Chapter XII: Book II (4)

“I have failed her—I have failed her. And since that—I have held out my hands, tried to speak. I am dumb before her youth and eager life. I love her dearly, I need her—but she cannot know it, will never know it. Experience is what she cries for, not of the mouth, but of the heart and blood. I have no blood to give her, and my heart is in a cage.” He spoke calmly, with the icy breath of despair upon his mouth; but it was to be seen that his thin frame trembled. . . . “A barrier grew up between us, not made with hands. Fate made her speak when I was at my lowest; it called me to listen when she was made strong by need. Since then she has respected me through fear; loved me by duty. I should have charmed her fears away, made love her food. Alas! You know that I have failed—from the very first.”

What could the other say? What could he do but bow his head?

“. . . I have endeavoured not to be selfish in this serious matter. It would have been easy for me to have kept her in the country; a plausible thing—it was implied when I took her. But I was not able to do that. The idea of the sacrifice of one so salient and strong, so well-disposed, with so much charm, was abhorrent to me. Deliberately, knowing full well what risks I ran, I chose for this Parliamentary work; and now I have, under my eyes, the result which I feared—the snares are all about her; she cannot walk without danger. And I must watch, and be dumb.”

He sat bitterly silent for a while. Then his eyes flamed, and he struck the table with his closed hand.

“Nobody shall take her from me. There is a point beyond which I cannot go. She is mine in all duty and conscience. I am vowed to protect her, and I will do it—both now and hereafter. Where she is now she is safe from the dastardly designs which beset her here. Her father will protect her, her father’s house. When she returns, I must take some steps—I must consider my plans—I have time enough. On this I am utterly resolved, that I will rescue her soul from destruction . . . my darling from the lions . . . from the power of the dog.”

His voice broke; he could say no more; but his face was white and stern. James Germain had no help for him.

XI
OF MARY IN THE NORTH

She had followed out Senhouse’s precepts as nearly to the letter as might be; neither staff nor scrip had she—no luggage at all, and very little money. In her exalted mood of resolve it had seemed a flouting of Providence to palter with the ideal. To follow the _patteran_ unerringly—a bird’s flight to the north—one could only fail by hesitation. Time, and the pressure of that alone, had insisted on the railway. The road, no doubt, had been the letter of the law.

Perhaps, too, a map was another compromise; but she found one in the station where, having made full use of its water, hair-brushes, and looking-glass, she dallied in the gay morning light—hovering tremulous on the brink of the unknown. It showed her Wastwater—where he had told her he was always to be found; and it showed her Kendal, too, dim leagues of mountain and moor apart. A loitering lampman entered into conversation with her. He was a Langdaler, he told her; used to walk over once a week to see the old folks; and there was another call he had thither, it seems. There was a lady—his “young lady,” who took it hard if he missed his day.

He spoke profoundly of Rossett Gill and Green Tongue, of Angle Tarn and Great End, and of the shelter under Esk Hause, which many a man had been thankful of before to-day. He advised the train to Windermere, the coach to Ambleside; thence, said he, you would get another coach to the Langdales, and there the road stops and you must take to Shanks’s mare. Here he looked her up and down, not disapprovingly. “Yon’s a rough road for you,” he considered, “and the track none so sure where the ground is soft. But you’ll do it yet,” said he; “and I’m thinking there’ll be looking for ye out of Wastwater.” She blushed, and denied. “Then he’s a fule,” said the lampman. His final warning was that she should inquire at the hotel before she started off to walk. She promised, and went into the town for a breakfast.

Fold within fold, height above height, wood and rock and water, the hill-country opened to her and took her in. When she changed coaches at Ambleside she was driven into the arms of the west wind, and could feel that every mile brought her nearer to her friend. Before the end of this sunlit day she would be face to face with the one being in all this world who might know, if he would, every secret of her heart. As she thought this, she pondered it. Every secret of her heart? Might he then know all? Yes—and she could tell herself so without a blush—even to that which she dared not confess to herself; even to that, he might know them all. She was in great spirits, and there were those in her company upon the coach who could have commerced with her, by way of exchange or barter. But though her eyes sparkled, and her parted lips were dewy, she had no looks for gallant youth. She faced the north-west, and never turned her face.

The horses drew up, and stretched their necks for water and the nose-bag; the passengers tumbled into the inn for luncheon. Mary, faltering no more, struck out along the valley, up Mickleden, for the sheep-fold and Rossett Gill. The coachman had told her that this road could not be mistook; her trouble would begin from the Gill. “Follow the beck,” he said, “to Angle Tarn—that on your left hand—and over the pass. Make you then for the gap betwixt Great End and Hanging Knott. Esk Hause we call it—a lonesome place. You shall not turn to right or left, if you mind me. Due nor’-west lies your road, down and up again to the Sprinkling Tarn. Maybe you’ll find a shepherd there. ’Tis a place to want company in, they tell me. You should strike the Styhead pass near by—if you’re in luck’s way.”

