There was a silence through which the poplars whispered in excitement.

"Perhaps I am a little deaf," Miriam said politely, "but I haven't heard you telling us anything."

"Yes; he said the ground was damp."

"So he did! Come along, we'll go in."

"No, don't!" he begged. "I know I'm not getting on very fast, but the fact is—I can't bear women to be called after flowers. If it weren't for that I should have told you long ago. And hers is one of the worst," he added sadly.

Miriam and Helen shook each other with their silent laughter.

"You can call her something else," Helen said.

"Mrs. C. would be a jaunty way of addressing her."

"Well, anyway, she's going to marry me, bless her heart. Get up! Notya wants to know why supper isn't ready." He did a clumsy caper on the grass. "Who's glad?"

"I am," Helen said.

"When?" Miriam asked.

"Soon."

"What did Notya say?" was Helen's question.

"Nothing worth repeating. Don't talk of that."

"Well," Miriam remarked, "it will be a very interesting affair to watch."

"Confound your impudence!"

"You're sure to have heaps of children," she warned him.

"Hope so."

"You'll forget how many there are, and mix them up with the dogs and the cats and the geese. They'll be very dirty."

"And perfectly happy."

"Oh, yes. Now Helen's will always be clean little prigs who couldn't be naughty if they tried. I shall like yours best, John, though they won't be clean enough to kiss."

"Shut up!" he said.

"I shall be a lovely aunt. I shall come from London Town with a cornucopia of presents. We're beginning to go," she went on. "First John, and then me, as soon as I am twenty-one."

"But Rupert will be here," Helen said quickly.

"He'll marry, too, and you'll be left with Notya. Somebody will have to look after her old age. And as you've always been so fond of her—!"

"There would be the moor," Helen said, answering all her unspoken thoughts.

"It wouldn't comfort me!"

"Don't worry, my dear," John said kindly; "the gods are surely tender with the good."

"But she won't grow old," Helen said earnestly. "I don't believe she could grow old. It would be terrible." And it was of Mildred Caniper and not of herself she thought.



CHAPTER XV

Mildred Caniper was wearing her deaf expression when they went into the house, and getting supper ready as a form of reproof. John was another of her failures. He had chosen work she despised for him, and now, though it was impossible to despise Lily Brent, it was impossible not to disapprove of such a marriage for a Caniper. But when she was helpless, Mrs. Caniper had learnt to preserve her pride in suavity, and as they sat down to supper she remarked that she would call on Lily Brent tomorrow.

"How funny!" Helen said at once.

Miriam darted a look meant to warn Helen that Notya was in no mood for controversy, and John frowned in readiness to take offence.

"Why funny?" he growled.

"I was just wondering if Notya would put on a hat and gloves to do it." She turned to Mildred Caniper. "Will you?"

"I'm afraid I have not considered such a detail."

"None of us," Helen went on blandly, "has ever put on a hat to go to the farm. I should hate any of us to do it. Notya, you can't."

"You forget," Mildred Caniper said in her coldest tones, "that I have not been accustomed to going there."

"Well, do notice Lily's primroses," Helen said pleasantly. "They're like sunshine, and she's like—"

"No, please," John begged.

"I wonder why Rupert has not come to supper," Mildred Caniper said, changing the subject, and Helen wondered pityingly why one who had known unhappiness should not be eager to spare others.

"But," Miriam began, her interest overcoming dread of her stepmother's prejudices, "we shall have to wear hats for John's wedding. I shall have a new one and a new dress, a dusky blue, I think, with a sheen on it."

"Did you mention my wedding?" John asked politely.

"Yes. And a peacock's feather in my hat. No, that's unlucky, but so beautiful."

"Nothing beautiful," Helen said, "can be unlucky."

"I wouldn't risk it. But what can I have?"

"For my wedding," John announced, "you'll have nothing, unless you want to sit alone in the garden in your new clothes. You're not going to be present at the ceremony. Good Lord! I'll have Rupert and Daniel for witnesses, and we'll come home in time to do the milking, but there'll be no show. It would make me sick."

"Not even a party?"

"What the—what on earth should we have a party for?"

"For fun, of course. Daniel and Zebedee and us." She leaned towards him. "And George, John, just to show that all's forgiven!" To see if she had dared too much, she cast a glance at Mildred Caniper, but that lady sat in the stillness of determined indifference.

"Not one of you!" John said. "It's our wedding, and we're going to do what we like with it."

"But when you're going to be happy—as I suppose you think you are—you ought to let other people join in. Here's a chance of a little fun—"

"There's nothing funny about being married," Helen said in her deep tones.

"Depends who—whom—you're marrying, doesn't it?" Miriam asked, and looking at Mildred Caniper once more, she found that she need not be afraid, for though the expression was the same, its effect was different. Notya looked as though she could not rouse her energies to active disapproval; as though she would never say her rare, amusing things again, and Miriam was reminded of the turnip lanterns they had made in their youth—hollowness and flickering light within.

The succeeding days encouraged that reminder, for something had gone from Mildred Caniper and left her stubbornly frail in mind and body. Rupert believed that hope had died in her but the Canipers did not speak of the change which was plain to all of them. She was a presence of flesh and blood, and she would always be a presence, for she had that power, but she approached Mr. Pinderwell in their thoughts, and they began to use towards her the kind of tenderness they felt for him. Sometimes she became aware of it and let out an irony with a sharpness which sent Helen about the house more gaily and persuaded her that Notya would be better when summer came, for surely no one could resist the sun.

John's soft heart forgave his stepmother's coldness towards his marriage and his bride, and prompted him to a generous suggestion. He made it shyly and earnestly one night in the drawing-room where Mildred Caniper sat under the picture of Mr. Pinderwell's lady.

"Notya," he began, "we want you to come to our wedding, too. Just you and Rupert and Daniel. Will you?"

She looked faintly amused, yet, the next moment, he had a fear that she was going to cry. "Thank you, John."

"We both want you," he said awkwardly, and went nearer.

"I'm glad you have asked me, but I won't come. I'm afraid I should only spoil it. I do spoil things." She smiled at him and looked at the hands on her knee. "It seems to me that that's what I do best."

He did not know what to say and, having made inarticulate noises in his throat, he went quickly to the schoolroom.

"Go to Notya, some one, and make her angry. She's being miserable in the drawing-room. Tell her you've broken something!"

"I won't," Miriam said. "I've had too much of that, and I'm going to enjoy the unwonted peace. You go, Helen."

"Leave her alone," Rupert advised. "You won't cure Notya's unhappiness so easily as that."

"When the summer comes—" Helen began, cheerfully deceiving herself, and John interrupted.

"Summer is here already. It's June next week."

He was married in his own way on the first day of that month, and Miriam uttered no more regrets. She was comparatively contented with the present. Mildred Caniper seldom thwarted her, and she knew that every day George Halkett rode or walked where he might see her, and her memory of that splendid summer was to be one of sunlight blotted with the shapes of man and horse moving across the moor. George was not always successful in his search, for she knew that he would pall as a daily dish, but on Sundays if Daniel would not be beguiled, and if it was not worth while to tease Helen through Zebedee, she seldom failed to make her light secret way to the larch-wood where he waited.

Her excitement, when she felt any, was only sexual because the danger she sought and the power she wielded were of that kind, and she was chiefly conscious of light-hearted enjoyment and the new experience of an understanding with the moor. Secrecy quickened her perceptions and she found that nature deliberately helped her, but whether for its own purposes or hers she could not tell. The earth which had once been her enemy now seemed to be her friend, and where she had seen monotony she discovered delicate differences of hour and mood. If she needed shelter, the hollows deepened themselves at her approach, shadows grew darker and the moor lifted itself to hide her. She seemed to take a friend on all her journeys, but she was not quite happy in its company. It was a silent, scheming friend and she was not sure of it; there were times when she suspected laughter at which she would grow defiant and then, pretending that she went openly in search of pleasure, she sang and whistled loudly on her way.

There was an evening when that sound was answered by the noise of hoofs behind her, the music of a chinking bridle, the creaking of leather and the hard breathing of a horse. She did not turn as George drew rein beside her and said "Good-evening," in his half sulky tones. She had her hands behind her back and she looked at the sky.

"'Sunset and evening star,'" she said solemnly, "'and one clear call for me.' Do you know those beautiful words, George?"

He did not answer. She could hear him fidgeting with whip and reins, but she gazed upward still.

"I'm sorry I can't recite the rest. I have forgotten it, but if you will promise to read it, I'll lend you a copy. On Sunday evenings you ought to sit at home and improve your mind."

He gave a laugh like a cough. "I don't care about my mind," he said, and he touched the horse with his heel so that she had to move aside. He saw warm anger chase the pious expression from her face.

"Ah!" she cried, "that is the kind of thing you do! You're rough! You make me hate you! Why!" her voice fell from its height, "that's a new horse!" Her hands were busy on neck and nose. "I like him. What is he called?"

Halkett was looking at her with an eagerness through which her words could hardly pierce. She was wonderful to watch, soft as a kitten, swift as a bird.

"What do you call him, George?" she said again, and tapped his boot.

"'Charlie'—this one."

She laughed. "You choose dull names. Is he as wicked as Daisy?"

"Nothing like."

"Why did you get him, then?"

"I want him for hard work."

"I believe you're lazy. If you don't walk you'll get fat. You're the kind of man that does."

"Perhaps, but that's a long way off. Riding is hard work enough and my father was a fine man up to sixty."

A thin shock of fear ran through her at the remembrance of old Halkett's ruined shape. "I was always frightened of him," she said in a small voice, and she looked at George as though she asked for reassurance. There was a cold grey light on the moor; darkness was not far off and it held a chill wind in leash.

"Do you wish he wasn't dead?" she whispered.

He lifted his shoulders and pursed his mouth. "No," he said.

"Are you lonely in that house?"

"There's Mrs. Biggs, you know," he said with a sneer.

"Yes, I know," she murmured doubtfully, and drew closer.

"So you don't think she's enough for me?"

"Of course I don't. That's why I'm so kind to you. She couldn't be listening to us, could she? Everything seems to be listening."

"So you're kind to me, are you?"

"Yes," she said, raising her eyebrows and nodding her head, until she looked like a dark poppy in a wind.

"And when I saw you on the road the other day you wouldn't look at me. That's the second time."

