Part 12 (1/2)

”We are going to walk as far as Hyde Park Corner with Thompson. Just the thing for you; you'll walk off your indigestion.”

”All right. Wait a moment; I'll put my coat on....”

”I never pa.s.s a set of street-sweepers without b.u.t.toning up,” said Harding, as they went out of the Temple into the Strand. ”The glazed shoes I don't mind, but the tie is too painfully significant.”

”The old signs of City,” said Thompson, as a begging woman rose from a doorstep, and stretched forth a miserable arm and hand.

About the closed wine-shops and oyster-bars of the Haymarket a shadow of the dissipation of the night seemed still to linger; and a curious bent figure pa.s.sed picking with a spiked stick cigar-ends out of the gutter; significant it was, and so too was the starving dog which the man drove from a bone. The city was mean and squalid in the morning, and conveyed a sense of derision and reproach--the sweep-carriage-road of Regent Street; the Royal Academy, pretentious, aristocratic; the Green Park still presenting some of the graces of a preceding century. There were but three cabs on the rank. The market-carts rolled along long Piccadilly, the great dray-horses shuffling, raising little clouds of dust in the barren street, the men dozing amid the vegetables.

They were now at Hyde Park Corner. Thompson spoke of the _improvements_--the breaking up of the town into open s.p.a.ces; but he doubted if anything would be gained by these imitations of Paris. His discourse was, however, interrupted by a porter from the Alexandra Hotel asking to be directed to a certain street. He had been sent to fetch a doctor immediately--a lady just come from an evening party had committed suicide.

”What was she like?” Harding asked.

”A tall woman.”

”Dark or fair?”

He couldn't say, but thought she was something between the two.

Prompted by a strange curiosity, feeling, they knew not why, but still feeling that it might be some one from Temple Gardens, they went to the hotel, and obtained a description of the suicide from the head-porter. The lady was very tall, with beautiful golden hair. For a description of her dress the housemaid was called.

”I hope,” said Mike, ”she won't say she was dressed in cream-pink, trimmed with olive ribbons.” She did. Then Harding told the porter he was afraid the lady was Lady Helen Seymour, a friend of theirs, whom they had seen that night in a party given in Temple Gardens by this gentleman, Mr. Frank Escott. They were conducted up the desert staircase of the hotel, for the lift did not begin working till seven o'clock. The door stood ajar, and servants were in charge. On the left was a large bed, with dark-green curtains, and in the middle of the room a round table. There were two windows. The toilette-table stood between bed and window, and in the bland twilight of closed Venetian blinds a handsome fire flared loudly, throwing changing shadows upon the ceiling, and a deep, glowing light upon the red panels of the wardrobe. So the room fixed itself for ever on their minds. They noted the crude colour of the Brussels carpet, and even the oilcloth around the toilette-table was remembered. They saw that the round table was covered with a red tablecloth, and that writing materials were there, a pair of stays, a pair of tan gloves, and some withering flowers. They saw the ball-dress that Lady Helen had worn thrown over the arm-chair; the silk stockings, the satin shoes--and a gleam of sunlight that found its way between the blinds fell upon a piece of white petticoat. Lady Helen lay in the bed, thrown back low down on the pillow, the chin raised high, emphasizing a line of strained white throat. She lay in shadow and firelight, her cheek touched by the light. Around her eyes the shadows gathered, and as a landscape retains for an hour some impression of the day which is gone, so a softened and hallowed trace of life lingered upon her.

Then the facts of the case were told. She had driven up to the hotel in a hansom. She had asked if No. 57 was occupied, and on being told it was not, said she would take it; mentioning at the same time that she had missed her train, and would not return home till late in the afternoon. She had told the housemaid to light a fire, and had then dismissed her. Nothing more was known; but as the porter explained, it was clear she had gone to bed so as to make sure of shooting herself through the heart.

”The pistol is still in her hand; we never disturb anything till after the doctor has completed his examination.”

Each felt the chill of steel against the naked side, and seeing the pair of stays on the table, they calculated its resisting force.

Harding mused on the ghastly ingenuity, withal so strangely reasonable. Thompson felt he would give his very life to make a sketch. Mike wondered what her lover was like. Frank was overwhelmed in sentimental sorrow. John's soul was full of strife and suffering.

He had sacrificed his poems, and had yet ventured in revels which had led to such results! Then as they went down-stairs, Harding gave the porter Lewis Seymour's name and address, and said he should be sent for at once.

CHAPTER VI

”I don't say we have never had a suicide here before, sir,” said the porter in reply to Harding as they descended the steps of the hotel; ”but I don't see how we are to help it. Whenever the upper cla.s.ses want to do away with themselves they chose one of the big hotels--the Grosvenor, the Langham, or ourselves. Indeed they say more has done the trick in the Langham than 'ere, I suppose because it is more central; but you can't get behind the motives of such people. They never think of the trouble and the harm they do us; they only think of themselves.”

London was now awake; the streets were a-clatter with cabs; the pick of the navvy resounded; night loiterers were disappearing and giving place to hurrying early risers. In the resonant morning the young men walked together to the Corner. There they stopped to bid each other good-bye. John called a cab, and returned home in intense mental agitation.

”It really is terrible,” said Mike. ”It isn't like life at all, but some shocking nightmare. What could have induced her to do it?”

”That we shall probably never know,” said Thompson; ”and she seemed br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with life and fun. How she did dance! ...”

”That was nerves. I had a long talk with her, and I a.s.sure you she quite frightened me. She spoke about the weariness of living;--no, not as we talk of it, philosophically; there was a special accent of truth in what she said. You remember the porter mentioned that she asked if No. 57 was occupied. I believe that is the room where she used to meet her lover. I believe they had had a quarrel, and that she went there intent on reconciliation, and finding him gone determined to kill herself. She told me she had had a lover for the last four years. I don't know why she told me--it was the first time I ever heard a lady admit she had had a lover; but she was in an awful state of nerve excitement, and I think hardly knew what she was saying. She took the letter out of her bosom and read it slowly. I couldn't help seeing it was in a man's handwriting; it began, '_Ma chere amie!_' I heard her tell her husband to take the brougham; that she would come home in a cab. However, if my supposition is correct, I hope she burnt the letter.”

”Perhaps that's what she lit the fire for. Did you notice if the writing materials had been used?”

”No, I didn't notice,” said Mike. ”And all so elaborately planned!

Just fancy--shooting herself in a nice warm bed! She was determined to do it effectually. And she must have had the revolver in her pocket the whole time. I remember now, I had gone out of the room for a moment, and when I came back she was leaning over the chimney-piece, looking at something.”