THE BORDERLAND BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE DRUMS OF FATE SOME PRESS OPINIONS " One of the finest tales of London life>hich has been written for years." Morning Leader. " Since ' 'Liza of Lambeth ' was written, nothing so poignant as ' The Drums of Fate ' has been given to literature. It has just that rare quality which endeared Dickens to his readers." Daily Express. " A masterpiece of characterization." Saturday Review. " A novel of force and originality. Mr. Halifax knows what he is talking about, and this tale of mean streets draws you down to the ' thoughts that burn like iron when you thirst.' If anything, the tale is too clever ; but read it. The roll of the drums will stir you." Daily News. " Delicious maddening haunting Jo ! ... A city tragedy, told by a man who has genius in him, and has drawn that rare thing a portrait of a woman who was a sinner." Public Opinion. " The pathos of such existence has seldom been so truthfully represented in Iterature before. It is all so natural." Bristol Times and Mirror. " This remarkable book of tears and laughter." Star. " For the individual characters we have nothing but the highest praise. From an artistic point of view they soar high, and we heartily congratulate Mr. Halifax on his latest creation. We look forward to good work from his pen." Literary World. " If you want to read a book quite out of the common, read ' The Drums of Fate.' Jo Galilee is as original as any petticoat that has flitted across the fiction of the twentieth century." " Dagonet," in the Referee. " Touched with the genuine humour of the London streets." Daily Telegraph. " It is a positive pleasure to come across such a clever, powerful, original novel as this. We have seldom seen a study of greater fidelity, pathos, and mingled humour." Bookseller. " A striking, a luminous, a clever study. A well-written book, ful of convincing truth." Liverpool Daily Post. THE GRIP OF GOLD " Most readers will remember that clever novel, ' The Drums of Fate,' with which Mr. Halifax made such a success a short time ago. In ' The Grip of Gold, 1 he shows that his power is by no means on the wane. It is a story full of human interest, told with a realistic touch that grips the attention at once. ' The Grip of Gold ' should do much to enhance Mr. Halifax's reputation as a novelist." The Queen. " There is abundant material in ' The Grip of Gold ' for two sensational novels, and Mr. Robert Halifax marshals his resources so deftly that the interest of the story never slackens." Daily Graphic. " The work of a clever and powerful writer who has the secret of portraying human passion with an actuality that is compelling. ... A story which keeps the reader's interest up to a high pitch from opening to finish." Nottingham Guardian. " A book of large ideas, of real thought and imagination." Morning Leader. " A capital story, well told." Layman. " Makes excellent reading." Daily News. " A clever and well written story." Bookseller. " Will hold the reader in a grip of its own till the last knot is loosed." Literary World. " Full of exciting situations a thrill, indeed, from beginning to end." Daily Express. THE BORDERLAND By ROBERT HALIFAX Author of "The Drums of Fate." NEW YORK E. P. BUTTON & CO. 1912 BUTLER ft TANNER, THE SKLWOOD PRINTING WORKS, FROMK, AMD LONDON. CHAPTER I IN the dying mellow light of a September evening, at a date recent enough for all who love the truth and their fellow men, a man and a woman came to a pause in one of the streets linking Hoxton with the long Kingsland Road. " Anything the matter ? " asked Miss Val- jean, with sudden rich interest in the position. " Nothing," John Laverock answered, with determination to match. " Oh ! I was afraid you might have missed your purse or thought better of it." " Better of what ? " " Of what ? " She prodded the kerb line with her umbrella tip delicately, her head at a critical angle. " Of your splendid intention of sweeping London clean in six months beginning with Hoxton." ' That's cruel," he said, his arms slowly folding. " That's as cruel as feminine." " Not at all. It being arranged that you were to take up Louis' mantle in London, while he donned yours in Hertfordshire, naturally, of course, it was my woman's part 6 THE BORDERLAND to show you where and how he had worked. And so here we are." " Is that how you assisted your brother, Miss Valjean ? I mean, did you adopt that attitude when you went from house to house with him ? " " I never went not quite into the houses or very seldom," she said, softly majestic. Her umbrella-tip had worked quite a nice groove between the kerb and pavement. " Not that I I mean, women's clothes are different from men's, aren't they ? " " I suppose they are," he admitted, his mouth still set. She had not yet asked him why his type of man almost invariably eschewed moustaches and yet wore full heads of hair. " Well ? " " Well ? " she echoed. " Louis was per- fectly sanguine until his health broke down. Aren't you ? " And now she had to look up at him, and the blood showed in her white- lily cheeks a little. "Don't be silly," she said. " What I mean is, that they are all staring at you. We don't stand in these streets taking mental snap-shots, whatever you do in your Hertfordshire lanes." He looked around. His tall, fighting, free- striding figure, beside the dainty woman's, had undeniably riveted interest. Women with great arms and shameless full bosoms leaned over railings to take his measure and THE BORDERLAND 7 compare estimates. Battalions of children had concentrated in a staring semi-circle unpleasantly close, and men smoking in door- ways seemed moodily sanguine of develop- ments. Miss Valjean they knew, of course, and sniffed the air when she occasionally passed that way, leaving a trail of scent. But absolute newcomers, pausing here, would as a matter of course look to be expectorated upon from one or two points of vantage. " Are you saved, Mrs. Mucklehorn ? " earnestly inquired one lady of another at a high window opposite. " Shaved ? " " Saved, I said. Don't be rude." " Oh, I dunno yet," was the reply. " I ain't in the blanket fund yet." " Ah, then it's you they're after. Let your hair down and rub your eyes." " Has Louis visited in this street at all ? " John Laverock asked of Miss Valjean. He had not flinched, but he certainly had the look of a man suddenly asked to plough a field of lava. " Oh, yes ! " Her lips were twitching curiously. " For quite a long time, I fancy. But I believe he recognized that only one sort of thing seems to grow in this atmosphere. Suppose we were to walk back to the Kings- land end and take the next turning down into Hoxton ? " 8 THE BORDERLAND She moved, and he followed not too grace- fully, because the children were revolving in a circle about them. Some of the expressions of regret sent after them were of a nature that apparently contained as much condensed local humour as those chalked at intervals upon the pavement. And John Laverock seemed to expect the woman at his side to bear that as easily as himself. " It was much the same down in Hert- fordshire," he explained to her, quietly. " On the surface, you might believe that no- thing is sacred nothing accomplished after twenty centuries of the leaven of Christian purity. The church was fairly full on Sun- days, but the people swore and poached on Monday if not before. And there it is the great problem put before all thinking men of to-day. Is progress real ? Is the world better at base than it was two thousand years ago ? " " Certainly not," Miss Valjean said. " Be- cause men and women are precisely in the same awkward position now as then born with their moral compass-needle always point- ing in the direction that they are warned they must not follow." " Born in sin yes ! " " Not at all. Motherhood is sacred, because sanctioned by God," she said, with cold, silencing decision. Once again he THE BORDERLAND 9 fancied that this sister of Louis Valjean deliberately took up a challenging attitude to draw him to remind him that, although an enthusiast, he was first and foremost a thing of flesh and blood like herself. They were back in the main road. The great electric cars swung by like stately armour-clads at sea ; cyclists careered in their track ; the nightly feverish rush from City to suburbs was in full swing. It made John Laverock feel a very small fighting unit. He had it in him to stand out like a gladiator, but in this vast arena, filled with the roar of indefinite sound, individual effort seemed numbed. All of it Miss Valjean knew. From day to day she had watched. His very thoroughness and clean-shaven resoluteness kept her mouth in a constant twitch hard to conceal. He was something entirely, fascinatingly fresh and new so different from Louis, who had no theories and who accepted Hoxton and the world around as it was. He seemed to want to put out his hands fine, strong hands and arrest the living chain as it passed, and deliver his message to each slippery link in turn. At any rate, his span of tenure in London, as a worker in the Christian Brother- hood Mission, promised to be full of excite- ment. " This way," she said archly. "It was a io THE BORDERLAND great mistake to stop as you did, but it cannot be helped. If there's the smallest weak spot in one's armour, these people find it and keep it." "Then I'll go back." He drew up, his grey eyes looking down at her. " Oh, no, not now. Besides, it is really quite sufficient for a night or so if you grasp some real idea of the streets and the people. You cannot hope oh, I say ! " She put a finger tentatively to her lips, glanced furtively, and sank her voice breathlessly. " Don't look round": I do believe that is the man whom Louis said was beyond any man's power to reclaim the man who never dared to come out in daylight. It is ! Ben Fisher ! " Naturally John Laverock wheeled round at once. Ben glared wolfishly back. At the moment his face, hairless and flabbily white, certainly suggested a prolonged diet of buttered toast taken in a dark cellar. Big, bald, inert, his dough-like flesh seemed to invite a finger-pressure. But it was a libel to claim that he never came out in daylight merely a woman's way of saying that he had no fixed habits. And he boasted none. That work evaded him so per- sistently was happily balanced by the fact that his wife, so much smaller and hence more wiry and active, had more offers of employment than she could humanly accept. Ben Fisher had migrated from Islington way THE BORDERLAND n into Hoxton a year or so ago with something of a reputation ; but Hoxton could assimilate anything in that line without moral dyspepsia. Miss Valjean had been whispering no doubt with the best intentions. Not knowing them, Ben thought it the moment to remark audibly to a man at his elbow that some interfering so-and-so's would be locked up if they spoke out loud. " What's that ? " John Laverock asked straightly. A man's character is written all over him in a hundred different ways for any one who cares to see ; and he had known his man at a glance, and saw an opportunity. " Jest private. Nothin'." Ben tilted the bowler hat that rested upon his ears. " On'y tellin' my pal that if I don't like a man I make no bones about it. I bash him one in the neck." " You do ? But not just because he's a man who asks only to be allowed to do a little good in the world eh ? Come ! I've heard of you. I've taken Mr. Valj can's place in Hoxton for a time, and we may as well be friends as enemies. Yes, you and I. Shake hands ! " Ben looked at his pal, and down at the hand. " Decent fin," he said, a little lamely. " Never done much work, has it ? Oh, I see ! " He became heavily truculent. " You're another talkee-talkee. Well, don't get comin' into my old woman's place number five. 12 THE BORDERLAND Jest leave the tracts on the top step, as I told the other bloke. That's all I've got to say to you." " Are you in work now ? " John Laverock asked, with a puzzling intentness. " Me ? " Ben resented this as a distinct side-issue. " Look 'ere, if you're comin' any capers down here " " Because I can get you some, if not. That's a fair offer now." Up and down him Ben looked, and round at the grinning faces, and was reduced to spitting. " Well, you've made a good lead- off, anyhow," he said. He filled his pipe slily. " If I start, the old woman '11 leave off, won't she ? " he asked, with winking acumen. He lit up. " Work, eh ? Call agin. If it's a foreman's job, near no gas- works, I'll let you know," he decided. " We don't owe no rent yet." ' Well," John Laverock said, gravely smil- ing, " you've had your thrust at me, and you may have many more before I say goodbye. But, mind you ' he put his hand on Ben's shoulder, and let him feel the grip of a man who had no right to a grip " we start level now. There's as much ' devil ' in me as in you, and there's as much power for good in you as in me. You're not going to use your devilment against the Mission man's efforts for good, are you plainly ? " THE BORDERLAND 13 Dunno so much," Ben muttered, darkly vague, the slits over his small eyes nearly closed. " You say you're a parson." " Not a bit. We believe in taking hold of a man's hand and helping him through. If I knock at a man's door it's not to preach, but to see if he needs any help." " Well, I can see you gettin' fat down our street," Ben summed up, to reverse the laugh. " When does this start ? " " You know." John Laverock watched him with the same keen, analytical smile. " That's all I had to say, and I mean it. Good- night ! " And he strode on. With parted lips, and skirts held as in readiness for flight, Miss Valjean had watched. " How you could have touched him ! " she breathed severely, as they moved on. " I told you I told you that they say if the last policeman who was killed down this next street could have lived long enough to speak " " Enough ! " he put in quietly. " If I stopped to realize all that my eyes and ears have shown me already, I should picture Hell as full long before the doors of Heaven open. I'm not going to. Down here ? " " Yes ! All right he shall go on," she seemed to add to herself. CHAPTER II THE street they had turned into was almost an exact replica of Phillimore Street lower down baffling to anybody not steeped in its atmosphere and traditions. Like Phillimore Street, and half a score of others that ran parallel, it had apparently its own society circle, and resented intrusion. Full-bosomed ladies craned from windows and exchanged marital confidences with similar ladies opposite, while the husbands concerned brooded in the doorways over mugs of beer, and the offspring of both bandied stones and imprecations as a relief from irk- some daily bounds imposed by the Council schools. The State had done its allotted part given just the pound of flesh demanded of it. The pavements were decently kept, the street- lamps in order, and the houses in fair repair. If the trail of reckless personal neglect, verbal filth and animalism was over all, it was doubtless because the State considered its duty extended only to the inanimate, and left the animate to look after itself. If the M THE BORDERLAND 15 Church, too, had signally failed here in all but establishing fuel and maternity funds, it was because a religion that demanded decency, humility, and other restrictions seemed so derisively superfluous, when the public-houses always remained as an alternative to prosy places of worship. So, just conceivably, it remained for a few determined workers on new methods, like Louis Valjean, to succeed where Church and State had failed utterly. " Here we are Hoxton Street ! " Miss Valjean said it in a voice of hushed thankfulness. She had been repressing a tense shudder a feeling as though her lace- trimmed skirts were carrying along the moral garbage. Hoxton Street itself to the eye, although not in respect to police records was so different. Shaped like a fat bottle with a narrow neck at either extreme, it was lined almost from end to end of its great length with heaped-up stalls, and the marketing public that flocked in from all the surrounding areas was a golden goose which demanded consideration. Over those narrow streets that branched off from the right some silently sinister, some swarming with life, all highly speculative from the Great Architect's point of view dusk had just thrown a merciful veil. Here, if you remembered your pockets, and did not appear too conscious or curious, 16 THE BORDERLAND you could thread a perfectly safe way, tempted by original invitations to purchase at one of the most economical and varied ready-money markets even London has to show. " I say, ma, what a lovely sunset ! And here's the old hen been and laid all brown eggs with double yolks again ! " . . . " Now's your time to get married, my dear. What price my honeymoon bacon at six-and-half a pun' ?"..." Have that half shoulder, lovey. There's only one to beat it that's yours. All English meat threepence. Sold again to a Duke's lady !".... " Now, then, gels, this little lot o' Dover plaice and one in for the baby, if you've got one. If you ain't, that's your fault, not mine. Ninepence fourpence twopence ! Ruined again ! " The naphtha lamps flared up. The crowd thickened. The hubbub deepened. John Laverock and Miss Valjean, keeping to the centre of the cobbled roadway, had walked slowly to the " Britannia " end of Hoxton and turned back. From time to time little flashes of excitement arose, to fizz out with almost equal stupefying swiftness. A public- house door swung : a man had " had a word " with his wife or some other man's wife. A few quickening oaths, a sudden blow, a scream, a shouting, a dive down one of the dark refuge-alleys and all was over. It takes THE BORDERLAND 17 something definitely dramatic to arouse Hoxton. " Keep calm," John Laverock said, as he held Miss Valjean close to him for a thrilling instant. A covey of shoeless, fearless, swear- ing little Britons were in full flight past them after a successful raid upon the rear of some stall. " As only the strongest can survive here, their nerves are perfect. At the other end of the social scale, you see, the hothouse atmosphere breeds neurotics. Between the extremes is the safe buffer of the vast class that lives steadily on in order that it may die respected. The thing is " " Yes ; the thing is," Miss Valjean said, as he paused, " did God contemplate this submerged horror all the submerged horrors when He created the scheme of Life ? " She was holding his sleeve tightly, as she tried to look along one of those narrow streets now on their left hand. She had caught an indefinite sound as of running feet and stran- gled voices, suggesting suppressed tragedy, down there ; but it was all enigmatical again, overwhelmed by the strident roar of Hoxton's market. To her, each of those semi-silent, coffin-like thoroughfares was a seething caul- dron, from which the lid was partly lifted now and again. To go down there to live down there. . . . " I should give one scream," she said i8 THE BORDERLAND slowly. " I should put both hands to my head and ask Heaven to take me. But think ! think of women whose womanhood survives down there ! " " No, think of ourselves who expect it to survive." " Think of the men who there, come along ! " She bit her lip upon a smile so deeply the man had been made to look down into her eyes for that moment. He must think what he must* He ought to divine that the sense of humour had leaped treacherously at her tragic note and stifled it. His own grey eyes had withstood every test hitherto ; but she was not yet quite convinced that any normal physical man could be lastingly superior to the first Adam of all. A diversion occurred. A piano-organ drew abruptly up beside them, and round went the handle. As if the Pied Piper of Hoxton had given his magic call, out poured the human rats. They sprang as from nowhere, and seemed to fall into step at a point broken off the day before. Dirty feet twinkled in the air, small skirts shook, knees were twisted on a level with the nose all in one minute the street centre was transformed into a " dancing " stage, every performer divinely insouciant, and all supremely superior to erratic changes rung upon the music. THE BORDERLAND 19 Then pouf ! The man turning the handle paused, looked round for remuneration, saw none in sight when was there ever any to be seen ? and moved abruptly on. The human rats had vanished before one could draw breath. John Laverock looked at Miss Valjean, laughed, and moved on. Comedy and tragedy are so closely interwoven in Hoxton that to disentangle them would be a hopeless task for any one with a sense of pity and proportion. " I think we must have been nearly all along one edge of the crater," Miss Valjean said demurely. " Then to-morrow, you know, you can begin your work in grim earnest. I hope there will not be any eruptions," she tacked on, with her delicate little cough. " What is it you mean ? " the man asked, a trifle coldly. " Well, you see, one can be too enthusiastic too sure of one's self. My last words to Louis at the station were that, in trying to save others he had come near losing himself. A trifle mixed, I know ; but women always are in argument. Look at those cheap tomatoes." He looked. He had been clearing his throat to say that the mute antagonism between them her and himself, not the tomatoes might as well find its vent to-night. But he hesitated, and the opportunity slipped. And 20 THE BORDERLAND upon such small facts do mighty issues hinge. Through the hubbub had come suddenly a note of appealing incongruity. A ring of Salvation Army lasses, with clean, rapt faces and clasped hands, had burst into " Abide with Me," no rats, however, being conjured up by the slow time. Miss Valjean would have floated by with dignified tolera- tion, but John Laverock halted. Purposely or involuntarily ? He never knew. His quick artistic perceptions had framed a pic- ture. He was only a man, and he had seen a Face. No man can say at what moment his heart shall pump double time without warning. Annoyed, Miss Valjean refused to whisper a second time, and moved on. He stood quite still, outwardly normal, inwardly lost. Reluctant admiration wrestled with tentative awe and misgiving. As he looked at that face, he seemed to be peering through dark windows for the mystery of a woman's soul. The woman had looked back at him, and seemed slowly, scornfully, to draw down the blinds. She was in the centre of the singing circle a passive prisoner one with them, yet apart. In deadliest tranquillity she seemed to chal- lenge her Hoxton acquaintances to jeer at her role as potential penitent to-night. Her THE BORDERLAND 21 slip of a figure was frail to consumption- point, but he had not grasped that fact yet. Out from her small, tea-rose-yellow face looked the two turquoise eyes eyes slightly filmed, yet consciously fathomless. Perhaps no one else had ever thought so, but it struck the man curiously as the work of an artist who had begun to model a Madonna and changed it into a Delilah with a few subtle touches. Yet she was palpably a product of the slums. Her wax-like small fingers, not clean, were heavy with apparently cheap rings. Her amber hair, with its chestnut tint, was drawn in two curtain-like waves low over her ears. Without that depth in her eyes that stillness as of a volcano believed to be dead, but alive far below she would have been a colourless doll, absurd in her theatrical assumption of Cleopatran dignity. He told himself that she was a mere girl with a mind more mature than his own. " Abide with Me " was ended. One of the lasses stepped out, and seemed to communi- cate with Heaven for a moment, her eyes ecstatically closed. Then " O Lord of us all ! " she called, beautifully clear, " look down once more upon Hoxton. Bring light into all its dark places. We ask it yet again to-night. Do what men cannot and will not. Help every selfish man to realize his 22 THE BORDERLAND manhood and master the baser instincts within him ; help every weak woman to know that for her the price of sin is shame here and hereafter. Help we lasses to prove it by practice, and not by precept. O Lord, let us all know the sweet sleep of a day purely spent and at last of a life lived for the world's betterment. The brothers who mock us, the sisters who scorn us, bless them all ! " A hushed pause. The man had bent his head. His nerves had tingled dully ; it was as if she had known that, all unawares, the impure animal instinct had taken life and writhed in himself for an instant. Then, taking up the thread of " Abide with Me," she clapped her hands, and the ring wheeled into double line, and passed on. And the girl, whose lips had not quivered through it all, moved with them between the lines. And the man, with his slower stride, followed. They were going his way that was all. He had lost sight of Miss Valjean ; but although he glanced round conscientiously for her dainty figure at every turn, he never once lost sight of the clapping, singing, rap- turous little throng passing from Hoxton just ahead, with the amber girl between. CHAPTER III HOXTON'S roar and naphtha-glare had died behind him. He could see the sky again, and feel clearer air upon his face. He was making back toward Downham Road, in a quiet turning out of which he had chosen his two modest rooms. Miss Valjean, who had kept house for her brother, had not offered to do the same for her brother's friend and substitute. The Army lasses, just ahead of him still, swung along now in " step " silence, with signs now and then of breaking out into " Onward, Christian Soldiers ! " It was darker here ; he could make out only indistinctly the figure of their trophy in the midst. He would have to stop in a minute in a minute ; meanwhile, his limbs carried him on with a lack of motive which he was aware Miss Valjean would have condemned at a glance. And now he found himself once more out in the Kingsland Road, with the stately cars gliding north and south, the motor 'buses buzzing in and out like angry bluebottles, 24 THE BORDERLAND and the long northern sweep of road stretching like a jewelled rod far before him. The " Army " had wheeled to the left, and, with a little tattoo upon their tambourines, filed into a building which had frankly no pretence at architecture or symbolism. It occurred unexpectedly. The man drew up short, aware of chilled expectancy. Doors had opened and closed ; the amber girl was swept out of his sight. It was like a just rebuff to his curiosity. He stood there for a time, listening to the singing within. He appeared to be waiting for a car that never came by. When, of a sudden, he turned and pushed gently at the door of the building, he felt almost as though convicted of stealthy, unworthy intrusion. Why ? He did not know. He stood, hold- ing his breath, in the crude little vestibule. There was no public meeting or, at least, no audience. But on a platform at the end of the room stood the amber girl in the same still attitude ; and around her in a circle knelt the uniformed figures. " O Lord ! " arose a woman's voice, weirdly supplicative, " complete Thy work ! Put out Thy hand and touch the heart of our sister here in the balances. Do it now ! " There was a murmur, and a hush. The world at his back seemed shut out. The standing girl looked around upon them, and THE BORDERLAND 25 away again. It seemed that some great smile was waiting to dawn on her lips. But again she looked down, and away. " O Lord ! " went up the same voice in unshaken fervour, " all that we have we yield to Thee ! Gold and fine raiment are of the earth, earthly. For it is written How can we serve God and cling to Mammon ? . . . Smite the rock, O Lord ! Smite the rock now ! Bid this our sister give proof of her desire to turn from the devil's playground ! " There was an electrifying " Lord ! Lord ! >J from the bending figures. And then John Laverock understood. One by one slowly the amber girl took the rings from her small fingers the brooch from her throat, the orna- ment from her hair and dropped them with dramatic deliberation into the collection plate beside her. It was done. Her fingers clasped again. He heard her voice low, level, just tinged with reckless indifference. " There, then ! all I've got in the world to-night ! " A " soldier " threw back his head and out- stretched his arms as in ecstasy. As in ecs- tasy, in the stillness, the verse strained from his lips " Just as I am, without one plea ! " Then all were upon their feet. A crash of tambourines, and out swelled a thril- ling burst of voices " We're marching to Canaan . . ! " 26 THE BORDERLAND Overwhelmed, John Laverock stepped out. For an instant, during the last pause, he had never seemed nearer to the Sacred Presence and now, as he drew the door to behind him, it seemed conversely that he had never been eyewitness of anything more essentially melo- dramatic. For some reason he set his teeth as he walked away. For some reason he obeyed an impulse and turned again, to wait and see what happened. And, at the end of only a few minutes, something hap- pened. The doors had opened, and a little knot of the " sisters " surged out. The amber girl was among them. They seemed to be plead- ing softly to her to stay to turn from some purpose. He saw her put back the detaining hands, feel at her throat, and then walk calmly away, leaving them standing as in some shock. She was marching in his direction. His heart took another of those unaccountable jumps another. Straight before her, with half -smiling eyes, she looked, seeing nothing. He was about to stand aside and let her pass out of his experience. Instead, as she came level, he found himself speaking. ' Pardon me I wanted to speak to you, as a friend." She looked up at him. The rise and fall of her small body ceased. The abstraction THE BORDERLAND 27 died out of her turquoise eyes a contemptu- ous flicker took its place. ' You be damned," she said, with quiet scorn. " You be damned," she repeated, with the utmost tranquillity, and was mov- ing on. For a moment he could not turn. The man in him was stung, as well as the en- thusiast. Then, with a determined pull upon himself, he had caught her up. " You did not mean that/' he said. " It was a flash of perversity." " Was it ? " she inquired, with another look up and down his strong figure. " You seem to know me. I should say you're gifted. Well ? " She folded her hands and stood waiting. " I know nothing. Quite possibly I made a mistake in thinking that you were in trouble of some kind ; but I did think it. And when I heard you say in that room just now that your morsel of jewellery was all you had " He paused. She had given an odd little laugh. " You thought you could lend me a bit on it, eh ? I knew I should fall on my feet ; I always do. Well, here they are." And she held out her small hand, with the rings and ornaments lumped in it. " Poor devils ! It's about the tenth time they've ' rescued ' me. They ought to know it's no use. Stickers, 28 THE BORDERLAND though, aren't they ? " She slipped the rings on to her fingers. YOU you took them back ? " he asked, with an inward gasp. " I did. Wouldn't you ? I never know lately what's comin' into my mind, you know. Suddenly thought, ' Lor, why should I ? What's the use ? I'm a dove to-night, but a devil to-morrow ? ' Where were you ? " " I'm sorry," John Laverock said, intensely puzzled, looking down at her. He wanted to keep her another moment. He had tem- porarily forgotten the crowded cars passing on one hand and the hurrying stream of people on the other. To look at her was somehow like watching a baffling little creature behind the bars of a cage. " If any one had told me that a girl could do such a flippant thing " " Me ? " She pushed back his hand disdain- fully. " I could do anything, if I wanted anything, now I don't care whether I live or get out of it. Couldn't you ? Why'd you want to follow us from Hoxton this far ? You're in the ' rescue ' line, too, aren't you ? I thought so." She made a movement as if she were accustomed to hitching shawl-ends together. But in that first moment he had noticed that the dress she wore had been a good one. " Well, good-night ! I'm off." " Where to ? " He had to ask it, as she THE BORDERLAND 29 moved. He knew now : there was a sup- pressed utter recklessness in her far more dangerous than the hysterics of another type of woman. He slipped up alongside, his voice earnestly quiet. "It is not rude- ness that makes me ask ; but it haunts me to hear you speak in that way." " Sorry for you," she said, with the same impenetrable calm. " I have dreams myself a lot, lately. But you don't hanker to be seen walking up the Kingsland Road with me, I'm sure." "Nonsense. Why ever not? We are all brothers and sisters in that sense or should be." " H'm ! You ought to sleep with some of the people where I live. You wouldn't want a bath to get rid of that idea." " Where is that ? " he persisted. " Don't take liberties ! " She looked up sideways at him with a flash such as he had never seen in a woman's eyes before. But, truly, her manner seemed to change every instant the hall-mark, he was to discover, of the girl who wears her hair curved low about her ears under a flat straw hat, and has drawn every breath of her life from a London slum, where wits are sharpened upon an ever- revolving grindstone. " Wait till I ask you where you live ! " And he cleared his throat. " But don't you understand ? My work 30 THE BORDERLAND lies in Hoxton and around. Perhaps you know Mr. Valjean " " Comes round with the visitin' lady oh, yes, I've seen the top of his hat from the landing. He's a fool, you know," she added, with cold complacency. " He'd believe it if he heard the things they say behind his back." " Well, then, they will say them behind mine. For I have taken his place for six months." "Oh! All right," she said, with sudden weariness of manner. "Do as you like. If ever you want a black eye and some language, knock next door to Mrs. Mucklehorn's, down Phillimore Street. Thought I'd tell you beforehand." " You're very perverse, but I happen to think that you don't mean a word of it," he answered, pausing. They had reached the bridge, and he fancied he could make out Ben Fisher's hairless, fleshy face under a lamp by Canal Street corner just ahead. " Good-night ! and perhaps I may hope to have a real talk to you one of these days." " What for ? " She looked down at the canal water, with its black shine. " What about ? " " About ? Yourself ; your present and future ; your woman's part in a world which is mainly what we make of it. We exist for each other or should do." THE BORDERLAND 31 " Sounds all right. Sounds marvellous, don't it ? " she mused absently. " Most of the talks I've had with men wouldn't do me much good." " What sort of men ? " he demanded. " Well, call 'em beasts. I don't know what you are, but I know what most are, give them their chance to show it. Oh, if I'd chose, I might have been a lady long ago." " Don't say that ! " he breathed, strangely stirred again as he looked down at the amber aureole around the small calm face, which seemed all the time to see beyond him. " What odds ? " she laughed. " It's the truth. I was in the chorus for two months, and might have been at it till doom struck. There's only one way to get on in that line unless you're a genius with moneyed friends ; you know that, if you know anything at all." " I don't know, and I don't believe it," he said slowly. " A woman can always remain pure, even beyond the theatre wings al- though there it may be hardest." And she glanced up sideways with her quick scorn. ' Would you like to let any sister of yours try her luck there for a month ? " " No ! " ' Thought so. She'd have to be cast-iron. I'm not." ' You " He paused. The word stuck in his throat. 32 THE BORDERLAND " I came out of it that's good enough for you," she said coldly. " I might want to go back. I'd sooner do that than take on the jam factory again. Want a tip ? don't ever touch shop jam." It had plunged into triviality with an easy swoop. But a mere span of seconds were gone since the first word, and yet he seemed to have known her a long time. He could not tell whether he was more repelled by her reckless precocity than magnetized by her personality. Assuredly any stray bubble of conceit in him was pricked by now. " Tell me your name ! " he asked, quite earnestly. He had a hand to his notebook. " Anything else ? " She paused, and laughed again. " My name ? Donna ! " " Donna what ? " ' That's all. Enough for any one, isn't it ? It's all you'll get." ' Then I'll say ' good-night,' Donna," he said, half sadly. " I should think so ! " She gave him one more swift look up and down, as at the termination of a freakish joke. " Good- night to you ! . . . Run ! " It flashed in a real spontaneous breath from her lips. He saw her blanch and cower aside. Through the irregular stream of hurrying people across the bridge he was just in time to note a figure darting crouchingly THE BORDERLAND 33 like a man from his mark in a sprint race. It loomed close with the swiftness of a shape on a bioscopic sheet. His brain focussed that, and nothing else. A sharp agony had gone through it, and momentarily blinded him. The blow, aimed as to blacken his eye, had landed on his temple. Perhaps he had fallen. He only knew that some unknown arm was wound beneath him as a support. All was muffled. The fine cars swung along like illuminated ships in perfect silence. The sky swam gently. The voices of the people pressing around him on all sides now came as from the bedside of a dying man. CHAPTER IV was he ? Do you know ? Would you know him again ? " He looked up at them mutely. A deadly nausea, that he meant to keep back at all costs, compelled it. " Now, then ! " It was a constable's voice, a little less dreamlike. He flashed his lamp over the strong, clean-shaven face, and saw his mistake. " Give him some air, it's cheap enough. What's the damage, sir ? " " I'm all right ! " he muttered faintly. He had seen the pale, intent, half-malicious face of the amber girl peering through at him. His eyes were fixed upon her. " I'm all right ! " " H'm ! " The policeman passed a finger over his temple. " Any one see it, and coming forward ? " " See it ! " The man holding him was moved to a husky retort. " Hear it, you mean like the crack of a whip. It was all done in a flash. The dirty skunk rushed past me, sprang up, smashed in his blow, and 34 THE BORDERLAND 35 greased like lightning killed him, I made sure." " Yes ? Well, I can't do anything except make a note of it." " Where's the Law ? " " The Law's right enough. But the man's gone." " I'm all right ! " they heard John Laverock repeat, much more firmly. The crowd was assuming proportions. He made his effort gathered himself to- gether in sections, as it seemed although his brain still " sang " and his eyes saw dart- ing shapes everywhere. Some one replaced the trampled hat on his head. Another good look at him, and the crowd began to thin. The constable paced to and fro as if anxious for the cause of the obstruction to be gone too. John Laverock's feet started moving. Walking like a stiff automaton, he had almost regained the Downham Road before he realized what had happened. Then, swaying slightly, he swerved about. As suddenly the amber girl turned. She had been walking a score of yards behind him, as in curiosity to see what befell a man who could survive that blow. To catch up with her to put one of the questions that thronged confusedly in his mind was not possible. The majestic rise and fall of her small figure dwindled in the lamplit distance, 36 THE BORDERLAND She would not look back he knew that by some intuition ; she was piqued at being seen. He smiled oddly to himself, and went on. It was not within his power to try and fathom the thing not to-night. Dazedly, a few minutes later, he found himself ringing the bell at a house not his own. He had gone there quite mechanically as with a sense of some duty to be done. The maid- servant stared at him or, rather, at his condition. " Is Miss Valjean in ? " he asked. " Some time ago, sir. Excuse me, sir, your coat your hat " " See to it for me, will you ? " he whispered. The sickness was threatening awkwardly again. She was a deft little thing. As if she under- stood all, she assisted him to the hall chair, quietly brushed and reshaped the hat, and then whisked the brush softly round his shoulders. And then he looked up, to see the drawing-room door open, and Miss Val- jean, as composed and dainty as if she had just stepped out of a picture-frame, watching the proceedings with steadfast interest. " Is it finished ? So this is ' Hoxton,' " she observed, with a sweet little titter. The small maid had scuttled. " Aren't you feel- ing yourself ? " she inquired pointedly, as he rose a little unsteadily. THE BORDERLAND 37 He looked at her. He was not thinking of anything in particular at all, and it was a little strange that two faint spires of conscious colour should run up her cheeks. " I was passing," he said dreamily. " Is that all ? Perhaps perhaps you only called in to see Bede on this occasion ? " Bede was her invalid brother upstairs. " I was passing," he repeated. Then he recollected himself, and steadied his figure. " Excuse me ! You got back home all right, then. I felt a little uneasy, missing you in that street." " Really ! " She bowed, and smoothed back a stray hair from her forehead. " Strange I should think you had called in to say you were sorry. You're not, I can see." " What have I done ? " he demanded. But for his strenuous Hertfordshire record she would have known him to be half drunk. " Nothing at all." " Then then why do you look at me in that fixed way, Miss Valjean ? " " Don't be silly. Won't you come in ? " She got it out with a little tremble, and bit her lips. His voice had sounded thick staccato, and was usually so grave and clear. " At least, there is no occasion to stand in that way with your hat on." -She swept back into the room. Shaded candles burned in sconces, gossamer-lace 38 THE BORDERLAND curtains hung like ethereal films, and all was the essence of comfort and exquisite taste, tempting to the mind and the body alike. John Laverock had followed stiffly. She half turned, standing still to look at him as a woman looks when she wishes fervently she had the freedom of a man's tongue. It was absurd everything was absurd to a degree to-night. He had sat in this room with Louis and herself and again with her alone, listening to her piano-playing fully a dozen times. Yet he was looking around it now as if it were aggressively new to him. His eyes were even turned down to the carpet into which his feet had sunk. Something had swelled ready in her throat as he spoke. It remained suspended for a minute. " No, we're not honest any of us. Not sincere ! " Bitterly, deliberately, it was spoken. Down he sat, a pale hand to his eyes the hat still on. There was a pause, so deep that the hum of London ringed about them took a sound suggesting the distant drone of myriad bees. Then "Whatever might you mean?' 5 she asked rigidly. ' You know ! " Beneath his hand he looked across at her. " I know it, too. We don't try to realize it, for the sake of our own bodily ease ; but the sincerity of our professed THE BORDERLAND 39 religion is only on the surface. Yes ! If it were not so if we really tried to follow Christ, who had not where to lay His head we could not live from day to day in such superfluous comfort as as this. We could not ! " he repeated, almost fiercely. " You begin, then," Miss Valjean whispered, ironically sympathetic. " Sell your furniture the clothes you have on and set the great example. You begin ! " He had not heard. Something perhaps that night's shock had turned on a whim- sical or rebellious current in his brain not to be dammed by mere woman's sarcasm. " I feel it ; I have always felt it. Take Hoxton ! It has a complete human answer to the men who preach God to it. The successful men in the Church live in personal ease and comfort, thereby stultifying all they have urged from the pulpit. The most successful of all are wealthy men, who live as such. And yet the Christ on the Cross they represent and hold up before Hox- ton " He paused, drawing in breath to check the surge of bitterness. " I'm sorry," he said, more quietly. " But if I am merely honest, I must always know that no sincere man could enjoy superfluities while around him were people wanting necessaries starv- ing even in body or soul women stitching away their sight and maternal powers for a 40 THE BORDERLAND few pence per day ; while the infant death- roll in the neighbouring slum averaged 180 per 1,000 all the year round." " And no sincere woman, of course ! " she whispered. "It is all quite true. Go on ! You may be quite frank, since you are moved to strip away the masks we all have to wear in this life." " We do not have to wear them," he per- sisted. He seemed to be drooping forward in the chair. " It is but a mean compromise with conscience. There is charity on all hands, I admit ; but it is not charity at all to give what we can do without. Where is the self-sacrifice among us ? We plead with the people, and we think we mean it ; then we return home to our good meal. It would choke us if we were sincere. We could not sleep in our comfortable bed, knowing there were thousands of shivering outcasts, if we were sincere. O God, forgive all our trans- parent hypocrisy ! " She stood very still. Her breast worked a little under its folds, but that was all. Lower and lower in his chair the man crouched ; he seemed to sleep. Awe, or something like it, had chained Miss Valj can's primal instincts, and given her a false idea of delicacy. She wanted to touch him, and could not. She seemed in that blank minute to stand alone in a deserted house . She THE BORDERLAND 41 thought of Bede, propped among the cushions in his warm room upstairs ; she thought of Louis, away there in the lonely Hertfordshire village. Her eyes, defiant but scared, tra- velled slowly round again to look at the man in the chair. She thought of him being taken ill, maybe delirious, in this house and herself not daring to play the nurse. He had walked so strong and capable beside her an hour or less ago. With a little hysterical cry, she reached out to touch the bell She paused. John Lave- rock was stumbling to his feet as by instinct. "No, don't!" he said. "I'm sorry. I felt unwell. It has passed it won't happen again. I am going I had better go." He stooped for his hat, that had fallen from him at last. His thick brown hair was ruffled over his forehead ; but Miss Valjean had a woman's eyes. Her hands clasping, she gave another a different little cry. She flitted close. " Stop ! " she said. 11 1 can't not to-night," he muttered, misunderstanding. " Stop ! " With one hand she seized his wrists ; with the other she fearfully lifted back the ruffled hair. " Oh ! " she cried tremblingly. " Oh, my dear ! " 42 THE BORDERLAND The man had winced, and then stood pas- sive, quivering because she had found him out. He smiled down, but it was too late. " Oh ! " she repeated, lifted out of herself. " You shall never go down those vile streets again. You never shall ! Don't move it can't be let me look." She dragged him forward, knocked aside a shade over one of the candles, and looked. There had been something heavy or per- haps only a thick finger ring in or upon the hand that had felled him like a malleted ox. Soft, graceful, dainty women like Miss Valjean sicken at anything not physically normal Miss Valjean turned her head with a shudder. There was a greenish swelling, hot and velvety to the touch, as large as a pigeon's egg, stand- ing out upon John Laverock's right temple. " Where have you been ? " She turned upon him, with a sob of anger, before she thought of healing apparatus. " Where have you been, I say?" " Nowhere. At least, I missed you, and came back to Downham Road there, and turned back as far as the bridge again." " It's nonsense. It's false ! " she said, her damp eyes aflame. " Don't you think I know something more ? You stayed looking at that girl that beauty ! Donna, as they call her. Donna ! " " Well, and what if I did ? " THE BORDERLAND 43 " Bah ! " She flung away. It was hope- less he would not express contrition. " I've no patience with you men that's all. You seem deliberately to walk into trouble, and glory in it bah ! Louis was ' held up ' and robbed down one of those streets one night, and laughed calmly about it. And now you Mary ! " John Laverock hastily put on his hat again. " Mary ? " he repeated. He was feeling considerably better, and her electrical out- burst rather amused him. " I thought her name was Maud ? Louis called her that." "My second name is 'Maud,'" was the chilling reply from the door. " There cannot be two of the same name in the same house or not in this house. Wherever is the girl ? She literally runs when I don't want her." Out she swept. Returning a minute later with lint, salve and hot water, she was more composed more tender. She gently did all that was necessary or all that would not pain him too much. " But I know that it ought to be lanced," she said. Then she stepped back, crying softly. " But there's nothing to worry about," he said, puzzled. " A bruise is only a thing of a day or so." ' Is it ! " She waved her small lace hand- kerchief. ' You did not see yourself when you came in when you sat in that chair. 