Nothing to remind him?

It made no difference whether the Abbey towers and the North Ride chimneys were visible or invisible; no screen of trees, whether leafless as now or carrying the full weight of foliage, could really screen them from him; they were inside him, together with all that they had once signified, a part of himself. If he did not look at them with introspective eyes, if he ignored their existence, if he succeeded in not thinking of them, there was always something else, inside him or outside him, to carry his thoughts back into the black bad time.

At this moment it was the Orphanage, with its wet red roofs and dripping white verandas. His road took him close in front of it—a lengthy stretch of building composed of a central block that contained the hall and schoolrooms, and two lesser and lower blocks connected by cloisters. He glanced at these blocks—long and low, only a ground floor and an upper story—and noticed the veranda and broad balconies. The girls slept here, as Mavis had told him; the younger in one block and the older in the other block. The whole institution had an air of old-established order and unceasing care; all the paint was new and clean; the gardens and terraces, with hedges and shrubs that had grown high and thick, were beautifully kept; not a weed showed in borders or paths; the copper bell in the belfry turret was so well polished that it seemed to shine, even though no glint of sunlight touched it. As he rode by he heard the sound of children's voices, and, raising himself in his stirrups, looked over the clipped yew hedge that guarded the lower garden from the roadway. A dozen or fifteen small blue-cloaks were romping joyously under one of the verandas, and perhaps twenty of the bigger blue-cloaks were soberly parading two by two in a cloister.

Nothing carried him back so promptly and surely as the sight of these blue-cloaked girls, and scarcely a day ever passed without his seeing them. Two by two they were incessantly tramping the roads for miles round. He could not walk, ride, or drive without meeting them. When he heard their footsteps and knew that they were coming marching by Vine-Pits, he turned his back to the office window, or went into the depths of granary or stable. He had hated that day when Mavis brought them off the road and into the heart of his home.

With the sound of their shrill cries and merry laughter lingering in his ears he rode on.

What a hideous and damnable mockery! This was the monument of that good kind man, the late Mr. Barradine. Every red tile, every dab of white paint, every square inch of clean gravel, gave substance and solidity to the lasting fame of that dear sweet gentleman. Visitors to the neighborhood always stopped their carriages or motor cars outside the Orphanage gates, questioned and gaped, sent in their cards, begged for permission to go all over it. Inside, no doubt they admired the rows of clean white beds, some of them quite little cots, others big enough for almost full-grown bouncing lasses; they stood with hushed breath before his portrait in the refectory hall or his bust on the stairs; and perhaps they patted the cheeks of some pretty inmate and asked if, when saying her prayers, she always included the name of the patron saint. On high occasions clergymen and bishops came, there to hiccough and weep over his blessed memory. Great lords and ladies praised him, newspaper writers praised him, ignorant fools in cottages praised him; and to high and low the crowning grace of his glorious charity was the selection of the softer, gentler, and too often downtrodden sex as the object of such tender care. That was what set the sentimental rivers flowing. It proved the innate gentleness and sweetness of him who was now an angel in Heaven. When it came to choosing the guests for the lovely home he had built in his mind, he had said: "I will not fill it with a lot of hulking boys. Boys are naturally rough and coarse animals, and can generally fight their way out on top, no matter how stiff the struggle. Give me so many graceful delicate girls; pretty helpless things, dainty little innocent fascinating creatures; not necessarily fatherless girls, but unprotected girls—girls that grievously need protection."

And Dale thought how the man, when he was alive, dealt with any innocent unprotected girl who chanced to fall into his power. In imagination he saw him taking care of Mavis, when she was young and tender, and scarcely knew right from wrong. In imagination he saw it all again—the pattings and pawings, the scheming and devising, the luring and ensnaring—Barradine and Mavis—the man of many years and the girl of few years, the serpent and the dove, the destroyer and the destroyed. Those torturing mental pictures glowed and took form, and were as vivid now as when, in the hour of his grief and despair, he first made them and saw them.

This departed saint, whose memory had become as a fragrance of myrrh, whose name sounded like the clinking of an incense-pot swung by devout hands, whose monument stood firm as a temple built upon the rock, was simply a dirty old beast for whom no excuse could be possible. What worse crime can there be than that of befouling youth? Who is a worse enemy to the commonweal than he who snatches and steals for his transient gratification treasures that are accumulating to make some honest man's life-long joy? Such wanton abuse of society's law and nature's plan is the unpardonable sin; it is sin as monstrous as the enormities that brought down fire upon the dwellers in the cities of the plain.

To Dale the idea of an offense so gross that its perpetrator deserved neither pity nor mercy was if anything stronger now than when it had first entered and filled his mind.

Yet it seemed to him that now, after all the years that had gone by, he could for the first time perfectly understand the dark and shameful tangle of emotions through which the sinner moved onward to his sin. It seemed that with luminous clearness he could look right into the corrupt heart of the dead man. He could understand all, though he could forgive nothing. He could measure the force of every thought and sensation that had pushed the dead man on and on.

After middle-age the blood grows stagnant, habit dulls the edge of appetite, a weariness of the mind and of the body makes one cease to taste well-used delights; a strong new stimulus is required to revive the emotional life that is sinking to decay. Such a stimulus must not only be strong and new, it must be light, delicate, altogether strange. The effect it produces is due to charm and spell as much as to substance and form.

To people who are elderly, youth itself, merely because it is youth, exercises a tremendous fascination. It sheds an atmosphere that is pleasant to breathe. It seems like a fountain of life in which, if we might bathe, we should take some rejuvenating virtue as well as a soothing bliss. There is a common saying that it makes one feel young just to consort with young people.

Then imagine the selfish unprincipled wretch who at the same time feels the new stimulus, experiences the mysterious fascination, and craves for the revivifying delight. Putting himself in the sinner's place, Dale could realize the pressure that drove him to his sin. He could estimate the fearful temptation offered by the mere presence of the fresh young innocent creature that one has begun to think about in this improper manner. She comes and she goes before one's eyes, piercing them with her beauty; she fills one with desire as wine fills a cup; she absorbs one, whether she knows it or not, dominates, overwhelms, makes one her sick and fainting slave. And suppose that while one becomes her slave one remains her master. To what a gigantic growth the temptation must rush up each time that one thinks she is utterly in one's power! How irresistible it must seem if she herself does not aid one to resist it, if through her ignorance or childish faith she invites the disaster one is struggling to avoid, if instead of flying from her danger she draws nearer and nearer to it.

But to yield to such temptation, however tremendous it may be, is abominable, disgusting, and inexpressibly base. No explanation can palliate or apology prevail—the crime remains the same crime, and he who commits it is not fit to live with decent upright men. That was what Dale had felt fifteen years ago, and he felt it with increased conviction now because of the religious faith that had become his guide and comfort. To a believing Baptist there is a peculiar sacredness, in unsullied innocence.

Two hours afterward, when he had transacted his business and drew near to home, he was still thinking of Mr. Barradine and the Orphanage for unguarded innocent girls. He shook himself in the saddle, squared his shoulders, and held up his head as he rode into the yard.

"Here, take my horse," he said sternly, as he swung his foot out of the stirrup.

Then, at the sound of a voice behind him, he felt a little shiver run down his spine, like the cold touch of superstitious fear.

It was only Norah calling to him. She had come out into the rain to tell him that Mavis Dale had gone to Rodchurch and could not be back to tea.



XXVII

A lassitude descended upon him. Things that had always seemed easy began to seem difficult; little bits of extra work that used to be full of pleasure now brought a fatigue that he felt he must evade; interests that he had allowed to widen without limit all at once contracted and shrank to nothing.

He surprised Mavis by telling her that he had resigned his membership of the District Council. During the last winter he had retired from the fire brigade, and Mavis thoroughly approved of this retirement; but she thought it rather a pity that he should cease to be a councilor. She had always liked the sound of his official designation. Councilor Dale sounded so very grand.

The fire brigade had proved a disappointment to him. Since its enrollment he and his men had often been useful at minor conflagrations, of ricks, cottage thatch, and kitchen flues; but they had never been given a chance of really distinguishing themselves. They had saved no lives, nor met with any perilous risks. However, the captain's retirement was made the occasion of showing the regard and respect in which Mr. Dale was held by the whole neighborhood. Secretly subscriptions had been collected for the purpose of giving Mr. Dale a testimonial, and at a very large meeting in the Rodchurch Schoolroom, it was presented by one of the most important local gentlemen. "Mr. Dale," said Sir Reginald, "our worthy vicar has mentioned the fact that I have come here to-night at some slight personal inconvenience; but I can assure you that if the inconvenience had been very much greater I should have come all the same." (Considerable cheering.) "And in handing you this inscribed watch and accompanying chain, I desire to assure you on behalf of all here"—and so on. Dale, for his part, said that "had he guessed this testimonial was on foot, he might have been tempted to burk it, because he could not have conscientiously countenanced it. But now accepting it, although he did not desire it, he felt quite overcome by it. Nevertheless he would ever value it." (Loud and prolonged cheers.) The record of all these proceedings, faithfully set forth in the Rodhaven District Courier, formed the proudest and finest snippet in Mavis' bulging scrap album; and brought moisture to her eyes each time that she examined it anew.

"I was never more pleased," she said, "than when I knew you wouldn't ever have to wear your fire helmet again; but now I'm wondering if you won't miss the Council."

