Read Online Honey's Farm by Iris Gower - Free Book Online

she was too proud to go into Swansea looking for him.
    And yet, she reasoned, wasn’t it up to her to make the first move? It was she who had uttered the awful words that had driven him away, wounding words telling him that he was a failure. She hadn’t meant to sound like that, a woman crowing at her own success; but anger had tipped her tongue with barbs, and they had struck home.
    Eline forced herself to concentrate on the task before her. She took one of the few paintings left and moved it from its place on the wall. With her head on one side, she stood it on the easel in the window.
    The painting was one of her own, a seascape that captured Mumbles Head rising like a mythical island from the mists. It was a good picture, and she knew it. Perhaps not technically faultless, but the mood evoked by the sky and sea blending in shades of grey and violet gave it the atmosphere of a fairy-tale world, a place of mystery, but also a place of peace. But Eline knew no peace, had known none since the day Will had walked away from her.
    She made up her mind quite suddenly. Damn her pride! She would close the gallery and go up to Swansea and face him, apologize on bended knee if need be, beg his forgiveness. She would find him easily enough; he would have gone to Hari Grenfell’s house, where else?
    Eline took off her apron and wiped her hands on the starched linen almost absent-mindedly. What would she say to Will? Would he even see her? For a moment, her courage failed. What if he’d left instructions that he was not to be bothered?
    She must try. It was no good sitting still allowing the bitterness between them to go unresolved. So Eline brushed back her hair, tucking the stray curls into the confining pins, and, after a moment’s hesitation, she let herself out of the gallery into the warm sunshine of the day.
    The Mumbles train was crowded. Men in tall hats and women in wide-skirted frocks laughed and chattered together as though life was one long holiday. And so it was for some, Eline mused. The rich of Swansea could spend the day at the seaside in Mumbles eating oysters, drinking dandelion cordial, without a care as to where the next penny was coming from. For people like her and like Will, life was a struggle to survive.
    For a moment, anger bit at her with sharp teeth. Will thought he was so hard done by; losing his business was a blow, of course it was, but he was young and strong, he had advantages that she’d never had – the backing of people like Hari Grenfell, for example.
    Eline had made a success of things by her own talent and ingenuity. She alone had found backing for the gallery in Lord Greyfield, a fine English gentleman who had been so impressed with Eline’s portrait of his bride-to-be that he had decided there was a profit to be made from her talent, profit that would benefit both of them.
    Shame washed over her then. She was doing it again, comparing her own success with Will’s failure. How could she even think like that? Look what Will had given to the stricken village. He had given the people boots and shoes they would never pay for, had lost his own living in the process; he was a fine, good man, a compassionate man. And what had she done to ease the anguish of Oystermouth? Set up a soup kitchen that was paid for mainly out of the pockets of others.
    Eline glanced out of the train and saw the soft sea gently lapping the golden sands of Swansea Bay. Out on the horizon, she could just make out the lines of a paddle steamer, making, no doubt, for the busy docklands to the east of the town.
    Eline knew that she wasn’t really concerned about the sea or the ships upon it; she was trying her utmost not to think about her meeting with Will, or what words she would find to say to him.
    When she alighted at Rutland Street, Eline looked around her and wondered at the size of the town. Swansea had grown very big over the last years; copper and tinplate works dominated the east