Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 6).djvu/186

in there follows often a slight hurrying up of incident—effects succeed quickly, as small clouds gathering, and the swift splash of rain on a sultry day. Perhaps an unquiet atmosphere lends significance to every whisper of the coming storm rush. A further stirring of hushed memories had awaited Elsa Vane before she reached the door of 131. Near the corner of Old Queer Street a lame boy carrying a basket paused a few paces in front of her, and gave in a rich, mellow voice a cry that was almost a refrain:—

Sweet La-ven-der. The words died away with plaintive appeal, for the voice was rarely sweet. Elsa was very tired, and the tears rose to her eyes. She stopped and spoke a few words to the lavender merchant before she turned into the gate. His face, like his voice, was refined. He told her that he had learned his cry from an old woman whom he used to hear calling in the streets; he added, rather sadly, that his voice was wearing, although he only used it for this trade; he was not so young as he looked, and the cry tried it. When Elsa had turned towards the house, he paused a few steps further on and gave his call twice with clear, prolonged sweetness. Elsa felt that it was for her.

"Sweet la-ven-da."

Such peace as she had gained was at an end from that day; memory grew vivid, quick-fingered, torturing; and under this hand her present surroundings showed repulsive and sordid. The sounds from the tavern ground their way into ears grown suddenly appreciative of only their hideous vulgarity, the daily routine of her life seemed harsh and unlovely. Behind it all, the refinement and sweet-scentedness of the home that had been hers shone far away, a rainbow-tinted vista beyond thoroughfares which were thronged and grey-hued. She felt jostled and wearied, and upon that mud-stained, fog-laden way the cry of the lavender merchant sounded very sweetly, like a song from home. She listened daily for its recurrence, but it came no more. It had been a mere street-cry, crossing her life like other incidents of the streets, pregnant with impression, but it dwelt in her mind with curious persistency.

This limitation of the God-given gift of song to the carrying of sweetness into sordid ways, waking Heaven knew what memories of pure life in tired hearts, grew to her somewhat strained imagination into a parable, losing nothing from the unconsciousness of the singer, and bearing heavily upon her own failure; the homely sweetness had been hers to disdain and cast aside.

One evening depression and hopelessness seemed to have reached their climax. She had been to the Strand that day, and many times since she had seen Tom Vane, but had never encountered him again. She began to feel that unless she wished to become a mere ghost haunting the confines of his life she must wander away again in search, at any rate, of numbness. An aching of keen desire was becoming habitual, and scarcely to be borne. She leaned her head upon her arm, folded over the blank