THE FAILURE OF BRADLEY.
The skater lightly laughs and glides,
Unknowing that beneath the ice
On which he carves his fair device
A stiffened corpse in silence glides.
It glareth upward at his play;
Its cold, blue, rigid fingers steal
Beneath the tracings of his heel.
It floats along and floats away.
—Unknown Poem.
“If I only had the courage,” said Bradley, as he looked over the stone parapet of the embankment at the dark waters of the Thames as they flashed for a moment under the glitter of the gaslight and then disappeared in the black night to flash again farther down.
“Very likely I would struggle to get out again the moment I went over,” he muttered to himself. “But if no help came it would all be done with, in a minute. Two minutes perhaps. I’ll warrant those two minutes would seem an eternity. I would see a hundred ways of making a living, if I could only get out again. Why can’t I see one now while I am out. My father committed suicide, why shouldn’t I? I suppose it runs in the family. There seems to come a time when it is the only way out. I wonder if he hesitated? I’m a coward, that’s the trouble.”
After a moment’s hesitation the man slowly climbed on the top of the stone wall and then paused again. He looked with a shudder at the gloomy river.
“I’ll do it,” he cried aloud, and was about to slide down, when a hand grasped his arm and a voice said:
“What will you do?”
In the light of the gas-lamp Bradley saw a man whose face seemed familiar and although he thought rapidly, “Where have I seen that man before?” he could not place him.