MAY
I
The afternoon which had seen Sarah's short-lived splendour had been
sweet also for May. Sweeter, indeed, since for her there was no
clashing of fierce passions to jar the tender witchery of her mood. And
though the glamour was of the past,--a sheet of gold as of sunlight far
at the back of her mind; a sea of gold from which she moved ever inward
towards the darkness of the hills,--a tongue of light had suddenly
darted from it to stream like a golden wind-blown ribbon over her path.
That light was the knowledge that in her own hands lay the possibility
of Geordie's return.
Youth came back to her with the thought, and she sat straighter still in
the trap, holding her unused whip at a jaunty angle across the elastic
bar of the reins. The good horse swung homewards in a generous stride;
the bright wheels of the dog-cart flashed through the dull country like
a whirled autumn leaf. The passers-by found a special sweetness in her
ready smile, because it reflected the secret in her heart. As they went
on their way they said what they always said,--that it was a marvel she
had not married long ago.
Yet the secret, fair as it was, had also the folly of all great
ventures, since, in laying her hands upon the future, she risked the
memory that had coloured her whole life. To bring Geordie home might
mean nothing but disappointment for herself, sordid disappointment and
shame for a mis-spent girlish dream. Things would be different, at the
very best; part of the memory would have to go. But the chief people to
be considered were the old folks who had so often been the footballs of
fate. Nothing that she might fear on her own account should stand in
the way of this sudden fulfilment for a frustrated old man, this light
to the eyes for an old woman going blind. In any case May was the sort
that would tenderly handle the cracked and mended pot right up to the
moment of dissolution at the well. No disappointment that Geordie could
bring her would remain sordid for very long. Out of her shattered idols
her wisdom and humour would gather her fresh beauty; clear-eyed,
uplifting affection for youthful worship, and pity and tenderness for
passion.
It was true that Sarah had already rejected her offer,--brutally,
almost, in her determination that May should suffer no further for her
son. But May had already almost forgotten the rough sentences which for
the time being had slammed the opening door in her eager face. Sarah was
strong, she knew, but she herself, because of love in the past and pity
in the present, felt stronger still. She said to herself, smiling, that
sooner or later she would find an argument that would serve. Sooner or
later Sarah would yield, and share with secret delight in the surprise
that they would so gaily prepare for the old man. Sooner or later the
boat would put out from port that carried the lost lad,--Geordie, with
his pockets empty but his heart full, and every nerve of him reaching
towards his home.
Now she had turned the end of the bay, and was running along the flat
road that hugged the curve of the shore. Below on her right were the
sands, almost within flick of her whip, with the river-channel winding
its dull length a hundred yards away. Beyond it, the sand narrowed into
the arm of the marsh, until the eye caught the soft etching of the
Thornthwaite farm, set on the faint gold and green of the jutting land.
The inn, low, white-faced, dark, with all the light of it in the eyes
that looked so far abroad, was very quiet when she came to it about
three o'clock. The odd-job man was waiting about to take her horse, and
she paused to have a word or two with him in the yard. Then she went
briskly into the silent place, and at once the whole drowsy air of it
stirred and became alive. The spotlessness of the house seemed to take
on a sparkling quality from the swift vitality of her presence. The
very fire seemed to burn brighter when she entered, and the high lights
on the steels and brasses to take a finer gleam. Her father called to
her from the room where he lay upstairs, and her buoyant tread, as she
went up, seemed to strengthen even his numb limbs and useless feet.
She sat by his bed for some time, telling him all the news, and
conveying as much as she could of the hiring and marketing stir
combined. This particular person had wished to know how he was; the
other had sent him a message to be delivered word for word. One had a
grandmother who had died in similar case; another a remedy that would
recover him in a week. Bits of gossip she had for him, sketches of old
friends; stories of old traits cropping up again which made him chuckle
and cap them from the past. By the time she had finished he was firmly
linked again to life, and had forgotten that deadly detachment which
oppresses the long-sick. Indeed, he almost forgot, as he listened, that
he had not been in Witham himself, hearing the gossip with his own ears
and seeing the familiar faces with his own eyes. For the time being he
was again part of that central country life, the touchstone by which
country-folk test reality and the truth of things, and by contact with
which their own identity is intensified and preserved.
