I stood by the grave this morning of my poor, pale,
clinging little friend now for some years at peace, and I thought
that the tragedy of Promethean torture or Christ-like crucifixion may
indeed be tremendous, but there is a tragedy too in the existence of
a soul like hers, conscious of its feebleness and ever striving to
overpass it, ever aware that it is an obstacle to the return of the
affection of the man whom she loves.
Meals, as I have said, were disagreeable at M'Kay's, and when we
wanted to talk we went out of doors. The evening after our visit to
the debating hall we moved towards Portland Place, and walked up and
down there for an hour or more. M'Kay had a passionate desire to
reform the world. The spectacle of the misery of London, and of the
distracted swaying hither and thither of the multitudes who inhabit
it, tormented him incessantly. He always chafed at it, and he never
seemed sure that he had a right to the enjoyment of the simplest
pleasures so long as London was before him. What a farce, he would
cry, is all this poetry, philosophy, art, and culture, when millions
of wretched mortals are doomed to the eternal darkness and crime of
the city! Here are the educated classes occupying themselves with
exquisite emotions, with speculations upon the Infinite, with
addresses to flowers, with the worship of waterfalls and flying
clouds, and with the incessant portraiture of a thousand moods and
variations of love, while their neighbours lie grovelling in the
mire, and never know anything more of life or its duties than is
afforded them by a police report in a bit of newspaper picked out of
the kennel.
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