CHAPTER III

A REFUGE OF STRAW

A blur Of gilded mist--'twas morn's first hour-- Made vague the world: and in the gleam Shivered the half-awakened stream.

Through tinted vapors looming large, Ambiguous shapes obscurely rode. She gazed where many a laden barge Like some dim-moving saurian showed. --WILLIAM WATSON.

In after days, whenever he was sleeping badly, or felt ill or feverish, Felix was able to recapture the exact feeling of that moment when he stood, with the defenseless girl, in the glare of the gas on the London pavement, and saw the two pursuers close to them, almost within arm's length. He knew that if the girl was recognized the sympathy of the crowd would be on the side of her uncle, and against the disreputable youth with whom she had run away. And he saw, too, that if she tried to run, recognition was almost inevitable.

Inspiration came with extremity. It flashed upon him that if they stood quite still they might escape notice. The girl's dark blue serge frock and coat were of the kind one sees everywhere. Her back was not distinctive. Her companion was an utter stranger. The street was the last place in which her uncle would expect to see her. In a moment Felix knew what to do. Snatching off his cap, he pushed it firmly down over her bare head, hissing in her ear as he did so, "Stand still--turn your back--look in at the window--hold your handkerchief to your face."

It is long in the telling, but it occupied an instant. By the time the two heavy men had gained the pavement the huddled girl, with stooping shoulders, was staring at the pies.

He of the oily face and black locks was looking at his watch in the light of the lamps, not three feet from where Felix stood at bay. Two or more gem rings flashed on his fat hand.

"Half-past six," he said, in the thick, smooth tones of the German Jew. "How far have we to go?"

"Two minutes' walk," replied his companion.

"We arrange then--I go in first," said the Jew, "and I soothe the child, and take her out to dine at the Tuscany. You do not appear. You comprehend? You do not appear?"

"All right, all right," said the other man, testily. "That's all arranged. You take her to dine in a private room----"

They moved off together. The last words audible from the Jew were, "A bottle of champagne--after starving all these hours----"

It was true. They were gone. They had stood within a few feet of their prey, and had not seen her. How should they expect to see her in that place, and with that companion? The promptness of Felix, joined to her instantaneous, convent-bred obedience, had saved them.

It seemed to him, and to her, hours that they stood so, hand gripped in hand, he facing towards the street and she towards the shop window, when he said, his voice tumbling over a sob, "They have turned the corner."

She moved slightly towards him--tottered on her feet. He took her by the shoulders, not roughly, but with sternness. "Look here," he said, under his breath, "you can't faint--there isn't time. You have got to pull yourself together and walk--do you hear?"

She nodded blindly, still clinging to his hand, and he dragged her across the road, dived into a dark side street, and moved along, as fast as he could induce her wavering feet to follow, for half a mile or more. By that time she was sobbing aloud in her pain and distress, and, fearful lest passers-by should think he was ill-treating her, and interfere, he stopped and sat down upon a doorstep, drawing her to rest her poor battered body against him.

"I can only give you just time to draw your breath," he said. "I must get you into some hiding-place. We are not going to be taken now."

"Oh, no! No!" She clutched him in terror.

"By this time they have found out that you are gone," he said, "and they will be racking their brains to think how. They will find the door locked. They will find the window leading into my room bolted on the inside. They will think that you have fallen upon the lines, and been found--the first thing they are dead certain to do is to go to the railway station to make inquiries. That gives us a bit of a start. If nobody saw us go away together, they will be very hard up for a clew. I left my letters on the table, and I poured away the laudanum out of the mug. They will be fairly puzzled to know what has happened."

She had recovered her breath, and she asked tremulously, "What are you going to do?"

"The only thing I can think of is to take you to a friend of mine, who is at times in charge of the hay wharf at the canal basin at Limehouse. If he is there he will let us sleep in the hay, and to-morrow I must turn to and earn a few coppers. Have you any change left out of your shilling?"

"Three-halfpence."

"That will do us. We will have two halfpenny 'bus rides down this road, close by, and, after that, it is only five minutes' walk to the wharf."

"And what if your friend is not there?"

"We must try and hide somewhere," he replied. "But let us hope for the best."

"I will pray that he may be there," said Rona, with simplicity.

When they emerged from the omnibus, at the end of their ride, one halfpenny represented the joint capital of the firm.

The wharf was dark and muddy, the black water of the basin reflecting the light of rather few lamps. But there was a warm, pleasant odor of dry hay permeating the listless atmosphere like a suggestion of sunny meadows. Felix felt in his heart that what he ought to do was to take his helpless companion to a hospital. Yet somehow the conviction was in him that, were he bereft of her, the old temptation to suicide would return with full force the moment he grew hungry again.

He had had enough of it--enough of seeing the look of suspicion on the faces of those to whom he applied for help. Here was one pair of eyes which spoke trust, one innocent creature, who clung to him as her sole refuge. He could not deny himself the new, strange solace.

