Part 25

It added a sharp touch to her slayer’s compassion, that, in regarding her mutilated image, she became the mirror of his own. He saw the parallel between the living and the dead. Every point in this analogy was so perfect that a mental fascination lurked in its rendering. Did the texture of his own fate admit of any more lenient inquiry? He also would have entered his kingdom had he but possessed the little more that meant so much. Were they not both in the beginning the victims of a fine and original talent, for she whom he had slain had been the offspring of a man of the first genius. Her thoughts were his thoughts; her desires were his desires; the tragedy of each had been that their fineness had been immolated upon the altar of its base surroundings; both had failed to scale those precipitous mountain-places from which alone it was possible to stand in true perspective to their own characters.

As he pressed home this analogy with that curious grim subtlety that was always one of his chief pleasures to employ, he began to feel in his own veins that intense desire of hers to live the life that nature had appointed, to discover an ampler, a truer self-expression. How was it possible to arrest those functions that had not had an opportunity to fulfil themselves? There was a ravishing vigor in his blood; he must not perish as a felon, he to whom all things were so full of meaning.

The overwhelming force of these thoughts translated them into action. It had already come to him that to obey his overmastering desire he must conceal his deed. He raised the heavy corpse in his arms; yet powerful as he was it proved too much for him to bear. Therefore he dragged it across the room, and with herculean labor contrived to hoist it on to the bed. He then drew the curtain across to hide it from the view of those who should chance to enter the room. Afterwards he proceeded to ponder the evolution of a means to ensure his own personal security.

He was still engrossed with this occupation when the old charwoman entered his room. She had brought him some clean linen. It was contained in a basket which it was her custom to deposit on a chair behind the curtain at the foot of his bed.

“You can leave it here, Mrs. Brown,” said Northcote, indicating with his finger a place on the floor.

“I had better take it out of the way, sir,” said the old woman. “Besides, I have not made the bed.”

“Never mind the bed,” said Northcote; “that won’t matter at all.”

“Oh, no, sir, it would never do for you not to have your bed made,” said the old woman, in a tone of quiet but determined expostulation.

“I tell you I don’t want it made,” said Northcote. “You can go.”

The tone of his voice seemed to strike the old woman. Formerly he had always been kind and gentle to her; he had never used such a tone to her before.

“Very well, sir,” she said meekly, looking at him with scared eyes.

Still, however, with a perversity which in the circumstances he could only regard as diabolical, she did not go. For suddenly she recollected that the day before she had lost her shawl, and it occurred to her now that it was not at all unlikely that she had left it beneath the bed. It was not in the least probable that she would find it there, but one of those irrational side-currents to mental activity, which science finds so baffling, had suggested to her that she might.

“What do you want now?” cried Northcote, as she moved towards the curtain.

“I want my shawl, sir.”

Her meekness exasperated him beyond endurance.

“Where is your shawl?”

“I think, sir, it might be under the bed.”

Her hand was already stretched towards the curtain. Northcote was standing against his writing-table, and near his elbow was the leaden paper-weight which he used for the destruction of rats. He took it in his hand and poised it in a fashion that would enable him to hurl it with all his force at the back of the old woman’s head.

For some occult reason she withdrew her hand from the curtain, and retired without pulling it back.

“Of course I remember now,” she said. “I lent my shawl to Mary Parker while the snow was about. I have such a bad memory,” she added plaintively.

“There is one little errand I should like you to do for me,” said Northcote, looking at her calmly. “Do you mind fetching me a gallon of paraffin? You can get it at an oilman’s or an ironmonger’s. I am going to try a new kind of fire.”

He handed her half a crown.

“Very good, sir,” said the old woman.

As he listened to her descending the stairs with little toddling steps, he balanced the paper-weight thoughtfully in the palm of his hand.

“Those five grandchildren will never come much nearer to the workhouse, you perverse old woman,” he said with a whimsical laugh.

