"You are Miss Webb? Please sit down. I understand you are applying for the post Mr. Smith has vacant. What are your qualifications? Oh, very well, then will you please take down this letter, type it, and let me have it as soon as possible. Will you come to the table?"
She drew off her gloves slowly and sat down, awaiting his first words with a look of pleasant expectation. He gave back a blind and stony gaze.
"Dear Sir——" She bent her head over the paper.
He carefully examined the typewritten copy, and announced that Mr. Smith would see her. The sobriety of his face had not relaxed as he opened the door which communicated with an inner room, and he did not respond to Theresa's tilted smile of thanks.
"Miss Webb, sir," he said, and disappeared.
Beyond the names she could give for reference, Mr. Smith said he only wanted to know three things: had she good health—in particular, was she free from colds in the head which he considered the most objectionable known complaint? Would she begin work at eight o'clock each morning? And would she promise to wear shoes that did not squeak?
She answered yes to all these questions and awaited her dismissal, but Mr. Smith had much more to say. He was a small, dry man, almost concealed by the great chair in which he sat, but his eyes were startlingly keen, and they never left Theresa's face. It was her own habit to fix people in this manner, and she expected it of others, so she sat, coolly interested, wearing that hint of a smile which was an inheritance from her mother, proof, in Theresa, of a shy enjoyment.
With a courtesy and shrewdness of which she was quite aware, he led her willingly into a self-revealing conversation. He learnt her age, the occupation of her father, her relationship to George Webb—"Harmonium George, we call him," he said with a twinkle—and many of her characteristics. She helped him freely in his discoveries, but she did it with a skill greater than his own.
"Very well," he said, as he rose, "if Mr. Partiloe——By the way, why did you leave Mr. Partiloe?"
"I had been there three years."
"Decent chap, isn't he? Decent pay? Why did you want to go, then?"
She thought for an instant. "It was a very stuffy office," she said.
"Ah, yes—yes. They are sometimes." He rang the bell. "Will you take a glass of wine before you go? Excellent port? No? Well, let me show you my flowers."
He took her through his conservatory, gave her a spray of heliotrope, and escorted her to the gate.
Two days later she had a letter signed by John Neville, asking her to begin her duties as Mr. Smith's under-secretary at eight o'clock on the following Monday morning.
Simon Smith's charities were exclusively his own. He seldom gave to hospitals, never to missionaries, and all organized societies had learnt that they were his detestation, that though he might consider individual cases they brought to his notice, he would never spend a penny on anything in which he had not a hand.
"My father," he said, "never sold a sweet he hadn't sampled. D'you think his money is going to be swallowed up while my back's turned? No, I'll look into this little affair myself."
Through many different channels news came to him of people he was glad to help, and it was with his vast correspondence that Theresa chiefly had to deal while Jack Neville, alert and always beautifully dressed, went hither and thither, making investigations, and finding new subjects for Mr. Smith's generosity.
"I came across a poor seedy-looking beggar this morning, down by the docks," he told Theresa one day, when she had worked there long enough to be considered part of the establishment. "I got into conversation with him, found he was a poet. He showed me some of his verses written on a dirty scrap of paper. Jolly good they are, too. Look!"
She fingered the paper delicately. "Was he dirty, too?"
"H'm. What you might call medium. But what do you think of his production?"
"Excellent." Her lips moved with the rhythm of the words. She did not look at Neville when she spoke. "Are you going to introduce him and his verses to Mr. Smith?"
"Well, what do you think?"
"I think Mr. Smith probably doesn't know his poets as well as you and I do."
"Ah, I wondered if you'd recognize it." She saw his growing approbation take a leap. "Rather a neat trick though, wasn't it? He must have known who I was. I shall have to adopt disguises."
"You see," she said, "you are so unforgettably well-groomed."
"My dear girl—I'm sorry."
"Oh, never mind."
"I hate familiarity."
"Let's call it friendship."
"May I? Thanks. I was going to say that my clothes alone lift me from the ruck. If I am not spick and span I'm nobody. It's the abominable mediocrity of my features and the shape of my head. There's much in heads."
"Yes, you can hide your mouths, but we have the advantage when it comes to skulls." She knew she had no need to conceal one or the other, for Nature, who had denied her beauty, had given her shapeliness, and she wondered if Jack Neville knew it. She was very happy in the companionship of these two men: whether or not they had eyes for her physical charms she could not tell, and it was not often that she cared, but she was sure they appreciated her intelligence. In this, as in many other matters, the two were at one, and gradually she was admitted to their counsels.
"I wanted this," Mr. Smith said. "I intended it; but I had to see what you were made of. We need the woman's mind. There's been too much man about things. Jack is always finding starving genius in a garret—and of the male gender. Well, it would be a bit awkward for him if it wasn't—I admit that. Now you—now look here, Miss Webb, here's a delicate bit of work for you to do. Somebody came this morning with a tale about a young woman living over a bird shop. Nasty atmosphere, eh? She's been deserted by her husband, or else there isn't a husband—that's for you to find out. I want the truth of the matter, and you can get it. Here's the address. Never mind these letters: they can wait, and if you're a success as my female agent I can get any fool to play with that typewriter. Well, what's the matter?"
There was a sound of trouble in her voice. "I should like to do this new work. I think it's the kind of thing I can do, but please, please, don't let anyone else touch my papers. I can't bear even Mr. Neville to interfere with them, and I can easily find time to do everything. Why, you don't work us half hard enough. And I should hate to give up my chair, and my table, and my typewriter, and all my beautiful files."
"There you are, keeping some other woman out of a job."
"Oh——"
"Never mind! Never mind! I assure you I don't want a stranger. She'd be sure to sniff."
The girl who was cooped up in a room hardly bigger than one of the cages that swung below, opened her heart almost as soon as she had opened her door to the bright-haired lady who knocked on it, and this case was the beginning of a little feminist movement of Theresa's own. From one woman she had hints of the troubles of another, and was off immediately on the trail, her nose so keen for the scent that it disdained the more material odours assailing it. She went into strange places and met strange people, and she made mistakes; but she had more than her share of her sex's special gifts, and she had, too, some quality that drew the truth from others. The work absorbed her, she could not have done it well if she had not found in it something of a mission; but she also delighted in the perpetual show she made for her own eyes. She had a large stage to act on, no lack of parts to play, and so she was for ever in a state of mind that was not self-satisfaction, but an engrossment which made her every action of interest to herself, and the very tones of her voice as memorable as the tale some starving woman told her. Yet, with it all, she never acted falsely, and though she saw herself haloed by her own skill and popularity, she tried to counteract her tendency to glance upwards at that adornment. "But it's not so serious as it seems," she would say when she was troubled by her egoism. "It's only playing the same old game. I used to be a beautiful princess, and now I'm a clever young person. I always knew I wasn't a princess, and now I know I'm not nearly as clever as I like to think, so where's the harm? Nobody is deceived, and I have my fun." Nevertheless, she was oftener with a heartache than without one.
Neville complained of her activities.
"You are swamping us with your women," he said. "My geniuses never get a chance, and the old man says he has too much on his hands to attend to my consumptive butcher."
"I don't believe there is such a thing."
"Oh, honour bright! He's more important than that last girl of yours—you rather rushed the old man over that—and here's my butcher threatening to marry. We've got to cure him first. We must come to some arrangement and divide things fairly."
