North did not visit the farm again. He sent Ruth a brief line: “I am
better away.” That he made no apology and expressed no thanks gave her
the measure of his trust in her and her friendship.
She answered his brief communication by one equally brief: “Try not to
think of it at all if you cannot think the right way.”
So North buried himself in his work, forced and drove himself to think
of nothing else. Slept at night from sheer weariness, and grew more
haggard and more silent day by day. At least if he could not be on the
side of the angels he would not help the devils.
The month was mostly wild and wet, with here and there days of supreme
beauty. It was on one of these, the last day of October, that Ruth and
Violet went, as they often did, for a long tramp through the wet woods
and over the wind-swept hills towards the sea. The atmosphere was that
exquisite clearness which often follows much rain. The few leaves
remaining on the trees, of burnished golden-brown, came falling in soft
rustling showers with each gust of the fresh strong wind. They had
walked far, so far that they had come by hill and dale as the crow flies
to where the fall of the ground came so abruptly as to hide the middle
distance, and the edge of the downs, broken by its low dark
juniper-bushes, stood before them, clear-cut, against the great sweep of
coastline far away beneath. Pale gold and russet, the flat lands
stretched, streaked with the sullen silver of sea-bound river and
stream, to where, like a hard steel-blue line on the horizon, lay the
sea itself. And behind that straight line, black and menacing, and
touched with a livid ragged edge, rolled up the coming of a great storm.
It made a noble picture, and Ruth watched it for a few moments, her face
responding, answering to its beauty. She loved these landscapes of
England, loved them not only with her present self, but also with some
far-away depth of forgotten experience. And it seemed to her that she
loved with them also those “unknown generations of dead men” to whom
they had been equally dear. For these few moments, as she looked out
over the edge of the downs, she forgot the haunting evil which was
darkening all her days, forgot everything but the beauty of great space,
of the wild rushing wind, the freedom—the escape.
Odd bits of quotations came to her, as they always did in these moments;
one, more insistent than the others, sang, put itself into music, clear,
bell-like, mysterious:
“When I have reached my journey’s end,
And I am dead and free.”
And in that moment her sense of being in touch with Dick Carey came back
to her. Came flooding in like a great tide of help and encouragement and
power.
“And I am dead and free.”
And yet people were afraid of death!
The great winds came up from the sea across the earth-scented downs,
shouting as they came. She loved them, and the big dark masses of cloud.
She could have shouted too, for joy of that great sense of freedom, of
power, of control, because she was one with those magnificent forces of
nature. In her too was that strength and freedom which bowed only to the
One who is All.
The blood tingled in her veins; in the full sweep of the wind she was
warm—warm with life. She forgot Violet Riversley cowering at her side.
Forgot the little dogs crouching, tucked against her feet, and swept for
one wild moment out into the immensity of a great freedom. Then,
suddenly, the steel-blue line of sea broke into white, the storm-clouds
met and crashed, and lightning, like the sharp thrust of a living sword,
struck across the downs, struck and struck again. Heaven and earth and
the waters under the earth shuddered and reeled in the grip of the
storm, and Violet Riversley, screaming with terror, fell on her knees by
Ruth, clasping her, crying:
“Keep it away from me! Keep it away! God! I can’t bear it any longer!
Keep it away!”
And at her cry all the motherhood in Ruth’s nature, never concentrated
only on the few, leapt into full life and splendour, spread its white
wings of protection. And away and beyond her own love and pity she felt
that of another. Away and above her own fight was a greater fight,
infinitely greater. She picked the girl up into the shelter of her arms,
and her whole heart cried out in a passion of pity. She said odd little
foolish words of tenderness, as mothers will, for the form she held was
as light as that of a little child; just a shell it felt, nothing more.
And then, suddenly, the rain fell in one blinding rushing flood,
drenching the little group to the skin, blotting out everything with its
torrential flow.
