Towards the middle of the day she could no longer evade the body’s craving want of rest and refreshment; but the rest was taken in a spirit vault, and the refreshment was a glass of gin.
Then she started up from the stupor she had taken for repose; and suddenly driven before the gusty impulses of her mind, she pushed her way to the place where at that very time the police were bringing the information they had gathered with regard to the all-engrossing murder.
She listened with painful acuteness of comprehension to dropped words, and unconnected sentences, the meaning of which became clearer, and yet more clear to her. Jem was suspected. Jem was ascertained to be the murderer.
She saw him (although he, absorbed in deep sad thought, saw her not), she saw him brought handcuffed and guarded out of the coach. She saw him enter the station—she gasped for breath till he came out, still handcuffed, and still guarded, to be conveyed to the New Bailey.
He was the only one who had spoken to her with hope that she might win her way back to virtue. His words had lingered in her heart with a sort of call to heaven, like distant Sabbath bells, although in her despair she had turned away from his voice. He was the only one who had spoken to her kindly. The murder, shocking though it was, was an absent, abstract thing, on which her thoughts could not, and would not dwell: all that was present in her mind was Jem’s danger, and his kindness.
Then Mary came to remembrance. Esther wondered till she was sick of wondering, in what way she was taking the affair. In some manner it would be a terrible blow for the poor, motherless girl; with her dreadful father, too, who was to Esther a sort of accusing angel.
She set off towards the court where Mary lived, to pick up what she could there of information. But she was ashamed to enter in where once she had been innocent, and hung about the neighbouring streets, not daring to question, so she learnt but little; nothing, in fact, but the knowledge of John Barton’s absence from home.
She went up a dark entry to rest her weary limbs on a doorstep and think. Her elbows on her knees, her face hidden in her hands, she tried to gather together and arrange her thoughts. But still every now and then she opened her hand to see if the paper were yet there.
She got up at last. She had formed a plan, and had a course of action to look forward to that would satisfy one craving desire at least. The time was long gone by when there was much wisdom or consistency in her projects.
It was getting late, and that was so much the better. She went to a pawnshop, and took off her finery in a back room. She was known by the people, and had a character for honesty, so she had no very great difficulty in inducing them to let her have a suit of outer clothes, befitting the wife of a working-man, a black silk bonnet, a printed gown, a plaid shawl, dirty and rather worn to be sure, but which had a sort of sanctity to the eyes of the street-walker as being the appropriate garb of that happy class to which she could never, never more belong.
She looked at herself in the little glass which hung against the wall, and sadly shaking her head thought how easy were the duties of that Eden of innocence from which she was shut out; how she would work, and toil, and starve, and die, if necessary, for a husband, a home—for children—but that thought she could not bear; a little form rose up, stern in its innocence, from the witches’ caldron of her imagination, and she rushed into action again.
You know now how she came to stand by the threshold of Mary’s door, waiting, trembling, until the latch was lifted, and her niece, with words that spoke of such desolation among the living, fell into her arms.
She had felt as if some holy spell would prevent her (even as the unholy Lady Geraldine was prevented, in the abode of Christabel) from crossing the threshold of that home of her early innocence; and she had meant to wait for an invitation. But Mary’s helpless action did away with all reluctant feeling, and she bore or dragged her to her seat, and looked on her bewildered eyes, as, puzzled with the likeness, which was not identity, she gazed on her aunt’s features.
In pursuance of her plan, Esther meant to assume the manners and character, as she had done the dress, of a mechanic’s wife; but then, to account for her long absence, and her long silence towards all that ought to have been dear to her, it was necessary that she should put on an indifference far distant from her heart, which was loving and yearning, in spite of all its faults. And, perhaps, she over-acted her part, for certainly Mary felt a kind of repugnance to the changed and altered aunt, who so suddenly reappeared on the scene; and it would have cut Esther to the very core, could she have known how her little darling of former days was feeling towards her.
“You don’t remember me, I see, Mary!” she began. “It’s a long while since I left you all, to be sure; and I, many a time, thought of coming to see you, and—and your father. But I live so far off, and am always so busy, I cannot do just what I wish. You recollect aunt Esther, don’t you, Mary?”
“Are you Aunt Hetty?” asked Mary faintly, still looking at the face which was so different from the old recollections of her aunt’s fresh dazzling beauty.
“Yes! I am Aunt Hetty. Oh! it’s so long since I heard that name,” sighing forth the thoughts it suggested; then, recovering herself, and striving after the hard character she wished to assume, she continued: “And to-day I heard a friend of yours, and of mine too, long ago, was in trouble, and I guessed you would be in sorrow, so I thought I would just step this far and see you.”
Mary’s tears flowed afresh, but she had no desire to open her heart to her strangely-found aunt, who had, by her own confession, kept aloof from and neglected them for so many years. Yet she tried to feel grateful for kindness (however late) from any one, and wished to be civil. Moreover, she had a strong disinclination to speak on the terrible subject uppermost in her mind.
So, after a pause, she said—
“Thank you. I dare say you mean very kind. Have you had a long walk? I’m so sorry,” said she, rising with a sudden thought, which was as suddenly checked by recollection, “but I’ve nothing to eat in the house, and I’m sure you must be hungry, after your walk.”
For Mary concluded that certainly her aunt’s residence must be far away on the other side of the town, out of sight or hearing. But, after all, she did not think much about her; her heart was so aching-full of other things, that all besides seemed like a dream. She received feelings and impressions from her conversation with her aunt, but did not, could not, put them together, or think or argue about them.
And Esther! How scanty had been her food for days and weeks, her thinly-covered bones and pale lips might tell, but her words should never reveal!
So, with a little unreal laugh, she replied—
“Oh! Mary, my dear! don’t talk about eating. We’ve the best of everything, and plenty of it, for my husband is in
