My rags are so thin. Chill death ascends from my sodden feet.

Up to my heart. What care I? For I can laugh at the cold.

My head is hot; my blood boils. I have just met a friend of old.

I was proud, I was dying for food, yet dared not beg for a crust; But he asked me to drink, and I drank--and now I feel as a G.o.d, As a G.o.d who has something to give, and so can rule with a nod.

"I stand by a well-known house, a house of gambling and l.u.s.t, Where in the bright-lit rooms, men flushed with the fever of play Win and lose. If they win, the she-devils rake it away.

Win and lose. If they lose, they must out in the cold and die; Or if they be callous and tough, why, then become even as I.

"Ah, me! for yon beautiful woman. Ah, me! for the pa.s.sionless mart Ah, me! for the soft, warm flesh that covers the cold, hard heart.

_He_ was lucky to-night at play; look at her wanton grace: The kisses, the toying hands, the flushed and amorous face, The moist lips lying of love!--she will lead him up to the gate Of Ruin and Death and h.e.l.l, and leave him there to his fate.

With a low and musical laugh, as of silver as hard and as cold, At his folly to think _she_ could love--she has treated so many of old.

"For is it not true that every gem your round white limbs do bear, And every star that shines in the night of your ebon hair, Was bought with a good man's soul? Each is a trophy sweet Of a n.o.ble life that was trampled under your delicate feet.

The wine of your mouth is poison unto the fool that sips; Your fair white bosom is bruised, but not with a baby's lips, Child never drew life from those b.r.e.a.s.t.s, no gentle mother thou art, No, nor woman! warm blood of a woman ne'er fed such a pitiless heart.

"And now from the steps of the house I see her descending again, Again after years, and there gnaws at my heart a twinge of an ancient pain: See!--still she is fair! nay, yet fairer! I gaze, as she pauses awhile To draw a delicate glove on a hand that has toyed with mine.

Lo, from the perfect lip there dies the last shade of a smile, A smile for the fool she has left, drunk with gaming and wine.

Alas! for that lip and that hand, and those heavy-fringed, amorous eyes.

Oh, the days of pa.s.sion that were--the days I believed in thy sighs-- The days when I loved thee so--as now, I hate and despise.

And, lo! I seek in vain to trace on thy mouth, in thine eyes, A _little_ remorse, a _little_ of woman. Thou knowest well to hide All feeling; but when awake, and thy lover sleeps by thy side, Does a serpent gnaw at thy bosom, a shade chill thy heart? Is thy brow, When thou sittest alone, as unruffled, as coldly tranquil as now?

... Fool to ask! Heart she has not. Had she ever so little a one, 'Twould have seared and wrinkled her beauty with thought of the ill she has done.

"She has gone! and I stand alone in the rainy, desolate street.

Is it famine or wine?--but never before did my heart so madly beat, And this pain of my whirling brain: the keen, quick sense of my _Now_!

Unpitied--self-unpitying--I know my want is my guilt.

I feel no remorse for the past--the cup was wantonly spilt.

I do not want pity--I have _no_ contrition. Knowing all that I know, Had I aught--why, then, that--and my life--and my soul--I'd stake at a throw, On the chance of winning once more sufficient to buy her kiss, To buy the dear false smile--the sweet lies whispered low, With the poisoned wine of her lips to drug the memories of this, Till the lies seemed delicious truths....

"... I _will_ forget all that I know, Oh, my love! and only remember how wondrously sweet thou art.

Ah, yes! Thou lovest me well; let me die in one long embrace.

Draw thee closer, yet closer. Let me feel thy breath on my face; Let us forget all things save our love--yes, even till we die In dreams of impossible joys, of more than human delight, Each sweet, pa.s.sionate secret wringing from love, you and I.

Through the mystical garden of Eros, hand in hand we will go, Plucking the magical fruits that poison the human heart.

And what if they do? Why we care not! While we live let us live!

We have ate of the magical fruit; we are drunk, and can no more strive.

So hail, mad excesses of pleasure! In spite of cold virtue; in spite Of h.e.l.l, let us know once again, _one_ hour as we used to know!

"... But why art thou gone in the darkness?... A dream!...

My brain swims to-night.

Hunger may be, or madness.... Ah, this pain at my heart.... Let me go!

It is death ... death in the streets.... Well, I care not--it is better so."

"Very pretty indeed," said Susan to herself, when she had read this poem; "very pretty, though I can't help thinking some of the ideas are hardly original. I wonder if I am the heroine, if I am this lovely 'Fille de Marbre?' I'm afraid he's. .h.i.t me off pretty well. Clever of him; yet, after all, he must be the greater fool to stick to me if he knows me so well. Yes, he is evidently beginning to understand me. I must look out."

She took the ma.n.u.script up again and re-read some of it. "Yes, my man!

you were certainly thinking of yourself when you wrote this," she reflected; "you are just the weak, pa.s.sionate fool described here. You are going to the dogs pretty fast. Who knows that you too will not die like a rat in the streets?"

