|
The Record of Badalia Herodsfoot 153
as an excuse. 'I've got to keep 'er out o' 'arm's way,' said Badalia,
'an' out she keeps. The curick won't care a for me, but — he
wouldn't any'ow.'
The effect of that quarantine was to shift the sphere of Sister
Eva's activity to other streets, and notably those most haunted by
the Reverend Eustace Hanna and Brother Victor, of the Order
of Little Ease. There exists, for all their human bickerings, a very
close brotherhood in the ranks of those whose work lies in Gun-
nison Street. To begin with, they have seen pain — pain that no
word or deed of theirs can alleviate — life born into Death,
and Death crowded down by unhappy life. Also they understand
the full significance of drink, which is a knowledge hidden from
very many well-meaning people, and some of them have fought
with the beasts at Ephesus. They meet at unseemly hours in un-
seemly places, exchange a word or two of hasty counsel, advice,
or suggestion, and pass on to their appointed toil, since time is
precious and lives hang in the balance of five minutes. For many,
the gas-lamps are their sun, and the Covent Garden wains the
chariots of the twilight. They have all in their station begged for
money, so that the freemasonry of the mendicant binds them
together.
To all these influences there was added in the case of two workers
that thing which men have agreed to call Love. The chance that
Sister Eva might catch diphtheria did not enter into the curate's
head till Badalia had spoken. Then it seemed a thing intolerable
and monstrous that she should be exposed not only to this risk, but
any accident whatever of the streets. A wain coming round a corner
might kill her; the rotten staircases on which she trod daily and
nightly might collapse and maim her; there was danger in the tot-
tering coping-stones of certain crazy houses that he knew well;
danger more deadly within those houses. What if one of a thousand
drunken men crushed out that precious life? A woman had once
flung a chair at the curate's head. Sister Eva's arm would not be
strong enough to ward off a chair. There were also knives that were
quick to fly. These and other considerations cast the soul of the
Reverend Eustace Hanna into torment that no leaning upon Provi-
dence could relieve. God was indubitably great and terrible — one
had only to walk through Gunnison Street to see that much - but
it would be better, vastly better, that Eva should have the protec-
tion of his own arm. And the world that was not too busy to watch
154 Rudyard Kipling
might have seen a woman, not too young, light-haired and light-
eyed, slightly assertive in her speech, and very limited in such ideas
as lay beyond the immediate sphere of her duty, where the eyes of
the Reverend Eustace Hanna turned to follow the footsteps of a
Queen crowned in a little gray bonnet with white ribbons under
the chin.
If that bonnet appeared for a moment at the bottom of a court-
yard, or nodded at him on a dark staircase, then there was hope
yet for Lascar Loo, living on one lung and the memory of past
excesses, hope even for whining sodden Nick Lapworth, blasphem-
ing, in the hope of money, over the pangs of a 'true conversion this
time, s'elp me Gawd, sir'. If that bonnet did not appear for a day,
the mind of the curate was filled with lively pictures of horror,
visions of stretchers, a crowd at some villainous crossing, and a
policeman - he could see that policeman - jerking out over his
shoulder the details of the accident, and ordering the man who
would have set his body against the wheels - heavy dray wheels, he
could see them - to 'move on'. Then there was less hope for the
salvation of Gunnison Street and all in it.
This agony Brother Victor beheld one day when he was coming
from a deathbed. He saw the light in the eye, the relaxing muscles
of the mouth, and heard a new ring in the voice that had told flat
all the forenoon. Sister Eva had turned into Gunnison Street after
a forty-eight hours' eternity of absence. She had not been run over.
Brother Victor's heart must have suffered in some human fashion, or
he would never have seen what he saw. But the Law of his Church
made suffering easy. His duty was to go on with his work until he
died, even as Badalia went on. She, magnifying her office, faced the
drunken husband; coaxed the doubly shiftless, thriftless girl-wife
into a little forethought, and begged clothes when and where she
could for the scrofulous babes that multiplied like the green scum
on the untopped water-cisterns.
The story of her deeds was written in the book that the curate
signed weekly, but she never told him any more of fights and tu-
mults in the street. 'Mis' Eva does 'er work 'er way. I does mine
mine. But I do more than Mis' Eva ten times over, an' "Thank yer,
Badalia," sez 'e, "that'll do for this week." I wonder what Tom's
doin' now long o' that — other woman. 'Seems like as if I'd go an'
look at 'im one o' these days. But I'd cut 'er liver out - couldn't
'elp myself. Better not go, p'raps.'
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
