"When?" she said, with great willingness.
"After tea."
"We've finished, haven't we?" Miriam asked. "Daniel, be quick and drink that. We're all waiting for you. And don't slop it on your waistcoat. There's a good boy! Very nice. Come into the drawing-room and I'll play to you. I might even sing. Ask Helen if you may get down."
"May I?" he asked, and went after Miriam.
The notes of the old piano tinkled through the hall. Miriam was playing a waltz, lightly and gaily.
"I'll go and make Daniel dance with me," Rupert said.
"Don't tease him any more."
"It'll do him good, and I want Zebedee to have a chance of lecturing you."
"It's not easy to lecture you," Zebedee said.
"Isn't it?"
Above their voices and the tinkling music there now came Daniel's protest, Rupert's persuasions, and Miriam's laughter: then these all died away and the waltz called out plaintively and with desire.
"She is making the piano cry," Helen said.
Zebedee did not speak, for he was listening: the whole house was listening. No other sound came from the drawing-room, and Helen fancied that Mr. Penderwell was standing on the stairs, held by the memory of days when he had taken his lady by her tiny waist and felt the whiff of her muslin skirts against him as they whirled. The children on the landing were wide-eyed and hushed in their quiet play. The sounds grew fainter; they faded away as though the ballroom had grown dark and empty, and for a little space all the listeners seemed to be easing themselves of sighs. Then Miriam's whistle, like a blackbird's, came clearly. She did not know how well she had been playing.
Helen stood up. "I wonder if the horse has walked away. Go into the drawing-room. I'll see."
"No. I'll come with you."
The music had subdued their voices and, because they had heard it together, they seemed to be wrapped round by it in a world unknown to anybody else. Quietly they went out of the house and found the horse, only a few yards distant, with his feet tangled in the reins.
"You ought to have fastened him to the post," Helen said, and together they led him back.
"Shall we take him out of the cart?"
"But I ought to go home."
"No," she said.
"Perhaps not."
The sunshine had gone, and over the moor the light was grey; grey clouds hung low in the sky, and as he looked down at her, it seemed to Zebedee that Helen was some emanation of grey earth and air.
"We'll take him out," she said.
"And then what shall we do with him?"
"I believe he'd be quite happy in the kitchen!"
"Yes, he's a domesticated old boy."
"We can't put him in the hen-house. Just tie him to the post and let him eat."
When that was done, she would have gone into the house, but Zebedee kept her back.
"Mayn't we stay in the garden? Are you warm enough?"
She nodded to both questions. "Let us go round to the back." The path at the side of the house was dark with shrubs. "I don't like this little bit," she said. "I hardly ever walk on it. It's—"
"What?"
"Oh, they don't come out. They stay there and get unhappy."
"The bushes?"
"The spirits in them."
He walked beside her with his hands behind his back and his head bent.
"You're thinking," she said.
"Yes."
"Don't," she begged, "think away from me."
He stopped, surprised. "I'm not doing that—but why?"
"I don't know," she said, looking him in the eyes, "but I should hate it."
"I was wondering how to bring myself to scold you."
They had reached the lawn and, caught by the light from the drawing-room, they stood under the poplars and watched the shadows moving on walls and ceiling. The piano and the people in the room were out of sight, and Miriam's small, husky voice came with a hint of mystery.
"'Drink to me only with thine eyes,'" she sang.
"'And I will pledge with mine,'" Rupert joined in richly.
"'Or leave a kiss within the cup—'"
In silence, under the trees, Helen and Zebedee listened to the singing, to voices wrangling about the words, and when a figure appeared at the window they turned together and retreated beyond the privet hedge, behind John's vegetable garden and through the door on to the moor.
The earth was so black that the rising ground was exaggerated into a hill; against it, Helen's figure was like a wraith, yet Zebedee was acutely conscious of her slim solidity. He was also half afraid of her, and he had an easily controlled desire to run from the delight she gave him, a delight which hurt and reminded him too clearly of past joys.
"Now," she said, and stood before him in her dangerous simplicity. "What are you going to say?"
She seemed to have walked out of the darkness into his life, a few nights ago, an unexpected invasion, but one not to be repelled, nor did he wish to repel it. He was amazed to hear himself uttering his thoughts aloud.
"I always liked you when you were a little girl," he said, as though he accounted for something to himself.
"Better than Miriam?" she asked quickly.
"Of course."
"Oh," she said, and paused. "But I feel as if Miriam—" She stopped again and waited for his next words, but he saw the steepness of the path on which he had set his feet and he would not follow it.
"And I used to think you looked—well, brave."
"Did I? Don't I now?"
"Yes; so you see, you must be."
"I'll try. Three stars," she said, looking up. "But mayn't I—mayn't I say the things I'm thinking?"
"I hope you will," he answered gravely; "but then, you must be careful what you think."
"This is a very gentle lecture," she said. "Four stars, now. Five. When I've counted seven, we'll go back, but I rather hoped you would be a little cross."
Pleased, yet half irritated, by this simplicity, he stood in silence while she counted her seven stars.
It had long been a custom of the Canipers to spend each warm Sunday evening in the heather, and there, if Daniel were not already with them, they would find him waiting, or they would watch for his gaunt, loose figure to come across the moor. This habit had begun when his father was alive, and the stern chapel-goer's anger must be dared before Daniel could appear with the light of a martyr on his brow. In those days, Zebedee, who was working under the old doctor, sometimes arrived with Daniel, and sank with an unexpressed relief into the lair which was a little hollow in the moor, where heather grew thickly on the sides, but permitted pale violets and golden tormentilla to creep about the grassy bottom. Zebedee was more than ten years older than his brother, and he suffered from a loneliness which made their honest welcome of great value to him. He liked to listen to the boys' precocious talk and watch the grace and beauty of the girls before he went back to the ugly house in the town of dreary streets, to the work he liked and wearied himself over, and the father he did not understand. Then he went away, and he never knew how bitterly Helen missed him, how she had recognized the tired look which said he had been working too hard, and the unhappy look which betrayed his quarrels with his father, and how, in her own fashion, she had tried to smooth those looks away, and now he had returned with a new expression on his face. It was that, she thought, of a man who, knowing misery like a great block in his path, had ridden over it and not looked back. She knew what Rupert meant by saying he was different, and again she felt a strong dislike for all his experiences which she had not shared.
On the evening after his visit, the Canipers and Daniel went to the trysting place. Helen wrapped herself in a shawl and lay down with her head on her arms and one eye for the clouds, but she did not listen to the talk, and she had no definite thoughts. The voices of Rupert and Daniel were like the buzzing of bees, a sound of warmth and summer, and the smell of their tobacco came and went on the wind. She was aware that John, having smoked for a time and disagreed with everything that was said, had walked off towards the road, and the succeeding peace was proof that Miriam too, had disappeared.
