Seven for a secret

On a certain cold winter evening, in the country that lies between the dimpled lands of England and the gaunt purple steeps of Wales-- half in Faery and half out of it--the old farm-house that stood in the midst of the folds and billows of Dysgwlfas-on-the-Wild-Moors glowed with a deep gem-like lustre in its vast setting of grey and violet. Moorland country is never colourless. It still keeps, when every heather-bell is withered, in its large mysterious expanses, a bloom of purple like the spirit of the heather. Against this background, which lay on every side, mile on sombre mile, the homestead, with its barns and stacks, held and refracted every ray of the declining sunlight, and made a comfortable and pleasant picture beneath the fleecy, low, cinereous sky, which boded snow. The farm-house was built of fine old mellow sandstone, of that weatherworn and muted red which takes an indescribable beauty beneath the level rays of dawn and sunset, as though it irradiated the light that touched it. It was evening only in the sense in which that word is used in this border country, which is any time after noon. It was not yet tea-time, though preparations for tea were going on within. Among the cornricks, which burned under the sun into a memory of the unreaped August tints of orange and tawny and yellow, redpolls were feasting and seeking their customary shelter for the night, and one or two late-lingering mountain linnets kept up their sad little lament of 'twite-twite-twite' in the bare blackthorn hedge. Blackbirds began to think of fluffing their feathers, settling cosily, and drawing up their eyelids. They 'craiked' and scolded in their anxiety to attain each his secret Nirvana. From the stubble fields, that lay like a small pale coin on the outspread moor, a flock of starlings came past with a rip of the air like the tearing of strong silk.

The rickyard lay on the north side of the foldyard; on the south was the house; to the east it was bounded by the shippen, the cowhouses and stables. To the west lay the orchard, and beyond it the cottage, which in these lonely places is always built when the farm is built. The whole thing formed a companionable little township of some five hundred souls--allowing the turkeys to have souls, and including the ewes when they lay near the house at lambing-time. As to whether the redpolls, the linnets and the starlings should be included, Gillian of Dysgwlfas was often doubtful. They sang; they flew; and nobody could sing or fly without a soul: but they were so quick and light and inconsequent, their songs were so thin and eerie, that Gillian thought their souls were not quite real--faery souls, weightless as an eggshell when the egg has been sucked out. On the roof of the farm the black fantail pigeons, which belonged to Robert Rideout of the cottage, sidled up and down uneasily. All day, troubled by the clangour within the house, they had stepped at intervals, very gingerly, to the edge of the thatch, and set each a ruby eye peering downwards. They had observed that the leaded windows stood open, every one, all day; that the two carved arm-chairs with the red cushions, and the big sheepskin hearthrug of the parlour, had been brought out on to the square lawn where the dovecote was, and beaten. They had seen Simon, their hated enemy, slinking round the borders where the brown sterns of the perennials had been crisped by early frosts, miserable as he always was on cleaning days, finally sulking in the window of the cornloft and refusing to enter the house at all. All this, they knew, meant some intrusion of the outer world, the world that lay beyond their furthest gaze, into this quiet place, drenched in old silence. It must be that Farmer Lovekin's sister was coming--that Mrs. Fanteague who caused cleanings of the dovecote, whom they hated. They marked their disapproval by flashing up all together with a steely clatter of wings, and surveying the lessening landscape from the heights of the air.

Most of the windows were shut now, and a warm, delicious scent of cooking afflicted Simon's appetite so that he rose, stretched, yawned, washed cursorily, shelved his dignity and descended to the kitchen, where he twined himself about the quick feet of Mrs. Makepeace, urgent between the larder and the great open fire, with its oven on one side and gurgling boiler on the other.

By the kitchen table stood Gillian Lovekin. Her full name was Juliana, but the old-fashioned way of treating the name had continued in the Lovekin family. She was stoning raisins. Every sixth raisin she put into her mouth, rapturously and defiantly, remembering that she and not Mrs. Makepeace was mistress of the farm. When her mother died Gillian had been only sixteen. Her first thought, she remembered with compunction, had been that now she would be mistress. She was eighteen on this evening of preparation, and just 'out of her black.' She was neither tall nor short, neither stout nor very slender; she was not dark nor fair, not pretty nor ugly. She had ugly things about her, such as the scar which seamed one side of her forehead, and gave that profile an intent, relentless look. Her nose was much too high in the bridge--the kind of nose that comes of Welsh ancestry and is common in the west. It gave her, in her softest moods, a domineering air. But her mouth was sensitive and sweet, and could be yielding sometimes, and her eyes had so much delight in all they looked upon, and saw so much incipient splendour in common things, that they charmed you and led you in a spell, and would not let you think her plain or dull.

She liked to do her daily tasks with an air; so she used the old Staffordshire bowl (which had been sent from that county as a wedding present for her grandmother) to dip her fingers in when they were sticky. The brown raisins were heaped upon a yellow plate, and she made a gracious picture with her two plaits of brown hair, her dark eyebrows bent above eyes of lavender-grey, and her richly tinted face with its country tan and its flush of brownish rose. The firelight caressed her, and Simon, when he could spare time from the bits of fat that fell off Mrs. Makepeace's mincing board, blinked at her greenly and lovingly.

Mrs. Makepeace was making chitterling puffs and apple cobs. 'Well!' she said, mincing so swiftly that she seemed to mince her own fingers every time, 'we've claned this day, if ever!'

Gillian sighed. She disliked these bouts of fierce manual industry almost as much as Simon did.

'I'm sure my A'nt Fanteague did ought to be pleased,' she said, making her aunt's name into three syllables.

'Mrs. Fanteague,' observed Mrs. Makepeace, 'is a lady as is never pl'ased. Take your dear 'eart out, serve on toast with gravy of your bone and sinew. Would she say "Thank you"? She'd sniff and she'd peer, and she'd say with that loud lungeous voice of 'ers: "What you want, my good 'oman, is a larger 'eart."'

Gillian's laugh rang out, and Simon, who loved her voice, came purring across the kitchen and leapt into her lap.

'Saving your presence, Miss Gillian, child,' added Mrs. Makepeace, 'and excuse me making game of your A'ntie.'

'Time and agen,' said Gillian, pushing away the plate of raisins, 'I think I'd lief get in the cyart by A'nt Fanteague when she goes back to Sil'erton, and go along of her, beyond the Gwlfas and the mountains, beyond the sea -'

'Wheer then?' queried Mrs. Makepeace practically.

'To the moon-O! maybe.'

'By Leddy! What'd your feyther do?'

'Feyther's forgetful. He wouldna miss me sore.'

'And Robert? My Bob?'

She looked swiftly at Gillian, her brown eyes keen and motherly.

'Oh, Robert?' mused Gillian, her hands going up and down amid Simon's dark fur.

She brooded.

'Robert Rideout?' she murmured. Then she swung her plaits backwards with a defiant toss, and cried: 'He wouldna miss me neither!'

She flung Simon down and got up.

'It's closing in,' she said. 'I mun see to my coney wires.'

'It's to be hoped, my dear, as you'll spare me a coney out of your catch to make a patty. Your A'nt Fanteague dearly loves a coney patty.'

'Not without feyther pays for it,' said Gillian. 'If I give away my comes as fast as I catch 'em, where's my lessons in the music?'

She opened the old nail-studded door that gave on the fold-yard, and was gone.

'Gallus!' observed Mrs. Makepeace. 'Ah, she's gallus, and for ever 'ankering after the world's deceit, but she's got an 'eart, if you can only get your fingers round it, Robert, my lad. But I doubt you binna for'ard enow.'

She shook her head over the absent Robert so that the strings of her sun-bonnet swung out on either side of her round, red, cheerful face.

'If I didna know as John Rideout got you long afore I took

pity on poor Makepeace (and a man of iron John Rideout was, and it's strange as I should come to a man of straw), I'd be nigh thinking you was Makepeace's, time and agen. Dreamy--dreamy!'

She rolled and slapped and minced as if her son and her second husband were on the rolling-board and she was putting them into shape. But John Rideout, the man of iron, remained in her mind as a being beyond her shaping. After his death she had seen all other men as so many children, to be cared for and scolded, and because Jonathan Makepeace was the most helpless man she had ever met, she married him. She had seen him first on a market day at the Keep. Tall, narrow, with his long hair and beard blowing in the wind, his mild blue eye met hers with the sadness of one who laments: 'When I speak unto them of peace, they make them ready for battle'. For the tragedy of Jonathan Makepeace was that, since he had first held a rattle, inanimate matter had been his foe. He was a living illustration of the theory that matter cuts across the path of life. In its crossing of Jonathan's path it was never Jonathan that came off as victor. Jugs flung themselves from his hands; buckets and cisterns decanted their contents over him; tablecloths caught on any metal portion of his clothing, dragging with them the things on the table. If he gathered fruit, a heavy fire of apples poured upon his head. If he fished, he fell into the water. Many bits of his coat, and one piece of finger, had been given to that Moloch, the turnip-cutter. When he forked the garden, he forked his own feet. When he chopped wood, pieces fled up into his face like furious birds. If he made a bonfire, flames drew themselves out to an immense length in order to singe his beard. This idiosyncrasy of inanimate nature (or of Jonathan) was well known on the moors, and was enjoyed to the full, from Mallard's Keep, which lay to the north, to the steep dusky market town of Weeping Cross, which lay south. It was enjoyed with the quiet, uncommenting, lasting enjoyment of the countryside. On the day Abigail met him, it was being enjoyed at the Keep, where the weekly market was, and where people shopped on ordinary occasions, reserving Christmas or wedding or funeral shopping for the more distant Weeping Cross. Jonathan had been shopping. Under one arm he had a bag of chicken-food; under the other, bran. Both bags, aware of Jonathan, had gently burst, and a crowd followed him with silent and ecstatic mirth while he wandered, dignified and pathetic, towards the inn, with the streams of grain and bran making his passing like a paperchase. She had heard of Jonathan (who had not?) and this vision of him was the final proof that he needed mothering. She told him briskly what was happening, and his 'Deary, deary me!' and his smile seemed to her very lovable. She wrapped up his parcels and listened sympathetically to his explanations. There was 'summat come over' things, he said. 'Seemed like they was bewitched.' She did not laugh. She had a kind of ancient wisdom about her that fitted in with her firm, rosy face, her robin-like figure. She knew that the heavens were not the same heavens for all. The rain did not fall equally on the evil and the good. Here was Jonathan, as good as gold, yet every cloud in heaven seemed to collect above him. As he ruefully said, 'Others met be dry as tinder, but I'm soused.' Realizing that war with the inanimate is woman's special province, because she has been trained by centuries of housework-- of catching cups as they sidle from their hooks and jugs as they edge from the table--Mrs. Rideout decided to spend the rest of her life fighting for Jonathan. She had done so for twelve years, to her own delight, the admiration of the country round, and Jonathan's content.

Robert was ten years old when she married Makepeace. His heavily lashed eyes, which had a dark glance as well as a tender one, and of which it was difficult to see the colour because of their blazing vitality, his forbidding mouth with its rare sweet smile, were so like his father's that she would ponder on bun for hours at a time. To John Rideout she was faithful, though she married Makepeace. And as Christmas after Christmas went by, and still Jonathan was alive and well, she triumphed. She loved him with a maternal love, and when Robert grew to manhood, Jonathan took his place. Abigail would look at his tall, thin figure with pride, remembering all that she had saved him from during the past year.

Now, while Abigail worked in the farm kitchen, Jonathan was very unhappily putting a tallow dip in his horn lantern, in order to harness the mare and go to the station across the moor to fetch Mrs. Fanteague. The tallow candle refused to stand up, bending towards him like the long greyish neck of a cygnet, pouring tallow on to Mrs. Makepeace's check tablecloth.

Jonathan thought of the things that the harness would do, of the gates that would slam in his face, and the number of times he would drop the whip; he thought of the miles of darkly sighing moor which he must cross in order to bring back Mrs. Fanteague and her sharp-cornered box (always by the mercy of heaven and in defiance of material things), and he sighed. Abigail would have a sup of tea ready for him when he got home, 'If he got home,' he amended. With a fatalism which shaded his character like a cloak, he regarded the worst as the only thing likely to happen, and whether he stubbed his foot or fell from the top of the hay-bay, he only said 'Lard's will be done.'

As he opened the stable door, a goblin of wind puffed his light out. The door slammed and pinched his fingers. He had no matches. Time pressed, for no one ever kept Mrs. Fanteague waiting. He lifted up his voice.

Robert Rideout! Robert Rideout!' he called.

His thin cry wandered through the foldyard to the rickyard, and brought sleepy eyelids half-way down. The echoes strayed disconsolately into the vagueness of the surrounding moor, which, at sunset, had darkened like a frown.

Robert did not appear.

'Off on lonesome!' commented Jonathan. 'What a lad! Oh, what a useless, kim-kam lad! Never a hand's turn. Allus glooming and glowering on the yeath!.'

'What ails you, stepfeyther?' asked a deep and quiet voice.

'What for be you blaating by your lonesome outside the dark door?'

