# The Under Dog (Meade)

Extracted from The Sunday Magazine (London) Vol. 21, 1892, pp. 195–200, 274–278 (It was published in two parts).
THE UNDER DOG.
By L. T. MEADE, Author or “A Girl or THE People,” “Daddy's Boy,” etc.
“It is a tremendous situation, and it is the allegory of the whole world's civilisation: the upper dog and the under dog are everywhere, and the under dog nowhere likes it.”—W. D. Howells.
CHAPTER I.
The snow still lay heavy on the ground, but a thaw had set in. The weather was therefore at its coldest, the chill damp penetrating even through thick warm clothing, and finding its way to feet which were comfortably and stoutly shod.
There must always in this world be a vast number of human beings who have an insufficiency of these essentials, and to them the icy cold of this thaw meant a great deal more than cold feet; in almost every instance it meant illness, in most cases great suffering, in extreme cases, death.
On a roadway not far from London, within hearing of the roar of the city, and on a clear day within distant sight of the docks, with their vast shipping and their thousands of active human beings, stood a brown, old-fashioned, ugly house. It stood in the midst of a row of new villas, with which, however, it had nothing in common. There was not a scrap of pretentiousness or new fashion about it. Its windows were smaller than those now considered essential by the modern builder. It had a narrow hall-door, sheltered from the cutting winds by a deep porch. Its roof was steep and covered by old-fashioned shingles. The house was three storeys high, and went back a good way. When its door was opened outsiders could get a peep into a long and narrow hall, and far away in the distance could see steep uncarpeted stairs going upwards, leading doubtless to other narrow passages and rooms as unpicturesque as those on the ground-floor.
The outside of the house had once been stuccoed, but the greater portion of the stucco had fallen off, leaving ugly brown bricks, and uglier mortar. In sunshine even the house looked brown and dilapidated, but now in the wintry thaw and watery moonlight, all its ugliness was intensified, and people felt inclined to hurry by it, and to wonder what business it had amongst its modern and more cheerful neighbours. The persons who would act so, however, would be strangers, for those who knew the present history of this unpretentious old-fashioned dwelling would assure the bystander that no house, far or near, was more popular, that the brown house was the blessing of its little neighbourhood, and that outward appearances were not always to be relied upon.
The present history of the house was a very simple one. It had been bought up cheap by some benevolent people, and turned into a little hospital. The hospital was mostly filled with waifs and strays. It was not a fever hospital nor a convalescent home, nor a place for accidents, but yet its narrow and friendly doors were wide open to sickness, were extremely compassionate to accident cases, and were known to send pale drooping children away with rosy faces and the clear eyes of health. The hospital was presided over by two elderly ladies who were known in the neighbourhood by the names of Sister Mercy and Sister Patience. They wore neat white caps, and dark blue dresses, and big comfortable aprons, and they had each of them a kindly, sympathetic face, and soothing, soft hands, and gentle voices, and a way of walking over the old boards without ever treading on the creaking ones. They were ladies both of them, and must have been well educated too, and they carried their ladyhood and their education into their hospital work, which they did to perfection, for no little hospital in London was in its way better or more thoroughly managed. However dismal the exterior of the house, the inside was bright with cheerful fires, and plenty of light, and gay pictures. The old boards were scrubbed so often that they were perfectly clean, and the Sisters were great advocates for whitewashing the passages, and constantly renewing a pleasant-toned wash grateful to the eyes in the three little wards.
On this particular night the hospital was quite full. The porters had been bringing in fresh cases all the afternoon, and now the last narrow white bed had its occupant. It was nearly midnight, and Sister Patience tripped softly down-stairs to lock the narrow hall-door.
“There's another case just being brought up the garden, Sister,” said Jim, the hall porter.
Sister Patience knit her brows anxiously.
“We have no more room, Jim,” she answered, in her kind confidential tone, “every bed is occupied; that poor little boy with the broken ankle was the very last we had a corner for. Dear, dear, what a pity! They must try and take that poor creature on to the London Hospital, and it's a good step from here, a long, weary step. Dear, dear, what a pity!”
“There's sure to be lots of casual cases to-night,” said Jim. “It's that slippery, thawin' one minit', freezin' next, and the wind seemin' to catch you every way at once. There's sure to be lots of casuals wantin' shelter to-night. It's a woman and a baby this time, Sister Patience; maybe she's took too much. She looks like it. Shall I tell the perleece to take her on to the London, Sister?”
“No, stay a minute,” said Sister Patience, knitting her brows again. She opened a door at one side of the narrow passage, and put her head in.
“Mercy, are you there?”
“Yes, Patience.”
“The police are just bringing in a fresh case.”
“We have no room here, Patience, the house is full.”
“It's a woman and a baby. Jim thinks she may have been in a public-house. I suppose we had better tell the men to take her on to the London Hospital.”
“I suppose so,” answered Sister Mercy in a faint voice. “It's an awful night for the baby to be out, though.” She came into the narrow passage, and stood by the side of Sister Patience.
The hall-door was wide open by this time, and the wind which was rising higher each minute caught little drifts of half-melted snow, and whirled it in through the porch to the warmly clad feet of little Sister Mercy. Two policemen had come up with a shutter, on which a thin figure lay very still.
