"My Dear Theresa,
"I'm watching for the new heather, but it seems long in coming, and will be longer yet. There's the old stuff still on the bushes, but the colour's gone and it's the purple flower I want. Will you not be here to see it flush the hills? But it's months till then, and just now there's little here but snow, and the streams so fierce and heavy that it takes your breath away. I think it's the early morning that I like best, when there's hardly any light but what comes from the snow; and this morning, just at that hour, I was wakened by the stairs creaking, and there was my father going out, half-dressed, and I heard my mother cry out to me to stop him, for he'd taken the razor. We'd had peace for these last weeks, and I'd begun to hope he'd worn himself into quiet, and there he was again, rushing into the snow and the grey morning. It was like chasing a ghost across the fields, for there was no sound on the snow, and the trees looked like spectres that had never known the run of sap. And my mother stood by the gate holding a lantern that gave a little flame the morning mocked at. It was like a lamp showing the door of the underworld I'd rushed into. I came up with him at last, and he laughed at me. He had no razor, he said, and it's true he hadn't, but he'd chosen to frighten my mother with that lie. What are we to do with the man? He threatens to take his life, and if it wasn't for my mother, I think I'd let him do it; but I've got to stop him, and then he laughs at us. I was near knocking him down, but I've always kept my hands off him so far, and I hope I always may. But he's mad, though my mother will not have it. And he is still laughing at his joke. Is it cunning to put us off the scent, I'm wondering?
"When I look back into my life, I see so many pictures of darkness; the night and the sound of his shambling feet coming home, the early morning and the creaking stairs, and my mother calling softly and telling me to stay in bed, for that was when I was young, and he had a spite against me; and the shadows in the kitchen when I did my work, and the moving shadow on the ceiling as my father prowled up and down. The darkness followed me when I went to school in the sun, and when I came back I knew it waited for me. If I went in mist or rain, there was nothing strange in that, for it was just the shadows going with me. Yet I'm exaggerating, for the hills always stood clear of all else, and were themselves and friends to me. Even you, who love them, cannot know what they have been. There's no good name I cannot give them—except one.
"I have written all this about myself, but it's hardly of myself I have been thinking. Indeed, I've written without thought at all, as if my pen knew all that I must say. I've been waiting for that book of yours. Is it coming soon? It's nearly two years since you were here, but I can squeeze all those months up into my hand and throw them from me. Will you send me a letter?
"Alexander."
The day after he had posted this letter to Theresa, he heard from Edward Webb.
"Something has happened which I can hardly believe," he wrote, "which I do not wish to believe. Theresa is to marry a Basil Morton, nephew of the Mr. Smith for whom she works. I know nothing against him, I believe she is happy, I hope she will be happy in the future. Perhaps a father always dreads marriage for his child, and yet I can conceive of circumstances in which I should not feel this heavy load, like death. I tell you what I would say to no one else, but I feel as if my affection for Theresa had made my very body sensitive to what may hurt her, and receptive of warnings. Yet she is a woman; she is twenty-five, and my feelings may be nothing but an old man's jealousy and anger at a turn of events I had not planned. Please understand—Mr. Morton is a man of breeding and education. His devotion to Theresa is evident. My objections are all of that strongest, inexplicable sort, and I feel that she has already gone from me for ever. Perhaps I have dwelt too persistently on the thought of her all these years, if one can think too much of what one loves; perhaps my perception of most things has become blunted by looking too keenly at the one thing. I do not know. It all seems very dark to me, and the burden of child-bearing is not all the mother's. I have borne Theresa for five-and-twenty years, and now she is snatched from me. Is this selfishness? I think I could have given her more willingly to another, but perhaps not, for I find my baseness is unfathomable."
The darkness which had so seldom left him now thickened and settled on Alexander, but first there was a bright spurt of light, a scattering of sparks that were the red colour of rage, and like the imprecations of his mind made visible.
[CHAPTER XXIII]
Mrs. Morton sat by the drawing-room fire, listening for the sound of wheels. The wind was high and as it dashed among the trees it made a roaring as of many chariots. Three times already she had laid down her crotchet and picked it up again, and now, wrapping a little shawl about her shoulders, she went to the window and watched for a blot on the whiteness of the drive that followed the side of the lawn for a little way before it curved out of sight.
The grass before the house sloped to a glimmer of water, and was edged by clustered trees; on the other side of the lake more trees stood black against the fading light, and close to the house there was a group of elms in which the rooks were busy. The branches of all the trees were swaying, flinging themselves this way and that, dipping towards the earth and springing up again in defiance of their humility, shaking their heads in denial, lowering them in contrite affirmation. The noise they made was like that of the sea, but, because it was rarer, it was more foreboding. The roaring of the sea, now loud, now soft, is as unceasing as its ebb and flow, but the trees only cry out when the wind whips them, and their voice is full of lamentation.
Mrs. Morton did not like the wind. She loved her home best when the summer sun shone on it, and the trees were clothed in green to hide their nakedness, when the flower-beds were bright with colour, and she could stroll beside them under the shade of her parasol. The gaunt energy of leafless trees, their moans and wailings, were akin to the sight and sound of a soul laid bare, and this tall, white-haired lady with the passive face disliked them according to her dread of the primitive and unruly.
She shuddered as she waited for Theresa. This was no fit day for Basil to bring home his betrothed; there was no bridal softness in the air and, with a carelessness unlike him, he had driven to meet her in the dog-cart. She had protested, for the wind was cold, but he had smiled, told her Theresa loved the wind, and repeated his inconsiderate order. She would be cold when she arrived.