It was a bitter winter, with more rain than snow, more snow than
sunshine, and it seemed to Helen that half her life was spent in
watching for Zebedee's figure bent against the storm as he drove up the
road, while Mildred Caniper lay slackly in her bed. She no longer stared
at the ceiling, for though her body had collapsed, her will had only
wavered, and it was righting itself slowly, and the old thoughts which
had been hunting her for years had not yet overcome her. Like hounds,
they bayed behind, and some day their breath would be on her neck, their
teeth in her flesh, and she would fall to them. This was the threat in
the sound which reached her, soft or loud, as bells are heard in the
wind, and in the meantime she steadied herself with varying arguments.
Said one of these, "The past is over," yet she saw the whole future of
these Canipers as the product of her acts. Reason, unsubdued, refused to
allow her so much power, and she gave in; but she knew that if good
befell the children she could claim no credit; if evil, she would take
all the blame. There remained the comfortable assurance that she had
done her best, and then Miriam's face mocked her as it peeped furtively
round the bedroom door. Thus she was brought back to her starting place,
and finding the circle a giddy one, she determined to travel on it no
more, and with her old rigidity, she kept this resolve. It was, however,
less difficult than it would once have been, for her mind was weary and
glad of an excuse to take the easiest path. She lay in bed according to
Zebedee's bidding, hardly moving under the clothes, and listening to the
noises in the house. She was astonished by their number and
significance. All through the night, cooling coals ticked in the grate
or dropped on to the hearth; sometimes a mouse scratched or cheeped in
the walls, and on the landing there were movements for which Helen could
have accounted: Mr. Pinderwell, more conscious of his loss in the
darkness, and unaware that his children had taken form, was moving from
door to door and scraping his hands across the panels. Often the wind
howled dolorously round the house while rain slashed furiously at the
windows, and there were stealthy nights when snow wound a white muffler
against the noises of the world. The clock in the hall sent out clear
messages as to the passing of man's division of time, and at length
there came the dawn, aged and eternally young, certain of itself, with a
grey amusement for man's devices. Before that, Helen had opened her door
and gone in soft slippers to light the kitchen fire, and presently
Rupert was heard to whistle as he dressed. Meanwhile, as though it
looked for something, the light spread itself in Mildred Caniper's room
and she attuned her ears for the different noises of the day. There was
Miriam's laughter, more frequent than it had been before her stepmother
was tied to bed, and provocative of a wry smile from the invalid; there
was her farewell shout to Rupert when he took the road, her husky
singing as she worked about the house. Occasionally Mildred heard the
stormy sound of Mrs. Samson's breathing as she polished the landing
floor, or her voice raised in an anecdote too good to keep. Brooms
knocked against the woodwork or swished on the bare floors, and still
the clock, hardly noticed now, let out its warning that human life is
short, or as it might be, over long. Later, but not on every day of the
week, the jingle of a bit, the turning of wheels, rose to Mildred's
window, telling her that the doctor had arrived, and though she had a
grudge against all who saw her incapacitated, she found herself looking
forward to his visits. He did not smile too much, nor stay too long,
though it was remarkable that his leave-taking of her was not
immediately followed by the renewed jingling of the bit. She was sure
her condition did not call for prolonged discussion and, as she
remembered Miriam who was free to come and go unchecked, to laugh away a
man's wits, as her mother had done before her, Mildred Caniper grew hot
and restless: she felt that she must get up and resume control, yet she
knew that it would never be hers in full measure again, and while, in a
rare, false moment, she pretended that the protection of Zebedee was her
aim, truth stared at her with the reminder that the legacy of her old
envy of the mother was this desire to thwart the daughter.
After that, her thoughts were long and bitter, and their signs were on
her face when Helen returned.
"What have you been doing?" Helen demanded, for she no longer had any
awe of Mildred Caniper, a woman who had been helpless in her hands.
"Please don't be ridiculous, Helen."
"I'm not."
"This absurd air of authority--"
"But you look--"
"We won't discuss how I look. Where is Miriam?"
"I don't know. Yes, I do. She went to Brent Farm to get some cream.
Zeb--He says you're to have cream."
Mildred made a movement which was meant to express baffled patience. "I
have tried to persuade you not to use pronouns instead of proper names.
Can't you hear how vulgar it is?"
