III
It did not reach her at first. She heard it, indeed, coming back to the present with the sound, but that Was all. The thing behind it had to travel after her over twenty years. The cry of the heron was natural enough, with a famous heronry so near, and it was only because of the exceptional stillness of the night that it drew her attention now. Her mind went mechanically to the high wood behind the Hall, to the long-necked, slender-legged birds going home to the tall trees that on this unstirred evening would be stiff as a witch's broom. She even had time to remember the old legend of their battle with the rooks, before the thing that had been running for twenty years entered her consciousness with a rush.
She stiffened then. From being softly still she became a rigid thing, stiller than sleep, stiller than death, because it was passionate will-power that held her still. It was already a moment or two since the sound had passed, but it still rang in the ear which had seemed to refuse to take it in. It had flashed through her brain like a bright sword flung in a high arc through a night without a star, but the truth that was behind it she held rigidly from her even as it tried to step within. She knew that it was too low for a bird's call, too sharp and clear in that muffle of mist, but she shut the knowledge out. She would not let herself either breathe or think until she had heard the sound again.
The shock was as great the second time, but it had a different effect. She began to tremble from head to foot; even her lips parted and shook; her hands relaxed and began to pluck at her gown. Her breath came in quick gasps that were almost sobs as her eyes strained towards the darkness that held the door. Her brain kept telegraphing her body that it must be still, but it was too strong for it, and paid no heed. Her heart alone, beating in hard, ponderous strokes, seemed as if by itself it must shut out any further sound; and when the call came the third time, breaking the silence so that it could not close again, her own power of restraint went by the board as well. Her hands lifted themselves and gripped each other across her breast, and her voice, shaken and full of tears, forced itself into her throat. "Jim!" she heard herself saying, "Jim!"--with no knowledge that she had meant to speak, and in that one word admitted the final defeat of all her life.
Then the knocking began, the terrible brazen knocking which soulless iron makes on the unresponsive door of an empty house. It was as if whoever knocked frightened himself by the knocking, and tried to beat away his fear with still louder blows. But to the woman who tried to pretend that the house was really empty it was more terrible still. It seemed to take on the sound of a summons to the soul itself to issue forth. The noise of it flooded the place, echoed its way upstairs and into far rooms, so that strange voices answered it sharply from wood and stone. The heavy, storm-tried walls were suddenly no more than paper, so that the knocking became folly when a push would have forced them in. It seemed to Sarah that they must hear it from end to end of the marsh, across at the 'Ship,' and out to the hidden edge of sea. She wondered why Simon did not come running, and the dog break into hoarse barks, for even in the far shippon they must surely hear. But there was only that great knocking in all the world, cheerful, impatient, or resigned by turn. It paused at moments, but only as the passing-bell pauses, Sarah thought, waiting to speak its single word afresh.
The noise had swept away in a moment both the false serenity of hate and the almost falser calm of that dwelling memory of love. From the respite, indeed, the live passion seemed to have sunk, as it were, on its haunches for a fiercer leap. She could not think clearly or control her limbs under the sudden impact of its spring. It seemed to fling itself on her as she had seen the tides in the winter crash against the wall. She, too, went under as if the water had beaten her down, and the noise at the door became the blows of the waves and the roar of the dragged beach.
She had that impulse to laughter which comes with long-expected woe, as if the gods were guilty of bathos when they stooped at last to strike. Scorn is the first sensation of those who seem to have watched the springs of action long before the hour. Sudden sorrows, quick blows have a majesty of their own, as if the gifts of the gods made for honour in good or ill. But long-deferred trouble, like suspended joy, has a meaner quality in fulfilment, and a subtle humiliation in its ache. That when the gods come they come quickly is true for both libations from the emptied cup. Royal sorrows, like royal joys, fall swift as thunderbolts from heaven.
She had always known in her heart that there was no fighting Blindbeck luck, that even the dregs of it were more potent than the best of the Sandholes brand. It could hardly fail to reach even across the sea, so that one of the failures would be less of a failure than the other in the end. The trouble of being the under-dog too long is that even the dog himself begins at last to think it his rightful place. For all her dreaming and lying on Geordie's behalf, she would have found it hard to believe in his ultimate success. Not for nothing had Eliza carefully tended her Method all this while, and watered it weekly with the Simons' tears.
At first she told herself that she would put out the light, and let the knocker knock until he was tired. Perhaps he would open the door and step inside, but the darkness would surely thrust him out again. He might even go to the foot of the stairs and call, until the silence itself put a hand upon his throat. But already the strain was more than she could bear, and each blow as it came was a blow on her own heart. She tried to move, but was afraid of the sound of her own feet, and it was only under the cover of fresh knocking that she made the effort at last. Now she was facing the door which she could not see, though she knew its panels like the palm of her hand. Behind it, she felt the knocking ring on her brain, but now she had come within range of a more persistent power than that. Plainly, through the wooden barrier that was raised between them, she felt the presence of the man who stood without.
There is always an effort, a faint dread, about the opening of a door, as if the one who entered were admitted to more than a room. From each personality that enters even for a moment into one's life something is always involuntarily received. The opening is only a symbol of the more subtle admission of the two, which leaves an intruder behind when the actual bodily presence has passed away. And of all openings there is none that includes such realisation and such risk as that which lets in the night and a stranger's face.