At starting, she felt that she was; springs in her heels, music in her heart. Up the broad valley, over rocks and tufted fern, beside clear-running water she sped her way, until under the frowning steep of the Pikes she began to climb. Here she had needed both patience and breath; but being alone with all this mountain glory, she must frolic and spend herself. She took off boots and stockings and cooled her feet in water and moss; she crossed the beck, and re-crossed it, picked a knot of harebells for her belt, stooped to drink out of clear fountains, rested supine in deep heather, fanned herself with fronded fern, watched the clouds, the birds, bared her arms to the shoulder and plunged them after trout. She played with her prospect, and had never been so happy in her life. At five o’clock, biscuits and chocolate; and instead of being by Sprinkling Tarn she was not yet at Esk Hause.

It was here that she misgave herself, and for a moment knew the wild horror of the solitude. Man is not made for the fells; Pan haunts them, and the fear of him gripes the heart suddenly and turns man to stone. The sun, sloping, had hidden himself beyond Great End. The world looked dun and sinister—estranged from her and her little joys and hopes. She stood on a trackless moorland encompassed by mighty hills. The black earth oozed black water where she trod; right over against her stood a mass of tumbled rock, spiked at the top as with knives. She was to go neither right nor left, she had been told; but which was right and which left by now, when she had roamed broadcast and at random a few times?

The knowledge that she was intensely alone braced her against her nerves. She beat back panic and considered what had best be done. Here stood the shelter, a rude circle of stones breast-high. Within was a seat half hidden in tall fern and foxgloves. Until she knew her road more certainly, she would not leave that refuge from the night wind; but at the thought of night coming down and finding her here, alone with bat and crying bird, made her shiver. With the shelter, then, always in her eye, she explored the tableland where now she was on all sides. The walking was rough and boggy; she was near being mired more than once. Fatigue settled down upon her as her spirits fell dead; despair rose up in their place and drove her to frantic efforts. She climbed heights which could give her no helping prospect—since all was alike to her, one intricate puzzle of darkening purple valleys and clouded peaks. And here the darkness came down like a fog and found her still. She huddled closely into her cloak and sat in the shelter, while fear, reproach, and doubts of which she would never have dreamed drove howling over the field—like the warring women of the Rheinfels scenting havoc from afar off, who, or whose likes, we suppose, people the uplands in the night-time while men and women in the valleys sleep with their children about them.

At nine o’clock it was dusk, but not dark; she heard quite suddenly and with distinctness a child crying. “Boohoo! Boohoo!”—a merry note. There was no doubt that it was silver music to her. A child crying, and not far away; she left the shelter immediately, her heart clamative for this blessed solace.

It led her further than she had expected, directly away from the shelter to the edge of the moorland and down hill among rocks and boulders. She knew that she could not find her way back, knew that she had risked everything. Stopping, with her heart beating fast, she listened for the sobbing wail; caught it again, more clearly than before, and went down after it. The descent became steep, and she very hot; but now the scent also was hot, and she in full cry. Presently it struck upon her close at hand. “Boohoo! Boohoo!”

“Don’t cry,” she called out clearly. “I’m coming—don’t cry.”

The wailing stopped, but not the snivelling, by whose sound she was led. She peeped round a great buttress of rock and saw a barefoot boy, his face in his arm, crying pitifully. She ran forward and knelt by him—“What is it? Tell me what the matter is.” He showed neither surprise nor alarm—he was beyond that stage—but as she continued to coax him, put her arm round his neck and tried to draw him to her, he turned up presently his bedabbled face and gave her to understand that he was lost and hungry. Mary laughed for joy. Here was one in worse case than she. “But so am I, my dear!” she told him; “we’re lost together. It’s not half so bad when there are two of us, you know. And I’ve still got some food left. Now dry your eyes and come and sit by me—and we’ll see what we shall see.”

He had a pinched, pale face, freckled, and a shock of sandy hair which tumbled about his eyes. So far as could be seen he had no shirt; but he was company, and more—he was poorer-hearted than herself. The mother in all women awoke in her; here was a child to be nursed.

He came to her without preface and sat by her side. She did not scruple to wipe his eyes and mouth with her handkerchief; she embraced him with her arms, snuggled him to her, and fed him with chocolate and biscuits. He seemed hungry, but more frightened than hungry, and more tired than either; for when he had finished what she first gave him he lay still within her arm for some time, with his head against her bosom. Presently she found that he was simply asleep. Happier than she had been for some hours, she let him lie as he was, until presently she also felt drowsy. Then she laid him gently down in the brake, took off her hat, and lay beside the lad. The cloak covered them both; in two minutes she was asleep.

He awoke her in the small grey hours by stretching in his sleep, and then, by a sudden movement, flinging his arm over her and drawing himself close. She took him in her arms and held him fast. He was still deeply asleep. She could hear his regular breath, and feel it too. “Poor dear,” she whispered, “sleep soundly while you can.” Then she kissed him, and herself slept again.

A sense of the full light, of the warmth of the sun upon her, added to the drowsy comfort of the hours between sleep and waking. The boy was still fast, and she hardly conscious, when some shadow between her and the comfort in which she lay basking caused her to open her eyes. Above her, looking down upon her, quietly amused, stood Senhouse, holding his horse by the bridle. The long white sweater, the loose flannel trousers, bare feet, bare head—but he might have been an angel robed in light.

