Despair's Last Journey Part 12

Paul told the story just as it happened.

'Well,' said the a.s.sistant, 'this is a pretty grave old case, and so I tell you. You may find yourself in trouble over this.'

'Find myself in trouble?' said Paul. 'Me?'

'Yes,' said the a.s.sistant; 'you.'

'You've got better work in hand than talkin' rubbish,' Paul retorted; 'stick to it.'

'Ah,' said the budding surgeon, 'well wait till the woman's conscious, if ever she is, and see what sort of a tale she has to tell.'

'It's the simple truf he's tould ye,' said the patient, in a feeble voice. 'What do ye be tryin' to frighten him for?'

'Oh, you're coming round, are you? asked the a.s.sistant; 'didn't expect it. That's a pretty nasty crack you've got.'

'Twill take more than that to kill Norah MacMulty,' said the young woman, struggling into a sitting posture, and beginning mechanically to arrange her disordered dress. 'The MacMultys is a fine fightin' famly, and it runs in the blood to take a cracked skull quite kindly. I'll be takin' a gla.s.s at the Grapes, and then I'll be goin' home, but not till I've thanked ye kindly. Has anybody seen me bonnut?'

'I shan't allow you to go to the Grapes to-night, my good woman,' said the a.s.sistant. 'Where do you live?'

She named her address, a wretched little row of tenement houses some ten score yards away.

'What's your trade?'

'Me trade, is it?' she answered, with a feeble, good-humoured laugh.

'Tis not much of a trade, anyhow; I'm a street-walker.'

She made the statement wholly commonplace in tone, and gave it with as little reluctance or embarra.s.sment as if she had laid claim to the most respectable calling in the world.

The a.s.sistant stared and laughed, but she caught Paul's look of amazed horror.

'Well,' she said, 'why wouldn't I be? I'll go to h.e.l.l for it, av coorse, for that's G.o.d's will on all of us. Tis hard lines, too, for 'tis none so fine a life when ye've tried ut. Thank ye kindly, both of yez. I'd pay ye for ut, but ye'd not be takin' a poor girl's last s.h.i.+llin', I know, from the good-tempered purty face of ye.'

'You're sweetly welcome,' said the a.s.sistant, busily was.h.i.+ng his hands at the sink, and looking sideways at her. 'You're a queer fish, any way.'

''Tis a queer fish I am,' she answered, 'an' by-an'-by they'll have the cookin' of me. Fried soul,' she said, with a faint laugh. 'Begobs!

that's funny; I never thought o'that before. Fried soul!'

'How old are you?' the a.s.sistant asked.

'Faith,' she said, 'I'm just past two-an'-twinty. 'Tis an agein' life, an' I look more; but 'tis G.o.d's truf I'm tellin' ye.'

'Very likely,' said the a.s.sistant, towelling his hands.

'I'll go now,' said Norah MacMulty. 'I'm a trifle unsteady with the shakin', but the drink's out of me, worse luck! and I'll be able to walk.'

'No calling at the Grapes, mind you,' said the a.s.sistant 'You'd better look in at the infirmary about eleven o'clock to-morrow.'

'I'll do that,' she answered. 'Will ye be lendin' me your shoulder as far as the dure, young man? I'll be better in a minute.'

Paul did as she requested, but he crawled with repulsion beneath her hand. The touch inspired him with loathing. He had lived a sheltered life, and had never seen an open abandonment to shame. He wondered why G.o.d allowed the degraded thing to live, and his heart ached with pity at the same time. He led her to the door, and then across the road. The a.s.sistant sent a curt 'Good-night' after him. He answered it, and the door dosed.

'Can you walk alone now?' he asked.

'I'll try,' she said, and made a staggering attempt at it.

Paul caught her, or she would have fallen.

'Take my arm,' he said to her, hardening his heart with an effort.

He blessed the darkness and the quiet of the street, but before they had gone a score of yards a door opened in a house he knew, and Armstrong came out of it.

