CHAPTER XII.

"Drip-Drip-Drip!"

As they issued from the hooded portal of Roxy's Rents, a woe-stricken woman approached the alley, and looked wearily around. Dark as was the night, and though years had passed since she had visited the locality, she had found her way without inquiry; but her steps faltered at the entrance to the narrow court, and her manner was that of one who was uncertain of the errand she had undertaken. To resolve her doubts, she accosted a young girl about to pass her:

"This is Roxy's Rents, isn't it?"

"Yes," replied the girl.

"Can you tell me if Mrs. Flower lives here?"

"Yes, the last house but one on the right; front room, ground floor."

"Is she at home, do you know?"

"I don't know."

"Thank you."

The girl went her way, singing; she was in her spring. The woman entered the alley, sighing; winter had come upon her too soon. When she arrived at the last house but one on the right, she seemed to be glad to see the glimmering of a light through the torn blind on the front window. The street door stood open, and she stepped into the dark passage, and paused before the door of the room in which Mrs. Flower lived.

"Janey!" she called, and listened for the answer. None reaching her ear, she entered without further ceremony. The candle, which Mr. Flower had inadvertently left alight, was burnt nearly to its socket, and the woman shivered as she noted the unmistakable signs of privation in the room.

"It _is_ Janey's place, I suppose!" she said, and looking toward the mantelshelf, saw there the faded photograph of herself and sister. "Yes, it's all right." She took down the photograph, and gazed at it with a curl of her lip as rueful as it was bitter. "Here we are together, Janey and me, before . . . ." A shudder served to complete the sentence. "How well I remember the day this was taken! We had a week at the seaside, and stood together on the sands, as happy as birds. The sun was shining, the children were playing and laughing. If I had known--if I had known! I never see children laughing now, and I sometimes wonder if the sun ever comes out. I was good-looking then, and nicely dressed, and no one could say anything against me. But what's the use of thinking about it? Thinking won't alter it."

She had contracted a habit of speaking to herself, and was scarcely conscious that she was uttering audible words.

"I don't mean to stand it long," she said presently. "I've come to London for something, and if he doesn't do what he ought to, I'll put an end to it. As I'm a living woman, I'll put an end to it! I don't care much which way it is. I've nothing to live for now!"

She sat down and covered her face with her hands; the candle had been spluttering and, being now at its last gasp, went out. The woman was left in darkness. It suited her mood. The sound of water slowly dropping outside attracted her attention. She removed her hands from her face, and listened; as she listened she followed the rhythm with the sound of her voice.

"Drip, drip drip! Drip, drip, drip!"

The pattering of the drops and her accompaniment fascinated her.

"Drip, drip, drip!" she continued to murmur, and did not stop till another sound diverted her attention. The door of the room was sharply opened, and Mrs. Flower entered. The woman stirred in her chair.

"Is that you, Prue?" asked Mrs. Flower. "Stop a minute; I'll get a light."

"No," replied the woman, "it isn't Prue."

"My God!" cried Mrs. Flower, "whose voice is that?"

She groped for the end of a candle, and lit it; holding it up, she looked at her visitor, who had risen, and was facing her.

"Martha!"

"Yes, Janey, it's me. You're not glad to see me, I dare say, after all these years."

"How can you say that? How long have you been here, and where's Prue?"

"I've been here--I don't know how long, and there was no one in the room when I came in. Who's Prue?"

"My little girl. Where can she have got to? I forgot, Janey. I didn't have a baby when----" She paused.

"Finish it," said Martha. "When I ran away and disgraced myself."

"O Martha!" said Mrs. Fowler, throwing her arms round her sister and kissing her, "don't think I'm hard on you. God knows I've no call to be hard on anyone, least of all on you. We all make mistakes."

"And have got to pay for them. Thank you for your welcome, Janey; it's more than I deserve."

"You're my sister, and I love you, Martha. Sit down, sit down, and tell me everything. How often I've wondered what had become of you! But I'm worried about Prue. I left her here with her father when I went out."

"Your husband's alive. That's a comfort."

"Is it? You wouldn't say so if he was yours. I suppose he's taken her into the streets with him. He's done it before, and got her to beg for him, the brute! It's no use my going out to find her; I shouldn't know where to look."

"That tells a tale, and I am sorry for you, Janey. I mightn't have come if I'd known; but I'd nowhere else to go to."

"Of course you came here. What a time it is since we saw each other!"

"We haven't improved much, either of us," said Martha. "I was hoping you were better off."

"I might have been if my husband was a man. The truth must be told: I couldn't be worse off than I am, I left my Prue hungry, and promised her some supper. I take in washing, Martha, and there was five shillings due to me, but the woman wouldn't pay me to-night; I've got to wait till to-morrow, so Prue will have to go to sleep on an empty stomach. It's hard lines on a sickly child, but what can I do?"

