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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/28615-8.txt b/28615-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ab09944 --- /dev/null +++ b/28615-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3369 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Flaw in the Crystal, by May Sinclair + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Flaw in the Crystal + +Author: May Sinclair + +Release Date: April 26, 2009 [EBook #28615] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLAW IN THE CRYSTAL *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Therese Wright and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +The Flaw in the Crystal + +By + +May Sinclair + + + NEW YORK + EˇPˇDUTTON & COMPANY + 31 West Twenty-Third Street + + + + + Copyright, 1912 + By May Sinclair + + + + +CHAPTER ONE + + +It was Friday, the day he always came, if (so she safeguarded it) he was +to come at all. They had left it that way in the beginning, that it +should be open to him to come or not to come. They had not even settled +that it should be Fridays, but it always was, the week-end being the +only time when he could get away; the only time, he had explained to +Agatha Verrall, when getting away excited no remark. He had to, or he +would have broken down. Agatha called it getting away "from things"; but +she knew that there was only one thing, his wife Bella. + +To be wedded to a mass of furious and malignant nerves (which was all +that poor Bella was now) simply meant destruction to a man like Rodney +Lanyon. Rodney's own nerves were not as strong as they had been, after +ten years of Bella's. It had been understood for long enough (understood +even by Bella) that if he couldn't have his weekends he was done for; he +couldn't possibly have stood the torment and the strain of her. + +Of course, she didn't know he spent the greater part of them with Agatha +Verrall. It was not to be desired that she should know. Her obtuseness +helped them. Even in her younger and saner days she had failed, +persistently, to realise any profound and poignant thing that touched +him; so by the mercy of heaven she had never realised Agatha Verrall. +She used to say that she had never seen anything _in_ Agatha, which +amounted, as he once told her, to not seeing Agatha at all. Still less +could she have compassed any vision of the tie--the extraordinary, +intangible, immaterial tie that held them. + +Sometimes, at the last moment, his escape to Agatha would prove +impossible; so they had left it further that he was to send her no +forewarning; he was to come when and as he could. He could always get a +room in the village inn or at the Farm near by, and in Agatha's house he +would find his place ready for him, the place which had become his +refuge, his place of peace. + +There was no need to prepare her. She was never not prepared. It was as +if by her preparedness, by the absence of preliminaries, of adjustments +and arrangements, he was always there, lodged in the innermost chamber. +She had set herself apart; she had swept herself bare and scoured +herself clean for him. Clean she had to be; clean from the desire that +he should come; clean, above all, from the thought, the knowledge she +now had, that she could make him come. + +For if she had given herself up to _that_---- + +But she never had; never since the knowledge came to her; since she +discovered, wonderfully, by a divine accident, that at any moment she +could make him--that she had whatever it was, the power, the uncanny, +unaccountable Gift. + +She was beginning to see more and more how it worked; how inevitably, +how infallibly it worked. She was even a little afraid of it, of what it +might come to mean. It _did_ mean that without his knowledge, separated +as they were and had to be, she could always get at him. + +And supposing it came to mean that she could get at him to make him do +things? Why, the bare idea of it was horrible. + +Nothing could well have been _more_ horrible to Agatha. It was the +secret and the essence of their remarkable relation that she had never +tried to get at him; whereas Bella _had_, calamitously; and still more +calamitously, because of the peculiar magic that there was (there must +have been) in her, Bella had succeeded. To have tried to get at him +would have been, for Agatha, the last treachery, the last indecency; +while for Rodney it would have been the destruction of her charm. She +was the way of escape for him from Bella; but she had always left her +door, even the innermost door, wide open; so that where shelter and +protection faced him there faced him also the way of departure, the way +of escape from _her_. + +And if her thought could get at him and fasten on him and shut him in +there---- + +It could, she knew; but it need not. She was really all right. Restraint +had been the essence and the secret of the charm she had, and it was +also the secret and the essence of her gift. Why, she had brought it to +so fine a point that she could shut out, and by shutting out destroy any +feeling, any thought that did violence to any other. She could shut them +all out, if it came to that, and make the whole place empty. So that, if +this knowledge of her power did violence, she had only to close her door +on it. + +She closed it now on the bare thought of his coming; on the little +innocent hope she had that he would come. By an ultimate refinement and +subtlety of honour she refused to let even expectation cling to him. + +But though it was dreadful to "work" her gift that way, to make him do +things, there was another way in which she did work it, lawfully, +sacredly, incorruptibly--the way it first came to her. She had worked it +twenty times (without his knowledge, for how he would have scoffed at +her!) to make him well. + +Before it had come to her, he had been, ever since she knew him, more or +less ill, more or less tormented by the nerves that were wedded so +indissolubly to Bella's. He was always, it seemed to her terror, on the +verge. And she could say to herself, "Look at him _now_!" + +His abrupt, incredible recovery had been the first open manifestation of +the way it worked. Not that she had tried it on him first. Before she +dared do that once she had proved it on herself twenty times. She had +proved it up to the hilt. + +But to ensure continuous results it had to be a continuous process; and +in order to give herself up to it, to him (to his pitiful case), she had +lately, as her friends said, "cut herself completely off." She had gone +down into Buckinghamshire and taken a small solitary house at Sarratt +End in the valley of the Chess, three miles from the nearest station. +She had shut herself up in a world half a mile long, one straight hill +to the north, one to the south, two strips of flat pasture, the river +and the white farm-road between. A world closed east and west by the +turn the valley takes there between the hills, and barred by a gate at +each end of the farm-road. A land of pure curves, of delicate colours, +delicate shadows; all winter through a land of grey woods and sallow +fields, of ploughed hillsides pale with the white strain of the chalk. +In April (it was April now) a land shining with silver and with green. +And the ways out of it led into lanes; it had neither sight nor hearing +of the high roads beyond. + +There were only two houses in that half-mile of valley, Agatha's house +and Woodman's Farm. + +Agatha's house, white as a cutting in the chalk downs, looked southwest, +up the valley and across it, to where a slender beech wood went lightly +up the hill and then stretched out in a straight line along the top, +with the bare fawn-coloured flank of the ploughed land below. The +farmhouse looked east towards Agatha's house across a field; a red-brick +house--dull, dark red with the grey bloom of weather on it--flat-faced +and flat-eyed, two windows on each side of the door and a row of five +above, all nine staring at the small white house across the field. The +narrow, flat farm-road linked the two. + +Except Rodney when his inn was full, nobody ever came to Woodman's Farm; +and Agatha's house, set down inside its east gate, shared its isolation, +its immunity. Two villages, unseen, unheard, served her, not a mile +away. It was impossible to be more sheltered, more protected and more +utterly cut off. And only fifteen miles, as the crow flies, between this +solitude and London, so that it was easy for Rodney Lanyon to come down. + +At two o'clock, the hour when he must come if he were coming, she began +to listen for the click of the latch at the garden gate. She had agreed +with herself that at the last moment expectancy could do no harm; it +couldn't influence him; for either he had taken the twelve-thirty train +at Marylebone or he had not (Agatha was so far reasonable); so at the +last moment she permitted herself that dangerous and terrible joy. + +When the click came and his footsteps after it, she admitted further +(now when it could do no harm) that she had had foreknowledge of him; +she had been aware all the time that he would come. And she wondered, +as she always wondered at his coming, whether really she would find him +well, or whether this time it had incredibly miscarried. And her almost +unbearable joy became suspense, became vehement desire to see him and +gather from his face whether this time also it had worked. + +"How are you? How have you been?" was her question when he stood before +her in her white room, holding her hand for an instant. + +"Tremendously fit," he answered; "ever since I last saw you." + +"Oh--seeing me----" It was as if she wanted him to know that seeing her +made no difference. + +She looked at him and received her certainty. She saw him clear-eyed and +young, younger than he was, his clean, bronzed face set, as it used to +be, in a firmness that obliterated the lines, the little agonized +lines, that had made her heart ache. + +"It always does me good," he said, "to see you." + +"And to see you--you know what it does to me." + +He thought he knew as he caught back his breath and looked at her, +taking in again her fine whiteness, and her tenderness, her purity of +line, and the secret of her eyes whose colour (if they had colour) he +was never sure about; taking in all of her, from her adorable feet to +her hair, vividly dark, that sprang from the white parting like--was it +like waves or wings? + +What had once touched and moved him unspeakably in Agatha's face was the +capacity it had, latent in its tragic lines, for expressing terror. +Terror was what he most dreaded for her, what he had most tried to keep +her from, to keep out of her face. And latterly he had not found it; or +rather he had not found the unborn, lurking spirit of it there. It had +gone, that little tragic droop in Agatha's face. The corners of her eyes +and of her beautiful mouth were lifted; as if by--he could find no other +word for the thing he meant but wings. She had a look which, if it were +not of joy, was of something more vivid and positive than peace. + +He put it down to their increased and undisturbed communion made +possible by her retirement to Sarratt End. Yet as he looked at her he +sighed again. + +In response to his sigh she asked suddenly, "How's Bella?" + +His face lighted wonderfully. "It's extraordinary," he said; "she's +better. Miles better. In fact, if it was not tempting Providence, I +should say she was well. She's been, for the last week anyhow, a perfect +angel." + +His amazed, uncomprehending look gave her the clue to what had +happened. It was another instance of the astounding and mysterious way +it worked. She must have got at Bella somehow in getting at him. She saw +now no end to the possibilities of the thing. There wasn't anything so +wonderful in making him what, after all, he was; but if she, Bella, had +been, even for a week, a perfect angel, it had made her what she was not +and never had been. + +His next utterance came to her with no irrelevance. + +"You've been found out." + +For a moment she wondered, had he guessed it then, her secret? He had +never known anything about it, and it was not likely that he should know +now. He was indeed very far from knowing when he could think that it was +seeing her that did it. + +There was, of course, the other secret, the fact that he did see her; +but she had never allowed that it was a secret, or that it need be, +although they guarded it so carefully. Anybody except Bella, who +wouldn't understand it, was welcome to know that he came to see her. He +must mean that. + +"Found out?" she repeated. + +"If you haven't been, you will be." + +"You mean," she said, "Sarratt End has been found out?" + +"If you put it that way. I saw the Powells at the station." + +(She breathed freely.) + +"They told me they'd taken rooms at some farm here." + +"Which farm?" + +He didn't remember. + +"Was it Woodman's Farm?" she asked. And he said, Yes, that was the name +they'd told him. Whereabouts was it? + +"Don't you know?" she said. "That's the name of _your_ Farm." + +He had not known it, and was visibly annoyed at knowing it now. And +Agatha herself felt some dismay. If it had been any other place but +Woodman's Farm! It stared at them; it watched them; it knew all their +goings out and their comings in; it knew Rodney; not that that had +mattered in the least, but the Powells, when they came, would know too. + +She tried to look as if that didn't matter, either, while they faced +each other in a silence, a curious, unfamiliar discomposure. + +She recovered first. "After all," she said, "why shouldn't they?" + +"Well--I thought you weren't going to tell people." + +Her face mounted a sudden flame, a signal of resentment. She had always +resented the imputation of secrecy in their relations. And now it was +as if he were dragging forward the thought that she perpetually put away +from her. + +"Tell about what?" she asked, coldly. + +"About Sarratt End. I thought we'd agreed to keep it for ourselves." + +"I haven't told everybody. But I did tell Milly Powell." + +"My dear girl, that wasn't very clever of you." + +"I told her not to tell. She knows what I want to be alone for." + +"Good God!" As he stared in dismay at what he judged to be her +unspeakable indiscretion, the thought rushed in on her straight from +him, the naked, terrible thought, that there _should_ be anything they +had to hide, they had to be alone for. She saw at the same time how +defenceless he was before it; he couldn't keep it back; he couldn't put +it away from him. It was always with him, a danger watching on his +threshold. + +"Then" (he made her face it with him), "we're done for." + +"No, no," she cried. "How could you think that? It was another thing. +Something that I'm trying to do." + +"You told her," he insisted. "What did you tell her?" + +"That I'm doing it. That I'm here for my health. She understands it that +way." + +He smiled as if he were satisfied, knowing her so well. And still his +thought, his terrible naked thought, was there. It was looking at her +straight out of his eyes. + +"Are you sure she understands?" he said. + +"Yes. Absolutely." + +He hesitated, and then put it differently. + +"Are you sure she doesn't understand? That she hasn't an inkling?" + +_He_ wasn't sure whether Agatha understood, whether she realised the +danger. + +"About you and me," he said. + +"Ah, my dear, I've kept _you_ secret. She doesn't know we know each +other. And if she did----" + +She finished it with a wonderful look, a look of unblinking yet vaguely, +pitifully uncandid candour. + +She had always met him, and would always have to meet him, with the idea +that there was nothing in it; for, if she once admitted that there was +anything, then they _were_ done for. She couldn't (how could she?) let +him keep on coming with that thought in him, acknowledged by them both. + +That was where she came in and where her secret, her gift, would work +now more beneficently than ever. The beauty of it was that it would make +them safe, absolutely safe. She had only got to apply it to that +thought of his and the thought would not exist. Since she could get at +him, she could do for him what he, poor dear, could not perhaps always +do for himself; she could keep that dreadful possibility in him under; +she could in fact, make their communion all that she most wanted it to +be. + +"I don't like it," he said, miserably. "I don't like it." + +A little line of worry was coming in his face again. + +The door opened and a maid began to go in and out, laying the table for +their meal. He watched the door close on her and said, "Won't that woman +wonder what I come for?" + +"She can see what you come for." She smiled. "Why are you spoiling it +with thinking things?" + +"It's for you I think them. I don't mind. It doesn't matter so much for +me. But I want you to be safe." + +"Oh, _I_'m safe, my dear," she answered. + +"You were. And you would be still, if these Powells hadn't found you +out." + +He meditated. + +"What do you suppose _they_'ve come for?" he asked. + +"They've come, I imagine, for his health." + +"What? To a god-forsaken place like this?" + +"They know what it's done for me. So they think, poor darlings, perhaps +it may do something--even yet--for him." + +"What's the matter with him?" + +"Something dreadful. And they say--incurable." + +"It isn't----?" He paused. + +"I can't tell you what it is. It isn't anything you'd think it was. It +isn't anything bodily." + +"I never knew it." + +"You're not supposed to know. And you wouldn't, unless you _did_ know. +And please--you don't; you don't know anything." + +He smiled. "No. You haven't told me, have you?" + +"I only told you because you never tell things, and because----" + +"Because?" He waited, smiling. + +"Because I wanted you to see he doesn't count." + +"Well--but _she_'s all right, I take it?" + +At first she failed to grasp his implication that if, owing to his +affliction, Harding Powell didn't count, Milly, his young wife did. Her +faculties of observation and of inference would, he took it, be +unimpaired. + +"_She_'ll wonder, won't she?" he expounded. + +"About us? Not she. She's too much wrapped up in him to notice anyone." + +"And he?" + +"Oh, my dear--He's too much wrapped up in _it_." + +Another anxiety then came to him. + +"I say, you know, he isn't dangerous, is he?" + +She laughed. + +"Dangerous? Oh dear me, no! A lamb." + + + + +CHAPTER TWO + + +She kept on saying to herself, Why shouldn't they come? What difference +did it make? + +Up till now she had not admitted that anything could make a difference, +that anything could touch, could alter by a shade the safe, the +intangible, the unique relation between her and Rodney. It was proof +against anything that anybody could think. And the Powells were not +given to thinking things. Agatha's own mind had been a crystal without a +flaw, in its clearness, its sincerity. + +It had to be to ensure the blessed working of the gift; as again, it was +by the blessed working of the gift that she had kept it so. She could +only think of that, the secret, the gift, the inexpressible thing, as +itself a flawless crystal, a charmed circle; or rather, as a sphere that +held all the charmed circles that you draw round things to keep them +safe, to keep them holy. + +She had drawn her circle round Rodney Lanyon and herself. Nobody could +break it. They were supernaturally safe. + +And yet the presence of the Powells had made a difference. She was +forced to own that, though she remained untouched, it had made a +difference in him. It was as if, in the agitation produced by them, he +had brushed aside some veil and had let her see something that up till +now her crystal vision had refused to see, something that was more than +a lurking possibility. She discovered in him a desire, an intention that +up till now he had concealed from her. It had left its hiding place; it +rose on terrifying wings and fluttered before her, troubling her. She +was reminded that, though there were no lurking possibilities in her, +with him it might be different. For him the tie between them might come +to mean something that it had never meant and could not mean for her, +something that she had refused not only to see but to foresee and +provide for. + +She was aware of a certain relief when Monday came and he had left her +without any further unveilings and revealings. She was even glad when, +about the middle of the week, the Powells came with a cart-load of +luggage and settled at the Farm. She said to herself that they would +take her mind off him. They had a way of seizing on her and holding her +attention to the exclusion of all other objects. + +She could hardly not have been seized and held by a case so pitiful, so +desperate as theirs. How pitiful and desperate it had become she +learned almost at once from the face of her friend, the little pale-eyed +wife, whose small, flat, flower-like features were washed out and worn +fine by watchings and listenings on the border, on the threshold. + +Yes, he was worse. He had had to give up his business (Harding Powell +was a gentle stockbroker). It wasn't any longer, Milly Powell intimated, +a question of borders and of thresholds. They had passed all that. He +had gone clean over; he was in the dreadful interior; and she, the +resolute and vigilant little woman, had no longer any power to get him +out. She was at the end of her tether. + +Agatha knew what he had been for years? Well--he was worse than that; +far worse than he had been, ever. Not so bad though that he hadn't +intervals in which he knew how bad he was, and was willing to do +everything, to try anything. They were going to try Sarratt End. It was +her idea. She knew how marvellously it had answered with dear Agatha +(not that Agatha ever was, or could be, where _he_ was, poor darling). +And besides, Agatha herself was an attraction. It had occurred to Milly +Powell that it might do Harding good to be near Agatha. There was +something about her; Milly didn't know what it was, but she felt it, +_he_ felt it--an influence or something, that made for mental peace. It +was, Mrs. Powell said, as if she had some secret. + +She hoped Agatha wouldn't mind. It couldn't possibly hurt her. _He_ +couldn't. The darling couldn't hurt a fly; he could only hurt himself. +And if he got really bad, why then, of course, they would have to leave +Sarratt End. He would have, she said sadly, to go away somewhere. But +not yet--oh, not yet; he wasn't bad enough for that. She would keep him +with her up to the last possible moment--the last possible moment. +Agatha could understand, couldn't she? + +Agatha did indeed. + +Milly Powell smiled her desperate white smile, and went on, always with +her air of appeal to Agatha. That was why she wanted to be near her. It +was awful not to be near somebody who understood, who would understand +him. For Agatha would understand--wouldn't she?--that to a certain +extent he must be given in to? _That_--apart from Agatha--was why they +had chosen Sarratt End. It was the sort of place--wasn't it?--where you +would go if you didn't want people to get at you, where (Milly's very +voice became furtive as she explained it) you could hide. His idea--his +last--seemed to be that something _was_ trying to get at him. + +No, not people. Something worse, something terrible. It was always after +him. The most piteous thing about him--piteous but adorable--was that he +came to her--to _her_--imploring her to hide him. + +And so she had hidden him here. + +Agatha took in her friend's high courage as she looked at the eyes where +fright barely fluttered under the poised suspense. She approved of the +plan. It appealed to her by its sheer audacity. She murmured that, if +there were anything that she could do, Milly had only to come to her. + +Oh well, Milly _had_ come. What she wanted Agatha to do--if she saw him +and he should say anything about it--was simply to take the line that he +was safe. + +Agatha said that was the line she did take. She wasn't going to let +herself think, and Milly mustn't think--not for a moment--that he +wasn't, that there was anything to be afraid of. + +"Anything to be afraid of _here_. That's my point," said Milly. + +"Mine is that here or anywhere--wherever _he_ is--there mustn't be any +fear. How can he get better if we keep him wrapped in it? You're _not_ +afraid. You're _not_ afraid." + +Persistent, invincible affirmation was part of her method, her secret. + +Milly replied a little wearily (she knew nothing about the method). + +"I haven't time to be afraid," she said. "And as long as you're not----" + +"It's you who matter," Agatha cried. "You're so near him. Don't you +realise what it means to be so near?" + +Milly smiled sadly, tenderly. (As if she didn't know!) + +"My dear, that's all that keeps me going. I've got to make him feel that +he's protected." + +"He _is_ protected," said Agatha. + +Already she was drawing her charmed circle round him. + +"As long as I hold out. If I give in he's done for." + +"You mustn't think it. You mustn't say it!" + +"But--I know it. Oh, my dear! I'm all he's got." + +At that she looked for a moment as if she might break down. She said the +terrible part of it was that they were left so much alone. People were +beginning to shrink from him, to be afraid of him. + +"You know," said Agatha, "I'm not. You must bring him to see me." + +The little woman had risen, as she said, "to go to him." She stood +there, visibly hesitating. She couldn't bring him. He wouldn't come. +Would Agatha go with her and see him? + +Agatha went. + +As they approached the Farm she saw to her amazement that the door was +shut and the blinds, the ugly, ochreish yellow blinds, were down in all +the nine windows of the front, the windows of the Powell's rooms. The +house was like a house of the dead. + +"Do you get the sun on this side?" she said; and as she said it she +realised the stupidity of her question; for the nine windows looked to +the east, and the sun, wheeling down the west, had been in their faces +as they came. + +Milly answered mechanically, "No, we don't get any sun." She added with +an irrelevance that was only apparent, "I've had to take all four rooms +to keep other people out." + +"They never come," said Agatha. + +"No," said Milly, "but if they did----!" + +The front door was locked. Milly had the key. When they had entered, +Agatha saw her turn it in the lock again, slowly and without a sound. + +All the doors were shut in the passage, and it was dark there. Milly +opened a door on the left at the foot of the steep stairs. + +"He will be in here," she said. + +The large room was lit with a thick ochreish light through the squares +of its drawn blinds. It ran the whole width of the house and had a third +window looking west where the yellow light prevailed. A horrible light +it was. It cast thin, turbid, brown shadows on the walls. + +Harding Powell was sitting between the drawn blinds, alone in the black +hollow of the chimney place. He crouched in his chair and his bowed +back was towards them as they stood there on the threshold. + +"Harding," said Milly, "Agatha has come to see you." + +He turned in his chair and rose as they entered. + +His chin was sunk on his chest, and the first thing Agatha noticed was +the difficult, slow, forward-thrusting movement with which he lifted it. +His eyes seemed to come up last of all from the depths to meet her. With +a peculiar foreign courtesy he bowed his head again over her hand as he +held it. + +He apologised for the darkness in which they found him. Harding Powell's +manners had always been perfect, and it struck Agatha as strange and +pathetic that his malady should have left untouched the incomparable +quality he had. + +Milly went to the windows and drew the blinds up. The light revealed +him in his exquisite perfection, his small fragile finish. He was fifty +or thereabouts, but slight as a boy, and nervous, and dark as Englishmen +are dark; jaw and chin shaven; his mouth hidden by the straight droop of +his moustache. From the eyes downwards the outlines of his face and +features were of an extreme regularity and a fineness undestroyed by the +work of the strained nerves on the sallow, delicate texture. But his +eyes, dark like an animal's, were the eyes of a terrified thing, a thing +hunted and on the watch, a thing that listened continually for the soft +feet of the hunter. Above these eyes his brows were twisted, were +tortured with his terror. + +He turned to his wife. + +"Did you lock the door, dear?" he said. + +"I did. But you know, Harding, we needn't--here." + +He shivered slightly and began to walk up and down before the +hearth-place. When he had his back to Milly, Milly followed him with her +eyes of anguish; when he turned and faced her, she met him with her +white smile. + +Presently he spoke again. He wondered whether they would object to his +drawing the blinds down. He was afraid he would have to. Otherwise, he +said, _he would be seen_. + +Milly laid her hand on the arm that he stretched towards the window. + +"Darling," she said, "you've forgotten. You can't possibly be +seen--here. It's just the one place--isn't it, Agatha?--where you can't +be." Her eyes signalled to Agatha to support her. (Not but what she had +perfect confidence in the plan.) + +It was, Agatha assented. "And Agatha knows," said Milly. + +He shivered again. He had turned to Agatha. + +"Forgive me if I suggest that you cannot really know. Heaven forbid that +you _should_ know." + +Milly, intent on her "plan," persisted. + +"But, dearest, you said yourself it was. The one place." + +"_I_ said that? When did I say it?" + +"Yesterday." + +"Yesterday? I daresay. But I didn't sleep last night. It wouldn't let +me." + +"Very few people do sleep," said Agatha, "for the first time in a +strange place." + +"The place isn't strange. That's what I complain of. That's what keeps +me awake. No place ever will be strange when It's there. And It was +there last night." + +"Darling----" Milly murmured. + +"You know what I mean," he said. "The Thing that keeps me awake. Of +course if I'd slept last night I'd have known it wasn't there. But when +I didn't sleep----" + +He left it to them to draw the only possible conclusion. + +They dropped the subject. They turned to other things and talked a +little while, sitting with him in his room with the drawn blinds. From +time to time when they appealed to him, he gave an urbane assent, a +murmur, a suave motion of his hand. When the light went, they lit a +lamp. Agatha stayed and dined with them, that being the best thing she +could do. + +At nine o'clock she rose and said good-night to Harding Powell. He +smiled a drawn smile. + +"Ah--if I could sleep----" he said. + +"That's the worst of it--his not sleeping," said Milly at the gate. + +"He will sleep. He will sleep," said Agatha. + +Milly sighed. She knew he wouldn't. + +The plan, she said, was no good after all. It wouldn't work. + + + + +CHAPTER THREE + + +How could it? There was nothing behind it. All Milly's plans had been +like that; they fell to dust; they _were_ dust. They had been always +that pitiful, desperate stirring of the dust to hide the terror, the +futile throwing of the dust in the poor thing's eyes. As if he couldn't +see through it. As if, with the supernatural lucidity, the invincible +cunning of the insane, he didn't see through anything and provide for +it. It was really only his indestructible urbanity, persisting through +the wreck of him, that bore, tolerantly, temperately, with Milly and her +plans. Without it he might be dangerous. With it, as long as it lasted, +little Milly, plan as she would, was safe. + +But they couldn't count on its lasting. Agatha had realised that from +the moment when she had seen him draw down the blind again after his +wife had drawn it up. That was the maddest thing he had done yet. She +had shuddered at it as at an act of violence. It outraged, cruelly, his +exquisite quality. It was so unlike him. + +She was not sure that Milly hadn't even made things worse by her latest +plan, the flight to Sarratt End. It emphasised the fact that they were +flying, that they had to fly. It had brought her to the house with the +drawn blinds in the closed, barred valley, to the end of the world, to +the end of her tether. And when she realised that it _was_ the end--when +he realised it ... + +Agatha couldn't leave him there. She couldn't (when she had the secret) +leave him to poor Milly and her plans. That had been in her mind when +she had insisted on it that he would sleep. + +She knew what Milly meant by her sigh and the look she gave her. If +Milly could have been impolite, she would have told her that it was all +very well to say so, but how were they going to make him? And she too +felt that something more was required of her than that irritating +affirmation. She had got to make him. His case, his piteous case, cried +out for an extension of the gift. + +She hadn't any doubt as to its working. There were things she didn't +know about it yet, but she was sure of that. She had proved it by a +hundred experimental intermissions, abstentions, and recoveries. In +order to be sure you had only to let go and see how you got on without +it. She had tried in that way, with scepticism and precaution, on +herself. + +But not in the beginning. She could not say that she had tried it in the +beginning at all, even on herself. It had simply come to her, as she put +it, by a divine accident. Heaven knew she had needed it. She had been, +like Rodney Lanyon, on the verge, where he, poor dear, had brought her; +so impossible had it been then to bear her knowledge and, what was +worse, her divination of the things he bore from Bella. It was her +divination, her compassion, that had wrecked her as she stood aside, cut +off from him, he on the verge and she near it, looking on, powerless to +help while Bella tore at him. Talk of the verge, the wonder was they +hadn't gone clean over it, both of them. + +She couldn't say then from what region, what tract of unexplored, +incredible mystery her help had come. It came one day, one night when +she was at her worst. She remembered how with some resurgent, ultimate +instinct of surrender she had sunk on the floor of her room, flung out +her arms across the bed in the supreme gesture of supplication, and thus +gone, eyes shut and with no motion of thought or sense in her, clean +into the blackness where, as if it had been waiting for her, the thing +had found her. + +It had found her. Agatha was precise on that point. She had not found +it. She had not even stumbled on it, blundered up against it in the +blackness. The way it worked, the wonder of her instantaneous well-being +had been the first, the very first hint she had that it was there. + +She had never quite recaptured her primal, virgin sense of it; but, to +set against that, she had entered more and more into possession. She +had found out the secret of its working and had controlled it, reduced +it to an almost intelligible method. You could think of it as a current +of transcendent power, hitherto mysteriously inhibited. You made the +connection, having cut off all other currents that interfered, and then +you simply turned it on. In other words, if you could put it into words +at all, you shut your eyes and ears, you closed up the sense of touch, +you made everything dark around you and withdrew into your innermost +self; you burrowed deep into the darkness there till you got beyond it; +you tapped the Power as it were underground at any point you pleased and +turned it on in any direction. + +She could turn it on to Harding Powell without any loss to Rodney +Lanyon; for it was immeasurable, inexhaustible. + +She looked back at the farm-house with its veiled windows. Formless and +immense, the shadow of Harding Powell swayed uneasily on one of the +yellow blinds. Across the field her own house showed pure and dim +against the darkening slope behind it, showed a washed and watered white +in the liquid, lucid twilight. Her house was open always and on every +side; it flung out its casement arms to the night and to the day. And +now all the lamps were lit, every doorway was a golden shaft, every +window a golden square; the whiteness of its walls quivered and the +blurred edges flowed into the dark of the garden. It was the fragile +shell of a sacred and a burning light. + +She did not go in all at once. She crossed the river and went up the +hill through the beech-wood. She walked there every evening in the +darkness, calling her thoughts home to sleep. The Easter moon, +golden-white and holy, looked down at her, shrined under the long sharp +arch of the beech-trees; it was like going up and up towards a dim +sanctuary where the holiest sat enthroned. A sense of consecration was +upon her. It came, solemn and pure and still, out of the tumult of her +tenderness and pity; but it was too awful for pity and for tenderness; +it aspired like a flame and lost itself in light; it grew like a wave +till it was vaster than any tenderness or any pity. It was as if her +heart rose on the swell of it and was carried away into a rhythm so +tremendous that her own pulses of compassion were no longer felt, or +felt only as the hushed and delicate vibration of the wave. She +recognised her state. It was the blessed state desired as the condition +of the working of the gift. + +She turned when the last arch of the beech-trees broke and opened to the +sky at the top of the hill, where the moon hung in immensity, free of +her hill, free of the shrine that held her. She went down with slow +soft footsteps as if she carried herself, her whole fragile being, as a +vessel, a crystal vessel for the holy thing, and was careful lest a +touch of the earth should jar and break her. + + + + +CHAPTER FOUR + + +She went still more gently and with half-shut eyes through her +illuminated house. She turned the lights out in her room and undressed +herself in the darkness. She laid herself on the bed with straight lax +limbs, with arms held apart a little from her body, with eyelids shut +lightly on her eyes; all fleshly contacts were diminished. + +It was now as if her being drank at every pore the swimming darkness; as +if the rhythm of her heart and of her breath had ceased in the pulse of +its invasion. She sank in it and was covered with wave upon wave of +darkness. She sank and was upheld; she dissolved and was gathered +together again, a flawless crystal. She was herself the heart of the +charmed circle, poised in the ultimate unspeakable stillness, beyond +death, beyond birth, beyond the movements, the vehemences, the +agitations of the world. She drew Harding Powell into it and held him +there. + +To draw him to any purpose she had first to loosen and destroy the +fleshly, sinister image of him that, for the moment of evocation, hung +like a picture on the darkness. In a moment the fleshly image receded, +it sank back into the darkness. His name, Harding Powell, was now the +only earthly sign of him that she suffered to appear. In the third +moment his name was blotted out. And then it was as if she drew him by +intangible, supersensible threads; she touched, with no sense of peril, +his innermost essence; the walls of flesh were down between them; she +had got at him. + +And having got at him she held him, a bloodless spirit, a bodiless +essence, in the fount of healing. She said to herself, "He will sleep +now. He will sleep. He will sleep." And as she slid into her own sleep +she held and drew him with her. + +He would sleep; he would be all right as long as _she_ slept. Her sleep, +she had discovered, did more than carry on the amazing act of communion +and redemption. It clinched it. It was the seal on the bond. + +Early the next morning she went over to the Farm. The blinds were up; +the doors and windows were flung open. Milly met her at the garden gate. +She stopped her and walked a little way with her across the field. "It's +worked," she said. "It's worked after all, like magic." + +For a moment Agatha wondered whether Milly had guessed anything; whether +she divined the Secret and had brought him there for that, and had +refused to acknowledge it before she knew. + +"What has?" she asked. + +"The plan. The place. He slept last night. Ten hours straight on end. I +know, for I stayed awake and watched him. And this morning--oh, my dear, +if you could see him! He's all right. He's all right." + +"And you think," said Agatha, "it's the place?" + +Milly knew nothing, guessed, divined nothing. + +"Why, what else can it be?" she said. + +"What does _he_ think?" + +"He doesn't think. He can't account for it. He says himself it's +miraculous." + +"Perhaps," said Agatha, "it is." + +They were silent a moment over the wonder of it. + +"I can't get over it," said Milly, presently. "It's so odd that it +should make all that difference. I could understand it if it had worked +that way at first. But it didn't. Think of him yesterday. And yet--if it +isn't the place, what is it? What is it?" + +Agatha did not answer. She wasn't going to tell Milly what it was. If +she did Milly wouldn't believe her, and Milly's unbelief might work +against it. It might prove, for all she knew, an inimical, disastrous +power. + +"Come and see for yourself." Milly spoke as if it had been Agatha who +doubted. + +They turned again towards the house. Powell had come out and was in the +garden, leaning on the gate. They could see how right he was by the mere +fact of his being there, presenting himself like that to the vivid +light. + +He opened the gate for them, raising his hat and smiling as they came. +His face witnessed to the wonder worked on him. The colour showed clean, +purged of his taint. His eyes were candid and pure under brows smoothed +by sleep. + +As they went in he stood for a moment in the open doorway and looked at +the view, admiring the river and the green valley, and the bare upland +fields under the wood. He had always had (it was part of his rare +quality) a prodigious capacity for admiration. + +"My God," he said, "how beautiful the world is!" + +He looked at Milly. "And all _that_ isn't a patch on my wife." + +He looked at her with tenderness and admiration, and the look was the +flower, the perfection of his sanity. + +Milly drew in her breath with a little sound like a sob. Her joy was so +great that it was almost unbearable. + +Then he looked at Agatha and admired the green gown she wore. "You don't +know," he said, "how exquisitely right you are." + +She smiled. She knew how exquisitely right _he_ was. + + + + +CHAPTER FIVE + + +Night after night she continued, and without an effort. It was as easy +as drawing your breath; it was indeed the breath you drew. She found +that she had no longer to devote hours to Harding Powell, any more than +she gave hours to Rodney; she could do his business in moments, in +points of inappreciable time. It was as if from night to night the times +swung together and made one enduring timeless time. For the process +belonged to a region that was not of times or time. + +She wasn't afraid, then, of not giving enough time to it, but she _was_ +afraid of omitting it altogether. She knew that every intermission +would be followed by a relapse, and Harding's state did not admit of any +relapses. + +Of course, if time _had_ counted, if the thing was measurable, she would +have been afraid of losing hold of Rodney Lanyon. She held him now by a +single slender thread, and the thread was Bella. She "worked" it +regularly now through Bella. He was bound to be all right as long as +Bella was; for his possibilities of suffering were thus cut off at their +source. Besides, it was the only way to preserve the purity of her +intention, the flawlessness of the crystal. + +That was the blessedness of her attitude to Harding Powell. It was +passionless, impersonal. She wanted nothing of Harding Powell except to +help him, and to help Milly, dear little Milly. And never before had she +been given so complete, so overwhelming a sense of having helped. It was +nothing--unless it was a safeguard against vanity--that they didn't +know it, that they persisted in thinking that it was Milly's plan that +worked. + +Not that that altogether accounted for it to Harding Powell. He said so +at last to Agatha. + +They were returning, he and she, by the edge of the wood at the top of +the steep field after a long walk. He had asked her to go with him--it +was her country--for a good stretch, further than Milly's little feet +could carry her. They stood a moment up there and looked around them. +April was coming on, but the ploughed land at their feet was still bare; +the earth waited. On that side of the valley she was delicately +unfruitful, spent with rearing the fine, thin beauty of the woods. But, +down below, the valley ran over with young grass and poured it to the +river in wave after wave, till the last surge of green rounded over the +water's edge. Rain had fallen in the night, and the river had risen; it +rested there, poised. It was wonderful how a thing so brimming, so +shining, so alive could be so still; still as marsh water, flat to the +flat land. + +At