With a sigh that came from the depths of his soul the unfortunate man lifted his feet from the spot where the patch of Lords-and-Ladies had seemed to paralyze him, and proceeded to run down the slope of Battlefield, running with a certain rather awkward movement of his long legs, such as used to make Lexie laugh at him and tease him when they were boys together.
Something seemed to be turning a kind of screw inside him with a squeeze and a twinge that scraped upon the very parchment of his soul as a lead pencil upon a slate; and it is likely enough that nothing that Ann or Netta or Nell had ever suffered, or would suffer, because of him, quite equalled the cold, unmitigated misery that hounded him on then, down that hill, like a murderous ice dog!
Arrived at his house he entered it, as was his wont and the wont of his father before him, through the kitchen door. He told Pandie to put on her things and run down to the village to order Twiney and his mare.
“Have you taken up tea yet to Miss Page?” he asked.
Pandie hummed and hawed and hovered, doing the thing that Lexie always described as “standing on one foot.” He saw that she had something on her mind beyond her courage to express, but he cut her short with a gesture.
“Have you taken the tea up yet, or haven’t you?” he asked irritably.
Pandie looked helplessly at the broad back of Mrs. Vabbin, who had ostentatiously occupied herself at the stove, but whose whole figure radiated “eyes and ears.” She muttered something about the door being locked.
“Locked!” he cried. “Well? What then? Haven’t you got knuckles? Haven’t you got a tongue?”
It might almost have been supposed that the wanderer from the county of Somerset had suffered paralysis in all her senses, for she remained rooted to the ground, staring at him as if she were looking at a ghost.
“Oh, be off, then, for heaven’s sake!” he cried. “And make Twiney put his horse in at once and drive you back here. A breath of air may quicken your wits, my good girl!”
He left the kitchen and ran up the great 17th-century staircase, two steps at a time. He had heard enough to fill him with all manner of sinister forebodings.
The door of Netta’s room was not locked, but the sight that met his eyes was worse than his worst presentiment. The room, facing south, was flooded with lovely spring sunshine. The window was wide open, and across the garden came the song of an invisible blackbird, that clear-throated gay-wistful song, which always seems to reach the mind from some mysterious pre-natal region, full of something sadder than human tears and happier than human laughter.
But what a travesty, what a farcical travesty of the first romance of a man’s life was the figure he found seated by that pleasant window! Netta sat there in her shift. Her hair, banging loose and disordered on each side of her head, betrayed only too many gray streaks in its untidy brown masses; while her right arm, falling limp and inert to the floor‚ still held in its feeble clutch one of those small glass bottles of French brandy for which the Ashover cellar had formerly been famous!
Her face was flushed and not agreeably flushed‚ the lines in it being drawn tightly and harshly underneath the skin‚ while the skin itself was that of a person marked and sealed as belonging pitifully to a nature divested of the natural instincts of human self-respect.
Rook closed the door behind him and turned the lock. “The servants have known this for a long time,” he thought to himself.
He crossed the room and stood by her side. Her breath‚ heavy with liquor, spoiled the scent of that divine air, which floated in upon him as if over thousands of leagues of newly sprouting grass.
He shook her by the shoulder; not roughly but quite without tenderness, for his heart at that moment felt dead within him beneath all the futilities of human existence.
She opened her eyes and stared at him wildly, appearing hardly conscious at first as to where she was. Then, with a natural impulse of concealment, as if—thought Rook bitterly—he had been a policeman in a raid, she pushed the bottle under her chair and made a pitiful movement to adjust her attire to the requirements of conventional modesty.
“So this is how you amuse yourself‚” he said. “Perhaps you’d like me to hand you your dressing gown?” he added, with a sarcasm in his tone which was as completely lost upon her as if it had been addressed to the lime tree in the garden.
She took the dressing gown he brought her and, holding out her arms as if she had been a doll, passively allowed him to help her into it. Then she rose unsteadily to her feet, clutching the folds of the garment against her breast with one hand and gathering up her hair with the other.
“Well?” he said in a low bitter tone.
She let her hair fall down again and put out her hand toward him with a helpless, deprecating gesture.
“Don’t you love me at all, Rook?” she murmured huskily.
He disregarded both gesture and words and, stepping past her, closed the window with so much unnecessary violence that its panes rattled. Then he pulled the blind halfway down as if to shut out the unbearable loveliness of that spring day. But the slanting sunshine was kinder than he was, for it threw upon the floor under her feet a pool of yellow light in the midst of which she continued to stand, like a woebegone leaden statue in a fountain of gold.
“I did it for you! I did it for you!” she brought out recklessly, too unhappy under his rep oaches and too dazed in her mind to care what inmost secrets she betrayed.
He stared at her in sceptical bewilderment.
“I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about, Netta,” he said; and then, fumbling awkwardly in his pocket for a cigarette, “Oh, do sit down!” he added, crossly and petulantly. “How can I talk to you when you’re standing there like a petrified image?”
“Rook!” she said, moving a step toward him.
