REBELS
Two days later, Frances went out into the garden. She leaned upon
Dolly’s arm, for she was very weak, and Lucy came behind, carrying rugs
and cushions. They settled her on a couch under the great cedar-tree
that spread its branches over the lawn, and there little Ruth came and
nestled beside her while the two elder girls went away.
“When you are well enough,” said Ruth, her sweet face upturned to the
chequered sunlight, “I would like you to come to the Stones with me.”
“When I am well enough, sweetheart,” said Frances, “as soon as I can
walk, that is, I am going away.”
“Right away?” said the child.
“Yes, darling. Right away. I have stayed too long, much too long, as it
is.”
“I would like you always here,” said Ruth.
Frances pressed her to her side in silence.
It was a perfect summer morning. From across the field that bordered the
old garden there came the babble of the stream. There was a line of
sunflowers along the red-brick wall, and below them the blue of
delphiniums that brought to mind the Bishop’s garden. The warm scent of
sweet-peas filled the air. Some distance away, Nell’s sunbonnet was
visible, dipping among the green. She and Lucy were gathering peas, and
their careless chatter came to Frances where she lay. The peace of the
place rested upon it like a benediction.
“You will come with me to the Stones before you go, won’t you?” said
Ruth.
It was hard to refuse her. “Perhaps, darling,” she said gently.
There came the tread of a horse’s hoofs on the cobbles of the yard.
“That is Uncle Arthur,” said Ruth, and freed herself from Frances’
encircling arm.
“Are you going?” Frances asked.
“I shall come back,” she said.
With perfect confidence she left the shade of the cedar-tree and moved
through the hot sunshine that bathed the lawn. Frances watched her
wonderingly. She did not run, but she went quickly over the grass, and
never faltered when her feet reached the gravel-path. Unerringly the
little blue-frocked figure found the gate that led into the yard, and
disappeared beyond the wall. Frances breathed a sigh. The place seemed
empty without her. Some minutes passed, and the child did not return.
She began to grow drowsy, and was actually on the verge of slumber when
a rustling sound close at hand suddenly recalled her. She came to
herself with a sharp start.
The rustling ceased immediately, but she had an acute sense of being
watched that sent a strange uneasiness through her. She made an effort
to raise herself.
Her heart was throbbing fast and hard, and she was conscious of intense
weakness, but she managed to drag herself into a sitting position and to
turn her head in the direction whence the sound had come.
At first she perceived nothing, for a screen of nut-trees that bounded
an orchard beyond the garden effectually concealed everything else from
sight. Then, as though drawn by some magnetism, her eyes became riveted.
She saw two other eyes peering at her through the leaves, and vaguely
discerned a figure crouched and motionless, a few yards from her.
The blood rushed to her heart in a great wave of apprehension. There was
something ominous in its utter stillness. She felt like a defenceless
traveller who has made his couch all unwittingly on the threshold of a
wild beast’s lair.
She lay very still, not moving, not daring to breathe.
Suddenly from across the lawn she heard the deep tones of a man’s voice.
She turned her eyes swiftly in the direction whence it came and, with a
throb of mingled relief and embarrassment, saw Arthur Dermot crossing
the grass towards her, little Ruth holding his hand. She glanced back
swiftly again into the green of the nut-trees, but the space whence
those eyes had glared so fixedly at her was empty. Without a sound the
watcher had gone.
An acute wave of reaction went through her—an overwhelming sense of
helplessness. She sank back upon her cushions, weakly gasping. The
sunlight swam before her eyes.
“Miss Thorold!” said a voice.
She looked up with an effort, seeing him through a mist. “I am quite all
right. Just—just a passing faintness! It is nothing—really nothing!”
She heard herself uttering the words, but she could not lift her voice
above a whisper. At the touch of a quiet hand laid upon her own, she
knew she started violently.
“It has been too much for you, coming out here,” he said.
“I am quite all right,” she assured him again tremulously. “I am only
sorry—to have given—so much trouble.”
“That’s not the way to look at it,” he said.
She felt his fingers close up on her wrist and wondered a little, for
there was something very quieting in his touch.
“You mustn’t attempt too much at a time,” he said. “Square told me so
only two days ago. You are not wanting to leave us yet, are you?”
The direct question, coming from him, took her by surprise. Her vision
was steadying, but an odd flutter of agitation still possessed her. She
did not know how to answer him for the moment; then the memory that he
wanted her gone came upon her, and she braced herself to reply.
“I must go—yes. I have been here much too long as it is.”
