The air tasted fresh; through the sunshiny mist the London houses shone
beautiful and vague; the passers-by seemed to be whistling and singing
as they went to their morning work. Already at Paddington cabs were
arriving; they drove down under the clock in an endless procession; the
family luggage was unloaded, and the passengers, muffled for winter
journeys, hurried into the station.
Then a hansom pulled up sharply, and a young man got out, whose air of
fashion and slim figure, as he stood there paying his driver, drew for a
moment the notice of the other travellers.
On the platform within, by the waiting trains, all was movement; the
great adventurous station was full of grey light, and a confusion of
sounds and echoes. Arthur Lestrange, as he walked across, looked about
with quick eyes on the orderly tumult, the heaps of moving luggage, the
hurrying people. They were all starting off on pleasant holiday
journeys, he fancied; indeed, everything seemed eager and gay that
morning.
He chose an empty first-class carriage in the train going northwards;
but in a moment he hurried out back to the bookstall to get a paper, and
returned with several novels in his hands. On the top of one was
pictured, in bright tragic colours, a young man suspended over the edge
of a perilous cliff.
"Why did I buy them?" Arthur wondered, looking at the books with
amusement.
Settling himself again, he watched through his window the anxious
procession of people who came peering by, looking for corner seats. Then
he saw his own luggage passing.
"Oh, you can put those things in here with me," he called out to the
porter.
"I've labelled them, sir," the porter said, looking up with a stupid
face.
"Put them in, put them in, don't you see there's plenty of room," Arthur
said with a certain sharpness and nervous agitation.
There were two young men standing on the platform near his window.
"Well, good-bye," one of them said, as he looked at the other with
friendly eyes, "you mustn't wait, and you'll come up and see us, won't
you?"
They were Oxford men, young Lestrange thought, as he watched them,
feeling envious, and almost lonely for a moment as he remembered the
times when he had travelled down so often with friends from Paddington
to Oxford.
But surely it was time for the train to start! The movement on the
platform seemed to be increasing; the tumult and screaming whistles
sounded louder and louder in his ears, as he waited, leaning
uncomfortably forward.
At last all the doors were shut; the platform grew more vacant; a few
belated people hurried up; a green flag was waved; a whistle blown;
everything about him seemed to glide backwards, and then, with the
shaking and noise of travel, the train drew itself slowly out of the
station. Arthur leaned back with a sensation of immense relief. He was
really away at last. Away from everybody! He had been almost afraid that
they might come to the station and try to stop him. But it was absurd,
he told himself, as he opened the morning paper, it was absurd to make
so much trouble; for what was there to bother about? He could take care
of himself; and anyhow his relations had better mind their own business.
As for talking about ruin! He thought of his pompous uncle and dull pale
cousins, and then of the people with whom he was going to stay.
"Good old ruin," he said half aloud, running down the news of the day
with eyes that hardly noticed what he read. In a moment he turned to
look out of the window.
After making its way through the suburbs, the train had begun at last to
travel more quickly through the open country. The trees and earth and
houses near at hand drifted backwards; the more distant fields moved
back with a slower motion, while the horizon seemed to glide forward
with the train. The sun shone on the brown earth and mist and leafless
trees; a young horse galloped the length of his field in a playful race
with the moving carriages.
Young Lestrange changed his seat restlessly. Then he began to rearrange
his luggage on the rack; he looked at himself in the mirror, caressing
his slight moustache. His hair was smooth and dark over his handsome
young face. Only his straight eyebrows, twitching nervously now and
then, would give him rather a harassed, anxious look for a moment.
What was the use of bothering, he said to himself, smiling as he turned
carelessly away. If one was young! Men sowed their wild oats; he would
settle down soon enough, but in the meantime he would enjoy himself. You
have only one life to live....
The winter morning seemed unusually bright and clear; the train went
swiftly; its wheels beat on the rails an unquiet and delicious measure,
answering and echoing his thoughts. Restless and excited, he again threw
down the paper, for the bright images of desire, that floated before his
eyes, made the printed words seem almost meaningless.
He pictured to himself the end of his journey--the trap that would
probably meet him--a dog-cart, with shining bay horse and man in livery,
standing in the gravel sweep of a country station. The drive up, and
then at tea, or just before dinner, he and she would meet in the drawing
room, greeting each other with pretended indifference. How he hated and
loved her!
After a while the train, going more slowly now, began to draw into
Reading. With the beginnings of weariness and headache Arthur looked at
the waste of railway trucks, the heaps of coal and blackened snow, the
red factory buildings, and the dreary streets beyond. Biscuit
factories--who could eat all the biscuits they made? he wondered;
"Clapper's Restaurant"--suppose you should dine there, they would give
you nothing but biscuits, probably. Did the train stop at Reading?--he
could get some spirits at the refreshment room.
At the bar, Lestrange saw the figure and long grey coat of a man he
thought he recognized; and then, getting sight of Boyle's smooth-shaven
face, and remembering his supercilious manners and reputation, he felt
with sudden repulsion how much he hated men of that kind--men of
pleasure, who were no longer young. When you were young it was
different--but to go on always....
But when Boyle turned and greeted him in an indifferent, half-friendly
way, and then walked up and down with him on the platform, Arthur could
not help feeling, in spite of himself, somewhat flattered and pleased.
After all, Boyle knew most of the best people, and went everywhere.
"I have an empty carriage; you might as well come in with me, if you are
by yourself." Boyle seemed not unwilling, and soon appeared at Arthur's
carriage.
"I'm just on my way to Marcham," Arthur said, as if casually; "the
Vallences', you know." There was a slight lisp in his pleasant musical
voice.
