CHAPTER XIII.

A FAIR MORNING'S WORK.

Petrovitch waited at the corner for some moments, but as his _protégée_ did not return, he concluded that she had found the house door open, and would be all right, so he turned his face west. The new feeling that had possessed him at the sound of Alice's surname had, while he waited, only shown itself in a restless movement of his hand over his beard; but now it found vent in the swinging pace at which he walked. He slackened it now and again, to glance with a frown at the heaps of dirty rags that filled the corners of doorways and the embrasures of walls, and hid human flesh and blood: the flesh and blood of your brothers and sisters, my esteemed Royal Commissioners. These door-steps and archways and out-of-the-way corners are not, of course, to be included in an investigation into the homes of the poor; but perhaps they might be if these royal, noble, and eminent brothers realised that these are the only homes of a large proportion of the poor.

Petrovitch only stopped once, and that was before a door-step on which something gleamed brightly, and caught his attention. There was a group there of the usual type--a man and woman, and a child, a little girl, from whose eyes the gleam came. She was sitting up, her elbow on her knee and her chin on her hand; a wizened, stunted child of some eight or nine years, with tangled dark hair that fell over her face, and through which her eyes were staring wide and vacant at the clear sky. As he stopped she transferred the gaze to him, but it was still a gaze void of hope and expectation. He did not speak to her, but patted her shoulder, dropped some coppers and a bar of chocolate in her lap, and hurried on, with a muttered curse which the child did not hear.

He stopped no more till he reached a tall house in a quiet street near Portland Road Station. He let himself in with a key, and softly mounted the stairs to the second floor. The room he entered was large, and looked bare until one noticed the shelves on shelves of well-bound, well-kept books, the pigeon-holes full of manuscripts, the brackets supporting good busts and statuettes, the one or two choice prints, the antique writing-table and chairs. There were no curtains to the window, and there was no carpet to the floor; but there was a reading-lamp of uncommon design, with a green shade. It was the luxury of literary asceticism.

Petrovitch turned up the lamp and rekindled his fire. Then he went into the adjoining room, from which presently came the sound of splashing water, followed by hard breathing, as of one wrestling with a rough towel. It was a ghastly hour for tubbing, and many an Englishman who plumes himself on taking a bath at eight or nine in the morning would have shuddered at the idea of thus taking one four or five hours earlier; but it seemed to agree with Petrovitch, for he came back to the fireside glowing, and seeming to have washed from his face the look of mingled weariness and anger which he had brought in with him.

His hand hovered a moment along the line of a certain bookshelf, then he picked out a book, and for the next three hours read steadily, only pausing to make notes.

At seven o'clock he shut his book gently, replaced it carefully on its shelf, very deftly and quickly prepared his breakfast, and, having eaten it, put on his hat and a black coat and went out again.

Now, for the first time, he thought over his night's adventures, for during the time he had spent in his room he had not allowed himself to think of them. He had the capacity of dismissing utterly from his mind anything about which he did not want to think. It was time enough to think when he could act, and he had known that he could not act till the morning. Now, two minutes' thought decided the course his action should take.

By half-past eight o'clock he had knocked at the door of 15 Spray's Buildings, and had been directed to the room of Mrs Fludger. That lady was surrounded by the family linen--some just as it had been discarded by the family, some in the wash-tub, and some hanging on lines slung across the room at a convenient height for dabbing itself wetly in the faces of possible visitors. The room appeared to be furnished chastely and simply with the tub and lines before mentioned, and nothing else whatever; for the remainder of the furniture had been heaped in one corner, in order that the washing might not be impeded, and was not noticeable at the first glance. Mrs Fludger had her arms bared for toil. She wore a dress with no appreciable waist and no distinctive colour. A woollen shawl wound her figure in its embrace, a black bonnet of no particular shape, and of antique appearance, was on the extreme back of her head, where it was supported, by no visible agency, in defiance of the laws of gravitation.

'Now then, my good man,' she began, in answer to Petrovitch's tap at the open door, 'we don't want no Scripture reading here. Thank the Lord, I knows my Bible duty, and does it, which wasn't I up this very morning afore five, which is more than you can say, I'll go bail. There's some needs talking to. Why don't you go after my master an' teach him the ten commanders if you _wants_ to Bible read?'

