CHAPTER VIII

They passed behind the house and, taking a narrow pathway, skirted the hill. Their boots struck against loose stones and scattered them, and their going made a great noise in the gloom. All about were the dark forms of hills, and the lake lay like ink in the hollow of the land. The larches were sighing very gently--moved, it seemed, of their own will; for the wind did no more than breathe in sleep.

"She's daft," said Alexander suddenly; and when he had no answer, he went on: "Do you not think she's daft yourself?"

"I have never seen her."

"It's my mother, I mean. Janet's not daft; she's queer."

"Will you let me have your arm? It's getting dark, and my feet don't know the way like yours. I've not been round here before."

"Her house is at the hill's foot, among larches."

"More larches?"

"Ay. Shoving you out like this!"

Edward paused and, dropping his hand from the boy's arm, turned himself slowly round. "Beauty everywhere," he said. "Are there any wicked people in this place?" That was a false step.

"There's one."

"Don't"--he hesitated--"don't make two of it. Beauty and morality--are they separable? There's a question. I have theories----" His voice died away, and he felt that some vast hand had gathered up the sound and laid it by in the place where all men's thoughts and deeds are stored until the winds come and drop them, like seed, about the world. It died away, and they heard the mountain noises--sheep crying, water falling--rarified and faint. Alexander's voice, violent and shrill, shook the night's peace.

"There is no God!" he cried.

The man's lips twitched in a secret smile, but his heart had pity in it. "Yet you are always worshipping," he said.

They walked on again. "Tell me about this lady. Her name is Janet, but how must I address her?"

"Her name's Beaker--Janet Beaker. It's a good name for her. You'll see. She's something between that and a bird."

"Is she married?"

"Janet? I should think not. She's a farmer. She takes butter and eggs to the market every week. You can see her driving there, but you'd never think she saw you. She does, though, and there are men hereabouts that know it. Did my mother never tell you the tale about the drunken men? Oh no, she wouldn't. She pretends there are no such things. Well, she saw them in the town, and they'd had too much. They were from these parts, and she knew them, and she never said a word to them, so they say--but what can they have known about it?--nor so much as looked at them; but they came back at her cart-tail, all three of them, each blaming another, and not one of them can tell how it happened. And those three have been bad friends ever since. But they've never borne her any malice. If they did that it would be like giving her the credit."

"No, they couldn't do that. The women here seem to be in the ascendant."

"They are that. You wait till you see Janet."

"Miss Beaker. I must remember."

"She'll not expect to be called that. I don't believe she's been called that in her life. You can't say that. It's--all wrong."

"Really? Well, perhaps I can avoid saying anything. One often has to, and I admit formality seems out of place. Here things seem clear and simple."

"But they're not. Sometimes"--he took a deep breath--"I feel as if I'm in 'Macbeth.' It's a black feeling--ugly."

"But this morning----"

"Oh, well, I didn't say it was always."

They had rounded the hill, and now a dog barked. Alexander called to it. "Come on, Jenny--come on."

"I must own I am always afraid of dogs."

"Jenny's all right, but Janet's got six of them altogether."

"Six!" He became uncomfortably aware of his legs.

"And she can break horses. She ought to have been a man."

A voice came from the trees ahead of them. "And do you think I ought to have been a hare because my ears are sharp? And a cat because I can see in the dark?"

"Oh, Janet, I might have known you'd hear. Here's Mr. Webb."

They trod softly on the fallen needles of the larches, and came to the door of the house where Janet stood, large and indistinct.

"Will you come in?" she said.

"No; let's stay in the wood, if you'll talk to us."

"I've no more tales."

"The old ones, then."

"I must thank you," Edward Webb began, peering upwards at the tall figure whose face was no more to him than a pale oval.

"I've wanted to see you, for I dreamt of you one night," she interrupted. "But I cannot see him in the wood, for all my cat's eyes, Alexander, so you'll have to come in."

