There were donkeys of diminutive breed grazing around her, a few tramps rising lazily from the ground, and a score of industrious people, men, women, boys and girls, digging up groundsel, chickweed and other green weeds, to sell in the great city for the sustenance of birds.
Lally wonderingly surveyed this species of industry of which she had not previously suspected the existence, and then hastily took her departure, not even tempted to prolong her stay by the offer of some bread and cheese from an old, blackened chimney-sweep, who had evidently also slept upon the heath.
All thoughts of self-destruction had gone from her mind, and the question as to her future course now presented itself. The school with which she had formerly been connected as music teacher was broken up, and among the few people she had known there was one only to whom she was tempted to go in her distress. That one was an old, consumptive woman who had been “wardrobe mistress” at the seminary during Lally’s stay there—that is, the old woman had mended and darned the garments of the pupils, and had supported herself on her meagre pay. She lived at Notting Hill, the school having been located in that neighborhood, and Lally knew her address. The old woman had been kind to her, and Lally resolved to seek her.
She walked a portion of the distance, and availed herself of the aid of omnibuses when she could. Yet the morning was well on when the girl climbed the rickety stairs to the garret of her old friend, and timidly knocked for admittance.
The old woman was at home, busy with her needle, and gave Lally admittance. More—when she heard her pitiful story—she gave the girl sympathy and the tenderest kindness. She was very near her grave, and very poor, but she offered Lally a share of her home, and the girl gratefully accepted it. Here she ate breakfast. During the day her old friend borrowed a copy of the morning’s paper, as was her daily custom, and Lally read in it the account of the suicide on Waterloo Bridge, her name being given—to her utter amazement—as that of the self-murderess.
Having a conviction that Rufus would see the same notice, as indeed he had done, she visited the coroner’s office with a yearning to see her young husband as he should bend over the poor mutilated body believing it to be her own, and to relieve his anguish and remorse. But Rufus came not, and the suicide was buried in a pauper’s grave.
Lally went back to the garret at Notting Hill, with a strange gloom on her face, and shared the labors of the old seamstress, gradually assuming the entire support of her friend, as the old woman’s strength failed. She did all the sewing her friend—who was now wardrobe mistress at a boys’ school—had engaged to do, and nursed her with a daughter’s tenderness, actually starving herself to nourish her only friend, watching by day and night at her side, denying herself food, clothes, and needed rest, to take care of the one who had befriended her; but with all her care and kindness the old woman faded day by day, and early in September died, invoking with her last breath blessings on Lally’s name.
The few sticks of furniture were sold to give the old woman a decent burial. Lally was out of money—out of everything. The superintendent of the boys’ school refused to allow her to continue the duties she had performed in the old woman’s name, alleging that she was too young. And as a last blow, she was turned out of her lodgings because of her inability to pay the rent.
At this crisis of her history, when as it seemed only death presented an open door to her, she resolved to go down to Wyndham and look once more on her husband’s face.
To think, with our desperate Lally, was to act. She set out to walk to Wyndham, working in the hop-fields for sustenance as she went. Thus she did three full days of work before she arrived near her destination, and she had crept into the way-side thicket to rest before continuing her journey to Wyndham, when she chanced to overhear the conversation between Neva Wynde and Rufus Black.