It was a sordid little scene that followed, but for the sake of the
good woman whose unaffected charity and kindly feeling illumined its
murky darkness, it shall be recorded here....
Mr. Knewbit, arriving at Miss Morency's door, thumped on it,
receiving no answer beyond the hurried shooting of the bolt, and the
scuffling of slippered feet across the carpet. Roused by the
meaningful silence to indignation, he delivered himself in the
following terms:
"You inside there--and you're aware why I don't address you as a
young lady!--I'm going to trouble you to unfasten that door!"
"No, you ain't!" said a feminine voice from within, defiantly. "Go
downstairs and shave yourself, you silly old man!"
A thickish masculine chuckle greeted this sally.
"When we have got you and your companion out of this respectable
house," quoth the wrathful Mr. Knewbit, "I may have time to attend to
my Sunday twylett. Not before! Are you a-going to undo this door?
Because, if you won't, I am a-going to bust it with the poker!
Once!" He applied the end of the weapon named to a panel with a
crack in it. "Twice!----"
"Stop!" cried Miss Ling, and Mr. Knewbit lowered the poker. "One
moment, Solomon!--I want to speak to her!"
Forgetful of her neat Sabbath attire, she went down upon her knees
before the door, as Mr. Knewbit joined P. C. Breagh upon the
staircase, and laid her work-worn hand as gently and persuasively
upon the threatened panel, as if it had been a human bosom housing an
obdurate heart.
"Miss Morency! Don't be afraid, my dear! Maria Ling it is
a-speaking to you!" She waited an instant, and receiving no
response, went on.
"Mr. Knewbit has got it in his head--he best knows why!--that you're
not Alone in that room, in a manner of speaking.... Open the door
and prove to him he's wrong; or tell me on your solemn honor--before
the God who made you and me both women!--that he's mistaken, and I'll
believe you--and ask your pardon--and we'll all go downstairs again!"
There was a silence within the room, and then a thick whispering
voice and a thin whispering voice held indistinct colloquy. P. C.
Breagh and Mr. Knewbit exchanged looks, Miss Ling grew pale, rose,
and withdrew from the door. Her clean Sunday handkerchief was in her
hand and the hand shook, and her mouth was shut tightly, as, with
much shuffling, an obstacle--probably a chest of drawers--was removed
from the other side, the key was turned, and the bolt withdrawn.
The door opened. The defiant figure and the angry painted face of a
good-looking young woman were revealed beyond the threshold. She
wore a gaudy dressing-gown trimmed with cheap lace, and a butterfly
cap in the prevailing mode was set upon her mound of dyed hair. Her
companion might have been the manager of a restaurant, or a West End
shopwalker. His face was sallow with debauch, and his eyes were red
from liquor or sleeplessness. With the rosebud of the previous night
still drooping in the buttonhole of his fashionably cut frock-coat,
and the mud of the previous night soiling his trouser-ends and his
shiny boots and drab spats, and his silk hat fixed firmly on his head
as though in anticipation of a scuffle, he stood behind the woman;
maintaining a sulky silence, gripping his cane in a hand that was
mottled and shaky. And the roll of his eyes said "Two of 'em!" as
his glance took in Mr. Knewbit and P. C. Breagh.
Said the rouged, defiant young woman in the flyaway cap, turning a
glare of defiance upon her landlady:
"You see now whether that"--she employed a term reflecting on the
moral character of her assailant--"was mistaken, or whether he
wasn't, I hope?"
Returned Miss Ling, looking mildly at the brazen countenance:
"I see! May the Lord forgive you, poor ruined young creature. But
for Him having given me a good, good mother, I might be standing
where you are now!"
"Never!" said Mr. Knewbit under his breath. The kind soul went on
without heeding him:
"Were you led away? ... Was it the first time? ... Whether or no,
it's not too late to change, and lead a life of decency. As for
this--man...."
The young woman interrupted, with lowered eyes shunning her:
"We're to be married! He's promised me upon his oath!"
Her companion purpled furiously, and broke out:
"You're lying, you----! I picked you up in the Haymarket! Do you
think I'm afraid of you and your bullies there? Stand back!"
Fulminating threats, he thrust roughly past Miss Ling, driving her,
possibly not with intention, against the landing wall. She gave a
little cry, and the poker fell.... He bellowed:
"---- you! You've broken my arm, you--blackguard! Where's the
police?"
A grip of steel shut upon his scruff, and the voice belonging to the
grip said cheerfully:
"In the street. Come down and look for 'em, my man!"