“Ah, look!” said Ruth, almost involuntarily. A great flash of light had
broken through from the west, and against the violet black sky the rain
looked like a silver wall. It was amazingly, even terribly, beautiful.
“We are in for a proper ducking,” she said, trying to regain the normal.
“Wet to the skin already, all of us. And Sarah and Selina frightened to
death, the little cowards! You’d better keep moving, dear. Come along.”
It seemed a weary way home. Never had Ruth been more thankful for the
presence of Miss McCox in her household. Fires, hot baths, hot coffee,
all were ready; and she dried even Selina, though surreptitiously,
behind the kitchen door that none might behold her weakness, with her
own hand. She put Violet to bed after her hot bath, and ordered her to
stay there. Nothing but asserting herself forcibly kept Ruth from a like
fate.
“Them as will be foolish, there is no reasoning with,” said Miss McCox,
with dignity, and retreated to the kitchen muttering like the storm.
After a lull, it had returned again with renewed force. The old house
rocked as the great wind hurled itself upon it, shrieking against the
shuddering windows as if demanding admittance. Sheets of wild rain broke
upon the panes, and every now and then the thunder crashed and broke and
rent. After her dinner Ruth went up and sat by the log fire in Violet’s
room. The pillow on which she lay was hardly whiter than the girl’s
face. Her great gold eyes gazed out into the shadows blankly. Very small
and young and helpless she looked, and Ruth’s heart ached for her. She
chatted on cheerfully, as she wove a woollen garment for some little
child of France with her ever-busy fingers; chatted of the little things
about the farm; told little quaint stories of the animals and flowers.
Had she known it, just so had Dick Carey often talked, in the winter
evenings over the fire, to the listening children. But Violet Riversley
just lay still, gazing into the shadows, taking little notice. She made
no allusion to her violent attack of terror out in the storm, and it
grew on Ruth uncannily and horribly that the girl who had clung to her,
crying for help, had slipped away from her again, somewhere out into the
darkness and silence, torn from all known anchorage.
The little dogs had remained in their baskets downstairs; only Larry had
followed her up, and lay across the doorway, his nose upon his paws, his
eyes gleaming watchfully out of the shadow. Every now and then, when the
shattering wind with increasing violence struck against the house again
and again and wailed away like a baffled spirit, he growled in his
throat as at a visible intruder.
It was late before Ruth gathered her work up and said good-night. She
was honestly tired in mind and body, but an unaccountable reluctance to
leave Violet held her. And yet the girl was apparently less restless,
more normal, than usual. Tired out, like herself, surely she would
sleep. Her terror out in the storm seemed entirely to have gone.
So Ruth reasoned to herself as she went downstairs.
In the sitting-room the little dogs slept soundly in their baskets. The
fire still burned, a handful of warm red ashes. The whole place seemed
full of peace and comfort, in marked contrast to the rush and wail of
the storm outside. Ruth crossed to the lamp to see that it was in order,
and moved about putting little tidying touches to the room, as women do
the last thing before they go upstairs to bed. She was fully alive to
the fact that the three weeks of Violet’s visit had been a heavy strain
on her, mentally and bodily. It would be quite easy to imagine things,
to let this knowledge that she was fighting steadily, almost fiercely,
against some awful unseen force overwhelm her, to drive her beyond the
limits of what was sanely and reasonably possible. With her renewed
sense of awareness of Dick Carey’s presence had come an indefinable
yearning tenderness for Violet Riversley which had been lacking before
in her kindly interest and friendship. To give way to fear or dread was
the surest way to fail in both.
She looked out at the night. By the light streaming from the window she
could see a streak of rain-washed lawn, and, dimly, beyond, the tortured
branches of trees bowed and strained under the whip of the wind. She
drew all the forces of her mind to the centre of her being.
“Lord of the heights and depths, Who dwellest in all the Forms that Thou
hast made.”
She let the blind fall into its place and moved back into the room.
Larry had settled himself in the big armchair which had been Dick
Carey’s. She stooped to stroke his head, and he looked at her with eyes
that surely understood.