that moment, in a flash that came like a shifting of her eyes, the +world she looked at suffered a change. + +And yet it did not change. All the appearances of things, their colours, +the movement and the stillness remained as if constant in their rhythm +and their scale; but they were heightened, intensified; they were +carried to a pitch that would have been vehement, vibrant, but that the +stillness as well as the movement was intense. She was not dazzled by it +or confused in any way. Her senses were exalted, adjusted to the pitch. + +She would have said now that the earth at her feet had become +insubstantial, but that she knew, in her flash, that what she saw was +the very substance of the visible world; live and subtle as flame; solid +as crystal and as clean. It was the same world, flat field for flat +field and hill for hill; but radiant, vibrant, and, as it were, +infinitely transparent. + +Agatha in her moment saw that the whole world brimmed and shone and was +alive with the joy that was its life, joy that flowed flood-high and yet +was still. In every leaf, in every blade of grass, this life was +manifest as a strange, a divine translucence. She was about to point it +out to the man at her side when she remembered that he had eyes for the +beauty of the earth, but no sense of its secret and supernatural light. +Harding Powell denied, he always had denied the supernatural. And when +she turned to him her vision had passed from her. + +They must have another tramp some day, he said. He wanted to see more +of this wonderful place. And then he spoke of his recovery. + +"It's all very well," he said, "but I can't account for it. Milly says +it's the place." + +"It _is_ a wonderful place," said Agatha. + +"Not so wonderful as all that. You saw how I was the day after we came. +Well--it can't be the place altogether." + +"I rather hope it isn't," Agatha said. + +"Do you? What do you think it is, then?" + +"I think it's something in you." + +"Of course, of course. But what started it? That's what I want to know. +Something's happened. Something queer and spontaneous and unaccountable. +It's--it's uncanny. For, you know, I oughtn't to feel like this. I got +bad news this morning." + +"Bad news?" + +"Yes. My sister's little girl is very ill. They think it's meningitis. +They're in awful trouble. And _I_--_I_'m feeling like this." + +"Don't let it distress you." + +"It doesn't distress me. It only puzzles me. That's the odd thing. Of +course, I'm sorry and I'm anxious and all that; but I _feel_ so well." + +"You _are_ well. Don't be morbid." + +"I haven't told my wife yet. About the child, I mean. I simply daren't. +It'll frighten her. She won't know how I'll take it, and she'll think +it'll make me go all queer again." + +He paused and turned to her. + +"I say, if she _did_ know how I'm taking it, she'd think _that_ awfully +queer, wouldn't she?" He paused. + +"The worst of it is," he said, "I've got to tell her." + +"Will you leave it to me?" Agatha said. "I think I can make it all +right." + +"How?" he queried. + +"Never mind how. I can." + +"Well," he assented, "there's hardly anything you can't do." + +That was how she came to tell Milly. + +She made up her mind to tell her that evening as they sat alone in +Agatha's house. Harding, Milly said, was happy over there with his +books; just as he used to be, only more so. So much more so that she was +a little disturbed about it. She was afraid it wouldn't last. And again +she said it was the place, the wonderful, wonderful place. + +"If you want it to last," Agatha said, "don't go on thinking it's the +place." + +"Why shouldn't it be? I feel that he's safe here. He's out of it. Things +can't reach him." + +"Bad news reached him to-day." + +"Aggy--what?" Milly whispered in her fright. + +"His sister is very anxious about her little girl." + +"What's wrong?" + +Agatha repeated what she had heard from Harding Powell. + +"Oh----" Milly was dumb for an instant while she thought of her +sister-in-law. Then she cried aloud. + +"If the child dies it will make him ill again!" + +"No Milly, it won't." + +"It will, I tell you. It's always been that sort of thing that does it." + +"And supposing there was something that keeps it off?" + +"What is there? What is there?" + +"I believe there's something. Would you mind awfully if it wasn't the +place?" + +"What do you mean, Agatha?" (There was a faint resentment in Milly's +agonised tone.) + +It was then that Agatha told her. She made it out for her as far as she +had made it out at all, with the diffidence that a decent attitude +required. + +Milly raised doubts which subsided in a kind of awe when Agatha faced +her with the evidence of dates. + +"You remember, Milly, the night when he slept." + +"I do remember. He said himself it was miraculous." + +She meditated. + +"And so you think it's that?" she said presently. + +"I do indeed. If I dared leave off (I daren't) you'd see for yourself." + +"What do you think you've got hold of?" + +"I don't know yet." + +There was a long deep silence which Milly broke. + +"What do you _do_?" she said. + +"I don't do anything. It isn't me." + +"I see," said Milly. "_I_'ve prayed. You didn't think I hadn't." + +"It's not that--not anything you mean by it. And yet it is; only it's +more, much more. I can't explain it. I only know it isn't me." + +She was beginning to feel vaguely uncomfortable about having told her. + +"And Milly, you mustn't tell him. Promise me you won't tell him." + +"No, I won't tell him." + +"Because you see, he'd think it was all rot." + +"He would," said Milly. "It's the sort of thing he does think rot." + +"And that might prevent its working." + +Milly smiled faintly. "I haven't the ghost of an idea what 'it' is. But +whatever it is, can you go on doing it?" + +"Yes, I think so. You see, it depends rather----" + +"It depends on what?" + +"Oh, on a lot of things--on your sincerity; on your--your purity. It +depends so much on _that_ that it frightens you lest, perhaps, you +mightn't, after all, be so very pure." + +Milly smiled again, a little differently. "Darling, if that's all, I'm +not frightened. Only--supposing--supposing you gave out? You might, you +know." + +"_I_ might. But It couldn't. You mustn't think it's me, Milly. Because +if anything happened to me, if I did give out, don't you see how it +would let him down? It's as bad as thinking it's the place." + +"Does it matter what it is--or who it is," said Milly, passionately; "as +long as----" Her tears came and stopped her. + +Agatha divined the source of Milly's passion. + +"Then you don't mind, Milly? You'll let me go on?" + +Milly rose; she turned abruptly, holding her head high, so that she +might not spill her tears. + +Agatha went with her over the grey field towards the Farm. They paused +at the gate. Milly spoke. + +"Are you sure?" she said. + +"Certain." + +"And you won't leave go?" Her eyes shone towards her friend's in the +twilight. "You _will_ go on?" + +"_You_ must go on." + +"Ah--how?" + +"Believing that he'll be all right." + +"Oh, Aggy, he was devoted to Winny. And if the child dies----" + + + + +CHAPTER SIX + + +The child died three days later. Milly came over to Agatha with the +news. + +She said it had been an awful shock, of course. She'd been dreading +something like that for him. But he'd taken it wonderfully. If he came +out of it all right she _would_ believe in what she called Agatha's +"thing." + +He did come out of it all right. His behaviour was the crowning proof, +if Milly wanted more proof, of his sanity. He went up to London and made +all the arrangements for his sister. When he returned he forestalled +Milly's specious consolations with the truth. It was better, he told +her, that the dear little girl should have died, for there was distinct +brain trouble anyway. He took it as a sane man takes a terrible +alternative. + +Weeks passed. He had grown accustomed to his own sanity and no longer +marvelled at it. + +And still without intermission Agatha went on. She had been so far +affected by Milly's fright (that was the worst of Milly's knowing) that +she held on to Harding Powell with a slightly exaggerated intensity. She +even began to give more and more time to him, she who had made out that +time in this process did not matter. She was afraid of letting go, +because the consequences (Milly was perpetually reminding her of the +consequences) of letting go would be awful. + +For Milly kept her at it. Milly urged her on. Milly, in Milly's own +words, sustained her. She praised her; she praised the Secret, praised +the Power. She said you could see how it worked. It was tremendous; it +was inexhaustible. Milly, familiarised with its working, had become a +fanatical believer in the Power. But she had her own theory. She knew of +course that they were all, she and Agatha and poor Harding, dependent on +the Power, that it was the Power that did it, and not Agatha. But Agatha +was _their_ one link with it, and if the link gave way where were they? +Agatha felt that Milly watched her and waylaid her; that she was +suspicious of failures and of intermissions; that she wondered; that she +peered and pried. Milly would, if she could, have stuck her fingers into +what she called the machinery of the thing. Its vagueness baffled and +even annoyed her, for her mind was limited; it loved and was at home +with limits; it desired above all things precise ideas, names, phrases, +anything that constricted and defined. + +But still, with it all, she believed; and the great thing was that Milly +_should_ believe. She might have worked havoc if, with her temperament, +she had doubted. + +What did suffer was the fine poise with which she, Agatha, had held +Rodney Lanyon and Harding Powell each by his own thread. Milly had +compelled her to spin a stronger thread for Harding and, as it were, to +multiply her threads, so as to hold him at all points. And because of +this, because of giving more and more time to him, she could not always +loose him from her and let him go. And she was afraid lest the pull he +had on her might weaken Rodney's thread. + +Up till now, the Powells' third week at Sarratt End, she had had the +assurance that his thread still held. She heard from him that Bella was +all right, which meant that he too was all right, for there had never +been anything wrong with him _but_ Bella. And she had a further glimpse +of the way the gift worked its wonders. + +Three Fridays had passed, and he had not come. + +Well--she had meant that; she had tried (on that last Friday of his), +with a crystal sincerity, to hold him back so that he should not come. +And up till now, with an ease that simply amazed her, she had kept +herself at the highest pitch of her sincere and beautiful intention. + +Not that it was the intention that had failed her now. It had succeeded +so beautifully, so perfectly, that he had no need to come at all. She +had given Bella back to him. She had given him back to Bella. Only, she +faced the full perfection of her work. She had brought it to so fine a +point that she would never see him again; she had gone to the root of +it; she had taken from him the desire to see her. And now it was as if +subtly, insidiously, her relation to him had become inverted. Whereas +hitherto it had been she who had been necessary to him, it seemed now +that he was far more, beyond all comparison more necessary to her. After +all, Rodney had had Bella; and she had nobody but Rodney. He was the one +solitary thing she cared for. And hitherto it had not mattered so +immensely, for all her caring, whether he came to her or not. Seeing him +had been perhaps a small mortal joy; but it had not been the tremendous +and essential thing. She had been contented, satisfied beyond all mortal +contentments and satisfactions, with the intangible, immaterial tie. Now +she longed, with an unendurable longing, for his visible, bodily +presence. She had not realised her joy as long as it was with her; she +had refused to acknowledge it because of its mortal quality, and it had +raised no cry that troubled her abiding spiritual calm. But now that +she had put it from her, it thrust itself on her, it cried, it clung +piteously to her and would not let her go. She looked back to the last +year, her year of Fridays, and saw it following her, following and +entreating. She looked forward and she saw Friday after Friday coming +upon her, a procession of pitiless days, trampling it down, her small, +piteous mortal joy, and her mortality rose in her and revolted. She had +been disturbed by what she had called the "lurking possibilities" in +Rodney; they were nothing to the lurking possibilities in her. + +There were moments when her desire to see Rodney sickened her with its +importunity. Each time she beat it back, in an instant, to its burrow +below the threshold, and it hid there, it ran underground. There were +ways below the threshold by which desire could get at him. Therefore, +one night--Tuesday of the fourth week--she cut him off. She refused to +hold him even by a thread. It was Bella and Bella only that she held +now. + +On Friday of that week she heard from him. Bella was still all right. +But _he_ wasn't. Anything but. He didn't know what was the matter with +him. He supposed it was the same old thing again. He couldn't think how +poor Bella stood him, but she did. It must be awfully bad for her. It +was beastly, wasn't it? that he should have got like that, just when +Bella was so well. + +She might have known it. She had in fact known. Having once held him, +and having healed him, she had no right--as long as the Power consented +to work through her--she had no right to let him go. + +She began again from the beginning, from the first process of +purification and surrender. But what followed was different now. She +had not only to recapture the crystal serenity, the holiness of that +state by which she had held Rodney Lanyon and had healed him; she had to +recover the poise by which she had held him and Harding Powell together. +And the effort to recover it became a striving, a struggle in which +Harding persisted and prevailed. Yes, there was no blinking it, he +prevailed. + +She had been prepared for it, but not as for a thing that could really +happen. It was contrary to all that she knew of the beneficent working +of the Power. She thought she knew all its ways, its silences, its +reassurances, its inexplicable reservations and evasions. She couldn't +be prepared for this--that it, the high and holy, the unspeakably pure +thing should allow Harding to prevail, should connive (that was what it +looked like) at his taking the gift into his own hands and turning it to +his own advantage against Rodney Lanyon. + +It was her fear at last that made her write to Rodney. She wrote in the +beginning of the fifth week (she was counting the weeks now). She only +wanted to know, she said, that he was better, that he was well. She +begged him to write and tell her that he was well. + +He did not write. + +And every night of that week, in those "states" of hers, Powell +prevailed. He was becoming almost a visible presence impressed upon the +blackness of the "state." All she could do then was to evoke the visible +image of Rodney Lanyon and place it there over Harding's image, +obliterating him. Now, properly speaking, the state, the perfection of +it, did not admit of visible presences, and that Harding could so +impress himself showed more than anything the extent to which he had +prevailed. + +He prevailed to such good purpose that he was now, Milly said, well +enough to go back to business. They were to leave Sarratt End in about +ten days, when they would have been there seven weeks. + +She had come over on the Sunday to let Agatha know that; and also, she +said, to make a confession. + +Milly's face, as she said it, was all candour. It had filled out; it had +bloomed in her happiness; it was shadowless, featureless almost, like a +flower. + +She had done what she said she wouldn't do; she had told Harding. + +"Oh Milly, what on earth did you do that for?" Agatha's voice was +strange. + +"I thought it better," Milly said, revealing the fine complacence of her +character. + +"Why better?" + +"Because secrecy is bad. And he was beginning to wonder. He wanted to go +back to business; and he wouldn't because he thought it was the place +that did it." + +"I see," said Agatha. "And what does he think it is now?" + +"He thinks it's _you_, dear." + +"But I told you--I told you--that was what you were not to think." + +"My dear, it's an immense concession that he should think it's you." + +"A concession to what?" + +"Well, I suppose, to the supernatural." + +"Milly, you shouldn't have told him. You don't know what harm you might +have done. I'm not sure even now that you have not done harm." + +"Oh, _have_ I!" said Milly, triumphantly. "You've only got to look at +him." + +"When did you tell him, then?" + +"I told him--let me see--it was a week ago last Friday." + +Agatha was silent. She wondered. It had been after Friday a week ago +that he had prevailed so terribly. + +"Agatha," said Milly, solemnly, "when we go away you won't lose sight of +him? You won't let go of him?" + +"You needn't be afraid. I doubt now if he will let go of me." + +"How do you mean--_now_?" Milly flushed slightly as a flower might +flush. + +"Now that you've told him, now that he thinks it's me." + +"Perhaps," said Milly, "that was why I told him. I don't want him to let +go." + + + + +CHAPTER SEVEN + + +It was the sixth week, and still Rodney did not write; and Agatha was +more and more afraid. + +By this time she had definitely connected her fear with Harding Powell's +dominion and persistence. She was certain now that what she could only +call his importunity had proved somehow disastrous to Rodney Lanyon. And +with it all, unacknowledged, beaten back, her desire to see Rodney ran +to and fro in the burrows underground. + +He did not write, but on the Friday of that week, the sixth week, he +came. + +She saw him coming up the garden path and she shrank back into her +room; but the light searched her and found her, and he saw her there. He +never knocked; he came straight and swiftly to her through the open +doors. He shut the door of the room behind him and held her by her arms +with both his hands. + +"Rodney," she said, "did you mean to come, or did I make you?" + +"I meant to come. You couldn't make me." + +"Couldn't I? Oh _say_ I couldn't." + +"You could," he said, "but you didn't. And what does it matter so long +as I'm here?" + +"Let me look at you." + +She held him at arm's length and turned him to the light. It showed his +face white, worn as it used to be, all the little lines of worry back +again, and two new ones that drew down the corners of his mouth. + +"You've been ill," she said. "You _are_ ill." + +"No. I'm all right. What's the matter with _you_?" + +"With me? Nothing. Do I look as if anything was wrong?" + +"You look as if you'd been frightened." + +He paused, considering it. + +"This place isn't good for you. You oughtn't to be here like this, all +by yourself." + +"Oh! Rodney, it's the dearest place. I love every inch of it. Besides, +I'm not altogether by myself." + +He did not seem to hear her; and what he said next arose evidently out +of his own thoughts. + +"I say, are those Powells still here?" + +"They've been here all the time." + +"Do you see much of them?" + +"I see them every day. Sometimes nearly all day." + +"That accounts for it." + +Again he paused. + +"It's my fault, Agatha. I shouldn't have left you to them. I knew." + +"What did you know?" + +"Well--the state he was in, and the effect it would have on you--that it +would have on any one." + +"It's all right. He's going. Besides, he isn't in a state any more. He's +cured." + +"Cured? What's cured him?" + +She evaded him. + +"He's been well ever since he came; absolutely well after the first +day." + +"Still, you've been frightened; you've been worrying; you've had some +shock or other, or some strain. What is it?" + +"Nothing. Only--just the last week--I've been a little frightened about +you--when you wouldn't write to me. Why didn't you?" + +"Because I couldn't." + +"Then you _were_ ill." + +"I'm all right. I know what's the matter with me." + +"It's Bella?" + +He laughed harshly. + +"No, it isn't this time. I haven't that excuse." + +"Excuse for what?" + +"For coming. Bella's all right. Bella's a perfect angel. God knows +what's happened to her. I don't. _I_ haven't had anything to do with +it." + +"You had. You had everything. You were an angel, too." + +"I haven't been much of an angel lately, I can tell you." + +"She'll understand. She does understand." + +They had sat down on the couch in the corner so that they faced each +other. Agatha faced him, but fear was in her eyes. + +"It doesn't matter," he said, "whether she understands or not. I don't +want to talk about her." + +Agatha said nothing, but there was a movement in her face, a white wave +of trouble, and the fear fluttered in her eyes. He saw it there. + +"You needn't bother about Bella. She's all right. You see, it's not as +if she cared." + +"Cared?" + +"About _me_ much." + +"But she does, she does care!" + +"I suppose she did once, or she couldn't have married me. But she +doesn't now. You see--you may as well know it, Agatha--there's another +man." + +"Oh, Rodney, no." + +"Yes. It's been perfectly all right, you know; but there he is and +there he's been for years. She told me. I'm awfully sorry for her." + +He paused. + +"What beats me is her being so angelic now, when she doesn't care." + +"Rodney, she does. It's all over, like an illness. It's you she cares +for _now_." + +"Think so?" + +"I'm sure of it." + +"I'm not." + +"You will be. You'll see it. You'll see it soon." + +He glanced at her under his bent brows. + +"I don't know," he said, "that I want to see it. _That_ isn't what's the +matter with me. You don't understand the situation. It isn't all over. +She's only being good about it. She doesn't care a rap about me. She +_can't_. And what's more I don't want her to." + +"You--don't--want her to?" + +He burst out. "My God, I want nothing in this world but _you_. And I +can't have you. That's what's the matter with me." + +"No, no, it isn't," she cried. "You don't know." + +"I do know. It's hurting me. And----" he looked at her and his voice +shook--"it's hurting _you_. I won't have you hurt." + +He started forward suddenly as if he would have taken her in his arms. +She put up her hands to keep him off. + +"No, no!" she cried. "I'm all right. I'm all right. It isn't that. You +mustn't think it." + +"I know it. That's why I came." + +He came near again. He seized her struggling hands. + +"Agatha, why can't we? Why shouldn't we?" + +"No, no," she moaned. "We can't. We mustn't. Not _that_ way. I don't +want it, Rodney, that way." + +"It shall be any way you like. Only don't beat me off." + +"I'm not--beating--you--off." + +She stood up. Her face changed suddenly. + +"Rodney--I forgot. They're coming." + +"Who are they?" + +"The Powells. They're coming to lunch." + +"Can't you put them off?" + +"I can, but it wouldn't be very wise, dear. They might think----" + +"Confound them--they _would_ think." + +He was pulling himself visibly together. + +"I'm afraid, Aggy, I ought----" + +"I know--you must. You must go soon." He looked at his watch. + +"I must go _now_, dear. I daren't stay. It's dangerous." + +"I know," she whispered. + +"But when is the brute going?" + +"Poor darling, he's going next week--next Thursday." + +"Well then, I'll--I'll----" + +"Please, you must go." + +"I'm going." + +She held out her hand. + +"I daren't touch you," he whispered. "I'm going now. But I'll come again +next Friday, and I'll stay." + +As she saw his drawn face there was not any strength in her to say +"No." + + + + +CHAPTER EIGHT + + +He had gone. She gathered herself together and went across the field to +meet the Powells as if nothing had happened. + +Milly and her husband were standing at the gate of the Farm. They were +watching; yes, they were watching Rodney Lanyon as he crossed the river +by the Farm bridge which led up the hill by the field path that slanted +to the farther and western end of the wood. Their attitude showed that +they were interested in his brief appearance on the scene, and that they +wondered what he had been doing there. And as she approached them she +was aware of something cold, ominous, and inimical, that came from +them, and set towards her and passed by. Her sense of it only lasted for +a second, and was gone so completely that she could hardly realise that +she had ever felt it. + +For they were charming to her. Harding, indeed, was more perfect in his +beautiful quality than ever. There was something about him moreover that +she had not been prepared for, something strange and pathetic, humble +almost and appealing. She saw it in his eyes, his large, dark, wild +animal eyes, chiefly. But it was a look that claimed as much as it +deprecated; that assumed between them some unspoken communion and +understanding. With all its pathos it was a look that frightened her. +Neither he nor his wife said a word about Rodney Lanyon. She was not +even sure, now, that they had recognised him. + +They stayed with her all that afternoon; for their time, they said, was +getting short; and when, about six o'clock, Milly got up to go she took +Agatha aside and said that, if Agatha didn't mind, she would leave +Harding with her for a little while. She knew he wanted to talk to her. + +Agatha proposed that they should walk up the hill through the wood. They +went in a curious silence and constraint; and it was not until they had +got into the wood and were shut up in it together that he spoke. + +"I think my wife told you that I had something to say to you?" + +"Yes, Harding," she said; "what is it?" + +"Well, it's this--first of all I want to thank you. I know what you're +doing for me." + +"I'm sorry. I didn't want you to know. I thought Milly wasn't going to +tell you." + +"She didn't tell me." + +Agatha said nothing. She was bound to accept his statement. Of course, +he must have known that Milly had broken her word, and he was trying to +shield her. + +"I mean," he went on, "that whether she told me or not, it's no matter. +I knew." + +"You--knew?" + +"I knew that something was happening, and I knew that it wasn't the +place. Places never make any difference. I only go to 'em because Milly +thinks they do. Besides, if it came to that, this place--from my +peculiar point of view, mind you--was simply beastly. I couldn't have +stood another night of it." + +"Well." + +"Well, the thing went; and I got all right. And the queer part of it is +that I felt as if you were in it somehow, as if you'd done something. I +half hoped you might say something, but you never did." + +"One ought not to speak about these things, Harding. And I told you I +didn't want you to know." + +"I didn't know what you did. I don't know now, though Milly tried to +tell me. But I felt you. I felt you all the time." + +"It was not I you felt. I implore you not to think it was." + +"What can I think?" + +"Think as I do; think--think----" She stopped herself. She was aware of +the futility of her charge to this man who denied, who always had +denied, the supernatural. + +"It isn't a question of thinking," she said at last. + +"Of believing, then? Are you going to tell me to believe?" + +"No; it isn't believing either. It's knowing. Either you know it or you +don't know, though you may come to know. But whatever you think, you +mustn't think it's me." + +"I rather like to. Why shouldn't I?" + +She turned on him her grave white face, and he noticed a curious +expression there as of incipient terror. + +"Because you might do some great harm either to yourself or----" + +His delicate, sceptical eyebrows questioned her. + +"Or me." + +"You?" he murmured gently, pitifully almost. + +"Yes, me. Or even--well, one doesn't quite know where the harm might +end. If I could only make you take another view. I tried to make you--to +work it that way--so that you might find the secret and do it for +yourself." + +"I can't do anything for myself. But, Agatha, I'll take any view you +like of it, so long as you'll keep on at me." + +"Of course I'll keep on." + +At that he stopped suddenly in his path, and faced her. + +"I say, you know, it isn't hurting you, is it?" + +She felt herself wince. "Hurting me? How could it hurt me?" + +"Milly said it couldn't." + +Agatha sighed. She said to herself, "Milly--if only Milly hadn't +interfered." + +"Don't you think it's cold here in the wood?" she said. + +"Cold?" + +"Yes. Let's go back." + +As they went Milly met them at the Farm bridge. She wanted Agatha to +come and stay for supper; she pressed, she pleaded, and Agatha, who had +never yet withstood Milly's pleading, stayed. + +It was from that evening that she really dated it, the thing that came +upon her. She was aware that in staying she disobeyed an instinct that +told her to go home. Otherwise she could not say that she had any sort +of premonition. Supper was laid in the long room with the yellow blinds, +where she had first found Harding Powell. The blinds were down to-night, +and the lamp on the table burnt low; the oil had given out. The light in +the room was still daylight and came level from the sunset, leaking +through the yellow blinds. It struck Agatha that it was the same light, +the same ochreish light that they had found in the room six weeks ago. +But that was nothing. + +What it was she did not know. The horrible light went when the flame of +the lamp burnt clearer. Harding was talking to her cheerfully and Milly +was smiling at them both, when half through the meal Agatha got up and +declared that she must go. She was ill; she was tired; they must +forgive her, but she must go. + +The Powells rose and stood by her, close to her, in their distress. +Milly brought wine and put it to her lips; but she turned her head away +and whispered, "Please let me go. Let me get away." + +Harding wanted to walk back with her, but she refused with a vehemence +that deterred him. + +"How very odd of her," said Milly, as they stood at the gate and watched +her go. She was walking fast, almost running, with a furtive step, as if +something pursued her. + +Powell did not speak. He turned from his wife and went slowly back into +the house. + + + + +CHAPTER NINE + + +She knew now what had happened to her. She _was_ afraid of Harding +Powell; and it was her fear that had cried to her to go, to get away +from him. + +The awful thing was that she knew she could not get away from him. She +had only to close her eyes and she would find the visible image of him +hanging before her on the wall of darkness. And to-night, when she tried +to cover it with Rodney's it was no longer obliterated. Rodney's image +had worn thin and Harding's showed through. She was more afraid of it +than she had been of Harding; and, more than anything, she was afraid +of being afraid. Harding was the object of a boundless and +indestructible compassion, and her fear of him was hateful to her and +unholy. She knew that it would be terrible to let it follow her into +that darkness where she would presently go down with him alone. "It +would be all right," she said to herself, "if only I didn't keep on +seeing him." + +But he, his visible image, and her fear of it, persisted even while the +interior darkness, the divine, beneficent darkness rose round her, wave +on wave, and flooded her; even while she held him there and healed him; +even while it still seemed to her that her love pierced through her fear +and gathered to her, spirit to spirit, flame to pure flame, the +nameless, innermost essence of Rodney and of Bella. She had known in the +beginning that it was by love that she held them; but now, though she +loved Rodney and had almost lost her pity for Harding in her fear of +him, it was Harding rather than Rodney that she held. + +In the morning she woke with a sense, which was almost a memory, of +Harding having been in the room with her all night. She was tired, as if +she had had some long and unrestrained communion with him. + +She put away at once the fatigue that pressed on her (the gift still +"worked" in a flash for the effacing of bodily sensation). She told +herself that, after all, her fear had done no harm. Seldom in her +experience of the Power had she had so tremendous a sense of having got +through to it, of having "worked" it, of having held Harding under it +and healed him. For, when all was said and done, whether she had been +afraid of him or not, she had held him, she had never once let go. The +proof was that he still went sane, visibly, indubitably cured. + +All the same she felt that she could not go through another day like +yesterday. She could not see him. She wrote a letter to Milly. Since it +concerned Milly so profoundly it was well that Milly should be made to +understand. She hoped that Milly would forgive her if they didn't see +her for the next day or two. If she was to go on (she underlined it) she +must be left absolutely alone. It seemed unkind when they were going so +soon, but--Milly knew--it was impossible to exaggerate the importance of +what she had to do. + +Milly wrote back that of course she understood. It should be as Agatha +wished. Only (so Milly "sustained" her) Agatha must not allow herself to +doubt the Power. How could she when she saw what it had done for +Harding. If _she_ doubted, what could she expect of Harding? But of +course she must take care of her own dear self. If she failed--if she +gave way--what on earth would the poor darling do, now that he had +become dependent on her? + +She wrote as if it was Agatha's fault that he had become dependent; as +if Agatha had nothing, had nobody in the world to think of but Harding; +as if nobody, as if nothing in the world beside Harding mattered. And +Agatha found herself resenting Milly's view. As if to her anything in +the world mattered beside Rodney Lanyon. + +For three days she did not see the Powells. + + + + +CHAPTER TEN + + +The three nights passed as before, but with an increasing struggle and +fear. + +She knew, she knew what was happening. It was as if the walls of +personality were wearing thin, and through them she felt him trying to +get at her. + +She put the thought from her. It was absurd. It was insane. Such things +could not be. It was not in any region of such happenings that she held +him, but in the place of peace, the charmed circle, the flawless crystal +sphere. + +Still the thought persisted; and still, in spite of it, she held him, +she would not let him go. By her honour, and by her love for Milly she +was bound to hold him, even though she knew how terribly, how implacably +he prevailed. + +She was aware now that the persistence of his image on the blackness was +only a sign to her of his being there in his substance; in his supreme +innermost essence. It had obviously no relation to his bodily +appearance, since she had not seen him for three days. It tended more +and more to vanish, to give place to the shapeless, nameless, +all-pervading presence. And her fear of him became pervading, nameless +and shapeless too. + +Somehow it was always behind her now; it followed her from room to room +of her house; it drove her out of doors. It seemed to her that she went +before it with quick uncertain feet and a fluttering heart, aimless and +tormented as a leaf driven by a vague light wind. Sometimes it sent her +up the field towards the wood; sometimes it would compel her to go a +little way towards the Farm; and then it was as if it took her by the +shoulders and turned her back again towards her house. + +On the fourth day (which was Tuesday of the Powells' last week), she +determined to fight this fear. She could not defy it to the extent of +going on to the Farm where she might see Harding, but certainly she +would not suffer it to turn her from her hill-top. It was there that she +had always gone as the night fell, calling home her thoughts to sleep; +and it was there, seven weeks ago, that the moon, the golden-white and +holy moon, had led her to the consecration of her gift. She had returned +softly, seven weeks ago, carrying carefully her gift, as a fragile, +flawless crystal. Since then how recklessly she had held it! To what +jars and risks she had exposed the exquisite and sacred thing! + +She waited for her hour between sunset and twilight. It was perfect, +following a perfect day. Above the wood the sky had a violet lucidity, +purer than the day; below it the pale brown earth wore a violet haze, +and over that a web of green, woven of the sparse, thin blades of the +young wheat. There were two ways up the hill; one over her own bridge +across the river, that led her to the steep straight path through the +wood; one over the Farm bridge by the slanting path up the field. She +chose the wood. + +She paused on the bridge, and looked down the valley. She saw the +farm-house standing in the stillness that was its own secret and the +hour's. A strange, pale lamplight, lit too soon, showed in the windows +of the room she knew. The Powells would be sitting there at their +supper. + +She went on and came to the gate of the wood. It swung open on its +hinges, a sign to her that some time or other Harding Powell had passed +there. She paused and looked about her. Presently she saw Harding Powell +coming down the wood-path. + +He stopped. He had not yet seen her. He was looking up to the arch of +the beech-trees, where the green light still came through. She could see +by his attitude of quiet contemplation the sane and happy creature that +he was. He was sane, she knew. And yet, no; she could not really see him +as sane. It was her sanity, not his own that he walked in. Or else what +she saw was the empty shell of him. _He_ was in her. Hitherto it had +been in the darkness that she had felt him most, and her fear of him had +been chiefly fear of the invisible Harding, and of what he might do +there in the darkness. Now her fear, which had become almost hatred, was +transferred to his person. In the flesh, as in the spirit, he was +pursuing her. + +He had seen her now. He was making straight for her. And she turned and +ran round the eastern bend of the hill (a yard or so to the left of her) +and hid from him. From where she crouched at the edge of the wood she +saw him descend the lower slope to the river; by standing up and +advancing a little she could see him follow the river path on the nearer +side and cross by the Farm bridge. + +She was sure of all that. She was sure that it did not take her more +than twelve or fifteen minutes (for she had gone that way a hundred +times) to get back to the gate, to walk up the little wood, to cut +through it by a track in the undergrowth, and turn round the further and +western end of it. Thence she could either take the long path that +slanted across the field to the Farm bridge or keep to the upper ground +along a trail in the grass skirting the wood, and so reach home by the +short straight path and her own bridge. + +She decided on the short straight path as leading her farther from the +farm-house, where there could be no doubt that Harding Powell was now. +At the point she had reached, the jutting corner of the wood hid from +her the downward slope of the hill, and the flat land at its foot. + +As she turned the corner of the wood, she was brought suddenly in sight +of the valley. A hot wave swept over her brain, so strong that she +staggered as it passed. It was followed by a strange sensation of +physical sickness, that passed also. It was then as if what went through +her had charged her nerves of sight to a pitch of insane and horrible +sensibility. The green of the grass, and of the young corn, the very +colour of life, was violent and frightful. Not only was it abominable in +itself, it was a thing to be shuddered at, because of some still more +abominable significance it had. + +Agatha had known once, standing where she stood now, an exaltation of +sense that was ecstasy; when every leaf and every blade of grass shone +with a divine translucence; when every nerve in her thrilled, and her +whole being rang with the joy which is immanent in the life of things. + +What she experienced now (if she could have given any account of it) was +exaltation at the other end of the scale. It was horror and fear +unspeakable. Horror and fear immanent in the life of things. She saw the +world in a loathsome transparency; she saw it with the eye of a soul in +which no sense of the divine had ever been, of a soul that denied the +supernatural. It had been Harding Powell's soul, and it had become hers. + +Furiously, implacably, he was getting at her. + +Out of the wood and the hedges that bordered it there came sounds that +were horrible, because she knew them to be inaudible to any ear less +charged with insanity; small sounds of movement, of strange shiverings, +swarmings, crepitations; sounds of incessant, infinitely subtle urging, +of agony and recoil. Sounds they were of the invisible things unborn, +driven towards birth; sounds of the worm unborn, of things that creep +and writhe towards dissolution. She knew what she heard and saw. She +heard the stirring of the corruption that Life was; the young blades of +corn were frightful to her, for in them was the push, the passion of the +evil which was Life; the trees as they stretched out their arms and +threatened her were frightful with the terror which was Life. Down +there, in that gross green hot-bed, the earth teemed with the +abomination; and the river, livid, white, a monstrous thing, crawled, +dragging with it the very slime. + +All this she perceived in a flash, when she had turned the corner. It +sank into stillness and grew dim; she was aware of it only as the scene, +the region in which one thing, her terror, moved and hunted her. Among +sounds of the rustling of leaves, and the soft crush of grass, and the +whirring of little wings in fright, she heard it go; it went on the +other side of the hedge, a little way behind her as she skirted the +wood. She stood still to let it pass her, and she felt that it passed, +and that it stopped and waited. A terrified bird flew out of the hedge, +no further than a fledgling's flight in front of her. And in that place +it flew from she saw Harding Powell. + +He was crouching under the hedge as she had crouched when she had hidden +from him. His face was horrible, but not more horrible than the Terror +that had gone behind her; and she heard herself crying out to him, +"Harding! Harding!" appealing to him against the implacable, unseen +Pursuer. + +He had risen (she saw him rise), but as she called his name he became +insubstantial, and she saw a Thing, a nameless, unnameable, shapeless +Thing, proceeding from him. A brown, blurred Thing, transparent as dusk +is, that drifted on the air. It was torn and tormented, a fragment +parted and flung off from some immense and as yet invisible cloud of +horror. It drifted from her; it dissolved like smoke on the hillside; +and the Thing that had born and begotten it pursued her. + +She bowed under it, and turned from the edge of the wood, the horrible +place it had been born in; she ran before it headlong down the field, +trampling the young corn under her feet. As she ran she heard a voice in +the valley, a voice of amazement and entreaty, calling to her in a sort +of song. + +"What--are--you--running for--Aggy--Aggy?" + +It was Milly's voice that called. + +Then as she came, still headlong, to the river, she heard Harding's +voice saying something, she did not know what. She couldn't stop to +listen to him, or to consider how he came to be there in the valley, +when a minute ago she had seen him by the edge of the wood, up on the +very top of the hill. + +He was on the bridge--the Farm bridge--now. He held out his hand to +steady her as she came on over the swinging plank. + +She knew that he had led her to the other side, and that he was +standing there, still saying something, and that she answered. + +"Have you _no_ pity on me? Can't you let me go?" + +And then she broke from him and ran. + + + + +CHAPTER ELEVEN + + +She was awake all that night. Harding Powell and the horror begotten of +him had no pity; he would not let her go. Her gift, her secret, was +powerless now against the pursuer. + +She had a light burning in her room till morning, for she was afraid of +sleep. Those unlit roads down which, if she slept, the Thing would +surely hunt her, were ten times more terrible than the white-washed, +familiar room where it merely watched and waited. + +In the morning she found a letter on her breakfast-table, which the maid +said Mrs. Powell had left late last evening, after Agatha had gone to +bed. Milly wrote: "Dearest Agatha,--Of course I understand. But are we +_never_ going to see you again? What was the matter with you last night? +You terrified poor Harding.