weeping, still more violent than the first. He watched the
symptoms with a sort of medical air, as if counting seconds. He
heard the guard’s whistle at last. An involuntary contraction of
the upper lip bared his teeth with all the aspect of savage
resolution as he felt the train beginning to move. Mrs Verloc
heard and felt nothing, and Ossipon, her saviour, stood still. He
felt the train roll quicker, rumbling heavily to the sound of the
woman’s loud sobs, and then crossing the carriage in two long
strides he opened the door deliberately, and leaped out.
He had leaped out at the very end of the platform; and such was his
determination in sticking to his desperate plan that he managed by
a sort of miracle, performed almost in the air, to slam to the door
of the carriage. Only then did he find himself rolling head over
heels like a shot rabbit. He was bruised, shaken, pale as death,
and out of breath when he got up. But he was calm, and perfectly
able to meet the excited crowd of railway men who had gathered
round him in a moment. He explained, in gentle and convincing
tones, that his wife had started at a moment’s notice for Brittany
to her dying mother; that, of course, she was greatly up-set, and
he considerably concerned at her state; that he was trying to cheer
her up, and had absolutely failed to notice at first that the train
was moving out. To the general exclamation, “Why didn’t you go on
to Southampton, then, sir?” he objected the inexperience of a young
sister-in-law left alone in the house with three small children,
and her alarm at his absence, the telegraph offices being closed.
He had acted on impulse. “But I don’t think I’ll ever try that
again,” he concluded; smiled all round; distributed some small
change, and marched without a limp out of the station.
Outside, Comrade Ossipon, flush of safe banknotes as never before
in his life, refused the offer of a cab.
“I can walk,” he said, with a little friendly laugh to the civil
driver.
He could walk. He walked. He crossed the bridge. Later on the
towers of the Abbey saw in their massive immobility the yellow bush
of his hair passing under the lamps. The lights of Victoria saw
him too, and Sloane Square, and the railings of the park. And
Comrade Ossipon once more found himself on a bridge. The river, a
sinister marvel of still shadows and flowing gleams mingling below
in a black silence, arrested his attention. He stood looking over
the parapet for a long time. The clock tower boomed a brazen blast
above his drooping head. He looked up at the dial. . . . Half-past
twelve of a wild night in the Channel.
And again Comrade Ossipon walked. His robust form was seen that
night in distant parts of the enormous town slumbering monstrously
on a carpet of mud under a veil of raw mist. It was seen crossing
the streets without life and sound, or diminishing in the
interminable straight perspectives of shadowy houses bordering
empty roadways lined by strings of gas lamps. He walked through
Squares, Places, Ovals, Commons, through monotonous streets with
unknown names where the dust of humanity settles inert and hopeless
out of the stream of life. He walked. And suddenly turning into a
strip of a front garden with a mangy grass plot, he let himself
into a small grimy house with a latch-key he took out of his
pocket.
He threw himself down on his bed all dressed, and lay still for a
whole quarter of an hour. Then he sat up suddenly, drawing up his
knees, and clasping his legs. The first dawn found him open-eyed,
in that same posture. This man who could walk so long, so far, so
aimlessly, without showing a sign of fatigue, could also remain
sitting still for hours without stirring a limb or an eyelid. But
when the late sun sent its rays into the room he unclasped his
hands, and fell back on the pillow. His eyes stared at the
ceiling. And suddenly they closed. Comrade Ossipon slept in the