these cursed fens!”
He walked along the edge of the ditch, looking for a plank or a dam by which to cross.
No plank! No dam! Only another black ditch still wider than the one he was following!
He had a queer horrid moment; caught there, by those two black ditches. The reeds had been dead and rotten for some time and their brown stalks stood up like twisted feathers from some obscene bird’s skull whose skeleton was mud-engulfed. One ditch was full of dead willow leaves. The other had a dead alder branch floating on its surface. And from both of them there emerged a heavy thick acrid odour that seemed as if it must be the very final exhalation of the dead flesh of a world.
Turning his heel in an angry desperation he caught sight ofa human figure emerging from the shadow of the church and moving hesitatingly among the graves.
His heart, in spite of himself, began to beat violently. She was earlier than he had expected!
Had there been some new trouble with that mad priest?
Well! Never mind the reason. She was there. And he quickened his steps to something approaching a run, fearful that she might take fright when she saw him and out of some crazy perversity elude him and vanish.
She gave no sign of retreating, however. She just remained passive—leaning against a tombstone; waiting for him. He scrambled over the low wall and strode straight up to her, holding his hat in his hand.
“I knew it was you,” she said simply; and made room for him at her side; so that he could lean also against the monument to “Timothy Edward Foraker, yeoman of this Parish.”
“I knew it was you,” she repeated, letting her fingers remain clasped in his as they stared together across the misty expanse.
Rook did not speak a word to her for several minutes. His soul seemed divided into three separate beings. One of these beings was obsessed with a simple concentrated desire to get hold of the inmost fluttering identity of this passive creature. To get hold of that—to take it for his own—to make it his unresisting, helpless, abandoned possession.
Another being in him was full of nervous considerations that were tremulous with a thousand fears, like the quivering antennæ of moths, the agitated feelers of sea anemones, the twitching nostrils of horses; considerations that included Netta, Cousin Ann, his mother—Nell herself.
But the third being in him just looked on, with absolute detachment and indifference, at the whole turbid stream of his life. It hovered over both their heads, this third being, and over the gravestone of Timothy Edward against which they leaned. It hovered over the ragged, mournful trunk ofLexie’s elm tree. It voyaged out over the misty fens, over the gates and dams and poplars and ditches—over the rim of the horizon. And it was already out of its body, this third being, out of its malice-ridden, nerve-jangled body, drinking with deep, thirsty draughts the great calm under lake of hateless, loveless oblivion!
His first words to her came from the second being in him, the one with the twitching nostrils of a nervous animal. “Why did you come earlier than you said? It’s only beginning to get dark now.”
Even while he spoke, the first being in him was clutching her thin fingers more tightly, possessing itself of them more unscrupulously.
“Why didn’t I wait?” she murmured. “It wasn’t because I was in such a desperate hurry that I couldn’t wait, Rook. Was that what you were thinking?” And she turned her head toward him with a faint little-girl smile, answering the pressure of his fingers.
“No, Rook dear,” she went on. “It was because he is after all going to have vespers to-night. He told me yesterday he wasn’t; that he had something else to do; and that’s why I said to you to come to-night. But he is. So I came early; on the chance. I shall have to wait for him here,” she added. “He likes me to be in the church.”
Rook cast a slow, cautious glance toward the corner of
He walked along the edge of the ditch, looking for a plank or a dam by which to cross.
No plank! No dam! Only another black ditch still wider than the one he was following!
He had a queer horrid moment; caught there, by those two black ditches. The reeds had been dead and rotten for some time and their brown stalks stood up like twisted feathers from some obscene bird’s skull whose skeleton was mud-engulfed. One ditch was full of dead willow leaves. The other had a dead alder branch floating on its surface. And from both of them there emerged a heavy thick acrid odour that seemed as if it must be the very final exhalation of the dead flesh of a world.
Turning his heel in an angry desperation he caught sight ofa human figure emerging from the shadow of the church and moving hesitatingly among the graves.
His heart, in spite of himself, began to beat violently. She was earlier than he had expected!
Had there been some new trouble with that mad priest?
Well! Never mind the reason. She was there. And he quickened his steps to something approaching a run, fearful that she might take fright when she saw him and out of some crazy perversity elude him and vanish.
She gave no sign of retreating, however. She just remained passive—leaning against a tombstone; waiting for him. He scrambled over the low wall and strode straight up to her, holding his hat in his hand.
“I knew it was you,” she said simply; and made room for him at her side; so that he could lean also against the monument to “Timothy Edward Foraker, yeoman of this Parish.”
“I knew it was you,” she repeated, letting her fingers remain clasped in his as they stared together across the misty expanse.
Rook did not speak a word to her for several minutes. His soul seemed divided into three separate beings. One of these beings was obsessed with a simple concentrated desire to get hold of the inmost fluttering identity of this passive creature. To get hold of that—to take it for his own—to make it his unresisting, helpless, abandoned possession.
Another being in him was full of nervous considerations that were tremulous with a thousand fears, like the quivering antennæ of moths, the agitated feelers of sea anemones, the twitching nostrils of horses; considerations that included Netta, Cousin Ann, his mother—Nell herself.
But the third being in him just looked on, with absolute detachment and indifference, at the whole turbid stream of his life. It hovered over both their heads, this third being, and over the gravestone of Timothy Edward against which they leaned. It hovered over the ragged, mournful trunk ofLexie’s elm tree. It voyaged out over the misty fens, over the gates and dams and poplars and ditches—over the rim of the horizon. And it was already out of its body, this third being, out of its malice-ridden, nerve-jangled body, drinking with deep, thirsty draughts the great calm under lake of hateless, loveless oblivion!
His first words to her came from the second being in him, the one with the twitching nostrils of a nervous animal. “Why did you come earlier than you said? It’s only beginning to get dark now.”
Even while he spoke, the first being in him was clutching her thin fingers more tightly, possessing itself of them more unscrupulously.
“Why didn’t I wait?” she murmured. “It wasn’t because I was in such a desperate hurry that I couldn’t wait, Rook. Was that what you were thinking?” And she turned her head toward him with a faint little-girl smile, answering the pressure of his fingers.
“No, Rook dear,” she went on. “It was because he is after all going to have vespers to-night. He told me yesterday he wasn’t; that he had something else to do; and that’s why I said to you to come to-night. But he is. So I came early; on the chance. I shall have to wait for him here,” she added. “He likes me to be in the church.”
Rook cast a slow, cautious glance toward the corner of
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