Jonathan sighed with relief, setting himself like a sleepy bird in the strong, secure presence of Robert Rideout. He stood with his white hair blowing, wringing his hands like a frail prophet of disaster, and told Robert of the long day's mishaps.

'Ah! It's allus like that when mother's off at farm,' said Robert, fetching out the mare, who nestled her nose softly into his rough coat. Horses never worked so well for anyone as for Robert. When he milked the cows, they gave more milk. No ewe, it was said, would drop her lambs untimely if he were shepherd. The very hens, obliged by hereditary instinct to 'steal their nesses,' would come forth with their bee-like swarms of chicks when Robert went by, revealing their sin and their glory to his eye alone.

'Ready!' said Robert. He gave Jonathan the reins and whip, tucked a sack round his knees, saw to the lamps, and opened the gate.

'Leave a light in stable, lad, agen we come--if we come.'

This was his customary phrase. If he only went to call the ducks from the pond, he bade his wife as fond a farewell as if he were going on a voyage. It was most probable that he would fall head foremost among the ducks and that the weeds would coil themselves about him and drag him down. It was curious that no one ever thought of stopping Jonathan doing these responsible tasks. For instance, he went to 'lug' Mrs. Fanteague back because he always did so. Things happened; but, so far, the worst had not occurred. There is a vein of optimistic fatalism in the country which always hopes that the worst never will happen. Besides, there was Mrs. Fanteague. Coming home, she would be in command. Even now, when she had not so much as alighted on the windswept wooden platform of the branch line station at the Keep, her presence, advancing solidly beyond the horizon, comforted him inexpressibly. There was also Winny, the mare. She would look after him. She understood him very well. When he jerked the off rein, she swerved to the near, and vice versa. She knew every stone, every bit of uneven road, every stray scent that crossed it, fine as a thread of cobweb, all the walking gradients and the slippery bits. She knew the place where the road ran beside the railway line for half a mile, just as you came to the Keep--where, if Robert had been driving, she would have been 'nervy' and relied on him, on his voice and his firm hand on the rein--where, if anyone else had been driving, she would have run away. When she had Jonathan in the trap, she did not run away; she allowed herself no starts or tremors. If he had left things entirely to her, nothing would ever have happened. The animal world, as if to make up for the unkindness of the inanimate, was kind to him, and as the stocks and stones rose up and confounded him, the living creatures comforted him, motherly and consoling.

'I'd come and send you a bit, stepfeyther, only I mun see to sheep.'

'Good-bye, lad, and God bless you,' said Jonathan. 'I'll be right enow when the mar' gets going.'

But as they swung out on to the moor, he turned and glanced at the comfortable lit windows of the farm and shook his head sadly and murmured: 'Lard save me to lug Mrs. Fanteague back.'

A Sharp young moon sidled up over the dark eastern shoulder of the moor, entangled herself in the black manes of the pines which swayed a little in the rising night wind, slipped through them like a fish through a torn net, and swam free in a large grey sky which was beginning to tingle between the woolly clouds, with a phosphorescence of faint starlight. In the last meadow that sloped up, rough and tussocky, to the splendid curve of moorland, Robert found the sheep, uneasy beneath a dubious heaven. They lay with their dim raddled bodies outlined by crisp, frosty, faintly luminous grass. The presage of lambing-time was already in their eyes.

'Coom then!' said Robert. 'Coom then!'

They rose with a faery crackling of herbage, and prepared to go whither he should lead them. But as he turned towards home, a voice, sharp and silvery as the young moon, cutting the deep boding silence like a sickle, cried from the other side of the bare hazel hedge:

'Bide for me, 'oot, Bob?'

He turned, unsurprised and unhurried.

'What ails you, Gillian, child, nutting in November? Dunna you know the owd rhyme?'

'Say it!'

'Nut in November,
Gather doom.
There's none will remember
Your tomb.'
'You made it,' she cried.

He laughed shyly.

'What for do you go to think that-a-way?'

'I dunna think. I know. You made it, somewheer in that- black tously head of yourn. I do believe you've got a cupboard there, like Mrs. Makepeace keeps the jam in, and you keep the tales and songs and what-nots with little tickets on 'em, and fetch 'em when you want 'em.'

She jumped down from the hedge-bank, and two dead rabbits in her hand swung across her apron and dabbled it with blood.

'I'se reckon,' said Robert, surveying her with amused eyes, 'as you'm a little storm in teacup, and no mistake. What's come o'er you to ketch the conies? You're like nought but a little brown coney yourself.'

She threw the conies on the grass, flung back her plaits, set her hands on her slim hips, and said: 'I've got to catch 'em. I'm bound to get money for lessons in the music. You know that.'

What for's it taken you to want the music?'

'I mun sing, and play a golden harp like the big man played at the Eisteddfod.'

'What then?'

'Then I'll buy a piece of crimson scarlet stuff and make me a dress, and put the harp in the cyart along of A'nt Fanteague, and go into the world and play to folks and make 'em cry.'

'What for cry?'

'Cos folk dunna like to cry at a randy. Even at the Revivals they only cry when the preachers shout mortal loud and the texts come pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, and knock 'em silly. If you can make 'em cry when they'd liefer not, you know as you've got over 'em'.

'You'm a queer chyild.'

'Where did you get that song you learnt me yesterday?'

'Foot of the rainbow.'

'Did you make it?'

'Did I make the moon?'

'If you wunna tell, you wunna. You're pig-headed, Bob Rideout.'

'I'm as I was made.'

'I'm sorry for you: but I'll sing the song.

'I took my little harp in hand,
I wandered up and down the land,
Up and down a many years.
But howsoever far I'd roam,
I couldna find the smiles or tears
Of whome.
And every quiet evenfall
I'd hear a call,
Like creatures crying in their pain,
"Come whome again!"'

'Not so bad,' said Robert. 'Only you dunna make it coaxing enough at the end.'

'I dunna want to. I want to startle folk. I want to sing till the bells fall down. I want to draw the tears out of their eyes and the money out of their pockets.'

'Money?'

'Ah! Bags of it. I canna be a great lady without money.

'What ails you, to want to be a lady?'

'I want a sparkling band round my head, and sparkling slippers on my feet, and a gown that goes "hush! hush!" like growing grass, and them saying, "There's Gillian Lovekin!" in a whisper.'

'Much good may it do ye!'

'And young fellows coming, and me having rare raps with 'em, and this one saying: "Marry me, Gillian Lovekin!" and that one saying: "I love you sore, Miss Juliana!" and me saying:

"Be off with ye!"'

'So you wouldna marry 'em?'

'No danger! I want to hear the folk clapping me and joining in the chorus like at the Eisteddfod--and my heart going pita-pat, and my face all red, knowing they'd cry when I made 'em, and laugh when I made 'em, and they'd remember Gillian Lovekin to their death day.'

'Lord save us! You're going to learn 'em summat seemingly, Jill. You're summat cruel when you're set on a thing. Curst, I call it.'

'And when I went to sleep, nights, and couldna bear to forget I was me for ten hours--and when I went to sleep for good and all--then I wouldna take it to heart so much, seeing as they'd remember me for ever and ever.'

She drew up her slim body, which had the peculiar wandlike beauty given by a narrow back, sloping shoulders and slender hips. The scar on her forehead shone silver and relentless in the moonlight. The sheep stirred about her like uneasy souls, and the rabbits lying at her feet might have been a sacrifice to some woodland goddess.

Robert looked at her, straight and attentively, for the first time in his life. Since his coming to the Gwlfas twelve years ago, he had taken her for granted. Now he saw her. His dark and dreamy eyes, so well warded by their lashes, his brooding forehead and his mouth, that was large and beautiful, the lips being laid together with a poise that partly concealed their firmness, all seemed to absorb her.

In just the same way he drank in the beauty of the countryside, the strange, lovely shapes of trees and rocks.

While she stood there and thought of her future as she had planned it, she slipped into his being like a raindrop into the heart of a deep flower. Neither of them knew what was happening, any more than the sheep knew whence came the unease that always troubled them before snow.

Robert was as simple, as unselfconscious as a child, without a child's egotism. He saw the landscape, not Robert Rideout in the landscape. He saw the sheep, not Robert Rideout as the kindly shepherd in the midst of the sheep. Mountains did not make him think of himself climbing. He did not, as nine hundred and ninety-nine people out of every thousand do, instinctively look at himself when he came to a pond. There was nothing of Narcissus in his soul. He seldom wanted to imitate birds, but rather to listen more intently. So now he saw Gillian with the inward eye, heard her with inward hearing, dank her into his soul, but never thought of himself in relation to her. He saw her slender waist without his arm about it, her mouth unkissed. His eyes lingered on shoulder and breast almost as men's eyes dwell on a Madonna, and to him the full-length portrait of Gillian was exactly as she herself saw it--alone, self-wrapped, self-complete.

Perhaps he was dreamy. Perhaps he developed late. His father had been just the same, only without Robert's poetry. He had not married Abigail till he was forty-five, though he had met her in his thirtieth year. Abigail had begun by laughing at him. But through those fifteen years she heard the deepening passion in his voice, until his least word could set her in a flutter.

Gillian was not sufficiently interested in Robert even to laugh at him. She had seen, in her childish fashion, the vision desired by all humanity--the vision of a secure small nest of immortality built in the crumbling walls of time. She wanted to go on being herself even when she was dissolved in nothingness. She wanted to make men and women hear her, love her, rue her. In the dove-grey, cooing silence of the farm, any mental absorption gained double force. So, while Simon purred, and Isaiah Lovekin made up his accounts, and Robert chopped wood outside, and Jonathan went through the vicissitudes of his day, Gillian built up this dream, in which she was always in the foreground, bathed in light, and masses of vague faces filled the background. When Mrs. Fanteague came from Silverton bringing news of the world and a great feeling of gentility, her dream became so vivid that it kept her awake
at night.
Robert, with a long sigh, relinquished her as a bee leaves a flower. And like a flower, self-poised but fragile, she seemed to shudder a little in her recovery.

He turned to lead the sheep home, and they followed him with crisply pattering feet.

Gillian picked up the rabbits with one of her supple falcon swoops. Disturbed by Robert's unusual manner, she found relief in singing, and as she wandered after the sheep in the moonlight, watching her shadow with impersonal curiosity, she chanted a tune of her own in a high treble that re-echoed against the bluff of moor:

'I saw seven magpies in a tree,
One for you and six for me.
One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold--'

And down in the hollow by the low-voiced brook, Robert, in his rich, quiet voice, finished the song:

'And seven for a secret
That's never been told!'

When you came towards Dysgwlfas Farm from the sheep-fields, it looked larger than it was, because the house was long and narrow, and the loft, with the granary and the room where the roots were kept, had been built in one with the farm. Beneath the granary was the high, square archway, called the Drift-house, that led into the foldyard. In front of the house was the garden, where the dovecote stood, and a stony path, lichened at the sides, led up to the house from the double wicket with its arch of privet.

The pattering feet of Robert's flock passed this gate and went on to the foldyard. Gillian, following in the leisurely and dreamy manner she had acquired lately, pushed open the wicket and went across the crisp grass to the parlour window. Looking in, she saw by the light of the well-trimmed lamp and the leaping flames that her father had come home. He was a person who could not come home without everybody knowing it. He had, as his sister--Mrs. Fanteague--said, a presence. The house re-echoed with his voice, his step. When he sat in his arm-chair by the fire it became a throne, and the parlour became an audience chamber. If anyone came in, he said 'Ha!' and they felt found out. In his buying and selling of sheep, this 'Ha!' did more for him than any amount of money. He said it so loudly, so knowingly and so judicially that every flaw in the goods offered leapt into fearful prominence, and the seller, however case-hardened, could see nothing else, could feel nothing else but a desire to go away with his detected, enormity, and hide. Very often Mr. Lovekin had not seen half of the things his interjection implied, but that did not matter. The legend of his acumen was about him like the protecting leaves of winter broccoli. Nothing but the best was ever offered to him, and he procured the best at reasonable prices. Hence he was becoming rich, although he had inherited a derelict farm and a debt. His father had possessed neither a presence nor a voice nor a 'Ha!' He had not stood six foot six with shoulders to match, nor weighed eighteen stone, nor had a patriarchal beard that flowed to his waist. He had been a much more industrious man than his son; known more about sheep; deserved success. He had failed lamentably. His son, riding about the country on his cob, penetrating the remote, precipitous hillsides where fat sheep were to be had for little money, had become a personality and a power. His lightest word was received with respect; a seat near the fire was kept for him on winter afternoons in the inn parlours; auctioneers had been known to wait to begin a sale until his large figure was seen looming in the assembly.

Whatever may be the ideas of civilization, in wild places physical perfection still dominates, as in the days of Saul. It may be that, as the fight with natural forces is more imminent in the country, it is more obvious that the biggest man is likely to last longest, and staying-power is greatly admired by country people. It may also be the instinct for hero-worship, the desire to have something big set up as a sign, something large enough for legends to accumulate round.

