2 The Country-side (1917)

Religion is an ordered superstition. In its modern forms – more particularly in that form taken by the English Church – it has become so ordered, so barren, so free from imagination and emotion, that it is like a plant which has been over-pruned, with no luxuriance of growth, with little beauty; circled by a high fence which may keep out evil, which does keep out light; utterly alien to that garden of roses and herbs, of peace, of perfume and splendour which it might be, which it sometimes has been, despite its many parasites, its over-luxuriant growth, and piercing thorns.

But, still, the root of all religions lies about what we – in connection with our own beliefs – call ‘faith’, and – in connection with other people’s beliefs – ‘delusion’.

It is all one and the same thing: all superstition, or the supposition regarding things which must for ever remain outside our exact understanding.

There is an idea that no vine grows such fine grapes as that which is planted over some source of corruption: and it does not do to dig too deeply around the far-stretching roots of our faith. For there are things there of which it is not pleasant to think, from the story of the two sons of Rizpah, and the five sons of Michal, who were delivered up by David to be hanged in the first days of barley harvest, that the famine might be stayed from the land – in itself the outcome of a far older belief in the legend of Tammuz or Adonis – to the witch-burning of a later day.

All this preamble is intended to lead your mind, somewhat gradually, to the story of Margaret Wister, and is mainly written in the endeavour to impress upon you that nothing is so strange as to be impossible; that those early roots of our Christian faith are still instinct with a sinister life. Also, maybe, to prepare the way a little, for if I had by saying that Mrs Wister, wife of the Reverend Robert Wister, the rector of a prosperous, squire-ridden English country parish, practised witchcraft, this story might be put on one side, with the tolerant and half tender smile which we accord to fairy tales or such-like remnants of a past youth.

The Wisters had been married for seven years, the first five years of their life together being passed in a poor and overcrowded South London parish, where the husband was at first junior and then senior curate.

Mrs Wister had been a governess. She was only twenty-three when she married; but there was nothing girlish about her. For six years she had been obliged to set an example of decorum – often to girls but little younger than herself – shut away from all tentative love-makings by which a woman learns so much regarding the transitory nature of human passions; from all harmless gaieties and natural exuberances either of taste or feeling.

She took life very seriously. She had never had any practice in making a fool of herself over trifles – and that in itself is a bad thing – because she could not afford to take any risks. Thus all her growth, both religious and intellectual, was inward; while deep beneath all else – absolutely untouched until the Reverend Robert Wister crossed her path – lay a deep well of passion, as primitive as that which animated the breast of any cave-dwelling woman.

She was a small creature, slender yet rounded, with a clear white skin, red lips – the upper a little too thin, the lower a trifle too full – very fair hair, thick and fine and straight, and deep hazel eyes.

She would have made a charming little ballerina, with her blonde hair over her ears, and all white tulle and roses. In this she would have had plenty of outlet for her nature, and things would never have got to that point where they happened as they did happen.

People used to say that it was a thousand pities she had no child, that she would make an exquisite, a Madonna-like mother. That, too, might – indeed, probably would – have changed the whole aspect of affairs; for it would have given her something else on which to concentrate, apart from the Reverend Robert. And this, after all, was what she most needed.

Those first years of married life in London were very happy, despite the grime and degradation which lay all around them.

They were neither of them particularly spiritually minded or sensitive, so far as the outside world was concerned. There was a great deal of very evident work to be done, and they were both continually busy – with boys’ clubs, and women’s clubs, with evening classes, with relief measures and clinical centres. They had little time to think, to analyze themselves or their work, in which religion had got as far away as possible from its old roots of superstition, of fear, and self-searching – stripped very bare, disinfected and fumigated as it were.

Margaret Wister proved an excellent helpmate. Her destiny had arranged for her the role of a childless, hard-worked clergyman’s wife, and very admirably she fitted the part – looked it, too, with her exquisitely smooth, fair head and quiet ways.

Robert Wister was a bigly made, muscular man, who had been captain of the football team at his private school, had won his blue at Oxford, and showed himself a good oar, good shot, and good all-round athlete.

As curate of St Cuthbert’s he had had no time for sport, even if the rector had approved of it; but he had an enormous amount of very hard work, for the most part among a rough, unscrupulous, and masculine element: while more than once he had been driven to use his fists in a fashion which gave him more kudos than the most spiritually minded and eloquent sermon which it was possible for any cleric to preach.

He had a naïve idea that he could write, fancied himself as an intellectual; while his wife, who was in reality far more clever than he was, took him at his own valuation! For though all her outside energies were given up to her husband’s work, the whole in-driven passion of her nature was for the man himself; was, indeed, an obsession which was kept wholesome by a regular life and plenty of work; but which might – in times of idleness and ease, under the influence of imagination, beauty, or fear – gather to something corroding, cancer-like. For Margaret Wister was one of those people whose greatest safeguard lies in the perpetual demands of the commonplace.

She honestly believed her husband – that big, hearty animal, slow-thinking, obtuse, and a trifle bumptious, with all the dominant instincts of the old English squire – seignorial rights and all – to be something of a genius, fretting continually against the petty demands on his time, which, as she took it, were almost akin to the robbing of posterity.

When at last, after five years of married life, her husband’s cousin, Lord Leyton – who had never appeared to so much as remember their existence – found himself with a comfortable living in Sussex thrown upon his hands, and – not quite knowing what to do with it, too lazy to bother himself – offered it to Robert Wister, Margaret’s first thought was that at last Robert would have leisure to do ‘his own work’, as she called it.

They had been so driven. Though they were always working along the same lines they were but little together, hardly ever alone. When they went to bed at night they were too tired out – by the endless succession of duties, the evening classes, the entertainments and meetings – to talk; while Robert dropped to sleep the moment his head touched the pillow.

But Margaret his wife – who, for all her quiet exterior, was far more highly wrought – would often find it difficult to settle off, and lie for quite a long time, thinking over her day’s work, planning for her husband, and watching him as he lay asleep; brooding, almost gloating, over the one thing in the world which was really hers – with due deference to the Almighty – for there was no shutter in the room, and the high lamp in the street outside flooded the room with light, showing him asleep, with his fine curly head on the pillow at her side.

Had she but known it, it was the happiest time of her life. If there were only some guide near us all, to cry halt when we reach the summit of our joy, to say, ‘Pause here, do not waste time looking back, do not try to rush forward, for there is nothing better to come’, how different life might be! But there is no one, and, like the rest of her fellow-creatures, Margaret Wister looked to the future to be better than the present; to add to her sum of happiness by giving her Robert a chance of showing what he really could do.

They arrived at their new home in late September. The little village – every garden crammed with dahlias and Michaelmas daisies, every wall mantled with Virginia creeper – lay glowing in the afternoon sunshine, hazy with autumn mist, all set round with cornfields, like a watercolour drawing in a golden mount, framed by the sweeping side of the Southern Downs.

The air was full of the good scent of autumn leaves and wood-smoke, and Robert Wister sniffed it appreciatively.

‘By Jove!’ he said, ‘but it smells good. It smells like home.’ As the cab turned in at the rectory gate his eyes moved towards the sweep of woodland which lay to the north of the downs, overhung by a whirling host of rooks.

‘I suppose those are some of Leyton’s coverts. I hear he’s awfully keen about his pheasants; I only hope he’ll give me some shooting. Though, after all, there’s nothing to compare with a day over the stubble after the partridges, with a good dog or two.’ His face glowed, as he stood with outstretched hand to help his wife from the cab; then he took her in his arms and kissed her, rather boisterously, on the steps of her new home, right in front of the trim, be-capped and aproned parlourmaid.

‘May it bring us both luck, eh, dear?’ he said, meaning, as Margaret well knew, the advent of that child for which he had never ceased to long.

Margaret Wister had one of those pale, clear skins which seldom change colour; but she was a little embarrassed at the thought of all that his words implied.

‘I did not know that you ever shot,’ she said, more by way of diverting the girl’s mind from any guess at his possible meaning than for any other reason.

‘Oh, there’re lots of things you don’t know about me yet,’ he answered, laughing. And then he turned to the waiting girl.

‘You’re Mary, I suppose? Lady Leyton wrote and told us all sorts of nice things about you. Get those rugs in, will you? And then – what about tea – eh, Margaret?’

Mary’s report to cook, later on over the kitchen tea, was to the effect that Master seemed real nice and friendly, but the new Missus a stuck-up, cold thing. ‘You never saw anything more pretty than the way as he behaved to ‘er, helping ‘er out of the cab an’ all, just as if they was only just married. An’ she without as much as a smile on ‘er face.’

This was the first note of antagonism which met Mrs Wister, right on the steps of her new home.

Mary was a good, honest, and thoroughly well-trained servant, so was the cook; but they did not understand her and she did not understand them.

In London Margaret had a wild gutter-snipe of a girl, who had adored her; declared that she was more like an angel than a woman; stole her pocket-handkerchiefs, wore her stockings, and spent a good part of her wages in making her fantastic presents. She would race up the stone stairs from the basement, directly she heard her come in, take off her boots for her, and tell her all the news of the day – regardless of the dinner, half in or half out of the oven, boiling over anyhow.

Then there was also an old woman, who sometimes came in to help, and called the curate’s wife ‘ducky’.

But now it seemed to her that the two stereotyped servants, which the importance of the living and the size of the rectory demanded, were joined together against her. Their cold looks, their very docility, were like a sort of secret contempt, a conspiracy of two against one. She was not bred to it, could not get used to it; while her experiences as a governess had left her with a secret distrust and fear of the servant class.

It was the same in the village: she was antagonized by the very respect of the people. She never seemed to get to know them any better. They curtsied to her when they met her, or pulled their forelocks; if she suggested going into their houses they made her welcome with the fine courtesy of the English rustic, dusting the best chair for her to sit upon.

That seemed to Margaret an emblem of what she got of their real life: everything arranged and made tidy for her. They allowed her only the skin of their troubles; the bitterness, the passion, the root of it all they kept from her, though they took her charity. Of their inner joys, of their loves and hates, she knew nothing, excepting so much as was told by the occasional advent of an unwanted child.

At first she believed them to be of a pastoral innocence. Then things came to her notice which showed that some of them were possessed by a cunning beyond anything she had met with in the slums, a grossness almost Saturnalian in its abandon and excess.

She saw them in sickness and health; but she never knew them any better. It was as if there was something between their spirit and hers which was as thick and impenetrable as the many layers of coarse clothing which lay ‘twixt her eyes and their private person – bodies subject to the same uses as her own, skins which, unroughened by hard work and weather, might well show every bit as fine and white.

As it was, she saw nothing beyond the ruddy or yellowish-brown faces, the expression of stolid indifference and respect.

Looking back, it seemed to her that the souls of the people in London – to whom she and Robert had been used to minister – were naked as the lights over the stalls in the New Cut on a Saturday night, flaming with iniquity, blown hither and thither with every wind of desire or greed, naked and unashamed. And yet by their very openness, by the fierceness of their flame, less fearful than these creatures of smouldering, silent passions, of deeply buried loves and hates, among whom her new life was cast.

The distant downs were open and wind-swept, but all round the rectory there were trees.

The leaves fell slowly that year; there was no sudden frost to nip them from their stems. The first part of the winter was very mild and damp, and they lay in heaps beneath the trees. It seemed to Margaret Wister that they smelt of death.

Even the country people realized that there was something which was not wholesome in the weather – ‘unseasonable’ they called it.