"No, Mav, I shan't miss it."

"One thing I'm sure of—they'll miss you."

"They'll get on very well without me, my dear." And then he told her that he was not quite the man he had been. "I'm not so greedy nowadays for every opportunity of spouting out my opinions; and I've come to think one's private work is enough, without putting public work on top of it. You'll understand, I don't mean that I want to fold my hands and sit quiet for the rest of my days. But I do seem to feel the need of taking things a little lighter than I used to do."

This explanation was more than sufficient for Mavis; she sympathetically praised him for his wisdom in dropping the silly old useless Council.

But it was later this evening, or perhaps one evening a little afterward, when something he said set her thoughts moving so fast that they rushed on from sympathy to apprehensive anxiety.

He spoke with unusual kindness about her family, and asked if she had suffered any real discomfort because of his having forbidden intercourse with all the Petherick relations. She said "No." Then he said he had been actuated by the best intentions; and he further added that all his experience of the world led him to believe that one got on a great deal better by one's self than if chocked up with uncles and cousins and aunts. "So I should hope, Mav, that you'd never now feel the wish to mend what I took the decision of breaking. I mean, especially as your people have mostly scattered and gone from these parts, that you'd never, however you were situated, wish to hunt them all out and bring them back to your doors again." Mavis dutifully and honestly said that her own experience had led her to similar conclusions. She thought that relatives were often more trouble than they were worth, and she promised never to attempt a regathering of the scattered Petherick clan.

"You know," he said, "if anything happened to me, you'd be all right. I have made my will long ago. There's a copy of it in there," and he pointed to the lower part of the bureau; "while th' instrument itself lies snug in Mr. Cleaver's safe, over at Manninglea."

"Oh, for goodness' sake, don't speak of it. I can't bear even to hear the word." And then, taking alarm, she said he must be feeling really ill, or such things as wills would never have come into his head. "Tell me the truth, dear. Tell me what you do feel—truly." And she asked him all sorts of questions about his health, begging him to consult a doctor without a day's delay.

"Only a bit tired, Mav—and that's what I never used to feel."

"No, you never did. And I don't at all understand it."

"It's quite natural, my dear."

"Not natural to you."

Then he took her hand, pressed it affectionately, and laughed in his old jolly way. "My dear, it's nothing—just an excuse for slacking off now and then. Remember, Mav, I am not a chicken. I shall be fifty before th' end of this year."

He convinced her that there was no cause for her anxiety; and only too happy not to have to be anxious, she thought no more of this strange thing that her untiring Will now sometimes knew what tiredness meant.

But his lassitude increased. He uttered no further hints about it to anybody; he endeavored to conceal it; he refused to admit its extent even to himself. On certain days to think made him weary, to be active and bustling was an impossibility. Instinct seemed to whisper that he was passing through still another phase, that presently he would be all right again—just as vigorous and energetic as in the past; and that meanwhile he should not flog and spur himself, but just rest patiently until all his force returned to him.

Since to do anything was a severe effort, he had better do nothing. He ceased to bother about Billy's schooling. He postponed making his harvest arrangements; he forgot to answer a letter asking for an estimate, and one Thursday he omitted to wind the clocks. He tried to let his beard grow, in order to escape the trouble of shaving. It grew during three days; but the effect was so disfiguring—a stiff stubble of gray, hiding his fine strong chin, and spreading high on his bronzed cheeks—that Norah and Mavis implored him to desist. Even Ethel the housemaid ventured to say how very glad she felt when he shaved again.

The month of May was hot and enervating; the month of June was wet and depressing. Day after day the rain beat threateningly against the windows, and night after night it dripped with a melancholy patter from the eaves. On three successive Sundays Dale considered the rain an adequate excuse for not going to chapel. He and Norah had a very short informal service within sound and within smell of the roast beef that was being cooked close by in the kitchen, and afterward he meditatively read the Bible to himself while Norah laid the cloth for dinner.

He had said that he did not want to fold his hands and sit quiet for the remainder of his existence; but that was precisely what he desired to do for the moment. He allowed Norah to relieve him of more and more of his office duties, and he idly watched her as she stood bending her neck over the tall desk or sat stooping her back and squaring her elbows at the writing-table. And still sitting himself, he would maintain long desultory conversations with her about nothing in particular when, having completed the tasks that he had entrusted to her, she moved here and there about the office tidying up for the night.

Thus on an evening toward the end of June he talked to her about love and the married state. It had been raining all day long, and though no rain fell at the moment, one felt that more was coming. The air was saturated with moisture; heavy odors of sodden vegetation crept through the open window; and one saw a mist like steam beginning to rise from the fields beyond the roadway. Mr. Furnival, the new pastor, had just passed by; and it was his appearance that started the conversation.

"He is a conscientious talented young man," said Dale; "and with experience he will ripen. At present he seems to me deficient in sympathy."

"Yes, so he does," said Norah, as she opened the desk drawer.

"He hasn't the knack of putting himself in the place of other people. There's something cold and cheerless in his preaching—I don't say as if he didn't feel it all himself, but as if he hadn't yet caught the knack of imparting his feelings to others."

"No more he has," said Norah, putting away her papers.

"Between you and me and the post," said Dale, "I don't like him."

"No more do I."

"What! Don't you like Mr. Furnival either?"

Norah shook her head and said "No" emphatically.

"But he is handsome, Norah. I call him undoubtedly a handsome man. And they tell me that the girls are falling in love with him."

Norah laughed, and said that, if Mr. Dale had been correctly informed, she was sorry for the taste of the girls.

"Then you don't admire his looks, Norah?"

"It rather surprises me, because I should have thought he was just the sort of person to attract and fascinate the other sex—a bachelor too, without ties, able to take advantage of any success in that line that came his way. I mean, of course, by offering marriage to the party who fancied him."

Norah said again that she thought nothing of Mr. Furnival's alleged handsomeness. She considered him a namby-pamby.

"You are young still. Perhaps I oughtn't to talk like this—putting nonsense in your head. But it'll come there sure enough of its own accord. Your turn will come. You'll fall in love one day, Norah."

Norah, putting the big account-books back on the shelf over the desk, did not answer.

"You've never fallen in love yet, have you?"

Norah would not answer.

"Ah, well." Dale got up from his chair, and stretched himself. "But you'll have to marry some day, you know."

"Oh, no, I shan't."

"Oh, yes, my dear, you will. That's a thing there's no harm for girls to think of, because it's what they've got to prepare themselves for." And Dale delivered a serious little homily on the duties and pleasures of wedlock, and concluded by telling Norah that when she had chosen an honest proper sort of young fellow, neither himself nor Mrs. Dale would stand in the way of her future happiness. "Yes, my dear, you'll leave us then; and we shall miss you greatly—both of us will miss you very greatly, but we shan't either of us consider that. And you mustn't consider it yourself. It's nature—quite proper and correct that under those circumstances you should leave us."

"Never," said Norah. "Never—unless you send me away;" and stooping her head on her arms, she began to cry.

"Oh, my dear, don't cry," said Dale bruskly. "What in the name of reason is there to cry about?"

"Then say you won't send me away," sobbed Norah. "Promise me you won't do that."

"Of course I won't," said Dale, in the same brusk tone. "That is, unless I'm morally certain that—"

"No, no—never."

"Oh, don't be silly. Dry your eyes, and be sensible;" and Dale, plunging his hands in his pockets, hurried out of the office.

He walked as far as the Baptist Chapel, and straight back again; and before he got home he made a solemn resolution to rouse himself from the idle lethargic state into which he felt himself slipping deeper and deeper. Thinking about business and other matters, he decided now that the odd weariness which he had been experiencing must be struggled with, and not submitted to. There was no sense in calmly accepting such a mental and bodily condition. It might be different if there was anything organically wrong with him; but he was really as strong and fit as ever—only a bit tired; but he thought with scorn of the folly of allowing dark days and foul weather to influence one's spirits or one's capacity for effort. That sort of rubbish is well enough for rich old maids who go about the world with a maid, a hot-water bottle, and a poll parrot; but it is degrading and undignified in a successful business man who has a wife and two children to work for, whether the sun shines or the sky is overcast.

At supper he told Mavis that he was going to make a long round of it next day, starting early, and riding far to pay several calls that were overdue. He added that he would not require Norah's assistance in the office, either to-morrow or for some time to come.

"I fear me," he said, "that I've been selfish, and abused the privilege of taking her away to act as secretary, and thereby thrown more on you."

"Not a bit," said Mavis. "Take her just as long as she makes herself useful."

"She has done fine," said Dale, "and lifted a lot off my shoulders. But now I feel I'm all clear, and I restore her to her proper place and duties."

Mavis, if aware of the fact, would have thought it curious that Dale had spoken to Norah of falling in love, because she herself was at this time worried by thoughts of such possibilities with regard to the girl. She noticed various changes in Norah's manner and deportment. Norah, although Dale said she worked well enough for him in the office, showed a perceptible slackness at her household tasks. She seemed to have lost interest, especially in all kitchen work; she was often careless in dusting and cleaning the parlor, and had done one or two very clumsy things—such as breaking tea-cups when washing up—as if her wits had gone wool-gathering instead of being concentrated on the job in hand. Her temper, too, was not so even and agreeable as it ought to have been. She was distinctly irritable once or twice to the children, when they were trying to play with her as of old, and not, as she declared, wilfully teasing her. And once or twice when she was reproved, there had come some nasty little flashes of rebellion.

