The Judge Part 41

She remained without, drooping. Would he find his mother there? She hoped so, for then they could all go home and leave this place, which she felt despised her. The tall trees of the forest, lifting their bare branches like antlers against the stars, seemed to be holding their heads high in contempt of her defeat. For so to be forgotten was defeat.

No sounds came from the temple, and she timidly went up the steps and pa.s.sed into the interior, which was cut by the colonnade into narrow chambers of shadows and broader chambers of light. At first she could not see him anywhere, and cried in alarm: "Richard!"

"I'm here," he answered. He was standing beside her, leaning against a pillar, but put out no hand to soothe her fear.

"Have you not found her?" she quavered.

He let the yellow circle of the electric torch travel over the cracked stucco-wall that faced them, the paintless door at its left extremity, the drift of dead leaves on the stone floor.

"What does that door open on to?" asked Ellen, forgetting the reason for their search in the queerness of the place.

"A staircase up to the room above."

"What a lovely place," she cried joyfully, trying to remind him of the existence of happiness, "to play in in the summer! Could one sleep up there, do you think?"

He switched off the light. "I daresay," he said gruffly in the darkness.

"And look!" She pointed to a moonlit niche in the middle of the wall high and deep enough to hold a life-sized statue. "It would be fun if I stood up there, wouldn't it?"

There was silence; and then amazingly, his voice cracked out on her like a whip. "Why do you say that? Did anybody tell you about this place? Has she told you anything about it?"

"Why, no!" she stammered. "n.o.body's told me a thing of it! I just thought it would be fun if I were to stand up there like a statue. You take me up too quick."

His pa.s.sion died suddenly. "No," he said weakly, exhaustedly. "Of course she wouldn't tell you. I was stupid. Yes, you're quite right. That's what a man would do with a woman, wouldn't he, if they were here together and they were lovers? He'd make her stand up there." Insanely he switched on the electric torch and flashed it up and down the niche, though in the dazzling moonlight its rays were but a small circular soilure.

"But it's not summer now," she reminded him tenderly, laying her hand on his sleeve. "Since she's not here, let's go home. Think of those bonny fires burning away and n.o.body the better for them!"

"That's what he'd do, he'd make her stand up there," he muttered, sending the light up and down the niche very slowly, as if in time to slow thoughts.

She turned and went down the steps and walked away, holding her hands, close to her eyes like blinkers, so that she might be the less afflicted by the night, whose beauty was a reproach to her. A desire to look out towards the sea and the flatlands came on her. This temple set among the woods was a human place; men had laid the stones, men had planted the trees, men had thought of it before it was. It was the stage for a scene in the human drama, which she had not been able to play. But the sea and the flatlands were not made by men; they made humanity seem a little thing, and human success and failure not reasonable causes for loud laughter or loud weeping. At the hill's edge she leaned against a tree and gazed down on the moon-diluted waters, on the moon-powdered lands, and was jealous of the plain, disturbing woman who kept herself covered with the quietness of the marshes to the distress of others; and saw suddenly, on the path at the foot of the slope, the far, weak ray of a dancing lantern.

She ran back to the temple. All she cared for really was pleasing him.

"Richard, Richard! I've found her! She's down there on the marshes!"

He was out beside her in a second. "Where? How do you know?"

"I saw her lantern down on the marshes!"

When they got back to the hill's edge the light was still to be seen, bobbing along towards the elm brow. Richard clipped Ellen's waist to show her how well pleased he was with her. "Ah, that'll be Marion!" he said. "n.o.body else would be on the marshes at this hour." Then a little wind of anger blew over his voice. "Has she been to his tomb? Can she have been to his tomb in the time? It's a steep climb for her. I wonder.... I wonder...."

The lantern bobbed out of sight behind the elm row. Feeling that they were again alone together, Ellen raised her lips to be kissed, but he had already turned away. "Let's go home now!" he said urgently. "I want to know where she's been."

The place seemed far more beautiful to her than it had done before. "Oh!

Now you're sure she's quite safe, mayn't we stay here a little?" she begged.