It was difficult to find anything to do. The two servants were competent; none of the villagers seemed very poor; the girls were all out at service, the old people lived with their married sons and daughters, there were hardly any sick folk. If anyone was really ill, soup and port wine were sent from the Hall; if a girl was known to have gone wrong she was obliged to remain away, or else her parents, if they wished to have her with them, must leave.

The whole place belonged to Lord Leyton.

When he was expected to come into residence the drives were swept, all the edges of the one road through the village cleared of weeds.

No one seemed to know what became of the weeds or the dead leaves, they were simply swept away out of sight.

It was the same with all which was unseemly in human nature.

Everything on Lord Leyton’s estate must be just so. There must be nothing left about which could offend the eye. Loose morals and loose scraps of paper alike – the great thing was that they should be out of sight.

It was difficult to get books; there was no lending or public library anywhere near. Margaret had thought that they would now buy books and magazines, which they had never before been able to afford. But, though their income was so much larger there seemed to be no margin. The way in which they must live, the things expected of them, appeared as inexorable as the laws of the Medes and Persians.

Then Robert’s expenses increased in a number of ways. Lord Leyton did ask him to shoot as he had hoped, and that necessitated a change of dress – a pepper-and-salt coat, breeches, and gaiters. He had been used to wear his clerical dress on all occasions. Now when they dined out he expressed himself as being adverse to parading his profession, and bought himself a suit of ordinary evening clothes, asserting his apartness from the ordinary layman merely by the fact that he wore a black tie, where they wore white, and said grace before dinner.

He had never been a teetotaller; had often, even in Deptford, taken a glass of beer with his midday meal. But at Christmas Lord Leyton sent him a case of Madeira, which he got into the way of enjoying after dinner each night; for in the country everyone dined late. When it was finished he missed it, so that he got more. ‘Dinner’s merely a meal without a glass of wine’, was what he said, and quoted St Paul.

There were no evening classes, excepting during the season when he was preparing young people for Confirmation, and later on, when he started a night school for young men. Nobody ever dropped in. They never went out, unless it were to dine, and Robert dropped into the habit of going to sleep after dinner each night; while, to Margaret’s ears, the quiet had a sort of sound of its own, more nerve-racking than any roar and rattle of traffic.

Every evening that they were both at home the same thing happened. Robert would say that he must go and do some work, and tell Mary to light the study fire. Then he would go in there, and sit down in front of the fire with his pipe in his mouth to think out his plans. But that was as far as it ever got. Even his sermons had to be prepared in the mornings, and often when there happened to be a Meet anywhere near on a Saturday, or his cousin or one of the farmers offered him some shooting, he contented himself with reading over an old one.

No wonder he was sleepy at night, for he was out the best part of the day. The want of light and air in London had bleached him, the constant nervous strain had kept him thin, his hands had been white, he looked almost ascetic.

Now he grew florid; despite all the exercise he took he put on flesh. His voice was louder, more hearty. He smelt of the open air, of animals.

At times Margaret was conscious – despite all her passionate, craving love, her adoration – of a certain feeling of repulsion towards her husband.

He had never before been used to snore; now he snored as he slept – heavily.

He had been bred in the country, was of the country. For years his instincts had lain dormant; but now he realized that he was in his right place, living a life native to himself, and was intensely happy, wanted nothing more.

Every day it seemed as though the blood ran redder in his veins; but as he bloomed his wife waxed whiter; even her lips lost their colour, grew thinner and more pinched.

‘A poor peaky bit o’ goods the rector’s wife be, fur sure; an’ ‘im such a fine gentleman an’ all.’

‘A tight-mouthed, bad-tempered ‘un: with looks as ‘ud turn the milk sour.’

This was the general trend of opinion in the village, and it hit to the bone; for she seemed to realize every shade of their feeling towards her.

She did not know what to talk to them about. Robert knew, and they liked him in their inarticulate, grudging way. It was the same with the gentry: bridge and sport, politics – a Toryism as rigid and one-sided as the beliefs which led to the Inquisition – servants and doles; round and round the same little circle.

Margaret – in her rather ill-fitting, not quite low enough evening dress – was dumb when she came out to dinner among the other women, who stood by the fire with their shimmering skirts raised, their satin-shod feet stretched out to the blaze. The only person who ever really attempted to talk to her on these occasions was the woman who, in all country house parties, is to be found winding wool after dinner, sitting rather on the edge of her chair and wearing a dull dress trimmed with priceless old Honiton.

Sometimes the idea came over Robert that his wife was not happy in the life which suited him so well. At first he was anxious, but as he himself sank deeper into it a sense of exasperation grew upon him.

What did she want? She could not expect to get on unless she made some sort of effort to adapt herself. The thought of the book which she had expected him to write rubbed like a sore place between them.

One day he was going out rabbit-shooting with one of the tenant farmers. It was a lovely morning, with a promise of spring in the air, though it was still only the first month of the new year.

He came to breakfast dressed in breeches and gaiters. Directly the meal was over he took his gun, filled his pockets with cartridges, and whistled to his dogs. When he first came to the parish someone had given him a red setter as a sort of watch-dog, and lately he had bought a bitch with the idea of breeding. Sometimes it seemed to Margaret that all his talk was of animals, their pedigrees, their possible offsprings; he had never discussed sex in regard to human beings; but now it was as though some hidden vein of sensuality came out in the way in which he talked of the dumb creatures he had gathered round him.

She had hardly spoken all breakfast time. Robert thought that she was sulking because he was going shooting again for the third day running; for he never even guessed at the corroding loneliness which nearly drove her mad.

Just as he was going out Mary came running across the hall with a packet of sandwiches for him to put in his pocket.

He had not intended to say good-bye to his wife; but as he thanked the girl, almost with effusion, he half turned and happened to notice her standing in the dining-room doorway, looking at him wistfully.

‘Mary remembers everything,’ he said gauchely, as though to explain his friendliness.

‘It was I who ordered them for you,’ answered Margaret, so stiffly that he was angry. ‘Surely she can’t be jealous of her own servant,’ he thought. Then he realized how pale she was, with bluish shadows about her eyes, and softened to her.

‘You look wretched, Meg; chilled to the bone.’

‘I seem to be always cold now.’

‘You should go out more: give your circulation a chance.’

‘There’s nowhere to go.’

‘Well, why not come to-day and help me with the sandwiches? I’m sure there are plenty.’ He patted his bulging pocket, laughing, for he felt ready to be in a good humour with everyone.

Margaret hesitated; she was famished for his company, and yet she felt that he did not really want her; she did not understand country things, was frightened of the cows, dreaded the sight of bloodshed, the sound of a gun. She never forgot the day when she had gone out after the hounds in the governess cart, with Lord Leyton’s children and the governess, and actually been in at the death. She felt as though she were petrified, turned to stone.

‘Well, Mrs Wister, what do you think of fox-hunting?’ one of the neighbouring squires had asked her, pushing his sweating horse up almost against the splash-board of the cart.

Her answer was so low that he had not caught it – the children were all talking at once, wild with excitement and glee – and he leant forward over his horse’s neck, bellowing a loud-voiced, ‘What?’

At that moment there had been a sudden break in the flow of the talk, and they had all caught little Mrs Wister’s answer, low as it was spoken from between tightly closed white lips:

‘I – I think it’s devilish!’

‘By Jove! the mischief a woman like that can do in a place! Socialist, crank, damned dangerous!’ That was the general verdict. Everyone warned Leyton against her; she would be putting things into the working people’s heads, they said, not in the least realizing that the working class mistrusted her as much as they did.

Of course, the thing came to Robert’s ears, and he was very angry about it. He had already had a few days’ hunting, and hoped for more. He rode well, belonged to a county family, and the men who liked him – as they liked everyone who was the same as themselves – were willing to give him an occasional mount; if only his wife did not spoil everything by what he called her ‘silly, hysterical folly’.

For the first time it came into his head that he had married beneath him.

Nothing could reconcile Margaret to all the killing which went on. To her mind the country seemed like a sort of shambles. If it had been the poor who killed for food, she would not have minded so much, but they seemed to have little share in the carnage apart from an occasional bout of poaching.

If her husband had asked her to accompany him on any other sort of expedition, she would have accepted with alacrity. Even now the memory of the two lonely days she passed – of the long hours which stretched out in front of her – filled her with dismay. The lengthening days seemed to bring nothing save an increased number of hours; for the rector was out of doors almost from dawn till dusk.

‘I have accounts to do, and some letters to write; and then there are the church flowers,’ she said, hesitating.

‘Well, join us at lunch. We are going to have it in the New Barn – you know, in that big field of Hargreaves’, just below Hyde Wood. And look here, if you do come – and it will do you no end of good – you might as well bring some cake to help out the feast!’

As Margaret Wister walked through the fields that day she was conscious of feeling happier, more light-hearted, than she had done for months. It seemed as though, with the promise of spring, some dark, stifling curtain were lifted from her heart and mind.

She really had no conscientious objection to country life, or even to the shedding of blood, for she herself ate meat at least once every day. The horror she felt for much in which her husband delighted was purely involuntary. Now, in this happier frame of mind, she tried to reason herself out of it. If one lived in the country one must adapt one’s self to the usages of country life.

But her very first step in among the damp, half-dead undergrowth of the wood brought it all back to her – with the scream of a rabbit beneath a weasel’s teeth, the distressed fluttering and scolding of a little flock of small birds, which led her eye to a hawk, hung motionless against the blue sky, high overhead.

All the rest of the way she was trembling and straining for the sound of a shot. But none came.

As she opened the gate and stepped into the field at the far side of the wood, close against the big barn – hoary and with nothing new about it but its name – she almost ran into a little group of men. There were Hargreaves, and a youth of eighteen, son of a local land agent; a couple of other farmers, two rough-looking working men – who did not seem quite like labourers – and her husband, who was on his knees, with his coat off and one arm up a hole. There was also a girl, buxom and weather-beaten, in a rough tweed dress, her reddish-brown head uncovered.

Robert looked up and nodded, while the others raised their caps and the girl – whom she knew to be Hargreaves’ daughter – stared.

‘Hallo Meg, that’s right.’ The rector had been kneeling with his spare hand spread out flat against the red, clayey bank above him. Now he raised it and wiped it across his forehead: ‘I say, but I’m hot – the little beggar!’

‘Let me have a try, sir,’ put in a farmer, while one of the hangers-on pushed forward officiously with a spade.

‘No, no, it’s so close you might hurt it. I touched it a moment ago – lucky it’s muzzled. Wait a moment, I believe I’ve got it now.’ He lay flat on his stomach against the bank, with his face laid cheek downwards upon it, his eyes glancing sideways – bright and a little bloodshot – straining his arm still farther up into the hole. Margaret could see the muscles swell on the bare strip which showed between the rough earth and his tightly rolled sleeve.

‘That’s it!’ He drew himself sharply back upon his heels, and gave a vindictive shake to the struggling, yellowish-tinted creature which he held in his hand. ‘Ugh! you little beast!’ he said.

His face was ugly; Margaret saw his grasp tighten round the writhing animal; for a moment she thought that he was going to kill it.

Then he tossed it over to the girl, who had sat down on the grass and was busy over something.

‘Here you are, Miss Hargreaves, here’s your pet.’

Margaret moved a few steps, and stood looking down at her – shaking a little – anxious to get the impression of her husband’s face from before her eyes.

