He put his hand on her shoulder. "We could peep through the windows. Are you coming?"
"I don't know," she said and there was a fluttering movement in her throat. "Don't you think it's rather dangerously near the road?"
"We could lock the gate," he said.
She dropped her face into her hands. "No, I can't come. I'm afraid. It's tempting things to happen."
"It has been empty for a long time," he went on in the same quiet tones. "I should think we could get it cheap."
She looked up again. "And I shall have a hundred pounds a year. That would pay the rent and keep the garden tidy."
He turned on her sharply. "Mind, I'm going to buy your clothes!"
"I can make them all," she said serenely. She leaned against him. "We love each other—and we know so little about each other. I don't even know how old you are!"
"I'm nearly thirty-one."
"That's rather old. You must know more than I do."
"I expect I do."
A faint line came between her eyebrows. "Perhaps you have been in love before."
"I have." His lips tightened at the memory.
"Very much in love?"
"Pretty badly."
"Then I hope she's dead!"
"I don't know."
"I can't bear her to be alive. Oh, Zebedee, why didn't you wait for me?"
"I should have loved you less, child."
"Would you? You never loved her like this?"
"She wasn't you."
In a little while she said, "I don't understand love. Why should we matter so much to each other? So much that we're afraid? Or do we only think we do? Perhaps that's it. It can't matter so much as we make out, because we die and it's all over, and no one cares any more about our little lives." On a sigh he heard her last words. "We mustn't struggle."
"Struggle?"
"For what we want."
To this he made no answer, but he had a strange feeling that the firm, fine body he held was something more perishable than glass and might be broken with a word.
He took her to the moor, but when they passed the empty house she would not look at it.
"The stream does run through the garden," he said. "We could sail boats on it." And he added thoughtfully, "We should have to dam it up somewhere to make a harbour."
Disease fell heavily on the town that autumn and Zebedee and Helen had to snatch their meetings hurriedly on the moor. She found that Miriam was right and she had no difficulty and no shame in running out into the darkness for a clasp of hands, a few words, a shadowy glimpse of Zebedee by the light of the carriage lamps, while the old horse stood patiently between the shafts and breathed visibly against the frosty night. Over the sodden or frozen ground, the peat squelching or the heather stalks snapping under her feet, she would make her way to that place where she hoped to find her lover with his quick words and his scarce caresses and, returning with the wind of the moor on her and eyes wide with wonder and the night, she would get a paternal smile from Rupert and a gibing word from Miriam, and be almost unaware of both. For weeks, her days were only preludes to the short perfection of his presence and her nights were filled with happy dreams: the eyes which had once been so watchful over Mildred Caniper were now turned inwards or levelled on the road; she went under a spell which shut out fear.
In December she was brought back to a normal world by the illness of Mildred Caniper. One morning, without a word of explanation or complaint, she went back to her bed, and Helen found her there, lying inert and staring at the ceiling. She had not taken down her hair and under the crown of it her face looked small and pinched, her eyes were like blue pools threatening to over-run their banks.
"Is your head aching?" Helen said.
"I—don't think so."
"What is it, then?"
"I was afraid I could not—go on," she said carefully. "I was afraid of doing something silly and I was giddy."
"Are you better now?"
"Yes. I want to rest."
"Try to sleep."
"It isn't sleep I want. It's rest, rest."
Helen went away, but before long she came back with a dark curtain to shroud the window.
"No, no! I want light, not shadows," Mildred cried in a shrill voice. "A dark room—" Her voice fell away in the track of her troubled memories, and when she spoke again it was in her ordinary tones. "I beg your pardon, Helen. You startled me. I think I must have dozed and dreamed."
"And you won't have the curtain?"
"No. Let there be light." She lay there helpless, while thoughts preyed on her, as vultures might prey on something moribund.
At dinner-time she refused to help herself to food, though she ate if Helen fed her. "The spoon is heavy," she complained.
Miriam was white and nervous. "She ought to have Zebedee," she said. "She looks funny. She frightens me."
"We could wait until tomorrow," Helen said. "He is so busy and I don't want to bring him up for nothing. He's being overworked."
"But for Notya!" Miriam exclaimed. "And don't you want to see him?" She could not keep still. "I can't bear people to be ill. He ought to come."
"Go and ask John."
"What does he know about it?" she whispered. "I keep thinking perhaps she will go mad."
"That's silly."
"It isn't. She looks—queer. If she does, I shall run away. I'm going to George. He'll drive into the town. You mustn't sacrifice Notya to Zebedee, you know."
Helen let out an ugly, scornful sound that angered Miriam.
"Old sheep!" she said, and Helen had to spare a smile, but she was thoughtful.
"Perhaps John would go."
"But why not George?"
"We're always asking favours."
"Pooh! He likes them and I don't mind asking."
"Well, then, it would be rather a relief. I don't know what to do with her."
The sense of responsibility towards George which had once kept Miriam awake had also kept her from him in a great effort of self-denial, and it was many days since she had done more than wave a greeting or give him a few light words.
"I believe I've offended you," he had told her not long ago, but she assured him that it was not so.
"Then I can't make you out," he muttered.
She shut her eyes and showed him her long lashes. "No, I'm a mystery. Think about me, George." And before he had time to utter his genuine, clumsy speech, she ran away.
"But I can't avoid temptation much longer," she told herself. "Life's too dull."
And now this illness which alarmed her was like a door opening slowly.
"And it's the hand of God that left it ajar," she said as she sped across the moor.
Her steps slackened as she neared the larch-wood, for she had not ventured into it since the night of old Halkett's death; but it was possible that George would be working in the yard and, tiptoeing down the soft path, she issued on the cobble-stones.
George was not there, nor could she hear him, and she was constrained to knock on the closed door, but the face of Mrs. Biggs, who appeared after a stealthy pause, was not encouraging to the visitor. She looked at Miriam and her thin lips parted and joined again without speech.
"I want Mr. Halkett," Miriam said, straightening herself and speaking haughtily because she guessed that Mrs. Biggs was suspicious of her friendliness with George.
"He's out. You'll have to wait," she said and shut the door.
A cold wind was swooping into the hollow, but Miriam was hot with a gathering anger that rushed into words as Halkett appeared.
"George!" She ran to him. "I hate that woman. I always did. I wish you wouldn't keep her. Oh, I hate her!"
