_On the Edge of the Precipice._
On Friday evening, March 19th, a thunderstorm of unusual violence broke
over London. It was notably peculiar in certain of its aspects. The
weather was cold and showery, a typical day of the March equinox. Under
such conditions barometric pressure remains fixed rather than variable,
yet many whose business or hobby it is to record such facts observed a
rapid shrinkage of the mercury column between the hours of six and
seven. A deluge of rain fell for many minutes, and was followed, about
7.30 P. M., by a mad turmoil of thunder and an astounding electrical
display not often witnessed beyond the confines of the giant mountain
ranges of the world.
So violent and unnerving was the outburst that the social life of London
was paralyzed for the hour. Theater parties, diners in the fashionable
restaurants, the greater millions anxious to get away from offices and
shops, those eager alike to enter and leave the charmed circle of the
four-mile radius, were ruthlessly bidden to wait while the awesome
forces of nature made mad racket in the streets. All horseflesh was
afraid. The drivers of cabs and omnibuses were unable to make progress.
They had sufficient ado to restrain their maddened animals from adding
the havoc of blind charges through the streets to the general confusion
caused by the warring elements. Telegraph and telephone wires became not
only useless but dangerous, and the suburban train service was
consequently plunged into a tangle from which it was not extricated
until midnight.
So general was the confusion, so widespread the public alarm, that the
sudden cessation of the uproar at eight o'clock caused more prayers of
thankfulness to be uttered in the metropolis than had been heard for
many a day. But worse remained. Thus far the lightning had been
appalling, brilliantly lurid, but harmless. At ten o'clock the storm
raged again, this time without the preliminary downfall of rain, and the
lightning, though less sensational in appearance, was demoniac in
effect, levying a toll on human lives, causing fires and general damage
to property, accounts of which filled many columns of the newspapers
next morning. This second outburst was succeeded by heavy and continuous
rain. At the hour when the theaters emptied their diminishing audiences
into the streets London wore its normal rain-sodden aspect. It was not
until the following day that people fully understood the magnitude and
terrifying results of the later display.
About a quarter to eight, while the first storm was at its height, a
carriage and pair dashed into a fashionable West End square and pulled
up outside a mansion cast in the stereotyped mold of the early Victorian
period. The horses, overfed and underworked, had been rendered frantic
by the drive through the park from the further west. Fortunately, they
knew this halting place, or the coachman would never have succeeded in
stopping them. As it was, they sweated white with fear, and the footman,
shouting to the occupants of the carriage that he could not attend to
the door, ran to their heads after giving a vigorous tug at the house
bell.
A boy, tall and thin, and scantily attired for such weather, who had
taken shelter in the dark portico of the mansion, ran forward to offer
his services at the carriage door. A bundle of evening papers, covered
with a piece of sacking, somewhat impeded the use of his left hand, and,
as it happened, in his right he held a large bun on which he had just
commenced to dine.
Before he could turn the handle the carriage door opened from the
inside. A man sprang out.
"Get out of the way," he said, impatiently, and the newsboy obeyed, glad
that he had not followed his first impulse and flung away the bun.
A vivid flash of lightning made the horses rear and plunge.
"Look sharp, Elf," cried the stranger, in no more cordial tone. "Gather
your wraps and jump out. On a night like this these nervous brutes----"
A peal of thunder that rattled the windows interrupted him. The two
animals reared and backed with one accord. The plucky footman, hanging
onto the crossbars of the bits, was lifted off his feet and banged
violently against the pole. He was forced to let go, and fell,
staggering backward some yards before he dropped. There was a smash of
iron and wood, and the near hind wheel of the carriage jammed against
the curb. A slight scream came from the interior. Certain that the
vehicle would turn over instantly, the man who had alighted slammed the
door and sprang clear. In doing so he tripped over the newsboy and fell
heavily on the pavement. The boy, quicker to note that the breaking of
the pole had given a momentary respite, rushed into the roadway,
throwing away both precious bun and still more precious stock of unsold
papers.
He wrenched the other door open, and shouted:
"This way, madam! Quick!"
"Madam" was quick. She sprang right into his arms, and proved to be a
girl of twelve or thereabouts, dressed all in white, and wrapped in an
ermine cloak.
