Miriam took Zebedee to the road and, finding him uninteresting, she gave
him a scant good-night and left him. She sank into the heather and told
herself many times that she did not know what to do. She had wit enough
to realize that she was almost ridiculous in her discontent, but for
that Notya must be blamed, and her own immediate necessity was to find
amusement. In all the vastness of the moor, George Halkett was the only
being who could give her a taste of what she wanted, and she had
quarrelled with George Halkett. She sat and glowered at the white road
cutting the darkness of the moor and she thought it had the cruel look
of a sharp and powerful knife. It seemed to threaten her and, though she
had all youth's faith in her good fortune, at times she was taken by a
panic lest she should turn out to be one of those whom fate left
stranded. That fear was on her now, for there were such women, she knew,
and sometimes they were beautiful! Perhaps they were often beautiful,
and in the long run it might be better to be good, yet she would not
have exchanged her looks for all the virtues in the world.
"Nobody would!" she cried aloud, and, seizing two bunches of heather by
their stalks, she shook them violently.
Nevertheless, she might grow old on the moor and marry Daniel in
despair. She shuddered. No one could love Daniel enough to pardon his
appearance, and amusement would soon change to hatred. She tormented
herself with pictures of their common life. She saw his shapeless
clothes lying about the room she had to share with him; his boots stared
up at her from the hall with much of his own expression. She heard him
talking legally to her through their meals and saw him gazing at her
with his peculiar, timid worship. But if they had children, they would
have Daniel's stamp on them, and then he would grow bold and take all
she gave for granted. Girls and boys alike, they would be big and gaunt
and clumsy, but considerate and good.
She threw her arms across her breast and held herself in a fury of
self-possession. Marriage suddenly appeared to her as an ugly thing even
if it attained to the ideal. No, no! Men were good to play with, to
tease and torture, but she had fixed her limits, and she fixed them with
some astonishment for her own reserve. The discovery of this inherent
coldness had its effect: it bounded her future in a manner which was too
disturbing for much contemplation, but it also gave her a new freedom of
action, assuring her that she need have no fears for her own restraint,
that when her chance came, she might go into the world like a Helen of
Troy who could never be beguiled. In the meantime, though she had
quarrelled with George Halkett, she remembered that she had not forsworn
his company; she had only sworn to punish him for having told the truth,
and she easily pretended not to know that her resentment was no more
than an excuse.
She swung herself to her feet, and not without fear, for the moor had
never been her friend, she walked quickly towards the patch of darkness
made by the larch-trees. "I am being driven to this," she thought
dramatically and with the froth of her mind. She went with her head held
tragically high, but in her throat, where humour met excitement, there
was a little run of laughter.
The trees stood without movement, as though they were weighted by
foreknowledge and there was alarm in the voice of the stream. She
stopped short of the water and stood by the brown path that led down to
the farm, and her feet could feel the softness of many falls of larch
needles. She listened and she could hear nothing but the small noises of
the wood and all round it the moor was like a circle of enchantment
keeping back intruders. There was no wind, but she was cold and her
desire for George had changed its quality. She wanted the presence of
another human being in this stillness; she would have welcomed Mrs.
Samson with a shout and even Notya with a smile, but she found herself
unable to turn and make for home. It would have been like letting danger
loose on her.
"George!" she called loudly, before she knew she was going to do it.
"George, George, George!" Her voice, shriller than its wont, raged at
her predicament.
A dog barked in the hollow and came nearer. She heard George silence
him, and she knew that man and dog were approaching through the wood.
Then her fears vanished and she strolled a few paces from the trees and
stood, an easy mark for George when he appeared.
"Was it you who called?" he asked her from a little distance.
"Me?" Now he was close to her, and she saw his guarded eyes soften
unwillingly.
"Somebody called. Didn't you hear the dog barking? Somebody called
'George!'"
"Perhaps," she ventured in the falsely innocent manner which both
recognized as foolish and unworthy and in which both took a different
delight, "perhaps it was--thought-reading!"
"With the dog?" he sneered.
"You and the dog," she said, joining them deliberately. "It's getting so
dark that I can hardly see your cross face. That's a good thing, because
I want to say thank you for driving Uncle Alfred and Notya to the
station."
"That's all right," he said, and added with a sullen curiosity, "Is he
the one who's going to adopt you?"
"Yes."
"He hasn't done it yet?"
"I'm not sure that I want to go. George, shall I tell you something?
Something charming, a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night--I did
call you!"
"Well," he said after a pause, "I knew that."
"You weren't certain. Tell the truth! Were you certain?"
"No, I was not," he said with the sulky honesty which should have moved
her.