"But you didn't come here to tell me that," he said. In her haste she had allowed him to take her hand and the touch of her softened his resentment at her neglect; amusement narrowed his eyes until she could not see their blue.
"She's horrid, she's rude; she left me on the step. I didn't want to go in, but she oughtn't to have left me standing there."
"She ought not. I'll tell her."
"Dare you?"
"Dare I!" he repeated boastfully.
"But you mustn't! Don't, George, please don't. Promise you won't. Promise, George."
"All right."
"Thank you." She drew her hand away.
"The fact is, she's always pretty hard on you."
Miriam's flame went out. "You don't mean," she said coldly, "that you discuss me with her?"
"No, I do not."
"You swear you never have?"
He had a pleasing and indulgent smile. "Yes, I swear it, but she dislikes the whole lot of you, and you can't always stop a woman's talk."
"You should be able to," she said. She wished she had not come for George did not realize what was due to her. She would go to John and she nodded a cold good-bye.
Her hands were in the pockets of her brown woollen coat, her shoulders were lifted towards her ears; she was less beautiful than he had ever seen her, yet in her kindest moments she had not seemed so near to him. He was elated by this discovery; he did not seek its cause and, had he done so, he was not acute enough to see that hitherto the feelings she had shown him had been chiefly feigned, and that this real resentment, marking her face with petulance, revealed her nature to be common with his own.
"But you've not told me what you came for," he said.
She was reluctant, but she spoke. "To ask you to do something for us."
"You know I'll do it."
Still sulky, she took a few steps and leaned against the house wall; she had the look of a boy caught in a fault.
"We want the doctor."
"Who's ill?"
"It's Notya."
"What's the matter?"
"I don't know." She forgot her grievance. "I don't like thinking of it. It makes me sick."
"Is she very bad?"
"No, but I think he ought to come."
"Must I bring him back?"
"Just leave a message, please, if it doesn't put you out."
In the pause before he spoke, he studied the dark head against the white-washed wall, the slim body, the little feet crossed on the cobbles, and then he stammered:
"You—you're like a rose-tree growing up."
She spread her arms and turned and drooped her head to encourage the resemblance. "Like that?"
He nodded, with the clumsiness of his emotions. "Look here—"
"Now, don't be tiresome. Oh, you can tell me what you were going to say."
"All these weeks—"
"I know, but it was for your sake, George."
"How?"
"It's difficult to explain, but one night my good angel bent over my bed, like a mother—or was it your good angel?"
He grinned. "I don't believe you'd know one if you saw one."
"I'm afraid I shouldn't," she admitted, with a laugh. "Would you?"
"I fancy I've seen one."
"Mrs. Biggs?" she dared. "Me?"
"I'm not going to tell you."
"I expect it's me. But run away and bring the doctor."
"I say—will you wait till I get back?"
"I couldn't. Think of Mrs. Biggs!"
"Not here. Up in the wood. But never mind. Come and see me saddle the little mare."
She liked the smell of the long, dim stable, the sound of the horses moving in their stalls, the regular crunching as they ate their hay. Years ago, she had been in this place with John and Rupert and she had forgotten nothing. There were the corn-bins under the windows and the pieces of old harness still hanging on big nails; above, there was the loft that looked as vast as ever in the shadowy gloom, and again it invited her ascent by the iron steps between the stalls.
From the harness-room Halkett fetched a saddle, and as he put it on the mare's back, he said, "Come and say how d'you do to her."
"It's Daisy. She'll go fast. Isn't she beautiful! She's rubbing her nose on me. I wish I could ride her."
"She might let you—for half a minute. Charlie's the boy for you. Come and see what's in the harness-room."
"Not now. There isn't time."
"Wait for me then." There was pleading in his voice. "Wait in the wood. I've something to show you. Will you do that for me?"
He was standing close to her, and she did not look up. "I ought to go back, but I don't want to. I don't like ill people. They sicken me."
"Don't go, then."
Now she looked at him in search of the assurance she wanted. "I needn't, need I? Helen can manage, can't she?"
He forgot to answer because she was like a flower suddenly brought to life in Daisy's stall, a flower for grace and beauty, but a woman for something that made him deaf to what she said.
"She can manage, can't she?"
"Of course." He snatched an armful of hay from a rack and led her to the larch trees and there he scraped together the fallen needles and laid the hay on them to make a bed for her.
"Rest there. Go to sleep and I'll be back before you wake."
She lay curled on her side until all sounds of him had passed and then she rolled on to her back and drew up her knees. It was dark and warm in the little wood; the straight trunks of the larches were as menacing as spears and the sky looked like a great banner tattered by their points. Though she lay still, she seemed to be marching with a host, and the light wind in the trees was the music of its going, the riven banner was a trophy carried proudly and, at a little distance, the rushing of the brook was the sound of feet following behind. For a long time she went with that triumphant army, but at length there came other sounds that forced themselves on her hearing and changed her from a gallant soldier to a girl half frightened in a wood.
She sat up and listened to the galloping of a horse and a voice singing in gay snatches. The sounds rose and sank and died away and came forth lustily again, and in the singing there was something full-blooded and urgent, as though the singer came from some danger joyfully escaped or hurried to some tryst. She stood up and, holding to a tree, she leaned sideways to listen. She heard Halkett speaking jovially to the mare as he pulled her up on the cobbles and gave her a parting smack of his open hand: then there began a sweet whistling invaded by other sounds, by Daisy's stamping in her stall, a corn-bin opened and shut, and Halkett's footsteps in the yard. Soon they were lost in the softness of the larch needles, but the whistling warned her of his coming and alarmed her with its pulsing lilt, and as she moved away and tried to make no noise, a dry branch snapped under her feet.
"Where are you?" he called out.
"Here," she answered, and awaited him. She could see the light gleaming in his eyes.
"Were you running off?"
"I didn't run."
He wound his arm about a tree and said, "We came at a pace, the mare and I."
"I heard you. Is Dr. Mackenzie coming?"
"Yes—fast as that old nag of his will bring him."
She slipped limply to the ground for she was chilled. She had braced herself for danger and it had turned aside, and she felt no thankfulness: she merely found George Halkett dull.
"Thank you for going," she said in cool tones. "Now I must go back and see how Notya is."
"No. I want to show you the side saddle."
"Which?"
"The one for you."
