He had begged Theresa to go with him, but she had snapped her pale lips on her decision. "I'm not going."
He looked anxiously at her. The thin figure drooped in its mourning, and her neck seemed without sufficient strength to hold her head and its thick, untidy hair. "You don't look well," he murmured in distress. "Theresa, don't people sometimes have their hair cut off; when they're ill, I mean?"
"I believe so—yes."
"I think, my dear, you ought to sacrifice some of yours. You have so much of it, and it seems to tire you."
"But I haven't got a fever!" she protested. Under her shadowed eyes the nerves were twitching. She wished he would not discuss her; she wanted to forget her own existence.
"No, you're too pale for that," he agreed, gazing at her so earnestly that she laughed. He raised his brows. "I don't know why you are amused, my dear, but I know the mountains would make you strong. And you've always wanted to go there. Why won't you?"
She could not tell him the whole truth. She could not say: "I thought so wickedly of you and the woman there that I cannot face you both together. And the mountains would frown on me in anger and frighten me. I must wait till I'm forgiven." She told part of the truth.
"I've to learn to earn my own living, and I must begin. And, besides, I never did like Alexander. If he wasn't going to be there——"
"I don't want to press it," he said, and left her a little disappointed that he had not pursued the subject.
Edward Webb went to the hills, and she began her training as a secretarial clerk. For the sum of five pounds Blister's Commercial Academy undertook to fit her for the work, and find a situation for her afterwards. She did not like the large condescension of Mr. Blister—preferably called "The Professor," and, by jocular spirits, the "Mayor and Corporation"—but she knew she could learn anything he could teach her, and she tried not to allow her feminine conception of him to prejudice her against his instruction, tried to be so impersonal as not to shrink when he stooped over her shorthand, looking, and sometimes, alas! even feeling, like a large and clever whale.
Her fellow-students, youths as well as women, were to her a new race, drawn as if by some common inheritance to these inky labours. The youths were for the most part genuinely young, but the women were of all ages. There were girls of fourteen, pert or simpering, with premature glances for the dusty, doubtfully collared young men; there were young women with the independence of their generation, and scorn or frank comradeship for men; their glances were straight and piercing, painful to the undeveloped male, wishing to be paramount. There were older women, jerked into the necessity of earning bread, with the sheltered look still on them, and an air of injured or shy surprise at Fortune's hardy ways, and elderly women, making a last effort to cheat Fate. While she worked there, these people were of an absorbing interest to Theresa, but like all, save the most foolish of them, she soon passed out of the Academy, and, as she went, they fell back into the less active places of her mind; and it was strange, yet, in some way, pleasing to think that she, too, made one of a crowd of half-remembered fellow-creatures, with her own tiny but irrebuttable influence on some one's conception of life.
For farewell, the Professor embedded her hand in his.
"I'm glad you've got such a nice appointment," he said. "Such a gentleman. You'll find yourself very comfortable there. Come and tell me 'ow you get on. My young ladies often come and see me."
He was a kind, if somewhat familiar whale, and she decided not to throw away her glove.
Her gentlemanly employer was a solicitor called Edgar Partiloe. He was, she judged, about thirty years of age, and beginning to attract clients to his dingy office. No one could doubt his learning, and ability glimmered behind his powerful spectacles. His forehead was knobbly, and it shone, but his hands were beautiful, and she suspected elegance in his feet, though they were shod in crumpled leather.
She shared the outer office with an elderly and impoverished clerk called Arnold Jessop. He always wore an overcoat, and keeping his lunch in the pockets of it, he would begin, from an early hour, to extract crumbs of bread and cheese, and quickly pop them into his mouth when he thought she was not looking. He lived with a sister who kept a small Home for Cats, and his first sign of consideration for Theresa was when he brought a kitten out of the pocket where it had been sitting on his lunch.
"It's an orphan," he said, and blew his nose.
"Poor thing," said Theresa, stroking it with a forefinger. "I hadn't realized a kitten could be."
"Could be?"
"An orphan."
"Of course they can. I should think so! Pussy, pussy, pussy!" she heard the grating of his teeth as he rubbed the creature's neck, "ain't you an orphan, then? Ain't you? Course you are—just like anybody else. You can have him if you like," he added, and turned away as though he disdained his gift.
"That's very kind of you," she said. She hated cats, but for Mr. Jessop she felt affection. "That's very kind," she repeated. "But are you sure you won't miss it?" she asked hopefully.
He gave a single shake of the head, and bunched up his lips.
"There are always more of them coming on," he said with melancholy.
She looked at the little animal as it wandered adventurously on the office table. "Then I'll take it home to-night; but, till then, would you mind keeping it in your pocket? I'm afraid it will get trodden on. And, oh, look, it has put its wretched little paw into the inkpot! If you dare to smudge my beautiful clean papers——" She held it gingerly by the body while Mr. Jessop dabbed its foot with blotting-paper.
"You'll be kind to him?" he asked wistfully.
"Of course I shall, and I'll call him Arnold, after you. Because," she added hastily, in dread of misunderstanding, "because it was so good of you to give him to me." She smiled vividly, with her unfailing wish to please.
For three years, while Grace danced, and laughed, and made people happy by the look of her, and fell in love and out of it again; while Edward Webb did his dull clerkly work until evening brought him to his poets, and Uncle George bought and sold his grains, and yearned towards his harmonium and the seamen, Theresa went daily to Mr. Partiloe's office. She had meant to spend her leisure in writing, and though she had not yet penned a word, she still saw her future haloed with fame; and when she was saddened by the thought of her blank pages, and the fact that she was not even mastering her technique, she found comfort in the belief that the experiences of her idleness were necessary to her stock-in-trade.
With the upper froth of her mind, she was learning to be social.
"Grace," she said one night, as they lay in bed, "I wish you'd furbish me up a little bit, and—and drag me about with you to places, if I shouldn't be a nuisance."
"Oh, Terry! Would you really come?" There was a break in Grace's voice, and her hand sought Theresa's. "Would you? I've always wanted to."
"Have you? Won't you be ashamed? I'm such a gawk."
"Ashamed! You're lovely. I shall be so proud to show you off. There's no one like you, Terry. You're—you're a person! And if you'd only be a little tidier, you would be pretty. And nothing"—the loyalty of her heart swelled triumphantly into her voice—"nothing can prevent your being distinguished!"
Theresa chuckled. She had no illusions as to her outer self.
"Don't overdo it. I don't expect to be a success, but I should like to have a little fun. I've been—a bit lonely."
"Oh!" Grace moaned over her and held her close. "I didn't know you were wanting it. I didn't, Terry!"
"And I wasn't—truly. But now—-"
"Well, you shan't be lonely any more, darling."
Theresa was wiser. She knew there was something in her nature which would not be so easily satisfied, but she did not know how to feed it; it was always piteously hungry, and even when she had drugged it with the sweet drink of gaiety and laughter, she could hear its muffled weeping far down in the depths of her heart.
