“Certainly,” said I; “if it is possible, I will go at once; but I must first know where they are.”
“You will?” he said, “You really will?” with an expression of wondering delight; and then, as though the very thought brought peace, remained perfectly still, apparently musing upon the idea.
“But,” said I, “you do not tell me where to find them.”
“No —, —— Street.”
I started, and shook my head. “That is impossible; I could not go there.”
“Impossible!” he said, his voice amounting almost to a shriek. “Don’t say it! Go, dearest lady, go! Nothing could hurt you; God will protect you; oh! go. I would kneel to you if I could rise.”
“I do not want you to kneel to me; I would go at once, but it would not be right.”
“Not right! not right!” he said, with utter despair in his tone. “Oh! then what on earth can be right?” and covering his head in the bed-clothes, he groaned as though from the depths of his soul.
As this is no autobiography, it matters little by what train, either of reasoning or of cars, I reached the spot where I stood, an hour later; nor, for the same reason, shall I be more particular in my description of what followed, than is necessary for my narrative. Suffice it to say, a certain account of “St. Margaret’s court,” in the matchless poem of Aurora Leigh, was before me, stereoscoped into life, never again to be mere word-painting.
A little, low, blue frame building; the outer room, into which you step from the street, is apparently a small green grocer’s shop. Strings of suggestive-looking sausages hang in ropes from the top of the door and window; pieces of black-looking material, yclept bacon, by courtesy, are piled up among barrels of gnarly green apples, evidently not gathered from the gardens of the Hesperides; baskets of eggs—which I am very sure no tidy hen would ever confess to having laid—crowd the little, low, dirty counter, behind which stands the live stock of this interesting apartment. And certainly the object upon which my eyes first rested did not belie her “entourage.” It has been well said, that the soul makes a harmony for itself in its surroundings, and thus character is developed and declared. If so, how beautifully the unities were here preserved; for why should we not have the unities of dirt, as well as those of elegance? Doubtless that Celtic soul found as much enjoyment in seeing all around her in such perfect keeping with her own appearance, as Beau Brummel ever did in the appointments of his famed boudoir. I should almost have hesitated to ask a question of this curious production of nature,—something between a crone and a hag, with coarse Irish features, loose dress, hair hanging down, and apparently guiltless of any tending of either comb or brush since she had attained maturity, which was certainly not yesterday,—had she not herself opened the way.