Part 2 — CHAPTER VI YOUTH

For how long she sat there crouched in complete exhaustion she did not know. It was not sleep that came upon her, but a kind of stupor through which she was aware of that curious unevenness of her heart-beats and a strange sense of oppression that seemed to develop therefrom. But at length gradually the burden began to lift, and she raised her head with a guilty feeling of having suffered herself to give way. She could not remember that she had ever yielded thus weakly before and she was thoroughly ashamed. Wearily she got up from her lowly seat, but the next moment she reeled dizzily with closed eyes against the whitewashed wall. Her brain seemed to have turned fluid and she could not steady it. For a space she leaned there helpless; then with a supreme effort she gathered up the reins of her self-control. This was absurd. She took herself seriously to task. There was nothing whatever the matter, save that she was perhaps a trifle over-tired. She must get to bed early to make up for the previous night's shortage of sleep. Meantime she must go in and get the tea.

With this resolution firmly fixed she put away her things and left the barn.

Her limbs felt oddly weak and inclined to double under her; but she compelled them to bear her. Such weakness was not to be permitted for another instant. Nevertheless, her progress was a somewhat unsteady one, and when she reached the gate that led from the farmyard to the garden she was glad to lean upon it for a brief respite. She had a basket of eggs in one hand, and this she deposited upon the ground; for she was shivering uncontrollably and could not trust herself to hold it.

The wind was cruelly keen in this particular spot, and she felt chilled to the bone. But she knew within herself that she lacked the strength to open the gate and go in. So for a further space she hung upon it, battling with the overwhelming inertia that held her.

It must have been nearly ten minutes later that a man's feet suddenly sounded in the yard behind her, and she started out of what was very nearly a state of semi-consciousness and began to fumble at the gate.

He came up through the dusk of the late afternoon and was close to her almost before she had realized his presence.

"I just walked down through the fields," he said, "to see if I could lend a hand as it's Sunday. What's the matter? Is the gate stuck?"

Then he reached her, and in a second his tone changed.

"Why, Miss Roberta—Bobby! What on earth's the matter? Are you ill?"

She answered him through lips that felt paralysed. "It—it's just the cold that has got hold of me. Could you—could you open the gate? It's so heavy."

"My dear!" said Silas. She felt the warmth of his body against her and had an odd little spasm of relief as he thrust his arm about her.

"Oh, I am cold!" she said.

"I'll take you in," said Silas, and pushed open the gate with a blow from his free hand.

"Mind my eggs!" said Bobby.

He gathered up the basket, still strongly upholding her. "Now walk!" he said. "Just walk! Don't think about anything else!"

She obeyed him blindly, leaving direction and all other considerations to him. Again it seemed to her that her knees would not bear her, but this time she was urged by a power greater than her own. As he guided her, so she went, till the farmhouse door rose up before her, and he lifted her over the doorstep into her kitchen.

And then she found herself sitting in a chair before the fire while he poked it vigorously into a blaze. By its light she saw his dark face almost forbidding in its gravity, and had a strange thought that he was rather like the Pluto of her childish fancies—a presence that could be sinister and yet in its way pathetic also.

He turned round to her and kneeling before her, his shoulders gigantic against the firelight, began to rub her hands. The awful rigour of cold that bound her relaxed as he did so, and she knew that her strength was returning.

"Thank you so much," she murmured gratefully; and a moment later, "Don't—please—let anyone know!"

Silas said nothing whatever. He only gathered up those frozen hands and pressed them against his neck, the while his dark eyes dwelt upon her with a kind of smouldering heat.

"I'm better now," whispered Bobby after a few moments. "Please don't worry about me any more! It was very kind of you to come round, but I've finished everything. Cox can lock up when he comes."

He still held her hands, and she felt that he was quivering with some emotion that she had never seen in him before.

"Please!" she said softly.

He spoke, under his breath. "So I'm to go away and leave you to kill yourself, am I?"

She smiled at that; it was the only way to treat it. "Oh, don't be silly!" she said. "You mustn't, you know. I am quite all right. It was only the cold, and being a little tired."

