Uncle Alfred wrote a short note from Calais, and on the day when old
Halkett was taken to his grave another letter came to say that Philip
Caniper was dead before the travellers could reach him.
"Then we're poor little orphans, like George," Miriam said, and, with
the peering look which asked how far she might venture, she added, "And,
like George, we have our Mrs. Biggs."
If Helen heard those words, she made no sign. "She'll never be happy
again," she said.
"Well, she never has been happy, and she has never wanted us to be
happy, so nothing's changed."
"What can we do?" Helen went on, and her thoughts alighted on such
practical kindnesses as a perfect state of cleanliness in the house to
which Notya would return, flowers in her bedroom for a welcome, and a
great willingness to do what pleased her. "But we mustn't be too
obvious," she murmured to herself.
"And whatever you do, don't slobber."
"Is it likely?" Helen asked superbly.
The firmest intentions in that direction would have been frustrated by
the sight of Mildred Caniper's cold face, and Helen saw with surprise
that it was almost as it had always been. Her "Well, Helen!" was as calm
as her kiss, and only when she raised her veil was her bitter need of
sleep revealed. Then, too, Helen saw that her features and her fair,
bright colouring had suffered an indefinable blurring, as though, in
some spiritual process, their sharpness had been lost, and while she
looked at her, Helen felt the full weight of responsibility for this
woman settling once more on her own slim shoulders. Yet she noticed that
the shadows which had hung so thickly in the house became thinner as
soon as Mildred Caniper entered it. No doubt they had slipped into the
body which was their home.
"Daniel is here," Helen said, "because it's Saturday and we didn't know
you were coming."
"Well?"
"I thought you might be sorry. And we have asked him to stay the night."
"I promise not to turn him out," Mildred Caniper said, with her humorous
look, and Helen laughed back with a friendliness for which Miriam,
listening in a corner, admired her secretly.
"But I shall want to talk to you this evening when you are all
together," Notya said.
For that ceremony, Miriam wore her customary black with an air which at
once changed the dress into one of mourning; the fashion of her hair was
subdued to match her manners, and Daniel, having a dim notion that he
might unknowingly have offended, asked in his clumsy way what troubled
her.
She edged closer to him and looked up, and he could see that she was
laughing at herself, though that helped him not at all.
"Isn't my father dead? And aren't we going to have a family consultation
in the dining-room? Well, here am I."
"I see."
"What do you see?"
He turned away. "I'm not going to tell you."
"Ah, Daniel dear, do! I know I'm horrid and frivolous and vain, and I
tease you, but I'm very fond of you and I should love--oh, love--you to
tell me something nice. Quick, Daniel! Quick, before the others come
in!"
He was red, and his forehead glistened as he said, "You'll only throw it
up at me."
"Oh, as if I would! I don't care for that expression, but I won't.
Daniel, some one's coming!"
He blew his nose and bent over his book, yet through the trumpeting and
the manipulation of his handkerchief, she heard a word.
"Beautiful," he mumbled.
"Always?"
He nodded, and like a delighted child, she clapped her hands.
Rupert, less debonair than usual, opened the door. "Come on," he said.
"We're all ready. Daniel, stay where you are. We don't want you tumbling
into the conclave."
"All right, all right."
"Got something to keep you quiet?"
"Greek grammar."
"Good man. Now then!" He plunged across the hall as though it were an
icy bath.
In the candle-lighted dining-room, Mildred Caniper sat by a wood fire.
The table barricaded her from the four Canipers who sat and looked at
her with serious eyes, and suddenly she found that she had very little
to say. Those eyes and the four mouths curved, in their different ways,
for passion and resolve, seemed to be making courteous mock of her; yet
three at least of the Canipers were conscious only of pity for her
loneliness behind the shining table.
"After all," she said, trying to be at ease, "there is not much to tell
you; but I felt that, perhaps, you have never understood your father
very well."
"He did not give us the opportunity," Rupert said.
John had his shoulders raised as though he would shield his ears from
family discordances, and he swore inwardly at Rupert for answering back.
