'I am wet to the skin,' he said, 'I made up my mind to walk, and I would do it;--but I am a fool for my pains.' She made him some feeble answer, affecting to be half asleep, and merely turned in her bed.'I must be out early in the morning.Mind you made them dry my things.They never do anything for my telling.'
'You don't want them dried to-night?'
'Not to-night, of course;--but after I am gone to-morrow.
They'll leave them there without putting a hand to them, if you don't speak.I must be off before breakfast to-morrow.'
'Where are you going? Do you want anything packed?'
'No; nothing.I shall be back for dinner.But I must go down to Birmingham, to see a friend of Happerton's on business.I will breakfast at the station.As you said to-day, something must be done.If it's necessary to sweep a crossing, I must sweep it.'
As she lay awake while he slept, she thought that those last words were the best she had heard from him since they were married.There seemed to be some indication of purpose in them.
If he would only sweep a crossing as a man should sweep it, she would stand by him, and at any rate do her duty to him, in spite of all that had happened.Alas! she was not old enough to have learned that a dishonest man cannot begin even to sweep a crossing honestly till he have in very truth repented of his former dishonesty.The lazy man may become lazy no longer, but there must have been first a process through his mind whereby his laziness has become odious to him.And that process can hardly be the immediate result of misfortune arising from misconduct.
Had Lopez found his crossing at Birmingham he would hardly have swept it well.
Early on the following morning he was up, and before he left his room he kissed his wife.'Good-bye, old girl,' he said, 'don't be down-hearted.'
'If you have anything before you to do, I will not be down-hearted,' she said.
'I shall have something to do before night, I think.Tell your father, when you see him, that I shall not trouble him here much longer.But tell him also, that I have no thanks to give him for his hospitality.'
'I will not tell him that, Ferdinand.'
'He shall know it though.But I do not mean to be cross to you.
Good-bye, love.' Then he stooped over and kissed her again;--and so he took his leave of her.
It was raining hard, and when he got into the street he looked about for a cab, but there was none to be found.In Baker Street he got an omnibus which took him down to the underground railway, and by that he went to Gower Street.Through the rain he walked up to the Euston Station, and there he ordered breakfast.Could he have a mutton chop and some tea? And he was very particular that the mutton chop should be well cooked.He was a good-looking man, of fashionable appearance, and the young lady who attended him noticed him and was courteous to him.He condescended even to have a little light conversation with her, and, on the whole, he seemed to enjoy his breakfast.'Upon my word.I should like to breakfast here every say of my life,' he said.The young lady assured him that, as far as she could see, there was no objection to such an arrangement.'Only it's a bore, you know, coming out in the rain when there are no cabs,'
he said.Then there were various little jokes between them, till the young lady was quite impressed with the gentleman's pleasant affability.
After a while he went back into the hall and took a first-class return ticket not for Birmingham, but for the Tenway Junction, as everybody knows it.From this spot, some six or seven miles distant from London, lines diverge east, west, and north, north-east, and north-west, round the metropolis in every direction, and with direct communication with every other line in and out of London.It is marvellous place, quite unintelligible to the uninitiated, and yet daily used by thousands who only know that when they get there, they are to do what someone tells them.The space occupied by the convergent rails seems to be sufficient for a large farm.And these rails always run into one another with sloping points, and cross passages, and mysterious meandering sidings, till it seems to the thoughtful stranger to be impossible that the best-trained engine should know its own line.