Adventure was hovering again. "For me? Are you really going to teach me to ride?"
"Didn't I say so?"
"But when?"
"When the rest of the world's in their beds."
"Oh. Won't it be too dark?"
"We'll manage. We'll try it first in daylight, right over the moor where no one goes. Most nights are not much darker than it is now, though. I can see you easily."
"Can you?" She was rocking herself in the way to which she had accustomed him. "What can you see?"
"Black hair and black eyes. Come here."
"I'm quite comfortable and you should never tell a lady to come to you, George."
"Are you asking me to come to you?"
"Don't be silly. Aren't you going to show me the saddle?"
"Yes. Where's your hand? I'll help you up. There you are! No, I'll keep your hand. The ground's steep and you might fall."
"No. Let me have it, George."
Her resistance broke the bonds he had laid on himself, and over her there fell a kind of wavering darkness in which she was drawn to him and held against his breast. His coat smelt of peat and tobacco; she felt his strength and the tense muscles under his clothes, and she did not struggle to get free of him. Ages of warm, dark time seemed to have passed over her before she realized that he was doing something to her hair. He was kissing it and, without any thought, obedient to the hour, she turned up her face to share those kisses. He uttered a low sound and put a hand to either of her cheeks, marking her mouth for his, and it was then she pushed him from her, stepped back, and shook herself and cried, "Oh, oh, you have been drinking!"
As she retreated, he advanced, but she fenced him off with outstretched hands.
"Go away. You have been drinking."
"I swear I haven't. I had one glass down there. I was thirsty—and no wonder. I swear I had no more. It's you, you that's sent it to my head."
At that, half was forgiven, but she said, "Anyhow, it's horrid and it makes me hate you. Go away. Don't touch me. Don't come near." In her retreat she stumbled against a tree and felt a bitterness of reproach because he did not ask if she were hurt.
"I'll show you I'm sober," he grumbled. "What do you know about it? You're a schoolgirl."
"Then if you think that you should be still more ashamed."
"Well, I'm not. You made me mad and—you didn't seem to mind it."
"I didn't, but I do now, and I'm going."
He followed her to the wood's edge and there she turned.
"If your head is so weak you ought never to take spirits."
"My head isn't weak, and I'm not a drunkard. Ask any one. It's you that are—"
She offered the word—"Intoxicating?" And she let a smile break through her lips before she ran away.
She felt no mental revulsion against his embrace; the physical one was only against the smell of spirits which she disliked, and she was the richer for an experience she did not want to repeat. She saw no reason, however, why he should not be tempted to offer it. She had tasted of the fruit, and now she desired no more than the delight of seeing it held out to her and refusing it.
The moor was friendly to her as she crossed it and if she had suffered from any sense of guilt, it would have reassured her. Spread under the pale colour of the declining sun, she thought it was a big eye that twinkled at her. She looked at the walls of her home and felt unwilling to be enclosed by them; she looked towards the road, and seeing the doctor's trap, she decided to stay on the moor until he had been and gone, and when at last she entered she found the house ominously dark and quiet. The familiar scent of the hall was a chiding in itself and she went nervously to the schoolroom, where a line of light marked its meeting with the floor.
Helen sat by the table, mending linen in the lamplight. She gave one upward glance and went on working.
"Well?" Miriam said.
"Well?"
"Did he come?"
"Yes."
"What did he say?"
"He called it collapse."
"How clever of him!"
"I have left the tea-things for you to wash, and will you please get supper?"
"You needn't talk like that. I'm willing to do my share."
"You shirked it today, and though I know you're frightened of her, that's no excuse for leaving me alone."
Miriam leaned on the table and asked in a gentler voice, "Is she likely to be ill long?"
"It's very likely."
"Well, we shan't miss her while you are with us, but it's a pity, when we might have peace. You're just like her. I hope you'll never have any children, for they'd be as miserable as I am, only there wouldn't be one like me. How could there be? One only has to think of Zebedee."
Helen stood up and brought her hand so heavily to the table that the lamplight flared.
"Go!" she said, "go—" Her voice and body shook, her arms slid limply over her mending, and she tumbled into her chair, crying with sobs that seemed to quaver for a long time in her breast. Miriam could not have imagined such a weeping, and it frightened her. With one finger she touched Helen's shoulder, and over and over again she said, "I'm sorry, Helen. I'm sorry. Don't cry. I'm sorry—" until she heard Rupert whistling on the track. At that Helen stirred and wiped her eyes, but Miriam darted from the room, shouted cheerfully to Rupert and, keeping him in talk, led him to the dining-room, while Helen sat staring with blurred eyes at the linen pile, and seeing the misery in Mildred Caniper's face.
