'SIN THE TRAVELLER'
It was a flash of the most intensely delighted surprise that illumined Borlase's face. Its reflection stole over hers and she smiled at him. Full knowledge of the hidden truth of both hearts pierced each at once.
Her smile decided him. He knew her well. He knew she had been taken unawares, and might resent her involuntary self-betrayal to herself when she realised it, as in another moment she might do.
She had not moved. It seemed to him that she expected him to go to her. His heart leapt as he perceived that here at last was what he wanted, she was no longer unconscious. He saw a change even in the poise of her figure, she was shy and uncertain. Yet there was a gleam in her eyes, clear and steady, that defied her strange confusion. Seizing reins and whip he was instantly alongside of her. He jumped down and took her hands.
'Anna,' he said, 'you know now what I have been waiting for, what I am longing to ask for, what I want to make me a happy man. You know, because at last you can give it me, cannot you, my darling?'
He drew her nearer.
'Give me the right to comfort you in every trouble,' he said. 'Let us share all joys and sorrows. I have loved you so long. Will you be my wife, Anna?'
For a moment she turned away, feeling that she could scarcely bear him to see her face. She was half ashamed of her happiness. She could not speak. She felt as though there were a world of happiness in her eyes. Then the thought came that it would make him happy to see it there. And so she raised her eyes to his and he did see it.
'And are you going back with me?' he said after a while.
She shook her head in a way expressive to him of a delightful amount of regret.
'No. Clothilde is going, and we are going to walk by the moor and the wood. We shall get home sooner.'
'Then you have persuaded her. Who would you not persuade to be good and do right? But may I not drive you both?'
'Oh no, Clothilde never would, and what could we say to Dad in explanation if he were home first? And I have not persuaded her, there was no need for persuasion. You must not think too much of me, idealise me or anything of that kind——'
'And what is my name, Commandant?' Borlase broke in, laughing.
'Your name? Geoffry, isn't it? Yes.'
'Well, then, call me Geoff or your commands shall be null.'
'That can wait till next time,' said Anna piquantly.
'Very well, it shall. The anticipation will bring me all the sooner to Old Lafer to see Mr. Severn. And I shall write to Mr. Piton. I shall be delighted to assert my ownership at Rocozanne. I've always been jealous of Ambrose.'
She laughed, and murmured that she must be going.
'Yes, I suppose you must,' he said. 'But tell me, are you going away happier than you came? Yes? And not only because Mrs. Severn has been amenable to reason? Have I at last a niche in your life, will it be more than a niche soon? It is so, is it not? Anna, remember you are to learn to be all mine. I shall be jealous of every one at Old Lafer, Mr. Severn, your sister, the whole batch of children.'
Her face showed him what music his eager tones were to her.
She could not herself have been more impetuous. His frankness charmed her. Well it might! It was the surest guerdon of lifelong happiness. He knew she was of the same nature. To such there is no fear of one of those tragedies of life which turns upon a misunderstanding.
Anna quickly re-descended into the hollow. She hoped Mrs. Severn would come out and not oblige her to go up to the cottage. She was anxious to get away while the Mires was still depopulated by the cottagers being out at their peat-stacks and bracken cutting. Besides which Hartas might be at home. She dreaded his familiar garrulousness, and the violence of his menacing hatred for the Admiral which he never lost an opportunity of impressing upon every one.
Mrs. Severn, however, did not come out, but Scilla did. She hurried towards her looking more troubled and anxious than usual, Anna thought. She was very bonny, and had a fresh colour and a quantity of fair hair which her constant flittings into the open air without hat or hood kept in a rough condition that suited her and showed off its colour. Sunbeams seemed to be caught among it. Years ago sunbeams had been in her limpid blue eyes too. But now they were sad, a haunting sorrow and a furtive fear brooded there. Not only was Kit in prison and her baby beneath a little mound in the churchyard, but there were times when she scarcely dared stay in the house with Hartas. Anna had often urged her to leave him and come back to Old Lafer. But she would not. She had promised Kit that she would not. If she broke a promise to him she would lose her hope of keeping him to better ways when his term was up and he was home again.
'Well, Scilla,' said Anna, 'when are you coming to see the children again?'
'Bless them,' said Scilla, her eyes filling; 'and another baby too. But oh, Miss Anna, I want a word with you. Come along, though. Don't let us stand or she'll maybe guess what I'm telling you. Father told me I never had to tell you, no, not if she did it again and again. He hates every one since poor Kit's punishment, and he'd help ruin any one that had aught to do with the Admiral. But I made up my own mind I'd tell if Mrs. Severn ever came here again and asked for——She's going away with you but that doesn't matter, she's been and she may come again. Miss Anna, the last time she was here she got to a bottle of father's——'
Her voice sank. Her eyes fixed themselves on Anna's, mutely imploring her to understand and yet not to be overwhelmed. Yes, she did understand. There was an anguished shame in her whole face.