“Lord of the heights and depths, Who dwellest in all the Forms that Thou
hast made.”
She kept the words and the thought in her mind quite steadily. Almost as
soon as she lay down she passed into sleep, and dreamt—dreamt that she
was walking in the buttercup field with Dick Carey and it was early
morning in the heart of the springtime. And he told her many things,
many and wonderful and beautiful things, which afterwards she tried to
recall and could not. And then, suddenly, he was calling to her from a
distance, and she was broad wide awake sitting up in bed, and Larry in
the room below barked fiercely, then was silent.
The next instant she had thrown her dressing-gown over her shoulders and
was running bare-footed across the landing and down the stairs. Midway
across the big old hall she stopped dead, for on her had fallen, swiftly
and terribly, that old horror of her small childhood, a sense of
all-pervading blackness. It gripped her as forcibly as it had done in
those far-off days. Again she was a small utterly helpless thing in its
hideous clutch. The light streaming from under the sitting-room door
accentuated the blackness, gleamed evilly, assumed a sinister and
terrible importance.
Almost she turned and fled—fled out of the door behind her into the
storm-swept night, away to the clean air, to the darkness which was full
of beauty and healing. Not this—this that stifled, and soiled, and
buried. Away—anywhere—anyhow—from what was behind that flickering evil
light, which made the hideous blackness visible as well as tangible.
Almost, but not quite. That which the long years of patience and
endurance had built into her, held. Dick Carey had called to her. What
if he were in there, fighting, fighting against odds. For the world was
full of this Evil let loose, the vibrations became palpable, engulfed
her, beat her down. For a moment that seemed endless she fought for more
than physical life.
Then she moved forward again, and it was as in dreams when feet are
leaden-weighted and we move them with an effort that seems past our
strength. But she did not hesitate again. Steadily she opened the door.
Dragging those leaden feet she went in and closed it behind her.
A blast of hot air met her, insufferably hot. Some one had made up the
fire again. Piled high with logs it burnt fiercely. The room was in
disorder. In the far corner by the south window the little dogs lay
cringing with terror, trembling, while before them Larry crouched, his
white fangs bare, his lips lifted till the gums showed, his blazing eyes
fixed on the figure in the centre of the room—the figure of Violet
Riversley.
Before her, piled on the floor, were various articles, books and papers,
gathered together and heaped in the shape of a bonfire. At her feet lay
the bronze lamp. In her right hand she held the wick, still alight.
Curiously, the light from the blazing logs played on the long folds of
her white gown. Almost it seemed as if she were clothed in flame.
It was more subconsciously than in any other way that Ruth took in these
details, for every sense she had—and all had become most acutely
alive—concentrated on the terrific and hideous fact that, enveloping
Violet, encasing her as it were, was a great outstanding Figure or
Presence. Fear gripped her to the soul like ice. She could have screamed
with very terror, but she was beyond the use of the body, beyond, it
seemed, all help. For the entity that was not Violet Riversley, very
surely not Violet Riversley, but a being infinitely stronger and more
powerful, looked at her with the eyes of a soul self-tortured,
self-maimed, and she saw in all their terrific hideousness Hate and
Revenge incarnate.
And as she looked a worse horror gripped her. The Thing was trying to
master her, to make her its instrument, even as it had made Violet
Riversley. The very hair of her head rose upon it as she felt her grip
on herself loosening, weakening. Her individuality seemed to desert her,
to disintegrate, to disappear.
It might have been a moment; it might have been an eternity.
Then, as from a long way off, she heard Larry give a strange cry.
Something between a howl and a bay its vibration stirred the air through
miles. The cry of the wolf to the pack for help. The old dog had stood
up, his jowl thrust forward, his body tense, ready for the spring.
