The Flaw in the Crystal Part 14

"Sometimes--I have thought it may have been my fear."

"Fear?"

"Yes, it's the worst thing. Don't you remember, I told you not to be afraid?"

"But Agatha, you were _not_ afraid."

"I was--afterwards. I got frightened."

"_You?_ And you told _me_ not to be afraid," said Milly.

"I had to tell you."

"And I wasn't afraid--afterwards. I believed in you. He believed in you."

"You shouldn't have. You shouldn't. That was just it."

"That was it? I suppose you'll say next it was I who frightened you?"

As they faced each other there, Agatha, with the terrible, the almost supernatural lucidity she had, saw what was making Milly say that.

Milly had been frightened; she felt that she had probably communicated her fright; she knew that that was dangerous, and she knew that if it had done harm to Harding, she and not Agatha would be responsible. And because she couldn't face her responsibility, she was trying to fasten upon Agatha some other fault than fear.

"No, Milly, I don't say you frightened me, it was my own fear."

"What was there for _you_ to be afraid of?"

Agatha was silent. That was what she must never tell her, not even to make her understand. She did not know what Milly was trying to think of her; Milly might think what she liked; but she should never know what her terror had been and her danger.

Agatha's silence helped Milly.

"Nothing will make me believe," she said, "that it was your fear that did it. That would never have made you give Harding up. Besides, you were not afraid at first, though you may have been afterwards."

"Afterwards?"

It was her own word, but it had as yet no significance for her.

"After--whatever it was you gave him up for. You gave him up for something."

"I did not. I never gave him up until I was afraid."

"You gave It up. You wouldn't have done that if there had not been something. Something that stood between."

"If," said Agatha, "you could only tell me what it was."

"I can't tell you. I don't know what came to you. I only know that if I'd had a gift like that, I would not have given it up for anything. I wouldn't have let anything come between. I'd have kept myself ..."

"I did keep myself--for _it_. I couldn't keep myself entirely for Harding; there were other things, other people. I couldn't give them up for Harding or for anybody."

"Are you quite sure you kept yourself what you were, Aggy?"

"What _was_ I?"

"My dear--you were absolutely pure. You said _that_ was the condition."

"Yes. And, don't you see, who _is_--absolutely? If you thought _I_ was you didn't know me."

As she spoke she heard the sharp click of the latch as the garden gate fell to; she had her back to the window so that she saw nothing, but she heard footsteps that she knew, resolute and energetic footsteps that hurried to their end. She felt the red blood surge into her face, and saw that Milly's face was white with another pa.s.sion, and that Milly's eyes were fixed on the figure of the man who came up the garden path.

And without looking at her Milly answered.

"I don't know now; but I think I see, my dear ..." In Milly's pause the door-bell rang violently. Milly rose and let her have it--"what was the flaw in the crystal."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Rodney entered the room and it was then that Milly looked at her.

Milly's face was no longer the face of pa.s.sion, but of sadness and reproach, almost of recovered incredulity. It questioned rather than accused her. It said unmistakably, "You gave him up for _that_?"

Agatha's voice recalled her. "Milly, I think you know Mr. Lanyon."

Rodney, in acknowledging Milly's presence, did not look at her. He saw nothing there but Agatha's face which showed him at last the expression that to his eyes had always been latent in it, the look of the tragic, hidden soul of terror that he had divined in her. He saw her at last as he had known he should some day see her. Terror was no longer there, but it had possessed her; it had pa.s.sed through her and destroyed that other look she had from her lifted mouth and hair, the look of a thing borne on wings. Now, with her wings beaten, with her white face and haggard eyes, he saw her as a flying thing tracked down and trampled under the feet of the pursuer. He saw it in one flash as he stood there holding Milly's hand.

Milly's face had no significance for him. He didn't see it. When at last he looked at her his eyes questioned her, they demanded an account from her of what he saw.

For Agatha Milly's face, prepared as it was for leave-taking, remained charged with meaning; it refused to divest itself of reproach and of the incredulity that challenged her. Agatha rose to it.

"You're not going, Milly, just because he's come? You needn't."

Milly _was_ going.

He rose to it also.

If Mrs. Powell _would_ go like that--in that distressing way--she must at least let him walk back with her. Agatha wouldn't mind. He hadn't seen Mrs. Powell for ages.

He had risen to such a height that Milly was bewildered by him. She let him walk back with her to the Farm and a little way beyond it. Agatha said good-bye to Milly at the garden gate and watched them go. Then she went up into her own room.

He was gone so long that she thought he was never coming back again. She did not want him to come back just yet, but she knew that she was not afraid to see him. It did not occur to her to wonder why in spite of her message he had come, nor why he had come by an earlier train than usual; she supposed that he must have started before her message could have reached him. All that, his coming or his not coming, mattered so little now.

For now the whole marvellous thing was clear to her. She knew the secret of the gift. She saw luminously, almost transparently, the way it worked. Milly had shown her. Milly knew; Milly had seen; she had put her finger on the flaw.

It was not fear, Milly had been right there too. Until the moment when Harding Powell had begun to get at her Agatha had never known what fear felt like. It was the strain of mortality in her love for Rodney; the hidden thing, unforeseen and unacknowledged, working its work in the darkness. It had been there all the time, undermining her secret, sacred places. It had made the first breach through which the fear that was not _her_ fear had entered. She could tell the very moment when it happened.

She had blamed poor little Milly, but it was the flaw, the flaw that had given their deadly point to Milly's interference and Harding's importunity. But for the flaw they could not have penetrated her profound serenity. Her gift might have been trusted to dispose of them.

For before that moment the gift had worked indubitably; it had never missed once. She looked back on its wonders; on the healing of herself; the first healing of Rodney and Harding Powell; the healing of Bella. It had worked with a peculiar rhythm of its own, and always in a strict, a measurable proportion to the purity of her intention. To Harding's case she had brought nothing but innocent love and clean compa.s.sion; to Bella's nothing but a selfless and beneficent desire to help. And because in Bella's case at least she had been flawless, out of the three Bella's was the only cure that had lasted. It had most marvellously endured. And because of the flaw in her she had left Harding worse than she had found him. No wonder that poor Milly had reproached her.

It mattered nothing that Milly's reproaches went too far, that in Milly's eyes she stood suspected of material sin (anything short of the tangible had never been enough for Milly); it mattered nothing that (though Milly mightn't believe it) she had sinned only in her thought; for Agatha, who knew, that was enough; more than enough; it counted more.