It was a bitter winter, with more rain than snow, more snow than sunshine, and it seemed to Helen that half her life was spent in watching for Zebedee's figure bent against the storm as he drove up the road, while Mildred Caniper lay slackly in her bed. She no longer stared at the ceiling, for though her body had collapsed, her will had only wavered, and it was righting itself slowly, and the old thoughts which had been hunting her for years had not yet overcome her. Like hounds, they bayed behind, and some day their breath would be on her neck, their teeth in her flesh, and she would fall to them. This was the threat in the sound which reached her, soft or loud, as bells are heard in the wind, and in the meantime she steadied herself with varying arguments. Said one of these, "The past is over," yet she saw the whole future of these Canipers as the product of her acts. Reason, unsubdued, refused to allow her so much power, and she gave in; but she knew that if good befell the children she could claim no credit; if evil, she would take all the blame. There remained the comfortable assurance that she had done her best, and then Miriam's face mocked her as it peeped furtively round the bedroom door. Thus she was brought back to her starting place, and finding the circle a giddy one, she determined to travel on it no more, and with her old rigidity, she kept this resolve. It was, however, less difficult than it would once have been, for her mind was weary and glad of an excuse to take the easiest path. She lay in bed according to Zebedee's bidding, hardly moving under the clothes, and listening to the noises in the house. She was astonished by their number and significance. All through the night, cooling coals ticked in the grate or dropped on to the hearth; sometimes a mouse scratched or cheeped in the walls, and on the landing there were movements for which Helen could have accounted: Mr. Pinderwell, more conscious of his loss in the darkness, and unaware that his children had taken form, was moving from door to door and scraping his hands across the panels. Often the wind howled dolorously round the house while rain slashed furiously at the windows, and there were stealthy nights when snow wound a white muffler against the noises of the world. The clock in the hall sent out clear messages as to the passing of man's division of time, and at length there came the dawn, aged and eternally young, certain of itself, with a grey amusement for man's devices. Before that, Helen had opened her door and gone in soft slippers to light the kitchen fire, and presently Rupert was heard to whistle as he dressed. Meanwhile, as though it looked for something, the light spread itself in Mildred Caniper's room and she attuned her ears for the different noises of the day. There was Miriam's laughter, more frequent than it had been before her stepmother was tied to bed, and provocative of a wry smile from the invalid; there was her farewell shout to Rupert when he took the road, her husky singing as she worked about the house. Occasionally Mildred heard the stormy sound of Mrs. Samson's breathing as she polished the landing floor, or her voice raised in an anecdote too good to keep. Brooms knocked against the woodwork or swished on the bare floors, and still the clock, hardly noticed now, let out its warning that human life is short, or as it might be, over long. Later, but not on every day of the week, the jingle of a bit, the turning of wheels, rose to Mildred's window, telling her that the doctor had arrived, and though she had a grudge against all who saw her incapacitated, she found herself looking forward to his visits. He did not smile too much, nor stay too long, though it was remarkable that his leave-taking of her was not immediately followed by the renewed jingling of the bit. She was sure her condition did not call for prolonged discussion and, as she remembered Miriam who was free to come and go unchecked, to laugh away a man's wits, as her mother had done before her, Mildred Caniper grew hot and restless: she felt that she must get up and resume control, yet she knew that it would never be hers in full measure again, and while, in a rare, false moment, she pretended that the protection of Zebedee was her aim, truth stared at her with the reminder that the legacy of her old envy of the mother was this desire to thwart the daughter.
After that, her thoughts were long and bitter, and their signs were on her face when Helen returned.
"What have you been doing?" Helen demanded, for she no longer had any awe of Mildred Caniper, a woman who had been helpless in her hands.
"Please don't be ridiculous, Helen."
"I'm not."
"This absurd air of authority—"
"But you look—"
"We won't discuss how I look. Where is Miriam?"
"I don't know. Yes, I do. She went to Brent Farm to get some cream. Zeb—He says you're to have cream."
Mildred made a movement which was meant to express baffled patience. "I have tried to persuade you not to use pronouns instead of proper names. Can't you hear how vulgar it is?"
"Dr. Mackenzie wishes you to have cream," Helen said meekly.
"I do not need cream, and his visits are becoming quite unnecessary."
"So he said today."
"Oh."
"But I," Helen said, smiling to herself, "wish him to come."
"And no doubt the discussion of what primarily concerns me is what kept Dr. Mackenzie so long this afternoon."
"How did you know he stayed?"
"My good Helen, though I am in bed, I am neither deaf nor an imbecile."
"Oh, I know," Helen said with a seriousness which might as well have been mockery as stupidity. "I gave him—I gave Dr. Mackenzie tea. He was driving further, and it's such a stormy day."
"Quite right. He looks overworked—ill. I don't suppose he is properly cared for."
"He has a cough. He says he often gets one," Helen almost pleaded, and she went, at the first opportunity, from the room.
She encountered Jane's solemn and sympathetic stare. "I can't have neglected him, can I?" she asked of the little girl in the pinafore, and the shadows on the landing once more became alive with the unknown. "He does cough a lot, Jane, but he says it's nothing, and he tells the truth." She added involuntarily and with her hand at her throat, "I've been so happy," and immediately the words buzzed round her with menace. She should not have said that; it was a thing hardly to be thought, and she had betrayed her secret, but it comforted her to remember that this was nearly the end of January, and before long the Easter fires would burn again and she could pray.
Between the present and that one hour in the year when she might ask for help, Zebedee's cough persisted and grew worse. He had to own to a weakness of the lungs; he suffered every winter, more or less, and there had been one which had driven him to warmer climes.
"And you never told me that before!" she cried, with her hand in that tell-tale position at her throat.
"My dear, there has been no time to tell you anything. There hasn't been one day when we could be lavish. We've counted seconds. Would I talk about my lungs?"
"Perhaps we don't really know each other," Helen said, hoping he would not intercept this hostage she was offering to fortune, and she looked at him under her raised brows, and smiled a little, tempting him.
"We don't," he said firmly, and she drew a breath. "We only know we want each other, and all the rest of our lives is to be the adventure of finding each other out."
"But I'm not adventurous," she said.
"Oh, you'll like it," he assured her, smiling with his wonderfully white teeth and still more with the little lines round his eyes. He looked at her with that practical air of adoration which was as precious to her as his rare caress; she felt doubly honoured because, in his love-making, he preserved a humour which did not disguise his worship of her. "You'll like it," he said cheerfully. "Why don't you marry me now and take care of me?"
She made a gesture towards the upper room. "How can I?"
"No, you can't. Not," he added, "so much on that account, as simply because you can't. I'd rather wait a few months more—"
"You must," she said, and faintly irritated him. She looked at her clasped hands. "Zebedee, do you feel you want to be taken care of?" Her voice was anxious and, though he divined how much was balanced on his answer, he would not adjust it nicely.
"Not exactly," he said honestly, and he saw a light of relief and a shadow of disappointment chase each other on her face.
"After all, I think I do know you rather well," he murmured, as he took her by the shoulders. "Do you understand what I am doing?"
"You're telling me the truth."
"And at what a cost?"
She nodded. "But you couldn't help telling me the truth."
"And if I bemoaned my loneliness, how my collars get lost in the wash, how tired I am of Eliza's cooking and her face, how bad my cough is, then you'd let me carry you away?"
"I might. Zebedee—are those things true, too?"
"Not particularly."
"And your cough isn't bad?"
He hesitated. "It is rather bad."
"And you're a doctor!"
"But my dear, darling, love—I've no control over the weather."
"You ought to go away," she said in a low voice.
"I hope it won't come to that," he said.
It was Rupert who asked her a week later if she had jilted Zebedee.
"Why?" she asked quickly.
"He's ill, woman."
"I know."
"But really ill. You ought to send him away until the spring."
Her lips moved for a few seconds before she uttered "Yes," and after that sound she was mute under the double fear of keeping him and parting from him, but, since to let him go would give her the greater pain, it was the lesser fear, and it might be that the powers who were always waiting near to demand a price would, in this manner, let her get her paying done. She welcomed the chance of paying in advance and she kept silence while she strengthened herself to do it bravely.
