FullReads

I had only slid the chair a little further back, reaching behind me to tap on the leather of the screen, but he jumped like a rat.

“No. Please attend to me, Mr. Turpin. ” She turned in her chair and faced him with his back to the door. It was an old and sordid little piece of scheming that she forced from him—his plea for the new cowshed at his landlady’s expense, that he might with the covered manure pay his next year’s rent out of the valuation after, as she made clear, he had bled the enriched pastures to the bone. I could not but admire the intensity of his greed, when I saw him out-facing for its sake whatever terror it was that ran wet on his forehead.

I ceased to tap the leather—was, indeed, calculating the cost of the shed—when I felt my relaxed hand taken and turned softly between the soft hands of a child. So at last I had triumphed. In a moment I would turn and acquaint myself with those quick-footed wanderers….

The little brushing kiss fell in the centre of my palm—as a gift on which the fingers were, once, expected to close: as the all faithful half-reproachful signal of a waiting child not used to neglect even when grown-ups were busiest—a fragment of the mute code devised very long ago.

Then I knew. And it was as though I had known from the first day when I looked across the lawn at the high window.

I heard the door shut. The woman turned to me in silence, and I felt that she knew.

What time passed after this I cannot say. I was roused by the fall of a log, and mechanically rose to put it back. Then I returned to my place in the chair very close to the screen.

“Now you understand,” she whispered, across the packed shadows.

“Yes, I understand—now. Thank you. ”

“I—I only hear them. ” She bowed her head in her hands. “I have no right, you know—no other right. I have neither borne nor lost—neither borne nor lost!”

“Be very glad then,” said I, for my soul was torn open within me.

“Forgive me!”

She was still, and I went back to my sorrow and my joy.

“It was because I loved them so,” she said at last, brokenly. “Thatwas why it was, even from the first—even before I knew that they—they were all I should ever have. And I loved them so!”

She stretched out her arms to the shadows and the shadows within the shadow.

“They came because I loved them—because I needed them. I—I must have made them come. Was that wrong, think you?”

“No—no. ”

“I—I grant you that the toys and—and all that sort of thing were nonsense, but—but I used to so hate empty rooms myself when I was little. ” She pointed to the gallery. “And the passages all empty…. And how could I ever bear the garden door shut? Suppose——”

“Don’t! For pity’s sake, don’t!” I cried. The twilight had brought a cold rain with gusty squalls that plucked at the leaded windows.

“And the same thing with keeping the fire in all night. Idon’t think it so foolish—do you?”

I looked at the broad brick hearth, saw, through tears I believe, that there was no unpassable iron on or near it, and bowed my head.

“I did all that and lots of other things—just to make believe. Then they came. I heard them, but I didn’t know that they were not mine by right till Mrs. Madden told me——”

“The butler’s wife? What?”

“One of them—I heard—she saw—and knew. Hers! Notfor me. I didn’t know at first. Perhaps I was jealous. Afterwards, I began to understand that it was only because I loved them, not because——… Oh, you mustbear or lose,” she said piteously. “There is no other way—and yet they love me. They must! Don’t they?”