No Name, Wilkie Collins [reading the story of the TXT] 📗

to present things. He looked about in a momentary confusion. The street was strange to him; he had lost his way.

The first foot passenger of whom he inquired appeared to have no time to waste in giving information. Hurriedly directing him to cross to the other side of the road, to turn down the first street he came to on his right hand, and then to ask again, the stranger unceremoniously hastened on without waiting to be thanked.

Kirke followed his directions and took the turning on his right. The street was short and narrow, and the houses on either side were of the poorer order. He looked up as he passed the corner to see what the name of the place might be. It was called “Aaron’s Buildings.”

Low down on the side of the “Buildings” along which he was walking, a little crowd of idlers was assembled round two cabs, both drawn up before the door of the same house. Kirke advanced to the crowd, to ask his way of any civil stranger among them who might not be in a hurry this time. On approaching the cabs, he found a woman disputing with the drivers; and heard enough to inform him that two vehicles had been sent for by mistake, where only one was wanted.

The house door was open; and when he turned that way next, he looked easily into the passage, over the heads of the people in front of him.

The sight that met his eyes should have been shielded in pity from the observation of the street. He saw a slatternly girl, with a frightened face, standing by an old chair placed in the middle of the passage, and holding a woman on the chair, too weak and helpless to support herself⁠—a woman apparently in the last stage of illness, who was about to be removed, when the dispute outside was ended, in one of the cabs. Her head was drooping when he first saw her, and an old shawl which covered it had fallen forward so as to hide the upper part of her face.

Before he could look away again, the girl in charge of her raised her head and restored the shawl to its place. The action disclosed her face to view, for an instant only, before her head drooped once more on her bosom. In that instant he saw the woman whose beauty was the haunting remembrance of his life⁠—whose image had been vivid in his mind not five minutes since.

The shock of the double recognition⁠—the recognition, at the same moment, of the face, and of the dreadful change in it⁠—struck him speechless and helpless. The steady presence of mind in all emergencies which had become a habit of his life, failed him for the first time. The poverty-stricken street, the squalid mob round the door, swam before his eyes. He staggered back and caught at the iron railings of the house behind him.

“Where are they taking her to?” he heard a woman ask, close at his side.

“To the hospital, if they will have her,” was the reply. “And to the workhouse, if they won’t.”

That horrible answer roused him. He pushed his way through the crowd and entered the house.

The misunderstanding on the pavement had been set right, and one of the cabs had driven off.

As he crossed the threshold of the door he confronted the people of the house at the moment when they were moving her. The cabman who had remained was on one side of the chair, and the woman who had been disputing with the two drivers was on the other. They were just lifting her, when Kirke’s tall figure darkened the door.

“What are you doing with that lady?” he asked.

The cabman looked up with the insolence of his reply visible in his eyes, before his lips could utter it. But the woman, quicker than he, saw the suppressed agitation in Kirke’s face, and dropped her hold of the chair in an instant.

“Do you know her, sir?” asked the woman, eagerly. “Are you one of her friends?”

“Yes,” said Kirke, without hesitation.

“It’s not my fault, sir,” pleaded the woman, shirking under the look he fixed on her. “I would have waited patiently till her friends found her⁠—I would, indeed!”

Kirke made no reply. He turned, and spoke to the cabman.

“Go out,” he said, “and close the door after you. I’ll send you down your money directly. What room in the house did you take her from, when you brought her here?” he resumed, addressing himself to the woman again.

“The first floor back, sir.”

“Show me the way to it.”

He stooped, and lifted Magdalen in his arms. Her head rested gently on the sailor’s breast; her eyes looked up wonderingly into the sailor’s face. She smiled, and whispered to him vacantly. Her mind had wandered back to old days at home; and her few broken words showed that she fancied herself a child again in her father’s arms. “Poor papa!” she said, softly. “Why do you look so sorry? Poor papa!”

The woman led the way into the back room on the first floor. It was very small; it was miserably furnished. But the little bed was clean, and the few things in the room were neatly kept. Kirke laid her tenderly on the bed. She caught one of his hands in her burning fingers. “Don’t distress mamma about me,” she said. “Send for Norah.” Kirke tried gently to release his hand; but she only clasped it the more eagerly. He sat down by the bedside to wait until it pleased her to release him. The woman stood looking at them and crying, in a corner of the room. Kirke observed her attentively. “Speak,” he said, after an interval, in low, quiet tones. “Speak in her presence; and tell me the truth.”

With many words, with many tears, the woman spoke.

She had let her first floor to the lady a fortnight since. The lady had paid a week’s rent, and had given the name of Gray.