The Unclassed

"You can believe what you like," she replied sullenly. "Of course I know you'll do your worst against me."

"I wish you to answer my question. If I choose to suspect that you yourself put this brooch in her pocket—and if other people choose to suspect the same, knowing your enmity against her, what proof can you give that she is guilty?"

"It isn't the first thing she's stolen."

"What proof have you that she took those other things?"

"Quite enough, I think. At all events, they've found a pawn-ticket for the spoon at her lodgings, among a whole lot of other tickets for things she can't have come by honestly."

Julian became silent, and, as Harriet looked up at him with eyes full of triumphant spite, he turned pale. He could have crushed the hateful face beneath his feet.

"You're a good husband, you are," Harriet went on, with a sudden change to anger; "taking part against your own wife, and trying to make her out all that's bad. But I think you've had things your own way long enough. You thought I was a fool, did you, and couldn't see what was going on? You and your Ida Starr, indeed! Oh, she would be such a good friend to me, wouldn't she? She would do me so much good; you thought so highly of her; she was just the very girl to be my companion; how lucky we found her! I'm much obliged to you, but I think I might have better friends than thieves and street-walkers."

"What do you mean?" asked Julian, starting at the last word, and turning a ghastly countenance on her.

"I mean what I say. As if you didn't know, indeed!"

"Explain what you mean," Julian repeated, almost with violence. "Who has said anything of that kind against her?"

"Who has? Why I can bring half a dozen people who knew her when she was on the streets, before Waymark kept her. And you knew it, well enough—no fear!"

"It's a lie, a cursed lie! No one can say a word against her purity. Only a foul mind could imagine such things."

"Purity! Oh yes, she's very pure—you know that, don't you? No doubt you'll be a witness, and give evidence for her, and against me;—let everybody know how perfect she is, and what a beast and a liar I am! You and your Ida Starr!"

Julian rushed out of the room.

Waymark could not but observe peculiarities in Mr. Woodstock's behaviour during the conversation about Ida. At first it had occurred to him—knowing a good deal of Abraham's mode of life—that there must be some disagreeable secret at the bottom, and for a moment the ever-recurring distrust of Ida rose again. But he had soon observed that the listener was especially interested in the girl's earliest years, and this pointed to possibilities of a different kind. What was it that was being taken from the drawer to show him, when the old man suddenly altered his mind? Mr. Woodstock had perhaps known Ida's parents. Waymark waited with some curiosity for the interview on the morrow.

Accordingly, he was surprised when, on presenting himself, Mr. Woodstock did not at first appear to remember what he had called about.

"Oh, ay, the girl!" Abraham exclaimed, on being reminded. "What did you say her name was? Ida something—"

Waymark was puzzled and suspicious, and showed both feelings in his looks, but Mr. Woodstock preserved a stolid indifference which it was very difficult to believe feigned.

"I've been busy," said the latter. "Never mind; there's time. She was remanded for a week, you said? I'll go and see Helter about her. May as well come along with me, and put the case in 'artistic' form."

It was a word frequently on Waymark's lips, and he recognised the unwonted touch of satire with a smile, but was yet more puzzled. They set out together to the office of the solicitor who did Abraham's legal business, and held with him a long colloquy. Waymark stated all he knew or could surmise with perfect frankness. He had heard from Julian the night before of the discovery which it was said the police had made at Ida's lodgings, and this had strengthened his fear that Harriet's accusation was genuine.

"How did this girl lose her place at the laundry?" asked Mr. Helter.

Waymark could not say; for all he knew it was through her own fault.

"And that's all you can tell us, Waymark?" observed Mr. Woodstock, who had listened with a show of indifference. "Well, I have no more time at present. Look the thing up, Helter."

On reaching home, Waymark wrote a few lines to Ida, merely to say that Grim was provided for, and assure her that she was not forgotten. In a day or two he received a reply. The official envelope almost startled him at first. Inside was written this:

"You have been kind. I thank you for everything. Try to think kindly of me, whatever happens; I shall be conscious of it, and it will give me strength.

