We stopped at a station surrounded by the evidences of that tireless, unceasing, and tremendous manufacturing industry which distinguishes the Five Towns, and I was left alone in the compartment. The train rumbled on through a landscape of fiery furnaces, and burning slag-heaps, and foul canals reflecting great smoking chimneys, all steeped in the mild sunshine. Could the toil-worn agents of this never-ending and gigantic productiveness find time for love? Perhaps they loved quickly and forgot, like animals. Thoughts such as these lurked sinister and carnal, strange beasts in the jungle of my poor brain. Then the train arrived at Shawport, and I was obliged to get out. I say ‘obliged,’ because I violently wished not to get out. I wished to travel on in that train to some impossible place, where things were arranged differently.
The station clock showed only five minutes to seven. I was astounded. It seemed to me that all the real world had been astir and busy for hours. And this extraordinary activity went on every morning while Aunt Constance and I lay in our beds and thought well of ourselves.
I shivered, and walked quickly up the street. I had positively not noticed that I was cold. I had scarcely left the station before Fred Ryley appeared in front of me. I saw that his face was swollen. My heart stopped. Of course, he would tell Ethel.... He passed me sheepishly without stopping, merely raising his hat, and murmuring the singular words:
‘We’re both very, very sorry.’
What in the name of Heaven could they possibly know, he and Ethel? And what right had he to ...? Did he smile furtively? Fred Ryley had sometimes a strange smile. I reddened, angry and frightened.
The distance between the station and our house proved horribly short. And when I arrived in front of the green gates, and put my hand on the latch, I knew that I had formed no plan whatever. I opened the right-hand gate and entered the garden. The blinds were still down, and the house looked so decorous and innocent in its age. My poor aunt! What a night she must have been through! It was inconceivable that I should tell her what had happened to me. Indeed, under the windows of that house it seemed inconceivable that the thing had happened which had happened. Inconceivable! Grotesque! Monstrous!
But could I lie? Could I rise to the height of some sufficient and kindly lie?
A hand drew slightly aside the blind of the window over the porch. I sighed, and went wearily, in my boat-shaped straw, up the gravelled path to the door.
Rebecca met me at the door. It was so early that she had not yet put on an apron. She looked tired, as if she had not slept.
‘Come in, miss,’ she said weakly, holding open the door.