Then the suspicions of Mavis were aroused by discovering that Norah was at her old tricks again. If you sent her as messenger of charity to one of the cottages, and more still if you gave her an hour or two for herself, she went stealing off into the forbidden woods. She had been seen doing it twice, and, as Mavis suspected, had done it often without being seen. She knew that she wasn"t allowed to do it. There was the plain house-rule that neither she nor Ethel were ever to leave the roads when they were out alone. Yet she broke the rule; and Mavis now suspected that she did not break this rule in order to pick wild flowers and look at green leaves but to meet a sweetheart.
Mavis, thinking about it, was at once angry and apprehensive. A fine thing for all of them, if the little fool came to trouble and disgrace that way. She would not immediately bother Dale about it; but she promptly tackled Norah, roundly accused her of improper behavior, expressed a firm conviction that she was playing the fool with some young man, and threatened to lay the whole matter before the master.
"D"you understand, Norah? We won"t put up with it--not for a moment.
We"re not going to let you make yourself the talk of the place and bring us to shame into the bargain."
Norah, alternately flushing and turning pale, defended herself with vigor. She was indignant not with the threats, but with the suspicion.
She swore that she had never for one instant thought of a young man, much less spoken to or made appointments with a young man; and that she had broken the house-rule simply because she found it almost impossible to keep it. She had always loved wandering about under the trees: she used to go there all alone as a baby, and she thought it unreasonable that she might not go there alone as a grown-up person.
Norah"s indignant tone suggested complete innocence, and Mavis felt relieved in mind, but yet not quite sure whether the girl was really telling the truth.
She indirectly returned to the charge on the following Sunday, when Norah was about to start for her afternoon out.
"Norah, I want a word with you."
The girl came back along the flagged path to the kitchen door.
"It"s just this, Norah. You"ll please to remember what I"ve told you, and act accordingly."
Norah turned her head and answered over her shoulder, rather sullenly, as Mavis thought.
"All right. I remember."
"Don"t answer me like that," said Mavis sharply. "And please to remember your manners, and look at people when you speak to them."
"All right," said Norah again, and, as Mavis judged, very sullenly this time.
"Look you here, young lady," she said, with increasing warmth. "I"m not going to stand any of your nonsense--and of that I give you fair warning. Now you just answer me in a seemly manner and tell me exactly where you are going this afternoon, or I"ll send you straight back into the house to take off your finery and not go out at all."
Dale, close by in the little sitting-room, heard his wife"s voice raised thus angrily, closed the book that was lying open on his knees, and came to the window.
"What"s wrong, Mav?"
"It"s Norah offering me her sauce, and I won"t put up with it."
Dale, with the book in his hand, came out through the kitchen, and stood by Mavis on the stone flags.
"Norah," he said seriously, "you must always be good, and do whatever Mrs. Dale tells you."
"Yes, but that"s just what she doesn"t do;" and Mavis explained that, in spite of repeated orders, Norah had several times gone mooning off into the woods all by herself. "So now I"m reminding her, and asking where she means to go this afternoon."
Norah, with her eyes on the flags, said that she would go to Rodchurch.
"Very good," said Mavis. "Then now you"ve answered, you may go."
When Norah had disappeared round the corner of the house, Mavis talked to her husband apologetically and confidentially.
"Will, dear, I"m sorry I disturbed you when you were reading;" and glancing at the book in his hand, she felt ashamed of her recent warmth. "I couldn"t help blowing her up, and I"ll tell you why." Then she spoke of the necessity of keeping a sharp eye and a firm hand on a girl of Norah"s age and attractions; and she further mentioned her suspicion, now almost entirely allayed, of some secret carryings-on.
"Oh, I don"t think there"s anything of that sort," said Dale. "No, I may say I"m morally sure Norah isn"t deceiving you there."
"I"m glad you think so. Yes, it"s what I think myself. I should have bowled her out if there"d been anything going on. But, Will, there"s other dangers for her--worse dangers."
"What dangers, Mavis?"
"Well, all the lads naturally are looking at her. Norah has come on faster than you may have noticed. I don"t want her to mix herself up with any of those louts that hang about the Cross Roads."
"No."
"And she"ll come across them for certain if she gets trapesing through the trees like she does. There"s her brothers would bring them together. Besides, it isn"t _safe_--at her age. You know yourself what"s always been said of it."
"Quite so," said Dale. "You are wise, Mavis--very wise to be watchful and careful."
Then he returned to the sitting-room, settled himself again in the porter"s chair, and reopened his book at the place where he had been interrupted.
It was the New Testament; and just now, while reading the twenty-first chapter of Saint Matthew, he had enjoyed a clear vision of Christ"s entry into Jerusalem. Making his picture from materials supplied by an article in the _People"s Encyclopedia_, he seemed to be able to see the ancient city and its exotic life as the Redeemer and the disciples must have seen it on that memorable day. Here were the narrow streets and the crowded market-places; the towers and domes; the strangely garbed traders, laden camels, gorgeous Roman soldiers, brown-faced priests, black-bodied slaves; sunlit hills high above one, distant faintly blue mountains far ahead of one--a thronged labyrinth of shadow and light, of noise and confusion, of pomp and squalor.
