Tetherstones

by Ethel M. Dell

PART III

CHAPTER I
THE VICTIM

Of that wild rush through the night Frances never recalled any very clear detail afterwards. She only knew a strange dazzle of moonlight that filled the world, making all things seem unreal, and once she fancied she caught a glimpse of the Stones grimly outlined upon a distant hill.

Her companion never spoke to her, his whole attention apparently being occupied in forcing the utmost speed from his car, despite the extreme unevenness of the moorland road they travelled. In the end they ran into a little town and straight up the one broad street in an inn, Frances always remembered the sign-board of that inn, for it was the first thing that made a definite impression upon her after her flight. The inn was called The Man in the Moon, and the sign-board portrayed the same, being an enormous yellow face with the most quizzing expression possible to imagine—a face that would have provoked a smile from the least humorous. Somehow that face served to jolt Frances back to the ordinary and the commonplace. It enabled her to put the overwhelming sense of tragedy away from her and assume something of her old brisk and business-like attitude.

“Is this where you are staying?” she said.

“Yes,” said Rotherby. “It’s comfortable enough in a homely way. Will you get out?”

She turned in the seat and faced him. By the light of the moon he looked ghastly pale, but he managed to call up a smile.

“If there is another inn in the place I’ll go to it,” said Frances.

“I’m afraid there isn’t,” said Rotherby. “And you probably wouldn’t get in if there were. But you needn’t be anxious on that account. I’ll call you my sister if you like.”

His manner reassured her. Moreover, he had the look of a man at the end of his strength. She wondered what had happened to affect him so.

She got out of the car without further discussion and waited while he ran it under an archway into the stableyard. It seemed a long while before he joined her again, and then she noticed that he moved with a curiously halting gait, almost as if he were feeling his way.

“It’s all right,” he said, as he reached her. “The door’s open. Come inside!”

He extended a hand to push it back for her, but very strangely the intention was frustrated. It was as if he had found some obstacle in his path. And as she turned towards him in surprise he suddenly uttered an inarticulate exclamation and grabbed at her arm. She was aware of his whole weight flung abruptly upon her, and she caught at him, supporting him as best she could.

He staggered against the door-post, breathing heavily. “I shall be all right in a minute—in a minute,” he gasped out. “Just hold me up—if you can! I won’t faint.”

She held him up, exerting all her strength.

Several dreadful seconds passed, then he made a determined effort and straightened himself. As he did so, she felt the sleeve of his coat at the elbow and found it wet through. A ghastly doubt assailed her.

“What has happened?” she said through trembling lips. “Your arm! Is it—is it——”

“Blood? Yes. I got it in the shoulder. Don’t be frightened! I shall get over it. Can you open the door?”

He spoke jerkily, but with more assurance. Frances opened the door with a sick wonder if the horrors of that night would ever pass.

Rotherby staggered in, and she followed him closely, half expecting him to fall headlong. But he had mastered himself to a certain extent, and she heard him speak with some authority to the shock-headed landlord who came sleepily out of the bar-parlour to meet them.

“This lady is my sister. Can you give her a comfortable room for the night?”

“There’s the room you told me to prepare, sir,” said the man, with a loutish grin.

“That’ll do. Take her to it! See that she has everything she wants! Good night, Frances! You follow him! I shall see you in the morning.”

Rotherby spoke calmly, but it was through clenched teeth.

Frances stood hesitating. The landlord waited at the foot of a steep, ill-lighted staircase.

“That’s all,” said Rotherby. “I’m sorry I can’t do more to-night.”

He was obviously putting strong restraint upon himself. Frances waited a moment longer, then spoke.

“I can’t—possibly—leave you like this. You have been hurt. You must let me do what I can to help you.”

Again for an instant she saw his smile, and she saw the clenched teeth behind it.

“I shall be all right,” he said again. “I don’t think there is anything to be done. It isn’t serious. I’ll see a doctor in the morning if necessary.”

But Frances was too practical to be thus reassured. “You must let me help you,” she said. “You must.”

He yielded the point abruptly. “Very well—if you wish it. Get some hot water, Jarvis! I’ve had a bit of an accident.”

He moved forward to the stairs, and Frances went with him, feeling herself once more the victim of an inexorable Fate.

They went up together, Rotherby stumbling until she gave him her arm to steady him. Reaching a small landing on which a gas-jet burned low, he directed her into a room with an open door, and they entered, he leaning upon her.

The moonlight flooded in through the uncovered window, and she saw that it was a bedroom with an old four-poster bed. She helped Rotherby to it, and he sank down upon the foot with a sigh of relief.

“Have you got any matches?” she said.

“In my pocket—on the right,” he said. “Can you get them?”

She felt for and found them. As she stood up again he surprised her by catching her hand to his lips. She drew it quickly away, and he said nothing.

She lighted the gas, that flared starkly in the shabby, old-fashioned room, and turned round to him again, forcing herself to a calm and matter-of-fact attitude.

“Shall I help you off with your coat?” she said.

He turned to her suddenly, and she was conscious of an unwilling admiration of the man’s courage when she saw the effort of his smile.

“I say, don’t dislike me so!” he said. “I’ll make Jarvis help me. Don’t you stay! There’s a room for you next-door—my room as a matter of fact, but I’ll stay in here for to-night.”

Against her will she was softened. Something about him—something which he neither uttered nor betrayed by look or gesture—appealed to her very strongly. She found herself unable to comply with his suggestion and abandon him to the mercy of the landlord who was even now lumbering heavily up the stairs. She realized clearly that whatever came of this night’s happenings, she was bound in common humanity to stand by Rotherby now. No other course of action was open to her.

“I shall not leave you,” she said, “till I have done all I can to help you—unless you make that impossible for me.”

“Heaven forbid!” said Rotherby, still smiling his twisted smile.

“Well, I am in earnest,” she said, as she bent to help him.

“I like you best that way,” said Rotherby.

She felt that in some fashion he had worsted her, but she put the matter resolutely away from her. It was not the moment for close analysis of the situation. She could only go as she was driven.

With the utmost care she helped him remove his coat, and was shocked to find that the shirt-sleeve was soaked with blood from shoulder to elbow.

“Don’t let Jarvis see!” said Rotherby sharply, and she covered it while the man was in the room.

Jarvis was too sleepy or too fuddled to be curious. He merely set down the can, wished them good night and stumped away.

Then Frances bent to her work. She found a jagged wound in the shoulder, from which the blood was still oozing, and she proceeded to bathe it with a strip of linen torn from the shirt-sleeve. The means at her disposal were wholly elementary, but she performed her task with a deftness that was characteristic of her, finding with infinite relief that the wound was not vitally deep. Rotherby endured her ministrations with a stoicism that again stirred her to admiration. He seemed bent upon making the business as easy for her as possible.

“Don’t mind me!” he said once. “Just go ahead! I’ll tell you if I can’t stand it.”

And then when she had finished at last, he told her where to find some handkerchiefs for bandaging purposes in the room that he occupied.

“You will go to a doctor in the morning, won’t you?” she said, pausing. “I have only cleansed it. There is bound to be some shot in the wound.”

“Some what?” said Rotherby, and looked at her with one of his most quizzical glances though his face was still drawn with pain. “Oh, didn’t I tell you that I tore it on some barbed wire?”

She felt herself colour deeply, but she did not take up the challenge. “I should go to a doctor all the same,” she said quietly.

He laughed at her with a touch of impudence that she could not resent. “Very good, Sister Superior, I will. Now if you don’t mind tying me up, I shall be grateful. Where would you like me to sleep—in this room, or my own?”

“In your own,” she said firmly.

He sobered suddenly at her tone. “Look here, you won’t run away in the night, will you? I promise you—I swear to you—I’ll play the game.”

What game, she wondered? But she did not put the wonder into words.

“I have nowhere to run to,” she said, and turned away from him that he might not see the bitterness on her face.

When she returned with the handkerchiefs she was a practical self once more. But she was beginning to be conscious of intense physical weariness, and she felt a sense of gratitude to him for noticing it.

“I say, you are tired! You’ve been ill, haven’t you?”

“I am well again,” she said.

He swept the assurance aside. “You don’t look it. Don’t bother about me any more! Oh, well, just tie a wet pad over it and then leave me to my fate!”

He became urgent in his solicitude and the knowledge that he was suffering considerably himself made her respond far more graciously than would otherwise have been the case.

But when it was over at last, when she was alone in the strange room and realized how completely that night’s happenings had changed the whole course of her life, a blackness of despair came down upon her, more overwhelming than any she had ever known. She cast herself down just as she was and wept out her agony till sheer exhaustion came upon her and she drifted at last into the merciful oblivion of dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER II
THE BARGAIN

It was late in the morning when she awoke in response to a persistent knocking at the door, on the opening of which she found a bare-armed country-girl who informed her without preamble that the gentleman was waiting breakfast for her downstairs. Having delivered this message, she retired, and Frances was left to perform what toilet she could with the very limited means at her command.

Her long sleep had refreshed her and she reflected with relief that her strength was certainly returning. The thought of meeting Montague Rotherby gave her no dismay. Very strangely he had ceased to possess any very great importance in her eyes, her only determination being to break off all connection with him as soon as possible.

Somehow, as she entered the room where he awaited her, she had a feeling that he had never really mattered very greatly in her life. It was only what he had stood for—the realization of that part of her being which had lain dormant for so long, the throbbing certainty that for her also even the stones of the wilderness might be turned into bread.

She came forward to him, faintly smiling. “Are you better to-day?” she said.

She did not offer her hand, but he took it. His face twitched a little at her matter-of-fact greeting. She saw at a glance that he looked ill.

“I’ve had a foul night,” he said. “But it’s not serious. I’m going up to town. Will you come with me?”

She looked at him, startled. “Oh, no!” she said.

He bit his lip. “Are you still disliking me?” he said.

It was a difficult question to answer, so little did he seem to matter now. She replied after a moment without any conscious feeling of any sort.

“No. But I am not coming up to town with you. Is there any particular reason why I should? You are quite able to go alone, I suppose?”

He stared at her for a few seconds, at first frowningly, then with a growing cynicism. At length: “What have they done to you at Tetherstones?” he said. “Since you accepted my protection last night—more, asked for it—I should have thought there was quite a good reason why you should be willing to come to town with me to-day.”

“Then you are quite wrong,” she replied very clearly. “I am not prepared to do anything of the kind.”

His frown deepened for a moment, then passed. “Shall we have breakfast?” he said. “Then you can tell me what your plans are. I am quite willing to fall in with them, whatever they may be.”

Her plans! What were her plans? The old pitiless problem presented itself. Had he meant, she asked herself, thus to bring home to her the fact of her dependence upon his good offices? What were her plans?

“I have got to think,” she said.

He nodded. “Perhaps I can be of use. I believe I can be. I’ll tell you—when we’ve finished breakfast—what I meant by suggesting that you should come up to London with me.”

She wondered if he were referring to the old plan of giving her secretary work. Or perhaps—though she hardly dared to think it—he was going to talk about her sketches and the possibilities therein contained. Against her will, that thought remained with her throughout the brief meal that they ate together. Upon one point only was she fully decided. She could live on charity no longer. She was resolutely determined to work for her living now, whatever that work might be.

She noticed that her companion ate very little, but he seemed fully master of himself, and she put away the feeling of uneasiness that tried to take possession of her. She would very thankfully have avoided any discussion of the events of the previous night, but she knew this to be inevitable. There were certain things that must be faced.

He pushed back his chair at length and spoke. “There’s only one way out of this tangle,” he said. “You must realize that as I do. But perhaps I have not made myself very clear. What I want you to do is to come up to town and—marry me. Will you do that?” He smiled at her with the words. “I’m sorry my courtship has hung fire for so long. But you will admit I am hardly responsible for that. And I am quite ready to make up for lost time now. What do you say to it?”

Frances was on her feet. He had roused her to feeling at last, but it was not such feeling as would have moved her a few weeks earlier. She had to stifle an almost overwhelming sense of indignation before she could speak.

“It is quite impossible,” she said then, with the utmost emphasis. “It is quite, quite impossible!”

“Impossible!” He stared at her. “But why? I understood it was what you wanted. I have a distinct recollection of your telling me so.”

She gasped at the recollection. It stung like a scorpion. “But that was long ago—long ago,” she said. “I don’t want it now! I couldn’t—possibly—contemplate such a thing now.”

“But why?” Rotherby insisted in astonishment. Then: “Perhaps you think I don’t love you. Is that it?”

“Oh, no!” She had begun to tremble. “That wouldn’t make any difference. At least, it is not that that has made me change my mind.”

“Ah!” he said with a sudden grimness. “Something else has done that.”

She was aware of a sharp pain at her heart that was almost unendurable. It took all her courage to meet his eyes. But she forced her voice to steadiness. “Perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say that I have come to know my own mind rather than that I have changed it. I thought I loved you, but it was a mistake. As to whether you ever loved me, I have no illusions at all. You never did.”

He got up. She saw his face twist as if he were in pain, but she knew that it was nothing physical that brought that look to his eyes, banishing the cynicism. “You seem very sure of that,” he said, and turned from her to light a cigarette. “So I am struck off the list, am I? Do you think you are altogether wise to do that—after what happened last night?”

The question surprised her, but it was wholly without malice. She could not take offence.

She answered him in a low voice, for the first time conscious of the dread of giving pain. “I have really no choice. I couldn’t do anything else.”

“What do you propose to do?” he said.

The old maddening question that she had had to answer so often. She tried to summon the old battling spirit, but it did not respond to her call. Her pride had been flung in the dust. What did she propose to do? Was there anything left that could ever restore her self-respect?

With a gesture that was quite unconsciously pathetic, she turned and went to the window in silence.

Rotherby smoked without speaking for a few seconds. If he felt the appeal of her hopelessness, he did not show it.

It was she who spoke first at length, without turning, and it was as though she uttered the words to herself with the dreary persistence of despair.

“I have got to begin again.”

“What are you going to do?” said Rotherby.

There was a quality of ruthlessness in his voice that pierced her despair. She swung round abruptly and faced him. There was majesty in her bearing, though with it was mingled the desperation of the hunted animal at bay.

“I will work,” she said. “I am not afraid of work. And I don’t care what I do.”

He came and joined her at the window. “Yes, it sounds all right,” he said. “But you haven’t the strength, and you know it.”

She shrank at the blunt words, for they struck her hard. She knew—it was useless to dispute it—that she lacked the strength.

“What is the use of saying that?” she said, protesting almost in spite of herself.

“Because I want you to see reason,” he rejoined, and she knew that he recognized his advantage, and would press it to the utmost. “Why don’t you want to marry me, Circe? You might do very much worse.”

She drew back from him. “Oh, don’t you see that it is out of the question?” she said. “I couldn’t marry you. I don’t love you.”

She saw his face harden. “That is plain speaking,” he said. “But I want to know why. What have I done to forfeit your love?”

“But I never loved you,” she said.

“Are you sure of that?” He spoke insistently. “You kissed me. You let me hold you in my arms.”

She flinched at the recollection, but she compelled herself to face him. “That was a mistake,” she said.

“You are sure of that?” said Rotherby.

“Quite sure,” she answered with simplicity.

