Moor Fires Part 59

"I was coming to the door to ask about Mrs. Caniper," he went on, still speaking huskily and very low.

"Were you?"

"You wouldn't have liked that!"

"She is better." Emptiness was becoming peopled, and she remembered Mildred Caniper in bed, and the nurse smiling when she meant to be sympathetically sad, and Miriam, pitiful under scolding, but George was only the large figure that blocked the future: he was not real, though he talked and must be answered.

"I was coming to ask: do you hear?"

"You know now."

"But there's more. Who's the old chap who drove up tonight? Your uncle, isn't it?"

Her mind, which had lain securely in her body out of reach of hurt, was slowly being drawn into full consciousness; but he had to repeat his words before she answered them, and then she spoke with a haughtiness to which Miriam had accustomed him.

"So you have been watching?"

"Why not?" he asked defiantly. "I've got to watch. Besides," he became clumsy, shy, and humble, "I was waiting to see you."

"I'm here."

"But you're--you're like a dead thing. That night, in my room, you were alive enough. You sat there, with your mouth open, a little--I could see your teeth, and your eyes--they shone."

His words were like touches, and they distressed her into movement, into a desire to run from him.

"I'm going in," she said.

"Not yet."

"I must."

He was hovering on the edge of sentences which had their risk: she could feel that he wished to claim her but dared not, lest she should refuse his claim. He found a miserable kind of safety in staying on the brink, yet he made one venture.

"There are things we've got to talk about."

"But not tonight."

"You'll say that every night."

"There's never really any need to talk about anything," she said.

He stammered, "But--you're going to marry me. I must make--make arrangements."

She had her first real scorn of him. He was afraid of her, and she despised him for it, yet she saw that she must keep him so. She could hardly bring herself to say, "Do what you like," but having said it, she could add, with vehemence, "Don't bother me! I'm busy."

"But--" he said, and looked down: and now she seemed to be caught in his shame, a partner, and she had to wait for what he tried to say.

He looked up, saying, "You promised."

"Oh, I know."

She did not go. Perhaps people lying side by side in their graves would talk to each other like this, in voices m.u.f.fled by their coffins and inarticulate because of fleshless lips, with words that had no meaning now that life, which made them, was done. And again she felt that she and George were moles, burrowing in the earth, scratching, groping for something blindly.

She brought her hands together and shook them.

"If only one could see!" she said aloud.

"What is it?"

"I feel as if I'm in a dark room."

"It's a dark night," he said, and touched her wrist. "When shall I see you again? Tomorrow?"

"You can't see me now."

"I can. Your hair has drops on it, and your face--"

"No!" she cried. "Don't tell me. Don't come with me."

She ran from him at last, and he did not follow her. Like her, he was bewildered, but for him she was a light he could not put out: for her he was the symbol of that darkness which had fallen on life.

CHAPTER XXVIII

The next day had its own bewilderment and confusion, and Helen learnt that high tragedy is not blackest gloom but a thing patched and streaked with painful brightness, and she found herself capable of a gaiety which made Miriam doubly reproachful.

"You've never been like this before," she said, "and we might have had such fun. And you shouldn't be like it now, when I'm going away tomorrow." She sat in her empty box, with her legs dangling over the side. "I'm not sure that I shall go."

"You've only two pairs of stockings without holes in them," Helen said.

She was kneeling before Miriam's chest of drawers.

"Doesn't matter. I shall have to buy heaps of things. D'you know, I'm afraid he's going to be strict."

"Poor little man!"

"And when one begins to think about it seriously, Helen, will one like it very much? Who's going to play with me? There'll be Uncle Alfred and a housekeeper woman. And do you know what he said?" She struggled from the box, shut down the lid and sat on it. "He said I must think I'm going into the world to learn. Learn!"

"I expect you'll want to. You won't like yourself so much when you meet other people."

"And shan't I hate my clothes! And I have visions, sister Helen, of four elderly gentlemen sitting round a whist-table, and me reading a book in a corner. So you see--no, I don't want to take that: give it to Samson--so you see, I'm a little damped. Well, if I don't like it, I shall come back. After all, there's Daniel."

"He's tired of you."

She showed her bright, sharp teeth, and said, "He'll recover after a rest. Oh, dear! I find I'm not so young and trustful as I was, and I'm expecting to be disappointed."

"The best thing," Helen said slowly, sitting down with a lapful of clothes, "is for the worst to happen. Then you needn't be troubled any more." She took a breath. "It's almost a relief."