While these things happened at Halkett's Farm, Helen sat sewing in the
schoolroom. Mildred Caniper had been in bed all day, as often happened
now, and there Miriam was supposed to be, on account of that strange
giddiness of hers.
Helen worked at the fashioning of a dress in which Zebedee should think
her fair and the lamplight shone on the pale grey stuff strewing the
table and brought sparks from the diamonds on her hand: the clipping of
the scissors made a cheerful sound, and Jim, as he sat before the fire,
looked up at her sometimes with wise and friendly eyes.
It was late when she began to be oppressed by the quiet of the house. It
was as though some one had just stopped whispering and would begin
again. She felt that she was watched by the unseen, and the loudness of
her own movements shocked her, but she worked on, using the scissors
stealthily and starting if a coal fell in the grate.
Surely there was some one standing outside the door? She changed her
seat to face it. Surely eyes were peering through the window? She rose
and drew the curtains with a suddenness that made Jim growl.
"Be quiet, dog!" She stood and listened. The night held its breath, the
stored impressions of the old house took shape and drew close and,
though they did not speak, their silent pressure was full of urging,
ominous and discreet.
She folded her work and put out the light, told Jim to follow her up the
stairs, and trod them quietly. It was comforting to see the Pinderwells
on the landing, but she had no time for speech with them. She was
wondering if death had come and filled the house with this sense of
presences, but when she bent over Mildred Caniper's bed she found her
sleeping steadily.
On the landing, she let out a long breath. "Oh, Jane, I'm thankful."
She went into Miriam's room and saw that the bed was empty and the
window wide. She looked out, and there was a chair on the scullery roof
and, as she leant, trembling, against the sill, she heard the note of
the hall clock striking eleven. That was a late hour for the people of
the moor, and she must hasten. She was sure that the house had warned
her, and, gathering her wits, she posted Jim at the bottom of the stairs
and ran out, calling as she ran. She had no answer. The lights of Brent
Farm were all out and she went in a dark, immobile world. There was no
wind to stir the branches of the thorn-bushes, the heather did not move
unless she pressed it, and her voice floated to the sky where there were
no stars. Then the heavier shade of the larches closed on her, and when
she left them and fronted Halkett's Farm, there was one square of light,
high up, at the further end, to splash a drop of gold into the hollow.
Towards that light Helen moved as through thick black water. She carried
her slippers in her hand and felt her feet moulded to the cobbles as she
crossed the yard and stood below the open window. She listened there,
and for a little while she thought her fears were foolish: she heard no
more than slight human stirrings and the sound of liquid falling into a
glass. Then there came Miriam's voice, loud and high, cutting the
stillness.
"I'll never promise!"
There was another silence that held hours in its black hands.
"No? Well, I don't know that I care. But you're not going home. When the
morning comes perhaps it'll be you begging me for a promise! Think it
over. No hurry. There's all night." George was speaking slowly, saying
each word as if he loved it. "And you're going to sit on my knee, now,
and read this letter to me. Come."
Helen heard no more. She rushed to the front door and found it locked,
and wasted precious seconds in shaking it before she abandoned caution
and rushed noisily round the house where the kitchen door luckily
yielded to her hand. Through a narrow passage and up narrow stairs she
blundered, involved in ignorance and darkness, until a streak of light
ran across her path and she almost fell into a room where Miriam stood
with her back against the wall. She had the look of one who has been
tortured without uttering a sound and, in the strain of her dark head
against the flowered wall, there was a determination not to plead.
Her face crumpled like paper at the sight of Helen.
"Oh," she said, smiling foolishly, "what--a good thing--you came."
She slipped as a picture falls, close to the wall, and there was hardly
a thud as her body met the floor.