She sat up, blushing and misty-eyed. “It is you! You have come in my sleep. I have been two days looking for you.” The extraordinary comfort she had always felt in the man’s presence was upon her immediately. Nothing to explain, nothing to extenuate, nothing to hide—what a priceless possession, such a friend!

“Two days!” he said. “You might easily have been two months—or two years for that matter. But you have made a mighty good shot. My camp is not six hundred yards away. I’ll show you. But who’s your sleeping friend?”

She looked down at the lad, whose face was buried deep in bracken. She put her hand on his hair.

“I don’t know—some poor boy. I heard him crying last night when I had completely lost myself, and followed the sound. We comforted each other. He gave me a good night, anyhow. We kept each other warm. But I know no more of him than that. We’ll find out where he belongs to when he wakes. He wants food mostly, I think.” And then she laughed in his face—“and so do I, I believe.”

“Of course you do,” said Senhouse. “Come along, and we’ll breakfast. I’ve just been out capturing the Ghost. He had wandered far, the old beggar.”

Mary jumped up. “What are we to do with the boy?”

“Oh, he’ll sleep for an hour yet. We’ll fetch him when his grub’s ready. You must help me, you know, now you’re here.”

“Of course,” she said, and walked by him, carrying her hat in her hand. “Are you surprised to see me?” she must needs ask him.

Senhouse raised his eyebrows. “No—I won’t say that. I should like to know why you came, though. No trouble, I hope?”

She looked at him, radiant. “No trouble now. I saw your trail—your _patteran_—in London.”

He started. “No, indeed, you did not. I haven’t been near London since I saw you there. I came straight here by train. But I’ll tell you a curious thing. Three nights ago I dreamed of you.”

Her eyes shone. “Tell me your dream.” But he would not, and she could not make him.

Past Sprinkling Tarn, and by the pass which hangs round about the Great Gable, he led her to a green plateau, high above the track, where she could see the tent. Bingo stood up and barked a welcome short and sharp. Then he came scrambling down the scree to meet her, knew her again immediately, and was profusely happy to see her. It was all like coming home for the holidays. She turned her glowing face to Senhouse, and her brimming eyes.

“Oh, why are you so good to me, you two?” she asked him, with Bingo’s head and fore-quarters in her lap.

“Why not?” said Senhouse.

XII
COLLOQUY IN THE HILLS

By the time the coffee was made, and the porridge, and Mary had emerged from the tent, washed and brushed and sparkling, she bethought her of the boy. “I’ll fetch him,” she told Senhouse. “He must be fed.” Senhouse nodded, so she went back to her _gîte_ of the night. The boy had disappeared, and with him her cloak.

Senhouse chuckled when he heard her faltered tale. “Nature all over—bless her free way,” he said. “She’ll lap you like a mother—and stare you down for a trespasser within the hour. She takes her profit where she finds it, and if she can’t find it will cry herself to sleep. Don’t you see that you were so much to the good for our friend? Well, what have you to regret? You warmed him, cuddled him, fed him—and he’s gone, warmed, cuddled, and fed. You’ve been the Bona Dea—and he’s not a bit obliged to you; very likely he thinks you were a fool. Perhaps you were, my dear; but I tell you, fools are the salt of the earth.”

“Yes, I know,” Mary said. “Of course I don’t mind the cloak. He wanted it more than I did. But what will become of him—poor little pinched boy?”

Senhouse picked up a bleached leaf of rowan—a gossamer leaf—and showed it to her. “What will become of that, think you? It all goes back again. Nothing is lost.” He threw it up, and watched it drift away on the light morning wind. Then, “Come and have your breakfast,” he bade her.

As they ate and drank she found herself talking to him of matters which London might have shrieked to hear. But it seemed not at all strange that Senhouse should listen calmly, or she candidly discuss them. He had not shown the least curiosity either to find her here or to know why she had come; in fact, after his question of “No trouble, I hope?” and her reply, he had become absorbed in what he had to do that day—the meal to be prepared, and the plantation of Mariposa lilies which he was to show her. “The work of three years—just in flower for the first time. You’re lucky in the time of your visit—another week and you would have missed them.” But her need to speak was imperious, and so she gave him to understand.

She told him, therefore, everything which had been implied in former colloquies—and found him prepared to believe her. Indeed, he told her fairly that when he had first heard from her that she was to marry John Germain he recognized that she would not be married at all. “Mind you,” he went on, “that need not have mattered a bit if the good man had had any other career to open to you. It was a question of that. You might have been his secretary, or his confidante, or his conscience, or his housekeeper. But he’s so damned self-contained—if you’ll forgive me for saying that—that he and the likes of him start in life filled up with everything except nature. There was really nothing for you to be to him except an object of charity. Nor did he want you to be anything else. He actually bought you, don’t you see, so that he might do his benevolence comfortably at home. You were to be beneficiary and admiring bystander at once. And you must have made him extremely happy until you began to make use of his bounties, and learn by what you had to do without them. Where was he then? It’s like a mother with a sucking child. She makes it strong, makes a man of it; and then, when it leaves her lap and goes to forage for itself, she resents it. What else could she expect? What else could Germain expect? He gives you the uses of the world; you find out that you are a woman with parts; you proceed to exercise yourself—and affront him mortally. I’ll warrant that man quivering all over with mortification—but I am sure he will die sooner than let you know it.”

