Oftentimes, it is the man, whom life has crushed beyond what the human heart can take, who stands firm in that solid character, higher moral ground and strength, who has more than once saved humanity.

And oftentimes then, it is the beautiful spoiled rich girl, brought up in the highest of society and sold to the vanity of puffed-up discourses, who disregard even the most common decencies toward a poorer class, resembling the deathly, bitter poison that devours body and soul.
But it was not so with the Clarke household.
Sophronia Rose Victoria Clarke grew up and ventured all her life in Ennismore, appropriately shielded from the rest of London. The young girl was mostly kept in the neat, dry, warm environment, filled with opulence in their family apartment.
But such was not the case in the Clarke household.
Barely sixteen years of age, she was curious about other people, and world’s to be explored. The books her father allowed her to read, were that of adventures and wars in Africa and India, of brave men and of wealth beyond comparison. Of diamonds being dug out of colossal holes, and of the largest sailing ships ferrying tea from the East Indies to the ports of England, where she, young Miss Victoria could enjoy that very tea while her imagination ran as wild as the ferocious beasts of that alluring dark continent.
Attired with a vigorous dose of ambition, her parents named her after the queen, but from the age of four or six, they comforted themselves in the notion that it was all in vain. Their little Victoria, had ideas of her own.
James Ward was also a man named after a King. He, however possessed none the nobility nor the character of a king. James was fortunate enough to have seen those diamonds Miss Victoria read about in the books, but never privileged enough to have owned one. Being warped by the greed of the mining trade, he joined the British troops in their fight against the Boers, and was rewarded with a Westley Richards’s bullet through the hip.
Armed with a cane, and a pipe and cheap tobacco, he lived in the kitchen of an apartment in White Chapel, barely keeping himself together with odd jobs at the docks. The world was a cruel and harsh place. Bitterness filled his belly. Self pity covered his soul.
Now not so often, but perhaps on a rare occasion it would happen that a young man in shanty clothes and in a wretched state, would after a long day at the quay, take his long walk home. And perhaps on such a rare occasion, a beautiful young girl in a Victorian dress would, in the spirit of youthful energy run after that man, having picked up something he accidentally dropped.
“Sir! You have dropped something that might belong to you? It must have fallen out of your pocket when you took out your pipe,” she said while feeling the cold ivory in her soft and tender hand.
“I don’t mean to trouble you, sir, but I’ve never seen anything like it, so beautifully carved with lions and elephants… What is it, sir?”
“Cut-throat.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“It’s a cut-throat razor, Miss.”
“Oh! Truly remarkable. Rather a unique piece of art, I might add!”
With those few lines, young Miss Victoria and Mr James Ward met. Two ‘bluebottles’ however, watched the distinct couple on the pavement with stark suspicion.
“Bluebottles, you say?” She didn’t understand.
“Coppers. Policemen,” he grunted.
“Let us hide in here, I have so much to ask you. Please, sir?” She pleaded, pointing to the cemetery.
“T’s old graveyard? They’ll be lock’n up soon… I’s illegal you know, they’ll take us for grave robbers, they will.”
“Oh, who will know? We’ll hide behind the sanctuaries. It’ll be our wild adventure!”
He looked doubtful.
“My father is quite all right you know, a man of reputation,” she smiled with confidence. “He will put a word in, if ever necessary.”
“He’ll save you, Miss, sure thing. For me they’ll hang.”
“Oh, do come on! I want to hear all about it. Everywhere you’ve been. Perhaps you can even take me there some day, to those faraway worlds of beauty and splendour…”
Thus it happened that the most unlikely of couples, committed the most irregular of acts, by spending an entire night, conversing in the moonlight shadows of tombstones and ancient oaks, on the subject of an adventure they both knew almost nothing about.

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