Moor Fires Part 20

"She died when I was thirteen and Daniel three, and my father was very unhappy."

"I didn't like your father a bit," Miriam said.

"He was a good man in his way, his uncomfortable way."

"Then I like them wickeder than that."

"It made him uncomfortable too, you know."

"If you're going to preach--"

He laughed. "I didn't mean to. I was only offering you the experience of my maturity!"

"Well, I'm getting stiff and cold. Helen likes that kind of thing. Give it to her while I get warm. Unless you'll lend me your shawl, Helen?"

"No, I won't."

"I must go too," said Zebedee, but he did not move and Helen did not speak. His thoughts were on her while his eyes were on the dark line of moor touching the sky; yet he thought less of her than of the strange ways of life and the force which drew him to this woman whom he had known a child so short a time ago. He wondered if what he felt were real, if the night and the mystery of the moor had not bewitched him, for she had come to him at night out of the darkness with the wind whistling round her. It was so easy, as he knew, for a solitary being to fasten eagerly on another, like a beaten boat to the safety of a buoy, but while he thus admonished himself, he had no genuine doubt. He knew that she was what he wanted: her youth, her wisdom, her smoothness, her serenity, and the many things which made her, even the stubbornness which underlay her calm.

Into these reflections her voice came loudly, calling him from the heights.

"I do wish you wouldn't keep Eliza. She's a most unsuitable person to look after you."

He laughed so heartily and so long that she sat up to look at him. "I don't know what's amusing you," she said.

"It's so extraordinarily like you!"

"Oh!"

"And why don't you think her suitable?"

"From things Daniel has told me."

"Oh, Daniel is an old maid. She's ugly and disagreeable, but she delivers messages accurately, and that's all I care about. Don't believe all Daniel's stories."

"They worry me," she said.

"Do you worry about every one's affairs?" he asked, and feared she would hear the jealousy in his voice.

"I know so few people, you see. Oughtn't I to?"

"I'm humbly thankful," he said with a light gravity.

"Then I'll go on. Aren't you lonely on Sundays in that house with only the holly bush and the rowan and the apple-trees that bear no fruit? Why don't you come up here?"

"May I?"

"You belong to the moor, too," she said.

He nodded his thanks for that. "Who told you about our trees? Daniel again?"

"Yes; but I asked him."

He stood up. "I must go back. Thank you and good night."

It was getting dark and, with a heavy feeling in her heart, she watched him walk away, while Miriam ran up with a whirl of skirts, crying out, "Is he going? Is he going? Come and see him to the road."

Helen shook her head. She would let Miriam have anything she wanted, but she would not share with her. She turned her back on the thin striding figure and the small running one behind it, and she went into the house.

There, the remembrance of Mildred Caniper went with her from room to room, and the house itself seemed to close on Helen and hold her in.

She stood at the schoolroom window and watched the twilight give place to night. In the garden, the laurel bushes were quite black and it seemed to her that the whole world was dead except herself and the lurking shadows that filled the house. Zebedee, who tramped the long road to the town, had become hardly more than a toy which had been wound up and would go on for ever. Then, on the hillside, a spark leapt out, and she knew that John or Lily Brent had lighted the kitchen lamp.

CHAPTER XII

Miriam took Zebedee to the road and, finding him uninteresting, she gave him a scant good-night and left him. She sank into the heather and told herself many times that she did not know what to do. She had wit enough to realize that she was almost ridiculous in her discontent, but for that Notya must be blamed, and her own immediate necessity was to find amus.e.m.e.nt. In all the vastness of the moor, George Halkett was the only being who could give her a taste of what she wanted, and she had quarrelled with George Halkett. She sat and glowered at the white road cutting the darkness of the moor and she thought it had the cruel look of a sharp and powerful knife. It seemed to threaten her and, though she had all youth's faith in her good fortune, at times she was taken by a panic lest she should turn out to be one of those whom fate left stranded. That fear was on her now, for there were such women, she knew, and sometimes they were beautiful! Perhaps they were often beautiful, and in the long run it might be better to be good, yet she would not have exchanged her looks for all the virtues in the world.

"n.o.body would!" she cried aloud, and, seizing two bunches of heather by their stalks, she shook them violently.

Nevertheless, she might grow old on the moor and marry Daniel in despair. She shuddered. No one could love Daniel enough to pardon his appearance, and amus.e.m.e.nt would soon change to hatred. She tormented herself with pictures of their common life. She saw his shapeless clothes lying about the room she had to share with him; his boots stared up at her from the hall with much of his own expression. She heard him talking legally to her through their meals and saw him gazing at her with his peculiar, timid worship. But if they had children, they would have Daniel's stamp on them, and then he would grow bold and take all she gave for granted. Girls and boys alike, they would be big and gaunt and clumsy, but considerate and good.

She threw her arms across her breast and held herself in a fury of self-possession. Marriage suddenly appeared to her as an ugly thing even if it attained to the ideal. No, no! Men were good to play with, to tease and torture, but she had fixed her limits, and she fixed them with some astonishment for her own reserve. The discovery of this inherent coldness had its effect: it bounded her future in a manner which was too disturbing for much contemplation, but it also gave her a new freedom of action, a.s.suring her that she need have no fears for her own restraint, that when her chance came, she might go into the world like a Helen of Troy who could never be beguiled. In the meantime, though she had quarrelled with George Halkett, she remembered that she had not forsworn his company; she had only sworn to punish him for having told the truth, and she easily pretended not to know that her resentment was no more than an excuse.

She swung herself to her feet, and not without fear, for the moor had never been her friend, she walked quickly towards the patch of darkness made by the larch-trees. "I am being driven to this," she thought dramatically and with the froth of her mind. She went with her head held tragically high, but in her throat, where humour met excitement, there was a little run of laughter.

The trees stood without movement, as though they were weighted by foreknowledge and there was alarm in the voice of the stream. She stopped short of the water and stood by the brown path that led down to the farm, and her feet could feel the softness of many falls of larch needles. She listened and she could hear nothing but the small noises of the wood and all round it the moor was like a circle of enchantment keeping back intruders. There was no wind, but she was cold and her desire for George had changed its quality. She wanted the presence of another human being in this stillness; she would have welcomed Mrs.

Samson with a shout and even Notya with a smile, but she found herself unable to turn and make for home. It would have been like letting danger loose on her.

"George!" she called loudly, before she knew she was going to do it.

"George, George, George!" Her voice, shriller than its wont, raged at her predicament.

A dog barked in the hollow and came nearer. She heard George silence him, and she knew that man and dog were approaching through the wood.

Then her fears vanished and she strolled a few paces from the trees and stood, an easy mark for George when he appeared.

"Was it you who called?" he asked her from a little distance.

"Me?" Now he was close to her, and she saw his guarded eyes soften unwillingly.

"Somebody called. Didn't you hear the dog barking? Somebody called 'George!'"

"Perhaps," she ventured in the falsely innocent manner which both recognized as foolish and unworthy and in which both took a different delight, "perhaps it was--thought-reading!"

"With the dog?" he sneered.

"You and the dog," she said, joining them deliberately. "It's getting so dark that I can hardly see your cross face. That's a good thing, because I want to say thank you for driving Uncle Alfred and Notya to the station."