Her eyes shone bright. “Yes, that’s true. He is like that. Well, but——”

Senhouse went on, speaking between pulls at his pipe. He did not look at her; he looked at his sandalled feet.

“I may be wrong, but I do not see what you owe him that has not been at his disposal any day these two years and a half. I suppose, indeed, that the blessed Law would relieve you—but by process so abominable and disgusting that a person who would seek that way of escape would be hardly fit to be let loose on the world. That being so, what are you to do? The fact is, Germain’s not sane. One who misreads himself so fatally, so much at another’s expense, is not sane. Then, I say, the world’s before you, if you have courage enough to face the policeman. He can’t touch you, you know, but he can stare you up and down and make you feel mean.” Then he looked at her, kindly but coolly—as if to ask, Well, what do you make of that? And if he saw what was behind her hot cheeks and lit eyes he did not betray the knowledge.

She could herself hardly see him for the mist, and hardly trust herself to speak for the trembling which possessed her. “Oh, I would dare any scorn in the world, and face any hardships if—” but she bit her lip at that point, and looked away; he saw tears hover at her eyes’ brink.

Presently he asked her, “What brought you up here to see me?” and she almost betrayed herself.

“Do you ask me that?” Her heart was like to choke her.

“Well,” said he, “yes, I do.” She schooled herself—looked down and smoothed out the creases in her skirt.

“There’s some one—who wants me.”

“I can’t doubt it. Well?”

She spoke fast. “He has—wanted me for a long time—since before I was married. Perhaps I have given him reason—I didn’t mean to do that—but certainly he used to think that I belonged to him. I was very ignorant in those days, and very stupid—and he took notice of me, and I was pleased—so he did have some reason, I think. Well, it all began again last year—imperceptibly; I couldn’t tell you how. And now he thinks that I still belong to him—and when I am with him I feel that I do. But not when I am away from him, or alone. I am sure that he does not love me; I know that I don’t love him. I feel humiliated by such a courtship; really, he insults me by his very look; and so he always did, only I couldn’t see it formerly. But now I do. I desire never to see him again—indeed, I dare not see him; because, if I do, I know what must happen. He is stronger than I, he is very strong. I know, I know very well that he could make me love him if I let him. You have no conception—how could you have? You don’t know what a woman feels when she is—when such a man as that—makes her love him. Despair. But I must not—no, no, I would sooner die. I could never lift up my head again. Slavery.” She shuddered, and shut her eyes; then turned quickly to Senhouse. “Oh, dear friend, I came to you because I was nearly lost one night. I had all but promised. I saw your sign in the road—or thought that I did—just in time, just in the nick of time. And when I saw it, though I had my letter to him in my hand, telling him where to find me the next day—Do you know, I felt so strong and splendidly free that I posted the letter to him—and came straight here without any check—and found you. Ah!” she said, straining her two hands together at the full stretch of her arms, “Ah! I did well that time. Because that very night when I was fighting for my life you were dreaming of me.” If Senhouse had looked at her now he would have seen what was the matter with her. But he was sunk in his thoughts. “This fellow,” he said, broodingly, “this fellow—Duplessis, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

“I used to know Duplessis—at Cambridge. And I’ve seen him since. He’s not much good, you know.”

She was looking now at her hands in her lap, twisting her fingers about, suddenly bashful.

“But I think,” Senhouse went on, in a level voice, “I think you had better go back and face him.”

She started, she looked at him full of alarm. “Oh, don’t tell me to do that—I implore you. Let me stay here a little while, until I’m stronger.” He smiled, but shook his head.

“No, no. Too unconventional altogether. Really I mean what I say. If you are to be free you must fight yourself free. There’s no other way. Fight Germain, if it is worth your while; but fight Duplessis at all events. That is essential. Bless you, you have only to tell him the truth, and the thing’s done.”

She was very serious. “I assure you, it is not. He won’t care for the truth; he won’t care what I tell him—No, don’t ask me to do that. It’s not—kind of you.”

Senhouse got up. “Let’s go and look at my lilies,” he said. “We’ll talk about your troubles again presently.” She jumped to her feet and followed him down the mountain.

