Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (387 page)

It was then the height of the season and the summer; the weather was serene and cloudless; and as he paced under the blinded houses and along the vacant streets, the chill of the dawn had fled, and some of the warmth and all the brightness of the July day already shone upon the city.  He walked at first in a profound abstraction, bitterly reviewing and repenting his performances at whist; but as he advanced into the labyrinth of the south-west, his ear was gradually mastered by the silence.  Street after street looked down upon his solitary figure, house after house echoed upon his passage with a ghostly jar, shop after shop displayed its shuttered front and its commercial legend; and meanwhile he steered his course, under day’s effulgent dome and through this encampment of diurnal sleepers, lonely as a ship.

‘Here,’ he reflected, ‘if I were like my scatter-brained companion, here were indeed the scene where I might look for an adventure.  Here, in broad day, the streets are secret as in the blackest night of January, and in the midst of some four million sleepers, solitary as the woods of Yucatan.  If I but raise my voice I could summon up the number of an army, and yet the grave is not more silent than this city of sleep.’

He was still following these quaint and serious musings when he came into a street of more mingled ingredients than was common in the quarter.  Here, on the one hand, framed in walls and the green tops of trees, were several of those discreet,
bijou
residences on which propriety is apt to look askance.  Here, too, were many of the brick-fronted barracks of the poor; a plaster cow, perhaps, serving as ensign to a dairy, or a ticket announcing the business of the mangler.  Before one such house, that stood a little separate among walled gardens, a cat was playing with a straw, and Challoner paused a moment, looking on this sleek and solitary creature, who seemed an emblem of the neighbouring peace.  With the cessation of the sound of his own steps the silence fell dead; the house stood smokeless: the blinds down, the whole machinery of life arrested; and it seemed to Challoner that he should hear the breathing of the sleepers.

As he so stood, he was startled by a dull and jarring detonation from within.  This was followed by a monstrous hissing and simmering as from a kettle of the bigness of St. Paul’s; and at the same time from every chink of door and window spirted an ill-smelling vapour.  The cat disappeared with a cry.  Within the lodging-house feet pounded on the stairs; the door flew back, emitting clouds of smoke; and two men and an elegantly dressed young lady tumbled forth into the street and fled without a word.  The hissing had already ceased, the smoke was melting in the air, the whole event had come and gone as in a dream, and still Challoner was rooted to the spot.  At last his reason and his fear awoke together, and with the most unwonted energy he fell to running.

Little by little this first dash relaxed, and presently he had resumed his sober gait and begun to piece together, out of the confused report of his senses, some theory of the occurrence.  But the occasion of the sounds and stench that had so suddenly assailed him, and the strange conjunction of fugitives whom he had seen to issue from the house, were mysteries beyond his plummet.  With an obscure awe he considered them in his mind, continuing, meanwhile, to thread the web of streets, and once more alone in morning sunshine.

In his first retreat he had entirely wandered; and now, steering vaguely west, it was his luck to light upon an unpretending street, which presently widened so as to admit a strip of gardens in the midst.  Here was quite a stir of birds; even at that hour, the shadow of the leaves was grateful; instead of the burnt atmosphere of cities, there was something brisk and rural in the air; and Challoner paced forward, his eyes upon the pavement and his mind running upon distant scenes, till he was recalled, upon a sudden, by a wall that blocked his further progress.  This street, whose name I have forgotten, is no thoroughfare.

He was not the first who had wandered there that morning; for as he raised his eyes with an agreeable deliberation, they alighted on the figure of a girl, in whom he was struck to recognise the third of the incongruous fugitives.  She had run there, seemingly, blindfold; the wall had checked her career: and being entirely wearied, she had sunk upon the ground beside the garden railings, soiling her dress among the summer dust.  Each saw the other in the same instant of time; and she, with one wild look, sprang to her feet and began to hurry from the scene.

Challoner was doubly startled to meet once more the heroine of his adventure, and to observe the fear with which she shunned him.  Pity and alarm, in nearly equal forces, contested the possession of his mind; and yet, in spite of both, he saw himself condemned to follow in the lady’s wake.  He did so gingerly, as fearing to increase her terrors; but, tread as lightly as he might, his footfalls eloquently echoed in the empty street.  Their sound appeared to strike in her some strong emotion; for scarce had he begun to follow ere she paused.  A second time she addressed herself to flight; and a second time she paused.  Then she turned about, and with doubtful steps and the most attractive appearance of timidity, drew near to the young man.  He on his side continued to advance with similar signals of distress and bashfulness.  At length, when they were but some steps apart, he saw her eyes brim over, and she reached out both her hands in eloquent appeal.