Trixie Hargeaves was holding the creature, which Robert had thrown to her, upright on her knee, with one hand round its neck and the other busied over the scrap of string which served as a muzzle. A similar animal, of a sable brown colour, nosed round on her lap. By her side lay a hessian bag which heaved as though there was something alive in it.

Margaret looked down at the animals with distaste. A pungent, sour smell hung about them; they looked meanly wicked, with their sharply pointed noses and red eyes.

‘What are those?’ she asked.

‘Ferrets,’ the girl answered, without looking up.

‘What horrible-looking things!’

‘I don’t know about that; they’re right enough, they can’t help their looks.’ Trixie’s voice was sulky; she enjoyed being the only woman among a group of men. Besides, what did the rector’s wife want there, with her superior, sneering ways?

‘You’re Miss Hargreaves, are you not? I think I’ve seen you at church.’ Margaret tried to speak pleasantly, while she watched the girl’s capable brown hands poke the writhing beasts into the bag, back among their fellows. She had no wish to spoil sport, was ashamed of the antipathy which she felt.

But it was all no good. The lunch passed miserably; they were all glad when she went – even Robert, she knew that as she walked home. Though he had tried to make jokes, to discuss the day’s sport, he was as awkward as a small boy disturbed among his fellows by some grown-up person of whom he is a little afraid.

Margaret was hot and sore. She had almost hated him as he had glanced up at her sideways from the bank, his face smeared with clay. But now it cut her to the heart to feel that he looked upon her as a bar to his pleasure.

The gulf between them widened and widened. Sometimes she scorned him so bitterly that her contempt was written plain for anyone to see upon her white face. Sometimes their apartness hurt her so that it was like a physical agony, which she felt must kill her unless some relief could be found.

Once, towards the autumn, they had a week’s holiday, and – with some sad thought of getting back what they had for ever lost – they decided to spend it in London.

They went down to the parish where they had lived for so long. Only a year had passed; but already the people had changed or forgotten them. The rector was away on his summer holiday.

It was a stifling September day, the pavement burnt their unaccustomed feet. ‘My God, to think that I ever lived in such a place!’ exclaimed Robert. His hand was at his round clerical collar. It was horrible to think of being obliged to wear such a thing, day in, day out – symbolical of all the drab monotony of South London.

Margaret hated it as much as he did. It seemed as though there was nothing she cared for left in life.

After three days of London they went to the sea. They could not go home because they were not expected, the servants were having a holiday. In the old days they would have gone, anyhow; and Robert would have built up the fire, and Margaret would have cooked chops, or scrambled eggs – very badly. But they would have been happy and gay, even over the washing up of the dishes; delighted with the feeling of having the place to themselves.

One could not do that sort of thing in the country, where everything was arranged and set; where even the very cows and trees seemed to know what was expected of them; where all which was out of the way must be sly and covert.

Robert Wister hunted pretty regularly that winter. There was no reason why he should not; it did not cost him anything beyond the occasional keep of a borrowed horse. The parish was so small that there was but little to do, and the people liked a sporting parson; they were proud of a man who mixed with the gentry, shared their pleasures. Besides, it prevented him from poking overmuch into their affairs.

He was very seldom at home; when he was he slept, or attended to the dogs, which he now bred for profit. He was intimate with people – spoke of them by their Christian names – whom Margaret did not even know by sight. ‘Oh, they’re not your sort – not clever enough for you,’ he would say when she asked about them; suggested that they should be invited to dinner.

Among all the villagers, the only one who interested Margaret was an old woman who lived at the edge of one of the large blocks of woodland, with a son who seemed half an imbecile – earning his living by cutting faggots and occasionally trimming hedges. And after all that was not so much interest as a sort of fascination.

The old woman was bedridden. Day in, day out, she lay under the patchwork quilt which had been part of her wedding dower; close beneath the roof in the one bedroom of the tree-encompassed house.

The roof was so sloping that she could hardly have sat quite upright even had she been able to. Margaret never knew whether she could sit up or get out of bed, what was the matter with her.

The son cooked for her and did the work downstairs; but it seemed as though she must get up to do her own room, to make the bed and wash herself – though no one ever saw her do it, for she would have no neighbour in to help her.

The son earned the living, kept the home together for both of them – a bent and distorted creature with shambling legs, whom she treated like a child, scolded and raved at. Neighbours said that sometimes when Jabe was a little the worse for drink – and half a pint of beer was enough to go to his weak head – she would rise up out of her bed and beat him unmercifully with an ash stick, which always stood in one corner of her room, and with which, in years past, she had been wont, to help herself about. Everyone knew that he slept in her room across the foot of her bed, for she declared that as long as she lived she would keep him under her own eye. There was no knowing what would be going on if she left him down there alone, with the shameless hussies that were about in these days. Though it may have been that the old woman was really quite helpless, afraid of being left alone. It was no use questioning Jabe; his answer was always the same – given with an apprehensive glance round, as though the old woman might suddenly appear at his elbow:

‘I’m sure I dunno; her does what her thinks best ter do.’

There was nothing obsequious about old Mrs Orpin. She was shrilly abusive, proud and intolerant: the people looked on her as a witch. Indeed, they declared that was why she kept her bed. Did she put her nose out of doors the devil would get her.

At times some sorely tried house-mother would climb the steep stairs, emboldened by exasperation, to complain that the cow would not let down her milk, or the butter come in the churn. On these occasions the old hag’s triumphant answer was always the same:

‘I knowed it, I knowed it.’

They went to her for sore eyes, for the reclaiming of errant husbands, and she swelled with pride. There was never any queen on her throne as arrogant, as self-satisfied.

Sometimes they would find her in a boasting mood, when she would brag to them of things which they spent their lives in hiding.

‘I was a real gay ‘un in my time, I was. Eh, but the body and souls ‘o the men! – I knew ‘em inside an’ outside, I did. An’ my own body, too, and the ways of it; that’s what made me master o’ ‘em. You’ll only master them as you beats in knowledgeableness. An’ you poor slumikin’ things, you don’t know naught, you’re like the hares in the furrow, fruz in; sent all zany-like by men’s passions an’ strong ways. Why, if Jabe there once got his will on me he’d kill me; times in an’ times out he’s wanted to; only he dursn’t. Keep ‘em under from the first. That’s the only way with the likes of them. Sons or lovers.’

Margaret tackled her about her supposed powers, of which she had heard something, though not much.

‘Why do you want to pretend that you know things which are past human knowledge? Can cure diseases, sorrows, of the nature of which you are completely ignorant?’ she inquired impatiently. ‘In the old days you’d have been taken for a witch.’

The old woman kept her head bent, plucking with claw-like fingers at the edge of the patchwork counterpane; for days after Margaret could visualize the pieces which formed that particular part of it – a pink cotton powdered with tiny black specks, a triangular scrap of rosebud chintz, a bit of brown calico.

‘How dust thee know as how I ain’t?’ she demanded sulkily.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Who told you as all the witches was dead, burned, and such-like?’

‘What nonsense! You don’t mean to say that you think you can pretend to me?’

‘What is it as ye’re calling pretence?’ The old hag glanced up, her blear eyes alight with malice. ‘There’s things as I could tell you, my fine madam, as ‘ud set that cold blood o’ yours on the boil; an’ there’s no mistake about that, neither.’

‘So you say. But as you either won’t or can’t talk sensibly to-day I’d better go,’ answered Margaret lightly, and walked out of the place determined that she would never go near it again: ‘unless the old thing is really ill’, she added to herself, with a feeling as though she were keeping a sort of loophole open for herself.

The very next week news came to her in a roundabout way that Jabe could hardly drag himself to his work; complained of being up night after night with his mother, who was ‘main bad’. No one would go near her except for their own ends, and it seemed to Margaret that now her duty was plain.

The old hag passed no remark in regard to the sudden termination of Mrs Wister’s last visit; but held herself aloof, with the air of someone who was engrossed in matters of far greater importance than those which were likely to circle round one small, fair-haired woman.

Margaret offered to read to her. But here she met with a distinct rebuff, for Mrs Orpin merely gazed over her head and remarked that she was ‘a-scholared’ herself.

It was early in January. Through the one tiny window Margaret Wister could see that the sky was already crimson, though it was not yet four o’clock.

In London the lights would be pricking out one by one; the red and yellow lamps on the taxis flashing like fireflies, the very ‘buses radiant with a sort of life which at night time seemed all their own; quite apart from the human beings with whom they consorted.

Here there was nothing – a few rooks flying home to roost, and thin strips of snow lying in the bare furrows of the plough, that was all.

She had moved to the window and stood looking out. ‘You have quite a nice view of the sunset here,’ she remarked idly for something to say.

There was no answer. She stood with her back to the old woman. After a moment or two a feeling came over her as though someone was standing close at her back, so close that she actually pulled herself together, fearful of being touched. Though all the time she told herself that it was nonsense, that old Mrs Orpin could not rise from her bed, or if she had done so she would have heard her.

She determined that she would not let her nerves overcome her, even to the extent of turning round to look, and went on talking of indifferent subjects: the prospect of finer weather, the forthcoming Primrose League Festival.

Still the old woman did not speak. And at last, as though something drew her – overcome by that mysterious fear of some terror close behind her, which we have all known as children, she turned.

Mrs Orpin was still in her bed, but she seemed to be sitting a little more upright, and was gazing at her with that curious intensity which one sees in a cat watching a hole, with half-closed eyes, the pupils drawn to a pin-point.

‘There ain’t any wise women these days, ain’t there?’ she began suddenly. ‘Well now, thee hearken to me, and I’ll tell thee.’

She caught at the ends of Margaret’s fur boa with her hand, and peered up in her face as she spoke. ‘Jabe brought me a white bowl o’ water a night or so back to wash mesen in. There was things in it as I seed,’ here she nodded mysteriously. ‘To other folks a bowl o’ water’s just a bowl o’ water; it ain’t anything more, that ‘ull tell yer. Other folks ‘ud a’ seen the white bottom o’ the bowl; but this is what I seed. There was a big old barn up agin it; an’ at one side o’ the barn was a stack o’ hay with a truss, or maybe two, took out o’ it. I told Jabe what it was as I did see – the owd barn and the rick, an’ a little gate out o’ the wood close alongside o’ it, and the hedge just about begun to be cut an’ layered, running towards where the sun sets, away from the gate – it ain’t no good sayin’ east nor west to Jabe, he’s that soft. “Lord bless us, Mither,” seys ‘ee, “if that ain’t the New Barn, rick an’ all, along which I be workin’.” Now hearken thee here, missus; there weren’t any rick o’ no sort alongside that ther barn when I was out last – ten years and more back.’

Margaret laughed; a sense of relief came over her. She did not know what she had expected, but certainly nothing so simple or harmless as this.

‘That was very strange,’ she said; ‘but one does have those sort of inward visions sometimes. Perhaps Jabe had told you that he was working there and of the new rick, and you’d forgotten it.’

The old woman took her hand away and tossed her head haughtily. ‘I don’t waste my time talkin’ ter Jabe. I’m not one as holds with chit-chattin’, chit-chattin’ with one’s childer as though they was one’s equals,’ she remarked; while Margaret was amused to see how angry she was at not being taken seriously.

‘You seem to keep Jabe in fine order.’ Margaret was still smiling. ‘But, after all, he’s not a child. Some day he may revolt, and then what will you do? Now I must go. I hope –’

All the time she had been speaking the old woman’s eyes had been fixed on her with an expression of impatient scorn. It was almost as though she said, in as many words, ‘Oh, do be quick and have done with all that silly talk of things you know nothing about.’ Now she broke in as though her patience was at an end.

