Devil's Tor (55 page)

From what extraordinary impact of another world came these quick stabbings of all their brains? Peter was seeing a second Ingrid, Ingrid was being flung towards a man with whom she had nothing to do, poor Hugh had seen his death advancing upon him; she herself was being remorselessly drawn out of her sane shallows by this long procession of labourings, abhorrences, solutions that told nothing—the tortured shaping in her intelligence of hints that individually she could neither understand nor hold. … And it was not this week that it had all begun, for Hugh's business had started much earlier; and so, too, were Peter's thoughts old; and Uncle Magnus's adventure years ago on Devil's Tor... and Dick's two visions, if they could be considered related. No, it was all like a cyclopean fateful shrinkage of time and space to the small concretion within one last short week of a single pair of persons. Or if it was not that, she knew not what it was.

Nor had she yet been told if Saltfleet were married.

But the trivialness of this last twist of her brain, hunting or hunted, surprised herself by its abrupt crude colour of the world; then brought humility. Thus, if the man should be eligible, she might still, in an improbable case, bestow her blessing!—or what else should her feminine inquisitiveness stand for? The mighty workings towards some end unknown of such a fearful subterranean seething of chaos were to depend for her puny sanction of a mother and law-servile woman on whether this thrown-up phantom, this Saltfleet, should possess the social right to lead her daughter in gala through the nave of Christian temple! ... Yet God and His ordinances were very real. Surely, whatsoever contradicted them must be of another origin. …

When Ingrid had come in to her, however, she seemed to comprehend from the child's earliest look and first words that she must not attempt to dictate to her. Suffering and confused evidently she was, and still from behind her fog of distress gleamed steadily, if faintly, a strange high wisdom for the finding of her way through the future, that somehow must be as different from Helga's own futile essays to reduce all to common judgment, as sacred from profane, or as starlight from the groping light of a candle.

The perfect bloodlessness of the girl's rigid face was stressed by her black clothes that already she wore for Hugh. Helga as well was in mourning. And her awareness of these tributes to a death which by now had lost its first edge of tragic excitement, to become a perpetual dull shock and horror to her under-mind, was as a chain of heavy reality binding her to crawling life, that inexorably went forward and never repeated its quietudes. So the new state was arrived, and all her endeavours would be unable, by reason of this death alone, to reproduce their happiness of but a week ago, before the quick, odd, hurrying intrusion of men and wonders. She contrasted in her mind two supremely fair days, the one before, the other after, a tempest; and they would be unlike. Into the second would have crept an air washed of its voluptuousness, a chill, the constant reminder of something that had been and no longer was. Therefore she must not require of Ingrid to bring back single-handed what in the nature of things was forever gone from amongst them. If in twenty-four hours she had ceased to be a child, that too was understandable.

And Hugh's vanishing should surely also be a symbol. Death, generally, was abroad; for every great change was a sort of death, and now the household might be cracking. Peter's bristling will vainly fought this oncoming wedge of fate, trying as with wild fingers to prevent its ghostlier entrance, while she herself perhaps was but more philosophic because her personal knowledge of the inevitable in life had long since cowed her head; but what if Ingrid's nobler occult vision should be compelling her, against her natural womanly shrinking from a dreadful adventure, to await in dauntless calmness that man's advances? ... Then her consent would be the wisdom of the affair, their foolish fear and counterplotting the unwisdom, sprung from their more imperfect perception of these things ... yet only supposing fate always to be bowed before; never to relent at the eleventh hour for the energy of desperation of its seeming victims, the energy too being fated; so that fate never could be read, till all was over. … But if Ingrid's nature was double, and its buried instincts on both sides were risen to anything like consciousness in their internecine war for sovereignty within her body, then the obvious shocking of that body was explained. She had been on the equivalent of a rack. Under the quick torture she might even have swooned.