Something in her expression touched a chord of remorseful tenderness in him and he took her in his arms; but he had no sooner done this than the overpowering smell of liquor in her breath extinguished the impulse. So as not to hurt her feelings he continued to press her against his shoulder and to let her lean all her weight upon him; but it was with a cold, unhappy, weary eye, without warmth and without pity, that he took in, over her bowed head, the familiar aspects of the room and the great stream of sunlight, full of flickering dust motes, that wavered across the floor.
As he looked at those tiny illuminated specks he thought to himself how likely enough it was that each one of these atoms was itself an enormous world, a world that doubtless at that very beat of time—perhaps a whole year of it—contained many Rook Ashovers in the process of disentangling themselves from many Netta Pages!
And the immense misery and futility of the whole boundless spectacle drove itself into his brain. What suffering! What misunderstanding! What cruel dilemmas! And all issueless and meaningless as that dance of April sun motes!
He registered in his mind a deep, silent vow that he would never, whatever happened to him afterward, forgive the Power that was responsible for this fermenting-vat of misery. No conceivable rearrangements or renewals or redemptions should ever make up, to him, at any rate, for what certain sensitive organisms are compelled to endure while this particular sphere is turning upon its axis!
Though he retorted thus, with all the righteous anger at his command, at the shameless First Cause of human suffering, his own nature was such that it never occurred to him to ask her again what she meant by that obscure cry: “I did it for you! I did it for you!”
And she, recovering now, as she clung passionately to him, both her sobriety and her love, recovered simultaneously with these her original heroic resolution.
In the strength of nothing less than this she extricated herself at last from his embrace, and some blessed principle of chance ordained, in defiance of the malignity of fate, that she should not know how cold and perfunctory, how weary and without human pity, that embrace had been!
No sooner had she recovered her mental balance and moving across to the bed had s
tretched herself out on it, a natural and touching smile upon her face and her hands clasped behind her neck, than there came the sound of wheels upon the gravel of the front drive. Pandie had been extremely expeditious in her embassy, and Mr. Twiney and his horse were at Rook’s disposal.
Netta was clear-witted enough now to understand from the look upon his face that there was something about the appearance of this conveyance at this moment that agitated and troubled him.
He moved to the window and stood there with his back to her, absorbed in miserable thought. Netta guessed shrewdly enough that he was suffering from the particular situation of all situations which he dreaded most: that of having to make a quick and momentous decision. She resolved to help him to make this mysterious choice at once‚ whatever the consequences might be.
“You’ve got an engagement, Rook‚” she said quietly. “So don’t let me keep you. You needn’t worry about me any more. I’m all right now. I’ll ring for Pandie presently, when I’m dressed, and have my tea. Then I’ve got a nice story to read till you come back. Or I may go out. That’s what I’ll do,” she added cheerfully and firmly. “I’II go out for a bit! So don’t worry. I shall be here; and quite good and quiet, Rook dear, when you come back.”
He found it the easiest thing to do at that moment, just to obey her; just to take advantage of the velvet cloak she snatched off her heart and spread out before him‚ covering the fissures that yawned under their feet, covering the mud, covering everything!
“I’ll tell her about Ann and me to-night,” he said to himself. “It’ll be easier to tell her at night. Her mind is not calm enough yet.”
His brain said other things to his heart, too, as he moved irresolutely toward the door, his eyes fixed on her face and his hands fumbling with the buttons of his overcoat. Had not her resolution held firm, with all the power of her love for him tightening the fibres of its cruel strength, had she collapsed again, or appealed to his feelings, or clung to him in the blind pathos of her helplessness‚ the probability is that he would not have found it in him to go.
But she did none of these things. She forced into her countenance that world-old smile, full of the bitter wisdom of centuries, the smile of Sarah, the smile of Mary, the smile wherewith the sons of men have been at once mocked and protected by the daughters of men since the beginning of the world.
“Good-bye, then,” he murmured‚ something within him surging up in one last wild desire that she should implore him, that she should conjure him to stay with her. “Good-bye, then, Netta dear. Don’t forget to ring for tea as soon as you are ready. See you again soon!”
The door opened, shut upon him‚ and he was gone.
A minute or two later she heard the sound of wheels upon gravel. He was gone; and she had done what she had taken upon herself to do. He was gone thinking of her like that, like the figure he had seen seated by the window when he first entered the room!
She did not move a muscle now. In exactly the position wherein he had left her, there she remained; but her mind, empty of every other thought, kept hovering round one particular thing: kept wishing that he had kissed her at the very last, just before he had gone, so that her heart could have given him, her cheek against his, its own secret, unrecognized, desperate farewell.
Rook had forgotten that one of the ways to Tollminster was by that very Antiger Lane where he had left his cousin. He remembered it just in time; just at the moment when Mr. Twiney’s gig reduced itself to a walking pace to ascend the long tree-shaded hill known as Friday’s Dip.
Halfway up this hill they came to a lane that left the road at right angles. An old signpost, lichen-covered and weather-stained, pointed a long exhausted arm toward this lane, bearing the single word “Gorm.”
