CHAPTER XVI
TWO VISITORS
Instinctively Ella drew closer to Jack, nestling at his side, as iffor the sake of the near neighbourhood. Graham advanced towards Madge,placing himself just at her back, with a something protective in hisair--as if he designed to place himself in front of her at aninstant's warning. While Ballingall moved farther towards the window,with that in his bearing which curiously suggested the bristling hairsof the perturbed and anxious terrier. And all was still--with thatsort of silence which is pregnant with meaning.
Without in the stillness, there could be plainly heard the fumbling ofthe latchkey, as if some one, with unaccustomed hands, was attemptingto insert it in the door. Presently, the aperture being found, and thekey turned, the door was opened. Some one entered the house; and,being in, the door was shut--with a bang which seemed to ringthreateningly through the little house, causing the listeners tostart. Some one moved, with uncertain steps, along the passage. Agrasp was laid from without on the handle of the sitting-room door.They saw it turn. The door opened--while those within, with oneaccord, held their breath. And there entered as strange and pitiful afigure as was ever seen.
It was the "ghost's wife," the woman who had so troubled Madge, whohad done her best that afternoon to keep her outside the house. Shewas the saddest sight in her parti-coloured rags, the dreadful relicsof gaudy fripperies.
When they saw it was her, there was a simultaneous half-movement,which never became a whole movement, for it was stopped at itsinitiatory stage--stopped by something which was in the woman's face,and by the doubt if she was alone.
On her face--her poor, dirty, degraded, wrinkled face--which was sopitifully thin there was nothing left of it but skin and bone, therewas a look which held them dumb. It was a look like nothing which anyof them had ever seen before. It was not only that it was a look ofdeath--for it was plain that the outstretched fingers of the angelalready touched her brow; but it was the look of one who seemed to seebeyond the grave--such a look as we might fancy on the face of thedead in that sudden shock of vision which, as some tell us, comes inthe moment after death.
She was gazing straight in front of her, as if at some one who wasthere; and she said, in the queerest, shakiest voice:
"So, Tom, you've brought me home at last. I'm glad to be at homeagain. Oh, Tom!" This last with the strangest catching in her throat.She looked about her with eyes that did not see. "It seems a long timesince I was at home. I thought I never should come back--never! Afterall, there's nothing to a woman like her home--nothing, Tom." Againthere was that strange catching. "You've brought me a long way--along, long way. To think that you should see me in the Borough--afterall these years--and should bring me right straight home, I wondered,if ever you did see me, if you'd bring me home--Tom. Only I wish--Iwish you'd seen me before. I'm--a little tired now."
She put her hand up to her face with a gesture which suggestedweariness which was more than mortal, and which only eternal restcould soothe--her hand in what was once a glove. When she removed itthere was something in her eyes which showed that she had suddenlyattained to at least a partial consciousness of her surroundings. Shelooked at the two girls and the two men grasped together on her right,with, at any rate, a perception that they were there.
"Who--who are these people? Whoever you are, I'm glad to see you; thisis a great night with me. I've seen my husband for the first time foryears and years, and he's brought me home with him again--after allthat time. This is my husband--Tom."
She held out her hand, as if designating with it some one who was infront of her. They, on their part, were silent, spellbound, uncertainwhether the person to whom and of whom she spoke with so muchconfidence might not be present, though by them unseen.
"It's a strange homecoming, is it not? And though I'm tired--oh, sotired!--I'm glad I'm home again. To this house he brought me when wewere married--didn't you, Tom? In this house my baby was born--wasn'tit, Tom? And here it died." There came a look into her face which, forthe moment, made it beautiful; to such an extent is beauty a matter ofexpression. "My dear little baby! It seems only the other day when Iheld it in my arms. It's as if the house were full of ghosts--isn'tit, Tom?"
Her eyes wandered round the room, as if in search of some one or ofsomething, and presently they lighted upon Mr. Ballingall. As they didso, the whole expression of her countenance was changed; it assumed alook of unspeakable horror.