Mavis, seeking any reason for this slight deterioration of conduct and steadiness, wondered if Norah by chance had a little secret love affair up her sleeve. That would account for everything. But if so, who could it be who was upsetting her? Girls, even at what matrons call the silly age, can not give scope to their silliness without opportunities; and there were no visitors to the house, and certainly none of the men in the yard, who could conceivably be carrying on with her.

Then the suspicions of Mavis were aroused by discovering that Norah was at her old tricks again. If you sent her as messenger of charity to one of the cottages, and more still if you gave her an hour or two for herself, she went stealing off into the forbidden woods. She had been seen doing it twice, and, as Mavis suspected, had done it often without being seen. She knew that she wasn't allowed to do it. There was the plain house-rule that neither she nor Ethel were ever to leave the roads when they were out alone. Yet she broke the rule; and Mavis now suspected that she did not break this rule in order to pick wild flowers and look at green leaves but to meet a sweetheart.

Mavis, thinking about it, was at once angry and apprehensive. A fine thing for all of them, if the little fool came to trouble and disgrace that way. She would not immediately bother Dale about it; but she promptly tackled Norah, roundly accused her of improper behavior, expressed a firm conviction that she was playing the fool with some young man, and threatened to lay the whole matter before the master.

"D'you understand, Norah? We won't put up with it—not for a moment. We're not going to let you make yourself the talk of the place and bring us to shame into the bargain."

Norah, alternately flushing and turning pale, defended herself with vigor. She was indignant not with the threats, but with the suspicion. She swore that she had never for one instant thought of a young man, much less spoken to or made appointments with a young man; and that she had broken the house-rule simply because she found it almost impossible to keep it. She had always loved wandering about under the trees: she used to go there all alone as a baby, and she thought it unreasonable that she might not go there alone as a grown-up person.

Norah's indignant tone suggested complete innocence, and Mavis felt relieved in mind, but yet not quite sure whether the girl was really telling the truth.

She indirectly returned to the charge on the following Sunday, when Norah was about to start for her afternoon out.

"Norah, I want a word with you."

The girl came back along the flagged path to the kitchen door.

"It's just this, Norah. You'll please to remember what I've told you, and act accordingly."

Norah turned her head and answered over her shoulder, rather sullenly, as Mavis thought.

"All right. I remember."

"Don't answer me like that," said Mavis sharply. "And please to remember your manners, and look at people when you speak to them."

"All right," said Norah again, and, as Mavis judged, very sullenly this time.

"Look you here, young lady," she said, with increasing warmth. "I'm not going to stand any of your nonsense—and of that I give you fair warning. Now you just answer me in a seemly manner and tell me exactly where you are going this afternoon, or I'll send you straight back into the house to take off your finery and not go out at all."

Dale, close by in the little sitting-room, heard his wife's voice raised thus angrily, closed the book that was lying open on his knees, and came to the window.

"What's wrong, Mav?"

"It's Norah offering me her sauce, and I won't put up with it."

Dale, with the book in his hand, came out through the kitchen, and stood by Mavis on the stone flags.

"Norah," he said seriously, "you must always be good, and do whatever Mrs. Dale tells you."

"Yes, but that's just what she doesn't do;" and Mavis explained that, in spite of repeated orders, Norah had several times gone mooning off into the woods all by herself. "So now I'm reminding her, and asking where she means to go this afternoon."

Norah, with her eyes on the flags, said that she would go to Rodchurch.

"Very good," said Mavis. "Then now you've answered, you may go."

When Norah had disappeared round the corner of the house, Mavis talked to her husband apologetically and confidentially.

"Will, dear, I'm sorry I disturbed you when you were reading;" and glancing at the book in his hand, she felt ashamed of her recent warmth. "I couldn't help blowing her up, and I'll tell you why." Then she spoke of the necessity of keeping a sharp eye and a firm hand on a girl of Norah's age and attractions; and she further mentioned her suspicion, now almost entirely allayed, of some secret carryings-on.

"Oh, I don't think there's anything of that sort," said Dale. "No, I may say I'm morally sure Norah isn't deceiving you there."

"I'm glad you think so. Yes, it's what I think myself. I should have bowled her out if there'd been anything going on. But, Will, there's other dangers for her—worse dangers."

"What dangers, Mavis?"

"Well, all the lads naturally are looking at her. Norah has come on faster than you may have noticed. I don't want her to mix herself up with any of those louts that hang about the Cross Roads."

"No."

"And she'll come across them for certain if she gets trapesing through the trees like she does. There's her brothers would bring them together. Besides, it isn't safe—at her age. You know yourself what's always been said of it."

"Quite so," said Dale. "You are wise, Mavis—very wise to be watchful and careful."

Then he returned to the sitting-room, settled himself again in the porter's chair, and reopened his book at the place where he had been interrupted.

It was the New Testament; and just now, while reading the twenty-first chapter of Saint Matthew, he had enjoyed a clear vision of Christ's entry into Jerusalem. Making his picture from materials supplied by an article in the People's Encyclopedia, he seemed to be able to see the ancient city and its exotic life as the Redeemer and the disciples must have seen it on that memorable day. Here were the narrow streets and the crowded market-places; the towers and domes; the strangely garbed traders, laden camels, gorgeous Roman soldiers, brown-faced priests, black-bodied slaves; sunlit hills high above one, distant faintly blue mountains far ahead of one—a thronged labyrinth of shadow and light, of noise and confusion, of pomp and squalor.

But the picture was gone, the dream was broken, the hope was darkened. He tried to bring it all back again, and failed utterly. He could not think of Christ riding into Jerusalem; he could only think of Norah walking along the road to Rodchurch.



XXVIII

Extreme heat came that year with the opening of July, and the atmosphere at night seemed as oppressive as in the day.

After an unusually wet June the foliage was rich and dense, but flowers were few and poor—except the roses, which had prospered greatly. Throughout the daylight hours trees close at hand looked solid, as if composed of some unbending green material; while those a little way off were rather firm, presenting the appearance of trees during heavy rain. Indeed that was the appearance of the whole scene—a country-side being drenched and rendered vague by a heavy downpour; but it was sheer heat that was descending, with never an atom of moisture in it.

The shadows beneath the trees were absolutely black, impenetrable; a dark cave under each ring of leaves. Then toward nightfall this shadow grew lighter and lighter, until it was a transparent grayness into which one could see quite clearly. Thus a girl and a man sitting under a hedgerow elm five or six hundred yards away were distinct objects, although perhaps themselves unaware that they had gradually lost their shelter and become conspicuous.

Dale, crossing his fields and staring at these two figures, for a moment fancied that one of them was Norah. Yet that would have been an impossibility, because he had just left her behind him at the house; and she could not have swum round in a great half-circle, through the drowsy air, to confront him at a distant point where he did not expect to see her. But the heat made one stupid and slow-witted. This man and woman were farmer Creech's people, and they had come sauntering along the edge of uncut grass to make lazy love to each other. Dale turned aside to avoid disturbing them.

As he returned toward the house presently, he thought of Norah's unwonted pallor. Poor child, the heat seemed to be trying her more than anybody. And he thought of how wan and limp and sad she looked early this morning, when he had again sent her out of his office and flatly refused to let her do any more writing or tidying for him. Even her red lips had gone pale; she dropped her head; her white eyelids and black lashes fluttered as she looked up at him piteously, seeming to ask: "What have I done that you treat me like this, oh, my cruel master?" He had driven his hands deep into his pockets, had shrugged his shoulders, and spoken almost roughly—telling her to go about her business, and not bother. He thought if he gave her time to do it, she might cry again; and he did not want to see any more of her tears.

But off and on throughout the day he had watched her when she did not in the least know that she was being observed. Just after breakfast he had watched her as she scrubbed the kitchen floor, and had noticed the pretty lines of her figure in these sprawling attitudes—her ankles, stockings, and the upturned soles of her buckle-shoes.

He was watching her when she came up from the dairy with the pail that held Mavis' afternoon supply of milk, and he noticed her stretched arm, bare to the elbow, and the other arm balancing, the tilted body helping also to maintain equilibrium. Almost more than she could manage—why didn't that broad-backed thick-legged lump of a dairy-maid carry the house-pail? He would have liked to go out and carry the pail himself; but that was one of the many things which he must carefully refrain from doing.

And all day long, though he saw her so often, he never once heard her sing. She made no song over her work, as used to be her habit. He wondered if Mavis was not working her too hard in this terribly exhausting weather. He wondered also if he would ever be able to say quite naturally what he had for so long wished to say and felt he ought to say—that Norah must be given a holiday, that she must be sent somewhere at a considerable distance and stay there in charge of kind and respectable people for an indefinite period. Mavis might consider the suggestion so strange; and it might be impossible to explain that, strange as it seemed, it was nevertheless full of wisdom—a suggestion that should be acted upon without an instant's delay.

The supper table had been brought out into the open air, and it stood upon the flagged path, where they had spread their hospitable feast for the higgler's wedding. Norah was coming in and out of the kitchen, and Dale sat watching her as she arranged knives, forks, and glasses. Both the children were to be of the party; and they might stay up as late as they pleased, because as it was too hot to sleep in their beds, it did not matter how long the young people remained out of them. They were now roaming about the orchard with Mavis, hunting for a coolness that did not exist anywhere except in one's memory, and their voices sounded at intervals languidly.

