IX

She knew now what had happened to her. She was afraid of Harding Powell;

and it was her fear that had cried to her to go, to get away from him.

The awful thing was that she knew she could not get away from him. She

had only to close her eyes and she would find the visible image of him

hanging before her on the wall of darkness. And to-night, when she tried

to cover it with Rodney’s it was no longer obliterated. Rodney’s image

had worn thin and Harding’s showed through. She was more afraid of it

than she had been of Harding; and more than anything, she was afraid of

being afraid. Harding was the object of a boundless and indestructible

compassion, and her fear of him was hateful to her and unholy. She knew

that it would be terrible to let it follow her into that darkness where

she would presently go down with him alone. “It would be all right,” she

said to herself, “if only I didn’t keep on seeing him.”

But he, his visible image, and her fear of it, persisted even while the

interior darkness, the divine, beneficent darkness rose round her, wave

on wave, and flooded her; even while she held him there and healed him;

even while it still seemed to her that her love pierced through her fear

and gathered to her, spirit to spirit, flame to pure flame, the

nameless, innermost essence of Rodney and of Bella. She had known in the

beginning that it was by love that she held them; but now, though she

loved Rodney and had almost lost her pity for Harding in her fear of

him, it was Harding rather than Rodney that she held.

In the morning she woke with a sense, which was almost a memory, of

Harding having been in the room with her all night. She was tired, as if

she had had some long and unrestrained communion with him.

She put away at once the fatigue that pressed on her (the gift still

“worked” in a flash for the effacing of bodily sensation). She told

herself that, after all, her fear had done no harm. Seldom in her

experience of the Power had she had so tremendous a sense of having got

through to it, of having “worked” it, of having held Harding under it

and healed him. For, when all was said and done, whether she had been

afraid of him or not, she had held him, she had never once let go. The

proof was that he still went sane, visibly, indubitably cured.

All the same, she felt that she could not go through another day like

yesterday. She could not see him. She wrote a letter to Milly. Since it

concerned Milly so profoundly, it was well that Milly should be made to

understand. She hoped that Milly would forgive her if they didn’t see

her for the next day or two. If she was to go on (she underlined it) she

must be left absolutely alone. It seemed unkind when they were going so

soon, but—Milly knew—it was impossible to exaggerate the importance of

what she had to do.

Milly wrote back that, of course, she understood. It should be as Agatha

wished. Only (so Milly “sustained” her) Agatha must not allow herself to

doubt the Power. How could she, when she saw what it had done for

Harding? If _she_ doubted, what could she expect of Harding? But, of

course, she must take care of her own dear self. If she failed—if she

gave way—what on earth would the poor darling do, now that he had become

dependent on her?

She wrote as if it was Agatha’s fault that he had become dependent; as

if Agatha had nothing, had nobody in the world to think of but Harding;

as if nobody, as if nothing in the world beside Harding mattered. And

Agatha found herself resenting Milly’s view. As if to her anything in

the world mattered beside Rodney Lanyon.

For three days she did not see the Powells.

X

The three nights passed as before, but with an increasing struggle and

fear.

She knew, she knew what was happening. It was as if the walls of

personality were wearing thin, and through them she felt him trying to

get at her.

She put the thought from her. It was absurd. It was insane. Such things

could not be. It was not in any region of such happenings that she held

him, but in the place of peace, the charmed circle, the flawless crystal

sphere.

Still the thought persisted; and still, in spite of it, she held him,

she would not let him go. By her honour and by her love for Milly she

was bound to hold him, even though she knew how terribly, how implacably

he prevailed.

She was aware now that the persistence of his image on the blackness was

only a sign to her of his being there in his substance; in his supreme

innermost essence. It had obviously no relation to his bodily

appearance, since she had not seen him for three days. It tended more

and more to vanish, to give place to the shapeless, nameless,

all-pervading presence. And her fear of him became pervading, nameless

and shapeless too.

Somehow it was always behind her now, it followed her from room to room

of her house; it drove her out of doors. It seemed to her that she went

before it with quick, uncertain feet and a fluttering heart, aimless and

tormented as a leaf driven by a vague light wind. Sometimes it sent her

up the field towards the wood; sometimes it would compel her to go a

little way towards the Farm; and then it was as if it took her by the

shoulders and turned her back again towards her house.

[Illustration]

On the fourth day (which was Tuesday of the Powells’ last week) she

determined to fight this fear. She could not defy it to the extent of

going on to the Farm where she might see Harding, but certainly she

would not suffer it to turn her from her hill-top. It was there that she

had always gone as the night fell, calling home her thoughts to sleep;

and it was there, seven weeks ago, that the moon, the golden-white and

holy moon, had led her to the consecration of her gift. She had returned

softly, seven weeks ago, carrying carefully her gift, as a fragile,

flawless crystal. Since then how recklessly she had held it! To what

jars and risks she had exposed the exquisite and sacred thing!

She waited for her hour between sunset and twilight. It was perfect,

following a perfect day. Above the wood the sky had a violet lucidity,

purer than the day; below it, the pale brown earth wore a violet haze,

and over that a web of green, woven of the sparse, thin blades of the

young wheat. There were two ways up the hill; one over her own bridge

across the river, that led her to the steep, straight path through the

wood; one over the Farm bridge by the slanting path up the field. She

chose the wood.

She paused on the bridge, and looked down the valley. She saw the

farm-house standing in the stillness that was its own secret and the

hour’s. A strange, pale lamplight, lit too soon, showed in the windows

of the room she knew. The Powells would be sitting there at their

supper.

She went on and came to the gate of the wood. It swung open on its

hinges, a sign to her that some time or other Harding Powell had passed

there. She paused and looked about her. Presently she saw Harding Powell

coming down the wood-path.