"Charles Ballingall!" she gasped. "Tom--Tom, what is he doing here?"
She stretched out her hands, seeming to seek for protection from thesome one who was in front of her--repeating the other's name as ifinvoluntarily, as though it were a thing accursed.
"Charles Ballingall!"
Slowly, inch by inch, her glance passed from the shrinking vagabond,until it stayed, seeming to search with an eager longing the face ofthe one who was before her in the apparently vacant air.
"Tom!--what's he doing here? Tom! Tom! don't look at me like that!Don't, Tom--for God's sake, don't look at me like that!" She brokeinto sudden volubility, every word a cry of pain. "Tom, I'm--I'm yourwife! You--you brought me home! Just now!--from the Borough!--all theway!--all the long, long way--home! Tom!"
The utterance of the name was like a scream of a wounded animal in itsmortal agony.
The four onlookers witnessed an extraordinary spectacle. They saw thistattered, drabbled remnant of what was once a woman, whose wholeappearance spoke of one who tottered on the very borders of the grave,struggling with the frenzy of an hysterical despair with the visitantfrom the world of shades who, it was plain to her, if not to others,was her companion--the husband whom, with such malignant cruelty andsuch persistent ingratitude, she had wronged so long ago. She had heldout her hands, her treacherous hands, seeking to shelter them in his;and it seemed as if, for a moment, he had suffered them to stay, andthat now, since she had realised the presence of her associate in sin,unwilling to retain them any more in his, he sought to thrust themfrom him; while she, perceiving that what she had supposed to be therealisation of hopes which she had not even dared to cherish wasproving but a chimera, and the fruit which she was already pressing toher lips but an Apple of Sodom, strained every nerve to retain thehold of the hands whose touch had meant to her almost an equivalent toan open door to Paradise. With little broken cries and gaspingsupplications, she writhed and twisted as she strove to keep hergrasp.
"Tom! Tom! Tom!" she exclaimed, over and over again. "You brought mehome! you brought me home! Don't put me from you! Tom! Tom! Tom!"
It seemed that the struggle ended in her discomfiture, and that thehands which she had hoped would draw her forward had been used tothrust her back; for, staggering backwards as if she had been pushed,she put her palms up to her breasts and panted, staring like onedistraught.
By degrees, regaining something of her composure, she turned andlooked at Ballingall, with a look before which he cowered, actuallyraising his arm as if warding off a blow. And, when she had breathenough, she spoke to him, in a whisper, as if her strength was gone.
"What are you doing here?"
Ballingall hesitated, looking about him this way and that as ifseeking for some road of retreat. Finding none, making a pitifuleffort to gather himself together, he replied to her question in avoice which was at once tremulous and sullen.
"Tom asked me to come. You know, Tom, you asked me to come."
He stretched out his arm with a gesture which was startling, as if tohim also the woman's companion was a reality. There was silence. Herepeated his assertion, still with his outstretched arm.
"You know, Tom, you asked me to come."
Then there happened the most startling thing of all. Some one laughed.It was a man's laugh--low, soft, and musical. But there was about itthis peculiar quality--it was not the merriment of one who laughswith, but of one who laughs at; as though the laugher was enjoyingthoroughly, with all his heart, a jest at another's expense. Before it
the man and woman cowered, as if beneath a rain of blows.
After it ceased they were still. It was plain that the woman wasashamed, disillusioned, conscious that she had been made a butt of;and that, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, she was stillamong the hopeless, the outcast, the condemned. She glanced furtivelytowards the companion of her shame; then more quickly still away fromhim, as if realising only too well that, in that quarter, there was nopromise of hope rekindled. And she said, with choking utterance:
"Tom, I never thought--you'd laugh at me. Did you bring--me home--forthis?"
She put up her hands, in their dreadful gloves, to her raddled,shrunken face, and stood, for a moment, still. Then her frame began toquiver, and she cried; and as she cried there came that laugh again.
