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Macallan followed her easily, knowing the place; and I walked in Mrs. Macallan's footsteps as closely as I could. "This is a nice family," my mother-in-law whispered to me. "Dexter's cousin is the only woman in the house and Dexter's cousin is an idiot." We entered a spacious hall with a low ceiling, dimly lighted at its further end by one small oil-lamp.
Its centre was filled with a triangular table, over which, pendent from the skylight, was an oil-lamp in chains. A settee ran completely round the sides, and on that one sat for meals, and used it as a step when climbing into a bunk. The skipper cheerily hailed me. "As you're in for it, make yourself comfortable. Sorry we can't do more than give you the seat to sleep on.
The tent was lit up by an oil-lamp, round which several night moths revolved, occasionally striking against the globe of glass. The tent-door was open, and just outside stood Ibrahim, with his head and face wrapped up in a shawl with flowing fringes, to see that the native waiter did his duty properly.
Her first thought was, how cheerless he would feel in the wide darkness of this great room, with one little oil-lamp burning at the further end, and the fire nearly out. She almost ran towards him. "Tito, dearest, I did not know you would come so soon," she said, nervously, putting up her white arms to unwind his becchetto.
She got up after a while and lighted an oil-lamp, placing it upon the table in the big room. She closed the door and then dropped listlessly into a chair beside the table, her eyes glistening, her lips quivering. The future was somber in aspect, almost hopeless, it seemed.
Because of this he was naturally interested to observe one day, in the course of his peregrinations, that there existed in two places under the Chicago River in the first place at La Salle Street, running north and south, and in the second at Washington Street, running east and west two now soggy and rat-infested tunnels which were never used by anybody dark, dank, dripping affairs only vaguely lighted with oil-lamp, and oozing with water.
Their garnishing was apt to assist this impression. Large-patterned carpets, which always look discontented in little rooms, haircloth furniture, black and shiny as beetles' wing cases, and centre-tables, with a sullen oil-lamp of the kind called astral by our imaginative ancestors, in the centre, these things were inevitable.
We had by this time rounded the Halles, and were threading our way through one gloomy by-street after another. The air was chill, the sky low and rainy; and already the yellow glow of an oil-lamp might be seen gleaming through the inner darkness of some of the smaller shops. Meanwhile, the dusk seemed to gather at our heels, and to thicken at every step. "You are sure you know your way?"
A deep, heavy breath as of relief rose now through the floor as the old man applied the burning match to the wick of his oil-lamp, and Punch drew back from the knot-hole, for the loft was dimly lit up by the rays which came through the cracks of the badly laid floor, so that it seemed to him as if this could be no hiding-place, for any one in the room below must for certain be aware of the presence of any one in the loft.
The dingy interior of the saloon, the booted and belted riders, the grimy floor littered with cigarette-ends, the hanging oil-lamp with its blackened chimney, flashed up and spread before him like the speeding film of a picture, stationary upon the screen of his vision, yet trembling toward a change of scene. A blur appeared in the doorway.
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