It was bitterly cold. Through the one curtainless window of the kitchen they could see the sand-hills and the white fringe of breakers on the beach, with every now and then a sudden spurt of water where a wave broke on the rocky spit a quarter of a mile from shore. Across the channel, now hidden by a rain squall, now so distinct that they could almost distinguish the trees on the rugged sky-line, was the island where Tom and Phil Ensay had gone the evening before. They were fishermen, and to the south of the island, between it and a group of rocky islets used in the old days by Gorton, the whaler, was the best fishing-ground on the coast.
‘If they hadn’t had all that bother with the valves, they’d have taken the motor-boat,’ said Lizzie. ‘With the old Violet Tom wouldn’t promise to be back tonight. Jansen’s sending some part of the machinery into town by the afternoon train to be repaired. The blacksmith says he can’t do anything with it.’
Mrs Scott handed Lizzie the last of the plates to dry and, opening the door, threw out the dirty water.
‘It’s my belief,’ she said, ‘that the people in this place, barring Tom and Phil, are as idle a lot as you’d meet in a summer day’s journey. You’ll find it a big change, when you’re married.’
‘I’ll risk it anyhow,’ she answered, laughing.
***
Lizzie Scott was engaged to Tom Ensay, the elder of the two brothers. She was an assistant at a draper’s shop in Wellington, and had met Tom the summer before, one Saturday afternoon at Day’s Bay. They had often laughed over the manner of their introduction. She had stopped his hat just as it was being blown over the pier. They had talked to each other on the boat coming home, when Lizzie, quite by accident, had discovered that she knew Tom’s aunt, a Mrs Matterley, who went to the same chapel and sat only two pews in front of her.
‘How small the world is!’ Lizzie had said.
It was not a case of love at first sight, for Lizzie Scott was not a particularly attractive girl. Tall and angular, with plain features, she had little to recommend her except a good-natured smile, that seemed the quiet echo of Tom’s hearty laugh. But Tom was not looking for pretty girls. He wanted a wife who could cook and sew, who would find enough in the little shanty by the beach to keep herself and him from getting lonely, and who would lend him a hand in looking after Phil, the wild young fellow of seventeen, fast earning for himself the dubious reputation of being a hard case.
Though Lizzie had been engaged to Tom for fifteen months, this was the first visit to what was to be her future home. She had all along been prepared to rough it. Her mother was harder to please. Mrs Scott had had other ideas as to Lizzie’s future; and, though there was nothing to be said against Tom, who had a reputation for quiet steadiness, she would rather have seen her daughter married to little Jones, the jeweller’s assistant, even if it had meant waiting another year.
‘You’ll have to get Tom to fix up some sort of sink in the kitchen,’ she said, ‘until he has time to build out the scullery at the back. You’ll want another room, too, if Phil is going to live with you. Goodness me! How cheerless the place is!’
‘We’ll get it into shape in time,’ said Lizzie, smiling. ‘A few improvements will make a lot of difference. We want some blinds or curtains for this window, to start with. Of course, no one passes at night; but it’s cheerless looking out over the sea in the evening. There’s a rod I could easily fix up, and a couple of yards of cretonne would make the room twice as cosy. I thought I’d get Jansen to give me a lift this afternoon when he goes to the station. I could easily walk back.’
‘Not on an afternoon like this,’ said Mrs Scott. ‘There’s sure to be rain, and the wind will likely rise again before evening. You’ll catch your death of cold driving in.’
‘Oh, no, I shan’t. I want something to do, and the walk back will warm me up. I could get your wool at the same time.’
It was just after half-past two when Lizzie set out for Jansen’s, taking advantage of a fine interval between showers. The house was a quarter of a mile away. At one time it had been an inn. That was in the old days, before road and rail, when all traffic was by way of the hard sandy beach. But in its old age the place no longer aroused cheerful memories of laughter, drink and song. It was nothing more than a tumbledown shanty, patched up with odd strips of corrugated iron or old kerosene tins, beaten out flat, and yellow with rust. Jansen was Tom Ensay’s partner. His stout, good-natured wife had died the winter before. Since then he seemed to have lost all interest in life. He missed her more than he had ever loved her; and Frida, his daughter, was not the sort of woman to fill her mother’s place.
