Mildred Caniper died two days afterwards, without opening her eyes. Day
and night, Helen watched and wondered whether, behind that mask, the
mind was moving to acquaintance with the truth. Between life and death,
she imagined a grey land where things were naked, neither clothed in
disguising garments nor in glory. It might be that, for the first time,
Mildred saw herself, looked into her own life and all the lives she
knew, and gained a wider knowledge for the next. Nevertheless, it was
horrible to Helen that Mildred Caniper had finally shut her eyes on the
scene that killed her, and, for her last impression, had one of falsity
and licence. Helen prayed that it might be removed, and, as she kept
watch that first night, she told her all. There might be a little cranny
through which the words could go, and she longed for a look or touch of
forgiveness and farewell. She loved this woman whom she had served, but
there were to be no more messages between them, and Mildred Caniper died
with no other sound than the lessening of the sighing breaths she drew.
Zebedee guessed the nature of the shock that killed her, but only George
and Helen knew, and for them it was another bond; they saw each other
now with the eyes of those who have looked together on something never
to be spoken of and never to be forgotten. She liked to have him with
her, and he was dumb with pity for her and with regrets. To Miriam, when
she arrived, it was an astonishment to find them sitting in the
schoolroom, hand in hand, so much absorbed in their common knowledge
that they did not loose their grasp at her approach, but sat on like
lost, bewildered children in a wood.
Wherever Helen went, he followed, clumsy but protective, peering at her
anxiously as though he feared something terrible would happen to her,
too.
"You don't mind, do you?" he asked her.
"What?"
"Having me."
"I like it--but there's your hay."
"There's hay every year," he answered.
* * * * *
Uncle Alfred moved quietly about the house, stood uneasily at a window,
or drifted into the garden, swinging his eyeglass, his expression
troubled, his whole being puzzled by the capacity of his relatives to be
dramatic, without apparent realization of their gift. Here was a sister
suddenly dead, a niece wandering hand in hand with the man from whom
another niece had fled, while the discarded lover acted the part of
family friend; and that family preserved its admirable trick of asking
no question, of accepting each member's right to its own actions. Only
Miriam, now and then catching his eye in the friendly understanding they
had established, seemed to make a criticism without a comment, and to
promise him that, foolish as she was, he need not fear results on
Helen's colossal scale.
It was Rupert who could best appreciate Helen's attitude, and when he
was not thinking of the things he might have done for a woman he could
help no longer, he was watching his sister and her impassivity, her
unfailing gentleness to George, the perfection of her manner to Zebedee.
She satisfied his sense of what was fitting, and gave him the kind of
pleasure to be derived from the simple and candid handiwork of a master.
"If tragedy produces this kind of thing," he said to John with a
gesture, "the suffering is much more than worth while--from the
spectator's point of view."
"I don't know what you are talking about," John said.
"The way she manages those two."
"Who? And which?"
"Good Lord, man! Haven't you seen it? Helen and the two suitors."
John grunted. "Oh--that!" He had not yet learnt to speak of the affair
with any patience.
* * * * *
Mildred Caniper had left the house and all it held to Helen.
"I suppose you'll try to let it," Rupert said. "I don't like to think of
that, though. Helen, I wish she hadn't died. Do you think we were more
unpleasant than we need have been?"
"Not much. She was unpleasanter than we were, really, but then--"
"Heavens, yes. What a life!"
Her lips framed the words in echo, but she did not utter them, though
she alone had the right.
"So perhaps I am not sorry she is dead," Rupert said.
Helen's lips tilted in a smile. "I don't think you need ever be sorry
that any one is dead," she said, and before she could hear what her
words told him, he spoke quickly.
"Well, what about this house?"
"I shan't let it."
"Will you live here?"
"No. I'm going to George, but no one else shall have it. I don't think
the Pinderwells would be happy. Is there any furniture you want? You can
have anything except what's in the dining-room. That's for Zebedee. His
own is hideous."
To Zebedee she said, "You'll take it, won't you?"
"I've always taken everything you've given me," he said, and with the
words they seemed to look at each other fairly for the last time.
"And don't have any more dead ferns," she told him. "There was one in
the dining-room the other day. You must keep fresh flowers on Mr.
Pinderwell's table."
"I shall remember."
Nothing was left in the house except the picture of Mr. Pinderwell's
bride, who smiled as prettily on the empty room as on the furnished one.
"She must stay with Mr. Pinderwell," Helen said. "What would he do if he
found her gone? I wonder if they'll miss us."
She refused to leave the house until the last cart had gone down the
road at which Helen must no longer look in hope. She watched the slow
departure of the cart and held to the garden gate, rubbing it with her
hands. She looked up at the long house with its wise, unblinking eyes.
She had to leave it: George was waiting for her at the farm, but the
house was like a part of her, and she was not complete when she turned
away from it.
There was daylight on the moor, but when she dipped into the larch-wood
she found it was already night, and night lay on the cobbled courtyard,
on the farmhouse, and on George, who waited in the doorway.
"You're like you were before," he said. "A silver star coming through
the trees--coming to me." He took her hand. "I don't know why you do
it," he murmured, and led her in.
