The Novel of the Black Seal

I must now give you some fuller particulars of my history. I am the
daughter of a civil engineer, Steven Lally by name, who was so
unfortunate as to die suddenly at the outset of his career, and before
he had accumulated sufficient means to support his wife and her two
children.

My mother contrived to keep the small household going on resources which
must have been incredibly small; we lived in a remote country village,
because most of the necessaries of life were cheaper than in a town, but
even so we were brought up with the severest economy. My father was a
clever and well-read man, and left behind him a small but select
collection of books, containing the best Greek, Latin, and English
classics, and these books were the only amusement we possessed. My
brother, I remember, learnt Latin out of Descartes's _Meditationes_, and
I, in place of the little tales which children are usually told to read,
had nothing more charming than a translation of the _Gesta Romanorum_.
We grew up thus, quiet and studious children, and in course of time my
brother provided for himself in the manner I have mentioned. I continued
to live at home: my poor mother had become an invalid, and demanded my
continual care, and about two years ago she died after many months of
painful illness. My situation was a terrible one; the shabby furniture
barely sufficed to pay the debts I had been forced to contract, and the
books I dispatched to my brother, knowing how he would value them. I was
absolutely alone; I was aware how poorly my brother was paid; and though
I came up to London in the hope of finding employment, with the
understanding that he would defray my expenses, I swore it should only
be for a month, and that if I could not in that time find some work I
would starve rather than deprive him of the few miserable pounds he had
laid by for his day of trouble. I took a little room in a distant
suburb; the cheapest that I could find; I lived on bread and tea, and I
spent my time in vain answering of advertisements, and vainer walks to
addresses I had noted. Day followed on day, and week on week, and still
I was unsuccessful, till at last the term I had appointed drew to a
close, and I saw before me the grim prospect of slowly dying of
starvation. My landlady was good-natured in her way; she knew the
slenderness of my means, and I am sure that she would not have turned me
out of doors; it remained for me then to go away, and to try to die in
some quiet place. It was winter then, and a thick white fog gathered in
the early part of the afternoon, becoming more dense as the day wore on;
it was a Sunday, I remember, and the people of the house were at chapel.
At about three o'clock I crept out and walked away as quickly as I
could, for I was weak from abstinence. The white mist wrapped all the
streets in silence, a hard frost had gathered thick upon the bare
branches of the trees, and frost crystals glittered on the wooden
fences, and on the cold, cruel ground beneath my feet. I walked on,
turning to right and left in utter haphazard, without caring to look up
at the names of the streets, and all that I remember of my walk on that
Sunday afternoon seems but the broken fragments of an evil dream. In a
confused vision I stumbled on, through roads half town and half country,
grey fields melting into the cloudy world of mist on one side of me, and
on the other comfortable villas with a glow of firelight flickering on
the walls, but all unreal; red brick walls and lighted windows, vague
trees, and glimmering country, gas-lamps beginning to star the white
shadows, the vanishing perspectives of the railway line beneath high
embankments, the green and red of the signal lamps--all these were but
momentary pictures flashed on my tired brain and senses numbed by
hunger. Now and then I would hear a quick step ringing on the iron road,
and men would pass me well wrapped up, walking fast for the sake of
warmth, and no doubt eagerly foretasting the pleasures of a glowing
hearth, with curtains tightly drawn about the frosted panes, and the
welcomes of their friends, but as the early evening darkened and night
approached, foot-passengers got fewer and fewer, and I passed through
street after street alone. In the white silence I stumbled on, as
desolate as if I trod the streets of a buried city; and as I grew more
weak and exhausted, something of the horror of death was folding thickly
round my heart. Suddenly, as I turned a corner, some one accosted me
courteously beneath the lamp-post, and I heard a voice asking if I could
kindly point the way to Avon Road.