When Lizzie reached the house, Jansen had already begun to saddle up the old chestnut mare. Frida stood in the doorway watching him, her red arms akimbo.
‘I suppose you’re going to the gun club dance tonight,’ she said. ‘They’ve hired Jobson’s hall. Everyone will be there.’
‘I might have gone, if the boys had been back, but they’ll spend the night in the hut on Gorton’s Island, Tom said, if the weather was bad; and, anyhow, he’s not over-fond of dancing.’
‘I should think not,’ said Frida; ‘dancing with him is like hopping round with a tame bear. But come without him. Jack Burley’s calling for me this evening. I’m afraid we shouldn’t have room for you too, but dad here would give you a lift. You could wait at Jobson’s.’
‘I don’t want to go to the dance,’ Lizzie answered, ‘but I should be very glad if Mr Jansen would take me in as far as the store. There are a few things I want to buy.’
‘Jump up!’ said the old man. ‘You’ll keep me company on the way. Frida can think of nothing else but dances. You’d better light the lamps before you go, Frida. If the wind drops, the boys may come back from Gorton’s after all, and they’ll want them to make the river mouth. It’s cheerless enough, I know, spending a night in those huts. And when you’ve finished frizzing your hair, you might have a try at sewing those buttons on my shirt.’
It was a long six miles’ drive from the beach to the store in a bitterly cold wind, that blew the sand along in stinging clouds. Jansen, making the most of a good listener, did nearly all the talking. He told Lizzie of the ships he had sailed in when he was a young fellow like Tom; how he had tried his luck all over the world, in the nitrate mines of Chile and on the gold-fields of California, without ever finding fortune ashore. He had gone back again and again to sea.
‘It’s a queer thing,’ he said, ‘how it gets a hold on you. I’ve had many a soft job come my way. I could earn more now at fencing than with this fishing business—and each year the rheumatism gets worse. But, bless you! I’d only sit and mope, if you was to take me away from the sound of the sea. Not that there’s very much in life at the best for us old chaps. Frida, she’s a quiet girl. You might think from the way she goes on that she cares for Jack Burley. Not a bit of it! He helps to pass the time, that’s all. Next month it will be someone else. She’ll never be good for much, won’t Frida.’
They reached the store soon after four.
‘It will be a long walk back for you,’ said Jansen, as he tied up the mare. ‘If you cared to wait till seven, I could give you a lift. What is it you want? If I’d only had my wits about me earlier, I could probably have saved you the journey.’
‘Thank you,’ said Lizzie. ‘I’ve enjoyed the drive. It’s just some stuff I want to buy to make into blinds. The house is a bit cheerless at present, and a little colour in the window will make all the difference.’
‘Well, Tom’s showed himself a sensible fellow in his choice. I don’t fancy I can see Frida thinking of a thing like that. Not that we look for much colour in life at my age.’
There were three or four people lounging in the store. It was bigger and older than Arkwright’s higher up the road, besides being nearer the station. Ned Porrit, the storekeeper, was also the postmaster. When Lizzie came in he was sorting out Robert Danks’ mail behind the counter to the right of the door.
‘Three letters, that’s al
l,’ he said. ‘Bills, too, by the look of them,’ he thought.
‘No newspaper?’ asked Danks. ‘There ought to be. This is the second week running it’s been a day late. Trust the Government for messing matters whenever they get a chance. I suppose the fencing wire I ordered hasn’t come either? I thought not!’ And, shrugging his shoulders, he walked out of the store amid the laughs of the loafers.
‘He’s always like that,’ said Porrit to Lizzie. ‘He’s a splendid bitter tonic, is Mr Danks. It does one good to hear him grumble. What can I get you?’
