Theresa left school without regret. She had made no friends there, for a
deep shyness overlaid the endearing qualities which she learnt, later,
to use for the capture of hearts: she had not cared for the work she did
easily, if without brilliance, and her ambitions had ignored and swept
far beyond a schoolgirl's triumphs. Moreover, novelty was breath to her:
if her heart had been torn at leaving, she would have welcomed the
wrench for the sake of the new part she was to play. She was the martyr
to domestic affliction and, accordingly, she smoothed the hair which the
years were sobering to the colour of mingled autumn leaves, and fastened
it austerely into a thick, swinging plait.
She was now the mistress of the household. She rose at seven, roused
Bessie from her heavy slumbers, waiting outside the door until she heard
the creaking of the bed and the subsequent thump of sleepy feet on the
floor, before she ran downstairs for a plunge into chilly water. She and
Grace, exiled from their old room by the arrival of Uncle George, now
shared the one above, opposite their father's little sanctum, and, still
higher up, Bessie slept in a long, low room under the roof. The maid
complained of the numerous stairs but Theresa liked them. Rushing up
them and down, she had a sensation of speed that excited her. She went
two steps at a time, and when the flight was composed of an odd number
she descended the last three, perilously, at a leap, and she learnt to
do it so lightly that even Grace the agile was impressed.
"But you'll hurt yourself some day," she said.
"Oh, well, one must do something! I pretend there are wolves after me,
or assassins. It makes life so much more interesting. I get through
everything like that, except dusting. I can't make up anything about
dusting, it's the dullest thing."
"I wish I had time to do it for you. I like the look of things
afterwards."
"I can never see any difference. I'm not doing my natural work."
"What's that?"
"Oh, if you need telling----" She retired to the study and sat in the
cold before a sheet of paper, with a pencil in her hand. The immortal
poem was her natural work, but how could she find time to write it with
a household of six people to care for? Her mother breakfasted in bed,
Uncle George was fastidious about his meals. Grace needed them at any
odd and inconvenient moment, and Theresa found herself a better cook
than Bessie. With a cake in the oven it was not easy to compose her mind
to the calm necessary for her first arresting lines: the family liked
her cakes, and praise was dear to her; therefore the poem and, she
feared, the public suffered, and sometimes at the thought of what
circumstances would not let her do, her body became a vessel for hot,
tumultuous anger. She felt it churning within her, and she longed to
raise her hands and strike. At these times she hated Bessie, she chafed
at her mother's weakness, she scorned Grace, she despised her father and
she took pains to plan annoyance for her uncle. After all, was it not he
who had caused this trouble? she would say, and somewhat against her
will, for she liked a reputation for good management, she would forget
to order the packet of dried cereals which formed his meal at
supper-time, so that he would be forced to eat meat and have
indigestion, or to go hungry. But a growing pride in her task soon
disdained these tricks, and she became almost maternally interested in
his appetite.
"You're not eating your cream," she told him one night. "I got it
specially for you. That stuff looks so husky. It makes me think of the
Prodigal Son."
He ignored the Biblical allusion and looked at her with a cold disregard
for her juvenile irreverence.
"I must use my natural juices," he assured her. He looked singularly
bereft of them. His face, clean-shaven but for short grey whiskers, was
as dried and colourless as his cereals, his grey hair was stiff and
dull, his hands were lean without nervousness.
Watching him, the twitching of her lips grew into a smile. She began to
like him. In his nature there was something grim and uncompromising
which enabled him to keep his teeth shut on speech and the expression of
his religious convictions. She recognized that this gift, or his wisdom,
had thwarted her. She had meant to tease him, to taunt him with his
Seaman's Club, where, on Saturday nights, the strains of the harmonium
he had carried there droned a melancholy yet compelling welcome to the
loafers about the docks, but she was robbed of opportunity. He never
spoke of his pursuits, seldom of himself, and she was startled into a
friendly pity for him. He had wanted a home and, at last, unwillingly,
he had been admitted into this one, yet here, in the place of his
desire, he sat silent and reserved, carefully keeping even a mental
aloofness from the doings of his relatives. Was this gratitude, or a
fear of ejection? And did he find any happiness among them? She frowned,
for her heart was softening, and she foresaw that when she had time,
when that poem was written, she would have to turn her powers to the
understanding of him. This was capitulation, she confessed, but then,
she comforted herself, analysis of men and women was important for her
future.