More and more color was now perceptible; distances were extending; lines of meager flowers, crimson and blue as well as white, showed in a border of the kitchen garden; and the sky, seeming to lift and brighten, was a faint orange above the horizon and a most delicate rose tint toward the zenith—so that till half-past eight, or later, one had the illusion that the night was going to be more brightly lighted than the day.

Nobody had much appetite for supper, but they all sat a long while at the table, glad to rest if they could not eat, hoping that when they moved from their chairs they would find the temperature lower within the house walls than outside them. Mavis gave little oppressed sighs as she fanned her jolly round face and broad matronly chest with a copy of the Courier. Ethel, who to-night seemed an extraordinarily cumbrous awkward creature, flumped the dishes down on the table and shuffled away on her big flat feet. Norah glided to and fro, now here, now there, pouring out milk and water for the children, and ducking prettily when a bat came close to her white face and black hair.

"What, Norah," said Mavis, laughing, "you a country girl, and afraid of a flitter-mouse!"

"Yes," said Billy, "she's afraid of the flitty-mouse. Isn't she a coward? You are a coward, Norah."

And then the laugh was turned against Billy; for the bat passing again and lower than before, Billy himself ducked and crouched automatically.

"Who's the coward now, young sir?"

"I don't mind anything that has wings," said Rachel. "It's what goes creeping and crawling that I'm afraid of."

"I don't mind ear-wigs," said Billy defiantly.

And Dale, while he talked without interest and ate without appetite, watched Norah. She had changed her gown an hour ago, and obviously when changing had discarded the burden of under-petticoats; this other gown hung close and yet limp about her limbs, modeling itself to each slim length and shapely curve; and he thought it made her look like the statue of a Grecian hand-maiden-such as he had seen many years before in illustrations of learned books. When she stood near him, he noticed nothing but the blackness of her hair or the whiteness of her cheeks; and then he thought she looked somehow wild and fantastic, like a person that one can see only in dreams. But whether she was near him or at a little distance, so long as she remained in sight, he was unintermittently conscious that the essential charm that she shed forth could be traced directly to her youth.

"Good night, daddy."

"Good night, Rachel."

His daughter had kissed him, and she stood between his knees while he patted her and caressed her. She too was young and fresh and sweet-smelling; and yet the touch of her purified one. So long as he was holding her, it seemed to him that a father's love is so great and so pure that there can not be any other love in the world.

But a minute afterward, when his own girl had gone and the other girl was again before his eyes, all the impure unworthy unpermissible desires came rushing back upon him.

They lighted lamps in the kitchen presently, and he sat staring at the open doorway, alone now, after the table had been cleared. The doorway seemed like an empty picture-frame. But each time that Norah came and stood there looking out for a moment, the picture was in its frame. With the light behind her, she was just a thin black figure; and he thought how slight, how weak and small a thing to possess such tremendous, almost irresistible power over him.

Next evening, between tea-time and supper-time, Norah absented herself without leave. Mavis did not miss her at first. Then she thought that very probably the girl was wandering about with the children, or gossiping with the maid at the dairy; but then old Mrs. Goudie, who had come to pay a call at the back door, said she had met Norah and had a chat with her "up th' road." On being further examined, Mrs. Goudie said that Norah, after bidding her good night, had got over the stile at the second footpath into Hadleigh Wood.

Mavis at once became angry and suspicious again, and she went to her husband to report this act of rebellion. The office was empty, but she found him at the yard. He was in his shirt-sleeves, sitting on a corn-bin, and he seemed to be greatly troubled by what she told him that she wished him to do. She asked him to go into the wood himself and spy out Norah quietly, and see if she was really alone there.

"Oh, I don't much like this job, Mav. Besides, it's to hunt for a needle in a bundle of hay. How do I know which way the lass has gone?"

"I'm telling you she went in at the second path. She won't have gone far. Probably you'll come upon her this side of the rides—along by the stream, very likely."

But Dale still showed reluctance to undertake the detective mission.

"Then I must go," said Mavis. "I can't put up with this sort of thing, and I mean to stop it. She must be made to understand once for all—"

"Very well," said Dale; and he got off the corn-bin and picked up his jacket.

"She'll pay more heed to you than she would to me. But, one word, Will. If you catch her with a young man don't go and lose your temper with him. Don't bother about him. Just bring the young minx straight home."

"An' suppose there's no young man."

"Bring her back just the same, and lecture her all the way on her disobedience—and the trouble and annoyance she is giving us. Tell her we're not going to stand any more of it."

"Very well."

He walked along the road at a fairly brisk pace until he came to the second stile, and then he stood hesitatingly. The firs grew thick here, and the shadows that they cast were dark and opaque, encroaching on the pathway, making it a narrow strip of dim light that would lead one into the mysterious and gloomy depths of the wood.

He crossed the stile, and went along the path very slowly, pausing now and then to listen. There was not a sound; the whole wood was as silent as the grave.

Presently the fir-trees on each side of him opened out a little, and here and there beeches and ashes appeared; then the path passed through a glade, the shadows receded, and he had a sensation of being more free and able to breathe better. If he kept on by the path he would soon come to the main ride, that long widely cut avenue which goes close to Kibworth Rocks and gives access to the other straight cuts leading to the Abbey park. He left the path and struck across through the trees, making a line that would take him soon to the wildest part of the ancient Chase, and that, if he pursued it far enough, would eventually bring him out on the big ride near the rocks.

The dark stiff firs gave place to solemnly magnificent beeches; glade succeeded glade; thickets of holly and hawthorn dense as a savage jungle tried to baffle one's approach to lawnlike spaces where the grass grew finely as in a garden, and the white stems of the high trees looked like pillars of a splendid church; the stream ran silently and secretly, not flashing when it swept out under the sky, or murmuring when it slid down tiny cascades beneath the branches.

Dale was following the stream, whether it showed itself or hid itself, and could have found his way blindfold. He knew the wood by night as well as he knew it by day.

He stopped on the edge of the biggest of all the glades, looked about him cautiously, advanced slowly, and stopped again to wipe the perspiration from his forehead. He was very near to the main ride now; straight ahead of him, say two hundred yards away, on the other side of the invisible ride lay the invisible rocks.

One of the beech-trees had fallen, and been left as it fell two months ago. Most of its tender young foliage had shriveled and died, but on branches near its upturned roots a few leaves were bright and green, still drawing life from the ruined trunk. Dale stood by the fallen tree, looking out across the glade. It was all silent and beautiful, with that curious effect of increasing light which made the distances clearer every moment, gave more color to the earth and a more tender glow to the sky.

Then he saw her, a long way off, coming from the direction of the ride through the trees; and he felt the pressure of blood pumping into his head, the weight on his lungs, the laboring pain of his heart, that a man might feel just before he sinks to the ground in an apoplectic fit.

She was all alone, sauntering toward him with her hands full of flowers. She had no hat, and she was wearing the same loose frock that she wore last night.

With the gesture that had become habitual to him, Dale put his hands in his pockets—those wicked hands that no prison could much longer hold, that would defy control, that seemed now to be stretched forth across all the intervening space to touch the face and limbs they hungered for. He moved away from the shadow by the fallen tree, stepped out into the open, went slowly to meet her, and his longing was intolerably acute. He was sick and mad with longing: he wanted her as a man dying of thirst wants the water that will save his life.

"Oh, Mr. Dale, how you hev made me jump!"

At sight of him she dropped the flowers and raised one of her hands to press it against her breast. She had been so startled that she still breathed fast, almost pantingly; but her lips were smiling, and her eyes shone with pleasure.

"Now look here, Norah; this won't do—no, really this won't do." He had taken his hands out of his pockets and clasped them behind his back. He too was breathing fast, though he spoke deliberately and rather thickly. "No, all this sort of thing won't do; it can't be allowed;" and he laid his right hand on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry," she said, watching his face intently.

"You mustn't go and moon about by yourself, like this. You know you mustn't, don't you?"

"Yes, I know. But I couldn't stay indoors."

He had slid his hand downward, and was holding her arm above the elbow. "It is very disobedient. Often and often Mrs. Dale has told you that you mustn't come here."

"I know," she said humbly.

"So now, you see, I am sent to fetch you—and to tell you that you mustn't do it." He was struggling hard to speak in his ordinary tone of voice, but failing. And his imitation of his usual fatherly manner, as he held her arm and led her along, was clumsy and laborious. He stopped moving when they reached the prostrate beech-tree, but continued to talk to her, saying the same things again and again. "Norah, it can not be allowed. You mustn't be disobedient. We can't allow it."

They lingered by the tree, she looking at him all the time, and he scarcely ever looking at her, but glancing about him furtively. Then they sat down side by side on one of the great branches, and as if unconsciously he began to caress her.

"Is Mrs. Dale very angry with me?"

"Yes, Norah, she is angry. You can't be surprised at that."

"Not so angry that she won't never forgive me?"

"Oh, no, she's not so angry as all that."

"But she isn't fond of me, as she used to be."

"Yes, of course she is, Norah." His arm was round her waist, and he lifted her upon his lap, and held her there. "We are both very fond of you."

"You are," she whispered. "I know that.... I should die if you ever turned so as not to care for me;" and she nestled against him.

"Norah."

With a last assumption of the fatherly manner he stooped and kissed her forehead. Then she raised her lips to his, and they kissed slowly.