He shifted his ground. “Are you also sure you know what love is?”

She clenched her hands as though in self-defence. “Every woman knows that,” she said.

“Then how did you come to make a mistake?” he countered.

Again she drew back as from the thrust of a dagger. “Oh, I suppose any woman might do that, but when once she has found it out—she doesn’t do it again.”

“How did you come to find out?” said Rotherby.

The inquisition was becoming intolerable, but still she faced him with resolution. “I have had a good many hours for thought,” she said. “And I have thought a good deal.”

“At Tetherstones?” he said.

“Yes.”

She saw a gleam of something she did not understand in his look. He seemed to be watching narrowly for something. He spoke abruptly.

“What I don’t understand—what I want to understand—is why you came with me last night.”

She answered him with an effort. “I had to get away.”

“Ah!” he said. “It wasn’t on my account then? You weren’t coming to meet me after all—in spite of my message? Did you get my message?”

She bent her head. “Yes. I had your message. Ruth told me. I was coming—I was coming—to meet you.”

“Yes?” he said. “Why were you so late?”

She hesitated. She could not tell him of that awful interview in the farm-kitchen. She could not bring herself so much as to mention Arthur’s name.

“I was coming to meet you,” she said again. “I didn’t mean to be late. But they are a strange family. I didn’t want them to know.”

“A very strange family!” said Rotherby. “Why should they know? Your affairs are your own.”

“Yes. But they have been very kind to me. They might think they had a right——”

“A right to shoot anyone from outside who wanted to speak to you?” he said.

“Oh, no—no!” she protested, feeling the hot colour rise overwhelmingly under his look. “That was a piece of madness.”

“You knew it was going to happen?” he questioned.

“No. I knew you were in some sort of danger. I didn’t know what. I was coming to warn you.”

Reluctantly she uttered the brief sentences. It was like the betrayal of her friends.

He seized upon the unwilling admission. “You knew? How did you know?”

She had to answer him. “One of the men on the farm told me. He didn’t say why—merely that you were in danger—that I had better warn you to go.”

“And then you decided to come with me?” said Rotherby.

“I decided that I couldn’t stay any longer,” she told him steadily. “You came up at the right moment, that was all.”

“What?” His eyes searched her again, his expression slowly changing. “You were running away too, were you?”

She wondered that he did not press the point of the mysterious attack upon him further, but was thankful that he refrained. She turned from the subject with relief. “I had to get away,” she said again.

“You’re not going back?” he questioned.

Something rose in her throat. Again she was conscious of that intolerable pain. She forced her utterance. “Never, no, never!” she said.

He made no comment, but turned away from her and paced the length of the room before he spoke again. Then, with his back to her, he paused.

“And yet you would sooner work yourself to death than marry me!”

She answered him immediately with feverish insistence. “Yes, I must work. I must work. I can’t go on being dependent. I can’t endure it.”

He turned round. “Perhaps—if you were independent—you might regard me differently,” he said.

She was silent.

He came slowly back to her. “Circe! May I hope for that?”

She looked at him helplessly.

He stood before her. “I swear to you,” he said forcibly, “that no one on this earth wants you as I do.”

A curious tremor of feeling went through her. She was stirred in spite of herself.

He put out his hand to her. “Circe!” His voice came oddly uncontrolled. “Won’t you—can’t you——”

She did not know what moved her—his obvious earnestness or her own utter friendlessness. But somehow her mood answered his. Her hand went into his grasp.

“But I must be independent first,” she said. It was the last effort of her pride. “You’ll help me to be that?”

“I’ll help you,” he said.

CHAPTER III
THE TURN OF THE TIDE

The days that succeeded her flight from Tetherstones left an ineradicable impression upon Frances. She maintained her steady refusal to accompany Rotherby to London, but she did not remain at The Man in the Moon. She found a bedroom over the little Post Office at Fordestown, and here she established herself, after collecting her few belongings from her former lodging at Brookside. She had very little money left, but she built on the hope that her sketches might find a market. Rotherby had undertaken to do his best to dispose of the one which he had taken with him, and she had plans for making more while the golden weather lasted.

On the second day of her sojourn at Fordestown she wrote to Dolly at Tetherstones. She found it impossible to give any adequate reason for her abrupt departure, so she barely touched upon it beyond begging her to believe that in spite of everything she was and would ever be deeply grateful for all the kindness that they had shown her. She ended the letter with a request that the next time Oliver had to come to Fordestown he might bring her sketching materials to her. She posted her letter and went out on to the moor for the rest of the day.

The solitude of the great heather-clad space that she loved brought soothing to her tired spirit. She was at last able to review the situation deliberately and dispassionately; but the more she meditated upon it, the more did she feel that the disposition of the future was no longer in her own control.

Very curiously, and now it seemed inextricably, had her life been bound up with Montague Rotherby’s. Neither attraction nor repulsion were factors that counted any more. He had laid claim to her so persistently that she had almost begun to feel at last that he had a claim. In any case she was too tired, too dazed by the blows of Fate, to battle any further. She who had fought so hard for her freedom was compelled to own herself vanquished at last. Like a stormy dawn romance had come to her, and by its light she had seen the golden vision of love. But the light had swiftly faded and the vision fled. And she was left—a slave.

“I will never have any more dreams,” she said to herself, as she gazed through tears at the dim blue tors. “None but a fool could ever imagine that the stones could be made bread.”

And then she sought to brace herself with the thought that she had not greatly suffered.

“It can’t have gone very deep,” she told herself very resolutely, “in so short a time.”

But yet she knew—as we all know—that it is not by time or any other circumstance that Love the Immeasurable can be measured, and that no power on earth can ever obliterate the memory of Love.

Of Montague personally she thought but little during those days. Of Arthur Dermot she thought ceaselessly. Against her will the individuality of the man imposed itself upon her. Night and day she thought of him, puzzled, distressed, humiliated, seeking vainly for a solution to the mystery in which all his actions were wrapped. Why had he misjudged her thus? What madness had driven him to attempt the other man’s life? Was he actually mad, she asked herself? It might have accounted for much, and yet somehow she did not believe it. The man’s melancholy philosophy was the philosophy of reason, his cynical acceptance of life the deliberate and trained conclusion of a balanced mind. His love for herself she found harder to understand, but it moved her to the depths, appealing to her as nothing had ever appealed before. His violence, his brutality, had shocked her unspeakably, so that she prayed passionately that she might never see him again. But yet, strangely, the appeal still held. By that alone, he had entered the inner shrine of her heart, and, strive as she might, she could not cast him out. His love for her might be dead. Never for a moment did she imagine that it could have survived that awful night. But the memory of it—ah, the memory of it—it would go with her all through her life, just as she would remember the purple flower upon the coping in the Palace garden, a thing of beauty beloved for a while and then lost—the gift that the gods had offered only to snatch away ere she had grasped it.

Those days of waiting were as the days spent by a prisoner awaiting trial, only there was no hope on the horizon. Like one of the prisoners of old of whom Arthur had told her, she was tethered to her stone and the first effort she made for freedom would crush her. Though to a great extent she had regained her strength, she knew that she was not equal to hard work—such work as she had done for the Bishop. There were times of faintness and inertia when she felt that the very heart within her must be worn out, times of overwhelming depression also, when for hours the tears would well up and fall and she lacked the power to restrain them.

No one knew what she was enduring. There was no one at hand to help her. Chained to her stone, she waited day by day, not for deliverance but for the coming of her fate.

And then one day there came a letter from Rotherby, and in that letter was an enclosure that sent the blood tingling through her veins. He had sold her sketch for five guineas, and he could dispose of more if she cared to send them. “Couldn’t you do a companion picture to the stepping-stones?” he said in conclusion.

His letter held no endearments. It was the most business-like epistle she had ever received from him, and her gratitude was intense. She sent him all the sketches she had by the next post, and with them a note expressing her earnest thanks and asking how he fared.

Then she sat down to think. It seemed to her in the first flush of excitement that this was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her. It was like a tonic to her drooping spirits. Surely it was the turning-point at last!

The bleatings and patterings of a flock of sheep passing up the street brought to her mind the fact that it was market-day. She went to the window with an eagerness she had not known for long with the thought that Oliver might be coming at any time with her sketching materials. She longed to take up her beloved pastime again. If indeed it were to give her back her cherished independence, with what gladness would she spend her utmost effort to achieve her best. But it seemed too good to be true.

She looked in vain for Oliver or for any face she knew, and at length, disappointed, she turned away. But Rotherby’s letter was close to her hand, and she sat down to read it afresh.

It was while she was thus employed that she heard the trampling of a horse’s hoofs outside, and looked forth once more in time to see Dr. Square just rolling off his old white horse.

Her heart gave a leap at the sight, but the next moment she told herself that he had patients in Fordestown and it was not likely that he had come thither to seek her.

Nevertheless she listened anxiously, and presently heard the sound of his heavy step upon the stairs. She went to her door then and opened it, meeting him on the narrow landing outside.

She saw in a moment that his big face lacked its usual cheeriness though he greeted her with outstretched hand. “Ah, here you are, Miss Thorold! Dolly told me where to look for you, and they sent me up from downstairs. May I come in?”

“Please do!” she said, and led the way back into her room. Her first instinctive feeling of pleasure at sight of him had given way to one of misgiving. She turned very quickly and faced him. “Please tell me what is the matter! Something is wrong.”

He did not attempt to deny it. “They’re in bad trouble at Tetherstones,” he said. “And when Dolly told me you were here, I said I’d come over and see you.”

“Oh, what is the matter?” she said.

His kindly eyes looked into hers with a hint of concern. “Don’t you upset yourself, Miss Thorold!” he said. “You’re not too strong, remember. It’s the little girl—little Ruth. She’s had an accident, and she’s very ill.”

“Oh, poor mite!” said Frances. “How did it happen?”

“It’s difficult to say. The child was lost for some hours the day after you left. Then they found her up at the Stones. She had been looking for you, she said. And that was all they could get out of her. She had had a bad fall off the Rocking Stone, and couldn’t move.”

“Oh, poor little girl!” Frances’ voice was quick with anxiety. “Is she much hurt?”

Dr. Square nodded slowly once or twice. “She has no strength—and I’m afraid—very much afraid—there is some mischief to the spine. She keeps on asking for you, Miss Thorold. I said I’d come and tell you.”

“Ah!” Frances said.

It came upon her like a blow—the cudgel-stroke of Fate. So there was to be no escape after all! A sense of suffocation came upon her, and she turned sharply to the window, instinctively seeking air. Blind for a moment, she leaned there, gathering her strength.

Behind her she heard the doctor’s voice. “Now take it quietly! Don’t let yourself be overcome! There’s no need. The little one isn’t suffering, and—please God—she won’t suffer. It’s only her anxiety about you that’s worrying her. She’s not used to worry, you know. She’s only a baby.” His voice shook a little. “But if you could just go to her—set her mind at rest—you’d never be sorry. You’ve had a hard life, Miss Thorold, but you’ve got a soft heart. And sometimes, you know, when we are throwing a line to others, the tide turns in our favour and we find we’re drifting in to our own desired haven as well.”

His words reached her through a great chaos of emotions. She leaned against the window-frame with closed eyes, seeing herself as driftwood upon the tide of which he spoke. To go back to Tetherstones, to face again the torment from which she had barely escaped, to feel the grey walls enclosing her once more and all the sinister influences that had, as it were, stretched out and around her to draw her down! She lifted her face to the soft grey sky with an inarticulate prayer for help.

She heard again the doctor’s voice behind her, and realized that he was pleading for something very near his heart. Was not little Ruth near to the hearts of all who knew her?

“It won’t be for very long,” he was saying. “She’s fretting her heart out for you because she had got hold of the idea that you are in danger—frightened—unhappy. No one can set her mind at rest except you, and it would be a kindness to them all at Tetherstones to go and do it. You would like to do them a kindness, Miss Thorold?”

That moved her. Very suddenly all her doubt and hesitation were swept away. To do them a kindness—these people who had brought her back from the gates of death, who had sheltered her, cared for her, comforted her in her extremity! What mattered anything besides? What was her pride compared with this? What though her very heart were pierced by the ordeal? She could not shirk it now. It was as though an answer had come to that half-formed prayer of hers. Whatever the outcome, she had no choice but to go back.

With a sharp, catching breath, she turned. “I will go—of course,” she said. “How can I get there?”

He smiled at her with instant relief, and she realized that he had hardly expected to gain his point. She wondered how much he knew regarding her sudden departure. It was evident that he understood that she had a very strong reason for not wishing to return.

He got up. “Well, as I said, you’ll never regret it,” he said. “As to getting there, Oliver’s in the town now with the cart. Do you mind going back with him? It may be for a few days, you know. You’re prepared for that?”

“I will stay as long as little Ruth wants me,” she said.

“That’s right. That’s like you.” He held out his hand to her, “Good-bye, Miss Thorold! You’re looking better. I believe the tide has turned already.”

She tried to smile in answer, but she found no words. Driftwood! Driftwood! And even if the tide turned, whither could it land her now?

CHAPTER IV
RUTH

“Pleased to see you, Miss Thorold,” Oliver touched his hat with his whip and gave her his friendly smile of welcome. “A bad business this about the little girl. They’re all very upset at Tetherstones.”

“I am sure they must be,” Frances said. “What a terribly sad business, Oliver! Who was it found her?”

“I found her,” said Oliver. “But we thought she was with you and no one missed her at first. She’d been lying there all night and a good part of the day before she was missed. We’d been busy, you see—” he jerked the reins—“busy with other things. Then Maggie came out to me and said you were gone and the little one couldn’t be found, and I went straight away to the Stones to look for her. She was lying just under the Rocking Stone unconscious, and I carried her back. She’s come to herself since, but they say she’s somehow different—that she’ll never be the same again—that she—” He broke off to cough and flicked the horse’s ears with his whip. They clattered over the rough stones of the street for some distance in silence. After a while he spoke again. “She’s only a child—a bit of a baby—but she isn’t like others I’ve ever seen. Maggie is just breaking her heart over her.”

“Poor Maggie!” said Frances gently.

“Yes.” He nodded acquiescence. “Maggie and Nan—Ruth’s mother—were always the pals, you see. There was only a year between them. Nan was Arthur’s favourite sister too. He’s feeling it pretty badly—though he’d sooner die than let anyone know.”

Frances felt her heart contract. She said nothing.

They were out upon the open moor road before Oliver volunteered anything further. Then, somewhat abruptly, with a sidelong glance at her, he said, “It’s decent of you to come back to us after the fright you had.”

“I am only coming for little Ruth’s sake,” Frances said.

“Yes, I know. The doctor told me. I didn’t think he’d get you to come,” said Oliver frankly. “You’d had a pretty bad scare. But it might have been worse, I suppose. The fellow wasn’t much damaged, was he?”

There was curiosity in his tone tempered with a reticence that she was quick to detect. A sharp sense of anger surged within her.

“It was no thanks to—to—the man who shot him that he wasn’t killed,” she said.

“No. I know,” said Oliver. He added after a moment, “Anyway I did my best to prevent it. It wasn’t my fault that it happened.”

She turned upon him. “But—surely you didn’t know it was going to happen?” she said.