--Yours ever, M. P." + +Without knowing why, Agatha tore the letter into bits and burned them in +the flame of a candle. She watched them burn. + +"Of course," she said to herself, "that isn't sane of me." + +And when she had gone round her house and shut all the doors and locked +them, and drawn down the blinds in every closed window, and found +herself cowering over her fireless hearth, shuddering with fear, she +knew that, whether she were mad or not, there was madness in her. She +knew that her face in the glass (she had the courage to look at it) was +the face of an insane terror let loose. + +That she did know it, that there were moments--flashes--in which she +could contemplate her state and recognise it for what it was, showed +that there was still a trace of sanity in her. It was not her own +madness that possessed her. It was, or rather it had been, Harding +Powell's; she had taken it from him. That was what it meant--to take +away madness. + +There could be no doubt as to what had happened, nor as to the way of +its happening. The danger of it, utterly unforeseen, was part of the +very operation of the gift. In the process of getting at Harding to heal +him she had had to destroy not only the barriers of flesh and blood, but +those innermost walls of personality that divide and protect, +mercifully, one spirit from another. With the first thinning of the +walls Harding's insanity had leaked through to her, with the first +breach it had broken in. It had been transferred to her complete with +all its details, with its very gestures, in all the phases that it ran +through; Harding's premonitory fears and tremblings; Harding's exalted +sensibility; Harding's abominable vision of the world, that vision from +which the resplendent divinity had perished; Harding's flight before the +pursuing Terror. She was sitting now as Harding had sat when she found +him crouching over the hearth in that horrible room with the drawn +blinds. It seemed to her that to have a madness of your own would not be +so very horrible. It would be, after all, your own. It could not +possibly be one-half so horrible as this, to have somebody else's +madness put into you. + +The one thing by which she knew herself was the desire that no longer +ran underground, but emerged and appeared before her, lit by her lucid +flashes, naked and unashamed. + +She still knew her own. And there was something in her still that was +greater than the thing that inhabited her, the pursuer, the pursued, +who had rushed into her as his refuge, his sanctuary; and that was her +fear of him and of what he might do there. If her doors stood open to +him, they stood open to Bella and to Rodney Lanyon too. What else had +she been trying for, if it were not to break down in all three of them +the barriers of flesh and blood and to transmit the Power? In the +unthinkable sacrament to which she called them they had all three +partaken. And since the holy thing could suffer her to be thus +permeated, saturated with Harding Powell, was it to be supposed that she +could keep him to herself, that she would not pass him on to Rodney +Lanyon. + +It was not, after all, incredible. If he could get at her, of course he +could get, through her, at Rodney. + +That was the Terror of terrors, and it was her own. That it could +subsist together with that alien horror, that it remained supreme +beside it, proved that there was still some tract in her where the +invader had not yet penetrated. In her love for Rodney and her fear for +him she entrenched herself against the destroyer. There at least she +knew herself impregnable. + +It was in such a luminous flash that she saw the thing still in her own +hands, and resolved that it should cease. + +She would have to break her word to Milly. She would have to let Harding +go, to loosen deliberately his hold on her and cut him off. It could be +done. She had held him through her gift, and it would be still possible, +through the gift, to let him go. Of course she knew it would be hard. + +It _was_ hard. It was terrible; for he clung. She had not counted on his +clinging. It was as if, in their undivided substance, he had had +knowledge of her purpose and had prepared himself to fight it. He hung +on desperately; he refused to yield an inch of the ground he had taken +from her. He was no longer a passive thing in that world where she had +brought him. And he had certain advantages. He had possessed her for +three nights and for three days. She had made herself porous to him; and +her sleep had always been his opportunity. + +It took her three nights and three days to cast him out. In the first +night she struggled with him. She lay with all her senses hushed, and +brought the divine darkness round her, but in the darkness she was aware +that she struggled. She could build up the walls between them, but she +knew that as fast as she built them he tore at them and pulled them +down. + +She bore herself humbly towards the Power that permitted him. She +conceived of it as holiness estranged and offended; she pleaded with +it. She could no longer trust her knowledge of its working, but she +tried to come to terms with it. She offered herself as a propitiation, +as a substitute for Rodney Lanyon, if there was no other way by which he +might be saved. + +Apparently that was not the way it worked. Harding seemed to gain. But, +as he kept her awake all night, he had no chance to establish himself, +as he would otherwise have done, in her sleep. The odds between her and +her adversary were even. + +The second night _she_ gained. She felt that she had built up her walls +again; that she had cut Harding off. With spiritual pain, with the +tearing of the bonds of compassion, with a supreme agony of rupture, he +parted from her. + +Possibly the Power was neutral; for in the dawn after the second night +she slept. That sleep left her uncertain of the event. There was no +telling into what unguarded depths it might have carried her. She knew +that she had been free of her adversary before she slept, but the +chances were that he had got at her in her sleep. Since the Power held +the balance even between her and the invader, it would no doubt permit +him to enter by any loophole that he could seize. + +On the third night, as it were in the last watch, she surrendered, but +not to Harding Powell. + +She could not say how it came to her; she was lying in her bed with her +eyes shut and her arms held apart from her body, diminishing all +contacts, stripping for her long slide into the cleansing darkness, when +she found herself recalling some forgotten, yet inalienable knowledge +that she had. Something said to her: "Do you not remember? There is no +striving and no crying in the world which you would enter. There is no +more appeasing where peace _is_. You cannot make your own terms with the +high and holy Power. It is not enough to give yourself for Rodney +Lanyon, for he is more to you than you are yourself. Besides, any +substitution of self for self would be useless, for there is no more +self there. That is why the Power cannot work that way. But if it should +require you here, on this side the threshold, to give him up, to give up +your desire of him, what then? Would you loose your hold on him and let +him go?" + +"Would you?" the voice insisted. + +She heard herself answer from the pure threshold of the darkness, "I +would." + +Sleep came on her there; a divine sleep from beyond the threshold; +sacred, inviolate sleep. + +It was the seal upon the bond. + + + + +CHAPTER TWELVE + + +She woke on Friday morning to a vivid and indestructible certainty of +escape. + +But there had been a condition attached to her deliverance; and it was +borne in on her that instead of waiting for the Power to force its terms +on her, she would do well to be beforehand with it. Friday was Rodney's +day, and this time she knew that he would come. His coming, of course, +was nothing, but he had told her plainly that he would not go. She must +therefore wire to him not to come. + +In order to do this she had to get up early and walk about a mile to the +nearest village. She took the shortest way which was by the Farm bridge +and up the slanting path to the far end of the wood. She knew vaguely +that once, as she had turned the corner of the wood, there had been +horrors, and that the divine beauty of green pastures and still waters +had appeared to her as a valley of the shadow of evil, but she had no +more memory of what she had seen than of a foul dream, three nights +dead. She went at first uplifted in the joy of her deliverance, drawing +into her the light and fragrance of the young morning. Then she +remembered Harding Powell. She had noticed as she passed the Farm house +that the blinds were drawn again in all the windows. That was because +Harding and Milly were gone. She thought of Harding, of Milly, with an +immense tenderness and compassion, but also with lucidity, with sanity. +They had gone--yesterday--and she had not seen them. That could not be +helped. She had done all that was possible. She could not have seen +them as long as the least taint of Harding's malady remained with her. +And how could she have faced Milly after having broken her word to her? + +Not that she regretted even that, the breaking of her word, so sane was +she. She could conceive that, if it had not been for Rodney Lanyon, she +might have had the courage to have gone on. She might have considered +that she was bound to save Harding, even at the price of her own sanity, +since there _was_ her word to Milly. But it might be questioned whether +by holding on to him she would have kept it, whether she really could +have saved him that way. She was no more than a vehicle, a crystal +vessel for the inscrutable and secret power, and in destroying her +utterly Harding would have destroyed himself. You could not transmit the +Power through a broken crystal--why, not even through one that had a +flaw. + +There had been a flaw somewhere; so much was certain. And as she +searched now for the flaw, with her luminous sanity, she found it in her +fear. She knew, she had always known, the danger of taking fear and the +thought of fear with her into that world where to think was to will, and +to will was to create. But for the rest, she had tried to make herself +clear as crystal. And what could she do more than give up Rodney? + +As she set her face towards the village, she was sustained by a sacred +ardour, a sacrificial exaltation. But as she turned homewards across the +solitary fields, she realised the sadness, the desolation of the thing +she had accomplished. He would not come. Her message would reach him two +hours before the starting of the train he always came by. + +Across the village she saw her white house shining, and the windows of +his room (her study, which was always his room when he came); its +lattices were flung open as if it welcomed him. + +Something had happened there. + +Her maid was standing by the garden gate looking for her. As she +approached, the girl came over the field to meet her. She had an air of +warning her, of preparing her for something. + +It was Mrs. Powell, the maid said. She had come again; she was in there, +waiting for Miss Agatha. She wouldn't go away; she had gone straight in. +She was in an awful state. The maid thought it was something to do with +Mr. Powell. + +They had not gone, then. + +"If I were you, Miss," the maid was saying, "I wouldn't see her." + +"Of course I shall see her." + +She went at once into the room where Rodney might have been, where Milly +was. Milly rose from the corner where she sat averted. + +"Agatha," she said, "I had to come." + +Agatha kissed the white, suppliant face that Milly lifted. + +"I thought," she said, "you'd gone--yesterday." + +"We couldn't go. He--he's ill again." + +"Ill?" + +"Yes. Didn't you see the blinds down as you passed?" + +"I thought it was because you'd gone." + +"It's because that _thing_'s come back again." + +"When did it come, Milly?" + +"It's been coming for three days." + +Agatha drew in her breath with a pang. It was just three days since she +began to let him go. + +Milly went on. "And now he won't come out of the house. He says he's +being hunted. He's afraid of being seen, being found. He's in there--in +that room. He made me lock him in." + +They stared at each other and at the horror that their faces took and +gave back each to each. + +"Oh, Aggy----" Milly cried it out in her anguish. "You _will_ help him?" + +"I can't." Agatha heard her voice go dry in her throat. + +"You _can't_?" + +Agatha shook her head. + +"You mean you haven't, then?" + +"I haven't. I couldn't." + +"But you told me--you told me you were giving yourself up to it. You +said that was why you couldn't see us." + +"It _was_ why. Do sit down, Milly." + +They sat down, still staring at each other. Agatha faced the window, so +that the light ravaged her. + +Milly went on. "That was why I left you alone. I thought you were going +on. You said you wouldn't let him go; you promised me you'd keep on ..." + +"I did keep on, till ..." + +But Milly had only paused to hold down a sob. Her voice broke out again, +clear, harsh, accusing. + +"What were you doing all that time?" + +"Of course," said Agatha, "you're bound to think I let you down." + +"What am I to think?" + +"Milly--I asked you not to think it was me." + +"Of course I knew it was the Power, not you. But you had hold of it. You +did something. Something that other people can't do. You did it for one +night, and that night he was well. You kept on for six weeks and he was +well all that time. You leave off for three days--I know when you left +off--and he's ill again. And then you tell me that it isn't you. It _is_ +you; and if it's you you can't give him up. You can't stand by, Aggy, +and refuse to help him. You know what it was. How can you bear to let +him suffer? How can you?" + +"I can because I must." + +"And why must you?" + +Milly raised her head more in defiance than in supplication. + +"Because--I told you that I might give out. Well--I have given out." + +"You told me that the Power can't give out--that you've only got to hold +on to it--that it's no effort. I'm only asking you, Aggy, to hold on." + +"You don't know what you're asking." + +"I'm asking you only to do what you have done, to give five minutes in +the day to him. You said it was enough. Only five minutes. It isn't much +to ask." + +Agatha sighed. + +"What difference could it make to you--five minutes?" + +"You don't understand," said Agatha. + +"I do. I don't ask you to see him, or to bother with him; only to go on +as you were doing." + +"You don't understand. It isn't possible to explain it. I can't go on." + +"I see. You're tired, Aggy. Well--not now, not to-day. But later, when +you're rested, won't you?" + +"Oh, Milly, dear Milly, if I could ..." + +"You can. You will. I know you will ..." + +"No. You must understand it. Never again. Never again." + +"Never?" + +"Never." + +There was a long silence. At last Milly's voice crept through, strained +and thin, feebly argumentative, the voice of a thing defeated and yet +unconvinced. + +"I don't understand you, Agatha. You say it isn't you; you say you're +only a connecting link; that you do nothing; that the Power that does it +is inexhaustible; that there's nothing it can't do, nothing that it +won't do for us, and yet you go and cut yourself off from +it--deliberately--from the thing you believe to be divine." + +"I haven't cut myself off from it." + +"You've cut Harding off," said Milly. "If you refuse to hold him." + +"That wouldn't cut him off--from It. But Milly, holding him was bad; it +wasn't safe." + +"It saved him." + +"All the same, Milly, it wasn't safe. The thing itself isn't." + +"The Power? The divine thing?" + +"Yes. It's divine and it's--it's terrible. It does terrible things to +us." + +"How could it? If it's divine, wouldn't it be compassionate? Do you +suppose it's less compassionate than--_you_ are? Why, Agatha, when it's +goodness and purity itself----?" + +"Goodness and purity are terrible. We don't understand it. It's got its +own laws. What you call prayer's all right--it would be safe, I mean--I +suppose it might get answered anyway, however we fell short. But +this--this is different. It's the highest, Milly; and if you rush in and +make for the highest, can't you see, oh, can't you see how it might +break you? Can't you see what it requires of _you_? Absolute purity. I +told you, Milly. You have to be crystal to it--crystal without a flaw." + +"And--if there were a flaw?" + +"The whole thing, don't you see, would break down; it would be no good. +In fact, it would be awfully dangerous." + +"To whom?" + +"To you--to them, the people you're helping. You make a connection; you +smash down all the walls so that you--you get through to each other, and +supposing there was something wrong with _you_, and It doesn't work any +longer (the Power, I mean), don't you see that you might do harm where +you were trying to help?" + +"But--Agatha--there was nothing wrong with you." + +"How do I know? Can anybody be sure there's nothing wrong with them?" + +"You think," said Milly, "there was a flaw somewhere?" + +"There must have been--somewhere ..." + +"What was it? Can't you find out? Can't you think? Think." + +"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 passion, 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 passion, 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 passed 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 compassion; 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. + +For thought went wider and deeper than any deed; it was of the very +order of the Powers intangible wherewith she had worked. Why, thoughts +unborn and shapeless, that ran under the threshold and hid there, +counted more in that world where It, the Unuttered, the Hidden and the +Secret, reigned. + +She knew now that her surrender of last night had been the ultimate +deliverance. She was not afraid any more to meet Rodney; for she had +been made pure from desire; she was safeguarded forever. + +He had been gone about an hour when she heard him at the gate again and +in the room below. + +She went down to him. He came forward to meet her as she entered; he +closed the door behind them; but her eyes held them apart. + +"Did you not get my wire?" she said. + +"Yes. I got it." + +"Then why ..." + +"Why did I come? Because I knew what was happening. I wasn't going to +leave you here for Powell to terrify you out of your life." + +"Surely--you thought they'd gone?" + +"I knew they hadn't or you wouldn't have wired." + +"But I would. I'd have wired in any case." + +"To put me off?" + +"To--put--you--off." + +"Why?" + +He questioned without divination or forewarning. The veil of flesh was +as yet over his eyes, so that he could not see. + +"Because I didn't mean that you should come, that you should ever come +again, Rodney." + +He smiled. + +"So you went back on me, did you?" + +"If you call it going back." + +She longed for him to see. + +"That was only because you were frightened," he said. + +He turned from her and paced the room uneasily, as if he saw. Presently +he drew up by the hearth and stood there for a moment, puzzling it out; +and she thought that he had seen. + +He hadn't. He faced her with a smile again. + +"But it was no good, dear, was it? As if I wouldn't know what it meant. +You wouldn't have done it if you hadn't been ill. You lost your nerve. +No wonder, with those Powells preying on you, body and soul, for weeks." + +"No, Rodney, no. I didn't _want_ you to come back. And I think--now--it +would be better if you didn't stay." + +It seemed to her now that perhaps he had seen and was fighting what he +saw. + +"I'm not going to stay," he said, "I am going--in another hour--to take +Powell away somewhere." + +He took it up where she had made him leave it. "Then, Agatha, I shall +come back again. I shall come back--let me see--on Sunday." + +She swept that aside. + +"Where are you going to take him?" + +"To a man I know who'll look after him." + +"Oh, Rodney, it'll break Milly's heart." + +She had come, in her agitation, to where he stood. She sat on the couch +by the corner of the hearth, and he looked down at her there. + +"No," he said, "it won't. It'll give him a chance to get all right. I've +convinced her it's the only thing to do. He can't be left here for you +to look after." + +"Did she tell you?" + +"She wouldn't have told me a thing if I hadn't made her. I dragged it +out of her, bit by bit." + +"Rodney, that was cruel of you." + +"Was it? I don't care. I'd have done it if she'd bled." + +"What did she tell you?" + +"Pretty nearly everything, I imagine. Quite enough for me to see what, +between them, they've been doing to you." + +"Did she tell you _how he got well_?" + +He did not answer all at once. It was as if he drew back before the +question, alien and disturbed, shirking the discerned, yet +unintelligible issue. + +"Did she tell you, Rodney?" Agatha repeated. + +"Well, yes. She _told_ me." + +He seemed to be making, reluctantly, some admission. He sat down beside +her, and his movement had the air of ending the discussion. But he did +not look at her. + +"What do you make of it?" she said. + +This time he winced visibly. + +"I don't make anything. If it happened--if it happened--like _that_, +Agatha ..." + +"It did happen." + +"Well, I admit it was uncommonly queer." + +He left it there and reverted to his theme. + +"But it's no wonder--if you sat down to that for six weeks--it's no +wonder you got scared. It's inconceivable to me how that woman could +have let you in for him. She knew what he was." + +"She didn't know what I was doing till it was done." + +"She'd no business to let you go on with it when she did know." + +"Ah! but she knew--then--that it was all right." + +"All right?" + +"Absolutely right. Rodney----" She called to him as if she would compel +him to see it as it was. "I did no more for him than I did for you and +Bella." + +He started. "Bella?" he repeated. + +He stared at her. He had seen something. + +"You wondered how she got all right, didn't you?" + +He said nothing. + +"That was how." + +And still he did not speak. He sat there, leaning forward, staring now +at his own clasped hands. He looked as if he bowed himself before the +irrefutable. + +"And there was you, too, before that." + +"I know," he said then; "I can understand _that_. But--why Bella?" + +"Because Bella was the only way." + +She had not followed his thoughts nor he hers. + +"The only way?" he said. + +"To work it. To keep the thing pure. I had to be certain of my motive, +and I knew that if I could give Bella back to you that would prove--to +me, I mean--that it was pure." + +"But Bella," he said softly--"Bella. Powell I can understand--and me." + +It was clear that he could get over all the rest. But he could not get +over Bella. Bella's case convinced him. Bella's case could not be +explained away or set aside. Before Bella's case he was baffled, utterly +defeated. He faced it with a certain awe. + +"You were right, after all, about Bella," he said at last. "And so was +I. She didn't care for me, as I told you. But she does care now." + +She knew it. + +"That was what I was trying for," she said. "That was what I meant." + +"You meant it?" + +"It was the only way. That's why I didn't want you to come back." + +He sat silent, taking that in. + +"Don't you see now how it works? You have to be pure crystal. That's +why I didn't want you to come back." + +Obscurely, through the veil of flesh, he saw. + +"And I am never to come back?" he said. + +"You will not need to come." + +"You mean you won't want me?" + +"No. I shall not want you. Because, when I did want you it broke down." + +He smiled. + +"I see. When you want me, it breaks down." + +He rallied for a moment. He made his one last pitiful stand against the +supernatural thing that was conquering him. + +He had risen to go. + +"And when _I_ want to come, when I long for you, what then?" + +"_Your_ longing will make no difference." + +She smiled also, as if she foresaw how it would work, and that soon, +very soon, he would cease to long for her. + +His hand was on the door. He smiled back at her. + +"I don't want to shake your faith in it," he said. + +"You can't shake my faith in It." + +"Still--it breaks down. It breaks down," he cried. + +"Never. You don't understand," she said. "It was the flaw in the +crystal." + +Soon, very soon he would know it. Already he had shown submission. + +She had no doubt of the working of the Power. Bella remained as a sign +that it had once been, and that, given the flawless crystal, it should +be again. + + + * * * * * + + +TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: + +The following changes have been made to the original text: + + Page 109: "there's" changed to "there" in "there he's been for + years." + + Page 110: added missing quotation mark before "Agatha, why can't + we?" + + Page 188: "shapless" changed to "shapeless" in "thoughts unborn + and shapeless," + +Other variations in spelling and inconsistent hyphenation have been +retained as they appear in the original book. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Flaw in the Crystal, by May Sinclair + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLAW IN THE CRYSTAL *** + +***** This file should be named 28615-8.txt or 28615-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/8/6/1/28615/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Therese Wright and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Flaw in the Crystal + +Author: May Sinclair + +Release Date: April 26, 2009 [EBook #28615] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLAW IN THE CRYSTAL *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Therese Wright and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + +<h1>The Flaw in the Crystal</h1> + +<h3>By</h3> + +<h2>May Sinclair</h2> + +<br /><br /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 139px;"> +<img src="images/tp01.jpg" width="139" height="200" alt="Title Page decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<br /><br /> + +<h3>NEW YORK</h3> +<h2>E·P·DUTTON & COMPANY</h2> +<h3>31 West Twenty-Third Street</h3> + + +<br /><br /> + + +<h4>Copyright, 1912<br /> +By May Sinclair</h4> + +<br /><br /><br /><br /> + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/ch01.jpg" width="600" height="154" alt="CHAPTER ONE" +title="CHAPTER ONE" /> +</div> + +<br /> + +<p><img src="images/dropi.jpg" width="119" height="120" alt="I" title="I" +class="firstletter" />T was Friday, the day he always came, if (so she +safeguarded it) he was to come at all. They had left it that way in the +beginning, that it should be open to him to come or not to come. They +had not even settled that it should be Fridays, but it always was, the +week-end being the only time when he could get away; the only time, he +had explained to Agatha Verrall, when getting away excited no remark. He +had to, or he would have broken down. Agatha called it getting away +"from things"; but she knew that there was only one thing, his wife +Bella.</p> + +<p>To be wedded to a mass of furious and malignant nerves (which was all +that poor Bella was now) simply meant destruction to a man like Rodney +Lanyon. Rodney's own nerves were not as strong as they had been, after +ten years of Bella's. It had been understood for long enough (understood +even by Bella) that if he couldn't have his weekends he was done for; he +couldn't possibly have stood the torment and the strain of her.</p> + +<p>Of course, she didn't know he spent the greater part of them with Agatha +Verrall. It was not to be desired that she should know. Her obtuseness +helped them. Even in her younger and saner days she had failed, +persistently, to realise any profound and poignant thing that touched +him; so by the mercy of heaven she had never realised Agatha Verrall. +She used to say that she had never seen anything <i>in</i> Agatha, which +amounted, as he once told her, to not seeing Agatha at all. Still less +could she have compassed any vision of the tie—the extraordinary, +intangible, immaterial tie that held them.</p> + +<p>Sometimes, at the last moment, his escape to Agatha would prove +impossible; so they had left it further that he was to send her no +forewarning; he was to come when and as he could. He could always get a +room in the village inn or at the Farm near by, and in Agatha's house he +would find his place ready for him, the place which had become his +refuge, his place of peace.</p> + +<p>There was no need to prepare her. She was never not prepared. It was as +if by her preparedness, by the absence of preliminaries, of adjustments +and arrangements, he was always there, lodged in the innermost chamber. +She had set herself apart; she had swept herself bare and scoured +herself clean for him. Clean she had to be; clean from the desire that +he should come; clean, above all, from the thought, the knowledge she +now had, that she could make him come.</p> + +<p>For if she had given herself up to <i>that</i>——</p> + +<p>But she never had; never since the knowledge came to her; since she +discovered, wonderfully, by a divine accident, that at any moment she +could make him—that she had whatever it was, the power, the +uncanny, unaccountable Gift.</p> + +<p>She was beginning to see more and more how it worked; how inevitably, +how infallibly it worked. She was even a little afraid of it, of what it +might come to mean. It <i>did</i> mean that without his knowledge, separated +as they were and had to be, she could always get at him.</p> + +<p>And supposing it came to mean that she could get at him to make him do +things? Why, the bare idea of it was horrible.</p> + +<p>Nothing could well have been <i>more</i> horrible to Agatha. It was the +secret and the essence of their remarkable relation that she had never +tried to get at him; whereas Bella <i>had</i>, calamitously; and still more +calamitously, because of the peculiar magic that there was (there must +have been) in her, Bella had succeeded. To have tried to get at him +would have been, for Agatha, the last treachery, the last indecency; +while for Rodney it would have been the destruction of her charm. She +was the way of escape for him from Bella; but she had always left her +door, even the innermost door, wide open; so that where shelter and +protection faced him there faced him also the way of departure, the way +of escape from <i>her</i>.</p> + +<p>And if her thought could get at him and fasten on him and shut him in +there——</p> + +<p>It could, she knew; but it need not. She was really all right. Restraint +had been the essence and the secret of the charm she had, and it was +also the secret and the essence of her gift. Why, she had brought it to +so fine a point that she could shut out, and by shutting out destroy any +feeling, any thought that did violence to any other. She could shut them +all out, if it came to that, and make the whole place empty. So that, if +this knowledge of her power did violence, she had only to close her door +on it.</p> + +<p>She closed it now on the bare thought of his coming; on the little +innocent hope she had that he would come. By an ultimate refinement and +subtlety of honour she refused to let even expectation cling to him.</p> + +<p>But though it was dreadful to "work" her gift that way, to make him do +things, there was another way in which she did work it, lawfully, +sacredly, incorruptibly—the way it first came to her. She had +worked it twenty times (without his knowledge, for how he would have +scoffed at her!) to make him well.</p> + +<p>Before it had come to her, he had been, ever since she knew him, more or +less ill, more or less tormented by the nerves that were wedded so +indissolubly to Bella's. He was always, it seemed to her terror, on the +verge. And she could say to herself, "Look at him <i>now</i>!"</p> + +<p>His abrupt, incredible recovery had been the first open manifestation of +the way it worked. Not that she had tried it on him first. Before she +dared do that once she had proved it on herself twenty times. She had +proved it up to the hilt.</p> + +<p>But to ensure continuous results it had to be a continuous process; and +in order to give herself up to it, to him (to his pitiful case), she had +lately, as her friends said, "cut herself completely off." She had gone +down into Buckinghamshire and taken a small solitary house at Sarratt +End in the valley of the Chess, three miles from the nearest station. +She had shut herself up in a world half a mile long, one straight hill +to the north, one to the south, two strips of flat pasture, the river +and the white farm-road between. A world closed east and west by the +turn the valley takes there between the hills, and barred by a gate at +each end of the farm-road. A land of pure curves, of delicate colours, +delicate shadows; all winter through a land of grey woods and sallow +fields, of ploughed hillsides pale with the white strain of the chalk. +In April (it was April now) a land shining with silver and with green. +And the ways out of it led into lanes; it had neither sight nor hearing +of the high roads beyond.</p> + +<p>There were only two houses in that half-mile of valley, Agatha's house +and Woodman's Farm.</p> + +<p>Agatha's house, white as a cutting in the chalk downs, looked southwest, +up the valley and across it, to where a slender beech wood went lightly +up the hill and then stretched out in a straight line along the top, +with the bare fawn-coloured flank of the ploughed land below. The +farmhouse looked east towards Agatha's house across a field; a red-brick +house—dull, dark red with the grey bloom of weather on +it—flat-faced and flat-eyed, two windows on each side of the door +and a row of five above, all nine staring at the small white house +across the field. The narrow, flat farm-road linked the two.</p> + +<p>Except Rodney when his inn was full, nobody ever came to Woodman's Farm; +and Agatha's house, set down inside its east gate, shared its isolation, +its immunity. Two villages, unseen, unheard, served her, not a mile +away. It was impossible to be more sheltered, more protected and more +utterly cut off. And only fifteen miles, as the crow flies, between this +solitude and London, so that it was easy for Rodney Lanyon to come down.</p> + +<p>At two o'clock, the hour when he must come if he were coming, she began +to listen for the click of the latch at the garden gate. She had agreed +with herself that at the last moment expectancy could do no harm; it +couldn't influence him; for either he had taken the twelve-thirty train +at Marylebone or he had not (Agatha was so far reasonable); so at the +last moment she permitted herself that dangerous and terrible joy.</p> + +<p>When the click came and his footsteps after it, she admitted further +(now when it could do no harm) that she had had foreknowledge of him; +she had been aware all the time that he would come. And she wondered, +as she always wondered at his coming, whether really she would find him +well, or whether this time it had incredibly miscarried. And her almost +unbearable joy became suspense, became vehement desire to see him and +gather from his face whether this time also it had worked.</p> + +<p>"How are you? How have you been?" was her question when he stood before +her in her white room, holding her hand for an instant.</p> + +<p>"Tremendously fit," he answered; "ever since I last saw you."</p> + +<p>"Oh—seeing me——" It was as if she wanted him to know +that seeing her made no difference.</p> + +<p>She looked at him and received her certainty. She saw him clear-eyed and +young, younger than he was, his clean, bronzed face set, as it used to +be, in a firmness that obliterated the lines, the little agonized +lines, that had made her heart ache.</p> + +<p>"It always does me good," he said, "to see you."</p> + +<p>"And to see you—you know what it does to me."</p> + +<p>He thought he knew as he caught back his breath and looked at her, +taking in again her fine whiteness, and her tenderness, her purity of +line, and the secret of her eyes whose colour (if they had colour) he +was never sure about; taking in all of her, from her adorable feet to +her hair, vividly dark, that sprang from the white parting +like—was it like waves or wings?</p> + +<p>What had once touched and moved him unspeakably in Agatha's face was the +capacity it had, latent in its tragic lines, for expressing terror. +Terror was what he most dreaded for her, what he had most tried to keep +her from, to keep out of her face. And latterly he had not found it; or +rather he had not found the unborn, lurking spirit of it there. It had +gone, that little tragic droop in Agatha's face. The corners of her eyes +and of her beautiful mouth were lifted; as if by—he could find no +other word for the thing he meant but wings. She had a look which, if it +were not of joy, was of something more vivid and positive than peace.</p> + +<p>He put it down to their increased and undisturbed communion made +possible by her retirement to Sarratt End. Yet as he looked at her he +sighed again.</p> + +<p>In response to his sigh she asked suddenly, "How's Bella?"</p> + +<p>His face lighted wonderfully. "It's extraordinary," he said; "she's +better. Miles better. In fact, if it was not tempting Providence, I +should say she was well. She's been, for the last week anyhow, a perfect +angel."</p> + +<p>His amazed, uncomprehending look gave her the clue to what had +happened. It was another instance of the astounding and mysterious way +it worked. She must have got at Bella somehow in getting at him. She saw +now no end to the possibilities of the thing. There wasn't anything so +wonderful in making him what, after all, he was; but if she, Bella, had +been, even for a week, a perfect angel, it had made her what she was not +and never had been.</p> + +<p>His next utterance came to her with no irrelevance.</p> + +<p>"You've been found out."</p> + +<p>For a moment she wondered, had he guessed it then, her secret? He had +never known anything about it, and it was not likely that he should know +now. He was indeed very far from knowing when he could think that it was +seeing her that did it.</p> + +<p>There was, of course, the other secret, the fact that he did see her; +but she had never allowed that it was a secret, or that it need be, +although they guarded it so carefully. Anybody except Bella, who +wouldn't understand it, was welcome to know that he came to see her. He +must mean that.</p> + +<p>"Found out?" she repeated.</p> + +<p>"If you haven't been, you will be."</p> + +<p>"You mean," she said, "Sarratt End has been found out?"</p> + +<p>"If you put it that way. I saw the Powells at the station."</p> + +<p>(She breathed freely.)</p> + +<p>"They told me they'd taken rooms at some farm here."</p> + +<p>"Which farm?"</p> + +<p>He didn't remember.</p> + +<p>"Was it Woodman's Farm?" she asked. And he said, Yes, that was the name +they'd told him. Whereabouts was it?</p> + +<p>"Don't you know?" she said. "That's the name of <i>your</i> Farm."</p> + +<p>He had not known it, and was visibly annoyed at knowing it now. And +Agatha herself felt some dismay. If it had been any other place but +Woodman's Farm! It stared at them; it watched them; it knew all their +goings out and their comings in; it knew Rodney; not that that had +mattered in the least, but the Powells, when they came, would know too.</p> + +<p>She tried to look as if that didn't matter, either, while they faced +each other in a silence, a curious, unfamiliar discomposure.</p> + +<p>She recovered first. "After all," she said, "why shouldn't they?"</p> + +<p>"Well—I thought you weren't going to tell people."</p> + +<p>Her face mounted a sudden flame, a signal of resentment. She had always +resented the imputation of secrecy in their relations. And now it was +as if he were dragging forward the thought that she perpetually put away +from her.</p> + +<p>"Tell about what?" she asked, coldly.</p> + +<p>"About Sarratt End. I thought we'd agreed to keep it for ourselves."</p> + +<p>"I haven't told everybody. But I did tell Milly Powell."</p> + +<p>"My dear girl, that wasn't very clever of you."</p> + +<p>"I told her not to tell. She knows what I want to be alone for."</p> + +<p>"Good God!" As he stared in dismay at what he judged to be her +unspeakable indiscretion, the thought rushed in on her straight from +him, the naked, terrible thought, that there <i>should</i> be anything they +had to hide, they had to be alone for. She saw at the same time how +defenceless he was before it; he couldn't keep it back; he couldn't put +it away from him. It was always with him, a danger watching on his +threshold.</p> + +<p>"Then" (he made her face it with him), "we're done for."</p> + +<p>"No, no," she cried. "How could you think that? It was another thing. +Something that I'm trying to do."</p> + +<p>"You told her," he insisted. "What did you tell her?"</p> + +<p>"That I'm doing it. That I'm here for my health. She understands it that +way."</p> + +<p>He smiled as if he were satisfied, knowing her so well. And still his +thought, his terrible naked thought, was there. It was looking at her +straight out of his eyes.</p> + +<p>"Are you sure she understands?" he said.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Absolutely."</p> + +<p>He hesitated, and then put it differently.</p> + +<p>"Are you sure she doesn't understand? That she hasn't an inkling?"</p> + +<p><i>He</i> wasn't sure whether Agatha understood, whether she realised the +danger.</p> + +<p>"About you and me," he said.</p> + +<p>"Ah, my dear, I've kept <i>you</i> secret. She doesn't know we know each +other. And if she did——"</p> + +<p>She finished it with a wonderful look, a look of unblinking yet vaguely, +pitifully uncandid candour.</p> + +<p>She had always met him, and would always have to meet him, with the idea +that there was nothing in it; for, if she once admitted that there was +anything, then they <i>were</i> done for. She couldn't (how could she?) let +him keep on coming with that thought in him, acknowledged by them both.</p> + +<p>That was where she came in and where her secret, her gift, would work +now more beneficently than ever. The beauty of it was that it would make +them safe, absolutely safe. She had only got to apply it to that +thought of his and the thought would not exist. Since she could get at +him, she could do for him what he, poor dear, could not perhaps always +do for himself; she could keep that dreadful possibility in him under; +she could in fact, make their communion all that she most wanted it to +be.</p> + +<p>"I don't like it," he said, miserably. "I don't like it."</p> + +<p>A little line of worry was coming in his face again.</p> + +<p>The door opened and a maid began to go in and out, laying the table for +their meal. He watched the door close on her and said, "Won't that woman +wonder what I come for?"</p> + +<p>"She can see what you come for." She smiled. "Why are you spoiling it +with thinking things?"</p> + +<p>"It's for you I think them. I don't mind. It doesn't matter so much for +me. But I want you to be safe."</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>I</i>'m safe, my dear," she answered.</p> + +<p>"You were. And you would be still, if these Powells hadn't found you +out."</p> + +<p>He meditated.</p> + +<p>"What do you suppose <i>they</i>'ve come for?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"They've come, I imagine, for his health."</p> + +<p>"What? To a god-forsaken place like this?"</p> + +<p>"They know what it's done for me. So they think, poor darlings, perhaps +it may do something—even yet—for him."</p> + +<p>"What's the matter with him?"</p> + +<p>"Something dreadful. And they say—incurable."</p> + +<p>"It isn't——?" He paused.</p> + +<p>"I can't tell you what it is. It isn't anything you'd think it was. It +isn't anything bodily."</p> + +<p>"I never knew it."</p> + +<p>"You're not supposed to know. And you wouldn't, unless you <i>did</i> know. +And please—you don't; you don't know anything."</p> + +<p>He smiled. "No. You haven't told me, have you?"</p> + +<p>"I only told you because you never tell things, and +because——"</p> + +<p>"Because?" He waited, smiling.</p> + +<p>"Because I wanted you to see he doesn't count."</p> + +<p>"Well—but <i>she</i>'s all right, I take it?"</p> + +<p>At first she failed to grasp his implication that if, owing to his +affliction, Harding Powell didn't count, Milly, his young wife did. Her +faculties of observation and of inference would, he took it, be +unimpaired.</p> + +<p>"<i>She</i>'ll wonder, won't she?" he expounded.</p> + +<p>"About us? Not she. She's too much wrapped up in him to notice anyone."</p> + +<p>"And he?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, my dear—He's too much wrapped up in <i>it</i>."</p> + +<p>Another anxiety then came to him.</p> + +<p>"I say, you know, he isn't dangerous, is he?"</p> + +<p>She laughed.</p> + +<p>"Dangerous? Oh dear me, no! A lamb."</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 90px;"> +<img src="images/orn01.jpg" width="90" height="90" alt="Page decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<br /><br /><br /> + + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/ch02.jpg" width="600" height="155" alt="CHAPTER TWO" +title="CHAPTER TWO" /></div> +<br /> + +<p><img src="images/drops.jpg" width="119" height="120" alt="S" title="S" +class="firstletter" />HE kept on saying to herself, Why shouldn't they +come? What difference did it make?