Deborah drew her breath with a sob. These suggestions were only an echo to the fears which had lately been haunting her.
“I’ll tell you what you could do,” the earl went on, in a kindly, sympathetic voice. “You might discover an excuse for wanting to go to London; I am going up myself in a day or two, and you would be very welcome to my services as an escort, since I don’t suppose they would let you travel alone. Then I would help you to find him out, and if he’s got into some scrape, we’d do our best together to help him out again.”
“Thank you,” said Deborah, “I’ll think about it.”
The earl was delighted, thinking he had advanced a step. But the girl had the discretion which natural modesty imparts, and though she did give his proposition a second thought, it was with a slight alteration which he had not contemplated. The result of her reflections was that she put it into Mrs. Pennant’s head that Rees might be ill, and that the best thing they could do was to go up and see him without too long a notice of their intention.
The discreet submissiveness towards the members of her family who were of the superior sex, which had become a habit of her life, made the old lady at first disinclined to act on Deborah’s suggestion. But, by working upon her maternal fears, the girl at last induced Mrs. Pennant to write a note to Rees, at the address in St. Martin’s-lane from which he always dated his letters, informing him that she was anxious about his health, and that she would call and see him within a few hours of the arrival of her note.
The two ladies left Carstow by the 4.12 train one raw October morning, before it was light. Hervey got up to see them off, but was just too late; they caught sight of him, panting and blinking on the platform, in the dull flicker of the gas-lamps, just as their train steamed out of the station. They had a dreadful, slow, stopping journey, and reached Paddington at ten minutes past ten, benumbed with cold, sleepy, and depressed. It was Deborah’s first visit to London, and the sensations she experienced as they drove in a shaky four-wheeled cab across the town between Praed street and Trafalgar-square were mingled bewilderment and disappointment. For a film of brownish fog enveloped the houses and obscured the sun, gave a wet, greasy look to the pavements, and to the atmosphere a heaviness which seemed suffocating to the country girl.
“Oh, mamma, is this really London?” she asked, as, with her teeth chattering, she looked out of the window when they came to Oxford Circus.
“Yes, child; of course you know it is. This is where two of the principal streets cross each other,” answered Mrs. Pennant, rather pettishly, for she was tired with the early and unaccustomed journey.
“What a pity we have come up on such a bad day! It makes everything look so black and gloomy.”
“If we had come up any other day it would have been the same. London is always foggy at this time of year.”