How much Isaiah Lovekin guessed of his own incipient god-head did not appear. He never commented upon it. He never spoke much. Perhaps if he had done so the spell would have been broken. He simply profited by it, accepted it, grew fat on it. Sometimes there might seem to be a roguish twinkle in that dark eye of his, but it was difficult to find out what it meant. Usually his monumental reserve was unbroken even by a twinkle, and, like some stately promontory, he accepted all that the sea of life brought to his feet. Nobody ever questioned his position, nor doubted his ability to live up to it. Only in his daughter's eyes sometimes there was a fleeting look of something half-way between mockery and motherhood. It had been there even when she looked up at him from her cradle, when she had been nothing but a bundle and a grey glance, lying so low at the feet of an immense, overwhelming being. Everybody had seen the look, compounded of pity and laughter. Isaiah had turned to his wife, as if for protection. Mrs. Fanteague had said: 'That's no Christian child! She's a changeling. She'll never live.' Mrs. Makepeace was sure it was only a tooth coming. Certainly Gillian had managed to live, changeling or not. It was Mrs. Lovekin who died, finding it too difficult to be the wife of a Deity.

Gillian, having watched her father sitting, before the fire, splendid, happy and idle, until her high nose--flattened against the window-pane--was very cold, suddenly hooted like an owl and drew back.

No! He did not jump. If only she could have made him jump! She kicked off her clogs, went into the kitchen, and startled the sleeping Simon instead. Mrs. Makepeace had gone, and the kitchen--shining, tidy, smelling of wet soap--was inhabited only by Simon and by the gentle, hesitating 'tick-tack' of the clock.

'Quiet!' said Gillian. 'Oh, dear sakes, I can hear the leaves a-falling on my grave! I'll even be glad to see A'nt Fanteague, Simon, for she do make a stir, O!'

She washed her face and hands at the pump, and tidied her hair at a little glass on the wall. Then she went into the parlour, singing in her high and delicious voice:

'Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret--'

'Ha!' said Isaiah, and she became silent, wondering in a kind of hypnotized way what she had done.

'So you've raught back, father?'

'Ah!'

'Bin far?'

'Over the border.'

'Whiteladies or Weeping Cross?'

'Weeping Cross.'

'Bought anything?'

'A tuthree.'

'Seen anybody?'

'Who should I see?'

'I mean, anybody fresh?'

'How you do raven after some new thing, Gillian!'

'But wasna there anybody but the old ancient people as you always see?''

'There was a dealer from beyond the mountains.'

She clapped her hands.

'I wish I'd been there! Was he young?'

'Middling young.'

'What was his name?'

'Elmer.'

'Could he ride without a saddle?'

'I didna inquire.'

'Oh, I wish I'd been there!'

Isaiah smoked in silence.

'If I'd been there d'you know what I'd ha' done?'

'Not even the Almighty knows that.'

'I'd ha' come walking up to him in my new frock that is to be, slate-coloured blue like the slatey drake, and my hair done up, and beads in it--'

'Beads?'

'Glass ones, shiny like diamonds.'

'Oh!'

'And I'd ha' bowed like parson's wife at the Keep. "Pleased to know you, but no liberties allowed." And I'd ha' dared him to ride full gallop without a saddle.'

'Oh, you would, would ye?'

'And if he was thrown and killed, I'd say: "One fool the less!" But if he did it proper, I'd jump up in front and I'd say: "Kind sir! Take me out in the world and learn me to sing, and I'll be yours for ever, beads and slatey frock and all!" And if he beat me, I'd say nought: but if he couldna ride, I'd laugh.'

'Just as well I didna take you.'

'Take me next time, father! Do!

'Decked like a popinjay, and being gallus with the fellers? No! Here you stop, my girl.'

'Father!'

'Eh?'

'When I've learnt to sing proper, I can go out into the world, canna I?'

'No.'

'Why?'

'You mun bide, and see to the house.'

'But Mrs. Makepeace could do that. And if you'll let me go, I'll come back when you're aged and old, with the palsy and the tic doloreux, hobbling on two sticks and tears in your eyes and nobody to love ye! I'll come in a carriage, with silver shoes and a purse of money, and maybe a husband and maybe not, and I'll walk in with a sighing of silk and pour out money on the table, and bring you oranges and candied peel and sparkly wine and a fur coat and summat for the tic doloreux!'

'Thank you kindly'

'So you'll take me next time?'

'No.'

'Well, then, I'll ask A'nt Fanteague to take me. So now!'

'Best make the toast, and see if fire"s alight in the guest-chamber, and look to the oven, for I smell burning.'

Gillian collapsed, departing almost in tears to the kitchen that was so quiet, and the guest-chamber that was quieter still.

She drew up the sullen fire in the grate, which was damp from disuse, and in its fugitive light she surveyed the large white bed with its Marcella quilt, the chill dressing-table, the clean, cold curtains, the polished oilcloth icily gleaming. There were no sounds except the crackling of the fire; and the wind soughing a little in the chimney. For the first time in her life Gillian was glad her aunt was coming. Aunt Fanteague lived in the great world, at Silverton itself. There would be plenty of pianos and singing masters there, and young men who could ride without saddle or bridle and accomplish feats of daring and danger at command. Having drawn the fire up to a roaring blaze, she ran downstairs to make the toast. Turning a hot red cheek to her father, she said:

'I wish she'd come!'

'You do? Ha!'

'I'm feared it's happened al long last.'

'What?'

'Why--Jonathan.'

'Oh, Jonathan'll turn up all right, peart as a robin. Accidents he may have, but that's all. And your A'ntie's along of him, you mind.'

'Yes, A'ntie's along of him. Maybe she'll bring me a present.'

'Maybe you've burnt the toast.'

'Hark! The wicket's clicked.'

Gillian was out of the room and the house in a twinkling. She -submerged her aunt in kisses, while Jonathan trundled off to the yard humming, 'Safe home, safe home in port.'

'What you want, Juliana,' said Aunt Fanteague, 'is control.'

She entered.

'Well, Isaiah!' she said.

She always said this on entering her brother's house. It expressed, among other things, her exasperated disappointment that the place was no better kept than it had been last time she came.

'Ha!' said her brother. But instead of feeling found out, Mrs. Fanteague behaved as if she had found him out.

'I see the big white stone by the wicket has not been put in place yet, Isaiah,' she said. 'Twelve months ago come Christmas Jonathan knocked it out bringing me home -and I thank my Redeemer it was no worse! Twelve months, Isaiah! Fifty-two weeks! Three hundred and sixty-five days! How many hours, Juliana?'

'Oh, A'ntie!'

'Where's your book-learning, child?'

Mrs. Fanteague sat down in the large chair opposite Isaiah--the chair that had been so well brushed and polished - and Gillian standing between them was like the young sickle-moon between two of the vast immemorial yew tees on the moor.

'You're late, sister!' said Isaiah.

'And well may you say it! And well may I be late! What Jonathan wants is two guardian angels for ever beside him, and he on a leash, with nothing else to do but walk along quiet under the shadow of their wings. It was into the hedge this side, and into the hedge that! Never a stone but we were on to it--and into the hedge agen! Then my box fell off, and how it kept on so long only the Redeemer knows--for Jonathan tied it. When we got well on to the moor, what must the man do but drive into the quaking slough, and there we were!'

Isaiah smiled into his beard. After all, they had arrived. People always did--in the long run--when Jonathan drove them.

'Is it froze over?'

'It is not, Isaiah. Look at my boots! Out I had to get. He trod on my umberella. Then I dropped my reticule and he trod on that. The mare wouldn't stir. So I said the Nunc Dimittis' (Aunt Fanteague was High Church) 'and took the butt-end of the whip to her, so after a bit we got to the road agen, and I didn't mind the other things near so much. But, seeing as you won't leave this God-elp place, what you want is to let young Rideout drive. Now, there's a man! Nothing said, but the thing gets done. If you'd send Rideout, your sister's bonnet wouldn't be torn to pieces with hedges and the whip--for when Jonathan thinks he's slashing the mare, it's your sister he's slashing, Isaiah, every time!'

Isaiah looked at the fire. A twinkle seemed to tenant his eyes for a moment. Perhaps he was thinking that if he sent Rideout there would be nothing to discourage Mrs. Fanteague from coming very often.

'And how's poor Emily?' he said.

'Poor Emily's as usual, Isaiah.'

Emily was, for the time, dismissed. Mrs. Fanteaguewas untying her bonnet-strings. She was large, though not so large as Isaiah. When her bonnet, which seemed to have been built with bricks and mortar, not merely sewn, was off and lay in her lap, the likeness to Isaiah became more obvious. She had the same fine head, massive but low brow; and solid features. Her hair was built up just as her bonnet was, and looked like sculptured hair. In it she wore massive combs, and five large yellow tortoise-shell pins. Her dress had the look of being held together only by the ferocious tenacity of its buttons, which were made of jet. Not that she was fat, but she was large of bone and well developed, and her dresses were always tight-fitting, after the style of a riding-habit. Pinning her collar together was a big square brooch of Wedgwood china depicting a cross, a young woman and a dove. The symbolism of this had never been explained to Gillian, though she had often inquired. It remained, like Isaiah, mysterious, capable of many constructions. Cuffs, knitted by Emily and trimmed with beads, finished her sleeves, and a well-gathered skirt came down to within an inch of the ground. She gave the impression, as she sat there, of being invulnerable, morally and physically.

'Would you like to wash you and change your boots, A'ntie? There's a good fire in the guest-chamber.'

'There is, is there? Well, you're tempting Providence, for coal's coal and it gets no cheaper. But I don't say it isn't pleasant.'

'And I filled the boiler, so there's hot water to wash you.'

'Juliana, you're improving!'

Praise from her was infrequent. If she had known the reason of the improvement, perhaps she would have withheld it.

'Dunna forget the cooling tea and a man that's sharpset for his'n,' said Isaiah.

They departed in a whirl of black skirts, coloured skirts, reticules, bags and bonnets.

Isaiah smiled at the fire. He knew yery well why Gillian bestowed such affectionate care on her aunt.

But as Aunt Fanteague did not know, and as she had, like many rocky natures, a great, though concealed, craving for affection, she was touched. She was glad she had brought Gillian a present.

'When I unpack,' she said, as she instinctively moved the dressing-table to look for dust underneath, running her finger over the polished surfaces, 'there might be something for a good girl.'

Gillian flushed, partly with pleasure, but mostly with annoyance at being treated in so babyish a way. Was she not Miss Juliana Lovekin, of Dysgwlfas? But it was not politic to show her annoyance. As the most practical way of getting nearer to the desired fairing, she began to uncord the box, which had been carried up the backstairs by Robert. It was the same yellow tin box in which Mrs. Fanteague's bridal raiment had been packed when she had left the farm on that long-ago summer day with the man of her choice.

This phrase was literally true, for Mr. Fanteague had had no choice in the matter. The box still looked wonderfully new, considering that Jonathan had fetched it once or twice every year across the moor. It had lost much less of its early freshness than Mrs. Fanteague had. Gillian's firm, pointed fingers undid the knots, and at last the lid, painted blue inside, was lifted to reveal tissue-paper, the black silk Sunday dress, best bonnet, gloves, and braided cape which Aunt Emily's nervous-fingers had folded. Underneath lay a small packet.

'I must tell you, my dear, it isn't new,' said Aunt Fanteague.

'But it's jewellery. And I know the vanity of your heart, Juliana.'

'Jewellery! Oh, A'ntie!'

'You can undo it, if you've a mind'

Gillian most certainly had a mind. She undid it. And there lay a small cornelian heart with a golden clasp through which a ribbon was to be slipped. It was wonderful--a fairy gift, It had colour, which she loved, and romance, and it was her first ornament.

'A'ntie! When you're ancient and old, when there's none to comfort ye, I'll mind this locket! And howsoever faraway I am, I'll come to ye! I will that! And I'll try to keep my nails clean, too, because you say they werrit ye. See! Dunna it look nice agen my frock? Have you got ever a piece of ribbon I could tie it on with?

Aunt Fanteague found a bit of black velvet, took up the candle, and said it was time to go down.

'And now,' said Isaiah, 'let me hear the news of poor Emily. She's well, you say?'

'I say that poor Emily's as well as can be expected in her peculiar situation.'

'Does she eat and sleep?'

'She eats but poorly, and dreams.'

'Dreams, A'ntie? Oh, I wish I could dream! What does she dream?'

'She dreams of angels.'

'Ha!'

Isaiah had a great idea of looking after his women-folk. He always asked particularly after their physical well-being. If that was satisfactory, nothing else mattered.

'Ha! If she dreamt of a babby, it 'ud be better! That's the dream for Emily! Always was!'

He gave his rare, tremendous laugh--the laugh which, as legend said, had once frightened Dosset's bull so much that it had omitted to toss Isaiah.

Mrs. Fanteague rose.

'Toast there may be, and cooling tea, and a welcome of sorts inside, and a cold wind drawing over the moor, but out I go, Isaiah, if you speak indecent. Before the child, too!

'I amna a child, A'ntie! And I like to hear about--A'nt Emily.'

'Sit down, sister. I'm mum.'

Mrs. Fanteague, after suitable hesitation, sat down.

'How old is Emily?' asked Isaiah, who was not good at dates.

'Emily's forty-one.'