He had already formed his plan, and like all subtle minds which yearn for a finality which they so seldom obtain, the definiteness of its nature enhanced his capacity for action. He discarded his carpet slippers in favor of boots, and set his hat, gloves, and overcoat in a place where he could take them up immediately. He placed the briefs confided to him by the solicitor carefully in his pocket. There were no other portable objects of value belonging to him except a quantity of large and loose manuscript sheets, numbering some two thousand pages, the “Note towards an Essay on Optimism,” that fruit of six years’ labor. These he collected from divers drawers in the writing-table, and piled them into one upstanding heap.

He stood surveying this proud edifice with a rueful smile when the old woman returned at last, bearing a gallon of paraffin contained in a tin.

“Thank you,” he said, taking it from her. “You may keep the change. If I spoke to you rather roughly just now, I hope you will not mind it. The fact is, I have a great deal of work to get through, and it has made me rather irritable.”

The old charwoman, immensely mollified by the tone in which she was now addressed, thanked him humbly, and after standing a moment irresolutely, in which she further considered the question of how far it would be now expedient to attempt the making of the bed, a daily duty which with all her soul she yearned to perform, decided it would not be politic to reopen the subject. Therefore she retired crestfallen, because she had failed to carry out a régime which was the foremost function of her life; yet a little exalted also by the apology which had been so feelingly rendered to her by one who wore a nimbus; and above all, tremulous with excitement by reason of having ninepence in her pocket which was pure gain, a solid lump of treasure-trove.

As soon as she had gone, Northcote “sported his oak” and locked the door. It was indeed necessary that he should not be disturbed in his labors; and he took elaborate precautions to render them effectual. First he broke up all the chairs he possessed, and strewed the fragments over the corpse. He pulled down the curtains, and flung them upon the pyre. He gathered several armfuls of books of jurisprudence and philosophy, dilapidated articles which had been purchased second-hand, tore them in pieces, and strewed them about. He pulled a wooden box from under the bed, flung out the contents, consisting of old clothes, and having broken up the box into splinters, heaped those up also. Finally, he gathered in his arms that formidable bundle, the “Note towards an Essay on Optimism,” and sprinkled its two thousand leaves upon the sacrifice.

By pressing into service every combustible article the room contained, the pile that he built mounted up to the roof. Having arranged the great mass to his satisfaction, he poured the paraffin over it. He then kindled one of the splinters of the chair into a fagot, and applied the lighted end to one of the saturated blankets of the bed. He then ran to the door, catching up his hat and coat as he did so, and unlocked it. Barely had he time to do this ere the whole of the pyre, under the excitation of the oil, had burst into a sheet of flame. He changed the key, and locked the door after him.

Putting on his hat and coat and gloves he walked down the four flights of stairs, past various open doors with clerks behind them, yet in so doing betrayed neither sign of haste nor discomposure. At the bottom of the last flight he was accosted by an elderly lame man, who bore unmistakable traces of being the clerk of an attorney.

“Can you tell me if Mr. Northcote’s chambers are on the top floor, sir?” he asked courteously.

“My name is Northcote. Can I be of service to you?”

The clerk opened a small bag that he carried, and selecting an oblong piece of paper from among half a dozen similar documents lying within it, handed it to the advocate.

“Messrs. Peberdy, Ward, and Peberdy, No. 3 Shortt’s Yard, sir,” he said.

“Thanks,” said Northcote, placing it in the inner pocket of his overcoat.

At that moment a clerk from one of the upper stories came running down the stairs.

“The place is on fire,” he cried. “The top landing is so full of smoke you can’t go up to it.”

“I thought there was a smell of burning,” said Northcote. “I say, it must be my room!”

“If you are Mr. Northcote, it is certainly your room.”

The advocate turned round hastily, and proceeded to ascend the steep and rickety old stairs. He was turned back, however, as he had anticipated, by other clerks who were running down.

“The place is on fire,” they cried excitedly. “The smoke will choke you.”