“We found her lying by the lamp-post,” said one of the men; “there's a young 'un in her arms; she's most froze, poor soul, and the babe don't seem to breathe.”
“Oh, dear, dear,” said Sister Patience, “what a pity the house is full! I don't believe that poor creature, whoever she is, has been near a public-house.”
“Shall we take her on to the London Hospital, marm?” said one of the men. “We can't leave her on the road, and she don't seem a case for the casual ward.”
Sister Mercy stepped into the porch, raised herself on tip-toe, and looked first at the woman, then touched with her hand the little bundle which contained the baby.
“Bring them both into the parlour,” she said to the men.
Sister Patience uttered a sigh of relief, and the men obeyed without a word.
CHAPTER II.
The parlour was very warm. In the centre of the room was a round table. A thick warm rug filled a conspicuous place in front of a blazing fire.
“Lay the poor creature on the rug,” said Sister Mercy to the policemen. “She will get the warmth soonest that way.”
The men obeyed deftly and quickly. They took their shutter out of the room and a moment later the narrow hall-door was heard to shut behind them. Sister Patience rang a bell, which was answered almost immediately by a nice fresh-looking young nurse.
“Oh, Sister!” she exclaimed in dismay. “And there isn't a bed left!”
“There is my bed,” said Sister Mercy. “Margaret, please come and hold the baby, and send Jim for Dr. Erskine.”
“Bring a tub of hot water right in here, Margaret,” added Sister Patience; “if there is any life left in this poor child a hot bath will revive it.”
In ten minutes' time the hastily summoned doctor arrived. By this time the starved, wretched-looking woman had been divested of a thin wrap, and the baby, with a blanket thrown over it, was lying in the nurse's arms. Sister Mercy was bending over the woman, now and then wetting her blue lips with drops of brandy.
“Eh,” said the doctor coming in, “what have we here? Waifs and strays in your own parlour, Sister Mercy?”
“Is this woman alive?” asked Sister Patience.
The doctor dropped on one knee and placed his finger on the woman's thin and dirty wrist.
“I can feel no pulse,” he said, “I doubt if the poor creature is alive. She is frightfully emaciated. A case of starvation and exposure. Let me see if I can do anything for the baby.”
“Don't give the woman up, doctor. I fancied I heard her sigh a minute ago.”
“You must have imagined it, Sister Mercy. She is dead. Let me look at the baby.”
Sister Patience withdrew the blanket which covered the little creature. Sister Mercy went down again on her knees, and kept on wetting the woman's lips with brandy. She did not seem to heed the doctor. No more pitiable object than that over which she bent could have been found. The woman was literally clothed in rags; her skin was dirty, her poor face haggard and lined. She might have been any age under fifty. Her sunken eyes, her deathly pallor had nothing to do with youth. She had a great quantity of hair which was rusty in hue and matted with neglect and exposure. On one terribly thin hand she wore a brass wedding-ring.
“There, I think she swallowed a drop that time,” said Sister Mercy. The doctor who was busy over the child half-turned his head. He glanced at Sister Patience with a pitying smile on his face. “I was right! Look at her, doctor, she has stirred, she is not dead.”
The doctor uttered an exclamation of astonishment.
“You have saved the woman's life, Sister Mercy,” he said. He put the baby back on the nurse's lap, and once more felt the woman's wrist. A faint slow pulse was stirring it. “I never saw death counterfeited so well before,” said Dr. Erskine. “Sister Mercy, you have saved this poor creature's life. Poor miserable object, I wonder if it is a blessing to her?”
“How can you say such words, Dr. Erskine? And she the mother of a dear little baby.”
“Ah, well, well, she is alive, and we must do what we can to bring her to consciousness. Will some one fetch me hot water? Ah, thank you, Sister Patience, this warm flannel is just what I require.”
There was very little sleep for the good Sisters of the hospital that night. It seemed to them that the waifs and strays who had no right to be there—for was not the house full before their arrival?—merited more care and attention than the legitimate inmates of the three closely packed wards up-stairs.
Nurse Margaret's services were soon dispensed with. The doctor went away, and Sister Patience and Sister Mercy undertook the care of the woman and the baby themselves. The baby was washed, and put into some old baby-linen of which Sister Mercy always kept a store. It cried feebly at first, and opened its blue eyes, and blinked them at Sister Mercy's face. She gave it food which it did not refuse, and afterwards she let it sleep in her kind arms. Long before morning the woman was delirious, but the baby was better. It awoke refreshed after its nice sleep, and smiled at Sister Mercy.
There was a good deal of commotion in the hospital the next day. Early in the morning an important discovery was made. The wretched woman who, dirty, dishevelled, in rags, had lain on Sister Mercy's warm rug during all the hours of the night, was carried up-stairs, and put into an impromptu bed; her rags were removed, she was carefully washed, and her rusty tangled hair combed out. It was after all this had been done, and she lay in a nice frilled night-dress between snowy sheets, that Dr. Erskine came up to see her.
“Her age,” he remarked, as he walked up the stairs, “may be anything over forty-five.” He had entered the ward now, and was bending over his new patient's bed. He started back and gave Sister Mercy a queer half-comical glance. “I have been altogether mistaken about this patient,” he said; “I thought her dead, and you brought her back to life again. What have you done to her besides? You seem to have given her youth as well.”
The face lying on the pillow belonged to a girl of nineteen or twenty, the rusty hair was shining and golden in hue.
