There was an empty seat. That was the first piece of luck, when the train already looked impossibly full of men and women and families, setting out with baggage which overflowed from the seats to the aisles. But there was the seat, at the end of the coach, undiscovered yet, or perhaps miraculously set apart for them—made invisible to other searchers—its red plush surface cleanly brushed for the journey and a streak of sunlight like a benison across the back of it.
Freda slipped in beside the window and, placing their baggage in the little rack, with a touch that was almost reverent for Freda’s bag, Gregory sat down beside her.
“We have an hour and forty minutes,” he declared, “and look, my darling.” He took out of his pocket a tiny white box, but, as she stretched her hand, he put it away again.
“You mustn’t see it. Not yet. But I wanted you to know I had it. It’s the most divine circlet of gold you ever saw. The halo of my wife.”
His voice was very soft and tender, the contact of his body against hers caressing.
A boy went by with sandwiches. They surprised each other by regarding him intently and then it occurred to Freda why they did so.
“Did you forget lunch too?” she cried.
So they lunched on ham sandwiches and Peters’ milk chocolate and water in sanitary paper cups and the train creaked into action, joltingly, as befitted a day coach in a local train.
Little stations twinkled by with sudden life and between them lay fields and valleys where life pushed quietly to the sun. They watched the villages with tenderness. Each one unexplored was a regret. There were so many things to be happy with. A child came running up to get a drink of water and leaned on the edge of their seat, staring at them curiously. They liked that. It seemed as if the child guessed their riot of joy and peace.
They had found that it was necessary for the haste of their marriage to go over the borderline of the state, a matter of forty miles. And they alighted in a little town of which they knew nothing. It was impressive as they looked about. Straight neat roads led away from the red roofed station.