'But I don't want to Bible read,' said Petrovitch, as she ended with a snap of her teeth, and recommenced the action of 'soaping in,' which her vigorous speech had suspended. 'I only wish to ask you of a Mrs Litvinoff?'

'Don't know the name.'

'Perhaps I mistake the name; I ask of the young woman who left here yesterday morning.'

'Oh, her!' with contemptuous emphasis; 'bless you, her name ain't nothing like that; no more nor yours nor mine. Her name's Hatfield; and she ain't a missus neither, without she was married yesterday.'

'I hope she did no wrong here, that you are not angry with her,' said he, as though feeling Mrs Fludger's displeasure to be the severest punishment of misdoing.

'No,' said Mrs Fludger, a little softened, 'I'm not angry with her; but will you jest be good enough to say what you want and have done with it, as my washing's all behind as it is?'

'I have a quite special reason,' he said, 'for wishing to befriend her. I am sure you will be willing to help me to give her help by telling me all you know about her.'

'Oh, Lord bless the men!' said Mrs Fludger, with an impatient intonation, dipping a blue-bag into a pail, 'I don't know nothing about the gal. She was here two months or more, and not a soul ever come a-nigh her, and now, afore she's been gone two days, here's half a dozen gentlemen comes after her. You ought to be able to do something 'andsome for her among you all. Why, only yesterday two young swells was a'most a-comin' to blows over her outside this very door, a-makin' a perfick inharmonium o' my stairs, to say nothing o' the gent as went a-makin' inquiries o' the ground-floor front, as was quite the improper person to imply to, not being responsible, and knowin' nothing about the lodgers.'

'I am exceedingly sorry to give you any further trouble, madam, but, as I know you are the only person who can inform me, I must ask you why this young woman left.' He spoke so gravely that Mrs Fludger seemed impressed. She lowered her voice a little as she answered,--

'She heard something as wasn't to her liking.'

'Not from you, I am sure.'

'Well, no; it warn't from me, though I should have told her fast enough if I had known myself, and, since you must know the ins and outs of it, she was taken bad on Sunday night, and my Joe went for the doctor, and if you're curious you'd better ask him, for he's more time for jaw than me, not having got nine children and a husband as is always in liquor.'

Petrovitch thanked her, and asked the address of the lucky doctor whom Fate had spared these inflictions.

Mrs Fludger gave it, squeezing the soapsuds off her lean arms as she spoke.

'Thank you very much,' he said; 'good-bye,' and held out his hand as though he had known her for years. This was partly because he thought it was the English thing to do in parting with one's equals, and partly because he went enough among poor people to know that their troubles are not made lighter by an assumption of superiority on the part of their visitors. It was a matter of course with him, but Mrs Fludger was particularly gratified. She gave him her damp hand, and returned his shake with heartiness.

'Well, now,' she said, 'if I've been a bit short, you must set it down to the washin', and I couldn't get it out o' my head that you was one of the religious sort. And I hope the young woman won't come to no hurt, and I will say as you look more the sort to do her good than them young sparks as come here yesterday, with their cussin', and swearin', and yellow kid gloves.'

An opinion in which her hearer concurred.

Dr Moore was not surprised at the inquiries with which Petrovitch called upon him ten minutes later. He had sojourned long enough in the land of the hard-up, and had seen enough of the seamy side of life, to have left off being surprised at the many threads and ties which bind together people whom one would imagine to be the very last to have any concern in each other's existences.

But before he answered any of the questions, he said,--

'Excuse me; but may I ask what interest you have in this poor girl? Are you a City missionary?'

The other smiled grimly.

'Not I; but there must be something very devout in my appearance. Evidently extremes meet in me. I encountered a hostile reception at Spray's Buildings through being taken for a Bible-reader.'

'Ah, well, I can't wonder; they do make themselves disliked. They're very good people, but they haven't a nice way with them, somehow, have they? Then, what is your motive for these questions?'

For answer the other told him frankly enough all that had passed the night before, adding that before he made any effort on her behalf he wished to verify her story as far as possible.

'But the landlady told me she had gone home to her people.'

'Ah, that was Mrs Fludger's little romance,' said Petrovitch, shrugging his shoulders. 'I wish she had gone to her people, poor child; but I am afraid that is what she will not do.'

