He glanced at Tallulah and did not recognize her. He looked back at Emily, waiting for her to continue.
“Because of the death of poor Ada McKinley …” Emily went on desperately. “It touches us closely … because …”
“Because my brother is suspected of the crime,” Tallulah finished.
“I don’t think …” he began, then frowned, studying her face in the light. “Tallulah?” His voice was high- pitched with incredulity. Even as he said it he could not completely believe. It was a question rather than a statement.
“Hello, Jago.” Her voice was rough with emotion. “Did you not know they suspected Finlay?”
“Yes. Yes, I did know, but I can’t believe he’s guilty. It’s too …” He did not finish. Whatever he had been going to say, he changed his mind. His face hardened, the pity or the tenderness forced out of it. “There really isn’t anything you can do here. You had better go home before it gets dark. I’m going ’round to Coke Street to serve out soup, but I’ll walk with you up to a place where you can get a hansom first. Come on.”
“We’ll help you with the soup,” Tallulah offered.
He dismissed the idea contemptuously. “Don’t be ridiculous! You don’t belong here. You’ll get dirty, your feet will hurt standing, and the people will smell and it will offend you. You’ll be tired and bored.” Anger hardened in his eyes and his mouth. “Those people’s hunger is not entertaining. They are real, with feelings and dignity, not something for you to come to look at so you can tell your friends.”
Emily felt as if she had been slapped. Tallulah had not exaggerated his scorn of her.
“Why do you imagine you are the only person who can wish to help from a genuine desire, Mr. Jones?” Emily said tartly. “Is compassion solely your preserve?”
Tallulah’s mouth dropped.
Jago drew in his breath sharply and the skin tightened across his cheeks. It was too dark to see if he blushed.
“No, Miss …”
“Radley,” Emily supplied. “Mrs. Radley.”
“No, Mrs. Radley, of course not. I have known Miss FitzJames for several years. But I had no right to judge you by her past nature. I apologize.”
“I accept your apology,” Emily said with considerable condescension. “But you should extend it to Tallulah as well. It was she who offered to help. Now, if you would lead the way, we shall come with you. I am sure more hands would make the task easier.”
Jago smiled in spite of himself, and obeyed, moving to the outside of the narrow footpath and walking beside them towards Coke Street.
He was right. The work was hard. Emily’s feet hurt, her arms ached and her shoulders and back felt as if they would never adjust to their natural position again. The people were noisy and the smell of hot, unwashed bodies and stale clothes was at times almost sickening. But far more than that she was oppressed by the hunger, the hollow eyes in the lamplight, the spindly limbs and skin pitted and dark with ingrained dirt. She saw tired women with sickly children and no hope. She looked across at Tallulah and saw the shock in her eyes. In the space of a couple of hours, poverty had become a word with a whole realm of meaning. It was reality, pain, people of flesh and blood who loved and had dreams, who got frightened and tired just as she did, only it was most of the time, not merely once or twice a year.
And Jago Jones had become different also, not an idealization but a man of flesh and spirit who also felt, who was occasionally clumsy and dropped things, whose knuckles bled when he scraped them against the wall while maneuvering the cart that carried the soup, who laughed at a child’s silly joke and who turned away to hide his grief when he was told of a woman’s miscarrying her baby.
Emily watched him and saw his contempt for Tallulah slowly soften as she worked to help, stifling her disgust at the smell of dirt and stale sweat, and smiling back at people with blackened or missing teeth, at first with an effort, at the end almost naturally, forgetting the gulf between them.
When the last person was fed they tidied away the empty churns and began slowly to push the cart back to the house where it was kept and the food was cooked. It all came from donations, sometimes from wealthy people, sometimes people with little more themselves.
At quarter past nine, in the dark, they walked side by side to the church. Then Jago insisted on accompanying them until they should find a hansom.
“Why did you really come to Whitechapel?” he asked Tallulah. They were passing under a gas lamp, and in the pool of light his expression was innocent. There was no guile in him, or expectation of a particular answer. Emily was interested that he had no thought that she might have come to see him. She liked him even better for his modesty.
“I wanted to help Finlay,” Tallulah answered after only a moment.
Emily longed to tell her to be quiet. Jago Jones would not approve of their going to see Rose Burke about her testimony. She pretended to trip, and caught hold of Tallulah’s sleeve, jerking her hard.
“Are you all right?” Jago said quickly, putting out his hand to steady her.
“Yes, thank you.” She stood upright again, smiling, although they were past the lamp now. “It wasn’t a very clever idea really. There isn’t anything we can do. But we thought if we saw the place, we might think of something.”
Jago shook his head but forbore from comment. He could be tactful when he chose.
Tallulah glanced at Emily as they moved under the next light. She seemed to have understood the hint.
Jago found them a hansom on Commercial Road, and after helping them in, bade them good-bye and thanked them with a wry smile, then turned and walked away without looking back.
Tallulah swiveled to face Emily, although they could barely see each other in the darkness inside the cab.
“I know even less than I did before,” she said, her voice tight with confusion and weariness. “I know I love Jago, but I don’t think I could live here. It smells so awful! Everything is so … dirty! Who could I even talk to? How can he bear it?”
Emily did not answer, because there really was nothing to say, nothing to argue about or rationalize. There was only the decision to be made, and no one could help with that.
Emily collected the new Hellfire Club badge and met Tallulah, by arrangement, at a dog show held by the members of the Ladies’ Kennel Club. It was somewhere they could both go quite comfortably without comment, and meet and compare notes, as if on the scores of dogs of every breed and color and size. Tallulah was in a gorgeous gown of daisy-patterned muslin with white satin ribbon trim. No one would have recognized her as the woman who had helped ladle soup in Coke Street the previous evening. She looked carefree, full of laughter and grace, until she saw Emily. Then she excused herself from her friends and came over, her hand held out, her face tense and shadows of unhappiness in her eyes.
Without comment Emily put her hand into Tallulah’s and passed over the badge, then as quickly withdrew. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Has something new happened?”
“No. I …” Tallulah shook her head. “I just love this dog show. Look at them all. Aren’t they beautiful and intelligent?”
“The people or the dogs?”
“The dogs, of course!” She brushed her fingers against the soft fabric of her skirt. “And I love this dress.”
“You look wonderful in it,” Emily said honestly.
“Can you see me wearing it in Whitechapel? It probably cost more than Jago makes in a year. Maybe two years.”
“Nobody can decide for you,” Emily replied under her breath, smiling and nodding to the wife of another member of Parliament who walked by leading a Great Dane and trying to look as if it were not leading her. “The one thing you must never do is blame someone else because you have chosen the wrong way. Be honest with yourself. If you want your life as it is, with money, fashion, a husband you may not love, then take it.” She smiled and lifted her hand in a gesture of acknowledgment to the wife of a cabinet minister she loathed. “But if you want Jago, with all that that means, don’t attempt to change him or blame him for being what he is.”
“Don’t you expect to change a husband a little?” Tallulah said reasonably. “Why should I be the one to make all the accommodations?”