Because she did not speak, Rupert elaborated. "When Zebedee loses his temper, there's something wrong."
"Has he done that?"
"Daniel daren't speak to him."
"He never speaks to people: he expounds."
"True; but your young man was distinctly short with me, even me, yesterday. Listen to your worldly brother, Helen. Why don't you marry him and take him into the sun? It's shining somewhere, one supposes."
"I can't."
"Why not? There's Miriam."
"What good is she?"
"You never give her a chance. You're one of those self-sacrificing, selfish people who stunt other people's growth. It's like not letting a baby learn to walk for fear it falls and hurts itself, or tumbles into the best flower-beds and ruins 'em. Have you ever thought of that?"
"But she's happier than she used to be," Helen said and smiled as though nothing more were needed. "And soon she will be going away. She won't stay after she is twenty-one."
"D'you think that fairy-tale is going to come true?"
"Oh, yes. She always does what she wants, you know. And she is counting on Uncle Alfred, though she says she isn't. She had a letter from him the other day."
"And when she has gone, what are you going to do?"
"I don't know what I'm going to do."
"Things won't be easier for you then. You'd better face that."
"But she'll be better—Notya will be better."
"And you'll marry Zebedee."
"I don't like saying what I'm going to do."
Rupert's dark eyes had a hard, bright light. "Are you supposed to love that unfortunate man? Look here, you're not going to be tied to Notya all her life. Zebedee and I won't have it."
"What's going to happen to her, then?"
"Bless the child! She's grown up. She can look after herself."
"But I can't leave just you and her in this house together."
He said in rather a strained voice, "I shan't be here. The bank's sending me to the new branch."
"Oh!" Helen said.
"I'm sorry about it. I tried not to seem efficient, but there's something about me—charm, I think. They must have noticed how I talk to the old ladies who don't know how to make out their cheques. So they're sending me, but I don't know that I ought to leave you all."
"Of course you must."
"I can come home on Saturdays."
"Yes. And Notya's better, and John is near. Why shouldn't you go?"
"Because your face fell."
"It's only that everybody's going. It seems like the end of things." She pictured the house without Rupert and she had a sense of desolation, for no one would whistle on the track at night and make the house warmer and more beautiful with his entrance; there would be no one to look up from his book with unfailing readiness to listen to everything and understand it; no one to say pleasant things which made her happy.
"Why," she said, plumbing the depths of loss, "there'll be no one to get up early for!"
"Ah, it's Miriam who'll feel that!" he said.
"And even Daniel won't come any more. He's tired of Miriam's foolishness."
"To tell you a secret, he's in love with some one else. But he has no luck. No wonder! If you could be married to him for ten years before you married him at all—"
"I don't know," Helen said thoughtfully. "Those funny men—" She did not finish her thought. "It will be queer without you," and after a pause she added the one word, "lonely."
It was strange that Miriam, whom she loved best, should never present herself to Helen's mind as a companion: the sisters, indeed, rarely spoke together except to argue some domestic point, to scold each other, or to tease, yet each was conscious of the other's admiration, though Helen looked on Miriam as a pretty ornament or toy, and Miriam gazed dubiously at what she called the piety of the other.
"Yes, lonely," she said, but in her heart she was glad that her payment should be great, and she said loudly, as though she recited her creed: "I wouldn't change anything. I believe in the things that happen."
"May they reward you!" he said solemnly.
"When will you have to go?"
"I'm not sure. Pretty soon. Look here, my dear, you three lone women ought to have a dog to take man's place as your natural protector—and so on."
"Have you told Zebedee you are going?"
"Yesterday."
"Then he will be getting one."
"H'm. He seems to be a satisfactory lover."
"He is, you know."
"Thank God for him."
"Would you?" Helen said. She had a practical as well as a superstitious distaste for offering thanks for benefits not actually received, and also a disbelief in the present certainty of her possession, but she took hope. John had gone, Rupert was going, of her own will she would send Zebedee away, and then surely the powers would be appeased, and if she suffered enough from loneliness, from dread of seeing Mildred Caniper ill again, of never getting her lover back, the rulers of her life might be willing, at the end, to let her have Zebedee and the shining house—the shining house which lately had taken firmer shape, and stood squarely back from the road, with a little copse of trees rising behind.
She cried out when next she saw him, for between this and their next meeting he had grown gaunter, more nervous, sharper in voice and gesture.
"Oh, you're ill!" she said, and stepped back as though she did not know him.
"Yes, I'm ill." He held to a chair and tipped it back and forth. "For goodness' sake, don't talk about it any more. I'm ill. That's settled. Now let's get on to something else."
He saw her lip quiver and, uttering a desperate, "I'm sorry," he turned from her to the window.
The wisdom she could use so well with others was of no avail with him: he was too much herself to be treated cunningly. She felt that she floated on a sea vastly bigger than she had ever known, and its waves were love and fear and cruelty and fate, but in a moment he turned and she saw a raft on which she might sail for ever.
"Forgive me."
"You've made me love you more."
"With being a brute to you?"
"Were you one? But—don't often be angry. I might get used to it!"
He laughed. "Oh, Helen, you wonder! But I've spoilt our memories."
"With such a little thing? And when I liked it?"
"You nearly cried. I don't want to remember that."
"But I shall like to because we're nearer than we were," she said, and to that he solemnly agreed. "And I am going to talk about it."
"Anything, of course."
"You look tired and hungry and sleepy, and I'm going to send you away."
"My dear," he said with a grimace, "I've got to go."
"Give me the credit of sending you."
"I don't want it. Ah! you've no idea what leaving you is like."
"But I know—"
"That's not the same thing."
"It's worse, I believe. Darling one, go away and come back to me, but don't come back until you're well. I want—I want to do without you now—and get it over." Her eyes, close to his, were bright with the vision of things he could not see. "Get it over," she said again, "and then, perhaps, we shall be safe."
He had it in him at that moment to say he would not go because of his own fear for her, but he only took her on his knee and rocked her as though she were a baby on the point of sleep and he proved that, after all, he knew her very well, for when he spoke he said, "I don't think I can go."
She started up. "Have you thought of something?"
"Yes."
"What is it?"
"You."