He lifted his shoulders. “No, I didn’t know, Miss Thorold. But I did know the chap was in danger. I told you so, didn’t I?”

“But why—why?” said Frances.

He gave her again that sidelong glance. “Can’t always account for things,” he said. “We’re a good long way from towns and civilization here.”

“But he might have been killed!” she said.

He nodded. “So he might. But he wasn’t. That’s all that matters. Where is he now?”

“He has gone to town,” she said.

“Then, if he’s a wise man, he’ll stop there,” said Oliver with finality, and whipped up his horse.

The day was soft and cloudy, the tors wrapped in mist. There was a feeling of rain in the air and the sweetness of rain-filled streams. She heard the rushing of unseen water as they trotted over the winding moorland road. It filled her with a great sadness, a longing indescribable to which she could give no name.

She asked no more questions of Oliver, for she knew instinctively that she would receive no actual enlightenment from him. Moreover, something within her shrank from discussing Arthur Dermot and Arthur Dermot’s motives with a third person. Any explanation, she felt, must come from the man himself.

They drove on up the stony road, drawing nearer and nearer to the great boulder-strewn tors, hearing the vague bleatings of sheep in the desolation but seeing no living thing upon their way. Again the eeriness of the place began to possess Frances. It was a relief to her when Oliver said abruptly, “We won’t go by the Stones.”

She believed it to be the quicker route, but it was rough, and she was thankful that he proposed to avoid it. Her dread of Tetherstones was growing with every yard they covered, but there was no turning back now. She could only go forward to whatever might be in store.

The mist gradually descended to meet them and turned to a small rain, drifting in their faces. The chill of the moor laid a clammy touch upon them. Frances shivered in spite of herself.

Oliver shot her his shrewd glance. “They’ll be awfully pleased to see you,” he said, and added, “We’re nearly there.”

Yes, they were nearly there. The atmosphere of Tetherstones seemed to be reaching out to receive them—the old grey place from which she had fled as from a prison.

They turned down the steep lane, and the scent of wet honeysuckle came to Frances mingling with the bog-myrtle of the moors. Something rose in her throat and she turned her face aside. She had fled from the place as from a prison, yet, returning, that exquisite scent came back to her as the breath of home.

They reached the white gate, standing wide to receive them, and drove through to the garden where Roger met them with extravagant antics of delight. His welcome sent a warmth to her heart that in some fashion eased the unacknowledged pain there. She approached the old stone doorway with more assurance.

Oliver saluted and turned the horse; she heard him driving round to the stables as she entered.

The door stood open according to custom. The passage was dark, but she heard someone moving in the kitchen and directed her steps thither, Roger bounding by her side. Then as she turned a corner there came the sudden tread of feet, and she drew back sharply. She was face to face with Arthur Dermot.

He also checked himself abruptly, and in a moment stood back against the wall to let her pass.

He did not attempt to address her, but she could not pass him so in his own house. She stood still.

But for a second or two her voice refused to serve her, and he made an odd movement as if to compel her to pass on. Then with a sharp effort she spoke.

“Little Ruth—I have come to see her. Is she—is she——”

“Dying—yes,” he said. “It was—good of you to come. Nell and Lucy are in the kitchen. If you like, I will tell them you are here.”

“Oh no,” she said. “No. I will go to them.”

She passed him quickly, thankful to escape, hearing his heavy tread as he went on, with that old fateful feeling at her heart. She wondered what he really thought of her for returning thus.

She found the two girls in the kitchen, very subdued and troubled though they gave her a ready welcome.

“We’ve missed you dreadfully,” said Nell. “And little Ruth has hardly left off crying for you all these days.” Her lip quivered. “Dr. Square said he should go and tell you after your letter came—but I didn’t think you’d come.”

“I had to come,” Frances said.

“I thought you would if you really knew how badly you were wanted,” said Lucy.

“I didn’t,” said Nell. “I knew you wouldn’t stay that day of the row. I told you so, didn’t I? And I never thought you’d come back. I told Arthur you wouldn’t. Only you would have done it.”

She looked at Frances with warm admiration in her eyes.

“You’re a brick,” she said. “And we’ll none of us forget it. You might run and tell Dolly, Lucy. Now sit down, Miss Thorold, and I’ll get you a glass of milk.”

She bustled round the old raftered kitchen, and Frances, sitting in the horsehair arm-chair, tried to forget that awful night when she had awaked as from a nightmare to find herself lying before the great fireplace—a prisoner.

“Where are your mother and Maggie?” she asked, when Nell brought her the milk.

“Mother is in the study with the old man,” said Nell. “Maggie is out somewhere. She and Elsie were getting hay down from the loft a few minutes ago. The work has got to go on, you know, whoever lives or dies.” She checked a sob upon the words.

Frances leaned forward and held her hand. “Tell me about little Ruth!” she said.

“Oh, there isn’t much to tell. She went to look for you the night you left. You had a fright, didn’t you? So did we. There was a frightful row after you were gone, and we all of us forgot to wonder where she was till the morning. Then Oliver found her—found her—” Nell choked and recovered herself. “It was up by the Stones. She’d been there heaps of times before and never come to any harm. But this time she must have gone right up on to the Rocking Stone and overbalanced. She was lying under it, and she’d been there for twelve hours or more, poor little darling. She was unconscious when Oliver found her, but she hadn’t been all the time. She keeps on talking about it, about being a prisoner under that stone and begging God to set her free so that she can go to you. She has got a rooted idea that you are in trouble. You’re not, are you? Everything’s all right with you?” She looked down at Frances piteously, through tears.

“Don’t you bother your head about me, my dear!” said Frances. “My affairs don’t count now.” She paused a moment, then, with some hesitation: “Will you tell me why there was such a disturbance after I went?” she asked.

“Oh, that!” said Nell, and also hesitated. “That’s one of the things we’re not supposed to talk about,” she said, after a moment. “You don’t mind, Miss Thorold? You’ll try to understand?”

“My dear, don’t you trouble!” said Frances very kindly. “I shall always try to understand.”

But even as she spoke she felt again that cold misgiving at her heart. What species of monster was this whom they all combined to shield?

Lucy came running down again with an eager message. Dolly said would she go up at once? Little Ruth was in their mother’s room. She would show her where it was.

Then, as they mounted the stairs together, she drew close to Frances and slipped a shy hand into her arm. “We have missed you so much,” she said.

Frances patted the hand without speaking. The warmth of her welcome touched her very deeply.

They traversed two or three rambling passages before they reached Mrs. Dermot’s room. It was over the kitchen, a low, oak-raftered apartment with an uneven floor. It contained two beds, and in one of these, close to a narrow, ivy-grown window, lay Ruth.

Her face was turned towards the door, and—it came upon Frances with a curious sense of shock—the eyes that had always till then been closed were open, wide open, and burning with a fire so spiritual, so unearthly, that for a moment she halted almost as one afraid. In that moment she realized very fully and beyond all possibility of doubt that little Ruth was dying.

Lucy’s soft touch drew her forward. She was aware of Dolly, pale and restrained, somewhere in the background, but she did not actually see her. She went to the child’s bedside as if she were entering a sanctuary.

Ruth greeted her instantly, but she lay like a waxen image with tiny hands folded on her breast.

“Have you come back at last, dear Miss Thorold?” she said, a thrill of gladness in her voice. “God told me you would in a dream last night.”

Frances knelt down by the bed and closely clasped the little folded hands that never stirred to her touch. “My little darling!” she said softly. “Have you been wanting me?”

The burning eyes were fixed upon her. It was as though in them alone the living spirit lingered. She was sure that the spirit saw her in that hour.

“Yes, I have wanted you,” the child said. “I have been calling you—crying for you—ever since that night. You said that you were coming then, but you never came.”

“I couldn’t,” whispered Frances.

“No. You had to go,” Ruth agreed, in her tired voice. “I knew that. But why didn’t you go to the Stones? You meant to go there, didn’t you?”

“I can’t tell you now, darling,” Frances said.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Ruth. “I think God didn’t want you to go. But I didn’t know that when I went to look for you. I thought you might be lost and frightened again—like you were that first night that I found you. And then—when you weren’t there—I was afraid something had happened to you. Did anything happen, dear Miss Thorold?”

“Nothing dreadful, sweetheart,” she answered softly.

“Then God took care of you,” Ruth said, with conviction. “There was something dreadful very near you—very near you; but He sent it away.”

Those blind eyes—the eyes of a visionary—kindled afresh with the words, and a sudden sense as of something vividly remembered smote Frances. She had seen those eyes before. Where? Where? Then it came to her—like a rending flash of lightning across a dark sky. The Bishop of Burminster had had that inner flame as of prophecy in his eyes on the night that he had denounced her. A great wave of feeling went through her. She had an overwhelming desire to shield herself, shrinking as one shrinks from the unsparing beam of a searchlight.

“We won’t talk of it now, darling,” she said almost pleadingly. “Try to go to sleep!”

“I don’t want to sleep,” said the child. “I want to give you a message, but it hasn’t come yet. And if I go to sleep, I shall forget it.”

“We will give her something to make her sleep presently,” said Dolly gently. “She isn’t in any pain—only a little tired. Take this chair, Miss Thorold! You must be tired too.”

So Frances sat down beside the bed to wait, as all in that house were waiting, for the coming of the Angel of Death.

CHAPTER V
THE EXILE

Late in the afternoon Maggie came in, her plump, rosy face drawn and sad. She came and hung over the bed for a space in silence. Ruth was lying as she had lain throughout, with her eyes fixed upwards, as though waiting for a sign, and still they burned with that fire of inner sight which to Frances had been somehow terrible. Maggie straightened herself at last with a deep sigh. She looked across at Frances with the glimmer of a welcoming smile, but she did not speak. Softly she crept away.

The next to come was the white-haired mother, and to her Ruth spoke the moment she entered the room though her entrance made no sound.

“My dear Granny!” she said.

Frances rose quickly and proffered her chair; but Mrs. Dermot shook her head.

“No, no! I have only come for a moment.” She bent over the child. “Are you happier now, my baby? Can you go to sleep?”

“Yes, I am quite happy,” said little Ruth, “now that Miss Thorold is here. But I can’t go to sleep till I get the message for her. I might die, dear Granny, and I shouldn’t be able to give it her then. We can only send our love—after we are dead.”

“But Miss Thorold can’t stay here all the time, darling,” said Mrs. Dermot, with a tender touch upon the child’s brow. “She will get so tired sitting here. She has been ill, you know. She will want to rest.”

“Someone will call her when the message comes,” said Ruth. “I know she won’t mind. She is always so good. Will you go and rest, please, Miss Thorold? It won’t come yet.”

“Please do!” said Mrs. Dermot. “My son asks me to say that he hopes you will regard Tetherstones as your home for as long as you care to stay in it. I think I need not speak for myself, or tell you how grateful we all are to you for coming back to set our little one’s mind at rest.”

There was infinite pathos to Frances in the quiet utterance. Mrs. Dermot was looking at her with eyes that seemed too tired for tears.

“How she has suffered!” was the thought that passed through Frances’ mind, as she met them.

“You are much more than kind—as you always have been,” she said very earnestly, as she rose to go. “Please remember that I am here to help, if there is anything whatever that I can do! Don’t hesitate—ever—to make use of me!”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Dermot. “I should like you to rest now. Your room is quite ready for you. Perhaps—perhaps—in the night we may need you.”

Frances knew what she meant. She stooped to kiss little Ruth and turned to go. “I shall be ready at any time,” she said.

In the doorway she encountered Dolly entering with a cup of milk in her hand. Dolly stopped.

“Are you going downstairs for some tea? That’s right. It’s in the kitchen. Maggie is there. She will look after you. We are so glad you have come back.”

She passed on into the room, and Frances went out alone.

The old house was full of shadows. She could hear the shrill cries of swallows wheeling about the eaves. The scent of honeysuckle was everywhere. How had she ever thought of it as a prison?

Slowly she went down the stairs, and turned towards the kitchen. As she did so, she heard a sudden sound in the recess in which she had hidden on the night of her flight, and started to see two figures emerge. They were very closely locked together, and she saw that in the dimness she was not observed. Involuntarily almost, she drew back.

“Don’t fret, sweetheart!” It was Oliver’s voice, pitched very low. “It’ll be all right, you’ll see.”

“Oh dear, I do hope so,” came back in a whisper from Maggie. “It doesn’t feel right though I suppose it is.”

“It is right,” the man confidently asserted. “If we can’t choose our circumstances we must adapt ourselves to them. It’s the only way to live.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Maggie somewhat dubiously.

They passed down the passage to the kitchen, leaving Frances standing at the foot of the stairs.

So standing, down the passage to her left that led to the study, she heard a voice—an old man’s voice, broken, pathetic, piteously pleading.

“I assure you—” it said—“I assure you—you are wrong. It is difficult to conceive how you can permit yourself to harbour these monstrous and terrible ideas. I sometimes think your brain is not normal. You are causing the greatest grief both to your mother whom you profess to love—and to myself, for whom I know but too well that all filial affection has long ceased to exist. I am an old man and helpless. Your behaviour is breaking my heart. I shall go down to my grave with the knowledge that my son—my only son—will rejoice to see me laid there.”

There followed an agonized sound that pierced Frances like the cry of a child. Almost before she knew what she was doing, she had turned in the direction of the study. She went down the passage swiftly to the door that stood half-open and knocked upon it quickly and nervously.

“Can I come in?” she said.

It was the impulse to help, to protect, that moved her, and though she knew who was in the study with old Mr. Dermot, she did not hesitate. Only as she entered did he realize that her heart was thumping almost unendurably.

She paused just within the room. “Can I come in?” she said again, and felt her breath come sharply with the words. It needed all her resolution to control it.

A startled silence followed her appearance, and then very kindly and courteously the old man greeted her.

“Come in, Miss Thorold! Come in! I am delighted to see you!”

He was sitting in a leathern armchair in the failing light, and she was struck afresh by his frailty and the deathly whiteness of his face.

“Will you excuse my getting up?” he said. “I have had one of my bad attacks and they leave my heart very weak. Come and sit down, Miss Thorold, and give me the pleasure of a chat with you.”

She went forward, keenly aware of Arthur standing motionless before the fireplace, but not glancing at him as she passed. She reached Mr. Dermot, and took the hand he extended. It was icy-cold and trembling, and it seemed to her that there was something almost appealing in the way it clung to hers.

“I am so sorry you have been ill,” she said.

“Yes, we are a sad household—a sad household,” he made answer. “I am told the little one is very ill—the little blind girl who lives with us. Can you tell me what is the matter with her? Some childish ailment, I suppose?”

As it were against her will, Frances glanced at Arthur. His eyes looked straight back at her from under frowning brows. He spoke briefly, coldly.

“I think you have been informed before, sir, that the child would not live to grow up. Perhaps under the circumstances it is hardly to be desired that she should.”

“Under what circumstances?” said Mr. Dermot, and his voice was as cold as his son’s, but with an edge of satire that was to Frances even more unbearable than the studied indifference of the younger man’s utterance. “Since when, may I ask, have you been a qualified judge as to the relative values of life and death?”

Arthur made a very slight movement that might have denoted either protest or exasperation. “I referred to her infirmity,” he said.

