LADY ARKROYD'S VISIT TO JIM. GOODY TALK. JIM AND HIS MAKER. HOW MR. TAYLOR VISITED ANOTHER CASE. A DEATH-BED CONFESSION

The reference to Jim's irreligious attitude, in the Rector's letter, makes it almost incumbent on the story to give some particulars of Lady Arkroyd's visit to the Hospital.

Athelstan Taylor, of course, came to his appointment to the minute. He always preferred to do the waiting himself if he could spare the time, and he usually found something to avert tedium. On this occasion, seeing no sign, when he arrived at St. Brides, of the Arkroyd pair of bays, or the dark chestnuts with starred foreheads—both well known to him—he made short excursions into the neighbourhood, hoping each time to just catch Lady Arkroyd on her arrival when he returned.

He made three such excursions, amounting in all to half an hour. The first and longest was made so by his lighting on a fight between two small boys, which he felt bound to interrupt. But not at the very earliest; it was such a good fight, and the two pugilists and their friends were enjoying it so. So he spun out his approach as much as possible, and then pounced with, "Why aren't you two at school, hey?" They looked at each other, and at him, as their friends did also, but could not agree on a reason. Then they said, "Let's go down the lyne," and fled, carrying jackets, to begin again as soon as possible. Pursuit down the lane did not seem to come into practical politics.

The second excursion was shorter, and he was sorry he could not spare time for more conversation with a purveyor of tortoises, who was offering them to the public from a truck. Why should the trade in tortoises flourish in South London? Why tortoises at all? He could not stop to learn; and when he found that her ladyship was still in arrear, he started back to find the tortoise-monger, but failed to do so. On his return this time, he thought it best to step into the Hospital and get a few words with his friend the House Surgeon, to whom he had sent a card overnight. It was all right, said that gentleman, about the dressers. They had nearly done by now, and Jim's case had been made a point of—was quite ready for visitors; nothing doing now till the visiting surgeon came—in an hour and a half about. Mr. Taylor, reassured, went out again to meet her ladyship, and presently saw the carriage coming down the street. In a very short time he was telling Jim he had brought a lady to see him.

"It's mighty kind of you, master. And it's mighty kind o' the lady. I'm not so fit to see company as I might be." He did not mean he could not see; for he always forgot his blindness. He referred entirely to his uncourtly entourage.

"We mustn't trouble about that," said her ladyship, and really didn't mean to be condescending. "I shall sit here, Mr. Taylor. Where will you come?" Here being the chair beside the bed. Mr. Taylor wouldn't sit down; indeed, it was easier to stand, as long as Jim kept his hand, which he did not seem inclined to let go.

"Tell this lady about your accident, Jim."

"Oh, do, please! I should so like to hear." This was true, and opened up an avenue of respite to a feeling of her ladyship's that she ought to say something good, if it was only about how we should bow to the will of an All-wise Providence. She had got that ready in the carriage coming through Old Bond Street, and had felt quite sure she should think of something better presently, and hadn't succeeded. So she was glad of a pause, to think in. Besides, it was interesting.

"There's none so much to tell about it, lady; you might put it all inside of a minute, in the manner o' speaking. Ye see, I never see this van coming along—never took note, I should say!—more by token I was listening like to hear the voice of my little lass call 'Pilot'—a kind of divarsion we make out between us, me and the lassie ... you'll understand?..."

"I quite understand. Your little lass is the child I have seen at Miss Fossett's Schoolroom. Little Eliza Ann."

"Belike you have, lady. She's Lizarann, sure! Well, this here van come along in the dark, and there was I mazed like, by reason of not finding the granite curb. It come with a nasty rush, and I had no way on me to steer clear, set apart the want of sea-room. But I'm a bit uncertain how it come about, there's the truth of it!" Jim paused, and felt for an expression, probably one akin to loss of presence of mind; then ended with, "In a quick turn about o' things, you don't easy come by the time to get your considerin' cap on. But it was no fault of any man, as I see it."

