my distress grew rather than diminished in the days immediately before her marriage, and that day itself stands out by itself in my memory, a day of wandering and passionate unrest. my imagination tormented me with thoughts of justin as a perpetual privileged wooer.
well, well,—i will not tell you, i will not write the ugly mockeries my imagination conjured up. i was constantly on the verge of talking and cursing aloud to myself, or striking aimlessly at nothing with clenched fists. i was too stupid to leave london, too disturbed for work or any distraction of my mind. i wandered about the streets of london all day. in the morning i came near going to the church and making some preposterous interruptions. and i remember discovering three or four carriages adorned with white favors and a little waiting crowd outside that extinguisher-spired place at the top of regent street, and wondering for a moment or so at their common preoccupation, and then understanding. of course, another marriage! of all devilish institutions!
what was i to do with my life now? what was to become of my life? i can still recall the sense of blank unanswerableness with which these questions dominated my mind, and associated with it is an effect of myself as a small human being, singular and apart, wandering through a number of london landscapes. at one time i was in a great grey smoke-rimmed autumnal space of park, much cut up by railings and worn by cricket pitches, far away from any idea of the thames, and in the distance over the tops of trees i discovered perplexingly the clustering masts and spars of ships. i have never seen that place since. then the angel at islington is absurdly mixed up with the distresses of this day. i attempted some great detour thence, and found myself with a dumb irritation returning to the place from another direction. i remember too a wide street over which passes a thundering railway bridge borne upon colossal rounded pillars of iron, and carrying in white and blue some big advertisement, i think of the daily telegraph. near there i thought a crowd was gathered about the victim of some accident, and thrusting myself among the people with a vague idea of help, discovered a man selling a remedy for corns. and somewhere about this north region i discovered i was faint with hunger, and got some bread and cheese and beer in a gaudily decorated saloon bar with a sanded floor. i resisted a monstrous impulse to stay in that place and drink myself into inactivity and stupefaction with beer.
then for a long time i sat upon an iron seat near some flower beds in a kind of garden that had the headstones of graves arranged in a row against a yellow brick wall. the place was flooded with the amber sunshine of a september afternoon. i shared the seat with a nursemaid in charge of a perambulator and several scuffling uneasy children, and i kept repeating to myself: "by now it is all over. the thing is done."
my sense of the enormity of london increased with the twilight, and began to prevail a little against my intense personal wretchedness. i remember wastes of building enterprise, interminable vistas of wide dark streets, with passing trams, and here and there at strategic corners coruscating groups of shops. and somewhere i came along a narrow street suddenly upon the distant prospect of a great monstrous absurd place on a steep hill against the last brightness of the evening sky, a burlesque block of building with huge truncated pyramids at either corner, that i have since learnt was the alexandra palace. it was so queer and bulky that it arrested and held my attention, struck on my memory with an almost dreamlike quality, so that years afterwards i went to muswell hill to see if indeed there really was such a place on earth, or whether i had had a waking nightmare during my wanderings....
i wandered far that night, very far. some girl accosted me, a thin-faced ruined child younger by a year or so than myself. i remembered how i talked to her, foolish rambling talk. "if you loved a man, and he was poor, you'd wait," i said, "you'd stick to him. you'd not leave him just to get married to a richer man."
we prowled talking for a time, and sat upon a seat somewhere near the regent's park canal. i rather think i planned to rescue her from a fallen life, but somehow we dropped that topic. i know she kissed me. i have a queer impression that it came into my head to marry her. i put all my loose money in her hands at last and went away extraordinarily comforted by her, i know not how, leaving her no doubt wondering greatly.
i did not go to bed that night at all, nor to the office next morning. i never showed myself in the office again. instead i went straight down to my father, and told him i wanted to go to the war forthwith. i had an indistinct memory of a promise i had made mary to stay in england, but i felt it was altogether unendurable that i should ever meet her again. my father sat at table over the remains of his lunch, and regarded me with astonishment, with the beginnings of protest.
"i want to get away," i said, and to my own amazement and shame i burst into tears.
"my boy!" he gasped, astonished and terrified. "you've—you've not done—some foolish thing?"
"no," i said, already wiping the tears from my face, "nothing.... but i want to go away."
"you shall do as you please," he said, and sat for a moment regarding his only son with unfathomable eyes.
then he got up with a manner altogether matter-of-fact, came half-way round the table and mixed me a whisky and soda. "it won't be much of a war, i'm told," he said with the syphon in his hands, breaking a silence. "i sometimes wish—i had seen a bit of soldiering. and this seems to be an almost unavoidable war. now, at any rate, it's unavoidable.... drink this and have a biscuit."
he turned to the mantelshelf, and filled his pipe with his broad back to me. "yes," he said, "you—— you'll be interested in the war. i hope—— i hope you'll have a good time there...."
