“Tell him I have never lost faith in the goodness of his heart,
that I shall love him for ever, and that heaven will never be
heaven to me without him beside me. Will you tell him to think of
that—sometimes—when he is alone; and of the sweet, happy hours we
spent together when we were but boy and girl, full of innocent glee
and love, before he was contaminated and led away. Oh, if God would
only grant me a little time longer on earth—a little time—just enough
to see poor Will led back to the right road and safe for heaven, I
could lay my head and say—‘Take me, Lord Jesus, take me home!’”
“You may be quite sure that time will be granted you for all that God
needs you to do on earth,” I softly returned. “He will not take you
till your work is done.”
I spoke with her for some time, going over many points in her history
already partly known to me, but I found that she would not breathe
one word against the man. She would not admit that in a fit of
passion he had thrown her into the river, or that she owed to that
immersion her present feeble condition. She would not listen with
patience to one slighting expression or word of demur; her whole soul
was wrapped up in him; and no tender, pure-souled mother could have
yearned over her child more eagerly than she did over the man whose
very name I could scarcely utter with patience. When she was gone I
drew a long breath, and mentally wished that I might get my clutches
on Smeaton firmly enough to treat him to a good long sentence of
penal servitude. I felt as if that would relieve my mind a bit.
A day or two later I came on Dinah and her companion, and took them
without trouble, but they had not an article about them which could
connect them with the robbery at Dinah’s last place. After a short
detention they were released, and I hoped that they would take fright
and leave the city. During my short acquaintance with Dinah, it
struck me that she was a great deal worse than her companion. “She is
of the stuff that jail birds are made of, and a bad one at that,” was
my reflection, and I remember thinking that it would certainly not be
long before I heard of her again, supposing they favoured the city
much longer with their presence. I saw them occasionally after that,
and noted the general decay in their appearance, and guessed at their
means of living, but never managed to get near them. One evening I
was surprised by a visit from Dinah at the Central. She looked savage
and sullen—a perfect fiend.
“You want to take Will Smeaton?” she abruptly began. “I know you do,
for you’ve been after him often enough.”
“I would rather take you,” was my cold reply, and I spoke the truth.
She affected to take the remark as a joke, and laughed savagely—having
the merriment all to herself. Then she revealed her message. Smeaton
and another were to break into a shop in the New Town by getting
through a hatch, creeping along the roof, and thence descending
through an unoccupied flat, and so reaching the workrooms and shop.
“You’ve quarrelled with him, and this is your revenge, I suppose?”
was my remark when she had finished, but Dinah’s reply cannot be
written down.
My only regret at the moment was that I could not warn Smeaton of
his danger. Dinah went back and had dinner and supper with the man
she had betrayed—actually broke bread with him and smiled in his
face, and appeared more loving than she had showed herself for weeks.
A woman, when good, can be holier, purer, and more strong in her
devotion and love than a man; but when she is bad, the depths of
iniquity which she can reach have never been touched by mortal man.
I sent over a posse of men one by one to the marked establishment,
and when Smeaton and his companion appeared and ascended the stair
I followed, and so closed up the retreat. They were not long
gone. We heard the alarm, and some shouting and struggling, and
soon saw Smeaton come scrambling out at the window on the roof by
which he had entered, and come flying along the slates towards the
hatch. As he got close my head popped out in front of him, and he
started—staggered back with an oath—lost his footing, and vanished
over the edge of the roof. He was picked up on the pavement below,
very much injured and quite senseless, and borne on a shutter to
the Infirmary, while his captured companion was marched over to
the Office and locked up. Dinah, in ferocious joy over Smeaton’s
accident, got drunk and disorderly, and was taken to the cells next
day. Smeaton remained for the most part unconscious during two days
and nights. Towards the close of the second day, a cab drove up to
the Infirmary gate, and out of it stepped a young girl, so pale and
feeble that every one thought it was a patient instead of a visitor
who had arrived. It was Jessie Aimers, who had risen from bed and
taken that long journey the moment she heard of the accident. She
was helped in to the ward, and sat there with Smeaton’s hand in her
own till evening, when he opened his eyes for a moment and hazily
recognised her.
“Oh, Jessie, I’ll never rise off this bed,” he feebly exclaimed; and
then, as her warm tears rained down on his cheeks, and her lips were
pressed to his own, he said—“Dinna! dinna dae that! I dinna deserve
it. Pray for me, Jessie, lass; it’s a’ I can ask o’ ye now.”
A screen had been put up round the bed, shutting them off from the
gaze of the other patients, and inside that the nurses glanced
occasionally. They remained there, whispering and communing till
Smeaton relapsed again. Towards morning there was a cry, loud and
piercing, behind the screen, but the night nurse was out of the
ward at the moment. When she appeared, one of the patients spoke of
the cry, and the nurse looked in on the pair. Jessie lay across the
bed with her arms clasped tight about the patient, and her face hid
in his bosom. Smeaton’s face was marble-like, his eyes half open
and fixed. The nurse knew that look at a glance, and called to her
companion that Smeaton was dead, and that she feared the young girl
had fainted. Gently they tried to disengage the clasping fingers,
that they might raise her and restore her to consciousness, but the
deathly coldness of the thin hand caused them both to start back
and exchange a look of inquiry and alarm. They bent over her, they
listened; all was still—still as the grave, still as eternity. Jessie
was dead.