On the evening of the next day, James Rutherford was not at supper.
Theresa had been warned of his peculiarities, and she readily obeyed a
hint that she should go early to bed; but she went reluctantly, for she
grudged missing any new experience, and she lay, reading by candlelight,
while the voices of her father and Clara rose, and died away, and rose
again.
She had taken the book from Alexander's shelves. It was the Keats her
father had given him. She saw their two names and the date, and for an
instant she held it close. The feel of it produced a vision of her
childhood as in a pictured show. She saw herself standing by her father
before the breakfast-room fire, listening to that tale of how he was
lost among the mountains. That was the day on which they had become part
of her life, and when, indissolubly united to them, she had first heard
of Alexander. Black-haired boy with the solemn face, clattering about
the yard among the geese, he had been stamped on her eager brain, never
to be removed. She would keep that old memory, lovingly, for her
childhood's sake, and she could feel tender towards the book which she
carried into bed, without doing violence to her cherished independence.
The pages of the book were well-worn, and the cover had suffered. No
doubt it had been with him on many a walk among the hills, on days when
the rain had run off his hair into his mouth and eyes and neck, and
soaked into his pockets, or when the sun's warmth had curled the leaves
while he read. Had he taken it to Oxford? Quickly she began to read.
Questions in ancient history she could allow, but these more modern
ones were unforgivable.
She read until she heard James Rutherford come home. There were sounds
outside, then her father's step on the stairs and the closing of his
door, and Clara's voice ringing clear through a mournful muttering; more
steps on the stairs, the brushing of bodies against the wall, another
door opened and shut, and then peace. She blew out the light.
When she woke it was to find the book held in her body's curve.
Downstairs there was a note for Edward Webb. "You won't be surprised
that we have gone out--probably for the whole day," Clara wrote.
"There's plenty of food in the larder, and Mrs. Spencer will come and
help if you send for her."
"It will be rather nice to be alone," said Theresa. "Who's Mrs. Spencer?
We don't want her, do we?"
"No. It's Easter Sunday. She will be going to church. She is a carter's
wife, down by the inn."
"What a man to be married to! Mr. Rutherford, I mean."
Edward Webb would not discuss his host. He helped to prepare breakfast.
"After handling pens and typewriters for three years," said Theresa, as
she cut the bacon, "it's a relief to turn to the homelier arts. Put that
in the pan, please."
He hesitated. "It looks remarkably greasy."
"Prod it with a fork, then. You're dreadfully civilised. Here's another
piece. Do you think you can cook it while I set the table?"
"I'll try," he said.
"Don't let it stick."
"How," he said politely, "is one to prevent it?"
"Oh, you silly! Perhaps I'd better do it, if I can trust you not to
break the china. Now, think of what you're doing."
"I'll do my best, ma'am." He delighted in her tyranny and in her
company. "Theresa," he said, with a cup hanging on each forefinger, "I'd
like to end my days up here with you. We could rent a little
cottage--there's one close to the church. It--it might be dull for you,
but--there's your writing. You'd have time for that, at last."
"You forget," she said in hurried interruption, for his ambitions for
her always smote her, "you forget that I shall be caring for my
widower." But that unwise allusion brought the red to her cheeks, and
she turned quickly to stir the porridge.
* * * * *
It was a morning of clear blue and green, with a high wind to blow the
larches and lash the waters of the streams that were swollen with the
melted snow. The shadows of passing clouds made transient blotches on
the shining emerald of the hills. The tolling of the one church bell
came now loud, now low, at the fancy of the wind.
"It's Easter Sunday," Edward Webb said again. "Theresa, there's a
beautiful little church, ten miles away, across the hills. I went there
once to service in the afternoon, and I think I'll go again. Will you
come with me?"
"I'd rather not. I don't like churches. I think I'll just go and sit
beside the stream, and have a little adventure of my own. You'd better
take your lunch in your pocket."
"And you'll wrap up warmly, Theresa. And mind you have enough to eat.
And don't sit too long, and don't wander away too far. A mist might come
on. Be careful."
"I believe you'd like to lock me in a cupboard! Don't you wish you had a
little pouch for me, like a kangaroo?"
"Yes, I do," he said, blinking earnestly.
"Well, I expect I shall stay beside the water. There are pools, and
creeks, and waterfalls, and rapids, and dreadful, silent little woods. I
shall be able to frighten myself finely."
"And Abraham will keep guard over the house and you. I shan't be back
till dark. You won't mind?"
"No, I shall feel quite courageous. And, do you know, I've never been
really alone in my life. There have always been houses, and tramcars,
and policemen, and no chance of being brave! If tramps come, what do you
say to them?"
"Ask Abraham. He'll bark at them, but I think few pass this way. There's
no high-road. Good-bye, my dear."