They were walking slowly on. Just before reaching the cottage Anna said in a low voice—
'I did not know Hartas knew, Scilla. Dinah told me, she thought it right to do so, and it was right. Have you ever told any one?'
'Never, Miss Anna; not even Kit. Dearest Miss Anna, she's asked for some to-day. I made pretence we'd none by us. She'd soon have sent for some. And that's what's been my fear, that she should get hold of Jimmy Chapman or one of the little ones and send them. Then all t' Mires would have known and a deal o' folk beside.'
'Do you think Hartas has told any one?'
'I don't think so,' she said; adding reluctantly, 'I sometimes fancy if he hasn't, he's biding his time, he's none one to let bad things drop.'
To Anna's relief and yet almost to her terror she found that Hartas was out. Hartas Kendrew, primed with this knowledge, had already become a power, a factor in her life; she would constantly be wondering and fearing what, involuntarily in his drunken fits or of malice prepense, he might disclose.
Scilla's little kitchen was empty of life, but for a kitten curled up on the langsettle, fast asleep. The flagged floor was bordered with a design in pipeclay, which Scilla renewed once a week. Some samplers hung in frames upon the walls between groups of memorial cards of various sizes. On the high mantel was a row of five copper kettles, all polished into a glint of gold, and above them two guns on crockets. A line of freshly-ironed clothes hung across the ceiling; some worsted stockings were drying off over the oven-door; the ironing blanket lay still unfolded on the table but had one corner turned over to make room for some cups and saucers and a rhubarb pasty. Scilla had made tea but no one would have any.
When Mrs. Severn heard their voices she came downstairs in her bonnet, a flimsy elegant affair of black lace which Anna had wondered at her having taken off. She said good-bye to Scilla with her ordinary indifference. But Anna lingered behind and kissed her with a passionate hand-grasp that assured her of her gratitude and confidence. Scilla looked at her searchingly. She had long cherished a hope for Anna. She was longing that it should be fulfilled. And had not Mr. Borlase brought her here to-day, and could he possibly have seen her in this old trouble and not wished to be her comforter? Surely she would never repulse him. He was good, of that Scilla was certain. She had thought as she walked along the edge of the marsh and met her that she had an air of quiet and happy preoccupation. She wanted to satisfy herself that it was so. Surely her love and respect warranted her.
'Why do you look at me, Scilla?' said Anna, as they were parting.
Scilla's pent-up solicitude rushed forth.
'Oh Miss Anna, I love you so,' she said in a hurried whisper, 'I want you to be happy. Are you? It's a queer question after what I've just told you, but there are others in the world besides her,' with a nod towards the door, 'while one brings trouble, another brings lightsomeness. And you are so good, always the same; you don't put a body in your pocket one day and turn a cold shoulder the next. You were always so helpful to me at Old Lafer. If you'd been there that dree winter I was ill, I know Kit would never have taken to bad ways, for you'd have tided us over, and he'd none have been tempted. Trust me a bit further, Miss Anna dear.'
She had never taken her eyes off her face, and seeing the colour that spread from neck to brow as she looked, she ventured to the verge and now stood breathless.
'How have you guessed?' said Anna.
'Then it's true?' cried Scilla rapturously, tightening her hold of her hands. 'I've prayed for it. I thought he'd never be so daft as to pass you by, a jewel that you are! And you're light at heart, eh? So was I when Kit came about Old Lafer, but you'll none have the finish I've had. God bless you.'
'This isn't the finish for you, Scilla,' said Anna. 'You'll have a happy time yet.'
Scilla smiled an April smile. Then suddenly she laughed. 'Miss Anna,' she said, 'what'll Mrs. Severn say to it? She'll none want to lose you from Old Lafer. She was in a fine taking on an hour ago, when I told her 'twere you and Mr. Borlase. But never mind what she says. Insulting words may come nigh you, but don't you make a trouble of them; they'll only speak badly for her as uses them. Every one knows what you are in your inwardest nature.'
Mrs. Severn had walked on and was now standing on the ridge, silhouetted against the sky. Anna soon overtook her, and they went on quickly, shortening the way by striking into the ling. Her anger had melted. The old tenderness was in her heart; for some bitter moments it had seemed indeed that the new shame must quench it. Nor was it her new-found happiness that inspired it. Her anger must have humiliated Clothilde, and she could not bear to think she was humiliated.
During the heavy walking through the ling she did all she could to be kind. The beautiful face, growing weary and haggard with a rare anxiety which she attributed to the wish to be home before her husband, touched her deeply. She helped her on, holding up her dress, throwing the shade of the parasol wholly over her, and hoping each moment that she might strike some chord that would unseal her heart and give some clue to its enigmatical life.
But Mrs. Severn remained silent, walking with her eyes down, but carefully picking her way among the tufts of ling. Anna in her white dress and sun hat got along easily, but Mrs. Severn's progress was laboured. She looked extraordinary, a figure more fit for a stage than the moor, her black draperies at once handsome and negligent, her arms bare from the elbows, the lace strings of her bonnet arranged about her throat with a mantilla-like effect, which set off the fine contour of her face. Always conscious of herself, she was now.
