Aweek had worked wonders with Grandmother Cardover. She had fallen a victim to Vi’s charm and, in that strange way that old folks have, had warmed her age at the fire of Vi’s youth. There was an unmistakable change in her; the somberness of her dress was lightened here and there with a dash of colored ribbons. As long as I could remember, the only ornaments she had permitted herself were of black jet, as befitted her widowed state. But now the woman’s instinct for self-decoration had come to life. Vi’s exquisite femininity had made her remember that she herself was a woman. She had rummaged through her jewelry and found a large gold-set cameo brooch, which she wore at her throat, and some rings, and a long gold chain, which she now wore about her neck, from which her watch was suspended.
Vi’s vivid physical beauty and intense joy in life had broadened the horizons of everyone in the house, and set them dreaming. Ruthita, coming down from London, had at once become infatuated. From day to day she had prolonged Vi’s visit, now with one excuse, now another. They had brought Dorrie down to stay with Vi at the shop—little Bee’s Knee as my Grannie called her, because she was so tiny and a bee’s knee was the smallest thing she could think of with which to compare her. It was many years since a child’s prattle had been heard about that quiet house. Vi’s comradeship with her little daughter finished the persuading of my grandmother that she was safe and good. All virtuous women believe in the virtue of a woman who is fond of children.
They were sitting down to lunch in the keeping-room when I entered.
“Why, if it isn’t Dante!”
The greeting I received was in welcome contrast to the cold, guarded reserve of the past seven days. A place was made for me at table between my grandmother and Ruthita. It was a gay little party that waited, watching me curiously across the dishes and plates, to hear my news. Just then I preferred the cosiness of my grandmother’s shop to the chilly dignity of Woadley Hall. Outside the sunshine slanted across the courtyard, leaving one half in shadow, the other golden white. The maid, coming in and out from the kitchen in her rustling print-dress, with her smiling country face, was a pleasanter sight than the butler at Woadley. From the shop came the smell of tar and rope and new-made bread. Everything was so frank and kindly, and unashamed of itself. Here in the keeping-room of the ship-chandler’s shop we were humanly intimate—“coxy-loxy” as my grandmother would have expressed it.
I told a sorrowful tale at first, which seemed to foreshadow a sorrowful ending. I spoke of the stiff formality of my reception, the garnished gentility which had marked my intercourse with Sir Charles, the withheld confidence—the fact that my mother’s name was scarcely mentioned. Ruthita’s hand sought mine beneath the table; I could feel the fingers tremble.
“This morning,” I said, “he called me into his study. He told me that I must leave within the hour and that our friendship could go no further.”
“The old rascal!” exclaimed Grandmother Cardover, bringing down her knife and fork on her plate with a clatter. “What was he a-doin’, gettin’ you there to Woadley? He must ’a’ known what we all expected.”
I tilted back my chair, putting on an expression of long-suffering melancholy. “He wanted to see what I was like, I suppose. His chief reason was that he wanted to make a new will.”
Babel broke loose. Why hadn’t I told them earlier? Why had I harrowed up their feelings for nothing? What were the particulars? I was cruel to have kept them in suspense.
Grandmother Cardover was hysterical with joy. She wanted to run out into the streets and tell everybody. She began with the maid in the kitchen, and would have gone on to the men in the bake-house if I hadn’t stopped her by appealing to her curiosity, saying there was more to tell. As for Ruthita, she just put her arms about me and laid her head on my shoulder, crying for sheer gladness. Little Bee’s Knee looked on open-mouthed, shocked that grownups should behave so foolishly. Vi gazed at me with a far-away stare in her eyes, picturing the might-have-beens, and I gazed back at her across the gulf that widened between us.
Discretion was thrown to the wind. When Vi gathered Dorrie to her and began to excuse herself, she was told that she must stay and make one of the family. Then the story was told again with the new perspective.
With shame and self-reproach I look back and perceive how carelessly I accepted all Ruthita’s admiration. My new good fortune promised nothing for her; yet she could rejoice in it. In her shy girl’s world, had I known it, I figured as something between a faery-prince and a hero. Through me she looked out into a more generous world of glamour than any she had personally experienced. Poor little Ruthita, with her mouse-like timidity! She had lived all her days in a walled-in garden, treading the dull monotonous round of self-sacrificing duties. No one ever credited her with a career of her own. No one stopped to think that she might have dreams and a will of her own. They told her what to do and let their gratitude be taken for granted. She humored my father when he was discouraged, did the housekeeping, and took shelter behind the superior social grace of the Snow Lady. We all loved her, but we made the mistake of not telling her—we supposed she knew. All the strong things that men and women do together, all love’s comedy and tragedy, were so much hearsay to her.
That afternoon and evening she sat beside me holding my hand with frank affection, making me feel that in loving Vi I was stealing something that belonged to her. More than that, I was feeling for this woman, who had been nothing to me a few weeks ago, a quality of kindness and consideration that I had always withheld from the child-friend who had tiptoed her way up to womanhood beside me.
After tea we mounted to the drawing-room, which was over the shop and faced the street. It was usually occupied only on Sundays and feast-days, or when a visiting Methodist minister had been apportioned to my grandmother for entertainment. Faded engravings of sacred subjects and simpering females elaborately framed, hung upon the walls. On the mantelshelf stood some quaint specimens of Ransby china—red-roofed cottages with grapes ripening above the porch, and a lover coming up the path while his lady watched him from the window. The chairs were upholstered in woolwork on canvas, which my grandmother had done in her youth. In one corner stood a heavy rosewood piano on which all the family portraits were arranged. In this room comfort was sacrificed to appearance—the furniture was sedate rather than genial. Nothing was haphazard or awry. The mats and antimacassars never budged an inch from their places. No smell of beer, or cheese, or baking bread vulgarized the sacred respectability of its atmosphere.
Here, as we sat together talking, the light began to fade. Heavy footsteps of sailors in their sea-boots, passing down the street from the harbor to the cottages, only emphasized the quiet. We watched the sky grow pink behind the masts of shipping, then green, then gray. Cordage and rigging were etched distinctly against the gloom of the oncoming night. At the top of the street a light sprang up, then another, then another. The lamp-lighter with his long pole and ladder passed by. Now with the heavy tread of men’s feet the tip-a-tap of girls’ footsteps began to mingle. Sometimes a snatch of laughter would reach us; then, as if afraid of the sound it made, it died abruptly away. While we talked in subdued voices, it seemed to me that all the sailor-lovers with their lassies had conspired to steal by the house that night. I fell to wondering what it felt like to slip your arm about the waist of a woman you loved, feel her warmth and trust and nearness, feel her head droop back against your shoulder, see her face flash up in the starlight and know that, while your lips were trembling against hers, she was abandoning herself soul and body to you in the summer dusk.