His protests were drowned in the rattling of his boot-heels on the
oil-cloth-covered staircase, in the violence of his transit to the
ground-floor. There, as Mr. Knewbit, dodging past, opened the hall
door, he was shot from its threshold as a human bullet from a
spring-cannon, even then supplying a sensational turn at the Royal
Alhambra Theater--rolled down the steps, gathering momentum, and
colliding with a late milk-truck that happened to be passing,
suffered abrasions and the ruin of his smart frock-coat. Leaving the
victim of righteous judgment to appease the justly-indignant milkman
with some of the silver shed from his trousers-pockets in the
transit, Mr. Knewbit slammed the door, and crowed, slapping P. C.
Breagh heartily upon the back.
"Neatly done! You could get a well-paid job as pitcher-out at a West
End bar, if you'd nothing better than your muscles to rely upon....
Wait a bit!" He vanished upstairs, walking as softly as a cat does,
to return and explain:
"The pumps are at work up there! Both of 'em crying--Rahab's
Daughter and Solomon's Virtuous Woman, I mean.... You remember the
text? '_Her price is above rubies._' I remembered it when I saw her
sitting dropping tears upon that trollop's head, that was a-lying in
her lap. Well, well!" He led the way down into the kitchen,
muttering, "'_As golden pillars upon bases of silver, so are the firm
feet upon the soles of a steady woman...._' and '_Her husband's heart
delighteth in her!_' Sit down, you must want a breather ...
'_Delighteth in her_'--or would have if she'd married one capable of
appreciating a character like hers."
Seeing that the mind of Mr. Knewbit was still running upon Miss Ling,
P. C. Breagh ventured to ask:
"And has she never entertained any intention of----"
Mr. Knewbit nodded sagely.
"Once. You might say--there has been a Romance in her life, without
exaggeration. When in service with that family of Nobs you've heard
her mention,--about twenty-four years ago, when she was a strapping
young woman of twenty-six--she got engaged to an underbutler--a young
man with an affectionate nature and a changeable disposition, in
conjunction with weak lungs. Weak lungs----"
Mr. Knewbit opened the oven-door and looked in to ascertain how the
mutton and Yorkshire pudding were getting on. "I've had weak lungs
myself, but never found 'em an excuse for villainy! Mph! ... Don't
smell like burning--pretty right, it seems to me!"
He sat down in his Windsor arm-chair near the hearth, stretched out
his carpet-slippered feet, and broke out:
"So--in the interests o' them weak lungs of his, his master's son,
Lord Wallingbrook--to whom he sometimes acted as valet, took him in
that capacity on a steam-yacht-trip from Plymouth, via Trinidad to
the Southern Seas. And they cruised among the Islands of the Pacific
for months--a gay party of bachelors amusing themselves!--and--in the
Paumotu Group--this precious young man of Maria's up-stick and took
French leave.... And that's all. And whether his master knew more
than he'd tell--that's uncertain. Anyhow, a letter arrived six
months after the steam-yacht dropped anchor at Plymouth, to say that
he was safe and well and happy--but was never coming Home any more.
And she believes ... 'Ssh! Here she is!"
It was Miss Ling, who had been crying, undoubtedly, for her Sunday
bonnet-strings were spotted as with rain, and her clean handkerchief
was reduced to a damp wad. Said she:
"I have talked to that poor thing upstairs, as a woman of my age is
privileged to do. And she has softened wonderful, Solomon, and from
what she has owned--has seen the shame and wickedness of her life
clear, and longed to be delivered from it--this many and many a day,
I'm sure! So if you'll kindly whistle up a four-wheeler, I'll make
bold--being late for the speaking at the Judd Street Branch Hall!--to
take her down to the Christian Mission Army Headquarters in the
Whitechapel Road. Where I shall find not only the General, as they
call Mr. Booth, but Mrs. Booth, ready and willing, please Heaven! to
help the poor soul to a better life! And though Lilla has gone home
to spend Sunday with her mother at Southampton Mews, I'll stop there
passing and send a note in, and she'll come round and dish up
dinner--and don't you, either of you, dream of waiting a minute for
me! Now, I'm going back to Miss Morency--though her real name is
nothing like so grand as that, poor creature!"
She turned at the door to nod and smile and say: "And her and me will
carry down her box between us, so don't show yourselves to shame her
poor swelled face before the cabman."
"There's a woman!" said Mr. Knewbit exultantly, a few minutes later,
as the hall-door shut and the cab-door banged, and the vehicle
containing the Daughter of Rahab and the Woman Above Rubies rattled
away in the direction of Holborn Circus.
"I wonder you----" P. C. Breagh was beginning, when he stopped
himself on the brink of an indiscretion.
"Eh?..." interrogated Mr. Knewbit. "What? ... Oh, but I did, though!"
Mr. Knewbit rubbed his chin, which needed shaving, and shook his head
in a despondent way.
