The road began to slope gently downwards. Wearily back-pedalling she crept down the incline her hand on the brake, her eyes straining forward. Hard points of gold light—of course. She had put them there herself. Marlborough … the prim polite lights of Marlborough; little gliding moving lights, welcoming, coming safely up as she descended. They disappeared. There must have been a gap in the trees. Presently she would be down among them.
“Goode Lord—it’s a woman.”
She passed through the open gate into the glimmer of a descending road. Yes. Why not? Why that amazed stupefaction? Trying to rob her of the darkness and the wonderful coming out into the light. The man’s voice went on with her down the dull safe road. A young lady, taking a bicycle ride in a daylit suburb. That was what she was. That was all he would allow. It’s something in men.
“You don’t think of riding up over the downs at this time of night?” It was like an At home. Everybody in the shop was in it, but she was not in it. Marlborough thoughts rattling in all the heads; with Sunday coming. They had sick and dying relations. But it was all in Marlborough. Marlborough was all round them all the time, the daily look of it, the morning coming each day excitingly, all the people seeing each other again and the day going on. They did not know that that was it; or what it was they liked. Talking and thinking with the secret hidden all the time even from themselves. But it was that that made them talk and make such a to do about everything. They had to hide it because if they knew they would feel fat and complacent and wicked. They were fat and complacent because they did not know it.
“Oh yes I do,” said Miriam in feeble husky tones.
She stood squarely in front of the grating. The people became angry gliding forms; cheated; angry in an eternal resentful silence; pretending. The man began thoughtfully ticking off the words.
“How far have you come,” he said suddenly pausing and looking up through the grating.
“From London.”
“Then you’ve just come down through the Forest.”
“Is that a forest?”
“You must have come through Savernake.”
“I didn’t know it was a forest.”
“Well I don’t advise you to go on up over the downs at this time of night.”
If only she had not come in she could have gone on without knowing it was “the downs.”
“My front tyre is punctured,” she said conversationally, leaning a little against the counter.
The man’s face tightened. “There’s Mr. Drake next door would mend that for you in the morning.”
“Next door. Oh, thank you.” Pushing her sixpence under the rail she went down the shop to the door seeing nothing but the brown dusty floor leading out to the helpless night.
Why did he keep making such impossible suggestions? The tyre was absolutely flat. How much would a hotel cost? How did you stay in hotels … hotels … her hands went busily to her wallet. She drew out the repair outfit and Mr. Leyton’s voice sounded, emphatic and argumentative “You know where you are and they don’t rook you.” There was certain to be one in a big town like this. She swished back into the shop and interrupted the man with her eager singing question.
“Yes,” came the answer, “there’s a quiet place of that sort up the road, right up against the Forest.”
“Has my telegram gone? Can I alter it?”
“No, it’s not gone, you’re just in time.”
It was the loveliest thing that could have happened. The day was complete, from morning to night.
Someone brought in the meal and clattered it quietly down, going away and shutting the door without a word. A door opened and the sound of departing footsteps ceased. She was shut in with the meal and the lamp in the little crowded world. The musty silence was so complete that the window hidden behind the buff and white blinds and curtains must be shut. The silence throbbed. The throbbing of her heart shook the room. Something was telling the room that she was the happiest thing in existence. She stood up, the beloved little room moving as she moved, and gathered her hands gently against her breast, to … get through, through into the soul of the musty little room. … “Oh. …” She felt herself beating from head to foot with a radiance, but her body within it was weak and heavy with fever. The little scene rocked, crowding furniture, antimacassars, ornaments, wool mats. She looked from thing to thing with a beaming, feverish, frozen smile. Her eyes blinked wearily at the hot crimson flush of the mat under the lamp. She sank back again her heavy light limbs glowing with fever. “By Jove, I’m tired. … I’ve had nothing since breakfast m—but a m-bath bun and an acidulatudd drop.” … She laughed and sat whistling softly … Jehoshophat—Manchester—Mesopotamia—beloved—you sweet sweet thing—Veilchen, unter Gras versteckt—out of it all—here I am. I shall always stay in hotels. … Glancing towards the food spread out on a white cloth near the globed lamp she saw beyond the table a little stack of books. Ham and tea and bread and butter. … Leaning unsteadily across the table … battered and ribbed green binding and then a short moral story or natural history—blue, large and fat, a “storybook” of some kind … she drew
