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The "claim" could neither be settled nor discussed; the doctor's warning was no less insistent although his patient was steadily improving. I faced the alternative of my compliance or her nervous prostration and I chose the former. My desire to shake her remained. So "Ash Clump" was given up. Hephzy and I speculated much concerning Little Frank's aversion to Leatherhead.
I spent that night in the inn that stands at the top of Putney Hill, sleeping in a made bed for the first time since my flight to Leatherhead.
"Kent," she whispered, "what was it Doctor Bayliss called you when you offered to promise not to follow me to Leatherhead?" I had told her the whole story of my last interview with Bayliss at the Continental. "He called me a silly ass," I answered promptly. "I don't care." "Neither do I; but don't you think you are one, just a little bit of one, in some things?
We stopped there all Sunday night and all the next day the day of the panic in a little island of daylight, cut off by the Black Smoke from the rest of the world. We could do nothing but wait in aching inactivity during those two weary days. My mind was occupied by anxiety for my wife. I figured her at Leatherhead, terrified, in danger, mourning me already as a dead man.
We stood aghast at our danger, and had the Martian looked down we must immediately have perished. We were so terrified that we dared not go on, but turned aside and hid in a shed in a garden. There the curate crouched, weeping silently, and refusing to stir again. But my fixed idea of reaching Leatherhead would not let me rest, and in the twilight I ventured out again.
There is no vehicle save a dog-cart which throws up mud in that way, and then only when you sit on the left-hand side of the driver." "Whatever your reasons may be, you are perfectly correct," said she. "I started from home before six, reached Leatherhead at twenty past, and came in by the first train to Waterloo. Sir, I can stand this strain no longer; I shall go mad if it continues.
They had entered the north downs, and were running through Dorking towards Leatherhead. Box Hill stood dark in the dusky sweetness of the night. Helena remembered that here she and Siegmund had come for their first walk together. She would like to come again. Presently she saw the quick stilettos of stars on the small, baffled river; they ran between high embankments.
"We can't possibly stay here," I said; and as I spoke the firing reopened for a moment upon the common. "But where are we to go?" said my wife in terror. I thought perplexed. Then I remembered her cousins at Leatherhead. "Leatherhead!" I shouted above the sudden noise. She looked away from me downhill. The people were coming out of their houses, astonished.
Through this range of hills at the back of the French Army lay a gap, just as there is a gap through the hills behind Leatherhead. Not only was that gap easily passable by an army easily, at least, compared with the hill country on either side but it had running through it the great road from Metz to Paris, so that advance along it was rapid and practicable.
We got a small bait at Leatherhead, and so to Godlyman, where we lay all night, and were very merry, having this day no other extraordinary rencontre, but my hat falling off my head at Newington into the water, by which it was spoiled, and I ashamed of it. I am sorry that I am not at London, to be at Hide-parke to-morrow, among the great gallants and ladies, which will be very fine. May 1st.
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