By Marie Corelli
A dark, desolate December night, a night that clung to the metropolis like a wet
black shroud, a night in which the heavy, low-hanging vapours melted every now
and then into a slow, reluctant rain, cold as icicle-drops in a rock cavern. People
passed and repassed in the streets like ghosts in a bad dream; the twinkling gas-
light showed them at one moment rising out of the fog, and then disappearing
from view as though suddenly engulfed in a vaporous ebon sea. With muffled,
angry shrieks, the metropolitan trains deposited their shoals of shivering,
coughing travelers at the several stations, where sleepy officials, rendered
vicious by the weather, snatched the tickets from their hands with offensive haste
and roughness. Omnibus conductors grew ill-tempered and abusive without any
seemingly adequate reason; shopkeepers became flippant, disobliging, and
careless of custom; cabmen shouted derisive or denunciatory language after
their rapidly retreating fares; in short, everybody was in a discontented, almost
spiteful humour, with the exception of those few aggressively cheerful persons
who are in the habit of always making the best of everything, even bad weather.
Down the long wide vista of the Cromwell Road, Kensington, the fog had it all its
own way; it swept on steadily, like thick smoke from a huge fire, choking the
throats and blinding the eyes of foot-passengers, stealing through the crannies of
the houses, and chilling the blood of even those luxurious individuals who,
seated in elegant drawing-rooms before blazing fires, easily forgot that there
were such bitter things as cold and poverty in that outside world against which
they had barred their windows. At one house in particular—a house with gaudy
glass doors and somewhat spoiled yellow silk curtains at the windows, a house
that plainly said to itself, "Done up for show!" to all who cared to examine its
exterior—there stood a closed brougham, drawn by a prancing pair of fat horses.
A coachman of distinguished appearance sat on the box; a footman of
irreproachable figure stood waiting on the pavement, his yellow-gloved hand
resting elegantly on the polished silver knob of the carriage door. Both these
gentlemen were resolute and inflexible of face; they looked as if they had
determined on some great deed that should move the world to wild applause;
but, truth to tell, they had only just finished a highly satisfactory "meat-tea," and
before this grave silence had fallen upon them, they had been discussing the
advisability of broiled steak and onions for supper. The coachman had inclined to
plain mutton-chops as being easier of digestion; the footman had earnestly
asseverated his belief in the superior succulence and sweetness of the steak and
onions, and in the end he had gained his point. This weighty question being
settled, they had gradually grown reflective on the past, present, and future joys
of eating at some one else's expense, and in this bland and pleasing state of
meditation they were still absorbed. The horses were impatient, and pawed the
muddy ground with many a toss of their long manes and tails, the steam from
their glossy coats mingling with the ever-thickening density of the fog. On the
