On this same Sunday night before the date fixed for the Suffrage
debate, a slender woman, in a veil and a waterproof, opened the gate of
a small house in the Brixton Road. It was about nine o'clock in the
evening. The pavements were wet with rain, and a gusty wind was
shrieking through the smutty almond and alder trees along the road
which had ventured to put out their poor blossoms and leaves in the
teeth of this February gale.
The woman stood and looked at the house after shutting the gate, as
though uncertain whether she had found what she was looking for. But
the number 453, on the dingy door, could be still made out by the light
of the street opposite, and she mounted the steps.
A slatternly maid opened the door, and on being asked whether Mrs.
Marvell was at home, pointed curtly to a dimly lighted staircase, and
disappeared.
Gertrude Marvell groped her way upstairs. The house smelt repulsively
of stale food, and gas mingled, and the wailing wind from outside
seemed to pursue the visitor with its voice as she mounted. On the
second floor landing, she knocked at the door of the front room.
After an interval, some shuffling steps came to the door, and it was
cautiously opened.
"What's your business, please?"
"It's me--Gertrude. Are you alone?"
A sound of astonishment. The door was opened, and a woman appeared. Her
untidy, brown hair, touched with grey, fell back from a handsome
peevish face of an aquiline type. A delicate mouth, relaxed and
bloodless, seemed to make a fretful appeal to the spectator, and the
dark circles under the eyes shewed violet on a smooth and pallid skin.
She was dressed in a faded tea-gown much betrimmed, covered up with a
dingy white shawl.
"Well, Gertrude--so you've come--at last!"--she said, after a moment,
in a tone of resentment.
"If you can put me up for the night--I can stay. I've brought no
luggage."
"That doesn't matter. There's a stretcher bed. Come in." Gertrude
Marvell entered, and her mother closed the door.
"Well, mother--how are you?"
The daughter offered her cheek, which the elder woman kissed. Then Mrs.
Marvell said bitterly--
"Well, I don't suppose, Gertrude, it much matters to you how I am."
Gertrude took off her wet waterproof, and hat, and sitting down by the
fire, looked round her mother's bed-sitting-room. There was a tray on
the table with the remains of a meal. There were also a large number of
women's hats, some trimmed, some untrimmed, some in process of
trimming, lying about the room, on the different articles of furniture.
There was a tiny dog in a basket, which barked shrilly and feebly as
Gertrude approached the fire, and there were various cheap illustrated
papers and a couple of sixpenny novels to be seen emerging from the
litter here and there. For the rest, the furniture was of a squalid
lodging-house type. On the chimney-piece however was a bunch of
daffodils, the only fresh and pleasing object in the room.
To Gertrude it was as though she had seen it all before. Behind the
room, there stretched a succession of its ghostly fellows--the rooms of
her childhood. In those rooms she could remember her mother as a young
and comely woman, but always with the same slovenly dress, and the same
untidy--though then abundant and beautiful--hair. And as she half shut
her eyes she seemed also to see her younger sister coming in and
out--malicious, secretive--with her small turn-up nose, pouting lips,
and under-hung chin.
She made no reply to her mother's complaining remark. But while she
held her cold hands to the blaze that Mrs. Marvell stirred up, her eyes
took careful note of her mother's aspect. "Much as usual," was her
inward comment. "Whatever happens, she'll outlive me."
"You've been going on with the millinery?" She pointed to the hats. "I
hope you've been making it pay."
"It provides me with a few shillings now and then," said Mrs. Marvell,
sitting heavily down on the other side of the fire--"which Winnie
generally gets out of me!" she said sharply. "I am a miserable pauper
now, as I always have been."
Gertrude's look was unmoved. Her mother had, she knew, all that her
father had left behind him--no great sum, but enough for a solitary
woman to live on.
"Well, anyway, you must be glad of it as an occupation. I wish I could
help you. But I haven't really a farthing of my own, beyond the
interest on my £1000. I handle a great deal of money, but it all goes
to the League, and I never let them pay me more than my bare expenses.
Now then, tell me all about everybody!" And she lay back in the
dilapidated basket-chair that had been offered her, and prepared
herself to listen.
The family chronicle was done. It was as depressing as usual, and
Gertrude made but little comment upon it. When it was finished, Mrs.
Marvell rose, and put the kettle on the fire, and got out a couple of
fresh cups and saucers from a cupboard. As she did so, she looked round
at her visitor.
