The chapter that is ostensibly about the train ride, though I'll add more at some point in the future.

Years later he wondered what his life would have been like if he'd have missed that train. The morning that he was to leave his uncle's he'd woken up early, looked out the window at the streaks of sunlight pouring through a thin layer of cirrus onto a field of wildflowers and began to feel nostalgic for the time he'd spent in the north. The light was colder here, offering only some small bit of warmth. And yet, like gold, its scarcity somehow made its presence more valuable. Yes, strange though it may have sounded to the people from his town down south, he'd miss the subtle changing of the leaves that happened earlier here, the way the songbirds could be heard more clearly when all the leaves were cleared away. He'd miss his uncle's laugh, guttural and full of a quiet mirth.

He was down in front of the house that sprawling house, with a grand front porch adorned by two tables and several white rocking chairs, and above, where he and his uncle had smoked cigarettes and discussed the day's events, another porch, where you could look out over the sea of grass at fireflies winking into and out of existence, in good time. He hugged his aunt and uncle goodbye, making promises to visit them again someday soon. His uncle would die a few weeks later of pneumonia and this would be there final parting, but the event held no such solemnity. They had taken pleasure in one another's company and were sad to part ways, but sure that they'd share a drink and some laughter again at some point in time.

The coach arrived promptly by seven thirty, driven by a young man with coal black hair, who had to keep brushing it away from his face with his right hand while driving. For some reason he felt lethargic and sad, weighed down by the impossibility of how long the coach ride to the station would be. It was only an hour. But he imagined spending the hour in tense silence, waiting for he and the coachman to talk. And the idea of that time stretched before him like some unending stretch of water. It appeared as vast as the ocean. He liked people and liked them to like him. What he needed to do was ask a question to pass the time.
"How long have you been doing this?" he asked the coach man.

"Not long," he answered, without turning his head but merely tilting it, keeping his eyes on the road ahead. The road was muddy. The tracks were well worn and the grass on the sides was pushed down and spattered with bits of mud from the spokes of wheels.

"Is your family from around here?" he asked.

"Nearby."

"What brought  you to this job?"

"This job is as good as any other."

"Do you like the horses?"

"Not really. Don't care much for them."

He wanted the young man to be happy in his job. He had wanted him to say that he had an abiding love in rubbing down the horses and driving strangers around to the station or from house to house. Unpleasantness was the sort of thing that burdened him.

The wheel broke a mile out from the train. It had started to rain, a thin mist, like the mist of water falling upon stone from a great height. The sky was leaden and small. He thought that he would not make his train. He'd be making the same journey on the next day, engaging some other coachman in polite conversation to pass the hour. Life was cyclical.

A clatter of wheels twenty minutes later signaled the arrival of another coach. He signaled to the driver by doffing his hat, and, after some brief discussion, his goods were transferred, and he was sitting on the top of a coach with another gentleman, not knowing that his life had just changed. Along the way, the bits of sunshine filtered through the layer of clouds and a large gust of wind began pushing them to the east. By the time he'd reached the station it was almost clear. An omen, he'd think to himself, years later, as he sat on the side of a ship bound for Africa, watching the gulls attack the waves.

He had a few minutes before the train was to arrive, and he spent them scanning the crowd around him. In the distance, a puff of smoke could be seen, trailing low and blue-black against the winter green of the hills. The sky above the remaining clouds was a mix of green and yellow, something in between, as if the world he saw was being viewed through a thin veil. At first glance he did not recognize anyone on the platform. This was not an unusual state of affairs. He knew only a few people who lived in the north, and he hadn't expected to see any of them today. He was moderately pleased to not find anyone he knew. It meant he could spend the ride reading his book in peace and quiet, passing the time in reverie, constructing what the past months had meant for his future.