His fingers left her wrist, but he still stood above her motionless,
looking straight down at her, yet not as if he watched her, but rather
as if he debated something with himself.
“May I ask a question?” he said suddenly.
She felt herself colour. There was something unexpected about this man.
She wondered why he embarrassed her so. She tried to smile in answer to
his words though his expression was grave to sombreness. “If it isn’t
too hard a one,” she said.
“It’s only this,” he said, in his quiet, rather ponderous fashion. “Have
you anywhere to go to—if you leave us?”
“Oh, that!” said Frances, and knew she had betrayed herself before she
could formulate her reply. “Why, yes,—of course I have.”
“Why ‘of course’?” he said.
She hesitated. “Because—well, every woman has somewhere to go to. I
have—a brother.”
“A brother?” he said.
She found herself explaining further as if under compulsion. “Yes, in
the North,—a business man. He would take me in.”
“Have you any intention of asking him to?” Somehow the question stung
her. It was so direct, so unerring, like the flick of a whip-lash. She
dropped her eyes before his look. “I can do so,” she said with pride.
“Do you intend to?” he insisted.
She did not answer. Before that straight regard she could not lie.
He waited a moment or two, then to her surprise he sat down upon the
grass by her side. “Ruth,” he said to the blind child standing silently
beside him. “Go to the house and find my tobacco-pouch! Maggie is in the
dairy. She will know where it is.”
Ruth went with instant obedience, and Arthur Dermot took off his cap and
laid it on the grass.
“Now, Miss Thorold,” he said, “I am going to ask you another question.”
He spoke with the authority of a man not accustomed to be gainsaid, and
again that odd quiver as of apprehension went through her. She lay in
silence, waiting.
When he spoke again, she knew he was looking at her, but she did not
meet his look.
“I want to know,” he said, “what it was that scared you so up at the
Stones the night you came to us.”
“Ah!” She made a quick movement of protest. “I can’t tell you that,” she
said.
“You don’t want to tell me,” he said.
“I can’t tell you,” she said again.
He was silent for a space, but she was conscious of his eyes still upon
her, and she had an urgent desire to escape from their scrutiny. They
were so intent, so unsparing, so full of resolution.
“Someone was up there with you,” he said suddenly.
She clenched her hands to check the swift leap of her heart. “I don’t
think you have any right—to press me like this,” she said, her voice
very low.
“No right whatever,” he agreed, and in his quiet rejoinder she caught an
unexpected note of relief. “I knew you had had a fright, and the Stones
have a bad name hereabouts. I wondered what bogey had frightened you.
But apparently it wasn’t a bogey this time.”
He smiled a little with the words and she felt the tension relax. She
lifted her eyes and met a gleam of friendliness in his.
“No,” she said. “It wasn’t a bogey.”
“Perhaps you don’t believe in them,” said Arthur Dermot.
She hesitated, remembering the eyes that had glared at her through the
nut-trees, and then wondering within herself if they had been a dream.
He went on with scarcely a pause.
“Whether you do or not, I shouldn’t go to the Stones again in the dark
if I were you. It’s not a healthy spot.”
“But the child goes!” she said in surprise.
“The child!” He lifted his brows. “The child is different,” he said
briefly. “The child goes everywhere.”
His tone did not invite comment. She wondered and held her peace.
After a moment he went on, his jaw set in the fighting fashion she had
come to associate with him. “All this is beside the point, though you’ve
satisfied me in one particular. Now, Miss Thorold, to return to the
charge! Why must you go from here before you are fit?”
“I think you know why,” she said.
“But if you have no one to go to—” he said.
“I am going to work,” said Frances, with decision.
“What is your work?” he asked.
She answered him without reserve, for his manner had undergone a change.
“I am a typist. I have been secretary to the Bishop of Burminster.”
“Burminster!” he repeated the name sharply. “What is his name?”
“Dr. Rotherby.”
“Ah!” She saw his face twist suddenly, as if at a spasm of pain. “That
man!” He ground the words between his teeth.
“Yes, that man! Do you know him?”
She asked the question with a certain hesitation, but he answered it
immediately. “I knew him once—before he came to Burminster. What is he
like now? Did he treat you decently?”
“He never treats anyone decently,” said Frances.
“You quarrelled with him?” He looked at her sharply.
“Yes. I quarrelled with him,” she answered with simplicity. “I think he
is the hardest man I have ever met.”
Arthur Dermot was silent. He picked up his cap and began to turn it in
his hands, moodily meditative.