It took Lizzie a long time to decide on the stuff, since Porrit was the best storekeeper on the line for goods and gossip. She was uncertain, too, as to the colour. There was a handsome darkish cretonne at one-and-nine the yard that she wanted at first to buy; but the red cotton twill was good stuff too, and Lizzie had always had a fancy for red blinds. The difference in price between the two, a matter of only a few pence, made her decide on the latter. She was determined to show Tom how economical she could be in her housekeeping. The red cotton twill, the wool for her mother, with some sewing-cotton, completed Lizzie’s purchases. The whistle of the up train had already sounded when she started back for the beach, stepping out bravely towards an angry western sky. Lizzie did not notice the loneliness of the road, for her mind was filled with thoughts of the future. She was a sensible girl. She expected no extraordinary pleasures from life, and realised that there were many things which she would have to learn to do without. ‘I won’t hope for much,’ she thought, ‘and then, if I get more, it will come as all the pleasanter surprise.’ It would have been easier, no doubt, to have started on their married life without Phil. He was a difficult boy to know; and she and Tom always got on better when they were alone. Then, too, Lizzie would have liked a garden. In her day-dreams she had always pictured her house as having one, stocks and poppies and roses, with perhaps a lawn, in the shadow of a macrocarpa hedge, where she would sit in the summer evenings, when the tea-things had been cleared away. They couldn’t do that sort of thing down by the beach; nothing seemed to grow in the sand except long, coarse grass; and all around the house was a litter of pots and pans and dried or decaying fish.
‘Never mind!’ thought Lizzie, smiling to herself. ‘There’s a lovely view at any rate, especially at high tide, with the waves beating up against that little spit of rock. It’s better than watching the trams pass down Cook Street. Some day I expect Tom will get other work to do, and then we shall have a garden and perhaps keep a cow.’
‘You’ve been a long time,’ said Mrs Scott, as Lizzie took off her boots by the fire, ‘a long time and no mistake. It’s to be hoped you won’t have made your cold worse. Did you remember my wools?’
‘Yes,’ said Lizzie, ‘and I got some stuff for the blinds. I’ll set to work and make them, as soon as I’ve had my tea, ready for when Tom gets back.’
‘What colour did you choose?’ said Mrs Scott.
‘There was some nice dark cretonne at one-and-nine; but I thought it was too much to give, so I bought this red stuff.’
‘I don’t like red,’ her mother answered, ‘not for a room. It’s too common.’
‘It makes a place look snug and cosy, at any rate in winter,’ Lizzie answered. ‘We can’t afford to have everything just at first.’
As soon as the evening meal was over—and Mrs Scott did not let the occasion pass without complaining of the monotony of fried fish—Lizzie cleared the table and set to work on her sewing. Her mother sat in the one easy chair, now knitting, now putting down her needles to take up the weekly paper, from which she would read aloud some item of news. Some time after seven Lizzie had occasion to go into her bedroom for a paper of pins. Looking out of the window across the sand-hills, she saw two jogging lights. They were Jack Burley’s buggy-lamps dancing off to the ball. During a lull in the wind she caught the sound of Frida’s laugh. Away to the left, between Jansen’s house and the mouth of the river, two lights, red and green, burned steadily.
‘I’d like to have gone too,’ thought Lizzie, ‘if it was only to show Frida how little she knows about dressmaking. It doesn’t matter though. I shall have plenty of other opportunities.’
***
Frida, sitting close beside Jack Burley, warm beneath a couple of rugs, was exceedingly happy. Jack had come to fetch her quite half an hour before she had expected him. He had found her sitting in a room that certainly might have been cleaner, sewing buttons on one of her father’s shirts. Frida, on the whole, was glad to have him watching her. She knew that most men liked at times to see a woman doing a woman’s work, and smiled to herself at the ease with which she read Jack Burley’s thoughts. They had gone out together to the two beacon lights on the sand-hills, so placed as to show the entrance to the river mouth at night, Jack carrying the lantern, Frida the oil.
‘No, don’t make me laugh,’ she said. ‘There’s not overmuch as it is; I spilled half of what should have gone into the first when you nudged my arm. Now you’ve done it again! It won’t be my fault if they go out. You had better light it this time; I’m no good at striking matches in a wind.’
‘Neither am I,’ said Jack, ‘so you had better put your hand up behind mine to keep the draught from getting between the cracks. Are you ready?’
But, instead of striking the match, Jack put his arm round her waist and kissed her on the lips. Frida laughed. ‘We haven’t time for that sort of thing now!’ she said. ‘Hurry up and light the lamp and we can go.’
