“Because I want to know what to expect. I want to know if you make that condition for your sake or mine.” Unhesitatingly he went to the point. He was very nearly sure of her, but still not quite.
She paused for some seconds before she answered him. He wondered if she were seeking a means of escape. Then very calmly she gave him her reply, and he knew that the game was his.
“I have said it was for both, because if you repent of the bargain, so shall I. But—if you do not repent, then I shall accept your offer with gratitude. But you have acted upon impulse, and I think you ought to take time to consider.”
“It rests with me then?” said Rotherby.
“Yes, it rests with you.” Quietly, even coldly, she yielded the point. “Of course, as you say, if you decide to take me, it will only be on trial. And if I fail to satisfy you, we are not worse off than we are at present. But please do not decide before to-morrow!”
The words were a request. The tone was almost a command. He could ignore neither, and he swept her a deep bow.
“Madam, your wishes in this matter shall be respected. To-morrow then—we decide!”
“Thank you,” said Frances quietly.
She turned to go, but suddenly stopped short. He was aware of a change in her—a tremor of agitation.
“Ah!” she said, under her breath.
She was looking out of the shadow into the moonlight, and swiftly his eyes followed hers.
A figure in black was walking slowly and quite noiselessly over the grass by the side of the path.
“Who on earth—” began Montague.
She silenced him with a rapid gesture. “Hush! It is the Bishop!”
He reflected later that from her point of view it might have been wiser to have ignored the warning and have gone forth openly to meet the advancing intruder. But—perhaps it was the romance of the hour, perhaps merely her impulse communicating itself to him—or even, it might have been some deeper motive, barely acknowledged as yet that actuated him—whatever the influence at work, he obeyed her, drawing back in silence against the trunk of the yew tree.
And so, like two conspirators trapped in that haunted garden, they drew close together in the depth of the shadow and dumbly watched the black-gowned figure advance over the moonlit grass.
He came very slowly, with priest-like dignity, yet in his deliberation of movement there was purpose. It was seldom that the Bishop of Burminster performed any action without a definite end in view. There was indeed something almost fatalistic in all that he did. The wandering friar himself who was said to haunt that sleeping garden could not have moved with greater assurance or more studied detachment of pose.
The man and the woman watching him from their hiding-place drew closer together as if in some fashion his coming inspired them with awe. It was true that Montague Rotherby’s lips bore a smile of cynical amusement, as though the situation appealed more to his sense of humour than to any other emotion. But it was not any humorous impulse that moved him to put his hand suddenly and reassuringly through the tense thin arm of the secretary and closely grip it.
She started sharply at his touch, made for a moment as if she would free herself, then stiffened and stood in rigid immobility.
For the Bishop was drawing nearer, and there was resolution as well as protection in Montague’s hold.
Slowly came the advancing figure, and the tension of the two who waited grew acute. Though he smiled, Montague’s teeth were clenched, and there was a glitter of ferocity in his eyes. He formed his plan of action while he waited. If the Bishop passed them by, he would release his companion instantly, bid her begone, and himself cover her retreat.
It was the only feasible plan, and in the morning she would thank him. In the morning she would realize that circumstances had placed her in his debt, and she would be ready to meet the obligation in accordance with his views. She certainly could not flout him or even keep him at a distance after this. Without forcing himself upon her, he had become her intimate friend, and she was not a woman to repudiate an obligation. She would acknowledge with gratitude all that he had done for her.
He no longer questioned with himself as to wherein lay the attraction that drew him. The attraction was there, and he responded to it, without scruple, as he had responded to such all his life. After all, it was no responsibility of his what she chose to do with her life. It was not likely that he was the first man to come into her existence. She knew very well what she was doing, and if she relaxed her guard he had no hesitation in storming her defence. After all, it was but a game, and women were quite as adroit in their moves as men, even more so in some cases, he reflected, though in this one it had certainly so far not been a difficult contest.
Swiftly the thoughts succeeded each other as he watched with a grim vigilance the advancing figure.
The Bishop was close to them now, almost abreast of them. He could see the harsh lines on the thin, ascetic countenance. There was something mediæval about that iron visage, something that was reminiscent of the Inquisition. This was the type of man who would torture and slay for the fulfilment of an ideal—a man of stern fanaticism, capable of the highest sacrifice, but incapable of that which even a dog may show to his master—the Divine offering of love.
Now he had reached the old yew in the shadow of which they stood, as if he had attained his destination he stood still.
Montague felt a sharp shiver run through his companion’s arm, and he gripped it more closely, with a steady, warning pressure. The Bishop was not looking in their direction. There was yet a chance that he might pass on and leave them unobserved. The situation was ridiculous. They had no reason for concealing themselves. But the instinct, old as mankind, that prompts the two whom Fate has thrown together to avoid the intrusion of a third, the unacknowledged dread of being caught in an equivocal position, the half-formed wish to protect that gleaming, iridescent wonder that is called Romance from the sacrilegious touch of the outside world, all of these impulses had conspired to bring about this absurd concealment which the man found both gratifying and exasperating. To be discovered now would be humiliating, but if the critical moment passed and they were left in peace he recognized that another powerful link would be added to the chain that some caprice had induced him to forge.
As for the woman, he had no clue to her thoughts. He only knew that with her whole soul she hoped to escape undetected.
The Bishop had turned towards the edge of the lake, and was standing there in sombre reflection.
“What on earth is he thinking about?” questioned Montague with himself. “He can’t know we are here! He wouldn’t play such a cad’s game as that.”
Nevertheless his heart misgave him. He had no faith in the Bishop’s sense of fair play. In his own weird fashion he believed him to be even more unscrupulous than he was himself. That any beauty of scene held him in that trance-like stillness he did not believe. He was merely thinking out some fell design for the glory of the fetish he worshipped.
Montague began to grow impatient. Were they to be kept there in suspense all night while he worked out his fantastic problems? He began to consider the possibility of making a move unheard and unseen while the Bishop remained wrapt in meditation. He had passed so close to them without seeing them that it seemed more than possible that an escape could be accomplished without any very serious risk.
