PURGATORY

SUDDENLY, and for the first time, did the thought flare through Zita's brain and scorch it—that she had compromised her character.

Now only did she see why Mark had refused to look at her; now only understand what he meant when he said that she had sold herself body and soul; now only comprehended what the laughter signified when the chairman in court had suggested that she was the 'companion' of Drownlands, a suggestion which had been received with titters. She remembered how then her brow had become hot, her heart had beat fast; she was sensible that something had been said that hurt her maiden pride, something that lowered her in the esteem of those assembled in the court. But she had not sounded the meaning of the insinuation, and had not thought what was really the sting in the words which wounded her.

Zita possessed a considerable amount of pride—a different sort of pride, maybe, from any that we can conceive in our stations in life. It was not vanity. She concerned herself little about her personal appearance, and made no effort by dress to display her beauty. She knew she was a good-looking girl, and was indifferent to the fact. She had no education of the sort which we prize; but she had stood on platforms, her feet level with the shoulders of the general public, and she had come, instinctively, without being able to account to herself for it, to regard herself as possessing a character, a dignity of her own above that which belonged to the members of the general public. She who stood above it actually must live up to her level, and stand above it in moral strength and integrity.

Zita had a simple and innocent mind. She had been reared in a van, had led a rambling life, her sole associate had been a father—a kindly man, gentle, good after his lights, and very careful of her welfare. The fact of her having been shifted perpetually from place to place had prevented her forming associates, making fast friendships, so that she had really had none to affect her mind save her father, and had grown to womanhood a singular combination of shrewdness and simplicity. Thus her heart was fresh and childlike, whilst her brain was keen in all that concerned commerce. She had been carefully screened by the Cheap Jack father from everything that could taint the sweetness of her innocence and sully the crystalline purity of her mind.

There was one thing she had never learned from her father, one thing of which till this moment she had no conception—the power of public opinion. She had acquired in her vagrant life an idea that the general public was a something to be laughed at and laughed with, that was to be humoured, cajoled, befooled; but it had never been suspected by her that the public could utter its voice and make the heart quake, breathe on and blast a reputation, could bite and poison the blood.

Now, suddenly, a veil was lifted, and she saw the general public in a new light, and felt the terrible power over her life and happiness that it exercised.

No man is so free as the man without a home. If he has committed an indiscretion, he pulls up his tent-pegs, moves away, and is forgotten. But a man who remains on the scene of his indiscretion is haunted by it ever after. The remembrance clings to him as the shirt of Nessus. It is never forgotten, never forgiven. As long as the van crawled over the face of the country, changing the atmosphere that surrounded it, it eluded the force of public opinion. Its inmates paid no tax to it; were not registered on its books. But hardly had Zita become settled before its burden fell upon her.

'Unsay what you have said!' cried Zita, grasping Mrs. Tunkiss by the arm.

'It is true. It is what every one has been saying; and, as you see, Mark Runham won't have anything to do with you. You thought to catch him, did you? You've been angling for him and the master, and taken the one as bids highest. 'Tis like a Cheap Jack that. You're young, but bold as brass and cankered as iron.'

'Silence, you false-mouthed woman!'

'Can you silence all the tongues in the Fen? There's not a man over his pipe and ale in the tavern ain't jeering at you. There's not a woman over her soapsuds and scrubbing-brush ain't crying shame on you. But what can you expect of a vagabond but vice? I spit at you.'

Zita cast the woman from her, and turned and threw herself on her knees at the broken table, buried her face in her hands, and burst into tears.

Drownlands waved imperiously to the housekeeper to leave, and the woman withdrew, muttering and casting malignant glances at the broken, prostrate girl.

The table was between the master of Prickwillow and Zita. His knuckles rested on the will. He leaned on them, and looked down on the shining head that was laid low before him. Zita's hair was cut short, and her neck showed as well as her rounded cheek.

He did not speak. He breathed heavily through his distended nostrils. He waited, not knowing what direction her thoughts might take, what resolve her mind would form.

There were but few alternatives among which she might choose. She could not resume her life as Cheap Jack without taking an assistant, and from that course she shrank with maidenly repugnance, rightly estimating its dangers. If she were to throw herself among the wanderers who frequented fairs, it would be to court ruin. Was it not probable that she would maintain her resolution to remain at Prickwillow, with this difference, that she would accept his first offer, and become his wife, to save her fair name from reproach? So far as Drownlands could see, this was the only means whereby she could extricate herself from her difficulties, and his heart swelled within him at the hope that opened before him. But he saw clearly that he must allow her to work to this solution by herself unassisted. A word from him would mar everything.

He accordingly stood with bent brows and pale face, the furrows deeply graven on his forehead and seaming his cheek, his lips set, looking steadily at the chestnut-gold head and the delicate bowed neck.

There is no agony more terrible than the agony of the soul, and among the many anguishes with which that can be affected none equals in intensity and poignancy that which is caused by the sense of the loss of the respect of men.

There was an ineffable humiliation in the thought of the light in which she—Zita—had come to be regarded, if what Mrs. Tunkiss said was true. The girl who errs through over-trust in a lover, who has believed his word, his oath, is looked down on, but deserves some pity. But Zita did not occupy such a position, had not the same claim to be dealt by lightly. She had—so men thought, so men said—deliberately and calculatingly sold herself to Drownlands. Her degradation had been a piece of sordid merchandise, with haggling over terms.

That was true which Leehanna said. She was the subject-matter of talk in the taverns, of coarse and ribald jokes, of calculation of the chances she had of retaining the affections of Drownlands, of remark on her craft, her dexterity in laying hold of and managing this intractable tyrant of the Fens.

But perhaps the intensest anguish-point lay in the thought that Mark, who had loved her, or liked her—Mark, whom she had loved, whom she loved still, regarded her with disgust, held himself aloof from her, as one unworthy even of his pity, as a cold, calculating wanton.

As all these thoughts passed through the mind of Zita, the pain was so excessive that she could have shrieked, and felt relief in shrieking; that she worked with her feet on the planks of the floor, as though to bore with them a hole down which she might disappear and hide her shame.

The drops ran off her brow like the drops on a window after rain—long-gathering trickles of moisture, then a great drop, immediately succeeded by another accumulation, and again another drop. Save for the working of her feet on the floor and the movement of her fingers, she was motionless. Drownlands contemplated her steadily. He saw her, in her anguish of mind, twine and untwine her long fingers, then pluck at and strip off chips of the table where he had broken it, put them between her teeth and bite them, but still with lowered brow and eyes that she could not raise for shame. He could see flushes pass over her, succeeded by deadly pallor. It was as though flames were flickering about her head, shooting up and enveloping throat and cheek and brow, then dying down and leaving a deathly cold behind. A soul in this present life was prematurely suffering its purgatory.

Then she laid her hands flat on the table before her, then folded them, as children fold their hands in prayer, and she was still, as though her pulses had ceased to beat and her lungs to play. Then again ensued a paroxysm of distress, in which the fingers writhed and became knotted, and tears broke from her eyes and sobs from her heart.

How long would this last?

What resolutions were forming and unforming under that crown of shining locks, in that heavily-charged heart?

The door was thrust open, and in came Sarah, the maid with St. Vitus' dance.

'Please,' she said, 'there be three gem'men from Ely downstairs. They say they be come after their toastin'-forks.'