He smiled at me, but he looked sad, I thought, and I wondered why.
XXXII
After a time they called me away, upstairs, and took off my wedding gown and dressed me in other new clothes, a brown coat and skirt, and a hat with a long feather, and a fur neck thing; all these were new too; I had been to shops with Cousin Delia to buy them.
And then we got into the same motor that had brought us from the church. Some one had lent it, but I can’t remember who, and Cousin John shut the door of the motor with a bang, and people shouted and waved to us, and Anthony Cowper threw some rice, and some one else confetti. Some of the confetti got into my umbrella, I don’t know how; it fell out a long time after, on the platform, when I opened the umbrella; that was on the journey back, after our honeymoon was over.
We drove to Euston, for we were going up to Carlisle the first night, and then on to the farmhouse on the Roman Wall, where Walter had been staying when we met him there.
It was a long journey; too long, perhaps, and people were in the carriage until Crewe.
The funny thing is, that I don’t remember that journey distinctly. I remember getting into the train at Euston and getting out at Carlisle, but in between it is a sort of blur; I only remember looking out of the window, at the rails, running along beside us, and thinking:
‘I might throw myself out on to those. That would be a way out of it still.’
But I knew I would not throw myself out really. That was nearly at the end of the journey, after passing Preston, and the place where the railway runs near to the sea.
It was evening when we reached Carlisle, but quite light, for it was summer and the days were longer there than in the South.