"Norah," he muttered. "Oh, Norah."

He felt as though almost swooning from delight. It was a rapture that he had never known—a voluptuous joy that yet brought with it complete appeasement to nerves and pulses.

"Norah, Norah;" and he continued to kiss her lips and mutter her name.

All thought had gone. It was as though all that was trouble and pain inside him had melted into sweet streams of delight—streams of fire; but a magical flame that soothes and restores, instead of burning and destroying. He went on fondling her, glorying in her freshness, her immature grace, her youthful beauty. And she was silent and passive, yielding to his gentle movements, pressing close if he held her to him, relaxing the pressure and becoming limp if he wished to see her face and held her from him, making him understand by messages through every sense channel that she was his absolutely.

Then after a while she began to talk in the pretty birdlike whisper that enchanted and enthralled him.

"Why didn't she want me to come here—really?"

"She—she thought you came to meet some lad."

"Oh, no;" and she gave a little laugh, and pressed against him. "It's the truth, what I've always answered to her. I came because I couldn't help it. Shall I tell you all my secrets—secrets I've never told any one?"

"Yes."

"Ever since I was a child—quite small—I hev always thought something wondersome would happen to me in Hadleigh Wood."

"Why should you think that?"

He had sat up stiffly, and while she clung whispering at his breast he looked out over her head, glancing his eyes in all directions. Straight in front of him across the glade, the great beeches were gray and ghostly, and beyond them in the strip that concealed the ride it seemed that the shadows had suddenly thickened and blackened.

"I'll tell you. But you tell me something first. Does Mrs. Dale think this place is haunted?"

He changed his attitude abruptly, put his hands on her shoulders and held her away from him, so that he could see her face.

"What was it you asked me?"

"Does she fancy the wood is haunted?"

"No, why?"

"I believe she does."

"Rubbish. Why should she?"

"They used to say it was. Granny used to say so. She gave me some dreadful whippings for coming here. Poor Granny was just like Mrs. Dale about it—always saying it wasn't right for me to come here."

Dale had settled the girl on his knees so that she sat now without any support from him. His hands had dropped to the rough surface of the tree; and he spoke in his ordinary voice.

"Look here, Norah, never mind for a moment what your Granny said. Tell me what it was that my wife said."

"When do you mean? Last time she was angry?"

"I mean, whatever she said—and whenever she said it—about ghosts or hauntings."

"Oh, a long time ago. It was to Mrs. Goudie."

"I expect you misunderstood her. But I'd like to know what first put such nonsense into your head—that Mrs. Dale thought the wood was haunted. Can't you remember exactly what she did say?"

"She said something about the gentleman's being killed here, and she wondered at the people coming a Sundays like they used to."

"Was that all?"

"No, she said something about it would serve them right for their pains if they saw the gentleman's ghost."

Dale grunted. "That was just her joke. There are no such things as ghosts."

"Aren't there?" Norah laughed softly and happily, and snuggled down again with her face against his jacket. "You aren't a ghost—though you made me jump, yes, you did. But I wasn't afraid of you."

"Hush," he muttered. "Norah, don't go on—don't." His hands were still on the tree, rigidly fixed there, and he sat bolt upright, staring out over her head.

"Why not? You said I might tell my secrets. I wasn't afraid. I thought 'Oh, aren't I glad I done what Mrs. Dale told me not to—and come into my wondersome, wondersome wood, and drawn you after me!'"

"Norah, stop."

"Why? You're glad too, aren't you? I know you are. I knew it when you came walking so tall and so quiet; an' I thought 'This is it—what I always hoped for—wonders to happen to me in Hadleigh Wood.' But I was afraid of the wood once—more afraid than Granny knew. I wouldn't tell her."

"What d'you mean? What wouldn't you tell her?"

"What I'd seen here."

"What had you seen?"

"I kep' it as my great secret—but I'll tell you, because you've found out all my secrets, now, haven't you?"

"Well, let's hear it."

"I saw a man hiding, crawling, ready to spring out on me."

"Oh. When was that?"

"Ages and ages ago, when I was almost a baby."

"Heft yourself, Norah. I want to get up, an' stretch ma legs."

The gentle soothing fire had faded—an invincible coldness crept on slow-moving blood from his heart to his brain. The girl was safe now. He would not injure her to-night. He got up, and stood looking down at her.

"Well," he said quietly, "let's hear some more. What sort of a man was it?"

"A wild man—with water dripping off him. He had crept out of the river."

"Do you mean—a sort of ghost or demon?"

"I didn't know."

"Not like an ordinary man—not like any other man you've ever seen?"

"Oh, no. All wild—fierce and dreadful. Not standing upright—more like an animal in the shape of a man."

"But surely you told your Granny, or somebody?"

"No. I've never told a soul except you."

"An' you say you were scared, though?"

"Oh, I was, rarely scared."

"Then you must have told your Granny, or one of 'em. You've forgotten, but I expect you told people at the time."

"I didn't. I didn't dare to at first. I thought he'd come after me, if I did. I was afraid."

Dale grunted again. "An' d'you mean to say you'd the grit in you to come back here all the same, after that?"

"Not for a little while. Then I did. I was all a twitter, so frightened still, but I was fascinated for to do it too—just to see."

"But you never saw him again."

"No, and then I began to think it was all a fancy. D'you think it was a fancy, and not real?"

"My dear girl, no;" and Dale shrugged his shoulders. "You prob'ly saw some poor devil of a tramp who had slept here, and was getting on the move after his night's rest." Then he took a step away from the tree, and spoke curtly. "Come. We must go home."

Norah sprang off the tree, hurried to his side, and, with her hands linked about his arm, looked up at him anxiously.

"Yes, but it's all right, isn't it? You're not angry with me—not turning against me?"

"No, it's all right."

"Then, don't let's go. Let's stay here a little longer"

"No, we must go—or Mrs. Dale will be coming to fetch us;" and he began to walk briskly. "And look here, Norah. I shall inform her I found you here by yourself, and I have lectured you at full length, and you've said you'll be good for the future. So don't answer back if she speaks sharp."

"Oh, I don't mind what she says now;" and Norah laughed happily as she trotted after him through the trees.

That evening he sat outside on the bench long after the supper table had been taken away and the kitchen door closed. Quite late, when Mavis spoke to him from an upper window, he said he must have one more pipe before he turned in.

Norah had been singing in the kitchen while she washed the plates; then he had heard her humming softly in the sitting-room; now she had gone up-stairs and was silent. The thoughts and sensations that had been suddenly and strangely inhibited a few hours ago came into play again, warmed his blood once more, repossessed his brain. Soon he was impotent to struggle against them. As he sat huddled and motionless, he revived each memory and wilfully renewed its delight. The brick walls, the timber beams, the flooring boards, and plastered partitions could not divide her from him; though hidden at a distance, she shed emanations, fiery atoms, darting sparks, that infallibly reached him: when he closed his eyes in order not to see the empty space before him, she herself was here. He could feel again the light weight of her body upon his knees, her hair brushed against his chin, her face gave itself to his lips.

Then more remote memories came to join the recent memories, deepening the spell that subjugated him. He thought of her crying when he teased her about love and marriage, and when her poor little innocent heart was bursting because of his pretense of not understanding that she craved for no love but his. And he thought of how she had looked in the middle of the night when he covered her with his jacket, and she stood before him trembling and blushing, with her hair all tumbling loose. That had been one of the mental pictures which he could not even make dim, much less obliterate.

He groaned, got up from the bench, and walked very slowly round the kitchen and behind the house. The first breath of air that he had noticed for days was stirring the leaves, and he saw the new moon like a golden sickle poised above the broken summit of a hayrick. It was a serenely beautiful nights with an atmosphere undoubtedly cooler than any they had had of late; he looked at the peaceful fields, and the fruit trees and the barn roof, all so gently, imperceptibly touched by the young and tender moonbeams; and he thought that the thin yellow crescent was being watched by thousands and thousands of eyes, that men were turning their money, and wishing for luck, for fame, or for satisfied love. But he only of all men might not wish for the desire of his heart, and to him only the moon could bring nothing but pain.

He went through the kitchen garden, and stood under an apple tree staring back at the window of her room. And still older memories sprang up and grew strong, so that they might attack and overcome and utterly undo him. The wild bad fancies of his adolescence came thronging upon him. Imagination and fact entangled themselves; the past and the present fused, and became one vast throbbing distress. He thought if he crept beneath the window and called to her, she would answer his call. If he told her to do so, she would come out in her night-dress—she would walk bare-footed through the fields, and plunge with him into the wonderful wood. If he told her to do it, she would go into the stream, and dance and splash—realizing that old dream—the white-bodied nymph of the wood for him to leap at and carry off into the gloom. He wrenched himself round, and made his way rapidly from the garden to the meadow. He could not support his thoughts. The proximity of the girl was driving him mad.

All through the little meadow and again in the wider fields the air had a soft fragrance; the sky was high and quite clear, with a few stars; the whole earth, for as much as he could see of it, seemed to be sleeping in a deep delightful peace. Beyond his fences there were the neighbors' farms, and then there were the heath, the hills; and beyond these, other counties, other countries, the rest of the turning globe, the universe it turned in—and once again he had that feeling of infinite smallness, the insect unfairly matched against a solar system, the speck of dust whirled as the biggest stars are whirled, inexorably.

