CHAPTER XXXVII
She did her shopping in her unhurried, careful way, and went on to the outfitter who made John's corduroy trousers. Clothes that looked as if they were made of cardboard hung outside the shop; unyielding coats, waistcoats and trousers seemed to be glued against the door: stockings, suspended by their gaudy tops, flaunted stiff toes in the breeze, and piles of more manageable garments were massed on chairs inside, and Helen was aghast at the presence of so many semblances of man.
It was dark in the shop, and the smell of fustian absorbed the air. The owner, who wore an intricately-patterned tie, stood on the pavement and talked to a friend, while a youth, pale through living in obscurity, lured Helen in.
She gave her order: two pairs of corduroy trousers to be made for Mr. Caniper of Brent Farm, to the same measurements as before: she wished to see the stuff.
"If you'll take a seat, miss—"
She would rather stand outside the door, she said, and he agreed that the day was warm.
The narrow street was thronged with people who were neither of the town nor of the country, and suffered the disabilities of the hybrid. There were few keen or beautiful faces, and if there were fine bodies they were hidden under clumsy clothes. Helen wanted to strip them all, and straighten them, and force them into health and comeliness, and though she would not have her moor peopled by them, she wished they might all have moors of their own.
The young man was very slow. She could hear him struggling with bales of cloth and breathing heavily. It was much hotter here than on the moor, and she supposed that human beings could grow accustomed to any smell, but she stepped further towards the kerbstone and drew in what air the street could spare to her.
Quite unconscious of her fairness against the dingy background, she watched the moving people and heard the talk of the two men near her. They spoke of the hay crop, the price of bacon, the mismanagement of the gas company, and the words fell among the footsteps of the passers-by, and the noise of wheels, and became one dull confusion of sound to her; but all sounds fainted and most sights grew misty when she saw Zebedee walking on the other side of the street, looking down as he went, but bending an ear to the girl beside him.
Men and women flitted like shadows between him and Helen, but she saw plainly enough. Zebedee was interested: he nodded twice, looked at the girl and laughed, while she walked sideways in her eagerness. She was young and pretty: no one, Helen thought, had ever married her.