‘Thee counts as how I know no more nor other folk,’ she said, grasping her visitor’s wrist, holding it with a clutch which felt like steel. ‘Well, hearken thee here now. There’s a hussy, round and brown and plump as a ripe pippin, an’ there’s a chap as she meets come Tuesdays an’ Fridays a’twixt the owd barn an’ the rick. You go an’ see if I’m not telling you the truth. No one ever comes a-nigh me, no one never tells me naught, but I knows – I knows.’

‘Really, Mrs Orpin, I’ve something better to do than to spend my time tracking the village girls and their sweethearts. And I think that you –’

With a wild laugh the old creature flung her visitor’s hand away from her, and, crossing her arms over her breast, rocked herself to and fro in a paroxysm of mirth. ‘The village girls and their sweethearts! That’s good, that’s fine! Let me tell thee this, my fine lady. It ain’t only the village wenches as plays the harlot, an’ it ain’t only the village chaps as –’

The rest of the words were lost, for Margaret was already half-way down the narrow stairway, nursing her bruised wrist, in a tumult of indignation and disgust.

People had said far worse things to her in the old days on the Thames-side: unutterable, unrepeatable things, which she had taken as part of the day’s work, almost as the natural mode of expression from such people. She had rebuked it, never let it pass; but that had been as a matter of duty, she had been outside it all – and it had left her untouched, unshaken.

But something in old Mrs Orpin’s words, or perhaps more in the abominable insinuation of her expression, shook her so that the whole thing seemed to be photographed on her mind, and throughout the remainder of that day – and indeed for many, many days afterwards – she could see her, hear her shrill laugh, her cracked voice.

That evening at dinner she spoke of it to her husband. ‘That old Mrs Orpin’s mad; she ought to be shut up, she and that wretched, imbecile son of hers.’

The rector raised his head. His jaw seemed to have grown heavier, all the fine lines of his face were lost in something that was more than flesh, a sort of inward coarsening. He was surprised at his wife’s tone, for she was usually tolerant to the point of indifference.

‘Oh, they’re all right. Jabe isn’t really an idiot; he’s only a bit off; he gets through his work well enough.’

‘He must be either wanting or a perfect fool, to let that old mother of his bully him as she does. Abominable old creature! She tries to make out that she’s a sort of witch – furious if anyone doubts her. It would serve her right to be treated as she would have been a century or two back – burnt at the stake. I should be glad to hear of it – it would be a good thing – an example to others,’ pursued Mrs Wister, amazed at the sound of her own voice, shrill and vindictive, at the feelings which were stirred up within her as she spoke.

Her husband stared, his mouth dropping open a little in a way she had not known it do before. Sometimes it seemed as though he were getting as animal as the people around him, ‘whose talk is of oxen’.

‘A woman like that poisons the very air. She has got some sordid story of a vision which she declared she had seen in a basin of water. I simply wouldn’t listen to her. I came away and left her shrieking.’

‘What sort of a vision?’ asked the rector heavily. He had just filled himself a second glass of wine and held it up to the light as he spoke.

‘Something about that barn – you know the place they call the New Barn, where I came and had lunch with you one day. She actually wanted me to go and see whether some story of a couple, whom she declares to be in the habit of meeting there, is true or not.’ Margaret laughed. ‘If would be a dignified thing for the parson’s wife to spend her time –’ Her voice trailed off.

The rector’s head was bent over the fruit on his plate, his whole attention seemingly engrossed by the orange which he was peeling.

‘All those old women are hopeless gossips,’ he said, after a pause, during which the mental vision of old Mrs Orpin – with which his wife’s mind had been occupied all that day – was displaced by something as vivid and far more disquieting, far more personal: the expression – was it of fear or guilt? – furtive and sly, and in some odd way wholly rustic, which had flashed across her husband’s face in that moment before he dropped his eyes from hers to his plate.

Even then she seemed numbed, frozen, so that she could not grasp any meaning in, any reason for her uneasiness, was only conscious, during the remainder of the dinner-hour, of a sense of chill such as one might have when summer suddenly gives place to winter, windy and wet, with falling leaves and leaden sky.

Almost the moment she was in bed she dropped asleep, as heavily as though she had been drugged.

But towards three o’clock she awoke suddenly, with a mind that was crystal clear. She saw again the scene that had been set before her as she joined the shooting party outside the New Barn; the bent head of a girl, russet tinted, while at the same moment came the thought of those two evenings, Tuesday and Friday, the evenings upon which – all that past winter – the rector had held a young men’s class, that had seemed to grow longer and longer as time went on.

All sorts of other hitherto unconsidered trifles rose to her mind. She remembered how her husband had always been talking of the Hargreaves, at one time, and then ceased to mention them; the expression of the girl when she had met her, and greeted her, tried to get into friendly conversation, one day not so very long ago; the young man who had come running with a forgotten book which Robert had left in the class-room one Friday night; his surprise at finding that Mr Wister had not yet arrived. ‘He left early a’cause he said as ‘ow he was expectin’ some’un to come an’ see him on business; I made sure as he’d be here by now,’ he had insisted, tiresomely enough as it seemed to Margaret, who had been in the hall and heard him ring.

Even then she would not definitely face the thought which was at the back of her mind; she seemed to be always holding herself away from it in agonized fear, as one may try to hold the rest of one’s body back from the seat of some intolerable pain.

From spring the weather had leapt back to winter, while the length of the days made their dreariness only the more apparent. Margaret stayed indoors for several days, shivering over the fire. It seemed that she had taken some chill, both outward and inward, which had the effect of almost stupefying her.

She was so palpably ill that it gave her an excuse – for which she was thankful – to keep away from her husband; to relax something of her normal ways of life.

One afternoon, sitting wrapped in a sort of dreamy stupor, she allowed the fire to go out, and rang to have it remade.

It was the cook who answered the bell, and brought paper and sticks to relight it, for the parlourmaid was having her afternoon off duty.

She was a fat, rather untidy-looking girl, more human and get-at-able than Mary.

A sense of utter, desolate loneliness had hung over Margaret all that day, and, thankful for any human companionship, she began to talk to the girl.

After a moment or two, noticing that the thick, red hands – busy over the reluctant fire, picking up morsels of charred stick from the hearth and replacing them beneath the coals – were scarred with warts, she asked the girl what she had done for them.

Up to now Emmie had been shy and difficult, stuffed full as she was with Mary’s tales of their mistress’s stand-off ways; but on this question of the warts it seemed that Mrs Wister had touched some point where she was so surcharged with morbid interest and excitement that she would have talked to anyone.

‘I’d been to Rose, the chemist, and I don’t know what not; everyone as I’d seen had been telling me something different what to do. But it wasn’t a scrap of good – though you wouldn’t believe the shillin’s as I’ve spent on it, Marm, no you wouldn’t. I’m sure I was ashamed for anyone to look at my hands, an’ all of a tremble I’ve been on a Sunday when I’ve brought in the tea, for fear that you or the Master should mention them. But now they ain’t nothing to what they used to be, not since last full moon.’

‘Why since last full moon?’

‘Well, Marm – it seems that silly, I’m sure you wouldn’t never credit it – I laughed myself when it was told to me. But it were true enough, gospel true – and – well, my hands aren’t the same as they was a couple o’ weeks back, everyone notices it. Being engaged an’ all makes a girl feel a thing like that; an’ my young man couldn’t bear them, that’s the fact.’

‘But what did you do?’

The fire had been obstinate and slow to take light, Emmie had been feeding it stick by stick, while it seemed as though her tongue kept time to the movement of her hands. But now she sat back on her heels, while her face grew slowly crimson as she adjusted the fire-irons. She had been a fool to talk like that! What would Mary say to her if she heard of it? To the missus too, of all people.

‘Well, Marm, it’s like this; one gets talking and hearing things. I don’t generally set much store by what the people about here say, they’re that countrified an’ ignorant. But when a girl’s worried, as I was about them there warts, it seems as though she would catch at anything; an’ I went to see the old woman – because they was all on at me, more for a sort of a lark than anything else. Though I wouldn’t go again not if I was ever so; the place itself with them there dark trees all round it gave me the shivers – an’ as for the old woman herself, she was like one of those witches as you read of in books’ – once again the girl warmed to her recital, her eyes round with importance. ‘When she took hold of my hand to look at my warts a shiver went through me, all over, from head to foot. I thought I’d got my death, I told Mary so when I came home that evening. I was that chilled through and through I was obliged to ask her to make me a cup o’ tea. An ‘orrible old woman I call her, with those wild eyes, fit to bore you through an’ through like a gimlet. I wouldn’t not a’ done anything she told me, and so I said to Mary. But Tom has seemed to be getting real nasty about my warts – an’ after all there wasn’t any real harm in what she was on at me to do; an’ so I did it.’

‘Did what?’ To her own ears Margaret’s voice had a curiously flat sound.

‘Well, it seemed that silly, Marm, I don’t know what you’ll say, an’ nasty too. She told me to get a snail at the full o’ the moon an’ rub it on the warts; and then to take it and put it on the spike of a blackthorn. An’ then – or so she said – as the snail withered away my warts it ‘ud wither away with ‘em. Horrid it seemed, an’ I didn’t believe, no, not for a minute, as how it ‘ud come true; though she kept on sayin’ “I know it, I know it,” artful like, you know, Marm. But the old woman was right, there’s a many as has quite gone away, an’ the rest is dying off, you can see for yourself, Marm.’

The girl stretched out a red hand, and Margaret, taking it in her own, regarded it gravely, with that intense scrutiny which one often gives to a thing of which one is only half aware.

Emmie had spoken the truth, the horrid things were still there in plenty, but they were shrunken and withered, and there were still more marks where others had been.

‘What old woman was it?’ The question was a mere waste of breath. Of course she knew what old woman it was; but it seemed as though someone quite outside herself put it, with the idea, as it were, of verifying something, driving something home.

‘Orpin was the name, Mrs Orpin. She’s got a son as is a luny, or so I’ve been told, for I wasn’t never one to mix myself with other people.’ Emmie’s voice was prim, it seemed as though she were again repenting of her outspokenness, taking refuge in the stiff gentility of the well-trained servant. ‘A horrid old woman I call her, I wouldn’t go anear her again, not if I was ever so. Though I must say this, she did speak the truth, and it’s my opinion you’ll excuse me saying so, Marm – that there’s nothing that dreadful old woman don’t know – there’s a look in her eye. There, Marm, I think it will burn nicely now, and shall I fetch the tea up, please, Marm?’

In love or hate or fear, it always seems that a certain point of intensity is reached when the person most concerned is distinguished by the word ‘the’.

To Margaret Wister, old Mrs Orpin had grown to be ‘The old woman’. Anyone who was country-bred would have taken her more naturally, for the real rustic mind – despite all its gorming wonder over anything new – is close to the primitive; deep rooted in all that is ancient and uncouth; at one with a sort of horror which is absolutely apart from the horrors of the town. So much so that country crimes, country loves and hates have their own distinctive manifestations.

Your true rustic is suckled on spells, incarnations, and superstitions. The worship of Odin and Thor is somewhere deep ingrained in his nature. The strange influence of the moon, the portents which are to be found in the movements of animals, the sacred influence of the quicken, or bunch of ash keys, the power which lies in the three names of Jehovah, Alpha and Omega, written upon a fair sheet of paper and sealed with red wax.