He led her by a scrambling path round the face of Great Gable, and so past Kirkfell foot into Mosedale, bright as emerald. As they neared the mountains, he showed her by name the Pillar, Steeple and Red Pike, Windy Gap and Black Sail. High on the southern face of the Pillar there was, he said, a plateau which none knew of but he. To reach it was a half-hour’s walk for her; but he encouraged her with voice and hand. There! he could tell her, at last; now she was to look before her. They stood on a shelf which sloped gently to the south. Mary caught her breath in wonder, and gave a little shriek of delight. “Oh, how exquisite! Oh, how gloriously beautiful!” A cloud of pale flowers—violet, rose, white, golden yellow—swayed and danced in the breeze, each open-hearted to the sun on stalks so slender that each bell seemed afloat in air—a bubble of colour; she thought she had never seen so lovely a thing. Senhouse, peacefully absorbing her wonder and their beauty, presently began to explain to her what he had done. “I had seen these perfect things in California, growing in just such a place; so when I lit on this plateau I never rested till I got what it was plainly made for. Full south, you see; sheltered on the east and north; good drainage, and a peaty bottom. I had a hundred bulbs sent out, and put them in three years ago. No flowers until this year; but they’ve grown well—there are nearly two hundred of them out now. I’ve had to work at it though. I covered them with bracken every autumn, and kept the ground clean—and here they are! With luck, the tourists won’t light on them until there are enough and to spare. They are the worst. I don’t mind the Natural History Societies a bit; they take two or three, and publish the find—but I can stand that, because nobody reads their publications. The trippers take everything—or do worse. They’ll cut the lot to the ground—flowers and leaves alike; and, you know, you kill a bulb if you take its leaves. It can’t eat, poor thing—can’t breathe. Now just look into one of those things—look at that white one.” She was kneeling before the bevy, and cupped the chosen in her two hands. “Just look at those rings of colour—flame, purple, black, pale green. Can such a scheme as that be matched anywhere? It’s beyond talk, beyond dreams. Now tell me, have I done a good thing or not?”

She turned him a glowing face. “You ought to be very happy.”

He laughed. “I _am_ happy. And so may you be when you please.”

“Ah!” she looked ruefully askance. “I don’t know—I’m not sure. But if I am ever to be happy it will be by what you teach me.”

“My child,” said Senhouse, and put his hand on her shoulder, “look at these things well—and then ask yourself, Is it worth while troubling about a chap like Duplessis, while God and the Earth are making miracles of this sort every day somewhere?” Thoughtful, serious, sobered, she knelt on under his hand.

“Love between a man and a woman is just such a miracle—just as lovely and fragile a thing. But there’s no doubt about it, when it comes—and it ought not to be denied, even if it can be. When there’s a doubt, on either side—the thing’s not to be thought of. Love’s not appetite—Love is nature, and appetite is not nature, but a cursed sophistication produced by all sorts of things, which we may classify for convenience as over-eating. ‘Fed horses in the morning!’ Well, one of these days the real thing will open to you—and then you’ll have no doubt, and no fears either. You’ll go about glorifying God.” He felt her tremble, and instantly removed his touch from her shoulder. He sat on the edge of the plateau with his feet dangling. “Let’s talk of real things,” he continued after a time, “not of feelings and symptoms. This is one of my gardens—but I can show you some more. Above this plateau is another—just such another. I filled it with Xiphion iris—what we call the English iris, although the fact is that it grows in Spain. It’s done well—but is nearly over now. I just came in for the last week of it. And of course I’ve got hepaticas and auriculas and those sort of things all over the place—this mountain’s an old haunt of mine. But my biggest job in Cumberland was a glade of larkspurs in a moraine of Scawfell Pike. I surpassed myself there. Last year they were a sight to thank God for—nine feet high some of them, lifting up great four-foot blue torches off a patch of emerald and gold. I lay a whole morning in the sun, looking at them—and then I got up and worked like the devil till it was dark. . . .

“Some brutal beanfeasters from Manchester fell foul of them soon after—fell upon them tooth and claw, trampled them out of sight—and gave me three weeks’ hard work this spring. But they have recovered wonderfully, and if I have luck this year I sha’n’t fear even a Glasgow holiday let loose on them.”

She was caressing the flowers, half kneeling, half lying by them. “Go on, please,” she said when Senhouse stopped. “Tell me of some more gardens of yours.”

He needed no pressing, being full of his subject, and crowded upon her his exploits, with all England for a garden-plot. To her inexperience it seemed like a fairy tale, but to her kindling inclination all such wonders were fuel, and he could tell her of nothing which did not go to enhancing the magic in himself. Peonies, he told her of, in a Cornish cove opening to the sea—a five years’ task; and a niche on a Dartmoor tor where he had coaxed Caucasian irises to grow like wholesome weeds. Tamarisks, like bushes afire, in a sandy bight near Bristol—“I made the cuttings myself from slips I got in the Landes”—Wistaria in a curtain on the outskirts of an oak wood in the New Forest. That had been his first essay—ten years ago. “You never saw such a sight—the trees look as if they were alight—wrapped in mauve flames. And never touched yet—and been there ten years!

“I’ve got the little Tuscan tulip—clusiana is its name, a pointed, curving bud it has, striped red and white—growing well on a wooded shore in Cornwall; I’ve got hepaticas on a Welsh mountain, a pink cloud of them—and Pyrennean auriculas dropping like rosy wells from a crag on the Pillar Rock. Ain’t these things worth doing? They are worth all Chatsworth to me!”

She caught his enthusiasm; her burning face, her throbbing heart were but flowers of his planting. Once more she was splendidly conscious of discovery, of unsuspected distances seen from a height and once more exulted in the strength which such knowledge gave her. No education could have bettered this—an interest in life itself, in work itself. All that day she laboured by his side—digging, weeding, fetching and carrying in that sunny hollow of the hills. She cooked his meals and waited upon him; she grimed her hands, scratched and blistered them, tore her gown, blowsed herself, was tired, but too happy to rest. This, this was life, indeed.

