THE GIRL FROM NOWHERE

By MRS. BAILLIE REYNOLDS

Author of "The Notorious Miss Lisle," "Out of the
Night," "A Doubtful Character"

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
NEW YORK

Copyright, 1910
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

BY MRS. BAILLIE REYNOLDS

A Doubtful Character
The Notorious Miss Lisle
The Girl from Nowhere
Out of the Night
A Make-shift Marriage

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
NEW YORK

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. [Despair]
II. [Flight]
III. [A Refuge of Straw]
IV. [Up River]
V. [Separation]
VI. [The Outcast's Brother]
VII. [The First Letter]
VIII. [A Touch of Sympathy]
IX. [The Squire Defies Conventions]
X. [The Hunt is Up]
XI. [Felix Takes Advice]
XII. [Rona's Knight]
XIII. [The Finished Product]
XIV. ["You Never Were Mine"]
XV. [A Difficult Situation]
XVI. [Happenings in a Strange Land]
XVII. ["I was the Man Selected"]
XVIII. [The Kirgiz Yourtar]
XIX. [The Despair of Vronsky]
XX. [What is this Love?]
XXI. [Denzil Does His Duty]
XXII. [Forebodings]
XXIII. [The Escape of Aunt Bee]
XXIV. [Veronica "On Her Own"]
XXV. [The Convalescence of Denzil]
XXVI. [Strangers Yet]
XXVII. [Two in the Campagna]
XXVIII. [The Primrose Path]
XXIX. [A Double Dilemma]
XXX. [Veronica is Surprised]

CHAPTER I
DESPAIR

The sense that every struggle brings defeat,
Because Fate holds no prize to crown success:
That all the oracles are dumb, or cheat,
Because they have no secret to express:—
That none can pierce the vast black veil uncertain
Because there is no light behind the curtain,
That all is vanity and nothingness!
The City of Dreadful Night.

The curtain rises on an empty stage.

Managers assure those of us who try to write plays nowadays that we must lay our scenes in well-to-do circles if we wish to attract an audience.

The scene before us now has few recommendations, either as a romantic or a tragic background. It is not quite wretched enough to suggest dark deeds; it is not nearly old enough to convey a hint of mystery: it is merely the back parlor of a London lodging-house of the meaner kind.

On a certain murky day in March it lay bare to the eye of anyone who was desirous of exploring.

The street of which it formed a narrow section was small and dreary. The front parlor window of this particular house was discreetly veiled with curtains which had once been white. Between them stood an artificial aspidistra in a ginger-colored pot, envied by some of the other dwellers in the immediate neighborhood.

This front parlor, at the date in question, was unlet. It had folding-doors, affording the sole entrance to a very small room behind, generally let as a bedroom, with the front room as sitting-room. For the past month this back parlor had been tenanted by one who was far too poor to think of needing more than one room in which to starve. Moreover, he was there on the understanding that he would vacate should a better let offer itself.

Had the curtain risen on that back room, the eye would have taken but one glance to feel assured of destitution on the part of the absent occupier. There was a bed, a washstand, a table, a chair. There was a cupboard, the door hanging open on one hinge, revealing the fact that an empty mug formed its sole contents. There was no carpet on the floor, no cloth on the rickety table—the only trace of occupancy was in a penny bottle of ink and a few sheets of paper which lay upon the table.

The smoke-dimmed window looked sheer down upon a mazy labyrinth of railway lines. Day by day trains rumbled by, and sent up each its contribution of soot and grime to choke the atmosphere and darken the unlovely prospect.

This window—it was more correctly a glass door—was open; and without was a mean iron railing, with a flight of corroded steps, which, at the time the house was built, probably led to the garden. The encroaching line had shorn away all the garden, leaving the iron steps overhanging the abyss with a futility that moved to pity the soul of the present occupier when he had a thought to spare from the anguish of his own condition.

So much for the stage. The actor, when at last he made his abrupt appearance, bursting in, as an actor should, dramatically, through the center doors—seemed to have been cast by Nature for a leading part.

He was still young, and somewhat tall; and, though his cheeks were sunken, his eyes rimmed with red, his hair rough, his beard some days old, and his clothes soiled and ragged, he yet kept that air of the dominant race, that carriage of the head and movement of the shoulders that tells of the public school if not the university.

But it was not merely this air of incongruity with environment which made him noticeable. It was a certain atmosphere that clothed him—a peculiar expression which cut him off from any other young man of his age and class—a quality of isolation which hung about him like some poisonous exhalation.

The eyes of the young look forward. Not always with hope or eagerness; sometimes with apprehension, or terror, or anxiety. But, in some wise, they do look forward. Life, whether it be good or bad, is still to come.

This man's eyes had ceased to travel on. He had done with life. He came into the room, as the last flicker of a flame may leap up in burnt paper. Though he still existed, hope and fear were alike dead in him. All was over: he had given up the contest with Fate.

In no sense was he any longer a part of his surroundings. He had severed himself, by an act of will, from the struggle and the fret. His pilgrimage—evil and brief—was ended.

He fastened the folding-doors behind him with deliberation, and, advancing to the table, laid down one or two packages upon it.

The largest of these must have been instantly recognized by any expert as rejected manuscript. Some irate publisher, at the end, probably, of a morning's fruitless search for something worth publishing, had scrawled in blue pencil upon the outside of the parcel: "Why the deuce don't you get your stuff typewritten?" In addition to this derisive question, the title of the bulky package was clearly legible, printed in large ink letters: "THE TRUMPET CALL TO REVOLUTION."

Seating himself by the table, the owner of the despised treasure drew from his pocket a very small bottle, labeled "Laudanum." He rose, searched the mattress of his bed, and extracted from various holes three other small bottles of the same size. Then he produced a paper from his pocket, smoothed it out, and spread it upon the table. A letter, upon good, thick writing-paper, stamped with an address—Normansgrave, Cleveshire.

The writing upon the bluish-tinted sheet was fine and clear:

"DEAR FELIX,—Bearing in mind the circumstances which led to your disgrace, you cannot, I think, upon your first emergence from prison, reasonably expect me to intrust you with money. I have placed a certain sum in the hands of the police-court missionary, with instructions to him to pay you so much a week from it, so as to give you time to seek honest employment. I have made it clear to him that, should you hold any kind of communication with the murderous gang of anarchists who have brought you to this pass, you are to forfeit all further right to your allowance.

"Once again let me entreat you to make a fresh start, and endeavor to atone, by a future of steady work, for the aberrations of your early manhood. Should you show any signs of a real effort to improve, I shall not refuse to receive you here once more as my father's son. But to do so now, before you have proved yourself, would be an injustice both to myself and you.—I remain, your brother, DENZIL VANSTON."

After carefully reading through this letter Felix Vanston took up a sheet of paper from among two or three lying near, and wrote as follows:

"DEAR PHARISEE,—You have sent the publican to his just doom. He goes to it with the publican's old prayer upon his lips. 'God be merciful'—for certainly man is not. You may continue to fast twice in the week and give tithes of all you possess to other objects than your disreputable brother—FELIX."

This letter he folded, addressed, and arranged with the other in the center of the table, marked thus:

"TO BE READ BY THE CORONER AT
THE INQUEST ON MY BODY.
(N.B.—No room for suspicion of insanity)."

This done, he took his bundle of MS. in his arms and went to the empty grate. Tearing off a few leaves, he pushed them through the bars, produced a box still containing two or three matches, and set them alight. He sat by on the grimy floor tearing off more and feeding the flames with it until the whole book was consumed.

The world, he found, was an oyster that he could not open. He had declined to try the usual kind of knife—that provided by custom for him, in the shape of an office stool. He had imbibed socialistic theories somehow in early boyhood, and his half-brother, Denzil Vanston, had from that moment assured him that he was lost.

