More than once their way led them through a village—which might have been always the same village, so alike was its aspect and its doings. Always some of the houses would be closed and some in the act of emptying; in each and all was the same scene of miserable haste, of loading carts, of families, scared and burdened, setting out on their flight to the southward. It was a scene that grew so familiar to William that, staggering with the weight of his own weariness, he hardly turned his head to watch it; it affected him only by the halts it caused, by the need of manoeuvring through a crowd. Cut off from his fellows by the lack of intelligible speech, he trudged on like an animal at the tail of the cart, ignorant as an animal of what the next hours might bring him.
There were moments when it seemed to him that he was asleep and would surely waken; when he put out his hand to touch something and feel that it resisted and was real—a dusty axle, a gate, a wall, the dusty bark of a fruit-tree. And there were other moments when the now was real, and he seemed to have newly wakened from the dream of a world impossible—of streets and stations and meals that came regularly, of life that was decent and reasonable and orderly, with men like unto himself. … Late in the afternoon he started and lifted his head in sudden trembling recognition of a sound reminiscent, and because reminiscent beloved—the nearby whistle of a passing engine, the nearby clank of a train. The note of the whistle, the sight of a long line of trucks—but a field’s-breadth away behind a fence—brought a rush of hope to his heart and a rush of tears to his eyes. His soul thrilled with the promise of them; after the vagabond horror of the last few days they stood for decency, for civilization, for a means of escape from hell. His eyes followed the train with longing as it snorted over a level meadow and wound out of sight behind a hill—followed it with longing, with something that was almost love.
A mile or two further they passed a level crossing and soon after came again on a village. It was larger than any they had so far traversed, and in ordinary times must have been of a prosperous importance; now many of its windows were bolted and shuttered, denoting the flight of inhabitants whom others were preparing to follow. The sun was red in the west when they reached its outskirts.
It was when they were about halfway along the wide paved street that there came a loud cry from the cart—so loud and so sudden that the driver pulled at his horse.
The cry had come from the hard-faced peasant woman who was leaning over Griselda. The life in William stood still as he saw her face, and she had to beckon to him twice before he moved to climb into the cart; she gave him a hand as he climbed and half jerked him over the bundles. … Griselda had died very quietly in the straw at the bottom of the cart.
XII
Someone, he thought, kept him back from the body while they lifted it down from the cart; there was a stir and bustle and three or four people gathered round, hiding it for a moment from his sight. One, he remembered, had the goat by the horns and was trying to drag it aside; the goat was refractory, kicked and bleated and made itself the centre of a scuffle. Afterwards he pushed through them all and stood looking down at his wife.
As he looked at her—limp, with glazed eyes and fallen jaw—there swam before his memory a pitiful vision of the dear Griselda he had married. He saw her—this huddle of rags and dirt—in her wedding garments, fussed and dainty, with her bouquet tied with suffragette ribbons. He remembered the expression, self-conscious and flushing, wherewith she had given her hand that he might place the ring on her finger; and how, when they were first alone as man and wife, he had taken the hand that wore the ring and kissed it till she drew it away. The crowd in the little house at Balham, the handshakes, the well-wishing faces—they were all so close and so present that they gave the lie to this dead woman dropped by the roadside. He looked down stupidly while the bystanders whispered and stared.
He did not know how long he sat beside her, nursing a dead hand in his own; but he knew he hated and shrank from the people around him—a group that kept forming and moving away and whispering as it gazed at himself and the body of his wife. It was a changing little crowd, never more than a dozen or so; men and women who stopped in their passing by, muttered questions, heard low answers, looked curious or pitying and moved on. He hated its inquisitiveness, he shrank from its pity, desiring to be alone with his dead. That he might not see its curious and pitying faces he pressed a hand over his eyes.
After some time—either minutes or hours—came a hand on his shoulder that stayed till he moved and looked up. He who had touched him wore the garb of a priest; was stout, not over-well washed or brushed, but kindly of manner and countenance. He spoke while the crowd stared and listened; William moved his head irritably, muttered, “I can’t understand what you say,” and would have covered his eyes again if he had not heard an English voice beside him. It was a woman who had caught his words and now pushed through the bystanders: a tall young woman in tweed coat and
