To-morrow | Page 7

the road turn their heads to-
wards the cottages. She would go in slowly at the front door, and a
moment afterwards there would fall a profound silence. Presently she
would re- appear, leading by the hand a man, gross and un- wieldy like
a hippopotamus, with a bad-tempered, surly face.
He was a widowed boat-builder, whom blindness had overtaken years
before in the full flush of busi- ness. He behaved to his daughter as if
she had been responsible for its incurable character. He had been heard
to bellow at the top of his voice, as if to defy Heaven, that he did not
care: he had made enough money to have ham and eggs for his
breakfast every morning. He thanked God for it, in a fiendish tone as
though he were cursing.
Captain Hagberd had been so unfavourably im- pressed by his tenant,
that once he told Miss Bes- sie, "He is a very extravagant fellow, my
dear."
She was knitting that day, finishing a pair of socks for her father, who
expected her to keep up the supply dutifully. She hated knitting, and, as
she was just at the heel part, she had to keep her eyes on her needles.
"Of course it isn't as if he had a son to provide for," Captain Hagberd
went on a little vacantly. "Girls, of course, don't require so much--h'm--
h'm. They don't run away from home, my dear."

"No," said Miss Bessie, quietly.
Captain Hagberd, amongst the mounds of turned-up earth, chuckled.
With his maritime rig, his weather-beaten face, his beard of Father
Nep- tune, he resembled a deposed sea-god who had ex- changed the
trident for the spade.
"And he must look upon you as already pro- vided for, in a manner.
That's the best of it with the girls. The husbands . . ." He winked. Miss
Bessie, absorbed in her knitting, coloured faintly.
"Bessie! my hat!" old Carvil bellowed out sud- denly. He had been
sitting under the tree mute and motionless, like an idol of some
remarkably monstrous superstition. He never opened his mouth but to
howl for her, at her, sometimes about her; and then he did not moderate
the terms of his abuse. Her system was never to answer him at all; and
he kept up his shouting till he got attended to --till she shook him by
the arm, or thrust the mouthpiece of his pipe between his teeth. He was
one of the few blind people who smoke. When he felt the hat being put
on his head he stopped his noise at once. Then he rose, and they passed
to- gether through the gate.
He weighed heavily on her arm. During their slow, toilful walks she
appeared to be dragging with her for a penance the burden of that
infirm bulk. Usually they crossed the road at once (the cottages stood in
the fields near the harbour, two hundred yards away from the end of the
street), and for a long, long time they would remain in view, ascending
imperceptibly the flight of wooden steps that led to the top of the
sea-wall. It ran on from east to west, shutting out the Channel like a
neglected railway embankment, on which no train had ever rolled
within memory of man. Groups of sturdy fishermen would emerge
upon the sky, walk along for a bit, and sink without haste. Their brown
nets, like the cobwebs of gigantic spiders, lay on the shabby grass of
the slope; and, looking up from the end of the street, the people of the
town would recognise the two Carvils by the creep- ing slowness of
their gait. Captain Hagberd, pot- tering aimlessly about his cottages,
would raise his head to see how they got on in their promenade.

He advertised still in the Sunday papers for Harry Hagberd. These
sheets were read in for- eign parts to the end of the world, he informed
Bes- sie. At the same time he seemed to think that his son was in
England--so near to Colebrook that he would of course turn up
"to-morrow." Bessie, without committing herself to that opinion in so
many words, argued that in that case the expense of advertising was
unnecessary; Captain Hagberd had better spend that weekly half-crown
on him- self. She declared she did not know what he lived on. Her
argumentation would puzzle him and cast him down for a time. "They
all do it," he pointed out. There was a whole column devoted to appeals
after missing relatives. He would bring the news- paper to show her. He
and his wife had advertised for years; only she was an impatient
woman. The news from Colebrook had arrived the very day after her
funeral; if she had not been so impatient