Dorrie had crept into her mother’s lap. Her soft breathing told that she was sleeping. One small hand, with fingers crumpled, rested against her mother’s throat. Someone had called to see Grandmother Cardover, so Vi, Ruthita, and I were left alone together. Sitting back in our chairs out of reach of the street-lamp, we could not see the expression on one another’s faces.
“I would give all the world to be you, Mrs. Carpenter,” Ruthita whispered.
“To be me! Why? I sometimes get very tired of it.”
“If I were you I should have Dorrie. It must be very sweet to be a mother. Why is it that she always calls you Vi and never mother?”
“She picked that up from her father. I never corrected her because—well, because somehow I like it. It makes me seem younger.”
“You don’t need toseemyoung,” I interrupted.
“How old do you think I am?”
“About the same age as myself and Ruthita.”
She laughed. “That couldn’t be; Dorrie is eight.”
“Then I give up guessing.”
“I’m twenty-seven. I was little more than a child, you see, when I married.”
“Mother married early,” said Ruthita, “and my papa was only twenty at the time. She says that early marriages turn out happiest.”
Vi made no answer. The silence grew awkward. We could almost hear one another’s thoughts trying to hide. Why had she explained in that tone of half-apology, “I was little more than a child; you see, when I married.” Why didn’t she say something now? Was it because an early marriage had proved for her disastrous? Then, if it had, what moral obligation separated us? Who was this husband who could dispense with her for a year, and yet had the power to stretch out his arm across the Atlantic and thrust me aside?
She leant forward. The light from the street-lamp kindled her face and smoldered in her hair. She had the wistful, rapt expression of a young girl, ignorant as yet of the bitter-sweet of love, who dreams of an ideal lover. I felt then that her soul was virgin; it had never been a man’s possession. It was almost mine.
Ruthita’s remark about the happiness of early marriages was forgotten, when Vi returned to the subject. “They may be sometimes,” she said, speaking doubtfully.
She caught my eye resting on her. Conscious that her qualification had divulged a secret, she hurried into an implied defense of her husband.
“I had a letter from Mr. Carpenter this morning. He’s lonely. He says he can’t bear to be without me any longer. He wants me to return home at once. He’s not seen Dorrie for nearly a year. He’s afraid she’ll forget him entirely. If I don’t go to him, he says he’ll come and fetch me. It’s been horrid of me to stay away so long. When we left, we only intended to be gone for three months. Somehow the time lengthened. I wanted to see so much. He’s been too easy with me. He’s been awfully kind. He always has been kind. He treats me like a spoilt child.”
She had been speaking so eagerly and hurriedly that she had not heard the creaking of the stairs. Through the darkness I could see my grandmother standing in the doorway. Vi turned to Ruthita with a pretense of gaiety, “No wonder you English don’t understand us. Don’t you think that American husbands are very patient?”
“I’m sure I do,” said Ruthita. “What makes them so different from English husbands?”
“They love their wives.”
It was impossible to tell from the bantering tone in Vi’s voice, whether she spoke the last words in cynicism or sincerity.
Grandmother Cardover took her literally. Her national pride was touched. She believed that an aspersion had been cast on the affection of all married Englishmen. She advanced into the room with suspicions aroused, bristling with morality. “If that’s what they call love in America,” she snorted, “then it’s glad I am that I was born in Ransby. ‘They shall be one flesh’—that’s what the Holy Book says about marriage. And ’ow can you be one flesh if you stay away from one another a twelvemonth at a time? Why, when my Will’am was alive, I never slept a night away from ’im, from the day we was married to the day he died.”
The darkness about her seemed to quiver with indignation. I could see her gray curls bobbing, and hear the keys hanging from her waist jangle, as she trembled. Ruthita cowered close to me, shocked and frightened. Dorrie woke and began to whimper to be taken to bed. We all waited for a natural expression of anger from Vi.
She set Dorrie on to her feet very gently, whispering to her mothering words, telling her not to cry. Drawing herself up, she faced into the darkness. When she spoke there was a sweet, low pleading in her voice.
“Mrs. Cardover, you took me too seriously. I’m sorry. You misunderstood me. I believe all that you have said—a wife ought to be her husband’s companion. There have been reasons for my long absence, which I cannot explain; if I did, you might not understand them. But I wantyoualways to believe well of me. I have never had such kindness from any woman as you have given me.”
I heard my Grannie sniffle. Vi must have heard her. She left Dorrie and, running across the room, put her arms about her. I heard them blaming themselves, and taking everything back, the way women do when they ask forgiveness. I lifted Dorrie into my arms, and Ruthita and I tiptoed from the room.
Presently they came down to us. Grandmother Cardover was smiling comically, as though she was rather pleased at what had happened. Vi said that she must be going. Ruthita and I volunteered to accompany her back to her lodgings. So the storm in the tea-cup ended, leaving me with new materials for conjecture and reflection.
On the way up the High Street we chatted volubly, trying to overlay what had occurred with a new impression. We talked against time and without sincerity. When we had reached the black flint house and the door had shut, Ruthita snuggled close to me with a relieved little sigh. Ever since my return from Woadley she had been waiting for this moment of privacy. With a sweet sisterly air of proprietorship she slipped her arm through mine. We turned down a score and struck out across the denes to the north beach, where we could be quiet. A wet wind from the sea pattered about our faces, giving Ruthita an excuse to cling yet more closely.
You would not have called Ruthita beautiful in those days. She lacked the fire that goes with beauty. She was too humble in her self-esteem, too self-effacing. But one who had looked closely would have discerned something more lasting than mere physical beauty—the loveliness of a pure spirit looking out from her quiet eyes. She was one of those domestic saints, unaware of their own goodness, that one sometimes finds in middle-class families; women who are never heard of, who live only through their influence on their menfolk’s lives.
