Chapter X

They met in silence on the worn path at the foot of Penlock Hill; two black figures joining in the darkness and, without word of greeting, without question of the way, turning by common consent towards the moors and vanishing into the pine trees.

Never was their silence broken while they climbed the hill. They had breath for that ascent, but no more. Coming to a steep place, he offered his hand to help her and then still held it till they reached the moors.

It was a late rising moon that crept up, shimmering wet with its pale light out of the sea. They stood with the heather about their knees and watched it, hand in hand, still silent; but he felt her trembling and she heard when he swallowed in his throat.

"It had to be a night like this," he said presently when the moon at last rose clear and the light seemed to fall from her in glittering drops that splashed like pieces of silver into the sea. "I know this is the one night of my life," he went on. "I know there'll never be moments like it again as long as I live. Perhaps you don't believe that. You'll think I've said such things before; yet the whole of my existence, past, present and future, is all crowded into this hour. I know I shall realize it the more fully as I grow older and Time wipes Time away."

She clung to his arm. It was now she was most afraid. The moors were so still about them. Down in its hollow amongst the firs and the misshapen oaks, the farm lay silent and black. No light was there. She thought of them asleep in their beds. So sleeping, she thought of Hannah, Jane, and Fanny. Only they two were awake in all the world it seemed. Only for some vague yet impelling purpose did the world exist at all and alone for them.

She did not feel at his mercy. She was not afraid of him. Indeed she clung to his arm as they stood in the heather, clung to his arm, trembling, appealing as though he alone were left between herself and Fate to soften it; as though to less terrible a note, he could still the sound of voices shouting in her ears.

These were sensations she had no words for.

"You stand there trembling," he said in a whisper. "What are you thinking of, my dear?"

"It's all so quiet," she whispered in reply, and a short laugh with no mirth in it escaped from her throat. "I don't know why I should expect or want it to be anything else."

"And do you want it to be anything else?"

"I suppose I must, or I shouldn't have said that."

"My dear, are you afraid?"

She jerked her head, reluctant to give assent to that.

No wonder, he thought. My God, no wonder women are afraid. If anything should happen, she'll have the brunt of it. Wouldn't I be afraid if I were her?

Such thoughts as these caught him to hesitation a moment stronger than the urging passion in his blood.

Was it fair to her? This girl, who in that stagnating corner of the world knew so little, was it fair? Hadn't he strength to resist it even now; to turn their steps back; to let her go, the great-hearted thing she was, as he had found her? If it might be the one moment in his life to him, would it be the less for letting it pass by? Would realization make it the greater? Might it not make it the less?

A surging desire to be master of himself swept over him. A rushing inclination to protect her from the forces of Nature in himself took louder voice than all his needs. She was too wonderful to spoil with the things that might happen in a sordid world.

For what would they say and think, those sisters of hers, and what sort of hell would life become for her in those narrow streets of little Bridnorth?

It was no good saying things might not happen.

What right had he to subject her to chance? She was too fine, too great of heart for that. With all the generosity of her soul she had placed herself in his hands, it was for him to save her even now, before it was too late. She was afraid. Then if there were a God who gave men strength, he could be strong enough to let her go.

He held her even the tighter with his fingers as in his mind he set her free.

"Mary," he said, "I told you it was strength, not weakness that made me kiss you. I expect you didn't believe that. It was true. And I feel stronger now than then. We're going back again, my dear, now, without waiting, I couldn't stay here longer. We're going back."

"Where?"

She said it in her breath.

"Back to Bridnorth--to our beds. I love you, my dear, that's why we're going back."

She felt a sudden chill and shivered.

"Back?" she whispered. No other word but that could her mind grasp.

As swiftly then the chill blew by. She felt as though she stood in scorching flames, as if the very heather were alight about her. There was pain and it gave her a fierce power she never thought she had possessed. It brought her anger to think she could suffer so much for such return.

Back? They could not go back! Not now! She had been through it all. This that must happen was just a moment. It was nothing to the hours her mind had lived till then.

She took off her hat and flung it down beside her in the heather.

"It's stifling, this heat," she muttered. "Everything seems burning."

He saw her throw down her hat. He heard what she said. The blood that had been strong like a courageous wine, turned all to water in his veins. He felt his limbs trembling. Something in her was stronger than the greatest purpose he had ever had in his life. It was a purpose he felt might be even stronger than she, yet knew he could not make it so.

It occurred to him, with an ironical laugh in the thought, that she was master of their moments and not he. And yet not she herself. Men were the stronger sex. That was an inherent thought, whatever might be said in abstract argument. Coming to such a moment in life as this, it was the man who must direct. With all the violence of his passions, he could still control.

This, with a loud voice, he told himself in his mind. Yet there was her hat lying in the heather and there in his ears were the sounds of her breathing as she stood beside him. His eyes fell upon her breast that rose and fell as her heart beat beneath it and he knew the current he had breasted with such confidence of power was bearing him back. In all his bodily consciousness then, it was as though his will were failing.

One last effort he made. Stooping, he picked up her hat.

"Shall we go now?" he said.

She swung in an instant's unsteadiness as she stood before him, but made no movement otherwise. One fear had gone in her, thrusting another in its place. Something terrified her now, a fear in her heart that over-rode all bodily fear.

If he should win in purpose now, the world were such an empty mockery of life as she well knew she had no strength to face. Hannah, Jane, Fanny, they might have survived the hollow meaninglessness of it all. They might have taken place in the senseless procession of Time, puppets of women, wasted lives in the thrusting crowd. Never could she fall in with them now.

Yet what was it she was struggling against? Something that had its purpose as well as she? Somehow she sensed it was the laws that men had made for the best of women to live by. He was attempting the best that was in him. But she had no pity for that. If love and contempt, passion and disgust can link in one, they met together in her then.

She never knew she thought all this. It was not in words she thought it. But those laws were wrong--all wrong. Possession was the very texture of them and all through the intricate fabric of life, she knew possession did not count. In instinct, reaching back, beyond the most distant consciousness of mind, she felt there was no possession in the world. No more would she belong to him than he to her. It was he who must give that which she most needed to take. And why had it resolved itself into this struggle, when all she had ever heard or known of men was nothing but the eagerness of passion to express desire?

These were not thoughts. Through all her substance they swept, a stream of voiceless impulses that had more power than words.

"We're not going now," she said in a strange quietness. "We didn't come here to go back. Not as we came."

Suddenly she put her hands upon his shoulders. He could feel her breath warm and though her voice was so close, it came from far away like the voices of the sirens calling which he knew would always call and which he knew a man must stop his ears and bind his limbs to resist.

"Do you want me to say it?" she whispered. "I'm yours--this moment I'm yours. For God's sake take me now."

It all was darkness then. The moon had no light for them. The very stars were blotted out and far away across the moors, with its insistent note, a night-jar whistled to its mate.

PHASE III