Helen rolled on her back and went floating with the clouds. While she merely watched them, she thought they kept a level course, but to go with them was like riding on a swollen sea, and as she rose and fell in slow and splendid curves, she discovered differences of colour and quality in a medium which seemed invariable from below. She swooped downwards like a bird on steady wings and saw the moor lifting itself towards her until she anticipated a shock; she was carried upwards through a blue that strained to keep its colour, yet wearied into a pallor which almost let out the stars. She saw the eye of a hawk as its victims knew it, and for a time she kept pace with a lark and saw the music in his throat before he uttered it. Joy escaped her in a little sound, and then she felt that the earth was solid under her.
Daniel and Rupert were still discussing the great things which did not matter, and idly she marvelled at their capacity for argument and quarrel; but she realized that for Rupert, at least, this was a sport equivalent to her game of sailing with the clouds, and when she turned to look at him, she saw him leaning against his heather bush, wearing the expression most annoying to an antagonist, and flicking broken heather stalks at Daniel's angular and monumental knees.
"You talk of the mind," Rupert said, "as though it were the stomach."
"I do," Daniel said heavily.
"And your stomach at that! Bulk and fat foods—"
"This is merely personal," Daniel said, "and a sign that you are being beaten, as usual. I was going to say that in a day of fuller knowledge we shall be able to predict the effect of emotions with the same certainty—"
"With which you now predict the effect of Eliza's diet. God forbid! Anyhow, I shall be dead. Come on."
Daniel stood up obediently, for they had now reached the point where they always rose and walked off side by side, in the silence of amusement and indignation.
There was a rustling in the heather, and she heard no more of them. Then the thud of approaching footsteps ran along the ground, and she sat up to see Miriam with Zebedee.
"I went fishing," Miriam said, "and this is what I caught."
He smiled at Helen a little uncertainly. "I had some time to spare, and I thought you wouldn't mind if I came up here. You used to let me."
"I've always wanted you to come back," she said with her disconcerting frankness.
"You may sit down," Miriam said, "and go on telling us about your childhood. Helen, we'd hardly said how d'you do when he began on that. It's a sure sign of age."
"I am old."
"Oh," Helen murmured. "No." She dropped back into her bed. She could see Zebedee's grey coat sleeve and the movements of his arm as he found and filled his pipe, and by moving her head half an inch she saw his collar and his lean cheek.
"Yes, old," he said, "and the reason I mentioned my unfortunate childhood was to point a moral in content. When I was young I was made to go to chapel twice on Sundays, three times counting Sunday-school, and here I find you all wandering about the moor."
"I'd rather have had the chapel," Miriam said. "One could at least look at people's hats."
"The hats in our particular Bethel were chiefly bonnets. Bonnets with things in them that nodded, and generally black." He stared across the moor. "I don't know that the memory of them is a thing to cherish."
Helen tried to do justice to the absent. "We were never told not to go. We could do what we liked."
"Ah, but we weren't encouraged," Miriam chuckled. "You have to be encouraged, don't you, Zebedee, before you go into places like that?"
"My father had other methods," he said grimly.
The silence tightened on his memories, and no one spoke until Miriam said, almost gently, "Please tell us some more."
"The pews were a bright yellow, and looked sticky. The roof was painted blue, with stars. There was a man in a black gown with special knowledge on the subject of sin."
"That," Miriam said pensively, "must have been amusing."
"No. Only dreary and somehow rather unclean. I liked to go to the surgery afterwards and smell the antiseptics."
"I wish the horrible black-gowned man could know that," Helen said fiercely.
He looked down, smiling tolerantly. "But it doesn't matter now."
"It does. It will always matter. You were little—" She broke off and huddled herself closer in her shawl, as though she held a small thing in its folds.
He found nothing to say; he was swept by gratitude for this tenderness. It was, he knew, what she would have given to anything needing comfort, but it was no less wonderful for that and he was warmed by it and, at the same time, disturbed. She seemed to have her hands near his heart, and they were pressing closer.
"Go on," said Miriam, unconscious of the emotions that lived near her. "I like to hear about other people's miseries. Were you rather a funny little boy?"
"I expect so."
"Pale and plain, I should think," she said consideringly, "with too big a nose. Oh, it's all right now, rather nice, but little boys so often have noses out of proportion. I shall have girls. Did you wear black clothes on Sunday?"
"I'm afraid so."
"Poor little ugly thing! Helen, are you listening? Black clothes! And your hair oiled?"
"No, not so bad as that. My mother was a very particular lady."
"Can you tell us about her?" Helen asked.
"I don't know that I can."
"You oughtn't to have suggested it," Miriam said in a reproof which was ready to turn to mockery at a hint from Zebedee.
"He won't tell us if he doesn't want to. You wouldn't be hurt by anything we said, would you?"
"Of course not. The difficulty is that there seems nothing to tell. She was so quiet, as I remember her, and so meek, and yet one felt quite safe with her. I don't think she was afraid, as I was, but there was something, something that made things uncertain. I can't explain."
"I expect she was too gentle at the beginning," Helen said. "She let him have his own way and then she was never able to catch up, and all the time—all the time she was thinking perhaps you were going to suffer because she had made that mistake. And that would make her so anxious not to make another, wouldn't it? And so—"
"And so it would go on. But how did you discover that?"
"Oh, I know some things," she said, and ended feebly, "about some things."
"She died when I was thirteen and Daniel three, and my father was very unhappy."
"I didn't like your father a bit," Miriam said.
"He was a good man in his way, his uncomfortable way."
"Then I like them wickeder than that."
"It made him uncomfortable too, you know."
"If you're going to preach—"
He laughed. "I didn't mean to. I was only offering you the experience of my maturity!"
"Well, I'm getting stiff and cold. Helen likes that kind of thing. Give it to her while I get warm. Unless you'll lend me your shawl, Helen?"
"No, I won't."
"I must go too," said Zebedee, but he did not move and Helen did not speak. His thoughts were on her while his eyes were on the dark line of moor touching the sky; yet he thought less of her than of the strange ways of life and the force which drew him to this woman whom he had known a child so short a time ago. He wondered if what he felt were real, if the night and the mystery of the moor had not bewitched him, for she had come to him at night out of the darkness with the wind whistling round her. It was so easy, as he knew, for a solitary being to fasten eagerly on another, like a beaten boat to the safety of a buoy, but while he thus admonished himself, he had no genuine doubt. He knew that she was what he wanted: her youth, her wisdom, her smoothness, her serenity, and the many things which made her, even the stubbornness which underlay her calm.
