A Broken Vessel (6 page)

It actually consisted of two adjacent houses, loosely cobbled together. They were of the design used for houses all over London for more than a hundred years: narrow but deep, with two or three rooms to a floor. These were debased examples of the type, built of a sickly yellow brick that was probably only a veneer for cheaper materials. The front door of the right-hand house was the formal entrance; it had a bell-pull and a dignified brass plate, too small to read from the street. The left-hand house looked meek and self-effacing. The knocker had been taken off the door, there was no bell, the shutters were closed, and for good measure there were iron gratings on all the windows.

Julian did not like the look of the place at all. The right-hand house had an air of rigour, stinginess, distrust. He would have liked to cut the two houses apart and set the left one free. He went up to the front door of the right-hand house to read the brass plate. It said: “Reclamation Society.”

Reclamation of what? he wondered. Stolen goods? The American colonies? People’s lost buttons and boots? In reality, this must be one of those associations for improving the public morals. There were a good many of them springing up in London these days.

He rang the bell. The door opened a crack, and a woman looked out. She had a small, square face, the skin drawn tightly across it, like fabric stretched on an embroidery frame. Her eyes were black and beady, her hair a salt-and-pepper grey. Her mouth seemed set in a perpetual grim line. “Yes?”

“Good morning.” He doffed his hat. “I was just passing and saw the sign on your door. Would you be good enough to tell me what the Reclamation Society is?”

“We reclaim lost women. We turn them from their evil paths, and make them into humble, repentant, useful members of society. Perhaps you’ve heard of our founder,” she added proudly, “the Reverend Mr. Harcourt.”

He had, now he thought of it. Harcourt was a clergyman from some country parish, who had made a minor stir in London lately with his sermons on the evils of prostitution. This had brought him a devoted following of respectable women, who were apt to be much harder on their fallen sisters than men were. Julian vaguely recalled that Harcourt had opened a refuge for prostitutes. This, obviously, was the place.

“Whom do I have the honour of addressing?” he asked.

“I’m Mrs. Fiske, one of the matrons.” Not that it’s any of your business, her tone implied.

If there was a Mr. Fiske, he had all Julian’s sympathies. “It sounds a formidable endeavour—reforming these women, making them humble and useful. How do you go about it?”

“We require them to confess their sins, as the first step toward repentance. Then they must submit to a regimen of hard work, prayer, and penitence. We impose the strictest discipline. Only by learning to conquer their wicked appetites and impulses can they regain some shred of the character they’ve thrown away.”

“What if they don’t—take to it?”

She drew herself up. “If they are too depraved to profit by the example we set and the chance we give them, they are free to leave. This isn’t a prison. But any of the creatures who leaves us is barred from ever coming back again. Otherwise we should have them crowding on our doorstep whenever they’re hungry or their landlords have very properly thrown them out, then returning to their vile habits after they’ve been fed and housed at our expense!”

“I should have thought that was charity.”

“Charity for the body—perdition for the soul! Who are you, sir? Are you a journalist?”

She would never believe him if he said he was—not the way he was dressed. The question had been rhetorical, a tart comment on his inquisitiveness.

She was starting to close the door.

“Just a moment—” he began.

“Good day to you, sir. I’ve no time for idle and curious people. Too many young men hang about this place as it is.”

He thought quickly. “I might wish to make a donation.”

The door stopped an inch from the jamb, and came grudgingly open again. “I’m sure we should be very grateful, sir,” she said stiffly.

“Of course I should like to know a little more about your work. What sort of women do you take in? Are they all English? Are they any particular age? What sort of families do they come from?”

“I can give you a pamphlet to read that describes our work. Mr. Harcourt wrote it himself. He isn’t here at present, but perhaps if you come back another day, he might find time to see you.” She spoke as a cardinal might of an audience with the Pope.

“I should like to read it. Thank you.”

“I’ll get it. I must ask you to wait outside. Gentlemen aren’t permitted in unless they have an appointment with Mr. Harcourt, or can prove they’re an inmate’s father or brother. Don’t think we haven’t had their fancy-men coming here pretending to be relatives, trying to get them out!” She pressed her lips together, her little eyes glinting.

She went inside. Julian admitted ruefully that he had not accomplished very much. True, he knew now what was at No. 9, Stark Street. And it seemed very likely that the woman he sought was an inmate of this place—or had been three days ago, when she wrote the letter. The shame and regret she expressed certainly fit the character of a repentant Magdalene. And he understood why she might feel a need to keep her identity a secret: the insistence on confession and public abasement in this place could easily make a woman shrink from laying bare her true name and history. Especially if she came of a respectable family, as this woman apparently did, and did not want them to share in her disgrace.

The question was, what should he do now? He had no means of identifying, much less speaking with, the woman who had written the letter. He could not hope to pass for a relative, since he did not know the writer’s name, how old she was, or what she looked like. He could show the letter to Mrs. Fiske, but he did not trust her not to browbeat the writer, force her to reveal the letter’s destination, perhaps even cast her out of the refuge. It was hard to see how leaving this place could be anything but a blessing, but perhaps the writer had nowhere else to go.

If he could only speak to her for a few minutes, he could explain how he came by her letter, and offer to make sure it reached whomever it was meant for. He did not know why he wanted so much to help her. Sheer boredom, perhaps, or his confounded chivalry. And then again, it might be that Mrs. Fiske, with her narrow, crabbed religious views, reminded him of his mother’s family, with whom he had spent several wretched years as a boy after his father died.

