveyance of heavy articles up the doorsteps into the hall. Where, being summoned from the kitchen by a bellow, P. C. Breagh recognized his own trunks and book-boxes, and wrung the hand of his good genius with a grateful swelling of the heart, and an irrepressible watering of the eyes.
"It was so kind!—and suppose I never am able to pay you—or keep you waiting a devil of a time?" he protested incoherently.
"Young fellow," said Mr. Knewbit, scowling with his heavy brows and twinkling pleasantly from under them. "You are a gentleman born and bred and taught. You must have your Books to keep up your Latin and Greek and other learning—and to keep up your appearance you must have your clothes. No man is so down in the world that he can afford to go downer. This is my opinion, and also Miss Ling's!"
"And to-morrow Mr. Breagh will find poor Miss Morency's room swept and scrubbed and got ready for him," said Miss Ling that evening, during Mr. Knewbit's absence. "And the rent is—including Kitchen Board with myself and Mr. Knewbit, who likes homeliness, sixteen shillings per week. And if I trust Mr. Breagh for a month—that will be a chance for him of getting work to do. And that he will turn from nothing that will bring him in an honest living, I am certain; and that he will justify the confidence of Mr. Knewbit, I am equally sure!"
Said P. C. Breagh, rather chokily:
"I hope to God I may one day be able to thank you both as I should like to! You don't know what you have done for me, either of you! But I will—will repay you, I swear!"
She said in her quaint way:
"What obligation there may be could be repaid now—with Mr. Breagh's permission. He saw that most unhappy girl to-day.... He has seen a-many—many like her! If he would promise me—never to bring about a fall like that, or help to drag a head so fallen, lower! Perhaps I take a liberty," said Miss Ling, "and presume, being almost a stranger.... Yet I ask it of Mr. Breagh, I do indeed!"
He gave the promise, in words that were broken and hurried, and with eyes that shunned her plain, kind, earnest face. She said:
"There will be a beautiful young lady, one of these days, all the happier for that promise Mr. Breagh has given. And I hope he won't think me unjust—because I am a woman! and blind to the wreck and ruin that my sex can bring about. I knew a young man, once; who was good, and honest, and worthy; and engaged to marry a young person of his own rank in life...."
Carolan remembered Mr. Knewbit's story of the faithless underbutler.
"He went Abroad to Foreign Countries," said Miss Ling, mildly, "sailing on a ship that voyaged for months at a time. I am told that the women are very beautiful in the islands that he visited; and somehow or another, he was led away...."
Though she looked at Carolan, her regard was curiously impersonal. It was as though she saw the wraith of some face once dear, and although changed, never to be forgotten, appear within the outlines of the face that looked back at her.
"The ship sailed Home without him. He wrote—by another vessel—to the young woman he was to have married, begging her forgiveness.... He had loved her, he said, and looked to be happy with her. But the sunshine and perfume and color of them foreign places, and the spell of the beauty of their wild brown foreign women was over him. He could not come back.... He never may come back again.... But if it happened so—and he, being old and worn, and weary of strange ways and distant places, was looking for an honest roof to shelter him, and a loving heart to lean upon at the last...."
"He would find both here, I know!" said Carolan, gently.
She started and, recalling herself, said in a changed tone:
"Mr. Breagh must excuse my having delayed him here a-talking. To work and bustle is more natural to me!"
He took her hand, and having learned in Germany to pay such pretty homage without looking foolish, he stooped above it and touched it with his lips. She smiled her wise, kind smile, and said with a touching simplicity:
"Mr. Breagh is good enough to honor a poor, hard, working hand!"
He said, and the tone had the ring of sincerity:
"I wish, with all my heart, I were worthier of touching it!"
And so went upstairs to sleep in Mr. Ticking's bed.