“No!” he said in sharp protest. “I will not have it! I am not going to run, I refuse to run. And that, whatever it may be, is for you, for your marriage.”
“My marriage!” she said in a wondering voice, very low, and opened wide at him the greenish fire of her eyes, as though the thought was new to her and very strange.
“Never trouble for me, in the end it will all be well. I am going back now,” said Elave firmly, too dazzled to be observant. “Never fear, I’ll take good care how I speak, how I carry myself, but I will not deny what I believe, or say aye to what I do not believe. And I will not run. From what? I have no guilt from which to run.”
He loosed her hands with a gesture almost rough, because at the end it seemed such a hard thing to do. He was turning away through the trees when he looked back, and she had not moved. Her eyes were on him, fixed thoughtfully, almost severely, and her lower lip was caught between even teeth.
“There is another reason,” he said, “why I will not go. Alone it would be enough to hold me. To run now would be to leave you.”
“And do you think,” said Fortunata, “that I would not follow and find you?”
She heard the several voices before she entered the hall, voices raised not so much in anger or argument as in bewilderment and consternation. Either Conan or Aldwin had thought it wise to acquaint the household with the morning’s sensational turn of events at once on arrival home, no doubt to put the best aspect on what they had done. She had no doubt that they were in collusion in the matter, but whatever their motives, they would not want to appear simply as squalid informers. A gloss of genuine religious revulsion and sense of duty would have to gloze over the malice entailed.
They were all there, Margaret, Jevan, Conan, and Aldwin, gathered in an agitated group, baffled question and oblique answer flying at the same time, Conan standing back to be the innocent bystander caught up in someone else’s quarrel, Aldwin bleating aloud as Fortunata entered: “How could I know? I was worried that such things should be said, I feared for my own soul if I hid them. All I did was tell Brother Jerome what was troubling me?”
“And he told Prior Robert,” cried Fortunata from the doorway, “and Prior Robert told everyone, especially that great man from Canterbury, as you knew very well he would. How can you pretend you never meant Elave harm? Once you launched it, you knew where it would end.”
They had all swung about to face her, startled by her anger rather than by the suddenness of her entry.
“No!” protested Aldwin, recovering his breath. “No, I swear I only thought the prior might speak to him, warn him, turn him to better counsel
“
“And therefore,” she said sharply, “you told him who had been present to hear. Why do that unless you meant it to go further? Why force me into your plans? That I shall never forgive you!”
“Wait, wait, wait!” cried Jevan, throwing up his hands. “Are you telling me, chick, that you were called to witness? In God’s name, man, what possessed you? How dared you bring our girl into such a business?”
“It was not I who wanted that,” protested Aldwin. “Brother Jerome got it out of me who was there. I never meant to bring her into the tangle. But I am a son of the Church. I needed to slough the load from my conscience, but then it got out of hand.”
“1 never knew you all that constant in observance,” said Jevan ruefully. “You could as well have refused to name any names but your own. Well, what’s done is done. Is it over even now? Need we expect her to be called to more enquiries, more interrogations? Is it to drag on to exhaustion, now it’s begun?”
“It isn’t over,” said Fortunata. “They have not pronounced any judgment, but they won’t let go so easily. Elave is pledged not to go away until he’s freed of the charge. I know it because I have just left him, among the trees close by the bridge, and he’s on his way back now to the abbey to stand his ground. I wanted him to run, I begged him to run, but he refuses. See what you’ve done, Aldwin, to a poor young man who never did you any harm, who has no family or patron now, no safe home and secure living, as you have. Here are you provided for life, without a care for your old age, and he has to find work again wherever he can, and now you have put a shadow upon him that will cling round him whatever the judgment, and turn men away from employing him for fear of being thought suspect by contagion. Why did you do it? Why?”
Aldwin had been gradually recovering his composure since the shock of her entrance had upset it, but now it seemed he had lost it altogether, and his wits with it. He stood gaping at her mutely, and from her to Jevan. Twice he swallowed hard before he could find a word to say, and even then he brought out the words with infinite caution, disbelieving.
“Provided for life?”
“You know you are,” she said impatiently, and herself was struck mute the next moment, suddenly sensible that for Aldwin nothing had ever been known beyond possibility of doubt. Every evil was to be expected, every good suspect and to be watched jealously, lest it evaporate as he breathed on it. “Oh, no!” she said on a despairing breath. “Was that it? Did you think he was come to turn you out and take your place? Was that why you wanted rid of him?”
“What?” cried Jevan. “Is the girl right, man? Did you suppose you were to be thrown out on the roads to make way for him to get his old place back again? After all the years you’ve lived here and worked for us? Did this house ever treat any of its people so? You know better than that!”
But that was Aldwin’s trouble, that he valued himself so low he expected as low a regard from everyone else, even after years, and the respect and consideration the house of Lythwood showed towards its other dependents could not, in his eyes, be relied on as applying equally to him. He stood dumbstruck, his mouth working silently.
“My dear soul!” said Margaret, grieving. “The thought never entered our heads to part with you. Certainly he was a good lad when we had him, but we wouldn’t have displaced you for the world. Why, the boy didn’t want it, either. I told him how it was, the first time he came back here, and he said surely, the place was yours, he never had the least wish to take it from you. Have you been fretting all this time over that? I thought you knew us better.”
“I’ve damaged him for no reason,” said Aldwin, as though to himself. “No reason at all!” And suddenly, with a convulsive movement that shook his aging body as a gale shakes a bush, he turned and blundered towards the doorway. Conan caught him by the arm and held him fast.
“Where are you going? What can you do? It’s done. You told no lies, what was said was said.”