"Dr. Mackenzie wishes you to have cream," Helen said meekly.
"I do not need cream, and his visits are becoming quite unnecessary."
"So he said today."
"Oh."
"But I," Helen said, smiling to herself, "wish him to come."
"And no doubt the discussion of what primarily concerns me is what kept
Dr. Mackenzie so long this afternoon."
"How did you know he stayed?"
"My good Helen, though I am in bed, I am neither deaf nor an imbecile."
"Oh, I know," Helen said with a seriousness which might as well have
been mockery as stupidity. "I gave him--I gave Dr. Mackenzie tea. He
was driving further, and it's such a stormy day."
"Quite right. He looks overworked--ill. I don't suppose he is properly
cared for."
"He has a cough. He says he often gets one," Helen almost pleaded, and
she went, at the first opportunity, from the room.
She encountered Jane's solemn and sympathetic stare. "I can't have
neglected him, can I?" she asked of the little girl in the pinafore, and
the shadows on the landing once more became alive with the unknown. "He
does cough a lot, Jane, but he says it's nothing, and he tells the
truth." She added involuntarily and with her hand at her throat, "I've
been so happy," and immediately the words buzzed round her with menace.
She should not have said that; it was a thing hardly to be thought, and
she had betrayed her secret, but it comforted her to remember that this
was nearly the end of January, and before long the Easter fires would
burn again and she could pray.
Between the present and that one hour in the year when she might ask for
help, Zebedee's cough persisted and grew worse. He had to own to a
weakness of the lungs; he suffered every winter, more or less, and
there had been one which had driven him to warmer climes.
"And you never told me that before!" she cried, with her hand in that
tell-tale position at her throat.
"My dear, there has been no time to tell you anything. There hasn't been
one day when we could be lavish. We've counted seconds. Would I talk
about my lungs?"
"Perhaps we don't really know each other," Helen said, hoping he would
not intercept this hostage she was offering to fortune, and she looked
at him under her raised brows, and smiled a little, tempting him.
"We don't," he said firmly, and she drew a breath. "We only know we want
each other, and all the rest of our lives is to be the adventure of
finding each other out."
"But I'm not adventurous," she said.
"Oh, you'll like it," he assured her, smiling with his wonderfully white
teeth and still more with the little lines round his eyes. He looked at
her with that practical air of adoration which was as precious to her as
his rare caress; she felt doubly honoured because, in his love-making,
he preserved a humour which did not disguise his worship of her. "You'll
like it," he said cheerfully. "Why don't you marry me now and take care
of me?"
She made a gesture towards the upper room. "How can I?"
"No, you can't. Not," he added, "so much on that account, as simply
because you can't. I'd rather wait a few months more--"
"You must," she said, and faintly irritated him. She looked at her
clasped hands. "Zebedee, do you feel you want to be taken care of?" Her
voice was anxious and, though he divined how much was balanced on his
answer, he would not adjust it nicely.
"Not exactly," he said honestly, and he saw a light of relief and a
shadow of disappointment chase each other on her face.
"After all, I think I do know you rather well," he murmured, as he took
her by the shoulders. "Do you understand what I am doing?"
"You're telling me the truth."
"And at what a cost?"
She nodded. "But you couldn't help telling me the truth."
"And if I bemoaned my loneliness, how my collars get lost in the wash,
how tired I am of Eliza's cooking and her face, how bad my cough is,
then you'd let me carry you away?"
"I might. Zebedee--are those things true, too?"
"Not particularly."
"And your cough isn't bad?"
He hesitated. "It is rather bad."
"And you're a doctor!"
"But my dear, darling, love--I've no control over the weather."
"You ought to go away," she said in a low voice.
"I hope it won't come to that," he said.
It was Rupert who asked her a week later if she had jilted Zebedee.
"Why?" she asked quickly.
"He's ill, woman."
"I know."
"But really ill. You ought to send him away until the spring."
Her lips moved for a few seconds before she uttered "Yes," and after
that sound she was mute under the double fear of keeping him and parting
from him, but, since to let him go would give her the greater pain, it
was the lesser fear, and it might be that the powers who were always
waiting near to demand a price would, in this manner, let her get her
paying done. She welcomed the chance of paying in advance and she kept
silence while she strengthened herself to do it bravely.
Because she did not speak, Rupert elaborated. "When Zebedee loses his
temper, there's something wrong."
