Lord Arthur Savile's Crime

Chapter 2

Ten minutes later, with face blanched by terror, and eyes wild with

grief, Lord Arthur Savile rushed from Bentinck House, crushing his

way through the crowd of fur-coated footmen that stood round the

large striped awning, and seeming not to see or hear anything. The

night was bitter cold, and the gas-lamps round the square flared and

flickered in the keen wind; but his hands were hot with fever, and

his forehead burned like fire. On and on he went, almost with the

gait of a drunken man. A policeman looked curiously at him as he

passed, and a beggar, who slouched from an archway to ask for alms,

grew frightened, seeing misery greater than his own. Once he

stopped under a lamp, and looked at his hands. He thought he could

detect the stain of blood already upon them, and a faint cry broke

from his trembling lips.

Murder! that is what the cheiromantist had seen there. Murder! The

very night seemed to know it, and the desolate wind to howl it in

his ear. The dark corners of the streets were full of it. It

grinned at him from the roofs of the houses.

First he came to the Park, whose sombre woodland seemed to fascinate

him. He leaned wearily up against the railings, cooling his brow

against the wet metal, and listening to the tremulous silence of the

trees. 'Murder! murder!' he kept repeating, as though iteration

could dim the horror of the word. The sound of his own voice made

him shudder, yet he almost hoped that Echo might hear him, and wake

the slumbering city from its dreams. He felt a mad desire to stop

the casual passer-by, and tell him everything.

Then he wandered across Oxford Street into narrow, shameful alleys.

Two women with painted faces mocked at him as he went by. From a

dark courtyard came a sound of oaths and blows, followed by shrill

screams, and, huddled upon a damp door-step, he saw the crook-backed

forms of poverty and eld. A strange pity came over him. Were these

children of sin and misery predestined to their end, as he to his?

Were they, like him, merely the puppets of a monstrous show?

And yet it was not the mystery, but the comedy of suffering that

struck him; its absolute uselessness, its grotesque want of meaning.

How incoherent everything seemed! How lacking in all harmony! He

was amazed at the discord between the shallow optimism of the day,

and the real facts of existence. He was still very young.

After a time he found himself in front of Marylebone Church. The

silent roadway looked like a long riband of polished silver, flecked

here and there by the dark arabesques of waving shadows. Far into

the distance curved the line of flickering gas-lamps, and outside a

little walled-in house stood a solitary hansom, the driver asleep

inside. He walked hastily in the direction of Portland Place, now

and then looking round, as though he feared that he was being

followed. At the corner of Rich Street stood two men, reading a

small bill upon a hoarding. An odd feeling of curiosity stirred

him, and he crossed over. As he came near, the word 'Murder,'

printed in black letters, met his eye. He started, and a deep flush

came into his cheek. It was an advertisement offering a reward for

any information leading to the arrest of a man of medium height,

between thirty and forty years of age, wearing a billy-c**k hat, a

black coat, and check trousers, and with a scar upon his right

cheek. He read it over and over again, and wondered if the wretched

man would be caught, and how he had been scarred. Perhaps, some

day, his own name might be placarded on the walls of London. Some

day, perhaps, a price would be set on his head also.

The thought made him sick with horror. He turned on his heel, and

hurried on into the night.

Where he went he hardly knew. He had a dim memory of wandering

through a labyrinth of sordid houses, of being lost in a giant web

of sombre streets, and it was bright dawn when he found himself at

last in Piccadilly Circus. As he strolled home towards Belgrave

Square, he met the great waggons on their way to Covent Garden. The

white-smocked carters, with their pleasant sunburnt faces and coarse

curly hair, strode sturdily on, cracking their whips, and calling

out now and then to each other; on the back of a huge grey horse,

the leader of a jangling team, sat a chubby boy, with a bunch of

primroses in his battered hat, keeping tight hold of the mane with

his little hands, and laughing; and the great piles of vegetables

looked like masses of jade against the morning sky, like masses of

green jade against the pink petals of some marvellous rose. Lord

Arthur felt curiously affected, he could not tell why. There was

something in the dawn's delicate loveliness that seemed to him

inexpressibly pathetic, and he thought of all the days that break in

beauty, and that set in storm. These rustics, too, with their

rough, good-humoured voices, and their nonchalant ways, what a

strange London they saw! A London free from the sin of night and

the smoke of day, a pallid, ghost-like city, a desolate town of

tombs! He wondered what they thought of it, and whether they knew

anything of its splendour and its shame, of its fierce, fiery-

coloured joys, and its horrible hunger, of all it makes and mars

from morn to eve. Probably it was to them merely a mart where they

brought their fruits to sell, and where they tarried for a few hours

at most, leaving the streets still silent, the houses still asleep.

It gave him pleasure to watch them as they went by. Rude as they

were, with their heavy, hob-nailed shoes, and their awkward gait,

they brought a little of a ready with them. He felt that they had

lived with Nature, and that she had taught them peace. He envied

them all that they did not know.

By the time he had reached Belgrave Square the sky was a faint blue,

and the birds were beginning to twitter in the gardens.