Towards dusk, after dinner, she was so tired that she could hardly keep her eyes open; and Senhouse who had been watching her with shrewd amusement, bade her to bed. The tent was at her disposal, while she remained. Slowly she obeyed him, unwillingly but without question. The day was fading to a lovely close; night, as it were, was drawing violet curtains over the dome of the sky. The great hills were intensely dark, and the valley between them and below lay shrouded in a light veil of mist. It was so quiet that they could hear the Lingmell beck crisping over the pebbles or swishing between the great boulders; and once a fish leapt in a pool, and the splash he made was like a smack on the cheek.

Mary obeyed slowly. She stood behind him where he sat watching all the still wonder of the dusk, hoping he would speak, afraid herself to break the spell of her own thoughts. She was excited, she felt the exquisite luxury of ease after toil; if she had dared she would have indulged her quivering senses. She could deceive herself no more; she had no need in the world which Senhouse could not satisfy, and no chance of happiness unless he did. But she respected him more than she loved him; it never entered her head for a moment that it would be possible for her to draw such a man on. Still she stayed, as if unable to leave him; his mere neighbourhood was balm to her fever.

So they remained for some unmeasured time, while the silence became crushing and the dark blotted out hill and hollow. She could not hear her heart beating, and the pulses in her temples. In a manner she was rapt in an ecstasy: she thought no more; she was possessed; her happiness was at the point of bliss.

Senhouse sat on, motionless, he, too, absorbed in contemplation—like a priest before his altar-miracles. He may not have known that she was so close to him; or he may have known it very well. If he did, he showed no sign of it. His thoughts, whatever they were, held him, as he sat, his chin between his clasped knees, rigid as a dead Viking, crouched so in his tomb of stones. His black, glazed eyes were fixed sombrely towards the shrouded valley—across it, to the mountains beyond. So at last, when her pleasure became a pain so piercing that, had it endured much longer, she must have cried aloud, she shivered as she clasped her hands together over her breast—and then lightly let one fall to touch his shoulder.

She must needs speak to him now. “Do you wish me to go?”

He answered shortly. “It will be better. Yes, you had better go.”

“Very well—I will. But to-morrow? Am I to go home to-morrow? I shall do exactly what you tell me. You know that.”

He did not move, nor answer her immediately. She hung upon his silence.

Then he said, “I’m a man, you know—and you’re a woman. There’s no getting away from that.”

“And you wish me——?”

“I’m a compromise—by my own act. This is Halfway House. You may rest here, you see—and go on—or go back.”

She could school her voice, but not her hand which touched his shoulder. She had to move it away before she spoke. “And if I decide—to go on?”

“You must not—until you know what it means. Some day—possibly—when you see—not feel—your way, it may be— Look here,” he said abruptly, “we won’t talk about all this. I told you—in cold blood—what I thought you ought to do. Go back and see Duplessis. Don’t ask me to reconsider that—in hot blood. I’m not myself at this time of night. I saw straight enough when you put it to me. I value your friendship—I’m proud of it. More I must not say. It is something to have made a woman like you trust me. That’s too good a thing to lose, do you see? And I’ll tell you this, too—that you _may_ trust me. If you do as I tell you, it will work out all right.”

“Yes, yes—I believe that. But you told me this morning to follow—my heart.”

“I did, my dear, and I meant it. But not what your heart calls out at midnight.”

She stood where she was a little longer; presently she sighed.

“I will do as you bid me—because you bid me;” and he laughed.

“Reason most womanish.”

“Don’t laugh at me just now,” she said.

He folded his arms tightly, and stooped his head towards them. “I daren’t do anything else,” he told her; “and I will not.”

In the dark she stretched out her hands to him; but soon she gave over, and gloried in the strength he had.

“Good-night,” she said; and he answered her without moving, “Good-night.”

She stole away to his tent; but he sat on where he was, far into the night.

In the morning light they met as if nothing had happened; and after breakfast he took her by Wastwater to Seascale—to the train for the south. He was the old informal, chatty companion, full of queer knowledge and outspoken reflections. He told her his plans, so far as he could foresee them. He should be going to Cornwall in November.

Then he put her in the train, and touched her hand lightly, as his way was. He looked into her face, and smiled half ruefully. “Don’t forget Halfway House,” he told her. She could only sob, “Oh, no! Oh, never, never!” He turned away—waited for the train to move—then waved his hand. As the train carried her under the arch, and bent on its course, she had her last glimpse. He stood, white and slim, against the grey buildings. She waved her hand, and was carried onwards to the south.

XIII
THE SUMMONS

She knew now that she loved Senhouse, and that knowledge filled her with indescribable triumph, and gave her unimagined strength. At the same time, the quietude of her new joy really amazed her. She could lie back in her corner seat of the train and watch her flight to the south, be conscious that every thresh of the great driving wheels was taking her from her beloved, reflect that she could neither write to him nor hear from him—wanderer that he was, and sojourner in tents—and regret nothing, and long for nothing more tangible than she possessed already. He had her heart; she had made her surrender on that night of intense colloquy. That had been her true bridal night—by that mysterious intercourse she had become his irrevocably. A great security possessed her, a conviction, which it would have been blasphemous to question, that all was well. If one had told her, you and he may never meet again, she would have laughed in his face at the absurdity. Such a thing was not worth argument, spelt its own refutation.

