The train glided into the fog-laden London station, and very slowly
Agnes Barlow stepped down out of the railway carriage. She felt
oppressed by the fact that she was alone. During the last few weeks
Ferrier had always been standing on the platform waiting to greet her,
eager to hurry her into a cab--to a picture gallery, to a concert, or of
late, oftenest of all, to one of those green oases which the great town
still leaves her lovers.
But now Ferrier was not here. Ferrier was ill, solitary, in the lonely
rooms which he called "home."
Agnes Barlow hurried out of the station.
Hammer, hammer, hammer went what she supposed was her heart. It was a
curious, to Agnes a new sensation, bred of the fear that she would meet
some acquaintance to whom she would have to explain her presence in
town. She could not help being glad that the fog was of that dense,
stifling quality which makes every one intent on his own business rather
than on that of his neighbours.
Then something happened which scared Agnes. She was walking, now very
slowly, out of the station, when a tall man came up to her. He took off
his hat and peered insolently into her face.
"I think I've had the pleasure of meeting you before," he said.
She stared at him with a great, unreasonable fear gripping her heart. No
doubt this was some business acquaintance of Frank's. "I--I don't think
so," she faltered.
"Oh, yes," he said. "Don't you remember, two years ago at the Pirola in
Regent Street? I don't _think_ I can be wrong."
And then Agnes understood. "You are making a mistake," she said
breathlessly, and quickened her steps.
The man looked after her with a jeering smile, but he made no further
attempt to molest her.
She was trembling--shaken with fear, disgust, and terror. It was odd,
but such a thing had never happened to pretty Agnes Barlow before. She
was not often alone in London; she had never been there alone on such a
foggy evening, an evening which invited such approaches as those she had
just repulsed.
She touched a respectable-looking woman on the arm. "Can you tell me the
way to Flood Street, Chelsea?" she asked, her voice faltering.
"Why, yes, Miss. It's a good step from here, but you can't mistake it.
You've only got to go straight along, and then ask again after you've
been walking about twenty minutes. You can't mistake it." And she
hurried on, while Agnes tried to keep in step behind her, for the slight
adventure outside the station became retrospectively terrifying. She
thrilled with angry fear lest that--that brute should still be stalking
her; but when she looked over her shoulder she saw that the pavement was
nearly bare of walkers.
At last the broad thoroughfare narrowed to a point where four streets
converged. Agnes glanced fearfully this way and that. Which of those
shadowy black-coated figures hurrying past, intent on their business,
would direct her rightly? Within the last half-hour Agnes had grown
horribly afraid of men.
And then, with more relief than the fact warranted, across the narrow
roadway she saw emerge, between two parting waves of fog, the shrouded
figure of a woman leaning against a dead wall.
Agnes crossed the street, but as she stepped up on to the kerb, suddenly
there broke from her, twice repeated, a low, involuntary cry of dread.
"Teresa!" she cried. And then, again, "Teresa!" For in the shrouded
figure before her she had recognized, with a thrill of incredulous
terror, the form and lineaments of Teresa Maldo.
But there came no answering cry; and Agnes gave a long, gasping,
involuntary sigh of relief as she realized that what had seemed to be
her dead friend's dark, glowing face was the face of a little child--a
black-haired beggar child, with large startled eyes wide open on a
living world.
The tall woman whose statuesque figure had so strangely recalled
Teresa's supple, powerful form was holding up the child, propping it on
the wall behind her.
Still shaking with the chill terror induced by the vision she now
believed she had not seen, Agnes went up closer to the melancholy group.
Even now she longed to hear the woman speak. "Can you tell me the way to
Flood Street?" she asked.
The woman looked at her fixedly. "No, that I can't," she said
listlessly. "I'm a stranger here." And then, with a passionate energy
which startled Agnes, "For God's sake, give me something, lady, to help
me to get home! I've walked all the way from Essex; it's taken me, oh!
so long with the child, though we've had a lift here and a lift there,
and I haven't a penny left. I came to find my husband; but he's lost
himself--on purpose!"
A week ago, Agnes Barlow would have shaken her head and passed on. She
had always held the theory, carefully inculcated by her careful parents,
that it is wrong to give money to beggars in the street.
But perhaps the queer illusion that she had just experienced made her
remember Father Ferguson. In a flash she recalled a sermon of the old
priest's which had shocked and disturbed his prosperous congregation,
for in it the preacher had advanced the astounding theory that it is
better to give to nine impostors than to refuse the one just man; nay,
more, he had reminded his hearers of the old legend that Christ
sometimes comes, in the guise of a beggar, to the wealthy.
She took five shillings out of her purse, and put them, not in the
woman's hand, but in that of the little child.
"Thank you," said the woman dully. "May God bless you!" That was all,
but Agnes went on, vaguely comforted.
* * * * *
And now at last, helped on her way by more than one good-natured
wayfarer, she reached the quiet, but shabby Chelsea street where
Ferrier lived. The fog had drifted towards the river, and in the
lamplight Agnes Barlow was not long in finding a large open door, above
which was inscribed: "The Thomas More Studios."
