On the platform the porters knew him, and, in spite of the colour of his ticket, opened for him a first-class carriage; one, with the ready courtesy of his kind, helped him to his place, then, turning, tapped his forehead and jerked his thumb over his shoulder with a leer; for Mr Burden was evidently very ill indeed.
In the train he sat, relieved by some repose, and conscious (in a blurred way) that an old man in the corner of a railway carriage was safer from insult and observation, than wandering on a platform, a thing for gibes.
He sat dully, his brows contracting now and then. The names of the stations pleased him, because they were familiar. He tried to remember their order, or at least the name of such as he had not yet reached; but he could not. He was puzzled, and looked round at his fellow passengers, as though for help. They glanced at him above their papers, and saw that he was ill. They feared for the decencies. One, more refined than the rest, bolted out at the next stopping-place. The others defended themselves with silence, reading steady behind the bulwark of the evening papers.
The old man turned to the window beside them, and watched the stations and the people as the train went on. He saw the news upon the placards, flaring under the flaring lights. He recited the headlines slowly to himself. They were associated dimly, he knew not why, with anxiety; they distressed him.
Then there was a little darkness and a rumble, and he heard the name of Norwood. He recognised it at once, and got out, and stood irresolutely at the gate. The collector took the ticket out of his hand, and smiled. Mr Burden looked at him fixedly, wondering at his smile, and felt for a moment an angry wave of emotion. He took this man also for one of his enemies.
But a muddled feeling of pleasant association came after. He took him foolishly for a friend, and smiled and nodded in reply. Then, by pure instinct, such as animals have, he found the way towards his home.
He came up that familiar road, his head reeling, and a bond, as though of iron, oppressing it within; and, as he walked, he suffered some dull ache continually. His slow steps jarred him; and now and then those pulsating throbs that are Death’s artillery preparing his attack, hammered at the walls of his being.
THE SERIOUS INDISPOSITION OF MR BURDEN IN THE TRAIN
He kept to one line of the pavement to make more sure; and once he thought: “Perhaps I am drunk.” For it flashed twice on him that he was something different from himself; and he mixed with a night forty years gone, when he had drunk a whole bottle of some kind of wine. He heard again his father’s anger; and it seemed to him, in a fantastic way, that he was about to meet that anger now—after all those years.