After awhile he returned these papers to the drawer and addressed himself to one of the dusty manuals of jurisprudence that adorned his table. But strange shapes were in his mind to-night; and these would not be harnessed to the dead letter of the law. A torrent had been unloosed which bore his thoughts in every direction save that in which he would have them go. After a time the lamp burned so low that it was no longer necessary to make a pretence at reading. Therefore he closed the book and lifted up his ears to the night. The faint, consistent drip drip of the water from the ceiling to the pool it had formed on the floor stole upon him with a sense of the uncanny. The room itself was draughty and decrepit, and in common with others in that neighborhood, particularly on the waterside, was inhabited by rats. He could hear them now in the crevices behind the wainscot. He took from the table a piece of lead which he used as a paper-weight, and waited grimly for one to appear.
Crouching upon the hearth with this deadly instrument in his hand, his thoughts strayed again to the country, again to his mother, and from her to the young girl whom he had hoped to make his wife. This slender and straight and joyous creature, with the supple limbs of a fawn and complexion of a dairymaid, had the seemliness and purity which was so essential in one who would be called to the function of completing his life. She was as sweet and choice as a lily, for her only gift was the serenity which has its seat in superb physical health and freedom from the penalties that wait upon intelligence.
She had seen nothing, knew nothing; there was nothing for her to see or to know. Her simplicity was so naïve that it was a perennial delight to a sophisticated nature. He never summoned her image except to cherish it. In his direst mood, in his straitest hour, when life blew barb after barb into his skin, he felt that to possess her was to keep a talisman in his spirit which could unweave the knots in the conspiracies of fate. Those lines in her shape, those curves which were so arch, so free, yet qualified so finely, seemed to bring healing and refinement to him; while those eyes, soft and luminous, yet lacking in expression, seemed to chasten his power without impairing it.
At this moment a sound for which he had been listening broke his reverie. An enormous she-rat, heavy with young, entered the room. He watched it waddle out of a dark corner and emerge slowly towards him along the floor. As it came near he could discern the gleam of its red eyes, its nose, its wide-spreading whiskers. They filled him with an indescribable ferocity. He poised the piece of lead in his hand, and took aim with close-breathing and deliberate care. Suddenly he hurled it with the strength of a giant, the creature was struck in the flank and lay dead before it knew that anything had occurred.
With a grunt of satisfaction amounting almost to joy he picked up the animal by the tail. “What a beauty!” he muttered, “and what a shot! I might try that a thousand times and not bring it off.” He opened the window, flung out the carcass, and heard it drop in a puddle of water in the middle of the traffic.
The perfectly successful accomplishment of this callous feat seemed to give his senses the exhilaration of strong wine; and the effect was heightened by a blast of icy air which was dashed on to his face when he opened the window. The mighty engines of his imagination were set in motion. He leaned out of the window and snuffed the brutal weather; and through the fierce sleet which stung his eyes and froze on his lips he looked down into London with its lights, its vehicles, and its chaos; unknowing, unheeding, and unseeing, yet in itself magnetic and so mysterious. He felt like an eagle who peers out of his eyrie in the cliffs in the midst of winter to witness the fury of the sea, dashing itself to pieces upon his paternal rocks, and is himself assaulted by the eternal ferocity of nature.
III
SUMMONING THE GENIE
The passion of Lear when on the heath he bares his head to the storm mounted in his veins. Leaning far out of the window of his garret to confront the rage of heaven, with the unbridled insolence of his youth he called upon the elements to wreak themselves upon him. Let them stab his eyes with tears, let them curdle the breath upon his lips. Nature had charged his being with that dynamic force which makes the world vibrate, only to withhold the master-key without whose aid his quality could not announce itself. All—all was furnished in the armory of the spirit. He asked no more than one brief occasion, and clad in his demonic power he would shake the pillars of society with that passion which was preying now upon his flesh and blood.
Such occasions were not denied to those who did not comprehend their use. How often with scornful eyes was he to watch in the courts of justice mediocrity, primed with privilege and favor, misconducting itself amid the purlieus of the law. Every week he was affronted with the spectacle of this hydra-headed monster toying with the life and liberty of the subject. At the worst it was no more than another “miscarriage of justice;” some other unseemly wretch offered upon the altars of incompetence.
Many times of a night when alone and hungry had he conjured up a vision of the judge calling from the bench for a tyro to undertake the defence of one too poor to purchase an advocate. “You, sir—will you undertake the defence of this unfortunate woman?” And over and over again had he broken the silence of his room with a carefully modulated, “It will give me great pleasure, m’lud, it will give me great pleasure.”