That same afternoon in High Street, Kensington, "Westminister," with his coat-collar raised against the inclement wind, his old hat spotted with rain, was drawing at a clay pipe and fixing his iron-rimmed gaze on those who passed him by. It had been a day when singularly few as yet had bought from him his faintly green-tinged journal, and the low class of fellow who sold the other evening prints had especially exasperated him. His single mind, always torn to some extent between an ingrained loyalty to his employers and those politics of his which differed from his paper's, had vented itself twice since coming on his stand; once in these words to the seller of "Pell Mells": "I stupulated with you not to come beyond the lamp-post. Don't you never speak to me again--a-crowdin' of me off my stand"; and once to the younger vendors of the less expensive journals, thus: "Oh, you boys! I'll make you regret of it--a-snappin' up my customers under my very nose! Wait until ye're old!" To which the boys had answered: "All right, daddy; don't you have a fit. You'll be a deader soon enough without that, y'know!"It was now his time for tea, but "Pell Mell" having gone to partake of this refreshment, he waited on, hoping against hope to get a customer or two of that low fellow's. And while in black insulation he stood there a timid voice said at his elbow "Mr. Creed!"The aged butler turned, and saw the little model.
"Oh," he said dryly, "it's you, is it?" His mind, with its incessant love of rank, knowing that she earned her living as a handmaid to that disorderly establishment, the House of Art, had from the first classed her as lower than a lady's-maid. Recent events had made him think of her unkindly. Her new clothes, which he had not been privileged to see before, while giving him a sense of Sunday, deepened his moral doubts.
"And where are you living now?" he said in tones incorporating these feelings.
"I'm not to tell you."
"Oh, very well. Keep yourself to yourself."
The little model's lower lip drooped more than ever. There were dark marks beneath her eyes; her face was altogether rather pinched and pitiful.
"Won't you tell me any news?" she said in her matter-of-fact voice.
The old butler gave a strange grunt.
"Ho!" he said. "The baby's dead, and buried to-morrer.""Dead!" repeated the little model.
"I'm a-goin' to the funeral--Brompton Cemetery. Half-past nine Ileave the door. And that's a-beginnin' at the end. The man's in prison, and the woman's gone a shadder of herself."The little model rubbed her hands against her skirt.
"What did he go to prison for?"
"For assaultin' of her; I was witness to his battery.""Why did he assault her?"
Creed looked at her, and, wagging his head, answered:
"That's best known to them as caused of it."
The little model's face went the colour of carnations.
"I can't help what he does," she said. "What should I want him for--a man like that? It wouldn't be him I'd want!" The genuine contempt in that sharp burst of anger impressed the aged butler.
"I'm not a-sayin' anything," he said; "it's all a-one to me. I never mixes up with no other people's business. But it's very ill-convenient. I don't get my proper breakfast. That poor woman--she's half off her head. When the baby's buried I'll have to go and look out for another room before he gets a-comin' out.""I hope they'll keep him there," muttered the little model suddenly.
"They give him a month," said Creed.
"Only a month!"
The old butler looked at her. 'There's more stuff' in you,' he seemed to say, 'than ever I had thought.'
'Because of his servin' of his country," he remarked aloud.
"I'm sorry about the poor little baby," said the little model in her stolid voice.
"Westminister" shook his head. "I never suspected him of goin' to live," he said.
The girl, biting the finger-tip of her white cotton glove, was staring out at the traffic. Like a pale ray of light entering the now dim cavern of the old man's mind, the thought came to Creed that he did not quite understand her. He had in his time had occasion to class many young persons, and the feeling that he did not quite know her class of person was like the sensation a bat might have, surprised by daylight.
Suddenly, without saying good-bye to him, she walked away.
'Well,' he thought, looking after her, 'your manners ain't improved by where you're living, nor your appearance neither, for all your new clothes.' And for some time he stood thinking of the stare in her eyes and that abrupt departure.
Through the crystal clearness of the fundamental flux the mind could see at that same moment Bianca leaving her front gate.
Her sensuous exaltation, her tremulous longing after harmony, had passed away; in her heart, strangely mingled, were these two thoughts: 'If only she were a lady!' and, 'I am glad she is not a lady!'
Of all the dark and tortuous places of this life, the human heart is the most dark and tortuous; and of all human hearts none are less clear, more intricate than the hearts of all that class of people among whom Bianca had her being. Pride was a simple quality when joined with a simple view of life, based on the plain philosophy of property; pride was no simple quality when the hundred paralysing doubts and aspirations of a social conscience also hedged it round.
In thus going forth with the full intention of restoring the little model to her position in the household, her pride fought against her pride, and her woman's sense of ownership in the man whom she had married wrestled with the acquired sentiments of freedom, liberality, equality, good taste. With her spirit thus confused, and her mind so at variance with itself, she was really acting on the simple instinct of compassion.
She had run upstairs from Mr. Stone's room, and now walked fast, lest that instinct, the most physical, perhaps, of all--awakened by sights and sounds, and requiring constant nourishment--should lose its force.
Rapidly, then, she made her way to the grey street in Bayswater where Cecilia had told her that the girl now lived.