Mr. Dermot laughed, a soft, bitter laugh, and Frances shivered. She felt the tension between the two men to be so acute as to be near the snapping point, and wondered desperately what mistaken impulse had brought her thither and how she might escape. But in a moment the old man addressed her again, and there came to her a curious conviction that in some fashion she was needed.

“Will you not sit down, Miss Thorold,” he said, “and take tea with me? I do not have my meals with my family as, on account of the weakness of my heart, quiet is essential to me. You were just going”; he turned very pointedly to his son; “will you be good enough to ask Elsie to bring tea for Miss Thorold as well as for myself?”

He spoke with frigid politeness as if addressing a menial, but there was a quaver in his voice that betrayed him. Frances realized very clearly in that instant which of the two men had the upper hand, and the realization was as a heavy weight laid upon her. She shook it off with conscious effort, telling herself that it mattered nothing to her at least since she had gained her freedom.

Arthur made no move of any sort in response to his father’s request. He stood as before, grim as a gaoler, looking straight across at her.

Very steadily, with a certain stateliness that was hers upon occasion, she took the chair the old man had indicated. “That is very kind of you,” she said to him. “I should like it very much.”

His smile of pleasure warmed her heart. “I assure you it will be the greatest treat to me,” he said. “It is hard to have to lead the life of a hermit. I have my books, and I am also writing—or I should say I have collected material to write—an exhaustive treatise upon the Stones. I think I told you of my intention the last time we met, and you very kindly offered to help me.”

“I would gladly do anything in my power,” said Frances, moved, as she had been moved before, by a certain forlornness in his attitude.

“Ah!” He nodded with obvious gratification. “That is kind of you. And I am sure you would be interested. There is so much that is strange and indeed almost uncanny about this subject.” He turned again to his son with elaborate courtesy. “We need not detain you here. I am aware that this matter is one that holds no appeal for a brain like yours, and I have no desire to bore you with it.”

“Very good, sir.” Arthur made a sudden movement as one who has come to a decision. “I will go.” He went to the door, and there paused, looking back, almost as if irresolute, then abruptly wheeled again. “I will send in tea,” he said, and was gone.

They heard him tramp heavily down the passage, and it seemed to Frances that a shudder went through the frail old man lying back in the armchair. He made a weary movement with one hand as one who would dismiss a distasteful subject.

“Tell me a little more about your book!” she said gently.

He looked at her, and she saw his eyes kindle in the dimness.

“I am going to ask you to tell me something first,” he said. “It all bears upon the same subject. This illness of the little blind girl which they say is so serious, is it in any way connected with the Stones—with any so-called accident that occurred there?”

He leaned slowly forward with the words, and though they were deliberately uttered there was an eagerness vibrating in them that made her wonder.

“Has no one told you about it?” she said.

“No one—no one. I am treated as a nonentity always.” He spoke fretfully, querulously. “I believe it is on account of my health, but I often think my health would improve if I were allowed to lead a more normal life. My son has relegated to himself the rulership of this establishment, and everyone is made to bow down to him. I am told—nothing. I am consulted—never.”

“He leads a hard life,” Frances said. “Perhaps it has made him hard.”

“No, no! It isn’t that. It is just the passion for ruling. Let me warn you against him, Miss Thorold! Never allow him to attain any sort of influence over you, for he is a difficult man to thwart. You would not like to be bound to him for life. It would break your heart.” He paused a moment and made again that gesture as of dismissing an unpleasant topic. “But now,” he said, “about the little girl—you were going to tell me. Something happened to her up at the Stones. What was it? Do you know what it was?”

Frances looked at him. His voice was tremulous, and yet she had a curious conviction that it was not solely anxiety for little Ruth that made it so. She considered for a moment before replying.

“She had a fall,” she said then.

“Ah! Was it near the Rocking Stone?” Mr. Dermot sat slowly forward. “You will tell me,” he said. “I am sure you will tell me.”

Again Frances hesitated. If the details of Ruth’s accident had purposely been kept from him, was she justified in enlightening him?

“I only know what I have been told since,” she said. “They found her lying unconscious, and it was evident that she had had a fall.”

“And that is all you know? You cannot tell me who found her or why she went?” Suppressed excitement sounded in the words. Mr. Dermot was gripping the arm of his chair, and the bones of his knuckles stood out sharply. “I am very anxious to know all,” he said. “They try to keep it from me, but it is wrong—it is wrong. She had a fall, you say? Was she—was she—alone when she fell?”

“I believe so,” Frances said. “In fact, I am sure of it, for they say she was not found for some hours after.”

“Ah!” The old man relaxed so suddenly that he almost fell back into his chair. “That is what I wanted to know. She was alone. They say so.” He broke off, panting a little; but in a moment or two recovered himself sufficiently to smile at her. “Now that,” he said, “gives colour, does it not, to the local rumour that the powers of evil are in some mysterious way permitted to haunt the Stones. This is a very interesting point, Miss Thorold. Can her fall have been due to something of this nature? Are you a believer in the occult?”

“Not to that extent,” said Frances, suppressing a chill shiver. “I think it was perfectly easy for the poor mite to fall, considering her blindness.”

“Ah, yes. They should not have let her wander so far. There is always the danger of a false step. But she is young. She may recover—she may recover. While there is life, there is hope; and if not,—there is the life beyond.”

He spoke gently, a faint smile on his grey features, and again Frances was touched in a fashion she could hardly have explained. He was so old, so tired, so near to the life beyond of which he spoke.

She said nothing, and in a few moments Elsie came in with a tea-tray. She looked at Frances, round-eyed, as she sat it down, but somewhat to her surprise she gave her no word of greeting.

“Arthur said you would like your tea in here,” she said. “Is that right?”

“Yes, Miss Thorold is my guest to-night,” said the old man. “Will you pour out, Miss Thorold?”

Frances complied. Elsie hovered about the room as if uncertain whether to go or to remain.

Mr. Dermot paid no attention to her for some seconds, then very suddenly he seemed to awake to the fact of her presence. He turned in his chair.

“Pray return to your work in the farmyard!” he said. “I am sure you have no time to spare for the ordinary civilities of life.”

His tone was quite quiet, but the words amazed Frances. The girl to whom they were addressed merely nodded and turned to the door. She went out in silence, leaving it open behind her.

“They always do that,” said Mr. Dermot, with a sort of weary patience. “I wonder, might I trouble you to shut it?”

Frances rose to do so, her mind still full of wonder at the curious attitude he had adopted towards his daughter.

“You think it strange,” he said, as she sat down again, “that there should be so great a lack of sympathy between certain members of my family and myself. But I assure you it did not originate with me. I am a student, Miss Thorold, and perhaps it is not surprising that those who devote the whole of themselves to manual labour on a farm should find it difficult to keep in touch with me. It is said that if you associate with the animals you will in time assimilate their characteristics. This has already happened to Arthur, and some of the girls are following in his footsteps. Milly is the only one who has shown no outward sign of deterioration since we came to Tetherstones. It is a very insidious evil, and it spreads—it spreads.” He sighed. “I foresaw it before we came here. I was never in favour of the scheme, but—I was overruled. We have a tyrant among us whose will is law.”

“Then you don’t like Tetherstones?” Frances said.

She saw again an extraordinary gleam in his eyes as he made reply. “You might ask a convict how he likes Princetown,” he said. “My place is at Oxford, but I have been torn from it and made to endure life in the desert all these years.”

“But a very beautiful desert,” suggested Frances.

He made a wide gesture of repudiation. “What is that to an exile? When you have been made to eat stones for bread, you will not notice if they are beautiful to look at.”

“I can understand that,” she said. “Yet a sense of beauty is sometimes a help. At least I found it so when I was at Burminster.”

“Ah! Burminster!” He repeated the name thoughtfully. “Did you ever meet anyone there of the name of Rotherby?”

“Why, yes.” She started a little, remembering Arthur’s attitude. “I was with Dr. Rotherby who is the Bishop of Burminster.”

“Yes—yes.” He nodded gravely. “We were at Oxford together. He left and I remained. So he is at Burminster! You were not happy with him?”

Frances hesitated. “Not very,” she admitted.

He nodded again. “A hard man—a hard man! And did you ever meet his nephew—Montague?”

She felt the colour leap to her face. “Yes, I have met him,” she said.

“Ah! He is a friend of yours,” said the old man, with quiet conviction. “A close friend?”

She did not know how to answer him. No words would come. But in that moment to her intense relief she heard a step outside. The door opened, and Mrs. Dermot entered.

“Arnold,” she said, “I am sorry to disturb you, but Dr. Square is here. He will be down immediately to see you. May he come in?”

The old man turned towards her with a fond smile. “My dear,” he said, “any pretext is welcome that brings you to my side.”

Frances got up, thankful for the interruption. “I will go to the kitchen if I may,” she said. “Maggie is there.”

“We need not drive you away,” protested Mr. Dermot.

But she was already at the door. “Perhaps—later,” she said, and was gone before he could say any more. The closing of the door behind her gave her a sense of escape from something terrible which she told herself was utterly unreasonable.

CHAPTER VI
THE CHAIN

The kitchen-door was half-open. She pushed it open and entered. Then sharply she drew back. It was raining and the place was in semi-darkness. Only a red glow from the great open fireplace lighted it, throwing into strong relief the old black rafters. And in this glow, seated at the table facing her, but with his head upon his hands, was a man.

He did not stir at her entrance. It was evident he did not hear her, and for a moment her impulse was to go as suddenly and silently as she had come. But something in that bowed silvered head checked her. She stood still, and in a second a whine of greeting from under the table betrayed her. Arthur sat upright with a jerk, and Roger came smiling out from his place at his master’s feet to welcome her.

It was Roger who saved the situation. She stooped to fondle him, and in so doing recovered her self-possession. Standing up again, she found that Arthur also was on his feet. They faced each other once more in the firelight, and the beating of the rain upon the thick laurel bushes outside mingled with the dirge-like monotony of the dripping eaves filled in that poignant pause.

Arthur spoke, his voice low and constrained. “Come and sit down! I’m just going.”

The awful pallor of his face, the misery of the eyes that avoided hers, went straight to her heart. She moved forward, urged by the instinct to help, forgetful of everything else in the rush of pity that surged through her.

“Don’t go because I am here!” she said.

He had turned already to the outer door. He paused with his back to her, and took up his cap from a chair.

“It was not my fault you were sent for,” he said. “It was done against my wish—without my knowledge.”

The words were curt, emotionless. Why did she feel as though she were in the presence of a sorely-wounded animal?

“Don’t go!” she said again, and somehow the words seemed to utter themselves; she was not conscious of any effort of her own by which they were spoken. “There is no need for you to go.”

“No need!” He still stood with his back to her. His hand was on the door, but he did not go. “Did you say that?” he said, after a moment.

“Yes.” She came forward slowly, and still it did not seem to be of her own volition that she moved or spoke. “I haven’t come back to make trouble—only to try and help—if I can.”

“Yes. I understand,” he said, and his voice came half-strangled, as though he fought some obstruction in his throat. “Square told me.”

She stopped at the table. “Have you been having tea? I thought Maggie was here.”

“She has gone out with Elsie. Milly went upstairs to Dolly. I don’t know where the others are.”

Again curiously something in his voice pierced her. It had a deadened quality—was it utter weariness—or smothered pain?

“Have you had tea?” she asked.

His hand wrenched at the door-handle. The door opened and a drift of rain blew in. But still he paused.

“I haven’t had mine,” said Frances.

He turned almost with violence and the door shut behind him. “Why haven’t you had yours? I thought Elsie brought it to you. I told her to.”

He looked at her, heavily scowling, for a moment, then again averted his eyes.

“Don’t be angry!” she said gently. “She did bring it, but I didn’t stay to drink it because your mother said the doctor was here. Do you mind if I have some now?” She looked round the table that had been cleared, then turned to the fire. “The kettle is quite hot. It will soon boil.”

He came back into the room. There was something about him at that moment upon which she could not look. He went to the dresser, and she heard the clatter of cups and saucers. She knew he was laying the table behind her, but she remained with her face to the fire.

Suddenly he was beside her. He took up the simmering kettle and forced it down into the heart of the fire, keeping his hand upon it.

“You will burn yourself!” she said.

He answered nothing, merely stood doggedly bent over the glow till the kettle spluttered and boiled. Then he lifted it, and turned back to the table.

Frances turned also. Mutely she watched him pour water into the old metal tea-pot. The haggardness of his face, the grim endurance of his set jaw, struck her afresh. She wondered if he were ill.

He set down the kettle and drew up the horse-hair chair with the wooden arms that she so well remembered.

“Sit down!” he said.

She obeyed him, finding no words.

He cut a slice from a loaf and began to toast it, Roger pressing closely against his gaitered legs.

Very suddenly his voice came back to her again, hollow, strained, oddly vibrant. “I should like you to know one thing. Though you have come back here against my will, you have—nothing to fear. I recognize it was—an act of—charity—and, so far as I am concerned, you are safe. I will never get in your way.”

“Thank you,” Frances said quietly. “I am not afraid of that.”

He made a jerky movement, but instantly checked himself, and turning the bread upon the fork, maintained his silence. She wondered what was passing behind that tensely restrained front, what torment was at work within him to produce the anguish of suffering which she sensed rather than saw. But he gave her no clue of any sort. He remained bent and silent till his task was finished.

Then he brought the toast and set it before her. “Can you pour out your own tea?” he said.

She looked up at him, gravely resolute. “Mr. Dermot, please join me!”

He made a sharp gesture that was more of protest than refusal. “Afraid I can’t stay. I’ve got to see Oliver.”

“You can if you will,” she said steadily. “That isn’t your reason. You can see Oliver afterwards.”

He gave in abruptly, in a fashion that surprised her. He dropped down on to the wooden chair he had occupied at her entrance, and propped his head on his hands.

“My God!” he said, under his breath. “My God!”

Then she knew that his endurance was very near the breaking-point, and the woman’s soul in her rose up in strength to support his weakness.

She got up to take another cup from the dresser, then poured out some tea and took it to him on the other side of the table. He did not attempt to stir at her coming, but the hands that supported his head were clenched and trembling.

She bent over him, all thought of fear gone from her. “Here is your tea,” she said. “Can you drink it?”

He moved then, reached out suddenly and grasped her wrist, drawing her hand over his face till her palm was tightly pressed upon his eyes.

“My God!” he said again, almost inarticulately. “Oh, my God—my God!”

A dreadful sob broke from him, and he caught his breath and held it rigidly till the veins in his temples stood out like cords.

Frances looked on mutely till she could bear it no longer. Then very gently she laid her other hand upon his shoulder.

“Ah, don’t!” she said. “Don’t! Let it come! It will be easier to bear afterwards. And what do I matter?”

She felt a great shiver go through him. His hold upon her hand was as the clutch of a drowning man, and suddenly she felt his tears, slow and scalding, oozing between her fingers. He bent his head lower and lower, striving with himself, and she instinctively turned her eyes away, averting them from his agony.

So, for what seemed an interminable space of time, they remained. Then at last the man spoke, jerkily, with difficulty, yet with returning self-mastery.

“It’s no good crying out. It’s got to be endured to the end.” He paused; then: “I don’t often cry out,” he said and she thought she caught a note that was almost of appeal in his voice.

