CHAPTER XXX

Theresa had slept at last, but she had waked often out of dreadful dreams and lain in a sweat of terror in spite of Alexander's nearness, and so her mind had passed to picturing the manner of her father's death. She saw it as a confusion of noise, and smoke, and fallen bodies; she heard his last three piteous words, and felt strength fading from her as it must have dropped from him, and the stern beauty of death was lost in the welter she made of it.

She rose more wearied than she had gone to bed and had a white and hollow face for Janet and Alexander when she descended to the kitchen. She had gone down with no thought about herself, but when she looked at Alexander a trembling shyness took her.

Through the kitchen door the sun came strongly, and the smell of the larches was blown in. She hardly knew what she did as she stepped across the threshold and held her palms upwards to the clean air; whether she went for cleansing from the night or for refuge from Alexander, she did not know nor did she question; she knew only that for the first time, and in the house where her father and his were lying dead, Alexander's presence shook her like a wind. But she had always loved the wind and she had courage, and her shadowed eyes were steady when she sat opposite to him at table, with a sunbeam shining on his head and hers, joining them as by a bar.

They hardly spoke, and when the meal was over and Theresa had done what household tasks she could, she went out to the horse-block and sat there. Behind her there were violets growing in the little garden, and they sent their sweetness up to her for comfort, and around were the hills, assuring her of life's loveliness and truth.

The world was coloured with brilliant greens and blues, veiled by the passing winds; the earth smelt of dampness and of growth; every tree and bush was budding, and the streams were roaring with the energy of spring; the impulse of all living things was leaping towards the sun; the voices of wind, and water, and singing trees, and of the sheep bleating on the hills, were praising life and the life-giver, while upstairs her father's hands had stiffened in the fold of death. She tried to teach herself that he was dead, but to that lesson she was dull and deaf. She felt him near her in every brushing of the wind and every scratching sound of the rose branches on the porch, so that she could only shake her head and say he lived.

She looked up at the sound of footsteps, and saw Alexander in the lane.

"Will you come with me a little way," he said, "while it's still early? Soon there will be people I'll have to see, and things to do. We'll both be wanted, but now, while the world's so fresh and empty, can we be together?"

She slipped from the horse-block and stood beside him.

"Which way?" she said.

"To the Broad Beck, but not under the trees. I want the sun."

They followed the grassy track and struck across the new green of the bracken to the stream that rioted among the rocks, teasing itself into foam, lashing itself into waterfalls, or lying in still pools. By one of these, on a broad slab of stone, Theresa and Alexander halted. The sun struck on the water and on them; it gilded the purple of Theresa's gown until it was illuminated like a missal; it found the lurking red in Alexander's hair, it turned hers to flame, and to each one it showed the suffering of the other.

"Theresa," he said, "the sun is shining. You said you would tell me in the sunshine, but if you cannot I will wait."

"No, I must tell you, because I said so, and because you must not blame yourself." She held her hands behind her back, twisting them there, and she looked up at him, frowning a little, with a rare appeal in her unflinching eyes.

"He always wanted us to meet," she said. "I believe he did this so that we might meet."

"And we had met."

"But then, I did not tell him."

"Why did you not?"

"Because I knew how much he wanted it. Can you not see? Oh, why must I always speak the truth to you? But I do not care. It is the truth, and you must make what you can of it." She was flushed with the colour of pride, and pride had stilled her hands. "And even now I have not told you all the truth. There is no need to tell you this, but I choose to do so. It was not only because I saw what it was he wanted; it was because I could not speak of that one day we had together, when I knew what it was to have a friend and to forget myself. I wanted to keep that secret, like a treasure, and it is a secret that has killed him. And these are things I think I might have been forgiven for not telling you, but I tell you because that day made you my friend. And there should be no--no falseness between us."

He laughed, and caught suddenly at her hand, and let it go.

"I love the truth of you," he said. "Theresa, let me tell you now. There shall be no shadows between you and me, unless you put them there. The day on which you called me friend made me your lover. Theresa, can you love me back? I am not satisfied with serving. I will not say I am. I want all I have ever seen, or heard, or dreamt of you, and all I do not know, all you may grow to be. Last night, when I was lying outside your door, listening for the sound of you, I did not think about my mother; I did not think about my father or yours. I remembered how you had put your head against my arm, under the yews, and how you had smiled at me in the firelight, and I could not sleep for hoping, and I thought you must have heard me crying out to you; that perhaps the door would open, and I should see you, like a moonbeam, and you'd put your hand in mine. But the door kept shut----"

"Oh," she said on a long, low note, "do you think I did not want to open it? Were you awake, too? Oh, Alexander, we've wasted half a night! We shall never make it up. Here are my hands now." She put them shaking into his, then snatched them from him. "No," she said, and knelt beside the water. "Look, I'm washing them in water from the hills because I once lent them to someone else. I only lent them, Alexander, but I wasn't true. Oh, do you think they're clean?" She held them up, glistening with drops.

"I cannot see unless you give them to me."

With one swift movement she was on her feet and he had her hands.

"These are all the diamonds you'll ever get from me," he said.

She laughed, throwing back her head. "You know you wouldn't give them to me if you could."

"I should, I should. I'd give you all that man could give you."

"Ah! don't," she said soberly. "That's a silly kind of jealousy, but I like it."

"And I am jealous. Do you think I'll ever forgive him for having touched you, and put a ring on your finger, and set you on a horse, and promised himself to give you all the beauty he could buy? Do you think I don't want to outdo him a hundred times in those as in all other ways?"