44 THE BORDERLAND I shall write to Louis I will ! Did you " She suddenly thought of something " Did you come across that unspeakable Ben Fisher again, and say something to him ? No ? Well, then, where did you is there anything you did do oh, I hate mystery ! " She went to the piano ; the lid was banged down with the blow she could not very well give to the man himself. " All right ! yes, a bruise is only a thing of a day or so. A crack on the head is nothing at all. Only a silly woman would think twice about it. You are going home to supper ? If you choose, you can stay " " Thanks." He roused. " But I couldn't touch anything to-night." " No oh, no ! I knew that. You forgot all about your dinner, didn't you ? walking all that way to see the procession of unem- ployed and loafers. Very well ; it is nothing whatever to do with me." " Good-bye, Miss Valjean and many thanks," he said, after the pause. " I think I'll get home to bed." " Oh, I would," she said, with sweet emphasis. After what he had said of sincerity and superfluity, she would die sooner than refer again to the tasteful little supper out- spread on the snowy cloth in the next room. ' You're so very comfortable in those rooms of yours, aren't you ? " she added. THE BORDERLAND 45 " Well" he had to look away at that- " I'll make the best of them for a few months, at any rate." " You should have asked me you should really have asked some woman to choose and arrange them for you. It was absurd from the first. I suppose you paid your deposit before you had even looked at the appoint- ments ? Men always take the first thing that is offered them and the bigger and more clever the man, the more helpless he seems. That Mrs. Blinco I have only seen her the once, of course " " But it was sufficient, eh ? >J He could laugh now. " Yes, maybe the vinegar was at the bottom, and the sugar uppermost, when I took the rooms. They have been shaken together since. Ah, well ! " Mary, the small maid, passed up the stair- case with something on a tray for Bede. " Good-night ! " he said heartily ; and " Good-night, sir ! " she called back delightedly. Miss Valjean bit her lip as an alternative to comment. The homage of a man, she might perhaps have said, is not such a wonderful thing if extended gratuitously to everything in petticoats. The invariably courteous man is better appreciated by men than by women. He walked away. His mind was clear enough now ; it was his body that lacked elasticity. He had kept his enthusiasm very 46 THE BORDERLAND dry until now ; but to-night there was a sus- picion of dampness a queer sense of the fact that there were as many culpable im- pulses latent in himself as active in the people he had come to work amongst. It annoyed him to have to wonder what Miss Valjean might have said and done had she divined the amazing thought in his brain as she applied her healing ointment. Her touch was very cool, soft and comforting, and yet, as his eyes closed in the process, he suddenly found himself thinking what if it had been the touch of the amber girl ? " Absolute nonsense," he said firmly to himself. " She's right. Absolute nonsense from beginning to end." His rooms were only a quarter of a mile distant. He admitted himself with his key. The house seemed curiously dull and depressing after the one he had j ust left . He had two rooms on the ground floor one behind the other because, with an ingrained love of air, those old-fashioned glass doors opening on to the gravel forecourt had struck him as quaint and useful. He drew down the blind now, lit the gas, and waited. And presently came a tap. " Did you say you required anything, Mr. Laverock ? " " Well, yes ! " He strode to the door. " I should very much like a bath." THE BORDERLAND 47 " A bath ! " Mrs. Blinco generally echoed a request slowly to point out its unusual character, presumably as a hint that it must not occur again. She was even more incredu- lous to-night, as shown by her tightly crossed arms and her access of nodding. " A bath, did you say, sir ? You don't mind my saying, I hope, but my other gentleman invariably took his bath out weekly, I fancy at a very trifling cost." " Is that so ? " He was impressed, but not turned. " But I understood, when I came, that there was a bath to use on the premises ? " " When there is a fire to heat the water," she reminded him, clinchingly. " And when the bath has not been newly enamelled," and back went her head. "Oh, I see. Well," he reflected, "per- haps I can have one in my own room. Will you oblige me with a can of warm water, and I'll settle with you for the extra gas used. Oh, and some rough towels, please ! " Sniffingly she retired. He knew that she had told her husband, and that the husband had said : " Serve you right for taking in gentlemen boarders," but he stood firm. And presently she came to the door of his bedroom with the can. " The towels ? " " I have no rough ones. We don't use 48 THE BORDERLAND them in this establishment." She was undoubtedly ruffled to-night, he thought. " Here, sir ! " She handed him one. " That is for the best parts ; and this " she took another critical look at it, speaking tartly " this is for the worst. And I must ask you not to splash more than you must. Good- night, sir ! " A little later, as John Laverock went back to his sitting-room for a quiet read or reverie, he heard Mrs. Blinco remark -that some people might starve, while others sat up all night burning gas for their own amusement. And he felt a distinct twinge of conscious shame. Or was it merely resentment ? Because he sat there in silence for an hour longer, trying to recall and interpret every look in the eyes of the amber girl. CHAPTER V ? Donna Bohannan ? Oh, yes, to be sure ! " said Mrs. Mucklehorn affably, as she kicked back the baby and waddled up from the area recesses at No. 10, squeezing the soap-bubbles from one huge arm and flicking them narrowly past him. He had never known a woman so wedded to' her wash-tub, he thought. 11 Oh, yes ! If you call by to-morrow about this time, sir, as like as not you'll find her in." " But you said that yesterday," John Laverock reminded her patiently. " You told me to call to-morrow, you know." " Did I ? But this isn't to-morrow this 'ere's to-day." She turned attention to the other arm, and he had to shift his position again. " The fact is, I dunno no thin' much about her ins and outs, and don't want to. It's as much as one can do nowadays to pay the rates and support a pack o' fat bishops in knee breeches." "I see. You find the rates press rather heavily ? " " Oh, no ; we like 'em. Look what we get 49 D 50 THE BORDERLAND for our money. We're allowed to live. You see, they're makin' such a fine place o' Lon- don. It don't matter a bit about the people who find the bricks, does it ? Yes, Donna '11 be in about this time to-morrow." He turned. He was growing used to the peculiar elusiveness of slum repartee, but there was something in Mrs. Mucklehorn's airy irrelevancies that defied him so far. In truth, too, he scarcely knew why at dusk, every day for a week, he had found himself drawn toward No. 10, Phillimore Street. Each time he had moved on with something of the feeling of a boy who has been warned not to pursue a will-o'-the-wisp any farther. And each fugitive glimpse of Donna Bohannan in Hoxton streets had weakened him again in his intention to let her pass out of his life as a problem. And then he turned. Mrs. Mucklehorn's voice had come after him ventriloquially. " I always shall say they've sent us a perfect gentleman ! " Struck by the emphasis he stepped back, and saw that she had the baby in her arms now. Almost before he knew it, he had taken some coins hurriedly from his pocket and pressed them into the baby's hand. " There, now," he said with a smile. " I never thought of it." " Never thought you were a gentleman ? THE BORDERLAND 51 Well, you look like one, and that passes for the real thing in this world, don't it ? " Mrs. Mucklehorn annexed the coins calmly but forcibly. " What I mean is, the front door's always open. There's nothin' to stop any one goin' up, is there ? Harf a minnit, though ! " He was taking the hint and a step forward simultaneously. " But I quite understand," he whispered. " She is at home was at home yesterday but told you to make a little lie of it." " Somethin' in that," Mrs. Mucklehorn admitted. " But what I mean is, you can't go gallivantin' about the house, sir, on the off chance. There's one up there already." John Laverock stood and looked down at her from the steps. Just for a moment he could not speak. His intentions had been creditable enough, but he felt suddenly placed in a false position in the eyes of others. " Who he is, and what he is, I ain't goin' to say," Mrs. Mucklehorn proceeded placidly, with a spank at the baby. " And I shan't interfere, so long as she pays up for her room. All I know is, he's been here before, and he's hot stuff, and he marched up them steps just afore you come along. Red sky agin, I see." There was an uncertain pause. He had glanced half incredulously once or twice 52 THE BORDERLAND into the passage, that was dark as the throat of a wolf. His voice, when it came, sounded husky. There seemed to be a most stubborn haze of mystery about the amber girl. " Why do they call her ' Donna ' ? Do you know ? " " Lor' love my soul, sir, what next ! I call her a finnickin' hussy, as deep as that drain." She pointed gutterwards. " There's some talk about her bein' called ' Madonna ' up at the music-halls, if that's anythink same as they called her mother before her. Sich rubbish ! Her name's Lou Lou Bohannan." " Lou ? " he said. Involuntarily he re- peated a thought that came into his mind. " Lou ! Amber Lou ! " " Amber Lou ! That's done it. That's a good 'un ! " Mrs. Mucklehorn laughed long and loud. And she could laugh. " Has she no parents living ? " he ven- tured, when it subsided. " Gawd knows. Ask her all about it, sir that's what you're here for. My copper '11 be boilin' over. Top floor front ! " She waddled down and disappeared. It was left to him to stride away like a fool, or have the simple courage of his convictions. There were other lodgers, he believed, but a sort of stagnant silence held the house just now, made more noticeable by the droning THE BORDERLAND 53 babble from the streets all around. Then, as he seemed to hear the sweet, icy little titter of Miss Valjean, he plunged forward and set his feet firmly upon the stairs. He was annoyed to think that he had temporized while the dusk deepened. Up he went, till he reached the second landing. There was one more short flight, but he paused, gripping the balustrade, his eyes as keenly strained as his ears. Just above there, some one seemed to be straining at a door. The panels were drummed, the handle shaken ferociously ; and then a man's panting, malicious low laugh. " Right you are ! I know all about it. You're in there right enough, because your key's turned that side. You've done me, but you'll come on your knees at the finish. You've got to live ! " This, then, was the man Mrs. Mucklehorn had indicated. He had a musical, slightly foreign lilt in his voice, and might easily have been jesting ; but John Laverock had to conceive a definite distrust of him on the spot. Drawing back he was relieved to find the landing deep enough to obviate any physical contact. The man was coming down, humming jauntily. He half paused, listening, just where a glimmer from the skylight caught upon him. His hat, pushed back, showed a crop of little close black 54 THE BORDERLAND curls. He had small gold loops in his ears, white teeth, dark skin, and upturned, gleaming eyes. He looked in that instant capable of any devilment that could suggest itself to a fertile brain. There was no sound. Another soft little laugh, and he swung himself with a catlike ease round the balustrade and darted lightly down the dark stair. And only when he had gone did John Laverock know himself to be standing with breath held and hands drawn up in the instinct of self-preservation. He had gone hot, too, at the thought of standing back there unannounced and un- suspected. He stepped halfway up the last flight at once. " Lou ! " he called, a little awkwardly, but resolutely. If he meant his work to be real and he did he must stifle sentiment and bring himself down to the prosaic Hoxton level. No answer. He cleared his throat. '' Donna ! " And that sounded a little more lifelike at least, somehow he preferred that name. " Donna ! " There was a steady step over bare boards. A key turned, the door opened, and the calm, contemptuous face looked down at him. He knew it now : the fact that his heart beat faster again meant that he could never feel quite at ease under those eyes of hers. THE BORDERLAND 55 " It's only me Mr. Laverock," he said. " I can see that," was the reply. " You've got my name pat, haven't you ? " " Miss Bohannan, then ! Not seeing you to speak to properly, I have called to know how you are, and if there is anything in which I, or Miss Valjean, could help you." " I know. It was like your blooming impudence," she said, in the same level voice. At the same time it struck him that she was speaking quite absently, and not thinking of him at all. He waited. She went back, and closed the door. Still he waited ; it did not seem possible that she was such a savage, inaccessible creature as all that. And presently the door opened again. She had lit a lamp. " Now you can come in, and say what you want to say, once and for all." He hesitated. He had scarcely contem- plated this ; he had thought of her vaguely as living on Mrs. Mucklehorn's premises, and that was all. Then he went forward. If she felt no shyness it was absurd of him to feel it for her. The room was almost bare, and the bed on the floor was only partly shut off by a few bits of flimsy drapery on a chair. That much he had to take in at a glance, and then he sat down and leaned forward to talk earnestly resolved not to be turned by her 56 THE BORDERLAND forced flippancy, which seemed a veil for deeper feelings. Instead, he began in an involuntary whisper. " Excuse me, you are far from well you ought not to be so pale as that ! " " No ? P'raps I chew tea, to give myself a better complexion." And he sat back. " You can be as rude to me as you like," he said ; " but I am here with a work to do, and, please God, I am going to do my utmost. If it were always pleasant work there would be no credit in success, would there ? The Salvation Army has given us immortal proof of that, hasn't it ? That's right 1 " She sat down opposite him, her chin resting in her hands, a far-away smile twitching her pale lips. " I thought Mr. Valjean took the cake," she remarked. " I don't now. Your Mission ought to make money. It's got the right men." John Laverock closed his eyes for a moment. It was true that for once he scarcely knew what to say. It seemed more than ever so incredible that there should be no softening, uplifting influence brought to bear upon these cramped lives and yet apparently so clear that any effort in that direction would be fruitless. " Does the Church visiting lady call here ? " he asked abruptly. THE BORDERLAND 57 The fathomless turquoise eyes were watch- ing him with such a strange expression of expectancy. " She did, until her third purse was pinched. You'd better mind yours." He shifted his legs, and started resolutely again. " Have you ever been asked to one of the Mission meetings, or into church or chapel, may I ask ? " " Never. And I don't intend to go." " Why not ? " " Because I'm not cut out for a blooming hypocrite." " How do you mean ? " he persisted, still gently, feeling his way to her true view of life. ' What I say. People go to church for what they can get to be on the right side." " But isn't it best to be on the right side ? " " It's the wrong. If there was no heaven at the end of it they wouldn't go. It's like promising a kid a bit o' sugar to be good." ' Where did you get your strange ideas from, Donna ? " " Nowhere. I use my own eyes and ears not other people's. It's a paying game, isn't it a preacher's ? There's one goes down the Kingsland Road in his motor-car, dressed up like a pet lamb. Don't talk to me about religion. Tell me how / can get a motor- 58 THE BORDERLAND car, and I'll chance the rest." She rose majestically, and smoothed back her fair hair before a bit of looking-glass. " I say ! If you don't want to get knifed," came her voice, without the slightest change, " keep away from here a bit." " Knifed ? " John Laverock repeated. " I should say so. I was going to tell you before, but I wouldn't. You had one warnin' last Wednesday, didn't you ? " And now he knew that she had turned her back upon him with a crude sort of tact. " Don't blame me. It was just as it happened him coming up at that moment. Ben Fisher put him up to it, with some lie or other. You passed him on the stairs just now, didn't you ? " " Who is he ? " It was of no use be- ginning on theories connected with the life to come. Spite of himself John Laverock was plucked back inevitably to the material. " I should never have asked you, but who is he ? " " Now you're talkin' sense." She had broken the ice. She turned, with her pro- voking tranquillity, and surveyed him. Then she looked away. " Never mind his name. They call him Cobra," she said. " And I ought to know. I lived with him once for a week." " You " He could not finish. He sat THE BORDERLAND 59 as in a cold spell, the puny grotesqueness of his first intentions forcing itself upon him. It was not the mere fact : it was the deadly, indifferent coolness of this aspect. She stood before him, naked and challenging and un- ashamed. He was reduced to a whisper " Do you mean me to believe that ? " " Mean what ? I never tell lies," she said, " because I don't care what people think of the truth. If I tell you now, it's only what I've told others, because one of these days he'll swing through the trap for his devil of a temper." " And and drag you down with him ? " John Laverock got out huskily. " Not if I can help it." She gave her odd little laugh, twisting her fingers together wearily. " But that's my affair, isn't it ? " " No ! " the man said quietly. He rose, and put his hand on her shoulder. He had mastered himself completely. " No, Donna ! You belong to God, and God will require an account of your life, as of mine. Do you believe that ? If no one has ever told you so before, do you believe it was put into my heart to want to speak to you, and help you, from the moment of our first talk together ? " Slowly she twisted free, and stood back, looking him up and down in the way that was all her own. For once she whispered. 60 THE BORDERLAND "I say! Supposing he was to take it into his head to come back. What would he think ? How would yon go on ? " John Laverock had trough! a small panel of books and leaflets on his round that evening. In the pause, he picked up what was left of them. 4 Would you care to read one or two of these, if I leave them ? ** he asked, in a very ordinary voice. " So that you can call back for 'em, eh ? " "No; I should call in any case. You can keep them." "What are they?" She avoided the leaflets astutely, and turned over a paper- covered hook with her "amal^ unckan fingers . "David Cop Copperfidd ? What a name! And what akrtof it!" She handed it back. "No, I never read, except it's the Era, or the Sunday paper. Mr. Varjean used to leave stacks of tracts and other rubbish. Whit's the use ? Her fip ended inde- scribably. " I say, what's the use o" readm" about heaven if you know you're booked for the other ? " * The other ? " he repeated. Her fmagm- adve shi.::s nanplusBed him. " Tes ! What would yon do if yon was me? Would you sweat in a jam-factory for six sniffings a week? Would you sit here IMI! |Mt-hnlfog for ninepence a day ? THE BORDERLAND 61 That's what I ask people like you. And they never answer they go on gassing about heaven.'' " Hush," he said gravely. " There is no real reason why you should do either. If you care forme to speak to Miss Valjean, or to the Mission Committee, I haven't the slightest doubt we could find you a com- fortable situation " " What ! a servant ? Sell my life to keep fed and look respectable ? Not me. I'd sooner starve or go back on the halls. P'raps I shall do that." " You will not ! " he said, his mouth set, his figure stiffened in a way that seemed to flatter her femininity. She turned her head to laugh. " Not, eh ? Who's going to keep me ? " " You will not, I hope," he repeated. " After what you have told me after showing me you know as clearly as I what is right and what is wrong I should say that you went deliberately to your own risk of ruin. I should God help me for saying it I should cease to pity you in the least." " Pity me ! " She drew herself up in turn. She looked as superb as any actress in a low-comedy role and she had a tigerish suggestiveness, too. " Pity me ! If that 'sail you come here to do you can keep away. Don't talk to me when you see me down 62 THE BORDERLAND Hoxton. The world '11 go on very well without your pity ! " " You don't understand me," he began again strenuously. But she went on, sticking her small face close to his, unaccountably roused. " Yes, I do. Any woman understands that. You're up in the world, and I'm down here. You had a good bringing-up, and I had none. That's all the real difference between us. And if there's a God Almighty so merciful as you keep bunging down our throats, He'll judge according won't He ? Pity me ! If I thought that much of you which I don't I'd just as lief you said you hated me. I shall go back to the halls if I want, and do anything else I want ; because I can see with my own eyes that one pays just as well as the other in this world and a bit better. There ! " " So you think ! " he was reduced to saying, very quietly. " So you tell me, at least. But it is perversely untrue to say that I force religion of any kind upon any one here. You know it ! All the religions in the world would fail in such an attempt I know that ! All I ask is, to get into touch with your human selves ; the spiritual self I may hope to reach later. Can't I mayn't I hope to try in your case, Doraia ? If I saw only a moment's softness I should feel so happy I can't tell THE BORDERLAND 63 you ! In fact," he took her hand suddenly and gripped it, " I'm going to try, whether you scoff or not." " Let go," she whispered. And then he realized that the hand he had held was smaller and more limp than he had been aware. " That's quite enough," she said, turning away coldly. " I'm not anxious to be pitied, while there's plenty of men quite ready to do the other thing. Just tell me when you mean to call again and I'll be out." " And still I shall hope for you ; and still believe that it is simply the devilry in you which " " In me ? Who put it there ? Did I ? What eyes you have got ! " she said, looking at him in irony apparently always keeping uppermost the consciousness that his sex made him essentially a target for the shafts of her own. In fact, she was eager to wound, and to see his face twitch. " You'd do well in the factory dinner-hour down Old Street, telling the girls just what they've had for dinner. Oh, I don't care what I say, or what you think ! " He had flushed pal- pably, and could have bitten his lip through in chagrin at the fact. " I can tell you something more, if you like." She marched coolly close again, and looked him in the eyes. " You're not a bit better than any- 64 THE BORDERLAND body else only you get frightened and repent every time you do anything. That's a fact. If it ever come to the point, you'd want as much pitying as any one. Don't believe me ? Wait ! A black coat covers a lot, don't it ? Yes, but it only covers flesh and blood." " Good-night ! " he said, with steady cheer- fulness, as the silence settled down again. He had turned and gathered up his booklets as if he knew that she would sweep them into limbo the instant he had gone. After all, it was only what Miss Valjean had hinted that he must expect. Hoxton would brook no interference with its animal freedom. " Good-night, Donna ! " He was at the door, smiling. " This is our first real talk, but not our last don't think that ! " " Mind the Cobra, then," she whispered absently. " He's not talking, but he'll sting you dead as soon as look at you." "' We shall see. What is he, may I ask ? " It was the question he had determined not to ask, and she seemed to know that. " Cobra King ? Oh, he's a very nice gentleman. You'd like him. Let me see he calls himself a professional agent, and dodges up and down the halls between here and Leicester Square. He'll get any likely girl a small part if she finds him the money. If she can't he finds her something else. THE BORDERLAND 65 Obliging, isn't he ? And he's only one of a thousand more like him. But you don't want to know anything about real life, do you ? You're so different. You don't even have to trouble to work, do you ? " " I work hard, Donna," he said in his deep voice, looking steadfastly back at her before he turned finally. There was flesh and blood enough in him, at any rate, to make him resolved there and then not to be mastered and jeered into failure by this slip of a girl. " I work hard every day of my fife." " I should say so." She laughed to her- self. " Go on good-night ! " She pushed the door to, and left him outside. He was very pale, heavy with bitterness, and ready to set his teeth ; but what was that to her ? She had calmly said as much she was one of the women born into the world branded with an invisible "A". And nothing could alter the fact. CHAPTER VI FOUR busy days had ticked by before John Laverock took his courage in both hands and paid the promised call at No. 10, Phillimore Street. Somehow they seemed like weeks. This time he mounted the mysterious stair with full confidence in himself, and like a man who acted as the humble agent of a higher power. He was doomed to cold disappointment. The top front room door remained closed to his knock. Imagination it was, perhaps, that persuaded him he had heard a move- ment within the room ; nothing answered his repeated call ; and there was no light beyond the door. Not to-night ! Down the dark stair and out on to the pavement he came with a little series of stumbles. A mist of rain was falling, and a lamp outside sent its light into his eyes. He took a few quick, uncertain strides, collided with something, and threw out his hands with instinctive swiftness. " Sorry, lad so sorry ! " he breathed. 66 THE BORDERLAND 67 " My fault. Stand quite still. Have I upset anything ? " " Dunno," was the husky answer the voice of " Lamps Out " Smith had never been anything but husky. " Have a look, and I'll tell yer." The lad stood passive, looking before him intently. He knew now who had clutched him, and there was a sort of grateful hypno- tism in the touch not to be lost too soon. Quite a score of typical, fascinating figures stood out by now more or less prominently in the forefront of the crowded Hoxton panorama that haunted John Laverock's dreams ; and this oddity with the peaked scrap of a face, large red ears, and staring eyes that saw nothing, was one of them. " Lamps Out," a pipe everlastingly gripped between his front teeth, and a tray of buttons and laces slung from his neck, slouched along the pavements of Hoxton and Haggerston with whimsical persistency from morning till night without ever appearing anxious to sell anything. The boys had abandoned organized rushes to upset his tray, because obviously he bore a protected life, having been knocked down by vehicles only once in crossing the Kingsland Road. In John Laverock's eyes he was an amazingly pathetic figure all the more so because he did not seem to realize anything of the sort. It 68 THE BORDERLAND was John Laverock's secret conviction, too, that God steered him along the kerbs, and permitted him to see things that only the blind can see. Stooping, John Laverock felt over the damp pavements conscientiously. " Lamps Out " was quick to interpret the sound. " Wipe yer hands on me," he advised, smoking away. " Nothink, is there ? " " Nothing, I feel sure." John Laverock peered into the tray, saw three halfpence among the buttons, and slid a sixpence beside them. " But your stock is quite wet, Smith. You want a cover of some sort, surely." " Rainin', is it ? Blowed if I knew. When it's alms rainin' in yer heart well, you don't notice, sir, do yer ? " (A touch of maudlin sentimentality happily rare in Smith, who was apt to feel shy and awkward in this great, towering presence as he pictured it.) " I can walk a little way with you," John Laverock decided. And they stepped out, John Laverock looking down askance at the pipe gripped in the front teeth of the upturned white face. The small idiosyncrasies of his types amused him deeply. " And who buys all this tobacco, Smith ? " " Dunno. Well, what I mean is, I'm in co. with a chap that picks up ' toppers ' down the road, and he does middlin' well at it. See ? " THE BORDERLAND 69 " I see," he said although he saw very hazily. " And what's your father doing by now ? " " Drunk," was the laconic response. " Drunk ? " He drew a sharp breath. Of late this same word flashed up a picture to him that made him want to fling him- self bodily at the public houses until he remembered that the public houses were not responsible. " But you said " " I know. Monday's his real day. And it's Toosday, ain't it ? I'm givin' him up to about Friday to start work again. The kid's died, and he's got the quid insurance off mother. See ? " " Vile ! ' ] breathed John Laverock to him- self. " The baby gone, eh ? Another ! " " Die off like flies, don't they ? " observed " Lamps Out," feeling for a fugitive lucifer. " Only seven left out o' fourteen, or there- abouts." " And and does your mother feel the loss ? " " Not harf she don't. She was so bad, I'm told, they had to put gin in her beer to keep her quiet. Course, now he's got the quid, she's got to pawn somethink to pay the undertaker man, ain't she ? 'Taint harf a life, one way an' another, is it ? " They had walked some way before John Laverock could seem to trust his voice to answer ordinarily. 70 THE BORDERLAND " Life is mainly what we make it, Smith, and I begin to think that the people in these dark places prefer their darkness." " Ain't they lit up yet, then ? " " Lamps Out " asked, quite innocently. " 'Bout time. Where are we ? " They had turned down a courtway and come out into Hoxton Street itself. The cobbles were greasy and black. Through the drizzle the naphtha lamps sent up a smoky flare, and the competitive humour of the stall-keepers was making itself heard. Women with tightly drawn shawls and no hats hurried by ; barefooted children scampered in and out of the damp, dark recesses like rabbits in a warren save that the rabbits were infinitely better off as to environment. John Laverock, thinking of the scent of the earth and lanes in his own Hertfordshire, often paused just here to realize the tremen- dous contrast anew ; but to-night, in truth, there was for him an inferno-like tinge about the place even in its very depression. That one man could leave any impression here in one lifetime seemed as impossible as that one man could dig the weeds out of a tropical jungle. " Perhaps I'm too squeamish." He often said something introspective of this kind. "It seems to me that one-half of these people should never be permitted to marry, because THE BORDERLAND 71 they don't realize their responsibilities. They are like children allowed to gratify every dangerous whim. If individual freedom fos- ters breeding-pens such as this " " What say ? " asked " Lamps Out." And he laughed. "I'm saying, Smith, that this London of ours is like a well-dressed man with dirty underclothing, if you can make anything of that. Let's walk on ! You understand me, I believe. I wish you could see with me, too ! I call these slums of ours unsightly, dangerous excrescences that could be, and ought to be, got rid of before another public library or recreation ground is built in the suburbs. I love my country, I hope, but I shall never forget what I saw in Germany, for instance : scarcely a ragged child any- where in the great towns, and a pawnshop only at rare intervals and that in State control. Here both are all around one. Every incentive seems to be given to the people to remain in a sordid, vicious groove. . . . Smith ! Do you know the girl Bohannan ? Donna, as they call her ? " " Know her ! " Smith's throat rattled queerly perhaps jealously. " A bit. Who don't ? Dunno anythink good about her." " Oh, come now nothing of that ! She wouldn't say that of you, I know." " She carn't ! I'd black her eye if she 72 THE BORDERLAND did least, I'd put some one on to do it." He gave his stooping shoulders a hitch back, and paused. " Harf a minnit hark ! That's Black Sam, hard at it again. Know his clapper anywhere. He's great, he is. I'll back him against the p'lice any day." A booming voice had made itself heard high above the manifold noises of Hoxton Street. Where a cheap] ack usually stood, a man with a bushy black beard and arresting eyes was mounted on a barrel, bending down to drive his words into a male audience. He lacked no forcible eloquence, and was obvious- ly not cursed with self-consciousness. Every now and then he swung round from the waist as on a pivot, as to detect some one who might be taking stealthy notes in his rear. Then he leaned low again, looking into each face in turn, and emphasizing every " point " with a fierce pause, and an up-swing of his arm to heaven. Gripping Smith's shoulder, John Laverock drew up to listen and to learn what he could from a man who had clearly something worth telling. " You almighty fools ! That's what you are, every one of you here. Rat-faced idiots, I might say ; but I know you're not that. I've told you before, and I tell you again ; and you'll own it when it's too late. ' Where's it going to end, I ask ? Your rates go up, and your wages stand still or go THE BORDERLAND 73 down because there's no work. Soon there will be less, because every day the clever people are bringing out some machine that will do the work of ten men. You are against the wall. And you stand it like sheep. You don't know your own power. And well your Jack-in-office may laugh, as he breaks his three brown eggs over the pink ham on his but- tered toast every morning, and rings the silver bell to say he's indisposed when a deputation of starving men call. You pay for all of it. You have to run the Empire for empire's sake. But when your bad time comes, the Empire shuts its eyes and ears or covers you up in a workhouse. They say you ought to have a pension when you're used up and done for, no matter what your age, but it will cost twenty-five millions a year, and they can't find it. No ; but they found two hundred and fifty millions for the war without turning a hair." At each pause, he waited for a " That's right enough ! " from some one in the crowd. He went on, cuttingly. ' There are twenty thousand men out of work in London to-night ; and this is only October. There are fifty thousand, if you knew it ; but don't be greedy to a thousand. They mustn't beg, they mustn't steal. Oh, Gawd above, it's a living marvel they can go home and look at their wife and kids' faces, 74 THE BORDERLAND and not do one or the other ! I say, are you men, or what are you ? " Here, I'll paint you a little picture that is, if you can see one. Here's a place called South Africa, that you won for the Empire I do love that word ! Here's a land that turns up gold or diamonds or what not almost wherever it's scratched. What's become of it ? Have they made any use of it ? Have they developed the railways and all the mineral wealth to get back to England what England paid for it ? No ; they've just turned their backs on it, as you do when you've whopped a man in a scrap. It's been left to a few stray people mostly foreigners to hop in and open up the coun- try and turn it into limited liability com- panies. I've only got one truthful word more to say to you on that point ; but never forget it ! ... The gold being dug out of that country to-day would in a few years provide a free pension for every man, woman or child here that needs it. " You drink, they say. Of course you do. There's nothing else. You can't go in for motor-cars and week-ends, and sea- trips, and dances, and and other men's wives. I wish you could, but a man with money can do things that you mustn't. It's all the difference. The magistrate who puts one away for going too far it may be with THE BORDERLAND 75 drink or the other man's wife very likely goes home and does the same thing himself. They put down your gambling club, but he can have his, with betting tape and all the rest of it. But he paints it white and puts up velvet curtains you don't. I don't know what you're alive for at all. You're a cursed nuisance to the country when you're out of work or down on your luck." ' That's right enough ! " came the deep- throated comment. " There you are, then where are you ? The thing is, how long are you going to support an Empire that can't support you ? Ask 'em straight What's to be done ? Send five hundred of your men over to Stepney next Friday, and join the march to the West End. Do that I You'd scare those jewelled hussies in their furs and flounces. Dig it into 'em that, being here, you've a right to live. That's your cry for all time forward The Right to Live ! A fair wage for work done, and enough work to stop men from snarling round every job like dogs round a bone. I say to you that if you once realized the strength that lies under your shirts at this moment " " Cop-per I " came a yell. And the black- bearded man with the arresting eyes calmly kicked his barrel out of sight and stood passive with folded arms among the crowd. 76 THE BORDERLAND The constable who strolled up could make nothing of it, and had to fall back on a mild " Move on, there ! " They moved on. A constable in Hoxton Street carries nearly his full weight. Occasionally, down one of the side-streets, his brief authority has been stripped from him for ever. " Great, ain't he ? " came up Smith's husky, admiring rattle through John Lave- rock's momentary coma. " Can't get away from what he says anyhow, can yer ? " " Er I don't know, Smith," John Laverock answered slowly. " It's not for me to say. Sometimes truth is dangerous, without a sense of proportion. What I do say, and must say, is that the people he talks to have it in their own power to make the first move toward a very different state of things." " Not harf," " Lamps Out " agreed cor- dially. " It only wants workin' up a bit. Give 'em a gun apiece, and let 'em pick off every bloomin' upstart roamin' the West End " " Nonsense," John Laverock put in, with a warmth that staggered him. " What do you mean ? that wholesale murder would increase trade and wipe out human selfish- ness ? " " Dunno," he temporized weakly. " It 'ud wipe out some o' these millionaire tykes, wouldn't it ? " THE BORDERLAND 77 And he was still more staggered. " Very childish and very mistaken, Smith ; and I'll tell you why. I expect you'll find that ' these millionaires ' have brought more brain and more hard work to their money- making than you or I or Hoxton ever dream of." " Well, what about it ? They've got the money, haven't they ? and we ain't." " Yes ! " He had to laugh. " We won't gp_ into that to-night. See what I meant ? How old are you ? twenty-two ? Well, then, you're old enough to know what I mean by human selfishness, which is at the base of it all. Take your father as an example you won't be offended, I know. So many children of his are brought into the world indiscriminately. There is no attempt to keep up with his responsibilities, or to rear the children as decent members of society. They are born that is all he knows. They must take their chance. They die, or they huddle together in the slums that bred them. They may act in the same way in their turn, because it is in their blood and up-bringing. But if, as he has at least five shillings a week to spare for beer still, he put by that money instead, he could live in a better house, and remember that your mother is a woman, and feed and clothe his children " " Hi, hi ! " " Lamps Out " nearly choked 78 THE BORDERLAND at the calm simplicity of it. " You tell him that. Why, he'd up with his foot if I let on I ain't got a bit o' sole to my boot. He's all right if he's got his full load o' four ale, but all wrong when he's only three parts ' on.' Come home Sat 'day and bio wed his smoke in the kid's face, and bashed mother agin the wall for layin' hold of it, and chucked " " Don't ! " John Laverock said. He was very pale and earnest. " Don't tell me. It makes me doubt never mind what. It makes me feel " " Got to put down four ale for a start, haven't yer ? " " Lamps Out " suggested, with acumen, in the pause. " No ! Why ? Don't talk such weak non- sense, Smith ! Do that, and you have simply removed the apple out of the pilfering child's reach the pilfering child remains. Drunken- ness is not necessarily a disease don't believe in that coward's refuge ! At each glass a man knows full well whether he is selfishly depriving his wife and children, and the same deliberate selfishness allows him to go on to the stage where responsibility is drugged. There, don't let me say such things, true as they are ! Good-night, Smith ! I've come far enough. Get home out of the wet as soon as you can, and God help you ! God help us all ! " He gripped the thin shoulder, wheeled THE BORDERLAND 79 abruptly, and was halfway back down Hox- ton Street before " Lamps Out " had located the sixpence on his tray. Smith bit it. " Bloomin' good un, barmy or not barmy," he said to himself referring to the donor as he relit his pipe and debated possibilities. Ere he had decided definitely between fried fish and a saveloy John Laverock was drawing in the breath of another atmosphere another world, it almost seemed. He had reached that quiet stretch between Kingsland and De Beauvoir Roads where there are long, deep gardens, tall trees and a peace only broken by the distant clang-clang of the electric-car bells. He had halted with a distinct, if unneces- sary, sense of yearning and shortcoming. He had set out buoyantly to do so much, and he had done practically nothing. It galled the man who tried faithfully to balance his account with conscience every night that fell. The days were ticking out and forming a long chain in his rear. And, worse still, he had only paused on a weak impulse within a stone's throw of Miss Valjean's house. It seemed now a matter of course that he should ring the bell there on his homeward way each evening. He wanted to see Bede to sit with him up in that quiet room over- looking the cloister-like vicarage grounds, and rest his physical and mental self in a 8o THE BORDERLAND silence more rich than all the talk but he did not wish to meet Bede's sister. Truth- fully, he could not have told why except that that swift look of hers into his eyes seemed of late one that in very manliness he ought not to realize. It was uncomfortably like a window to her soul, and he did not wish to look in. In a word, he was telling himself that here in London the way of a man who essays to keep to the straight and narrow path is beset by manifold subtle complications. And he abhorred the necessity for making cunning detours. Just possibly, despite the drizzle, she would be embarking on one of her periodical shopping excursions unconscious, woman- like, that the delight in each ' bargain " might imply the misery of the original pro- ducer. But, after a wait of near thirty minutes, while he watched the crimson light in Bede's window, his nerves began to tingle and shame him. He strode forward and rang the bell. " Good-evening ! " he said to the little maid, with the obstinate courtesy which Miss Valjean thought the one flabby point in his character. And then, as no one rustled out from the drawing-room, he sank his voice just a little. " You need not I mean, I'll just call up and see Mr. Valjean." THE BORDERLAND 81 And he went straight up the stairs. It was the first time he had done that. The maid raised her shoulders in an ecstatic little laugh as she listened from the kitchen door. She knew just how long Mr. Bede's sister had occupied before her mirror that evening. He reached the first broad landing, over which the palm-fronds arched from a vase in the grasp of a marble figure. There was a soft swish-swish, and he found himself looking into Miss Valj can's face. It was smiling, but with a cold radiance like that of winter sunshine ; and she had drawn back her skirts a thought too studiedly. " Go on ! " she said. " I mustn't keep you I heard." " And you " he began, a little breath- lessly. He had had to think involuntarily of another stair landing how near it was, and how inconceivably faraway it seemed! on which he had paused one night, looking back into a feminine face that openly scorned him. " Oh, I'm going out." " Not not because I came ? " He reached out his hand. He would have none of that hide-and-seek. And she stared blankly back, as it seemed. " You ? The idea ! As if I did not know as if I had not seen you standing almost opposite for the last thirty minutes ! How 82 THE BORDERLAND very strange of you ! Why why do you need to hold my arm, Mr. Laverock ? " His hand went quickly back, and the icy little coo in her voice died as quickly. " I am strange, perhaps," he said. He knew now, too, that he had forgotten to lift his hat. Altogether, it seemed that he might fall back on reckless indifference. " I came to London to do great things, did I not ? What have I done, you would like to ask ? I don't know whether Louis thought all I think, or saw all I see, in Hoxton streets. I only know " " Yes," she said tentatively, watching him. " Louis had all the same insoluble problems on his mind, I believe except, perhaps, ' Donna.' I cannot answer as to ' Donna ' ! " she added, with the same hushed emphasis. And, before he knew it, his blunt shaft had gone back. 1 Why need you trouble ? She is a woman, after all." " Certainly. Every whit as much a woman as I am ! " This time, as she held back her skirts lightly for him to pass, it seemed absurd to hesitate. He walked on down a brief side passage, drummed his knuckles softly against the panels of a door at the end, and tiptoed in. There was no real need to tiptoe, but to THE BORDERLAND 83 a mind like John Laverock's the hypnotic hush of this room veiled something far deeper than any one but himself seemed to feel. CHAPTER VII THERE was a curtain to pass, and then the outer world seemed shut off. In here was a man who had sat and looked death in the face steadily for so long that he had learned to laugh where one expected a shudder : for so long, that the suggestion of a waiting, hovering shape seemed to be an inseparable part of the room. Most axioms lie, but creaking gates do hang long ! For more months than seemed possible Death had been stooping toward the man or boy in the cushioned arm- chair there, literally playing cat-and-mouse with him ; periodically bending to dart the final chill breath, and then drawing back for another reprieve. Twice a week some- times oftener a doctor came and sat down opposite him, and ostensibly appeared to earn his fee, but between him and Bede Valjean there was no screen of make-be- lieve. " Well ? " John Laverock whispered, go- ing close at once and taking both long, veined hands in his strong grasp and looking down 84 THE BORDERLAND 85 at him. It was always like a bather's first plunge, to be taken at once. " Well ? " Bede gave him back, his soft mouth playing quizzically, contentedly. Bede knew him now better than any one. " Better ? " " Much ! Can't you see it ? Not going yet awhile, old chap. You sit down ! just there ! Well ? " " There is nothing new," John Laverock said, in the same subdued way. Ever so softly he had moved back the agate jar of scented cigarette-tobacco, the books, and the grapes on the table to make room for his arm, so that he could shade his face with one hand. " That is why I felt I must come in again to-night, because " " Of course," Bede said penetratively, in the pause. " You wanted something to break your depression upon. I knew that ; I watched. You always will as long as you keep to your ideal of making other people something that they are not and never can be. I told you I told Louis before you that as the regenerating process has to be begun all over again with each generation, Nature palpably rejects it, and leaves it a mere tattooing affair of the skin or the imagination." He said everything in a sustained series of quick, quiet gasps, with now and then a 86 THE BORDERLAND pause not accounted for. Sometimes a film came down over his great dark eyes, and then, with his head ever drawn forward, and his breast ever rising and falling in the effort to breathe, he looked like a cage-bird that was dying upon its perch. John Laverock had not yet perhaps never would grown used to it. He looked away and held his breath in those moments. And then, along his veins each time there ran