"I want to be fair, but one's enthusiasms——" She ended with a smile, and as he looked down at her he found her very good to see in her plain green frock, with a glint of winter sunshine on her hair.
Looking up at him, Theresa saw another face, and felt a dull throb in her breast. It would soon be a year since she had seen the mountains, a year since she had seen her friend. Strenuously she called him by that name, yet she would not obey her eager wish to write to him and so talk to him again: she was held back by some inherited instinct of waiting on the male, and she felt her spirit starving. It was hard to live for ever on her memories, and she turned to her old food. She must shine for some one, and she did it so glitteringly for her father and Simon Smith and Neville, that her pangs were dulled; but there returned the restlessness which, for a little while, had been banished.
Edward Webb had been to stay among the hills, and she thought she would tear her heart out with his going. She was not included in the invitation. James Rutherford, it was understood, was so uncertain in his behaviour, that her presence was not desirable, and her father had returned in some anxiety.
"What is the matter?" she asked, and the sound of her voice taught her more than she had wished to know, yet a joy that soared in agony came with the knowledge.
"He's very bad."
"Who?" Her fingers were torturing each other.
"James. And Alexander—Alexander isn't like himself, Theresa."
"Isn't he?"
"No. He's—so morose. I hardly had a word with him. I own I was a little hurt."
If her father had looked at her, he would have seen the strain of her smile as she dared herself to speak her fear.
"Perhaps he is in love," she said.
"Oh, I hope not. But"—he was reluctant—"I must confess that Janet—Janet hinted something, vague as herself. But I hope not."
She spared him some of her aching pity for herself, and answered steadily: "He must be twenty-eight. Quite old enough to marry. People are very disagreeable when they are in love." But as she drove the nails into her palms, she was saying over and over again: "Thank God I didn't write to him. Thank God I didn't do it!"
And if she had a prayer, it was that she might not dream about the hills.
One day, when the summer of the next year had slipped into September, Theresa was five minutes late for work. She shut the door with a bang that had a sound of triumph in it, and her face had the flush of victory.
Neville pointed to the clock.
"Don't be fussy, Jack. This is the first time—and I've been up all night!"
"It seems to have agreed with you. You've been looking like a wilted daffodil for months, and now you're like, well—what would you like to be like? A rose will do. Has your arch enemy died?"
"No." She drew her chair noisily to the table. "No."
"Need you be quite so emphatic in your movements?"
"I must be. It's my form of self-expression, and I wish to express joy. I've got a niece, Jack, a real live niece. Isn't it glorious?"
"Is it? Felicitations! If we tell the old gentleman, he'll have in a bottle of champagne."
"Let's have it for lunch, and if you want to dictate, start quickly, before disinclination conquers me. I've never wanted to stay away from work before."
He shook his smooth round head. "I've quite a lot of nieces and nephews, myself, but not one of them ever threw me off my balance—not one. Women——"
"Well?"
"Queer things! Now, please. To Mr. Thomas Cartright. Dear Sir."
Grace's little daughter revealed the maternal in Theresa. Grace had the quality in its fairest shape, the one painters choose to picture, tender, soft and content. Her arms were intimate with the small body they held, her voice and her laughter had the mother note, and her smiling lips took on a new and passionate droop. Her eyes, adoring the baby, adored Phil the more, and he, through worship of his wife, worshipped the baby.
Watching this ancient and eternal trinity, Theresa felt her eyes pricked with dreadful tears. She dropped her lids on them, and saw the inner wilderness in which she lived. It was shorn of beauty, it was a waste, empty but for the little figure of herself, moving on and on—to what? There seemed no bourne for her. She did not know what she wanted: she was not sure that Grace's happiness was one she envied; but she stooped and seized the baby and held it close, not with the perfection of Grace's instinct, but with a gaunt desire that savagely portrayed a universal hunger. She felt the common pangs, the common easing of them under the pressure of the little body, and while she held the child her restlessness was soothed and she was comforted. Against all likelihood she found a certain happiness in sharing the emotions known to other women. It joined her to them, so that she lost her stabbing consciousness of self, and she remembered how Alexander had said he liked to walk in the paths of other men, because it linked his humanity to theirs. She could consent to that, but only in this mood of soft desires that came too often for her pride.
She suffered through that autumn. The nights brought happiness that only made the days more lonely, and she rushed to her work for refuge. She wrought at it with something near to genius and remained unsatisfied, so that she began to know a secret, faint despair of self that shook her into fear, and so into defiance and a determination not to fail. She drove herself back to the gallant thoughts of childhood: she remembered that it was wonderful to be alive, splendid to struggle, that she had looked to difficulties as her destiny, and here was her chance to combat them. She took the chance, and in those days, Neville, watching her, saw that she went with her head carried higher, and a new calm about her lips. He tried to draw her into talk, but she avoided it. She feared his quickness as she feared her father's love, and it was to Bessie she went when weariness came to mock at her bright courage, for Bessie was tonic in her simplicity and her readiness to do without the thing she could not have.
"Are you happy?" Theresa asked one night, when she came on Bessie sitting solitary in the dimly-lighted kitchen.
"Happy?" she answered. And more emphatically: "'Appy? Oh, I don't know, Miss Terry. What's 'appy, anyway?"
Theresa laughed, and put a hand on Bessie's knee.
"I like you, Bessie," she said. "I don't know what I'd do without you. You see things. That's because you live in this cave and don't get dazzled by what doesn't matter."
"It's not such a bad kitchen," said Bessie practically. "At least, I'm used to it."
December came, and one evening, when she returned from work, Theresa found a letter waiting for her father. It was from Clara, and Theresa put it on her father's plate, and walked with dignity from the room; nor did she enter it again until she was called to supper.
After that meal she waited for the word which, sooner or later, she would have to hear.
"James is better."
"Oh!"
"Clara wishes me to go there for the New Year."
"That would be nice for you."
"If I can get leave. I hope it is not an extravagance."
"Your only one."
"There may be an excursion."
"Very likely."
"Would you like to read the letter, my dear?"
Her brows were doubtful. "Oh yes, thank you." She read it. Clara had included her in the invitation. She handed back the sheet.
It was a little while before he said: "You notice that she asks for you?"
"Yes, it's very kind of her. Please thank her, nicely and regretfully." She added lightly, finally: "And do be careful not to take cold up there. I suppose you won't stay longer than a week?"
Blinking, he put the letter in his pocket. "Not so long as that. Three days perhaps."
She nodded. The subject was dismissed.
On New Year's Eve, Theresa was kept late at work, for the affairs of twelve months had to be finally set in order, and long after the usual hour Neville and she had tea together. Simon Smith was out, and these two sat by the hearth with the tea-table between them and a shaded lamp to light the luxurious room they called the office.
"This is comfortable," said he.
"Yes. How many hours of work have we?"
"Bless you, I'll do it all."
"No, you won't. You always muddle up my things. And I want to stay."
"I don't call that sufficient reason. Have some muffin. I shall begin to think you yearn overmuch for my society."
She leaned forward as she laughed, and touched his sleeve.
"Jack, do you know what a dear you are?"