</p> + +<p>Up till now she had not admitted that anything could make a difference, +that anything could touch, could alter by a shade the safe, the +intangible, the unique relation between her and Rodney. It was proof +against anything that anybody could think. And the Powells were not +given to thinking things. Agatha's own mind had been a crystal without a +flaw, in its clearness, its sincerity.</p> + +<p>It had to be to ensure the blessed working of the gift; as again, it was +by the blessed working of the gift that she had kept it so. She could +only think of that, the secret, the gift, the inexpressible thing, as +itself a flawless crystal, a charmed circle; or rather, as a sphere that +held all the charmed circles that you draw round things to keep them +safe, to keep them holy.</p> + +<p>She had drawn her circle round Rodney Lanyon and herself. Nobody could +break it. They were supernaturally safe.</p> + +<p>And yet the presence of the Powells had made a difference. She was +forced to own that, though she remained untouched, it had made a +difference in him. It was as if, in the agitation produced by them, he +had brushed aside some veil and had let her see something that up till +now her crystal vision had refused to see, something that was more than +a lurking possibility. She discovered in him a desire, an intention that +up till now he had concealed from her. It had left its hiding place; it +rose on terrifying wings and fluttered before her, troubling her. She +was reminded that, though there were no lurking possibilities in her, +with him it might be different. For him the tie between them might come +to mean something that it had never meant and could not mean for her, +something that she had refused not only to see but to foresee and +provide for.</p> + +<p>She was aware of a certain relief when Monday came and he had left her +without any further unveilings and revealings. She was even glad when, +about the middle of the week, the Powells came with a cart-load of +luggage and settled at the Farm. She said to herself that they would +take her mind off him. They had a way of seizing on her and holding her +attention to the exclusion of all other objects.</p> + +<p>She could hardly not have been seized and held by a case so pitiful, so +desperate as theirs. How pitiful and desperate it had become she +learned almost at once from the face of her friend, the little pale-eyed +wife, whose small, flat, flower-like features were washed out and worn +fine by watchings and listenings on the border, on the threshold.</p> + +<p>Yes, he was worse. He had had to give up his business (Harding Powell +was a gentle stockbroker). It wasn't any longer, Milly Powell intimated, +a question of borders and of thresholds. They had passed all that. He +had gone clean over; he was in the dreadful interior; and she, the +resolute and vigilant little woman, had no longer any power to get him +out. She was at the end of her tether.</p> + +<p>Agatha knew what he had been for years? Well—he was worse than +that; far worse than he had been, ever. Not so bad though that he hadn't +intervals in which he knew how bad he was, and was willing to do +everything, to try anything. They were going to try Sarratt End. It was +her idea. She knew how marvellously it had answered with dear Agatha +(not that Agatha ever was, or could be, where <i>he</i> was, poor darling). +And besides, Agatha herself was an attraction. It had occurred to Milly +Powell that it might do Harding good to be near Agatha. There was +something about her; Milly didn't know what it was, but she felt it, +<i>he</i> felt it—an influence or something, that made for mental +peace. It was, Mrs. Powell said, as if she had some secret.</p> + +<p>She hoped Agatha wouldn't mind. It couldn't possibly hurt her. <i>He</i> +couldn't. The darling couldn't hurt a fly; he could only hurt himself. +And if he got really bad, why then, of course, they would have to leave +Sarratt End. He would have, she said sadly, to go away somewhere. But +not yet—oh, not yet; he wasn't bad enough for that. She would +keep him with her up to the last possible moment—the last possible +moment. Agatha could understand, couldn't she?</p> + +<p>Agatha did indeed.</p> + +<p>Milly Powell smiled her desperate white smile, and went on, always with +her air of appeal to Agatha. That was why she wanted to be near her. It +was awful not to be near somebody who understood, who would understand +him. For Agatha would understand—wouldn't she?—that to a +certain extent he must be given in to? <i>That</i>—apart from +Agatha—was why they had chosen Sarratt End. It was the sort of +place—wasn't it?—where you would go if you didn't want +people to get at you, where (Milly's very voice became furtive as she +explained it) you could hide. His idea—his last—seemed to be +that something <i>was</i> trying to get at him.</p> + +<p>No, not people. Something worse, something terrible. It was always after +him. The most piteous thing about him—piteous but +adorable—was that he came to her—to <i>her</i>—imploring +her to hide him.</p> + +<p>And so she had hidden him here.</p> + +<p>Agatha took in her friend's high courage as she looked at the eyes where +fright barely fluttered under the poised suspense. She approved of the +plan. It appealed to her by its sheer audacity. She murmured that, if +there were anything that she could do, Milly had only to come to her.</p> + +<p>Oh well, Milly <i>had</i> come. What she wanted Agatha to do—if she saw +him and he should say anything about it—was simply to take the +line that he was safe.</p> + +<p>Agatha said that was the line she did take. She wasn't going to let +herself think, and Milly mustn't think—not for a +moment—that he wasn't, that there was anything to be afraid of.</p> + +<p>"Anything to be afraid of <i>here</i>. That's my point," said Milly.</p> + +<p>"Mine is that here or anywhere—wherever <i>he</i> is—there +mustn't be any fear. How can he get better if we keep him wrapped in it? +You're <i>not</i> afraid. You're <i>not</i> afraid."</p> + +<p>Persistent, invincible affirmation was part of her method, her secret.</p> + +<p>Milly replied a little wearily (she knew nothing about the method).</p> + +<p>"I haven't time to be afraid," she said. "And as long as you're +not——"</p> + +<p>"It's you who matter," Agatha cried. "You're so near him. Don't you +realise what it means to be so near?"</p> + +<p>Milly smiled sadly, tenderly. (As if she didn't know!)</p> + +<p>"My dear, that's all that keeps me going. I've got to make him feel that +he's protected."</p> + +<p>"He <i>is</i> protected," said Agatha.</p> + +<p>Already she was drawing her charmed circle round him.</p> + +<p>"As long as I hold out. If I give in he's done for."</p> + +<p>"You mustn't think it. You mustn't say it!"</p> + +<p>"But—I know it. Oh, my dear! I'm all he's got."</p> + +<p>At that she looked for a moment as if she might break down. She said the +terrible part of it was that they were left so much alone. People were +beginning to shrink from him, to be afraid of him.</p> + +<p>"You know," said Agatha, "I'm not. You must bring him to see me."</p> + +<p>The little woman had risen, as she said, "to go to him." She stood +there, visibly hesitating. She couldn't bring him. He wouldn't come. +Would Agatha go with her and see him?</p> + +<p>Agatha went.</p> + +<p>As they approached the Farm she saw to her amazement that the door was +shut and the blinds, the ugly, ochreish yellow blinds, were down in all +the nine windows of the front, the windows of the Powell's rooms. The +house was like a house of the dead.</p> + +<p>"Do you get the sun on this side?" she said; and as she said it she +realised the stupidity of her question; for the nine windows looked to +the east, and the sun, wheeling down the west, had been in their faces +as they came.</p> + +<p>Milly answered mechanically, "No, we don't get any sun." She added with +an irrelevance that was only apparent, "I've had to take all four rooms +to keep other people out."</p> + +<p>"They never come," said Agatha.</p> + +<p>"No," said Milly, "but if they did——!"</p> + +<p>The front door was locked. Milly had the key. When they had entered, +Agatha saw her turn it in the lock again, slowly and without a sound.</p> + +<p>All the doors were shut in the passage, and it was dark there. Milly +opened a door on the left at the foot of the steep stairs.</p> + +<p>"He will be in here," she said.</p> + +<p>The large room was lit with a thick ochreish light through the squares +of its drawn blinds. It ran the whole width of the house and had a third +window looking west where the yellow light prevailed. A horrible light +it was. It cast thin, turbid, brown shadows on the walls.</p> + +<p>Harding Powell was sitting between the drawn blinds, alone in the black +hollow of the chimney place. He crouched in his chair and his bowed +back was towards them as they stood there on the threshold.</p> + +<p>"Harding," said Milly, "Agatha has come to see you."</p> + +<p>He turned in his chair and rose as they entered.</p> + +<p>His chin was sunk on his chest, and the first thing Agatha noticed was +the difficult, slow, forward-thrusting movement with which he lifted it. +His eyes seemed to come up last of all from the depths to meet her. With +a peculiar foreign courtesy he bowed his head again over her hand as he +held it.</p> + +<p>He apologised for the darkness in which they found him. Harding Powell's +manners had always been perfect, and it struck Agatha as strange and +pathetic that his malady should have left untouched the incomparable +quality he had.</p> + +<p>Milly went to the windows and drew the blinds up. The light revealed +him in his exquisite perfection, his small fragile finish. He was fifty +or thereabouts, but slight as a boy, and nervous, and dark as Englishmen +are dark; jaw and chin shaven; his mouth hidden by the straight droop of +his moustache. From the eyes downwards the outlines of his face and +features were of an extreme regularity and a fineness undestroyed by the +work of the strained nerves on the sallow, delicate texture. But his +eyes, dark like an animal's, were the eyes of a terrified thing, a thing +hunted and on the watch, a thing that listened continually for the soft +feet of the hunter. Above these eyes his brows were twisted, were +tortured with his terror.</p> + +<p>He turned to his wife.</p> + +<p>"Did you lock the door, dear?" he said.</p> + +<p>"I did. But you know, Harding, we needn't—here."</p> + +<p>He shivered slightly and began to walk up and down before the +hearth-place. When he had his back to Milly, Milly followed him with her +eyes of anguish; when he turned and faced her, she met him with her +white smile.</p> + +<p>Presently he spoke again. He wondered whether they would object to his +drawing the blinds down. He was afraid he would have to. Otherwise, he +said, <i>he would be seen</i>.</p> + +<p>Milly laid her hand on the arm that he stretched towards the window.</p> + +<p>"Darling," she said, "you've forgotten. You can't possibly be +seen—here. It's just the one place—isn't it, +Agatha?—where you can't be." Her eyes signalled to Agatha to +support her. (Not but what she had perfect confidence in the plan.)</p> + +<p>It was, Agatha assented. "And Agatha knows," said Milly.</p> + +<p>He shivered again. He had turned to Agatha.</p> + +<p>"Forgive me if I suggest that you cannot really know. Heaven forbid that +you <i>should</i> know."</p> + +<p>Milly, intent on her "plan," persisted.</p> + +<p>"But, dearest, you said yourself it was. The one place."</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> said that? When did I say it?"</p> + +<p>"Yesterday."</p> + +<p>"Yesterday? I daresay. But I didn't sleep last night. It wouldn't let +me."</p> + +<p>"Very few people do sleep," said Agatha, "for the first time in a +strange place."</p> + +<p>"The place isn't strange. That's what I complain of. That's what keeps +me awake. No place ever will be strange when It's there. And It was +there last night."</p> + +<p>"Darling——" Milly murmured.</p> + +<p>"You know what I mean," he said. "The Thing that keeps me awake. Of +course if I'd slept last night I'd have known it wasn't there. But when +I didn't sleep——"</p> + +<p>He left it to them to draw the only possible conclusion.</p> + +<p>They dropped the subject. They turned to other things and talked a +little while, sitting with him in his room with the drawn blinds. From +time to time when they appealed to him, he gave an urbane assent, a +murmur, a suave motion of his hand. When the light went, they lit a +lamp. Agatha stayed and dined with them, that being the best thing she +could do.</p> + +<p>At nine o'clock she rose and said good-night to Harding Powell. He +smiled a drawn smile.</p> + +<p>"Ah—if I could sleep——" he said.</p> + +<p>"That's the worst of it—his not sleeping," said Milly at the +gate.</p> + +<p>"He will sleep. He will sleep," said Agatha.</p> + +<p>Milly sighed. She knew he wouldn't.</p> + +<p>The plan, she said, was no good after all. It wouldn't work.</p> + + +<br /><br /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 90px;"> +<img src="images/orn01.jpg" width="90" height="90" alt="Page decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<br /><br /><br /> + + + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/ch03.jpg" width="600" height="156" alt="CHAPTER THREE" +title="CHAPTER THREE" /></div> +<br /> + + +<p><img src="images/droph.jpg" width="119" height="120" alt="H" title="H" +class="firstletter" />OW could it? There was nothing behind it. All +Milly's plans had been like that; they fell to dust; they <i>were</i> dust. +They had been always that pitiful, desperate stirring of the dust to +hide the terror, the futile throwing of the dust in the poor thing's +eyes. As if he couldn't see through it. As if, with the supernatural +lucidity, the invincible cunning of the insane, he didn't see through +anything and provide for it. It was really only his indestructible +urbanity, persisting through the wreck of him, that bore, tolerantly, +temperately, with Milly and her plans. Without it he might be dangerous. +With it, as long as it lasted, little Milly, plan as she would, was +safe.</p> + +<p>But they couldn't count on its lasting. Agatha had realised that from +the moment when she had seen him draw down the blind again after his +wife had drawn it up. That was the maddest thing he had done yet. She +had shuddered at it as at an act of violence. It outraged, cruelly, his +exquisite quality. It was so unlike him.</p> + +<p>She was not sure that Milly hadn't even made things worse by her latest +plan, the flight to Sarratt End. It emphasised the fact that they were +flying, that they had to fly. It had brought her to the house with the +drawn blinds in the closed, barred valley, to the end of the world, to +the end of her tether. And when she realised that it <i>was</i> the end—when +he realised it ...</p> + +<p>Agatha couldn't leave him there. She couldn't (when she had the secret) +leave him to poor Milly and her plans. That had been in her mind when +she had insisted on it that he would sleep.</p> + +<p>She knew what Milly meant by her sigh and the look she gave her. If +Milly could have been impolite, she would have told her that it was all +very well to say so, but how were they going to make him? And she too +felt that something more was required of her than that irritating +affirmation. She had got to make him. His case, his piteous case, cried +out for an extension of the gift.</p> + +<p>She hadn't any doubt as to its working. There were things she didn't +know about it yet, but she was sure of that. She had proved it by a +hundred experimental intermissions, abstentions, and recoveries. In +order to be sure you had only to let go and see how you got on without +it. She had tried in that way, with scepticism and precaution, on +herself.</p> + +<p>But not in the beginning. She could not say that she had tried it in the +beginning at all, even on herself. It had simply come to her, as she put +it, by a divine accident. Heaven knew she had needed it. She had been, +like Rodney Lanyon, on the verge, where he, poor dear, had brought her; +so impossible had it been then to bear her knowledge and, what was +worse, her divination of the things he bore from Bella. It was her +divination, her compassion, that had wrecked her as she stood aside, cut +off from him, he on the verge and she near it, looking on, powerless to +help while Bella tore at him. Talk of the verge, the wonder was they +hadn't gone clean over it, both of them.</p> + +<p>She couldn't say then from what region, what tract of unexplored, +incredible mystery her help had come. It came one day, one night when +she was at her worst. She remembered how with some resurgent, ultimate +instinct of surrender she had sunk on the floor of her room, flung out +her arms across the bed in the supreme gesture of supplication, and thus +gone, eyes shut and with no motion of thought or sense in her, clean +into the blackness where, as if it had been waiting for her, the thing +had found her.</p> + +<p>It had found her. Agatha was precise on that point. She had not found +it. She had not even stumbled on it, blundered up against it in the +blackness. The way it worked, the wonder of her instantaneous well-being +had been the first, the very first hint she had that it was there.</p> + +<p>She had never quite recaptured her primal, virgin sense of it; but, to +set against that, she had entered more and more into possession. She +had found out the secret of its working and had controlled it, reduced +it to an almost intelligible method. You could think of it as a current +of transcendent power, hitherto mysteriously inhibited. You made the +connection, having cut off all other currents that interfered, and then +you simply turned it on. In other words, if you could put it into words +at all, you shut your eyes and ears, you closed up the sense of touch, +you made everything dark around you and withdrew into your innermost +self; you burrowed deep into the darkness there till you got beyond it; +you tapped the Power as it were underground at any point you pleased and +turned it on in any direction.</p> + +<p>She could turn it on to Harding Powell without any loss to Rodney +Lanyon; for it was immeasurable, inexhaustible.</p> + +<p>She looked back at the farm-house with its veiled windows. Formless and +immense, the shadow of Harding Powell swayed uneasily on one of the +yellow blinds. Across the field her own house showed pure and dim +against the darkening slope behind it, showed a washed and watered white +in the liquid, lucid twilight. Her house was open always and on every +side; it flung out its casement arms to the night and to the day. And +now all the lamps were lit, every doorway was a golden shaft, every +window a golden square; the whiteness of its walls quivered and the +blurred edges flowed into the dark of the garden. It was the fragile +shell of a sacred and a burning light.</p> + +<p>She did not go in all at once. She crossed the river and went up the +hill through the beech-wood. She walked there every evening in the +darkness, calling her thoughts home to sleep. The Easter moon, +golden-white and holy, looked down at her, shrined under the long sharp +arch of the beech-trees; it was like going up and up towards a dim +sanctuary where the holiest sat enthroned. A sense of consecration was +upon her. It came, solemn and pure and still, out of the tumult of her +tenderness and pity; but it was too awful for pity and for tenderness; +it aspired like a flame and lost itself in light; it grew like a wave +till it was vaster than any tenderness or any pity. It was as if her +heart rose on the swell of it and was carried away into a rhythm so +tremendous that her own pulses of compassion were no longer felt, or +felt only as the hushed and delicate vibration of the wave. She +recognised her state. It was the blessed state desired as the condition +of the working of the gift.</p> + +<p>She turned when the last arch of the beech-trees broke and opened to the +sky at the top of the hill, where the moon hung in immensity, free of +her hill, free of the shrine that held her. She went down with slow +soft footsteps as if she carried herself, her whole fragile being, as a +vessel, a crystal vessel for the holy thing, and was careful lest a +touch of the earth should jar and break her.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 90px;"> +<img src="images/orn01.jpg" width="90" height="90" alt="Page decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<br /><br /><br /> + + + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/ch04.jpg" width="600" height="157" alt="CHAPTER FOUR" +title="CHAPTER FOUR" /></div> + +<br /> + +<p><img src="images/drops.jpg" width="119" height="120" alt="S" title="S" +class="firstletter" />HE went still more gently and with half-shut eyes +through her illuminated house. She turned the lights out in her room and +undressed herself in the darkness. She laid herself on the bed with +straight lax limbs, with arms held apart a little from her body, with +eyelids shut lightly on her eyes; all fleshly contacts were diminished.</p> + +<p>It was now as if her being drank at every pore the swimming darkness; as +if the rhythm of her heart and of her breath had ceased in the pulse of +its invasion. She sank in it and was covered with wave upon wave of +darkness. She sank and was upheld; she dissolved and was gathered +together again, a flawless crystal. She was herself the heart of the +charmed circle, poised in the ultimate unspeakable stillness, beyond +death, beyond birth, beyond the movements, the vehemences, the +agitations of the world. She drew Harding Powell into it and held him +there.</p> + +<p>To draw him to any purpose she had first to loosen and destroy the +fleshly, sinister image of him that, for the moment of evocation, hung +like a picture on the darkness. In a moment the fleshly image receded, +it sank back into the darkness. His name, Harding Powell, was now the +only earthly sign of him that she suffered to appear. In the third +moment his name was blotted out. And then it was as if she drew him by +intangible, supersensible threads; she touched, with no sense of peril, +his innermost essence; the walls of flesh were down between them; she +had got at him.</p> + +<p>And having got at him she held him, a bloodless spirit, a bodiless +essence, in the fount of healing. She said to herself, "He will sleep +now. He will sleep. He will sleep." And as she slid into her own sleep +she held and drew him with her.</p> + +<p>He would sleep; he would be all right as long as <i>she</i> slept. Her sleep, +she had discovered, did more than carry on the amazing act of communion +and redemption. It clinched it. It was the seal on the bond.</p> + +<p>Early the next morning she went over to the Farm. The blinds were up; +the doors and windows were flung open. Milly met her at the garden gate. +She stopped her and walked a little way with her across the field. "It's +worked," she said. "It's worked after all, like magic."</p> + +<p>For a moment Agatha wondered whether Milly had guessed anything; whether +she divined the Secret and had brought him there for that, and had +refused to acknowledge it before she knew.</p> + +<p>"What has?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"The plan. The place. He slept last night. Ten hours straight on end. I +know, for I stayed awake and watched him. And this morning—oh, my +dear, if you could see him! He's all right. He's all right."</p> + +<p>"And you think," said Agatha, "it's the place?"</p> + +<p>Milly knew nothing, guessed, divined nothing.</p> + +<p>"Why, what else can it be?" she said.</p> + +<p>"What does <i>he</i> think?"</p> + +<p>"He doesn't think. He can't account for it. He says himself it's +miraculous."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps," said Agatha, "it is."</p> + +<p>They were silent a moment over the wonder of it.</p> + +<p>"I can't get over it," said Milly, presently. "It's so odd that it +should make all that difference. I could understand it if it had worked +that way at first. But it didn't. Think of him yesterday. And +yet—if it isn't the place, what is it? What is it?"</p> + +<p>Agatha did not answer. She wasn't going to tell Milly what it was. If +she did Milly wouldn't believe her, and Milly's unbelief might work +against it. It might prove, for all she knew, an inimical, disastrous +power.</p> + +<p>"Come and see for yourself." Milly spoke as if it had been Agatha who +doubted.</p> + +<p>They turned again towards the house. Powell had come out and was in the +garden, leaning on the gate. They could see how right he was by the mere +fact of his being there, presenting himself like that to the vivid +light.</p> + +<p>He opened the gate for them, raising his hat and smiling as they came. +His face witnessed to the wonder worked on him. The colour showed clean, +purged of his taint. His eyes were candid and pure under brows smoothed +by sleep.</p> + +<p>As they went in he stood for a moment in the open doorway and looked at +the view, admiring the river and the green valley, and the bare upland +fields under the wood. He had always had (it was part of his rare +quality) a prodigious capacity for admiration.</p> + +<p>"My God," he said, "how beautiful the world is!"</p> + +<p>He looked at Milly. "And all <i>that</i> isn't a patch on my wife."</p> + +<p>He looked at her with tenderness and admiration, and the look was the +flower, the perfection of his sanity.</p> + +<p>Milly drew in her breath with a little sound like a sob. Her joy was so +great that it was almost unbearable.</p> + +<p>Then he looked at Agatha and admired the green gown she wore. "You don't +know," he said, "how exquisitely right you are."</p> + +<p>She smiled. She knew how exquisitely right <i>he</i> was.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 90px;"> +<img src="images/orn01.jpg" width="90" height="90" alt="Page decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<br /><br /><br /> + + + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/ch05.jpg" width="600" height="157" alt="CHAPTER FIVE" +title="CHAPTER FIVE" /></div> + +<br /> + + +<p><img src="images/dropn.jpg" width="118" height="120" alt="N" title="N" +class="firstletter" />IGHT after night she continued, and without an +effort. It was as easy as drawing your breath; it was indeed the breath +you drew. She found that she had no longer to devote hours to Harding +Powell, any more than she gave hours to Rodney; she could do his +business in moments, in points of inappreciable time. It was as if from +night to night the times swung together and made one enduring timeless +time. For the process belonged to a region that was not of times or +time.</p> + +<p>She wasn't afraid, then, of not giving enough time to it, but she <i>was</i> +afraid of omitting it altogether. She knew that every intermission +would be followed by a relapse, and Harding's state did not admit of any +relapses.</p> + +<p>Of course, if time <i>had</i> counted, if the thing was measurable, she would +have been afraid of losing hold of Rodney Lanyon. She held him now by a +single slender thread, and the thread was Bella. She "worked" it +regularly now through Bella. He was bound to be all right as long as +Bella was; for his possibilities of suffering were thus cut off at their +source. Besides, it was the only way to preserve the purity of her +intention, the flawlessness of the crystal.</p> + +<p>That was the blessedness of her attitude to Harding Powell. It was +passionless, impersonal. She wanted nothing of Harding Powell except to +help him, and to help Milly, dear little Milly. And never before had she +been given so complete, so overwhelming a sense of having helped. It was +nothing—unless it was a safeguard against vanity—that they didn't +know it, that they persisted in thinking that it was Milly's plan that +worked.</p> + +<p>Not that that altogether accounted for it to Harding Powell. He said so +at last to Agatha.</p> + +<p>They were returning, he and she, by the edge of the wood at the top of +the steep field after a long walk. He had asked her to go with him—it +was her country—for a good stretch, further than Milly's little feet +could carry her. They stood a moment up there and looked around them. +April was coming on, but the ploughed land at their feet was still bare; +the earth waited. On that side of the valley she was delicately +unfruitful, spent with rearing the fine, thin beauty of the woods. But, +down below, the valley ran over with young grass and poured it to the +river in wave after wave, till the last surge of green rounded over the +water's edge. Rain had fallen in the night, and the river had risen; it +rested there, poised. It was wonderful how a thing so brimming, so +shining, so alive could be so still; still as marsh water, flat to the +flat land.</p> + +<p>At that moment, in a flash that came like a shifting of her eyes, the +world she looked at suffered a change.</p> + +<p>And yet it did not change. All the appearances of things, their colours, +the movement and the stillness remained as if constant in their rhythm +and their scale; but they were heightened, intensified; they were +carried to a pitch that would have been vehement, vibrant, but that the +stillness as well as the movement was intense. She was not dazzled by it +or confused in any way. Her senses were exalted, adjusted to the pitch.</p> + +<p>She would have said now that the earth at her feet had become +insubstantial, but that she knew, in her flash, that what she saw was +the very substance of the visible world; live and subtle as flame; solid +as crystal and as clean. It was the same world, flat field for flat +field and hill for hill; but radiant, vibrant, and, as it were, +infinitely transparent.</p> + +<p>Agatha in her moment saw that the whole world brimmed and shone and was +alive with the joy that was its life, joy that flowed flood-high and yet +was still. In every leaf, in every blade of grass, this life was +manifest as a strange, a divine translucence. She was about to point it +out to the man at her side when she remembered that he had eyes for the +beauty of the earth, but no sense of its secret and supernatural light. +Harding Powell denied, he always had denied the supernatural. And when +she turned to him her vision had passed from her.</p> + +<p>They must have another tramp some day, he said. He wanted to see more +of this wonderful place. And then he spoke of his recovery.</p> + +<p>"It's all very well," he said, "but I can't account for it. Milly says +it's the place."</p> + +<p>"It <i>is</i> a wonderful place," said Agatha.</p> + +<p>"Not so wonderful as all that. You saw how I was the day after we came. +Well—it can't be the place altogether."</p> + +<p>"I rather hope it isn't," Agatha said.</p> + +<p>"Do you? What do you think it is, then?"</p> + +<p>"I think it's something in you."</p> + +<p>"Of course, of course. But what started it? That's what I want to know. +Something's happened. Something queer and spontaneous and unaccountable. +It's—it's uncanny. For, you know, I oughtn't to feel like this. I got +bad news this morning."</p> + +<p>"Bad news?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. My sister's little girl is very ill. They think it's meningitis. +They're in awful trouble. And <i>I</i>—<i>I</i>'m feeling like this."</p> + +<p>"Don't let it distress you."</p> + +<p>"It doesn't distress me. It only puzzles me. That's the odd thing. Of +course, I'm sorry and I'm anxious and all that; but I <i>feel</i> so well."</p> + +<p>"You <i>are</i> well. Don't be morbid."</p> + +<p>"I haven't told my wife yet. About the child, I mean. I simply daren't. +It'll frighten her. She won't know how I'll take it, and she'll think +it'll make me go all queer again."</p> + +<p>He paused and turned to her.</p> + +<p>"I say, if she <i>did</i> know how I'm taking it, she'd think <i>that</i> awfully +queer, wouldn't she?" He paused.</p> + +<p>"The worst of it is," he said, "I've got to tell her."</p> + +<p>"Will you leave it to me?" Agatha said. "I think I can make it all +right."</p> + +<p>"How?" he queried.</p> + +<p>"Never mind how. I can."</p> + +<p>"Well," he assented, "there's hardly anything you can't do."</p> + +<p>That was how she came to tell Milly.</p> + +<p>She made up her mind to tell her that evening as they sat alone in +Agatha's house. Harding, Milly said, was happy over there with his +books; just as he used to be, only more so. So much more so that she was +a little disturbed about it. She was afraid it wouldn't last. And again +she said it was the place, the wonderful, wonderful place.</p> + +<p>"If you want it to last," Agatha said, "don't go on thinking it's the +place."</p> + +<p>"Why shouldn't it be? I feel that he's safe here. He's out of it. Things +can't reach him."</p> + +<p>"Bad news reached him to-day."</p> + +<p>"Aggy—what?" Milly whispered in her fright.</p> + +<p>"His sister is very anxious about her little girl."</p> + +<p>"What's wrong?"</p> + +<p>Agatha repeated what she had heard from Harding Powell.</p> + +<p>"Oh——" Milly was dumb for an instant while she thought of her +sister-in-law. Then she cried aloud.</p> + +<p>"If the child dies it will make him ill again!"</p> + +<p>"No Milly, it won't."</p> + +<p>"It will, I tell you. It's always been that sort of thing that does it."</p> + +<p>"And supposing there was something that keeps it off?"</p> + +<p>"What is there? What is there?"</p> + +<p>"I believe there's something. Would you mind awfully if it wasn't the +place?"</p> + +<p>"What do you mean, Agatha?" (There was a faint resentment in Milly's +agonised tone.)</p> + +<p>It was then that Agatha told her. She made it out for her as far as she +had made it out at all, with the diffidence that a decent attitude +required.</p> + +<p>Milly raised doubts which subsided in a kind of awe when Agatha faced +her with the evidence of dates.</p> + +<p>"You remember, Milly, the night when he slept."</p> + +<p>"I do remember. He said himself it was miraculous."</p> + +<p>She meditated.</p> + +<p>"And so you think it's that?" she said presently.</p> + +<p>"I do indeed. If I dared leave off (I daren't) you'd see for yourself."</p> + +<p>"What do you think you've got hold of?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know yet."</p> + +<p>There was a long deep silence which Milly broke.</p> + +<p>"What do you <i>do</i>?" she said.</p> + +<p>"I don't do anything. It isn't me."</p> + +<p>"I see," said Milly. "<i>I</i>'ve prayed. You didn't think I hadn't."</p> + +<p>"It's not that—not anything you mean by it. And yet it is; only it's +more, much more. I can't explain it. I only know it isn't me."</p> + +<p>She was beginning to feel vaguely uncomfortable about having told her.</p> + +<p>"And Milly, you mustn't tell him. Promise me you won't tell him."</p> + +<p>"No, I won't tell him."</p> + +<p>"Because you see, he'd think it was all rot."</p> + +<p>"He would," said Milly. "It's the sort of thing he does think rot."</p> + +<p>"And that might prevent its working."</p> + +<p>Milly smiled faintly. "I haven't the ghost of an idea what 'it' is. But +whatever it is, can you go on doing it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I think so. You see, it depends rather——"</p> + +<p>"It depends on what?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, on a lot of things—on your sincerity; on your—your purity. It +depends so much on <i>that</i> that it frightens you lest, perhaps, you +mightn't, after all, be so very pure."</p> + +<p>Milly smiled again, a little differently. "Darling, if that's all, I'm +not frightened. Only—supposing—supposing you gave out? You might, you +know."</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> might. But It couldn't. You mustn't think it's me, Milly. Because +if anything happened to me, if I did give out, don't you see how it +would let him down? It's as bad as thinking it's the place."</p> + +<p>"Does it matter what it is—or who it is," said Milly, passionately; "as +long as——" Her tears came and stopped her.</p> + +<p>Agatha divined the source of Milly's passion.</p> + +<p>"Then you don't mind, Milly? You'll let me go on?"</p> + +<p>Milly rose; she turned abruptly, holding her head high, so that she +might not spill her tears.</p> + +<p>Agatha went with her over the grey field towards the Farm. They paused +at the gate. Milly spoke.</p> + +<p>"Are you sure?" she said.</p> + +<p>"Certain."</p> + +<p>"And you won't leave go?" Her eyes shone towards her friend's in the +twilight. "You <i>will</i> go on?"</p> + +<p>"<i>You</i> must go on."</p> + +<p>"Ah—how?"</p> + +<p>"Believing that he'll be all right."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Aggy, he was devoted to Winny. And if the child dies——"</p> + +<br /><br /> + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 90px;"> +<img src="images/orn01.jpg" width="90" height="90" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<br /><br /><br /> + + + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/ch06.jpg" width="600" height="157" alt="CHAPTER SIX" +title="CHAPTER SIX" /></div> + +<br /> + + +<p><img src="images/dropt.jpg" width="120" height="120" alt="T" title="T" +class="firstletter" />HE child died three days later. Milly came over to +Agatha with the news.</p> + +<p>She said it had been an awful shock, of course. She'd been dreading +something like that for him. But he'd taken it wonderfully. If he came +out of it all right she <i>would</i> believe in what she called Agatha's +"thing."</p> + +<p>He did come out of it all right. His behaviour was the crowning proof, +if Milly wanted more proof, of his sanity. He went up to London and made +all the arrangements for his sister. When he returned he forestalled +Milly's specious consolations with the truth. It was better, he told +her, that the dear little girl should have died, for there was distinct +brain trouble anyway. He took it as a sane man takes a terrible +alternative.</p> + +<p>Weeks passed. He had grown accustomed to his own sanity and no longer +marvelled at it.</p> + +<p>And still without intermission Agatha went on. She had been so far +affected by Milly's fright (that was the worst of Milly's knowing) that +she held on to Harding Powell with a slightly exaggerated intensity. She +even began to give more and more time to him, she who had made out that +time in this process did not matter. She was afraid of letting go, +because the consequences (Milly was perpetually reminding her of the +consequences) of letting go would be awful.</p> + +<p>For Milly kept her at it. Milly urged her on. Milly, in Milly's own +words, sustained her. She praised her; she praised the Secret, praised +the Power. She said you could see how it worked. It was tremendous; it +was inexhaustible. Milly, familiarised with its working, had become a +fanatical believer in the Power. But she had her own theory. She knew of +course that they were all, she and Agatha and poor Harding, dependent on +the Power, that it was the Power that did it, and not Agatha. But Agatha +was <i>their</i> one link with it, and if the link gave way where were they? +Agatha felt that Milly watched her and waylaid her; that she was +suspicious of failures and of intermissions; that she wondered; that she +peered and pried. Milly would, if she could, have stuck her fingers into +what she called the machinery of the thing. Its vagueness baffled and +even annoyed her, for her mind was limited; it loved and was at home +with limits; it desired above all things precise ideas, names, phrases, +anything that constricted and defined.</p> + +<p>But still, with it all, she believed; and the great thing was that Milly +<i>should</i> believe. She might have worked havoc if, with her temperament, +she had doubted.</p> + +<p>What did suffer was the fine poise with which she, Agatha, had held +Rodney Lanyon and Harding Powell each by his own thread. Milly had +compelled her to spin a stronger thread for Harding and, as it were, to +multiply her threads, so as to hold him at all points. And because of +this, because of giving more and more time to him, she could not always +loose him from her and let him go. And she was afraid lest the pull he +had on her might weaken Rodney's thread.</p> + +<p>Up till now, the Powells' third week at Sarratt End, she had had the +assurance that his thread still held. She heard from him that Bella was +all right, which meant that he too was all right, for there had never +been anything wrong with him <i>but</i> Bella. And she had a further glimpse +of the way the gift worked its wonders.</p> + +<p>Three Fridays had passed, and he had not come.</p> + +<p>Well—she had meant that; she had tried (on that last Friday of his), +with a crystal sincerity, to hold him back so that he should not come. +And up till now, with an ease that simply amazed her, she had kept +herself at the highest pitch of her sincere and beautiful intention.</p> + +<p>Not that it was the intention that had failed her now. It had succeeded +so beautifully, so perfectly, that he had no need to come at all. She +had given Bella back to him. She had given him back to Bella. Only, she +faced the full perfection of her work. She had brought it to so fine a +point that she would never see him again; she had gone to the root of +it; she had taken from him the desire to see her. And now it was as if +subtly, insidiously, her relation to him had become inverted. Whereas +hitherto it had been she who had been necessary to him, it seemed now +that he was far more, beyond all comparison more necessary to her. After +all, Rodney had had Bella; and she had nobody but Rodney. He was the one +solitary thing she cared for. And hitherto it had not mattered so +immensely, for all her caring, whether he came to her or not. Seeing him +had been perhaps a small mortal joy; but it had not been the tremendous +and essential thing. She had been contented, satisfied beyond all mortal +contentments and satisfactions, with the intangible, immaterial tie. Now +she longed, with an unendurable longing, for his visible, bodily +presence. She had not realised her joy as long as it was with her; she +had refused to acknowledge it because of its mortal quality, and it had +raised no cry that troubled her abiding spiritual calm. But now that +she had put it from her, it thrust itself on her, it cried, it clung +piteously to her and would not let her go. She looked back to the last +year, her year of Fridays, and saw it following her, following and +entreating. She looked forward and she saw Friday after Friday coming +upon her, a procession of pitiless days, trampling it down, her small, +piteous mortal joy, and her mortality rose in her and revolted. She had +been disturbed by what she had called the "lurking possibilities" in +Rodney; they were nothing to the lurking possibilities in her.</p> + +<p>There were moments when her desire to see Rodney sickened her with its +importunity. Each time she beat it back, in an instant, to its burrow +below the threshold, and it hid there, it ran underground. There were +ways below the threshold by which desire could get at him. Therefore, +one night—Tuesday of the fourth week—she cut him off. She refused to +hold him even by a thread. It was Bella and Bella only that she held +now.</p> + +<p>On Friday of that week she heard from him. Bella was still all right. +But <i>he</i> wasn't. Anything but. He didn't know what was the matter with +him. He supposed it was the same old thing again. He couldn't think how +poor Bella stood him, but she did. It must be awfully bad for her. It +was beastly, wasn't it? that he should have got like that, just when +Bella was so well.</p> + +<p>She might have known it. She had in fact known. Having once held him, +and having healed him, she had no right—as long as the Power consented +to work through her—she had no right to let him go.</p> + +<p>She began again from the beginning, from the first process of +purification and surrender. But what followed was different now. She +had not only to recapture the crystal serenity, the holiness of that +state by which she had held Rodney Lanyon and had healed him; she had to +recover the poise by which she had held him and Harding Powell together. +And the effort to recover it became a striving, a struggle in which +Harding persisted and prevailed. Yes, there was no blinking it, he +prevailed.</p> + +<p>She had been prepared for it, but not as for a thing that could really +happen. It was contrary to all that she knew of the beneficent working +of the Power. She thought she knew all its ways, its silences, its +reassurances, its inexplicable reservations and evasions. She couldn't +be prepared for this—that it, the high and holy, the unspeakably pure +thing should allow Harding to prevail, should connive (that was what it +looked like) at his taking the gift into his own hands and turning it to +his own advantage against Rodney Lanyon.