The child died three days later. Milly came over to Agatha with the
news.
She said it had been an awful shock, of course. She’d been dreading
something like that for him. But he’d taken it wonderfully. If he came
out of it all right, she _would_ believe in what she called Agatha’s
“thing.”
He did come out of it all right. His behaviour was the crowning proof,
if Milly wanted more proof, of his sanity. He went up to London and made
all the arrangements for his sister. When he returned he forestalled
Milly’s specious consolations with the truth. It was better, he told
her, that the dear little girl should have died, for there was distinct
brain trouble anyway. He took it as a sane man takes a terrible
alternative.
Weeks passed. He had grown accustomed to his own sanity and no longer
marvelled at it.
And still, without intermission, Agatha went on. She had been so far
affected by Milly’s fright (that was the worst of Milly’s knowing) that
she held on to Harding Powell with a slightly exaggerated intensity. She
even began to give more and more time to him, she who had made out that
time in this process did not matter. She was afraid of letting go,
because the consequences (Milly was perpetually reminding her of the
consequences) of letting go would be awful.
For Milly kept her at it. Milly urged her on. Milly, in Milly’s own
words, sustained her. She praised her; she praised the Secret, praised
the Power. She said you could see how it worked. It was tremendous; it
was inexhaustible. Milly, familiarized with its working, had become a
fanatical believer in the Power. But she had her own theory. She knew,
of course, that they were all, she and Agatha and poor Harding,
dependent on the Power, that it was the Power that did it, and not
Agatha. But Agatha was _their_ one link with it, and if the link gave
way where were they? Agatha felt that Milly watched her and waylaid her;
that she was suspicious of failures and of intermissions; that she
wondered; that she peered and pried. Milly would, if she could, have
stuck her fingers into what she called the machinery of the thing. Its
vagueness baffled and even annoyed her, for her mind was limited; it
loved and was at home with limits; it desired above all things precise
ideas, names, phrases, anything that constricted and defined.
[Illustration]
But still, with it all, she believed; and the great thing was that Milly
_should_ believe. She might have worked havoc if, with her temperament,
she had doubted.
What did suffer was the fine poise with which she, Agatha, had held
Rodney Lanyon and Harding Powell each by his own thread. Milly had
compelled her to spin a stronger thread for Harding and, as it were, to
multiply her threads, so as to hold him at all points. And because of
this, because of giving more and more time to him, she could not always
loose him from her and let him go. And she was afraid lest the pull he
had on her might weaken Rodney’s thread.
Up till now, the Powells’ third week at Sarratt End, she had had the
assurance that his thread still held. She heard from him that Bella was
all right, which meant that he too was all right, for there had never
been anything wrong with him _but_ Bella. And she had a further glimpse
of the way the gift worked its wonders.
Three Fridays had passed, and he had not come.
Well—she had meant that; she had tried (on that last Friday of his),
with a crystal sincerity, to hold him back so that he should not come.
And up till now, with an ease that simply amazed her, she had kept
herself at the highest pitch of her sincere and beautiful intention.
Not that it was the intention that had failed her now. It had succeeded
so beautifully, so perfectly, that he had no need to come at all. She
had given Bella back to him. She had given him back to Bella. Only, she
faced the full perfection of her work. She had brought it to so fine a
point that she would never see him again; she had gone to the root of
it; she had taken from him the desire to see her. And now it was as if
subtly, insidiously, her relation to him had become inverted. Whereas
hitherto it had been she who had been necessary to him, it seemed now
that he was far more, beyond all comparison, more necessary to her.
After all, Rodney had had Bella; and she had nobody but Rodney. He was
the one solitary thing she cared for. And hitherto it had not mattered
so immensely, for all her caring, whether he came to her or not. Seeing
him had been, perhaps, a small mortal joy; but it had not been the
tremendous and essential thing. She had been contented, satisfied beyond
all mortal contentments and satisfactions, with the intangible,
immaterial tie. Now she longed, with an unendurable longing, for his
visible, bodily presence. She had not realized her joy as long as it was
with her; she had refused to acknowledge it because of its mortal
quality, and it had raised no cry that troubled her abiding spiritual
calm. But now that she had put it from her, it thrust itself on her, it
cried, it clung piteously to her and would not let her go. She looked
back to the last year, her year of Fridays, and saw it following her,
following and entreating. She looked forward and she saw Friday after
Friday coming upon her, a procession of pitiless days, trampling it
down, her small, piteous mortal joy, and her mortality rose in her and
revolted. She had been disturbed by what she had called the “lurking
possibilities” in Rodney; they were nothing to the lurking possibilities
in her.
