The Last Call: A Romance (Vol. 1 of 3)

"Vernon and Son bankrupt. See about your money at once. Am ill, and cannot go over."

When the telegram reached London it was delivered to a young woman of twenty years of age, who grew pale and flushed, and flushed and pale again, upon reading it. "What?" she cried, "Dominique ill. My darling suffering and I not near him. I will leave to-night for Glengowra. Stop! I must get money somewhere first. I have none, not a penny-the attorney told me he would have my money to-day. These people are pressing me for the rent. They are hateful creatures. I will go to the solicitor at once. I can pay what I owe then, and go over by to-night's mail." She put on her things. The landlady was waiting in the hall. The landlady would feel obliged if Miss Harrington would give her the rent now, before going out. She really must insist on being paid now. She could not afford to give six weeks' credit, and she had had an application for the rooms. There were six guineas for the rooms and ten guineas for meat and drink, sixteen in all. Would Miss Harrington pay or leave, please? Miss Harrington would pay upon her return from her solicitor. Oh, that old story about the solicitor! People could not go on believing this old tale for ever. If Miss Harrington did not bring the money with her, she need not come back that day. Whatever she had upstairs would not pay half the bill, and indeed Miss Harrington ought not to go out with her watch and chain and leave struggling people so pressed for money. The tears were now falling fast from the young girl's eyes. She was alone, friendless, in London. She had not a coin in her possession. She took off her watch and chain and laid them silently upon the hall table. She made a great effort at self-control, and said, pointing to the third finger of her left hand: "I have nothing else of value but this. Shall I leave it also? It was given to me by one very dear to me." "It would help," said the landlady, "and I have my husband and children to think of." Then she took off the ring-his ring-the ring he had given her to wear until he gave her a simpler one with a holier meaning. She put the ring down on the table beside the watch and chain. Then her heart hardened against this woman, and no more tears came, and bowing slightly she said good-bye and left the place, meaning never to return. She went to her solicitor's. He was away. Would his managing clerk do? Yes, anyone who could give her information about her affairs. The managing clerk had bad news-it was terrible news indeed. They had not been able to get the money from Vernon and Son. Vernon and Son were bankrupts according to to-day's reports, and all her money was gone. Would there be none of it coming to her? No. Owing to the way in which the money was lent there was no chance of getting any back. Then she left the office, homeless, friendless, penniless. She had not even a shilling to telegraph to him-her Dominique. Whither should she go? Where should she turn? To the river.

CHAPTER VII

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.

CHAPTER VIII

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.