</p> + +<p>It was her fear at last that made her write to Rodney. She wrote in the +beginning of the fifth week (she was counting the weeks now). She only +wanted to know, she said, that he was better, that he was well. She +begged him to write and tell her that he was well.</p> + +<p>He did not write.</p> + +<p>And every night of that week, in those "states" of hers, Powell +prevailed. He was becoming almost a visible presence impressed upon the +blackness of the "state." All she could do then was to evoke the visible +image of Rodney Lanyon and place it there over Harding's image, +obliterating him. Now, properly speaking, the state, the perfection of +it, did not admit of visible presences, and that Harding could so +impress himself showed more than anything the extent to which he had +prevailed.</p> + +<p>He prevailed to such good purpose that he was now, Milly said, well +enough to go back to business. They were to leave Sarratt End in about +ten days, when they would have been there seven weeks.</p> + +<p>She had come over on the Sunday to let Agatha know that; and also, she +said, to make a confession.</p> + +<p>Milly's face, as she said it, was all candour. It had filled out; it had +bloomed in her happiness; it was shadowless, featureless almost, like a +flower.</p> + +<p>She had done what she said she wouldn't do; she had told Harding.</p> + +<p>"Oh Milly, what on earth did you do that for?" Agatha's voice was +strange.</p> + +<p>"I thought it better," Milly said, revealing the fine complacence of her +character.</p> + +<p>"Why better?"</p> + +<p>"Because secrecy is bad. And he was beginning to wonder. He wanted to go +back to business; and he wouldn't because he thought it was the place +that did it."</p> + +<p>"I see," said Agatha. "And what does he think it is now?"</p> + +<p>"He thinks it's <i>you</i>, dear."</p> + +<p>"But I told you—I told you—that was what you were not to +think."</p> + +<p>"My dear, it's an immense concession that he should think it's you."</p> + +<p>"A concession to what?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I suppose, to the supernatural."</p> + +<p>"Milly, you shouldn't have told him. You don't know what harm you might +have done. I'm not sure even now that you have not done harm."</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>have</i> I!" said Milly, triumphantly. "You've only got to look at +him."</p> + +<p>"When did you tell him, then?"</p> + +<p>"I told him—let me see—it was a week ago last Friday."</p> + +<p>Agatha was silent. She wondered. It had been after Friday a week ago +that he had prevailed so terribly.</p> + +<p>"Agatha," said Milly, solemnly, "when we go away you won't lose sight of +him? You won't let go of him?"</p> + +<p>"You needn't be afraid. I doubt now if he will let go of me."</p> + +<p>"How do you mean—<i>now</i>?" Milly flushed slightly as a flower might +flush.</p> + +<p>"Now that you've told him, now that he thinks it's me."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps," said Milly, "that was why I told him. I don't want him to let +go."</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 90px;"> +<img src="images/orn01.jpg" width="90" height="90" alt="Page decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<br /><br /><br /> + + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/ch07.jpg" width="600" height="157" alt="CHAPTER SEVEN" +title="CHAPTER SEVEN" /> +</div> + +<br /> + + +<p><img src="images/dropi.jpg" width="119" height="120" alt="I" title="I" +class="firstletter" />T was the sixth week, and still Rodney did not write; +and Agatha was more and more afraid.</p> + +<p>By this time she had definitely connected her fear with Harding Powell's +dominion and persistence. She was certain now that what she could only +call his importunity had proved somehow disastrous to Rodney Lanyon. And +with it all, unacknowledged, beaten back, her desire to see Rodney ran +to and fro in the burrows underground.</p> + +<p>He did not write, but on the Friday of that week, the sixth week, he +came.</p> + +<p>She saw him coming up the garden path and she shrank back into her +room; but the light searched her and found her, and he saw her there. He +never knocked; he came straight and swiftly to her through the open +doors. He shut the door of the room behind him and held her by her arms +with both his hands.</p> + +<p>"Rodney," she said, "did you mean to come, or did I make you?"</p> + +<p>"I meant to come. You couldn't make me."</p> + +<p>"Couldn't I? Oh <i>say</i> I couldn't."</p> + +<p>"You could," he said, "but you didn't. And what does it matter so long +as I'm here?"</p> + +<p>"Let me look at you."</p> + +<p>She held him at arm's length and turned him to the light. It showed his +face white, worn as it used to be, all the little lines of worry back +again, and two new ones that drew down the corners of his mouth.</p> + +<p>"You've been ill," she said. "You <i>are</i> ill."</p> + +<p>"No. I'm all right. What's the matter with <i>you</i>?"</p> + +<p>"With me? Nothing. Do I look as if anything was wrong?"</p> + +<p>"You look as if you'd been frightened."</p> + +<p>He paused, considering it.</p> + +<p>"This place isn't good for you. You oughtn't to be here like this, all +by yourself."</p> + +<p>"Oh! Rodney, it's the dearest place. I love every inch of it. Besides, +I'm not altogether by myself."</p> + +<p>He did not seem to hear her; and what he said next arose evidently out +of his own thoughts.</p> + +<p>"I say, are those Powells still here?"</p> + +<p>"They've been here all the time."</p> + +<p>"Do you see much of them?"</p> + +<p>"I see them every day. Sometimes nearly all day."</p> + +<p>"That accounts for it."</p> + +<p>Again he paused.</p> + +<p>"It's my fault, Agatha. I shouldn't have left you to them. I knew."</p> + +<p>"What did you know?"</p> + +<p>"Well—the state he was in, and the effect it would have on you—that +it would have on any one."</p> + +<p>"It's all right. He's going. Besides, he isn't in a state any more. He's +cured."</p> + +<p>"Cured? What's cured him?"</p> + +<p>She evaded him.</p> + +<p>"He's been well ever since he came; absolutely well after the first +day."</p> + +<p>"Still, you've been frightened; you've been worrying; you've had some +shock or other, or some strain. What is it?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing. Only—just the last week—I've been a little frightened about +you—when you wouldn't write to me. Why didn't you?"</p> + +<p>"Because I couldn't."</p> + +<p>"Then you <i>were</i> ill."</p> + +<p>"I'm all right. I know what's the matter with me."</p> + +<p>"It's Bella?"</p> + +<p>He laughed harshly.</p> + +<p>"No, it isn't this time. I haven't that excuse."</p> + +<p>"Excuse for what?"</p> + +<p>"For coming. Bella's all right. Bella's a perfect angel. God knows +what's happened to her. I don't. <i>I</i> haven't had anything to do with +it."</p> + +<p>"You had. You had everything. You were an angel, too."</p> + +<p>"I haven't been much of an angel lately, I can tell you."</p> + +<p>"She'll understand. She does understand."</p> + +<p>They had sat down on the couch in the corner so that they faced each +other. Agatha faced him, but fear was in her eyes.</p> + +<p>"It doesn't matter," he said, "whether she understands or not. I don't +want to talk about her."</p> + +<p>Agatha said nothing, but there was a movement in her face, a white wave +of trouble, and the fear fluttered in her eyes. He saw it there.</p> + +<p>"You needn't bother about Bella. She's all right. You see, it's not as +if she cared."</p> + +<p>"Cared?"</p> + +<p>"About <i>me</i> much."</p> + +<p>"But she does, she does care!"</p> + +<p>"I suppose she did once, or she couldn't have married me. But she +doesn't now. You see—you may as well know it, Agatha—there's another +man."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Rodney, no."</p> + +<a name="TNanchor_1" id="TNanchor_1"></a> +<p>"Yes. It's been perfectly all right, you know; but there he is and +there he's been for years. She told me. I'm awfully sorry for her."</p> + +<p>He paused.</p> + +<p>"What beats me is her being so angelic now, when she doesn't care."</p> + +<p>"Rodney, she does. It's all over, like an illness. It's you she cares +for <i>now</i>."</p> + +<p>"Think so?"</p> + +<p>"I'm sure of it."</p> + +<p>"I'm not."</p> + +<p>"You will be. You'll see it. You'll see it soon."</p> + +<p>He glanced at her under his bent brows.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," he said, "that I want to see it. <i>That</i> isn't what's the +matter with me. You don't understand the situation. It isn't all over. +She's only being good about it. She doesn't care a rap about me. She +<i>can't</i>. And what's more I don't want her to."</p> + +<p>"You—don't—want her to?"</p> + +<p>He burst out. "My God, I want nothing in this world but <i>you</i>. And I +can't have you. That's what's the matter with me."</p> + +<p>"No, no, it isn't," she cried. "You don't know."</p> + +<p>"I do know. It's hurting me. And——" he looked at her and his voice +shook—"it's hurting <i>you</i>. I won't have you hurt."</p> + +<p>He started forward suddenly as if he would have taken her in his arms. +She put up her hands to keep him off.</p> + +<p>"No, no!" she cried. "I'm all right. I'm all right. It isn't that. You +mustn't think it."</p> + +<p>"I know it. That's why I came."</p> + +<p>He came near again. He seized her struggling hands.</p> + +<a name="TNanchor_2" id="TNanchor_2"></a> +<p>"Agatha, why can't we? Why shouldn't we?"</p> + +<p>"No, no," she moaned. "We can't. We mustn't. Not <i>that</i> way. I don't +want it, Rodney, that way."</p> + +<p>"It shall be any way you like. Only don't beat me off."</p> + +<p>"I'm not—beating—you—off."</p> + +<p>She stood up. Her face changed suddenly.</p> + +<p>"Rodney—I forgot. They're coming."</p> + +<p>"Who are they?"</p> + +<p>"The Powells. They're coming to lunch."</p> + +<p>"Can't you put them off?"</p> + +<p>"I can, but it wouldn't be very wise, dear. They might think——"</p> + +<p>"Confound them—they <i>would</i> think."</p> + +<p>He was pulling himself visibly together.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid, Aggy, I ought——"</p> + +<p>"I know—you must. You must go soon." He looked at his watch.</p> + +<p>"I must go <i>now</i>, dear. I daren't stay. It's dangerous."</p> + +<p>"I know," she whispered.</p> + +<p>"But when is the brute going?"</p> + +<p>"Poor darling, he's going next week—next Thursday."</p> + +<p>"Well then, I'll—I'll——"</p> + +<p>"Please, you must go."</p> + +<p>"I'm going."</p> + +<p>She held out her hand.</p> + +<p>"I daren't touch you," he whispered. "I'm going now. But I'll come again +next Friday, and I'll stay."</p> + +<p>As she saw his drawn face there was not any strength in her to say +"No."</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 90px;"> +<img src="images/orn01.jpg" width="90" height="90" alt="Page decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<br /><br /><br /> + + + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/ch08.jpg" width="600" height="157" alt="CHAPTER EIGHT" +title="CHAPTER EIGHT" /> +</div> + +<br /> + + +<p><img src="images/droph.jpg" width="119" height="120" alt="H" title="H" +class="firstletter" />E had gone. She gathered herself together and went +across the field to meet the Powells as if nothing had happened.</p> + +<p>Milly and her husband were standing at the gate of the Farm. They were +watching; yes, they were watching Rodney Lanyon as he crossed the river +by the Farm bridge which led up the hill by the field path that slanted +to the farther and western end of the wood. Their attitude showed that +they were interested in his brief appearance on the scene, and that they +wondered what he had been doing there. And as she approached them she +was aware of something cold, ominous, and inimical, that came from +them, and set towards her and passed by. Her sense of it only lasted for +a second, and was gone so completely that she could hardly realise that +she had ever felt it.</p> + +<p>For they were charming to her. Harding, indeed, was more perfect in his +beautiful quality than ever. There was something about him moreover that +she had not been prepared for, something strange and pathetic, humble +almost and appealing. She saw it in his eyes, his large, dark, wild +animal eyes, chiefly. But it was a look that claimed as much as it +deprecated; that assumed between them some unspoken communion and +understanding. With all its pathos it was a look that frightened her. +Neither he nor his wife said a word about Rodney Lanyon. She was not +even sure, now, that they had recognised him.</p> + +<p>They stayed with her all that afternoon; for their time, they said, was +getting short; and when, about six o'clock, Milly got up to go she took +Agatha aside and said that, if Agatha didn't mind, she would leave +Harding with her for a little while. She knew he wanted to talk to her.</p> + +<p>Agatha proposed that they should walk up the hill through the wood. They +went in a curious silence and constraint; and it was not until they had +got into the wood and were shut up in it together that he spoke.</p> + +<p>"I think my wife told you that I had something to say to you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Harding," she said; "what is it?"</p> + +<p>"Well, it's this—first of all I want to thank you. I know what you're +doing for me."</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry. I didn't want you to know. I thought Milly wasn't going to +tell you."</p> + +<p>"She didn't tell me."</p> + +<p>Agatha said nothing. She was bound to accept his statement. Of course, +he must have known that Milly had broken her word, and he was trying to +shield her.</p> + +<p>"I mean," he went on, "that whether she told me or not, it's no matter. +I knew."</p> + +<p>"You—knew?"</p> + +<p>"I knew that something was happening, and I knew that it wasn't the +place. Places never make any difference. I only go to 'em because Milly +thinks they do. Besides, if it came to that, this place—from my +peculiar point of view, mind you—was simply beastly. I couldn't have +stood another night of it."</p> + +<p>"Well."</p> + +<p>"Well, the thing went; and I got all right. And the queer part of it is +that I felt as if you were in it somehow, as if you'd done something. I +half hoped you might say something, but you never did."</p> + +<p>"One ought not to speak about these things, Harding. And I told you I +didn't want you to know."</p> + +<p>"I didn't know what you did. I don't know now, though Milly tried to +tell me. But I felt you. I felt you all the time."</p> + +<p>"It was not I you felt. I implore you not to think it was."</p> + +<p>"What can I think?"</p> + +<p>"Think as I do; think—think——" She stopped herself. She was aware of +the futility of her charge to this man who denied, who always had +denied, the supernatural.</p> + +<p>"It isn't a question of thinking," she said at last.</p> + +<p>"Of believing, then? Are you going to tell me to believe?"</p> + +<p>"No; it isn't believing either. It's knowing. Either you know it or you +don't know, though you may come to know. But whatever you think, you +mustn't think it's me."</p> + +<p>"I rather like to. Why shouldn't I?"</p> + +<p>She turned on him her grave white face, and he noticed a curious +expression there as of incipient terror.</p> + +<p>"Because you might do some great harm either to yourself or——"</p> + +<p>His delicate, sceptical eyebrows questioned her.</p> + +<p>"Or me."</p> + +<p>"You?" he murmured gently, pitifully almost.</p> + +<p>"Yes, me. Or even—well, one doesn't quite know where the harm might +end. If I could only make you take another view. I tried to make you—to +work it that way—so that you might find the secret and do it for +yourself."</p> + +<p>"I can't do anything for myself. But, Agatha, I'll take any view you +like of it, so long as you'll keep on at me."</p> + +<p>"Of course I'll keep on."</p> + +<p>At that he stopped suddenly in his path, and faced her.</p> + +<p>"I say, you know, it isn't hurting you, is it?"</p> + +<p>She felt herself wince. "Hurting me? How could it hurt me?"</p> + +<p>"Milly said it couldn't."</p> + +<p>Agatha sighed. She said to herself, "Milly—if only Milly hadn't +interfered."</p> + +<p>"Don't you think it's cold here in the wood?" she said.</p> + +<p>"Cold?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Let's go back."</p> + +<p>As they went Milly met them at the Farm bridge. She wanted Agatha to +come and stay for supper; she pressed, she pleaded, and Agatha, who had +never yet withstood Milly's pleading, stayed.</p> + +<p>It was from that evening that she really dated it, the thing that came +upon her. She was aware that in staying she disobeyed an instinct that +told her to go home. Otherwise she could not say that she had any sort +of premonition. Supper was laid in the long room with the yellow blinds, +where she had first found Harding Powell. The blinds were down to-night, +and the lamp on the table burnt low; the oil had given out. The light in +the room was still daylight and came level from the sunset, leaking +through the yellow blinds. It struck Agatha that it was the same light, +the same ochreish light that they had found in the room six weeks ago. +But that was nothing.</p> + +<p>What it was she did not know. The horrible light went when the flame of +the lamp burnt clearer. Harding was talking to her cheerfully and Milly +was smiling at them both, when half through the meal Agatha got up and +declared that she must go. She was ill; she was tired; they must +forgive her, but she must go.</p> + +<p>The Powells rose and stood by her, close to her, in their distress. +Milly brought wine and put it to her lips; but she turned her head away +and whispered, "Please let me go. Let me get away."</p> + +<p>Harding wanted to walk back with her, but she refused with a vehemence +that deterred him.</p> + +<p>"How very odd of her," said Milly, as they stood at the gate and watched +her go. She was walking fast, almost running, with a furtive step, as if +something pursued her.</p> + +<p>Powell did not speak. He turned from his wife and went slowly back into +the house.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 90px;"> +<img src="images/orn01.jpg" width="90" height="90" alt="Page decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<br /><br /><br /> + + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/ch09.jpg" width="600" height="157" alt="CHAPTER NINE" +title="CHAPTER NINE" /></div> + +<br /> + + +<p><img src="images/drops.jpg" width="119" height="120" alt="S" title="S" +class="firstletter" />HE knew now what had happened to her. She <i>was</i> +afraid of Harding Powell; and it was her fear that had cried to her to +go, to get away from him.</p> + +<p>The awful thing was that she knew she could not get away from him. She +had only to close her eyes and she would find the visible image of him +hanging before her on the wall of darkness. And to-night, when she tried +to cover it with Rodney's it was no longer obliterated. Rodney's image +had worn thin and Harding's showed through. She was more afraid of it +than she had been of Harding; and, more than anything, she was afraid +of being afraid. Harding was the object of a boundless and indestructible +compassion, and her fear of him was hateful to her and unholy. She knew +that it would be terrible to let it follow her into that darkness where +she would presently go down with him alone. "It would be all right," she +said to herself, "if only I didn't keep on seeing him."</p> + +<p>But he, his visible image, and her fear of it, persisted even while the +interior darkness, the divine, beneficent darkness rose round her, wave +on wave, and flooded her; even while she held him there and healed him; +even while it still seemed to her that her love pierced through her fear +and gathered to her, spirit to spirit, flame to pure flame, the +nameless, innermost essence of Rodney and of Bella. She had known in the +beginning that it was by love that she held them; but now, though she +loved Rodney and had almost lost her pity for Harding in her fear of +him, it was Harding rather than Rodney that she held.</p> + +<p>In the morning she woke with a sense, which was almost a memory, of +Harding having been in the room with her all night. She was tired, as if +she had had some long and unrestrained communion with him.</p> + +<p>She put away at once the fatigue that pressed on her (the gift still +"worked" in a flash for the effacing of bodily sensation). She told +herself that, after all, her fear had done no harm. Seldom in her +experience of the Power had she had so tremendous a sense of having got +through to it, of having "worked" it, of having held Harding under it +and healed him. For, when all was said and done, whether she had been +afraid of him or not, she had held him, she had never once let go. The +proof was that he still went sane, visibly, indubitably cured.</p> + +<p>All the same she felt that she could not go through another day like +yesterday. She could not see him. She wrote a letter to Milly. Since it +concerned Milly so profoundly it was well that Milly should be made to +understand. She hoped that Milly would forgive her if they didn't see +her for the next day or two. If she was to go on (she underlined it) she +must be left absolutely alone. It seemed unkind when they were going so +soon, but—Milly knew—it was impossible to exaggerate the +importance of what she had to do.</p> + +<p>Milly wrote back that of course she understood. It should be as Agatha +wished. Only (so Milly "sustained" her) Agatha must not allow herself to +doubt the Power. How could she when she saw what it had done for +Harding. If <i>she</i> doubted, what could she expect of Harding? But of +course she must take care of her own dear self. If she failed—if +she gave way—what on earth would the poor darling do, now that he +had become dependent on her?</p> + +<p>She wrote as if it was Agatha's fault that he had become dependent; as +if Agatha had nothing, had nobody in the world to think of but Harding; +as if nobody, as if nothing in the world beside Harding mattered. And +Agatha found herself resenting Milly's view. As if to her anything in +the world mattered beside Rodney Lanyon.</p> + +<p>For three days she did not see the Powells.</p> + +<br /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 90px;"> +<img src="images/orn01.jpg" width="90" height="90" alt="Page decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<br /><br /><br /> + + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/ch10.jpg" width="600" height="156" alt="CHAPTER TEN" +title="CHAPTER TEN" /></div> + +<br /> + + +<p><img src="images/dropt.jpg" width="120" height="120" alt="T" title="T" +class="firstletter" />HE three nights passed as before, but with an increasing +struggle and fear.</p> + +<p>She knew, she knew what was happening. It was as if the walls of +personality were wearing thin, and through them she felt him trying to +get at her.</p> + +<p>She put the thought from her. It was absurd. It was insane. Such things +could not be. It was not in any region of such happenings that she held +him, but in the place of peace, the charmed circle, the flawless crystal +sphere.</p> + +<p>Still the thought persisted; and still, in spite of it, she held him, +she would not let him go. By her honour, and by her love for Milly she +was bound to hold him, even though she knew how terribly, how implacably +he prevailed.</p> + +<p>She was aware now that the persistence of his image on the blackness was +only a sign to her of his being there in his substance; in his supreme +innermost essence. It had obviously no relation to his bodily +appearance, since she had not seen him for three days. It tended more +and more to vanish, to give place to the shapeless, nameless, +all-pervading presence. And her fear of him became pervading, nameless +and shapeless too.</p> + +<p>Somehow it was always behind her now; it followed her from room to room +of her house; it drove her out of doors. It seemed to her that she went +before it with quick uncertain feet and a fluttering heart, aimless and +tormented as a leaf driven by a vague light wind. Sometimes it sent her +up the field towards the wood; sometimes it would compel her to go a +little way towards the Farm; and then it was as if it took her by the +shoulders and turned her back again towards her house.</p> + +<p>On the fourth day (which was Tuesday of the Powells' last week), she +determined to fight this fear. She could not defy it to the extent of +going on to the Farm where she might see Harding, but certainly she +would not suffer it to turn her from her hill-top. It was there that she +had always gone as the night fell, calling home her thoughts to sleep; +and it was there, seven weeks ago, that the moon, the golden-white and +holy moon, had led her to the consecration of her gift. She had returned +softly, seven weeks ago, carrying carefully her gift, as a fragile, +flawless crystal. Since then how recklessly she had held it! To what +jars and risks she had exposed the exquisite and sacred thing!</p> + +<p>She waited for her hour between sunset and twilight. It was perfect, +following a perfect day. Above the wood the sky had a violet lucidity, +purer than the day; below it the pale brown earth wore a violet haze, +and over that a web of green, woven of the sparse, thin blades of the +young wheat. There were two ways up the hill; one over her own bridge +across the river, that led her to the steep straight path through the +wood; one over the Farm bridge by the slanting path up the field. She +chose the wood.</p> + +<p>She paused on the bridge, and looked down the valley. She saw the +farm-house standing in the stillness that was its own secret and the +hour's. A strange, pale lamplight, lit too soon, showed in the windows +of the room she knew. The Powells would be sitting there at their +supper.</p> + +<p>She went on and came to the gate of the wood. It swung open on its +hinges, a sign to her that some time or other Harding Powell had passed +there. She paused and looked about her. Presently she saw Harding Powell +coming down the wood-path.</p> + +<p>He stopped. He had not yet seen her. He was looking up to the arch of +the beech-trees, where the green light still came through. She could see +by his attitude of quiet contemplation the sane and happy creature that +he was. He was sane, she knew. And yet, no; she could not really see him +as sane. It was her sanity, not his own that he walked in. Or else what +she saw was the empty shell of him. <i>He</i> was in her. Hitherto it had +been in the darkness that she had felt him most, and her fear of him had +been chiefly fear of the invisible Harding, and of what he might do +there in the darkness. Now her fear, which had become almost hatred, was +transferred to his person. In the flesh, as in the spirit, he was +pursuing her.</p> + +<p>He had seen her now. He was making straight for her. And she turned and +ran round the eastern bend of the hill (a yard or so to the left of her) +and hid from him. From where she crouched at the edge of the wood she +saw him descend the lower slope to the river; by standing up and +advancing a little she could see him follow the river path on the nearer +side and cross by the Farm bridge.</p> + +<p>She was sure of all that. She was sure that it did not take her more +than twelve or fifteen minutes (for she had gone that way a hundred +times) to get back to the gate, to walk up the little wood, to cut +through it by a track in the undergrowth, and turn round the further and +western end of it. Thence she could either take the long path that +slanted across the field to the Farm bridge or keep to the upper ground +along a trail in the grass skirting the wood, and so reach home by the +short straight path and her own bridge.</p> + +<p>She decided on the short straight path as leading her farther from the +farm-house, where there could be no doubt that Harding Powell was now. +At the point she had reached, the jutting corner of the wood hid from +her the downward slope of the hill, and the flat land at its foot.</p> + +<p>As she turned the corner of the wood, she was brought suddenly in sight +of the valley. A hot wave swept over her brain, so strong that she +staggered as it passed. It was followed by a strange sensation of +physical sickness, that passed also. It was then as if what went through +her had charged her nerves of sight to a pitch of insane and horrible +sensibility. The green of the grass, and of the young corn, the very +colour of life, was violent and frightful. Not only was it abominable in +itself, it was a thing to be shuddered at, because of some still more +abominable significance it had.</p> + +<p>Agatha had known once, standing where she stood now, an exaltation of +sense that was ecstasy; when every leaf and every blade of grass shone +with a divine translucence; when every nerve in her thrilled, and her +whole being rang with the joy which is immanent in the life of things.</p> + +<p>What she experienced now (if she could have given any account of it) was +exaltation at the other end of the scale. It was horror and fear +unspeakable. Horror and fear immanent in the life of things. She saw the +world in a loathsome transparency; she saw it with the eye of a soul in +which no sense of the divine had ever been, of a soul that denied the +supernatural. It had been Harding Powell's soul, and it had become hers.</p> + +<p>Furiously, implacably, he was getting at her.</p> + +<p>Out of the wood and the hedges that bordered it there came sounds that +were horrible, because she knew them to be inaudible to any ear less +charged with insanity; small sounds of movement, of strange shiverings, +swarmings, crepitations; sounds of incessant, infinitely subtle urging, +of agony and recoil. Sounds they were of the invisible things unborn, +driven towards birth; sounds of the worm unborn, of things that creep +and writhe towards dissolution. She knew what she heard and saw. She +heard the stirring of the corruption that Life was; the young blades of +corn were frightful to her, for in them was the push, the passion of the +evil which was Life; the trees as they stretched out their arms and +threatened her were frightful with the terror which was Life. Down +there, in that gross green hot-bed, the earth teemed with the +abomination; and the river, livid, white, a monstrous thing, crawled, +dragging with it the very slime.</p> + +<p>All this she perceived in a flash, when she had turned the corner. It +sank into stillness and grew dim; she was aware of it only as the scene, +the region in which one thing, her terror, moved and hunted her. Among +sounds of the rustling of leaves, and the soft crush of grass, and the +whirring of little wings in fright, she heard it go; it went on the +other side of the hedge, a little way behind her as she skirted the +wood. She stood still to let it pass her, and she felt that it passed, +and that it stopped and waited. A terrified bird flew out of the hedge, +no further than a fledgling's flight in front of her. And in that place +it flew from she saw Harding Powell.</p> + +<p>He was crouching under the hedge as she had crouched when she had hidden +from him. His face was horrible, but not more horrible than the Terror +that had gone behind her; and she heard herself crying out to him, +"Harding! Harding!" appealing to him against the implacable, unseen +Pursuer.</p> + +<p>He had risen (she saw him rise), but as she called his name he became +insubstantial, and she saw a Thing, a nameless, unnameable, shapeless +Thing, proceeding from him. A brown, blurred Thing, transparent as dusk +is, that drifted on the air. It was torn and tormented, a fragment +parted and flung off from some immense and as yet invisible cloud of +horror. It drifted from her; it dissolved like smoke on the hillside; +and the Thing that had born and begotten it pursued her.</p> + +<p>She bowed under it, and turned from the edge of the wood, the horrible +place it had been born in; she ran before it headlong down the field, +trampling the young corn under her feet. As she ran she heard a voice in +the valley, a voice of amazement and entreaty, calling to her in a sort +of song.</p> + +<p>"What—are—you—running for—Aggy—Aggy?"</p> + +<p>It was Milly's voice that called.</p> + +<p>Then as she came, still headlong, to the river, she heard Harding's +voice saying something, she did not know what. She couldn't stop to +listen to him, or to consider how he came to be there in the valley, +when a minute ago she had seen him by the edge of the wood, up on the +very top of the hill.</p> + +<p>He was on the bridge—the Farm bridge—now. He held out his hand to +steady her as she came on over the swinging plank.</p> + +<p>She knew that he had led her to the other side, and that he was +standing there, still saying something, and that she answered.</p> + +<p>"Have you <i>no</i> pity on me? Can't you let me go?"</p> + +<p>And then she broke from him and ran.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 90px;"> +<img src="images/orn01.jpg" width="90" height="90" alt="Page decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<br /><br /><br /> + + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/ch11.jpg" width="600" height="157" alt="CHAPTER ELEVEN" +title="CHAPTER ELEVEN" /></div> + +<br /> + + +<p><img src="images/drops.jpg" width="119" height="120" alt="S" title="S" +class="firstletter" />HE was awake all that night. Harding Powell and the +horror begotten of him had no pity; he would not let her go. Her gift, +her secret, was powerless now against the pursuer.</p> + +<p>She had a light burning in her room till morning, for she was afraid of +sleep. Those unlit roads down which, if she slept, the Thing would +surely hunt her, were ten times more terrible than the white-washed, +familiar room where it merely watched and waited.</p> + +<p>In the morning she found a letter on her breakfast-table, which the maid +said Mrs. Powell had left late last evening, after Agatha had gone to +bed. Milly wrote: "Dearest Agatha,—Of course I understand. But are we +<i>never</i> going to see you again? What was the matter with you last night? +You terrified poor Harding.—Yours ever, M. P."</p> + +<p>Without knowing why, Agatha tore the letter into bits and burned them in +the flame of a candle. She watched them burn.</p> + +<p>"Of course," she said to herself, "that isn't sane of me."</p> + +<p>And when she had gone round her house and shut all the doors and locked +them, and drawn down the blinds in every closed window, and found +herself cowering over her fireless hearth, shuddering with fear, she +knew that, whether she were mad or not, there was madness in her. She +knew that her face in the glass (she had the courage to look at it) was +the face of an insane terror let loose.</p> + +<p>That she did know it, that there were moments—flashes—in which she +could contemplate her state and recognise it for what it was, showed +that there was still a trace of sanity in her. It was not her own +madness that possessed her. It was, or rather it had been, Harding +Powell's; she had taken it from him. That was what it meant—to take +away madness.</p> + +<p>There could be no doubt as to what had happened, nor as to the way of +its happening. The danger of it, utterly unforeseen, was part of the +very operation of the gift. In the process of getting at Harding to heal +him she had had to destroy not only the barriers of flesh and blood, but +those innermost walls of personality that divide and protect, +mercifully, one spirit from another. With the first thinning of the +walls Harding's insanity had leaked through to her, with the first +breach it had broken in. It had been transferred to her complete with +all its details, with its very gestures, in all the phases that it ran +through; Harding's premonitory fears and tremblings; Harding's exalted +sensibility; Harding's abominable vision of the world, that vision from +which the resplendent divinity had perished; Harding's flight before the +pursuing Terror. She was sitting now as Harding had sat when she found +him crouching over the hearth in that horrible room with the drawn +blinds. It seemed to her that to have a madness of your own would not be +so very horrible. It would be, after all, your own. It could not +possibly be one-half so horrible as this, to have somebody else's +madness put into you.</p> + +<p>The one thing by which she knew herself was the desire that no longer +ran underground, but emerged and appeared before her, lit by her lucid +flashes, naked and unashamed.</p> + +<p>She still knew her own. And there was something in her still that was +greater than the thing that inhabited her, the pursuer, the pursued, +who had rushed into her as his refuge, his sanctuary; and that was her +fear of him and of what he might do there. If her doors stood open to +him, they stood open to Bella and to Rodney Lanyon too. What else had +she been trying for, if it were not to break down in all three of them +the barriers of flesh and blood and to transmit the Power? In the +unthinkable sacrament to which she called them they had all three +partaken. And since the holy thing could suffer her to be thus +permeated, saturated with Harding Powell, was it to be supposed that she +could keep him to herself, that she would not pass him on to Rodney +Lanyon.</p> + +<p>It was not, after all, incredible. If he could get at her, of course he +could get, through her, at Rodney.</p> + +<p>That was the Terror of terrors, and it was her own. That it could +subsist together with that alien horror, that it remained supreme +beside it, proved that there was still some tract in her where the +invader had not yet penetrated. In her love for Rodney and her fear for +him she entrenched herself against the destroyer. There at least she +knew herself impregnable.</p> + +<p>It was in such a luminous flash that she saw the thing still in her own +hands, and resolved that it should cease.</p> + +<p>She would have to break her word to Milly. She would have to let Harding +go, to loosen deliberately his hold on her and cut him off. It could be +done. She had held him through her gift, and it would be still possible, +through the gift, to let him go. Of course she knew it would be hard.</p> + +<p>It <i>was</i> hard. It was terrible; for he clung. She had not counted on his +clinging. It was as if, in their undivided substance, he had had +knowledge of her purpose and had prepared himself to fight it. He hung +on desperately; he refused to yield an inch of the ground he had taken +from her. He was no longer a passive thing in that world where she had +brought him. And he had certain advantages. He had possessed her for +three nights and for three days. She had made herself porous to him; and +her sleep had always been his opportunity.</p> + +<p>It took her three nights and three days to cast him out. In the first +night she struggled with him. She lay with all her senses hushed, and +brought the divine darkness round her, but in the darkness she was aware +that she struggled. She could build up the walls between them, but she +knew that as fast as she built them he tore at them and pulled them +down.</p> + +<p>She bore herself humbly towards the Power that permitted him. She +conceived of it as holiness estranged and offended; she pleaded with +it. She could no longer trust her knowledge of its working, but she +tried to come to terms with it. She offered herself as a propitiation, +as a substitute for Rodney Lanyon, if there was no other way by which he +might be saved.</p> + +<p>Apparently that was not the way it worked. Harding seemed to gain. But, +as he kept her awake all night, he had no chance to establish himself, +as he would otherwise have done, in her sleep. The odds between her and +her adversary were even.</p> + +<p>The second night <i>she</i> gained. She felt that she had built up her walls +again; that she had cut Harding off. With spiritual pain, with the +tearing of the bonds of compassion, with a supreme agony of rupture, he +parted from her.</p> + +<p>Possibly the Power was neutral; for in the dawn after the second night +she slept. That sleep left her uncertain of the event. There was no +telling into what unguarded depths it might have carried her. She knew +that she had been free of her adversary before she slept, but the +chances were that he had got at her in her sleep. Since the Power held +the balance even between her and the invader, it would no doubt permit +him to enter by any loophole that he could seize.</p> + +<p>On the third night, as it were in the last watch, she surrendered, but +not to Harding Powell.</p> + +<p>She could not say how it came to her; she was lying in her bed with her +eyes shut and her arms held apart from her body, diminishing all +contacts, stripping for her long slide into the cleansing darkness, when +she found herself recalling some forgotten, yet inalienable knowledge +that she had. Something said to her: "Do you not remember? There is no +striving and no crying in the world which you would enter. There is no +more appeasing where peace <i>is</i>. You cannot make your own terms with the +high and holy Power. It is not enough to give yourself for Rodney +Lanyon, for he is more to you than you are yourself. Besides, any +substitution of self for self would be useless, for there is no more +self there. That is why the Power cannot work that way. But if it should +require you here, on this side the threshold, to give him up, to give up +your desire of him, what then? Would you loose your hold on him and let +him go?"</p> + +<p>"Would you?" the voice insisted.</p> + +<p>She heard herself answer from the pure threshold of the darkness, "I +would."</p> + +<p>Sleep came on her there; a divine sleep from beyond the threshold; +sacred, inviolate sleep.</p> + +<p>It was the seal upon the bond.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 90px;"> +<img src="images/orn01.jpg" width="90" height="90" alt="Page decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<br /><br /><br /> + + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/ch12.jpg" width="600" height="158" alt="CHAPTER TWELVE" +title="CHAPTER TWELVE" /></div> + +<br /> + + +<p><img src="images/drops.jpg" width="119" height="120" alt="S" title="S" +class="firstletter" />HE woke on Friday morning to a vivid and indestructible +certainty of escape.</p> + +<p>But there had been a condition attached to her deliverance; and it was +borne in on her that instead of waiting for the Power to force its terms +on her, she would do well to be beforehand with it. Friday was Rodney's +day, and this time she knew that he would come. His coming, of course, +was nothing, but he had told her plainly that he would not go. She must +therefore wire to him not to come.</p> + +<p>In order to do this she had to get up early and walk about a mile to the +nearest village. She took the shortest way which was by the Farm bridge +and up the slanting path to the far end of the wood. She knew vaguely +that once, as she had turned the corner of the wood, there had been +horrors, and that the divine beauty of green pastures and still waters +had appeared to her as a valley of the shadow of evil, but she had no +more memory of what she had seen than of a foul dream, three nights +dead. She went at first uplifted in the joy of her deliverance, drawing +into her the light and fragrance of the young morning. Then she +remembered Harding Powell. She had noticed as she passed the Farm house +that the blinds were drawn again in all the windows. That was because +Harding and Milly were gone. She thought of Harding, of Milly, with an +immense tenderness and compassion, but also with lucidity, with sanity. +They had gone—yesterday—and she had not seen them. That could not be +helped. She had done all that was possible. She could not have seen +them as long as the least taint of Harding's malady remained with her. +And how could she have faced Milly after having broken her word to her?</p> + +<p>Not that she regretted even that, the breaking of her word, so sane was +she. She could conceive that, if it had not been for Rodney Lanyon, she +might have had the courage to have gone on. She might have considered +that she was bound to save Harding, even at the price of her own sanity, +since there <i>was</i> her word to Milly. But it might be questioned whether +by holding on to him she would have kept it, whether she really could +have saved him that way. She was no more than a vehicle, a crystal +vessel for the inscrutable and secret power, and in destroying her +utterly Harding would have destroyed himself. You could not transmit the +Power through a broken crystal—why, not even through one that had a +flaw.</p> + +<p>There had been a flaw somewhere; so much was certain. And as she +searched now for the flaw, with her luminous sanity, she found it in her +fear. She knew, she had always known, the danger of taking fear and the +thought of fear with her into that world where to think was to will, and +to will was to create. But for the rest, she had tried to make herself +clear as crystal. And what could she do more than give up Rodney?