There were moments when her desire to see Rodney sickened her with its
importunity. Each time she beat it back, in an instant, to its burrow
below the threshold, and it hid there, it ran underground. There were
ways below the threshold by which desire could get at him. Therefore,
one night—Tuesday of the fourth week—she cut him off. She refused to
hold him even by a thread. It was Bella and Bella only that she held
now.
On Friday of that week she heard from him. Bella was still all right.
But _he_ wasn’t. Anything but. He didn’t know what was the matter with
him. He supposed it was the same old thing again. He couldn’t think how
poor Bella stood him, but she did. It must be awfully bad for her. It
was beastly—wasn’t it?—that he should have got like that, just when
Bella was so well.
She might have known it. She had, in fact, known. Having once held him,
and having healed him, she had no right—as long as the Power consented
to work through her—she had no right to let him go.
She began again from the beginning, from the first process of
purification and surrender. But what followed was different now. She had
not only to recapture the crystal serenity, the holiness of that state
by which she had held Rodney Lanyon and had healed him; she had to
recover the poise by which she had held him and Harding Powell together.
She was bound equally not to let Harding go.
It was now almost a struggle to concentrate on both Rodney and Harding,
a struggle in which Harding persisted and prevailed. Yes, there was no
blinking it, he prevailed.
She had been prepared for it, but not as for a thing that could really
happen. It was contrary to all that she knew of the beneficent working
of the Power. She thought she knew all its ways, its silences, its
reassurances, its inexplicable reservations and evasions. She couldn’t
be prepared for this—that it, the high and holy, the unspeakably pure
thing should allow Harding to prevail, should connive (that was what it
looked like) at his taking the gift into his own hands and turning it to
his own advantage against Rodney Lanyon.
Not that she thought it really had connived. That was unthinkable, and
Agatha did not think these things; she felt them. Hitherto she had had
no misgivings as to the possible behaviour of the Power. And now she was
afraid, not of It, and not, certainly not, of poor Harding (how could
she be afraid of him?); she was afraid mysteriously, without knowing why
or how.
It was her fear that made her write to Rodney Lanyon. She wrote in the
beginning of the fifth week (she was counting the weeks now). She only
wanted to know, she said, that he was better, that he was well. She
begged him to write and tell her that he was well.
He did not write.
And every night of that week, in those “states” of hers, Powell
predominated. He was becoming almost a visible presence impressed upon
the blackness of the “state.” All she could do then was to evoke the
visible image of Rodney Lanyon and place it there over Harding’s image,
obliterating him. Now, properly speaking, the state, the perfection of
it, did not admit of visible presences, and that Harding could so
impress himself showed more than anything the extent to which he had
prevailed.
He prevailed to such good purpose that he was now, Milly said, well
enough to go back to business. They were to leave Sarratt End in about
ten days, when they would have been there seven weeks.
She had come over on the Sunday to let Agatha know that; and also, she
said, to make a confession.
Milly’s face, as she said it, was all candour. It had filled out; it had
bloomed in her happiness; it was shadowless, featureless almost, like a
flower.
She had done what she said she wouldn’t do; she had told Harding.
“Oh, Milly, what on earth did you do that for?” Agatha’s voice was
strange.
“I thought it better,” Milly said, revealing the fine complacence of her
character.
“Why better?”
“Because secrecy is bad. And he was beginning to wonder. He wanted to go
back to business; and he wouldn’t, because he thought it was the place
that did it.”
“I see,” said Agatha. “And what does he think it is now?”
“He thinks it’s _you_, dear.”
“But I told you—I told you—that was what you were not to think.”
“My dear, it’s an immense concession that he should think it’s you.”
“A concession to what?”
“Well, I suppose, to the supernatural.”
“Milly, you shouldn’t have told him. You don’t know what harm you might
have done. I’m not sure even now that you haven’t done it.”
“Oh, have I?” said Milly triumphantly. “You’ve only got to look at him.”
“When did you tell him, then?”
“I told him—let me see—it was a week ago last Friday.” Agatha was
silent. She wondered. It had been after Friday a week ago that he had
prevailed so terribly.
“Agatha,” said Milly solemnly, “when we go away you won’t lose sight of
him? You won’t let go of him?”
“You needn’t be afraid. I doubt now if he will let go of me.”
“How do you mean—_now_?” Milly flushed slightly as a flower might flush.
“Now that you’ve told him, now that he thinks it’s me.
“Perhaps,” said Milly, “that was why I told him. I don’t want him to let
go.”