"Well," he said quietly, "let"s hear some more. What sort of a man was it?"
"A wild man--with water dripping off him. He had crept out of the river."
"Do you mean--a sort of ghost or demon?"
"I didn"t know."
"Not like an ordinary man--not like any other man you"ve ever seen?"
"Oh, no. All wild--fierce and dreadful. Not standing upright--more like an animal in the shape of a man."
"But surely you told your Granny, or somebody?"
"No. I"ve never told a soul except you."
"An" you say you were scared, though?"
"Oh, I was, rarely scared."
"Then you must have told your Granny, or one of "em. You"ve forgotten, but I expect you told people at the time."
"I didn"t. I didn"t dare to at first. I thought he"d come after me, if I did. I was afraid."
Dale grunted again. "An" d"you mean to say you"d the grit in you to come back here all the same, after that?"
"Not for a little while. Then I did. I was all a twitter, so frightened still, but I was fascinated for to do it too--just to see."
"But you never saw him again."
"No, and then I began to think it was all a fancy. D"you think it was a fancy, and not real?"
"My dear girl, no;" and Dale shrugged his shoulders. "You prob"ly saw some poor devil of a tramp who had slept here, and was getting on the move after his night"s rest." Then he took a step away from the tree, and spoke curtly. "Come. We must go home."
Norah sprang off the tree, hurried to his side, and, with her hands linked about his arm, looked up at him anxiously.
"Yes, but it"s all right, isn"t it? You"re not angry with me--not turning against me?"
"No, it"s all right."
"Then, don"t let"s go. Let"s stay here a little longer"
"No, we must go--or Mrs. Dale will be coming to fetch us;" and he began to walk briskly. "And look here, Norah. I shall inform her I found you here by yourself, and I have lectured you at full length, and you"ve said you"ll be good for the future. So don"t answer back if she speaks sharp."
"Oh, I don"t mind what she says now;" and Norah laughed happily as she trotted after him through the trees.
That evening he sat outside on the bench long after the supper table had been taken away and the kitchen door closed. Quite late, when Mavis spoke to him from an upper window, he said he must have one more pipe before he turned in.
Norah had been singing in the kitchen while she washed the plates; then he had heard her humming softly in the sitting-room; now she had gone up-stairs and was silent. The thoughts and sensations that had been suddenly and strangely inhibited a few hours ago came into play again, warmed his blood once more, repossessed his brain. Soon he was impotent to struggle against them. As he sat huddled and motionless, he revived each memory and wilfully renewed its delight. The brick walls, the timber beams, the flooring boards, and plastered part.i.tions could not divide her from him; though hidden at a distance, she shed emanations, fiery atoms, darting sparks, that infallibly reached him: when he closed his eyes in order not to see the empty s.p.a.ce before him, she herself was here. He could feel again the light weight of her body upon his knees, her hair brushed against his chin, her face gave itself to his lips.
Then more remote memories came to join the recent memories, deepening the spell that subjugated him. He thought of her crying when he teased her about love and marriage, and when her poor little innocent heart was bursting because of his pretense of not understanding that she craved for no love but his. And he thought of how she had looked in the middle of the night when he covered her with his jacket, and she stood before him trembling and blushing, with her hair all tumbling loose. That had been one of the mental pictures which he could not even make dim, much less obliterate.
He groaned, got up from the bench, and walked very slowly round the kitchen and behind the house. The first breath of air that he had noticed for days was stirring the leaves, and he saw the new moon like a golden sickle poised above the broken summit of a hayrick. It was a serenely beautiful nights with an atmosphere undoubtedly cooler than any they had had of late; he looked at the peaceful fields, and the fruit trees and the barn roof, all so gently, imperceptibly touched by the young and tender moonbeams; and he thought that the thin yellow crescent was being watched by thousands and thousands of eyes, that men were turning their money, and wishing for luck, for fame, or for satisfied love. But he only of all men might not wish for the desire of his heart, and to him only the moon could bring nothing but pain.
