Margaret Maliphant

by Alice Vansittart Strettel Carr

Her voice dropped wearily; in truth, she cared very little whether he came or not; there was only one whom she longed for, and he could never come again.

But I—sorely as I too longed for that presence that she mourned—I cared whether Trayton Harrod came again, and when he did not come I went to get news of him. Joyce thought it very dreadful of me to go for a walk when our dead had been but so lately laid to rest, but Joyce did not know. She too, perhaps, wondered at his absence, but she did not know, as I did, the reason for it.

I went out of the house, across the garden, down the cliff where I had seen him disappear on that weird, moonlight night a month ago, down onto the marsh. The sun had gone behind the hill, for it was afternoon, but the sky was clear and limpid, the sea blue beyond the mellow marsh-land; along the banks of the dikes thorn-bushes studded the way—rosy-flushed from afar, but close at hand coral-tipped on every slender branch; and the water, shorn of its green rush-mantle, lay still and bare to the sky.

I walked fast till I came to the white gate that divides sheepfold from cattle-pasture, and then I turned round to look back: if I chanced on the squire I should get news; but there was not a living thing to be seen on the land—I was alone with the birds and the water-rats. The cattle had been called off the marsh when the stormy weather set in, and I had forgotten to bring even the dog with me; it was so long since I had been for a walk.

But the dear familiar land soothed me with its sadness. Far away upon dikes where the scythe had not yet mown the rushes, broad streaks of orange color followed the lines of the banks or were dashed across the stream, tongues of flame in the sunlight. In the distance blue smoke soared slow and straight into the pale air from the fires of weed-burners in the ploughed furrows, and a shadow crossed the base of the town, whose pinnacle was still white in the afternoon light. Along the under-cliff of the Manor woods the crimson of beeches made gorgeous patches of painting upon the sombre background of pines, and larches held amber torches up among the paler gold of elm-trees.

God's earth was very fair, but why had he taken away all that made it glad? Not far from here had we two first met in the rain and mist; here had we started the lapwing in the green spring-time and scared the cuckoo from its nest, usurped; here had we many a time followed the game and learned the ways of birds and beasts; here had we gathered the hay and the harvest, and watched the sheep-shearing; here had we crossed the plain in the thunder and lightning of the storm.

And all these things would happen again—the spring and the summer and the winter would come with their sights and their sounds, their life and their duties; the marsh-land would always be the same, but would it ever be the same again to me? Ah, that day I did not think so!

A shot sounded in the woods. It was the squire's keeper after the pheasants. It awoke me from my dream, but I must have been so still that even the rabbits thought I was not alive, for two of them ran out across my path.

Was I alive after all? I shook myself and went slowly on to where the marsh meets the road, and then I turned up across the ash copse on the hill—bare already of leaves—and took the path towards "The Elms." Yes, I had come out to hear news of Trayton Harrod, and I would not go back without it; somehow and from somebody I would learn where he was, and why he had gone.