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The Woman Thou Gavest Me: Being the Story of Mary O'Neill, a novel by Hall Caine |
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Part 6. I Am Lost - Chapter 101 |
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_ SIXTH PART. I AM LOST ONE HUNDRED AND FIRST CHAPTER At length Angela opened, with a key from her satchel, a door on the top landing, and we entered a darkened room which was partly in the roof. As we stepped in I heard rapid breathing, which told me that we were in a sick chamber, and then a man's voice, very husky and weak, saying: "Is that you, Agnes?" "It's only me, dear," said Angela.. After a moment she turned up the solitary gas-jet, which had been burning low, and I saw the shadowy form of a man lying in a bed that stood in a corner. He was wasted with consumption, his long bony hands were lying on the counterpane, his dark hair was matted over his forehead as from sweat, but I could not mistake the large, lively grey eyes that looked out of his long thin face. It was Father Giovanni. Angela went up to him and kissed him, and I could see that his eyes lighted with a smile as he saw her coming into the room. "There's somebody with you, isn't there?" he said. "Yes. Who do you think it is?" "Who?" "Don't you remember little Margaret Mary at the Sacred Heart?" "Is this she?" "Yes," said Angela, and then in a hoarse, angry voice the man said: "What has she come here for?" Angela told him that I had seen her on Piccadilly, and being a great lady now, I (Oh heaven!) was one of the people who came out into the streets at midnight to rescue lost ones. "She looked as if she wondered what had brought me down to that life, so I've fetched her home to see." I was shocked at Angela's mistake, but before I could gather strength or courage to correct her Giovanni was raising himself in bed and saying, with a defiant air, his eyes blazing like watch-fires: "She does it for me, if you want to know. I've been eleven months ill--she does it all for me, I tell you." And then, in one of those outbursts of animation which come to the victims of that fell disease, he gave me a rapid account of what had happened to them since they ran away from Rome--how at first he had earned their living as a teacher of languages; how it became known that he was an unfrocked and excommunicated priest who had broken his vows, and then his pupils had left him; how they had struggled on for some years longer, though pursued by this character as by a malignant curse; and how at length his health had quite broken down, and he would have starved but for Agnes (Angela being her nun's name), who had stuck to him through everything. While the sick man said this in his husky voice, Angela was sitting on the bed by his side with her arm about his waist, listening to him with a sort of pride and looking at me with a kind of triumph. "I dare say you wonder why I didn't try to get work," she said. "I _could_ have got it if I had wanted to. I could have got it at the Italian laundry. But what was two shillings a day to a man who was ordered new milk and fresh eggs five times every twenty-four hours, not to speak of the house rent?" "She ought to have let me die first," said Giovanni, and then, looking at me again with his large, glittering, fierce eyes, he said: "_You_ think she ought to have let me die, don't you?" "No, no, no," I said--it was all I _could_ say, for their mistake about myself was choking me. Perhaps my emotion appeased both of them, for after a moment Angela beat out Giovanni's pillow and straightened his counterpane, and then told him to lie down and be quiet, while she brought a chair for me and took off her things in her own bedroom. But hardly had she gone into an adjoining chamber when the sick man raised himself again and, reaching over in my direction, told me in a hoarse whisper the story of the first night of her present way of life--how the doctor had said he must be removed to the hospital; how Agnes would not part with him; how the landlord had threatened to turn them out; and how at last, after sitting with her head in her hands the whole evening, Aggie had got up and gone out and, coming back at midnight, had thrown two sovereigns on the table and said, "There you are, Giovanni--that's our rent and your eggs and milk for one week, anyway." By this time Angela had returned to the room (her paint and rouge washed off, and her gay clothes replaced by a simple woollen jacket over a plain underskirt), and she began to beat up an egg, to boil some milk, to pour out a dose of medicine, and to do, with all a good woman's tact, a good woman's tenderness, the little services of which an invalid stands in need. Oh heavens, how beautiful it was--fearfully, awfully tragically beautiful! I was deeply moved as I sat in silence watching her; and when at length Giovanni, who had been holding her hand in his own long, bony ones and sometimes putting it to his lips, dropped off to sleep (tired out, perhaps, by