She thought Zebedee would come to her on the next day, or the next, but
she watched in vain for him. Though she had sent him from her, she
longed for him to be back, and at night, when George entered the
kitchen, she hardly looked up to welcome him. Her mind was more
concerned with Zebedee's absence than with George's presence, but in her
white face and tired eyes he fancied resentment for the kiss that still
burned on his own mouth.
"You haven't much to say," he told her, after an hour of silence. He did
not know if he most hated or adored the smooth head turned sideways, the
small ear and the fine eyebrow, the aloofness that kept him off and drew
him on; but he knew he was the victim of a glorious kind of torment of
which she was the pain and the delight.
"I have been thinking," she explained.
"Then why don't you tell me what you think about?"
"Would you be interested?" She smiled at the thought of telling him with
what anxiety she looked for Zebedee, with what anger she blamed him for
neglect, with what increase she loved him.
"Yes, I would. Now you're laughing. D'you think it funny? D'you think I
can't read or write, or understand the way you speak?"
"George," she said, "I wish you wouldn't get so cross. I don't think any
of those things."
"Never think about me at all, I suppose. Not worth it."
She answered slowly, "Yes, you are," and he grunted a mockery of thanks.
It was some time before he threw out two words of accusation. "You're
different."
"Different?"
"That's what I said. You never answer straight."
"Don't I?"
"There you are again!"
"What do you want me to say? Shall I ask you how I'm different? Well,
I've asked, George. Won't you answer?"
"I can't. I can't explain. But a few nights back--well--all tonight
you've been sitting as if I wasn't here. I don't know why I stand it.
Look here! You married me."
"So you are always telling me; but no one can buy the things you want."
"I'll get them somehow." He used the tones that made her shrink, but
tonight she was unmoved, and he saw that her womanhood was crushed by
the heaviness of her fatigue, and she was no more than a human being who
needed rest.
"I think you ought to go to bed," he said. "I'm going. Good-night." He
kissed her hand, but he did not let it fall. "You're not to look so
white tomorrow night," he said.
She did not know why she went to the kitchen door and stood by it while
he climbed the wall and dropped to the crisp snow on the further side.
He called out another low good-night and had her answer before she heard
his boots crunching the frozen crust. No stars and no moon shone on the
white garden, and to her it was like a place of death. The deep black of
the trees against the wall made a mourning border, and the poplars
lifted their heads in questioning of fate, but they had no leaves to
make the question audible, and no wind stirred their branches.
Everything was silent; it seemed as if everything had died, and Helen
was envious of the dead. She wished she might curl herself up at a
poplar's foot and sleep there until the frost tightened on her heart and
stopped its beating.
"It is so hard," she said aloud, and shut the door and locked it with
limp hands.
The kitchen's warmth gave back her sanity and humour, and she laughed as
she sat before the fire again, but when she spoke to Jim, it was in
whispers, because of the emptiness of the old house.
"We shall manage if only we can see Zebedee sometimes. Other women have
worse things to bear. And George likes me. I can't help liking people
when they like me. And there'll be Zebedee sometimes. We'll try to keep
things beautiful, and we'll be strong and very courageous, and now we'll
go to bed."
The next morning Zebedee appeared, and in the hall of their many
greetings, she slipped her hand into his.
"What have you been doing, Zebedee?"
"Working."
"Is that all?"
He laughed, and asked, "Isn't that enough?"
"No; not enough to keep you from me. I thought you would come yesterday
and the day before."
He looked at her with an astonishment that was near scorn, for she had
driven him from her and now reproached him when he did not run back. She
put her hand on his and looked at him with shadowless grey eyes, and
showed him a mouth that tempted, as she had done before she married this
other man to whom she was determined to be faithful. His thoughts were
momentarily bitter, but his words were gentle.
"I told you I wanted time to think." He pressed her hand and gave it
back to her. "And I have thought, and, since you are what you are, I
see, at present, no other way but yours."
"Oh." She was daunted by his formality.
"Shall I go up to Mrs. Caniper?"
"Yes," she said, puzzled. "But aren't you cold? Come into the kitchen
and you shall have some coffee. I had it ready in case you came. Your
hands--your cheeks--" She touched him lightly and led him to the kitchen
fire.
"I think we shall have more snow," he said, and his manner was snow
against her heart.
"Do you?" she said politely, but her anger dropped away as she saw his
face more clearly and knew he had not slept. She knew, too, that his
mind was as firmly fixed as hers, and she felt as if the whole world
were sliding from her, for this was not her lover: this was some ascetic
who had not yet forgotten his desires. He looked haggard, fierce with
renunciation and restraint, and she cried out, "Zebedee, darling, don't
look like that!"
He laughed a little, moved, and passed his hands over his face. "No," he
said sensibly.