“We are all human,” she said.

“Are we?” He raised himself abruptly with the words, and leaned back in his chair, looking straight up at her, her hand still grasped in his. “Are you human?” he said, as if challenging her. “I don’t believe you are.”

His eyes were burning. They had the strained look that comes from lack of sleep. A brief misgiving assailed her, but she put it firmly away. She met his look unflinching.

“Yes, I am human,” she said.

“Then how you must hate me!” he said.

She shook her head in silence.

“Why do you do that?” he said. “Are you afraid to tell me so?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t hate you.”

“Why not?” he said.

She hesitated momentarily. Then: “It may be because I don’t know you well enough,” she said.

There was something in his eyes that besought her. Again involuntarily she thought of a wounded animal. “Not well enough to hate me?” he said.

“Not well enough to judge,” she answered quietly.

She saw his throat move spasmodically. His eyes left hers. “I would rather be hated—than tolerated—by you,” he said, almost under his breath.

His hold upon her had slackened; she slipped her hand away. “Won’t you have your tea?” she said. “I am sure you will feel the better for it.”

He made an odd sound that might have been an effort at laughter, and stretched out his hand for the cup.

She stood beside him while he drank, and took it from him when he had finished. “Eat some toast while I pour you out some more!” she said.

“I made the toast for you,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter,” she returned.

“It does matter.” He leaned across the table for the loaf. “Bread will do for me. And you will drink some tea yourself before you give me any more.”

She heard the dominant note returning in his voice. “I shall do as I think best,” she said, but she complied, for something in the glance of those fevered eyes compelled.

They ate and drank together thereafter in unbroken silence until he rose to go. Then, his cap once more in his hand, he paused, looking across at her.

“So you have decided to reserve judgment for the present?” he said.

She met his look steadily, though her heart quickened a little.

“For the present—yes,” she said.

He still looked at her. “And if you find—some day—that I can behave other than as a brute-beast, will you perhaps—manage to forget?”

To forget! The word, uttered so humbly, brought the quick tears to her eyes. She turned her face aside.

“Why don’t you ask me to—forgive?” she said, her voice very low.

“Because I won’t ask the impossible,” he answered. “Because you tell me you are human, and—well, some things are past forgiveness. I know that.”

He swung round with the words. She heard him open the door, heard again the drip and patter of the rain outside, heard the heavy tread of his feet as he went out.

Then, when she knew that she was alone, her strength went from her. She covered her face and wept.

In that hour she knew that she was chained indeed, beyond all hope of escape. Brute-beast as he described himself—murderer at heart as she believed him to be—yet had he implanted that within her heart which she could never cast out. Whatever he was, whatever he did, could make no difference now. She loved him.

CHAPTER VII
THE MESSAGE

“The doctor says it can’t possibly go on much longer.”

“But if it does—if it does——”

“Oh, Lucy, do stop crying! What’s the good? You’ll make yourself ill, child, if you go on.”

“I can’t help it—I can’t help it. Mother looked like death just now.”

“That’s only because of something the Beast said. Oliver told me——”

The voice sank to a lower whisper as in the old days behind the screen, and Frances, seated in a low chair beside the bed, tried not to strain her ears to listen. She wished the two girls would leave the adjoining room and go to bed, but they had been placed there by Dolly while she snatched a brief rest, and she did not like to intervene. So she sat there motionless, watching a great moth that had come in from the night and was fluttering round and round the ceiling in the arc of light cast upwards by the shaded lamp at her side, and listening to Lucy’s fitful sobbing in the other room and Nell’s somewhat rough and ready efforts to comfort her.

The very thought of tears seemed out of place in that quiet room, for Ruth was as still and as peaceful as an effigy upon a tomb. She was not asleep; of that Frances was fully convinced. But she was utterly at rest, content so long as her friend remained beside her to lie in that trance-like repose and wait.

The soft night air blew softly in upon them, laden with the scent of the moors. The magic of it went to Frances’ inmost soul. She felt as if in some fashion the message of which the child had spoken was being wafted in from those star-lit spaces, but as yet it had no words. Only the burden of it was already in her heart.

A long time passed thus; then there came a movement in the adjoining room. The whispering was renewed for a moment, and ceased. The white-haired mother entered, and as before, Ruth spoke.

“My dear Granny!” she said softly.

Mrs. Dermot motioned to Frances not to move. She came to the other side of the bed and knelt down. “Shall we say our prayers, darling?” she said.

Abruptly Frances realized that someone else had entered also, though she had heard no sound, and looking up she saw Arthur standing just within the doorway between the two rooms.

He stood there motionless until his mother began to murmur the Lord’s Prayer, then noiselessly he crept forward and knelt close to the foot of the bed.

It came to Frances then, and she never questioned the impulse, to slip to her knees beside him. And in the hush of that quiet room, she prayed as she never prayed before.

Mrs. Dermot’s gentle voice went unfaltering on to the evening hymn.

“Abide with me, fast falls the eventide,

The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide,

When other helpers fail and comforts flee,

Help of the helpless, O, abide with me.”

Verse after verse very softly she repeated to the dying child, and at the last Ruth’s voice joined hers, low and monotonous, murmuring the words.

“Hold Thou Thy Cross before my closing eyes,

Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies,

Heaven’s morning breaks and earth’s vain shadows flee,

In life—in death—O Lord, abide with me.”

The two voices ceased, and there fell a deep silence. How long it lasted Frances never knew. She was as one kneeling in a holy place, too near to the spiritual to reck of time. But gradually, as she knelt, there dawned upon her the consciousness of another presence in that chamber of Death. It did not surprise her when Ruth’s voice, quiet and confident, spoke in the stillness. “This is my mother!” she said. “She came to me that night at the Stones and stayed with me so as I shouldn’t be frightened. She said she would come again if God would let her. Isn’t He kind?” An odd little quiver of rapture ran through the words.

“He is always kind to His little ones, my darling,” said Mrs. Dermot very tenderly. “ ‘He shall gather the lambs with His arm and carry them in His bosom.’ ”

“That is what my mother told me,” said the child. “She says—she says—that if we only knew how beautiful it is on beyond, we should never mind going, or cry—ever—for those who went. You won’t cry when I’ve gone, dear Granny, will you?”

“Not for you, darling,” Mrs. Dermot whispered back.

“Nor for my mother any more,” said little Ruth. “She is quite happy. Do you see her? She is standing close to you and smiling. Don’t you see her, Granny?”

“I know that she is here,” said Mrs. Dermot.

“She is very, very pretty,” said Ruth in a hushed voice, “much prettier than anyone else I know. Her hair is dark, and her eyes are lovely, like hare-bells. No one else has eyes like that.” Again the thrill of gladness was in her voice. “I can see her, Granny! I can see her!” said little Ruth. Then in a lower voice, slightly mystified: “I wonder why Uncle Arthur and Miss Thorold are so unhappy. I can see them too, but they are not so clear. I wish they were happy. I should see them more easily then.”

Frances raised her head, but the blue eyes were fixed upwards; it was the eyes of the soul that saw her, the voice of the soul that spoke.

“Miss Thorold,” said the child, “the Stones are waiting for you. Don’t ever be afraid! They are going to give you something that you’re wanting—something that you’ve wanted always. I don’t know what it is, but that doesn’t matter. You’ll know it when you find it, because it’s very big—bigger even than the Rocking Stone. And if you can’t find it by yourself, Uncle Arthur will help you. Only you’ll have to ask him—because it’s the only way.” Her voice began to drag a little. “He’s so lonely and so sad, and he never thinks anybody wants him. Often when you think he is cross, he is just unhappy. He has been unhappy for ever so long, and it’s getting worse. Grandpa doesn’t understand, but then he is so often away now. He has been away ever since that night I went to look for you at the Stones. I don’t know where he goes to, do you?”

Frances hesitated, but at once Mrs. Dermot spoke in answer.

“Granny knows where he is, darling. He is coming back soon. Don’t trouble your little head about him!”

“Give him my love!” said Ruth. “I shan’t see him again, but he is too old to mind, and I am not big enough to matter. Will you ask Uncle Arthur to come quite close to me just for a minute? I want—I want to tell him something.”

Arthur rose from his knees and moved to the head of the bed. His arm went round his mother as he stooped to the child.

“I am here, Ruth. What is it?”

There came a little gasp from the bed. “Will you—hold my hand?” said Ruth. “I—can’t see you quite well yet. Thank you, Uncle Arthur. Now I can tell you. Do you remember that night I found my dear Miss Thorold—up by the Stones—when she was frightened—and lost?”

“I remember,” he said.

“I found her—for you,” said the child. “God sent me and I went. I brought her back to Tetherstones—for you. I told her it was home because you were here—because I knew—somehow—that you wanted her. You do want her, don’t you, Uncle Arthur?”

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” he said.

“It does matter,” said Ruth very earnestly. “Because when people want each other and haven’t got each other they are very unhappy—same as you, Uncle Arthur. And I don’t think she’ll ever find that big thing by the Stones unless you help her. You see—you see—” again the child’s voice flagged, she seemed to seek for words—“You see, there is—someone else. And if—if anyone else helps her, p’raps they won’t find the real thing at all, but something—something quite different. Don’t you see, Uncle Arthur? Don’t you understand? It’s hidden, and you’ll have to hunt and hunt before you find it. I shall know when you find it. But I shan’t be able to tell you how pleased I am. I shall only—be able—to send you—my love.”

The tired voice trailed off drowsily. Frances was anxiously watching the little white face on the pillow, but suddenly something drew her look upwards. She met the man’s eyes across the bed, and was conscious of a sense of shock. They were grim with a desperate endurance that pierced her like a cry. Though they met her own, they were fixed and desolate. Scarcely even did they seem to see her.

Then again Ruth spoke with that soft thrill of gladness that made her think of the first faint call of a bird in the dawning.

“My mother is waiting for me,” she said. “She is going to take me out to the stars. Do you mind if I go, dear Granny? I would like to go so much.”

There was a brief pause. Then: “I don’t mind, my darling,” Mrs. Dermot answered very softly, and added as if to herself, “God knows best.”

“I shall always be happy with my mother,” said little Ruth. “And when you come, we shall all be happy together.”

She sank into silence again, and for a space no one moved or spoke. Frances realized that Ruth’s breathing was getting feebler, but there was no distress of any sort. Like the flame of a spent candle the little life was slowly flickering out.

She heard the soft stirring of the night-wind in the trees of the garden and the patter of falling rain-drops. And the great peace in which the world was wrapped came into the quiet room like a benediction, so that presently she was scarcely aware of any other presence there than that of the Angel upon the threshold.

It seemed to her a long while before Ruth spoke again, and then it was to utter her own name.

“Dear Miss Thorold, are you there?”

She rose up quickly. “Yes, darling, yes. What is it?”

The blue eyes with their mysterious fire gazed straight up to hers. “You’ll find it up by the Stones,” said the child, “where the giant hare-bells grow. That is the message, dear Miss Thorold. And when you find it, keep it—always—always—always!” Her breath caught suddenly, stopped, went on again with a gasp. “Because God sent it for you—and He wants you to have it. Do you understand? If you don’t, it doesn’t matter—so long as you keep on looking. You’ll know it when you find it, because it’s—it’s the most precious thing in the world.” She broke off, and for a few seconds it was as if she had forgotten to breathe, so still was she, so utterly without any suggestion of pain. Then, very faintly, her voice came again.

“I’m very tired. Is my dear Granny there?”

“I am here, darling,” came the patient answer from the bedside.

“Will you kiss me good night?” said little Ruth. “I am going to sleep now.”

On either side of the bed the man and the woman drew back, making way for the older woman. She bent and kissed the child, clasping her closely, murmuring fond words.

So for a time they remained. Then there came a soft, fluttering sigh, and afterwards a great silence. And Frances knew that the child was asleep.

CHAPTER VIII
THE MIRACLE

“You won’t leave us?” said Maggie tremulously. “Please, you won’t leave us?”

“If I can be of the slightest use here of course I will stay,” Frances answered, “for a time at least. But I can’t live on your kindness any longer. That is absolutely certain. I am beginning to make money by my sketches, and I must be allowed to pay my way.”

“You will talk that over with Mother, won’t you?” said Maggie. “I know she doesn’t want you to go. None of us do.” She smiled tearfully. “Somehow we feel as if all the luck of Tetherstones would go with you, and there’s never very much of it at any time, as you may have noticed.”

“I shouldn’t say that,” said Frances. “Fortune favours the brave, you know. You mustn’t let yourself lose heart.”

“I try not,” said Maggie. “But it’s very difficult sometimes. That night you went away to Fordestown was so terrible, and then—and then losing little Ruth! We thought there would have to be an inquest, but Dr. Square is so good, and he managed everything for us. Of course our darling was not like other children. We all knew that, and that we shouldn’t have her always. But that doesn’t make it any easier, does it?”

“My dear, don’t cry!” said Frances gently. “I am sure there is a happy time in front of you. Just keep looking up! You will see very soon that the clouds are breaking.”

“I wonder,” whispered Maggie. “Well, I must go. There’s heaps to be done. Poor Mother is so tired when Father is ill.”

“Is he better this morning?” Frances asked.

“No, not much. He fainted three times during the night. Dolly of course is splendid. She and Mother and Arthur divide the nursing between them. At least, Arthur—or Oliver—is always within call in case of need. But the rest of us are not much good. So we just run round the farm,” said Maggie, preparing to depart.

“Is he fretting for little Ruth?” asked Frances.

Maggie’s eyes opened wide; she looked startled for a moment. Then: “Oh, no! I doubt if he even thinks about her,” she said. “He never loved her as we did. He doesn’t love anybody except Mother. That’s what makes it so difficult.”

“I wonder if I could help with him,” said Frances.

“Oh, don’t think of it!” said Maggie. “It wouldn’t be fit for you.”

But Frances did think of it notwithstanding. The serious illness of the old man, so quickly following the death of little Ruth, had stirred her deepest pity for them all, and she longed to be of any use. They had done so much for her in her hour of need, and it seemed to her a heaven-sent opportunity to make some return.

The work of the farm went on as usual now that little Ruth had been laid to rest. The general routine was unchanged. There was no sign of mourning. It was only in their hearts that the child’s passing had left a blank. The girls whispered together of her and sometimes wept, but no special corner was empty because of her. Like a will-o’-the-wisp she had dwelt with them and now had flitted away. All had loved her, all had cared for her, all missed her. But now that she was gone not one of them, save perhaps the white-haired grandmother, could say that the removal of her daily presence had made any material difference. She had ever been a thing of the spirit, flower-like, contented, asking nothing of those around her, clinging closely only to one. And that one was the least likely of all to make any outcry. Patient and steadfast, she went her quiet way, and if she suffered, none knew it.

Frances had come to regard her with a deep reverence. She understood now something of the nature of the bond that existed between mother and son. They were cast in the same mould. They faced life with the same determined fortitude. But whereas the one had definitely passed the age of rebellion and unrest, the other was still in the prime of life,—a gladiator to whom defeat was cruelly hard to bear. He might come to it in time, that stillness of resignation, but not till the fires of life had died down in his veins and there was nought of paramount importance left to live for. Then she could imagine such a state of mind supervening, but her whole soul revolted at the thought. And there were times when she was fiercely glad that he had not been able to hide his suffering from her.

