III
“I,” she said, very slowly, “I was married the same night as you.”
He looked at her.
“Not legally, of course,” she replied. “But—actually.”
“To the keeper?” he said, not knowing what else to say.
She turned to him.
“You thought I could not?” she said. But the flush was deep in her cheek and throat, for all her assurance.
Still he would not say anything.
“You see”—she was making an effort to explain—”I had to understand also.”
“And what does it amount to, this understanding?” he asked.
“A very great deal—does it not to you?” she replied. “One is free.”
“And you are not disappointed?”
“Far from it!” Her tone was deep and sincere.
“You love him?”
“Yes, I love him.”
“Good!” he said.
This silenced her for a while.
“Here, among his things, I love him,” she said.
His conceit would not let him be silent.
“It needs this setting?” he asked.
“It does,” she cried. “You were always making me to be not myself.”
He laughed shortly.
“But is it a matter of surroundings?” he said. He had considered her all spirit.
“I am like a plant,” she replied. “I can only grow in my own soil.”
They came to a place where the undergrowth shrank away, leaving a bare, brown space, pillared with the brick-red and purplish trunks of pine trees. On the fringe, hung the sombre green of elder trees, with flat flowers in bud, and below were bright, unfurling pennons of fern. In the midst of the bare space stood a keeper’s log hut. Pheasant-coops were lying about, some occupied by a clucking hen, some empty.
Hilda walked over the brown pine-needles to the hut, took a key from among the eaves, and opened the door. It was a bare wooden place with a carpenter’s bench and form, carpenter’s tools, an axe, snares, traps, some skins pegged down, everything in order. Hilda closed the door. Syson examined the weird flat coats of wild animals, that were pegged down to be cured. She turned some knotch in the side wall, and disclosed a second, small apartment.
“How romantic!” said Syson.
“Yes. He is very curious—he has some of a wild animal’s cunning—in a nice sense—and he is inventive, and thoughtful—but not beyond a certain point.”
She pulled back a dark green curtain. The apartment was occupied almost entirely by a large couch of heather and bracken, on which was spread an ample rabbit-skin rug. On the floor were patchwork rugs of cat-skin, and a red calf-skin, while hanging from the wall were other furs. Hilda took down one, which she put on. It was a cloak of rabbit-skin and of white fur, with a hood, apparently of the skins of stoats. She laughed at Syson from out of this barbaric mantle, saying:
“What do you think of it?”
“Ah—! I congratulate you on your man,” he replied.
“And look!” she said.
In a little jar on a shelf were some sprays, frail and white, of the first honeysuckle.
“They will scent the place at night,” she said.
He looked round curiously.
“Where does he come short, then?” he asked. She gazed at him for a few moments. Then, turning aside:
“The stars aren’t the same with him,” she said. “You could make them flash and quiver, and the forget-me-nots come up at me like phosphorescence. You could make things wonderful. I have found it out—it is true. But I have them all for myself, now.”
He laughed, saying:
“After all, stars and forget-me-nots are only luxuries. You ought to make poetry.”
“Aye,” she assented. “But I have them all now.”
Again he laughed bitterly at her.
She turned swiftly. He was leaning against the small window of the tiny, obscure room, and was watching her, who stood in the doorway, still cloaked in her mantle. His cap was removed, so she saw his face and head distinctly in the dim room. His black, straight, glossy hair was brushed clean back from his brow. His black eyes were watching her, and his face, that was clear and cream, and perfectly smooth, was flickering.
“We are very different,” she said bitterly.
Again he laughed.
“I see you disapprove of me,” he said.
“I disapprove of what you have become,” she said.
“You think we might”—he glanced at the hut—“have been like this—you and I?”
She shook her head.
“You! no; never! You plucked a thing and looked at it till you had found out all you wanted to know about it, then you threw it away,” she said.
“Did I?” he asked. “And could your way never have been my way? I suppose not.”
“Why should it?” she said. “I am a separate being.”
“But surely two people sometimes go the same way,” he said.
“You took me away from myself,” she said.
He knew he had mistaken her, had taken her for something she was not. That was his fault, not hers.
“And did you always know?” he asked.
“No—you never let me know. You bullied me. I couldn’t help myself. I was glad when you left me, really.”
“I know you were,” he said. But his face went paler, almost deathly luminous.
“Yet,” he said, “it was you who sent me the way I have gone.”
“I!” she exclaimed, in pride.
“You would have me take the Grammar School scholarship—and you would have me foster poor little Botell’s fervent attachment to me, till he couldn’t live without me—and because Botell was rich and influential. You triumphed in the wine-merchant’s offer to send me to Cambridge, to befriend his only child. You wanted me to rise in the world. And all the time you were sending me away from you—every new success of mine put a separation between us, and more for you than for me. You never wanted to come with me: you wanted just to send me to see what it was like. I believe you even wanted me to marry a lady. You wanted to triumph over society in me.”
“And I am responsible,” she said, with sarcasm.
“I distinguished myself to satisfy you,” he replied.
“Ah!” she cried, “you always wanted change, change, like a child.”
“Very well! And I am a success, and I know it, and I do some good work. But—I thought you were different. What right have you to a man?”
“What do you want?” she said, looking at him with wide, fearful eyes.
He looked back at her, his eyes pointed, like weapons.
“Why, nothing,” he laughed shortly.
There was a rattling at the outer latch, and the keeper entered. The woman glanced round, but remained standing, fur-cloaked, in the inner doorway. Syson did not move.
The other man entered, saw, and turned away without speaking. The two also were silent.
Pilbeam attended to his skins.
“I must go,” said Syson.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Then I give you ‘To our vast and varying fortunes.’” He lifted his hand in pledge.
“‘To our vast and varying fortunes,’” she answered gravely, and speaking in cold tones.
“Arthur!” she said.
The keeper pretended not to hear. Syson, watching keenly, began to smile. The woman drew herself up.
“Arthur!” she said again, with a curious upward inflection, which warned the two men that her soul was trembling on a dangerous crisis.
The keeper slowly put down his tool and came to her.
“Yes,” he said.