The social engagements of these hard-working young women were not of an extravagant nature, nor were they many; but there were dances now and then, and supper parties, and sometimes a bevy of men and maidens would wait patiently outside the theatre for the joy of sitting in the front row of the pit, where they eat chocolates between the acts. On these occasions Uncle George always went to bed before their return, as a sign of his displeasure, but Edward Webb had the kettle on the fire and warm slippers for them if the night were cold.
Theresa liked dancing, and she liked going to the theatre, but she never lost her sense of strangeness in the company of Grace's friends. She knew she was essentially different from them, and she always found herself looking at things from the opposite side to theirs, so that there seemed to be a high wall between them, barring sight and deadening sound. Yet she had her little success among them. They thought her amusing, and she enjoyed their admiration, but gradually she dropped out of their affairs. That voice within was now impervious to the drugs, and she could get no peace from its clamour. Constant listening to the sound brought back the elfin eagerness of her looks, she grew thinner and more restless, yet her face grew indefinably in beauty of line and texture, for though she was unsatisfied and uncertain, she was at least listening to the claims of her spirit, and trying to understand them.
"What's the matter, Terry? Why aren't you coming?" Grace asked, with wide eyes full of anxious love, and Theresa, after searching for a way of putting it, replied:
"Well, you see, they are all very nice, but one time is just the same as another, and I think I want to read. I feel dried up inside. And Grace, I can't stand men. They always seem to be expecting something, and they bore me horribly when I'm not wondering how they ever came to be created."
"Yes, that's how you look at them. I'm glad I'm not so particular, though I don't care for any of them."
"That's because there isn't one you haven't been engaged to."
"Theresa, don't be vulgar."
"Isn't it true?"
"No—not quite. And Terry—I think I'm rather tired of gadding about myself. Let's stay at home together and mend our stockings."
"Mine do need it," said Theresa, glancing downward.
"And there's Father."
"Yes."
So they stayed at home, but at nine o'clock Grace said she wanted air, and would go for a little walk.
"Shall I come with you?" Theresa asked lazily, and was so much startled by Grace's quick and emphatic, "Oh no, thank you!" that she almost felt it in her conscience to follow her; but she sat still, frowning, and put a direct question when Grace, returned, unusually silent, and stood to warm her hands before the fire.
"Have you been out with a man?"
"Theresa, you're horrid. No, I have not. You talk to me as though I were a servant girl."
Theresa smiled. "I wish you were as unsusceptible as Bessie. She gets all her romance out of novelettes, bless her!"
Grace drew a troubled breath. "I've been doing something like that myself to-night." She stared into the fire, and spoke with a slight blurring of her words. "I feel as if I want to tell you. I've just been—imagining."
"Don't you often do it?"
"Why, no! I'm generally much too busy with the present, but lately—oh, well, I expect I'm silly."
"No. Go on."
"I'm nearly twenty-four."
"And I'm twenty-one."
"And, Terry, I'm beginning to want things."
Theresa knew the meaning of this general term. "It must be nice to know what you want," she said softly. "And to want such simple, beautiful things of every day."
"Yes, but they're hard to get. You can't do it all by yourself. I've been wandering up and down the streets, wishing I were going back to a little house with my own man in it, and a soft thing in a cradle. Theresa, aren't women wonderful?"
"What makes you say so?"
"They are so good! Oh, I want to be loved! Sometimes I so badly want to be loved that I could go and ask someone to do it!"
"That's not wanting to be loved," said Theresa bluntly.
"Well, words don't matter so long as you understand. But I don't do it! And think what men do!"
"It's worse for men."
"Not for all of them. Those are the only times when I want to read poetry, the only times when there seems any sense in it."
Theresa gave her chuckling laugh and hugged her knees.
"Am I horrid? Are you like that?"
"No; I think it makes me rather sick. But, then, I'm a queer person."
"I'm glad you don't think it's wrong of me. I'm frightened of myself sometimes."
"I'm sure you needn't be," Theresa said cheerfully, but she was anxious. Grace, with her beauty and the warm, swift blood flushing her cheeks, seemed to her the very embodiment of life, and she feared its impulse. Her own knowledge had the vagueness of inexperience, and it was the more alarming, so she watched Grace jealously, and knew something of the cares of parenthood.
Some weeks later, on a cold and windy evening in March, she walked home very quickly from Mr. Partiloe's office. She held her head high, but for once she was unobservant of how the chestnut trees were swelling into black, shining buds, and how the sound of her feet on the pavement had the ring of spring-time in it, and the birds were giving out shrill notes of joy. She went to her room, flung her hat on the bed and ran her fingers through her hair.
"I never go to that man's office again," she said to Grace, who was sitting on the window-sill with hands loosely clasped in her lap, and a tender smile on her lips.
"What's the matter?"
"I've left." She flounced on to the bed, expectant of more questions, but none came, for Grace was gazing straight into heaven.
"I've left," she repeated. "Mr. Jessop nearly cried, and so did I; but I've asked him to come to tea on Sunday and bring his sister and as many cats as they like. Grace, do you hear?"
"Yes, I hear. Then we must tell Bessie to take a lot of extra milk on Sunday. Have you really left?"
"Yes, I have." She kicked her shoes to the far end of the room. "Good heavens! The creature asked me to marry him!" She shuddered strongly. "Grace, he asked me to marry him! And his hands trembled! I didn't know people could go on like that. Never, never, never, shall any other man do it. I won't give him a chance. It was dreadful."
"It wouldn't have been dreadful if you had loved him." Grace spoke softly. "Poor little man. What did you say to him?"
"Say! I couldn't speak! How did I know he was going to be so ridiculous? And to do it in the office! I thought I might conceivably fall in love some day, but I know now that my affection wouldn't survive the proposal. Why didn't you tell me people behaved like that?"
"I expect they are all different. Tell me about it, Terry."
Theresa padded up and down the room in her stockinged feet.
"It was this afternoon. I went into his room to take down letters, and suddenly he stopped dictating. Oh, I can't tell you! But he says he has loved me for three years, and something about the sunlight on my hair when I first entered the office—I don't know!—and his eyes looked like lamps behind those enormous spectacles, and his face was white and—and quivering. Oh, let me forget it. But I never shall. I want to go into a nunnery. I feel stained."
"Don't talk like that, Theresa dear. He couldn't do more than ask you to marry him, could he? And you are insulting him, and—and love, too!"
"Good gracious!" Theresa stood still and looked down on her sister, whose upturned face was pale and earnest. The luminous eyes looked steadily at Theresa: they had lost their sparkle, and showed dark and unsuspected depths. "Who taught you to be love's advocate?"
Grace made a weak little movement with her hands and turned to look out on the docks. In the silence Theresa heard her breathing and saw the throbbing pulse in her throat. Speech came with difficulty.
