CHAPTER XXVIII

For the first time since her school days Theresa had to stay in bed.

"You need not think I'm overcome with grief," she said, when Grace peeped round the door. "And don't whisper, and don't be tenderly tactful. I'm in bed of an aching body, not a broken heart."

"And a sharp tongue, I should think. Let me look at it. Oh, that's all right."

"No, it isn't. I don't believe you know anything about it. It's that colour because I've been eating those pink lozenges that Uncle George keeps in his waistcoat pocket. There are knives sticking into me everywhere."

Grace seated herself on the bed, and eyed her with the judicial air befitting one who is a mother. "You've taken cold," she said soothingly.

"I have indeed. I'm surrounded by hot-water bottles, and I can't get warm. It seems to be a mistake to stand on the doorstep in one's nightgown."

"What on earth did you do that for?"

"I'm trying to find out. I don't know whether I was asleep or awake, but there I was. I must have been awake, for I can remember running down the stairs. I had to do it."

With a little crease between her brows Grace said easily: "You must have been over-tired."

"That's a comfortable solution. We'll leave it at that. Would you mind tucking the clothes into my back? No, don't touch my pillows. How nice you look! Like a pretty apple. Can you stay with me?"

"No, dear; I'm going to a lesson. Would you like Baby?"

"I don't think I feel equal to a baby. Come and see me on your way back. How's Phil?"

Grace's cheeks could still flush at the sound of his name.

"I think he is going to leave the theatre. He has so many pupils now, and it's torture to him to play the same trash night after night. We shall manage quite well, and he wants more time for composing."

"Oh, poor me! I shall have to hear the writhings of his genius all of every night. Tell him to come and see me. That will keep him quiet for a little while. Will you pull down the blind, and tell Bessie I'm going to sleep? She comes in every five minutes with something on a plate, and it grows a little monotonous."

"If you're not better to-night, I shall send for the doctor."

"Then I shall be better. I'm glad I'm at home again."

"So am I. I didn't like him, Terry."

"I like him very much."

"I mean, I didn't like him for you, and I feel--I feel as if you've escaped out of an ogre's castle!"

"Ah, if he had been more ogreish, I might have stayed for the fun of it. Let's thank God he is just a man."

The ministrations of an adoring family speedily cured Theresa without a doctor's help, and a few days after her return Neville appeared as emissary of Simon Smith.

"We want you to come back," he said.

"I don't think Mrs. Morton would consider it etiquette. Of course I'll come, Jack. When?"

He stroked his chin. "Well, we haven't given the present good person notice yet. She got the post through sheer force of character, for we both hated her at sight. There'll be a difficulty in turning her out. The old gentleman is afraid to do it, and I tell him it's not my business. It will come to writing her a note and enclosing a cheque during the Easter holidays."

"What's the matter with her?"

"Oh, she's horrid. I let her have the office to herself. The old gentleman is certainly a sportsman. He just gave a nod when I carried my things into his room. Ah well, trouble has drawn us more closely together!"

"Does she do her work properly?"

"I don't know! Oh yes, I suppose she does, in a mechanical kind of way. We don't let her go outside the house. You know, you have a spark of genius, Theresa, and you've spoilt us."

"Anybody could do what I did, if they used my methods."

"I don't believe it; but what are they?"

She shook her head. "I'm trying to forget them."

"Then you'll be no further use to us."

"Yes, I shall. I'm not so limited as that. Jack, why do you love your work?"

"I don't know. I can't help loving it."

"For its own sake?"

"I imagine so."

"That's what I'm going to do."

"Didn't you?"

"No."

"Why, then?"

"Chiefly for mine, but not altogether--not nearly altogether. I am not made of stone, but I have eyes that are turned inwards. A mental squint!"

"It never showed."

She laughed. "Oh, I'm an expert in my profession, but I'm very sick of it, so don't say nice things to me. Don't help me to think about myself."

He raised his brows in a comical dubiety. "This sounds a little morbid."

"And I want to think it's the beginning of health." She turned quietly to stand by the window, and as she looked out on the street, where spring was coming, he found a new dignity in her pose, one born of some dignity of the mind, and her thinness, the manner in which her hand hung by her side, something in the lift of her head, impressed him with a sense of pathos hitherto alien to his thoughts of her. Yet, when she faced him, she was vivid again, and sparkling. He noticed how the words seemed to come upon her lips before she spoke them.

