I waited until he had disappeared in the darkness, then turned and walked in exactly the opposite direction, neither thinking nor caring where I was going, so dulled was I with misery. But the road went on, and seemed as if it would never end, and at length I stopped, chilled, wet, and weary. Then suddenly it occurred to me that I ought to try and get home; there was just a faint chance that Felix might go down to ask what it all meant. At the thought that he might arrive at the castle, find me still absent, and imagine me still with D’Arcy, I began to burn with fever. I turned, and ne’er through an arch so hurried the blown tide, as I through the rain and the dark did hurry then. Thinking it would now be best, I followed the direction D’Arcy had taken, and after a time came to some big iron gates. Just as I passed through them a hansom came driving towards me. My first impulse was to accost the driver, but I pulled myself up just when about to speak, for by the flickering light of the gas-lamp on the gate I saw it was the man who had driven me away from Felix. With my head down I hurried past him.
“Missy! Missy!” called the man as I passed. I made no answer. He turned and drove after me, walking the horse by my side as I pressed on in the rain. “Missy! Listen. I’m a poor man with a large family, and that gent is a well-known fare of mine so I did not like to go against him. But I didn’t half like the job. It went against my conscience a bit, it did, seeing you so unwilling inside. After I left you, when I’d got well away, who should I see but the gent dashing round a corner in another hansom, with a bad sort of look on him, and, dashed if I could go on, for thinking of the helpless looking young thing I left with him in the rain. So back I came again, just to see what had become of you. And now, Missy, if I can make up to you by driving you anywhere, say the word and jump in, and there you shall go.”
So lost and wretched did I feel, and so consuming was my desire to get home, I could not refuse the offer. The man helped to bring about my misery, but, if I sent him away now, where should I go, what should I do, in this great unknown city? I climbed in, feeling utterly spent.
“Where to?” asked the man, peering down through the now horribly familiar trap-door.
“Oh, take me home, take me home!” I half moaned in answer.
“Yes, Missy, don’t you fret, I’ll take you home. But where is it?”
“On Wildacre Common.”
“Phew! That’s a long way off. I can’t drive you to Wildacre, but I’ll drive you to Waterloo, and you’ll get a train there easy that’ll take you straight to Wildacre.”
He flicked his whip and started. I do not know what streets we passed through, but again I seemed to drive through miles and miles of them. The rain poured down upon the pavements, which shone in murky glossiness beneath the gas-lamps. The people flitted past like black ghosts, beneath the shade of their dripping umbrellas. This was the gay city, the city of my dreams. I had envied Felix his life in this city; I had risked my life’s happiness to spend one day in it. And, behold! its pleasures had turned to ashes in my mouth, and its light into horrible murky darkness. It was a miserable city, a terrible city, a city that made one feel fearfully, utterly alone.
We reached Waterloo at last, and my driver called a porter and asked him to attend to me. Then he drove off instantly, and not until afterwards did I remember that he had gone without even asking for his fare. The porter escorted me to the right platform, but there we found a train to Wildacre had just gone, and there would be no other for thirty-five minutes. I sat down in my wet things upon a bench, and waited with feverish impatience, whilst the clock overhead lagged through the interminable minutes. Then what D’Arcy had said came true. Strange horrible men came up and spoke to me. I sat mute, and answered never a word, and my heart sickened with longing for Felix. The porter came for me when the time was up, and put me into the train, and smiled gratefully at me when I gave him half-a-crown. All through the journey to Wildacre I sat in a kind of stupor, only waking from it when people got in and out at the stations, or when a train whizzed past on its way up to London. Then came the drive up the hill and across the common. It was very cold on the common. The rain had now ceased to fall, and the wind cut my face like a knife, but I was too weary to pull up the cab windows. By the little sunken fence I dismissed the cab, and walked in the darkness across the lawn to the honeysuckle porch. A flood of light greeted me as I opened the door, and Anne Gillotson rushed out of the dining-room looking white and agitated.