"Me?" she asked on a long note.
"I don't know whether I can trust you."
"Me?" she said again.
"Don't you remember how I asked you to be brave?"
"I tried, but it was easier then because I hadn't you." Her arm tightened round his neck. "Now you're another to look after."
He held her off from him. "What am I to do with you? What am I to do with you? How can I leave this funny little creature who is afraid of shadows?"
"That night," she said in a small voice, "you told me I looked brave."
"Yes, brave and sane. And I have often thought—don't laugh at me—I have thought that was how Joan of Arc must have looked."
"And now?"
"Now you are like a Joan who does not hear her voices any more."
She slipped from his knee to hers. "You're disappointed then?"
"No."
"You ought to be."
"Perhaps."
"Would you love me more if I were brave?"
"I don't believe I could."
She laughed, and with her head aslant, she asked, "Then what's the good of trying?"
"Just to make it easier for me," he said.
She uttered a little sound like one who stands in mountain mists and through a rent in the grey curtain sees a light shining in the valley.
"Would it do that for you? Oh, if it's going to help you, I'm afraid no longer." She reached out and held his face between the finger-tips of her two hands. "I promise not to be afraid. Already"—she looked about her—"I am not afraid. How wonderful you are! And what a wise physician! Physician, heal thyself. You'll go away?"
"Yes, I can go now."
"Where?"
"For a voyage. The Mediterranean. Not a liner—on some slow-going boat."
"Not a leaky one," she begged.
"Ah, I'd come back if she had no bottom to her. Nothing is going to hurt me or keep me from you!"
She did not protest against his boasting, but smiled because she knew he meant to test her.
"You'll be away a long time," she said.
"And you'll marry me when I come back?"
"Yes. If I can."
"Why not? In April? May? June? In June—a lovely month. It has a sound of marriage in it. But after all," he said thoughtfully, "it seems a pity to go. And I wouldn't," he added with defiance, "if I were not afraid of being ill on your hands."
"My hands would like it rather."
"Bless them!"
"Oh—what silly things we say—and do—and you haven't seen Notya yet."
"Come along then," he said, and as they went up the stairs together Helen thought Mr. Pinderwell smiled.
It was after this visit that Mildred Caniper coolly asked Helen if Dr. Mackenzie were in the habit of using endearments towards her.
"Not often," Helen said. Slightly flushed and trying not to laugh, she stood at the bed-foot and faced Mildred Caniper fairly.
"You allow it?"
"I—like it."
Mildred Caniper closed her eyes. "Please ask him not to do it in my presence."
"I'll tell him when he comes again," Helen answered agreeably, and her stepmother realized that the only weapons to which this girl was vulnerable were ones not willingly used: such foolish things as tears or sickness; she seemed impervious to finer tools. Helen's looks at the moment were unabashed: she was trying to remember what Zebedee had said, both for its own sake and to gauge its effect on Notya to whose memory it was clear enough, and its naturalness, the slight and unmistakable change in his voice as he spoke to Helen, hurt her so much with their reminder of what she had missed that pain made her strike once more.
"This is what I might have expected from Miriam."
"But," said Helen, all innocence, "she doesn't care for him."
"And you do."
She did not wish to say yes; she could not say no; she kept her half-smiling silence.
"How long has this been going on?" The tones were sharp with impotence.
"Oh—well—since you went to Italy. At least," she murmured vaguely, "that was when he came to tea."
But Mildred did not hear the last homely sentence, and Helen's next words came from a great distance, even from the shuttered room in Italy.
"And why should you mind? Why shouldn't we—like each other?"
Mildred Caniper opened her remarkably blue eyes, and said, almost in triumph, "You'll be disappointed."
At that Helen laughed with a security which was pathetic and annoying to the woman in the bed.
"Life—" Mildred Caniper began, and stopped. She had not yet reached the stage, she reflected, when she must utter platitudes about the common lot. She looked at Helen with unusual candour. "I have never spoken to you of these things," she said.
"Oh, I shouldn't like you to!" Helen cried, and her hands were near her ears.
Mildred allowed her lips to curve. "I am not referring to the facts of generation," she said drily, and her smile broadened, her eyebrows lifted humorously. "I am quite aware that the—the advantages of a country life include an early arrival at that kind of knowledge. Besides, you were fortunate in your brothers. And then there were all the books."
"The books?"
"The ones Rupert used to bring you."
"So you knew about them."
"I have had to remind you before, Helen, that I am not out of my mind."
"What else do you know?" Helen asked with interest, and sat down on the bed.
This was Miriam's inquiry when the conversation was reported to her.
"She didn't tell me anything else. I think she had said more than she meant. She is like that sometimes, now. It's because she hasn't so much strength."
"I expect she knows everything we ever did."
"Well, we never did much."
"No. And everything we do now."
"She didn't know about Zebedee."
"Oh, she wouldn't suspect you."
"Then don't do anything you shouldn't," Helen said mildly.
"Her 'should' and my 'should' are very different members of the same family, my dear." She peered into Helen's face and squeaked, "And what the devil is there to do?"
"Don't use words like that."
"Wow! Wow! This is the devil's St. Helena, I imagine. There's nothing to be done in it. I believe she has eyes all round her head."
"He's a gentleman always, in pictures."
"Are you really stupid?"
"I think so."
"I was talking about Notya."
"Oh."
"And I believe she can see with her ears and hear with her eyes. Helen—Helen, you don't think she gets up sometimes in the night, and prowls about, do you?"
"I should hear her."
"Oh. Are you sure?"
"I sleep so lightly. The other night—"
"Yes?"
"I was waked by a sheep coughing outside the garden."
Miriam burst out laughing. "Did you think it was Zebedee?" She laughed a great deal more than was necessary. "Now she's putting on her never-smiled-again expression! Will he be back before I go away?"
Helen looked at her dumbly. She heard the garden gate shutting behind John and Zebedee, Rupert and Miriam, with a clang which seemed to forbid return, and her dread of Zebedee's going became sharper, though beneath her dread there lay the courage she had promised him.
"And there will be the dog," she found herself saying aloud.
The animal, when he arrived, leapt from the dog-cart in which he had been unwillingly conveyed and proved to be an Airedale, guaranteed to be a perfect watch-dog and suspicious of all strangers.
Proudly, Zebedee delivered himself of these recommendations.