"I did."

"As if I'd been a sheep."

"Oh!" Laughter bubbled in her. "You did look rather like one. I was occupied in thinking deeply, seriously, intently—"

"That's no excuse."

"My good George, I shouldn't think of excusing myself to you. I chose to ignore you and I shall probably ignore you again."

"Two can play at that game."

"Well, dear me, I shan't mind."

He bent in the saddle, and she did not like the polished whiteness of his eyeballs. His voice was very low and heavy. "You think you can go on making a mock of me for ever."

She started back. "No, George, no."

"You do, by God!" He lifted his whip to shake it in the face of heaven.

"Oh, don't, George, please! I can't stay"—she crept nearer—"if you go on like that. What have I done? It's you who treat me badly. Won't you be nice? Tell me about something." She put her face against the horse's neck. "Tell me about riding. It must be beautiful in the dark. Isn't it dangerous? Dare you gallop?"

"Well, we do."

"Such lots of rabbit-holes."

"What does it matter?"

"Oh, dear, you're very cross."

"I can't help it," he said like an unhappy child. "I can't help it." And he put his hand to his head with an uncertain movement.

"Oh." With a practical air she sought for an impersonal topic. "Tell me about Paris."

"Paris." There was no need for him to speak above a murmur. "I want to take you there."

"Do you?"

He leant lower. "Will you come?"

Her eyes moved under his, but they did not turn aside. "I think I'm going there with some one else," she said softly, and before her vision of this eager lover there popped a spruce picture of Uncle Alfred.

"That isn't true," Halkett said, but despair was in his voice.

She was angered instantly. "I beg your pardon?"

"It isn't true," he said again.

"Very well," she said, and she began to walk away, but he called after her vehemently, bitterly, "Because I won't let you go!"

She laughed at that and came back to her place, to say indulgently, "How silly you are! I'm only going with an aged uncle!"

"But he's not the man to take you there."

"No."

"Come with me now."

"Shall I?"

"Get up beside me and I'll carry you away."

She was held by his trouble, but she spoke lightly. "Could he swim with us both across the Channel? No, I don't think I want to come tonight. Some day—"

"When?"

"Oh," she said on a high note, "perhaps when I'm very tired of things."

"You're tired already."

"Not so much as that. And we're talking nonsense, and I must go."

"Not yet."

"I must. It's nearly time for bed, and I'm not sure that it's polite of you to sit on that horse while I stand here."

"Come up and you'll see how well he goes."

"He wouldn't bear us both."

"Pooh! You're a feather."

"Oh, I couldn't. Wouldn't he jump?"

"He'd better try!"

"Now, don't be cruel to him."

"What do you know about it? I've ridden since I could walk."

"Lucky you!"

"I'll teach you."

"Could you?"

"Give me a chance."

"Here's one! No, no, I didn't mean it," she cried as he dismounted and lifted her to the saddle. "Oh, I feel so high up. Don't move him till I get used to it. I'm not safe on this saddle. Put me a little further on, George. That's further forward! I'm nearly on his neck. No, I don't think I like it. Take me down."

"Keep still." The words were almost threatening in the gloom. "Sit steady. I'm coming up."

"No, don't. I shall fall off!"

But already he was behind her, holding her closely with one arm. "There! He's quiet enough. I couldn't do this with Daisy. And he's sure-footed. He was bred on the moor." He set the horse trotting gently. "He goes well, doesn't he?"

"Yes."

"Don't you like it?"

"Ye-es."

"What's the matter?"

"There isn't room enough," she said, and moved her shoulders.

He spoke in her ear. "If I don't hold you, you'll fall off. Here's a smooth bit coming. Now, lad, show us what you can do and remember what you're carrying!"

The saddle creaked and the bit jangled and George's arm tightened round her. Though she did not like his nearness, she leaned closer for safety, and he and the horse seemed to be one animal, strong and swift and merciless. Once or twice she gasped, "Please, George, not quite so fast," but the centaur paid no heed. She shut her eyes because she did not like to see the darkness sliding under them as they passed, and they seemed to be galloping into a blackness that was empty and unending. Her hands clutched the arm that fenced her breasts: her breath came quickly, exhilaration was mixed with fear, and now she was part of the joint body that carried her and held her.

She hardly knew when the pace had slackened; she was benumbed with new sensations, darkness, speed and strength. She had forgotten that this was a man she leaned against. Then the horse stood still and she felt Halkett's face near hers, his breath on her cheeks, a new pressure of his arm and, unable to endure this different nearness, she gave his binding hand a sharp blow with her knuckles, jerked her head backwards against his and escaped his grasp; but she had to fall to do it, and from the ground she heard his chuckle as he looked down at her.

At that moment she would have killed him gladly; she felt her body soiled by his, but her mind was curiously untouched. It knew no disgust for his desire nor for her folly, and while she hated him for sitting there and laughing at her fall, this was still a game she loved and meant to play. In the heather she sat and glowered at him, but now she could hardly see his face.

"That was a silly thing to do," she heard him say. "You might easily have been kicked. What did you do it for?"

She would not own her knowledge of his real offence, and she muttered angrily, "Galloping like that—"

"Didn't you like it? He's as steady as a rock."

"How could I know that?"

"And I thought you had some pluck."

"I have. I sat quite still."

Again he laughed. "I made you."

"Oh," she burst out. "I'll never trust you again."

"You would if you knew—if you knew—but never mind. I wanted to see you on a horse. You shall have him to yourself next time. I'll get a side saddle."

"I don't want one," she said.

"Oh, yes, you do. Let me help you up. Say you forgive me."

With her hand in his she murmured, "But you are always doing something. And my head aches."

"Does it? I'm sorry. What made it ache?"

"It—I—I bumped myself when I fell."

"Poor little head! It was silly of you, wasn't it? Let me put you on his back again, and I'll walk you slowly home."

He was faithful to his word, letting her go without a pressure of the hand, and she crept into the house with the uneasy conviction that Helen was right, that George wanted the chance he had never had, and her own responsibility was black over her bed as she tried to sleep. Turning from side to side and at last sitting up with a jerk, she decided to evade responsibility by evading George, and with that resolution she heaved a deep sigh at the prospect of her young life despoiled by duty.



CHAPTER XVI

Zebedee had the lover's gift of finding time which did not exist for other men, and there were few Sundays when he did not spend some minutes or some hours on the moor. There were blank days when Helen failed him because she thought Mildred Caniper was lonely, others when she ran out for a word and swiftly left him to the memory of her grace and her transforming smile; yet oftenest, she was waiting for him in the little hollow of earth, and those hours were the best he had ever known. It was good to sit and see the sky slowly losing colour and watch the moths flit out, and though neither he nor she was much given to speech, each knew that the other was content.

"Helen," he said one night in late September when they were left alone, "I want to tell you something."

She did not stir, and she answered slowly, softly, in the voice of one who slept, "Tell it."

"It's about beauty. I'd never seen it till you showed it to me."

"Did I? When?"

"I'm not sure. That night—"

"On the moor?"

"Always on the moor! When you had the basket. It was the first time after I came back."

"But you couldn't see me in the darkness."

"Yes, a little. You remember you told me to light the lamps. And I could hear you—your voice running with the wind—And then each day since. I want to thank you."

"Oh—" She made a little sound of depreciation and happiness.

"Those old Sundays—"

"Ah, yes! The shining pews and the painted stars. This is better."

"Yes, this is better. Heather instead of the sticky pews—"

"And real stars," she murmured.

"And you for priestess."

"No, I'm just a worshipper."

"But you show the way. You give light to them that sit in darkness."

"Ah, don't." There was pain in her voice. "Don't give me things. At least, don't give me praise. I'm afraid of having things."

"But why, my dear?" The words dropped away into the gathering dusk, and they both listened to them as they went.

"I'm afraid they will be taken away again."

"Don't have that feeling. It will be hard on those who want to give you—much."

"I hadn't thought of that," she cried, and started up as though she were glad to blame him. "And you never tell me anything. Why don't you? Why don't you tell me about your work? I could have that. There would be no harm in that."

"Harm? No. May I?"

"Why shouldn't you? They all tell me things. Don't you want somebody to talk to?"

"I want you, if you care to hear."

"Oh, Zebedee, yes," she said, and sank into her place.

"Helen," he said unsteadily, "I wish you would grow up, and yet, Helen, what a pity that you should change."

She did not answer; she might have been asleep, and he sat in a stillness born of his disturbance at her nearness, her pale smooth skin, her smooth brown hair, the young curves of her body. If he had moved, it would have been to crush her beautiful, firm mouth, but her youth was a chain wound round him, and though he was in bonds he seemed to be alive for the first time. He and Helen were the sole realities. He could see Miriam's figure, black against the sky as she stood or stooped to pick a flower, but she had no meaning for him, and the voices of the young men, not far off, might have been the droning of some late bee. The world was a cup to hold him and this girl, and over that cup he had a feeling of mastery and yet of helplessness, and all his past days dwindled to a streak of drab existence. Life had begun, and it went at such a pace that he did not know how much of it was already spent when Helen sat up, and looking at him with drowsy eyes, asked, "What is happening?"

"There was magic abroad. The sun has been going down behind the moor, and night is coming on. I must be going home."

"Don't go. Yes, it's getting dark. There will be stars soon. I love the night. Don't go. How low the birds are flying. They are like big moths. The magic hasn't gone."

Grey-gowned, grey-eyed, white-faced, he thought she was like a moth herself, fragile and impalpable in the gloom, a moth motionless on a flower, and when he saw her smile he thought the moth was making ready for flight.

"I want this to go on for ever," she said. "The moor and the night and you. You're such a friend—you and the Pinderwells. I don't know how I should live without you."

"Do you know what you're saying to me?"

"I'm telling you I like you, and it's true. And you like me. It's so comfortable to know that."

"Comfortable!"

"Isn't it?"

"Comfortable?" he said again. "Oh, my love—" He broke off, and looking at each other, both fell dumb.

He got to his feet and looked down with an expression which was strange to her, for into that moment of avowal there had come a fleeting antagonism towards the woman who, in spite of all her gifts to him, had taken his possession of himself: yet through his shamed resentment, he knew that he adored her.

"Zebedee," she said in a broken voice. "Oh, isn't it a funny name! Zebedee, don't look at me like that."