Leaving Rona seated upon a trolley, he groped his way along the stumpy jetty to where the light in the night watchman's cabin gleamed across the dark, lapping wavelets.

A man in a blue jersey was seated, smoking a pipe, on a capstan, his ugly face in shadow.

"What ho, Comrade Dawkes!" said Felix, in a low tone.

The man started. "You!" he said, in tones of astonishment. He turned round so as to see Felix fully. Then, rising with the difficult movement of one whose joints are crippled with rheumatics, took the young man by the sleeve and drew him a little forward, to bring his face into the light of his lamp.

"'Tis yourself," he said at last; "who would have thought it? Where have you been since they let you loose?"

Felix gave a short laugh. "I'm still on ticket-of-leave, mate," he said; "and if the police know I am in communication with any of the old lot, I score a black mark. But who cares? I'm desperate."

The night-watchman again seated himself upon his capstan. He puffed once or twice at his pipe before he replied. "Oh, you're desperate, are you? That's how we like 'em. Always got a job on hand for desp'rate men, we have."

"I'm not taking any to-night, old man," said Felix. "I'm saving a girl."

This was so surprising that Dawkes turned round so as to face him completely, and took his pipe out of his mouth.

"Saving a girl, are yer? What d'yer mean by that? Got religion? Ministers been at yer?"

"No. But a girl dropped into my arms out of nowhere--a girl fleeing from the black wolves they call men in this city--a girl who had been trapped--a good girl, Dawkes. I've got this thing to do--just to put her somewhere, where she'll be safe."

Dawkes gazed upon him with small blear eyes, deliberately. "Good-lookin', I suppose?" he remarked at length.

"Well, no, that's the odd part of it to me," said Felix. "She says that two men wanted her to train for the stage, singing and dancing. But she's not a bit pretty--just a kiddie, all legs and arms, with the most sorrowful eyes--like a lost dog."

Dawkes shrugged his shoulders, and turned away as if from a hopeless idiot. "What d'you want to do with her?" he asked.

"She's been hurt--pretty badly," said Felix, timidly. "I want you to let her spend the night here in the hay."

"Where is she?"

"Close by here."

"Bring her along, so's I can 'ave a squint at her."

Felix obeyed. A fire blazed in the night-watchman's cabin, and by his instructions he seated Rona on a chair in front of it. She was scared and nervous, hardly able to control herself, what with bodily pain and mental apprehension.

"You tyke my tip," said Comrade Dawkes, after a prolonged scrutiny. "Tyke and get shut of 'er to-night, and now. Send her to the orsepital, they'll look after 'er there. Go an' saddle yourself with a girl, there'll never be no end to it."

Rona did not speak, but her "lost dog" eyes besought Felix.

"If she's no better in the morning, I must," he said, reluctantly. "But, you see, if she goes to the hospital, ten to one those ruffians will find her; and he's her uncle--they would have to let him take her away. There's nobody but me to speak for her, and nobody will believe me on oath in a police-court. The end of it would be my being jugged again, for abduction, and she handed over to ruin."

Dawkes nodded slowly. He saw the desperate nature of their plight. Once caught, they would have no chance at all.

"If that's the way of it, and you go to be off, my advice to you both is--be off, and look sharp about it," said he. "Don't hang around here all night."

Felix made a gesture of despair. "But she can't travel, and we have no money," he said, resentfully. "We'd better chuck ourselves in there, and have done with it."

"She can travel," said Dawkes.

"How, then?"

"In a canal boat."

They regarded him earnestly.

"Anywhere you thought of making for?" he asked.

Felix told him of the Convent School in the North Riding.

"First place they'll look for her," said Dawkes, reflectively. "Get there slow, is my advice. It'll do you no 'arm if you go a bit roundabout, what I can see of it. My son-in-law is starting to-night for Basingstoke. His boy's took and got pneumony. If you drove the boss," he said to Felix, "I expect he'd pay yer syme as he paid 'im. And you'd get to Basingstoke with a few shillin's in yer pocket--which would be all to the good, seemin'ly."

For the first time a glimmer of hope lit up the heart of Felix. The suggestion was eminently practical. Unless some quite unlooked-for clew were given nobody would think of searching for them in a canal barge.

"Think he'd take me on, Comrade? I'm a green hand," he said, "but I can manage horses all right. I'm used to them."

"Looks as if we might fix you up, then," returned the man, unemotionally. He stepped, with some difficulty, to the hob, removed a tea-pot, and, turning to a shelf, poured out a cup of tea, mixed in a spoonful of condensed milk from a tin near, and handed it to the girl. "Stop a bit," he said, withdrawing the cup as at a sudden thought. He went to a tiny corner cupboard, took out a square black bottle, and poured something into the cup. "Drink that up, it'll put heart into yer," he said. Then, to Felix, "When she's 'ad all she wants, you take a ditto, and never mind emptying the pot; I can make some more."