Into these reflections her voice came loudly, calling him from the heights.
"I do wish you wouldn't keep Eliza. She's a most unsuitable person to look after you."
He laughed so heartily and so long that she sat up to look at him. "I don't know what's amusing you," she said.
"It's so extraordinarily like you!"
"Oh!"
"And why don't you think her suitable?"
"From things Daniel has told me."
"Oh, Daniel is an old maid. She's ugly and disagreeable, but she delivers messages accurately, and that's all I care about. Don't believe all Daniel's stories."
"They worry me," she said.
"Do you worry about every one's affairs?" he asked, and feared she would hear the jealousy in his voice.
"I know so few people, you see. Oughtn't I to?"
"I'm humbly thankful," he said with a light gravity.
"Then I'll go on. Aren't you lonely on Sundays in that house with only the holly bush and the rowan and the apple-trees that bear no fruit? Why don't you come up here?"
"May I?"
"You belong to the moor, too," she said.
He nodded his thanks for that. "Who told you about our trees? Daniel again?"
"Yes; but I asked him."
He stood up. "I must go back. Thank you and good night."
It was getting dark and, with a heavy feeling in her heart, she watched him walk away, while Miriam ran up with a whirl of skirts, crying out, "Is he going? Is he going? Come and see him to the road."
Helen shook her head. She would let Miriam have anything she wanted, but she would not share with her. She turned her back on the thin striding figure and the small running one behind it, and she went into the house. There, the remembrance of Mildred Caniper went with her from room to room, and the house itself seemed to close on Helen and hold her in.
She stood at the schoolroom window and watched the twilight give place to night. In the garden, the laurel bushes were quite black and it seemed to her that the whole world was dead except herself and the lurking shadows that filled the house. Zebedee, who tramped the long road to the town, had become hardly more than a toy which had been wound up and would go on for ever. Then, on the hillside, a spark leapt out, and she knew that John or Lily Brent had lighted the kitchen lamp.
Miriam took Zebedee to the road and, finding him uninteresting, she gave him a scant good-night and left him. She sank into the heather and told herself many times that she did not know what to do. She had wit enough to realize that she was almost ridiculous in her discontent, but for that Notya must be blamed, and her own immediate necessity was to find amusement. In all the vastness of the moor, George Halkett was the only being who could give her a taste of what she wanted, and she had quarrelled with George Halkett. She sat and glowered at the white road cutting the darkness of the moor and she thought it had the cruel look of a sharp and powerful knife. It seemed to threaten her and, though she had all youth's faith in her good fortune, at times she was taken by a panic lest she should turn out to be one of those whom fate left stranded. That fear was on her now, for there were such women, she knew, and sometimes they were beautiful! Perhaps they were often beautiful, and in the long run it might be better to be good, yet she would not have exchanged her looks for all the virtues in the world.
"Nobody would!" she cried aloud, and, seizing two bunches of heather by their stalks, she shook them violently.
Nevertheless, she might grow old on the moor and marry Daniel in despair. She shuddered. No one could love Daniel enough to pardon his appearance, and amusement would soon change to hatred. She tormented herself with pictures of their common life. She saw his shapeless clothes lying about the room she had to share with him; his boots stared up at her from the hall with much of his own expression. She heard him talking legally to her through their meals and saw him gazing at her with his peculiar, timid worship. But if they had children, they would have Daniel's stamp on them, and then he would grow bold and take all she gave for granted. Girls and boys alike, they would be big and gaunt and clumsy, but considerate and good.
She threw her arms across her breast and held herself in a fury of self-possession. Marriage suddenly appeared to her as an ugly thing even if it attained to the ideal. No, no! Men were good to play with, to tease and torture, but she had fixed her limits, and she fixed them with some astonishment for her own reserve. The discovery of this inherent coldness had its effect: it bounded her future in a manner which was too disturbing for much contemplation, but it also gave her a new freedom of action, assuring her that she need have no fears for her own restraint, that when her chance came, she might go into the world like a Helen of Troy who could never be beguiled. In the meantime, though she had quarrelled with George Halkett, she remembered that she had not forsworn his company; she had only sworn to punish him for having told the truth, and she easily pretended not to know that her resentment was no more than an excuse.
She swung herself to her feet, and not without fear, for the moor had never been her friend, she walked quickly towards the patch of darkness made by the larch-trees. "I am being driven to this," she thought dramatically and with the froth of her mind. She went with her head held tragically high, but in her throat, where humour met excitement, there was a little run of laughter.
The trees stood without movement, as though they were weighted by foreknowledge and there was alarm in the voice of the stream. She stopped short of the water and stood by the brown path that led down to the farm, and her feet could feel the softness of many falls of larch needles. She listened and she could hear nothing but the small noises of the wood and all round it the moor was like a circle of enchantment keeping back intruders. There was no wind, but she was cold and her desire for George had changed its quality. She wanted the presence of another human being in this stillness; she would have welcomed Mrs. Samson with a shout and even Notya with a smile, but she found herself unable to turn and make for home. It would have been like letting danger loose on her.
"George!" she called loudly, before she knew she was going to do it. "George, George, George!" Her voice, shriller than its wont, raged at her predicament.
A dog barked in the hollow and came nearer. She heard George silence him, and she knew that man and dog were approaching through the wood. Then her fears vanished and she strolled a few paces from the trees and stood, an easy mark for George when he appeared.
"Was it you who called?" he asked her from a little distance.
"Me?" Now he was close to her, and she saw his guarded eyes soften unwillingly.
"Somebody called. Didn't you hear the dog barking? Somebody called 'George!'"
"Perhaps," she ventured in the falsely innocent manner which both recognized as foolish and unworthy and in which both took a different delight, "perhaps it was—thought-reading!"
"With the dog?" he sneered.
"You and the dog," she said, joining them deliberately. "It's getting so dark that I can hardly see your cross face. That's a good thing, because I want to say thank you for driving Uncle Alfred and Notya to the station."
"That's all right," he said, and added with a sullen curiosity, "Is he the one who's going to adopt you?"
"Yes."
"He hasn't done it yet?"
"I'm not sure that I want to go. George, shall I tell you something? Something charming, a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night—I did call you!"
"Well," he said after a pause, "I knew that."
"You weren't certain. Tell the truth! Were you certain?"
"No, I was not," he said with the sulky honesty which should have moved her.
"And had you been thinking of me?"
He would not answer that.
"I shan't be hurt," she said, swaying from foot to foot, "because I know!" Against the invading blackness her face and teeth gleamed clearly.
