“I made a mistake, too,” Henry said, still slightly dazzled. “Back then, I thought I could just take you like an object I desired, irrespective of your fears and doubts. That wasnʼt right, Sarah. It was selfish, and I am sorry. But I just wanted you so much. I have never wanted anything or anyone that much in my whole life...”
“You can take me now, Henry. Take me wherever you want. I will not be able to marry you, though, but be sure that I am yours forever...”
For a little while Henry and Sarah were just standing in the room, holding each other in a tight embrace, without speaking and only relishing each otherʼs presence.
At some stage, Henry slowly freed himself out of her grip.
“Sarah, I want you to go back to these stupid old cows right now and tell them that you will change your clothes. Then you go to your room, take all your belongings and leave the hotel. I will wait for you outside,” he said determinedly. He didnʼt want to waste time anymore. He was eager to act.
“Henry, that will not work. I can not just walk out of this building. The receptionist is keeping an eye on me on Damianʼs order. Apart from that, Abigail and Phyllis do not even let me go to my room on my own. They are always following me. We must find another way.”
Henry was thinking hard how to get Sarah and himself out of the building when suddenly there was knock at the door.
“Sarah, are you still in there?!”
“There you go,” Sarah whispered and rolled her eyes. “Itʼs Phyllis...”
“Speak to her,” Henry said nervously.
“Yes, I am here!” Sarah called.
“Will you let me in, please!” Phyllis shouted from the other side. Her shrill voice reminded Henry slightly of the parrot in the restaurant. He was a little bit worried she might come up with the idea to kick in the door or get someone to do it for her; Henry found that she sounded angry and determined enough to do something like that.
He quickly scanned the small room, but there simply was no place to hide. And as there wasnʼt any window through which he could have escaped either, he just hid behind the door while Sarah was desperately racking her brain for an excuse not to let Phyllis inside.
“Iʼm afraid, I can not open the door just now,” she finally said. “I am still trying to get the stains out of my dress.”
“Donʼt bother! We will go up to your room where you can change into a new dress! We will give the stained one the hotel staff to clean it. Now open that door!”
“I can not let you in! The truth is, I made a mess!” Sarah shouted back.
“A mess? What kind of mess?!” Phyllis asked suspiciously.
“I could not keep the food inside, and now it is all over the floor! I would like to wipe it up first before somebody else comes in.”
“You can not be serious!” Phyllis blurted out. “What food are you talking about? You have not eaten anything all morning. Do not bother with the cleaning! This is no ladiesʼ work. I will get someone of the staff to do it.”
“No, please wait! I am almost finished! I do not want anyone to see it. I am begging you, please do spare me that disgrace! I am terribly embarrassed by all of this...”
“Good gracious me, that girl is driving me insane,” Henry heard Phyllis mutter. “Alright, do what you feel you have to do, but I will wait here until you are finished!”
Suddenly there was silence.
Sarah peered through the keyhole of the door. She signaled Henry that Phyllis was still outside. Henry pulled Sarah away from the door and into the farthest corner of the bathroom again where the risk of being heard was not so high.
“Sarah, the ship leaves at two in the morning,” Henry whispered. “At half past midnight, I will wait for you in a coach outside the hotel, a little bit further down the road and out of sight of anyone who could get suspicious. You must try to sneak out of the building while Damian is asleep.”
“Henry, I do not want you to wait for me here!” Sarah said excitedly. “If Damian wakes up and gets wind of it all, he really will kill you!”
“Do you still have some of those sleeping pills that Oscar gave you? You might use one of them to keep him quiet,” Henry asked.
“No, I used them all up.”
“I will ask Oscar to give me one. Then I will come back later today and secretly deposit it in one of the flower pots in front of the building. When you leave the hotel in the afternoon, you can pick it up and eventually put it in Damianʼs glass. Do it later towards the evening, though. After all, we donʼt want Damian to fall asleep at the dinner table, do we?”
Sarahʼs face momentarily lit up. Then she frowned again.
“That sounds like a good idea, but there is another problem: The hotel is locked at night and there is a night porter who will surely not let me out. It is not safe and appropriate for a young lady to go outside when it is dark.”
Henry let out a sigh.
Why does it all have to be so complicated...
“I have an idea!” Sarah suddenly blurted out. “Once I have sneaked out of the hotel room, I will rush down to the night porter and begin to cry. I will pretend that I lost one of my precious earrings upon returning from the dinner and will claim that it might have fallen onto the ground when I climbed out of the coach. I will tell him that the earrings were a wedding gift from Damian and that he will get very angry when he notices that I was so careless to lose one of them. The porter will surely let me out then in order to go in search of the earring, as he will suppose that I will not go very far. Then, when you see me, you can pull up with the coach, I will jump inside, and off we are. It will all happen so quickly that the night porter will not be able to do anything about it.”
