‘Heaven have mercy on us all, for we have need of mercy!’ exclaimed Robert, in a tone which betrayed the emotion that he felt, and leaning with his elbows on the table, he buried his face in his hands.
He heard Fanny sobbing, but for some moments neither of them moved or spoke. Then he heard a slight rustling, and he removed his hands from his pale and agitated countenance, and slowly raised his head. Fanny was hurriedly leaving the room; it was her mantle brushing the door as she passed out, which he had heard. He sighed heavily, and then he dropped his head upon his hands again, and sat silent and motionless, until roused by the entrance of the bar-keeper who, thinking that he was asleep, shook him, and bawled that he was going to close the house. Then he arose, quitted the house, and walked slowly, and with an expression of misery and despair upon his pale countenance. The rain had now degenerated into a thick fog, through which the lamps twinkled dimly, and the pavement was covered with thin mire of the color and adhesive quality which distinguishes the mud of San Francisco, except where the broken condition of the pavement of the footway permitted the turbid water to lay in large puddles, dimly reflecting the street lamps. Regardless of the puddles, Robert walked on, now with his eyes fixed upon the miry pavement, and now looking forward with contracted brow and moving though silent lips; and when he reached a lane, he went straight on and entered a house. Thither we will not immediately follow him.
On leaving the bar-room, where she had encountered Robert Jervis, Fanny had hurried down to the wharf, where she began to walk more slowly, the terrible excitement which had until then impelled her onward, beginning to subside. But though she walked more slowly, she kept towards the bay, and still walked slowly onwards. About the hour of one, she advanced towards steps leading down to some water. It was not the first time since she had added herself to the thousands of unfortunate women who seek the wages of sin, that she sought the bay with suicidal purposes, but there was something so terrible and so awful to her mind in the thought of death, that she had never dared to attempt the execution of it.
‘It must be done,’ she murmured, as she approached the steps. ‘I can endure this dreadful life no longer.’
She descended the steps hurriedly, but on the lowest that was uncovered by the water, she paused, and gazed upon the dark bosom of the flood that rolled with a hoarse dull murmur.
‘Death! What is it?’ murmured the miserable girl, clasping her small white hands, and looking down upon the water that rolled darkly at her feet. ‘Awful mystery, which I wish, yet fear, to solve! Is it but the intermediate state which mortals pass through to free the soul from the grossness which clogs it during its sojourn on earth, and fit it for a higher and happier state of existence? or is it a long sleep—a night without dreams, and to which no morrow comes? Is it, as some say, the chrysalis state from which we emerge into new life, like the butterfly? Unfortunate analogy!—the repugnance to the soul’s annihilation, this longing after immortality? Oh there must be something beyond the grave, though what I cannot say. It cannot be worse, whatever it may be than the life I am leading.’
She paused in her muttered soliloquy, thinking she heard soft and cautious footsteps behind her, but on casting a look up the steps, she saw no one; indeed the fog prevented her from seeing more than a couple of yards.
‘It is nothing,’ she muttered. ‘Now to end a life of which I have long been weary! It is but a plunge—a splashing of the water—a circling ripple on the surface—and all will be over!’
As she murmured these words, the poor girl threw herself into the dark waters, adding to the long list of man’s perfidy and inhumanity—‘One more unfortunate victim.’