An immense content possessed her, a security which excused her from looking back, and made the future indifferent. She thought neither of her husband with remorse nor of Duplessis with apprehension. She was not appalled by the flatness of her immediate prospect: of a return to town and its round of flurry, chatter, and dress; of Southover and its autumn rites. These things were shadows of life: the real life was hidden in her heart. She would send her tricked-out body to dinner-parties and other assemblies of dolls, while she herself would be elsewhere, in some blue immensity of air, breasting some great hill, breathing the breath—which was food—of her mother the Earth—_her_ mother! _Their_ mother! She and her beloved were brother and sister. Entertainment here, for the flying miles, to which the threshing wheels lent processional music.

If she hardly knew herself it is no wonder. She crossed London by rote, reached Blackheath, walked sedately to her father’s little house, entered the little dull door, and kissed her parents, whom she found at tea—all in a dream. They made much of her, the great lady she was become; found it not amiss that she appeared in tumbled gown, with soiled blouse, and hat remarkable for its unremarkableness. Great ladies could do as they pleased, being a law unto themselves. Nor were they confused by her replies to the proper inquiries. “Mr. Germain?” she said, “I think he’s very well. I haven’t seen him since I left London. We don’t see much of each other, you know, Mother.” A stack of forwarded letters was indicated, telegrams among them. She nodded her head, and passed her cup for some more tea.

She heard of the girls’ progress—all out in good boarding schools of her providing; next of Jinny’s triumphs in the Lincolnshire home of the Podmores. “Jinny has a bold way with her, as you know, Mary. They were not inclined towards her at first. There was a question whether she should not pack up her box again the day after she got there—but Mr. Podmore—her Mr. Podmore—went on his knees, _on his knees_, Mary—and she consented to stay. Very bold of Jinny, considering that old Mr. Podmore is a Rural Dean——”

Mary smiled. The simple talk went on. By-and-by it came out that a visitor had called to see Mary several times—a Mr. Duplessis, a very tall young man. “He came here the evening we had expected you, and I thought the chimney was afire when I heard his knock. Exactly like the fire brigade. I opened the door in a twitter—and there he was—six feet-two of him, and a tall hat atop of that. “Is Mrs. Germain at home?” he asks me, and I say, “She may be, for she’s not here.” Then he says, “You are Mrs. Middleham, I take it.” I tell him he takes me rightly. “Don’t you expect your—Mrs. Germain?” I told him the truth. “I’ll call to-morrow,” he says—“and he did, Mary, and to-day, too. A handsome, upstanding young man—very much at home with the likes of me. I suppose—but you know your own business best, of course.”

Mary stroked her mother’s cheek. “Dear little old Mother,” she said, “I know you’re afraid for me. Mr. Duplessis is quite harmless. I’ll see him, if he comes to-morrow.”

In the intervals of housework—for she insisted upon being useful—she wrote to her husband from day to day, telling him in her first letter that she had been unable to write before as she had been travelling. On this particular information he made no comment whatsoever; indeed, he confined himself to such generalities as the state of the weather, his cold, “which, under medical advice, I am nursing at home,” and the proceedings of Mrs. James. “Constantia is a great comfort to me. You will be pleased to hear that I am not without hope of inducing her to prolong her visit. She speaks very kindly of you. My brother, I regret to say, has been called home by parochial cares. . . . The Cantacutes dined here last evening. I regretted that I could not be down to receive them. However, Constantia. . . .” She replied pleasantly to all this, feeling not one grain of discomfort out of anything which Mrs. James could or could not do. She begged to be kept informed of his cold. “You know that I will come to you the moment you care to have me.” In answer to that, by return of post, he wrote that “on no account” must she alter her plans. “Believe me, I am fully contented that you should be with your parents. It is, I understand, reckoned a failing of the past generation that children should admit any claim in them who bore and nurtured them. Personally, I do not pretend to be abreast of the times in this particular; nor should I wish you to be so. I am assured that there is no cause for uneasiness on my account, and will most certainly see that you are kept supplied with bulletins. I beg my sincere respects to your father and mother.”

After that she heard nothing more from him.

Duplessis had called two days after her arrival, but she had been out, and he had not waited. He came again after three days’ interval—having written to announce his intention—at 11 o’clock in the morning. She was on her knees, in pinned-up skirt and apron, her arms bare to the elbows, scrubbing the kitchen floor, when his knock resounded through the house. The quick blood leapt into her cheeks, but she held to her task. Her mother came fluttering in. “That’s your visitor, Mary. What am I to do?—and you in such a state!”

“Show him in here, Mother,” says Mary.

“Never, child. He’ll think you demented.”

Mary was inflexible; her eyes glittered. “I shall see him nowhere else,” she said.

Upon his second attack, a scared and serious Mrs. Middleham opened the door. Mary, pausing in her scrubbing, heard the dialogue.

“Oh, good-morning. Mrs. Germain?”

“My daughter is here, Sir.”

“Oh, she’s come, has she? Do you think she would see me?”

