The little hand instinctively wandered to the mother's wasted breast, and plucked at it imploringly, ravenously. The woman looked around in the last throes of an anguish too deep for expression, except in the appalling words to which she gave despairing utterance.
"Come," she cried, "we will end it!"
Out into the cold streets she crept, unobserved. She shivered, and a pitiful smile crossed her lips.
"Hush, hush!" she murmured to her babe. "It will soon be over. Better dead--better dead--for you and for me!"
She crept towards the sea, and hugged the wall when she heard approaching footsteps. She need not have feared; the night was too inclement for any but selfish consideration. The soft snow fell, and enwrapped her and her child in its pitiless shroud. She paused by a lamp-post, and cast an upward look at the heavens, in which she could see the glimmering of the stars. Then she went on, and fretfully pressed her babe close to her breast, to stifle the feeble sobs.
"Be still, be still!" she murmured. "There is no hope in life for either of us. Better dead--better dead!"
CHAPTER VI.
THE FRIEND IN NEED.
Desperately resolved as she was to carry her fatal design into execution she had not reckoned with nature. Weakened by the life of privation she had led for so many months, and also by the birth of her child, her physical forces had reached the limit of human endurance. She faltered and staggered, the ground slipped from beneath her weary feet. Vain was the struggle, her vital power was spent. From her overcharged heart a voiceless and terrible prayer went up to heaven. "Give me strength, O God, give me but a little strength! I have not far to go!" She fought the air with her disengaged hand, and tossed her head this way and that; but her ruthless prayer was not answered, and though she struggled fiercely she managed to crawl only a few more steps. She had yet hundreds of yards to go to reach the sea when some chord within her seemed to snap; her farther progress was instantly arrested, and she found herself incapable of moving backward or forward. Swaying to and fro, the earth, the sky the whirling snow, and the dim light of the stars swam in her sight and faded from before her. In that supreme moment she saw a spiritual vision of her dishonoured life. Deprived early of a mother's counsel and companionship, she had passed her days with a spendthrift father, whose love for her was so tainted with selfishness that it was not only valueless, but mischievous. When she grew to woman's estate she was worse than alone; she had no guide, no teacher, to point out the rocks and shoals of maidenhood, to inculcate in her the principles of virtue which would act as a safeguard against the specious wiles of men whose eyes were charmed by her beauty, and whose only aim was to lure her to ruin. Then her father died, and a friend came forward who offered her a home and an honourable position in the world. Friendless and penniless, she accepted him, and gave him her promise, and accepted his money. Love had not touched her heart; she thought it had when a wilier man wooed her in another and more alluring fashion, and by this man she had been beguiled and betrayed. Then she knew what she had lost, but it was too late; her good name was gone, and she fled to a strange part of the country and lived among strangers, a heartbroken, despairing woman. All the salient features in her career flashed before her. She saw the man who had trusted her, she saw the man in whom she put her trust, she saw herself, an abandoned creature, with a child of shame in her arms. These ghostly figures stood clearly limned in that one last moment of swiftly fading light, as in the moment of sunrise on a frosty morning every distant object stands sharply outlined against the sky; then darkness fell upon her, and with an inarticulate, despairing cry, she sank to the ground in a deathlike swoon. The wind sobbed and shrieked and wailed around her and her child; the falling snow, with treacherous tenderness, fell softly upon them; herself insensible, she had no power to shake it off; her babe was conscious, but its feeble movements were of small avail against the white pall which was descending upon it and its outcast mother. Thicker and thicker it grew, and in the wild outcry of this bitter night Fate seemed to have pronounced its inexorable sentence of death against these unfortunate beings.
Ignorant of the fact that chance or a spiritual messenger was guiding him aright, Dr. Spenlove plodded through the streets. He had no clue, and received none from the half-dozen persons or so he encountered as he walked towards the sea. He was scarcely fit for the task he had undertaken, but so intent was he upon his merciful mission that he bestowed no thought upon himself. The nipping air aggravating the cough from which he was suffering, he kept his mouth closed as a protection, and peered anxiously before him for some signs of the woman he was pursuing. A man walked briskly and cheerily towards him, puffing at a large and fragrant cigar, and stamping his feet sturdily into the snow. This man wore a demonstratively furred overcoat; his hands were gloved in fur; his boots were thick and substantial; and in the independent assertion that he was at peace with the world, and on exceedingly good terms with himself, he hummed the words, in Italian, of the Jewel Song in "Faust" every time he removed the cigar from his lips. Although it was but a humming reminiscence of the famous and beautiful number, his faint rendering of it was absolutely faultless, and proved him to be a man of refined musicianly taste, quite out of keeping with his demonstratively furred overcoat. Music, however, was not his profession; the instincts of his race and a youthful ambition had welded the divine art into his soul, and the instincts of his race had made him--a pawnbroker. Singular conjunction of qualities--the music of the celestial spheres and fourpence in the pound a month! A vulgar occupation, that of a pawnbroker, which high-toned gentlemen and mortals of aristocratic birth regard with scorn and contempt. But the last vulgar and debasing music-hall ditty which was carolled with delight by the majority of these gilded beings of a higher social grade never found lodgment in the soul of Mr. Moss, which, despite that he devoted his business hours to the lending of insignificant sums of money upon any small articles which were submitted to his judgment across the dark counter of his pawnbroking establishment, was attuned to a far loftier height than theirs in the divine realms of song. Puff, puff, puff at his cigar, the curling wreaths from which were whirled into threads of fantastic confusion by the gusts of wind, or hung in faint grey curls of beauty during a lull. The starry gleam was transferred from the lips to the fur-covered hand:--
"E' strano poter il viso suo veder;
Ah! mi posso guardar mi pospo rimirar.
Di, sei tu? Margherita!
Di, sei tu? Dimmi su;
Dimmi su, di su, di su, di su presto!"
From hand to lips the starry gleam, and the soul of Mr. Moss followed the air as he puffed his weed. …
"E la figlia d'un re! …
Proseguiam l'adornamento.
Vo provare ancor se mi stan
Lo smaniglia ed il monil!"
The pawnbroker broke into ecstasy. From lips to hand again the starry light, and his voice grew rapturous:--
"Ciel! E come una man
Che sul baaccio mi posa!
Ah! Io rido in poter
Me stessa qui veder!"
The last trill brought him close to Dr. Spenlove.
"Friend, friend!" cried the doctor. "A word with you, for charity's sake!"
Mr. Moss did not disregard the appeal. Slipping off his right glove, and thereby displaying two fingers decorated with massive rings studded with diamonds, he fished a couple of coppers from a capacious pocket, and thrust them into Dr. Spenlove's outstretched palm. He thought it was a homeless beggar who had besought charity. Dr. Spenlove caught his hand, and said,--
"No, no, it is not for that. Will you kindly tell me----
"Why," interrupted Mr.