So he became a bout-drinker, having at intervals these bouts
of three or four days of brandy-drinking, when he was drunk for
the whole time. He did not think about it. A deep resentment
burned in him. He kept aloof from any women, antagonistic.
When he was twenty-eight, a thick-limbed, stiff, fair man
with fresh complexion, and blue eyes staring very straight
ahead, he was coming one day down from Cossethay with a load of
seed out of Nottingham. It was a time when he was getting ready
for another bout of drinking, so he stared fixedly before him,
watchful yet absorbed, seeing everything and aware of nothing,
coiled in himself. It was early in the year.
He walked steadily beside the horse, the load clanked behind
as the hill descended steeper. The road curved down-hill before
him, under banks and hedges, seen only for a few yards
ahead.
Slowly turning the curve at the steepest part of the slope,
his horse britching between the shafts, he saw a woman
approaching. But he was thinking for the moment of the
horse.
Then he turned to look at her. She was dressed in black, was
apparently rather small and slight, beneath her long black
cloak, and she wore a black bonnet. She walked hastily, as if
unseeing, her head rather forward. It was her curious, absorbed,
flitting motion, as if she were passing unseen by everybody,
that first arrested him.
She had heard the cart, and looked up. Her face was pale and
clear, she had thick dark eyebrows and a wide mouth, curiously
held. He saw her face clearly, as if by a light in the air. He
saw her face so distinctly, that he ceased to coil on himself,
and was suspended.
"That's her," he said involuntarily. As the cart passed by,
splashing through the thin mud, she stood back against the bank.
Then, as he walked still beside his britching horse, his eyes
met hers. He looked quickly away, pressing back his head, a pain
of joy running through him. He could not bear to think of
anything.
He turned round at the last moment. He saw her bonnet, her
shape in the black cloak, the movement as she walked. Then she
was gone round the bend.
She had passed by. He felt as if he were walking again in a
far world, not Cossethay, a far world, the fragile reality. He
went on, quiet, suspended, rarefied. He could not bear to think
or to speak, nor make any sound or sign, nor change his fixed
motion. He could scarcely bear to think of her face. He moved
within the knowledge of her, in the world that was beyond
reality.