When on the afternoon of that same day Miltoun did not come, all the
chilly doubts which his presence alone kept away, crowded thick and fast
into the mind of one only too prone to distrust her own happiness. It
could not last—how could it?
His nature and her own were so far apart! Even in that giving of herself
which had been such happiness, she had yet doubted; for there was so
much in him that was to her mysterious. All that he loved in poetry and
nature, had in it something craggy and culminating. The soft and
fiery, the subtle and harmonious, seemed to leave him cold. He had
no particular love for all those simple natural things, birds, bees,
animals, trees, and flowers, that seemed to her precious and divine.
Though it was not yet four o'clock she was already beginning to
droop like a flower that wants water. But she sat down to her piano,
resolutely, till tea came; playing on and on with a spirit only half
present, the other half of her wandering in the Town, seeking for
Miltoun. After tea she tried first to read, then to sew, and once more
came back to her piano. The clock struck six; and as if its last stroke
had broken the armour of her mind, she felt suddenly sick with anxiety.
Why was he so long? But she kept on playing, turning the pages without
taking in the notes, haunted by the idea that he might again have fallen
ill. Should she telegraph? What good, when she could not tell in the
least where he might be? And all the unreasoning terror of not knowing
where the loved one is, beset her so that her hands, in sheer numbness,
dropped from the keys. Unable to keep still, now, she wandered from
window to door, out into the little hall, and back hastily to the
window. Over her anxiety brooded a darkness, compounded of vague growing
fears. What if it were the end? What if he had chosen this as the most
merciful way of leaving her? But surely he would never be so cruel!
Close on the heels of this too painful thought came reaction; and she
told herself that she was a fool. He was at the House; something quite
ordinary was keeping him. It was absurd to be anxious! She would have to
get used to this now. To be a drag on him would be dreadful. Sooner than
that she would rather—yes—rather he never came back! And she took up her
book, determined to read quietly till he came. But the moment she sat
down her fears returned with redoubled force-the cold sickly horrible
feeling of uncertainty, of the knowledge that she could do nothing but
wait till she was relieved by something over which she had no control.
And in the superstition that to stay there in the window where she could
see him come, was keeping him from her, she went into her bedroom. From
there she could watch the sunset clouds wine-dark over the river. A
little talking wind shivered along the houses; the dusk began creeping
in. She would not turn on the light, unwilling to admit that it
was really getting late, but began to change her dress, lingering
desperately over every little detail of her toilette, deriving therefrom
a faint, mysterious comfort, trying to make herself feel beautiful. From
sheer dread of going back before he came, she let her hair fall, though
it was quite smooth and tidy, and began brushing it. Suddenly she
thought with horror of her efforts at adornment—by specially preparing
for him, she must seem presumptuous to Fate. At any little sound she
stopped and stood listening—save for her hair and eyes, as white from
head to foot as a double narcissus flower in the dusk, bending towards
some faint tune played to it somewhere oft in the fields. But all those
little sounds ceased, one after another—they had meant nothing; and each
time, her spirit returning—within the pale walls of the room, began once
more to inhabit her lingering fingers. During that hour in her bedroom
she lived through years. It was dark when she left it.