One half of the matches he struck the wind blew out, the other half, Frida; but at last the flame burned steadily.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘It’s all right, now. We shall be late. I’ll race you to the buggy.’
***
Lizzie went on with her sewing. The wind seemed to have lessened its force with nightfall, though it still came in sudden gusts down the wide chimney, blowing the smoke before it in clouds that made the woman cough and the girl’s eyes to water.
‘Leave the sewing for tonight, child,’ said Mrs Scott. ‘There’s no hurry, and you’ll only ruin your sight.’
‘Don’t bother to wait up,’ Lizzie answered, ‘if you want to go to bed. I shall be another hour yet. I’ll bring you up a cup of tea in twenty minutes.’
Mrs Scott said ‘Goodnight.’ Lizzie, left alone, took up her work again, smiling to herself, as she plied her needle. From time to time she looked up at the cheap alarm-clock on the mantelpiece and then through the dark uncurtained window. She finished at last. Certainly the room looked more cheerful once the cold stare of night was shut out behind the neat red blinds.
Lizzie’s eyes were tired with her needlework. She pushed the table with the lamp on it to the window and sank into the easy chair with a sigh of satisfaction, letting the thoughts which she had shepherded all day wander at will over the boundless plain of the future. Now and then she smiled, as she remembered some little trick of Tom’s: the way his mouth always lagged behind his eyes when laughing, or his awkward shyness with women. At last she fell asleep, her head resting wearily on her arm. In her dream she was walking with Tom down a long dusty high road, counting the telegraph-poles as they went. ‘Each one we see,’ said Tom, ‘means a year of happy married life.’ And she had laughed, for she saw them stretching on ahead for miles and miles over plains and mountains to the other end of the world. And then quite suddenly Tom’s face changed. He was looking at something she did not see, hearing something she did not hear. He was pale and haggard. Lizzie moved restlessly in her chair. Tom was speaking: ‘You were right, Phil, after all,’ he said huskily; ‘we shall never make it! My God! It’s blinds, red blinds, blinds, blinds, blinds!’
Lizzie awoke with a start as the clock struck one. She held out her hands for a moment before the flickering embers, lit the candle, and turned out the lamp that had been burning steadily on the table. The wind must have risen while she had slept. It no longer crept fitfully around the house, but howled at doors and windows for admission. Lizzie
went into her room. In spite of the wind the night was clear; through the pane she could see only one of the two beacon lights burning a jealous green. With a heart at peace she knelt to say her prayers, thankful for the day that had passed, all unconscious of what the morrow was to show. Then she fell asleep. The wind dropped and the sound of the breakers died.
MISS CORNELIUS
ANDREW SAXON was senior science master at Cornford School. Cornford is a new school, remodelled on an old foundation. H.M.I.s, when they can afford it, and that is not often, send their boys there, especially if they have a bent for science. Many parents thought that Andrew should have been headmaster, but he himself was aware of his limitations. That he was more of a teacher than an administrator, more of a stimulus than a teacher, one might guess after reading that brilliantly disturbing book, Saxon and Butler’s Introduction to the Principles of Organic Chemistry.
He was known to the boys as ‘Anglo-Saxon’, or ‘Old Alfred’, and was treated by them with an affectionate respect, which was increased by the knowledge that he was a first-rate rifle shot, and had once been runner-up for the King’s Prize at Bisley.
Saxon had never shown any special interest in psychical research, but when his friend Clinton, the manager of the Eastern Counties Bank, asked him to take part in a joint investigation into what was going on in Meadowfield Terrace, he did not like to refuse. The house was occupied by Parke, a cashier in the bank, Mrs Parke and two children, a cook, who had been with Parke for five years, a rather slow-witted girl of sixteen who acted as nurse-parlourmaid, and Miss Cornelius. Saxon knew Miss Cornelius by sight as the elderly lady who lived in that rather delightful house by the vicarage. He understood from Clinton that it was undergoing extensive renovations, and that while the plumbers and painters were about the place she had suggested lodging with the Parkes, who were always glad to receive paying guests.
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