"Farewell. I don't suppose we shall ever meet again. I am forced to
retire from the world--from love--from you.
"I cannot explain, but fear walks with me night and day. Oh, my
love! if you could only save me, you would, I know, but it is
impossible and so farewell. Were I not sure that we shall not see
each other more I could not write as I have done and signed myself
here,
"Your
"JUANITA."
I put the letter carefully into the breast-pocket of my coat, and then,
for the first time in my life, I fainted dead away.
Preston found me a few minutes later, got me right somehow, ascertained
that I had not eaten for many hours, scolded me like a father, and
poured turtle soup into me till I was alive again, alive and changed
from the man I had been a few hours ago.
* * * * *
The next day I satisfied myself that all was going well in the office,
and simply roamed about London. Already I think the dim purpose which
afterwards came to such extraordinary fruit was being born in my mind. I
wanted to be alone, taken quite out of my usual surroundings, and I
achieved this with considerable success. I rode in tube trains and heard
every one discussing Gideon Morse, and what was already known as the
"City in the Clouds." The papers announced that thousands of people were
encamped in Richmond Park gazing upwards, and seeing nothing because of
a cloud veil that hung around the top of the towers. It seemed the
proprietors of telescopes on tripods were doing a roaring trade at
threepence a look, but the gate in the grim, prison-like walls
surrounding the grounds at the foot of the tower, was never once opened
all day long.
I began to realize that probably nothing new, nothing reliable that is,
would transpire at present. The sensation would go its usual way. There
would be songs and allusions in all the revues to-night. Punch would
have a cartoon, suggesting the City in the Clouds as a place of
banishment for its particular bugbear of the moment. Gossip papers would
be full of beautiful, untrue stories of a romantic nature about the girl
I loved, her name would be the subject of a million jokes by a million
vulgar people. Then, little by little, the excitement would die away.
All this, as a trained journalist I foresaw easily enough, but knowing
what I knew--what probably I alone of all the teeming millions in London
knew--I was forming a resolve, which hourly grew stronger, that I would
never rest until I knew the worst.
I found myself in Kensington. There was a motor-omnibus starting for
Whitechapel Road. I climbed on the top.
"I sye," piped a little ragamuffin office boy to his friend, "why does
Jewanniter live in the clouds, Willum?"
"Arsk me another."
"'Cos she's a celebrated 'airess--see?"
"What I say," said a meager-looking man with a bristling mustache which
unsuccessfully concealed his slack and feeble mouth, "is simply this. If
Mr. Morse chooses to live in a certain way of life and 'as the money to
carry it out, why not let him alone? Freedom for every individual is a
'progative of English life, and I expect Morse is fair furious with what
they're saying about him, for I have it on the best authority that a
copy of every edition of the _Evening Special_ goes up to him in the
tower lifts as soon as it is issued."
Words, words, words! everywhere, silly, irresponsible chatter which I
heeded as little as a thrush heeds a shower of rain.
Steadily, swiftly, certainly, my purpose grew.
I got down in the Whitechapel Road, that wide and unlovely thoroughfare,
and, feeling hungry, went into a dingy little restaurant partitioned off
in boxes. The tablecloth was of stained oil skin, the guests the
seediest type of minor clerks, but I do remember that for ninepence I
had a little beefsteak and kidney pudding to myself which was as good as
anything I have ever eaten. As I went out I saw my neighbor of the
omnibus who had spoken so eloquently of freedom, walking by with a
little black bag, as in an aimless way I hailed a taxicab from the rank
opposite a London hospital and told the man to drive slowly westwards.
He did so, and when we came to the Embankment a gleam of afternoon
sunshine began to enlighten what had been a leaden day. Thinking a brisk
walk from Black Friars to Westminster would help my thoughts, I
dismissed the cab and started.
It was with an odd little thrill and flutter of the heart that far away
westwards, to the left of the Houses of Parliament, I saw three ghostly
lines, no thicker than lamp posts, it seemed, springing upwards from
nothingness. At Cleopatra's Needle, I felt the want of a cigarette and
stopped to light one.
At the moment there were few people on the pavement, though the
unceasing traffic in the road roared by as usual. I lit the cigarette,
put my case back in my pocket, and was about to continue my stroll when
I heard some one padding up behind me with obvious purpose.
I half turned, and there again I saw the man with the weak mouth and the
big mustache.
It flashed upon me, for the first time, that I was being followed, had
been followed probably during the whole of my wanderings.
As I said, there was nobody immediately about, so I turned to
rabbit-face and challenged him.
"You're following me, my man, why? Out with it or I'll give you in
charge."
"Yer can't," he said. "This is a free country, freedom is my 'progative
as well as yerself, Sir Thomas Kirby. I've done nothing to annoy yer,
have I?"