Still he shrank back; there was one thing more to do; he was to go up-town and get his ticket, and the letter to Judge Johnson, and bid Wade Powell good-by. A wild hope leaped in his heart; perhaps--but no, it was irrevocable now. He went, and got his letter, but Powell refused to bid him good-by; he said he would be at the train to see him off. He bought his ticket and went home. Old man Downing had been there with his dray and hauled away his trunk; it was settled. He could only wait and watch the minutes tick by.
It seemed to Marley that all things that evening conspired to accentuate all that he was leaving behind, and to make the grief of parting more poignant. His mother, who was then in that domestic exigency described by the ladies of Macochee as being without a girl, had prepared an unusually elaborate supper, and while there was no formal observance of the fact, it was eaten, so far as any of them could eat that evening, under a sense of its significance as a parting ceremonial. They talked, or tried to talk, indifferently of commonplace things, and Doctor Marley even sought to add merriment to their feast by a jocularity that was unusual with him. Marley, who knew his father so well, could easily detect the heavy heart that lay under his father's jokes, and he suffered a keener misery from the pathos of it. Then he would catch his mother looking at him, her eyes deep and sad, and it seemed to him that his heart must burst.
Marley's train was to leave at eleven o'clock; he had arranged to go to Lavinia's and remain with her until ten o'clock; then he was to stop in at his home for his last good-by. Those last two hours with Lavinia were an ordeal; into the first hour they tried to crowd a thousand things they felt they must say, and a thousand things they could only suggest; when the clock struck nine, they looked at each other in anguish; they did little after that but mentally count the minutes. The clock ticked loudly, aggressively, until in the soul of each, unconfessed, there was a desire to hasten the moments they felt they would like to stay; the agony was almost beyond endurance; it exhausted them, beat them down, and rendered them powerless to speak. Finally the clock struck the half-hour; they could only sit and look at each other now; at a quarter of ten they began their good-bys.