"And had you been thinking of me?"
He would not answer that.
"I shan't be hurt," she said, swaying from foot to foot, "because I
know!" Against the invading blackness her face and teeth gleamed
clearly.
"You're like a black cat!" he burst out, in forgetfulness of himself.
"A witch's cat!"
"A witch."
"Do you think witches are ever afraid? Only when they see the cross,
isn't it? But I was, George, when I called out."
"What of?"
"I--don't know. The quietness and the dark."
He gave a short laugh which tried to conceal his pleasure in her
weakness.
"Aren't you ever?"
"Can't remember it."
"Not of anything?"
"No."
"How--stupid of you."
"Stupid?"
"Yes, when the world's full of things you don't understand."
"But nothing happens."
That was her own complaint, but from him the words came in the security
of content. "But tonight--" she began, shivered lightly and raised her
hand. "What's that?"
He lifted his head; the dog, sitting at his feet, had cocked his ears.
"Nothing."
"I heard something."
Hardly heeded, he put his strong fingers on her wrist and grasped it.
His voice was rich and soft. "What's the matter with you tonight?"
Unmistakably now, a sound came from the hollow; not, this time, the
raging of old Halkett, but a woman's cry for help, clear and insistent.
"It must be my father," he said, and his hand fell away from Miriam's;
but for a few seconds he stared at her as though she could tell him what
had happened. Then he went after the dog in his swift passage through
the trees, while, urged by an instinct to help and a need for George's
solid company, Miriam followed. She was soon outstripped, so that her
descent was made alone. Twigs crackled under her feet, the ranks of
trees seemed to rush past her as she went, and, with the return of
self-remembrance, she knew that this was how she had felt long ago when
she read fairy stories about forests and enchanted castles.
Yet she would have been less alarmed at the sight of a moated,
loop-holed pile than at this of Halkett's farm, a white-washed
homestead, with light beaming from a window on the ground floor, the
whole encompassed by a merely mortal possibility of strange events. Her
impulse had been to rush into the house, but she stood still, feeling
the presence of the trees like a thick curtain shutting away the outer,
upper world and, having paused, she found that she could not pursue her
course.
"I must go back," she whispered. After all, this was not her affair.
A murmur of voices came from the lighted room; the movement of a horse
in the stables was the friendliest sound she had ever heard.
Reluctantly, for she was alive with curiosity, she turned to go when a
step rang on the flagged passage of the farm and George stood in the
doorway. He beckoned and met her half way across the yard.
"He's gone," he said, and he looked dazed. "Can't believe it," he
muttered.
"Oh!" she said under her breath. "Oh, dear!" It was her turn to put a
hand on him, for she was afraid of death.
"Can't believe it," he said again, and taking her with him, he went as
though he were drawn, towards the lighted windows and looked in.
"Yes," he said, assuring himself that this thing really was.
Fascinated by the steadfastness of his gaze, Miriam looked too and drew
back with a muffled cry. She had seen the old man rigid on a red velvet
sofa, his head on a yellow cushion, his grey hair in some way coarsened
by the state of death, his limbs clad in the garments of every day and
strangely insulted by them. Near him, with her back to the window and
straight and stiff as a sentinel, sat Mrs. Biggs, the housekeeper, the
knob of her smooth black hair defying destiny.
Still whispering, Miriam begged, "George, don't look any more." Her
horror was as much for the immobile woman as for the dead man. "Come
away, before she turns round. I want to go home. George--I'm sorry."
"Yes," he said.
"Good-night."
"Good-night," he answered, and she saw him look through the window
again.
Going across the moor, she cried feebly. She wished old Halkett had not
been lying on the red sofa. He should have died in the big kitchen of
his fathers, or upstairs in a great bed, not in that commonly-furnished
little sitting-room where the work-basket of Mrs. Biggs kept company
with a cheap china lamp and photographs in frames. She wondered how they
would manage to undress him, and for how long Mrs. Biggs would sit
beside him like a fate, a fate in a red blouse and a brown skirt.
Perhaps even now they were pulling off his clothes. Terrible for George
to have to do that, she thought, yet it seemed natural enough work for
Mrs. Biggs, with her hard mouth and cold eyes, and no doubt she had
often put him to bed in the lusty days of his carousals. Perhaps the
dead could really see from under their stiff eyelids, and old Halkett
would laugh at the difficulty with which they disrobed him for this last
time. Perhaps he had been watching when George and she looked through
the window. Until now she had never seen him when he did not leer at
her, and she felt that he must still be leering under the mask of death.