"Certainly. This is my favourite coat, Theresa. Are your fingers buttery by any chance?" He took them in his and gave them a friendly squeeze. "Well, I think we've always dealt honestly by each other. And now I'm going to catechize you. What time do you go to bed?"
"Oh, I don't know."
"Do you sleep?"
"Why else should I go to bed?"
"Theresa Webb, how often do you lie awake?"
"Not often."
"And do you dream?"
She raised her brows. "That's part of sleep."
"Not with me, thank God," he said heartily. "But you come here in the mornings, looking as if you'd had nightmares."
"I don't believe it! But I do have nightmares—wild beasts and burglars—all the ordinary things. I daresay it tires one." Colour was in her cheeks, and her eyes were guarded. She looked at him, but she saw the place of the dreams that came in spite of prayer; the quiet lake under the riven rock. She felt the soft wind in her hair, and heard the water lapping.
The shaking of Neville's head blurred her vision, and his voice boomed through the chaos of dissolving hill and lake.
"It won't do. I've watched men and women for years, and I know there's something on your mind. What's the matter?"
She leaned back, with all her defences up and pride for the strong inner wall. She scorned herself for sentimental weakness, and with feverish hands she thrust it back for the enemy it was.
"There's nothing the matter," she said, and determined that, henceforth, those words should be the faithful echo of her heart. "I'm a restless sort of creature. I wear myself out. I'll try to be more sensible." Her smile was a little stretched. "One doesn't always know what one wants."
"I think——" He jumped up and took a pipe from his pocket. "Let's talk in peace till the old gentleman comes back. He has gone to the station for the Landed Proprietor."
"Who's that?"
"Nephew. Quite a swell. Sits on the bench, I believe; rides a horse in the Yeomanry; very good-looking, quite intelligent. The sort of man who is a father to his tenants. You'll see. I was going to say, I don't think the independent woman is a great success. Now, then!" But the expected indignation did not come.
"Oh?" she said politely.
"Aren't you even going to show fight?"
"I'm much too lazy. But go on."
"It's difficult to argue with a non-combatant, but I'll try to rouse you. You're a failure yourself, Theresa."
She raised her tired eyes, and again she encouraged him.
"Oh?"
"You do your work almost perfectly, and it doesn't satisfy you."
"Yes, it does."
"No, it doesn't."
"Well, does yours?"
"Of course. But you have some female hankering or other. God knows what for."
"I expect He does, Jack, even though you don't. I suppose you are suggesting that I ought to marry. You're as bad as Grace. A husband and a home, and then content! I won't believe it! I don't believe it! My life can't be bound within a wedding-ring. As though that could soothe one's restlessness, satisfy one's desires! Yet it's the only solution anybody offers."
"Then you admit the problem?"
"Oh yes—I admit it!"
"Ha——"
"There's no life without it. But I don't think the hankering is a feminine one, Jack. I think it's—it's of the spirit, and I had it when I was quite a little girl. I can't find what I want. It's up and away—beyond everything else."
"And love has wings," he said, twisting his face comically to roughen the words.
"It has nothing to do with love. Mind, I don't despise it. How could I? But"—she threw out her hands—"I will not have myself hemmed in by it. I want wide spaces."
"You'll get them when you get love," he said. "You see—I know."
She looked up with a different animation. "Oh, Jack, why haven't you married her?"
"She's dead," he said.
She gave a little strangled sob, and stared at him as though she saw something wonderful, and when she spoke, it was to say a strange thing.
"Then you have her quite, quite safe." She seemed to look on him as on one who has reached the desired harbourage.
Her own uncertain voyaging seemed the lonelier, the more endless. She could not steer a course, she needed piloting. She confessed the need, and then, lifting her head, her pride strove with such pitiful dependence. She remembered that long-past morning by the docks, when she had suffered to see the stately sailing-ship obediently following the little tug: she remembered how the lofty masts had bowed themselves in submission, with what a sad humility the ship had been drawn through the water. She felt the old pain, yet here she was crying out for a leading hand.
"No, no!" she said, and looked across at Neville. "I'm sufficient for myself," she told him; but in her face he saw the danger of her hungry moment.
"That's right," he said; "don't borrow a particle of anyone unless you're forced to it."
"I shan't be forced to it," she answered.
The maid had carried away the tea-things, Neville had gone into the inner room to fetch some papers, and Theresa stood looking into the fire with one foot on the fender, one hand on the mantelpiece and the other hanging at her side. The room was in darkness but for one rosy light and the flames of the fire, and in this brilliance she stood enshrined.
The door opened, she slowly turned her head, and her hand dropped from the mantelpiece in the excess of her trembling. A tall, dark man, wrapped in a great coat, stood by the door, and for an instant she had thought she looked at Alexander; the next, Mr. Smith had bustled in, exclaimed at the darkness, turned on another light, and presented his nephew to Theresa.
Mr. Basil Morton made a deep bow in response to her exquisite little inclination, and she had an impression of a handsome, serious face emerging from the upturned collar of his coat.
"Bitter night," said Simon Smith. "I'll drive you home, Miss Webb. Much too cold for you to walk, and you never have thick boots. You shall have the brougham. We had the dog-cart. B-rrrh!" He rang the bell, and tried to shake himself into warmth.
"Please don't order the carriage." She was vividly aware of Mr. Morton's continued gaze. "I can't go home for hours."
"Why not? What's Neville thinking of? Jack! You two know each other, don't you?"
Neville shook hands heartily with the Landed Proprietor. "Cold drive?"
"Very." He turned to Theresa. "But your streets are beautiful at night."
"The docks are best," she said, and as a siren called through the darkness, she waved a hand towards the window. "It's full tide."
"We didn't pass the docks," he said.
They spoke in low voices: there seemed to be a wall round them, and, from outside it, Simon Smith harangued Neville for allowing Miss Webb to overwork herself.
"She wanted to stay, sir. I can't use force!"
Theresa made an effort to overcome the barrier dividing her from these two. "I can't have Mr. Neville put in authority over me! I want to stay. And there's nobody at home."
"Very well. We dine at eight. But if you hadn't been gadding after that young woman with the false address and the false face, you would have had your correspondence done."
"We're doing the accounts."
"I don't care what it is. I'll get that clerk if you're not careful. Wasting your time over a woman anybody could have seen through in a blink! Miss Webb," he said, turning to Morton, "is an anomaly. You can't deceive her about men, but she's a tool in the hands of her own sex."
"I'm really the best judge of character of us all, male and female," she said, lifting her chin. "Don't you think so, Jack?" She felt power strong in her. She was the centre of a little circle which she controlled. The eyes of the three men were on her, and she knew she was admired according to the nature of each one.
Neville answered with his cheerful friendliness: "Of course you are!" Simon Smith chuckled indulgently. At Morton she did not look. She could feel the colour in her cheeks, and the sparkle in her eyes; she held her lips in their easy smile, and the weariness of her heart and mind had leapt from her.
"Well, we'll leave you to your work."
She made Neville laugh three times while he did addition sums and she classified cases.
"It's a long time since I've been so funny," she said in great contentment.
"Or wasted so much time."
"Oh!" She made a rueful face. "Don't you like me to be gay?"
"I always like you. Does that satisfy you? Let's attend to business."
