In the thinnest thread of sound, she murmured: "Sometimes. A little."

He was trembling. "You poor thing. You poor little thing. Yet I can't tell you."

She clapped her hands over her ears. "Ah, no. I couldn't bear to listen if you did." They sank into a trembling silence. Her black eyes, fixed on the opposite wall, saw the shape of mountains, against the white evening of a dark sky; the dark red circle of a peat-stained pool lying under the shadow of a rock; the earth of a new-ploughed field over which seagulls ambled white in heavy air, under a cloud-felted sky; and other sombre appearances that moved the heart strangely, as if it discerned in them proofs that the core of life was darkness. There came on her suddenly a memory of that fierce initiatory pain which she had felt when she first drank wine, when she first was kissed by Richard. She remembered it with a singular lack of dismay. There ran through her on the instant a tingling sense of pride and ambition towards all new experience, and she leapt briskly from the bed, crying out in placid annoyance, as if it were the only care she had, because her hair had fallen down about her shoulders. They stood easily together in the light of the great window, she feeling for the strayed hairpins in her head, he looking down on the disordered glory.

"But what's that for?" he asked, pointing at the open trunk in the middle of the floor.

Her eyes filled with tears. "I was packing to go back to Edinburgh."

"Oh, my dear, my dear!" he said solemnly. "I came near to imperilling a perfect thing." He took her face between his hands and was going to kiss her, but she started away from him.

"Oh, maircy! What cold hands!" she exclaimed.

"I've been out in the shed working at my motor-bicycle. It was freezing. And I made an awful mess of it, too, because I was blind and shaking with rage."

"You poor silly thing!" she cried lovingly. "Give me yon bits of ice!"

She took both his hands and pressed them against her warm throat.

For a little time they remained so, until her trembling became too great for him to bear, and he whispered: "This is all it is! This is all it is!"

"What do you mean?" she murmured.

"What you fear ... is just like this. You will comfort my whole body as you are comforting my hands...."

She drooped, she seemed about to fall, but joy was a bright light on her face, and she answered loudly, plangently: "Then I shall not be afraid!"

They swayed together, and she told him in earnest ecstasy: "I will marry you any day you like." When he answered, "No, no, I will wait," she jerked at his coat-lapels like an impatient child, and cried: "But I want to be married to you!" Then their lips met in a long kiss, and they travelled far into a new sphere of love.

It amazed her when, in the midst of this happiness, he broke away from her. She felt sick and shaken, as if she had been sitting in an express train and the driver had suddenly put on the brakes, and it angered her that he once more made one of those wordless sounds that she detested.

But her anger died when she saw that he was staring over her shoulder out of the window at some sight which had made his face white and pointed with that grave alertness which is the brave man's form of fear.

She swung round to see what it was.

A man and a woman were standing in the farmyard looking up at them.

Their att.i.tude of surprise and absorbed interest made it evident that the width and depth of the window had enabled them to see clearly what was happening in the room; and for a moment Ellen covered her face with her hands. But she was forced to look at them again by a sense that these people were strange in a way that was at once unpleasant and yet interesting and exciting. They were both clad in uniforms cut unskilfully out of poor cloth, the man in a short coat with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, braided trousers, and a circular cap like a sailor's, and the woman in an old-fashioned dress with a tight-fitting bodice and a gored skirt; and round his cap and round the crown of her poke-bonnet were ribbons on which was printed: "Hallelujah Army."

The odd unshapeliness of their ill-built bodies in their ill-fitting clothes, the stained and streaky blue of the badly-dyed serge, and the shallow, vibrating magenta of the ribbon made it very fitting that they should stand in the foreground of the mean winter day which had coloured the farmyard and its buildings sour, soiled tones of grey. Their perfect harmony with their surroundings, even though it was only in disagreeableness that they matched them, gave Ellen a kind of pleasure.

She felt clever because she had detected it, and she stared down into their faces, partly because she was annoyed by their steady inspection and wanted to stare them out, and partly because she wanted to discover what these people, who were behaving so oddly, were like in themselves.

There was nothing very unusual about the woman, save that she united several qualities that one would not have thought could be found together. She was young, certainly still in her middle twenties, yet worn; florid yet haggard; exuberant and upstanding of body, yet bowed at the shoulders as if she were fragile. But the man was odd enough. He was pale and had a very long neck, and wore an expression of extreme foolishness. From the frown with which he was accompanying his gaping stare it was evident that his mind was so vague and wandering that he found it difficult to concentrate it; she was reminded of an inexpert person she had once seen trying to put a white rabbit into a bag. She looked again at the girl, with that contempt she felt, now that she had Richard, for all women who let themselves mate with unworthy men, and found that her dark eyes were fixed sullenly, almost hungrily, on Richard. She laid her hand on Richard's arm and cried: "If it's not impudence, it's the next thing to it, staring like that into a pairson's room! They're collecting, I suppose. Away and give them a penny."