He pressed his companion’s arm and was aware of her eyes strangely luminous in the shadow turned towards him in enquiry. By some trick of the moonlight, the pale features took on a sudden unexpected beauty. He saw her in that moment not as the woman she was, faded and weary with the long harassment of overwork and anxiety, but as the woman she might have been, vivid, enchanting, young. . . . The illusion was so arresting that he forgot his purpose and stood, gazing upon her, bound by a spell that he had not known for years.
There came a sound through the magic stillness—the soft chiming of the quarter from the Cathedral tower. The Bishop stirred as if a hand had been laid upon him, stirred and turned.
His face was in the full moonlight, and it was the face of a denunciatory prophet. He spoke in hollow tones that reached them like a voice of doom.
“As I thought!” he said. “As I might have known! You may come out of your hiding-place. No subterfuge will serve either of you. Go—both of you! Let me never see you again!”
“Damnation!” said Montague.
The vision flashed away from him. He saw only the red fire of his wrath. Then, strangely, the vision returned. He saw her again—a woman of amazing possibilities, a woman to dream about, a woman to love. . . .
He took her cold hand very firmly into his own and led her forth.
She tried to resist him, to free herself. He knew that later. At the time he realized but the one overmastering determination to vindicate himself and her in the eyes of the denunciatory prophet. He strode forward and confronted him.
“Damnation!” he said again, and he flung the word with all the force of his fury. “Who are you to dare to speak to either of us in this strain? What the devil do you mean by it?”
He spoke as one man speaking to another, but the calm gesture of the Bishop’s uplifted hand dispelled the situation before it could be established.
“Who am I?” he said. “I am a priest of the Lord to whom profanity is no more than the vapouring of fools. How do I dare to speak to you thus? I have never flinched from my duty in the bold rebuke of vice. What do I mean? I mean that you and this woman have been detected by me on the very verge of sin. And I tell you to go, because I cannot stop your sinning until you have endured your hell and—if God is merciful—begun to work out your own salvation.”
“The man is mad!” said Montague.
A moment before, he had been in a mood to take him by the throat, but now he paused, arrested by the fanatical fervour of the Bishop’s speech. Quite suddenly he realized that neither argument nor indignation would have the smallest effect. And, curiously, his anger cooled. Any other man he would have hurled into the placid waters of the lake without an instant’s hesitation. But this man was different. Almost involuntarily he accorded him the indulgence which the abnormal can practically always command.
He turned very quietly to the woman whose hand had closed convulsively in his own, but who stood beside him, immobile and emotionless as a statue.
“Miss Thorold,” he said, “I must apologize to you for—quite inadvertently—placing you in this extraordinary situation. The whole thing is too monstrous for discussion. I only ask you to believe that I regret it from the bottom of my heart, and I beg that you will not allow anything so outrageous to prejudice you with regard to the future.”
Her eyes were downcast. She heard him without raising them. And still no shade of feeling crossed her death-white face as she made reply.
“I am not likely to do that,” she said coldly and proudly. “I am not likely to blame you for showing kindness to me in the house of one whom mercy and humanity are unknown. I do not hold you responsible for another man’s wickedness.”
It was a challenge, clearly and unhesitatingly spoken, and Montague marvelled at the icy courage of her, the biting disdain. As she spoke, she drew her hand from his, and paused, facing him, not deigning to look upon her accuser; then, as he spoke no word, calmly, regally, with head erect but eyes cast down, she walked away over the moonlit grass, and so passed out of their sight.
The soft thudding of cows’ feet through the red mud of a Devon lane—the chirruping call of a girl’s voice in their rear—the warning note of a blackbird in the hedge—and the magic fragrance of honeysuckle everywhere! Was ever summer day so fair? Was ever world so green?
“Drat that young Minnie! If she hasn’t taken the wrong turning again!” cried the voice that had chirruped to the herd, and there followed a chuckling laugh that had in it that indescribable sweetness of tone which is peculiar only to those of a contented mind.
It took Frances Thorold by storm—that laugh. She got up swiftly from her knoll, sketching block in hand, to peer over the hedge.
The hedge was ragged and the lane was deep, but she caught a glimpse of the red cows, trooping by, and of the pink dress and wildly untidy hair of their attendant. Then there came a sharp whistle, and a dog went scampering by, audible but unseen in the leafy depth of the lane. There followed a blundering check among the animals, and then again the clear, happy voice calling to order and the equally cheery bark of the dog.
“That’ll do, Roger! Come back!” cried the bright voice. “Minnie won’t do it again till next time, so you needn’t scold. Now, Penelope, what are you stopping for? Get on, old girl! Don’t hold up the traffic! Ah, here’s a motor-car!”
It was not annoyance so much as a certain comic resignation that characterized the last sentence. The buzz of an engine and the sharp grinding of brakes upon skidding wheels succeeded it, and Frances, still peering over the ragged hedge, flushed suddenly and deeply, almost to the colour of the sorrel that grew about her feet.
She made a small movement as though she would withdraw herself, but some stronger motive kept her where she was. The car came grinding to a standstill almost abreast of her, and she heard the animals go blundering past.
“Thank you, sir,” called the fresh voice, with its irresistible trill of gaiety. “Sorry we take up so much room.”
“Don’t mention it! You’re as much right as I—if not more,” called back the driver of the car.
Frances stirred then, stirred and drew back. She left her green vantage-ground and sat down again on the bank. Her eyes returned to her sketching-block, and she began to work industriously. The hot colour receded slowly from her face. It took on a still, mask-like expression as though carved in marble. But the tired look had wholly left it, and the drawn lines about the mouth were barely perceptible. They looked now as if they sought to repress a smile.
She chose a tiny paint-brush from her box, and began to work with minute care. The sketch under her hand was an exquisite thing, delicate as a miniature—just a brown stream with stepping-stones and beyond them the corner of an old thatched barn—Devon in summer-time. The babble of the stream and the buzz of a million insects were in that tender little sketch with its starry, meadow flowers and soft grey shadows. She had revelled in the making of it, and now it was nearly finished.
She had counted upon finishing it that afternoon, but for some reason, after that episode in the lane, her hand seemed to have lost its cunning. With the fine brush between her fingers she stopped, for her hand was shaking. A faint frown, swiftly banished, drew her brows, and then one of them went up at a humorous angle, and she began to smile.
