第33章

These words were not especially touching or sympathetic.But the fact of that resemblance insisted upon was enough in itself to act upon her emotions powerfully.With a little faint cry, and throwing her arms out, Mrs Verloc burst into tears at last.

Ossipon entered the carriage, hastily closed the door and looked out to see the time by the station clock.Eight minutes more.For the first three of these Mrs Verloc wept violently and helplessly without pause or interruption.Then she recovered somewhat, and sobbed gently in an abundant fall of tears.She tried to talk to her saviour, to the man who was the messenger of life.

`Oh, Tom! How could I fear to die after he was taken away from me so cruelly! How could I! How could I be such a coward!'

She lamented aloud her love of life, that life without grace or charm, and almost without decency, but of an exalted faithfulness of purpose, even unto murder.And, as often happens in the lament of poor humanity rich in suffering but indigent in words, the truth - the very cry of truth - was found in a worn and artificial shape picked up somewhere among the phrases of sham sentiment.

`How could I be so afraid of death! Tom, I tried.But I am afraid.Itried to do away with myself.And I couldn't.Am I hard? I suppose the cup of horrors was not full enough for such as me.Then when you came...

'

She paused.Then in a gust of confidence and gratitude: `I will live all my days for you, Tom!' she sobbed out.

`Go over into the other corner of the carriage, away from the platform,'

said Ossipon, solicitously.She let her saviour settle her comfortably, and he watched the coming on of another crisis of weeping, still more violent than the first.He watched the symptoms with a sort of medical air, as if counting seconds.He heard the guard's whistle at last.An involuntary contraction of the upper lip bared his teeth with all the aspect of savage resolution as he felt the train beginning to move.Mrs Verloc heard and felt nothing, and Ossipon, her saviour, stood still.He felt the train roll quicker, rumbling heavily to the sound of the woman's loud sobs, and then crossing the carriage in two long strides he opened the door deliberately, and leaped out.

He had leaped out at the very end of the platform; and such was his determination in sticking to his desperate plan that he managed by a sort of miracle, performed almost in the air, to slam to the door of the carriage.

Only then did he find himself rolling, head over heels like a shot rabbit.

He was bruised, shaken, pale as death, and out of breath when he got up.

But he was calm, and perfectly able to meet the excited crowd of railwaymen who had gathered round him in a moment.He explained, in gentle and convincing tones, that his wife had started at a moment's notice for Brittany to her dying mother; that, of course, she was greatly upset, and he considerably concerned at her state; that he was trying to cheer her up, and had absolutely failed to notice at first that the train was moving out.To the general exclamation `Why didn't you go on to Southampton, then sir?' he objected the inexperience of a young sister-in-law left alone in the house with three small children, and her alarm at his absence the telegraph offices being closed.He had acted on impulse.`But I don't think I'll ever try that again,' he concluded; smiled all round; distributed some small change, and marched without a limp out of the station.

Outside, Comrade Ossipon, flush of safe banknotes as never before in his life, refused the offer of a cab.

`I can walk,' he said, with a little friendly laugh to the civil driver.

He could walk.He walked.He crossed the bridge.Later on the towers of the Abbey saw in their massive immobility the yellow bush of his hair passing under the lamps.The lights of Victoria saw him, too, and Sloane Square, and the railings of the park.And Comrade Ossipon once more found himself on a bridge.The river, a sinister marvel-of still shadows and flowing gleams mingling below in a black silence, arrested his attention.

He stood looking over the parapet for a long time.The clock tower boomed a brazen blast above his drooping head.He looked up at the dial...Half past twelve of a wild night in the Channel.

And again Comrade Ossipon walked.His robust form was seen that night in distant parts of the enormous town slumbering monstrously on a carpet of mud under a veil of raw mist.It was seen crossing the streets without life and sound, or diminishing in the interminable straight perspectives of shadowy houses bordering empty roadways lined by strings of gas-lamps.

He walked through Squares, Places, Ovals, Commons, through monotonous streets with unknown names where the dust of humanity settles inert and hopeless out of the stream of life.He walked.And suddenly turning into a strip of a front garden with a mangy grass plot, he let himself into a small grimy house with a latchkey he took out of his pocket.

He threw himself down on his bed all dressed, and lay still for a whole quarter of an hour Then he sat up suddenly, drawing up his knees, and clasping his legs.The first dawn found him open-eyed, in that same posture.This man who could walk so long, so far, so aimlessly, without showing a sign of fatigue, could also remain sitting still for hours without stirring a limb or an eyelid.But when the late sun sent its rays into the room he unclasped his hands, and fell back on the pillow.His eyes stared at the ceiling.And suddenly they closed.Comrade Ossipon slept in the sunlight.