Lord Arthur Saviles Crime | Page 6

own voice made him shudder, yet
he almost hoped that Echo might hear him, and wake the slumbering
city from its dreams. He felt a mad desire to stop the casual passer-by,
and tell him everything.
Then he wandered across Oxford Street into narrow, shameful alleys.
Two women with painted faces mocked at him as he went by. From a
dark courtyard came a sound of oaths and blows, followed by shrill
screams, and, huddled upon a damp door-step, he saw the crook-backed
forms of poverty and eld. A strange pity came over him. Were these
children of sin and misery predestined to their end, as he to his? Were
they, like him, merely the puppets of a monstrous show?
And yet it was not the mystery, but the comedy of suffering that struck
him; its absolute uselessness, its grotesque want of meaning. How
incoherent everything seemed! How lacking in all harmony! He was
amazed at the discord between the shallow optimism of the day, and
the real facts of existence. He was still very young.
After a time he found himself in front of Marylebone Church. The
silent roadway looked like a long riband of polished silver, flecked here
and there by the dark arabesques of waving shadows. Far into the
distance curved the line of flickering gas-lamps, and outside a little
walled-in house stood a solitary hansom, the driver asleep inside. He
walked hastily in the direction of Portland Place, now and then looking
round, as though he feared that he was being followed. At the corner of
Rich Street stood two men, reading a small bill upon a hoarding. An
odd feeling of curiosity stirred him, and he crossed over. As he came
near, the word 'Murder,' printed in black letters, met his eye. He started,

and a deep flush came into his cheek. It was an advertisement offering
a reward for any information leading to the arrest of a man of medium
height, between thirty and forty years of age, wearing a billy-cock hat,
a black coat, and check trousers, and with a scar upon his right cheek.
He read it over and over again, and wondered if the wretched man
would be caught, and how he had been scarred. Perhaps, some day, his
own name might be placarded on the walls of London. Some day,
perhaps, a price would be set on his head also.
The thought made him sick with horror. He turned on his heel, and
hurried on into the night.
Where he went he hardly knew. He had a dim memory of wandering
through a labyrinth of sordid houses, of being lost in a giant web of
sombre streets, and it was bright dawn when he found himself at last in
Piccadilly Circus. As he strolled home towards Belgrave Square, he
met the great waggons on their way to Covent Garden. The
white-smocked carters, with their pleasant sunburnt faces and coarse
curly hair, strode sturdily on, cracking their whips, and calling out now
and then to each other; on the back of a huge grey horse, the leader of a
jangling team, sat a chubby boy, with a bunch of primroses in his
battered hat, keeping tight hold of the mane with his little hands, and
laughing; and the great piles of vegetables looked like masses of jade
against the morning sky, like masses of green jade against the pink
petals of some marvellous rose. Lord Arthur felt curiously affected, he
could not tell why. There was something in the dawn's delicate
loveliness that seemed to him inexpressibly pathetic, and he thought of
all the days that break in beauty, and that set in storm. These rustics,
too, with their rough, good-humoured voices, and their nonchalant
ways, what a strange London they saw! A London free from the sin of
night and the smoke of day, a pallid, ghost-like city, a desolate town of
tombs! He wondered what they thought of it, and whether they knew
anything of its splendour and its shame, of its fierce, fiery- coloured
joys, and its horrible hunger, of all it makes and mars from morn to eve.
Probably it was to them merely a mart where they brought their fruits
to sell, and where they tarried for a few hours at most, leaving the
streets still silent, the houses still asleep. It gave him pleasure to watch

them as they went by. Rude as they were, with their heavy, hob-nailed
shoes, and their awkward gait, they brought a little of a ready with
them. He felt that they had lived with Nature, and that she had taught
them peace. He envied them all that they did not know.
By the time he had reached Belgrave Square the sky was a faint blue,
and the birds were beginning to