She saw but little of him during that time, but on the day of her talk with Maggie, she came upon him unexpectedly towards evening, leaning upon the garden-gate in the gloaming, his pipe in his mouth.

He straightened himself to let her pass, and, the last glow of the sunset being upon him, she saw again that sleepless look in his eyes that had before so moved her.

She paused with the half-formed intention of making some casual remark; but words that were wholly different from those she had intended to utter came to her lips instead.

“How tired you are!” she said.

She saw his mouth take the old cynical curve. “But still not down and out,” he said.

She realized at once that the subject was unwelcome, but she did not turn from it. Some impulse moved her in the face of his distaste.

“I am wondering,” she said, “if perhaps I could be of use—relieve you and your mother a little. I should be very proud if you would let me try.”

He caught at the word as though it stung him. “Proud! Miss Thorold, your pride is easily satisfied!”

She faced him steadily. “Mr. Dermot, I mean what I say—always. I owe you a debt. I should like to repay it. But if you refuse to accept payment, I will at least not add to it any further. If you will not allow me to be of use to you, I shall leave to-morrow.”

His attitude altered on the instant, so suddenly that she was disconcerted. He leaned towards her with an odd gesture of surrender. “It is not a question of my allowing or disallowing,” he said. “You have me in the dust. Do whatever seems good to you—now and always. You come or go at Tetherstones exactly as you will.”

His manner had a baffling quality, but she did not question the sincerity of his words; for she sensed a certain anxiety behind them that thrilled her strangely.

“In that case,” she said, “will you let me stay—and help you?”

He did not answer immediately, and in the brief silence she realized that he was putting strong restraint upon himself. Then: “You will stay,” he said, “if you will deign to do so. As to helping me—as to helping me—” he paused as if at a loss.

Something moved her to fill in the gap. “If you will trust me in the sick-room,” she said, “I think I could be of use. May I not try?”

He drew a hard breath and turned half from her as though he would go away. Roger, standing by and eagerly watching his every movement, prepared to accompany him, and then, realizing his mistake, drooped his head dejectedly and resigned himself to further inactivity.

Arthur spoke with his face averted. “It is not a question of trust, Miss Thorold. It is you yourself that I have to consider. You don’t quite know what you are asking, and it is difficult for me to tell you.”

“You need not mind telling me,” she said.

He made a gesture of impotence. “I’ve got to tell you. That’s the hell of it. If you stay here, you’ve got to understand one thing. My father is suffering from heart-disease, and, as you know, the heart and brain are very closely connected. His brain is affected.”

“I am not surprised at that,” Frances said. “In fact, I had suspected it before.”

He turned upon her with that goaded expression which but for its suffering, might have intimidated her.

“What made you do that? What has he said to you?”

“Oh, nothing very much,” she answered gently. “I have thought him a little vague from time to time. I noticed that he never seemed to regard little Ruth as an actual belonging, for one thing.”

“Go on!” he said grimly. “You have noticed more than that.”

She faced him candidly. “ ‘Yes, I have. I have noticed a great lack of sympathy between him and his family for which I could not imagine they were to blame.”

“You never blamed me?” he said.

She hesitated. “I think I always knew that you were very heavily handicapped in some way,” she said.

He nodded. “Yes, damnably. But I won’t attempt to deceive you of all people, so far as I am concerned. I have a brutal temper, and I hate him! I hate him from the bottom of my soul—just as he hates me!”

“Oh, stop!” Frances said, shocked beyond words by the deadly emphasis with which he spoke.

He uttered a sound that was half-laugh and half-groan. “You’ve got to know it. Yes, he is my father, but I only endure him for my mother’s sake. I have wished him dead for years. I wish it more than ever now.”

“Oh, hush!” Frances said. “Please don’t say it! Don’t think it! You will be so sorry afterwards.”

“Why should I be sorry?” he said sombrely. “Do you think I shall ever regret him? He who has all my life stood in the way of my gaining anything I hold worth having? It’s too late now. My chances are gone. And I don’t complain—even to you. As I say, his brain is affected. He suffers from delusions. I have got to bear with him to the end. So what is the good?”

She could not answer him. Only, after a few seconds, she said quietly, “I think I should be too sorry for him to—hate him.”

“I wonder,” said Arthur.

He stood for a few moments looking at her. Then, very abruptly: “Is that by any chance the reason why you don’t hate me?” he said.

She met his look unflinching. “No,” she said. “At least not entirely.”

“There is another reason?” he questioned.

She bent her head.

“And I am not to know what it is?” His voice was low but it held urgency.

Her hand was on the catch of the gate, but still she met his look. “Mr. Dermot,” she said, “there is a French saying that applies very closely to you and to me. Do you know what it is?”

“ ‘Tout comprendre est tout pardonner,’ ” he said.

She opened the gate. “Even so,” she said. “When that happens, you will know why I have not hated you.”

She left him with the words, but not before the sudden fire of his look had reached her soul. As she went away down the garden-path, she knew that her limbs were trembling. But there was that in her heart which filled her with a burning exultation. The stones were turning to bread indeed.

CHAPTER IX
THE INVALID

“Don’t take any notice of anything he says!” whispered Nurse Dolly. “Just sit beside him and keep him quiet! He’s got some queer fancies, poor old man. Sure you won’t mind them?”

“Of course not,” Frances murmured back.

“That’s right. And give him some bromide if he gets tiresome! Otherwise, that digitalis stuff. You understand, don’t you?”

“Perfectly,” said Frances.

“Then I’ll go,” said Dolly. “Be sure to call if you want anyone! I shall only be in the next room. I expect he’ll be quite good. He likes you. But don’t stand any nonsense from him! Because if once he gets the upper hand, he’s difficult.”

“I am sure he will be good,” Frances whispered, with a pitying glance towards the pallid face on the pillow.

“I daresay he will,” said Dolly. “He’s tired now. He may get a little sleep. It’s very good of you, Miss Thorold. He won’t stand anyone else near him, you know, except Mother. And it’s killing work for her.”

“If you only knew how glad I am to be of some use to you at last!” Frances said.

Dolly smiled. “You’ve made all the difference to this establishment already. There, I’ll go. Sure you’ve got everything you want?”

“Everything,” said Frances.

“Then good-bye! I’ll be back in two hours unless you call me sooner.”

She nodded a cheery farewell and departed, softly closing the door behind her, leaving Frances to wonder at her endurance. For it did not take more than the most casual glance to tell her that the girl’s eyes were drooping with weariness.

“They are all amazing,” she said to herself, as she sat down in a low chair within sight of the bed. “They never give in.”

It was the afternoon of the following day and she had gained her end after a very brief talk with Mrs. Dermot who, somewhat to her surprise, had put but slight obstacle in her way. The fact that she herself was nearly dropping with fatigue possibly had some influence with her, but Frances was inclined to think that Arthur had already given his vote in her favour. For she had shown no surprise, only a wan gratitude that went to her heart.

So for that afternoon the invalid was in her charge, and Frances was strangely elated by the trust reposed in her. The grimness of Tetherstones seemed to be mellowing day by day into a homely warmth that was infinitely precious to her.

She had another reason also for elation on that golden afternoon of late summer, though with regard to this her feelings were decidedly mixed. A letter had been forwarded to her from Fordestown bearing a London postmark, containing a further cheque for ten pounds from Montague Rotherby, and a few words scrawled within telling her that her sketches were sold and that the purchaser desired to see her in town with a view to commissioning more. The message was of the briefest, wholly business-like in tone. He wrote from a club, but he gave her an address in Mayfair at which his friend—a Mr. Hermon—was to be found, and offered to meet her himself and conduct her thither if she would fix a date convenient to her.

It was an offer which she well knew she could not afford to refuse, though she would have given much to have received it from any other quarter. But since the means could not be of her choosing, since, moreover, it was inevitable that she should meet and finally convince Montague Rotherby that the concession he had so hardly won from her must be relinquished, she braced herself to face the situation with a stout heart.

“They are all so brave here,” she said to herself. “I mustn’t be the one to shirk.”

And then rather wistfully she smiled at the thought of classing herself as one of the inmates of Tetherstones—she who had fled in terror not so very long before. She wondered how it was that they had all with one consent refrained from any species of questioning upon that night’s doings. Arthur again, no doubt! But Arthur himself—how had he come to change his mind concerning her? Arthur who in his fury had so nearly taken another man’s life!

She lacked the key to the puzzle and it was futile to turn it over and over. The fact remained that in some fashion she had been vindicated, and Arthur’s remorse was a thing upon which she could not bear to dwell. She wondered if she would ever understand all, but she knew that already she had pardoned.

The afternoon sunlight slanted in at the open window. From where she sat she could see the steep rise of the moor that led up to the Stones. She pictured them in their stark grandeur—those mystic signs of a bygone age—the tetherstones of the prisoners and the terrible Rocking Stone that none might move out of its place, but that even a child might sway. How many of those striving ones had been ground to death in their desperation, she wondered? And now the sun shone upon that fatal place of sacrifice, and the giant harebells bloomed where the child who had never known darkness had wandered and lain down to sleep. Her thoughts dwelt tenderly upon little Ruth and her harebells—the flowers she had never seen yet knew and loved so dearly—the flowers to which she had likened her mother’s eyes!

A feeble voice spoke in the stillness and her mind flashed back to her surroundings.

“Nan, my dear, is that you?” it said.

She heard the words and sat motionless, uncertain as to whether they were intended for her or not. Then she saw that the tired old eyes were looking straight at her, and she softly rose and went to the bed.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” she asked.

He looked up at her, frowning a little, as if there were something about her that he could not wholly understand. “Yes, dear, yes,” he said finally. “Bring your little sketching-block and sit down beside me! I should like to lie and watch you.”

“I haven’t been doing any to-day,” she said. “But I have a book here. Would you like me to read to you?”

He shook his head restlessly. “No, no, no! I am too tired for books. Bring your sketching! I should like that better than anything. The light is good enough, isn’t it?”

“Oh, quite,” she said, “if you really wish it. But—” She stood hesitating, uncertain whether to comply with his request; for the sketch upon which she was just then engaged was one of little Ruth in the corn-field. She was making it while the memory was still fresh within her, and she planned to give it to Mrs. Dermot.

The old man broke in upon her irresolution. “Go and fetch it! Go and fetch it! You know how I love to see you at work. They have kept you away from me for a very long time, my darling. Run and fetch it and come straight back!”

His manner was urgent though he smiled upon her with the words. She decided swiftly that, whatever his delusion, it was better to humour him. She went quickly from the room, and ran down the passage to her own. Here she hastily collected her sketching materials, and was back again within two minutes of her departure.

She found him anxiously watching the door, and she saw his eyes kindle afresh at the sight of her. “How like you, my dear!” he said. “There is no one else in the family who would have left me alone for a single second. They are always watching me, always watching me. I don’t know why.”

He spoke querulously.

She returned to her seat by his side.

“I expect they think you might want something and there would be no one to give it to you,” she said. “Do you really want to see my latest sketch? You are sure it interests you?”

“Yes—yes.” A touch of impatience sounded in the answer, but the next moment a thin old hand came out and patted hers. “My little daughter!” he said very fondly. “I can’t spare you to that brother of mine again. He keeps you too long—too long.”

“I am very glad to be back,” said Frances gently.

She looked down at the ivory-coloured hand with its nervous, clutching fingers, and was irresistibly reminded of the talons of a bird. When it closed upon her own, she was conscious of a sense of chill that almost amounted to shrinking. But still pity was uppermost in her mind, pity for this frail old man whose hold on life was so weak and yet who seemed to cling to it with such persistence.

His clasp relaxed after a moment. “Well, dear, let me see what you have been doing!” he said wearily. “I must not talk very much to-day. My heart is very tired. Have you more than one to show me?”

“No, only one,” she said. “There hasn’t been a great deal of time just lately.”

“Ah!” He smiled. “The pomps and vanities! Is that it? You have been very gay, I hear? And that handsome youngster—your cousin—what has he to say for himself? You will never contenance any serious attention from him, my darling, promise me! He is in love with you, of course. They all are. You are so lovely—so lovely. But cousins, you know, cousins are only brothers and sisters once removed. Uncle Theodore would never permit it for a moment. Neither would I, dear. You know that. You are so beautiful. You will look higher than a near relation with a wild record like his. Pshaw! I am talking nonsense. You would never dream of marrying him.”

“Never!” said Frances very decidedly, as he paused for her assurance.

“Thank you, dear, thank you,” he said. “Now let me see your sketch!”

She held it up in front of him, propped as he was upon the pillows, and there fell a long silence while he scrutinized it. The picture was of Ruth standing among the sheaves in the sunlight, with her flower-like face upraised, and in her little hands a trailing bunch of the golden corn.

The old man looked at it intently with drawn brows. Finally, with a deliberation that was almost painful, he looked at her.

“Who is that child?” he said.

She hesitated for a second; then: “Don’t you remember little—Ruth?” she said gently.

His frown deepened. “Little Ruth! You mean the blind child, I think—the little girl who lives with us?”

“Yes,” said Frances.

“And this is that child?” He turned again to the sketch, gazing at it fixedly. “But why have you made her like Nan?” he said, in a troubled voice. “Nan wasn’t blind. She had eyes like bluebells.” His look came back to her. “Thank you, Miss Thorold,” he said courteously. “You have a very charming talent. Some day I hope you will allow me to conduct you to the Stones. I should much like to see a sketch of them from your brush, most especially of the Rocking Stone, regarding which there are some very interesting traditions. You have heard of some of them perhaps?”

“I have indeed,” said Frances, laying her sketch out of sight with a feeling of relief. “I think it is rather a gruesome spot myself.”

“It is—it is,” agreed Mr. Dermot. “The Rocking Stone has even been called the Slaughter Stone before now. If you ever visit it at sunset you will see a curious phenomenon. It is streaked here and there with crimson strata, to which the sunset light gives the appearance of freshly shed blood.”

“Shall we talk of something else?” said Frances quietly.

He lifted his brows. “Certainly,” he said, with a touch of hauteur. “I have no desire to discuss anything distasteful to you. In fact, our worthy doctor has warned me that conversation of any description should not be indulged in too freely. So pray take up your sketch and work, and I will lie and watch you.”

There was a certain imperiousness in his tone which reminded her of Arthur. She would gladly have left her sketch untouched, but she realized that to do so would not make for peace. She took it up again therefore without further words, and opening her box prepared to put in some minute touches.

The consciousness of the old man closely watching her did not tend to help her, but after a few minutes the fascination of her art asserted itself, and she began to forget him. She worked for some time without looking up, and the little blue-clad figure in the corn-field began to stand out in delicate outline. She knew, as her brush moved dexterously fashioning the image of her brain, that this was the best work she had ever done, and the delight of it quickened her blood. The thought of Rotherby’s letter came to her, and she made a mental note that she would answer it that very day and accept the suggestion he had made. Now that her chance had come to her, she could not afford to let it slip. She must seize and hold it with both hands.

