It was the late afternoon of a September day. We had had tea early at
the black flint house, Vi, Ruthita, Dorrie, and I. After tea a walk had
been proposed; but Dorrie had said she was “tho tired” and Ruthita had
volunteered to stay with her.
For two months Vi and I had never allowed ourselves the chance of being
alone together; yet every day we had met. To her I was “Mr. Cardover”;
to me she was “Mrs. Carpenter.” Even my grandmother had ceased to
suspect that any liking deeper than friendship existed between us. She
loved to have young people about her, and therefore encouraged Vi and
Dorrie. She thought that we were perfectly safe now that we had Ruthita.
Through the last two months we four had been inseparable, rambling
about, lazy and contented. Our conversations had all been general, Vi
and I had never trusted ourselves to talk of things personal. If, when
walking in the country, Ruthita and Dorrie had run on ahead to gather
wild flowers, we had made haste to follow them, so betraying to each
other the tantalizing fear we had one of another. We were vigilant in
postponing the crisis of our danger, but neither of us had the strength
to bring the danger to an end by leaving Ransby, lest our separation
should be forever.
If our tongues were silent, there were other ways of communicating. Did
I take her hand to help her over a stile, it trembled. Did I lift her
wraps and lean over her in placing them about her shoulders, I could see
the faint rise of her color. Her eyes spoke, mocked, laughed, dared, and
pleaded, when no other eyes were watching.
Since the one occasion that has been related, Vi had not mentioned her
husband. Whether he was still urging her to return, or had extended her
respite, or was on his way to fetch her, I had no means of guessing.
I lived in a secret delirium of exalted happiness and torturing
foreboding. Each day as it ended was tragic with farewell. The hour was
coming when I must return to Oxford and when she must return to America.
Soon we should have nothing but memories. However well we might disguise
our motives for dawdling in Ransby, it could not be long before their
hollowness would be detected. Already Sir Charles had ceased to serve me
as an excuse; I had not seen him since my departure from Woadley.
The very suavity of our interchanged courtesies and unsatisfying
pretense of frank friendship gave edge to my yearning.
I had come at last to the breaking-point. I did not know it. I still
told myself that we were both too honorable to step aside: that we
had too much to lose by it; that I loved her too dearly to let her
be anything to me unless she could be my wife. The casuistry of this
attitude was patent.
As my hunger increased I grew more daring. No thoughts that were not of
her could find room in my mind. I had lost my interest in books--they
were mere reports on the thing I was enduring. Nature was only my
experience made external on a lower physical plane. My imagination swept
me on to depths and heights which once would have terrified. I grew
accustomed to picturing myself as the hero of situations which I had
formerly studied with puzzled amazement in other men’s lives.
The face of Lottie, encountered daily in the gray streets of Ransby,
which had at first restrained me by reminding me of sin’s ultimate
ugliness, ceased to warn me.
When Ruthita made the suggestion that we should go for our walk alone
together, I had expected a prompt refusal from Vi. She rose from the
disordered tea-table and walked over to the window, turning her back on
us. I could see by the poise of her head that she was gazing down the
gardens, across the denes to the wreck, where everything important had
taken place. I could guess the memories that were in her mind.
From where I sat I could see her head, framed in the window against the
slate-colored expanse of water, the curved edge of the horizon, and the
orange-tinted sky.
Creeping across the panes under full sail came a fleet of fishing
smacks, losing themselves one by one as they advanced into the tangled
amber of her hair. I counted them, telling myself that she would speak
when the foremost had re-appeared on the other side. Then it occurred to
me that she was waiting for me to urge her.
“Mrs. Carpenter,” I said casually, “won’t you come? It’s going to be a
jolly evening. We can go by way of St. Margaret’s Church to the Broads
and watch the sunset.”
Without moving her body, she commenced to drum with her fingers on the
panes.
“That would take time,” she procrastinated. “We couldn’t get back before
eight. Who’d put Dorrie Darling to bed?”
“Don’t worry,” Ruthita broke in with eagerness. “I’d love to do it.
Dorrie and I’ll take care of one another and play on the sands till
bedtime.”