'Well, it's not past praying for, then. You mind when Bob Rideout was born, Abigail was forty-three. And you couldna find a stronger, lustier-'

Mrs. Fanteague arose again.

'Oh, sit down, sister! I'm dumb as a corpse!'

'Is poor A'nt Emily still in love, A'ntie?'

This romance of Emily's was a perennial source of interest to Gillian.

'Yes, my dear.'

'And does Mr. Gentle still call?'

'Regular as clockwork. More regular than any newfangled clock.'

'But they inna going to get married?'

'I don't know, my dear.'

'What does A'nt Emily think?'

'She wouldn't consider it ladylike to think anything till Mr. Gentle spoke.'

'And dunna he?'

'No, my dear. Not like that. He says it's blowing up for rain, or there's a peck of March dust, or what a sight of apple-blow, or as it was a pleasant sermon. And he reads. We're doing Crabbe now. And once lie said he liked lilac, when Aunt Emily had a lilac dress on. But that's all.'

'Ha!' said Isaiah, and buried his face in his cup.

'Oh, A'ntie, how awful!'

'No, my dear, it's very pleasant.'

'Awful for poor A'nt Emily! Coddling about year after year!

I'd want Mr. Gentle to fall down on his kneebones-'

'He's a little bit rheumatic, Juliana.'

'He should ha' done it when he could. To fall down on his knees and say: "I love ye! " And get up quick and kiss me-till I couldna breathe.'

Mrs. Fanteague looked at her brother accusingly.

'Like father, like child!' she said.

'And then for him to say: "Fix the day! Fix it! Fix it!" And me all in a fluster, like the ducks when I catch 'em. And away to church. And into the trap. And off to the station! And him saying: "You be mine for ever and ever." Only I dunna think Mr. Gentle would do. Can he drive and ride without a-saddle? Durst he walk along the top of a wagon o' hay when it's going quick, like Robert does?'

Mrs. Fanteague smiled. It was not easy for her to smile, because her face,had set in other lines.

'Juliana,'she said, 'if ever you see Mr. Gentle, you'll under stand. No words of mine can make you. Mr. Gentle's one that never has a speck on him, and never loses his dignity; he's a real polished gentleman.'

'Oh, dear sores! I shouldna like him. He'd kiss so soft.'

Isaiah came to life.'

'What d'ye know about kisses, my girl? Has Robert been playing the fool? I'll give him the best-'

'You wouldna find it so easy! Robert's strong. But he hanna kissed me nor wanted to. I never thought of it afore you said.'

She began to look dreamy.

'I'd like it to be said as Gillian Lovekin married young and had a very sweet nature, like they said about Great-Aunt Amy Lovekin.'

'Did you take them pastries out of oven?' inquired Isaiah.

'Oh, dearie, dearie me!'

She fled to the kitchen, returning slowly.

'Spoilt, I suppose?'

She nodded.

'Fetch 'em!'

They came. Twenty-four cheese-cakes and some pastry 'fingers,' all of ebony-black.

'How much stuff went to 'em?'

'Pound o' flour, half dripping, three oranges, sugar, two eggs-'

'What 'ud that cost, sister?'

'Well, as you've got your own fowl, maybe about a shilling.'

'Fetch a shilling, Gillian.'

'Oh, father! Not a coney shilling?'

'Ah.'

'But that's a music lesson, father!'

'Fetch it. It'll learn you not to get dreamy and moithered like poor Emily. You be glad I'm too lazy to leather ye.'

Gillian retired to the kitchen in tears. Her aunt, coming out to 'dry'while she washed-up, was prepared to comfort the weeping penitent.

But instead of a penitent she saw, when she entered, two pillows placed in chairs at the table. One was dressed in Isaiah's best coat and hat, the other in Gillian's summer frock, a lace curtain for a veil, and the cornelian heart.

'It's A'nt Emily's wedding breakfast!' said Gillian. 'Mr. Gentle's spoken at long last!'

Aunt Fanteague was to stay a fortnight. She had been at Dysgwlfas a week before Gillian found courage to think of asking her about the visit to Silverton. Now she was desperate, because, when she got up at seven and peeped into the outer world, the sky was soft and woolly with snow, and a few flakes already wandered past the window--which meant that Aunt Fanteague would hasten her departure lest, as she said, 'a worse thing befall her.' At Dysgwlfas people were often snowed-up for a week at a time, and Christmas drew near, and it would never do for Mrs. Fanteague to be away at Christmas, for then poor Emily and Mr. Gentle could not keep the festival together, since they would be unchaperoned.

'This day, if ever!' said Gillian, breaking the ice in her jug and wondering, as she washed her face, how she would break the ice in Aunt Fanteague's mind.

As she lit the kitchen fire she thought how lovely it would be to live at a grand place like the Drover's Arms at Weeping Cross, where the Farmers' Ordinary was, of which her father told her carefully censored tales when he came back from fairs and auctions.

While she sat by the sudden blaze made by an armful of heather and chips, and drank her cup of tea, she read the serial in the weekly paper her father took in. It told how a young and innocent girl, not very much prettier than herself went to London and was betrayed, and lived in luxury and sin, and then died. She thought it would be almost worth dying in order to see and hear and experience all the wonderful things the heroine saw and heard and felt. 'Betrayed!' What food for curiosity! What depths of horror! It recalled old tales, and detective stories (of which Robert possessed two), and Judas Iscariot. It was wicked, deliciously wicked, and it implied a sort of vicarious wickedness in the betrayed one. It had a thrill. She had lived, this girl, for nearly a year in a 'palatial suite' somewhere near a place called Piccadilly. Gillian supposed that this was where the pickle came from, which occasionally varied the home-made red cabbage. She went to theatres. She wore satin, jewels, swansdown. She was called 'Madame.' She was kissed. She went about in a motor-car, marvellously upholstered, with the man who betrayed her, who was over six feet tall in his (expensively) stockinged feet, and had a long drooping moustache and a fur coat. Gillian was sure he could have walked about on the most toppling load of hay without the slightest inconvenience. Delightful Iscariot! There he was, within a few hours' journey of Silverton. If once she could get there, she would only have to step into a train, and in such a little while she would be in London. The rest, no doubt, followed mechanically.

'Ask her, I will, this very day! She may say she's deaf. She may read a book. She may walk out of the room. But I'll ask her. If I can get to Sil'erton, I can get to London.'

She surveyed herself in the kitchen mirror.'

'I'm not so bad. And if I learn to sing that'll be one to me, for this here Julia couldna sing a note.'

While she stirred the porridge, she saw a vision of herself in the slate-coloured dress (that was to be), with a feather hat made of the slatey drake, walking in high-heeled satin shoes past shops full of yellow, square bottles of piccalilli.

'Dreamy!' said her father, as he knocked the earth from his boots and came in to breakfast. 'Now look lively, my girl, for the sooner I start the more chance to get back early. It's whiteover now, and I've got to get a hundred sheep back afore night.'

'Is it set in for snow, Isaiah?' asked Mrs. Fanteague.

'Ah.'

'Then I pack. I'll catch the last train from the Keep.'

'A short visit, sister!'

'Weather's weather, Isaiah. If I stay, maybe the thaw won't come till after Christmas. And Emily'd be all alone.'

'There'd be Mr. Gentle, A'ntie.'

'Aunt Emily wouldn't dream of asking a gentleman to the place in my absence,' said Aunt Fanteague.

Gillian opined that there were a good many different kinds of women in the world, for what could be more different than the minds of Emily and Julia? And she herself was like neither.

Isaiah swallowed his breakfast, went to the door and shouted for Robert.

'Be I to come, sir? Or stepfather?'

'No, I must make shift, for Jonathan must take Mrs. Fanteague. I'll ride the cob, and call for Dosset's lad--he's got a pony. He'll give me a hand with the sheep.'

'I'd sooner Robert drove me,' observed Mrs. Fanteague. 'Robert's got to stop. The threshing-engine may come any minute. If it does, Jonathan's no manner use.'

'Mother says, would you kindly send her as far as the Maiden? Mrs. Thatcher's took bad. They want mother to bide the night over.'

'And welcome. Jonathan can send her.'

Isaiah looked at Robert, hesitated, then stepped out into the foldyard.

'Oh, Rideout!' he said, with less than his customary ease, 'no offence, but you'll bear in mind as my girl's for none but a 'farmer, or higher.'

Robert smiled. His smile was slow, sad, a little ironical, but sweet. His eyes did not always smile in unison with it. They did not smile now. There was criticism and a spice of mockery in them.

'Nothing less than a lord, sir!' he said. 'But what is to be, will be.'

'Whatever's to be, it's not to be cowman-shepherd, seesta?'

'Ah! I see, sir. And if so be I'd raised my eyes to your little maid, I'd lower 'em agen. But I want no woman.'

'What do you want, lad?' asked Isaiah, with some compunction.

'My time to myself, sir,' replied Robert, and turned towards the stable.

'His time to himself and he wants no woman!'

Gillian laughed as she washed the dishes, having listened at the kitchen window.

Robert had not, previously, seemed worth captivating. She took him for granted. Now, as she watched his sturdy and independent figure cross the fold, she became conscious of him as a young man to be enslaved.

'Good-bye, sister!' said Isaiah. 'There's a box of them winter pears, and the red apples you like, and Gillian can gather some eggs for ye, and Robert'll get you a couple of fowl. Tell Emily to dream what I said!'

With a shout of laughter he swung into the saddle. 'Good-bye, Isaiah,' said Mrs. Fanteague. 'God willing, I shall see Silverton shops to-night.'

'A'nt Fanteague willing, I shall see 'em soon!' thought Gillian.

'Shall I give you a hand, packing, A'ntie?' she asked.

'No, child.'

'Shall I kindle a bit of fire in your room?'

'I'm not so nesh as to need a fire to pack by, my dear.'

'Could you sit by this 'un, then? I want to ask you summat particular.'

'Oh.'

'A'ntie! Let me come and bide with you 'a bit! Please, A'ntie!'

'For why?'

'To learn to make that grand Simnel cake, and bake a ham the old-fashioned way, and plain-sew.'

'And go shopping and look for a young man?'

'Oh, A'ntie!'

'Well, maybe it ud liven up poor Emily. I'll consider it.'

'Not too long! Life goes over. "Nut in November, nut for doom."'

'Who told you that?'

'Robert.'

'Do you like that young man?'

'Oh, all right! He's nought but cowman-shepherd, though.'

'That's right, child. Never demean yourself.'

Aunt Fanteague became ruminative. There was a young organist at Silverton, also a bachelor doctor and an unmarried curate. Aunt Fanteague dreamed. How surprised the ladies who now despised her would be! If it was the curate, she might even be asked to decorate the pulpit instead of doing the two dark windows by the door. If it was the doctor, the little doses of bromide for Emily after Mr. Gentle's visits would be prescribed free. If it was the organist--well, it had better not be the organist.

'Well, my dear, if you're a good girl, and your father raises no objection, you shall come for a bit in the New Year!'

'Oh, A'ntie, I do love you!'

'That you don't, Gillian! But so long as you respect me, I ask no more.'

'How long can I come for?'

'That depends.'

'A month? Two? Three?'

'Maybe a month.'

'When, A'ntie?'

'When the snow's gone. January, maybe.'

'I'll buy some cashmere with my coney money and make me a frock. And I'll kill the slatey drake.'

'Don't bedizen yourself Gillian. You know what poor Emily says of a lady.'

'What?'

'You can tell a lady, because nobody knows she's there.'

'But slatey colour's as meek as mice, A'ntie!'

'It's according as it's worn. Now write me the label while I pack.'

As Gillian wrote the label, she thought how it would look.

'Miss Juliana. Lovekin. Silverton.' 'Miss Juliana Lovekin. London.'

She preferred the last.

After dinner, Jonathan, with resignation in his manner, brought round the trap. The eggs and fruit were packed in. Mrs. Makepeace sat on the tin box at the back. Jonathan observed:

'It's snow for our pillow to-night, Mrs. Fanteague, ma'am. Ah! that's what it'll be, snow for our pillow!'

Mrs. Fanteague waved resignedly, and they drove away through the thickening snow.

'Please God, take care of A'ntie so that I can get to London soon!' prayed Gillian.

The simplicity with which people express themselves when there is no one to hear but the Almighty must often entertain Him.

'Robert!' called Gillian. 'Robert Rideout O!'

'Wells Miss Gillian?'

'What have I done to be treated so stiff?'

'Nought.'

'Well, then, come your ways in. We'll have a randy, same as we always do when they're out.'

'We didn't ought.'

'Didn't ought's in Dead Man's Yard. Come on! We'll make toffee. There's all the market butter. We'll play "I spy" all over the house. Then I'll help you to milk. Then we'll have tea. You can finish outside while I get it. They'll neither of 'em be back before seven or eight. It'll be cosy as cosy. We'll pretend it's our house and I'm your missus.'

Robert flushed and turned away, suddenly shy, perhaps because of Isaiah, perhaps because of his consciousness, of Gillian in the meadow.

'No!' he said.

'Yes. I'm going away come New Year.'

He turned quickly.

'Where?'

'To Sil'erton. I'll tell you at tea. Now for the toffee!'