“I wanted to introduce you,” she said, trembling.
“I’ve met him a’ready,” said the keeper.
“Have you? It is Addy, Mr Syson, whom you know about.—This is Arthur, Mr Pilbeam,” she added, turning to Syson. The latter held out his hand to the keeper, and they shook hands in silence.
“I’m glad to have met you,” said Syson. “We drop our correspondence, Hilda?”
“Why need we?” she asked.
The two men stood at a loss.
“Is there no need?” said Syson.
Still she was silent.
“It is as you will,” she said.
They went all three together down the gloomy path.
“‘Qu’il était bleu, le ciel, et grand l’espoir,’” quoted Syson, not knowing what to say.
“What do you mean?” she said. “Besides, we can’t walk in our wild oats—we never sowed any.”
Syson looked at her. He was startled to see his young love, his nun, his Botticelli angel, so revealed. It was he who had been the fool. He and she were more separate than any two strangers could be. She only wanted to keep up a correspondence with him—and he, of course, wanted it kept up, so that he could write to her, like Dante to some Beatrice who had never existed save in the man’s own brain.
At the bottom of the path she left him. He went along with the keeper, towards the open, towards the gate that closed on the wood. The two men walked almost like friends. They did not broach the subject of their thoughts.
Instead of going straight to the high-road gate, Syson went along the wood’s edge, where the brook spread out in a little bog, and under the alder trees, among the reeds, great yellow stools and bosses of marigolds shone. Threads of brown water trickled by, touched with gold from the flowers. Suddenly there was a blue flash in the air, as a kingfisher passed.
Syson was extraordinarily moved. He climbed the bank to the gorse bushes, whose sparks of blossom had not yet gathered into a flame. Lying on the dry brown turf, he discovered sprigs of tiny purple milkwort and pink spots of lousewort. What a wonderful world it was—marvellous, for ever new. He felt as if it were underground, like the fields of monotone hell, notwithstanding. Inside his breast was a pain like a wound. He remembered the poem of William Morris, where in the Chapel of Lyonesse a knight lay wounded, with the truncheon of a spear deep in his breast, lying always as dead, yet did not die, while day after day the coloured sunlight dipped from the painted window across the chancel, and passed away. He knew now it never had been true, that which was between him and her, not for a moment. The truth had stood apart all the time.
Syson turned over. The air was full of the sound of larks, as if the sunshine above were condensing and falling in a shower. Amid this bright sound, voices sounded small and distinct.
“But if he’s married, an’ quite willing to drop it off, what has ter against it?” said the man’s voice.
“I don’t want to talk about it now. I want to be alone.”
Syson looked through the bushes. Hilda was standing in the wood, near the gate. The man was in the field, loitering by the hedge, and playing with the bees as they settled on the white bramble flowers.
There was silence for a while, in which Syson imagined her will among the brightness of the larks. Suddenly the keeper exclaimed “Ah!” and swore. He was gripping at the sleeve of his coat, near the shoulder. Then he pulled off his jacket, threw it on the ground, and absorbedly rolled up his shirt sleeve right to the shoulder.
“Ah!” he said vindictively, as he picked out the bee and flung it away. He twisted his fine, bright arm, peering awkwardly over his shoulder.
“What is it?” asked Hilda.
“A bee—crawled up my sleeve,” he answered.
“Come here to me,” she said.
The keeper went to her, like a sulky boy. She took his arm in her hands.
“Here it is—and the sting left in—poor bee!”
She picked out the sting, put her mouth to his arm, and sucked away the drop of poison. As she looked at the red mark her mouth had made, and at his arm, she said, laughing:
“That is the reddest kiss you will ever have.”
When Syson next looked up, at the sound of voices, he saw in the shadow the keeper with his mouth on the throat of his beloved, whose head was thrown back, and whose hair had fallen, so that one rough rope of dark brown hair hung across his bare arm.
“No,” the woman answered. “I am not upset because he’s gone. You won’t understand....”
Syson could not distinguish what the man said. Hilda replied, clear and distinct:
“You know I love you. He has gone quite out of my life—don’t trouble about him....” He kissed her, murmuring. She laughed hollowly.
“Yes,” she said, indulgent. “We will be married, we will be married. But not just yet.” He spoke to her again. Syson heard nothing for a time. Then she said:
“You must go home, now, dear—you will get no sleep.”
Again was heard the murmur of the keeper’s voice, troubled by fear and passion.
“But why should we be married at once?” she said. “What more would you have, by being married? It is most beautiful as it is.”
At last he pulled on his coat and departed. She stood at the gate, not watching him, but looking over the sunny country.
When at last she had gone, Syson also departed, going back to town.
Second Best
“Oh, I’m tired!” Frances exclaimed petulantly, and in the same instant she dropped down on the turf, near the hedge-bottom. Anne stood a moment surprised, then, accustomed to the vagaries of her beloved Frances, said:
“Well, and aren’t you always likely to be tired, after travelling that blessed long way from Liverpool yesterday?” and she plumped down beside her sister. Anne was a wise young body of fourteen, very buxom, brimming with common sense. Frances was much older, about twenty-three, and whimsical, spasmodic. She was the beauty and the clever child of the family. She plucked the goose-grass buttons from her dress in a nervous, desperate fashion. Her beautiful profile, looped above with black hair, warm with the dusky-and-scarlet complexion of a pear, was calm as a mask, her thin brown hand plucked nervously.
“It’s not the journey,” she said, objecting to Anne’s obtuseness. Anne looked inquiringly at her darling. The young girl, in her self-confident, practical way, proceeded to reckon up this whimsical creature. But suddenly she found herself full in the eyes of Frances; felt two dark, hectic eyes flaring challenge at her, and she shrank away. Frances was peculiar for these great, exposed looks, which disconcerted people by their violence and their suddenness.
“What’s a matter, poor old duck?” asked Anne, as she folded the slight, wilful form of her sister in her arms. Frances laughed shakily, and nestled down for comfort on the budding breasts of the strong girl.
“Oh, I’m only a bit tired,” she murmured, on the point of tears.