All at once he had an idea. When Mrs. Fiske returned with the pamphlet, he asked, “How many inmates do you have at present?”

“Four-and-twenty.”

“Are you accepting any more?”

“Mr. Harcourt thinks we might accommodate as many as thirty. Of course, we’re careful whom we accept. No papists, no known felons. And if they’re diseased, we send them to hospital.”

“How do you find them?”

“They find us. They hear of our work and come to us here. We interview them, and if we’re satisfied they’re truly repentant, we take them in. Some don’t stay more than a few days. They’re too soft and self-indulgent. They think to find an easy life here. We soon set them right on that score!”

“I’ve no doubt you do,” he said, with wry conviction. He thought for a moment. “Do they relapse very frequently?”

“How do you mean, frequently?”

“Well—have any left the refuge in the past few days?”

“No.” She eyed him, puzzled and suspicious.

“Thank you, Mrs. Fiske. You’ve been extraordinarily kind. Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon, Mr.—?”

But Julian was already walking away.

He read the pamphlet on his way home. It was not very enlightening. It consisted largely of rhetoric about prostitution—“the stain upon our national soul,” as Harcourt called it—rather than any practical information about the refuge or its inmates. Not that it was foolish or facile. Harcourt wrote with force and grace, and without the pomposity that made so many reformers seem comical just when they were most sincere. But was all this eloquence in earnest? Julian felt he would like to know more about the Reverend Gideon Harcourt.

He let himself in at the street door of his lodging and went upstairs. As he was laying his hat and stick on the hall table, Sally came running out of the parlour. Her nut-brown hair hung damp and loose. Her bare feet made little wet marks on the floor. She was wearing his green silk dressing-gown (and nothing else, that he could perceive). The sash was loosely tied, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. She kicked the hem from under her feet as she rushed toward him.

“Did you find her? What did she say about the letter? What kind of place is she shut up in? Is it a knocking-house?”

“Aren’t you afraid of catching cold?”

“Pox on that! Who
is
she? What’s it all about?”

“I don’t know who she is, but she seems to be an inmate of a refuge for fallen women. That’s what’s at Number 9, Stark Street.”

“Oh, one of them places.” She wrinkled her nose. “Did you see her?”

“I couldn’t. There was a dragon guarding the door.” He described his encounter with Mrs. Fiske. “At least we know the woman who wrote the letter is still there, assuming she really is an inmate. Mrs. Fiske says no inmates have left in the past few days.”

“What’ll we do now?”

“We could find you something warmer to wear than my dressing-gown.”

“I don’t want nothing else. This is plummy, this is. Feels like heaven next me skin!”

“Where did you get it?”

“Out of your wardrobe.” She shrugged, as if to say, where else? “Suits me, don’cha think?”

“Yes. It does.”

A slow smile spread over her face. “You fancies me, Mr. Julian Kestrel.”

“I think you’re very fetching,” he said politely.

“Bender! I know when a cove has the itch. You likes me in this here dressing-robe of yours, but you’d like me a sight better out of it. Wouldn’t you, now?”

He began drawing off his gloves. “What’s become of Dipper?”

“He went to fetch me traps from me lodging in Seven Dials. But first he brought me up a tub of hot water, and I washed meself all over. Even me hair and under me nails! I never done that afore.”

Julian looked rather blank.

“Scrubbed meself raw, I did. On account of, Dip’s so swell now, I has to live up to him. And you—! Cor, I never seed a cove so splash. Dip says you changes your linen every day. I’m glad it ain’t me as does your washing, that’s all!”

He suddenly realized he had not yet asked how she was. She seemed so gay and lively, he had all but forgotten what she had gone through last night. He wondered how much of her cockiness was pure, stubborn courage. In all the time she had been here, he had never heard her complain, though she still hobbled a little, and there was a mottled bruise over her left eye.

She saw him look at it. “Regular rainbow, ain’t it? Looks worse nor it is, though.”

“I’m sorry, Sally.”

“It ain’t nothing.” She gave a little wriggle, as if to shake off his concern. “You ain’t said what we was going to do about that letter. You mean to ask Blue Eyes about it?”

“I’d rather not. It may have nothing to do with him—and if it does, it’s probably a personal matter he wouldn’t relish my knowing about.” After the Bellegarde murder, Julian was not anxious to receive any more forced confidences from the erring aristocracy. “I still think the most tactful and sensible course is to find the writer, and see what she wants done with the letter.”

“But you said you can’t get in that place.”

“
I
can’t, no.”

“Then how—Oh, I’m down upon you! You wants
me
to have a try!”

He did not answer at once. It was true he had meant to ask her to go to the refuge, and he sensed that she would do it without hesitation—whether to keep on his good side or because she was curious herself, he could not say. But the realization that he had this power over her made him think twice about using it.

“If you’re willing,” he said at last. “It’s a grisly place—I wouldn’t blame you for avoiding it like the plague. But Mrs. Fiske told me they had room for a few more inmates. And if you could once get inside, I shouldn’t think it would be difficult to find the writer. There can’t be many women like her there—educated and gently bred. You’ve only to tell her we have the letter and ask her what she wants done with it, and then you can take yourself off.”