"I'm all right. Trying the other side . . ."
His last thought came back to him. He had broken their convention: he had exhibited concern: like any other man. . . . He said to himself:
"By God! Why not take a holiday: why not break all conventions?"
They erected themselves intangibly and irrefragably. He had not known this young woman twenty-four hours: not to speak to: and already the convention existed between them that he must play stiff and cold, she warm and clinging. . . . Yet she was obviously as cool a hand as himself: cooler no doubt, for at bottom he was certainly a sentimentalist.
A convention of the most imbecile type . . . Then break all conventions: with the young woman: with himself above all. For forty-eight hours . . . almost exactly forty-eight hours till he started for Dover. . . .
"And I must to the greenwood go,
Alone: a banished man!"
By the descending moon: it being then just after cockcrow of midsummer night—what sentimentality!—it must be half-past four on Sunday. He had worked out that to catch the morning Ostend boat at Dover he must leave the Wannops' at 5.15 on Tuesday morning, in a motor for the junction. . . . What incredible cross-country train connections! Five hours for not forty miles, He had then forty-eight and three-quarter hours! Let them be a holiday! A holiday from himself above all: a holiday from his standards: from his convention with himself. From clear observation: from exact thought: from knocking over all the skittles of the exactitudes of others: from the suppression of emotions. . . . From all the wearinesses that made him intolerable to himself. . . . He felt his limbs lengthen, as if they too had relaxed.
Well, already he had had six and a half hours of it. They had started at 10 and, like any other man, he had enjoyed the drive, though it had been difficult to keep the beastly cart balanced, the girl had had to sit behind with her arm round the other girl who screamed at every oak tree. . . .
But he had—if he put himself to the question—mooned along under the absurd moon that had accompanied them down the heaven: to the scent of hay: to the sound of nightingales, hoarse by now, of course—in June he changes his tune; of corncrakes, of bats, of a heron twice, overhead. They had passed the blue-black shadows of corn stacks, of heavy, rounded oaks, of hop oasts that are half church tower, half finger-post. And the road silver grey, and the night warm. . . . It was midsummer night that had done that to him. . . .
Hat mir's angethan.
Das war ein schweigsames Reiten. . . .