Her features were small, but perfect. Her figure slight, and buoyant in its carriage. Her complexion white, but ready to suffuse with color at the least sign of appreciation. Her glory was in her hair, which was black and abundant as night. From a child I had always thought that her feet and hands were most beautiful in their fragile tininess. I never told her any of these flattering observations, which would have meant so much if put into words. Brothers don’t—and I was as good as her brother.
“Don’t you think,” said Ruthita, “that there’s something awfully queer about Mrs. Carpenter’s marriage? I’ve been with her nearly a week now, and I’ve never heard her mention her husband until to-night.”
“And Dorrie doesn’t speak of him either.”
“No, I’ve noticed that.”
Then Ruthita surprised me. “Do you know, Dante, I think to marry the wrong man must be purgatory.”
I was amused at the note of seriousness in her voice.
“Ruthie, to hear you speak one’d suppose you’d been in love. Have you ever thought that you’ll have to marry some day?”
“Of course I have.”
“What’ll he have to be like?”
She held her tongue. My jauntiness had made her shy. “Come, Ruthie,” I said, “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I hate to own that you’re grown up. I didn’t think you’d given a thought to marriage. Tell me, what’ll he have to be like?”
I halted, swinging her round so she had to look up in my face. She wore a hunted look of cornered perplexity.
“I’ve never spoken of these things even to mother,” she said. “They all treat me as though I were still a child.”
I wondered what was her trouble. The searchlight swept her. I saw the eagerness for confession on her trembling mouth.
The fire which her beauty had always lacked leapt up. I was amazed at the transformation. She looked reckless. The mask of maidenly tranquillity had slipped aside; I saw all the longing of her unnoticed womanhood focused for an instant in her eyes. The search-light traveled out to sea again. I repeated, “What must he be like?”
She reached up to me, so that her lips almost touched mine. “I think he must be like you,” she whispered.
Of all answers that was the last I had expected. I had thought myself on the brink of some great discovery—that she, too, had some secret lover. I slipped my arm about her and we strolled on through the darkness in silence. Ahead the harbor-lights, reflected across the water, drew nearer. We climbed the beach and the sea-wall, and made our way across the denes to the town.
“You’re all wrong,” I said. “Some day, when you do fall in love, you’ll get a better standard.”
We entered the lamp-lit town. For the rest of the evening we did not say much. I was thinking how easy it is for two people to live always together and yet never to understand each other. Who would have guessed that little Ruthita had this hunger to be loved?
While we were seated at breakfast next morning, someone walked across the shop and tapped on the door of the keeping-room. Before any of us could spring up, Lawyer Seagirt entered.
“Keep your seats. Keep your seats,” he said cheerily. “I’m sure you’ll excuse this early call when you hear what I’ve come about.”
With his back to the empty fireplace, he straddled the hearthrug, bowing first to my grandmother, then to Ruthita. Then he settled his gaze on me, with the beaming benevolence of a bachelor uncle. He cleared his throat.
“Ahem! Ahem! Mr. Cardover, I congratulate you. After you left yesterday, Sir Charles spoke of you with considerable feeling. He expressed sentiments concerning you which from him meant much—much more than if uttered by any other man. For many years he has honored me with his confidence, yet on no occasion do I remember him to have displayed so much emotion. Of course all this is strictly between ourselves and must go no further.”
Like three mandarins we nodded.
“It is my pleasant duty to have to inform you, Mr. Cardover, that Sir Charles has been pleased to make you an allowance. It will be paid quarterly on the first day of January, April, July, and October, and will be delivered to you through my hands.”
Again he halted. Grandmother Cardover, losing patience, forgot her manners. “God bless my soul,” she exclaimed, “how the man maunders! How much?”
“Madam,” said Lawyer Seagirt, “the amount is four hundred pounds per annum.”
The good man had never found himself so popular. He was made to sit down to table with us, despite his protests that he had breakfasted already. The money might have been coming out of his own pocket for all the fuss we made of him. Every now and then the fact of my prosperity would strike Grandmother Cardover afresh. Throwing up her hands she would exclaim, “Four ’undred pounds, and he’s got two ’undred already from his fellowship! It’s more than I’ve ever earned in any year with all my wear and tear. Just you wait till his pa ’ears about it!”
That morning I took Ruthita to Norwich. She was puzzled when I told her to get ready to come. All the way over in the train she kept trying to guess my purpose. The truth was I had contrasted her with Vi. Vi was not only exquisite in herself, but as expensively exquisite as fine clothes could make her. Ruthita, on the other hand, had the appearance of making the most genteel impression at the minimum expenditure of money. My father’s means were narrow, and she was not his daughter; therefore the Snow Lady insisted on making most of her own and Ruthita’s dresses. Rigid economies had been exercised; stuffs had been turned, and dyed, and made over again. Now that I could afford it, I was determined to see what fine feathers could do for this shy little sister.
When the gowns came home, even Ruthita was surprised at the prettiness that filmy muslins and French laces accentuated in her.
“My word, Ruthie, you’re a dainty little armful. You won’t have to wait long for that lover now,” I told her, when she came down into the keeping-room to show herself to me.
She pouted and made a face at me like a child. “I don’t want lovers,” she laughed. “I only want my big brother.”
When she had gone upstairs my grandmother turned to me. “You can go too far with her, Dannie.” She only called me Dannie when she was saying something serious or a little wounding. “You can go too far with her, Dannie. I should advise you to be careful.”
“What are you driving at?” I asked bluntly.
“Just this, that however you may pretend to one another, she isn’t your sister and you aren’t her brother. Any day you may wake something up in her that you didn’t mean to.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” I replied. “At heart she’s only a child.”
“All I can say is you’re going the right way to work to make her a woman,” my grandmother said shortly.
That afternoon I persuaded Ruthita to put on all her finery and come for a walk on the esplanade. I wanted her to lose her timidity and to discover for herself that she was as good as anybody. I felt a boyish pride in walking beside her; she was my creation—I had dressed her.
We had passed the pier and entered the long trim walk, lined with sculptured Neptunes, which runs along the seafront from Ransby to Pakewold, when a figure which had a morbid interest for me came in sight. It was that of a buxom broad-hipped woman, handsome in her own bold fashion, leading by the hand an over-dressed, half-witted child. As she drew nearer, the rouge on her face became discernible. She strolled with a swagger through the fashionable crowd, eyeing the men with sly effrontery. She was known in Ransby by the nickname of “Lady Halloway.” She was the bathing-machine man’s daughter, and had been the victim of one of my cousin’s earliest amorous adventures. It was commonly believed that he was the father of her child.