Lady Arkroyd saw an opportunity. "It was the will of Providence," she said. There could be no harm in that, although her clerical friend had cautioned her that Jim's mind was not an easy one to deal with on religious lines. But Jews, Turks, Heretics, and Infidels innumerable could have subscribed to this, surely. Jim only said, with the most perfect simplicity: "I wouldn't wish to fix the blame, with any confidence. It was just a chance, as I see it." Her ladyship did not catch the exact tenor of the remark, and did not see the amused, benevolent smile on the face of the big man who still stood looking down on Jim, holding his hand as he would have held a child's.

The fact was that, on one of the two or three occasions when the Rev. Athelstan had referred—but quite colloquially, and without any idea of taking a mean advantage of Jim's helplessness—to the Almighty as the responsible agent in the matter, Jim had taken up the theological position that if God hadn't "cut in," he—Jim—might have been still the strong seaman on the great free sea, might have actually seen his little lass! Dolly must have died, of course—"my wife, seven year agone, master," said Jim. "Because a many on us may die, any time"—but that was another matter. At least, why need both his eyes go? "Ah, master!" said he, when it was settled that if God had done one job, he'd done the other, "why couldn't he leave me just no more than a quarter-allowance of one of them—just for to see my wife and the little lass together, what time there was for it?" Perhaps it was part of the Rector of Royd's unsoundness that he almost lost sight of Jim's anthropomorphism—the naÏvetÉ of his presentment of his Maker as a meddlesome old plague—in the heartbroken voice that could still speak about the eyes that could no longer see, about the child his touch and hearing alone could tell him of. Part of that unsoundness, too, maybe, that he resolved thenceforward to make no attempt to change Jim's views, except by hypnotic suggestions, or their equivalent! No crop could grow on land so foully manured! Better to leave it to the wild-flowers for a season.

He certainly thought he saw an improvement of Jim's feelings towards this strange deity of his conception, in this readiness to exonerate him, or it, and to lay the blame on the metaphysico-religious scapegoat, Chance. It was manifested in the tone of his voice, one of willingness to spare even an author of mischief—maybe a well-intentioned blunderer—and to find an insensitive back to flagellate in his place.

"The merest chance, I am sure!" Lady Arkroyd welcomed the scapegoat, and the Rev. Athelstan looked more amused than ever, under the skin. The lady never suspected herself of any absurdity. "But Sir Murgatroyd says the matter ought to be gone into, and proper inquiries made." The Baronet had done so, certainly; but may be said to have been left speaking, like M.P.'s when a reporter packs off an instalment of shorthand in mediis rebus. "Of course, if there was any doubt about the driver of the van being sober at the time...."

Jim showed anxiety on the carman's behalf. "He mightn't be any the worse driver for that, lady," he said. "It was the sart o' night a pint or so don't go far on, to keep the life in a man."

"Jim won't grudge him that much, on such a night, Lady Arkroyd. But Sir Murgatroyd's quite right, of course! However, as a matter of fact, the whole thing has been thoroughly sifted, and it seems certain drink had nothing to do with it, this time."

"Not likely, master! Didn't the pore feller make a shift to get over here a'ter work hours—took a night-turn all the way from Camden Road goods station—so they told me—just for to hear the end of the story? And the follerin' night? So they said, and I'm tellin' ye all I know. In coorse, I never seen him, myself!"

"No—of course you could not." Lady Arkroyd's pity for Jim's blindness, which his speech ignored, is mistaken by him for regret at the stringency of visiting regulations. The feeling of compassion in her voice seems to him only man's natural resentment against rules, interpreted by womanly sensibility.

"I'll see him one o' these days, lady," Jim says consolatorily. Of course, he means in the days of the wooden leg to come, if not sooner. Her ladyship, still conscious of the desirability of a religious atmosphere, has some vague impression that Mr. Taylor has been guaranteeing Jim eyesight on a cloud, through the whole of an exasperating Sunday lasting for ever; and she makes up her mind Jim could be read to out of the Bible with advantage, and of course there were any number of people ready to do this sort of thing. She will inquire about that. But Jim had really wanted to change the conversation to a subject nearer his heart.

"My little lass, lady!" he said. "You seen the lass once, round to the Schoolhouse. Happen you might see her again?"

"If I see Miss Fossett, Coupland, I shall certainly ask her to point out your little girl. She may not be there, you know."