Over went the carriage with a fearful crash. The coachman managed to
jump from the box into the roadway. He retained the reins and whip in
his grasp, and now, losing his temper, lashed the struggling horses
savagely. This cowed them, and they ceased their antics.
The boy and the girl found themselves standing on the sidewalk, close to
the ruined vehicle.
"You have saved my life!" said the girl, sweetly, and without any trace
of the nervousness which might naturally be expected after such a narrow
escape from a serious accident.
The boy noted that her eyes were large and blue, that she wore a great
shining ornament in her hair, and that she appeared to be dressed in
somewhat fanciful manner, though the big cloak she wore concealed the
details.
The door of the mansion opened, and servants came running out.
Suddenly the boy received a violent blow on the side of the head.
"Confound you!" shouted the man who had fallen on the pavement, "why
didn't you get out of the way when I told you?"
The boy, astounded by such recognition of his timely help, made no
reply, but the girl protested vehemently.
"Oh, uncle," she cried, "why did you strike him? He got me out of the
carriage just before it turned over. He did, indeed!"
Another vivid flash of lightning illumined the scene. It lit up the
group with starling brilliancy. The boy, still somewhat shaken by the
vicious blow, was nevertheless able to see clearly the pale, handsome,
but dissipated features of his enraged assailant, whose evening dress
and immaculate linen were soiled by the black mud of the pavement. The
girl, dainty and fairy-like, a little maid of aristocratic type, and of
a beauty that promised much in later years, was distressed now and
almost tearful.
Through the crowd of frightened servants, augmented by a few daring
pedestrians, a burly policeman, gigantic in waterproof overalls, was
advancing with official bluster.
"What has happened?" he demanded. "Is anybody hurt?"
The man answered:
"My horses were startled by the storm. I jumped out and was endeavoring
to extricate my niece when this wretched boy got in the way."
"Uncle," protested the girl, "you closed the door on me, and the
boy----"
"Shut up!" he growled, curtly. "Go inside the house!"
But his niece shared with him at least one characteristic. She possessed
the family temper.
"I will not go away and let you say things which are untrue. Listen to
me, Mr. Policeman. Lord Vanstone did close the door because he thought
the carriage would turn over on top of him. For some reason the accident
did not happen immediately, and the boy ran round to the other side and
helped me out just in time."
"Confound the brat! I think he was the real cause of the whole affair.
Why was he hiding in my doorway?"
Lord Vanstone was more enraged than ever by the girl's obstinate defense
of her rescuer and her insistence on his own seeming cowardice.
"I was not hiding. I only took shelter from the storm. I tried to help
you because the footman was struggling with the horses. I do not claim
any credit for simply opening a door and helping the young lady to
alight, but I lost both my dinner and my papers in doing so."
Everyone experienced a shock of surprise at hearing the boy's elegant
diction. The policeman was puzzled. He instantly understood the facts,
but dared not browbeat an earl.
"You do not bring any charge against him, my lord?" he said.
But his lordship deigned no reply. He told the coachman to arrange for
the removal of the carriage, grasped his niece by the arm and led her,
still protesting, into the house.
The policeman saw the bundle of papers scattered over the roadway, and,
near them, the partly-eaten bun. After a wrench at his garments he
produced a penny.
"Here," he said to the boy. "Buy another bun and be off. It's a good
job for you the young lady spoke up the way she did."
"She merely told the truth. That man was a liar."
Refusing the proffered penny, the boy turned on his heel. The policeman
looked after him.
"That's a queer kid," he thought. "Talked like a regular young gent. I
wonder why he is selling papers. Poor lad! He lost a bob's worth at
least, and small thanks he got for it."
Passing out of the square by the first eastward street, Philip Anson,
with his head erect and hands clinched in his pockets, strode onward at
a rapid pace. The lightning was less frequent now, and the thunder was
dying away in sullen rumblings. He was wet and hungry. Yet, although he
had three halfpence, the remaining balance of the only sales effected
that evening, he passed many shops where he could have bought food.
In Piccadilly, where the cessation of the storm created a rush of
traffic, he was nearly run over, by reason of his own carelessness, and
received a slash from a whip, accompanied by a loud oath from an angry
cabman. He shivered, but never even looked around. Crossing Trafalgar
Square, he plunged through the vortex of vehicles without troubling to
avoid them in the slightest degree. Once the hot breath of a pair of van
horses touched his cheek while a speechless driver pulled them back onto
their haunches. Again, the off-wheel of an omnibus actually grazed his
heel as he sped behind the statue of Charles the First.
