He had been many times to ask about me.
About me! What was he doing about.... But no, that was for me alone. Up and down the streets I should go, looking into the eyes of outcasts under city lamps—looking for the eyes I knew.
Nor could I wait till I was well. Night by night I went upon the quest. Catching distant glimpses of Bettina in my dreams, struggling to reach her, for ever losing her in the turmoil of streets and the roar of stations, till the thought of Bettina was merged in overmastering terror of the noise and evil which was London.
The moment I was a little better they tried to get me to sleep without an opiate. The doctor made so great a point of this, I did all in my power not to disappoint him, and for no reason in the world but that something in his voice reminded me of Eric—just a little. Nobody knew how much of the time, behind closed eyes, my mind was broad awake....
Oh, the London nights!—airless, endless. And the anguish of those haunted hours before dawn. My country ears, so used to silence or the note of birds, strained to interpret London sounds before break of day.
Hardly any honest, individual voices, and yet no moment quiet. Incessantly the distant rumbling of ... something. I could never tell what. It was the roar of London streets by day, attenuated, held at bay, but never conquered—the bustle and clang muffled in the huge blanket of the night.
The strongest impression about it was just of the vague, unverifiable thing being there—an enemy breathing in the dark. Sometimes it started up with a rattle of chains.
"Mail-carts," said the nurse.
And that other sound—like one's idea of battering-rams thundering at fortress walls—the nurse would have me believe that to such an accompaniment did milk make entry into London! Sometimes the thick air was so sharply torn by horn, or pierced by whistle, that I would start up in my bed trembling, listening, till the dying clamour sunk once more to the level of the giant's breathing.
When I was not delirious, the reason I lay still was sometimes half a nightmare reason; a feeling that the muffled night-sounds were like the bees at home in the rhododendron, drumming softly so long as we sat still. The moment we rose up the bees rose too, with angry commotion, ready to fly in our faces and sting. Just so with that muted hum of London. If I were not very still, if I were to rise and venture out, all the stinging, angry noises would rise, too, and overwhelm me.