The Dynamiter | Page 5

of Putney,
where he enjoyed a parlour and bedroom and the sincere esteem of the
people of the house. To this remote home he found himself, at a very
early hour in the morning of the next day, condemned to set forth on
foot. He was a young man of a portly habit; no lover of the exercises of

the body; bland, sedentary, patient of delay, a prop of omnibuses. In
happier days he would have chartered a cab; but these luxuries were
now denied him; and with what courage he could muster he addressed
himself to walk.
It was then the height of the season and the summer; the weather was
serene and cloudless; and as he paced under the blinded houses and
along the vacant streets, the chill of the dawn had fled, and some of the
warmth and all the brightness of the July day already shone upon the
city. He walked at first in a profound abstraction, bitterly reviewing and
repenting his performances at whist; but as he advanced into the
labyrinth of the south-west, his ear was gradually mastered by the
silence. Street after street looked down upon his solitary figure, house
after house echoed upon his passage with a ghostly jar, shop after shop
displayed its shuttered front and its commercial legend; and meanwhile
he steered his course, under day's effulgent dome and through this
encampment of diurnal sleepers, lonely as a ship.
'Here,' he reflected, 'if I were like my scatter-brained companion, here
were indeed the scene where I might look for an adventure. Here, in
broad day, the streets are secret as in the blackest night of January, and
in the midst of some four million sleepers, solitary as the woods of
Yucatan. If I but raise my voice I could summon up the number of an
army, and yet the grave is not more silent than this city of sleep.'
He was still following these quaint and serious musings when he came
into a street of more mingled ingredients than was common in the
quarter. Here, on the one hand, framed in walls and the green tops of
trees, were several of those discreet, bijou residences on which
propriety is apt to look askance. Here, too, were many of the
brick-fronted barracks of the poor; a plaster cow, perhaps, serving as
ensign to a dairy, or a ticket announcing the business of the mangler.
Before one such house, that stood a little separate among walled
gardens, a cat was playing with a straw, and Challoner paused a
moment, looking on this sleek and solitary creature, who seemed an
emblem of the neighbouring peace. With the cessation of the sound of
his own steps the silence fell dead; the house stood smokeless: the
blinds down, the whole machinery of life arrested; and it seemed to
Challoner that he should hear the breathing of the sleepers.
As he so stood, he was startled by a dull and jarring detonation from

within. This was followed by a monstrous hissing and simmering as
from a kettle of the bigness of St. Paul's; and at the same time from
every chink of door and window spirted an ill- smelling vapour. The
cat disappeared with a cry. Within the lodging-house feet pounded on
the stairs; the door flew back, emitting clouds of smoke; and two men
and an elegantly dressed young lady tumbled forth into the street and
fled without a word. The hissing had already ceased, the smoke was
melting in the air, the whole event had come and gone as in a dream,
and still Challoner was rooted to the spot. At last his reason and his fear
awoke together, and with the most unwonted energy he fell to running.
Little by little this first dash relaxed, and presently he had resumed his
sober gait and begun to piece together, out of the confused report of his
senses, some theory of the occurrence. But the occasion of the sounds
and stench that had so suddenly assailed him, and the strange
conjunction of fugitives whom he had seen to issue from the house,
were mysteries beyond his plummet. With an obscure awe he
considered them in his mind, continuing, meanwhile, to thread the web
of streets, and once more alone in morning sunshine.
In his first retreat he had entirely wandered; and now, steering vaguely
west, it was his luck to light upon an unpretending street, which
presently widened so as to admit a strip of gardens in the midst. Here
was quite a stir of birds; even at that hour, the shadow of the leaves was
grateful; instead of the burnt atmosphere of cities, there was something
brisk and rural in the air; and Challoner paced forward, his eyes upon
the pavement and his mind running upon