* * * * *
She thought that was the most wonderful morning of her life. It was the
kind of weather she loved best, with a piercing quality of both wind and
sun, and everything glowing, swaying, rustling, creaking. She was
gloriously alone, and as she followed the stream and forced its passage,
jumping from stone to stone, and feeling water oozing through her shoes,
her years fell from her. She was childlike in her acceptance of the
hour, nor did she look in upon herself and say, "See how like a child I
am!" She was enthralled by the gilded water and the little ferns and
mosses growing between the stones, and by the sober presence of the
hills that stood far off and looked down with friendly faces. It was
only when she passed under the brooding silence of a wood that she
remembered her womanhood, and remembered it with fear. Among clustered
trees she was not the mistress of her fate: there were influences at
work on her, malicious eyes peering, hands ready to tease or bind her,
and she hurried from them to the open, where there was nothing between
her and heaven.
It was as she returned across the fields that she saw a man leaving the
house. He stood for an instant just outside the door, gave a quick
glance up and down the lane, and hurried up the valley. She began to
run. The man turned sharply to his left, making for a grassy track that
skirted the larch wood. She followed, realizing the sterling value of
policemen. He went fast, with long, easy strides, and as she noticed
the manner of his walking, she was sure this was no common thief. He was
a free man by the look of him, fearing nobody. His head, his back--she
crushed down a cry, and as, with her eyes still on that back, she would
have swung round to retrace her way, she stumbled against a stone, and
it was he who turned.
She had not fallen, but her hand was at her throat, her attitude was one
of fear, and he ran down the slope. He saw a pale and slightly freckled
face under a crown of heavy, burnished hair. He knew the face very well,
but it had grown thinner, he perceived, and the photographs did not show
the golden freckles, nor the colour of her hair. She was a little
breathless, but her lips were tightly closed, and he was acutely aware
of the physical control she exercised: there was no sound, the hand at
her throat hardly rose or fell. Her eyes, wide at first, narrowed a
little, and her lips quivered into a smile.
"I thought you were a thief--so I ran." She made as if she would wave
him onwards. "I will pretend I haven't seen you."
He looked beyond her. "I ought to have gone out by the back."
"Yes, you were very careless." But as she spoke she knew why he had
chosen the dangerous and longer way. She, too, had rejoiced in the great
blue wall that barred the kitchen passage, but rather than explain her
understanding, she endured the cool distance of the stare that told her
plainly she was alien and unwelcome. But, as she looked at him,
returning his gaze with one of frank, unguarded interest, she decided
that she did not mind his rudeness, that, indeed, she rather liked the
unconsciousness of it, and, without warning, she laughed aloud, and
checked against her sides the friendly impulse of her hands.
He condescended to smile, too, under his drawn brows.
"Well--good-bye," she said.
"Good-bye."
Neither moved: each looked over the other's shoulder; Theresa, upwards
at the swell of green hills against the sky, and Alexander down at the
quiet valley and his home, with Abraham sitting before the kitchen door.
"Where are the others?"
"All gone for walks."
"Don't you walk?" She saw the red sparks in his eyes, and his face
mobile for the next emotion. This one was a gently disguised scorn, and
again she was unmoved.
"I'd rather run."
"If you're alone, won't you come back to Janet's?"
"No, thank you."
"She would like to see you."
"And I should like to see her. I've known about her for so long;
but--it's good to be alone, isn't it? This is the first day I've ever
had like this. I'm greedy of it. But if I could just go and speak to her
and come back again, that would be best of all."
"You can do what you like at Janet's," he said. "I'm staying there."
To that she made no answer, but her mind was busy, adding this last
statement to Janet's refusal to see visitors. She smiled, and through
her thought there ran a pleasant sense of liking for Alexander's
company. His face was almost what she had expected, but his effect on
her was not. She had forgotten her old enmity and all the lurking,
half-seen fears that caused it, and she walked easily by his side and
knew no embarrassment at their silence.
"We've got photographs of you in our kitchen," he said suddenly; "but
how did you know me?"
"Well, I guessed. No I didn't!" She stood still to think. "Oh--I knew."
"You're like your pictures."
"You see," she was explaining her recognition of him--"I've heard about
you since I was ten years old. Did Father ever tell you about me?"
He gave a shout of laughter.
"Oh!" she said, "was it as bad as that? No wonder you wouldn't stay in
the house with us."
His face became grave. "I had work to do."
She looked at him with a like solemnity, showing him a face which might
have been reverential but for the dancing light in the eyes, and for the
lips, held back as in a leash. He lifted his head with a jerk, and
stared before him until they were at the crest of the slope, and Theresa
paused to see the valley.