At dinner Theresa talked very little. She had an instinctive wisdom in the making of her half-conscious effects, a sense of fitness that rarely failed her, and having let these men feel the tug of her personality, she let go her grip, and became responsive to theirs. She dropped a word here and there, laughed when she was amused, and presented no more than an intelligent expression to jokes that bored her, and throughout the meal she watched every movement Morton made, and was sensitive to each tone of his voice. It was a full, low voice, like that of many another man, and he treated his syllables with respect. This, like his appearance, pleased her; and when he turned his dark eyes full on her, she felt a little tremor run from her feet to her throat. In his looks she read lofty and earnest aspirations and a fastidiousness of mind which made her own view of things seem coarse. She was not humble, but she put a higher value on her own opinions when he turned and asked for them with his deferential air.
At five minutes to ten Simon Smith bade Theresa put on her hat. She said good-night, and again she knew that sense of power as Mr. Smith got out of the chair that dwarfed him, and Neville stopped in his light playing of the piano and gave her his good smile, and Morton looked deeply into her eyes as he opened the door. These were courtesies that men always paid to women, but she knew she had more from them, that they gave her of their minds because she demanded the gift, and she laughed as she ran up the stairs and fastened her hat to her shining hair, and settled her coat to the lines of her slim shape.
She liked walking downstairs because there was something in the pointing of her toes that always pleased her, and to-night, because she was rejoicing in all the little skilfulnesses of her body, she went down slowly, pulling on her gloves, and, as she looked into the hall, she saw Morton looking up.
"May I be allowed to see you home?" he asked, as she touched the bottom stair.
"Please don't. I'm going in the carriage."
"I know." His words were almost a reproof. "You won't forbid me?"
She flashed her brightest, frankest look at him. "Why no!"
He put the rug over her knees and took his seat beside her. She did not speak. She leaned back against the cushions, taking pleasure in the shadows of the bare trees, splashed across the pavements.
He told her it was long since he had been to Radstowe, and the tone implied regret. She had made no answer before the horses stopped.
"This is my home," she said.
"So soon," he murmured.
"It was absurd to have the carriage, wasn't it? Look, down there are the dock lights." They stood together on the pavement. "And there's a boat going out. You can see the light at her masthead. Oh—do you like it?"
"It is very beautiful," he said, but the next moment his eyes were on her face.
The house was very quiet when Theresa entered it. The hour was early, but, in the hall, the lowered gas told her that Uncle George and Bessie had already gone to bed. She was glad to be alone.
She leant against the door, listening to the sound of the departing carriage; and when she could hear it no longer, she stretched up an arm and put out the light. The darkness fell on her warmly, clothing her. For a little while its thickness hid her thoughts and muffled the quick beating of her heart; but as the umbrella stand took shape, and the dining-room door became more than a pale blot, she had to face her mood.
Something lighter than laughter seemed to be bubbling in her throat. She was sharply conscious of her body and its strength. She stood straight, tightening her muscles, throwing back her head. She found herself smiling, and at that, with a gesture half of denial and half of shame, she ran up the stairs; but her room was like a friend, and in its presence she was doubly aware of her own strangeness. Her mood was still to be faced, and she attempted no evasion.
She shut the door and sank to the bare boards beside it. She took off her hat, and threw it, like a quoit, on to the bed. She laughed at that, and frowned, hugging her knees, staring into the gloom, swaying very slightly to and fro. Her meditations grew to a point that was a single name, and she uttered it on a growing note.
"Alexander, Alexander, if you knew how tired I am——"
The rasp of her boots on the boards was like her mind made audible.
"If you think I'm going to make excuses——" she whispered fiercely, and stood defiant. Her cheeks were hot with old memories, and new thoughts rushing to the future. She shook her head impatiently.
"Be quiet!" she said. "Be quiet!" But she talked to herself without ceasing, while she undressed.
"Life's very lonely. I haven't lighted the gas. It doesn't matter. I don't want to see my ugly little face. No, I won't be humble. And it isn't ugly. I like it. I won't be humble, and I won't be bound. No fetters—but—I should like to be loved."
She brushed her hair and plaited it. She was uncertain whether to smile or frown, but she nodded in acquiescence.
"Jack's right. What a nuisance! Alexander, if you're not careful I shall hate you soon. No, I won't. You're apart—apart. My friend. But I'm rather hungry. If you had given me honest food, food of a friend—but you didn't after the first bite—and you won't. You can't blame me if I take delicacies, things which are not very good for me, but nice! Are you laughing at me? I don't care a bit, but I seem excited. I'd better think things out."
Wrapt in her eider-down, she sat on the window-sill and watched the lights, but she did not think. Her mind refused the effort. It gave her pictures. She saw herself standing before the fire, with that empty, aching place in her breast; she saw the opening of the office door and the entrance of a man, dark, like Alexander, but with no other likeness, unless it were the power to make her whole, for her suffering had vanished under his long gaze.
"But that was only because I was interested," she said sensibly.
He had been interested, too, and more than that. The expression on his face was new to her. She had come to believe that admiration was her right; mingled with adoration, she had taken it from her father; Uncle George had mixed it with his annoyance; Neville had given it frankly; and Simon Smith, in the guise of petulant pleasure; but in this stranger it was overwhelmed by something for which she had no name. Surprise, baffled by courtesy, baffling his own unwillingness, had looked from his eyes and behind that there had been eagerness restrained. It was for her. She knew it surely, and the knowledge brought again that bubbling to her throat. This time she laughed, stretching out her hands. She felt like one caressed, secure, yet free, with power to capture and skill to elude captivity.
"It's fun!" she cried, and stayed her gaiety at the remembrance of Morton's grave and courteous face. She found nobility in it, and she was sobered.
"No, it isn't fun," she said—"it isn't fun. You must try to be an honest woman, Theresa. But I wish the morning would come."
She checked another laugh as she slipped into bed.
To Basil Morton, haste was as foreign a quality as dignity was a native one. He lived slowly, marshalled his actions into order and subdued his thoughts into a fair sequence, worthy of the noble mind of man. Even in his imaginations of a future wooing, he had pictured it as a smooth and rhythmic progress, for, seeing his lady fair and holy, fit to be adored, the celebration of his worship must be beautiful and stately; she must be won to the delicately pacing music of his heart. That lady of his fancy had been tall and dark, gracious and reserved, with no ink stain on her middle finger, and no happy comradeship with men. She must be above them, loftily enthroned, white-fingered, perfect; yet here he was ensnared by this Theresa with her red hair and her quickness and her fearless glances of eyes that were rarely veiled. He was ensnared when he first looked into those eyes, heard her voice, and watched her nimble gestures; and, as though to lie held in her toils were not enough, she had magically animated him with her own quickness. The courtship he had planned for the dark, imagined lady faded and left a fragrance of old things, while his heart leapt with a strangeness of hurry and his brain was hot with his impatience. Yet he liked to remember his first sight of her, for she had been gazing into the fire, as maidens should, and for that instant she had looked soft and vulnerable and young, needing the protection he had to give. He longed to give it. Thought of the lives of unprotected women could always give his social conscience its sharpest pang, and as he saw Theresa turn her latch-key in the lock, that pang had changed to bitter pain. How often did she walk home late at night alone? Into what dreadful slums and dens of wickedness was she forced by his uncle's folly? What right had he to employ her for these purposes? What horrid sights had she seen, what language heard? She should not suffer that degradation of eyes and ears. He hated the hours she spent with Neville. She must be taken from such work; she should live, he vowed, a life more fitted for a woman, and he resolved to win her to it.
