“Come in and wash it,” answered Harriet, mildly, “and let me give you something to bind it up.”
The woman caught her arm, and drawing it before her own eyes, hid them against it, and wept. Not like a woman, but like a stern man surprised into that weakness; with a violent heaving of her breast, and struggle for recovery, that showed how unusual the emotion was with her.
She submitted to be led into the house, and, evidently more in gratitude than in any care for herself, washed and bound the injured place. Harriet then put before her fragments of her own frugal dinner, and when she had eaten of them, though sparingly, besought her, before resuming her road (which she showed her anxiety to do), to dry her clothes before the fire. Again, more in gratitude than with any evidence of concern in her own behalf, she sat down in front of it, and unbinding the handkerchief about her head, and letting her thick wet hair fall down below her waist, sat drying it with the palms of her hands, and looking at the blaze.
“I daresay you are thinking,” she said, lifting her head suddenly, “that I used to be handsome, once. I believe I was—I know I was—Look here!”
She held up her hair roughly with both hands; seizing it as if she would have torn it out; then, threw it down again, and flung it back as though it were a heap of serpents.
“Are you a stranger in this place?” asked Harriet.
“A stranger!” she returned, stopping between each short reply, and looking at the fire. “Yes. Ten or a dozen years a stranger. I have had no almanac where I have been. Ten or a dozen years. I don’t know this part. It’s much altered since I went away.”
“Have you been far?”
“Very far. Months upon months over the sea, and far away even then. I have been where convicts go,” she added, looking full upon her entertainer. “I have been one myself.”
“Heaven help you and forgive you!” was the gentle answer.
“Ah! Heaven help me and forgive me!” she returned, nodding her head at the fire. “If man would help some of us a little more, God would forgive us all the sooner perhaps.”
But she was softened by the earnest manner, and the cordial face so full of mildness and so free from judgment, of her, and said, less hardily:
“We may be about the same age, you and me. If I am older, it is not above a year or two. Oh think of that!”
She opened her arms, as though the exhibition of her outward form would show the moral wretch she was; and letting them drop at her sides, hung down her head.
“There is nothing we may not hope to repair; it is never too late to amend,” said Harriet. “You are penitent—”
“No,” she answered. “I am not! I can’t be. I am no such thing. Why should I be penitent, and all the world go free? They talk to me of my penitence. Who’s penitent for the wrongs that have been done to me?”
She rose up, bound her handkerchief about her head, and turned to move away.
“Where are you going?” said Harriet.
“Yonder,” she answered, pointing with her hand. “To London.”
“Have you any home to go to?”
“I think I have a mother. She’s as much a mother, as her dwelling is a home,” she answered with a bitter laugh.
“Take this,” cried Harriet, putting money in her hand. “Try to do well. It is very little, but for one day it may keep you from harm.”
“Are you married?” said the other, faintly, as she took it.
“No. I live here with my brother. We have not much to spare, or I would give you more.”
“Will you let me kiss you?”
Seeing no scorn or repugnance in her face, the object of her charity bent over her as she asked the question, and pressed her lips against her cheek. Once more she caught her arm, and covered her eyes with it; and then was gone.
Gone into the deepening night, and howling wind, and pelting rain; urging her way on towards the mist-enshrouded city where the blurred lights gleamed; and with her black hair, and disordered headgear, fluttering round her reckless face.
XXXIV
Another Mother and Daughter
In an ugly and dark room, an old woman, ugly and dark too, sat listening to the wind and rain, and crouching over a meagre fire. More constant to the last-named occupation than the first, she never changed her attitude, unless, when any stray drops of rain fell hissing on the smouldering embers, to raise her head with an awakened attention to the whistling and pattering outside, and gradually to let it fall again lower and lower and lower as she sunk into a brooding state of thought, in which the noises of the night were as indistinctly regarded as is the monotonous rolling of a sea by one who sits in contemplation on its shore.
There was no light in the room save that which the fire afforded. Glaring sullenly from time to time like the eye of a fierce beast half asleep, it revealed no objects that needed to be jealous of a better display. A heap of rags, a heap of bones, a wretched bed, two or three mutilated chairs or stools, the black walls and blacker ceiling, were all its winking brightness shone upon. As the old woman, with a gigantic and distorted image of herself thrown half upon the wall behind her, half upon the roof above, sat bending over the few loose bricks within which it was pent, on the damp hearth of the chimney—for there was no stove—she looked as if she were watching at some witch’s altar for a favourable token; and but that the movement of her chattering jaws and trembling chin was