He cast a glance at her. She wore a short skirt of some dull purple
stuff, and a woollen garment of the same colour that fitted loosely, yet
defined her slimly rounded shape. He thought that among the gold and
copper of her hair he saw a bronze glide into a glinting purple, and it
came into his mind that she was like the heather. Her feet, shod soberly
in brown, were planted firmly, but her body, like that mountain plant,
gave to the wind, and thereafter she and the flower he loved best were
for ever one to him.
She knew he looked at her and she looked back at him, now with a
different smile--how many had she?--frank and friendly.
"I do like being here," she said, and clasped her restless hands behind
her back.
"That's Janet's house among the larches," he said.
The dogs greeted them, and then Janet's tall figure slipped through the
trees.
Shyness took hold of Theresa, and when she sat in the dark kitchen she
was conscious again of the mystery of woods. The larches were close to
the window, scratching the panes, and the room was full of shadows.
Janet did not try to talk, but, having seated Theresa by the fire, she
took her stool on the other side of the hearth and scrutinized her
keenly, while Alexander leaned in the door-way, reading. Theresa could
think of nothing to say, and decided that if these two were content with
silence there was no need for her to break it; so she looked into the
fire, at Janet's face and the plates on the dresser, at the fire again,
at Alexander and the lean hands holding his book.
She had been free and happy outside with him, and now she was uneasy,
fettered.
"I think I'll go back," she said.
Alexander closed his book. "But you're going to stay to dinner. Isn't
she, Janet?"
"Of course." She looked at Theresa in her brooding, unsmiling way. "I
like to have you here. Your father's a friend of mine."
"Did he ever tell you that dream of Janet's?" Alexander asked.
"The one about the birds? Oh yes, he told me that." She smiled. "I think
he tells me everything."
"I'll see about the dinner."
Slightly frowning, Theresa looked at Alexander. "Must I stay?"
"I thought, if you would, I'd take you afterwards to a place I know.
Will you come? It's a fine place."
"I'd like to come," she said.
Janet fetched food from the larder while Laura, the little maid, with
her arms bare beyond the elbow, laid the table and cast casual remarks
at Alexander in a pretty monotone. She herself was pretty, but
Alexander, reading again, hardly looked at her. He murmured his assents
and "no's" and interjections into the book, while she told him how
someone in the village had driven into town, and the white horse had
fallen and cut its knees, and it was a good horse and a new one. "So
they'll have to bide home till its knees are mended, and that's awkward
for them with their coal and all to fetch."
"Ye-es," said Alexander. "It'll be hard work fetching the coal by hand."
"They'll never do that!" she exclaimed, and laughed as she saw the queer
raising of his brows.
Theresa was unreasonably angered by these pleasantries. She wanted to
tell Alexander he was not funny at all, that she could be much funnier
herself; but he had returned to his reading with so little apparent
satisfaction in his mild joke that she forgave him. Moreover, she liked
the way his head rose from his neck, and the line of his chin; he had a
manner of touching books that pleased her, and on small likes and
dislikes Theresa could hang a serious mood.
A little later, with the dogs leaping round them, they set out together
by the front door of the house, and Theresa turned among the larches to
wave farewell to Janet, who stood looking after them with her strange
passivity.
But to-day, below the quiet of her face, she was feeling all the tragedy
of her lost youth and her empty arms. These she folded across her breast
and pressed heavily against her heart to still the pain, and, in the
trouble of a mother who has had no lover but her son, she saw the
shadows drop back into their places as the two figures passed through
and on. And she stood there, rigid, with the hurt smile on her lips,
until the dogs came back and lay down at her feet, with lolling tongues.
* * * * *
Alexander led Theresa to a broad green path which they could see curving
far before them.
"Have we to walk on this all the way?" she asked.
"You need not. It's quickest in the end."
"But it's simply crying out for our obedience! Don't let us obey. Take
me the long short cut."
"Well, if you like walking on the sides of your feet----"
"Better than walking in other people's footsteps."
"I like to tread where other men have been," he said quietly. "It links
me to them."
"Links? Chains! I want to be free."
Amused, he looked down at her. "But you can't be, you know."
"But I am!"
"You'll find someone tugging at the other end one day."
Turning her palms up and down, she showed him her unshackled wrists.
"There's nothing there."
"Well, lead on, then. Straight for the gap."
She went before him. To her the walk was a revelation of her capacity
for happiness and when she went to bed that night, she could look back
on the day and marvel at the ease with which she had talked about
herself, what she wished to do, what she feared she would never do,
telling him all without a thought of making any effect, impelled by her
conviction of his sympathy, and her own need to speak. Only now, in the
quiet of the bedroom, did she speculate on Alexander's judgment of her.