“Yeth, do go,” lisped Dorrie. “I want Ruthita all to mythelf.”
These two who had stood between us, for whose sakes we had striven to
do right, were pushing wide the door that led into the freedom of
temptation.
A shiver ran through her. She turned. The battle against desire in her
face was ended.
“I will come,” she said slowly.
Left in the room by myself while they went upstairs to dress, I did not
think; I abandoned myself to sensations. I could hear their footsteps go
back and forth above my head. The running ones were Dorrie’s. The
light, quick ones were Ruthita’s. The deliberate ones, postponing and
anticipating forbidden pleasures--they were Vi’s. The sound of her
footsteps, so stealthy and determined, combined with the long gray sight
of the German Ocean, sent my mind back to Guinevere’s description of her
sinning, which covered all our joint emotions:
“As if one should
Slip slowly down some path worn smooth and even,
Down to a cool sea on a summer day;
Yet still in slipping there was some small leaven
Of stretched hands catching small stones by the way
Until one surely reached the sea at last,
And felt strange new joy as the worn head lay
Back, with the hair like sea-weed; yea, all past
Sweat of the forehead, dryness of the lips
Washed utterly out by the dear waves o’ercast,
In a lone sea, far off from any ships!”
She entered. She was alone. The others were not yet ready. I could
not speak to her. “Come,” she whispered hoarsely. Her voice had the
distressed note of hurry.
We hastened up the High Street like fugitives. Windows of the stern red
houses were eyes. They knew all about us. They had watched my mother
before me; by experience they had become wise. At the top of the town we
turned to the left, going inland towards the hill on which the tower
of St. Margaret’s rose gray against the sky, beyond which lay the open
country. We did not walk near together, but with a foot between us. Now
we slackened our pace and I observed her out of the corners of my eyes.
She was dressed in white, all billowy and blowy, with a wrap of white
lace thrown over her shoulders, and a broad white hat from which drooped
a blue ostrich feather. Whatever had been her intention, she looked
bridal. The slim slope of her shoulders was unmatronly. Her long neck
curved forward, giving her an attitude of listening demureness. Her mass
of hair and large hat scarcely permitted me to see her face.
We came to St. Margaret’s and passed. Was it a sense of the religious
restraints that it represented, that made us hurry our footsteps? We
turned off into a maze of shadowy lanes. We were happier now that we
were safe from observation. We could no longer fancy that we saw our
own embarrassment reflected as suspicion in strangers’ eyes. We drew
together. My hand brushed hers. She did not start away. I let my fingers
close on it.
The golden glow of evening was in the tree-tops. The first breath of
autumn had scorched their leaves to scarlet and russet. Behind their
branches long scarves of cloud hung pink and green and blood-red. Far
away, on either side, the yellow standing wheat rustled. Nearer,
where it had been cut, the soil showed brown beneath the close-cropped
stubble. Honeysuckle, climbing through the hedges, threw out its
fragrance. Evening birds were calling. Distantly we could hear the swish
of scythes and the cries of harvesters to their horses. Hidden from the
field-workers, we stole between the hedges with the radiant peace of the
sunset-on our faces. As yet we had said nothing.
She drew her hand free from mine and halted. Scrambling up the bank,
she pulled down a spray of black-berries. I held the branch while she
plucked them. We dawdled up the dusty lane, eating them from her hand.
“Vi,” I said softly, “we have tried to be only friends. What next?”
I was smiling. She knew that I did not hint at parting. She smiled back
into my eyes; then looked away sharply. I put my arm about her and
drew her to me. Without a struggle, she lifted up to me her mouth, all
stained with blackberries like any school-girl’s. I kissed her; a long
contented sigh escaped her. “We have fought against it,” she whispered.
“Yes, dearest, we have fought against it.”
A rabbit popped out into the road; seeing us, it doubled and scuttled
back into the hedge. The smoke of a cottage drifted up in spirals. We
approached it, walking sedate and separate. A young mother, seated on
the threshold, was suckling her child. A man, who talked to her while he
worked, was trimming a rose-bed. They glanced up at us with a friendly
understanding smile, as much as to say, “We were as you are now last
September.”
