On the eleventh of January my uncertainty was ended by the apparition (and in the village of Staizley it is no less) of a girl with a telegram. Her walk of three miles or thereabouts, from our nearest telegraph office, brought her to my gate at three in the afternoon; and with her customary awed speechlessness she gave me her message. It was from “Kingfisher,” the decoded entity of which was the great shipping owner to whom I owed my arrangements; and in response I hastily attempted to leave a semblance of order behind me and to seem unexcited. My luggage, no cumbrous affair, had already been packed. By six, the trap of an ingenious neighbour, who lives by all sorts of traps, was heard at the gate, and Mary and myself got in. Determined protest, not at my departure, but at the apparent departure of her mother, was now raised by the youngest among us. My comforting promises were ignored, and the infant’s cries redoubled. Nevertheless, off we went.

The evening had been pouring out, with the vigour of an elemental Whistler, sleet and hail, and now though the wind was down our drive lay through fields half whitened with the storm; and the air was livid with the clouded moon and as cold as the ebbing light. With its multitude of pollards, its desolate great fields, its chilling breaths, the countryside might have been Flanders. This aspect seemed incidentally to demonstrate the wisdom of going elsewhere for a month or two.

We now came into Slowe, discussing all the time our past, present and future; the chief result of the discussion was the placing of my unanswered letters at Mary’s disposal. The town of Slowe was at peace. Its station wore the familiar air of having nothing to do with the coarse noise of traffic. Here Mary spent some moments in melancholy visions of my funeral at sea. She hoped these were wrong, and I, beginning to be affected also, hoped so equally.

“Good-bye” to Mary! The curve of the track carried her out of sight, and, imagining with resolution that the carriage was comfortably warm, I resigned myself to the journey to Liverpool Street. By way of passing the time, I fell back upon my habit of considering how the Latin poets might render the words, upon which few Englishmen have not been reared:

But though the sentiment which they convey is salutary, and though such metrical gifts as “graviora” and “viatores” instantly suggested themselves, the task once again defeated me.

Some such deadening pastime (Tennyson advises it) was necessary. There are many stations between Slowe and Liverpool Street, and the train, the last of the day between those places, stopped at each one. Arrived in London, and shivering with cold, I sought out my relations; reported with a certain amount of pride, which evoked no corresponding admiration at such a late hour, my impending voyage, and was rewarded with a bed.

---