“Well, of course you are, what do you expect?” soothed Anne. It was a joke to Frances that Anne should play elder, almost mother to her. But then, Anne was in her unvexed teens; men were like big dogs to her: while Frances, at twenty-three, suffered a good deal.
The country was intensely morning-still. On the common everything shone beside its shadow, and the hillside gave off heat in silence. The brown turf seemed in a low state of combustion, the leaves of the oaks were scorched brown. Among the blackish foliage in the distance shone the small red and orange of the village.
The willows in the brook-course at the foot of the common suddenly shook with a dazzling effect like diamonds. It was a puff of wind. Anne resumed her normal position. She spread her knees, and put in her lap a handful of hazel nuts, whity-green leafy things, whose one cheek was tanned between brown and pink. These she began to crack and eat. Frances, with bowed head, mused bitterly.
“Eh, you know Tom Smedley?” began the young girl, as she pulled a tight kernel out of its shell.
“I suppose so,” replied Frances sarcastically.
“Well, he gave me a wild rabbit what he’d caught, to keep with my tame one—and it’s living.”
“That’s a good thing,” said Frances, very detached and ironic.
“Well, it is! He reckoned he’d take me to Ollerton Feast, but he never did. Look here, he took a servant from the rectory; I saw him.”
“So he ought,” said Frances.
“No, he oughtn’t! and I told him so. And I told him I should tell you—an’ I have done.”
Click and snap went a nut between her teeth. She sorted out the kernel, and chewed complacently.
“It doesn’t make much difference,” said Frances.
“Well, ’appen it doesn’t; but I was mad with him all the same.”
“Why?”
“Because I was; he’s no right to go with a servant.”
“He’s a perfect right,” persisted Frances, very just and cold.
“No, he hasn’t, when he’d said he’d take me.”
Frances burst into a laugh of amusement and relief.
“Oh, no; I’d forgot that,” she said, adding, “And what did he say when you promised to tell me?”
“He laughed and said, ‘he won’t fret her fat over that.’”
“And she won’t,” sniffed Frances.
There was silence. The common, with its sere, blonde-headed thistles, its heaps of silent bramble, its brown-husked gorse in the glare of sunshine, seemed visionary. Across the brook began the immense pattern of agriculture, white chequering of barley stubble, brown squares of wheat, khaki patches of pasture, red stripes of fallow, with the woodland and the tiny village dark like ornaments, leading away to the distance, right to the hills, where the check-pattern grew smaller and smaller, till, in the blackish haze of heat, far off, only the tiny white squares of barley stubble showed distinct.
“Eh, I say, here’s a rabbit hole!” cried Anne suddenly. “Should we watch if one comes out? You won’t have to fidget, you know.”
The two girls sat perfectly still. Frances watched certain objects in her surroundings: they had a peculiar, unfriendly look about them: the weight of greenish elderberries on their purpling stalks; the twinkling of the yellowing crab-apples that clustered high up in the hedge, against the sky: the exhausted, limp leaves of the primroses lying flat in the hedge-bottom: all looked strange to her. Then her eyes caught a movement. A mole was moving silently over the warm, red soil, nosing, shuffling hither and thither, flat, and dark as a shadow, shifting about, and as suddenly brisk, and as silent, like a very ghost of joie de vivre. Frances started, from habit was about to call on Anne to kill the little pest. But, today, her lethargy of unhappiness was too much for her. She watched the little brute paddling, snuffing, touching things to discover them, running in blindness, delighted to ecstasy by the sunlight and the hot, strange things that caressed its belly and its nose. She felt a keen pity for the little creature.
“Eh, our Fran, look there! It’s a mole.”
Anne was on her feet, standing watching the dark, unconscious beast. Frances frowned with anxiety.
“It doesn’t run off, does it?” said the young girl softly. Then she stealthily approached the creature. The mole paddled fumblingly away. In an instant Anne put her foot upon it, not too heavily. Frances could see the struggling, swimming movement of the little pink hands of the brute, the twisting and twitching of its pointed nose, as it wrestled under the sole of the boot.
“It does wriggle!” said the bonny girl, knitting her brows in a frown at the eerie sensation. Then she bent down to look at her trap. Frances could now see, beyond the edge of the boot-sole, the heaving of the velvet shoulders, the pitiful turning of the sightless face, the frantic rowing of the flat, pink hands.
“Kill the thing,” she said, turning away her face.
“Oh—I’m not,” laughed Anne, shrinking. “You can, if you like.”
“I don’t like,” said Frances, with quiet intensity.
After several dabbling attempts, Anne succeeded in picking up the little animal by the scruff of its neck. It threw back its head, flung its long blind snout from side to side, the mouth open in a peculiar oblong, with tiny pinkish teeth at the edge. The blind, frantic mouth gaped and writhed. The body, heavy and clumsy, hung scarcely moving.
“Isn’t it a snappy little thing,” observed Anne twisting to avoid the teeth.
“What are you going to do with it?” asked Frances sharply.
“It’s got to be killed—look at the damage they do. I s’ll take it home and let dadda or somebody kill it. I’m not going to let it go.”
She swaddled the creature clumsily in her pocket-handkerchief and sat down beside her sister. There was an interval of silence, during which Anne combated the efforts of the mole.
“You’ve not had much to say about Jimmy this time. Did you see him often in Liverpool?” Anne asked suddenly.
“Once or twice,” replied Frances, giving no sign of how the question troubled her.
“And aren’t you sweet on him any more, then?”
“I should think I’m not, seeing that he’s engaged.”
“Engaged? Jimmy Barrass! Well, of all things! I never thought he’d get engaged.”
“Why not, he’s as much right as anybody else?” snapped Frances.
Anne was fumbling with the mole.
“’Appen so,” she said at length; “but I never thought Jimmy would, though.”
“Why not?” snapped Frances.
“I don’t know—this blessed mole, it’ll not keep still!—who’s he got engaged to?”
“How should I know?”
“I thought you’d ask him; you’ve known him long enough. I s’d think he thought he’d get engaged now he’s a Doctor of Chemistry.”
Frances laughed in spite of herself.
“What’s that got to do with it?” she asked.