Since the news had got abroad that I had supplanted Halloway in my grandfather’s favor, she had glowered at me, with undisguised hostility, whenever we met.
As we passed, Ruthita’s parasol just touched her. It was the woman’s fault, for she had crowded us purposely. I raised my hat, muttering an apology, and was on the point of moving forward, when she wrenched the parasol from Ruthita’s hand and flung it to the ground. Ruthita stared at her too surprised to say a word. The woman herself, for the moment, was too infuriated to express herself. All the bitterness of a deserted mistress, the pent-up resentment against years of contempt and the false pride with which she had brazened out her shame among her fellow-townsmen, came to the surface and found an excuse for utterance. People nearest to us halted in their promenade and, gathering round, began to form the nucleus of an audience. An audience for her oratory was what “Lady Halloway” most desired. Her lips were drawn back from her teeth and her hands were clenched; anger re-created her into something almost magnificent and wholly brutal. When she spoke, she addressed herself to Ruthita, but her eyes were fixed on mine in vixenish defiance. The over-dressed, top-heavy oddity at her side steadied himself by clinging to her skirts, gazing from one to the other of us with a vacant, wondering expression.
I picked up Ruthita’s parasol and handed it back to her, whispering that she should go on. The woman heard me.
“Yes, go on, my fine lady,” she sneered in savage sarcasm. “Go on. You’re too good ter be zeen a-talkin’ wi’ the likes o’ me. Yer know wot I am. I’m a woman wot’s fallen. I ain’t too bad, ’owsomever, for Mr. Cardover to diddle me out o’ my property. He’s a grand man, Mr. Cardover, wi’ ’is high airs and proud ways. And where do ’e get them from, I ax. From old Cardover’s bake-’ouse around the corner ter be sure, and from ’is mawther, wot ran orf wi’ ’is father and ’ad the good luck ter get married.”
I interrupted her. “I’m very sorry for you,” I said, “but you’ve got to stop this at once. You don’t know what you’re saying, neither does anyone else. Please let us pass.”
She stepped in front of us with her plump arms held up in fighting attitude, blocking our path.
“Zorry for me. Zorry for me,” she laughed, still addressing Ruthita. “I doan’t want ’is zorrow. Your man’s a thief, my gal, and it’s the likes o’ him wot despises me—me as should be Lady Halloway if I ’ad me rights, me as should be livin’ at Woadley ’All as zoon as Sir Charles be dead and gorn. ’E says ’e’s zorry for me, wi’ the lawful heir, the child ’e ’as robbed, a-standin’ in ’is sight. The imperdence of ’im!”
She gave the idiot’s hand a vicious jerk, swinging him in front of her, so that the lawful heir began to holloa. Someone who had newly joined the crowd, inquired what was up.
“Wot’s up, you axed. This gentleman, as ’e calls ’isself, told ’is gal to barge inter me. That’s wot’s up, and I won’t stand it. ’E’s robbed my kid, wot was heir, o’ wot belongs ter ’im. And ’e’s robbed my ’usband, for ’e’s as good as my ’usband in the sight o’ almighty Gawd. ’E treats me like a dorg and tells ’is gal to barge inter me, and ’e thinks I’ll stand it.”
While she had been exploding I had tried to back away from her, but she followed. Now a policeman’s helmet showed above the heads of the spectators. Just then the bathing-machine man strolled up from the beach out of curiosity. Seeing his daughter the center of disturbance, he fought his way to the front and seized her by the wrists with a threatening gesture. “Yer fool, Lottie,” he panted, “when are yer goin’ ter be done a-disgracin’ o’ me?”
For a moment she was cowed. But as he dragged her away to the bathing-machines, she tore one hand free and shook her fist at me. “’E’s comin’ down to-morrer,” she shouted. “I’ve writ and told ’ im wot you’ve been a-doin’ at Woadley.”
Ruthita was trembling all over with disgust and excitement. I took her back to the shop. When I was alone with my grandmother I asked her what kind of a woman Lottie was.
“As nice and kind a little girl as there was in Ransby,” she answered, “until that rascal, Lord Halloway, ruined her.”
Next day I had a chance of judging for myself the worth of Lord Halloway. In the afternoon, just as I was going out, I was told that he was waiting to see me in the shop. I went to meet him prepared for trouble. I found a tall, aristocratic man of about thirty-five, filling up the doorway, looking out into the street with his legs wide apart. He was swinging his cane and whistling softly. The impression one got from his back-view was that he was extremely athletic. When he turned round I saw that he was magnificently proportioned, handsome, high complexioned, and graceful to the point of affectation. When he smiled and held out his hand, his manner was so winning that every prejudice was for the moment swamped. He had the instinctive art of charm.
“Awfully sorry to have to meet you like this for the first time,” he said. “We’re second-cousins, aren’t we? Strange how we’ve managed to miss one another, and being members of the same college and all.”
He had removed his hat, and was leaning against the door-jamb, with his legs crossed. I watched him narrowly while he was talking. I had expected to see a cultured degenerate—the worst type of bounder. Instead of being exhausted and nervous with a spurious energy, he was almost military in his upright carriage. He had a daredevil air of careless command, which was so much a part of his breeding that it was impossible to resent it. A man would have summed up his vices and virtues leniently by saying that he was a gay dog. A good woman might well have fallen in love with him, and excused the attraction that his wickedness had for her by saying that she was trying to convert him. The only sign of weakness I could detect was a light inconsequent laugh, strangely out of keeping with the virility of his height and breadth; it was like the vain and meaningless giggle of a silly woman.
I asked him if he would not come inside. He shook his head, saying that this was not a social visit, but that he had come to apologize. Then he faced me with an openness of countenance which impressed me as manly, but which might have been due to shamelessness.
“I want to tell you how sorry I am for the beastly row you had yesterday. Lottie’s not a bad sort, but she gets fancies and they run away with her. I’ve talked with her, and I can promise you it won’t happen again. She’s been writing me angry letters for the past week, ever since you made it up with Sir Charles. I was afraid something like this would happen, so I thought I’d just run down. I wish I’d managed to get here earlier.”
