"I've told my Charlie," she said, "to keep clear of Hughs a bit. They comes out as p.r.i.c.kly as hedgehogs. Pick a quarrel as soon as look at you, they will."

'Oh dear,' thought Creed, 'she's full o' cold comfort.' But, careful of his dignity, he answered, "I'm a-waitin' here to engage the situation.

You don't think he'll attack of me with definition at this time in the mornin'?"

The lame woman shrugged her shoulders. "He'll have had a drop of something," she said, "before he comes home. They gets a cold feelin' in the stomach in them places, poor creatures!"

The old butler's heart quavered up into his mouth. He lifted his shaking hand, and put it to his lips, as though to readjust himself.

"Oh yes," he said; "I ought to ha' given notice, and took my things away; but there, poor woman, it seemed a-hittin' of her when she was down. And I don't want to make no move. I ain't got no one else that's interested in me. This woman's very good about mendin' of my clothes. Oh dear, yes; she don't grudge a little thing like that!"

The lame woman hobbled from her post of rest, and began to make the bed with the frown that always accompanied a task which strained the contracted muscles of her leg. "If you don't help your neighbour, your neighbour don't help you," she said sententiously.

Creed fixed his iron-rimmed gaze on her in silence. He was considering perhaps how he stood with regard to Hughs in the light of that remark.

"I attended of his baby's funeral," he said. "Oh dear, he's here a'ready!"

The family of Hughs, indeed, stood in the doorway. The spiritual process by which "Westminister" had gone through life was displayed completely in the next few seconds. 'It's so important for me to keep alive and well,' his eyes seemed saying. 'I know the cla.s.s of man you are, but now you're here it's not a bit o' use my bein' frightened. I'm bound to get up-sides with you. Ho! yes; keep yourself to yourself, and don't you let me hev any o' your nonsense, 'cause I won't stand it. Oh dear, no!'

Beads of perspiration stood thick on his patchily coloured forehead; with lips stiffening, and intently staring eyes, he waited for what the released prisoner would say.

Hughs, whose face had blanched in the prison to a sallow grey-white hue, and whose black eyes seemed to have sunk back into his head, slowly looked the old man up and down. At last he took his cap off, showing his cropped hair.

"You got me that, daddy," he said, "but I don't bear you malice. Come up and have a cup o' tea with us."

And, turning on his heel, he began to mount the stairs, followed by his wife and child. Breathing hard, the old butler mounted too.

In the room on the second floor, where the baby no longer lived, a haddock on the table was endeavouring to be fresh; round it were slices of bread on plates, a piece of b.u.t.ter in a pie-dish, a teapot, brown sugar in a basin, and, side by side a little jug of cold blue milk and a half-empty bottle of red vinegar. Close to one plate a bunch of stocks and gilly flowers reposed on the dirty tablecloth, as though dropped and forgotten by the G.o.d of Love. Their faint perfume stole through the other odours. The old butler fixed his eyes on it.

'The poor woman bought that,' he thought, 'hopin' for to remind him of old days. "She had them flowers on her weddin'-day, I shouldn't wonder!"

This poetical conception surprising him, he turned towards the little boy, and said "This 'll be a memorial to you, as you gets older." And without another word all sat down. They ate in silence, and the old butler thought 'That 'add.i.c.k ain't what it was; but a beautiful cup o' tea. He don't eat nothing; he's more ameniable to reason than I expected. There's no one won't be too pleased to see him now!'

His eyes, travelling to the spot from which the bayonet had been removed, rested on the print of the Nativity. "'Suffer little children to come unto Me,'" he thought, "'and forbid them not." He'll be glad to hear there was two carriages followed him home.'

And, taking his time, he cleared his throat in preparation for speech.

But before the singular muteness of this family sounds would not come.

Finishing his tea, he tremblingly arose. Things that he might have said jostled in his mind. 'Very pleased to 'a seen you. Hope you're in good health at the present time of speaking. Don't let me intrude on you.

We've all a-got to die some time or other!' They remained unuttered.

Making a vague movement of his skinny hand, he walked feebly but quickly to the door. When he stood but half-way within the room, he made his final effort.

"I'm not a-goin' to say nothing," he said; "that'd be superlative! I wish you a good-morning."

Outside he waited a second, then grasped the banister.

'For all he sets so quiet, they've done him no good in that place,' he thought. 'Them eyes of his!' And slowly he descended, full of a sort of very deep surprise. 'I misjudged of him,' he was thinking; 'he never was nothing but a 'armless human being. We all has our predijuices--I misjudged of him. They've broke his 'eart between 'em--that they have.'