What was the good of that? The man was dead, and he might be allowed to
rest. It was strange, he thought, that Rupert, under his charming ways,
had a hardness of which he himself was not capable.
"No," Mildred Caniper was saying, and by her tone she shifted the blame
from her husband to his children. The word acted as a full stop to her
confidences, and there was an uneasy pause.
"But tell us, please," Helen said, leaning forward.
"Oh, please," Rupert added.
Mildred Caniper smiled waveringly, between pride and pain. "I was only
going to tell you a little about him, but now I don't know that I can."
She swallowed hard. "I wanted you to know how gifted he was."
"How?" Rupert asked.
"He wrote," she said, defying their criticism of what they had not seen,
"but he destroyed all he did because he was never satisfied. I found
nothing--anywhere."
Here was a father whom Rupert could understand, and for the first time
he regretted not having known him; but to John it was foolishness for a
man to set his hand to work which was not good enough to stand. He must
content himself with a humbler job.
"He liked only the best," Mildred Caniper said, doing her duty by him,
and the next moment she caught the full shaft of Miriam's unwary glance
which was bright with the conviction that her father's desertion needed
no more explanation.
Mildred Caniper's mind registered the personal affront, and swept on to
its implication as rain sweeps up a valley. The result was darkness, and
as she sat straight and motionless in her chair, she seemed to herself
to struggle, for her soul sighted despair. Long ago, she had taken life
into her hands and used it roughly, and life was taking its slow
revenge. In the shuttered room by the sea, the dead man, deaf to the
words with which she had hurried to him, and here, in this house, the
eyes of Miriam announced her failure, yet to that cold clay and to this
living flesh she had been, and was, a power.
She dropped her hands limply. She was tired of this fictitious power;
she was almost ready to pretend no longer; and with that thought she
found herself being observed by Helen with a tenderness she was not
willing to endure. She spoke abruptly, resigning the pious task of
sweetening Philip Caniper's memory.
"Your father has left you each nearly a hundred pounds a year"--she
glanced at Miriam--"to be handed over when you have reached the age of
twenty-one."
There was a feeling that some one ought to thank him, but no one spoke,
and his children left the room with an unaccountable sense of guilt.
In the safety of the schoolroom Miriam's voice rose bitterly: "Oh, why
aren't we an ordinary family? Why can't we cry for a father who leaves
us nearly a hundred pounds?"
"Try to," Rupert advised. He was smiling queerly to himself.
"Helen, isn't it horrid?"
"No: I don't like crying."
"John, you look as though you're going to refuse the money. I will if
you do. John--"
"Don't be a little fool," he said. "Refuse it! I'm holding on to it with
both hands."
She drooped forlornly, but no one seemed to notice her. Daniel was
absorbed in the Greek grammar, and the others were thinking their own
thoughts.
"I'll go on to the moor," she told herself, and she slipped through the
window in search of what adventure she could find. Outside the garden
she paused and nodded towards the house.
"I don't care," she said. "It's all their fault. And Helen--oh, I could
kill Helen!" Wickedly she tried to mimic Helen's face.
A few minutes later John followed through the window, and he went into
the darkness with a strange excitement. For a time he did not think, for
he was experiencing all the relief of daring to feel freely, and the
effect was at first only a lightening of the heart and feet. Hardly
knowing where he wandered, he found himself on the moor behind Brent
Farm, and there, in the heather, he sat down to light his pipe. He was
puzzled when the match quivered in his hand, and then he became aware
that innumerable pulses were beating in his body, and with that
realization others rushed on him, and he knew how he had held himself in
check for months, and how he desired the touch of Lily Brent's splendid
strength and the sight of her drowsy, threatening eyes. Picturing her,
he could not rest, and he rose and marched aimlessly to and fro. He had
been a fool, he told himself: he had denied his youth and doubted her:
proud in poverty, he should have gone to her and offered all he had, the
love and labour of his body and brain, honouring her in asking her to
take him empty-handed if she would take him at all. Now he must go to
her as though she could be bought at the price of a hundred pounds a
years and the poor thing he had once called his pride, known now for a
mere notion gathered from some source outside himself. He who had
scorned convention had been its easy victim, and he bit hard at his pipe
stem and grunted in disgust.
