“Wait a few minutes, Reuben.”
She retained his hand.
“I can’t dear; I can’t.”
His cheeks were hot. “I have an appointment.”
“What appointment? With whom?”
“A friend. It is something important.
I’ll tell you another time.”
“Tell me now. Your sister is more to you
than a friend. I ask you to stay with me, Reuben.”
In his haste, he did not understand how great an effort
over herself such words as these implied. The
egoist rarely is moved to wonder at unusual demonstrations
made on his own behalf. Miriam was holding his
hand firmly, but he broke away. Then he turned
back, took her in his arms, and kissed her more tenderly
than he ever had done since he was a child. Miriam
had a smile of hope, but only for a moment. After
all, he was gone.
IN DUE COURSE
A change of trains, and half an hour’s delay,
at Manchester, then on through Lancashire civilization,
through fumes and evil smells and expanses of grey-built
hideousness, as far as the station called Bartles.
Miriam remarked novelties as she alighted. The
long wooden platform, which used to be almost bare,
was now in part sheltered by a structure of iron and
glass. There was a bookstall. Porters were
more numerous. The old stationmaster still bustled
about; he recognized her with a stare of curiosity,
but did not approach to speak, as formerly he would
have done. Miriam affected not to observe him;
he had been wont to sit in the same chapel with her.
The wooden stairs down into the road were supplanted
by steps of stone, and below waited several cabs,
instead of the two she remembered. “To
Redbeck House.” The local odours were, at
all events, the same as ever; with what intensity
they revived the past! Every well-known object,
every familiar face, heightened the intolerable throbbing
of her heart; so that at length she drew herself into
a corner of the cab and looked at nothing.
In the house itself nothing was new; even the servants
were the same Miriam had left there. Mrs. Fletcher
lived precisely the life of three and a half years
ago, down to the most trivial habit; used the same
phrases, wore the same kind of dress. To Miriam
everything seemed unreal, visionary; her own voice
sounded strange, for it was out of harmony with this
resuscitated world. She went up to the room prepared
for her, and tried to shake off the nightmare oppression.
The difficulty was to keep a natural consciousness
of her own identity. Above all, the scents in
the air disturbed her, confused her mind, forced her
to think in forgotten ways about the things on which
her eyes fell.
The impressions of every moment were disagreeable,
now and then acutely painful. To what purpose
had she faced this experience? She might have
foreseen what the result would be, and her presence
here was unnecessary.