"How shall I look at you?" he asked, not clearly.

"In the old way. But don't say things." She sprang up. "Not tonight."

"When?" he asked sternly.

"I—don't know. Tonight I feel afraid. It's—too much. I shan't be able to keep it, Zebedee. It's too good. And we can't get this for nothing."

"I'm willing to pay for it. I want to pay for it, in the pain of parting from you now, in the work of all my days—" He stopped in his realization of how little he had to give. "I can't tell you," he added simply.

"Will it hurt you to leave me tonight?" she whispered.

"Yes."

She touched his sleeve. "I don't like you to be hurt, yet I like that. Will you come next Sunday?"

"Not if you're afraid. I can't come to see you if you won't let me say things."

"I'll try not to be afraid; only, only, say them very softly so that nothing else can hear."

He laughed and caught her hand and kissed it. "I shall do exactly what I like," he said; but as he strode away without another word he knew from something in the way she stood and looked at him, something of patience and resolve, that their future was not in his hands alone.

When he was out of sight and hearing, Helen moved stiffly, as though she waked from a long sleep and was uncertain where she was. The familiar light shone in the kitchen of Brent Farm, yet the house seemed unreal and remote, marooned in the high heather. The heather was thick and rich that year, and the flowers touched her hands. The smell of honey was heavy in the air, and thousands of small, pale moths made a honey-coloured cloud between the purple moor and the night blue of the sky. If she strained her ears, Helen could hear the singing of Halkett's stream and it said things she had not heard before. A sound of voices came from the road and she knew that some faithful Christians of the moor were returning from their worship in the town: she remembered them crude and ugly in their Sunday clothes, but they gathered mystery from distance and the night. Perhaps they came from that chapel where Zebedee had spent his unhappy hours. She turned and her hands swept the heather flowers. This was now his praying place, as it had always been hers, and when the Easter fires came again they would pray to them together.

At the garden door her hand fell from the latch and she faced the moor. She lifted her arms and dropped them in a kind of pleading for mercy from those whom she had served faithfully; then she smoothed her face and went into the house.

In the drawing-room, Mildred Caniper was sitting on the sofa, and near her John and Lily had disposed themselves like guests.

Helen stopped in the doorway. "Then the light in your house meant nothing," she said reproachfully.

"What should it mean?" John asked.

"Happiness and peace—somewhere," she said.

"It does mean that," and turning to Lily, he asked, "Doesn't it?"

"Yes, yes, but don't brag about it."

They laughed together, and they sat with an alert tranquillity of health which made Mildred Caniper look very small and frail. She was listening courteously to the simple things John told her about animals and crops and butter-sales, but Helen knew that she was almost too tired to understand, and she felt trouble sweeping over her own happiness.

To hide that trouble, she asked quickly, "Where are the others?" and an invisible Rupert answered her.

"You're the last in." He sat outside the window, and as she approached, he added, "And I hope you have had a happy time."

"Yes." She looked back into the room.

"Daniel wouldn't stay," Rupert went on, smoking his pipe placidly. "If it hadn't been for my good offices, my dear, he'd have hauled Zebedee off long ago. He suddenly thought of a plan for getting rid of Eliza. Why aren't you thanking me?"

"He wouldn't have gone."

"Oh, ho!"

"But they ought to get rid of Eliza. I've told Zebedee."

"Quite right," Rupert said solemnly. His dark eyes twinkled at the answering stars. "When I have lunch with Daniel, I'm afraid of being poisoned, though she rather likes me, and she's offensively ugly—ugh! Yet I like to think that even Eliza has had her little story. Are you listening, Helen? I'm being pastoral and kind. I'm going to tell you how Eliza fell in love with a travelling tinker."

"Is it true?"

"As true as anything else."

"Go on."

"It happened when Eliza was quite young, not beautiful, but fresh and ruddy. She walked out one summer night to meet the farm hand who was courting her, but he was not at the appointed place, so Eliza walked on, and she had a sore heart because she thought her lover was unfaithful. She was walking over high downs with hollows in them and the grass cropped close by sheep, and there was a breeze blowing the smell of clover from some field, and suddenly she stood on the edge of a hollow in which a fire was burning, and by the fire there sat a man. He looked big as he sat there, but when he stood up he was a giant, in corduroys, and a check cap over his black eyes. Picturesque beggar. And the farm hand had deserted her, and there was a smell of burning wood, and the sky was like a velvet curtain. What would you? Eliza did not go home that night, nor the next, nor the next. She stayed with the travelling tinker until he tired of her, and that was very soon. For him, she was no more than the fly that happened to get into his web, but for Eliza, the tinker—the tinker was beauty and romance. The tinker was life. And he sent her back to the ways of virtue permanently soured, yet proud. Thus, my dear young friend, we see—"

"Don't!" Helen cried. "You're making me sorry for Eliza. I don't want to be sorry for her. And you're making me like the tinker. He's attractive. How horrid that he should be attractive." She shuddered and shook her head. "Your story is too full of firelight—and the night. I'll go and get supper ready."

"Miriam's doing it. Stay here and I'll tell you some more."

But she slipped past him and reached the kitchen from the garden.

"Rupert has been telling me a story," she said a little breathlessly to Miriam who was filling a tray with the noisy indifference of a careless maid-servant.

"Hang the plates! Hang the dishes! What story?"

"It's rather wonderful, I think. It's about the Mackenzies' Eliza."

"Then of course it's wonderful. And hang the knives and forks!" She threw them on the tray.

"And there's a travelling tinker in it." With her hands at her throat, she looked into the fire and Miriam looked at her.

"I'll ask him to tell it to me," she said, but very soon she returned to the kitchen, grumbling. "What nonsense! It's not respectable, and it isn't even true."

"It's as true as anything else," Helen said.

"Oh, you're mad. And so is Rupert. Let's have supper and go to bed. Why can't we have a servant to do all this? Why don't we pay for one ourselves?"

"I don't want one."

"But I do, and my hands are ruined."

"Upstairs in Jane," Helen said, "in the small right-hand drawer of my chest of drawers, there's the lotion—"

"It's not only my hands! It's my whole life! Your lotion isn't going to cure my life!" She sat on the edge of a chair and drooped there.

"No," Helen said. "But what's the matter with your life?"

Miriam flapped her hands. "I'm so tired of being good. I want—I want—"

Helen knelt beside her. "Is it Zebedee you want?" Her voice and her body shook with self-sacrifice and love and when Miriam's head dropped to her shoulder Helen was willing to give her all she had.

"I'm not crying," Miriam said, after an agitated pause. "I'm not overcome. I'm only laughing so much that I can't make a sound! Zebedee! Oh! No! That's very funny." She straightened herself. "Helen dear, did you think you'd discovered my little secret, my maidenly little secret? I only want Uncle Alfred to come and take me away. This is a dreadful family to belong to, but there are humorous moments. It's almost worth while. John, here's Helen suggesting that I'm in love with Zebedee!"

"Well, why not?" he asked, but he was hardly thinking of what he said. "I've left Lily on guard in there. Notya has gone to sleep."

"But she can't have," Helen said.

"She has, my child."

"Are you sure she's not—are you sure she is asleep?"

"Like a baby."

"Then we shall have to make a noise and wake her. She would never forgive us if she found out that we knew, so tell Lily to come out and then we must all burst in."



CHAPTER XVII

Lily and John went down the track: Mildred Caniper climbed slowly, but with dignity, up the stairs; Miriam was heard to bang her bedroom door and Rupert and Helen were left together in the schoolroom.

"I can't get the tinker out of my head," she told him.

"I must have done it very well."

"Miriam didn't like it. She thought it silly."

"So it is."

"No, it's real, so real that he has been sitting in our hollow," she complained.

"That won't do. Turn him out. He doesn't belong to our moor."

"No. I think I'll go for a walk and forget him."

"I should," he said, in his sympathetic way. "I won't go to bed till you come back." He pulled his chair nearer to the lamp, opened a book and contentedly heard Helen leave the house, for though he was fond of her there were times when her forebodings and her conscience became wearisome. Let the moor be her confessor tonight!

Helen dropped into the darkness like a swimmer taking deep water quietly and at once she was immersed in happiness. She forgot her stepmother sitting so stiffly on the sofa and for a little while she forgot that the future which held her and Zebedee in its embrace held a solitary Mildred Caniper less warmly. In the scented night, Helen allowed herself to taste joy without misgiving.

She walked slowly because she was hemmed in by feelings which were blissful and undefined: she knew only that the world smelt sweeter than it had ever done, that the stars shone with amazing brightness. Through the darkness she could see the splendid curves of the moor and the shapes of thorn bushes thick with leaves. The familiar friends of other days seemed to wait upon her happiness, but the stars laughed at her as they had always done. She looked up and saw a host of them, clear and distant, shining in a sky so blue and vast that to see it was like flight. They were secure in their high places, and with the smiling benignity of gods they assured her of her littleness, and gladly she accepted that assurance, for she shared her littleness with Zebedee, and now she understood that her happiness was made of small great things, of the hope of caring for him, of keeping that shining house in order, of cradling children in wide, airy rooms. She had a sudden desire to mend Zebedee's clothes and put them neatly in their places, to feel the smoothness of his freshly-laundered collars in her hand.

She sat down in the heather and it was her turn to laugh up at the stars who could do none of these things and lived in isolated grandeur. The earth was nearer to her finite mind. It was warm with the sunshine of many days and trodden by human, beloved feet; it offered up food and drink and consolation. Darker than the sky, it had no colour but its own, yet Helen sat among pale spikes of blossom.

It was a night when even those beings who could not wander in the daytime must be content to lie and listen to the silence, when evil must run from the face of beauty and hide itself in streets. All round her, Helen fancied shapes without substance, lying in worship of the night which was their element, and when she rose from her bed at last she moved with quietness lest she should disturb them.

She had not gone far before she was aware that some one else was walking on the moor. For a moment she thought it must be Rupert in search of her, but Rupert would have called out, and this person, while he rustled through the heather, let forth a low whistled note, and though he went with care, it was for some purpose of his own and not for courtesy towards the mystery of the night.

She could not decide from what direction the sounds came; she stopped and they stopped; then she heard the whistle again, but nearer now, and with a sudden realization of loneliness and of the womanhood which had seldom troubled her, she ran with all her strength and speed for home.