Her wisdom, however, shone on through the torpor that sank her there voiceless and dreaming; it was mystic in the trance-light of her slowly shifting eyes, to-day in this room more grey than blue, now downcast in frowning meditation, now fastened unpleasantly upon a far part of the floor, rarely raised to Helga's own eyes which never left them. Perhaps, even, the wisdom, the vision, was not caring to become interpreted, but was leaving the child's lower understanding idle. How, then, should she address it? Her first question must bring Ingrid back to the world, and the light would vanish. She would relate the skeleton of her adventure on the Tor, she would minimise her emotional state, and perhaps agree to any plan suggested or wish expressed; but Helga wanted to capture her daughter's soul entire. …

Or should she wait until time should have softened these hard contrasts and brought that whole soul to communication in the poetry of perspective remembrance? It was impossible. For there were things to know, and things to be settled, at once; besides which, Ingrid's return to her normal manner must be signalised—by what? So heavy a mood could not pass without a consequence. It might take the form of a reactive loathing of the contact that had had such power to desolate her; but, more probably, her rising from this depth must mean new vigour, new life. Precisely in the transition her instinct towards a strange passion might know its next wave of unearthly joy and irresponsible hardihood. … She could not tell. Like Peter, now she felt she knew her girl no longer.

Yet had that other queer heavenly influx of
love
endured, it was just such a renewal of life that she would have dared to want. For love spoke not to cowardice or the heart's retirement to old peace; but to its high tides. And the brave exchange would have illuminated all the case for them both; whereas merely to persuade her child to her duty might succeed in its immediate end, but because they would have talked upon a plane of prudence and coldness it must be an alienating conversation, and the sacrifice without horror, from decency, custom, lassitude alone, must unconsciously introduce to Ingrid's existence a new character of disillusion and renunciation, insidiously destroying her youth. …

Then Ingrid, scarcely looking at her mother, stopped her hesitations by quietly telling what had not yet been told. She said that Mr. Saltfleet had followed her to Devil's Tor by
intention.
He could not have known, and had not known, that she was to be there, but he had learnt that she was out, and had guessed that her uneasiness might be drawing her to see the hill again.

As Helga heard her, the new fact so little startled her, that she was sure she had expected nothing else throughout. And it was a corollary for her understanding, how his trouble taken on a doubtful chance represented the measure of his earnestness to meet her daughter once more, as the calculation itself should represent the measure of his mental energy. … So that now their earlier arrangement of the day was cancelled, and all choices were again open to her. The perfidy could not anger her, for it was too serious, too dynamic. Neither was she permitted to stand amazed before any brutality or insolence of such a person; but what seized the rule of her pale silence of many unquiet thoughts came to be her groping after some reasonable motive in him for so flying at a girl unknown to him only yesterday, whose pure sphere was grazing his terrible one on but the infinitesimal point of an accident. For Ingrid, at least thank God!—had had no part in shaping this encounter beforehand... unless her demeanour lied. … No, she could be keeping nothing back of that; and Peter's canker of an ancient monstrous instinct within her, how could the ugliness so soon, indeed, have acquired a corporeal form, requiring to be served by deceits? Then Saltfleet's was all the sin... and yet, again, she could not conceive him sensual. …

A feeble gleam of afternoon sun threw some lines of the window-frame on a circumscribed patch of the opposite wall, and Helga, glancing at the contrast, remarked it. She meditated how, in the properest sense, every joy in life was like the slow-moving sunlight on a prison wall, half a warmth and blessedness, but half a defining of one's bars. Then since the true joy, the full blazing of the sun, was outside the prison, and this only its travelling mockery for those who should never quit these walls except by way of a coffin, what a pathetic madness it was to lament the inevitable passage and final disappearance of the gleams as though they presented a retainable good! ... the long peace of years of their family was to crumble at last, and the storm come. When it had hewed and slashed among them to satiety, for some—those that were left—would begin a new peace slowly accumulating sweetness... and that, too, must be broken, to the music of weeping and execration: and such was life. The moving of pale sunlight along prison walls! ...

