December 22nd
Stephen pulled up the collar of his coat as he walked briskly along the platform. Overhead a dim fog clouded the station. Large engines hissed superbly, throwing off clouds of steam into the cold raw air. Everything was dirty and smoke-grimed.
Stephen thought with revulsion:
âWhat a foul countryâwhat a foul city!â
His first excited reaction to London, its shops, its restaurants, its well-dressed, attractive women, had faded. He saw it now as a glittering rhinestone set in a dingy setting.
Supposing he were back in South Africa nowâ¦He felt a quick pang of homesickness. Sunshineâblue skiesâgardens of flowersâcool blue flowersâhedges of plumbagoâblue convolvulus clinging to every little shanty.
And hereâdirt, grime, and endless, incessant crowdsâmoving, hurryingâjostling. Busy ants running industriously about their ant-hill.
For a moment he thought, âI wish I hadnât comeâ¦â
Then he remembered his purpose and his lips set back in a grim line. No, by hell, heâd go on with it! Heâd planned this for years. Heâd always meant to doâwhat he was going to do. Yes, heâd go on with it!
That momentary reluctance, that sudden questioning of himself: âWhy? Is it worth it? Why dwell on the past? Why not wipe out the whole thing?ââall that was only weakness. He was not a boyâto be turned this way and that by the whim of the moment. He was a man of forty, assured, purposeful. He would go on with it. He would do what he had come to England to do.
He got on the train and passed along the corridor looking for a place. He had waved aside a porter and was carrying his own raw-hide suitcase. He looked into carriage after carriage. The train was full. It was only three days before Christmas. Stephen Farr looked distastefully at the crowded carriages.
People! Incessant, innumerable people! And all soâsoâwhat was the wordâso drab-looking! So alike, so horribly alike! Those that hadnât got faces like sheep had faces like rabbits, he thought. Some of them chattered and fussed. Some, heavily middle-aged men, grunted. More like pigs, those. Even the girls, slender, egg-faced, scarlet-lipped, were of a depressing uniformity.
He thought with a sudden longing of open veldt, sun-baked and lonelyâ¦
And then, suddenly, he caught his breath, looking into a carriage. This girl was different. Black hair, rich creamy pallorâeyes with the depth and darkness of night in them. The sad proud eyes of the Southâ¦It was all wrong that this girl should be sitting in this train among these dull, drab-looking peopleâall wrong that she should be going into the dreary midlands of England. She should have been on a balcony, a rose between her lips, a piece of black lace draping her proud head, and there should have been dust and heat and the smell of bloodâthe smell of the bull-ringâin the airâ¦She should be somewhere splendid, not squeezed into the corner of a third-class carriage.