"I should like one day, only one, to be wet," said Edward Webb, fussing up and down between the two doors of the kitchen. "I want Theresa to see the mists. She hasn't seen the mountains until she has seen them hidden. I want her to hear the wind howling and see the rain driven. That's rain personified, half god, half man, urging and urged. In a town, it's nothing more than water falling, but here——"
"This is how he goes on," said Clara. "He and Alexander!"
"No, no. Alexander keeps a wise silence. It is I who am so—so garrulous, I am afraid."
"Oh, we like to hear you," she said.
A voice came from the shadows. "I like soft rain on my face, in the dark among the mountains. It is very dark among them in the night."
The burning wood stirred uneasily, a flame leapt, and Theresa saw the hand, pallid in the fierce glow, still working on the dog's head. The flame sank, and the small sounds in the kitchen, the clink of teacups and the dull drumming of a light wind at the pane, added to her sense of mysterious and impending happenings. She sat here, at last, in the kitchen she seemed to have known all her life. Above her, on the mantelpiece, her own eyes looked down, smiling in comradeship and welcome and amusement at her surprise. Those photographs had been sent without her knowledge and she felt strangely at a disadvantage. For all these years Alexander had been familiar with her looks, while to her he was still a vague form, perpetually menacing an exacter shape. She was like someone who has thought herself alone and finds all her actions watched. But Alexander was away, and she would not have to meet the scrutiny that compared reality with pictures. If she had not been assured of that she would not have been here among the hills. But—happiness triumphed above discomfiture—she was undeniably here! The smell of burning wood was in her nostrils and, outside, the hills were powerfully, peacefully asleep under their caps of snow. She was here, with the freshness of the mountain air on her cheeks, while, in the warm west, Grace was a three days' bride. But on the thought of that surrender Theresa would not dwell.
She felt she was having her revenge on Alexander, when, having been lighted up the stairs by his father, she closed the door of his room; for if he had been able to study her face during all these years, she could now retort with an examination of his belongings. His books, she considered, would be quite as tell-tale as her appearance—and then she caught back her thoughts. He had probably never so much as glanced at the mantelpiece, and why should she be curious as to his tastes?
She went to the window, and, kneeling before it, undressed with hasty hands. She saw the fields and the mountains, and a great moon swung in heaven: she had realized a dream, but her one wish was to put out the light and draw the bedclothes close about her head, and lose consciousness of this room which moved her like a presence.
It was a long time before she slept. A mouse scratched in the wall, somewhere a door was shaken in its frame, and often the stairs creaked as though a foot had pressed them. She hated the bed she lay on, and the blankets covering her; they were unbearably intimate. This was the pillow Alexander's head had dinted, and the moon made his possessions clear to her wakeful eyes. The room was whitewashed, and the walls, against which many books were stacked, were bare of pictures. "Dull creature!" she exclaimed, and, muffled to the chin, sat up in bed, determined to be done with foolishness. She would not allow the man to mar her joy, for to do so was to admit an importance to which he had no right. She punched the pillow defiantly and, holding her ankles, rested her chin on her knees. Sitting thus she could see the shoulder of the Blue Hill, and she nodded to it grimly, in a kind of challenge, for it seemed to hold the judicial scales between her and Alexander, and to persuade her to its own wise tolerance. What, it asked mildly, had Alexander done to offend? and she was bound to answer: "Nothing. Nothing but make me feel inferior, ever since I first heard his name. How could I like a boy who was not afraid of geese when I was terrified by them? A boy who tramped long miles to school at an age when I thought it an adventure to go down to the docks, a clever boy who won scholarships I knew I could never get? I was prejudiced against him at ten years old! Oh, Alexander, I have been very silly! I'm quite willing to be friends." She kissed her hand. "We are friends, I tell you. But be careful how you behave, my man. I'm very hard to please!" She laughed at the moonlit night. "As if he cares!" And then, hitting the pillow forcefully again, "Oh, but if I saw him, I'd make him care!"
A beautiful windy morning waked her. She found her father on the horse-block, his nose and cheeks blue with cold, his eyes reddened but bright with joy.