"You're like a black cat!" he burst out, in forgetfulness of himself.
"A witch's cat!"
"A witch."
"Do you think witches are ever afraid? Only when they see the cross, isn't it? But I was, George, when I called out."
"What of?"
"I—don't know. The quietness and the dark."
He gave a short laugh which tried to conceal his pleasure in her weakness.
"Aren't you ever?"
"Can't remember it."
"Not of anything?"
"No."
"How—stupid of you."
"Stupid?"
"Yes, when the world's full of things you don't understand."
"But nothing happens."
That was her own complaint, but from him the words came in the security of content. "But tonight—" she began, shivered lightly and raised her hand. "What's that?"
He lifted his head; the dog, sitting at his feet, had cocked his ears. "Nothing."
"I heard something."
Hardly heeded, he put his strong fingers on her wrist and grasped it. His voice was rich and soft. "What's the matter with you tonight?"
Unmistakably now, a sound came from the hollow; not, this time, the raging of old Halkett, but a woman's cry for help, clear and insistent.
"It must be my father," he said, and his hand fell away from Miriam's; but for a few seconds he stared at her as though she could tell him what had happened. Then he went after the dog in his swift passage through the trees, while, urged by an instinct to help and a need for George's solid company, Miriam followed. She was soon outstripped, so that her descent was made alone. Twigs crackled under her feet, the ranks of trees seemed to rush past her as she went, and, with the return of self-remembrance, she knew that this was how she had felt long ago when she read fairy stories about forests and enchanted castles.
Yet she would have been less alarmed at the sight of a moated, loop-holed pile than at this of Halkett's farm, a white-washed homestead, with light beaming from a window on the ground floor, the whole encompassed by a merely mortal possibility of strange events. Her impulse had been to rush into the house, but she stood still, feeling the presence of the trees like a thick curtain shutting away the outer, upper world and, having paused, she found that she could not pursue her course.
"I must go back," she whispered. After all, this was not her affair.
A murmur of voices came from the lighted room; the movement of a horse in the stables was the friendliest sound she had ever heard. Reluctantly, for she was alive with curiosity, she turned to go when a step rang on the flagged passage of the farm and George stood in the doorway. He beckoned and met her half way across the yard.
"He's gone," he said, and he looked dazed. "Can't believe it," he muttered.
"Oh!" she said under her breath. "Oh, dear!" It was her turn to put a hand on him, for she was afraid of death.
"Can't believe it," he said again, and taking her with him, he went as though he were drawn, towards the lighted windows and looked in.
"Yes," he said, assuring himself that this thing really was.
Fascinated by the steadfastness of his gaze, Miriam looked too and drew back with a muffled cry. She had seen the old man rigid on a red velvet sofa, his head on a yellow cushion, his grey hair in some way coarsened by the state of death, his limbs clad in the garments of every day and strangely insulted by them. Near him, with her back to the window and straight and stiff as a sentinel, sat Mrs. Biggs, the housekeeper, the knob of her smooth black hair defying destiny.
Still whispering, Miriam begged, "George, don't look any more." Her horror was as much for the immobile woman as for the dead man. "Come away, before she turns round. I want to go home. George—I'm sorry."
"Yes," he said.
"Good-night."
"Good-night," he answered, and she saw him look through the window again.
Going across the moor, she cried feebly. She wished old Halkett had not been lying on the red sofa. He should have died in the big kitchen of his fathers, or upstairs in a great bed, not in that commonly-furnished little sitting-room where the work-basket of Mrs. Biggs kept company with a cheap china lamp and photographs in frames. She wondered how they would manage to undress him, and for how long Mrs. Biggs would sit beside him like a fate, a fate in a red blouse and a brown skirt. Perhaps even now they were pulling off his clothes. Terrible for George to have to do that, she thought, yet it seemed natural enough work for Mrs. Biggs, with her hard mouth and cold eyes, and no doubt she had often put him to bed in the lusty days of his carousals. Perhaps the dead could really see from under their stiff eyelids, and old Halkett would laugh at the difficulty with which they disrobed him for this last time. Perhaps he had been watching when George and she looked through the window. Until now she had never seen him when he did not leer at her, and she felt that he must still be leering under the mask of death.
The taint of what she had looked on hung heavily about her, and the fresh air of the moor could not clear it away. Crying still, in little whimpers which consoled her, she stole through the garden and the house to the beautiful solitude of Ph[oe]be's room and the cleanliness of linen sheets.
Supperless she lay there, by turn welcoming and rejecting the pictures which appeared on the dark wall of her mind, and when Helen knocked on the door she was not bidden to enter.
"Don't you want anything to eat?" she called.
"No."
"What's the matter?"
"I—feel sick."
"Then mayn't I come in and look after you?" Helen asked in a voice which impelled Miriam to bark an angry negative.
It was Helen, who liked to help people, to whom this thing should have happened, yet Miriam possessed her experience jealously; it had broken into the monotony of life and to that extent she was grateful.
"And I must be very kind to George," she decided before she went to sleep.
She dropped her white eyelids the next morning when John gave the news of the old man's death, for she did not want to betray her knowledge.
"Oh!" Helen said, and Rupert remarked lightly and watchfully that Zebedee would now be less often on the moor.
"There's still the funeral," Helen said oddly.
"And let's hope they'll bury him soon," John added, and so finished with old Halkett.
Helen was still thoughtful. "Perhaps we ought to go and be nice to George. There won't be anything we can do, but we might ask him if there is."
"The less you have to do with George—" John began, and Miriam interrupted him, clicking her tongue.
"Helen, Helen, haven't you heard about George and Lily Brent? A dreadful story. Ask John."
"If you're not careful," he said menacingly, "I'll do what she did to him."
"No, no, you won't, Johnny; for, in spite of everything, you're a little gentleman."
"Oh, do be quiet, you two! Rupert's trying to say something."
"Send a note of condolence to George," he advised, "and I'll go to the funeral. It's no good asking John to do it. He wouldn't shine. Heavens! it's late, and I haven't cleaned the boots!"
The boys went about their business and left the girls to theirs.
"I don't think a note is enough for George," Helen said as she rolled up her sleeves. "A man without a mother or a father, and only a Mrs. Biggs!"
"H'm," Miriam commented. "Except for Mrs. Biggs, I don't know that he's to be pitied. Still, I'm quite willing to be agreeable, unless you mean to go and knock at the farm door?"
"No. Couldn't we catch him somewhere!"
"Yes," Miriam said too promptly. She made a cautious pause. "He won't be riding on the moor today, because there'll be undertakers and things. If we went down the road—or shall I go alone?"
