A person less simple than Helen would have readjusted her conception of
herself, her character and circumstances, in the light of her new
knowledge; but with the passionate assertion that she could not be held
altogether responsible for what her own children might have to suffer,
Helen had made her final personal comment. For a day, her thoughts
hovered about the distant drama of which Mildred Caniper was the
memento, like a dusty programme found when the play itself is half
forgotten, and Helen's love grew with her added pity; but more urgent
matters were knocking at her mind, and every morning, when she woke, two
facts had forced an entrance. She was nearer to Zebedee by a night, and
only the daylight separated her from George and what he might demand
and, outside, the moor was covered with thick snow, as cold as her own
mind.
A great fire burned in Mildred Caniper's room, another in the kitchen;
the only buds on the poplars were frozen white ones, and the whiteness
of the lawn was pitted with Halkett's footsteps. Since the first day of
snow he had climbed the garden wall close to the kitchen door so that he
should not make another trail, but the original one still gaped there,
and Helen wished more snow would fall and hide the tracks. She saw them
every morning when she went into her own room to dress, and they were
deep and black, like open mouths begging the clouds for food.
One day, John, looking from the kitchen window, asked who had been
tramping about the garden.
"Doesn't it look ugly?" Helen said. "I can't bear snow when it's
blotched with black. Is there going to be more of it?"
"I think so."
"Are your lambs all right?"
"We haven't lost one. Lily's a wonder with them. We've a nursery in our
kitchen. Come and see it." He went out, and she heard him on the crisp
snow.
"Now he'll mix the trail," she thought happily. "And I might have done
it myself. I think I'm growing stupid. But it will be John and George
when I get up in the morning: that's better than George and me."
John came back and spoke gravely. "I find those footsteps go right
across the moor towards Halkett's Farm."
"Of course! George made them."
"Oh, you knew?"
"Yes. I couldn't imagine Jim had done it, could I?"
"What did he come for?"
"He sat by the fire and smoked."
"You'd better not encourage him."
"I don't."
"Be careful!--What are you laughing at?"
"That old story of the kiss!"
"It makes me mad."
"He doesn't try to kiss me, John. I shouldn't be horrified if he did.
You needn't be afraid for me."
"All right. It's your affair. Want any wood chopped?"
"Rupert did a stack for me."
"This is pretty dull for you, isn't it? When does--"
She interrupted. "At the end of next week, I think." She was somewhat
tired of answering the question.
That night, as she sat with George, he said, "When we're like this, I
wish you'd wear your wedding-ring."
"I said I wouldn't."
"It couldn't do any harm."
"It could--to me."
"You talk as if it's dirt," he said.
"Oh, no, I know it's gold! Let's keep our bargains and talk of
something else. Tell me what you have been doing today."
His face reddened to a colour that obscured his comeliness. "You can't
get round me like that."
"What do you mean?" She lifted her head so that he saw her round white
throat. "Why should I condescend to get round you, as you call it?"
"That's it!" he shouted angrily. "That's the word!" He rose and knocked
his pipe against the stove. "You're too damned free with your
condescension, and I'm sick of it." He left the kitchen angrily, and two
minutes later she heard the distant banging of the garden door.
She wanted to run after him, for she was afraid of the impulses of his
anger. She felt a dreadful need to conciliate, for no other reason than
his body's greater strength, but she let him go, and though for several
days she did not see him, she had no sense of liberty. He would come
back, she knew, and she found herself planning unworthy little shifts,
arranging how she would manage him if he did this or that, losing her
birthright of belief that man and woman could meet and traffic honestly
together. They could not do it, she found, when either used base
weapons: she, her guile, or he, his strength; but if he used his
strength, how could she save herself from using guile? She had to use
it, and she clung fiercely to it, though she knew that, at last, it
would be wrested from her.