“Well,” Frances said, after a moment, “that is a closed chapter now. I
am looking out for another post.”
“They are not very easy to find, are they?” he said.
The indomitable courage that Montague Rotherby had admired in her
sounded in her reply. “Of course they are not easy. That’s just the best
of life. We’ve got to work for everything worth having.”
“Some of us have to work for what isn’t,” he said.
“Yes. I’ve done that too,” she answered.
He lifted his eyes abruptly to hers, dark eyes that seemed to her to
hold a curious protest. “And you’ve found it worth while?” he said.
She countered the question. “Have you?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t say I’d done it.”
“But you know what it feels like,” she said.
He smiled at that. “You are very shrewd. Well, I have done it. But I
don’t see any results—any decent results. I never shall see any.”
“Does one ever really get results before the work is done?” said
Frances.
“I don’t know.” He dropped his eyes again moodily, and she found her own
resting upon the silvery gleam of his bent head. “Life can be pretty
damnable,” he said, “most particularly to those who have a sense of
duty.”
“It is more damnable if we rebel,” said Frances quietly.
“You speak as one who knows,” he said.
“Yes. I do know.” She uttered the words with conviction. “I have been a
rebel. But that is over. I am going back now to work in the furrows—if
a place can be found for me.”
He frowned at her words. “Those infernal furrows! We plough our very
souls into the soil! And to what end? Of what use?”
“So you are a rebel too!” said Frances, with the suspicion of a smile.
He threw her his sudden, challenging look, and she thought he was angry.
But in a moment, sombrely, with eyes downcast, he made answer. “Yes, I
am a rebel too.”
There fell a silence between them that was curiously sympathetic.
Frances reflected later that it was that silence that banished all her
former embarrassment. She knew when he spoke again that it would not be
as a stranger. Somehow they had ceased to be strangers.
He looked up at her again at length. “Miss Thorold, I want to ask you
something, and I don’t know how to put it. I’ve lived among clods too
long to express myself with much delicacy. Will you make allowances for
that?”
She met his look with frankness. “You do not need to ask me that,” she
said.
“Thank you.” His eyes held hers with a certain mastery notwithstanding
the humility of his address. “I have no intention of being offensive, I
assure you. But I know—I can’t help knowing—that you have come through
a pretty bad passage lately. I don’t want to ask anything about it. I
only want to lend a hand to help you back to firm ground. Will you let
me do this?”
“I have already accepted too much from you,” she said.
His look hardened. “I know. So you think. But you only see one point of
view. I want you to realize that there is another. And if you leave
Tetherstones now, well, you won’t have done all you might towards
lessening what I believe you regard as an obligation.”
“What do you mean?” she said. “I thought you wanted me to go.”
“You thought wrong,” he returned with finality. “There is room for you
here, and no reason whatever why you should go back to old Mrs.
Trehearn, who is utterly unfit to look after you. Square says it would
be madness. I beg you will not contemplate such a thing for a moment.”
He spoke with a force that he did not attempt to conceal, and she heard
him with a strange mixture of surprise and doubt. She could not
understand his insistence, but at the back of her mind she was oddly
conscious of the fact that she lacked the strength to combat it.
Instinctively she sought to temporize. “It would be quite impossible for
me to stay on here indefinitely. You have all been much too kind to me
already, and I couldn’t—I really couldn’t.”
“Wait!” he said. “I haven’t suggested your doing that. I know you
wouldn’t. What I do suggest is that you should stay here to convalesce
while you are looking about for another post. Can’t you do that as
easily here as with your brother in the North for instance?”
She smiled a little at his words, but she shook her head. “I can’t go on
living on your kindness, and I have so very little money left. You must
understand how impossible it would be.”
“I don’t understand,” he said doggedly. “You are a woman, and a woman
has got to be protected when she is at the end of her resources. If you
really want to make any return, you can do the farm accounts for Milly.
She never had any aptitude for figures. But for heaven’s sake don’t talk
of going until you are well! I won’t hear of it.”
There was little logic in the argument and more than a little dogmatism;
but for some reason Frances found herself unable to combat the point
further. He was evidently determined that she should stay, and she was
too tired for further resistance.
“We will talk of this again,” she said gently. “Meanwhile, I am very,
very grateful to you, and—should like to help with the farm accounts if
I may—while I am here.”
“Thank you,” he said.
He got to his feet with the words. She thought he was going to take her
hand, then suddenly she saw him stiffen, and realized that they were no
longer alone.
She raised herself to see the bent figure of an old man coming towards
them over the grass.