</p> + +<p>As she set her face towards the village, she was sustained by a sacred +ardour, a sacrificial exaltation. But as she turned homewards across the +solitary fields, she realised the sadness, the desolation of the thing +she had accomplished. He would not come. Her message would reach him two +hours before the starting of the train he always came by.</p> + +<p>Across the village she saw her white house shining, and the windows of +his room (her study, which was always his room when he came); its +lattices were flung open as if it welcomed him.</p> + +<p>Something had happened there.</p> + +<p>Her maid was standing by the garden gate looking for her. As she +approached, the girl came over the field to meet her. She had an air of +warning her, of preparing her for something.</p> + +<p>It was Mrs. Powell, the maid said. She had come again; she was in there, +waiting for Miss Agatha. She wouldn't go away; she had gone straight in. +She was in an awful state. The maid thought it was something to do with +Mr. Powell.</p> + +<p>They had not gone, then.</p> + +<p>"If I were you, Miss," the maid was saying, "I wouldn't see her."</p> + +<p>"Of course I shall see her."</p> + +<p>She went at once into the room where Rodney might have been, where Milly +was. Milly rose from the corner where she sat averted.</p> + +<p>"Agatha," she said, "I had to come."</p> + +<p>Agatha kissed the white, suppliant face that Milly lifted.</p> + +<p>"I thought," she said, "you'd gone—yesterday."</p> + +<p>"We couldn't go. He—he's ill again."</p> + +<p>"Ill?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Didn't you see the blinds down as you passed?"</p> + +<p>"I thought it was because you'd gone."</p> + +<p>"It's because that <i>thing</i>'s come back again."</p> + +<p>"When did it come, Milly?"</p> + +<p>"It's been coming for three days."</p> + +<p>Agatha drew in her breath with a pang. It was just three days since she +began to let him go.</p> + +<p>Milly went on. "And now he won't come out of the house. He says he's +being hunted. He's afraid of being seen, being found. He's in there—in +that room. He made me lock him in."</p> + +<p>They stared at each other and at the horror that their faces took and +gave back each to each.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Aggy——" Milly cried it out in her anguish. "You <i>will</i> help him?"</p> + +<p>"I can't." Agatha heard her voice go dry in her throat.</p> + +<p>"You <i>can't</i>?"</p> + +<p>Agatha shook her head.</p> + +<p>"You mean you haven't, then?"</p> + +<p>"I haven't. I couldn't."</p> + +<p>"But you told me—you told me you were giving yourself up to it. You +said that was why you couldn't see us."</p> + +<p>"It <i>was</i> why. Do sit down, Milly."</p> + +<p>They sat down, still staring at each other. Agatha faced the window, so +that the light ravaged her.</p> + +<p>Milly went on. "That was why I left you alone. I thought you were going +on. You said you wouldn't let him go; you promised me you'd keep on ..."</p> + +<p>"I did keep on, till ..."</p> + +<p>But Milly had only paused to hold down a sob. Her voice broke out again, +clear, harsh, accusing.</p> + +<p>"What were you doing all that time?"</p> + +<p>"Of course," said Agatha, "you're bound to think I let you down."</p> + +<p>"What am I to think?"</p> + +<p>"Milly—I asked you not to think it was me."</p> + +<p>"Of course I knew it was the Power, not you. But you had hold of it. You +did something. Something that other people can't do. You did it for one +night, and that night he was well. You kept on for six weeks and he was +well all that time. You leave off for three days—I know when you left +off—and he's ill again. And then you tell me that it isn't you. It <i>is</i> +you; and if it's you you can't give him up. You can't stand by, Aggy, +and refuse to help him. You know what it was. How can you bear to let +him suffer? How can you?"</p> + +<p>"I can because I must."</p> + +<p>"And why must you?"</p> + +<p>Milly raised her head more in defiance than in supplication.</p> + +<p>"Because—I told you that I might give out. Well—I have given out."</p> + +<p>"You told me that the Power can't give out—that you've only got to hold +on to it—that it's no effort. I'm only asking you, Aggy, to hold on."</p> + +<p>"You don't know what you're asking."</p> + +<p>"I'm asking you only to do what you have done, to give five minutes in +the day to him. You said it was enough. Only five minutes. It isn't much +to ask."</p> + +<p>Agatha sighed.</p> + +<p>"What difference could it make to you—five minutes?"</p> + +<p>"You don't understand," said Agatha.</p> + +<p>"I do. I don't ask you to see him, or to bother with him; only to go on +as you were doing."</p> + +<p>"You don't understand. It isn't possible to explain it. I can't go on."</p> + +<p>"I see. You're tired, Aggy. Well—not now, not to-day. But later, when +you're rested, won't you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Milly, dear Milly, if I could ..."</p> + +<p>"You can. You will. I know you will ..."</p> + +<p>"No. You must understand it. Never again. Never again."</p> + +<p>"Never?"</p> + +<p>"Never."</p> + +<p>There was a long silence. At last Milly's voice crept through, strained +and thin, feebly argumentative, the voice of a thing defeated and yet +unconvinced.</p> + +<p>"I don't understand you, Agatha. You say it isn't you; you say you're +only a connecting link; that you do nothing; that the Power that does it +is inexhaustible; that there's nothing it can't do, nothing that it +won't do for us, and yet you go and cut yourself off from +it—deliberately—from the thing you believe to be divine."</p> + +<p>"I haven't cut myself off from it."</p> + +<p>"You've cut Harding off," said Milly. "If you refuse to hold him."</p> + +<p>"That wouldn't cut him off—from It. But Milly, holding him was bad; it +wasn't safe."</p> + +<p>"It saved him."</p> + +<p>"All the same, Milly, it wasn't safe. The thing itself isn't."</p> + +<p>"The Power? The divine thing?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. It's divine and it's—it's terrible. It does terrible things to +us."</p> + +<p>"How could it? If it's divine, wouldn't it be compassionate? Do you +suppose it's less compassionate than—<i>you</i> are? Why, Agatha, when it's +goodness and purity itself——?"</p> + +<p>"Goodness and purity are terrible. We don't understand it. It's got its +own laws. What you call prayer's all right—it would be safe, I mean—I +suppose it might get answered anyway, however we fell short. But +this—this is different. It's the highest, Milly; and if you rush in and +make for the highest, can't you see, oh, can't you see how it might +break you? Can't you see what it requires of <i>you</i>? Absolute purity. I +told you, Milly. You have to be crystal to it—crystal without a flaw."</p> + +<p>"And—if there were a flaw?"</p> + +<p>"The whole thing, don't you see, would break down; it would be no good. +In fact, it would be awfully dangerous."</p> + +<p>"To whom?"</p> + +<p>"To you—to them, the people you're helping. You make a connection; you +smash down all the walls so that you—you get through to each other, and +supposing there was something wrong with <i>you</i>, and It doesn't work any +longer (the Power, I mean), don't you see that you might do harm where +you were trying to help?"</p> + +<p>"But—Agatha—there was nothing wrong with you."</p> + +<p>"How do I know? Can anybody be sure there's nothing wrong with them?"</p> + +<p>"You think," said Milly, "there was a flaw somewhere?"</p> + +<p>"There must have been—somewhere ..."</p> + +<p>"What was it? Can't you find out? Can't you think? Think."</p> + +<p>"Sometimes—I have thought it may have been my fear."</p> + +<p>"Fear?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, it's the worst thing. Don't you remember, I told you not to be +afraid?"</p> + +<p>"But Agatha, you were <i>not</i> afraid."</p> + +<p>"I was—afterwards. I got frightened."</p> + +<p>"<i>You?</i> And you told <i>me</i> not to be afraid," said Milly.</p> + +<p>"I had to tell you."</p> + +<p>"And I wasn't afraid—afterwards. I believed in you. He believed in +you."</p> + +<p>"You shouldn't have. You shouldn't. That was just it."</p> + +<p>"That was it? I suppose you'll say next it was I who frightened you?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"No, Milly, I don't say you frightened me, it was my own fear."</p> + +<p>"What was there for <i>you</i> to be afraid of?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Agatha's silence helped Milly.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Afterwards?"</p> + +<p>It was her own word, but it had as yet no significance for her.</p> + +<p>"After—whatever it was you gave him up for. You gave him up for +something."</p> + +<p>"I did not. I never gave him up until I was afraid."</p> + +<p>"You gave It up. You wouldn't have done that if there had not been +something. Something that stood between."</p> + +<p>"If," said Agatha, "you could only tell me what it was."</p> + +<p>"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 ..."</p> + +<p>"I did keep myself—for <i>it</i>. 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."</p> + +<p>"Are you quite sure you kept yourself what you were, Aggy?"</p> + +<p>"What <i>was</i> I?"</p> + +<p>"My dear—you were absolutely pure. You said <i>that</i> was the +condition."</p> + +<p>"Yes. And, don't you see, who <i>is</i>—absolutely? If you thought +<i>I</i> was you didn't know me."</p> + +<p>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 passion, 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 90px;"> +<img src="images/orn01.jpg" width="90" height="90" alt="Page decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<br /><br /><br /> + + + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/ch13.jpg" width="600" height="156" alt="CHAPTER THIRTEEN" +title="CHAPTER THIRTEEN" /></div> + +<br /> + + +<p><img src="images/dropr.jpg" width="120" height="120" alt="R" title="R" +class="firstletter" />ODNEY entered the room and it was then that Milly +looked at her. Milly's face was no longer the face of passion, but of +sadness and reproach, almost of recovered incredulity. It questioned +rather than accused her. It said unmistakably, "You gave him up for +<i>that</i>?"</p> + +<p>Agatha's voice recalled her. "Milly, I think you know Mr. Lanyon."</p> + +<p>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 passed 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You're not going, Milly, just because he's come? You needn't."</p> + +<p>Milly <i>was</i> going.</p> + +<p>He rose to it also.</p> + +<p>If Mrs. Powell <i>would</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>her</i> fear had entered. She could tell the very moment when it +happened.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 compassion; 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<a name="TNanchor_3" id="TNanchor_3"></a> +<p>For thought went wider and deeper than any deed; it was of the very +order of the Powers intangible wherewith she had worked. Why, thoughts +unborn and shapeless, that ran under the threshold and hid there, +counted more in that world where It, the Unuttered, the Hidden and the +Secret, reigned.</p> + +<p>She knew now that her surrender of last night had been the ultimate +deliverance. She was not afraid any more to meet Rodney; for she had +been made pure from desire; she was safeguarded forever.</p> + +<p>He had been gone about an hour when she heard him at the gate again and +in the room below.</p> + +<p>She went down to him. He came forward to meet her as she entered; he +closed the door behind them; but her eyes held them apart.</p> + +<p>"Did you not get my wire?" she said.</p> + +<p>"Yes. I got it."</p> + +<p>"Then why ..."</p> + +<p>"Why did I come? Because I knew what was happening. I wasn't going to +leave you here for Powell to terrify you out of your life."</p> + +<p>"Surely—you thought they'd gone?"</p> + +<p>"I knew they hadn't or you wouldn't have wired."</p> + +<p>"But I would. I'd have wired in any case."</p> + +<p>"To put me off?"</p> + +<p>"To—put—you—off."</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>He questioned without divination or forewarning. The veil of flesh was +as yet over his eyes, so that he could not see.</p> + +<p>"Because I didn't mean that you should come, that you should ever come +again, Rodney."</p> + +<p>He smiled.</p> + +<p>"So you went back on me, did you?"</p> + +<p>"If you call it going back."</p> + +<p>She longed for him to see.</p> + +<p>"That was only because you were frightened," he said.</p> + +<p>He turned from her and paced the room uneasily, as if he saw. Presently +he drew up by the hearth and stood there for a moment, puzzling it out; +and she thought that he had seen.</p> + +<p>He hadn't. He faced her with a smile again.</p> + +<p>"But it was no good, dear, was it? As if I wouldn't know what it meant. +You wouldn't have done it if you hadn't been ill. You lost your nerve. +No wonder, with those Powells preying on you, body and soul, for weeks."</p> + +<p>"No, Rodney, no. I didn't <i>want</i> you to come back. And I think—now—it +would be better if you didn't stay."</p> + +<p>It seemed to her now that perhaps he had seen and was fighting what he +saw.</p> + +<p>"I'm not going to stay," he said, "I am going—in another hour—to take +Powell away somewhere."</p> + +<p>He took it up where she had made him leave it. "Then, Agatha, I shall +come back again. I shall come back—let me see—on Sunday."</p> + +<p>She swept that aside.</p> + +<p>"Where are you going to take him?"</p> + +<p>"To a man I know who'll look after him."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Rodney, it'll break Milly's heart."</p> + +<p>She had come, in her agitation, to where he stood. She sat on the couch +by the corner of the hearth, and he looked down at her there.</p> + +<p>"No," he said, "it won't. It'll give him a chance to get all right. I've +convinced her it's the only thing to do. He can't be left here for you +to look after."</p> + +<p>"Did she tell you?"</p> + +<p>"She wouldn't have told me a thing if I hadn't made her. I dragged it +out of her, bit by bit."</p> + +<p>"Rodney, that was cruel of you."</p> + +<p>"Was it? I don't care. I'd have done it if she'd bled."</p> + +<p>"What did she tell you?"</p> + +<p>"Pretty nearly everything, I imagine. Quite enough for me to see what, +between them, they've been doing to you."</p> + +<p>"Did she tell you <i>how he got well</i>?"</p> + +<p>He did not answer all at once. It was as if he drew back before the +question, alien and disturbed, shirking the discerned, yet +unintelligible issue.</p> + +<p>"Did she tell you, Rodney?" Agatha repeated.</p> + +<p>"Well, yes. She <i>told</i> me."</p> + +<p>He seemed to be making, reluctantly, some admission. He sat down beside +her, and his movement had the air of ending the discussion. But he did +not look at her.</p> + +<p>"What do you make of it?" she said.</p> + +<p>This time he winced visibly.</p> + +<p>"I don't make anything. If it happened—if it happened—like <i>that</i>, +Agatha ..."</p> + +<p>"It did happen."</p> + +<p>"Well, I admit it was uncommonly queer."</p> + +<p>He left it there and reverted to his theme.</p> + +<p>"But it's no wonder—if you sat down to that for six weeks—it's no +wonder you got scared. It's inconceivable to me how that woman could +have let you in for him. She knew what he was."</p> + +<p>"She didn't know what I was doing till it was done."</p> + +<p>"She'd no business to let you go on with it when she did know."</p> + +<p>"Ah! but she knew—then—that it was all right."</p> + +<p>"All right?"</p> + +<p>"Absolutely right. Rodney——" She called to him as if she would compel +him to see it as it was. "I did no more for him than I did for you and +Bella."</p> + +<p>He started. "Bella?" he repeated.</p> + +<p>He stared at her. He had seen something.</p> + +<p>"You wondered how she got all right, didn't you?"</p> + +<p>He said nothing.</p> + +<p>"That was how."</p> + +<p>And still he did not speak. He sat there, leaning forward, staring now +at his own clasped hands. He looked as if he bowed himself before the +irrefutable.</p> + +<p>"And there was you, too, before that."</p> + +<p>"I know," he said then; "I can understand <i>that</i>. But—why Bella?"</p> + +<p>"Because Bella was the only way."</p> + +<p>She had not followed his thoughts nor he hers.</p> + +<p>"The only way?" he said.</p> + +<p>"To work it. To keep the thing pure. I had to be certain of my motive, +and I knew that if I could give Bella back to you that would prove—to +me, I mean—that it was pure."</p> + +<p>"But Bella," he said softly—"Bella. Powell I can understand—and me."</p> + +<p>It was clear that he could get over all the rest. But he could not get +over Bella. Bella's case convinced him. Bella's case could not be +explained away or set aside. Before Bella's case he was baffled, utterly +defeated. He faced it with a certain awe.</p> + +<p>"You were right, after all, about Bella," he said at last. "And so was +I. She didn't care for me, as I told you. But she does care now."</p> + +<p>She knew it.</p> + +<p>"That was what I was trying for," she said. "That was what I meant."</p> + +<p>"You meant it?"</p> + +<p>"It was the only way. That's why I didn't want you to come back."</p> + +<p>He sat silent, taking that in.</p> + +<p>"Don't you see now how it works? You have to be pure crystal. That's +why I didn't want you to come back."</p> + +<p>Obscurely, through the veil of flesh, he saw.</p> + +<p>"And I am never to come back?" he said.</p> + +<p>"You will not need to come."</p> + +<p>"You mean you won't want me?"</p> + +<p>"No. I shall not want you. Because, when I did want you it broke down."</p> + +<p>He smiled.</p> + +<p>"I see. When you want me, it breaks down."</p> + +<p>He rallied for a moment. He made his one last pitiful stand against the +supernatural thing that was conquering him.</p> + +<p>He had risen to go.</p> + +<p>"And when <i>I</i> want to come, when I long for you, what then?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Your</i> longing will make no difference."</p> + +<p>She smiled also, as if she foresaw how it would work, and that soon, +very soon, he would cease to long for her.</p> + +<p>His hand was on the door. He smiled back at her.</p> + +<p>"I don't want to shake your faith in it," he said.</p> + +<p>"You can't shake my faith in It."</p> + +<p>"Still—it breaks down. It breaks down," he cried.</p> + +<p>"Never. You don't understand," she said. "It was the flaw in the +crystal."</p> + +<p>Soon, very soon he would know it. Already he had shown submission.</p> + +<p>She had no doubt of the working of the Power. Bella remained as a sign +that it had once been, and that, given the flawless crystal, it should +be again.</p> + +<br /><br /> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 90px;"> +<img src="images/orn01.jpg" width="90" height="90" alt="Page decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<br /><br /> +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> +<div class="tn" style="width: 70%"> +<h4>TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:</h4> + + +<p>The following changes has been made to the original text:</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Page <a href="#TNanchor_1">109</a>: +"there's" changed to "there" in "there he's been for years."</span></p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Page <a href="#TNanchor_2">110</a>: +added missing quotation mark before "Agatha, why can't we?"</span></p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Page <a href="#TNanchor_3">188</a>: +"shapless" changed to "shapeless" in "thoughts unborn and shapeless,"</span></p> + +<p>Other variations in spelling and inconsistent hyphenation have been +retained as they appear in the original book.</p> + +</div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Flaw in the Crystal, by May Sinclair + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLAW IN THE CRYSTAL *** + +***** This file should be named 28615-h.htm or 28615-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/8/6/1/28615/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Therese Wright and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Flaw in the Crystal + +Author: May Sinclair + +Release Date: April 26, 2009 [EBook #28615] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLAW IN THE CRYSTAL *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Therese Wright and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +The Flaw in the Crystal + +By + +May Sinclair + + + NEW YORK + E.P.DUTTON & COMPANY + 31 West Twenty-Third Street + + + + + Copyright, 1912 + By May Sinclair + + + + +CHAPTER ONE + + +It was Friday, the day he always came, if (so she safeguarded it) he was +to come at all. They had left it that way in the beginning, that it +should be open to him to come or not to come. They had not even settled +that it should be Fridays, but it always was, the week-end being the +only time when he could get away; the only time, he had explained to +Agatha Verrall, when getting away excited no remark. He had to, or he +would have broken down. Agatha called it getting away "from things"; but +she knew that there was only one thing, his wife Bella. + +To be wedded to a mass of furious and malignant nerves (which was all +that poor Bella was now) simply meant destruction to a man like Rodney +Lanyon. Rodney's own nerves were not as strong as they had been, after +ten years of Bella's. It had been understood for long enough (understood +even by Bella) that if he couldn't have his weekends he was done for; he +couldn't possibly have stood the torment and the strain of her. + +Of course, she didn't know he spent the greater part of them with Agatha +Verrall. It was not to be desired that she should know. Her obtuseness +helped them. Even in her younger and saner days she had failed, +persistently, to realise any profound and poignant thing that touched +him; so by the mercy of heaven she had never realised Agatha Verrall. +She used to say that she had never seen anything _in_ Agatha, which +amounted, as he once told her, to not seeing Agatha at all. Still less +could she have compassed any vision of the tie--the extraordinary, +intangible, immaterial tie that held them. + +Sometimes, at the last moment, his escape to Agatha would prove +impossible; so they had left it further that he was to send her no +forewarning; he was to come when and as he could. He could always get a +room in the village inn or at the Farm near by, and in Agatha's house he +would find his place ready for him, the place which had become his +refuge, his place of peace. + +There was no need to prepare her. She was never not prepared. It was as +if by her preparedness, by the absence of preliminaries, of adjustments +and arrangements, he was always there, lodged in the innermost chamber. +She had set herself apart; she had swept herself bare and scoured +herself clean for him. Clean she had to be; clean from the desire that +he should come; clean, above all, from the thought, the knowledge she +now had, that she could make him come. + +For if she had given herself up to _that_---- + +But she never had; never since the knowledge came to her; since she +discovered, wonderfully, by a divine accident, that at any moment she +could make him--that she had whatever it was, the power, the uncanny, +unaccountable Gift. + +She was beginning to see more and more how it worked; how inevitably, +how infallibly it worked. She was even a little afraid of it, of what it +might come to mean. It _did_ mean that without his knowledge, separated +as they were and had to be, she could always get at him. + +And supposing it came to mean that she could get at him to make him do +things? Why, the bare idea of it was horrible. + +Nothing could well have been _more_ horrible to Agatha. It was the +secret and the essence of their remarkable relation that she had never +tried to get at him; whereas Bella _had_, calamitously; and still more +calamitously, because of the peculiar magic that there was (there must +have been) in her, Bella had succeeded. To have tried to get at him +would have been, for Agatha, the last treachery, the last indecency; +while for Rodney it would have been the destruction of her charm. She +was the way of escape for him from Bella; but she had always left her +door, even the innermost door, wide open; so that where shelter and +protection faced him there faced him also the way of departure, the way +of escape from _her_. + +And if her thought could get at him and fasten on him and shut him in +there---- + +It could, she knew; but it need not. She was really all right. Restraint +had been the essence and the secret of the charm she had, and it was +also the secret and the essence of her gift. Why, she had brought it to +so fine a point that she could shut out, and by shutting out destroy any +feeling, any thought that did violence to any other. She could shut them +all out, if it came to that, and make the whole place empty. So that, if +this knowledge of her power did violence, she had only to close her door +on it. + +She closed it now on the bare thought of his coming; on the little +innocent hope she had that he would come. By an ultimate refinement and +subtlety of honour she refused to let even expectation cling to him. + +But though it was dreadful to "work" her gift that way, to make him do +things, there was another way in which she did work it, lawfully, +sacredly, incorruptibly--the way it first came to her. She had worked it +twenty times (without his knowledge, for how he would have scoffed at +her!) to make him well. + +Before it had come to her, he had been, ever since she knew him, more or +less ill, more or less tormented by the nerves that were wedded so +indissolubly to Bella's. He was always, it seemed to her terror, on the +verge. And she could say to herself, "Look at him _now_!" + +His abrupt, incredible recovery had been the first open manifestation of +the way it worked. Not that she had tried it on him first. Before she +dared do that once she had proved it on herself twenty times. She had +proved it up to the hilt. + +But to ensure continuous results it had to be a continuous process; and +in order to give herself up to it, to him (to his pitiful case), she had +lately, as her friends said, "cut herself completely off." She had gone +down into Buckinghamshire and taken a small solitary house at Sarratt +End in the valley of the Chess, three miles from the nearest station. +She had shut herself up in a world half a mile long, one straight hill +to the north, one to the south, two strips of flat pasture, the river +and the white farm-road between. A world closed east and west by the +turn the valley takes there between the hills, and barred by a gate at +each end of the farm-road. A land of pure curves, of delicate colours, +delicate shadows; all winter through a land of grey woods and sallow +fields, of ploughed hillsides pale with the white strain of the chalk. +In April (it was April now) a land shining with silver and with green. +And the ways out of it led into lanes; it had neither sight nor hearing +of the high roads beyond. + +There were only two houses in that half-mile of valley, Agatha's house +and Woodman's Farm. + +Agatha's house, white as a cutting in the chalk downs, looked southwest, +up the valley and across it, to where a slender beech wood went lightly +up the hill and then stretched out in a straight line along the top, +with the bare fawn-coloured flank of the ploughed land below. The +farmhouse looked east towards Agatha's house across a field; a red-brick +house--dull, dark red with the grey bloom of weather on it--flat-faced +and flat-eyed, two windows on each side of the door and a row of five +above, all nine staring at the small white house across the field. The +narrow, flat farm-road linked the two. + +Except Rodney when his inn was full, nobody ever came to Woodman's Farm; +and Agatha's house, set down inside its east gate, shared its isolation, +its immunity. Two villages, unseen, unheard, served her, not a mile +away. It was impossible to be more sheltered, more protected and more +utterly cut off. And only fifteen miles, as the crow flies, between this +solitude and London, so that it was easy for Rodney Lanyon to come down. + +At two o'clock, the hour when he must come if he were coming, she began +to listen for the click of the latch at the garden gate. She had agreed +with herself that at the last moment expectancy could do no harm; it +couldn't influence him; for either he had taken the twelve-thirty train +at Marylebone or he had not (Agatha was so far reasonable); so at the +last moment she permitted herself that dangerous and terrible joy. + +When the click came and his footsteps after it, she admitted further +(now when it could do no harm) that she had had foreknowledge of him; +she had been aware all the time that he would come. And she wondered, +as she always wondered at his coming, whether really she would find him +well, or whether this time it had incredibly miscarried. And her almost +unbearable joy became suspense, became vehement desire to see him and +gather from his face whether this time also it had worked. + +"How are you? How have you been?" was her question when he stood before +her in her white room, holding her hand for an instant. + +"Tremendously fit," he answered; "ever since I last saw you." + +"Oh--seeing me----" It was as if she wanted him to know that seeing her +made no difference. + +She looked at him and received her certainty. She saw him clear-eyed and +young, younger than he was, his clean, bronzed face set, as it used to +be, in a firmness that obliterated the lines, the little agonized +lines, that had made her heart ache. + +"It always does me good," he said, "to see you." + +"And to see you--you know what it does to me." + +He thought he knew as he caught back his breath and looked at her, +taking in again her fine whiteness, and her tenderness, her purity of +line, and the secret of her eyes whose colour (if they had colour) he +was never sure about; taking in all of her, from her adorable feet to +her hair, vividly dark, that sprang from the white parting like--was it +like waves or wings? + +What had once touched and moved him unspeakably in Agatha's face was the +capacity it had, latent in its tragic lines, for expressing terror. +Terror was what he most dreaded for her, what he had most tried to keep +her from, to keep out of her face. And latterly he had not found it; or +rather he had not found the unborn, lurking spirit of it there. It had +gone, that little tragic droop in Agatha's face. The corners of her eyes +and of her beautiful mouth were lifted; as if by--he could find no other +word for the thing he meant but wings. She had a look which, if it were +not of joy, was of something more vivid and positive than peace. + +He put it down to their increased and undisturbed communion made +possible by her retirement to Sarratt End. Yet as he looked at her he +sighed again. + +In response to his sigh she asked suddenly, "How's Bella?" + +His face lighted wonderfully. "It's extraordinary," he said; "she's +better. Miles better. In fact, if it was not tempting Providence, I +should say she was well. She's been, for the last week anyhow, a perfect +angel." + +His amazed, uncomprehending look gave her the clue to what had +happened. It was another instance of the astounding and mysterious way +it worked. She must have got at Bella somehow in getting at him. She saw +now no end to the possibilities of the thing. There wasn't anything so +wonderful in making him what, after all, he was; but if she, Bella, had +been, even for a week, a perfect angel, it had made her what she was not +and never had been. + +His next utterance came to her with no irrelevance. + +"You've been found out." + +For a moment she wondered, had he guessed it then, her secret? He had +never known anything about it, and it was not likely that he should know +now. He was indeed very far from knowing when he could think that it was +seeing her that did it. + +There was, of course, the other secret, the fact that he did see her; +but she had never allowed that it was a secret, or that it need be, +although they guarded it so carefully. Anybody except Bella, who +wouldn't understand it, was welcome to know that he came to see her. He +must mean that. + +"Found out?" she repeated. + +"If you haven't been, you will be." + +"You mean," she said, "Sarratt End has been found out?" + +"If you put it that way. I saw the Powells at the station." + +(She breathed freely.) + +"They told me they'd taken rooms at some farm here." + +"Which farm?" + +He didn't remember. + +"Was it Woodman's Farm?" she asked. And he said, Yes, that was the name +they'd told him. Whereabouts was it? + +"Don't you know?" she said. "That's the name of _your_ Farm." + +He had not known it, and was visibly annoyed at knowing it now. And +Agatha herself felt some dismay. If it had been any other place but +Woodman's Farm! It stared at them; it watched them; it knew all their +goings out and their comings in; it knew Rodney; not that that had +mattered in the least, but the Powells, when they came, would know too. + +She tried to look as if that didn't matter, either, while they faced +each other in a silence, a curious, unfamiliar discomposure. + +She recovered first. "After all," she said, "why shouldn't they?" + +"Well--I thought you weren't going to tell people." + +Her face mounted a sudden flame, a signal of resentment. She had always +resented the imputation of secrecy in their relations. And now it was +as if he were dragging forward the thought that she perpetually put away +from her. + +"Tell about what?" she asked, coldly. + +"About Sarratt End. I thought we'd agreed to keep it for ourselves." + +"I haven't told everybody. But I did tell Milly Powell." + +"My dear girl, that wasn't very clever of you." + +"I told her not to tell. She knows what I want to be alone for." + +"Good God!" As he stared in dismay at what he judged to be her +unspeakable indiscretion, the thought rushed in on her straight from +him, the naked, terrible thought, that there _should_ be anything they +had to hide, they had to be alone for. She saw at the same time how +defenceless he was before it; he couldn't keep it back; he couldn't put +it away from him. It was always with him, a danger watching on his +threshold. + +"Then" (he made her face it with him), "we're done for." + +"No, no," she cried. "How could you think that? It was another thing. +Something that I'm trying to do." + +"You told her," he insisted. "What did you tell her?" + +"That I'm doing it. That I'm here for my health. She understands it that +way." + +He smiled as if he were satisfied, knowing her so well. And still his +thought, his terrible naked thought, was there. It was looking at her +straight out of his eyes. + +"Are you sure she understands?" he said. + +"Yes. Absolutely." + +He hesitated, and then put it differently. + +"Are you sure she doesn't understand? That she hasn't an inkling?" + +_He_ wasn't sure whether Agatha understood, whether she realised the +danger. + +"About you and me," he said. + +"Ah, my dear, I've kept _you_ secret. She doesn't know we know each +other. And if she did----" + +She finished it with a wonderful look, a look of unblinking yet vaguely, +pitifully uncandid candour. + +She had always met him, and would always have to meet him, with the idea +that there was nothing in it; for, if she once admitted that there was +anything, then they _were_ done for. She couldn't (how could she?) let +him keep on coming with that thought in him, acknowledged by them both. + +That was where she came in and where her secret, her gift, would work +now more beneficently than ever. The beauty of it was that it would make +them safe, absolutely safe. She had only got to apply it to that +thought of his and the thought would not exist. Since she could get at +him, she could do for him what he, poor dear, could not perhaps always +do for himself; she could keep that dreadful possibility in him under; +she could in fact, make their communion all that she most wanted it to +be. + +"I don't like it," he said, miserably. "I don't like it." + +A little line of worry was coming in his face again. + +The door opened and a maid began to go in and out, laying the table for +their meal. He watched the door close on her and said, "Won't that woman +wonder what I come for?" + +"She can see what you come for." She smiled. "Why are you spoiling it +with thinking things?" + +"It's for you I think them. I don't mind. It doesn't matter so much for +me. But I want you to be safe." + +"Oh, _I_'m safe, my dear," she answered. + +"You were. And you would be still, if these Powells hadn't found you +out." + +He meditated. + +"What do you suppose _they_'ve come for?" he asked. + +"They've come, I imagine, for his health." + +"What? To a god-forsaken place like this?" + +"They know what it's done for me. So they think, poor darlings, perhaps +it may do something--even yet--for him." + +"What's the matter with him?" + +"Something dreadful. And they say--incurable." + +"It isn't----?" He paused. + +"I can't tell you what it is. It isn't anything you'd think it was. It +isn't anything bodily." + +"I never knew it." + +"You're not supposed to know. And you wouldn't, unless you _did_ know. +And please--you don't; you don't know anything." + +He smiled. "No. You haven't told me, have you?" + +"I only told you because you never tell things, and because----" + +"Because?" He waited, smiling. + +"Because I wanted you to see he doesn't count." + +"Well--but _she_'s all right, I take it?" + +At first she failed to grasp his implication that if, owing to his +affliction, Harding Powell didn't count, Milly, his young wife did. Her +faculties of observation and of inference would, he took it, be +unimpaired. + +"_She_'ll wonder, won't she?" he expounded. + +"About us? Not she. She's too much wrapped up in him to notice anyone." + +"And he?" + +"Oh, my dear--He's too much wrapped up in _it_." + +Another anxiety then came to him. + +"I say, you know, he isn't dangerous, is he?" + +She laughed. + +"Dangerous? Oh dear me, no! A lamb." + + + + +CHAPTER TWO + + +She kept on saying to herself, Why shouldn't they come? What difference +did it make? + +Up till now she had not admitted that anything could make a difference, +that anything could touch, could alter by a shade the safe, the +intangible, the unique relation between her and Rodney. It was proof +against anything that anybody could think. And the Powells were not +given to thinking things. Agatha's own mind had been a crystal without a +flaw, in its clearness, its sincerity. + +It had to be to ensure the blessed working of the gift; as again, it was +by the blessed working of the gift that she had kept it so. She could +only think of that, the secret, the gift, the inexpressible thing, as +itself a flawless crystal, a charmed circle; or rather, as a sphere that +held all the charmed circles that you draw round things to keep them +safe, to keep them holy. + +She had drawn her circle round Rodney Lanyon and herself. Nobody could +break it. They were supernaturally safe. + +And yet the presence of the Powells had made a difference. She was +forced to own that, though she remained untouched, it had made a +difference in him. It was as if, in the agitation produced by them, he +had brushed aside some veil and had let her see something that up till +now her crystal vision had refused to see, something that was more than +a lurking possibility. She discovered in him a desire, an intention that +up till now he had concealed from her. It had left its hiding place; it +rose on terrifying wings and fluttered before her, troubling her. She +was reminded that, though there were no lurking possibilities in her, +with him it might be different. For him the tie between them might come +to mean something that it had never meant and could not mean for her, +something that she had refused not only to see but to foresee and +provide for. + +She was aware of a certain relief when Monday came and he had left her +without any further unveilings and revealings. She was even glad when, +about the middle of the week, the Powells came with a cart-load of +luggage and settled at the Farm. She said to herself that they would +take her mind off him. They had a way of seizing on her and holding her +attention to the exclusion of all other objects. + +She could hardly not have been seized and held by a case so pitiful, so +desperate as theirs. How pitiful and desperate it had become she +learned almost at once from the face of her friend, the little pale-eyed +wife, whose small, flat, flower-like features were washed out and worn +fine by watchings and listenings on the border, on the threshold. + +Yes, he was worse. He had had to give up his business (Harding Powell +was a gentle stockbroker). It wasn't any longer, Milly Powell intimated, +a question of borders and of thresholds. They had passed all that. He +had gone clean over; he was in the dreadful interior; and she, the +resolute and vigilant little woman, had no longer any power to get him +out. She was at the end of her tether. + +Agatha knew what he had been for years? Well--he was worse than that; +far worse than he had been, ever. Not so bad though that he hadn't +intervals in which he knew how bad he was, and was willing to do +everything, to try anything. They were going to try Sarratt End. It was +her idea. She knew how marvellously it had answered with dear Agatha +(not that Agatha ever was, or could be, where _he_ was, poor darling). +And besides, Agatha herself was an attraction. It had occurred to Milly +Powell that it might do Harding good to be near Agatha. There was +something about her; Milly didn't know what it was, but she felt it, +_he_ felt it--an influence or something, that made for mental peace. It +was, Mrs. Powell said, as if she had some secret. + +She hoped Agatha wouldn't mind. It couldn't possibly hurt her. _He_ +couldn't. The darling couldn't hurt a fly; he could only hurt himself. +And if he got really bad, why then, of course, they would have to leave +Sarratt End. He would have, she said sadly, to go away somewhere. But +not yet--oh, not yet; he wasn't bad enough for that. She would keep him +with her up to the last possible moment--the last possible moment. +Agatha could understand, couldn't she? + +Agatha did indeed. + +Milly Powell smiled her desperate white smile, and went on, always with +her air of appeal to Agatha. That was why she wanted to be near her. It +was awful not to be near somebody who understood, who would understand +him. For Agatha would understand--wouldn't she?--that to a certain +extent he must be given in to? _That_--apart from Agatha--was why they +had chosen Sarratt End. It was the sort of place--wasn't it?