She was going away. This would be the last time of childish romping. When she came back she would be a lady. She might be engaged--even married. He could put in longer time at the wood-chopping to-morrow. He scraped his boots and came in.

'Butter first!' said Gillian. She ran to the dairy where the round yellow pats--all decked with swans--lay on their clean white cloth. Into the saucepan went two pats, for Gillian never believed in doing things by halves.

'You stir! You're an old steady-goer!' said she.

Robert scrubbed his hands in the back-kitchen and stirred. They were nice hands, large and dependable and strong. What they undertook, they finished. The animals on the farm loved them. People with whom he shook hands at market felt a kind of promise of protection in them, and they would have trusted him with their lives, or even their bank-books. They were hands that might have helped to make him a great surgeon. The local vet had noticed them, and had offered to take him into partnership. But Robert refused. He did not like to see creatures in pain oftener than he could help. Also, he had his dream to dream on Dysgwlfas itself. Day after day, in the early morning or after his work was done, he brooded upon the waste as it lay beneath his gaze, self-wrapped, conning its own secret, dreaming of itself and its dark history, its purple-mantled past and its future clothed in vaporous mystery. The colour that comes on the heather when it is in full flower, which is like the bloom on a plum, was in his dream. The rumour that runs, in warm, dark spring evenings, from the peering leaf down the veins of the stalk, to the waiting flower sleeping in the root--a rumour of rain and misty heat and the melodious languors of a future June; this, too, was in his dream. Wave on profound wave of beauty broke over him, submerged him. The wonder and terror of it came to his soul with a keenness that darted from the colours and perfumes like a sword hidden in roses. Far beyond the rim of blue was still the moorland--the secret moorland, with its savage peace. There the curlews cried, eerie and lonely, in spring. Thence the wind drew, urgent, vital. And always, whether he was at market or chapel, in the farm or the inn, which lay alone out on the moor, he heard--whatever the weather or the season--as it were a long way off, and far down in his consciousness--the roar of the winter wind over the bleak, snowy acres of Dysgwlfas. He was aware that an almost vocal sympathy existed between the place and himself. There was something he must do for it, but he could not guess what it was. Also he felt a vague portent in the winter country. There was something waiting for him there in the future--some deed, some high resolve. Was it death? It was mysterious as death, he thought. All his days he walked in this dream, which did not hinder his deft hands nor his quick feet, and continually the country spun more threads between itself and him.

He would sit dreaming by his mother's fire as if he had been fairy-led, or, as Jonathan said, as if he had been 'comic-struck.' And now Gillian was finding a place in his dream. Softly, relentlessly as a leaf-boring bee, she was impressing herself on the purple twilight of his unwritten poetry.

As to what all this meant, he was doubtful. He must bide his time. He could always do that, without being either lethargic or futile. And when the waiting was over, he could act.

At the present moment it was time to act, for the toffee was ready.

'Dunna forget to put the tin in cold water, Gillian!' he reminded her.

They played 'I spy' till it cooled. Then it was milking-time. There was laughter in the cowhouse and milking was soon done. Then, with one of her weird owl cries, she ran across the dark fold into the kitchen.

It glowed, for Robert had made up the fire. She set the table with the best china, brought out cranberry jelly, new bread, lemon cheese, visitor's tea. She put on her best frock, put up her hair, and picked a scarlet geranium from the window to wear in it. She would be as gay, as pretty and as kind as she could. It wasn't nice of her father to tell him he was only a cowman. And perhaps, if she looked really pretty, Robert would kiss her! That would be good practice for the future. Isaiah had forbidden all 'May-games.' Kissing was certainly a May-game. But then--Robert had such a nice mouth. Now that she considered it attentively, it was remarkably nice.

She went to the door. Snow was falling thickly now, whirling softly, coming in large flakes. She could see Robert's lantern in the stable, and his shadow on the white wall.

'Bob!'

He came, smoothing his roughened, snowy hair.

'Now! I'm missus. You're maister.'

'I'm cowman-shepherd,' said Robert. 'And you're the maister's daughter. And only a farmer's good enough, but you might consider a lord.'

'Oh, Bob! You are unkind. I didna say it.'

'You think it. You know right well you'd never marry a farm-labourer.'

'Maybe, if--if the labourer was called--Robert Rideout O!'

'You're a jill-flirt, my dear, and that's all about it. Gillian jill-flirt!'

'Pretend, Robert!'

'There's danger in pretending.'

She sulked.

'This is a good tea,' observed Robert. 'And I'm sure it's very charitable of you, miss!'

'Don't you dare mock me!'

'I amna. I'm enjoying meself.'

He stretched comfortably. His lean, 'strong, pleasant face was happy in the firelight. His boots steamed. The snow-wind soughed fitfully in the chimney. Gillian, demure in the dignity of having her hair up, poured out tea and did the honours.

Through his lashes Robert observed her; saw her lovely, wilful, remote; wanted to conquer and possess.

'I'd thank you not to look at me so fierce!' she laughed. 'I'd thank you for some more tea,' said Robert, 'and some of that nice cake.'

'Oh, Bob! You hanna come to see me a bit! You're after what you can get!'

'Ah! That's the tune of it!' said Robert, lying splendidly.

'Jelly, please, mum!'

After tea she sat on the hearthrug and told him her dreams--some of them. She told him how she would dress when she sang at an Eisteddfod, and as she looked up, lit with new beauty, he suddenly found out what it was he wanted to do. Pennillions! He would make pennillions about the moor, and in the midst of them should be Gillian Lovekin. He did not know quite what pennillions were, nor how to make them, but he could learn. He could walk over the mountains to the abode of some Eisteddfod singer, and learn. Here was the way to express all those strange things, those wild and dim and tender thoughts, that invaded his soul and would not let him rest. When he had given them house-room, when he had made garments of song for them, they could not cry out on him so. And secretly, unknown even to herself, Gillian should be the bright centre of these dim pictures, the flower in the rocky cavern of his poetry.

'Seven for a secret!' he murmured.

'Now then! No talking to mommets! What is it?' cried Gillian.

'Nought--nought.'

One must not make love to the master's daughter, nor enthrone her in a poem, nor make poems. He reflected with amusement that the time in which he would make songs in his mind would be paid for by Isaiah; that the moor all round the farm, which had inspired him, was Isaiah's; that their central beauty would be Isaiah's only child.

'It'll take a deal of overtime to 'make up for all that, I doubt!' he thought. His smile stirred Gillian's curiosity.

'Tell! Tell!'

'No. I canna tell ye.'

'Summat you're going to do?'

'Maybe.'

'For me?'

'In a sort of way it'll be all for you.'

'Oh, Bob!'

'Now say all about what coloured gowns you'll get when you're a rich lady.'

They sat in the firelight, happy, gay. Anyone looking through the snow-fingered window would have thought them lovers, not knowing the barriers of class and wealth between them.

Seven o'clock.

'I mun go now, Gillian. Thank you kindly.'

'We shanna have another time like this before I go away.'

'Never, maybe.'

'Robert!'

'Well?'

'Pretend!'

'What?'

'Pretend we're -' she whispered.

'Pretending's no good.'

She held up a glowing cheek. She was bent on adventure.

'You can take one, Robert!'

But Robert's face was hard. It smiled no more; there was no sweetness in it. She did not guess that it was his hardest battle yet.

'When I want a kiss,' he said, 'I'll ask for it.'

He was gone.

Gillian flung herself on the hearthrug, raging, sobbing.

'Oh, I wanted him to kiss me! I wanted to know what it was like! I'll pay him out for this. Oh, dearie, dearie me; suppose they're all like Robert!'

She was in despair. She could not think how the innocent Julia (who never dreamt of asking for kisses, but always screamed and said, 'Unhand me, sir!') had had love-affairs.

'I don't believe Julia was all that much prettier than me!' she sobbed. 'But seemingly it's them as don't ask don't want, and them as do ask can't have!'

The Makepeace kitchen was even more miraculously neat than most country kitchens. The saucepans and frying-pans looked as if they could never by any possibility have been used. The tiles had the soft polish given by daily washing with milk and water. The open grate shone smooth and immaculate as a fine lady's shoe. The check table-cloth of red and blue revealed, when folded back for culinary operations, a table of honeycomb whiteness. The lustre jugs, the Broseley plates and Coalport teapot gleamed from the dresser. The eight-day wall-clock of inlaid oak, with the soothing tick and the chime that sounded as if it were made of pale gold, was rich with satiny polish. Everything seemed to be there to satisfy Mrs. Makepeace's love of cleaning. Things were cleaned not because they needed it, but because it was 'their day.' The result was that Jonathan and Robert appeared as wild hill-men of some earlier race strayed into the trim residence of an elf.

They sat, on an evening in mid-January, one on each side of the fire. Mrs. Makepeace was at the farm, helping Gillian to pack. The thaw had come, and the path from cottage to farm was full of large dark patches where the snow had melted. The jessamine bush by the door showed bright green points, and the lingering afterglow was green beyond the window.

Robert looked across the room into the pale sky, and the pelargonium with the white eye, that stood beside the one with

scented leaves against the muslin curtain of the lower half of the window, returned his gaze limpidly. There was something of Gillian, he thought, in its wistful boldness. He called it, to himself, 'peartness' and 'bashfulness,' and he began to make a poem about it, humming beneath his breath as he whittled thatching-pegs. The sticks for these lay in a pile on the rug, which was one of Mrs. Makepeace's own manufacture--of bright-coloured wools with the word 'Welcome' in the centre. They were using their pocket-knives, of large and practical make. The potatoes for supper simmered gently, hanging above the fire, and a stockpot on the hob gave out a good herby odour. Jonathan paused in his work and looked at Robert for a long time, his mouth a little open.

'So she's going?' Robert nodded.

'The missus 'ere,' said Jonathan, with a backward jerk of his thumb towards his wife's sacking apron hanging on the door, 'gave me so to understand.'

Jonathan was so used to being watched and guarded by his wife that he lived in a perpetual sense of her imminence. Whether she was away at market, when the door was tenanted by her apron and sun-bonnet, or at the wash-tub, when her cloak and hat were there, she was always present to him.

'Ah! She says, "When they shake their wings, it goes hard, but they wunna come back till they break their wings."'

On the upper half of the window Robert saw a picture of Gillian in the slatey dress, which was real to him because she had described it, lying as he had often seen a wild duck lie, with one broken wing trailing out beside it.

'We mun see to it as she dunna.'

'I reckon it'll be me to drive her to the station to-morrow

day, Bob?'

'No; me.'

Jonathan fell into a seemingly mystical contemplation of his pegs. The clock registered a quarter of an hour.

'Flocks, hill pasture, a new shippen and a sight of money in the bank, so they do say!' he remarked.

Robert came out of a dream of wild duck and rose-coloured pelargoniums.

'Money? What money?'

'Money as young Gillian Lovekin'll get when the maister goes.'

'Money,' said Robert, going on with his work, 'is nought but dung.'

'Dear sores, man! It buys all but Paradise. And some say it buys even that.'

'Can it buy love?'

'So they do say' Jonathan chuckled.

'Where did they say that?'

'At the public--the "Naked Maid."'

'I dunna like that name. Why dunna they say "The Mermaid's Rest," like the sign says?'

'Well, lad, there she is over the door, shameless as the Woman o' Babylon, mother-naked to the waist. We call 'er what she is. I'm thankful she's got some decent scales. She's not so ondecent as Eve in my poor mother's Bible. It's little wonder to me as Adam went wrong. Now if Eve had bought a calico chemise and a pair o' stays and a tuthree petticoats and a nice print dress and apern, there'd ha' been no such May-games with serpents and apples and what-not. Maybe their eldest would ha' bin a decent lad and brought up a family close by the old people, and there'd never ha' bin niggers then.'

'Why ever not?'

'Cain's love-children were the beginning of the niggers.'

Where Jonathan had gained his Scriptural (and apocryphal) knowledge was a mystery. This, and the legendary lore of the countryside, formed the basis of the tales for which he was famous.

'Paint the wench out, I say, or paint a bodice in. It draws the eye like that. It's bad for the lads. For till they get married and find out what a poor ornary thing an 'oman is, the lads think she's summat grand and curious.'

Suddenly, in the midst of the dream of wild duck and pelargoniums, Gillian's face swam up on the green sky with the pale, lissom body of the mermaid on the sign. Robert got up, threw the pegs on the floor, and walked up and down the little room. Two strides and a half. Turn. Two strides and a half. Turn. He must stop this garrulous old voice, or lead it elsewhere.

'Tell about the mermaid coming first!' he said.

'Washed ashore at Aberdovey. Ah! That's what came to pass. High tides they get at Aberdovey, time and agen. This was a spring tide like none's seen since. A mort of queer shells and seaweed came in on that tide, and coloured fishes and seaflowers from countries far away. And her. There she lay in a swound among the green weed, and a fisherman found her and went nigh mad with love. So she wiled him and she bewitched him, and she sang at him:

'"Back to the sea, fisherman! Back to the sea!"

'"No danger!" says he. And he kisses her.

'"Put me in fresh watter, then," she says, "so long as it is watter."

'"What'll you give me?" he says.