Rook clapped his hand on the driver’s wrist.
“Go the Antiger way, will you, Mr. Twiney?”
“’Tis a deal longer round, Squire‚” replied the man. “And there be bad ruts on thik little road. The best way is the nat’ral way as you might ’spress it.” And he indicated with his whip the long straight ascent before them.
Rook’s next speech was perhaps as much of a surprise to himself as it was to Mr. Twiney.
“I have to pick up Lady Ann,” he said, “at Drool’s. We have an engagement together at Tollminster.”
“Right you be, Squire!” returned the man cheerfully. “I reckon me wold horse can wamble on through more dirt than any dirt these folks have a-known. These roads be nothink to what I’ve a-seed down Stourbridge way. Illigant carriage drives they be, to them parts!’
He turned his mare in the desired direction as he spoke; and Rook, watching the gleaming celandines in the ditch as they jogged along, found himself repeating the word upon the signpost as if it were an incantation.
“What kind of a village is Gorm?” he inquired casually. “I’ve seen that signpost ever since I was a child, but I can’t remember ever having seen any place corresponding to it. I know the hamlets so well, too, between here and Tollminster.”
“’Tain’t a village at all, Squire,” answered his companion. “’Tis writ on thik signpost and that’s all I do mind. Gippoo Cooper, same as your Dad were smitten wi’‚ did used to say down to Black Pig that ’un were a girt devil’s name, writ on thik board for to guide boggles and ghosties. I’ve always been a bit scared-like, in dirty weather, when I’ve a-seed thik sign; and me mare, too, stopped in’s tracks one terrible wet night and turned ’un’s head right round to I, same as a living Christian might, as much as to say, poor dumb beasty, ‘This place bain’t a place for neither thee nor me, mister!’”
The warm golden afternoon light had deepened to a rich amber tint, falling upon hedge and copse and meadow, by the time they approached Drool’s cottage.
Rook was reminded of that mysterious glow, seeming to come from all quarters of the horizon at once, such as forms the background to the delicate Tuscan leafiness in many an Old Master’s picture. The very cuckoo-flowers in the damp margins of the fields had that curious allegorical look which all fresh spring growths sometimes assume, as if they were painted in the illuminated edges of old breviaries.
Twiney pulled up in front of the little garden, where not so many hours before the cousins had separated, and Rook hurried up to the door. He knocked sharply with the handle of his stick and waited impatiently for an answer.
As he waited the impression came over him, as impressions do on such occasions—our reasoning faculties not having altogether destroyed our intuitions—of something or another being seriously amiss. Made up of an accumulation of many converging little signs—silences where there would naturally be sounds; sounds where there would naturally be silence—there gathers suddenly upon the human heart at such moments a burden of prophetic misgiving.
He opened the door and entered the little entrance hall. As he did so he became aware of two simultaneous sounds, both of them sinister and disturbing. The louder of the two sounds was the high-pitched monotone of the idiot Binnory; and the words uttered by the lad, as Rook listened in breathless amazement, were more extraordinary than the sound itself.
“I do see ’ee! Binnory do see the fine lady what’s been brought low! Loowhee! Loowhee! Loowhee! I do see through crack and chink! I do see through hole and cranny! I do see ’ee! Binnory do see ’ee. The fine lady, on the high horse, what our Squire have tumbled and towzled! ’Ee be left, all draggled and scanted, like a fine girt mallard with’s wing shot off. And Squire be gone to London town and he’ll never come back; never no more at all! And Binnory do see ’ee and do hear ’ee! You mid drive Binnory away but a’ll come back. And you mid live now where Uncle Dick did live; and you mid tell Binnory stories and stories, like what Uncle Dick did tell. Loowhee! Loowhee! Binnory knows all that do befall in earth and in sky!”
The second sound that reached Rook’s ears, simultaneously with the idiot’s babble, was the low persistent crying of a girl in abandoned misery. Could that be his cousin? Could that faint pitiful whimper come fr
om the heart of Lady Ann?
He waited to hear no more but rushed up the little staircase.
He found Binnory clinging to a hole in the wall, which he had evidently made for himself and through which he was peering into the room. Rook was too concerned now to bother about the boy; without even knocking at the door he burst straight in.
Lady Ann was lying with her face on the pillow, having exhausted herself to such a point that her crying was scarcely audible.
“My dear! What’s the matter? For God’s sake, what’s the matter?” And Rook knelt by the bed and pulled the girl over toward him.
“Send him away, Rook! He’s there still! Send him away, Rook, or I shall go mad!’ And her voice began to rise to something like a scream.
Rook got upon his feet, rushed out into the passage, caught up the idiot under his arm and carrying him downstairs as if he were a bundle of hay, put him out of the front door and locked it from inside.
Then he went into Mrs. Drool’s part of the house and locked the other door, too. There was no sign of the gamekeeper or his wife anywhere about the place.
When he returned to the room upstairs he was amazed at the change in Cousin Ann. It was just as if Binnory had really cast a spell over her, and that the moment he was disposed of she came entirely back to her normal self.
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