CHAPTER XV

OUT OF WHOM WENT SEVEN DEVILS

On a blowy night in early October, just ten days before he was due to leave Pimlico, Mark was sitting in his room when the bell of the Clergy House rang sharply. He had been reading the life of St. Francis of Assisi, whose Feast it had been, and, turning the pages of the Lives of the Saints, he had come across the account of St. Thais, the famous penitent of the austere Egyptian Paphnutius, among the saints commemorated four days hence. He had been moved by the brief and simple narrative and had been making up his mind to read farther into her history, when the bell rang. The maid came up to say that a little girl was asking for a priest to take the Sacrament to a dying woman at once, and Mark told her that the little girl had better wait while he went to fetch the pyx, so that she could walk back with him to the house. It was past ten o'clock, and the wind, gathering fury all the time, whirled round the church, sounding like fiends of Hell that feared to lose a victim and would deter the priest from his sacred task.

Hanging the pyx round his neck by a silken cord and cramming a white stole into the pocket of his soutane, Mark hurried back to the Clergy House, where a little girl with big blue eyes was perched on a hall chair, from which she slid down as soon as he spoke.

"Have we far to go, my dear?"

"Redmans Terrace, sir.

"Come along, then. Take hold of my hand, and we shall go all the faster."

The wind was raging along the flat grey façade of Balm Street, and from time to time stronger gusts swooped down upon the lamps, making them reel and flutter like frightened birds.

"And whose little girl are you?

"Please, sir, I'm Mrs. Budd's little girl."
The name was unfamiliar to him.
"Is it your mother who is so ill?"

"Oh no, sir, it's not mother. It's our lady lodger. Mother didn't want me to come out so late.”

"But she was quite right to let you come, because it was an errand of mercy. It was doing something for our dear Lord."

"Yes, sir."

Something in the way the child spoke made Mark wonder if she knew to Whom he was referring. "You know Who our Lord is?" he asked.

"No, sir."

"You don't ever come to church?"

"No, sir. Mother says she's got something better for me to do of a Sunday morning. I does a good bit for her about the house."

"Our Lord is our Lord Jesus Christ. You know Who Jesus Christ is?”

"It's what we learn at school."

Mark sighed. He must visit Redmans Terrace some day on another errand.

"Is this poor lady very ill?" he asked.

"They reckon she'll die almost any time now. Mother ain't half in a way over it. She said if she'd have known she'd have give her a week's notice to leave before she got so bad."

"What is your father? Does he live at home?"
"No, sir.

He's a ship's steward. He comes home once in a while. But he rows with mother most of the time."

They turned a corner as the little girl said this, and met the full force of the wind coming from the river. "Hold on tight," Mark said, "or you'll be blown right away."

The little hand squeezed his closer, and he uttered a silent prayer to the Sacred Heart that the flame of Its undaunted love would shed warmth upon the small soul. beside him.

"Take her to Thy Heart, O Lord. Teach her to know

Thee. O Mother of God, look down and set this little child in the arms of Thy Son, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."

"There's another lady with our lady lodger," Mark's small companion announced. "You know, one of them as dresses so funny."

“A nurse?”

"No, not a nurse. She couldn't afford no nurse. She couldn't afford to pay her rent for a fortnight. Not since she got this pumonia the matter with her."

"Ah, a sister of mercy!" Mark exclaimed gladly. "Yes, that's what she called herself," said the little girl. "Such a nice lady. If she hadn't spoke so nice to mother, mother wouldn't never have let me come."

"And what does the poor sick lady work at when she's well?" Mark asked.

He felt the child's grasp of his hand relax a moment as she muttered:

"I don't know."

Mark divined by the tone of her voice that she knew only too well and that it was knowledge of evil. He pressed his free hand against the pyx in agony. The full horror of the Fall from primal innocence was suddenly made known to Mark's imagination, for God must have created Man and Woman with the eyes of children. He hurried along in silence, repeating to repeating to himself the Miserere; and presently they turned off into Redmans Terrace from the wide and wind-swept road running down to the river.

