Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1042 page)

He was near the end of the street by this time. The sight of the misery about him, and the sense of his own utter inability to remedy it, weighed heavily on his spirits. He thought of the peaceful and prosperous life at Tadmor. Were his happy brethren of the Community and these miserable people about him creatures of the same all-merciful God? The terrible doubts which come to all thinking men — the doubts which are not to be stifled by crying “Oh, fie!” in a pulpit — rose darkly in his mind. He quickened his pace. “Let me let out of it,” he said to himself, “let me get out of it!”

BOOK THE SIXTH. FILIA DOLOROSA

CHAPTER 1

Amelius found it no easy matter to pass quickly through the people loitering and gossiping about him. There was greater freedom for a rapid walker in the road. He was on the point of stepping off the pavement, when a voice behind him — a sweet soft voice, though it spoke very faintly — said, “Are you good-natured, sir?”

He turned, and found himself face to face with one of the saddest sisterhood on earth — the sisterhood of the streets.

His heart ached as he looked at her, she was so poor and so young. The lost creature had, to all appearance, barely passed the boundary between childhood and girlhood — she could hardly be more than fifteen or sixteen years old. Her eyes, of the purest and loveliest blue, rested on Amelius with a vacantly patient look, like the eyes of a suffering child. The soft oval outline of her face would have been perfect if the cheeks had been filled out; they were wasted and hollow, and sadly pale. Her delicate lips had none of the rosy colour of youth; and her finely modelled chin was disfigured by a piece of plaster covering some injury. She was little and thin; her worn and scanty clothing showed her frail youthful figure still waiting for its perfection of growth. Her pretty little bare hands were reddened by the raw night air. She trembled as Amelius looked at her in silence, with compassionate wonder. But for the words in which she had accosted him, it would have been impossible to associate her with the lamentable life that she led. The appearance of the girl was artlessly virginal and innocent; she looked as if she had passed through the contamination of the streets without being touched by it, without fearing it, or feeling it, or understanding it. Robed in pure white, with her gentle blue eyes raised to heaven, a painter might have shown her on his canvas as a saint or an angel; and the critical world would have said, Here is the true ideal — Raphael himself might have painted this!

“You look very pale,” said Amelius. “Are you ill?”

“No, sir — only hungry.”

Her eyes half closed; she reeled from sheer weakness as she said the words. Amelius held her up, and looked round him. They were close to a stall at which coffee and slices of bread-and-butter were sold. He ordered some coffee to be poured out, and offered her the food. She thanked him and tried to eat. “I can’t help it, sir,” she said faintly. The bread dropped from her hand; her weary head sank on his shoulder.

Two young women — older members of the sad sisterhood — were passing at the moment. “She’s too far gone, sir, to eat,” said one of them. “I know what would do her good, if you don’t mind going into a public-house.”

“Where is it?” said Amelius. “Be quick!”

One of the women led the way. The other helped Amelius to support the girl. They entered the crowded public-house. In less than a minute, the first woman had forced her way through the drunken customers at the bar, and had returned with a glass of port-wine and cloves. The girl revived as the stimulant passed her lips. She opened her innocent blue eyes again, in vague surprise. “I shan’t die this time,” she said quietly.

A corner of the place was not occupied; a small empty cask stood there. Amelius made the poor creature sit down and rest a little. He had only gold in his purse; and, when the woman had paid for the wine, he offered her some of the change. She declined to take it. “I’ve got a shilling or two, sir,” she said; “and I can take care of myself. Give it to Simple Sally.”

“You’ll save her a beating, sir, for one night at least,” said the other woman. “We call her Simple Sally, because she’s a little soft, poor soul — hasn’t grown up, you know, in her mind, since she was a child. Give her some of your change, sir, and you’ll be doing a kind thing.”

All that is most unselfish, all that is most divinely compassionate and self-sacrificing in a woman’s nature, was as beautiful and as undefiled as ever in these women — the outcasts of the hard highway!

Amelius turned to the girl. Her head had sunk on her bosom; she was half asleep. She looked up as he approached her.

“Would you have been beaten to-night,” he asked, “if you had not met with me?”

“Father always beats me, sir,” said Simple Sally, “if I don’t bring money home. He threw a knife at me last night. It didn’t hurt much — it only cut me here,” said the girl, pointing to the plaster on her chin.

One of the women touched Amelius on the shoulder, and whispered to him. “He’s no more her father, sir, than I am. She’s a helpless creature — and he takes advantage of her. If I only had a place to take her to, he should never set eyes on her again. Show the gentleman your bosom, Sally.”

She opened her poor threadbare little shawl. Over the lovely girlish breast, still only growing to the rounded beauty of womanhood, there was a hideous blue-black bruise. Simple Sally smiled, and said, “That
did
hurt me, sir. I’d rather have the knife.”

Some of the nearest drinkers at the bar looked round and laughed. Amelius tenderly drew the shawl over the girl’s cold bosom. “For God’s sake, let us get away from this place!” he said.

The influence of the cool night air completed Simple Sally’s recovery. She was able to eat now. Amelius proposed retracing his steps to the provision-shop, and giving her the best food that the place afforded. She preferred the bread-and-butter at the coffee-stall. Those thick slices, piled up on the plate, tempted her as a luxury. On trying the luxury, one slice satisfied her. “I thought I was hungry enough to eat the whole plateful,” said the girl, turning away from the stall, in the vacantly submissive manner which it saddened Amelius to see. He bought more of the bread-and-butter, on the chance that her appetite might revive. While he was wrapping it in a morsel of paper, one of her elder companions touched him and whispered, “There he is, sir!” Amelius looked at her. “The brute who calls himself her father,” the woman explained impatiently.