"And you're as deep in that militant business as ever."
Gertrude made a negligent sign of assent.
"Well, you'll never get any good of it." The mother's pale cheek
flushed. It excited her to have this chance of speaking her mind to her
clever and notorious daughter, whom in many ways she secretly envied,
while heartily disapproving her acts and opinions.
Gertrude shrugged her shoulders.
"What's the good of arguing?"
"Well, it's true"--said the mother, persisting. "Every new thing you
do, turns more people against you. Winnie's a Suffragist--but she says
you've spoilt all their game!"
Gertrude's eyes shone; she despised her mother's opinion, and her
sister's still more, and yet once again in their neighbourhood, once
again in the old environment, she could not help treating them in the
old defiant brow-beating way.
"And you think, I suppose, that Winnie knows a good deal about it?"
"Well, she knows what everybody's saying--in the trams--and the trains
everywhere. Hundreds of them that used to be for you have turned over."
"Let them!"
The contemptuous tone irritated Mrs. Marvell. But at the same time she
could not help admiring her eldest daughter, as she sat there in the
fire-light, her quiet well-cut dress, her delicate hands and feet. It
was true indeed, she was a scarce-crow for thinness, and looked years
older--"somehow gone to pieces"--thought the mother, vaguely, and with
a queer, sudden pang.
"And you're going on with it?"
"What? Militancy? Of course we are--more than ever!"
"Why, the men laugh at you, Gertrude!"
"They won't laugh--by the time we've done," said Gertrude, with
apparent indifference. Her mother had not sufficient subtlety of
perception to see that the indifference was now assumed, to hide the
quiver of nerves, irreparably injured by excitement and overstrain.
"Well, all I know is, it's against nature to suppose that women can
fight men." Mrs. Marvell's remarks were rather like the emergence of
scattered spars from a choppy sea.
"We shall fight them," said Gertrude, sourly--"And what's more, we
shall beat them."
"All the same we've got to live with them!" cried her mother, suddenly
flushing, as old memories swept across her.
"Yes,--on our terms--not theirs!"
"I do believe, Gertrude, you hate the very sight of a man!" Gertrude
smiled again; then suddenly shivered, as though the cold wind outside
had swept through the room.
"And so would you--if you knew what I do!"
"Well I do know a good bit!" protested Mrs. Marvell. "And I'm a married
woman,--worse luck! and you're not. But you'll never see it any other
way than your own, Gertie. You got a kink in you when you were quite
a girl. Last week I was talking about you to a woman I know--and I
said--'It's the girls ruined by the bad men that make Gertrude so
mad'--and she said--'She don't ever think of the boys that are ruined
by the bad women!--Has she ever had a son--not she!' And she just cried
and cried. I suppose she was thinking of something."
Gertrude rose.
"Look here, mother. Can I go to bed? I'm awfully tired."
"Wait a bit. I'll make the bed."
Gertrude sat down by the fire again. Her exhaustion was evident, and
she made no attempt to help her mother. Mrs. Marvell let down the
chair-bed, drew it near the fire, and found some bed-clothes. Then she
produced night-things of her own, and helped Gertrude undress. When her
daughter was in bed, she made some tea, and dry toast, and Gertrude let
them be forced on her. When she had finished, the mother suddenly
stooped and kissed her.
"Where are you going to now, Gertrude? Are you staying on with that
lady in Hamptonshire?"
"Can't tell you my plans just yet," said Gertrude sleepily--"but you'll
know next week."
The lights were put out. Both women tried to sleep, and Gertrude was
soon heavily asleep.
But as soon as it was light, Mrs. Marvell heard her moving, the splash
of water, and the lighting of the fire. Presently Gertrude came to her
side fully dressed--
"There, mother, I've made _you_ a cup of tea! And now in a few minutes
I shall be off."
Mrs. Marvell sat up and drank the tea.
"I didn't think you'd go in such a hurry," she said, fretfully.
"I must. My day's so full. Well, now look here, Mother, I want you to
know if anything were to happen to me, my thousand pounds would come to
you first, and then to Winnie and her children. And it's my wish, that
neither my brother nor Henry shall touch a farthing of it. I've made a
will, and that's the address of my solicitors, who're keeping it." She
handed her mother an envelope.