CHAPTER III.
Never before had the brown house contained such an interesting inmate. The poor waif and stray had not only youth on her side; she was also beautiful. A little food, a little care, a little love brought back the dimples to her cheeks, the smiles to her lips, the light to her eyes. Her fair face was oval in shape and only faintly-coloured; her hair was lovely, and her eyes dark and gentle in expression.
Never had the hospital known a more grateful patient. She was all smiles, all happiness—everything pleased her. She had gone through terrible exposure, and for nearly a week after her arrival she was too feeble to sit up. But she would lie hour after hour with her baby in her arms, a smile lingering round her lips, a look of perfect content and happiness filling her eyes.
“It's such rest to be here, Sisters,” she would say to the two old ladies when they came to visit her.
“Don't you want anything?” Sister Mercy would ask. “Have you no wishes, no anxieties?”
“I am resting,” she would reply. “I suppose I shall want something presently. But baby is alive, and I am resting. I have no wishes to-day, Sister Mercy.”
By-and-by the new patient was well enough to sit up and walk about. In the course of a fortnight she had quite recovered. She was now a plump-looking, strong young woman, tall, well-made, upright, capable of any amount of physical exertion. Sister Mercy and Sister Patience looked at her wistfully many times. She was clearly in no sense an invalid, and could no longer remain in the hospital in that capacity. The baby had also perfectly recovered.
One evening the sisters called her into their little sitting-room.
“Shut the door, Pamela,” they said; “we want to ask you some questions. Yes, you may sit on that chair if you like.”
“You see, Pamela,” continued Sister Patience, “we know nothing whatever about you, excepting your Christian name.”
Pamela's face grew red and then pale. She grasped the rung of the chair with one hand, but did not sit down.
“You have asked me no questions, Sister Patience,” she said after a pause.
“Well, we want to ask you a good many now.”
“And I will answer them.”
“You are married, Pamela? You wear a wedding-ring.”
“I am married, Sister.”
“What is your husband's name?”
“David Apjohn.”
“Is he alive?”
“I have no reason to suppose he is not alive.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“No.”
Sister Patience had been asking all the questions. Now Sister Mercy rose to her feet, crossed the room, and took hold of Pamela Apjohn's hand.
“My dear child,” she said, “Sister Patience and I have no wish to wring your heart with questions that may seem cruel. I don't know what there is about you, Pamela, but we trust you—we can't help trusting you. You shall only tell us what vou wish.”
“I will tell you everything, Sister Mercy,” said Pamela. Her eyes filled with tears, which rolled silently down her cheeks; she put up her handkerchief to wipe them away.
“I can tell what there is to tell in very few words,” she said. “I am married for nearly two years. Before that I lived in the country in Warwickshire. I was well brought up, and mother sent me to school till I was a big girl. There was a little farm near our home, not a big place, but small. I don't think there was a great deal of money to be made off the farm. It belonged to two brothers, William and David Apjohn. There was an old mother, too, who was bedridden. The farm could scarcely support two men; it was very small, and the weather seemed always against the crops, and the head landlord was a hard man, and would make no improvements. One day I got a message to go to the farm. It was from the old lady, Mrs. Apjohn; she asked me if I'd live there and help to keep the place straight.
“Mother was willing enough I should go. She said, 'Maybe you'll marry William Apjohn, Pamela, and he's a likely man.' I went there the next week. I was treated well and made one of the household at once. The brothers were always quarrelling, but they were civil to me. At every meal William, the elder, used to say to David, 'The farm is too small for the two of us; you ought to go out into the world and find something else to do.' But David never made any answer. He was a downhearted sort of man even in his best days. Mrs. Apjohn got worse, and at last she died. Then I knew I must leave, but William asked me to stay over the funeral. It was the evening after his mother's death that David began to open his heart to me. He said he had never had any luck. The world was always against him, and William wished him away, and now that his mother was dead there wasn't a soul on earth to care what became of him. He looked very pitiful as he spoke, and something seemed to stir in my heart, and wake there, and answer to his pain.
“That same night William Apjohn asked me if I'd stay on at the farm and be his wife.
“Perhaps I'd have said yes, for I knew my mother was set on it, and I had no dislike to William for himself, but David's face seemed to come between William and me. I saw David's eyes so deep set and so angry, and yet with it all so sorrowful, and I couldn't, try as I would, say the words William wished me to say.
“I felt very restless all the next day, and in the evening I went out. The moon was shining, and I thought maybe I'd see David, for he had a great fancy for walking abroad on moonlight nights. Sure enough he was there. He caught a glimpse of my light cotton dress, and he called to me to come and walk with him. We walked up and down in front of the house for a long time—for over an hour. David scarcely said a word. Now and then he'd mutter, 'There's nobody left; I'm the most unlucky dog as has ever seen daylight. When mother's buried there won't be a soul on earth to care whether I'm dead or alive. I wish I was dead; I'm no good to nobody. Id be best out of the way.'
“He said these kind of things many times, and all the while I kept trying to answer him, but the words seemed to stick in my throat.
“Suddenly we heard a window open, and William's voice called to us to come in to supper. After supper David rose to go out again, but William said, 'Sit down Dave. I've a word I want to say.' Then William turned to me, 'Well, Pamela,' he said, 'you know what I said to you last night. Is it to be yea or nay?'