"Both of us—to represent the family. And we can say we're sorry—"
"But we're not."
"Yes, in a way. Sorry he hadn't a nicer father to be sorry for."
"What about ours?" Miriam asked.
"He may be dead, too, by now."
"And that will matter less to us than old Halkett does to George."
"But the great thing," Helen said, "is to have people one can't be ashamed of."
"Oh!"
"I know; but it's true. And our father would always look nice and be polite, even when he was dying. Old Halkett—"
"Don't talk about him! Come along. We'll catch George on his way to that shop with the pictures of hearses in the window. If I die before you, don't put me in one of those black carts."
"I don't think I could put you into anything," Helen said with simple fervour.
"Then you'd have to mummify me and stick me up in the hall beside the grandfather clock, and you'd think the ticking was my heart."
"There are hearts beating all over the house now," Helen said. "But this is not meeting George," she added, and rolled her sleeves down again.
They waylaid him successfully where the road met Halkett's lane, and from his horse he looked down on the two upturned faces.
"We've heard about Mr. Halkett," Helen said, gazing with friendliness and without embarrassment into his eyes. "I suppose there's nothing we can do?"
"Nothing, thanks."
"And Rupert said he would like to go to the funeral, if he may."
"Thank you. I'll let him know about it." He glanced at Miriam and hesitated, yet when he spoke it was in a franker voice than the one she was used to hear. "I'm afraid you were upset last night."
Her answering look made a pact between them. "We didn't hear about it till this morning."
He nodded, watching her through his thick lashes. He gave her a strong impression that he was despising her a little, and she saw him look from her to Helen as though he made comparisons. Indeed, at that moment, he thought that these sisters were like thirst and the means to quench it, like heat and shade; and a sudden restlessness made him shift in his seat.
"I expect you have a lot to do," Helen said. "Good-bye."
"Good-bye. And thank you," he said gruffly, and caught the flash of Miriam's smile as he turned.
Helen stood looking after him. "Poor George!" she said. "I rather like him. I wish he wouldn't drink."
"Exaggerated stories," Miriam remarked neatly.
"Oh, yes, but he looks as if he had never had a chance of being nice."
"I don't believe he has ever wanted one," Miriam said.
Uncle Alfred wrote a short note from Calais, and on the day when old Halkett was taken to his grave another letter came to say that Philip Caniper was dead before the travellers could reach him.
"Then we're poor little orphans, like George," Miriam said, and, with the peering look which asked how far she might venture, she added, "And, like George, we have our Mrs. Biggs."
If Helen heard those words, she made no sign. "She'll never be happy again," she said.
"Well, she never has been happy, and she has never wanted us to be happy, so nothing's changed."
"What can we do?" Helen went on, and her thoughts alighted on such practical kindnesses as a perfect state of cleanliness in the house to which Notya would return, flowers in her bedroom for a welcome, and a great willingness to do what pleased her. "But we mustn't be too obvious," she murmured to herself.
"And whatever you do, don't slobber."
"Is it likely?" Helen asked superbly.
The firmest intentions in that direction would have been frustrated by the sight of Mildred Caniper's cold face, and Helen saw with surprise that it was almost as it had always been. Her "Well, Helen!" was as calm as her kiss, and only when she raised her veil was her bitter need of sleep revealed. Then, too, Helen saw that her features and her fair, bright colouring had suffered an indefinable blurring, as though, in some spiritual process, their sharpness had been lost, and while she looked at her, Helen felt the full weight of responsibility for this woman settling once more on her own slim shoulders. Yet she noticed that the shadows which had hung so thickly in the house became thinner as soon as Mildred Caniper entered it. No doubt they had slipped into the body which was their home.
"Daniel is here," Helen said, "because it's Saturday and we didn't know you were coming."
"Well?"
"I thought you might be sorry. And we have asked him to stay the night."
"I promise not to turn him out," Mildred Caniper said, with her humorous look, and Helen laughed back with a friendliness for which Miriam, listening in a corner, admired her secretly.
"But I shall want to talk to you this evening when you are all together," Notya said.
For that ceremony, Miriam wore her customary black with an air which at once changed the dress into one of mourning; the fashion of her hair was subdued to match her manners, and Daniel, having a dim notion that he might unknowingly have offended, asked in his clumsy way what troubled her.
She edged closer to him and looked up, and he could see that she was laughing at herself, though that helped him not at all.
"Isn't my father dead? And aren't we going to have a family consultation in the dining-room? Well, here am I."
"I see."
"What do you see?"
He turned away. "I'm not going to tell you."
"Ah, Daniel dear, do! I know I'm horrid and frivolous and vain, and I tease you, but I'm very fond of you and I should love—oh, love—you to tell me something nice. Quick, Daniel! Quick, before the others come in!"
He was red, and his forehead glistened as he said, "You'll only throw it up at me."
"Oh, as if I would! I don't care for that expression, but I won't. Daniel, some one's coming!"
He blew his nose and bent over his book, yet through the trumpeting and the manipulation of his handkerchief, she heard a word.
"Beautiful," he mumbled.
"Always?"
He nodded, and like a delighted child, she clapped her hands.
Rupert, less debonair than usual, opened the door. "Come on," he said. "We're all ready. Daniel, stay where you are. We don't want you tumbling into the conclave."
"All right, all right."
"Got something to keep you quiet?"
"Greek grammar."
"Good man. Now then!" He plunged across the hall as though it were an icy bath.
In the candle-lighted dining-room, Mildred Caniper sat by a wood fire. The table barricaded her from the four Canipers who sat and looked at her with serious eyes, and suddenly she found that she had very little to say. Those eyes and the four mouths curved, in their different ways, for passion and resolve, seemed to be making courteous mock of her; yet three at least of the Canipers were conscious only of pity for her loneliness behind the shining table.
"After all," she said, trying to be at ease, "there is not much to tell you; but I felt that, perhaps, you have never understood your father very well."
"He did not give us the opportunity," Rupert said.
John had his shoulders raised as though he would shield his ears from family discordances, and he swore inwardly at Rupert for answering back. What was the good of that? The man was dead, and he might be allowed to rest. It was strange, he thought, that Rupert, under his charming ways, had a hardness of which he himself was not capable.
"No," Mildred Caniper was saying, and by her tone she shifted the blame from her husband to his children. The word acted as a full stop to her confidences, and there was an uneasy pause.
"But tell us, please," Helen said, leaning forward.
"Oh, please," Rupert added.
Mildred Caniper smiled waveringly, between pride and pain. "I was only going to tell you a little about him, but now I don't know that I can." She swallowed hard. "I wanted you to know how gifted he was."
