“Yes, sir, it do look pretty dismal, but you wait. April’s a funny month; why, to-morrow we shall probably have brilliant sunshine, and there’ll be twenty or thirty people down here, and when you go away you’ll be thinking about getting out that bat of yours and putting a drop of oil on it.” Roland expressed a hope that this prophecy would prove correct.
April was a funny month: it was cold to-day, but within a week the sun would be shining on green grass and new white flannels. Only another week! The fixing of this date, however, reminded Roland that in a week’s time he would be in a small village under the Downs, three miles from the nearest station, and this reminder was somewhat of a shock to him. He would miss the first four weeks of the season. By the time he came back everyone else would have found their form; it was rather a nuisance. Still, a honeymoon! Ah, well, one could not have it both ways.
Gerald was not arriving till the afternoon, and the morning passed slowly for Roland. He walked from Kennington over Westminster Bridge and along the Embankment to Charing Cross; he strolled down the Strand, looking into the shop windows and wondering whether he was hungry enough to have his lunch. He decided he was not and continued his walk, but boredom made him reconsider the decision, and he found himself unable to pass a small Italian restaurant at the beginning of Fleet Street; and as he had a long time, with nothing to do in it, he ordered a heavy lunch. When the waiter presented him with his bill he had become fretfully irritable--the usual penalty of overeating.
What on earth should he do with himself for two hours? How slowly the time was passing. It was impossible to realize that in twenty-four hours’ time he would be standing beside Muriel before the altar, that in two days’ time they would be man and wife. What would it be like? Pondering the question, he walked along to Trafalgar Square, and still pondering it he mounted a bus and traveled on it as far as a sevenpenny ticket would take him. Then he got on to a bus that was going in the opposite direction, and by the time he was back again at Trafalgar Square, Gerald’s train from Hogstead was nearly due.