Her thoughts wandered back over the random words that old Mr. Dermot had just uttered. The name of Theodore had stirred her memory. It was the name of the Bishop of Burminster. She remembered how once in conversation with Arthur she had spoken of him and discovered that he knew him. Was it possible that they were related?

Another memory suddenly flashed across her—a vivid and strangely compelling memory. The eyes of the blind child with their deep blue fire of the spirit—the eyes of a visionary which had so pierced her that she had almost turned away! She felt as if a scroll, hitherto sealed, were being unrolled before her eyes; and so strong was the impression that her fingers ceased from their task and she looked up.

In a moment she was aware of a startling change in the old man in her charge. He had sunk down on the pillows, and his face was ghastly.

She got up quickly, seizing a bottle of restorative as she did so. Then she saw that his lips were moving and was partially reassured.

As she poured a dose into the medicine-glass, he spoke aloud. “You need not be alarmed. My heart is a little tired—a little tired. But it will not stop yet.”

She bent over him, holding the glass to his pallid lips.

He drank and paused. “I shall soon be better,” he said, and gasped for breath. A faint colour began to show once more in his face. He smiled at her and drank again.

“I am so sorry,” she said, with deep self-reproach. “I ought to have seen.”

“No—no,” he said, in his kindly, courteous fashion. “You must not blame yourself for that. I think I will have a little sleep. I shall not last much longer, but I shall live to see the Stones again—just once again—my Stones—the place of sacrifice—where my three-fold vow has been accomplished.” His voice began to trail off indistinctly. He closed his eyes. “The place of sacrifice—” he murmured again, and then followed an odd jumble of words in which “mother, father, and child” came with unintelligible frequency until his utterance ceased altogether.

Frances stood by his side, listening to his uncertain breathing while other words sprang up all-unbidden in her mind, almost finding their way to her lips.

“From all evil and mischief, from sin, from the crafts and assaults of the devil,—Good Lord deliver us!”

CHAPTER X
THE WOMAN’S RIGHT

“He is still sleeping very peacefully,” said Mrs. Dermot, with a grateful look at Frances. “You had a very composing effect upon him this afternoon. I hope it did not tire you very badly.”

It was supper-time, and they had met at the table in the old farm-kitchen, which Lucy and Nell had been spreading with the home produce. It was the one meal of the day at which the whole family as a rule assembled, but Dolly and Milly were absent on this occasion in the sick-room, and Arthur and Maggie had not entered.

“It did not tire me at all,” Frances answered. “I was very, very glad to be of any use. I hope you will let me do it again.”

“You are very good,” said Mrs. Dermot. “He will be better after this for a time. A long, unbroken sleep always brings him back. Won’t you sit down?”

“Did you sleep?” Frances asked.

“Oh, yes, Mother slept,” said Lucy. “I took in her tea, and she never even knew.”

“She needed it badly enough,” put in Elsie. “She’s been up three nights running.”

“Ah, well, I expect I shall rest to-night,” said Mrs. Dermot, with her tired smile. “Oh, there you are, Arthur! I was just wondering. And Maggie,—where is she?”

He had entered from the scullery. He stopped beside her chair. “Maggie? I don’t know where Maggie is. Somewhere about, no doubt. How are you, Mother? Better?”

She looked up into his face, and Frances saw the flash of sympathy between them, realized for an instant the closeness of the bond at which till then she had only guessed, and felt as if she had looked upon something sacred.

“I am all right, dear,” said Mrs. Dermot. “I have had a most refreshing sleep, thanks to Miss Thorold’s kindness. Your father will be much better when he wakes.”

“Sit down, Arthur!” said Nell. “We want to begin.”

He glanced round with a quick frown. “Where is everybody? Maggie—Oliver! Why don’t they come in? Go and call them, Elsie!”

“I don’t know where they are,” said Elsie. “I’ve milked the cows and fed the horses and locked up. They went to market this morning, and I haven’t seen them since.”

“Oh, rot!” he said. “They must have come back long ago. They are probably dawdling round somewhere. Has no one seen them? Nell, haven’t you?”

Nell shook her head. “We’ve been busy in the dairy, Lucy and I. Only came in in time to get the supper. What’s it matter? They’ll turn up.”

He turned again to Elsie. “You say you locked up. Was the brown cob back?”

“I didn’t go that way,” she said, with a touch of defiance. “It was only the cart-horses I saw to. Joe was there too. Oliver always does the cob.”

“What does it matter?” Nell said again. “Maggie can have her supper when she comes in. There’s no reason to wait for her.”

“It does matter,” he returned sternly. “I won’t have any of you out on the moors after dark, and you know it.”

“My good man!” said Nell. “What do you think we’re made of?”

He whirled upon her in a sudden tempest of wrath. “Don’t you dare to gainsay me! I mean it. I—will—not—have—you—out—after—dark. Is that plain enough? Damn it! Do you think I’ll be defied to my face?”

“My dear!” said Mrs. Dermot very gently.

He looked down at her and curbed himself. “I’m sorry, Mother. But a chit like that—not eighteen!”

“I am eighteen,” asserted Nell, crimson-cheeked. “And I won’t be kept in order by you. So there!”

He turned his eyes upon her, and she shrank in spite of herself. “You will be kept in order by me,” he said. “You will go up to your room now—do you hear?—and stay there for the rest of the night.”

“I!” said Nell. “What—now?” She stood gripping the back of the chair in which she had been about to seat herself. Her face had gone from red to white. Her eyes stared straight across the table at her brother.

He answered her without moving, but his single word fell like a blow. “Now!”

There followed a terrific silence, during which it seemed to Frances that the wills of the man and the girl were in visible conflict though neither stirred or spoke. In the end there came a faint gasp from Nell, and she turned to obey.

Lucy started up with hysterical crying. “I’m going too, then—I’m going too!”

“You will stay where you are,” Arthur said, without turning his gaze from the younger sister.

She dropped back sobbing in the chair, and Nell went wordlessly to the door. Slowly she opened it, slowly passed out and closed it again.

Mrs. Dermot looked up at her son. “Elsie may take up her supper,” she said.

He shrugged his shoulders. “She can do as she likes.” He moved to his own place and sat down. His look came to Frances. “Sorry to treat you to this exhibition,” he said. “But discipline must be maintained.”

She met his look with the utmost directness. “Did you say discipline or tyranny?” she said.

She expected anger, was prepared for it, even desired it. But he only smiled.

“Yes, you may call it that,” he said. “But it’s in a good cause. Nell is getting above herself. She has got to learn. Lucy, sit up and behave yourself! You’ve nothing whatever to cry about. Good heavens, child! Why all this fuss?”

Lucy sobbed some inarticulate words into her handkerchief, and abruptly Frances leaned forward. She spoke in a low tone, very urgently, to Arthur.

“Let her run after Nell and fetch her back!” she said.

She could not have said exactly what prompted the request. It was not primarily pity for either of the two girls. It was the man himself who held her attention at that moment, and an overwhelming desire to move that iron will out of its undeviating course.

But his reception of her interference was disconcerting. Instead of displaying the opposition she had anticipated, he spoke again to the still sobbing girl.

“Dry your eyes, you silly girl, and go tell Nell to come back!”

Lucy looked up with a gasp of sheer amazement, and Frances found herself gasping too at the utter unexpectedness of his action. Arthur’s face wore a cynical expression, but he showed no sign of impatience. “Go on!” he said. “Go and fetch her back and be quick about it!”

Lucy got up and slipped from the room.

“Miss Thorold, may I give you some ham?” said Arthur.

Their eyes met, and she caught a quizzical gleam in his that sent an odd feeling as of tension relaxed through her.

“Thank you,” she said.

He proceeded to carve the ham in silence, and as he did so there came the sound of wheels and a horse’s feet outside.

“Here they are!” said Mrs. Dermot in a tone of relief.

“I knew they wouldn’t be long,” said Elsie.

Arthur’s face took an inscrutable look. He said nothing whatever.

Elsie carried round the plates and they began the meal. After a brief pause Nell and Lucy came back into the room and silently resumed their places; but a considerable interval elapsed before the opening of the outer door into the scullery told of the entrance of the latest comers.

Maggie came in looking flushed and nervous. Oliver entered behind her, swaggering a little, his bold eyes somewhat fierce.

“Hullo!” he said. “That’s right. I said you’d begin. We’d better sit down as we are.”

Maggie’s place was next to her mother. He pulled out the chair for her, and she dropped into it speechlessly.

“What have you been doing?” said Arthur.

He spoke quietly, but his tone was ominous. Maggie threw him one swift glance and then lowered her eyes.

“Everything’s all right,” said Oliver, with a touch of aggressiveness. “We thought we’d make a day of it. I’ll tell you all about it presently.”

“You’ll tell me now,” Arthur said.

“Oh, all right.” Oliver stood with his hand upon the back of Maggie’s chair. He bent suddenly over her. “Sure you want me to tell, Maggie?” he said.

She put up a trembling hand in answer. Abruptly he stooped lower and kissed her before them all.

The violent overturning of Arthur’s chair as he sprang to his feet brought him upright again with a jerk. He broke in upon the other’s furious oath with quick speech that yet was not wholly uncontrolled.

“Yes, you can damn as much as you please,” he said. “It won’t make a ha’porth of difference now. She is mine—for better for worse—and you can’t undo it. We were married to-day at Fordestown—after we’d sold the pigs.”

“Married!” The single word fell with frightful force from Arthur’s lips. He put his hand suddenly to his head.

Maggie crouched against her mother, and Mrs. Dermot, pale as death, put her arm about her without a word.

Then across the silence, shrill as the piping of a bird, came Nell’s voice. “Well played, Oliver! I wish you luck!”

He turned to her with his winning boyish smile and gripped her outstretched hand across the table.

“Thanks, little ’un! You’re a brick, and I’ll always remember it.”

Elsie left her end of the table and came round to Maggie. Lucy cowered in her chair and hid her face.

Arthur’s hand fell and clenched at his side. He spoke—not to Oliver, but to Maggie.

“Is this true?”

She looked up at him with an effort. Through quivering lips she answered him. “Yes.”

“You are—actually married—to this—damned—clod?”

Oliver straightened himself sharply. “I’ll answer that question,” he said. “Come outside and I’ll show you the exact stuff he’s made of!”

But at that Maggie left her mother’s sheltering arm and got up. She stood between the two men, breathing very fast.

“You shan’t fight about me,” she said. “You’ve nothing to fight about, for I belong to Oliver and always shall, from now on. I’ve the right—as every woman has—to choose my own mate, and I’ve chosen. That’s all there is to it.”

There was a simple dignity about her as she uttered the words that carried an irresistible appeal to Frances. Shaking as she was with agitation, the girl asserted her right of womanhood with a decision that none might question.

Arthur did not attempt to question it. He merely lifted a hand and pointed to the door.

“All right,” he said. “You can go—you and your mate. And you will never enter Tetherstones again.”

He did not look at Oliver. He had scarcely looked at him from the outset. But at that the young man’s wrath boiled over, and he compelled attention.

“You think that you and your blasted Tetherstones count a couple of damns with either of us, do you?” he said. “You think that because poor Nan broke her heart here, we’d be pining to do the same! You’re a damn’ fool, Arthur, that’s what you are. And now I’ve got what I want, I take pleasure in telling you so. You’re too grand a swell to fight the likes of me. You don’t fight your own labourers! No, I thought not. But you can’t prevent ’em telling you the truth or taking a woman out of your family and giving her happiness—common or garden happiness—in place of this infernal mass of corruption you’re pleased to call your family honour. I’ve got my honour too, but it’s not your sort, thank God. I’m just a plain man, and I’ve no frills of any kind. But I’ve got the right to marry the girl who loves me, and there’s no one on this earth can come between us now. If they think they can, well, let ’em try, that’s all. Just let ’em try!”

He moved with the words, and pulled Maggie to him, pressing her close to his side. But his eyes remained upon Arthur, hot with anger and superbly contemptuous of the other man’s superior strength.

Arthur stood motionless. His look was turned upon Oliver, but he made no attempt whatever to check the fierce torrent of words so forcibly poured out. To Frances he had the look of the gladiator sorely wounded yet holding his ground for the sake of that honour which Oliver so bitterly denounced. And her heart went out to the man in sudden wild rush of sympathy that seemed to sweep away all rational thought. She found herself on her feet and quivering with a burning desire to help him in some way, though how she knew not. The deadly pallor of his face, the awful fixity of his eyes, were more than she could bear.

He spoke—this time to Oliver but he did not deign to waste a single word in answer to the furious challenge hurled at him.

“Let me see your marriage certificate!” he said.

His words fell with the utmost calm and Frances wondered if she were the only one in the room who knew how cruelly deep was his wound.

Oliver drew a hard angry breath, as though he found himself unexpectedly held in check by some force unknown. He stared for a moment, then with a sullen air thrust a hand inside his coat. He brought out a paper which he flung down in front of Arthur.

“There you are. You’ll find it all in order,” he said. “You won’t undo that knot in a hurry.”

Arthur picked up the document, opened and scanned it, then held it in silence before his mother. She laid an imploring hand upon his.

“Arthur—Arthur!” she said, an anguished break in her voice. “Don’t do anything in a hurry! I can’t lose another of my girls like my darling Nan.”

“I’m afraid you have lost her, Mother,” he replied, with a species of grim gentleness, “since she has chosen to go.”

“I haven’t chosen to go!” burst from Maggie. She turned and flung her arms closely about her mother. “If I have to go, it’ll be your doing, not mine and not Oliver’s. He’s willing to stay. He’s told me so. In fact, he was willing to go on here in the same old way, and not to tell, only I felt I couldn’t bear it. He’s thought of me and my happiness all through—all through. And we’ve loved each other for years. You don’t know what love is. You can never possibly understand. But Mother knows—Mother knows.”

“Yes, I know,” said Mrs. Dermot, and the tragedy of the quiet utterance was as though she stood beside one dead.

There was a brief pause as of involuntary reverence, then Oliver spoke, his voice steady and deferential. “It was only for the mother’s sake we came back,” he said. “I’d sooner have gone to the other end of the world myself. But—well, Maggie’s happiness was at stake, so I couldn’t.”

“Maggie’s happiness!” An exceedingly bitter note sounded in Arthur’s voice. “Was it for Maggie’s happiness, may I ask, that you persuaded her to do this thing?”

Oliver’s look flashed back to him. He stiffened himself afresh for battle. Couldn’t he see, Frances asked herself desperately? Were they all blind to the agony of this man’s soul?

“Yes, it was,” he flung back hotly. “It was for her happiness. Don’t you dare to question that, Arthur Dermot! You’re not in a position to question it. There’s not a woman on this earth who would trust her happiness to you. And you know it.”

The blow went home. Frances felt as if it had been directed against herself. She did not need to see the stricken look in Arthur’s eyes. She knew without seeing, and on the instant she acted, for further inaction was unedurable.

Before he could make any reply to the thrust, she was in the lists beside him.

“You are wrong!” she said, and her voice rang clear and triumphant before them all. “You are utterly wrong! I would!”

She turned to him quivering with the greatness of the moment to find his eyes upon her with that in them which thrilled her to the soul.

She stretched forth a trembling hand. “I would!” she repeated, and this time she spoke to him alone. “You know I would!”