But the picture was gone, the dream was broken, the hope was darkened.
He tried to bring it all back again, and failed utterly. He could not think of Christ riding into Jerusalem; he could only think of Norah walking along the road to Rodchurch.
XXVIII
Extreme heat came that year with the opening of July, and the atmosphere at night seemed as oppressive as in the day.
After an unusually wet June the foliage was rich and dense, but flowers were few and poor--except the roses, which had prospered greatly. Throughout the daylight hours trees close at hand looked solid, as if composed of some unbending green material; while those a little way off were rather firm, presenting the appearance of trees during heavy rain. Indeed that was the appearance of the whole scene--a country-side being drenched and rendered vague by a heavy downpour; but it was sheer heat that was descending, with never an atom of moisture in it.
The shadows beneath the trees were absolutely black, impenetrable; a dark cave under each ring of leaves. Then toward nightfall this shadow grew lighter and lighter, until it was a transparent grayness into which one could see quite clearly. Thus a girl and a man sitting under a hedgerow elm five or six hundred yards away were distinct objects, although perhaps themselves unaware that they had gradually lost their shelter and become conspicuous.
Dale, crossing his fields and staring at these two figures, for a moment fancied that one of them was Norah. Yet that would have been an impossibility, because he had just left her behind him at the house; and she could not have swum round in a great half-circle, through the drowsy air, to confront him at a distant point where he did not expect to see her. But the heat made one stupid and slow-witted. This man and woman were farmer Creech"s people, and they had come sauntering along the edge of uncut gra.s.s to make lazy love to each other. Dale turned aside to avoid disturbing them.
As he returned toward the house presently, he thought of Norah"s unwonted pallor. Poor child, the heat seemed to be trying her more than anybody. And he thought of how wan and limp and sad she looked early this morning, when he had again sent her out of his office and flatly refused to let her do any more writing or tidying for him. Even her red lips had gone pale; she dropped her head; her white eyelids and black lashes fluttered as she looked up at him piteously, seeming to ask: "What have I done that you treat me like this, oh, my cruel master?" He had driven his hands deep into his pockets, had shrugged his shoulders, and spoken almost roughly--telling her to go about her business, and not bother. He thought if he gave her time to do it, she might cry again; and he did not want to see any more of her tears.
But off and on throughout the day he had watched her when she did not in the least know that she was being observed. Just after breakfast he had watched her as she scrubbed the kitchen floor, and had noticed the pretty lines of her figure in these sprawling att.i.tudes--her ankles, stockings, and the upturned soles of her buckle-shoes.
He was watching her when she came up from the dairy with the pail that held Mavis" afternoon supply of milk, and he noticed her stretched arm, bare to the elbow, and the other arm balancing, the tilted body helping also to maintain equilibrium. Almost more than she could manage--why didn"t that broad-backed thick-legged lump of a dairy-maid carry the house-pail? He would have liked to go out and carry the pail himself; but that was one of the many things which he must carefully refrain from doing.
And all day long, though he saw her so often, he never once heard her sing. She made no song over her work, as used to be her habit. He wondered if Mavis was not working her too hard in this terribly exhausting weather. He wondered also if he would ever be able to say quite naturally what he had for so long wished to say and felt he ought to say--that Norah must be given a holiday, that she must be sent somewhere at a considerable distance and stay there in charge of kind and respectable people for an indefinite period. Mavis might consider the suggestion so strange; and it might be impossible to explain that, strange as it seemed, it was nevertheless full of wisdom--a suggestion that should be acted upon without an instant"s delay.
The supper table had been brought out into the open air, and it stood upon the flagged path, where they had spread their hospitable feast for the higgler"s wedding. Norah was coming in and out of the kitchen, and Dale sat watching her as she arranged knives, forks, and gla.s.ses.
Both the children were to be of the party; and they might stay up as late as they pleased, because as it was too hot to sleep in their beds, it did not matter how long the young people remained out of them. They were now roaming about the orchard with Mavis, hunting for a coolness that did not exist anywhere except in one"s memory, and their voices sounded at intervals languidly.
More and more color was now perceptible; distances were extending; lines of meager flowers, crimson and blue as well as white, showed in a border of the kitchen garden; and the sky, seeming to lift and brighten, was a faint orange above the horizon and a most delicate rose tint toward the zenith--so that till half-past eight, or later, one had the illusion that the night was going to be more brightly lighted than the day.
n.o.body had much appet.i.te for supper, but they all sat a long while at the table, glad to rest if they could not eat, hoping that when they moved from their chairs they would find the temperature lower within the house walls than outside them. Mavis gave little oppressed sighs as she fanned her jolly round face and broad matronly chest with a copy of the _Courier_. Ethel, who to-night seemed an extraordinarily c.u.mbrous awkward creature, flumped the dishes down on the table and shuffled away on her big flat feet. Norah glided to and fro, now here, now there, pouring out milk and water for the children, and ducking prettily when a bat came close to her white face and black hair.