At the confines of his land he leaned upon a gate, groaning and praying.

"O Christ Jesus, Redeemer of mankind, why hast Thou deserted me? O God the Father, Lord and Judge, why dost Thou torment me so?"



XXIX

Very early in the morning he told Mavis that he felt sure they ought to send Norah away on a holiday for the good of her health.

"This hot weather has been a severe test for all of us," he said; "and of course what I should consider equally advisable would be to send you and the children along with her, but I suppose—"

"What, me go away just when you're going to cut the grass!"

"Very well," he said, "I won't urge it. But as to Norah, that's a decision I've come to; so please don't question it. She's been working too hard—"

"Did she complain to you yesterday, when you lectured her?"

"No. Not a word. An' she'll prob'ly resist the idea. But she must be overruled, because my mind is made up. So now the only question that remains is—where are you to send her? What about that place for servants resting—at Bournemouth, the place Mrs. Norton collects subscriptions for?"

"Yes, I might ask Mrs. Norton if she could spare us a ticket."

"No, send the girl as a paying guest. I don't grudge any reasonable expense. Or again there's Mrs. Creech's daughter-in-law, over at S'thaampton Water."

"Oh, there's half a dozen people I could think of—"

"All right," he said; "but I want it done now, straight away. And look here, Mav. Take this thing off my shoulders, and don't let me be bothered. I shouldn't have decided it, if I didn't know it was right. I've a long and difficult day before me. You just hop into the gig, and Tom'll drive you round—to see Mrs. Norton or anybody else. Only let me hear by dinner-time that the arrangement is made."

"You shall," said Mavis cheerfully.

"Thank you, Mav. You're always a trump. You never fail one."

What had seemed an insuperable difficulty was thus in a moment accomplished. His quietly authoritative tone had made Mavis accept the thing not only easily but without a doubt or question, and he thought remorsefully that, except for his sneaking, cowardly delay, all this might have occurred a month ago. He felt a distinct lightening of the trouble as he went back into his own room, and then the weight of it fell upon him again. He had succeeded so far as Mavis was concerned; but how about Norah?

He stood meditating in front of the looking-glass before he began to shave. When he picked up the shaving-brush, he noticed that his hand was trembling—not much, yet quite visibly. It never used to do that, and he looked at it with disgust. It seemed to him like an old man's hand.

Then he began to study his face in the glass. No one would have guessed that this was a man who had been praying all night. The whole face showed those signs of fatigue that come after base pleasures, after riotous waste of energy, after long hours of debauch. It seemed to him that his gray hair was finer of texture than it ought to be, hanging straight and thin, with no strength in it; that his eyes were too dim, that the flesh underneath them had puffed out loosely, and that his lower lip was drooping slackly—and he shuddered in disgust. It seemed to him that his face changed and grew uglier as he looked at it. It was becoming like an old man's face he had seen years ago.

In spite of the slight shakiness of his hand he managed to shave himself without a cut, and he was just about to wash the soap away when he heard a sound of lamentation on the lower floor. It was Norah loudly bewailing herself. Mavis had gone down-stairs and published his sentence of banishment.

Suppose that the girl betrayed their secret. Suppose that she was even now telling his wife what had happened in the wood. Well, he must go down to them and flatly deny whatever Norah said. But he tingled and grew hot with a most miserable shame; his heart quailed at the mere notion of the sickening, disgraceful character of such a scene—he, the highly respected Mr. Dale, the good upright religious man, being accused by a little servant girl and having to rebut her accusations in the presence of his wife.

He dipped his head in the basin, and even when under the cold water the tips of his ears seemed as if they were on fire. He must go down-stairs the moment he had cooled his face; but he would go as some wretched schoolboy goes to the headmaster's room when he guesses that his unforgivable beastliness has been discovered, and that first a thrashing and then expulsion are awaiting him.

Some of the lying words that he must utter suggested themselves. "Oh, Norah, this is a poor return you are making for all my kindness. Aren't you ashamed to stand there and tell such ungrateful false-hoods. Ma lass, your cheek surprises me. I wonder you can look me in the face."

But it would be Mavis, and not Norah, who would look him in the face—and she would read the truth there. She would see it staring at her in his shifting eyes, his slack lip, and his weak frown. Her first glance at him would be loyal and frank, just an eager flash of love and confidence, seeming to say, "Be quick, Will, and put your foot on this viper that we've both of us warmed, and that is trying to bite me;" then she would turn pale, avert her head, and drop upon a chair. And for why? Because she had seen the nauseating truth, and her heart was almost broken.

Then he suddenly understood that there was no real danger of all this. It was only his own sense of guilt that unnerved him. Nothing had happened in the wood. If he behaved quietly and sensibly, he would be altogether safe, and Mavis would never guess. Truly all that he had to conceal was that he had been stopped on the very brink of his sin, that but for a startling interference, an almost miraculous interference, the wicked thoughts would infallibly have found their outlet in wicked deeds.

If Norah said he took her on his knees and kissed her, Mavis would think nothing of it—would not even think it undignified; would merely take as one more evidence of his kindly nature the fact that, instead of upbraiding the silly child, he had embraced her. If the girl howled and said she did not want to go because she was fond of him, Mavis would think nothing of that either. Mavis knew it already, and had never thought anything of it.

Therefore if he did not betray himself, the girl could not betray him. All that was required of him was just to maintain an ordinary air of ingenuousness. He had done enough acting in his life to be at home when dissimulating. He must do a little more successful acting now.

After a minute or so he went down-stairs, and was outwardly staid and calm, looking as he had looked on hundreds of mornings: the good kind father of a household, whose only care is the happiness and welfare of those who are dependent on him.

Directly he entered the breakfast-room Norah ran sobbing to him and clung to his hand.

"She is sending me away. Oh, don't let her do it. You promised you wouldn't. Oh, why do you let her do it?"

"This is my plan, Norah," he said gently; "not Mrs. Dale's. I wish it—and I ask you not to make a fuss."

"I've told her," said Mavis, "that it's only for her own good; and that she'll be back here in a fortnight or three weeks. But she seems to think we want to be rid of her forever."

"No, no," said Dale. "Nothing of the sort. It's merely for the good of your health—and not in any way as a punishment for your having been rather disobedient."

"Why, I'm sure," said Mavis cheerfully, "most girls would jump for joy at the chance. You'll enjoy yourself, and have all a happy time."

"No, I shan't," Norah cried. "I shall be miserable;" and she looked up at Dale despairingly. "Do you promise I'm really and truly to come back?"

"Of course I do. And it's all on the cards that Mrs. Dale and Rachel and Bill may follow you before your holiday is over."

"Oh, I doubt that," said Mavis.

"No," cried Norah, "when I'm gone you'll turn against me, and forget me. I shall never see you again, and I shall die. I can't bear it." And she began to sob wildly.

Then Dale, standing big and firm, although each sob tore at his entrails, pacified and reassured the girl. He said that she must not be "fullish," she must be "good and sensible," she must fall in with the views of those "older and wiser" than herself; finally, after his arguments and admonitions, he laid his hand on her bowed head as if silently giving a patriarchal blessing; and Mavis watched and admired, and loved him for his noble generosity in taking so much trouble about the poor little waif that had no real claim on him.

"There," she said, "dry your eyes, Norah. Mr. Dale has told you he wishes it, and that ought to be enough for you."

And then Norah said she would do what Mr. Dale wished, even if she died in doing it.

"Oh, stuff, stuff," said Mavis, laughing cheerily. "I never heard such talk. Now come along with me, and get the breakfast things;" and she took Norah down the steps into the kitchen.

Norah came back to lay the cloth presently, and would have rushed into Dale's arms, if he had not motioned to her to keep away, and laid a finger on his lips warningly. But he could not prevent her from whispering to him across the table.

"Will you come and see me, wherever it is?"

"Perhaps."

"Come and see me without her. Come all for me, by yourself."

Dale did more work in that one morning than he had done for months. The wet season had naturally postponed the hay-making, but negligence was postponing it still further; now at last he gave all necessary orders. But it was only his own grass that he had to deal with. Letting everything drift, he had not made any of the usual arrangements with his neighbors; this year he would not have to ride grandly round and watch dozens of men and women laboring for him; and there would be no farmers' banquet or speeches or cigar-smoking.

When he came in to dinner he found Mavis all hot and red, but pleased with herself after her bustling activities. The whole business was settled. Norah was to go as a paying guest to that place at Bournemouth, and Mavis would drive her over to Rodchurch Road and put her into the four-fifteen train. At the station they would meet a girl called Nellie Evans, whom by a happy chance Mrs. Norton was despatching to-day; and so the two girls could travel together, and prevent each other from being a fool when they changed trains at the junction; and altogether nothing could have turned out better or nicer.

Mavis, babbling contentedly all through dinner, harped on the niceness both of people and things. Mrs. Norton, and indeed everybody else, had been so nice about it. All Rodchurch had seemed anxious to assist Mr. and Mrs. Dale in contriving their little maid's holiday. "And it is nice," said Mavis simply, "to be treated like that." Mrs. Norton had taken her all round the vicarage garden, and she had never seen it looking nicer. "Although the flowers aren't anything to boast of, any more than ours are."

