Soon after nine o'clock, Helen bade Mildred Caniper and the nurse
good-night and went downstairs with Jim close at her heels.
"We're going to sit in the kitchen, James. I'll get my sewing."
She hesitated at the window: the night was very dark, but she could see
the violent swaying of the poplars, and she thought the thickening of
their twigs was plain and, though it was April already, it was going to
snow. She touched the tassel of the blind, but she did not pull on it,
for she would not anger George with little things, and she left the
window bare for his eyes and the night's.
"Keep close to me, Jim," she said as she sat and sewed, and she stroked
him with a foot. She could hear no sound but the raging wind, and when
the back door was opened she was startled.
"It's me," George said as he entered.
"I didn't hear you coming."
"I've been looking through the window for a long time." He went to the
fireside. "Didn't you know? I hoped you'd be looking out for me, but you
weren't anxious enough for that."
"Anxious?"
"Well--eager."
"Of course I wasn't. Why should I be?"
"You're my wife--and wives--"
"You know why I married you, George."
"You're married, none the less."
"I'm not disputing that."
"I suppose you despise me for--getting what I wanted."
"I only wonder if it was worth while."
"I'll make it that."
"But you won't know until your life is over, until lots of lives are
over."
"I'll get what I can now."
She nodded lightly, and her coolness warmed him.
"Helen--"
"Why don't you sit down?"
"I don't know. I wish you wouldn't sew."
Without a word, she folded her work and gave it to him, and when he had
put it down he knelt beside her, holding the arms of the chair so that
he fenced her in.
"You don't understand, you can't understand that night's work," he said.
"I want to tell you. You--you were like an angel coming down into the
racket. You took away my strength. I wanted you. I forgot about Miriam.
If I'd only known it, I'd been forgetting her every day when I saw you
walking with the dog. You think I was just a beast, but I tell you--"
"I don't think that. I can't explain unless you give me room. Thank you.
You were a beast with Miriam, not with me."
He sat stiffly on his chair and murmured, "That's just it. And now, you
see--"
"Yes, I do."
"But you don't like me."
"I might."
"You shall, by God!" He seemed to smoulder.
"I hope so," she said quietly, and damped the glow.
"You'll let me come here every night and sit with you?"
"Yes."
"And Mrs. Caniper, can she hear?"
"No, she is in the front of the house."
"And Jim won't mind?"
"Oh, no, Jim won't."
"Nor you?"
"You can get the big old chair from the schoolroom and bring it here.
That shall be yours."
He sat there for an hour, and while he smoked she was idle. His eyes
hardly left her face, but hers were for the fire, though sometimes she
looked at him, and then she saw him behind tobacco smoke, and once she
smiled.
"What's that for?" he asked.
"I was thinking of the fires on the moor--the heather burning."
"What made you think of that?"
"You--behind the smoke. If the snow comes, the fires will be put out,
but there will still be your smoke."
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said.
"I like to see you--behind the smoke."
"I'm glad you're pleased with something."
"I like a fair exchange," she said, and laughed at him, "but I shall
offer up no more prayers."
"I don't understand this joke, but I like to see you laugh." Possession
had emboldened him. "Helen, you're pretty."
"I'm sleepy. It's after ten. Good-night."
"I'll come tomorrow."
"But not on Saturday. Rupert comes home then."
"He goes on Sunday night?"
"Yes." She locked the door on him, blew out the light, and ran upstairs.
She thought Mr. Pinderwell passed her with no new sorrow on his face.
"It's worse for me," she said to him. "Jane, it's worse for me."
She went cautiously to her window and peeped through. She saw George
standing on the lawn, and tremblingly she undressed in darkness.
The next day, Mildred Caniper called Helen to her side.
"I feel--rested," she said. Her voice had for ever lost its crispness,
and she spoke with a slovenly tongue. "I don't like strangers--looking
at me. And she--she--"
"I know. She shall go. Tomorrow I'll sleep with you."
