The brougham rolled on, and very soon Lord Somerville knew he was in the heart of London. The streets were flooded, passengers were rushing along, in vain trying to get into omnibuses or hansoms; shouting, whistling, rent the damp atmosphere, competing with claps of thunder which at times alarmed the inhabitants, especially when the electric lights suddenly went out and Londoners were plunged for a few minutes into utter darkness. Lord Somerville could not remember having ever witnessed such a thunderstorm in town; still, he welcomed its magnitude with joy, for it was the proper accompaniment to his frenzy against an inadequate state of Society. The wheels turned the corner of Piccadilly and Park Lane, not without risk, for the obscurity was dangerous, and in a few seconds the carriage halted before his stately mansion; he opened the door, jumped out, and went into the house without turning round to give orders for next day to his coachman. This seemed peculiar to the servant, as he knew my lord to be very methodical in all that concerned his household.
The Earl entered his library, and after lighting a few electric lights, which were only now throwing a dim and lurid light into the large room, he sank down into a huge armchair. It was very quiet in that room; double doors and double windows shut out the noise of the splashing rain against the window-panes, the thunder even was less violent in this well-padded room, and the lightning could not pierce through the shutters and the thick brocaded draperies. After the _fracas_ of the streets, it seemed to him as if he had already entered the Valley of Death as he sat in this silent place. The picture of his late father was hanging on the panel in front of him, and he looked at it for a considerable time. What could that face tell him at this critical hour, when for long years of his time he had never found one convincing argument with which to enlighten his son on all the grave problems of existence? It was always the same answers to the same inquiries: “My boy, others have gone through life besides yourself, and found it no worse than I have. Don’t think too hard, leave that to those who have to use their brains for a livelihood. You have a bed ready made to lie on, do not complain that it is too soft; but do not forget that you are a gentleman, and that when you have passed a few turnpikes of life—let us say, Eton, Oxford, the War or the Foreign Office—you can do whatever you like, for you are then innocuous; and no one, not even the most Argus-eyed dowager, will consider you dangerous, however wild your mode of life may be. My advice to you is, never fall into the clutches of any woman; to my mind the sex is divided into two dangerous species: the one that kill you before they bore you, the other that bore you before they kill you. But in either way you are a doomed man; though for myself I should prefer being killed to being bored—and as you know, I chose the former.”