The girl from nowhere

The sense that every struggle brings defeat, Because Fate holds no prize to crown success: That all the oracles are dumb, or cheat, Because they have no secret to express:-- That none can pierce the vast black veil uncertain Because there is no light behind the curtain, That all is vanity and nothingness! The City of Dreadful Night.

The curtain rises on an empty stage.

Managers assure those of us who try to write plays nowadays that we must lay our scenes in well-to-do circles if we wish to attract an audience.

The scene before us now has few recommendations, either as a romantic or a tragic background. It is not quite wretched enough to suggest dark deeds; it is not nearly old enough to convey a hint of mystery: it is merely the back parlor of a London lodging-house of the meaner kind.

On a certain murky day in March it lay bare to the eye of anyone who was desirous of exploring.

The street of which it formed a narrow section was small and dreary. The front parlor window of this particular house was discreetly veiled with curtains which had once been white. Between them stood an artificial aspidistra in a ginger-colored pot, envied by some of the other dwellers in the immediate neighborhood.

This front parlor, at the date in question, was unlet. It had folding-doors, affording the sole entrance to a very small room behind, generally let as a bedroom, with the front room as sitting-room. For the past month this back parlor had been tenanted by one who was far too poor to think of needing more than one room in which to starve. Moreover, he was there on the understanding that he would vacate should a better let offer itself.

Had the curtain risen on that back room, the eye would have taken but one glance to feel assured of destitution on the part of the absent occupier. There was a bed, a washstand, a table, a chair. There was a cupboard, the door hanging open on one hinge, revealing the fact that an empty mug formed its sole contents. There was no carpet on the floor, no cloth on the rickety table--the only trace of occupancy was in a penny bottle of ink and a few sheets of paper which lay upon the table.

The smoke-dimmed window looked sheer down upon a mazy labyrinth of railway lines. Day by day trains rumbled by, and sent up each its contribution of soot and grime to choke the atmosphere and darken the unlovely prospect.

This window--it was more correctly a glass door--was open; and without was a mean iron railing, with a flight of corroded steps, which, at the time the house was built, probably led to the garden. The encroaching line had shorn away all the garden, leaving the iron steps overhanging the abyss with a futility that moved to pity the soul of the present occupier when he had a thought to spare from the anguish of his own condition.

So much for the stage. The actor, when at last he made his abrupt appearance, bursting in, as an actor should, dramatically, through the center doors--seemed to have been cast by Nature for a leading part.

He was still young, and somewhat tall; and, though his cheeks were sunken, his eyes rimmed with red, his hair rough, his beard some days old, and his clothes soiled and ragged, he yet kept that air of the dominant race, that carriage of the head and movement of the shoulders that tells of the public school if not the university.

But it was not merely this air of incongruity with environment which made him noticeable. It was a certain atmosphere that clothed him--a peculiar expression which cut him off from any other young man of his age and class--a quality of isolation which hung about him like some poisonous exhalation.

The eyes of the young look forward. Not always with hope or eagerness; sometimes with apprehension, or terror, or anxiety. But, in some wise, they do look forward. Life, whether it be good or bad, is still to come.

This man's eyes had ceased to travel on. He had done with life. He came into the room, as the last flicker of a flame may leap up in burnt paper. Though he still existed, hope and fear were alike dead in him. All was over: he had given up the contest with Fate.

In no sense was he any longer a part of his surroundings. He had severed himself, by an act of will, from the struggle and the fret. His pilgrimage--evil and brief--was ended.

He fastened the folding-doors behind him with deliberation, and, advancing to the table, laid down one or two packages upon it.

The largest of these must have been instantly recognized by any expert as rejected manuscript. Some irate publisher, at the end, probably, of a morning's fruitless search for something worth publishing, had scrawled in blue pencil upon the outside of the parcel: "Why the deuce don't you get your stuff typewritten?" In addition to this derisive question, the title of the bulky package was clearly legible, printed in large ink letters: "THE TRUMPET CALL TO REVOLUTION."

Seating himself by the table, the owner of the despised treasure drew from his pocket a very small bottle, labeled "Laudanum." He rose, searched the mattress of his bed, and extracted from various holes three other small bottles of the same size. Then he produced a paper from his pocket, smoothed it out, and spread it upon the table. A letter, upon good, thick writing-paper, stamped with an address--Normansgrave, Cleveshire.

The writing upon the bluish-tinted sheet was fine and clear:

"DEAR FELIX,--Bearing in mind the circumstances which led to your disgrace, you cannot, I think, upon your first emergence from prison, reasonably expect me to intrust you with money. I have placed a certain sum in the hands of the police-court missionary, with instructions to him to pay you so much a week from it, so as to give you time to seek honest employment. I have made it clear to him that, should you hold any kind of communication with the murderous gang of anarchists who have brought you to this pass, you are to forfeit all further right to your allowance.