She turned into the kitchen and, getting a light from the low fire, held a candle aloft. Edward Webb blinked nervously.

"Did you dream true, Janet?"

"When did I dream false?"

"Tell us the dream."

"Afterwards. You'll want to eat. Will you come to the table, Mr. Webb, and help yourself?"

He held a chair for her, but she refused it. "No, I've eaten. Sit down. Alexander, cut the pie."

She began to walk up and down the room between the fireplace and the table, and Edward Webb, hardly looking at her, was aware of her strength and height and the brooding keenness of her eyes. In a little while she seated herself on a stool near the fire and Alexander broke the silence there had been.

"Did you bring my father back?" he asked.

Swiftly she turned her face and then Edward Webb understood Alexander's description of her; for though her features had no hardness, her eyes had the look of a hawk's in act to pounce and her head was quick on the firm neck, but she had a wide mouth capable of softness and she sat widespread, as though she held in her lap the cup of wisdom whence all might drink. And for an instant his interest in Alexander's subtlety swamped the eagerness with which he listened for her answer.

"How do I know?"

"You tried? Then you did it. What for?"

"Ease a woman's heart, perhaps." Her voice had a deeper, longer note.

He looked vindictive. "If we were back a few hundred years, we'd get you burnt for a witch."

"Oh no, Alexander; the real witches were never burnt, or where was their witchcraft?"

"Well, if he goes off another time, you can magic him over a precipice."

"Hush!" Edward Webb hissed nervously. No one heeded him.

"If you want that done, you can use your own hands to it. Then you'll be hanged. But that'll not happen. I can't see that. Did they never tell you about the black dog?"

"Which one?"

"The one on your shoulder, my lad."

"Daft talk," he muttered.

"You get what you give, you see."

Edward Webb's face was illumined. "That's the world's rule," he said.

She eyed him sharply. "Not the world's."

He made his courteous inclination of acknowledgment. "Not the world's," he agreed.

"I'm lost," said Alexander, looking from one to the other.

"That's the dog's fault," she teased him.

He laughed through his annoyance. "Oh, be quiet! Janet, put some more wood on the fire ready for when we've done, and we'll have the candle out."

"It'll be time for you to go home."

"There's the dream to tell."

"I'll tell it now. I was walking on a green path and I met a man. The dream wouldn't let me see his face, but he was a big man, and in each hand he had a bird. 'Will you give them to me?' I said, for I didn't like to see them caught; but when he held them out to me, I couldn't take them. He said: 'They're larks, but I can't get them to fly.' 'They're sparrows,' I said, and so they were. 'No,' he said; 'for they've got wings.' We didn't seem to be getting much sense out of each other, so I went on; but in a minute I heard a beating sound, and I looked, and the birds had flown, and they'd grown as big as eagles, but the man had fallen down. It was as if their flight had overthrown him. And I ran to him, but he'd gone, and I kept calling, 'Edward Webb, Edward Webb'--for I knew it was him; but he'd gone, and I never saw his face; but, for all that, I knew what he was like. And now, go home, Alexander."

"Have you nothing more to tell?"

"Not a word?"

"All right, then. Good-night. That's a good dream."

The large, stone-floored kitchen, with its shadowy corners, was a lonely place to Edward Webb when he had gone. It had the feeling of a vault and this woman might have been a carved figure, keeping the door; for she sat quite still and looked on the ground; but, without warning, she began to speak in a rising murmur.

"There's trouble somewhere," she said. "I can feel it." She stood up, lifted her arms to their utmost stretch, and dropped her hands on the high mantelshelf. "But I can't find it. It can't be yet." Suddenly she seemed to remember him, and spoke with a friendly brusqueness. "Will you come to the fire? I'll fetch a log."

"Allow me."

"No, I'll do it. Sit down. You don't look like shifting lumps of wood. You're town-bred, aren't you?"

