CHAPTER XXXII. REARDON BECOMES PRACTICAL

Reardon had never been to Brighton, and of his own accord never would
have gone; he was prejudiced against the place because its name has
become suggestive of fashionable imbecility and the snobbishness which
tries to model itself thereon; he knew that the town was a mere portion
of London transferred to the sea-shore, and as he loved the strand and
the breakers for their own sake, to think of them in such connection
could be nothing but a trial of his temper. Something of this species of
irritation affected him in the first part of his journey, and disturbed
the mood of kindliness with which he was approaching Amy; but towards
the end he forgot this in a growing desire to be beside his wife in her
trouble. His impatience made the hour and a half seem interminable.

The fever which was upon him had increased. He coughed frequently; his
breathing was difficult; though constantly moving, he felt as if, in
the absence of excitement, his one wish would have been to lie down and
abandon himself to lethargy. Two men who sat with him in the third-class
carriage had spread a rug over their knees and amused themselves with
playing cards for trifling sums of money; the sight of their foolish
faces, the sound of their laughs, the talk they interchanged,
exasperated him to the last point of endurance; but for all that he
could not draw his attention from them. He seemed condemned by some
spiritual tormentor to take an interest in their endless games, and to
observe their visages until he knew every line with a hateful intimacy.
One of the men had a moustache of unusual form; the ends curved upward
with peculiar suddenness, and Reardon was constrained to speculate as
to the mode of training by which this singularity had been produced. He
could have shed tears of nervous distraction in his inability to turn
his thoughts upon other things.

On alighting at his journey's end he was seized with a fit of shivering,
an intense and sudden chill which made his teeth chatter. In an
endeavour to overcome this he began to run towards the row of cabs, but
his legs refused such exercise, and coughing compelled him to pause for
breath. Still shaking, he threw himself into a vehicle and was driven to
the address Amy had mentioned. The snow on the ground lay thick, but no
more was falling.

Heedless of the direction which the cab took, he suffered his physical
and mental unrest for another quarter of a