The Bladud passed swiftly over Paddington Station, and followed the line of the Edgware Road to the Marble Arch. The incessant roar of the traffic below reached their ears, and it was a relief to get over the great, far-spreading Park—silent and only faintly lighted by the scattered lamps. To the left, Park Lane had a gloomy look. The famous residences of the wealthy, like hundreds of great London mansions in the neighbouring squares, were untenanted. People could not afford to live in such palaces nowadays; the governing bodies of the capital had done their best to ruin it by Socialistic experiments and over-rating. At Hyde Park Corner, which was soon reached, once more the tumult of the traffic rose into the air, and the long lines of electric lamps stretching eastward along Piccadilly, gave the impression of an enormous glittering serpent down below. They followed the route to Piccadilly Circus, where the blaze of lights and the swiftly changing units in the thoroughfares produced an effect that, seen for the first time by Linton Herrick, held him in a sort of fascination. Trafalgar Square and the Strand produced the same bewildering characteristics, and to the right the effect conveyed by the illuminated bridges was marvellously beautiful. The Bladud circled widely so that Linton might take his fill of the spectacle. Then Mr. Jardine headed her eastward again, and for awhile the streets below lay gloomy and silent until they had crossed the City. Soon the lights of[Pg 22] the Commercial Road and Whitechapel outlined the great thoroughfares of the East End, while in every direction branch streams of flaring, smoky light showed where the hawkers and hucksters plied their evening trade. They had sailed over the Isle of Dogs and Greenwich Reach before the President put the boat about; then in the distance, like a lighthouse, the great clock towering over the Houses of Parliament came into view, the dial shining like a huge, dull moon. In these days it was always illuminated, whether the House were sitting or in recess.
"Look!" exclaimed Zenobia, suddenly.
Away in the heart of Southwark huge flames were shooting into the air, and monstrous clouds of woolly looking smoke rolled slowly from above a conflagration.
"A fire," said Mr. Jardine, "and a big one, too. We'll have a look at it."
"Not too close, father," said his daughter, for the first time showing nervousness.
"Keep her to windward," said Mr. Jardine, slowing down a little, and the girl obeyed. Vast showers of sparks rose into the air; they heard the hiss and splash of water, and the pant-pant of half a dozen fire engines as they played upon the burning buildings. The lights shone on the helmets of the firemen—clambering here and there on the roofs of towering warehouses, and dense masses of people seemed to be packed into the streets, on whose pallid, upturned faces the lights produced a strangely weird effect.
The sight below seemed full of awe and terror. Presently, a sudden gust of wind changed the direction of the smoke column and brought a volley of sparks over the Bladud.
"Hard a-port!" cried Mr. Jardine, "we'll get out of this."
In a moment they had veered away from the scene of the conflagration, and were crossing first the river,[Pg 23] then Cannon Street, almost at full speed. The fans were set to work, and they rose to a greater altitude to avoid all risk of colliding with church towers and steeples. A dark, domed mass took shape a hundred feet away, and over it the great cross of St. Paul's loomed for an instant into view; a train with faces showing against the lighted windows, crawled across the railway bridge at the foot of Ludgate Hill; and far away in the West the gleam of another fire lighted up the sky with a sudden threatening glare.
From below there now arose the piteous bellowing of cattle. They were passing over the huge markets in Smithfield, and the shouts of the drovers blended with the noise made by the doomed and harried beasts, whose flesh was to feed London on the morrow. Soon another long row of lights revealed Southampton Row, running straight, as it seemed, from Kingsway to Euston. The station clock showed that it was nearly ten. They swept over the quiet West Central squares, over the Euston Road and Regent's Park, and so onward and away, until the huddled dwellings of the capital gave place to suburbs, dark roads, and silent fields.
Linton, through the later sights and sounds of the night, was conscious of being in a sort of dream; and in the dream the girl by his side was the principal, nay, the only figure save his own. The end of a light scarf that was round her neck blew across his face; the sway of the Bladud brought her arm against his own, and each slight contact seemed to thrill him. Once or twice he glanced at her face, almost inquiringly; for now he had the oddest feeling that she was no stranger; that in reality they knew each other and had only met again; that in the past, somehow, somewhere he knew not when, there had been a kinship or a tie between them. From the first moment of their meeting she had interested and attracted him. Of that he was well aware. But not until they sat side by side in this aerial[Pg 24] journey had the impression of which he was now conscious crept into his mind or memory. What could it mean? That strange exhilaration of the upper air, the quickening of imagination, wrought by their rapid travelling high above the solid earth and all its limitations, perhaps might account in some degree for the puzzling feeling that possessed him. He glanced at her again; their eyes met, and in hers he read, or fancied that he read, a telepathic answer to his thoughts.
Suddenly he found himself repeating, as if with better understanding, lines that always lingered in his memory:
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar."
"How odd," murmured the girl in a wondering voice, "the very lines that I was thinking of," and in low tones she finished the quotation:
"O joy, that in our embers
Is something that doth live;
That nature yet remembers,
What was so fugitive!"