'I am very glad,' said Dr Moore, 'that someone does take an interest in her, but I must say I wish it was a woman instead of a man, for it is a woman's care and kindness she will need by-and-by.'

'So I imagined,' said Petrovitch thoughtfully, 'and I suppose the best I can do towards her is to try and find for her such care and kindness.'

'I am afraid it will be difficult; women are angels, certainly, but they are very apt to be hard on each other.'

'Very much like the rest of us. But, like the rest of us, they can sometimes be got to hear reason.'

'That's not the general opinion of women,' said Dr Moore, laughing; 'but I hope you're right. I have seen a great many of these sad cases,' he went on, gravely, 'but very, very few of the others. We're all much too ready to cast stones, and it's two to one if a girl's in trouble that a female priest or Levite comes by, and not a good Samaritan.'

The doctor was pleased with his visitor, whose face and figure were not quite like those that usually faced him in his drug-scented surgery, and when the interview ended it was he who offered the hand-shake.

As Petrovitch came out of the door he glanced at his watch.

'Now for a third interview,' he thought, and he did not think in English. 'Only two hours and a-half in which to work a miracle.'

If this man had no connection with the Bible reading and City missionary fraternity, he had at least one thing to which they lay claim--the faith which moves mountains; but it was faith in humanity, and faith in himself.

He only knew one woman who combined the strength of character and the kindness of heart necessary for his purpose, and of her it had been said only the night before, by the one who ought to have known her best, that she had a sharp tongue. Mr Toomey had not adhered strictly to truth in telling Alice that he lived up in the direction of Gray's Inn Road, vaguely. His household gods were enshrined 'out Bermondsey way,' and thither Petrovitch now betook himself.

Mrs Toomey welcomed him in an off-hand manner, which showed that she at least did not suspect him of being a Bible-reader. She asked him in, and he passed up the narrow passage where two Toomeys of tender years were playing at houses with a profusion of oyster-shells. A third of still smaller size was in the mother's arms.

'Toomey's a-bed,' she said, as she set a chair for Petrovitch, 'and I wonder you're not. He told me he saw you on the bridge in the beginning of the morning. What have you done with that poor thing?'

'Nothing yet.'

'What are you going to do?'

'That's just what I want you to tell me,' he answered, and forthwith began gently to unfold his plan, which was neither more nor less than that Mrs Toomey should let Alice rent her spare room, and should be as kind to her as possible. But Mrs Toomey, as might have been expected, didn't see it at all. She had much the feeling of the elder brother of the Prodigal--that it was hardly fair to those who had done their duty thus to help out of their difficulties those who had not.

'This is the great privilege of those who do their duty,' said he, 'to be able to help those who have not done it.'

'That's all very well,' said Mrs Toomey; 'but what's to become of example if the good and the bad gets treated alike?'

'It isn't that; what I want is to give the bad--who is not so very bad in this case--a chance of being better.'

But she was not silenced. She ran over the whole scale of objections, moral and conventional, to his proposition, and to each and all of them he found an answer, and sat there quietly persistent, until at last he drove her back upon 'What will people say?'

'As far as I'm concerned they can say what they like, but if you care about people's opinion, it is easy to guard yourself against it by telling them nothing. No one would know more than you chose to tell them.'

'That's honest, isn't it?' asked Mrs Toomey, patting the baby, who was choking himself with his fist.

'Well, honesty doesn't consist in publishing other people's affairs to all your neighbourhood. And, my good Mrs Toomey, don't you see that the very fact of her being in your house would stop questions?'

'I'm no hand at arguing,' said Mrs Toomey at last, 'but I know you've some sense, sir, and I don't think you'd press a thing like this without there was some rhyme or reason in it; but the most I can say is, me and Toomey'll talk it over; but the truth is, I've never had nothing to say to that sort o' girls, and I don't like to begin at this time o' day. And even if my man agrees, I won't promise about it until I've seen the young woman, for what's the good of Providence giving us common sense if we're not to put it to use, instead of trusting to hearsay and other people.'

'Quite right; that's a first-rate principle. If all the world would think like that we should see some changes. I will tell her you have a room to let, and advise her to apply for it, and then you can see her and act as you choose. But I feel sure beforehand how it will be.'