But her eyes were turned continually to the window as she chatted and
laughed, dwelling upon the misty picture even when they were not
followed by her mind. Only her brain answered without fail when her
gaze travelled to the farm on the farther shore. Gradually the picture
shadowed and dimmed in line, but still she sat by the bed and laughed
with her lips while her heart looked always abroad. Neither she nor her
father ever drew a blind in the little inn. They had lived so long with
that wide prospect stretching into the house that they would have
stifled mentally between eyeless walls.
She talked until he was tired, and then she made his tea, and left him
happy with the papers which she had brought from Witham. Her own tea she
ate mechanically, with the whole of her mind still fixed on the promise
of the day, and when she had finished she was drawn to the window again
before she knew. The Thornthwaites would be home by now, she concluded,
looking out. Tired and discouraged, they would be back again at the
farm, feeling none of the quivering hope which lifted and thrilled her
heart. Sarah would not even dwell on the offer, having put it by for
good, and Simon did not as much as know that there had been an offer at
all. They would creep to bed and sleep drearily, or wake drearily
against their will, while she would wake of her own accord in order to
clasp her purpose and find it still alive. She could not bear the
thought of the long, blank night which would so soon be wrapping them
round; even a stubborn refusal of her hope would be a better friend to
them than that. Stronger and stronger grew the knowledge within her
that she must see them before they slept. It was for their sake, she
told herself, at first, thirsting to be across, and then, as she
clinched her decision, knew it was also for her own.
She went upstairs again to put on her coat and hat, wondering as she did
so what her father would have to say. He would be sure to enquire what
took her across the sands so late, yet he would wonder and fret if she
left him without a word. Geordie's name had dropped into silence
between them for many a year, and, lately as she had spoken it to Sarah,
it would be hard to speak it now. She knew only too well what her
father would think of her offer of hard-saved gold. He had always been
bitter against Geordie for her sake, and would want no wastrel fetched
overseas to play on her pity again. She stole half-way down the stairs,
and then was vexed with herself and went up again with a resolute tread.
Once more she hesitated, with her hand on the door-latch, and then it
slipped from her finger and she found herself in the room.
Fleming looked up from his paper with his faded eyes. "Off again,
lass?" he enquired, noticing how she was dressed. "Is there a pill-gill
Milthrop way to-night?"
She shook her head.
"Not as I know of.... Nay, I'm sure there's not." She stood staring at
him, uncertain what to say, and then her eyes, as if of their own
accord, turned back towards the sands. "I just felt like going out a bit
again, that's all."
"Likely you're going up road for a crack wi' Mrs. Bridge?"
"Nay ... I didn't think o' going there."
"To t'station, happen?"
"Nor that, neither...." There was a little pause. "Just--out," she
added, and the note in her voice seemed to reach before her over the
sandy waste. Fleming heard it, and saw the track of her gaze as well.
"What's up, lass?" he asked quietly, letting his paper drop. "What
d'you want to do?"
She braced herself then, swinging round to him with one of her cheerful
laughs. "You'll think I'm daft, I know," she said, looking down at him
with dancing eyes, "but I'm right set on seeing Mrs. Thornthet again
to-night. We'd a deal to say to each other this morning, but we didn't
finish our talk. I thought I could slip over sand and back before it
was dark."
Fleming looked perturbed.
"It's over late for that, isn't it?" he asked. "Light's going pretty
fast an' all. Hadn't you best bide till morning, and gang then?"
"I don't feel as I can. I'm set on going to-night. I've often been
across as late, you'll think on. I'll take right good care."
"What about tide?"
"Not for a couple of hours yet, and I've not that much to say. Boat's
ready alongside channel; it nobbut wants shoving off. I'll be there and
back before you can say knife."
"Ay, well, then, you'd best be off, and look sharp about it!" Fleming
conceded in a reluctant tone. "I'll have t'lamp put in winder as usual
to set you back. Don't you get clattin' now and forget to see if it's
there."
"I'll look out for it, don't you fret. Like as not I'll never go inside
the house. There's just something I want to make sure of before I
sleep."