* * * * *
In these days of his absence, there were hours when she wandered
ceaselessly through the house, urged by the pride which refused
allegiance to this man, tortured by her love for Zebedee and the pain
she had to give him, hunted by the thought that George was making for
himself a place in the circle where she kept her pensioners. Each time
that he looked at her with longing, though she shrank, she gave her
ready pity, and when he walked away into the night, her heart went after
him unwillingly. Worse than all, she knew she would not always see him
as a pensioner. Far off and indistinct, like a gallows seen on a distant
hill, she spied the day when she might own a kind of need of him; she
had to love those who loved her enough, and his strength, the very
limits of his mind, would some day hold her. But she would not let these
thoughts properly take shape: they were vague menaces, and they chased
her through Mr. Pinderwell's sparsely-furnished rooms. She was glad that
Zebedee had never been a pensioner; he had always given more than he had
asked. His had not been an attitude of pleading, and she could not
remember once seeing an appeal in his eyes. They had always been quick
on her face and busy with herself, and her pride in him was mixed with
anger that he had not bound her to him by his need. He would manage
without her very well, she thought, and hardened herself a little; but
hard or soft, the result of her fierce thinking was the same. She had
the picture of Miriam like a broken flower, lying limp and crumpled on
the floor, and she believed she had done well in selling herself to save
that beauty. It was the only thing to do, and Zebedee would know. These
words she repeated many times.
But she went beyond that conclusion on her own path. She had married
George, and that was ugly, but life had to be lived and it must be
beautiful; it could not be so long that she should fail to make it
beautiful: fifty years, perhaps. She beat her hands together. She could
surely make it beautiful for fifty years.
But at night, when she waited for George, she trembled, for she knew
that her determination meant ultimate surrender.
He came on the fourth night. She gave him half a smile, and with a thin
foot she pushed his chair into its place, but he did not sit down. He
stood with his hands clasped behind him, his head thrust forward, and
having glanced at him in that somewhat sulky pose, she was shaken by
inward laughter. Men and women, she reflected, were such foolish things:
they troubled over the little matters of a day, a year, or a decade, and
could not see how small a mark their happiness or sorrow made in the
history of a world that went on marching.
She bent over her sewing while she thought, and she might have forgotten
his presence if a movement had not blocked the light.
"George, please, I can't see."
"I beg your pardon."
"I wish you would sit down. It isn't comfortable like this."
"All right." He sank down heavily and sighed.
She lifted her head quickly and showed him her puckered face. "Are you
still so cross?"
"I--don't know. I've been miserable enough," he said, but he had to
smile on her.
She was astonished that he should have no difficulty in speaking of
himself, and she looked at him in this surprised consideration before
she tempted him to say more.
"Why?" she asked.
"You wouldn't understand."
"I might."
"How much I wanted you."
She tapped her thimble against her teeth. "It's so absurd," she said
softly.
"Eh?"
She hated him to say that, and she frowned a little as he asked, "Why is
it absurd?"
"Because you don't know me at all."
"That's nothing to do with it." He stood up and kicked a protruding
coal. "Nothing to do with it. I know I--want you." He turned sharply
towards her. "I was half drunk that night."
"I wish you wouldn't talk about it."
He added abruptly, "I've had nothing since."
Her silence implied that this was only what she had expected and,
feeling baulked of his effect, he sighed again.
"Oh, you are so pathetic! Why don't you smile?" He did it, and she
nodded her applause, while he, appeased and daring, asked her, "Well,
did you miss me?"
"Yes. A little."
"Are you glad I'm here?"
"I think so."
"When will you be sure?"
"Ah, that depends on you. I hate you to be rough."
"God knows I've had enough to make me. You wear me out, you're so damned
superior."
"I'm afraid that's not my fault!"
He swore under his breath. "At it again!"
"Oh, dear!" she cried, "that was meant to be a joke! I thought it rather
good! Shall I make some coffee? They say a wise woman always has good
things for her--for a man to eat and drink. I'm going to try it."
They drank in silence, but as he put down his cup, she said, twinkling
over hers, "Was I a wise woman?" and suddenly she felt the great
loneliness of the house, and remembered that she was a woman, and this
man's wife. She looked down that he might see no change. He did not
answer, and the coals, dropping in the grate, were like little tongues
clicking in distress. She wondered if he were ever going to speak.
"Give me your cup," she heard him say, and his voice was confident. She
felt a hand put firmly on her shoulder, and she saw him bending over
her.
"Good-night," he said, "I'm going," and still with that hand on her, he
kissed her mouth.
She did not move when the door was shut behind him: she leaned back in
the chair, pressed there by his kiss, her hands limp in her lap. She
respected him at last. There had been dignity in that kiss, and she
thought it better that he should take what he desired than sit too
humble under her gaze, but she knew she was no longer what she had been.
He had, in some manner, made her partly his: not by the spirit, not by
her will, but by taking something from her: there was more to take, and
she was sure now that he would take it. She was not angry, but for a
long time she cried quietly in her chair.