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Me now," she applied to Miss Montaubyn, "if I took it up same as you wot'd come to a gal like me?" "Wot ud yer want ter come?" Dart saw that in her mind was an absolute lack of any premonition of obstacle. "Wot'd yer arst fer in yer own mind?" Glad reflected profoundly. "Polly," she said, "she wants to go 'ome to 'er mother an' to the country.
At the bottom of the first short flight they stopped in the darkness and Glad knocked at a door with a summons manifestly expectant of cheerful welcome. She used the formula she had used before. "'S on'y me, Miss Montaubyn," she cried out. "'S on'y Glad." The door opened in wide welcome, and confronting them as she held its handle stood a small old woman with an astonishing face.
The three words she dragged out were so faint that perhaps none but Dart's strained ears heard them. "Wot price ME?" The soul of her was loosening fast and straining away, but Jinny Montaubyn followed it. "THERE IS NO DEATH," and her low voice had the tone of a slender silver trumpet. "In a minit yer 'll know in a minit. Lord," lifting her expectant face, "show her the wye."
"'T ain't fair to arst that wye," Glad put in with shrewd logic. "Miss Montaubyn she allers knows it WILL come an' it does." "Something not myself turned my feet toward this place," said Dart. "I was thrust from one thing to another. I was forced to see and hear things close at hand. It has been as if I was under a spell. The woman in the room below the woman lying dead!"
The girl Glad sat clinging to her knees, her eyes wide and awed and with a sudden gush of hysteric tears rushing down her cheeks. "That's the wye! That's the wye!" she gulped out. "No one won't never believe they won't, NEVER. That's what she sees, Miss Montaubyn. You don't, 'E don't," with a jerk toward the curate. "I ain't nothin' but ME, but blimme if I don't blimme!"
Those whom the pressure outside had crushed against the wall near the window in a passionate hurry, breathed on and rubbed the panes that they might lay their faces to them. One tore out the rags stuffed in a broken place and listened breathlessly. Jinny Montaubyn was kneeling down and laying her small old hand on the muddied forehead.
Dart sat and thanked her. Glad dropped upon the floor and girdled her knees comfortably while Miss Montaubyn took the second chair, which was close to the table, and snuffed the candle which stood near a basket of colored scraps such as, without doubt, had made the harlequin curtain. "Yer won't mind me goin' on with me bit o' work?" she chirped. "Tell 'im wot it is," Glad suggested.
"Ah!" said Miss Montaubyn, drawing out a long needleful of thread, "Bet, SHE thinks it worse than it is." "Could it be worse?" asked Dart. "Could anything be worse than everything is?" "Lots," suggested Glad; "might 'ave broke your back, might 'ave a fever, might be in jail for knifin' someone. 'E wants to 'ear you talk, Miss Montaubyn; tell 'im all about yerself."
Antony Dart bent forward in his chair. He looked far into the eyes of the ex-dancer as if some unseen thing within them might answer him. Miss Montaubyn herself for the moment he did not see. "What," he stammered hoarsely, his voice broken with awe, "what of the hideous wrongs the woes and horrors and hideous wrongs?"
The tumult was increasing; people were running about in the court, and it was plain a crowd was forming by the magic which calls up crowds as from nowhere about the door. The child's screams rose shrill above the noise. It was no small thing which had occurred. "I must go," said Miss Montaubyn, limping away from her table. "P'raps I can 'elp. P'raps you can 'elp, too," as he followed her.
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