London (England) -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Mystery fiction
"Ah, I remember," said the viscountess, a kind-faced old lady whom I
liked immensely. "I do wish she would consider my feelings a little
more."
With that the subject dropped.
Next morning I took leave of them all, and promising to meet Eric a few
days later, took the train up to town to keep the secret tryst with my
little friend who had so suddenly disappeared.
As I stood at the kerb looking up and down the wet pavement with its
busy, hurrying crowd carrying umbrellas, I knew that I had commenced a
very dangerous game. Would she keep her appointment? Did she really
intend to go into voluntary exile in some mean street in one of the
dismal southern suburbs? Was it possible that she who had from her
birth been used to every luxury and extravagance could pose successfully
as the wife of a compositor with forty shillings a week?
Ah! would not her very voice, her smart expressions, betray her as a
lady?
I heard the rumbling of a train below, and once again up the grimy
stairs came a long string of eager men and women returning from the City
to their homes, tumbling over each other in their anxiety to get back
after the day's toil. They swept past me along the Pentonville Road,
and then I stood again, reflecting and watching, until suddenly a figure
in neat black halted before me, and I found myself face to face with the
fugitive.
"Tibbie!" I cried. "Then you've really come, after all?"
"Of course," was her answer in a low, half-frightened tone. "When I
make an appointment I keep it. Where shall we go? We can't talk here,
can we?"
A hansom was passing, and hailing it we got in hurriedly. I told the
man to drive across Waterloo Bridge to the Elephant and Castle, a
neighbourhood where we would be both quite unknown. Then, as I sank
beside her, she asked, with a pretty, mischievous smile,--
"Well, Wilfrid, and how do you like me as your wife?"
"My wife!" I echoed. "By Jove, yes. I forgot that," and I recollected
the strange game I was playing.
"Don't Mason's things fit me well? She's just my figure. I took this
dress, jacket and hat from her box and put them into mine when I left
Ryhall in the car. I thought they'd come in useful."
I looked at her, and saw that with her brown hair brushed severely from
her forehead, her small close-fitting hat and slightly shabby black
jacket she was quite a demure little figure. The exact prototype of the
newly-married wife of a working-man.
"It's really quite a suitable get-up, I think," I said, laughing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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