"Jack," said Theo, laying the violin down on his knee, "do you remember a fancy mother had just before she died, about the crocus-flowers in the grass? Well, I... I've been seeing that in my head lately, and it's coming into tune. I think it's going to be for orchestra, I'm not sure yet; but I must play you some bits. Miss Raymond, did you ever look at a crocus, — I mean, really look at it?"
"Yes," she answered from the shadow of the screen. "But not often. You can look at a dicotyledonous flower every day, and be the happier for it; but I'm afraid of the spear-leaved things that grow in threes; they're like the angel with the flaming sword, and all my gates are shut."
Her brother glanced round at her in wonder; it was as if Helen had spoken. She had turned her head now, so that the fire-light shone on her face. She and Theo were looking at each other silently, with a long look, troubled, searching, and unsatisfied; the look of those who see into deep chasms and who are afraid.
Theo began to play; very softly, his eyes still on the girl's face. After a while he drifted unconsciously into improvisation, pausing now and then with lifted bow and filling in the spaces with low, rhythmic speech. The violin, with its faint wailing, its dim, inadequate murmur; the flicker of the fire; the shabby, dingy, lodging-house room; all lost their separate characters, merged into a common background of dreams. To listeners and artist alike, the glittering spears of visionary warriors, the sight and sound of a great army marching, were an actual presence, living and immense.
Silence followed, and Theo sat with bent head, trembling a little, the violin still in his hand. Molly was again in shadow, motionless as if asleep with open eyes. It was Jack who spoke first, rising to light the lamp.
"Old man," he said, "there's one thing you might try to remember now and then."
"Yes?" Theo murmured vaguely. He had still not come back to earth.
"Only that ordinary mortals are your fellow creatures, after all, and can sometimes
see when you guide their eyes, even though they're not crowned kings by right divine."
Molly made a sudden passionate movement, as though he had hurt her. Theo started up, a sort of horror in his face.
" 'Kings by...' Jack, how can you! Just because I can see things in my head! Do you think I wouldn't give it all — fiddle and everything — to do things and be things like you? What's nearer to being king by right divine — to see God's warrior flowers, or to be as they are? What am I but a fiddle?"
He turned away, his voice quivering with bitter discouragement, as with suppressed tears. Molly raised her head slowly and looked at her brother. His face was solemn, even to sternness; but the next instant he caught sight of his own image in the looking-glass, and burst out laughing, like a schoolboy seized by a humorous idea. It struck upon her with a sudden sense of tragedy, that she had never heard him laugh that way when they were children.
"What do you think of that, Moll, for an artist's imagination? I look like a crocus, don't I, with this mug! Theo, put the kettle on, my son; it's tea-time; and don't be an unmitigated ass, if you can help it. Why, what's become of the butter? And there are no biscuits either. Have you eaten them all?"
He was rummaging in the cupboard.
"Not quite all. The landlady's cat had some. We held a feast here while I waited for you. It was the cat that strewed crumbs all over the floor; I was too hungry to waste them that way; I've had nothing to eat since breakfast in Paris this morning."
"Why didn't you get lunch on the boat?"
"I had no money; only my cab-fare and two-pence over. I wanted to ask the waiter for a penny roll, but he looked so superior."
Jack turned round with an accusing face.
"What did you do with Hauptmann's last cheque?"
"Oh, I... don't know."
"I do," said Jack grimly. "Next time a deserving applicant comes to you with a pathetic story, hand him over to me, and I'll see he leaves you a little to go on with. You mean well, Theo, but you're a born fool, and oughtn't to be trusted with a cheque-book. There, sit still, and I'll get you something to eat. You'll have to put up here for to-night; and wire to Hauptmann for more money to-morrow."
He went out, leaving Theo and Molly silent by the fire. The deadly embarrassment of an hour ago had taken hold upon them again.
"You know my brother better than I do," she said suddenly, looking up with serious eyes. "I didn't understand what you meant just now."