He looked up, caught her puzzled, eager stare, and smiled. Smiling, too,
she nodded. Really, she thought, why has not someone fallen in love with
him?
When the meal was over and Edward Webb had crept quietly to his study,
and Uncle George had departed to his harmonium, Theresa stood before
the fire and looked down at her mother, gently rocking in the old chair.
"Do you think he has ever been in love?" she said.
"Who?" Nancy asked.
"Uncle George, of course," said Theresa.
"I don't know, dear. I never heard of anyone."
"It's not lawful to marry one's uncle, is it?"
"I suppose not." Nancy's brows were raised.
"I'm coming to the conclusion that he's rather an attractive man--and
very mysterious. If I ever marry, I shall marry a mystery."
"I shouldn't advise it, dear."
"I should tire of anyone else in a year--less! I must have excitement."
"There's a time of life when one longs for peace."
Theresa jerked her head upwards. "Not for me!" she cried, and clasped
her hands behind her back. Like a young horse, not yet broken, she
believed herself unconquerable.
Nancy smiled. "Where's Grace? She has no class to-night."
"No, I expect she has gone to see someone." A little dart of anxiety
pierced her, for she was a shrewed guesser, her eye was quick, and
Grace's symptoms during the last weeks had been disturbing and familiar
ones. She sighed.
"Are you tired, dear?"
"No, thank you."
"Then I wish you'd see what Father's doing. He looks so white to-night.
Just give me those new books off the sideboard, first, dearie."
Theresa went upstairs. She felt a vague irritation against her family,
and tasted life's staleness in her mouth. It brought nothing but a round
of common tasks for her, dreary labour to her father, a strange darkness
of energy to Bessie, and ill-health to her mother; to Uncle George, an
emptiness he tried to fill with a harmonium and a hymnal, and to Grace,
a breathlessness of dancing, smiling, dressing, flirting. All efforts
and all persons seemed so separate, yet so united, and she could find no
meaning in them beyond that. The thought wearied her, her body and mind
felt old, and, remembering that it was long since she had dreamed of
mountains, she realized the cause of her unrest--that romance and
excitement were easily forfeited if she might see the hills in sleep.
She paused on the landing and drew breath sharply, as though it were the
mountain air she gathered.
She opened the study door, and saw her father bowed over his desk. He
was writing, but he stopped and looked up to welcome her.
"Are you busy? Writing letters? Shall I go?"
"No, my dear, stay."
She went to the window. The blind was up, and she could see the quiet,
lamplit street.
"Houses and houses, and people in all of them, and they all have
relatives, and friends, and troubles. And they all care so much more
about themselves than about anything else. I can't get used to that. And
when I see people crowding into tramcars, it's the same. Sometimes I
like it; it's exciting"--she caught her lip over the word and laughed
secretly--"and then sometimes the thought's too big--worrying. I like
the other side of the house best. I feel that I can get out--to the
sea."
He was enchanted by her unusual readiness to talk.
"Do you want to get to the sea?"
"On windy nights, when the ships call me. Do you hear them in your
room?"
"Oh, yes!" he said.
"Does it make you want to go?"
He hesitated. "No, I'm a chilly person, but I admit it stirs me to think
of others facing cold and danger. The sea--I'm afraid the sea frightens
me a little."
Like a child who is too shy to speak of what it loves, she forced him to
name it for her.
"You don't like the sea best, do you?"
"No, Theresa, it's the mountains that have snared me."
"Tell me about them."
"It's so long since I've been."
"Why?"
He showed his jaded face. "I can't get there for nothing, my dear, and I
don't want to leave your mother. But some day, when she is better, I'll
take you there. I think you would be happy."
"Should I?" she questioned innocently, hiding her smile. "Let's pretend
we're on the way. You tell me what we're coming to. I'll shut my eyes."
She chuckled delightedly at her own babyishness, but he seemed unaware
of it, for this was the little girl who had always wanted stories and
never been denied.
