CHAPTER XX
Lucia came out into the sun-baked garden, and even as she stood for a moment in the little veranda a train shrieked by over the embankment at the end of it. For six months now the garden, the varying conditions of its flower-beds, the degrees of chilliness, of moisture, or of sultry heat had been familiar to her; familiar, too, was the sight and sound of the rushing train that took the happier folk from one place to another, whore joy or pain or something, anyhow, awaited them. She had planted bulbs last November in the flower-beds, and in April had seen them flame into trumpets of daffodils, or a little later into the pure chalices of tulips. But now in June there was no sign left of these fiery presences in the beds, nor in her heart was any comfort from the sight of the spring garden. She had planted roses also, which were in bud to-day; she had planted clematis, that was beginning to put forth its purple stars in a night of green leaves; she had planted pyramids of sweet-peas, which were twining juicy stalks about the brushwood that supported them. All this she had done in hope, but the hope that she had dug into the soil was now known by her to be barren. It would never spring up; it was dead; there was no hope any more.
She had scarcely set foot during all these six months outside the house and the garden. Once or twice she had gone into Brixham, but on each of these occasions someone, whose face she just remembered, but no more, had crossed the road when she came near, or had gone by her with quick step and a set, wooden smile, and eyes that did not see her. A very little of that was enough for Lucia, and she had her remedy easy to take; there was no need that she should go into the town at all. Miss Lucia Grimson was her name—was it?—she looked after Aunt Cathie. Once a young woman, with a child toddling beside her, came out of the shop which she was passing. Lucia could not remember her name, nor had she heard that she was married.
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