She nodded brightly and began to move away, but he called her back
before she reached the door. With the quickness of those who lie long
in a sick room, he had noticed the change in her atmosphere at once.
Restlessness and impatience were strange things to find in May, and
there was a touch of excitement in her manner as well. He looked at her
thoughtfully as she retraced her steps.
"Is there any news o' that wastrel lad o' theirs? Happen he's thinking
o' coming back?"
The words spoken from another's mouth brought a rush of certainty to her
longing mind. She answered him confidently, as if she held the actual
proof.
"That's it, father! That's right." She laughed on a buoyant, happy
note. "Our Geordie's coming home!"
"To-night?" Fleming's mouth opened. "D'ye mean he's coming to-night?"
"Nay, I don't know about that!" She laughed again. "But it'll be before
so long. I feel as sure about it as if he was knocking at Sandholes
door!"
"You've no call to be glad of it, as I can see," Fleming said, with a
touch of fretfulness in his tone. "Are you thinking o' wedding him
after all this time?"
Her head drooped a little.
"I'm past thinking o' that, and he'll have been past it long ago. I'm
just glad for the old folks' sake, that's all. It's like as if it was
somebody dead that was coming back, so that I needn't believe in death
and suchlike any more. It's like as if it's myself as is coming
back,--as if I should open door and see the lass I used to be outside."
"I'd be glad to see you settled afore I went, but not wi' an idle
do-nowt as'd spoil your life. It'll be queer to me if Geordie
Thornthet's made much out. He was a wastrel, right enough, for all his
wheedlin' ways."
"I'm past thinking o' marriage," she said again. "It's just what it
means to the old folks, poor old souls!"
"Ay. They've had a mighty poor time, they have that." He sighed,
thinking of many a tale of woe unfolded by Simon beside his bed. Then he
looked up at her with a whimsical smile. "They'd nobbut the one bairn,
same as your mother and me, and there's been whiles I've been real mad
because you weren't a lad. Ay, well, I've lived to see the folly o' my
ways, and to thank God I'd nobbut a lass! You're worth a dozen Geordie
Thornthets any day o' the week...."
She was gone with an answering smile directly he finished his speech,
and the sound of her feet was light and swift on the stair. Hearing
her, he, too, seemed to see her a girl again, gone to meet Geordie
Thornthwaite along the shore. But instead of reviving and cheering him,
it made him sad. He was too near the end to wish himself back at the
start. He glanced at the lamp on the table to make sure that it was
filled, and settled himself back to his papers with a sigh.
II
May stopped to speak to the hired girl as she went out, and was alarmed
by the creeping dusk already in the inn. She breathed again when she
was in the road, and saw the dull light holding yet on either hand. The
soft closing of the door behind her back gave her a long-forgotten
thrill, bringing back similar autumn evening hours, when she had gone to
meet a lover from over the sands.
She got down to the shore about the time that the scene at Blindbeck was
drawing to an end. She hurried, not only because she had little or no
time to waste, but because she could not have gone slowly if she had
tried. The young May had never gone slowly, who was all kindness and
knew nothing of pride. She ran down the shingle and across the sand,
only pausing to draw breath and to reprove herself at the channel's
edge. Passers-by on the flat road stopped to stare at her as she sped
across, wondering what she could be doing at that hour. Pausing, she
looked across at the farm before she bent to the boat, chiding herself
for her almost childish haste. But her tongue ached to let loose the
words of persuasion that she carried with her, and her heart ached for
the word of permission that she was sure she would carry back. She did
not doubt for a moment that Sarah would give way, so strong was her
inward belief that Geordie was coming home.
At last she pushed off, stepped in and punted herself across, and once
out again on dry ground tried to hold herself to a walk. The sand,
ribbed and hard beneath her feet, spoke to the fact that the tide had
been gone for hours. It was extraordinary how forgotten the sands
always seemed as soon as the tide had gone away. Only those who had
proved it by daily experience could believe that the water would ever
return. Even to them it remained something of the miracle that it was
in truth, arousing continually a thrill of awed surprise. Yet, side by
side with that impression of final retreat, of waste that had always
been waste and would never be reclaimed, was one of a brooding terror
that was only waiting its hour. The sea and the sands were like cat and
mouse, May thought,--the one, aloof, indifferent, yet always poised to
leap; the other, inert, paralysed though apparently free, and always the
certain victim in the end.
