Chapter 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.