“I wish you to lay out the black satin gown, and the diamonds,—you understand?”
“Yes, Madame la Marquise.”
“I am going out now,—alone: I shall not need your company. If any one calls in the meantime, say I shall not return until to-morrow. At no time to-day is any one to be admitted except Monsieur Fillmore: he will arrive about seven o’clock. Will you attend to this?”
“Certainly, Madame la Marquise. Will Madame dine at the usual hour?”
“No; you will dine by yourself to-day. That is all.”
“Au revoir, Madame la Marquise.”
The old lady courtesyed and went out. Perdita sat down at her desk and wrote several letters, which she locked up in a drawer. Her dejection seemed to have been lightened: her demeanor was grave, but not oppressed or unnatural. Occasionally she would fall into revery for a few minutes, but the abstraction was not painful, and was easily cast aside. In the course of an hour or so she closed her desk, and going to her room, put on a dark pelisse and veiled bonnet, and went out. The sky was overcast, and the air cold; but there was neither rain nor wind. The streets were full of people, and the shops were doing a thriving trade in Christmas goods. Perdita mingled with the crowd, and seemed to take pleasure in observing them: in gazing into the shop windows, shoulder to shoulder with them: in listening to the confused noise of voices, tramping feet, and rattling wheels. On the Strand she happened to notice four ragged children flattening their noses against the glass of a candy-shop. “I choose this,” said one little girl “Oh! I choose this!” said another, in the pride of superior discernment. “Don’t yer wish yer may git it?” remarked a boy, the eldest of the party, with gloomy cynicism. “Come in here, youngsters,” said Perdita; “you shall have all the candy you want!” With the matter-of-course acceptance of miracles characteristic of children, they followed her into the shop, and presently came forth again with candy enough to last them for a week. None of them thanked her, any more than we thank the sun for shining through a break in the clouds—the supposition being that the sun is made for that purpose. But Perdita was not in need of gratitude. She wanted to feel the actual contact of human creatures for a few hours, and that was all. Resuming her walk, she passed through St. Paul’s churchyard, and along Cheapside, where she entered a shop and made one or two purchases on her own account. Thence she turned in a southerly direction, and presently came in sight of London Bridge. It was a quaint, narrow, high-backed structure, with jutting piers, affording spaces for venders of apples and other cheap merchandise to set up their little stalls. The bridge was roaring with vehicles and crowded with foot-passengers; there was no noisier or more populous place in London. There was a high balustrade on each side; but by stepping upon one of the semicircular stone seats over the piers, it was possible to look over at the broad stream beneath. Perdita did this, and remained for a long time, absorbed by the spectacle. The brown river, rushing at the arches of the bridge, fell through them in boiling cataracts, with a sound that was audible over the tumult of the vehicles and the foot-passengers above. On either bank, the wharves were thronged with shipping—straight masts and cobweb cordage, dense as primeval forests. Black chimneys belched forth blacker smoke, which trailed and brooded over the city: huge, ugly buildings of stone or brick looked down into the dark water. Millions of human beings had done all this: millions of human beings lived and moved here, labored and hungered, fought and conquered, struggled and succumbed, were born and died. Here was the centre and concentration of the human race, the culmination of the history of five thousand years; and what a gloomy, dirty, toiling, roaring, sordid Babel it was! And yet, what a strong charm and attraction! We battle and shout and hope in the face of death; we know that our hopes are vain and that death is sure; we know that life is weariness and that death is rest; we bury our parents and know that our children shall bury us; and still generation succeeds generation—appears and disappears—and each maintains the turmoil with as much energy and earnestness as if to it alone belonged not the present only, but likewise the future and the past. Earthly life, the oldest of all deceivers, the mightiest of all hypocrites, exposed and condemned at each passing moment of recorded time—by what spell does it still retain its mastery over us? Does it inspire the wish to be cheated that it gratifies? or is there something behind—within it—some reality whereof it is but the symbol, which leads us onward to another goal than that we aimed at,—a goal which, were it revealed to us, we never should attain?
Chilled by long contact with the stone parapet, Perdita stepped down from her perch, and returned along the bridge. In one of the narrow streets leading toward Cheapside, she noticed a small inn or ordinary, where a card nailed to the door-post announced that a dinner was to be had inside at a cheap rate. Perdita entered; the place was low and dark, and was tolerably full of customers, most of whom were seated at opposite sides of the little oblong tables projecting at right angles from the walls. A man, seeing Perdita stand there, made room for her beside him. He wore a dirty fur cap and a topcoat of coarse cloth; had a bold, not unhandsome face, and powerful but by no means clean hands. A plate full of some sort of food was put before Perdita, and she began to eat. The man who had nearly finished his dinner, now called for a pot of ale; and having glanced at Perdita once or twice, he addressed her:
“Say, my dear, you’re a good-looking gal, do you know that?”
“Yes,” said Perdita, “other men have told me so.”