Not even Janet. It was scarcely affection that was hastening her. Perhaps it was duty, perhaps custom. Something was menaced for which she was responsible. That, with capable people, is generally all that is wanted in the way of a key to wind them up and set them going. The rain had stopped and she put down her dripping umbrella. The blue flower in her unsuitable hat had lost its backbone and flagged, a limp, large thing; there was a fine powdering of wet on her thick eyebrows and the harsh twist of hair at the back of her head. Mist was pouring in from the sea, the wind having sat in the south-east – the wet quarter on the east coast – for three days; and though it had dropped like lead with last night’s tide, the ‘haar’ was coming miles inland as though some huge, unseen engine out seaward were puffing its damp breath across the fields. The cultivated slopes of the Sidlaws, a mile on her right, diminishing in height as they neared the estuary, were hidden. The Grampians, ten miles away on her left, were hidden too; that quarter of the horizon where, on ordinary days, they raised their blue and purple wall, being a mere blank. The river whose infancy they cradled had burst from them angrily, like a disobedient child from its parents, and was tearing along, mad with lust of destruction, to the sea.
When she was some way out of the town a figure emerged from the vapour ahead, growing familiar as the two wayfarers approached each other. Her expression lightened a little as she recognised the advancing man. He was smiling too.
‘Hey, Janet!’ he cried, ‘I was wond’rin’ what-like daft wife was oot on sic a day.’
His face was red and moist with the mist.
‘I’ve been at Newbiggin Street. I’m just awa’ hame,’ said she.
He was a connection of the Robb family, so her words conveyed something to him.
‘An’ foo’s auntie?’ he inquired.
‘Weel eneuch – but I maun awa’ back. There’s an awfae spate, ye ken.’
‘Tuts, bide you a minute. I haena seen ye this twa weeks syne.’
She made no move to go on. Willie Black had a different place in her mind from anyone else. It was not easy to deflect Janet Robb from her way, but she would do more for this man, a little younger than herself and infinitely her inferior in will, than for any other person. He was the only male living being who approached her from the more easy and lighter standpoint from which such men as she knew approached girls, and their quasi-relationship had brought them into a familiarity which she enjoyed. He was one of those who looked upon women in a general way with a kind of jocose patronage, always implied and often expressed. He meant no harm by this manner; it was natural to him, and he was not nearly so bold a character as his attitude would suggest. Janet was so much unlike the other women he knew that he would have thought it right to assume superiority even had he, in her case, not felt it. She attracted him, not through his heart and certainly not through his senses, but as a curiosity to be explored in a mildly comic spirit. He knew, too, that Thievie was well off; for once, in a moment of confidence, Janet had hinted at her father’s savings, and Black felt vaguely, but insistently, that in the fullness of time he would be wise in proposing to her. The day was distant yet, but meanwhile he sought opportunities of considering her and discovering how far she would be endurable as a wife.
Janet fidgeted from one foot to the other. By one half of herself she was urged to continue her way; the other half being impelled to stay by the invitation in his eyes. She did not know for how much this counted, so great was her ignorance of the amenities of men. Black was the only man who had ever come nearer to her life than the baker’s cartman from whom she took the bread at her door or the cadger from whom she bought the fish. She had a great longing to be like other women, a factor in the male world. She was too busy to brood over the subject, and had inherited too much of her father’s love of money-making to be deeply affected by any other idea. But when she was with Black she was conscious of all she lacked and was lured beyond measure by her perception of his attitude. It suggested that she took rank with the rest of her sex.
‘I’ll need awa’,’ she began, ‘feyther’s himsel’ i’ the hoose. There’s an awfae water comin’ doon an’ he canna win up the stair his lane. I maun hae tae gang on.’
‘I didna ken ye thocht sic a deal o’ Thievie. Ye micht think o’ me a bittie,’ he added, with knowing reproachfulness.
She looked away from him into the blankness of the mist.
‘Heuch! – you?’ she exclaimed.
‘He’s an auld, dune crater. Ye could dae weel, wantin’ him.’
‘Haud yer tongue!’ she cried, actuated purely by a sense of what was fitting.
‘Weel, what’s the advantage o’ him sittin’ yonder, an’ a’ that siller just nae use ava’ till him – an’ nae use tae ony ither body?’
She made no reply. There is something silencing in hearing another person voice an idea one believes to be one’s own private property.
‘Ye’d be a real fine lass wi’ yon at yer back,’ he continued; ‘it’s a fair shame ye should be dancin’ after the like o’ yon auld deil when ye micht be daein’ sae muckle better.’
She withdrew her gaze from the mist and met his eyes.
‘What would I be daein’ better?’ she inquired, rather fiercely.
He gave a sort of crowing laugh.
‘What wad ye be daein’? Gie’s a kiss, Janet, an’ maybe I’ll tell ye.’
Before she had time to think he had flung his arm about her and the roughness of his dripping moustache was on her lips.
She thrust him from her with all her very considerable strength. He laughed again.
It was the first time that a man had ever attempted such a thing and her heart almost stopped. She was torn between wrath and a thrilling, overmastering sense of something achieved. She stood panting, her bundle fallen into the mud. Then she snatched it and dashed into the greyness. It took but a moment to swallow up her figure, but he stayed where he was, staring, his coarse shoulders shaking with laughter. She could hear his jesting voice calling after her as she went. When she had gone a little distance she paused, listening to discover whether he was following; but there was no sound of footsteps.
She hurried on though she had ceased to think of her goal. Her thoughts drove her, rushing and tumbling like birds with beating wings, crowding and jostling and crying in her ears. Black’s words had let them loose, stirring her as much as his action. Yes, it was quite true. She was tied, as she had been all her life, to her father and his box. She drudged for him, year in, year out, and got nothing by it, while he clung like an old dog in the manger to the thing he would neither use nor share. She would be a wife worth having for any man with the contents of that box to start housekeeping on! Willie Black would realise that. She remembered her years at the ferry in fair weather and foul, the picking and scraping she had done and suffered in the house, that the hoarding might go on that was no good to anyone. There had never been any love lost between herself and Thievie, and though he was her father she had long known that she hated him. Yes, she hated him. She had no fear of work and had taken it as a normal condition, but it had come between her and all that was worth having; the toil that had been a man’s toil, not a woman’s, had built a barrier round her to cut her off from a woman’s life. All this had lurked, unrecognised, in her mind, but now it had leaped up, aroused by a man’s careless, familiar horseplay.
Her breath came quick as she thought of her own meagre stake in the world. She knew herself for some kind of a power, and that was awaking the dormant realisation of her slavery, all the more bitter for its long sleep. She pushed back her hat and the drops came tumbling to her shoulder