“There was something in William's tone that made David look up. His eyes seemed to go right through and through me, they pierced me like a sword. I felt myself turning red and white.
“'Is it to be yea or nay?' William said.
“'I'm afraid it's to be nay, William,' I said. He looked very hard at David, and then very straight at me, and then he spoke.
“'Maybe it's David you fancy, Pamela,' he said.
“David jumped up from his seat and went up to William as if he meant to strike him. 'Look here,' he said. 'Ain't I to have nothing at all? Do you grudge me Pamela if she do like me?'
“William was quite silent for nearly a minute, then he said quietly, 'No, I don't grudge her to you, Dave.'
“David jumped back as if William's words had shot him—he did not look at me again, nor did I glance at him. After another little pause, William began to speak. 'Look here, David,' he said, 'mother will be buried to-morrow, and there'll have to be a change here. Pamela won't have me, and from what I can see she's willing enough to have you. You take her, David, and go. Go away up to London the pair of you, and try your luck. I'll give you fifty pounds; it's a good bit of money—you can't say as it ain't. You take Pamela, David, and the bit of money, and I'll keep the farm. The farm ain't big enough for two, and I'm the elder, and I ought to have it. Shall we settle it that way, Dave, old man?'
“Then it was that David looked at me. I rushed up to him and put my arms round his neck, and laid my head on his shoulder.
“'You can't never say again, David, that there ain't one woman in the world as don't love you,' I sobbed, 'for I love you with all my heart. I do, David, I do.' Then David stooped down and kissed me on my forehead, and it seemed as if an evil spirit went out of him.
“We were married soon after that, Sisters, and came to London, and for a bit we were happy enough. David thought a sight of his fifty pounds, and we took a little room, and I kept it clean, and I made the money go a long way. I was always wanting David to go and earn more, and he was always promising me that he would. He used to answer advertisements, and he'd go and see a lot of gentlemen, but nothing came of it; he never got anything to do. I think it was his own fault, for he wouldn't take up with any sort of work; he had a real hankering for the country. I think there was something wild about him; and he hated being stive up in London. He said the air half suffocated him. He was always looking for work on a farm, and he used to go into Surrey and Kent, and take long, long walks, and ask many a farmer to take him on, but he had a surly kind of face, and they didn't like the looks of him, and somehow we had no luck. When the fifty pounds got very low I made a little money by sewing for a factory, but I was ill after baby was born, and then we very nearly quite starved.”
When she got to this part of her story Pamela stopped speaking for a minute or two; her breath came and went fast, and a catch seemed to get into her voice.
“All our troubles rose in a heap soon after that,” she said pitifully. “I don't believe David ever stopped loving me,” she continued; “and he was mighty set up for a bit when he found he had a little lad of his own. But the money got shorter and shorter, and every day Dave looked less like the sort of man that people would give work to. One morning he said to me, '1'm going down to the farm to see William.'
“'Oh! where's the use of that?' I said.
“'There's every use,' he answered in his dogged fashion. 'I'm going down. I'm going to ask William to take me on as a day-labourer. I'll write to you, Pamela, if I succeed. If not, I'll come back. You wait here till you see me, or till you hear.'
“I was never nearer starved in my life, Sisters, than during the month when David was away. Yes, he was away a whole month. He came back late one evening. I knew at once by his way that he had been taking something, and he was weak, poor chap, and it had got into his head. I said at once, 'I know you've bad news, Dave, but don't tell it. Eat a bit of supper first.' I thought to quiet him, Sisters, but I might as well have tried to keep in a wild animal. He was filled up to the brim with anger and misery, and he had to let it out somehow. He told me about William. William was married, and he had things so I spick and span, and the new wife was a fine lady, and there was less room than ever for Dave at the farm. I don't know to this day what words passed between Dave and William, but I know that in the morning Dave was back again on his road to London, and William had turned him out. He was his twin-brother, too. I don't say that William wasn't in the right, for he had made his bargain with Dave, but that didn't make it any the less bitter for a man like David.
“I couldn't never try to tell you, Sisters, the awful words David used, nor the state of passion he was in; I almost thought his reason would go. I went up to him at last to try and comfort him, but he pushed me away—a hard push. My head knocked against something, and I fell down flat on my back, and I didn't remember anything. When I came to it was morning, and David was gone. I have never seen him since.
“The blow on my head made me very weak and bad for a good while. I couldn't hold the needle from giddiness, and I had to wean baby. At last there came a day when the landlady said I mustn't stay any longer. It was an awful bitter, cold day, and I begged and prayed of her, for the love of Heaven, to let the baby and me sleep in one of the attics for the night, but she said she couldn't. She didn't speak unreasonable, or anyway angry. She just showed me that I'd have to go. She said she was very sorry for me, I but she must make an example of them as couldn't pay their rent. Where would she be herself if she didn't, she said. Oh, it was quite just what she said, and I hadn't a word in me to answer her. I wrapped the warmest shawl I possessed round baby, and went out.
“It was very pitiful to see baby. He didn't like the cold, and he didn't like the hunger; and when he looked up at me with his blue eyes watering, and the little pinched sort of smile round his lips and about his wee face, it seemed as if a sword went through and through my heart. It was then I began to hate Dave. I thought him a coward to knock me down and hurt me, and then leave the baby and me. I had awful thoughts, Sisters, as I walked along the snowy roads, with the baby wrapped up in the old shawl, pressed close to my heart.