"Love itself, I suppose," Theresa heard.
"Are you ill?" She forced a place for herself on the window-sill, and took Grace's hands. "Grace, what has happened?" Fear pumped at her heart and shook her body. "Grace, tell me."
She turned for a long, full look and the eyes were not those of an unhappy woman. "I'm going to be married in a month," she said.
Theresa's mouth fell slack. "What—on earth for?" she asked. Dreadful visions flashed, but Grace dispelled them with her bubbling laughter.
"Oh, Theresa! Because I am in love! Because—because I understand your poor little Mr. Partiloe."
Theresa released her hands. "You don't mean to say that your man behaved like that?"
Grace was dignified, almost matronly. "My man," she said, "behaved exactly as I could have wished."
"And where," asked Theresa, with the coarseness of desperation, "did you pick him up?"
"He lives next door—lodges there."
"Not the man who strums, and fiddles, and sings?"
"He plays in the theatre orchestra."
"Here's fame!"
"He's a musician."
"I'll take your word for it. I've no ear myself."
"Theresa dear, be nice. I have liked him ever since he came here——"
"Are you watching for him to come up that road, because if you are I'm not going to listen."
"He is at the theatre or he would be here," she said. "It's your Mr. Jessop who has made the match, Terry. Do you remember the night at Christmas time, when we couldn't find Arnold?"
"Yes. He was next door."
"But I didn't tell you that when I was outside calling for him, Phil came up the street—he had been to the theatre—and told me where he was."
"Who was?"
"Arnold, of course. He was in Phil's room."
"Had he stolen him?"
"Well—temporarily. He truly likes him——"
"Oh, these pronouns!"
"But he got friendly with him in the hope of getting friendly with us."
"With you, you mean. How charming!"
"Yes, I think it was," said Grace simply.
"And so it went on?"
"Yes. I think Bessie knew. Didn't she say anything?"
"Has Bessie ever sneaked, in all her days?"
"This afternoon we went for a walk. We were both free——"
"And now neither of you is. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!"
"Oh, Terry, do be glad."
"But you looked miserable. I thought something terrible had happened."
"So it has. It's terrible to like anyone so much." Her lips trembled. "And we're not going to waste any time apart. I shall just go and live with him, and we shall each do our own work. He teaches too, and he composes. Some day he'll be heard of, now that he has some one to believe in him. Do be glad. And won't it be lovely to be so near each other still? Next door, Terry! He is coming to see Father to-morrow, but I shall tell him to-night, only it had to be you first."
Theresa was meditative. "It seems a mad notion."
"Mad! It's perfect! To be so sure of each other, to feel so safe! Oh, Theresa, I'm ashamed of all the sillinesses I've done. Letting other men touch me, and fancying I liked them! But he knows. He knows everything. And I didn't have to tell him!"
Theresa walked to the dressing-table and studied her face in the glass.
"I wonder if Mr. Partiloe wanted me as much as that," she said. "I'm beginning to be rather sorry for him."
"There's snow on the hill-tops," said Clara.
"Yes, I saw."
"Did you have a cold drive?"
"I wasn't cold."
"My dear, your hands are like bits of ice. And your feet, too, I expect. Let me take your boots off for you."
"No, no, please. I'll do it."
"Very well. You sit there and toast your toes, and you shall have some nice hot tea in a minute."
Edward Webb pattered down the stone passage, and put his head in at the door.
"Theresa, come and look at the Blue Hill. It's wonderful in this light—wonderful."
"Don't go, my dear. Leave her alone, Edward. The Blue Hill will be there to-morrow, and the child's cold."
"Oh, mayn't I? Just for a minute!" She rose from the red-cushioned chair and Clara gave consent with a nod of the head and a flourish of the bread-knife.
Issuing from the dark passage, she was confronted by the Blue Hill. Night was falling, and what little light there was seemed to be stealing into the mountain. She thought it had opened its arms and its breast like a great door, and the day was creeping into it. Only to the west, beyond the lake and out over the sea, there was a pale amber streak, refusing shelter, but slowly, as she watched, its colour faded, melted into the universal grey, and was gathered home with the rest.
"I have often wondered what happened to the day," she said in a small voice. She thought there was a slight movement of the hill, as though, with the last light safely housed, it closed its doors and settled down to sleep. And the other hills folded their arms likewise, and slept. She heard their breathing, and then she became aware of the ceaseless running of the streams.
A sharp pain of joy ran through her, and she had to hold her throat lest a sobbing sigh should be let loose and spoil with human sounds the marvellous stillness of the night. Swiftly she stepped back into the passage and leaned against the wall. Its solidity assured her that this was not another of her lovely dreams, and the smell of tea and hot cakes was confirmation; yet, as she felt her way to the kitchen, she feared to wake.
But nothing vanished. James Rutherford, back from returning the cart Janet had lent, was by the fire, and the dog sat with its nose on his knee.
"Alexander is away," said Clara.
Yes, Theresa had heard that.
"You are to have his room. Sit in the armchair again and have your supper by the fire. We're going to have a fine Easter, aren't we, Jim? Jim is weather-wise," she explained.
Theresa smiled nervously at the gaunt man who was rhythmically stroking the dog's head. He looked very dark and shadowy where he sat beyond the rays of the lamp. "Yes, it will be fine," he said, and nodded at Theresa.
"I should like one day, only one, to be wet," said Edward Webb, fussing up and down between the two doors of the kitchen. "I want Theresa to see the mists. She hasn't seen the mountains until she has seen them hidden. I want her to hear the wind howling and see the rain driven. That's rain personified, half god, half man, urging and urged. In a town, it's nothing more than water falling, but here——"
"This is how he goes on," said Clara. "He and Alexander!"
"No, no. Alexander keeps a wise silence. It is I who am so—so garrulous, I am afraid."
"Oh, we like to hear you," she said.
A voice came from the shadows. "I like soft rain on my face, in the dark among the mountains. It is very dark among them in the night."
The burning wood stirred uneasily, a flame leapt, and Theresa saw the hand, pallid in the fierce glow, still working on the dog's head. The flame sank, and the small sounds in the kitchen, the clink of teacups and the dull drumming of a light wind at the pane, added to her sense of mysterious and impending happenings. She sat here, at last, in the kitchen she seemed to have known all her life. Above her, on the mantelpiece, her own eyes looked down, smiling in comradeship and welcome and amusement at her surprise. Those photographs had been sent without her knowledge and she felt strangely at a disadvantage. For all these years Alexander had been familiar with her looks, while to her he was still a vague form, perpetually menacing an exacter shape. She was like someone who has thought herself alone and finds all her actions watched. But Alexander was away, and she would not have to meet the scrutiny that compared reality with pictures. If she had not been assured of that she would not have been here among the hills. But—happiness triumphed above discomfiture—she was undeniably here! The smell of burning wood was in her nostrils and, outside, the hills were powerfully, peacefully asleep under their caps of snow. She was here, with the freshness of the mountain air on her cheeks, while, in the warm west, Grace was a three days' bride. But on the thought of that surrender Theresa would not dwell.