the thrill as Bede's long, wan fingers reached out for the cigarette- papers as though nothing were amiss. Such awe there was in watching the mind and actions of a beloved one who was slipping away and did not cry out to be held back. Bede sat there only to think, and puff his cigarettes, and wait. Yet he looked out upon his world, and talked of it, as calmly, as analytically, as though he had a stake in its future development. ' Yes, you have told me that many times," John Laverock replied, when he could. " And God has given you a mind that enables you to prove apparently all you say. But God has given me a stubborn tenacity in- stead. Light must and will be brought into all the dark places at last. Sin, Bede, is as definite and as yielding to influence as a disease of the body yes ! " ' Hoxton still ! " whispered the other. " Old chap, you miss the great essential THE BORDERLAND 87^ truth. Your ' sin ' is everywhere and al- ways. Everybody ' sins ' in every hour of his life, negatively or otherwise. But here our refined taste enamels it white. In slum- land it wears its own colour, and so jumps to your eyes like an impressionist picture. Over and over again I have been going to make you tell me just what you mean by ' sin.' ' John Laverock sat still, looking into the glowing fire, the hand against his face giving a twitch now and then. " You mustn't ! " Bede burst out, with a rare touch of excitement. " You mustn't ! You assume all, and act as strenuously as though it were proved truth. Religion springs only from a natural human craving for some- thing desirable beyond this life. Without the crown who would wish to bear the cross ? That very fact " " No ! " John Laverock said, almost sternly, putting out his hand. " No ! I can bear it from any lips but yours." " But I love to talk to you, and see into your mind ! " he panted. " None of my vitality can go in action ; it must all go to my brain I must think ! And sitting here from day to day, always thinking, I know perhaps more of the world than you who move up and down in it. I see them pass I watch them I hear often what they say. And what of it ? Where you would grieve, 88 THE BORDERLAND I can smile. I know beforehand that the character of each one has been formed inde- libly by his environment, and cannot be re- formed any more than a new set of teeth can be grown. I tell you I tell you again where no sin is intended there is no sin ! But we have twisted Nature about and about to suit our changing conditions, our artificial life. You would name sinful those who do not conform to certain conventionalities and stifle their primitive impulses, whereas they are simply natural and not afraid of criti- cism. Oh, be honest, whatever it costs you to sacrifice your ideals ! But, again, don't be too honest. Don't ask every man to pause and recollect man's first duty all the while. He would find life impossible ; he would find himself hated by all. A man must be himself, and nothing else. Life is life as his particular eyes were fashioned to see it. ... You saw her to-night ? " It came as subdued and detached as though no other words had passed between them. He had rolled his thin white tube of tobacco, put it to his lips, and fallen back exhausted. ' Who ? " John Laverock brought his face round with an effort. His mind had been sweeping along on a wild torrent of thought, to be giddily brought to a stand- still. All was suddenly quiet and normal again. " Who ? " THE BORDERLAND 89 " Your amber girl ! Your Hoxton Queen Bee ! Your wonderful woman who embodies in herself all the types outside the social pale. Your girl who walks the streets with her calm devilment, her disdain, her flat straw hat, her swift tongue, her hair looped over her ears. Did you think I did not know her ? Fair and dark, she is a London product and of London only. She fears neither God nor man. The girl against whom you have concentrated all your guns Donna ! " ! " Did I did I tell you all this ? " John Laverock asked, drawing a breath in the pause. " Why not ? All that, and much more ! " The long white fingers wavered out as if to propitiate him. John Laverock looked down at them, laid his hand over them, and kept it there. He had swallowed some throat lump. " I forgot ! Honestly, I forgot. You read me through and through, Bede. You are like a judge, sitting there to pass sentence." ' Then you must feel guilty ! . . . No, no, old chap, we won't be artificial. I like you. I love you ! I do read you in our silences I can't help it. You brought her before me. You sat there, that first night, and sketched her in words from the life. It was a prose poem if you knew it. You were 90 THE BORDERLAND so impressed, so sure you had discovered the mind in her the spring from which all her future possibilities might flow, and which had been turned into a foul marsh by the Hoxton exhalations your own words ! The next evening I waited, and the next and the next. But you held back. Since then you have gone round the subject like one skirting the edge of a pond. Bring her before me again ! " " It was not to-night," John Laverock said, in the way of a man impelled against his will. " I was not to see her to-night. I did not tell you what happened, because ... It was last Thursday evening. I went into her room there in Phillimore Street. God knows and you know that I wanted to speak to her as I have spoken to many others. But I found it impossible, or so it seemed that night. I cannot explain, but at every turn she pinned me down to the sense of being a mere physical puppet like herself, and that in her place I should be as she is. Since then she has avoided me, looked back with her pale smile and vanished down some side-turning. To-night, when I knocked at her room again, no one answered. That is all. I was depressed, I don't know why. I walked back into Hoxton with blind Smith, and then came straight on here." " Not one touch of humour anywhere THE BORDERLAND 91 that you could pick out of the prevailing gloom ? " " Ah, one ! " He brightened, as with re- lief. " I looked over the railings at No. 36 to call down to old Wisbey, the cobbler ; he works till midnight with a bit of candle in the area room, you know I can never pass him by he looks like the sunken-eyed figure of Father Time kneeling among a few scraps of leather. There is a morsel of back yard, and he grows actually grows a few scarlet runners in two tubs in the corner. I asked after them at once, and he growled : them fish had come back, owin' to the warm weather, and were swimmin' all over 'em again. What fish ? Why, them fish hay- fish, of course ; he thought I'd lived in the country and knew all about it ! I had to turn away like a fool in the end, and then I recollected. Some one has given him the botanical name, and he has never let it go. He meant the white blight aphis." Bede, watching him, had listened as with- out hearing. He put down his cigarette. Only the audible heave of his breast broke the silence of the warm room. His great dark eyes, with their velvety depths, looked into space. " She's quite right," he said quietly, but startlingly. ;< Never mind the cobbler ; you can take him that packet of tobacco to- 92 THE BORDERLAND morrow. Don't tell him that he ought not to smoke, because it seems to you a weak, wasteful habit. It is ; but our lives are made up of weak, wasteful habits in food, dress, amusements, and so on. ... She's perfectly right your Donna ! What radical difference olid you think there was, beyond that you had each been reared in different grooves ? There is none. What did she tell you of herself ? I want to know that ! " " She told me that she that she had once lived with a man as his wife." " Ah ! " Bede tried to lift himself from the cushions, and fell back again. " It's all right don't mind me you will be gone soon, and then I have the long night to face. Alice will come in and kiss me, and stand looking at me, and tell me again that I must have a night nurse. As if I could bear to lie here and look eternally across at some respectable old soul with no ideas, and her hands folded on her lap ! . . . Donna lived with a man as his wife ! You tell me that as if you had made an abnormal, terrifying discovery. Isn't [she a natural woman ? Aren't our inclinations in that way purely as private and justifiable as our appetites at meals ? " " No ! " John Laverock's voice answered, on that deep note. " No ! " " I see. Poor girl ! I can understand THE BORDERLAND 93 just how she looked at you, and what you felt. Then you stand pledged to subvert all human nature, eh ? " " No ! " he said again in the same rigid voice. He took no notice now of the thin fingers groping toward him. " Not ? Don't be hard. I am not making a butt of your beliefs. But perhaps, up in this room all day, I can see sanely and clearly, whereas all your manifold impressions are apt to run into one another like damp colours eh, old chap ? Look at me ! I think I think that the thing we all most need is tolerance. She made her mistake, maybe ; but that is all. You may make yours some day in another way. Maybe she loved him for the time. Maybe she loves the same man still, whoever he is. But he wearied. And just so that weariness exists where the legal and divine sanction has been given." "It is not love. It is lust ! " John Lave- rock said unsteadily. He stood up like a gladiator, then sat down again. Bede's quivering, lovable mouth ! " Don't be angry," Bede whispered again pantingly, " because you will not have me here always to combat, and you are just the man to remember with pain. Man alive, be merciful to her, at any rate ! Haven't you realized in thirty odd years of life ? A man looking upon a woman, and a woman looking 94 THE BORDERLAND upon a man, seldom pause to think. They are involuntarily fulfilling the vital law at the base of all things. For indiscretion they may pay, and others may pay, but the immutable law remains. Puritanism is not purity. Your ' love/ Laverock, is simply lust glorified ! " This time there was no response. He could not, or he would not, let his thoughts take sound. Out of their lives ticked a number of minutes unaccounted for, one of those pauses in which the never-ceasing breath struggle going on beneath Bede Val- j can's velvet jacket came to sound precisely like the drain of wavelets down some distant pebbly beach. Slowly in John Laverock's own throat the swelling grew and grew ; the heat of stifled argument died out and left him cold. He looked up at last with dulled eyes, and saw Bede sitting there as beyond a film. " Oh, if I could only make you understand ! You, Bede, you only ! " he wanted to cry out. " If you only knew all I feel, and how hard it is to go on when everything living seems ranked against one ! You do know ! " But he did not say it. Bede's voice came again just as he was about to sway up. " Hush listen ! . . . I want you to lis- ten to that ! " Solemn and low deepening, ever deepen- ing majestic in its inseparable suggestions THE BORDERLAND 95 of eternity and God beyond, came in a sound. It seemed to roll away past and present, to span the gulf wherein waited all the vast legions of the pale, cold dead, and to link up little earth and its still-existent pigmy mil- lions with the unknown beyond. It was the voice of the great organ from the church close by. A pigmy's fingers drew it forth, but behind him there was the power which evolved a universe, peopled it, and left the peoples to work out their own salvation. Grandly, appallingly, still it seemed in Bede's curtained room just then, although ringed about by all London. " Don't move," came Bede's laboured voice, as from a distance. The muffled thunder had died away. " Tell me if I'm not right. All that you felt in that moment gives the keynote to your character. You heard something that was not ! Your life is a series of such mental thrills. You can- not sit still and allow yourself to realize that they are merely emotional myths ; you don't want to. You cling to all your illusions about life. You place some people upon pedestals from which they must fall, and others appear to you to be struggling in a morass from which you must pluck them. . . . Old chappie ! old chappie ! " He looked up with eyes that were glazed and loving and apologetic. He had caught the 96 THE BORDERLAND other's clenched hand, and held it. " I like you, or I wouldn't cut you with the truth the truth as I can see it. Why worry about your fellow-men ? ' Life is life ! ' You are trying to take out of divine hands the divine process. You are hurling yourself against the rocks that have stood for all time. And you will find you must fail. Because, if you believe that God created a hell, you must believe that God created sinners to people it. Can you, John Laverock, here to-day and gone to-morrow, add one or take one away from their number ? " A minute more of the silence. Something had seemed about to choke in John Lave- rock's throat, but that was all. Then " Good- night ! " he whispered ; and walked quickly from the room. Outside all was overwhelmingly different. The thin warm rain still descended, the pavements gleamed blackly, the electric car bells clanged at a distance, people hurried by as though it were full enough to be asked of them to reach home after one day's work in time to prepare for another. The roll of the church organ was stilled life was life. " No ! " John Laverock said aloud to himself, with a stubborn emphasis. " No, Bede ; no ! " He should have turned to the left for his THE BORDERLAND 97 own rooms. Instead he struck across into Kingsland Road, along which the stream of vehicles and pedestrians still poured north- ward so strongly that to move in the other direction seemed like swimming against the tide. The noise seemed like the tense hum- ming of wires in a wind. His mind was in a state of semi-suspension, wanting some sharp abstraction to right it. And it came. He did not know just how far he had walked, when he started and swerved round. He saw only a half-clothed boy's heels twinkling round a corner. He went on, thinking he had dreamed it. But it came after him again, fainter, with the same impish, sing-song mockery, like the tag of a tune with echoes. " Amber Lou-ou-ou ! " He felt himself turn white, and looked down, as if the passers-by had had a sudden flash-glimpse of his soul. As he went on, it echoed in his brain again and again, and refused to be stilled " Amber Lou-ou-ou ! " It brought him back to the normal, as if a burst in his ears had restored hearing and a proportionate sense of things. He looked up and saw that he was over the canal bridge, within a few score paces again of Phillimore Street. CHAPTER VIII ONE of the things that had most impressed John Laverock on previous brief visits to London was London's crowd. One of the things that impressed him yet more, now that he was coming to know his London, was the fact that fully one-half of London's crowd had solved the problem of how to live without working. Was there a house ablaze ? Within a few minutes this same crowd had concentrated to suffocation point, prepared to remain wedged and fascinated as long as a glowing ember remained. Was there a mid-week foot- ball match or a music hall matine'e, the same crowd waited at the pay-box with a supreme indifference for toil ; while a spectacular street procession found them lining the pave- ments in their thousands for hours in ad- vance. In outward appearance they were all of the business or working classes. They lived on, they had money to spend, and a full capacity for enjoyment. And the eternal mystery remained how did they live ? The thought recurred involuntarily to John THE BORDERLAND 99 Laverock as, passing a certain public house, he passed as by natural sequence the big figure of Ben Fisher inert, motionless, with swinish slits of eyes in his putty-like face, and the same huge bowler hat low over his bald head. Ben's physical mould was not of his own casting, but it was hard to think that he ever took off his clothes, even at night, or to bathe ; hard to believe that he ever stirred from that shadowy square formed by the public house window ; harder still to believe that he had ever been born of woman. John Laverock gave him a genial " Good- evening," and a keen glance. There was no response, save that the hairless eyelids came quite down over the slits of eyes. Only a few yards on, he happened to glance back. For a man so torpid, so indisposed to any action that exhausted the human tissues unnecessarily, Ben Fisher had vanished from his post with noticeable precipitancy. He turned again ; Ben Fisher, so far, was beyond him. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should right-wheel into Phillimore Street, yet now he found himself walking consciously, and unable to do more than give one furtive glance up at Mrs. Mucklehorn's top front window. The full-bosomed ladies with folded arms in open doorways appeared to be regarding him with ioo THE BORDERLAND more interest than usual on this occasion, and at any moment the greeting yells of the children who swarmed after him might change into that impish, sing-song " Amber Lou-ou-ou ! " Mrs. Mucklehorn had basely betrayed that harmless involuntary utterance of his. Now he was out at the far end. The long glaring vista of Hoxton Street ran before him both ways yet again. Should he turn back ? Plenty of dogged will-power there was in the man ; but it seemed like tempting criticism to run the gauntlet of Phillimore Street a third time that night. He walked on a few steps, and drew up to reflect. He had lost none of his original perseverance, but he would be more discreet. Yes, he would wait until he passed her quite by accident moving along one of these pavements. His method had been too direct and impulsive, perhaps. He must allow himself to become insensibly absorbed into the confidence of these people, and not hope to take them by storm. He had been vouchsafed a sharp lesson in tact. He slid a hand up to his eyes for a moment and asked the Almighty to give him the help he asked for others. " Penny the whole lot, sir ! " said a woman, with wheedling pathos. She had " spotted " him unerringly from the other side, and was pushing a handful of raw beetroots against THE BORDERLAND 101 his coat. There was a moaning mite of a child held loosely at her bare breast, and she looked as though her entire fortune hinged upon a quick sale. " Do, sir ! The last lot, sir ! There you are a ha'penny 1 " He had his intuitive doubts, and he had no use for the vegetable in that state. But it was the baby that appealed to him once again. He found twopence, and left the beetroots. As she darted back across the roadway he heard her shout to another woman, " Clicked again ! " Number two was hurriedly making for him, but he declined a deal in onions. He was watching number one. She had made unsteadily for the public house almost directly opposite. As she went to catch at the door it swung out abruptly. A sort of creeping paralysis took him ; he had never been more certain of anything than that the door struck the small head clutched to her breast he saw the sickly little arms go up as in a convulsion and fall again. For near a minute he could not move. Then he strode across, every human instinct in him tingling. He pushed at the door vehemently. He paused. No one saw him for a moment, or no one troubled. His eyes focussed what he would have described as a crowded little hell of noise and tobacco-smoke. It over- whelmed any word on his tongue. 102 THE BORDERLAND Number one had a small glass of some colourless liquid in one hand ; with the free arm, while she talked, she rocked violently the potential citizen at her breast. It still cried, its bleat, just audible in the deafening hubbub, going through the man's heart. Even the woman heard. Looking down, she shook the child into silence. And then, as with a maternal qualm, she dipped her fore- finger rapidly several times into her glass and thence into the child's mouth. John Laverock knew it for crude gin. Sick to the soul, he let the door swing and turned away. He was beginning to under- stand Hoxton's infantile death-roll even as officially admitted. And Hoxton, Louis Val- jean had told him, was a thriving and whole- some centre as compared to other slums in this richest city in the world. It made money somehow, and it spent it anyhow, and the devil was welcome to any other human consideration. About to recross, he was aware of a shock of a different kind. Maybe it was the un- expectedness of it that set his blood racing afresh. There she was, within a hundred yards of him Donna Amber Lou ! He stared unconsciously, fixedly, at her with his grave grey eyes. For some reason it took him a moment to believe that the two men with whom she talked at the corner THE BORDERLAND 103 were Ben Fisher and and Cobra King. At least no, they were not talking. Amber Lou had her back to him, and seemed to be studying the pavement attentively ; but the two men were narrowly watching himself. They would have drawn back, but there was not time. And it flashed to him at once that he had been watched previously : that the heavy, hairless man had acted upon instructions to report upon his movements in the vicinity of Mrs. Mucklehorn's. Ben Fisher was a mere pawn upon the board. The other man Cobra was of an- other calibre. He was well dressed, and held a cigarette fastidiously between fingers upon which rings glittered. Every movement of the man was of the darting, serpentine order, even to the swift turn of his foreign-looking eyes, and the swifter smile that bared his white teeth. The action of his brain, the few rapid words when he spoke, the smile that followed, were all compassed within a flash of time. Yes, they had him under observation, had been speaking of him ; and the passing crowd between chanced to have left this temporary gap. The fact held him in vague misgiving for a moment ; in the next his muscles tightened most strangely, and he swallowed some many-cornered lump. With deliberate meaning Cobra had leaned forward 104 THE BORDERLAND and buried his lips against the neck of Amber Lou. She struck him away, passionately, as it looked ; but he was smiling his sinister smile again ; he had given the full indica- tion he desired. And then, of a sudden, Amber Lou turned and walked away with her composed majestic step. The crowd intervened, and the two remaining figures seemed to melt. John Laverock came to himself and moved mechanically back toward the northern out- let of Hoxton Street. He had just reached the first comparatively quiet stretch beyond it when he felt his coat plucked sharply. " Donna ! " he muttered, staring down into the tea-rose, contemptuous face. " Don- na ! " Either she had crossed the road ahead of him, or she had been waiting here by mere instinct ; it mattered not which at that moment. " Stand right under the lamp let 'em see you I would ! " she said, on that low level note that was hard and yet blood- stirring. " You do ask for what you'll get one o j these days, don't you ? You do ; yes I " " What does that mean ? " he demanded, not budging. He refused even to be drawn into looking apprehensively around. " What have I done ? " " Oh, all right ! " With her baffling little THE BORDERLAND 105 smile she was about to march calmly away again ; but his nerves had been wrought up to a pitch that night. He took a deter- mined stride and caught her by the wrist. " There ! It is not all right. You came after me to say something, and 1*11 hear it." " You will ? You'll stand here and make me ? You don't care two straws if they are watching you all the time ? " "I do not. Why should I ? I know that you were waiting here, and that is enough." " Yes ; a damned fool I was to take the trouble, wasn't I ? " " Don't, Donna don't ! I can't bear to hear any woman I respect lending her lips to such words." And the lips twitched. She had said it with a studied deliberation that should goad him into an outburst. ' Yes, you do it knowingly ; I am aware of that," he added straightly. " But it won't deter me in the least, as I told you. Come ! I need not hold you ; I trust you. I knew there was something in the air to-night. What have I done ? " She drew her mouth in and out, her blue eyes looking past him. He noticed and perhaps she was not averse to his noticing that she wore some finery over her dingy skirt and blouse, and that there was a real feather drooping from her hat to-night. io6 THE BORDERLAND " It isn't what you've done, is it ? " she asked absently, after a pause. " It's what they've taken it into their heads you'd like to do, isn't it ? And if you can't see it for yourself it's no use talking." " Well ! " He looked away, with a breath of desperation. " I must be the densest man walking Kingsland to-night. I expect to be misunderstood I was warned of that ; but this beats me. No, come here ! " She had made another movement, only to find his arm a bar. For a moment he thought she would swing him aside in her own quick fashion ; but she subsided again. It was only that her mouth had tightened, and her foot tapped the pavement ominously. He had waited to allow some people to pass. He whispered. " Donna or Lou I don't care which I call you will you always per- sist in looking upon me as some one quite out of your own sphere your own circle, that is ? You know what I mean ! Speak to me plainly ; as plainly as you were speak- ing to that other man just now ! " " You wouldn't like me to," she said, looking up at him. " You'd soon see where the difference comes in. You are different, aren't you ? or you wouldn't be a preacher." " A preacher ! " He had almost to laugh, without knowing why. " I think you know very well the aim of the Christian Brother THE BORDERLAND 107 hood Mission to which I belong as Mr. Valjean belongs. Never mind ; call me that if you wish to. Isn't a preacher a man ? " " No," she said flatly. " If he sets up in that line it shows he thinks himself a good deal better than the rest. Whether he's a blooming hypocrite or not well, I don't know, and I don't care a rap. You're a preacher ; and Cobra isn't." " I see. Now you've spoken plainly. Tell me, will you, why the man should harbour any grudge against me, considering that, until last Thursday night, I did not know of his existence." " Well, there you are. His knife's in you. I can't say it any plainer, can I ? " " Tell me why ! " he persisted, struggling between anger and amazement. " I'm not blind ; I guessed at something. But, why ? You're the woman you know." " Jest it," came the undisturbed reply. " He's heard of you following me up and down Hoxton, hasn't he ? Very likely he put you down at once as some one in his own line. You've got a way of your own that gives people something to talk about, haven't you ? " " I have ? " ' You have. I told you what he was. Think I'm joking, don't you ? He ' did ' three months over a man that only touched io8 THE BORDERLAND his beer glass in mistake." Up and down him she looked in her critical, belittling manner. " What chance would you stand, big as you are, with a man who knows every trick in the game, and would have his knife in and out again while you're taking your coat off ? " " And is that the class of man to whom to whom you would give yourself have given yourself ? " He said it with difficulty. To the question of Cobra's physical su- periority he declined to give another thought. But there was sting in the seeming fact that she deliberately preferred the other type of man to himself. "Is it ? " " What rubbish," she whispered. For an instant even she was awed or irritated. " You're talking of long ago." "I'm talking of to-night ! You were with the man in Hoxton only a few minutes ago. It is none of my business, perhaps ; but to think that you, with all the possibilities of a splendid woman in you " He broke off. It sounded unnatural, or would sound so to her. The words were bubbling up in his throat fast enough, but could not find suitable expression. He had only determined one thing that she should not drift back to the " halls " at Cobra's instigation. A curious silence. The tap of her foot had ceased. She had closed her lips as with THE BORDERLAND 109 a perverse decision to tell him no more to keep the door of her inner self quite closed to him still. Then suddenly she cleared her throat. " What d'you want with me ? What is it you see in me, that you're so upset and anxious about me ? Am I the only one worth troubling over ? If you must know, p'raps I did you a good turn by taking him on just now." " Taking him on ? " he repeated me- chanically. " Yes. You're not to know everything that's in my mind, are you ? P'raps you saw Ben Fisher ? Well, when you see him, you always know there's something on. Not that I care ! " And her shrug proved it. " I thought I'd just know what they were up to that's all." " And what was it ? " " I'm to let you come after me. I'm to let you come up to my room whenever you like. That's all." " I don't understand not in the least," he said tensely, watching every movement in the small oval face. And she tossed her head impatiently. " I thought not. But you will. You're playing up to him at this minnit, aren't you ? A tale about you " " About me ? " no THE BORDERLAND " and me " Another mocking pause. " You ? " he gasped. " might cost you something." " What on earth " " Oh, stop it ! " she put in wearily. " I shan't speak any plainer. You've put his back up that's enough. Keep away ! " " I shan't believe it. Donna, I can't." He put the detaining hand on hers. " This is some idea of your own. You think I am gentleman enough fool enough to be scared. You think to frighten me by " " I reckon I have ! " with another shrug. "I've given myself away to rights in coming and telling you, if that's anything." " How ? " " Ask yourself. As likely as not, if they walked after you, or cut round to the front, they know just what we're talking about. Oh, they know all about you ! " " Did you tell them ? " " Me ? " She drew herself up. " Be care- ful, won't you ? Sorry I troubled. I'll say good-night ! " " Donna ! One moment ! " He held her, as if just realizing, and looked keenly on all sides. It had impressed him more than he would own, oddly-vague as it sounded. " What you mean is that you have run a risk on my account. I appreciate it ay, I THE BORDERLAND HI do ! But don't fear for me ! One word to the police " " You won't. You won't ! " she repeated, with a palpable tremble, drawing back. Deep into her defiant turquoise 'eyes he looked, and whispered " What, because he is the man with whom you once " 11 Never you mind," she whispered back. " Because, for one thing, it wouldn't pay you. If you don't care, well I don't ! " She snapped her fingers in his face, twisted free, and was walking away. Ere he could believe it she was passing serenely out of sight back to her Hoxton fastnesses. There was a metallic shiver of tambourines, a burst of fresh voices. Down the road with quick step came the band of lasses who seemed to have found the secret of per- petual happiness, who feared neither heat, nor rain, nor ridicule. " Ask the Saviour to help you ! " It rang about him as they passed, their rapt faces looking neither to right nor to left. " He will carry you through ! " It died away with the tramp of their feet in the distance. He drew a breath, and squared his shoulders. ' Yes, yes ! The great work is going on," he said to himself. " In God's mysterious way it must be going on even in Hoxton ! " CHAPTER IX '* "IV /TIGHT you have heard anything ? " 1VJL asked Mrs. Blinco, with great steadiness. Arms folded, she had sat waiting for her husband to put down his newspaper and recollect that he had a wife. Men who read in silence, she had said, were ten degrees more selfish than the average man. And this, based upon Mrs. Blinco's standard, was saying a good deal. And for years Mr. Blinco had retaliated with the silence which rankles in a talkative woman most. " I did not," he answered. " I knew that," she said with a sniff. " I did." She would not stoop to pluck the rustling sheet from his grasp she had lowered herself only once in that way. She sat on, one foot swaying to and fro in ceaseless eloquence. This, with slight variations, was the evening's programme. " I heard it again," she said presently, with an indiffer- ence to match his own. " Then go and see." 112 THE BORDERLAND 113 " Thank you. I happen to be as comfort- able as you are." ' Then hold your tongue and let me read." " I will." She directed her glance into the dying fire, and whispered to herself, ' What a blessing to know that I can support one pig ! " " What ? " asked her husband languidly. And she was silent. " You support me, do you say ? " he asked, still more slowly, as if on the point of a gust of laughter. " I do. I say that every helpless, shiftless man is supported by his wife. Could you venture out with the buttons off your clothes ? Could you cook yourself a dinner ? Could you do any mortal thing but catch a train up to the office and catch a train back ? No, you'd die first," she said, with well-meant but obscure emphasis. " I can do this I can do that I can do everything, because I'm the woman. You simply give me what you think you must just as you might do with any slut of a housekeeper. I say that a married woman nowadays is a machine bought body and soul " ' When did machines have souls ? " " I say that the passion of a man at its very best is pure selfishness, while that of a woman at its very worst is a self-sacrifice. A pretty thing, to think that Creation can only be kept going by woman's pain and H ii4 THE BORDERLAND shame ! I wish I only wish I could stand up and tell the women of the whole world what a husband is when the veneer is off him. They may well say : ' Scratch the best man breathing, and you find an animal.' You do. By heaven, you do ! " " Quite right," he agreed, sleepily. " No one has cared to say what you would find if you scratched a woman, of course." " Don't talk," she whispered, with sarcasm. " You may be missing a line in the gambling column. Don't ! " And, shaking with silent laughter, he went on reading. " Half-past ten," she said after a while. " I'm going to bed, if I may." " You can't. Your gentleman-boarder is not in." " Ah, of course. I'm the wife I must wait up. Well, I married a man : I deserve all I get." Presently he folded the paper, rose, shook his limbs, and checked a yawn. " Er I think I did hear something." " Oh, no, impossible ! No burglar, you've said, would ever come to a house like this." " Burglars be hanged." He strolled down the passage, turned up the light, and went into the front room John Laverock's sitting-room. He was gone about two minutes. THE BORDERLAND 115 " Well ? " she queried sweetly. " You left one of the glass doors swinging open, of course." " Pardon me, I did not." " Then he did ; and there's an end of it." He went up the stairs, smothering his " Good-night ! " in a cough. It was generally accepted that Mr. and Mrs. Blinco had arrived at the stage of bare mutual tolerance when " Good-night ! " to each other in a normal voice would have sounded like a return to the golden days of courtship and illusion. Opposites in temperament ought never to mate for a permanency. The prevailing opinion was that Mrs. Blinco lived to save money, and her husband lived to spend it. And across the rift they glared at each other from day to day, and tugged it wider and wider. And so it had become as it always becomes a mere living on in order to die. She sat with her foot still swaying, and her gaze fixed upon the slow-moving clock- hands. Her bitterness nevertheless, she was deep in two definite speculations : how much gas the pin-point of a hall light was consuming, and whether it would pay her to adopt some- one's baby preferably with " no questions asked." The baby's squalls would at least shake her husband's apathy, while he cer- tainly could not suggest any pecuniary profit to himself over such a maternal transaction. n6 THE BORDERLAND Presently, as the clock stood at eleven, she got up, with a " That's done it ! " She was going to switch off all lights and leave John Laverock to grope a fugitively-penitent way in. A man who remained out until past eleven o'clock, religiously inclined or not, was assuredly bent upon no good. Come to that, she had no faith in the professed moral principles of any male breathing. As she reached the hall she heard his quick, firm step outside. She chose to smile coldly her husband's homing step at times had been marvellously clever and deceptive until he essayed the staircase. She threw open the door quickly, so that he had to give an involuntary stumble. " Oh, I beg your pardon," she said. " I never dreamed of you being " " Am I so late ? Yes, I am ! I'm sorry to have kept you up. To tell you the truth, I felt unwell. The London air does not agree with me yet, and " " The London what, Mr. Laverock ? " She inclined her ear, a little deaf for the moment. " This air ! I started off for a long tramp, and went much farther than I intended." " Ah ! Very nice and very healthy ex- cept that I never believe in night air for gentlemen, nor my mother before me. Would you like me to wait and dry your clothes, Mr. Laverock ? " THE BORDERLAND 117 " Pooh, no ! " He had closed the door and put a hand to his temples for a moment. He looked a little pale in the dim light, she thought ; and, being a man, he deserved it, no doubt. He had not explained away that bruise on his brow as yet. " No ; I am not made of such poor stuff as all that." " Just as you like," she said, with tight- lipped impressiveness. " Once get the rheu- matics in one's bones, and the end is only a matter of time, as my mother used to say. Ah, and she was a mother ! she had a real man for a husband." " Why, and haven't you, Mrs. Blinco? " he turned at his bedroom door to remark. Late or not, it seemed a good moment to say something that had gathered in his throat several times during those past few weeks. " I'm sure of it yes ! " ' Then, if you're sure, there is no need for anything more to be said, Mr. Laverock," she replied distantly. " Of course, lookers-on do see more of the game we are told so. Whether they feel it whether they know quite what they're looking at well, that's quite beside the question, naturally. I mar- ried him, and I ought to be grateful. I hope I am. A woman does not wed for pleasure, of course, as a man does. She marries because she feels called upon to sacrifice herself, I suppose. There's nothing else. If she goes n8 THE BORDERLAND out to earn a living she is ousting the men from their proper sphere ; if she remains an old maid, she is secretly pitied and laughed at as a ' remainder.' And so, all things con- sidered " she passed her thin red hands slowly over each other and eyed the crack in the ceiling as though John Laverock was responsible for it " all things considered, you can hardly wonder at the increase in suicide, can you ? It will go on ! " "Well, it's strange," he said. He had heard much the same remarks before, and confined himself to nods of silent sympathy. There was no telling precisely whether she meant her husband to hear too, nor what view her husband might take of his position as a third party. " I mean, I get on really excellently with Mr. Blinco " ' You do." It made her turn up the light a little, the better to nod at him. " You do yes. You are not married to him." " Well, no, I'm not." And she nodded away in tart triumph. " But what I mean is, Mrs. Blinco, it's such a vast pity for a hard-working husband and a good wife to drift " " Who ? I beg your pardon ! hardwork- ing, you say ? My husband ? I'm glad you have seen no deeper than that, Mr. Laverock. I'm glad for his sake. My husband does not know what work is ! any more than you do, THE BORDERLAND 119 I was going to say. Did you ever know a man who would change places with any woman ? Did you ever see a workman who did not throw down his tools and run run ! the very instant his time was up ? My good- ness, no ! And you never will. A woman has quite enough to do when she's first married. When she has six children " " But you have not six children, Mrs. Blinco." " I might have had ! " she retorted severely. ' When she has six children, I say, her hus- band expects her to do six times the amount of work as a matter of course, and on the same money. Nature, if you wish to know it, cursed woman in the very beginning, and kept her cursed, as far as the world's treatment of her goes. I'm sure " " Hush ! Let me speak," he said. There were hollows of weariness under his eyes, but he was drawn to say a good word for his own sex and for the man upstairs in particular if possible. " Now, it seems to me there are only one or two really important points on which you are at variance. To think that a mutual understanding might pave the way " "Oh, don't. Don't begin that!" She waved it away with both arms. " If you do, I shall think you know not what you say ! In fact, I read it all in the Sunday-school 120 THE BORDERLAND books years ago. TryBlinco. Tell him that. Don't always expect the woman to take the first step toward the impossible." " Ah ! " he said, smiling. " The woman is the softer, and can do wonders if she will. Why " he put out his hand, and sank his voice " you loved him. I'm sure you did. Then, you love him still, now he's Darby and you're Joan well, ahem, nearing it, at any rate. Suppose, now, you have had a few cold words together this evening. It's hard, I know ; but, in the morning, meet him with a forgetful smile, and kiss him and and give him for breakfast the little relish he used to like ; and then " " Ha ! " She had been staring hard. She sniffed rapidly. " And then give him the little relish he likes for tea, and let him smoke in the bedroom, and provide him with a new wife when I get a bit drab. In a word, let the woman wear out, while the man rusts out the way of the world ! No, Mr. Laverock, if I'm not keeping you up, that is." She stooped toward him with great earnestness. " I'm not one to complain ; I'll put up with my fate, if it's got to be. All I can hope for now is to be allowed to lay by a few shillings for the day when I'm released or done with. And that I will do ! " " But if money cannot buy you happi- ness " THE BORDERLAND 121 " It can, and does. Without it, I've proved you stand up to be knocked down again in this life. And I'mno longer a willing skittle, I assure you. Don't talk to me about money ! I've lived longer than you, Mr. Laverock although you might not think it to look at me. When we hear of a person who has lived so conscientiously that he could save nothing, we say ' It was God's will ' and then forget it. When we hear of a man who has sweated his workpeople and got rich by sharp practice and ' rigging ' stocks and shares, we say that nothing succeeds like success and make him a baronet. You can't enlighten me ! All these pretty sayings are frauds when tested. Very few do good and blush to find it known nowadays, but blush with annoyance if it doesn't leak out ; and so on. But I'm tired. I'll wish you a very good-night, Mr. Laverock, and a little more insight into the ways of this world as they are, and not what they seem to be ! " The gas was shut off with a sharp snap. He heard her rattle the door-bolts emphatic- ally and go up the staircase. He was sorry for her, in a sense, and had endeavoured in every way to make his own presence in the house as little felt as possible ; but he was telling himself, as he sat there in the quiet back room, that he wished he had left to Miss Valj can's superior finesse the choice of his 122 THE BORDERLAND apartments. Now that he had been made to realize Mrs. Blinco's aim in life, it would be doubly unpleasant to tell her that he was contemplating a change. In fact he was not sure that he could do it. Taking off his damp shoes, he had gone on mechanically to remove his coat and vest. Then, with a little laugh, he called to mind that he had had neither tea nor supper yet. The supper would be set, and the gas left burning, in the next room. He had only a folding door to pass. Yes, the supper was laid, and a letter served partly to conceal the thinness of his shaving of ham. He tore it open a letter from Louis Valjean brought a whiff of his own beloved Hertford- shire that seemed very precious to-night. He sat down, and pushed back the plates, to read and absorb every word. "... Let me know something about Bede. He has written to me here twice, but he speaks only of you not of himself. I am hoping and trusting that some word of yours may pierce the fatalistic mantle he has wrapped about himself. Sit with him, talk with him, John, whenever you can ; and I shall picture myself there with you both. If there should seem any change for the worse but I cannot bear to talk of that. You know ! While we profess to welcome our Hereafter as the summit of happiness, it is THE BORDERLAND 123 strange how we do everything in human power to cling to this life. " You will be anxious to know about my own health. Nothing organically wrong, I hear. Your doctor here says I was com- pletely ' run down.' My rapid strides back to health have surprised him perhaps pleased him, as he has to drive four miles to see me. How do these people fare in times of sickness? Truthfully, John, glorious as this stretch of poppy and corn country is, I do not feel that I would exchange places with you perman- ently. The people themselves find no joy in existence. There are no lights, no shops, and no stimulus to enterprise or effort what- ever. Human life here strikes one as utterly stagnant and motiveless, with the iron rod of the landed proprietor over all ; while yet I am afraid that our friend the universal enemy finds a good deal for the idle hands to do under the surface. " You seem to be shocked by the moral atmosphere around you there. But if this village is typical of English rural life, it is I who should be aghast. And I hear to-day of a local divine resigning his living as a pro- test against the ' rank, open immorality of the week-end parties held among the local gentry,' which is discussed to the detriment of the whole country-side. I may meet him shortly, and will ascertain the truth. 