Sophie, only too willing to be convinced, sat by him in the little clearing, and listened almost in silence. Behind them on both sides the hazel-bushes made a faintly whispering screen of darkness, at their feet the mill-dam lay silent save for the occasional plop-plop of the tiny trout rising at late flies, on the further bank the hedge was a network of tangled black against the deepening sky, while overhead the elms and sycamores were pierced by the first faint stars. The two were set in a hushed sphere of aloofness, and for Sophie it was the world. "Trust me, my sweet Sophie—only trust me!" was whispered in her ear, and when she answered that she did, and he told her that if it were really so she would not draw away from him, she let his arms creep round her and his mouth come to hers. Weeks of carefully calculated love making had gone to make her pliable, kisses at which all the chill girlhood of her would earlier have shuddered, as it had at the same thing in Charles Le Petyt, she now bore, if not yet with passion, yet with the woman's tolerance of it in the man she loves. Crandon knew it was the moment to bind her to him irrevocably, for he guessed that to a woman of her type faithfulness is a necessity of self-respect, and with him desire was one with deliberate planning. Whether he threw a spell of words over her, or whether the mere force of his thought pleaded with her to prove she trusted him utterly, Sophie could never have told. She only knew that the still night, the soft air, the rustling leaves and the pricking stars, his presence, dimly seen but deeply felt, and the beating in her own frame, all cried to her, "It was for this that I was born! For this, for this, for this!"
IV
THE SPELL
Every one, on looking back at the past, even from the near standpoint of a few months, realizes how it falls into separate phases, unnoticed at the time, but nevertheless distinct. When she had reached her apex, Sophie saw how that night by the mill-dam had shut down one phase for ever, and ushered in a new one. Deceptions, and constant evading of her father's suspicions, secret meetings, to connive at which it became a bitter necessity to bribe the servants, hard Lylie and slow-tongued James—while at the same time instinct warned her to keep the thing from Hester Keast—all these were wearisome and galling, but by the quality of affairs with Crandon fell into insignificance, merely an added irritation, flies on a wound.
What first suggested to Crandon his idea of the love-potion was the discovery of Sophie's credulousness. Like all West Country folk, especially in those days, she was a firm believer in witches and spells, to an extent incredible to a Saxon. As late as the latter half of the nineteenth century an old woman was accused by a farmer of ill-wishing his bullocks and was brought to trial; while a "cunning man," or "white-witch," lived until lately in the northern part of the Duchy. A century earlier, therefore, when Cornwall was practically cut off from England, when even the coach came no further than Saltash, and travellers continued on horseback or in a "kitterine"; when newspapers were unknown, and books only found in parsonages or the biggest of the country houses; when animals were burned alive as sacrifices to fortune, and any man out at night went in fear of ghosts and the devil, then there was no one, of whatever rank, who did not believe in witchcraft. That Sophie, lonely, romantic, with the superstitious blood of the Celt unadulterated in her veins, should give credence to such things, was inevitable; and when Crandon suggested giving a love-potion to the Squire, so that he might feel his heart warmed towards his would-be son-in-law, she seized at what was to her more a certainty than a hope.
It was an afternoon in late September, and she and Crandon had met in a wood about a mile away from Troon, when he first mooted his plan; she sat beside him on one of the great grey boulders with which the sloping floor of the wood was covered, and listened with growing eagerness. It was a damp, steamy day, gold and tawny leaves, blown down in one night's gale, were drifted thickly in the fissures of the rocks and over the patches of vividly green moss; and livid orange fungi grew on the tree-boles. Sophie, always affected by externals, shuddered a little and drew closer to Crandon. Slipping his hand under the heavy knot of her hair, he laid it against the nape of her neck, and as she closed her eyes in the pleasure of his touch he looked down at her with a queer expression on his narrow face.
"You have the loveliest neck in the world, my Sophie," he said, making his hands meet round it as he spoke, "see—I make you a living necklace for it."
Sophie tucked in her chin, and bending her head, kissed the clasping fingers. Although he was not of those men to whom the attained woman gains in attractions, yet there were still things about Sophie—little flashes and gleams, swift touches, that fired him afresh. She stirred him now, yet he was cold enough to be glad of the stir because it gave him added eloquence for his purpose.
"I will get you a better necklace," he told her. "Nothing very fine, or what would the Squire think? I have been collecting choice bits of serpentine, and had them cut out and polished, and you shall have a necklace of them—the stones of your own country. Your throat will warm them, my Sophie, as it would warm my hands if they were cold in death."
"Death!" murmured Sophie, shuddering again, "we should not speak of it, lest it hear us."