Suddenly jumping up, he put away all idea of sleep, and lowered the window. It was pitch dark; vague changing shapes, which might have been either trees or mere7 fancies of the groping eye, outlined themselves a short distance away; far in front was a dull glare from the engine, and behind twinkled the guard's lamp.... In a few seconds he closed the window again, chilled to the bone, though May was nearly at an end.
The thought occurred to him that he was now a solitary8 upon the face of the earth. It concerned no living person whether he did evil or good. If he chose to seek ruin, to abandon himself to the most ignoble9 impulses, there was none to restrain,—not even a brother-in-law. For several weeks past, he had been troubled about his future, afraid to face it. Certainly London satisfied him, and the charm of living there had not perceptibly grown less. He rejoiced in London, in its vistas10, its shops, its unending crowds, its vastness, its wickedness; each dream dreamed about London in childhood had come true; and surer than ever before was the consciousness that in going to London he had fulfilled his destiny. Yet there was something to lack in himself. His confidence in his own abilities and his own character was being undermined. Nearly a year had gone, and he had made no progress, except at the office. Resolutions were constantly broken; it was three months since he had despatched an article to a newspaper. He had not even followed a definite course of study, and though his acquaintance with modern French fiction had widened, he could boast no exact scholarship even in that piquant11 field. Evening after evening—ah! those long, lamplit evenings which were to be given to strenuous12 effort!—was frittered away upon mean banalities, sometimes in the company of some casual acquaintance and sometimes alone. He had by no means grasped the full import and extent of this retrogression; it was merely beginning to disturb his self-complacence, and perhaps, ever so slightly, his sleep. But now, hurrying to the funeral of William Vernon, he lazily laughed at himself for having allowed his peace of mind to be ruffled14. Why bother about "getting on"? What did it matter?
He still experienced but little sorrow at the death of Vernon. His affection for the man had strangely faded. During the nine months that he had lived in London they had scarcely written to one another, and Richard regarded the long journey to attend William's obsequies as a tiresome15 concession16 to propriety17.
That was his real attitude, had he cared to examine it.
At about four o'clock it was quite light, and the risen sun woke Richard from a brief doze18. The dew lay in the hollows of the fields but elsewhere there was a soft, fresh clearness which gave to the common incidents of the flying landscape a new and virginal beauty—as though that had been the morn of creation itself. The cattle were stirring, and turned to watch the train as it slipped by.
Richard opened the window again. His mood had changed, and he felt unreasonably19 joyous20. Last night he had been too pessimistic. Life lay yet before him, and time enough to rectify21 any indiscretions of which he might have been guilty. The future was his, to use as he liked. Magnificent, consoling thought! Moved by some symbolic22 association of ideas, he put his head out of the window and peered in the direction of the train's motion. A cottage stood alone in the midst of innumerable meadows; as it crossed his vision, the door opened, and a young woman came out with an empty pail swinging in her left hand. Apparently23 she would be about twenty-seven, plump and sturdy and straight. Her hair was loose about her round, contented24 face, and with her disengaged hand she rubbed her eyes, still puffed25 and heavy with sleep. She wore a pink print gown, the bodice of which was unfastened, disclosing a white undergarment and the rich hemispheres of her bosom26. In an instant the scene was hidden by a curve of the line, and the interminable succession of fields resumed, but Richard had time to guess from her figure that the woman was the mother of a small family. He pictured her husband still unconscious in the warm bed which she had just left; he even saw the impress of her head on the pillow, and a long nightdress thrown hastily across a chair.
He was deeply and indescribably affected27 by this suggestion of peaceful married love set in so great a solitude28. The woman and her hypothetical husband and children were only peasants, their lives were probably narrow and their intellects dormant29, yet they aroused in him a feeling of envy which surged about his brain and for the moment asphyxiated30 thought....
Later on the train slackened speed as it passed through a shunting-yard. The steam from the light shunting-engine rose with cloud-like delicacy31 in the clear air, and an occasional short whistle seemed to have something of the quality of a bird's note. The men with their long poles moved blithely32 among the medley33 of rails, signalling one another with motions of the arm. The coupling-chains rang with a merry, giant tinkle34, and when the engine brought its load of waggons35 to a standstill, and a smart, metallic
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