124 THE BORDERLAND " It struck me oddly to find that very few of the older couples here have been legally married,but have mated more or less promiscu- ously, with terribly muddling results as far as their children and grandchildren are con- cerned. The fact that the church is three miles distant is something of an excuse on Sundays ; but the poaching that goes on in the week appears to be in the local blood. Can we wonder ? Starvation wages rule here ; and the brains and souls are starved as well. Some pen greater than mine could write a telling impeachment of rural life, I am afraid. " There seems no real vigour or reaching- power in the Church here : a mere parrot-like muttering of responses, a cold sermon high above the minds of the congregation, and such a fervent ' Ha ! ' of relief when the ordeal is ended. No, it is not worship of God : it is a mere clinging to traditions. I greatly fear I have offended the Rector who, by the by, is surely prostituting the deepest Chris- tian ideal by accepting the living with a Rectory and 300 a year, and paying a curate 80 per annum to do every atom of his work ? This is our National Church ! " I called to see him, and found him enter- taining a garden-party. I ventured to speak of what poverty and utter apathy I had seen in the villages so far, and heard that it had always been so, and always would be so the THE BORDERLAND 125 people did not strive for any betterment and could not appreciate it ; and so forth. I must have looked what I felt : I was asked to call some other day. I could not help it, John I had to speak ! I gave him word for word your own unshakable conviction that the Constitutional Church, based for so many centuries on pomp and financial lines, and not upon a spontaneous desire to lift the fallen as our Master commanded, was mainly sup- ported by a fear of shattering old idols in glass cases, and must surely crumble. " I don't feel that I am in touch with God in this Church. I am simply impressed by a theatrical sensuousness by the shadow of the real. " You will be grieved to hear that Betty Sorrell, the woman in the last house by the lane, was caught by the keepers on Monday night while poaching dressed as a man. There was a hand-to-hand fight in the woods, I hear. It may have been due to that that her child was born in the town gaol that same night . . ." Without moving, John Laverock strained his eyes upward so that he could see across the room. He thought nay, he knew he had heard a thin, gurgling sound that conceivably could come only from a human throat. He was not frightened the sensation of 126 THE BORDERLAND not being alone in his room went too deep for that. He sat on in a sort of incredulous stupefaction, little thrill after thrill trickling along his nerves. He sat on until his brain allowed him to realize for a surety. There was a man standing cramped and stiff and still behind the heavy curtain at the left- hand side of the old-fashioned glass doors. There was a man who had stood there so long that some irrepressible sound had betrayed him. CHAPTER X HE appeared to go on reading. He was like one staring at a bomb that might at any moment explode. He took in all the probabilities. Did the man know that he knew ? There was no movement yet. He had never looked at the curtains closely before. They were of thick, rusty material, and appar- ently quite opaque. The table stood be- tween, but if he gave a stealthy movement to the right, there was nothing to impede one bound that would bring him sheer to the spot. Then he could throw out his arms, enfold the curtain with its living burden, and give his shout. All this he told himself in a tense, analytical way, while yet he sat steeped in the uncertain and growing horror of the thing. He even made a calculation as to where the man's knees, protruding slightly, gave the key to the man's size ; and where, higher up, one clenched hand seemed to lend a slight tremor to the material. But when he went to make the soundless movement to the right, he 128 THE BORDERLAND found that his muscles were not responding to his brain. His body seemed a dead weight of metal, and the chair beneath him a magnet. It was the consciousness of eyes that perhaps could see him, and of a mind that might be waiting with a counter-movement. Singu- larly enough, from first to last there did not occur to him the idea of a movement to the left and a bound for the door. He sat on, Valj can's letter gripped so tightly that it seemed to grow thick between his fingers. He heard twelve strokes boom from the church near at hand, and thought of Bede up in that warm, silent room, and wondered if there were such a thing as cerebral telepathy in truth. He knew that he had been numbed because he could feel the blood crawling again in his limbs. Two men passed the house, talking in deep tones, their footsteps drawing a dull clang from the pavement. There was tremendous awe in the bare realization, that next moment, that he had let them pass. Pooh ! Pooh t Pooh ! He whispered the nerving syllable to himself three times. He recalled a similar moment in the mission-house away in Hert- fordshire. In the thick of a dark night he had heard dull, inchoate sounds. He had crept down in his night-shirt, withdrawn the bolts of the back door with infinite stealth, sprung out and all but throttled a gipsy- THE BORDERLAND 129 tramp who was stealing his faggots. Where was the essential difference now ? Half-unconsciously, his head still down, he reached out his hand toward the mantelshelf. The curtain did not move no no ! He leaned his body in the same direction, as to find something he wanted. He could not see it. Acting splendidly, he was upon his feet. His back had to be turned for an instant, and the mere fact brought out a prickly heat upon him. It proved the spur. With a sharp, sudden " Who's there ? ", he leaped for the spot. " Oh, Gawd ! " It was strained out gaspingly. Something slid out convulsively from the curtain as he clutched it something that felt like a thick eel going down between his arms. It doubled, straightened up, and stood at bay against the wall there. And then all the varied, accumu- lated sensations oozed out of John Laverock with a weakening rush. He was looking into the heavy, hairless face of Ben Fisher, with its sickly smile and fish-belly pallor. " Ben Fisher ! " he said to himself. It needed the pause of quite a minute to con- vince himself that Amber Lou's words of that night were not materializing in an evil dream. " Ben Fisher ! " " ' Sorl right," Ben said, feeling at his puffy throat. A blotchy flush was tinting his face, l 130 THE BORDERLAND and in his eyes was an overture at mutual understanding more loathsome than leprosy. " You don't want no upset. More do I. I wouldn't I wouldn't make no sound, if I was you." John Laverock plucked at the curtain, and let it fall again. " He put you here," he whispered at once. " You've got it," Ben assented thickly. " It's him you want, not me. I knew some- thin' 'ud come of it. Told him so all along. But there you are ! " " Stand where you are, and please don't move," John Laverock said in the pause. He was ashamed now of what seemed sheer- est cowardice. Perfectly clear the next step appeared, and yet he found himself weighing consequences. He had his sensitiveness as well as his resoluteness. He walked across and sat down at the table, trembling with the reaction. He stood up again, stern and grey. It was incredibly weak in him to have tem- porized for an instant ! " Now ! I have often asked people what you do for a living. This answers me. I am compelled to give you in charge for attempted burglary, and you may work for the next six months or so." " You know better," the other man rattled. " Housebreakin' at the outside. I was here long afore twelve struck afore eleven. There's the winders, to prove it. The bloke come THE BORDERLAND 131 through and locked me in. That's all there is in it. May I die ! " " All ? You hope to brave it out in that way, do you ? I'm going to tell you that you are a scoundrel, Fisher ; and a contempti- ble specimen, if there be any degrees in villainy. A scoundrel ! " " Very likely," he muttered. The lids were half down over his straw-coloured eyes, so that their expression was problematical. " Hold hard, before you say any more of that, though." " What what do you mean ? " " There you are ! " He went to the length of a leering wink. He was furtively button- ing the coat across his chest now. " I on'y know what I'm told. I was asked to slip a message under the winder there, and found it open, and thought and thought I might as well lay it on the table to make sure no one else got it. 'Fore I knew where I was, the bloke had come through in the dark and locked up had me like a rat. I should ha' undone 'em and been outside in another minnit and no fuss at all, on'y you come in, and I had to keep quiet jest as it was to be, like." John Laverock stood stiff, with a long, unwavering look that made him stir uneasily. "If I wished, to I cannot trust a word that you say. What right have you in this house at all ? If you had a message for me, 132 THE BORDERLAND why should it not reach me in the ordinary way ? Why must no one else see it ? Answer that ? " " Not so loud," he muttered, peering round. " If you can't take a hint there's others will, and sharp." " Answer me ! " John Laverock took a step, thoroughly roused now. " What have you laid your hands upon since you entered this room ? " " Me ? Nothin'." He seemed hurt and amazed. " Nothin', if I never move again." " It is a lie. I know just what has hap- pened. You came at that man's instigation to leave a message, as you call it. You found the doors ajar my own fault and you set to work to thieve anything that came handy." He stepped quickly close. " Here it is here they are ! I knew it. I only want to look at a man's face once to know what he is capable of." He had tapped two bulging coat pockets in turn, " Now, have you anything to say? ' " All right." He drew a hand across his mouth. " Put me away, and I'll get even for it inside a month. S'help me, I will that." " We'll see. Put everything here." For a minute he stood with head lowered, breathing heavily like an ox brought to the shambles. Laverock's eye and pointing finger THE BORDERLAND 133 did not waver. A minute more, and three articles had been slid with inexpressible furtiveness on to the table, while the fixed faces of the two men almost touched. Then Ben Fisher stood back, like one purged and absolved. " That's the lot," he said, " if I never move again." A Dresden shepherdess, a feather cushion, and a small clock the familiar tick of which John Laverock had not missed until that moment. "And now I'll have this 'message,'" he said briefly. " Then I think I shall have fathomed the extent of to-night's dirty work. Put it there." " Not not me." " You refuse ? " He went back a step. " I don't mind. Quick ! " "I'll bash your brains out, you arister- cratic pup, t if you touch that bell," Fisher breathed. He felt at his waistbelt, and licked his palms. There was as much of the hyena as the swine in the man. " Touch it, and I'll leave you stone dead." He suddenly threw himself forward , Laverock had seemed to hesitate. There was a dull crack, and he went back, held to wonder stupidly at a man who could strike him with an open hand when a clenched one might have broken his jaw. 134 THE BORDERLAND " Put it there," John Laverock said again, as quietly as though nothing had happened. " I mean to get to the bottom of this, if I can. You needn't fear giving yourself away ; your face shows you have done that already. You're only the agent ; I want the principal. Out with it ! " And out reluctantly it came from his waist- coat pocket an envelope folded in halves, but surprisingly clean. John Laverock felt a thrill which he kept to himself. " Thank you. Step back again, and mind what you are up to." He obeyed. The situation was not develop- ing according to precedent ; something in John Laverock's restrained method was be- ginning to overawe him unpleasantly. And Laverock, opening the envelope steadily, read the message. Fisher could have tripped him up easily now, so still and absorbed he stood, as the meaning of it travelled to his brain. It was couched somewhat in the type of a sporting challenge. " Certain and final ! Make no error this time ! If J. Laverock, Esq., thinks to hold up his head in this neighbourhood another day, this is a straight and genuine offer that won't be repeated. If he chooses to come down with a twenty pound note by Tuesday next, he may hear no more of it. If not, as sure as Hell's hot Hoxton will be made too THE BORDERLAND 135 hot to hold him. It's known he's been after a girl, to wit, Lou Bohannan, for weeks past, and it's known to a few he was up in her room for near an hour last week for reasons best known to himself, and that he tried the same game to-night, to say no more. Lou Bohan- nan won't deny it, any more than she'll deny what she's been in the past/as every one knows. There's a dozen witnesses, if they're wanted, and there's no error about what's wha't this journey. So J. Laverock can hold his tongue or find himself in a bad box. It's no odds to the writer of this ; but it may turn out trumps with the Christian Brotherhood concern. If the twenty pounds isn't handed to the door- keeper at the Slade Club, Kingsland Road, by 10 p.m. Tuesday next, in an envelope marked ' J. K., Private/ he had better buy a mill- stone for his neck than come round Hoxton again. Fair words and final ! " There was a long pause. A half-smile had twitched John Laverock's face. Then, nod- ding comprehensively, he returned the mess- age to its envelope. " Disguised or not, our friend the Cobra writes quite a creditable hand, Fisher. I'm sorry I cannot oblige him in the matter, small as the amount may seem to him in the cir- cumstances. I hope it won't be himself who is removed from Hoxton. You know what this means for both of you, of course ? I 136 THE BORDERLAND impound this letter. I have you both in a trap from which you cannot escape. I shall take one day to consider it. If I do what I ought, it will mean anything from two to three years' imprisonment for you." " You won't," Fisher said in a scarcely audible voice. All the excitement had died down unaccountably. Within and without there reigned a stark silence, as if London all around were drugged. " If you're a man you won't." " Is that your usual experience ? " He was at the, window, and had slipped back the fastenings, and taken out the two sash- screws which had hampered Fisher's exit. The same smile was twitching his lips, but Fisher was not to know that. " My dear man, blackmail never yet scared the man who had not laid himself open to blackmail. De- pend upon that. And you, in your heart, know just how much truth there is in this foul composition. Eh ? I'll hear you answer that." " Arst him, not me," Ben whispered, still staring, coma-like. " Wouldn't matter two straws to me if you made up to every gel round the place, same as he does." " Meaning that you're not a man but a beast," John Laverock said. He was as cool and composed now as though a great difficulty had been swept away. " I ought to feel sorry for you, but I can't. It is such men as you THE BORDERLAND 137 who poison all the good work of others. One word more ! Where was this letter written ? " " In in a pub." " And where did you leave him ? " " Down the road," was the vaguely-hoarse reply. " And what did you get for doing it ? " " Nothin' not as yet." " Exactly. You were to share in the profits. You were in the scheme." John Laverock thought for another minute, and then drew open the left-hand window. " Very well ; you can go." " Go ? " " Yes. I have done with you. I hold the evidence, and that is quite sufficient. This way ! " Ben Fisher edged a step out, and then paused. Not for one instant did he believe that the thing ended here ; a way out, in that off-hand manner, rose high above his philosophy. And, being what he was, there was something else seething in his nutmeg of a mind. Blackmail ! " This way ! " John Laverock repeated, sharply. " You have done all you came to do ! " He did not like the look in the man's half- closed eyes, but he was attributing it solely to nervous dread of developments. Fisher came level, and paused again, looking out into the roadway as if he feared being seen. 138 THE BORDERLAND The unwholesome scent of his big body, the noise of his half -suppressed breathing both were very distinct. And then, of a sudden, with a treachery as irresistible as typical of slum practice, he had both his great thumbs hard over the " apple " of the other man's throat. John Laverock saw a crimson mist felt something flicked from the other's lips into his face. There was no tangible sound simply a swaying to and fro on the carpet, with those bulging hands clamped around his neck and throttling the life-breath out of him. He was strong ; he had led a clean, simple life ; he could have met Ben Fisher on level terms and given him the thrashing of his life. But strength was use- less never thought of while he fought to get back his breath ; while the crimson slowly changed to purple and thence to black ; while the great roaring grew in his ears. It was a thunder as of many voices shout- ing, of bells pealing followed by a muffled silence through which came the faint echo of that impish, sing-song " Amber Lou-ou-ou ! " And then he lay quite still as he had crashed down, his head striking the wall with a thud. Something had been snatched from his pocket and the gas-light turned out. The glass doors closed, and he was quite alone, with all the look upon his upturned face of a man who could never tell. CHAPTER XI UP the smooth, slimy sides of a black pit a man was crawling slowly crawling. His feebly-straining knees and ringers lifted him a few feet, and then he slid back again almost as many, to begin the inert process again. It was so deep a pit that no definite sound from above could reach him yet not yet. He seemed to have crawled thus far in the course of years from a nameless dark abyss into which, did he cease to struggle, he must topple back for ever. At times he flung back his head, with an inarticulate moan, to stare upward. Far above he could see it the faint disc of light. Was it any nearer ? was it ? O, God, yes, a little ! He closed his eyes, leaned forward, and fought on. Soon soon, perhaps, some eye above would discern the living speck climbing the pit side. In time, if his soul did not dry up in despair, he might clutch at fingers thrust down to pluck him over the edge. On, slowly on ! And in time, dreamlike as it seemed, he found himself gripping the fingers. He felt 139 140 THE BORDERLAND himself being dragged slowly over the lip, his numbed limbs hanging helpless. There was a swooning blank, and then a bursting dawn of light in his eyes a rushing sound in his ears. He was lying upon an altar in the dim light of some vast, arched cathedral. The far-away organ sounded low, the distant voices of choristers made the hush holy. It died away. But he did not desire to move not yet. The sensation of utter still- ness, utter suspension of every faculty, after that struggle from the depths, was too in- finitely sweet. Hours seemed to pass before his heavy eyelids lifted a little as without his knowledge, ever so little, but enough to show him a face that he had known in that other existence on earth. It was Alice Valjean, sitting there so motion- less that he seemed to be looking at a wax figure. The next effort of his brain to right itself told him that the clutching fingers were hers ; the blood-warmth from them seemed to be slowly entering into his own. One more spell of the vague awe, and then it was made known to him that at regular intervals a tremor passed down her figure, and her hand- clasp tightened. The light from some window seemed to catch upon her set face ; she appeared to be looking out as at something no one else could hope to see. And presently the soul awoke THE BORDERLAND 141 and thrilled and shuddered within him. She had stooped stooped with a mechanical movement that suggested repetition at inter- vals. She was kissing him. Her lips touched his eyes, his forehead, his mouth. She sat back. He lay quite still as before, the shudder dying away within him. He would not look again. Never in life must she know that her kiss had touched more than unconscious flesh. He lay motion- less until his instincts had groped their slow way to the position. He could feel the bed- clothes beneath him, and knew that he had lain there a long time. Soon his subtle sixth sense assured him that it was his own bed, and that he was in his right mind. But the realization must have occupied a long time. When at length it dawned upon him in his innate sensitiveness that he was deceiving the woman there by his silence, and he gave that convulsive twitch of his arm and stared up fully, the light upon Miss Valj can's face had been obscured by blue dusk. She shrank away with a little frightened, doubting cry. Slowly she craned back again, her hand feeling for his as for the first time, her eyes searching his face. He was vaguely glad that the rest had seemed so unreal that a genuine vast wonder could stare back from his own eyes. " Oh, you know me ? " she cried softly. 142 THE BORDERLAND ' You can see it is Alice Miss Valjean ? Yes, he does he does ! . . . Oh, where has your mind been ? What does it all mean ? . . . No, no, you're not to speak not to move yet. But you know me ? you won't drift away from us like that again ? " " Where's Bede ? " he whispered. It seemed to form and sound without his know- ledge. " Bede ? " She moved back a little, look- ing around. She was trembling. " Why do you want Bede ? You have been very ill ; you have lost two whole days from your life. What what made you think first of Bede ? " He gazed at her with the hollow eyes that in two days appeared to have doubled in size. The three days' growth of hair upon his face made it seem whiter than it was. The firm- ness of his jaws stood out a little too dis- tinctly, the flesh above them having fallen in. But if his physical part had responded to the havoc in his mental being during that long climb from the pit, he should have been a skeleton. " Two days ? " he said disbelievingly, in the same quick breaths. " Why who brought you here ? " " Don't you want me want any one ? " she faltered, bending very still. While he lay like a sleeping child she had felt herself exceedingly brave, and even palpitatingly THE BORDERLAND 143 proud of her vast temporary responsibility ; but now he knew, and all was suddenly different. And no welcome consciousness had dawned in his face yet. " Oh, we thought we didn't know what to do. But she had sat here for two days and nights, and I made her go upstairs and lie down. And I'm afraid I'm afraid she has gone to sleep. Gone to sleep, and I said I said I would wait here until the doctor came again." " Who ? " he demanded. " Mrs. Blinco. She wouldn't hear of a nurse, or of carrying you to the hospital." She retreated a little farther from his stare. " Don't you know anything of what has happened ? " The man turned his head and moaned in his realization of helplessness like a boy. It was not for her to hear, or, if she heard, to try and understand. He faced round again. It had to be met and endured. We are not measured by our weakness when ill, but by our strength when in health. " Sit down," he said, with an effort. Just a trace of colour had come back to his skin. " I'm very sorry." He put out his hand. "I'm very sorry. I knew nothing." And, for some reason, she turned away and burst into tears. It was not at all in keeping with the nurse's role, but even a nurse may 144 THE BORDERLAND be no more than a woman. Maybe it was the sincerity in his voice that had sunk so deep into her. He was sorry ! " Don't cry," he whispered. Lumps had been gathering in his own throat. " Don't do that. It cannot be helped. Perhaps, if we knew all, we ought to thank God for one more mercy." " Yes," she said, in a half doubtful, very small voice. He waited. She knelt down slowly by the side of the bed. The man's eyes closed, and he seemed to be muttering something in the silence. Then she was on her feet again. " Here here you were to drink this. I forgot I did not know what I was doing. Do I " There was no help for it. He lay passive, as her arm crept beneath his head, as he felt how it shook. She drew him as close to her breast as she could without seeming to, and held something to his lips in a glass. A good deal of it ran down his shirt front, and was lost, but a little trickled down his throat, and in a minute seemed to be galvanizing every fibre in his body. " I'll sit up," he said. " This can't be I'm not as bad as you think. Yes, try me ! " " Indeed, I will not ! " She let the head slip back, and put her cool, delicate hand to his forehead commandingly for a moment, THE BORDERLAND 145 " Wasn't it strange," she asked breathlessly, u you should come back to real consciousness while I was here ? Don't you think so ? " " Yes, I do ," he said slowly. " I do. But how came I here ? " " Hush, you're not to talk at all," she said very earnestly. That subject was too ab- stract and too profound to be entered upon just now. " I shall have to be going soon unless Mrs. Blinco shouldn't wake. You must say now just what you would like to be done. I wish you would ! It's not nice to say, but I really I really cannot somehow take to that person upstairs. I don't know why she should have taken everything into her own hands, as though you were her own flesh and blood." John Laverock did. Mrs. Blinco was not playing the Good Samaritan with purely charitable motives. But of that he would not speak. " You must wake her," he said, after the pause. " I will settle with her afterwards. I shan't be a burden long to anybody. What doctor is it ? " " A Doctor Prothero. I don't know him. Her own doctor, I expect. I couldn't very well bring another. Only think ! we did not know until late last night that anything had happened so terrible. Are you listening ? " His eyes had closed. "Do I worry you ? K 146 THE BORDERLAND Is your pillow soft enough ? Shall I lift you . . . all right, I won't ! " He had flinched. " No, we knew nothing," she whispered on, still craning above him as though ready to draw back at any instant. " A note a dirty note was pushed under our door, to say you were oh, dying ! And no one knows who put it there." The eyes opened again and looked at her with fixed intentness. That stare did not relax until he had recalled everything that had passed in the adjoining room on a night which seemed years back. " Then, no one knows " He half struggled up, his throat straining to sound something. It frightened her. " Lie still oh, lie still ! I couldn't bear it if you were taken bad again like that. Why must you know all at once ? Then there's nothing to tell you we thought you could tell us ! You had a fit of some kind, and you struck your poor head no, don't touch it ! All Mrs. Blinco says is that she found you lying upon the floor in there on Wednes- day morning. I can scarcely believe it. And now it is Friday evening. You have only moved and talked strangely at intervals, and taken a drain of a drug twice. And why those windows should have been found unfastened there, it is all such a mystery. I ought not to have told you ! " THE BORDERLAND 147 " I knew," he said. He had been very white again, and his hands clenched upon the coverlet for a moment. He was pre- paring himself for the lie the lie that would end all at once. " It's no mystery. I knew. I I opened the windows myself. I felt bad ; I remember falling against the wall quite well. I could not save myself. My head struck it I know now." " Are you sure ? " she said doubtfully. " I mean, you seemed so strong so unlikely to do anything of that kind." " In the midst of life," he whispered, look- ing away, " we are in death. You and I all of us ! " That was all. She dared to hang breath- lessly over the bed for more than a minute ; but no new note was to be struck. It was not to be shown her whether he accepted her presence there as a mere matter of fem- inine duty, or whether his silence was a sign of some deeper masculine thought. She drew away, uncertain whether to assume coldness or not. In such a position, she could be only very dear to him, or sink the woman entirely in the nurse. And he had not asked her to remain, even temporarily. She was wildly conscious of not being able to do for him all that was required of her. She was doing nothing. And he had been to the threshold of the Unknown and back 148 THE BORDERLAND again, and he was physically starved. She wrung her hands and bit her lip as she stood back where he could not see her. She did not want Mrs. Blinco ; and yet if only Mrs. Blinco would come in and let her steal out for a few minutes ! It was practically dark now. She lit a lamp there was no gas in this room and placed it so that his face was shrouded in shadow. Of what could he possibly be think- ing ? Was he thinking, or had his mind swooped into the darkness again ? She stole forward a little. She saw that he looked like a dead man, but that he breathed ; and that was all. She wrung her hands desperately again in secret. She knew it now : she could never, never, nurse a man who had no exclu- sive claim upon her ! The folding doors over there shut out all sounds from the street. Just when the silence had so sunk into her that she told herself she must cry out if he moved, she heard the doctor's carriage draw up sharply. A rat-tat went through the house a doctor's dignity is paramount to all other considerations. Even Mrs. Blinco must have heard it. No. Rat-tat came again, even louder. John Laverock half started up. " Lie still ! ' she gasped, and ran out. " Dear me ! Dear me ! " said the doctor, bustling in and striking his silk hat against THE BORDERLAND 149 the gas-bracket. " Where are we ? All in darkness ? Surely patient " " Oh, he's alive ! " she gasped, confusedly. It is singular how the most composed of women are fluttered in the medical presence. " He has talked quite rationally. I gave him the draught. But he must he must have some one there with him. He will die ! " " But I thought you were there with him ! " said the doctor, in surprise. " Yes ; but but I mean, some one who knows what to do ! " " Dear me ! " said the doctor again, as he went in. " Dear me ! This won't do ! " She held her breath to listen for a moment. Then she flew up the staircase. " Where are you, Mrs. Blinco, oh, where are you ? You must come down at once. You really must ! " A door opened, a candle-light shone out, and Mrs. Blinco was looking at her with swollen eyes. " Good gracious me," she said, " you'd frighten any one. I couldn't have a death in my house. Why, I thought you were so used to sickness, and anxious to be with him ?" " I am ! But but the doctor's here. Oh, be quick ! " They stumbled down. The doctor was sitting calmly by the bedside holding John Laverock's hand, and talking in a quiet, ordinary voice. 150 THE BORDERLAND " It's wonderful," he said, looking round at them. " I say it's wonderful. I was fully prepared to find brain fever pouncing on him. There is nothing of the kind. Now, come, which of you two good ladies is looking after him ? You ? " Mrs. Blinco had gone for- ward while Miss Valjean stood in the throes of a bursting " I ! 1 1 " " Well, then, will the other leave the room ? One is enough. He only needs quiet and sleep. You're a wonderful man, sir, and that's all I need say!" As cold as ice Miss Valjean stood at the door. Not wanted ! For a minute she could not, would not, move she felt so sure that an imploring stare from John Laverock's eyes would bid her to drop all other considerations and remain. But he did not seem to give her a second thought. It was Mrs. Blinco who raised him into a sitting position, and un- fastened his shirt-front, while the doctor got out a thermometer. She watched in a sort of unconscious fascination. And then suddenly the doctor turned his head, saw her, stood up, and saw fit to motion her sharply out. In the obscurity of the front room, stifling a great cry, Miss Valjean drew on her hat and gloves. Her hand hard to her lips, she went along the passage, found the lock, clicked the door behind her, and was gone. The woman not wanted is the saddest, bitterest THE' ^BORDERLAND , 151 woman on earth save the woman who has been wanted and then cast aside. The long night ticked by. Dawn came, flushing the sky over London with lilac and saffron, and the rush of the strenuous human tide down the Kingsland Road had begun. John Laverock thought of it all thought of it as something that he had never expected to witness again. He had taken a little nutri- ment and slept for seven hours without stir- ring, while Mrs. Blinco sat and dozed, or swayed her foot and looked at the ceiling for a financial inspiration. More nutriment had been silently handed him at 8 a.m., and he took it humbly, conscious of his dependent position. He could not keep offering thanks, because he divined that Mrs. Blinco set no great store upon verbal gratitude. And now she had washed his face, and combed his hair, and remarked encouragingly that a beard would suit him better than it did most men, although she couldn't understand why the " things " were wanted at all, being neither use nor ornament. Most men with beards looked about as foolish as a middle-aged man in knee-breeches. It all exhausted him. He lapsed into another stupor. When he awoke, soon after midday, Mrs. Blinco was not in the room, and he felt quite able to get out of bed with- out her assistance. He essayed it, and 152 THE BORDERLAND found himself lying stretched upon the carpet. " There's a nice thing," she said placidly, when he lay back upon the pillows once more. Secretly she was not regretting the incident. " That's men all over ! If you're paying for a nurse, Mr. Laverock, you must let the nurse earn her money. I'm sure I try." He felt like weeping in his mortification. But he laughed the ghost of a laugh instead. " Do you do you think Miss Valjean will come to-day ? " he asked. He felt no actual pain now merely a terrible, inexplicable heaviness. " I don't somehow fancy so," Mrs. Blinco replied, with slow emphasis. " I hope not," he whispered. " And so do I," she agreed grimly. " I mean I mean, I can hardly expect it of her." " Oh, I know what you mean. I mean the same. If she comes, I shall say you have got up and gone out." " Oh, don't do anything of that don't wound her ! " " Wound her fiddlesticks ! All a woman like that could do in a case of illness is to knock up a fantastic jelly and leave it on the doorstep. She does ' fancy work,' I expect. H'm ! Women who do ' fancy work ' don't generally fancy work." THE BORDERLAND 153 " She she has a sick brother to attend always." " I'm sorry for him," Mrs. Blinco said decisively. Then she had to close her eyes and droop her head. " That's what I mean," he breathed. " It can't go on. You will be worn out. What will your husband think ? " " Think ? As much as he's able to, I sup- pose that much." She snapped thumb and finger. " Three good meals a day covers everything with most men. ' : He was silent. He did not know whether to feel most sorry for her, or for her husband, or for himself. ' You should certainly have taken me to the hospital at once," he ventured, after thinking a bit. " Bah ! " she said calmly. " And have you put on a slab and cut up like a shin of beef. They'd have gloried in getting hold of a body that couldn't feel anything for two days. There wouldn't have been half of you left." And now it was wearing on toward dusk again. She had propped him up in her no- mincing-matters fashion, and was watching to see if he perversely turned pale and slid down. He really felt almost well, he kept saying. And the doctor had been again, and had bustled out with the same muttered " Wonderful ! Wonderful I " 154 THE BORDERLAND " Mrs. Blinco, you're to go straight up- stairs and lie down," he commanded, sud- denly, almost brokenly. He had been looking at her. " I say, yes ! Put the bell here, so that I can ring if I want you. I'm all right. You're not ! " " Then I think I will," she said, not averse to showing that she could scarcely keep her speech coherent. She had really withstood an ordeal with acrid determination that he only now realized in full. " God forgive me, though," she hesitated, " if I should go dead off and that doctor came banging again." " He won't. Let him go again, if he does. You must ! " She had placed the bell and nutriments near him. Every now and then she stumbled drowsily, and it distressed him keenly. She was just turning, with a hand to her forehead, when there came a half-hearted rat-tat at the door. She sat down. ' There you are. I knew some one would come. I knew it." " Then," he said warmly, " if it should be Miss Valjean, she can come in and sit with me. Or it may be some one from the but they don't know, do they ? Anything anything so long as you snatch a little rest before the night comes ! " She went out. He heard a mumbling. Then she was back. THE BORDERLAND 155 " It is not Miss Valjean," she said. " It is " She swayed and caught at the wall. " Oh, don't ! " he implored. " FU get up. I'm ashamed of myself. Never mind who it is ! What matters ? " " It's a girl who says says she knows you in your Mission work. Wants to speak to you very particularly about business. Knocked twice last night. Don't believe her I never heard it." " Ask her no, never mind. Let her come in a minute, if she wishes to. I can't think. Yes, yes, it is some one I know. Show her in, and then " He lay back, feeling deathly faint. For a moment he lost touch with passing events. Only a mere moment. Then the door had opened again, and into the room, and halfway across it, with a calm, composed step, came Donna Amber Lou. " Is it all right ? " asked Mrs. Blinco. There was a deep, strange struggle within him. He thanked God unconsciously for the creeping dusk that half hid his face. Then he whispered back steadily. " Yes ! It's my friend." Mrs. Blinco was in the comatose, " giving way " state that required nothing more. She gave a deep sigh, and then her feet were dragging up the staircase. CHAPTER XII THE door had closed. Amber Lou looked at it, and back again at him, as if uncertain what was going to happen of her cool temerity. Or, perhaps, the look of John Laverock's face was not just what she had expected. In that curious pause he took in every detail. His heart had thumped : it had seemed so impossible for Mrs. Blinco to mis- take her for anything but what she was. But now he understood. Amber Lou's face and hands looked perfectly clean. She was dressed tidily, even tastefully ; and she was not wearing the emblem of her class the flat straw hat. Never until this moment had he known how he loathed the black flat straw hat. " Why ! " He had to say it first of all, in a voice that he strove to keep steady. " You look quite different. You look a lady!" " Think so ? " It was the same low and level tone, but distinctly subdued for the occasion. " You didn't mind me coming like that, then ? " 156 THE BORDERLAND 157 "Mind?" He put out his hand. "I couldn't believe ; I can't believe it yet. What put it into your heart to think of me ? " " Oh, it was nothing of that," she said, standing with her fingers clasped in front of her. Her inborn self-possession could never seem to waver for an instant. The turquoise eyes in her yellow-rose face looked straight out contemplatively. " I didn't expect you to see me I wasn't sure you could see any one ; but I didn't know what else to say when I'd once knocked, with that woman's gimlet eyes on me. I was thinking they'd done for you." She dropped her head with a sudden jerk. For a moment he was held by a thrill that he could not analyse. Those last seven words of hers had ended in a dry, defiant but un- mistakable sob that was almost a revelation. ' They haven't oh, no ! " he breathed eagerly. " See for yourself." ' Then it doesn't matter," she said, pluck- ing at her fingers. She seemed about to make one of her majestically startling turns for the door. " Oh, but it does ! I'll only tell you what the doctor says that it might have finished any other man. How came you to know ? " " I knew all about it." She flashed a quick look at his hand lying limp there, and away again. " I guessed the lot the moment 158 THE BORDERLAND I heard Ben Fisher had cleared out of it." " Ah ! And and what of the other man ? " " He's gone, too," she whispered. " That was good enough." " Gone for good, you mean ? " " I don't know. You'd better not ask. They wouldn't go far, but you'd never find 'em. You'd better let it drop." " They have not," he sank his voice, " sent you here to spy for them to know whether it was life or death for me ? " " You can think that if you want to." " No ! Tell me let me think you came because you wanted to ; you were sorry. Look at me, Lou, won't you ? " She obeyed. She had been going to smile, but she checked it. The imploring ring in his voice the sight of him lying there so different and yet so amazingly unrevengeful seemed to reach a depth in her never as yet probed. " I did, then," she said, almost softly. " P'raps I'm not quite such a savage as you thought. Oh, I know all about it ! " All through this uncertain spell she had remained standing on the same spot. In truth, the man feared to suggest a chair ; her disdainful refusal seemed so inevitable. And, after the initial surprise, it was borne in upon him that she must be thinking her position more than odd. THE BORDERLAND 159 " You're not shy ? " he dared suddenly. " You quite understand how it is I am left alone here for a time ? " " Well, I was just wondering," she ad- mitted. " If you've been as bad as all that " " She's worn out, Donna ! Couldn't you see it ? I ought to have gone to the hospital, but I had no say in the matter it all hap- pened so suddenly. Only last night, Donna only last night I struggled through. I never thought I was to see any of you again. . . . Don't be afraid. Come closer ! Come and speak to me, won't you ? " She took a step another as if drawn against her will. She drew back her hands tightly to her sides, and looked down at him as he wished. In that moment, maybe, a " bash over the head " took on a new aspect for her. She had her first glimpse of the gentle side of tragedy. Her lips worked several times before she would sound her query. " What did he do to you ? Fisher, was it?" The man smiled faintly. " Why do you want to know ? I am going to let it drop, as you asked. No one but you and I is to know that it happened. Are you sorry, then ? . . . I don't think he meant to murder me no, I don't think that. He was frightened ; he acted on an animal impulse. He got his hands round my throat, 160 THE BORDERLAND and I couldn't defend myself, and down I went." " The devil," she whispered, looking at the wall beyond. Her small throat twitched. " The wicked devil." " Hush ! " John Laverock reached out and gripped her fingers suddenly in his. " Hush ! you have dropped all that now from now ! " Then the inevitable silence. She seemed drugged by the warm, convulsive grip by something beneath it all too deep to be turned aside with a laugh. If the man seemed so contented why, it seemed that she ought not to move until his eyes opened again. More than once she had given her fingers a tug, but his own were too big and powerful. And now he was trembling violently. It ceased he had clenched his teeth. The sick look in his face had gone to his eyes, as he unclosed them. She looked around the room just as Miss Valjean had looked yesterday. " What is it ? Can I do anything ? " she asked abruptly. " If you don't mind, I don't." He nodded, and smiled weakly again. But he did not offer to release her hand. " It's a funny set-out, isn't it, you being left like this ? " she said huskily. " Did you let her think I was some some friend you expected ? " THE BORDERLAND 161 And he nodded again, without hesitation. Amber Lou inwardly resented it, but she was woman enough to feel a momentary gratifica- tion, all the same. She stooped a little. " Had any tea ? It was past five when I knocked. I don't mind telling her I'll have her out of it ! " " Tea ! " He caught at the half-forgotten syllable. It suggested a wonderful fragrance just then. He had not tasted tea for days. In fact Mrs. Blinco had not attempted to run any risk of over-feeding her patient. ' You mean would you make me a cup ? " She hesitated. It was strange ay, and pregnant with the irony of circumstance, that there glistened in his eyes the very light for which another woman had searched yesterday in vain. " 1 could ; but what about her ? Hasn't she been near, or sent some one in to you yet ? You know who I mean Mr. Valj can's sister ! " He looked at her. She had tried to say it with such an indifference. " Ah, now I know," he said, slowly. " Now I do know all. It was you who put the note under her door. You did that for me." " Not so much to do, was it considering ? " " No ; because you know all I would do for you in trouble"!/' He turned his head on the pillows. He was beginning to feel a little strange again there was a " lift- L 162 THE BORDERLAND ing " sensation at the arch of his head which must be fought against. " Yes, she came ; but perhaps I offended her. Never mind that now. You can do anything you please here yes, anything I need you badly ! " " I suppose you know you're holding me as if I was gold ? Ah, that's better." His hand had dropped away. " Touching this cup of tea, then how do you make it ? " " Anyhow," he muttered, watching her. " Anyhow." " Don't be silly." She had to laugh. She was her cool, inimitable self again now, and not in the least apprehensive of anything Mrs. Blinco might have to say. " I mean, there's no fire. You can't boil water without at least I can't." " I think I think she used an oil-stove in that corner for her breakfast. I'm not sure." " Ah ! No, she didn't look as if she wasted much coal. It's alight ! and here's a cup and saucer. Now what about the tea ? " " Goodness knows," he said, faintly. He had not thought of that. Amber Lou was on her knees. He heard her laugh to herself an odd little laugh that was new to him on her lips. He tried to raise himself, and caught just a glimpse of her shoes. The soles were well, there were no soles worth mentioning. " It's all right," she said coolly, looking THE BORDERLAND 163 back. " You keep still ; I was only thinking. You ought to be married, that's the long and the short of it. Now then, I'm going into her kitchen, and you needn't fear I shall touch anything of hers." She marched out. Now that she had spoken in that voice, his contentment deepened. It was curious that the stark novelty of the situation should have died quite out already, and that she seemed to have stepped into a blank. Perhaps he dozed for a few minutes. The next thing he knew was that his arm had been shaken. Long and steadfastly up at her he looked, swelling after swelling unchecked in his throat. The blind was drawn, and the evening shut out ; Amber Lou's hair shone golden against the lamplight behind her. ' Well, don't you want it now I've made it ? " she queried, with a shaky scorn. " I couldn't help being a while. I've been out there was no milk to be seen in this house. I put the mat up against the door. You didn't hear that, did you ? " The man slowly drew himself up, and groped out to take the cup. Perhaps the light had dazzled him for a moment. For the first time she appeared to grasp that he was far weaker than he had seemed at the outset. And the focus of his eyes seemed " out," by the way in which he took the cup. 164 THE BORDERLAND " Here, what's the matter ? " she queried, bluntly if softly. " Do you have a cushion to lean against, or what ? Well, go on there you are ! Have your cup of tea, at any rate ! " She dragged up a pillow and held it in position, with both arms stubbornly tight around him for support. He could not see her now ; she was looking down, wondering when he was going to drink it or if his class of people drank tea differently from others. As a matter of fact he kept putting the cup to his lips and lowering it again. "Drink up!" she whispered. " You'll have it stone cold. Something in your throat, is there ? Seems to me they've let you job along as best you can, haven't they ? I wouldn't say anything at all about this ; I'll wash the cup out. I had to open a dozen tin boxes before I found a screw of tea in a corner. That woman's after saving, isn't she ? I always thought you lived in a grand house like Mr. Valjean's. Well ? " Of a sudden, with a series of little chokes, the man let the cup drop plump to the white coverlet. Out spread the rich brown stain in all directions. " My Gawd ! " Amber Lou breathed in- voluntarily to herself. " That's done it ! " "I'm sorry," she heard him say, in the silence. THE BORDERLAND 165 " Sorry ? That's not much use. What'll she say about her dimity bed ?. . . Hang her bed, if you couldn't help it ! You're shaking all over, you are. Here, let me see to it. She couldn't grumble if you'd burst a blood-vessel, could she ? No ; well then, that's all right." She had dried the mischief as well as she could, and given the bedclothes cunning little twists to hide the worst. " Now don't start worrying. You're not half as well, you know, as when I came in. How's that ? Can you wait while I make another cup ? I don't mind ! " No, he did not want it now. The glamour of tea Mrs. Blinco's tea had departed with the first and only sip. " I'm keeping you here," he said. She was still holding the pillow around him, as he seemed to prefer that attitude after the long spell of lying flat. " Just now you wanted me to stay. Which is it to be ? I don't mind. I only lit the lamp because it looked more cheerful. I'd light a fire, too, if I knew where she kept the coals October ! Not that I came for anything of that. If it's not rude, couldn't some one write to the Mission people for you ? I'll go and tell them, if you like. It's down Shoreditch way, isn't it ? " " No no," he said, his head shaking against her. " I want to let it all drop. I don't 166 THE BORDERLAND wish a breath of it to leak out in Hoxton or anywhere you know that." ' What, on account of me ? " she breathed in the pause, staring. " You don't think I " The burst of contempt broke off ; he could finish it for himself. In her mind she had suddenly weighed against his Quixotic silence her position at this passing moment. " I couldn't live in a house like this," she went on, to keep the pause from deepening too much. " It's like a churchyard. Doesn't her husband come home doesn't any one ever come in or go out ? " There was no answer. Peering down in her calm fashion, it seemed to her that he was asleep. " This is all right ! " she whis- pered to herself. And yet, if Mrs. Blinco had entered the room at that moment, she would not have moved. The fact of his illness, and that alone, could have made her step across the gulf of restraint. In her crude way she told herself that very likely sleep was the thing he wanted. The minutes went by. Her arms were beginning to tire a little. Her lips drew in with a little ironic smile, as she saw that the lamp wick was burning down from lack of oil. Now it was half dark, with small flickers of lemon light on the walls, as the wick expired. THE BORDERLAND 167 " I say ! " she said, on the lowest note of her voice, bending a little. He stirred slightly. Some inarticulate word sounded in his throat. His head came round, till his lips lay against the hand she had slid up to shake his shoulder. She felt distinctly the lips part and close again upon her flesh, with a passive little sound. She could not move. She stood stiffened, little sensations that she had never experienced before following each other down her body. Into her mind crowded strange thoughts, making it expand curiously, but she put them easily from her. " He doesn't know," she said to herself. " He's forgotten who I am, and all about it. He didn't want me for that ! " Soon, as his breathing seemed even, she let him droop back to his pillows, with more soft stealth than he would have suspected in her. Now was her moment to creep out ; and yet she did not like the idea. She was resenting inwardly the whole unsatisfactory position. The lamp was all but burned out. She had stooped for the last time, to draw up the coverlet noiselessly. And then then her heart took that scared leap. His arm was flung out, and touched her face, and drew it down. 168 THE BORDERLAND " Donna ! " He called it out, as if he had dreamed it. " Donna ! I want Donna ! " " You've got me/' she had to breathe back. " I'm here. Be quiet. What is it you mean ? " " Donna ! " he said again, almost as loudly. " Donna ! O, God forgive me ! O, God, tell her ! " His arm fell of its own accord. She could draw back, quivering as after a blow. But with scorn she drove the ineffaceable glimpse of his soul out of her mind. He did not know ! She was intuitive enough to divine that he would have died sooner than utter any such words consciously. And that very knowledge pricked some dormant protective instincts within her. What she did not fathom was the fact that in that hour John Laverock's personality had entered into her own everyday life, whereas up till now he had been a shadowy figure quite outside it. His hand-bell ! it stood just there. She found the matches, went out, closed the door upon him, and lit the hall gas. Going to the head of the stair, she rang her bell sharply. It was almost a duplicate of Miss Valj can's action of the evening before, but it was done very differently. Then she went down to the hall door, and was discovered standing with it half open. THE BORDERLAND 169 " Who's flared that light ? Who is it ? " came Mrs. Blinco' s voice from the landing presently. " Oh, it's you ! You're going ? I don't seem to have slept a wink." " Only three hours," was the dry reply. " I thought I'd better stay with him a bit, as no one else seemed anxious. Now I'm going for his doctor, if you'll tell me the house." " What for ? " Mrs. Blinco came slowly down, a shawl wrapped about her. " You look very pale ! what's the matter with him ? " " I was born pale. There's nothing the matter with him except that I should say he's going to be worse before he's better." " Well, then, it's more than I can manage," said Mrs. Blinco, with an access of asperity. " He's a most provoking patient. The doc- tor ? What time is it ? Past eight ? Oh, well, then he's coming at nine. Much obliged to you good-evening ! " She was pushing the door to. She was a little staggered to find it pushed back very pronouncedly. " Don't do that," Amber Lou said in a different voice. " You can't play about with the man's life like that. I mean, if you don't want him here, say so, and I'll walk down to the Mission people, sharp." " Are you are you any connexion of Mr. 170 THE BORDERLAND Laverock's ? " queried Mrs. Blinco, with sudden vague suspicion. " My brain was a little fuddled when I answered your knock, I think." " Moral, don't drink," was the low reply. She drew herself up. " If you want to know anything about me, ask him. I don't think you'll close the door on me twice. I don't think ! " " Sorry," she said, startled. " We are all liable to mistakes. Might you be coming again ? " " I can't say. I haven't thought about it. I'm going to walk up and down here till the doctor's been ; and p'raps you won't mind stepping out and telling me what he says." " Oh, very good ! " said Mrs. Blinco, dubiously. " I can't stop talking." " Disease of yours, eh ? " " Pardon me ! I say, I can't stop talking I must attend to him." " Yes, do ! " was Amber Lou's parting, chilly shot. She walked away. Perhaps never till to- night had she known her mind to carry her along automatically, but she found herself down at Dalston presently, in the blaze of the shops. She felt in her pockets, and found a few coins. It was a little after nine when she came THE BORDERLAND 171 marching calmly back. The doctor's carriage was there, its twin lights shining like a wolf's eyes at her in the darkness. She waited a little way off, her foot tapping tentatively on the pavement. Then she saw the doctor emerge with importance, his sonorous voice, audible across the roadway, making a fine advertisement. " You're not surprised ? I'm not not in the least oh, dear me, no ! In fact, I fully looked for it." " Liar ! " Amber Lou said to herself, hardly knowing why, save that there was a sort of sinking sensation at her heartstrings that she was not going to own to. He had gone. Mrs. Blinco ran to the gateway and peered both ways a little sus- piciously. " Oh, there you are, then," she sniffed. It was the moment to wipe her eyes. " Yes, here I am." Amber Lou walked up. " Lord Bug, isn't he ? What was that he said ? " " Oh, nothing. He's worse ; that's all." She induced her voice to falter, to remove former impressions. " In fact, he's a bit delirious." " I I thought that," Amber Lou said, her mouth setting in a cold little smile. " That all ? " " All ! I'm perfectly alone in the house. 