"No, no. Some other night. I'll bring you to-morrow night. But not now, not now."

She followed laggingly, looking about her with infatuation. There was something religious about the scene. Rites of some true form of worship might fitly be celebrated here. All appeared more majestic and more sacred than in the strained, bickering moments before she showed him the lantern. Now she perceived that it was the silver circle of trees which was the real temple, and that the marble belvedere was but a human offering laid before the shrine. It was in there, along the ebony paths which ran among the glistening thickets, that one would find the presence of the divinity.

"Oh, Richard! It will never be so beautiful as this on any other night!

Let us stay!"

"No. It will be just as good any moonlit night. I swear I'll bring you.

But now I want to get back home."

He slipped her arm through his to make her come. She stumbled along, turning her face aside towards those mystic woods. At the end of those paths was another clearing, wide but smaller than this, and girdled all sides by the forest; and there was something there.... Another temple? A statue? An event? She did not know. But if they found it, they would be happy for ever....

"Richard--"

"No."

He swung her over the tangled wires, and they hurried through the ploughed field. When they came to the gate at the top of the elm-row they saw below them, on the path up from the marshes to the orchard gate, the bobbing lantern.

"She's going fairly quickly," he said softly, speculatively. "I wonder if she's been to his tomb? Do you think she's had time?"

"I don't know," Ellen murmured, disquieted that he should ask her when he must be aware she could not tell.

"Oh, well!" he exclaimed, with a sudden change to loudness and bluffness, switching on the electric torch and turning it on the earth at their feet. "We'll find out when we get home. Let's hurry back."

They ran across the hillside, Ellen following desperately, with a dread that if she tripped and delayed him he might not be able to behave quite nicely, the circle of light he cast on the ground for her guidance. The humped and raw-edged frozen earth hurt her feet. The speed they went at shook the breath out of her lungs. At an easy, comfortable pace, the lantern bobbed its way into the orchard and up towards the garden. She was the lucky woman, Marion.

"Good," said Richard, as they pa.s.sed through the gate. "You did that in fine style."

"Why do you need to hurry so?" she protested. "You have all night now to ask her where she has been."

"I want to find out if she has been to his tomb," he repeated with dull, drilling persistence.

When they came to the end of the garden he drew up sharply. "Why is she standing by the servant's door? Why the devil is she always doing such extraordinary things?"

Ellen saw in front of her, through a screen of bushes that ran from the left-hand corner of the house to the left wall of the garden, the steady rays of the lantern come to rest. "You'd better go and ask her," she said pettishly.

He crossed the lawn quickly and halted before a trellis arch which pierced this screen, and motioned her to go before him. At that moment there came the sound of knocking near by. He caught his breath, pressed on her heels impatiently, and when they entered the tiled yard brushed past her and walked towards the lantern, which was close to the door in the side of the house, calling querulously: "Mother! Mother!"

The light swung and wavered. "What is the woman up to?" thought Ellen crossly. The strong yellow rays of the lantern dazzled before them and prevented them from seeing anything of its bearer, though the moonlight beams were still unclouded.

"Mother!" Richard cried irascibly, and levelled the torch on her like a revolver.

Its brightness showed the dewy roundness, towsled with perplexity, of a doe-eyed girl of Ellen's age.

"Ach!" said Richard, shouting with rage. "Who are you? Who are you?"

It struck Ellen that his refusal of any recognition of the girl's sweetness was unnatural; that it would have been more sane and wholesome, though it would have p.r.i.c.ked her jealousy, if he had shown some flush of pleasure at this gentle, bucolic, nut-brown beauty.

"Please, sir," gabbled the girl with her wet, foolish, pretty lips, "I'm Annie Brickett, and your cook's my auntie, and I come over to say my married sister's had a little baby, and it's before her time, so would auntie give us the clothes she was making?"

The door opened, and ap.r.o.ned figures looked out of the kitchen brightness at them.

"Where is your mistress?" Richard asked them, cutting into the girl's sweet, silly speech. "Has she come back?"