He went through the kitchen garden, and stood under an apple tree staring back at the window of her room. And still older memories sprang up and grew strong, so that they might attack and overcome and utterly undo him. The wild bad fancies of his adolescence came thronging upon him. Imagination and fact entangled themselves; the past and the present fused, and became one vast throbbing distress. He thought if he crept beneath the window and called to her, she would answer his call. If he told her to do so, she would come out in her night-dress--she would walk bare-footed through the fields, and plunge with him into the wonderful wood. If he told her to do it, she would go into the stream, and dance and splash--realizing that old dream--the white-bodied nymph of the wood for him to leap at and carry off into the gloom. He wrenched himself round, and made his way rapidly from the garden to the meadow. He could not support his thoughts. The proximity of the girl was driving him mad.
All through the little meadow and again in the wider fields the air had a soft fragrance; the sky was high and quite clear, with a few stars; the whole earth, for as much as he could see of it, seemed to be sleeping in a deep delightful peace. Beyond his fences there were the neighbors" farms, and then there were the heath, the hills; and beyond these, other counties, other countries, the rest of the turning globe, the universe it turned in--and once again he had that feeling of infinite smallness, the insect unfairly matched against a solar system, the speck of dust whirled as the biggest stars are whirled, inexorably.
At the confines of his land he leaned upon a gate, groaning and praying.
"O Christ Jesus, Redeemer of mankind, why hast Thou deserted me? O G.o.d the Father, Lord and Judge, why dost Thou torment me so?"
XXIX
Very early in the morning he told Mavis that he felt sure they ought to send Norah away on a holiday for the good of her health.
"This hot weather has been a severe test for all of us," he said; "and of course what I should consider equally advisable would be to send you and the children along with her, but I suppose--"
"What, me go away just when you"re going to cut the gra.s.s!"
"Very well," he said, "I won"t urge it. But as to Norah, that"s a decision I"ve come to; so please don"t question it. She"s been working too hard--"
"Did she complain to you yesterday, when you lectured her?"
"No. Not a word. An" she"ll prob"ly resist the idea. But she must be overruled, because my mind is made up. So now the only question that remains is--where are you to send her? What about that place for servants resting--at Bournemouth, the place Mrs. Norton collects subscriptions for?"
"Yes, I might ask Mrs. Norton if she could spare us a ticket."
"No, send the girl as a paying guest. I don"t grudge any reasonable expense. Or again there"s Mrs. Creech"s daughter-in-law, over at S"thaampton Water."
"Oh, there"s half a dozen people I could think of--"
"All right," he said; "but I want it done now, straight away. And look here, Mav. Take this thing off my shoulders, and don"t let me be bothered. I shouldn"t have decided it, if I didn"t know it was right.
I"ve a long and difficult day before me. You just hop into the gig, and Tom"ll drive you round--to see Mrs. Norton or anybody else. Only let me hear by dinner-time that the arrangement is made."
"You shall," said Mavis cheerfully.
"Thank you, Mav. You"re always a trump. You never fail one."
What had seemed an insuperable difficulty was thus in a moment accomplished. His quietly authoritative tone had made Mavis accept the thing not only easily but without a doubt or question, and he thought remorsefully that, except for his sneaking, cowardly delay, all this might have occurred a month ago. He felt a distinct lightening of the trouble as he went back into his own room, and then the weight of it fell upon him again. He had succeeded so far as Mavis was concerned; but how about Norah?
He stood meditating in front of the looking-gla.s.s before he began to shave. When he picked up the shaving-brush, he noticed that his hand was trembling--not much, yet quite visibly. It never used to do that, and he looked at it with disgust. It seemed to him like an old man"s hand.
Then he began to study his face in the gla.s.s. No one would have guessed that this was a man who had been praying all night. The whole face showed those signs of fatigue that come after base pleasures, after riotous waste of energy, after long hours of debauch. It seemed to him that his gray hair was finer of texture than it ought to be, hanging straight and thin, with no strength in it; that his eyes were too dim, that the flesh underneath them had puffed out loosely, and that his lower lip was drooping slackly--and he shuddered in disgust.
It seemed to him that his face changed and grew uglier as he looked at it. It was becoming like an old man"s face he had seen years ago.