PAGE 8
The Pupil of Aurelius
by
‘Poor Mary Ann,’ the landlady said contemplatively. ‘If she dies, she’ll ‘ave to be buried by the work’us. And if she lives, she’ll be worse off than ever; for they won’t take a girl with cropped hair into a shop, and the fear of infection besides. She ain’t got a friend in the world, she ain’t; except her own people, and they’re only a drain on the poor thing. Poor Mary Ann! she have had a bad time of it. Perhaps it would be kinder in Providence if He took her; for who’s to pay for her keep if she gets through the fever? Not that I would ask to be paid for her lodging; I ain’t one like that; there’s her room, and welcome; that’s what I says to my husband when he come home last night; and neither him nor me’s afraid of fever, nor would turn out a poor thing as have been took. But law! it would be months afore she’d get another place; and she ain’t got nobody to look after her.’
‘What have you done with the money I gave you last night?’ he asked.
‘There it lies, sir–on the mantel-shelf. It ain’t for me to touch; it is for the doctor to give his orders about that money.’
‘Just put this eighteenpence to it, mistress, and ask the doctor what the poor lass may want. It is all I happen to have with me the now.’
Then he left; and walked away with an unusual air of determination He was not downcast because he had parted with his last sixpence.
‘It is even better thus,’ this stern-faced man was saying to himself, ‘for now we must face facts, and get rid of speculation. Let us begin at the beginning–with one’s ten fingers! Poor lass! It is a dreadful place, a great city like this; it has no compassion. Surely, in the country, she would not be so utterly thrown down in the race. Surely, some one would say, “At meal-time come thou hither and eat of the bread, and dip thy morsel in the vinegar;” and would command the young men and say to them, “Let her glean even among the sheaves, and reproach her not. And let fall also some of the handfuls of purpose for her, and leave them, that she may glean them, and rebuke her not.” Poor lass! poor lass! Even that cadaverous-jawed, Tennants’-stalk of a woman thinks it would be better for her to die.’
He walked quickly, his lips firm. It was a miserable morning; the noisy thoroughfares full of mist and wet and mud; drifts of sleet swooping round corners; the air raw and cold. The river was scarcely visible when he crossed London Bridge; the steamers and ships were like ghosts in the fog. He made his way as quickly as he could through the crowded streets, until he reached Tower Hill; then he passed up into the Minories; there he paused in front of one or two shops, in the windows of which were the most miscellaneous objects–old clothes, waterproof leggings, tin cans, and what not. At last he entered one of these places, and after a great deal of haggling and argument, he exchanged his coat of gray home-spun for a much shabbier looking dingy blue over-coat, that appeared the kind of thing a pilot would wear. To this was added a woollen comforter; there was no money in the transaction. Douglas wrapped the comforter round his neck there and then, and put on the coat; when he stepped out again into the mud and snow and murky atmosphere, his appearance was much more reconcilable with the neighbourhood.
Still walking quickly, he went down to the London and St. Katherine Docks, passing under the shadow of the gaunt walls; and then along that dismal thoroughfare, Nightingale Lane, that looks like a passage between two great prisons; until at last, with moderate pace, and with a certain anxious, nervous look, as if he did not wish himself to be seen, he arrived at the entrance to a space at the corner of the London Dock, which was enclosed with some rusted iron railings, and partially roofed over.