He smiled; then grew suddenly grave.
"And I can't explain, though you'll realise it yourself when you know him better. I think what I meant is that he's so... unconscious."
"Unconscious?"
"Yes; like a thing that works by the laws of its own nature, not by anybody's ethical codes. Don't you see? For instance... well, take justice; in him it's not a virtue to be cultivated; it's what music is to me, an inborn passion eternally unsatisfied. That's why he seems to me the saddest phenomenon I know. He'll go on wanting justice all his life, and there's no such thing to be had."
He hesitated for a moment, looking away from her; then asked under his breath:
"And all your gates are shut?"
She rose, putting her hands up as if to stop him; then let them fall again and turned away, with a broad and mournful recklessness.
"Yes, all; and there is no one that has the key."
She crossed to the window, and stood with her back to him, looking out. Jack, coming in with his paper packages, found her so, and sighed under his breath as he put the eggs on to boil. He had come so near to having a sister; and now Theo had scared her in the moment of her shy unfolding, and she had shrunk again into her shell, like any snail. She would go back to Porthcarrick a stranger, as she had come; and he would lose the friend he needed, because of the friend who needed him.
CHAPTER XII
During the months which he spentin Vienna, Jack heard almost nothing of his sister. He had parted from her at Padding-ton Station with a lingering hope that the friendship born during her visit to London would live and grow; but from the moment of her return to Porthcarrick she had slipped back into the old, stiff relationship. Her letters, rare and short, seemed to have been written by a school-girl, with the governess looking over her shoulder. After some time they stopped altogether.
The bitterness of his disappointment was all the keener for the short bright month of mutual confidence. He had seen enough of the girl's inner self to have no doubt that she was wasting fine powers in the cramped Porthcarrick life, and that she herself was conscious of its narrowness, its petty, jarring hypocrisy. The look on her face was alone enough to show that she was restless and unhappy; and he had more evidence than that. Perhaps, but for Theo, he might have been able to help her, to win her away from the stultifying influences of the Vicarage, or at least to support her in her unequal struggle for a little personal freedom, for a wider, more useful, more self-respecting life. But poor Theo, the gentlest, sunniest-natured thing alive, had innocently ruined all. He seemed to have aroused in her some shrinking, fierce antipathy; Theo, who made friends with every stray dog in the street; who surely had never before, in all his careless, beautiful life, been disliked by anything that breathed.
When Jack left Vienna he went to Edinburgh to take his degree. This accomplished, creditably, but without special honours, he returned to London and applied for hospital work, which he at once obtained. There was, indeed, not much fear of his lacking employment; several professors who had known him as a student had promised to recommend him in case of his applying for a vacancy. He was offered the choice of two posts, and chose the one with the smaller salary, as it gave him better opportunities for study, and had the further advantage of being non-resident.
He settled down in shabby Bloomsbury lodgings, and worked like a cart-horse, trying to fill up every moment with vehement effort or deadening fatigue, that he might not feel the dread and blankness of his isolation. He was as one who enters from black passages into a lighted room, and shuts the door in h
aste because of the outer darkness whose ragged fringes would trail in behind him. Helen had saved him from the domination of fear; and in her healing presence he had forgotten to be accurst; but now that she had left him alone, the horror of his childhood stretched out chill finger-tips of memories and dreams to touch him unaware. While at work he was never afraid; but he still dared not face leisure and loneliness together.
Lonely, indeed, he was exceedingly. Theo was on a concert tour in America, and from there was to go on to Australia and New Zealand; he would be away a year. For that matter, had he been in London, his presence would have been small help to Jack. A kind of cloud had fallen upon their friendship; neither less affectionate nor less sincere than before, it had of late been disturbed and darkened, on Theo's side by a certain nervous irritability, on Jack's by a deep and melancholy sense, steadily growing within him, of his incapacity to understand a nature so different from his own. With Helen he had always been able to understand.