'"My love for one night!"

'"But you're a cold mermaid. You canna love!"

'"I'll come mortal for one night!"

'So she came mortal for one night. And in the grey dawn he chucked her into the river. And she swam upstream to the top of a mountain, and crept across to the spring of another stream, and so to another agen, and at last she was at Dysgwlfas inn, just where the little gyland goes down to the stream. And she sang at the innkeeper, and wiled him away. Some say they went down to Severn, and so to the sea. But they never heard tell of the innkeeper agen, only they found a bit of old sea-money in the shallows. Some say as she was seen on the moor with a shepherd that knew a charm to keep her mortal for ever. But anyway, a sign-painter put her on the signboard, and there she be.'

'She was Gillian!' thought Robert. This braving of circumstance, this luring of men, this boldness and elusiveness, were all Gillian, and the starting-out to-morrow to conquer the world was very like the mermaid's journey. Would he might be that shepherd at the end! He knew so well what she wanted, and he was powerless to give it her. He could only put his soul into a poem and enthrone her there. Would she care? He snapped his finger and thumb.

'Not that!' he said, and began to love her.

'Laws, lad! you nearly made me cut meself!'

Jonathan whittled always in fear of ultimate dissolution. Quick steps came through the slush. With a scraping and rubbing of shoes, Abigail came in, and immediately began to get supper ready.

'Well, missus! Packed and labelled?' asked Jonathan. A noticeable stillness came upon Robert. His brown hands lay motionless on his knees. His eyes waited on his mother's face.

She was hindered in her dialogue by the supreme necessity of watching Jonathan. No guardian angel with a sinner, rifleman with a target, or cat with a bird, could have been more tense and absorbed than she was when Jonathan wielded a knife. Each time he picked up a stick and began to hack bits from one side to make a firm stay for the cord she leaned a little forward, working her mouth with each cut, unable to speak. Then, as he relapsed into the less dangerous task of marking out a slight groove round the stick, she would relax. Finally, when he flung the peg on to the heap, she would sigh, smile, and take up her parable. So it was only in scattered sentences that Robert heard how the new dress fitted; how Miss Gillian had bought a pink ready-made blouse, three white nightdresses--not unbleached, such as she usually wore--shoes with heels, and a veil; how lovely she looked in the toque made of the slatey drake; how she had taken six rabbit-skins to the chief draper at Weeping Cross, and had them made into a muff and tippet; how she had laughed like half a dozen woodpeckers, and sung like twenty throstles; and how they had finally made some paste and fastened on the label:

Miss Juliana Lovekin,

Passenger to Silverton.

Ah, how sad the white eye of the pelargonium! Almost it seemed to Robert that a dew had fallen in that quiet room, for he saw it through tears.

'A fine mingicumumbus! And only to go to her a'ntie's!' observed Jonathan.

'Going opens the door to the world,' said Abigail, turning the stockpot upside-down over an immense basin, and proclaiming supper.

Robert hummed very softly:

'And howsoever far I'd roam,

I couldna find the smiles and tears of whome.'

'What a kimet -' began Jonathan, looking at him open-mouthed. But at this point he cut himself, and Abigail took command. She had everything at hand. No trick of an unkind fate could surprise her. She had simple disinfectants, ointments, clean needles for thorns, soft linen, bandages, even a bit of iron for cauterizing, in case some mad dog should seek out Jonathan and bite him (which Abigail was sure would happen if there were even one case of rabies in the West Country). While she bound him up, she made him feel like a wounded hero, so that a glow came over him, and he enjoyed his troubles, and the idea that he was clumsy was never allowed to enter his mind.

Robert looked at the heap of pegs beside Jonathan. They would take him till midnight with his own. It did not occur to him to leave them undone. There was the task, just as in potato setting or haying, and, if one was incapacitated, the others must do more.

'What time'll she start, mother?'

'The noon train.'

'Then I'll please to ask you to give me bite and sup as soon as I've milked. I'll just put on me market coat and wrap horse-rug round me.' .

'You're set to take her, then?'

'Ah.'

With a safety-pin in her mouth, Mrs. Makepeace looked at her son across Jonathan's bandaged hand. Her eyes were keen with love--futile love, for she could not help him. She would have liked to 'cosset' him as she did Jonathan, but she knew it was useless. He looked back at her with those deep eyes of his--brooding and sad, stern and a little mocking--and his secret, which she had guessed, but had not certainly known, leapt across the quiet room.

'Drat the girl!' thought she. 'I didna want it to be this way.

'Twas she should ha' loved first. Now here the lad'll sit and mope like a bird with a shot mate. Nowt said. Nowt done. Oh, deary me! Canna you hold still a minute, Jonathan, my dear?'

Jonathan, who had been enjoying his cut very much, looked up wistfully, like a child in fault, at this sudden irritability.

'Mother, is there ever a bit o' writing-paper in the place?' asked Robert.

'Ah! There's a sheet or two left from the box Mrs. Fanteague sent me Christmas was a year.'

She fetched it.

'A pen, mother?'

But no pen could be found. They were not a writing family. Isaiah kept the farm accounts, Robert's songs were in his mind only, and when Abigail wrote on the jam-covers she borrowed a pen from Gillian.

'There's a drop of ink, but the pen's lost,' she said.

Robert lit the lantern and went out, returning soon with a quill from the poultry-house, which he cut into shape. His mother's mouth did not work when he used the knife, nor did she watch him. Was he not the marrow of his father, that man of absolute, though quiet, competence?

Robert put the quill and paper on the chest of drawers beside the shell box and the Bible in readiness, and went on with the pegs.

As Mrs. Makepeace washed up she thought: 'So it goes! Nowt said to her. Nowt said to me. It'll be a wonder if the Lord Almighty gets a word out of the lad. He'll just eat sorrow. Now, what's that letter he's set on writing when we've gone upstairs?'

She fetched the candlestick

'Time for us to be going, my dear.'

'Which was what Lord 'Umphrey said when the Dark Coach came for the Lady Rosanna Tempest,' remarked Jonathan. '"Time for us to be going," he says. And in she got. And off they druv. And clap went all! For Lord 'Umphrey was the owd lad himself, and none saw 'em after.'

'It's raining soft and quiet,' said Abigail, opening the door and looking out into the night.

'Heavy going to-morrow, mother.'

'Ah, Bob!' she sighed.

As she knelt in her unbleached nightdress and the red woollen shawl that John had given her, she made an extra prayer for her son.

'O Lord! Let Miss Gillian and Master and everybody bend to my lad's will like corn to the wind. Amen.'

But whether this prayer was addressed to Christ or Jehovah or a pagan god it would have been difficuh to say.

As soon as he was alone, Robert set out the writing materials and began his letter. It was very short. He addressed it to 'Mister Gruffydd Conwy, by the kindness of Mister Cadwalladar, Grocer, The Keep.'

With his face bent over the letter, his dark, slightly wavy hair and well-shaped head outlined against the white wall, he made a pleasant picture. When he lifted his wide brows to glance at the golden-sounding clock, the yellow, figured face seemed to congratulate itself, as though it were feminine and had charmed these grey eyes.

Robert was glad when the letter was done. He drew a mug of beer from the cask in the larder and went on with the pegs again. These done, he fell into a deep cogitation, while the low firelight shone up into his face, accentuating the strong jaw, the fine lines about the eyes, the slightly hollow temples, the decisive nose. So he was to sit, alone and brooding, on another winter night not so very far away, while the clock ticked low as if in awe, and the red firelight tinted his face like that of the Roman soldier in Gillian's picture. Perhaps even now, in the silence, the future spoke; perhaps even now his very self was aware and ready.

She was going from him. Should he ask her to write? Of what use were letters? Either you had a person's very self beside you or--nothing. Of what use would it be to him, wanting her laugh, her stamp of rage, wanting her there to watch and plan surprises for, of what use to have a letter, stilted and formal, saying she was well and A'ntie sent compliments? Also, she would not be allowed to write to him when her family were aiming at the Church.

'All as is, is this,' he thought, 'the way I feel to the child must be the secret that's never been told.'

He pondered.

'No reason I shouldna know she's well,' he thought, 'and things going pleasant.'

He wrote another letter. This was addressed to:

'Gipsy Johnson,

'The Caravan on the Fair Ground,

'Silverton.'

Gipsy Johnson travelled into Wales by way of the Gwlfas every spring, returning in the autumn, and living through the winter at Silverton. He was one of Robert's friends. Robert had a silent, unstressed, lifelong friendship with a good many people. Each spring and autumn he and Johnson smoked a pipe together by the gipsy fire, saying little, asking few questions, but conscious of mutual trust. There was very little that Johnson did not know about Silverton and the country where lay his beat. Also, he had the key to that curious express system which, in lonely places, can bring news almost as quickly as the telegraph wires, running over the land like secret wildfire--the Mercury of democracy. Under his eye Gillian would be safe. That desire of hers to go to London alone, of which Robert knew, could not be carried into practice without Johnson's knowledge. It was a desire that must be decisively treated, Robert had decided. Of what use was parental authority or the aphorisms of aunts, or the mild shockedness of a Mr. Gentle, when dealing with a girl like Gillian? His lips took their forbidding line and there was a flicker of amusement in his eyes. He and Johnson were the men for that job, for they could meet wiles with action, and boldness with superior knowledge of the situation, and they were not polished and would have no qualms about using force if necessary. At the idea of himself daring to dictate (though silently) to Miss Lovekin, Robert threw back his head and laughed soundlessly. Yes. He and Johnson would carry it through.

'Dear sores! If she went flaunting in her innicence to that wilderness o' men, she'd soon be trod under foot,' he thought.

He wrote:

'Dear Friend,

'Master's girl's coming to Mrs. Fanteague of the Lilacs to stop a bit. Please to keep a glim on her. Leave me know all's well time and agen. Send quick if you hear tell of her travelling anywhere. Hoping all's well as it leaves me.

Robt. Rideout'

He lit his pipe and sat looking at the envelopes with some complacency.

'That job's jobbed,' he reflected. He went to the window. Velvet-dark night leant against it with an almost palpable weight; it was as if the glass might fall inwards at any moment. He drew back the bolt and went out, stepping straight into the breast of a great cloud that lay across the Gwlfas like a grey bird. Through the fold, under the drift-house, he went, on to the little lawn in front of the farm, where the mossy grass was spongy and white fragments of snow lay to the north. He stood by the pigeon-cote. Yes! There was her lit window--pale yellow, like a Lent lily. Once he saw her head outlined against the light.

He threw a pebble. It struck sharply on the glass. He threw it as if it were a signal of distress, because of the sudden pain of knowing that to-morrow there would be no bright Lent lily there. She opened the window and leant out. She had a white shawl on. Underneath he could see in the flickering candle-light a sleeve with frills--one of those new, extravagant night-gowns, no doubt.

And it was only for two old ladies to admire! Oh, dear! 'Good fleet!' he said abruptly. For now that she was there he could think of nothing to say. He had ceased to be the usual human word-coining machine, and was just a surge of wild instincts and desires.

A ripple of laughter fell.

'And you called me up out of my beauty-sleep to say "Good fleet!" as crousty as can be!'

'You werena asleep.'

'What's kep you up so late?'

'Writing letters.'

'Letters! I didna know you could!'

'I can do whatever I set mind to do.'

'Where be they? Who to? Can I see?'

Robert slapped his chest.

'They be in my pocket. They be to friends o' mine. You canna see 'em. But they consarn you.'

He laughed.

'Oh, you aggravating man!'

She slammed the window.

The Lent lily faded.

'Well, God bless ye!' said Robert, as his heavy boots went 'sook, sook' across the lawn.

Morning came coldly over the sodden moor, where partridges ran across the deep cart-tracks with the glee of creatures released from a spell. For the present winter had withdrawn like a slow wave, and the green places shone like stained glass with a light behind it. The farm glowed in deep jewel reds; the ricks took the colours of ripe barley; Robert's face was red beneath its brown. The wind came from the northwest and was sharp and glassy as an iceberg. Gillian's cheeks tingled as she climbed into the trap and waved a gay farewell to her father, and she was very much amused at his evident perturbation on seeing who was to drive her. Rich as a dark pink rose with a touch of brown in it, she shone through the new veil, beneath the feathers of the defunct drake. The brown-grey rabbit fur suited her. Joy suited her. She had washed her hair with the farm-house shampoo of beaten egg-yolk, and it gleamed with lustrous softness. Her gloves were of suede. She liked her shoes so much that she would not have the rug over them. The cornelian heart added its touch of elegance. Gillian was, she felt, a real lady.

'Well, if ever!' breathed Robert, after a mile in silence, during which he had stolen many sidelong looks.

'It inna so bad, is it?'

'Bad! You're the Queen of May, Miss Gillian.'

'Miss?'

'Ah, you've got to be Miss Gillian now.'

'Miss always I shanna be!'

Robert suddenly slashed at the mare, to her everlasting surprise. It had never happened before. What had come to this dear master? What had she done? Indignant, half in revolt, she made the cart spin past the last fields of the farm. They were opposite the gyland now. These neighbouring fields always seemed to be tentatively asking each other's protection against the wild that lay, vast, purple, and silent, on every side.