She felt she was having her revenge on Alexander, when, having been lighted up the stairs by his father, she closed the door of his room; for if he had been able to study her face during all these years, she could now retort with an examination of his belongings. His books, she considered, would be quite as tell-tale as her appearance—and then she caught back her thoughts. He had probably never so much as glanced at the mantelpiece, and why should she be curious as to his tastes?
She went to the window, and, kneeling before it, undressed with hasty hands. She saw the fields and the mountains, and a great moon swung in heaven: she had realized a dream, but her one wish was to put out the light and draw the bedclothes close about her head, and lose consciousness of this room which moved her like a presence.
It was a long time before she slept. A mouse scratched in the wall, somewhere a door was shaken in its frame, and often the stairs creaked as though a foot had pressed them. She hated the bed she lay on, and the blankets covering her; they were unbearably intimate. This was the pillow Alexander's head had dinted, and the moon made his possessions clear to her wakeful eyes. The room was whitewashed, and the walls, against which many books were stacked, were bare of pictures. "Dull creature!" she exclaimed, and, muffled to the chin, sat up in bed, determined to be done with foolishness. She would not allow the man to mar her joy, for to do so was to admit an importance to which he had no right. She punched the pillow defiantly and, holding her ankles, rested her chin on her knees. Sitting thus she could see the shoulder of the Blue Hill, and she nodded to it grimly, in a kind of challenge, for it seemed to hold the judicial scales between her and Alexander, and to persuade her to its own wise tolerance. What, it asked mildly, had Alexander done to offend? and she was bound to answer: "Nothing. Nothing but make me feel inferior, ever since I first heard his name. How could I like a boy who was not afraid of geese when I was terrified by them? A boy who tramped long miles to school at an age when I thought it an adventure to go down to the docks, a clever boy who won scholarships I knew I could never get? I was prejudiced against him at ten years old! Oh, Alexander, I have been very silly! I'm quite willing to be friends." She kissed her hand. "We are friends, I tell you. But be careful how you behave, my man. I'm very hard to please!" She laughed at the moonlit night. "As if he cares!" And then, hitting the pillow forcefully again, "Oh, but if I saw him, I'd make him care!"
A beautiful windy morning waked her. She found her father on the horse-block, his nose and cheeks blue with cold, his eyes reddened but bright with joy.
"Where shall we go to-day, Theresa? I hoped to take you to see Janet, but Clara tells me it is not convenient, so that must be for another time. There are the Spiked Crags—look! You see them? And the Blue Hill, and what Alexander calls the school track——"
"The Spiked Crags, please," she said.
He nodded. "I knew you would choose them."
During the ascent, she owed it to her father's breathlessness that they did not talk, and in the silence that was only broken by his panting Theresa could realize the hills. Yet she wished she were quite alone. She could feel her father's mind, like his body, straining after her wondering what she thought of this and that, watching for signs, and her desire was to sit as unheeded as a stone and let the winds play over her, and be a little part of something so much vaster than herself that her petty frets and follies would be of no more moment than the sound of one heather stalk grating against another.
"Do you mind," she said, "if I go on ahead of you? I'm—I'm so impatient to get to the top."
He smiled and nodded, patting his chest to account for lack of speech.
"You're sure you don't mind?"
"Yes, yes," he nodded, and she sped on. But she did not sit and ponder on her insignificance. Joy took hold of her and made her its own. There was a great tumult of singing in her breast, the wind lashed her, torturing her skirt and flicking the hair into her eyes until she clapped a hand to each side of her head to control the struggling locks, and let go again to wrestle with the greater problem of her petticoats and to wind her skirt about her waist.
She danced through the hard patches of snow lying here and there; she shouted because she knew the wind would tear the sound and scatter it; she was as light as the driven clouds, and she waved her hands to them. She forgot Mr. Partiloe, or, remembering him, did not shudder; she forgot the restlessness of her being, and rejoiced in the lithe young body that bent easily before the wind, and pushed its way against it, and loved its buffeting. There was no one to watch her and, when she reached the summit, she behaved with the abandonment of all young things in the spring-time of the year and their own lives. Little pigs, and lambs, and colts have their squealing, skipping, prancing ways of praising God, and Theresa had her own. She ran as fast as the wind would let her, with her hands high above her head; she lay down in the places which the snow disdained; she drove her fingers into the snow and sucked them warm again; and she loosed her hair so that it was flung out like a pennon. Dishevelment is seldom fair to see, and Theresa did not look beautiful. She did not care. She wanted to feel the wind's fingers at the roots of her hair, and she liked the tug and the sound as the strands were whipped this way and that. She stood alone on the mountain top, and gave her body to the elements, yet remained free. The elements made a generous lover: they took all she could give, yet they kept nothing, and they resigned her at a word. Poor little Grace, she thought, to be fastened for ever to the body and soul of a man, even though the man had intelligent green eyes and an adoring heart! It was better to be the wind's lady—easy come and easy go, and no fragile human feelings to be a hindrance.
The sight of her father toiling upward sobered her ecstasy. She sat down to await him, feeding on beauty as she braided her hair. She could see the valley, the lake, and the river all running towards the sea between walls of ever lessening hills. Here, at the valley's head, they were immense; they swept to the sky and rolled their great backs into distant valleys, and the little homesteads down below were meek in their shadow; but, like a wave that has spent its strength, the heights diminished as they approached the shore, that shore lying between two oceans, the one of water and the one of hills.
Her eyes felt cleansed of all the doubtful sights they had ever met, and her mind shared in the cleansing. Her happiness was so deep that she did not know of it; for, as nearly as human beings may, she was seeing things filtered of self, and the wide winds were in her soul.
She had made two thick plaits by the time her father sank to the ground and leaned his head against her shoulder.
"I wish your mother could have seen this," he said.
"The dear soul would never have got here. And now she doesn't have to climb at all. She'll be very glad, you know, to be allowed to look down on it all without any trouble."
"I came here so often without her, but it was not time I could have spent with her. That comforts me. But there are little things one did or did not do. Theresa, when you love, don't be afraid to let your conduct reflect your heart."
"Well, am I not very nice to you?"
"Very nice, my dear; but I was thinking of a different kind of love."
"Oh, don't talk to me of that! Not till I'm middle-aged. Then, perhaps, I'll consider it, and marry a comfortable widower, slightly infirm, so that I can occasionally escape, but not ill enough to need nursing."
"You'll have no such jog-trot end, my dear. I hope you'll run in harness with a swifter steed."
"I don't want to be harnessed at all," she said, and lay back.
Their thoughts went on different journeys, and his were so absorbing that, when he halted at his next remark, he had forgotten how easily she might trace his route.