--where you +would go if you didn't want people to get at you, where (Milly's very +voice became furtive as she explained it) you could hide. His idea--his +last--seemed to be that something _was_ trying to get at him. + +No, not people. Something worse, something terrible. It was always after +him. The most piteous thing about him--piteous but adorable--was that he +came to her--to _her_--imploring her to hide him. + +And so she had hidden him here. + +Agatha took in her friend's high courage as she looked at the eyes where +fright barely fluttered under the poised suspense. She approved of the +plan. It appealed to her by its sheer audacity. She murmured that, if +there were anything that she could do, Milly had only to come to her. + +Oh well, Milly _had_ come. What she wanted Agatha to do--if she saw him +and he should say anything about it--was simply to take the line that he +was safe. + +Agatha said that was the line she did take. She wasn't going to let +herself think, and Milly mustn't think--not for a moment--that he +wasn't, that there was anything to be afraid of. + +"Anything to be afraid of _here_. That's my point," said Milly. + +"Mine is that here or anywhere--wherever _he_ is--there mustn't be any +fear. How can he get better if we keep him wrapped in it? You're _not_ +afraid. You're _not_ afraid." + +Persistent, invincible affirmation was part of her method, her secret. + +Milly replied a little wearily (she knew nothing about the method). + +"I haven't time to be afraid," she said. "And as long as you're not----" + +"It's you who matter," Agatha cried. "You're so near him. Don't you +realise what it means to be so near?" + +Milly smiled sadly, tenderly. (As if she didn't know!) + +"My dear, that's all that keeps me going. I've got to make him feel that +he's protected." + +"He _is_ protected," said Agatha. + +Already she was drawing her charmed circle round him. + +"As long as I hold out. If I give in he's done for." + +"You mustn't think it. You mustn't say it!" + +"But--I know it. Oh, my dear! I'm all he's got." + +At that she looked for a moment as if she might break down. She said the +terrible part of it was that they were left so much alone. People were +beginning to shrink from him, to be afraid of him. + +"You know," said Agatha, "I'm not. You must bring him to see me." + +The little woman had risen, as she said, "to go to him." She stood +there, visibly hesitating. She couldn't bring him. He wouldn't come. +Would Agatha go with her and see him? + +Agatha went. + +As they approached the Farm she saw to her amazement that the door was +shut and the blinds, the ugly, ochreish yellow blinds, were down in all +the nine windows of the front, the windows of the Powell's rooms. The +house was like a house of the dead. + +"Do you get the sun on this side?" she said; and as she said it she +realised the stupidity of her question; for the nine windows looked to +the east, and the sun, wheeling down the west, had been in their faces +as they came. + +Milly answered mechanically, "No, we don't get any sun." She added with +an irrelevance that was only apparent, "I've had to take all four rooms +to keep other people out." + +"They never come," said Agatha. + +"No," said Milly, "but if they did----!" + +The front door was locked. Milly had the key. When they had entered, +Agatha saw her turn it in the lock again, slowly and without a sound. + +All the doors were shut in the passage, and it was dark there. Milly +opened a door on the left at the foot of the steep stairs. + +"He will be in here," she said. + +The large room was lit with a thick ochreish light through the squares +of its drawn blinds. It ran the whole width of the house and had a third +window looking west where the yellow light prevailed. A horrible light +it was. It cast thin, turbid, brown shadows on the walls. + +Harding Powell was sitting between the drawn blinds, alone in the black +hollow of the chimney place. He crouched in his chair and his bowed +back was towards them as they stood there on the threshold. + +"Harding," said Milly, "Agatha has come to see you." + +He turned in his chair and rose as they entered. + +His chin was sunk on his chest, and the first thing Agatha noticed was +the difficult, slow, forward-thrusting movement with which he lifted it. +His eyes seemed to come up last of all from the depths to meet her. With +a peculiar foreign courtesy he bowed his head again over her hand as he +held it. + +He apologised for the darkness in which they found him. Harding Powell's +manners had always been perfect, and it struck Agatha as strange and +pathetic that his malady should have left untouched the incomparable +quality he had. + +Milly went to the windows and drew the blinds up. The light revealed +him in his exquisite perfection, his small fragile finish. He was fifty +or thereabouts, but slight as a boy, and nervous, and dark as Englishmen +are dark; jaw and chin shaven; his mouth hidden by the straight droop of +his moustache. From the eyes downwards the outlines of his face and +features were of an extreme regularity and a fineness undestroyed by the +work of the strained nerves on the sallow, delicate texture. But his +eyes, dark like an animal's, were the eyes of a terrified thing, a thing +hunted and on the watch, a thing that listened continually for the soft +feet of the hunter. Above these eyes his brows were twisted, were +tortured with his terror. + +He turned to his wife. + +"Did you lock the door, dear?" he said. + +"I did. But you know, Harding, we needn't--here." + +He shivered slightly and began to walk up and down before the +hearth-place. When he had his back to Milly, Milly followed him with her +eyes of anguish; when he turned and faced her, she met him with her +white smile. + +Presently he spoke again. He wondered whether they would object to his +drawing the blinds down. He was afraid he would have to. Otherwise, he +said, _he would be seen_. + +Milly laid her hand on the arm that he stretched towards the window. + +"Darling," she said, "you've forgotten. You can't possibly be +seen--here. It's just the one place--isn't it, Agatha?--where you can't +be." Her eyes signalled to Agatha to support her. (Not but what she had +perfect confidence in the plan.) + +It was, Agatha assented. "And Agatha knows," said Milly. + +He shivered again. He had turned to Agatha. + +"Forgive me if I suggest that you cannot really know. Heaven forbid that +you _should_ know." + +Milly, intent on her "plan," persisted. + +"But, dearest, you said yourself it was. The one place." + +"_I_ said that? When did I say it?" + +"Yesterday." + +"Yesterday? I daresay. But I didn't sleep last night. It wouldn't let +me." + +"Very few people do sleep," said Agatha, "for the first time in a +strange place." + +"The place isn't strange. That's what I complain of. That's what keeps +me awake. No place ever will be strange when It's there. And It was +there last night." + +"Darling----" Milly murmured. + +"You know what I mean," he said. "The Thing that keeps me awake. Of +course if I'd slept last night I'd have known it wasn't there. But when +I didn't sleep----" + +He left it to them to draw the only possible conclusion. + +They dropped the subject. They turned to other things and talked a +little while, sitting with him in his room with the drawn blinds. From +time to time when they appealed to him, he gave an urbane assent, a +murmur, a suave motion of his hand. When the light went, they lit a +lamp. Agatha stayed and dined with them, that being the best thing she +could do. + +At nine o'clock she rose and said good-night to Harding Powell. He +smiled a drawn smile. + +"Ah--if I could sleep----" he said. + +"That's the worst of it--his not sleeping," said Milly at the gate. + +"He will sleep. He will sleep," said Agatha. + +Milly sighed. She knew he wouldn't. + +The plan, she said, was no good after all. It wouldn't work. + + + + +CHAPTER THREE + + +How could it? There was nothing behind it. All Milly's plans had been +like that; they fell to dust; they _were_ dust. They had been always +that pitiful, desperate stirring of the dust to hide the terror, the +futile throwing of the dust in the poor thing's eyes. As if he couldn't +see through it. As if, with the supernatural lucidity, the invincible +cunning of the insane, he didn't see through anything and provide for +it. It was really only his indestructible urbanity, persisting through +the wreck of him, that bore, tolerantly, temperately, with Milly and her +plans. Without it he might be dangerous. With it, as long as it lasted, +little Milly, plan as she would, was safe. + +But they couldn't count on its lasting. Agatha had realised that from +the moment when she had seen him draw down the blind again after his +wife had drawn it up. That was the maddest thing he had done yet. She +had shuddered at it as at an act of violence. It outraged, cruelly, his +exquisite quality. It was so unlike him. + +She was not sure that Milly hadn't even made things worse by her latest +plan, the flight to Sarratt End. It emphasised the fact that they were +flying, that they had to fly. It had brought her to the house with the +drawn blinds in the closed, barred valley, to the end of the world, to +the end of her tether. And when she realised that it _was_ the end--when +he realised it ... + +Agatha couldn't leave him there. She couldn't (when she had the secret) +leave him to poor Milly and her plans. That had been in her mind when +she had insisted on it that he would sleep. + +She knew what Milly meant by her sigh and the look she gave her. If +Milly could have been impolite, she would have told her that it was all +very well to say so, but how were they going to make him? And she too +felt that something more was required of her than that irritating +affirmation. She had got to make him. His case, his piteous case, cried +out for an extension of the gift. + +She hadn't any doubt as to its working. There were things she didn't +know about it yet, but she was sure of that. She had proved it by a +hundred experimental intermissions, abstentions, and recoveries. In +order to be sure you had only to let go and see how you got on without +it. She had tried in that way, with scepticism and precaution, on +herself. + +But not in the beginning. She could not say that she had tried it in the +beginning at all, even on herself. It had simply come to her, as she put +it, by a divine accident. Heaven knew she had needed it. She had been, +like Rodney Lanyon, on the verge, where he, poor dear, had brought her; +so impossible had it been then to bear her knowledge and, what was +worse, her divination of the things he bore from Bella. It was her +divination, her compassion, that had wrecked her as she stood aside, cut +off from him, he on the verge and she near it, looking on, powerless to +help while Bella tore at him. Talk of the verge, the wonder was they +hadn't gone clean over it, both of them. + +She couldn't say then from what region, what tract of unexplored, +incredible mystery her help had come. It came one day, one night when +she was at her worst. She remembered how with some resurgent, ultimate +instinct of surrender she had sunk on the floor of her room, flung out +her arms across the bed in the supreme gesture of supplication, and thus +gone, eyes shut and with no motion of thought or sense in her, clean +into the blackness where, as if it had been waiting for her, the thing +had found her. + +It had found her. Agatha was precise on that point. She had not found +it. She had not even stumbled on it, blundered up against it in the +blackness. The way it worked, the wonder of her instantaneous well-being +had been the first, the very first hint she had that it was there. + +She had never quite recaptured her primal, virgin sense of it; but, to +set against that, she had entered more and more into possession. She +had found out the secret of its working and had controlled it, reduced +it to an almost intelligible method. You could think of it as a current +of transcendent power, hitherto mysteriously inhibited. You made the +connection, having cut off all other currents that interfered, and then +you simply turned it on. In other words, if you could put it into words +at all, you shut your eyes and ears, you closed up the sense of touch, +you made everything dark around you and withdrew into your innermost +self; you burrowed deep into the darkness there till you got beyond it; +you tapped the Power as it were underground at any point you pleased and +turned it on in any direction. + +She could turn it on to Harding Powell without any loss to Rodney +Lanyon; for it was immeasurable, inexhaustible. + +She looked back at the farm-house with its veiled windows. Formless and +immense, the shadow of Harding Powell swayed uneasily on one of the +yellow blinds. Across the field her own house showed pure and dim +against the darkening slope behind it, showed a washed and watered white +in the liquid, lucid twilight. Her house was open always and on every +side; it flung out its casement arms to the night and to the day. And +now all the lamps were lit, every doorway was a golden shaft, every +window a golden square; the whiteness of its walls quivered and the +blurred edges flowed into the dark of the garden. It was the fragile +shell of a sacred and a burning light. + +She did not go in all at once. She crossed the river and went up the +hill through the beech-wood. She walked there every evening in the +darkness, calling her thoughts home to sleep. The Easter moon, +golden-white and holy, looked down at her, shrined under the long sharp +arch of the beech-trees; it was like going up and up towards a dim +sanctuary where the holiest sat enthroned. A sense of consecration was +upon her. It came, solemn and pure and still, out of the tumult of her +tenderness and pity; but it was too awful for pity and for tenderness; +it aspired like a flame and lost itself in light; it grew like a wave +till it was vaster than any tenderness or any pity. It was as if her +heart rose on the swell of it and was carried away into a rhythm so +tremendous that her own pulses of compassion were no longer felt, or +felt only as the hushed and delicate vibration of the wave. She +recognised her state. It was the blessed state desired as the condition +of the working of the gift. + +She turned when the last arch of the beech-trees broke and opened to the +sky at the top of the hill, where the moon hung in immensity, free of +her hill, free of the shrine that held her. She went down with slow +soft footsteps as if she carried herself, her whole fragile being, as a +vessel, a crystal vessel for the holy thing, and was careful lest a +touch of the earth should jar and break her. + + + + +CHAPTER FOUR + + +She went still more gently and with half-shut eyes through her +illuminated house. She turned the lights out in her room and undressed +herself in the darkness. She laid herself on the bed with straight lax +limbs, with arms held apart a little from her body, with eyelids shut +lightly on her eyes; all fleshly contacts were diminished. + +It was now as if her being drank at every pore the swimming darkness; as +if the rhythm of her heart and of her breath had ceased in the pulse of +its invasion. She sank in it and was covered with wave upon wave of +darkness. She sank and was upheld; she dissolved and was gathered +together again, a flawless crystal. She was herself the heart of the +charmed circle, poised in the ultimate unspeakable stillness, beyond +death, beyond birth, beyond the movements, the vehemences, the +agitations of the world. She drew Harding Powell into it and held him +there. + +To draw him to any purpose she had first to loosen and destroy the +fleshly, sinister image of him that, for the moment of evocation, hung +like a picture on the darkness. In a moment the fleshly image receded, +it sank back into the darkness. His name, Harding Powell, was now the +only earthly sign of him that she suffered to appear. In the third +moment his name was blotted out. And then it was as if she drew him by +intangible, supersensible threads; she touched, with no sense of peril, +his innermost essence; the walls of flesh were down between them; she +had got at him. + +And having got at him she held him, a bloodless spirit, a bodiless +essence, in the fount of healing. She said to herself, "He will sleep +now. He will sleep. He will sleep." And as she slid into her own sleep +she held and drew him with her. + +He would sleep; he would be all right as long as _she_ slept. Her sleep, +she had discovered, did more than carry on the amazing act of communion +and redemption. It clinched it. It was the seal on the bond. + +Early the next morning she went over to the Farm. The blinds were up; +the doors and windows were flung open. Milly met her at the garden gate. +She stopped her and walked a little way with her across the field. "It's +worked," she said. "It's worked after all, like magic." + +For a moment Agatha wondered whether Milly had guessed anything; whether +she divined the Secret and had brought him there for that, and had +refused to acknowledge it before she knew. + +"What has?" she asked. + +"The plan. The place. He slept last night. Ten hours straight on end. I +know, for I stayed awake and watched him. And this morning--oh, my dear, +if you could see him! He's all right. He's all right." + +"And you think," said Agatha, "it's the place?" + +Milly knew nothing, guessed, divined nothing. + +"Why, what else can it be?" she said. + +"What does _he_ think?" + +"He doesn't think. He can't account for it. He says himself it's +miraculous." + +"Perhaps," said Agatha, "it is." + +They were silent a moment over the wonder of it. + +"I can't get over it," said Milly, presently. "It's so odd that it +should make all that difference. I could understand it if it had worked +that way at first. But it didn't. Think of him yesterday. And yet--if it +isn't the place, what is it? What is it?" + +Agatha did not answer. She wasn't going to tell Milly what it was. If +she did Milly wouldn't believe her, and Milly's unbelief might work +against it. It might prove, for all she knew, an inimical, disastrous +power. + +"Come and see for yourself." Milly spoke as if it had been Agatha who +doubted. + +They turned again towards the house. Powell had come out and was in the +garden, leaning on the gate. They could see how right he was by the mere +fact of his being there, presenting himself like that to the vivid +light. + +He opened the gate for them, raising his hat and smiling as they came. +His face witnessed to the wonder worked on him. The colour showed clean, +purged of his taint. His eyes were candid and pure under brows smoothed +by sleep. + +As they went in he stood for a moment in the open doorway and looked at +the view, admiring the river and the green valley, and the bare upland +fields under the wood. He had always had (it was part of his rare +quality) a prodigious capacity for admiration. + +"My God," he said, "how beautiful the world is!" + +He looked at Milly. "And all _that_ isn't a patch on my wife." + +He looked at her with tenderness and admiration, and the look was the +flower, the perfection of his sanity. + +Milly drew in her breath with a little sound like a sob. Her joy was so +great that it was almost unbearable. + +Then he looked at Agatha and admired the green gown she wore. "You don't +know," he said, "how exquisitely right you are." + +She smiled. She knew how exquisitely right _he_ was. + + + + +CHAPTER FIVE + + +Night after night she continued, and without an effort. It was as easy +as drawing your breath; it was indeed the breath you drew. She found +that she had no longer to devote hours to Harding Powell, any more than +she gave hours to Rodney; she could do his business in moments, in +points of inappreciable time. It was as if from night to night the times +swung together and made one enduring timeless time. For the process +belonged to a region that was not of times or time. + +She wasn't afraid, then, of not giving enough time to it, but she _was_ +afraid of omitting it altogether. She knew that every intermission +would be followed by a relapse, and Harding's state did not admit of any +relapses. + +Of course, if time _had_ counted, if the thing was measurable, she would +have been afraid of losing hold of Rodney Lanyon. She held him now by a +single slender thread, and the thread was Bella. She "worked" it +regularly now through Bella. He was bound to be all right as long as +Bella was; for his possibilities of suffering were thus cut off at their +source. Besides, it was the only way to preserve the purity of her +intention, the flawlessness of the crystal. + +That was the blessedness of her attitude to Harding Powell. It was +passionless, impersonal. She wanted nothing of Harding Powell except to +help him, and to help Milly, dear little Milly. And never before had she +been given so complete, so overwhelming a sense of having helped. It was +nothing--unless it was a safeguard against vanity--that they didn't +know it, that they persisted in thinking that it was Milly's plan that +worked. + +Not that that altogether accounted for it to Harding Powell. He said so +at last to Agatha. + +They were returning, he and she, by the edge of the wood at the top of +the steep field after a long walk. He had asked her to go with him--it +was her country--for a good stretch, further than Milly's little feet +could carry her. They stood a moment up there and looked around them. +April was coming on, but the ploughed land at their feet was still bare; +the earth waited. On that side of the valley she was delicately +unfruitful, spent with rearing the fine, thin beauty of the woods. But, +down below, the valley ran over with young grass and poured it to the +river in wave after wave, till the last surge of green rounded over the +water's edge. Rain had fallen in the night, and the river had risen; it +rested there, poised. It was wonderful how a thing so brimming, so +shining, so alive could be so still; still as marsh water, flat to the +flat land. + +At that moment, in a flash that came like a shifting of her eyes, the +world she looked at suffered a change. + +And yet it did not change. All the appearances of things, their colours, +the movement and the stillness remained as if constant in their rhythm +and their scale; but they were heightened, intensified; they were +carried to a pitch that would have been vehement, vibrant, but that the +stillness as well as the movement was intense. She was not dazzled by it +or confused in any way. Her senses were exalted, adjusted to the pitch. + +She would have said now that the earth at her feet had become +insubstantial, but that she knew, in her flash, that what she saw was +the very substance of the visible world; live and subtle as flame; solid +as crystal and as clean. It was the same world, flat field for flat +field and hill for hill; but radiant, vibrant, and, as it were, +infinitely transparent. + +Agatha in her moment saw that the whole world brimmed and shone and was +alive with the joy that was its life, joy that flowed flood-high and yet +was still. In every leaf, in every blade of grass, this life was +manifest as a strange, a divine translucence. She was about to point it +out to the man at her side when she remembered that he had eyes for the +beauty of the earth, but no sense of its secret and supernatural light. +Harding Powell denied, he always had denied the supernatural. And when +she turned to him her vision had passed from her. + +They must have another tramp some day, he said. He wanted to see more +of this wonderful place. And then he spoke of his recovery. + +"It's all very well," he said, "but I can't account for it. Milly says +it's the place." + +"It _is_ a wonderful place," said Agatha. + +"Not so wonderful as all that. You saw how I was the day after we came. +Well--it can't be the place altogether." + +"I rather hope it isn't," Agatha said. + +"Do you? What do you think it is, then?" + +"I think it's something in you." + +"Of course, of course. But what started it? That's what I want to know. +Something's happened. Something queer and spontaneous and unaccountable. +It's--it's uncanny. For, you know, I oughtn't to feel like this. I got +bad news this morning." + +"Bad news?" + +"Yes. My sister's little girl is very ill. They think it's meningitis. +They're in awful trouble. And _I_--_I_'m feeling like this." + +"Don't let it distress you." + +"It doesn't distress me. It only puzzles me. That's the odd thing. Of +course, I'm sorry and I'm anxious and all that; but I _feel_ so well." + +"You _are_ well. Don't be morbid." + +"I haven't told my wife yet. About the child, I mean. I simply daren't. +It'll frighten her. She won't know how I'll take it, and she'll think +it'll make me go all queer again." + +He paused and turned to her. + +"I say, if she _did_ know how I'm taking it, she'd think _that_ awfully +queer, wouldn't she?" He paused. + +"The worst of it is," he said, "I've got to tell her." + +"Will you leave it to me?" Agatha said. "I think I can make it all +right." + +"How?" he queried. + +"Never mind how. I can." + +"Well," he assented, "there's hardly anything you can't do." + +That was how she came to tell Milly. + +She made up her mind to tell her that evening as they sat alone in +Agatha's house. Harding, Milly said, was happy over there with his +books; just as he used to be, only more so. So much more so that she was +a little disturbed about it. She was afraid it wouldn't last. And again +she said it was the place, the wonderful, wonderful place. + +"If you want it to last," Agatha said, "don't go on thinking it's the +place." + +"Why shouldn't it be? I feel that he's safe here. He's out of it. Things +can't reach him." + +"Bad news reached him to-day." + +"Aggy--what?" Milly whispered in her fright. + +"His sister is very anxious about her little girl." + +"What's wrong?" + +Agatha repeated what she had heard from Harding Powell. + +"Oh----" Milly was dumb for an instant while she thought of her +sister-in-law. Then she cried aloud. + +"If the child dies it will make him ill again!" + +"No Milly, it won't." + +"It will, I tell you. It's always been that sort of thing that does it." + +"And supposing there was something that keeps it off?" + +"What is there? What is there?" + +"I believe there's something. Would you mind awfully if it wasn't the +place?" + +"What do you mean, Agatha?" (There was a faint resentment in Milly's +agonised tone.) + +It was then that Agatha told her. She made it out for her as far as she +had made it out at all, with the diffidence that a decent attitude +required. + +Milly raised doubts which subsided in a kind of awe when Agatha faced +her with the evidence of dates. + +"You remember, Milly, the night when he slept." + +"I do remember. He said himself it was miraculous." + +She meditated. + +"And so you think it's that?" she said presently. + +"I do indeed. If I dared leave off (I daren't) you'd see for yourself." + +"What do you think you've got hold of?" + +"I don't know yet." + +There was a long deep silence which Milly broke. + +"What do you _do_?" she said. + +"I don't do anything. It isn't me." + +"I see," said Milly. "_I_'ve prayed. You didn't think I hadn't." + +"It's not that--not anything you mean by it. And yet it is; only it's +more, much more. I can't explain it. I only know it isn't me." + +She was beginning to feel vaguely uncomfortable about having told her. + +"And Milly, you mustn't tell him. Promise me you won't tell him." + +"No, I won't tell him." + +"Because you see, he'd think it was all rot." + +"He would," said Milly. "It's the sort of thing he does think rot." + +"And that might prevent its working." + +Milly smiled faintly. "I haven't the ghost of an idea what 'it' is. But +whatever it is, can you go on doing it?" + +"Yes, I think so. You see, it depends rather----" + +"It depends on what?" + +"Oh, on a lot of things--on your sincerity; on your--your purity. It +depends so much on _that_ that it frightens you lest, perhaps, you +mightn't, after all, be so very pure." + +Milly smiled again, a little differently. "Darling, if that's all, I'm +not frightened. Only--supposing--supposing you gave out? You might, you +know." + +"_I_ might. But It couldn't. You mustn't think it's me, Milly. Because +if anything happened to me, if I did give out, don't you see how it +would let him down? It's as bad as thinking it's the place." + +"Does it matter what it is--or who it is," said Milly, passionately; "as +long as----" Her tears came and stopped her. + +Agatha divined the source of Milly's passion. + +"Then you don't mind, Milly? You'll let me go on?" + +Milly rose; she turned abruptly, holding her head high, so that she +might not spill her tears. + +Agatha went with her over the grey field towards the Farm. They paused +at the gate. Milly spoke. + +"Are you sure?" she said. + +"Certain." + +"And you won't leave go?" Her eyes shone towards her friend's in the +twilight. "You _will_ go on?" + +"_You_ must go on." + +"Ah--how?" + +"Believing that he'll be all right." + +"Oh, Aggy, he was devoted to Winny. And if the child dies----" + + + + +CHAPTER SIX + + +The child died three days later. Milly came over to Agatha with the +news. + +She said it had been an awful shock, of course. She'd been dreading +something like that for him. But he'd taken it wonderfully. If he came +out of it all right she _would_ believe in what she called Agatha's +"thing." + +He did come out of it all right. His behaviour was the crowning proof, +if Milly wanted more proof, of his sanity. He went up to London and made +all the arrangements for his sister. When he returned he forestalled +Milly's specious consolations with the truth. It was better, he told +her, that the dear little girl should have died, for there was distinct +brain trouble anyway. He took it as a sane man takes a terrible +alternative. + +Weeks passed. He had grown accustomed to his own sanity and no longer +marvelled at it. + +And still without intermission Agatha went on. She had been so far +affected by Milly's fright (that was the worst of Milly's knowing) that +she held on to Harding Powell with a slightly exaggerated intensity. She +even began to give more and more time to him, she who had made out that +time in this process did not matter. She was afraid of letting go, +because the consequences (Milly was perpetually reminding her of the +consequences) of letting go would be awful. + +For Milly kept her at it. Milly urged her on. Milly, in Milly's own +words, sustained her. She praised her; she praised the Secret, praised +the Power. She said you could see how it worked. It was tremendous; it +was inexhaustible. Milly, familiarised with its working, had become a +fanatical believer in the Power. But she had her own theory. She knew of +course that they were all, she and Agatha and poor Harding, dependent on +the Power, that it was the Power that did it, and not Agatha. But Agatha +was _their_ one link with it, and if the link gave way where were they? +Agatha felt that Milly watched her and waylaid her; that she was +suspicious of failures and of intermissions; that she wondered; that she +peered and pried. Milly would, if she could, have stuck her fingers into +what she called the machinery of the thing. Its vagueness baffled and +even annoyed her, for her mind was limited; it loved and was at home +with limits; it desired above all things precise ideas, names, phrases, +anything that constricted and defined. + +But still, with it all, she believed; and the great thing was that Milly +_should_ believe. She might have worked havoc if, with her temperament, +she had doubted. + +What did suffer was the fine poise with which she, Agatha, had held +Rodney Lanyon and Harding Powell each by his own thread. Milly had +compelled her to spin a stronger thread for Harding and, as it were, to +multiply her threads, so as to hold him at all points. And because of +this, because of giving more and more time to him, she could not always +loose him from her and let him go. And she was afraid lest the pull he +had on her might weaken Rodney's thread. + +Up till now, the Powells' third week at Sarratt End, she had had the +assurance that his thread still held. She heard from him that Bella was +all right, which meant that he too was all right, for there had never +been anything wrong with him _but_ Bella. And she had a further glimpse +of the way the gift worked its wonders. + +Three Fridays had passed, and he had not come. + +Well--she had meant that; she had tried (on that last Friday of his), +with a crystal sincerity, to hold him back so that he should not come. +And up till now, with an ease that simply amazed her, she had kept +herself at the highest pitch of her sincere and beautiful intention. + +Not that it was the intention that had failed her now. It had succeeded +so beautifully, so perfectly, that he had no need to come at all. She +had given Bella back to him. She had given him back to Bella. Only, she +faced the full perfection of her work. She had brought it to so fine a +point that she would never see him again; she had gone to the root of +it; she had taken from him the desire to see her. And now it was as if +subtly, insidiously, her relation to him had become inverted. Whereas +hitherto it had been she who had been necessary to him, it seemed now +that he was far more, beyond all comparison more necessary to her. After +all, Rodney had had Bella; and she had nobody but Rodney. He was the one +solitary thing she cared for. And hitherto it had not mattered so +immensely, for all her caring, whether he came to her or not. Seeing him +had been perhaps a small mortal joy; but it had not been the tremendous +and essential thing. She had been contented, satisfied beyond all mortal +contentments and satisfactions, with the intangible, immaterial tie. Now +she longed, with an unendurable longing, for his visible, bodily +presence. She had not realised her joy as long as it was with her; she +had refused to acknowledge it because of its mortal quality, and it had +raised no cry that troubled her abiding spiritual calm. But now that +she had put it from her, it thrust itself on her, it cried, it clung +piteously to her and would not let her go. She looked back to the last +year, her year of Fridays, and saw it following her, following and +entreating. She looked forward and she saw Friday after Friday coming +upon her, a procession of pitiless days, trampling it down, her small, +piteous mortal joy, and her mortality rose in her and revolted. She had +been disturbed by what she had called the "lurking possibilities" in +Rodney; they were nothing to the lurking possibilities in her. + +There were moments when her desire to see Rodney sickened her with its +importunity. Each time she beat it back, in an instant, to its burrow +below the threshold, and it hid there, it ran underground. There were +ways below the threshold by which desire could get at him. Therefore, +one night--Tuesday of the fourth week--she cut him off. She refused to +hold him even by a thread. It was Bella and Bella only that she held +now. + +On Friday of that week she heard from him. Bella was still all right. +But _he_ wasn't. Anything but. He didn't know what was the matter with +him. He supposed it was the same old thing again. He couldn't think how +poor Bella stood him, but she did. It must be awfully bad for her. It +was beastly, wasn't it? that he should have got like that, just when +Bella was so well. + +She might have known it. She had in fact known. Having once held him, +and having healed him, she had no right--as long as the Power consented +to work through her--she had no right to let him go. + +She began again from the beginning, from the first process of +purification and surrender. But what followed was different now. She +had not only to recapture the crystal serenity, the holiness of that +state by which she had held Rodney Lanyon and had healed him; she had to +recover the poise by which she had held him and Harding Powell together. +And the effort to recover it became a striving, a struggle in which +Harding persisted and prevailed. Yes, there was no blinking it, he +prevailed. + +She had been prepared for it, but not as for a thing that could really +happen. It was contrary to all that she knew of the beneficent working +of the Power. She thought she knew all its ways, its silences, its +reassurances, its inexplicable reservations and evasions. She couldn't +be prepared for this--that it, the high and holy, the unspeakably pure +thing should allow Harding to prevail, should connive (that was what it +looked like) at his taking the gift into his own hands and turning it to +his own advantage against Rodney Lanyon. + +It was her fear at last that made her write to Rodney. She wrote in the +beginning of the fifth week (she was counting the weeks now). She only +wanted to know, she said, that he was better, that he was well. She +begged him to write and tell her that he was well. + +He did not write. + +And every night of that week, in those "states" of hers, Powell +prevailed. He was becoming almost a visible presence impressed upon the +blackness of the "state." All she could do then was to evoke the visible +image of Rodney Lanyon and place it there over Harding's image, +obliterating him. Now, properly speaking, the state, the perfection of +it, did not admit of visible presences, and that Harding could so +impress himself showed more than anything the extent to which he had +prevailed. + +He prevailed to such good purpose that he was now, Milly said, well +enough to go back to business. They were to leave Sarratt End in about +ten days, when they would have been there seven weeks. + +She had come over on the Sunday to let Agatha know that; and also, she +said, to make a confession. + +Milly's face, as she said it, was all candour. It had filled out; it had +bloomed in her happiness; it was shadowless, featureless almost, like a +flower. + +She had done what she said she wouldn't do; she had told Harding. + +"Oh Milly, what on earth did you do that for?" Agatha's voice was +strange. + +"I thought it better," Milly said, revealing the fine complacence of her +character. + +"Why better?" + +"Because secrecy is bad. And he was beginning to wonder. He wanted to go +back to business; and he wouldn't because he thought it was the place +that did it." + +"I see," said Agatha. "And what does he think it is now?" + +"He thinks it's _you_, dear." + +"But I told you--I told you--that was what you were not to think." + +"My dear, it's an immense concession that he should think it's you." + +"A concession to what?" + +"Well, I suppose, to the supernatural." + +"Milly, you shouldn't have told him. You don't know what harm you might +have done. I'm not sure even now that you have not done harm." + +"Oh, _have_ I!" said Milly, triumphantly. "You've only got to look at +him." + +"When did you tell him, then?" + +"I told him--let me see--it was a week ago last Friday." + +Agatha was silent. She wondered. It had been after Friday a week ago +that he had prevailed so terribly. + +"Agatha," said Milly, solemnly, "when we go away you won't lose sight of +him? You won't let go of him?" + +"You needn't be afraid. I doubt now if he will let go of me." + +"How do you mean--_now_?" Milly flushed slightly as a flower might +flush. + +"Now that you've told him, now that he thinks it's me." + +"Perhaps," said Milly, "that was why I told him. I don't want him to let +go." + + + + +CHAPTER SEVEN + + +It was the sixth week, and still Rodney did not write; and Agatha was +more and more afraid. + +By this time she had definitely connected her fear with Harding Powell's +dominion and persistence. She was certain now that what she could only +call his importunity had proved somehow disastrous to Rodney Lanyon. And +with it all, unacknowledged, beaten back, her desire to see Rodney ran +to and fro in the burrows underground. + +He did not write, but on the Friday of that week, the sixth week, he +came. + +She saw him coming up the garden path and she shrank back into her +room; but the light searched her and found her, and he saw her there. He +never knocked; he came straight and swiftly to her through the open +doors. He shut the door of the room behind him and held her by her arms +with both his hands. + +"Rodney," she said, "did you mean to come, or did I make you?" + +"I meant to come. You couldn't make me." + +"Couldn't I? Oh _say_ I couldn't." + +"You could," he said, "but you didn't. And what does it matter so long +as I'm here?" + +"Let me look at you." + +She held him at arm's length and turned him to the light. It showed his +face white, worn as it used to be, all the little lines of worry back +again, and two new ones that drew down the corners of his mouth. + +"You've been ill," she said. "You _are_ ill." + +"No. I'm all right. What's the matter with _you_?" + +"With me? Nothing. Do I look as if anything was wrong?" + +"You look as if you'd been frightened." + +He paused, considering it. + +"This place isn't good for you. You oughtn't to be here like this, all +by yourself." + +"Oh! Rodney, it's the dearest place. I love every inch of it. Besides, +I'm not altogether by myself." + +He did not seem to hear her; and what he said next arose evidently out +of his own thoughts. + +"I say, are those Powells still here?" + +"They've been here all the time." + +"Do you see much of them?" + +"I see them every day. Sometimes nearly all day." + +"That accounts for it." + +Again he paused. + +"It's my fault, Agatha. I shouldn't have left you to them. I knew." + +"What did you know?" + +"Well--the state he was in, and the effect it would have on you--that it +would have on any one." + +"It's all right. He's going. Besides, he isn't in a state any more. He's +cured." + +"Cured? What's cured him?" + +She evaded him. + +"He's been well ever since he came; absolutely well after the first +day." + +"Still, you've been frightened; you've been worrying; you've had some +shock or other, or some strain. What is it?" + +"Nothing. Only--just the last week--I've been a little frightened about +you--when you wouldn't write to me. Why didn't you?" + +"Because I couldn't." + +"Then you _were_ ill." + +"I'm all right. I know what's the matter with me." + +"It's Bella?" + +He laughed harshly. + +"No, it isn't this time. I haven't that excuse." + +"Excuse for what?" + +"For coming. Bella's all right. Bella's a perfect angel. God knows +what's happened to her. I don't. _I_ haven't had anything to do with +it." + +"You had. You had everything. You were an angel, too." + +"I haven't been much of an angel lately, I can tell you." + +"She'll understand. She does understand." + +They had sat down on the couch in the corner so that they faced each +other. Agatha faced him, but fear was in her eyes. + +"It doesn't matter," he said, "whether she understands or not. I don't +want to talk about her." + +Agatha said nothing, but there was a movement in her face, a white wave +of trouble, and the fear fluttered in her eyes. He saw it there. + +"You needn't bother about Bella. She's all right. You see, it's not as +if she cared." + +"Cared?" + +"About _me_ much." + +"But she does, she does care!" + +"I suppose she did once, or she couldn't have married me. But she +doesn't now. You see--you may as well know it, Agatha--there's another +man." + +"Oh, Rodney, no." + +"Yes. It's been perfectly all right, you know; but there he is and +there he's been for years. She told me. I'm awfully sorry for her." + +He paused. + +"What beats me is her being so angelic now, when she doesn't care." + +"Rodney, she does. It's all over, like an illness. It's you she cares +for _now_." + +"Think so?" + +"I'm sure of it." + +"I'm not." + +"You will be. You'll see it. You'll see it soon." + +He glanced at her under his bent brows. + +"I don't know," he said, "that I want to see it. _That_ isn't what's the +matter with me. You don't understand the situation. It isn't all over. +She's only being good about it. She doesn't care a rap about me. She +_can't_. And what's more I don't want her to." + +"You--don't--want her to?" + +He burst out. "My God, I want nothing in this world but _you_. And I +can't have you. That's what's the matter with me." + +"No, no, it isn't," she cried. "You don't know." + +"I do know. It's hurting me. And----" he looked at her and his voice +shook--"it's hurting _you_. I won't have you hurt." + +He started forward suddenly as if he would have taken her in his arms. +She put up her hands to keep him off. + +"No, no!" she cried. "I'm all right. I'm all right. It isn't that. You +mustn't think it." + +"I know it. That's why I came." + +He came near again. He seized her struggling hands. + +"Agatha, why can't we? Why shouldn't we?" + +"No, no," she moaned. "We can't. We mustn't. Not _that_ way. I don't +want it, Rodney, that way." + +"It shall be any way you like. Only don't beat me off." + +"I'm not--beating--you--off." + +She stood up. Her face changed suddenly. + +"Rodney--I forgot. They're coming." + +"Who are they?" + +"The Powells. They're coming to lunch." + +"Can't you put them off?" + +"I can, but it wouldn't be very wise, dear. They might think----" + +"Confound them--they _would_ think." + +He was pulling himself visibly together. + +"I'm afraid, Aggy, I ought----" + +"I know--you must. You must go soon." He looked at his watch. + +"I must go _now_, dear. I daren't stay. It's dangerous." + +"I know," she whispered. + +"But when is the brute going?" + +"Poor darling, he's going next week--next Thursday." + +"Well then, I'll--I'll----" + +"Please, you must go." + +"I'm going." + +She held out her hand. + +"I daren't touch you," he whispered. "I'm going now. But I'll come again +next Friday, and I'll stay." + +As she saw his drawn face there was not any strength in her to say +"No." + + + + +CHAPTER EIGHT + + +He had gone. She gathered herself together and went across the field to +meet the Powells as if nothing had happened. + +Milly and her husband were standing at the gate of the Farm. They were +watching; yes, they were watching Rodney Lanyon as he crossed the river +by the Farm bridge which led up the hill by the field path that slanted +to the farther and western end of the wood. Their attitude showed that +they were interested in his brief appearance on the scene, and that they +wondered what he had been doing there. And as she approached them she +was aware of something cold, ominous, and inimical, that came from +them, and set towards her and passed by. Her sense of it only lasted for +a second, and was gone so completely that she could hardly realise that +she had ever felt it. + +For they were charming to her. Harding, indeed, was more perfect in his +beautiful quality than ever. There was something about him moreover that +she had not been prepared for, something strange and pathetic, humble +almost and appealing. She saw it in his eyes, his large, dark, wild +animal eyes, chiefly. But it was a look that claimed as much as it +deprecated; that assumed between them some unspoken communion and +understanding. With all its pathos it was a look that frightened her. +Neither he nor his wife said a word about Rodney Lanyon. She was not +even sure, now, that they had recognised him. + +They stayed with her all that afternoon; for their time, they said, was +getting short; and when, about six o'clock, Milly got up to go she