For some days after her unforgettable meeting with Daunt in the woods,
Margaret had not left the house. She had spent much of her time reading
to Lydia. There was a never lessening sorrow in the invalid’s gaze that
affected her, full as was her mind of her own thoughts, and she had
been glad to sit with her to escape the slow-burning fires that haunted
her in Melwin’s opaque eyes.
She had almost a fear to venture beyond the shelter of this cheerless
home--a fear of what she longed for unspeakably and as unspeakably
dreaded. She told herself that Daunt was gone, that he had returned
to the city, that she would not see him again at Warne. And yet her
inmost wish belied the thought. He had gone away believing her cruel.
The memory tortured her. An instinctive modesty, as innate as her
conscience, had made it impossible for her to express in words the
distinction which her own sensitiveness had drawn. To think of it was
an intangible agony; to voice it was to penetrate the veiled sanctuary
of her woman-soul.
But the afternoon following Melwin’s outburst in the dining-room, her
flagging spirits and the smell of the cropped fields drew her out of
doors. She was sore with a sense of reproach at her own unthinking
blunder. Since then she had not seen Melwin. She felt how awkward would
be the next meeting.
The sunlight splintered against low-sailing clumps of vapor which
extended to the horizon, and the chill of the air prompted her to walk
briskly. She did not take the wood road, but kept to the open country,
following the maple-lined footpath that boarded the rusting hedgerows.
There was little promise in the drooping, despondent sky. A shiver
of wind was in the tall grasses and a far whistling of a flock of
marsh-birds came to her over the moist fallow.
A darting chipmunk made her turn her head, and she became conscious
that a figure was close behind her. An intuitive knowledge flashed upon
her that it was Daunt. A vibrant thrill shot through her limbs and she
felt her cheeks heating.
“Margaret! Margaret!”
She turned her head where he stood uncovered behind her. His left wrist
was bound tightly with a black band, and he carried his arm thrust
between the buttons of his jacket.
“I am disabled for riding, you see,” he said, smiling. “My wrist has
gone lame on me. You see I am stopping at Tenbridge, and I walked over
the hill.”
The ease and naturalness of his opening disarmed her. She caught
herself smiling back at him.
“I’m so sorry about your wrist,” she said. “Does it pain you much?”
“Only when I forget and use it. Did you think I would come back again?”
This with blunt directness.
She made him no answer.
“Do you know, I have been here every day since I saw you. I’ve spent
the hours haunting the road through the woods and tramping these paths
between the fields.”
“I have not been out of the house since then,” she answered.
“Why not?”
“Can’t you guess why?”
“Were you afraid you might see me?”
“I--I didn’t know.”
“Look here, dear,” he said, “you know I don’t want to persecute you.
If you will only tell me truly that you don’t love me, I will go away
at once and never see you again. But I believe that there is no other
thing in life worth setting against love. It means my happiness and
yours, and it would be cowardly for me to give you up for anything but
your happiness. Can’t we reason a little about it?”
She shook her head hopelessly. “It wouldn’t help. I have reasoned and
reasoned, and it only makes me wretched.”
His brows knit perplexedly. He stopped and faced her in the path. “Do
you think that I have come to you for any other reason than that I
want you, that you mean more to me now than you ever did? That I love
you more--_more_--since I know you love me wholly? You have loved me,
absolutely. Now you are refusing to marry me! Why? Why? Why?”
Margaret’s flush had deepened. While he had been speaking, she had
several times flung out her hand in mute protest. “Oh!” she said, “how
can I make you understand? Love is strange and terrible. It isn’t
enough to love with the earth-side of us! Why”--her voice vibrated with
a little tremor--“I would love you just the same if I knew you _had_
no soul--if there was only the human feel of you, and if I knew you
must die like a dumb beast and not go to my heaven. If I knew that I
should never see you again after this life, I would love you and long
for you, just the same, now and afterward! Oh, there must be something
wrong with my soul! That kind of a love is wrong. It’s the love of the
flesh! Don’t you see? Can’t you see it’s wrong?”
