'Come! Wake up from your fancies. Been laughing, joking, chatting, drawing deep breaths, have you? Ah, well, here am I. You know me. Hear the ring of the hurrying horses' feet on my hard ways? See the anxious ferret faces of my workers? I am Reality. I am your master, and the world's master. You may escape me for a day, and dream you are a free man in the open. Grrrr!--' The train jars to a standstill. 'That may be well enough for a dream; but I am Reality. Come! There's no time here for reflection. Pick up your load. Get on; get on; or I'll smash you down in my gutters, where my human wastage lies!'
That is how cities have always spoken to me as I have entered them from the country. And yet--and yet, most of my life has been spent within their confines. Long imprisonment makes men fear liberty, they say. But how could a man fear the kindly country and its liberty for reflection? And, attaining to it, how could he possibly desire return to the noisy, crowded cells of the city? Impossible, surely, unless of course the city offered him a living, his life; and the country--calm and beautiful--refused it. And that perhaps is rather often the position, for your sedentary man, at all events; your modern, who cannot dig and is ashamed to beg--a numerous and ever increasing body.
Big Ben struck the hour of eight as we trundled past into Whitehall on the top of an omnibus. I thought of Fanny with some self-reproach. She would have reached the lodgings by about five, and our evening meal hour was seven. I hoped she had not waited without her meal. I left Heron on the 'bus, for he had farther than I to go, and hurried along to No. 46 Kent Street--the dingy house in which we had been living now for a month or more.
Fanny was not there, and, to my surprise, the landlady told me she had not been in all day, save for five minutes in the early afternoon, after which she went out carrying a parcel. I went to my bedroom for an overcoat, as the night was chilly. I possessed two of these garments at the time--one rather heavy and warm, the other a light coat. Both were missing from their accustomed pegs.
'Tcha! Now what does this mean?' I growled to myself; knowing quite well what it meant. 'And I take holidays in the country! I might have known better.'
And with that--all the brightness of the day forgotten now--I hurried out, bound for Howard Street and Mrs. Pelly's house.
But Mrs. Pelly had no idea as to her daughter's whereabouts. It seemed Fanny had left her before three o'clock, intending to go home.
Then began a search of the kind which had become only too familiar with me of late. I suppose I must have entered upon scores of such dismal quests since my marriage. First, I visited some twenty or thirty different 'gin-mills.' (In one of them I stayed a few minutes to eat a piece of bread and cheese.) Then I went to two police stations, at the two opposite ends of that locality. Finally, I tramped back to Kent Street, thinking to find Fanny there, and picturing in advance the condition in which I should find her. The most I ventured to hope was that she had been able to reach her room without assistance. But she had not been there at all.
I went out again into the street, somewhat at a loss. It was now past ten o'clock. After some hesitation I caught a passing omnibus and journeyed back towards Howard Street, near which stood a third police station, which I had not before visited.
'Wait there a minute, will you?' said the officer to whom my inquiry here was addressed. A moment later I heard his voice from an adjacent corridor; 'Has the doctor gone?' it asked. I did not hear the answer. But a minute or two later a tall man in a frock coat entered the room and walked up to me. I could see the top of a stethoscope protruding from one of his inner breast-coat pockets.