Memories ran with her strangely, and brought back that day when she had been hotly chased by Mrs. Brent's big bull, and she remembered how, through all his fears for her, Rupert had laughed as though he would never stop. She laughed in recollection, but more in fear. The bull had snorted, his hoofs had thundered after her, as these feet were thundering now.

"But this is the tinker, the tinker!" her mind cried in terror, and overcome by her quickened breathing, by some sense of the inevitable in this affair, she stumbled as she ran. She saved herself, but a hand caught at her wrist and some one uttered a sound of satisfaction.

She did not struggle, but she wondered why God had made woman's strength so disproportionate to man's, and looking up, she saw that it was George Halkett who held her. At the same moment he would have loosed her hand, but she clung to his because she was trembling fiercely.

"Oh, George," she said, "it's you! And I thought it was some one horrid!"

She could not see him blush. "I'm sorry," he mumbled. She gleamed, in the starlight, as he had seen pale rocks gleaming on such a night, but she felt like the warm flesh she was, and the oval of her face was plain to him; he thought he could see the fear leaving her widely-opened eyes. "I'm sorry," he said again, and made an awkward movement. "I thought—I—Wouldn't you like to sit down? There's a stone here."

"It's the one I fell against!" She dropped on to it and laughed. "You weren't there, were you, years and years ago, when the bull chased me? That red bull of Mrs. Brent's? He was old and cross. No, of course you weren't."

"I remember the beast. He had a broken horn."

"Yes. Just a stump. It made him frightful. I dream about him now. And when you were running after me—"

He broke in with a muffled exclamation and shifted from one foot to the other like a chidden child. "I'm sorry," he said again, and muttered, "Fool!" as he bent towards her. "Did you hurt yourself against that stone? Are you all right? You've only slippers on."

"I've nearly stopped shaking," she said practically. "And it doesn't matter. You didn't mean to do it. I must go home. Rupert is waiting for me."

His voice was humble. "I don't believe I've spoken to you since that day in the hollow."

She remembered that occasion and the curious moment when she felt his eyes on her, and she was reminded that though he had not been running after her, he had certainly been running after somebody. She glanced at him and he looked very tall as he stood there, as tall as the tinker.

"Why don't you sit down?" she asked quickly, and as he did so she added, on a new thought, "But perhaps I'm keeping you. Perhaps—Don't wait for me."

"I've nothing else to do," he told her.

"I spoke to you," she said, "the day after your father died."

"I meant alone," he answered.

They sat in silence after that, and for Helen the smell of heather was the speech of those immaterial ones who lay about her. Some change had taken place among the stars: they were paler, nearer, as though they had grown tired of eminence and wanted commerce with the earth. The great quiet had failed before the encroachment of little sounds as of burrowing, nocturnal hunting, and the struggles of a breeze that was always foiled.

"Do you know what time it is?" Helen asked in a small voice.

He held his watch sideways, but he had to strike a match, and its light drew all the eyes of the moor.

"Quick!" Helen said.

He was not to be hurried. "Not far off midnight."

"And Rupert's waiting! Good-night, George."

"And you've forgiven me?" he asked as they parted at the gate.

"No." She laughed almost as Miriam might have done, and startled him. "I'll forgive you," she said, "I'll forgive you when you really hurt me." She gave him her cool hand and, holding it, he half asked, half told her, "That's a promise."

"Yes. Good-night."

Slowly she walked through the dark hall, hesitated at the schoolroom door and opened it.

"I've come back," she said, and disappeared before Rupert could reply, for she was afraid he would make some allusion to the tinker.

It was characteristic of her that, as she undressed, carefully laying her clothes aside, her concern was for George's moral welfare rather than for the safety of the person for whom he had mistaken her, and this was because she happened to know George, had known him nearly all her life, while the identity of the other was a blank to her, because she had no peculiar feeling for her sex; men and women were separated or united only by their claim on her.

Mildred Caniper, whose claim was great, came down to breakfast the next morning with a return of energy that gladdened Helen and set Miriam thinking swiftly of all the things she had left undone. But Mildred Caniper was fair, and where she no longer ruled, she would not criticize. She condescended, however, to ask one question.

"Who was on the moor last night?"

"Daniel," Helen said.

"Zebedee," said Miriam.

"Zebedee?" she said, pretending not to know to whom that name belonged.

"Dr. Mackenzie."

"Oh."

"The father of James and John," Miriam murmured.

"So he has children?" Mrs. Caniper went on with her superb assumption that no one joked in conversation with her.

"Oh, I don't think so," Helen said earnestly. "He isn't married! Miriam meant the gentleman in the Bible."

"I see." Her glance pitied Miriam. "But this was early in the evening. Some one came in very late. Rupert, perhaps."

"No, it was me," Helen said.

"I," Mildred Caniper corrected.

"Yes. I."

"Did I hear voices?"

"Did you?" Helen returned in another tone and with an innocence that surprised herself and revealed the deceit latent in the mouth of the most truthful. It was long since she had been so near a lie and lying was ugly: it made smudges on the world; but disloyalty was no better, and though she could not have explained the debt, she felt that she owed George silence. She had to choose. He had been like a child as he fumbled over his apologies and she could not but be tender with a child. Yet only a few seconds earlier she had thought he was the tinker. Oh, why had Rupert ever told her of the tinker?

"I would rather you did not wander on the moor so late at night," Mildred Caniper said.

"But it's the best time of all."

"I would rather you did not."

"Very well. I'll try to remember."

A sign from Miriam drew Helen into the garden.

"Silly of you to come in by the front way. Of course she heard. If the garden door is locked, you can climb the wall and get on to the scullery roof. Then there's my window."

Helen measured the distance with her eye. "It's too high up."

"Throw up a shoe and I'll lower a chair for you."

"But—this is horrid," Helen said. "Why should I?"

Miriam's thin shoulders went up and down. "You never know, you never know," she chanted. "You never know what you may come to."

"Don't!" Helen begged. She leaned against a poplar and looked mournfully from the window to Miriam's face.

"No," Miriam said, "I've never done it. I only planned it in case of need. It would be a way of escape, too, if she ever locked me up. She's capable of that. Helen, I don't like this rejuvenation!"

"Don't," Helen said again.

"I haven't mended the sheets she gave me weeks ago."

"I'll help you with them."

"Good, kind, Christian girl! There's nothing like having a reputation to keep up. That's why I told you about my secret road."

"You're—vulgar."

"No, I'm human, and very young, and rather beautiful. And quite intelligent." There came on her face the look which made her seem old and tired with her own knowledge. "Was it Zebedee last night?"

Heat ran over Helen's body like a living thing.

"You're hateful," she stammered. "As though Zebedee and I—as though Zebedee and I would meet by stealth!"

"Honestly, I can't see why you shouldn't. Why shouldn't you?"

Helen smoothed her forehead with both hands. "It was the way you said it," she murmured painfully and then straightened herself. "Of course nothing Zebedee would do could be anything but good. I beg his pardon." And in a failing voice, she explained again, "It was the way you said it."

"I suppose I'm not really a nice person," Miriam replied.



CHAPTER XVIII

During the week that followed, a remembrance of her responsibilities came back to Helen and when she looked at Mildred Caniper, alternating between energy and lassitude, the shining house seemed wearily far off, or, at the best, Notya was in it, bringing her own shadows. Helen had been too happy, she told herself. She must not be greedy, she must hold very lightly to her desires lest they should turn and hurt her, yet with all her heart she wanted to see Zebedee, who was a surety for everything that was good.

By Rupert he sent letters which delighted her and gave her a sense of safety by their restraint, and on Sunday another letter was delivered by Daniel because Zebedee was kept in town by a serious case.

"So there will be no fear of my saying all those things that were ready on my tongue," he wrote, to tease, perhaps to test her, and she cried out to herself, "Oh, I'd let him say anything in the whole world if only he would come!" And she added, on her own broken laughter, "At least, I think so."

She felt the need to prove her courage, but she also wanted an excuse fit to offer to the fates, and when she had examined the larder and the store cupboard she found that the household was in immediate need of things which must be brought from the town. She laughed at her own quibble, but it satisfied her and, refusing Miriam's company, she set off on Monday afternoon.

It was a soft day and the air, moist on her cheek, smelt of damp, black earth. The moor would be in its gorgeous autumn dress for some months yet and the distances were cloaked in blue, promising the wayfarer a heaven which receded with every step.

With a destination of her own, Helen was not daunted. Walking with her light long stride, she passed the side road leading to Halkett's farm and remembered how George and Zebedee, seated side by side, something like figures on a frieze, had swung down that road to tend old Halkett. Beyond the high fir-wood she came upon the fields where old Halkett had grown his crops: here and there were the cottages of his hands, with dahlias and staring children in the gardens, and before long other houses edged the road and she saw the thronging roofs of the town.

It was Zebedee who chanced to open to her when she knocked and she saw a grave face change to one of youth as he took her by the wrist to draw her in.

"Do you always look like that when I'm not here?" she asked anxiously, quickly, but he did not answer.

"It's you!" he said. "You!"

In the darkness of the passage they could hardly see each other, but he had not loosed his grasp and with a deft turn of the wrist she thrust her whole hand into his.

"I was tired of waiting for you," she said. "A whole week! I was afraid you were never coming back!"

"You know I'd come back to you if I were dead."

"Yes, I know." She leaned towards him and laughed and, wrenching himself free from the contemplation of her, he led her to his room. There he shut the door and stood against it.

"I want to look at you. No, I don't think I'd better look at you." He spoke in his quick usual way. "Come and sit down. Is that chair all right? And here's a cushion for you, but I don't believe it's clean. Everything looks dirty now that you are in the room. Helen, are you sure it's you?"

"Yes. Are you sure you're glad? I want to sit and laugh and laugh, do all the laughing I've never had. And I want to cry—with loud noises. Which shall I do? Oh—I can't do either!"

"I've hardly ever seen you in a hat before. You must take it off. No, let me find the pins. Now you're my Helen again. Sit there. Don't move. Don't run away. I'm going to tell Eliza about tea."

She heard a murmur in the passage, the jingle of money, the front door opened and shut and she knew the Eliza had been sent out to buy cakes.

