Robed in pure white, with her gentle blue eyes raised to heaven, a painter might have shown her on his canvas as a saint or an angel; and the critical world would have said, Here is the true ideal--Raphael himself might have painted this!
"You look very pale," said Amelius. "Are you ill?"
"No, sir--only hungry."
Her eyes half closed; she reeled from sheer weakness as she said the words. Amelius held her up, and looked round him. They were close to a stall at which coffee and slices of bread-and-butter were sold. He ordered some coffee to be poured out, and offered her the food. She thanked him and tried to eat. "I can't help it, sir," she said faintly. The bread dropped from her hand; her weary head sank on his shoulder.
Two young women--older members of the sad sisterhood--were passing at the moment. "She's too far gone, sir, to eat," said one of them. "I know what would do her good, if you don't mind going into a public-house."
"Where is it?" said Amelius. "Be quick!"
One of the women led the way. The other helped Amelius to support the girl. They entered the crowded public-house. In less than a minute, the first woman had forced her way through the drunken customers at the bar, and had returned with a glass of port-wine and cloves. The girl revived as the stimulant passed her lips. She opened her innocent blue eyes again, in vague surprise. "I shan't die this time," she said quietly.
A corner of the place was not occupied; a small empty cask stood there. Amelius made the poor creature sit down and rest a little. He had only gold in his purse; and, when the woman had paid for the wine, he offered her some of the change. She declined to take it. "I've got a shilling or two, sir," she said; "and I can take care of myself. Give it to Simple Sally."
"You'll save her a beating, sir, for one night at least," said the other woman. "We call her Simple Sally, because she's a little soft, poor soul--hasn't grown up, you know, in her mind, since she was a child. Give her some of your change, sir, and you'll be doing a kind thing."
All that is most unselfish, all that is most divinely compassionate and self-sacrificing in a woman's nature, was as beautiful and as undefiled as ever in these women--the outcasts of the hard highway!
Amelius turned to the girl. Her head had sunk on her bosom; she was half asleep. She looked up as he approached her.
"Would you have been beaten to-night," he asked, "if you had not met with me?"
"Father always beats me, sir," said Simple Sally, "if I don't bring money home. He threw a knife at me last night. It didn't hurt much--it only cut me here," said the girl, pointing to the plaster on her chin.
One of the women touched Amelius on the shoulder, and whispered to him. "He's no more her father, sir, than I am. She's a helpless creature--and he takes advantage of her. If I only had a place to take her to, he should never set eyes on her again. Show the gentleman your bosom, Sally."
She opened her poor threadbare little shawl. Over the lovely girlish breast, still only growing to the rounded beauty of womanhood, there was a hideous blue-black bruise. Simple Sally smiled, and said, "That did hurt me, sir. I'd rather have the knife."
Some of the nearest drinkers at the bar looked round and laughed. Amelius tenderly drew the shawl over the girl's cold bosom. "For God's sake, let us get away from this place!" he said.
The influence of the cool night air completed Simple Sally's recovery. She was able to eat now. Amelius proposed retracing his steps to the provision-shop, and giving her the best food that the place afforded. She preferred the bread-and-butter at the coffee-stall. Those thick slices, piled up on the plate, tempted her as a luxury. On trying the luxury, one slice satisfied her. "I thought I was hungry enough to eat the whole plateful," said the girl, turning away from the stall, in the vacantly submissive manner which it saddened Amelius to see. He bought more of the bread-and-butter, on the chance that her appetite might revive. While he was wrapping it in a morsel of paper, one of her elder companions touched him and whispered, "There he is, sir!" Amelius looked at her. "The brute who calls himself her father," the woman explained impatiently.
Amelius turned, and saw Simple Sally with her arm in the grasp of a half-drunken ruffian; one of the swarming wild beasts of Low London, dirtied down from head to foot to the colour of the street mud--the living danger and disgrace of English civilization. As Amelius eyed him, he drew the girl away a step or two. "You've got a gentleman this time," he said to her; "I shall expect gold to-night, or else--!" He finished the sentence by lifting his monstrous fist, and shaking it in her face. Cautiously as he had lowered his tones in speaking, the words had reached the keenly sensitive ears of Amelius. Urged by his hot temper, he sprang forward. In another moment, he would have knocked the brute down--but for the timely interference of the arm of the law, clad in a policeman's great-coat. "Don't get yourself into trouble, sir," said the man good-humouredly. "Now, you Hell-fire (that's the nice name they know him by, sir, in these parts), be off with you!" The wild beast on two legs cowered at the voice of authority, like the wild beast on four: he was lost to sight, at the dark end of the street, in a moment.
"I saw him threaten her with his fist," said Amelius, his eyes still aflame with indignation. "He has bruised her frightfully on the breast. Is there no protection for the poor creature?"
"Well, sir," the policeman answered, "you can summon him if you like. I dare say he'd get a month's hard labour. But, don't you see, it would be all the worse for her when he came out of prison."
The policeman's view of the girl's position was beyond dispute. Amelius turned to her gently; she was shivering with cold or terror, perhaps with both. "Tell me," he said, "is that man really your father?"
"Lord bless you, sir!" interposed the policeman, astonished at the gentleman's simplicity, "Simple Sally hasn't got father or mother--have you, my girl?"
She paid no heed to the policeman. The sorrow and sympathy, plainly visible in Amelius, filled her with a childish interest and surprise. She dimly understood that it was sorrow and sympathy for her. The bare idea of distressing this new friend, so unimaginably kind and considerate, seemed to frighten her. "Don't fret about me, sir," she said timidly; "I don't mind having no father nor mother; I don't mind being beaten." She appealed to the nearest of her two women-friends. "We get used to everything, don't we, Jenny?"
Amelius could bear no more. "It's enough to break one's heart to hear you, and see you!" he burst out--and suddenly turned his head aside. His generous nature was touched to the quick; he could only control himself by an effort of resolution that shook him, body and soul. "I can't and won't let that unfortunate creature go back to be beaten and starved!" he said, passionately addressing himself to the policeman. "Oh, look at her! How helpless, and how young!"
The policeman stared.