To-morrow | Page 6

say about that, my dear," Captain Hagberd intimated to her across the railing.
Miss Bessie's head remained bowed over her work. She had heard all this so many times. But now and then she would rise, lay down her sewing, and come slowly to the fence. There was a charm in these gentle ravings. He was determined that his son should not go away again for the want of a home all ready for him. He had been filling the other cottage with all sorts of furniture. She im- agined it all new, fresh with varnish, piled up as in a warehouse. There would be tables wrapped up in sacking; rolls of carpets thick and vertical like fragments of columns, the gleam of white mar- ble tops in the dimness of the drawn blinds. Cap- tain Hagberd always described his purchases to her, carefully, as to a person having a legitimate interest in them. The overgrown yard of his cot- tage could be laid over with concrete . . . after to-morrow.
"We may just as well do away with the fence. You could have your drying-line out, quite clear of your flowers." He winked, and she would blush faintly.
This madness that had entered her life through the kind impulses of her heart had reasonable de- tails. What if some day his son returned? But she could not even be quite sure that he ever had a son; and if he existed anywhere he had been too long away. When Captain Hagberd got excited in his talk she would steady him by a pretence of belief, laughing a little to salve her conscience.
Only once she had tried pityingly to throw some doubt on that hope doomed to disappointment, but the effect of her attempt had scared her very much. All at once over that man's face there came an ex- pression of horror and incredulity, as though he had seen a crack open out in the firmament.
"You--you--you don't think he's drowned!"
For a moment he seemed to her ready to go out of his mind, for in his ordinary state she thought him more sane than people gave him credit for. On that occasion the violence of the emotion was followed by a most paternal and complacent re- covery.
"Don't alarm yourself, my dear," he said a lit- tle cunningly: "the sea can't keep him. He does not belong to it. None of us Hagberds ever did belong to it. Look at me; I didn't get drowned. Moreover, he isn't a sailor at all; and if he is not a sailor he's bound to come back. There's nothing to prevent him coming back. . . ."
His eyes began to wander.
"To-morrow."
She never tried again, for fear the man should go out of his mind on the spot. He depended on her. She seemed the only sensible person in the town; and he would congratulate himself frankly before her face on having secured such a level- headed wife for his son. The rest of the town, he confided to her once, in a fit of temper, was certainly queer. The way they looked at you--the way they talked to you! He had never got on with any one in the place. Didn't like the people. He would not have left his own country if it had not been clear that his son had taken a fancy to Colebrook.
She humoured him in silence, listening patiently by the fence; crocheting with downcast eyes. Blushes came with difficulty on her dead-white complexion, under the negligently twisted opu- lence of mahogany-coloured hair. Her father was frankly carroty.
She had a full figure; a tired, unrefreshed face. When Captain Hagberd vaunted the necessity and propriety of a home and the delights of one's own fireside, she smiled a little, with her lips only. Her home delights had been confined to the nursing of her father during the ten best years of her life.
A bestial roaring coming out of an upstairs win- dow would interrupt their talk. She would begin at once to roll up her crochet-work or fold her sew- ing, without the slightest sign of haste. Mean- while the howls and roars of her name would go on, making the fishermen strolling upon the sea-wall on the other side of the road turn their heads to- wards the cottages. She would go in slowly at the front door, and a moment afterwards there would fall a profound silence. Presently she would re- appear, leading by the hand a man, gross and un- wieldy like a hippopotamus, with a bad-tempered, surly face.
He was a widowed boat-builder, whom blindness had overtaken years before in the full flush of busi- ness. He behaved to his daughter as if she had been responsible for its incurable character. He had been heard to bellow at the