GRACE O' GOD
It was a hard winter's night four years ago, lovely and merciless; and towards midnight I walked home from a theatre to my rooms in St.James's Street.The Venusberg of Piccadilly looked white as a nun with snow and moonlight, but the melancholy music of pleasure, and the sad daughters of joy, seemed not to heed the cold.For another hour death and pleasure would dance there beneath the electric lights.
Through the strange women clustering at the corners I took my way,--women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites,--and I thought, as I looked into their poor painted faces,--faces but half human, vampirish faces, faces already waxen with the look of the grave,--I thought, as I often did, of the poor little girl whom De Quincey loved, the good-hearted little `peripatetic' as he called her, who had succoured him during those nights, when, as a young man, he wandered homeless about these very streets,--that good, kind little Ann whom De Quincey had loved, then so strangely lost, and for whose face he looked into women's faces as long as he lived.Often have Istood at the corner of Titchfield Street, and thought how De Quincey had stood there night after night waiting for her to come, but all in vain, and how from the abyss of oblivion into which some cruel chance had swept her, not one cry from her ever reached him again.
I thought, too, as I often did, what if the face I seek should be here among these poor outcasts,--golden face hidden behind a mask of shame, true heart still beating true even amidst this infernal world!
Thus musing, I had walked my way out of the throng, and only a figure here and there in the shadows of doorways waited and waited in the cold.
It was something about one of these waiting figures,--some movement, some chance posture,--that presently surprised my attention and awakened a sudden sense of half recognition.She stood well in the shadow, seeming rather to shrink from than to court attention.As I walked close by her and looked keenly into her face, she cast down her eyes and half turned away.Surely, Ihad seen that tall, noble figure somewhere before, that haughty head; and then with the apparition a thought struck me--but, no!
it couldn't be she! not HERE!
"It is," said my soul, as I turned and walked past her again;"you missed her once, are you going to miss her again?""It is," said my eyes, as they swept her for the third time;"but she had glorious chestnut hair, and the hair of this woman is--gilded.""It is she," said my heart; "thank God, it is she!"So it was that I went up to that tall, shy figure.
"It must be very cold here," I said; "will you not join me in some supper?"She assented, and we sought one of the many radiating centres of festivity in the neighbourhood.She was very tired and cold, --so tired she seemed hardly to have the spirit to eat, and evidently the cold had taken tight clutch of her lungs, for she had a cough that went to my heart to hear, and her face was ghastly pale.When I had persuaded her to drink a little wine, she grew more animated and spots of suspicious colour came into her cheeks.So far she had seemed all but oblivious of my presence, but now she gave me a sweet smile of gratitude, one of those irradiating transfiguring smiles that change the whole face, and belong to few faces, the heavenly smile of a pure soul.
Yes, it was she! The woman who sat in front of me was the woman whom I had met so strangely that day on that solitary moorland, and whom in prophecy still more strange my soul had declared to be, "now and for ever and before all worlds the woman God had created for me, and that unless I could be hers and she mine, there could be no home, no peace, for either of us so long as we lived--" and now so strangely met again.
Yes, it was she!
For the moment my mind had room for no other thought.I cared not to conjecture by what devious ways God had brought her to my side.I cared not what mire her feet had trodden.She had carried her face pure as a lily through all the foul and sooty air.There was a pure heart in her voice.Sin is of the soul, and this soul had not sinned! Let him that is without sin amongst you cast the first stone.
"Why did you dye that wonderful chestnut hair?" I asked her presently--and was sorry next minute for the pain that shot across her face, but I just wanted to hint at what I designed not to reveal fully till later on, and thus to hint too that it was not as one of the number of her defilers that I had sought her.