“I’m sure it’s got a lot. He’ll want to feel somebody now, so he’s got engaged. Hey, stop it; go in!”
But at this juncture the mole almost succeeded in wriggling clear. It wrestled and twisted frantically, waved its pointed blind head, its mouth standing open like a little shaft, its big, wrinkled hands spread out.
“Go in with you!” urged Anne, poking the little creature with her forefinger, trying to get it back into the handkerchief. Suddenly the mouth turned like a spark on her finger.
“Oh!” she cried, “he’s bit me.”
She dropped him to the floor. Dazed, the blind creature fumbled round. Frances felt like shrieking. She expected him to dart away in a flash, like a mouse, and there he remained groping; she wanted to cry to him to be gone. Anne, in a sudden decision of wrath, caught up her sister’s walking-cane. With one blow the mole was dead. Frances was startled and shocked. One moment the little wretch was fussing in the heat, and the next it lay like a little bag, inert and black—not a struggle, scarce a quiver.
“It is dead!” Frances said breathlessly. Anne took her finger from her mouth, looked at the tiny pinpricks, and said:
“Yes, he is, and I’m glad. They’re vicious little nuisances, moles are.”
With which her wrath vanished. She picked up the dead animal.
“Hasn’t it got a beautiful skin,” she mused, stroking the fur with her forefinger, then with her cheek.
“Mind,” said Frances sharply. “You’ll have the blood on your skirt!”
One ruby drop of blood hung on the small snout, ready to fall. Anne shook it off on to some harebells. Frances suddenly became calm; in that moment, grown-up.
“I suppose they have to be killed,” she said, and a certain rather dreary indifference succeeded to her grief. The twinkling crab-apples, the glitter of brilliant willows now seemed to her trifling, scarcely worth the notice. Something had died in her, so that things lost their poignancy. She was calm, indifference overlying her quiet sadness. Rising, she walked down to the brook course.
“Here, wait for me,” cried Anne, coming tumbling after.
Frances stood on the bridge, looking at the red mud trodden into pockets by the feet of cattle. There was not a drain of water left, but everything smelled green, succulent. Why did she care so little for Anne, who was so fond of her? she asked herself. Why did she care so little for anyone? She did not know, but she felt a rather stubborn pride in her isolation and indifference.
They entered a field where stooks of barley stood in rows, the straight, blonde tresses of the corn streaming on to the ground. The stubble was bleached by the intense summer, so that the expanse glared white. The next field was sweet and soft with a second crop of seeds; thin, straggling clover whose little pink knobs rested prettily in the dark green. The scent was faint and sickly. The girls came up in single file, Frances leading.
Near the gate a young man was mowing with the scythe some fodder for the afternoon feed of the cattle. As he saw the girls he left off working and waited in an aimless kind of way. Frances was dressed in white muslin, and she walked with dignity, detached and forgetful. Her lack of agitation, her simple, unheeding advance made him nervous. She had loved the far-off Jimmy for five years, having had in return his half-measures. This man only affected her slightly.
Tom was of medium stature, energetic in build. His smooth, fair-skinned face was burned red, not brown, by the sun, and this ruddiness enhanced his appearance of good humour and easiness. Being a year older than Frances, he would have courted her long ago had she been so inclined. As it was, he had gone his uneventful way amiably, chatting with many a girl, but remaining unattached, free of trouble for the most part. Only he knew he wanted a woman. He hitched his trousers just a trifle self-consciously as the girls approached. Frances was a rare, delicate kind of being, whom he realized with a queer and delicious stimulation in his veins. She gave him a slight sense of suffocation. Somehow, this morning, she affected him more than usual. She was dressed in white. He, however, being matter-of-fact in his mind, did not realize. His feeling had never become conscious, purposive.
Frances knew what she was about. Tom was ready to love her as soon as she would show him. Now that she could not have Jimmy, she did not poignantly care. Still, she would have something. If she could not have the best—Jimmy, whom she knew to be something of a snob—she would have the second best, Tom. She advanced rather indifferently.
“You are back, then!” said Tom. She marked the touch of uncertainty in his voice.
“No,” she laughed, “I’m still in Liverpool,” and the undertone of intimacy made him burn.
“This isn’t you, then?” he asked.
Her heart leapt up in approval. She looked in his eyes, and for a second was with him.
“Why, what do you think?” she laughed.
He lifted his hat from his head with a distracted little gesture. She liked him, his quaint ways, his humour, his ignorance, and his slow masculinity.
“Here, look here, Tom Smedley,” broke in Anne.
“A moudiwarp! Did you find it dead?” he asked.
“No, it bit me,” said Anne.
“Oh, aye! An’ that got your rag out, did it?”
“No, it didn’t!” Anne scolded sharply. “Such language!”
“Oh, what’s up wi’ it?”
“I can’t bear you to talk broad.”
“Can’t you?”
He glanced at Frances.
“It isn’t nice,” Frances said. She did not care, really. The vulgar speech jarred on her as a rule; Jimmy was a gentleman. But Tom’s manner of speech did not matter to her.
“I like you to talk nicely,” she added.
“Do you,” he replied, tilting his hat, stirred.
“And generally you do, you know,” she smiled.
“I s’ll have to have a try,” he said, rather tensely gallant.
“What?” she asked brightly.
“To talk nice to you,” he said. Frances coloured furiously, bent her head for a moment, then laughed gaily, as if she liked this clumsy hint.
“Eh now, you mind what you’re saying,” cried Anne, giving the young man an admonitory pat.
“You wouldn’t have to give yon mole many knocks like that,” he teased, relieved to get on safe ground, rubbing his arm.
“No indeed, it died in one blow,” said Frances, with a flippancy that was hateful to her.
“You’re not so good at knockin’ ’em?” he said, turning to her.
“I don’t know, if I’m cross,” she said decisively.
“No?” he replied, with alert attentiveness.
“I could,” she added, harder, “if it was necessary.”
He was slow to feel her difference.
“And don’t you consider it is necessary?” he asked, with misgiving.
“W—ell—is it?” she said, looking at him steadily, coldly.
“I reckon it is,” he replied, looking away, but standing stubborn.
