She was shaking as if in a pa.s.sion. His eyes expressed nothing; he only unlatched the gate in silence, grasped her arm and drew her in. Then closing it with a kick--
"Not your name? That"s all one to me. Your name"s the least thing about you I care for." He was leading her firmly away from the gate though she resisted slightly. There was a sort of joy in his eyes which frightened her. "You are not a princess in disguise," he said with an unexpected laugh she found blood-curdling. "And that"s all I care for.
You had better understand that I am not blind and not a fool. And then it"s plain for even a fool to see that things have been going hard with you. You are on a lee sh.o.r.e and eating your heart out with worry."
What seemed most awful to her was the elated light in his eyes, the rapacious smile that would come and go on his lips as if he were gloating over her misery. But her misery was his opportunity and he rejoiced while the tenderest pity seemed to flood his whole being. He pointed out to her that she knew who he was. He was Mrs Fyne"s brother. And, well, if his sister was the best friend she had in the world, then, by Jove, it was about time somebody came along to look after her a little.
Flora had tried more than once to free herself, but he tightened his grasp of her arm each time and even shook it a little without ceasing to speak. The nearness of his face intimidated her. He seemed striving to look her through. It was obvious the world had been using her ill. And even as he spoke with indignation the very marks and stamp of this ill-usage of which he was so certain seemed to add to the inexplicable attraction he felt for her person. It was not pity alone, I take it.
It was something more spontaneous, perverse and exciting. It gave him the feeling that if only he could get hold of her, no woman would belong to him so completely as this woman.
"Whatever your troubles," he said, "I am the man to take you away from them; that is, if you are not afraid. You told me you had no friends.
Neither have I. n.o.body ever cared for me as far as I can remember.
Perhaps you could. Yes, I live on the sea. But who would you be parting from? No one. You have no one belonging to you."
At this point she broke away from him and ran. He did not pursue her.
The tall hedges tossing in the wind, the wide fields, the clouds driving over the sky and the sky itself wheeled about her in ma.s.ses of green and white and blue as if the world were breaking up silently in a whirl, and her foot at the next step were bound to find the void. She reached the gate all right, got out, and, once on the road, discovered that she had not the courage to look back. The rest of that day she spent with the Fyne girls who gave her to understand that she was a slow and unprofitable person. Long after tea, nearly at dusk, Captain Anthony (the son of the poet) appeared suddenly before her in the little garden in front of the cottage. They were alone for the moment. The wind had dropped. In the calm evening air the voices of Mrs Fyne and the girls strolling aimlessly on the road could be heard. He said to her severely:
"You have understood?"
She looked at him in silence.
"That I love you," he finished.
She shook her head the least bit.
"Don"t you believe me?" he asked in a low, infuriated voice.
"n.o.body would love me," she answered in a very quiet tone. "n.o.body could."
He was dumb for a time, astonished beyond measure, as he well might have been. He doubted his ears. He was outraged.
"Eh? What? Can"t love you? What do you know about it? It"s my affair, isn"t it? You dare say _that_ to a man who has just told you!
You must be mad!"
"Very nearly," she said with the accent of pent-up sincerity, and even relieved because she was able to say something which she felt was true.
For the last few days she had felt herself several times near that madness which is but an intolerable lucidity of apprehension.
The clear voices of Mrs Fyne and the girls were coming nearer, sounding affected in the peace of the pa.s.sion-laden earth. He began storming at her hastily.
"Nonsense! n.o.body can ... Indeed! Pah! You"ll have to be shown that somebody can. I can. n.o.body..." He made a contemptuous hissing noise.
"More likely _you_ can"t. They have done something to you.
Something"s crushed your pluck. You can"t face a man--that"s what it is. What made you like this? Where do you come from? You have been put upon. The scoundrels--whoever they are, men or women, seem to have robbed you of your very name. You say you are not Miss Smith. Who are you, then?"
She did not answer. He muttered, "Not that I care," and fell silent, because the fatuous self-confident chatter of the Fyne girls could be heard at the very gate. But they were not going to bed yet. They pa.s.sed on. He waited a little in silence and immobility, then stamped his foot and lost control of himself. He growled at her in a savage pa.s.sion. She felt certain that he was threatening her and calling her names. She was no stranger to abuse, as we know, but there seemed to be a particular kind of ferocity in this which was new to her. She began to tremble. The especially terrifying thing was that she could not make out the nature of these awful menaces and names. Not a word. Yet it was not the shrinking anguish of her other experiences of angry scenes.
She made a mighty effort, though her knees were knocking together, and in an expiring voice demanded that he should let her go indoors. "Don"t stop me. It"s no use. It"s no use," she repeated faintly, feeling an invincible obstinacy rising within her, yet without anger against that raging man.
He became articulate suddenly, and, without raising his voice, perfectly audible.
"No use? No use! You dare stand here and tell me that--you white-faced wisp, you wreath of mist, you little ghost of all the sorrow in the world. You dare! Haven"t I been looking at you? You are all eyes.
What makes your cheeks always so white as if you had seen something ...
