Moor Fires Part 21

"That's all right," he said, and added with a sullen curiosity, "Is he the one who's going to adopt you?"

"Yes."

"He hasn't done it yet?"

"I'm not sure that I want to go. George, shall I tell you something?

Something charming, a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night--I did call you!"

"Well," he said after a pause, "I knew that."

"You weren't certain. Tell the truth! Were you certain?"

"No, I was not," he said with the sulky honesty which should have moved her.

"And had you been thinking of me?"

He would not answer that.

"I shan't be hurt," she said, swaying from foot to foot, "because I know!" Against the invading blackness her face and teeth gleamed clearly.

"You're like a black cat!" he burst out, in forgetfulness of himself.

"A witch's cat!"

"A witch."

"Do you think witches are ever afraid? Only when they see the cross, isn't it? But I was, George, when I called out."

"What of?"

"I--don't know. The quietness and the dark."

He gave a short laugh which tried to conceal his pleasure in her weakness.

"Aren't you ever?"

"Can't remember it."

"Not of anything?"

"No."

"How--stupid of you."

"Stupid?"

"Yes, when the world's full of things you don't understand."

"But nothing happens."

That was her own complaint, but from him the words came in the security of content. "But tonight--" she began, shivered lightly and raised her hand. "What's that?"

He lifted his head; the dog, sitting at his feet, had c.o.c.ked his ears.

"Nothing."

"I heard something."

Hardly heeded, he put his strong fingers on her wrist and grasped it.

His voice was rich and soft. "What's the matter with you tonight?"

Unmistakably now, a sound came from the hollow; not, this time, the raging of old Halkett, but a woman's cry for help, clear and insistent.

"It must be my father," he said, and his hand fell away from Miriam's; but for a few seconds he stared at her as though she could tell him what had happened. Then he went after the dog in his swift pa.s.sage through the trees, while, urged by an instinct to help and a need for George's solid company, Miriam followed. She was soon outstripped, so that her descent was made alone. Twigs crackled under her feet, the ranks of trees seemed to rush past her as she went, and, with the return of self-remembrance, she knew that this was how she had felt long ago when she read fairy stories about forests and enchanted castles.

Yet she would have been less alarmed at the sight of a moated, loop-holed pile than at this of Halkett's farm, a white-washed homestead, with light beaming from a window on the ground floor, the whole encompa.s.sed by a merely mortal possibility of strange events. Her impulse had been to rush into the house, but she stood still, feeling the presence of the trees like a thick curtain shutting away the outer, upper world and, having paused, she found that she could not pursue her course.

"I must go back," she whispered. After all, this was not her affair.

A murmur of voices came from the lighted room; the movement of a horse in the stables was the friendliest sound she had ever heard.

Reluctantly, for she was alive with curiosity, she turned to go when a step rang on the flagged pa.s.sage of the farm and George stood in the doorway. He beckoned and met her half way across the yard.

"He's gone," he said, and he looked dazed. "Can't believe it," he muttered.

"Oh!" she said under her breath. "Oh, dear!" It was her turn to put a hand on him, for she was afraid of death.

"Can't believe it," he said again, and taking her with him, he went as though he were drawn, towards the lighted windows and looked in.

"Yes," he said, a.s.suring himself that this thing really was.

Fascinated by the steadfastness of his gaze, Miriam looked too and drew back with a m.u.f.fled cry. She had seen the old man rigid on a red velvet sofa, his head on a yellow cushion, his grey hair in some way coa.r.s.ened by the state of death, his limbs clad in the garments of every day and strangely insulted by them. Near him, with her back to the window and straight and stiff as a sentinel, sat Mrs. Biggs, the housekeeper, the k.n.o.b of her smooth black hair defying destiny.

Still whispering, Miriam begged, "George, don't look any more." Her horror was as much for the immobile woman as for the dead man. "Come away, before she turns round. I want to go home. George--I'm sorry."

"Yes," he said.

"Good-night."

"Good-night," he answered, and she saw him look through the window again.

Going across the moor, she cried feebly. She wished old Halkett had not been lying on the red sofa. He should have died in the big kitchen of his fathers, or upstairs in a great bed, not in that commonly-furnished little sitting-room where the work-basket of Mrs. Biggs kept company with a cheap china lamp and photographs in frames. She wondered how they would manage to undress him, and for how long Mrs. Biggs would sit beside him like a fate, a fate in a red blouse and a brown skirt.

Perhaps even now they were pulling off his clothes. Terrible for George to have to do that, she thought, yet it seemed natural enough work for Mrs. Biggs, with her hard mouth and cold eyes, and no doubt she had often put him to bed in the l.u.s.ty days of his carousals. Perhaps the dead could really see from under their stiff eyelids, and old Halkett would laugh at the difficulty with which they disrobed him for this last time. Perhaps he had been watching when George and she looked through the window. Until now she had never seen him when he did not leer at her, and she felt that he must still be leering under the mask of death.

The taint of what she had looked on hung heavily about her, and the fresh air of the moor could not clear it away. Crying still, in little whimpers which consoled her, she stole through the garden and the house to the beautiful solitude of Phoebe's room and the cleanliness of linen sheets.

Supperless she lay there, by turn welcoming and rejecting the pictures which appeared on the dark wall of her mind, and when Helen knocked on the door she was not bidden to enter.

"Don't you want anything to eat?" she called.