XVIII
THE WORLD ABOVE
The night had set in grayly, and a drizzle of fine rain was falling.
West India Dock Road presented a prospect so uninviting that it must
have damped the spirits of anyone but a cave-dweller.
Soames, buttoned up in a raincoat kindly lent by Mr. Gianapolis, and of
a somewhat refined fit, with a little lagoon of rainwater forming
within the reef of his hat-brim, trudged briskly along. The necessary
ingredients for the manufacture of mud are always present (if invisible
during dry weather) in the streets of East-end London, and already
Soames' neat black boots were liberally bedaubed with it. But what cared
Soames? He inhaled the soot-laden air rapturously; he was glad to feel
the rain beating upon his face, and took a childish pleasure in ducking
his head suddenly and seeing the little stream of water spouting from
his hat-brim. How healthy they looked, these East-end workers, these
Italian dock-hands, these Jewish tailors, these nondescript, greasy
beings who sometimes saw the sun. Many of them, he knew well, labored
in cellars; but he had learnt that there are cellars and cellars. Ah! it
was glorious, this gray, murky London!
Yet, now that temporarily he was free of it, he realized that there was
that within him which responded to the call of the catacombs; there was
a fascination in the fume-laden air of those underground passages; there
was a charm, a mysterious charm, in the cave of the golden dragon, in
that unforgettable place which he assumed to mark the center of the
labyrinth; in the wicked, black eyes of the Eurasian.
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