Mrs. Marvell put down her tea, and put her handkerchief to her eyes.
"I believe you're up to something dreadful, Gertrude,--which you won't
tell me."
"Nonsense," said Gertrude, not however unkindly. "But we mayn't see
each other for a good while. There!--I'll open the windows--that'll
make you feel more cheerful." And she drew up the blinds to the dull
February day, and opened a window.
"I'll telephone to Winnie as I go past the Post Office to come and
spend the day with you--and I'll send up the servant to do your room.
Now don't fret."
"I'm a lonely old woman, Gertrude:--and I wish I was dead."
Gertrude frowned.
"You should try and read something, Mother--better than these trashy
novels. When I've time, I'll send you a parcel of books--I've got a
good many. And don't you let your work go--it's good for you. Now
good-bye."
The two women kissed--Mrs. Marvell embracing her daughter with a sudden
fierceness of emotion to which Gertrude submitted, almost for the first
time in her life. Then her mother pushed her away.
"Good-bye, Gertrude--you'd better go!"
Gertrude went out noiselessly, closing the door behind her with a
lingering movement, unlike her. In the tiny hall below, she found the
"general" at work, and sent her up to Mrs. Marvell. Then she went out
into the grey February morning, and the little girl of the landlady
standing on the steps saw her enter one of the eastward-bound trams.
Monday afternoon came. Winnington had been called away to Wanchester by
urgent County business; against his will, for there had been some bad
rioting the day before at Latchford, and he would rather have gone to
help his brother magistrates. But there was no help for it. Lady
Tonbridge was at the little Georgian house, shutting it up for six
months. Delia was left alone in the Abbey, consumed with a restless
excitement she had done her best to hide from her companions. She
suddenly made up her mind that she would go and see for herself, and by
herself, what was happening at Monk Lawrence. She set out unobserved
and on foot, and had soon climbed the hill and reached the wood walk
along its crest where she had once met Lathrop. Half way through,
she came on two persons whom she at once recognised as the
science-mistress, Miss Jackson, and Miss Toogood. They were waiting
slowly, and, as it seemed to Delia, sadly; the little dressmaker
limping painfully, with her head thrown back and a face of fixed and
tragic distress.
When they saw Delia, they stopped in agitation.
"Oh, Miss Blanchflower!--"
Delia who knew that Miss Jackson had been in town hoping for work at
the Central Office of the League of Revolt, divined at once that she
had been disappointed.
"They couldn't find you anything?"
The teacher shook her head.
"And the Governors have given me a month's salary here in lieu of
notice. I've left the school, Miss Blanchflower! I was in the Square
you know, that day--and at the Police Court afterwards. That was what
did it. And I have my old mother to keep."
A pair of haggard eyes met Delia's.
"Oh, but I'll help!" cried Delia.--"You must let me help!--won't you?"
"Thank you--but I've got a few savings," said the teacher quietly. "It
isn't that so much. It's--well, Miss Toogood feels it too. She was in
town--she saw everything. And she knows what I mean. We're
disheartened--that's what it is!"
"With the movement?" said Delia, after a moment.
"It seemed so splendid when we talked of it down here--and--it
_was_--so horrible!" Her voice dropped.
"So horrible!" echoed Miss Toogood drearily. "It wasn't what we meant,
somehow. And yet we'd read about it. But to see those young women
beating men's faces--well, it did for me!"
"The police were rough too!" cried Miss Jackson. "But you couldn't
wonder at it, Miss Blanchflower, could you?"
Delia looked into the speaker's frank, troubled face. "You and I felt
the same," she said in a choked voice. "It was ugly--and it was
absurd."
She walked back with them a little way, comforting them, as best she
could. And her sympathy, her sweetness did--strangely--comfort them.
When she left them, they walked on, talking tenderly of her, counting
on _her_ good fortune, if there was none for them.
At the end of the walk, towards Monk Lawrence, another figure emerged
from the distance. Delia started, then gathered all her wits; for it
was Lathrop.
He hurried towards her, breathless, cutting all preliminaries--
"I was coming to find you. I arrived this morning. There is something
wrong! I have just been to the house, and there is no one there."
"What do you mean?"
"No one. I went to Daunt's rooms. Everything locked. The house
absolutely dark--everywhere. And I know that he has had the strictest
orders!"
Without a word, she began to run, and he beside her. When she
slackened, he told her that while in London he had made the most
skilful enquiries he could devise as to the plot he believed to be on
foot. But--like Delia's own--they had been quite fruitless. Those
persons who had shared suspicion with him in December were now
convinced that the thing was dropped. All that he had ascertained was
that Miss Marvell was in town, apparently recovered, and Miss Andrews
with her.
"Well--and were you pleased with your raid?" he asked her, half
mockingly, as he opened the gate of Monk Lawrence for her.
She resented the question, and the tone of it, remembering his first
grandiloquent letter to her.
"_You_ ought to be," she said, drily. "It was the kind of thing you
recommended."
"In that letter I wrote you! I ought to have apologised to you for that
letter long ago. I am afraid it was an exercise. Oh, I felt it, I
suppose, when I wrote it."
There was a touch of something insolent in his voice.
She made no reply. If it had not been for the necessity which yoked
them, she would not have spent another minute in his company, so
repellent to her had he become--both in the inner and the outer man.
She tried only to think of him as an ally in a desperate campaign.
They hastened up the Monk Lawrence drive. The house stood still and
peaceful in the February afternoon. The rooks from the rookery behind
were swirling about and over the roofs, filling the air with monotonous
sound which only emphasized the silence below. A sheet of snowdrops lay
white in the courtyard, where a child's go-cart upset, held the very
middle of the stately approach to the house.
Delia went to the front door, and rang the bell--repeatedly. Not a
sound, except the dim echoes of the bell itself from some region far
inside.
"No good!" said Lathrop. "Now come to the back." They went round to the
low addition at the back of the house, where Daunt and his family had
now lived for many months. Here also there was nobody. The door was
locked. The blinds were drawn down. Impossible to see into the rooms,
and neither calling nor knocking produced any response.
Lathrop stood thinking.
"Absolutely against orders! I know--for Daunt himself told me--that he
had promised Lang never to leave the house without putting some deputy
he could trust in charge. He has gone and left no deputy--or the deputy
he did leave has deserted."
"What's the nearest house--or cottage?"
"The Gardeners' cottages, beyond the kitchen garden. Only one of them
occupied now, I believe. Daunt used to live there before he moved into
the house. Let's go there!"
They ran on. The walled kitchen garden was locked, but they found a way
round it to where three creeper-grown cottages stood in a pleasant
lonely space girdled by beech-woods. One only was inhabited, but from
that the smoke was going up, and a babble of children's voices emerged.
Lathrop knocked. There was a sudden sound, and then a silence within.
In a minute however the door was opened, and a strapping black-eyed
young woman stood on the threshold looking both sulky and astonished.
"Are you Daunt's niece?" said Lathrop.
"I am, Sir. What do you want with him?"
"Why isn't he at Monk Lawrence?" asked Lathrop roughly. "He told me
himself he was not to leave the house unguarded."
"Well, Sir, I don't know I'm sure what business it is of yours!" said
the woman, flushing with anger. "He got bad news of his son, whose ship
arrived at Portsmouth yesterday, and the young man said to be dying, on
board. So he went off this afternoon. I've only left it for ten minutes
and I'm going back directly. Mrs. Cresson here had asked the children
to tea, and I brought them over. And I'll thank you, Sir, not to go
spying on honest people!"
And she would have slammed the door in his face, but that Delia came
forward.
"We had no intention of spying upon you, Miss Daunt--indeed we hadn't.
But I am Miss Blanchflower, who came here before Christmas, with Mr.
Winnington, and I should have been glad to see Mr. Daunt and the
children. Lily!--don't you remember me?"--and she smiled at the
crippled child--a delicate blue-eyed creature--whom she saw in the
background.
But the child, who seemed to have been crying violently, did not come
forward. And the other two, who had their fingers in their mouths, were
equally silent and shrinking. In the distance an old woman sat
motionless in her chair by the fire, taking no notice apparently of
what was going on.
The young woman appeared for a moment confused or excited.
"Well, I'm sorry, Miss, but my Uncle won't be back till after dark. And
I wouldn't advise you to come in, Miss,"--she hurriedly drew the door
close behind her--"the doctor thinks two of the children have got
whooping-cough--and I didn't send them to school today."
"Well, just understand, Miss Daunt, if that's your name," said Lathrop,
with emphasis--"that till you return to the house, we shall stay there.
We shall walk up and down there, till you come back. You know well
enough there are people about, who would gladly do an injury to the
house, and that it's not safe to leave it. Monk Lawrence is not Sir
Wilfrid Lang's property only. It belongs to the whole nation, and there
are plenty of people that'll know the reason why, if any harm comes to
it."
"Oh, very well. Have it your own way, Sir! I'll come--I'll come--fast
enough," and the speaker, with a curious half-mocking look at Lathrop,
flounced back into the cottage, and shut the door. They waited. There
were sounds of lowered voices, and crying children. Then Miss Daunt
emerged defiantly, and they all three walked back to Monk Lawrence.
The keeper's niece unlocked the door leading to Daunt's rooms. But she
stood sulkily in the entry.
"Now I hope you're satisfied, Sir. I don't know, I'm sure, why you
should come meddling in other people's affairs. And I daresay you'll
say something against me to my uncle!"
"Well, anyway, you keep watch!" was the stern reply. "I take my rounds
often this way, as your Uncle knows. I daresay I shall be by here again
tonight. Can the children find their way home alone?"
"Well, they're not idiots, Sir! Good-night to you. I've got to get
supper." And brusquely shutting the door in their faces, she went
inside. They perceived immediately afterwards that she had lit a light
in the kitchen.
"Well, so far, all right," said Lathrop, as he and Delia withdrew. "But
the whole thing's rather--queer. You know that old woman, Mrs.
Cresson, is not all there, and quite helpless?"
He pondered it as they walked back through the wood, his eyes on the
ground. Delia shared his undefined anxiety. She suggested that he
should go back to the house in an hour or so, to see if Daunt had
returned, and complain of his niece's breach of rules. Lathrop agreed.
"How do we know who or what that girl is?"--he said slowly--"that she
mayn't have been got hold of?"
The same terror grew in Delia. She walked on beside him absorbed in
speculation and discussion, till, without noticing, she had reached the
farther gate of the wood-walk. Outside the gate, ran the Wanchester
road, climbing the down, amid the woods. To reach the field path
leading to the Abbey, Delia must cross it.
She and Lathrop emerged from the wood still talking in low voices, and
stood beside the gate. A small car, with one man driving it, was
descending the long hill. But Delia had her back to it.
It came nearer. She turned, and saw Winnington approaching her--saw the
look on his face. For a moment she wavered. Then with a bow and a hasty
"Good Evening," she left Lathrop, and stepped into the road, holding up
her hand to stop the car.
"How lucky!" she said, clearly, and gaily,--"just as it's going to
rain! Will you take me home?"
Winnington, without a word, made room for her beside him. The two men
exchanged a slight greeting--and the car passed.
Lathrop walked quickly back in the direction of Monk Lawrence. His
vanity was hugely pleased.
"By George!--that was one to me! It's quite evident she hasn't taken
him into her confidence--doesn't want magistrates interfering--no
doubt. And meanwhile she appeals to _me_--she depends on _me_. Whatever
happens--she'll have to be grateful to me. That fellow with his
wry face can't stop it. What a vision she made just now under the
wood--'belle dame sans merci!'--hating my company--and yet compelled
to it. It would make a sonnet I think--I'll try it tonight."
* * * * *
Meanwhile in the dark corridors of Monk Lawrence a woman groping, met
another woman. The two dim figures exchanged some whispered words. Then
one of them returned to the back regions.
Lathrop, passing by, noticed smoke rising from the Daunts' chimney, and
was reassured. But in an hour or so he would return to look for Daunt
himself.
He had no sooner descended the hill to his own cottage, in the fast
gathering dusk, than Eliza Daunt emerged. She left the light burning in
the keeper's kitchen, and some cold supper on the table. Then with a
laugh which was half a sob of excitement she ran down the path leading
to the garden cottages.
She was met by a clamour of rebellious children, as she opened Mrs.
Cresson's door. "Where's Daddy, Liza?--where's Daddy! Why can't we go
home! We want our Daddy!"
"Hold your noise!" said Eliza roughly--"or it'll be the worse for
you--Daddy won't be home for a couple of hours yet, and I promised Fred
Cresson, I'd get Mrs. Cresson's tea for her. Lily, stop crying--and
get the tray!"
The crippled child, red-eyed, unwillingly obeyed. Neither she nor her
sisters could understand why they had been brought over to tea with
Mrs. Cresson of whose queer half-imbecile ways they were all terrified.