She looked behind and before from the quiet home which she had left to
the still more lonely and quiet house which was her goal. There was a
point about half-way across at which it seemed as if she would never
reach the one, never get back to the other in all time. Both seemed to
recede from her equally as she moved, vague shapes formed only of
imagination and the mist. Just for a moment that vagueness of things
which she knew to be concrete caught her by the throat. The little that
she could see of the earth was so cloudlike, so lacking in sturdy
strength. The very shore of the marsh looked as though a breath might
dissolve it in thin air. Though the distance across was little more
than a mile, the feeling of space around her was infinite as the sky.
The sands seemed suddenly to become a treadmill under her feet, turning
and turning, but never bringing her to the horizon which she sought.
The whole doorway of the bay was blocked by the great wall of mist, and
over the Lake mountains there was a smother of mist, and mist over all
the land that went east to the Pennine range. She began to fear even the
crinkled sand which felt so firm, as if it might suddenly sway and shift
like one of the many traps with which the bay was sown. Behind her, the
grey, faint-gleaming strip of the channel seemed to cut her off from her
safe home. A slice of the bank broke suddenly with an echoing spash,
chilling her with the lonely terror of water that has a victim in its
hold. The boat, helpless-looking, inert, a mere black speck on the
channel edge, seemed the only insoluble thing beside herself. She longed
for the comfort of her feet on the tarred boards, for the reassurance of
her hands against the sculls. It was a moment or two before she had the
courage to let it go, and face a world that was full of bodiless shapes
and evanescent shores.
But almost before she knew it she was on the opposite side, scrambling
up the stones to the grassy slope beyond, and so, panting and hurrying,
to the top of the sea-wall. She saw at once that there was nobody in
the house, that it was still with the growing stillness of augmented
hours, and a further chill fell on her happy mood. Yet she was glad at
least to be there to welcome the old folks when they came, and in any
case they could not be very far. Every jolt of the trap must be
bringing them nearer to the net which she was spreading so lovingly for
their feet. They would be tired, of course, and probably very cross,
but May was used to market-day moods and would not care. With
affectionate ruthlessness she told herself that would yield to her all
the sooner for being tired. Presently they would agree unwillingly that
she might have her way, and then she would hurry home again as if on
wings. They would be crosser than ever after she had gone, vexed both
with her and themselves and terribly touched in their pride. And then,
slowly but surely, the hope that she had forced upon them would begin to
race its stimulant through their veins. They would lie down to sleep
with a secret gladness that they had not the courage to confess, and
would wake in the morning and know that the world had been made for them
anew.
She kept stopping the rush of her thoughts to send her senses over the
marsh, but no sign of life came back to her, or sound of wheel or hoof.
The wide stretches of grass and plough and the long length of road
seemed almost as unsuggestive of human influence as the sands
themselves. Swifter and swifter faded the passionate confidence which
had sent her out, leaving the risks of the matter uppermost in her mind.
She remembered that it was possible to be patient all one's life, and
yet to wreck the fruits of it in an unguarded hour. This sudden mental
and physical rashness might be symbolical of a greater rashness of the
soul. Perhaps after to-night all her footholds and anchorages might go,
leaving the world that she had managed so bravely only a nightmare
blurred by tears.
The dusk thickened about her as the night tried to impress itself on the
earth as a separate entity from the mist. The most that it could do,
however, was to produce the effect of a hovering shadow from some huge
arrested wing. The real warning of night was in the deepened sense of
loneliness and dread of personal diminution in a growing space, in the
further recession of things unseen as well as seen. It lay, too, in the
stirring consciousness of the impending advent of the tide. She began
to look anxiously towards her father's window for the lamp, and though
she was comforted when she saw no sign, it stamped the illusion of
desolation on her mind. Then she heard the cattle stir in the shippon
as she walked along the wall, and was cheered and companioned by them
for a little while. She would have gone down to them, or to the dog,
who was always a firm friend, but she was afraid of losing her
consciousness of time. She could not tear herself, either, from her
breathless waiting for the silence to fill with life. She was cold
whether she stood or walked, and more and more oppressed by a sense of
folly and grave doubt. She even laughed at the middle-aged woman who
had thrilled like a girl, but she laughed between her tears. Once or
twice she ran down the bank and on to the sand, but always something
drew her back, and at last, when she had listened so long that she had
ceased to hear, there came the crunching sound of the Thornthwaite
wheels. It was there suddenly where there had been no sign, as if it
had only begun at the moment it reached her ear. At once her courage
sprang up again, and her spirits rose. The whole affair was sweet and
brave once more. It was as if she had heard her lover himself coming
surely towards her over the lonely marsh....
