Robin Paige - Death in Hyde Park

“Quite a city,” Mr. London remarked, pursing his lips. “Not up to New York’s mark, of course,” he added judiciously, “or even Frisco, which is still a bit raw. But quite a city nevertheless.”

Nellie felt at a disadvantage, since she had not been to New York or San Francisco. But she was stung by the condescension in his tone and observed tartly that many people seemed to prefer London to any city in the world. She softened her remark with a sideways smile, though, and the comment, “From the East End to the Carleton-you’re seeing quite a good deal of the City, Mr. London. The writing is going well, I hope?”

They talked about Mr. London’s new book, then, which he had described to her at length the other afternoon at tea at the Palmers’. He said he had spent the day doing research-tramping the docks, talking to dockworkers, and taking notes about their awful working conditions, as well as any number of photographs-and he gave her a detailed description of the dens and dives, as he called them, that he had explored. He had been glad to return to the Palmers’, where he could get a hot bath and change out of what he called his “slum costume” before coming out for the evening. He was writing steadily, he added with a conscious pride, working from notes he took on his expeditions into the East End and from some documents the Socialists had provided him, figures and statistics and the like. He expected to finish the book, which he was calling People of the Abyss, before he returned to New York.

“People of the Abyss?” Nellie repeated, not sure that she liked the sound of the title.

“People of the pit,” Mr. London said. He shrugged, his dark eyes glinting. “Hell, if you like that better.”

“Well, of course, some of Whitechapel is very bad,” Nellie conceded. “There’s no denying that. But I lived there myself for a time, and I-”

“Then you understand exactly what I’m talking about,” London said. He slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Now, Miss Lovelace, let’s talk about pleasanter things. You were a vision tonight, up there on that stage. The way you moved, I couldn’t keep my eyes off you.” His glance dropped to her breasts, and his lips to her mouth, forcibly. Nellie was decidedly relieved when the carriage jolted to a stop in front of the Carleton. Mr. London pulled back as a liveried valet opened the door.

And then they were entering the Carleton, and Nellie found herself surrounded by a wonderland of plush carpets, soft lights and music, sweet-scented flowers on the tables, and green palms in every corner. They were shown to a table covered by snowy damask linen and set with sparkling crystal and elegant china, where they quickly agreed to call each other Jack and Nellie, then lingered for a very long time over a lavish supper of rare roast duck (Jack’s favorite) and several bottles of Liebfraumilch (another of his favorites). Afterward, they floated (at least, that’s how Nellie remembered it) into a private lounge, where they sat together on a velvet settee with their coffees and liqueurs and cigarettes.

Jack was a marvelous conversationalist, as one might expect of a famous adventure writer, and the words flowed out of him in a wild torrent. He had sailed before the mast on the last of the seal-hunters to leave San Francisco Bay, he said, and felt “absolutely exalted” when he stood at the wheel of the wildly careering schooner, guiding it through a maelstrom of waves. “When I have done such a thing,” he said expansively, “I glow all over. Every fiber of me thrills with it.”

Nellie started to say that she felt exactly the same way when she was on the stage, but he was hurrying on to tell her about how he had nearly lost his life among the icebergs of the Bering Sea, and while she was still gasping at the brutal dangers of that desolate scene, he began to describe the harrowing winters he had spent searching for gold in the Klondike, where he had learned to love the loud, clear call of wolves in the echoing wilderness. She had barely transformed him in her mind from sailor and seal-hunter to gold-seeker, when he was describing how he had hitched his way right across the United States in a railway boxcar, and then had only just missed being elected Mayor of Oakland, California-in fact, he would have been elected if he hadn’t run on the Socialist ticket, because Socialists weren’t quite the thing in America just yet.

But they would be, he insisted, stubbing out his cigarette in his coffee cup. There would be a revolution, it was absolutely inevitable, and then the millions of people (like himself) whose birthrights had been denied would rise up and reclaim them from the capitalists who had stolen them. That Jack London was a Socialist and spoke so warmly against the destructive powers of capitalism was somewhat surprising to Nellie, because she had thought-naively, it seemed-that only capitalists could afford to eat roast duck at the Carlton.

Over their liqueurs, the conversation turned to another event that seemed to have caught Jack’s fancy, for he told the story with an amusing panache. He was walking down Hampstead Road when a bird’s nest fell out of the sky and onto the pavement in front of him. Looking up, he saw to his great surprise a woman scrambling across a roof, and then, to his delight, descending straight down an iron fire-ladder and practically into his arms, while on the street at his very elbow, the police were bustling three men into a police van. Questioning those around him, he learned that the woman who jumped off the ladder and disappeared into the crowd was none other than the editor of the Clarion, an Anarchist newspaper, and that she was escaping from a raid. He seemed to find this whole affair wonderfully amusing and stimulating.

“That would be Charlotte Conway,” Nellie said, glad that she was at last able to contribute something to the conversation, which up to that point had been mainly his. “I know her quite well, actually. In fact, I’ve already heard all about her narrow escape. She told me herself.”

Jack’s dark eyes glinted with excitement. “She told you? You mean, you know where she is?”

Nellie frowned. Things might be a bit blurry from everything she’d had to drink, but she still had her wits about her. “I know where she was, ” she said cautiously. “She’s not there now.”

“Then where is she?”

Feeling that there was an odd urgency about the question, Nellie put on a mysterious smile. “Why, she could be anywhere,” she said lightly. “Those Anarchists, you know. Always so independent, never wanting to ask for anything.”

“Somehow I guessed that about her,” Jack said, half to himself. “A free spirit, nothing held back, nothing denied. Mate woman.”

Nellie frowned, puzzled by the phrase mate woman. In her experience, men (especially sailors and Aussies) considered one another as mates, and animal pairs were thought of as mates, and sometimes married people spoke of their spouses as mates. Mate woman didn’t make much sense, if Jack was thinking of Lottie.

Still, she didn’t want him to suspect that she herself was withholding something, so she only smiled and said, “That’s Lottie, a free spirit,” adding, “The last time I saw her, she had cut her hair short and disguised herself as a young man.”

“The hell you say!” Jack exploded into a raucous laugh. “A man, huh? What a woman!” Catching her curious glance, he said, still chuckling, “Well, then, if you see her, let her know I’m looking for her. I’m dying to interview her-get her opinion about the East End and what’s going on there. I’ll wager she knows more than most about what I’m interested in. As an Anarchist, that is.”

With a twinge of jealousy, Nellie thought that there might be more to it than that, but she just shrugged. “I’m sure she does,” she said, tossing her head carelessly. “Well, if I happen to run into her again, I’ll see if she wants to talk to you.”