With a final desperate effort, which seemed to tear her soul out of her
body, Ruth cried too—cried to all she had ever thought or dreamed or
held to of Good; and in that moment her awareness of Dick Carey suddenly
became acute. Afterwards, in her ordinary consciousness, Ruth always
found it impossible to recapture, or in any way adequately to remember,
the sensations of the next overwhelming moment. Not only were they
beyond speech they seemed beyond the grip of ordinary thought.
After that moment of supreme terror, of incredible struggle, with the
acute return of her awareness of Dick Carey, with some crash of warring
elements and forces, mingling as part of and yet distinct from the
raging of the outside storm, she regained Herself. Was out as it were,
in illimitable space, fighting shoulder to shoulder, hand to hand, one
with Dick Carey. One, too, with some mighty force, fighting gloriously,
triumphantly, surely; fighting through all the Ages, through all the
Past, on through all the Future, beyond Space and beyond Time.
Then, suddenly, she was carried out—in no other way could she describe
it afterwards—out of the stress and the battle on a wave of very pure
and perfect compassion into the heart of a radiance before which even
the radiance of the fullest sunlight would be as a rush candle. And into
that infinite radiance came too the deadly hatred, the unspeakable
malice, the craving for revenge, the bitterness, the rebellion—came and
was swallowed up, purified, transmuted. In a great and glorious moment
she knew that the Force was one and the same, and that it is the motive
power behind which makes it Good or Evil.
Then the outside storm concentrated and fell in one overwhelming crash.
The house rocked, and rocked again. Ruth, mechanically stepping forward,
caught in her arms a body which fell against her almost like a paper
shell. Very swiftly she carried it out into the hall. Her normal senses
were suddenly again acute; they worked quickly. And on the stair,
infinitely to her relief, appeared the shining polished countenance of
Miss McCox. Her attire defied description, and in her hands she held,
one in each, at the carry, the proverbial poker and tongs. Behind her
came Gladys, open-mouthed, dishevelled, likewise fully armed, and
accomplishing a weird sound which appeared to be a combination of
weeping and giggling.
Ruth struggled with delightful and inextinguishable laughter, which she
felt might very easily degenerate into hysterics, for she was shaking in
every limb.
“No, no; it is not burglars!” she said. “Put those things down, and take
Mrs. Riversley. She has been walking in her sleep, and I am afraid has
fainted. You know what to do. I must telephone the doctor.”
In her mind was the immediate necessity of dealing with that sinister
bonfire before it could work damage, also before any eyes but her own
should see it.
The lighted wick had fallen on to papers sprinkled with the oil, and
already, when she returned to the sitting-room, little tongues of flame
were alight and a thin pillar of smoke crowned its apex. She dealt
swiftly with it with the heavy rugs luckily to her hand, and when the
creeping fire was crushed out and stifled she put the injured remains of
treasured books and ornaments hurriedly into the drawers of the big
bookcase. The damage to the carpet there was no possibility of
concealing, and after a moment of thought she took one of the charred
logs, black and burnt out, and scattered it where the pile had been.
Then she took the wick in which the light still burned, true symbol of
the Life Eternal, and restored it and the lamp to its own place, drew
back the curtains, and opened the great window looking south.
It was early morning. The storm was riding away in broken masses of
heavy cloud. Drenched and dim, and covered with a rising silver mist,
the racked world rested in a sudden calm. But the storm had left its
traces in the broken branches strewing lawn and garden and field, and
across the pathway a great elm-tree, snapped half-way up the main trunk,
lay with its proud head prostrate, blocking the main entrance.
The coolness of the dawn touched like a benediction Ruth’s tired face
and black and bruised hands. For a few moments she stood looking up at
the washed sky, the fading stars, while the dogs nestled against her,
craving for notice. A great sense of life and happiness came flowing
into her, flowing like a mighty tide with the wind behind it, and she
knew that all was well.