III
Simon uttered an exclamation when he saw the figure on the wall. His
heart leaped first with a supernatural fear, and then with a sudden
foreboding of some normal ill. His nerves were still unstrung from his
experience with the car, and ready enough to shape familiar objects into
ghosts. Even when he had recognised May and spoken her name, he could
not rid himself of his feeling of alarm.
So he was not pleased to see her when she came running down, and Sarah,
who had spent so kindly a morning with her, was not pleased either. In
the last few miles she had seemed to travel out of human touch, and
there was a jar in the sudden intrusion of even this one thing left to
her to love. Her brow contracted both with the effort of thought and
the effort of sight, but indeed she knew well enough why May was there.
Her intuition had worked uncertainly all the day, but it warned her now.
She knew what impulse had brought May out to await their coming home.
Simon, however, had no clue to this sudden appearance at his journey's
end. He sat still in the trap as she came swiftly through the yard, and
then leaned out to address her with an anxious frown.
"Nay, now whatever's brought you trapesin' here so late? Nowt wrong, is
there? Father badly again? Is he axin' for me, by any chance?"
She reassured him with a shake of the head and a smile, and, as in the
case of Mr. Dent, he felt a sudden resentment towards smiles. In all
his life Simon had never encountered so many smiling faces as had looked
at him that day.
"All's right, thank you.... Father's much about the same. I wanted a
word with Mrs. Thornthet, that was all.
"You've been a terble while on the road, though!" she added gaily,
before he could speak. "I'd about made up my mind as I'd have to be
getting back."
"We were kept at Blindbeck, that's how it was," Simon said, remembering
suddenly and with gloom the precise circumstances under which they had
been kept. "But if you nobbut wanted a word wi' the missis, you could
surely ha' waited while morn. It's a daft-like trick to be lakin' on
t'sands when it's getting dark."
His words made her turn again to throw a glance at the inn, but still
there was no summoning gleam from the room upstairs. "Ay, but tide
isn't till six," she answered him coaxingly, turning back, "and I shan't
be long. Father'll show a light for me when it's time I was setting
off."
Sarah, ignoring the pair of them, had already clambered out, and Simon
remembered that he had the horse to stable and the cows to milk and
feed. "Danged foolishness, that's what it is!" he growled, as he
scrambled down, giving May a very unaccustomed scowl. "If I did as I
ought, I'd be skifting you pretty sharp. Say what you've gitten to say,
and then clear out!"
Sarah had been moving away from them towards the house, but, as May
followed her, she swung about. There was no invitation, however, in her
rigid face.
"You've nowt to say as I know on," she said in a curt tone, "and I'm
rarely tired. Anyway, there's no sense in lossing yourself for a bit of
a chat."
"I'll not lose myself, not I!" May laughed, advancing towards her, full
of kindly warmth. She had been prepared for some such reception as this,
and was not depressed. "What, I've been across that often, it's the
same to me as the road! I've been over when it was snowing,--ay, and by
moonlight, too. As for Geordie," she added, with a tender laugh, "he's
crossed in the pitch dark, with only his nose to tell him where he was
at!
"I was bound to ask you again before I slept," she urged, casting a
glance at Simon, busy with the horse. "Can't I come in a minute?--I
won't be long. It's late to be telling my business in the yard."
"You've no business wi' me," Sarah said stolidly, "so you can stop off
yon weam voice. You're not coming into Sandholes to-night, May Fleming,
so that's flat!"
May laughed again, but there was less confidence in the laugh. She
waited to speak again until Simon had moved away, the dog leaping and
barking under the horse's nose.