The note of mockery that was in it served to sting Ballingall into anassertion of such manhood as was in him. He clenched his fists, drewhimself straighter, and, throwing back his head, faced towards wherethe laughter seemed to stand.
"Tom," he said, "I've used you ill. We've both of us used you ill,both she and I--she's been as false a wife to you as I've been friend.Our sins have been many--black as ink, bitter as gall. We know it,both of us. We've had reason to know it well. But, Tom, consider whatour punishment has been. Look at us--at her, at me. Think of what wewere, and what we are. Remember what it means to have come to thisfrom that. Every form of suffering I do believe we've known--of mindand of body too--she in her way, and I in mine. We've been sinkinglower and lower and lower, through every form of degradation,privation, misery, until at last we're in the ditch--amidst the slimeof the outer ditch. We've lost all that there is worth having, so faras life's concerned, for ever. The only hope that is left us is thehour in which it is appointed that we shall die. For my part, my hopeis that for me that hour is not far off. And, as I'm a living man, Ibelieve that for her it has already come; that the scythe is raised toreap; that she's dying where she stands. Have you no bowels ofcompassion, Tom--none? You used to have. Are they all dried andwithered? There's forgiveness for sinners, Tom, with God; is therenone with you? You used to be of those who forgive till seventy timesseven; are you now so unforgiving? You may spurn me, you may trampleon me, you may press my head down into the very slime of the ditch;you know that these many months you've torn and racked me with all theengines of the torture chambers: but she's your wife, Tom--she wasyour wife! you loved her once! She bore to you a little child--alittle baby, Tom, a little baby! It's dead--with God, Tom, with God!She's going to it now--now, now! While she's passing into the verypresence chamber, where her baby is, don't abase her, Tom. Don't, Tom,don't!"
He threw out his arms with a gesture of such frenzied entreaty, andhis whole figure was so transformed by the earnestness, and passion,and pathos, and even anguish with which he pressed his theme, that atleast the spectators were cut to the heart.
"I know not," he cried, "whether you are dead or living, or whether Imyself am mad or sane--for, indeed, to me of late the world has seemedall upside down. But this I know, that I see you and that you see me,and if, as I suppose, you come from communion with the Eternal, youmust know that, in that Presence, there is mercy for the lowest--forthe chief of sinners! There is mercy, Tom, I know that there is mercy!Therefore I entreat you to consider, Tom, the case of this woman--ofshe who was your wife, the mother of your child. She has paid dearlyfor her offence against you--paid for it every moment of every hour ofevery day of every year since she offended. Since then she has beencontinually paying. Is not a quittance nearly due--from you, Tom? Ifblood is needed to wash out her guilt, she has wept tears of blood. Ifsuffering--look at her and see how she has suffered. And now, even asI stand and speak to you, she dies. She bears her burden to the grave.Is she to add to it, still, the weight of your resentment? That willbe the heaviest weight of all. Beneath it, how shall she stagger tothe footstool of her God? All these years she has lived in hell.Don't--with your hand, Tom!--now she's dying, thrust her into hell,for ever. But put her hand in yours, and bear her up, and stay her,Tom, and lead her to the throne of God. If she can say that you'veforgiven her, God will forgive her too. And then she'll find her baby,Tom."
It was a strange farrago of words which Ballingall had strungtogether, but the occasion was a strange one too. His earnestness, inwhich all was forgotten save his desire to effect his purpose, seemedto cast about them a halo as of sanctity. It was almost as if he stoodthere, pleading for a sinner, in the very Name of Christ--the greatPleader for all great sinners.
The woman, this latest Magdalene, did as that first Magdalene haddone, she fell on her knees and wept--tears of bitterness.
"Tom! Tom!" she cried, "Tom! Tom!"
But he to whom she cried did not do as the Christ, the Impersonationof Divine Mercy, did. Christ wept with the sinners. He to whom shepleaded laughed at her. And, beneath his laughter, she crouched lowerand lower, till she lay almost prostrate on the floor; and her bodyquivered as if he struck her with a whip.
