London (England) -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Women -- Fiction
The next morning Lilian left her lodging at the customary hour of 8.15,
to join one of the hundreds of hastening, struggling, preoccupied
processions of workers that converged upon central London. She had
slept for ten hours without a break on the previous day, risen hungry to
a confused and far too farinaceous tea, done some dressmaking by the
warmth of an oil-stove, and gone to bed again for another enormous
period of heavy slumber. She was well refreshed; her complexion was
restored to its marvellous perfectness; and life seemed simpler, more
promising, and more agreeably exciting than usual.
She had convinced herself that the Irish lord would call at the office
in person to pay his bill; the mysterious and yet thoroughly understood
code that governs certain human relations would forbid him either to
post a cheque or to send his man with the money. Her only fear was that
he might already have called. But even if he had already called, he
would call and call again, on one good pretext or another, until ...
Anyhow they would meet.... And so on, according to the inconsequent
logic of day-dreams in the everlasting night of the Tube.
The dreamer had a seat in the train--one of the advantages of living
near the terminus--but strap-hangers of both sexes swayed in clusters
over her, and along the whole length of the car, and both the platforms
were too densely populated. She could not read; nobody could read. As
the train roared and shook through Down Street station, she jumped up to
fight her way through straphangers towards the platform, in readiness to
descend at Dover Street. On these early trains carrying serious people,
if you sat quiet until the train came to your station you would
assuredly be swept on to the next station. These trains taught you to
meet the future half-way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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