"That's so, lady. But supposin'! Any guess thing you might speak about, ye know. So I was just thinkin', if you was to be so very kind as to bear in mind...."

"Yes. Indeed I will, Coupland. Is there something you wish I should say?"

"Well, lady, yes! And be very thankful to ye! Would ye be so very kind as just say to her ... from her Daddy, ye know ... nothing at all about any sort of an ill-convenience come of this here accident. Just make it easy, like ... for she's but young, ye'll understand...."

"Jim means ... I know, Jim"—for Jim seemed about to interrupt the Rev. Athelstan—"he means he wants Lizarann to think the accident a slight one."

"Right you are, master!" Jim is much relieved, and his interpreter continues: "So he wants her to know as little as possible till he can walk about and make the least of it."

"Oh yes! I quite understand that. I'll be very careful and discreet."

"Not for to let on, anyways, about her Daddy being a fut the less!" Jim's relief is enormous at the completeness of the understanding.

The conversation ran on, on such general lines as the diet of hospital life—highly approved of—the sanguineness of the head-surgeon that Jim would make a record in recovery, and the peculiarly small amount of inconvenience endured (if the truth were known) by the wearers of wooden legs. Jim was very cheerful about this. "Bob Steptoe, he'll lose a good half o' my custom," said he, immensely amused.

At this moment an interruption occurred. A nurse who had passed through the room a few minutes before rather hurriedly was returning, with a slightly perplexed manner on her, as of one who had not found a thing sought for. At the same moment another, who seemed a superior functionary, came in from the opposite door, and they met and spoke together in an undertone. Both looked round towards Jim's bed.

"I can ask him, anyhow!" said the senior nurse, and approached Athelstan Taylor. She spoke to him rapidly under her breath, but of what she said neither Jim nor the lady heard anything. When she had finished, he said, "Of course, certainly!" and then, turning to Lady Arkroyd, explained that a man who was dying in another part of the Hospital had asked to see a clergyman, and that an unusual conjunction of circumstances had made it difficult to comply with his request, which was urgent. He might die any moment, the nurse had said, and Mr.*** was ill—he being, presumably, the usual resource in such cases. Mr. Taylor was sure Lady Arkroyd would excuse him. But it would be better for him to say good-bye provisionally, as no one could tell how long he might be detained. Her ladyship would no doubt stay and talk with Jim a little longer.

Lady Arkroyd was not sorry to do so. She had not quite come up to her own standard of self-justification; having, indeed, a well-marked conviction of her capability of doing anything she turned her hands to, and certainly not least of affording consolation and help to the distressed. Without cataloguing the instances, she had an inner conviction of the existence of a class of persons who were sick, and she visited them. She was a good-natured woman enough, and really took sufficient pleasure in doing good on purpose, to make playing at Providence a luxury, or at least to prevent its ever becoming a bore. No wonder that on this occasion she felt a little damped, with nothing further to her score so far than an undertaking on her part to hold her tongue and be discreet, under specified circumstances.

"The master's coming back—the gentleman?" says Jim, as the door closes on Mr. Taylor and the nurse.

"Oh yes!—he'll come back to see you before he goes." Jim has to be satisfied with this. "You must try to keep quiet and be patient, Coupland, and then the healing will go on quicker...."

"It ain't hardly impatience, lady." Jim pauses to think what it is. "Not so much as the want of a good stretch. I'd be all right if they'd take this here plaister off o' my right leg. It's a mighty thick plaister, anyhow." Jim's slight movement is terribly expressive of the irksomeness of his lot. The nurse in charge notes the fact, and contrives such alleviation as may be—an alteration in the angle of the couch, an adjustment of a pillow, a dose of some refreshing stimulant that seems not unwelcome. "He's not the trouble many are," says she. Jim seems a favourite.

Lady Arkroyd, left to herself, casts about for something to say which shall neither be aggressively religious nor too cowardly a concession to Jim's heathenism, of which Mr. Taylor has spoken freely to her. After a few more words about collateral matter, especially about the Hospital's veto on smoking—a bitter privation—she thinks she sees her way.