When a corner of the lane had hidden us, I again placed my arm about
her. “Tell me, what have you to lose by it?”
“Lose by it?”
“Yes. I know so little of your life. What is he like?”
“My husband?”
She flushed as she named him. I nodded.
“He is kind.”
“You always say that.”
“I say it because it is all that there is to say. He is a good man,
but----”
“And in spite of that _but_ you married him.”
“No, I was married to him. He was over forty, and I was only eighteen
at the time. He was in love with me. My father was a banker; he lent my
father money to tide him over a crisis. Then they told me I must marry
him. I was only a child.”
“And you never loved him? Say you never loved him!”
She raised her head from my shoulder and looked me in the face with her
fearless eyes. “I never loved him. I have been a sort of daughter to
him. I scarcely knew what marriage meant until--until it was all over.
Then for a time I hated him; I felt myself degraded. Dorrie came. I
fought against her coming. Then I grew reconciled. I tried to be true to
him because he was her father. He made me respect him, because he was
so patient. Dante, when I think of him, I become ashamed of what we are
doing.”
Her nostrils quivered, betraying her suppressed emotion. She had spoken
with effort.
“Why did you leave him? Did you intend to go back to him?”
She became painfully confused.
“Why do you put so many questions?” she cried. “Don’t you trust me?”
“Vi, I trust you so much that for you I’m going to alter all my life.
I’m so glad that you too are willing to be daring.”
“Then why do you question me?”
“Because I want to be more sure that he has no moral right to you.”
“I left him,” she said, “because I could no longer refuse him. He was
breaking down my resistance with his terrible kindness. If he had only
been unjust and had given me some excuse for anger, I could have endured
it. But day after day went by with its comfort, and its heartache, and
its outward smoothness. And day after day he was looking older and more
patient, and making me feel sorrier for him. He got to calling me ‘My
child.’ People said how beautiful we were together. I couldn’t bear to
stay and watch him humbling himself and breaking his heart about me. So
I asked him to let me go traveling with Dorrie. He let me go, thinking
that absence and a change of scene might teach me how to love him.”
She hid her face against me. It was burning.
“He thinks you are coming back again?”
“He thinks so in every letter he writes. I thought so too when I went
away.”
“Vi, you never wear a wedding ring. Why is that if you meant to return
to him?”
“I wanted to be young just for a little while. They made me a woman when
I was only a child.”
“And that was why you taught Dorrie to call you Vi?” The pity of it got
me by the throat. I kissed her eyes as she leant against me. “Poor girl,
then let us forget it.” She struggled feebly, making a half-hearted
effort to tear herself away. “But we can’t forget it,” she whispered.
“We can’t, however we try. There’s Dorrie. He loves her terribly. He
would give me anything, except Dorrie.”
“And we both love Dorrie,” I said; “we could never do anything that
would spoil her life--that would make her ashamed of us one day. You’re
trembling like a leaf, Vi. You mustn’t look afraid of me.”
Gradually she nestled closer in my embrace. It was not me that she had
feared, but consequences. We became sparing in our words; words stated
things too boldly.
Coming to the end of the lane, we sauntered out on to a broad white
road. It wound across long flat marshes where the wind from the sea is
never quiet. The marshes are intersected with dikes and ditches, dotted
with windbreaks for the cattle, and bridged here and there with planks.
One can see for miles. There is nothing to break the distance save
square Norman towers of embowered churches in solitary hamlets and oddly
barrel-shaped windmills with sails turning, for all the world like
stout giants, gesticulating and pummeling the sky. Here the orchestra
of nature is always practising; its strings, except when a storm is
brewing, are muted. From afar comes the constant bass of the sea,
striking the land in deep arpeggios. Drawing nearer is the soprano
humming of the wind or the staccato cry of some startled bird. Then
comes a multitude of intermittent soloists,--frogs croaking, reeds
rustling, cattle lowing, the rumbling wheels of a wagon. They clamor
in subdued ecstasy, now singly and now together. Through all their song
runs the murmuring accompaniment of water lapping.
