“That’s as may be,” retorted the superior, pursing her lips, and Lucy Wood went home.
She had heard no word of her husband—nothing but that Jim Casey had gone to the sea-port, and thither she was forced to suppose Jerry had gone too.
She washed her boy and put him to bed and bade Sue turn in too, and when she had damped the linen ready for the morrow’s final ironing, she put a light in the window, in case Jerry should come by the top way, and closing the front door softly, slunk shyly down to the wall at the end of the road to watch for that home-coming that she longed for and yet dreaded.
Many a time had she thus watched and waited before, but somehow to-night there was on her a deeper and more incomprehensible fear than she had ever known.
A horrible and sinister sense of mystery seemed to hang over everything: the moon was struggling with clouds that continually overswept and swamped her, and even when she looked forth it was with no mild radiance, but as though coldly trying to pierce some cruel secret; white and dense the sea-fog overspread the marsh like a blanket, swaying even up to the village on the cliff and floating softly down its streets and around its old church in the big square graveyard. One could scarcely see a yard in front of one, and two men who came smartly up the hill and round the corner did not see Lucy as she hung over the wall peering down the road.
“Pore Mrs. Wood, she’ll ’ave a job wi’ ’im to-night, she will!” said one with a laugh. “I often wonders whether she guesses the worst on ’im and just keeps dark on it for ’er pride’s sake.”
“Ye never can tell wi’ folk,” said the other sagely. “The gals from the ’Arbour don’t often come up this way, and I don’t s’pose no one’d go for to tell ’er.”
“Lord love ye, ye can’t never tell what nasty turn one woman’d do another,” declared Wilson. “Though I dare say she’d sooner put up wi’ it all than be rid on ’im, if the truth was known. It be past crediting what some women’ll look over in a man as they love.”
He started, for he felt a touch on his arm in the mist, and looking round recognized Lucy.
“I was thinkin’ p’r’aps ye might ha’ seen my ’usband down at the ’Arbour, Mr. Wilson,” said she in a thin, panting voice, that told of inner anguish bravely concealed. “’E ain’t come ’ome yet, and it be a nasty aitchy night.”