CHAPTER XXIX
IN WHICH CASSANDRA VISITS DAVID THRYNG'S ANCESTORS
It was a pleasant morning in London, with as clear a sky as is ever permitted to that great city. Cassandra had placed her little son in the middle of a huge bed which nearly filled the small room she had been given in a hotel, recommended to her by Betty Towers as one where "nice ladies travelling alone" could stop.
The child was dressed in a fresh white coat, and Cassandra had much ado to keep him clean. She heaped him about with pillows and bedclothing to make a nest for him, and gave him a spoon and a drinking cup for entertainment, while she arranged her own toilet before a cloudy mirror by a slant ray of daylight that managed to sift through the heavy draperies and lace curtains that obscured the one high, narrow window of her room.
She had tried to put them one side that she might look out when she awoke, but she could see only chimney-pots and grimy, irregularly tiled roofs. A narrow opening at the top of the window let in a little air; still she felt smothered, and tried to raise the lower sash, but could not move it. She thought of the books she had read about great cities, and how some people had to live in places like this always; and her heart filled with a large pity for them. Here only a small triangle of blue sky could be seen—not a tree, not a bit of earth—and in the small room all those heavy furnishings closed around her, dark red, stuffy, and greasy with London smoke. She could not touch them without blackening her hands, nor let her baby sit on the floor for the dirt he wiped up on his clothing as he rolled and kicked about.
The room seemed to sway and tip as the ship had done, and there was a continuous sound as of thunder, a strange undercurrent that seemed to her strained nerves like the moaning of the lost souls of all the ages, who had lived and toiled and smothered in this monstrous and terrible city.
Ah, she must get out of it. She must hurry—hurry and find David. He would be glad to see his little son. He would take him in his arms. He would hold them both to his heart. She would see him smile again and look in his eyes, and all this foreboding would cease, and the woful sounds die out of the air and become only the natural roar of the activities and traffic of a great city. She must get used to all this, and not expect to find all the world like her own sunny mountains.
The bishop's careful little wife had tried to explain to her how to meet her new experiences. She was to go nowhere alone, without taking a cab, and never start out on foot, carrying her baby in her arms, as she might do at home. She had given her written instructions how to conduct herself under all ordinary circumstances, at her hotel or on the street—how to ring for a servant, order her meals, or call a cab.