University of Virginia Library

31. CHAPTER XXVIII.

There is much more to relate of the prominent
characters in the past history, but we are already, we
fear, trespassing beyond the limits generally allotted
to such a story. The reader will, we trust, excuse
omissions which the may easily supply with his own
imagination.

It was many weeks before Claude sufficiently recovered
from the avocations and emotions consequent
upon the new position in which he found himself, to
think calmly upon the past or the future. Within that
period he had become the husband of her whom he
had loved so ardently, and for whom he had dared so
many dangers. The novel prospects opened to him—
the duties, acquaintances, responsibilities, pleasures,
and plans, so far above all his wildest fancy could have
pictured or his highest hopes desired—expanded his
mind with almost a new existence. It required all his
firmness of character to remain unchanged; but he
did so; and, ere many months had passed away, he
had subdued excesses of joy as he had before done
excesses of grief, and learned to move with calmness
and self-possession in his new sphere. A more contented
husband, a happier wife, perhaps never assumed
the graver responsibilities of matrimony. For
each had that conscientious and clear perception of
duty—that innate sense of moral right, which had sustained
both in adversity, and did not desert them in
prosperity. Amid the happiness by which they were
surrounded, consisting of all that earth could bestow,
they did not fail to prostrate themselves, as humbly as
ever they had done at their darkest hour, before that
Supreme Being before whom all the forms of life are
as passing shadows, except what is founded in the
power of self-government and the practice of virtue, at

the sacrifice even of the world's applause—even of the
happiness of the heart.

Some time after their union, Claude walked through
one of the back streets of London in order to seek and
relieve a poor fugitive recently escaped out of France.
He arrived at the door of the house indicated as the
residence of the object of his search. He knocked.
The man was not at home, and he was leaving the
door, when a woman, apparently a beggar, passed him
and entered the door. She had on a worn and tattered
frock, entirely divested of ornament; an old bonnet
scarcely fit for use. It was a cold winter day,
but she was without cloak, shawl, and gloves, and
seemed emaciated with sickness, grief, and hunger,
and trembling with cold. As she entered she staggered
against the wall, apparently intoxicated; so much
so that Claude drew back, with that disgust which one
feels at beholding a woman in so degraded a situation.

“She's drunk, sir, poor thing,” said the bloated-faced
woman who kept the wretched lodging-house;
“but I never seed her so afore. She's generally a
werry temperate person, though werry poor pay. I
must turn her out to-day, as I can't afford to take people
in my house for nothing—and drunken sluts like
her too! Here, you—good woman! you might as well
hear it now as later. You must clear out o' my house.
Tramp—clear! Your room's better than your company!”

Claude was about leaving the steps, when he was
arrested by the voice of the unfortunate creature, and
the deep anguish and pathos so far removed from intoxication.

“For God's dear sake, do not turn me out to-day!”
said she. “I shall die on the pavement.”

“Die where you like, so long as you don't die in my
house,” replied the woman.

“Oh, what shall I do?”

“People as can afford to get drunk—”

“Drunk? Oh, I am not, believe me. I am only
faint from fatigue and want of food.”

She turned her face—Claude's eyes fell upon it.

“Great God!” he cried, “do my eyes deceive me?
No—it is impossible.”

“Mr. Wyndham! Merciful Heaven! I thank you.
Yes, it is I.”

“Mrs. Denham!”

“Yes—starving in the street—fainting with hunger.
Oh, sir,” she added, a flood of shame crimsoning
her pale face, “that you should ever see me in this
situation!”

Tears of bitter pain and self-reproach filled Claude's
eyes, and had hitherto kept him silent. In the fulness
of his bliss he had neglected to inquire of her.

“Poor Denham!” he faltered.

“Don't name him! Oh, Mr. Wyndham, that rash
act—that selfish—that—what suffering it has caused
me! My father—”

“Your father?”

“Dead!”

“And your friends—your family?”

“All that I could have appealed to are far away
from London, and I would not be a burden to those
already poor. I thought I could make a living, first
by drawing, then by teaching music, then by sewing,
and lately by going out to service. Yes, I have been
a maid-servant rather than eat the bread of beggary
or shame. But my helplessness—my feebleness—my
misery—my ill health, disqualified me for all occupation.
I have been ill, too, and alone; the privations I
have suffered—the coarse unkindness of the people
about me—the insults offered me, and the gross vice
I have been obliged to witness—to be in contact with
—oh, Charles, Charles, had you known what was to
follow, would you have brought upon your poor wife
all these horrors?”

“And Ellen?”

“She has a place at a shoemaker's in the city. She
works fourteen hours a day, and scarcely gains her
bread; they abuse and beat her—she—I—”

And the unhappy being, turning ashy pale, staggered

back, and would have fallen had not Claude caught
her on his arm.