Daunt struck savagely at the wiry beard-grasses with the stick he
carried. This doubt was so irrational, so unwholesome to his healthy
mind that to argue it filled him with a dumb anger. He groaned
inwardly. She was impossible!
“You give no credit,” he slowly said at last, “to your humanity. In
a woman of your soul-sensitiveness, it is unthinkable that the one
should exist without the other. Soul and sense react upon each other.
Bodily love, in people who possess spirituality, who are not mere
clods, dependent upon their eyes and appetites for all life gives them,
presupposes spiritual affinity. The physical may be the lesser side of
us, but it is not necessarily the lower. Whatever there is in Nature
is there because it ought to be. If we cannot see its beauty or its
meaning, let us not blame Nature; let us blame ourselves.”
“Don’t think,” said Margaret, “that I haven’t thought all that! It is
so easy to reason around to what we _want_ to believe. It doesn’t make
me happy to think as I do, but I can’t help it! We can’t make ourselves
_feel_. _I_ can’t! What good would it do me to make myself _think_ I
believed that? You would soon see what I lacked, and I would know it,
and we would be chained to each other while our souls shrivelled. Oh,”
she ended with almost a sob, “I am so utterly miserable!”
Daunt felt a mad desire to take that near-by form in his arms, to
soothe her and comfort her. He felt as if she were squeezing his heart
small with her hands. He was silent. Then his resentful will rose in an
ungovernable flood.
“Do you suppose I intend to break my life in two for a quibble--for a
baseless fancy? I tell you, you’re wrong! You’re wrong! You’ve tangled
yourself up in a lot of sophistry! Don’t think I am going to give up. I
won’t! You shall come to yourself! You shall! You _shall_!”
Margaret felt the leap of his will as an unbroken pacer the unexpected
flick of a whip-thong. It was a new sensation. It had a tang of
mastery, of domination, that was strange to her. She was unprepared
for such a situation. She looked at him half stealthily. In the lines
of his mouth there was an unfamiliar sovereignty. She felt that
deliciousness of revolt which every strong woman feels at the first
contact with an overbearing masculinity. A swift suggestion of the
potentiality of his unyielding purpose stabbed her.
“And the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat
upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.” A flitting
memory brought the parable to her mind. Could it be that the house of
her defence was built upon the sands? “And the rain descended and
the floods came and the winds blew”--the first promise of the tempest
was in his eyes. A fear of yielding insinuated itself darkly. The set
intentness of his obstinacy lingered after his words, hung about her
in the air and pressed upon her with the weight of an unescapable
necessity. Her breath strained her.
All at once she turned, speaking rapidly, incoherently. “Don’t--don’t
talk to me like that! Don’t argue with me! I can’t bear it--now!
I’m all at sea; I’m a ship without a captain. Don’t bend me; I was
never made to be bent. I have got to think for myself. You must go
away--indeed, you must! Somehow, to talk about it makes it so much
worse. I can’t discuss it! Don’t ask me any more! Oh, I know you think
I’m unreasonable. It sounds unreasonable sometimes, even to myself. I
wish you wouldn’t blame me, but I know you must. You can’t help it. I
blame myself, and I hurt myself, and the blame and the want and the
hurt are all mixed up together! If you care--if you care anything for
me, you will go away! You won’t come again. I hurt you when you do, and
I can’t bear to do it.”
Daunt nodded, took her hand, held it a moment, and then released it.
“Very well,” he said quietly and sadly. He did not offer to kiss
her. The fire had died out of his voice and there was left only a
constrained sorrow. But it had no note of despair. Its resignation was
just as wilful as had been its assertive passion. He looked at her a
moment lingeringly, then turned and vaulting the hedge, with squared
shoulders and swinging stride, struck off across the stubble of the
fields.
Margaret did not look back, but she knew he had not turned his head.
Then a long sigh escaped her.