Don"t speak. I love it--No use! And you really think that I can now go to sea for a year or more, to the other side of the world somewhere, leaving you behind. Why! You would vanish ... what little there is of you. Some rough wind will blow you away altogether. You have no holding ground on earth. Well, then trust yourself to me--to the sea-- which is deep like your eyes."
She said: "Impossible." He kept quiet for a while, then asked in a totally changed tone, a tone of gloomy curiosity:
"You can"t stand me then? Is that it?"
"No," she said, more steady herself. "I am not thinking of you at all."
The inane voices of the Fyne girls were heard over the sombre fields calling to each other, thin and clear. He muttered: "You could try to.
Unless you are thinking of somebody else."
"Yes. I am thinking of somebody else, of someone who has n.o.body to think of him but me."
His shadowy form stepped out of her way, and suddenly leaned sideways against the wooden support of the porch. And as she stood still, surprised by this staggering movement, his voice spoke up in a tone quite strange to her.
"Go in then. Go out of my sight--I thought you said n.o.body could love you."
She was pa.s.sing him when suddenly he struck her as so forlorn that she was inspired to say: "No one has ever loved me--not in that way--if that"s what you mean. n.o.body, would."
He detached himself brusquely from the post, and she did not shrink; but Mrs Fyne and the girls were already at the gate.
All he understood was that everything was not over yet. There was no time to lose; Mrs Fyne and the girls had come in at the gate. He whispered "Wait" with such authority (he was the son of Carleon Anthony, the domestic autocrat) that it did arrest her for a moment, long enough to hear him say that he could not be left like this to puzzle over her nonsense all night. She was to slip down again into the garden later on, as soon as she could do so without being heard. He would be there waiting for her till--till daylight. She didn"t think he could go to sleep, did she? And she had better come, or--he broke off on an unfinished threat.
She vanished into the unlighted cottage just as Mrs Fyne came up to the porch. Nervous, holding her breath in the darkness of the living-room, she heard her best friend say: "You ought to, have joined us, Roderick."
And then: "Have you seen Miss Smith anywhere?"
Flora shuddered, expecting Anthony to break out into betraying imprecations on Miss Smith"s head, and cause a painful and humiliating explanation. She imagined him full of his mysterious ferocity. To her great surprise, Anthony"s voice sounded very much as usual, with perhaps a slight tinge of grimness. "Miss Smith! No. I"ve seen no Miss Smith."
Mrs Fyne seemed satisfied--and not much concerned really.
Flora, relieved, got clear away to her room upstairs, and shutting her door quietly, dropped into a chair. She was used to reproaches, abuse, to all sorts of wicked ill-usage--short of actual beating on her body.
Otherwise inexplicable angers had cut and slashed and trampled down her youth without mercy--and mainly, it appeared, because she was the financier de Barral"s daughter and also condemned to a degrading sort of poverty through the action of treacherous men who had turned upon her father in his hour of need. And she thought with the tenderest possible affection of that upright figure b.u.t.toned up in a long frock-coat, soft-voiced and having but little to say to his girl. She seemed to feel his hand closed round hers. On his flying visits to Brighton he would always walk hand in hand with her. People stared covertly at them; the band was playing; and there was the sea--the blue gaiety of the sea. They were quietly happy together.--It was all over!
An immense anguish of the present wrung her heart, and she nearly cried aloud. That dread of what was before her which had been eating up her courage slowly in the course of odious years, flamed up into an access of panic, that sort of headlong panic which had already driven her out twice to the top of the cliff-like quarry. She jumped up saying to herself: "Why not now? At once! Yes. I"ll do it now--in the dark!"
The very horror of it seemed to give her additional resolution.
She came down the staircase quietly, and only on the point of opening the door and because of the discovery that it was unfastened, she remembered Captain Anthony"s threat to stay in the garden all night.
She hesitated. She did not understand the mood of that man clearly. He was violent. But she had gone beyond the point where things matter.
What would he think of her coming down to him--as he would naturally suppose. And even that didn"t matter. He could not despise her more than she despised herself. She must have been light-headed because the thought came into her mind that should he get into ungovernable fury from disappointment, and perchance strangle her, it would be as good a way to be done with it as any.
"You had that thought," I exclaimed in wonder.
With downcast eyes and speaking with an almost painstaking precision (her very lips, her red lips, seemed to move just enough to be heard and no more), she said that, yes, the thought came into her head. This makes one shudder at the mysterious ways girls acquire knowledge. For this was a thought, wild enough, I admit, but which could only have come from the depths of that sort of experience which she had not had, and went far beyond a young girl"s possible conception of the strongest and most veiled of human emotions.
"He was there, of course?" I said.
"Yes, he was there." She saw him on the path directly she stepped outside the porch. He was very still. It was as though he had been standing there with his face to the door for hours.
Shaken up by the changing moods of pa.s.sion and tenderness, he must have been ready for any extravagance of conduct. Knowing the profound silence each night brought to that nook of the country, I could imagine them having the feeling of being the only two people on the wide earth.
A row of six or seven lofty elms just across the road opposite the cottage made the night more obscure in that little garden. If these two could just make out each other that was all.