"Nelly, don"t you know me?" The woman was coming to.
"Haven"t you a light?" The woman faintly shook her head.
"See, I have your portrait where you placed it; it has never left me all the time. But when I saw your picture I did not need your portrait to tell me it was you."
"When you saw my picture?"
"Your portrait in Mr. Bodenham"s picture at Academy "St.i.tch! St.i.tch!
St.i.tch!""
"Mr. Bodenham"s--I see."
The woman"s tone was curiously cold.
"Nelly, you don"t seem to be very glad to see me."
"Have you got any money?"
"Any money, Nelly?"
"I am hungry."
"Hungry!"
The woman"s words seemed to come to him with the force of revelation.
"Hungry!" She turned her head away. "Oh, my G.o.d, Nelly." His voice trembled. "Wa-wait here, I--I sha"n"t be a moment. I"ve a cab at the door."
He was back almost as soon as he went. He brought with him half the contents of a shop--among other things, a packet of candles. These he lighted, standing them, on their own ends, here and there about the room. The woman ate shyly, as if, in spite of her confession of hunger, she had little taste for food. She was fingering the faded photograph of a girl which Mr. Gibbs had taken from his pocket-book.
"Is this my portrait?"
"Nelly! Don"t you remember it?"
"How long is it since it was taken?"
"Why, it"s more than seven years, isn"t it?"
"Do you think I"ve altered much?"
Mr. Gibbs went to her. He studied her by the light of the candles.
"Well, you might be plumper, and you might look happier, perhaps, but all that we"ll quickly alter. For the rest, thank G.o.d, you"re my old Nelly." He took her in his arms. As he did so she drew a long, deep breath. Holding her at arms-length, he studied her again. "Nelly, I"m afraid you haven"t been having the best of times."
She broke from him with sudden pa.s.sion.
"Don"t speak of it! Don"t speak of it! The life I"ve lived----" She paused. All at once her voice became curiously hard. "But through it all I"ve been good. I swear it. No one knows what the temptation is, to a woman who has lived the life I have, to go wrong. But I never went.
Tom"--she laid her hand upon Mr. Gibb"s arm as, with marked awkwardness, his name issued from her lips--"say that you believe that I"ve been good."
His only answer was to take her in his arms again, and to kiss her.
Mr. Gibbs provided his new-found lost love with money. With that money she renewed her wardrobe. He found her other lodgings in a more savoury neighbourhood at Putney. In those lodgings he once more courted her.
He told himself during those courtship days, that, after all, the years had changed her. She was a little hard. He did not remember the Nelly of the old time as being hard. But, then, what had happened during the years which had come between! Father and mother both had died. She had been thrown out into the world without a friend, without a penny! His letters had gone astray. In those early days he had been continually wandering hither and thither. Her letters had strayed as well as his.
Struggling for existence, when she saw that no letters reached her, she told herself either that he too had died, or that he had forgotten her.
Her heart hardened. It was with her a bitter striving for daily bread.
She had tried everything. Teaching, domestic service, chorus singing, needlework, acting as an artist"s model--she had failed in everything alike. At the best she had only been able to keep body and soul together. It had come to the worst at last. On the morning on which he found her, she had been two days without food. She had decided that, that night, if things did not mend during the intervening hours--of which she had no hope--that she would seek for better fortune--in the Thames.
She told her story, not all at once, but at different times, and in answer to her lover"s urgent solicitations. She herself at first evinced a desire for reticence. The theme seemed too painful a theme for her to dwell upon. But the man"s hungry heart poured forth such copious stores of uncritical sympathy that, after a while, it seemed to do her good to pour into his listening ears a particular record of her woes. She certainly had suffered. But now that the days of suffering were ended, it began almost to be a pleasure to recall the sorrows which were past.
In the sunshine of prosperity the woman"s heart became young again, and softer. It was not only that she became plumper--which she certainly did--but she became, inwardly and outwardly, more beautiful. Her lover told himself, and her, that she was more beautiful even than she had been as a girl. He declared that she was far prettier than she appeared in the old-time photograph. She smiled, and she charmed him with an infinite charm.
The days drew near to the wedding. Had he had his way he would have married her, off-hand, when he found her in the top attic in that Chelsea slum. But she said no. Then she would not even talk of marriage. To hear her, one would have thought that the trials she had undergone had unfitted her for wedded life. He laughed her out of that--a day was fixed. She postponed it once, and then again. She had it that she needed time to recuperate--that she would not marry with the shadow of that grisly past still haunting her at night. He argued that the royal road to recuperation was in his arms. He declared that she would be troubled by no haunting shadows as his dear wife. And, at last, she yielded. A final date was fixed. That day drew near.
As the day drew near, she grew more tender. On the night before the wedding-day her tenderness reached, as it were, its culminating point.
Never before had she been so sweet--so softly caressing. They were but to part for a few short hours. In the morning they were to meet, never, perhaps, to part again. But it seemed as if he could not tear himself away, and as if she could not let him go.
Just before he left her a little dialogue took place between them, which if lover-like, none the less was curious.
"Tom" she said, "suppose, after we are married, you should find out that I have not been so good as you thought, what would you say?"
"Say?--nothing."
"Oh yes, you would, else you would be less than man. Suppose, for instance, that you found out I had deceived you."
"I decline to suppose impossibilities."
She had been circled by his arms. Now she drew herself away from him.
She stood where the gaslight fell right on her.
"Tom, look at me carefully! Are you sure you know me?"
"Nelly!"
"Are you quite sure you are not mistaking me for some one else? Are you quite sure, Tom?"
"My own!"
He took her in his arms again. As he did so, she looked him steadfastly in the face.
"Tom, I think it possible that, some day, you may think less of me than you do now. But"--she put her hand over his mouth to stop his speaking--"whatever you may think of me, I shall always love you"--there was an appreciable pause, and an appreciable catching of her breath--"better than my life."
She kissed him, with unusual abandonment, long and fervently, upon the lips.
The morning of the following day came with the promise of fine weather.
Theirs had been an unfashionable courtship--it was to be an unfashionable wedding. Mr. Gibbs was to call for his bride, at her lodgings. They were to drive together, in a single hired brougham, to the church.
Even before the appointed hour, the expectant bridegroom drew up to the door of the house in which his lady-love resided. His knock was answered with an instant readiness which showed that his arrival had been watched and waited for. The landlady herself opened the door, her countenance big with tidings.