“The first night I sold my wedding-ring, and bought a brass one for a halfpenny to put on instead. I got one and sixpence for the ring, and that gave me some supper and a night's shelter in a common lodging-house. That lodging-house was an awful place; I don't want to speak of it. Baby and I got out of it at four o'clock in the morning. I had a warm dress on when I left the lodging-house. That dress gave baby and me our breakfast. I took it to a pawn-shop. I got about tenpence for it.”
Pamela paused here again.
“I don't quite know how the two next days went,” she said then in a hurried voice. “I look back on them now as part of a horrid dream. The last I remember was the night falling, and the cold road stretching away for miles and miles, and the snow over everything. Baby and I had left London behind us, and it seemed to me somehow as if I were going away into the country to look for Dave, and that when I saw him I'd show him baby, and I'd tell him he had killed baby—he had killed him because he was a coward, and would never turn to and work like a man. I walked very fast all the time, while these thoughts were rushing and flying through my brain, and baby lay so still—so still in my arms.
“That's the last thing I remember, Sisters. The next I was lying in my white bed, and Sister Mercy was bending over me. Oh, Sister Mercy, you're an angel out of heaven. God, God bless you!”
Pamela's voice broke more and more as she came to the end of her story. With the last words she ran forward, fell on her knees, and pressed Sister Mercy's little hands to her lips.
“Get up, my child,” said Sister Mercy, “get up. Don't cry any more.”
“It was God in heaven sent you to us, Pamela,” said Sister Patience.
“And I am no angel, but a faulty old woman,” said Sister Mercy, wiping the tears from her eyes.
The two ladies then began to whisper together. After a time Sister Patience came up to where Pamela stood.
“My dear,” she said, “you are quite well now, and so is baby quite well.”
“Yes, Sister.”
“And this little brown hospital is a place for sick people.”
“Yes, Sister.”
“And nurses,” interposed Sister Mercy.
“I'm coming to that,” said Sister Patience. “What Sister Mercy and I want to propose to you, Pamela, is this, that as you can no longer stay as a patient, you should remain with us as a nurse.”
(To be continued)
Part II
CHAPTER IV.
Pamela Apjohn made a very satisfactory patient. As a nurse she was even more desirable. She had no whims, and no fads, and no fancies. It was impossible to offend her by neglect, and impossible to spoil her by petting and attention. Now that she was well fed, and warmly clothed, and had no anxiety about her baby, she developed to a marked degree those invaluable acquisitions for a nurse—calm nerves, a restful manner, a quiet, unexcited voice.
Pamela was a treasure in herself; a perfect fund of security and resource in the accident ward. She was never slow, but neither was she ever flurried. She bore frightful sights without flinching. Nothing happened during all that bitter winter at the Brown House which upset Pamela's presence of mind. Her life filled her with interest. If she was a calm nurse she was also a kind one. When she looked at suffering her lovely brown eyes would fill with tears, and pity would tremble on the tones of her gentle voice; but her pity was not a weakness, nor her compassionate sorrow any sign of breaking down.
Pamela's face grew plump, and a soft rose tint suffused her cheeks, and her lovely hair lay crisp and shining round her head. It was a pleasure to the sick people to look at Pamela, and the Sisters never did better work in their little hospital than during the short time she remained there as nurse.
The winter was very long that year. It was a winter to be remembered for its severity, its fogs, its weeks of unbroken frost and snow. One or two thaws set in, followed by fresh seasons during which King Frost kept the earth tightly bound under his iron heel.
The winter began early, and kept sway far into the spring. Pamela had arrived at the hospital early in November, and now, towards the middle of March, showers of sleet were falling and east winds were frolicking gaily over the country.
One evening, about seven o'clock, Pamela ran swiftly down-stairs to summon Sister Mercy to soothe the last moments of a little dying child. Pamela's heart was shining through her face as she ran down the gas-lit stairs. The bright light fell on her trim figure in its dark, neat dress and white apron and cap. It cast little reflections on her. golden head, and lit up the grave pity which filled her eyes, and lingered round her lips.
A man, standing in the shelter of the deep porch and straining his eyes to catch a glimpse of the warmth and comfort inside the little hospital, saw her as she came down.
He was a man largely and somewhat loosely built, with a dishevelled head of dark hair and a cadaverous face. There was a limpness about his gait which testified abundantly to the absence of all moral support. The expression in his eyes revealed both despair and hesitancy. From head to foot he showed an absence of fibre. It was very evident that the spirit which animated the man's frame was for some reason or other stunted in its growth. It was not half big enough for the physical part of the man. Hence the uncertainty which characterized his every movement, which made him raise his hand and almost pull the hospital bell, and then withdraw it again, as if the effort were greater than he could accomplish.
This man saw Pamela as she ran down the stairs. He caught but a flashing glimpse of her. But that little glimpse gave him sufficient fibre to give the bell at the hall-door of the hospital a feeble sound.
It was not Pamela's custom to answer the hall-door bell, but hearing the sound she went straight now and opened the door. Standing in the doorway her face was partly in shadow, but the light of the hall-lamp fell full on the man, revealing him from the crown of his unkempt head to his slipshod and muddy boots.