"You'll tell me when you have evicted the lady?"

"Yes," he said mournfully. "It's quite likely she'll refuse to go quietly. We may have to invent a rich relative who dies and leaves her with a competency."

"A little courage would be cheaper."

"But that's what we haven't got."

"You begin to make me wonder if your compliments are more than sops."

"Compliments in their relation to you are barred as topics of conversation. Good-bye. Oh, I was to ask you if you would like any salary in advance."

"No, thank you. I'm a thrifty soul. I must have quite ten shillings."

"But, I say, Theresa----"

"My good man, you've no idea how long ten shillings can be made to last. I can assure you that my stockings are no rivals to your socks, and I don't have a new tie every week. I'm not going to have any money I haven't earned."

"Bless the child! It will be quite a month, you know, before we get rid of the Gorgon."

"I don't mind. I want a rest. I'm tired, Jack."

He drew a step nearer, and looked kindly down at her.

"Theresa, I'm rather worried about you. Have you some disease lurking?"

"No; but I've been in such a hurry all my life, and done so little. I have a weary spirit. I wish I could go riding on the clouds for a week of these March winds. I should look down and see the earth so small, and people of my size not visible at all, and the heavens so infinite."

"But if you know all that----"

"Knowing is not enough," she said. "That's one of the easy things, I find. It's feeling I have to cultivate."

He nodded curtly. "You're quite right. I do believe you're growing up. Good-bye, my dear."

The weariness she confessed to was in her face, the taste of humiliation was in her mouth, but hope was in her heart, like a low sound of singing. She would not listen to it frankly, but it murmured there like the noise of constant water, hardly acknowledged, yet filling life with meaning. It sang through her dreams at night and mingled with the talking of the dark lake's water, for she was restored to her place under the mountain, and now, while she waited, she had no doubt of whose footfall she expected, whose hand she wished to grasp, and, when the morning came, flashing truth on her receptive mind, she had to own her need of Alexander. But, indeed, she was glad to own it. She had gone past a state in which pride could be greater than her love and, as if to make amends for her disloyalty, she acclaimed him. It was not love she tried to disavow, but hope, and even there she failed.

He was coming at Easter, and Easter was not far off, yet she looked for a letter. If he knew the truth--and when had her father kept it from him?--he would surely write; but she did not hear from him, and the tiredness in her face overcame the secret joy. With a little twist of bitterness about her lips, she looked back at her girlhood and saw a fiercely independent Theresa stretching out hands to a future made glorious only by her own powers, subject only to her own genius, and here was Theresa, grown a woman, wearing out her strength with longing, conscious that her whole life had been bound by human beings, that she had no genius but that of drawing people to her and giving them of herself. There was to be no widespread fame for her, but there might be happiness and growth; and Alexander was the soil in which she knew her roots could deepen, he was the sun and the rain, yet he denied her everything. Oh, why did he not write? she cried within herself. Since the coming of that one letter he had sent her, filled with the breath of the hills and his own being, she had believed in Alexander's love; yet he was silent, though he must know her to be free. Did he scorn her fickleness, or had he changed? She tortured herself with questions, then cast them from her and stilled herself, glad to give love without reward.

"You are not grieving, not regretting?" her father asked her one night.

It was a few days before Easter, the time which was to bring Alexander, yet the marks of trouble were fretted under her eyes and hollowed in the shadowy places of her cheeks, for hope and despair and dread were battling for her heart.

"Yes, I'm regretting many things. No, I don't want Basil back, but I want my--my wholeness back. I had no right to give him anything, poor soul! and I feel there are little bits of me strewed everywhere." She laughed. "It's not that I set so high a value on those little bits, but it doesn't seem quite fair on a possible other person!"

Without the usual hesitation of his emotions, he asked a direct question, looking her in the eyes. "Would you like some other person?" He seemed to hold his breath until he heard.

She coloured, but looked smiling back at him. "Of course I should. A satisfactory one. I'm human--and I want the human gifts. Look--I'm twenty-five, and I have done none of the things you wanted me to do. Have I? Have I?"

"My dear, you have been nearly all the world to me."

