Moor Fires Part 74

"You don't take enough exercise," he said briskly. "Walk on the moor every day. It's only fair to Jim. Read something stiff--philosophy, for instance. It doesn't matter whether you understand it or not, so long as you try. Promise you'll do that. I'll bring some books tomorrow. Take them as medicine and you'll find they're food. And, Helen"--he was at the gate and he looked back at her--"you are rather like a blade yourself."

He knew the curing properties of praise.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

When evening came, the blue colour of the sky had changed to one that was a memory of the earth's new green. Helen went through the garden to the moor and sat there on a grey rock out of which her own grey figure might have been carved. She watched the stars blink forth and stare; she saw the gradual darkening of the world, and then Halkett's moving shape came towards her. Out here, he was in his proper place: the kitchen made him clumsy, but wide places set him off, and she felt a kind of pride in his quickness and his strength.

"George," she said softly as he would have pa.s.sed her, and he swung round and bent and took her in his arms, without hesitation or mistake.

"Were you waiting for me?" he whispered, and felt her nod against his coat. She freed herself very gently. "Shall we stay out here?" he said.

"No. I have left Notya long enough."

"What made you wait for me?"

"I--don't know," she said. She had not asked herself the question, and now the unspoken answer shocked her with its significance. She had gone to wait for him without any thought. It might have been the night that drew her out, but she knew it was not that. Once before, she had called herself a slave, and so she labelled herself again, but now she did it tremulously, without fierceness, aware that it was her own nature to which she was chiefly bound.

"Are you going to wait for me every night?" she heard him say. "Give me your hand, Helen. It is so small. Will you go over the wall or through the door? I'd like to lift you over."

"No. I want to go through the garden. There are primroses there. Big ones, like stars."

"It's you that are a star."

"I think they liked the snow. And the poplars are all buds. I wish I could sit in the tree-tops and look right across the moor."

"And wait for me. And when I came I'd hold my arms out and you'd jump into them."

"If I didn't fly away."

"Ay, I expect you would do that."

They did not speak again until they reached the house, and when she had lighted the kitchen lamp she saw him looking moodily into the fire.

"Is Mrs. Biggs better?" she asked smoothly.

"What do you know about her?"

"I heard she was ill."

"Who told you?"

"Dr. Mackenzie."

"Oh, he's been again, has he?"

"Yes." Her voice had a ring in it. "And he will come tomorrow."

"And the next day, I suppose, and the next. I should have thought he'd spare that old nag of his; but no, up he comes, and I want to know why."

She did not answer immediately because she feared to betray the indignation that moved in her like a living thing. She found her sewing and signed to him to put her chair into its place, and when she had st.i.tched steadily for a time she said in pleasant tones, "George, you are like a bad person in a book."

"I'm not up to this kind of talk. You told me yourself that Mrs. Caniper hardly needs a doctor. What does he come for, then? Is it for you?"

"No, it is not."

"Do you like the man?"

She opened her lips and shut them several times before she spoke. "I'm very fond of him--and of Daniel."

"Oh, leave Daniel alone. No woman would look at him."

She gave him a considering gaze for which he could have struck her, because it put him further from her than he had ever been.

"It's no good staring at me like that. I've seen you with him before now."

"Everybody on the moor must have seen me with him."

"Yes, and walking pretty close. I remember that."

"Very likely you will see me walking with him again."

"No, by G.o.d!"

"Oh," she said, wearily, "how often you call on G.o.d's name."

"No wife of mine--"

She laughed. "You talk like Bluebeard. How many wives have you?"

"I've none," he cried in an extremity of bitterness. "But I'll have one yet, and I'll keep her fast!"

She lifted her head in the haughty way he dreaded. "I will not endure suspicions," she said clearly, but she flushed at her own words, for she remembered that she had been willing to give Zebedee the lesser tokens of her love, and it was only by his sternness that she could look George in the eyes. Zebedee would have taken her boldly and completely, believing his action justified, but he would have no little secret dealings, and she was abashed by the realization of her willingness to deceive. She was the nearer to George by that discovery, and the one shame made her readier to suffer more.

"It's because I want you," he said, shading his eyes; and for the first time she had no resentment for his desires.

"Oh, George, don't you think you had better go home?" she said.

"Why?" he asked her.

"Because--because I want to read."

"Well, I can watch you."

"And you won't think it rude?"