Dora Harrington found herself in the Strand, in the full light of a
summer's day, homeless, friendless, penniless. Her last chance was
gone. Vernon and Son, who held all the money she owned in the world,
had failed, and failed in such a way as to leave no prospect of her
ever getting a penny out of the five thousand pounds confided to them.
She was an orphan, and had spent much of her life out of these
kingdoms. She knew nothing of business. Mr. Kempston, her solicitor,
had been appointed her guardian, with full discretionary powers as to
the disposal of her property. She and he had not agreed too well, for
she had wished to marry Lavirotte, and he had opposed her desires. She
had wished to get control of her property, and had been denied, and
the relations between her guardian and herself had of late been most
straitened. Only for his good-humour in the matter there would have
been an open rupture. He had politely, but firmly, refused to agree to
either of her suggestions. She had impulsively, warmly protested
against what she called his interference in her affairs.
Two years ago she had first met Lavirotte. She was then a young girl
of eighteen. She met him at a concert of amateurs in London. He made
love to her, and she fell in love with him. He proposed, and she had
accepted. Then he explained his position.
He was not rich enough to marry. She told him she had a little
money--she thought about five thousand pounds. He laughed, and said
that might be enough for one, but was no good for two, adding,
bitterly, that he did not know how he could possibly advance himself
in the world. He was then the only photographer in the small town or
village of Glengowra, and the chance of his getting into any better
way of making money did not seem likely to him.
"You sing very well," she said. "You have a good voice, and you know
music. Have you never thought of music as a profession?"
He had never thought of music as a profession until then. He was only
twenty-two at the time. He knew very well he could not afford to go to
Italy or even to the Conservatoire. He had no money laid by, nor was
there any likelihood of his having money to lay by.
Then she suggested that he should borrow some of her. To this he would
not listen. If he were not able to attain a competency himself, he
would never put it in the power of fools to say that he had climbed
into a profession aided by anyone, least of all by his future wife.
After much talk and expostulation on her side, he was induced to agree
to accept the loan of a few hundred pounds. Then it was that she went
to her solicitor and guardian, told him she had made up her mind with
regard to her future, and that the man of her choice was a Frenchman,
by name Lavirotte, and by profession a photographer in the town of
Glengowra, in Ireland.
The solicitor was considerably surprised, and said he should not be
able to come to any decision for a few days. Mr. Kempston was a
bachelor, and had no means of taking care of his ward beyond the
ordinary appliances of his profession. He could not invite her to his
bachelor home, and her income was not sufficiently large to warrant
him in appointing a lady companion or chaperon of any kind; all he
could do in her interest was to find her moderately comfortable
lodgings, and see that she regularly received the dividends on her
shares in the banking concern of Vernon and Son.
Mr. Kempston was the sole surviving executor and trustee to her
father's will, and in the exercise of his discretion he had invested
her five thousand pounds in shares of Vernon and Son, Unlimited. She
knew nothing whatever of business, and Mr. Kempston's managing clerk,
in alluding to her money as lent to the bankrupt firm, was simply
using popular language, and attorning to the ignorance of business
inherent in the female mind. He knew very well that she, being a
shareholder, had not only lost all the money she owned, but was liable
to the very last shred of her possessions for any further demands
which might be made upon her with regard to this failure. He had felt
himself fully justified in telling her she had lost all her fortune,
that she was, in fact, a pauper; but he had not felt himself called
upon to explain that later on she would appear in the light of a
defaulter.
Dora Harrington, now an outcast from home, and fortune, and friends,
found herself in the great city of London absolutely without resources
of any kind. Her money was gone, she knew. Her guardian and she were
no more than business correspondents. Her lover's position in
Glengowra forbade the hope he might ever be able to marry her, and she
had within herself no art or knowledge by which she could hope to earn
a living.
What was now to be done? Where should she eat that evening? Where
should she sleep that night?
Nowhere!
Where was nowhere?
The river.
And yet to be only twenty years of age, and beautiful, as she had been
told, and still driven to the river by the mere fact of a few pounds
this way or that, seemed terribly hard to one who knew she had done no
harm.
If he were but near her! But he was poor and hurt, and it would only
help his pain if he knew that she had been cruelly hurt by fortune.
