Night after night she continued, and without an effort. It was as easy
as drawing your breath; it was indeed the breath you drew. She found
that she had no longer to devote hours to Harding Powell, any more than
she gave hours to Rodney; she could do his business in moments, in
points of inappreciable time. It was as if from night to night the times
swung together and made one enduring timeless time. For the process
belonged to a region that was not of times or time.
She wasn't afraid, then, of not giving enough time to it, but she _was_
afraid of omitting it altogether. She knew that every intermission
would be followed by a relapse, and Harding's state did not admit of any
relapses.
Of course, if time _had_ counted, if the thing was measurable, she would
have been afraid of losing hold of Rodney Lanyon. She held him now by a
single slender thread, and the thread was Bella. She "worked" it
regularly now through Bella. He was bound to be all right as long as
Bella was; for his possibilities of suffering were thus cut off at their
source. Besides, it was the only way to preserve the purity of her
intention, the flawlessness of the crystal.
That was the blessedness of her attitude to Harding Powell. It was
passionless, impersonal. She wanted nothing of Harding Powell except to
help him, and to help Milly, dear little Milly. And never before had she
been given so complete, so overwhelming a sense of having helped. It was
nothing--unless it was a safeguard against vanity--that they didn't
know it, that they persisted in thinking that it was Milly's plan that
worked.
Not that that altogether accounted for it to Harding Powell. He said so
at last to Agatha.
They were returning, he and she, by the edge of the wood at the top of
the steep field after a long walk. He had asked her to go with him--it
was her country--for a good stretch, further than Milly's little feet
could carry her. They stood a moment up there and looked around them.
April was coming on, but the ploughed land at their feet was still bare;
the earth waited. On that side of the valley she was delicately
unfruitful, spent with rearing the fine, thin beauty of the woods. But,
down below, the valley ran over with young grass and poured it to the
river in wave after wave, till the last surge of green rounded over the
water's edge. Rain had fallen in the night, and the river had risen; it
rested there, poised. It was wonderful how a thing so brimming, so
shining, so alive could be so still; still as marsh water, flat to the
flat land.
At that moment, in a flash that came like a shifting of her eyes, the
world she looked at suffered a change.
And yet it did not change. All the appearances of things, their colours,
the movement and the stillness remained as if constant in their rhythm
and their scale; but they were heightened, intensified; they were
carried to a pitch that would have been vehement, vibrant, but that the
stillness as well as the movement was intense. She was not dazzled by it
or confused in any way. Her senses were exalted, adjusted to the pitch.
She would have said now that the earth at her feet had become
insubstantial, but that she knew, in her flash, that what she saw was
the very substance of the visible world; live and subtle as flame; solid
as crystal and as clean. It was the same world, flat field for flat
field and hill for hill; but radiant, vibrant, and, as it were,
infinitely transparent.
Agatha in her moment saw that the whole world brimmed and shone and was
alive with the joy that was its life, joy that flowed flood-high and yet
was still. In every leaf, in every blade of grass, this life was
manifest as a strange, a divine translucence. She was about to point it
out to the man at her side when she remembered that he had eyes for the
beauty of the earth, but no sense of its secret and supernatural light.
Harding Powell denied, he always had denied the supernatural. And when
she turned to him her vision had passed from her.
They must have another tramp some day, he said. He wanted to see more
of this wonderful place. And then he spoke of his recovery.
"It's all very well," he said, "but I can't account for it. Milly says
it's the place."
"It _is_ a wonderful place," said Agatha.
"Not so wonderful as all that. You saw how I was the day after we came.
Well--it can't be the place altogether."
"I rather hope it isn't," Agatha said.
"Do you? What do you think it is, then?"
"I think it's something in you."
"Of course, of course. But what started it? That's what I want to know.
Something's happened. Something queer and spontaneous and unaccountable.
It's--it's uncanny. For, you know, I oughtn't to feel like this. I got
bad news this morning."
"Bad news?"
"Yes. My sister's little girl is very ill. They think it's meningitis.
They're in awful trouble. And _I_--_I_'m feeling like this."
"Don't let it distress you."
"It doesn't distress me. It only puzzles me. That's the odd thing. Of
course, I'm sorry and I'm anxious and all that; but I _feel_ so well."
