'Poor girl! poor girl!' he said, as if to himself: 'was this the only way left?'
Then he spoke tenderly to her.What he said I could not hear--Ionly heard the tone.
'O sir!' she cried, in piteous entreaty, 'do let me go.Why should a wretched creature like me be forced to live? It's no good to you, sir.Do let me go.'
'Come here,' he said, drawing her close to the fence.'Stand up again on the beam.Look down.'
She obeyed, in a mechanical kind of way.But as he talked, and she kept looking down on the dark mystery beneath, flowing past with every now and then a dull vengeful glitter--continuous, forceful, slow, he felt her shudder in his still clasping arm.
'Look,' he said, 'how it crawls along--black and slimy! how silent and yet how fierce! Is that a nice place to go to down there?
Would there be any rest there, do you think, tumbled about among filth and creeping things, and slugs that feed on the dead; among drowned women like yourself drifting by, and murdered men, and strangled babies? Is that the door by which you would like to go out of the world?'
'It's no worse,' she faltered, '--not so bad as what I should leave behind.'
'If this were the only way out of it, I would not keep you from it.
I would say, "Poor thing! there is no help: she must go." But there is another way.'
'There is no other way, sir--if you knew all,' she said.
'Tell me, then.'
'I cannot.I dare not.Please--I would rather go.'
She looked, from the mere glimpses I could get of her, somewhere about five-and-twenty, making due allowance for the wear of suffering so evident even in those glimpses.I think she might have been beautiful if the waste of her history could have been restored.
That she had had at least some advantages of education, was evident from both her tone and her speech.But oh, the wild eyes, and the tortured lips, drawn back from the teeth with an agony of hopelessness, as she struggled anew, perhaps mistrusting them, to escape from the great arms that held her!
'But the river cannot drown you,' Falconer said.'It can only stop your breath.It cannot stop your thinking.You will go on thinking, thinking, all the same.Drowning people remember in a moment all their past lives.All their evil deeds come up before them, as if they were doing them all over again.So they plunge back into the past and all its misery.While their bodies are drowning, their souls are coming more and more awake.'
'That is dreadful,' she murmured, with her great eyes fixed on his, and growing steadier in their regard.She had ceased to struggle, so he had slackened his hold of her, and she was leaning back against the fence.
'And then,' he went on, 'what if, instead of closing your eyes, as you expected, and going to sleep, and forgetting everything, you should find them come open all at once, in the midst of a multitude of eyes all round about you, all looking at you, all thinking about you, all judging you? What if you should hear, not a tumult of voices and noises, from which you could hope to hide, but a solemn company talking about you--every word clear and plain, piercing your heart with what you could not deny,--and you standing naked and shivering in the midst of them?'
'It is too dreadful!' she cried, making a movement as if the very horror of the idea had a fascination to draw her towards the realization of it.'But,' she added, yielding to Falconer's renewed grasp, 'they wouldn't be so hard upon me there.They would not be so cruel as men are here.'
'Surely not.But all men are not cruel.I am not cruel,' he added, forgetting himself for a moment, and caressing with his huge hand the wild pale face that glimmered upon him as it were out of the infinite night--all but swallowed up in it.
She drew herself back, and Falconer, instantly removing his hand, said,'Look in my face, child, and see whether you cannot trust me.'
As he uttered the words, he took off his hat, and stood bare-headed in the moon, which now broke out clear from the clouds.She did look at him.His hair blew about his face.He turned it towards the wind and the moon, and away from her, that she might be undisturbed in her scrutiny.But how she judged of him, I cannot tell; for the next moment he called out in a tone of repressed excitement,'Gordon, Gordon, look there--above your head, on the other bridge.'
I looked and saw a gray head peering over the same gap through which Falconer had looked a few minutes before.I knew something of his personal quest by this time, and concluded at once that he thought it was or might be his father.
'I cannot leave the poor thing--I dare not,' he said.
I understood him, and darted off at full speed for the Surrey end of the bridge.What made me choose that end, I do not know; but I was right.
I had some reason to fear that I might be stopped when I reached it, as I had no business to be upon the new bridge.I therefore managed, where the upper bridge sank again towards a level with the lower, to scramble back upon it.As I did so the tall gray-headed man passed me with an uncertain step.I did not see his face.Ifollowed him a few yards behind.He seemed to hear and dislike the sound of my footsteps, for he quickened his pace.I let him increase the distance between us, but followed him still.He turned down the river.I followed.He began to double.I doubled after him.Not a turn could he get before me.He crossed all the main roads leading to the bridges till he came to the last--when he turned toward London Bridge.At the other end, he went down the stairs into Thames Street, and held eastward still.It was not difficult to keep up with him, for his stride though long was slow.
He never looked round, and I never saw his face; but I could not help fancying that his back and his gait and his carriage were very like Falconer's.
We were now in a quarter of which I knew nothing, but as far as Ican guess from after knowledge, it was one of the worst districts in London, lying to the east of Spital Square.It was late, and there were not many people about.
As I passed a court, I was accosted thus:
''Ain't you got a glass of ale for a poor cove, gov'nor?'
