by George Moore
“I am very hard up; I don’t know how I shall get through next week; give me a few shillings for it, say five! — three!”
“I really can’t,” returned the old man, peevishly. “I have over a hundred of your water-colours, half of which are not framed, the rest not even numbered. I sha’n’t buy any more at present; call another day.”
A look of fear and helplessness passed over the young man’s face; he said nothing, but took up his drawings, and, leaving the old man still fumbling through his portfolios in the failing light, he walked down the bleak stone staircase into Fitzroy Square.
A slight rain was falling. The wet dripped from the tall trees slowly; occasionally a leaf fluttered down into the dirty gutter. The air was quite still; a soft smell of mud hung over the windless streets; and in the night, which grew darker, Lewis thought he saw an image of the fatality which pursued him.
“I can bear it no longer,” he muttered; “anything is preferable to this bitter struggle for life, for bread, yes, for mere bread! for at the best I cannot hope to make more, with my wretched little drawings that no one cares about, not even old Bendish.”
For two days he had not left his miserable room, but had sat working at the drawings that Bendish now refused to buy at any price. He had lived on a few crusts and a little tea, afraid to spend his last shilling. And now, as he walked wearily, he took it out of his pocket and looked at it: it was all that remained between him and starvation. But black as were his prospects, he shuddered when he thought of the past, and he remembered that death was preferable to such a life, even if he could continue it. But his resources were exhausted, his clothes were pawned, and he did not know who would lend him a sixpence; all his acquaintance were wearied of him.
As he approached the Strand, the passers-by grew more frequent, but he only saw them as phantoms, their voices sounded in his ears like a murmur of distant waters, and out of his soul there rose from time to time a mute protestation against Providence and God.
He walked on like one in a desert until he came to Drury Lane; then the light, which the flaring windows of half-a-dozen public-houses threw over the wet pavement, awoke him from the torpor into which he had fallen, and he realised again, and more bitterly, that he was lost, without a hope to guide. Like a torn flag in a battle, portions of his past life floated through his mind. He remembered how he had come only two years ago to London, expecting pleasure and fame, and he had found, what? Despair, stifled cries, and vanishing dreams. He remembered how the very first night he had wandered through the self-same Strand, and how exultingly he had thought of the great city that extended around him. The crowds that passed him, men and women, the shop windows, rich with a million treasures, carriages, monuments, the turmoil, feasts, beautiful dresses, acclamations, triumphs, all had turned in his bead — a golden nightmare, that had tempted and tortured him for a while. But now all was over; he had neither courage nor desire for anything. It astonished him to see people pressing onwards, all having apparently some end in view. To him the world seemed to have come to an end. He was like a corpse over whose grave the city that had robbed and ravished him was holding a revelling carnival As he turned into the Strand, he was caught in a crowd that poured through the entrance of a fashionable theatre, and the clear voices of two young men sounded shrill in his ears.
They were in evening dress, and the white cravats and patent leather shoes brought Lack to him the dream of the life of pleasure and luxury he so ardently desired.
“My dear fellow,” said one, “there is no use your going to her ball, you will bore yourself horribly; come into the theatre, and well go to supper afterwards.”
The ball-goer, however, was not easily persuaded, and his friend proceeded to tell him of the ladies he intended to invite; appending to each name an anecdote, over which both laughed boisterously. Lewis listened, and soon losing sight of his own personality, saw the scene as an independent observer, and dreamed of a picture to be called “Suicide.” In the foreground, just out of the way of a fashionable crowd going into a theatre, two young men discussed whether they would seek amusement there or elsewhere, whilst a wretched wight stood reading a notice posted on the walls —
TWO POUNDS REWARD
Yesterday, at nine o’clock, a young roan drowned himself from the parapet of Waterloo Bridge. The above reward will be paid to anyone giving such information as will lead to the recovery of the body.
