Always at the call of the poor of his district, the Reverend Arthur
Sterne sighed as, slowly descending towards the court, he tried to drive
away the words that seemed to ring in his ears; but in vain, for the
next moment he was muttering them once more; and the thought came upon
him that, for many months past, he had been gazing at the Hardon family
through a pleasant medium--a softening mist, glowing with bright
colours, but now swept away by one rude blast, so that he looked upon
this scene of life in all its rugged truthfulness. He told himself that
the mist had once opened to afford him a glimpse, while again and again
he smiled at the folly which had led him to expect romance in a London
court. The pleasant outlines and softened distance, toned down by the
light mists, were gone now, and he gazed upon nothing but the cold, bare
reality. It was strange; but he did not ask himself whether the bitter
blast might not have brought with it some murky, distorted cloud, whose
shade had been cast athwart the picture upon which, he now woke to the
fact, he had dearly loved to gaze; and still muttering to himself, he
slowly went down step by step.
"So young, so pure-looking! But who could wonder, living in this
atmosphere of misery? But what is it to me?" he cried angrily; for
strange thoughts and fancies came upon him, and his mind was whispering
of a wild tale. The thoughts of the past, too, came--of the happy days
when, in early manhood, he had loved one as fair and bright--one whom
another bridegroom had claimed, as having been betrothed to him from her
birth. The cold earth had been her nuptial-bed, and he, the lover,
became the gloomy retired student until his appointment to a city
curacy, and the devotion of his life to the sorrows of the poor. But
again he bit his lip angrily, at making the comparison between the dead
and the living. What connection was there between them, and of what had
he been dreaming? What indeed! After years upon years of floating down
life's stream,--a calm and sad, but placid journey, unruffled but by the
sorrows of others,--he now awoke to the fact that unwittingly he had
halted by a pleasant spot, where he had been loitering and dreaming of
something undefined--something fraught with memories of the past; and
now he had been rudely awakened and recalled to the duties he had
chosen.
He passed into the court, and stood for a few moments gazing at where
there was a cellar opened, with half a score of children collected to
drop themselves or their toys down; while, being a fresh arrival upon
the scene, a cluster of the little ones began to get beneath his feet,
and run against him, or give themselves that pleasant cramp known as "a
crick in the neck," by staring up in his face; but he freed himself from
his visitors by hastily entering the opposite house.
More than one door was opened, and more than one head thrust out, as Mr
Sterne ascended the staircase; but in every instance there was a smile
and a rude curtsey to greet him, for he had that happy way of visiting
learned by so few, and his visits always seemed welcome. Those who,
moved by curiosity, appeared, were ladies, who directly after became
exceedingly anxious concerning their personal appearance. Aprons, where
they were worn, were carefully stroked down; hair was smoothed or made
less rough; sundry modest ideas seemed to rise respecting a too great
freedom of habit where a junior was partaking of nourishment; but
everywhere the curate met with cordial glances, till he once more stood
in front of an attic and entered.
Mr Sterne had so far only encountered females; for "the master" of the
several establishments was out at work, or down in the country after the
birds, or at the corner of some street where there was a public-house,
at whose door he slouched, in the feeble anticipation that work would
come there to find him, or that the landlord or a passing friend would
invite him to have "a drain;" but Mr William Jarker was, as has been
seen, at home, though, with the exception of his legs, invisible; for he
was among his pigeons, emulating the chimneys around by the rate at
which he smoked--chimneys smoking here the year round, since in most
cases one room formed the mansion of a family.
But Mr Sterne had not come to see Jarker, but at the summons of his
wife, in whom some eighteen months had wrought a terrible change. She
sat wrapped in an old shawl, shivering beside the few cinders burning in
the rusty grate--shivering though burned up with fever, the two or three
large half-filled bottles of dispensary medicine telling of a long and
weary illness. The wide windows admitted ample light, but only seemed
to make more repulsive the poverty-stricken place, with its worn,
rush-bottomed chairs, rickety table, upon which stood the fragments of
the last meal; the stump bedstead, with its patched patchwork
counterpane; the heaped-up ashes beneath the grate; the battered and
blackened quart-pot from the neighbouring public-house standing upon the
hob to do duty as saucepan; while here and there stood in corners the
stakes and nets used by Mr Jarker in his profession of birdcatcher. A
few cages of call-birds hung against the wall; but Mr Jarker's custom
was, when he had captured feathered prey, to dispose of it immediately--
pigeons being his "fancy."
A sad smile lit up the woman's face as the curate entered,--a face once
doubtless pleasing, but now hollow, yellow, and ghastly; where hung out
flauntingly were the bright colours which told of the enemy that held
full sway in the citadel of life.
"I knew you would come, sir," she whispered, letting her thin white
fingers play amongst the golden curls of a little head, but
half-concealed in her lap, where one bright round eye as peeping timidly
out to watch the stranger; and then, as the curate took one of the
broken chairs and sat beside the sick woman, whenever she spoke it was
in a whisper, and with many a timid glance at the ladder and open trap
in the roof, where her master stood, as though she feared to call down
punishment upon her head,--"I knew you would come; and Bill was easy
to-day, and come and fetched you, though he came back and said you were
busy, and would not stop."
"Look alive, there, and get that over!" cried Mr Jarker from the trap.
"I ain't a-goin' to stand here all day;" and by way of giving effect, or
for emphasis, this remark was accompanied by a kick at the ladder, and a
shake of the trap. Then followed an interval of peace, during which the
presence of the domestic tyrant was made known only by the fumes of his
tobacco, which floated down into the room, and made the poor woman cough
terribly.
Once Mr Sterne was about to tell the fellow to cease, but the look of
horror in the woman's face, and the supplicating joining of her hands,
made him pause, for he knew that he would be but adding to her suffering
when his back was turned. The open trap seemed to act as a sort of
retiring-room for Mr Jarker when anyone was in the attic that he did
not wish to see; but every now and then during the earnest conversation
with the suffering woman, there came a kick and a growl, and a shake of
the ladder, which made Mr Sterne frown, and the poor woman start as if
in dread. And so, during the remainder of the curate's stay, the
consolatory words he uttered were again and again interrupted; while at
last the voice came growling down as if in answer to a statement Mrs
Jarker had just made:
"Don't you tell no lies, now, come, or I shall make it hot for yer!"
When in the involuntary shudder the woman gave, there was plainly enough
written for the curate's reading the long and cruel records of how "hot"
for her it had often been made.
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 mere_, 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 VIII.