"But you wanted me to be more, and so did I. And I find I'm just an ordinary person, and I want--I want--oh, I may as well say it--I want love. To have it and to give it. I have been feeding on myself all these years, and I am so weary of the taste of me. It's as though I had grown old since New Year's Day. I wonder if I'm any wiser. I feel to-day as if you couldn't teach me anything, but to-morrow--oh, to-morrow, I may be young and brave again! It's strange," she went on thoughtfully, "I have had a very humdrum life, and yet I feel that I have lived through great adventures. It's quite an effort to convince myself of their unreality. I have been loved, and I have loved; I have had children, and seen them die. I've heard men shouting as they fight, and giving grunting, gasping breaths under the shriek of steel, and I have gone on long voyages and seen far countries. I know how they smell. Why is it? Why is it?"

He made no answer, and they both gazed in the fire, and, defying the habits of youth and age, it was Theresa who saw the scrolls of the past, and Edward Webb who looked towards the future.

"I want you to promise me something," he said at last.

"What is it?"

"You'll marry no one whom you do not love with your best self; you will try not to be the servant of your imagination. Teach it to serve you, Theresa."

"I'll promise that," she said.

"And, Theresa, while--while we are speaking of serious things, I want to tell you I made my will long ago, of course, and it is in the desk with the rest of my papers. Those are all yours. There are your mother's letters to me, mine to her, and all the letters you ever wrote to me, and Grace's, too. You will find I have been very methodical; everything is ticketed and dated; and there are all my poems, Theresa, with Alexander's criticisms, and his letters. You can do what you like with them."

She put her hand on his knee, and he saw how thin she was.

"Why are you telling me all this? I won't have you giving these instructions. It's what Mother did. You are not ill, are you? Don't have secrets from me.

"I am not ill, my dear. I am very well and happy. But there is never any knowing what may happen. The train might run off the lines when I go to the farm on Easter Saturday."

She took her hand away and held it. She would not let it shake.

"But," she said--and in the effort to steady her voice, it came loudly--"but what about Alexander?"

"He cannot come. I heard last night--only last night. And I--I have decided to go there instead."

"Why can't he come?" she asked, and she seemed to hear the thudding drop of her heart.

"He cannot leave his mother. He is a good son."

She was silent. Then, "I'm glad you're going," she said. "It will do you good."

"I have no doubt it will do me good." He gave a secret smile she did not see.

She waited for the request he had made so often, which she must refuse again, but it did not come. Was he tired of asking for a companionship she would not grant? Through the blackness of her disappointment she looked at him, wondering how often she had given him pain, and, as if in answer, he spoke, fidgeting with his hands.

"You mustn't think because you have not done all we hoped, you mustn't think yourself a failure. It is not given to many daughters to be what you have been to me. I want you to remember that--try to remember that."

"Do you think I could forget it?" she cried, in a voice that broke into harshness. "You put all your own goodness into me, and call it mine!"

She could not see for tears. She made a little fluttering movement with her hands and dropped her head against his shoulder. He slipped his arm about her waist, and so they sat, in an according silence.

On the Thursday before Good Friday, George Webb packed a small black bag and started off on a solitary holiday, and a few hours later Chesterfield Row was animated by the departure in a cab of Grace and the baby, Phil and the violin, sundry packages, and a puppy.

"Heaven knows how we'll get there," Grace said cheerfully to Theresa, from the depths of the musty cab. "We have to change three times, and this wretched animal always wants to eat people's feet, but I dare not leave him behind. He's as strong as a lion, and would be sure to kill something. And I thought he would be a sort of plaything for Baby!"

"I hope Phil's mother will appreciate him."

"That entirely depends on her affection for her boots. What's Phil doing? We shall lose the train."

"Tearing his hair. He can't find something. It's his umbrella. It's here, Phil, in the cab. What a family! And fancy troubling about an umbrella!"

"He never touches it except when he is going on a journey. Men----Oh, do get in, Phil."

"And don't tread on Grace's toes! Good-bye, good-bye!"

Theresa went indoors, laughing. These people were so perennially young and beautiful.

Early on Saturday morning it was Edward Webb's turn to go.

"Will you be very lonely with all of us gone?" he asked.

"No. There's Bessie; and I shall read your poems. May I?"

"Of course, my dear, of course. They are all yours. I hope you won't think the less of me for them."