Early in March violent storms of wind and rain swept over London, with a sudden fall of temperature which caused much sickness and distress and, in consequence, very heavy work at the hospital. One evening, as Jack struggled home, late and weary, through a blinding downpour whose parallel slanting threads gleamed wickedly in the flickering lamp-light, he caught sight of a woman's figure clinging to an area railing, the cape of a drenched cloak flapping round head and shoulders. He crossed the street to offer help against the savage wind; but when he reached the opposite pavement the woman had turned a corner and disappeared.
He got home at last, changed his wet clothes, and sat down by a smoky fire to wait for dinner. Possibly because he was tired and cold, he found it to-night more difficult than usual to shake off the depression which always lay in wait to spring upon him whenever he was off his guard. He sat idle, a rare thing with him, and listened to the angry hissing of rain-drops falling down the chimney on to the hot coals.
"A woman has been here enquiring for you," said the landlady, bringing in the tray.
"In this weather? Who is it?"
"She wouldn't give her name; said she'd call again. She's been walking up and down the street waiting for you. She looks very bad."
"A patient, walking up and down on such a night! What was she like?"
"I couldn't see; she was so muffled up, and drenched to the skin. She's queer somehow, — all draggled and shivering and splashed with mud, and her hair half tumbling down, and yet dressed like a lady. I should think she's a bit crazed."
"Or else in trouble. It must be something serious for her to..."
Some one knocked at the street door, evidently with a shaking hand.
"There she is," said the landlady. "Shall she come in, sir?"
"Of course."
The woman came in with a swishing sound of wet skirts dragging round her feet, and stopped short in the half-light near the door. The landlady, after one quick, suspicious glance, went away, shaking her head.
"I'm sorry I was out when you called," Jack began, rising.
He could not see what his visitor was like, for she had put up an arm before her eyes as though the lamp-light dazzled her; but he recognised the cloak which he had seen flapping by the area gate.
"You must be wet through," he said. "You wished to see me..?"
There he broke off and drew back a step.
The woman came towards him slowly, with a stumbling, swaying movement as though she were blindfolded. Little streams of water trickled from her skirt, from her cloak, from the tumbled mass of hair that had slipped down on to her shoulder. The hood of her cloak was drawn over her head; but as she dropped her arm he saw that the half-hidden face was white and wild and haggard, and that the brow was broad and very level.
"Molly!" he cried.
She pushed back her hood and stared at him vacantly. She made two or three efforts to speak before any sound came from her lips.
"Yes," she said; "you were quite right."
"Molly! How did you..?"
"Uncle has turned me out of the house. You said he would. I came to you... I hadn't anywhere else to go. Will you put me up for a night or two... till I can think... of something... make some... arrangement... I'm tired... sleepy... I can't... see..."
Her voice was sinking into an unintelligible murmur. He caught her by the arm.
"Sit down. You shall tell me about it afterwards. You must get off these wet things and..."
His touch seemed to rouse her; she shook her arm free.
"I won't sit down till you understand. How do I know you'll take me in?.. I tell you, he has turned me out because..."
"Good God, child, what do I care why! Take this cloak off; one could wring a gallon of water out of it."
He was unbuttoning the cloak. She flung it off suddenly and stepped into the light.
"Look," she said.
He stood still, looking at her figure; a moment passed before the truth flashed on him. She turned away with a slow, grave gesture, and stooped to pick up the wet heap lying on the floor; but he snatched it out of her hand with a cry.
"Oh, my poor little girl... and at uncle's mercy!"
He caught her up in a sudden passion of tenderness, and, laying her on the sofa, covered her hands with kisses. His vehement emotion roused no responding thrill in her; she only shivered faintly, passive in his arms. He came to his senses after a moment.
"How cold you are! You must get off all these things at once. Wait, I'll lock the door and go into the bedroom while you change by the fire. I'll fetch you some clean things; you'll have to manage with underclothes of mine and the blankets. Let me get your boots off first; I must cut them, I think."
