The little one moved and moaned in her sleep. He started instinctively towards her, the long habit of five years compelling; then remembrance rushed upon him and choked him, and he sat down again, moaning himself. Ah, could it be that those idle words of his were going to come true under this different stress—that he was going to hate her—his little maid whom he had reared and nursed as a mother nurses her first-born? Had he indeed blindly promised that which he could not perform?
Remembrance rushed in upon him.
Now that the veil was lifted the past lay vivid and hard before him, as the familiar marsh-land would lie to-morrow morning, when the kindly night had lifted her cloak and the whole world would smile, bright and garish, with never a covered place, with never a secret, and different, different from yesterday!
It had been a good world on the whole till now, but now he was fain to say in his haste that it had never been good! For he remembered that Milly had never had any happiness in it save that which she had had apart from him; he remembered that her sunniest days had been those when the Mary Jane was in port, and she had asked leave to walk down to the harbour to see her father; or when Ben Forester had come up to the village—never, as he recollected, consenting to come in to the cottage—but certainly, oh, most certainly wandering with her along the quiet lanes, or upon the lonely downs while he was at work.
Why remember any more? Why torture himself with further proof? He was quite soundly enough convinced. He saw that he ought to have guessed it long ago. He scarcely even blamed them—they were dead. He blamed himself: himself for having so often asked her to have him; himself for not guessing; himself for having been a fool, and for having been old. Yes, there had been the mischief—he had been too old to understand, and it was hard he had not been too old to love.
His anger was slowly dying out, but with the fire of his wrath was dying also the fire of his life.
He felt very old.
Milly had been taken from him, but Daisy had been left, and she had made life new for him—she had made him young. But Milly had gone from him afresh to-day, and she had taken Daisy away with her. There was no one left to him, and he knew that he was too old ever to begin caring for anything again—ever to make another clutch at life in its fulness.
His appointed days he would have to run, and to that end he must needs work that he might eat; but the savour of work was gone, for the savour of life was gone—with his child.
He sat there beside the dead hearth and faced it all out, while the cool dawn crept slowly into the sky behind the downs, first putting out the stars in the blue-black heaven, then softly washing it with faintest grey, then slowly streaking it and flushing it with violet and with rose and with gold.