'Yes, I did.'
Would he ever forget that call?
It was on a bleak day in early spring. No gleam of sunshine lit up the old house as he rode up the hill. A north-east wind blew off the moors, whose hollows were still snow-drifted. The roar of the swollen stream thundering down the gill filled the air; the larches strained away from the buildings they sheltered, creaking with every fresh blast. He had knocked at the front door without answer, then gone round to the back with the same result. Not even the bark of a dog disturbed the death-like silence. Returning to the flags he scanned the fields. In the corner of the first pasture was a temporary shed for the ewes. As he looked, Dinah Constantine emerged from it carrying two lambs. Her keen eyes noted him instantly. She ran back, put down the lambs, and came up the field at the top of her speed. On reaching him she grasped his arm with the grip of a vice, poured into his amazed ears her dreary story, and finally opened the parlour door and showed him Anna.
She was sitting at the table with outflung arms, in which her face was buried. It was her first sorrow. She was exhausted by a grief that had been passionate and now was sickening. It seemed to her earnest and matter-of-fact nature that happiness had flown for ever from Old Lafer. He sat down and reasoned with her after closing the door against Dinah. He did not go near her, knowing instinctively that to feel any one near her would be intolerable, circumscribing, as it would seem to do, both grief and sympathy. Standing near the window in silence for a while, then sitting down apart, but where she could see him when she looked up, as he hoped she would do soon, he set himself to win her through the struggle and show her the light again.
And as he won her back to patience, he was himself won to love. Her bitter tears, yet the spasmodic efforts at smiles that pierced her hopelessness with hope and showed her capable of bracing herself for trial; her ardent love for Clothilde; her fierce shame and agony of remorse for Mr. Severn; her refrain at each point gained as to what had possessed Clothilde to be so 'wicked' as to leave her home, and her simple perplexity at its having been 'allowed' by God, expressing themselves on her face and in her gestures more than by word, made a never-to-be-forgotten impression upon him. This school-girl, whom he had as a matter of course either overlooked or patronised, and who was certainly plain to the point of being the ugly duckling of the family, dwelt thenceforth enthroned in his heart. His thoughts centred round her. His steps took him to her side at every opportunity. Other women, though beautiful, palled upon him. There insensibly stole into his soul a tender reverence that gradually made him hold aloof from the very intensity of his longing to be near her. He discovered in himself a new nature, capable of chivalrous self-control and subtly delicate adoration. Anna Hugo was dearer to him than life itself, except for her sake. She was a girl whom time would mature into a noble womanhood, and the stern realities of life at once strengthen and sweeten; the one woman whom—if he were to have his heart's desire—he must win for his wife.
And here she was to-day, at his side but still not won. However, she knew now that she was wooed. He would know more soon. Mrs. Severn should not come between them a third time, either directly or indirectly.
'The first time she ran away I was at school,' Anna said. 'Dad has never spoken of it, but Dinah has told me how awful it was. He became frantic when hours passed and there was no news or trace of her. There had been a heavy storm, and the waters were out, and he was certain she had been in the gill and slipped in and been drowned. And then old Hartas Kendrew came over from the Mires and told them she had gone there to see Scilla. Of course they thought it was a call; and Scilla made tea and then expected she would go. But the storm came on, and so she waited, and when it cleared Scilla proposed to set her home. Then she looked at her and said, "Prissy, I am come to stay with you, my husband won't let me go to Paris." She always calls Scilla Prissy, though she knows how she dislikes it. Scilla thought she was joking. Fancy going to the Mires because she could not go to Paris! But she would stay, and so Hartas came to tell us.'
'And Mr. Severn brought her back?'
'Yes. He was very angry, and insisted, and she was frightened. The second time he tried to persuade her, and she would not be persuaded, so he let her stay, and at a month's end she came back. But she never asked him to forgive her, and it was heart-rending to see him so gentle. He blamed himself, said he should never have asked her to marry him, that she was too young and handsome and well-born, and had he not been too selfish to let her alone she would have married some man who could have given her all the wealth and pleasure she had a right to expect. Last time he did not even try to coax her, though he actually went to see her. He said she must be happy in her own way. He had only his love to plead, and she had taught him she did not care for that.'
Her voice had sunk to the lowest of tones. Its inflexion touched the chord in his heart, of whose vibration in devotion to herself she was far from thinking in this hour. He caught his breath and abruptly turned his head away. He could not have borne to glance at her. For a moment he could not speak.