"And what do you think? Here's a bit of news you'll be sorry to hear, though it mayn't surprise you." Then Mavis related how it had been necessary to procure some sort of trunk to hold Norah's things, because there wasn't a single presentable bit of luggage in the house, and she had discovered exactly what she wanted—something that was not immoderate, appearing solid, yet not heavy—at the new shop that had recently been opened at the bottom of the village near the Gauntlet Inn. First, however, she had gone to their old friend the saddler's, wanting to see if she could buy the box there. But Mr. Allen's shop was empty, woe-begone, dirty with cobwebs, dead flies, and mud on the window; and Mr. Allen himself was ill in bed, being nursed hand and foot, and fed like a baby, by poor Mrs. Allen. He had been stricken down by some dreadful form of rheumatism, and three doctors had said the same thing—that he had brought this calamity upon himself by his ridiculous, ceaseless tramping after the hounds.

Dale nodded and smiled, or made his face appropriately grave, while Mavis prattled to him; but truly his mind was occupied only by Norah. She came in and out of the room, looking pale and limp and resigned; she knew all about the trunk, and that it was up-stairs and that already the mistress and Ethel had begun to pack it; she was submitting to destiny, but out of her soft blue eyes there shot a glance now and then that made him quiver with pain.

He went out of the house the moment dinner was finished, and kept moving about, now in the office, now in the yard, never still. Then, when he was pottering round and round the office for the fiftieth time in two hours, he heard a footstep, and Norah came—to whisper and cling to him, to make him kiss her again; to penetrate him with her ineffable sweetness; to plant the seeds of inextinguishable desire in the last few cells and fibers of his brain that as yet she had not reached.

"I don't ast you to stand in th' road when we drive away. I'd rather not. Say good-by to me now, when there's nobody watchin'."

Then he had to take her in his arms once more; and they stood close to the door, far from the window, pressed heart to heart, mute, throbbing.

"I'm kissing you," she whispered presently, "but you're not kissing me. Kiss me."

And he obeyed her.

"No," she whispered. "Different from that. Kiss me like you did yesterday."

"Very well," he said hoarsely. "This is the good-by kiss. This is good-by." And once again he felt the swift lambent ecstasy of a love that he had never till now guessed at; a joy beyond words, beyond dreams, beyond belief. "Now, you must go;" and he slowly released himself, and held her at arm's length. "That was our good-by. Good-by, my Norah—my darling—good-by." Then he went to the table in front of the window, and sat down.

She came a little way from the door, and spoke to him before going out and along the passage.

"I shan't mind now—however miserable I am—because I know it's all right. An' I promise to be good, an' do all I'm told, an' always be your own Norah."

Then she left him—the gray-haired respected Mr. Dale of Vine-Pits Farm, sitting in his office window for all the world to see; looking livid, shaky, old; and feeling like a Christian missionary in some far-off heathen land, who, having preached to the gang of pirates into whose hands he had fallen, lies now at the roadside with all his inside torn away, and waits for birds with beaks or beasts with claws to come and finish him.

Before the horse was put into the wagonette and the trunk brought down-stairs, Dale had left the house and gone some distance along the road in the direction of the Barradine Arms. Even if Norah had not said that he need not be there at the moment of departure, he would have been unable to remain. He could not stand by and see her piteous face, her slender figure, her forlorn gestures, while they carried her off—the poor little weak thing sent away from hearth and home, cast out among strangers because any spot on the earth, however bare or hard, had become a better shelter for her than the place that should have been sacredly secure.

He walked heavily, with a leaden heart and leaden feet; his eyes downcast, not glancing at the dark trees on one side or the bright fields on, the other. But after passing the first of the woodland paths and before coming to the second, he looked up. He had heard the sound of many footsteps and the murmur of many voices. All those blue-cloaked orphans, two and two, an endless procession, were advancing toward him.

Never had the sight and the sound of them been so horribly distasteful to him. They were still a long way off, and he thought he could dodge them, at any rate avoid meeting them face to face, if he hurried on to the second footpath and dived into the wood there. But then it seemed as if he had stupidly miscalculated the distance, or that his legs were failing him, or that the girls came sweeping down the road at an impossibly rapid pace; so that they were right upon him just as he reached the stile. He drew aside, and, feeling that it was too late now to turn his back, watched them as they passed.

The mistresses must have issued a sudden order of silence, for they all went by without so much as a whisper. There were fifty of them, but they seemed to be thousands. Dressed in their light blue summer cloaks, golden-haired, brown-haired, a very few black-haired, they passed two by two, with the little ones first, and bigger and bigger girls behind—an ascending scale of size, so that he had the illusion of seeing a girl grow up under his eyes, change in a minute instead of in years from the small sexless imp that is like an amusing toy, to the full-breasted creature that is so nearly a woman as to be dangerous to herself and to everybody else.

Not one of them spoke, but all of them, little and big, looked at him—very shyly, and yet with intense interest. He stood staring after them, and presently their tuneful young voices sounded again, filled the air with virginal music. He swung his leg over the stile, and went along the path through the trees where he had followed Norah yesterday.

He had not intended to leave the highroad, but it was as if that dead man's girls had driven him into the wood to get away from their shyly questioning eyes. He might meet them again if he stayed out there. In here he could be alone with his thoughts.

To-day there was plenty of sunlight, and instead of turning off the path he went straight on to the main ride. This too was bright with sunshine, a splendid broad avenue that was shut close on either side by the thickly planted firs; the mossy track seeming soft as a bed, and the sky like an immensely high canopy of delicate blue gauze. A heron crossed quickly but easily, making only three flaps of its powerful wings before it disappeared; there was an unceasing hum of insects; and two wood-cutters came by and wished Dale good afternoon and touched their weather-stained hats.

"Good afternoon," he said, in a friendly tone. "A bit cooler and pleasanter to-day, isn't it?"

"You're right, sir. 'Bout time too."

Then he walked on, alone with his thoughts again, along the wide sunlit ride toward Kibworth Rocks; and a phrase kept echoing in his ears, sounding as if he said it aloud. "It is the finger of God. It is the finger of God." He was quoting himself really, because he had once used that phrase in a pompously effective manner. Could one repeat it as effectively in regard to what happened near here yesterday? Could one dare to say that the finger of God interposed, touching his blood with ice, making his muscles relax, forcing him to loosen his hold on the delicious morsel that like a beast of prey he was about to devour and enjoy.

He walked with hunched shoulders and lowered head, but there was great resolution, even an odd sort of swaggering defiance in his gait. He stopped short, raised his head, and looked about him at a certain point of the ride. Here he was very near to the open glade where he met Norah; but he was nearer still to the strewn boulders, jagged ridges, and hollow clefts of Kibworth Rocks. If he left the ride, he would see them, brown and gray, glittering in the sunshine.

And he thought again of those fifty orphans or waifs. Why weren't they here to bow and do honor to him who had been the friend of girls in life and who was the guardian angel of girls in death? This was the hallowed spot, the benefactor's resting-place till devout hands raised him and priests sang over him, the rocky shrine of their patron saint.

Dale grunted, shook himself, and went off the ride in the opposite direction—to tread the moss that had been crushed by Norah's footsteps, to push against the branches that had touched her shoulders, to see the dead flowers that had dropped from her hands. He found a shriveled sprig or two of her woodland posy, and carried them to the fallen beech tree.

She was gone now—already a long way from him—at the railway station, with ticket bought, and box labeled, waiting for the train to take her still farther from him. Only a heron could fly fast enough to get to her now before the train possessed her. And he quoted himself again, really saying the words aloud this time. "Good-by—my darling—good-by, good-by."

That was what he meant when he gave her the last kiss. He had said so. He had called it the last kiss. But she—poor lamb—thought it was the last kiss till next time; that it was good-by for three weeks, not good-by forever. He must never see her again. There could be no two ways about that decision. He mustn't palter, or trifle, or shilly-shally about that iron certainty. But how without Heaven's unceasing aid would he have strength to keep such a vow?

And sitting on the tree, and thinking for a little while about himself rather than about her, he endeavored to survey his situation in the logical clear-sighted way that had once been customary with him. To what a blank no-thoroughfare he had brought himself. What a damnable mess he had made of his peaceful, happy home.

Of course he had known for a long time what was the matter with him. His disgust with himself at the revelation of his own weakness dated from a long time ago; but the progress of his passing from perfectly pure and normal thoughts about the girl to cravings that he struggled with as morbid impurities was so subtle that it defied analysis. At first when he put his hand on her head, or patted her shoulder, every thought behind the fatherly gesture was itself fatherly; and then, without anything to startle one by a recognition of change, the time had come when he felt a slight thrill in touching her, when he was always seeking occasions or excuses for doing it, when the wider the contact the more massive was his satisfaction. Her white neck, her round fore-arms, her thin wrists, irresistibly attracted a caress. He could not keep his hands off her—and it distressed and worried him whenever he saw anybody else doing quite innocently what he did with an unavowable purpose. Perhaps this was the real cause of his dislike for the new pastor. After Mr. Furnival's initial appearance at the chapel, they all three walked a little way together, and the good-looking young man paid Norah compliments about her singing, and held her hand and patted it. Nothing could have been more innoxious, more completely ministerial; and yet Dale had felt that he would like to take the clerical gentleman by the collar of his black coat and the seat of his gray trousers, and send him sprawling over a quick-set hedge into a ploughed field.

He knew then the nature of the poison that had crept insidiously into his blood and was beginning to spread and rage with deadly power. He fought against it bravely, he fought against it despairingly. He hoped that chance would cure him, he prayed that heaven would cleanse him.