"It's a shame," she said cheerfully, "to bother you so late, but I just
couldn't bring myself to wait. It was you as brought it all back, Mrs.
Thornthet, come to that, with yon talk at the doctor's of Geordie coming
home!"
"There's no talk of him coming," Sarah said coldly, "and never was."
With one magnificent sweep she disposed of the fallacy of the afternoon.
"You ought to ha' more sense than to go fancying things like that!"
"But you'd a letter, you said, begging his fare?" May was slightly
bewildered, but went pressing on. "You said he was keen to come, if he
had the brass."
"Ay, and there wasn't no brass; so yon's finished and by wi'," Sarah
said.
"Ay, but there is," May pleaded. "Plenty o' brass!" She faltered a
little before the other's lack of response. "Nay, Mrs. Thornthet, don't
you look like that! What does it matter where it comes from if it makes
folks glad?"
"I'll buy no gladness o' mine from you, my lass, as I said before."
"I can spare the brass right enough,--if it's only that."
"Ay, but I can't spare the pride to take it," Sarah said.
"Ay, well, then, think as you're buying my happiness!" May begged. "I'd
be real proud to think as I'd brought him back, even if he never looked
aside at me again."
"You'd have lile or nowt to be proud on, I'll be bound!" There was a
touch of weary impatience in Sarah's voice. "And what-like happiness
would it be for you in the end? Nay, May, my girl, we've thrashed the
matter out, and I'm over-tired to be fret wi' it to-night."
May sighed, and stood looking at her with troubled eyes, but she was
unable to let the whole of her hope go.
"I'm right sorry to have put you about," she said sadly. "It's a real
shame! Can't you promise to think it over a bit? I'll come over
to-morrow for another talk."
"I want neither talking nor thinking, so that's flat!" Sarah snapped.
"I'll promise to turn key in the door when I see you coming, and that's
all!"
The tears came into May's eyes.
"You've no call to go telling me off like that," she said, with a little
break in her voice. "I haven't done anything that's wrong, I'm sure."
"You've shoved your nose into other folks' business," Sarah said
roughly,--"that's what you've done! I'll thank you to leave us to do
for our lad as'll suit us best!"
"He was mine, too!" May flung at her suddenly, roused at last. "Long
ago, maybe,--years on years,--but he was mine as well!"
Sarah gave a sneering laugh.
"There'll be more than one lass, I reckon, setting up to think that!"
May uttered a little cry, wounded to the heart.
"Eh, but you're a cruel woman, Mrs. Thornthet!" she exclaimed, in a
voice quivering with pain. "It's true I'd be glad to see Geordie again,
but it don't make that much difference now. It's for your sake and poor
Mr. Thornthet's that I want to see him back....
"You're fond o' me, nowadays," she went on bravely, controlling herself
again. "You like me well enough now, whatever you felt once. Can't you
take the money for the sake of bygone times?"
But already Sarah had turned away from her and was moving towards the
door. She fitted the key in the lock with the ease of use, and gave the
rickety door an opening push. And again May followed and stood, strong
in the courage of those who plead for the thing that they have at heart.
"Don't go away feeling mad with me, Mrs. Thornthet!" she begged. "I'm
sorry I spoke as I did. Think on how happy we were together, this
morning, you and me. Think how it would be if he was to come marching
into the yard...."
Sarah was now over the threshold, with her hand against the door, but
May's hand was also against it, refusing to let it close. Her face was
white as a flower upon the dusky air, pleading and sweet with frank lips
and tearful eyes. Sarah herself was engulfed by the dark house, a shadow
that was yet more surely a block than the actual door. It seemed to May
that she had all the passionless resistance of some ancient, immovable
stone. A lantern across showed the black squares of the shippon stalls,
the white coats of the beasts and Simon moving from dark to light. May
did not know that the old woman's purpose was giving in the pause, that
that last sentence of hers had broken the stubborn will. She waited
despairingly, seeking for more to say, and finding nothing, since the
right word had been said. And because she despaired she broke the pause
too soon, in an access of hopelessness flinging away her chance. Taking
her hand from the door, she pointed to Simon at his job.