"It is very hard, Coupland, and one can't help saying so. Only, of course, it doesn't do to call the Wisdom of Providence in question...."

"What might that be, missis—lady, I should say?" Now the fact is, Jim was not inquiring about the Wisdom of Providence—of which he had heard before from Mr. Wilkins—but about the meaning of "calling in question." The lady thought otherwise, mistakenly.

"I only meant," she said, feeling very unsafe, "that we know—at least, we believe—that events are Divinely ordered for the best."

"Ye know better than I do about that, lady," said Jim. And then Lady Arkroyd thought he was an Agnostic. He had really only paid tribute to her superior education. But it seemed to set him a-thinking, too! For he added, after a pause: "If they'd a' been ordered for the worst, maybe I might have had my barker-pipe." The word "Divinely" had not carried his mind outside the Hospital regulations. Poor Jim had not the remotest conception that he had shocked his lady visitor.

Nevertheless, she was shocked, and felt the case called for an effort. But her own religious convictions—only she had been quite properly educated, mind you!—were few and vapid. Her proprietorship of a Prayer-Book, with a mark in the right place, nearly covered the whole ground. However, there was always the Rev. Athelstan; she could make him responsible, by indirect engineering, for any amount of belief, whatever her own unprofessional laxity might be. So she assumed a definitely religious air, and ignored Jim's unfortunate remark about the pipe.

"I feel so sure, Coupland, that Mr. Taylor has told you, and will tell you more, about Where to look, in tribulation for...."

"Sakes alive, Lady! Me look!..." Jim, who had interrupted, stopped suddenly, confused and perturbed at something. Her ladyship, interpreting this as some protest of Agnosticism, now felt her insufficiency to deal with the case, and only wished to transfer the conversation elsewhere. She felt she had done her duty, in what she would not have hesitated to mention in Society as "goody talk," when she executed that superb entrechat, so to speak, of the big initial W of "Where." She had done her duty, and had not succeeded. She would be quite justified now in relaxing from the exalted serenity, tempered with due humility, of a spiritual instructress, and referring to the minor consolations of this earth. She ignored Jim's exclamation, and continued speaking as though her last sentence had been completed.

"Besides, in a very little while you will be able to have Eliza Ann back again, and really you'll be able to move about quite easily."

Jim laughed out—a big hearty laugh of contempt for any mere personal mishap of his own. "I'll have the less weight to carry, sure!" he said. And then her ladyship looked at her watch, and asked the nurse whether that clock was right; who promptly replied that that clock was, if anything, slow. Seeing the good effect of which, she went on to say that it was slower still. However, this was not needed, for the visitor was only feeling about for departure, which, in view of the possible indefinite postponement of Mr. Taylor's return, was given up with insincere professions of regret on the part of both, and Lady Arkroyd took her leave, consolable, but with a noble sense of duty done.

"The master be coming back, though, missis...?" Jim asks anxiously of the nurse.

"Oh, yes, he's bound to come back, and you may make your mind easy."

When Athelstan Taylor and the nurse left the ward, they passed through the avenue of beds in the adjoining ward without speaking, and into a lobby beyond. Then the nurse stopped and spoke. "This is a bad ward that we are going to. Perhaps I ought to have told you?"

"You are going there yourself?"

"It is my duty to go."

"And mine." They said no more, but no more was necessary. It was a little way further that they had to go, through wards and passages; but the circumstances did not seem to favour chat. Arriving at the door of the ward, Mr. Taylor turned and said: "This is a man, is it not—this patient—I think you said?"

"A man. The case developed in the hospital. He was brought in as sudden paralysis. He has been here a month or more."

"Do they keep cases of this sort so long?"

"Not always. They kept this one. He had an epileptic seizure which was followed by torpor. Dr.—— thinks now that the disease has affected the valves of the heart. He might die suddenly, at any moment. When I told him so to-day, he asked to see the Chaplain, Mr.——. He and all his family have mumps."