The next moment very quietly she returned the brush unused to its box, laid both sketching-block and paints aside, and clasped her hands about her knees, waiting.
The commotion in the lane had wholly ceased, but there was a sound of feet squelching in the mud on the other side of the hedge. Frances turned her head to listen. Finally, the smile still about her lips, she spoke.
“Are you looking for someone?”
“By Jove!” cried back a voice in swift and hearty response. “So you’re there, are you? I thought I couldn’t be wrong—through a stream and past a barn, and down a hill—what damnable hills they are too in this part of the world! How on earth does one get up there?”
Quite concisely and without agitation she made reply. “One usually goes to the bottom of the hill, opens a gate and walks up on the other side.”
“Oh, that’s too much to ask,” protested the voice below her. “Isn’t there some hole where one can get through?”
“If one doesn’t mind spoiling one’s clothes,” said Frances.
“Oh, damn the clothes—this infernal mud too for that matter! Here goes!”
There followed sounds of a leap and a scramble—a violent shaking of the nut-trees and brambles that composed the hedge—and finally a man’s face, laughing and triumphant, appeared above the confusion.
“By gad,” he said, “you look as if you were on a throne!”
She smiled at him, without rising. “It is quite a comfortable perch. I come here every day. In fact,” she indicated the sketching-block by her side. “This is how I amuse myself.”
He came to her, carrying a trail of honeysuckle which he laid at her feet. “May I share the throne?” he said.
She looked at him, not touching the flowers, her smile faintly quizzical. “You can sit on a corner of this rug if you like. It is rather a ragged affair, but it serves its purpose.”
She indicated the corner furthest from her, and Rotherby dropped down upon it with a satisfied air. “Oh, this is a loafer’s paradise. How are you getting on, Miss Thorold? You look—” he regarded her critically—“you look like one who has bathed in magic dew.”
She met his look, her own wholly impersonal. “I feel rather like that,” she said. “It has been a wonderful fortnight. I am quite ready for work.”
He leaned upon his elbow, still carelessly watching her. “Have you learnt to milk cows yet?” he asked.
“Well, no!” She laughed a little. “But I have several times watched the operation. You saw that girl just now, driving the cows back to pasture for the night. She comes from such a dear old farm on the moor called Tetherstones. I have stood at the door of the cowshed and watched her. She is wonderfully quick at it.”
“Is she going to give you lessons?” he said idly.
“I haven’t got to the point of asking her yet. We only pass the time of day when we meet.”
Frances picked up her sketching-block again. Her hand was quite steady now.
“May I see?” said Rotherby.
“When it is finished,” she said.
“No, now, please!” His tone had a hint of imperiousness.
She leaned forward with the faintest possible suggestion of indulgence, such as one might show to a child, and gave it to him.
He took it in silence, studied it at first casually, then more closely, with growing interest, finally looked up at her.
“You ought to find a ready market for this sort of thing. It’s exquisite.”
She coloured then vividly, almost painfully, and the man’s eyes kindled, watching her.
“Do you really think that?” she asked in a low voice.
“Of course I do. It isn’t to my interest to say it, is it? You’ve mistaken your vocation.”
He smiled with the words and gave her back the sketch.
“It isn’t a paying game—except for the chosen few. But I believe I could find you a market for this sort of thing. I had no idea you were so talented.”
“It has always been my pastime,” said Frances rather wistfully. “But I couldn’t make a living at it.”
“You could augment a living,” he said.
“Ah! But one needs interest for that. And I—” she hesitated—“I don’t think I am very good at pushing my wares.”
He laughed. “Well, I’ll supply the interest—such as it is. I’ll do my best anyway. You go on sketching for a bit, and I’ll come and look on and admire. Shall I?”
She gave him a steady look. “When are you going to begin your book?”
“Oh, that!” he spoke with easy assurance. “That’ll have to keep for a bit. I’m not in the mood for it yet. By and by,—in the winter——”
Her face changed a little. “In that case,” she said, slowly, “I ought to set about finding another post.”
“Oh, rot!” said Montague with lightness. “Why?”
She turned from her steady regard of him, and looked down at the sketch in her hand. “Because,” she said, her voice chill and constrained as was its habit in moments of emotion, “I haven’t money to carry me on till then. I shouldn’t have wasted this fortnight if I had known.”
“It hasn’t been wasted,” argued Montague, still careless and unimpressed. “You couldn’t have done without it.”
She did not lift her eyes. “It is quite true I needed a rest,” she said, “but I could have employed the time in trying to find another post. I could have advertised. I could have answered advertisements.”
“And ended up as you are now minus the cost of the postage,” said Montague.
She took up her brush again. “Yes, that is quite possible; but I should have had the satisfaction of knowing that I had done my best.”
“You’ve done much more for yourself by just taking a rest and sketching,” said Montague. “Have you done any besides this?”
She answered him with her eyes upon her work. “Three.”
“Will you let me see them?”
“If you wish.”
“When?”
“Whenever you like.”
“May I come round to-night then—sometime after dinner? I went round to your diggings just now. It was the old woman who sent me on here. Extraordinary old witch! Does she make you comfortable?”
“The place is quite clean,” said Frances.
“That’s non-committal. What’s the food like?”
“I don’t suppose you would care for it. It is quite plain, but it is good. It suits me all right, and it suits my purse.”
He pounced upon the words. “Then why in heaven’s name worry? A little extra holiday never hurt anyone, and you have got your sketching.”
“I can’t afford it,” said Frances.
“But if you can sell some of your work.”
“I can’t,” she said.
“Well, I can for you. It’s the same thing. Look here, Miss Thorold! You’re not being reasonable.”
She turned again and faced him. Her eyes were very quiet, quite inscrutable.
“It is not that I am unreasonble, Mr. Rotherby,” she said. “It is simply you—who do not understand.”
There was stubbornness in his answering look. “I understand perfectly,” he said. “I know what you are afraid of. But if you will only leave things to me, it won’t happen. After all, you promised to be my secretary, didn’t you? You can’t seriously mean to let me down?”