He called instantly for a hackney-coach, and, in the
mean time, the woman of the house administered to
her wants with a world of protestations and apologies.
She said that she had already pitied her from her
heart—that she had already seen she was something
better than common. She had told her husband she
would not wonder if she had been even a carriage-lady
in her time.

Madam Denham revived as the coach drove up to
the door, and Claude supported her in with the assistance
of a maid, whom he requested to accompany
them. He ordered the coachman to drive at once to
Grosvenor Square. Ida received her unhappy guest
with the sympathy which such hearts as hers always
feel with misfortune; but when she learned who she
was, and how far her husband was, although innocently,
the cause of her calamity, she fully entered
into all his feelings, and protested she should watch
over and cherish her as a beloved sister.

In the night the poor invalid grew worse; she was
attacked with a violent and dangerous fever, in the
course of which, at length, reason entirely deserted
her. It was only by means of force that she could be
kept in bed. Her paroxysms during this period were
shocking to behold. She acted over again, in imagination,
the terrible scene which she had suffered in Berlin.
She still seemed to wait and wait for the beloved husband
who was never to return alive. She fancied she
heard the hours strike ten—eleven—twelve—one, and
at length that she beheld borne in the dead body of him
who a few hours before had been her support, her refuge,
her pride, her happiness, her hope. Again she kissed
his pale lips, felt his cold bosom, and thought her
fingers stained with his blood. Then she fancied that
she had passed away from that dark scene and fatal
hour. She was wandering about London—shrinking
from police-officers—praying mercy of the licentious

and the intoxicated, and that they would not insult her
—and at length she implored bread from the street-passengers.

“Ah! give me bread—only bread! Work? I cannot.
Look at these arms! Cruel! he's gone. Ah!
madam, will you take pity on me? I am starving! A
prison? For mercy's sake, no!”

All the skill of the physician could not treat this
state of excitement with much hope of recovery.

Early the next morning, leaving Mrs. Denham to
the tender care of Ida, Claude went in his carriage to
the shop of the shoemaker, whose address he had learned,
and where his little favourite Ellen had been bound
as an apprentice. It was a mean, low, dark, filthy
shop, in a damp, narrow, blind alley. A brutal-looking
man with a red nose, and harsh, appalling features,
was tending the shop, while a shrewish woman, with a
face sour as vinegar, had been examining the work of
the little girl, who, pale and silent, in ragged and dirty
clothes, sat by the window binding a shoe.

“It's wretchedly done. It isn't fit to be seen,” said
the woman; “you little, lazy, good-for-nothing slut,
take that!” And she gave her a blow upon the ears
enough to make the child's brain reel again.

“Ah! that's right; it's the only way to make anything
of her.”

“It's the best I could do,” said Ellen, in a voice so
unhappy and resigned that it went to Claude's heart.

“Silence, you vagabond. Do you bandy words with
me too?” said the man. “What can I do for you,
sir?” said he, turning to Claude with a smile fit for a
customer.

Ellen did not raise her eyes.

“I have come to see this little girl,” said Claude.

But the tones of his voice had no sooner reached
Ellen's ears, than she uttered an exclamation of acute
surprise and joy, and lifted her eyes. On recognising
him as he extended his arms, she started up with
a scream of exquisite delight.

“Why, what on earth is in the child?” said the man,
leaning over with a threatening countenance, and raising
his hand to strike her.

But his arm was arrested by Claude, and the brutal
tyrant was thrust with some force against the wall on
the opposite side of the room.

“Zounds and fury, sir,” cried the man, rushing forward
with clinched fists, “if you were the king, I'd
learn you better manners than that!”

“Stop, sir,” said Claude, calmly but firmly grasping
him by the throat; “you are a brutal, infamous,
drunken scoundrel; you must know that such treatment
as I have witnessed towards this little girl subjects
you to severe punishment; and, if you advance
farther, I shall be obliged to teach you on the spot a
lesson you deserve to learn.”

“Oh! Mr. Wyndham—dear, dear Mr. Wyndham—
save me! save me from these cruel people!”

“Who are you, and what are your intentions?” demanded
the man, his wrath and resistance entirely
abated by the stern and cool attitude with which
Claude had addressed him.

“There is my card,” said Claude. “I have the
power to make you rue what you have done; give me
the articles of indenture of this little girl, and let me
take her away, and I will let you go; otherwise I shall
instantly take measures to have you punished.”

“Your lordship's grace—is—the master—I did not
know—the child can go where your grace's lordship
likes—your worship.”

“Yes—certainly—your honourable excellency will
not wish to ruin two poor honest people,” said the
woman.

“Here are the articles,” said the man, taking from
a drawer, with hands trembling partly with intemperance
and partly with rage and fear, the papers demanded.

“Come, my sweet Ellen,” said Claude.

“And my shoe!” said the little girl, trembling and
bewildered.

“Let them finish it themselves, my dearest child,”
said Claude, smiling; “you will have other work, I
hope.”