She would have given a good deal to sit down and cry, but there was much
to be done. That morning passed like a hurried nightmare, the whole
house pervaded with that painful agitation which the shadow of death,
coming suddenly, brings, for Violet Riversley was desperately and
dangerously ill. She was in a high fever, wildly delirious, and Ruth
found it impossible to leave her. Miss McCox took command in her
absence, and moved about house and farm a very tower of strength in
emergency, while Gladys haunted her footsteps, crying at every word, as
is the manner of her kind in such moments. In the sitting-room, Roger
North and his wife, summoned by telephone, waited while the doctor made
his examination. The room had been stiffly set in order by Miss McCox’s
swift capable hands. Over the scorched and blackened patch on the carpet
she had set a table, nothing but a general air of bareness and smell of
burning remained to hint of anything unusual. Both windows were opened
wide to the chill early morning air, and Mrs. North crouched by the fire
shivering.
She was utterly unnerved and overcome. The message had arrived just as
she was dressing. She had swallowed a hurried breakfast, when, quite
strangely, it did not matter that the coffee was not so good as usual,
and the half-dozen notes and letters from various friends were of no
real concern whatever. She had been engaged to lunch at the Condors. In
the afternoon she had promised to give away the prizes at a Village Work
Show. And into all this pleasant everyday life had come, shattering it
all into little bits, the sudden paralyzing fact that Violet had been
taken dangerously ill during the night.
She and her husband had driven over in the little car to find the doctor
still in the sick-room. Ruth was also there, and questioning Miss McCox
was much like extracting information from the Sphinx.
“I always disliked that woman; she has no more heart than a stone,” Mrs.
North complained tearfully. “And I do think she ought to tell Miss Seer
we have arrived. It is dreadful to be kept away from one’s own child
like this and not know what is happening.”
“Eliot will be down soon, I expect,” said North. He was wandering
aimlessly, restlessly, about the room, for as the time lengthened his
nerves too grew strained with waiting. What had happened? All sorts of
horrible possibilities pressed themselves upon him. If only Ruth would
come and he could see her alone for a moment!
He stopped in his restless pacing, and looked down kindly at his wife’s
shivering form. “Shall I shut the windows?” he asked.
“No,” she answered; “never mind. Oh, Roger, do you think she will die? I
can’t bear it! Oh, why doesn’t he come?”
She got up and clutched her husband’s coat-sleeve, hiding her face on
his shoulder. “Roger, I couldn’t bear her to die.”
Never before had the great presence of Death really come near to her,
except to summon the very old whose life had already almost passed to
the other side. And now, suddenly, like a bolt out of a serene blue sky,
it was standing beside her, imminent, threatening, and, to her,
unspeakably terrible.
Roger North put an awkward arm round her. He felt uncomfortably stiff
and useless, and ridiculously conscious of the fact that she had
forgotten in her hurry and distress to take her hair out of the curler
at the back of her neck.
He was honestly anxious to be sympathetic, to be all that was kind and
helpful. His own anxiety racked him, and yet, absurdly enough, that
curler obtruded itself on his notice until he found himself saying, “You
have left one of your curlers in.”
He was acutely aware that it was about the last thing he should have
said and wholly unsuitable to the moment, but his wife, fortunately,
took no such view.
“It just shows the state of my mind!” she exclaimed, trying with shaking
fingers to disentangle it. “I have never done such a thing in my life
before! What a mercy you noticed it!”
He helped her to get the little instrument out, and put it in his
pocket.
There was the sound of a closing door above, the hurried movement of
feet, and Mrs. North clutched her husband’s arm. They both looked
towards the door. But silence fell again, and she began to cry.
“Do you think she’s dying, Roger?”
“No, no! Eliot would send for us, of course.” He began his restless walk
to and fro again. “I wish we had got here before Eliot did. You could
have gone in with him then.”
And here, at last, footsteps came down the stairs, across the hall, the
door opened, and the doctor came in.
He was an unusual man to find buried in a country practice. A man of
outstanding intellect and of a very charming presence. Between him and
North a warm friendship existed.
“Ah, you have come!” he exclaimed.
He took Mrs. North’s hand and looked down at her with exceeding
kindness.
