CHAPTER XXIV.A PARAGRAPH.
There was no sleep for me. This seemed the final stroke of treason against the happiness of sentient life. I had done my best to spoil humanity’s share of it, till Victoria entered hercaveatagainst the crime; and here was this sleeping figure, as my logical sequel, with all animate Nature for his mark.
It was a distressing thought, and I looked round for something to drive it away. The Captain’s bundle of newspapers lay on a chair, and I took them up to read myself to sleep.
I might as well have taken coffee as an opiate. As I turned these fatal leaves, life in all its littleness seemed to beat in upon me, with a suffocating rush, from every quarter of the globe. I was in the fever-struck crowd once more, after my spiritual quarantine of months. It was as a comingback to consciousness after chloroform: my brain throbbed, every pulsation was pain. I darted from column to column, from page to page. I had lost the art of selection: one thing was as another thing, and each impression was a shock. Once again, I realised Europe and America, Asia and Africa, but only as masses in a whirl. The Ball itself, with all its continents, seemed to have suddenly whizzed my way, as I lay dreaming on a cloud in space. Every particle was in movement, as well as the mass; it was a huge rolling cheese, putrid with unwholesome being—a low-bred world, not a world at all, a mere glorified back-court, with all its cheatings, thefts, lies, cruelties, small cares, and small ambitions, multiplied into themselves, and into one another, to make a whole. The finer things alone seemed without an entry, as though, in a business reckoning, such trifles could not count.
I did not know how to read it. Picking and choosing was impossible; I took it as it came. ‘Brigandage in the public Thoroughfares;’ ‘Foreign Paupers blocking the City Streets;’ ‘Outrages on English Fishermen;’‘Parliament—two Members suspended;’ ‘Afghanistan—Five hundred killed;’ ‘Moonlighting in Ireland; a Policeman’s Head beaten to Pulp;’ ‘Evictions—Death of an Old Woman on the Roadside;’ ‘A Hundred People Burned to Death in a Theatre;’ ‘Brutal Treatment of a Boy.’ This was from the English budget. The American was more appalling in the cool devilry of its mocking headlines, as though all the woe and all the folly of the world were but one stupendous joke—‘Green Immigrants sold like Cattle;’ ‘Awful Railway Accident; the Line stripped bare by Speculators, and no Money to Pay for Repairs;’ ‘Mr. Chown’s Dyspepsia; In the Acquisition of Millions, his Digestion had to go;’ ‘A Crank writing a weekly Begging-Letter for Fourteen Years, asking for $50,000 to start a Newspaper;’ ‘No Holiday for Philadelphia’s wealthiest Bachelor; Watching his large Interests, and Keeping the Run of Quotations all through the Hot Spell;’ ‘Mistaken Parsimony makes the Insane Asylum a Pest Hole of Disease;’ ‘Schevitch voted an Idiot;’ ‘The last Wrinkle in Thieving;’ ‘Socialists cry “Rats;”’ ‘Carbolic Acid isn’t Holy Water;’‘The Bulk of the Jewelry melted into Bars;’ ‘Marvellous Anecdotes of the Altitudinous Aristocracy of Great Britain;’ ‘Society at Saratoga—another Brilliant Week;’ ‘Prosperity of the Country; a lady with Thirty-eight Trunks;’ ‘Pa says he likes Saratoga, because he has a Private Wire to the Stock Exchange.’
And then, suddenly, in one of our own papers, my own name.
‘Henry is altogether inaccurate as to the disappearance of poor Lord ——. He has been missing, or, at any rate, away from home, for nearly a year, instead of “for the better part of two months.” The family at —— Court have tried to keep the matter out of the newspapers, and that, no doubt, is why Henry has not heard of it till now. Others, who were better informed, kept silent, because they did not wish to cause unnecessary alarm.’
‘It is certainly true that the shock has been too much for the poor Dowager-Countess, and that her condition causes the gravestuneasiness. Lord —— was her favourite son. It is not true that he has been heard from only once since he left England. At the outset, he wrote from Paris, as well as from Genoa.’
‘The Genoa letter was somewhat enigmatical:—“Running away for a ramble; news when I come back.” This naturally excited the Dowager’s apprehensions. The police were consulted, somewhat too soon, and they discovered that he had been seen at Geneva in rather questionable company. The Dowager immediately jumped to the conclusion that he had fallen into a Nihilist snare. From that moment, she refused to believe that he was alive, and, though a subsequent letter bearing his signature was shown to her, she declined to accept the evidence of his handwriting.’
‘Henry is doubly wrong in saying that Lord —— was never heard of after the Genoa letter. A few weeks ago, direct news of him was received in a rather extraordinary way. During her late cruise in the South Seas, H.M.S. “Rollo” touched at one of the Islands(I forget which), and there, in the best of health and spirits, she found the missing man. He had fallen under the spell of a native beauty, and, I believe, was about to get himself tattooed, as a preliminary to adoption by the tribe. He sent affectionate messages to his family, but he could not be prevailed upon to make any promise of an immediate return.’
‘The messages have been communicated to the Dowager, but she persists in regarding them with incredulity. She is persuaded that Lord —— fell a victim to foul play at Genoa, or Geneva, and that all these communications have been forged in his name. Her delusions constitute the only serious feature of the case. These are the facts, if Henry will condescend to accept them as such for the benefit of his readers; and I may further inform him that —— Court has been shut up.’