It was midnight, and as silent as the grave. The quality of the
silence was peculiar; for although no sound stirred the air close at
hand, there was, beyond the limits at which the ear could detect
individual sounds, from minute to minute a tone of deep murmur, which
would have been like the noises of a distant sea but that it was
pulseless.
Overhead hung an impenetrable cloud of darkness. There was no moon, no
star, no light from the north. Looking right overhead, one saw
nothing, absolutely nothing. The eyes of the living were, when turned
towards the sky, as useless as the eyes of the dead. But casting the
eyes down, one could see roofs, and towers, and spires, and domes, dim
and ghastly in the veiled underlight, glowing upward from the streets
of a vast city.
No wind stirred. The broad river, with its radial gleams of light
shooting towards the lamps, moved no more than an inland lake into
which no stream whispers, from which no stream hurries forth. It was
high water.
Looking down from the giddy height, no moving forms could be seen, a
policeman had passed under a little while ago, and none would pass
again for a little while more, except some thief on his way to plunder
the living, or some poor, troubled, outcast brother on his way to the
river to join the silent confraternity of the dead.
The leads were slippery with dew and green slime; the battlements were
clammy and cold. To look straight down one should raise himself
slightly on the parapet of the embrasure. Then he saw a perpendicular
chasm, two hundred feet deep on his side, a hundred feet deep on the
side opposite. On the four sides of the leads were four such chasms,
and in all of them lay the dark heavy gloom of that summer night, save
where once in each cleft there burned a fiery point--the gas-lamp--to
scare the unlawful and light the harmless through the silent
ways--part of the mighty city-labyrinth lying below.
On the leads it was impossible to see anything. From parapet to
parapet, from battlement to battlement, from embrasure to embrasure
was to the eye a purposeless void. It was impossible to guide the
movements except by the sense of touch; for although when one gazed
downward on the roofs below, the chequered glow hanging above the
street gave the eye purpose, when one drew back from the parapet all
was dark, the dull reflection of the city's light did not reach upward
far enough to illume the open space within the four walls.
Yet there was life and motion on those leads, in that darkness set in
the solitude. A heavy, slow tread could be heard now and then, and now
and then groans, and now and then words of protest and anger, bitter
reproach, tremulous entreaty, fierce invective, and passionate
lamentation. The voice was high and quavering like that of a woman
overwrought, or a man overwrought or broken down by sorrows or by
years. Then these sounds would cease, the footsteps, the groans, the
words, and the silence of a blind cave in which no water dripped, and
which harboured only the whispering and confounded echoes of a far-off
stream, fell upon the place and filled out the measure of its
isolation.
The slow measured tread of the policeman broke in once more upon the
listening ear, gained, reached its height, and was lost in the still
ocean of darkness.
"I am accursed. Nothing favours me. All is against me. No wind! No
rain! Wind and rain are my only friends. They are the only things
which can now be of service to me, and for a week there has been
neither."
The querulous, complaining voice was hushed. The shuffling feet moved
rapidly across the leads. Then all was still once more. Stop! what is
that? In the street below an echo to the wail above? No words can be
heard, yet the purport of the voice is unmistakable.
The listener catches the import of those tones. He has heard similar
sounds before.
"It is a woman," he says. "Men never whine here, and at this hour,
going that way! In a quarter of an hour it will be all over with her.
A quarter of an hour! How long have I been here, slaving and toiling
day and night, carrying away bit by bit what lies between me and
affluence, and to think that in a quarter of an hour, from one bell of
the clock of St. Paul's to the next, I might find an end to all my
hopes, and fears, and labours, and lie at peace, as far as this world
is. Hark! Why does she pause beneath? She cannot suspect, no one can
suspect why I am here. All the dreary months of terror and sweat that
I have spent here never drew from me one word, one sign which could
give a clue."
The figure of a woman in the street below could be seen dimly on the
other side of the way. 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.
"She is gone," said the voice in the darkness. "She is taking all her
troubles with her to the greasy Thames. Why should not I, too, take
all my troubles thither and end my care? A quarter past! Before the
half-hour strikes, I and my secret, my great secret, might be gone for
ever. Has she a secret, or is it only the poor want of bread and
shelter, or is it unkindness, a hope destroyed, love outraged,
affection slighted? Why should I inquire?"
From the narrow lane into which she had struck, a moan reached the
listener's ears.
"She is in no great haste. This is not the despair of sudden ruin to
life or hopes. Her misfortunes have crawled gradually upon her, with
palsied feet and blows that maddened because they never ceased--not
brave blows that drive one furious and to swift despair. _I_ am the
victim of this slow despair. Why should I drag out wearily, toilfully,
in terrors that I make myself, the end of my old life?"
Again the woman groaned.
"Curse her! Can she not go? Who minds a woman more or less in the
world? The world is overstocked with them. No one is here to pity her.
Why should she pity herself? It would be a mercy to her to take her
and lead her to the brink and push her in. Why, it would shorten all
her pains. Curse her, there she groans again. No rain, no wind to help
me, and only these groans for a goad to my despair. I will not hear
them any longer. My own troubles are more than I can bear. Stay! That
is a lucky thought. I'll go down and tell her that the police are
here, coming for her, and that she has not a moment to spare."
Again the woman's voice was heard.
"Forty years ago I could not take that voice so coldly, for all women
were then to me the sisters of one; my sweetheart then, my wife, the
mother of my children, now the tenant of the neglected grave miles and
miles and miles away out there. Now all the children dwell in houses
such as hers, and with her and them went out the life of me. I never
cared to see the younger brood, for when my wife died it seemed to me
that all who loved me, or whom I loved, came to me but to die, and so
I steeled my heart against the new brood and slunk into myself, shut
myself out from them and all the world, and took to lonely ways and
solitude until I came to this."
For a while no sound reached the ear. At last there was a sob, not a
woman's voice this time, but a man's.
"I hardened my heart against them, and the world seemed to have
hardened its heart against me. I am lonely and alone. There is no
wind. There is no rain. There has been no wind or rain for weeks. For
weeks I have been ready for either, and either will not come. Twice a
day the river gains its full height, asking me to go with it out of my
loneliness and my toil. Heaven will not send rain or wind to me.
Heaven took my wife and happiness. Heaven sent the river to me. I have
often thought of going. I cannot leave this place and live. I cannot
stay in this place and live. Hark! I hear the first rippling of the
river as it turns its footsteps towards the sea. What sound is that?
She! Five minutes by the clock and all will be over with her. What?
Striking half-past? Idiot that I am! Why should I burden myself with
the despairs of another hour? I shall await the five minutes. For
I should not care to be--disturbed. I should not care to hear or
see--anything of her. I am alone. I would go alone. I am in no humour
for company. I am too big with my own griefs to care for those of
others. I have feasted on sorrow until I have grown enormous,
colossal, distended beyond human shape. Let my great secret die with
me. Let me die alone. I am a giant in the land of woes. I am Giant
Despair. She has closed the door behind her ere this. It is time for
me to knock. I have no farewells to take. That is lucky. Not one heart
in all London will beat one beat more or one beat less when I am
gone."
The feet trod the leads more vigorously than before. Then a step was
heard descending the ladder.