He caught her hand and closely held it. “Yes, I know—I know!” he said. Then curtly to Oliver, “That’s enough for the present. Sit down and have some supper, you and Maggie too! We’ll discuss this thing in the morning. Frances, sit here!”

He pulled forward a chair and she sat beside him at the head of the table. But save for that one brief command he did not speak to her or look in her direction again.

No one else ventured to address a word to her. Only Mrs. Dermot leaned forward and gently pressed her hand.

CHAPTER XI
THE PERFECT GIFT

The thing was done. Frances stood alone in the old ivy-covered porch looking out into the faint starlight and asked herself how she had come to do it. It had been the impulse of the moment, and she well knew that if she had taken time to consider she would never have acted upon it. But a power that was infinitely greater than herself had urged her, and she had had no choice.

Now it was over. The inspiration had departed, and she waited with a certain chill apprehension for the coming of the man she loved. He had gone up to the sick-room with his mother, and she had slipped away from the rest, for she wanted to be alone when he came. He generally smoked his pipe upon the porch when the day’s work was done, and evidently Roger expected him to-night; for he shared her vigil, alert and friendly, his head within reach of her hand.

It was a very peaceful evening, full of that wonderful moorland fragrance so dear to her heart, so quiet that she could hear the cart-horses munching the hay in their mangers in the stable across the yard. From the kitchen quarters in the house behind her came the homely clatter of dishes being washed up, accompanied by the chattering of girlish voices. Elsie, Lucy and Nell were evidently discussing the dramatic events of the evening. She wondered what they all thought of her, if Maggie and Oliver imagined that she had made that amazing declaration for their sakes. She wondered what Arthur thought. . . . A curious feeling of depression came upon her. She felt as if she were faced by an immensity too great to gauge. What had she done? What had she done? Ah! His step at last! She turned with a hard-beating heart and met him face to face.

She could not read his expression in the dimness, but she realized in an instant that there was none of the lover’s ardour in his coming. And the soul within her shrank like a frightened child. She stood before him trembling.

He came to her and paused. “Shall we go into the garden?” he said. His voice was low, constrained. She turned mutely, and they passed down the winding path between the hollyhocks and sunflowers side by side.

On they went and on in utter silence till they came to the door in the wall that led to the lawn and the cedar-tree. He opened it and she passed through. The door closed with a thud and he walked beside her again.

The silence widened and became a gulf between them. The dew lay like a silver veil upon the lawn. She turned aside to the path leading to the nut-trees. And here at last in deepest shadow he spoke.

“Frances!”

She paced on, as though some remorseless Fate compelled. She knew then—it seemed to her that she had known all along—that the gulf was such as could not be bridged.

She answered him with absolute steadiness. “You needn’t say any more. Let us go back!”

He made a gesture with one hand that was almost violent. “It isn’t always possible—to go back,” he said.

“It is quite possible in this case,” she said quietly. “Perhaps it will make matters easier if I tell you that I found out by accident some time ago that Maggie and Oliver were contemplating this step, and my sympathies have been entirely with them all through.”

He gave a sharp start. “Maggie! Oliver! But why tell me this?”

“Doesn’t it make it easier for you?” she said.

“Why should it?” he demanded. And then abruptly, realizing the loophole she had made for him, “Oh, damn it, Frances! Are you trying to throw dust in my eyes—at this stage?”

“Not in the least,” she returned, and now her pride came back to her and she lifted it grandly like a banner. “I am telling you the truth. My sympathies are, and always have been, entirely with Maggie and Oliver. I may be very presumptuous, but I can’t stand by and see a great wrong done without making a very great effort to avert it. I have made my effort, and whether successful or not I have at least managed to prevent your acting in this matter without consideration. That is all I have to say.”

She was holding her banner bravely now, masking her own humiliation and his anguish of spirit also. For herein, it seemed to her, lay salvation for them both. If she could check the flood-tide of passion which she sensed in his restraint, if she could hold back the wild words that were fighting for utterance, she would be doing him service. And in serving him, she served herself. For thus has Love the Omnipotent ordained, that in the service of another we should find our own deliverance.

Again the silence fell between them. They were walking more slowly now in the gloom of the nut-trees. She realized that the tension was partially relaxed, but she did not dare to lower her flag.

He spoke at last, his voice very quiet and sombre, with something of the old iron ring. “What do you want me to do?”

They reached the end of the nut-walk and she turned. Her agitation was wholly past, but her heart felt deadly cold within her.

“I want you,” she said, “to try to understand that Maggie and Oliver have done no wrong, and to treat them with kindness.”

“Is that all?” he said.

She did not understand his tone. “Is it too much to ask?” she said.

“No, it is very little—less than nothing. Do you think I care a damn what happens to either of them now?” His voice shook a little.

She turned her face towards him as she walked. “Yes, you do care,” she said. “And that’s why it isn’t easy. But, Arthur, listen! There is no one on this earth who has the shadow of a right to interfere between a man and woman who love each other. When I say love, I don’t mean the mere physical attraction which so many mistake for love. I mean that holy thing, the love of the spirit, which nothing can ever change or take away. That is too sacred to be tampered with, and no third person should ever presume to touch it. It comes from God, and it should command our utmost reverence,—even our homage.”

She spoke very earnestly, for somehow—in spite of that terrible coldness at her heart—it seemed essential that he should see this thing with her eyes. It lay with her—she knew it lay with her—to save him from committing a great wrong, and to avert another sorrow from Tetherstones.

But as they paced on towards the open starlight in front of them, his silence seemed to hold but little hope. And the coldness grew and spread within her, paralysing her. She knew if this effort failed, she could not make another.

Arthur spoke at last. “Are you suggesting that they should go on exactly as if this had not happened? If my father came to know of it,—it would drive him crazy.”

“Your father need not know,” she said. “He is an old man. It rests with you, not with him.”

“Ah!” He stood still suddenly. “That’s true. He can’t live for ever. How many years have I told myself that, and yet I always forget it. Frances!” His voice thrilled suddenly, and then as suddenly he stopped himself. “No! I won’t say that to you. I’ll say just this. I see your point, and—I’ll act on it if I find I can. Does that satisfy you?”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Don’t!” he said sharply, and swung round to go on. “Don’t ever thank me! Just—believe in me—if you can!”

“I can,” she said. “And I do.”

They came out upon the path that wound about the dewy lawn, and walked back along it in silence.

To Frances it was as if there were nothing more to be said, and yet it was in the words that had been left unspoken that the true meaning of the interview lay. In some fashion she felt that a chapter in her life had been closed. She knew what lay before her. Her only course was to go, and she would not flinch from taking it. She would meet unswervingly the difficulties and trials of the way. She would keep her banner flying. For in that one word, her own name spoken as he had spoken it, the coldness had melted from about her heart, and whatever came to her now, she knew that, though inexplicably bound hand and foot like the prisoners of the tetherstones, he had poured out to her that which is greater than all things—the love of his whole soul—the perfect gift.

CHAPTER XII
THE PARTING

“I’ll never forget what you’ve done for us,” said Maggie. “And I’m very sorry you’re going.” She spoke with great earnestness but the lilt had come back to her voice and the light to her eyes. She held Frances’ hand very tightly between her own. “You’ll come back some day?” she said.

“I shall certainly come back to the moors,” Frances said, “to make my sketches.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Maggie. “Then you’ll let us know where you are. I couldn’t bear not to. You’re going up to London now?”

“Only for a day or two—to see a friend who has found a purchaser for my work. I shan’t stay,” said Frances.

“A friend?” Maggie gave her a curious look. “Is it—it isn’t—the friend you went away to see at Fordestown?”

“Why shouldn’t it be?” said Frances.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Maggie coloured suddenly and vividly. “I just wondered, that’s all. And then you’re coming back? You will come back, won’t you?”

“I shouldn’t wonder if I came back to Mrs. Hearn,” said Frances. “But, Maggie, tell me what makes you ask about Mr. Rotherby! What do you know about him?”

“Oh, I can’t tell you that,” said Maggie quickly. “I shouldn’t have asked. But Arthur knows him—and hates him. Please don’t let’s talk about him—and I wouldn’t go to see him if I were you. He’s a bad man. Ah, here comes Oliver to fetch you! Good-bye, dear Frances, and just a hundred thousand thanks for everything.”

She responded warmly to Frances’ embrace, and returned to her butter-making with a song on her lips and gladness in her eyes.

“Yes, I should just think we are grateful,” said Oliver, as he followed Frances out. “Arthur has been as decent as he knows how, and it’s all thanks to you. Hope you’ll make a match of it before long, Miss Thorold, when better times come. You won’t want to wait as long as we did.”

They all treated her thus, as if her marriage to Arthur were a foregone conclusion, cheerily disregarding the fact that neither she nor Arthur had given them any justification for so doing. They had in fact barely seen one another since that night in the garden, now two days past; and she had even begun to wonder if he would let her go without a word of farewell. Old Mr. Dermot was better, would soon be downstairs again, they said, and his son had returned to his work on the farm, appearing only at meals and then for very brief intervals.

She had taken leave of everyone else, save Oliver who was to drive her to the station, and time was too short for lingering. She gave up hope at last, as she climbed into the cart. Roger was nowhere to be seen, so evidently his master was not in the vicinity. Perhaps he had not grasped the fact that she was going! Perhaps he had forgotten the hour! Perhaps—and somehow this was a supposition to which she clung instinctively for comfort—perhaps he had decided that he could not face the parting. In any case, he was not there, and her heart was heavy as they trotted out on to the moorland road. She felt she could have endured anything more easily than to be suffered to go without a sign.

The sky was dark with clouds that drove rapidly but unendingly before a west wind. The chill of coming rain was in the air, and the great heads of the tors were wrapped in drifting mist-wreaths. The scent of the bogs came to Frances with a poignant sense of regret.

“I shall be home-sick for this when I get away,” she said.

“It does take hold of you, doesn’t it?” said Oliver.

Homely words that almost brought the tears to her eyes! Yes, it did take hold of her. She was bound with a chain that she could never break. She could not speak in answer. Her heart was too full.

She had said to Maggie that she expected to be in town for but a few days, but a strong conviction was upon her that her absence would be much longer than this. She even wondered if she would ever return. The future was as a blank wall before her which she was utterly powerless to penetrate. But she had regained her health, and she knew that courage would return as soon as the last of her farewells was spoken.

So they trotted on over the moor with the clouds gathering thickly on every side.

Rounding the curve of a hill, they came at length within sight of the spot where she and Roger had sat together on that summer morning that seemed so long ago, and she had first seen Roger’s master. Vivid as a picture actually before her eyes, came the memory of that day, of the solitary horseman riding in the blinding sunlight, of the brief incident that had been their first introduction. She remembered her indignation—her sweeping condemnation of the man. But he had done worse things since, infinitely worse. Did she condemn him now? As if in answer, another memory smote her—the memory of this man bowed to the earth by a burden too great to be borne—the dumb agony of which she had been a witness—and his tears—his tears!

Her own eyes suddenly swam in them. She turned her face away. She must not break down now. She must not.

Some seconds passed before she could command herself to look again. They were nearing the bend in the road by which she and Roger had sat.

“Hullo!” said Oliver suddenly.

She started. “What is it? Ah!”

A great wave of feeling, tumultuous, overwhelming, surged through her and she could say no more. Arthur was waiting on his horse, motionless as a statue, at the very spot that meant so much to her. Roger was with him with pricked, expectant ears.

Oliver gave a chuckle and checked the cob. “Somehow I thought—” he said. “Have I got to pull up?”

She did not answer him, for Arthur with an imperious wave of the hand did that for her. He walked his horse forward as Oliver reined into a standstill.

“You can ride my animal back,” he said. “I will take Miss Thorold to the station.”

“You haven’t too much time,” said Oliver.

“Then get down and be quick about it!” said Arthur briefly.

To Frances he said nothing, and she attempted no word of greeting, even when he mounted to the seat beside her.

A hasty farewell to Oliver, the starting forward of the cob, a cheery bark from Roger scudding in front, and they were rounding the bend of the road and alone. Before them, the drifting clouds parted suddenly like a rent curtain, and a great shaft of light descended. They drove straight into the brightness; but as they reached it the clouds drew together again, and they were once more in gloom. The moor stretched all about them like a wilderness.

Arthur spoke at last. “Why are you going?”

His voice was quiet; it held no special thrill of interest. She even wondered as she made reply if he were greatly interested.

“It is better for me to go,” she said. “I am going to take up work in earnest. I have had some encouragement. Several of my sketches have been bought.”

“I have seen the one you gave to my mother,” he said. “It was good of you to part with it.”

“I did it for her,” said Frances simply.

He nodded. “Nothing could have pleased her more. You say you have found a purchaser for the others. You are hoping to get commissioned work?”

“I am hoping,” said Frances.

“And if you succeed, that will bring you back?” he said.

She hesitated. His tone told her so little.

“It might,” she said at length.

He drove on for some distance in silence. Then, with a restraint so evident that she could not fail to realize that he was putting strong force upon himself, he said, “I hope you will succeed. I hope you will make your fortune. It’s a difficult world, but there are always some lucky ones. You may be one of them. In any case, whether you are or not, may I give you one word of advice?”

“What is it?” she said.

He answered her briefly, with a certain recklessness that somehow hurt her. “Forget you ever met me! It’s no good—no good! Don’t weight yourself with a burden that can only handicap you! If it’s your fate, as well as mine, to grind your bread from stones, you’ll need all your strength to do it. People like you and me can’t afford to waste any time over—dreams.”

He cut the horse a savage flick over the ears with the last word and they went forward on a downward slant at a startling pace.

Frances attempted no rejoinder of any sort. She understood him too well. He had warned her not to return, at what cost to himself she would never know, though possibly it was for his own sake as well as for hers that he had done it. There was an insuperable barrier between them, and he was not a man with whom any compromise would be possible. There were in his nature fires which, it was evident, even he could not always keep under control. Perhaps he realized that he could not. But he had spoken, and she felt that he had spoken finally. It was not for her to question his decision. She could only go onward now through a wilderness of utter desolation.

Not till they had reached the outskirts of Fordestown and the grey moors were left behind, did he speak again, and then it was to say in his customary, clipped style, “We’ll not make a tragedy of this. Life’s too short. It’s just good-bye and good luck! And that’s all.”

She forced herself to smile. “Except many, many thanks!” she said.

He stopped her quickly. “No, not that! Never that! Do you mind if I don’t get down at the station? I don’t like to leave the horse.”

“Of course not,” she said.

They finished the journey in silence. He did not so much as help her to descend. A porter came for her baggage, and at the last moment she stood on the path, looking up at him.

“Good-bye!” she said.

He looked down at her, his face like an iron mask. “Good-bye—and good luck! You haven’t any time to spare.”

He did not see the hand she began to offer, and it fell instantly. He touched his cap with his whip and lifted the reins. In another moment he was driving swiftly out of the yard.

She turned into the station with a curious sense of groping her way, and heard the porter’s cheery voice at her shoulder. “It’s all right, miss. You’ve got ten minutes to spare.”

“Thank you,” said Frances, and drew a hard, deep breath.

Ten minutes to spare! And then to take up the burden of life again!