'I wonder, if any one met us, what we should be taken for?' she said, as they stood resting a moment by leaning against the wall of the coal-pit shanty. 'I think I might be taken for an actress gone astray.'
Anna thought this so much nearer the truth than was intended that she said nothing.
'And you for my maid.'
'Probably,' said Anna, and walked on again. She felt too worn by the varying strong emotions she had gone through to dissent from any suggestion. It seemed hopeless to think of reaching Clothilde's inner self, but she could not help speculating over it. Life's opening out for herself during the last few hours had quickened her perceptions. A new experience of the influence each can exert on the lives round it, bringing a rush of undreamt-of possibilities that invested the vista of the future with a halo of definite and sacred responsibilities, had stirred her to a wider grasp of the issues involved in action, as well as to a keener questioning of their mainspring. She had known for years that Clothilde did not love her husband; but considered that she had no capacity either for love or hate, treating her emotions as diffused and colourless, and herself none the more unhappy for her indifference.
But now she wondered why she did not love him. She had been surprised by the vehemence of the tone in which she had said, 'I cannot bear Mrs. Hennifer.' It was not merely the irrational petulance of a childish mind resenting disapproval. Why did she not like her? Had she never cared for her husband? If so, if she had force of character to strongly dislike the one and shrink so sensitively from the other, that his home sometimes became unbearable, and all her married and social obligations were sacrificed to the one dominating desire to get away from them, there must be a reverse to the picture, comparison must play its natural part in her mind, dislike of one be accented by appreciation of another, and shrinking from one by attraction to another. Had she ever loved any one as a woman can and does love? A few short minutes of vivid personal experience had proved to her how one life bears upon another, weaving a web of influence and circumstance which is completed or left incomplete by the frailty of a single thread. Was there a broken thread in Clothilde's life? Might this discord have been a harmony?
The silence was not again broken before they reached home. The sun was setting as they emerged from the larch woods on to the wooden bridge that crossed the beck below the meadows. Old Lafer was above them on the hillside, its drifts of smoke wreathing against the sky. As they climbed the fields, the moors gradually came into sight, the last rays from the sun striking in a golden haze athwart the dense blue shadows that moulded them. The old house looked dark and gray. Anna scanned every window as she balanced herself on the stile. That of the parlour was wide open. She saw that Mr. Severn was neither in his arm-chair nor in the one before the secretaire at which he wrote the correspondence that he did not get through at the office. The tea-table, too, was too orderly for any one to have already had tea there. She went on into the house. His hat was not on its peg on the stand. Dinah heard her step as she worked with the kitchen door open in readiness, and, sallying forth, shook her head.
'He's none come. Hev you brought her?' she said in a loud but cautious whisper; and peering beyond her as she spoke, she caught sight of Mrs. Severn just crossing the flags.
'T' Almighty be thanked!' she ejaculated. 'And eh, Miss Anna, I've put out some honey for tea. That'll keep t' baärns so busy, what wi' smashing it, and smearing their bread, and messing theirsels, that they'll hev no time for much talk. Now go your ways upstairs and get a souse to freshen yoursel for tea. My word, she looks like death! And there are some girdle-cakes, my dearie. Them's what you favour, and Master too for t' matter of that, only he mayn't be in time.'
Half an hour later they were sitting round the tea-table. Mr. Severn had not come yet, and the children's chatter was varied, as usual, by pauses in which they all steadied themselves to listen for his horse's hoofs, or the clash of the gate, or his voice calling Elias.
But they missed the sounds of his arrival to-day. He surprised them by quietly opening the door and standing just within while taking off his gloves. His eyes travelled from one to another, and rested longest on his wife. She was leaning back playing with the spoon in her saucer and scarcely glanced at him. Nevertheless he came round and kissed her.
'I've news,' he said, passing on to his seat. 'Here's a bit of excitement for you at last, Clothilde. We're to have a wedding. Now, who's the bride-elect?'
'Miss Marlowe, Cynthia,' said Anna.
'Miss Marlowe it is, but Tremenheere's none the man. Mrs. Kerr's been a bad manager, not known how to marshal her forces, taken too much time about it.'
'Not Canon Tremenheere after all! And you've lunched there; did he know? Who is it? Who told you?'
'The Admiral told me. I wish it had been the Canon, I do. I always thought she'd come round. And she went off so simply, was the only one who didn't suspect Mrs. Kerr's plan. I was sure she'd fall in with it quite naturally. But it's a failure. She's engaged herself without any leave-asking to a man she's met on their travels; Danby they call him, Lucius Danby. He's an Anglo-Indian.'
He was stirring his tea, Anna was replenishing the teapot. No one noticed that Mrs. Severn's head had fallen back, and that she was slipping off her chair.
For the first time in her life she had fainted.