The late Squire Vanston, of Normansgrave, had made a foolish second marriage. He had been caught by a designing young woman whom he met at a Brighton hotel. While Felix was still a child, his father died, leaving the widow a life interest in the property. Poor Denzil had cause to feel displeasure. The second Mrs. Vanston filled the house with a crew of very second-rate journalists, music-hall artistes, and sporting men. Her son, Felix, was most imprudently indulged; her stepson, Denzil, had no home as long as she lived. His own mother had been the exact reverse of his father's second wife—a good, rather dull woman, affectionate and sincere, but hard and prim. Denzil, brought up on these lines, was unspeakably shocked by the proceedings which at Normansgrave followed his father's death.

Mrs. Vanston was killed in a carriage accident, after a reckless ten years of very frivolous widowhood. This is putting the case with an extreme mildness, which the inhabitants of the neighborhood might class as euphemism. She died intestate, and was found to have spent the whole of the money which the Squire had left to her, with a view to its coming to Felix after her death. His will bequeathed all the property and all the money, with the exception of this sum, to his elder son. Felix was unprovided for.

At this time he was eighteen years old, and studying at a Continental university. Oxford and Cambridge were not Bohemian enough for him. His brother was willing to make him an allowance, on condition of his qualifying for some profession; and although the only profession for which he would show interest was journalism, and though Denzil profoundly, and perhaps excusably, mistrusted journalism after his experience of his stepmother's set, he did help him, and did make him an allowance, until debts and irregular habits and bad associates convinced him that Felix would do no good until he had actually to work for his living.

Actuated by the best intentions, the elder brother said he would stop supplies until Felix really buckled down to work. The next thing was that the police raided a Dynamite Club in Soho, and Felix was arrested, brought to trial, and convicted. He had served the greater part of his two years' sentence. And now the end had come. At the age of twenty-three Felix Vanston decided that life was not worth living.

It is possible that journalism was not his destined medium. It is certain that nobody would pay him for what he wrote. With hunger comes depression. Moreover, Felix, from the moment when he donned his prison garb, had lost his self-respect. There was nothing to hold him back from the thing he contemplated. He had nothing to lose.

His book was burnt. The incoherent ravings of a boy caught by catchwords, not understanding what he thought or wished or hoped, knowing little, comprehending less—it was all ashes now. The wild heart of him had gone out into its formless sentiments. Nonsense as it was, he had burned with the necessity of expressing it. Now it was gone; and the world finally went out with it. The last flicker, oddly enough, took him back to a boyish episode, when the gardeners had a big bonfire at Normansgrave in the autumn long ago. He saw, as he crouched by the rusty grate, a dream-picture of October woods, rising in billows of color upon the swelling uplands that cradled the old red-brick house. He saw the drift of blue smoke between his eyes and the distance, smelt the aromatic fragrance of burning wood and smoldering leaf. He could feel again the warmth of his big brother's hand as he stood, in his fur and velvet and plumed cap, shouting to Denzil to make it blaze. He saw his mother coming along the garden walk, somewhat hurried. She had a smile for the men who fed the fire, and for the two boys—the little and big—watching. Then she ordered them away. She said Felix must not be out in the cold air. Denzil, kindly enough, tried to draw away the small boy, who, spoilt and uncontrolled, declined to go—stamped, shrieked, and fought. In the midst of his fighting the fire blazed up higher—just near where they were standing. He saw his mother, with a furtive, sweeping look round at the men, whose backs were turned as they lifted more fuel on the flames with a fork—he saw her make a swift movement and fling into the glowing red part of the fire some letters which she had clasped in her hand.

The fire was very fierce; they were ashes in a moment; and, stroking her boy's smooth cheek, she said, laughingly: "Let him stay a while, Denzil, if he cares so much."

Then the child was conscious of a silence—an interchange of glance between his mother and her step-son. Denzil knew that Mrs. Vanston had come down to the bonfire to burn something—that she had desired to send him and Felix away that they might not see her do so; that the sudden opening of a glowing hot hole in the fire quite near had made her risk detection and toss in what she came to destroy. Felix had not understood. He thought Denzil looked severely at "Ma" because she spoilt him, Felix, and let him have his way when he roared. But as his paper fire flared and died down and blackened, the memory of the little scene floated to him through the mist of years; he saw the sweet place, the faint sunlight, the privet hedges and green archways of the vegetable garden; and for one moment there swept over him a desire to live—a desire to see the Cleveshire hills again.

It expired with the last red glow in the flapping ash of paper. Life was over. Nobody there at Normansgrave wanted him. Nay, more, they would be devoutly thankful to know that he was dead.

He rose from his crouched attitude and straightened himself as well as he could for the gnawing pains of hunger. Then he took the mug from the cupboard and carried it to the table. He paused, looking round. The bed was unmade, its unwholesome grayish linen crumpled and tossed. Since he was to lie there to sleep his last sleep, it might as well be smooth. He made it hurriedly, for the wolf that gnawed him was growing clamorous, and came back to the table, where stood the bottles of oblivion. Pouring the brown syrup into the mug, he raised it to his lips.

"A health to Denzil Vanston, of Normansgrave!" he cried aloud; and then, just as the rim of the mug touched his mouth, a shadow fell before his eyes, some dark thing passed swiftly across the window, there was a heavy thud, and a muffled shriek.

The suicide started as if he had been shot. He trembled in every limb. What, in Heaven's name, could it be? Something, someone, was hanging doubled over the sooty iron railing outside his open window.

He put down the cup. He staggered forward. A human body was hanging across the rail. It writhed; in one instant more it would have fallen, and it must fall upon the railway lines below.

That human instinct which comes into action before thought sent him flying to the rescue. He seized the limp, twisting body, and drew it with difficulty, for he was very weak, back over the rail till the feet rested upon the small iron balcony beside him.

It was a girl—a girl about sixteen, with a torrent of bright brown hair. She was very thin; her face seemed to him of a bluish tinge. The moment he touched her she began to cry out. When she was on her feet she began to struggle.

"Let me go! Let me go! Don't touch me, I must kill myself! How dare you hold me! Let me go, I say!"

Stupefaction held Felix mute for a minute or two. To be consistent, he should have helped her over the verge. The bare thought of so doing made his head swim. With no words, but still obeying imperious instinct, he pulled her, struggling feebly against him, into his desolate apartment. He dragged her to the bed, so recently prepared for the accommodation of another guest, and having pushed her upon it, ran to the window and fastened it, with an overmastering dread lest she should make a dash for her freedom, and he not have the strength to stop her.

Seated on the edge of the bed, she doubled herself together and moaned. Her rescuer, sinking dizzily upon the one chair, stared in dumb contemplation. The girl was evidently in terrible pain. Probably she had broken all her ribs. Ought he to go and fetch a hospital ambulance? Dare he leave her alone within reach of that window? Whence had she fallen, and why did she want to kill herself? In spite of hunger, he almost thought he must postpone his own exit until he knew what prompted this child to attempt hers.

After two or three bewildered minutes he went up to her, sat down beside her, and said weakly, "There, there! Tell me where you have hurt yourself."

She uncovered her face and shot a look at him. They had a simultaneous impulse of surprise. Looking at each other, they knew, intuitively, each that the other was not the kind of person you would expect to find in Hawkins Row, Deptford.

For the first time since the gates of the jail closed behind him, Felix forgot to be lonely. He had a sudden, wholly ridiculous sense of being wanted. The moment he saw the face of the girl beside him he knew that she must be saved.

Cautiously he lowered her to the pillow, lifted her legs upon the bed, laid her flat, and bent over her.

"Where do you feel the pain?" he urgently asked.

"Everywhere—all over me. Oh, what shall I do? Why couldn't you let me die?"

"I don't know," said Felix, staring stupidly.

She sobbed aloud, drawing each breath with a groan. He sat by, his mind hardly working, vaguely wondering what would happen next. Presently he was conscious that her moaning had ceased, and he looked up with a sudden leap of his heart in his exhausted frame lest she should be dead. But her eyes were wide open, and roaming round the room.

"Do you live here?" she asked, timidly.

He laughed miserably. "I have contrived to support existence here for ten days," he said. "Now I can't stick it any longer. I was just going to take poison, that very moment that you—came."

She turned her head right round on the dirty pillow to look at him with horror. "You were going to kill yourself? How wicked!" she said, with tremendous emphasis.