At last he reached the comparative seclusion of the Embankment, and
stood for a moment to gaze fixedly at the swirling, glinting river.
"Not here," he muttered, aloud. "I must be nearer to mother--dear old
mother! She is there, waiting for me."
He trudged steadily away, through Queen Victoria Street, Cornhill,
Leadenhall Street, and so on to Johnson's Mews, in the Mile End Road.
Pausing at a marine store dealer's shop, kept by an army pensioner, an
Irishman, with whom he had a slight acquaintance, he entered. An elderly
man was laboriously reading a paper of the preceding day's date.
"Good-evening, Mr. O'Brien," he said. "Can you oblige me with a piece of
rope? I want a strong piece, about three or four yards in length. I can
only spare three halfpence."
"Faix, I dunno. They use nails on the crates mostly nowadays. If I have
a bit it's at yer sarvice. I wouldn't be afther chargin' the likes o'
you."
Philip's story was known in that humble locality, and the old soldier
sympathized with the boy. "He has rale spunk an' no mistake," was his
verdict when others said Philip was proud and overbearing. O'Brien moved
rheumatically about the squalid shop. At last he found some portion of a
clothesline.
"Will that do?" he inquired.
Philip tested it with vigorous pulling against his knee.
"Excellently," he said. "Let me pay you for it."
"Arrah, go away wid ye. And, be the powers, isn't the poor lad cowld an'
famished. Luke here, now. In five minutes I'm goin' to have a cup o'
tay----"
"I am awfully obliged to you, but I could not touch a morsel. I am in a
hurry."
"Are ye goin' a journey? Have ye got a job?"
"I think so. It looks like a permanency. Good-by."
"Good-by, an' good luck to ye. Sure the boy looks mighty quare. 'Tis
grief for his mother has turned his head entirely."
No words could more clearly express Philip's condition than this
friendly summing up. Since his mother's burial he had been half
demented. His curt, disconnected answers had lost him two places as an
errand boy, which he could easily have secured. His small stock of
money, ridiculously depleted by the generosity with which he met the
open hints of the undertaker's assistants, barely sufficed to keep him
in food for a week. Then he sought employment, but with such stiff upper
lip and haughty indifference to success that he unknowingly turned those
against him who would have assisted him.
For two days he was chosen to act as van boy for a parcel delivery firm.
He earned a few meals, but in a fit of aberration induced by the sight
of a lady who was dressed in a costume similar to one he remembered his
mother wearing at Dieppe, he allowed a ham to be stolen from the rear of
the van. This procured his instant dismissal, with threats. Then he sold
newspapers, only to find that every good site was jealously guarded by a
gang of roughs who mercilessly bullied any newcomer. Personal strength
and courage were unavailing against sheer numbers. His face was still
swollen and his ribs sore as the result of being knocked down and kicked
at Ludgate Circus; at Charing Cross next day he was hustled under the
wheels of an omnibus and narrowly escaped death. So he was driven into
the side streets and the quiet squares, in which, during three or four
days, he managed to earn an average of eightpence daily, which he spent
on food.
Each night he crept back to the poor tenement in Johnson's Mews, his
bleak "home" amidst the solitude of empty stables and warehouses. The
keeper of a coffee stall, touched one night by his woe-begone
appearance, gave him some half-dried coffee grounds in a paper, together
with a handful of crusts.
"Put 'arf that in a pint of water," he said, looking critically at the
soddened mess of coffee, "an' when it comes to a bile let it settle.
It'll surprise you to find 'ow grateful an' comfortin' it tastes on a
cold night. As for the crusts, if you bake 'em over the fire, they're
just as good as the rusks you buy in tins."
This good Samaritan had repeated his gift on two occasions, and Philip
had a fairly large supply of small coal, sent to his mother by the
colliery company, so his position, desperate enough, was yet bearable
had he but sought to accustom himself to the new conditions of life.
There was a chance that his wild broodings would have yielded to the
necessity to earn a living, and that when next a situation was offered
to him he would keep it, but the occurrences of this stormy night had
utterly shaken him for the hour. He was on the verge of lunacy.