Feeling a sudden pang there, Pamela pressed her hand to her heart. It seemed to her she could read this man through. She could see the fibreless and purposeless soul in the midst of the great uncouth frame; the eyes through which the feeble and dying soul looked seemed to smite her with their dulness and apathy. It was with a violent effort that she could keep back the exclamation which struggled to burst from her lips.
“I want to see one of the Sisters,” said the man.
Pamela paused before she spoke—her lips were dry; she found great difficulty in uttering a sound.
“The Sisters are busy,” she said then, in a husky voice, “and—” her tones grew more husky, “the house is full.”
“Oh, ay,” said the man, “I might ha' known that without your telling me. There's no room anywhere for good-for-noughts. I might ha' known that. I didn't mean to ring, but it looked warm inside, and God knows it's a bitter night. Good evening, miss.”
“Stop a minute,” said Pamela. “You'd like a bit of bread, wouldn't you?”
“Like it?” The man grew an inch or two taller. He seemed to straighten himself out, and to pull himself together. “Like a bit of bread, miss?” he said. “I have tasted nothing to-day.”
“Stop a minute,” said Pamela again. Leaving the door open, which was contrary to all the rules of prudence, she rushed into the kitchen, seized half a loaf which lay on the table, and, diving her hand into her pocket, brought out a shilling. She gave both loaf and shilling to the man; then she almost slammed the door in his face. His “Thank you, miss,” which was uttered with a certain amount of energy, never even reached her.
She was alone in the gas-lit hall: the man was out in the cold. She was white—she was trembling from head to foot.
“Oh, David, David, David!” she gasped in great sobs, under her breath. “Did I marry a man like you? Are you baby's father? And have you come to this? To the cold of such a night as this, and to the death—to the death of all your manliness! Oh, I cannot bear it! Oh, God in Heaven, I cannot, cannot bear it!”
The nurses were busy up-stairs. Sister Mercy was repeating gentle little hymns to the dying child. Sister Patience, tired out with many nights of anxious watching, was asleep. Pamela knew that David's baby and hers lay warm in his crib. A rushing noise as of many waters seemed to have got into her ears; her eyes were half-blinded. She pressed her hand against them again and again to shut out a fearful sight.
At last a resolve came to her. It steadied her nerves, quieting her excitement as the necessity for immediate action generally does. A long, dark Sister's cloak hung on a peg in the hall; a bonnet with a veil over it hung on another peg. Pamela put on the cloak; she threw off her cap, and reaching down the bonnet from its peg she tied it under her chin. Then, opening the hall-door, she let herself out. She had resolved to follow the man.
There was a dim kind of twilight abroad. The bitter easterly winds which had raged so fiercely all day had abated some of their fury; they only came in gusts now, but these gusts were bad enough. They caught Pamela's cloak and swept it tightly round her legs: they beat cruelly against her face, partly. depriving her of breath. Overhead a black cloud was travelling swiftly. From that cloud a shower of sleet would soon descend. Overhead again, beyond and above the cloud, pervading everything, entering into the heart of all creation, was coming down the Night. No stars were anywhere to be seen, everywhere shadow brooded.
Pamela shaded her eyes with her hand and looked far along the wintry road. The man had a good start of her, but still she could see him. She did not want to get up to him; she had no idea of joining him, nor of making herself known to him, but she had a strong impulse, greater than she could control, to keep him in sight.
The evening was so exceptionally bitter and inclement that there were very few people abroad. For a moment or two, near London as the place was, the only two people to be seen were the man walking stumblingly and wearily along the road to London, and the woman flying after him, and yet never quite coming up to him. Had the man turned once he could not but have noticed this pursuing and anxious figure, but he was too apathetic to look round. He was munching the loaf which Pamela had given him, and thinking of the bed which her shilling would supply him with.
After pursuing the straight road for nearly a mile he abruptly turned a corner. Pamela had to quicken her steps to gain a further view of him. He was now in the region of small houses, close thoroughfares, crying children, scolding women, and drunken men. He was in a very low part of the slums. Pamela, in her Sister's dress, however, was safe even in these regions. But had she not been safe it would have made no difference to her then, for she had no room for fear in her heart.
The man suddenly stopped before a house a little larger than its neighbours. About half-a-dozen people were waiting patiently at the door. The man waited as patiently as the rest. He munched his bread as he waited, picking up the crumbs as they fell on his tattered coat, and putting them carefully into his mouth.
The door of the house was opened, and one by one the people went inside. The man was the last to enter. Pamela walked slowly past the house. There was a small card in one window, a soiled white card on which was printed, in crooked and uncertain type, the words—
“Lodgings for single men. Clean beds, fourpence a night.”
Pamela noted the number of the house, then she went back to the hospital.
CHAPTER V.
There was a little light in a tiny bedroom at the top of the Brown House. It was caused by the uncertain flicker of a half-burnt-out night-light. It revealed the poor but neat and clean furniture of an attic bedroom. It shadowed forth the outlines of a child's crib, but expended most of its feeble radiance in lighting up the bright hair and fair face of a young woman who stood close to it with an open book in her hand.