He peered at her from under his heavy lashes with a real curiosity. "You say wicked? But you were going to do the same thing yourself?"

"Yes, but that was different. If I had been a man I wouldn't. It is cowardly for a man to bolt. It is the only thing a girl can do—sometimes."

He took a long look at her. There were so many things to say—such crushing replies to make to her artless philosophy. But he was too weak and shaken to make them.

"Come," he said, "shall I take you to a hospital, or will you wait here while I go and see if I can find the parish doctor?"

She waved her small frail hand to the mug on the table. "I'll share that stuff with you."

Felix sat reflecting. He could not give her poison. Why could he not? Which was wrong—his former despair, or his new-found sentiment? He could not determine, but he was bracing himself up to resist her. "There's not enough to kill us both," he said, weakly, "and I am not going to let you throw yourself on those lines down there."

She made no reply to this, but lay with her eyes closed. He ventured a question, "How far did you fall?"

"Only from the room just above this. He locked me in."

"Who did?"

"The man who calls himself my uncle." She pushed up her sleeve, showing a livid bruise upon her arm. "Look," she said, "there are worse on my back and shoulders."

Felix clenched his hands, quite instinctively.

"If he comes back," she sobbed, "he'll—he said he'd do worse than kill me. And you're not strong enough to fight him, are you?"

"Let's run away," said Felix, without an instant's reflection.

She sat up, propping herself upon her arms, while she stared at him. "Have you got any money?"

"Not a halfpenny." He sank back in despair. This hunger of his must be appeased, or he must die.

"I've got a shilling and three-halfpence," said the girl. "It would get us something to eat. But I won't go to those night refuges; I had much rather jump down on the railway lines. And I won't go to a reformatory, or any institution place; so it is no use to try and persuade me...." She reflected a while. "It would be no good to try and get more poison; they wouldn't sell any to me or to you."

Felix had in his pocket the doctor's prescription which had enabled him to purchase what he already had. But he did not say so. She should not know. His eyes had lit up at the bare mention of food.

"See," he said, "I am really, actually starving. I'm in such pain, I hardly know what I am saying just now. Let us go out together and get some food, and then think what we can do afterwards. Do you feel as if you could walk?"

She slipped off the bed and stood up. "I feel very bad," she said, hesitatingly; "but I can walk. Yes—let us get away from here and have something to eat; And then we can jump off a bridge to-night, if there seems nothing else to do."

CHAPTER II
FLIGHT

In her utter helplessness
Sent forth a sudden sharp and bitter cry,
As of a wild thing, taken in a trap,
Which sees the trapper coming through the wood.
—TENNYSON.

Outside, the raw March day was drawing to its unbeautiful close. They crept together along by the railings, as sorry a couple of cripples as ever started forth into the world together. Young Vanston could not walk without reeling—the only thing that held him in control was his anxiety respecting the girl, whose face was still ashen, and who gasped and panted as she moved. He had solicitously felt her ribs—a proceeding rendered easy by her thinness and emptiness, poor child. He had ascertained that no bones were broken, though the pain was severe, and he vaguely diagnosed it to himself as "something internal."

But she was driven by some overmastering impulse of flight which blotted out even the physical distress. To get away was her idea. She had been willing to do so at the cost of life itself. But now that life persisted, and she had escaped from her prison, the desire to live returned in some obscure, muffled fashion. As for him, his apprehensions on her account had for the moment driven clean out of his mind his own desperate intention.

Coming out of Hawkins Row, they crawled along a dark, dreary alley, which brought them out into a main thoroughfare, where traffic of all kinds roared and seethed. Just at the corner a cocoa-room poured its blaze of newly-lit gas across the street.

"Pull yourself together and get across the floor steady," whispered Felix; and the two crept in, and with a last effort sank down into seats in a far corner, near the stove.

It was not a cold evening, except to the starving, and the table which stood inconveniently near the stove was vacant. The girl wore no hat, but, except for this deficiency, they were, in point of costume, rather above than below the average of those present.

Felix had the sense to know that he must not "wolf" his food, or he would increase, and not allay, the pain that rent him. He sat forcing himself to sip the warm cocoa, which tasted like the nectar of the gods. The girl was not so ravenous as he; she had been fed the day before. She was very scared and timid, starting at each new customer that entered, in fear lest it should be the man she dreaded. She sat with her eyes upon the door, keeping a ceaseless guard. For about a quarter of an hour they did not speak.

But when the first demands of bodily craving were satisfied they began to talk.

"Tell me your name," said the girl, peremptorily.

He considered a moment. "My name is David—David Smith," he said at last. He felt unable to give away the name he loved and had dishonored.

"Mine is Veronica—Veronica Leigh, but I am always called Rona." She gazed into his face with some kind of wistful intentness. "You are the first young man—I mean, of the real human kind—that I have ever spoken to," she said earnestly.

The color sprang up under his white face. "I'm not the human kind—that is—I'm all wrong," he said hastily. "No respectable person would speak to me. I have no right to talk to you, or to any good girl. Are you a good girl?"

"I want to be," said Rona, looking at him with startled eyes. "What have you done? You seem—I don't know how to say it, but to me you seem—right—the kind of person I understand—not a beast—not a demon. The men in London," she concluded seriously, "are all beasts and demons."

"I don't know which class I am," said Felix, "but you had better know the worst of me. I have served a term of two years' imprisonment. That means that hardly any walk of life is open to me. I am a man without a character."

She looked at him with a shrinking horror. "In prison! Oh! What did you do?"

"I was in prison for my political opinions, not for theft or anything of that kind."

She seemed to ponder this. "I didn't know they could put people in prison for their political opinions. I thought they passed an Act—the Mother Superior taught us that in England everybody was free."

The young man's eyes darkened. "We won't talk about it," he said shortly. "I have confessed to you the sort I am. Are you sorry you did not leave me to starve?"

She still sat considering him gravely. Her eyes were very dark blue, and the intensity of their gaze was embarrassing. "Are you sorry now for having done the thing they put you in prison for?" she asked at last.

He gave a brief, scoffing laugh. "Well, if you must know, I am," he said. "I was young, and a fool, and I got carried away. I am still a red-hot socialist, but I don't believe in dynamite as I used to do. I find the belief has not a pretty effect upon men's characters."

The admission was a visible relief to his companion. "I am glad," she said.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, suddenly leaning forward. "Is the pain getting at all less?"

"Yes," she returned, "it is less. It hurts a great deal, but I am beginning to feel as if I might be only badly bruised. I did not fall far, and I broke my fall with my arms, somehow." She showed two livid bruises, caked with dried blood, under her sleeves.

"Before we leave here," said Felix, "I wish you would try to tell me a little more. I mean," he broke off in great embarrassment, "perhaps you are not going to tell me anything, nor to trust me. There is nobody in the world who either likes or trusts me, and if you don't either, I shall not be surprised. But if you feel that you could trust me, I would like to help you if I can."

"I don't see how you are to help me," she replied in a hopeless kind of way. "My uncle brought me to London. At least, he says he is my uncle. I have been brought up at a convent school in the north of England. I never saw or heard from any relative until a month ago. I was always there, terms and holidays too, except once or twice when a girl asked me to her home for a few days. You see, I am as lonely as you!"

"Yes," said Felix, "I have a step-brother, but he hates me."

"Well," continued Rona, "about a month ago the Mother Superior told me my uncle had written to say he was coming to fetch me away. He wanted to see me, to judge what I was best fitted for, as I should have to earn my own living. I was rather pleased, for I had always been so lonely. You don't know what it is like to live in a school where letters come, and presents, and parcels, for everybody but you; and visitors and holidays for everybody but you. I had not even known that I had an uncle. But the Mother Superior said it was all right; the letter came from the firm of solicitors who had always paid my school bills. So he came, and I was sent for, and the very first moment I saw him I knew he was all wrong. I knew I should hate him. I could see the Reverend Mother was miserable too. She did not like to let him take me away. But of course she had to. She could not prevent it."