He stopped suddenly, gazing toward the keeping-room door. Ruthita came out and crossed the shop. She had on one of her new dresses and was on her way to tea with Vi.
He followed her with his eyes till she was gone. There was nothing insulting in the gallantry with which he admired her; he seemed rather surprised—that was all. For a minute he continued conversing with me in an absent-minded manner, then he wished me good-by, hoping that we might meet again in Oxford. I walked out on to the pavement and watched him down the street. Then I hurriedly fetched my hat and followed.
It might have been accidental and I may have been over-suspicious, but his path lay in the same direction as Ruthita’s; he never walked so quickly as to overtake her or so slowly as not to keep her well in sight. When she entered the old flint house, he hesitated, as though the purpose of his errand was gone; then, seeing me out of the tail of his eye, he turned leisurely to the left down a score. Next day I heard that he had departed from Ransby.
I could not rid myself for many days of the impression this incident had created. Like a Hogarth canvas, it typified for me the ugly nemesis of illicit passion in all its grotesque nakedness. There was horror in connecting such a man as Halloway with such a woman as Lottie. The horror was emphasized by the child. Yet Lottie had once been “as nice and kind a little girl as there was in Ransby,” until he destroyed her. Doubtless at the time, their sinning had seemed sweet and excusable—much the same as the love of any lover for any lass. Only the result had proved its bitterness.
This thought made me go with a tightened rein. When impulse tempted me to give way, the memory of that woman with her half-witted child, brazening out her shame before a crowd of pleasure-seekers on the sunlit esplanade, sprang into my mind and turned me back like the flame of a sword.
It was the late afternoon of a September day. We had had tea early at the black flint house, Vi, Ruthita, Dorrie, and I. After tea a walk had been proposed; but Dorrie had said she was “tho tired” and Ruthita had volunteered to stay with her.
For two months Vi and I had never allowed ourselves the chance of being alone together; yet every day we had met. To her I was “Mr. Cardover”; to me she was “Mrs. Carpenter.” Even my grandmother had ceased to suspect that any liking deeper than friendship existed between us. She loved to have young people about her, and therefore encouraged Vi and Dorrie. She thought that we were perfectly safe now that we had Ruthita. Through the last two months we four had been inseparable, rambling about, lazy and contented. Our conversations had all been general, Vi and I had never trusted ourselves to talk of things personal. If, when walking in the country, Ruthita and Dorrie had run on ahead to gather wild flowers, we had made haste to follow them, so betraying to each other the tantalizing fear we had one of another. We were vigilant in postponing the crisis of our danger, but neither of us had the strength to bring the danger to an end by leaving Ransby, lest our separation should be forever.
If our tongues were silent, there were other ways of communicating. Did I take her hand to help her over a stile, it trembled. Did I lift her wraps and lean over her in placing them about her shoulders, I could see the faint rise of her color. Her eyes spoke, mocked, laughed, dared, and pleaded, when no other eyes were watching.
Since the one occasion that has been related, Vi had not mentioned her husband. Whether he was still urging her to return, or had extended her respite, or was on his way to fetch her, I had no means of guessing. I lived in a secret delirium of exalted happiness and torturing foreboding. Each day as it ended was tragic with farewell. The hour was coming when I must return to Oxford and when she must return to America. Soon we should have nothing but memories. However well we might disguise our motives for dawdling in Ransby, it could not be long before their hollowness would be detected. Already Sir Charles had ceased to serve me as an excuse; I had not seen him since my departure from Woadley.
The very suavity of our interchanged courtesies and unsatisfying pretense of frank friendship gave edge to my yearning.
I had come at last to the breaking-point. I did not know it. I still told myself that we were both too honorable to step aside: that we had too much to lose by it; that I loved her too dearly to let her be anything to me unless she could be my wife. The casuistry of this attitude was patent.
As my hunger increased I grew more daring. No thoughts that were not of her could find room in my mind. I had lost my interest in books—they were mere reports on the thing I was enduring. Nature was only my experience made external on a lower physical plane. My imagination swept me on to depths and heights which once would have terrified. I grew accustomed to picturing myself as the hero of situations which I had formerly studied with puzzled amazement in other men’s lives.
The face of Lottie, encountered daily in the gray streets of Ransby, which had at first restrained me by reminding me of sin’s ultimate ugliness, ceased to warn me.
When Ruthita made the suggestion that we should go for our walk alone together, I had expected a prompt refusal from Vi. She rose from the disordered tea-table and walked over to the window, turning her back on us. I could see by the poise of her head that she was gazing down the gardens, across the denes to the wreck, where everything important had taken place. I could guess the memories that were in her mind.
From where I sat I could see her head, framed in the window against the slate-colored expanse of water, the curved edge of the horizon, and the orange-tinted sky.
Creeping across the panes under full sail came a fleet of fishing smacks, losing themselves one by one as they advanced into the tangled amber of her hair. I counted them, telling myself that she would speak when the foremost had re-appeared on the other side. Then it occurred to me that she was waiting for me to urge her.
“Mrs. Carpenter,” I said casually, “won’t you come? It’s going to be a jolly evening. We can go by way of St. Margaret’s Church to the Broads and watch the sunset.”
Without moving her body, she commenced to drum with her fingers on the panes.
“That would take time,” she procrastinated. “We couldn’t get back before eight. Who’d put Dorrie Darling to bed?”
“Don’t worry,” Ruthita broke in with eagerness. “I’d love to do it. Dorrie and I’ll take care of one another and play on the sands till bedtime.”
“Yeth, do go,” lisped Dorrie. “I want Ruthita all to mythelf.”
These two who had stood between us, for whose sakes we had striven to do right, were pushing wide the door that led into the freedom of temptation.
A shiver ran through her. She turned. The battle against desire in her face was ended.
“I will come,” she said slowly.