"I can't think any more, dear, if they are the most marvellous ever written. You are not eating any breakfast."

"I have had some coffee."

"I shan't let you go unless you eat a lot."

"I'll try, my dear, but before a journey, and so early in the morning----"

"That's dyspepsia, worthy of Uncle George!" She took him by the chin and turned his face to the light. "You don't look well. Didn't you sleep?"

"Oh yes, yes." He ate hastily, guiltily, and she was not deceived, but she did not know the reason for his sleeplessness, nor that he had sat long by her bed that night, watching her quiet features and the shades of dreams passing across her face.

He held her in farewell as though he could not let her go; he said good-bye, and kissed her on each cheek, and hurried into the street, but only to come back again and look dumbly in her face, while she looked into his.

"You'll see the hills to-night," she said, "and hear all those sounds of water, and the sheep crying, and the little lambs. Will you think of me? I shall be thinking of you."

"Will you, my child? Will you, Theresa? Ah! I'm glad of that."

"I don't think you understand," she said, "how much I like you. And I like the hills. When you see them, will you wave your hand to each one and tell them you are doing it for me? And will you look at all the other things and give them messages?"

He nodded. His lips were twitching, and there was a long ridge of pain across his brow.

She brought back her thoughts to him. "Dear, do you think you ought to go? You don't look well. Do you want to go?"

"I always want to go, my child. It's only leaving you I do not like."

"But you'll soon come back to me, and if you can wait just a minute longer I'll get my hat and come to the station to take care of you."

"No, Theresa--no, my darling," he said firmly. "I want to say good-bye to you here, not in that dark station, where I cannot see you."

She stood on the pavement with the spring wind ruffling her hair and the spring sunshine delighting in its ruddy gold and, standing very straight and proud, she waved her hand to him as his small bent figure turned the corner. He was the message she sent to Alexander, and he carried no lesser treasure than her heart.

That night, when she and Bessie had supped together in the kitchen, Theresa went upstairs to her father's room, and, sitting before his desk, unlocked the drawers. She wanted Alexander's letters and finding them, neatly arranged in order of their dates, she read them one by one. The correspondence had not been heavy, but it had lasted for nearly fifteen years, and time was swallowed as she sat there.

Her hand was on the last letter when Bessie knocked at the door.

"Miss Terry, it's half-past eleven. You ought to be in bed. I've locked up and put out all the lights, so just drink this milk and go."

"Yes, yes, Bessie, in a minute. How you do fuss!"

"The master said I was to see to you."

"I'm going to read this letter. Then I'll go."

She read it twice, and looked up with so dazed and wild a look that Bessie cried aloud in wonder.

"What is it, Miss Theresa? Are you ill?"

"No." Her hand went to her forehead. "I'm just thinking. Wait a bit. There's rather a lot to think about. Don't talk to me."

Memories and half-memories rushed and whirled about her. She saw her father's pallid face and felt his kisses. She remembered his silences as clearly as his words, and to all she fitted meanings, and fitted them again. She was afraid, yet the very immensity of her suspicion was its best derision, and so the wheels of her mind turned and clanked until the room went round with them, and meanwhile she sat very still, resting her head on her hands.

"Is it all right, Miss Terry?"

"Yes, all right, Bessie."

"Then good-night, my dear."

"Good-night."

The door was closed; she heard Bessie tramp higher up the stairs, and she rose stealthily to her feet. She was in that state of fear when to breathe is to court danger, and noiselessly she turned and took the time-table from its shelf. The leaping of her heart seemed to confuse her sight, but soon she had made sense of the narrow print and turned down the page.

She locked the desk and put out the gas, and crossed the dark landing to her dark room. Standing before her window, with the twinkling dock lights to comfort her, she was able to believe herself fanciful and absurd. Yet he had been told danger lay in wait for him among the hills, and he had gone without asking for her company, and he had gone strangely, and those letters she had read so eagerly seemed to have been given to her with his dying breath.

But she would not think it. She refused the horror of her thoughts, and, jumping into bed, she forced herself to sleep.

Easter morning came strong and sunny, with the sound of many bells that scattered fear relentlessly in their pealing joy, yet they had not done their ringing when the summons came. "Will you come at once?" it said, and it bore Alexander's name.