Chapter V

He had run through all the physical sensations of his terror. What he felt now was the sharp, abominable torture of the mind.

If the dead knew—

The dead _did_ know. She had come back to tell him that she knew. She knew that he thought of her with unkindness. She had been there when he talked about her to Effie. She knew the thought he had hidden even from himself. She knew that she had died because, secretly, he had wished her dead.

That was the meaning of her look and of her tears.

No fleshly eyes could have expressed such an intensity of suffering, of unfathomable grief. He thought: the pain of a discarnate spirit might be infinitely sharper than any earthly pain. It might be inexhaustible. Who was to say that it was not?

Yet could it—could even an immortal suffering—be sharper than the anguish he felt now? If only he had known what he was doing to her— If he had known. If he had known—

But, he thought, we know nothing, and we care less. We say we believe in immortality, but we do not believe in it. We treat the dead as if they _were_ dead, as if they were not there. If he had really believed that she was there, he would have died rather than say the things he had said to Effie. Nobody, he told himself, could have accused him of unkindness to his mother while she lived. He had really loved her up to the moment, the moment of supreme temptation, when he wanted Effie. He had not willed her to die. He had been barely conscious of his wish. How, then, could he be held accountable? How could he have destroyed the thing whose essence was the hidden, unknown darkness? Yet, if men are accountable at all, he was accountable. There had been a moment when he was conscious of it. He could have destroyed it then. He should have faced it; he should have dragged it out into the light and fought it.

Instead, he had let it sink back into its darkness, to work there unseen.

And if he had really loved his mother, he would have wished, not willed her to live. He would have wanted her as he wanted her now.

For, now that it was too late, he did want her. His whole mind had changed. He no longer thought of her with resentment. He thought, with a passionate adoration and regret, of her beauty, her goodness, and her love for him. What if she _had_ kept him with her? It had been, as Effie had said, because she loved him. How did he know that if she had let him go he would have been good for anything? What on earth could he have been but the third-rate organist he was?

He remembered the happiness he had had with her before he had loved Effie; her looks, her words, the thousand things she used to do to please him. The Mendelssohn she had given him. A certain sweet cake she made for him on his birthdays. And the touch of her hands, her kisses.

He thought of these things with an agony of longing. If only he could have her back; if only she would come to him again, that he might show her—

He asked himself: How much did Effie know? She must wonder why he had taken that sudden dislike to the drawing-room; why he insisted on sleeping in his study. She had never said anything.

A week had passed—they were sitting in the dining-room after supper, when she spoke.

“Wilfrid, why do you always want to sit here?”

“Because I hate the other room.”

“You didn’t use to. It’s only since that day you were ill, the last time you were playing. Why do you hate it?”

“Well, if you want to know—you remember the beastly things I said about mother?”

“You didn’t mean them.”

“I did mean them— But it wasn’t that. It was something you said.”

“I?”

“Yes. You said ‘If the dead knew—’”

“Well—?”

“Well—they do know—I’m certain my mother knew. Certain, as I’m certain I’m sitting here, that she heard.”

“Oh, Wilfrid, what makes you think that?”

“I can’t tell you what makes me think it— But—she was there.”

“You only think it because you’re feeling sorry. You must get over it. Go back into the room and play.”

He shook his head and still sat there thinking. Effie did not speak again; she saw that she must let him think.

Presently he got up and went into the drawing-room, shutting the doors behind him.

The Mendelssohn was still on the piano ledge, open at Number Nine. He began to play it. But at the first bars of the melody he stopped, overwhelmed by an agony of regret. He slid down on his knees, with his arms on the edge of the piano and his head bowed on his arms.

His soul cried out in him with no sound.

“Mother—Mother—if only I had you back. If only you would come to me. Come—Come—”

And suddenly he felt her come. From far-off, from her place among the blessed, she came rushing, as if on wings. He heard nothing; he saw nothing; but with every nerve he felt the vibration of her approach, of her presence. She was close to him now, closer than hearing or sight or touch could bring her; her self to his self; her inmost essence was there.

The phantasm of a week ago was a faint, insignificant thing beside this supreme manifestation. No likeness of flesh and blood could give him such an assurance of reality, of contact.

For, more certain than any word of flesh and blood, her meaning flashed through him and thrilled.

She knew. She knew she had him again; she knew she would never lose him. He was her son. As she had once given him flesh of her flesh, so now, self to innermost self, she gave him her blessedness, her peace.

THE VICTIM

Steven Acroyd, Mr. Greathead’s chauffeur, was sulking in the garage.

Everybody was afraid of him. Everybody hated him except Mr. Greathead, his master, and Dorsy, his sweetheart.