"Has he done that?"
"Daniel daren't speak to him."
"He never speaks to people: he expounds."
"True; but your young man was distinctly short with me, even me,
yesterday. Listen to your worldly brother, Helen. Why don't you marry
him and take him into the sun? It's shining somewhere, one supposes."
"I can't."
"Why not? There's Miriam."
"What good is she?"
"You never give her a chance. You're one of those self-sacrificing,
selfish people who stunt other people's growth. It's like not letting a
baby learn to walk for fear it falls and hurts itself, or tumbles into
the best flower-beds and ruins 'em. Have you ever thought of that?"
"But she's happier than she used to be," Helen said and smiled as though
nothing more were needed. "And soon she will be going away. She won't
stay after she is twenty-one."
"D'you think that fairy-tale is going to come true?"
"Oh, yes. She always does what she wants, you know. And she is counting
on Uncle Alfred, though she says she isn't. She had a letter from him
the other day."
"And when she has gone, what are you going to do?"
"I don't know what I'm going to do."
"Things won't be easier for you then. You'd better face that."
"But she'll be better--Notya will be better."
"And you'll marry Zebedee."
"I don't like saying what I'm going to do."
Rupert's dark eyes had a hard, bright light. "Are you supposed to love
that unfortunate man? Look here, you're not going to be tied to Notya
all her life. Zebedee and I won't have it."
"What's going to happen to her, then?"
"Bless the child! She's grown up. She can look after herself."
"But I can't leave just you and her in this house together."
He said in rather a strained voice, "I shan't be here. The bank's
sending me to the new branch."
"Oh!" Helen said.
"I'm sorry about it. I tried not to seem efficient, but there's
something about me--charm, I think. They must have noticed how I talk to
the old ladies who don't know how to make out their cheques. So they're
sending me, but I don't know that I ought to leave you all."
"Of course you must."
"I can come home on Saturdays."
"Yes. And Notya's better, and John is near. Why shouldn't you go?"
"Because your face fell."
"It's only that everybody's going. It seems like the end of things." She
pictured the house without Rupert and she had a sense of desolation, for
no one would whistle on the track at night and make the house warmer and
more beautiful with his entrance; there would be no one to look up from
his book with unfailing readiness to listen to everything and understand
it; no one to say pleasant things which made her happy.
"Why," she said, plumbing the depths of loss, "there'll be no one to get
up early for!"
"Ah, it's Miriam who'll feel that!" he said.
"And even Daniel won't come any more. He's tired of Miriam's
foolishness."
"To tell you a secret, he's in love with some one else. But he has no
luck. No wonder! If you could be married to him for ten years before you
married him at all--"
"I don't know," Helen said thoughtfully. "Those funny men--" She did not
finish her thought. "It will be queer without you," and after a pause
she added the one word, "lonely."
It was strange that Miriam, whom she loved best, should never present
herself to Helen's mind as a companion: the sisters, indeed, rarely
spoke together except to argue some domestic point, to scold each other,
or to tease, yet each was conscious of the other's admiration, though
Helen looked on Miriam as a pretty ornament or toy, and Miriam gazed
dubiously at what she called the piety of the other.
"Yes, lonely," she said, but in her heart she was glad that her payment
should be great, and she said loudly, as though she recited her creed:
"I wouldn't change anything. I believe in the things that happen."
"May they reward you!" he said solemnly.
"When will you have to go?"
"I'm not sure. Pretty soon. Look here, my dear, you three lone women
ought to have a dog to take man's place as your natural protector--and
so on."
"Have you told Zebedee you are going?"
"Yesterday."
"Then he will be getting one."
"H'm. He seems to be a satisfactory lover."
"He is, you know."
"Thank God for him."
"Would you?" Helen said. She had a practical as well as a superstitious
distaste for offering thanks for benefits not actually received, and
also a disbelief in the present certainty of her possession, but she
took hope. John had gone, Rupert was going, of her own will she would
send Zebedee away, and then surely the powers would be appeased, and if
she suffered enough from loneliness, from dread of seeing Mildred
Caniper ill again, of never getting her lover back, the rulers of her
life might be willing, at the end, to let her have Zebedee and the
shining house--the shining house which lately had taken firmer shape,
and stood squarely back from the road, with a little copse of trees
rising behind.