“I!” Her eyes widened and darkened in genuine surprise. “I don’t think you can very well accuse me of that,” she said.
“Can’t I? In spite of the fact that you are threatening to throw me over?” There was a bantering note in his voice, but his look was wary.
“I must think of myself,” she said. “You forget I have got to make my living.”
“No, I haven’t forgotten. But there are more ways than one of doing that.” His look fell suddenly to the trailing honeysuckle at her feet and dwelt there with an odd abstraction. “Surely you can fill in time as I have suggested,” he said. “You won’t be a loser in the end.”
“I like to feel I am standing on firm ground,” said Frances Thorold, and returned to her sketch with an air of finality as though thereby the subject were closed.
Montague took out a cigarette-case and opened it, offering it to her with the same abstracted air.
She shook her head without looking at him. “No, thank you. I’ve never taken to it. I’ve never had time.”
“It seems to me that you have never had time for anything that’s worth doing,” he said, as he took one himself.
“That is true,” she said in her brief way.
There fell a silence between them. Montague leaned upon his elbow smoking, his eyes half-closed, but still curiously fixed upon the long spray of honeysuckle as though the flowers presented to him some problem.
Frances worked gravely at her sketch, just as she had worked in the Bishop’s room at Burminster a fortnight before, too deeply absorbed to spare any attention for any interest outside that upon which she was engaged. It was her way to concentrate thus.
Suddenly through the summer silence there came a sound—the voice of a little child singing in the lane below—an unintelligible song, without tune, but strangely sweet, as the first soft song of a twittering bird in the dawning.
Frances lifted her head. She looked at Montague. “Did you leave your car in the lane?”
“I did,” he said, wondering a little at the sudden anxiety in her eyes.
“Ah!” She was on her feet with the word, her sketching almost flung aside. “She’ll run into it.”
“Absurd!” he protested. “Not if she has eyes to see!”
“Ah!” Frances said again. “She hasn’t!”
She was gone even while she spoke, springing for the gap through which he had forced his way a few minutes earlier, calling as she went in tones tender, musical, such as he had never believed her capable of uttering. “Mind, little darling! Mind! Wait till I come to you!”
She was gone from his sight. He heard her slipping down the bank into the mud of the lane. He heard the child’s voice lifted in wonder but not in fear.
“You are the pretty lady who came to see the cows. May I hold your hand?”
And Frances’ answering voice with a deep throb in it that oddly made the listening man stiffen as one who listens to undreamt-of music:—“Of course you shall, sweetheart. We will walk up the road together and find some honeysuckle.”
The man’s eyes came swiftly downwards to the flowers that trailed neglected where her feet had been. So she did love honeysuckle after all! With a movement of violence half-suppressed he snatched up the pink and white blossoms and threw them away.
The description that Frances had given of the lodging she had found for herself in that little Devon village on the edge of the moors gave a very fair impression of the hospitality she enjoyed. The place was scrupulously clean, and, beyond this, quite comfortless. The fare was cottage fare of the very plainest. Her hostess—a stiff-limbed old creature, toothless, ungracious—was content to bestow upon her lodger the bare necessaries of life and no more.
“I can boil you up some hot water to wash in, but it’ll be an extra,” expressed her general attitude towards all things. And Frances, being unable to afford the luxury here implied, contented herself with the sweet, soft moorland water as it came from the pump at the cottage-door. In fact, she very often pumped her own in preference to accepting the grumbling ministrations of the old woman.
But she had been happy during that fortnight of enforced rest after leaving the Palace. The solitude and the boundless leisure of her days had brought healing to her tired soul. She was beginning to feel equipped to face the world afresh. She was looking forward to taking up secretarial work again of an infinitely more congenial character. Her first instinctive hesitation was past. She was prepared to take refuge once more in professional absorption, resolutely banishing all misgivings regarding the man who had hidden with her in the Bishop’s garden and had taken his stand beside her in the Bishop’s presence.
They had been cast forth,—she thought of it sometimes still with the tremor of a smile—they had been driven out as Adam and Eve, and neither of them would ever enter that garden again. Their intercourse since that night had been of the very briefest. Rotherby had obtained from her an address by which he could find her at any time. His attitude had been as business-like as her own, and she had been reassured. She had agreed to take a three weeks’ holiday before entering upon her new duties, and now had come this. He had followed her to tell her that he would not now need her until the winter.
It had been a blow. She could not deny it. But already busily she was making her plans. He would have to understand clearly that she could not wait; but he had shown her great kindness, and if he really desired her services, she would try to find some temporary work till he should be ready. She wondered, as she sorted out her sketches in the little bare sitting-room in preparation for his coming that evening, if he really did need her, or if he had merely obeyed the impulse of the moment and had now repented. She recalled his careless gallantry which might well cover a certain discomfiture at having placed himself in a difficult position, his obvious desire to help her still by whatever means that might come to hand. Yes, it was impossible to formulate any complaint against him. He had been kind—too kind. He had allowed his sympathies to carry him away. But they should not carry him any farther. On that point she was determined. He should see her sketches—since he wished to see them—but no persuasion on his part should induce her to look upon them as a means of livelihood. She would make him understand very clearly that she could accept no benefits from him in this direction. As she had said, she must feel firm ground under her feet, and only by a fixed employment could she obtain this.
So ran her thoughts on that summer evening as she waited for his coming with a curious mixture of eagerness and reluctance. She marvelled at the kindness of heart that had prompted his interest in her. If she had been—as she once had been—an ardent, animated girl, it would have been a different matter. But she had no illusions concerning herself. Her youth was gone, had fled by like a streak of sunshine on a grey hillside, and only the greyness remained. It was thus that she viewed herself, and that any charm could possibly have outlived those years of drudgery she did not for a moment suspect. That any part of her character could in any fashion hold an appeal for such a man as Montague Rotherby she could not, and did not, believe. Pity—pity, alone—had actuated him, and he chose to veil his pity—for her sake—in the light homage which he would have paid to any woman whom he found attractive. Something in the situation, as she thus viewed it, struck a humorous note within her. How odd of him to imagine that a woman of her shrewdness could fail to understand! Ah, well, the least she could do was to let him continue his cheery course without betraying her knowledge of the motive that drove him. She would not be so ungrateful as to let him imagine that she saw through his kindly device. Only she must be firm, she must stand upon solid ground, she must—whatever the issue—assert the independence that she held as her most precious possession. Whatever he thought of her, he should never deem her helpless.
