“You saw that painted Jezebel to-night, and”—stopping abruptly.
She had not heard him, and he followed her doggedly, with an occasional snort or grunt or other inarticulate damn at the obstinate mud. She stopped at last, with a quick gasp. Looking at her, he chafed her limp hands,—his huge, uncouth face growing pale. When she was better, he said, gravely,—
“I want you, Margaret. Not at home, child. I want to show you something.”
He turned with her suddenly off the main road into a by-path, helping her along, watching her stealthily, but going on with his disjointed, bearish growls. If it stung her from her pain, vexing her, he did not care.
“I want to show you a bit of hell: outskirt. You’re in a fit state: it’ll do you good. I’m minister there. The clergy can’t attend to it just now: they’re too busy measuring God’s truth by the States’-Rights doctrine or the Chicago Platform. Consequence, religion yields to majorities. Are you able? It’s only a step.”
She went on indifferently. The night was breathless and dark. Black, wet gusts dragged now and then through the skyless fog, striking her face with a chill. The Doctor quit talking, hurrying her, watching her anxiously. They came at last to the railway-track, with long trains of empty freight-cars.
“We are nearly there,” he whispered. “It’s time you knew your work, and forgot your weakness. The curse of pampered generations. ‘High Norman blood,’—pah!”
There was a broken gap in the fence. He led her through it into a muddy yard. Inside was one of those taverns you will find in the suburbs of large cities, haunts of the lowest vice. This one was a smoky frame standing on piles over an open space where hogs were rooting. Half a dozen drunken Irishmen were playing poker with a pack of greasy cards in an out-house. He led her up the rickety ladder to the one room, where a flaring tallow-dip threw a saffron glare into the darkness. A putrid odor met them at the door. She drew back, trembling.
“Come here!” he said, fiercely, clutching her hand. “Women as fair and pure as you have come into dens like this,—and never gone away. Does it make your delicate breath faint? And you a follower of the meek and lowly Jesus! Look here! and here!”
The room was swarming with human life. Women, idle trampers, whiskey-bloated, filthy, lay half-asleep or smoking on the floor, and set up a chorus of whining begging when they entered. Half-naked children crawled about in rags. On the damp, mildewed walls there was hung a picture of the Benicia Boy, and close by Pio Nono, crook in hand, with the usual inscription, “Feed my sheep.” The Doctor looked at it.