She had walked with him for hours, she had been careless of his opinion
because she trusted it, because she had so completely and immediately
accepted him as friend that another conception of the relationship had
seemed impossible, and she saw now that her feeling for him had been too
sure and swift for any reflex action. She was less likely to pose to him
even than to herself, and, pondering on that remarkable fact, she sat on
the bed and drew off her stockings. After all her years of introspection
and enjoyment of an audience, this new condition neared the miraculous,
and it grew in significance as she sat, slowly unfastening her clothes.
Why, it had all been as simple as picking a flower and putting it in her
dress, but that Alexander was hardly comparable to a flower. What was he
like? A hill, she thought, mirroring the clouds and growing light again
with their passing.
She told no one of her meeting with him, and she did not see him again.
To Alexander the memory of that day was a tempting and detested scourge.
He was twenty-seven, and the two women who were his friends had held him
in their laps. Young women were strangers even to his thoughts, and at
Theresa's invasion of his home he had left it, only to have her gold and
purple thrust into his hands. And how tightly he had held them all that
day! How he had watched her going before him, turning, now and then, to
speak! The allurement of her poised body had been strong for him: she
had come upon him out of the very earth, with the sun on her hair, and
his unguarded senses had greeted her in spite of the dictates of his
mind, and, powerful against all warnings, he felt the stirring of the
life that had been so long asleep.
But it was when they rested in the promised place that he felt the
kinship of her spirit, and did his best not to acknowledge it, and
yielded before the vision of her enraptured face. He had taken her to a
tower of grey rocks, whence she could look forth as from a window on
fold after fold of hills: blue and purple they were, green and grey,
colours so intermixed and blended that the eye could hardly part them,
and as she gazed out on these serene and solid waves of earth and the
deep troughs dividing them, or looked straight below her at the narrow
valley streaked with the cotton threads that were streams, up at the sky
and the bird that hung there, and down to the ferns in the crannies of
the rocks, he knew she loved the hills with a passion younger than his
own, but as strong. He knew it through his heart and mind, and in the
same instant, he was jealous that she should love them, and that they
should be loved by her.
Separated from her by a few yards, he sat on a rock, smoking his pipe
and saying nothing, nor did she show any wish to speak. Sometimes he
turned to look at her, and always he saw his own emotions on her face.
She sat very still, leaning a little forward: the fingers of her clasped
hands were interlaced, except when she brushed aside the ruffled hair
that strayed into her eyes: her cheeks were pale, but about her there
was a subdued light like that in the sky long after the sun has dropped
away.
Presently she rose and wandered off, and, in fear lest she should be
lost, he followed and found her lying at full length, propping her chin
with her hands and digging little graves for her toes. Smiling, but
looking at him with solemn eyes, she released one hand and patted the
ground beside her in invitation, and thus they lay until her shiver
warned him that the air was cold.
"We must go," he said, and remembering the softness of his voice, he was
tormented.
She sprang up, and the long silence was broken. They walked home side by
side, and she had talked and drawn talk from him until he was telling
her the thoughts he hardly knew were his, and now found were his best
possessions. With perfect confidence in her interest, he told her the
great and little things about his work, and she did not fail him. It was
her mind he sought and she gave it gladly; he knew there were no
barriers raised against him, and his own were all thrown down.
They had clasped hands in farewell, and she had thanked him for her day,
and suddenly her face had become as beautiful for him as her body. It
was elfin in the gloaming and tremulous with life, and he saw the
loveliness of her lips.
Long after she had left him he sat staring at the stream, shaking and
half-afraid because of his fierce desire to touch her.
The water was dark and hardly discernible except where foam gathered and
pale waterfalls were splashing, but it was Theresa that he saw. Now he
would push her from him in anger, hating himself for his need, and a
moment later twine his fingers among hers and draw her back, looking
into her clear, unflinching eyes, telling her it was her companionship
as well as her sweet frame he wanted, the mind that had sprung so
swiftly to his meaning and never fallen short. And then again there
would come a terrible distrust, born of his physical desire. How was he
to clear himself of that and see an uncaged Theresa flown from the vivid
body that might and might not be the expression of herself? Better
perhaps to see neither bird nor gilded wires, to forget the singing she
had started in his breast, and to go steadily on his chosen road. Why
should he introduce strange new gods into his worship? Would they
satisfy him? Would they not hinder him, and demand the offering up of
sacrifices he could not give?
He cried aloud, and his voice fell in with the sound of the rushing
water. "Oh, Theresa, you heather flower, I'll give you anything but my
work, if you'll only be what your face says you are. But you can't be
that. Can you? Can you? It would be like Heaven opened. Oh,
fool--fool--fool!"
He stood up strongly, holding down his hands. "And I thought myself a
stubborn man to beat! Well, and I'm not beaten yet."
Nevertheless, late that night he stole round the house and sat long on
the horse-block, for it was just below her window.