There came the click of the garden-gate, and she started with a sharp jerk of every pulse. Again, before she could check it the hot colour rushed upwards to her face and temples. She stood, strangely tense, listening.
He came up the path with his easy saunter. She knew it for the step of a man of the world. None of the village men walked thus—with this particular species of leisurely decision, unhurried assurance. He strolled between the line of hollyhocks and sunflowers and spied her by the window.
“Ah! Hullo! May I come in this way?”
He stepped over the low sill into the room. It was growing dusk. The air was extraordinarily sweet.
“There’s a mist on the moors to-night,” he said. “Can you smell it?”
“Yes,” said Frances.
She gave him no word of greeting. Somehow the occasion was too unconventional for that. Or was it merely the manner of his entrance—the supreme confidence of his intimacy with her—that made conventional things impossible? He entered her presence without parley, because—obviously—he knew she would be glad to see him. The breath caught oddly in her throat. Was she glad?
The tension of her limbs passed, but she was aware of it still mentally,—a curious constraint from which she could not break free. She laid her sketches before him almost without words.
He took them and looked at them one after another with obvious interest. “You’ve got the atmosphere!” he said. “And the charm! They’re like yourself, Miss Thorold. No, it isn’t idle flattery. It’s there, but one can’t tell where it lies. Ah, what’s this?”
He was looking at the last of the pictures with an even closer interest.
“That is the little blind child at Tetherstones,” she said. “It is only an impression—not good at all. I couldn’t get the appeal of her—only the prettiness. It isn’t even finished.”
“What, the child you went to in the lane this morning? But this is clever. You must finish this. You’ve got her on the stepping-stones too. She doesn’t cross those alone surely!”
“Oh, yes, she goes everywhere, poor mite. She is just seven and wonderfully brave. Sure-footed, too! She wanders about quite alone.”
“Poor kid!” Rotherby laid the sketch aside and turned to her. “Miss Thorold, I’ve come for a talk—a real talk. Don’t freeze me!”
She smiled almost in spite of herself, and the thought came to her that he must have had a very winning personality as a boy. Gleams of the boy still shone out now and again as it were between the joints of his manhood’s armour.
“Sit down!” she said. “Sit down and talk!”
But Rotherby would not sit. He began to pace the narrow room restlessly, impatiently.
“You accused me of letting you down this morning,” he said, “and I protest against that. It wasn’t fair. You’ve got a wrong impression of me.”
“I!” said Frances.
“Yes, you!” He met her surprise with a certain ruthlessness. “I know it sounded like the other way round, but it wasn’t actually. In your heart you felt I’d played you a dirty trick—let you down. Own up! Didn’t you?”
She replied with that slight humorous lift of the eyebrow that was characteristic of her, “I really didn’t put it quite like that—even in my heart, Mr. Rotherby. I owe you too much for that.”
He flung round as if at the prick of a goad. “What do you owe me? Nothing whatever! Let’s talk sense, Miss Thorold! You don’t owe me anything—except perhaps some sort of reparation for the restless nights you have made me go through.”
Dead silence followed his words, uttered on the edge of a laugh that somehow had a dangerous note. He had his back to her as he uttered them, but in the silence he turned again and came back, treading lightly, with something of a spring.
Frances stood quite straight and motionless, with that characteristic pose of hers that was in some inexplicable fashion endowed with majesty. She did not attempt to answer or avoid him as he returned. She only faced him very steadily in the failing light.
“Do you know what I mean?” he said, stopping before her.
She made a slight movement of negation, but she did not speak. She stood as one awaiting an explanation.
He bent towards her. “Don’t you know what I mean, you wonderful woman? Haven’t you known from the very beginning—you Circe—you enchantress?”
His arms came out to her with the words. He caught the slim shoulders, and in a moment he had her against his breast.
“Oh!” gasped Frances, and said no more, for he pressed her so closely to him that no further words could come.
She did not resist him. Burningly, afterwards, she remembered her submission, remembered how, panting, her lips met his, and were held and crushed till blindly she fought for breath but not for freedom. It all came like a fevered dream. One moment she had been a woman of the world—a business woman—cold, collected, calm; the next she a girl again, living, palpitating, thrilling to the rapture which all her life she had missed, drinking the ecstasy of the moment as only those who have been parched with thirst can drink. She was as it were borne on a great wave of amazed exultation. That he should love her—that he should love her! Ah, the marvel of it—and the gladness that was like to pain!
He was speaking now, speaking with lips that yet touched her own. “So now I have caught you—my white flame—my wandering will-o’-the-wisp! How dared you refuse my flowers this morning? How dared you? How dared you?”
He kissed her between each question, hotly, with a passion that would not be denied. And she lay there in his arms, quivering, helpless, wildly rejoicing in the overwhelming mastery of the great flood-tide on which she was borne.
Her life had been so singularly empty—just a fight for bare existence. There had been no time for new friendships—old friendships had waned. And now this! O God, now this!
She did not try to answer him. His kisses stayed all speech. His arms encompassed her—lifted her. He sat down on the little horse-hair sofa in the growing darkness, holding her. And she clung to him—clung to him—in the abandonment of love’s first surrender.
It was like a dream—yet not a dream. Over and over again she marvelled afresh at the wonder of it, lying on the hard little bed in her room with the sloping roof, watching the misty stars through their long night march.
They had parted—somehow he had torn himself away, she could not remember how. She only remembered that after he had gone, he had returned to the window and said to her laughing, “Why not come up on to the moor and do sacrifice to the high gods with me?”
And she had answered, also laughing—tremulously, “Oh no, really I couldn’t bear any more to-night. Besides, it is misty—we might be lost.”
“I should like to be lost with you,” he had answered, and had gone away laughing.
