第254章

However, so as to make quite certain that the train should not run past unnoticed, Frankie pulled up the blind and, rubbing the steam off the glass, took up his station at the window to watch for its coming, while Owen opened the letter:

`Dear Owen, `Enclosed you will find two bank-notes, one for ten pounds and the other for five.The first I beg you will accept from me for yourself in the same spirit that I offer it, and as I would accept it from you if our positions were reversed.If I were in need, I know that you would willingly share with me whatever you had and I could not hurt you by refusing.The other note I want you to change tomorrow morning.Give three pounds of it to Mrs Linden and the remainder to Bert White's mother.

`Wishing you all a happy Xmas and hoping to find you well and eager for the fray when I come back in the spring, `Yours for the cause, `George Barrington.'

Owen read it over two or three times before he could properly understand it and then, without a word of comment - for he could not have spoken at that moment to save his life - he passed it to Nora, who felt, as she read it in her turn, as if a great burden had been lifted from her heart.All the undefined terror of the future faded away as she thought of all this small piece of paper made possible.

Meanwhile, Frankie, at the window, was straining his eyes in the direction of the station.

`Don't you think we'd better have the window open now, Dad?' he said at last as the clock struck eight.`The steam keeps coming on the glass as fast as I wipe it off and I can't see out properly.I'm sure it's nearly time now; p'raps our clock isn't as fast as you think it is.'

`All right, we'll have it open now, so as to be on the safe side,'

said Owen as he stood up and raised the sash, and Nora, having wrapped the child up in a shawl, joined them at the window.

`It can't be much longer now, you know,' said Frankie.`The line's clear.They turned the red light off the signal just before you opened the window.'

In a very few minutes they heard the whistle of the locomotive as it drew out of the station, then, an instant before the engine itself came into sight round the bend, the brightly polished rails were illuminated, shining like burnished gold in the glare of its headlight; a few seconds afterwards the train emerged into view, gathering speed as it came along the short stretch of straight way, and a moment later it thundered across the bridge.It was too far away to recognize his face, but they saw someone looking out of a carriage window waving a handkerchief, and they knew it was Barrington as they waved theirs in return.Soon there remained nothing visible of the train except the lights at the rear of the guard's van, and presently even those vanished into the surrounding darkness.

The lofty window at which they were standing overlooked several of the adjacent streets and a great part of the town.On the other side of the road were several empty houses, bristling with different house agents' advertisement boards and bills.About twenty yards away, the shop formerly tenanted by Mr Smallman, the grocer, who had become bankrupt two or three months previously, was also plastered with similar decorations.A little further on, at the opposite corner, were the premises of the Monopole Provision Stores, where brilliant lights were just being extinguished, for they, like most of the other shops, were closing their premises for the night, and the streets took on a more cheerless air as one after another their lights disappeared.

It had been a fine day, and during the earlier part of the evening the moon, nearly at the full, had been shining in a clear and starry sky;but a strong north-east wind had sprung up within the last hour; the weather had become bitterly cold and the stars were rapidly being concealed from view by the dense banks of clouds that were slowly accumulating overhead.

As they remained at the window looking out over this scene for a few minutes after the train had passed out of sight, it seemed to Owen that the gathering darkness was as a curtain that concealed from view the Infamy existing beyond.In every country, myriads of armed men waiting for their masters to give them the signal to fall upon and rend each other like wild beasts.All around was a state of dreadful anarchy; abundant riches, luxury, vice, hypocrisy, poverty, starvation, and crime.Men literally fighting with each other for the privilege of working for their bread, and little children crying with hunger and cold and slowly perishing of want.

The gloomy shadows enshrouding the streets, concealing for the time their grey and mournful air of poverty and hidden suffering, and the black masses of cloud gathering so menacingly in the tempestuous sky, seemed typical of the Nemesis which was overtaking the Capitalist System.That atrocious system which, having attained to the fullest measure of detestable injustice and cruelty, was now fast crumbling into ruin, inevitably doomed to be overwhelmed because it was all so wicked and abominable, inevitably doomed to sink under the blight and curse of senseless and unprofitable selfishness out of existence for ever, its memory universally execrated and abhorred.