"I hope you will meet Alexander some day," he said. Then he flushed guiltily, and, with a pitiful attempt at carelessness, began to hum untunefully.
Her words came instinctively, like an arm raised against a blow. "Oh, I expect I shall." The next moment, she could marvel at the readiness with which she had spoken, in spite of her stiffened body and the lump of revolt in her throat.
She lay very still, but her heart was thudding and, as though with the glow of her father's blush, her face was crimsoned; but soon it faltered into white and her lips trembled. The quality of her anger brought her near tears, and a great pity for herself surrounded her like air. Was she a chattel to be proffered in hope of sale? she asked silently, and that brought pride to drive back her weeping. She sat up with a beautiful, strong lift of her back. Pride was her strength. It enabled her to deceive her father.
"Shall we go on?" she said, and smiled, so that he thought she had not understood, and was thankful. She saw care visibly lifted from him, and her heart was tender for him. Was he not true to his own advice, and did not all his actions speak of love? She could not blame him since he loved her, thought her incomparable, and said so, through his eyes.
She linked her arm in his, but her rage against Alexander was red-hot.
On the evening of the next day, James Rutherford was not at supper. Theresa had been warned of his peculiarities, and she readily obeyed a hint that she should go early to bed; but she went reluctantly, for she grudged missing any new experience, and she lay, reading by candlelight, while the voices of her father and Clara rose, and died away, and rose again.
She had taken the book from Alexander's shelves. It was the Keats her father had given him. She saw their two names and the date, and for an instant she held it close. The feel of it produced a vision of her childhood as in a pictured show. She saw herself standing by her father before the breakfast-room fire, listening to that tale of how he was lost among the mountains. That was the day on which they had become part of her life, and when, indissolubly united to them, she had first heard of Alexander. Black-haired boy with the solemn face, clattering about the yard among the geese, he had been stamped on her eager brain, never to be removed. She would keep that old memory, lovingly, for her childhood's sake, and she could feel tender towards the book which she carried into bed, without doing violence to her cherished independence.
The pages of the book were well-worn, and the cover had suffered. No doubt it had been with him on many a walk among the hills, on days when the rain had run off his hair into his mouth and eyes and neck, and soaked into his pockets, or when the sun's warmth had curled the leaves while he read. Had he taken it to Oxford? Quickly she began to read. Questions in ancient history she could allow, but these more modern ones were unforgivable.
She read until she heard James Rutherford come home. There were sounds outside, then her father's step on the stairs and the closing of his door, and Clara's voice ringing clear through a mournful muttering; more steps on the stairs, the brushing of bodies against the wall, another door opened and shut, and then peace. She blew out the light.
When she woke it was to find the book held in her body's curve.
Downstairs there was a note for Edward Webb. "You won't be surprised that we have gone out—probably for the whole day," Clara wrote. "There's plenty of food in the larder, and Mrs. Spencer will come and help if you send for her."
"It will be rather nice to be alone," said Theresa. "Who's Mrs. Spencer? We don't want her, do we?"
"No. It's Easter Sunday. She will be going to church. She is a carter's wife, down by the inn."
"What a man to be married to! Mr. Rutherford, I mean."
Edward Webb would not discuss his host. He helped to prepare breakfast.
"After handling pens and typewriters for three years," said Theresa, as she cut the bacon, "it's a relief to turn to the homelier arts. Put that in the pan, please."
He hesitated. "It looks remarkably greasy."
"Prod it with a fork, then. You're dreadfully civilised. Here's another piece. Do you think you can cook it while I set the table?"
"I'll try," he said.
"Don't let it stick."
"How," he said politely, "is one to prevent it?"
"Oh, you silly! Perhaps I'd better do it, if I can trust you not to break the china. Now, think of what you're doing."
"I'll do my best, ma'am." He delighted in her tyranny and in her company. "Theresa," he said, with a cup hanging on each forefinger, "I'd like to end my days up here with you. We could rent a little cottage—there's one close to the church. It—it might be dull for you, but—there's your writing. You'd have time for that, at last."
"You forget," she said in hurried interruption, for his ambitions for her always smote her, "you forget that I shall be caring for my widower." But that unwise allusion brought the red to her cheeks, and she turned quickly to stir the porridge.
It was a morning of clear blue and green, with a high wind to blow the larches and lash the waters of the streams that were swollen with the melted snow. The shadows of passing clouds made transient blotches on the shining emerald of the hills. The tolling of the one church bell came now loud, now low, at the fancy of the wind.
"It's Easter Sunday," Edward Webb said again. "Theresa, there's a beautiful little church, ten miles away, across the hills. I went there once to service in the afternoon, and I think I'll go again. Will you come with me?"
"I'd rather not. I don't like churches. I think I'll just go and sit beside the stream, and have a little adventure of my own. You'd better take your lunch in your pocket."
"And you'll wrap up warmly, Theresa. And mind you have enough to eat. And don't sit too long, and don't wander away too far. A mist might come on. Be careful."
"I believe you'd like to lock me in a cupboard! Don't you wish you had a little pouch for me, like a kangaroo?"
"Yes, I do," he said, blinking earnestly.
"Well, I expect I shall stay beside the water. There are pools, and creeks, and waterfalls, and rapids, and dreadful, silent little woods. I shall be able to frighten myself finely."
"And Abraham will keep guard over the house and you. I shan't be back till dark. You won't mind?"
"No, I shall feel quite courageous. And, do you know, I've never been really alone in my life. There have always been houses, and tramcars, and policemen, and no chance of being brave! If tramps come, what do you say to them?"
"Ask Abraham. He'll bark at them, but I think few pass this way. There's no high-road. Good-bye, my dear."
She thought that was the most wonderful morning of her life. It was the kind of weather she loved best, with a piercing quality of both wind and sun, and everything glowing, swaying, rustling, creaking. She was gloriously alone, and as she followed the stream and forced its passage, jumping from stone to stone, and feeling water oozing through her shoes, her years fell from her. She was childlike in her acceptance of the hour, nor did she look in upon herself and say, "See how like a child I am!" She was enthralled by the gilded water and the little ferns and mosses growing between the stones, and by the sober presence of the hills that stood far off and looked down with friendly faces. It was only when she passed under the brooding silence of a wood that she remembered her womanhood, and remembered it with fear. Among clustered trees she was not the mistress of her fate: there were influences at work on her, malicious eyes peering, hands ready to tease or bind her, and she hurried from them to the open, where there was nothing between her and heaven.
It was as she returned across the fields that she saw a man leaving the house. He stood for an instant just outside the door, gave a quick glance up and down the lane, and hurried up the valley. She began to run. The man turned sharply to his left, making for a grassy track that skirted the larch wood. She followed, realizing the sterling value of policemen. He went fast, with long, easy strides, and as she noticed the manner of his walking, she was sure this was no common thief. He was a free man by the look of him, fearing nobody. His head, his back—she crushed down a cry, and as, with her eyes still on that back, she would have swung round to retrace her way, she stumbled against a stone, and it was he who turned.