172 THE BORDERLAND My husband hasn't condescended to bring himself home yet." " I don't wonder," was flashing from the girl's lips, but, curiously again, she checked herself. " That's the worst of biting off more than you can chew," she said shortly. And Mrs. Blinco drew back from the hyperbole. " Allow me to congratulate you upon your command of language," she said. " Mr. Laverock is, at least, in the care of a lady, if I may say so." There was an unsatisfactory pause, while Amber Lou's foot kept up the ceaseless tattoo. " What's to be done ? " came the abrupt query then. "Is he to lay there and shift for himself ? Because, come to that " she stopped. ' Thank you, there's no occasion to come to anything." Mrs. Blinco was properly frigid now. " I think I know my duty as a married woman who has been a mother which you are not, by the look of you." " All right ! " Her brief, scornful reverie was ended. " You don't mind putting these beside him, to freshen the room a bit, do you ? " And she held a bunch of angel- white blossoms across the gate. They got no farther. " Good-night to you ! " whispered Mrs. THE BORDERLAND 173 Blinco, with withering sweetness. " Leave the freshening to me. Good-night ! " The door snapped. Amber Lou was left standing on the pavement with the first and last gift of flowers she would buy for any man breathing. CHAPTER XIII " T OST, somewhere between sunrise and I v sunset sixty golden minutes, each set with sixty diamond seconds ! No reward is offered, as they are gone for ever." Those quaint words sang through John Laverock's brain as he stepped a little un- steadily from Mrs. Blinco's front door and felt the fresh air of heaven upon his face again. Mrs. Blinco was looking after him, as though confidently waiting for him to stumble and fall headlong ; but as he seemed to have falsified the doctor's prediction, so he disappointed hers. For only forty-eight hours more were gone, and this, his first dash from the thraldom of the back room, was the outcome of an obstinate man's deliberate stiffneckedness. The evening was divinely still and clear for October, with little dots of golden fleece still hanging in the carmine of the west ; but he wore an overcoat, buttoned up around his throat. And this it was, perhaps, that made more noticeable the leaden haggard- ness of his strong jaws, and the sunken 174 THE BORDERLAND 175 appearance of his eyes. Apart from a little natural giddiness, he had said, he felt hungry for a hard day's work. Conscience had smitten him, as he sat there, and he had leaped up. And conscience was now a synonym for Hoxton. He forgot at once how badly he needed shaving. He headed straight for the blue haze above which the dome of gaslight was beginning to waver. There were at least two score of beings dotted about there who had come to regard his daily call and few minutes' earnest talk with interest, and be- tween whom and himself there seemed to have yawned a gulf. Old Wisbey, the cobbler, would have fallen back into his habit of shrill, vindictive cursing when the cats misused his plants. Sal Dowson would have yielded to another drinking-spell while her baby lay alone up- stairs for a day at a stretch. Mrs. Rowley would have forgotten his offer of weekly assistance on the condition that she had no more children. And Mrs. Mucklehorn but he skipped Mrs. Mucklehorn's house, and stumbled on through the remainder of the bewildering category. It was a queer sensation the forcing himself sharply back in that brief walk to all the living realities. He could have said that his world seemed to have gone on with- 176 THE BORDERLAND out him. Either it was that his mental range had not been properly restored, or that London streets had a photographically clear and tinted appearance to-night. There was an intangible, gliding aspect about the steady stream of home-bound figures that passed him ; a muffled suggestion in the tread of their feet, the cries of children at play, and the clang-clang of the distant electric-cars ; a sense of being out of touch with it all. When just at the wide space where four roads strike north, south, east and west, Hoxton Street being one of them he heard a vague blare of music, it seemed quite consonant with the order of things to-night. He did not obey the rush of pedestrians to form a line on the kerb, but stood still in the roadway until a mounted policeman loomed close and edged him back. Round the bend of St. John's Road, with a pitiful semblance of dignity and marching array, poured a four-deep line of men, women and children mostly men. The latter walked with sullen, jaded strides ; their women took little runs now and then to keep up with them. Tramp tramp tramp. The constables in the van had the bored look of men shepherding a lot of half -tame animals who must be humoured, in case they ever turned dangerous. A few indifferent musi- THE BORDERLAND 177 cians behind them strove to maintain the martial spirit to the end ; and behind these came a big, dark-bearded mechanic with arresting eyes, who carried a worn old banner upon which was still legible the traditional device : " Curse your charity ! We want work ! " although, paradoxically, men on the flanks rattled money-boxes. It was Black Sam in his element. And then John Laverock understood. This was merely a detached remnant of a host of London's submerged which had poured from all quarters into Hyde Park to demonstrate its strength and its necessity. And London had heard, and could only give the same pacifying answer : that there was not really enough to go all round at present that the " boom " in trade must sooner or later reflect itself upon the employes as well as upon the employers and that Christ Himself had expressly ordained that " The poor ye have always with you." Tramp tramp. They were going by now. The watching crowd viewed them with typical complacent curiosity, without either groan or cheer, as beings who were essentially part of the cosmic scheme. Spellbound him- self by something in the dispirited, non- descript appearance of many among them, John Laverock computed mechanically that at least sixty per cent, of their number must M 178 THE BORDERLAND be accounted genuine strugglers who could justly ask of Leisured Opulence " the right to live." At least ! " Rough, ain't it ? " observed a man with a bag of tools over his shoulder and a pipe in his mouth. " I mustn't grumble. I was in that lot last winter. Sold every stick of the third home up. People don't know what it is to be in work one week and out the next ; no 'bacca, no grub, and the kids howlin'. I'd like 'em all to have a year's turn at it. They'd find the money then as easily as they find it for a Guildhall banquet. My oath ! " " Rubbish." A stout old gentleman with an umbrella and gold-rimmed spectacles glared round. " You can't burn the national candle at both ends and in the middle too. You've got your real remedy." " Oh ! What's that ? Teach 'em con- tentment in church, eh ? " " Rubbish. There is a remedy. Only one, and a stiff one ; but one that will have to come. Over-population, sir indiscriminate over-population is our curse, like the rabbits in Australia. While machinery cuts down every demand for labour, the number of labourers increases. The law of supply and demand, sir, is the first consideration of every thriving business ; and it will have to be considered nationally. Do you realize, THE BORDERLAND 179 sir I don't suppose you trouble to, by the look of you that while the wealthy classes, who could afford to train good, wholesome stock, are remaining deliberately childless, these people go on eating up the land with their offspring, thirty per cent, of whom are physically or mentally unfit, and twenty percent. of whom possess or transmit criminal tendencies. Result : the State is busy night and day enlarging its workhouses, prisons and lunatic asylums. And the nation sits down and looks on and does nothing. Where do you think such a policy can end, sir ? Where do you, sir ? " he appealed to John Laverock, with growing heat. And John Laverock could only answer with silence. The workman coughed sceptically. ' Yes, we've heard all that, scores of times. What's your remedy, boss ? Poison in their grub ? " " No, sir ! You've got that already. Nearly everything you eat and drink is poisoned with adulterants more shame to us for allowing it. No, sir ! The State has a vital problem before it so vital that every successive government shirks it and passes it on to the next ! Let the State inculcate by some form of graduated taxa- tion that a man shall limit his family according to his means, the same as he limits his house-room, and the cut of his 180 THE BORDERLAND clothes. And, above all, let the State insist that every employer shall pay his man a fair living wage. End sweating do those two things and you arrest our social rot, sir, if you don't end it. Charity, sir ! Charity is a disgraceful compromise in a nation like this. It insults the willing, and it breeds the loafer. It acknowledges the wrong that exists, but can never right that wrong. You think over that, sir, when you've tackled all the other solutions ! " The workman passed on his way with a laugh. The shifting crowd impelled John Laverock across the road. The tramp of the remnant of London's skeleton army was dying out of hearing. " Smith ! " John Laverock gave an involuntary shout. He had caught a glimpse of " Lamps Out " pushing a way with both hands at the tail of the procession. Till that moment he had been forgetting the existence of " Lamps Out " of Haggerston. He ran and caught up the odd figure in an old " frock " coat three sizes too large for it, and with the tray of buttons and laces on the point of capsizing. " Come back, here you'll be hurt. What are you after ? Any one would think you could see ! " " Lemme go ! Black Sam's goin' to have a meetin', p'lice or no p'lice ! " THE BORDERLAND 181 " Lamps Out " twisted and wriggled, but it was no good. He gave in resentfully. " Lost my pipe now," he explained, with warmth. " Some one collared it out o' my mouth. I'd ha' clawed his tongue out if I knew who it was. Dirty bleed'n' trick." " Come, come ! I won't listen to that. We can easily get you another, if you must have it. What's the price ? " " Tuppenny cherrywood." He was feeling over his tray in a tremble to see if his day's takings had been collared as well. Once again it was a secret marvel to John Laverock that any human being could exist from day to day in such haphazard fashion blind ! " Where've you been all this time ? " " Lamps Out " queried. His direct method was always toned down with a flavour of respect. " Ain't seen you for months." " Days," the other reminded him. They were back on the pavement now, and he was glad to put one hand to a railing to steady that giddiness. "I've been queer, Smith, and I don't feel as I ought to yet." " Oh ? Thought you sounded a bit harf an' harf, like. Didn't tell you, did I ? The old man's done it this time not harf done it. They've bunged him in the infirmary, and he ain't comin' out very quick. Why, he got chucked out of a pub. for dealin' the old woman one out. She'd gone there to find 182 THE BORDERLAND him and get a shillin' off him, and he ups with his fist instead. Well, you never don't know what happened, do yer ? Anyway, a bloomin' bus couldn't pull up in time, and there you are. All right, ain't it ? All right for the old woman, I mean. Don't make much odds to me whether he gets over it or not. Don't cost me nothin' to live. Ain't got that tuppence handy, have yer ? " " Look here," said John Laverock. He had been trying to think. " Give her this shilling now I trust you, mind and meet me just here to-morrow night about this time, and I'll see what can be done. The worst of it is, the Mission Fund drains out much faster than it well, never mind, I'll come down and see her as soon as I can. My heart's with her, poor soul ! Don't forget." " Not me. Er you said somethink about a tuppenny " " Oh, ah that precious pipe ! Here you are good-night, Smith ! " He turned and struck down Hoxton Street. It was Monday night he had been forgetting that, too. Hoxton, as far as business went, resembled a theatre after the audience had gone. The stalls and barrows stood deserted by the kerb ; more than half the shops had a " gone away " appearance. Here and there a naphtha lamp flared : a negro with gleaming teeth related how he could make all other THE BORDERLAND 183 teeth gleam as nicely with his preparation, or a pill-vendor went through the list of human diseases and showed how his pills were specially constructed to deal with the whole list in bulk. But real trade was suspended. Hoxton had not yet quite ex- hausted Saturday's wages ; an air of semi- stagnation was over all. And yet Hoxton was still Hoxton. An odour of fried fish and stale greenstuff lurked in the air. At the corners of those abysmal narrow streets on the right, knots of women stood who looked as if they had crept out of noisome cellars for a furtive look at the autumn night. Other women, a degree more tidy and normal, leaned from windows and shouted subtle jokes to acquaint- ances below. Barefooted children darted and scampered in all directions, with a general disregard for decency and a vocabulary of obscenities to congeal the blood of any one who knew not his slum-land and the slumber- ing conscience of London. From each public- house came the familiar Babel of shouting and singing, while in the glare outside troops of girls, arm-in-arm, improved upon the can-can and laughed loudly over vile jests that made one wonder for their womanhood. Hoxton, on the surface, was fully contented to toil and pleasure in its own way. But below the surface down in those coffin-like 184 THE BORDERLAND dark side-streets there the drunkards and the diseased slept, and there the innocent unfit were conceived and born in the image of God. CHAPTER XIV THE sky was jet black everywhere now, with a powder of stars. John Lave- rock had paid his few brief calls in Hoxton Street itself, with varying success or dis- appointment ; and now he turned and wheeled into Phillimore Street, which, on a dry night, with its crowded doorsteps and underclothing hung to dry from windows, roughly resembled a row in a Chinese fair. The muffled suggestion was over all partly still, and at times he had experienced a warning wave of faintness ; but he attributed both to his enforced spell of inactivity. He leaned over the railings at No. 36, to find old Wisbey's area shutters closed it was Monday, of course. SalDowson lived two doors higher up. She had a baby, but no husband. She could earn one-and-six- pence a day at plain needlework ; but as she invariably spent two-and-sixpence the next day, and pawned her customers' materials to make good the deficiency, the outlook for her and her baby was not encouraging. " Sheer waste of time," the fatherly "point" 186 186 THE BORDERLAND constable, with a fund of local statistics, had remarked once to him. " Out of thirty- three ' dead drunks ' up at court last Monday twenty-one were her sort. Here's last year's charge-street for the borough : 817 ordinary ' drunks,' and 1,230 drunk and disorderly or drunk while in charge of children. All women ! Clap on another ' nought ' for the number never charged or noticed and there you are. It's in their blood in their bones. When a day in the cells stops drunkenness, one dose of castor-oil will cure consumption." However, he went hopefully up the steps once again. " Who is it ? " yelled a woman from the obscure lower regions. " Oh ! Well, tell him she's sleepin' it off, and can't see no one. And if she don't wake up again she won't be missed. That's me. And I don't care if she hears." " Who has the little one ? " he asked anxiously. It was what he had half feared on Monday. " Who ? Who does he suppose ? If I hadn't taken it from her, it 'ud ha' fell in the copper sure as fate, at twelve o'clock this blessed day. It was on the edge. And best out of it, I say. Has he gone ? " He was going. It struck him that, from the raucous tone of the woman downstairs, she too had slept something off ; and it could THE BORDERLAND 187 all be heard by the interested lodgers on either side. Mrs. Mucklehorn's was directly opposite. He had been going to pass. On an impulse, that seemed weak and yet was justifiable, he changed his mind and went quietly across. If he hesitated and feared, it would seem that he feared the breath of blackmail. Dense columns of steam arose from the lower door and windows. Mrs. Mucklehorn, while denying strenuously that she " took in " washing, had begun the week in no uncertain fashion. Going down the few steps, he could see her waddling to and fro in the distant candlelight, with a huge hillock of soap- foam before her ; but no response came to his call or knock. Finally he went up the front steps and mounted the stair. And it seemed an age since he had felt that balustrade shake under his grasp before. All was dark. Right to the top he felt his way, calling now and then, not sure at any moment whether a door might open and some one stare out at him. He knocked softly three times. " Donna ! " he said. " It is I, Mr. Laverock. Are you at home ? " No answer. He tried one more tap, and then it struck him that the door had yielded in a little. It was going back. The star- light from the window opposite showed him bare boards. Her room was vacant. i88 THE BORDERLAND The sensation that crawled over him was one not easily explained or forgotten. No- thing only an empty room ! and yet haunted by the invisible presence of the woman who had sat there, and thought there, and slept there, and had her being there. He felt inexpressibly chilled, and he knew now of a sudden, without wishing to know, what it was that had buoyed him up with expect- ancy until this moment. He turned away from it as from an un- worthy thought that may dart through the cleanest mind taken unawares. He did re- press a shudder as he reached the last stair, but that was because of the dark dreariness of the house itself. Down through the steam he went again, and this time Mrs. Mucklehorn saw him. Quite calmly he called a question. " Gone ! " shouted Mrs. Mucklehorn, her copper-stick suspended. " Went last Sat'day night paid up her one-and-six and took her things off in a barrer. It's along o' Cobra, if you ask me." " Along of Cobra ? " he repeated. He mis- took her meaning. He knew that a shaft of dull pain had gone through him. " Are you sure ? " " Sure ? No, bless me, you can't be sure of anything nowadays. Harf a minnit, sir ! " She made a mighty plunge or two of the stick into seething cauldrons, as it looked THE BORDERLAND 189 to him ; thrust aside a child who seemed preparing for a perfunctory bath ; and waddled placidly forward. Remembering the flying soapsuds, he stepped back. " Well, and how are you, sir ? Sorry to hear you was on your back. Did you want her ? Well, I never asked where she was goin', and I dunno any one who did. She never opened her mouth unless she chose. She went off huffy and quiet, about nine, Sat' day night. She wouldn't be gone far unless, as I say, it's along o' that Cobra. He was here twice late the same night, askin' after her, and he wasn't harf in a fever about some- thin'. He was no good to her I know that much. I never like them streak o' lightnin' sort o' chaps." " You think she wouldn't have gone f ar ? " was all he could ask, standing very still. " Bless you, no. Once here, always here. Look at me : I've moved up an' down the same street for fifty-three years had this house twice over. Mucklehorn ? Well, he's middlin'. He'd be all right if it wasn't for the sherbet and his rheumaticky pains. Still, they can't say of him what they can of that Ben Fisher could get his livin' anywhere where there ain't no police. That's some- thin'." " How how is Mrs. Fisher going on ? " he asked, with a twinge of his nerves. He had 190 THE BORDERLAND been feeling his way to that point. And she shrugged her deep shoulders. " Goodness knows. It don't do to ask. You've got to keep your eyes skinned and your mouth shut nowadays. Her man ain't been seen by mortal eyes for nigh a week, I'm told. Yes, keeps lovely weather, Mr. Laverock, for them that's out in it with a full belly. There's my copper over again. I'll tear that Frankie's ear off. I told him to hop out o' the bath and see after it." In part relieved, and yet with the same sense of a sick, growing void within him, he went by Mrs. Fisher's house and drew up at the busy Kingsland Road corner. Some one, indeed, had sent after him a galling, if furtive, echo of that haunting " Amber Lou-ou-ou ! " but he did not even turn his head. It was but a contemptible reminder of the Cobra's financial inspiration, and could be allowed to fizzle out as the Cobra's coup had done. He would make his way home. His effort had abruptly exhausted itself. There were singing noises in the air everywhere, and and a desire to be quite alone, down on his knees, and realize that he was being impelled quite consciously into the lethal chamber of passion a longing for two warm arms to enfold him and hold him. He set off back with long strides, his hands clenched against himself. THE BORDERLAND 191 He would never know why, but, passing the public-house by the canal bridge, he swerved aside, swung in the middle door, stared round and found himself looking into the eyes of the very man. Ben Fisher ! For once they were wide open, and re- mained so. Standing by a barrel behind the door, he had a full pot of beer halfway to his mouth. But that it was pewter it would have cracked, as his arm dropped down to the barrel and moved as in a palsy among the spilled liquor. There were other drinkers in the bar, but they simply looked ; they, too, appeared to see something of the risen dead in the drawn white face and tall figure of the man who had stepped silently in. Into stone, or ice, Ben's body seemed to be congealing under that stare. "So we are still on the same earth to- gether ? " John Laverock said, with a bitter little laugh. " And the old haunt drew you as strongly as this ? . . . Step out here." Ben moved forward and after him like a clockwork figure. A few paces down quiet Canal Street he was allowed to pause. He could just move his palms over each other, as if preparing for the great muscular swing that would end in his heavy face. He was going to take it glad to take it without a word or a whine. To his eternal surprise there came nothing 193 THE BORDERLAND but the quiet voice of a man who trembled more in sorrow than in anger. " I am not going to expose you. I have nothing to say to you on that score now. . . . I simply wish you to tell me what has become of her. Yes, Lou Bohannan. I feel that you can, and will." "That's a bet." Ben Fisher felt at his intact throat, and whispered hoarsely. He had been staring at the blackly-flowing canal in torpid amazement, but it told him nothing. " That's a bet. You go " he cleared his voice and wheeled round to point quite con- vincingly " go down the road, turn up Holly Street, take the third on your left, and then . ' ' He mentioned an obscure thorough- fare, and mentioned something concerning the thoroughfare. " She's two doors from the Dalston Lane end of it. And s'help me " "That will do. When did she go there ? " " Sat'day night. And strike me purple blind if " " No, no ! I'm going to believe you, strange as it seems. When did you find it out ? " " Late las' night. Cobra had his ' narks ' out, and one of 'em spotted her." Husky still, he fumbled at his belt, prepared yet for possible flight. " Don't b'lieve me ? You can go down there now, and you'll find him " THE BORDERLAND 193 " Find him ? " " When you've found him, you're as nigh her as makes no odds." John Laverock took two quick steps. He swung round again. His own voice was a little changed, but nothing could change the fact that his hand was straight out. " Take it, Fisher," he was saying. " I can forgive, if I cannot forget. I mean it. Thank you ! The number of my enemies in this world is down to to just two now ; that man and myself. Good-night to you ! " And with those cryptic words he walked away, leaving behind a man so flabby and unstrung that he failed to go back and drink his beer. N CHAPTER XV DOWN the broadest reach of Kingsland Road, and into Holly Street on the right, a man went striding with fire in his veins and a haze before his eyes. There were no more pauses for self -analysis. He was justified now. The great palliating motive had been put into his hands. It was not passion that drew him now, but deadly fear for the soul and body of the woman Lou Bohannan. He had found the obscure street. There was nothing outwardly suggestive in it to feed his fever, as he walked down one pave- ment and returned by the other. He had seen merely a double line of small drab houses in a still, dingy thoroughfare along which came every few seconds the scream of a rail- way vent- valve. He had looked keenly at the house, without pausing. He had mentally decided which room was likely to be hers. But for some reason he would not knock there not yet. He had drawn the hat over his eyes and the coat collar up around his chin. He had spoken quietly to a policeman 194 THE BORDERLAND 195 who passed. After that, whenever a man went by, he turned and looked after him with great hollow eyes, and only drew breath when the man passed out of sight. He was slowly but surely passing into the mood which makes a man dare evil that good may come of it. More than an hour would have passed. The door of the house had not seemed to open once, as far as he could judge from the corner where he hovered. Sometimes he tried to laugh and walk away ; at others he drew up his stiffened arms in conviction as real as though the debasement of her body were the corresponding agony of his own. And then of a sudden all seemed to merge into desperate determination that obliterated everything else. Crossing the road in a few silent leaps, he had intercepted her, as she came moving mechanically round the corner and entered the quiet, dingy zone. " Oh, it's you ! "with the ghost of her ironic little laugh. ' Yes." He looked into the fathomless eyes upturned. They should quail before him to-night. " Yes, it is I. I have found you out I may be in time to save you from that last step of all." She put back his hands, and looked both ways meditatively. Then her breath quick- ened a little, as she began to understand. " I say, I think you'd better go better 196 THE BORDERLAND say good-bye, and drop me. You've been asking questions, haven't you ? Yes, I thought so. Well then, you ought to see I'm not worth your worrying over. I don't know why you do," she ended, looking straight up, a challenging pause between each word. " Never mind anything of that." The man was not sufficiently master of himself to keep back a choke. " Enough that I say you are not going back to that house." There was a silence. For a moment all the world was shut out. She looked down at her twisted fingers. She looked up again, and drew in a breath as of semi-stupefaction. " Are you mad ? ... Do you mean that ? " " I have said it. God shall judge me, for right or wrong. I never meant anything more, happen what must." " What do you think could happen ? " she whispered, still too impressed to laugh or move. " I have not looked beyond the moment when I should face you here and turn you back." " That's nonsense," she said. He had thought for an instant that she Amber Lou was about to clap a hand to her eyes and give a wild sob. " Whatever you think, or whatever you say " "Is it too late ? " He grasped her arm almost roughly. THE BORDERLAND 197 She would not answer, save by a little curl of her lip. ' Whatever you say," she went on pres- ently, "I'm paying for my room ; and you can't keep me out of it." " How much have you paid ? " His ques- tion came at once, stern but tender, full of the same resolute finality that amazed himself as much as her. Again she was silent. " Do you hear ? How much ? " he re- peated. " It makes no difference whether you lie to me or not. You can put it out of your mind for the time being that I am a man at all. I simply ask : How much ? " " Nothing as yet," she had to say, low and defiantly. " I've not I've not decided to stop. ... I wish you'd go 1 " " One moment ! " He kept his firm grip on her arm. " All life is before you, Lou Donna ! I should be less than a man if I allowed one night to pass* Answer me truly, and without any fear. Will you take me, knowing me for what I am, into that house, and let me sit and talk to you as I would talk to any pure woman ? " "No." It came in a sort of hard little moan. " No ! Let me go you're hurting me ! You're trying to make me worse giving me all these things to think of ! You can see it for yourself I got away from him ig8 THE BORDERLAND and from you too I don't want anything more to do with you. There ! " " Oh, Lou ! " he whispered. And he let her hand drop back, and leaned against the wooden door of a closed yard at his side in sheer weakness of mind and body. There was a sudden scamper of light feet on the pavement behind. He did not seem to hear ; it was Amber Lou's half-stifled scream that made him turn. Some shape sped level and half paused. He had just a flash-glimpse of Cobra King's bared teeth and gleaming eyes. Something crashed into the woodwork within an inch of his head. The self-same twist of Cobra's arm, it seemed, had dealt a vicious blow at Amber Lou's breast. Before her moan had died almost before the jagged lump of flint had ceased to roll back the light rush of feet was dying away. " Donna ! Donna ! What is it ? Where has he hurt you ? " He seemed to come from a brief dream. He was panting it brokenly, as he put both arms around the small figure. " Oh, come away come away from this hell's threshold ! Come with me any- where !" She stood her ground. Crouched low against the wall, she was weeping with a terrible softness to herself. The man felt himself on the verge of a storm of sobs, too. THE BORDERLAND 199 " Don't don't, Lou ! You break my heart ! You make me forget .... Dear one ! It was here he struck you here ! . . . O, God, tell me what to do ! " In the pause her crying ceased. Her voice came dully up to him. " Go home, please. You mustn't be seen here like this. Let me drift drift to the devil that wants me and drove me. There's nothing else nothing else." The man looked down at her. He could not speak. His own faculties seemed numbed. One arm was still supporting her. He drew out his handkerchief, and dried her face, smoothed back the amber hair smoothed it unthinkingly back from the ears over which he had not cared to see it looped. Pausing in the movement, he saw her lips quivering passively, like those of one who cared not what happened. With a little answering cry, he put his own to them, stilled them, and dried the dampness on her cheek. She did not seem to know ; or the power to resist was quite lacking. Her eyes, filmed and blurred now, looked desolately into the night beyond him. He took her hand, to feel once again how fragile it was. He took in every detail of the frail figure ; and the heart within his own strong frame hungered and hungered the more to take her away to keep her away from all the swinish leers 200 THE BORDERLAND and poisonous influences to see the true womanhood shining in her defiant eyes. He did not stay to think. Sane thought seemed so half-hearted so inconceivable when so much was at stake. A horror of the still, dingy street had taken him. Without another word, he drew her arm tightly within his, and was moving back along it past the house and on. " You'll be sorry," she gasped faintly. She had fought to get free, but his strength was ten times that of hers now. " You'll be sorry. You don't know what I am or what I Ve been." " You are not that now," he said brokenly. He half swung her round to face him. " You are still still the woman you were when you came to me in my hour of weakness ? Swear that to me ! Oh, answer me, while I can ask it ! There is only only that one week in your life that you told me of ! Answer ! " She looked up at him, white scorn in her face, her teeth clenched. " I can," she said slowly. " You kissed me. You kissed me, and you need not be ashamed to remember it." No more. He had put his hand over her lips, and drawn her on. He saw dimly now just where the path was leading him, but he had entered upon it for the woman's sake, and would not turn back if all London tried to THE BORDERLAND 201 bar his way. If he had to put the world behind him, the world must go. If she sank she sank alone. With his arm about her both might rise. Very silent she was now. She was mastered by a man. He had but a light touch upon her arm as they came out from Holly Street into Kingsland Road. True, she looked both ways with a remnant of stubborn hesitation ; but the shops were long since shut, and the pavements nearly deserted. The night closed around them again as they passed down the street directly opposite. She could summon her voice ; her face was partly hidden from him. " You'll be sorry," she repeated. " You haven't thought." " I have kept my word. Where are we ? ... Yes, make me think now ! let me think for both of us ! What have I done ? " ' What what you can undo without going another yard." " Ah ! " He smiled past her, as she came to a stop. " Don't think that ; you little know me yet. It might have been months years before I brought myself to such a step ; but to-night I was driven, and you shan't find me a coward at a crisis. Yes, it is a crisis ; and you must let me meet it in my own way. If you trust me for the 202 THE BORDERLAND time, I'll answer to God for the rest. Do you, Lou, or not ? " "HI must, I must," she said, in a voice growing calm. " No, no, that does not answer me. Speak from your heart, as I speak from mine. Do you trust my motives ? my reason for bring- ing you away from that." " You've made me," it came at last. " No woman could stand against you." She looked away. " Do what you think best," she whispered. " I won't say another word." He drew her hand between his, and found it cold, and chafed it gently, thinking hard the while. ' Yes, you may talk now," he said. " We will talk together. We can be as calm now as two people who have come along a precipice safely. What is there of yours left in that house ? " " A a box ? " " Only one ? Unpacked ? " " No ; only uncorded. That and a small one." " Then to-morrow I will fetch them from the place myself. Yes, I shall do that." She had given a tremor. " And now that is settled, and for ever forgotten. And now, what of to-night ? " She had no answer attempted none. She THE BORDERLAND 203 was completely abandoned to his mastery, with a strange vista ahead of her along which she would not try to look. "If," he said, " I got you a room some- where close here as I ought to be able to do I should have to stand outside it the night long. No, no, not that I think you would mean to deceive me escape from me. But there is all the past to pull you back ; and only this one passing hour to let you realize what is real and earnest, and how different life may seem if there is always some one close at hand to help you. And so " " Trust me once," she said. " I can go anywhere you can't. Trust me by myself to-night ; and then " " I couldn't, Lou I couldn't. I seem to know so well what would happen. You would tell yourself you were a stumbling- block in my path ; you would be gone by morning. I should never know where and how your life had ended." " Do you want to ? " she asked, with sud- den huskiness. " Do you want to know, as much as all that ? " " I kissed you," John Laverock replied, looking away, his chafing hand becoming still. " I am going to be quite honest with myself. I kissed you ; and you knew it. Until that moment, I had never wished to kiss a woman in that way. I cannot explain ; 204 THE BORDERLAND I cannot understand ; I can only tell you the truth." And through her upturned, amazed eyes gradually shone the glory of a wonder and belief the first faintly vague dawn of awaken- ing pride in the womanhood that she had but just reached. It might fade ; the shutter of ironic incredulity might intervene again ; but it had shone there for a moment. " It is past eleven, dear," he said quietly. He had stood, his hands gripping hers pre- ciously, till he suddenly remembered he had a watch. " I am afraid I have brought you into a false position. . . . No, no, I have not ! Why should we care, as long as we have some- thing to hope for ? ... Are you afraid ? afraid to take my own front room for just this night, while I take the back ? If so, I won't say a word to persuade you. I will do anything your woman's brain suggests except except that I know I could not rest until I saw you safe again to-morrow." " Very well, then," she said, her lips setting a little. " What you mean is, that you wish me to take the back room, and you the front. Then you can trust me. I can't think of anything if you cannot." They moved on again, less quickly. He had stated a proposition, but neither he nor she had the least belief in its reality. An inevit- able lethargy had succeeded the whirlwind : THE BORDERLAND 205 vague ecstasy in the man at his own daring and triumph mute, unspeakable awe in the woman at her own blind obedience to the man. They passed within a few yards of Miss Valj can's stately-looking house. The man looked up, and saw the crimson-shaded light in Bede's room. If he could have called to Bede, and to Bede alone, he would have said : " Look look ! ' There is no sin where no sin is intended ! ' I win her for God not for myself." And the woman, about to pause and speak again before it became too late, as it seemed, saw the working of his haggard but happy face, and realized anew that nothing she could say to-night would shake his determination. Perhaps, had it been possible to prolong that walk indefinitely, he would willingly have done so. But he knew her ; he believed he could follow the mazes of her mind as she moved beside him. So essentially human herself, so steeped in the practical and com- monplace, it was for him to avoid anything which might give her a doubt of his sanity. So he drew up without any show of hesitation a pace or so from Mrs. BHnco's gateway. It was a moment palpitating with mystery and problem from the view-point of the world around ; but John Laverock spoke as natur- ally as though none existed. 