As he passed through the dark archway leading to his abode, the desolate
stable yard was fitfully lit by lightning, and in the distance he heard
the faint rumble of thunder. The elemental strife was beginning again.
This was the second and more disastrous outbreak of the evening of March
19th.
Although wet to the skin he was warm now on account of his long and
rapid walk. When he unlocked the door another flash of lightning
revealed the dismal interior. He closed and locked the door behind him.
On the mantelpiece were a farthing candle and some matches. He groped
for them and soon had a light. On other occasions his next task was to
light a fire. By sheer force of habit he gathered together some sticks
and bits of paper and arranged them in the grate. But the task was
irksome to him. It was absurd to seek any degree of comfort for the few
minutes he had to live. Better end it at once. Moreover, the storm was
sweeping up over the East End with such marvelous speed that the
lightning now played through the tiny room with dazzling brilliancy, and
the wretched candle burned with blue and ghostlike feebleness. The cold
of the house, too, began to strike chilly. He was so exhausted from
hunger that if he did not eat soon he would not have the strength left
to carry out his dread purpose.
He sprang erect with a mocking little laugh, picked up the candle and
the piece of rope, and climbed the stairs. He paused irresolutely at the
top, but, yielding to overwhelming desire, went on and stood at the side
of the bed on which his mother had died. He fancied he could see her
lying there still, with a smile on her wan face and unspoken words of
welcome on her lips.
A flood of tears came and he trembled violently.
"I am coming to you, mother," he murmured. "You told me to trust in God,
but I think God has forgotten me. I don't want to live. I want to join
you, and then, perhaps, God will remember me."
He stooped and kissed the pillow, nestling his face against it, as he
was wont to fondle the dear face that rested there so many weary days.
Then he resolutely turned away, descended four steps of the ladder-like
stairs, and tied the clothesline firmly to a hook which had been driven
into the ceiling during the harness-room period of the room beneath.
With equal deliberation he knotted the other end of the cord round his
neck, and he calculated that by springing from the stairs he would
receive sufficient shock to become insensible very quickly, while his
feet would dangle several inches above the floor.
There was a terrible coolness, a settled fixity of purpose far beyond
his years, in the manner of these final preparations. At last they were
completed. He blew out the candle and stood erect.
At that instant the room became absolutely flooded with lightning, not
in a single vivid flash, but in a trembling, continuous glare, that
suggested the effect of some luminous constellation, fierce with
electric energy. Before his eyes was exhibited a startling panorama of
the familiar objects of his lonely abode. The brightness, so sustained
and tremulous, startled him back from the very brink of death.
"I will wait," he said. "When the thunder comes, then I will jump."
Even as the thought formed in his mind, a ball of fire--so glowing, so
iridescent in its flaming heat that it dominated the electric waves
fluttering in the over-burdened air--darted past the little window that
looked out over the tiny yard in the rear of the house, and crashed
through the flagstones with the din of a ten-inch shell.
Philip, elevated on the stairway, distinctly saw the molten splash which
accompanied its impact. He saw the heavy stones riven asunder as if
they were tissue paper, and, from the hole caused by the thunderbolt, or
meteor, came a radiance that sent a spreading shaft of light upward like
the beam of a searchlight. The warmth, too, of the object was almost
overpowering. Were not the surrounding walls constructed of stone and
brick there must have been an immediate outbreak of fire. As it was, the
glass in the windows cracked, and the woodwork began to scorch. In the
same instant a dreadful roll of thunder swept over the locality, and a
deluge of rain, without any further warning, descended.
All this seemed to the wondering boy to be a very long time in passing.
In reality it occupied but a very few seconds. People in the distant
street could not distinguish the crash of the fallen meteor from the
accompanying thunder, and the downpour of rain came in the very nick of
time to prevent the wood in the house and the neighboring factories from
blazing forth into a disastrous fire.
The torrent of water caused a dense volume of steam to generate in the
back yard, and this helped to minimize the strange light shooting up
from the cavity. There was a mad hissing and crackling as the rain
poured over the meteor and gradually dulled its brightness. Pandemonium
raged in that curiously secluded nook.
Amazed and cowed--not by the natural phenomenon he had witnessed, but by
the interpretation he placed on it--the boy unfastened the rope from his
neck.
"Very well, mother," he whispered, aloud. "If it is your wish I will
live. I suppose that God speaks in this way."