Moor Fires Part 73

"What have you been doing, Zebedee?"

"Working."

"Is that all?"

He laughed, and asked, "Isn't that enough?"

"No; not enough to keep you from me. I thought you would come yesterday and the day before."

He looked at her with an astonishment that was near scorn, for she had driven him from her and now reproached him when he did not run back. She put her hand on his and looked at him with shadowless grey eyes, and showed him a mouth that tempted, as she had done before she married this other man to whom she was determined to be faithful. His thoughts were momentarily bitter, but his words were gentle.

"I told you I wanted time to think." He pressed her hand and gave it back to her. "And I have thought, and, since you are what you are, I see, at present, no other way but yours."

"Oh." She was daunted by his formality.

"Shall I go up to Mrs. Caniper?"

"Yes," she said, puzzled. "But aren't you cold? Come into the kitchen and you shall have some coffee. I had it ready in case you came. Your hands--your cheeks--" She touched him lightly and led him to the kitchen fire.

"I think we shall have more snow," he said, and his manner was snow against her heart.

"Do you?" she said politely, but her anger dropped away as she saw his face more clearly and knew he had not slept. She knew, too, that his mind was as firmly fixed as hers, and she felt as if the whole world were sliding from her, for this was not her lover: this was some ascetic who had not yet forgotten his desires. He looked haggard, fierce with renunciation and restraint, and she cried out, "Zebedee, darling, don't look like that!"

He laughed a little, moved, and pa.s.sed his hands over his face. "No," he said sensibly.

He killed the words she had ready for him: she felt them fall, dead things, into her throat, and hang helplessly in her breast. She handed him the cup, and while he drank she stood beside the table and watched him with despair and indignation. She had not imagined him thus changed: she had expected the old adoring looks, the loving words, everything but his caresses and his claims, and he treated her as though she were no more to him than any other woman. She knew him to be just and honest, but she thought him cruel and, aghast at the prospect of endless days wherein he would not smile at her nor praise her, she doubted her ability to live without him. She caught her breath in fear that his habit of indifference would change to indifference indeed; and without shame, she confessed that she would rather have him suffering through love of her than living happily through lack of it.

Mechanically, she moved after him up the stairs, played her part, and followed him down again; but when next he came, she had stiffened in emulation of him, and they talked together like people who had known each other for many years, but never known each other well.

Once he trespa.s.sed, but that was not to please himself.

"If you need me, you'll still use me?" he said hurriedly, and she answered, "Yes, of course."

He added, "I can't keep it from Daniel for ever."

"No. It need not be a secret now, except from Notya. And if she lives--"

"She may live for a long time if she has no shock."

"Ah, then," Helen said calmly, "she must not know."

He found her more beautiful than she had been, for now her serenity was by conquest, not by nature, and her head was carried with a freer grace.

It might have been the freedom of one who had gained through loss and had the less weight to carry, but he tortured himself with wondering what fuller knowledge had given her maturer grace. Of this he gave no sign, and the att.i.tude he maintained had its merciful result on Helen, for if he pretended not to need her, she had a nightly visitor who told her dumbly of his longing. Love bred liking, as she had prophesied, and, because life was lonely, she came to listen for his step. She was born to minister to people, and the more securely Zebedee shut her out, the more she was inclined to slip into the place that George had ready for her. And with George the spring was in conspiracy. The thaw came in a night, and the next morning's sun began its work of changing a white country into one of wet and glistening green. Snow lingered and grew dirty in the hollows, and became marked with the tiny feet of sheep, but elsewhere the brilliance of the moor was like a cry. It was spring shouting its release from bonds. Buds leapt on the trees, the melted snow flooded the streams, tributary ones bubbled and tinkled in unexpected places.

"Now," Helen said, leaning from the window of Mildred Caniper's room, "you can't help getting well. Oh, how it smells and looks and feels!

When the ground is drier, you shall go for a walk, but you must practise up here first. Then John shall carry you downstairs."

But Mildred Caniper did not want to be energetic: she sat by the fire in a cus.h.i.+oned wicker chair, and when Helen looked at the lax figure and the loosened lines of the face she recognized the woman who had made confession to relieve a mind that had finished with all struggling. It was not the real Mildred Caniper who had told that story in the night; it was the one who, weakened by illness, was content to sit with folded hands by the fireside.

She dimmed the sun for Helen and robbed the spring of hope. This glory would not last: colours would fade and flowers die, and so human life itself would slip into a mingling of light and shadow, a pale confluence of the two by which a man could see to dig a grave.

Helen leaned out again, trying to recover the sense of youth, of boundless possibilities of happiness that should have been her sure possession.

"Are you looking for Zebedee?" Mildred asked. "He doesn't come so often."

"You don't need him. And he is busy. He isn't likely to come today."

Yet she wished ardently that he might, for though he would have no tenderness to give her, he would revivify her by the vigour of his being: she would see a man who had refused to let one misfortune cripple him, and as though he had divined her need, he came.

"I had to go to Halkett's Farm," he explained.

"Who's ill there?" she asked sharply.

"The housekeeper."

"I hadn't heard. Is she very ill?"

"She may be."

"Then I hope she'll die," she said in a low voice.

"My dear!" He was startled into the words, and they made her laugh openly for joy of knowing they were ready on his tongue. Lightly she swayed towards him, but he held her off.

"No, no, my heart." He turned deliberately from her. "Why do you wish that?"

"Because of Miriam. She ought to die."

"I'm afraid she won't. She's pretty tough."

"Is there anybody to look after her? I could go sometimes, if you like."

He smiled at this confusion of ministering and avenging angel.

"There's a servant there who seems capable enough."

"I wonder why George didn't tell me."

"She was all right yesterday."

"You'll have to see her tomorrow. Then you'll come here, too."

"There isn't any need."

"But Notya likes to see you. Come and see her now."

She sighed when they walked downstairs together as though things had never changed. "Oh, Zebedee, I wanted you to come today. You have made me feel clean again. Notya--oh--!" She shuddered. "She looks like some fruit just hanging to a tree. Soon she will slip, and she doesn't care.

She doesn't think. And once she was like a blade, so bright and edged.

And when I looked at her this morning, I felt as if I were fattening and rotting, too, and it wasn't spring any longer. It was autumn, and everything was over-ripe."