“You are right,” he remarked to Vennie, “it’s the sea we’re in want of. These curst inland fields have the devil in their heavy mould.”
They found themselves, when they reached the town, with an hour to spare before their train started, and entering a little dairy-shop near the station, they refreshed themselves with milk and bread-and-butter. Here Mr. Quincunx and the child waited in excited expectation, while the two girls went out to make some necessary purchases—returning finally, in triumph, with a light wicker-work suit-case, containing all that they required for several days and nights.
They were in the train at last, with a compartment to themselves, and, as far as they could tell, quite undiscovered by anyone who knew them.
Vennie had hardly ever in her life enjoyed anything more than she enjoyed that journey. She felt that the stars were fighting on her side or, to put it in terms of her religion, that God Himself was smoothing the road in front of her.
She experienced a momentary pang when the train, at last, passing along the edge of the back-water, ran in to Weymouth Station. It was so sweet, so strangely sweet, to know that three living souls depended upon her for their happiness, for their escape from the power of the devil! Would she feel like this, would she ever feel quite like this, when the convent-doors shut her away from this exciting world?
They emerged from the crowded station,—Mr. Quincunx carrying the wicker-work suit-case—and made their way towards the Esplanade.
The early afternoon sun lay hot upon the pavements, but from the sea a strong fresh wind was blowing. Both the girls shivered a little in their thin frocks, and as the red shawl of the young Italian had already excited some curiosity among the passers-by, they decided to enter one of the numerous drapery shops, and spend some more of Mr. Quincunx’s money.
They were so long in the shop that the nervous excitement of the recluse was on the point of changing into nervous irritation, when at last they reappeared. But he was reconciled to the delay when he perceived the admirable use they had made of it.
All three were wearing long tweed rain-cloaks of precisely the same tint of sober grey. They looked like three sisters, newly arrived from some neighbouring inland town,—Dorchester, perhaps, or Sherborne,—with a view to spending a pleasant afternoon at the sea-side. Not only were they all wrapped in the same species of cloak. They had purchased three little woollen caps of a similar shade, such things as it would have been difficult to secure in any shop but a little unfashionable one, where summer and winter vogues casually overlapped.
Mr. Quincunx, whose exaltation of mood had not made him forget to bring his own overcoat with him, now put this on, and warmly and comfortably clad, the four fugitives from Nevilton strolled along the Esplanade in the direction of St. John’s church.