She returned to Ingrid, to comment slowly, without effort controlling her manner to a cleareyed, rather beautiful immobility that was not the proper garment of her perturbed soul, yet allowed enough of its bewilderment and foreboding to peep through to preclude a charge of art, while the ground of calmness was her remoteness from indignation or quick dismay:

"This action of his was singular, however. Since you spoke together, didn't he give you the news of his friend's arrival, and my offer to them? It was on the particular condition that they were to let you alone."

"Either he couldn't have promised that yet, or he had the right to recall the bargain, so far having had nothing from you."

"But Peter saw him and his friend, when they professed to be quite agreeable to what I proposed; with the small additional proviso that your consent in writing should be obtained, for the salving of Mr. Saltfleet's conscience. … Now I am to suppose that they were only keeping me amused, knowing that the arrangement would fail on just that point? It was Mr. Saltfleet's way of rebuking my interference in a business he has come to regard as yours?"

Ingrid said nothing, and her mother proceeded:

"It's so impossible, on this insolent—or at least mysterious—challenge, to understand any longer what really they want. I hope you're to tell me. For if it were no more than Hugh's duplicate treasure, that you hold, surely one means of procuring it is as good as another to them? ... I can't even resent this affront until I learn what it means. If it is only the stone, they may still have that. And perhaps the mistake I made was in insisting on a condition, that that man has been finding offensive to you—in a spirit of chivalry not less offensive to me. So you needn't write... in fact, I imagine this personal meeting was instead... but Peter shall see them again, and hand them the stone without conditions. Perhaps I insulted you by that demand. Of course,
you
will pass me your word not to go out of doors until they are safely away to-morrow."

"He wants me to meet Mr. Arsinal. So far as I know, he is neither being chivalrous, nor taking up any attitude towards yourself."

"Isn't it an attitude to flout my offer?"

"No, he is too caught by realities to think of attitudes. He does see that you may take it in the human way and withdraw the offer out of pique, refusing them the stone altogether. He could not be expected to fathom the essential good nature of a woman who has chosen suddenly to cease his acquaintance. So that contingency, certainly, he has provided for; but it is still scarcely an attitude."

"Then you had better tell me what passed between you, in your own manner."

Ingrid dropped her lashes, frowned, and was quiet. She looked up again to say:

"But you have something to tell me, too. Why have you been in such an inordinate hurry over this transaction, mother? Wasn't it Peter who suggested the use being made of my absence?"

A slight colour stole into her mother's face.

"He is not to deny it. He's very seriously concerned about you, Ingrid, and his whole care is to get these men dismissed without an instant's unnecessary delay. Don't censure Peter."

"You two had a long talk?"

"You enabled it. He came to see you with the news of Mr. Arsinal's arrival; but you were out."

"And every accident is helping! ... Yet at the inn last evening he agreed to the principle of a meeting between Mr. Arsinal and me."

"You haven't seen that man as well?" inquired Helga quickly.

"No, I have said I
am
to meet him."

"To discuss what? And why was it hidden from me yesterday, when you came back?"

"You would have forbidden it."

"But you are telling me now."

"Because now I am willing that you should forbid it. If Peter has faced about, so have I. … And I shall obey your will in the matter. … But the discussion
yesterday
was to have been about the moral ownership of Hugh's two stones. They are occult, you know; and to the right person, very precious. Mr. Arsinal, however, claims to be the principal on the other side."

"As you are not, on this side, Ingrid."

"No. But it was a case of information, and
you
would have arrived at a judgment on the wrong points."

"You cannot say that, my dear. I did not talk to Hugh about our one of them, at least, for nothing."

"I am saying only what was in my mind yesterday. Now you and Peter have decided the destination of both, to which I agree, and that practical part of the business is closed. If I still met Mr. Arsinal, it would be simply to exchange wisdom for wisdom. Only, it is futile. Something, not at all a joke, is coming on some of us in this house and district, and no doubt the best wisdom for Mr. Arsinal, as well as me, will be not to try to calculate the incalculable. Otherwise, our meeting could still be at Peter's—at half-past five this afternoon. I've to send word. If you dislike the idea, I will cancel it."