He killed the words she had ready for him: she felt them fall, dead
things, into her throat, and hang helplessly in her breast. She handed
him the cup, and while he drank she stood beside the table and watched
him with despair and indignation. She had not imagined him thus changed:
she had expected the old adoring looks, the loving words, everything but
his caresses and his claims, and he treated her as though she were no
more to him than any other woman. She knew him to be just and honest,
but she thought him cruel and, aghast at the prospect of endless days
wherein he would not smile at her nor praise her, she doubted her
ability to live without him. She caught her breath in fear that his
habit of indifference would change to indifference indeed; and without
shame, she confessed that she would rather have him suffering through
love of her than living happily through lack of it.
Mechanically, she moved after him up the stairs, played her part, and
followed him down again; but when next he came, she had stiffened in
emulation of him, and they talked together like people who had known
each other for many years, but never known each other well.
Once he trespassed, but that was not to please himself.
"If you need me, you'll still use me?" he said hurriedly, and she
answered, "Yes, of course."
He added, "I can't keep it from Daniel for ever."
"No. It need not be a secret now, except from Notya. And if she lives--"
"She may live for a long time if she has no shock."
"Ah, then," Helen said calmly, "she must not know."
He found her more beautiful than she had been, for now her serenity was
by conquest, not by nature, and her head was carried with a freer grace.
It might have been the freedom of one who had gained through loss and
had the less weight to carry, but he tortured himself with wondering
what fuller knowledge had given her maturer grace. Of this he gave no
sign, and the attitude he maintained had its merciful result on Helen,
for if he pretended not to need her, she had a nightly visitor who told
her dumbly of his longing. Love bred liking, as she had prophesied, and,
because life was lonely, she came to listen for his step. She was born
to minister to people, and the more securely Zebedee shut her out, the
more she was inclined to slip into the place that George had ready for
her. And with George the spring was in conspiracy. The thaw came in a
night, and the next morning's sun began its work of changing a white
country into one of wet and glistening green. Snow lingered and grew
dirty in the hollows, and became marked with the tiny feet of sheep, but
elsewhere the brilliance of the moor was like a cry. It was spring
shouting its release from bonds. Buds leapt on the trees, the melted
snow flooded the streams, tributary ones bubbled and tinkled in
unexpected places.
"Now," Helen said, leaning from the window of Mildred Caniper's room,
"you can't help getting well. Oh, how it smells and looks and feels!
When the ground is drier, you shall go for a walk, but you must practise
up here first. Then John shall carry you downstairs."
But Mildred Caniper did not want to be energetic: she sat by the fire in
a cushioned wicker chair, and when Helen looked at the lax figure and
the loosened lines of the face she recognized the woman who had made
confession to relieve a mind that had finished with all struggling. It
was not the real Mildred Caniper who had told that story in the night;
it was the one who, weakened by illness, was content to sit with folded
hands by the fireside.
She dimmed the sun for Helen and robbed the spring of hope. This glory
would not last: colours would fade and flowers die, and so human life
itself would slip into a mingling of light and shadow, a pale confluence
of the two by which a man could see to dig a grave.
Helen leaned out again, trying to recover the sense of youth, of
boundless possibilities of happiness that should have been her sure
possession.
"Are you looking for Zebedee?" Mildred asked. "He doesn't come so
often."
"You don't need him. And he is busy. He isn't likely to come today."
Yet she wished ardently that he might, for though he would have no
tenderness to give her, he would revivify her by the vigour of his
being: she would see a man who had refused to let one misfortune cripple
him, and as though he had divined her need, he came.
"I had to go to Halkett's Farm," he explained.
"Who's ill there?" she asked sharply.
"The housekeeper."
"I hadn't heard. Is she very ill?"
"She may be."
"Then I hope she'll die," she said in a low voice.
"My dear!" He was startled into the words, and they made her laugh
openly for joy of knowing they were ready on his tongue. Lightly she
swayed towards him, but he held her off.
"No, no, my heart." He turned deliberately from her. "Why do you wish
that?"
"Because of Miriam. She ought to die."
"I'm afraid she won't. She's pretty tough."
"Is there anybody to look after her? I could go sometimes, if you like."
He smiled at this confusion of ministering and avenging angel.
"There's a servant there who seems capable enough."
"I wonder why George didn't tell me."
"She was all right yesterday."
"You'll have to see her tomorrow. Then you'll come here, too."
"There isn't any need."
"But Notya likes to see you. Come and see her now."
She sighed when they walked downstairs together as though things had
never changed. "Oh, Zebedee, I wanted you to come today. You have made
me feel clean again. Notya--oh--!" She shuddered. "She looks like some
fruit just hanging to a tree. Soon she will slip, and she doesn't care.
She doesn't think. And once she was like a blade, so bright and edged.
And when I looked at her this morning, I felt as if I were fattening
and rotting, too, and it wasn't spring any longer. It was autumn, and
everything was over-ripe."
"You don't take enough exercise," he said briskly. "Walk on the moor
every day. It's only fair to Jim. Read something stiff--philosophy, for
instance. It doesn't matter whether you understand it or not, so long as
you try. Promise you'll do that. I'll bring some books tomorrow. Take
them as medicine and you'll find they're food. And, Helen"--he was at
the gate and he looked back at her--"you are rather like a blade
yourself."
He knew the curing properties of praise.