"How?" Rupert asked.
"He wrote," she said, defying their criticism of what they had not seen, "but he destroyed all he did because he was never satisfied. I found nothing—anywhere."
Here was a father whom Rupert could understand, and for the first time he regretted not having known him; but to John it was foolishness for a man to set his hand to work which was not good enough to stand. He must content himself with a humbler job.
"He liked only the best," Mildred Caniper said, doing her duty by him, and the next moment she caught the full shaft of Miriam's unwary glance which was bright with the conviction that her father's desertion needed no more explanation.
Mildred Caniper's mind registered the personal affront, and swept on to its implication as rain sweeps up a valley. The result was darkness, and as she sat straight and motionless in her chair, she seemed to herself to struggle, for her soul sighted despair. Long ago, she had taken life into her hands and used it roughly, and life was taking its slow revenge. In the shuttered room by the sea, the dead man, deaf to the words with which she had hurried to him, and here, in this house, the eyes of Miriam announced her failure, yet to that cold clay and to this living flesh she had been, and was, a power.
She dropped her hands limply. She was tired of this fictitious power; she was almost ready to pretend no longer; and with that thought she found herself being observed by Helen with a tenderness she was not willing to endure. She spoke abruptly, resigning the pious task of sweetening Philip Caniper's memory.
"Your father has left you each nearly a hundred pounds a year"—she glanced at Miriam—"to be handed over when you have reached the age of twenty-one."
There was a feeling that some one ought to thank him, but no one spoke, and his children left the room with an unaccountable sense of guilt.
In the safety of the schoolroom Miriam's voice rose bitterly: "Oh, why aren't we an ordinary family? Why can't we cry for a father who leaves us nearly a hundred pounds?"
"Try to," Rupert advised. He was smiling queerly to himself.
"Helen, isn't it horrid?"
"No: I don't like crying."
"John, you look as though you're going to refuse the money. I will if you do. John—"
"Don't be a little fool," he said. "Refuse it! I'm holding on to it with both hands."
She drooped forlornly, but no one seemed to notice her. Daniel was absorbed in the Greek grammar, and the others were thinking their own thoughts.
"I'll go on to the moor," she told herself, and she slipped through the window in search of what adventure she could find. Outside the garden she paused and nodded towards the house.
"I don't care," she said. "It's all their fault. And Helen—oh, I could kill Helen!" Wickedly she tried to mimic Helen's face.
A few minutes later John followed through the window, and he went into the darkness with a strange excitement. For a time he did not think, for he was experiencing all the relief of daring to feel freely, and the effect was at first only a lightening of the heart and feet. Hardly knowing where he wandered, he found himself on the moor behind Brent Farm, and there, in the heather, he sat down to light his pipe. He was puzzled when the match quivered in his hand, and then he became aware that innumerable pulses were beating in his body, and with that realization others rushed on him, and he knew how he had held himself in check for months, and how he desired the touch of Lily Brent's splendid strength and the sight of her drowsy, threatening eyes. Picturing her, he could not rest, and he rose and marched aimlessly to and fro. He had been a fool, he told himself: he had denied his youth and doubted her: proud in poverty, he should have gone to her and offered all he had, the love and labour of his body and brain, honouring her in asking her to take him empty-handed if she would take him at all. Now he must go to her as though she could be bought at the price of a hundred pounds a years and the poor thing he had once called his pride, known now for a mere notion gathered from some source outside himself. He who had scorned convention had been its easy victim, and he bit hard at his pipe stem and grunted in disgust.
"We get half our ideas out of books," he said. "No woman would have been such a fool. They get things at first hand."
He stopped and pointed at the farm. No doubt the woman down there had read his thoughts and laughed at him, yes, loving him or not, she must be laughing at him. He laughed himself, then listened for the chance sound of her distant voice. He could hear footsteps on the cobbled yard, the clattering of a pail, the shrill stave of a song uttered by the maid-servant, but no more; and he paced on until the lights in Brent Farm went out and his own home was darkened.
In the grey of the morning, he went down the track. Mists were lying on the moor; above them, trees showed like things afloat, and when he crossed the road he felt that he was breasting silent floods. Through his thick boots he could feel the cold of ground soaked by a night of unexpected rain, and against his gaiters the long grasses rid themselves of their loads of drops and swung back to their places as he passed. He turned at the sound of footsteps on the road and saw one of Halkett's men walking through that semblance of grey water. The man gave a nod of greeting, John raised a hand, and the peace of the waking day was not shattered by human speech.
In the corner of the meadow near the house, the cows, looming large and mysterious and unfamiliar, were waiting with hanging heads, and John stood and looked at them in a kind of dream before he fetched his pail and stool and settled down to work. His hands were not steady and the cow was restless at his touch, and when he spoke to her the sound of his own voice startled him, for the world was leagued with silence and even the hissing of the milk into the pail had the extravagance of a cascade.
As he worked, he watched the house. No smoke came from its chimneys, but at length he heard the opening of a door and Lily Brent appeared. He thought she was like the morning, fresh and young, with all the promise and danger of a new day, and while he looked at her his hands dropped idle. She stood on the step and nodded to him before she walked across the grass.
"You here alone?" she said, and there was a fine frown on her brow. "Where's the rest of them? If I don't rout them out myself—"
"Don't," he said. "It's early, and it's Sunday morning. They'll come soon enough." He stood up and rested his folded arms on the cow's back and looked at Lily.
"She'll have the pail over," she warned him quickly.
He put it out of danger and returned.
"You haven't fetched my stool," she said.
"I forgot it. Wait a bit. I'll get it soon."
"What's the matter with you this morning? We're wasting time."
"Let's waste time," he said. He looked round at the mists floating off the moor. The light was clearing; the cows had dwindled; the road was no longer a fairy flood but a highway for the feet of men.
"I want you to pretend it's yesterday," he said.
"What's the matter with you, John?"
"I'm going to tell you. Will you pretend it's yesterday?"
"Yes. It's Saturday morning, a busy day for us. We ought to get to work."
"Come a step nearer," he said, and she obeyed.
He clutched the hair on the cow's back and spoke in a harsh voice. "Will you marry me?" he said, frowning and looking her in the eyes. "I've hardly any money, but I love you. I want you. I didn't know what to do. If I'd waited till I had as much as you, I might have lost you. I didn't know what to do, but I thought I'd tell you."
"You needn't explain any more," she said. Her hands, too, fell on the cow's back, and with a little movement she bade him take them. He gathered her fingers into his and turned and twisted them.
"I thought—if you wanted me—why should we live on opposite sides of the way? I can help you—and I love you." He relied on that.