She had not fallen, but her hand was at her throat, her attitude was one of fear, and he ran down the slope. He saw a pale and slightly freckled face under a crown of heavy, burnished hair. He knew the face very well, but it had grown thinner, he perceived, and the photographs did not show the golden freckles, nor the colour of her hair. She was a little breathless, but her lips were tightly closed, and he was acutely aware of the physical control she exercised: there was no sound, the hand at her throat hardly rose or fell. Her eyes, wide at first, narrowed a little, and her lips quivered into a smile.
"I thought you were a thief—so I ran." She made as if she would wave him onwards. "I will pretend I haven't seen you."
He looked beyond her. "I ought to have gone out by the back."
"Yes, you were very careless." But as she spoke she knew why he had chosen the dangerous and longer way. She, too, had rejoiced in the great blue wall that barred the kitchen passage, but rather than explain her understanding, she endured the cool distance of the stare that told her plainly she was alien and unwelcome. But, as she looked at him, returning his gaze with one of frank, unguarded interest, she decided that she did not mind his rudeness, that, indeed, she rather liked the unconsciousness of it, and, without warning, she laughed aloud, and checked against her sides the friendly impulse of her hands.
He condescended to smile, too, under his drawn brows.
"Well—good-bye," she said.
"Good-bye."
Neither moved: each looked over the other's shoulder; Theresa, upwards at the swell of green hills against the sky, and Alexander down at the quiet valley and his home, with Abraham sitting before the kitchen door.
"Where are the others?"
"All gone for walks."
"Don't you walk?" She saw the red sparks in his eyes, and his face mobile for the next emotion. This one was a gently disguised scorn, and again she was unmoved.
"I'd rather run."
"If you're alone, won't you come back to Janet's?"
"No, thank you."
"She would like to see you."
"And I should like to see her. I've known about her for so long; but—it's good to be alone, isn't it? This is the first day I've ever had like this. I'm greedy of it. But if I could just go and speak to her and come back again, that would be best of all."
"You can do what you like at Janet's," he said. "I'm staying there."
To that she made no answer, but her mind was busy, adding this last statement to Janet's refusal to see visitors. She smiled, and through her thought there ran a pleasant sense of liking for Alexander's company. His face was almost what she had expected, but his effect on her was not. She had forgotten her old enmity and all the lurking, half-seen fears that caused it, and she walked easily by his side and knew no embarrassment at their silence.
"We've got photographs of you in our kitchen," he said suddenly; "but how did you know me?"
"Well, I guessed. No I didn't!" She stood still to think. "Oh—I knew."
"You're like your pictures."
"You see," she was explaining her recognition of him—"I've heard about you since I was ten years old. Did Father ever tell you about me?"
He gave a shout of laughter.
"Oh!" she said, "was it as bad as that? No wonder you wouldn't stay in the house with us."
His face became grave. "I had work to do."
She looked at him with a like solemnity, showing him a face which might have been reverential but for the dancing light in the eyes, and for the lips, held back as in a leash. He lifted his head with a jerk, and stared before him until they were at the crest of the slope, and Theresa paused to see the valley.
He cast a glance at her. She wore a short skirt of some dull purple stuff, and a woollen garment of the same colour that fitted loosely, yet defined her slimly rounded shape. He thought that among the gold and copper of her hair he saw a bronze glide into a glinting purple, and it came into his mind that she was like the heather. Her feet, shod soberly in brown, were planted firmly, but her body, like that mountain plant, gave to the wind, and thereafter she and the flower he loved best were for ever one to him.
She knew he looked at her and she looked back at him, now with a different smile—how many had she?—frank and friendly.
"I do like being here," she said, and clasped her restless hands behind her back.
"That's Janet's house among the larches," he said.
The dogs greeted them, and then Janet's tall figure slipped through the trees.
Shyness took hold of Theresa, and when she sat in the dark kitchen she was conscious again of the mystery of woods. The larches were close to the window, scratching the panes, and the room was full of shadows.
Janet did not try to talk, but, having seated Theresa by the fire, she took her stool on the other side of the hearth and scrutinized her keenly, while Alexander leaned in the door-way, reading. Theresa could think of nothing to say, and decided that if these two were content with silence there was no need for her to break it; so she looked into the fire, at Janet's face and the plates on the dresser, at the fire again, at Alexander and the lean hands holding his book.
She had been free and happy outside with him, and now she was uneasy, fettered.
"I think I'll go back," she said.
Alexander closed his book. "But you're going to stay to dinner. Isn't she, Janet?"
"Of course." She looked at Theresa in her brooding, unsmiling way. "I like to have you here. Your father's a friend of mine."
"Did he ever tell you that dream of Janet's?" Alexander asked.
"The one about the birds? Oh yes, he told me that." She smiled. "I think he tells me everything."
"I'll see about the dinner."
Slightly frowning, Theresa looked at Alexander. "Must I stay?"
"I thought, if you would, I'd take you afterwards to a place I know. Will you come? It's a fine place."
"I'd like to come," she said.
Janet fetched food from the larder while Laura, the little maid, with her arms bare beyond the elbow, laid the table and cast casual remarks at Alexander in a pretty monotone. She herself was pretty, but Alexander, reading again, hardly looked at her. He murmured his assents and "no's" and interjections into the book, while she told him how someone in the village had driven into town, and the white horse had fallen and cut its knees, and it was a good horse and a new one. "So they'll have to bide home till its knees are mended, and that's awkward for them with their coal and all to fetch."
"Ye-es," said Alexander. "It'll be hard work fetching the coal by hand."
"They'll never do that!" she exclaimed, and laughed as she saw the queer raising of his brows.
Theresa was unreasonably angered by these pleasantries. She wanted to tell Alexander he was not funny at all, that she could be much funnier herself; but he had returned to his reading with so little apparent satisfaction in his mild joke that she forgave him. Moreover, she liked the way his head rose from his neck, and the line of his chin; he had a manner of touching books that pleased her, and on small likes and dislikes Theresa could hang a serious mood.
A little later, with the dogs leaping round them, they set out together by the front door of the house, and Theresa turned among the larches to wave farewell to Janet, who stood looking after them with her strange passivity.
But to-day, below the quiet of her face, she was feeling all the tragedy of her lost youth and her empty arms. These she folded across her breast and pressed heavily against her heart to still the pain, and, in the trouble of a mother who has had no lover but her son, she saw the shadows drop back into their places as the two figures passed through and on. And she stood there, rigid, with the hurt smile on her lips, until the dogs came back and lay down at her feet, with lolling tongues.
Alexander led Theresa to a broad green path which they could see curving far before them.
"Have we to walk on this all the way?" she asked.
