‘Noisy! Divil a sound out of her,’ said Denis. ‘She looks for all the world, yer honour, as if there wasn’t a spark o’ life left in her. Sthretched in the hall she is, an’ the colour o’ death.’
‘In the hall?’ said Wyndham quickly. ‘I thought you said she was on the steps.’
‘She was. She’—cautiously—‘was. But——’ He paused and scanned anxiously the two faces before him. ‘It’s bitther cowld outside to-night, so I tuk her in.’
And, indeed, though the month was May, a searching wind was shaking the city, and biting into the hearts of young and old. As often happens in that ‘merrie month,’ a light fall of snow was whitening the tops of the houses.
‘I had better see to this,’ said the young man, rising. He left the room, followed by Denis (who had stopped to throw a few more coals on the now cheerful fire), and went down to the cold, bare, hideous hall below. The light from the solitary gas-lamp scarcely lit it, and it took him a few seconds to discern something that lay on the worn tarpaulin at the lower end of it. At last he made it out, and, stepping nearer, saw that it was the figure of a young and very slight girl. She was lying on the ground, her back supported against a chair, and Wyndham could see that Denis had folded an old coat of the Professor’s that usually hung on the hat-stand, and placed it behind her head.
The light was so dim that he could not see what she was like; but stooping over her, he felt her hands, and found that they were cold as ice. Instinct, however, told him that life still ran within her veins, and lifting her quickly in his arms, he carried her upstairs to the room he had just left, and where the Professor still sat, so lost in fresh dreams of the experiment yet to be made that he started as Wyndham re-entered the room with his strange burden; it was, indeed, with difficulty that he brought his mind back to the present moment. He had forgotten why the young man had left the room.
‘She seems very ill,’ said Wyndham. His man had followed him, and now, through a sign from his master, he pulled forward a huge armchair, in which Wyndham placed the unconscious girl.
The Professor came nearer and stared down at her. She was very young—hardly eighteen—but already Misery or Want, or both, had seized and laid their cruel hands upon her, dabbing in dark bistre shades beneath her eyes, and making sad hollows in her pallid cheeks. The lips, white now, were firmly closed as if in death, but something about the formation of them suggested the idea that even in life they could be firm too.
It was a face that might be beautiful if health had warmed it, and if joy had found a seat within the heart that now seemed at its last ebb. The lashes lying on the white, cold cheek were singularly long and dark, and Wyndham roused himself suddenly to find himself wondering what could be the colour of the eyes that lay hidden behind that wonderful fringe.
Her gown was of blue serge, neatly, even elegantly made, and the collar and cuffs she wore were quite primitive in their whiteness and simplicity. She had no hat or cloak with her, but a little gray woollen shawl had been evidently twisted round her head. Now it had fallen back, leaving all the glory of her rich chestnut hair revealed.