Amelius turned, and saw Simple Sally with her arm in the grasp of a half-drunken ruffian; one of the swarming wild beasts of Low London, dirtied down from head to foot to the colour of the street mud — the living danger and disgrace of English civilisation. As Amelius eyed him, he drew the girl away a step or two. “You’ve got a gentleman this time,” he said to her; “I shall expect gold to-night, or else — !” He finished the sentence by lifting his monstrous fist, and shaking it in her face. Cautiously as he had lowered his tones in speaking, the words had reached the keenly sensitive ears of Amelius. Urged by his hot temper, he sprang forward. In another moment, he would have knocked the brute down — but for the timely interference of the arm of the law, clad in a policeman’s great-coat. “Don’t get yourself into trouble, sir,” said the man good-humouredly. “Now, you Hell-fire (that’s the nice name they know him by, sir, in these parts), be off with you!” The wild beast on two legs cowered at the voice of authority, like the wild beast on four: he was lost to sight, at the dark end of the street, in a moment.

“I saw him threaten her with his fist,” said Amelius, his eyes still aflame with indignation. “He has bruised her frightfully on the breast. Is there no protection for the poor creature?”

“Well, sir,” the policeman answered, “you can summon him if you like. I dare say he’d get a month’s hard labour. But, don’t you see, it would be all the worse for her when he came out of prison.”

The policeman’s view of the girl’s position was beyond dispute. Amelius turned to her gently; she was shivering with cold or terror, perhaps with both. “Tell me,” he said, “is that man really your father?”

“Lord bless you, sir!” interposed the policeman, astonished at the gentleman’s simplicity, “Simple Sally hasn’t got father or mother — have you, my girl?”

She paid no heed to the policeman. The sorrow and sympathy, plainly visible in Amelius, filled her with a childish interest and surprise. She dimly understood that it was sorrow and sympathy for
her.
The bare idea of distressing this new friend, so unimaginably kind and considerate, seemed to frighten her. “Don’t fret about
me,
sir,” she said timidly; “I don’t mind having no father nor mother; I don’t mind being beaten.” She appealed to the nearest of her two women-friends. “We get used to everything, don’t we, Jenny?”

Amelius could bear no more. “It’s enough to break one’s heart to hear you, and see you!” he burst out — and suddenly turned his head aside. His generous nature was touched to the quick; he could only control himself by an effort of resolution that shook him, body and soul. “I can’t and won’t let that unfortunate creature go back to be beaten and starved!” he said, passionately addressing himself to the policeman. “Oh, look at her! How helpless, and how young!”

The policeman stared. These were strange words to him. But all true emotion carries with it, among all true people, its own title to respect. He spoke to Amelius with marked respect.

“It’s a hard case, sir, no doubt,” he said. “The girl’s a quiet, well-disposed creature — and the other two there are the same. They’re of the sort that keep to themselves, and don’t drink. They all of them do well enough, as long as they don’t let the liquor overcome them. Half the time it’s the men’s fault when they do drink. Perhaps the workhouse might take her in for the night. What’s this you’ve got girl, in your hand? Money?”

Amelius hastened to say that he had given her the money. “The workhouse!” he repeated. “The very sound of it is horrible.”

“Make your mind easy, sir,” said the policeman; “they won’t take her in at the workhouse, with money in her hand.”

In sheer despair, Amelius asked helplessly if there was no hotel near. The policeman pointed to Simple Sally’s threadbare and scanty clothes, and left them to answer the question for themselves. “There’s a place they call a coffee-house,” he said, with the air of a man who thought he had better provoke as little further inquiry on that subject as possible.

Too completely pre-occupied, or too innocent in the ways of London, to understand the man, Amelius decided on trying the coffee-house. A suspicious old woman met them at the door, and spied the policeman in the background. Without waiting for any inquiries, she said, “All full for to-night,” — and shut the door in their faces.

“Is there no other place?” said Amelius.

“There’s a lodging-house,” the policeman answered, more doubtfully than ever. “It’s getting late, sir; and I’m afraid you’ll find ‘em packed like herrings in a barrel. Come, and see for yourself.”

He led the way into a wretchedly lighted by-street, and knocked with his foot on a trap-door in the pavement. The door was pushed open from below, by a sturdy boy with a dirty night-cap on his head.

“Any of ‘em wanted to-night, sir?” asked the sturdy boy, the moment he saw the policeman.

“What does he mean?” said Amelius.

“There’s a sprinkling of thieves among them, sir,” the policeman explained. “Stand out of the way, Jacob, and let the gentleman look in.”

He produced his lantern, and directed the light downwards, as he spoke. Amelius looked in. The policeman’s figure of speech, likening the lodgers to “herrings in a barrel,” accurately described the scene. On the floor of a kitchen, men, women, and children lay all huddled together in closely packed rows. Ghastly faces rose terrified out of the seething obscurity, when the light of the lantern fell on them. The stench drove Amelius back, sickened and shuddering.

“How’s the sore place on your head, Jacob?” the policeman inquired. “This is a civil boy,” he explained to Amelius, “and I like to encourage him.”

“I’m getting better, sir, as fast as I can,” said the boy.

“Good night, Jacob.”

“Good night, sir.” The trap-door fell — and the lodging-house disappeared like the vision of a frightful dream.

There was a moment of silence among the little group on the pavement. It was not easy to solve the question of what to do next. “There seems to be some difficulty,” the policeman remarked, “about housing this girl for the night.”