The country woman turns her money in her pocket when she hears the cuckoo for the first time, when she sees the new moon. The town woman goes her way untouched, laughs or shudders at the superstitions which are an integral part of the everyday life of a shepherd or plough-herd.

Orpin – the very name held in it a tang of something ominous to Margaret Wister’s mind. Why did the woman obsess her so? Sometimes it seemed as though her brain, her heart, and mind were so many photographic plates on which the picture of that old hag was the only thing to register itself, with, somewhere in the background – like the so-called ‘ghost photos’ in which one is taken over the other – a man, heavy jowled, with something at once sly and appealing in his sidelong glance, and a girl, with wind-roughened head, bent over a lapful of small-eyed, narrow beasts, supple as snakes.

One thing she made up her mind that she would not do – revisit the cottage in the wood.

And yet her walks seemed to be for ever taking her that way. There seemed, on more mature thoughts, a thousand reasons why she should go, if only to confute afresh all that the old hag had said – or worse, left unsaid.

Her very feet were in league against her, to take her there.

Meanwhile the whole week seemed to concentrate itself down to two sharp points of anguish – those hours of Tuesday and Friday when Robert might or might not be still at his class.

She could not have borne to go to the New Barn and see for herself who, if anyone, met there, betwixt it and the towering bulk of the rick. If she had gone, and seen what she was sure – somewhere at the back of her mind, though she would not put the thought to words – that she would see, it would have killed her; her avoidance of it was as instinctive as the avoidance of any certain death well can be.

But one night she did find herself outside the school house where the class was held. There was only one dim light in it, and that went out just as she reached the gate.

Next moment the schoolmaster emerged, locking the door behind him.

As he crossed the yard Margaret spoke to him: ‘Has Mr Wister gone yet, Mr Bryce?’

‘Yes, oh yes, some time ago.’ The man poked his head forward, peering at her through the darkness. ‘Who is it? Oh, Mrs Wister. I’m sure I beg your pardon,’ he added, raising his hat as he spoke; ‘but it’s so difficult to see when one first comes out of the light. I stayed behind correcting some of the work. I can’t understand how you didn’t meet him – but perhaps he went the short way home through the fields. I remember he did seem rather pressed for time. Dear, dear, I am sorry that you should have had all that walk for nothing.’

‘It doesn’t matter in the least. I wanted some fresh air, and I thought I would look in and see if he was still here.’ It seemed to Margaret as though someone else repeated these words; speaking with clear-cut decision, in a thin voice from somewhere infinitely far away.

She heard the schoolmaster offer his escort to somebody – she supposed that it was the person who had been speaking. She heard the same voice protest that it was most kind, but quite unnecessary; heard it say good-night, and then left it – or went with it – she could not tell which.

Anyhow, it was silent during all that chill, scurrying passage across the fields back to the rectory; when the very touch of the wind against her cheek scared her, and the grass and bushes at the roadside seemed alive with terror.

One thing was certain. Neither that strange voice nor her own asked whether the rector was at home when Mary opened the door in answer to her ring.

She went upstairs and laid on her bed, pulling the eiderdown over her, turning her face to the wall for the sake of an even greater darkness than the curtained room afforded.

Presently Robert came in; she heard him go to his room and wash his hands; then he came and stood by her bed, apologizing for being late, asking if she was ill, what he could do for her; if she would come down, or have her dinner upstairs; standing awkwardly at her side, without once touching her or bending over her.

She did not reply, because it seemed as though there was nothing to say; as though, indeed, there were no words left in her. And after a while he went away.

Later on she got undressed and crept into bed; slept all that night without stirring, a sleep which was as heavy as death.

When she got down next morning Robert had finished his breakfast, and gone off to some board meeting or other, to which it seemed Lord Leyton was to drive him; or such was the information volunteered by Mary, as she brought in fresh tea.

Margaret scarcely listened. It didn’t seem to matter to her where Robert had gone, or said he had gone. The sun was streaming in through the windows of the dining-room. She could let him go in the daylight; it was in the evening or on dark, misty days that the close-growing woods and enfolding downs appeared like whispering walls set round some sinister and wordless scene.

But at that moment all she thought of was the necessity – though she did not know why there was any necessity – of waiting till it was at least half-past ten before making her way to the cottage in the wood.

She had no idea why she was going, what she would find to say when she got there. Once up the narrow, dark stairs, however, standing by old Mrs Orpin’s bedside, she realized that it was not necessary to attempt any explanation; that she was in the presence of a superior and uncanny knowledge.

For a moment or so the eyes of the two women held each other: Margaret Wister’s clear hazel, heavily ringed with dark shadows; Mrs Orpin’s red-rimmed, alive with triumph.

Margaret’s gaze was the first to falter, for the thought of guilt in the man she loved made her feel ashamed. Perhaps she could have borne anything better than this thing which she knew of, though she would not acknowledge it; there were intellectual sins – sins of ambition and pride or of a fine sort of rage. But the hiding away, the petty lies and pretences, the degradation of such sins of the flesh were beyond her comprehension.

Once again she turned and walked over to the window, while the old woman’s eyes followed her.

It was a March day, the wind was sweeping the clouds, wisp-like trails of white gossamer, across the sky; shadows mimicked in the racing light and shade which swept over the still, bare field. There was a madder-tinted flush on the woods where the young buds were swelling; the swallows had come. It seemed as if everything was alive and moving, gathering itself together for a new lease of life. ‘And here am I,’ thought Margaret Wister, ‘dull and heavy as a snake with an unsloughed skin – futile, utterly useless. I, who am – after all – the one thing which makes a sin of what Robert chooses to do. The real reason of damnation, the condition of heaven or hell.’

‘Look ‘ee here, Missus.’ The old woman’s tone was peremptory, and the rector’s wife turned as though she were somehow bound to obey. Mrs Orpin had turned down the hem of her sheet, and spread out a white handkerchief, upon which was laid something which looked like a piece of dried bracken.

‘Look ‘ee here, an’ listen to me, now as you know that old Mother Orpin ain’t the cheat as ‘ee took ‘er for. I gathered this ‘ere sprig o’ male fern, on a St John’s Eve, eight or ten years back, when I had the full use of me legs. I cut ‘un with a silver knife, as I had off my owd Missus – for it maun never be as much as touched with iron – an’ I laid a fine white nappy under it, for the seed maun not be let fall to the ground, nor be touched by hand – neither one nor the other. When I cut ‘un I says – as them as know ‘ud tell ‘ee maun be said: “God greet thee, noble sprig. With God the Father I seek thee; with God the Son I find thee; with the Holy Ghost I break thee. I abjures thee, stalk an’ leaf, by the power of the Mightiest that thou shows me what I orders”’ – the ancient formula, used throughout unremembered ages, rolled smoothly off the old woman’s tongue, terminating with the final appeal to the Blessed Virgin and the Trinity.

‘Silence! Silence!’ cried Mrs Wister. ‘I refuse to listen to such blasphemy.’ She was sure that she said it; that she heard her own voice repeat the words. But the next moment she began to doubt the testimony of her senses, for old Mrs Orpin went on as imperturbably as though she had heard nothing: ‘I took ‘un to the church one day when the ‘oomen as was cleaning there had left the door open, an’ I laid ‘un on the altar an’ said “Our Father” over ‘un. An’ now here it be. Lay out thy kerchief on the bed – woman.’

For the life of her Margaret could not have said why she obeyed; but the fact remains that she took her small white handkerchief from her bag and spread it out on the bed, when the old woman lifted hers carefully by each corner and emptied the dried fern-leaf into it.

‘Guard it as thee would guard thine own heart,’ she said. ‘In two weeks’ time that there young son o’ Maester Hargreaves is agoin’ to be wed. Then is the time to track them as is faithless to their marriage beds. If so be as ye’re too mealy-minded to go watch as I bid yer, hark yer here now, Missus, yer’ll take that there bit o’ fern with yer when yer goes to the marryin’, for it ‘ull be in this ‘ere church an’ both you and the Reverant will be bidden to the feast as follows. Them there Hargreaves are purse-proud devils; there ain’t nothing from a marryin’ to a buryin’ as they won’t make show on – an’ you’ll lay it, sly-like so that there’s none to see yer do it, under the cloth a’neath the place where yer man’ll be sittin’.

‘If so hap he’s been all as he should by rights a’ been to thee, there’s no harm done. But if so be he’s guilty – an’ I know what I know – he’ll turn as pale as death, shakin’ from head to foot so as he maun get up – all swayin’ as though he was drunken, an’ be gone from o’ the room.

‘Then thee comes to me, an’ I’ll tell thee what ter do to the hussy as has stole ‘un from yer – with the lust o’ the eye an’ all the wanton ways o’ she.’

Without a word Margaret Wister gathered up her handkerchief by the four corners, twisted them together, and thrust it into the bosom of her dress.

Never once did her eyes meet those of Mrs Orpin. Even as she went down the dark stairs she kept them bent. All the way home, through the woods, where the catkins hung upon the hazels and the wood mercury was green beneath her feet, she never once raised them.

The last time she had seen old Mrs Orpin she had told herself that she would have nothing more to do with her; been full of smarting pride and scorn, drawing back within herself as though from some polluting touch.

But it seemed as though by this time she was beaten, drawn in, made one with all the primitive passions – smouldering and sullen, all the slow-working, subtle ways of primitive men and women.

When she got home she went up to her room, hunted out a little bit of silk – choosing, with a sort of bitter, perverted sentiment, a scrap of trimming from her wedding dress – and made a little bag into which she put the morsel of dried fern, hanging it by a cord round her neck, wondering all the while if it was really she – Margaret Wister – who was doing this thing.

There was a childish rhyme which she remembered, running somehow thus:

If this be I,

As I should hope it be,

I’ve a little dog at home

And he’ll know me.

If it be I

He’ll wag his little tail.

But if it be not

He’ll loudly bark and wail.

A true little rhyme – pregnant with a knowledge, more than half forgotten – of the faithful love of a dog, which can recognize and lament over the very shadow of its master.

But as for Margaret, she had not even a dog to recognize the real her, the integral ego. Slow tears came into her eyes at the thought of her own loneliness. It seemed as if there, alone, she was capable of human feeling; for the rest she was like a creature driven by some hateful force, against which she was powerless.

The invitation to the wedding arrived two days later, and she accepted it. Her husband watched her as she opened the letter – it seemed as though he was always watching her now. He would pretend to go out, noisily slamming the front door; then he would creep back and, opening the door of the room where she was sitting very gently, peer in as though to make sure that she was still there, after which, if she did not look up, he would slip away without a word.

Whenever Margaret lifted her eyes – and she seemed to do so less and less often, with a conscious effort as though she were actually raising some weight – he seemed to be watching her, as if wondering how much she knew.

If either of them could have spoken openly; if he could have challenged her, or she accused him, it might have cleared the air; but they had both got beyond that.

At night the rector slept heavily. He had taken to drinking port at dinner instead of Madeira, and his one glass had given place to two, then three. But Margaret could not sleep; it was only at night that her brain appeared capable of working. During the day she seemed to be in a state of stupefaction, as though she were drugged, but at night her teeming brain raced her pulses.

