stepped to the door, and turned on the threshold.
"One other question, Mr. Gordon. If I succeed, when will you require her to give up her child?"
"To-morrow evening. I will have a carriage ready at the door. On the following day Mrs. Turner and I will leave Portsmouth, and there is no probability after that that you and I will ever meet again."
Dr. Spenlove nodded, and left the house.
CHAPTER IV.
"ONE MORE UNFORTUNATE."
The snow was falling more heavily, and a strong wind blew the flakes into his face as he made his way to Mrs. Turner's garret. He walked as quickly as he could, but his progress was impeded by the force of the wind and by its driving the snow into his eyes. Despite these obstacles his intuitive observance of what was passing around him and all his mental forces were in active play, and it was a proof of his kindly and unselfish nature that, in the light of the vital errand upon which he was engaged, he was oblivious of the sense of physical discomfort. Conflicting questions agitated his mind. No longer under the influence of the cold, cruel logic which distinguished Mr. Gordon's utterances, he once more asked himself whether he would be right in urging Mrs. Turner to renounce her maternal duties and obligations, and to part forever with the child of her blood. The human and the divine law were in conflict. On one side degradation and direst poverty from which there seemed no prospect of escape, and driving the mother perhaps to a course of life condemned alike by God and man; on the other side a life of material comfort and respectability for herself and child. A fortuitous accident--a chance for which he had prayed earlier in the night--had made him at once the arbiter and the judge; his hand was upon the wheel to steer these two helpless beings through the voyage upon which they were embarked, and upon him rested the responsibility. There was no case here of plowing through unknown waters over hidden rocks; he saw the ocean of life before him, he saw the rocks beneath. Amid those rocks lay the forms of lost, abandoned women who in their mortal career would surely have been saved had an offer of rescue come such as had come to the woman who chiefly occupied his thoughts. They would have been spared the suffering of despairing days, the horrors of despairing death; they would have been lifted from the gulf of shame and ignominy. New hopes, new joys, would have arisen to comfort them. The sacrifice they would have been called upon to make would have been hallowed by the consciousness that they had performed their duty. It was not alone the happiness of the mortal life that had to be considered. If the ministrations of God's ministers on earth were not a mockery and a snare, it was the immortal life that was equally at stake. The soul's reward sprang from the body's suffering.
And still the pitiless snow fell, and the wind howled around him, and through the white whirlwind he beheld the light of heaven and the stars shining upon him.
How should he act? He imagined himself steering the vessel through an ocean of sad waters. On the right lay a haven of rest, on the left lay a dark and desolate shore. Which way should he turn the wheel? His pity for her had drawn from him during their last interview the exclamation, "God help you!" and she had asked hopelessly, "Will he?" He had turned from her then; he had no answer to make. There is, he said to himself now, no divine mediation in human affairs; the divine hand is not stretched forth to give food to the hungry. In so grave an issue as the starvation of a human being dependence upon divine aid will not avail. Admitting this, he felt it to be almost a heresy, but at the same time he knew that it was true.
There were but few people in the white streets, and of those few a large proportion tinged his musings with a deeper melancholy. These were ragged, shivering children, and women recklessly or despondently gashing the white carpet, so pure and innocent and fair in its sentimental aspect, so hard and bitter and cruel in its material. By a devious process of reasoning he drew a parallel between it and the problem he was engaged in solving. It was poetic, and it freezed the marrow; it had a soul and a body, one a sweet and smiling spirit, the other a harsh and frowning reality. The heart of a poet without boots would have sunk within him as he trod the snow-clad streets.
Dr. Spenlove's meditations were arrested by a sudden tumult. A number of people approached him gesticulating and talking eagerly and excitedly, the cause of their excitement being a couple of policemen who bore between them the wet, limp body of a motionless woman. He was drawn magnetically toward the crowd, and was immediately recognized.
"Here's Dr. Spenlove," they cried. "He knows her."
Yes, he knew her the moment his eyes fell upon her, the people having made way for him. The body borne by the policemen was that of a young girl scarcely out of her teens, an unfortunate who had walked the streets for two or three years past.
"You had better come with us, doctor," said one of the policemen, to both of whom he was known. "We have just picked her out of the water."
A middle-aged woman pushed herself close to Dr. Spenlove.
"She said she'd do it a month ago," said this woman, "if luck didn't turn."
Good God! If luck didn't turn! What direction in the unfortunate girl's career was the lucky turn to take to prevent her from courting death?
"You will come with us, sir," said the policeman.
"Yes," answered Dr. Spenlove mechanically.
The police station was but a hundred yards away, and thither they walked, Dr. Spenlove making a hasty examination of the body as they proceeded.
"Too late, I'm afraid, sir," said the policeman.
"I fear so," said Dr. Spenlove gravely.
It proved to be the case. The girl was dead.
The signing of papers and other formalities detained Dr. Spenlove at the police station for nearly an hour, and he departed with a heavy weight at his heart. He had been acquainted with the girl whose life's troubles were over since the commencement of his career in Portsmouth. She was then a child of fourteen, living with her parents, who were respectable working people. Growing into dangerous beauty, she had fallen as others had fallen, and had fled from her home to find herself after a time deserted by her betrayer. Meanwhile the home in which she had been reared was broken up; the mother died, the father left the town. Thrown upon her own resources, she drifted into the ranks of the "unfortunates," and became a familiar figure in low haunts, one of civilization's painted, bedizened nightbirds of the streets. Dr. Spenlove had befriended her, counseled her, warned her, urged her to reform, and her refrain was: "What can I do? I must live." It was not an uncommon case; the good doctor came in contact with many such, and could have prophesied with unerring accuracy the fate in store for them. The handwriting is ever on the wall, and no special gift is needed to decipher it. Drifting, drifting, drifting, forever drifting and sinking lower and lower till the end comes. It had come soon to this young girl--mercifully, thought Dr. Spenlove as he plodded slowly on, for surely the snapping of life's chord in the spring, time of her life was better than the sure descent into a premature, haggard, and sinful old age. Recalling these reminiscences, his doubts with respect to his duty in the mission he had undertaken were solved. There was but one safe course for Mrs. Turner to follow.
He hastened his steps. His interview with Mr. Gordon and the tragic incident in which he had been engaged had occupied a considerable time, and it was now close upon midnight. It was late for an ordinary visit, but he was a medical man, and the doors of his patients were open to him at all hours. In the poor street in which Mrs. Turner resided many of the houses were left unlocked night and day for the convenience of the lodgers, and her house being one of these, Dr. Spenlove had no difficulty in obtaining admission. He shook the snow from his clothes, and ascending the stairs,
