I knew."
"You--knew?"
"I knew that something was happening, and I knew that it wasn"t the place. Places never make any difference. I only go to "em because Milly thinks they do. Besides, if it came to that, this place--from my peculiar point of view, mind you--was simply beastly. I couldn"t have stood another night of it."
"Well."
"Well, the thing went; and I got all right. And the queer part of it is that I felt as if you were in it somehow, as if you"d done something. I half hoped you might say something, but you never did."
"One ought not to speak about these things, Harding. And I told you I didn"t want you to know."
"I didn"t know what you did. I don"t know now, though Milly tried to tell me. But I felt you. I felt you all the time."
"It was not I you felt. I implore you not to think it was."
"What can I think?"
"Think as I do; think--think----" She stopped herself. She was aware of the futility of her charge to this man who denied, who always had denied, the supernatural.
"It isn"t a question of thinking," she said at last.
"Of believing, then? Are you going to tell me to believe?"
"No; it isn"t believing either. It"s knowing. Either you know it or you don"t know, though you may come to know. But whatever you think, you mustn"t think it"s me."
"I rather like to. Why shouldn"t I?"
She turned on him her grave white face, and he noticed a curious expression there as of incipient terror.
"Because you might do some great harm either to yourself or----"
His delicate, sceptical eyebrows questioned her.
"Or me."
"You?" he murmured gently, pitifully almost.
"Yes, me. Or even--well, one doesn"t quite know where the harm might end. If I could only make you take another view. I tried to make you--to work it that way--so that you might find the secret and do it for yourself."
"I can"t do anything for myself. But, Agatha, I"ll take any view you like of it, so long as you"ll keep on at me."
"Of course I"ll keep on."
At that he stopped suddenly in his path, and faced her.
"I say, you know, it isn"t hurting you, is it?"
She felt herself wince. "Hurting me? How could it hurt me?"
"Milly said it couldn"t."
Agatha sighed. She said to herself, "Milly--if only Milly hadn"t interfered."
"Don"t you think it"s cold here in the wood?" she said.
"Cold?"
"Yes. Let"s go back."
As they went Milly met them at the Farm bridge. She wanted Agatha to come and stay for supper; she pressed, she pleaded, and Agatha, who had never yet withstood Milly"s pleading, stayed.
It was from that evening that she really dated it, the thing that came upon her. She was aware that in staying she disobeyed an instinct that told her to go home. Otherwise she could not say that she had any sort of premonition. Supper was laid in the long room with the yellow blinds, where she had first found Harding Powell. The blinds were down to-night, and the lamp on the table burnt low; the oil had given out. The light in the room was still daylight and came level from the sunset, leaking through the yellow blinds. It struck Agatha that it was the same light, the same ochreish light that they had found in the room six weeks ago.
But that was nothing.
What it was she did not know. The horrible light went when the flame of the lamp burnt clearer. Harding was talking to her cheerfully and Milly was smiling at them both, when half through the meal Agatha got up and declared that she must go. She was ill; she was tired; they must forgive her, but she must go.
The Powells rose and stood by her, close to her, in their distress.
Milly brought wine and put it to her lips; but she turned her head away and whispered, "Please let me go. Let me get away."
Harding wanted to walk back with her, but she refused with a vehemence that deterred him.
"How very odd of her," said Milly, as they stood at the gate and watched her go. She was walking fast, almost running, with a furtive step, as if something pursued her.
Powell did not speak. He turned from his wife and went slowly back into the house.
CHAPTER NINE
She knew now what had happened to her. She _was_ afraid of Harding Powell; and it was her fear that had cried to her to go, to get away from him.
The awful thing was that she knew she could not get away from him. She had only to close her eyes and she would find the visible image of him hanging before her on the wall of darkness. And to-night, when she tried to cover it with Rodney"s it was no longer obliterated. Rodney"s image had worn thin and Harding"s showed through. She was more afraid of it than she had been of Harding; and, more than anything, she was afraid of being afraid. Harding was the object of a boundless and indestructible compa.s.sion, and her fear of him was hateful to her and unholy. She knew that it would be terrible to let it follow her into that darkness where she would presently go down with him alone. "It would be all right," she said to herself, "if only I didn"t keep on seeing him."
But he, his visible image, and her fear of it, persisted even while the interior darkness, the divine, beneficent darkness rose round her, wave on wave, and flooded her; even while she held him there and healed him; even while it still seemed to her that her love pierced through her fear and gathered to her, spirit to spirit, flame to pure flame, the nameless, innermost essence of Rodney and of Bella. She had known in the beginning that it was by love that she held them; but now, though she loved Rodney and had almost lost her pity for Harding in her fear of him, it was Harding rather than Rodney that she held.
In the morning she woke with a sense, which was almost a memory, of Harding having been in the room with her all night. She was tired, as if she had had some long and unrestrained communion with him.
She put away at once the fatigue that pressed on her (the gift still "worked" in a flash for the effacing of bodily sensation). She told herself that, after all, her fear had done no harm. Seldom in her experience of the Power had she had so tremendous a sense of having got through to it, of having "worked" it, of having held Harding under it and healed him. For, when all was said and done, whether she had been afraid of him or not, she had held him, she had never once let go. The proof was that he still went sane, visibly, indubitably cured.
All the same she felt that she could not go through another day like yesterday. She could not see him. She wrote a letter to Milly. Since it concerned Milly so profoundly it was well that Milly should be made to understand. She hoped that Milly would forgive her if they didn"t see her for the next day or two. If she was to go on (she underlined it) she must be left absolutely alone. It seemed unkind when they were going so soon, but--Milly knew--it was impossible to exaggerate the importance of what she had to do.
Milly wrote back that of course she understood. It should be as Agatha wished. Only (so Milly "sustained" her) Agatha must not allow herself to doubt the Power. How could she when she saw what it had done for Harding. If _she_ doubted, what could she expect of Harding? But of course she must take care of her own dear self. If she failed--if she gave way--what on earth would the poor darling do, now that he had become dependent on her?
She wrote as if it was Agatha"s fault that he had become dependent; as if Agatha had nothing, had n.o.body in the world to think of but Harding; as if n.o.body, as if nothing in the world beside Harding mattered. And Agatha found herself resenting Milly"s view. As if to her anything in the world mattered beside Rodney Lanyon.
For three days she did not see the Powells.