She broke off, as at some recollection which turned her sick. She shuddered.

Felix had had a bowl of porridge and an egg. He was now able to give her his undivided attention.

"Till he came," slowly said Rona, fixing her eyes, heavy with unshed tears, upon the tablecloth, "I had never spoken to a man, except Father Lawson. But I had an idea that men were young, and handsome, and good, and that it was their mission to care for women and protect them." Suddenly she laughed harshly, pushing her cup from her, leaning her elbows on the table and hiding her face. "I know better now," she said in an undertone. "I know better now! They are creatures that sell girls, body and soul, for money. They only care for money and what it will get. My uncle said he was going to train me for the stage. He heard me sing, and said I should have my voice trained, and be taught to dance.... He has taken me every day to a place where they handle girls as if they were apes or pet dogs. I have been made to put on horrible clothes—to dance with hardly any clothes on at all, while men stood and made remarks about the way I was made. Other girls," she said, looking up in a pitiful wonder—"there were others who didn't seem to mind—others who laughed at me for minding. But, you see, I have been taught to say my prayers, and to shrink from all immodesty. Oh, if you could know what I have undergone!"

Felix growled. He clenched his hands and cursed his own physical weakness. "Well," he said—"well, what then?"

"A few days ago a man came to the dancing school who offered to buy me from my uncle. He was a man with an oily face and black curls, and had a grin like the demons that are carrying off the lost souls in the altarpiece at the Convent. He hung about all day watching me, and in the evening he said to uncle that he could train me, but he should want to take me over entirely. My uncle was in a savage mood, for he and I had battles every evening. I said I would earn my living in any honest way he liked. I would sit in a workroom ten hours a day, I would scrub or do anything he told me; but he said there was no money in such work, and I had got to make money for him. I think he was beginning to find out that he could not manage me, and was afraid I should run away. So—though at first he refused the man's offer, and said he knew a good thing when he saw it, and that in twelve months I should be setting London ablaze—still, after a bit, they came to terms. He was to pay my uncle a sum down, undertake the whole care of me, and my training, and he bound himself to pay some percentage on my earnings to my uncle when I came out. If you will believe it, all the other girls seemed to think I was fortunate. But I made up my mind that I would run away. However, my uncle suspected that, so when we got home he gave me a thrashing, and locked me in with bread and water, and said I should stay there until I had come to my senses. He had not beaten me before that, and it turned me into a tiger. I held out for five days—think of it—five days in that room, staring down on those trains, all alone, nothing to do, nothing to read, hardly anything to eat! And I was getting weak—so weak that I began to be afraid I should give in. I felt that if my uncle were to come in with a cane in his hand I should be too sick with fear to resist. So I said my prayers, and decided the only thing I could do was to kill myself. I knew that if I got into the power of the man with the black curls I should be—lost—and it was better to die. So I jumped—that's all. Oh, do let us go out! I am so nervous, I fancy every moment they may walk in—my uncle and he."

"From what you tell me," said Felix, "they are most unlikely to come here. They would go to a bar, not a cocoa-house."

"I suppose so," she said, faintly, her face livid, either with pain or fear.

Felix folded his arms, leant back, and thought profoundly. "I should think," he said, "the best thing—the only thing—would be for me to take you back to the Convent, would it not?"

She considered this, her wide gaze once more intent upon his face. "But he might go there and ask for me, and what could the Mother say?"

"She could not keep you there, of course, because you could not pay her. But she would find you some honest way to earn your living."

She nodded. "I believe she would—and not tell him that I had come to her. Yes!"—laying her two hands upon the table before her she looked him bravely in the eyes. "I will go with you," she said.

They paid their reckoning, rose with difficulty, for both were stiff, and reluctantly left the warmth of the fire and crept out into the street. Dusk had fallen, and the air was thick, but not what Londoners would call a fog. As they came out of the door an omnibus stopped close to the curb, and two men descended.

One was middle-aged, heavily built, fleshy, and well dressed; he looked like the proprietor of a low-class music-hall. The other was lean, shabby, wolf-like—a debased type: a man who had evidently sunk in the social scale.

Felix felt upon his arm the grip of a desperate thing. "Run—run—never mind if we are killed, run," she uttered, gaspingly. "It's they—it's they!"

CHAPTER III
A REFUGE OF STRAW

A blur
Of gilded mist—'twas morn's first hour—
Made vague the world: and in the gleam
Shivered the half-awakened stream.

Through tinted vapors looming large,
Ambiguous shapes obscurely rode.
She gazed where many a laden barge
Like some dim-moving saurian showed.
—WILLIAM WATSON.

In after days, whenever he was sleeping badly, or felt ill or feverish, Felix was able to recapture the exact feeling of that moment when he stood, with the defenseless girl, in the glare of the gas on the London pavement, and saw the two pursuers close to them, almost within arm's length. He knew that if the girl was recognized the sympathy of the crowd would be on the side of her uncle, and against the disreputable youth with whom she had run away. And he saw, too, that if she tried to run, recognition was almost inevitable.

Inspiration came with extremity. It flashed upon him that if they stood quite still they might escape notice. The girl's dark blue serge frock and coat were of the kind one sees everywhere. Her back was not distinctive. Her companion was an utter stranger. The street was the last place in which her uncle would expect to see her. In a moment Felix knew what to do. Snatching off his cap, he pushed it firmly down over her bare head, hissing in her ear as he did so, "Stand still—turn your back—look in at the window—hold your handkerchief to your face."

It is long in the telling, but it occupied an instant. By the time the two heavy men had gained the pavement the huddled girl, with stooping shoulders, was staring at the pies.

He of the oily face and black locks was looking at his watch in the light of the lamps, not three feet from where Felix stood at bay. Two or more gem rings flashed on his fat hand.

"Half-past six," he said, in the thick, smooth tones of the German Jew. "How far have we to go?"

"Two minutes' walk," replied his companion.

"We arrange then—I go in first," said the Jew, "and I soothe the child, and take her out to dine at the Tuscany. You do not appear. You comprehend? You do not appear?"

"All right, all right," said the other man, testily. "That's all arranged. You take her to dine in a private room——"

They moved off together. The last words audible from the Jew were, "A bottle of champagne—after starving all these hours——"

It was true. They were gone. They had stood within a few feet of their prey, and had not seen her. How should they expect to see her in that place, and with that companion? The promptness of Felix, joined to her instantaneous, convent-bred obedience, had saved them.

It seemed to him, and to her, hours that they stood so, hand gripped in hand, he facing towards the street and she towards the shop window, when he said, his voice tumbling over a sob, "They have turned the corner."

She moved slightly towards him—tottered on her feet. He took her by the shoulders, not roughly, but with sternness. "Look here," he said, under his breath, "you can't faint—there isn't time. You have got to pull yourself together and walk—do you hear?"

She nodded blindly, still clinging to his hand, and he dragged her across the road, dived into a dark side street, and moved along, as fast as he could induce her wavering feet to follow, for half a mile or more. By that time she was sobbing aloud in her pain and distress, and, fearful lest passers-by should think he was ill-treating her, and interfere, he stopped and sat down upon a doorstep, drawing her to rest her poor battered body against him.

"I can only give you just time to draw your breath," he said. "I must get you into some hiding-place. We are not going to be taken now."

"Oh, no! No!" She clutched him in terror.

"By this time they have found out that you are gone," he said, "and they will be racking their brains to think how. They will find the door locked. They will find the window leading into my room bolted on the inside. They will think that you have fallen upon the lines, and been found—the first thing they are dead certain to do is to go to the railway station to make inquiries. That gives us a bit of a start. If nobody saw us go away together, they will be very hard up for a clew. I left my letters on the table, and I poured away the laudanum out of the mug. They will be fairly puzzled to know what has happened."

She had recovered her breath, and she asked tremulously, "What are you going to do?"

"The only thing I can think of is to take you to a friend of mine, who is at times in charge of the hay wharf at the canal basin at Limehouse. If he is there he will let us sleep in the hay, and to-morrow I must turn to and earn a few coppers. Have you any change left out of your shilling?"

