The Complete Five Towns Collections. Bennett Arnold

having obtained leave from the office, arrived at a quarter to twelve. He peered up and down. Could it be that she was really going? Not even yet had he grown accustomed to the idea, and at times he still said to himself, "It isn't really true; there must be some mistake." The moment of separation, now that it was at hand, he accused of having approached sneakingly to take him unawares. He was conscious of no great emotion, such as his æsthetic sense of fitness might have led him to expect,—nothing but a dull joylessness, the drab, negative sensations of a convict foretasting a sentence of years.

      There she stood, by the bookstall, engaged in lively talk with the clerk, while other customers waited. Lottie was beside her, holding a bag. The previous night they had slept at Morley's Hotel.

      "Everything is all right, I hope?" he said, eyeing her narrowly, and feeling extremely sentimental.

      "Yes, thank you.... Lottie, you must go and keep watch over our seats.... Well," she went on briskly, when they were left alone, "I am actually going. I feel somehow as if it can't be true."

      "Why, that is exactly how I have felt for days!" he answered, allowing his voice to languish, and then fell into silence. He assiduously coaxed himself into a mood of resigned melancholy. With sidelong glances, as they walked quietly down the platform, he scanned her face, decided it was divine, and dwelt lovingly on the thought: "I shall never see it again."

      "A dull day for you to start!" he murmured, in tones of gentle concern.

      "Yes, and do you know, a gentleman in the hotel told me we should be certain to have bad weather, and that made me so dreadfully afraid that I nearly resolved to stay in England." She laughed.

      "Ah, if you would!" he had half a mind to exclaim, but just then he became aware of his affectation and trampled on it. The conversation proceeded naturally to the subject of seasickness and the little joys and perils of the voyage. Strange topics for a man and a woman about to be separated, probably for ever! And yet Richard, for his part, could think of none more urgent.

      "I had better get in now, had I not?" she said. The clock stood at five minutes to noon. Her face was sweetly serious as she raised it to his, holding out her hand.

      "Take care of yourself," was his fatuous parting admonition.

      Her hand rested in his own, and he felt it tighten. Beneath the veil the colour deepened a little in her rosy cheeks.

      "I didn't tell you," she said abruptly, "that my uncles had begged me to go to them weeks and weeks ago. I didn't tell you—and I put them off—because I thought I would wait and see if you and I—cared for each other."

      It had come, the explanation! He blushed red, and stuck to her hand. The atmosphere was suddenly electric. The station and the crowd were blotted out.

      "You understand?" she questioned, smiling bravely.

      "Yes."

      He was dimly conscious of having shaken hands with Lottie, of the banging of many doors, of Adeline's face framed in a receding window. Then the rails were visible beside the platform, and he had glimpses of people hurriedly getting out of the train at the platform opposite. In the distance the signal clattered to the horizontal. He turned round, and saw only porters, and a few forlorn friends of the voyagers; one woman was crying.

      * * * * *

      Instead of going home from the office, he rambled about the thoroughfares which converge at Piccadilly Circus, basking in the night-glare of the City of Pleasure. He had four pounds in his pocket. The streets were thronged with swiftly rolling vehicles. Restaurants and theatres and music halls, in evening array, offered their gorgeous enticements, and at last he entered the Café Royal, and, ordering an elaborate dinner, ate it slowly, with thoughtful enjoyment. When he had finished, he asked the waiter to bring a "Figaro." But there appeared to be nothing of interest in that day's "Figaro," and he laid it down.... The ship had sailed by this time. Had Adeline really made that confession to him just before the train started, or was it a fancy of his? There was something fine about her disconcerting frankness ... fine, fine.... And the simplicity of it! He had let slip a treasure. Because she lacked artistic sympathies, he had despised her, or at best underestimated her. And once—to think of it!—he had nearly loved her.... With what astonishing rapidity their intimacy had waxed, drooped, and come to sudden death!... Love, what was love? Perhaps he loved her now, after all....

      "Waiter!" He beckoned with a quaint movement of his forefinger which brought a smile to the man's face—a smile which Richard answered jovially.

      "Sir?"

      "A shilling cigar, please, and a coffee and cognac."

      At about nine o'clock he went out again into the chill air, and the cigar burnt brightly between his lips. He had unceremoniously dismissed the too importunate image of Adeline, and he was conscious of a certain devil-may-care elation.

      Women were everywhere on the pavements. They lifted their silk skirts out of the mud, revealing ankles and lace petticoats. They smiled on him. They lured him in foreign tongues and in broken English. He broadly winked at some of the more youthful ones, and they followed him importunately, only to be shaken off with a laugh. As he walked, he whistled or sang all the time. He was cut adrift, he explained to himself, and through no fault of his own. His sole friend had left him (much she cared!), and there was none to whom he owed the slightest consideration. He was at liberty to do what he liked, without having to consider first, "What would she think of this?" Moreover, he must discover solace, poor blighted creature! Looking down a side street, he saw a man talking to a woman. He went past them, and heard what they said. Then he was in Shaftesbury Avenue. Curious sensations fluttered through his frame. With an insignificant oath, he nerved himself to a resolve.

      Several times he was on the very point of carrying it out when his courage failed. He traversed the Circus, got as far as St. James's Hall, and returned upon his steps. In a minute he was on the north side of Coventry Street. He looked into the faces of all the women, but in each he found something to repel, to fear.

      Would it end in his going quietly home? He crossed over into the seclusion of Whitcomb Street to argue the matter. As he was passing the entry to a court, a woman came out, and both had to draw back to avoid a collision.

      "Chéri!" she murmured. She was no longer young, but her broad, Flemish face showed kindliness and good humour in every feature of it, and her voice was soft. He did not answer, and she spoke to him again. His spine assumed the consistency of butter; a shuddering thrill ran through him. She put her arm gently into his, and pressed it. He had no resistance....

      Chapter XXVI

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      It was the morning of Boxing Day, frosty, with a sky of steel grey; the streets were resonant under the traffic.

      Richard had long been anticipating the advent of the New Year, when new resolutions were to come into force. A phrase from a sermon heard at Bursley stuck in his memory: Every day begins a new year. But he could not summon the swift, courageous decision necessary to act upon that adage. For a whole year he had been slowly subsiding into a bog of lethargy, and to extricate himself would, he felt, need an amount of exertion which he could not put forth unless fortified by all the associations of the season for such feats, and by the knowledge that fellow-creatures were bracing themselves for a similar difficult wrench.

      Now that he looked back upon them, the fourteen months which had elapsed since Adeline's departure seemed to have succeeded one another with marvellous rapidity. At first he had chafed under the loss of her, and then gradually and naturally he had grown used to her absence. She wrote to him, a rather long letter, full of details about the voyage and the train journey and her uncles' home; he had opened the envelope half expecting that the letter might affect him deeply; but it did not; it struck him as a distinctly mediocre communication. He sent a reply, and the correspondence ended. He did not love her, probably never had loved her. A little sentiment: that was all. The affair was quite over. If it