§ 13
And now, on the slope leading up to the railway station, George was distressed. He was physically and mentally unmanned. He could not speak without a tremor. He seemed so physically enfeebled that she took his arm and asked him to lean on her. All at once she realized the extraordinary fact that of the two she was infinitely the stronger. With all his self-confidence and arrogance and aplomb, he was nothing but a pathetic weakling.
The hostility of the crowd had made her vaguely sympathetic with him. She had watched him being browbeaten by policemen and by the owner of the cart, and a strange protective instinct surged up in her. She wanted to stick up for him, to plant herself definitely on his side. She felt she was bound to champion him in adversity. She thought: “I’m with him, and I must look after him. He’s my man, and I’ve got to protect him.”
All the long walk to the station was saturated in this atmosphere of tense sympathy and anxious protection.
“We shall catch the 10.20,” he said. “There’s heaps of time. We shall have over an hour to wait.”
“That’ll be all right,” she said comprehensively.
On the station platform they paced up and down many times in absolute silence. The moon was gorgeously radiant, flinging the goods yard opposite into blotches of light and shadow. The red lamps of the signals quavered ineffectually.
“You know it’s awfully lucky you weren’t hurt,” he said at last.
She nodded. Pause.
Then he broke out: “You know, really, I’m most awfully sorry——”
“Oh, don’t bother about that,” she said lightly. “It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t help it.”
(Yet she knew it was his fault, and that he could have helped it. She also knew that he had no licence.)
And then a strange thing happened.
They were in the shadow of a doorway. He suddenly put his two arms on her shoulders and kissed her passionately on the lips. Her hair was blowing behind her like a trail of flame. He kissed her again with deepening intensity. And then her face, upturned to his, dropped convulsively forward. Her eyes were closed with a great mist, and her hair fell over his hands and hid them from view. There was something terrible in the fierceness with which he bent down and, because he could not kiss her face, kissed her fire-burnished hair. And as he did so again and again she began to cry very softly. His hands could feel the sobs which shook her frame. And he was thrilled, electrified....
“My God!” he whispered....
... Then with a quick movement she drew back. The tears in her eyes were shining like pearls, and her face was white—quite white. Passion was in every limb of her.
“That’s enough,” she said almost curtly, but it was all that she could trust herself to say. For she was overwhelmed, swept out of her depth by this sudden tide.
And all the way to Liverpool Street, with George sitting in the corner opposite to her, her mind and soul were running mad riot....
“Good-bye,” he said later, at the gate of No. 14, Gifford Road, and from the inflexion of his voice she perceived that their relations had undergone a subtle change....
She watched him as he disappeared round the corner. On a sudden impulse she raced after him and caught him up.
“George!” she said.
“Yes?”
“Will you be summoned, d’you think?”
“Oh, certainly.”
“Well—I thought I’d tell you ... if you’re short of money through it ... I’ve got some.... I can lend it to you ... if you’re short, that is....”
“It’s awfully good of you,” he replied. Yet she knew he was thinking of something else.... Her running back to him had reopened the problem of farewell. He was debating: “Shall I kiss her again?” And she was wondering if he would. In a way she hoped not. There would be something cold-blooded in it if he did it too frequently. It would lack the fire, the spontaneity, the glorious impulse of that moment at Bishop’s Stortford railway station. It would assuredly be banal after what had happened. She was slightly afraid. She wished she had not run back to him. Nervousness assailed her.
“Good-night!” she cried, and fled back along Gifford Road. Behind her she heard his voice echoing her farewell and the sound of his footsteps beginning along the deserted highway. It was nearly two a.m....
Undressing in the tiny attic bedroom she discovered a dark bruise on her right shoulder. It must have been where he lurched sideways against her just after the collision. She had not felt it. She had not known anything about it....