And as he bade her good-bye he did feel quite sure that he had not spent that half-hour in vain.

'I really feel like a City missionary, or a newspaper correspondent, after all these interviews. Now for the last and most interesting.'

But when he reached Mrs Litvinoff's room he found her out. There was no answer to his repeated knocks, so at last, as the key was in the door, he opened it, almost fearing to find her in another of those fainting fits. But the room was empty. He hesitated a moment, and then entered. It wanted a few minutes to noon; he would wait till the appointed time, and while he waited he wondered, as he had been wondering all the morning, why she had taken this name of Litvinoff. Was it simply because Litvinoff had been the first name that had come into her head, or for some deeper or more important reason?

The room was very neat, and did not offer much entertainment to the eye or employment to the mind; but there were four or five books on the mantelpiece, and he was drawn towards them by a natural attraction. It was one of his habits always to take up a book, if one was within reach. They were very nicely bound, he noticed, except two small volumes at the end of the row, in which he smiled rather sadly to recognise a Bible and Prayer Book. He ran over the titles--one or two novels, 'The Children's Garland,' 'Mrs Hemans,' and, strange accompaniment, Swinburne's 'Songs before Sunrise.'

He took it out and opened it. On the first page was written, 'To Alice, from Litvinoff.'

He stood looking at it fixedly--so absorbed that he did not hear Alice's foot on the stairs, nor notice the rustle of her dress in the room, till she said,--

'Have you been here long? I am so sorry I had to run out for some thread for my work. I thought I should have been back before.'

She was a little out of breath with running upstairs, and a little flushed, too. He now saw that she was prettier than he had thought, but he also saw more plainly the hollows in her cheeks and the dark circles round her eyes.

'I must make a confession,' he began at once, turning to her with the book in his hand. 'I have asked myself, was it chance made you take this name of Litvinoff? But I see now you have a right to it.'

She turned her head and looked towards the window in silence for a moment. Then she said,--

'I do not know that I have a right to any name except the one I was born to; but if I have a right to any it is to the one written there.' It was said slowly and with evident effort. She threw her bonnet on the table, leaned her elbows on the window-ledge, and looked out.

'Won't you sit down?' she asked, after a minute, without looking round.

He took a chair, and said, 'Then it wasn't only for the lecture you went to Soho?'

'No.'

'See here, Mrs Litvinoff; I know the Count, and I and others are much interested in his career. I wish you to believe that I would not ask you questions from idle curiosity. His own welfare depends to a great extent on what we may hear of him.'

'I have nothing but good to tell you of him.'

'But, madam--forgive me--how about last night? He has deserted you?'

'No,' said she, steadily; 'don't make any mistake. I left him. He was never anything but good to me.'

'You are not married to him?'

'Don't ask me any more questions,' said Alice. 'I can't tell you anything.'

'Mrs Litvinoff,' said Petrovitch, very gently and very gravely, 'I beg you for his sake to tell me all you can of him. You know the sort of dangers run by a man in such a position as his; and from many of these dangers we can help to screen him. I am a friend to all who are friends of Litvinoff. Think of me not as a man and a stranger, but as the friend of him, and tell me frankly all there is to tell.'

It was characteristic of the man who spoke that he should be able to make an appeal which would move this girl, who had not known him twenty-four hours, to tell him all that she had felt it to be impossible to tell her foster-brother, Richard Ferrier. For she did tell him.

The substance of her story was this: She had been staying with an aunt who kept a small hotel in Liverpool, when she had met Litvinoff, and had seen a great deal of him. He had seemed to her to be different from all the other men she had ever seen, and though she could not help being pleased by his admiration, she had felt that the difference in their station was such that she could not properly fill the position of his wife. His grave and respectful manner and the perfect deference with which he always treated her had made it impossible for her to suppose that his wish was other than to make her his wife. So, though all her inclinations would have kept her in Liverpool, she had, after a severe struggle with herself, shortened her visit, and returned to Derbyshire without bidding him good-bye.

He had followed her, and one evening when she was walking alone she had met him. Of course, there had been explanations. He had implored her not to send him away--to let him be always as happy as he had been that month at Liverpool. He met her objections as to the difference in their position by telling her that he was an outcast and an exile, and had no position. Would she not make his hard life a little easier to him? At every word he said she felt her resolutions melting away; but her parents, would they ever consent to her marriage with one who held such opinions as his?

