And now the importunities of the child by her knee aroused the poor woman to a forgetfulness of self in motherly cares, when the curate took his leave, but in nowise hurried by the savage shake that Jarker gave to the ladder—a shake which brought down a few scraps of plaster, to fall upon the cages and make the songsters flutter timidly against their prison-bars.
Half-way down the stairs Mr Sterne encountered the woman with whom he had seen Lucy in the Lane; the woman he presumed to be the mother of the child Mrs Jarker had now for some time nursed.
For a moment he stopped, as if to speak; but he remembered the next instant that he had no right to question her, and he stood gazing sternly at her, while, as she shrank back into a corner of the landing, her look was keen and defiant—the look of the hunted at bay. Once he had followed her for some distance, and then perhaps he would have spoken; but now the desire seemed gone, and linked together in his mind were Lucy, ma mère, the ruffian he had left up-stairs, and this woman.
“But what is it to me?” he thought bitterly; and, hurrying down the stairs, he stood for a moment at the doorway, heedless of the children scampering over the broken pavement—heedless that, with hot eyes and fevered cheeks, Lucy had left her sewing-machine and stepped back from the window that she should neither see nor be seen—heedless of all around; for his thoughts were a strange medley—pride, duty, and passion seeking to lead him by different roads. Then for a while he remembered the poor woman he had left, whose leave-taking he felt was near—a parting that he could not but feel would be a happy release from sorrow and suffering.
At last, turning to go, he cast his eyes towards the open window that Lucy had so lately left, when, with knitted brow and care gnawing at his heart, he passed out into the street, and walked towards his lodgings; but even there, in the midst of the busy throng, where the deafening hum of the traffic of the great city was ever rising and falling, now swelling into a roar, and again sinking to the hurried buzz of the busy workers, ever rang in his ears the bitter words of the old Frenchwoman—“Our beauty, some of us!”
Volume Two—Chapter Eight.
Documentary Evidence.
“Now, sir,” said old Matt, as he appeared, brushed-up and smart for the occasion, punctual to his appointment; “now, sir; here we are—baptism, marriage, and doctor. First ought to come last, you know, only Saint Mark’s Church comes before Finsbury, don’t you see?”