I. S."

The week went by, and Ida again appeared in court. Mr. Woodstock went with Waymark, out of curiosity, he said. The statement of the case against the prisoner sounded very grave. What Harriet had said about the discovery of the pawn-ticket for her silver spoon was true. Ida's face was calm, but paler yet and thinner. When she caught sight of Harriet Casti, she turned her eyes away quickly, and with a look of trouble. She desired to ask no question, simply gave her low and distinct "Not guilty." She was committed for trial.

Waymark watched Mr. Woodstock, who was examining Ida all the time; he felt sure that he heard something like a catching of the breath when the girl's face first became visible.

"And what's your opinion?" asked Waymark.

"I couldn't see the girl very well," said the old man coldly.

"She hasn't quite a fortnight to wait."

"No."

"You're sure Helter will do all that can be done?"

"Yes."

Mr. Woodstock nodded his head, and walked off by himself.

Julian Casti was ill. With difficulty he had dragged himself to the court, and his sufferings as he sat there were horribly evident on his white face. Waymark met him just as Mr. Woodstock walked off; and the two went home together by omnibus, not speaking on the way.

"She will be convicted," was Julian's first utterance, when he had sat for a few minutes in Waymark's room, whilst Waymark himself paced up and down. The latter turned, and saw that tears were on his friend's hollow cheeks.

"Did you sleep better last night?" he asked.

"Good God, no! I never closed my eyes. That's the third night without rest. Waymark, get me an opiate of some kind, or I shall kill myself; and let me sleep here."

"What will your wife say?"

"What do I care what she says!" cried Julian, with sudden excitement, his muscles quivering, and his cheeks flaming all at once. "Don't use that word 'wife,' it is profanation; I can't bear it! If I see her to-night, I can't answer for what I may do. Curse her to all eternity!"

He sank beck in exhaustion.

"Julian," said Waymark, using his friend's first name by exception, "if this goes on, you will be ill. What the deuce shall we do then?"

"No, I shall not be ill. It will be all right if I can get sleep."

He was silent for a little, then spoke, with his eyes on the ground.

"Waymark, is this true they say about her—about the former time?"

"Yes; it is true."

Waymark in turn was silent.

"I suppose," he continued presently, "I owe you an apology."

"None. It was right of you to act as you did."

He was going to say something else, but checked himself. Waymark noticed this, watched his face for a moment, and spoke with some earnestness.

"But it was in that only I misled you. Do you believe me when I repeat that she and I were never anything but friends!"

Julian looked up with a gleam of gratitude in his eyes.

"Yes, I believe you!"

"And be sure of this," Waymark went on, "whether or not this accusation is true, it does not in the least affect the nobility of her character. You and I are sufficiently honest, in the true sense of the word, to understand this."

Waymark only saw Mr. Woodstock once or twice in the next fortnight, and very slight mention was made between them of the coming trial. He himself was not to be involved in the case in any way; as a witness on Ida's side he could do no good, and probably would prejudice her yet more in the eyes of the jury. It troubled him a little to find with what complete calmness he could await the result; often he said to himself that he must be sadly lacking in human sympathy. Julian Casti, on the other hand, had passed into a state of miserable deadness; Waymark in vain tried to excite hope in him. He came to his friend's every evening, and sat there for hours in dark reverie.

"What will become of her!" Julian asked once. "In either case—what will become of her!"

"Woodstock shall help us in that," Waymark replied. "She must get a place of some kind."

"How dreadfully she is suffering, and how dark life will be before her!"

And so the day of the trial came. The pawnbroker's evidence was damaging. The silver spoon had been pledged, he asserted, at the same time with another article for which Ida possessed the duplicate. The inscriptions on the duplicates supported him in this, and he professed to have not the least doubt as to the prisoner's identity. Pressed in cross-examination, he certainly threw some suspicion on the trustworthiness of his assertions. "You positively swear that these two articles were pledged by the prisoner, and at the same time!" asked the cross-examiner. "Well," was the impatient reply, "there's the same date and name, and both in my writing." But even thus much of doubt he speedily retracted, and his evidence could not be practically undermined.

