Chapter 79
"Reverend mother, has Sister Grace ever spoken of the past?"
The superior told a few beads.
"The past is as nothing to us here, my daughter. Within these walls the world does not enter. In the presence of the Cross the past and the future are one."
Greta drew a long breath. Then she stooped and kissed the hand of the superior, and turned softly away.
Greta and the landlady pa.s.sed out through the deep portico, and the same nun who had opened the door closed it behind them. Mrs. Drayton clung to Greta's arm as they went through, and her hand trembled perceptibly.
"Who is she?" whispered the landlady, when they were seated in a cab.
"Sister Grace," said Greta, and turned her head aside.
"I could ha' sworn as she were the mother of my Paul," murmured Mrs.
Drayton.
Greta faced about, but the landlady saw nothing of the look of inquiry; her eyes, like her thoughts, were far away.
CHAPTER XX.
Though the hour was late, the streets were thronged. The people were trooping home from the theaters; and the Strand, as Greta and the landlady crossed it, was choked with cabs and omnibuses. The cab drove through the Seven Dials, and there the public-houses were disgorging at every corner their poor ruins of men and women. Shouts, curses, quarreling, and laughter struck upon the ear above the whir of the wheels. Unshaven men and unwashed women, squalid children running here and there among the oyster and orange stalls, thieves, idlers, vagabonds of all conditions, not a few honest people withal, and among them the dark figures of policemen.
Greta's heart beat high that night. Her spirit was full of a new alacrity. Every inch of the way, as they flew over the busy streets, seemed to awake in her soul some fresh sensibility. She wondered where the mult.i.tudes of people came from, and whither they were going--vast oceans on oceans of humanity, flowing and ebbing without tide.
She wanted to alight a hundred times, and empty her pockets of all her money. A blind man, playing a tin whistle, and leading a small dog held by a long string, awoke her special pity; the plaintive look in the eye of the cur was an object of peculiar sympathy. A filthy woman, reeling drunk and bareheaded across the street, almost under the feet of the horses, her discolored breast hanging bare, and a puny infant crying feebly in her arms, was another occasion for solicitude. A tiny mite that might have been a dirty boy, coiled up in a ball on a doorstep like a starved cat, was an object of all but irresistible attraction. But she dare not stop for an instant; and, at last, with this certainty, she lay back and shut her eyes very resolutely, and wondered whether, after all, it were not very selfish to be very happy.
The cab stopped with a jolt; they
"Has he come?" asked Greta, eagerly, and looked about her with eyes that comprehended everything at a glance.
She could not see Paul, and when a porter opened the cab and helped her to alight, it was on her tongue to ask the man if he had seen her husband. But no, she would not do that. She must look for him herself, so that she might be the first to see him. Oh, yes, she must be the very first to see him, and she was now obstinately determined to ask no one.
The porter brought round the truck, and wheeled the luggage onto the platform, and Greta and Mrs. Drayton followed it. Then the wide eyes that half smiled and looked half afraid beneath their trembling lids glanced anxiously around. No, Paul was not there.
"What is the time?" she asked, her eyes still wandering over the bustling throng about her.
"Ten to twelve, miss," announced the porter.
"Oh," she said, with a sigh of relief, "then he will soon be here."
"Will you sit in the waiting-room, miss?" asked the porter; and almost unconsciously she followed him when he led the way. Mrs. Drayton hobbled behind her.
"What did he say about being ill?" she asked, when they were left together.
"That he was only a bit dizzy. Mayhap he's noways 'customed to illness,"
said the landlady.
"That is true. And what did you say then?"
"I coaxed him to rest him a bit, and take a drop o' summat, and he smiled and said, 'Thank you, my good woman.'
"You were in the right, you dear old soul," said Greta. And she put her arms about the landlady and hugged her. "I'm sure you've been very good to my husband, and watched him tenderly, while I, who should have nursed him, have been away. Thank you, thank you!"
Mrs. Drayton was feeling uneasy. "Well, d'ye know, I can't bear to see a fellow creatur' suffer. It goes agen me someways."
Greta had risen to her feet. "Stay here, Mrs. Drayton--Drayton, isn't it?--stay here while I go on to the platform. He might come and not see me. Ah, yes, he may be looking everywhere for me now."
She went out and elbowed her way among the people who were hurrying to and fro; she dodged between the trucks that were sliding luggage on to the weighing machine and off to the van. The engines were puffing volumes of smoke and steam up to the great gla.s.s roof, where the whistle of the engine-man echoed sharp and shrill. Presently she returned to the waiting-room.
"Oh, Mrs. Drayton," she said, "I dreamed a fearful dream last night.
What do you think? Will he be well enough to come?"
"Coorse, coorse, my dear. 'Tell her to meet her husband at twelve.'
Them's the gentleman's own words."
"How happy I shall be when we are safe at home! And if he is ill, it will be for me to nurse him then."
The light in the dove-like eyes at that moment told plainly that to the poor soul even illness might bring its compensating happiness.
"And as to dreams, to be sure, they are on'y dreams; and what's dreams, say I?"
"You are right, Mrs. Drayton," said Greta, and once more she shot away toward the platform. Her mind had turned to Parson Christian. Could it be possible that he had arrived? The porter who had brought in her luggage was still standing beside it, and with him there was another porter. Their backs were toward Greta as she came out of the waiting-room, and, tripping lightly behind them, she overheard a part of their conversation before they were aware that she was near.
"See the old file in the gaiters by the eleven up?" said one.
"Rather. A reg'lar grandmother's great-grandfather just out of the year one. Talk about swallows, eh?--and the buckles--and the stockings!"
"Good sort, how-an'-ever."
"Good for a tip, eh? Wouldn't ha' thought it."
"No, but a real good-hearted 'un an' if he is a Pape."
"Never?"
"To be sure. Got me to put him in a fly for the Catholic Convent up Westminster way."
Greta could restrain herself no longer, but burst in upon them with twenty questions. When had the parson arrived? When had he left? Was it in a fly? Would it go quickly? Could there be time for it to get back?
"What's your train, miss--twelve to the north?"
"Yes; will he catch it?"
"Scarce get back at twelve," said the porter. But, in spite of this discouraging prophecy, Greta was so elated at the fresh intelligence that she drew out her purse and gave the man five s.h.i.+llings. She had no other change than two half crowns and two pennies, and in her present elevation of soul there could be no choice, between the silver and the copper, as to which the bearer of such news deserved.