In spite of the slight shakiness of his hand he managed to shave himself without a cut, and he was just about to wash the soap away when he heard a sound of lamentation on the lower floor. It was Norah loudly bewailing herself. Mavis had gone down-stairs and published his sentence of banishment.
Suppose that the girl betrayed their secret. Suppose that she was even now telling his wife what had happened in the wood. Well, he must go down to them and flatly deny whatever Norah said. But he tingled and grew hot with a most miserable shame; his heart quailed at the mere notion of the sickening, disgraceful character of such a scene--he, the highly respected Mr. Dale, the good upright religious man, being accused by a little servant girl and having to rebut her accusations in the presence of his wife.
He dipped his head in the basin, and even when under the cold water the tips of his ears seemed as if they were on fire. He must go down-stairs the moment he had cooled his face; but he would go as some wretched schoolboy goes to the headmaster"s room when he guesses that his unforgivable beastliness has been discovered, and that first a thrashing and then expulsion are awaiting him.
Some of the lying words that he must utter suggested themselves. "Oh, Norah, this is a poor return you are making for all my kindness.
Aren"t you ashamed to stand there and tell such ungrateful false-hoods. Ma la.s.s, your cheek surprises me. I wonder you can look me in the face."
But it would be Mavis, and not Norah, who would look him in the face--and she would read the truth there. She would see it staring at her in his shifting eyes, his slack lip, and his weak frown. Her first glance at him would be loyal and frank, just an eager flash of love and confidence, seeming to say, "Be quick, Will, and put your foot on this viper that we"ve both of us warmed, and that is trying to bite me;" then she would turn pale, avert her head, and drop upon a chair.
And for why? Because she had seen the nauseating truth, and her heart was almost broken.
Then he suddenly understood that there was no real danger of all this.
It was only his own sense of guilt that unnerved him. Nothing had happened in the wood. If he behaved quietly and sensibly, he would be altogether safe, and Mavis would never guess. Truly all that he had to conceal was that he had been stopped on the very brink of his sin, that but for a startling interference, an almost miraculous interference, the wicked thoughts would infallibly have found their outlet in wicked deeds.
If Norah said he took her on his knees and kissed her, Mavis would think nothing of it--would not even think it undignified; would merely take as one more evidence of his kindly nature the fact that, instead of upbraiding the silly child, he had embraced her. If the girl howled and said she did not want to go because she was fond of him, Mavis would think nothing of that either. Mavis knew it already, and had never thought anything of it.
Therefore if he did not betray himself, the girl could not betray him.
All that was required of him was just to maintain an ordinary air of ingenuousness. He had done enough acting in his life to be at home when dissimulating. He must do a little more successful acting now.
After a minute or so he went down-stairs, and was outwardly staid and calm, looking as he had looked on hundreds of mornings: the good kind father of a household, whose only care is the happiness and welfare of those who are dependent on him.
Directly he entered the breakfast-room Norah ran sobbing to him and clung to his hand.
"She is sending me away. Oh, don"t let her do it. You promised you wouldn"t. Oh, why do you let her do it?"
"This is _my_ plan, Norah," he said gently; "not Mrs. Dale"s. I wish it--and I ask you not to make a fuss."
"I"ve told her," said Mavis, "that it"s only for her own good; and that she"ll be back here in a fortnight or three weeks. But she seems to think we want to be rid of her forever."
"No, no," said Dale. "Nothing of the sort. It"s merely for the good of your health--and not in any way as a punishment for your having been rather disobedient."
"Why, I"m sure," said Mavis cheerfully, "most girls would jump for joy at the chance. You"ll enjoy yourself, and have all a happy time."
"No, I shan"t," Norah cried. "I shall be miserable;" and she looked up at Dale despairingly. "Do you promise I"m really and truly to come back?"
"Of course I do. And it"s all on the cards that Mrs. Dale and Rachel and Bill may follow you before your holiday is over."
"Oh, I doubt that," said Mavis.
"No," cried Norah, "when I"m gone you"ll turn against me, and forget me. I shall never see you again, and I shall die. I can"t bear it."
And she began to sob wildly.
Then Dale, standing big and firm, although each sob tore at his entrails, pacified and rea.s.sured the girl. He said that she must not be "fullish," she must be "good and sensible," she must fall in with the views of those "older and wiser" than herself; finally, after his arguments and admonitions, he laid his hand on her bowed head as if silently giving a patriarchal blessing; and Mavis watched and admired, and loved him for his n.o.ble generosity in taking so much trouble about the poor little waif that had no real claim on him.
"There," she said, "dry your eyes, Norah. Mr. Dale has told you he wishes it, and that ought to be enough for you."
And then Norah said she would do what Mr. Dale wished, even if she died in doing it.
"Oh, stuff, stuff," said Mavis, laughing cheerily. "I never heard such talk. Now come along with me, and get the breakfast things;" and she took Norah down the steps into the kitchen.
Norah came back to lay the cloth presently, and would have rushed into Dale"s arms, if he had not motioned to her to keep away, and laid a finger on his lips warningly. But he could not prevent her from whispering to him across the table.
"Will you come and see me, wherever it is?"
"Perhaps."
"Come and see me without _her_. Come all for me, by yourself."
Dale did more work in that one morning than he had done for months.
The wet season had naturally postponed the hay-making, but negligence was postponing it still further; now at last he gave all necessary orders. But it was only his own gra.s.s that he had to deal with.
Letting everything drift, he had not made any of the usual arrangements with his neighbors; this year he would not have to ride grandly round and watch dozens of men and women laboring for him; and there would be no farmers" banquet or speeches or cigar-smoking.
