Karel Čapek - Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 7

The hansom rattles through the streets It goes at a good pace, but it seems a long time getting to its destination. At length it pulls up.

“What part of Whitechapel, sir?” inquires the cabman, looking through the aperture in the roof of his vehicle.

“You may put me down here, cabby,” answers the young duke, handing him half-a-sovereign; “and if you like to wait for me, I may be about an hour gone. I’ll pay you well, if you will.”

“You’re a genelman, I can sees that pretty plainly,” answers the cabman glibly, as he touches his hat, and pockets the half-sovereign. “I’ll wait, sir; no fear.”

Evelyn Ravensdale wanders through the gloomy, ill-lighted streets. Midnight has chimed out from Big Ben; it is getting on towards one o’clock, and he does not meet many people. A policeman or two saunter along their beats, and turn their lights upon him as he passes. Sometimes a man and woman flit past him, or a solitary man by himself. He passes a dark, gloomy-looking archway into which the light from a flickering gas-lamp just penetrates. He can see a boy and girl with white, pinched faces asleep in an old barrel in one corner, a shivering, skinny dog curled up at their feet. The sight is terrible to him. He steps into the archway, and touches the boy on the shoulder. With a frightened cry the lad starts up and eyes him beseechingly.

“Ah, bobby! Don’t turn us out to-night,” he says pleadingly. “Maggie’s so poorly and sick, she can hardly stand up. See, she’s asleep now. Don’t wake her, please, bobby, don’t.”

He starts suddenly, and pulls his forelock as he perceives that it is not a policeman he is talking to. “Beg pardon, sir,” he says, “thought it was a bobby.”

“Have you no better place than this to sleep in, my poor lad?” inquires the duke pityingly, his hand still on the boy’s shoulder.

“Ah, sir! this is a gran’ place. We don’t allays gets the likes o’ this. Poor Maggie, she was so pleased when we found this ’ere barrel. See, sir, how she do sleep.”

“Is Maggie your sister?” asks the young duke, with a half-sob.

“No, sir, she’s my gal. Maggie and me, we’ves been together a long time now, we has.”

“And what do you do for a living”, boy? “continues Evelyn Ravensdale gently.

“Anything, sir, we can get to do. It’s not allays we can get a job, and then we have to go hungry like.”

“My God!” bursts from the young man’s lips, but he says no more. The next moment he has pressed a couple of sovereigns into the poor lad’s hand, and is gone.

He wanders on through the same street. He takes no note of the name of it. His thoughts are far too busy for that. He is approaching another street, less lonely and better lighted than the one he is in. There are more people about, and he sees several women loitering up and down near the corner. Instinctively he crosses the street so as to avoid them. Two of them are making off after two men that have just passed by, the third is left alone. She spies the young duke at once, and runs across the street to cut him off. He sees he cannot avoid her, and pulls himself together. In another moment she is by his side, with one hand on his arm.

“Won’t you come home with me, dear?” she says softly. “Won’t you”

“Peace, woman!” he almost shouts, as he flings off her hand from his arm. She starts back with a low cry, and he sees a face, young still, with traces of great beauty, but careworn and haggard with suffering. His heart is filled with a great pity; he feels that such sights as these are unendurable to him. He feels that he cannot face them.

“Poor thing, poor thing,” he says gently; “forgive me if I was rough to you. This is no place for you, my child. You look a mere child; are you not one?”

“I am eighteen,” she stammers.

“Eighteen, and so fallen!” he exclaims in a horrified tone. “Ah, child! get away out of this.”

“And starve?” she ejaculates bitterly. “Easy for you to talk; you are not starving.”

“Starving!” He utters that word with a peculiar intonation. It tells her what pity there is in his heart for her.

“Oh, sir!” she exclaims, “I would not be here if I were not driven to it. I don’t want to be here. I hate it; I hate it! It is my hard, hard fate, that I am here.”

“Have you no father, no mother to care for you?” he asks sadly.

“No, sir, not to care for me,” she answers, with a sob. “Father’s in gaol. Mother walks the streets like me, to make her bread. She told me I’d better do so too, unless I wanted to starve. That’s how it is, sir.”

He covers his face with one hand, and groans aloud. His thoughts have rushed back to the luxury he has but lately quitted; he compares it with the misery he has just witnessed. Once more his hand is in his pocket.

“If I give you this, my child,” he says, drawing out a five-pound note, “will you promise me to go home at once, and leave these streets of infamy and wrong; and if I give you my card, and promise to place you in a way of earning an honest livelihood, will you call at my house tomorrow for a letter which I will leave to be given to you? Will you try and get your mother, too, to come with you?”

She bursts into tears. “Ah, sir! may God in heaven bless you. Yes, yes, I will promise; indeed I will. Gladly, too gladly.”

He holds out to her the card and the bank-note. As she takes them she bends over his hand and kisses it passionately. He draws it gently away.

“Remember your promise,” he says quietly.

“I will,” she answers, between her sobs. “Oh God! I would die for you, sir.”

He watches her as she turns away and disappears in the gloom. Heavy tears are in his eyes.

“I must go home now,” he whispers to himself. “I cannot see more.”

“TEN to one bar one, ten to one bar one, ten to one bar one.” The ring is roaring itself hoarse over these words; the hubbub is deafening; it reverberates all around; it echoes and reechoes through the hot June air.

It is Derby Day. The waving downs of Epsom are alive with people; they swarm over every cranny and nook of the wide-stretching space on either side of the straight run-in; they surge to and fro like a sea of dark, moving matter; they contribute to the busy air of life, that has established its reign on all around. It is a great day. Always crowded, Epsom is more than usually so. Old habitues of the place declare, that never in their memories—and some of them have pretty old ones—can they recollect such a swarming throng.

But the reason for all this crowd is an excellent one. Have not the people come to see the great horse win?

He is in the paddock now, and is being stripped, for the saddling bell has rung. He is the centre of a pushing, hustling throng, all eager to catch a glimpse of the unbeaten hero of the day; for have not his triumphs been such as a horse and its owner might well be proud of, carrying, as he does, the laurels of the Dewhurst Plate, the Middle Park Plate, and the Two Thousand Guineas upon him?

What a grand-looking horse he is I How his rich, ruddy chestnut coat glistens in the sun like armour of burnished gold! Such a quiet beast, too, neither snatching, nor stamping, nor doing aught that a restive or vicious racehorse would.

“He can’t be beat!” exclaims a young man who has been standing silently watching the stripping process. “I’ll be a man or a mouse, Florrie; I’ll stand every penny I’ve got on him or lose all, hanged if I won’t!”

“Don’t be a fool, Reggie,” answers the lady addressed. She is close beside him, and has laid her hand on his arm. It is Flora Desmond.

“Fool or no fool,” he answers quickly, “I mean to have this dash. I tell you he can’t be beat. It’s only a question of pluck laying the odds. Hanged if I won’t stand every penny of the £100,000 which I have got on him. They are taking twenty to one now.”