The day of young Hargreaves’ wedding arrived, a soft and brooding spring day which made itself felt in every limb, in the cooing of wood-doves among the trees, the press of green shoots through the moist ground; seeming to draw and pinch the human heart in its progress with the almost intolerable agony of all useless, unwanted things.

Margaret wore a silk dress of brownish-green – autumnal, like her mood – and a small round hat with a bent brim across her eyes. She was always – had been, even at her poorest – scrupulously dainty about her person; but on this particular day she felt as though she were somehow preparing for a sacrifice, in which clean raiment and purification were part of the recognized ritual.

Her husband commented on her appearance, his eyes sliding – past her face – from the brown feather on her hat to the pointed bronze shoe, with its steel buckle. ‘My word! but you are a swell!’ he said. ‘You’ll astonish the Hargreaves; they’re very simple people, you know. I’m afraid that you’ll find them rough, be shocked. They may get a little lively. Weddings in the country are the occasions for all sorts of jollification – a little too much liquor – loose speech. You’ll find it best to slip away early.’

It was evident that he did not want her to go, but could not find any reason for an open objection. He was looking extraordinarily well in his florid, Georgian way – it would have been difficult for anyone to recognize the rather ascetic young curate of St Cuthbert’s in the deep-chested, robust man with his almost oppressive air of animal vitality.

The back of his neck had grown red, with deep lines across it. When he laughed he threw back his head and opened his mouth wide. It sometimes seemed to Margaret that when he was near her he took all the air, left her scarcely enough for her shallow breathing.

The wedding itself was like a prelude to a play, in which she sat down, knelt, rose to her feet as though taking the part of some meaningless super.

But anyhow it was all meaningless – people made vows, and then they broke them. In the whole arrangement there seemed to be some grotesque – almost ludicrous – confusion between the flesh and the spirit. People were always glossing things over; why did they not face them out, make up their minds once for all which was the strongest? Then how ridiculous it was to use the same formula for any two people – herself and Robert, for instance. The oaths which had been intended to bind her were quite superficial; she had one mate, and she would never want another, even if he died; had he never come into her life it is more than probable that there never would have been anyone else. But for Robert there must always be someone; even in the old days she had never thought of him remaining a widower supposing she died first – he would need someone to look after him, that was the way in which she had put it to herself.

She wondered now if he had taken her share of the vows as well as his own, whether it would have kept him faithful to her; if anything would keep young Hargreaves – with that loose, sensual mouth – faithful to the rabbit-faced, narrow-chested slip of a girl with whom he was now kneeling before the altar.

Farmer Hargreaves gave Margaret his arm out of the church, and through the two or three meadows that lay between it and the house; while she heard herself talking to him – of the wedding, of his new daughter-in-law, of the weather, of the crops. He was flattered and pleased; people had said the parson’s wife was stuck up, but he found her uncommonly pleasant, and almost pretty, though peaky-looking, not a patch on his girl, in her pink-flounced gown.

‘Thee ought to get a bit more colour in thy cheeks living here in this fine air; but I misdoubts as thou don’t get out an’ about in the fresh air enough. Look at the rector now; uncommon well he looks, not like the same man as he did when he comed here. But I maun say this, he took to country life, from the first go off, like a duck to water.’

‘I never had much colour,’ answered Margaret, ‘but for all that I’m never ill.’

‘Well, and there are some like that. I’d a mare once that always looked as though her were on the road to die; creepin’ aben her work for all the world like a sniggle. When she was gotten with foal I an’ my missus ‘ud spend half our time cockering her up; until we found out that there weren’t nothing, in reason, nor yet out, ‘ud down her. Why I tell thee straight, missus, her’d get through as much work as any two of the others, without turning a hair; an’ there wasn’t any mare as I ever had as ‘ud throw a better foal – with less trouble neither.’

He talked on till they reached the house. Then the men dispersed, and all the other women, excepting an old dame who was hovering about the ready-set table, went upstairs to take off their hats. Only Margaret remained behind: ‘I’m afraid I shall not be able to stay very long – it is scarcely worth while,’ she said; and sat herself down on the wide old sofa by the window, to wait till they came back.

It was Miss Hargreaves who had asked her whether she would like to go upstairs; sulkily, as though Mrs Wister’s very existence grieved her. Her face was flushed with health and fresh air, her full lips crimson.

‘What a pretty frock you have got on,’ said Margaret, who wished no harm to the girl; it was no good blaming her, even if the fern should reveal all that she suspected was true. She belonged to the country – the lush, fertile country. And Robert, too, he belonged to it. What wonder if they had been caught in its seductive toils? It was what the country was full of, seemed to be made for; the propagation of each after its own kind; every beast and bird, and insect and flower, was busied over it – multiplying and killing, that was the whole sum of country life.

Her eyes strayed to the skirt of the girl’s dress, for flounces had only just come into fashion again, and this was flounced from waist to hem.

This, indeed, was her only thought. But as she looked up her eyes met those of Trixie Hargreaves – full – for the first time; large and blue and heavy-lidded, suffused with a sort of defiant shame.

The dress was well planned; the girl so generously built that it was hardly possible for anyone to suspect anything. Her parents might see her every day for weeks to come, and yet not notice the faint-growing difference in her form.

But Mrs Wister knew, rather than saw, or else even the girl’s look would have told her nothing.

As she sat alone on the settee, with the soft spring air – laden with the scent of grape hyacinths – creeping in through the open window, she tried to think things out. There were other men in the world; hanging about the farm, even during the short walk from church she had seen two strapping young farmers on either side of Trixie, competing for her smiles.

The women in the room above were moving about, setting themselves to rights; from somewhere at the back of the house came the sound of water splashing and men’s voices, mingled with laughter.

The old woman came and went. Once Margaret saw her husband peer round the corner of the open door.

She knew that there was not much time left to do what she had to do. But she was overcome by a curious sort of languor. It would be done, because it was ordained and set, by some implacable and aloof power of which she understood nothing. There was no need for her to fret or hurry, the chance would come.

She was right there; it came to her clear with none of her contriving. For presently the farmer’s voice sounded from the back kitchen: ‘Best to get the ale drawn now, eh, Mrs Gullet?’

The old woman went to the dresser and took down a large jug then moved over to the fireplace for the cellar key, which hung on a nail against the jamb. There was the sound of drawing corks in the distance, and more laughter.

The bridegroom came swaggering into the big kitchen, to smirk at himself, and set his tie straight in the glass above the mantelshelf; while someone shouted an Elizabethan witticism after him, which he returned in kind – with the embellishment of a meaningless oath. He did not realize that there was anyone, save the old woman – who did not count – in the room, until he caught sight of Margaret in the glass, upon which he retreated with a crimson face.

The old woman was grumbling because none of the other women came downstairs to give her a hand; the cellar stairs were steep, and she had rheumatism that bad she misdoubted she had been hit by an ‘elf’ shot – on her way home the night before. It wouldn’t be a lucky marriage she knew that. For the butter had never come in the churn – not as it should do – from the first day the couple was ‘church-bawled’. As for that there girl Trixie she had one rue-bargain already. Girls weren’t what they were when she was young, a flighty, feather-brained lot.

‘What is a rue-bargain?’ asked Margaret idly. Still she did not feel hurried, the time would be given her.

The old woman, half-way out of the door, turned and stared in surprise at her ignorance. ‘To be bawled in church for sure an’ then not to come up to the scratch. She were to a’ been married at the New Year – Miss Yes-an’-No. If I’d been her mother I’d a’ walloped ‘er – saving yer presence, Marm – for throwing over as nice a young chap as never was, all in a moment like that. His house full o’ furniture, bought an’ all; makin’ ‘im look that foolish like it’s little wonder as ‘ee went off to the States to be out on it all! Well, here am I keeping yon with my talking, an the beer to be drawed an’ all. One as didn’t know the Hargreaves as I knows ‘em, wouldn’t think to find them giving beer at a wedding. But that’s their way; that’s for the relations, that is; with t’owd chap tippin’ them the wink to say as how they prefers it to the sherry wine – of which they bain’t but four bottle, though don’t thee tell nobody as I told yer.’

The old woman grumbled her way to the top of the cellar steps, which were just outside the door, and so down them; her voice growing fainter at every step.

‘Whistle, Polly, whistle,’ roared an hilarious voice from the back kitchen, to be followed by a thin, far-away fluttering whistle, which showed that – whatever old Mrs Gullet might be doing – she had not got her mouth to the tap of the beer barrel.

Margaret had been to rustic weddings before, she knew that the parson sat on the left-hand of the bride – with the bridegroom to the right; and, after a moment or so of fumbling at her breast, she got up, moved across the room, lifted the edge of the table-cloth, and slipped the fern beneath it.

Then she sat down again on the settee – her hands folded on her lap, in a manner which was symbolical. The whole affair had been taken out of them. If Robert was guilty there remained only one thing to be done, to put herself, her barren, useless self, out of the way so that he might legalize the child which Trixie Hargreaves would bear to him; while if he were not guilty no harm would be done. Presently the women came down the stairs, laughing and whispering, with the bride in their midst. Mrs Hargreaves – a close-lipped, secretive-looking woman – lingered by the door to waylay old Mrs Gullet as she came panting up the steps; giving her some last instructions. Then she crossed over to the window to apologize to Mrs Wister for having kept her so long waiting, with her eyes glancing sideways at the table, counting the places to see that they were rightly set, for at the last moment a couple of uninvited cousins had joined the party.

Then the men came in with shining hair and red faces. Mrs Hargreaves sniffed the air as though she thought that she smelt whisky, reprimanded her husband in a sharp aside, and then, smiling, bade her guests be seated.

Her glance was chill as it swept Trixie, in the pink frock, and Margaret wondered if, after all, she did know, or guess, or whether it was merely the antagonism so common between mother and daughter.

They all stood while the rector said grace, and then they sat down, while Farmer Hargreaves began to carve the cold turkey. There were fowls at the other end of the table; there were cold pork and beef, jellies and custards and blancmanges.

No one spoke much. The young men and women looked at each other shyly, the elders were busy with their food. Mrs Hargreaves’ anxious glance went up and down the table. They would be better when liquor had loosened their tongues. Only the host made jokes as he carved; told stories of his own wedding, laughing at them freely.

Margaret and her husband were at the opposite ends of the table, she could look straight down it at him.

She saw the farmer heap a plate and pass it down to him: ‘Cum on then, Paerson,’ she heard him say, ‘I know as thee be a fine trencher-man.’

Robert’s face was flushed, his eyes bright, it was evident that he had already had something to drink.

The young bridegroom reached across his bride and poured him out a glass of sherry.

‘Here you are, Paerson, wet yer whistle afore yer start,’ he spoke familiarly, almost – as it seemed to Margaret – contemptuously.

The rector had just raised his knife and fork; but now he put them down, and taking the glass in his hand rose to his feet.

Every scrap of colour had gone out of his face as suddenly as though a cloth had been wiped over it. The wine in the glass which he held slopped over the edge, showing how his hand shook.

The murmured attempt at conversation ceased, every face was turned in the same direction – pale and flushed, long and round, all alike with the chins dropping a little, mouths open, eyes staring.

‘I – I – I have come here –’ began the rector. What was happening? Was he going to propose the health of the bride and bridegroom, forgetting that the feast was scarcely begun? The women appeared frightened; but the men glanced sideways at each other and grinned. Margaret felt a foot brush past her gown as one youth kicked another under the table.

The bride was shrinking sideways; for the rector trembled so that it almost seemed as though he might fall upon her.

