He
lifted his cap and passed on down the road. There remained distinct in
his consciousness, like a vision, the memory of her face, lifted from the
tombstone in the churchyard, and looking at him with slow, large,
portentous eyes. It _was_ portentous, her face. It seemed to mesmerize
him. There was a heavy power in her eyes which laid hold of his whole
being, as if he had drunk some powerful drug. He had been feeling weak
and done before. Now the life came back into him, he felt delivered from
his own fretted, daily self.
He finished his duties at the surgery as quickly as might be, hastily
filling up the bottles of the waiting people with cheap drugs. Then, in
perpetual haste, he set off again to visit several cases in another part
of his round, before teatime. At all times he preferred to walk, if he
could, but particularly when he was not well. He fancied the motion
restored him.
The afternoon was falling. It was grey, deadened, and wintry, with a
slow, moist, heavy coldness sinking in and deadening all the faculties.
But why should he think or notice? He hastily climbed the hill and turned
across the dark-green fields, following the black cinder-track. In the
distance, across a shallow dip in the country, the small town was
clustered like smouldering ash, a tower, a spire, a heap of low, raw,
extinct houses. And on the nearest fringe of the town, sloping into the
dip, was Oldmeadow, the Pervins' house.
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