To hide the sudden fury that possessed him at the thought of Gillian's marriage, Robert pointed with the whip to the long, narrow cover of stunted larches and birches called the 'Gyland,' which rose steeply on the other side of the brook beyond the first of the Mermaid fields.

'Unket!' he said. 'Real unket, that place is.'

'Ah!'

Gillian had not noticed his confusion. She was engrossed in the thought that this evening she would be, out in the world.

'It's a place,' said Robert, still looking at the dark, snowstrewn cover, 'where summat 'll come to pass. Summat unket.'

'What for will it?'

'I dunno. But I feel it in my bones.'

'Tell it! It's like a tale of frittening.'

'It's like as if there were places where the Lord o' Darkness comes borsting through, and they bear the mark before and after. Like as if good's thin there--only a croust--and he can come through easy. All the while afore it, the place bodes it. All the while after, it minds it. So it's different from other places for ever and ever.'

'I like that. It's right nice and 'orrid.'

'I dunna like it. It's got summat to do with you and me.'

'Oh, Robert! What way?'

'I dunno. Some way. You mind how you fell out o' cradle and cut yer forehead?'

'Ah. I fell out o' cradle. I was dreaming about where I came from--a green place with mountains and chiming rivers where I was before I was born. I woke up all of a sudden, and it was dark, and there was a sough o' wind, and wildfire in the window, and I knew summat beyond the glass was jealous of my dream.'

'And you only five summers!'

'Ah. I couldna put words to it for a many years. But I knew there was somebody crushing and crushing at the farm to get at me and the dream. And in the morning, Mother said she noticed a great crack in the chimley right to the ground.'

'And you'd had the dream before?'

'Ah! Every night, when Mother rocked me, the dream came. Always the same. Little round hills like Gwlfas Pyatt, and some a bit bigger, like "the green hill far away," and all round 'em at the back, sharp-pointed, high black mountains, and bright streaks of silver down 'em, that was rivers.'

'And it was a good dream?'

'I canna tell you the good of it. It was like all the best things--like the feeling of sliding on good ice, and riding downhill with a wallop, and neesening, and the good feeling of Lord's Supper, and paddling in the brook, and having dinner at the "Ordinary" (only I don't never), and finding a vi'let in winter.'

'But it broke?'

'Ah. It broke like gossamers when the soughing came in the chimbley. Then the bad spirits put a mark on me, and I'm a child of hell.'

'No.'

'Ah! I canna help it. Whenever the good dream comes, the bad'll break in. As soon as I begin to see them shiny meadows and green, mossy mountains, I'm feared.'

'Dunna be.'

'But if those devils came crushing in agen, I'd die.'

'They shanna. I'll keep you safe.'

'You? Oh, Robert! You binna strong enough.'

'I be, because I-'

'Because what?'

'Oh, gerron-with-ye, mare!' said Robert very crossly.

The mare's moist dark eye came round--for he drove without blinkers--as if in reproach.

'And maybe that's what the dark feel of the gyland means. Maybe they'll break through there and kill my dream.'

'There's summat waiting there, I make no doubt. We mun just bide and see.'

'Do ye like my dress, Robert?'

Green hills and granite mountains must recede before such a weighty question.

'It's middling tidy.'

'I'd like to give you a clout in the ear, Bob Rideout! Only "middling"!'

'But I canna see why you mun go and kill the poor owd drake. Owd drake and me was allus friendly.'

'I wanted a hat that colour.'

'If you allus kill to have, you'll go to the land o' silence raddled all o'er.'

'I dunna care.'

'Mind the day dunna come when you'll sup sorrow for it.'

'I shall get preaching in Sil'erton, thank ye kindly. Look! There's public. What a lost and forgotten place it looks. I canna bear the way the sign creaks, winter.'

'It's unket, like the gyland. But it's a grand place enough, with all the upsy downsy rooms, and the great guest-chambers, to say nought of the attics. It's bigger than Thatchers want.'

'Father says, if Mrs. Thatcher dies, Mr. Thatcher 'll leave.'

'That'll be a big change. Thatchers ha' been there many a long day.'

'I wonder who'll come?'

'Ah.'

'Maybe somebody young as'll give a Christmas tea. I'd like to go to a Christmas tea at the public.'

'Likely you will some day.'

'I wonder what Mrs. Thatcher felt like when she came walking over the heath in her bride-dress, and Mr. Thatcher's arm in her arm, and the blush roses in blow, and none in all that great place but him and her? And I wonder what Mr. Thatcher felt like?'

'I can pretty well guess.'

'Say!'

'I wunna.'

'You're talking very choppy. You ought to read the book of good manners A'ntie lent me. It says nought about chopping the words like worms under a spade.'

She pulled out her handkerchief and played with it. Whiffs of scent came from it, lace edged it; all this forbidden sweetness was unbearable. At the top of the long road that swept in a grand switchback of gradually descending country from the 'Mermaid's Rest' to Mallard's Keep, Robert pulled up short.

'Now look you, Gillian, no more o' that! No more about kissing and weddings and what-not. Flesh and blood wunna stand it.'

Gillian's face was gleeful. So flesh and blood wouldn't stand it! Aha! He wouldn't kiss her, but none the less he thought her pretty. He was obstinate, but he had been obliged to ask for mercy.

'I tell ye,' went on Robert's angry voice, 'another word and I'll drive down there dang-swang, and dash us to pieces at the bottom and lie in one grave.'

'Oh, Robert! Why won't flesh and blood stand it?'

Robert gave her a look, a fierce, swift look like a ray of concentrated light. Then he set his face towards the Keep again.

'Oh, coom on, mare! We'll miss that borsted train!' he said.

They continued for some miles in silence. At last, after many lonely hills and valleys, they climbed the last steep hill to a Pisgah view of Mallard's Keep. There it lay--the end of delight for Robert. There it shone, its clustered roofs, square church tower and miniature railway station all sloping up a hill with the inconsequence of a card house. Beyond were meadows, steep woods, blue distance, purple distance, smoke-coloured hills, and more hills so pale as to fade on the sky. All about them plovers ran in the mangold fields and wheeled in the air with their wistful winter cry. A luggage train like a toy drew out from the distant station with no sound, and a puff of white smoke floated like a bubble against the dark woodland. The acrid scent of burning weeds came up from an unseen fire somewhere in the meadows below the road. A thrush, balanced on the top twig of a fragrant fir tree, sang with piercing sweetness. Robert looked, listened, sighed. His broad shoulders were a little bowed, and looked pathetic. When a man is young and his pulses strong; when desire is swift and eager, and all things subservient to it; then it is very easy to take, very hard and bitter to renounce. They might have been driving to a fair or a harvest dance or a Christmas supper as a betrothed couple, or even to church to have their banns called. (Oh, thought forbidden! Oh, sweet thought!) It might have been the gate of heaven, that little, huddled, shining town. It was, instead, the gateway of despair. They were going to no feast of fulfilment. It was not golden September, but cold, early spring; nothing begun, nor likely to begin--no possibility of any harvest for his love.

'Oh, dang it!' he said.

An idea came to Gillian. It would be fun! It would be doing a kindness to Robert also. It would be Christian, as Christian as one of Aunt Fanteague's prayer-meetings--nearly.

'Robert! Would you like to come as far as the Junction along of me, and us'll get tea, and I'll go on by the last train?'

'Oh, my dear 'eart!' murmured Robert.

'I canna hear what you say, Robert. Tell it out! I dunna like churching-mice.'

'I darstna.'

'Well, but darst you come?'

'Well,' said Robert, staring defiantly at the far blue hills, 'I dunna see why not.'

She clapped her hands.

'We'll have some fine May-games, Robert O! There's a shop at the Junction where they sell cornets in summer--made of biscuit with pink ice inside. But they wunna have 'em in winter.

Oh, dear!'

'There'll be buns,' said Robert, 'and plum cake, likely, and brandy-balls and liquorice.'

'Ah, but liquorice is for children.'

'Hoity-toity! you be grown-up and grand! You'll be getting altogether marred for us poor folk when you've been in Silverton a bit.'

'Well, Mr. Rideout, it wunna be you as has to live with me, so you needna mind.'

Off they went, hell-for-leather down the hill, for Robert's patience was exhausted. Not a word did he say as they rushed on, nor as they climbed the steep main street, nor as they drove over the cobbled inn yard where he unharnessed and stabled the mare. Without a word he shouldered Gillian's box and turned towards the station.

The road twisted back for a few yards, and they faced towards Dysgwlfas. There it lay, so faint, so blue, the one long, wavering line that meant so many miles of folded, seamed and tumbled land. There was his home. There he must bide until he had fulfilled his task, silently laid upon him by the silent moor. He must drag its heart out, mingle it with his own being, make it into something lovely and unfading. The soul of Gillian Lovekin also should be mingled with it. He had no knowledge, no words, no books, yet he would do it.

'Ah!' he said to himself as he brooded on that faint far-hung ridge. 'I'll get the guts out of the place. I will that!'

'Oh, look ye!' cried Gillian.

There, about a mile away, between two hills of bare larches, which shone golden in the afternoon sunlight, was a puff of white smoke--the train.

'Look sharp, or we'll miss un!' cried Gillian.

When they came to the station Robert discovered that he had not one penny in his pocket. Here was a pretty pass!

'I amna coming,' he said sulkily.

'I've taken your ticket!' laughed Gillian. 'Come you shall!' She commanded, scolded, implored. It was useless. At last the guard prepared to wave his flag. Robert stood stolidly on the platform. Gillian was in despair. Her afternoon's fun was to be snatched from her. Suddenly she was lonely. She leaned out.

'Oh, please, sir!' she cried to the guard. 'Could you and porter give my 'usband a leg up, for he's all of a kim-kam with the rheumatics?'

Before Robert could collect his wits he was hoisted into the carriage by four kind, brawny arms and received by Gillian.

The flag waved. The whistle blew. They were alone.

'Dear to goodness!' said Robert, red and wrathful. 'If I was your 'usband, my girl, I'd learn you not to make such a gauby of me! I would that!'

But Gillian only laughed.

'Oh, deary me! I hope nobody knew us! What ud father say? But I got my way!'

'Ah! you got your way by a nasty, sneaking woman's trick. I wish I could get mine as easy,' remarked Robert, with a sudden blaze of passion in his eyes.

'And what met that be?'

'Ah, maybe that's 'the secret that's never been told, Miss Gillian.'

With a wild and gloomy expression he turned his back on her, and did not look at her again until they had passed the three wayside stations set in the woods, and were nearing the Junction. He was afraid, desperately afraid, of forces undreamed of within himself, of a savagery that slept within his own soul bound, but strong enough to break any shackle.

As they drew in to the junction he turned to her.

'Gillian Lovekin!' he said. 'I warn ye, dunna play too many May-games with me. I tell ye straight, I canna stand it.'

From her corner she looked at him and quailed a little.

Then she jumped out on to the platform in a flurry.

'Come on!' she cried. 'Now for the buns and the cake and the tea O! Darby and Joan at the junction!'

Robert was obliged to laugh. And although the forbidding expression came back to his face afterwards, Gillian felt that she was forgiven. They came to the one tea-shop in the single street. Its small, rounded window was full of brandy-balls and bulls'-eyes, green canisters of tea with gold hieroglyphics on them, buns, ginger snaps, leather boot-laces, thimbles and oranges. Inside was a broadly smiling lady in a white apron, who said:

'Pleasant weather for sweet'arting,' and made Robert angry again.

But when the tea came--it was perfection. There were cakes of many shapes; there was a brown teapot with raised forget-me-nots on it; there were pikelets and jelly, and pink willow cups and a large cake with icing that stood on a doyley smelling of mice.

When they had finished it was time to go to the station. On the way they looked into shops, and Gillian saw a picture of a Roman soldier standing in a glare of light. Underneath was written: 'Faithful unto death.'

She went in and asked the price. It was three and sixpence, or, as she thought of it, two rabbits and a half.

She bought it.

'Look! It's like you, Robert!'

Robert looked into the face of the soldier. He brooded so long that the approaching whistle of the train took them by surprise, and they had to run.

'For you!' she said, as they reached the platform. Then, as she looked at his rough coat, his dark hair and eloquent, proud glance, she was suddenly homesick. She leant out.

'I'll see Severn to-night!' she said, with bravado.

'What do I care if you see a score Severns?'

'I want to see it--smooth and green, with swans on it.'

'I canna abide swans.'

'Robert!'

'Well?'

'There's nobody in this carriage but me.'

'So I see.'

'If you've a mind -'

'Gillian Lovekin! your name ought to be Gill-flirt!'

'But, Robert!'

Robert looked at the flushed cheek, the smiling mouth ready to droop, the eyes that shone with the radiant tints of the feather hat. Then without more ado he turned and rushed up the platform with long strides. When he came back there was only the flutter, of a handkerchief from the receding train. But on his way home Robert took many refreshing peeps at the picture of the soldier. It comforted him, in the suddenly realized emptiness created by that fluttering handkerchief, to dream that there might come a time when he would stand amid the red ruin of his life defending the helpless, childish soul of Gillian.

