'How much do you think you could live on?' asked Daisy.
Mrs Griffith looked at George and then at Edith. What should they ask? Edith and George exchanged a glance; they were in agonies lest Mrs Griffith should demand too little.
'Well,' said that lady, at last, with a little cough of uncertainty, 'in our best years we used to make four pounds a week out of the business--didn't we, George?'
'Quite that!' answered he and his wife, in a breath.
'Then, shall I tell my husband that if he allows you five pounds a week you will be able to live comfortably?'
'Oh, that's very handsome!' said Mrs Griffith.
'Very well,' said Daisy, getting up.
'You're not going?' cried her mother.
'Yes.'
'Well, that is hard. After not seeing you all these years. But you know best, of course!'
'There's no train up to London for two hours yet,' said George.
'No; I want to take a walk through Blackstable.'
'Oh, you'd better drive, in your position.'
'I prefer to walk.'
'Shall George come with you?'
'I prefer to walk alone.'
Then Mrs Griffith again enveloped her daughter in her arms, and told her she had always loved her and that she was her only daughter; after which, Daisy allowed herself to be embraced by her brother and his wife. Finally they shut the door on her and watched her from the window walk slowly down the High Street.
'If you'd asked it, I believe she'd have gone up to six quid a week,' said George.
XV
Daisy walked down the High Street slowly, looking at the houses she remembered, and her lips quivered a little; at every step smells blew across to her full of memories--the smell of a tannery, the blood smell of a butcher's shop, the sea-odour from a shop of fishermen's clothes.... At last she came on to the beach, and in the darkening November day she looked at the booths she knew so well, the boats drawn up for the winter, whose names she knew, whose owners she had known from her childhood; she noticed the new villas built in her absence. And she looked at the grey sea; a sob burst from her; but she was very strong, and at once she recovered herself. She turned back and slowly walked up the High Street again to the station. The lamps were lighted now, and the street looked as it had looked in her memory through the years; between the 'Green Dragon' and the 'Duke of Kent' were the same groups of men--farmers, townsfolk, fishermen--talking in the glare of the rival inns, and they stared at her curiously as she passed, a tall figure, closely veiled. She looked at the well-remembered shops, the stationery shop with its old-fashioned, fly-blown knick-knacks, the milliner's with cheap, gaudy hats, the little tailor's with his antiquated fashion plates. At last she came to the station, and sat in the waiting-room, her heart full of infinite sadness--the terrible sadness of the past....
And she could not shake it off in the train; she could only just keep back the tears.
At Victoria she took a cab and finally reached home. The servants said her husband was in his study.
'Hulloa!' he said. 'I didn't expect you to-night.'
'I couldn't stay; it was awful.' Then she went up to him and looked into his eyes. 'You do love me, Herbert, don't you?' she said, her voice suddenly breaking. 'I want your love so badly.'
'I love you with all my heart!' he said, putting his arms round her.
But she could restrain herself no longer; the strong arms seemed to take away the rest of her strength, and she burst into tears.
'I will try and be a good wife to you, Herbert,' she said, as he kissed them away.
THE END
*******************************************
NOTES FOR TRANSCRIBER IN PROGRESS
spendour splendour apparently be changed to apparently been the the third changed to the third make both end meet changed to make both ends meet that to than ratings to rantings
End of Project Gutenberg's Orientations, by William Somerset Maugham
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ORIENTATIONS ***
***** This file should be named 31308-8.txt or 31308-8.zip ***** This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: http://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/3/0/31308/
Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept
