To Basil Morton, haste was as foreign a quality as dignity was a native
one. He lived slowly, marshalled his actions into order and subdued his
thoughts into a fair sequence, worthy of the noble mind of man. Even in
his imaginations of a future wooing, he had pictured it as a smooth and
rhythmic progress, for, seeing his lady fair and holy, fit to be adored,
the celebration of his worship must be beautiful and stately; she must
be won to the delicately pacing music of his heart. That lady of his
fancy had been tall and dark, gracious and reserved, with no ink stain
on her middle finger, and no happy comradeship with men. She must be
above them, loftily enthroned, white-fingered, perfect; yet here he was
ensnared by this Theresa with her red hair and her quickness and her
fearless glances of eyes that were rarely veiled. He was ensnared when
he first looked into those eyes, heard her voice, and watched her nimble
gestures; and, as though to lie held in her toils were not enough, she
had magically animated him with her own quickness. The courtship he had
planned for the dark, imagined lady faded and left a fragrance of old
things, while his heart leapt with a strangeness of hurry and his brain
was hot with his impatience. Yet he liked to remember his first sight of
her, for she had been gazing into the fire, as maidens should, and for
that instant she had looked soft and vulnerable and young, needing the
protection he had to give. He longed to give it. Thought of the lives of
unprotected women could always give his social conscience its sharpest
pang, and as he saw Theresa turn her latch-key in the lock, that pang
had changed to bitter pain. How often did she walk home late at night
alone? Into what dreadful slums and dens of wickedness was she forced by
his uncle's folly? What right had he to employ her for these purposes?
What horrid sights had she seen, what language heard? She should not
suffer that degradation of eyes and ears. He hated the hours she spent
with Neville. She must be taken from such work; she should live, he
vowed, a life more fitted for a woman, and he resolved to win her to it.
Wondering greatly at the headlong manner in which he had fallen at her
feet, he forced himself to sleep, anxious to bring the day and meet his
lady on her way to work.
It was a foggy morning, and she came towards him through a grey mist
which had bedewed her clothes and hair. Her cheeks were a pale pink, her
eyes were very bright, and at the sight of her he felt as though he had
been bathing in some rare air where prejudices could be blown away, and
youth regained and strengthened.
"May I be the first to wish you a very happy New Year?" he said.
"You are too late. Bessie, our domestic drudge and best friend, was the
first; then Uncle George. He seemed to have very little hope. You are
the third--and thank you. And a happy New Year to you, too."
"It has begun happily," he said gravely.
"Yes. I can smell the spring coming through the mist. And soon there'll
be snowdrops and crocuses."
"You are fond of flowers?" His words were more a statement than a
question, and his implied sureness of her love for beauty hampered while
it pleased her.
She shook her shoulders and spoke quickly. "Yes, but I like spring
better. I like the smell of the wind and the way the earth lets things
through. It's so eager!"
"Autumn is my favourite time of year."
She looked at him acutely. "It's not so pushing, is it? More
resigned--and all the dying things have the respectability of age. But
my buds insist on coming out. They're active, and your autumn leaves are
passive: they just flutter down, poor things. The buds for me!"
He thought she was like the spring herself, and was immediately
converted to her view. "I shall watch spring this year with different
eyes," he said, and the blood ran swiftly, joyously in her veins.
He left her at the foot of the broad steps leading to the front door,
but they met at lunch, and when Theresa went home that evening she found
a sheaf of flowers awaiting her.
"Who brought them, Bessie?" she asked, fingering them softly, for they
were the flowers a lover chooses--roses, lilies and violets, delicate
and sweet-scented things.
"A tall young feller--strange to me. 'Andsome."
"Fair?"
"Dark, with a moustache."
"I'd better put them in water," Theresa said quickly, and carried them
upstairs.
The next day was long in coming, yet she would have urged the night to
stay. It was glorious to be courted, but she was half ashamed. If a man
had picked her up without question and borne her away, she would have
struggled fiercely, but she would have been without this strange
shrinking of the mind. She was uncertain of her position: this wordless
gift of flowers affected her like a lurking enemy. Moreover, though of
all things she loved power, and though people sometimes seemed to her
like pawns she could move at will, she suddenly felt herself unfitted to
receive such gentle homage. It made her feel large and clumsy:
remembering Morton's quiet voice, her own sounded too loud and rough,
and she was aware again of his fastidious mind. Hers was not fastidious:
she liked the truth, whatever the garb it wore, and for knowledge of
life she had a thirst ready for the bitterest dregs. Had he known that,
would he have sent those flowers? And had he sent the flowers? Should
she thank him or be silent? To thank him would surely be to assume too
much, yet she wished to thank him, for she loved the flowers. She could
see them gleaming faintly as they stood on the table by her bed, and
their scent stole towards her. She put out a hand and touched them. They
were like friends. But she would be silent: she had no choice, and it
would be sweeter so: unnamed, they would lie the closer in her heart.
These were the thoughts that kept her waking through the night, so that
she arose pale and heavy-eyed with all her quickness gone but for the
restlessness of her hands.
Twice during that morning she met Morton in the hall, gave him a smile
and half a smile, and passed on. At lunch they faced each other, but
Theresa's eyes skimmed over his, and she would not talk. Shyness was
like a weight on her head, and she could not shake it off. Once more she
was ashamed; she, the independent, the undaunted, to be sitting there
like a bashful child! And oh, did she look as foolish as she felt? She
hated the flowers that bound her: they had stolen her freedom. For the
first time in her unbridled life she felt the curb, and she would have
bitten the hand that forced it on her; yet, looking on Morton as the
stern master, she lost the shame she had in seeing him as the adorer.
She could kick and bite and struggle against hard measures, but against
softer ones she had no weapon, only the pain of seeing herself
unwillingly subdued.
What were these people talking about? Their words flowed past her like a
river, until Simon Smith addressed her.
"You'd better go home directly after lunch, Miss Webb. Make up for all
that extra work. Jack has to go out this afternoon, so there'll be
nothing for you to do."
Slowly she turned that weighted head, and the effect was dignified,
reproachful.
"My work does not depend on Mr. Neville," she said. "Except for the few
letters he dictates every morning our work is quite distinct. There's no
reason why I should go early."
"Very well, very well. I thought you looked tired, that's all. Do as you
please. Do as you please. Of course, the house and the whole concern is
entirely under your management!"
She smiled at him, he smiled at her: they understood each other very
well and, pleased with her little show of power, she glanced at Morton,
surprising from him a look so tender and unguarded that her face was
crimsoned. She felt that even her eyes were blushing, and she covered
them with rosy lids, hating her weakness, hating him, yet conscious of a
new respect for a man who could make her flinch.
In the afternoon a knock came at the office door, and Morton entered at
Theresa's bidding.
"I wondered if I could help you," he said; "for, indeed, you do look
very tired." He stood near her chair, looking down at her. His eyes were
deep and soft, the lines of his face were firm and fine. He seemed firm
and fine all over: his hands, his clothes, his figure, belonged to a
type of man she had not known: he stood for something orderly and
seemly, something her life had missed.
"I am not tired," she said. "And I don't think you can help. Thank you.
It would be more trouble to tell you what to do. I don't suppose you can
use a typewriter?"
"No." He felt the vastness of his ignorance. "But I think I could
learn."
"It's not much harder than organ grinding." Laughter crept slyly about
her eyes and mouth. "Would you like to try?"
"I should, very much."
"Then you may take the typewriter into the library. It's rather an
irritating noise to work with, but I shan't hear it from there. And
then, some other day, you may be useful."
He could do nothing but carry the heavy thing away with him, and for the
rest of the afternoon he sat before it, trying, for his dignity's sake,
to pretend he liked the sound which deafened him to the other one he
listened for, so that Theresa went home without his knowledge.
Morton stayed in Radstowe for a fortnight, and each day hurried his
determination to win Theresa. Yet even to his fondness, to fancy her a
wife, was to imagine the chaining of a dragon fly. The moods she showed
him were as changeful as the colours in that creature's wings, her
glances were as swift as its flight. Sometimes he would find her steady,
as though she had settled on a flower, and at a word she would dart off
again whither he could not follow. He could not always even watch her
passage, it was so tortuous and so quick, and she left him puzzled,
bewildered, uncertain of her, but the more certain of himself.
Every day they met decorously at luncheon, and often, if Neville were
out, she made him welcome in the office. "You must let me help you."
"Of course." Her lifted eyebrows snubbed him delicately. "Will you read
out this list for me? I want to type it. Oh, but faster than that! No,
let me have it. I shall manage better alone."
He protested. "I'm very sorry. I wasn't thinking. Let me try again."
She was lenient: she knew he had been watching her.
"Very well." And when they had finished she nodded cheerfully. "With a
little practice you might become quite useful."
"I believe you despise me for a drone."
"No, I don't despise you. And I haven't quite decided what you are."
He looked up from the paper in his hand. "I hope you will make a
decision in my favour," he said, and his voice was vibrant.
She sat facing the light, and he saw the slight quiver of her features.
"I expect I shall." She had no inner doubts. She found in him something
good and rare, something the more valuable because of its aloofness and
its difference from herself, and if she could not yet see him as a
whole, she was drawn to the parts made visible.
She broke the moment's strain by pushing aside her papers and setting
her elbows on the table. She took her face in her hands.
"Let's talk," she said. And then, "Do you ever laugh?"
He smiled instead. "Not often."
"I should like to see you helpless with laughter, doing all sorts of
undignified things--crying and uncontrolled. Do you think you could?"
"I'm sure I couldn't. You'll set that down against me?"
"I'm not making a list of your qualities," she said sharply. "But you're
honest."
"Had you doubted it?"
"I don't think we'll talk, after all," she said. He pleased her with the
steady look that ended in a smile, and she went home that night in a
state of happy restlessness.
She felt herself being involved in a liking for him which resulted from
his liking for her, but was none the less sincere, and characteristically
she chafed while she rejoiced. Love, she found, has more than one means
of entry, and though she had always pictured herself seized roughly by
the intruder, life was teaching her to mistrust imagination, and she
resigned herself easily to this daintier form of worship, for there was
a novel pleasure in being enthroned, spreading herself for homage and
startling the worshipper with sudden incongruities.
For those fourteen days she was richly fed with the delicacies she had
foretold, and when Morton went away he left her hungry. Irritation came
with the pangs, and the old anger against herself, against him and all
the world. Neville offended her with indiscreet remarks, Grace dared to
suggest she was not well, and Bessie threatened to give notice.
"What for?" Theresa was sitting in her old place on the kitchen fender,
and Bessie was wandering, felt-shod, in apparent aimlessness.
"Your temper always was a bit awkward, Miss Terry. D'you remember when
you had your clean clothes? We'd all try to keep clear of you for an
hour or two, and it would pass off, but for this last month--well! I've
never known when you were going to flare, and I haven't pleased you
once."
"That's your fault. You needn't blame me. Oh, Bessie, I am a
bad-tempered wretch! Don't take any notice of me. Just be kind!"
"It's 'ard sometimes, Miss Terry dear."
"I know. I know. But you've got to go on loving me. I can't live unless
people like me--and, anyhow, you can't help it!"
"But you shouldn't take advantage, Miss Theresa."
"It is rather mean, isn't it?" she said thoughtfully; "but, you know,
Bessie, I have a hunger that's never satisfied."
"If it's for something 'olesome----"
"But it isn't. It's just to be made a fuss of."
"And there's your father thinking of you day and night."
"Yes, there's Father." She had been neglecting him of late; she had
allowed him to come home without a single question about his visit to
the farm, and now, repentant, she ran upstairs to his little room.
"How dare you sit here without a fire?" she asked.
"I'm wearing my overcoat, my dear."
"Come downstairs at once!"
"I'm afraid your Uncle George is in the dining-room. I can work better
alone."
She knelt and put a match to the wood and paper.
"We can't afford it, Theresa."
"I can, though. What are you working at?"
"I've begun again. It's foolish, no doubt--a waste of time, but the old
impulse returns. Though now there is no one who cares for it."
"There's me." She was kneeling by the growing fire, and she could only
see her father's back, but its stillness and his silence were a
punishment for all the kindnesses she had left undone, and for an
instant she knew how she would feel when he lay dead. Gripping the
fender, she dropped her head to her knees. "And there's Alexander," she
said, in a voice muffled against her dress.
There was a pause. "Yes, there's Alexander."
"Did you have a happy time," she stopped, and deliberately she used
Alexander's words, "up yonder."
"Very. Very. He was like himself again. And, I hope you won't mind,
Theresa, he wants to come here for his Easter holiday. I didn't ask
him--I wouldn't do that without your consent. He asked himself. I could
only make one answer, could I, my dear?"
"No. No. I don't mind at all. Why should I?"
He turned in his chair. "You seemed to have such an extraordinary
dislike for him, my child."
On her knees she crossed the narrow space between them, and leaned her
head against his arm.
"I've always hated to hear other people praised, and that was the way
you began about him, fourteen years ago. Fourteen years! And you've been
praising him ever since. But I'm trying to be more sensible. At least,
I'm different. At least, I think I am! Oh--I don't know! Anyhow, I don't
mind his coming a bit, a bit! He can live here if he likes!" She sank to
a sitting posture, and she beat the ground softly, hurriedly, with her
fists.
"He won't want to do that," Edward Webb said unnecessarily. "He seems
wedded to his life there."
"I thought he was in love." Her voice scorned the state in him.
"So Janet seemed to think. I have heard no more of it. And he seems
content."
"Contented people," she snapped, "have fat souls."
