“This rack is intended for light articles only. It must not be used for heavy luggage. This rack is intended for light articles. Only it must not be used for heavy luggage. While there’s life there’s hope. While there’s life there’s hope. While there’s life there’s hope.”
So, in the pitiful whirl of Edwin’s brain, foolish words re-echoed, and in the end the empty phrase seemed to attach itself to the regular beat of the train’s rhythm as the wheels rolled over the joints in the rails. Mesmerised by the formula he only dimly realised that they were now roaring, under a sky far paler and less blue, towards the huge pall of yellowish atmosphere beneath which the black country sweltered.
Soon the prim small gardens told that they were touching the tentacles of a great town. A patch of desert country, scarred with forgotten workings in which water reflected the pale sky, and scattered with heaps of slag. A pair of conical blast furnaces standing side by side and towering above the black factory sheds like temples of some savage religion, as indeed they were. Gloomy canal wharfs, fronting on smoke-blackened walls where leaky steampipes, bound with asbestos, hissed. The exhaust of a single small engine, puffing regular jets of dazzling white steam, seen but not heard. A canal barge painted in garish colours, swimming in yellow water, foul with alkali refuse. A disused factory with a tall chimney on which the words Harris and Co., Brass Founders, was painted in vertical letters which the mesmeric eye must read. Another mile of black desert, pools, and slag heaps, and ragged children flying kites. Everywhere a vast debris of rusty iron, old wheels, corroded boilers, tubes writhen and tangled as if they had been struck by lightning. An asphalt school-yard on a slope, with a tall, gothic school and children screaming their lungs out, but silent to Edwin’s ears. Endless mean streets of dusky brick houses with roofs of purple slate and blue brick footpaths. Dust and an acrid smell as of smoking pit heaps. More houses, and above them, misty, and almost beautiful, the high clock tower of the Art Gallery. A thunderous tunnel. . . . The clamour of the wheels swelled to an uproar. “While there’s life there’s hope. While there’s life there’s hope.” Under the gloom of the great glass roof the train emerged.
“Good-bye, dearie,” said the black woman, smiling. “I hope it’s not as bad as you think. You never know. Don’t forget your bag, now.”
He could easily have done so.
CHAPTER IX
THE DARK HOUSE
I
Aunt Laura was waiting for him on the platform. It was a very strange sensation. Always at other times when he had come home from St. Luke’s his mother had met him at North Bromwich, and even now it seemed natural to look for her, to pick out her fragile figure from all the others on the platform, and then to kiss her cool face through her veil. On these occasions neither of them would speak, but he would see her eyes smiling and full of love looking him all over, drowning him in their particular kindness. Aunt Laura was a poor substitute. To-day she was a little more diffuse and emotional than usual, and at the same time curiously kinder. She kissed him—her lips were hot—and he felt that the kiss was really nothing more than an attempt to conceal an entirely different emotion and to hide her eyes. On his cheek her lips trembled. He dared not look at her for he was afraid that in her eyes he would be able to read the worst. It had to be faced. At last he managed to say,
“How is she?”
And above the roar of the station he heard an uncertain voice answer. “She’s very ill, Eddie . . . very ill indeed.”