Her heart lightened a little, and through the day she thought of Mildred
Caniper's room as of a hermitage, but without the nurse the house was so
much emptier of human life that it became peopled with the thoughts of
all who had lived in it; and while Helen waited for George's coming, she
felt them moving round her.
There were the thoughts of the people who had lived in the house before
Mr. Pinderwell, and these were massed and indistinct, yet the more
troubled; they were too old for form, too young for indifference, and
they thronged about her, asking for deliverance. She could not give it,
and she was jostled by a crowd that came closer than any one of flesh
and blood: it got inside her brain and frightened her. The thoughts of
Mr. Pinderwell were familiar, but now she could better understand his
wild young despair, the pain of his lonely manhood, the madness of his
old age. Yet, when she thought of him, she said again, "It's worse for
me." Mr. Pinderwell had not been obliged to marry some one else, and,
though he did not know it, his children lived. Nearer than his thoughts,
but less insistent than the formless ones that pressed about her,
begging shamelessly, were those of Mildred Caniper. Helen saw them in
the dining-room where they had been made, and they were rigid under
suffering, dignified, but not quite lost to humour, and because she did
not know their cause, because their creator lay upstairs, dead to such
activities, Helen had a horror of them that made her watch the clock for
George's hour. She was less afraid of George than of these shapeless,
powerful things, this accumulated evidence of what life did with its
own; and until he came she talked to Jim, quickly and incessantly,
careless of what she said, if words could calm her.
"Jim, Jim, Jim! I must say something, so I'll say your name, and then
other things will come. I do not intend to be silly. I won't let you be
silly, Helen. You mustn't spoil things. It's absurd--and wicked! And
there's snow outside. It's so deep that I shan't hear him come. And I
wish he'd come, Jim. Funny to wish that. Jim, I'm afraid to turn my
head. It feels stiff. And I ought to go upstairs and look at Notya's
fire, but I don't like the hall. That's where they all meet. And I don't
know how I dare say these things aloud. I'll talk about something else.
Suppose I hadn't you? What shall we have for dinner tomorrow? There's a
bone for you, and the jelly for Notya, and for me--an egg, perhaps.
Boiled, baked, fried, poached, scrambled, omeletted? Somehow, somehow.
What shall I say next? Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, and
all that kind of thing. That will take a long time. I know I sound mad,
but I'm not. And this isn't me: not our me, James. Dickory, dickory,
dock--But this is worse than before. I wonder why God thought of men and
women--and snow--and sheep--and dogs. Dogs--" Her words stopped; she
heard the little noises of the fire. She found that this was not the way
in which to combat terrors. She knew how Zebedee would look if he saw
her now, and she stood up slowly. The muscles in his cheek would twitch,
and the queer flecks in his eyes would chase each other as he watched
her anxiously and sadly. She could not let him look like that.
She walked into the middle of the room and looked about her. She opened
the door and stood in the dark hall and refused the company of the
thronging thoughts. Up the stairs she went, seeing nothing more alarming
than poor Mr. Pinderwell, and on the landing she found the friendly
children whom she loved. Jim followed her, and he seemed to share her
views; he paused when she did and stood, sturdily defying the unknown;
and so they went together into every room, and mended Mildred Caniper's
fire, and returned freely to the kitchen.
"We've conquered that," Helen said. "We'll conquer everything. Fear
is--terrible. It's ugly. I think only the beautiful can be good."
She held to the high mantelshelf and looked at the fire from between her
arms. A few minutes ago, life had been some mighty and incalculable
force which flung its victims where it chose, and now she found it could
be tamed by so slight a thing as a human girl. She had been blinded,
deafened, half stupefied, tossed in the whirlpool, and behold, with the
remembrance that Zebedee believed in her, she was able to steer her
course and guide her craft through shallows and over rapids with a
steady hand.
"There now!" she exclaimed aloud, and turned a radiant face as Halkett
entered.
For an instant, he thought it was his welcome, and his glow answered
hers before both faded.
"Good-evening, George."
"Good-evening, Helen," he answered, and there was a little mockery in
his tone.
He stood close to her, and the frosty air was still about him. A fine
mist and a smell of peat came from his clothes as the fire warmed them.
