The Complete Works of Frances Hodgson Burnett. Frances Hodgson Burnett

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СКАЧАТЬ “but before we go I want to hand something over to you.”

      The curate turned an amazed gaze upon him.

      “What is it?” he asked.

      Dart withdrew his hand from his pocket, and the pistol was in it.

      “I came out this morning to buy this,” he said. “I intended—never mind what I intended. A wrong turn taken in the fog brought me here. Take this thing from me and keep it.”

      The curate took the pistol and put it into his own pocket without comment. In the course of his labors he had seen desperate men and desperate things many times. He had even been—at moments—a desperate man thinking desperate things himself, though no human being had ever suspected the fact. This man had faced some tragedy, he could see. Had he been on the verge of a crime—had he looked murder in the eyes? What had made him pause? Was it possible that the dream of Jinny Montaubyn being in the air had reached his brain—his being?

      He looked almost appealingly at him, but he only said aloud:

      “Let us go upstairs, then.”

      So they went.

      As they passed the door of the room where the dead woman lay Dart went in and spoke to Miss Montaubyn, who was still there.

      “If there are things wanted here,” he said, “this will buy them.” And he put some money into her hand.

      She did not seem surprised at the incongruity of his shabbiness producing money.

      “Well, now,” she said, “I was wonderin’ an’ askin’. I’d like ‘er clean an’ nice, an’ there’s milk wanted bad for the biby.”

      In the room they mounted to Glad was trying to feed the child with bread softened in tea. Polly sat near her looking on with restless, eager eyes. She had never seen anything of her own baby but its limp newborn and dead body being carried away out of sight. She had not even dared to ask what was done with such poor little carrion. The tyranny of the law of life made her want to paw and touch this lately born thing, as her agony had given her no fruit of her own body to touch and paw and nuzzle and caress as mother creatures will whether they be women or tigresses or doves or female cats.

      “Let me hold her, Glad,” she half whimpered. “When she’s fed let me get her to sleep.”

      “All right,” Glad answered; “we could look after ‘er between us well enough.”

      The thief was still sitting on the hearth, but being full fed and comfortable for the first time in many a day, he had rested his head against the wall and fallen into profound sleep.

      “Wot’s up?” said Glad when the two men came in. “Is anythin’ ‘appenin’?”

      “I have come up here to tell you something,” Dart answered. “Let us sit down again round the fire. It will take a little time.”

      Glad with eager eyes on him handed the child to Polly and sat down without a moment’s hesitance, avid of what was to come. She nudged the thief with friendly elbow and he started up awake.

      “‘E’s got somethin’ to tell us,” she explained. “The curick’s come up to ‘ear it, too. Sit ‘ere, Polly,” with elbow jerk toward the bundle of sacks. “It’s got its stummick full an’ it’ll go to sleep fast enough.”

      So they sat again in the weird circle. Neither the strangeness of the group nor the squalor of the hearth were of a nature to be new things to the curate. His eyes fixed themselves on Dart’s face, as did the eyes of the thief, the beggar, and the young thing of the street. No one glanced away from him.

      His telling of his story was almost monotonous in its semi-reflective quietness of tone. The strangeness to himself—though it was a strangeness he accepted absolutely without protest—lay in his telling it at all, and in a sense of his knowledge that each of these creatures would understand and mysteriously know what depths he had touched this day.

      “Just before I left my lodgings this morning,” he said, “I found myself standing in the middle of my room and speaking to Something aloud. I did not know I was going to speak. I did not know what I was speaking to. I heard my own voice cry out in agony, ‘Lord, Lord, what shall I do to be saved?’”

      The curate made a sudden movement in his place and his sallow young face flushed. But he said nothing.

      Glad’s small and sharp countenance became curious.

      “‘Speak, Lord, thy servant ‘eareth,’” she quoted tentatively.

      “No,” answered Dart; “it was not like that. I had never thought of such things. I believed nothing. I was going out to buy a pistol and when I returned intended to blow my brains out.”

      “Why?” asked Glad, with passionately intent eyes; “why?”

      “Because I was worn out and done for, and all the world seemed worn out and done for. And among other things I believed I was beginning slowly to go mad.”

      From the thief there burst forth a low groan and he turned his face to the wall.

      “I’ve been there,” he said; “I’m near there now.”

      Dart took up speech again.

      “There was no answer—none. As I stood waiting—God knows for what—the dead stillness of the room was like the dead stillness of the grave. And I went out saying to my soul, ‘This is what happens to the fool who cries aloud in his pain.’”

      “I’ve cried aloud,” said the thief, “and sometimes it seemed as if an answer was coming—but I always knew it never would!” in a tortured voice.

      “‘T ain’t fair to arst that wye,” Glad put in with shrewd logic. “Miss Montaubyn she allers knows it will come—an’ it does.”

      “Something—not myself—turned my feet toward this place,” said Dart. “I was thrust from one thing to another. I was forced to see and hear things close at hand. It has been as if I was under a spell. The woman in the room below—the woman lying dead!” He stopped a second, and then went on: “There is too much that is crying out aloud. A man such as I am—it has forced itself upon me—cannot leave such things and give himself to the dust. I cannot explain clearly because I am not thinking as I am accustomed to think. A change has come upon me. I shall not use the pistol—as I meant to use it.”

      Glad made a friendly clutch at the sleeve of his shabby coat.

      “Right O!” she cried. “That’s it! You buck up sime as I told yer. Y’ ain’t stony broke an’ there’s allers tomorrer.”

      Antony Dart’s expression was weirdly retrospective.

      “I did not think so this morning,” he answered.

      “But there is,” said the girl. “Ain’t there now, curick? There’s a lot o’ work in yer yet; yer could do all sorts o’ things if y’ ain’t too proud. I’ll ‘elp yer. So’ll the curick. Y’ ain’t found out yet what a little folks can live on till luck turns. Me, I’m goin’ to try Miss СКАЧАТЬ