“The child is very ill and I fear brain trouble,” he said. “I gather she
went for a long walk yesterday and got drenched in the storm, so it is
possibly aggravated by a chill. Do you know of any special worry or
trouble?”
“Nothing whatever,” said Mrs. North decisively. “Except, of course, poor
Dick’s death. She felt that very much at the time, and Roger thinks she
has never got over it, don’t you, Roger?”
Roger nodded. For a moment he considered laying before his friend the
abnormal situation in which Ruth Seer believed, and which he himself had
come anyway to recognize as within the realms of possibility. But the
inclination faded almost as soon as born. He had had no speech yet with
Ruth, nor did it seem fair to Violet. Possibly, perhaps, some personal
pride held him.
The doctor looked at him kindly. “Poor little girl! Well, she made a
brave fight, I remember. Now, Mrs. North, no worrying. How old is the
child? Twenty-six? You can get over anything at twenty-six! I’m sending
in a nurse, and that woman upstairs is worth her weight in gold. You
couldn’t have her in better hands. Now you’d like to go up and have a
look at her. Don’t get worried because she won’t know you; that’s part
of the illness.”
But outside he looked at Roger with an anxious face.
“She’s very ill, North,” he said. “It must have been coming on for some
time. The storm—yes—that shook it up into active mischief, no doubt.
We’ll pull her through, I hope; but would you like a specialist’s
opinion? These brain troubles are very obscure.”
“I leave it to you,” said North, his whole being sick and empty.
“Well, we’ll see how she goes on in the next twenty-four hours.”
He sped away, and Roger wandered aimlessly about the farm, looking at
the wreckage of the storm, with Larry and the little dogs, conscious in
their dumb way that their beloveds were in trouble, keeping at his heel.
By one of those vagaries which make the English climate so lovable in
spite of its iniquities, it was, after the day and night of storm and
rain, that very wonderful thing a perfectly beautiful morning in
November. The sun shone with astonishing warmth, scattering great masses
of grey and silver cloud, against which the delicate black tracery of
bough and twig, stripped of every lingering leaf, showed in exquisite
perfection.
The farm was wide awake and astir with the life of a new day. But Vi,
little Vi, was lying up there, at the Door of Death. Recollections of
her as a soft-headed, golden-eyed baby came back to him; as a small
child flitting like a white butterfly about the garden; as a swift
vision of long black legs and a cloud of dark hair, running wild with
the boys; as the glorious hoyden who had taken her world by storm in the
days just before the war. And now she lay there a broken thing, tossed
and driven to death in the purposeless play of soulless and unpitying
forces. He ground his teeth in impotent rage, overcome with a very
anguish of helpless pain and wrath. If only Ruth would come and tell him
what had happened!
The cowman, who was helping the gardener clear away the remains of the
storm, came up from the fallen tree and spoke to him. He was sorry to
hear there was illness at the house. North thanked him mechanically and
escaped into the flower garden. The few remaining flowers were beaten to
the ground, their heads draggled in the wet earth. He got out his knife
and began to cut them off and tidy up the border. He could watch the
house at the same time. The minutes dragged like hours, and then, at
last, the door on to the terrace opened, and Ruth came out.
She looked round and, catching sight of him, hurried by the shortest
way, across the wet grass, to meet him. His pain-ravaged face smote her
with a great pity. She held out both her hands to meet his.
“I could not come before,” she said. “She is quieter now. Oh, do not
feel like that! She will get well. I know she will get well.”
“Where can we go to be alone?” he asked. “I must hear what happened. It
is that which has been driving me mad.”
“Let us go and walk along the path under the ‘house on the wall,’” she
said. “No one will come there and it is sheltered and warm in the sun.”
And there, pacing up and down, she told him, as well as she could, the
happenings of the night before.
North ground his teeth. “She would be better dead,” he said. “And yet——”
He looked at her, a new horror growing in his haggard eyes, a
question——?
