Section 6
I missed the train.
Partly that was because the curate's clock was slow, and partlyit was due to the commercial obstinacy of the shoemaker, who wouldtry on another pair after I had declared my time was up. I boughtthe final pair however, gave him a wrong address for the return ofthe old ones, and only ceased to feel like the Nietzschean Over-man,when I saw the train running out of the station.
Even then I did not lose my head. It occurred to me almost at oncethat, in the event of a prompt pursuit, there would be a greatadvantage in not taking a train from Clayton; that, indeed, to havedone so would have been an error from which only luck had savedme. As it was, I had already been very indiscreet in my inquiriesabout Shaphambury; for once on the scent the clerk could not failto remember me. Now the chances were against his coming into thecase. I did not go into the station therefore at all, I made nodemonstration of having missed the train, but walked quietly past,down the road, crossed the iron footbridge, and took the way backcircuitously by White's brickfields and the allotments to the wayover Clayton Crest to Two-Mile Stone, where I calculated I shouldhave an ample margin for the 6.13 train.
I was not very greatly excited or alarmed then. Suppose, I reasoned,that by some accident the curate goes to that drawer at once: willhe be certain to miss four out of ten or eleven sovereigns? If hedoes, will he at once think I have taken them? If he does, willhe act at once or wait for my return? If he acts at once, will hetalk to my mother or call in the police? Then there are a dozenroads and even railways out of the Clayton region, how is he toknow which I have taken? Suppose he goes straight at once to theright station, they will not remember my departure for the simplereason that I didn't depart. But they may remember about Shaphambury?It was unlikely.
I resolved not to go directly to Shaphambury from Birmingham, butto go thence to Monkshampton, thence to Wyvern, and then come downon Shaphambury from the north. That might involve a night at someintermediate stopping-place but it would effectually conceal mefrom any but the most persistent pursuit. And this was not a caseof murder yet, but only the theft of four sovereigns.
I had argued away all anxiety before I reached Clayton Crest.
At the Crest I looked back. What a world it was! And suddenly itcame to me that I was looking at this world for the last time. IfI overtook the fugitives and succeeded, I should die with them--orhang. I stopped and looked back more attentively at that wide uglyvalley.
It was my native valley, and I was going out of it, I thought neverto return, and yet in that last prospect, the group of towns thathad borne me and dwarfed and crippled and made me, seemed, in someindefinable manner, strange. I was, perhaps, more used to seeing itfrom this comprehensive view-point when it was veiled and softenedby night; now it came out in all its weekday reek, under a clearafternoon sun. That may account a little for its unfamiliarity.And perhaps, too, there was something in the emotions through whichI had been passing for a week and more, to intensify my insight,to enable me to pierce the unusual, to question the accepted. Butit came to me then, I am sure, for the first time, how promiscuous,how higgledy-piggledy was the whole of that jumble of mines andhomes, collieries and potbanks, railway yards, canals, schools,forges and blast furnaces, churches, chapels, allotment hovels,a vast irregular agglomeration of ugly smoking accidents in whichmen lived as happy as frogs in a dustbin. Each thing jostled anddamaged the other things about it, each thing ignored the otherthings about it; the smoke of the furnace defiled the potbank clay,the clatter of the railway deafened the worshipers in church, thepublic-house thrust corruption at the school doors, the dismalhomes squeezed miserably amidst the monstrosities of industrialism,with an effect of groping imbecility. Humanity choked amidst itsproducts, and all its energy went in increasing its disorder, likea blind stricken thing that struggles and sinks in a morass.
I did not think these things clearly that afternoon. Much less didI ask how I, with my murderous purpose, stood to them all. I writedown that realization of disorder and suffocation here and now asthough I had thought it, but indeed then I only felt it, felt ittransitorily as I looked back, and then stood with the thing escapingfrom my mind.
I should never see that country-side again.
I came back to that. At any rate I wasn't sorry. The chances wereI should die in sweet air, under a clean sky.
From distant Swathinglea came a little sound, the minute undulationof a remote crowd, and then rapidly three shots.
That held me perplexed for a space. . . . Well, anyhow I wasleaving it all! Thank God I was leaving it all! Then, as I turnedto go on, I thought of my mother.
It seemed an evil world in which to leave one's mother. My thoughtsfocused upon her very vividly for a moment. Down there, under thatafternoon light, she was going to and fro, unaware as yet thatshe had lost me, bent and poking about in the darkling undergroundkitchen, perhaps carrying a lamp into the scullery to trim, orsitting patiently, staring into the fire, waiting tea for me. Agreat pity for her, a great remorse at the blacker troubles thatlowered over her innocent head, came to me. Why, after all, wasI doing this thing?
Why?
I stopped again dead, with the hill crest rising between me andhome. I had more than half a mind to return to her.
Then I thought of the curate's sovereigns. If he has missed themalready, what should I return to? And, even if I returned, howcould I put them back?
And what of the night after I renounced my revenge? What of thetime when young Verrall came back? And Nettie?
No! The thing had to be done.
But at least I might have kissed my mother before I came away, lefther some message, reassured her at least for a little while.All night she would listen and wait for me. . . . .
Should I send her a telegram from Two-Mile Stone?
It was no good now; too late, too late. To do that would be to tellthe course I had taken, to bring pursuit upon me, swift and sure,if pursuit there was to be. No. My mother must suffer!
I went on grimly toward Two-Mile Stone, but now as if some greaterwill than mine directed my footsteps thither.
I reached Birmingham before darkness came, and just caught the lasttrain for Monkshampton, where I had planned to pass the night.
CHAPTER THE FIFTH
THE PURSUIT OF THE TWO LOVERS