The country grew dimmer, grew dark, in the short journey. It only took three-quarters of an hour, but to Gillian it was like a whole day. Once she saw the far hills dark against the afterglow, once she caught a glimpse of a brook lit by reflected radiance. Then came straggling houses, a village church, houses clustering thicker, roofs all huddled together, a square church tower, two silver spires, a great bridge across the Severn--Silverton. They ran into a bay of the long station, and there stood Aunt Fanteague in her best mantle and her well-mortised bonnet, very severe.

'We missed our, train,' remarked Aunt Fanteague. When she used the first person plural, things were very wrong.

'I'm only a country girl, A'ntie,' said Gillian. 'Silverton 'll soon learn me to catch trains.' She thought of the London express.

'I've met the train twice,' said Aunt Fanteague, half inclined to be mollified.

Gillian gave her a great hug.

'It ud serve me right if you hadna kept any tea for me,' she said, 'and I clemmed.'

'No one shall clem in my house, Juliana.'

'Oh, A'ntie, you are good.'

They walked out of the station yard, up the hill, with brig shop-windows on both sides. The cake shop at the top of the hill was a blaze of light and gay-ribboned chocolate boxes.

'Not even London,' said Gillian, 'could be better than this.'

'Oh, London! Well, I've never been there myself. Silverton's good enough for me. Where there's a church, and a doctor, and a butcher's, and the other shops for the necessary, and a good wool shop, and reasonable coal, it seems to me there's no need of London.'

'But folk tell a sight of tales--'

'Oh, tales! They'll make tales' out of nothing. Now if you went to London what ud you find?'

Gillian opened her mouth to say: 'A lover,' but remembered in time.

'You'd find churches and butchers and the other shops, maybe a better wool shop, but less reasonable coal. That's all.'

'Oh, deary me!'

'But you can ask poor Emily.'

'Has A'nt Emily been to London?'

'Why, yes, my dear, you needn't scream. She went to her operation.'

If she had said coronation, Aunt Fanteague could not have spoken more respectfully. They left the bright street and took their way up a narrow alley of ancient black and white houses. The moon was up, and it threw the deep shadows of old romance. Never a dark brooding shade of a gable without the possibility of a Romeo for every Juliet. Bells began to sound. They rang the chimes. A mellow bell said a word that sounded like 'June' six times. As they crossed the square, the shutters were being put up. More black and white gables leaned to Gillian, more shadows lured her. Up another narrow street, down a little hill.

'Here we are,' said Aunt Fanteague. The rumbling of the out-porter's barrow followed them down-hill. They had come to a little brown house, between a high, red garden wall and another brown house. There were two windows up and two down, two gables, black oak beams let into the brown stone, two hollow white steps, a bright knocker.

They knocked, and there was Aunt Emily. She stood pensively under the pale light in the narrow hall, while the cuckoo-clock, a little behind the times, struck six.

Aunt Emily kissed her.

'It's years since I saw you, dear,' she said. 'Why, you've quite grown up!'

'You saw her just before your operation,' said Mrs. Fanteague.

'Yes, yes, sister.'

Gillian understood that the time of the operation would be an inexhaustible topic; would perhaps provide her with much useful information.

The box arrived.

'Now, Emily, you take the child in. She's starved and clemmed. I'll see to the box.'

Aunt Emily led the way.

She was tall and thin, and she seemed to have too many bones in her face, so that when she spoke, you expected them to click together. She had a lined forehead, a pointed chin, a wistful mouth and eyes that always seemed to have just stopped crying. She was dressed in grey, with a small lilac bow. Her hair was slightly grey and was knotted at the back and covered with a net, not built up like Aunt Fanteague's.

In the parlour the table was set for tea, and, the fire of reasonable coal burned brightly. There was a piano which was a musical box. There was an oval case of stuffed willow-wrens; there were two glass-fronted cupboards of china, a whist table, and several framed lustre paintings on velvet; a cabinet portrait in a plush frame signed 'Hubert Gentle'; a piece of coal which was supposed to contain a diamond, and which caused much future trouble to Gillian. (She was unable, after some weeks, to tolerate its bland assumption of priceless worth, so she proved it with a pocket knife. In the manner of coal, it fell to pieces. There was no diamond, nor was there now any coal; and it was an heirloom. Not only that, it was a faith. She felt, on the day when she faced Aunt Emily across the fragments, really a child of hell.)

There were innumerable photographs on the walls, all a little mottled, a little yellow. They seemed to be of people who could never really have lived. The ladies wore chignons, the gentlemen wore whiskers. All wore stiff and curious clothes. She was told they were the Aunts' grandparents, her great-grandparents. She was glad she had never known them. On the mantelpiece were vases of everlastings. In a corner was a painted drainpipe (sun-flowers on a brown ground), containing bulrushes. On one wall was Landseer's Fidelity, on another Highland Cattle, on another a still life-study by Aunt Emily in youth (apples, Michaelmas daisies and vase), and on the fourth, Wedded. On the piano were some sacred songs.

'As you're a traveller, I know sister will excuse you sitting down as you are,' said Emily. 'Do you take milk and sugar?'

'Everything, please, A'ntie!'

That was it! She wanted everything! She would take milk and sugar and all the rest of life. She would bear anything, even pain. Only never, never would she be like Aunt Emily. She would rather die. The atmosphere of the house oppressed her. It was so quiet. She was used to her father's 'Ha!' and Robert's tramp in the yard, and a sound of shifting cow-chains from the fold, and stampings from the stable. She was used to the smell of strong tobacco and beer. Here was only a faint scent of camphor. She thought even the bread and butter tasted of camphor, as if it had been cut for a tea-party of the mottled people on the walls, a long time ago, and preserved. But Gillian was hungry again by this time, so the camphor and the seed cake, the quince conserve and the little cakes were all equally delicious. She wished Robert could enjoy it too. What would Robert be doing now? She saw again the dark moor, the winding road with snow water lying in every uneven place, the vast and cloudy sky, the cart with Winny trotting briskly, ears pricked for home, and Robert's figure, stooping forward a little in one of his customary attitudes of easy power, holding the reins in his large, capable hand with a look of carelessness which would have been swiftly belied if the mare had stumbled.

When she looked at the brilliant tints of Aunt Emily's apples, she saw that quiet picture. While she heard the coals fall with a tindery sound into the white ash on the flawless hearth, she heard also Winny's splashing trot, the creaking of the harness, the rattle of the whip-holder, which had always been loose. Aunt Fanteague was a long while on the stairs, for not only must she go into the ethics of overcharges, but she also had to inquire as to the absence of the out-porter's little boy from Sunday School, which was held under one of the silver spires. She also had to hear, in a loud, mysterious whisper, that the reason was that the missus had had an increase, and that all had been 'collywessen' in the house. She then had to look out some comforts for the porter's family, and give him many injunctions. So Aunt Emily and Gillian had a long time together. They had not met for some years, because Aunt Emily had not felt equal to the journey to the Gwlfas.

Sometimes, beyond the shutters, muffled footsteps would go up or down the hill, and Gillian thought they sounded as steps would sound if she was in her grave, and had a flagstone over her, and was wakeful. Suddenly she felt sorry for Emily, sitting there so still, eating so little, getting ready for the dreams that would come in three hours. It was not in Gillian's nature to be sorry for people, and when she pitied, she despised. Why had Aunt Emily become like this? Why hadn't she run away with Mr. Gentle? Looking again at Mr. Gentle's portrait, she wondered less. But she had the native courtesy which is in most country people, however rough they may be.

'He looks to be a very pleasant-spoken gentleman,' she said. 'His likeness to Charles the First of blessed memory,' said Aunt Emily, 'is considered to be very striking.'

'Was that the one that had his head ?'

'The likeness is the only resemblance,' said Aunt Emily, rather stiffly.

Gillian wondered if, should Aunt Emily so far forget herself as to ask for a kiss, Mr. Gentle would behave as Robert had behaved. Could Mr. Gentle blaze into sudden anger, with a look underneath that made you hot and cold? She did not think so. Her thoughts wandered to Aunt Fanteague. There was and always had been a mystery about Aunt Fanteague.

There was a Mr. Fanteague; but where he was, what he did, who cooked his meals and made his bed, nobody seemed to know. He was as mysterious as the Trinity.

'A'nt Em,' said Gillian suddenly, flinging herself on the rug by the grey knees of Miss Emily, 'A'nt Em, do tell about Mr. Fanteague!'

Aunt Emily gasped.

But the necessity of answering was taken from her. Mrs. Fanteague stood in the doorway.

'Mr. Fanteague, Gillian, is a spark that runs among the stubble,' she said, and with that she poured herself a cup of tea, and closed the subject. 'A spark among the stubble!' It sounded nice--better than Charles the First. She would like to meet Mr. Fanteague. Since her early years all mention of him had been hushed and frozen. She and Mrs. Makepeace simmered with curiosity. Apparently this was not to be satisfied.

'Maybe, if I'm right nice to Mr. Gentle, I can get it out of him,' thought Gillian.

She was too much on her best behaviour to get up and look at his portrait, but she could see it fairly well from her chair, for her sight, like her supple movements, had something in it of the falcon. She took the opportunity of Mrs. Fanteague going to fetch hot water to say: 'I do want to listen to Mr. Gentle reading.'

'It's his evening to-morrow,' confided Aunt Emily. 'He never misses. Not in all these years. Colds he may have. Once it was measles that he caught in the Sunday School.' (I compare him to the brave leper Missionaries, for though it was not dangerous, it was just as sacrificial.) And once it was earache; but he came.'

Gillian clasped her hands round her knees and said, without any sarcasm:

'It must be grand to have a lover! For a chap to be mad after you!'

Aunt Emily hastily reached a palm-leaf fan that hung on the wall. She was very much embarrassed.

'Mr. Gentle would never be mad after anything,' she said.

'And I don't call him my lover, nor anything so forward. I call him my gentleman friend.'

'I suppose it inna very likely as Mr. Gentle could ride without a saddle?' Gillian asked.

'Juliana!' said her elder aunt, returning, 'you must keep in mind that whatsoever your Aunt Emily and me was used to in times gone by, we're used to good manners now--stirrups and saddles and good broadcloth--a paid pew in church--no feckless ways like at the Gwlfas.'

'But it inna feckless to ride bareback!--you've got to get ever such a grip of the knees!'

'You mustn't talk like that when Mr. Gentle's here, child. And now I'll show you to your room. You can unpack ready for bed. We're early folks. We go to bed at nine, nights, except on Mr. Gentle's evenings, and then we allow ourselves till ten. One evening I shall ask the curate and his mother. He is a very earnest young man; One that found his God before he lost Him, and never left the narrow way.'

'Oh, deary me! Never no fun at all!'

'To play the devil's game, Juliana, is not fun, but death.'

'Afore I die,' said Gillian, as she brushed her hair (which filled her with despair because it never would be anything but plain brown) before the grand swing-mirror, 'afore I die, I'm in behopes to play the devil's games once anyway.'

Aunt Fanteague sat down on the bed and raised her hands to heaven.

'Juliana! I counsel you to read two chapters in the Bible to-night instead of one. Travelling's turned your head. Best not come down again. I'll bring you some bread and milk in bed. There's The Dove in the Eagle's Nest, you can read when you've read your chapters.'

'It's a dove's nest I'm in,' thought Gillian. 'I'd liefer it was an eagle's.'

She wandered round the small, clean bristling room. Three texts, girl and swan, kittens in basket, all framed in cut cardboard. An entertaining screen made of Christmas cards. A wall-paper with blue roses on it. A bookshelf with Peep of Day, a Bible, a Lady's Companion that had belonged to her grandmother, and had always been considered a great treasure, for her grandfather had 'looked high' for his wife, and had married the schoolmistress from Mallard's Keep. There were also some bound copies of the Quiver in the seventies. Gillian thought there would be some good reading in these. She was fascinated most by the dressing-table, for it had a china set of dishes and boxes painted with unearthly flowers, culminating in a kind of china antler on which Gillian's rings (if she had possessed any) were supposed to hang. She looked at her bare brown fingers. What a long way it seemed to that desired day when she would stand before a glittering audience with rings of all colours on her white hands, and sing them into an ecstasy. Well, she had gained one step. But had she? Looking round the pictured walls, listening to the silence, broken only by slow chimes, she had a sudden flash of perception that this was further away from her dreams than the Gwlfas was. She realized that place is nothing--or at least very little. Aunt Emily's visit to London helped in this. When Aunt Emily had been in London, she had really been further away from it, from its glittering savage soul, than she had been when she walked the old streets of Silverton in health. A hospital ward was not London, though in the centre of it: nor a prison, nor a nunnery, nor any place which had been made, either subtly or openly, into a cage. Gillian did not think all these things in any consecutive way, but the realization was borne in on her--and she knew that if she married the curate or anyone else whom her aunt should choose for her, she would be in a cage even if he took her to London. There was, then, no choice. It must be the way of the girl in the story--or the Gwlfas.

'They're poor old kim-kam things,' she reflected. 'And Aunt Emily's as soft as an unshelled egg. But I mun stop a bit, and learn some music and find a way to get