"Why not? Answer me! Speak, I tell you!"
But Cleone knelt there beside the couch, her head proudly averted, uttering no word.
"Why, you don't think, like so many of the fools, that he killed Jasper Gaunt, do you?" cried Barrymaine feverishly. "You don't think he d-did it, do you—do you? Ah, but he didn't—he didn't, I tell you, and I know—because—"
"Stop!" exclaimed Barnabas.
"Stop—no, why should I? She'll learn soon enough now and I'm m-man enough to tell her myself—I'm no c-coward, I tell you—"
Then Cleone raised her head and looked up at her half-brother, and in her eyes were a slow-dawning fear and horror.
"Oh, Ronald!" she whispered, "what do you mean?"
"Mean?" cried Barrymaine, "I mean that I did it—I did it. Yes, I k-killed Jasper Gaunt, but it was no m-murder, Clo—a—a fight, an accident—yes, I s-swear to God I never meant to do it."
"You!" she whispered, "you?"
"Yes, I—I did it, but I swear I never m-meant to—oh, Cleone—" and he reached down to her with hands outstretched appealingly. But Cleone shrank down and down—away from him, until she was crouching on the floor, yet staring up at him with wide and awful eyes.
"You!" she whispered.
"Don't!" he cried. "Ah, don't look at me like that and oh, my God!
W-won't you l-let me t-touch you, Clo?"
"I—I'd rather you—wouldn't;" and Barnabas saw that she was shivering violently.
"But it was no m-murder," he pleaded, "and I'm g-going away, Clo—ah! won't you let me k-kiss you good-by—just once, Clo?"
"I'd rather—you wouldn't," she whispered.
"Y-your hand, then—only your hand, Clo."
"I'd rather—you didn't!"
Then Ronald Barrymaine groaned and fell on his knees beside her and sought to kiss her little foot, the hem of her dress, a strand of her long, yellow hair; but seeing how she shuddered away from him, a great sob broke from him and he rose to his feet.
"Beverley," he said, "oh, Beverley, s-she won't let me touch her." And so stood a while with his face hidden in his griping hands. After a moment he looked down at her again, but seeing how she yet gazed at him with that wide, awful, fixed stare, he strove as if to speak; then, finding no words, turned suddenly upon his heel and crossing the room, went into his bed-chamber and locked the door.
Then Barnabas knelt beside that shaken, desolate figure and fain would have comforted her, but now he could hear her speaking in a passionate whisper, and the words she uttered were these:
"Oh, God forgive him! Oh, God help him! Have mercy upon him, oh God of Pity!"
And these words she whispered over and over again until, at length,
Barnabas reached out and touched her very gently.
"Cleone!" he said.
At the touch she rose and stood looking round the dingy room like one distraught, and, sighing, crossed unsteadily to the door.
And when they reached the stair, Barnabas would have taken her hand because of the dark, but she shrank away from him and shook her head.
"Sir," said she very softly, "a murderer's sister needs no help, I thank you."
And so they went down the dark stair with never a word between them and, reaching the door with the faulty latch, Barnabas held it open and they passed out into the dingy street, and as they walked side by side towards Hatton Garden, Barnabas saw that her eyes were still fixed and wide and that her lips still moved in silent prayer.
In a while, being come into Hatton Garden, Barnabas saw a hackney coach before them, and beside the coach a burly, blue-clad figure, a conspicuous figure by reason of his wooden leg and shiny, glazed hat.
"W'y, Lord, Mr. Beverley, sir!" exclaimed the Bo'sun, hurrying forward, with his hairy fist outstretched, "this is a surprise, sir, likewise a pleasure, and—" But here, observing my lady's face, he checked himself suddenly, and opening the carriage door aided her in very tenderly, beckoning Barnabas to follow. But Barnabas shook his head.
"Take care of her, Bo'sun," said he, clasping the sailor's hand,
"take great care of her." So saying, he closed the door upon them,
and stood to watch the rumbling coach down the bustling street until
it had rumbled itself quite out of sight.
CHAPTER LXVII
WHICH GIVES SOME ACCOUNT OF THE WORST PLACE IN THE WORLD
A bad place by day, an evil place by night, an unsavory place at all times is Giles's Rents, down by the River.
It is a place of noisome courts and alleys, of narrow, crooked streets, seething with a dense life from fetid cellar to crowded garret, amid whose grime and squalor the wail of the new-born infant is echoed by the groan of decrepit age and ravaging disease; where Vice is rampant and ghoulish Hunger stalks, pale and grim.
Truly an unholy place is Giles's Rents, down by the River.
Here, upon a certain evening, Barnabas, leaning out from his narrow casement, turned wistful-eyed, to stare away over broken roof and chimney, away beyond the maze of squalid courts and alleys that hemmed him in to where, across the River, the sun was setting in a blaze of glory, yet a glory that served only to make more apparent all the filth and decay, all the sordid ugliness of his surroundings.
Below him was a dirty court, where dirty children fought and played together, filling the reeking air with their shrill clamor, while slatternly women stood gossiping in ragged groups with grimy hands on hips, or with arms rolled up in dingy aprons. And Barnabas noticed that the dirty children and gossiping women turned very often to stare and point up at a certain window a little further along the court, and he idly wondered why.
It had been a day of stifling heat, and even now, though evening was at hand, he breathed an air close and heavy and foul with a thousand impurities.
