And when he came home at night, his heart relenting and
growing hot for love of her, when he was just ready to feel he
had been wrong, and when he was expecting her to feel the same,
there she sat at the sewing-machine, the whole house was covered
with clipped calico, the kettle was not even on the fire.
She started up, affecting concern.
"Is it so late?" she cried.
But his face had gone stiff with rage. He walked through to
the parlour, then he walked back and out of the house again. Her
heart sank. Very swiftly she began to make his tea.
He went black-hearted down the road to Ilkeston. When he was
in this state he never thought. A bolt shot across the doors of
his mind and shut him in, a prisoner. He went back to Ilkeston,
and drank a glass of beer. What was he going to do? He did not
want to see anybody.
He would go to Nottingham, to his own town. He went to the
station and took a train. When he got to Nottingham, still he
had nowhere to go. However, it was more agreeable to walk
familiar streets. He paced them with a mad restlessness, as if
he were running amok. Then he turned to a book-shop and found a
book on Bamberg Cathedral. Here was a discovery! here was
something for him! He went into a quiet restaurant to look at
his treasure. He lit up with thrills of bliss as he turned from
picture to picture. He had found something at last, in these
carvings. His soul had great satisfaction. Had he not come out
to seek, and had he not found! He was in a passion of
fulfilment. These were the finest carvings, statues, he had ever
seen. The book lay in his hands like a doorway. The world around
was only an enclosure, a room. But he was going away. He
lingered over the lovely statues of women. A marvellous,
finely-wrought universe crystallized out around him as he looked
again, at the crowns, the twining hair, the woman-faces. He
liked all the better the unintelligible text of the German. He
preferred things he could not understand with the mind. He loved
the undiscovered and the undiscoverable. He pored over the
pictures intensely. And these were wooden statues,
"Holz"--he believed that meant wood. Wooden statues so
shapen to his soul! He was a million times gladdened. How
undiscovered the world was, how it revealed itself to his soul!
What a fine, exciting thing his life was, at his hand! Did not
Bamberg Cathedral make the world his own? He celebrated his
triumphant strength and life and verity, and embraced the vast
riches he was inheriting.
But it was about time to go home. He had better catch a
train. All the time there was a steady bruise at the bottom of
his soul, but so steady as to be forgettable. He caught a train
for Ilkeston.