The idea fascinated him, and he wondered if it would be possible to explain by the expression, that the poor devil reading the notice recognised the fact that dead he was worth two pounds, but alive he was merely an outcast, in whom no one took the least interest. He continued to think of his picture until he actually began to consider the advisability of painting it. Then his face winced as if with a sudden pain. He remembered that there were no more dreams for him to dream, no more glad or sorry hours for him to live. He must steal away into the eternal silence of the grave, and leave London to laugh above him. Then a cry for mercy, for life, went up from the bottom of his heart, like a shrill voice heard in the vastitude of night.
“Surely,” he asked, “I am not going to die, like a rat, of starvation in the middle of this enormous city?”
Then again his thoughts drifted, and looking at the women as they went wrapped up in silk, the rose colour of their feet visible through the open lace stockings as they stepped from their broughams, he grew dizzy with envious rage, that none of their elegant life, so artistically fashionable, was for him. Carriages came up every minute. All were filled with people who had money, who had come forth to spend it in the night, and in his madness he fancied he heard the shower of gold and kisses that fell over the city.
Then, again, a cry for life and its enjoyments arose out of his feeble heart, and he moaned at his own helplessness. What was there for him to do? he asked himself, again and again. He could not sell his drawings. What was there for him to do? Everything, except the women that passed before him so deliciously beautiful, seemed to advise him to die; but in the silken rustle of their skirts, and the faint odour they left, he heard a thousand secret voices, that seemed to whisper of a vision of perfumed lace, in which one day he would be enwrapped at rest, on the bosom of the siren city which now so cruelly cast him aside.
The crowd round the theatre-door had grown denser, and Lewis still stood looking vacantly before him, lost in an utter sense of abandonment. He had fallen into that state of torpid meditation so common to criminals on their way to the scaffold. The crowd jostled him, but he paid no heed, until he was at last hustled into the street, and then, waking up suddenly, he found he had to cross it to avoid a series of passing cabs. The accident, trivial in itself, seemed to him like an omen, for he was now nearer the Thames than before. The vision of wealth and beauty he had seen had darkened for him even the darkness of death; he now feared the water as a woman fears the tempter that whispers in her ear; had he not been obliged to cross the bridge to get home he would not have ventured to walk down Wellington Street, so gloomy did it look, with its shadows and vast background of cold sky.
Picking his way out of the crowd, he walked until he came to the middle of the bridge, then, leaning his arms on the parapet, he examined the countless crustations of the stone which sparkled in the rays of the electric light. But in a moment remembering himself, and thinking his conduct unworthy of a man who contemplated committing suicide, he looked mournfully at the wide flood of ink that swirled through the piers of the bridge.
All was fantastically unreal, all seemed symbolical of something that was not. Along the embankment, turning in a half circle, the electric lights beamed like great silver moons, behind which, scattered in inextricable confusion, the thousand gaslights burned softly like night-lights in some gigantic dormitory. On the Surrey side an immense curtain of shadow stretched across the sky, out of which a red light watched him with the haggard gaze of a bleeding eye.
But the mystery of the dark wandering waters suggested peace, and in th
e solemn silence he longed for the beatitude that death only can give, as in the glitter and turmoil of the Strand he had yearned for the pleasures of living. Then a dream of those who had ended their troubles from where he stood arose before his eyes; in a febrile and vacillating way he thought of emulating the courage of his predecessors, and he mused long on the melancholy poetry of suicide. A story he had heard of two lovers who had drowned themselves together, profoundly interested him. Before they threw themselves into the water, the woman had bound herself to the man with a scarf taken from her shoulders, so that they might not even be separated in death. He dwelt on the idea, thinking it a beautiful one, and he said to himself, “To-morrow or to-day, what matters since death is the sure end of all we see or feel?”
