Moor Fires Part 43

"Oh, yes. She always does what she wants, you know. And she is counting on Uncle Alfred, though she says she isn't. She had a letter from him the other day."

"And when she has gone, what are you going to do?"

"I don't know what I'm going to do."

"Things won't be easier for you then. You'd better face that."

"But she'll be better--Notya will be better."

"And you'll marry Zebedee."

"I don't like saying what I'm going to do."

Rupert's dark eyes had a hard, bright light. "Are you supposed to love that unfortunate man? Look here, you're not going to be tied to Notya all her life. Zebedee and I won't have it."

"What's going to happen to her, then?"

"Bless the child! She's grown up. She can look after herself."

"But I can't leave just you and her in this house together."

He said in rather a strained voice, "I shan't be here. The bank's sending me to the new branch."

"Oh!" Helen said.

"I'm sorry about it. I tried not to seem efficient, but there's something about me--charm, I think. They must have noticed how I talk to the old ladies who don't know how to make out their cheques. So they're sending me, but I don't know that I ought to leave you all."

"Of course you must."

"I can come home on Sat.u.r.days."

"Yes. And Notya's better, and John is near. Why shouldn't you go?"

"Because your face fell."

"It's only that everybody's going. It seems like the end of things." She pictured the house without Rupert and she had a sense of desolation, for no one would whistle on the track at night and make the house warmer and more beautiful with his entrance; there would be no one to look up from his book with unfailing readiness to listen to everything and understand it; no one to say pleasant things which made her happy.

"Why," she said, plumbing the depths of loss, "there'll be no one to get up early for!"

"Ah, it's Miriam who'll feel that!" he said.

"And even Daniel won't come any more. He's tired of Miriam's foolishness."

"To tell you a secret, he's in love with some one else. But he has no luck. No wonder! If you could be married to him for ten years before you married him at all--"

"I don't know," Helen said thoughtfully. "Those funny men--" She did not finish her thought. "It will be queer without you," and after a pause she added the one word, "lonely."

It was strange that Miriam, whom she loved best, should never present herself to Helen's mind as a companion: the sisters, indeed, rarely spoke together except to argue some domestic point, to scold each other, or to tease, yet each was conscious of the other's admiration, though Helen looked on Miriam as a pretty ornament or toy, and Miriam gazed dubiously at what she called the piety of the other.

"Yes, lonely," she said, but in her heart she was glad that her payment should be great, and she said loudly, as though she recited her creed: "I wouldn't change anything. I believe in the things that happen."

"May they reward you!" he said solemnly.

"When will you have to go?"

"I'm not sure. Pretty soon. Look here, my dear, you three lone women ought to have a dog to take man's place as your natural protector--and so on."

"Have you told Zebedee you are going?"

"Yesterday."

"Then he will be getting one."

"H'm. He seems to be a satisfactory lover."

"He is, you know."

"Thank G.o.d for him."

"Would you?" Helen said. She had a practical as well as a superst.i.tious distaste for offering thanks for benefits not actually received, and also a disbelief in the present certainty of her possession, but she took hope. John had gone, Rupert was going, of her own will she would send Zebedee away, and then surely the powers would be appeased, and if she suffered enough from loneliness, from dread of seeing Mildred Caniper ill again, of never getting her lover back, the rulers of her life might be willing, at the end, to let her have Zebedee and the s.h.i.+ning house--the s.h.i.+ning house which lately had taken firmer shape, and stood squarely back from the road, with a little copse of trees rising behind.

CHAPTER XXI

She cried out when next she saw him, for between this and their next meeting he had grown gaunter, more nervous, sharper in voice and gesture.

"Oh, you're ill!" she said, and stepped back as though she did not know him.

"Yes, I'm ill." He held to a chair and tipped it back and forth. "For goodness' sake, don't talk about it any more. I'm ill. That's settled.

Now let's get on to something else."

He saw her lip quiver and, uttering a desperate, "I'm sorry," he turned from her to the window.

The wisdom she could use so well with others was of no avail with him: he was too much herself to be treated cunningly. She felt that she floated on a sea vastly bigger than she had ever known, and its waves were love and fear and cruelty and fate, but in a moment he turned and she saw a raft on which she might sail for ever.

"Forgive me."

"You've made me love you more."

"With being a brute to you?"

"Were you one? But--don't often be angry. I might get used to it!"

He laughed. "Oh, Helen, you wonder! But I've spoilt our memories."

"With such a little thing? And when I liked it?"