"I love you," he said again.
He heard her ask softly, "Why?"
"Because—because—oh, you're all I want. You're like the earth, like herbs, like fresh green grass. I've got your hands: give me the rest of you!"
Her eyes flashed open, he saw and heard her laugh, and their lips met across the bulky barrier.
"But I want you in my arms," he said, and in the clearing light he held her there, though the sound of an opening window told them that the farm was waking.
On the night of Mildred Caniper's return, Helen felt that the house had changed. A new emotion was mingling with the rest, and it was as unmistakable as a scent, and like a scent, it would grow fainter, but now it hung in every room and on the stairs. Surely Mr. Pinderwell must be disturbed by it. She fancied his grey old face puckered in bewilderment and his steps going faster up and down the stairs. Helen, too, was restless, and having slept uneasily, she woke in the dark of the night.
Outside her widely-opened windows the poplars were moving gently. They seemed near enough to touch, but she found something formidable in their aspect. Black, tall and bare, they watched her to the accompaniment of their indifferent whispering and swaying, and they warned her that whatever might be her lot, theirs would continue to be this one of lofty swinging. So, aware of all that happened they had always watched and whispered, and only tonight was she resentful in her love for them. Could they not feel a little sorrow for the woman burdened with trouble who had come back to the house? Had not the sense of that trouble stolen through the doors and windows? Beyond the garden walls there was, she knew, immunity from human pain. The moor understood it and therefore remained unmoved. It was the winds that grieved, the grey clouds that mourned and the sunshine that exulted; under all these, and changed only on the surface, the moor spread itself tranquilly, but the poplars were different. For Helen, all trees were people in another shape and she could not remember a time when these had not been her friends, but now they seemed not to care, and she started up in the sudden suspicion that nothing cared, that perhaps the great world of earth and sky and growing things had lives as absorbing and more selfish than her own.
"But only perhaps," she said aloud, asserting her faith in what she loved.
She pushed the pillow behind her back and stared into the clearing darkness of Jane's large bare room. The curved front of her elegant dressing-table with its oval mirror became distinct. Helen's clothes lay like a patch of moonlight on a chair, the tallboy and the little stool by which she reached the topmost drawers changed from their semblances of beasts to sedate and beautiful furniture. By the bedside, soft slippers waited with an invitation, and into them Helen soon slipped her feet, for it seemed to her that the trouble thickened with each minute and that Notya must be in need of help.
Yet, when she had noiselessly opened the door of the room opposite, she found Mildred Caniper sleeping in her narrow bed with the steadiness of complete fatigue, with something, too, touchingly childlike in her pose. She might have been a child who had cried bitterly for hours before she at last found rest, but Notya's grief, Helen divined, had not the simplicity which allowed of tears nor the beauty which was Mr. Pinderwell's consolation. It was not death which had hurt her.
Mildred Caniper's head had slid from the pillow and lay on her outstretched arm; the other arm, slender and round as youth, was thrown outside the bed-clothes, and only when Helen bent quite low could she see the frown of trouble between the brows. Then, feeling like a spy, she returned to the darkness of the landing where Ph[oe]be and Jane and Christopher were wondering what she did.
She might have been a mother who, waking from a bad dream, goes about the house to see that all is safe: she wished she could go into each room to make sure that its occupant was there, but such kindnesses had never been encouraged in a family trained to restraint; moreover, Miriam might wake in fright, Rupert was a light sleeper and John had an uncertain temper. There was nothing to do but to go back to bed, and she did not want to do that. She could not sleep, and she would rather stay on the landing with the Pinderwells, so she leaned against the wall and folded her arms across her breast. She wanted to be allowed to care for people practically and she wished her brothers and sister were small enough to be held in the arms which had to be contented with herself. She had, she complained silently to the Pinderwells, to pretend not to care for the others very much, lest she should weary them. But she had her secret visions of a large house with unencumbered shining floors on which children could slide, with a broad staircase down which they would come heavily, holding to the rails and bringing both feet to each stair. She lived there with them happily, not thwarted by moods and past miseries, and though she had not yet seen the father of those children about the house, tonight, as she stood in the covering darkness, she thought she heard his footsteps in the garden where the children played among the trees.
She moved abruptly, slipped, and sat down with a thud. Her laughter, like a ghost's, trickled through the stillness, and even while she laughed a door was opened and John appeared, holding a lighted candle in his hand.
"It's only me," Helen said.
"What the devil are you up to?"
"I'm not up to anything. I'm on the floor."
"Ill?"
"No."
"I thought I heard some one prowling about."
"Couldn't you sleep either?"
He put his fingers through his hair. "No, I couldn't sleep."
"The house is full of—something, isn't it?"
"Fools, I think," he answered, laughing a little. "Look here, you mustn't sit there. It's cold. Get up."
"Help me."
"Why didn't you put on your dressing-gown?"
"You didn't."
"I don't wear this flimsy rubbish. Go back to bed."
"Yes. What's the time?"
"One o'clock. The longest night I've ever known!"
Rather wistfully she looked at him. "What's the matter, John?"
"I'm waiting for tomorrow," he said almost roughly.
"So am I," she said, surprising herself so that she repeated the words slowly, to know their meaning. "So am I—and it's here."
"Not till the dawn," he said. "Go to sleep."
Together their doors were softly closed and Helen knew now whose footsteps were in the children's garden. She went to the window and nodded to the poplars. "And you knew, I suppose; but so did I, really, all the time."
She slept profoundly and woke to a new wonder for the possibilities of life, a new fear for the dangers which might assail those who had much to cherish; and now she descried dimly the truth she was one day to see in the full light, that there is no gain without loss and no loss without gain, that things are divinely balanced, though man may sometimes throw his clumsy weight into the scale. Yet under these serious thoughts there was a song in her heart and her pleasure in its music shone out of her eyes so brilliantly that Rupert, watching her with tolerant amusement, asked what had befallen her.
"It's only that it's Sunday," the quick-witted Miriam said and Helen replied with the gravity which was more misleading than a lie: "Yes, that's all."
Nevertheless, when Zebedee arrived on the moor, her brightness faded. Already the desire of possession hurt her and Miriam had attached herself to him as though she owned him. She was telling him about Philip Caniper's death, about the money which was to come to them, and asserting that Daniel now wanted to marry her more than ever. Daniel was protesting through his blushes, and Zebedee was laughing. It all seemed very foolish, and she was annoyed with Zebedee for even pretending to be amused.
"Oh, don't," she murmured and lay back.
"Be quiet, prig!"
"She's not that, is she?" Zebedee asked, his strangely flecked eyes twinkling.