Wondering greatly at the headlong manner in which he had fallen at her feet, he forced himself to sleep, anxious to bring the day and meet his lady on her way to work.
It was a foggy morning, and she came towards him through a grey mist which had bedewed her clothes and hair. Her cheeks were a pale pink, her eyes were very bright, and at the sight of her he felt as though he had been bathing in some rare air where prejudices could be blown away, and youth regained and strengthened.
"May I be the first to wish you a very happy New Year?" he said.
"You are too late. Bessie, our domestic drudge and best friend, was the first; then Uncle George. He seemed to have very little hope. You are the third—and thank you. And a happy New Year to you, too."
"It has begun happily," he said gravely.
"Yes. I can smell the spring coming through the mist. And soon there'll be snowdrops and crocuses."
"You are fond of flowers?" His words were more a statement than a question, and his implied sureness of her love for beauty hampered while it pleased her.
She shook her shoulders and spoke quickly. "Yes, but I like spring better. I like the smell of the wind and the way the earth lets things through. It's so eager!"
"Autumn is my favourite time of year."
She looked at him acutely. "It's not so pushing, is it? More resigned—and all the dying things have the respectability of age. But my buds insist on coming out. They're active, and your autumn leaves are passive: they just flutter down, poor things. The buds for me!"
He thought she was like the spring herself, and was immediately converted to her view. "I shall watch spring this year with different eyes," he said, and the blood ran swiftly, joyously in her veins.
He left her at the foot of the broad steps leading to the front door, but they met at lunch, and when Theresa went home that evening she found a sheaf of flowers awaiting her.
"Who brought them, Bessie?" she asked, fingering them softly, for they were the flowers a lover chooses—roses, lilies and violets, delicate and sweet-scented things.
"A tall young feller—strange to me. 'Andsome."
"Fair?"
"Dark, with a moustache."
"I'd better put them in water," Theresa said quickly, and carried them upstairs.
The next day was long in coming, yet she would have urged the night to stay. It was glorious to be courted, but she was half ashamed. If a man had picked her up without question and borne her away, she would have struggled fiercely, but she would have been without this strange shrinking of the mind. She was uncertain of her position: this wordless gift of flowers affected her like a lurking enemy. Moreover, though of all things she loved power, and though people sometimes seemed to her like pawns she could move at will, she suddenly felt herself unfitted to receive such gentle homage. It made her feel large and clumsy: remembering Morton's quiet voice, her own sounded too loud and rough, and she was aware again of his fastidious mind. Hers was not fastidious: she liked the truth, whatever the garb it wore, and for knowledge of life she had a thirst ready for the bitterest dregs. Had he known that, would he have sent those flowers? And had he sent the flowers? Should she thank him or be silent? To thank him would surely be to assume too much, yet she wished to thank him, for she loved the flowers. She could see them gleaming faintly as they stood on the table by her bed, and their scent stole towards her. She put out a hand and touched them. They were like friends. But she would be silent: she had no choice, and it would be sweeter so: unnamed, they would lie the closer in her heart.
These were the thoughts that kept her waking through the night, so that she arose pale and heavy-eyed with all her quickness gone but for the restlessness of her hands.
Twice during that morning she met Morton in the hall, gave him a smile and half a smile, and passed on. At lunch they faced each other, but Theresa's eyes skimmed over his, and she would not talk. Shyness was like a weight on her head, and she could not shake it off. Once more she was ashamed; she, the independent, the undaunted, to be sitting there like a bashful child! And oh, did she look as foolish as she felt? She hated the flowers that bound her: they had stolen her freedom. For the first time in her unbridled life she felt the curb, and she would have bitten the hand that forced it on her; yet, looking on Morton as the stern master, she lost the shame she had in seeing him as the adorer. She could kick and bite and struggle against hard measures, but against softer ones she had no weapon, only the pain of seeing herself unwillingly subdued.
What were these people talking about? Their words flowed past her like a river, until Simon Smith addressed her.
"You'd better go home directly after lunch, Miss Webb. Make up for all that extra work. Jack has to go out this afternoon, so there'll be nothing for you to do."
Slowly she turned that weighted head, and the effect was dignified, reproachful.
"My work does not depend on Mr. Neville," she said. "Except for the few letters he dictates every morning our work is quite distinct. There's no reason why I should go early."
"Very well, very well. I thought you looked tired, that's all. Do as you please. Do as you please. Of course, the house and the whole concern is entirely under your management!"
She smiled at him, he smiled at her: they understood each other very well and, pleased with her little show of power, she glanced at Morton, surprising from him a look so tender and unguarded that her face was crimsoned. She felt that even her eyes were blushing, and she covered them with rosy lids, hating her weakness, hating him, yet conscious of a new respect for a man who could make her flinch.
In the afternoon a knock came at the office door, and Morton entered at Theresa's bidding.
"I wondered if I could help you," he said; "for, indeed, you do look very tired." He stood near her chair, looking down at her. His eyes were deep and soft, the lines of his face were firm and fine. He seemed firm and fine all over: his hands, his clothes, his figure, belonged to a type of man she had not known: he stood for something orderly and seemly, something her life had missed.
"I am not tired," she said. "And I don't think you can help. Thank you. It would be more trouble to tell you what to do. I don't suppose you can use a typewriter?"
"No." He felt the vastness of his ignorance. "But I think I could learn."
"It's not much harder than organ grinding." Laughter crept slyly about her eyes and mouth. "Would you like to try?"
"I should, very much."
"Then you may take the typewriter into the library. It's rather an irritating noise to work with, but I shan't hear it from there. And then, some other day, you may be useful."
He could do nothing but carry the heavy thing away with him, and for the rest of the afternoon he sat before it, trying, for his dignity's sake, to pretend he liked the sound which deafened him to the other one he listened for, so that Theresa went home without his knowledge.
Morton stayed in Radstowe for a fortnight, and each day hurried his determination to win Theresa. Yet even to his fondness, to fancy her a wife, was to imagine the chaining of a dragon fly. The moods she showed him were as changeful as the colours in that creature's wings, her glances were as swift as its flight. Sometimes he would find her steady, as though she had settled on a flower, and at a word she would dart off again whither he could not follow. He could not always even watch her passage, it was so tortuous and so quick, and she left him puzzled, bewildered, uncertain of her, but the more certain of himself.
Every day they met decorously at luncheon, and often, if Neville were out, she made him welcome in the office. "You must let me help you."
"Of course." Her lifted eyebrows snubbed him delicately. "Will you read out this list for me? I want to type it. Oh, but faster than that! No, let me have it. I shall manage better alone."
He protested. "I'm very sorry. I wasn't thinking. Let me try again."
She was lenient: she knew he had been watching her.
"Very well." And when they had finished she nodded cheerfully. "With a little practice you might become quite useful."
"I believe you despise me for a drone."
"No, I don't despise you. And I haven't quite decided what you are."
He looked up from the paper in his hand. "I hope you will make a decision in my favour," he said, and his voice was vibrant.
She sat facing the light, and he saw the slight quiver of her features. "I expect I shall." She had no inner doubts. She found in him something good and rare, something the more valuable because of its aloofness and its difference from herself, and if she could not yet see him as a whole, she was drawn to the parts made visible.
