She kept stopping the rush of her thoughts to send her senses over the marsh, but no sign of life came back to her, or sound of wheel or hoof. The wide stretches of grass and plough and the long length of road seemed almost as unsuggestive of human influence as the sands themselves. Swifter and swifter faded the passionate confidence which had sent her out, leaving the risks of the matter uppermost in her mind. She remembered that it was possible to be patient all one’s life, and yet to wreck the fruits of it in an unguarded hour. This sudden mental and physical rashness might be symbolical of a greater rashness of the soul. Perhaps after tonight all her footholds and anchorages might go, leaving the world that she had managed so bravely only a nightmare blurred by tears.
The dusk thickened about her as the night tried to impress itself on the earth as a separate entity from the mist. The most that it could do, however, was to produce the effect of a hovering shadow from some huge arrested wing. The real warning of night was in the deepened sense of loneliness and dread of personal diminution in a growing space, in the further recession of things unseen as well as seen. It lay, too, in the stirring consciousness of the impending advent of the tide. She began to look anxiously towards her father’s window for the lamp, and though she was comforted when she saw no sign, it stamped the illusion of desolation on her mind. Then she heard the cattle stir in the shippon as she walked along the wall, and was cheered and companioned by them for a little while. She would have gone down to them, or to the dog, who was always a firm friend, but she was afraid of losing her consciousness of time. She could not tear herself, either, from her breathless waiting for the silence to fill with life. She was cold whether she stood or walked, and more and more oppressed by a sense of folly and grave doubt. She even laughed at the middle-aged woman who had thrilled like a girl, but she laughed between her tears. Once or twice she ran down the bank and on to the sand, but always something drew her back, and at last, when she had listened so long that she had ceased to hear, there came the crunching sound of the Thornthwaite wheels. It was there suddenly where there had been no sign, as if it had only begun at the moment it reached her ear. At once her courage sprang up again, and her spirits rose. The whole affair was sweet and brave once more. It was as if she had heard her lover himself coming surely towards her over the lonely marsh. …
III
Simon uttered an exclamation when he saw the figure on the wall. His heart leaped first with a supernatural fear, and then with a sudden foreboding of some normal ill. His nerves were still unstrung from his experience with the car, and ready enough to shape familiar objects into ghosts. Even when he had recognised May and spoken her name, he could not rid himself of his feeling of alarm.
So he was not pleased to see her when she came running down, and Sarah, who had spent so kindly a morning with her, was not pleased either. In the last few miles she had seemed to travel out of human touch, and there was a jar in the sudden intrusion of even this one thing left to her to love. Her brow contracted both with the effort of thought and the effort of sight, but indeed she knew well enough why May was there. Her intuition had worked uncertainly all the day, but it warned her now. She knew what impulse had brought May out to await their coming home.
Simon, however, had no clue to this sudden appearance at his journey’s end. He sat still in the trap as she came swiftly through the yard, and then leaned out to address her with an anxious frown.
“Nay, now whatever’s brought you trapesin’ here so late? Nowt wrong, is there? Father badly again? Is he axin’ for me, by any chance?”
She reassured him with a shake of the head and a smile, and, as in the case of Mr. Dent, he felt a sudden resentment towards smiles. In all his life Simon had never encountered so many smiling faces as had looked at him that day.
“All’s right, thank you. … Father’s much about the same. I wanted a word with Mrs. Thornthet, that was all.
“You’ve been a terble while on the road, though!” she added gaily, before he could speak. “I’d about made up my mind as I’d have to be getting back.”
“We were kept at Blindbeck, that’s how it was,” Simon said, remembering suddenly and with gloom the precise circumstances under which they had been kept. “But if you nobbut wanted a word wi’ the missis, you could surely ha’ waited while morn. It’s a daft-like trick to be lakin’ on t’sands when it’s getting dark.”
His words made her turn again to throw a glance at the inn, but still there was no summoning gleam from the room upstairs. “Ay, but tide isn’t till six,” she answered him coaxingly, turning back, “and I shan’t be long. Father’ll
