As she went home, a fine drizzle of rain fell.
“Is it raining again?” said Clifford, seeing her shake her hat.
“Just drizzle.”
She poured tea in silence, absorbed in a sort of obstinacy. She did want to see the keeper today, to see if it were really real. If it were really real.
“Shall I read a little to you afterwards?” said Clifford.
She looked at him. Had he sensed something?
“The spring makes me feel queer—I thought I might rest a little,” she said.
“Just as you like. Not feeling really unwell, are you?”
“No! Only rather tired—with the spring. Will you have Mrs. Bolton to play something with you?”
“No! I think I’ll listen in.”
She heard the curious satisfaction in his voice. She went upstairs to her bedroom. There she heard the loudspeaker begin to bellow, in an idiotically velveteen-genteel sort of voice, something about a series of street-cries, the very cream of genteel affectation imitating old criers. She pulled on her old violet-coloured mackintosh, and slipped out of the house at the side door.
The drizzle of rain was like a veil over the world, mysterious, hushed, not cold. She got very warm as she hurried across the park. She had to open her light waterproof.
The wood was silent, still and secret in the evening drizzle of rain, full of the mystery of eggs and half-open buds, half-unsheathed flowers. In the dimness of it all trees glistened naked and dark as if they had unclothed themselves, and the green things on earth seemed to hum with greenness.
There was still no one at the clearing. The chicks had nearly all gone under the mother hens, only one or two lost adventurous ones still dibbed about in the dryness under the straw roof-shelter. And they were doubtful of themselves.
So! He still had not been. He was staying away on purpose. Or perhaps something was wrong. Perhaps she could go to the cottage and see.
But she was born to wait. She opened the hut with her key. It was all tidy, the corn put in the bin, the blankets folded on the shelf, the straw neat in a corner; a new bundle of straw. The hurricane lamp hung on a nail. The table and chair had been put back where she had lain.
She sat down on a stool in the doorway. How still everything was! The fine rain blew very softly, filmily, but the wind made no noise. Nothing made any sound. The trees stood like powerful beings, dim, twilit, silent and alive. How alive everything was!
Night was drawing near again; she would have to go. He was avoiding her.
But suddenly he came striding into the clearing, in his black oilskin jacket like a chauffeur, shining with wet. He glanced quickly at the hut, half-saluted, then veered aside and went on to the coops. There he crouched in silence, looking carefully at everything, then carefully shutting the hens and chicks up safe against the night.
At last he came slowly towards her. She still sat on her stool. He stood before her under the porch.
“You come then,” he said, using the intonation of the dialect.
“Yes,” she said, looking up at him. “You’re late!”
“Ay!” he replied, looking away into the wood.
She rose slowly, drawing aside her stool.
“Did you want to come in?” she asked.
He looked down at her shrewdly.
“Won’t folks be thinkin’ somethink, you comin’ here every night?” he said.
“Why?” She looked up at him, at a loss. “I said I’d come. Nobody knows.”
“They soon will, though,” he replied. “An’ what then?”
She was at a loss for an answer.
“Why should they know?” she said.
“Folks always does,” he said fatally.
Her lip quivered a little.
“Well I can’t help it,” she faltered.
“Nay,” he said. “You can help it by not comin’—if yer want to,” he added, in a lower tone.
“But I don’t want to,” she murmured.
He looked away into the wood, and was silent.
“But what when folks find out?” he asked at last. “Think about it! Think how lowered you’ll feel, one of your husband’s servants.”
She looked up at his averted face.
“Is it,” she stammered, “is it that you don’t want me?”
“Think!” he said. “Think what if folks finds out—Sir Clifford an’ a’—an’ everybody talkin’—”
“Well, I can go away.”
“Where to?”
“Anywhere! I’ve got money of my own. My mother left me twenty thousand pounds in trust, and I know Clifford can’t touch it. I can go away.”
“But ’appen you don’t want to go away.”
“Yes, yes! I don’t care what happens to me.”
“Ay, you think that! But you’ll care! You’ll have to care, everybody has. You’ve got to remember your Ladyship is carrying on with a gamekeeper. It’s not as if I was a gentleman. Yes, you’d care. You’d care.”
“I shouldn’t. What do I care about my ladyship! I hate it really. I feel people are jeering every time they say it. And they are, they are! Even you jeer when you say it.”
“Me!”
For the first time he looked straight at her, and into her eyes.
“I don’t jeer at you,” he said.
As he looked into her eyes she saw his own eyes go dark, quite dark, the pupil dilating.
“Don’t you care about a’ the risk?” he asked in a husky voice. “You should care. Don’t care when it’s too late!”
There was a curious warning pleading in his voice.
“But I’ve nothing to lose,” she said fretfully. “If you knew what it is, you’d think I’d be glad to lose it. But are you afraid for yourself?”
“Ay!” he said briefly. “I am. I’m afraid. I’m afraid. I’m afraid o’ things.”
“What things?” she asked.
He gave a curious backward jerk of his head, indicating the outer world.
“Things! Everybody! The lot of ’em.”
Then he bent down and suddenly kissed her unhappy face.
“Nay, I don’t care,” he said. “Let’s have it, an’ damn the rest. But if you was to feel sorry you’d ever done it!”
“Don’t put me off,” she pleaded.
He put his fingers to her cheek and kissed her again suddenly.
“Let me come in then,” he said softly. “An’ take off your mackintosh.”
He hung up
