“If you were bothered because you hesitated, you were ridiculous. Your song was a triumph.”
“The triumph wasn’t mine, and when you played the march I was ashamed. I felt I was afraid for nothing.”
Kit saw her mood was emotional. She was young and, so far as he knew, she had no friends on board the crowded ship. It looked as if her loneliness weighed, and to talk might cheer her.
“After your song, my march was perhaps a contrast, but a contrast, so to speak, is not a contradiction. To be sad because something you loved is gone is human; but it’s human to brace up and look for better luck. You did brace up nobly. All the same, I didn’t play to cheer you; I myself was doleful.”
“Ah,” said Alison, “in a way, my nearly stopping was not important, but I thought it ominous. It looked as if I’d started on an adventure I couldn’t carry out.”
“The adventure was your starting for Montreal?”
Alison hesitated, but her loneliness weighed, and somehow she trusted Kit.
“Yes,” she said. “You see, I wasn’t altogether forced to go. My father and mother are dead, but my relations in the North wanted me to join them. Until trade got slack I was at a manufacturer’s office, and then I couldn’t find another post. I wanted to go to Whinnyates, but I knew if I went and helped my aunt I might stay for good. Whinnyates is a small moorland farm.”
“But if you were not happy at Whinnyates, when business was better you might have gone back to the town.”
“I doubt——” said Alison thoughtfully. “One is soon forgotten and one forgets one’s job. Whinnyates, at the dalehead, is very quiet; you only see the sheep on the fellside and the cattle by the beck. A rock shuts in the valley and old ash-trees hide the house. At a spot like that you get slow and perhaps you get dull. You think about the dairy and the calves, and until dark comes work must go on. At a modern office they do not want a girl whose back is bent by turning the churn.”