"I had to get rid of her," Zebedee said. "I had to have you to myself." He knelt before her. "I'm going to take off your gloves. What do you wear them for? So that I can take them off?"

He did it slowly. Each hand was like a flower unsheathed, and when he had kissed her fingers and her palms he looked up and saw a face made tragic by sudden knowledge of passion. Her eyes were dark with it and her mouth had shaped itself for his.

"Helen—!"

"I know—I know—"

"And there's nothing to say."

"It doesn't matter—doesn't matter—" His head was on her knees and her hands stroked his hair. He heard her whispering: "What soft hair! It's like a baby's." She laughed. "So soft! No, no. Stay there. I want to stroke it."

"But I want to see you. I haven't seen you since I kissed you. And you're more beautiful. I love you more—" He rose, and would not see the persuasion of her arms. "Ah, dear, dearest one, forget I love you. You are too young and too beautiful for me, Desire."

"But I shall soon be old. You don't want to wait until I'm old."

"I don't want to wait at all."

"And I'm twenty, Zebedee."

"Twenty! Well, Heaven bless you for it," he said and swung the hand she held out to him.

"And this is true," she said.

"It is."

"And I never thought it would be. I was afraid Miriam was loving you."

"But," he said, still swinging, "I was never in any danger of loving Miriam."

She shook her head. "I couldn't have let her be unhappy."

"And me?"

She gave him an illuminating smile. "You're just myself. It doesn't matter if one hurts oneself."

"Ah!" He bent her fingers and straightened them. "How small they are. I could break them—funny things. So you'd marry me to Miriam if she wanted me. That isn't altogether satisfactory, my dear. To be you—that's perfect, but treat me more kindly than you treat yourself."

"Just the same—it must be. Swing my hand again. I like it." She went on in a low voice. "All the time, I've been thinking she would come between."

"She can't now."

She looked up, troubled, and begged, "Don't say so. Sometimes she's just like a bat, flying into one's face. Only more lovely, and I can't be angry with her."

"I could. But let's talk about you and me, how much we love each other, and how nice we are."

"We do, don't we?"

"We are, aren't we?"

"Oh, how silly!"

"Let's be sillier than any one has ever been before."

"Listen!" Helen said and Zebedee stopped on his way to her.

"It's that woman. Why didn't something run over her? Is my hair ruffled?"

"Come quickly and let me smooth it. Nice hair."

"Yours is always smooth, but do you know, it curls a little."

"Oh, no."

"It does, really, on the temples. Come and look. No, stay there. She'll be in soon, confound her."

"We ought to be talking sensibly."

"Can we?"

"I can. Shall I put my hat on?"

"No, no, not for one greater than Eliza. I'm afraid of you in a hat. Now I'll sit here and you can begin your sensible conversation."

"I'm serious, truly. It's about Notya. She's funny, Zebedee. At night I can hear her walking about her room and she's hardly ever strict. She doesn't care. I wish you would make her well."

"Will she let me try?"

"I couldn't ask her that because I pretend not to notice. We all do. She's like a person who—who can't forget. I—don't know."

"I'm sorry, darling."

"Don't be. I'm always afraid of being sorry or glad because you don't know what will happen. Father leaving us like that, making her miserable—it's given you to me." She looked up at him. "The world's difficult."

"Always; but there are times when it is good. Helen—"

Eliza entered, walking heavily in creaking boots, and when Helen looked at her, she wondered at the tinker. Eliza was hard-featured: she had not much hair, and on it a cap hung precariously. Spreading a cloth on a small table, she went about her business slowly, carrying one thing at a time and leaving the door open as a protest against Helen's presence.

"Who'll pour?" she asked.

"You can leave the table there."

"They were out of sugar cakes. I got buns."

He looked at them. "If that's the best they can do, they ought to be ashamed of themselves."

"If you want cakes you should get them in the morning. I've kept the change to pay the milkman."

With a flourish of the cosy Zebedee turned to Helen as the door was shut.

"Isn't she dreadful?"

"She wants a new pair of boots."

"And a new face."

"I know she doesn't clean the house properly. How often does she sweep this carpet? It isn't clean, but I wouldn't mind that if she took care of you."

"Daniel beat her on the supper question. He thought she'd leave rather than give in, and he was hopeful, but she saw through that. She stuck."

"Isn't she fond of you?" Helen asked wistfully.

"No, darling, we detest each other. Do I put the milk in first?"

"Bring the table to me and I'll do it. Is she honest?"

"Rigidly. I notice that the dishonest are generally pleasing. No, you can't have the table. It would hide a lot of you. I want to talk to you, Helen. Have one of these stale buns. What a meal for you! We've got to settle this affair."

"But it is settled."

"Eat your bun and listen, and don't be forward."

She laughed at him. "It was forward to come here, wasn't it?"

"It was adorable. But since last Sunday, I have been thinking. What do you know about life, about men? I'm just the one who has chanced across your path. It's like stealing you. It isn't fair."

"There's Daniel," she said solemnly. "And the dentist. And your father when we had measles. And George Halkett—"

"Be serious."

"There's the tinker."

"Who on earth is he?"

"A man Rupert told me about, a made-up man, but he has come alive in my mind. I wish he hadn't. I might meet him. Once I nearly did, and if I met him, Zebedee—"

"Darling, I wish you'd listen. Suppose you married me—"

"You want me to marry you?"

"My dear, precious child—"

"I wasn't sure. Go on."

"If you married me, and afterwards you found some one you liked better, as well you might, what would happen then?"

"I should make the best of you."

"You wouldn't run away?"

"If I went, I should walk, but I shouldn't go. I'm like that. I belong to people and to places."

"You belong to me."

"Not yet. Not quite. I wish I did, because then I should feel safe, but now I belong to the one who needs me most. Notya, perhaps."

"And if we were married?"

"Then I should just be yours."

"But we are married."

"No," she said.

"I don't see the distinction."

"But it's there," she said, and once more he felt the iron under her grace.

"This isn't modern, Helen."

"No, I'm simple."

"And I don't like it." He was grave; the muscles in his cheek were twitching and the brown flecks in his eyes moved quickly. "Marry me at once."

"You said I was too young!"

"I say it still." He paced the room. "It's true, but neither your youth nor anything else shall take you from me, and, oh, my little heart, be good to me."

"I can't be good enough and I'll marry you when you want me."

"This week?"

She caught his hand and laid her cheek against it. "Oh, I would, I would, if Notya didn't need me."

"No one," he said, "needs you as I do. We'll be married in the spring."

Her hand and her smile acknowledged what he said while her eyes were busy on his thin face, his worn, well-brushed clothes, the books and papers on his desk, the arrangements of the room.

"I don't like any of your furniture," she said suddenly. "And those ornaments are ugly."

He took them from the mantelpiece and threw them into the waste-paper basket.

"Anything else? It won't hold the furniture."

"Ah, you're nice," she said, and, going to the window, she looked out on the garden, where the apple-trees twisted themselves out of a rough lawn.

"When you marry me," Zebedee said, standing beside her and speaking quietly, "we'll leave this house to Daniel and Eliza. There's one outside the town, on the moor road, but set back in a big garden, a square house. Shall we—shall we go and look at it?"

"Shall we?" she repeated, and they faced each other unsmiling.

"It's an old house, with big square windows, and there's a rising copse behind it."

"I know," Helen said.

"There's a little stream that falls into the road."

"Does it run inside the garden?"

"That's what I'm not sure about."

"It must."

He put his hand on her shoulder. "We could peep through the windows. Are you coming?"

"I don't know," she said and there was a fluttering movement in her throat. "Don't you think it's rather dangerously near the road?"

"We could lock the gate," he said.

She dropped her face into her hands. "No, I can't come. I'm afraid. It's tempting things to happen."

"It has been empty for a long time," he went on in the same quiet tones. "I should think we could get it cheap."

She looked up again. "And I shall have a hundred pounds a year. That would pay the rent and keep the garden tidy."

He turned on her sharply. "Mind, I'm going to buy your clothes!"

"I can make them all," she said serenely. She leaned against him. "We love each other—and we know so little about each other. I don't even know how old you are!"

"I'm nearly thirty-one."

"That's rather old. You must know more than I do."

"I expect I do."

A faint line came between her eyebrows. "Perhaps you have been in love before."

"I have." His lips tightened at the memory.

"Very much in love?"

"Pretty badly."

"Then I hope she's dead!"

"I don't know."

"I can't bear her to be alive. Oh, Zebedee, why didn't you wait for me?"

"I should have loved you less, child."

"Would you? You never loved her like this?"

"She wasn't you."

In a little while she said, "I don't understand love. Why should we matter so much to each other? So much that we're afraid? Or do we only think we do? Perhaps that's it. It can't matter so much as we make out, because we die and it's all over, and no one cares any more about our little lives." On a sigh he heard her last words. "We mustn't struggle."

"Struggle?"

"For what we want."

To this he made no answer, but he had a strange feeling that the firm, fine body he held was something more perishable than glass and might be broken with a word.

He took her to the moor, but when they passed the empty house she would not look at it.

"The stream does run through the garden," he said. "We could sail boats on it." And he added thoughtfully, "We should have to dam it up somewhere to make a harbour."



CHAPTER XIX

Disease fell heavily on the town that autumn and Zebedee and Helen had to snatch their meetings hurriedly on the moor. She found that Miriam was right and she had no difficulty and no shame in running out into the darkness for a clasp of hands, a few words, a shadowy glimpse of Zebedee by the light of the carriage lamps, while the old horse stood patiently between the shafts and breathed visibly against the frosty night. Over the sodden or frozen ground, the peat squelching or the heather stalks snapping under her feet, she would make her way to that place where she hoped to find her lover with his quick words and his scarce caresses and, returning with the wind of the moor on her and eyes wide with wonder and the night, she would get a paternal smile from Rupert and a gibing word from Miriam, and be almost unaware of both. For weeks, her days were only preludes to the short perfection of his presence and her nights were filled with happy dreams: the eyes which had once been so watchful over Mildred Caniper were now turned inwards or levelled on the road; she went under a spell which shut out fear.

In December she was brought back to a normal world by the illness of Mildred Caniper. One morning, without a word of explanation or complaint, she went back to her bed, and Helen found her there, lying inert and staring at the ceiling. She had not taken down her hair and under the crown of it her face looked small and pinched, her eyes were like blue pools threatening to over-run their banks.