She glanced at the clock and started to see how late it was. "Where can he be? I believe I am getting superst.i.tious; sitting all alone in this dark room is enough to give one the jumps; but somehow I can't help feeling that there is something ominous in this ridiculous poem I have been reading. 'Death, death in the streets.... Well, I care not; it is better so.' Pooh! what nonsense! I am a fool," she shivered and looked uneasily around the room; then she rose from her chair, and, drawing aside the curtain, peered out of the window at the deserted court.

"Where can he be? He has never been late like this before. He has been drinking like a madman for the last few days. Who knows?--perhaps he may have foretold his own end in those verses. He may even now be dying....

But this is sheer folly; he can look after himself. But I must get rid of these blues. Ah! here is his beloved brandy bottle."

With the aid of some spirits and water, she contrived to dispel her nervousness. But still he did not come. She fidgeted about the rooms vainly seeking something to amuse her. At intervals she would walk up to the mirror, and contemplate the image of her face with a close scrutiny to see how the wrinkles about her eyes were getting on--a common trick of this unfortunate being, whose whole pleasure in life, whose every interest hung on her youth and beauty, who was haunted by the perpetual dread of age and ugliness.

For six hours she waited in the chambers, but she would not go--she would see the end of this.

One o'clock boomed out in melancholy tones from the spire of St.

Clements, answered by Big Ben in the distance, and a dozen city churches. A quarter of an hour afterwards there was a hurried rush of someone up the stairs, then a long fumbling at the keyhole.

She went to the door and opened it, and the aspect of her lover, as he stood there with the light of the pa.s.sage lamp falling on his distorted features was so terrible, that she shrunk back in fear.

"Don't be frightened, Edith, I won't hurt you--only drunk," and he laughed discordantly as he pushed by her without further greeting, without offering to kiss her, for which last omission she was thankful.

He entered the sitting-room, threw himself into a chair by the table, and buried his head in his hands, as he placed his elbows on the wine-stained mahogany.

What a contrast between this scene and one three years before! The chambers were the same, though not so tidy as of old; then it was summer. It was now winter, with no fire in the grate, and a cheerless look about the place. Then there were two, a man and a woman together--a man young, in the prime of life, happy, hopeful, and a girl of n.o.ble instincts, and lovely as the young Aphrodite. Now it was the same man but how changed, how fallen! and the woman was another--the evil genius of the man, just as the first woman might have been his good genius.

Susan stood by him for some minutes without speaking, too terrified to bring out the nasty little speech she had meditated before he came in.

At last she touched him on the shoulder. "Tommy, dear, you are ill."

He raised his head and stared at her with a look in which there was no recognition, and quite empty of its usual love, and said angrily, "Ill--not at all--who the deuce are you?--where's the brandy?"

He rose and walked to the cupboard, took out the decanter of brandy and a tumbler, which he half-filled and drank off.

"Oh, Tommy!" she cried, much alarmed and seizing him by the arm. "For G.o.d's sake don't go on like this--go to bed--I will watch by you, love."

He flung her from him, and glaring at her savagely and sullenly, cried, "Love! love! what do you mean by calling me that? Who are you to use that word? I have only got one love and she is dead. Ha! ha! and I killed her--yes, killed her, do you hear that?"

"No! no! darling," she exclaimed clasping him in her arms. "Look at me, I am your love."

"You!--not you--I don't know you--she was nothing like you--you are not Mary."

"Now dear, be quiet. Don't be so foolish; you are only putting on all this to frighten me. You'll be sorry to-morrow that you have been so unkind to your little sweetheart--when you come to your senses. Now dear, do go to bed, and don't talk any more nonsense about your Mary."

"Don't mention _her_ name!" he almost screamed. "Mary! Mary! O G.o.d! if she could see me now--Mary--a saint not anything like you--Mary. She died three years ago, here in these rooms--and I saw her ghost this afternoon--I killed her--the only thing I loved, and I killed her--Oh!

oh!"

"No dear, she is not dead--are you sure her name was Mary--was it not Edith? Come think now--look at me, my poor old boy," and she pressed his head to her bosom and stroked his hair softly with her hand, in the hopes of soothing him somewhat.

"Edith be d.a.m.ned!" he shouted at the top of his voice, as he threw her off once more. "No, it was Mary.--Her name was Mary Grimm, and she is dead! dead! dead!"

"Mary Grimm!" said the woman in a low voice between her clenched teeth--"did you say Mary Grimm?"

"Yes, Mary Grimm--an angel whose name your mouth should not pollute by mentioning."

"Mr. Hudson, do you remember who I am?"

"I do, I do. Do you think I don't see through your wicked heartless wiles. I never loved you really. I was mad for a moment--a drunken affection--blind with drink. I have only made a beast of myself with you--but Mary!--Oh, I loved her, as no man ever loved before."

The woman stood before him, very pale now, biting her lips to conceal her malice and rage--she hated as well as despised this fool now.