IV
Lydia Protheroe, whose mind worked instinctively in terms of drama, always saw herself afterwards, in retrospect, standing alone in the rain on the pavement outside her father’s house wondering where she should go. She had not expected events to be so rapid or so complete. She had foreseen long weeks of argument, during which her family would slowly be worn down to some reluctant compromise, and although this had not been much to her satisfaction as a prospect, she had resigned herself to hope for nothing more. She found herself now, triumphant indeed, but a little disconcerted, with no luggage and too much pride to slip into the house again in order to pack. No doubt they counted on her doing so; no doubt their ultimatum had been but bluff. Probably they were even now sitting expectant, waiting to hear her key in the door, waiting to rush out and overwhelm her in the passage, and to pull her in with cries of “Alice, dear, we didn’t mean it!” Let them wait! She started down the wet street, where the gas-lamps shone reflected in the roadway, and as she went she turned up the collar of the overcoat she had snatched off the row of hooks in the passage, for the rain was dripping into her neck. It then occurred to her that the overcoat was not her own. She had taken her own hat, cramming it down as far as her eyebrows; but she had got the wrong coat. She investigated it: it was her brother’s—Bertie’s. This seemed to her to be an extremely good joke—and Bertie, too, was always so particular about his things. She felt quite disproportionately heartened by this occurrence, and as she thrust her hands into the pockets to keep them dry she pretended to herself that she was a man, to give herself additional courage; she even affected a masculine stride, and whispered to herself, “Lydia Protheroe ... Richard Protheroe ... who am I?” and she skipped two or three paces in her excitement and trepidation. There was a pipe in the pocket of the coat; she curved her fingers round its little friendly bowl, and for a minute she even took it out and stuck it in her mouth, sucking at it as she had seen Bertie do, but almost immediately she slipped it back again with a guilty air and the sense of having done something inordinately daring, grotesque, and improper. The extravagance of her adventure was indeed going to her head. She had been for so long enveloped in the cotton-wool of her family that to be free of it was, simply, incredible. No father, no mother, no Bertie, to madden her with their injunctions and their restrictions. She skipped again, another two or three paces. But in the meantime she had no idea of where she was going or of what she meant to do. This irresponsibility was all very well, this release very delightful, but from Lydia Protheroe masquerading down a dark wet street in her brother’s overcoat, to Lydia Protheroe the proprietress of a flourishing theatrical business, with her name over the door and fat ledgers on her desk, was a far cry; and she had nowhere to sleep that night.
She turned towards the station. Where did the next train go to? There would she go, even if it carried her to Wick or Thurso. Since she had abjured all the common prudences, she would allow fate to decide for her hap-hazard: fate was a Bohemian, if ever there was one, overthrowing careful plans and disregarding probabilities—a random deity which must henceforth be her guide. Before very long, she reflected, scoffing, though a little uncertainly, at herself meanwhile, she would be ordering her life by the spin of a coin or the conjunction of the planets, since here she was already, with not ten minutes of liberty behind her, resigning her destination into the keeping of Bradshaw. She hurried on towards the station, huddled inside the coat that was much too big for her, frightened but indomitable: still pretending to herself that she was a man—a boy, rather, and such phrases as “He ran away to sea” kept flitting through her mind, inconsequent but vaguely inspiriting—and although she was thereby transporting herself into a world of pretence, she could not help feeling, with exultation, that she had discarded for ever the world of true pretence, of casuistry and circumspection, growing richer, more emancipated by the exchange. Presently she stood upon the railway bridge, looking down upon the station, an etching in silver-point never by her forgotten. The rails were lines of polished silver, the low black sheds of the station were spanned by girders against a black and silver sky. Only a few yellow lights gave colour; and, high up, the light of a signal, like a high and isolated ruby, burned deep upon the wrack of the silver-rifted clouds.