Part 57 (2/2)

”I'm jolly glad you're here,” Rupert said cordially, and Uncle Alfred, not used to a conspirator's part, stole a glance at Helen. She was standing near him; her stillness was broken by constant tiny movements, like ripples on a lake; she looked from one face to another as though she antic.i.p.ated and watched the thoughts behind, and was prepared to combat them.

”I wish you'd sit down,” Lily said, as Helen went to the window and looked out.

”Yes, sit down, sit down,” said Uncle Alfred, and he stood up, pointing to his chair.

”No; I'm listening, thank you,” Helen said.

The nurse's heavy tramp thudded across the room above, and her steps had something in them of finality, of the closing of doors, the shutting down of lids, the impenetrability of earth.

Sitting next to John, with her arm in his, Lily moved a little. Her eyes were full of pity, not so much for the woman upstairs, or for the Canipers, as because the emotions of these people were not the heartily unmixed ones which she had suffered when her own mother died.

”He's a long time,” Helen said. She went into the hall and pa.s.sed Miriam, in a black dress, with her hair piled high and a flush of colour on her cheeks.

”He's in there,” Helen said with a wave of her hand, and speaking this time of Uncle Alfred.

The front door stood open, and she pa.s.sed through it, but she did not go beyond the gate. The moor was changelessly her friend, yet George was on it, and perhaps he, too, called it by that name. She was jealous that he should, and she did not like to think that the earth under her feet stretched to the earth under his, that the same sky covered them, that they were fed by the same air; yet this was not on account of any enmity, but because the immaterial distance between them was so great that a material union mocked it.

Evening was slipping into night: there was no more rain, but the ground smelt richly damp, and seemed to heave a little with life eager to be free; a cloud, paler than the night, dipped upon the moor above Brent Farm and rose again, like the sail of a s.h.i.+p seen on a dark sea. Then a light moving on the road caught back Helen's thoughts and she went into the house.

”He's coming,” she said listlessly, careless of the use of p.r.o.nouns.

There was a p.r.o.noun on a s.h.i.+p, one on the moor, another driving up the road, and each had an importance and a supremacy that derided a mere name.

She shut the schoolroom door and waited in the hall, but half an hour later, she opened the door again.

”It's good news,” she said breathlessly. ”Do you want to speak to him, Rupert? She's going to live!”

She could not see her own happiness reflected.

”Like that?” John asked roughly.

”No, better, better. Always in bed, perhaps, but able to speak and understand.”

He lifted his big shoulders; Uncle Alfred flicked something from his knee and, in the silence, Helen felt forlorn; her brightness faded.

”And you'll be left here with her, alone!” Miriam wailed, at last.

”Alone?” asked John.

”Uncle Alfred's going to take me away,” Miriam said, yet she was not sure of that, and she looked curiously at him.

”I want her to go,” Helen said quickly.

John was still glowering at Miriam. ”Take you away! You talk as if you were a parcel!”

”I knew you would be angry,” she said. ”You've always been hard on me, and you don't understand.”

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