“She will not die,” said Ruth. “But don’t you understand, don’t you
believe, whether she lives or dies the evil is conquered, is transmuted,
is taken in to the Eternal Good?”
“No, I cannot believe,” said North harshly. “I think you are playing
with words. It seems to me that only Evil is powerful. If anything
survives, it is that.”
Ruth looked at him with very gentle eyes. “Wait,” she said. “Have just a
little patience. She will get well, and then you will believe.”
“I cannot believe,” said Roger North. The words fell heavily, like
stones. He paced restlessly backwards and forwards, crunching the wet
gravel viciously under his feet.
“The house might have been burnt down. You—I suppose you think that was
the object?”
“Yes, I think it must have been so. At any rate one of them.”
“That is the loathsome horror of it all!” North burst forth savagely. “I
believe just enough, because in no other way can I account for what has
happened, to make me dread death for her in a way I should never have
dreaded it otherwise. I have always looked on our personal grief as
fundamentally selfish.”
Ruth was silent. He seemed beyond the reach of help, and she would have
given so much to help him. That he, at any rate for the moment, gave no
thought to what she had been through disturbed her not at all.
“Listen,” she said presently. “You may think it all imagination, or what
people call imagination, but if you could only have seen it, as I did,
you would know it was very, very real. It was when I was alone with her
waiting for Doctor Eliot. I went to the window to pull the blind down a
little, and when I turned round again—I saw”—she stopped, searching for
adequate words—“I saw what looked like a wall of white light. I can’t
describe it any other way, though it was not like any light we know of
here, more wonderful, alive in some strange way. It was all round her.
No evil thing could get through. I am so sure.”
She looked at him with her heart in her eyes, but Roger North shook his
head.
“It leaves me cold,” he said. “Is that why you feel so sure she will get
well?”
“No. But I _am_ sure; that is all I know.”
And to that Ruth held through the days of tense anxiety that followed,
through the visit of the specialist from London, who gave little hope,
through the despair of others. She moved among them as one carrying a
secret store of strength. Mrs. North, pitiably broken up, clung to her
for help and comfort, but North, after the talk in the garden, had
withdrawn into himself and kept aloof. The ravages day after day marked
on his face went to Ruth’s heart when he came over to inquire. But for
the moment he was beyond her reach or help. Whatever devils from the
bottomless pit rent and tore his soul during these dark days, he fought
them single-handed, as indeed, ultimately, they must be fought by every
man.
Mrs. North and Fred Riversley stayed at Thorpe.
“Uncommonly decent of Miss Seer,” said Mr. Pithey to his wife. “Turning
her house into a hotel as well as a hospital! That stuck-up little Mrs.
North, too. I’ve heard her say things about Miss Seer that have put my
bristles up. Give me Lady Condor every time. Paint or no paint!”
But Mrs. Pithey had learnt things down in the dark valley. She was not
so censorious as of old.
“I don’t cotton to Mrs. North myself,” she answered. “She’s a woman who
overprices herself. But she’s a mother, and Miss Seer could do no less
than take her in. You might take down some of these best Musk Cat grapes
after tea, ’Erb. P’raps Mrs. Riversley could fancy ’em.”
Everyone indeed was very kind, but with the exception of Lady Condor and
Mr. Fothersley, Ruth kept visitors away from Mrs. North.
Fred Riversley had astonished everyone by turning out a wonderful nurse,
and what little rest Violet had was in his strong arms, nursed like a
child. She seemed nothing more, and in her delirium had gone back to the
days of her childhood and talked of little else, and more and more
happily as the time went by.
“One might as well try to keep a snow wreath,” he said one afternoon to
Ruth, who was giving him tea after his usual tramp round the fields for
some fresh air and exercise.
Even as he spoke there was a little bustle and scurry outside the door,
and before it opened Riversley was on his feet and moving towards it.
Mrs. North stood there, half laughing, half crying. “Oh, she is better!”
she cried. “She has gone into a real sleep. Nurse says we may hope. She
will get well.”
