'Why, she lived downstairs,' I said.
'That's true; you seem to be well up in the family, sir. But Poll couldn't pay her rent, so old Meg took her in. And on the very morning when Meg and Poll were a-startin' off together into the country—it was quite early and dark—Poll stumbles over three young flower-gals as 'ad crep' in the front door in the night time and was makin' the stairs their bed. Gals as hadn't made enough to pay for their night's lodgin' often used to sleep on Meg's stairs. Poll was picked up as nigh dead as a toucher, and she died at the 'ospital.'
Toiling in the revolving cage of Circumstance, I strove in vain against that most appalling form of envy—the envy of one's fellow creatures that they should live and breathe while there is no breath of life for the one.
My uncle Cecil's death had made me a rich man; but what was wealth to me if it could not buy me respite from the vision haunting me day and night—the vision of the attic, the mattress, and the woman?
And as I thought of the powerlessness of wealth to give me one crumb of comfort, and remembered Winnie's sermon about wealth, I would look at myself in the mirror above my mantelpiece and smile bitterly at the sight of the hollow cheeks, furrowed brow, and melancholy eyes, and recall her words about her hovering near me after she was dead.
The thought of my wealth and the squalor in which she had died was, I think, the most maddening thought of all. I had now become the possessor of Wilderspin's picture 'Faith and Love,' having bought it of the Bond Street dealer to whom it belonged; and also of the 'Christabel' picture, and these I was constantly looking at as they hung up on the walls of my room. After a while, however, I destroyed the 'Christabel' picture, it was too painful. Though I would not see such friends as I had, I read their letters; indeed, it was these same letters which alone could draw from me a grim smile now and then.
Almost every letter ended by urging me, in order to flee from my sorrows, to travel! With the typical John Bull travelling seems to be always the panacea. In sorrow, John's herald of peace is Baedeker: the dispenser of John's true nepenthe is Mr. Murray. Pity and love for Winifred pursued me, tortured me nigh unto death, and therefore did these friends of mine seem to suppose that I wanted to flee from my pity and sorrow! Why, to flee from my sorrow, to get free of my pity, to flee from the agonies that went nigh to tearing soul from body, would have been to flee from all that I had left of life—memory.
Did I want to flee from Winnie? Why, memory was Winnie now; and did I want to flee from her? And yet it was memory that was goading me on to the verge of madness. No doubt the reader thinks me a weak creature for allowing the passion of pity to sap my manhood in this fashion. But it was not so much her death as the manner of her death that withered my heart and darkened my soul. The calamities which fell upon her, grievous beyond measure, unparalleled, not to be thought of save with a pallor of cheek and a shudder of the flesh, were ever before me, mocking me—maddening me.
'Died in a hovel!' As I gave voice to this impeachment of Heaven, night after night, wandering up and down the streets, my brain was being scorched and withered by those same thoughts of anger against destiny and most awful revolt which had appalled me when first I saw how the curse of Heaven or the whim of Circumstance had been fulfilled.
Then came that passionate yearning for death, which grief such as mine must needs bring. But if what Materialism teaches were true, suicide would rob me even of my memory of her. If, on the other hand, what I had been taught by the supernaturalism of my ancestors were true, to commit suicide might be but to play finally into the hands of that same unknown pitiless power with whom my love had all along been striving.