She did not look at him, and when she would have done so, his gaze
weighted her eyelids so that she could not lift them; and again, as on
that first occasion in the hollow, but ten times more strongly, she was
conscious of his appreciation and her sex. There was peril here, and
with shame she liked it, while, mentally at first, and then physically,
she shrank from it. She dropped into the chair beside her, and with an
artifice of which she was no mistress, she yawned, laughed in apology,
and looked at him.
"I believe you were awake half the night," he grumbled. "I won't have
you tired. You shouldn't have sent the nurse away." He sat down and
pulled out his pipe, and filled it while he watched her. "But I'm glad
she's gone," he said softly.
She did not answer. She had a gripping hand on each arm of the chair:
she wanted to run away, and she hated George; she wanted to stay, and
then she hated herself.
"I shan't get tired," she said weakly. "Mrs. Samson stays till six
o'clock. I only look after Notya."
"And you sleep with her?"
"Yes," she said and, picking a spill of paper from the hearth, she
lighted it and held it out to him. He put his hand round hers and did
not let it go until his pipe was lit, and then he puffed thoughtfully
for a time.
"I've never been up your stairs except when I carried her to bed," he
said, and every muscle in her body contracted sharply. She flogged her
mind to start her tongue on a light word.
"Not--not when you were little? Before we came here?"
He laughed. "I wouldn't go near the place. We were all scared of old
Pinderwell. They used to say he walked. I was on the moor the night you
came, I remember, and saw the house all lighted up, and I ran home,
saying he'd set the place on fire. I was supposed to be in my bed, and I
had my ears well boxed."
"Who boxed them?"
"Mrs. Biggs, of course. She has hands like flails. I--What's the
matter?"
"Is she at the farm still?"
"Mrs. Biggs?"
"Yes."
"D'you want her to go?"
"I should have thought you did."
"Well--" He spoke awkwardly. "She's been there nearly all my life. You
can't turn people off like that, but if you want it, she shall go."
"No, it's not my affair," she told him.
"It will be," he said sharply.
"Of course," she said in a high voice, "I should never dream of living
in the same house with her, but then," she went on, and her tones
loosened, there was an irritating kind of humour in them, "I don't
suppose I shall ever live there at all."
She did not know why she spoke so; her wish to hurt him was hardly
recognizable by herself, but when she saw him stung, she was delighted.
The colour rushed up to his eyes. "What d'you mean by that? What d'you
think you're going to do?"
She raised her eyebrows, and answered lightly, "I'm sure I don't know."
He put a heavy hand on her knee. "But I do," he said, and her mouth
drooped and quivered. She knew she had laid herself open to an attack
she could not repel.
"He'll get me this way," she found herself almost whispering, and aloud
she said, "George, let's wait and see. Tell me some more about when you
were little."
Things went smoothly after that, and when she went to bed, she talked to
Jane.
"We mustn't have any pauses," she said. "We can feel each other then. We
must talk all the time, and, oh, Jane, I'm so fond of silence!"
That night a voice waked her from a dreamless sleep.
"Helen, are you there?"
"Yes. Do you want something?"
"I have been thinking." Her tongue seemed too thick for her mouth. "Is
the dog on the landing?"
"Yes. He's always there. You haven't been afraid?"
"No. It's a big house for two women."
Helen sat up and, putting her feet into her slippers, she opened the
door. Jim was sleeping in the darkness: he woke, looked up and slept
again. It was a quiet night and not a door or window shook.
"I didn't say I heard anything. Go back to bed."
Helen obeyed, and she was falling softly into sleep when the voice, like
a plucked wire, snatched her back.
"Helen! I want to tell you something."
"I'm listening." She stared at the corner whence the voice was
struggling, and gradually the bed and Mildred's body freed themselves
from the gloom.
By a supreme effort, the next words were uttered without a blur and with
a loudness that chased itself about the room.
"I am to blame."
"To blame?" Helen questioned softly.
"It was my fault, not Edith's--not your mother's."
"I don't know what you're talking about, Notya dear."