"Three-halfpence."

"That will do us. We will have two halfpenny 'bus rides down this road, close by, and, after that, it is only five minutes' walk to the wharf."

"And what if your friend is not there?"

"We must try and hide somewhere," he replied. "But let us hope for the best."

"I will pray that he may be there," said Rona, with simplicity.

When they emerged from the omnibus, at the end of their ride, one halfpenny represented the joint capital of the firm.

The wharf was dark and muddy, the black water of the basin reflecting the light of rather few lamps. But there was a warm, pleasant odor of dry hay permeating the listless atmosphere like a suggestion of sunny meadows. Felix felt in his heart that what he ought to do was to take his helpless companion to a hospital. Yet somehow the conviction was in him that, were he bereft of her, the old temptation to suicide would return with full force the moment he grew hungry again.

He had had enough of it—enough of seeing the look of suspicion on the faces of those to whom he applied for help. Here was one pair of eyes which spoke trust, one innocent creature, who clung to him as her sole refuge. He could not deny himself the new, strange solace.

Leaving Rona seated upon a trolley, he groped his way along the stumpy jetty to where the light in the night watchman's cabin gleamed across the dark, lapping wavelets.

A man in a blue jersey was seated, smoking a pipe, on a capstan, his ugly face in shadow.

"What ho, Comrade Dawkes!" said Felix, in a low tone.

The man started. "You!" he said, in tones of astonishment. He turned round so as to see Felix fully. Then, rising with the difficult movement of one whose joints are crippled with rheumatics, took the young man by the sleeve and drew him a little forward, to bring his face into the light of his lamp.

"'Tis yourself," he said at last; "who would have thought it? Where have you been since they let you loose?"

Felix gave a short laugh. "I'm still on ticket-of-leave, mate," he said; "and if the police know I am in communication with any of the old lot, I score a black mark. But who cares? I'm desperate."

The night-watchman again seated himself upon his capstan. He puffed once or twice at his pipe before he replied. "Oh, you're desperate, are you? That's how we like 'em. Always got a job on hand for desp'rate men, we have."

"I'm not taking any to-night, old man," said Felix. "I'm saving a girl."

This was so surprising that Dawkes turned round so as to face him completely, and took his pipe out of his mouth.

"Saving a girl, are yer? What d'yer mean by that? Got religion? Ministers been at yer?"

"No. But a girl dropped into my arms out of nowhere—a girl fleeing from the black wolves they call men in this city—a girl who had been trapped—a good girl, Dawkes. I've got this thing to do—just to put her somewhere, where she'll be safe."

Dawkes gazed upon him with small blear eyes, deliberately. "Good-lookin', I suppose?" he remarked at length.

"Well, no, that's the odd part of it to me," said Felix. "She says that two men wanted her to train for the stage, singing and dancing. But she's not a bit pretty—just a kiddie, all legs and arms, with the most sorrowful eyes—like a lost dog."

Dawkes shrugged his shoulders, and turned away as if from a hopeless idiot. "What d'you want to do with her?" he asked.

"She's been hurt—pretty badly," said Felix, timidly. "I want you to let her spend the night here in the hay."

"Where is she?"

"Close by here."

"Bring her along, so's I can 'ave a squint at her."

Felix obeyed. A fire blazed in the night-watchman's cabin, and by his instructions he seated Rona on a chair in front of it. She was scared and nervous, hardly able to control herself, what with bodily pain and mental apprehension.

"You tyke my tip," said Comrade Dawkes, after a prolonged scrutiny. "Tyke and get shut of 'er to-night, and now. Send her to the orsepital, they'll look after 'er there. Go an' saddle yourself with a girl, there'll never be no end to it."

Rona did not speak, but her "lost dog" eyes besought Felix.

"If she's no better in the morning, I must," he said, reluctantly. "But, you see, if she goes to the hospital, ten to one those ruffians will find her; and he's her uncle—they would have to let him take her away. There's nobody but me to speak for her, and nobody will believe me on oath in a police-court. The end of it would be my being jugged again, for abduction, and she handed over to ruin."

Dawkes nodded slowly. He saw the desperate nature of their plight. Once caught, they would have no chance at all.

"If that's the way of it, and you go to be off, my advice to you both is—be off, and look sharp about it," said he. "Don't hang around here all night."

Felix made a gesture of despair. "But she can't travel, and we have no money," he said, resentfully. "We'd better chuck ourselves in there, and have done with it."

"She can travel," said Dawkes.

"How, then?"

"In a canal boat."

They regarded him earnestly.

"Anywhere you thought of making for?" he asked.

Felix told him of the Convent School in the North Riding.

"First place they'll look for her," said Dawkes, reflectively. "Get there slow, is my advice. It'll do you no 'arm if you go a bit roundabout, what I can see of it. My son-in-law is starting to-night for Basingstoke. His boy's took and got pneumony. If you drove the boss," he said to Felix, "I expect he'd pay yer syme as he paid 'im. And you'd get to Basingstoke with a few shillin's in yer pocket—which would be all to the good, seemin'ly."

For the first time a glimmer of hope lit up the heart of Felix. The suggestion was eminently practical. Unless some quite unlooked-for clew were given nobody would think of searching for them in a canal barge.

"Think he'd take me on, Comrade? I'm a green hand," he said, "but I can manage horses all right. I'm used to them."

"Looks as if we might fix you up, then," returned the man, unemotionally. He stepped, with some difficulty, to the hob, removed a tea-pot, and, turning to a shelf, poured out a cup of tea, mixed in a spoonful of condensed milk from a tin near, and handed it to the girl. "Stop a bit," he said, withdrawing the cup as at a sudden thought. He went to a tiny corner cupboard, took out a square black bottle, and poured something into the cup. "Drink that up, it'll put heart into yer," he said. Then, to Felix, "When she's 'ad all she wants, you take a ditto, and never mind emptying the pot; I can make some more."

With this he disappeared, and they heard him stumping along the jetty. The cognac was really good, and the hot drink pulled the young man together. Rona and he sat by the fire side by side, gazing at the red coals, with a drowsiness born of fatigue and excitement.

Felix had an illusion of being separated from the world which was to him so detestable a spot, and placed in a new setting, in a universe where there was clearly a post for him, and a work which he alone could do. He looked, in a fervor of compassion, at the figure of the waif beside him. Rona was gripping the arms of the hard wooden chair upon which she sat to hold herself upright. Her breath came broken and uneven; there was a glaze of perspiration upon her pale forehead, where little locks of bronze hair lay damp. He could see that she was wretchedly uncomfortable, and that she was too dazed with misery to see how her discomfort could be lessened. Every minute or so the lids half-sunk over her filming eyes, the pupils turned up, as if sleep were overcoming her. Then her limbs relaxed a little, and the torture startled her awake once more. When he had watched this for some minutes, he saw that she would be easier lying down. But the floor was impossible. He glanced down at the mud and expectoration which defiled it, and then at the fragile girl, who was daintily clean, except for the dust and mire of her breathless escape.

The young man rose, placed his arms under her, and lifted her upon his knees. He laid her head against the shabby coat, which, with a shirt, was all that protected him from the March wind, and rested her feet upon the chair in which she had been sitting. She moaned a little as he lifted her; but evidently the relief of the change of position was immediate. She seemed to breathe more easily, and after a moment she raised her eyes to his with a gratitude which he found very moving. As he cradled her there, before the cinder fire, in that strange refuge, he vowed himself to her service, as one of Arthur's knights may have vowed life and loyalty to the lady for whom he fought.

There was satisfaction in seeing the blue-veined lids once more descend, as unconsciousness enfolded the suffering girl.

The long minutes ticked on, and now and then a shouting, or sudden noise out of the night, set his nerves a-quiver. But nothing happened. More than an hour went by, and still he sat so, almost past caring what might next befall them. That Rona should continue to sleep, with her head upon his shoulder, seemed the one important thing.

The footfall of Comrade Dawkes returning, and the flood of cold air which accompanied his entrance, brought back the necessity for action with a pang.

"Come along, and look slippy," he said.