Left in the room by myself while they went upstairs to dress, I did not think; I abandoned myself to sensations. I could hear their footsteps go back and forth above my head. The running ones were Dorrie’s. The light, quick ones were Ruthita’s. The deliberate ones, postponing and anticipating forbidden pleasures—they were Vi’s. The sound of her footsteps, so stealthy and determined, combined with the long gray sight of the German Ocean, sent my mind back to Guinevere’s description of her sinning, which covered all our joint emotions:
“As if one should
Slip slowly down some path worn smooth and even,
Down to a cool sea on a summer day;
Yet still in slipping there was some small leaven
Of stretched hands catching small stones by the way
Until one surely reached the sea at last,
And felt strange new joy as the worn head lay
Back, with the hair like sea-weed; yea, all past
Sweat of the forehead, dryness of the lips
Washed utterly out by the dear waves o’ercast,
In a lone sea, far off from any ships!”
She entered. She was alone. The others were not yet ready. I could not speak to her. “Come,” she whispered hoarsely. Her voice had the distressed note of hurry.
We hastened up the High Street like fugitives. Windows of the stern red houses were eyes. They knew all about us. They had watched my mother before me; by experience they had become wise. At the top of the town we turned to the left, going inland towards the hill on which the tower of St. Margaret’s rose gray against the sky, beyond which lay the open country. We did not walk near together, but with a foot between us. Now we slackened our pace and I observed her out of the corners of my eyes. She was dressed in white, all billowy and blowy, with a wrap of white lace thrown over her shoulders, and a broad white hat from which drooped a blue ostrich feather. Whatever had been her intention, she looked bridal. The slim slope of her shoulders was unmatronly. Her long neck curved forward, giving her an attitude of listening demureness. Her mass of hair and large hat scarcely permitted me to see her face.
We came to St. Margaret’s and passed. Was it a sense of the religious restraints that it represented, that made us hurry our footsteps? We turned off into a maze of shadowy lanes. We were happier now that we were safe from observation. We could no longer fancy that we saw our own embarrassment reflected as suspicion in strangers’ eyes. We drew together. My hand brushed hers. She did not start away. I let my fingers close on it.
The golden glow of evening was in the tree-tops. The first breath of autumn had scorched their leaves to scarlet and russet. Behind their branches long scarves of cloud hung pink and green and blood-red. Far away, on either side, the yellow standing wheat rustled. Nearer, where it had been cut, the soil showed brown beneath the close-cropped stubble. Honeysuckle, climbing through the hedges, threw out its fragrance. Evening birds were calling. Distantly we could hear the swish of scythes and the cries of harvesters to their horses. Hidden from the field-workers, we stole between the hedges with the radiant peace of the sunset-on our faces. As yet we had said nothing.
She drew her hand free from mine and halted. Scrambling up the bank, she pulled down a spray of black-berries. I held the branch while she plucked them. We dawdled up the dusty lane, eating them from her hand.
“Vi,” I said softly, “we have tried to be only friends. What next?”
I was smiling. She knew that I did not hint at parting. She smiled back into my eyes; then looked away sharply. I put my arm about her and drew her to me. Without a struggle, she lifted up to me her mouth, all stained with blackberries like any school-girl’s. I kissed her; a long contented sigh escaped her. “We have fought against it,” she whispered.
“Yes, dearest, we have fought against it.”
A rabbit popped out into the road; seeing us, it doubled and scuttled back into the hedge. The smoke of a cottage drifted up in spirals. We approached it, walking sedate and separate. A young mother, seated on the threshold, was suckling her child. A man, who talked to her while he worked, was trimming a rose-bed. They glanced up at us with a friendly understanding smile, as much as to say, “We were as you are now last September.”
When a corner of the lane had hidden us, I again placed my arm about her. “Tell me, what have you to lose by it?”
“Lose by it?”
“Yes. I know so little of your life. What is he like?”
“My husband?”
She flushed as she named him. I nodded.
“He is kind.”
“You always say that.”
“I say it because it is all that there is to say. He is a good man, but——”
“And in spite of thatbutyou married him.”
“No, I was married to him. He was over forty, and I was only eighteen at the time. He was in love with me. My father was a banker; he lent my father money to tide him over a crisis. Then they told me I must marry him. I was only a child.”
“And you never loved him? Say you never loved him!”
She raised her head from my shoulder and looked me in the face with her fearless eyes. “I never loved him. I have been a sort of daughter to him. I scarcely knew what marriage meant until—until it was all over. Then for a time I hated him; I felt myself degraded. Dorrie came. I fought against her coming. Then I grew reconciled. I tried to be true to him because he was her father. He made me respect him, because he was so patient. Dante, when I think of him, I become ashamed of what we are doing.”
Her nostrils quivered, betraying her suppressed emotion. She had spoken with effort.
“Why did you leave him? Did you intend to go back to him?”
She became painfully confused.
“Why do you put so many questions?” she cried. “Don’t you trust me?”
“Vi, I trust you so much that for you I’m going to alter all my life. I’m so glad that you too are willing to be daring.”
“Then why do you question me?”
“Because I want to be more sure that he has no moral right to you.”
“I left him,” she said, “because I could no longer refuse him. He was breaking down my resistance with his terrible kindness. If he had only been unjust and had given me some excuse for anger, I could have endured it. But day after day went by with its comfort, and its heartache, and its outward smoothness. And day after day he was looking older and more patient, and making me feel sorrier for him. He got to calling me ‘My child.’ People said how beautiful we were together. I couldn’t bear to stay and watch him humbling himself and breaking his heart about me. So I asked him to let me go traveling with Dorrie. He let me go, thinking that absence and a change of scene might teach me how to love him.”
She hid her face against me. It was burning.
“He thinks you are coming back again?”
“He thinks so in every letter he writes. I thought so too when I went away.”
“Vi, you never wear a wedding ring. Why is that if you meant to return to him?”
“I wanted to be young just for a little while. They made me a woman when I was only a child.”
“And that was why you taught Dorrie to call you Vi?” The pity of it got me by the throat. I kissed her eyes as she leant against me. “Poor girl, then let us forget it.” She struggled feebly, making a half-hearted effort to tear herself away. “But we can’t forget it,” she whispered. “We can’t, however we try. There’s Dorrie. He loves her terribly. He would give me anything, except Dorrie.”
“And we both love Dorrie,” I said; “we could never do anything that would spoil her life—that would make her ashamed of us one day. You’re trembling like a leaf, Vi. You mustn’t look afraid of me.”
Gradually she nestled closer in my embrace. It was not me that she had feared, but consequences. We became sparing in our words; words stated things too boldly.