In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the old man would have gone by dreaming, but he was alert enough at odd moments, and this chanced to be one of them. He saw Paul arm-in-arm with a bandaged drunken woman, and as he recognised his son the pair reeled together.

'Paul!' he cried. 'Good G.o.d!'

'I'm glad it's you, father,' said Paul. 'This poor creature fell at the corner yonder and cut her head terribly. I fetched young Marley to her from Dr. Hervey's, and he has seen to her. She wants to get home.'

'I'll take the other side,' said Armstrong, and the three lurched slowly along in the dimness.

'Ye're good people,' Norah MacMulty said when they had brought her to her door.

A slattern woman answered Armstrong's knock, heard the news with no discernible emotion, and helped the arrival in as if she had been a sack of coals. Armstrong and Paul went home with few words. 'Don't be startled when you see me,' Paul said at the door. 'I helped to carry her to the doctor's, and she bled horribly.'

It was not meant for an exaggeration, but he was unused to such scenes, and the woman's language more than anything else had helped to scare him from his self-possession. The hour was late already, reckoning by his custom. He washed, and went upstairs, but not to bed. He threw the window open and let in the soft, heavy night-air. Strange thoughts made a jumble in his mind. From his attic he could see, over the roofs of the houses opposite, the outlines of the Quarrymore Hills, clearly defined in the light of the rising moon. Half way between him and them the air was dimly red with the glow of the unseen furnaces in the valley. He heard the loud roar of the invisible fires, and now and then the clank of iron. His thoughts were not on these things, but he was vaguely conscious of them.

He had taken his earliest look at the real tragedy of life. The peril of the woman's soul was the first thing to emerge clearly from the chaos of his thoughts. Her flippant, reckless acceptance of the certainty of her own d.a.m.nation horrified him. Out of the streets, out of the b.e.s.t.i.a.l degradation of that life of shame and drink, into sheer h.e.l.l? No chance?

No hope? Surely Christ had died! But only for those who owned Him, and called upon Him! No, no, and a thousand times no! It was not to be believed, not to be borne. It was hateful, horrible, monstrous. The poor degraded thing had punishment enough already. She was in h.e.l.l already.

The bruised reed, the smoking flax! He fell upon his knees, and his soul seemed to melt in a flood of anguished pity. He wept pa.s.sionately, with an incoherent clamour in his heart of 'G.o.d--G.o.d--G.o.d!'

The storm wore itself out, but he knelt there long, with his hands on the window-sill, and his face buried in them. He had been too agitated to find words, and now he was too tired and empty even to wish for them.

His eyes were dry, and his lips were harsh and salt with his tears.

He looked up, and the whole night had changed. The moon rode high, and was nearly at the full. The skies were spangled with thousands on thousands of glittering stars. He thrust out his head and looked upward into the vast blue of the night Out from the stainless sky fell one warm, heavy drop full on his upturned forehead. To his worn thoughts it was like an angel's tear. He nestled beside the open window, and gazed from star to star, seeming idly to trace an intricate winding road of blue amongst them. Peace came back to him, an empty peace, no more than a mental languor. He slept at last, and awoke stiff and chill to find the light of morning creeping along a clouded east.

All that day one purpose was present to his mind. When the day's work was over and he was free, he dressed and walked into the street He roamed up and down it from end to end, and several times he diverged from it to pace the road in which Norah MacMulty lived, and to linger about the house into which he had helped her. He had something to say to Norah MacMulty, but he caught no sight of her. He went home, and to bed.

Next evening he paced the streets again. There was still no sign of her, but he encountered the a.s.sistant, who nodded to him in pa.s.sing. Paul stopped him.

'I beg your pardon,' he said. 'Is there any news of that poor woman?'

'Yes,' said the a.s.sistant. 'She's in for a touch of erysipelas. They kept her at the Infirmary to-day. If they'd left her at large she'd have killed herself.'

'How?' said Paul.

'Drink,' returned the a.s.sistant, and went his own way.

So Paul ceased his wanderings for a while, and a fortnight had pa.s.sed before he saw the woman again.