When she had escaped from her only shelter, half maddened and wholly despairing, with the voices of Craven Black and Mrs. McKellar yet ringing in her ears, her first impulse had been self-destruction. She had sped along the streets until, by a circuitous route, she had gained the river and a jutting pier, but it was daylight, and people were in waiting for the boats, so her dread purpose was checked, and she wandered on, wild of face and half distraught, keeping the river ever in sight, as if the view of its waters soothed her mad despair.
Wandering aimlessly onward, she passed through foul river streets, where the vile of every sort congregated, but no one spoke to her or molested her. The shield of a watchful Providence interposed between her and all harm. Once or twice some ruffian would have accosted and stayed her, but a glance into her white and rigid face and wild unseeing eyes made him shrink back abashed, and she sped on as if pursued, not knowing the dangers she had escaped.
She grew weary of foot, and to the wildness of her anguish succeeded a merciful apathy, which steeped her senses. The night came on; the gas lamps were lighted in the streets; the warehouses and shops were closed, there were fewer women in the streets; and in happy homes in the suburbs, at the north and south and east and west of the great teeming city, wives and daughters were gathered into pleasant homes. But she had no home, no refuge, no shelter. She had—oh, saddest of words, and saddest of meaning—she had nowhere to go!
And so she plodded on, slowly and wearily now. She had traversed miles since leaving her lodgings, and it seemed as if her march, like that of the fabled Wandering Jew, must be eternal.
At last, still wandering without aim, she staggered through the turn-gate and out upon the Waterloo Bridge, in the wake of a party of returning play-goers. No one noticed her, and she passed half-way over the bridge and sank down upon one of the stone benches, while the party she had followed went on and were soon lost to view in the Waterloo Road.
She was alone on the bridge, in the night and darkness. Below her lay the dark river, with the small steamers puffing and glancing through the gloom with their tiny eyes of fire, and lowering their stack-pipes as they passed under the bridge. A few people stood at the landing below. Somerset House, dark and silent, like some gigantic mausoleum, lay to her left. Along the river banks were the great warehouses, long since closed for the night, and in the distance the dome of St. Paul’s reared its head, faint and shadowy, among the deeper shadows.
The glancing lights of the river boats, the lamps at the landing and along the shores looked strangely unreal to Lally’s dazed eyes. She crouched in a corner of the seat and peered over the parapet and tried to think, but her brain seemed paralyzed. The only thought that came to her was that she was no wife, that Rufus had abandoned and disowned her, and that he was to marry another.
People crossed the bridge in laughing groups as the Strand theatres and concert-halls closed, but no one paid heed to, even if they saw, the slender, crouching figure with its wild, fearing eyes. Sometimes, for many minutes together, Lally was alone upon that portion of the bridge—alone with her desperate soul and her terrible temptation to end her sorrows in one fatal plunge.
She arose in one of these intervals to her feet upon the bench and leaned over the parapet, a prayer upon her lips that Heaven would forgive the deed she meditated. And, as she stood poised for the leap into eternity, there came back to her, though years had passed since she heard it, the voice of her mother, as she had once listened to it, denouncing the self-murderer as one who destroys his soul as well as his body. The remembrance of the words, and the thought of her mother, caused her to drop again into the corner of her bench sobbing, and weeping a storm of tears that saved her reason.
The wild outburst of her anguish had been succeeded by a strange dullness and apathy, when a woman—a mere girl—“bonnetless, and her hair flying,”—as the Blacks had read in the paper—came running upon the bridge with moans upon her lips. Lally was as pure and innocent as a little child, yet she knew at a glance that this poor creature belonged to that class which is often termed “unfortunate”—as Heaven knows they are indeed, in every sense of the sad word. This girl came up to the very niche where Lally was hidden, and sprang upon the bench. She gave one wild look over her shoulder, at the officer who pursued her, and then, with the name of some man upon her lips, tossed up her arms, and sprang over the parapet—into eternity!