The Flaw in the Crystal Part 7

Well--she had meant that; she had tried (on that last Friday of his), with a crystal sincerity, to hold him back so that he should not come.

And up till now, with an ease that simply amazed her, she had kept herself at the highest pitch of her sincere and beautiful intention.

Not that it was the intention that had failed her now. It had succeeded so beautifully, so perfectly, that he had no need to come at all. She had given Bella back to him. She had given him back to Bella. Only, she faced the full perfection of her work. She had brought it to so fine a point that she would never see him again; she had gone to the root of it; she had taken from him the desire to see her. And now it was as if subtly, insidiously, her relation to him had become inverted. Whereas. .h.i.therto it had been she who had been necessary to him, it seemed now that he was far more, beyond all comparison more necessary to her. After all, Rodney had had Bella; and she had n.o.body but Rodney. He was the one solitary thing she cared for. And hitherto it had not mattered so immensely, for all her caring, whether he came to her or not. Seeing him had been perhaps a small mortal joy; but it had not been the tremendous and essential thing. She had been contented, satisfied beyond all mortal contentments and satisfactions, with the intangible, immaterial tie. Now she longed, with an unendurable longing, for his visible, bodily presence. She had not realised her joy as long as it was with her; she had refused to acknowledge it because of its mortal quality, and it had raised no cry that troubled her abiding spiritual calm. But now that she had put it from her, it thrust itself on her, it cried, it clung piteously to her and would not let her go. She looked back to the last year, her year of Fridays, and saw it following her, following and entreating. She looked forward and she saw Friday after Friday coming upon her, a procession of pitiless days, trampling it down, her small, piteous mortal joy, and her mortality rose in her and revolted. She had been disturbed by what she had called the "lurking possibilities" in Rodney; they were nothing to the lurking possibilities in her.

There were moments when her desire to see Rodney sickened her with its importunity. Each time she beat it back, in an instant, to its burrow below the threshold, and it hid there, it ran underground. There were ways below the threshold by which desire could get at him. Therefore, one night--Tuesday of the fourth week--she cut him off. She refused to hold him even by a thread. It was Bella and Bella only that she held now.

On Friday of that week she heard from him. Bella was still all right.

But _he_ wasn't. Anything but. He didn't know what was the matter with him. He supposed it was the same old thing again. He couldn't think how poor Bella stood him, but she did. It must be awfully bad for her. It was beastly, wasn't it? that he should have got like that, just when Bella was so well.

She might have known it. She had in fact known. Having once held him, and having healed him, she had no right--as long as the Power consented to work through her--she had no right to let him go.

She began again from the beginning, from the first process of purification and surrender. But what followed was different now. She had not only to recapture the crystal serenity, the holiness of that state by which she had held Rodney Lanyon and had healed him; she had to recover the poise by which she had held him and Harding Powell together.

And the effort to recover it became a striving, a struggle in which Harding persisted and prevailed. Yes, there was no blinking it, he prevailed.

She had been prepared for it, but not as for a thing that could really happen. It was contrary to all that she knew of the beneficent working of the Power. She thought she knew all its ways, its silences, its rea.s.surances, its inexplicable reservations and evasions. She couldn't be prepared for this--that it, the high and holy, the unspeakably pure thing should allow Harding to prevail, should connive (that was what it looked like) at his taking the gift into his own hands and turning it to his own advantage against Rodney Lanyon.

It was her fear at last that made her write to Rodney. She wrote in the beginning of the fifth week (she was counting the weeks now). She only wanted to know, she said, that he was better, that he was well. She begged him to write and tell her that he was well.

He did not write.

And every night of that week, in those "states" of hers, Powell prevailed. He was becoming almost a visible presence impressed upon the blackness of the "state." All she could do then was to evoke the visible image of Rodney Lanyon and place it there over Harding's image, obliterating him. Now, properly speaking, the state, the perfection of it, did not admit of visible presences, and that Harding could so impress himself showed more than anything the extent to which he had prevailed.

He prevailed to such good purpose that he was now, Milly said, well enough to go back to business. They were to leave Sarratt End in about ten days, when they would have been there seven weeks.

She had come over on the Sunday to let Agatha know that; and also, she said, to make a confession.

Milly's face, as she said it, was all candour. It had filled out; it had bloomed in her happiness; it was shadowless, featureless almost, like a flower.

She had done what she said she wouldn't do; she had told Harding.

"Oh Milly, what on earth did you do that for?" Agatha's voice was strange.

"I thought it better," Milly said, revealing the fine complacence of her character.

"Why better?"

"Because secrecy is bad. And he was beginning to wonder. He wanted to go back to business; and he wouldn't because he thought it was the place that did it."

"I see," said Agatha. "And what does he think it is now?"

"He thinks it's _you_, dear."

"But I told you--I told you--that was what you were not to think."

"My dear, it's an immense concession that he should think it's you."

"A concession to what?"

"Well, I suppose, to the supernatural."

"Milly, you shouldn't have told him. You don't know what harm you might have done. I'm not sure even now that you have not done harm."

"Oh, _have_ I!" said Milly, triumphantly. "You've only got to look at him."

"When did you tell him, then?"

"I told him--let me see--it was a week ago last Friday."

Agatha was silent. She wondered. It had been after Friday a week ago that he had prevailed so terribly.

"Agatha," said Milly, solemnly, "when we go away you won't lose sight of him? You won't let go of him?"

"You needn't be afraid. I doubt now if he will let go of me."

"How do you mean--_now_?" Milly flushed slightly as a flower might flush.

"Now that you've told him, now that he thinks it's me."

"Perhaps," said Milly, "that was why I told him. I don't want him to let go."

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was the sixth week, and still Rodney did not write; and Agatha was more and more afraid.

By this time she had definitely connected her fear with Harding Powell's dominion and persistence. She was certain now that what she could only call his importunity had proved somehow disastrous to Rodney Lanyon. And with it all, unacknowledged, beaten back, her desire to see Rodney ran to and fro in the burrows underground.

He did not write, but on the Friday of that week, the sixth week, he came.

She saw him coming up the garden path and she shrank back into her room; but the light searched her and found her, and he saw her there. He never knocked; he came straight and swiftly to her through the open doors. He shut the door of the room behind him and held her by her arms with both his hands.

"Rodney," she said, "did you mean to come, or did I make you?"

"I meant to come. You couldn't make me."

"Couldn't I? Oh _say_ I couldn't."

"You could," he said, "but you didn't. And what does it matter so long as I'm here?"

"Let me look at you."

She held him at arm's length and turned him to the light. It showed his face white, worn as it used to be, all the little lines of worry back again, and two new ones that drew down the corners of his mouth.

"You've been ill," she said. "You _are_ ill."