Their father had gone off in a great hurry--because of the telegram
which had come. And Fred had bicycled down to Latchford to see somebody
about a gardener's place. And now there was no one left but Liza and
Mrs. Cresson--of whom, for different reasons, the three little girls
were equally afraid. And Lily's heart especially was sore for her
father. She knew very well they were all doing what was forbidden. But
she dared not complain. They had found Cousin 'Liza a hard woman.
After Eliza Daunt had left Daunt's kitchen, for the space of half an
hour, a deep and brooding quiet settled on Monk Lawrence. The old house
held that in its womb, which must soon crash to light; but for this
last brief space, all was peace. The twilight of a clear February
evening mellowed the grey walls, and the moss-grown roofs; the house
spoke its last message--its murmured story, as the long yoke-fellow of
human life--to the tranquil air; and the pigeons crooned about it,
little knowing.
Presently from the same door which had seen Eliza Daunt depart, a woman
cautiously emerged. She was in dark clothes, closely veiled. With
noiseless step, she passed round the back of the house, pausing a
moment to look at the side door on the north side which had been lately
strengthened by Sir Wilfrid's orders. Then she gained the shelter of
the close-grown shrubbery, and turning round she stood a few seconds
motionless, gazing at the house. In spite of her quiet movements, she
was trembling from head to foot--with excitement, not fear.
"It's beautiful," she was saying to herself--"and precious--and I've
destroyed it." Then--with a fierce leap in the blood--"_Beauty_! And
what about the beauty that men destroy? Let them _pay_!"
But as she stood there a sudden disabling storm of
thought--misgiving--argument--swept through her brain. She seemed to
hear on all sides voices in the air--the voices of friends and foes, of
applause and execration--Delia's voice among them! And at the mere
imagination of it, a shiver of anger ran through her. She thought of
Delia now, only as of one who had deserted and disobeyed.
But with the illusion of the ear, there came also an illusion of
vision. The months of her recent life rose before her, in one hurrying
spectacle of scenes and faces, and the spectacle aroused in her but one
idea--one sickening impression--of crushing and superhuman effort. What
labour!--what toil! She shuddered under it. Then, suddenly, her mind
ran back to the early years before, beyond, the days of "war"--sordid,
unceasing war--when there had been time to love, to weep, to pity, to
enjoy; before wrath breeding wrath, and violence begetting violence,
had driven out the Spirits of Tenderness and Hope. She seemed to see,
to feel them--the sad Exiles!--fleeing along desert ways; and her
bitter heart cried out to them--for the only--the last time. For in the
great names of Love and Justice, she had let Hate loose within her, and
like the lion-cub nurtured in the house, it had grown to be the soul's
master and gaoler; a "doom" holding the citadels of life, and working
itself out to the appointed end.
But the tumult in which she stood began to unnerve her. By a last
exercise of will she was able to pull herself together.
Rapidly, as one well used to them, she made her way through the
shrubbery paths; round the walled garden, and behind the gardeners'
cottages. She heard the children in Mrs. Cresson's cottage as she
passed, Lily still fretfully crying, and the old woman's voice
scolding. Poor children!--they would be horribly frightened--but
nothing worse.
The thick overgrown wood of fir and beech behind the cottages received
her, swallowed up the slight insignificant form. In the wood there was
still light enough to let her grope her way along the path, till at the
end, against an opening to the sky, she saw the outlines of a keeper's
hut. Then she knew that she was worn out, and must rest. She pushed the
door ajar, and sat crouching on the threshold, while the schemes and
plottings of the preceding weeks ran disjointedly through memory.
Marion was safe by now--she had had an hour's start. And Eliza too had
gone. Nothing could be better than the arrangements made for those two.
But she herself was not going--not yet. Her limbs failed her; and
beyond the sheltering woods, she seemed to become electrically aware of
hostile persons, of nets drawn round her, cutting off escape. As to
that, she felt the most supreme indifference to what might happen to
her. The indifference, indeed, passed presently into a strange and
stinging temptation to go back--back to the dark house--to see with
her own eyes what her hands had done. She resisted it with
difficulty.... Suddenly, a sound from the distance--beyond the
cottages--as of a slight explosion. She started, and throwing back her
veil, she sat motionless in the doorway of the hut, her face making a
dim white patch upon the darkness.