Moor Fires Part 68

"Are your lambs all right?"

"We haven't lost one. Lily's a wonder with them. We've a nursery in our kitchen. Come and see it." He went out, and she heard him on the crisp snow.

"Now he'll mix the trail," she thought happily. "And I might have done it myself. I think I'm growing stupid. But it will be John and George when I get up in the morning: that's better than George and me."

John came back and spoke gravely. "I find those footsteps go right across the moor towards Halkett's Farm."

"Of course! George made them."

"Oh, you knew?"

"Yes. I couldn't imagine Jim had done it, could I?"

"What did he come for?"

"He sat by the fire and smoked."

"You'd better not encourage him."

"I don't."

"Be careful!--What are you laughing at?"

"That old story of the kiss!"

"It makes me mad."

"He doesn't try to kiss me, John. I shouldn't be horrified if he did.

You needn't be afraid for me."

"All right. It's your affair. Want any wood chopped?"

"Rupert did a stack for me."

"This is pretty dull for you, isn't it? When does--"

She interrupted. "At the end of next week, I think." She was somewhat tired of answering the question.

That night, as she sat with George, he said, "When we're like this, I wish you'd wear your wedding-ring."

"I said I wouldn't."

"It couldn't do any harm."

"It could--to me."

"You talk as if it's dirt," he said.

"Oh, no, I know it's gold! Let's keep our bargains and talk of something else. Tell me what you have been doing today."

His face reddened to a colour that obscured his comeliness. "You can't get round me like that."

"What do you mean?" She lifted her head so that he saw her round white throat. "Why should I condescend to get round you, as you call it?"

"That's it!" he shouted angrily. "That's the word!" He rose and knocked his pipe against the stove. "You're too d.a.m.ned free with your condescension, and I'm sick of it." He left the kitchen angrily, and two minutes later she heard the distant banging of the garden door.

She wanted to run after him, for she was afraid of the impulses of his anger. She felt a dreadful need to conciliate, for no other reason than his body's greater strength, but she let him go, and though for several days she did not see him, she had no sense of liberty. He would come back, she knew, and she found herself planning unworthy little shifts, arranging how she would manage him if he did this or that, losing her birthright of belief that man and woman could meet and traffic honestly together. They could not do it, she found, when either used base weapons: she, her guile, or he, his strength; but if he used his strength, how could she save herself from using guile? She had to use it, and she clung fiercely to it, though she knew that, at last, it would be wrested from her.

In these days of his absence, there were hours when she wandered ceaselessly through the house, urged by the pride which refused allegiance to this man, tortured by her love for Zebedee and the pain she had to give him, hunted by the thought that George was making for himself a place in the circle where she kept her pensioners. Each time that he looked at her with longing, though she shrank, she gave her ready pity, and when he walked away into the night, her heart went after him unwillingly. Worse than all, she knew she would not always see him as a pensioner. Far off and indistinct, like a gallows seen on a distant hill, she spied the day when she might own a kind of need of him; she had to love those who loved her enough, and his strength, the very limits of his mind, would some day hold her. But she would not let these thoughts properly take shape: they were vague menaces, and they chased her through Mr. Pinderwell's spa.r.s.ely-furnished rooms. She was glad that Zebedee had never been a pensioner; he had always given more than he had asked. His had not been an att.i.tude of pleading, and she could not remember once seeing an appeal in his eyes. They had always been quick on her face and busy with herself, and her pride in him was mixed with anger that he had not bound her to him by his need. He would manage without her very well, she thought, and hardened herself a little; but hard or soft, the result of her fierce thinking was the same. She had the picture of Miriam like a broken flower, lying limp and crumpled on the floor, and she believed she had done well in selling herself to save that beauty. It was the only thing to do, and Zebedee would know. These words she repeated many times.

But she went beyond that conclusion on her own path. She had married George, and that was ugly, but life had to be lived and it must be beautiful; it could not be so long that she should fail to make it beautiful: fifty years, perhaps. She beat her hands together. She could surely make it beautiful for fifty years.

But at night, when she waited for George, she trembled, for she knew that her determination meant ultimate surrender.

He came on the fourth night. She gave him half a smile, and with a thin foot she pushed his chair into its place, but he did not sit down. He stood with his hands clasped behind him, his head thrust forward, and having glanced at him in that somewhat sulky pose, she was shaken by inward laughter. Men and women, she reflected, were such foolish things: they troubled over the little matters of a day, a year, or a decade, and could not see how small a mark their happiness or sorrow made in the history of a world that went on marching.

She bent over her sewing while she thought, and she might have forgotten his presence if a movement had not blocked the light.

"George, please, I can't see."

"I beg your pardon."

"I wish you would sit down. It isn't comfortable like this."

"All right." He sank down heavily and sighed.

She lifted her head quickly and showed him her puckered face. "Are you still so cross?"

"I--don't know. I've been miserable enough," he said, but he had to smile on her.

She was astonished that he should have no difficulty in speaking of himself, and she looked at him in this surprised consideration before she tempted him to say more.

"Why?" she asked.

"You wouldn't understand."

"I might."

"How much I wanted you."

She tapped her thimble against her teeth. "It's so absurd," she said softly.

"Eh?"

She hated him to say that, and she frowned a little as he asked, "Why is it absurd?"

"Because you don't know me at all."