"Is your head aching?" Helen said.

"I—don't think so."

"What is it, then?"

"I was afraid I could not—go on," she said carefully. "I was afraid of doing something silly and I was giddy."

"Are you better now?"

"Yes. I want to rest."

"Try to sleep."

"It isn't sleep I want. It's rest, rest."

Helen went away, but before long she came back with a dark curtain to shroud the window.

"No, no! I want light, not shadows," Mildred cried in a shrill voice. "A dark room—" Her voice fell away in the track of her troubled memories, and when she spoke again it was in her ordinary tones. "I beg your pardon, Helen. You startled me. I think I must have dozed and dreamed."

"And you won't have the curtain?"

"No. Let there be light." She lay there helpless, while thoughts preyed on her, as vultures might prey on something moribund.

At dinner-time she refused to help herself to food, though she ate if Helen fed her. "The spoon is heavy," she complained.

Miriam was white and nervous. "She ought to have Zebedee," she said. "She looks funny. She frightens me."

"We could wait until tomorrow," Helen said. "He is so busy and I don't want to bring him up for nothing. He's being overworked."

"But for Notya!" Miriam exclaimed. "And don't you want to see him?" She could not keep still. "I can't bear people to be ill. He ought to come."

"Go and ask John."

"What does he know about it?" she whispered. "I keep thinking perhaps she will go mad."

"That's silly."

"It isn't. She looks—queer. If she does, I shall run away. I'm going to George. He'll drive into the town. You mustn't sacrifice Notya to Zebedee, you know."

Helen let out an ugly, scornful sound that angered Miriam.

"Old sheep!" she said, and Helen had to spare a smile, but she was thoughtful.

"Perhaps John would go."

"But why not George?"

"We're always asking favours."

"Pooh! He likes them and I don't mind asking."

"Well, then, it would be rather a relief. I don't know what to do with her."

The sense of responsibility towards George which had once kept Miriam awake had also kept her from him in a great effort of self-denial, and it was many days since she had done more than wave a greeting or give him a few light words.

"I believe I've offended you," he had told her not long ago, but she assured him that it was not so.

"Then I can't make you out," he muttered.

She shut her eyes and showed him her long lashes. "No, I'm a mystery. Think about me, George." And before he had time to utter his genuine, clumsy speech, she ran away.

"But I can't avoid temptation much longer," she told herself. "Life's too dull."

And now this illness which alarmed her was like a door opening slowly.

"And it's the hand of God that left it ajar," she said as she sped across the moor.

Her steps slackened as she neared the larch-wood, for she had not ventured into it since the night of old Halkett's death; but it was possible that George would be working in the yard and, tiptoeing down the soft path, she issued on the cobble-stones.

George was not there, nor could she hear him, and she was constrained to knock on the closed door, but the face of Mrs. Biggs, who appeared after a stealthy pause, was not encouraging to the visitor. She looked at Miriam and her thin lips parted and joined again without speech.

"I want Mr. Halkett," Miriam said, straightening herself and speaking haughtily because she guessed that Mrs. Biggs was suspicious of her friendliness with George.

"He's out. You'll have to wait," she said and shut the door.

A cold wind was swooping into the hollow, but Miriam was hot with a gathering anger that rushed into words as Halkett appeared.

"George!" She ran to him. "I hate that woman. I always did. I wish you wouldn't keep her. Oh, I hate her!"

"But you didn't come here to tell me that," he said. In her haste she had allowed him to take her hand and the touch of her softened his resentment at her neglect; amusement narrowed his eyes until she could not see their blue.

"She's horrid, she's rude; she left me on the step. I didn't want to go in, but she oughtn't to have left me standing there."

"She ought not. I'll tell her."

"Dare you?"

"Dare I!" he repeated boastfully.

"But you mustn't! Don't, George, please don't. Promise you won't. Promise, George."

"All right."

"Thank you." She drew her hand away.

"The fact is, she's always pretty hard on you."

Miriam's flame went out. "You don't mean," she said coldly, "that you discuss me with her?"

"No, I do not."

"You swear you never have?"

He had a pleasing and indulgent smile. "Yes, I swear it, but she dislikes the whole lot of you, and you can't always stop a woman's talk."

"You should be able to," she said. She wished she had not come for George did not realize what was due to her. She would go to John and she nodded a cold good-bye.

Her hands were in the pockets of her brown woollen coat, her shoulders were lifted towards her ears; she was less beautiful than he had ever seen her, yet in her kindest moments she had not seemed so near to him. He was elated by this discovery; he did not seek its cause and, had he done so, he was not acute enough to see that hitherto the feelings she had shown him had been chiefly feigned, and that this real resentment, marking her face with petulance, revealed her nature to be common with his own.

"But you've not told me what you came for," he said.

She was reluctant, but she spoke. "To ask you to do something for us."

"You know I'll do it."

Still sulky, she took a few steps and leaned against the house wall; she had the look of a boy caught in a fault.

"We want the doctor."

"Who's ill?"

"It's Notya."

"What's the matter?"

"I don't know." She forgot her grievance. "I don't like thinking of it. It makes me sick."

"Is she very bad?"

"No, but I think he ought to come."

"Must I bring him back?"

"Just leave a message, please, if it doesn't put you out."

In the pause before he spoke, he studied the dark head against the white-washed wall, the slim body, the little feet crossed on the cobbles, and then he stammered:

"You—you're like a rose-tree growing up."

She spread her arms and turned and drooped her head to encourage the resemblance. "Like that?"

He nodded, with the clumsiness of his emotions. "Look here—"

"Now, don't be tiresome. Oh, you can tell me what you were going to say."

"All these weeks—"

"I know, but it was for your sake, George."

"How?"

"It's difficult to explain, but one night my good angel bent over my bed, like a mother—or was it your good angel?"

He grinned. "I don't believe you'd know one if you saw one."

"I'm afraid I shouldn't," she admitted, with a laugh. "Would you?"

"I fancy I've seen one."

"Mrs. Biggs?" she dared. "Me?"

"I'm not going to tell you."

"I expect it's me. But run away and bring the doctor."

"I say—will you wait till I get back?"

"I couldn't. Think of Mrs. Biggs!"

"Not here. Up in the wood. But never mind. Come and see me saddle the little mare."

She liked the smell of the long, dim stable, the sound of the horses moving in their stalls, the regular crunching as they ate their hay. Years ago, she had been in this place with John and Rupert and she had forgotten nothing. There were the corn-bins under the windows and the pieces of old harness still hanging on big nails; above, there was the loft that looked as vast as ever in the shadowy gloom, and again it invited her ascent by the iron steps between the stalls.

From the harness-room Halkett fetched a saddle, and as he put it on the mare's back, he said, "Come and say how d'you do to her."

"It's Daisy. She'll go fast. Isn't she beautiful! She's rubbing her nose on me. I wish I could ride her."

"She might let you—for half a minute. Charlie's the boy for you. Come and see what's in the harness-room."

"Not now. There isn't time."

"Wait for me then." There was pleading in his voice. "Wait in the wood. I've something to show you. Will you do that for me?"

He was standing close to her, and she did not look up. "I ought to go back, but I don't want to. I don't like ill people. They sicken me."

"Don't go, then."

Now she looked at him in search of the assurance she wanted. "I needn't, need I? Helen can manage, can't she?"

He forgot to answer because she was like a flower suddenly brought to life in Daisy's stall, a flower for grace and beauty, but a woman for something that made him deaf to what she said.

"She can manage, can't she?"

"Of course." He snatched an armful of hay from a rack and led her to the larch trees and there he scraped together the fallen needles and laid the hay on them to make a bed for her.

"Rest there. Go to sleep and I'll be back before you wake."

She lay curled on her side until all sounds of him had passed and then she rolled on to her back and drew up her knees. It was dark and warm in the little wood; the straight trunks of the larches were as menacing as spears and the sky looked like a great banner tattered by their points. Though she lay still, she seemed to be marching with a host, and the light wind in the trees was the music of its going, the riven banner was a trophy carried proudly and, at a little distance, the rushing of the brook was the sound of feet following behind. For a long time she went with that triumphant army, but at length there came other sounds that forced themselves on her hearing and changed her from a gallant soldier to a girl half frightened in a wood.

She sat up and listened to the galloping of a horse and a voice singing in gay snatches. The sounds rose and sank and died away and came forth lustily again, and in the singing there was something full-blooded and urgent, as though the singer came from some danger joyfully escaped or hurried to some tryst. She stood up and, holding to a tree, she leaned sideways to listen. She heard Halkett speaking jovially to the mare as he pulled her up on the cobbles and gave her a parting smack of his open hand: then there began a sweet whistling invaded by other sounds, by Daisy's stamping in her stall, a corn-bin opened and shut, and Halkett's footsteps in the yard. Soon they were lost in the softness of the larch needles, but the whistling warned her of his coming and alarmed her with its pulsing lilt, and as she moved away and tried to make no noise, a dry branch snapped under her feet.

"Where are you?" he called out.

"Here," she answered, and awaited him. She could see the light gleaming in his eyes.

"Were you running off?"

"I didn't run."

He wound his arm about a tree and said, "We came at a pace, the mare and I."

"I heard you. Is Dr. Mackenzie coming?"

"Yes—fast as that old nag of his will bring him."

She slipped limply to the ground for she was chilled. She had braced herself for danger and it had turned aside, and she felt no thankfulness: she merely found George Halkett dull.

"Thank you for going," she said in cool tones. "Now I must go back and see how Notya is."

"No. I want to show you the side saddle."

"Which?"

"The one for you."

Adventure was hovering again. "For me? Are you really going to teach me to ride?"

"Didn't I say so?"

"But when?"

"When the rest of the world's in their beds."

"Oh. Won't it be too dark?"

"We'll manage. We'll try it first in daylight, right over the moor where no one goes. Most nights are not much darker than it is now, though. I can see you easily."

"Can you?" She was rocking herself in the way to which she had accustomed him. "What can you see?"

"Black hair and black eyes. Come here."

"I'm quite comfortable and you should never tell a lady to come to you, George."

"Are you asking me to come to you?"

"Don't be silly. Aren't you going to show me the saddle?"