"Yes." He felt himself a sinner.

"And you've been all over the world, perhaps."

"No, no, indeed I haven't. I wish I had."

"What d'you wish that for? I've never been in a train in my life."

"You interest me. You have never wished to travel?"

"Never yet. The time may come, though I have not seen it coming. What would I want to travel for? There's men and women in these parts, and God's earth; there's nothing elsewhere that I know of. I wouldn't say they're wrong who run about looking for things they'll never find; it's the way they're made, and they've got to work that way, but I can find all I want, sitting at my kitchen door."

"You're fortunate."

"I like a wood, and I've got it. I feel safe when there are trees round me. Why's that, do you suppose?"

"I do not know. My little girl is afraid to sit in a wood alone. She says there are things watching her. She likes the open."

"That's so that she can run. I'd rather have trees for shelter. You can slip from one to the other, and what they fling doesn't hit you if you are quick. There's less chance for you running. You'll be struck or caught. It's silly, that. She should take shelter when she can, and keep quiet; then they'll pass by, perhaps, without seeing you."

"I'll be sure to tell her. But--but what are we talking about? Who would try to catch her? What need to--what were we talking about?"

"Eh? I was saying I've trees before and behind my house. My grandfather planted them. We've been here for a long while, but I'm the last of us."

Edward Webb brushed his forehead: he blinked. He had an impression that, made drowsy by the strong air of the mountains, he had been near falling asleep in the glow of the fire.

"It's sad for a family to die out," he said; and the remark sounded foolishly in his ears.

"Alexander's a good lad," she said, so that he understood the sequence of her thought.

"He is, he is. But one is afraid for him."

"Yes, there's trouble--a thick block of trouble on his way."

He fluttered. "You--you are a prophetess?"

"I can see sometimes, but there are dark places. They are mostly dark, and you must wait till the darkness lifts. I'm no witch. It's not for us to come across people's paths. But I can't help seeing things when they're shown. And that poor Rutherford fool--I told the truth to Alexander. For his wife's sake, I wished him back, but I don't know that it was my thinking brought him, for I did not think strong. I would not. Who am I to say he must turn this way or that? I'm not a witch, but Alexander likes to call me one. He's done it since he was a little chap and I told him tales. But I've known a witch, and she was an unhappy woman. She had power, but there were powers over her, and she was never rid of them. She was more witched than witching, she'd say to me, and warn me not to meddle. I was a girl then. She said when she went to sleep her eyelids would feel clogged with sin. That had a bad sound, and it frightened me. She was itching to teach me, and I itched to learn, but I had guidance. You wouldn't have known her for a witch. She had a rosy face, but if you looked into her eyes, you knew she did not see clean. She died twenty years ago, one night, sitting by the fire in Clara's kitchen."

"Clara's!"

"Yes; she lived there, and no one's lived there since till Clara came. It was a bad thing for James to get there, I sometimes think. You never know what's left and he's a poor empty vessel."

"But the others?" Unwillingly, unreasonably, he thought, he was alarmed.

"Oh, Clara's full and sweet, and Alexander's one to fill himself. And, anyway, what do we know--what do we know? I sit here thinking, and I breed fancies." She turned her sharp look on him. "You won't like sleeping in my house to-night."

Fidgetting, he confessed: "I am a little nervous, and I think, if I may, I will go to bed."

She laughed frankly, but nodded, and he, with a shamed face, smiled; but at the door, when he had said his good-night, he stood for a minute, candle in hand.

"May I ask, is there an interpretation of your dream?"

"There must be, but I don't know it."

"It would be easy to make one."

"You mustn't, or it will lead you the wrong way."

"My imagination," he began, and added, as if to himself: "It is dangerous to be the servant of one's imagination."

Going up the dark and creaking stairs, he was afraid, but in the big chamber she had assigned to him he found quietness. Nothing evil or uneasy dwelt there and he slept peacefully till morning.