When he had drawn the sofa to the fire and laid her on it, rolled up in the rug from his bed, he ran downstairs for hot-water bottles, boiling milk, and brandy. Coming back he found her in a kind of stupor, neither fainting nor asleep, but too much dazed with cold and fatigue to understand when spoken to. After some time a faint tinge of natural colour came back into her blue lips. She opened her eyes and looked at him gravely.
"Jack," she said, "did you understand?"
He was sitting on the edge of the sofa, chafing her hands. He bent down and kissed first one and then the other.
"Yes, my darling."
"And you... will take me in?"
He pushed the damp hair back from her forehead.
"Why, you little goose! Drink some hot milk and don't talk nonsense."
"No — no!" She drew herself away from him and sat up, her eyes glittering. "You want to be merciful, like Aunt Sarah. She tried to interfere yesterday — talked to uncle about the woman taken in adultery and the one sinner that repenteth... I've nothing to repent of: I'm not ashamed. You have to understand that before you take me in. My life is my own to keep or give away; and if I choose to ruin it and pay the cost..."
"You shall tell me all that afterwards, dear. Theories will keep, and your supper won't. Take this while it's hot."
She took the cup eagerly and tried to drink. Then, for the first time, she broke down. He knelt beside the sofa, holding her close against him; and it seemed to him that hours passed while she sobbed on his neck. When she had grown quiet at last, he forced a little food on her with gentle persistence.
"When did you last have anything to eat?"
"I... forget. Some time yesterday. They found out in the afternoon... I think; or was it evening?.. Ah, yes; it was dark. I tried to find some water in the night;...it was so cold on the moor, and my throat burned... I suppose it was the gale... I found a rain-pool... but the water smelt of graves. Everything smelt of graves... and the sleet made me giddy... I fell so many times... That's why my hands are cut about this way..."
"Were you out on the moor all night?" He spoke in a suppressed voice, harsh and low.
"Yes... I... I got to Penrhyn in the morning and caught the early train... you know, the cheap one. I was lucky, wasn't I? I shouldn't have had money enough for the express."
<
br /> "Do you mean that he turned you out on to the moor alone, at night, in the storm, with no money?"
"It was because I wouldn't answer his questions. Aunt Sarah gave me a few shillings that she had over from something. She cried so bitterly, poor thing. And I had half a sovereign. I was threepence short for the railway ticket, but I had some postage-stamps..."
"Where did you get that bruise on your forehead?" he interrupted. Her left temple was cut and swollen; the blow, an inch lower, might have killed her.
She hesitated a moment, then silently bared her right arm. It was stamped below the elbow with blue finger-marks.
"I... don't think he meant it," she said softly; and drew the sleeve down again.
"He struck you?" Jack asked in the same dead voice.
"He was trying to make me speak. I had refused to tell him... who the father is. He seemed to lose his senses bit by bit. He kept on repeating: 'Who?' and wrenching my arm harder and harder... Then Aunt Sarah tried to stop him... and he knocked me down..."
"There, that's enough."
She turned at the strange sound of her brother's voice; and looked at him. She had never seen before how he looked when he was angry; and the sight chilled her into silence.
"You'd better not tell me any more about uncle," he said presently, with his habitual quiet manner. "We came pretty near to killing each other once, you know; and I have you to look after now. Suppose we make a compact not to mention him again. I think I must get your bed ready now, dear; and tomorrow we'll talk over our plans."
"But where will you sleep if I take your room? "
"Here, on the sofa, of course. We'll fit in this way for a week or two, and then get other lodgings. As soon as you are well enough, you must see about some clothes."
"But, Jack, I can't stay here, on your hands. It's all very well for one night, but I must find some work to-morrow."
"Dearest, work is not so easy to find all at once; and you're not in a state to do it, if it were. Rest a few days and then well see."
"Oh, you don't understand! There are more than two months still... and when the time comes... Do you think they'll take me in at any hospital, Jack?"
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