She paused at a door, behind which there seemed to rise a perfect Babel of sound--a Babel, yet curiously subdued, as though many people spoke, and spoke at once, yet in hushed voices. She knocked, and a woman opened, who, with a curious, indescribable air of excitement, plucked her by the sleeve, whispering hoarsely,--'Come in by--come ben!'
Alison felt impelled to enter, but shrank involuntarily, as the close air of the darksome and overcrowded chamber, with some nameless horror in it, assailed her senses. The woman, however, who had admitted her, now closed the door behind her. Alison noticed that her hands were shaking, piteously, uncontrollably, and that she was very pale. The room seemed full--full to overflowing--of women who whispered with bent heads, gesticulating, raising hands to heaven, and who now turned curious eyes on Alison.
She stood still in the middle of the wretched place, awed and terrified, she knew not why, yet instinctively conscious of the nearness of some tragedy.
'I was sent here,' she whispered to the woman near her, 'with five shillings for a girl, Clow, said to be in want or sickness.'
A murmur ran round the room. At her words, as if by common consent, the crowd of women drew aside, and through the clearance thus made Alison perceived a bed; and on the bed, its dismal occupant, the newly-dead, as yet untended, the staring eyes unclosed, the pallid hand clenched on the disordered covering. A woman, standing at the bed's head, still held to the parted lips the undimmed mirror.
Alison's vision swam; she sickened, but she saw--saw, upturned among the blankets, the gaunt, grey, sightless face; saw it--and knew it.
'Mysie!' she cried, shrinking back in utmost horror.
'Eh?' ejaculated several astonished voices; 'ye kent poor Mysie?'
But Alison felt the clammy sweat of faintness break out upon her flesh.
'Oh, let me go--let me out!' she gasped. 'I will speak to you upon the stair.'
The women crowded round her, questioning, muttering, explaining she knew not what. She got forth from the room at last, and found herself standing with the one woman upon the outer landing. The poor creature seemed decent enough. By some trick of likeness, she might have been, probably was, the dead woman's sister. She eyed Alison, not resentfully, but curiously.