And yet, how could she live? Where could she go? Whither should she
turn? The world of life seemed closed against her, and only the
portals of death seemed fit for her escape.
To be so young, to love and be loved, and yet to have no avenue before
one but that leading to the ghastly tomb, appeared hard indeed.
It is true that of late her Dominique had seemed less eager in his
haste to write to her, less fervent in his expressions, less tender in
his regard. But this may have been owing to his sense of inability to
face the future with her maintenance added to the charges upon his
slender means. There was no prospect of his advancing himself to any
substantial result. He had written her, saying he had devoted much of
his time lately to the cultivation of his voice and the art of music.
That, in fact, he was now leading tenor in the choir of the church.
But he was careful to explain to her that this meant no financial
advancement, and that in fact it was to him the source of some small
losses of time and money. Besides, there was no one in Glengowra who
knew much of music save the two organists, and the knowledge of even
these was not of much use to anyone who had to think purely of voice
culture as opposed to instrumentalism.
In the present there seemed no germ of hope. The future was a blank,
or worse than a blank. And to-day, now, this hour, was an intolerable
burden which could not be endured.
And yet how was she to remove it? How was she to get from under this
crushing sense of ruin? It was plain to her that the ardour of his
affection was cooling, not owing to any indifference on his part to
herself, but owing to the fact that he recognised, even with the
prospect of her five thousand pounds a year hence, the impossibility
of their union.
Now that five thousand pounds had vanished wholly, and the possibility
of their marriage had been reduced to an almost certain negative.
What should she do? What was there to be done? The answer to this
question did not admit of any delay. Between this moment and the
moment of absolute want was but an hour, two hours, three hours, a
condition which must arise absolutely by sunset. She could do nothing.
It was possible to walk about the streets, no doubt, until death
overtook her; but why should she wait for death. If Death were coming,
why should she not go and meet him half-way?
Still it was hard to die. To die now in the full summer, when one was
young and full of health, although bankrupt in hope, when the sun was
bright, and the air was clear, and great London at its most beautiful.
To die now without even the chance of communicating with him,
Dominique?
He, too, was ill, dying perhaps. Yes, he was dying. His affection
towards her seemed waning. He had no worldly prospect, and her little
fortune was wholly gone. If death would only come in some pleasant
shape she would greet it gladly; but the notion of wooing death was
cold and repugnant. The waters of the river were chill, and full of
noises and foul contagion. People had not willed themselves into life;
why should they not be allowed to will themselves out of it?
For hours she walked along the crowded streets of London. Moment by
moment faintness and the sense of dereliction grew upon her. The
active troubles of the morning had passed away, and were now succeeded
by a dull numbing sense of hopelessness. She had no longer the energy
to protest against her fate. She moved through the crowded ways
without hope, without fear, without anticipation, without
retrospection. She had the dull, dead sense of being an impertinence
in life, nothing more. She wished that life were done with her. Life
was now a tyrannical taskmaster, who obliged her to walk on endlessly,
with no goal in view; who compelled her to pass among this infinite
multitude, debarred of all sympathy with them, of all participation in
their joys.
At length the sun fell, and minute by minute the busy streets grew
stiller. The great human tide of London was ebbing to the cool and
leafy suburbs.
She found herself in a neighbourhood which she had never before
trodden. She had passed St. Paul's, going east, and then turned down
some dark, deserted way, until she found the air growing cooler and
the place stiller.
"I must be near the Thames," she thought. "Fate is directing my steps.
The future is a blank. Let the present be death."
She was now beginning to feel faint from physical exhaustion. She had
sought that solitary way because she found she could no longer walk
steadily. She had eaten nothing that day.
It was now close to midnight. This place seemed so sequestered, so far
away from the feet of men, that she felt she might lie down and sleep
until the uprousing of the great city. But she thought:
"If I sleep here, I shall wake here, and what good will that be to me?
If I sleep in the river, I shall wake--Elsewhere."
She found herself under a square tower. She leaned against the wall,
irresolute or faint. She moaned, but uttered no word. In a few moments
she placed her hand against the wall and pushed herself from it, as
though repelling a final entreaty. Then she staggered down the street
and into a narrow laneway that led to the river.