Part 30 (2/2)

XVIII

CRUEL PROOF OF THIS MAN'S STRENGTH As You Like It, i. 2.

The afternoon was already darkening into dusk one day late in January when Philip Ashe stood in the hallway of a squalid tenement house, looking out into a dingy court. The place was surrounded by tall buildings which cut off the light and made day shorter than nature had intended, an effect which was not lessened by the clothes drying smokily on lines above. In one corner of the court yawned like the entrance to a cave the mouth of the pa.s.sageway by which it was entered.

In another stood a dilapidated handcart in which some dweller there was accustomed to carry abroad his rubbishy wares. The windows were for the most part curtainless, rising row above row with an aspect of wretchedness which gave Ashe a sense of discomfort so strong as almost to be physical. Here and there rags and old hats did duty instead of gla.s.s; some windows were open, framing slatternly women.

These women were stupidly quiet. Ashe wondered if they would have talked to each other across the court if he had not been in sight, or if the gathering dusk silenced them. One of them was smoking a short black pipe, and once let fall a spark upon the head of another idler a couple of floors below. The injured woman poured forth a volley of oaths, and Ashe expected a war of words. Nothing of the sort occurred.

The figure above was so indifferent as hardly to glance down where the offended harridan was steaming with a fume of curses.

Philip began to be uneasy. He looked up at the darkening sky, and backward to the gloom of the stairway behind him. No gas had been lighted in the building, and he wondered if any ever were. It was certainly too late for Mrs. Fenton to be poking about in these dangerous places. They had been doing charity visiting together, and she had insisted on coming to this one house more before going home. He had remonstrated, but she had laughed at his fears.

”I don't believe any of these places are really dangerous,” she had declared. ”I've been coming here for years, and n.o.body ever troubled me.”

”By daylight it is all very well,” he had answered, ”but it's a different thing after dark. I have been here once or twice to see some sick person in the evening, and it is a rough place.”

”But it isn't after dark,” she had persisted, ”and it won't be for an hour.”

She had had her way, but Ashe reflected uneasily that if harm came to her it would be his fault. He should have insisted upon her going home.

The light was fading fast, and the locality was one of the worst in town. He wondered why the mere absence of daylight gave wickedness so much boldness. Men who by day were the veriest cowards seemed to spring into appalling fearlessness as soon as darkness gave its uncertain promise of concealment. The thought made him turn, and begin slowly to walk up the stairs.

He was not sure what floor she meant to visit. She was going, he knew, to see a woman whose husband got drunk and beat her. She had told him about the poor creature as they came along. She was sure Mrs. Murphy must have known a decent life. She set her down as having been a housekeeper or upper servant who had foolishly married a rascal. The woman, Mrs. Fenton had added, was evidently ashamed of her present condition, and afraid that those who had known her in her better days should discover her.

”It is pitiful,” Mrs. Fenton had said musingly, ”to see how she clings to her husband. She pulls down her sleeves to cover the bruises, and tells how good he was to her when they were first married. She says he doesn't mean to hurt her, but that he's the strongest man in the court, and doesn't realize what he is doing. She's even proud of his strength.”

”Strength is apt to impress women,” Ashe had answered, not without a secret sense of humiliation to lack this quality.

As he walked gropingly up the dark stairway, a man came clumsily after, and presently stumbled past him. A strong smell of liquor enveloped the newcomer, and he lurched heavily against Ashe without apology. Philip heard his uneven steps mounting in the gloom, and followed almost mechanically. He paused in one of the hallways to listen to a babble of words in one of the rooms. It was chiefly profanity, but it hardly seemed to be ill-natured. It was simply a family cursing each other with well-accustomed vehemence. He grew every instant more and more uneasy, and thought of knocking at every door until he found his friend. What right had philanthropy to demand that a beautiful, n.o.ble woman should be exposed to the chances of a nest of ruffianism and vice? He was indignant at the committee for not delegating such work to men. Then he remembered that Mrs. Fenton was herself on the committee, and that it was by her own insistence that she was here.

”She is capable of any sacrifice to what she believes to be right,” he said to himself; ”but she is too good for such work; she is too delicate, too”--

Suddenly a noise arose on the floor above him. A man's voice, thick with anger or drink, was pouring out a stream of words, half oaths; a woman was shrilly entreating. Ashe sprang quickly upstairs, and as he did so he heard Mrs. Fenton scream. The sound was behind a door, and without stopping to deliberate he tried to open it. The latch yielded, but he could not open.

”Let me in!” he cried fiercely. ”What is the matter?”

The voice of a man who was evidently against the door answered him with blasphemies. A woman within cried to the man to stop, while Mrs. Fenton called to Ashe for help. Philip set his shoulder against the door and strained with all his might to force it. He remembered then what Mrs.

Fenton had said about the strength of the husband of her pensioner.

”Go to the window, and call the police,” he shouted.

”He's holding me!” Mrs. Fenton cried back pantingly.

Philip strained more desperately, and as he did so he heard the window within flung open, and the voice of a woman yelling for the police. The man inside sprang forward with an oath, the door yielded, and Philip plunged headlong into the room.

As Philip fell upon his knees, he saw a man seize the woman who from the window was calling for help, and fling her to the floor. The sound of her fall, with her wild shriek beaten into a choking gasp by the force with which she struck, turned his heart sick; but his fear for Mrs. Fenton kept him up. He scrambled to his feet, and as he did so she ran toward him.

<script>