Chapter 61
Her tears were rolling down her cheeks, but her eyes were very bright.
"What do you wish me to do?" she whispered. "Is it not something for me to do?"
"It is, darling. You said rightly that the thought of one is the thought of both."
"What is it?"
"A terrible thing!"
"No matter. I am here to do it. What?"
"It is to part from me to-night--only for to-night--only until to-morrow."
Greta's face broke into a perfect suns.h.i.+ne of beauty. "Is that all?" she asked.
"My darling!" said Paul, and embraced her fervently and kissed the quivering lips, "I am leading you through dark vaults, where you can see no single step before you."
"But I am holding your hand, my husband," Greta whispered.
Speech was too weak for that great moment. Again the heart-breaking sobs fell on the silence. Then Paul drew a cloak over Greta's shoulders and b.u.t.toned up his ulster. "It is a little after midnight," he said with composure. "There is a fly at the door. We may catch the last train up to London. I have a nest for you there, my darling."
Then he went out into the bar. "Landlady," he said, "I will come back to-morrow for our luggage. Meantime, let it lie here, if it won't be in your way. We've kept you up late, old lady. Here, take this--and thank you."
"Thankee! and the boxes are quite safe, sir--thankee!"
He threw open the door to the road, and hailed the driver of the fly, cheerily. "Cold, sleety night, my good fellow. You'll have a sharp drive."
"Yes, sir; it air cold waiting, very, specially inside, sir, just for want of summat short."
"Well, come in quick and get it, my lad."
"Right, sir."
When Paul returned to the room to call Greta, he found her examining papers. She had picked them up off the table. They were the copies of certificates which Hugh Ritson had left there. Paul had forgotten them during the painful interview. He tried to recover them unread, but he was too late.
"This," she said, holding out one of them, "is not the certificate of your birth. This person, Paul Lowther, is no doubt my father's lost son."
"No doubt," said Paul, dropping his head.
"But he is thirty years of age--see! You are no more than twenty-eight."
"If I could but prove that, it would be enough," he said.
"I can prove it, and I will!" she said.
"You! How?"
"Wait until to-morrow, and see," she said.
He had put one arm about her waist, and was taking her to the door.
She stopped.
"Now, driver, up and away."
"Right, sir. Kentish Town Junction?"
"The station, to catch the 12:30."
The carriage door was opened and closed. Then the bitter weeping from the upper room came out to them in the night.
"Poor girl! whatever ails her? I seem to remember her voice," said Greta.
"We can't wait," Paul answered.
CHAPTER IX.
The clocks of London were striking one when Paul and Greta descended the steps in front of St. Pancras Station. The night was dark and bitterly cold. Dense fog hung in the air, and an unaccustomed silence brooded over the city. A solitary four-wheeled cab stood in the open square. The driver was inside, huddled up in his great-coat, and asleep. A porter awakened him, and he made way for Greta and Paul. He took his ap.r.o.n from the back of his horse, wrapped it about his waist, and snuffed the wicks of his lamps--they burned low and red, and crackled in the damp atmosphere.
"What hotel, sir?"
"The convent, Westminster."
"Convent, sir? Did you say the convent, sir? St. Margaret's, Westminster, sir?"
"The Catholic convent."
Greta's hand pressed Paul's arm.
The cabman got on to his box, muttering something that was inaudible. As he pa.s.sed the gate lodge he drew up while the porter on duty came out with a lamp, and took the number of the cab.
The fog grew more dense at every step, and the pace at which they traveled was slow. To avoid the maze of streets that would have helped them to a shorter cut on a clearer night, the driver struck along Euston Road to Tottenham Court Road, and thence south toward Oxford Street.
This straighter and plainer course had the disadvantage of being more frequented. Many a collision became imminent in the uncertain light.
The cabman bought a torch from a pa.s.ser-by, and stuck it in his whip-barrel. As they reached the busier thoroughfares he got down from his box, took the torch in one hand and the reins in the other, and walked at his horse's head.
The pace was now slower than before. It was like a toilsome pa.s.sage through the workings of an iron mine. Volumes of noisome vapor rolled slowly past them. The air hung close over their heads like an unseen, vaulted roof. Red lights gleamed like vanis.h.i.+ng stars down the elastic vista. One light would turn out to be a coffee-stall, round which a group of people gathered--cabmen m.u.f.fled to the throat, women draggled and dirty, boys with faces that were old. Another would be a potato-engine, with its own volumes of white vapor, and the clank of its oven door like the metallic echo of the miner's pick. The line of regular lamps was like the line of candles stuck to the rock, the cross streets were like the cross-workings, the damp air settling down into streaks of moisture on the gla.s.s of the cab window was like the ceasless drip, drip of the oozing water from overhead.
And to the two laden souls sitting within in silence and with clasped hands, the great city, nay, the world itself, was like a colossal mine, which human earthworms had burrowed underground, while the light and the free air were both above.
At one point, where a patch of dry pavement indicated a bake-house under the street, three or four squalid creatures crouched together and slept.
The streets were all but noiseless. It would be two hours yet before the giant of traffic would awake. The few cabmen hailed each other as they pa.s.sed unrecognized, and their voices sounded hoa.r.s.e. When the many clocks struck two, the many tones came m.u.f.fled through the dense air.
The journey was long and wearisome, but Paul and Greta scarcely felt it.
They were soon to part; they knew not when they were to meet again.
Perhaps soon, perhaps late; perhaps not until a darkness deeper than this should cover the land.