‘I rise to – to –’ he began again; upon which young Hargreaves stretched an arm round, behind his newly-made wife, and tweaked him by the coat.

‘Sit thee down, Paerson; ‘tain’t time fur that yet awhile. Thee mun –’

He broke off as Robert Wister turned and stared at him, the glass in his hand held at such an angle that the last drop of wine was spilled on the cloth; while the next moment the glass itself dropped from his hand, and with a glance round the table, his white face drawn and piteous with a sort of childish horror and dismay, he turned and hurried out of the room.

‘He’s a bit upset. Maybe it’s a touch of the liver, or summat – hurrin’ on an empty stomach an’ all.’ The kindly farmer had his hand on Margaret’s arm, as though trying to reassure her, while the rest of the company looked awkward and self-conscious, as though something in the incident reflected on them personally.

To Margaret it seemed that for the moment all her senses, which had been for so long half-numbed, were doubled. For she saw and heard all this, though at the same time her entire attention seemed to be engrossed by Trixie Hargreaves.

She had watched Robert’s piteous self-betrayal with her full-lipped mouth tight shut instead of half open, as were the others. It seemed as though her blooming face had grown suddenly old, drawn, and anxious.

As he rushed from the room she had half risen to her feet, the knuckles of her hands showing white as she pressed them on the table. For a moment she hesitated thus, and then sank back on to her chair, without even glancing in the direction of her mother, who eyed her steadily.

The company picked up their knives and forks.

‘I don’t think I ever smelt anything like those grape hyacinths, Mr Hargreaves,’ said Margaret. ‘The perfume which came through the window while I was waiting down here was beyond words. And those yellow things, like large cowslips – what do you call them?’

Everyone stared at her with an air of shocked amazement. But she had started the conversation, and for a few moments it went on, accompanied by the rattle of knives and forks.

Then, during a sudden pause, came a sound which struck them all silent – the heart-rending sound of a man sobbing.

At this Trixie was out of her chair in a moment. Her mother caught at her dress as she passed – one of those flying frills of rose-pink; but she tore it almost savagely from her hand and was gone.

In a moment every eye was turned to Margaret, and realizing that there was something expected of her – something which she must do – she laid her napkin on the table and pushed back her chair.

‘You will excuse me, I hope, Mrs Hargreaves; my husband is subject to these heart attacks; they are terribly painful at the time, but there is no real need for anxiety. We have – there are remedies.’

As she left the room they all turned their heads from side to side and stared at each other. ‘Well I never! Did you ever see the like of that now? Heartless!’

Out from the large kitchen there was an anteroom; then a passage flagged with red bricks, which led to the porch, where Mrs Wister found her husband sitting, with his head leaning against the woodwork at the side.

Trixie Hargreaves stood by him, with one knee on the seat, so that his shoulder rested against her. She had one arm round his neck, and with the other hand, holding a white handkerchief, she wiped his forehead.

‘There, there!’ she was saying. ‘There – now you’ll be all right, my dear love, my man.’

Margaret could see that his shoulders shook. It was as if he were retching violently, though no sound came apart from an occasional sob, which seemed as though it would tear his chest.

Trixie raised her eyes and looked at her, with no sign of antagonism. It was as though Robert were a great child regarding whom their one concern was to find the best thing to do.

After a moment Margaret turned and went down the passage to where she had guessed, by the sound of running water, the back kitchen might be found. Here she drew a cup of water, and returning, handed it to Trixie, who held it to Robert’s lips.

At first he seemed to choke over it; then he took a long draught, and drew himself a little upright, while the girl again wiped his brow, smoothing back his damp hair. Centuries ago, back in Deptford, Margaret had been used to run her fingers through it and kiss it while he slept; someone had once said that all men with curly hair were weak, but she had never really thought whether Robert was, or was not, weak; he was far too near and dear for any analysis.

Presently he raised his head and looked at his wife as she stood leaning against the opposite side of the porch; then up at Trixie, his lips trembling.

‘I don’t know what happened,’ he said; ‘I felt so ill suddenly – deadly sick – and frightened – horribly frightened, as though I was going to die.’ He looked at Margaret; it seemed as though he wanted to work upon her pity to excuse him something.

‘I hope that I didn’t make a scene, upset people. I never felt so awful in my life. I was obliged to come out into the air, and Miss Hargreaves –’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Margaret; at which they both looked up, and for a moment their glances held. Those of the other two troubled, half defiant and half shamed; hers cold and sad, like that of a creature from another world.

It was the wife who spoke first – rather hurriedly, for fear that they should attempt any excuse or explanation. ‘I think, Robert, for all our sakes, that the best thing will be for you to come home with me now, and for Miss Hargreaves to go back to her father’s guests. She can say that I was so stupefied that I did not know what to do; that it was a good thing that there was someone with their wits about them, etc. Then, if she will come – it will seem only natural, as you were her father’s guest – up to the rectory this evening, she will be able to see how you are after your – your attack.’

They acquiesced in this; it seemed as though she had taken the lead so decisively that there was no choice save to do as she told them.

Together they got Robert to his feet, and Margaret made him lean upon her with one arm round her shoulder, while Trixie stood for a moment with his hand in hers, her face raised. With a woman’s greater abandonment to love she would have kissed him there, in front of his wife, had he given any sign of wishing it.

But he did not, and after a pause she turned round and went into the house without a word, while Mrs Wister braced herself to her husband’s weight.

‘Come,’ she said; ‘we must get home as best we can.’

All the way back to the rectory he talked of the attack which had overcome him, wondering what it could be, saying that he must stay in bed and send Mary for the doctor, set his affairs in order. ‘It was so sudden – so utterly unaccountable,’ he kept saying. ‘I had done nothing, taken nothing, which could have possibly upset me.’

It was very evident that he feared she might suspect him of having drunk too much, or of God only knows what else; that he looked on her as a possible judge, to be feared and almost hated.

Directly they got home – and after they had gone a little way he moved more easily, seemed refreshed by the air – she made him lie down on the sofa in the study; he would not go to bed, after all; and she knew why – that he wished to be sure of seeing Trixie when she called that evening. Then she sent for the doctor, for it seemed to her that it would be best to make the fact of his indisposition as public as possible.

When the doctor did come there seemed little that he could say. The rector’s heart appeared somewhat quicker in its beat, his pulse fuller than it should be. He was manifestly very shaken, but as neither he nor Mrs Wister would acknowledge that he had received any sort of shock – though the doctor himself suspected something of the nature of a violent quarrel – there was nothing for him to say, beyond speaking of the effect that the sudden spell of spring heat was having upon all his patients.

To Margaret it seemed as though she were putting everything into order, getting things into train, as it were; that the story of her life was moving to an end with the smooth inevitability of a Greek tragedy. She held no key to what that end might be; had no idea of what was coming next. But of this she was certain: it was all ordered, prepared, would be carried out decently, with dignity. For it is only people who fight against Fate who make an ugly, clashing confusion of their lives. For the others there are deep, agonizing wounds, both of mind and body, but there is at least the dignity of beauty and silence.

She was still in that curiously receptive state, sure that she only had to wait to be shown the way. And here she was right, for it was pointed out to her clearly, without any effort on her part, emanating, in this case, from the doctor when she was seeing him off in the hall.

‘You’re looking very seedy yourself, Mrs Wister – as if you were in need of a change, or a little feeding up. It does not do to let oneself get too run down; one loses all power of rebound. If anything happens, any slight illness, a cold or anything, it takes hold and is difficult to cure.’

‘I think I’m all right. Perhaps a little run down.’

The doctor put out a soft, plump hand and clasped her wrist. ‘Your pulse is a bit uncertain, I should say your nerves were out of order. Now, how have you been sleeping?’

Here it was – the thing which she had been waiting for. She took her chance calmly. ‘I’ve not been sleeping well for some time. I think, though it sounds a ridiculous thing to say, that the silence gets on my nerves. If you could let me have something that would start me off again, I believe I should be all right. Perhaps I’ve got it into my head that I can’t sleep,’ she added with a little laugh.

‘I will send you something – a few powders – when I send your husband’s medicine. I will make them very mild, and you can take one every night for a week. I dare say that will put you right again. But I would get away if I were you; nothing will do you – both of you, indeed – so much good as a thorough change.’

‘I will try and persuade Robert. About the medicine, now, doctor, I would like him to have a dose as soon as possible.’

‘Yes, that’s right. I’m going home now, and I will make it up and send it straight round to you.’

‘And the powders? It would be a pity to give your lad two journeys.’

‘And the powders. I won’t forget. Though, mind you, Mrs Wister, a fortnight at Margate – or, if you object to that, Broadstairs – would do you far more good than any of my physic.’

The afternoon dragged on its way with a heavy quiet. The wind had dropped, the blue sky and clouds were alike lost; it seemed as though the whole of nature were overhung by a heavy curtain of grey which muffled colour and speech and sound, so that they touched the senses with a dull obscurity.

Robert Wister felt oppressed, almost suffocated. He was so used to being out of doors that it made him restless to be too long within four walls. Yet he realized that he was an invalid – that he had behaved at the wedding that day in a manner which could only be excused by ill-health. That it would be scarcely seemly for him to go out and about.

Every now and then he got up and stared out of the window like a disconsolate child; the mayfly were out – they lasted such a short time, and it was just the evening for fishing. But directly he heard his wife coming he ran back to the sofa, and lay there with closed eyes.

Soon after five the medicine came from the doctor. Margaret undid the parcel in the hall, and brought his to him. ‘It’s the best time to take it now you’ve just had your tea,’ she said.

The rector drank it off obediently, with a glance at the tray which stood by his side. ‘I was not able to eat anything,’ he said, observing, with a sense of resentment, that his wife seemed in nowise touched, engrossed in herself.

‘I don’t think you’ll want anything more at present,’ she said; ‘I’m going to lie down a little and rest; I have slept badly for the last few nights.’

A sense of relief came over Robert. He would now be able to get up, to move about the house, to behave like a normal being. Though with this came a sense of resentment against her for her heartlessness.

Though he was better now he certainly had been very ill indeed; was frightened of illness as all normally healthy people are.

Once again Mary was out; Emmie was somewhere in the back regions; the house was almost abnormally quiet.

After a while he moved into the dining-room and mixed himself a whisky and soda; then into the drawing-room.

There was a photograph of himself as he had appeared in the St Cuthbert’s days, in a silver frame upon Margaret’s writing-table, and he stood staring at it for a moment or two – rather contemptuously. Then he moved back into his study and took up a book.

But he had lost the habit of reading; and after a while he threw it on one side, and picked up a sporting paper.

The time seemed interminable. At last Emmie appeared with the lamp. And then – after another long pause – came to say that dinner was ready; asking what she was to do. For she had taken Mrs Wister her hot water and found her lying on her bed asleep, did not know whether to waken her or not.

‘No, no, don’t disturb her; she has had bad nights lately – so she tells me. Just keep some soup hot, and she can have it when she stirs.’

Robert was conscious of a little glow of self-appreciation as he spoke; he was seeing to his wife’s comfort like a good husband. He was a good husband, as long as she did not know anything to the contrary.

He dawdled over his dinner and his three glasses of port, which seemed to put new life into him. That was what Margaret needed; there was nothing like port for toning up the system.

He had almost given up the thought of seeing Trixie that night. Though the desire for her swelled up in him so that he half thought of walking towards the farm, hanging about a little in hopes of seeing her.