Coming to the end of the lane, we sauntered out on to a broad white road. It wound across long flat marshes where the wind from the sea is never quiet. The marshes are intersected with dikes and ditches, dotted with windbreaks for the cattle, and bridged here and there with planks. One can see for miles. There is nothing to break the distance save square Norman towers of embowered churches in solitary hamlets and oddly barrel-shaped windmills with sails turning, for all the world like stout giants, gesticulating and pummeling the sky. Here the orchestra of nature is always practising; its strings, except when a storm is brewing, are muted. From afar comes the constant bass of the sea, striking the land in deep arpeggios. Drawing nearer is the soprano humming of the wind or the staccato cry of some startled bird. Then comes a multitude of intermittent soloists,—frogs croaking, reeds rustling, cattle lowing, the rumbling wheels of a wagon. They clamor in subdued ecstasy, now singly and now together. Through all their song runs the murmuring accompaniment of water lapping.
In gleaming curves across this green wilderness flow fresh-water lagoons and rivers which are known as the Broads. Dotted with water-lilies, barriered with bulrushes, they reflect the sky’s vast emptiness. Brimming their channels they slip over into the meadows, flashing like quicksilver through ashen sedges.
The sun had vanished. The lip of the horizon was scarlet. The dust of twilight was drifting down. In this primitive spaciousness and freedom one’s thoughts expanded.
“Vi,” I whispered, “we’re two sensible persons. Of what have we to be afraid? Only ourselves.”
“There’s the future.”
“The future doesn’t belong to us. We have the present. All our lives we’ve wanted to be happy. Don’t let’s spoil our happiness now that we have it. Just for to-night we’ll forget you’re married. We’ll be lovers together—as alone as if no one else was in the world.”
“And afterwards?”
“Afterwards I’ll wait for you. Afterwards can take care of itself.”
The misshapen shadow of sin which had followed and stood between us, holding us at arm’s length, awkward and embarrassed, was banished. If this was sin, then wrongdoing was lovely.
We began to talk of how everything had happened—how, out of the great nothingness of the unknown, we had been flung together. How easy it would have been for us to have lived out our lives in ignorance of one another and therefore free from this temptation. We justified ourselves in the belief that our meeting had been fated. It could not have been avoided. We were pawns on a chess-board, manipulated by the hand of an unseen player. We had tried to escape one another and had been forced together against our wills. The outcome of the game did not come within the ruling of our decision.
The theory brought re-assurance. It excused us. We were not responsible. Then my mind fled back to my mother. She and my father had had these same thoughts as they had wandered side by side through these same fields and hedges. Why had I been brought back to the country of their courting to pass through their ordeal?
Night was coming down, covering up landmarks. Darkness lent our actions modesty; they lost something of their sharpened meaning because we could not see ourselves acting. We lived unforgettable moments. Passing over narrow plank-bridges from meadow to meadow, we seemed to be traveling out of harsh reality into a world which was dream-created.
She carried her hat in her hand. A soft wind played in her hair and loosened it in places. Her filmy white dress was all a-flutter. Mists began to rise from the marshlands, making us vague to one another. Traveling out of the east swam the harvest moon, nearing its fullness.
“Vi,” I whispered, taking both her hands in mine, “you don’t know yourself—you’re splendid.”
She laughed up into my eyes with elfin daring and abandon.
“You’re the kind of woman for whom a man would willingly die.”
“I ought to know that,” she mocked me, “for one tried.”
“If this were five hundred years ago, do you know what I’d do to-night?”
“It isn’t five hundred years ago—that makes all the difference. But, if it were, what would you do?”
“I’d ride off with you.”
“Oh, no, you wouldn’t.”
“I should. I shouldn’t care what happened a week later. They might kill me like a robber. It wouldn’t matter—a week alone with you would have been worth it.”
“But you wouldn’t,” she insisted; “you wouldn’t ride off with me.”
“Shouldn’t I? And why?”
She freed her hands from mine and placed her arms about my neck. The laughter had gone from her face.
“Dear Dante, you wouldn’t do it, becauseyouareyou.” The burning thoughts I had had died down. We wandered on in silence.
Ahead of us a flickering light sprang up. Out of curiosity we went towards it. We found ourselves treading a rutted field-path which led back in the direction of the main road. Out of the mist grew up a clump of marsh-poplars. The light became taller and redder. We saw that it was the beginning of a camp-fire. Over the flames hung a stooping figure.
“Good-evening.”
The figure turned. It was that of a shriveled mummy of a woman—gray-haired, fantastic, bent, with face seamed and lined from exposure. A yellow shawl covered her head and shoulders. She held a burning twig in her hand, with which she was lighting her pipe.
“Good-evening, mother. Good luck to you.”
“Nowt o’ luck th’ day, lad,” she grumbled. “All the folks is in the fields at th’ ’arvest.”
We seated ourselves at the blaze. She went back into the darkness. We heard the snapping of branches. She returned out of the clump of poplars with a companion; each of them was carrying a bundle of dead wood for fuel. Her companion was a younger woman of about thirty. She nodded to us with a proud air of gipsy defiance and sat herself down on the far side of the fire, holding her face away from the light of the flames. The one glimpse I had had of her had shown me that she was handsome.
“There’s bin nowt o’ luck th’ day,” the older woman continued. “They hain’t got their wage for th’ ’arvest yet and they be too cumbered wi’ work for fortune-tellin’.”
“Do you tell fortunes?” asked Vi.
“Do I tell fortunes!” the crone repeated scornfully. “I should think I did tell fortunes. Every kind o’ folk comes ter me wot wants ter read the future. Farmers whose sheep is dyin’. Wimmem as wants childen and hasn’t got ’em. Gals as is goin’ ter have childen and oughtn’t ter have ’em. Wives whose ’usbands don’t love ’em. Lovers as want ter get married, but shouldn’t. Lovers as should get married, but don’t want ter. They all comes to their grannie. I’ve seen a lot o’ human natur’ in my day, I ’ave.”
“And what do you tell them?” asked Vi.
“I tell ’em wot’s preparin’ for or agen ’em. I read th’ stars and I warn ’em.”
“Can they escape by taking your advice?”