"You need not. It's quickest in the end."
"But it's simply crying out for our obedience! Don't let us obey. Take me the long short cut."
"Well, if you like walking on the sides of your feet——"
"Better than walking in other people's footsteps."
"I like to tread where other men have been," he said quietly. "It links me to them."
"Links? Chains! I want to be free."
Amused, he looked down at her. "But you can't be, you know."
"But I am!"
"You'll find someone tugging at the other end one day."
Turning her palms up and down, she showed him her unshackled wrists. "There's nothing there."
"Well, lead on, then. Straight for the gap."
She went before him. To her the walk was a revelation of her capacity for happiness and when she went to bed that night, she could look back on the day and marvel at the ease with which she had talked about herself, what she wished to do, what she feared she would never do, telling him all without a thought of making any effect, impelled by her conviction of his sympathy, and her own need to speak. Only now, in the quiet of the bedroom, did she speculate on Alexander's judgment of her. She had walked with him for hours, she had been careless of his opinion because she trusted it, because she had so completely and immediately accepted him as friend that another conception of the relationship had seemed impossible, and she saw now that her feeling for him had been too sure and swift for any reflex action. She was less likely to pose to him even than to herself, and, pondering on that remarkable fact, she sat on the bed and drew off her stockings. After all her years of introspection and enjoyment of an audience, this new condition neared the miraculous, and it grew in significance as she sat, slowly unfastening her clothes. Why, it had all been as simple as picking a flower and putting it in her dress, but that Alexander was hardly comparable to a flower. What was he like? A hill, she thought, mirroring the clouds and growing light again with their passing.
She told no one of her meeting with him, and she did not see him again.
To Alexander the memory of that day was a tempting and detested scourge. He was twenty-seven, and the two women who were his friends had held him in their laps. Young women were strangers even to his thoughts, and at Theresa's invasion of his home he had left it, only to have her gold and purple thrust into his hands. And how tightly he had held them all that day! How he had watched her going before him, turning, now and then, to speak! The allurement of her poised body had been strong for him: she had come upon him out of the very earth, with the sun on her hair, and his unguarded senses had greeted her in spite of the dictates of his mind, and, powerful against all warnings, he felt the stirring of the life that had been so long asleep.
But it was when they rested in the promised place that he felt the kinship of her spirit, and did his best not to acknowledge it, and yielded before the vision of her enraptured face. He had taken her to a tower of grey rocks, whence she could look forth as from a window on fold after fold of hills: blue and purple they were, green and grey, colours so intermixed and blended that the eye could hardly part them, and as she gazed out on these serene and solid waves of earth and the deep troughs dividing them, or looked straight below her at the narrow valley streaked with the cotton threads that were streams, up at the sky and the bird that hung there, and down to the ferns in the crannies of the rocks, he knew she loved the hills with a passion younger than his own, but as strong. He knew it through his heart and mind, and in the same instant, he was jealous that she should love them, and that they should be loved by her.
Separated from her by a few yards, he sat on a rock, smoking his pipe and saying nothing, nor did she show any wish to speak. Sometimes he turned to look at her, and always he saw his own emotions on her face. She sat very still, leaning a little forward: the fingers of her clasped hands were interlaced, except when she brushed aside the ruffled hair that strayed into her eyes: her cheeks were pale, but about her there was a subdued light like that in the sky long after the sun has dropped away.
Presently she rose and wandered off, and, in fear lest she should be lost, he followed and found her lying at full length, propping her chin with her hands and digging little graves for her toes. Smiling, but looking at him with solemn eyes, she released one hand and patted the ground beside her in invitation, and thus they lay until her shiver warned him that the air was cold.
"We must go," he said, and remembering the softness of his voice, he was tormented.
She sprang up, and the long silence was broken. They walked home side by side, and she had talked and drawn talk from him until he was telling her the thoughts he hardly knew were his, and now found were his best possessions. With perfect confidence in her interest, he told her the great and little things about his work, and she did not fail him. It was her mind he sought and she gave it gladly; he knew there were no barriers raised against him, and his own were all thrown down.
They had clasped hands in farewell, and she had thanked him for her day, and suddenly her face had become as beautiful for him as her body. It was elfin in the gloaming and tremulous with life, and he saw the loveliness of her lips.
Long after she had left him he sat staring at the stream, shaking and half-afraid because of his fierce desire to touch her.
The water was dark and hardly discernible except where foam gathered and pale waterfalls were splashing, but it was Theresa that he saw. Now he would push her from him in anger, hating himself for his need, and a moment later twine his fingers among hers and draw her back, looking into her clear, unflinching eyes, telling her it was her companionship as well as her sweet frame he wanted, the mind that had sprung so swiftly to his meaning and never fallen short. And then again there would come a terrible distrust, born of his physical desire. How was he to clear himself of that and see an uncaged Theresa flown from the vivid body that might and might not be the expression of herself? Better perhaps to see neither bird nor gilded wires, to forget the singing she had started in his breast, and to go steadily on his chosen road. Why should he introduce strange new gods into his worship? Would they satisfy him? Would they not hinder him, and demand the offering up of sacrifices he could not give?
He cried aloud, and his voice fell in with the sound of the rushing water. "Oh, Theresa, you heather flower, I'll give you anything but my work, if you'll only be what your face says you are. But you can't be that. Can you? Can you? It would be like Heaven opened. Oh, fool—fool—fool!"
He stood up strongly, holding down his hands. "And I thought myself a stubborn man to beat! Well, and I'm not beaten yet."
Nevertheless, late that night he stole round the house and sat long on the horse-block, for it was just below her window.
While Alexander battled against the physical with hopes divided between a conquest which might show Theresa to him in spiritual beauty, and a defeat which would keep her clothed in flesh, and so preserve him from complete capitulation, Theresa, as yet untrammelled by these cares, went home rejoicing in a friend. There was no other to whom she could give that name with the same fulness of meaning, and the glow of her splendid possession did something to remove the chilliness from a home with no Grace in it. She had, too, a new belief in herself based, not on fancy, but on Alexander's confidences and her own understanding of them, and with that to help her, she set about finding work. Her view of men had been almost imperceptibly readjusted by half a day's communion with one of them, and she would have returned to Mr. Partiloe but for the certainty of planting hope in him. She could not do that, and she spent much time and weariness of body in looking for someone whom she considered fit to be her employer. Weariness of mind, she had none; she was conscious of a strong effect of wind and sunshine there, clearing the dust and dirt from its corners and making room for fresh and urgent powers, and she saw life as a thing too short for the use of her vitality.
"Your holiday has done you good," Grace told her.
"How do you know?" The bride's statements were now delivered with such authority that Theresa was forced to question them.
"You're so good-tempered."
"You think that because you're not living with me. Ask Uncle George! We quarrelled this morning. He wants me to be secretary to one of his old societies. I think it was in aid of the children of devoured missionaries."
