to the night he wandered, until he came to a
solemn river majestic as a stream in hell. Therein were gathered
the waters of Central England--those that flow off Hindhead, off the
Chilterns, off Wiltshire north of the Plain. Therein they were made
intolerable ere they reached the sea. But the waters he had known
escaped. Their course lay southward into the Avon by forests and
beautiful fields, even swift, even pure, until they mirrored the tower
of Christchurch and greeted the ramparts of the Isle of Wight. Of these
he thought for a moment as he crossed the black river and entered the
heart of the modern world. Here he found employment. He was not hampered
by genteel traditions, and, as it was near quarter-day, managed to get
taken on at a furniture warehouse. He moved people from the suburbs
to London, from London to the suburbs, from one suburb to another. His
companions were hurried and querulous. In particular, he loathed
the foreman, a pious humbug who allowed no swearing, but indulged in
something far more degraded--the Cockney repartee. The London intellect,
so pert and shallow, like a stream that never reaches the ocean,
disgusted him almost as much as the London physique, which for all
its dexterity is not permanent, and seldom continues into the third
generation. His father, had he known it, had felt the same; for between
Mr. Elliot and the foreman the gulf was social, not spiritual: both
spent their lives in trying to be clever. And Tony Failing had once put
the thing into words: "There's no such thing as a Londoner. He's only a
country man on the road to sterility."

At the end of ten days he had saved scarcely anything. Once he passed
the bank where a hundred pounds lay ready for him, but it was still
inconvenient for him to take them. Then duty sent him to a suburb not
very far from Sawston. In the evening a man who was driving a trap asked
him to hold it, and by mistake tipped him a sovereign. Stephen called
after him; but the man had a woman with him and wanted to show off, and
though he had meant to tip a shilling, and could not afford that, he
shouted back that his sovereign was as good as any one's, and that if
Stephen did not think so he could do various things and go to various
places. On the action of this man much depends. Stephen changed the
sovereign into a postal order, and sent it off to the people at Cadford.
It did not pay them back, but it paid them something, and he felt that
his soul was f