XXXVII
Onemisty but pleasant morning of the early autumn, a four-wheeled cab was drawn up against the kerb immediately opposite the portals of a London penitentiary. A wizened and undersized young man with black hair, a short bristling moustache, and his hands in his pockets, stood with his back to this vehicle. Upon his not particularly agreeable countenance was a curious air of expectancy.
Ever and anon the young man might have been seen to take out his watch. By the manner in which he regarded it, it was to be surmised that he was growing impatient. He began to pace up and down the pavement in front of the prison. Already he had been waiting more than an hour. It began to seem that he whom he awaited would never appear.
At last there stepped through the sombre portals of the gaol an extremely slight figure, rather above than below the middle height. It was that of a young man. His hands were remarkably slender and delicate; his eyes were large and deep yet extraordinarily luminous; his hair was shaved close to his head. The tardy beams of the sun which were beginning to creep over the great city declared his gaunt face to be suffused by a somewhat curious pallor. In the centre of the right cheek was a slight yet almost hideous natural disfigurement.
Scarcely had this fragile figure emerged from the portals of the gaol, than the wizened and undersized young man, who had been pacing the flags of the pavement for some little time past, turned and beheld it. At once he made towards him. Quite suddenly, however, he stopped, as if in the throes of a profound bewilderment. An expression of pain and confusion overspread his face.
In the next moment, however, he had gone forward again. It was as though an irresistible impulse had driven him.
“Why—why,” he said, peering into the great and luminous eyes of the man who had issued from the portals of the gaol, “can—can it be Luney?”
He who was addressed in this singular manner replied by taking a hand of the speaker’s in each of his own, and by saluting him upon the forehead.