The taint of what she had looked on hung heavily about her, and the
fresh air of the moor could not clear it away. Crying still, in little
whimpers which consoled her, she stole through the garden and the house
to the beautiful solitude of Phoebe's room and the cleanliness of
linen sheets.
Supperless she lay there, by turn welcoming and rejecting the pictures
which appeared on the dark wall of her mind, and when Helen knocked on
the door she was not bidden to enter.
"Don't you want anything to eat?" she called.
"No."
"What's the matter?"
"I--feel sick."
"Then mayn't I come in and look after you?" Helen asked in a voice
which impelled Miriam to bark an angry negative.
It was Helen, who liked to help people, to whom this thing should have
happened, yet Miriam possessed her experience jealously; it had broken
into the monotony of life and to that extent she was grateful.
"And I must be very kind to George," she decided before she went to
sleep.
She dropped her white eyelids the next morning when John gave the news
of the old man's death, for she did not want to betray her knowledge.
"Oh!" Helen said, and Rupert remarked lightly and watchfully that
Zebedee would now be less often on the moor.
"There's still the funeral," Helen said oddly.
"And let's hope they'll bury him soon," John added, and so finished with
old Halkett.
Helen was still thoughtful. "Perhaps we ought to go and be nice to
George. There won't be anything we can do, but we might ask him if there
is."
"The less you have to do with George--" John began, and Miriam
interrupted him, clicking her tongue.
"Helen, Helen, haven't you heard about George and Lily Brent? A dreadful
story. Ask John."
"If you're not careful," he said menacingly, "I'll do what she did to
him."
"No, no, you won't, Johnny; for, in spite of everything, you're a little
gentleman."
"Oh, do be quiet, you two! Rupert's trying to say something."
"Send a note of condolence to George," he advised, "and I'll go to the
funeral. It's no good asking John to do it. He wouldn't shine. Heavens!
it's late, and I haven't cleaned the boots!"
The boys went about their business and left the girls to theirs.
"I don't think a note is enough for George," Helen said as she rolled up
her sleeves. "A man without a mother or a father, and only a Mrs.
Biggs!"
"H'm," Miriam commented. "Except for Mrs. Biggs, I don't know that he's
to be pitied. Still, I'm quite willing to be agreeable, unless you mean
to go and knock at the farm door?"
"No. Couldn't we catch him somewhere!"
"Yes," Miriam said too promptly. She made a cautious pause. "He won't be
riding on the moor today, because there'll be undertakers and things. If
we went down the road--or shall I go alone?"
"Both of us--to represent the family. And we can say we're sorry--"
"But we're not."
"Yes, in a way. Sorry he hadn't a nicer father to be sorry for."
"What about ours?" Miriam asked.
"He may be dead, too, by now."
"And that will matter less to us than old Halkett does to George."
"But the great thing," Helen said, "is to have people one can't be
ashamed of."
"Oh!"
"I know; but it's true. And our father would always look nice and be
polite, even when he was dying. Old Halkett--"
"Don't talk about him! Come along. We'll catch George on his way to that
shop with the pictures of hearses in the window. If I die before you,
don't put me in one of those black carts."
"I don't think I could put you into anything," Helen said with simple
fervour.
"Then you'd have to mummify me and stick me up in the hall beside the
grandfather clock, and you'd think the ticking was my heart."
"There are hearts beating all over the house now," Helen said. "But this
is not meeting George," she added, and rolled her sleeves down again.
They waylaid him successfully where the road met Halkett's lane, and
from his horse he looked down on the two upturned faces.
"We've heard about Mr. Halkett," Helen said, gazing with friendliness
and without embarrassment into his eyes. "I suppose there's nothing we
can do?"
"Nothing, thanks."
"And Rupert said he would like to go to the funeral, if he may."
"Thank you. I'll let him know about it." He glanced at Miriam and
hesitated, yet when he spoke it was in a franker voice than the one she
was used to hear. "I'm afraid you were upset last night."
Her answering look made a pact between them. "We didn't hear about it
till this morning."
He nodded, watching her through his thick lashes. He gave her a strong
impression that he was despising her a little, and she saw him look from
her to Helen as though he made comparisons. Indeed, at that moment, he
thought that these sisters were like thirst and the means to quench it,
like heat and shade; and a sudden restlessness made him shift in his
seat.
"I expect you have a lot to do," Helen said. "Good-bye."
"Good-bye. And thank you," he said gruffly, and caught the flash of
Miriam's smile as he turned.
Helen stood looking after him. "Poor George!" she said. "I rather like
him. I wish he wouldn't drink."
"Exaggerated stories," Miriam remarked neatly.
"Oh, yes, but he looks as if he had never had a chance of being nice."
"I don't believe he has ever wanted one," Miriam said.