Then the fluid magnetism of the water took possession of him, and he felt his nature dissolving slowly; his thoughts swayed and flowed with the tide, and he saw monuments, bridges, and lights in a mist that seemed to descend, and in turn to pass into the river. He could resist the temptation no longer, and clutching the parapet, sought to climb over, but as he did so, memories flitted across his mind, among which a girl’s name and face came foremost; the face was one of an ordinary work girl, the name was Gwynnie Lloyd. He remembered that it was Friday, to-morrow she would have fifteen shillings, and thinking that she would not refuse to share it with him, he stood irresolute, leaning against the bridge.
“After all,” he thought, “Bendish told me to call another day;” and feeling much relieved at the respite, although somewhat disappointed at the common-place denouement of his magnificent project, he walked to his lodging in the Waterloo Road, where he had come to hide from a few creditors.
Threading his way through the crowds of girls and boys who filled the roadway and collected round the stalls, he moodily wondered if this passer and that were more unfortunate than he, until he stopped at a house taller, but not less grimy, than the rest. The bottom part formed a shop, where the landlord sold common delf and tin ware. At the present time he was bargaining with an old woman who would not give the price he asked for a copper kettle. Lauding its merits, he held the article up to the light of a paraffin lamp, that cast a lurid glare over the large white and blue china basins, jugs, and tin saucepans, which were piled and hung on stands outside.
As Lewis passed through the shop to his room, the landlady’s little daughter ran forward, tottering under the weight of an enormous yellow cat, which she held in her chubby arms.
“When are ‘ou doing to paint my picture wid pussy, Mr. Seymour?”
“To-morrow, perhaps, if you are a good girl,” said Lewis, stooping to kiss the child, much to the large, stout mother’s delight, who stood holding in her hand a string of kettles, which she had lifted down from a peg at the back of the shop.
Lewis owed three weeks’ rent, and he hoped to persuade Mrs. Cross to let him pay it with a sketch of the child; anyhow, a kiss on Dinah’s fair hair was not unpleasant, and might soften the mother’s impatience.
With a nod to Mrs. Cross, he went up the dirty staircase, and on the top floor struck a match. The sudden light showed two doors almost facing each other. As he unlocked one, the other opened, and a clear voice asked:
“Is that you, Lewis?”
“Yes; come in.”
Shading the match with his hand from the draughts, he eventually succeeded in lighting the tallow candle which stood on a table covered with paints and brushes.
Gwynnie Lloyd was a charming specimen of the English work girl. She was only sixteen, and under the little black dress, her tiny figure, half a girl’s, half a woman’s, swelled like a rose-bud in its leaves. Her face was fresh, but pale from overwork; her eyes, although almost destitute of brows or lashes, had a delicious look of confidence and candour that made them beautiful through sheer force of truth; her hair was the colour of fine dust; her hands were those of her class, stout and rather coarse.
“So you have been waiting for me, Gwynnie?” he said, passionately. His whole heart was in the words, for apparently her affection was the only thing he possessed in the world.
“Yes, I expected you earlier,” she answered, timorously, for she guessed from his manner that he had not sold his sketches.
“I loitered by the river, and if it hadn’t been for you, Gwynnie, I think I should have drowned myself; I can stand this misery no longer.”
“Oh, Lewis, how can you say such a thing! Do you not know that God forbids us to destroy ourselves?”
In her life she had never heard anyone say so wicked a thing, and as she clung to him, she mentally prayed for him.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, despairingly, “how happy we might be if we had a little money! You are a dear good girl, and I love you better than anything in the world; but all is useless for the want of a few pounds.”
“Have a little patience,” said Gwynnie, trembling at the idea of losing her lover.
“That’s all very well,” replied Lewis, sinking into a chair, and sobbing bitterly; “but what shall I do? They won’t let me remain even here another week if I don’t pay my rent. I have only a shilling left.”
Gwynnie would have liked to have cried, but she felt it was her duty to support him.
“Never mind,” she said, trying to assume a cheerful voice; “I shall have fifteen shillings to-morrow; that will keep us alive, and you are sure to sell something soon.”
Lewis could not answer her at once for sobbing, but he drew her closer with one arm.
