'How like a villain,' I say, when he takes his seat again, 'you are now.'
'And how like a lady, you!' he answers, with a sneer.
Then he turns his face from me, rests his head against the jolting cushion; and pretends, with twitching eye- lids, to sleep.
My own eyes stay open. I gaze through the lozenge of glass at the road we have travelled— a winding red road, made cloudy by dust, like a thread of blood escaping from my heart.
We make part of our journey like this, but then must give up the asylum carriage and take a train. I have never ridden a train before. We wait at a country station. We wait at an inn, since Richard is still afraid that my uncle will have sent out men to watch f o r u s . H e h a s t h e l a n d l o r d p u t u s i n a p r i v a t e r o o m a n d b r i n g m e t e a a n d bread-and-butter. I will not look at the tray. The tea grows brown and cool, the bread curls. He stands at the fire and rattles the coins in his pocket, then bursts out: 'God damn you, do you think I take food for you, for free?' He eats the bread-and-butter himself. 'I hope I see my money soon,' he says. 'God knows I need it, after three months with you and your uncle, doing what he calls a gentleman's labour, receiving wages that would barely keep a proper gentleman in cuffs. Where's that damn porter?
How much do they mean to swindle me of for our tickets, I wonder?'
At last a boy appears to fetch us and take our bags. We stand on the station platform and study the rails. They shine, as if polished.
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In time they begin to purr, and then— unpleasantly, like nerves in failing teeth— to hum. The hum becomes a shriek. Then the train comes hurtling about the track, a plume of smoke at its head, its many doors unfolding. I keep my veil about my face.
Richard hands a coin to the guard, saying easily: 'You'll see to it, perhaps, that my wife and I are kept quite private, till London?' The guard says he will; and when Richard comes and takes his place in the coach across from me he is more peevish than ever.
'That I must pay a man to think me lewd, so I may sit chastely, with my own little virgin of a wife! Let me tell you now, I am keeping a separate account of the costs of this journey, to charge against your share.'
I say nothing. The train has shuddered, as if beaten with hammers, and now begins to roll upon its tracks. I feel the growing speed of it, and grip the hanging strap of leather until my hand cramps and blisters in its glove.
So the journey proceeds. It seems to me that we must cross vast distances of space.— For you will understand that my sense of distance and space is rather strange.
We stop at a village of red-bricked houses, and then at another, very similar; and then at a third, rather larger. At every station there is what seems to me a press of people clamouring to board, the thud and shake of slamming doors. I am afraid the crowds will overburden the train— perhaps overturn it.
I think, I deserve to be crushed in the wreck of a train; and almost hope they do.
They do not. The engine speeds us onward, then slows, and again there are streets and the spires of churches— more streets and spires than I have yet seen; more houses, and between them a steady traffic of cattle and vehicles and people. London! I think, with a lurch of my heart. But Richard studies me as I gaze, and smiles unpleasantly. 'Your n a t u r a l h o m e , ' h e s a y s . W e s t o p a t t h e s t a t i o n a n d I s e e t h e n a m e o f i t : MAIDENHEAD.
Though we have come so swiftly we have travelled no more than twenty miles, and have another thirty to go. I sit, still gripping the strap, leaning close to the glass; but the station is filled with men and women— the women in groups, the men idly walking; and from
them I shrink. Soon the train gives a hiss, and gathers its bulk, and shudders back into terrible life. We leave the streets of Maidenhead. We pass through trees. Beyond the trees there are open parklands, and houses— some as great as my uncle's, some greater.
Here and there are cottages with pens of pigs, with gardens set with broken sticks for climbing beans, and hung with lines of laundry. Where the lines are full there is laundry hung from windows, from trees, on bushes, on chairs, between the shafts of broken carts— laundry everywhere, drooping and yellow.
I keep my pose and watch it all. Look, Maud, I think. Here is your future. Here's all your liberty, unfolding like a bolt of cloth . . .
I wonder if Sue is very much injured. I wonder what kind of place they have her in, now.
Richard tries to see beyond my veil. 'You're not weeping, are you?' he says. 'Come on, don't trouble over it still.'
I say, 'Don't look at me.'
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'Should you rather be back at Briar, with the books? You know you should not. You know you have wanted this. You'll forget, soon, the manner in which you got it.
Believe me, I know these things. You must only be patient. We must both be patient now. We have many weeks to pass together, before the fortune becomes ours. I am sorry I spoke harshly, before. Come, Maud. We shall be at London, soon. Things will seem different to you there, I assure you ..."
I do not answer. At last, with a curse, he gives it up. The day is darkening now— or rather, the sky is darkening, as we draw close to the city. There come streaks of soot upon the glass. The landscape is slowly growing meaner. The cottages have begun to be replaced by wooden dwellings, some with broken windows and boards. The gardens are giving way to patches of weed; soon the weed gives way to ditches, the ditches to dark canals, to dreary wastes of road, to mounds of stones or soil or ashes.
Still, Even ashes, I think, are a part of your freedom— and I feel, despite myself, the kindling in me of a sort of excitement. But then, the excitement becomes unease. I have always supposed London a place, like a house in a park, with walls: I've imagined it rising, straight and clean and solid. I have not
supposed it would sprawl so brokenly, through villages and suburbs. I've believed it complete: but now, as I watch, there come stretches of wet red land, and gaping trenches; now come half-built houses, and half-built churches, with glassless windows and slateless roofs and jutting spars of wood, naked as bones.
Now there are so many smuts upon the glass they show like faults in the fabric of my v e i l . T h e t r a i n b e g i n s t o r i s e . I d o n ' t l i k e t h e s e n s a t i o n . W e b e g i n t o c r o s s streets— grey streets, black streets— so many monotonous streets, I think I shall never be able to tell them apart! Such a chaos of doors and windows, of roofs and chimneys, of horses and coaches and men and women! Such a muddle of hoardings and garish signs: Spanish blinds.— Lead Coffins.— O i l T a l l o w & C o t t o n W a s t e . W o r d s , everywhere. Words, six- feet high. Words, shrieking and bellowing: Leather and Grindery.— S h o p T o L e t . — B r o u g h a m s & N e a t Carriages.— Paper-Stainers.— Supported Entirely.— To Let!— To Let!— By Voluntary Subscription.—
There are words, all over the face of London. I see them, and cover my eyes. When I look again we have sunk: brick walls, thick with soot, have risen about the train and cast the coach in gloom. Then comes a great, vast, vaulting roof of tarnished glass, hung about with threads of smoke and steam and fluttering birds. We shudder to a frightful halt. There is the shrieking of other engines, a thudding of doors, the pressing passage— it seems to me— of a thousand, thousand people.
'Paddington terminus,' says Richard. 'Come on.'
He moves and speaks more quickly here. He is changed. He does not look at me— I wish he would, now. He finds a man to take our bags. We stand in a line of people— a queue, I know the word— and wait for a carriage— a hackney, I know that word also, from my uncle's books. One may kiss in a hackney; one may take any kind of liberty with one's lover; one tells one's driver to go about the Regent's Park. I know London.