J. A. HOBBS.
She smiled wanly upon the drearily angular handwriting. In rummaging in her hand-bag she had come across the Rev. Elkin Broodbank’s visiting card, left by him that morning, and she caught sight of some writing on the back which she had previously overlooked. “I find you not in,” the Rev. Elkin had written, in his finicky handwriting and pseudo-Carlylean prose style, “so I leave this. Will you have tea with me on Sunday? I have old MSS. church rubric to show you: also good booklet on Oxford movement.—Yrs., E. B.”
Also upon this she smiled wanly....
Chelmsford....
Oh, what have I done with my life? she cried to herself in a moment of sudden horror. What have I to show for all these years of toil and stress? Is there anything of all that I have ever had which has lasted? I am twenty-four years old, and my youth is over. I have had dreams, I have had ambitions, I have had golden opportunities and been near success. But what have I to show? Have I any hold on life which death would not loose? Am I deep set in the heart of any friend, man or woman, in the world? Whatever happens to me, does it matter to anyone save myself? No, no, and therefore I am going to Barhanger. I would go to Barhanger if it cost me pain for the rest of my life....
At the junction station midway between Chelmsford and Colchester she got out. On the opposite platform the train for Holleshont was waiting. Small and feeble it looked beside the great express, but there was an air of sturdy independence about it, and especially about its single track curving away over the hills into the dim distance. Catherine breathed the country air with avidity: she entered a compartment and leaned out of the window as the express rolled slowly out of the other platform. As it vanished into the north-east the station became full of broken silences and staccato sounds. Glorious! she murmured, as the sun warmed her cheeks and the wind wafted to her the scent of pansies growing on the embankment near by. And then suddenly, as if it had a fit of divine inspiration, the train moved off....
Over the dim hills, stopping at tiny halts, with waiting-rooms and booking halls fashioned out of wheelless railway carriages, up steep slopes where the grass grew long between the rails, curving into occasional loops, and pausing sometimes like a hard-worked animal taking breath. And then, from the top of a hill, the miles drooped gently into the bosom of the estuary: the tide was out and the mud shone golden in the sun. Yachts were lying stranded off the fair-way, and threading the broad belt of mud the river ran like a curve of molten gold. There were clusters of houses here and there on either bank, and a church with a candle-snuffer tower, and stretches of brown shingle.... And the train went gathering speed as it broke over the summit....
At Holleshont the estuary was no longer in view, but the sea-smell was fresh in the air. “Barhanger?” she said to a man with a pony and trap who was waiting outside the station. He nodded, and helped her to a seat beside him. He was buxom and red-faced and jolly. If he had been younger, it would have been rather romantic to go driving with him thus along the lonely country lanes. But he was taciturn, and stopped once to pluck from the side of the hedge a long grass to suck. At times he broke into humming, but it was a tune Catherine did not recognize. After half an hour’s riding they came upon a dishevelled country lane, which on turning a corner became immediately the main street of a village. They passed a church and a public-house, a post-office, a pump, and then another public-house. At this last the driver pulled his horse to a standstill and indicated to Catherine that she should descend. “Barhanger,” he muttered explanatorily. Seeing her uncertainty, he questioned her. “Lookin’ f’ranywhere partic’ler, miss?”
She replied with a momentary impulse: “Seahill.”
He pointed in a southerly direction.