'Well, I suppose you must do as you like. I'll come and see you off.'
'No,' said I firmly. 'I shall say good-bye to you here, Edgar. I have very particular reasons for it, and you must give way to me in this.'
He tried to change my mind; he wanted to know my reasons; but he was unsuccessful in both attempts. I knew how obstinate he was, and that if I once allowed him to go with me to town, he would be sure to subject me to more painful meetings in the endeavour to persuade me to remain in England. Luckily for me, the very next day the Marquis telegraphed to his son to join him immediately in Monmouthshire; and no sooner had Edgar left the house, with the sure knowledge that he should not see me again, than I fulfilled his fears by instant preparation for my own departure. I had discarded all disguises, and contented myself by masking my face as much as possible with a travelling cap and a muffler; on arriving in town I went to an hotel in Covent Garden, where I was not known, and by the evening of the following day I had provided myself with the outfit of a Transpontine villain, a low-crowned, wide-brimmed soft hat and a black Spanish cloak.
In this get-up, which, when not made too conspicuous by a stage-walk and melodramatic glances around, is really a very efficient disguise both of form and features, I knew myself to be quite safe from recognition anywhere, and having decided to start from Charing Cross for Cologne by way of Ostend on the following morning, I devoted the evening of my second day in town to a last look round.
CHAPTER IV
It was Saturday evening; a week of fog having been succeeded by a week of rain, the pavements were now well coated with black slimy mud, in which one kept one's footing as best one could, stimulated by plentiful showers of the same substance, in a still more fluid state, flung by the wheels of passing vehicles.
Oh, wisely-governed city, where there is work for thousands of starving men, while thousands of men are starving for want of work! If a boy can keep a crossing clean in a crowded thoroughfare, could not an organised gang of men, ten times as numerous and twice as active as our gentle scavengers, save the sacred boots, skirts, and trousers of the respectable classes from that brush-resisting abomination, London mud? I respectfully recommend this suggestion to my betters with the assurance that, if it is considered of any value, there are plenty more where that came from.
Starting from Covent Garden, I made my way through King Street, Garrick Street, Cranbourne Street, Leicester Square and Coventry Street, into Regent Street, and was struck by a hundred common London sights and incidents which, in the old days, when my own life was so idle and yet so absorbing, had entirely escaped my notice. Oxford Street, Bond Street, Piccadilly, St. James's Street, I made the tour of them all; past the clubs, of many of which I was a member, brushing, unrecognised, by a dozen men who had known me well, into Trafalgar Square, where the gas-lamps cast long glittering lines of light on the wet pavement, and the spire of St. Martin's and the dome of the National Gallery rose like gray shadow-palaces above in the rainy air.