"I can't assist you, Janey. I've spent my last penny."

"There's no help for it, then; we're in the same boat. But tell me where you've been all these years."

"In Manchester. It's a puzzle to me how I got here, but I made up my mind to come to London, to try and screw something out of the man who took me away from home. I've got his address, and I went to his house this afternoon. He was away in the country, they told me, but I couldn't get them to tell me where. There was a man saw me standing at his door after they'd shut it in my face, and he came up and asked if he could do anything for me, and whether I would mind telling him what I wanted with Mr. Fox-Cordery, for that's the name of the villain that deceived me, but I said it was no business of his, and I walked away, and left him looking after me. I wandered about till it was dark, and then I thought I'd come and ask you to let me sleep here to-night. Must I turn out?"

"How can you ask such a thing? You're welcome to stop if you don't mind. This is the only room we've got, and I can't give you anything to eat because the cupboard's as empty as my pocket."

"Oh, I'm used to that! Your heart isn't changed, Janey."

"I couldn't be hard to you if I tried; and I'm not going to try. In Manchester you've been? You disappeared so suddenly and mysteriously----"

"Yes, yes; but we were carrying on together long before I went away. He wanted to get me out of London, away from him, you know: he was tired of me, and I wasn't in the best of tempers; he got frightened a bit, I think, because I said if he threw me over I'd have him up at the police court when my baby was born. He's a very respectable man--oh, very respectable!--and looks as soft and speaks as soft as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. But he's clever, and cunning, and sly, for all that, and he talked me over. I was to go away from London, and he was to allow me so much a week. He did for a little while, and sent it on to me in Manchester. Janey, when he first pretended to get fond of me he promised to marry me."

"Yes, they all do that, and women are fools enough to believe em."

"I was, and I used to remind him of his promise. That was while I was in London. When I was in Manchester he thought himself safe. Then my baby came, and it cost him a little. I had to write to him for every shilling almost, and he'd send me a postal order without a word of writing to say who it came from. That made me wild, and I wrote and said if he didn't write me proper letters I'd come back to London and worry his life out of him. That pulled him up, and he did write, but he never signed his name. He just put 'F.' at the bottom of his letters; I've got them in my pocket, every one of them. Well, then I got a situation as a shop-woman--they didn't know I had a baby, and I didn't tell them, you may be sure--and I put by a shilling or two. It was wanted, because his money dropped off. I lost my situation, and then I frightened him into coming to Manchester to see me. He was as soft and smooth as ever, and he swore to me that I should never want; he took his oath on it, and I told him if he didn't keep it I'd make it hot for him. Janey, you don't know the promises that man made to me when we first came together; it was a long time before I could bring myself to like him, but he spoke so fair that at last I gave way. And he played me false, after all. Don't think that I wanted to sponge on him; if I could have got my own living in an honest way.--and I never intend to get it any other way; I'm not thoroughly bad, Janey--I wouldn't have troubled him; but I couldn't. I have been in such misery, that if it had not been for my child I should have made away with myself long ago; but nothing keeps me back now. I have lost my child; it was buried by the parish."

"Hush, Martha, hush!"

"It's no use talking to me, Janey. I can't live this life any longer; and if the man that's brought me to it won't help me, I've made up my mind what to do. Nothing can change it--nothing. Look at me; I've hardly a rag to my back. It's a rosy look-out, to-morrow is. If I had decent clothes and a pound in my pocket, I might get into service; but who'd take me as I am?"

"You are changed from what you were, Martha; you used to be as merry as a lark."

"The lark's taken out of me long ago, and you haven't much of it left in you that I can see. I don't know that you're any better off than me, though you _are_ a respectable married woman; you've had to pay for your respectability. Much comfort it brings you, according to your own reckoning! What water is that dripping outside?"

She asked this question in the dark; the candle had gone out, and Mrs. Flower had no more.

"The water-butt leaks."

"Drip, drip, drip--and then it becomes a large pool--I see it spreading out--large enough to drown one's self in!"

"Martha!"

"Which would be best, Janey? That or what I shall be forced into if no one helps me? Supposing I'm alive! There it goes--drip, drip, drip! It might be drops of blood. There isn't a sheet of water I've seen since my child died that hasn't seemed to draw me to it, that hasn't whispered, 'Come, and end it!' When you wake up of a morning sometimes, aren't you sorry?"

"I am, God help me!"

"You've had a long sleep, and you've been happy; and you wake up--to this! Wouldn't it be better never to wake up? Drip, drip, drip! It's singing 'Come, come, come!' It drips just to that tune." She began to sing softly, with a pause between each word, to keep time to the water, "Come--come--come! Let me alone, Janey; don't lay hands on me. I'm all right for a day or two--I won't say for how much longer. I'll try and get some sleep."