Miss Wilson lost her presence of mind. To gain time, she replied, “I—I can’t hear you. What do you say?”
“Damnation!” said the voice, speaking this time to some one outside. “They can’t hear.” And the knocking recommenced with increased urgency. Agatha, excited, caught Miss Wilson’s dressing gown, and repeated to her what the voice had said. Miss Wilson had heard distinctly enough, and she felt, without knowing clearly why, that the door must be opened, but she was almost over-mastered by a vague dread of what was to follow. She began to undo the chain, and Agatha helped with the bolts. Two of the servants exclaimed that they were all about to be murdered in their beds, and ran away. A few of the students seemed inclined to follow their example. At last the door, loosed, was blown wide open, flinging Miss Wilson and Agatha back, and admitting a whirlwind that tore round the hall, snatched at the women’s draperies, and blew out the lights. Agatha, by a hash of lightning, saw for an instant two men straining at the door like sailors at a capstan. Then she knew by the cessation of the whirlwind that they had shut it. Matches were struck, the candles relighted, and the newcomers clearly perceived.
Smilash, bareheaded, without a coat, his corduroy vest and trousers heavy with rain; a rough-looking, middle-aged man, poorly dressed like a shepherd, wet as Smilash, with the expression, piteous, patient, and desperate, of one hard driven by ill-fortune, and at the end of his resources; two little children, a boy and a girl, almost naked, cowering under an old sack that had served them as an umbrella; and, lying on the settee where the two men had laid it, a heap of wretched wearing apparel, sacking, and rotten matting, with Smilash’s coat and sou’wester, the whole covering a bundle which presently proved to be an exhausted woman with a tiny infant at her breast. Smilash’s expression, as he looked at her, was ferocious.
“Sorry fur to trouble you, lady,” said the man, after glancing anxiously at Smilash, as if he had expected him to act as spokesman; “but my roof and the side of my house has gone in the storm, and my missus has been having another little one, and I am sorry to ill-convenience you, Miss; but—but—”
“Inconvenience!” exclaimed Smilash. “It is the lady’s privilege to relieve you—her highest privilege!”
The little boy here began to cry from mere misery, and the woman roused herself to say, “For shame, Tom! before the lady,” and then collapsed, too weak to care for what might happen next in the world. Smilash looked impatiently at Miss Wilson, who hesitated, and said to him:
“What do you expect me to do?”
“To help us,” he replied. Then, with an explosion of nervous energy, he added: “Do what your heart tells you to do. Give your bed and your clothes to the woman, and let your girls pitch their books to the devil for a few days and make something for these poor little creatures to wear. The poor have worked hard enough to clothe THEM. Let them take their turn now and clothe the poor.”
“No, no. Steady, master,” said the man, stepping forward to propitiate Miss Wilson, and evidently much oppressed by a sense of unwelcomeness. “It ain’t any fault of the lady’s. Might I make so bold as to ask you to put this woman of mine anywhere that may be convenient until morning. Any sort of a place will do; she’s accustomed to rough it. Just to have a roof over her until I find a room in the village where we can shake down.” Here, led by his own words to contemplate the future, he looked desolately round the cornice of the hall, as if it were a shelf on which somebody might have left a suitable lodging for him.
Miss Wilson turned her back decisively and contemptuously on Smilash. She had recovered herself. “I will keep your wife here,” she said to the man. “Every care shall be taken of her. The children can stay too.”