LITMIR.BIZ

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cut across the cheek-bone that would leave a scar; and the collar-bone was broken. I stayed until he had recovered consciousness. “Lettie.” He wanted Lettie, so she had to remain at Highclose all night. I went home to tell my mother.

      When I went to bed I looked across at the lighted windows of Highclose, and the lights trailed mistily towards me across the water. The cedar stood dark guard against the house; bright the windows were, like the stars, covering their torment in brightness. The sky was glittering with sharp lights — they are too far off to take trouble for us, so little, little almost to nothingness. All the great hollow vastness roars overhead, and the stars are only sparks that whirl and spin in the restless space. The earth must listen to us; she covers her face with a thin veil of mist, and is sad; she soaks up our blood tenderly, in the darkness, grieving, and in the light she soothes and reassures us. Here on our earth is sympathy and hope, the heavens have nothing but distances.

      A corn-crake talked to me across the valley, talked and talked endlessly, asking and answering in hoarse tones from the sleeping, mist-hidden meadows. The monotonous voice, that on past summer evenings had had pleasant notes of romance, now was intolerable to me. Its inflexible harshness and cacophony seemed like the voice of fate speaking out its tuneless perseverance in the night.

      In the morning Lettie came home wan, sad-eyed, and self-reproachful. After a short time they came for her, as he wanted her again.

      When in the evening I went to see George, he too was very despondent.

      “It’s no good now,” said I. “You should have insisted and made your own destiny.”

      “Yes — perhaps so,” he drawled in his best reflective manner.

      “I would have had her — she’d have been glad if you’d done as you wanted with her. She won’t leave him till he’s strong, and he’ll marry her before then. You should have had the courage to risk yourself — you’re always too careful of yourself and your own poor feelings — you never could brace yourself up to a shower-bath of contempt and hard usage, so you’ve saved your feelings and lost — not much, I suppose — you couldn’t.”

      “But —” he began, not looking up; and I laughed at him.

      “Go on,” I said.

      “Well — she was engaged to him —

      “Pah — you thought you were too good to be rejected.”

      He was very pale, and when he was pale, the tan on his skin looked sickly. He regarded me with his dark eyes, which were now full of misery and a child’s big despair.

      “And nothing else,” I completed, with which the little, exhausted gunboat of my anger wrecked and sank utterly. Yet no thoughts would spread sail on the sea of my pity: I was like water that heaves with yearning, and is still.

      Leslie was very ill for some time. He had a slight brain fever, and was delirious, insisting that Lettie was leaving him. She stayed most of her days at Highclose.

      One day in June he lay resting on a deck-chair in the shade of the cedar, and she was sitting by him. It was a yellow, sultry day, when all the atmosphere seemed inert, and all things were languid.

      “Don’t you think, dear,” she said, “it would be better for us not to marry?”

      He lifted his head nervously from the cushions; his face was emblazoned with a livid red bar on a field of white, and he looked worn, wistful.

      “Do you mean not yet?” he asked.

      “Yes — and, perhaps — perhaps never.”

      “Ha,” he laughed, sinking down again. “I must be getting like myself again, if you begin to tease me.”

      “But,” she said, struggling valiantly, “I’m not sure I ought to marry you.”

      He laughed again, though a little apprehensively.

      “Are you afraid I shall always be weak in my noddle?” he asked. “But you wait a month.”

      “No, that doesn’t bother me —”

      “Oh, doesn’t it!”

      “Silly boy — no, it’s myself.”

      “I’m sure I’ve made no complaint about you.”

      “Not likely — but I wish you’d let me go.”

      “I’m a strong man to hold you, aren’t I? Look at my muscular paw!”— he held out his hands, frail and white with sickness.

      “You know you hold me — and I want you to let me go. I don’t want to

      “To what?”

      “To get married at all — let me be, let me go.”

      “What for?”

      “Oh — for my sake.”

      “You mean you don’t love me?”

      “Love — love — I don’t know anything about it. But I can’t — we can’t be-don’t you see — oh, what do they say — flesh of one flesh.”

      “Why?” he whispered, like a child that is told some tale of mystery.

      She looked at him, as he lay propped upon his elbow, turning towards hers his white face of fear and perplexity, like a child that cannot understand, and is afraid, and wants to cry. Then slowly tears gathered full in her eyes, and she wept from pity and despair.

      This excited him terribly. He got up from his chair, and the cushions fell on to the grass.

      “What’s the matter, what’s the matter! — Oh, Lettie — is it me? — don’t you want me now? — is that it? — tell me, tell me now, tell me,”— he grasped her wrists, and tried to pull her hands from her face. The tears were running down his cheeks. She felt him trembling, and the sound of his voice alarmed her from herself. She hastily smeared the tears from her eyes, got up, and put her arms round him. He hid his head on her shoulder and sobbed, while she bent over him, and so they cried out their cries, till they were ashamed, looking round to see if anyone were near. Then she hurried about, picking up the cushions, making him lie down, and arranging him comfortably, so that she might be busy. He was querulous, like a sick, indulged child. He would have her arm under his shoulders, and her face near his.

      “Well,” he said, smiling faintly again after a time. “You are naughty to give us such rough times — is it for the pleasure of making up, bad little Schnucke — aren’t you?”

      She kept close to him, and he did not see the wince and quiver of her lips.

      “I wish I was strong again — couldn’t we go boating — or ride on horseback — and you’d have to behave then. Do you think I shall be strong in a month? Stronger than you?”

      “I hope so,” she said.

      “Why, I don’t believe you do, I believe you like me like this — so that you can lay me down and smooth me — don’t you, quiet girl?”

      “When you’re good.”

      “Ah, well, in a month I shall be strong, and we’ll be married and go to Switzerland — do you hear, Schnucke — you won’t be able to be naughty any more then. Oh — do you want to go away from me again?”

      “No — only my arm is dead,” she drew it from beneath him, standing up, swinging it, smiling because it hurt her.

      “Oh, my darling — what a shame! Oh, I am a brute, a kiddish brute. I wish I was strong again, Lettie, and didn’t do these things.”

      “You boy — it’s nothing.” She smiled at him again.

      Chapter 6

       The Courting

       Table

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