XXXIX

WITHOUT FEAR AND WITHOUT STAIN

Northcote made no further show of resistance to the inevitable, but accompanied the excited clerks into Fleet Street. The window of his room abutting on to it had already attracted the notice of the crowd that thronged its pavements. By the time he had crossed to the other side of the road and had taken up his stand with the knot of spectators that was rapidly assembling at the end of a bystreet, the smoke had increased considerably in volume.

“Not much doubt about there being a fire,” was the verdict of those around him.

The bunch of witnesses in the side street increased every instant. Persons riding on the outsides of the omnibuses stood up to look. Policemen on point-duty came out of the press of the traffic to gaze with concern and inquiry at the smoke which now was belching forth in a black mass.

“Must ha’ begun in the chimbley,” said one of Northcote’s neighbors, a man without a collar. “That’s soot.”

“It’s Pearmain’s Hotel,” said another.

“No,” said a third, “it’s Shepherd’s Inn.”

“If it’s Shepherd’s Inn it will take it all,” said a fourth. “It has been condemned by the County Council for the past two years. It is so crazy it can hardly stand up in a gale.”

“It is rotten and rat-ridden from top to bottom. It must be five hundred years old.”

“Five ’undred me leg,” said the man without a collar. “It ain’t more than two.”

“Lord Bacon lived in it, anyway.”

“Wot if he did? I tell you it ain’t more than two.”

The controversialist spat on the pavement authoritatively, and those who surrounded him, who knew he was wrong, deferred to his opinion humbly.

“There’s the flame,” said a quiet man excitedly. “Why don’t they bring the engines?”

“They want it to get a firm ’old,” said the man without a collar, “so that they can put it out in style.”

“They will have something to go at when they do come,” said a nervous man, who wore spectacles. “There it goes through the roof. Look, look, see that!”

There could be no measure of uncertainty as to the power the fire had acquired already. Smoke and flame were pouring and leaping out of the windows and through the old red tiles into the dull December sky. A stern joy held Northcote as he gazed. Every instant of delay increased his chance. It needed a holocaust to ensure his safety. He derived that thrill of impersonal satisfaction which visits a good craftsman when a work is placed before him which has been adequately planned and executed.

“The engines ought to have been round from Fenchurch Street afore now,” said one, whose mustache bristled like that of a county councillor.

“Fenchurch Street, did yer sye?” said the man without a collar. “Lord love me, they’ll send ’em round from ’Olborn.”

“They are taking a lifetime about it,” said the nervous man in a voice of intense anxiety.

However, at that moment there sounded a curious rattle of warning; policemen came running up, and immediately afterwards came the first of the engines. The crowd was now dense and the traffic was impeded. In the next few moments it had been stopped altogether and diverted into side streets. By now a large posse of constables had appeared, and they succeeded in clearing a space in which the firemen could carry out their operations. Before the hose had been placed in position two other engines had arrived.

Northcote had managed to place himself in an admirable situation among the excited throng; and although those in front of him were somewhat roughly thrust back by the police, he was able to maintain his coign of vantage. By the time the first spray of water had been flung upon the conflagration, it had not only burnt through his room into the story beneath, but also it had spread some twenty yards along the tiles.

“If it takes to burning down, it will be awkward,” said a voice near him.

“How it is spreading! They will find it difficult to keep it off the hotel.”

Northcote, in the midst of the frenzy of destruction that possessed him, now grew conscious that a hand had gripped his arm. He managed to turn his head sideways and discovered that his old schoolfellow, Hutton, was standing next to him.

“This crazy old hole has been waiting for this,” said Hutton. “It burns like tinder. If there are any poor devils who keep there, I pity them.”

“I’m one,” said Northcote quietly.

“Well, I call that really bad luck,” said his old schoolfellow fervently. “Upon my word, it will take the whole place.”

“Job’s comforter,” said Northcote.

“I say though, it is a blaze! By Jove, it has got into the hotel! It will take half Fleet Street if they don’t look out.”

“More engines,” said Northcote with satisfaction, as their hideous rattles pierced the air. “Well, they will all be wanted.”

“I say, though,” said his companion, with the growing excitement of his surroundings communicating itself to him, “this is going to be really awful. It has got down another story, and it is certainly in the hotel, and if they don’t look out it will be in the bank.”

