The Lighted WayOppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips)
General
The Lighted Way
Oppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips)
Detective and mystery stories
"I feel that it is all wrong," she murmured, leaning back, "but it
is like little bits out of a fairy book, and to-night I feel so weak
and you are so strong. It isn't any use my saying anything, Arnold,
is it?"
"Not a bit," he answered. "All that you have to do is to hold my
hand and wait."
In less than ten minutes the cab stopped. He hurried her into the
entrance hall of a tall, somewhat somber building. A man in uniform
rang a bell and the lift came down. They went up, it seemed to her,
seven or eight flights. When they stepped out, her knees were
trembling. He caught her up and carried her down a corridor. Then he
fitted a Yale key from his pocket into a lock and threw open the
door. There was a little hall inside, with three doors. He pushed
open the first; it was a small bedroom, plainly but not
unattractively furnished. He carried her a little way further down
the corridor and threw open another door--a tiny sitting-room with a
fire burning.
"Our new quarters!" he exclaimed cheerfully. "The room at the other
end of the passage is mine. A pound a week and a woman to come in
and light the fires! Mr. Jarvis let me have some money and I paid
three months' rent in advance. What do you think of them?"
"I can't think," she whispered. "I can't!"
He carried her to the window.
"This is my real surprise, dear," he announced, in a tone of
triumph. "Look!"
The blind flew up at his touch. On the other side of the street was
a row of houses over which they looked. Beyond, the river, whose
dark waters were gleaming in the moonlight. On their left were the
Houses of Parliament, all illuminated. On their right, the long,
double line of lights shining upon the water at which they had gazed
so often.
"The lighted way, dear," he murmured, holding her a little more
closely to him. "While I am down in the city you can sit here and
watch, and you can see the ships a long way further off than you
could ever see them from Adam Street. You can see the bend, too.
It's always easier, isn't it, to fancy that something is coming into
sight around the corner?"
She was not looking. Her head was buried upon his shoulder. Arnold
was puzzled.
"Look up, Ruth dear," he begged. "I want you to look now--look along
the lighted way and hold my hand very tightly. Don't you think that,
after all, one of your ships has come home?"
She lifted her face, wet with tears, and looked in the direction
where he pointed. Arnold, who felt nothing himself but a thrill of
pleasure at his new quarters, was puzzled at a certain trouble which
he seemed to see in her features, a faint hopelessness of
expression. She looked where he pointed but there was none of the
eager expectancy of a few weeks ago.
"It is beautiful, Arnold," she murmured, "but I can't talk just
now."
"I am going to leave you to get over it," he declared. "I'm off now
to fetch the luggage. You won't be afraid to be left here?"
She shook her head. A certain look of relief flashed across her
face.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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