She laughed quickly.
“But it isn’t necessary for me,” she said, with slight contempt.
“Yes, that’s quite true,” he answered.
She laughed in a shaky fashion.
“I know it is,” she said; and there was an awkward pause.
“Why, would you like me to kill moles then?” she asked tentatively, after a while.
“They do us a lot of damage,” he said, standing firm on his own ground, angered.
“Well, I’ll see the next time I come across one,” she promised, defiantly. Their eyes met, and she sank before him, her pride troubled. He felt uneasy and triumphant and baffled, as if fate had gripped him. She smiled as she departed.
“Well,” said Anne, as the sisters went through the wheat stubble; “I don’t know what you two’s been jawing about, I’m sure.”
“Don’t you?” laughed Frances significantly.
“No, I don’t. But, at any rate, Tom Smedley’s a good deal better to my thinking than Jimmy, so there—and nicer.”
“Perhaps he is,” said Frances coldly.
And the next day, after a secret, persistent hunt, she found another mole playing in the heat. She killed it, and in the evening, when Tom came to the gate to smoke his pipe after supper, she took him the dead creature.
“Here you are then!” she said.
“Did you catch it?” he replied, taking the velvet corpse into his fingers and examining it minutely. This was to hide his trepidation.
“Did you think I couldn’t?” she asked, her face very near his.
“Nay, I didn’t know.”
She laughed in his face, a strange little laugh that caught her breath, all agitation, and tears, and recklessness of desire. He looked frightened and upset. She put her hand to his arm.
“Shall you go out wi’ me?” he asked, in a difficult, troubled tone.
She turned her face away, with a shaky laugh. The blood came up in him, strong, overmastering. He resisted it. But it drove him down, and he was carried away. Seeing the winsome, frail nape of her neck, fierce love came upon him for her, and tenderness.
“We s’ll ’ave to tell your mother,” he said. And he stood, suffering, resisting his passion for her.
“Yes,” she replied, in a dead voice. But there was a thrill of pleasure in this death.
The Shadow in the Rose Garden
A rather small young man sat by the window of a pretty seaside cottage trying to persuade himself that he was reading the newspaper. It was about half-past eight in the morning. Outside, the glory roses hung in the morning sunshine like little bowls of fire tipped up. The young man looked at the table, then at the clock, then at his own big silver watch. An expression of stiff endurance came on to his face. Then he rose and reflected on the oil-paintings that hung on the walls of the room, giving careful but hostile attention to “The Stag at Bay”. He tried the lid of the piano, and found it locked. He caught sight of his own face in a little mirror, pulled his brown moustache, and an alert interest sprang into his eyes. He was not ill-favoured. He twisted his moustache. His figure was rather small, but alert and vigorous. As he turned from the mirror a look of self-commiseration mingled with his appreciation of his own physiognomy.
In a state of self-suppression, he went through into the garden. His jacket, however, did not look dejected. It was new, and had a smart and self-confident air, sitting upon a confident body. He contemplated the Tree of Heaven that flourished by the lawn, then sauntered on to the next plant. There was more promise in a crooked apple tree covered with brown-red fruit. Glancing round, he broke off an apple and, with his back to the house, took a clean, sharp bite. To his surprise the fruit was sweet. He took another. Then again he turned to survey the bedroom windows overlooking the garden. He started, seeing a woman’s figure; but it was only his wife. She was gazing across to the sea, apparently ignorant of him.
For a moment or two he looked at her, watching her. She was a good-looking woman, who seemed older than he, rather pale, but healthy, her face yearning. Her rich auburn hair was heaped in folds on her forehead. She looked apart from him and his world, gazing away to the sea. It irked her husband that she should continue abstracted and in ignorance of him; he pulled poppy fruits and threw them at the window. She started, glanced at him with a wild smile, and looked away again. Then almost immediately she left the window. He went indoors to meet her. She had a fine carriage, very proud, and wore a dress of soft white muslin.
“I’ve been waiting long enough,” he said.
“For me or for breakfast?” she said lightly. “You know we said nine o’clock. I should have thought you could have slept after the journey.”
“You know I’m always up at five, and I couldn’t stop in bed after six. You might as well be in pit as in bed, on a morning like this.”
“I shouldn’t have thought the pit would occur to you, here.”
She moved about examining the room, looking at the ornaments under glass covers. He, planted on the hearthrug, watched her rather uneasily, and grudgingly indulgent. She shrugged her shoulders at the apartment.
“Come,” she said, taking his arm, “let us go into the garden till Mrs Coates brings the tray.”
“I hope she’ll be quick,” he said, pulling his moustache. She gave a short laugh, and leaned on his arm as they went. He had lighted a pipe.
Mrs Coates entered the room as they went down the steps. The delightful, erect old lady hastened to the window for a good view of her visitors. Her china-blue eyes were bright as she watched the young couple go down the path, he walking in an easy, confident fashion, with his wife, on his arm. The landlady began talking to herself in a soft, Yorkshire accent.
“Just of a height they are. She wouldn’t ha’ married a man less than herself in stature, I think, though he’s not her equal otherwise.” Here her granddaughter came in, setting a tray on the table. The girl went to the old woman’s side.
“He’s been eating the apples, gran’,” she said.
“Has he, my pet? Well, if he’s happy, why not?”
Outside, the young, well-favoured man listened with impatience to the chink of the teacups. At last, with a sigh of relief, the couple came in to breakfast. After he had eaten for some time, he rested a moment and said:
“Do you think it’s any better place than Bridlington?”
“I do,” she said, “infinitely! Besides, I am at home here—it’s not like a strange seaside place to me.”
“How long were you here?”
“Two years.”
He ate reflectively.
“I should ha’ thought you’d rather go to a fresh place,” he said at length.
She sat very silent, and then, delicately, put out a feeler.
“Why?” she said. “Do you think I shan’t enjoy myself?”
He laughed comfortably, putting the marmalade thick on his bread.
“I hope so,” he said.
She again took no notice of him.
