Before six o'clock it was quite dark. He thought it a strange notion,
to fix a rendezvous at such an hour, on a day in autumn, in the open
air. But perhaps she was very busy, doing servant's work in the
preparation of her house for visitors. When he reached the pier gates
at five minutes to six, they were closed, and the obscure vista of the
pier as deserted as some northern pier in mid-winter. Naturally it was
closed! There was a notice prominently displayed that the pier would
close that evening at dusk. What did she mean? The truth was, he
decided, that she lived in the clouds, ordering her existence by means
of sudden and capricious decisions in which facts were neglected,--and
herein probably lay the explanation of her misfortunes. He was very
philosophical: rather amused than disturbed, because her house was
scarcely a stone's-throw away: she could not escape him.
He glanced up and down the lighted promenade, and across the broad muddy
road towards the opening of Preston Street. The crowds had disappeared;
only scattered groups and couples, and now and then a solitary, passed
quickly in the gloom. The hotels were brilliant, and carriages with
their flitting lamps were continually stopping in front of them; but the
blackness of the shop-fronts produced the sensation of melancholy proper
to the day even in Brighton, and the renewed sound of church bells
intensified this arid melancholy.
Suddenly he saw her, coming not across the road from Preston Street, but
from the direction of Hove. He saw her before she saw him. Under the
multiplicity of lamps her face was white and clear. He had a chance to
read in it. But he could read nothing in it save her sadness, save that
she had suffered. She seemed querulous, preoccupied, worried, and
afflicted. She had the look of one who is never free from apprehension.
Yet for him that look of hers had a quality unique, a quality that he
had never found in another, but which he was completely unable to
define. He wanted acutely to explain to himself what it was, and he
could not.
"You are frightfully cruel," she had said. And he admitted that he had
been. Yes, he had bullied her, her who, he was convinced, had always
been the victim. In spite of her vigorous individuality she was
destined to be a victim. He was sure that she had never deserved
anything but sympathy and respect and affection. He was sure that she
was the very incarnation of honesty--possibly she was too honest for the
actual world. Did not the Orgreaves worship her? And could he himself
have been deceived in his estimate of her character?
She recognised him only when she was close upon him. A faint,
transient, wistful smile lightened her brooding face, pale and stern.
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