And so he put his arm about my shoulders and led me from the house. He found a boy to walk behind us, carrying my trunk. He meant to take me to a cab-stand and drive me to the station at Paddington, and see me on my train.
The day was a miserable one. Even so, it was not so often I got to cross the water, and I said I should like to walk as far as Southwark Bridge, to look at the view. I had thought I should see all of London from there; but the fog grew thicker the further we went. At the bridge it seemed worst of all. You could see the black dome of St Paul's, the barges on the water; you could see all the dark things of the city, but not the fair— the fair were lost or made like shadows.
'Queer thing, to think of the river down there,' said Gentleman, peering over the edge.
He leaned, and spat.
We had not bargained on the fog. It made the traffic slow to a crawl, and though we found a cab, after twenty minutes we paid the driver off and walked again. I had been meant to catch the one o'clock train; now, stepping fast across some great square, we heard that hour struck out, and then the quarter, and then the half— all maddeningly damp and half- hearted, they sounded, as if the clap-pers and the bells that rung them had been wound about with flannel.
'Had we not rather turn around,' I said, 'and try again tomorrow?'
But Gentleman said there would be a driver and a trap sent out to Marlow, to meet my train there; and I had better be late, he thought, than not arrive at all.
But after all, when we got to Paddington at last we found the trains all delayed and made slow, just like the traffic: we had to wait another hour then, until the guard should raise the signal that the Bristol train— which was to be my train as far as Maidenhead, where I must get off and join another— was ready to be boarded. We stood beneath the ticking clock, fidgeting and blowing on our hands. They had lit the great lamps there, but the fog having come in and mixed with the steam, it drifted from arch to arch and made the light very poor. The walls were hung with black, from the death of Prince Albert; the crape had got streaked by birds. I thought it very gloomy, for so grand a place. And of course, there was a vast press of people beside us, 32
all waiting and cursing, or jostling by, or letting their children and their dogs run into our legs.
'Fuck this,' said Gentleman in a hard peevish voice, when the wheel of a bath-chair ran over his toe. He stooped to wipe the dust from his boot, then straightened and lit up a cigarette, then coughed. He had his collar turned high and wore a black slouch hat. His eyes were yellow at the whites, as if stained with flip. He did not, at that moment, look like a man a girl would go silly over.
He coughed again. 'Fuck this cheap tobacco, too,' he said, pulling free a strand that had come loose on his tongue. Then he caught my eye and his face changed. 'Fuck this cheap life, in all its forms— eh, Suky? No more of that for you and me, soon.'
I looked away from him, saying nothing. I had danced a fast waltz with him the night before; now, away from Lant Street and Mrs Sucksby and Mr Ibbs, amongst all the men and women that were gathered grumbling about us, he seemed just another stranger, and I was shy of him. I thought, You're nothing to me. And again I almost said that we ought to turn round and go home; but I knew
that if I did he would grow more peevish and show his temper; and so, I did not.
He finished his smoke, then smoked another. He went off for a piddle, and I went off for a piddle of my own. I heard a whistle blown as I was tidying my skirts; and when I got back, I found the guard had sent out the word and half the crowd had started up and was making in a great sweating rush for the waiting train. We went with them, Gentleman leading me to a second-class coach, then handing up my trunk to the man who was fixing the bags and boxes on the roof. I took a place beside a white- faced woman with a baby on her arm; across from her were two stout farmer-types. I think she was glad to see me get on, for of course, me being dressed so neat and comely, she couldn't tell— ha ha!— that I was a thieving Borough girl. Behind me came a boy and his old dad, with a canary in a cage. The boy sat beside the farmers. The old dad sat by me. The coach tilted and creaked, and we all put back our heads and stared at the bits of dust and varnish that tumbled from the ceiling where the luggage thumped and slithered about above.
The door hung open another minute and then was closed. In all the fuss of getting aboard I had hardly looked at Gentleman. He had handed me on, then turned to talk with the guard. Now he came to the open window and said,
'I'm afraid you may be very late, Sue. But I think the trap will wait for you at Marlow.
I am sure it will wait. You must hope that it will'
I knew at once that it would not, and felt a rush of misery and fear. I said quickly,
'Come with me, can't you? And see me to the house?'
But how could he do that? He shook his head and looked sorry. The two farmer-types, the woman, the boy and the old dad all watched us— wondering I suppose what house we meant, and what a man in a slouch hat, with a voice like that, was doing talking to a girl like me about it.
Then the porter climbed down from the roof, there came another whistle, the train gave a horrible lurch and began to move off.
Gentleman lifted up his hat and followed until the engine got up its speed; then he gave it up— I saw him turn, put his hat back on, twist up his collar. Then he was gone.
33
The coach creaked harder and began to sway. The woman and the men put their hands to the leather straps; the boy put his face to the window. The canary put its beak to the bars of its cage. The baby began to cry. It cried for half an hour.
'Ain't you got any gin?' I said to the woman at last.
'Gin?' she said— like I might have said, poison. Then she made a mouth, and showed me her shoulder— not so pleased to have me, sitting by her, the uppity bitch, after all.
What with her and the baby, and the fluttering bird; and the old dad— who fell asleep and snorted; and the boy— who made paper pellets; and the farmer-types— who smoked and grew bilious; and the fog— that made the train jerk and halt and arrive at Maidenhead two hours later than its time, so that I missed one Marlow train and must wait for the next one— what with all that, my journey was very wretched. I had not brought any food with me, for we had all supposed I should arrive at Briar in time to take a servant's tea there. I had not had a morsel since that dinner of bread and dried meat, at noon: it had stuck to my gums then, but I should have called it wonderful at Maidenhead, seven hours later. The station there was not like Paddington, where there were coffee-stalls and milk-stalls and a pastry-cook's shop. There was only one place for vittles, and that was shut up and closed. I sat on my trunk. My eyes stung, from the fog. When I blew my nose, I turned a handkerchief black. A man saw me do it. 'Don't cry,' he said, smiling.
'I ain't crying!' I said.
He winked, then asked me my name.
It was one thing to flirt in town, however. But I wasn't in town now. I wouldn't answer.
When the train came for Marlow I sat at the back of a coach, and he sat at the front, but with his face my way— he tried for an hour to catch my eye. I remembered Dainty saying that she had sat on a train once, with a gentleman near, and he had opened his trousers and showed her his cock, and asked her to hold it; and she had held it, and he had given her a pound. I wondered
what I would do, if this man asked me to touch his cock— whether I would scream, or look the other way, or touch it, or what.
But then, I hardly needed the pound, where I was headed!
Anyway, money like that was hard to move on. Dainty had never been able to spend hers for fear her father should see it and know she'd been gay. She hid it behind a loose brick in the wall of the starch works, and put a special mark on the brick, that only she would know. She said she would tell it on her death-bed, and we could use the pound to bury her.