They slept in a room papered with a pattern of roses and furnished with
a great fourposted bed. It was the room in which George Halkett and his
father had been born, the best bedroom for many generations. The china
on the heavy washstand had pink roses on it, too, and the house was
fragrant with real roses, burning wood, clean, scented linen. Jasmine
grew round the window and nodded in.
"Are you going to be happy?" George asked her, when the warm darkness
dropped on them like another coverlet, and she hardly knew that it was
she who reassured him. Could it be Helen Caniper in this room with the
low ceiling and farmhouse smells, this bridal chamber of the Halketts?
Helen Caniper seemed to have disappeared.
She woke when she had been asleep for a little while, and at first she
could not remember where she was; then the window darted out of the
darkness and the furniture took on shapes. She looked up and saw the
looming canopy of the bed, she heard George breathing beside her, and
suddenly she felt suffocated by the draperies and the low ceiling and
the remembrance of the big pink roses growing on the wall.
She slid to the edge of the bed and out of it. The carpet was harsh to
her feet, but, by the window, the bare boards soothed them.
There were dark clouds floating against the sky, and the larches looked
like another cloud dropped down until she saw their crests, spear-like
and piercing: they hid the moor in its livery of night.
She turned her head and listened to the sleeper, who did not stir except
to breathe. She wanted to see her moor and the house where the
Pinderwells were walking and wondering at its emptiness. George would
not hear her if she dressed and left the room, and, having done so, she
stood outside the door and listened before she fumbled her way along the
passages.
She sped through the larches, but when her feet touched the heather they
went more slowly, and now it was she who might have been a cloud,
trailing across the moor. So she went until she saw the house, and then
she ran towards it, startling the rabbits, hearing the blur of wings,
and feeling the ping or flutter of insects against her face.
The doors were locked, but the kitchen window was not hasped, and
through it she climbed. The room had an unfamiliar look: it was
dismantled, and ghostly heaps of straw and paper lay where the men had
left them, yet this was still her home: nothing could exile her.
She went into the hall and into each bare room, but she could not go
upstairs. It was bad enough to see Mr. Pinderwell walking up and down,
and she could not face the children whom she had deserted. She sat on
the stairs, and the darkness seemed to shift about her. She thought of
the bedroom she had left, and it seemed to her that there would never be
a night when she would not leave it to find her own, nor a day when, as
she worked in the hollow, her heart would not be here. Yet she was Helen
Halkett, and she belonged to Halkett's Farm.
She rose and walked into the kitchen and slipped her hand along the
mantelshelf to find a box of matches she had left there.
She was going to end the struggle. She could not burn Zebedee, but she
could burn the house. The rooms where he had made love to her should
stand no longer, and so her spirit might find a habitation where her
body lived.
She piled paper and straw against the windows and the doors, and set a
lighted match to them; then she went to the moor and waited. She might
have done it in a dream, for her indifference: it was no more to her
than having lighted a few twigs in the heather; but when she saw the
flames climbing up like red and yellow giants, she was afraid. There
were hundreds of giants, throwing up hands and arms and trying to reach
the roof. They fought with each other as they struggled, and the dark
sky made a mirror for their fights.
The poplars were being scorched, and she cried out at that discovery.
Oh, the poplars! the poplars! How they must suffer! And how their leaves
would drop, black and shrivelled, a black harvest to strew the lawn. She
thought she heard the shouting of the Pinderwells, but she knew their
agony would be short, and already they were silent. The poplars were
still in pain, and she ran to the front of the house that she might not
see them.
There was a figure coming up the track. It was John, with his trousers
pulled over his night things.
"God! What's up?" he cried.
"It's the house--only the house burning. There's no one there."
He looked into the face that was all black and white, like cinders; then
at the flames, red and yellow, like live coals, and he held her by the
arm because he did not like the look of her.
A man came running up. It was Halkett's William.
"Have you seen the master? He went round by the back."
"Go and look for him. Tell him his wife's here. I'll search the front."
Both men ran, shouting, but it was Helen who saw George at the window of
Mildred Caniper's room.
She rushed into the garden where the heat was scorching, she heard his
joyful "Helen!" as he saw her, and she held out her arms to him and
called his name.
She saw him look back.
"I'll have to jump!" he shouted.
"Oh, George, come quickly!"
There were flames all round him as he leapt, and there were small ones
licking his clothes when he fell at her feet.
"His neck's broke," William said.
They carried him on to the moor, and there he lay in the heather. She
would not have him touched. She crouched beside him, watching the flames
grow and lessen, and when only smoke rose from the blackened heap, she
still sat on.
"I'm waiting for Zebedee," she said.
John sent for him, and he came, flogging his horse as a merciful man
may, and when she saw him on the road, she went to meet him.
She put both hands on the shaft. "I set the house on fire," she said,
looking up. "I didn't think of George. He was asleep. I had to burn it.
But I've killed him, too. First there was Notya, and now George. I've
killed them both. His neck is broken. William said, 'His neck's broke,'
that's all, but he cried. Come and see him. He hasn't moved, but he was
too big to die. I've killed him, but I held my arms out to him when he
jumped."