She broke the moment's strain by pushing aside her papers and setting her elbows on the table. She took her face in her hands.
"Let's talk," she said. And then, "Do you ever laugh?"
He smiled instead. "Not often."
"I should like to see you helpless with laughter, doing all sorts of undignified things—crying and uncontrolled. Do you think you could?"
"I'm sure I couldn't. You'll set that down against me?"
"I'm not making a list of your qualities," she said sharply. "But you're honest."
"Had you doubted it?"
"I don't think we'll talk, after all," she said. He pleased her with the steady look that ended in a smile, and she went home that night in a state of happy restlessness.
She felt herself being involved in a liking for him which resulted from his liking for her, but was none the less sincere, and characteristically she chafed while she rejoiced. Love, she found, has more than one means of entry, and though she had always pictured herself seized roughly by the intruder, life was teaching her to mistrust imagination, and she resigned herself easily to this daintier form of worship, for there was a novel pleasure in being enthroned, spreading herself for homage and startling the worshipper with sudden incongruities.
For those fourteen days she was richly fed with the delicacies she had foretold, and when Morton went away he left her hungry. Irritation came with the pangs, and the old anger against herself, against him and all the world. Neville offended her with indiscreet remarks, Grace dared to suggest she was not well, and Bessie threatened to give notice.
"What for?" Theresa was sitting in her old place on the kitchen fender, and Bessie was wandering, felt-shod, in apparent aimlessness.
"Your temper always was a bit awkward, Miss Terry. D'you remember when you had your clean clothes? We'd all try to keep clear of you for an hour or two, and it would pass off, but for this last month—well! I've never known when you were going to flare, and I haven't pleased you once."
"That's your fault. You needn't blame me. Oh, Bessie, I am a bad-tempered wretch! Don't take any notice of me. Just be kind!"
"It's 'ard sometimes, Miss Terry dear."
"I know. I know. But you've got to go on loving me. I can't live unless people like me—and, anyhow, you can't help it!"
"But you shouldn't take advantage, Miss Theresa."
"It is rather mean, isn't it?" she said thoughtfully; "but, you know, Bessie, I have a hunger that's never satisfied."
"If it's for something 'olesome——"
"But it isn't. It's just to be made a fuss of."
"And there's your father thinking of you day and night."
"Yes, there's Father." She had been neglecting him of late; she had allowed him to come home without a single question about his visit to the farm, and now, repentant, she ran upstairs to his little room.
"How dare you sit here without a fire?" she asked.
"I'm wearing my overcoat, my dear."
"Come downstairs at once!"
"I'm afraid your Uncle George is in the dining-room. I can work better alone."
She knelt and put a match to the wood and paper.
"We can't afford it, Theresa."
"I can, though. What are you working at?"
"I've begun again. It's foolish, no doubt—a waste of time, but the old impulse returns. Though now there is no one who cares for it."
"There's me." She was kneeling by the growing fire, and she could only see her father's back, but its stillness and his silence were a punishment for all the kindnesses she had left undone, and for an instant she knew how she would feel when he lay dead. Gripping the fender, she dropped her head to her knees. "And there's Alexander," she said, in a voice muffled against her dress.
There was a pause. "Yes, there's Alexander."
"Did you have a happy time," she stopped, and deliberately she used Alexander's words, "up yonder."
"Very. Very. He was like himself again. And, I hope you won't mind, Theresa, he wants to come here for his Easter holiday. I didn't ask him—I wouldn't do that without your consent. He asked himself. I could only make one answer, could I, my dear?"
"No. No. I don't mind at all. Why should I?"
He turned in his chair. "You seemed to have such an extraordinary dislike for him, my child."
On her knees she crossed the narrow space between them, and leaned her head against his arm.
"I've always hated to hear other people praised, and that was the way you began about him, fourteen years ago. Fourteen years! And you've been praising him ever since. But I'm trying to be more sensible. At least, I'm different. At least, I think I am! Oh—I don't know! Anyhow, I don't mind his coming a bit, a bit! He can live here if he likes!" She sank to a sitting posture, and she beat the ground softly, hurriedly, with her fists.
"He won't want to do that," Edward Webb said unnecessarily. "He seems wedded to his life there."
"I thought he was in love." Her voice scorned the state in him.
"So Janet seemed to think. I have heard no more of it. And he seems content."
"Contented people," she snapped, "have fat souls."
"I didn't say self-content, my dear," he explained mildly. "But he is willing to live a life of obscurity—for the sake of an ideal. That's rather great, Theresa. With his scholarship and his power he might have made himself a name."
"Then he ought to have made it. Anybody could teach those stodgy boys." Yet his own words came back to her, mingling with the water and the wind, and once more she gave assent.
"That's just what he does not believe. Does a preacher think one soul of more value than another? And should a teacher? That is what he asks, my dear—and answers. And I am proud to call him my friend."
She went to bed, to lie there cold and stiff, her thoughts hideously and mercifully formless, until at last, out of that mangled heap of indistinguishable things, sleep came to her as gently as a fallen feather.
Morning brought her a letter from Morton, and her sores were healed. It was the letter she had wanted. It told her delicately something of what she seemed to him, and it revealed the aspirations of the man; it implied that they had been blown still higher by the bright strong breath of her spirit, and it satisfied the ancient hunger that, last night, had shrieked ravenously for food. No one else had ever claimed her for his inspiration, and as she put the letter in her breast, the action was like a gage flung down, though the name of her enemy was not cried.
The next day, flowers came, and then another letter, and after a few more days, more flowers, and, lying among them, a little missive, telling Theresa that these but heralded his own approach.
"Have you heard the news?" Neville said, when she entered the office that morning.
"Which news?"
"The L. P. is coming here again—arrives to-night."
"Yes, I knew that."
"Oh, then, good-bye, Theresa. If you are an accessory before the act, it's all over, but the old gentleman and I have been hoping against hope."
"What hope?" she asked coldly, her hands on the back of her chair.
"We don't want you to marry the L. P."
"I have not been asked to marry him. Oh, how can you talk like this? I think you're vulgar!" Tears darted to her eyes. "And you spoke so beautifully about love!"
She had betrayed herself, but he hid his knowledge. "I say—I'm sorry, Theresa. I only meant it as a joke. Silly fool! And beastly bad form, I know; but, really, we do live in dread of someone's stealing you, and we've made special plans for his abduction. You shouldn't make yourself so lovable, my dear." He was right when he said he understood men and women, for now she laughed brokenly, but with pleasure, and spoke forcibly in spite of her trembling lips.
"I don't know why I should behave like this. Is it like me? Jack, is it like me?"
"Not a bit! Yes—exactly," he added, and again she had to laugh.
"And you've made me self-conscious and ridiculous!"
"I promise I won't look when you meet."
"Oh, Jack! Let's get to work. I do wish sometimes we were all one sex."
Neville's promise was an unnecessary one, for Theresa did not see more than Morton's coat hanging in the hall until the second evening of his visit, when he called on her father.
"The flower-man's come," said Bessie, flapping into the kitchen where Theresa was making soup.
"The flower-man?"
"I mean the young feller that brought them on New Year's Day."
"Oh!" said Theresa, on a long, indifferent note, and stirred steadily.