"Once again let me entreat you to make a fresh start, and endeavor to atone, by a future of steady work, for the aberrations of your early manhood. Should you show any signs of a real effort to improve, I shall not refuse to receive you here once more as my father's son. But to do so now, before you have proved yourself, would be an injustice both to myself and you.--I remain, your brother, DENZIL VANSTON."

After carefully reading through this letter Felix Vanston took up a sheet of paper from among two or three lying near, and wrote as follows:

"DEAR PHARISEE,--You have sent the publican to his just doom. He goes to it with the publican's old prayer upon his lips. 'God be merciful'--for certainly man is not. You may continue to fast twice in the week and give tithes of all you possess to other objects than your disreputable brother--FELIX."

This letter he folded, addressed, and arranged with the other in the center of the table, marked thus:

"TO BE READ BY THE CORONER AT THE INQUEST ON MY BODY. (N.B.--No room for suspicion of insanity)."

This done, he took his bundle of MS. in his arms and went to the empty grate. Tearing off a few leaves, he pushed them through the bars, produced a box still containing two or three matches, and set them alight. He sat by on the grimy floor tearing off more and feeding the flames with it until the whole book was consumed.

The world, he found, was an oyster that he could not open. He had declined to try the usual kind of knife--that provided by custom for him, in the shape of an office stool. He had imbibed socialistic theories somehow in early boyhood, and his half-brother, Denzil Vanston, had from that moment assured him that he was lost.

The late Squire Vanston, of Normansgrave, had made a foolish second marriage. He had been caught by a designing young woman whom he met at a Brighton hotel. While Felix was still a child, his father died, leaving the widow a life interest in the property. Poor Denzil had cause to feel displeasure. The second Mrs. Vanston filled the house with a crew of very second-rate journalists, music-hall artistes, and sporting men. Her son, Felix, was most imprudently indulged; her stepson, Denzil, had no home as long as she lived. His own mother had been the exact reverse of his father's second wife--a good, rather dull woman, affectionate and sincere, but hard and prim. Denzil, brought up on these lines, was unspeakably shocked by the proceedings which at Normansgrave followed his father's death.

Mrs. Vanston was killed in a carriage accident, after a reckless ten years of very frivolous widowhood. This is putting the case with an extreme mildness, which the inhabitants of the neighborhood might class as euphemism. She died intestate, and was found to have spent the whole of the money which the Squire had left to her, with a view to its coming to Felix after her death. His will bequeathed all the property and all the money, with the exception of this sum, to his elder son. Felix was unprovided for.

At this time he was eighteen years old, and studying at a Continental university. Oxford and Cambridge were not Bohemian enough for him. His brother was willing to make him an allowance, on condition of his qualifying for some profession; and although the only profession for which he would show interest was journalism, and though Denzil profoundly, and perhaps excusably, mistrusted journalism after his experience of his stepmother's set, he did help him, and did make him an allowance, until debts and irregular habits and bad associates convinced him that Felix would do no good until he had actually to work for his living.

Actuated by the best intentions, the elder brother said he would stop supplies until Felix really buckled down to work. The next thing was that the police raided a Dynamite Club in Soho, and Felix was arrested, brought to trial, and convicted. He had served the greater part of his two years' sentence. And now the end had come. At the age of twenty-three Felix Vanston decided that life was not worth living.

It is possible that journalism was not his destined medium. It is certain that nobody would pay him for what he wrote. With hunger comes depression. Moreover, Felix, from the moment when he donned his prison garb, had lost his self-respect. There was nothing to hold him back from the thing he contemplated. He had nothing to lose.

His book was burnt. The incoherent ravings of a boy caught by catchwords, not understanding what he thought or wished or hoped, knowing little, comprehending less--it was all ashes now. The wild heart of him had gone out into its formless sentiments. Nonsense as it was, he had burned with the necessity of expressing it. Now it was gone; and the world finally went out with it. The last flicker, oddly enough, took him back to a boyish episode, when the gardeners had a big bonfire at Normansgrave in the autumn long ago. He saw, as he crouched by the rusty grate, a dream-picture of October woods, rising in billows of color upon the swelling uplands that cradled the old red-brick house. He saw the drift of blue smoke between his eyes and the distance, smelt the aromatic fragrance of burning wood and smoldering leaf. He could feel again the warmth of his big brother's hand as he stood, in his fur and velvet and plumed cap, shouting to Denzil to make it blaze. He saw his mother coming along the garden walk, somewhat hurried. She had a smile for the men who fed the fire, and for the two boys--the little and big--watching. Then she ordered them away. She said Felix must not be out in the cold air. Denzil, kindly enough, tried to draw away the small boy, who, spoilt and uncontrolled, declined to go--stamped, shrieked, and fought. In the midst of his fighting the fire blazed up higher--just near where they were standing. He saw his mother, with a furtive, sweeping look round at the men, whose backs were turned as they lifted more fuel on the flames with a fork--he saw her make a swift movement and fling into the glowing red part of the fire some letters which she had clasped in her hand.