"Yes. Where's your hand? I'll help you up. There you are! No, I'll keep your hand. The ground's steep and you might fall."

"No. Let me have it, George."

Her resistance broke the bonds he had laid on himself, and over her there fell a kind of wavering darkness in which she was drawn to him and held against his breast. His coat smelt of peat and tobacco; she felt his strength and the tense muscles under his clothes, and she did not struggle to get free of him. Ages of warm, dark time seemed to have passed over her before she realized that he was doing something to her hair. He was kissing it and, without any thought, obedient to the hour, she turned up her face to share those kisses. He uttered a low sound and put a hand to either of her cheeks, marking her mouth for his, and it was then she pushed him from her, stepped back, and shook herself and cried, "Oh, oh, you have been drinking!"

As she retreated, he advanced, but she fenced him off with outstretched hands.

"Go away. You have been drinking."

"I swear I haven't. I had one glass down there. I was thirsty—and no wonder. I swear I had no more. It's you, you that's sent it to my head."

At that, half was forgiven, but she said, "Anyhow, it's horrid and it makes me hate you. Go away. Don't touch me. Don't come near." In her retreat she stumbled against a tree and felt a bitterness of reproach because he did not ask if she were hurt.

"I'll show you I'm sober," he grumbled. "What do you know about it? You're a schoolgirl."

"Then if you think that you should be still more ashamed."

"Well, I'm not. You made me mad and—you didn't seem to mind it."

"I didn't, but I do now, and I'm going."

He followed her to the wood's edge and there she turned.

"If your head is so weak you ought never to take spirits."

"My head isn't weak, and I'm not a drunkard. Ask any one. It's you that are—"

She offered the word—"Intoxicating?" And she let a smile break through her lips before she ran away.

She felt no mental revulsion against his embrace; the physical one was only against the smell of spirits which she disliked, and she was the richer for an experience she did not want to repeat. She saw no reason, however, why he should not be tempted to offer it. She had tasted of the fruit, and now she desired no more than the delight of seeing it held out to her and refusing it.

The moor was friendly to her as she crossed it and if she had suffered from any sense of guilt, it would have reassured her. Spread under the pale colour of the declining sun, she thought it was a big eye that twinkled at her. She looked at the walls of her home and felt unwilling to be enclosed by them; she looked towards the road, and seeing the doctor's trap, she decided to stay on the moor until he had been and gone, and when at last she entered she found the house ominously dark and quiet. The familiar scent of the hall was a chiding in itself and she went nervously to the schoolroom, where a line of light marked its meeting with the floor.

Helen sat by the table, mending linen in the lamplight. She gave one upward glance and went on working.

"Well?" Miriam said.

"Well?"

"Did he come?"

"Yes."

"What did he say?"

"He called it collapse."

"How clever of him!"

"I have left the tea-things for you to wash, and will you please get supper?"

"You needn't talk like that. I'm willing to do my share."

"You shirked it today, and though I know you're frightened of her, that's no excuse for leaving me alone."

Miriam leaned on the table and asked in a gentler voice, "Is she likely to be ill long?"

"It's very likely."

"Well, we shan't miss her while you are with us, but it's a pity, when we might have peace. You're just like her. I hope you'll never have any children, for they'd be as miserable as I am, only there wouldn't be one like me. How could there be? One only has to think of Zebedee."

Helen stood up and brought her hand so heavily to the table that the lamplight flared.

"Go!" she said, "go—" Her voice and body shook, her arms slid limply over her mending, and she tumbled into her chair, crying with sobs that seemed to quaver for a long time in her breast. Miriam could not have imagined such a weeping, and it frightened her. With one finger she touched Helen's shoulder, and over and over again she said, "I'm sorry, Helen. I'm sorry. Don't cry. I'm sorry—" until she heard Rupert whistling on the track. At that Helen stirred and wiped her eyes, but Miriam darted from the room, shouted cheerfully to Rupert and, keeping him in talk, led him to the dining-room, while Helen sat staring with blurred eyes at the linen pile, and seeing the misery in Mildred Caniper's face.



CHAPTER XX

It was a bitter winter, with more rain than snow, more snow than sunshine, and it seemed to Helen that half her life was spent in watching for Zebedee's figure bent against the storm as he drove up the road, while Mildred Caniper lay slackly in her bed. She no longer stared at the ceiling, for though her body had collapsed, her will had only wavered, and it was righting itself slowly, and the old thoughts which had been hunting her for years had not yet overcome her. Like hounds, they bayed behind, and some day their breath would be on her neck, their teeth in her flesh, and she would fall to them. This was the threat in the sound which reached her, soft or loud, as bells are heard in the wind, and in the meantime she steadied herself with varying arguments. Said one of these, "The past is over," yet she saw the whole future of these Canipers as the product of her acts. Reason, unsubdued, refused to allow her so much power, and she gave in; but she knew that if good befell the children she could claim no credit; if evil, she would take all the blame. There remained the comfortable assurance that she had done her best, and then Miriam's face mocked her as it peeped furtively round the bedroom door. Thus she was brought back to her starting place, and finding the circle a giddy one, she determined to travel on it no more, and with her old rigidity, she kept this resolve. It was, however, less difficult than it would once have been, for her mind was weary and glad of an excuse to take the easiest path. She lay in bed according to Zebedee's bidding, hardly moving under the clothes, and listening to the noises in the house. She was astonished by their number and significance. All through the night, cooling coals ticked in the grate or dropped on to the hearth; sometimes a mouse scratched or cheeped in the walls, and on the landing there were movements for which Helen could have accounted: Mr. Pinderwell, more conscious of his loss in the darkness, and unaware that his children had taken form, was moving from door to door and scraping his hands across the panels. Often the wind howled dolorously round the house while rain slashed furiously at the windows, and there were stealthy nights when snow wound a white muffler against the noises of the world. The clock in the hall sent out clear messages as to the passing of man's division of time, and at length there came the dawn, aged and eternally young, certain of itself, with a grey amusement for man's devices. Before that, Helen had opened her door and gone in soft slippers to light the kitchen fire, and presently Rupert was heard to whistle as he dressed. Meanwhile, as though it looked for something, the light spread itself in Mildred Caniper's room and she attuned her ears for the different noises of the day. There was Miriam's laughter, more frequent than it had been before her stepmother was tied to bed, and provocative of a wry smile from the invalid; there was her farewell shout to Rupert when he took the road, her husky singing as she worked about the house. Occasionally Mildred heard the stormy sound of Mrs. Samson's breathing as she polished the landing floor, or her voice raised in an anecdote too good to keep. Brooms knocked against the woodwork or swished on the bare floors, and still the clock, hardly noticed now, let out its warning that human life is short, or as it might be, over long. Later, but not on every day of the week, the jingle of a bit, the turning of wheels, rose to Mildred's window, telling her that the doctor had arrived, and though she had a grudge against all who saw her incapacitated, she found herself looking forward to his visits. He did not smile too much, nor stay too long, though it was remarkable that his leave-taking of her was not immediately followed by the renewed jingling of the bit. She was sure her condition did not call for prolonged discussion and, as she remembered Miriam who was free to come and go unchecked, to laugh away a man's wits, as her mother had done before her, Mildred Caniper grew hot and restless: she felt that she must get up and resume control, yet she knew that it would never be hers in full measure again, and while, in a rare, false moment, she pretended that the protection of Zebedee was her aim, truth stared at her with the reminder that the legacy of her old envy of the mother was this desire to thwart the daughter.

After that, her thoughts were long and bitter, and their signs were on her face when Helen returned.

"What have you been doing?" Helen demanded, for she no longer had any awe of Mildred Caniper, a woman who had been helpless in her hands.

"Please don't be ridiculous, Helen."

"I'm not."

"This absurd air of authority—"

"But you look—"

"We won't discuss how I look. Where is Miriam?"

"I don't know. Yes, I do. She went to Brent Farm to get some cream. Zeb—He says you're to have cream."

Mildred made a movement which was meant to express baffled patience. "I have tried to persuade you not to use pronouns instead of proper names. Can't you hear how vulgar it is?"

"Dr. Mackenzie wishes you to have cream," Helen said meekly.

"I do not need cream, and his visits are becoming quite unnecessary."

"So he said today."

"Oh."

"But I," Helen said, smiling to herself, "wish him to come."

"And no doubt the discussion of what primarily concerns me is what kept Dr. Mackenzie so long this afternoon."

"How did you know he stayed?"

"My good Helen, though I am in bed, I am neither deaf nor an imbecile."

"Oh, I know," Helen said with a seriousness which might as well have been mockery as stupidity. "I gave him—I gave Dr. Mackenzie tea. He was driving further, and it's such a stormy day."

"Quite right. He looks overworked—ill. I don't suppose he is properly cared for."

"He has a cough. He says he often gets one," Helen almost pleaded, and she went, at the first opportunity, from the room.

She encountered Jane's solemn and sympathetic stare. "I can't have neglected him, can I?" she asked of the little girl in the pinafore, and the shadows on the landing once more became alive with the unknown. "He does cough a lot, Jane, but he says it's nothing, and he tells the truth." She added involuntarily and with her hand at her throat, "I've been so happy," and immediately the words buzzed round her with menace. She should not have said that; it was a thing hardly to be thought, and she had betrayed her secret, but it comforted her to remember that this was nearly the end of January, and before long the Easter fires would burn again and she could pray.

Between the present and that one hour in the year when she might ask for help, Zebedee's cough persisted and grew worse. He had to own to a weakness of the lungs; he suffered every winter, more or less, and there had been one which had driven him to warmer climes.

"And you never told me that before!" she cried, with her hand in that tell-tale position at her throat.

"My dear, there has been no time to tell you anything. There hasn't been one day when we could be lavish. We've counted seconds. Would I talk about my lungs?"

"Perhaps we don't really know each other," Helen said, hoping he would not intercept this hostage she was offering to fortune, and she looked at him under her raised brows, and smiled a little, tempting him.

"We don't," he said firmly, and she drew a breath. "We only know we want each other, and all the rest of our lives is to be the adventure of finding each other out."

"But I'm not adventurous," she said.

"Oh, you'll like it," he assured her, smiling with his wonderfully white teeth and still more with the little lines round his eyes. He looked at her with that practical air of adoration which was as precious to her as his rare caress; she felt doubly honoured because, in his love-making, he preserved a humour which did not disguise his worship of her. "You'll like it," he said cheerfully. "Why don't you marry me now and take care of me?"