"No," said Richard. "They are not collecting. That is Roger."

CHAPTER IX

Ellen could not understand why Richard whispered explosively as they turned away from the window: "Pin up your hair! Quickly! We must go down at once!" or why he hurried her downstairs without giving her time to use her brush and comb. When they got down into the old parlour Richard went to the side door that opened into the farmyard and flung it open, beginning a sentence of greeting, but there was nothing to be seen but the grey sheds, the wood-pile, and the puddle-pocked ground. He uttered an exasperated exclamation, and drew it to, saying to Ellen: "Open the front door! Please, dear." She did so, but saw nothing save the dark and narrow garden and the black trees against the white north sky. "What in Christ's name are they doing?" Richard burst out, and flung open the side door again. Both put their heads out over the threshold to see if the two visitors were standing about anywhere, and a gust of wind that was making the trees beat their arms darted down on the house and turned the draught between the two open doors into a hurricane. Ellen squealed as her door banged and struck her shoulder before she had time to steer clear of it. "Oh, my poor darling!" said Richard, and he was coming towards her, when they heard the glug-glug-glug of water dripping from the table to the floor, and saw that the draught had overturned a vase filled with silver boughs of honesty. He picked it up and uttered another bark of exasperation, for it had cracked across and he had cut his hand on the sharp edge of the china.

"Oh, d.a.m.n! oh, d.a.m.n! oh, d.a.m.n!" he cried, in a voice that rage made high-pitched and childish, sucking his finger in between the words.

"What a filthy mess!" He looked down on the wet tablecloth and the two halves of the vase lying in the bedabbled leaves with an expression of distaste so far out of proportion to its occasion that Ellen remembered uneasily how several times that day she had noticed in him traces of a desperate, nervous tidiness like Marion's. "If you ring for one of the maids she'll soon clear it up," she said soothingly, and moved towards the bell. But he took his bleeding finger away from his lips and waved it at her, crying: "No! no! I don't want either of the servants round till I've found that fool and that woman! This is some new folly--probably I'll have to get him away before mother comes! Come on!

Perhaps they're hanging about the garden, though G.o.d knows why!" After making a savage movement towards the broken vase, as if he could not bear to leave the disorder as it was, and checking it abruptly, jarringly, he rushed into the dining-room, and Ellen followed him.

The two were there, their faces pressed against the window-panes. Behind them the grey waste of stormy shallow waters, and the salt-dimmed pastures, and the black range of the Kentish hills, hung with grape-purple rainclouds, made it apparent how much greater dignity belongs to the earth and sea than to those who people them. As Richard and Ellen halted at the door the faces receded from the gla.s.s. The woman stepped backwards and, looking as if she were being moved on by a policeman, pa.s.sed suddenly out of sight beyond the window's edge.

Richard crossed the room and opened the French window, but by the time he had unlocked it the man in uniform, who had been beckoning to his companion with long bony hands, had gone in search of her. As Richard put his head round the door to bid them enter, the wind, which was now rushing round the house, made itself felt as a chill commotion, an icy anger of the air, in which both he and Ellen shivered. Presently the pair in uniform appeared again, but at some distance across the lawn, and too intensely absorbed in argument to pay any attention to him.

"Oh, d.a.m.n! oh, d.a.m.n!" sobbed Richard. The wind was blowing earth-daubed leaves off the flowerbeds through the open door into the prim room. He stepped into the gale and shouted: "Roger! Roger! Come in!"

Roger waved his arms, which were too long for the sleeves of his coat, and from his mouthings it was evident that he was shouting back, but the wind took it all. In anger Richard stepped back into the room and made as if to close the doors, and at that the two on the lawn ran towards the house, with that look which common people have when they run for a train, as if their feet were buckling up under them. Richard held the door wide again, but when the couple reached the path in front of the house they were once more seized with a doubt about entering and came to a standstill.

"Come in," said Richard; "come in."

The man took off his cap and ran his hands through his pale, long hair.

"Is mother in?" he demanded in a thin, whistling voice.

"Come in," said Richard; "come in."

The man began: "Well, if mother's not in, I don't know--"

Richard fixed his eyes on the woman's face. "Come in," he said softly, brutally, loathingly. Ellen shivered to hear him speak thus to a woman and to see a woman take it thus, for at once the stranger moved forward to the window and stepped into the room. As she brushed by him she cringingly bowed her shoulders a little, and looked up at him as he stood a head and shoulders higher than herself. He looked back steadily and made no sign of seeing her save by a slight compression of the lips, until she pa.s.sed on with dragging feet and stood listlessly in the middle of the room. It was evident that they completely understood one another, and yet their understanding sprung from no recollection of any previous encounter, for into the eyes of neither did there come any flash of recognition. There could be no doubt that Richard was feeling nothing but contempt for this woman, and her peaked yet rich-coloured face expressed only sick sullenness; yet Ellen felt a rage like jealousy.

