"Oh, a letter has just come saying she will not be back, and we don't know where she is gone to, sir."
Anne had forgotten to call him even "my lord."
That night the members of the new Anerly Club saw nothing of its founder.
CHAPTER VII.
[ADRIFT.]
When Marion found herself out of the house for the second time on that day, with the letter in her hand addressed to her aunt, she had no idea of what direction she took. It was only a little after five o'clock, and the air was fall of pleasant sunshine. All around her were happy-looking people moving blithely along, each to some known point or other. She was going nowhere; she was simply going away. All places were alike to her, so long as there was no chance of meeting him there. She, whose whole nature yearned to be at his side, was flying from him who, she knew, wished her to remain for him, with him. What was all the world to one without love? How could it be that anything in the world could come between hearts that loved?
She turned east and walked on. She was conscious she knew well the streets through which she passed, but the names of them did not occur to her. After a while she found herself on the Thames Embankment. It was full tide, and the river looked its best. It was the fresh young summer of the year, when all London looks brightest; and no part of London, not even the parks, feels the summer so much as the Embankment; for there is not only the fresh green of the time on the trees of the Embankment and the gardens, but the bright silver of the river of all time sparkling back to the wide expanse of sky. Every wholesome man and woman and child, and beast and bird and insect, that could, came out to pay homage to the sun; all noisome things, human or beneath man in the scheme of Nature, now sought concealment. It made old people young and young people gay, to be abroad.
She had not often been on the Embankment, and the river was a variety to her. Without intruding on her thoughts, it attracted her eye. A full tide between prosperous banks always gives a sense of quietude and peace; but to May's mind the sense of peace did not seem of this world, but of the world beyond. There was a bounteous calm in that river which seemed to invite the weary. When the tide is out, and the sordid lower abutments of bridges and the bedraggled foreshore are visible, the river looks fit to be the friend of only outcasts and felons. But when it is full it seems to have risen up to one as a kind friend capable of assuaging present woes, and of wafting one securely to Elysian Fields.
As May walked along by the parapet, she thought she should like to lay herself down gently on the bosom of the water, and be carried calmly beyond the noises of the world. She had no thought of suicide; what she felt was merely a craving of her physical nature. It was parallel to the desire one experiences, when looking down from a high mountain, to launch oneself into air, and float above the valley below. She did not murmur against Heaven or revile Fate. She would have liked to be at rest; she longed to change utterly the ordinary experiences of life, even if death was the only alternative; but she had no intention or wish to compass her own death.
Big Ben struck seven. The sound startled her.