"I'll ask Mr. Thornthet, then!" she cried sharply, beginning to move
away. "Happen he'll see to it for me instead of you. Happen he'll see
the offer's kindly meant, and not let pride and suchlike stand between!"
But Sarah, too, cried out before she had gone a yard, her voice harsh
with wrath and a sort of fear.
"You leave Simon be," she cried fiercely,--"let him be! I've had enough
o' your worry, without plaguin' him an' all. You get back to your dad,
and don't come interfering again. You came between me and my lad, but
you shan't meddle wi' my man! You mean well enough, I don't doubt, but
you're nobbut a meddler, all the same. It never does to go shoving
kindnesses at folk who keep on saying nay. If you force 'em, you do 'em
more harm than good in the long run, by a deal. D'you think I want
Geordie coming back in rags, as like a tramp on t'roads as a couple o'
peas? D'you think I want a drunken do-nowt loafing about t'spot,--a
thief, maybe, or happen summat worse? What sort o' food and drink would
yon be to Blindbeck, d'you think? Eliza's gitten enough on her tongue,
without the likes o' that! Nay, the lad as went was a limb, but he was
bonny and smart, and Eliza'll always think of him like yon. She'll
always think in her heart as he was the better o' Jim, for all she talks
so loud. But if he come back to shame us, it'd rob me even o' that. I
couldn't abide it!" she finished vehemently. "It'd be worse than death.
I'd rather the sea took him afore ever he reached home!"
She stopped with an indrawn breath, and the door, creaking abruptly,
showed that her weight was heavy on the latch. May stood still in the
yard, as still as the shadow that had once again turned to ancient
stone. The silence that had fallen between them seemed to push her
away, to drive them so far apart that never again would they be able to
speak. At last, in that terrible outpouring, May had discovered the
real barrier to her desire. There were pride and generosity in the way,
but there was also something which she could not fight. The monstrous,
lifelong obsession of Eliza had slopped even the natural road to a
mother's heart.
Fear came over her, a more terrible fear than had taken her on the
sands. In the quiet spot that should have been homely because of the
moving light and the dumb beasts, she had a hint of something not quite
sane. Things that had no place in the life of the soil seemed suddenly
to have forced a passage in. She peered into the darkness of Sarah's
mind, as her bodily eyes sought for her hidden face.
She was startled into action again by the old dog's nose thrust kindly
into her hand. He had listened to the urgent voices with constantly
pricked ears, knowing by instinct that somebody suffered and was afraid.
Now he came to May, begging her to take charge of her soul, lest he,
too, whose only trust was in Man, should suffer fear. She laid her hand
for a moment on the warmth of his head, dropping her gaze to meet his
upturned eyes. Instantly, however, as if he had brought her a further
message, she looked towards the bay, and saw the lamp in her father's
window spring to life.
She was loth to go with this wreck of things at her feet, but in her
destitution of heart she was afraid to stay. Armed with the promise,
she would have cared nothing for dark or tide, but with this weight at
her heart it seemed as if it would take her all the night to cross the
sand. She tried to believe that she would return to wrestle with Sarah
in the day, but she knew well enough that she would never return. Eliza,
and all that Eliza had meant in their spoiled lives, lay like a
poisonous snake across her path.
She wondered drearily what had become of the passionate certainty with
which she had set out. The sea still sundered her lover and herself,
the bar of the sea so much greater than any possible stretch of land.
There were people to whom the sea was a sort of curse, and perhaps,
without knowing it, she was one of those. She loved it, indeed, but she
never forgot that it had taken her first hope. Perhaps it mocked at her
love as Sarah had mocked her love. Perhaps it was only waiting out in
the dark to do her harm....
She made one last entreating movement towards the shadow that was stone,
but nobody moved in the darkness and nobody spoke. She could not be
sure at that moment whether Sarah was there, or whether all that she
begged of was merely blackened space. Then she began by degrees to move
away, wrenching her feet, as it were, from the ground of the yard.
Sadly, without looking back, she mounted the sea-wall, bowed by her
burden of failure and sorrow and self-contempt. But the fear took her
again as soon as she faced the sands, and she hurried down the further
side. The good angel of the Thornthwaites fled away into the night as
if driven by flails.