Henry looked at Sarah sternly. He had to think about how easy it would have been for him and her to run away during that wonderful weekend that Lord and Lady Partridge had spent in Norwich. Compared to his escape plans back then, Sarahʼs suggestion with the lost earring sounded ridiculously risky. Still, Henry knew, they had no other choice, and Sarah sounded confident enough to pull her daring idea through.
“Alright then,” he said hesitantly. “Let us hope that luck is on our side…”
The next moment, they heard Phyllis shout again.
“Sarah, have you finished by now?! You know that my varicose veins begin to hurt when I have to stand for too long!”
“I will be with you straight away!” Sarah called back. Then she turned to Henry again.
“I am worried about you…” she whimpered. “Do you not think that it would be better if you waited for me at the docks? You could send me a coach instead and—”
Getting slightly impatient, Henry interrupted her.
“I doubt that I will find a coach driver whom I can bribe into stealing you for me. It is definitely better if I am around because if the coach driver notices what kind of game we play, well... maybe it will be necessary to put him out of action. Maybe I will have to drive the coach to the port myself in the end.”
Sarah stared at Henry, a terrified expression on her face.
“Calm down, Sarah, I will not kill him,” Henry said nervously. “But maybe I will have to knock him down and tie him up. God, what the hell do I know? I have never done anything like this before!”
“Good Lord, Henry, this is getting really dangerous. And it is entirely my fault...”
Henry let his fingers gently run along Sarahʼs cheek.
“It is alright, my sweetheart. I love you. And I will do whatever it takes to get you out of here.”
There was this look in her eyes again that told Henry that she believed he was a hero.
I am bloody insane, thatʼs all... he thought bitterly.
Outside, Phyllis began to moan.
“I really need to go now,” Sarah said, quickly flinging her arms around Henry again.
“Alright, Sarah, I will see you tonight at half past midnight,” Henry replied, giving her a hearty hug.
“I will be there, my dearest. I love you. Never forget that...”
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“I love you, too.”
Henry bent down and kissed Sarah one last time. Worry lay in her eyes; worry if he would make it and if they both would come out of this little adventure unscathed. Henry decided not to let Sarahʼs concern affect him too much, otherwise he too would have begun to worry about himself. Right now, he still felt determined enough to pull it all through, felt an unexpected fit of courage and eagerness fueled by the prospect of finally having Sarah all to himself in the near future. He didnʼt want this sudden rush of endorphine to ebb, didnʼt want to feel discouraged by Sarahʼs doubts that everything would work out the way they hoped.
He watched Sarah carefully open the door and quickly slip outside.
“Good Lord, Miss Sarah, how much longer would you have made me wait for you!” Henry heard Phyllis mutter. “Let us go to your room now and get you changed! What a strange girl you are indeed...”
When Henry was certain that the two had gone, he sneaked out of the bathroom as well.
In the entrance hall, everything was back to normal again. Waffle-Wally was nowhere to be seen and Henry guessed that he had either already left, miraculously risen from the almost-dead, or—in the worst case—had been brought to a hospital where the doctors would shortly release him after finding out that he had not had a heart attack at all.
Wanting to get out of the building without being seen, Henry was now facing the same problem as earlier on when he had tried to get inside: He needed to get past the receptionist. But the latter had taken up his usual position behind his desk, sorting through his papers, observing the entrance hall. And as he was still confused by the incident with the beggar, he appeared to be even more attentive now.
Henry walked up and down the corridors on the ground floor for a while, wondering what to do. He was certain that a servantʼs entrance existed somewhere in the building, but he didnʼt know where it was, and apart from that he was worried that he would be asked stupid questions and raise suspicion if he used it.
Then he suddenly noticed a chamber maid who was in the process of cleaning room number four which had obviously just been vacated. When Henry crept over to the door and secretly peered inside the room, he saw that the maid was busy making the bed. She was humming a little tune and paused occasionally in order to pick her nose. Outside in the corridor and next to the open door stood one of the little trolleys which the maids used to transport fresh bed linen, towels and cleaning utensils.
Henry gave the trolley a little nudge. The wheels were squeaking a little bit, but not too much. Henry was positive that the maid would not hear the noise as she had now gone over to singing loudly to herself.
Henry grabbed the trolley and carefully pushed it along the corridor, some fifteen yards away from the guestroom. Then he quickly hastened back, hid behind a marble column in the corner, and waited.
After less than a minute, the maid came out of the room, still singing. Her singing abruptly stopped, however, when she noticed to her utter confusion that the trolly was gone. When she finally spotted it at the far end of the corridor, she shook her head in wonder and then, shrugging, marched off into the trolleyʼs direction in order to retrieve it.