The woman was Pamela Apjohn; the hour was three o'clock in the morning. A silent hour even in the hospital, for the sick who were to recover were many of them just then taking a turn for the better, and faintly closing their eyes to greet the sleep which must heal and strengthen and restore; and the sick who were to die were also greeting sleep—the sleep which was to quiet, and, in many cases, to usher in a happier life.
So in the quiet hour the hospital nurse had a few moments to stand in her own little room, and to read a few sentences from an open book. After the fashion of people of her class, Pamela read the words aloud. There was only the baby to hear, and, had the baby wakened, he would not have understood. The book she held open was the Prayer Book of the Church of England. The words she uttered were from the Marriage Service. She repeated them partly from the book, partly from memory:
“I, Pamela, take thee, David, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer.”
She shut the Prayer Book.
“It has been all worse, and all poorer,” she murmured to herself. “Still, there are the words, and they mean a vow, and I took it. I'm Pamela, and he—he whom I followed to-night—is David. I took you for worse, David, and for poorer. There's no getting over that. I don't even know that I want to get over it. Although—although—oh! the bitter cold of last November, and baby's pinched face! Now baby's face is rosy, and I'm warmed, and I'm fed. Still, there's no getting over it. I took David for worse and for poorer.”
A light step was heard on the creaking stairs; a voice called: “Pamela!”
She ran down. Some patients in her own ward were waiting for her. She resumed her duties as nurse.
Early in the morning she was free. Now was her time. Having made up her mind, she was not a young woman to hesitate.
“Pamela, you look very tired,” said Sister Mercy. “You must go and lie down at once.”
Pamela murmured something which Sister Mercy could not quite hear. She ran swiftly up the creaking stairs.
“Come, baby,” she said, lifting the rosy child out of his warm crib. She wrapped him in a shawl, and covered his dewy face with kisses. “Come to your dad, baby,” she said. Then she put on her own neat bonnet and shawl; and, standing by her dressing-table, wrote a word of farewell to the Sisters.
There was no sentiment in her note. She was not the kind of young woman who could use expressive words and cast a halo of sentiment round her action. Pamela's writing, too, was poor, and her spelling far from perfect.
“Dear Sisters,” she wrote, “Please forgive me; I'm going back to my husband. I'm taking baby. Yours gratefully, Pamela Apjohn.”
She pinned the note on her pincushion; she felt as she did so that her farewell was commonplace, that it expressed nothing of the agony which filled her heart. It told not a single word of the love she felt for the Sisters, nor of the sacrifice she felt she was making in returning to her starved and miserable husband.
The new day was cold, but Pamela was too excited to feel it. She walked quickly, her shawl wrapped tightly round her baby. He was a bonnie boy, and faced the bitter winds and the piercing cold of the early morning with his big blue eyes wide open, and contented smiles on his parted lips.
The sun was up and the day had warmed a little by the time Pamela had reached the lodging-house where her husband had spent the night. A stream of sleepy, unwashed-looking men were going out as she approached the door-step. She stood back a little to see them pass. David Apjohn was not among them. When all the men had gone by, Pamela went up and pulled the door-bell. A dirty middle-aged woman answered her summons.
“We don't take ladies in here, miss,” she said, with a laugh which was more like a jeer.
“Oh, stay a minute, please,” said Pamela. “One of the men who slept here last night is my husband.”
“Yes, that's so likely,” retorted the woman.
“And see—this is his bonnie boy. Look at him—isn't he a beauty?”
The woman had given birth to many children, and buried several. She loved babies, though she had never owned one like Pamela's.
“Is that child yourn?” she said. “Eh! but he's fine and fat and firm! Well, young woman, I must wish you good morning. It ain't likely that the mate of a comely lass like you, and the father of that child, would lodge in a place like this. You've made a mistake, and I'm sorry for you, but your mate ain't here.”
“Oh, but he is,” retorted Pamela. “I saw him go in. I stood over there, see, by that shop, and saw him. I didn't want to join him then, for baby and me we are well-to-do, and when we were with him we—we suffered. But now I can't keep away. Maybe it's a case of duty. I don't know what it is; but, anyhow, I must go back to him, for he's my mate, and I wedded him. You tell me if he's up-stairs, please do. He's my mate, and he's low in the world, and I ought to be by his side.”
“Well, well,” said the woman; “I never seed a greater or more born fool than you, my dear. You come after a man who lodges in a house like this, and you the mother of that bonnie little chap, and a likely fresh young thing yourself! There, my dear, it ain't too late yet. You take a hint from one wot knows—them low-down sort of fellers ain't worth a nice decent young woman sacrificing herself to them. You go back to the people who are taking such good care of you. You go back, it ain't too late, for no man that ever slept inside these walls is fit to be mate to a nice young body like yourself.”
“But that's not the question,” said Pamela. “The man I saw go in here last night is my mate. Maybe you don't belong to the English Church, ma'am?”
“I don't know about that. I was wedded in a church, St. Luke's, round the corner.”
“Then you must remember that you took your husband for worse, as well as for better. Please will you come up-stairs with me, and let me see if David Apjohn is still in the house?”
The woman favoured Pamela with a queer glance, half of admiration, half of contempt.
“You are a fool,” she said; but as she spoke she turned on her heel, and beckoned to Pamela to follow her.
They found a man sound asleep in a tiny room near the roof. Pamela gave one glance at the figure stretched out on the bed.
“That's him!” she said. “I'll stay here with baby till he wakes.”