‘Are you an English gentleman?’ she cried.

The unhappy Challoner regarded her with consternation.  He was the spirit of fine courtesy, and would have blushed to fail in his devoirs to any lady; but, in the other scale, he was a man averse from amorous adventures.  He looked east and west; but the houses that looked down upon this interview remained inexorably shut; and he saw himself, though in the full glare of the day’s eye, cut off from any human intervention.  His looks returned at last upon the suppliant.  He remarked with irritation that she was charming both in face and figure, elegantly dressed and gloved; a lady undeniable; the picture of distress and innocence; weeping and lost in the city of diurnal sleep.

‘Madam,’ he said, ‘I protest you have no cause to fear intrusion; and if I have appeared to follow you, the fault is in this street, which has deceived us both.’  An unmistakable relief appeared upon the lady’s face.  ‘I might have guessed it!’ she exclaimed.  ‘Thank you a thousand times!  But at this hour, in this appalling silence, and among all these staring windows, I am lost in terrors — oh, lost in them!’ she cried, her face blanching at the words.  ‘I beg you to lend me your arm,’ she added with the loveliest, suppliant inflection.  ‘I dare not go alone; my nerve is gone — I had a shock, oh, what a shock!  I beg of you to be my escort.’

‘My dear madam,’ responded Challoner heavily, ‘my arm is at your service.’

‘She took it and clung to it for a moment, struggling with her sobs; and the next, with feverish hurry, began to lead him in the direction of the city.  One thing was plain, among so much that was obscure: it was plain her fears were genuine.  Still, as she went, she spied around as if for dangers; and now she would shiver like a person in a chill, and now clutch his arm in hers.  To Challoner her terror was at once repugnant and infectious; it gained and mastered, while it still offended him; and he wailed in spirit and longed for release.

‘Madam,’ he said at last, ‘I am, of course, charmed to be of use to any lady; but I confess I was bound in a direction opposite to that you follow, and a word of explanation — ’

‘Hush!’ she sobbed, ‘not here — not here!’

The blood of Challoner ran cold.  He might have thought the lady mad; but his memory was charged with more perilous stuff; and in view of the detonation, the smoke and the flight of the ill-assorted trio, his mind was lost among mysteries.  So they continued to thread the maze of streets in silence, with the speed of a guilty flight, and both thrilling with incommunicable terrors.  In time, however, and above all by their quick pace of walking, the pair began to rise to firmer spirits; the lady ceased to peer about the corners; and Challoner, emboldened by the resonant tread and distant figure of a constable, returned to the charge with more of spirit and directness.

‘I thought,’ said he, in the tone of conversation, ‘that I had indistinctly perceived you leaving a villa in the company of two gentlemen.’

‘Oh!’ she said, ‘you need not fear to wound me by the truth.  You saw me flee from a common lodging-house, and my companions were not gentlemen.  In such a case, the best of compliments is to be frank.’

‘I thought,’ resumed Challoner, encouraged as much as he was surprised by the spirit of her reply, ‘to have perceived, besides, a certain odour.  A noise, too — I do not know to what I should compare it — ’

‘Silence!’ she cried.  ‘You do not know the danger you invoke.  Wait, only wait; and as soon as we have left those streets, and got beyond the reach of listeners, all shall be explained.  Meanwhile, avoid the topic.  What a sight is this sleeping city!’ she exclaimed; and then, with a most thrilling voice, ‘“Dear God,” she quoted, “the very houses seem asleep, and all that mighty heart is lying still.”‘

‘I perceive, madam,’ said he, ‘you are a reader.’

‘I am more than that,’ she answered, with a sigh.  ‘I am a girl condemned to thoughts beyond her age; and so untoward is my fate, that this walk upon the arm of a stranger is like an interlude of peace.’

They had come by this time to the neighbourhood of the Victoria Station and here, at a street corner, the young lady paused, withdrew her arm from Challoner’s, and looked up and down as though in pain or indecision.  Then, with a lovely change of countenance, and laying her gloved hand upon his arm —

‘What you already think of me,’ she said, ‘I tremble to conceive; yet I must here condemn myself still further.  Here I must leave you, and here I beseech you to wait for my return.  Do not attempt to follow me or spy upon my actions.  Suspend yet awhile your judgment of a girl as innocent as your own sister; and do not, above all, desert me.  Stranger as you are, I have none else to look to.  You see me in sorrow and great fear; you are a gentleman, courteous and kind: and when I beg for a few minutes’ patience, I make sure beforehand you will not deny me.’

