"Now that there's this spirit abroad, I'll answer for nothing at all,"
he said; "you'd be better the other side of Aldgate, and that's certain.
There's nothing but a pack of foreign cut-throats in the streets
to-night, and no man is safe. Just you take my advice, sir, and come
back in the morning, when they've had time to cool awhile. This is no
place for the young lady, whatever it may be for us."
Silvester agreed with him, but he found it impossible to influence
Gabrielle. She seemed strangely moved by the melancholy glamour of the
scene; by the savage figures shadowed in the after-glow; by the
reddening skeleton of the Temple which stood up so proudly a few hours
ago. To-morrow there would be but a pit of ashes, where to-day a
sacrifice had been offered to the nation. She suffered profoundly when
she surveyed this wreck of her handiwork, and it seemed to her that her
work among the people was done.
"Let us go on to the old Temple," she said with what resignation she
could command, "if they have burned that also, then I will return with
you, father, for I can do nothing more."
Silvester disliked the idea of it. He would have been pleased enough to
have been back in his little study at Hampstead, where he might have
composed a sermon upon "ingratitude," as an obstacle; but he had long
been schooled to obedience when his daughter commanded, and so they
re-entered the cab and drove to the old Temple. A silent multitude
watched them as they went, but none cheered. The bitter cold night
either sent people to their houses, where they might shiver upon heaps
of rags, or it drove them to the open street where many a huge fire had
been kindled that the outcasts might warm themselves. Hereabouts you
would often see a whole family lying upon a filthy pallet of straw, and
so huddled together for warmth that it had the appearance of some
fearsome animal which had crawled from the darkness to the light. The
shadows gave pictures more terrible, husbanding the dying and the dead.
Starvation abetted the rigour of the winter. Nature waged war here in
these silent alleys, and no sound attended her stealthy victories, which
were multitudinous.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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