She made a gesture towards the upper room. "How can I?"

"No, you can't. Not," he added, "so much on that account, as simply because you can't. I'd rather wait a few months more—"

"You must," she said, and faintly irritated him. She looked at her clasped hands. "Zebedee, do you feel you want to be taken care of?" Her voice was anxious and, though he divined how much was balanced on his answer, he would not adjust it nicely.

"Not exactly," he said honestly, and he saw a light of relief and a shadow of disappointment chase each other on her face.

"After all, I think I do know you rather well," he murmured, as he took her by the shoulders. "Do you understand what I am doing?"

"You're telling me the truth."

"And at what a cost?"

She nodded. "But you couldn't help telling me the truth."

"And if I bemoaned my loneliness, how my collars get lost in the wash, how tired I am of Eliza's cooking and her face, how bad my cough is, then you'd let me carry you away?"

"I might. Zebedee—are those things true, too?"

"Not particularly."

"And your cough isn't bad?"

He hesitated. "It is rather bad."

"And you're a doctor!"

"But my dear, darling, love—I've no control over the weather."

"You ought to go away," she said in a low voice.

"I hope it won't come to that," he said.

It was Rupert who asked her a week later if she had jilted Zebedee.

"Why?" she asked quickly.

"He's ill, woman."

"I know."

"But really ill. You ought to send him away until the spring."

Her lips moved for a few seconds before she uttered "Yes," and after that sound she was mute under the double fear of keeping him and parting from him, but, since to let him go would give her the greater pain, it was the lesser fear, and it might be that the powers who were always waiting near to demand a price would, in this manner, let her get her paying done. She welcomed the chance of paying in advance and she kept silence while she strengthened herself to do it bravely.

Because she did not speak, Rupert elaborated. "When Zebedee loses his temper, there's something wrong."

"Has he done that?"

"Daniel daren't speak to him."

"He never speaks to people: he expounds."

"True; but your young man was distinctly short with me, even me, yesterday. Listen to your worldly brother, Helen. Why don't you marry him and take him into the sun? It's shining somewhere, one supposes."

"I can't."

"Why not? There's Miriam."

"What good is she?"

"You never give her a chance. You're one of those self-sacrificing, selfish people who stunt other people's growth. It's like not letting a baby learn to walk for fear it falls and hurts itself, or tumbles into the best flower-beds and ruins 'em. Have you ever thought of that?"

"But she's happier than she used to be," Helen said and smiled as though nothing more were needed. "And soon she will be going away. She won't stay after she is twenty-one."

"D'you think that fairy-tale is going to come true?"

"Oh, yes. She always does what she wants, you know. And she is counting on Uncle Alfred, though she says she isn't. She had a letter from him the other day."

"And when she has gone, what are you going to do?"

"I don't know what I'm going to do."

"Things won't be easier for you then. You'd better face that."

"But she'll be better—Notya will be better."

"And you'll marry Zebedee."

"I don't like saying what I'm going to do."

Rupert's dark eyes had a hard, bright light. "Are you supposed to love that unfortunate man? Look here, you're not going to be tied to Notya all her life. Zebedee and I won't have it."

"What's going to happen to her, then?"

"Bless the child! She's grown up. She can look after herself."

"But I can't leave just you and her in this house together."

He said in rather a strained voice, "I shan't be here. The bank's sending me to the new branch."

"Oh!" Helen said.

"I'm sorry about it. I tried not to seem efficient, but there's something about me—charm, I think. They must have noticed how I talk to the old ladies who don't know how to make out their cheques. So they're sending me, but I don't know that I ought to leave you all."

"Of course you must."

"I can come home on Saturdays."

"Yes. And Notya's better, and John is near. Why shouldn't you go?"

"Because your face fell."

"It's only that everybody's going. It seems like the end of things." She pictured the house without Rupert and she had a sense of desolation, for no one would whistle on the track at night and make the house warmer and more beautiful with his entrance; there would be no one to look up from his book with unfailing readiness to listen to everything and understand it; no one to say pleasant things which made her happy.

"Why," she said, plumbing the depths of loss, "there'll be no one to get up early for!"

"Ah, it's Miriam who'll feel that!" he said.

"And even Daniel won't come any more. He's tired of Miriam's foolishness."

"To tell you a secret, he's in love with some one else. But he has no luck. No wonder! If you could be married to him for ten years before you married him at all—"

"I don't know," Helen said thoughtfully. "Those funny men—" She did not finish her thought. "It will be queer without you," and after a pause she added the one word, "lonely."

It was strange that Miriam, whom she loved best, should never present herself to Helen's mind as a companion: the sisters, indeed, rarely spoke together except to argue some domestic point, to scold each other, or to tease, yet each was conscious of the other's admiration, though Helen looked on Miriam as a pretty ornament or toy, and Miriam gazed dubiously at what she called the piety of the other.

"Yes, lonely," she said, but in her heart she was glad that her payment should be great, and she said loudly, as though she recited her creed: "I wouldn't change anything. I believe in the things that happen."

"May they reward you!" he said solemnly.

"When will you have to go?"

"I'm not sure. Pretty soon. Look here, my dear, you three lone women ought to have a dog to take man's place as your natural protector—and so on."

"Have you told Zebedee you are going?"

"Yesterday."

"Then he will be getting one."

"H'm. He seems to be a satisfactory lover."

"He is, you know."

"Thank God for him."

"Would you?" Helen said. She had a practical as well as a superstitious distaste for offering thanks for benefits not actually received, and also a disbelief in the present certainty of her possession, but she took hope. John had gone, Rupert was going, of her own will she would send Zebedee away, and then surely the powers would be appeased, and if she suffered enough from loneliness, from dread of seeing Mildred Caniper ill again, of never getting her lover back, the rulers of her life might be willing, at the end, to let her have Zebedee and the shining house—the shining house which lately had taken firmer shape, and stood squarely back from the road, with a little copse of trees rising behind.



CHAPTER XXI

She cried out when next she saw him, for between this and their next meeting he had grown gaunter, more nervous, sharper in voice and gesture.

"Oh, you're ill!" she said, and stepped back as though she did not know him.

"Yes, I'm ill." He held to a chair and tipped it back and forth. "For goodness' sake, don't talk about it any more. I'm ill. That's settled. Now let's get on to something else."

He saw her lip quiver and, uttering a desperate, "I'm sorry," he turned from her to the window.

The wisdom she could use so well with others was of no avail with him: he was too much herself to be treated cunningly. She felt that she floated on a sea vastly bigger than she had ever known, and its waves were love and fear and cruelty and fate, but in a moment he turned and she saw a raft on which she might sail for ever.

"Forgive me."

"You've made me love you more."

"With being a brute to you?"

"Were you one? But—don't often be angry. I might get used to it!"

He laughed. "Oh, Helen, you wonder! But I've spoilt our memories."

"With such a little thing? And when I liked it?"

"You nearly cried. I don't want to remember that."

"But I shall like to because we're nearer than we were," she said, and to that he solemnly agreed. "And I am going to talk about it."

"Anything, of course."

"You look tired and hungry and sleepy, and I'm going to send you away."

"My dear," he said with a grimace, "I've got to go."

"Give me the credit of sending you."

"I don't want it. Ah! you've no idea what leaving you is like."

"But I know—"

"That's not the same thing."

"It's worse, I believe. Darling one, go away and come back to me, but don't come back until you're well. I want—I want to do without you now—and get it over." Her eyes, close to his, were bright with the vision of things he could not see. "Get it over," she said again, "and then, perhaps, we shall be safe."

He had it in him at that moment to say he would not go because of his own fear for her, but he only took her on his knee and rocked her as though she were a baby on the point of sleep and he proved that, after all, he knew her very well, for when he spoke he said, "I don't think I can go."

She started up. "Have you thought of something?"

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"You."

"Me?" she asked on a long note.

"I don't know whether I can trust you."

"Me?" she said again.

"Don't you remember how I asked you to be brave?"

"I tried, but it was easier then because I hadn't you." Her arm tightened round his neck. "Now you're another to look after."

He held her off from him. "What am I to do with you? What am I to do with you? How can I leave this funny little creature who is afraid of shadows?"

"That night," she said in a small voice, "you told me I looked brave."

"Yes, brave and sane. And I have often thought—don't laugh at me—I have thought that was how Joan of Arc must have looked."

"And now?"

"Now you are like a Joan who does not hear her voices any more."

She slipped from his knee to hers. "You're disappointed then?"

"No."

"You ought to be."

"Perhaps."

"Would you love me more if I were brave?"

"I don't believe I could."

She laughed, and with her head aslant, she asked, "Then what's the good of trying?"

"Just to make it easier for me," he said.

She uttered a little sound like one who stands in mountain mists and through a rent in the grey curtain sees a light shining in the valley.

"Would it do that for you? Oh, if it's going to help you, I'm afraid no longer." She reached out and held his face between the finger-tips of her two hands. "I promise not to be afraid. Already"—she looked about her—"I am not afraid. How wonderful you are! And what a wise physician! Physician, heal thyself. You'll go away?"

"Yes, I can go now."

"Where?"

"For a voyage. The Mediterranean. Not a liner—on some slow-going boat."

"Not a leaky one," she begged.

"Ah, I'd come back if she had no bottom to her. Nothing is going to hurt me or keep me from you!"

She did not protest against his boasting, but smiled because she knew he meant to test her.

"You'll be away a long time," she said.

"And you'll marry me when I come back?"

"Yes. If I can."

"Why not? In April? May? June? In June—a lovely month. It has a sound of marriage in it. But after all," he said thoughtfully, "it seems a pity to go. And I wouldn't," he added with defiance, "if I were not afraid of being ill on your hands."

"My hands would like it rather."

"Bless them!"

"Oh—what silly things we say—and do—and you haven't seen Notya yet."

"Come along then," he said, and as they went up the stairs together Helen thought Mr. Pinderwell smiled.

It was after this visit that Mildred Caniper coolly asked Helen if Dr. Mackenzie were in the habit of using endearments towards her.

"Not often," Helen said. Slightly flushed and trying not to laugh, she stood at the bed-foot and faced Mildred Caniper fairly.