Rona was so stiff that Felix could hardly lift her, and he had almost to carry her along to where there loomed out of the darkness the dim bulk of a barge, lying low in the water, with her cargo of tarpaulin-covered hay.

Dawkes had arranged with his son-in-law, an unamiable-looking person with a wall eye, to take Felix on in place of the boy left behind with "pneumony," and to pay him the princely sum of seven shillings for the trip, which he expected would last four days, and during which he undertook to feed both Felix and the girl. The night-watchman had, moreover, bestowed upon the eloping pair a truss of hay, such as formed his perquisite from the barges mooring at the wharf, and which he usually disposed of to carters and van-owners of his acquaintance. This truss he had opened, and disposed so as to make a comfortable couch for Rona, with a tarpaulin canopy, stretched upon a hurdle, cunningly inserted between the tightly piled trusses of the cargo.

It was an ingeniously planned bed; and though the son-in-law, who was very deaf, in addition to the imperfection of his vision, seemed to dislike the notion of his female passenger, Felix felt that it was all far better arranged than he could have hoped for. His sole discomfort lay in the notion that, to secure this freedom, he had been obliged to put himself under obligations to a "Comrade"—one of the old lawless gang—and one never quite knew what form payment to the Brotherhood might have to take. However, so far, all was clear gain. He wrung the hand of the night-watchman and stepped aboard, while with shouts and oaths the barge got itself attached to the tail of another, which was tied to a third, which depended upon a dirty, noisy, squat steam-tug, the owner of which poured forth his language in a torrent which could hardly be equaled, one would think, even in California.

They were to be towed, it appeared, as far as the beginning of the Wey navigation, so Felix's stable duties would not yet begin. The son-in-law, whose name was Doggett, took the tiller during the critical night hours. Felix went to see how fared his charge. The hay was clean, warm, and fragrant, and she, worn out with misery, relieved at their escape, bemused by her first taste of stimulant, sank off to sleep in a few minutes, and left the young man free to go aft, and take lessons in steering a barge, which is an art not to be acquired in five minutes, even by one who has stroked his College eight.

The waters of the dirty river, slapped and churned by the passage of the tug, bumped and billowed in light and darkness. The yellow, sickly lights of the shore mingled with the riding lights of the craft around, until the young man's brain reeled. The night was cold, and he was dog tired. His head sank from time to time on his chest. At last Doggett seized him by the arm and shook him.

"Go, sleep it out," he bawled, as if Felix, like himself, was hard of hearing. "I'll call yer when I want yer."

Dizzily the would-be suicide stumbled into the little dingy cabin, found the thing that purported to be a bed, and in half a minute was sound asleep, deaf even to the torrent of language which the appearance of the tug and her barges seemed to provoke all along the great watery highway.

CHAPTER IV
UP RIVER

Bordered by cities, and hoarse
With a thousand cries, is its stream.
And we on its breast, our minds
Are confused as the cries which we hear,
Changing and shot as the sights that we see.
—MATTHEW ARNOLD.

The dawn was misty gray and the cold piercing when Doggett awoke his second-in-command. The barge flotilla was just passing under Hammersmith Bridge.

Felix, dazed with sleep, arose, and, as directed, lit a paraffin stove, boiled a kettle, and made tea. Then he frizzled bacon in a frying-pan, an accomplishment which was by no means new to him. He took his own breakfast, a few hurried mouthfuls, and then, carrying his mug and plate, went to relieve his master at the tiller.

As he passed, he stooped to where Rona slept, motionless in her nest of hay. She was lying quite still, her lashes, with a bronze luster on their blackness, penciled sharply upon her cheek, flushed with warm slumber. The rosy tint made the face appear far more pleasing than it had seemed last night. She panted now and then, as if it hurt her to draw breath. But, as far as he could tell, she was not feverish.

He went on to his post, wrapped himself up in old sacks, and set himself with determination to his work. The steersman of the barge immediately in front hailed him, and wanted to know, in a particularly rich vernacular, whether he were going to pursue the Old Man's policy of steering in the one exact way most calculated to annoy the man ahead. Felix had been in queer places, and though bargees were not among his experiences, convicts, it was to be presumed, ran them pretty close in the way of language. His reply was of the right kind, and given in the right tone. When Doggett, munching his bacon, heard it, he gave a hoarse, inward chuckle, and decided that his new "boy" was not such a green hand after all.

Having finished his breakfast, the Old Man turned in; and from that time until ten o'clock, when he had been bidden to call him, Felix sat guiding the heavy, sulky barge upstream. The mist cleared away little by little, the sun came up, and the day broke out clear and gay, though very cold. Just as he came off his watch, Rona awoke and called him. He hurried to her side, knelt down, and took the warm little hand thrust out to him.

"How do you feel?" he asked.

They looked at each other with curiosity. Felix was not an engaging object, with the lower half of his gaunt face shrouded in stubbly black beard. He had discarded his collar and tie, and Comrade Dawkes had lent him a very dirty blue jersey. The girl had the soiled, rumpled aspect of one who has slept in her clothes. Her hair was rough and tumbling down, and full of bits of hay. There were purple marks under her eyes, and her lids were red with the unavailing tears of many days.

The friendliness of the young man's heart was curiously unmixed with any feeling of sex attraction. Sex only entered into the question in so far that he was more sorry for Rona than he would have been for a boy in her case, on account of her greater helplessness.

"I feel very queer," said Rona, shyly, "and terribly stiff."

"I daren't let you get up and move about yet," he returned. "It is so cold, the wind cuts like a knife. I'll go and make you some hot tea. Could you eat some bacon?"

She said "No" to that, with an expression of loathing. He went to the cabin, and with infinite labor managed to make a bit of toast, which he took to her, fervently hoping that it did not taste of paraffin. She earnestly asserted that it did not, but could not eat it nevertheless. She drank the tea, however, and declared herself refreshed. But Felix could see that she felt very ill. He could not stay long with her, for he had to wash up, make the so-called bed, put the cabin tidy, etc.; all the time parrying with difficulty the intense interest and pointed questions of the steersman of the barge ahead.

When he next went to her, she wished to know where they were going. He told her Basingstoke, and that from thence they would have to tramp to Sempleton, where the Convent was situated. She was glad she had not to walk that day. She was sure she should be better to-morrow, if she lay quite still. She was warm, and not very uncomfortable.

They reached Teddington Lock at midday, and below it they waited forty-five minutes by Mr. Doggett's watch; which delay provoked a cataract of comment which left the listener stunned. At this place Felix bought a paper, which, to his relief, said nothing of any abduction or elopement, nor made any comment upon the disappearance of two such obscure persons as themselves. He cheered Rona with this news. Here he also persuaded the lock-keeper's wife to sell him a fresh egg for the sum of one halfpenny, since "his sister" was ill, and found herself quite unable to eat the pork chops which were, with fried greens, to form the midday repast of himself and Mr. Doggett.

His cooking gave his new master great satisfaction. Mr. Doggett consumed his succulent repast in full view of the envious crew of the George Barnes, who had some cold meat of the least appetizing description, and to whom the savory odor from the cabin of the Sarah Dawkes was a provocation hard to be endured.

The lock-keeper's wife, charmed by Felix's persuasive tongue, herself toasted bread for Rona, who, stimulated by the fresh air and the rest cure she was undergoing, managed to eat both egg and toast, to the relief and triumph of the young man, whose only interest in life she had suddenly become.

He developed powers of ready invention, coupled with artistic restraint, in informing the crew of the George Barnes, in answer to their vast and avid desire for personal information, how his sister had worked in a pickle factory, and how the air was so bad that she had been attacked with anæmia, and how the doctors recommended a trip up the canal as the finest cure for this same dread complaint. The man had never heard of anæmia, and treated it with the awe-struck respect entertained by the scolding lady of Theodore Hook's story, for a parallelogram.

