At the hotel, as she passed his room, the door stood open, and she saw the chambermaid with brush and broom making its emptiness neat and clean for another lodger. There was a litter of crumpled newspapers on the tiled hearth; the low table on which he packed his last valise had been pushed away from the foot of the bed; and the window curtains were looped up high, to keep them out of the dust that the broom was making.
Miss Verinder went into her own room, and remained for a minute motionless, with clenched hands, struggling for breath. This parting was too bitter--much too bitter. It was more than she could bear. She rang the bell, and continued to ring it until the chambermaid came to help her. Then she began to pack, with feverish haste.
Dusk was falling rapidly and the port light of the _Mercedaria_ made a red reflection in the grey stream when, after less than two hours, Dyke got back on board. He had achieved his object, but he roared in anger again at hearing that the mate had not returned with those men.
They came while he was still shouting. Their boat was alongside. They were coming up the ladder. Captain Cairns, on the bridge with the pilot, looked down at the vague clambering forms and cursed them one by one and all together. They were in tarpaulin coats, clutching at their bundles or chests and seeming to have an absurd amount of baggage; one at least of them--if not every one of them, as the Captain said--appeared to be drunk. The others had to aid him as he sprang weakly and clumsily from the boat to the ladder.
Then soon the _Mercedaria_ began to glide down the river, emitting a melancholy siren blast to demand her rights of way. They were off. The dusk was deepening, the rain swept along with them; all was greyness, mistiness, and smoke, and the city towers and pinnacles seemed to sink lower and to fade behind banks of cloud, below which hundreds of lights began to twinkle feebly. The wretchedness and misery of departure enveloped the whole broad estuary.
Dyke had put on a waterproof and a sou’wester, and he prowled to and fro below the bridge gazing across the water, now on this side, now on that. He was quiet now, and yet not altogether easy in his mind. The fretfulness caused by dread of delay and interruption could not immediately be subdued, and perhaps certain doubts still lingered. He went down to the lower deck, made his way aft and stood for a while right at the stern, looking out intently. One might have supposed that he was now silently brooding on his love, sadly thinking of the girl he had left behind him; but in truth he thought only of the voyage and the venture. Watching and waiting, as the low land slid away and the darkness fell, he was wondering if a steam pinnace with those confounded custom-house people would come racing after him, and feeling that he would like to sink them if they came. But nothing happened. It was all right.