Although half a dozen engines had arrived by this time and the supply of water was copious, the fire had spread on all sides with such alarming rapidity that the liquid sheets that were flung upon it seemed only to increase the virulence of the flames. The surrounding buildings were all more or less decrepit, while the old inn itself had not the slightest resistance to offer to the flames. The whole of its quadrangular roof, most of which lay behind, appeared, as far as the onlookers could discern, by now to be involved.

“There is something strange, fascinating, exhilarating,” said Northcote with a thrill of exaltation in his voice, “in witnessing a really great fire. The fire of London must have been the finest sight the world ever saw.”

“You don’t appear to mind very much about your rooms, I must say,” said his companion. “If I were looking on at the destruction of my goods and chattels and the roof that protects my head, I don’t think I should be able to raise much enthusiasm for the spectacle.”

“It will probably take half Fleet Street. What is my wretched little attic in comparison with that?”

“Somehow in the circumstances I don’t think I could play the philosopher myself.”

“It is all up with the hotel,” said Northcote. “It will be into a few of these newspaper offices before long. Conceive a holocaust that places the press of England in danger! Ha, ha, there goes the roof of my room!”

“Why, that is where the fire began! You don’t mean to say the fire began in your room?”

“Yes, that is where the fire began.”

“No! How did it begin? Were you in it when it started?”

“Yes, I was in it when it started.”

“No!”

“I started it myself.”

“Did you overturn a lamp? Or did it begin in the chimney?”

“Well, if you must know,” said Northcote, “you shall hear the true facts. A lady called upon me last evening, and very kindly stayed the night. But this morning when I wanted to turn her out she refused to go. And further, she showed temper and made herself distinctly objectionable. Therefore I lost patience with her, and being a man of my hands I twisted her neck. But when I had managed to do that--by Jove, it is into the bank! we shall soon be able to reckon the damage by a cool million and it has only just begun!--but when I had managed to twist her neck, the question arose how to get rid of her remains. You see to have her unvirtuous person found in my room would not help this career at the bar I am just about to begin. How could I get rid of the body, that was the question? Now mark the really fertile mind of genius. Why not burn down the whole place? And that, you see, is exactly what I have done, although I will admit the idea is a plagiary from that excellent old author, Charles Lamb. You remember his Chinaman who burnt down the house of his parents every time he wanted to eat roast pig?”

“Well, North, you have a pretty mind, I must say,” said his companion to whom this recital, in the circumstances which attended it, had afforded keen amusement. “But you were always a bit of a lunatic at school. Now if you had tried to persuade me that you had insured your furniture, and that you had fired your place to keep out an execution, I might have tried to swallow it.”

“That is mediocrity all over, my son,” said Northcote, linking his arm through that of his companion. “It is always craving for hard facts. It cries aloud for hard facts; they are the staff of its life, its daily bread, but you have only to present hard facts to it in a somewhat unconventional form--my God, look at the bank!--in a somewhat unconventional form, and it flings them back in your face and asks you what you take it for.”

“My dear old lunatic, what _are_ you talking about?”

“Merely this. Your alternative of the insurance company and the furniture is ingenious but lacking in comprehensiveness. The insurance company would, after the fashion of insurance companies, have insisted on an investigation into the cause of the disaster; they might even have preferred a charge against me to save themselves a few wretched shillings; litigation would almost certainly have ensued--there goes the roof of the hotel!--and litigation which touches myself is the last thing I should be willing to risk.”

“All this is very elaborate, North, but it is hardly convincing. Why are you so unwilling to risk litigation when your whole life--and a rather important one I expect--will be bound up in it?”

“The less my name is associated in the public mind with any shady transaction the better for my career.”

“A point of honor, North. You always had the reputation at school of being rather nice about it.”

“To be frank, it is a point of expedience, my son. Henceforward you will find the notorious ‘Cad’ Northcote without fear and without stain.”

“Why?”

“Why! Because one of these days they will make him a judge.”

THE END.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.