"You _are_ well. Don't be morbid."
"I haven't told my wife yet. About the child, I mean. I simply daren't.
It'll frighten her. She won't know how I'll take it, and she'll think
it'll make me go all queer again."
He paused and turned to her.
"I say, if she _did_ know how I'm taking it, she'd think _that_ awfully
queer, wouldn't she?" He paused.
"The worst of it is," he said, "I've got to tell her."
"Will you leave it to me?" Agatha said. "I think I can make it all
right."
"How?" he queried.
"Never mind how. I can."
"Well," he assented, "there's hardly anything you can't do."
That was how she came to tell Milly.
She made up her mind to tell her that evening as they sat alone in
Agatha's house. Harding, Milly said, was happy over there with his
books; just as he used to be, only more so. So much more so that she was
a little disturbed about it. She was afraid it wouldn't last. And again
she said it was the place, the wonderful, wonderful place.
"If you want it to last," Agatha said, "don't go on thinking it's the
place."
"Why shouldn't it be? I feel that he's safe here. He's out of it. Things
can't reach him."
"Bad news reached him to-day."
"Aggy--what?" Milly whispered in her fright.
"His sister is very anxious about her little girl."
"What's wrong?"
Agatha repeated what she had heard from Harding Powell.
"Oh----" Milly was dumb for an instant while she thought of her
sister-in-law. Then she cried aloud.
"If the child dies it will make him ill again!"
"No Milly, it won't."
"It will, I tell you. It's always been that sort of thing that does it."
"And supposing there was something that keeps it off?"
"What is there? What is there?"
"I believe there's something. Would you mind awfully if it wasn't the
place?"
"What do you mean, Agatha?" (There was a faint resentment in Milly's
agonised tone.)
It was then that Agatha told her. She made it out for her as far as she
had made it out at all, with the diffidence that a decent attitude
required.
Milly raised doubts which subsided in a kind of awe when Agatha faced
her with the evidence of dates.
"You remember, Milly, the night when he slept."
"I do remember. He said himself it was miraculous."
She meditated.
"And so you think it's that?" she said presently.
"I do indeed. If I dared leave off (I daren't) you'd see for yourself."
"What do you think you've got hold of?"
"I don't know yet."
There was a long deep silence which Milly broke.
"What do you _do_?" she said.
"I don't do anything. It isn't me."
"I see," said Milly. "_I_'ve prayed. You didn't think I hadn't."
"It's not that--not anything you mean by it. And yet it is; only it's
more, much more. I can't explain it. I only know it isn't me."
She was beginning to feel vaguely uncomfortable about having told her.
"And Milly, you mustn't tell him. Promise me you won't tell him."
"No, I won't tell him."
"Because you see, he'd think it was all rot."
"He would," said Milly. "It's the sort of thing he does think rot."
"And that might prevent its working."
Milly smiled faintly. "I haven't the ghost of an idea what 'it' is. But
whatever it is, can you go on doing it?"
"Yes, I think so. You see, it depends rather----"
"It depends on what?"
"Oh, on a lot of things--on your sincerity; on your--your purity. It
depends so much on _that_ that it frightens you lest, perhaps, you
mightn't, after all, be so very pure."
Milly smiled again, a little differently. "Darling, if that's all, I'm
not frightened. Only--supposing--supposing you gave out? You might, you
know."
"_I_ might. But It couldn't. You mustn't think it's me, Milly. Because
if anything happened to me, if I did give out, don't you see how it
would let him down? It's as bad as thinking it's the place."
"Does it matter what it is--or who it is," said Milly, passionately; "as
long as----" Her tears came and stopped her.
Agatha divined the source of Milly's passion.
"Then you don't mind, Milly? You'll let me go on?"
Milly rose; she turned abruptly, holding her head high, so that she
might not spill her tears.
Agatha went with her over the grey field towards the Farm. They paused
at the gate. Milly spoke.
"Are you sure?" she said.
"Certain."
"And you won't leave go?" Her eyes shone towards her friend's in the
twilight. "You _will_ go on?"
"_You_ must go on."
"Ah--how?"
"Believing that he'll be all right."
"Oh, Aggy, he was devoted to Winny. And if the child dies----"