The Helpmate Part 59

She took up her brush, and with a turn of her head swept her hair forward over one shoulder. It hung in one ma.s.s to her waist. Then she began to brush it.

The first strokes of the brush stirred the dull gold that slept in its ashen furrows. A shining undulation pa.s.sed through it, and broke, at the ends, as it were, into a curling golden foam. Then Anne stood up and tossed it backwards. Her brush went deep and straight, like a ploughshare, turning up the rich, smooth swell of the under-gold; it went light on the top, till numberless little threads of hair rippled, and rose, and knitted themselves, and lay on her head like a fine gold net; then, with a few swift swimming movements, upwards and outwards. It scattered the whole ma.s.s into drifting strands and flying wings and soft falling feathers, and, under them, little tender curls of flaxen down.

With another stroke of the brush and a shake of her head, Anne's hair rose in one whorl and fell again, and broke into a shower of woven spray; pure gold in every thread.

Majendie held out a shy hand and caught the receding curl of it. Its faint fragrance reached him, winging a shaft of memory. His nerves shook him, and he looked away.

Anne had been cool and business-like in every motion, unconscious of her effect, unconscious almost of him. Now she gathered her hair into one ma.s.s, and began plaiting it rapidly, desiring thus to hasten his departure. She flung back the stiff braid, and laid her finger on the extinguisher of the shaded lamp, as a hint for him to go.

"Anne," he whispered, "Anne--"

The whisper struck fear into her.

She faced him calmly, coldly; not unkindly. Unkindness would have given him more hope than that pitiless imperturbability.

"Have you anything to say to me?" she said.

"No."

"Well, then, will you be good enough to go?"

"Do you really mean it?"

"I always mean what I say. I haven't said my prayers yet."

"And when you have said them?"

She had turned out the lamp, so that she might not see his unhappy face.

She did not see it; she only saw her spiritual vision destroyed and scattered, and the havoc of dreams, resurgent, profaning heavenly sleep.

"Please," she whispered, "please, if you love me, leave me to myself."

He left her; and her heart turned after him as he went, and blessed him.

"He is good, after all," her heart said.

But Majendie's heart had hardened. He said to himself, "She is too much for me." As he lay awake thinking of her, he remembered Maggie. He remembered that Maggie loved him, and that he had gone away from her and left her, because he loved Anne. And now, because he loved Anne, he would go to Maggie. He remembered that it was on Fridays that he used to go and see her.

Very well, to-morrow night would be Friday night.

To-morrow night he would go and see her.

And yet, when to-morrow night came, he did not go. He never went until December, when Maggie's postal orders left off coming. Then he knew that Maggie was ill again. She had been fretting. He knew it; although, this time, she had not written to tell him so.

He went, and found Maggie perfectly well. The postal orders had not come, because the last lady, the lady with the t.i.tle, had not paid her. Maggie was good as gold again, placid and at peace.

"Why," he asked himself bitterly, "why did I not leave her to her peace?"

And a still more bitter voice answered, "Why not you, as well as anybody else?"

BOOK III

CHAPTER XXVIII

Eastward along the Humber, past the brown wharves and the great square blocks of the warehouses, past the tall chimneys and the docks with their thin pine-forest of masts, there lie the forlorn flat lands of Holderness. Field after field, they stretch, lands level as water, only raised above the river by a fringe of turf and a belt of silt and sand.

Earth and water are of one form and of one colour, for, beyond the brown belt, the widening river lies like a brown furrowed field, with a clayey gleam on the crests of its furrows. When the grey days come, water and earth and sky are one, and the river rolls sluggishly, as if sh.o.r.es and sky oppressed it, as if it took its motion from the dragging clouds.

Eleven miles from Scale a thin line of red roofs runs for a field's length up the sh.o.r.e, marking the neck of the estuary. It is the fishing hamlet of Fawlness. Its one street lies on the flat fields low and straight as a d.y.k.e.

Beyond the hamlet there is a little spit of land, and beyond the spit of land a narrow creek.

Half a mile up the creek the path that follows it breaks off into the open country, and thins to a track across five fields. It struggles to the gateway of a low, red-roofed, red-brick farm, and ends there. The farm stands alone, and the fields around it are bare to the skyline.

Three tall elms stand side by side against it, sheltering it from the east, marking its humble place in the desolate land. To the west a broad bridle-path joins the road to Fawlness.

Majendie had a small yacht moored in the creek, near where the path breaks off to Three Elms Farm. Once, sometimes twice, a week, Majendie came to Three Elms Farm. Sometimes he came for the week-end, more often for a single night, arriving at six in the evening, and leaving very early the next day. In winter he took the train to Hesson, tramped seven miles across country, and reached the farm by the Fawlness road. In summer the yacht brought him from "Hannay & Majendie's" dock to Fawlness creek. At Three Elms Farm he found Maggie waiting for him.

This had been going on, once, sometimes twice a week, for nearly three years, ever since he had rented the farm and brought Maggie from Scale to live there.

The change had made the details of his life difficult. It called for all the qualities in which Majendie was most deficient. It necessitated endless vigilance, endless hara.s.sing precautions, an unnatural secrecy.

He had to make Anne believe that he had taken to yachting for his health, that he was kept out by wind and weather, that the obligations and complexities of business, multiplying, tied him, and claimed his time.

Maggie had to be hidden away, in a place where no one came, lodged with people whose discretion he could trust. Pearson, the captain of his yacht, a close-mouthed, close-fisted Yorkshireman, had a wife as reticent as himself. Pearson and his wife and their son Steve knew that their living depended on their secrecy. And cupidity apart, the three were devoted to their master and his mistress. Pearson and his son Steve were acquainted with the ways of certain gentlemen of Scale, who sailed their yachts from port to port, up and down the Yorkshire coast. Pearson was a man who observed life dispa.s.sionately. He asked no questions and answered none.

It was six o'clock in the evening, early in October, just three years after Edith's death. Majendie had left the yacht lying in the creek with Pearson, Steve, and the boatswain on board, and was hurrying along the field path to Three Elms Farm. A thin rain fell, blurring the distances.

The house stood humbly, under its three elms. A light was burning in one window. Maggie stood at the garden gate in the rain, listening for the click of the field gate which was his signal. When it sounded she came down the path to meet him. She put her hands upon his shoulders, drew down his face and kissed him. He took her arm and led her, half clinging to him, into the house and into the lighted room.

A fire burned brightly on the hearth. His chair was set for him beside it, and Maggie's chair opposite. The small round table in the middle of the room was laid for supper. Maggie had decorated walls and chimney-piece and table with chrysanthemums from the garden, and autumn leaves and ivy from the hedgerows. The room had a glad light and welcome for him.

As he came into the lamplight Maggie gave one quick anxious look at him.

She had always two thoughts in her little mind between their meetings: Is he ill? Is he well?

He was, to the outward seeing eye, superlatively well. Three years of life lived in the open air, life lived according to the will of nature, had given him back his outward and visible health. At thirty-nine, Majendie had once more the strength, the firm, upright slenderness, and the brilliance of his youth. His face was keen and brown, fined and freshened by wind and weather.

Maggie, waiting humbly on his mood, saw that it was propitious.

"What cold hands," said she. "And no overcoat? You bad boy." She felt his clothes all over to feel if they were damp. "Tired?"

"Just a little, Maggie."

She drew up his chair to the fire, and knelt down to unlace his boots.

"No, Maggie, I can't let you take my boots off."

"Yes, you can, and you will. Does _she_ ever take your boots off?"