206 THE BORDERLAND " In the morning perhaps I may decide to tell her. To-night, if she should be waiting up, it would be difficult to make her under- stand, and " " Yes, she'd drive me out," Lou finished for him. Much of her wonted composure seemed to have returned, but her breath came faster, and her dry, dilated eyes showed a fear of the dark silence behind and ahead that maybe she had never felt until now. " She'd drive me out at sight, and you too ; and you know it your voice shows. You can't deceive me." " I don't mean to," he said gravely. " If you can trust me, all questions are answered that you and I need trouble about. Eleven o'clock is not of our own deliberate choosing, always remember. Besides " he chafed her hand again, and smoothed back the disordered hair from her brows " these rooms are quite my own, until I give up tenancy. Have no fear at all ! " "And then then what about the morning?" she breathed, half clinging, half resisting. It could be only himself and his own position that she was troubled over, he told himself with a twinge and yet with a fresh thrill of hope for her womanhood. " Leave that to me, cannot you ? You forget one thing, Lou. It means this and only this." He bent close, " J have your THE BORDERLAND 207 honour to guard from now; and my own honour depends on my doing that. You can under- stand ? Then, let all else go. Listen quite calmly, will you ? " " Yes yes I am ! " " I am going in with my key. I must leave you here a minute perhaps longer oh, you don't know how I trust you now ! Then I have simply to open the glass doors there. Just that." He pressed and released her hands. Amber Lou caught at his arm again, and stood an instant, looking beyond him. Then, with a quiver of her breath, she walked quietly on alone, through the gateway, and to the end of the small square of ground fronting the windows. He could see her, through the evergreen border, standing very still. Startled for the moment, he understood ; and his heart swelled. " God bless you, dear," he said across the border. " I will not keep you long like that." He went steadily in as usual, just swinging the gate to after him. His key clicked, and the door closed behind him. The bolts shot into place, leaving the woman outside. And, as it was to be, a questioning, shawl-draped figure rose from a sentinel-post in the kitchen. Mrs. Blinco had chosen to wait. CHAPTER XVI Mr - Laverock ? " " It is ! " " You do know the time, I presume, sir ? " she asked, coldly solemn. " I may be for- given for thinking you out of your senses, I hope ? " " Certainly certainly," he called back, almost cheerfully. Yet how his heart throbbed ! "As long as I am not, and time proves it, what odds ? " " Odds ? " she repeated. She was not feigning her suppressed indignation. " A sick man, barely up from his bed, to go career- ing about the streets until twenty to midnight? Is that nothing ? If I had been a professional nurse you would not have dared. As it is well, there, I consider it unkind ungrateful." And the shawl-fringe went to her eyes. She had watched the clock, and burned gas, for over two hours. Andjie walked in as if nothing had happened and seemed none the worse ! " Oh, come ! " he said, a little impatiently. " I have work in the world to do, like your- self, and I must try to do it. But but I 208 THE BORDERLAND 209 am tired ; you'll believe that. I want no- thing nothing at all, thank you. Good- night ! " She stood like a drab ghost in the dimness for a moment, looking at him, as he held open the back-room door. His voice recalled her. " Is is Mr. Blinco in ? " he asked a little thickly. " He is," she replied, with emphasis. " Well you may enquire. It appears to me that the world is slowly going upside down slowly but very surely. Ah, well, I'm no one I don't count." ' You've been very, very good," he rapped out. " I shall repay you, for all. Is that enough ? " " Oh, don't speak of that never mind that. I shall never be missed not even by my own husband. Good-night ! There is your medicine the doctor's boy brought it. Take it ; I don't expect you to drink it. Good-night ! " He held his breath, literally, until sure that the door above the staircase had closed finally. He held it for another spell until his heart threatened to burst. Then he turned the door-key on the inside, and walked to the folding-doors. He would not hurry, he told himself. But " Oh, Lou, Lou ! " he was saying, in a moan of misgiving, as he had to take that silent o 2io THE BORDERLAND leap across the front room. " I trusted you ! " He shot up the blind. And she was there, with only the glass between. She had not stirred. He waited just a moment, his pale face smiling back at her reassuringly. Then steadily he slid back the fastenings. One unseeing glance she gave at the night around, one back at himself, and then was inside. He just pressed her hand again. " Victory ! " he whispered. It was not for her to understand not yet. As far as she grasped, he might be meaning his own fleshly triumph over another man Cobra King. But he whispered it : " Vic- tory ! " and it had a fear-dispersing sound. She had been to these rooms before ; but now all was different. At first she would not move. Then, lifting her head, she gave before her the swift look of a startled child. Her face flamed. It was new, sudden, con- sciousness of her sex. The flame, dying out, left her very white. But all that the man did not seem to see. He had lowered the blinds, turned up the gas, and moved about the room quietly but not on tiptoe, or stealthily. Once again he had been forgetting all about his supper, but it had been spread out there with a sarcastic elaboration by Mrs. Blinco's hands, and it had a not unwelcome look in the mystic nebulosity which, spite of himself, still clung about the THE BORDERLAND 211 situation. In fact, as he moved, he kept turning his head furtively. He half thought the still figure of Amber Lou must be a myth that would vanish. And oh, the tense, suppressed joy of each realization that she was standing there ! He thought rapidly, and decided that nothing could be more natural than to insist upon her sharing the meal with him. That would break the spell for her. He was not fearing in the least now ; but she was a woman. And the world casts the stone at the woman, and never at the man. It was solely the stern necessity to whisper everything that galled him now. " Still," he said, " it is only just to ourselves, and kind to her. Let her sleep quite peace- fully, now she can. I do feel happy, Donna ! It's a new feeling something more than happiness . I have done the only thing I could think of in the circumstances, and I'm not going to let you regret it in the least. I don't ! " " Sure ? " she whispered, looking at him. On her part, she was beginning to wonder hazily just when and where the " preacher " had slipped from him, and only the " man " had been left . She only knew she could never, never, think of him as anything but a man again. " Perfectly ! " " And yet yet you might have been lying 212 THE BORDERLAND dead by now. He meant it to-night this time," she said, still standing stiff. " You don't know, but I knew. He had waited for you not me with that stone. He meant it, and he means it still." " Then, we won't fear. Forewarned, we shall be forearmed. Just leave everything to me from this moment. You're still very cold, although it is really warm to-night ! " He took off her jacket, and then her hat, and laid them carefully upon a chair. He would have lit a fire had he dared. Instead, he drew her to the table. " Now, dear, don't say a word to wound me. Eat half of my supper, and I will eat the other half not because we want it, but be- cause it is wise. What is there ? Not much for ' a grand house ', I'm afraid, Lou. Still, we're quite happy ! " He had to fall back on that iteration again. Amber Lou put a piece of bread to her mouth, and paused. With wide blue eyes she stared straight before her. A series of sudden little chokes followed each other quickly in her throat. The man reached across, held her hand, said " No ! " in a deep, quiet voice ; and she was stilled. " I won't again, "she said, almost piteously. " But you know you know how you found me." " Enough ! " he said, in the same hushing THE BORDERLAND 213 way. " I have drawn a line behind us, and you will not cross it again while I live. Now, eat ! " She obeyed, in a subdued, stupefied man- ner. Now and then, when he looked across, her filmed blue eyes, watching him so intently, gave him a faint, half-unconscious, smile that made him want to leap up, and kneel beside her and draw her head on his shoulder, and thank her. But to do anything of that, he knew, might bring the outburst that nothing could check. All was strange ; all was uncertain save that she was gradually fitting herself to the position trying to be the woman he believed her to be. That was wonderful enough ! Now the meal was over. He was not going to sit and talk to her, as if eager to prolong the mere novelty. As he rose, she stood up ; but he motioned her back. ' You've been so brave so tactful far more than I could have asked. Be so still ! " He went across to the broad, old-fashioned couch in the corner, and quietly stripped away the coverings. Her under-lip twitching now and then, she watched him moving to and fro between the folding- doors. In a few minutes she knew that he had practically transferred the bulk of his own bedding to the couch. She wanted to rise up against it, but could not ; the very naturalness of the 214 THE BORDERLAND man's method conveyed to her the highest sense of his delicacy and resolution. But, finally, when the pillows had been placed, the woman in her revolted. She would not be outdone. She walked through and stood looking down at his own mattress with a sensation not easily described. " Yes, I will see I will speak," she whis- pered. " I've not said anything, but I knew you were not even fit to be out of doors to- night, much less this ! Bring half of them back, please ! " He stood firm. So did Amber Lou. Be- fore it could reach smiling-point, she pushed past him and showed what she meant. Then, with her own hands, she calmly prepared his bed. She went up to him, without a pause. " Now you know whether you can trust her. Good-night ! " " I shall not say it," he said quietly. " It sounds like a farewell even that word. No ; you'll be so near that I need only say ' God bless you ! ' " She turned away. She turned again, drew his face down a little abruptly, and put her lips to his cheek ; as to say that she could appre- ciate all, and that she was woman enough to divine where the " victory " really lay that night between the fleshly and the spiritual forces within himself. She went through, nearly closing the folding THE BORDERLAND 215 doors behind her. His own room was in darkness, save for a glimmer from the low gaslight he had left burning in hers. As he moved quietly back, he found himself totter- ing, in a weakness so pronounced that he could wonder where all his nervous strength had come from that evening. As he took off his shoes, his eyes were closing in a deadly weariness. Yet he sprang to the realization sharply he must not sleep. Not for one minute. There was the morning to be reck- oned with. He had compelled her mute compliance on every point. He lay down on the bed just as he was. Without listening, he knew that Amber Lou, in her room, had done the same. He was wishing earnestly she might be able to forget herself for a few hours, but dared not go beyond the bare hope. Sleep ? Nay. A sort of vertigo had taken his brain round and round like a maelstrom the moment his head touched the pillows. It frightened him. He swayed up, coldest sweat breaking out at every pore. He sat in tremor after tremor. If if the threaten- ing physical breakdown came now ! A gulp of cold water kept it at bay. If he could only venture to draw those folding-doors quite close, she might not have to hear him tip-toeing to and fro. A long time he waited, as it seemed ; and then stole to do it. And 216 THE BORDERLAND instantly came her voice, in two breathless bursts, telling that she was upon her feet. " What is it ? What is the time ? " He started back as if the woodwork had burned him. Only with the greatest effort he controlled his throat. " It's all right. You're not to worry about me. I felt faint unwell and I did not wish to disturb you. That's all." " I ought to worry," came her voice, softly vehement, in the pause. " You were ill. I knew it when I first looked at you. Can I_can I " " Hush no ! I'm very much annoyed with myself for making you think that. You are to lie down, dear, and just forget everything, as I am going to do. I'll call you in time long before any one is about." Another pause. He had cunningly drawn the doors almost together by degrees. Then " I don't believe you ! " flashed from be- hind them, dangerously audible. " How would you wake ? how could you ? I know. You were going to sit up ! " " Nonsense, Lou ! Don't get excited. Look here could you sleep, if I can ? " " No 1 " And he gave a little groan. " I thought not. I've roused you. But try. I'm gone. Try ! " THE BORDERLAND 217 He slipped away, looked out through the back window, and wondered how the stark hours, with his nerves still at that elastic stretch of suspense, were to be lived through. He tried to forget her to keep his mind from treacherously passing the doors and catching a glimpse of her as she lay with her eyes wide open ; but he found that an im- possibility. He had been swept by yearning pity into that kiss ; he had looked deeper into her woman's soul than any other man had done ; and it was not to be humanly sup- posed she could forget in an hour. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he forced himself out of a partial stupor, and looked again at his watch. Ten minutes to two. He listened for her breathing, but could hear nothing. To and fro he went tip-toeing, now and then putting a hand to his head to keep back that intolerable foreboding of collapse. He thought of his medicine, and drank a double dose at random he would do any- thing to keep capable and clear-headed until, say, half -past five. Now it was half-past two. In about three hours more the obstinate sky out there would be streaked with grey dawn. Then he would steal out to the kitchen and make a cup of tea no, two cups. A little later, he would unfasten the glass doors and walk quietly from the house with her ; and Mrs. Blinco 218 THE BORDERLAND might conclude that his madness had ex- tended now to long tramps before break- fast. Beyond that point his speculations would not go. " Oh, this pain this sickness ! " he cried to himself once, with suppressed impatience. " Oh, if I could sleep for one hour, and be sure of waking. One hour ! " He flung himself down on the bed and buried his face in his arms. A long time he seemed to lie, trying to force a lethargy and yet struggling against it. There were sharp little agonies darting like lightning-streaks through his forehead, and at times a " winding up " of his brain that seemed about to go on to snapping point. But he bore it, seldom stirring only clenching his teeth against any sound, or swinging up an arm in the darkness now and again. He had heard nothing. Maybe the lethargy was gaining hold without his knowledge. He could not move, when there came a rustle so soft and so intangible as to suggest the entry of a spirit. Something was hovering over him ; something that bent close, and that tried not to breathe too palpably. He opened his eyes suddenly wide. " Oh," he said, with a moan, his arm flung up. " Oh, this night ! " " I know ! " Closer still she stooped, and put her hand upon his forehead. " Lie THE BORDERLAND 219 still. I know ! I've watched you till I couldn't bear it any longer." She slipped her hand to and fro very softly through the wave of hair above his temples, as if instinct told her where the " lifting " pain must lie. Again and again the man moaned, and then he was still. The touch Amber Lou's touch although not trained to softness, came like a velvety green oasis and soothed his raw nerves as nothing else could have done. When it seemed about to cease he groped out to hold her to him. " Yes, all right," came her far-away whis- per. " I'm here. I ought to have known I did ! Let everything go. I'll know just what to do." The minutes passed oh, so slowly, so curiously ! Her effort had tired, but the lulling caress went on, save at moments when her own weary head sank forward. If she paused for ever so little, his breathing, growing deeper, seemed about to break in a quiver, and his arm made that groping movement. Sleep had come to him, she felt almost posi- tive ; and yet the mind within him was afraid to cease work on her account ! She stole her face round once just once to look past the crevice of his blind. There was just a suspicion of sickliness in the sky out there, but nothing more. Unthinkingly 220 THE BORDERLAND automatically she went to lift her aching body from the cramped position. And a long tremble went through her as the silence was cut by his dull, weak little cry. " Don't go ! " " Not ? " she said, looking low into his face. " Not ? You want me ? ... 'Sh ! No, I won't go ! " She paused. And then, ever so softly, she lay down beside him, and drew his head close to her, and held him tightly so, his cheek buried against the quick throb of her heart. * * * * * It was full daylight when John Laverock heard a sound through his dreams as of muffled drums beating. It was the incessant tap of fingers against his door panels. " No no ! " he half shouted, starting up. " I beg your pardon, Mr. Laverock ? Breakfast ready, when you are. Nearly nine o'clock ! " He stared around. He was alone. He looked at the pillow beside his but he was alone. Fear and vast wonder ay shame and joy held him in their grip for a minute. Then he saw a folded scrap of paper pinned to his mirror there. As if still dreaming he read the few words that had been scrawled across it with a stump of pencil. " Just six o'clock. Am going. Do nothing to-day but rest, because I ask you. Shall THE BORDERLAND 221 pass by end of street about 7 to-night, if you wish it." " Bless her ! Bless her ! " he said brokenly, crumpling it up. " I will ! " It was a new voice, even to himself. The weak sunlight flooding the room was more golden than ever it had seemed before. He trod to the folding-doors as toward something semi-sacred. It seemed beyond belief : she had carried back her couch- coverings in silence, and removed all visible traces. Then she had gone out by the glass doors just at daybreak, wedging them to- gether with a bit of wood after her. It was he who had slept that night, and not Amber Lou. He refastened the windows, and went back. And then Mrs. Blinco was tapping again with his breakfast, and the never-to-be- forgotten interval had to pass into the realm of memory. CHAPTER XVII AGAINST all traditions, at noon that day the sun hung like a great orange be- hind a veil of heat. By four o'clock it was a fading crimson blotch behind the bank of slate-coloured cloud that forged over London, giving it an unnatural, funereal appearance. People turned up their faces for a breath of air that was not, and to wonder what the heavens were plotting. For John Laverock the sun had not lost a shred of its first brightness. He trod Kingsland Road, and then Holly Street, with the air of a man detached from his surroundings. Two small facts, if he could have halted to realize, were typical of his changed mental condition : Hoxton seemed to have slid quite into a background, and he had forgotten Bede Valjean Bede, who lay propped up in that room and waited for him. The obscure street just off Dalston Lane looked not nearly as dramatic and depressing now as it had looked by night. But, for him, there would ever be evil in its sinister silence THE BORDERLAND 223 its pretence at respectable unobtrusiveness. It was the supine tentacle of an octopus, waiting to absorb its prey. He walked its length for the last time, and knocked at the house. A woman put her head from an upper window and looked at him. He looked back at her in silence. She came down, opened the door two inches, and looked him up and down again. He had an unmistakable " cut." " Yes, I knocked. Are you afraid of me ? " he asked straightly. " Who are you ? " She looked as if her nights and days were spent between her bed and the card-table. Every trace of feminine freshness had been burned out of her skin. " What do you want ? " " Only to know if Miss Bohannan is in." " Who on earth's that ? " There was a pause. Then another woman's voice came from a quarter invisible. " He means that girl who came Saturday night. She went out yesterday evening, and hasn't been back." " Thanks thanks ! " His heart leaped. He put a foot on the mat. " I have simply called for her boxes. She will not be back. If you'll just " The woman silently yielded way for him. There was a look about him which seemed wholly incompatible with natural deductions, 224 THE BORDERLAND but which compelled obedience. She pointed, and ran back to whisper with the other woman. He had stepped into a room that was gloomy and stuffy. He could have shuddered at the tawdry draperies at the few innocent- looking prints on the wall. Striking a match, he found the boxes two cheap tin things. He would not glance at their contents, to see if they were worth plucking from this place ; but for just a moment it was hot in him to stride out and say : "I have changed my mind. She will not require again any- thing that was left here of hers." But there might be a relic some small memento of the past to which Amber Lou had clung. He retied the cord, gripped both boxes in one hand, and stepped out. " There was a trifle to pay, I understand," he said bluntly. This time they were prepared for him, with folded hands, little coughs, and business- like attitudes. He saw at a glance that they had jumped to an inspiration he was engaged in Rescue Work. " Yes. Fifteen shillings," one said sen- tentiously. " Nonsense," he replied. "You think so?" she tittered. "Then perhaps you will be good enough to put back the boxes and allow Miss What's-her-name to settle her own affairs." THE BORDERLAND 225 He looked from face to face, but neither flinched in the least. It was a novelty, for the time of day. " You might lower your demand if I called the police," he suggested. " Oh, we are quite friendly with the police, thank you," was the reply, convincing enough. " In that case," he said, taking his resolu- tion, " you must send them after me, for that is all I have with me, and all I intend to pay you." He put down half-a-sovereign, and walked out with the boxes. He heard a smothered cascade of laughter behind, and knew that there was no risk of a denouement. In five minutes more the street was left behind for ever. It was not yet half-past five, but the air had grown purply dark. A light in an upper window showed him Mrs. Blinco's wavering reflection on the blind there. He breathed freely. Entering quietly with his key, he slid the boxes far under his bed, knowing from experience that they would be safe there until Saturday morning, when the dust- clouds drove him from the house. Then he drank a cup of tea, and waited. Problems had to solve themselves now as they arose. As he stepped from the house again at half-past six a greenish-yellow fork of light darted down the heavens. It startled him 226 THE BORDERLAND a little, but he went on, merely wondering that there had been no thunder. And it had quite gone from his mind when, a few minutes later, he saw a small, calm figure turn the corner opposite to where he waited. He went across, took her hands in his, looked down into her face once, and was full of a deep content. " You are early ! " he whispered. " So are you ! " she whispered back. The scared, defiant stare had gone from her eyes. There was only the least tremble in her hands. "Don't talk yet," he said. " We won't stand here. There is the evening before us." " And the storm," she added, in the same bated way. It was as if both unconsciously tried to pick up the thread where it had dropped at dawn. He had drawn her arm within his. It seemed the right thing to do now now that he had plucked her out of her own element into his, with all its inevitable res- traint and strangeness. Morally considered, she was a wild thing, only lassoed into a semblance of submission as yet. If he once allowed her to realize the depth of what the world termed the social gulf and there his thoughts paused. There was one thing that could bridge any human gulf, however deep, at a bound, and that, even now, he felt THE BORDERLAND 227 a curious shame in contemplating. He wanted to believe that something far deeper, far nobler, had swayed him throughout. They had walked on and on, like two shy children, till almost the length of the long, rural-like Southgate Road lay behind them. In truth, there was something in her silence that made him afraid to break his own. Being a man, with limitations on certain essential points, he had left it to her to devise in the interval a way out of the temporary dilemma as to ways and means. But no effort to do so reflected itself in her face, with its calmly-compressed lips, its absent blue eyes, and its expression of half sad, half stubborn abandonment to him. What, he asked himself, if she had taken him literally at his word in everything ! One more baleful fork shot down the sky ahead with the swiftness of a serpent's sting. This time a distant growl made the still air quiver. Two heavy rain-drops splashed upon his hand and upon hers. He drew her to a momentary standstill, to try and realize that the night was not normal. But all was deceptively still again. To turn back seemed somehow like admitting a disillusion or a fiasco. He went on, as with an objective in sight ; and Amber Lou walked passively beside him. He had assuredly not intended to come citywards into these 228 THE BORDERLAND crowded streets ; and yet the very rush and scurry around was a check upon this perilous, lulling silence of theirs. " Lou ! " he said " Donna, I mean I'm going to call you that. Do you mind ? " " Mind ? Where are we ? What is there to mind if you like it ? " she answered, as in a reverie. They were passing the quiet oasis known as Finsbury Circus, with its broad pavements, its fountain, and its lordly proof of what the State can achieve when it makes up its mind to beautify drab areas. " Are you tired, then ? " he whispered. " Oh, no ! I can hardly feel myself moving." " But you have not left it until now to to think ? " " I have ! " she said, as if she had been preparing herself for a stern reproof. " I have ! " " You have nowhere to go when when you leave me ? " " Nowhere at all ! " He was thrilled and silenced by mixed sensations for a moment. Then he pressed her hand quickly. " Don't worry ! What have you done, then, since since you left me ? " " Nothing ! " It was the same passion- less voice, but with something dormant in it. "I see. You could not. What have / done ? Nothing ! nothing but bring away THE BORDERLAND 229 your boxes from that place. I meant, where did you go ? " " I wanted to be all by myself you made me ! I went by the tram, and it stopped at Hampstead, and I sat down there in the quiet that's all." " But with nothing to eat all day ? " He paused, looking into her face keenly. " I never thought of it. I didn't want it. No no ! " She checked his hand, drew him on. " I don't want it now. Don't keep thinking of me." " But I must ! If I do not it will seem as though I deliberately kept you in last night's position. You have nowhere to go except except Oh, Lou ! " That was the extent of his effort. The misgivings came so thickly, and paralysed his faculties. What could he say what ought he to do ? Sheer drugging impulses seemed drawing them along a path to which there was no visible end. What last night had seemed a justifiable resource Both paused simultaneously. He had not the faintest idea as to where he was now, and not time to ascertain. That thunder- burst had come like the stunning roar of a tiger leaping for their very throats. Amber Lou gave a little cry and clung to his arm. There was the briefest, vaguest pause another buffeting roar an avalance of sudden 230 THE BORDERLAND rain that whipped the pavements into foam a series of lightning-streaks which gave the streets a ghastly illumination and a flight of human figures that left them standing alone as in a doomed, dead city. " My precious ! " John Laverock gasped, all unconsciously. He had thought to fling his own coat about her frail shoulders, but was half blinded. " In here ! ' ; It was the dimly-lit portal of an old church one of the old City churches that may have stood for centuries, half forgotten, grandly, coldly serene amid the rush of human progress. As they panted through, the door was closed against the rain-storm behind them. The thunder without was drowned by that of the organ high above the dim chancel where tall candles flickered a light upon stone figures and painted angels that had looked down upon the same cloister-like vista for ages. It was London, and yet it was like stepping from earth across the threshold of the realm we see in dreams. Dotted here and there along the carved oaken pews was the figure of a worshipper, almost lost in the vast solemnity. Divine service was being held. The voice of a man robed in white, unreal in the far-back glow of those candles, came through the hush as steadily, as conscientiously, as though a full assembly knelt there to worship the Almighty, THE BORDERLAND 231 as though no lorces of the Almighty were whipping the fugitive thousands outside. And the low organ wail, and the subdued intonation of unseen figures, answered him in the pauses, with the greatest and saddest of all finalties in language the reverent, sonorous, sublime " Amen ! " Into the remotest shadowy recess of all the man had drawn the woman's figure. It had begun to tremble violently against him, as his arm held her close. She had closed her eyes, and could not open them again. This vast solemnity spoke to her of the end of all things ; to her mind the voice of the white-robed man was the voice that calls to account in the name of the Majesty in which all men and women, from the highest to the lowest, must keep their secret belief. In this psychic hour of her career, when all had grown uncertain and vague, with possibilities hungering to sprout in the dark so quickly that they might exhaust their own vitality and die back, this great revelation shone suddenly into her, and seemed to lay her small soul bare. . . . Once at the play a drama of the emotional type even her scornful imagination had thrilled at the sight of a stage-woman a woman like herself driven out of a vile environment by the light of the dawning Cross. In this moment she was that woman ! 232 THE BORDERLAND The voice went on. The voices answered him. She seemed to fear to breathe. Mere physical movement seemed to disturb the workings of a Divine process. In the deep obscurity of the high, old-fashioned pew the man held her tightly to him, as if he under- stood as if, through the storm, he had been the unsuspecting instrument of God. The steady down-slash of rain without could just be heard. But it belonged to an- other world. A great silence had folio wed the organ's last swell and die-away. The white- robed figure of the man had slowly advanced. He looked before him, his hand upon the eagle-winged lectern : looked across the dim space seemed to be looking at themselves. A wild sob that had been gathering in the woman's throat, and shaking her breast, threatened to burst from its bonds. The man again as though he understood put a hand to her lips, and pressed her to him. " Be brave," he whispered. " Let God speak. Listen ! He speaks to you ! " And at last the waiting voice came. " For you, to-night, I have no sermon, but a simple allegory a message to those who go through life saying : ' There is no Light because the Light has never come to me ! ' The picture of a man as I have seen him in my thoughts blind, perverse, despairing, when the truth knocked at his very door 1 " CHAPTER XVIII drip, drip but no rain. Drip ! at unnerving intervals, with now and then that still smaller sound like that of dry lips parting for a passive kiss, or a dumb man straining in secret to regain his voice. Two falling leaves had touched and rustled ' good-bye ' ; or a shorn tree had shivered inertly. Drip ! To the Man, watch- ing from his closed window with dull, stubborn eyes the pen cast aside that meant his livelihood it was like the slow drain of life-blood. His own ! " He thought of Summer. O, God ! Summer, in her whirl of yellow flame, who came rushing back each year to blow breath of poppies upon his chilled limbs and faculties, who took him to her thyme-scented bosom and wound her downy hair lovingly about him, and from whose full breast he drank the warm milk that was new life to her best- beloved, most petulant, child the struggling poet of moods ! Summer ! . . .To stand and see this regal, full-blown rose scattered to sodden soil ! To see November, the cold- 233 234 THE BORDERLAND breath' d, mist-haloed, cynical old grave- digger, covering all with his fungi, his matted- leaf rugs, and his crape of silence ! Out of death, life yes ! Patient Nature would endure her travail yet again ; Spring would open its eyes to blink smiles or weep showers ; but for that he would have to wait weary months. And, being what he was, he had convinced himself that he could not bear the spell of waiting again that there was no relief. When his power to work failed him utterly, when the perverse despair reached its fullest hold, he would fling open the corner drawer, close his eyes, and clutch the cold pistol lying there. It was something to think that he might end all in a moment ! " Asked, he would have said impatiently that he knew no religion required none. But he lied ! He worshipped his own comfort the sun. " He worshipped it with a passion, an absorbing sincerity, that made all other worships seem incredible and make-believe. When the sun hung like a topaz in serene blue, it was for him the only justification of life. Those who could not see eye to eye with him were insane. When the drab days came like a shutter between, his heart sank as though the tragic figure of Death had climbed the throne of the universe for ever. This was his blindness his inseparable THE BORDERLAND 235 selfishness. He resented the shy, veiled ap- pearance of Nature in her period of gestation. He was living only half his appointed exist- ence ! Like the child at the play, he could brook no intervals. He was numbed at his desk robbed of inspiration and desire to create. Poverty threatened. He would end it. Sooner or later the culminating point would come ! " But Summer ! He flung open his doors, strained out his arms in the glow, called to the Woman to come and realize that every- thing on earth save herself responded to the sun's caress and justified his own bitter theory. . . Winter ! At the first humid scent of mushrooms he grew silent and foreboding. No one must laugh aloud, or suggest that the grey, stark stillness had a fitting place in the mosaic of the seasons much less an artistic one. He shut himself obstinately in with his fire, and shivered rebelliously, and nursed his dyspepsia, and only wrote in savage spasms for the Woman's sake. And in his heart he called God more than cruel. " The Woman was watching, too. Watch- ing the Man. He came always first : for her, no time to think of seasons. She ' under- stood ' him. That meant, she was expected to understand ; she had been singled out to be a struggling poet's soul-mate. His brain was so much greater than hers ! She must 236 THE BORDERLAND never question or show surprise ; she must see life as he saw it through his dark glasses. Her great yearning love for him, her belief in his genius and depth, made her an un- conscious willing martyr. It told her when to sing at her work, and when to be voiceless and sad ; when to arrange his room, and when to leave it severely untouched. She knew, through closed doors, the moment when to steal in and draw the pen from his fiercely-gripping fingers and thaw his bitter- ness once again close against her throbbing heart. She knew when to cling to him as her hero, and when to soothe him protectively as her babe. The Man had picked a pearl from the oyster of life, but held it so loosely that it might fall from his grasp. And this was what her love would never let her tell him in words. " She came in, hooded and cloaked for her daily walk. His hand slipped away from that corner drawer but that she was not to know. It was just to look at him to let her lips quiver in a mute kiss that need not disturb him. And then. . . . " He was crouching there, cold, stubborn, breathless waiting for her to go ; but to her he was a sick man who had turned upon his pillow to watch the closing door. With a little rush of fear and longing she was suddenly beside him, and had gathered him THE BORDERLAND 237 determinedly to her, and smoothed back his hair in the way known to some dear, tender women, and looked deep into his eyes. " ' Yes yes loved one, there is light in the darkness for those who seek to find ! The days are passing our life is going,' she said, keeping back the tremor in her voice. ' I want you to leave all and come with me, just this once only this once ! ' " ' Out in that ? ' He shivered, and tried to draw away. He laughed derisively, be- cause she held him still. ' Out ? For the mere love of mechanical walking ? ' " ' No,' she whispered ; ' for love of me. Wife knows ! Be still, my husband bend to my will for just this one hour, I will never ask it again. Never again ! ' " She drew on his thick shoes and laced them steadily. Dazedly he rose, as she fitted his overcoat upon him, and put a hand over his mouth for silence. He gasped, and gasped again, as she drew him gently out of his nerve-drugging atmosphere into the raw outer world. The first tingle of it crept over him like flies moving over bare flesh. A billow of cold air seemed to engulf him and chill his marrow and make the thing grotesquely impossible ; but the Woman waited. He was drawn on, shuddering ironically. So long still at his desk, he walked stiffly as if on the 238 THE BORDERLAND stumps of feet ; but the Woman said nothing only held his hand fast between hers. " Grotesque ay ! What could there be in this sodden, leafless cemetery of an earth to make a man wish to remain upon it ! And yet the Woman seemed almost happy, and swung along beside him, and sang softly to herself as over a secret still kept, and darted him round once to make him see a spray of living berries sticky with the shrouded mist that prowled over the universal ruin ! And now she was turning calmly into the woods. The woods ! A lump had rattled in his throat ; but she drew his face sharply down and kissed him, and stunned him with amaze- ment. He stumbled dully on. He felt like a man dragged from the warm hollow of his bed, thrown into the sea, and made to swim for his life. " Down the twilight of the long ride they went, the Woman shaking back her hair, and laughing warmly now as she pointed to the plantation where stood in readiness the conical firs of the children's Christmas dreams, and jumping lightly across a ditch when the Man walked round it, and seeming never to read the thing brooding beneath his silence. " Into the sponge of moss his feet sank. He loathed it all tensely ; he was unshakably bitter ; summer was dead, and there was no known compensation none ! Down the once THE BORDERLAND 239 green drives, where in summer he had held his breath for the dance of the shy elves upon emerald velvet, his sunken eyes looked now for the noiseless glide-by of the funeral coach. Across the solemn glades, where lemon lengths of light had quivered like shaken lances, where crimson tints had imparted the holy beauty of an old cathedral, where the very hush had been rich with the rush of dream- angels' wings,* he saw nothing now but the mist-ghoul, prowling stealthy and poacher- like, licking the trees that stood as sentinels dead at their posts. The birds were silent ; the scampering life of the undergrowth had gone torpid in its burrows or lay with its tiny stiff feet pointing mutely skyward. The mystery was torn away from everything. That mossy niche, curtained by a mystic drapery of creeper-tendrils, where often he had sat with the Woman's head nestled against him, was a naked, dreary burial-mound now. A few red leaves clung on ; a few pitiful trailers hung bleached and dry like the hair of an old crone's head ; but the glamour was gone at the best these were but the few wisps of bunting left at dawn in a dismantled ball-room. It was November ! And without the warmth and the glamour he had told himself finally that the blood could not move in his veins and permit him to write for money.. 240 THE BORDERLAND " And now they had come out into the road at the far side, and he had turned watering, incredulous, desolate eyes upon the Woman, as he realized that he must follow the circuit of the long road all round, or recross the naked woods. And again she drew his face quickly down to hers, and blew upon his fingers and hushed his lips with her hand, and drew him on again this strange Woman ! And she had plucked a few starved black- berries, and pretended to find them sweet and fit for food ; but he drew savagely away from that last word in mockery of make-believe. He had obeyed her whim but he had no wish to live on. " And so on and on they tramped between the hedgerows, the Woman still singing softly to her inner self, the Man still staring ahead, and carrying along his sense of in- justice and finality. His own cheeks might be sickly, but he had glanced at hers, and seen the pseony tint creeping into their thin- ness ; and so he dared not say what he wished. Till the gate at last creaked behind them again, he preserved his bitter silence, and thought of the pistol in the corner drawer his revenge upon the world that looked to him to make bricks without straw. " And then he turned her round in the path, and pointed to the grey lava of dusk that was blotting out every landmark THE BORDERLAND 241 " ' Look ! ' he said. ' Look at it, and ask why all inspiration is dried up in me why I would prefer death itself to this death- in-life ! ' " But the Woman, passing on, only turned a strange, maddening little smile up to his angry stare. " They went in. She threw open the door of his room, where the fire burned redly to welcome him back after his nameless ordeal. He strode toward it, and drew back a little, with an unconscious puff-out of his breath ; and threw off his overcoat, and drew back farther still and stood and looked at her, his haggard face suddenly streaked. Why ' " ' Eh ? ' she cried. ' Eh, dear one ? * The light in her wide eyes danced behind tears like leaping firelight seen through the windows of a dark room. ' Eh ? ' She flung her arms around his neck. ' Eh, husband ? ' she cried, yet again. ' Loved one, what is it ? ' " And he put up a hand to his eyes, like one blinded by a revelation. And his voice choked in wonder and doubt and gratitude unspeakable. " ' Why phew ! . . . What does it mean ? Open that door !. . . This this isn't winter ! . . . It is all different. I can think I can work Tm warm \ ' ***** Q 242 THE BORDERLAND " And so may the mist of perversity fall from the eyes of all who continue to walk in pitiful darkness. And in such manner may the great awakening the eternal Light of God's infinite wisdom shine into the void. " Amen ! " CHAPTER XIX 11 /^OME in," said Bede Valjean, in his \^4 panting, thin voice. " I know you. Come in." The portiere rings clashed softly, travelled back again, and John Laverock had entered. A long, long time it seemed since he had stepped into the heated silence of this room noticeably less oppressive to-night, be- cause of the chill sting in the air outside. He was pausing. In truth, he had feared, while he longed, to look again into the face of the man or boy who sat among the cushions there, the hair brushed back from his alabas- ter forehead, the velvet jacket hiding his frailty, the great dark eyes so softly search- ing, the curve of his spine buried among the cushions. " All alone ? " John Laverock asked. It seemed he must say something, however superfluous or commonplace, before he took his quick stride forward. " All alone," Bede whispered, watching him. It was John Laverock and yet John Laverock with a difference. " Sit down ! 243 244 THE BORDERLAND Don't let the fact of a blank month come between us for a minute ! " " Is it really that a month ? Oh, don't say so ! " He had moved a chair so that his back was to the light. It brought a little smile flicker- ing to Bede's lips lips that were always on the quiver as if about to speak jestingly. Then, as the other's face flushed a little, he groped out his hand in the old way. " Only by the almanack, old chap ! There it hangs, as the minister brought it. There is a text for every day in the year. I asked him this morning on what basis they were chosen, and why ' Rejoice merrily ' from Solomon's Song should fit Wednesday, the 23rd of November, more than any other day, and whether everybody was expected to look at it and begin rejoicing irrespective of their real feelings. He thought it a cynical joke of mine. A good sort, he doesn't know that a cynic is merely a man who tells the truth without coating his pill. He really loves truth, but I mustn't remind him that his graveyard is a monument of living lies. What do you make of such men, John ? He is an unconscious slave to habit, isn't he ? like the County Council, that gravely prints ' Wash and brush up ' on all its public baths and lavatories. Those are the little things I have to sit up here and laugh at to myselfg THE BORDERLAND 245 A man brushed ' up,' instead of down, would be ' brushed up ' in temper, eh ? " He was talking at random to clear the air and bring a smile ; but no smile came. John Laverock did not seem to have heard. He had brought his eyes round at last to look into Bede's face, saw that there was the change he had feared, and looked away again, little lumps clicking like hailstones in his throat. " I was a coward," he burst out in the pause. " What it cost me to come, after this blank, you had better not ask." " I never meant to," Bede's small whisper shot back. "If we all had windows to our souls most of us would need to keep the blinds down. Why not you, at times ? How can you expect to be an exception ? It is egotism, old chap, if you knew it." " I shall not listen." He turned away. " I don't want to see that side of you to-night. I know what my own conscience tells me night and day. I I have no right to try and lead others in the way that I cannot keep myself ! " " Sit still ! " Bede begged strenuously. He had gone walking to and fro. " What can I say ? What unnatural thing have you done ? John ! Don't you know that the more you tell a man he is wicked the more you flatter him nowadays ? Man alive, let's 246 THE BORDERLAND be honest. We would all belong to the 1 Smart Set ' if we could just as a sparrow, could it think, would prefer to be a peacock or a bird of paradise. As a rule, we decry the things we cannot imitate. Sit down, and be calm be yourself ! " He obeyed. He gripped the thin, long fingers more crushingly than he knew, and sank his head. " Would you believe me believe me if I said that I am or have been living in open sin ? " The laboured rise and fall of Bede's chest seemed to slacken for a moment but only for a moment. His intuition, so exquisitely developed that he had to mask it with materialistic jests, had told him at a glance of the self-accusing storm soon to break. " Would I ? Why not ? Born in sin, we must live in sin and die in sin. All my heart goes out to you, if there is some price to pay if that is what you came to tell me ! " John Laverock sank his head lower still, his dull eyes looking at the fire opposite. He spoke in staccato notes. " You shall judge. I have done the thing I thought most vile in other men. I I have lived with a woman who is not my wife." In the silence Bede felt out for his cigarettes, and smoked, and thought, and waited. Nearer death than life as he was, he could not THE BORDERLAND 247 focus the thing as it lived in the other man's brain. All his interest lay in the man him- self. " But you have repented ? " he asked quietly. " You have fallen back on your faith ? What then ? " There was no answer. Bede laid down his cigarette. "I'm sorry," he said faintly. "I'm sorry for a man who has not the courage of his love or his lust whichever I am to call it.' ' " I have ! " It broke almost fiercely. " I love her, as nobly and sinlessly as a man can love a woman. But I let the sin come too ; and I never I never thought I should have to feel the shame of that, for her and myself too ! " " Hush ! I don't understand," Bede said. " The fascination the very irresistibility -of ' sin ' is in proportion to the forbidden element in it, I admit. But if you are a coward, all of us are cowards to go on ' sin- ning ' if we admit the degradation of it. But go on ! " " I can say no more to-night." The dull eyes looked up abruptly. " I ought not to have told you. But but I could not face you again as a hypocrite. I had talked with you so often upon that very thing morality " " Morality yes ? Merely the term for a 248 THE BORDERLAND prudent code formulated by society for its own protection. Go on ! " " I deserved and I came to be shamed and judged by my own standard " " Nonsense," Bede gasped, his head mov- ing upon the cushions. " I won't have that. What right has any man to judge another, even in thought, unless he has been in pre- cisely the other's position ? We are not capable ; we base our convictions upon im- pressions we have a misleading relative point of view for nearly everything. We call a glutton a beast ; a drunkard is only ' misguided.' It is all a topsy-turveydom, old chap yes ! The one fact remains that we are no whit better, and no whit worse, in our morals than our progenitors a thousand years back. We are all at heart self-cheat- ing opportunists. The temptation comes we succumb. Some repent some do not ; that is the sole difference. This is the point : Did you did you set yourself deliberately to wrong any woman ? " " No ! no ! " " I knew that. And if any wrong has been done unintentionally, you will go about to put it right at once like a sensible man ! " " I want to I do love her yes ! " " And the revelation of it all has swept you off your mental balance. And you have been ill, too. Yes, I see it all. I thought THE BORDERLAND 249 of you every day every day I wondered. Because I knew." " You knew ? " the other rattled. " I knew that that girl Donna had come into your life to stay ; perhaps for a year, perhaps for ever. You thought your- self so strong in fact, you did not apply the ordinary requirements of human nature to yourself at all. But a mere child could have read it in your eyes, as you talked to me of her. She was moving invisibly with you, night and day. You were in passion's grip. And it was no more unnatural or shameful in you than any other human disease taking you unawares." John Laverock had held his breath, wait- ing in a curious, swelling bitterness which would not be kept back. ' Then, if it was all so plain to you, it was your friend's part to warn me against myself. A word from you might have done that. Your eyes were open ; and, as God hears me, I have been blind ! JI " Hush ! " the other begged again. " You forget. You would have laughed in your strength, as Goliath laughed. And I could only see the first flush of the disease. I could not tell how it would end I only wondered if it would run its normal course. What are you but a man ? what is she but a woman ? " 250 THE BORDERLAND Over and over again, in that next strained silence, John Laverock looked at the door and made as if to rise to drop back again and clap that hand to his eyes. And then then with a suddenness almost unnerving, that choke had burst from him, and others followed in quick succession which nothing could check. He had drawn away ; Bede's hand could not reach him. Bede could only wait, the big, glazed, dark eyes contracted in pain, a faint " Don't ! " leaving his lips now and again. And at last the convulsive tremors ceased. His voice came again, far more collectedly. All the tension had died out. " I'm sorry, Bede ; I'm sorry. I would not have come if I had known I could not trust myself. But I had to know what you thought. I came to tell you what I would not tell to any other living man. I am in such trouble. I honestly want to do the right thing, and I cannot. It is haunting me making a different man of me." " Yes, tell me ! " Bede said. " I want to know, but I would not ask. You were so strange but that has passed now. You need not have hesitated a moment. You know you know that whatever is told me in this room, I can never take out of it." "It is not that no ! But it was sacred sacred to her and myself. I would not THE BORDERLAND 251 have told you her name. But you knew it ! . . . She gave herself to me, in the unselfish love that will blind a woman to all conse- quences for the man's sake. And I, the man, the stronger, who should have proved my love by shielding her have only shielded her in name ! Now you know to what I have sunk ! " " Be calm," Bede breathed. " We shall see. It could only have happened because " " She was driven into my arms ! she could call upon God to bear witness to that. I cannot tell you all, if I wished. I had taken her away from that life that terrible Hoxton life without a thought as to what must follow. For days I was only swayed by the one fear that I might lose her again nothing but that. I made her take my help and my money, because it seemed that any work she was suited for must bring her back into contact with the old associations. And about it all there seemed some deadly need for secrecy that I cannot explain. And I found I loved her more each hour and I wanted her always near me and I drugged my own sense of right and wrong. And it is she who must pay ! " ' You have temporarily suspended your work, then ? All is at a standstill, of course ? Then you have only to call upon yourself to end it. What is the stumbling-block ? " 252 THE BORDERLAND " I I am responsible for her life her happiness her whole future. She has under- gone a change that that at moments frightens me." " Not every man would feel that responsi- bility so keenly. She is not a woman who would suffer half as deeply as you, the man, might. Are you living with her still ? " " Yes no not in reality. I have taken a room for her. But I cannot blot out the facts. What must you think after all that I have sat here and said ? " He clenched his hands together, turning upon the seat yet again. " What must she think, however much she has come to care for me ? That I wanted her for that alone ! " " So you did. So you did ! " Bede paused, his head thrown back. A single-noted cough left his lips short, and sharp, and dry like the tearing of a new calico sheet. John Laverock had leaped to his feet shakily, waiting as in fear of another waiting until the glazed, loving, apologetic eyes slowly reopened and looked at him with a little smile. Then he sank