With this he disappeared, and they heard him stumping along the jetty. The cognac was really good, and the hot drink pulled the young man together. Rona and he sat by the fire side by side, gazing at the red coals, with a drowsiness born of fatigue and excitement.

Felix had an illusion of being separated from the world which was to him so detestable a spot, and placed in a new setting, in a universe where there was clearly a post for him, and a work which he alone could do. He looked, in a fervor of compassion, at the figure of the waif beside him. Rona was gripping the arms of the hard wooden chair upon which she sat to hold herself upright. Her breath came broken and uneven; there was a glaze of perspiration upon her pale forehead, where little locks of bronze hair lay damp. He could see that she was wretchedly uncomfortable, and that she was too dazed with misery to see how her discomfort could be lessened. Every minute or so the lids half-sunk over her filming eyes, the pupils turned up, as if sleep were overcoming her. Then her limbs relaxed a little, and the torture startled her awake once more. When he had watched this for some minutes, he saw that she would be easier lying down. But the floor was impossible. He glanced down at the mud and expectoration which defiled it, and then at the fragile girl, who was daintily clean, except for the dust and mire of her breathless escape.

The young man rose, placed his arms under her, and lifted her upon his knees. He laid her head against the shabby coat, which, with a shirt, was all that protected him from the March wind, and rested her feet upon the chair in which she had been sitting. She moaned a little as he lifted her; but evidently the relief of the change of position was immediate. She seemed to breathe more easily, and after a moment she raised her eyes to his with a gratitude which he found very moving. As he cradled her there, before the cinder fire, in that strange refuge, he vowed himself to her service, as one of Arthur's knights may have vowed life and loyalty to the lady for whom he fought.

There was satisfaction in seeing the blue-veined lids once more descend, as unconsciousness enfolded the suffering girl.

The long minutes ticked on, and now and then a shouting, or sudden noise out of the night, set his nerves a-quiver. But nothing happened. More than an hour went by, and still he sat so, almost past caring what might next befall them. That Rona should continue to sleep, with her head upon his shoulder, seemed the one important thing.

The footfall of Comrade Dawkes returning, and the flood of cold air which accompanied his entrance, brought back the necessity for action with a pang.

"Come along, and look slippy," he said.

Rona was so stiff that Felix could hardly lift her, and he had almost to carry her along to where there loomed out of the darkness the dim bulk of a barge, lying low in the water, with her cargo of tarpaulin-covered hay.

Dawkes had arranged with his son-in-law, an unamiable-looking person with a wall eye, to take Felix on in place of the boy left behind with "pneumony," and to pay him the princely sum of seven shillings for the trip, which he expected would last four days, and during which he undertook to feed both Felix and the girl. The night-watchman had, moreover, bestowed upon the eloping pair a truss of hay, such as formed his perquisite from the barges mooring at the wharf, and which he usually disposed of to carters and van-owners of his acquaintance. This truss he had opened, and disposed so as to make a comfortable couch for Rona, with a tarpaulin canopy, stretched upon a hurdle, cunningly inserted between the tightly piled trusses of the cargo.

It was an ingeniously planned bed; and though the son-in-law, who was very deaf, in addition to the imperfection of his vision, seemed to dislike the notion of his female passenger, Felix felt that it was all far better arranged than he could have hoped for. His sole discomfort lay in the notion that, to secure this freedom, he had been obliged to put himself under obligations to a "Comrade"--one of the old lawless gang--and one never quite knew what form payment to the Brotherhood might have to take. However, so far, all was clear gain. He wrung the hand of the night-watchman and stepped aboard, while with shouts and oaths the barge got itself attached to the tail of another, which was tied to a third, which depended upon a dirty, noisy, squat steam-tug, the owner of which poured forth his language in a torrent which could hardly be equaled, one would think, even in California.

They were to be towed, it appeared, as far as the beginning of the Wey navigation, so Felix's stable duties would not yet begin. The son-in-law, whose name was Doggett, took the tiller during the critical night hours. Felix went to see how fared his charge. The hay was clean, warm, and fragrant, and she, worn out with misery, relieved at their escape, bemused by her first taste of stimulant, sank off to sleep in a few minutes, and left the young man free to go aft, and take lessons in steering a barge, which is an art not to be acquired in five minutes, even by one who has stroked his College eight.

The waters of the dirty river, slapped and churned by the passage of the tug, bumped and billowed in light and darkness. The yellow, sickly lights of the shore mingled with the riding lights of the craft around, until the young man's brain reeled. The night was cold, and he was dog tired. His head sank from time to time on his chest. At last Doggett seized him by the arm and shook him.

"Go, sleep it out," he bawled, as if Felix, like himself, was hard of hearing. "I'll call yer when I want yer."

Dizzily the would-be suicide stumbled into the little dingy cabin, found the thing that purported to be a bed, and in half a minute was sound asleep, deaf even to the torrent of language which the appearance of the tug and her barges seemed to provoke all along the great watery highway.