“But don’t say anything about it in the village, Frank,” she said casually. “Don’t say who I am, or that I used to live here. There’s nobody I want to meet, particularly, and we should never feel free if they knew me again.”
“Why did you come, then?”
“‘Why?’ Can’t you understand why?”
“Not if you don’t want to know anybody.”
“I came to see the place, not the people.”
He did not say any more.
“Women,” she said, “are different from men. I don’t know why I wanted to come—but I did.”
She helped him to another cup of coffee, solicitously.
“Only,” she resumed, “don’t talk about me in the village.” She laughed shakily. “I don’t want my past brought up against me, you know.” And she moved the crumbs on the cloth with her finger-tip.
He looked at her as he drank his coffee; he sucked his moustache, and putting down his cup, said phlegmatically:
“I’ll bet you’ve had a lot of past.”
She looked with a little guiltiness, that flattered him, down at the tablecloth.
“Well,” she said, caressive, “you won’t give me away, who I am, will you?”
“No,” he said, comforting, laughing, “I won’t give you away.”
He was pleased.
She remained silent. After a moment or two she lifted her head, saying:
“I’ve got to arrange with Mrs Coates, and do various things. So you’d better go out by yourself this morning—and we’ll be in to dinner at one.”
“But you can’t be arranging with Mrs Coates all morning,” he said.
“Oh, well—then I’ve some letters to write, and I must get that mark out of my skirt. I’ve got plenty of little things to do this morning. You’d better go out by yourself.”
He perceived that she wanted to be rid of him, so that when she went upstairs, he took his hat and lounged out on to the cliffs, suppressedly angry.
Presently she too came out. She wore a hat with roses, and a long lace scarf hung over her white dress. Rather nervously, she put up her sunshade, and her face was half-hidden in its coloured shadow. She went along the narrow track of flag-stones that were worn hollow by the feet of the fishermen. She seemed to be avoiding her surroundings, as if she remained safe in the little obscurity of her parasol.
She passed the church, and went down the lane till she came to a high wall by the wayside. Under this she went slowly, stopping at length by an open doorway, which shone like a picture of light in the dark wall. There in the magic beyond the doorway, patterns of shadow lay on the sunny court, on the blue and white sea-pebbles of its paving, while a green lawn glowed beyond, where a bay tree glittered at the edges. She tiptoed nervously into the courtyard, glancing at the house that stood in shadow. The uncurtained windows looked black and soulless, the kitchen door stood open. Irresolutely she took a step forward, and again forward, leaning, yearning, towards the garden beyond.
She had almost gained the corner of the house when a heavy step came crunching through the trees. A gardener appeared before her. He held a wicker tray on which were rolling great, dark red gooseberries, overripe. He moved slowly.
“The garden isn’t open today,” he said quietly to the attractive woman, who was poised for retreat.
For a moment she was silent with surprise. How should it be public at all?
“When is it open?” she asked, quick-witted.
“The rector lets visitors in on Fridays and Tuesdays.”
She stood still, reflecting. How strange to think of the rector opening his garden to the public!
“But everybody will be at church,” she said coaxingly to the man. “There’ll be nobody here, will there?”
He moved, and the big gooseberries rolled.
“The rector lives at the new rectory,” he said.
The two stood still. He did not like to ask her to go. At last she turned to him with a winning smile.
“Might I have one peep at the roses?” she coaxed, with pretty wilfulness.
“I don’t suppose it would matter,” he said, moving aside: “you won’t stop long——”
She went forward, forgetting the gardener in a moment. Her face became strained, her movements eager. Glancing round, she saw all the windows giving on to the lawn were curtainless and dark. The house had a sterile appearance, as if it were still used, but not inhabited. A shadow seemed to go over her. She went across the lawn towards the garden, through an arch of crimson ramblers, a gate of colour. There beyond lay the soft blue sea with the bay, misty with morning, and the farthest headland of black rock jutting dimly out between blue and blue of the sky and water. Her face began to shine, transfigured with pain and joy. At her feet the garden fell steeply, all a confusion of flowers, and away below was the darkness of tree-tops covering the beck.
She turned to the garden that shone with sunny flowers around her. She knew the little corner where was the seat beneath the yew tree. Then there was the terrace where a great host of flowers shone, and from this, two paths went down, one at each side of the garden. She closed her sunshade and walked slowly among the many flowers. All round were rose bushes, big banks of roses, then roses hanging and tumbling from pillars, or roses balanced on the standard bushes. By the open earth were many other flowers. If she lifted her head, the sea was upraised beyond, and the Cape.
Slowly she went down one path, lingering, like one who has gone back into the past. Suddenly she was touching some heavy crimson roses that were soft as velvet, touching them thoughtfully, without knowing, as a mother sometimes fondles the hand of her child. She leaned slightly forward to catch the scent. Then she wandered on in abstraction. Sometimes a flame-coloured, scentless rose would hold her arrested. She stood gazing at it as if she could not understand it. Again the same softness of intimacy came over her, as she stood before a tumbling heap of pink petals. Then she wondered over the white rose, that was greenish, like ice, in the centre. So, slowly, like a white, pathetic butterfly, she drifted down the path, coming at last to a tiny terrace all full of roses. They seemed to fill the place, a sunny, gay throng. She was shy of them, they were so many and so bright. They seemed to be conversing and laughing. She felt herself in a strange crowd. It exhilarated her, carried her out of herself. She flushed with excitement. The air was pure scent.
Hastily, she went to a little seat among the white roses, and sat down. Her scarlet sunshade made a hard blot of colour. She sat quite still, feeling her own existence lapse. She was no more than a rose, a rose that could not quite come into blossom, but remained tense. A little fly dropped on her knee, on her white dress. She watched it, as if it had fallen on a rose. She was not herself.
Then she started cruelly as a shadow crossed her and a figure moved into her sight. It was a man who had come in slippers, unheard. He wore a linen coat. The morning was shattered, the spell vanished away. She was only afraid of being questioned. He came forward. She rose. Then, seeing him, the strength went from her and she sank on the seat again.
He was a young man, military in appearance, growing slightly stout. His black hair was brushed smooth and bright, his moustache was waxed. But there was something rambling in his gait. She looked up, blanched to the lips, and saw his eyes. They were black, and stared without seeing. They were not a man’s eyes. He was coming towards her.