Henry left his hiding place and, careful not to make any noise, tiptoed past the maidʼs back into room number four where he ran straight over to the window, opened it, and jumped outside. Then he quickly shut the window again, and although he was not able to lock it, it looked as if it had never been opened in the first place.
Henry straightened his jacket and, a satisfied grin on his face, made his way back home.
Chapter 14 – Secrets
When he arrived at the guesthouse, Henry rushed up the stairs and knocked at the door to Oscarʼs room.
“Where is she, Henry?” the doctor wanted to know as soon as he had let Henry in.
Henry let himself fall on a chair, giving a bitter laugh.
“Did you really believe I could simply walk out of the hotel with her?”
“What happened? Did she refuse to come with you? Again?!”
“These two ugly crows were keeping her under lock and key. And the receptionist is a cunning man. I had no chance to sneak her out of the building,” Henry explained. “I managed, however, to secretly talk to her in the ladiesʼ bathroom.”
“Did anyone see you?” Oscar wanted to know.
Henry shook his head.
“No, we were entirely unobserved although we didnʼt have much time. But as for her answer: Yes, she wants to come.”
“Brilliant!” Oscar cheered for joy. “What are you going to do now? Tell me!”
“Well, we needed to come to a quick decision,” Henry said with a sigh. “And so we arranged that a coach is going to bring me to the hotel tonight. Sarah will try and secretly leave her room while Damian is asleep. She wants to make the night porter let her go outside by telling him some tale about an earring which she lost and which she needed to go in search of. She will claim that it was a wedding gift from Damian and that the latter would be mad at her if he found out that she lost it. In the meantime, I will make the coach driver pull up in front of the hotel, and if all goes well, Sarah will jump inside, and then we will drive straight to the docks.”
A troubled expression spread across Oscarʼs face.
“Good heavens, Henry, this plan is destined to fail...” he mumbled.
“Honestly, Oscar, I am worried less about the escape tonight than about getting Sarah on board of the ship,” Henry remarked flatly. “After all, I do not have a ticket for her, and I doubt that I will still get one judging the crowd which queued in front of the ticket office last week. But I already have an idea how to solve this problem.”
“Another idea?” Oscar cast Henry a doubtful glance.
“I will give Sarah my ticket and I can ask the crew on board to let me do some work; peeling potatoes, cleaning the latrines, whatever,” Henry explained. “I will do anything to pay for the fare, and I can sleep on the floor if there is no bed left for me.”
“What kind of ticket have you got?”
“One for 3rd Class.”
“You can not be serious, Henry...” Oscar said, incredulously.
“Well, I am afraid, that was all I got for the little money I had left,” Henry answered. “Do you actually know how expensive these tickets are?”
“Henry, forget about that 3rd Class ticket. It is of no use to you and of no use to Sarah either. She might as well sign her own death warrant.”
Henry looked at Oscar uncomprehendingly.
“You have never really informed yourself about what it is like being on a steamship, have you?” Oscar asked.
Henry shook his head.
“Well, let me give you a little lecture then,” Oscar continued. “The compartments of 3rd Class are normally located down at the very bottom of the ship right next to the engines and the steering controls; therefore 3rd Class is also called ʻSteerage Class.ʼ But rest assured that the noise down there is the very last thing the passengers normally worry about... First of all, there are no windows and there is hardly any room for everyone, as you can imagine, because all people are packed together in compartments like chickens in a coop—sometimes five hundred of them, sometimes seven hundred, or more. At night it is so cold that you want to sleep with your clothes on. And the food that you have to queue for is so little that is very difficult to keep up your strength. Nobody of the crew will bother to look after you. Nobody will clean up after you if you get seasick and vomit on the floor. Apart from that, the air is stifling. There will probably be a couple of ventilators, but by far not enough to suffice the need for fresh air of hundreds of people. Also, the washing facilities leave a lot to be desired, and you risk catching all sorts of diseases of whose existence you have never even been aware of. And that is the place where you expect Sarah to spend the time of the crossing? Weak and pregnant as she is? Just think about the baby!”
Oscar immediately bit his lip.
“Donʼt worry,” Henry said with a d
ismissive gesture of his hand. “I know all about it...”
The doctor cast Henry a shamefaced look.
“Henry, I am sorry that I did not tell you. But please try to understand the difficult situation that I found myself in…” he said, a beseeching tone to his voice. “I had to promise Sarah to keep quiet about it. She was terribly worried that you would come and do something foolish and that you would endanger everybodyʼs life, including your own. Please do not hold a grudge against me.”
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