"We get half our ideas out of books," he said. "No woman would have been
such a fool. They get things at first hand."
He stopped and pointed at the farm. No doubt the woman down there had
read his thoughts and laughed at him, yes, loving him or not, she must
be laughing at him. He laughed himself, then listened for the chance
sound of her distant voice. He could hear footsteps on the cobbled yard,
the clattering of a pail, the shrill stave of a song uttered by the
maid-servant, but no more; and he paced on until the lights in Brent
Farm went out and his own home was darkened.
In the grey of the morning, he went down the track. Mists were lying on
the moor; above them, trees showed like things afloat, and when he
crossed the road he felt that he was breasting silent floods. Through
his thick boots he could feel the cold of ground soaked by a night of
unexpected rain, and against his gaiters the long grasses rid themselves
of their loads of drops and swung back to their places as he passed. He
turned at the sound of footsteps on the road and saw one of Halkett's
men walking through that semblance of grey water. The man gave a nod of
greeting, John raised a hand, and the peace of the waking day was not
shattered by human speech.
In the corner of the meadow near the house, the cows, looming large and
mysterious and unfamiliar, were waiting with hanging heads, and John
stood and looked at them in a kind of dream before he fetched his pail
and stool and settled down to work. His hands were not steady and the
cow was restless at his touch, and when he spoke to her the sound of his
own voice startled him, for the world was leagued with silence and even
the hissing of the milk into the pail had the extravagance of a cascade.
As he worked, he watched the house. No smoke came from its chimneys, but
at length he heard the opening of a door and Lily Brent appeared. He
thought she was like the morning, fresh and young, with all the promise
and danger of a new day, and while he looked at her his hands dropped
idle. She stood on the step and nodded to him before she walked across
the grass.
"You here alone?" she said, and there was a fine frown on her brow.
"Where's the rest of them? If I don't rout them out myself--"
"Don't," he said. "It's early, and it's Sunday morning. They'll come
soon enough." He stood up and rested his folded arms on the cow's back
and looked at Lily.
"She'll have the pail over," she warned him quickly.
He put it out of danger and returned.
"You haven't fetched my stool," she said.
"I forgot it. Wait a bit. I'll get it soon."
"What's the matter with you this morning? We're wasting time."
"Let's waste time," he said. He looked round at the mists floating off
the moor. The light was clearing; the cows had dwindled; the road was no
longer a fairy flood but a highway for the feet of men.
"I want you to pretend it's yesterday," he said.
"What's the matter with you, John?"
"I'm going to tell you. Will you pretend it's yesterday?"
"Yes. It's Saturday morning, a busy day for us. We ought to get to
work."
"Come a step nearer," he said, and she obeyed.
He clutched the hair on the cow's back and spoke in a harsh voice. "Will
you marry me?" he said, frowning and looking her in the eyes. "I've
hardly any money, but I love you. I want you. I didn't know what to do.
If I'd waited till I had as much as you, I might have lost you. I didn't
know what to do, but I thought I'd tell you."
"You needn't explain any more," she said. Her hands, too, fell on the
cow's back, and with a little movement she bade him take them. He
gathered her fingers into his and turned and twisted them.
"I thought--if you wanted me--why should we live on opposite sides of
the way? I can help you--and I love you." He relied on that.
"I love you," he said again.
He heard her ask softly, "Why?"
"Because--because--oh, you're all I want. You're like the earth, like
herbs, like fresh green grass. I've got your hands: give me the rest of
you!"
Her eyes flashed open, he saw and heard her laugh, and their lips met
across the bulky barrier.
"But I want you in my arms," he said, and in the clearing light he held
her there, though the sound of an opening window told them that the farm
was waking.