CHAPTER IX

St. Prisca's Tower stands alone in Porter Street, hard by the Thames, on the Middlesex side, and between Blackfriars Bridge and the Tower of London. It is all that now remains, all that remained on that night, of St. Prisca's Church. City improvements had swept away the main portion of the building, and on that silent summer night, when that man descended from the leads of the tower, this square structure rose up, a mighty isolated shaft, two hundred feet above the pavement of the street and the three small alleys which skirted its other sides. In a short time after the voice ceased finally on the roof, the figure of a man-Lionel Crawford-emerged from the gloomy darkness of the tower door, and stood in the light of the lamp. Lionel Crawford was a man of sixty-five years of age, bent in the shoulders, and a little feeble in the legs. His walk was shuffling and uncertain, but still he seemed capable of great physical effort, if he chose to exert himself. His face was dark, and of a leathery colour. His eyes were dark, almost black, and protruded a little. His mouth was large, the lips full and heavy, the teeth still white and sound. The forehead was broad and high, and strongly marked with wrinkles, perpendicular and horizontal, dividing the forehead into four parts. Two smooth, wide, arch-shaped spaces stood up over the brows, and above them, slightly retreating, two smooth convex expanses. His hands were large, ill-made, knotty. In the lamp-light he took off the soft felt hat he was wearing and disclosed a head bald to the apex, but having still around its lower edges and behind a thick covering of curly black hair. He was dressed in clothes which had been those of a gentleman at one time, but were now nothing more than the meanest device for covering the body and keeping it warm. When Lionel Crawford had stood in the light of the lamp for a short time he drew himself up to his full height, inflated his lungs, and looked around defiantly. To judge by his face, defiance was an attitude familiar to his mind. But here was no one to see it, only the callous walls, the imperturbable night. From the top of the tower he had marked the way taken by the woman. It was a continuation of the narrow alley into which the door of the tower opened. It led directly to the river, and in order to reach it from where he stood it was necessary to cross Porter Street. Once more the measured tread of the policeman was heard approaching. Lionel Crawford drew himself back into the deep doorway of the tower, and waited until the footsteps had passed the end of the alley and died away in the distance. Then he issued forth, turned to his left out of the doorway, crossed Porter Street with a brisk step, and plunged into the narrow way the woman had taken. Before he had gone ten yards the place became as dark as a vault; it was impossible to see a yard ahead, and only that he knew the place well, he could not have proceeded without feeling his way. No ordinary man in an ordinary state of mind would, at such an hour, venture into that narrow, dark, forbidding way. But Lionel Crawford was an exceptional man, in an abnormal state of mind. From the time he left the top of the tower until he obliterated himself in the darkness, his mind had been in a dull lethargic state. He fully intended putting an end to his existence that night. That was his only thought. He should walk down to the end of that narrow lane. At the end of that narrow lane was a wharf, and from the edge of this wharf to the surface of the water he had only a few feet to fall. Then all would be as good as over, for he could not swim, and it was not likely-the chance was one to a thousand-there would be anyone there to attempt a rescue. Notwithstanding his familiarity with the place, he abated his pace a little and walked more with his old shuffling gait than when he had the light to guide him. All at once he stumbled and fell. "What is this!" he cried, as he tried to rise. His feet were entangled in something soft, which yielded this way and that, and for a while hindered him from rising. At last he rose, and leaning against the wall for breath, rubbed the sweat from his forehead. His faculties were numbed, and for a few moments he scarcely knew where he was or whither he had been going. The first thing he clearly recalled was that he had entered Winter Lane. Then he realised the fact that in the dark he had tripped over something now lying at his feet. "But," he thought, "what can be here? What can be lying here at such an hour? I was down here to-day and the place was clear. Now I remember I had intended going to the river. I had calculated on no one being at hand to prevent me. Fool that I was! How could I have forgotten the watchman of the wharf. I dared not throw into the river the stones I get up with so much labour, lest he might hear me and hand me over to the police." He now was standing over what had tripped him. He stooped down and felt carefully, slowly, around him. His hand touched a face-a smooth, beardless face-the hat of a woman. What was this? A woman lying prostrate here, and at such an hour. He seized the form by the shoulders, and shook it. "What are you doing here?" he said. "Wake up. What are you doing here?" There was a slight motion in the form of the woman. She made an effort to rise. He helped her. "What do you mean, woman," he said angrily, "by going to sleep in such a place at such a time, and tripping up an old man who is on his way to-his Friend?" The woman answered in a feeble voice: "I don't remember exactly how it was. I did not go to sleep. I think I must have fainted." "But this is no place for you to be, woman, at this hour of night." "I did not mean to stop here," she said. "I meant to go to-the River." "You meant to go to the River-to my friend, the River? So did I. You faint and trip me up. That may be an omen of good luck to both of us. Come, although there is neither rain nor wind I feel in better humour now. Are you hungry?" "I have no friend-no money." "Are you young?" "Twenty years of age." "Too young to think of death. Come with me. It cannot have been a mere accident that brought us two together. Come with me, my child. I am old enough to be your grandfather. Stop!" he cried, suddenly. "What is that? Did you notice anything?" "No," answered the woman feebly. "Do you know it rains?" he said. The tone of despondency at once left his voice, and was succeeded by one of exultation. "I told you," he said, "we did not meet for nothing. I have been praying and cursing for rain. I meet you, and here the rain is. Twenty," he said, "and tired of life! Nay, nay; that will not do. You have a sweetheart? I was young myself once." "Yes." "And he is false?" "No, no. He is ill and poor." "I am alone, old, childless, friendless. You have stopped me on my way to the river, and brought the rain. One day, at any hour, I may be rich. If I live to win my gold, I shall share with you and your lad. It would be a piteous thing that a sweetheart of twenty should die. Come with me; cheer up and come with me." He drew her arm through his and led her in the direction of the tower. "Sweetheart," he said, "it makes one young again to think of saving love. I cannot see your face or figure; but all are sweethearts at twenty. What is his name?" "He is French," said she. "French! What is his name?" "Dominique Lavirotte." "Dominique Lavirotte!"