"I did. She was thirty-one when the Earl and Countess pensioned
her--thirty-one pound a year For Life they promised.... And it's
been paid regularly, going on for nineteen year now. And in the
second year I came to lodge here early in January, and finding her a
comfortable, cleanly, kindly creature, I stopped on--and all but
asked her to marry me next time New Year came round. On the
following anniversary I took the plunge! after reading a passage of
Solomon's peculiarly applicable to my case. '_He that hath found a
good wife hath found a good thing,_' it was. Turned it up by
accident, and showed it to her, and asked her. And she said No! And
goes on saying it--though I ask her for the last time regularly every
year. Here's the gal coming down the area-steps. Now that meat and
pudding's off my conscience, I shall put on my boots for an airing
before dinner. And while I'm gone--try your hand at a neat article
in moderate paragraphs describing the methods of that"--Mr. Knewbit
cast about for a new term--"that Man-eating Alligator in the Euston
Road. What was the name of the place? 'Royal Copenhagen Hotel!' ...
Why, it fairly smells of roguery! 'Royal Greenhorn' would be pretty
well up to the mark."
Mr. Knewbit returned, just as the little servant pronounced dinner to
be in danger of spoiling--in a cab; and thereupon ensued much jolting
and bumping, suggestive of the conveyance of heavy articles up the
doorsteps into the hall. Where, being summoned from the kitchen by a
bellow, P. C. Breagh recognized his own trunks and book-boxes, and
wrung the hand of his good genius with a grateful swelling of the
heart, and an irrepressible watering of the eyes.
"It was so kind!--and suppose I never am able to pay you--or keep you
waiting a devil of a time?" he protested incoherently.
"Young fellow," said Mr. Knewbit, scowling with his heavy brows and
twinkling pleasantly from under them. "You are a gentleman born and
bred and taught. You must have your Books to keep up your Latin and
Greek and other learning--and to keep up your appearance you must
have your clothes. No man is so down in the world that he can afford
to go downer. This is my opinion, and also Miss Ling's!"
"And to-morrow Mr. Breagh will find poor Miss Morency's room swept
and scrubbed and got ready for him," said Miss Ling that evening,
during Mr. Knewbit's absence. "And the rent is--including Kitchen
Board with myself and Mr. Knewbit, who likes homeliness, sixteen
shillings per week. And if I trust Mr. Breagh for a month--that will
be a chance for him of getting work to do. And that he will turn
from nothing that will bring him in an honest living, I am certain;
and that he will justify the confidence of Mr. Knewbit, I am equally
sure!"
Said P. C. Breagh, rather chokily:
"I hope to God I may one day be able to thank you both as I should
like to! You don't know what you have done for me, either of you!
But I will--will repay you, I swear!"
She said in her quaint way:
"What obligation there may be could be repaid now--with Mr. Breagh's
permission. He saw that most unhappy girl to-day.... He has seen
a-many--many like her! If he would promise me--never to bring about
a fall like that, or help to drag a head so fallen, lower! Perhaps I
take a liberty," said Miss Ling, "and presume, being almost a
stranger.... Yet I ask it of Mr. Breagh, I do indeed!"
He gave the promise, in words that were broken and hurried, and with
eyes that shunned her plain, kind, earnest face. She said:
"There will be a beautiful young lady, one of these days, all the
happier for that promise Mr. Breagh has given. And I hope he won't
think me unjust--because I am a woman! and blind to the wreck and
ruin that my sex can bring about. I knew a young man, once; who was
good, and honest, and worthy; and engaged to marry a young person of
his own rank in life...."
Carolan remembered Mr. Knewbit's story of the faithless underbutler.
"He went Abroad to Foreign Countries," said Miss Ling, mildly,
"sailing on a ship that voyaged for months at a time. I am told that
the women are very beautiful in the islands that he visited; and
somehow or another, he was led away...."
Though she looked at Carolan, her regard was curiously impersonal.
It was as though she saw the wraith of some face once dear, and
although changed, never to be forgotten, appear within the outlines
of the face that looked back at her.
"The ship sailed Home without him. He wrote--by another vessel--to
the young woman he was to have married, begging her forgiveness....
He had loved her, he said, and looked to be happy with her. But the
sunshine and perfume and color of them foreign places, and the spell
of the beauty of their wild brown foreign women was over him. He
could not come back.... He never may come back again.... But if it
happened so--and he, being old and worn, and weary of strange ways
and distant places, was looking for an honest roof to shelter him,
and a loving heart to lean upon at the last...."
"He would find both here, I know!" said Carolan, gently.
She started and, recalling herself, said in a changed tone:
"Mr. Breagh must excuse my having delayed him here a-talking. To
work and bustle is more natural to me!"
He took her hand, and having learned in Germany to pay such pretty
homage without looking foolish, he stooped above it and touched it
with his lips. She smiled her wise, kind smile, and said with a
touching simplicity:
"Mr. Breagh is good enough to honor a poor, hard, working hand!"
He said, and the tone had the ring of sincerity:
"I wish, with all my heart, I were worthier of touching it!"
And so went upstairs to sleep in Mr. Ticking's bed.