In gleaming curves across this green wilderness flow fresh-water lagoons
and rivers which are known as the Broads. Dotted with water-lilies,
barriered with bulrushes, they reflect the sky’s vast emptiness.
Brimming their channels they slip over into the meadows, flashing like
quicksilver through ashen sedges.
The sun had vanished. The lip of the horizon was scarlet. The dust of
twilight was drifting down. In this primitive spaciousness and freedom
one’s thoughts expanded.
“Vi,” I whispered, “we’re two sensible persons. Of what have we to be
afraid? Only ourselves.”
“There’s the future.”
“The future doesn’t belong to us. We have the present. All our lives
we’ve wanted to be happy. Don’t let’s spoil our happiness now that we
have it. Just for to-night we’ll forget you’re married. We’ll be lovers
together--as alone as if no one else was in the world.”
“And afterwards?”
“Afterwards I’ll wait for you. Afterwards can take care of itself.”
The misshapen shadow of sin which had followed and stood between us,
holding us at arm’s length, awkward and embarrassed, was banished. If
this was sin, then wrongdoing was lovely.
We began to talk of how everything had happened--how, out of the great
nothingness of the unknown, we had been flung together. How easy it
would have been for us to have lived out our lives in ignorance of one
another and therefore free from this temptation. We justified ourselves
in the belief that our meeting had been fated. It could not have been
avoided. We were pawns on a chess-board, manipulated by the hand of an
unseen player. We had tried to escape one another and had been forced
together against our wills. The outcome of the game did not come within
the ruling of our decision.
The theory brought re-assurance. It excused us. We were not responsible.
Then my mind fled back to my mother. She and my father had had these
same thoughts as they had wandered side by side through these same
fields and hedges. Why had I been brought back to the country of their
courting to pass through their ordeal?
Night was coming down, covering up landmarks. Darkness lent our actions
modesty; they lost something of their sharpened meaning because we could
not see ourselves acting. We lived unforgettable moments. Passing over
narrow plank-bridges from meadow to meadow, we seemed to be traveling
out of harsh reality into a world which was dream-created.
She carried her hat in her hand. A soft wind played in her hair and
loosened it in places. Her filmy white dress was all a-flutter. Mists
began to rise from the marshlands, making us vague to one another.
Traveling out of the east swam the harvest moon, nearing its fullness.
“Vi,” I whispered, taking both her hands in mine, “you don’t know
yourself--you’re splendid.”
She laughed up into my eyes with elfin daring and abandon.
“You’re the kind of woman for whom a man would willingly die.”
“I ought to know that,” she mocked me, “for one tried.”
“If this were five hundred years ago, do you know what I’d do to-night?”
“It isn’t five hundred years ago--that makes all the difference. But, if
it were, what would you do?”
“I’d ride off with you.”
“Oh, no, you wouldn’t.”
“I should. I shouldn’t care what happened a week later. They might kill
me like a robber. It wouldn’t matter--a week alone with you would have
been worth it.”
“But you wouldn’t,” she insisted; “you wouldn’t ride off with me.”
“Shouldn’t I? And why?”
She freed her hands from mine and placed her arms about my neck. The
laughter had gone from her face.
“Dear Dante, you wouldn’t do it, because _you_ are _you_.” The burning
thoughts I had had died down. We wandered on in silence.
Ahead of us a flickering light sprang up. Out of curiosity we went
towards it. We found ourselves treading a rutted field-path which led
back in the direction of the main road. Out of the mist grew up a clump
of marsh-poplars. The light became taller and redder. We saw that it was
the beginning of a camp-fire. Over the flames hung a stooping figure.
“Good-evening.”
The figure turned. It was that of a shriveled mummy of a
woman--gray-haired, fantastic, bent, with face seamed and lined from
exposure. A yellow shawl covered her head and shoulders. She held a
burning twig in her hand, with which she was lighting her pipe.
“Good-evening, mother. Good luck to you.”
“Nowt o’ luck th’ day, lad,” she grumbled. “All the folks is in the
fields at th’ ’arvest.”