"We'd get out of the train," he began, "and smell the sea; and then we
should smell a fresh and wonderful wind, and we should know it came from
the mountains, and we'd hurry along the road. We're hurrying, Theresa,
to the place where that wind was born. It's the spring, I think. There
are primroses in the hedges, lots of them by the stream, but I expect we
shall see some snow on the hills. It lies late in the gullies, and at
night it falls up there, when it is almost warm in the valleys. It's a
long walk, but we're going very fast because we are so eager, and now
we're turning a corner, and the wind comes more smartly, stealing our
breath, and it is hard work to raise our heads against it to see----"
Theresa's parted lips drooped sharply, without warning, and stopped his
speech. "Don't!" she cried imploringly. "Don't tell me! I--I don't think
I like this game. Pretending!" She hid her face and indistinctly
murmured: "I don't think I can bear to talk about it."
"My dear!"
She looked up: there were tears in her eyes. He blinked.
"My dear," he repeated helplessly. "What is it?" She shook her head,
laughing, and yielding to the persuasion of his hand, she sat on the
arm of his chair, and leaned against him.
"I'm silly," she said.
But he would not allow that: he triumphed in her sensibility. "No, no,"
he said. The pressure of his encircling arm assured her that he
understood, and she did not try to check her weeping, for she enjoyed
it, and all the nameless troubles of her youth seemed to be finding
solace. She was surprised at her emotion, and became interested in it:
thought dammed the flood, and with the back of her hand she wiped her
eyes. Edward Webb continued to hold her firmly while she stared before
her, not guiltless of an occasional sniff which had for him the pathos
of a cry. Considering herself, she decided that she was strange. Why had
she silenced her father? Her glance fell, broodingly, to the papers on
his desk. Was it because the hills were her religion, her love for them
her form of worship? She liked the notion and saw herself enhanced by
it. Her heart beat a little faster; there were depths in her she had not
sounded, and her blurred gaze cleared itself in this excitement. Her
mind looked inward while her eyes mechanically followed the lines of her
father's writing. They were partly concealed by blotting-paper, but some
of them she read over and over again, making accompaniment to her
thoughts, until their meaning flashed and blinded her to all else. They
were words of love, brilliant, coloured words that startled, horrified
her. She had read such words in print, but to see them in her father's
handwriting seemed to strike life out of her.
Her mind had a curious sensation of lop-sidedness; it was partly numbed,
partly acute; she was incapable of remembering to shift her glance, but
quite clearly she saw words which told her the letter was written to
that woman in the hills. There was no doubt of that. Was he not
comparing her face to a sun-bathed peak visible through cloud? She
learnt this in half a minute's passing, and then she rose. She was cold,
but her mind was once more a whole, and merciless in its conclusions
and its indictment.
"Are you going, my dear?" He moved his papers into a little heap.
"Yes."
He did not look at her. "I wish," he said, beating a tattoo on the desk
and speaking with an effort--"I wish you would always come to me,
Theresa, when you are--when you are not happy."
"Oh!" she cried chokingly, and rushed away.
He found her confusion easy to understand, and he loved her for the
reserves so seldom and so delightfully broken.
The icy darkness of her bedroom enclosed Theresa with the chill and
colour of life itself. The future was cold and rayless; she groped
towards it and was afraid, but she had the courage of anger and as she
stumbled against the bedpost, she lifted her head. How could he? how
could he? She saw her mother sitting down there by the fire, rocking
gently, with that faint smile curving her lips; she remembered the
shadow that had sometimes seemed to fall between her parents, and
loyalty ran out towards her mother like a wave. And, on the other side
of the landing, bending over his desk, that meek, uncertain father of
hers wrote his love letters in secret. He wrote love letters because he
could not afford to go to the mountains and the woman, because he would
not leave his wife!
The terrible, sickly blackness of things covered her. She struggled
under it, and with the effect of something magical, mockingly plain, yet
distant, she saw, all the time, the lights of the docks, and heard the
clanging of the tramcar bells in New Dock Road. Lights while she
floundered in gloom, human sounds while she wandered in fear-inhabited
caverns! She had rejoiced in the reading of such situations, she had
fancied herself fitted to cope with them, but she found reality too
real. Anger at something greater than a small personal injury was a
bigger passion than she had imagined, and pity, doomed to voicelessness
and impotence, tore her with strong hands.