On the steps of Number Ten a woman was watching for them.

"Peace be to this house and to all that dwell in it," Mark said.

"I was anxious about Mabel," the woman told him. "Well, anyone doesn't like to have a child out alone at this time of night."

Mrs. Budd was a woman of about forty with the remains of a beauty that not even her swift decline into a slatternly middle-age had yet managed to destroy. When she bent down to kiss Mabel with evident relief at her safe return, Mark could not help wishing that

she had felt as much anxiety to guard her daughter against the premature knowledge of evil as she had felt about her nocturnal errand of mercy.

"Mrs. Shoolbred is in the back room along the passage," she said. "She's going fast, pore thing, all of a-mutter, and anything you do catch you can't make head or tail of. The doctor said he'd look in about midnight, but he didn't hold out any hopes. Here comes the Sister, who's a thoroughly nice ladylike person, I'm bound to admit."

"Is that the priest?" a quiet voice asked, and Mark looking up quickly saw that it was Esther.

"Perhaps you'd like to take the clergyman into the front sitting-room, Sister," Mrs. Budd suggested. “And you pop off up to your bed, Mabel."

She opened the door of the sitting-room and pulled the chain of the incandescent mantle.

"That's a bit more cheerful," she said, as the room was suffused with the sickly illumination.

Sister Esther Magdalene put a finger to her lips.

"Oh, she's asleep, is she?" Mrs. Budd whispered, with a glance toward the bedroom, the flickering candlelight in which was visible through the half-open folding doors that separated it from the sitting-room. "Well, I'll go down to the kitchen and put on some milk to boil. I dare say the clergyman would like a cup of tea before he goes out again.

"Thank you, Mrs. Budd, I'm sure he would," said Sister Esther. "I'll come and call you when he's ready, shall I?"

Mrs. Budd retreated pleasantly without being aware that she had been dismissed. When she was gone, Esther turned to Mark.

"I wondered if it would be you that Mabel would fetch. I nearly asked for you by name, but I thought that you might be out, and I was afraid of the least delay. She cannot live very long. She is one of our girls from the home. Her baby died, and she relapsed into sin. Violet Shoolbred is her name. It was a great grief to the Reverend Mother when we lost sight of her; but she remembered us in her illness, and sent the Reverend

Mother a postcard. Look!" Esther gave Mark a picture postcard with views of Margate on the back.

Dear Revrend Mother,

I am very ill at 10 Redmans Terrace, Pimlico. Dear Revrend Mother, I am sorry I never wrote and told you were I was. Dear Revrend Mother, can one of the dear sisters come to me.

Your affec.

Violet Shoolbred.

"When I arrived here, two days ago, she was quite delirious, and I fear that she may never return to consciousness. But, Mark, her poor wandering mind is tormented by the thought of sin, and can you not give her Viaticum?

Mark entered the sick-room and found the table prepared with crucifix and two lighted candles and communion cloth. Putting on his stole, he placed the pyx upon the table and genuflected. As he rose from his knees the sick woman sat up in bed and stared before her. "Does she know how to make her confession?" Mark whispered to Esther.

"Her mind is troubled," Esther replied; "but she is not conscious of our presence.'

"Are you sure that she repents?" he whispered again. "Oh, I am sure, sure. She has seemed to regret so

much in her delirium."

"Listen," Mark said. "She is going to speak.” The sick woman began to talk rapidly in a harsh voice :

"Of course, as I say, I don't like to stay on here always. I mean to say, the Reverend Mother and all the sisters are very nice and kind and all that, but still anyone feels they want to be by themselves some time. I shall tell the Reverend Mother I'd sooner go back to business. I mean to say, I'm perfectly sure that Holland Brothers would take me on again in the hats. Miss Marshall always said there was no girl showed off a hat so well as I did. Well, dear, there's no doubt I was by far the prettiest girl in the department. I mean to