Then he had told her gravely and tenderly that he was at war with society and with most of its conventions, and that for him to marry in the ordinary sense of the word would be to compromise and deny every principle on which his life was founded. The true marriage, he had maintained, was fidelity, and mutual love was more binding than could be a ceremony in which one of the performers did not believe. He loved her he had said, far too dearly to wish to deceive her in the smallest degree about his sentiments, and so he felt bound to tell her that to him a legal marriage would be for ever impossible. In spite of that, would she not be noble enough to trust her life entirely to him, and be his wife?

This had been so completely unexpected as to be a great shock to her, and she had felt at once that, however she might decide, it would be out of the question to tell or ask her parents about it. Her choice lay between them and her lover. We know how she chose.

Of her time of happiness she said very little, but her hearer gathered that, though Litvinoff had left her much alone, she had had no reason to doubt that he still cared for her.

But the influence of her early training, though it had sunk into abeyance in the hour of strong temptation, had slowly and surely reasserted itself as the months went by. She had striven still to believe that she was acting rightly, but at last it became impossible to her to persuade herself that she had any right to be a law unto herself. So at last she had left her lover, with no farewell but a letter, in which she had tried to tell him how it was. She had felt a pleasure in the hardness of the life that followed--had vaguely felt it to be in some sort an expiation of her wickedness.

'You see,' she ended, 'if I had believed as he did, perhaps I should have been right to act as I did; but I believed in all the things that he denies, and so I was wrong to dare to take his views of good and bad for me, while all the time I kept my own old thoughts of what was really good and bad. I can't explain myself well, but you see what I mean--don't you?'

'Yes,' answered Petrovitch, rising; 'I see that another life has been sacrificed upon the altar of an abstraction. If it gives you happiness to give yourself pain, at anyrate I should think your wickedness, as you call it, was expiated now. Has he never tried to find you out?'

'He may have tried,' said Alice, 'but he has not succeeded.'

'Would you not go back to him--now that you have another life than your own to think of?'

Alice darted a quick glance at him, and turned very white.

'No, unless that happened which never can happen--if his belief changed. But I cannot go on talking like this; it is torture to me--and to what end?'

'I told you--for his good and yours. However, to business. Of course, since you have undertaken that tailor's work you must finish it; but after, I will get you work better paid. And this room--you do not like it? Mrs Toomey has a room to let, and I am sure she will like to have you for a lodger. Will you go there and see it, and if you like it move there? I will lend you money for moving and for present expenses, and you can pay me when you settle to work again.'

'But why,' asked Alice, half turning round to look at him, 'why are you so kind? Why do you help me so?'

'I help you,' he answered, laying some money on the table, 'because to me you are truly Litvinoff's wife, and I am the true friend of all who are friends of him.'

* * * * *

Alice knocked at Mrs Toomey's door about three o'clock that afternoon. Mrs Toomey, her baby in her arms, and an air of reserving judgment about her, showed the room she had to let, which was convenient and exquisitely clean.

Alice followed her into the parlour afterwards.

'I think it only fair to tell you,' she began confusedly, 'that I am not really Mrs Litvinoff--but--'

The other interrupted her.

'I know all about it,' she said, bluntly, 'and now I've seen you--'specially as you were going to tell me, so honest and fair--I'm sure we shall get on very well. And no one sha'n't ever know anything from me, and let bygones be bygones betwixt us. If you'd like to move in at once, why do, and come and have a cup o' tea with me when you've fetched your things.'

There was no mistaking the cordiality which had replaced Mrs Toomey's half distrust as soon as she saw that her would-be lodger had no intention of coming there under false pretences.

And so, a few hours later, Alice had effected her moving, taken possession of her room, and was sitting by Mrs Toomey's spotless hearth, with her feet on the brilliant steel fender, her face brighter than it had been for many a long day, while the children stared at her with wide but friendly eyes, and Mrs Toomey's baby lay contentedly on her lap.

The day had been at its beginning so wild, so bitter, so full of horrible possibilities; this was a peaceful--almost a happy--ending to it. Alice felt the change keenly, and there was gratitude to Petrovitch in every word she spoke to the mother, every smile she gave to the little ones.