“That’s more’n I can say. Thar was Joe Moyer, wot was hanged at Norwich for murthering ’is sweetheart. I telt ’im ’is fortune a year ago come St. Valentine’s Day. ‘Joe,’ says I, ‘your ’and ’ll be red before the poppies blow agen and you neck ’ll be bruk before th’ wheat is ripe. Leave off a-goin’ wi’ ’er,’ says I. And the lassie a-standin’ thar by ’is side, she laughs at her grannie. But it all come true, wot I telt ’im.”
“Could you read the stars for me?” asked Vi.
Her voice was so thin and eager that it pierced me like a knife. I quivered with fearful anticipation. All our future might depend on what this hag by the roadside might say. I did not want to hear her. She might release terror from the ghost-chamber of conscience. However much we scoffed at her words, they would influence our actions and haunt our minds. Who could say, perhaps Joe Moyer would never have murdered his sweetheart and would not have been hanged at Norwich, if she hadn’t suggested his crime.
“Vi,” I said sternly, “you don’t believe in fortune-telling. We must be going; it’s getting late.”
“Hee-hee-hee!” the gipsy tittered, “if she don’t believe in fortune-tellin’, we knows who do. Come, don’t be afeard, me dearie. Cross me ’and wi siller and I’ll read the stars for ’ee.”
Vi crossed her palm with a shilling. The gipsy flung fresh twigs on the fire, that she might study the lines in Vi’s hands more clearly. As the flames shot up, they illumined the other woman. Her features were strongly Romany, dark and fierce and shy. Somewhere I had seen them; their memory was pleasant. She regarded me fixedly, as though in a trance, across the fire. She too was trying to remember. Then, rising noiselessly, she stole like a panther into the poplars away from the circle of light. From out there in the darkness I felt that her eyes were still watching.
The old fortune-teller had flung back her shawl from her head. Her grizzled hair broke loose about her shoulders. She was peering over Vi’s hand, tracing out the lines with the stem of her foul pipe. Every now and then she paused to ask a whispered question or make a whispered statement. Now she would look up at the stars, and now would pucker her brows. Her head was near to Vi’s. The flames jumped up and showed their faces clearly: the one white and pure, and crowned with gold; the other cunning, mahogany-colored, and witch-like. The flames died down; the shadows danced in again.
I drew nearer and heard the gipsy muttering, “You was born under Venus, dearie. Love’ll be the makin’ o’ yer, an’ love’ll be the ruin o’ yer. You’ll always be longin’ an’ longin’ an’ lookin’ for the face o’ ’im as is comin’. You’re married, dearie, but it warn’t to the right ’un, and yer’ve ’ad childen by ’un. Cross me ’and wi’ siller, dearie. Cross me ’and wi’ siller. I can’t see plain. That’s better. Now I see un. ’E’s comin’, dearie, and ’e’ll be tall and masterfu’, yer ’ll ’ave ter sin ter get ’un. Aye, it’s all writ ’ere, but it gets mazed—the lines rin t’gether.”
She dragged Vi’s hand lower to the ground, nearer the fire. She was excited and clearly puzzled. She kept on croaking out what she had said already, “Yer ’ll ’ave ter sin ter get ’un. It’s all writ ’ere. Aye, but it can’t be—it can’t be for sartin. It gets all mazed and tangled.”
She turned her head, blinking across the blaze to where her companion had been sitting.
“Lil, Lil,” she cried hoarsely, “come ’ere. I can’t see plain. Young eyes is better.”
Lil emerged out of the shadows, treading as softly as retribution following temptation. She bent over the hand, unraveling the lines to which the fortune-teller pointed with her pipe-stem.
Lil! Lil! Where had I heard that name before? The wind rustled the leaves of the poplars and caused the ash of the fire to scatter.
“Whenever he hears your voice, it shall speak to him of me. If he goes where you do not grow, oh, grass, then the trees shall call him back. If he goes where you do not grow, oh, trees, then the wind shall tell him. His hand shall be as ours, against the works of men. When he hears your voices, he shall turn his face from walls and come back.”
“Do you want to know the future?” she asked, peering into Vi’s face gravely.
Vi hesitated. “Is it so terrible?” she whispered.
“Not terrible as we gipsies reckon it; but sweet and dangerous and reckless, and it ends in——”
“Lilith.”
I caught her by the wrist. She shot upright and faced me.
“Don’t you know me? I’m Dante—Dante Cardover.”
Vi had sunk upon her knees and stared up at us, steadying herself with her hands. The old hag gazed angrily from behind Lilith, stretching out her long thin neck.
“I remember you, brother,” said Lilith. “You are one of us. I knew that one day you would hear us calling.”
“Wot did ’ee see in the lady’s ’and?”
The fortune-teller laid a skinny claw on Lilith’s shoulder; her voice quavered with eagerness.
“I will not tell,” said Lilith.
“Did ’ee see——?”
Lilith clapped her hand over the woman’s mouth. “You shan’t tell, grannie,” she said; “it’s not good to tell.”
Down the field-track came the creaking sound of wheels. I looked up and saw through the poplars the swinging lanterns of a caravan.
Vi touched me on the arm. She was unnerved and trembling. “Take me home, Dante.”
I turned to Lilith. “Who is that?”
“G’liath.”
“Where’ll you be camping to-morrow? At Woadley Ham?”
A cloud passed over her face. “We never camp there, now.”
The crone broke in with a spiteful titter: “But we used ter, until she wouldn’t let us.”
Lilith spoke hastily. “We’re going to Yarminster Fair. We get there to-morrow.”
“Then I’ll see you there,” I told her.
The caravan had come to a halt. I could see the tall form of G’liath moving about the horses. I did not want to meet him just then. Skirting the encampment, we hurried off across fields to the highroad.
A sleepy irritable landlady opened the door to Vi. By the time I had walked down the High Street to the shop, it was nearly midnight. Ruthita was sitting up for me; my grandmother had been in bed two hours. She eyed me curiously. “You had a long walk,” she said.
“Yes, longer than we expected.” I spoke brusquely. I was afraid she would question me.
At the top of the stairs, just as I was entering my room, she stole near to me.
“Dante, ar’n’t you going to kiss me good-night?”
I was bending perfunctorily over her lifted face, when I saw by the light of the candle in my hand that her eyes were red.
“Ruthie, you little goose, you’ve been crying. What’ve you been crying about?”
“I’ve not,” she denied indignantly, and broke from me. After she had entered her room I tiptoed down the passage and listened outside her door.
In the stillness of the house I could hear her sobbing.