"Oh, a bad one. She disapproves of everything she doesn't like herself."
"Helen, wake up! I want to know if this is true."
"Do you think it is?"
"I'm afraid it's very likely."
"Oh, dear!" she sighed, "I don't know what to do about it. A person without opinions is just nothing, and you really were being very silly just now. I hate jokes about marrying."
"H'm, they are rather feeble," Zebedee owned.
"Vulgar, I think," she said, with her little air of Mildred Caniper.
"Ah," said Rupert, tapping Daniel lightly on the head, "a man with a brain like this can't develop a taste for the real thing. I've seen him shaking over jokes that made me want to cry, but you mustn't expect too much of him. He does very well. Come along, my boy, and let's have some reasonable talk."
"He doesn't want to go!" Miriam cried.
"But he must. I know what's good for him."
"He looks just like an overgrown dancing bear," Miriam said as she watched the two figures stepping across the moor.
Helen continued her own gloomy thoughts. "No one can like a prig."
"Oh, yes," Zebedee assured her cheerfully, "I can. Besides, you'll grow out of it."
"She never will! She's getting worse, and it's with living here. As a doctor, I think you might prescribe a change for her—for all of us. What will become of us? I can't," she added bitterly, "be expected to marry a dancing bear!"
"If you're speaking of Daniel—" Zebedee began sharply.
"Oh, don't you be cross, too! I did think I had one friend!"
"Daniel's a good man. He may be queer to look at, but he's sound. You only hurt yourself, you know, when you speak like that."
Miriam pouted and was silent, and Helen was not sure whether to be angry with Zebedee for speaking thus to her who must be spoiled, or glad that he could do it to one so beautiful, while he could preserve friendliness for a prig. But her life-long loyalty refused this incipient rivalry; once more she decided that Miriam must have what she wanted, and she lay with clenched hands and a tranquil brow while she listened to the chatter which proclaimed Miriam's recovery.
Helen could see nothing but a sky which was colourless and unclouded, and she wished she could be like that—vague, immaterial, without form. Perhaps to reach that state was happiness; it might be negation, but it would be peace and she had a young, desperate wish to die and escape the alternations of joy and pain. "And yet this is nothing," she said with foresight, and she stood up. "I'm going home."
"No!" Zebedee exclaimed in the middle of one of Miriam's sentences.
"I must. Notya's all alone. Good-night."
He would not say the word, and he walked beside her. "But I'm your guest," he reminded her.
"I know. But you see, she's lonely."
"And I've been lonely all my life."
She caught her breath. "Have you?" Her hands moved against her skirt and she looked uneasily about her. "Have you?" She was pulled two ways, and with a feeling of escape, she found an answer for him. "But you are you. You're not like her. You're strong. You can manage without any one."
"I've had to."
"Oh," she moaned, "don't make me feel unhappy about going."
"I wouldn't have you unhappy about anything."
"You're a wonderful friend to me. Good-night."
He watched her move away, but when she had gone a few paces she ran back.
"It wasn't quite the truth," she said. "It was only partly Notya."
"You're not angry with me?"
"With you? I couldn't be. It was just my silly self, only I didn't want to be half truthful with you."
Their hands touched and parted, and he waited until she was out of sight before he went back to Miriam.
"You're a little pest," he said, "wasting my time—"
"Ha, ha! I knew. I won't waste any more of it. Wasn't it horrid of me? If you hadn't scolded me I might have been kind; but I always, always pay people out."
"Silly thing to do," he muttered, and went off.
Miriam chuckled under her whistling as she strolled across the moor. She did not whistle a tune, but uttered sweet, plaintive notes like a bird's call, and as she reached the stream a tall figure rose up from the darkness of the ground.
"Oh, are you here, George?" she said. "I'm glad. I'm sick of everything."
"H'm. I'm glad I'm useful. Are the others having their usual prayer-meeting?"
"What do you mean?"
"That Mackenzie of yours and your brother, sitting in the dip and talking. I can't think what on earth they find to say."
"Well, you see, George, they are very clever people. Let us sit down. You can't—I mean you and I can't appreciate them properly."
"The Mackenzie looks a fool."
"He is a great friend of mine. You must not be rude. Manners makyth man. According to that, you are not always a man when you're with me."
He breathed deeply. "There's something about you—"
"Now you're blaming me, and that's not gallant."
"You think I'm not fit to breathe the same air with you, don't you?"
"Yes, sometimes." She sat hugging her knees and swaying to and fro, and with each forward movement her face neared his. "But at others you are quite presentable. Last night you were charming to me, George."
"I can be what I choose. D'you know that I had the same education as your brothers?"
"You're always saying that. But you forget that you didn't have me for a sister."
"No, thank God."
"Now—!"
"That's a compliment."
"Oh! And, George," she peered at him and dared herself to say the words, though old Halkett's ghost might be lurking among the trees: "I don't think your father can have been a ve-ry good influence on a wild young man like you."
"The old man's dead. Leave it at that. And who says I'm wild?"
"Aren't you? Don't disappoint me."
"I'm all right," he said with admirable simplicity, "if I don't drink."
"Then you mustn't, and yet I love to think that you're a bold, bad man."
His eyes, which rarely widened, did so now, and in the gathering dusk she saw a flash of light.
"You see, it makes me feel so brave, George."
"It ought to."
There was danger in his presence and she liked invoking it; but there was a certain coarseness, also invoked by her, from which she shrank, towards which she crept, step by step, again. She made no answer to his words. In her black dress and against the darkness of the wood, she was hardly more than a face and two small hands. There was a gentle movement among the trees; they were singing their welcome of a peaceful night; the running of the stream came loudly, giving itself courage for the plunge into the wood.
Miriam spoke in a low voice. "It's getting late. The others must have gone in. They'll wonder where I am."
"And they'd be horrified, I suppose, if they knew."
She bent towards him so that he might see her reproachful face.
"You've spoilt this lovely night. You don't match the sky and stars. I wish I hadn't met you."
"You needn't have done," he said.
"Are you sorry I did?" she challenged him.
"Oh, I don't know," he muttered almost to himself. "That's it. I never know."
She choked down the lilt of triumph in her voice. "I'll leave you to think, about it," she said and, looking at the high fir-wood, she added, "But I thought we were going to be such friends, after all."
Halkett stood up, and he said nothing, for his feelings were not to be put into words he could say to her. In her presence he suffered a mingling of pain and pleasure, anger and delight; cruelty strove in him with gentleness, coarseness with courtesy; he wanted to kiss her roughly and cast her off, yet he would have been grateful for the chance of serving her.