Richard turned again to the garden, and said: "Come in."

"Now don't be high-handed, old man," expostulated the stranger. But then he seemed to remember something, and stretched out both his arms, held them rigid, and opened his mouth wide as if to speak very loudly. But no sound came, and his arms dropped, and his long bony hands pawed the air.

Then suddenly his arms shot out again, and he exclaimed very quickly in a high, strained voice: "Pride has always been your besetting sin, Richard. You aren't a bad chap in any way that I know of. But you're proud. And it doesn't become any of us to be proud"--his spirit was shaking the words out of his faltering flesh--"for we're all miserable sinners. You needn't order me"--he spoke more glibly now, the flesh and the spirit seemed in complete agreement--"to come out of the garden like that. I wish Poppy hadn't gone in." He caught his breath with something like a sob; but the woman in uniform made no movement, and turned her eyes to Richard's face as if it were he that must give the order. "I've got a reason for staying out here. I know mother's not got Jesus. If she's ashamed of me now that I'm one of Jesus' soldiers, I won't come in. I'll go and wrestle on my knees for her soul, but I won't hurt her by coming in. So here I stay till she tells me to come in."

"But she's out," said Richard.

The man in uniform was discomfited. The light went out of his face and his mouth remained open. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and muttered: "Ooh-er, is she?"

"Yes," said Richard pleasantly. "She's gone over to Friar's End, but she'll be back any time now. I wish you'd come in. I haven't seen you for years, and I'd like to swap yarns with you about what we've been doing all the time."

"You'd have the most to tell," answered the other wistfully. "You've been here, there, and everywhere in foreign parts. And I haven't been doing nothing at all. Except--" he added, brightening up, "being saved."

"That's your own fault," Richard told him. "I've often wondered why you didn't try your luck abroad. You'd have been sure to hold your own.

Well, anyway, come in and have some tea. I don't know what mother would say to me if she came in and found I'd let you stay out in the cold.

She'd be awfully upset."

"Do you think she would?" the man in uniform asked, and seemed to ponder. He looked up at the grey sky and shivered. "'Tis getting coldish. And the cloth this uniform is made from isn't the sort that keeps out cold weather. G.o.d knows I don't want to grumble at the uniform I wear for Jesus' sake, but me having been in the drapery, I can't help noticing when a thing is cheap." He stared down at his toes for a time, lifting alternately his heels and pressing them down into the wet gravel; then raised his head and said nonchalantly: "Well, old man, I think I will come in after all." But he halted yet again when he got one foot over the threshold. "Mind you, I'm not coming in just because it's cold," he began, but Richard, exclaimed, "Yes, yes! Of course I know you're not!" and gripped him by the arm and pulled him into the room. He did not seem to resent the rough treatment at all, and went over at once to the woman in uniform, and, looking happily about him, cried: "Isn't this a lovely home? I always say there's n.o.body got such a nice home as my mother."

His voice whistled; and Ellen in her mind's eye saw a vision of some clumsy, half-b.e.s.t.i.a.l creature wandering in primeval swamps, feeling joy and yet knowing no joyful word or song, and so plucking a reed and breathing down it, and in his ignorance being pleased at the poor noise.

She felt pity and loathing, and looked across the room at Richard, meaning to tell him by a smile that she would help him to be kind to Roger. But Richard was still occupying himself with the window, examining with an air of irascibility a stain of blood which his cut finger had left on the white paint near the lock. His eyes travelled from it to the muddy footprints of the two who had come in from the garden and to the spatter of earth-daubed leaves on the polished floor, and his mouth drew down at the corners in a grimace of pa.s.sion that made Ellen long to run to him and kiss him and bid him not give way to the madness of order so prevalent in this house. But he did not even look at her, so she could do nothing for him.

He went forward to Roger, determinedly sweetening his face, and shook his hand heartily. "It's good that you should have turned up just at this moment, for I'm going to be married before long to Miss Melville, whom I met in Scotland when I was working at Aberfay. Ellen, this is my brother, Roger."

Roger took Ellen's hand and then seemed to remember something. After exchanging a portentous glance with the woman in uniform, he looked steadfastly into her face and said sombrely: "I hope all's well with you, sister! I hope all's well with you!"

"Pairfectly," answered Ellen; and after a pause added, shyly: "And I'm pleased to meet you. I hope anyone that's dear to Richard will be friends with me."