There had been something wild and Pan-like in his laugh. It was the laugh of the conqueror, and she tingled to the memory of it, thrilling like a delicate instrument to the hand of a skilled player. He had waked in her such music as none had ever waked in her before. She did not know herself any longer. This throbbing, eager creature was a being wholly different from the Frances Thorold of her knowledge, just as the man who had laughed and vanished like Pan into the mist had a personality wholly apart from that somewhat cynical but kindly gentleman who was Montague Rotherby.
What magic had wrought the change in them? What moorland spell was this, holding them as surely as a net about their feet? She was as one on the threshold of an enchanted world, afraid not so much of the unknown that lay before her as of the desert that lay behind—that desert which she had so miraculously quitted for this place of amazing gladness.
Once in the night she arose and went to the little cottage-window since sleep was impossible. It came to her there as she stood gazing up at those far dim stars to breathe a deep thanksgiving for this strange deliverance. But the words she sought to utter would not come. The vague mist, floating like smoke, seemed to cling about her soul. She stood speechless, and so standing she heard a voice, denunciatory, fanatical, speak suddenly within.
“I tell you to go, because I cannot stop your sinning until you have endured your hell and—if God is merciful—begun to work out your own salvation.”
So clearly fell the words upon her consciousness that she felt as if they had been uttered by her side. She almost turned to see who spoke. Then, remembering, a sharp shudder went through her. She shrank and caught her breath as though she had been pierced.
Was this the magic that had caught her—the awful magic of temptation? Was there poison in the draught which she had drunk with such avidity? This enchanted land to which she had come after weary years of desert journeying, was this to prove—her hell?
As if stricken with blindness, she stumbled back into the room and lay down. All her former doubts swept over her afresh in a black cataract of misgiving. Love her—faded and tired and dull? How could he love her? What could a man of this sort, rich, popular, successful, see in a woman of hers save an easy prey? She lay and burned in the darkness. And she had given him all he asked in that amazing surrender. She had opened to him her very soul. Wherefore? Ah, indeed, wherefore? Because he had overwhelmed her with the audacity of his desire! For no other reason—no other reason! How could this thing be Love?
So she lay, chastising herself with the scorpions of shame and fear and desolation—because she had dared to dream that Love could ever come to her. At last—in that terrible vigil—she found words wherewith to pray, and in an agony of supplication she made her prayer: “O God, keep me from making a mistake! Let me die sooner! Let me die!”
And though no answer came to her then, tears came instead and washed the burning anguish away. Afterwards she slept. . . .
In the morning she awoke to see the sun drawing up the mist like a veil from the green earth. All the evils of the night were gone. She arose wondering at the emotions that had so torn her a few hours before. After all, if she kept her soul with steadfastness, what had she to fear? She viewed the strange event of the previous evening with a curious sense of detachment, almost as if it had happened to another person, very far removed from herself. She was calm now, calm and strong and no longer afraid. The habit of years had reasserted itself. She girt herself anew in the armour which till then had never failed her. Work was her safeguard as well as her necessity. She would waste no further time in idleness.
After breakfast she set forth on a three-mile tramp to the nearest town to buy a newspaper, promising herself to spend the afternoon answering advertisements. Her way lay by a track across the moor which she had never before followed. The purple heather was just coming into bloom and the gold of coronella was scattered every where about her path. The singing of larks filled the whole world with rejoicing. She thought that the distant tors had never been so blue.
About a mile from the village, on the edge of a deep combe through which flowed the babbling stream of her sketch, she came to the farm called Tetherstones, and here, somewhat to her surprise, she was joined by the dog, Roger. He bounded to her, his brown eyes beaming good fellowship through his shaggy hair, and at once and quite unmistakably announced his intention of accompanying her. No amount of reasoning or discouragement on her part had the smallest effect upon his resolution. Beaming and jolly he refused to pay any attention to either, having evidently decided to take a day off and spend it in what he regarded as congenial society. She found it impossible to hide from him the fact that she loved his kind, and he obviously considered her honest attempt to do so as a huge joke, laughing whenever she spoke in a fashion so disarming that she was very soon compelled to admit herself defeated.
They went on together, therefore, Roger with many eager excursions into the heather, till Tetherstones was left far behind. Then, at last, Frances, growing weary, sat down to rest, and Roger came, panting but still cheery, to lie beside her.
She fondled his beautiful shaggy head with an understanding touch. “What a funny fellow you are,” she said, “to follow me like this.”
Roger smiled at her, his tongue hanging between his pearly teeth, and laid a damp, podgy paw upon her lap. She understood him to express his warm appreciation of the company in which he found himself.
“They’ll think I’ve run away with you,” she said.
And he shook his ears with a nonchalance that said very plainly that it was no concern of his what they thought.
Then there came a tramp of hoofs along the white, sandy track, and she saw a man on horseback coming towards them through the glare. Roger sat up sharply and, gulping, ceased to pant.
She saw that his eyes were fixed upon the advancing horseman though he made no movement to leave her side. The thud of the approaching hoofs had a dull fateful sound to her ears. She experienced an odd desire to rise and plunge deep into the heather to avoid an encounter. But the tenseness of the dog by her side seemed to hold her also motionless. She waited with a strange expectancy.
The dazzling sunshine made it impossible for her to see what manner of man the rider was until he was abreast of her. Then she realised that he was broad and heavy of build. He wore a cap drawn down over his eyes.
The sudden checking of the horse made her start. “Roger!” a deep voice said, “What the devil are you doing here?”
Roger started also, and she felt a quiver as of guilt run through him. He got up with an apologetic air, and stood wagging his funny stump of a tail ingratiatingly.
It seemed to Frances that even the horse looked apologetic halted there at his master’s behest.
“Roger!” the new comer said again. Roger’s tail dipped and became invisible in the bushy hair of his hindquarters. He crept forward with a slinking air as if he yearned for a deep hole in which to bury himself.
The man on horseback waited quite motionless till the dog reached his foot, then suddenly he leaned down and struck him a stinging cut with his riding-whip.
The dog cried out, and fled to a distance, and Frances, her hands gripped in the heather on both sides of her, uttered an involuntary exclamation.