A young doctor was in the ward, who said, "Is this the gentleman?" and after "Yes" from the nurse, continued: "You mustn't be alarmed at our precautions. We only take them in order to be on the safe side." The precautions which, it seemed, St. Bride insisted on for all who should enter a contagion-ward were a close overall of some germ-proof canvas or linen, and thin, invulnerable rubber gloves. Mr. Taylor, as he drew them on, shuddered to think how many a time, conceivably, they might have been some wearer's only safeguard against a blasted life, and the inheritance of a dire poison by generations yet unborn.

When he was safely attired in them, the young surgeon, as he conducted him through the ward, said in reply to a question: "Oh no!—not the slightest danger from the breath. You may be quite happy about that. Let Sister Martha put a little eau-de-Cologne on your handkerchief. This is your man."

This! This semi-mummy that is little else than bandages! This thing, at least, only manifested to us, otherwise, as an exposed mouth; or what was a mouth and is an orifice, to be identified by two carious, projecting teeth; or as the nailless fingers of an enclosed hand, escaping from its wraps. This, it seems, is the Rev. Athelstan Taylor's man, by whom he takes a chair the nurse brings him, as he thinks to himself: "My man, thank God, not Gus's!" For his invalid friend might easily have been here in his place, and could he—poor delicate fellow!—have borne the awful flavour of this place, breaking through all antiseptic spray and palliation of ozone, and making him, himself, as physically sick as he is sick at heart? "Not Gus's man, thank God! At least, a great overgrown giant like myself!" So he thought as he tried to catch the words of the wretched remnant on the bed beside him. They were audible only by him, as he stooped resolutely, brushing all caution aside, and placed his ear close to the dreadful mouth. It needed an effort, even with Sister Martha's benediction on his handkerchief.

"What is my name, and who am I?" He repeats the whispered words as he hears them. "I am Athelstan Taylor, a priest in holy orders.... Yes—a clergyman of the Church of England ... yes!—I understand what you say. You have something on your conscience which you wish to tell. Try and tell me."

The nurse evidently thinks the man is dying, and may die without receiving the Sacrament, which she has supposed his principal object. She makes a suggestion to that effect. But Mr. Taylor thinks otherwise. "Presently!" he says. "Let him tell his story first." The nurse retires, and the tale goes on.

It was a hard tale to catch the threads of. But its hearer was able to master the main points. The narrator had married, sixteen years before, a very young and inexperienced girl, unknown to her parents, who seemed to have remained in ignorance throughout. Even when he deserted her, a very short time after marriage, she kept her secret from everyone but a young clerk, a friend of his own, with whom, as a natural consequence, the poor girl, apparently afraid to divulge the facts to her family, became very liÉe. His story was obscure at this point, the only clear thing being that, in order to shake her off and remain free to contract another marriage, he had written a mock confession to this young man; alleging, on grounds which the dying man's condition prevented his explaining in full, that the wedding had been really a fraud, and his statement that it was so seemed to have been held sufficient by the girl. The friend, either convinced of its truth or in love with the girl himself, had accepted it, or seemed to accept it, as indisputable. Was it to be wondered at that, when she returned to her home after an absence of some months, with nothing to show that this concealed marriage had taken place, she had accepted this young man as her lover, and married him with the full consent of her parents? The narrator had clearly foreseen this, and looked to it as a practical release from an encumbrance. His own subsequent career had been one of profligacy and crime, some of his sins being, to all appearance, far worse than this one, as such things are estimated; one achievement having, in fact, procured him a long term of penal servitude. How strange it seemed that now, with the hand of Death upon him, he should feel the lighter offence an exceptional weight upon his conscience! Yet so it was! And his hearer thought he could detect the relief the confession had given him in the changed whisper that followed the completion of his story. Mr. Taylor was glad that the atrocity that sent him to Portland Island was not specially referred to in the culprit's final inquiry—could he hope for forgiveness?

"I told the unhappy creature," wrote Athelstan to Gus, in the letter he wrote that evening, "that his chances of forgiveness must depend on the truth or falsehood of his own contrition, and I am afraid I had the cruelty to say it with some severity. You know my severe manner. But, then, it was true. I'm afraid, Gus dear, that I have hardly your faith in the efficacy of my holy office, taken by itself. But these things are awful to face. I had hardly time to fulfil my function as a priest when the poor wretch breathed his last."