And even Dorsy now, after yesterday!

Night had come. On one side the yard gates stood open to the black tunnel of the drive. On the other the high moor rose above the wall, immense, darker than the darkness. Steven’s lantern in the open doorway of the garage and Dorsy’s lamp in the kitchen window threw a blond twilight into the yard between. From where he sat, slantways on the step of the car, he could see, through the lighted window, the table with the lamp and Dorsy’s sewing huddled up in a white heap as she left it just now, when she had jumped up and gone away. Because she was afraid of him.

She had gone straight to Mr. Greathead in his study, and Steven, sulking, had flung himself out into the yard.

He stared into the window, thinking, thinking. Everybody hated him. He could tell by the damned spiteful way they looked at him in the bar of the “King’s Arms”; kind of sideways and slink-eyed, turning their dirty tails and shuffling out of his way.

He had said to Dorsy he’d like to know what he’d done. He’d just dropped in for his glass as usual; he’d looked round and said “Good-evening,” civil, and the dirty tykes took no more notice of him than if he’d been a toad. Mrs. Oldishaw, Dorsy’s aunt, _she_ hated him, boiled-ham-face, swelling with spite, shoving his glass at the end of her arm, without speaking, as if he’d been a bloody cockroach.

All because of the thrashing he’d given young Ned Oldishaw. If she didn’t want the cub’s neck broken she’d better keep him out of mischief. Young Ned knew what he’d get if he came meddling with _his_ sweetheart.

It had happened yesterday afternoon, Sunday, when he had gone down with Dorsy to the “King’s Arms” to see her aunt. They were sitting out on the wooden bench against the inn wall when young Ned began it. He could see him now with his arm round Dorsy’s neck and his mouth gaping.

And Dorsy laughing like a silly fool and the old woman snorting and shaking.

He could hear him. “She’s my cousin if she _is_ your sweetheart. You can’t stop me kissing her.” _Couldn’t_ he!

Why, what did they think? When he’d given up his good job at the Darlington Motor Works to come to Eastthwaite and black Mr. Greathead’s boots, chop wood, carry coal and water for him, and drive his shabby secondhand car. Not that he cared what he did so long as he could live in the same house with Dorsy Oldishaw. It wasn’t likely he’d sit like a bloody Moses, looking on, while Ned—

To be sure, he had half killed him. He could feel Ned’s neck swelling and rising up under the pressure of his hands, his fingers. He had struck him first, flinging him back against the inn wall, then he had pinned him—till the men ran up and dragged him off.

And now they were all against him. Dorsy was against him. She had said she was afraid of him.

“Steven,” she had said, “tha med ’a killed him.”

“Well—p’r’aps next time he’ll knaw better than to coom meddlin’ with _my_ lass.”

“I’m not thy lass, ef tha canna keep thy hands off folks. I should be feared for my life of thee. Ned wurn’t doing naw ’arm.”

“Ef he doos it again, ef he cooms between thee and me, Dorsy, I shall do ’im in.”

“Naw, tha maunna talk that road.”

“It’s Gawd’s truth. Anybody that cooms between thee and me, loove, I shall do ’im in. Ef ’twas thy aunt, I should wring ’er neck, same as I wroong Ned’s.”

“And ef it was me, Steven?”

“Ef it wur thee, ef tha left me— Aw, doan’t tha assk me, Dorsy.”

“There—that’s ’ow tha scares me.”

“But tha’ ’astna left me—’tes thy wedding claithes tha’rt making.”

“Aye, ’tes my wedding claithes.”

She had started fingering the white stuff, looking at it with her head on one side, smiling prettily. Then all of a sudden she had flung it down in a heap and burst out crying. When he tried to comfort her she pushed him off and ran out of the room, to Mr. Greathead.

It must have been half an hour ago and she had not come back yet.

He got up and went through the yard gates into the dark drive. Turning there, he came to the house front and the lighted window of the study. Hidden behind a clump of yew he looked in.

Mr. Greathead had risen from his chair. He was a little old man, shrunk and pinched, with a bowed narrow back and slender neck under his grey hanks of hair.

Dorsy stood before him, facing Steven. The lamplight fell full on her. Her sweet flower-face was flushed. She had been crying.

Mr. Greathead spoke.

“Well, that’s my advice,” he said. “Think it over, Dorsy, before you do anything.”

That night Dorsy packed her boxes, and the next day at noon, when Steven came in for his dinner, she had left the Lodge. She had gone back to her father’s house in Garthdale.

She wrote to Steven saying that she had thought it over and found she daren’t marry him. She was afraid of him. She would be too unhappy.