The horseman, preparing to go on, paused. “Did you speak, madam?” he asked, scowling at her from under the peak of his cap.
She collected herself and rose to the occasion. “No! There are no words for a thing of that sort,” she said, icily contemptuous.
He put up a hand, ironically courteous, and saluted her. She saw the hard line of a very prominent jaw as he rode on.
The dog fell in behind and meekly followed him.
“What a bear!” said Frances. “I suppose that is the owner of Tetherstones. Or—no! Someone said that was an old man. Then this must be his son.”
She arose and pursued her way, a grim sense of amusement succeeding her annoyance. How curious it was of people to go out of their way to be objectionable! They so seldom injured anyone except themselves in the process.
She had not thought that a walk across the moors would have tired her overmuch, but the day was hot and she very soon realised that she would need a considerable rest before returning. She had breakfasted early and none too bountifully, and she had brought no refreshment with her, counting on obtaining it when she reached her destination at Fordestown.
But Fordestown was a long way off, further than she had anticipated, and she began after a while to wonder if she had done wisely in attempting the walk. She felt lonely after Roger had left her. The great spaces of the moors had a bewildering effect upon her tired senses. The solitude weighed upon her.
Then, after what seemed an endless period of walking, she came to a cross-track with no indication as to whither the branching by-path led. There was no habitation in sight, no sign of life beyond that of the larks singing interminably in the blazing blue overhead, no possibility of knowing in which direction she ought to turn.
Her heart began to fail her a little, and she sat down again to consider the problem. The whirr of grasshoppers arose in a ceaseless hum around her. The distant hills swam before her aching vision. She sank deep into the scented heather and closed her eyes.
She had meant to give herself only the briefest rest, but she was in a place where Nature reigned supreme, and Nature proved too much for her. Her lids were sealed almost immediately. The hum of insects became a vague lullaby to her jaded nerves. She slipped deeper and deeper into a sea of slumber that took her and bore her with soft billowings into an ocean of oblivion. She slept as a child sleeps—as she had not slept for years—the soul as it were loosed from the body—her whole being perfectly at rest.
Often she wondered afterwards how long that sleep would have lasted, if it had been left to Nature to awake her. It was so deep, so dreamless, so exquisite in its utter restfulness. She never slept thus in the open before. The magic of the moors had never so possessed her. And she had been so weary. All the weariness of the weary years seemed to go to the making of that amazing sleep of hers in the heather. She was just a child of Nature, too tired for further effort. She slept for hours, and she would have slept for hours longer, but for the interruption.
It came to her very suddenly, so suddenly that it seemed to her that the soul had scarcely time to gird itself anew in the relaxed body, before the amazing battle was upon her. She sprang upright in the heather, gasping, still trammelled in the meshes of sleep, defenceless, to find the day nearly spent and a curtain of mist surrounding her; and, within that curtain, most terribly alone with her, she also found Montague Rotherby.
Her recognition of him came with a choking cry. She realized that he had only just reached her, that his coming must have called her back from that deep oblivion in which she had been so steeped. But that first sight of him—alone with her—alone with her—within that strangely shifting yet impenetrable curtain—showed her something which to her waking vision—made keen by that long spell of rest—was appalling. She was terrified in that moment as she could not remember that she had ever been terrified before.
He bent over her. “Found!” he said and laughed with a triumph that seemed to stab her. “I’ve had a long hunt for you. Have you been hiding here all day?”
“No,” she said, through lips that felt strangely stiff, compelling her voice with difficulty. “I lost my way. I fell asleep. I am just going to Fordestown.”
“Going to Fordestown! Why, it’s miles away! Why didn’t you wait till I came to you? You knew I should come.”
His voice had a caressing quality. It drew her against her judgment. Her wild, unreasoning fear subsided somewhat. She smiled at him, though still her lips felt stiff.
“I expected to be back by that time,” she said. “I started quite early.”
“But why did you start at all?” he said.
He was still bending over her. She gave him her hands with a slight gesture of appeal to help her up. He took them and drew her upwards into his arms.
Holding her so, in spite of her quick effort for freedom, he looked deeply into her eyes. “Tell me why you went!” he said.
She hesitated, trying to avert her face.
“No, that won’t help you,” he said, frustrating her. “Tell me!”
Unwillingly she answered him. “I had a bad night, and I decided—in the morning—that—I had better look for work.”
“Why did you decide that?” he said.
She made a more determined stand against him. “I can’t tell you. It’s natural, isn’t it? I have always been independent.”
“Till you met me,” he said.
She summoned her courage and faced him though she knew that she was crimson and quivering. “I shall go on being independent,” she said, “until we are married.”
She expected some subtle change of countenance, possibly some sign of discomfiture, as thus boldly she took her stand. But at once he defeated her expectations. He met her announcement with complete composure. He even smiled, drawing her closer.
“Oh, I think not,” he said. “After what happened yesterday we won’t talk nonsense of that kind to-day. What is the matter, sweetheart? Has someone been troubling you?”
She relaxed somewhat. It was impossible not to respond to the tenderness of his voice and touch. But he had not satisfied her; the misgiving remained.
“Only my own mind—my own reason,” she confessed, still painfully seeking to avoid his look.
“After—yesterday!” he said.
The reproach of his tone pierced her. She hid her face against his breast. “I couldn’t help it. You must make allowances. There has been no time for—love-making—in my life.”
“There’s time now,” he said, and again she heard in his voice the note of triumph that had so deeply disquieted her. “It’s not a bit of good trying to run away at this stage. You’re caught before you start.”
“Ah!” she said.
He held her fast. “Do you realize that?”
She was silent.
He held her faster still. “Frances! Put your arms round my neck and tell me—tell me you are mine!”
She shrank, hiding her face more deeply. He had lulled her distrust, but he had not gained her confidence.
“You won’t?” he said.
“I can’t,” she whispered back.
He felt for her face and turned it upwards. “You will presently,” he said, and bending, kissed her, holding her lips with his till she broke free with a mingled sense of shame and self-reproach.
“What is it?” he said, watching her, and she thought his face hardened. “You have changed since yesterday. Why?”
She laid a pleading hand upon his arm. Yes, she had changed; she could not deny it. But she could not tell him why.