back. " Oh, Bede ! " he said brokenly. " It's all right. I don't often cough now. You haven't upset me only yourself ! I shan't laugh I shan't sneer ; but I won't let you cheat yourself any longer. You wanted her, however unconsciously, for the THE BORDERLAND 253 reason that Nature implanted in every man ; and religious or any other form of scruple go down before that reason. What you really dread is, not the fact, but the conse- quences. You want to break loose from a temporary spell that threatens to paralyse your energies that leaves you in the posi- tion of the hypocrite, as you call it. Then, the way to do a thing is to do it. End it ! " " I can't," he said, his eyes hopeless, but his voice dogged. " I have no wish to. I tell you that I love her I want her al- ways. Now do you understand ? " And Bede's eyes looked back at him with a fixed, wistful wonder for a long time. "I don't," Bede whispered. ''Nothing except this : what a happy man you must be what a farce all this talk has been ! You want her always and you have got her ! " " In secret ! " he said, the voice gone al- most to nothing. " Not as it should be. In secret ! " " What of that ? Will you realize ! Love or lust always is, in its very essence, secret until it palls. It walks alone, apart from the world's eyes, conscious of the for- bidden element. The public marriage the legal tie is only a concession to convention- ality ; a publicity of that which is essentially private. The act of marriage never yet 254 THE BORDERLAND solemnized any understanding between a man and a woman never yet made it the more binding. The inherently bad or un- faithful man would be bad or unfaithful whether the compact were legalised or not. Who knows better than you that half of the civilized world out there clanks its fetters in daily misery because it cannot free itself from the bad or unfaithful partner ? If you love her, and act honestly by her, the mechani- cal blessing of a paid priest is not something that will make or mar your dual destinies. No ! If it were, you would make her your legal mate at once." " That is my trouble," John Laverock said. He did not seem to have heard the rest. " That is my trouble to-night. She refuses to hear of becoming my wife." " Refuses ? Because she is Donna and you are John Laverock ? You have actu- ally asked her to take your name and become one with you in everything ? " " I have. She has given herself to me, to prove her affection, as she believes. And I, as a man, would not hesitate to give her the surest and only proof of mine. And she will not ! She forgets that I have ruined her life ; she fears that she may ruin mine ! JJ He was upon his feet, standing very still save for the tremor. There was a long silence, disturbed only by the sinking-in of THE BORDERLAND 255 the coals and by the far-away rattle beneath Bede's velvet jacket. " You are going ? " Bede asked wistfully at last. " Going in that way ? " " I must. There is no other way. I am going back along the streets with the know- ledge the sure knowledge that if people knew all they would point the finger of scorn at me. I must live on in sin or I must let her go ! " " She knows that ? You have made her see it in that light ? " " On my knees ! On my knees, Bede, with my arms around her neck ! Once she had almost given way, and the tears came. And then she laughed to make it easier for me ! I knew. She saw the sudden picture : she saw herself walking along those streets with me as my wife. She could do it face them proudly even Hoxton ; but she thought of me, and she laughed. And and if I speak of that again I may lose her. She thinks I am offering the great- est sacrifice ; whereas, as God hears me, I want to do right I love her oh, only God knows what a mist is about me ! " He strode suddenly, stumblingly, for the door, his hand out, as if the air of that room could not be borne another moment. " Good-bye ! " Bede's panting little cry came after him. " Good-bye ! " it came 256 THE BORDERLAND again, on a strenuous, faltering note. He heard it he was to remember it all through his life but he did not turn. And now the curtain-rings had clashed, and the door closed hurriedly behind him, as upon a man who had kept back a groan or a shudder until that moment. From Bede was shut out eternally all sound or knowledge of what awaited him on the outer side of it. CHAPTER XX A WOMAN had drawn back quickly. Her hand grasped the balustrade, one foot was upon the first stair of the flight leading upward. He was in time to hear a long, quivering breath escape her, and then she stood as coldly still as himself. It was Miss Valjean. His own figure was in the full light from the hall below ; hers was entirely in shadow. Yet he could seem to feel that the whole of her graceful, dainty shape, gowned so deli- cately that the cloth covering seemed to fit her like a third skin, had just now an invis- ible armour of stiffened muscles and fibres. She had only waited. She would not speak, except with her eyes. She took advantage of her sex, knowing that her mere attitude dared him to pass on in silence. At bay herself, she could make him feel that he was the one at bay. " Well ? " He had completely nerved himself in that instant of realization. He sent his voice down to that penetrating soft- ness only so that Bede should never hear. 257 R 258 THE BORDERLAND ' Well ? " she repeated, the same merciful instinct compelling her. He should not have all the dignity and self-control ! He should not divine that she tingled with a hunger-like craving to drive her hand into his set face again and again, and scream, and then make him silence her sounds with his kisses ! " Did the end justify the means ? that is all I need ask," he said, so ominously stern, sad and composed that the last shred of hope should have died within her as, maybe, it died. " Yes ! yes, yes ! " she whispered it thrice, drawing a breath between each vehement syllable. " Very well. Then there is nothing more to be said ? " " Nothing ! You can go. And, of course, you could never show your face here again." He winced, and drew in his lips. He was stung to the depths, she could see. He had tried to smile as in contempt for her methods, but he had to look away with miserable, gloomy eyes. For a minute she had him pilloried against the door there, without a word in self-defence, his face a haggard be- trayal of the mind within. Then he came to himself, and looked steadily back at her. " Yes, I know exactly what it means, Miss Valjean. Just this : If you felt you must THE BORDERLAND 259 let me know how low I have fallen in your estimation, you might have said it downstairs not here." " He knows. Knows quite enough ! " she flashed back, with bitter tranquillity. " Be- ing a man, he saw no wrong in a mere woman's ruin none ! " " Being a man, it might wound him to know that another woman had listened to find that out." " You can tell him you are quite equal to it. You can tell him that I sank my womanliness for a moment long enough to know that the man in there with him had sunk his manliness for all time ! " " Perhaps you are wrong," he answered. It was all uttered as between two persons on the threshold of a sacred place. " You are speaking in passion. Even if you do not understand, it is not a woman's way to make a man feel he is vile beyond hope." ' You glory in it, no doubt. No doubt ! I understand that. The contrition you ex- pressed is the sop thrown to your conscience. The fact that your end was achieved while you masqueraded as a man with a mission can soon be forgotten. What remains ? Only the woman ! You meant to redeem her. You have redeemed her by ' love ' ! " " Silence ! " John Laverock said, taking a step, his arms drawn up. And she shrank 260 THE BORDERLAND a stair higher. She was frightened of him in that moment while he stood listening, his grey eyes looking beyond her, his tall, strong, capable figure embodying her lifelong ideal of a man's physical and mental form. He seemed about to take one more step, and shake her in his grasp. And she would submit ! But he only raised his hand, pointing to the door behind. " Did you speak of shame ? Where is your own ? You have listened here before." " Once ! I have nothing to conceal. Yes once." " Why ? " Miss Valj can's shapely fingers twisted on the balustrade. Her face, turned away, worked enigmatically for a moment. She had a sweet, arch voice that seldom varied in its modulations, but now it was strained with that heart-swelling at her corsage which she would have given years of her life] to be able to stifle. The delicately- true fit of that corsage seemed to be suffo- cating her. " Why ? " she gasped slowly. " Perhaps I wanted to believe in you to know that you were what you wished the world to think you. Or perhaps I only wished to know what men talk about when they are alone when there is no artificial restraint upon THE BORDERLAND 261 their one theme. That would be nearer the mark, in your estimation, would it not ? " " I am incapable, then, of imagining any woman to be as pure in heart as pure in face ? " " That that I do not know. It is simply that I shall never again believe in any man that I shall always know now that the best of us are at heart as bad as the worst. But nothing matters now." " Nothing ever mattered ! " he said, with the blunt directness that now and then was stirred up in him. " No o o ! " It was a weak, trailing little laugh. " No o o ! " He stood looking up at her, his mouth hard, his eyes aflame and yet troubled as if un- certain whether to reach out for her hand or whether to take her at her word and walk from the house. Then his ringers slid a little way up the balustrade towards hers. " Alice ! " he said, ever so quietly. " Alice ! I am going to call you that once again, if only because you are Bede's sister. What has been done can never be undone. I am not going to make any lame attempt to put myself right in your eyes ; perhaps it is true, as you say, that if all our secret thoughts and talk could be read and overheard we should all shrink from each other. But will you come downstairs for one minute and hear what I have to say ? " 262 THE BORDERLAND He waited for no answer. If he had done so, there was but one answer she could have given " No ! " Reaching the hall he stood back, and she swept past him into the drawing-room, her pose regal, her face death- pale, the swish of her skirts like that of the wind through dry grasses. He followed. Their feet made no sound on the thick carpet. The door swung to behind them. There was no light, and no movement of her arm toward the chandelier. He could not tell for an instant exactly how near he was to her. And then, when her voice came, he fathomed that she preferred the darkness, because it hid her face, and because in some mysterious way it enabled her to speak with an icy contempt, whether she felt it or not. " One minute, Mr. Laverock, you said." " I did. I " He paused, looking toward the voice. All the words that had gathered in his throat on the landing were gone now. He asked himself why Bede's pooh-poohing sympathy with his moral lapse should have unnerved him to the point of sobs, while her just, scathing bitterness stiffened him with a sense of defiance and resentment. Was it merely because the sting of degradation in a woman's eyes went so much more deep ? " Where are you ? " he found himself say- THE BORDERLAND 263 ing huskily. He strode forward. " Miss Valjean, I can't bear this I won't life is too short for angry words that mean estrange- ment. Where are you ? " " Here ! But don't touch me don't touch me ! " " I will ! I have done nothing that I stand ashamed of there, no ! If I had, it is a woman's part to forgive, if she cannot forget. You think fit to forbid me the house, but while Bede wants me " "It is my house not Bede's." She was moving backwards round and round the circular oak table between them. " It is my house, held in trust for my brother Louis. If I cannot forbid you, your own shame shall. If you can go on with your work of redemp- tion in Hoxton, there should walk with you the knowledge that you are a whited sepul- chre preaching purity in the open and practising the reverse in secret. You came here yes, you came here to sit with a sick man, to talk to him of his soul and all the while " With a little throat rattle, goaded by the insistent vehemence that stabbed him through the darkness, he took a quick leap and caught her wrists. . . . He was to let them fall again in the same instant, with a shudder that left its mark upon him. Maybe a thrill of actual fear had taken her 264 THE BORDERLAND at the contact. Maybe it was the culminat- ing point when her wounded pride must find its vent in words that should revenge for all. " You dare ! " She had given a warm little laugh, that died into a thin whimper. " You dare to touch me with those hands ! Go back to her your Donna ! Go back to your harlot to the love bought with your money ! " " O God ! " the man said in a hushed voice, scarcely knowing it. There fell a silence, broken only by that heaving sound of her breast across the table. " O God ! " he said again, as to himself. He stood a little longer, quite motionless ; and then intuition seemed to tell her that all was over that he was moving slowly for the door. " Come back ! " she said breathlessly. " I I don't go yet ! Let me " "It is too late," his expressionless voice came back. " You have said it. You have shown me what you truly think." " Not not of you ! You are only a man whom a good woman could have helped and been proud of ! But she she a vile, shameless thing, reared in the slums, with only the fascination of her own reckless bravado she has dragged you down and scored over all the women worthy worthy THE BORDERLAND 265 of a man's affection. She an animal has made of you " " Yes, pause," he said, in the same dull way. "It is not me you are hurting now ; it is the woman I hope to make my wife " " Your wife ? " came the muffled cry. " Wife ! " " My wife. It may never be ; but I will tell you what I have done, unknown to her in the hope that it may be. I have pub- lished the banns of our marriage my marri- age with Donna Bohannan. I have done that ! " " Your wife ! Wife ! A girl of the streets oh, heaven, spare me spare us that in- dignity ! His wife ! " It trailed away into the series of warm, wild little sounds, half laugh, half sob, as she bent her head down upon the table. She suddenly lifted herself, her head thrown back in superb irony, her breast swelling, her finger pointed all crys- tal-clear to his intuition in the darkness. ' Tell me when ! Tell me when your mar- riage takes place ! Let me be at the church, to see with my own eyes this travesty of romance let me look at her again, to see what could blind a sane man and drag him down to the gutter-level in that manner ! But I forgot ! you love her. You have lived with her already, as man and wife. In God's eyes, as Bede says, you are man and wife at this moment ! " 266 THE BORDERLAND ' Yes," he said, not stirring. " Such is my blindness that I mean, if only possible, to lift her to the level at which no one can cast a stone at her or at myself. And such is her love her willingness to efface herself on my account that I cannot bring her to take my name ; because, as you would point out to her, such a marriage might ' drag me down/ That you did not hear me tell your brother. But you hear it now." "It is," she whispered, "it is the very smallest remnant of womanly sense I should expect in her. She knows she knows any such thing is impossible. She knows herself as you do not know her. The very sordid stamp of Hoxton of hell itself is upon the fact that you, a man pledged to God to lift others from their weaknesses, are yourself upon the knees of a Delilah. Oh, think of it you ! " There was that sound again in her throat as of impending strangulation. And the man was mute. She had put her finger upon the raw wound. He could not justify himself in the sight of the world. And by the world a man is judged ; and upon that judgment hinges all a man's influence for good or for evil in this world. " Yes, go," Miss Valjean said, in a voice pityingly chill. " Back to her, if you will if you must. Back to your own senses, if you are wise if you have still the instincts THE BORDERLAND 267 of the gentleman we thought you. Realize that, no longer able to help yourself, you are no longer able to help others ; and that the discovery of that fact will be another weapon for the scoffers. . . . I I take back all else I have said. I I would not wound you, but oh, I would save you from that even as she would ! " There was a little bump. She had slid down upon her knees, her forehead against the table. In a whirl, yet moved to a degree almost beyond bearing, the man held his breath a moment more. Then he craned toward her, his voice entirely changed. " If it is to be the last time, as it must be, I cannot go until ... I mean, I am man enough still to wish to thank you for coming to me in my illness as you did that day when it must have seemed to you there was no gratitude in me. I do I do thank you for all ! " There was no answer, save a tremble that he could feel, rather than see. He stole out. There was a coldness in his limbs. He looked along the passage, as if in guilty fear that it might have been overheard. Then the street door clicked as quietly as possible behind him. A moment more perhaps two and it had clicked in just the same way behind Miss Valjean. CHAPTER XXI THE house near the church was left behind. The man walked steadily, his head now thrown back, his stride decisive. He was not thinking ; he was looking mechanically straight out before him, as though resolved to think no longer. Above him the clear, cold, starry heaven lay like a black mantle pow- dered with silver sequins . There was keen frost in the air, and his every step drew a rhythmical ring from the pavement. He looked not once either to right or left or to the rear. Reaching De Beauvoir Road, his home- ward way lay down the turning that faced him. Instead, he wheeled to the right to- ward Balls Pond, and then to the left. There was no uncertainty in his turns. He moved as though he could have taken that way blindfolded. It was a long peaceful street, of small, old- fashioned houses with green balconies, side- walks and quaint angles mocked by the modern builder of bubble residences. He came to a dead stop by a lamp, and looked 268 THE BORDERLAND 269 up at a window above the ground floor. He seemed to make no sound or sign, but a blind up there moved. He waited a moment, his congealing breath forming a little halo in the lamplight. Then he walked forward. The door had opened. Two arms were put up around his neck, drawing his head down, in perfect silence, as it seemed. Then the door closed, and he was within. From the opposite pavement, plain to be seen if that blind moved again, Miss Valjean watched in a sort of stupor that was almost a suspension of life. The cloak around her shoulders was still unfastened ; she held the lapels together with one ungloved hand. This was the shadowy auditorium. She seemed to be watching for the next rising of a curtain spectator of some play of which she, and she alone, had grasped the true in- ward significance. The very silence of the acting was its fascination. She had seen two shapes faintly silhouetted upon the blind the shapes of the man and the wo- man. They flickered away. There was a blank spell, in which sick thrill after thrill passed down her stiff figure. Some people went by, and she knew that they had paused to stare back. A hand wavered up to her face, as to shield it ; but she could do no more ; and they went 'on, 270 THE BORDERLAND speculating audibly. They had had a sug- gestion of the figure of Lot's wife looking back immovable evermore. But Tragedy flits through one's focus so often in London streets that it becomes commonplace. Perhaps half an hour had ticked by. She would never be sure ; she had utterly lost count of time. Then all her deadened faculties twitched, and the sick wave took her again. That door had re-opened sud- denly. The man was going. The two arms drew down his head ; his lips moved along as though silently caressing an upturned forehead. And then, with a glance at his watch, he was striding away. Miss Valjean looked after him, quick little breaths shaking her. Till the last ring of his footsteps had died she bore her mental tra- vail. A moment more, and she was lifting her hand to knock at that door. She heard the step on the stairs. She could have seen through the glass panels, but she would not look. A mute, funereal figure, she stood until the door was wide open. Then she faced slowly round, with no word only the fixed gaze. Very tightly her cloak was held about her. " It's Miss Valjean," Amber Lou said, as to herself. The silence had appeared to last indefinitely. She seemed to swallow a little obstruction in her throat, and then her voice THE BORDERLAND 271 was quite cool. " You are welcome," she said. " You need not stand like that." " Am I ? " Miss Valjean replied, in a thin, frozen whisper. " If you live to see the end of the world you will never think of a greater lie than that." Just the pause, and then " Very well, then. I'll tell the truth, and shut the door." It was closing. Just in time Miss Valj can's hand shot out. " Will you ? Oh, no ! Where a Christian gentleman has been I need not be afraid to venture. . . . Thank you ! Now you can close it." They faced. Miss Valjean had the advan- tage in height and pedigree, but in nothing more. Amber Lou, dressed quietly in black, and with the fair hair smoothed back Madon- na-wise from her small oval face, stood with a far-away smile in the blue eyes simply waiting, and conscious of no fear. It was the same girl yet not the same girl. How Miss Valjean looked at her how she could bear the look without even flinching were two things never to be explained. " You are alone in the house ? " Miss Val- jean asked at last. Her voice cracked a little ; she was struggling for great calmness at any cost. " Yes to-night just as it happens," 272 THE BORDERLAND was the absent reply. " Perhaps you will come to my room ? " She went quietly up. With a bursting heart, a feeling akin to madness, Miss Valjean followed. Her room ! His room ! And there it was. Amber Lou held back the door, and then drew forward a chair. She did not see it. She halted as in a trance, looking round. It was neat and comfortable like any other room. A fire burned, and a little copper kettle " sang " on the hob. There were books upon the table that held the shaded lamp. There was a white bed partially curtained off in the corner. All was ordinarily material, and yet and yet the mystery of the man's sex and soul breathed in this small space. There was a dual posses- sion. Miss Valjean stood, the rigid fingers clutching the ends of her cloak. " Oh heaven ! " she said, twice, with a little moan wrung out. " Oh heaven ! " And then she knew that Amber Lou had walked past her and sat down upon a stool, looking into the fire her lips strangely set, but her eyes still apparently smiling as at something no one else could see. " You vile thing ! " Miss Valj can's strain- ing cry suddenly filled the room. " Stand up ! If you are a woman I am not one ! " With just a little tremble Amber Lou looked round at her. The smile had gone. THE BORDERLAND 273 She leaned her head upon her hand. It was done slowly. It all testified to the inward ecstasy the complete absorption of her mind that^left her impervious even to a blow. " Stand up ! " Miss Valjean repeated, in a manner not to be resisted. And she obeyed, her hands folded together. " What what is he to you ? " " You seem to know," said the low, level voice. " Answer me ! " " He's everything." Miss Valjean took a step, bending her body. " He comes here he comes here every night of his life. You deny that ? " And the blue eyes looked at her, and away again. "No. I wish he could. It's his place if he wants me." " Wants you ? " was repeated, with slow awe. " You can stand there and say this to me ? " " Yes ; because I knew what you had come to say to me. And it's no use. Nothing can alter it. If I could not, you cannot." " Alter it ? You are only a child. You have no right to to any man's love or pro- tection. You have drawn him into this shameful position to to ruin him." " Ask him," Amber Lou said, her foot s 274 THE BORDERLAND tapping a little. With just the same abstract calm she looked around, and added : " You can't ; he's not here, is he ? I'll tell you, if you wish. He comes to me every day, if only for a little while, and I hold him in my arms, and he's happy, and that's all I care for in the whole wide world. If he killed me to-night I should still love him. So you don't think it's any use trying to come be- tween us ? " It was horror that held Miss Valjean so still. She had no answer ; none seemed possible. In those few simple words the girl had stripped away all the mystery ; yet, in all her conceptions of the depths of human passion none had ever seemed so deep and vast as this. This frail slip of a girl held him body and soul, and only lived from day to day for the hour of his coming. And yet the world around went on as though nothing had happened. Sweep from the polluted room, with one swish of her skirts ? No, she would not could not. She must look into this woman's face yet a little longer : look until she saw what there was in it that she herself did not possess. The man had passed her by, and given all his strength, all his devotion, all his being, into the power of this girl. He had held her, and kissed her, within those last few minutes. THE BORDERLAND 275 Miss Valjean felt out for the chair, although she had determined never to come into con- tact with it. Afterwards she realized that she must have been near a swoon, because she found Amber Lou standing over her, and her forehead being softly dabbed with a damp handkerchief. Up into the turquoise, serene eyes she stared. " Better ? " Amber Lou asked. " I'll do anything for you that you need, but you mustn't try to make me out bad in his eyes. I don't mind, but he would. You can't say I have not thought it all out, and when you talk of disgrace you only mean I am stand- ing in the shoes some other woman ought to wear. I cannot help that, can I ? All I can tell you is, that you can't take him from me at least, not unless I knew he wished it." " Not although you know you have ruined him ? " came up faintly. " Yes ! " She struggled to her feet. " Every kiss he has given you is unholy, and he knows it well although he cannot expect you to know it. From from beginning to end, it is impure ! " ' Then all the world's impure, at that rate ? " " Don't talk to me in that calm way ! Don't come near me I want to respect my- self ! You know just what I mean ; you have mind enough of your own, and to spare ! 276 THE BORDERLAND Even if there were no wrong in such a life as he is leading, you, as the woman, can think ! What what if a child was born to you " "I'd love it." Amber Lou put her hands together tightly. " You don't understand a bit. Anything of his I should love. All you say to me makes no difference. You don't you can't know what it is to begin a new life like mine. If you did if you did, you couldn't come to me and say such things. They all sound so silly. I'm not a bit afraid of any one or anything. I needn't say a word. He'll put his arms round me and answer for me. . . . It's all his. He took this room for me, and bought everything you see except the big furniture. He put that shelf up for me with his own hands. He can do anything he likes, because I only want him to be happy. And I'm lonely, miserable, every moment he is away from me ! '" she ended, with almost a little wail. It was utterly hopeless something not to be grappled with. Slowly Miss Valj ean turned for the door and turned for yet another look. " Enough ! " she whispered. " Now hear me. However low you may have sunk, or will sink, it is not the intention of his best friends that he shall sink altogether too. With you I have nothing more to do. I have given you a name in my own mind that THE BORDERLAND 277 I shall not utter. I shall take the liberty of waiting below, to inform the landlady of this house who and what he is ; to tell her that you are living here under a lie that you are not man and wife." " She knows," was the unmoved answer. " You will only waste your time. What he is to me, and what I am to him, I say, is nothing to do with any one else in the world. If you wait long enough he may be back he will tell you for himself. I know he would ! " ' You know ? " It was maddening that she could do little but echo those calm asser- tions ; maddening to think that this girl alone held the key to the man's fugitive movements by day and night. " You know nothing except what he chooses to tell you. What do you imagine a man cares for any woman who sells herself to him in the way you have done ? In what one sense are you fitted to be the companion of such a man as he ? You ! I am asking you a question ! " ' When you're quite happy you don't stop to think," Amber Lou said simply. Nothing, it seemed, could rend the robe of shame that she wore as proudly as a bride wears orange-blossom. Nothing could make her falter. " Happiness ? You call it that ? " Miss Valjean had taken a step back into the room. 278 THE BORDERLAND " You are either a cunning woman or a fool ; but at least you know, as every woman knows, that Nature made man the hunter and woman the hunted in this life. It was for you to hold him at his distance, for the sake of his future career, if nothing more. It was " " One moment," Amber Lou put in, with just a touch of the old quiet scorn. " I have thought of that, all along. I could have been his wife at this minute, but I wouldn't. I don't know why I should tell you, but it is so. I'll never tie him down to anything, to spoil his chances you needn't fear that so much. You can see there's a change in me, can't you ? He's proud of that. But that's not to say that some day he won't wake up and look back, is it ? And and if I leave him quite free to marry, I can't do more, can I ? " " Yes ! You can leave him free now to-night ! Shall I tell you something ? It is only an hour since I heard him say that he had, awakened, and yet was fettered. What did he mean ? That by his own folly he had put a halter about his neck, and that he is too weak to clear himself. It is for you to say the word, and let him go let him come back to his right place in the world ! " " And if I did, would he be just the same to Miss Valjean as if nothing had happened ? " Amber Lou asked absently. " Or would you think him inst as bad as you think me ? " THE BORDERLAND 279 " That is not the question." She restrained a trembling eagerness. " I refuse to discuss the relations between you, which nothing you say can justify " " That's where you're wrong," she inter- polated with a grave assurance. " Love justifies him coming here to me as often as he likes. If not he would keep as far away as he could. You don't know him in the least." Gasp after gasp left Miss Valj can's pale lips. These were the words he had spoken himself, and Amber Lou had learned them by heart, and based all her serene dignity upon them. " We'll call it, then, his indiscretion," she said, when she could, bowing her head to the superior faith. " I, perhaps, have an alto- gether wrong idea as to what his professed religion says upon the subject. I think we have said enough. You have made it very clear to me what the attraction is for him here. You can tell him that I came to- night " " I shan't, Miss Valjean." She was look- ing down at her little " singing " kettle. " I shall not say one word to upset him. He knows just what he is doing. And perhaps perhaps it might surprise you to know that he has knelt by that bed and prayed more than once. And he meant what he said. 280 THE BORDERLAND He's a better man than you or I will ever be as women ! " " Where is he now, may I ask ? " Miss Val- jean said, in a voice almost soundless. The long pause had intervened. " Yes, I can tell you that. He has gone with food-and-shelter tickets for the men and women on the Embankment all night. They give them two ounces of margarine, half a pound of bread, and a bed for the night. He says it breaks his heart to see them. That's part of his winter work you know, of course. You know far more about him than I do, come to that except that every word you say against him will only make me think the more of him. It's just the same, you know " she rose slowly from the stool, with the tranquillity and pose of a born tragedienne " as if you came here to a wife and tried to take her husband from her. Just the same. And that's the thing I should have thought any woman might feel shame for ! " " You took him from me." Out it quivered. Her clenched hands came together ; the cloak fell from her shoulders in a heap un- heeded. " You took him from me ! . . . Yes, you may stare you can do nothing else you have no heart in you. From me ! " " I'm sorry." Amber Lou's lips set upon those two hushed words. That was all. THE BORDERLAND 281 " Sorry ? Don't be ! Don't think I mourn on my own account ; don't think I came for that. I mourn to think that such a man he is good ! should have sacrificed himself and his splendid future completely upon upon you ! " " Has he done that ? " the other asked with lips gone dry. For one moment that last moment Miss Valj can's emotion had lifted her to the height of a woman inspired. " You know ! Does his face never tell you that ? Do you never see the trouble in his eyes ? Yes, you do ! In passion for you, he dare not tell you he is ruined that within a few days from now the Christian Brother- hood will cast him out from their ranks as a traitor. Then, when he walks the streets, he may come to his senses. And you could have saved him ; you could have proved what you call your love. You could have taken yourself out of his life for a while " " I couldn't," Amber Lou said, with a queer sob, her blue eyes dilated. " There's no place in London to-night where he wouldn't find me ! " And Miss Valjean crept close. ' There is ! " she whispered. " There is ! . . . Give him only one month no more and he will be thanking God that he was saved on the very brink of ruin. Saved by you ! " CHAPTER XXII ONE night, when an icy wind hummed along the streets and filled with bitter- ness all those who walked London pavements with starved stares and empty pockets, John Laverock came out into Hoxton Street. It burst upon his dull, blank eyes like a revelation. He had skirted the long thorough- fare in a dreamlike way often of late, but a vague horror and grief was now wrapped for him about its mere name. Near a month had gone since he had actually set foot in the place. It was Saturday night. He had turned, all unknowingly, down one of the quieter turnings from the Cityward end of Kingsland Road, and there, running before him with all the blaze and clamour of a fair, was Hoxton again. Nothing was changed save himself. All was the same if he could bring himself to realize it all anew. The same hatless women hurried past with tightly-drawn shawls, dragging shivering chil- dren, and talking in the foul, meaningless manner that was for them the King's English. 282 THE BORDERLAND 283 The ever-swinging public-house doors gave out a strident babble of noise : the men had taken their money, and were spending it in the only way known to them. Those in charge of the innumerable naphtha-lit stalls roared out invitations to purchase, justified by the solid fact that Hoxton can, and does, sell almost every known commodity at a price that strangles competition, and yet with a profit known only to itself. "Buy the lot! Who'll buy the lot? Coin' on yer honeymoon ter-morrow, are yer ? Then here's yer chance. We'll go together ! " " No larks, gels ! Take this lump o' skate home to the old man, and he won't know hisself. He'll gnaw yer neck." " Now, then ! who says a humbrella for Chris'mus ? Look at it. None o' yer nine- penny cotton pray-for-rain about that. All silk from the genuine worm, as used by the Shah and Shah-ess ; and they oughter know ; they live on blood-worm and lemon kali ! Two bob one and three there, take it, eight pence ! Perish me pink, I can't sell 'em at that ! Well, go on, have yer own way. If I die for it, it shall go to-night for thank you, mum, it's yours elevenpence ! " (Broad grins. A woman had stretched out with her shilling a thought too soon.) " All 'ot ! AlTot ! . . . . Eight a punny, 284 THE BORDERLAND them oranges like wine ! . . . . Here's mutton for yer three a pound. Go south down the road Southdown ; see ? and you'll pay ninepence. Sold to a lady with rings on her fingers and bells your change, mum ! . . . . Here ! Screw on this ! Ever seen a bit o' linoleum to touch that ? Why, the Czar o' Russia had the feller piece to it and wired for more. Last time four and six ! You won't ? No, I'm damned if you shall, any of yer. Pack it away, Bill. They ain't buyin' ; they're out pickin' pockets ! " He was impelled on down the stall-lined avenue, sickened by the clamour, and yet trying hard to get his old grip upon enthu- siasm and hope. Now there was a scuffling and shouting just behind him, and he retreated to let a small, jeering crowd pour by. At the head, half savage, half leering in apprecia- tion, walked a man leading three or four dogs of different sizes at the end of strings. All had disappeared down one of those pro- blematical side-streets before a passer-by's remark had carried the truth to John Lave- rock's brain. A reward would be offered for those dogs to-morrow ; and it represented a fair day's work. Hoxton on a Saturday night is especially rich in surprises and contrast shocks for all except those to whom it is the beginning and end of existence. The saddest, maddest, THE BORDERLAND 285 merriest street conceivable. Starkest poverty moves in and out of plenty in and out, like a procession of skeletons winding among the laden tables of a banqueting-hall. Jewelled fingers wrap up oddments of meat for pur- chasers whose bones seem scarcely to hang together beneath a few rags of raiment. There is no thought for to-morrow for many a to-morrow has no meaning, or never dawns. The shifting crowd pours in and out of the rookeries lining the main thorough- fare : rookeries teeming with drunken laughter, dreadful silences, screaming infants, altercations, blows and curses vice and poverty herded into one small area that seems scarcely able to contain it. And nobody cares nobody save those few pitying, earnest souls who labour night and day to pour a little oil on the turbulent waters, and of whose Titanic efforts so little is heard. Private effort and self-sacrifice can never purge the Hoxtons of England ; and public determina- tion is not to be aroused by mere statistics and passing impressions. Yet Hoxton enjoys itself surpassingly in its own way. John Laverock found his way barred by another crowd in the centre of the road the sidewalks being quite impassable. The piper again ! A piano-organ, beloved of Hoxton, had drawn up, and the handle was revolving at 286 THE BORDERLAND a great rate. The strains of " Killarney " percolated through the din ; and in an instant the army of barefooted rats had gathered as from nowhere, " dancing " with grave solemn- ity in serried rows. Troops of girls in flat straw hats, their arms linked, formed circles and vied in attempts to exhibit the quality or absence of their underclothing, amid gusts of laughter. The tune flashed into a wild polka, and thence into the haunting melody of " A few more years shall roll ; " and the " dancing " and laughter went on. One half -tipsy girl made a clutch at John Laverock's arm and swung him down from the kerb. He shook himself free with a bitter word that he regretted in the next instant and forged his way on through the crowd. There was no " heart " in his intentions to-night. It was a mere mechanical re- connoitre a reluctant fascination a compel- ling of himself to look upon Hoxton once more in all its sordid glory. From time to time he found himself halting to look dully round at certain corners, as for a possible glimpse of Cobra or Ben Fisher. But they were not to be seen : that particular phase of the Hoxton bioscope seemed to have faded out. Of all the familiar types only one passed him to-night the shuffling old Chinaman, who stood and nodded at him with cunning stupidity. That past strange month seemed THE BORDERLAND 287 to be lengthening into a year. One more queer sensation filtered through his dreamlike haze. Perhaps Phillimore Street itself had undergone a change. Perhaps his unques- tioned house-to-house influence there had been utterly obliterated. With the effort of his lifetime, as it seemed, he turned into the wind-swept street. The lamps were flickering and throwing great shadows. Either actually, or only in his brain, there certainly was a comparative silence ; and the pavements seemed almost bare of their usual cargo of bickering children. It was at old Wisbey's, as a matter of recur- ring habit, that he paused first. He looked down over the broken railing, and there in the area room, between two bits of burning candle, the chips of leather strewn all around him, sat old Wisbey, as though he had never moved from that position. He was smoking a clay pipe, and he glared back stonily as without recognition. " How are you, Wisbey ? " John Laverock called down quietly. " How's business with you ? " Slowly old Wisbey took the pipe from his toothless gums, and pointed it. ' What do you know about bis'ness ? " he demanded shrilly. " When did you ever do any ? When you want to know, come and try a bit, and see." 288 THE BORDERLAND " Oh, come ! " said the other soothingly. " You and I " " I don't want to come ! " he called out, savagely vague. Clearly it was one of his truculent nights. " It's the likes of you that talk and don't act. Next time you want Wisbey you'll ring the bell at the work' us yard." " What, are things as bad as that ? " " Bad as that ? " He mimicked the words mockingly. " If I ain't worth a hunderd o' coal at Chris' mus I ain't worth a year's gammon and gab from such as you ! That's me." And then John Laverock understood. Old Wisbey, for some reason, doubtless sound, was not a recipient of one of the limited number of sacks of fuel distributed at Yuletide. " I'm sorry," was all he could say. " It is so hard for them to pick and choose " " Ay ! 'Specially for them that'll have fires goin' in every room theirselves, and turkeys, and what not. I know 'em. Don't you worry ! " " Wait a day or so, and I'll see what I can do for you." A promise he had had to repeat quite a dozen times that week. " Don't want it," old Wisbey snarled, getting to his feet. " I wouldn't have it if you chucked it down the airy no ! You get home to your quails on toast you ain't THE BORDERLAND 289 wanted down here. Go on ! it's about time for you to have appendicitis ! " Made to smile, John Laverock wished him good-night and walked quickly away from a perverse fusillade of curses to halt abruptly at the next gateway but one. Sal Dowson and her baby ! Almost he had allowed himself to forget the existence of Sal Dowson. The twinge of conscience took him up the steps at once. He had generally sustained a rebuff at this house, but his interest in Sal Dowson's fatherless baby had nevertheless been keen from the outset. He knocked an anxious rat-tat. " How are you all ? " he asked warmly, as Sal's hard-featured landlady at last ap- peared. " And how's Sal, and the little one ? Shall I come in for a minute ? " She stood peering, drawing the wisps of loose hair back from her face. For an instant she had seemed about to bang the door as an answer. " Oh, it's you," she said lifelessly. " Lor' lumme, ain't you heard, sir ? You're all behind the times, you are, and no mistake." " Don't say that ! Is she " He had a vague misgiving ; but he was not prepared for the sense of drear hopelessness which seemed to pervade all life ahead in that next moment. The landlady had given a short laugh. 