“She says so, Sir. I have asked her. But she hopes you will excuse her untidiness——”

“Oh, of course——”

“She has been kind enough to help us here—she is at work now. You will please to overlook——”

“My dear Mrs. Middleham——”

“If you will follow me I will show you where she is.”

Mary rose from her knees to receive him, having wiped her hands and arms on her apron. Her cheeks were burning and her eyes alight—but she looked none the worse, assuredly, for that.

When Duplessis, stooping his fair head, entered the kitchen, she came forward lightly to receive him. “Good-morning,” she said. “You will take me as I am?”

“I’ll take you how I can,” said Tristram, shaking hands. “Your mother prepared me for this attack of industry. You might let me help you.”

Mary laughed. “Don’t destroy my mother’s illusions. She is convinced of the complete idleness of the upper classes. If she lost that she would have to alter all her ideas of society.”

“I don’t know anything about the upper classes; but Mrs. Middleham can have no notion how hard _I_ can work,” Duplessis said. “I was at it all last night. Dancing till Heaven knows when.”

“I’ll warrant Heaven does,” said Mrs. Middleham to herself. She was not able to find anything to say to this magnificent visitor.

Duplessis and Mary made a fairer show, for she had learned to dread, with the high world, a single second of awkwardness. She was even able to continue her work on her knees and chat with Tristram, who, for his part, sat calmly on the kitchen table and talked nineteen to the dozen. It is difficult to say which side of this simple performance scandalized Mrs. Middleham the more—that Mary should be on her knees with a scrubbing brush, or that Duplessis should not be. The good blunt woman sat it out as long as her endurance would last, growing more and more stiff in the back, primming her lips in and in until she showed none at all. Finally she rose with a “You will excuse me,” and stalked out of her own kitchen. She sat in the empty parlour and looked at a photograph album as a protest. Meanwhile Mary’s hour had come. It had been on the edge of her tongue to ask her mother to stay—but she had dismissed the thought as unworthy. She fixed her mind upon the plateau of Mariposa lilies, and her eyes on her work, and scrubbed for life.

“Molly,” said Duplessis, “why did you run away from me?”

She elbowed her brush stoutly. “Because I was afraid of you,” she said—then stopped and looked up at him. “But I’m not now—not in the least afraid.”

“You need not be. You wrote to me that you were coming on the 13th.”

“I know.”

“And this is the 20th, and you are only just here.”

“No. I have been here four or five days.”

“Where were you—when you were not here?”

“I was travelling.”

“Travelling!”

“Yes. But I decline to be questioned.”

“You mean, I suppose, that you will decline to answer.”

Her colour rose. “You always correct my language, I know. My exact meaning is that I deny your right to question me about my own affairs.”

“But if they are my affairs, too? May I not know what you are doing with them?”

She thought. “Yes—I suppose you may do that.”

“Very well. Then I will ask you why you sent me word that you were to come here on the 13th ‘by train,’ and then did nothing of the sort?”

On her knees still, she faced him with her answer. “Yes, I will answer that. When I wrote, I intended to come—and expected that you would meet me. But when I posted the letter I had changed my mind. I did _not_ intend to come.”

He stared, with very cold, bright eyes. “You did _not_ intend to come when you posted the letter? Pray, did you intend me to expect you at the station?”

She answered him, “Yes, I did expect it.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Really, my dear friend, you interest me extremely. Did you think that six hours or more at Charing Cross Station would be good for my nerves, morals, or constitution?”

“I will tell you what I thought,” she said. “I thought that waiting at Charing Cross would be no worse—to say the least—for a man than an appointment in Burlington Arcade could be for a woman.”

Duplessis bit his cheek. “That was your gentle reproof, then, for my blunder?”

“Yours was only a blunder because I saw what it really was. It had never entered your head that I could be other than honoured to meet you anywhere. You presumed that I should run there.”

“You ran very near to it, my friend,” he said. “That is, you had yourself driven.”

She bowed her head. “I admit it. I was a fool—but I am not a fool now.”

“No,” said Duplessis, “you are not. You are, as a matter of truth, extraordinarily beautiful just now, and I am more ridiculously in love with you than ever. But—” She rose from her knees and stood before him.

“Let me finish what I have to say to you, please,” she said. “That was not my only reason for deceiving you. I wished you to wait for me in vain, because I wished you to understand that I could not see you any more. I wished you to believe that our intercourse must be over. I chose the harshest means I could think of. I might have written it, no doubt, but you would have answered the letter, and I am no match for you in writing. I might have seen you and told you—but I couldn’t do that.”

“Molly,” said Duplessis, folding his arms, “why couldn’t you see me?”

She looked down. “Because I couldn’t.”

“It was because you dared not,” said Duplessis.

She did not answer; she was trembling a little now, and he saw it. But presently she looked him straight in the face.

“Yes,” she said, “that is true. I did not dare.” He laughed gaily and started forward to take her; but she put her hand up.

“No,” she said, “you are mistaken. I dared not then, but now I dare. I can meet you now whenever you please, and have no fear at all.”

Duplessis, red in the face, scowled and watched her from under savage brows. “Am I to understand by that that you have ceased to care?”

“You must understand that I do not love you.”

He left the table where he had been sitting and took a turn about the room. Presently he stopped in front of her. His height gave him great advantage.