When he came in to dinner he found Mavis all hot and red, but pleased with herself after her bustling activities. The whole business was settled. Norah was to go as a paying guest to that place at Bournemouth, and Mavis would drive her over to Rodchurch Road and put her into the four-fifteen train. At the station they would meet a girl called Nellie Evans, whom by a happy chance Mrs. Norton was despatching to-day; and so the two girls could travel together, and prevent each other from being a fool when they changed trains at the junction; and altogether nothing could have turned out better or nicer.
Mavis, babbling contentedly all through dinner, harped on the niceness both of people and things. Mrs. Norton, and indeed everybody else, had been so nice about it. All Rodchurch had seemed anxious to a.s.sist Mr.
and Mrs. Dale in contriving their little maid"s holiday. "And it is nice," said Mavis simply, "to be treated like that." Mrs. Norton had taken her all round the vicarage garden, and she had never seen it looking nicer. "Although the flowers aren"t anything to boast of, any more than ours are."
"And what _do_ you think? Here"s a bit of news you"ll be sorry to hear, though it mayn"t surprise you." Then Mavis related how it had been necessary to procure some sort of trunk to hold Norah"s things, because there wasn"t a single presentable bit of luggage in the house, and she had discovered exactly what she wanted--something that was not immoderate, appearing solid, yet not heavy--at the new shop that had recently been opened at the bottom of the village near the Gauntlet Inn. First, however, she had gone to their old friend the saddler"s, wanting to see if she could buy the box there. But Mr. Allen"s shop was empty, woe-begone, dirty with cobwebs, dead flies, and mud on the window; and Mr. Allen himself was ill in bed, being nursed hand and foot, and fed like a baby, by poor Mrs. Allen. He had been stricken down by some dreadful form of rheumatism, and three doctors had said the same thing--that he had brought this calamity upon himself by his ridiculous, ceaseless tramping after the hounds.
Dale nodded and smiled, or made his face appropriately grave, while Mavis prattled to him; but truly his mind was occupied only by Norah.
She came in and out of the room, looking pale and limp and resigned; she knew all about the trunk, and that it was up-stairs and that already the mistress and Ethel had begun to pack it; she was submitting to destiny, but out of her soft blue eyes there shot a glance now and then that made him quiver with pain.
He went out of the house the moment dinner was finished, and kept moving about, now in the office, now in the yard, never still. Then, when he was pottering round and round the office for the fiftieth time in two hours, he heard a footstep, and Norah came--to whisper and cling to him, to make him kiss her again; to penetrate him with her ineffable sweetness; to plant the seeds of inextinguishable desire in the last few cells and fibers of his brain that as yet she had not reached.
"I don"t ast you to stand in th" road when we drive away. I"d rather not. Say good-by to me now, when there"s n.o.body watchin"."
Then he had to take her in his arms once more; and they stood close to the door, far from the window, pressed heart to heart, mute, throbbing.
"I"m kissing you," she whispered presently, "but you"re not kissing me. Kiss me."
And he obeyed her.
"No," she whispered. "Different from that. Kiss me like you did yesterday."
"Very well," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "This is the good-by kiss. This is good-by." And once again he felt the swift lambent ecstasy of a love that he had never till now guessed at; a joy beyond words, beyond dreams, beyond belief. "Now, you must go;" and he slowly released himself, and held her at arm"s length. "That was our good-by. Good-by, my Norah--my darling--good-by." Then he went to the table in front of the window, and sat down.
She came a little way from the door, and spoke to him before going out and along the pa.s.sage.
"I shan"t mind now--however miserable I am--because I know it"s all right. An" I promise to be good, an" do all I"m told, an" always be your own Norah."
Then she left him--the gray-haired respected Mr. Dale of Vine-Pits Farm, sitting in his office window for all the world to see; looking livid, shaky, old; and feeling like a Christian missionary in some far-off heathen land, who, having preached to the gang of pirates into whose hands he had fallen, lies now at the roadside with all his inside torn away, and waits for birds with beaks or beasts with claws to come and finish him.
Before the horse was put into the wagonette and the trunk brought down-stairs, Dale had left the house and gone some distance along the road in the direction of the Barradine Arms. Even if Norah had not said that he need not be there at the moment of departure, he would have been unable to remain. He could not stand by and see her piteous face, her slender figure, her forlorn gestures, while they carried her off--the poor little weak thing sent away from hearth and home, cast out among strangers because any spot on the earth, however bare or hard, had become a better shelter for her than the place that should have been sacredly secure.
He walked heavily, with a leaden heart and leaden feet; his eyes downcast, not glancing at the dark trees on one side or the bright fields on, the other. But after pa.s.sing the first of the woodland paths and before coming to the second, he looked up. He had heard the sound of many footsteps and the murmur of many voices. All those blue-cloaked orphans, two and two, an endless procession, were advancing toward him.
Never had the sight and the sound of them been so horribly distasteful to him. They were still a long way off, and he thought he could dodge them, at any rate avoid meeting them face to face, if he hurried on to the second footpath and dived into the wood there. But then it seemed as if he had stupidly miscalculated the distance, or that his legs were failing him, or that the girls came sweeping down the road at an impossibly rapid pace; so that they were right upon him just as he reached the stile. He drew aside, and, feeling that it was too late now to turn his back, watched them as they pa.s.sed.
The mistresses must have issued a sudden order of silence, for they all went by without so much as a whisper. There were fifty of them, but they seemed to be thousands. Dressed in their light blue summer cloaks, golden-haired, brown-haired, a very few black-haired, they pa.s.sed two by two, with the little ones first, and bigger and bigger girls behind--an ascending scale of size, so that he had the illusion of seeing a girl grow up under his eyes, change in a minute instead of in years from the small s.e.xless imp that is like an amusing toy, to the full-breasted creature that is so nearly a woman as to be dangerous to herself and to everybody else.