Moor Fires Part 81

"Was he thinking too?"

"I expect so."

"H'm. Do you like him to come marching through your house?"

"Why not? He's an old friend of ours."

"He seems to be! You were in a hurry to get away from me, I noticed, and then you have to waste time mooning with him in the twilight."

"He wasn't there, George." She laid the back of her hand against her forehead. "I watched him out of sight."

"What for?"

"He looked so lonely, going home to--that. Are you always going to be jealous of any one who speaks to me? It's rather tiring."

"Are you tired?"

"Yes," she said with a jerk, and pressed her lips together. He pulled her to his knee, and she put her face against his strong, tanned neck.

"Well," he said, "what's this for?"

"Don't tease me."

"I'm not so bad, then, am I?"

"Not so bad," she answered. "You have been smoking one of those cigars."

"Yes. D'you mind?"

"I love the smell of them," she said, and he laid his cheek heavily on hers.

"George!"

"U-um?" he said, drowsing over her.

"I think the rest of the summer is going to be happy."

"Yes, but how long's this to last? I want you in my house."

"I wish it wasn't in a hollow."

"What difference does that make? We're sheltered from the wind. We lie snug on winter nights."

"I don't want to. I like to hear the wind come howling across the moor and beat against the walls as if it had great wings. It does one's crying for one."

"Do you want to cry?"

"Yes."

"Now?"

"No."

"When, then?"

"Don't you?"

"Of course not. I swear instead." He shook her gently. "Tell me when you want to cry."

"Oh, just when the wind does it for me," she said sleepily.

"I'll never understand you."

"Yes, you will. I'm very simple, and now I'm half asleep."

"Shall I carry you upstairs?"

She shook her head.

"Helen, come to my house. Bring Mrs. Caniper. I want you. And the whole moor's talking about the way we live."

"Oh, let the moor talk! Don't you love to hear it? It's the voice I love best. I shan't like living in your house while this one stands."

"But you'll have to."

She put up a finger. "I didn't say I wouldn't. Will you never learn to trust me?"

"I am learning," he said.

"And you must be patient. Most people are engaged before they marry. You married me at once."

"Hus.h.!.+" he said. "I don't like thinking about that."

After this confession, her mind crept a step forward, and she dared to look towards a time when Mildred Caniper would be dead and she at Halkett's Farm. The larch-lined hollow would half suffocate her, she believed, but she would grow accustomed to its closeness as she would grow used to George and George to her. Soon he would completely trust her. He would learn to ask her counsel, and, at night, she would sit and sew and listen to his talk of crops and cattle, and the doings and misdoings of his men. He would have no more shyness of her, but sometimes she would startle him into a memory of how he had wooed her in the kitchen and seen her as a star. And she would have children: not those s.h.i.+ning ones who were to have lived in the beautiful bare house with her and Zebedee, but st.u.r.dy creatures with George's mark on them.

She would become middle-aged and lose her slenderness, and half forget she had ever been Helen Caniper; yet George and the children would always be a little strange to her, and only when she was alone and on the moor would she renew her sense of self and be afraid of it.

The prospect did not daunt her, for she had faith in her capacity to bear anything except the love of Zebedee for another woman. She ignored her selfishness towards him because the need to keep him was as strong as any other instinct: he was hers, and she had the right to make him suffer, and, though she honestly tried to shut her thoughts against him, when she did think of him it was to own him, to feel a dangerous joy in the memory of his thin face and tightened lips.

On the moor, harvests were always late, and George was gathering hay in August when richer country was ready to deliver up its corn, and one afternoon when he was carting hay from the fields beyond the farm, Helen walked into the town, leaving Lily Brent in charge of Mildred Caniper.

Helen had seldom been into the town since the day when she had married George, and the wind, trying to force her back, had beaten the body that was of no more value to her. Things were better now, and she had avenged herself gaily on the G.o.d behind the smoke. He had heard few sounds of weeping and he had not driven her from the moor: he had merely lost a suppliant and changed a girl into a woman, and today, in her independence of fate, she would walk down the long road and plant a pleasant thought at every step, and she need not look at the square house which Zebedee had bought for her.

She had told George to meet her at the side road if he had any errands for her in the town, and though he had none, he was there before her.

Watching her approach, he thought he had never seen her lovelier. She wore a dress and hat of Miriam's choosing, the one of cream colour and the other black, and the beauty of their simple lines added to the grace that could still awe him.

"You look--like a swan," he said.

"Oh, George, a horrid bird!" She came close and looked up, for she liked to see him puzzled and adoring.