"He's trained, thoroughly trained to bite. And he's enormously strong. Just look at his neck! Look at his teeth—get through anything."
Helen was kneeling to the dog and asking, "Are you sure he'll bite people? He seems to like me very much."
"I've been telling him about you. My precious child, you can't have a dog who leaps at people unprovoked. He'd be a public danger. You must say 'Rats!' or something like that when you want him to attack."
"Well—I love him," she said.
"And I've something else for you."
"Oh, no!"
"Shut your eyes—"
"And open my mouth?"
"No, give me your hand. There! Will you wear that for me?"
"Oh! Oh! It's the loveliest thing I've ever seen in my life! Much! Oh, it's perfect. It's so white."
"Tell me I'm rather a success today."
"You're one all the time. Did you have it made for me?"
"D'you think I'd get you something out of a shop window? I made it up. And there's another thing—"
"But you won't have any money left!" she cried.
"Then I won't tell you about the third thing."
She said solemnly, "You ought to have no secrets from me."
"Have you none from me?"
"Not one. Except—but that's so silly—except the tinker."
"Tell me that one."
She obeyed him, and she frowned a little, because she could not understand why the thing should need telling. "And then I went on to the moor, and George Halkett ran after me, and I thought it was the tinker."
"Why," Zebedee asked, "did he run after you?"
"He must have thought I was some one else."
"Why does he run after anybody?"
"Because he's George, I think, and if John were here he would tell you the story of how he tried to kiss Lily Brent!"
"That sort of animal oughtn't to be let loose."
"I like him," Helen said. "I'm sorry for him."
"H'm," said Zebedee. "Well, you have the dog."
"Oh," she said, "he isn't like that with me. We've known each other all our lives. And you don't mind about the tinker?"
"I don't think so."
"It's not nearly so bad," she persuaded him, "as the real woman you once liked."
He did not contradict her. "We're not going to argue about dreams and the past. We haven't time for that."
"And I haven't begun to thank you! I knew you were going to bring a dog!"
"Who told you?"
"I just knew you'd think of it. But two lovely presents in one day, and both from you! But I feel—I feel—"
"I know. You want to drown the dog and throw the ring away as hostages for my safety."
"Yes, don't laugh."
"My dear," he said wearily, "there are moments when one can do nothing else."
"I'm sorry. And don't be angry with me in case you make me love you too much to let you go! And I'm brave, really. I promise to be good."
He nodded in his quick way while he looked at her as though, in spite of all he said, he feared he might never look at her again, and she was proud of his firm lips and steady eyes in the moment of the passionate admiration which lived with her like a presence while he was away.
Helen passed into a pale windy world one February morning and walked slowly down the track. There was no sharpness in the air and the colours of approaching spring seemed to hover between earth and heaven, though they promised soon to lay themselves down to make new green and splendid purple and misty blue. Slow-moving clouds paced across the sky, and as she looked at them Helen thought of Zebedee sailing under richer colour and with white canvas in the place of clouds. She wondered if time crept with him as slowly as it did with her; if he had as much faith in her courage as she had in his return. She knew he would come back, and she had trained herself to patience: indeed, it was no hard matter, for hers had always been a world in which there was no haste. The seasons had their leisured way; the people moved with heavy feet; the moor lay in its wisdom, suffering decay and growth. Even the Brent Farm cattle made bright but stationary patches in the field before the house, and as she drew nearer she came upon John and Lily leaning on a fence. Their elbows touched; their faces were content, as slowly they discussed the fate of the cow they contemplated, and Helen sat down to await their leisure.
Before her, the moor sloped to the road and rose again, lifting Pinderwell House on its bosom, and to her right, from the hidden chimneys of Halkett's Farm, she could see smoke rising as though it were the easy breath of some monster lying snug among the trees. There was no other movement, though the sober front of Pinderwell House was animated for an instant by the shaking of some white substance from a window. Miriam was at her household tasks, and Helen waved a hand to the dark being who had made life smoother for her since her night of stormy weeping. She waved a hand of gratitude and friendship, but the signal was not noticed, the house returned to its discretion, John and Lily talked sparsely but with complete understanding, and Helen grew drowsy in the sunshine. She was happier than she had ever been, for Zebedee had laid peace on her, like a spell, and the warmth of that happiness stole up from her feet and spread over her breast; it curled the corners of her mouth so that John, turning to look at her, asked her why she smiled.
"I'm comfortable," she said.
"Never been comfortable before?"
She gave him the clear depths of her eyes. "Not often."
He went away, driving the cow before him, and Lily stood looking after him.
"He's wonderful," she said. "He comes along and takes hold of things and begins to teach me my own business."
"So you're pleased with him?" Helen said demurely.
"Yes," the other answered with twitching lips, "he's doing very well." Her laughter faded, and she said softly, "I wonder if they often happen—marriages like ours."
"Tell me about it."
"Nothing to tell. It's just as if it's always been, and every minute it seems fresh."
"No," Helen said consideringly, "I shouldn't think it often happens. I've come for a pound of butter, please."
"How's Mrs. Caniper?"
"She's better, but I think she would be rather glad to die. I let her make a cake yesterday, and it did her good. Come and see her soon."
"I will. Let's go to the dairy. Will you have it in halves or quarters? Look at my new stamp!"
"What is it meant to be?"
"Well! It's a Shetland pony, of course."
"I like the pineapple better. I don't think a pony seems right on butter. I'll have the pineapple."
"John says there's as much sense in one as in the other, because we don't get butter from either of them."
"The pineapple is food, though."
"So's the pony, by some accounts!" She leaned in her old attitude against a shelf, and eyed Helen nervously. "Talking of ponies, have you seen anything of these ghostly riders?"
"I don't know what they are."
"That's what my—our—shepherd calls them. He saw them late one night, a while back. One was a woman, he said, and the air was cold with them and set him sneezing. That's what he says."
"It was some of the wild ponies, I suppose."
"Maybe."
"You don't think it was really ghosts?"
"No, for I've seen them myself." She paused. "I haven't said anything to John, but I'm wondering if I ought."
"Why not?"
Lily's gaze widened in her attempt to see what Helen's point of view would be and she spoke slowly, that, if possible, she might not offend.
"It was George Halkett I saw. There was no woman, but he was leading one horse and riding another. It was one night when John was late on the moor and I went to look for him. George didn't see me. I kept quiet till he'd gone by. There was a side saddle on the led horse."