"Your mother." The voice was querulous. "I was--unkind to your mother.
Oh--worse than that!" The bed creaked, and a long sigh gave place to the
halting speech in which the sibilants were thickened into lisping
sounds.
"She was my friend. She was beautiful. You are all like her. Miriam and
Rupert--" The voice dropped like a stone falling into a well without a
bottom, and Helen, listening for the sound of it, seemed to hear only
the echoes of Mildred Caniper's memory, coming fainter and fainter from
the past where the other woman made a gleam.
"Miriam--" she began again. "I haven't seen her."
"No. Uncle Alfred has taken her away."
"Ah!" Mildred said, and there was a silence.
After a time, her voice came back, thin and vague, a ghostly voice,
speaking the thoughts of a mind that had lost its vigour.
"Alfred was in love with Edith. They all were. She was so pretty and so
gay. But she was not unfaithful. No. I knew that. She told me and she
trusted me, but I said nothing. That's what has worried me--all the
time." Heavily she sighed again, and Helen drew herself to a sitting
posture in her bed. She dared not ask the questions which tramped over
each other in her mind; she hardly drew a breath lest the sound should
change the current of the other's thought.
"She did silly things. They vexed me. I was jealous, I suppose. Take
care of Miriam. Oh--but she's gone. Edith--she made men love her, and
she couldn't help it, and then one night--but it's too long to tell.
Philip thought she wasn't faithful, but I knew. She wouldn't tell him.
She was angry, she wouldn't say a word, but she trusted me to tell him.
And you see, I--didn't. He wouldn't go and see her. If he had seen her
he would have found out. And soon she died--of measles." The woman in
the bed laughed softly.
"That was so foolish! And then I married him. I got w-what I wanted. But
there's a verse about leanness in the soul, isn't there? That's what I
had. He wanted some one to look after the children, and I looked after
you--no more. The struggling hasn't been worth while."
"No." The word came from Helen like a lost puff of wind.
"And then Philip went away, and I came here. That's all. I wanted to
tell somebody. Now perhaps I can have peace. I meant to tell him, too,
but I was too late. That worried me. All these years--"
Leaning on her elbow, Helen looked at the narrow bed. It had some aspect
of a coffin, and the strangely indifferent voice was still. She felt an
intolerable pity for the woman, and the pain overcame her bewilderment
and surprise, yet she knew she need not suffer, for Mildred Caniper had
slipped her burden of confession and lay at rest.
Beyond the relief of tears, Helen slid into her place. The dead, distant
mother was not real to her: she was like the gay shadow of a butterfly
that must soon die, and Philip Caniper was no more than a name. Their
fate could hardly stir her, and their personal tragedy was done; but now
she thought she could interpret the thoughts which clustered in the
dining-room. This was Mildred Caniper's secret, and it had been told
without shame. The irony of that made her laugh silently to the shaking
of her bed. She had no words with which to clothe her feelings, the
sense of her own smallness, of unhappiness so much the common lot that
it could almost pass unheeded. There was some comfort in the mingling of
her own misery with all that had been and was to be, but she felt
herself in the very presence of disintegration: the room was stirring
with fragments of the life which Mildred Caniper could not hold
together: mind and matter, they floated from the tired body in the
corner and came between Helen and the sleep that would have kept her
from thinking of the morrow, from her nightly vision of Zebedee's face
changing from that of happy lover to poor, stricken man. Turning in the
bed, she left him for the past of which Mildred Caniper had told her,
yet that past, as parent of the present, looked anxiously and not
without malice towards its grandchildren. What further tragedy would the
present procreate?
Answers to that question were still trooping past Helen when dawn came
through the windows, and some of them had the faces of children born to
an unwilling mother. Her mind cried out in protest: she could not be
held responsible; and because she felt the pull of future generations
that might blame her, she released the past from any responsibility
towards herself. No, she would not be held responsible: she had bought
Miriam, and the price must be paid: she and Miriam and all mankind were
bound by shackles forged unskilfully long ago, and the moor,
understanding them, had warned her. She could remember no day when the
moor had not foretold her suffering.