Challoner grudgingly promised; and the young lady, with a grateful eye-shot, vanished round the corner.  But the force of her appeal had been a little blunted; for the young man was not only destitute of sisters, but of any female relative nearer than a great-aunt in Wales.  Now he was alone, besides, the spell that he had hitherto obeyed began to weaken; he considered his behaviour with a sneer; and plucking up the spirit of revolt, he started in pursuit.  The reader, if he has ever plied the fascinating trade of the noctambulist, will not be unaware that, in the neighbourhood of the great railway centres, certain early taverns inaugurate the business of the day.  It was into one of these that Challoner, coming round the corner of the block, beheld his charming companion disappear.  To say he was surprised were inexact, for he had long since left that sentiment behind him.  Acute disgust and disappointment seized upon his soul; and with silent oaths, he damned this commonplace enchantress.  She had scarce been gone a second, ere the swing-doors reopened, and she appeared again in company with a young man of mean and slouching attire.  For some five or six exchanges they conversed together with an animated air; then the fellow shouldered again into the tap; and the young lady, with something swifter than a walk, retraced her steps towards Challoner.  He saw her coming, a miracle of grace; her ankle, as she hurried, flashing from her dress; her movements eloquent of speed and youth; and though he still entertained some thoughts of flight, they grew miserably fainter as the distance lessened.  Against mere beauty he was proof: it was her unmistakable gentility that now robbed him of the courage of his cowardice.  With a proved adventuress he had acted strictly on his right; with one who, in spite of all, he could not quite deny to be a lady, he found himself disarmed.  At the very corner from whence he had spied upon her interview, she came upon him, still transfixed, and — ’Ah!’ she cried, with a bright flush of colour.  ‘Ah!  Ungenerous!’

The sharpness of the attack somewhat restored the Squire of Dames to the possession of himself.

‘Madam,’ he returned, with a fair show of stoutness, ‘I do not think that hitherto you can complain of any lack of generosity; I have suffered myself to be led over a considerable portion of the metropolis; and if I now request you to discharge me of my office of protector, you have friends at hand who will be glad of the succession.’

She stood a moment dumb.

‘It is well,’ she said.  ‘Go! go, and may God help me!  You have seen me — me, an innocent girl! fleeing from a dire catastrophe and haunted by sinister men; and neither pity, curiosity, nor honour move you to await my explanation or to help in my distress.  Go!’ she repeated.  ‘I am lost indeed.’  And with a passionate gesture she turned and fled along the street.

Challoner observed her retreat and disappear, an almost intolerable sense of guilt contending with the profound sense that he was being gulled.  She was no sooner gone than the first of these feelings took the upper hand; he felt, if he had done her less than justice, that his conduct was a perfect model of the ungracious; the cultured tone of her voice, her choice of language, and the elegant decorum of her movements, cried out aloud against a harsh construction; and between penitence and curiosity he began slowly to follow in her wake.  At the corner he had her once more full in view.  Her speed was failing like a stricken bird’s.  Even as he looked, she threw her arm out gropingly, and fell and leaned against the wall.  At the spectacle, Challoner’s fortitude gave way.  In a few strides he overtook her and, for the first time removing his hat, assured her in the most moving terms of his entire respect and firm desire to help her.  He spoke at first unheeded; but gradually it appeared that she began to comprehend his words; she moved a little, and drew herself upright; and finally, as with a sudden movement of forgiveness, turned on the young man a countenance in which reproach and gratitude were mingled.  ‘Ah, madam,’ he cried, ‘use me as you will!’  And once more, but now with a great air of deference, he offered her the conduct of his arm.  She took it with a sigh that struck him to the heart; and they began once more to trace the deserted streets.  But now her steps, as though exhausted by emotion, began to linger on the way; she leaned the more heavily upon his arm; and he, like the parent bird, stooped fondly above his drooping convoy.  Her physical distress was not accompanied by any failing of her spirits; and hearing her strike so soon into a playful and charming vein of talk, Challoner could not sufficiently admire the elasticity of his companion’s nature.  ‘Let me forget,’ she had said, ‘for one half hour, let me forget;’ and sure enough, with the very word, her sorrows appeared to be forgotten.  Before every house she paused, invented a name for the proprietor, and sketched his character: here lived the old general whom she was to marry on the fifth of the next month, there was the mansion of the rich widow who had set her heart on Challoner; and though she still hung wearily on the young man’s arm, her laughter sounded low and pleasant in his ears.  ‘Ah,’ she sighed, by way of commentary, ‘in such a life as mine I must seize tight hold of any happiness that I can find.’