Harriet's examination was long and searching, but she bore it without the slightest damage to her credit. Plain, straightforward, and stubborn were all her replies and assertions; she did not contradict herself once. Waymark marvelled at her appearance and manner. The venom of malice had acted upon her as a tonic, strengthening her intellect, and bracing her nerves. Once she looked directly into Ida's face and smiled.

Mrs. Sprowl had been summoned, and appeared in all the magnificence of accumulated rings, bracelets, necklaces, and watch-chains. Helter hoped to make good use of her.

"Did you on a certain occasion go to the person in whose employ the prisoner was, and, by means of certain representations with regard to the prisoner's antecedents, become the cause of her dismissal?"

"I did. I told all I knew about her, and I consider I'd a right to do so."

Mrs. Sprowl was not to be robbed of her self-assurance by any array of judicial dignity.

"What led you to do this?"

"A good enough one, I think. She'd been imposed on Mr. Casti and his wife as a respectable character, and she was causing trouble between them. She had to be got rid of somehow, and this was one step to it."

"Was Mrs. Casti aware of your intention to take this step?"

"No, she wasn't."

"But you told her when you had done it?"

"Yes, I did."

The frankness of all this had its effect, of course. The case was attracting much interest in court, and the public seats were quite full. Mrs. Sprowl looked round in evident enjoyment of her position. There was a slight pause, and then the examination continued.

"Of what nature was the trouble you speak of, caused by the prisoner between this lady and her husband?"

"Mr. Casti began to pay a good deal too much attention to her."

There was a sound of whispers and a murmuring.

"Did Mrs. Casti impart to you her suspicions of the prisoner as soon as she missed the first of these articles alleged to be stolen?"

"Yes, she did."

"And did you give any advice as to how she should proceed?"

"I told her to be on the look-out."

"No doubt you laid stress on the advantage, from a domestic point of view, of securing this prisoner's detection?"

"Certainly I did, and I hoped and prayed as she might be caught!"

Mrs. Sprowl was very shortly allowed to retire. For the defence there was but one witness, and that was the laundress who had employed Ida. Personal fault with Ida she had none at all to find; the sole cause of her dismissal was the information given by Mrs. Sprowl. Perhaps she had acted hastily and unkindly, but she had young girls working in the laundry, and it behoved her to be careful of them.

Julian's part in the trial had been limited to an examination as to his knowledge of Ida's alleged thefts. He declared that he knew nothing save from his wife's statements to him. He had observed nothing in the least suspicious.

A verdict was returned of "Guilty."

Had the prisoner anything to say? Nothing whatever. There was a pause, a longer pause than seemed necessary. Then, without remark, she was sentenced to be imprisoned for six months with hard labour.

Waymark had been drawn to the court in spite of himself. Strangely quiet hitherto, a fear fell upon him the night before the trial. From an early hour in the morning he walked about the streets, circling ever nearer to the hateful place. All at once he found himself facing Mr. Woodstock. The old man's face was darkly anxious, and he could not change its expression quickly enough.

"Are you going in?" he said sharply.

"Are you?"

"Yes."

"Then I shall not," said Waymark. "I'll go to your place, and wait there."

But when Abraham, whose eyes had not moved from the prisoner throughout the proceedings, rose at length to leave, a step or two brought him to a man who was leaning against the wall, powerless from conflicting excitement, and deadly pale. It was Waymark. Mr. Woodstock took him by the arm and led him out.

"Why couldn't you keep away?" the old man exclaimed hoarsely, and with more of age in his voice than any one had ever yet heard in it.

Waymark shook himself free, and laughed as one laughs under torment.

CHAPTER XXV
ART AND MISERY

One Monday afternoon at the end of October—three months had gone by since the trial—Waymark carried his rents to St. John Street Road as usual.

"I'm going to Tottenham," said Mr. Woodstock. "You may as well come with me."

"By the by, I finished my novel the other day," Waymark said, as they drove northward.

"That's right. No doubt you're on your way to glory, as the hymn says."

Abraham was in good spirits. One would have said that he had grown younger of late. That heaviness and tendency to absent brooding which not long ago seemed to indicate the tightening grip of age, was disappearing; he was once more active and loud and full of his old interests.