took +Agatha aside and said that, if Agatha didn't mind, she would leave +Harding with her for a little while. She knew he wanted to talk to her. + +Agatha proposed that they should walk up the hill through the wood. They +went in a curious silence and constraint; and it was not until they had +got into the wood and were shut up in it together that he spoke. + +"I think my wife told you that I had something to say to you?" + +"Yes, Harding," she said; "what is it?" + +"Well, it's this--first of all I want to thank you. I know what you're +doing for me." + +"I'm sorry. I didn't want you to know. I thought Milly wasn't going to +tell you." + +"She didn't tell me." + +Agatha said nothing. She was bound to accept his statement. Of course, +he must have known that Milly had broken her word, and he was trying to +shield her. + +"I mean," he went on, "that whether she told me or not, it's no matter. +I knew." + +"You--knew?" + +"I knew that something was happening, and I knew that it wasn't the +place. Places never make any difference. I only go to 'em because Milly +thinks they do. Besides, if it came to that, this place--from my +peculiar point of view, mind you--was simply beastly. I couldn't have +stood another night of it." + +"Well." + +"Well, the thing went; and I got all right. And the queer part of it is +that I felt as if you were in it somehow, as if you'd done something. I +half hoped you might say something, but you never did." + +"One ought not to speak about these things, Harding. And I told you I +didn't want you to know." + +"I didn't know what you did. I don't know now, though Milly tried to +tell me. But I felt you. I felt you all the time." + +"It was not I you felt. I implore you not to think it was." + +"What can I think?" + +"Think as I do; think--think----" She stopped herself. She was aware of +the futility of her charge to this man who denied, who always had +denied, the supernatural. + +"It isn't a question of thinking," she said at last. + +"Of believing, then? Are you going to tell me to believe?" + +"No; it isn't believing either. It's knowing. Either you know it or you +don't know, though you may come to know. But whatever you think, you +mustn't think it's me." + +"I rather like to. Why shouldn't I?" + +She turned on him her grave white face, and he noticed a curious +expression there as of incipient terror. + +"Because you might do some great harm either to yourself or----" + +His delicate, sceptical eyebrows questioned her. + +"Or me." + +"You?" he murmured gently, pitifully almost. + +"Yes, me. Or even--well, one doesn't quite know where the harm might +end. If I could only make you take another view. I tried to make you--to +work it that way--so that you might find the secret and do it for +yourself." + +"I can't do anything for myself. But, Agatha, I'll take any view you +like of it, so long as you'll keep on at me." + +"Of course I'll keep on." + +At that he stopped suddenly in his path, and faced her. + +"I say, you know, it isn't hurting you, is it?" + +She felt herself wince. "Hurting me? How could it hurt me?" + +"Milly said it couldn't." + +Agatha sighed. She said to herself, "Milly--if only Milly hadn't +interfered." + +"Don't you think it's cold here in the wood?" she said. + +"Cold?" + +"Yes. Let's go back." + +As they went Milly met them at the Farm bridge. She wanted Agatha to +come and stay for supper; she pressed, she pleaded, and Agatha, who had +never yet withstood Milly's pleading, stayed. + +It was from that evening that she really dated it, the thing that came +upon her. She was aware that in staying she disobeyed an instinct that +told her to go home. Otherwise she could not say that she had any sort +of premonition. Supper was laid in the long room with the yellow blinds, +where she had first found Harding Powell. The blinds were down to-night, +and the lamp on the table burnt low; the oil had given out. The light in +the room was still daylight and came level from the sunset, leaking +through the yellow blinds. It struck Agatha that it was the same light, +the same ochreish light that they had found in the room six weeks ago. +But that was nothing. + +What it was she did not know. The horrible light went when the flame of +the lamp burnt clearer. Harding was talking to her cheerfully and Milly +was smiling at them both, when half through the meal Agatha got up and +declared that she must go. She was ill; she was tired; they must +forgive her, but she must go. + +The Powells rose and stood by her, close to her, in their distress. +Milly brought wine and put it to her lips; but she turned her head away +and whispered, "Please let me go. Let me get away." + +Harding wanted to walk back with her, but she refused with a vehemence +that deterred him. + +"How very odd of her," said Milly, as they stood at the gate and watched +her go. She was walking fast, almost running, with a furtive step, as if +something pursued her. + +Powell did not speak. He turned from his wife and went slowly back into +the house. + + + + +CHAPTER NINE + + +She knew now what had happened to her. She _was_ afraid of Harding +Powell; and it was her fear that had cried to her to go, to get away +from him. + +The awful thing was that she knew she could not get away from him. She +had only to close her eyes and she would find the visible image of him +hanging before her on the wall of darkness. And to-night, when she tried +to cover it with Rodney's it was no longer obliterated. Rodney's image +had worn thin and Harding's showed through. She was more afraid of it +than she had been of Harding; and, more than anything, she was afraid +of being afraid. Harding was the object of a boundless and +indestructible compassion, and her fear of him was hateful to her and +unholy. She knew that it would be terrible to let it follow her into +that darkness where she would presently go down with him alone. "It +would be all right," she said to herself, "if only I didn't keep on +seeing him." + +But he, his visible image, and her fear of it, persisted even while the +interior darkness, the divine, beneficent darkness rose round her, wave +on wave, and flooded her; even while she held him there and healed him; +even while it still seemed to her that her love pierced through her fear +and gathered to her, spirit to spirit, flame to pure flame, the +nameless, innermost essence of Rodney and of Bella. She had known in the +beginning that it was by love that she held them; but now, though she +loved Rodney and had almost lost her pity for Harding in her fear of +him, it was Harding rather than Rodney that she held. + +In the morning she woke with a sense, which was almost a memory, of +Harding having been in the room with her all night. She was tired, as if +she had had some long and unrestrained communion with him. + +She put away at once the fatigue that pressed on her (the gift still +"worked" in a flash for the effacing of bodily sensation). She told +herself that, after all, her fear had done no harm. Seldom in her +experience of the Power had she had so tremendous a sense of having got +through to it, of having "worked" it, of having held Harding under it +and healed him. For, when all was said and done, whether she had been +afraid of him or not, she had held him, she had never once let go. The +proof was that he still went sane, visibly, indubitably cured. + +All the same she felt that she could not go through another day like +yesterday. She could not see him. She wrote a letter to Milly. Since it +concerned Milly so profoundly it was well that Milly should be made to +understand. She hoped that Milly would forgive her if they didn't see +her for the next day or two. If she was to go on (she underlined it) she +must be left absolutely alone. It seemed unkind when they were going so +soon, but--Milly knew--it was impossible to exaggerate the importance of +what she had to do. + +Milly wrote back that of course she understood. It should be as Agatha +wished. Only (so Milly "sustained" her) Agatha must not allow herself to +doubt the Power. How could she when she saw what it had done for +Harding. If _she_ doubted, what could she expect of Harding? But of +course she must take care of her own dear self. If she failed--if she +gave way--what on earth would the poor darling do, now that he had +become dependent on her? + +She wrote as if it was Agatha's fault that he had become dependent; as +if Agatha had nothing, had nobody in the world to think of but Harding; +as if nobody, as if nothing in the world beside Harding mattered. And +Agatha found herself resenting Milly's view. As if to her anything in +the world mattered beside Rodney Lanyon. + +For three days she did not see the Powells. + + + + +CHAPTER TEN + + +The three nights passed as before, but with an increasing struggle and +fear. + +She knew, she knew what was happening. It was as if the walls of +personality were wearing thin, and through them she felt him trying to +get at her. + +She put the thought from her. It was absurd. It was insane. Such things +could not be. It was not in any region of such happenings that she held +him, but in the place of peace, the charmed circle, the flawless crystal +sphere. + +Still the thought persisted; and still, in spite of it, she held him, +she would not let him go. By her honour, and by her love for Milly she +was bound to hold him, even though she knew how terribly, how implacably +he prevailed. + +She was aware now that the persistence of his image on the blackness was +only a sign to her of his being there in his substance; in his supreme +innermost essence. It had obviously no relation to his bodily +appearance, since she had not seen him for three days. It tended more +and more to vanish, to give place to the shapeless, nameless, +all-pervading presence. And her fear of him became pervading, nameless +and shapeless too. + +Somehow it was always behind her now; it followed her from room to room +of her house; it drove her out of doors. It seemed to her that she went +before it with quick uncertain feet and a fluttering heart, aimless and +tormented as a leaf driven by a vague light wind. Sometimes it sent her +up the field towards the wood; sometimes it would compel her to go a +little way towards the Farm; and then it was as if it took her by the +shoulders and turned her back again towards her house. + +On the fourth day (which was Tuesday of the Powells' last week), she +determined to fight this fear. She could not defy it to the extent of +going on to the Farm where she might see Harding, but certainly she +would not suffer it to turn her from her hill-top. It was there that she +had always gone as the night fell, calling home her thoughts to sleep; +and it was there, seven weeks ago, that the moon, the golden-white and +holy moon, had led her to the consecration of her gift. She had returned +softly, seven weeks ago, carrying carefully her gift, as a fragile, +flawless crystal. Since then how recklessly she had held it! To what +jars and risks she had exposed the exquisite and sacred thing! + +She waited for her hour between sunset and twilight. It was perfect, +following a perfect day. Above the wood the sky had a violet lucidity, +purer than the day; below it the pale brown earth wore a violet haze, +and over that a web of green, woven of the sparse, thin blades of the +young wheat. There were two ways up the hill; one over her own bridge +across the river, that led her to the steep straight path through the +wood; one over the Farm bridge by the slanting path up the field. She +chose the wood. + +She paused on the bridge, and looked down the valley. She saw the +farm-house standing in the stillness that was its own secret and the +hour's. A strange, pale lamplight, lit too soon, showed in the windows +of the room she knew. The Powells would be sitting there at their +supper. + +She went on and came to the gate of the wood. It swung open on its +hinges, a sign to her that some time or other Harding Powell had passed +there. She paused and looked about her. Presently she saw Harding Powell +coming down the wood-path. + +He stopped. He had not yet seen her. He was looking up to the arch of +the beech-trees, where the green light still came through. She could see +by his attitude of quiet contemplation the sane and happy creature that +he was. He was sane, she knew. And yet, no; she could not really see him +as sane. It was her sanity, not his own that he walked in. Or else what +she saw was the empty shell of him. _He_ was in her. Hitherto it had +been in the darkness that she had felt him most, and her fear of him had +been chiefly fear of the invisible Harding, and of what he might do +there in the darkness. Now her fear, which had become almost hatred, was +transferred to his person. In the flesh, as in the spirit, he was +pursuing her. + +He had seen her now. He was making straight for her. And she turned and +ran round the eastern bend of the hill (a yard or so to the left of her) +and hid from him. From where she crouched at the edge of the wood she +saw him descend the lower slope to the river; by standing up and +advancing a little she could see him follow the river path on the nearer +side and cross by the Farm bridge. + +She was sure of all that. She was sure that it did not take her more +than twelve or fifteen minutes (for she had gone that way a hundred +times) to get back to the gate, to walk up the little wood, to cut +through it by a track in the undergrowth, and turn round the further and +western end of it. Thence she could either take the long path that +slanted across the field to the Farm bridge or keep to the upper ground +along a trail in the grass skirting the wood, and so reach home by the +short straight path and her own bridge. + +She decided on the short straight path as leading her farther from the +farm-house, where there could be no doubt that Harding Powell was now. +At the point she had reached, the jutting corner of the wood hid from +her the downward slope of the hill, and the flat land at its foot. + +As she turned the corner of the wood, she was brought suddenly in sight +of the valley. A hot wave swept over her brain, so strong that she +staggered as it passed. It was followed by a strange sensation of +physical sickness, that passed also. It was then as if what went through +her had charged her nerves of sight to a pitch of insane and horrible +sensibility. The green of the grass, and of the young corn, the very +colour of life, was violent and frightful. Not only was it abominable in +itself, it was a thing to be shuddered at, because of some still more +abominable significance it had. + +Agatha had known once, standing where she stood now, an exaltation of +sense that was ecstasy; when every leaf and every blade of grass shone +with a divine translucence; when every nerve in her thrilled, and her +whole being rang with the joy which is immanent in the life of things. + +What she experienced now (if she could have given any account of it) was +exaltation at the other end of the scale. It was horror and fear +unspeakable. Horror and fear immanent in the life of things. She saw the +world in a loathsome transparency; she saw it with the eye of a soul in +which no sense of the divine had ever been, of a soul that denied the +supernatural. It had been Harding Powell's soul, and it had become hers. + +Furiously, implacably, he was getting at her. + +Out of the wood and the hedges that bordered it there came sounds that +were horrible, because she knew them to be inaudible to any ear less +charged with insanity; small sounds of movement, of strange shiverings, +swarmings, crepitations; sounds of incessant, infinitely subtle urging, +of agony and recoil. Sounds they were of the invisible things unborn, +driven towards birth; sounds of the worm unborn, of things that creep +and writhe towards dissolution. She knew what she heard and saw. She +heard the stirring of the corruption that Life was; the young blades of +corn were frightful to her, for in them was the push, the passion of the +evil which was Life; the trees as they stretched out their arms and +threatened her were frightful with the terror which was Life. Down +there, in that gross green hot-bed, the earth teemed with the +abomination; and the river, livid, white, a monstrous thing, crawled, +dragging with it the very slime. + +All this she perceived in a flash, when she had turned the corner. It +sank into stillness and grew dim; she was aware of it only as the scene, +the region in which one thing, her terror, moved and hunted her. Among +sounds of the rustling of leaves, and the soft crush of grass, and the +whirring of little wings in fright, she heard it go; it went on the +other side of the hedge, a little way behind her as she skirted the +wood. She stood still to let it pass her, and she felt that it passed, +and that it stopped and waited. A terrified bird flew out of the hedge, +no further than a fledgling's flight in front of her. And in that place +it flew from she saw Harding Powell. + +He was crouching under the hedge as she had crouched when she had hidden +from him. His face was horrible, but not more horrible than the Terror +that had gone behind her; and she heard herself crying out to him, +"Harding! Harding!" appealing to him against the implacable, unseen +Pursuer. + +He had risen (she saw him rise), but as she called his name he became +insubstantial, and she saw a Thing, a nameless, unnameable, shapeless +Thing, proceeding from him. A brown, blurred Thing, transparent as dusk +is, that drifted on the air. It was torn and tormented, a fragment +parted and flung off from some immense and as yet invisible cloud of +horror. It drifted from her; it dissolved like smoke on the hillside; +and the Thing that had born and begotten it pursued her. + +She bowed under it, and turned from the edge of the wood, the horrible +place it had been born in; she ran before it headlong down the field, +trampling the young corn under her feet. As she ran she heard a voice in +the valley, a voice of amazement and entreaty, calling to her in a sort +of song. + +"What--are--you--running for--Aggy--Aggy?" + +It was Milly's voice that called. + +Then as she came, still headlong, to the river, she heard Harding's +voice saying something, she did not know what. She couldn't stop to +listen to him, or to consider how he came to be there in the valley, +when a minute ago she had seen him by the edge of the wood, up on the +very top of the hill. + +He was on the bridge--the Farm bridge--now. He held out his hand to +steady her as she came on over the swinging plank. + +She knew that he had led her to the other side, and that he was +standing there, still saying something, and that she answered. + +"Have you _no_ pity on me? Can't you let me go?" + +And then she broke from him and ran. + + + + +CHAPTER ELEVEN + + +She was awake all that night. Harding Powell and the horror begotten of +him had no pity; he would not let her go. Her gift, her secret, was +powerless now against the pursuer. + +She had a light burning in her room till morning, for she was afraid of +sleep. Those unlit roads down which, if she slept, the Thing would +surely hunt her, were ten times more terrible than the white-washed, +familiar room where it merely watched and waited. + +In the morning she found a letter on her breakfast-table, which the maid +said Mrs. Powell had left late last evening, after Agatha had gone to +bed. Milly wrote: "Dearest Agatha,--Of course I understand. But are we +_never_ going to see you again? What was the matter with you last night? +You terrified poor Harding.--Yours ever, M. P." + +Without knowing why, Agatha tore the letter into bits and burned them in +the flame of a candle. She watched them burn. + +"Of course," she said to herself, "that isn't sane of me." + +And when she had gone round her house and shut all the doors and locked +them, and drawn down the blinds in every closed window, and found +herself cowering over her fireless hearth, shuddering with fear, she +knew that, whether she were mad or not, there was madness in her. She +knew that her face in the glass (she had the courage to look at it) was +the face of an insane terror let loose. + +That she did know it, that there were moments--flashes--in which she +could contemplate her state and recognise it for what it was, showed +that there was still a trace of sanity in her. It was not her own +madness that possessed her. It was, or rather it had been, Harding +Powell's; she had taken it from him. That was what it meant--to take +away madness. + +There could be no doubt as to what had happened, nor as to the way of +its happening. The danger of it, utterly unforeseen, was part of the +very operation of the gift. In the process of getting at Harding to heal +him she had had to destroy not only the barriers of flesh and blood, but +those innermost walls of personality that divide and protect, +mercifully, one spirit from another. With the first thinning of the +walls Harding's insanity had leaked through to her, with the first +breach it had broken in. It had been transferred to her complete with +all its details, with its very gestures, in all the phases that it ran +through; Harding's premonitory fears and tremblings; Harding's exalted +sensibility; Harding's abominable vision of the world, that vision from +which the resplendent divinity had perished; Harding's flight before the +pursuing Terror. She was sitting now as Harding had sat when she found +him crouching over the hearth in that horrible room with the drawn +blinds. It seemed to her that to have a madness of your own would not be +so very horrible. It would be, after all, your own. It could not +possibly be one-half so horrible as this, to have somebody else's +madness put into you. + +The one thing by which she knew herself was the desire that no longer +ran underground, but emerged and appeared before her, lit by her lucid +flashes, naked and unashamed. + +She still knew her own. And there was something in her still that was +greater than the thing that inhabited her, the pursuer, the pursued, +who had rushed into her as his refuge, his sanctuary; and that was her +fear of him and of what he might do there. If her doors stood open to +him, they stood open to Bella and to Rodney Lanyon too. What else had +she been trying for, if it were not to break down in all three of them +the barriers of flesh and blood and to transmit the Power? In the +unthinkable sacrament to which she called them they had all three +partaken. And since the holy thing could suffer her to be thus +permeated, saturated with Harding Powell, was it to be supposed that she +could keep him to herself, that she would not pass him on to Rodney +Lanyon. + +It was not, after all, incredible. If he could get at her, of course he +could get, through her, at Rodney. + +That was the Terror of terrors, and it was her own. That it could +subsist together with that alien horror, that it remained supreme +beside it, proved that there was still some tract in her where the +invader had not yet penetrated. In her love for Rodney and her fear for +him she entrenched herself against the destroyer. There at least she +knew herself impregnable. + +It was in such a luminous flash that she saw the thing still in her own +hands, and resolved that it should cease. + +She would have to break her word to Milly. She would have to let Harding +go, to loosen deliberately his hold on her and cut him off. It could be +done. She had held him through her gift, and it would be still possible, +through the gift, to let him go. Of course she knew it would be hard. + +It _was_ hard. It was terrible; for he clung. She had not counted on his +clinging. It was as if, in their undivided substance, he had had +knowledge of her purpose and had prepared himself to fight it. He hung +on desperately; he refused to yield an inch of the ground he had taken +from her. He was no longer a passive thing in that world where she had +brought him. And he had certain advantages. He had possessed her for +three nights and for three days. She had made herself porous to him; and +her sleep had always been his opportunity. + +It took her three nights and three days to cast him out. In the first +night she struggled with him. She lay with all her senses hushed, and +brought the divine darkness round her, but in the darkness she was aware +that she struggled. She could build up the walls between them, but she +knew that as fast as she built them he tore at them and pulled them +down. + +She bore herself humbly towards the Power that permitted him. She +conceived of it as holiness estranged and offended; she pleaded with +it. She could no longer trust her knowledge of its working, but she +tried to come to terms with it. She offered herself as a propitiation, +as a substitute for Rodney Lanyon, if there was no other way by which he +might be saved. + +Apparently that was not the way it worked. Harding seemed to gain. But, +as he kept her awake all night, he had no chance to establish himself, +as he would otherwise have done, in her sleep. The odds between her and +her adversary were even. + +The second night _she_ gained. She felt that she had built up her walls +again; that she had cut Harding off. With spiritual pain, with the +tearing of the bonds of compassion, with a supreme agony of rupture, he +parted from her. + +Possibly the Power was neutral; for in the dawn after the second night +she slept. That sleep left her uncertain of the event. There was no +telling into what unguarded depths it might have carried her. She knew +that she had been free of her adversary before she slept, but the +chances were that he had got at her in her sleep. Since the Power held +the balance even between her and the invader, it would no doubt permit +him to enter by any loophole that he could seize. + +On the third night, as it were in the last watch, she surrendered, but +not to Harding Powell. + +She could not say how it came to her; she was lying in her bed with her +eyes shut and her arms held apart from her body, diminishing all +contacts, stripping for her long slide into the cleansing darkness, when +she found herself recalling some forgotten, yet inalienable knowledge +that she had. Something said to her: "Do you not remember? There is no +striving and no crying in the world which you would enter. There is no +more appeasing where peace _is_. You cannot make your own terms with the +high and holy Power. It is not enough to give yourself for Rodney +Lanyon, for he is more to you than you are yourself. Besides, any +substitution of self for self would be useless, for there is no more +self there. That is why the Power cannot work that way. But if it should +require you here, on this side the threshold, to give him up, to give up +your desire of him, what then? Would you loose your hold on him and let +him go?" + +"Would you?" the voice insisted. + +She heard herself answer from the pure threshold of the darkness, "I +would." + +Sleep came on her there; a divine sleep from beyond the threshold; +sacred, inviolate sleep. + +It was the seal upon the bond. + + + + +CHAPTER TWELVE + + +She woke on Friday morning to a vivid and indestructible certainty of +escape. + +But there had been a condition attached to her deliverance; and it was +borne in on her that instead of waiting for the Power to force its terms +on her, she would do well to be beforehand with it. Friday was Rodney's +day, and this time she knew that he would come. His coming, of course, +was nothing, but he had told her plainly that he would not go. She must +therefore wire to him not to come. + +In order to do this she had to get up early and walk about a mile to the +nearest village. She took the shortest way which was by the Farm bridge +and up the slanting path to the far end of the wood. She knew vaguely +that once, as she had turned the corner of the wood, there had been +horrors, and that the divine beauty of green pastures and still waters +had appeared to her as a valley of the shadow of evil, but she had no +more memory of what she had seen than of a foul dream, three nights +dead. She went at first uplifted in the joy of her deliverance, drawing +into her the light and fragrance of the young morning. Then she +remembered Harding Powell. She had noticed as she passed the Farm house +that the blinds were drawn again in all the windows. That was because +Harding and Milly were gone. She thought of Harding, of Milly, with an +immense tenderness and compassion, but also with lucidity, with sanity. +They had gone--yesterday--and she had not seen them. That could not be +helped. She had done all that was possible. She could not have seen +them as long as the least taint of Harding's malady remained with her. +And how could she have faced Milly after having broken her word to her? + +Not that she regretted even that, the breaking of her word, so sane was +she. She could conceive that, if it had not been for Rodney Lanyon, she +might have had the courage to have gone on. She might have considered +that she was bound to save Harding, even at the price of her own sanity, +since there _was_ her word to Milly. But it might be questioned whether +by holding on to him she would have kept it, whether she really could +have saved him that way. She was no more than a vehicle, a crystal +vessel for the inscrutable and secret power, and in destroying her +utterly Harding would have destroyed himself. You could not transmit the +Power through a broken crystal--why, not even through one that had a +flaw. + +There had been a flaw somewhere; so much was certain. And as she +searched now for the flaw, with her luminous sanity, she found it in her +fear. She knew, she had always known, the danger of taking fear and the +thought of fear with her into that world where to think was to will, and +to will was to create. But for the rest, she had tried to make herself +clear as crystal. And what could she do more than give up Rodney? + +As she set her face towards the village, she was sustained by a sacred +ardour, a sacrificial exaltation. But as she turned homewards across the +solitary fields, she realised the sadness, the desolation of the thing +she had accomplished. He would not come. Her message would reach him two +hours before the starting of the train he always came by. + +Across the village she saw her white house shining, and the windows of +his room (her study, which was always his room when he came); its +lattices were flung open as if it welcomed him. + +Something had happened there. + +Her maid was standing by the garden gate looking for her. As she +approached, the girl came over the field to meet her. She had an air of +warning her, of preparing her for something. + +It was Mrs. Powell, the maid said. She had come again; she was in there, +waiting for Miss Agatha. She wouldn't go away; she had gone straight in. +She was in an awful state. The maid thought it was something to do with +Mr. Powell. + +They had not gone, then. + +"If I were you, Miss," the maid was saying, "I wouldn't see her." + +"Of course I shall see her." + +She went at once into the room where Rodney might have been, where Milly +was. Milly rose from the corner where she sat averted. + +"Agatha," she said, "I had to come." + +Agatha kissed the white, suppliant face that Milly lifted. + +"I thought," she said, "you'd gone--yesterday." + +"We couldn't go. He--he's ill again." + +"Ill?" + +"Yes. Didn't you see the blinds down as you passed?" + +"I thought it was because you'd gone." + +"It's because that _thing_'s come back again." + +"When did it come, Milly?" + +"It's been coming for three days." + +Agatha drew in her breath with a pang. It was just three days since she +began to let him go. + +Milly went on. "And now he won't come out of the house. He says he's +being hunted. He's afraid of being seen, being found. He's in there--in +that room. He made me lock him in." + +They stared at each other and at the horror that their faces took and +gave back each to each. + +"Oh, Aggy----" Milly cried it out in her anguish. "You _will_ help him?" + +"I can't." Agatha heard her voice go dry in her throat. + +"You _can't_?" + +Agatha shook her head. + +"You mean you haven't, then?" + +"I haven't. I couldn't." + +"But you told me--you told me you were giving yourself up to it. You +said that was why you couldn't see us." + +"It _was_ why. Do sit down, Milly." + +They sat down, still staring at each other. Agatha faced the window, so +that the light ravaged her. + +Milly went on. "That was why I left you alone. I thought you were going +on. You said you wouldn't let him go; you promised me you'd keep on ..." + +"I did keep on, till ..." + +But Milly had only paused to hold down a sob. Her voice broke out again, +clear, harsh, accusing. + +"What were you doing all that time?" + +"Of course," said Agatha, "you're bound to think I let you down." + +"What am I to think?" + +"Milly--I asked you not to think it was me." + +"Of course I knew it was the Power, not you. But you had hold of it. You +did something. Something that other people can't do. You did it for one +night, and that night he was well. You kept on for six weeks and he was +well all that time. You leave off for three days--I know when you left +off--and he's ill again. And then you tell me that it isn't you. It _is_ +you; and if it's you you can't give him up. You can't stand by, Aggy, +and refuse to help him. You know what it was. How can you bear to let +him suffer? How can you?" + +"I can because I must." + +"And why must you?" + +Milly raised her head more in defiance than in supplication. + +"Because--I told you that I might give out. Well--I have given out." + +"You told me that the Power can't give out--that you've only got to hold +on to it--that it's no effort. I'm only asking you, Aggy, to hold on." + +"You don't know what you're asking." + +"I'm asking you only to do what you have done, to give five minutes in +the day to him. You said it was enough. Only five minutes. It isn't much +to ask." + +Agatha sighed. + +"What difference could it make to you--five minutes?" + +"You don't understand," said Agatha. + +"I do. I don't ask you to see him, or to bother with him; only to go on +as you were doing." + +"You don't understand. It isn't possible to explain it. I can't go on." + +"I see. You're tired, Aggy. Well--not now, not to-day. But later, when +you're rested, won't you?" + +"Oh, Milly, dear Milly, if I could ..." + +"You can. You will. I know you will ..." + +"No. You must understand it. Never again. Never again." + +"Never?" + +"Never." + +There was a long silence. At last Milly's voice crept through, strained +and thin, feebly argumentative, the voice of a thing defeated and yet +unconvinced. + +"I don't understand you, Agatha. You say it isn't you; you say you're +only a connecting link; that you do nothing; that the Power that does it +is inexhaustible; that there's nothing it can't do, nothing that it +won't do for us, and yet you go and cut yourself off from +it--deliberately--from the thing you believe to be divine." + +"I haven't cut myself off from it." + +"You've cut Harding off," said Milly. "If you refuse to hold him." + +"That wouldn't cut him off--from It. But Milly, holding him was bad; it +wasn't safe." + +"It saved him." + +"All the same, Milly, it wasn't safe. The thing itself isn't." + +"The Power? The divine thing?" + +"Yes. It's divine and it's--it's terrible. It does terrible things to +us." + +"How could it? If it's divine, wouldn't it be compassionate? Do you +suppose it's less compassionate than--_you_ are? Why, Agatha, when it's +goodness and purity itself----?" + +"Goodness and purity are terrible. We don't understand it. It's got its +own laws. What you call prayer's all right--it would be safe, I mean--I +suppose it might get answered anyway, however we fell short. But +this--this is different. It's the highest, Milly; and if you rush in and +make for the highest, can't you see, oh, can't you see how it might +break you? Can't you see what it requires of _you_? Absolute purity. I +told you, Milly. You have to be crystal to it--crystal without a flaw." + +"And--if there were a flaw?" + +"The whole thing, don't you see, would break down; it would be no good. +In fact, it would be awfully dangerous." + +"To whom?" + +"To you--to them, the people you're helping. You make a connection; you +smash down all the walls so that you--you get through to each other, and +supposing there was something wrong with _you_, and It doesn't work any +longer (the Power, I mean), don't you see that you might do harm where +you were trying to help?" + +"But--Agatha--there was nothing wrong with you." + +"How do I know? Can anybody be sure there's nothing wrong with them?" + +"You think," said Milly, "there was a flaw somewhere?" + +"There must have been--somewhere ..." + +"What was it? Can't you find out? Can't you think? Think." + +"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 passion, 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 passion, 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 passed 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 compassion; 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. + +For thought went wider and deeper than any deed; it was of the very +order of the Powers intangible wherewith she had worked. Why, thoughts +unborn and shapeless, that ran under the threshold and hid there, +counted more in that world where It, the Unuttered, the Hidden and the +Secret, reigned. + +She knew now that her surrender of last night had been the ultimate +deliverance. She was not afraid any more to meet Rodney; for she had +been made pure from desire; she was safeguarded forever. + +He had been gone about an hour when she heard him at the gate again and +in the room below. + +She went down to him. He came forward to meet her as she entered; he +closed the door behind them; but her eyes held them apart. + +"Did you not get my wire?" she said. + +"Yes. I got it." + +"Then why ..." + +"Why did I come? Because I knew what was happening. I wasn't going to +leave you here for Powell to terrify you out of your life." + +"Surely--you thought they'd gone?" + +"I knew they hadn't or you wouldn't have wired." + +"But I would. I'd have wired in any case." + +"To put me off?" + +"To--put--you--off." + +"Why?" + +He questioned without divination or forewarning. The veil of flesh was +as yet over his eyes, so that he could not see. + +"Because I didn't mean that you should come, that you should ever come +again, Rodney." + +He smiled. + +"So you went back on me, did you?" + +"If you call it going back." + +She longed for him to see. + +"That was only because you were frightened," he said. + +He turned from her and paced the room uneasily, as if he saw. Presently +he drew up by the hearth and stood there for a moment, puzzling it out; +and she thought that he had seen. + +He hadn't. He faced her with a smile again. + +"But it was no good, dear, was it? As if I wouldn't know what it meant. +You wouldn't have done it if you hadn't been ill. You lost your nerve. +No wonder, with those Powells preying on you, body and soul, for weeks." + +"No, Rodney, no. I didn't _want_ you to come back. And I think--now--it +would be better if you didn't stay." + +It seemed to her now that perhaps he had seen and was fighting what he +saw. + +"I'm not going to stay," he said, "I am going--in another hour--to take +Powell away somewhere." + +He took it up where she had made him leave it. "Then, Agatha, I shall +come back again. I shall come back--let me see--on Sunday." + +She swept that aside. + +"Where are you going to take him?" + +"To a man I know who'll look after him." + +"Oh, Rodney, it'll break Milly's heart." + +She had come, in her agitation, to where he stood. She sat on the couch +by the corner of the hearth, and he looked down at her there. + +"No," he said, "it won't. It'll give him a chance to get all right. I've +convinced her it's the only thing to do. He can't be left here for you +to look after." + +"Did she tell you?" + +"She wouldn't have told me a thing if I hadn't made her. I dragged it +out of her, bit by bit." + +"Rodney, that was cruel of you." + +"Was it? I don't care. I'd have done it if she'd bled." + +"What did she tell you?" + +"Pretty nearly everything, I imagine. Quite enough for me to see what, +between them, they've been doing to you." + +"Did she tell you _how he got well_?" + +He did not answer all at once. It was as if he drew back before the +question, alien and disturbed, shirking the discerned, yet +unintelligible issue. + +"Did she tell you, Rodney?" Agatha repeated. + +"Well, yes. She _told_ me." + +He seemed to be making, reluctantly, some admission. He sat down beside +her, and his movement had the air of ending the discussion. But he did +not look at her. + +"What do you make of it?" she said. + +This time he winced visibly. + +"I don't make anything. If it happened--if it happened--like _that_, +Agatha ..." + +"It did happen." + +"Well, I admit it was uncommonly queer." + +He left it there and reverted to his theme. + +"But it's no wonder--if you sat down to that for six weeks--it's no +wonder you got scared. It's inconceivable to me how that woman could +have let you in for him. She knew what he was." + +"She didn't know what I was doing till it was done." + +"She'd no business to let you go on with it when she did know." + +"Ah! but she knew--then--that it was all right." + +"All right?" + +"Absolutely right. Rodney----" She called to him as if she would compel +him to see it as it was. "I did no more for him than I did for you and +Bella." + +He started. "Bella?" he repeated. + +He stared at her. He had seen something. + +"You wondered how she got all right, didn't you?" + +He said nothing. + +"That was how." + +And still he did not speak. He sat there, leaning forward, staring now +at his own clasped hands. He looked as if he bowed himself before the +irrefutable. + +"And there was you, too, before that." + +"I know," he said then; "I can understand _that_. But--why Bella?" + +"Because Bella was the only way." + +She had not followed his thoughts nor he hers. + +"The only way?" he said. + +"To work it. To keep the thing pure. I had to be certain of my motive, +and I knew that if I could give Bella back to you that would prove--to +me, I mean--that it was pure." + +"But Bella," he said softly--"Bella. Powell I can understand--and me." + +It was clear that he could get over all the rest. But he could not get +over Bella. Bella's case convinced him. Bella's case could not be +explained away or set aside. Before Bella's case he was baffled, utterly +defeated. He faced it with a certain awe. + +"You were right, after all, about Bella," he said at last. "And so was +I. She didn't care for me, as I told you. But she does care now." + +She knew it. + +"That was what I was trying for," she said. "That was what I meant." + +"You meant it?" + +"It was the only way. That's why I didn't want you to come back." + +He sat silent, taking that in. + +"Don't you see now how it works? You have to be pure crystal. That's +why I didn't want you to come back." + +Obscurely, through the veil of flesh, he saw. + +"And I am never to come back?" he said. + +"You will not need to come." + +"You mean you won't want me?" + +"No. I shall not want you. Because, when I did want you it broke down." + +He smiled. + +"I see. When you want me, it breaks down." + +He rallied for a moment. He made his one last pitiful stand against the +supernatural thing that was conquering him. + +He had risen to go. + +"And when _I_ want to come, when I long for you, what then?" + +"_Your_ longing will make no difference." + +She smiled also, as if she foresaw how it would work, and that soon, +very soon, he would cease to long for her. + +His hand was on the door. He smiled back at her. + +"I don't want to shake your faith in it," he said. + +"You can't shake my faith in It." + +"Still--it breaks down. It breaks down," he cried. + +"Never. You don't understand," she said. "It was the flaw in the +crystal." + +Soon, very soon he would know it. Already he had shown submission. + +She had no doubt of the working of the Power. Bella remained as a sign +that it had once been, and that, given the flawless crystal, it should +be again. + + + * * * * * + + +TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: + +The following changes have been made to the original text: + + Page 109: "there's" changed to "there" in "there he's been for + years." + + Page 110: added missing quotation mark before "Agatha, why can't + we?" + + Page 188: "shapless" changed to "shapeless" in "thoughts unborn + and shapeless," + +Other variations in spelling and inconsistent hyphenation have been +retained as they appear in the original book. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Flaw in the Crystal, by May Sinclair + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLAW IN THE CRYSTAL *** + +***** This file should be named 28615.txt or 28615.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/8/6/1/28615/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Therese Wright and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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