Flames - Robert Hichens

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up the trap in the roof.

      "Drive to the European Hotel, in the Euston Road," he said to the cabman.

       "D' you know it?"

      "Yes, sir," the cabman said. He was smiling on his perch as he cracked his whip and drove towards the Circus.

      The glass had been let down and the two friends beheld a continuously blurred prospect of London framed in racing raindrops and intersected by the wooden framework of the movable shutter. It was at the same time fantastic and tumultuous. The glare of light at the Circus shone over the everlasting procession of converging omnibuses, the everlasting mob of prostitutes and of respectable citizens waiting to mount into the vehicles whose paint proclaimed their destination. Active walkers darted dexterously to and fro over the cobblestones, occasionally turning sharply to swear at a driver whose cab had bespattered their black conventionality with clinging dirt. The drivers were impassively insulting, as became men placed for the moment in a high station of life. At the door of the Criterion Restaurant an enormously fat and white bookmaker in a curly hat and diamonds muttered remarks into the ear of an unshaven music-hall singer. A gigantic "chucker-out" observed them with the dull gaze of sullen habit, and a beggar-boy whined to them in vain for alms, then fluttered into obscurity. Fixed with corner stones upon the wet pavement of the "island" lay in an unwinking row the contents bill of the evening papers, proclaiming in gigantic black or red letters the facts of suicide, slander, divorce, murder, railway accidents, fires, and war complications. Dreary men read them with dreary, unexcited eyes, then forked out halfpence to raucous youths whose arms were full of damp sheets of pink paper. A Guardsman kissed "good-bye" to his trembling sweetheart as he chivalrously assisted her into a Marylebone 'bus, and two shop-girls, going home from work, nudged each other and giggled hysterically. Four fat Frenchmen stood in the porch of the Monico violently gesticulating and talking volubly at the tops of their voices. Two English undergraduates pushed past them with a look of contempt, and went speechlessly into the café beyond. A lady from Paris, all red velvet and white ostrich-tips, smoothed her cheek with her kid glove meditatively, and glanced about in search of her fate of the dark and silent hours. And then—Valentine and Julian were in the comparative dimness of Shaftesbury Avenue—a huge red cross on a black background started out of the gloom above a playhouse. Julian shuddered at it visibly.

      "You are quite unstrung to-night, Julian," Valentine said. "Let us turn the cab round and go home."

      "No, no, my dear fellow; I am all right. It is only that I see things to-night much more clearly than usual. I suppose it is owing to something physical that every side of London seems to have sprung into prominence. Of course I go about every day in Piccadilly, St. James's Street, everywhere; but it is as if my eyes had been always shut, and now they are open. I can see London to-night. And that cross looked so devilishly ironical up there, as if it were silently laughing at the tumult in the rain. Don't you feel London to-night, too, Valentine?"

      "I always feel it."

      "Tragically or comically?"

      "I don't know that I could say truly either. Calmly or contemptuously would rather be the word."

      "You are always a philosopher. I can't be a philosopher when I see those hordes of women standing hour after hour in the rain, and those boys searching among them. I should be one of those boys probably but for you."

      "If you were, I doubt whether I should feel horrified."

      "Not morally horrified, I dare say, but intellectually disgusted. Eh?"

      "I am not sure whether I shall permit my intellect quite so much license in the future as I have permitted it in the past," Valentine said thoughtfully.

      His blue eyes were on Julian, but Julian was gazing out on Oxford Street, which they were crossing at that moment. Julian, who had apparently continued dwelling on the train of thoughts waked in him by the sight of the painted cross, ignored this remark and said:

      "It is not my moral sense which shuddered just now, I believe, but my imagination. Sin is so full of prose, although many clever writers have represented it as splendidly decorated with poetry. Don't you think so, Val? And it is the prose of sin I realized so vividly just now."

      "The wet flowers on the waiting hats, the cold raindrops on the painted faces, the damp boots trudging to find sin, the dark clouds pouring a benediction on it. I know what you mean. But the whole question is one of weather, I think. Vanity Fair on a hot, sweet summer night, with a huge golden moon over Westminster, soft airs and dry pavements, would make you see this city in a different light. And which of the lights is the true one?"

      "I dare say neither."

      "Why not both? The smartest coat has a lining, you know. I dare say there are velvet sins as well as plush sins, and the man who can find the velvet is the lucky fellow. Sins feel like plush to me, however, and I dislike plush. So I am not the lucky fellow."

      "No, Valentine; you are wrong. I'm pretty sure all virtue is velvet and all vice is plush. So you stick to velvet."

      "I don't know. Ask the next pretty dressmaker you meet. Bloomsbury is a genteel inferno on a wet night."

      They traversed it smoothly on asphalt ways. All the time Valentine was watching Julian with a fixed and narrow scrutiny, which Julian failed to notice. The rows of dull houses seemed endless, and endlessly alike.

      "I am sure all of them are full of solicitors," said Valentine.

      Presently in many fanlights they saw the mystic legend, "Apartments." Then there were buildings that had an aged air and sported broken windows. Occasionally, on a background of red glass lit by a gas-jet from behind, sat the word "Hotel." A certain grimy degradation swam in the atmosphere of these streets. Their aspect was subtly different from the Bloomsbury thoroughfares, which look actively church-going, and are full of the shadows of an everlasting respectability which pays its water rates and sends occasional conscience-money to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. People looked furtive, and went in and out of the houses furtively. They crawled rather than pranced, and their bodies bore themselves with a depression that seemed indiscreet. Occasionally men with dripping umbrellas knocked at the doors under the red glass, and disappeared into narrow passages inhabited by small iron umbrella-stands. Night brooded here like a dyspeptic raven with moulting tail-feathers and ragged wings. But London is eloquent of surprises. The cab turned a corner, and instantly they were in a wide and rain-swept street, long and straight, and lined with reserved houses, that shrank back from the publicity of the passing traffic at the end of narrow alleys protected by iron gates. Over many of these gates appeared lit arches of glass on which names were inscribed: "Albion Hotel," "Valetta Hotel," "Imperial Hotel," "Cosmopolitan Hotel,"—great names for small houses. These houses had front doors with glass panels, and all the panels glowed dimly with gas.

      The cab flashed by them, and Julian read the fleeting names, until his eyes were suddenly saluted with "European Hotel."

      Violently the cabman drew up. The smoking horse was squeezed upon its haunches, and its feet slithered harshly along the stones. It tried to sit down, was hauled up by the reins, and stood trembling as the right wheel of the cab collided with the pavement edge, and the water in the gutter splashed up as if projected from a spray.

      "Beg pardon, gents. I thought it was a bit further on," said the cabby, leering down cheerfully. "Nice night, sir, ain't it?"

      He shook the reluctant drops of moisture from his waterproof-shrouded hat, and drove off.

      Valentine opened the damp iron gate, and they walked up the paved alley to the door.

       Table of Contents

      THE EUSTON ROAD EPISODE

      Opening the door, they found themselves in a squalid passage. A room on the left was fronted by a sort of counter, above which was a long window giving onto the passage, and as the shrill tinkle of a bell announced

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