"I did not think you were so simple," she said, smiling. "Oh, Alexander, I want to cry. I needed you. I needed someone strong to lift me up and understand those crying voices in me, and you have given me yourself! Oh, will you let me cry?"

He was smiling at her in a way she had not seen before, teasingly and with possession. "We'll have to get a place to sit comfortably in first," he said, so that they laughed together.

"Let us sit on this stone," she said. "I promise not to cry, because I've laughed instead, and the water seems to be making noises for me. Let me have your hand. Isn't it wonderful? There's no need to talk, but I want to do it. And there's nothing to explain. It's like being born and knowing all about it--coming into the world grown up. I don't like looking back into the dark."

She laid his hand against her eyes; he felt the twitching of her eyelids, and when she showed her face, he saw it puzzled, reminiscent.

"Alexander, something happened the night before I told Basil I wouldn't marry him. Were you thinking of me?"

He spoke in his queer, toneless voice. "Did I ever stop?"

She gave the laugh that no one else had heard, and clasped her hands round his. "Oh, but you are the man I wanted! I mean, thinking very specially. It was the tenth of March."

"What happened?"

"Someone woke me and drove me down the stairs into the night. Alexander, was it you?"

"It wasn't me. Would I have meddled? Do you remember how you said you must be free?"

"And you said I never could be, and it's true!"

"And was that all?"

"Yes, I went back to bed, but there _was_ someone. What is it?" She felt how he had stiffened. "Your hand's not loving me. What is it?"

"It's Janet, the witch--the witch! It was that night I told her, and she threatened me with her tricks. Theresa, was it then you knew you didn't love that man? Could you not learn it for yourself?"

"I did, I did." He saw the swift lines of her throat as she raised her head. He knew how she would look when she was angered.

"I had your letter for a pillow. Before I slept I knew I couldn't marry him. I was only waiting to tell him in the morning, and I was yours that night. It happened--that strange thing happened, after I knew--after! How dare you think I didn't choose to do it!"

For a long time he looked at her. He had forgotten nothing of her face.

"It's not easy to believe you're all you are," he told her slowly.

She laughed again on her low note of joy.

"You always say the perfect thing. Here are my hands again. Oh, you poor soul, you can't be half as happy as I am, for you have never been engaged to someone you did not love. Or have you?"

"No. I wish you would not talk about that man. Theresa, I've got a bad, black temper. I ought not to let you marry me."

"And I have a bright blazing one. There will be thunder and lightning among these hills. Do you think I am afraid of your tempers?" Her lips and her eyelids drooped, her grasp tightened, and she drew closer to him. He felt her body tremble. "I'm afraid of nothing but your love," she said; and at the words he crushed her to him so that she felt the hard and hurried beating of his heart and the fury of his kisses on her hair.

"Oh, my heather flower," he said--"my heather flower!"

And the water babbled by, and a bird hung with spread wings like a canopy above them, and the sheep cried to their young, and the wind blew a strand of Theresa's hair across Alexander's face--a strand of quivering gold, smelling of sun, and wind, and earth.

He took a deep strong breath, and put her from him. "We must go back," he said.

She looked quickly in his face "You are not thinking we should not feel like this?"

"No, my heart, no."

"Because it's what he wanted us to feel. Oh, he knew. How could he know so well? I am not ashamed of being happy, though he's dead. And this day, and the sunshine, and all the beauty of the hills, are much more my father than the one that's--that's lying on the bed. I'm sorry for your sadness, but, except that, I haven't any of my own. Oh yes, I feel as if I have just been born, and the world is new, too, and life is beginning for you and me, and we are going to do things! But, Alexander, it isn't only mothers who die in bearing children." She checked a sob, dropping her head to her knees, and, looking past her, Alexander watched the shadows on the hills.

"To-morrow Grace will come, and Uncle George. They wouldn't understand if we looked happy, would they? Nobody would understand that death could be so beautiful." She rose and stood beside him. "Alexander, why don't you speak to me?"

He gave her the quick look she had loved to remember through the years. "Theresa, do you see what he has done? He's joined us with a seal we dare not break."

"Why should we want to break it?" she asked on a breath.

"Because we're frail and stupid, my beloved. Yes, you with your temper and your pride, and me with the evil in me like a weed. We've got to be more finely faithful than other folks. Do you think he had not seen that? He had a poet's soul. Common kindnesses and loyalty will not be memorial enough for him. We can give him nothing but the highest. Ah! you mustn't think I wouldn't want to give it to you, that you don't shine for me until I feel it's sacrilege to touch you, but though we may live all our lives in more worship of each other than we dream of yet, there'll be other things, Theresa. Hard work, and trouble, and weariness, and poverty, and they may breed anger, and hard words, and that unfaithfulness of the mind that's worse than any fleshly one. All these might come, even to lovers such as you and me; but what would _he_ think? If we feel him in the wind and among the hills where you and I are to live and work together, we'll live and work so that he need never suffer for us. That's what he's done for us, Theresa. He might have joined us in some other way, but not so surely, not so fast."

Her eyes were filled with awe and wonder for the man who had done this thing and the one who understood. "I had a dream of waiting for you among the hills," she said, "and now it has come true; but do you remember that dream of Janet's--the one about the birds, the little ones that grew to eagles? We've got to make that one come true as well. Oh, Alexander, shall we ever do it?"

He shook his head as he bent to kiss her. "No, most dear," he said.

She gave that laugh which was of happiness. Their glances met and rested in each other, and there was no shadow lying between their souls, and so they entered again into the house where Life had clothed itself in the quiet garments of Death.