When the train arrived, he looked up from his watch and briefly caught her eyes, which were lifted from her book. She flicked them away instantly, and he felt that perhaps the moment had passed. They boarded the train, and he sat in the second row, she in the third, opposite him in the aisle. He opened his bag and set about reading the morning news. The countryside started passing by, lilies of the valley, gorse, flecks of heather covered in meadow foam with white blossoms.

            He tried to focus on his reading, but he was dimly aware of her as he read, conscious that he had snubbed her, or that she had snubbed him. He turned quickly to catch her eye, but she was reading still. As he turned back to the window he was certain that she looked up, and he could feel her eyes on the back of his neck. He used his right arm to cushion his head in his hand and shifted his body slightly to face her. He glanced up again, but she was reading again, as if it were her only care in the world.

            For a full five minutes he read without moving. He was dimly aware that she too was reading, light skipped through the window splashing on the floor. He found it nearly impossible to read. His eyes skimmed over the words, not comprehending their meaning

Her nose was long and angular. Overly long, in his estimation. But what precisely had he been reading? Something about the nature of business and perhaps time? He glanced up from his book and staid his gaze; she met his eyes. Her eyes were dark and hard. There is a difference between looking at a person and truly taking them in. 

 In the middle of her otherwise smooth brow was a slight furrow, delicately and symmetrically carved. The furrow did not look natural but rather, it was clear that it was affect of looking intently at things as she'd looked at the essays of Montaigne when she'd snubbed him at his father's house. The furrow then in some imperceptible way began to change his perception of her, making her slightly more palatable. She was not aloof but intense. Or perhaps she was aloof, but it was born out of intensity. 

She crossed her legs and pulled them up to her chest, then looked out the window at the hills passing by. He crossed his arms and stared down at his book. He put his finger down on the page, tracing the words as if he were a child learning to read, a gesture that she'd make fun of him for with delight over the next few months. "You were just learning to read," she'd say. "How could I resist the chance to form such a surprisingly young mind." 

He gave up again on the book a moment later and looked up at her. She was staring right back at him, and she smiled. "Charlotte," she said, extending her thin hand to grasp his. He was conscious of how delicate her fingers looked, and yet, how strong their grip was. She played piano, quite well, though she often denied it on company. The beginning of the conversation was slow. She asked him what he was reading, and he said that he couldn't really tell her, that he'd been staring at the book without comprehending any of the words. She said that it happened to her all the time. "It's strange, she said, looking out the window as she spoke, "how your mind can be so distant, miles or years away from where you are. That's strange right? To be somewhere physically, but to be inhabiting it like a ghost." 

 She started talking to him about her fiancee, the interesting things he was learning in the school of medicine. Something of The Origin of Species hung over their conversation. It came out that she was a skeptic rather than a believer. He found her very strange.

Meanwhile, he talked for a while of Jane and his job in the country, working at law. He told her of the fireflies and the trees that shed their powdery puffs into the night sky, slivers of moonlight laying low across the river. Or rather, he evoked them. What he meant to say was that he'd felt a kind of peace in the north that he'd never thought he'd experience elsewhere. He wasn't thinking as he spoke with her that the things he was saying were intimate, rather, she seemed to draw them out of him without any effort in part. He found himself wanting to tell her everything about those nights on the veranda, every last detail because somehow she was managing to convey that she cared that she was deeply interested in the sound of the wind through oaks and the crickets lying in the dry grass. She asked quick and pointed questions, and kept eye contact for longer than he was used to. In the end, he felt wrung out by her, as if her were a wash cloth. 

When they got off the train it was as acquaintances now rather than as strangers. As soon as they parted ways he nearly forgot their entire conversation because all he could think of was Jane. He wanted not to tell her all the things he'd been thinking the past months as he had with Charlotte. What he wanted was to behold her, to stand across a room and watch the way bits of light seemed to cling to bits of stray hair. 

The wind started to kick leaves across the street. A pair of horses dragged a cart across a muddy road. In the distance he could hear the sound of a piano being played, somewhat poorly. He had missed being at home. He'd start by telling her that he missed her, and then he'd tell her that