We seated ourselves at the blaze. She went back into the darkness. We
heard the snapping of branches. She returned out of the clump of poplars
with a companion; each of them was carrying a bundle of dead wood for
fuel. Her companion was a younger woman of about thirty. She nodded to
us with a proud air of gipsy defiance and sat herself down on the far
side of the fire, holding her face away from the light of the flames.
The one glimpse I had had of her had shown me that she was handsome.
“There’s bin nowt o’ luck th’ day,” the older woman continued. “They
hain’t got their wage for th’ ’arvest yet and they be too cumbered wi’
work for fortune-tellin’.”
“Do you tell fortunes?” asked Vi.
“Do I tell fortunes!” the crone repeated scornfully. “I should think I
did tell fortunes. Every kind o’ folk comes ter me wot wants ter read
the future. Farmers whose sheep is dyin’. Wimmem as wants childen and
hasn’t got ’em. Gals as is goin’ ter have childen and oughtn’t ter
have ’em. Wives whose ’usbands don’t love ’em. Lovers as want ter
get married, but shouldn’t. Lovers as should get married, but don’t want
ter. They all comes to their grannie. I’ve seen a lot o’ human natur’ in
my day, I ’ave.”
“And what do you tell them?” asked Vi.
“I tell ’em wot’s preparin’ for or agen ’em. I read th’ stars and I
warn ’em.”
“Can they escape by taking your advice?”
“That’s more’n I can say. Thar was Joe Moyer, wot was hanged at Norwich
for murthering ’is sweetheart. I telt ’im ’is fortune a year ago
come St. Valentine’s Day. ‘Joe,’ says I, ‘your ’and ’ll be red
before the poppies blow agen and you neck ’ll be bruk before th’ wheat
is ripe. Leave off a-goin’ wi’ ’er,’ says I. And the lassie a-standin’
thar by ’is side, she laughs at her grannie. But it all come true, wot
I telt ’im.”
“Could you read the stars for me?” asked Vi.
Her voice was so thin and eager that it pierced me like a knife. I
quivered with fearful anticipation. All our future might depend on what
this hag by the roadside might say. I did not want to hear her. She
might release terror from the ghost-chamber of conscience. However much
we scoffed at her words, they would influence our actions and haunt our
minds. Who could say, perhaps Joe Moyer would never have murdered his
sweetheart and would not have been hanged at Norwich, if she hadn’t
suggested his crime.
“Vi,” I said sternly, “you don’t believe in fortune-telling. We must be
going; it’s getting late.”
“Hee-hee-hee!” the gipsy tittered, “if she don’t believe in
fortune-tellin’, we knows who do. Come, don’t be afeard, me dearie.
Cross me ’and wi siller and I’ll read the stars for ’ee.”
Vi crossed her palm with a shilling. The gipsy flung fresh twigs on the
fire, that she might study the lines in Vi’s hands more clearly. As
the flames shot up, they illumined the other woman. Her features were
strongly Romany, dark and fierce and shy. Somewhere I had seen them;
their memory was pleasant. She regarded me fixedly, as though in a
trance, across the fire. She too was trying to remember. Then, rising
noiselessly, she stole like a panther into the poplars away from the
circle of light. From out there in the darkness I felt that her eyes
were still watching.
The old fortune-teller had flung back her shawl from her head. Her
grizzled hair broke loose about her shoulders. She was peering over Vi’s
hand, tracing out the lines with the stem of her foul pipe. Every now
and then she paused to ask a whispered question or make a whispered
statement. Now she would look up at the stars, and now would pucker her
brows. Her head was near to Vi’s. The flames jumped up and showed their
faces clearly: the one white and pure, and crowned with gold; the other
cunning, mahogany-colored, and witch-like. The flames died down; the
shadows danced in again.
I drew nearer and heard the gipsy muttering, “You was born under Venus,
dearie. Love’ll be the makin’ o’ yer, an’ love’ll be the ruin o’ yer.
