Part 6
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, familiarized 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 realized 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. She was bound equally not to let Harding go.
It was now almost a struggle to concentrate on both Rodney and Harding, 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.
Not that she thought it really had connived. That was unthinkable, and Agatha did not think these things; she felt them. Hitherto she had had no misgivings as to the possible behaviour of the Power. And now she was afraid, not of It, and not, certainly not, of poor Harding (how could she be afraid of him?); she was afraid mysteriously, without knowing why or how.
It was her fear that made her write to Rodney Lanyon. 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 predominated. 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 haven’t done it.”
“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.”
VII
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 anybody.”
“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.”
VIII
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. The bridge carried the field path that slanted up the hill 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 realize 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 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 recognized 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 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 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, 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 oughtn’t 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 drawn to-night, and the lamp on the table burnt low; the oil was giving 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.
IX
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.