She dropped on to her knees by the fire and buried her face against the
cushions of the sofa, sobbing and crying, while Riversley tore across
the hall and up the stairs two steps at a time.
* * * * *
It was early on the following morning that Violet Riversley opened her
eyes and looked at her husband with recognition in them.
“Dear old Freddy,” she said weakly. “What’s the matter?”
He put his arms round her with the tears running down his cheeks, and
she nestled to him like a tired child and fell asleep again.
When she woke the second time the room was full of the pale November
sunshine. She looked round it curiously for a moment, then her mind
seemed to give up the effort to remember where she was and she looked at
him.
“I do love you, Freddy,” she said.
The morning sounds of the farm came in through the open window and she
smiled. “Of course, I’m at Thorpe. I dreamt I was with Dick.”
Outside, Ruth went across the terrace to her farm work. Her face was
that of one who holds secure some hidden store of happiness. She sang to
herself as she went:
“When I have reached my journey’s end,
And I am dead and free.”
The words floated up clear and sweet through the still air.
“Dead and free.” Violet repeated them in a small faint voice, and again
Fear gripped Riversley by the throat. He longed to hold her more closely
and dared not. There seemed no perceptible substance to hold. His mouth
went dry while he struggled with his difficulty of speech.
“The journey is worth making too, Vi,” he said.
The husky strangled voice made its appeal. She looked with more of
understanding into his bloodshot eyes, his haggard ravaged face, and her
own face became suddenly very sweet and of a marvellous brightness.
“Yes,” she said, “the journey is worth making too.”
More distant came the sound of Ruth’s song:
“I pray that God will let me go
And wander with them to and fro,
Along the flowered fields I know,
That look towards the sea,
That look towards the sea.”
The white pigeons swooped down about her. The dogs, so long kept in to
heel, rushed wildly over the lawn and down to the river, uttering sharp
cries of joy. A robin, perched on the coping of the old wall, sang sweet
and shrill. She looked out over her beloved fields, over the long valley
full of misty sunshine, and was content. The farm was Itself again. She
moved on across the lawn leaving footprints on the silver wet grass, to
where, standing by the gate, she saw Roger North.
He turned at the sound of her coming, and she called to him:
“She has slept ever since I ’phoned to you. She will get well.”
“Thank God!” he said, as men will in these moments, whether they believe
or no.
His face was curiously alive, alight with some great happening; there
was an air of joyous excitement about him. He moved towards her, and
smiled a little, rather shamefaced smile, and the odd likeness to a
schoolboy who is feeling shy was very apparent. Then he blurted it out.
“I have seen him,” he said.
“Ah!” The exclamation was a note of pure joy. “Oh, tell me about it!”
“He was leaning over the gate. He was looking for me, waiting for me,
just as he used to do. And he looked at me with his dear old grin. It
was ever so real.”
“Yes. Yes.”
“And he spoke. Just as you have told me. It isn’t the same as speaking
here. It’s something like a thought passing——”
He stopped, his face all alight. He looked years younger. The heavy
lines were hardly visible.
“I wish I had spoken. Somehow at the moment I couldn’t.”
“I know. One cannot. I believe it is because of the vibrations. I
suppose——” Ruth hesitated. “Can you tell me?”
“What he said? It—it seems so ridiculous. One expected it would be
something important, something—well, different.”
She laughed, looking at him with affection, with that wonderful look of
pure friendliness.
“But why should it?”
He laughed too—joyously. As he had not laughed since boyhood. Surely
again the world was full of wonder and of glory. Again all things were
possible, in the light of the Horizon beyond Eternity.
“He said—just as he used to, you know—‘Come _on_, old Roger!’”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s note:
1. Table of Contents added by transcriber.
2. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
3. Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as
printed.
4. P. 87, changed '“She is really an excellent worker,” and little Miss
Luce' to '“She is really an excellent worker,” said little Miss
Luce'.