"How's Casti?" Mr. Woodstock went on to ask.

"A good deal better, I think, but shaky. Of course things will be as bad as ever when his wife comes out of the hospital."

"Pity she can't come out heels first," muttered Abraham.

Waymark found that the purpose of their journey was to inspect a large vacant house, with a good garden and some fine trees about it. The old man wished for his opinion, and, by degrees, let it be known that he thought of buying the property.

"I suppose you think me an old fool to want a house like this at my time of life, eh?"

There was a twinkle in his eye, and a moment after he fairly burst into a laugh of pleasure. Waymark asked no questions, and received no more information; but a thought rose in his mind which occupied him for the rest of the day.

In the evening Julian came. He looked like one who had recovered from a long illness, very pale and thin, and his voice had tremblings and uncertainties of key. In fact, a feverish disorder had been upon him for some weeks, never severe enough to prevent his getting about, but weakening him to a serious degree. It would doubtless have developed into some more pronounced illness, but for the period of comparative rest and quietness which had begun shortly after the miseries of the trial. Harriet's ailments had all at once taken such a decided turn for the worse—her fits becoming incessant, and other disorders traceable to the same source suddenly taking hold upon her—that Julian had obtained her admission to the hospital, where she still remained. He went to see her in the ward two or three times a week, though he dreaded the necessity. From little incidents which occurred at such times, he was convinced that all her fellow-patients, as well as the "sister" and nurses of the wards, had been prejudiced against him by her reports and accusations. To meet their looks occasioned him the most acute suffering. Sometimes he sat by the bedside for half an hour without speaking, then rose and hastened away to hide himself and be alone with his misery.

He was earnest and eager to-night in his praise of Waymark's book, which he had just read in manuscript.

"It is horrible," he exclaimed; "often hideous and revolting to me; but I feel its absolute truth. Such a book will do more good than half a dozen religious societies."

"If only people can be got to read it. Yet I care nothing for that aspect of the thing. Is it artistically strong? Is it good as a picture? There was a time when I might have written in this way with a declared social object. That is all gone by. I have no longer a spark of social enthusiasm. Art is all I now care for, and as art I wish my work to be judged."

"One would have thought," said Julian, "that increased knowledge of these fearful things would have had just the opposite effect."

"Yes," exclaimed the other, with the smile which always prefaced some piece of self-dissection, "and so it would in the case of a man born to be a radical. I often amuse myself with taking to pieces my former self. I was not a conscious hypocrite in those days of violent radicalism, working-man's-club lecturing, and the like; the fault was that I understood myself as yet so imperfectly. That zeal on behalf of the suffering masses was nothing more nor less than disguised zeal on behalf of my own starved passions. I was poor and desperate, life had no pleasures, the future seemed hopeless, yet I was overflowing with vehement desires, every nerve in me was a hunger which cried to be appeased. I identified myself with the poor and ignorant; I did not make their cause my own, but my own cause theirs. I raved for freedom because I was myself in the bondage of unsatisfiable longing."

"Well," he went on, after regarding his listener with still the same smile, "I have come out of all that, in proportion as my artistic self-consciousness has developed. For one thing, I am not so miserable as I was then, personally; then again, I have found my vocation. You know pretty well the phases I have passed through. Upon ranting radicalism followed a period of philosophical study. My philosophy, I have come to see, was worth nothing; what philosophy is worth anything? It had its use for myself, however; it made me by degrees self-conscious, and brought me to see that in art alone I could find full satisfaction."

"Yet," urged Julian, "the old direction still shows itself in your choice of subjects. Granting that this is pure art, it is a kind of art only possible to an age in which the social question is predominant."

"True, very likely. Every strong individuality is more or less the expression of its age. This direction may be imposed upon me; for all that, I understand why I pursue it."

After reflecting, Julian spoke in another tone. "Imagine yourself in my position. Could you appreciate the artistic effect of your own circumstances?"

