He had gone. She gathered herself together and went across the field to
meet the Powells as if nothing had happened.
Milly and her husband were standing at the gate of the Farm. They were
watching; yes, they were watching Rodney Lanyon as he crossed the river
by the Farm bridge which led up the hill by the field path that slanted
to the farther and western end of the wood. Their attitude showed that
they were interested in his brief appearance on the scene, and that they
wondered what he had been doing there. And as she approached them she
was aware of something cold, ominous, and inimical, that came from
them, and set towards her and passed by. Her sense of it only lasted for
a second, and was gone so completely that she could hardly realise that
she had ever felt it.
For they were charming to her. Harding, indeed, was more perfect in his
beautiful quality than ever. There was something about him moreover that
she had not been prepared for, something strange and pathetic, humble
almost and appealing. She saw it in his eyes, his large, dark, wild
animal eyes, chiefly. But it was a look that claimed as much as it
deprecated; that assumed between them some unspoken communion and
understanding. With all its pathos it was a look that frightened her.
Neither he nor his wife said a word about Rodney Lanyon. She was not
even sure, now, that they had recognised him.
They stayed with her all that afternoon; for their time, they said, was
getting short; and when, about six o'clock, Milly got up to go she took
Agatha aside and said that, if Agatha didn't mind, she would leave
Harding with her for a little while. She knew he wanted to talk to her.
Agatha proposed that they should walk up the hill through the wood. They
went in a curious silence and constraint; and it was not until they had
got into the wood and were shut up in it together that he spoke.
"I think my wife told you that I had something to say to you?"
"Yes, Harding," she said; "what is it?"
"Well, it's this--first of all I want to thank you. I know what you're
doing for me."
"I'm sorry. I didn't want you to know. I thought Milly wasn't going to
tell you."
"She didn't tell me."
Agatha said nothing. She was bound to accept his statement. Of course,
he must have known that Milly had broken her word, and he was trying to
shield her.
"I mean," he went on, "that whether she told me or not, it's no matter.
I knew."
"You--knew?"
"I knew that something was happening, and I knew that it wasn't the
place. Places never make any difference. I only go to 'em because Milly
thinks they do. Besides, if it came to that, this place--from my
peculiar point of view, mind you--was simply beastly. I couldn't have
stood another night of it."
"Well."
"Well, the thing went; and I got all right. And the queer part of it is
that I felt as if you were in it somehow, as if you'd done something. I
half hoped you might say something, but you never did."
"One ought not to speak about these things, Harding. And I told you I
didn't want you to know."
"I didn't know what you did. I don't know now, though Milly tried to
tell me. But I felt you. I felt you all the time."
"It was not I you felt. I implore you not to think it was."
"What can I think?"
"Think as I do; think--think----" She stopped herself. She was aware of
the futility of her charge to this man who denied, who always had
denied, the supernatural.
"It isn't a question of thinking," she said at last.
"Of believing, then? Are you going to tell me to believe?"
"No; it isn't believing either. It's knowing. Either you know it or you
don't know, though you may come to know. But whatever you think, you
mustn't think it's me."
"I rather like to. Why shouldn't I?"
She turned on him her grave white face, and he noticed a curious
expression there as of incipient terror.
"Because you might do some great harm either to yourself or----"
His delicate, sceptical eyebrows questioned her.
"Or me."
"You?" he murmured gently, pitifully almost.
"Yes, me. Or even--well, one doesn't quite know where the harm might
end. If I could only make you take another view. I tried to make you--to
work it that way--so that you might find the secret and do it for
yourself."
"I can't do anything for myself. But, Agatha, I'll take any view you
like of it, so long as you'll keep on at me."
"Of course I'll keep on."
At that he stopped suddenly in his path, and faced her.
"I say, you know, it isn't hurting you, is it?"