“I think we have been—rather headlong,” was all she found to say.
And at that he laughed, easily, cajoling her. “Well, we’ve gone too far to pull up now. Perhaps it will be a lesson to you next time, what? But no more of your will-o’-the-wisp performances on this occasion, O lady mine! We’ll play the game, and as we have begun, so we will go on.”
He kissed her again, and his kiss was almost a challenge.
“Don’t you realize that I love you?” he said. “Do you think I am going to lie awake all night for you, and then not hold you in my arms when we meet?”
He laughed as he uttered the question, but it had a passionate ring. His lean, sunburnt face had a drawn look that oddly touched her pity. She was even moved to compunction.
“I am sorry,” she said. “I thought—perhaps—it was just—a passing fancy.”
“My fancies don’t pass like that,” said Montague.
He spoke almost moodily, as if she had hurt him, and again her heart smote her.
“I am beginning to understand,” she said. “But—you must give me time. We hardly know each other yet.”
“That is soon remedied,” he said. “I warn you, I am not a very patient person. There is nothing to wait for that I can see.”
“Oh, we must wait,” she said. “We must wait.”
He broke again into that odd laugh of his. “We won’t wait. Life is too short.” He stooped again to kiss her. “You amazing woman!” he said. “Do you really prefer stones to bread?”
She could not answer him. He had her defeated, powerless. She had no weapons with which to oppose him. But still deep in her heart, the doubt and the wonder remained. Was this indeed love that had come to her? If so, why was she thus afraid?
Yet she met his lips with her own, for somehow he made her feel that she owed it to him.
“That’s better,” he said, when he suffered her to go again. “Now, what are your plans? Are you still wanting to go to Fordestown?”
She hesitated. “You say it is a long way?”
“It’s miles,” he said. “You are right out of your way. What made you wander up here?”
“They told me it was a short cut across the moor,” she said.
He laughed. “Ah! These short cuts! Well, what are you going to do?”
She looked at him, “Do you know—I haven’t had anything to eat all day—not since breakfast?”
“Good heavens!” he said. “You’ve been wandering about the moor starving all this time?”
She smiled. His concern touched her. Not for years had anyone expressed any anxiety for her welfare.
“Not wandering about much,” she said. “I got as far as this this morning, and then, while I was considering which way to go, I fell asleep.” She glanced about her uneasily. “Do you think this fog is going to get any worse?”
“Oh no!” he said lightly. “It’s nothing. They often come up like this in the evening. But look here! I can’t have you starving. We had better make for Fordestown after all.”
“But—is it far?” She still hesitated. “Do you know the way?”
“I know the direction. I can’t say how far it is. But it is nearer than Brookside. There is a fairly decent inn there. I am staying there myself.”
“Oh!” she said with relief. “Then if we can only get there, you can motor me back to Brookside.”
“The point is to get there,” said Montague.
“But you know the direction. Do let us start before it gets any worse! I am quite rested.”
She spoke urgently, for he seemed inclined to linger. He turned at once.
“Yes. You must be famished. This is the way.”
He drew her hand through his arm with decision and began to lead her up one of the sandy tracks.
The mist closed like smoke about them, and Frances felt it wet upon her face. “We seem to be in the clouds,” she said.
“I think we are,” said Montague.
“You are sure we are going right?” she said.
He laughed at her. “Of course we are going right. Don’t you trust me?”
Trust him! The words sent a curious sensation through her. Did she trust him? Had she ever—save for that strange, delirious hour last night really trusted him? She murmured something unintelligible, for she could not answer him in the affirmative. And Montague laughed again.
Looking back upon that walk later, it seemed to her that they must have covered miles. It was not easy going. The track was rough, sometimes stony, sometimes overgrown. She stumbled often from weariness and exhaustion; and still they went on endlessly over the moor. Always they seemed to be going uphill, and always the mist grew thicker. Here and there they skirted marshy ground, splashing through puddles of black water, and hearing the sound of running streams close at hand but invisible in the ever-thickening mist.
It began to grow dark, and at last Frances became really anxious. They had not spoken for a long time, merely plodding on in silent discomfort, when abruptly she gave voice to her misgivings.
“I am sure we are wrong. This path leads to nowhere.”
“It leads to Fordestown,” he declared stubbornly, “if you keep on long enough.”
“I don’t think I can keep on much longer,” she said.
“I told you it was miles,” said Montague.
She heard the sullen note in his voice, and her heart sank. Progress was becoming increasingly difficult. Very soon they would not be able to see the path.
She stood still suddenly, obedient to an inner urging that would not be denied. “Oh, let us go back!” she said.
He pressed her arm to his side with sharp insistence and drew her on. “Don’t be ridiculous! Do you want to spend the night in the open moor?”
“It is what I am afraid of,” she said desperately. “If we go back we can at least find the way back eventually to Brookside. But this—oh, this is hopeless!”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” he said again. “It is just possible that we have taken a wrong turn in this infernal fog, but it’s bound to lead to somewhere. There are no roads in England that don’t.”
She yielded to him, feeling she had no choice. But her alarm was increasing with every step she took. It seemed to her that they were actually beginning to climb one of the tors! Now and again, they stumbled against boulders, dimly seen. And it was growing very cold. The drifting fog had turned to rain. Her feet had been wet for some time, and now her clothes were clinging about her, heavy with damp. She felt chilled to the bone, and powerless—quite powerless—to do anything but go whither she was led.
It was as if her will-power were temporarily in abeyance. This man was her master, and she had no choice but to obey his behests. She began to move as one in a dream, dimly counting her halting footsteps, vaguely wondering how many more she would accomplish.
And then quite suddenly she seemed as it were to reach a point where endurance snapped. She pitched forward, against his supporting arm.
“I can’t go—” she cried out—“I can’t go—any further.”
He caught her as she fell. She was conscious of the brief physical comfort afforded by the warmth of his body as he held her. Then, oddly, over her head she heard him speak as if addressing someone beyond her. “That settles it,” he said. “It’s not my fault.”
She knew that he lowered her to the ground, still holding her, and began to rub her numbed and powerless hands.