Helen did not stir: she looked at Miriam and at Halkett, who was sitting
on the bed, and on him her gaze rested. His answered it, and while, for
a moment, she saw the man beyond the beast, his life was enlightened by
what was rare in her, and his mind, softened by passion to the
consistency of clay, was stamped with the picture of her as she stood
and looked at him. Vaguely, with uneasiness and dislike, he understood
her value; it was something remote as heaven and less desired, yet it
strengthened his sensual scorn of Miriam, and rising, he went and made a
hateful gesture over her. Some exclamation came from him, and he stooped
to pick her up and slake his thirst for kisses. He wanted to beat her
about the face before he cast her out.
"Don't touch her!" Helen said in tones so quiet that he hesitated. "She
has only fainted."
He laughed at that. "Don't think I'm worrying, but she's mine, and I'll
do what I like with her."
He drew up her limp body and held it until it seemed to be merged into
his own, and though his mouth was close on hers, he did not kiss it. His
lips moved fast, but no words came, and he lowered her slowly and
shakily to the floor. He turned to Helen, and she saw that all the
colour had left his face.
"Go out!" he said, and pointed.
The clasp of her hands tightened, and while she looked up at him, she
prayed vehemently. "O God, God," she thought, "let me save her. O God,
what shall I do? O God, God, God!"
"Go out," he said. "I'm going to keep her here till she'll be glad to be
my wife, and then it'll be my turn to laugh. She can go home in the
morning."
"I want to sit down," Helen said.
She looked for a chair and sat on it, and he dropped to the bed, which
gave out a loud groaning sound. He hid his face in his hands and rocked
himself to and fro.
"She's tortured me," he muttered, and glared angrily at Helen.
She rose and went to him, saying, "Yes, but she's only a little girl.
You must remember that. And you're a man."
"Yes, by God!" he swore.
He raised both hands. "Get out of this!" he shouted. "She shall stay
here tonight." The hands went to Helen's shoulders and forced her to her
knees. "D'ye hear? I tell you she's made me mad!"
Helen was more pitiful than afraid. She hardly knew what she did, but
she thought God was in the room.
"George, I'll do anything in the world for you if you'll give her up.
Anything. You couldn't be so wicked. George, be quick. Before she wakes.
Shan't we carry her out now? Shan't we?" She forgot his manhood, and saw
him only as a big animal that might spring and must be soothed. "Let us
do that before she knows. George--"
He looked half stupefied as he said childishly, "But I swore I'd have
her, and I want her."
"But you don't love her. No, no, you don't." She laid a hand on his
knee. "Why, you've known us all our lives."
"Ah!" He sprang up and past her and the spell of the soft hands and
voice was broken. He sneered at her. "You thought you'd done it that
time!"
"Yes," she said sadly, and put herself between him and Miriam. With her
chin on her clasped hands, and her steady eyes, she seemed to be the
thing he had always wanted, for the lack of which he had suffered, been
tormented.
"George," she said, "I'll give you everything I have--"
He caught his breath. "Yourself?" he asked on an inspiration that held
him astonished, eager and translated.
She looked up as if she had been blinded, then stiffly she moved her
head. "What do you mean?"
"Give me yourself. Oh, I've been mad tonight--for days--she made me." He
pointed to the limp and gracious figure on the floor and leaned against
the bed-rail. "Mad! And you, all the time, out there on the moor against
the sky. Helen, promise!"
Her voice had no expression when she said, "I promised anything you
asked for. Bring some water."
But he still stood, dazed and trembling.
"Bring some water," she said again.
He spilt it as he carried it. "Why didn't I see before? I did see
before. On the moor, I watched for you You're beautiful." His voice
sank. "You're good."
She was not listening to him. She dabbled water on Miriam's brow and
lips and chafed her hands, but still she lay as if she were glad to
sleep.
"Poor little thing!" Helen said deeply and half turned her head. "Some
of your brandy," she commanded. "She is so cold."
"I'll take her to the kitchen."
"Is that woman in the house?" she asked sharply.
"She's in bed, I suppose."
"She must have heard--she must have known--and she didn't help!"
