Lydia Protheroe, whose mind worked instinctively in terms of drama,
always saw herself afterwards, in retrospect, standing alone in the rain
on the pavement outside her father’s house wondering where she should
go. She had not expected events to be so rapid or so complete. She had
foreseen long weeks of argument, during which her family would slowly be
worn down to some reluctant compromise, and although this had not been
much to her satisfaction as a prospect, she had resigned herself to hope
for nothing more. She found herself now, triumphant indeed, but a little
disconcerted, with no luggage and too much pride to slip into the house
again in order to pack. No doubt they counted on her doing so; no doubt
their ultimatum had been but bluff. Probably they were even now sitting
expectant, waiting to hear her key in the door, waiting to rush out and
overwhelm her in the passage, and to pull her in with cries of “Alice,
dear, we didn’t mean it!” Let them wait! She started down the wet
street, where the gas-lamps shone reflected in the roadway, and as she
went she turned up the collar of the overcoat she had snatched off the
row of hooks in the passage, for the rain was dripping into her neck. It
then occurred to her that the overcoat was not her own. She had taken
her own hat, cramming it down as far as her eyebrows; but she had got
the wrong coat. She investigated it: it was her brother’s—Bertie’s. This
seemed to her to be an extremely good joke—and Bertie, too, was always
so particular about his things. She felt quite disproportionately
heartened by this occurrence, and as she thrust her hands into the
pockets to keep them dry she pretended to herself that she was a man, to
give herself additional courage; she even affected a masculine stride,
and whispered to herself, “Lydia Protheroe ... Richard Protheroe ... who
am I?” and she skipped two or three paces in her excitement and
trepidation. There was a pipe in the pocket of the coat; she curved her
fingers round its little friendly bowl, and for a minute she even took
it out and stuck it in her mouth, sucking at it as she had seen Bertie
do, but almost immediately she slipped it back again with a guilty air
and the sense of having done something inordinately daring, grotesque,
and improper. The extravagance of her adventure was indeed going to her
head. She had been for so long enveloped in the cotton-wool of her
family that to be free of it was, simply, incredible. No father, no
mother, no Bertie, to madden her with their injunctions and their
restrictions. She skipped again, another two or three paces. But in the
meantime she had no idea of where she was going or of what she meant to
do. This irresponsibility was all very well, this release very
delightful, but from Lydia Protheroe masquerading down a dark wet street
in her brother’s overcoat, to Lydia Protheroe the proprietress of a
flourishing theatrical business, with her name over the door and fat
ledgers on her desk, was a far cry; and she had nowhere to sleep that
night.
She turned towards the station. Where did the next train go to? There
would she go, even if it carried her to Wick or Thurso. Since she had
abjured all the common prudences, she would allow fate to decide for her
hap-hazard: fate was a Bohemian, if ever there was one, overthrowing
careful plans and disregarding probabilities—a random deity which must
henceforth be her guide. Before very long, she reflected, scoffing,
though a little uncertainly, at herself meanwhile, she would be ordering
her life by the spin of a coin or the conjunction of the planets, since
here she was already, with not ten minutes of liberty behind her,
resigning her destination into the keeping of Bradshaw. She hurried on
towards the station, huddled inside the coat that was much too big for
her, frightened but indomitable: still pretending to herself that she
was a man—a boy, rather, and such phrases as “He ran away to sea” kept
flitting through her mind, inconsequent but vaguely inspiriting—and
although she was thereby transporting herself into a world of pretence,
she could not help feeling, with exultation, that she had discarded for
ever the world of true pretence, of casuistry and circumspection,
growing richer, more emancipated by the exchange. Presently she stood
upon the railway bridge, looking down upon the station, an etching in
silver-point never by her forgotten. The rails were lines of polished
silver, the low black sheds of the station were spanned by girders
against a black and silver sky. Only a few yellow lights gave colour;
and, high up, the light of a signal, like a high and isolated ruby,
burned deep upon the wrack of the silver-rifted clouds.
V
The difficulties of life had not sobered her. On the contrary, as she
disencumbered herself more and more from the oppression of the
traditions in which she had been brought up, her mettle had risen with
proportionate buoyancy. She soared, as the weights dropped from her. She
fled from these realities with increasing determination into the realms
of make-believe. In her worst moments—for there had been bad moments,
hours in her career which would have seemed to anyone else unpromisingly
dark, hours when dishonesty saddened and failure discouraged her—she
could always say to herself, “I don’t exist at all. There’s no such
person as Lydia Protheroe.” And she thought of all the parish ledgers,
serious and civic, in which the birth, baptism, and other _faits et
gestes_ of Lydia Protheroe ought properly to be recorded, and from which
Lydia Protheroe was so gratifyingly absent. This habit of mind grew upon
her, until every suggestion of her actual existence as a citizen and a
ratepayer was enough to throw her into a state of indignation. Who was
Lydia Protheroe, that unsubstantial and fantastic being, that she should
be bound down to the orthodoxy of an urban district council form for the
payment of property-tax or house-duty? that she should be asked to
account for her income and to contribute a shilling in the pound towards
the upkeep of her country? she who had no country, no status? she who
was so impudently and audaciously a myth? It was manifestly impossible
to induce the tax-collectors to take this view. It would have entailed,
moreover, the betrayal of Lydia Protheroe’s secret, and the asking of
questions leading inevitably to the resurrection of Alice Jennings. She
consoled herself, therefore, in the midst of her mortification as she
filled in her forms (never until “third application” glared across the
top of the paper), by reflecting that she was playing a trick on the
authorities with her tongue well thrust into her cheek. But there was
nothing she would not do to evade the census returns, when they came
round in 1891, and again in 1901, and again in 1911.