He stopped. He had not yet seen her. He was looking up to the arch of

the beech-trees, where the green light still came through. She could see

by his attitude of quiet contemplation the sane and happy creature that

he was. He was sane, she knew. And yet, no; she could not really see him

as sane. It was her sanity, not his own, that he walked in. Or else what

she saw was the empty shell of him. _He_ was in her. Hitherto it had

been in the darkness that she had felt him most, and her fear of him had

been chiefly fear of the invisible Harding, and of what he might do

there in the darkness. Now her fear, which had become almost hatred, was

transferred to his person. In the flesh, as in the spirit, he was

pursuing her.

He had seen her now. He was making straight for her. And she turned and

ran round the eastern bend of the hill (a yard or so to the left of her)

and hid from him. From where she crouched at the edge of the wood she

saw him descend the lower slope to the river; by standing up and

advancing a little she could see him follow the river path on the nearer

side and cross by the Farm bridge.

She was sure of all that. She was sure that it did not take her more

than twelve or fifteen minutes (for she had gone that way a hundred

times) to get back to the gate, to walk up the little wood, to cut

through it by a track in the undergrowth, and turn round the further and

western end of it. Thence she could either take the long path that

slanted across the field to the Farm bridge or keep to the upper ground

along a trail in the grass skirting the wood, and so reach home by the

short, straight path and her own bridge.

She decided on the short, straight path as leading her farther from the

farm-house, where there could be no doubt that Harding Powell was now.

At the point she had reached, the jutting corner of the wood hid from

her the downward slope of the hill, and the flat land at its foot.

As she turned the corner of the wood, she was brought suddenly in sight

of the valley. A hot wave swept over her brain, so strong that she

staggered as it passed. It was followed by a strange sensation of

physical sickness, that passed also. It was then as if what went through

her had charged her nerves of sight to a pitch of insane and horrible

sensibility. The green of the grass, and of the young corn, the very

colour of life, was violent and frightful. Not only was it abominable in

itself, it was a thing to be shuddered at, because of some still more

abominable significance it had.

Agatha had known once, standing where she stood now, an exaltation of

sense that was ecstasy; when every leaf and every blade of grass shone

with a divine translucence; when every nerve in her thrilled, and her

whole being rang with the joy which is immanent in the life of things.

What she experienced now (if she could have given any account of it) was

exaltation at the other end of the scale. It was horror and fear

unspeakable. Horror and fear immanent in the life of things. She saw the

world in a loathsome transparency; she saw it with the eye of a soul in

which no sense of the divine had ever been, of a soul that denied the

supernatural. It had been Harding Powell’s soul, and it had become hers.

Furiously, implacably, he was getting at her.

Out of the wood and the hedges that bordered it there came sounds that

were horrible, because she knew them to be inaudible to any ear less

charged with insanity; small sounds of movement, of strange shiverings,

swarmings, crepitations; sounds of incessant, infinitely subtle urging,

of agony and recoil. Sounds they were of the invisible things unborn,

driven towards birth; sounds of the worm unborn, of things that creep

and writhe towards dissolution. She knew what she heard and saw. She

heard the stirring of the corruption that Life was; the young blades of

corn were frightful to her, for in them was the push, the passion of the

evil which was Life; the trees, as they stretched out their arms and

threatened her, were frightful with the terror which was Life. Down

there, in that gross green hot-bed, the earth teemed with the

abomination; and the river, livid, white, a monstrous thing, crawled,

dragging with it the very slime.

All this she perceived in a flash, when she had turned the corner. It

sank into stillness and grew dim; she was aware of it only as the scene,

the region in which one thing, her terror, moved and hunted her. Among

sounds of the rustling of leaves, and the soft crush of grass, and the

whirring of little wings in fright, she heard it go; it went on the other

side of the hedge, a little way behind her as she skirted the wood. She

stood still to let it pass her, and she felt that it passed, and that it

stopped and waited. A terrified bird flew out of the hedge, no further

than a fledgling’s flight in front of her. And in that place it flew

from she saw Harding Powell.

He was crouching under the hedge as she had crouched when she had hidden

from him. His face was horrible, but not more horrible than the Terror

that had gone behind her; and she heard herself crying out to him:

“Harding! Harding!” appealing to him against the implacable, unseen

Pursuer.

He had risen (she saw him rise), but as she called his name he became

insubstantial, and she saw a Thing, a nameless, unnameable, shapeless

Thing, proceeding from him. A brown, blurred Thing, transparent as dusk

is, that drifted on the air. It was torn and tormented, a fragment

parted and flung off from some immense and as yet invisible cloud of

horror. It drifted from her; it dissolved like smoke on the hillside;

and the Thing that had born and begotten it pursued her.

She bowed under it, and turned from the edge of the wood, the horrible

place it had been born in; she ran before it, headlong down the field,

trampling the young corn under her feet. As she ran she heard a voice in

the valley, a voice of amazement and entreaty, calling to her in a sort

of song.

“What—are—you—running for—Aggy—Aggy?”

It was Milly’s voice that called.

Then as she came, still headlong, to the river, she heard Harding’s

voice saying something, she did not know what. She couldn’t stop to

listen to him, or to consider how he came to be there in the valley,

when a minute ago she had seen him by the edge of the wood, up on the

very top of the hill.

He was on the bridge—the Farm bridge—now. He held out his hand to steady

her as she came on over the swinging plank.

She knew that he had led her to the other side, and that he was standing

there, still saying something, and that she answered.

“Have you no pity on me? Can’t you let me go?” And then she broke from

him and ran.