"Convent, sir? Did you say the convent, sir? St. Margaret's, Westminster, sir?"
"The Catholic convent."
Greta's hand pressed Paul's arm.
The cabman got on to his box, muttering something that was inaudible. As he passed the gate lodge he drew up while the porter on duty came out with a lamp, and took the number of the cab.
The fog grew more dense at every step, and the pace at which they traveled was slow. To avoid the maze of streets that would have helped them to a shorter cut on a clearer night, the driver struck along Euston Road to Tottenham Court Road, and thence south toward Oxford Street. This straighter and plainer course had the disadvantage of being more frequented. Many a collision became imminent in the uncertain light.
The cabman bought a torch from a passer-by, and stuck it in his whip-barrel. As they reached the busier thoroughfares he got down from his box, took the torch in one hand and the reins in the other, and walked at his horse's head.
The pace was now slower than before. It was like a toilsome passage through the workings of an iron mine. Volumes of noisome vapor rolled slowly past them. The air hung close over their heads like an unseen, vaulted roof. Red lights gleamed like vanishing stars down the elastic vista. One light would turn out to be a coffee-stall, round which a group of people gathered—cabmen muffled to the throat, women draggled and dirty, boys with faces that were old. Another would be a potato-engine, with its own volumes of white vapor, and the clank of its oven door like the metallic echo of the miner's pick. The line of regular lamps was like the line of candles stuck to the rock, the cross streets were like the cross-workings, the damp air settling down into streaks of moisture on the glass of the cab window was like the ceasless drip, drip of the oozing water from overhead.
And to the two laden souls sitting within in silence and with clasped hands, the great city, nay, the world itself, was like a colossal mine, which human earthworms had burrowed underground, while the light and the free air were both above.
At one point, where a patch of dry pavement indicated a bake-house under the street, three or four squalid creatures crouched together and slept. The streets were all but noiseless. It would be two hours yet before the giant of traffic would awake. The few cabmen hailed each other as they passed unrecognized, and their voices sounded hoarse. When the many clocks struck two, the many tones came muffled through the dense air.
The journey was long and wearisome, but Paul and Greta scarcely felt it. They were soon to part; they knew not when they were to meet again. Perhaps soon, perhaps late; perhaps not until a darkness deeper than this should cover the land.