He stared at her fixedly, made unconscious salute, and sat down beside her on the seat. He moved on the bench, shifted his feet, saying, in a gentlemanly, military voice:
“I don’t disturb you—do I?”
She was mute and helpless. He was scrupulously dressed in dark clothes and a linen coat. She could not move. Seeing his hands, with the ring she knew so well upon the little finger, she felt as if she were going dazed. The whole world was deranged. She sat unavailing. For his hands, her symbols of passionate love, filled her with horror as they rested now on his strong thighs.
“May I smoke?” he asked intimately, almost secretly, his hand going to his pocket.
She could not answer, but it did not matter, he was in another world. She wondered, craving, if he recognized her—if he could recognize her. She sat pale with anguish. But she had to go through it.
“I haven’t got any tobacco,” he said thoughtfully.
But she paid no heed to his words, only she attended to him. Could he recognize her, or was it all gone? She sat still in a frozen kind of suspense.
“I smoke John Cotton,” he said, “and I must economize with it, it is expensive. You know, I’m not very well off while these lawsuits are going on.”
“No,” she said, and her heart was cold, her soul kept rigid.
He moved, made a loose salute, rose, and went away. She sat motionless. She could see his shape, the shape she had loved, with all her passion: his compact, soldier’s head, his fine figure now slackened. And it was not he. It only filled her with horror too difficult to know.
Suddenly he came again, his hand in his jacket pocket.
“Do you mind if I smoke?” he said. “Perhaps I shall be able to see things more clearly.”
He sat down beside her again, filling a pipe. She watched his hands with the fine strong fingers. They had always inclined to tremble slightly. It had surprised her, long ago, in such a healthy man. Now they moved inaccurately, and the tobacco hung raggedly out of the pipe.
“I have legal business to attend to. Legal affairs are always so uncertain. I tell my solicitor exactly, precisely what I want, but I can never get it done.”
She sat and heard him talking. But it was not he. Yet those were the hands she had kissed, there were the glistening, strange black eyes that she had loved. Yet it was not he. She sat motionless with horror and silence. He dropped his tobacco pouch, and groped for it on the ground. Yet she must wait if he would recognize her. Why could she not go! In a moment he rose.
“I must go at once,” he said. “The owl is coming.” Then he added confidentially: “His name isn’t really the owl, but I call him that. I must go and see if he has come.”
She rose too. He stood before her, uncertain. He was a handsome, soldierly fellow, and a lunatic. Her eyes searched him, and searched him, to see if he would recognize her, if she could discover him.
“You don’t know me?” she asked, from the terror of her soul, standing alone.
He looked back at her quizzically. She had to bear his eyes. They gleamed on her, but with no intelligence. He was drawing nearer to her.
“Yes, I do know you,” he said, fixed, intent, but mad, drawing his face nearer hers. Her horror was too great. The powerful lunatic was coming too near to her.
A man approached, hastening.
“The garden isn’t open this morning,” he said.
The deranged man stopped and looked at him. The keeper went to the seat and picked up the tobacco pouch left lying there.
“Don’t leave your tobacco, sir,” he said, taking it to the gentleman in the linen coat.
“I was just asking this lady to stay to lunch,” the latter said politely. “She is a friend of mine.”
The woman turned and walked swiftly, blindly, between the sunny roses, out of the garden, past the house with the blank, dark windows, through the sea-pebbled courtyard to the street. Hastening and blind, she went forward without hesitating, not knowing whither. Directly she came to the house she went upstairs, took off her hat, and sat down on the bed. It was as if some membrane had been torn in two in her, so that she was not an entity that could think and feel. She sat staring across at the window, where an ivy spray waved slowly up and down in the sea wind. There was some of the uncanny luminousness of the sunlit sea in the air. She sat perfectly still, without any being. She only felt she might be sick, and it might be blood that was loose in her torn entrails. She sat perfectly still and passive.
After a time she heard the hard tread of her husband on the floor below, and, without herself changing, she registered his movement. She heard his rather disconsolate footsteps go out again, then his voice speaking, answering, growing cheery, and his solid tread drawing near.
He entered, ruddy, rather pleased, an air of complacency about his alert figure. She moved stiffly. He faltered in his approach.
“What’s the matter?” he asked a tinge of impatience in his voice. “Aren’t you feeling well?”
This was torture to her.
“Quite,” she replied.
His brown eyes became puzzled and angry.
“What is the matter?” he said.
“Nothing.”
He took a few strides, and stood obstinately, looking out of the window.
“Have you run up against anybody?” he asked.
“Nobody who knows me,” she said.
His hands began to twitch. It exasperated him, that she was no more sensible of him than if he did not exist. Turning on her at length, driven, he asked:
“Something has upset you hasn’t it?”
“No, why?” she said neutral. He did not exist for her, except as an irritant.
His anger rose, filling the veins in his throat.
“It seems like it,” he said, making an effort not to show his anger, because there seemed no reason for it. He went away downstairs. She sat still on the bed, and with the residue of feeling left to her, she disliked him because he tormented her. The time went by. She could smell the dinner being served, the smoke of her husband’s pipe from the garden. But she could not move. She had no being. There was a tinkle of the bell. She heard him come indoors. And then he mounted the stairs again. At every step her heart grew tight in her. He opened the door.
“Dinner is on the table,” he said.
It was difficult for her to endure his presence, for he would interfere with her. She could not recover her life. She rose stiffly and went down. She could neither eat nor talk during the meal. She sat absent, torn, without any being of her own. He tried to go on as if nothing were the matter. But at last he became silent with fury. As soon as it was possible, she went upstairs again, and locked the bedroom door. She must be alone. He went with his pipe into the garden. All his suppressed anger against her who held herself superior to him filled and blackened his heart. Though he had not known it, yet he had never really won her, she had never loved him. She had taken him on sufference. This had foiled him. He was only a labouring electrician in the mine, she was superior to him. He had always given way to her. But all the while, the injury and ignominy had been working in his soul because she did not hold him seriously. And now all his rage came up against her.