talking to me), and she, drawing up to where I sat by the end of the bed, resumed her self-defence, saying in a whisper that ladies like me could not possibly understand what a woman would do, in spite of herself, when the life of one she loved was threatened, I could bear her mistake no longer, but told her of my real condition--that I was no longer a lady, that I had run away from my husband, that I had a child, and was living as a poor seamstress in the East End of London. Angela listened to my story in astonishment; and when I had come to an end she was holding my hand and looking into my eyes with just that look which she had when she put me to bed for the first time at school, and, making her voice very low, told me to be a good child of the Infant Jesus. "It's nearly one o'clock. You can't go back to the East End to-night," she whispered. "Oh, I must, I must," I said, getting up and making for the door. But before I had reached it my limbs gave way, whether from the strain of emotion or physical weakness, and if it had not been for Angela I should have dropped to the floor. After that she would hear of no excuses. I must stay until morning. I could sleep in her own bed in the other room, and she could lay a mattress for herself on the floor by the side of Giovanni's. There would be no great sacrifice in that. It was going to be one of Giovanni's bad nights, and she was likely to be up and down all the time anyway. Half an hour later I was in bed in a little room that was separated by a thin papered partition from the room of the poor consumptive, and Angela, who had brought me a cup of hot milk, was saying in a whisper: "He's very bad. The doctor says he can't last longer than a week. Sister Veronica (you remember her, she's Mildred Bankes that used to be) tried to get him into a home for the dying. It was all arranged, too, but at the last moment he wouldn't go. He told them that, if they wanted to separate him from Agnes, they had better bring his coffin because he would be dead before they got him to the door." When she had gone I lay a long time in the dark, listening to the sounds on the other side of the partition. Giovanni awoke with an alarming fit of coughing, and in the querulous, plaintive, fretful, sometimes angry tones which invalids have, he grumbled at Angela and then cried over her, saying what a burden he was to her, while she, moving about the room in her bare feet, coaxed and caressed him, and persuaded him to take his milk or his medicine. Through all this I would hear at intervals the drumming noises of the singing downstairs, which sounded in my ears (as the singers were becoming more and more intoxicated) like the swirling and screeching of an ironical requiem for the dying man before he was dead:
I could not help it if I felt a startling reverence for Angela, as a ministering angel faithful unto death, and I remembered that as I fell asleep I was telling myself that we all needed God's mercy, God's pardon, and that, God would forgive her because she had loved much. But sleep was more tolerant still I dreamt that Angela died, and on reaching the gates of heaven all the saints of God met her, and after they had clothed her in a spotless white robe, one of them--it was the blessed Mary Magdalene--took her hand and said: "Here is another of the holy martyrs." I awoke from that dream with beads of perspiration on my forehead. But I dare not say what confused and terrible thoughts came next, except that they were about baby--what I might do myself if driven to the last extremity. When I slept and dreamt again, it was I who was dead, and it was my darling mother who met me and took me to the feet of the Blessed Virgin and said: "Mother of all Mothers, who knows all that is in a mother's heart, this is my little daughter. She did not intend to do wrong. It was all for the sake of her child." When I awoke in the morning, with the darkness shivering off through the gloom, this last dream was sitting upon me like a nightmare. It terrified me. I felt as if I were standing on the edge of a precipice and some awful forces were trying to push me over it. The London sparrows were chirping on the skylight over my head, and I could faintly hear the Italian criers in the front street: "Latte!" "Spazzina!" "Erbaggi freschi!" In spite of myself (hating myself for it after all the tenderness that had been shown me), I could not overcome a feeling of shame at finding myself lying where I was, and I got up to run away that I might cleanse my soul of the evil thoughts which had come to me while there. As I dressed I listened for a sound from the adjoining room. All was quiet now. The poor restless ones were at last getting a little rest. A few minutes afterwards I passed on tiptoe through their room without looking towards the bed, and reaching the door to the staircase I opened it as noiselessly as I could. Then I closed it softly after me, on so much suffering and so much love. _ |
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