But see! the streets were now set thick along the path of the railway, dingy parallels, skulking streets at right angles. The fields had long been engulfed in red brick, grey brick. The town once more was gathering about his lungs. And there, pretentious, ugly, forbidding, like the policemen for whom it was their focal centre, reared the chimney of the prison on Doomington Road. The fat man blinked with alarm as the train jarred and jolted into the station.
"Doomington!" Philip murmured, "Be kind, God!"
CHAPTER XIV
The tramcar stopped at a corner nearer the station by one block of buildings than Angel Street. Rayman, the butcher, was hacking away with indecent enthusiasm at a hulk of ribs. At Lansky, the draper's, unconcerned girl assistants were measuring lengths of cloth by outstretching one corner and lifting the other to the teeth. Philip noticed with an acute realization of detail the stupid cat with a closed eye and a foolish blue ribbon round its neck which was arching its back lasciviously against a woman's leg. The distance he had walked could scarcely have been more than fifty yards, yet when he came to Moishele's shop at the corner it seemed to him for one moment that he had been walking and walking since dawn broke. Above him and across the intervening gap of the street, on the side wall of the "Crown Inn," and over the advertisement for Groves and Whitnall's Ale, he read on an oblong plaque, "Angel Street."
Angel Street! He dared not put into words what he feared. Must he turn into the street? Oh, turn swiftly, swiftly, never a moment to lose! A small clump of figures down the street brought momentary terror over his blurred eyes, until he made out the wheels and the containing boards of a fruit-handcart.
Thank God, nothing! Nothing at the pavement's edge outside the steps of his father's house! Quietly he knocked. He could hear his heart knocking loudly as the hand knocked. Channah came to the door; pale she was, with wide, dark eyes. A spurt of light came into her eyes when she saw Philip standing there, then the light flickered away.
"How is she?"
"Bad! Go in and see!"
"Just take my bag away. Oh, Channah, I thought I'd never get here!"