"Miss Terry, is he coming after you?"
"I don't know, Bessie." She spoke in a voice that had the clear emptiness of a puzzled child's. "I don't know," she repeated, and then her uncouth young womanhood came strongly on her. "Oh, Bessie, Bessie, I think it's terrible to be a woman—terrible. Men—oh—and yet I know it is our destiny. Nature drives us. And I'm pushing against the chariot she sits in, pushing, pushing"—she brandished the wooden spoon—"and I know I shall be beaten in the end."
"Oh, Miss Terry, you've dropped some soup on your dress. Just look at that!"
"And I want to be beaten—oh, never mind the soup! It will wash out."
"I'm going to wash it out now. D'you think I'd let you go upstairs like that?"
When they had had supper and Morton had gone, Edward Webb and Theresa sat silently by the fire. She was happy, for Morton was better than her memory of him, and though her heart was beating fast, she was conscious of a kind of peace.
She did not look at her father until he spoke.
"He told me about himself," he said, and there was a tragedy of appeal in the words. They implored her to reassure him, to swear that this man had not come to take her from him. But she only nodded, looking down again.
"His mother is the sister of Simon Smith, it seems. I imagine he is rich, not that he told me that, of course, but incidentally. And I think he is an honest man." There seemed to be something he had left unsaid, but before he had time to say it, she lifted her head and showed him her face aglow. He could not say the words. Instead, he put out his hands.
"Theresa," he said. "Theresa."
She held tightly to him, steadied her mouth against his hands, and laughed. That laughter was unmistakable: it sounded the farewell to all his hopes, and he heard them go clanging down to the very place of disappointments.
The months after Theresa's departure had been black ones for Alexander. For a time her face lived before him like a flame, but it had been extinguished by the winds of the mountains as he battled through them, and though his hands were burnt, he was glad of the scars. They told him he was stronger than the small vivid woman who had tried to steal his heart and the singleness of mind that meant so much to him. He desired nothing but his work to wife, yet Theresa had come fleetly into his existence, luring him to unfaithfulness. He threw her off, he trained himself to look coldly at the pictures on the mantelpiece, to tell her he had good reason to hate those smiling lips; but at bedtime, when he stood in the glow of the firelight and looked up at her, and bade her his unwilling good-night, he had no heart to leave her gazing into the darkness, and quietly turned her on her face, that she, too, might sleep.
In truth, he could not hate those lips, for they were nobly human, and, with a young wisdom of their own, they defied his hatred, but his resentment against the eager life in her had a healthy bitterness. He could cast her off, but he could not cast out the passions her womanhood had aroused.
There are men as fiercely virginal as any maiden, but this was no quality of Alexander. His disdain of the flesh, and now his loathing of it, came of his desire to be unhampered, untrammelled, the servant of nothing but his mind and spirit: it was the desire of the boy who had fought his temper and controlled his ordinary, wholesome hunger, because he must be supreme. It had been strengthened by experience of his father's weakness and encouraged by the clean solitude of the hills. Walking among them, lifting his feet high to overcome the heather, he had trampled, too, on ambition, and believed himself the master of his life; yet Theresa had come and thrown the commonest, most perilously lovely shackles on his hands and feet.
Now, as he walked, he had another foe to conquer, and that was a harder matter, for he had thought himself secure, and lo! his enemy came on him before he was aware. The wildness that he had cloaked with his strength made him a fierce fighter, but the same wildness and the same strength were the qualities he had to combat. He was aghast at the terrible determination of nature. He had seen the torn sides of the hills, he had heard storms, howling round them with awful ruthlessness, but he had known no ruthlessness like this he battled with, that dragged the life from him and left him sunken in eye and cheek so that the raging of the winds was thereafter a little thing to him.
The sight of Janet's pretty Laura was a shameful torture to him; he did not fear her beauty but it rose before him as the very emblem of the thing he dreaded. He drove it off at last, routed it utterly, and lay prone in a mental exhaustion that was like sleep. And into it, as though she were a dream, Theresa came laughing back. He felt no surprise: it seemed she was the thing he had been waiting for. He took her coming as a symbol, a reward for valour, and he welcomed her, but not alone for that. It was her very self he wanted. What choice had he, when he saw her full of courage and comradeship, with eyes that were the doorways to her larger life, and open hands that were like an offering? He took the hands, and as his own tightened on them, as he looked on her, he saw clear. She cleaned his sight, and he knew that arduous fight of his had been more a failure than a triumph. He had not fought for virtue's sake, but for that of his own pride; it was not goodness that he loved, but his own strength, and he was warned that it would have been less a sin had he fallen by his weakness, and not conquered by his strength.
Theresa taught him shame as well as love: the face that was before him was not now a flaming one; it shone with the steady light of her eyes, like truth made manifest.
"It seems I need you," he said to the vision, and the moment when he realized his human need of her was the moment when he first felt, like an inspiration, his divine need of God.
This was in November, more than a year and a half since he had seen Theresa, and this was when his work became a sacrament. He had never lacked in enthusiasm or high purpose, but now, with the fervour of his nature, he offered all he did, through Theresa, up to God. Of these two presences he was always conscious; they were as living as his own heart. Theresa was the high priestess of his temple: it was she who had interceded, she who had handed him the bread of humility to eat. Inevitably, he saw her all spirit for a while, mingled her too freely with the divine, but as he sat by his window on starry winter nights, watching the great bulk of the Blue Hill stand free of the sky, she slipped quietly into her rightful place and, already servant to her bright spirit, he became aware of the holy beauty of her body, and his own love of it. He saw love tearing off the ugly vestments with which men clothe their thoughts, and felt the inseparable fusion of soul and body that love alone can make.
He loved her: he never dreamt that she might not love him. His need was so imperative and so profound that it did not permit of doubt, and his faith was so complete that, without vanity, it presupposed and claimed a like faith in her.
When Edward Webb had gone back to Radstowe and the promise of Easter seemed to be carried the further from Alexander, he found he could not wait so long in silence, and he began to shape a letter for Theresa. He did not set it down in writing, but, as he came and went between the Grammar School and the farm, or watched the tardy spring coming to the mountains, he made the sentences, rounding them fairly, and choosing words that would express his thought and please her ear. He did not tell her of his love, yet he revealed it, for he let her into the very recesses of his mind, the most intimate details of his work were made known to her, he spoke of the strivings of his spirit, and through all his confidences there flashed the bright feet of spring. He told her how the quiet of the valley would soon be shattered, and yet built up, by the penetrating cries of lambs and the bleating mournfulness of their mothers, how the primroses would shine out like eyes from the banks, and the buds would swell and glisten, with the melting of the snow. There was no sight of bird, or beast, or growing thing that he did not register for her and turn into a glowing sentence; no promise of spring but had another, quicker pulse. But though this letter was written at last, it was not sent, for he was a stiff-tongued man, and this inky eloquence seemed to present him falsely, and too fairly, to Theresa. This was a height of correspondence to which he could not always soar, and she must be content with the humdrum lowlands of his life. He tore up the paper on which he had written this careful prose, and taking another sheet, he plunged into an unstudied letter which he did not deign to read when it was done.