You’ll always be longin’ an’ longin’ an’ lookin’ for the face o’ ’im
as is comin’. You’re married, dearie, but it warn’t to the right ’un,
and yer’ve ’ad childen by ’un. Cross me ’and wi’ siller, dearie. Cross
me ’and wi’ siller. I can’t see plain. That’s better. Now I see un.
’E’s comin’, dearie, and ’e’ll be tall and masterfu’, yer ’ll ’ave
ter sin ter get ’un. Aye, it’s all writ ’ere, but it gets mazed--the
lines rin t’gether.”
She dragged Vi’s hand lower to the ground, nearer the fire. She was
excited and clearly puzzled. She kept on croaking out what she had said
already, “Yer ’ll ’ave ter sin ter get ’un. It’s all writ ’ere.
Aye, but it can’t be--it can’t be for sartin. It gets all mazed and
tangled.”
She turned her head, blinking across the blaze to where her companion
had been sitting.
“Lil, Lil,” she cried hoarsely, “come ’ere. I can’t see plain. Young
eyes is better.”
Lil emerged out of the shadows, treading as softly as retribution
following temptation. She bent over the hand, unraveling the lines to
which the fortune-teller pointed with her pipe-stem.
Lil! Lil! Where had I heard that name before? The wind rustled the
leaves of the poplars and caused the ash of the fire to scatter.
“Whenever he hears your voice, it shall speak to him of me. If he goes
where you do not grow, oh, grass, then the trees shall call him back. If
he goes where you do not grow, oh, trees, then the wind shall tell him.
His hand shall be as ours, against the works of men. When he hears your
voices, he shall turn his face from walls and come back.”
“Do you want to know the future?” she asked, peering into Vi’s face
gravely.
Vi hesitated. “Is it so terrible?” she whispered.
“Not terrible as we gipsies reckon it; but sweet and dangerous and
reckless, and it ends in----”
“Lilith.”
I caught her by the wrist. She shot upright and faced me.
“Don’t you know me? I’m Dante--Dante Cardover.”
Vi had sunk upon her knees and stared up at us, steadying herself with
her hands. The old hag gazed angrily from behind Lilith, stretching out
her long thin neck.
“I remember you, brother,” said Lilith. “You are one of us. I knew that
one day you would hear us calling.”
“Wot did ’ee see in the lady’s ’and?”
The fortune-teller laid a skinny claw on Lilith’s shoulder; her voice
quavered with eagerness.
“I will not tell,” said Lilith.
“Did ’ee see----?”
Lilith clapped her hand over the woman’s mouth. “You shan’t tell,
grannie,” she said; “it’s not good to tell.”
Down the field-track came the creaking sound of wheels. I looked up and
saw through the poplars the swinging lanterns of a caravan.
Vi touched me on the arm. She was unnerved and trembling. “Take me home,
Dante.”
I turned to Lilith. “Who is that?”
“G’liath.”
“Where’ll you be camping to-morrow? At Woadley Ham?”
A cloud passed over her face. “We never camp there, now.”
The crone broke in with a spiteful titter: “But we used ter, until she
wouldn’t let us.”
Lilith spoke hastily. “We’re going to Yarminster Fair. We get there
to-morrow.”
“Then I’ll see you there,” I told her.
The caravan had come to a halt. I could see the tall form of G’liath
moving about the horses. I did not want to meet him just then. Skirting
the encampment, we hurried off across fields to the highroad.
A sleepy irritable landlady opened the door to Vi. By the time I had
walked down the High Street to the shop, it was nearly midnight. Ruthita
was sitting up for me; my grandmother had been in bed two hours. She
eyed me curiously. “You had a long walk,” she said.
“Yes, longer than we expected.” I spoke brusquely. I was afraid she
would question me.
At the top of the stairs, just as I was entering my room, she stole near
to me.
“Dante, ar’n’t you going to kiss me good-night?”
I was bending perfunctorily over her lifted face, when I saw by the
light of the candle in my hand that her eyes were red.
“Ruthie, you little goose, you’ve been crying. What’ve you been crying
about?”
“I’ve not,” she denied indignantly, and broke from me. After she had
entered her room I tiptoed down the passage and listened outside her
door.
In the stillness of the house I could hear her sobbing.