Ballingall, as if he could scarcely credit the evidence of his ownsenses, started back and stared, as though divided between amazementand dismay. Under his breath, he put a singular inquiry--the wordsseeming to be wrung from him against his will.
"Tom!--Are you a devil?"
And it seemed as if an answer came. For he stood in the attitude ofone who listens, and the muscles of his face worked as if what wasbeing said was little to his mind. A dogged look came into his eyes,and about his mouth. He drew himself further back, as if retreatingbefore undesired advances. Words came sullenly from between his teeth.
"No, Tom, no--I want none of that. It isn't that I ask; you know itisn't that."
It appeared as if the overtures made by the unseen presence, unwelcomethough they were, were being persisted in. For Ballingall shook hishead, raising his hands as if to put them from him, conveying in hisbearing the whole gamut of dissent; breaking, at last, intoexclamations which were at once defiant, suppliant, despairing.
"No, Tom, no! I don't want your fortune. You know I don't! All thistime you've been dangling it before my eyes, and all the time it'sbeen a will-o'-the-wisp, leading me deeper and deeper into the mire. Iwas unhappy enough when first you came to me and spoke of it--but I'vebeen unhappier since, a thousand times. You might have let me have itat the beginning, if you'd chosen--but you didn't choose. You used itto make of me a mock, and a gibe--your plaything--whipping boy!To-night the lure of it has only served as a means to bring us heretogether--she and I!--when you know I'd rather have gone a hundredmiles barefooted to hide from her my face. I don't know if there is afortune hidden in this house or not, and I don't care if behind itswalls are concealed the riches of Golconda. I'll have none of it--it'stoo late! too late! I've asked you for what I'd give a many fortunes,and you've laughed at me. You'll not show, by so much as a sign, thatyou forgive her--now, at this eleventh hour. There's nothing else ofyours I'll have."
In reply, there came again that quiet laughter, with in it thatcurious metallic quality, which seemed to act on the quivering nervesof the two sin-stained, wayworn wretches as if it had been moltenmetal. At the sound of it they gave a guilty start, as if the ghostsof all their sins had risen to scourge them.
From her demeanour, the laugher, diverting his attention fromBallingall, had apparently turned to address the woman. In accentswhich had grown perceptibly weaker since her first entering, sheessayed to speak.
"Yes, Tom, I'll get up. If you wish me, Tom, of course I will.I'm--tired, Tom--that's all."
She did get up, in a fashion which demonstrated she was tired. Theprocess of ascension was not the work of a moment, and when she hadregained her feet, she swung this way and that, like a reed in thewind. It was only by what seemed a miracle that she did not fall.
"Don't be angry--I'm tired--Tom--that's all."
In her voice there was a weariness unspeakable.
Something, it seemed, was said to her--from which, as Ballingall haddone, only in her feebler way, she expressed dissent.
> "I don't want your money, Tom. It's so good of you; it's like you usedto be, kind and generous. You always did give me lots of money, Tom,But--I don't want money--not now, Tom, not now."
Something else was said, which stung her, for she clasped her hands infront of her, with a movement of pain.
"I--didn't wish to make you angry, Tom--I'm--sure I didn't. Don'tspeak to me and look at me like that, don't, Tom, don't! You don'tknow how it hurts me, now--that I'm so tired. I'll go and fetch yourmoney if you wish me--of course I will, if--you'll show me--where itis. I'll go at once. Upstairs? Yes, Tom--I don't think I'm--too tiredto go upstairs, if--you'll come with me. Yes, Tom--I'm--going--now."
The woman turned towards the door hastily.
With a swift, eager gesture, in which there was something bothmysterious and secretive, Ballingall addressed the four onlookers, thespellbound spectators of this, perhaps, unparelleled experience in theregions of experimental psychology. He spoke beneath his breath,hurriedly, hoarsely, with fugitive sidelong glances, as if before allthings he was anxious that what he said should be heard by them alone.
"He's going to show her where the fortune is!"
The woman opened the door.