Calthorpe found her sitting listless in a corner. She showed a hunted
preference for corners, and for shelter behind furniture.
“Why, you’re pale,” he said. He came closer, “You’re wan.”
She did a rare thing: she put her hand into his and let him hold it,
which he did as though it were a child’s. He was overcome by her
smallness and frailty; she seemed to be almost transparent, and her
features were tiny and delicate, but her eyes were large as she raised
them. “Not ill?” he asked. “No,” she replied, “only tired and afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“No, not afraid really; only worn.”
“Yes, indeed; you’re like a little wraith. You’d blow away in a puff.”
He could not rouse her at all; she made no complaint, but sat very quiet
and beaten, letting her hand lie in his. In reply to his questions, she
kept on saying that she was tired. He knew that she meant spiritually,
not physically, tired. She was very polite to him, saying “No, thank
you, Mr. Calthorpe,” and he found her extremely pitiable, but his
science failed him when he tried to think of a remedy. He could only sit
alternately patting and pressing her hand. She gave him a grateful
smile, at length.
“You do me good, just by being there.”
“Come, that’s better; won’t you tell me now what was the matter?”
“I only want to be happy,” she said suddenly, and her mouth quivered
beyond her control, so she bit her under-lip and looked away.
“Oh, my dear! my dear!” said poor Calthorpe.
“I want to run by the sea, over the sands,” she cried, as though her
heart had burst its compressing bonds; “I used to live by the sea once,
in the south, and I think about it ... and the birds nesting. There were
gulls upon all the rocks. There were white splashes down the rocks. It
wasn’t home. But I’m homesick, I think.”
“You’re just a child,” said Calthorpe. “You want to play. Poor little
soul!”
“Oh, how kind you are,” she said, and he felt her fingers flutter within
his hand. “I get so tired of fighting, sometimes....”
“Won’t you tell me just exactly what you’re fighting against?” He was
very patient and full of pity, but believing her to be slightly
hysterical he had the reasonable man’s reliance on a calm statement of
her difficulties to disperse much of their bogie-mist.
She only said, however, “I don’t know.”
(“Hysteria,” he thought. If she had said, “Forces of darkness,” he would
have started mistrustfully, without allowing himself to be impressed.
But she was too ignorant to use the phrase.)
“Come, then,” he said heartily, “it can’t be a very serious enemy if you
can’t give it a name,—what?”
“It’s everything,” she said, “the floods,—I hate them,—the factory....
If the factory would stop, sometimes, but it never does: always that
black smoke, and the men working in shifts to keep it going, and then
the men always talking about wages, and sometimes the strikes. Even the
abbey gets to be like the factory.”
“You’re fanciful,” said Calthorpe.
“Anybody would get fanciful, living with Silas and Gregory,” she replied
mournfully.
How she changed! he reflected. Sometimes she ordered him about, and
sometimes she came to him like a child for consolation. Whatever her
mood, he never ventured upon familiarity. He told himself sometimes with
irritation that he had never been kept so at arm’s length by an
otherwise friendly woman. He was a wholesome and masculine man, and he
had a wholesome and masculine liking for the company of woman in his
hours of relaxation, and in regard to Nan had certainly intended their
friendship to run upon different lines, harmless enough, but perhaps a
little more stimulating; he found, however, that quite quietly it was
she who decided the direction, while he in aggrieved but unprotesting
surprise fell meekly in with her wishes. He often told himself that he
was wasting his time, and would go no more to the Denes’ cottage, but he
always broke his resolution.
“Is Morgan no help to you? he’s something young about the house.”
“I don’t speak to him much, he’s always in his books. I wish you lived
in the house, Mr. Calthorpe.”
“I wish I did, Nan.” But on the whole, he thought, he was glad he
didn’t.