"My Dear Theresa,"I'm watching for the new heather, but it seems long in coming, and will be longer yet. There's the old stuff still on the bushes, but the colour's gone and it's the purple flower I want. Will you not be here to see it flush the hills? But it's months till then, and just now there's little here but snow, and the streams so fierce and heavy that it takes your breath away. I think it's the early morning that I like best, when there's hardly any light but what comes from the snow; and this morning, just at that hour, I was wakened by the stairs creaking, and there was my father going out, half-dressed, and I heard my mother cry out to me to stop him, for he'd taken the razor. We'd had peace for these last weeks, and I'd begun to hope he'd worn himself into quiet, and there he was again, rushing into the snow and the grey morning. It was like chasing a ghost across the fields, for there was no sound on the snow, and the trees looked like spectres that had never known the run of sap. And my mother stood by the gate holding a lantern that gave a little flame the morning mocked at. It was like a lamp showing the door of the underworld I'd rushed into. I came up with him at last, and he laughed at me. He had no razor, he said, and it's true he hadn't, but he'd chosen to frighten my mother with that lie. What are we to do with the man? He threatens to take his life, and if it wasn't for my mother, I think I'd let him do it; but I've got to stop him, and then he laughs at us. I was near knocking him down, but I've always kept my hands off him so far, and I hope I always may. But he's mad, though my mother will not have it. And he is still laughing at his joke. Is it cunning to put us off the scent, I'm wondering?"When I look back into my life, I see so many pictures of darkness; the night and the sound of his shambling feet coming home, the early morning and the creaking stairs, and my mother calling softly and telling me to stay in bed, for that was when I was young, and he had a spite against me; and the shadows in the kitchen when I did my work, and the moving shadow on the ceiling as my father prowled up and down. The darkness followed me when I went to school in the sun, and when I came back I knew it waited for me. If I went in mist or rain, there was nothing strange in that, for it was just the shadows going with me. Yet I'm exaggerating, for the hills always stood clear of all else, and were themselves and friends to me. Even you, who love them, cannot know what they have been. There's no good name I cannot give them—except one."I have written all this about myself, but it's hardly of myself I have been thinking. Indeed, I've written without thought at all, as if my pen knew all that I must say. I've been waiting for that book of yours. Is it coming soon? It's nearly two years since you were here, but I can squeeze all those months up into my hand and throw them from me. Will you send me a letter?"Alexander."
"My Dear Theresa,
"I'm watching for the new heather, but it seems long in coming, and will be longer yet. There's the old stuff still on the bushes, but the colour's gone and it's the purple flower I want. Will you not be here to see it flush the hills? But it's months till then, and just now there's little here but snow, and the streams so fierce and heavy that it takes your breath away. I think it's the early morning that I like best, when there's hardly any light but what comes from the snow; and this morning, just at that hour, I was wakened by the stairs creaking, and there was my father going out, half-dressed, and I heard my mother cry out to me to stop him, for he'd taken the razor. We'd had peace for these last weeks, and I'd begun to hope he'd worn himself into quiet, and there he was again, rushing into the snow and the grey morning. It was like chasing a ghost across the fields, for there was no sound on the snow, and the trees looked like spectres that had never known the run of sap. And my mother stood by the gate holding a lantern that gave a little flame the morning mocked at. It was like a lamp showing the door of the underworld I'd rushed into. I came up with him at last, and he laughed at me. He had no razor, he said, and it's true he hadn't, but he'd chosen to frighten my mother with that lie. What are we to do with the man? He threatens to take his life, and if it wasn't for my mother, I think I'd let him do it; but I've got to stop him, and then he laughs at us. I was near knocking him down, but I've always kept my hands off him so far, and I hope I always may. But he's mad, though my mother will not have it. And he is still laughing at his joke. Is it cunning to put us off the scent, I'm wondering?
"When I look back into my life, I see so many pictures of darkness; the night and the sound of his shambling feet coming home, the early morning and the creaking stairs, and my mother calling softly and telling me to stay in bed, for that was when I was young, and he had a spite against me; and the shadows in the kitchen when I did my work, and the moving shadow on the ceiling as my father prowled up and down. The darkness followed me when I went to school in the sun, and when I came back I knew it waited for me. If I went in mist or rain, there was nothing strange in that, for it was just the shadows going with me. Yet I'm exaggerating, for the hills always stood clear of all else, and were themselves and friends to me. Even you, who love them, cannot know what they have been. There's no good name I cannot give them—except one.
"I have written all this about myself, but it's hardly of myself I have been thinking. Indeed, I've written without thought at all, as if my pen knew all that I must say. I've been waiting for that book of yours. Is it coming soon? It's nearly two years since you were here, but I can squeeze all those months up into my hand and throw them from me. Will you send me a letter?
"Alexander."
The day after he had posted this letter to Theresa, he heard from Edward Webb.
"Something has happened which I can hardly believe," he wrote, "which I do not wish to believe. Theresa is to marry a Basil Morton, nephew of the Mr. Smith for whom she works. I know nothing against him, I believe she is happy, I hope she will be happy in the future. Perhaps a father always dreads marriage for his child, and yet I can conceive of circumstances in which I should not feel this heavy load, like death. I tell you what I would say to no one else, but I feel as if my affection for Theresa had made my very body sensitive to what may hurt her, and receptive of warnings. Yet she is a woman; she is twenty-five, and my feelings may be nothing but an old man's jealousy and anger at a turn of events I had not planned. Please understand—Mr. Morton is a man of breeding and education. His devotion to Theresa is evident. My objections are all of that strongest, inexplicable sort, and I feel that she has already gone from me for ever. Perhaps I have dwelt too persistently on the thought of her all these years, if one can think too much of what one loves; perhaps my perception of most things has become blunted by looking too keenly at the one thing. I do not know. It all seems very dark to me, and the burden of child-bearing is not all the mother's. I have borne Theresa for five-and-twenty years, and now she is snatched from me. Is this selfishness? I think I could have given her more willingly to another, but perhaps not, for I find my baseness is unfathomable."
"Something has happened which I can hardly believe," he wrote, "which I do not wish to believe. Theresa is to marry a Basil Morton, nephew of the Mr. Smith for whom she works. I know nothing against him, I believe she is happy, I hope she will be happy in the future. Perhaps a father always dreads marriage for his child, and yet I can conceive of circumstances in which I should not feel this heavy load, like death. I tell you what I would say to no one else, but I feel as if my affection for Theresa had made my very body sensitive to what may hurt her, and receptive of warnings. Yet she is a woman; she is twenty-five, and my feelings may be nothing but an old man's jealousy and anger at a turn of events I had not planned. Please understand—Mr. Morton is a man of breeding and education. His devotion to Theresa is evident. My objections are all of that strongest, inexplicable sort, and I feel that she has already gone from me for ever. Perhaps I have dwelt too persistently on the thought of her all these years, if one can think too much of what one loves; perhaps my perception of most things has become blunted by looking too keenly at the one thing. I do not know. It all seems very dark to me, and the burden of child-bearing is not all the mother's. I have borne Theresa for five-and-twenty years, and now she is snatched from me. Is this selfishness? I think I could have given her more willingly to another, but perhaps not, for I find my baseness is unfathomable."
The darkness which had so seldom left him now thickened and settled on Alexander, but first there was a bright spurt of light, a scattering of sparks that were the red colour of rage, and like the imprecations of his mind made visible.