Читать книгу The storm of London: a social rhapsody онлайн

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Was this all that the aristocratic shape framed in front of him could tell him? It was not enough. He was too robust to be killed by the London Hetaires, and too fastidious to allow himself to be bored by the other species. He listened, but no sound came from the outside; the walls were too thick, the draperies too rich to allow any fracas to disturb the owner of that dwelling. He was hermetically shut out from every outward commotion, and might have lived in a vault. Was not that an image of his privileged life? All things had been so ordained and smoothed down in his easy existence that he could see nothing beyond his own direct surroundings, and could never penetrate into another heart, nor allow anyone to hear the throbs of his own heart. That was called the privilege of the well-bred, and it was all that generations before him had done for his welfare: a double-windowed house and a well-padded life, out of which he never could step. There were barriers at every corner of the road in which he had walked. Harrow, Oxford, the Guards, Downing Street, watched him, reminding him, by the way, that he could prance, kick, roll, do anything he had a mind to, within his boundary; and he heard that haunting whisper in his wearied ears that, however low he sank—he was a gentleman. But outside the boundary was a world called life, with a real, throbbing, howling humanity, a pushing and elbowing crowd with which he evidently had nothing to do; out there he had no business, for over there people answered for themselves, were responsible for their own actions, and he would no doubt fare badly were he to push and elbow for his own sake, independently of all the privileged institutions that propped him up through life. He suddenly remembered that next day there was a Levee, and that he was to be there. No, he would not go, he would escape for once, and for good and all, these recurring functions of social London which seemed to narrow the horizon of life. The best was to make a suitable exit and bring down the curtain on a Mayfair episode; it would puzzle, interest, amuse half of London for the inside of a week, and it would be over. He got up and went to a large bureau that stood in the middle of the room, and began to open drawer after drawer; he brought out some business papers, laid them carefully on the bureau, pulled out bundles of letters, read a few, burnt a great many. Amongst all the correspondence he came across there was not one note from Gwendolen; she did not write, she sent wires about anything, for an appointment at Ranelagh, a bracelet she had seen at Hancock’s, or some more trifling matter; and even then, she hardly sat down to pen these cursory remarks; she sent her wires when at breakfast, close to the dish of fried bacon, at lunch, at tea, on the corner of the silver tray. He opened another drawer and took out a revolver; it was loaded, and he examined it minutely. How long had it been in that drawer and when had he loaded it? He could not recall when last he had seen the arm. He slowly lifted it to his temple and pulled the trigger, as a violent clap of thunder shook the house to its very foundation, causing the electric lights to go out. Lord Somerville fell heavily on the Turkish carpet.