Chapter 2 - Page 2

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-cock 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