Slowly the hours crawled. His father got up; he heard him pottering about. Then the miner set off to the pit, his heavy boots scraping the yard. Cocks were still crowing. A cart went down the road. His mother got up. She knocked the fire. Presently she called him softly. He answered as if he were asleep. This shell of himself did well.
He was walking to the station—another mile! The train was near Nottingham. Would it stop before the tunnels? But it did not matter; it would get there before dinner-time. He was at Jordan's. She would come in half an hour. At any rate, she would be near. He had done the letters. She would be there. Perhaps she had not come. He ran downstairs. Ah! he saw her through the glass door. Her shoulders stooping a little to her work made him feel he could not go forward; he could not stand. He went in. He was pale, nervous, awkward, and quite cold. Would she misunderstand him? He could not write his real self with this shell.
“And this afternoon,” he struggled to say. “You will come?”
“I think so,” she replied, murmuring.
He stood before her, unable to say a word. She hid her face from him. Again came over him the feeling that he would lose consciousness. He set his teeth and went upstairs. He had done everything correctly yet, and he would do so. All the morning things seemed a long way off, as they do to a man under chloroform. He himself seemed under a tight band of constraint. Then there was his other self, in the distance, doing things, entering stuff in a ledger, and he watched that far-off him carefully to see he made no mistake.
But the ache and strain of it could not go on much longer. He worked incessantly. Still it was only twelve o'clock. As if he had nailed his clothing against the desk, he stood there and worked, forcing every stroke out of himself. It was a quarter to one; he could clear away. Then he ran downstairs.
“You will meet me at the Fountain at two o'clock,” he said.
“I can't be there till half-past.”
“Yes!” he said.
She saw his dark, mad eyes.
“I will try at a quarter past.”
And he had to be content. He went and got some dinner. All the time he was still under chloroform, and every minute was stretched out indefinitely. He walked miles of streets. Then he thought he would be late at the meeting-place. He was at the Fountain at five past two. The torture of the next quarter of an hour was refined beyond expression. It was the anguish of combining the living self with the shell. Then he saw her. She came! And he was there.
“You are late,” he said.
“Only five minutes,” she answered.
“I'd never have done it to you,” he laughed.
She was in a dark blue costume. He looked at her beautiful figure.
“You want some flowers,” he said, going to the nearest florist's.
She followed him in silence. He bought her a bunch of scarlet, brick-red carnations. She put them in her coat, flushing.
“That's a fine colour!” he said.
“I'd rather have had something softer,” she said.
He laughed.
“Do you feel like a blot of vermilion walking down the street?” he said.
She hung her head, afraid of the people they met. He looked sideways at her as they walked. There was a wonderful close down on her face near the ear that he wanted to touch. And a certain heaviness, the heaviness of a very full ear of corn that dips slightly in the wind, that there was about her, made his brain spin. He seemed to be spinning down the street, everything going round.
As they sat in the tramcar, she leaned her heavy shoulder against him, and he took her hand. He felt himself coming round from the anaesthetic, beginning to breathe. Her ear, half-hidden among her blonde hair, was near to him. The temptation to kiss it was almost too great. But there were other people on top of the car. It still remained to him to kiss it. After all, he was not himself, he was some attribute of hers, like the sunshine that fell on her.
He looked quickly away. It had been raining. The big bluff of the Castle rock was streaked with rain, as it reared above the flat of the town. They crossed the wide, black space of the Midland Railway, and passed the cattle enclosure that stood out white. Then they ran down sordid Wilford Road.
She rocked slightly to the tram's motion, and as she leaned against him, rocked upon him. He was a vigorous, slender man, with exhaustless energy. His face was rough, with rough-hewn features, like the common people's; but his eyes under the deep brows were so full of life that they fascinated her. They seemed to dance, and yet they were still trembling on the finest balance of laughter. His mouth the same was just going to spring into a laugh of triumph, yet did not. There was a sharp suspense about him. She bit her lip moodily. His hand was hard clenched over hers.
They paid their two halfpennies at the turnstile and crossed the bridge. The Trent was very full. It swept silent and insidious under the bridge, travelling in a soft body. There had been a great deal of rain. On the river levels were flat gleams of flood water. The sky was grey, with glisten of silver here and there. In Wilford churchyard the dahlias were sodden with rain—wet black-crimson balls. No one was on the path that went along the green river meadow, along the elm-tree colonnade.
There was the faintest haze over the silvery-dark water and the green meadow-bank, and the elm-trees that were spangled with gold. The river slid by in a body, utterly silent and swift, intertwining among itself like some subtle, complex creature. Clara walked moodily beside him.
“Why,” she asked at length, in rather a jarring tone, “did you leave Miriam?”
He frowned.
“Because I WANTED to leave her,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I didn't want to go on with her. And I didn't want to marry.”
She was silent for a moment. They picked their way down the muddy path. Drops of water fell from the elm-trees.
“You didn't want to marry Miriam, or you didn't want to marry at all?” she asked.
“Both,” he answered—“both!”
They had to manoeuvre to get to the stile, because of the pools of water.
“And what did she say?” Clara asked.
“Miriam? She said I was a baby of four, and that I always HAD battled her off.”
Clara pondered over this for a time.
“But you have really been going with her for some time?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“And now you don't want any more of her?”
“No. I know it's no good.”
She pondered again.
“Don't you think you've treated her rather badly?” she asked.
“Yes; I ought to have dropped it years back. But it would have been no good going on. Two wrongs don't make a right.”
“How old ARE you?” Clara asked.
“Twenty-five.”
“And I am thirty,” she said.
“I know you are.”
“I shall be thirty-one—or AM I thirty-one?”
“I neither know nor care. What does it matter!”