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XXXI.
It goes to my heart to tell of the end of that day, how the fugitives
vanished into Immensity; how there were no more trains how Botley stared
unsympathetically with a palpable disposition to derision, denying
conveyances how the landlord of the Heron was suspicious, how the next
day was Sunday, and the hot summer's day had crumpled the collar of
Phipps and stained the skirts of Mrs. Milton, and dimmed the radiant
emotions of the whole party. Dangle, with sticking-plaster and a black
eye, felt the absurdity of the pose of the Wounded Knight, and abandoned
it after the faintest efforts. Recriminations never, perhaps, held the
foreground of the talk, but they played like summer lightning on the
edge of the conversation. And deep in the hearts of all was a galling
sense of the ridiculous. Jessie, they thought, was most to blame.
Apparently, too, the worst, which would have made the whole business
tragic, was not happening. Here was a young woman--young woman do I
say?
a mere girl!--had chosen to leave a comfortable home in Surbiton, and
all the delights of a refined and intellectual circle, and had rushed
off, trailing us after her, posing hard, mutually jealous, and now tired
and weather-worn, to flick us off at last, mere mud from her wheel, into
this detestable village beer-house on a Saturday night! And she had
done it, not for Love and Passion, which are serious excuses one may
recognise even if one must reprobate, but just for a Freak, just for a
fantastic Idea; for nothing, in fact, but the outraging of Common Sense.
Yet withal, such was our restraint, that we talked of her still as one
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