The woman left her, and she seated herself on the edge of the straw palliasse, and looked at her sleeping husband. There was nothing in the face on which she gazed to recommend itself to a woman's fancy or respect. The sunken lines of despondency were very visible in sleep; the hollow temples gave a look of age; the coarse black hair was strongly sprinkled with grey. The face was repellent, notwithstanding its sadness.
“I married you, David,” whispered Pamela. “Look, baby, that's poor dad—poor dad—and he never had a chance, not even when I married him. I thought he had then, but it wasn't true. The luck was against him. You always said the luck was against you, David.”
Her words came in whispers, and they never reached the tired-out half-starved sleeper. He slept on; his eyes were very sunken, his cheeks very thin; there was a week's growth of beard and moustache round his lips and chin.
There was nothing at all in this sleeper to excite a woman's fancy or admiration, but as Pamela looked something else moved in her breast—a soft pity, a tender love, rose up pure and fresh within her. She bent down and kissed the man's forehead. Then her tears dropped on it, then her arms stole around his neck, and her fair blooming cheek lay against his. Apjohn stirred, groaned, and opened his eyes.
“That beastly dream again,” he murmured. “It unmans me more than anything. Why—Pamela! It ain't—it ain't a dream then?”
Apjohn started to a sitting position on the bed. He pushed his wife away from him—he looked at her in terror.
“It's cruel of you to haunt me like that,” he said. “I killed yer with that blow, didn't I? And every time I went to sleep since a'most I've dreamt of you, Pamela. And now it's bitter cruel to come and haunt me. I'll lose my senses if you go on with it. You know that, and you might keep away.”
“But I ain't dead, David,” said Pamela. “Feel my hands, they're warm, touch my cheek, it's soft. Kiss me, David, then you'll know that I'm alive, that I'm your wife—that I love you, and that I'm never going away from you again.”
Apjohn's face turned white as death. He did not touch Pamela, but springing out of bed he went down on his knees.
“My God!” he said, “then I ain't killed her. My God!—thank God, thank God.”
CHAPTER VI.
When Sister Patience saw the letter which the hospital nurse left behind her, she could not help giving vent to an expression of annoyance.
It is always the same,” she said to Sister Mercy; “one can never expect gratitude or constancy from any of these poor people. I did hope for better things from Pamela, but even Pamela has left us with scarcely a word, to go back to that wretched good-for-nothing husband of hers.”
“Poor child,” said Sister Mercy, in her gentle voice. “If her husband wanted her could she refuse to go back to him, Patience? I for one cannot blame her.”
“Do you ever blame any one, Mercy?”
“Perhaps I do, now and then,” replied dear little Sister Mercy, “but at least I am sure that person will never be Pamela.”
A few days afterwards Sister Patience came eagerly into the parlour where Sister Mercy was resting.
“Do you know,” she said in an excited voice, “that I am certain that thin, gaunt-looking man who is sweeping the crossing, just there opposite the public-house, is Pamela's husband.”
“My dear, you cannot possibly mean it?”
“Yes, but I do, and I never saw a crossing swept with such vigour and so clean before. I could not help praising the man, and putting threepence into his hand half an hour ago.”
“But, Patience, why do you connect that miserable man with Pamela?”
“I am coming to that part. I had to take shelter in the William Scott Buildings from that heavy hail-shower, and I stood at the window and watched the crossing-sweeper, although he did not see me. Presently, who should come up to him but Pamela herself, with the baby in her arms. She brought him something in a tin pail, and then she held up the baby to kiss him. That was conclusive to my mind. Do you think Pamela would let any other crossing-sweeper kiss that baby?”
“Certainly not,” replied Sister Mercy with vigour. “And now, Patience, we must not leave a stone unturned to help Pamela's husband.”
When Apjohn had recovered from the amazement which Pamela's return had caused him, he seized her hands and covered them with kisses. He called her by every endearing name he could think of, and then he did something even more astonishing.
“Pamela,” he said, “if you have a shilling about you I will go out and buy a broom and take to crossing-sweeping. I have heart enough for anything, for anything, Pamela, now that you are alive and have come back to me.”
There are all kinds of dogs in the world, lame dogs—those who get pushed to the wall, those who are underneath. But as Fortune slowly turns her wheel, it sometimes happens that a little thing, an unexpected ray of sunshine, an unlooked for kindness, or the pathos of a great devotion, puts sudden life and courage into the heart which never before had a chance.
Something occurs which makes the dormant soul grow. From the moment that happens the man who has hitherto cursed his life, and spoken of chance being all against him, faces the world. He looks at it with his awakened eyes, and sees that it is full of Light, not Darkness, of Opportunities, not Stumbling-blocks. That God meant good for him when He put him into the world; that there is no such thing really as Bad Luck, but that there is a very big and beautiful thing called Hope; with this he can climb the hill and reach the top.
When Apjohn's wife came back to him this extraordinary change took place. In the future days when this couple were well-to-do and happy, David Apjohn used sometimes to say to Pamela—
“You brought a golden key with you, when you came to me that morning, wife. There was a prison inside of me with a locked door, and that little key just fitted the lock, and the door flew open; then my soul came out into the sunshine and began to grow. After that, Pamela, I ceased to be a poor, worthless dog, and I became a man.”
THE END.
This work was published before January 1, 1930, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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