He would not believe that his ruin was irretrievable. That would be too monstrous and absurd. Because, except for this expanding trouble, everything inside him, all the main component parts that made up the vast and still solid thinking organism which had been labeled for external observers by the name of William Dale, remained quite unchanged. His religious faith stood absolutely firm, was strengthened rather than shaken; he regarded his wife with exactly the same affection; he loved his children as much as, more than ever; only this astounding dreadful new thing was added to him: he worshiped Norah.

In his struggles to free himself from the new mental growth, he had turned to his children. Instinct seemed to say that from them and through them should come an influence sufficiently potent to resist temptation, however tremendous. He felt so proud of the boy. Billy was never afraid of him, looked at him so firmly even when threatened, holding up the pink and white face, with its soft unformed features and yet a determined set to the chin and mouth already—a real little man. Dale took his son's hand in his, took Billy with him into the granary, the hay loft, or across the fields, cut bits of willow and showed how to make a whistle, took a hedge sparrow's nest and blew the eggs; and the boy was proud and happy in such noble society, but he could not exorcise the evil spell for his grand companion.

Nor could Rachel give freedom. Dale embraced his daughter with the truest paternal fervor, pumping up sweet clean love from deep unsullied wells, thinking honestly and as of old so long as she stood by his side. At such moments he forced himself to imagine a man playing the fool with Rachel, and immediately there came a full normal explosion of parental rage; and he knew, without the possibility of doubt, that such a man had better never have been born than encounter Rachel's father. But these imaginations could not help him. Thoughts about Rachel and thoughts about Norah, which once had mingled, were now like two rivers running side by side but never meeting.

Again, what had rendered the fight hopeless was his recognition of the overwhelming fact that the spell was mutual. It was not only that he wanted her, Norah wanted him. There lay the sweetly venomous throb of the poison. In her eyes he was not old; his gray hair did not appall her, his rugged frame did not repel her. All night and all day, during months, yes, during years, she had told him: "You are not old; you need not be old; I can make you young."

He thought, as he had thought again and again, of her artlessness, her ignorance, and her total absence of compunction. It seemed so wonderful. She drifted toward him as the petal of a flower comes on running water, as corn seeds blow through the air, as anything small and light obeying a natural law. She did not in the least understand social conventions. She was not troubled with one thought of right or wrong; she neither meditated nor remembered. How wonderful. The ten commandments and the catechism that she knew by heart, all the hymns she had sung and all the sermons she had heard, did not exert the faintest restraining influence. They had no real meaning for her probably, and she could not therefore bring them into relation with concrete facts. In her innocence, in her virginal simplicity, she would keep the book of life close—sealed until he opened it roughly for her at its ugliest page.

He, or somebody else!

Suddenly he threw away the faded wood-blossoms, sprang up from the tree, and paced to and fro. A wave of revolt came sweeping through and through him. Was he not making mountains out of mole-hills?

If he could trample down all this sentimental fiddle-de-dee, what was the plain English of the case so far as she was concerned? Unbidden, innumerable circumstances stored from local knowledge offered themselves as guides for argument. Take any girl of that class—well, what are her chances? Why, you are lucky if you keep 'em straight until the time comes to send 'em out into domestic service; their parents scarcely expect it, barely seem to desire it. But after that time, when they get among strangers and there's nobody with an eye on them, they fall as victims—if you choose to call it so—to the first marauder—to the young master, the nephew home for his Christmas holidays, or the man who comes to tune the piano. If not himself, it would be somebody else.

And he thought. "Blast it all, am I a man or a mouse? Who's to judge me, or stan' in my way, if I do what I please? Suppose it's found out, well, it must be smoothed over, covered up, and put behind the fireplace. I shan't be Number One that's bin th' same road!" and he remembered how lightly other married men, his neighbors, country farmers, or town tradesmen, amused themselves with their servants, and how their middle-aged wives just had to grin and bear it. "An' Mavis," he thought, "can do the same. Heavens an' earth, I've got an answer ready if she tries to make a fuss, or wants to take the dinner-bell and go round as public crier—an answer that ought to flatten her as if a traction engine had bin over her. 'My lass, who began it? Bring out your slate and put it alongside mine, an' we'll see which looks dirtiest, all said and done.'" While he was thinking in this manner, his face became very ugly, with hard deep lines in it, and about the mouth that cruel pouting expression once seen by Mavis.

He came back to the tree; and sat down, letting his hands hang loose, his head droop, and his shoulders contract. The fire had gone cold again.

Now he felt only disgust and horror. Norah's ignorance and disregard of moral precepts, or readiness to yield to the snares of unlicensed joy, were summed up in the better and truer word innocence. The greater her weakness, the greater his wickedness. If he could not save her from others, he could save her from himself. Then if she fell, it would at least be a natural fall. It would not be a foul betrayal of youth by age; it would not be the sort of degraded crime that makes angels weep, and ordinary people change into judges and executioners.

When a man has reached a certain time of life he must not crave for forbidden delights, he must not permit himself to be eaten up with new desire, he must not risk destroying a girl's soul for the gratification of his own body. If he does, he commits the unpardonable sin. And there is no excuse for him.

The Devil's reasonings to which a few minutes ago he had listened greedily were specious, futile, utterly false. That sort of argument might do for other men—might do for every other man in the wide world—but it would not do for him, William Dale. Its acceptance would knock the very ground from under his feet.

For, if there could be any excuse, why had he killed Everard Barradine?



XXX

Then Dale lived again for the hundred thousandth time in the thoughts and passions of that distant period.

The forest glade grew dim, vanished. He was lying on the grass in a London park, and Mavis' confession rang through the buzzing of his ears, through the chaos of his mind. It seemed that the whole of his small imagined world had gone to pieces, and the immensity of the real world had been left to him in exchange—crushing him with an idea of its unexplored vastness, of its many countries, its myriad races. And yet, big as it all was, it could not provide breathing space for that man and himself.

Soon this became an oppressive certainty. Life under the new conditions had been rendered unendurable. And then there grew up the one solid determination, that he must stand face to face with his enemy and call him to account. It must at last be man to man. He must tell the man what he thought of him, call him filthy names, strip him of every shred of dignity—and strike him. A few blows of scorn might suffice—a backhander across the snout, a few swishes with a stick, a kick behind when he turned. He was too rottenly weak a thing to fight with.

His mind refused to go further than this. However deeply and darkly it was working below the surface of consciousness, it gave him no further directions than this.

He got rid of his wife. That was the first move in the game—anyhow. He did not want to think about her now; she would be dealt with again later on. At present he wished to concentrate all his attention on the other one.

He took a bed for himself in a humbler and cheaper house farther west, a little nearer to the house of his enemy; and almost all that day he spent in thinking how and where he should obtain the meeting he longed for. He understood at once that it would be hopeless to attempt such an interview at Grosvenor Place. In imagination he saw himself escorted by servants to that tank-like room at the back of the mansion—the room where the man had treated him as dirt, where his first instinct of distrust had been aroused, where all those photographs of girls had subtly suggested the questioning doubts that led him on to suspicion and discovery. The man would come again to this room, with his tired eyes and baggy cheeks and drooping lip; would stare contemptuously; and at the first words of abuse, he would ring a bell, call for servants, call for the police, and have the visitor ignominiously turned out. "Policeman, this ruffian has been threatening me. He is an ill-conditioned dog that I've been systematically kind to, and he now seems to have taken leave of his senses and accuses me of injuring him. For the sake of his wife, who is a good respectful sort of person, I do not give him in charge. But I ask you to keep an eye on him. And if he dares to return to my door, just cart him off to the police station." No, that would not do at all. He and Mr. Barradine must meet somewhere quietly and comfortably, out of reach of electric bells, butlers, and police officers.

That first night after the confession he slept sound and long. In the morning when he woke, feeling refreshed and strengthened, his determination to bring about the interview had assumed an iron firmness, as if all night it had been beaten on the anvil of his thoughts while he lay idle. But he was no nearer to devising a scheme that should give effect to the determination.

Mr. Barradine had said that he was going down to the Abbey to-morrow, or next day, Friday, at latest; and in the course of this Wednesday morning Dale decided that the interview must be delayed. It was impossible up here. It would be much easier to arrange down there. He must wait until Mr. Barradine went down to Hampshire, and go down after him. He could call at the Abbey, where the man would be more accessible than up here; and, by restraining himself, by simulating his usual manner, by lulling the man to a false security, he could lure him out of the house—get him out into the open air, away from his servants, perhaps beyond the gardens and as far off as the park copses. Then when they were alone, they two, at a distance from the possibility of interruption, Dale could drop the mask of subservience, turn upon him, and say "Now—"

No, that would not do. It was all childish. For a thousand obscure reasons it would not do at all.

Then, brooding over his wife's confession—the things she had merely hinted at as well as the things she had explicitly stated—he remembered how in the beginning the wood near Long Ride was their meeting-place, how the man had met her there, and led her slowly beneath the trees to the cottage of the procuress. And then an inspiration came. A note to be sent in his wife's name, as soon as Mr. Barradine got home to the Abbey. "Meet me in the West Gate copse. I want to show my gratitude"—or—"I want to thank you again"—something of that sort. "Meet me at the end of North Ride by the Heronry. I will be there if possible four o'clock to-morrow. If not there to-morrow, I will be there next day. Mavis."