"I didn't say self-content, my dear," he explained mildly. "But he is
willing to live a life of obscurity--for the sake of an ideal. That's
rather great, Theresa. With his scholarship and his power he might have
made himself a name."
"Then he ought to have made it. Anybody could teach those stodgy boys."
Yet his own words came back to her, mingling with the water and the
wind, and once more she gave assent.
"That's just what he does not believe. Does a preacher think one soul of
more value than another? And should a teacher? That is what he asks, my
dear--and answers. And I am proud to call him my friend."
She went to bed, to lie there cold and stiff, her thoughts hideously and
mercifully formless, until at last, out of that mangled heap of
indistinguishable things, sleep came to her as gently as a fallen
feather.
Morning brought her a letter from Morton, and her sores were healed. It
was the letter she had wanted. It told her delicately something of what
she seemed to him, and it revealed the aspirations of the man; it
implied that they had been blown still higher by the bright strong
breath of her spirit, and it satisfied the ancient hunger that, last
night, had shrieked ravenously for food. No one else had ever claimed
her for his inspiration, and as she put the letter in her breast, the
action was like a gage flung down, though the name of her enemy was not
cried.
The next day, flowers came, and then another letter, and after a few
more days, more flowers, and, lying among them, a little missive,
telling Theresa that these but heralded his own approach.
"Have you heard the news?" Neville said, when she entered the office
that morning.
"Which news?"
"The L. P. is coming here again--arrives to-night."
"Yes, I knew that."
"Oh, then, good-bye, Theresa. If you are an accessory before the act,
it's all over, but the old gentleman and I have been hoping against
hope."
"What hope?" she asked coldly, her hands on the back of her chair.
"We don't want you to marry the L. P."
"I have not been asked to marry him. Oh, how can you talk like this? I
think you're vulgar!" Tears darted to her eyes. "And you spoke so
beautifully about love!"
She had betrayed herself, but he hid his knowledge. "I say--I'm sorry,
Theresa. I only meant it as a joke. Silly fool! And beastly bad form, I
know; but, really, we do live in dread of someone's stealing you, and
we've made special plans for his abduction. You shouldn't make yourself
so lovable, my dear." He was right when he said he understood men and
women, for now she laughed brokenly, but with pleasure, and spoke
forcibly in spite of her trembling lips.
"I don't know why I should behave like this. Is it like me? Jack, is it
like me?"
"Not a bit! Yes--exactly," he added, and again she had to laugh.
"And you've made me self-conscious and ridiculous!"
"I promise I won't look when you meet."
"Oh, Jack! Let's get to work. I do wish sometimes we were all one sex."
Neville's promise was an unnecessary one, for Theresa did not see more
than Morton's coat hanging in the hall until the second evening of his
visit, when he called on her father.
"The flower-man's come," said Bessie, flapping into the kitchen where
Theresa was making soup.
"The flower-man?"
"I mean the young feller that brought them on New Year's Day."
"Oh!" said Theresa, on a long, indifferent note, and stirred steadily.
"Miss Terry, is he coming after you?"
"I don't know, Bessie." She spoke in a voice that had the clear
emptiness of a puzzled child's. "I don't know," she repeated, and then
her uncouth young womanhood came strongly on her. "Oh, Bessie, Bessie, I
think it's terrible to be a woman--terrible. Men--oh--and yet I know it
is our destiny. Nature drives us. And I'm pushing against the chariot
she sits in, pushing, pushing"--she brandished the wooden spoon--"and I
know I shall be beaten in the end."
"Oh, Miss Terry, you've dropped some soup on your dress. Just look at
that!"
"And I want to be beaten--oh, never mind the soup! It will wash out."
"I'm going to wash it out now. D'you think I'd let you go upstairs like
that?"
When they had had supper and Morton had gone, Edward Webb and Theresa
sat silently by the fire. She was happy, for Morton was better than her
memory of him, and though her heart was beating fast, she was conscious
of a kind of peace.
She did not look at her father until he spoke.
"He told me about himself," he said, and there was a tragedy of appeal
in the words. They implored her to reassure him, to swear that this man
had not come to take her from him. But she only nodded, looking down
again.
"His mother is the sister of Simon Smith, it seems. I imagine he is
rich, not that he told me that, of course, but incidentally. And I think
he is an honest man." There seemed to be something he had left unsaid,
but before he had time to say it, she lifted her head and showed him
her face aglow. He could not say the words. Instead, he put out his
hands.
"Theresa," he said. "Theresa."
She held tightly to him, steadied her mouth against his hands, and
laughed. That laughter was unmistakable: it sounded the farewell to all
his hopes, and he heard them go clanging down to the very place of
disappointments.