He turned and went indoors. The third time, she heard him mounting the stairs. Her heart stood still. He turned the catch and pushed the door—it was locked. He tried it again, harder. Her heart was standing still.
“Have you fastened the door?” he asked quietly, because of the landlady.
“Yes. Wait a minute.”
She rose and turned the lock, afraid he would burst it. She felt hatred towards him, because he did not leave her free. He entered, his pipe between his teeth, and she returned to her old position on the bed. He closed the door and stood with his back to it.
“What’s the matter?” he asked determinedly.
She was sick with him. She could not look at him.
“Can’t you leave me alone?” she replied, averting her face from him.
He looked at her quickly, fully, wincing with ignominy. Then he seemed to consider for a moment.
“There’s something up with you, isn’t there?” he asked definitely.
“Yes,” she said, “but that’s no reason why you should torment me.”
“I don’t torment you. What’s the matter?”
“Why should you know?” she cried, in hate and desperation.
Something snapped. He started and caught his pipe as it fell from his mouth. Then he pushed forward the bitten-off mouth-piece with his tongue, took it from off his lips, and looked at it. Then he put out his pipe, and brushed the ash from his waistcoat. After which he raised his head.
“I want to know,” he said. His face was greyish pale, and set uglily.
Neither looked at the other. She knew he was fired now. His heart was pounding heavily. She hated him, but she could not withstand him. Suddenly she lifted her head and turned on him.
“What right have you to know?” she asked.
He looked at her. She felt a pang of surprise for his tortured eyes and his fixed face. But her heart hardened swiftly. She had never loved him. She did not love him now.
But suddenly she lifted her head again swiftly, like a thing that tries to get free. She wanted to be free of it. It was not him so much, but it, something she had put on herself, that bound her so horribly. And having put the bond on herself, it was hardest to take it off. But now she hated everything and felt destructive. He stood with his back to the door, fixed, as if he would oppose her eternally, till she was extinguished. She looked at him. Her eyes were cold and hostile. His workman’s hands spread on the panels of the door behind him.
“You know I used to live here?” she began, in a hard voice, as if wilfully to wound him. He braced himself against her, and nodded.
“Well, I was companion to Miss Birch of Torril Hall—she and the rector were friends, and Archie was the rector’s son.” There was a pause. He listened without knowing what was happening. He stared at his wife. She was squatted in her white dress on the bed, carefully folding and refolding the hem of her skirt. Her voice was full of hostility.
“He was an officer—a sub-lieutenant—then he quarrelled with his colonel and came out of the army. At any rate”—she plucked at her skirt hem, her husband stood motionless, watching her movements which filled his veins with madness—“he was awfully fond of me, and I was of him—awfully.”
“How old was he?” asked the husband.
“When—when I first knew him? Or when he went away?——”
“When you first knew him.”
“When I first knew him, he was twenty-six—now—he’s thirty-one—nearly thirty-two—because I’m twenty-nine, and he is nearly three years older——”
She lifted her head and looked at the opposite wall.
“And what then?” said her husband.
She hardened herself, and said callously:
“We were as good as engaged for nearly a year, though nobody knew—at least—they talked—but—it wasn’t open. Then he went away——”
“He chucked you?” said the husband brutally, wanting to hurt her into contact with himself. Her heart rose wildly with rage. Then “Yes”, she said, to anger him. He shifted from one foot to the other, giving a “Ph!” of rage. There was silence for a time.
“Then,” she resumed, her pain giving a mocking note to her words, “he suddenly went out to fight in Africa, and almost the very day I first met you, I heard from Miss Birch he’d got sunstroke—and two months after, that he was dead——”
“That was before you took on with me?” said the husband.
There was no answer. Neither spoke for a time. He had not understood. His eyes were contracted uglily.
“So you’ve been looking at your old courting places!” he said. “That was what you wanted to go out by yourself for this morning.”
Still she did not answer him anything. He went away from the door to the window. He stood with his hands behind him, his back to her. She looked at him. His hands seemed gross to her, the back of his head paltry.
At length, almost against his will, he turned round, asking:
“How long were you carrying on with him?”
“What do you mean?” she replied coldly.
“I mean how long were you carrying on with him?”
She lifted her head, averting her face from him. She refused to answer. Then she said:
“I don’t know what you mean, by carrying on. I loved him from the first days I met him—two months after I went to stay with Miss Birch.”
“And do you reckon he loved you?” he jeered.
“I know he did.”
“How do you know, if he’d have no more to do with you?”
There was a long silence of hate and suffering.
“And how far did it go between you?” he asked at length, in a frightened, stiff voice.
“I hate your not-straightforward questions,” she cried, beside herself with his baiting. “We loved each other, and we were lovers—we were. I don’t care what you think: what have you got to do with it? We were lovers before ever I knew you——”
“Lovers—lovers,” he said, white with fury. “You mean you had your fling with an army man, and then came to me to marry you when you’d done——”
She sat swallowing her bitterness. There was a long pause.
“Do you mean to say you used to go—the whole hogger?” he asked, still incredulous.
“Why, what else do you think I mean?” she cried brutally.
He shrank, and became white, impersonal. There was a long, paralysed silence. He seemed to have gone small.
“You never thought to tell me all this before I married you,” he said, with bitter irony, at last.
“You never asked me,” she replied.
“I never thought there was any need.”
“Well, then, you should think.”
He stood with expressionless, almost childlike set face, revolving many thoughts, whilst his heart was mad with anguish.
Suddenly she added:
“And I saw him today,” she said. “He is not dead, he’s mad.”
Her husband looked at her, startled.
“Mad!’ he said involuntarily.
“A lunatic,” she said. It almost cost her her reason to utter the word. There was a pause.
“Did he know you?” asked the husband in a small voice.
“No,” she said.
He stood and looked at her. At last he had learned the width of the breach between them. She still squatted on the bed. He could not go near her. It would be violation to each of them to be brought into contact with the other. The thing must work itself out. They were both shocked so much, they were impersonal, and no longer hated each other. After some minutes he left her and went out.