The process of getting the barges out of the lock was one which threatened to last forever. It was done at last, however, and they proceeded up the river reaches, passing slowly below the long red wall of Hampton Court. Mr. Doggett, his good dinner eaten, and his pipe in his mouth, was quite content to sit at the tiller all day. In fact, he never believed that anybody but himself could induce the Sarah Dawkes to take the right course—an opinion which was not confined to his barge, but extended to the lady who was his wife, and in whose honor the craft was named.

His devotion to duty left Felix free, after washing up the dinner things, to try the effect of walking Rona up and down the deck. This was, however, so painful to her, that he was obliged to desist. The idea was growing in him that there was, as he at first feared, internal mischief. What were they to do?

Mr. Doggett presently confided to him his intention to part from the tug at Sunbury, and remain there that night, going on thence with a horse. A few more questions extracted a piece of information which was somewhat agitating to the young man. In his eagerness for flight the previous day he had jumped at the idea of going to Basingstoke, without having any clear notion of the waterway which would lead them thither. Now he ascertained that, at Weybridge, they would follow the Wey Navigation to the point where the Guildford and Basingstoke Canal flowed in—and afterwards, the sinuous curve of the quiet water would lead them within sight of the very uplands where Normansgrave stood among its pinewoods.

His heart leaped up at the idea of passing so near to his old home. His brow crimsoned with shame to think how any one of the villagers who in old days had petted him, would now pass him on the towing-path without recognition.

He plunged deeply into thought, into unavailing bitterness of heart towards his sorely tried half-brother. But in his thought was a new element. For the first time he began to see that Denzil might have some right on his side—that it was conceivable that their father's son might legitimately object to the use he had made of their father's name.

He was glad he had not told Rona who he was. The old name at least was not associated in her mind with the notion of a suicide and a convict.

He longed for, yet dreaded, the moment when they should reach the spot to which the poor heart that thought itself weaned from all ties now discovered that it clung with passionate desire.

It was dark by the time they were moored at Sunbury. Mr. Doggett went ashore to pass the evening with a few kindred spirits at the Waterman's Rest. As he would probably return to seek his couch in the cabin later on in the night hours, Felix made himself a shake-down with hay not far from where Rona lay, with the benevolent design of hearing her, should she call during the night.

But he slept like a log. The strain of body and mind through which he had passed was relaxed to the extent of permitting him to yield to an overmastering fatigue. There were clouds ahead. He still apprehended the necessity of depositing Rona in some hospital or infirmary. Every mile traversed by the barge was taking them farther from the north of England, and would increase the length, and consequently the expense, of their journey thither. Moreover, he was on ticket-of-leave for another fortnight, and he did not quite know what the police would make of his deserted room, his letter to his brother, and the empty mug. But, in spite of these things—in spite of the knowledge that his present route was slow and winding, and that pursuit might catch up at any moment—still, the fresh air and the food and the relaxation of tension had had their effect, and he slept ten hours without a break, and would have slept longer but for the ungentle touch of the Old Man's boot against his sparsely-clad ribs.

All that day he was tramping along the tow-path. They nearly went aground at the shallow just opposite Halliford, but, fortunately for the Old Man's state of mind, not more than a good shove with the pole would counteract.

Up to Weybridge, past Shepperton and the Island, and on to the narrow black mouth of the Wey between the old gaping lock gates into the deep jaws of the newer one. After that, they were in the region of locks which they had to work themselves, and progress was very slow.

Felix had hardly a moment in which to think of Rona, though he felt that she was growing worse instead of better. He had never been so tired in his life as he was when they moored near a small village called Dunhythe, where the night was to be spent.

Doggett had an errand for him. He was to go up to the village, which lay half a mile from the little hythe or wharf, and get the blacksmith to re-fix the iron point of the long pole, damaged at Halliford. Before starting on his errand he went to look at the girl, who had been unable to eat or drink anything but water at dinner-time. She was now delirious. To his horror, she did not know him. Her face was bright red, and her eyes preternaturally bright.

Felix determined that he must call in a doctor, if he could persuade one to come without a fee. He said nothing of his intention to the Old Man, but set out for the village as fast as he could go, with the long pole over his shoulder.

Having deposited his burden with the blacksmith, and promised to call for it, he asked the way to the doctor's house, and found himself obliged to run nearly a mile. A smart motor was at the door when he arrived, and the maid said the doctor was seeing a patient, but would speak to him when disengaged. The minutes seemed hours to Felix as he sat in the hall, filled with a vast and overwhelming depression. It was of no use to struggle against his destiny. Rona, the sole thing for which he was making this last stand, was going to die.

The door opened, the doctor came out, and advanced across the hall, accompanied by an elderly lady with a plain, humorous face, and a natural charm of manner.

"Well," she said, "that is reassuring, doctor. But mind, nothing is to be spared. Let the poor fellow have port wine or tonic, or anything he ought to have, and send in the bills to me."

"You are splendid!" was the reply, in a tone of deep feeling. "What would happen without you, I wonder? Hullo, my good man, what can I do for you?"

He spoke to Felix, who could not immediately reply. He was seized with a fit of trembling, and grew white. He had seen the lady from time to time in his boyish days. She was only sister to his father's first wife—her name was Miss Rawson. She lived at Normansgrave, and kept house for Denzil Vanston.

CHAPTER V
SEPARATION

I loved and love you—here is simple speech;
I loved and love you, who are out of reach.
—WILLIAM WATSON.

For a minute or two the possibility that Denzil's aunt might recognize him rose up and flooded out everything else in the mind of Felix. That would be the culminating point of shame. Yet, as he thought it over, he felt nearly certain that she could not. She had not seen him since he was a Rugby boy. He was changed out of all knowledge, and he had never been considered like his father, so there would be no family likeness to guide her. And then there was the safeguard of his disreputable appearance.

Choking down his nervousness, and by a great effort avoiding looking at Miss Rawson, he mumbled out, with as thick a Cockney accent as he could assume, the fact that his sister was ill aboard a canal boat at the wharf. She had had an accident cleaning "winders." She fell out over the rail of a balcony. He faltered out his story, aware of very formidable gaps in it, should he be called upon to substantiate it. But if the doctor was to help the suffering child he must know what had happened to her. The pickle-factory story and the anæmia were no good here, though they had served the George Barnes. He added the fact that they had no money.

Felix became aware that Miss Rawson was looking at him with her kind face charged with pity. She laid her hand upon the arm of the doctor.

"Here is my motor," said she; "jump in. What do you say is the name of the barge? The Sarah Dawkes? Yes, thank you, you will follow on foot, will you not?"

He assented, relieved beyond measure to think of the approaching help for Rona. The two got into the car, which whizzed out of sight in a moment, and Felix stumbled back, limping in his worn-out boots, along the mile to the village.

He had forgotten the windings of the river. He had not realized that, though ten miles or more along the water to Normansgrave, Dunhythe was only a very few miles by road.

He was all wrapped up in the thought of what he was to do. He could not face Denzil—Denzil would know him in a moment. And if Miss Rawson were to take an interest in the case, who knew but that Denzil might at any moment appear?

He could not tell what feeling was uppermost, as at last he came in sight of the wharf. A small crowd of natives was collected on the landing-stage, the motor was still in waiting, and several people seemed to be picking their way about the encumbered deck of the Sarah Dawkes.

As he approached he made out the figure of the doctor, moving along with a huge bundle in his arms, which at once he knew to be the muffled form of Rona.

His girl! They were taking her away! A rebellion now tore at his heart, as unlike as possible to that despair of lethargy which had filled his soul before the coming of Rona into his life. In spite of his sore feet he ran as hard as he could, crossed the bridge, and came panting up, just as the doctor was carefully placing the sick girl in the motor.

"What are you doing?" cried Felix, in a voice that did not belong to a barge-boy.

It surprised the doctor, but, as it happened, Miss Rawson was out of earshot. She had remained to offer Mr. Doggett half a sovereign for his humane care of the invalid. "Lord love yer, I'd 'a done twice as much if I'd 'a bin arst," said he, with a geniality few were privileged to perceive in his usual manner. "Love the gal as if she was me own I do, and 'er brother'll tell yer jest the syme if you was to arst 'im."