It was at that last moment that the need of the rubber gloves became manifest. Just at the end, the dreadful nailless hand, moving painfully about, and fraught with some sudden strength, had caught the healthy one that lay near it on the coverlid, and drew it up to touch it with the things that had once been lips. The young doctor seemed relieved when he had himself seen the priest in holy orders well drenched in water with strange suspicions of sanitation in it, after a heart-felt lather of carbolic soap.

When the Rev. Athelstan came back to Jim's bedside, his face no longer wore its cheerful aspect of an hour ago. In that short time his sad experience—surely something more than a mere death-bed, such as his daily routine of life brought him to the sight of so often!—had changed it, and made him almost like another man.

"I'm martal glad ye've come, master," said Jim. And, at the sound of a voice with a memory in it of the chant the windlass echoes when the anchor leaves its bed in the sand, and the last shore-boat waves God-speed to the ship set free, his hearer seemed to shake off some of the gloom that oppressed him. "I'm martal glad to see ye back," he repeats, "by token of the good lady."

Athelstan takes the hand that seeks his. "Why the good lady, Jim?" he says.

"Why, master, the good lady she says to me, she says, did I know where to look for soomat or other? Lard knows what! And I says to her, 'Me look!' I says, because I was thinking belike this drawback on my eyesight might have slipped out of memory...."

"Not very likely, Jim! But if it did, Lady Arkroyd's recollected it by now."

"Ye think so, master? But put it she hasn't! I'd be sorry she should come to the knowledge late in the day. These here ladies, master, they ain't a rough sart, like we"—this did not mean his hearer, only himself and his congeners—"and she might easy get tender-hearted what with thinkin' over. And I'd never be the worse, bless you!"

"I see what you mean, Jim." The light dawns; the speaker had been till then in the dark. He has a laugh ready for it, as he adds: "You thought the lady would be unhappy when she found she'd been talking to a blind man about his eyesight? Wasn't that it?" That was it, clearly. But Jim discerns a justification for his idea, when he learns that his blindness had been fully talked over.

"There's just what I said, in that, ye see!" says he. "The lady wouldn't be talking, not to hurt my feelings! Jim Coupland's feelings now!... where are we at that?" They seem to be a rare good joke to Jim. But there is material for regret in the background. "'Tain't a matter to cry one's eyes out over," says he, "but a bit of a pity, too!..."

"What is, Jim?"

"If I'd kept a lookout ahead, I could have steered the good lady clear of any fret about me and my eyesight. And if we'd only 'a known, I might 'a told her the starry o' the Flying Dutchman—just for entertainment like! A yarn's a yarn, master!"

Athelstan Taylor was puzzled on his way home by the curious selection of a restless conscience as aliment for disquiet. But thinking back on his own past, he found that his disquiets had not been about his mistakes that had most harmed others. Could he not remember his own prolonged remorse, at five years old, when an overtwist brought off the wooden leg of a minute doll, and he had the meanness to put the limb in place, and leave it, sound to all seeming, for its owner to discover its calamity? And how he never told! Even now, he wished he had confessed. It was no use now! The sister that doll had belonged to had been dead thirty years, and this tale he had just heard was, so he gathered, well within the last twenty.

He was wondering that evening, after writing to Gus, whether his friend, whose place he was so glad to occupy, would not have raised some technical difficulty about the Administration of the Sacrament in rubber gloves, when a note came from his friend the House Surgeon. Had the man he had talked with given his name? It appeared that the name entered in the list of patients was an alias. Probably he had several aliases. But he had a right to be buried and registered under his last one. A line by return would do. The letter made very light of the matter—said the deceased couldn't have had any property!

Athelstan Taylor's reply was that the name given, as far as he could hear it, was Edward Kay Thorne. He walked out and posted it himself, as the servants had gone to bed. He posted at the same time his letter to his friend Gus, to which he had added a long postscript about the events of the day. "You need not think," it ended, "that I have broken the 'seal of the confessional' in telling this man's story. He said I was at liberty to do as I liked." He felt rather glad to have a sharer in such a confidence. Then he went back to his comfortable library, put coals on the fire, and sat up till one in the morning reading.