Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/50

 the jarring clonk of the County Council's surface lines, the yelping whistle of penny steamers, the sardonic hooting of lumbering, topheavy motorbuses, the strident tinkling of costermongers' bells—clear through the thousand motley cries of gutter and pavement, through the maze and reek and riot of the sordid London streets, he heard the call of Asia.

Asia—which had always given honor and preferment and a square chance to the Wades of Dealle!

Asia—the Mother—to which he turned now, in his hour of disgrace and despair!

Not that these were the exact thoughts in his brain. For he was a rational enough young Englishman for all his high cheekbones and black, opaque eyes; and if his own, inner, secret consciousness had whispered to him just then that a mysterious, invisible force was tugging at his heart-strings and that the silent soul of all the East was whirring about his own soul, trying to edge into it, to merge with it—if his inner, secret consciousness had whispered to him any of these things, he would have entered the nearest chemist's shop and bought himself a round six-penny box filled with Mr. Beecham's renowned pills.

But the fact remained that, an hour after he had registered at the Shaftesbury Hotel in Moor Street, with the sandy-haired gentleman in close attendance, he turned toward the Docks, East of the Tower, where the steamship offices are open until late at night, to book a passage on the first P. & O. steamer for Calcutta.

Every penny he possessed in the world, about fifty