"Oh, Terry!"
"It was something quite as bad. And for a mere pittance! He told me the work would be reward enough. I nearly threw the coffee-pot at him. Am I not worthy of my hire? Why can't they employ one of the undevoured children? And he turned the other cheek. He said he would try to find something else for me. He likes me, you know."
"People seem to. Phil thinks you're charming."
"Does he? By the way, do ask that enthusiastic young man not to play the fiddle quite so late at night. I can hear so plainly through the wall just when I want to go to sleep. First there's a squealing—oh, it really is squealing; you must face facts—and then there's a wailing, and then one note that you know is meant to be a musical one, and you think at last the tune is coming—but he stops there. And there's a long pause, and I know you are saying, 'Oh, Phil, how wonderful! Play it again.' And he does. It makes me hot all over, and I hate you both and call you names. I don't think I like having only a wall between us. I'm always wondering what you are talking about, and I feel as I used to when I was little, and heard Father and Mother talking in another room. It always sounded so mysterious and so important, and I wanted to listen, but I should have found it very dull, just as I should find your conversations."
"They're not dull. There are no end of wonderful things to talk about when you really like a person."
Theresa's lips curved in a small, superior smile. Did she not know?
"You needn't look like that," said Grace sharply. "You'll know some day."
"Married people," said Theresa, "do nothing but prophesy their own feelings for other people. Bless you, I don't want to feel as you do. It would be like—like feeding me on grass."
"I suppose there's meant to be an insult there," said Grace placidly, "but I don't understand it."
"No, it was only an unsuccessful simile. One can't always hit the nail exactly on the head. I like that way of doing your hair."
Grace scanned herself in the glass. "Yes. Phil made it up."
"Good Heavens! He ought to be a hairdresser!" She could not imagine Alexander concerning himself with such trivialities.
"He could only be that if he were in love with all his customers," said Grace, preening herself delicately and feeling that the last word was hers.
"The source of all inspiration! Oh me! Where's mine?"
"Your what?" Grace had been executing an intricate step, and now she stood on tiptoe, poised like a dragonfly.
"My inspiration, and the fountain head thereof. My river is all dried up. But I never was a river; I only thought I was."
"I don't know what you're talking about." This was the remark which had punctuated their childhood, and Theresa laughed, swinging forward to clasp her knees.
"Of course you don't! I'm talking of the nonexistent. Alas, alas, and I thought myself a torrent that could never be dammed! Grace, Grace, do you think there's any chance of my becoming a torrent some day?"
"I think," she pirouetted, "you could be almost anything you like, if—oh, look! wasn't that rather pretty?—if you cared enough."
"That's just it," said Theresa gloomily. "I only care about myself, and I am that already. At least, I suppose I am. I'm not sure. Grace, have you got a self you're sure of?"
"Yes."
"Just one whole, compact little bundle of self?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Oh, how did you do it? There are parts of me in every star and in every earthworm, and I don't know which is which or where! What magnet will draw them all together?"
"Ah!" said Grace.
"Oh, don't be silly. It's no good talking to a woman with only one idea in her head."
"It's a good idea," said Grace serenely.
"Yes, for you."
Grace laughed now, with a wise little giggle of premonition. "Poor Theresa!"
"Go back to your hairdresser. I'm going to do some work."
"My hairdresser is giving a lesson. There's a wretched man who wants to learn the banjo from him. The banjo!"
"I'd rather hear the banjo any day than Phil playing the fiddle. Why do you let him? He'll end his days scratching the thing outside public-houses. He's just the type. And you'll stand on the pavement with a tin mug. Do go home—while you have one!"
"Yes, I must go. I have a class in an hour. Good-bye, darling. You've a lot of new freckles, and you look so well. Have you forgiven Mr. Partiloe?"
"Oh yes, I've forgiven him. He doesn't matter any more."
"What did you think of the Rutherford boy?"
"He's not a boy; he's a man. He was away from home."
"Oh, how dull."
"Not a bit." She straightened the bow of her slipper and spoke quickly. "There's no need of people when there are mountains."
She did not raise her head until she thought her blush had faded. And why had she blushed? Why had she replied evasively, she who prided herself on speaking truth? Because, her ready mind made answer, to say more would not have been fair to Alexander. And oh, cried the voice of her heart, taking her by surprise, because, like a miser, she could not bear to speak about her gold. She held her friend close, and looked on him as though she tried to appraise his value, which was immeasurable; she saw his strong, lean figure, the quietness of his face with the passions subdued below, and heard the voice he so seldom raised beyond the pitch that accorded with the mountain noises. Looking down, with his hands in his pockets, he had walked beside her, listening, and at a word that pleased him or reached beyond the outskirts of his being, he had swiftly lifted and turned his head to look at her. And when she ceased and he began to speak, it was haltingly at first, with eyes still downcast, but again there came those sudden looks, marking his earnestness. No, of these things she could not speak; they had no parallel in words, and the miser might as hopefully try to express adoration of his stores. And it would certainly not be fair to Alexander, she repeated, doing homage to that useful suggestion of her mind.
"Father told me he was very sorry."
"Yes, he likes him."
"Have you ever thought, Terry, that Father——" She stopped and looked through the window, meditatively biting her lips.
"Go on."
"No, I won't say it." Already she had acquired something of the matron's discretion, and saw the faint barrier between married and unmarried. In a day her knowledge had so far outspread Theresa's that what she would have said freely two months ago was now checked for consideration. Was it wise to say this to Theresa, who was a girl? There was less danger in silence—so she stood biting her lips.
But Theresa knew that Grace also had divined her father's wish, and though she was not angry she felt indescribably sad, nor did she understand why, for the rest of that day, she seemed to move in mist.
In the evening Uncle George pierced the veil. He looked unreal and over large as he stood before her.
"Theresa, I have found the very thing for you—not the thing I recommend, mind, but the thing you'll like."
"Lots of money?"
"A hundred a year."
"Oh, good! That's better than the Christian stipend you offered me."
"I'm afraid this will be anything but Christian."
"Oh, good! I mean—tell me about it."
He eyed her with the peculiar expression he kept for her, one hovering between a controlled frenzy and an amusement greater than his prejudices.
"Have you ever heard of Simon Smith?"
"No, but one wouldn't, would one?"
"His father was a large manufacturer of cheap—but I don't say injurious—sweets. Simon Smith is a very rich man and a philanthropist. I have met him on committees—all of which he has left. I entirely disapprove of his methods, entirely, but that's no reason why I should not tell you that he has a vacancy for a secretary. I advise you to go and see him."
"I certainly shall. Shall I say I'm your favourite niece?"
"Not if you want to get the post," he said grimly.
The next morning Theresa presented herself at Mr. Smith's large front door, and was ushered into a sunny room where a spruce young man was sitting. He rose, bowed in a bored manner, and spoke rapidly.