"Well?" Helen said.
"That's all. I thought you ought to know."
In that moment Helen hated Lily. "Is it Miriam you're hinting at?" she asked on a high note.
"Yes, it is. You're making me feel mean, but I'm glad I've told you. It's worried me, and John—I didn't like to tell John, for he has a grudge against the man, and he might have made trouble before he need."
"I think that's what you're doing," Helen said.
"That may be. I took the risk. I know George Halkett. Miriam, having a bit of fun, might find herself landed in a mess. I'm sorry, Helen. I hope I'm wrong."
Helen was half ashamed to hear herself asking, "How late was it?"
"About twelve."
"But I'm awake half the night. I should have heard. Besides—would there be any harm?"
"Just as much as there is in playing with fire," Lily said.
"'Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth,'" Helen said, looking at the ground.
"Yes, but there's more than a little fire in Miriam, and George Halkett's a man, you know."
Helen raised her head and said, "We've lived here all our lives, and we have been very lonely, but I have hardly spoken to a man who was not gentle. John and Rupert and Zebedee and Daniel, all these—no one has spoken roughly to us. It makes one trustful. And George is always kind, Lily."
"Yes, but Miriam—she's not like you."
"She's much more beautiful."
Lily's laughter was half a groan. "That won't make George any gentler, my dear."
"Won't it?"
Lily shook her head. "But perhaps there's nothing in it. I'm sorry to have added to your worries, but Miriam's so restless and discontented, and I thought—"
"Ah," Helen interrupted gladly, "but lately she has been different. Lately she has been happier. Oh!" She saw where her words had led her, and with a little gesture of bewilderment she turned and walked away.
Perhaps, after all, the things that happened were not necessarily best, and for the first time Helen felt a blind anger against the unknown. In a moment of sharp vision, she saw what this vaguely concentrated life had done for her and Miriam, and she wondered by whose law it had been decreed that no human being could have a destiny unconditioned by some one else, and though she also saw that this law was the glory as well as the tragedy of life, she rebelled against it now, lest the radiant being whom she loved should be dishonoured or disillusioned.
Helen's firm curved lips took a harder line as she went slowly home, for it seemed to her that in an active world the principle of just going on left all the foes unconquered and ready for the next victim who should pass that way.
She slept fitfully that night, and once she woke to a sound of galloping on the moor. She knew it was made by more animals than two, yet her heart beat quickly, and her thoughts sprang together to make a picture of George Halkett leading a horse without a rider through the night, waiting in the darkness with his ears stretched for the sound of one coming through the heather.
She started up in bed, for the mysterious allurement of George's image was strong enough to make her understand what it might be for Miriam, and she held herself to the bed lest she should be tempted to play the spy; yet, had she brought herself to open her sister's door, she would have been shamed and gladdened by the sight of that pretty sleeper lying athwart her bed in profound unconsciousness.
Miriam, whose heart was still untouched by God or man, could lie and sleep soundly, though she knew George waited for her on the moor. The restlessness that had first driven her there had sent her home again, that, by a timely abstention, she might recover the full taste of adventure, and that, by the same means, George might learn her worth. She was a little puzzled by his behaviour, and she began to find monotony in its decorum. According to his promise, he had taught her to ride, and while all her faculties were bent on that business, she hardly noticed him, but with confidence in her own seat and Charlie's steadiness, there came freedom to look at George, and with it the desire to rule the expression of his face and the modulations of his voice.
He would not be beguiled. "I'm teaching you to ride," he said, and though she mocked him he was not stirred to quarrel. She was temporarily incapable of realizing that while she learnt to ride, he learnt to honour her, and found safety for himself and her in silence; nor, had she realized it, would she have welcomed it. What she wanted was the pleasure of being hunted and seeing the hunter discomfited, and though she could not get that from him, she had a new joy when Charlie carried her strongly and safely across the moor; again she knew the feeling of passing through a void, of sailing on a thunder-cloud without hope of rescue and careless of it, and she paid a heavy price when she decided that it would do George good to wait in vain for her. She would not have him disrespectful, but she desired him ardent; she wished to see that stubbornly set mouth open to utter longings, and, when she went to bed after a dull day, she laughed to think of how he waited and stared into the gloom.
A fortnight passed before she stole out on a misty night and at the appointed place found him like a grey carved figure on a grey carved horse. Only his lips moved when she peered at him through the mist. He said, "This is the fifteenth night. If you'd waited till tomorrow, you wouldn't have found me here."
"George," she said, with her face close to his knee, "how unkind you are to me. And, oh, George, do you really think I should have cared?"
In the mist, she, too, had the look of one not made of flesh and blood, but she had no likeness to some figure carved: she was the spirit of the mist with its drops on her hair, a thing intangible, yet dowered with power to make herself a torment. So she looked, but Halkett had felt the touch of her, and taking her by the wrist, he dragged her upwards while he bent down to her.
"You—you—!" he panted.
"You're hurting, George!"
"What do I care? I haven't seen you for two weeks. I've been—been starving for you."
She spoke coolly, with a ringing quality in her tones. "You would see me better if you didn't come so near."
Immediately he loosened her without looking at her, and she stood chafing her hands, hating his indifference, though she knew it was assumed, uncertain how to regain her supremacy. Then she let instinct guide her, and she looked a little piteous.
"Don't be rough with me. I didn't mean—I don't like you to be rough with me."
He was off his horse and standing by her at those words, and, still watchful for rebuffs, he took her hand and stroked it gently.
"Did I hurt you, then?" he said.
"Yes. Why are you like that?" She lifted her head and gave him the oval face, the dark, reproachful eyes like night.
"Because I'm mad for you—mad for you. Little one—you make me mad. And you'll never marry me. I know that. And I'm a fool to let you play the devil with me. I know that, too. A mad fool. But you—you're in my blood."
Softly she said, "You never told me that before. You needn't scold me so. How should I know you wanted that?"
"You knew I loved you."
"No. I knew you liked me and I hoped—"
He bent his head to listen.
"I hoped you loved me."
His words came thickly, a muddy torrent. "Then marry me, marry me, Miriam. Marry me. I want—I can't—You must say you'll marry me."
Keeping her eyes on him, she moved slowly away, and from behind Charlie's back she laughed with a genuine merriment that wounded inexpressibly.