“And now,” she said, restraining her tears with difficulty, “you will promise me never to say such a wicked thing again; besides, you say you are fond of me, and you talk of drowning yourself; what should I do without you?”
Then Lewis dried his eyes, and said he would do some more sketches; Gwynnie promised to sit to him for a head on Sunday morning, and for a long half-hour they talked of their little affairs.
He had seen a good deal of her since he came to live in the house. They had made acquaintance by rendering each other little services, and he had easily persuaded her to come into his room to see his pictures. Once or twice she had been out to walk with him on the wide London Road; clinging to his arm, she had looked at the stars, and had thought of the infinite goodness of God. Then the conversation turned on her early life, and she told him how her father was a Methodist carpenter, but her mother, who was a Roman Catholic, had brought her up in that religion.
Seeing that the subject interested her, Lewis told how his mother had also brought him up a Roman Catholic, but that his father was an atheist. She didn’t know what an atheist meant, and was so shocked when she heard, that she refused to believe that his father had been so wicked. Lewis listened, amused at her pious chatter, till at last, to change the subject which began to bore him, he asked her if she were happier now than when she lived in the country. She did not answer, but involuntarily pressed his arm. The tenderness of that evening was not to be forgotten; it perfumed her life like a grain of scented salts fallen by accident into an empty wardrobe. Lewis knew that she loved him, and he returned her affection because it cheered his loneliness to do so.
As she was about to wish him good-night, a shuffling step was heard on the stairs, then a knock came at the door; on their frightened faces was plainly written the word landlord.
Without waiting for an answer, the stranger pushed the door open and entered.
“I have something for you — a commission,” he said, distorting his long mouth into a laugh, and showing one solitary tooth.
“I am very glad to hear it, Mr. Jacobs,” said Lewis, trying to conceal his joy. “What is it?”
Mr. Jacobs was an old Jew, who undertook commissions of all sorts, but his chief business lay in pictures. He knew every dealer and every artist in London, and he trotted about from one to the other, buying and selling for them, supplying information, finding addresses, arranging meetings of all kinds, in fact, carrying on underhand commerce of the most complicated description.
“I called in at Mr.
Carver’s to-day, you know, in Pall Mall,” said the old man, in a husky voice, “and I found him in an awful fix; he has an order to supply some decorative panels; he promised that one should be ready by Monday — in fact, it will be of no use if it isn’t — and the gentleman he relied on to do them is ill, another is out of town, and the third — I forget what happened to the third — anyhow, I thought of you, and I have brought you the panel, and I’m going to pay you liberal, and if it suits, you will have more to do.”
“How much?” asked Lewis, excitedly.
“Well, this is what I want done,” said Jacobs, taking the panel from out a piece of paper, “I want you to paint me a Venus rising from the sea, with a few Cupids, and it must be at Mr. Carver’s on Monday by twelve.”
“How much is it to be, a fiver?”
“A fiver!” repeated Mr. Jacobs, as if horrified; “you are joking.” Eventually it was arranged that three pounds was to be the price, and Mr. Jacobs was about to go, when Lewis said:
“Could you let me have a trifle in advance; I am very hard up?”
“I really couldn’t; I have only a few coppers on me; besides, it is Mr. Carver who will pay you; but I am sorry not to be able.”
“Couldn’t you manage half a sovereign?”
“No, no,” cried the old man, testily; “I’d sooner give the panel to someone else.”
Seeing that he would not give him anything, Lewis fetched the light to show him downstairs.
“On Monday morning at twelve; no mistakes; it will be no use later.”
“Don’t be afraid, Mr. Jacobs; it will be all right.”
“And mind you make it look ‘fetching;’ it is for a gentleman who is very particular,” said Mr. Jacobs, as he shuffled downstairs. When Lewis came back, Gwynnie took hold of his hands and wrung them.
“Now, Lewis,” she exclaimed, “did I not tell you it would all come right? Three pounds and prospects of more work, isn’t it fine?”
