The Eternal City | Page 2

imperfectly, my sympathy
with the struggles of the poor, and my participation in the social
problems with which the world is now astir, I have obtained the
promise of my publisher that the original version of "The Eternal City"
shall be kept in print as long as the public calls for it.
In this form of my book, the aim has been to rely solely on the
humanities and to go back to the simple story of the woman who
denounced her husband in order to save his life. That was the theme of
the draft which was the original basis of my novel, it is the central
incident of the drama which is about to be produced in New York, and
the present abbreviated version of the story is intended to follow the
lines of the play in all essential particulars down to the end of the last
chapter but one. H. C.
Isle of Man, Sept. 1902.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

THE ETERNAL CITY
PROLOGUE
I
He was hardly fit to figure in the great review of life. A boy of ten or
twelve, in tattered clothes, with an accordion in a case swung over one
shoulder like a sack, and under the other arm a wooden cage containing
a grey squirrel. It was a December night in London, and the Southern
lad had nothing to shelter his little body from the Northern cold but his
short velveteen jacket, red waistcoat, and knickerbockers. He was
going home after a long day in Chelsea, and, conscious of something
fantastic in his appearance, and of doubtful legality in his calling, he
was dipping into side streets in order to escape the laughter of the
London boys and the attentions of policemen.

Coming to the Italian quarter in Soho, he stopped at the door of a shop
to see the time. It was eight o'clock. There was an hour to wait before
he would be allowed to go indoors. The shop was a baker's, and the
window was full of cakes and confectionery. From an iron grid on the
pavement there came the warm breath of the oven underground, the red
glow of the fire, and the scythe-like swish of the long shovels. The boy
blocked the squirrel under his armpit, dived into his pocket, and
brought out some copper coins and counted them. There was ninepence.
Ninepence was the sum he had to take home every night, and there was
not a halfpenny to spare. He knew that perfectly before he began to
count, but his appetite had tempted him to try again if his arithmetic
was not at fault.
The air grew warmer, and it began to snow. At first it was a fine
sprinkle that made a snow-mist, and adhered wherever it fell. The
traffic speedily became less, and things looked big in the thick air. The
boy was wandering aimlessly through the streets, waiting for nine
o'clock. When he thought the hour was near, he realised that he had lost
his way. He screwed up his eyes to see if he knew the houses and shops
and signs, but everything seemed strange.
The snow snowed on, and now it fell in large, corkscrew flakes. The
boy brushed them from his face, but at the next moment they blinded
him again. The few persons still in the streets loomed up on him out of
the darkness, and passed in a moment like gigantic shadows. He tried to
ask his way, but nobody would stand long enough to listen. One man
who was putting up his shutters shouted some answer that was lost in
the drumlike rumble of all voices in the falling snow.
The boy came up to a big porch with four pillars, and stepped in to rest
and reflect. The long tunnels of smoking lights which had receded
down the streets were not to be seen from there, and so he knew that he
was in a square. It would be Soho Square, but whether he was on the
south or east of it he could not tell, and consequently he was at a loss to
know which way to turn. A great silence had fallen over everything,
and only the sobbing nostrils of the cab-horses seemed to be audible in
the hollow air.

He was very cold. The snow had got into his shoes, and through the
rents in his cross-gartered stockings. His red waistcoat wanted buttons,
and he could feel that his shirt was wet. He tried to shake the snow off
by stamping, but it clung to his velveteens. His numbed fingers could
scarcely hold the cage, which was also full of snow. By the light
coming from a fanlight over the door in the porch he looked at his
squirrel. The little thing was trembling pitifully