"Probably not. And it is because I recognise that, that I grow more and more careful to hold aloof from situations that would threaten my peace of mind. My artistic egotism bids fair to ally itself with vulgar selfishness. That tendency I must resist. For the artist ought to be able to make material of his own sufferings, even while the suffering is at its height. To what other end does he suffer? In very deed, he is the only man whose misery finds justification in apparent result."

"I am not an artist," sighed Julian.

"On the contrary, I firmly believe that you are. And it makes me angry to see the impulse dying in you."

"What am I to do?" Julian cried, almost with a voice of anguish. "I am so helpless, so hopelessly fettered! Release is impossible. No words could express the desperate struggles I go through when I recognise how my life is being wasted and my powers, whatever they may be, numbed and crushed. Something I might do, if I were free; I feel that! But there is no hope of freedom. I shall fall into darker and darker depths of weakness and ruin, always conscious of what I am losing. What will be the end?"

"What the end will be, under the present circumstances, is only too clear to me. But it might easily be averted?"

"How? Give me some practical advice, Waymark! Let us talk of the matter freely. Tell me what you would do!"

Waymark thought for a moment.

"Does there seem any chance of her health being permanently improved?" he asked.

"I can't say. She says she is better. It's no use my asking the doctors; they despise me, and would not think of treating me with any consideration."

"Why don't you do this?" began Waymark, after another pause. "Use all means to find some convalescent home where she can be received when she leaves the hospital. Then, if her fits and the rest of it still continue, find some permanent place for her. You can afford it. Never mind if it reduces you for a time to a garret and a crust."

"She would refuse to go to such places," said Julian despondently.

"Then refuse to take her back! Sell your furniture; take one room for yourself; and tell her she must live where she likes on a sufficient allowance from you."

"I dare not. It is impossible. She would never leave me in peace."

"You will have to do this ultimately, if you are to continue to live. Of that there is no doubt. So why not now?"

"I must think; it is impossible to make up my mind to such a thing at once. I know you advise what is best; I have thought of it myself. But I shall never have the courage! I am so miserably weak. If only I could get my health back! Good God, how I suffer!"

Waymark did his best to familiarise Julian with the thought, and to foster in him something of resoluteness, but he had small hope of succeeding. The poor fellow was so incapable of anything which at all resembled selfishness, and so dreaded the results of any such severity on his part as that proposed. There were moments when indignation almost nerved him to independence, but there returned so soon the souse of pity, and, oftener still, the thought of that promise made to Harriet's father, long ago, in the dark little parlour which smelt of drugs. The poor chemist, whose own life was full of misery, had been everything to him; but for Mr. Smales, he might now have been an ignorant, coarse-handed working man, if not worse. Was Harriet past all rescue? Was there not even yet a chance of saving her from herself and those hateful friends of hers?

This was the natural reaction after listening to Waymark's remorseless counsel. Going home, Julian fought once more the battle with himself, till the usual troubled sleep severed his thoughts into fragments of horrible dreams. The next day he felt differently; Waymark's advice seemed more practical. In the afternoon he should have visited Harriet in the ward, but an insuperable repulsion kept him away, and for the first time. It was a bleak, cheerless day; the air was cold with the breath of the nearing winter. At night he found it impossible to sit in his own room, and dreaded to talk with any one. His thoughts were fixed upon one place; a great longing drew him forth, into the darkness and the rain of the streets, onwards in a fixed direction. It brought him to Westminster, and to the gate of Tothill Fields Prison. The fetters upon the great doors were hideous in the light of the lamps above them; the mean houses around the gaol seemed to be rotting in its accursed shadow. A deadly stillness possessed the air; there was blight in the dropping of the rain.

He leaned against the great, gloomy wall, and thought of Ida. At this hour she was most likely asleep, unless sorrow kept her waking. What unimagined horrors did she suffer day after day in that accursed prison-house? How did she bear her torments? Was she well or ill? What brutality might she not be subjected to? He pictured her face wasted with secret tears, those eyes which were the light of his soul fixed on the walls of the cell, hour after hour, in changeless despair, the fire of passionate resentment feeding at her life's core.

The night became calmer. The rained ceased, and a sudden gleam made him look up, to behold the moon breaking her way through billows of darkness.