The brother at the moment was standing there all a-quiver, his extremely beautiful dark gray eyes appealing to the doctor in a passion of protest.

"It's all right, my man, your sister will be nursed and taken care of like a Princess," said Dr. Causton. "Miss Rawson runs a cottage hospital at Aylfleet, and we are taking her there. I fear there is internal inflammation. The bargee says you and he are going to Basingstoke, and coming back by the same route. Well, she won't be wanting to see you for some days to come, I'm afraid; and you can stop on the way back and come up to find out how she is."

There was one master question at the back of Felix's mind, and he asked it straight out, and with no hesitation, "Will she die?"

The doctor looked at him with a puzzled interest. But he had seen a good deal in his London hospital days, and he knew that such a thing as a deep fraternal devotion is not unknown, though certainly rare, among the lowest classes. "No, I hope not," he said; "she has a fine constitution, and I don't see why she should not pull through."

Felix turned to look at the girl, moaning and tossing in her wrappings. She knew nobody, she had no need of him, she was going to be taken care of—he must let her go. With a rush the conviction came to him that he should never see her again. He had not wept for years, but tears blinded him now. They overflowed his eyes, and, to his fury, he had to lift his hand and dash them away.

Who was he, the acquaintance of a moment, to have any claim upon her? Perhaps when she was rational again she would not remember that she had ever seen him. He had read of such things in books. Miss Rawson hurried up.

"There, poor fellow," said she, with deep pity, "how glad I am that I just chanced to be down at the surgery when you called. It seems providential for your poor little sister! We shall take such care of her up at our sweet little hospital you won't know her when next you see her. Let me see, Smith you say the name is?"

"Yes, miss. Rona Smith."

Her kind hand was outstretched. He suddenly became aware that there was a coin in it. With a tremendous effort he resisted the impulse to push it away, and accepted it thankfully. He would be able to buy pen, ink, paper, stamp, and write a few lines for Rona to have when she was no longer delirious—words telling her the story he had fabricated, and coaching her in what she must say when she was questioned.

"Thank you, miss," said he, meekly, adding, as he shut the carriage door, "and Gawd bless yer," with as thick an accent as he could assume. He had much more to say, but there was no time, the motor was off in two twos, as a member of the interested throng around remarked.

"Ah! she's a good 'un, is Miss Rawson," pronounced a woman who was wiping her hands on a corner of her canvas apron. "A little bit of all right she is, and no mistake. Not like that last 'un they had up at Normansgrave, a painted Jezebel no better than a ——" She used a foul word vigorously. "Seemed queer a man of old Vanston's sort should 'a married such as her."

"And the son no better, seemin'ly," chimed in a man leaning on a post. "I did 'ear 'e 'ad gone to the deuce as clean as a whistle; but, Lord! I ain't one to believe all I 'ear."

"Not even your ears wouldn't be large enough down in these parts," said the woman, cheerfully, waddling into her cottage door.

Felix, who had overheard this conversation, mooned down to the water's edge, his face set hard to prevent tears, and went aboard the Sarah Dawkes.

"An' now she's gorn, glory be," observed Doggett gayly. "Now you an' me can be comfortable, and if you come over to the Flower-pot with me, I don't mind standin' yer a sorsidge an' mashed. 'A good deed,' says the lydy, 'never goes without its reward, my man'; and I tell yer stryte, I ain't sorry I took yer sister aboard, though at the time it went all agin me."

Felix had no reply to make. He turned his back, and went along to where the empty lair which had contained Rona lay upon the deck. What should he do? Wait till the darkest hour of night and then drop into the smooth black water?

No! She still lived; and, though it was not likely, it was still possible that she might want him again.

CHAPTER VI
THE OUTCAST'S BROTHER

When the drunken comrade mutters and the great
guard-lantern gutters,
And the horror of our fall is written plain,
Every secret, self-revealing, on the aching, whitewashed ceiling,
Do you wonder that we drug ourselves from pain?
—RUDYARD KIPLING.

The master of Normansgrave had come in from his golf, had been upstairs, made the necessary change in his dress, and returned to the hall, where he stood in the light of the fire, reading the Spectator. He was a young man of medium height, medium complexion, and medium looks. If it were added that his intellect also was of a medium quality, it would describe him pretty accurately. He was neither good nor bad, able nor foolish, handsome nor ugly. Just one of those men whose bent is determined largely by circumstances.

Circumstances had made him master of a comfortable though not extensive property. Circumstances had placed him always in strong and virtuous opposition to a rowdy stepmother and an impossible half-brother. Circumstances also made him one of the county eligibles. And this, perhaps, was the unkindest trick that Circumstance had played him.

The ruling motive of his conduct was a terrible fear of throwing himself away. He did not put it like that. He would have said, to anybody who might be interested, that, with the sad example of so good a man as his father before him, and the risk of the old estates descending to Felix, it behoved him to be peculiarly careful. But the real truth was that he thought nobody good enough to be mistress of himself and Normansgrave combined. He used to lament the inadequacy of modern young ladies from time to time to Miss Rawson, who gave her sympathy with a twinkle in her eye, and longed to see the correct young man deeply in love with an unsuitable person.

In fact, she had lately begun to be of the opinion that it was high time her nephew, who was now past thirty, ranged himself. That very day, before going out in her motor, she had arranged a little house-party, to include one or two nice girls, and determined to urge Denzil to permit her to invite them forthwith.

But now the clock was moving perilously near the sacred dinner-hour; and Miss Rawson was not in, said the correct butler, who was, like his master, a study in mediocrity.

As he decorously swept a few ashes from the red tiles of the warm hearth, the purring of the motor sounded without; and in a minute or so Miss Rawson came in, a few flakes of snow powdering her furs.

"My dear boy, I am more than sorry. A case of sickness, and I used the motor to take it to the Cottage Hospital——"

Denzil's eyes expressed horror—almost dismay.

"My dear Aunt Bee—was it infectious?"

"Infectious? Oh, no, it was an accident. Such a curious, mysterious thing—such a wonderful, simply wonderful girl—I must tell you all about it! I found her lying among some hay in a canal barge. Wait a few minutes—I'll not keep you," and she went flying upstairs like a young woman, calling her maid as she ran.

"You have quite stimulated my curiosity," said Denzil later, as he helped her to soup. "A wonderful girl in a canal barge? Tell me all about it."

"Smith is the name—not very romantic," said Miss Rawson between her spoonfuls. "The brother rushed up for Dr. Causton, just as I was in the surgery talking to him about old Lambert. He—the brother—was a dirty young ruffian, but seemed in great distress, and said his sister had fallen from a window while cleaning it, and that she had injured herself, he feared, internally. They had, apparently, no idea that the injury was so serious, and he thought if he took her out into the country and the fresh air, and she rested, it would get well. She had a horror, it seems, of going to a hospital; that would have meant leaving her alone in London, as he had to go with the barge. So I went on board with the doctor, and there she was lying among the hay in a high fever—104 point two, Dr. Causton says—and we saw she must be taken to the hospital, so off we rushed in the motor. Then, when Sister Agnes undressed her, she told me the girl was no common girl—her underclothes were beautiful, she was carefully nurtured. She keeps on talking of a convent school, and calling for the Reverend Mother. Sister Agnes and I believe that she has run away, and probably got hurt in escaping from a window. Don't you think that sounds probable?"

"Possible, certainly," said Denzil. "But what about the man?"

"Well, he looked a regular ruffian to me, but the doctor says some of that was put on. He says once, when he was off his guard, he spoke with a clear, educated accent."

"Why, you have got hold of a romance," said Denzil, with interest. "Shall I go down to the wharf and have a look at him?"

"Oh, you won't find him! They go on to Basingstoke at once. But on his return journey he will come to see if she is well enough to be moved. You ought to go and look at her, Denzil, she is most remarkable. She is not grown up yet, but she is going to be a lovely woman—such hair—a dark, rich chestnut, not a bit red, but like Romney's 'Lady Hamilton.' And dark blue eyes—what a novelist might call violet, I should think—and very remarkable, expressive features. When she is conscious and out of pain, she ought to be worth looking at."