But it was only an idle thought; for he knew well enough that, particularly just now, he must do nothing to endanger his reputation. He was conscious of a sense almost of resentment against Trixie, along with his craving to see her, to be near her. For somehow he thought that if it had not been for her things would not have happened as they did; not being profound enough to realize that he was so ripe for such happenings that – at the beginning – any woman would have done equally well.

At half-past nine – when he had long given her up – Trixie arrived, and all speculation was lost in his delight at the mere sight of her; his feeling that here at last was someone to ‘be nice’ to him – as he himself would have expressed it.

She was all flushed with hurrying through the night air, wrapped from head to foot in an old ulster. But for all her colour she was nervous and depressed. The excuse which she had given for her late visit to Emmie, who opened the door to her, was that her father and mother were anxious to know if Mr Wister was any better; though, as a matter of fact, they had gone to bed early and believed her to be in her room, already asleep.

When she was shown into the study she had not a word to say of her father. It was all of her mother that she spoke: ‘She suspects something, I know she does; she watches me all the time – that’s her way. Oh, it’s horrible! I’ve always been open, not minded what people said or thought of me; but now I seem to be for ever lying – and I’m sure I don’t know what Tom’ – Tom was the newly-married brother – ‘thinks of it all. I wouldn’t mind if we could go away together, openly.’

‘We can’t – you know we can’t. You must remember my –’ he was going to say ‘my cloth’, and then, suddenly ashamed, changed the word to ‘profession’.

‘I know, I know; though any outsider would think it ‘ud be the sort of profession that ‘ud make one have to be open. And it isn’t only that – there’s your wife. I thought from what you told me that she was as cold as a stone, didn’t care for you. But she’s not like that, anyhow where you’re concerned. I don’t know, but looking at her to-day I felt that she half worshipped you, would die for you. Besides, she’s a lady, one of your own sort. I wouldn’t – even if anything happened – make you as good a sort of wife, as the world counts it, as she does. Though you tell me that you never did love her – not as you love me.’ There was something almost of entreaty in the girl’s voice, as though she wanted him to reassure her in some way. ‘I don’t know what to do.’ She spread her arms out on the study table and dropped her head upon them, with a little moan: ‘I’ve felt rather proud of it, thought it was rather grand till to-day. But now I’m frightened. Even if she found out and divorced you – if we were able to marry – things would never seem right. Not for my people, I mean – they’re that old-fashioned; not for me either, for the matter of that; I don’t believe I’d ever feel we were really married; though God knows I love you so that I’d go through fire for you.’

The rector moved over to the mantelpiece; picked up his pipe, filled it, and rammed the tobacco down with his little finger. He did not know what to say; for it was a curious fact that though both his wife and Trixie Hargreaves believed he would marry her if possible, he himself had no such idea. Or if it came to him, it was with a sense of shrinking, of something which, at the worst, he might be driven to. In his passion for the girl herself there was nothing permanent or domestic. He realized this clearly, as men – even the stupidest of them – do realize such things, which, with all her quicker intelligence, a woman is slow to grasp.

Now, because he really did not know what to do or say, Robert Wister took refuge in a caress; and moving across the room put one hand on Trixie’s hair; then slid it round under her chin, raised her face, and kissed her on the lips. ‘It will all come right, dear. I know I have done wrong, horribly wrong. But things right themselves somehow, one must’ – he was going to say, ‘put one’s trust in God,’ he had said it so often, but again he changed his words – ‘try not to lose one’s self-control, get flurried. After all’ – suddenly his face grew flushed, boyish, honest – ‘why are we told to be fruitful and multiply – eyes and ears and imagination, all alike fed up with sex, from the time we are kids at school – tied and bound as we are? What is a marriage without children? It isn’t half a marriage. If we had been given children I’d never have as much as looked at another woman,’ he added. And now he spoke the truth; not one child – wistful and quiet as only children so often are – would have satisfied him, but a nursery full of boisterous growing girls and boys, a sort of tally-hoing pack.

‘Then – then we wouldn’t have had our love,’ said Trixie, with the element of simplicity which is in all primitive women.

‘No, we wouldn’t have had our love,’ agreed Robert Wister; perhaps rather lukewarmly, for she glanced up at him with a sort of fierceness.

‘Well, by God, that’s been worth something!’ she breathed; and caught at his hand, would have said more but for a sudden tumult in the hall.

It was Mary’s voice shrilly raised. It seemed as though she were making her way through the hall from the kitchen; throwing back her words as she went to someone who still remained there. ‘I will tell him; I’ve to tell him. It’s my duty, I say; an’ oh dear, oh dear, I wonder why I ever –’

Robert Wister moved again to the fireplace; and Trixie sat up straight, smoothing out the gloves which she had been in too great a hurry to put on. ‘Well, I suppose I ought to be going,’ she was beginning in a mincing voice, when – with a perfunctory knock – the study door was pushed open, and the parlourmaid burst into the room, still wearing her hat and coat.

Her face was patched in crimson and white, as though haste and fear had struggled for mastery. For some moments it seemed as though she had exhausted all her words in her transit through the hall, or else her panting breath half choked her.

Again Trixie Hargreaves murmured something about going, and rose from her chair. At which a stream of words broke forth from the other woman, shaken by some overwhelming fear out of all her set ways. For Mary was a thoroughly good servant, very regular in her ways. Always on her day out she was back at ten; and put on her cap and apron to come and ask her master and mistress if there was anything else they needed, to wish them good night. In the face of all this her disarray was the more noticeable – even if it had been unaccompanied by an incoherent flow of speech. ‘Oh, sir, I don’t know what you’ll say to me – I don’t know whatever took me to go and do such a thing – but Emmie had been; it was Emmie as told me that the old woman was that cunning and creepy-like. But I’ll never forget it, no, not if I live to be a hundred! She dared me to do it. An’ I did it. Oh dear, oh dear!’ Here the girl broke off in a shuddering, hysterical sob.

‘Did what?’ inquired the rector.

‘Went to see that there old Mrs Orpin. I don’t care what folks say about there being no devil – saving your presence, sir – they wouldn’t say it if they’d seen that dreadful old woman as I did. She was in ‘er bed; and she had a great white enamel basin o’ water on ‘er knee, and she was stirring it round with her finger. I meant to ask her about my friend, you know, sir, Ben Hawkins’s son, for he’s gone off to a job in Bristol, and there’s never any knowing –’ She paused for a moment, her face was sombre, she had her own troubles, and there was never any knowing.

Then the more recent happenings took possession of her again. ‘You wouldn’t wonder that I was upset if you could have seen her, sir, and the way she carried on – laughing and all!’

Again she shuddered; for the first time in her life she realized that a laugh could be terrible, absolutely devoid of merriment or derision.

‘Well, there’s nothing in that to be so very frightened about, a silly old woman who plays on the credulity of you silly girls. You deserve everything you get, if you will go tampering with such folly.’

He spoke pompously; it seemed to give him a sort of strength to find someone to rebuke.

Mary took out her handkerchief and put it to her eyes, then began to twist it round and round in her fingers: ‘It wasn’t about myself, sir, I’m in such an upset. It’s what she said about you and the mistress – terrible things! O’ death and – and all sorts of wickedness – I told Emmie it was my plain duty to tell you of it – then, just as I was making off, she called after me. About the mistress, sir, she said as how she had come to this place all fresh an’ fair, but as how the black ox had trodden on her foot since then –’

‘The black ox? But what in the world –’ Robert Wister was beginning, when Trixie broke in:

‘I know, it’s a country saying – it means she’s had trouble.’

Mary turned and stared at her. They were all standing in a rough triangle, overcome by a sort of creeping fear out of all proportion to the things of which the girl was telling them.

‘She said: “Get thee along home, girl, there’s one that is coming to join us to-night, and if a hare crosses your path on the way you will know that it’s the truth I’m speakin’ an’ that you’ve met her half way. When you get back, if you find her gone” – those were her very words, as I stand here, sir – “if you find her gone, put a saucer of salt on her breast”.’

‘But this is sheer balderdash!’ broke in the rector. He glanced from his terror-stricken parlourmaid to Trixie Hargreaves, and saw to his surprise that she had taken on that strange mottled paleness which some naturally high-coloured people show in moments of great agitation.

‘Oh, oh,’ she said, ‘don’t’ – and put both her hands over her ears, as though she wished to shut out the sound of Robert Wister’s robust voice. ‘It’s what they do here – in the country – for – for the sin eater.’ Her voice sank to the merest whisper on the last words.

‘The what?’ – the rector stared at her with drooping jaw. There was something uncanny, horrible in the whole thing.

‘Yes, you’re right.’ It was Mary who spoke, turning to Trixie as she did so – drawing her apart, as it were – so that the matter now hung between the two women. ‘That’s what she said of the mistress. She has suffered for the sins of others, now let them others eat her sin, which it is they as have druv her to.’

‘Yes, yes, I know – and I?’ breathed Trixie.

‘I came home. I came by the field against the wood. I was all moithered with fear, or I wouldn’t have come that way. And just before I got to the gate – oh, my God, how it frightened me! My God! My God!’ She crossed her hands over her breast, and rocked herself to and fro in an agony of hysterical fear. The correct and well-trained parlourmaid, out of whose veins no training in the whole world, even among the best families, could wholly eradicate the deep well-spring of rustic superstition and fear – ‘When I was just nigh the gate a great hare ran under it, and clean across my feet. An’ I knew that the – that the missus was –’

‘Why, your mistress is upstairs lying on her bed asleep. I never heard such nonsense! I –’ The rector’s words broke off into a great burst of rather too high-pitched laughter.

It had been a trying day, things had worked upon him, and after all he was an invalid, in the doctor’s hands. It was no wonder his nerves had been stretched taut by Mary’s incredible tale. But now – this was too much – bordering on the grotesque. Did the fool of a girl mean that it was his wife, Margaret Wister, who was careering about the fields at night in the form of a hare? ‘Marthas’, they called them, ‘Marthas’. He laughed again. ‘She was tired out, she didn’t even come down to dinner. I think perhaps she was over-anxious’ – he was going to say ‘over-anxious about me’, which seemed a sane and wifely failing, when he realized that he was out of it – that the two women were gazing at each other with their very souls in their eyes.

It was Mary who moved first, and she turned and ran, with her hat all on one side, her best skirt gathered up around her knees; while – ‘No, no, no!’ cried Trixie, and followed her – as though the rector were not in the room, as though the house were her own.

‘What would Margaret think?’ That was his one thought as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and filled it again, with shaking hands.

He half moved across the room as though to follow them, then came back. After all there was nothing he could do, it was best to let the women have it out among themselves, he was thinking, when there came the sound of a long-drawn, wailing cry from the upper storey.

He heard Emmie run up the stairs two steps at a time – then there came another cry; then a long silence.

He stood in the middle of the room with his unlighted pipe in his hand. What did it all mean – what was going on up there? It seemed as if he were rooted to the spot like a man in a dream, or did not dare to go upstairs to see what was wrong. Though all his faculties seemed tearing themselves to tatters in their effort to see, to hear, to guess.

A moment or two later Emmie came running down the stairs – with her apron up to her face, blubbering unrestrainedly – and bolted into the dining-room.

By some supreme effort the rector tore his feet from his study carpet, and met her in the doorway as she returned.

‘What – what?’ he began, loudly, truculently; then glanced down at what she carried in her hand.

A small white glass salt-cellar.