He put a hand to his forehead. "No, she didn't help. I'd meant to give
her up, and then--I found her here, and I'd been drinking."
"Don't tell me! Don't tell me!" She twisted her hands together. "George,
don't make me hate you."
"No," he said with a strange meekness. "Shall I take her to the kitchen?
It'll be warm there, and the fire won't be out. I'll carry her."
"But I don't like you to touch her," Helen stated with a simplicity that
had its fierceness.
"It's just as if she's dead," he said in a low voice, and at Helen's
frightened gasp, he added--"I mean for me."
"Take her," she said, and when he had obeyed she sat on her heels and
stared at nothing. For her, a mist was in the room, but through it there
loomed the horrid familiarity of Halkett's bed, his washstand and a row
of boots. Why was she here? What had she done? She heard him asking
gently, "Aren't you coming?" and she remembered. She had promised to
marry George because Miriam had been lying on the floor, because, years
ago, the woman lying alone in Pinderwell House had brought the Canipers
to the moor where George lived and was brutal and was going to marry
her. But it could not be true, for, in some golden past, before this
ugliness fell between her and beauty, she had promised to marry Zebedee.
She held her head to think. No, of course she had given him no promise.
They had come together like birds, like bees to flowers--
"Aren't you coming?" Halkett asked again.
She rose. Yes, here was her promised man. She had bought Miriam with a
price. She stumbled after him down the stairs.
In the warmth of the kitchen, by the light of a glowing fire and a
single candle, Miriam's eyelids fluttered and lay back.
"It's all right, darling," Helen said. "You're quite safe. You're with
Helen, with Helen, dear."
Behind Miriam's eyes, thoughts like butterflies with wet wings were
struggling to be free.
"Something happened. It was George. Has he gone away?"
"He isn't going to hurt you. He wants to take you home."
"Don't let him. We'll go together, Helen. Soon. Not yet. Take care of
me. Don't leave me." She started up. "Helen! I didn't say I'd marry him.
I wouldn't. Helen, I know I didn't!"
"You didn't, you didn't. He knows. He frightened you because you teased
him so. He just frightened you. He's here--not angry. Look!"
He nodded at her clumsily.
"You see?"
"Yes. I'm glad. I'm sorry, George."
"It doesn't matter," he said.
He looked at Helen and she looked full at him and she knew, when he
turned to Miriam, that he still watched over herself. She could
recognize the tenderness and wonder in his eyes, but she could not
understand how they had found a place there, ousting greed and anger
for her sake, how his molten senses had taken an imprint of her to
instruct his mind.
"Can you come now?" she said.
"Yes." Miriam stood up and laughed unsteadily. "How queer I feel!
George--"
"It's all right," he said. "I'll take you home."
"But we're not afraid," Helen said. "There's nothing to be afraid of on
the moor." All possibility of fear had gone: her dread had been for some
uncertain thing that was to come, and now she knew the evil and found in
it something almost as still as rest.
In the passage, he separated her from Miriam. "I want to speak to you."
"Yes. Be careful."
"Tonight. In your garden. I'll wait there. Come to me. Promise that,
too."
"Oh, yes, yes," she said. "That, too."
He watched them go across the yard, their heads bent towards each other,
and Helen's pale arm like a streak on Miriam's dress. He heard their
footsteps and the shifting of a horse in the stables, and a mingled
smell of manure and early flowers crept up to him. The slim figures were
now hardly separable from the wood, and they were frail and young and
touching. He looked at them, and he was sorry for all the unworthy
things he had ever done. It was Helen who made him feel like that, Helen
who shone like a star, very far off, but not quite out of reach. She was
the only star that night. Not one showed its face among the clouds, and
there was no moon to wrinkle her droll features at the little men on
earth. Helen was the star, shining in the larch-wood. He called her
name, but she did not hear, and he seemed to be caught up by the sound
and to float among the clouds.
"It's like being converted," he told himself, and he followed slowly
across the moor.