290 THE BORDERLAND " Oh, it ain't that. She won't have many more chances to fly to drink, I'm thinkin'. She's done the kid in." He stood like a figure of stone, staring. Gratified by the effect produced, she emerged a little farther, dabbed her eyes, and pro- ceeded. " Yes, you're all behind, sir. Course, you know, its father a butcher's man up the road was knocked down to pay two-and- six a week for its keep. And, of course, he's never paid a farthin' from that day to this. They never do ; they hop into the next neigh- bourhood. One thing and another, and the drink as well, it must ha' got on her mind, pore soul. She dropped it out o' misery over the canal bridge one night why, it was the Thursday before last, wasn't it, Mrs. Cropley ? " ' Thursday 'fore last," confirmed Mrs. Cropley with cheerful decision from the stairs. " The inquest was on Sarraday. Course, she was screamin' for a look at the pore mite then." " Dead ? " his hollow voice could just sound. " Dead ! Not harf . And the best thing for it, too. I should ha' put her away myself if it had gone on much longer. Why, the kid laid up there days at a time without a morsel of any thin'." Mrs. Cropley folded THE BORDERLAND 291 her arms and came forward for a look at the glow over Hoxton Street. " It looked lovely, didn't it, with all them flowers round it. Eight months old, sir, come January. It's the father that ought to swing, not the mother; but they never do. The law ain't made for wimmen ; you can't make men know what wimmen have to go through." " Will she hang ? " he whispered. " Not she ! " replied Mrs. Cropley. " She's up for the Sessions I dunno where they took her at the finish but the p'lice-court mis- sionary bloke's got somethin' to say, I've heard. It was like this. Here was the bridge, as you might say, at your elbow, and she hung the kid over the parrypit jist like this so they tell me, over a minnit before she let go ; and then " " Don't ! " With a sudden uncontrollable shudder the man turned and stumbled down the steps. He had paid his last call at that house. The pavements were heaving ; the icy wind seemed to be a cold hand closing over his heart. Only the strongest effort at self- repression enabled him to make that next pause at Mrs. Mucklehorn's, on the opposite side. He wished merely, he told himself, to glean a little information as to the last-known movements of Ben Fisher. He shrank in- stinctively from calling upon little Mrs. Fisher 292 THE BORDERLAND herself a patient, long-suffering little slave who merited a better fate than God had meted out to her. Besides, he remembered, she was seldom at home ; whereas it was Mrs. Mucklehorn's complacent boast that she never stepped out of the bloomin' house from one month's end to another. In other circumstances it would have struck him, as she waddled along the lower passage, that Mrs. Mucklehorn might soon have a difficulty in doing so, if she had so wished. Her vast shoulders and depth of bosom partially exposed to permit her to breathe were truly impressive. " Gettin' a size, ain't I ? " she observed, noting his involuntary glance. " Muckle- horn says I get out o' bed ton by ton ; and he ain't far out. And how ha' you been all this long time, Mr. Laverock ? I should say you've lost flesh, and a middlin' good bit, too. My word ! " " Yes," he admitted. He had grown accus- tomed to the candid allusions of Hoxton as to his personal appearance. " It upset me a little to hear of Sal Dowson's sad ending. But I really called to know if you could tell me anything of Mrs. Fisher and her husband ? " " Oh, ah ! Herharf o' the house has been empty this fortnit." "Empty?" " Didn't you know ? I thought you'd THE BORDERLAND 293 been knockin' there. Yes, Ben Fisher and his missis, you mean." She looked at him ; and he knew now, what he had suspected before, that Phillimore Street had a fairly comprehensive idea of the part Ben Fisher had played. "Well, yes, I'm sorry for that woman," she confessed. " She can't settle down anywhere for six months at a stretch, and loses all her jobs every time. That dirty swine of a husband of hers pah ! I'd limb him alive if ,he was mine. A man that lived on my earnings 'ud find hisself under the tap, sharp. So he is, come to that The Brewery Tap down Kingsland. Yes ; him and that Cobra King had been passin' their flash notes for long enough, I've heard. Anyway, they've cleared right out. And the woman had to do the same. Catch me ! She left harf her things behind in her hurry. The coppers came down only an hour afterwards. You won't see them no more down this way." He stood ; stood so long thinking of it all that he began to wonder why the world was created. Then he remembered that Hoxton this Borderland of lost souls and human wreckage was man's creation alone ; toler- ated, they assured him, because the human wreckage must be swept into and confined within certain circumscribed areas. A healthy normal man would quickly die in one of the Hoxton rookeries, he was assured ; but the 294 THE BORDERLAND true product of the Borderland, supposing that he reached adult age by an accident, could thrive there. He felt in his pockets, found some coins for Mrs. Mucklehorn's children, and turned to go. He had a curious conviction that he should not pass down Phillimore Street again. And then, at the top of the steps, he swerved round, his face a degree paler. And it was coincidental that Mrs. Mucklehorn had waited. " You you have not seen or heard any- thing lately of of Lou Bohannan ? " " No, sir ; I've not/' she said. " Have you ? " It was never answered. He had given a choke, and was gone. Before her door closed, his fast strides had put Phillimore Street behind him. CHAPTER XXIII HE reached his rooms again shortly after nine oclock. He walked to and fro between the folding doors to and fro. At one time these apart- ments of his had seemed tolerably comfort- able. Now now there was an insupportable air of loneliness, an atmosphere of haunting memories, about them. His supper was set, but he could not touch it. He was at tense war with his inner self, and knew not how it could end ; and the protracted struggle was telling upon him physically and mentally. He went to the glass doors and drew the blind aside with shaking fingers, and looked out over London and across to the hidden street of houses in one of which a listening slip of a girl had sat and waited and] nursed her blind absorbing belief in his greatness, his tenderness, his faith. "It is God's doing ! " he said, with catch after catch of his breath. " But I cannot bear it ; I cannot live without her. What- ever happens, God must judge me according to my strength and my motives ! " 295 296 THE BORDERLAND The postman came up the path. He drew back sharply, his ears set. Rat-tat ! " For you, Mr. Laverock," came Mrs. Blinco's voice, in mingled resentment and resignation. She had taken a careful survey of the envelope, he knew. She could not help doing that. " Thank you ! " He sprang to the door, to take it from her. One glance, and the thick beat of his pulse died down, and the letter was pocketed. It was from Louis Valjean ; and of late he had felt a conscious fear and reluctance in opening the letters from his old friend. And the sight of the handwriting had made him think of something else. He gave a quiet little cough, helped by the fact that Mrs. Blinco had lingered. " By the bye, Mrs. Blinco, I ought to have told you that I shall be saying good-bye to you in a fortnight with the New Year, that is. And perhaps I may take this opportunity j. " Don't ! Pray don't mention anything of that," she put in, with a frigidity which experience told him was the forerunner of a sobbing wonder as to why she had ever been born. " You're going. That's enough. I can bear anything now they can burn the house down over my head. In fact, it will come to that, I know for the insurance THE BORDERLAND 297 money. Blinco cannot be expected to care so long as he has a bed to lie in. Oh, I ought to have killed him with kindness, I know ; I ought to clean his boots for him, to keep him in a good humour yes ! Don't trouble, Mr. Laverock don't trouble ! You may hear I'm gone for good, but that's nothing ; the rates and taxes go on for ever, like fiends of husbands." " He is not a fiend ; I can't let you call him that," he said, with warmth. He had followed her to the kitchen, wishful to soften the blow as far as lay in his power. " In fact, I should like to say before I go that I shall always believe Mr. Blinco is simply one of the men whom whom you require to know how to manage. But] there, we won't talk of that. You knew, of course, that my term in London was only " (< I did not. I did not," she repeated, tearfully distant. " I was told nothing that I recollect. I knew, of course, that I could not please you. I saw, of course, there was a decided change, after your illness you had taken to late hours, and staying out with ' friends,' and all that sort of thing natural enough, I suppose, in men who have nobody's feelings but their own to consider. Oh, if I were only a man ! " She rose, and banged her chair back. " I'd I'd revive the lash and pickle for some of these bipeds who go to 298 THE BORDERLAND business from nine till five, and then go out again in a huff for the evening because their wives are not dressed-up and smiling on thirty shillings a week. I would, heaven help me ! It's not so much what they spend, if they earn it; but did you ever know a man who, calling his drinking and smoking a legitimate pleasure, ever gave his wife an equal amount to spend per night for her pleasure ? Never ! The selfishness of men ! " "He is not at home ? " John Laverock ventured hesitatingly. " At home ? Can you see him sitting in that chair ? I can't ! I can sit here and scheme how to save money while he wastes it perhaps on other men's wives for all I know.' " Oh, no no no ! " " No ? That's what you say, Mr. Laver- rock. What you think, is another matter. No man in the world could ever be trusted out of sight with a sovereign in his pocket. They fly to the wrong thing just as a wasp goes to the jam jar. There is not such a thing as a straightforward man. Don't you think we women don't know ? Only we have to put up with it. And thirty years of putting up with it is nearly enough nearly enough ! " She had by no means exhausted her theme. She paused only because her listener, standing there so stiff of limb and fixed of face, had THE BORDERLAND 299 abruptly subsided into a chair, slid his arms over the table, and dropped his head sideways on to them. She half rose. It was as if a see-saw had reversed its balance. " Oh, I didn't don't think I was referring to you in any way, Mr. Laverock," she said, almost softly. " There is the exception, of course, to even that iron rule. And I will say that of all the gentlemen " Even that word failed to touch him. Craning a little nearer, struck by the white- ness of his face and hands, she found herself looking into wide-open eyes that did not see her. She j umped back with a scared whimper. Presently, as she went to cry out, his hand rose a little and fell again, as in a sign to her for silence. For a minute or so it held. Then his glassy eyes closed slowly ; and that allowed her to act. The cruet was at her back. Regardless for once of waste, she lifted him and swamped his brows with the table vinegar. If it ran down beneath his collar in little rivulets its efficacy was unquestionable. It induced shiver after shiver. A minute more, and he could sit unsupported, one hand to his fore- head and one clutchingly upon her arm. Unnervingly strange he still looked ; but he was in his right mind again. " Forgive me," he muttered thickly. " Where am I ? Forgive me 1 " 300 THE BORDERLAND " Forgive you ! " she breathed back. " I don't like it at all. That mustn't happen again. I knew very well you had some trouble or other on your mind ; but you can't warn a man. Was was it a sudden pain, or what ? " " No no ! I'm all right," he said, breath- ing fast. As the pallor left his face, the sweat had begun to bead out upon it. The end of her apron could hardly keep pace with this secondary symptom. " I don't know what happened. Don't cry ! " " I'm not going to." She had reached for the kettle, and was bathing his face with clean water by this time. "I'm going to get you into bed, and then I'm going to knock for that doctor, late as it is. As I said and he said you deserved something for cutting that illness as short as you did. Straight to bed this way ! " " No no ; nothing of the sort," he said. He had got to his feet. " Give me a minute stand still. ... I am going out again I must. Only for a little while because I must. The cold air the air will do me good." " Or it will finish you," she pronounced solemnly, like an Amen. "Go on ; you must do as you will you're a man ! J) He went unsteadily back down the passage. She stood, her breath suspended, waiting for him to collapse ; but he found his hat, found THE BORDERLAND 301 the lock, and was actually gone. With a sigh pregnant enough, prolonged enough, to ex- pand a small balloon, Mrs. Blinco turned to grasp that it had really happened and that nothing had been said about the vinegar. The cold air had done wonders. Reaching the street-end, John Laverock was almost himself again. Only a chill fear like that of a man who has received an anonymous menace from some enemy was left ; but that became smaller and smaller in contrast to his returning realization of the vast, nameless dread that had held him in bondage previously. Now he had reached the small house with the green balcony, side-walk and quaint angles. For some time he stood by the lamp, gazing up at that first-floor window. Then, slowly, almost reverently, he went for- ward and knocked at the door. It opened. A woman stood and looked up into his ques- tioning face. " I wondered," she said at last, just above her breath. " No, never a word. Not a sign not a clue of any kind." " And it's the tenth day the tenth night," he said, almost piteously. He had turned his face, to hide it. " Yes ; the tenth night," she whispered. What she did not understand, she could feel, it seemed so quietly she stood, with her hands clasped. 302 THE BORDERLAND " I must bear it," he said, with sudden husky resoluteness that made her start. " Yes, bear it if you only can," she whis- pered. " Perhaps it was all for the best in some mysterious way hard as that seems to say. Poor child ! " " It is clear. She meant to go, and to leave no trace." He lingered. He seemed to find his ray of comfort in her hushed atti- tude. " She had said no word to you, and no one had been here to see her no one whom she might have known." " No one, as far as I can tell. And she had never left the house at night before that. Just that one evening I happened to be out, and her light was burning, as I say, when I came back soon after ten. Only half an hour afterwards, I heard the front door click ; and that was the last I have seen or heard of her. But, perhaps " " No no," he said heavily. " She has gone ; and I must must leave her in the Al- mighty's keeping. And and what it means for me, I have yet to discover." Another silence. From time to time she stole a glance up at his face, and away again. It was all beyond her all but the palpable fact that the man's teeth gave a little series of clicks now and again as with cold. " You could not," she dared, at length, THE BORDERLAND 303 "you would not care to make inquiries through the police ? " " I could not no ! If if she went like that, of her own accord, I could not hope to " He paused ; then dashed a hand to his eyes, as to sweep away a mist that shamed the traditions of his sex. He was going. "If I do not see you before, I wish you and yours a very, very happy Christmas ! " " The same to you, sir," she called involun- tarily, in a choking voice. " I mean, if we know in our hearts all is right you know what I mean ! " And the small dagger of hall-light vanished abruptly. She had gone in. She had nothing to tell him ; and both secretly realized that there would never be anything to telljiim. CHAPTER XXIV SLOWLY the drab, half-lit, longest-seeming days in the year ticked by over London. It was six o'clock on Christmas Eve. Not the Eve of the Christmas cards and children's dreams. London lay under a mysterious pall of dun-grey, that deadened sound and coated the streets with a slime over which horses passed with timid, sliding feet. The heavens, to which men's eyes or thoughts turn involuntarily on Christmas Eve, were shut out ; but the indefinable, inseparable thrill the sensation of tension waiting to snap with a signal-burst of voices from on high tingled in the air everywhere. To stand at any street corner with closed eyes was like pausing to listen to the bated mur- murings of a great, distant multitude waiting for something to happen. Even John Laverock could feel it. This was precisely his mental attitude the sense of standing apart and realizing vaguely how fast, and ever increasingly fast, the pulse of London beat to-night. For he had seemed to move all that week like a man in a phantom 304 THE BORDERLAND 305 city, unaware of any impulse or striving to break free of the spell, following his pre- scribed duties automatically. He had missed this year completely the precious spirit of Christmas-tide ; but set against that fact was the merciful lethargy which obscured full realization. Amber Lou was taken from him but only in the flesh. She moved with him, breathed with him, watched while he slept. He had still the unshakable, deep- down conviction that some divine process was silently at work for him and for her. He was standing in the room which Mrs. Smith called her kitchen in Laburnum Street, Haggerston. It did duty for bed- room as well ; and in odour and general appearance suggested that cattle had had at least temporary possession here. His tall figure reached almost to the black ceiling, and the lamplight showed him vermin calmly retracing their tracks on the walls. Mrs. Smith had " let everything go." She had, indeed, wiped a chair, with the remark that she thought it would " hold up a little longer "; but he had preferred to stand, even at the risk of wounding what susceptibilities were left to her. " Don't be flurried, please," he said, in the subdued, sunken voice that was becoming habitual with him now. "I am no one u 306 THE BORDERLAND or, at least, I am some one who knows and understands." " Ah ! " A woman who was past weeping for herself /she sat with her faded eyes watching the empty grate, her head now and then shaking as in a kind of palsy. " You wish, I know, you could carry the picture you've seen here and pack it down in front o' the West-End, and make 'em see that, while they work so hard to spend their money, hundreds here are on'y waitin' for Gawd to take 'em home. As I heard the minister say the other day, happy are the poor who die early in London ! Yes ; it's easy to be good, and hold up your head, when you've got somethin' to live for." " Must you think that ? " he asked, almost as lifelessly. He had put down several small packets on the table, and was wondering abstractedly what had become of all her children. " I am afraid it is not so, Mrs. Smith. Good houses, good wages, good condi- tions of life do not bring men nearer to God. The West-End of London has all these things, I know ; but it is not heaven there it is perhaps nearer hell than the slums." " But why why should the woman born in Kensington have all she wants in life, while the woman born in Haggerston starves and weeps her few years away ? Where's God to allow it ? " THE BORDERLAND 307 " Hush hush. I cannot answer that. No man can." " I can't stop, Mr. Laverock ! " She sud- denly swayed up, as though remembering " There's my Ezra I must think of him to-night, if ever." And she caught up her rag of a black shawl. " Ezra yes ! Where is he ? I have missed him for weeks. I brought him this tobacco." " Heaven knows," she wailed. " I dunno what's come over him lately. At least, I do ! He ain't been nigh home all day again and there's his tray over there. He's took nothin' for days. And there's hardly a bit o' boot to his feet. Since he got so thick with that Black Sam it's turned his weak brain. And if he goes marchin' with 'em to-night, as he will, there's no sayin'. They're so many mad wolves by now. He's been trod on twice this week in the scuffles. If Black Sam gets 'em to the Palace to-night, as he says he will, there'll be hell to pay." " The Palace ? " he repeated. " Ain't you heard, sir ? " Fastening her " bonnet," she turned to him with a beautiful touch of pride at her Ezra's share in the great movement. " He says there'll be ten thou- sand men, if one. If you'd have heard him last night you'd ha* thought he was light- headed. I hope I've kept some faith in Providence," she added, untying and tying 308 THE BORDERLAND again the bonnet strings with fleshless fingers, " but I can't get over that thought o' seein' him fetched home once too often on a shutter. You read the papers, sir, don't you ? " His grey eyes had looked back at her quite blankly. " The papers ? " Now he recollected. There had been rumours and rumblings in the air for some time past : rumours that London's army of famished and unemployed had reached the end of its tether of endur- ance. But until this moment it had had no real significance for him. One man's trouble blinds him to the troubles of all those around him. " This is the night of their great march ? " " To-night's the night, sir. They're goin' to see the Queen. And my Ezra's with 'em. I sat up here all last night, listenin'. Seemed all the time as if I could hear their feet goin' and drums beatin' just as when my husband was a soldier, and I went to see him off. Yes, he served his time through two wars, and he got two medals, but nothin' else ; an' he lost the situation that might have kept him a man. No one 'ud give him a job or look at him the war that he helped to win was all over and done with, you see. And he went from bad to worse from that time. He had two British flags tattooed on his arm, and tried to get 'em out, so that he THE BORDERLAND 309 mightn't be found dead with 'em on him. I've seen him jab a knife into 'em before now. He said he'd get his own back on his feller creatures, and he's doin' it. They feed him in prison ; and they'll have to bury him and me both. They didn't want us." " Where is he now your husband ? " he asked, in the pause. He himself seemed to be listening while he talked always listening. " I've got no husban'," she replied, taking down her door key. " He's comin* out o' 'ospital next Tuesday if they let him. His mates '11 meet him, and inside of an hour he'll be shoutin' drunk and smash some one, and they'll ' run him in ' again. That's all they can do keep puttin' 'em in prison and lettin' 'em out. It don't stop the goin's-on a bit, but it keeps a lot o' men in work buildin'. I sold the last picture last week for eightpence. Then I applied for parish relief. They came down here an' told me I could go into the infirmary if I wanted, but there was no money to give away. I s'pose they wanted it all to keep up the Empire and gold-laced uniforms, as Black Sam says. I couldn't go into the infirmary with seven children starvin' behind. I oughtn't to have had any children, I know ; it's not nateral ; but I had a husban' who couldn't take that in. The Bishop his- self says there's A'mighty's blessin' on a full fam'ly ; and he ought to know. I must go, 3io THE BORDERLAND sir ; I want to get my Ezra out of it, if I can. I've got the woman next door to mind my little ones." And he stepped mechanic- ally out into the street with her. " Yes, this is Chris'mus Eve, sir. The night, many years ago, down there in Wiltshire, when I used to go with the other girls and stand outside the Hall, and sing : ' God bless the Squire and his relations, And teach us all our proper stations/ And if we sang as if we meant it, Squire 'ud send his flunkey out with a bun and a' orange for each. I don't think I could do it now. No, I think I should fling 'em back in his face, and ask him how he dares to sit in church and read the Lessons, and send men to gaol for snarin' one of his partridges his birds ! and hoard up them thousands o' pounds while he pays his labourers twelve shillin's a week, and sacks 'em for not votin' for the right party. But he's dead, and he can think it all out while he burns. I used to shudder at them anarchists, but I don't now. I should be one myself if A'mighty hadn't put a timid heart into me that couldn't stand blood. It's this way I'm goin', sir ! " Shocked and silenced, he kept pace with her, as her shrunken little figure slipped fast along the blackly-damp pavements. Where he was going, and why he went, he did not know ; THE BORDERLAND 311 and he did not pause to ask. Down squalid and echoing alleys all overhung and permeated with the smell of gasworks, turgid canal water and unclean humanity short cuts through the most depressing, cramped and unwhole- some district that even east London has to show ; down stretches of main road, avenues of shop-windows frosted and ablaze, and with scarlet and white berries catching the eye everywhere ; through more obscure, misery- haunted areas where the very gas-light seemed impoverished in quality and so on for what seemed miles. Then at last Ezra Smith's mother drew up, and the man gripped her arm in a startled way. " Where are we ? Are you sure you know ? Are you sure he could find his way all this distance blind ? " " Every yard every day," she said, in the same thin, calm voice. " Black Sam runs before the p'lice. He'll snatch a meeting in Stepney High Street at eight o'clock under their very eyes, and another down Hoxton two hours later. They're afraid of him now. They've hunted a lamb and found him a lion." " Who is he ? I mean, what is he ? That is the point." " He was a packer, with eight children, and a pound a week when in work." She hurried on a little way, peering in all direc- 312 THE BORDERLAND tions. " They sold up his home to pay his rent and taxes. And one day he marched into the p'lice-court an' demanded that the State should find him work or keep his f amly, as he'd helped to keep the State. They threw him out ; but he went again and again. And that's how he made his name. And he says if the people kept out o' the pubs for on'y a month, an' stood square against the sweaters, England 'ud have a right to call itself a Christian country. It's him that's got on my Ezra's brain. Ezra can't see he on'y hears the talk, and draws the picturs in his own mind." They turned a corner ; and all was changed. The mother of " Lamps Out " ran forward with a little cry. Following her, John Lave- rock found himself drawn into the outer fringe of a crowd such as he had never seen before not for size, but for silence. It was massed by the light of carried lamps under a triple span of high railway arches, over which trains thundered now and then and drowned the booming voice of the man who was speaking. He was a mere speck of a figure from this distance, and to get a foot nearer was impossible ; but it was Black Sam the man with the arresting eyes, the thrilling movements of arm and head, the organ-voice that went through the brain and left there a memory not to be forgotten. THE BORDERLAND 313 " ... Is that the truth ? Don't answer me ; silence '11 do, or the police '11 say we dis- turbed the peace. The peace of what ? This London, that doesn't want to know of us that doesn't want a skeleton grinning past the Christmas tree in its windows. What have you got, on this Eve of the Day when Christ was born to teach us how hard it is for a rich man to enter His heaven ? Some of you have had work nine months out of the twelve, and now you're grumbling disgusting, dis- contented beasts that you are ! Some of you have been so blessed that you've got a bit of beef or a sack of coal from the Church that runs the world in Christ's name ; the Church that has millions of money locked up in landed estate and property and funds, and that can afford to pay its bishops thousands a year. Thousands ! to men who stand up to set you and me the example of how to live to the glory of God ! If God looks down on London to-night there, I'll say no more of that. You know the worth of religion now. " Now ! We know our own minds at last or most of us do. The world won't budge for us ; we've seen that. We've marched our feet off to Hyde Park and back, and we can go on doing it. It's something for London to look at, and for the papers to write about. But we're going to do it once more, in our own way this time, come what may. We 314 THE BORDERLAND may be beaten ; but one day one day we shall win ! " Can you hear me ? I read the paper this morning read articles written by men sitting in easy chairs in warm offices, with cigarettes in their mouths. What did they tell us ? They tell us of booming trade, of growing contentment, of wonderful progress all over the civilized world. It may be so ; but, if so, you and I and thousands more are the faggots that go to feed that furnace. Nothing comes our way nothing save the yearly certainty that we shall be out of work sooner or later. But now I'll read you something that was alongside those articles : the words of a British statesman at a meeting last night and British states- men don't paint with red colours when white will do. Remember, he is not talking to you and me. He is addressing a wealthy Institu- tion of scholars who deal only with facts. " ' The truth must be told, however un- pleasant. There is no doubt whatever that, as the result of insanitary and over-crowded dwellings, of meagre and artificially-preserved and adulterated foods, and, above all, of lack of employment, the condition of the East and South of this city of London is infinitely worse than it was twenty years ago, when a similar investigation was made. The average of health there is lower than THE BORDERLAND 315 it has ever been in modern times. There is visible racial degeneration. The women of the poorer classes are forced to work at times when work is the ruin of maternity and the death of the nation's best material. Formerly we had only a winter industrial trouble, which we tided over somehow by the help of those abominable Mansion House Funds ' mark that word on the lips of a statesman ! ' To-day the distress goes on throughout the whole year. Imperial apathy is breeding sheer barbarism in the slums that Borderland that widens and widens ; and through that fact we shall fall as surely as slothful Rome fell through the barbarians of the North.' " I mustn't speak for long, maties ! Time is too precious. There are a dozen other meetings being held at this moment, and this banner I'm pointing at ought to be at the head of ten thousand men, two abreast. ' Life's Handicap,' it says. And it's to be run off to-night, when all the money and the glitter are about. And the course from Whitechapel straight as a die to Buck- ingham Palace. ' We don't want anything more to do with Prime Ministers. No ! we're going straight to the Queen herself this time, just as we are, without any leaders or programme. This isn't a Lord Mayor's Show it's a show 316 THE BORDERLAND of starving human bodies ' beings erect upon two legs, and bearing all the outward semblance of men, and not of monsters ' as you've heard it said. The police have given us warning that we mustn't go beyond the City boundary ; and we've answered the police that we must, because there is no other way of reaching her. " The Queen ! She has done her bit for the East End twice over, hasn't she ? Well, we take the right to go and thank her for ourselves, and she'll see us in the flesh as we are, and perhaps we can make England realize through her to-night that we really are living units, and not the pariah dogs of London. They tell me I don't see things in their true light and proportion ; but I can see all you standing before me this Christmas Eve ; and you're the solidest fact in answer. And if not, it's enough for me to see my own children, and and sometimes to have to turn and look away from them, in case I might. . . . " All together ! Buckingham Palace by nine o'clock to-night ! The King and Queen are there, we know. The Queen '11 come out to look at us, if she knows we mean no harm. Let her hear this ! one, two, three ! " And a crackling roar went up that seemed to rend the envelope of earth's air, and to sweep John Laverock off his feet. The THE BORDERLAND 317 crowd faced about and poured past him like a tide suddenly loosed. He had lost his clutch upon the arm of Smith's mother ; she had been carried away, a mere straw in the eddy. Strong himself, he stood his ground, buffeted this way and that, until he could catch a glimpse of Black Sam again. And there beside him, his blind face turned up, shouting deliriously as long as his lungs would hold out, was " Lamps Out " Smith of Haggerston. No more. When he had fought his way to the wall of the last arch, they were gone, banners and all. He stood a moment, over- whelmed ; and then fought his way back into the heart of the hurrying crowd of men. CHAPTER XXV AT twenty minutes past eight that Christmas Eve, when over London lay a spreading dome of reflected light, and laughter echoed from lip to lip in the crowded streets, a sinister, disconsonant thing hap- pened. A great drab snake began to wind its way out from the East End. Vehicles drew aside ; the crowds poured to the kerbs for a sight. " Here they are here they come ! " went up the whispers ; and the snake was winding by. It was composed of a mass of human units, who claimed " the right to live." Just that " the right to live." They raised no shouts kept the same silence ; most of them had their jaws con- sciously, stubbornly, set as for an effort yet to come. Their myriad feet upon the mud- carpeted roadway made very little sound an imaginative man might have closed his eyes a moment and thought of the phantom march past of the " Deathless Army." If any man did, it was John Laverock, whose soul, in travail for itself, could yet feel the 318 THE BORDERLAND 319 nation's shame as typified by the thing that crawled out of the East that night. To see the Queen ! Or, at least, to reach her Palace. On they tramped, as orderly, as solemn, as much in earnest as children " playing at soldiers." They meant no ill to any one Black Sam had given it as his last word at the start ; and there were no collection boxes to-night. To see the Queen herself that was all. And at the head swayed that great crimson sheet with the odd device : " Life's Handi- cap ! Work first Justice second Content- ment third." Sweating, darkly haggard, grimly triumphant, Black Sam bore one of the poles in a socket at his waist ; and close at his side, clutching the leader's pocket flap, stepping out as in a sort of suppressed ecstasy, went " Lamps Out " Smith of Hagger- ston. Every now and again the bigger man parted his teeth to mutter inspiringly. " Keep steady, lad ! you're well in it. They won't stop us to-night. You'll look straight up at her with them blind eyes. Fall out for no one. You'll do it." Tramp, tramp ! Left, right ; left, right ! And now the thickening crowd on either flank kept straining eyes ahead as if to see an opposing snake advancing in the distance. And soon an indefinite murmur was in the air : " There they are ! " Black Sam heard 320 THE BORDERLAND it, and turned his head to look at the winding length behind. " Yes, there they are," he said. " And here are we. They haven't got body and soul at stake but we have. Straight on ! " " Straight on ! " called " Lamps Out " at the top of his husky voice. There was nothing that he could see ; but maybe, as John Laverock had often thought, he had a sixth sense denied to the rest. He was feeling like a soldier who had caught his first real glimpse of the enemy. He stepped out faster in his sodden, squelching travesties of shoes. There it was now, just ahead : a solid, motionless black patch stretched across the roadway by the Aldgate Pump. A triple line of mounted police first, and behind them a force on foot. . . . The City was barred to-night to men who came not singly, but in battalions. They could not reach the Palace by that route which meant that they were not to reach it by any known route. The police had said so, and had given a good reason ; and there should have been an end of it, only Black Sam and a few others as desperate had thought otherwise. And may- be there is nothing quite so awe-inspiring, potent and compelling as a massed force of British police, horse and foot. It kept still and dignified and compact. THE BORDERLAND 321 There was still a space of yards between, when the neck of the snake betrayed a wavering, disheartened movement. The great banner swayed and rocked uncertainly as Black Sam turned again with incredulous scorn glittering in his black eyes. Now seemed the tactful, supreme moment when so much may hinge upon so little. A mounted officer trotted a few calm paces, drew up, and called out pacifically enough. " Now, my good fellows, you had your warning. What is it ? " " Warning be damned. We're men, starv- ing at Christmas ! " " I can't help that. You've come so far. Turn round and get home quietly, and let us do the same ; that's all we want, I'm sure. You can't march beyond this point. Good-night, all ! " Thick, dull silence. The watching crowd held its breath. The great drab snake seemed easing up for second thoughts all along the line. Then a subtle congesting movement stiffened it again. A hoarse, clarion voice rang back from the head. " On ! You're not afraid ? Now or never ! " And " Lamps Out " Smith echoed it deliriously. " Now or never ! " The black patch ahead moved back a little, and advanced again in a calm, com- pact mass. The horses reared instinctively, 322 THE BORDERLAND as the contact point was reached ; women screamed, men were shouting. The long line was wavering again, and falling back in disorder ingrained respect for, or fear of, the Law. It re-formed and surged on afresh, as Black Sam's booming, blasting voice rose above all the din. But slowly slowly back again it went, the horses' great smooth flanks, turned side- ways, forcing irresistibly ramparts of flesh and bone while their riders looked down impassively. It was all but over a battle all but bloodlessly won and lost when Black Sam's glaring eyes focussed a momentary gap just ahead the way into the sacred mile. His organ- voice swelled out in the hopeless confusion. " Not a man among us ? Not one ? One, two, three '.first past the Pump show 'em we mean it ! Forward ! " The banner had fallen. He panted some- thing to " Lamps Out " Smith who, kicked and flung back a dozen times, had found the flap of his coat again, and hung on. With a crazy cheer " Lamps Out " let go, and plunged ahead into what for him was a sea of darkness. On on, followed by a few, fighting like a man possessed at arms he could not see, shouting wildly : " We've done it ! This way to the Queen ! " Yes, they had done THE BORDERLAND 323 it ; and for a thrilling moment the issue swung in doubt, and plain courage might have turned the scale and made history. But British police seldom lose their heads in emergency, knowing that ten organized men are superior to fifty unorganized men. There was a quick, revolving movement of the third mounted line. The momentary gap was closed up and obliterated; the few inside were lost to sight. The drab snake was being turned upon itself and driven back in grim earnest. It became a rout, remorselessly followed up by the mounted men and by the pushing, shouting crowd. All was over. And behind ? The gradual lull, and the knot of foot constables bending to peer at a huddled, stunted figure that had been trodden into the mire by hoofs and feet, and carried into a side street. Of all in that forlorn charge he was the one remaining. Black Sam had fought a way through, and escaped ; others had been escorted to oblivion by force. ' Lamps Out " Smith had simply plunged on until knocked down. They waited, chatting among themselves. They had sent for an ambulance, but it had gone in the wrong direction. Just before it arrived there was a little commotion. A man's unsteady voice it was John Lave- rock's arose from the rear. " Stand back, please ! Clear a way it's 324 THE BORDERLAND his mother ! " She had marched with the snake, and he had found her and led her to the spot. She tottered slowly forward, and was allowed to kneel beside her boy. She smoothed the wisps of muddy hair from his face, and drew up his head to her flat breast. She looked around at the uniformed figures, and spoke without a tremor. " Yes, sirs, he had a mother like your- selves ! " She looked low into his face again, and back at them. John Laverock had one of her hands in his shaking grasp. " Not your fault, sirs ; you couldn't help it. It's all over now. He couldn't go that way to see the Queen, as he thought ; and so and so p'raps he's gone another way to see the great Judge of us all. And you and I " " No, no ! " John Laverock whispered, plucking her shoulder. " He's not dead. Don't say that. Look ! " The ambulance had come up. It waited a second. She had looked down into her son's face again, and gave a queer little cry. " Lamps Out's " fingers had wavered up and felt for hers. He spoke, as to himself, still in that ecstasy. " Fust past the Pump ! I done it I done it ! " " Home ! " the little woman said with dignity, as she rose and drew her old shawl around her. " Bring him home, please. Straight home." THE BORDERLAND 325 Another uncertain pause. John Laverock bent back for a brief whisper with the officer in charge. There was no home, he had to explain. The officer cleared his throat. " That's all right," he said cheerfully. " Blind, is he ? Then it's a stroke of luck, perhaps. Come along, mother ! We're going to see if the doctors can do something for his eyes, all under one. I shouldn't be a bit surprised. You don't want him blind and lame, too." She gave way mutely. John Laverock holding her arm, the little procession wended its way by back streets to the hospital. And there they stripped the rags off " Lamps Out," and stretched him upon a couch in the " Accident " ward. Outside, in the corridor, John Laverock and the mother stood silent, waiting the verdict. It came within an hour. " Small bone broken now set. Fully con- scious. No danger whatever. No apparent possibility of restoration of sight." Soon they were allowed through. " Lamps Out " lay on a bed the like of which he had never touched before, in a spotless ward where grey-robed women flitted to and fro as on feet of velvet. " Better, boy ? " John Laverock softly asked, touching his forehead. " Better," was the sleepy answer. " Rum- 326 THE BORDERLAND bustical go, ain't it ? Shall miss my 'bacca a bit." A little later, John Laverock stooped for what he felt might perchance be his last look at " Lamps Out," pressed the hand of the mother sitting there, and stole out. And so ended the march of the men who claimed " the right to live." CHAPTER XXVI " TUST in time. Some one to see you, J Mr. Laverock," said Mrs. Blinco, in tones hushed as with mystery that she had waited to share. Besides, not many times more would his key turn in that door. " Some one ? " he repeated. At times, of late, he seemed to have a difficulty in bringing his mind round to grasp the merest common- place. It was just after dusk. Nearly another week had been notched. It wanted but two days to the close of the happiest and saddest year of his life. '"Sh!" She nodded and pointed. "I showed her in. Some young person. She seemed so flurried and anxious I thought there was no harm. I said you might be in to tea at any moment." For a moment his heart had taken a series of sick leaps, but sank again. Mrs. Blinco's brief description could not fit the one and only woman who moved with him invisibly night and day. She was always calm and calmest in her ordeals. He went in, closing the door at once in a 27 328 THE BORDERLAND way that moved Mrs. Blinco to an access of disgust. A feminine figure stood nervously near the window. He stumbled to turn up the gas before he looked at her. Then he saw. It was the tactful, smiling little maid who, months ago, had so often answered his knock at Miss Valj can's residence. One look at her face, and he stood prepared. " What is it, Mary ? " he asked quietly, at once. " I thought I thought you should know, sir ! oh, I don't know what I thought ! I took it upon myself to slip across. Mr. Bede " " No ! " He took a stride, with that half- shout. " Yes ! " She put up her hands, and burst into a storm of tears that nothing could stop. The man stood, trembling in every limb, but unable to take any action. Minutes had passed before his voice would sound. " Tell me ! " And the streaming eyes looked at him. " He had a cough at at three o'clock, and fell forward. It seemed the last. The doctor came at half past, and I heard Miss Valjean cry out. The doctor went out for a minute, and I heard her ask him if there was anything in the world that he wanted, and he should have it. I couldn't hear, but I think he said ' Louis.' She opened the THE BORDERLAND 329 door to call me, and I heard him whisper it twice quite plain : ' Tell John ! Tell John ! ' And she burst out crying like a mad thing, and ran up to her room. She has been so very strange lately ; she won't let me even go upstairs, if she can help it, and is always watching me about. I think I know, sir I couldn't help knowing ! And when she sent me with the telegram to fetch Mr. Louis, and said not a word about you, I I thought I must come straight to you, sir, whatever happened. I must go ; perhaps I've done wrong ! " " No no ! " He struggled as against a stupor. ' Three o'clock and now it is past five. . . God bless you for telling me. I could never have forgiven her nor myself. I'll come ! I can act a lie if I must. Bede ! " She flitted out, the man just behind her ; and Mrs. Blinco drew back just in time. For once Mrs. Blinco dared not speak, but what it cost her to contain herself only she knew. John Laverock stood holding the street door ajar, like a man tensely counting the beats of time as they passed. Then, of a sudden, he banged the door without a word, and was gone too. Mrs. Blinco' s reflections in the kitchen, if silent, were tremendous. Walking steadily, he reached the house. With outward calm he touched the bell. There was a pause as if Mary, the listening 330 THE BORDERLAND maid, had thrilled and hesitated to answer. He rang again, and his gaze through the glass panels showed him Miss Valjean coming slowly down the stairs. Ere she reached the foot Mary had run forward. He stepped in, and stood, his hat - lifted. And back at him the swollen eyes in Miss Valjean's face stared as at a ghost. For a moment the recollection of all else seemed to slip from her, and in those eyes was almost a haunting terror. Then she had made her effort, and was turning. Even at such a moment her lips had set ; she was turning to go back with a semblance of cold majesty that refused to speak. But not before she had looked at Mary's conscious face as pale as her own. She knew. They watched her. She had paused on the first landing. She seemed to reach up her arms as in an agony that longed to find vent, but dared not. Then she had gone on up toward her own room. She knew. The way was clear. With a nod to the troubled maid, he tip-toed up the stair in turn. He would not knock. He stood out- side the curtained door in silent prayer a moment, and then turned the handle and pushed so gently as to prevent the portiere rings clashing. He was inside. The lamp burned, its crimson shade tilted THE BORDERLAND 331 aside. A woman, who looked like a nurse, stood there as though she had not stirred for hours ; and the doctor sat grave and still, his hand framing his chin. Both turned silently to look at him, and then looked back at the velvet-coated figure sunk in the cushions. It just stirred the breast just heaved in quick, never-ceasing, nearly sound- less little gasps, like that of a cage-bird dying upon its perch. He had not been moved from his chair. Fighting for self-control, the bubbles rising in his throat, John Laverock put down his hat and stole near, and stood with hands folded before him, looking down. The doctor glanced up at him, saw his twitching muscles, and frowned a warning. It sufficed. He became very still, with only a click of his teeth now and then. Bede's flowers, that were sent from the church with a verse attached every morning, stood on the table beside him. There x too, was the jar of cigarette tobacco ; and one half-consumed little white tube lay near by, just as his grasp had relaxed upon it and let it fall. A long time John Laverock looked as with unseeing eyes at that little relic of the man's comfort in life ; and then, half un- knowingly, he slid out his hand and took it. Almost simultaneously there was a partly stifled little sound behind him ; and he 332 THE BORDERLAND knew that Alice Valjean had stolen in, and stood there with a handkerchief to her lips, and that she had seen. After that, for a time, no one moved. The thrown-back face with the half-parted lips on the cushions seemed that of a man who, while not asleep, yet saw something and heard something in his detached state that linked them through himself with the life beyond. His great dark eyes were all but closed. Now and then his delicate nostrils quivered, and he seemed about to give one long sigh and yield up the struggle to remain with them a little longer. And then, as they held their breath, the far-away sound beneath his velvet jacket the sound as of wavelets draining down a distant pebbly beach became audible yet again. It was answered by the tick of the clock on the mantelpiece. Round and round went the hands, till they reached seven o'clock. Louis Valjean's train was on the way, but it could not reach London yet. The nurse stirred, and looked inquiringly at the doctor. He nodded. She dipped a feather in something and put it to Bede's lips. They moved in feeble response. His glazed eyes unclosed a little ; he seemed to feel faintly surprised. He was looking at them, and yet as past them. The doctor motioned to John Laverock. THE BORDERLAND 333 " Speak to him." He could not. He bent. The bubble swelled and broke in his throat again and again. The panting went on, and Bede's eyes were looking lovingly up into his ; but the agony of the man who tried to call him by name, and could not, for fear there should come no response, was something that Bede was not to know. John Laverock kissed the passive, pure forehead, and was drawn back by the doctor, who motioned to Miss Valjean in turn. She came slowly forward looked and drew up her hands to her breast. What passed John Laverock did not know. He had turned away. Once more the feather was dipped, and put to Bede's lips. The great dark eyes swung round a little, still as in surprise at their presence and their silence ; and then reclosed. For near half an hour more the quick heaving of his breast went on. And then the fingers of one hand slowly spread themselves out. The doctor stood up. " Yes, he is going," he said, in a voice that was hardly a voice. No one moved. A moment more, and Bede's lips parted wide. A long, thin, strain- ing sound came from them like the strenuous answer to a call. He looked out straight before him, with a fixed, imploring look. He saw John Laverock ; he gazed at him as 334 THE BORDERLAND at one he had known, and forgotten, and suddenly remembered again. He put out both his hands as to take something, and John Laverock gripped them, and cried out " Yes, yes, Bede I'll meet you and tell you ! " And then " 'Sh ! ... He is gone," the doctor said. ***** A little later, as John Laverock turned, the door opened, and Louis Valjean stood there. He had come just too late. The two men gripped hands without a word. For just a moment Louis looked into his friend's eyes. And then John Laverock was passing on down the stair. At the foot he drew back to make way for the minister, who had been away from home when summoned. Again no word passed only the look. A little later yet it might have been half an hour as he knelt alone by the table in the dark drawing-room, he felt his arm touched. He looked up, in the awe as of a wondrous dream. It was Miss Valjean. The light from the hall shone upon her rigid face. She was looking before her not down at him with a look that he had not seen on her face before. She spoke in a slow voice, subdued with her grief, heavy with suffering. " What what was it that you may have to tell my brother when you meet ? " THE BORDERLAND 335 He did not answer. He bent his head again. In this hour, all the past was blotted out by the shadow of death. Her voice came again. " Tell me as you would have told Bede. . . . What was she to you that woman whom you won and lost ? " And he answered in the quietest of voices " The light of my life the hope of the years before me ! " There was a long silence. Then she touched his arm. " Come ! " she whispered. He rose. He was following her up the stair. He knew nothing but that something in that word had told him he was on the threshold of a revelation. He followed her up the second flight, and beyond that again to a little landing that his feet had never touched until now. There was a door a closed door. She stood with her hand upon the panels. " He would have wished it," she said softly. " For your sake, as I thought, I tried to part her from you. . . . God, through my dead brother, commands me to give her back to you." The door swung open. With a cry the man put out his arms. There was a little answering cry a moment of agony and hesitation and Amber Lou was between them. 336 THE BORDERLAND The month had gone ; and Miss Valjean was answered. She closed the door upon them, and went downstairs. The minister was just shaking hands in good-bye with Louis Valjean in the hall. She faced them, a finger to her lips. " Not yet," she said. " I want you and Louis too." And she drew them into the dark drawing-room. And she stood there, and told them, without one tremor ; and it ended just as John Laverock's feet sounded upon the stair above. "He is coming," she whispered. " This is the hour of reparation. Louis, stand by me, as witness. The banns were read thrice ! ... John, call her the woman you love. You were two. The minister is here, waiting to make you One." THE END. Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London. A 000128266 4