The silence in the room continued after his departure. But when the little boy had gone to school, Hughs rose and lay down on the bed. He rested there, unmoving, with his face towards the wall, his arms clasped round his head to comfort it. The seamstress, stealing about her avocations, paused now and then to look at him. If he had raged at her, if he had raged at everything, it would not have been so terrifying as this utter silence, which pa.s.sed her comprehension--this silence as of a man flung by the sea against a rock, and pinned there with the life crushed out of him. All her inarticulate longing, now that her baby was gone, to be close to something in her grey life, to pa.s.s the unfranchisable barrier dividing her from the world, seemed to well up, to flow against this wall of silence and to recoil.

Twice or three times she addressed him timidly by name, or made some trivial remark. He did not answer, as though in very truth he had been the shadow of a man lying there. And the injustice of this silence seemed to her so terrible. Was she not his wife? Had she not borne him five, and toiled to keep him from that girl? Was it her fault if she had made his life a h.e.l.l with her jealousy, as he had cried out that morning before he went for her, and was "put away"? He was her "man." It had been her right--nay, more, her duty!

And still he lay there silent. From the narrow street where no traffic pa.s.sed, the cries of a coster and distant whistlings mounted through the unwholesome air. Some sparrows in the eave were chirruping incessantly.

The little sandy house-cat had stolen in, and, crouched against the doorpost, was fastening her eyes on the plate which, held the remnants of the fish. The seamstress bowed her forehead to the flowers on the table; unable any longer to bear the mystery of this silence, she wept.

But the dark figure on the bed only pressed his arms closer round his head, as though there were within him a living death pa.s.sing the speech of men.

The little sandy cat, creeping across the floor, fixed its claws in the backbone of the fish, and drew it beneath the bed.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

THE DUEL

Bianca did not see her husband after their return together from the Round Pond. She dined out that evening, and in the morning avoided any interview. When Hilary's luggage was brought down and the cab summoned, she slipped up to take shelter in her room. Presently the sound of his footsteps coming along the pa.s.sage stopped outside her door. He tapped.

She did not answer.

Good-bye would be a mockery! Let him go with the words unsaid! And as though the thought had found its way through the closed door, she heard his footsteps recede again. She saw him presently go out to the cab with his head bent down, saw him stoop and pat Miranda. Hot tears sprang into her eyes. She heard the cab-wheels roll away.

The heart is like the face of an Eastern woman--warm and glowing, behind swathe on swathe of fabric. At each fresh touch from the fingers of Life, some new corner, some hidden curve or angle, comes into view, to be seen last of all perhaps never to be seen by the one who owns them.

When the cab had driven away there came into Bianca's heart a sense of the irreparable, and, mysteriously entwined with that arid ache, a sort of bitter pity: What would happen to this wretched girl now that he was gone? Would she go completely to the bad--till she became one of those poor creatures like the figure in "The Shadow," who stood beneath lampposts in the streets? Out of this speculation, which was bitter as the taste of aloes, there came to her a craving for some palliative, some sweetness, some expression of that instinct of fellow-feeling deep in each human breast, however disharmonic. But even with that craving was mingled the itch to justify herself, and prove that she could rise above jealousy.

She made her way to the little model's lodging.

A child admitted her into the bleak pa.s.sage that served for hall. The strange medley of emotions pa.s.sing through Bianca's breast while she stood outside the girl's door did not show in her face, which wore its customary restrained, half-mocking look.

The little model's voice faintly said: "Come in."

The room was in disorder, as though soon to be deserted. A closed and corded trunk stood in the centre of the floor; the bed, stripped of clothing, lay disclosed in all the barrenness of discoloured ticking.

The china utensils of the washstand were turned head downwards. Beside that washstand the little model, with her hat on--the hat with the purplish-pink roses and the little peac.o.c.k's feather-stood in the struck, shrinking att.i.tude of one who, coming forward in the expectation of a kiss, has received a blow.

"You are leaving here, then?" Bianca said quietly.

"Yes," the girl murmured.

"Don't you like this part? Is it too far from your work?"

Again the little model whispered: "Yes."

Bianca's eyes travelled slowly over the blue beflowered walls and rust-red doors; through the dusty closeness of this dismantled room a rank scent of musk and violets rose, as though a cheap essence had been scattered as libation. A small empty scent-bottle stood on the shabby looking-gla.s.s.

"Have you found new lodgings?"

The little model edged closer to the window. A stealthy watchfulness was creeping into her shrinking, dazed face.

She shook her head.

"I don't know where I'm going."

Obeying a sudden impulse to see more clearly, Bianca lifted her veil. "I came to tell you," she said, "that I shall always be ready to help you."