Very well!—she was in a flame from head to foot—very well! When he did want——
But beneath all that she sensed a weak longing for him which she was trying to drown in a flood of exaggerated indignation. Something told her that when he did want to speak to her again she would not be able to refuse: for he was not only a man for whom she felt a personal attraction, but he was also a type towards which all her new ambitions aspired. Poised as she now was, between what she had left and where she desired to be, he represented to her an ideal—assured, educated, a gentleman.
But though he did not walk home with her—in spite of what he said of the lonely road—she was not to go by herself after all. For a young man who was a connection of the Creddles—a railway porter by trade—chanced to pass just as she was leaving the promenade, and escorted her as far as the gate of the Cottage. He was a good-looking, intelligent youth, with a pleasant, hearty manner and a fair share of those solid qualities which adorned Mr. Creddle—the very man to make a good father and a good husband. Already attracted by Caroline, he would have gone further that night if he had not been discouraged, but she thought of his broken and blackened finger-nails, and of the noise he made when he drank tea, and so they parted at the gate without anything definite being said.
But as she ran up the garden path with her self-esteem thus agreeably restored, she had not the faintest idea that she had just passed by that rarest thing in life—a chance of real happiness.
Chapter X
Sunday Night
The long street leading to the church was thronged with people who walked slowly, smiling and talking to each other, either going towards the lanes beyond the little town, or towards the sea. But a third sort, much smaller in number, threaded rather quickly in and out of the gently-moving crowds with an air of obeying some purpose within themselves and not merely enjoying the lull in the wind at sundown and the warm air. And above it all, clanging out from the grey tower, the last bell rang out a single note urgently: "Come! Come! Come!"
A good many did not notice the bell at all; others just took it in as a sound of Sunday evening which ministered pleasantly to their agreeable feeling of having nothing to do but enjoy themselves; scarcely anyone was troubled by declining that invitation, because the habit of church-going has fallen from the position of a duty to that of a compliment which the religiously disposed are willing to pay their God if quite convenient.
Caroline walked briskly, now and then glancing up at the clock on the tower as if she belonged to the purposeful minority which was making its way to the grey porch. Not that she had started out with any intention of going to the service, but her girl friend had come across an admirer at the church corner, and so it became necessary to do something in self-defence. Impossible to contemplate wandering alone on a Sunday evening without a companion of any sort. The lack of a "boy" for such a purpose made Caroline feel oddly self-conscious—as if people were staring at her and wondering. She would have been glad of the young railway porter's company now, if he had turned up, and would have welcomed him as a sort of refuge.