PART III
THE TEMPLE
CHAPTER I
She drew great breaths of relief as she made her way through the fields, treading the little worn paths between the sloping stretches of green. Between the warm fastnesses of the hedges she felt sheltered, but not cramped—those close coverts of life which wore so rich and crowded a look. The bright line of the sky barring the tops to the west told her that very soon she would see the sea. Indeed, the broad, lifted, lightened sense which belongs to a coast was not only in the look of things but in the feel. There was a thrill in the air as of something running towards freedom of breath and limb. The very land itself seemed to rush onwards rejoicing to its escape.
Unpleasant as the experience had been, she could almost have found it in her heart to be glad of the “little chat,” because the walk through the fields seemed so gracious by sheer contrast. Like most country women, she very seldom walked for walking’s sake, merely going mechanically wherever necessity happened to take her. But she appreciated the country well enough when she had time to look at it, and if she did not think of it very often it was because it was always there. To-day, however, there was something almost poignant about coming out of Emma’s cave into this sweet openness and spacious peace. It was almost like leaving a prison to walk direct out of the house that was Emma Catterall’s mind into this wide and wonderful house that was the Mind of God Himself.
As she went along, with the bells clashing and clanging behind her back, she tried to shed all those thoughts of Emma which tugged at her brain like spiked brambles at a skirt. Indeed, it seemed to her, after a while, as she got further away and higher, that she shed not only Emma, but the whole of the village as well. Up here in the clean fields she seemed alone in a new world, with nothing of any importance but the free road to her desire.
But before she reached that desirable point her mind had still a good deal to say about Emma and Emma’s detestable behaviour. There had been times, indeed, when she had felt as if it were Emma’s “day” instead of her own, so completely had Emma contrived to pervade it! Yet there seemed no possible reason why she should have chosen to take a hand in passing events. All her proceedings had been puzzling in the extreme, and none of them more inexplicable than the “little chat.” Neither her natural intuition nor the shrewdness induced by a long and strenuous life had been able to provide Mrs. Clapham with a clue to her neighbour’s purpose. Emma had depressed her, of course, made her feel ill-tempered and ill-behaved, reminded her that she hadn’t a son, and—almost, indeed!—that she hadn’t a daughter! But all that, after all, was only just what she knew to be Emma, that mixture of stabbing and subtle suggestion which represented her queer character. It did not account for the “little chat.” Possibly she had meant nothing more than to make herself thoroughly nasty, to roll a log, as it were, in the way of a march past. But there was more than one point in the recent talk which this explanation did not cover, such as the troublesome letter to the Committee. Mrs. Clapham still felt more than a little heated upon this particular subject. It would be strange indeed if, at her time of life, she had to begin learning manners from Emma!
At one of the stiles she encountered a young soldier, wearing the khaki which was still to be seen about the country, and he stood on one side to let her through. Like most stiles, however, it was meant for the young and slim, and presently, as she struggled and chuckled, he put out his hand and gave her a pull. “You look mighty pleased with yourself, mother,” he commented, as she squeezed past. “That’s a wedding-peal they’re ringing there, isn’t it? Have you been getting wed?”
The remark struck her in her happy mood as a very jewel of humour. “Better than that!” she chuckled, still panting but full of smiles. “I’ve finished wi’ that a long while back. It’s a deal better than that!”
“Well, good luck to it, whatever it is!” he wished her, springing over the stile, and as he went on his way again she heard him begin to whistle. He had a thin, dark face that reminded her of Poor Stephen, stamped with that strained, sleepless look which was the legacy of the War. He had not been whistling when they met, but he was whistling now, as if the very sight of a creature so happy had somehow made him feel happy, too. It was not a loud whistle, indeed, not the noisy, almost unconscious whistle of thoughtless youth. It was rather hesitating and wistful, a little doubtful, a little afraid. It was not the full note that almost deafens the ear when the earth is at last the birds’; it was the first ripple of robin’s song when the year is on the turn.
The sight of the haunted face that bore such a likeness to Poor Stephen set her thinking again of the sad photograph in his mother’s room. Absurd as it seemed now, she had felt, at the time, as if it had wished her to take it away. Yet most people going in—people like his lordship, for instance—and seeing it in its silver frame, would never doubt for a moment that Emma had loved her son. They would take off their hats, as it were, to her glory and grief. Even if you had told them the truth, and with an army of witnesses at your back, they would still have averred that at least Emma was sorry now. Yet nobody who had known her as Mrs. Clapham had known her would believe that it was possible for her to be really sorry. It was true that Mrs. Tanner had hinted at some such possibility only that morning, but she herself would be the first to say that she had meant nothing by it. As for the charwoman, whose love for her only child was as crystal-clear as running water, she could see nothing that looked even remotely like love in the sorrowing Emma. She was not the only one, of course, who had been puzzled of late by the queer psychology of war-time love. So much of it seemed to be merely clutching and coarse, as if it was the body that mattered and not the soul. Emma, indeed, seemed to be still clutching at Stephen even after his body was gone, and not only clutching at Stephen but his widow and children as well....