Part 44 (1/2)

”Here's my handkerchief!” she cried, with pleasure. It was on the counter, a little white wisp in the grey-sheeted gloom. Stifford must have found it on the floor and picked it up.

The idea flashed through Edwin's head: ”Did she leave her handkerchief on purpose, so that we should have to come back here?”

The only illumination of the shop was from three or four diamond-shaped holes in the upper part of as many shutters. No object was at first quite distinct. The corners were very dark. All merchandise not in drawers or on shelves was hidden in pale dust cloths. A chair wrong side up was on the fancy-counter, its back hanging over the front of the counter. Hilda had wandered behind the other counter, and Edwin was in the middle of the shop. Her face in the twilight had become more mysterious than ever. He was in a state of emotion, but he did not know to what category the emotion belonged. They were alone. Stifford had gone for the half-holiday. Darius, sickly, would certainly not come near. The printers were working as usual in their place, and the clanking whirr of a treadle-machine overhead agitated the ceiling. But n.o.body would enter the shop. His excitement increased, but did not define itself. There was a sudden roar in Duck Square, and then cries.

”What can that be?” Hilda asked, low.

”Some of the strikers,” he answered, and went through the doors to the letter-hole in the central shutter, lifted the flap, and looked through.

A struggle was in progress at the entrance to the Duck Inn. One man was apparently drunk; others were jeering on the skirts of the lean crowd.

”It's some sort of a fight among them,” said Edwin loudly, so that she could hear in the shop. But at the same instant he felt the wind of the door swinging behind him, and Hilda was silently at his elbow.

”Let me look,” she said.

a.s.suredly her voice was trembling. He moved, as little as possible, and held the flap up for her. She bent and gazed. He could hear various noises in the Square, but she described nothing to him. After a long while she withdrew from the hole.

”A lot of them have gone into the public-house,” she said. ”The others seem to be moving away. There's a policeman. What a shame,” she burst out pa.s.sionately, ”that they have to drink to forget their trouble!”

She made no remark upon the strangeness of starving workmen being able to pay for beer sufficient to intoxicate themselves. Nor did she comment, as a woman, on the misery of the wives and children at home in the slums and the cheap cottage-rows. She merely compa.s.sionated the men in that they were driven to brutishness. Her features showed painful pity masking disgust.

She stepped back into the shop.

”Do you know,” she began, in a new tone, ”you've quite altered my notion of poetry--what you said as we were going up to the station.”

”Really!” He smiled nervously. He was very pleased. He would have been astounded by this speech from her, a professed devotee of poetry, if in those instants the capacity for astonishment had remained to him.

”Yes,” she said, and continued, frowning and picking at her m.u.f.f: ”But you do alter my notions, I don't know how it is... So this is your little office!”

The door of the cubicle was open.

”Yes, go in and have a look at it.”

”Shall I?” She went in.

He followed her.

And no sooner was she in than she muttered, ”I must hurry off now.” Yet a moment before she seemed to have infinite leisure.

”Shall you be at Brighton long?” he demanded, and scarcely recognised his own accents.

”Oh! I can't tell! I've no idea. It depends.”

”How soon shall you be down our way again?”

She only shook her head.

”I say--you know--” he protested.

”Good-bye,” she said, quavering. ”Thanks very much.” She held out her hand.