"Certainly."
The Squire gave Mrs. Mapping"s address, telling briefly of her present distress and weakly state, and intimated that the best mode of relief would be to allow her a few shillings weekly. "You will be sure to see to her?" was his parting injunction. "She may starve if you do not."
"Have no fear: it is our business to do so," repeated the thin gentleman. "Good-day."
"Johnny," said the Squire, going up the street sideways in his excitement, "it is refreshing to hear of these self-denying deeds.
These good men must be going on straight for heaven!"
"Take care, sir! Look where you are going."
The Squire had not been going on straight himself just then, and had b.u.mped up against a foot-pa.s.senger who was hurrying along. It was Pitt, the surgeon. After a few words of greeting, the Squire excused his flurry by telling him where he had come from.
"Been _there_!" exclaimed Pitt, bursting into a laugh. "Wish you joy, sir! We call it Benevolence Hall."
"And a very good name, too," said the Squire. "Such men ought to be canonized, Pitt."
"Hope they will be?" answered Pitt in a curious kind of tone. "I can"t stop now, Mr. Todhetley; am on my way to a consultation."
"He slips from one like an eel," cried the Squire, looking after the doctor as he hurried onwards: "I might have spoken to him about Mrs.
Mapping. But my mind is at ease with regard to her, Johnny, now that these charitable men have the case in hand: and we shall be up again in a few weeks."
III.
It was nearly two months before we were again in London, and winter weather: the same business, connected with a lawsuit, calling the Squire up.
"And now for Mrs. Mapping," he said to me during the afternoon of the second day. So we went to Gibraltar Terrace.
"Yes, she is in her room," said Miss Kester in a resentful tone, when she admitted us. "It is a good thing somebody"s come at last to see after her! I don"t care to have her alone here on my hands to die."
"To die!" cried the Squire sharply, supposing the dressmaker spoke only in temper. "What is she dying of?"
"Starvation," answered Miss Kester.
"Why, what on earth do you mean, ma"am?" demanded he. "Starvation!"
"I"ve done what I could for her, so far as a cup of tea might go, and a bit of bread-and-b.u.t.ter once a day, or perhaps a drop of broth," ran on Miss Kester in the same aggrieved tone. "But it has been hard times with myself lately, and I have my old mother to keep and a bedridden sister.
What she has wanted is a supply of nourishing food; and she has had as good as none of any sort since you were here, sir, being too weak to work: and so, rapid consumption set in."
She whisked upstairs with the candle, for the short winter day was already closing, and we followed her. Mrs. Mapping sat in an old easy-chair, over a handful of fire, her thin cotton shawl folded round her: white, panting, attenuated, starved; and--there could not be much mistake about it--dying.
"Starved? dying? dear, dear!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Squire, backing to the other chair and sitting down in a sort of terror. "What has become of the good people at Benevolence Hall?"
"They!" cried Miss Kester contemptuously. "You don"t suppose those people would spend money to keep a poor woman from dying, do you, sir?"
"Why, it is their business to do it," said the Squire. "I put Mrs.
Mapping"s case into their hands, and they undertook to see to it."
"To see to it, perhaps, sir, but not to relieve it; I should be surprised if they did that. One of them called here ever so many weeks ago and frightened Mrs. Mapping with his harsh questions; but he gave her nothing."
"I don"t understand all this," cried the Squire, rumpling his hair. "Was it a gentleman?"--turning to Mrs. Mapping.
"He was dressed as one," she said, "but he was loud and dictatorial, almost as though he thought me a criminal instead of a poor sick woman.
He asked me all kinds of questions about my past life, where I had lived and what I had done, and wrote down the answers."
"Go on," said the Squire, as she paused for breath.
"As they sent me no relief and did not come again, Miss Kester, after two or three weeks had gone by, was good enough to send a messenger to the place: her nephew. He saw the gentlemen there and told them I was getting weaker daily and was in dreadful need, if they would please to give me a trifle; he said he should never have thought of applying to them but for their having come to see after me. The gentlemen answered unfavourably; inquiries had been made, they sternly told him, and the case was found to be one not suitable for relief, that I did not deserve it. I--I--have never done anything wrong willingly," sobbed the poor woman, breaking down.
"I don"t think she has, sir; she don"t seem like it; and I"m sure she struggled hard enough to get a living at No. 60," said Miss Kester. "Any way, they did nothing for her--they"ve just left her to starve and die."
I had seen the Squire in many a temper, but never in a worse than now.
He flung out of the room, calling upon me to follow him, and climbed into the hansom that waited for us outside.
"To Benevolence Hall," roared he, "and drive like the deuce."
"Yes, sir," said the man. "Where is Benevolence Hall?"
I gave him the address, and the man whirled us to Benevolence Hall in a very short time. The Squire leaped out and indoors, primed. In the office stood a young man, going over some accounts by gaslight. His flaxen hair was parted down the middle, and he looked uncommonly simple.
The rest of the benevolent gentlemen had left for the day.
What the Squire said at first, I hardly know: I don"t think he knew himself. His words came tumbling out in a way that astonished the clerk.
"Mrs. Mapping," cried the young man, when he could understand a little what the anger was about. "Your ten pounds?--meant for her, you say----"
"Yes, my ten pounds," wrathfully broke in the Squire; "my ten-pound cheque that I paid down here on this very table. What have you done with it?"
"Oh, that ten pounds has been spent, partly so, at least, in making inquiries about the woman, looking-up her back history and all that.
Looking-up the back lives of people takes a lot of money, you see."
"But why did you not relieve her with it, or a portion of it? That is the question I"ve come to ask, young man, and I intend to have it answered."
The young man looked all surprise. "Why, what an idea!" lisped he. "Our a.s.sociation does not profess to help sinners. That would be a go!"
"Sinners!"
"We can"t be expected to take up a sinner, you know--and she"s a topping one," continued he, keeping just as cool as the Squire was hot. "We found out all sorts of dreadful things against the woman. The name, Mapping, is not hers, to begin with. She went to church with a man who had a living wife----"
"She didn"t," burst in the Squire. "It was the man who went to church with her. And I hope with all my heart he came to be hanged!"
The clerk considered. "It comes to the same, doesn"t it?" said he, vaguely. "She did go to church with him; and it was ever so long before his proper wife found it out; and she has gone on calling herself Mapping ever since! And she managed so badly in a lodging-house she set up, that she was sold out of it for rent. Consider that! Oh, indeed, then, it is not on such people as these that our good gentlemen would waste their money."
"What do they waste it on?" demanded the Squire.
"Oh, come now! They don"t waste it. They spend it."
"What on? The sick and needy?"