Agnes walked timorously through into the square, empty, gas-lit hall,
and looked round her with distaste. The place struck her as very ugly
and forlorn, utterly lacking in what she had always taken to be the
amenities of flat life--an obsequious porter, a lift, electric light.
How strange of Ferrier to have told her that he lived in a building that
was beautiful!
Springing in bold and simple curves, rose a wrought-iron staircase,
filling up the centre of the narrow, towerlike building. Agnes knew that
Ferrier lived high up, somewhere near the top.
She waited a moment at the foot of the staircase. She was gathering up
her strength, throwing behind her everything that had meant life,
happiness, and--what signified so very much to such a woman as
herself--personal repute.
But, even so, Agnes did not falter in her purpose. She was still
possessed, driven onward, by a passion of jealous misery.
But, though her spirit was willing, ay, and more than willing, for
revenge, her flesh was weak; and as she began slowly walking up the
staircase she started nervously at the grotesque shapes cast by her own
shadow, and at the muffled sounds of her own footfalls.
Half-way up the high building the gas-jets burned low, and Agnes felt
aggrieved. What a mean, stupid economy on the part of the owners of this
strange, unnatural dwelling-place.
How dreadful it would be if she were to meet any one she knew--any one
belonging to what she was already unconsciously teaching herself to call
her old, happy life! As if in cruel answer to her fear, a door opened,
and an old man, clad in a big shabby fur coat and broad-brimmed hat,
came out.
Agnes's heart gave a bound in her bosom. Yes; this was what she had
somehow thought would happen. In the half-light she took the old man to
be an eccentric acquaintance of her father's.
"Mr. Willis?" she whispered hoarsely.
He looked at her, surprised, resentful.
"My name's not Willis," he said gruffly, as he passed her on his way
down, and her heart became stilled. How could she have been so foolish
as to take that disagreeable old man for kindly-natured Mr. Willis?
She was now very near the top. Only a storey and a half more, and she
would be there. Her steps were flagging, but a strange kind of peace had
fallen on her. In a few moments she would be safe, for ever, in
Ferrier's arms. How strange and unreal the notion seemed!
And then--and then, as if fashioned by some potent incantation from the
vaporous fog outside, a tall, grey figure rose out of nothingness, and
stood, barring the way, on the steel floor of the landing above her.
Agnes clutched the iron railing, too oppressed rather than too
frightened to speak. Out in the fog-laden street she had involuntarily
called out the other's name. "Teresa?" she had cried, "Teresa!" But this
time no word broke from her lips, for she feared that if she spoke the
other would answer.
Teresa Maldo's love, the sisterly love of which Agnes had been so little
worthy, had broken down the gateless barrier which stretches its dense
length between the living and the dead. What she, the living woman, had
not known how to do for Teresa, the dead woman had come back to do for
her--for now Agnes seemed suddenly able to measure the depth of the gulf
into which she had been about to throw herself....
She stared with fearful, fascinated eyes at the immobile figure swathed
in grey, cere-like garments, and her gaze travelled stealthfully up to
the white, passionless face, drained of all expression save that of
watchful concern and understanding tenderness....
With a swift movement Agnes turned round. Clinging to the iron rail, she
stumbled down the stairway to the deserted hall, and with swift
terror-hastened steps rushed out into the street.
Through the fog she plunged, not even sparing a moment to look back and
up to the dimly lighted window behind which poor Ferrier stood,--as a
softer, a truer-natured woman might have done. Violently she put all
thought of her lover from her, and as she hurried along with tightening
breath, the instinct of self-preservation alone possessing her, she
became more and more absorbed in measuring the fathomless depth of the
pit in which she had so nearly fallen.
Her one wish now was to get home--to get home--to get home--before Frank
got back.
But the fulfilment of that wish was denied her--for as Agnes Barlow
walked, crying softly as she went, in the misty darkness along the road
which led from Summerfield station to the gate of The Haven, there fell
on her ear the rhythmical tramp of well-shod feet.
She shrank near to the hedge, in no mood to greet or to accept greeting
from a neighbour. But the walker was now close to her. He struck a
match.
"Agnes?" It was Frank Barlow's voice--shamed, eager, questioning. "Is
that you? I thought--I hoped you would come home by this train."
And as she gave no immediate answer, as he missed--God alone knew with
what relief--the prim, cold accents to which his wife had accustomed him
of late, he hurried forward and took her masterfully in his arms. "Oh!
my darling," he whispered huskily, "I know I've been a beast--but I've
never left off loving you--and I can't stand your coldness, Agnes; it's
driving me to the devil! Forgive me, my pure angel----"
And Frank Barlow's pure angel did forgive him, and with a spontaneity
and generous forgetfulness which he will ever remember. Nay, more;
Agnes--and this touched her husband deeply--even gave up her pleasant
acquaintance with that writing fellow, Ferrier, because Ferrier, through
no fault of his, was associated, in both their minds, with the terrible
time each would have given so much to obliterate from the record of
their otherwise cloudless married life.