She moved rapidly to and fro between the dressing-table and the bed's
foot. She had loved her father, and now she saw him a deceiver. The
thought hung on her as she walked. Surely truth had looked out of his
kind eyes, love had shone there, and could deceit give a hand to each?
She found it hard to distrust him utterly, for did he not believe in
her? But she crushed this relenting in her clenched hands, and continued
her restless pacing. That little grey man a lover! Had he been tall, and
strong, and masterful, he had been easier to forgive, but that a small,
meek man should be unfaithful made the insult to her mother doubly
bitter. And that woman Alexander's mother! She came to a stand, holding
her throat. Did Alexander know? He was her father's friend, but she
hated him, and immediately she imagined him the abettor. Oh, how they
sullied her glorious mountains, and, oh! was it possible that she was
dull and prudish? Was she missing the grandeur of a hopeless love
because she was too near to see it well? The question stilled her. In
books--to these her judgments always turned--she was able to sympathize
as much with the guilty as the innocent, but here----. Ah, well, she was
not in a book, and she had loved her father, and downstairs her mother
sat ill and miserable. She might die at any moment, and Theresa felt the
pang of her father's remorse. Had he thought of that? Once more her
heart seemed to stop its beating.
A knock came at her door. "Yes?" she said.
"It's me, Theresa. I want to show you something. May I come in?"
She opened the door to Edward Webb, and stood rigid, glaring fiercely at
him out of her white face. Yet he was unchanged. The odour of sin was
not upon him, and he blinked and smiled as he held a paper towards her.
"All in darkness? Look, my dear, this--this is something Alexander sent
to-day. I should like you to look at it."
"Alexander!" Her low voice had turned shrill. "I don't want to see
anything he has sent! I don't want to know anything about those people!"
She pushed past him and ran down the stairs.
An hour afterwards, having tenderly seen her mother into bed, Theresa
went to her own room, too heart-weary to be anxious about Grace.
Everything seemed ruinous and wrecked, what matter if Grace fell, too?
This was her mood as she slipped off her clothes and bravely stretched
herself between the cold sheets, yet she kept her ears alert, and when
she heard an unmistakable step she made a hurried movement of relief.
Grace flung herself into the wicker chair, which creaked dolefully.
"Oh, Terry!" The gas was turned low, but Theresa could see the beauty of
her pose.
"You're very late."
"Don't be cross. I can't bear it. Terry! Theresa! I'm so happy that I
want to cry!"
"Why don't you, then? I shan't mind. And for Heaven's sake be quick and
come to bed."
"I did hope you would be in a nice temper, and you're horrid." She sat
on the bed and laid her cheek against Theresa's. "You really must be
good to me to-night."
"I suppose you've engaged yourself again?" Her tone was hard at the
thought of love-making.
Grace withdrew her caress. "I have never been engaged before," she said
distinctly.
"Then you've told me lies, twice. A good thing I didn't believe them!"
"You're hateful! You know the other times were only folly."
"Yes, I knew, but I didn't know you did. I shouldn't tell anyone else
about this if I were you. It won't last long."
"It will last for ever and ever." She took off her hat. "Don't you want
to know who it is?"
"Is it that Wilkinson with the undeveloped head?"
"It's a beautiful head--classic. Theresa, you are horrid. I thought you
would understand."
"I do, and I'm not a bit disturbed. He will never be my brother-in-law.
You've too much sense--somewhere. Now do your crying, and then get into
bed. It's rather cold all alone."
"I'm burning," said Grace. She would not be snubbed, and she hummed
gaily instead of weeping.
"Did he ask you to-night?" said Theresa, unwillingly curious.
"Yes."
"Where?"
"I'm not going to tell you."
"Oh, all right. I asked Bessie to leave out your milk and biscuits. Did
you have them?"
"Milk! Biscuits! As if I could eat anything at a time like this! You are
the most unromantic person."
"It's safer," said Theresa wearily. She made a deeper nest for her tawny
head, and dismissed Grace's light affairs. They became negligible in the
face of the tragedy she knew, and with the closing of her eyes she shut
them from her mind. She prayed that sleep would bring the mountains, the
clean mountains which, after all, could not be smirched by human beings,
and they came to her. She saw them, tall, dark, superb, and inviolable,
and she woke with something of their courageous peace.