Boyle was putting his golf clubs in the rack, but turned round at this
and glanced at Arthur oddly. However he said nothing, and after a
moment he sat down, and, lighting a cigarette, began looking at the
paper.
As the train went out of Reading they began to talk, or rather Arthur
talked. Soon he was discussing horses and actresses and gambling debts.
It was a good game, baccarat, Arthur said, but you had to pay for it
sometimes. He had just dropped a cool thousand or two, which was rather
a bore. There was a music hall singer to whom Arthur referred more than
once as "Mamie."
"And how about Lulu, hey?" Boyle asked, with his disagreeable laugh.
"Oh, Lulu--good old Lulu!" Arthur said, but he really had no idea of
what Boyle meant.
Boyle told a story in his short, indifferent way, and Arthur exclaimed,
"Capital! capital!" and laughed loudly in the fashion of a popular man
he knew.
Had he ever been to the Vallences' before? Boyle asked.
No, he had never gone before. Did Boyle know them?--Boyle had been
there; was going there now, in fact, he said.
"Really, are you going there now? How odd we should meet like this!"
They talked a little about the place and people. It would be rather a
lively set, wouldn't it? Arthur asked; and he boasted that his uncle,
Lord Seabury, had warned him against them. But, good God! what did he
care if people were amusing. "Do you know who else will be there?"
"Oh, a lot of people. Mrs. Stair (Arthur blushed at this), and that
young Glass."
"Glass?" Arthur exclaimed; "oh, not really that man! They can't like
him."
"They like his money."
"You don't mean they ask a man--a stupid boy like that--to get his
money."
"They don't say they do," and Boyle looked up from his paper with an
expression that seemed to say, "You young fool, you don't know much."
("Is that what I'm asked for?" Arthur wondered for a second.)
"I say, did you read about that young Hughes?" Boyle was saying. "It
seems he's gone and played the fool--shot himself; wrote to his mamma he
was ruined. So he won't be there."
"Used he to go to Marcham?"
"Oh, always there."
"Well, it's the pace that kills," Arthur said sententiously, though his
hand, as he lighted another cigarette, shook a little. "It isn't
everyone that can stand the racket."
"If they weren't all such sickening young fools," Boyle replied in a
short contemptuous way, as if the talk bored him.
"He thinks a damned lot of himself," Arthur thought, looking with a
sidelong glance at Boyle. His head began to ache again; a sudden disgust
came over him; he felt he hated Boyle. And he hated himself too, for
talking and boasting as he had talked and boasted but a few minutes
before. And they were all like Boyle, all those people; they cared only
for his name and money. "Name and money, name and money," the wheels
beat on the rails. Well, soon he would lose them, most likely--his name
and money--like the young suicide, who had lost them both and his life
too.
Still he made an effort to ward off the mood that was settling down on
him--the mood he knew so well! He was not ruined, he told himself, and
there was nothing ruinous in an ordinary visit. He could take care of
himself. The chief of his debts were gambling debts, and he was going to
stop playing soon; would settle down quietly; he would make a
resolution, and keep to it.
But what was he doing now in that rattling train? Only the day before he
had resolved not to come; had promised solemnly that he would not come;
had made a resolution to break with all that set, and not yield to the
passion which people said would ruin him. Yet here he was, going on to
it all! There seemed to him something sinister in his journey, something
fatal in the swiftness of the rattling train, as if he were being
carried on to a dreadful place, and into misfortune, against his will.
He leaned away from Boyle, and touched his cheek to the cool pane of the
window. Masses of steam enveloped the train, but Arthur saw the quiet
landscape now and then, glimpses of faded green fields with snow, and,
over the hedges, the shining river, and bluish hills beyond. He saw a
boat on the river; recognized a bit of wood, a church tower. Those were
the hills that he had ridden over; the lanes through which he had so
often walked; the river down which he had floated in the summer
sunshine, pulling up refreshed and strong after bathing. With an eager,
almost childish interest he waited for the green visions, through the
shifting steam, of these familiar places.
He opened the window; the singing air tasted pleasantly cool and fresh.
Over the flooded fields and the moving trees he saw the spires and
towers of Oxford. He could well remember the quiet streets there; seemed
to see himself, indeed, moving through them; and he almost believed that
in a few minutes he would be driving up, as he had driven up so often
before, in that procession of racing cabs to the old College, and to all
his friends.
The steam blew again about the train, wrapped his face in its warm
breath, and blotted out the view. Inside the shaking carriage was the
tobacco smoke, and his luggage. "Where am I going with that man?" he
asked himself suddenly, for the picture of Oxford had filled his mind
entirely for a moment. The buildings and towers were so near now, the
water of the reservoir gleamed slowly past. Arthur took down his luggage
from the rack. At the bottom of his mind he had been wanting for a long
time to go back to Oxford, and see it all, and see an old friend there;
and so, eagerly, almost before the train had stopped, he hailed a porter
and got out of the carriage.
"I must stay over here a few hours," he said to Boyle, with apparent
calmness. "There is something I have just thought of, and must attend
to. I'll telegraph, but you'd better tell them, though, not to meet me."
He turned and walked away.
But as he drove up to Oxford, "What a fool I am," he kept saying to
himself. Indeed Boyle's surprise, the commonplace platform, the
ticket-collector's questions, the sight outside of his own luggage being
lifted up on a hansom, had soon made his foolish, helpless impulse fade,
like the flame of a candle, taken out into the daylight and windy air.
But to go back to the train would have seemed doubly foolish, so, borne
on by the impetus of his dead desire, he drove away. The next train was
not till half-past six. He would get luncheon, and, after all, it might
be pleasant to see the old place. But he was resolved that never again
would he act on those stupid, sudden ideas--they made him seem like a
fool.