She drew her hands gently from him with the words and prepared to rise. But he made a sudden movement that checked her. Still kneeling before her, he took her by the shoulders. His face was sterner than she had ever seen it, and there was that in his eyes which she found she could not meet.

"Bobby," he said, "how long is this tomfoolery to go on? When will you see reason?"

"I don't know," said Bobby rather weakly. He made her feel weak, holding her thus like a culprit before him.

"It's downright madness," Silas said, and though his voice was low, the force of him was like a storm-blast against which it was impossible to stand. "You'll have to give in. Bobby, why don't you? Why go on till you breakdown? It won't cost you anything. I have said it. Don't you believe me? Can't you trust me?"

"I don't know," she said again. She was not exactly frightened, but she felt at a disadvantage, overwhelmed, helpless.

"Who is going to benefit?" he pursued relentlessly. "You say you can't afford to be ill? But what if you are ill already? You're overtaxing your strength every single day, and it won't last. What's going to happen then? If you won't let me lend a hand, who else is going to? Tell me that!"

"I don't know," whispered Bobby for the third time.

Her heart was beating strangely again, and she felt oddly scared and uncertain of herself. Silas in this mood was a formidable proposition, almost impossible to reckon with.

"Listen!" he said suddenly. "If you'll only agree to this thing, you'll be just as free as you are now. I'll never ask to know any of your secrets. Every woman has 'em, I suppose, and I've no wish or intention to pry. I shall never want to go beyond that private gate of yours. If it's that that's holding you back, wash it out! I'll never trespass, that I swear to you. Whatever you keep there, it's safe, so far as I'm concerned."

"Ah!" said Bobby. That moved her, seemed to pierce her. She put her hand to her side, and slowly the painful colour came up over her face, though she sought bravely to smile. For a moment or two, she sat so, as one on the verge of speech, yet holding back. Then a sound overhead attracted her attention, and she turned her head sharply to listen. "Oh, please will you go?" she said then, panting a little in her urgency. "Rosemary is coming down, and I can't—I can't have another scene with you here. Please, Silas, please will you go now? Forgive me for asking you to!"

"Forgive you!" said Silas. "Oh, you poor little soul! Poor little—martyr!"

He spoke the last word under his breath and with it his hands tightened upon her as though he would draw her to him. Then abruptly he checked himself. There was the sound of a step on the stairs. He released her and stood up.

For a second he seemed too moved for further speech, then he bent over her, and she saw that the fire that shone in his eyes was lighted by sheer devotion.

"Don't forget I'm here!" he said rather hurriedly. "Always here and willing to help! Nothing on earth can make any difference to that as long as I live!"

There was emotion in the low-spoken words, such emotion as stirred her deeply. It was as though he had uttered a solemn oath before her.

She reached forward and touched his hand in answer. There was no time for more, Rosemary was almost at the door, but ere she entered he had swung away and gone by the outer door through which he had come.

Bobby commanded herself and got up, still panting slightly. When Rosemary came in, she was busy over the fire.

The girl moved slowly, as if tired out. She reached Bobby's side and stood still.

"Aunt Bobby!" she said.

"Well, dear?" said Bobby.

It was in her heart at the sound of that spent voice to turn and put her arms round her, but she refrained. Rosemary must be conquered this time.

"I want to tell you something," pursued Rosemary. "Will you listen to me a minute?"

Bobby turned towards her. They stood and faced one another in the firelight. "What is it, dear?" she said.

Rosemary's eyes were heavy with weeping. She looked like a broken-hearted child, and Bobby's own heart urged her again to tenderness. But she would not yield.

"Well, Rosemary?" she said.

"I just want to say this," said Rosemary. "You have hurt me—terribly."

"My dear," said Bobby, stifling those inner promptings with desperate effort. "I meant to hurt you."

Rosemary winced. "You have no right—" she began, and checked herself abruptly. "No, I shouldn't say that, I suppose. Everyone who brings up children thinks they have a right to go on controlling them after they are grown up. But—"

"You are not grown up, darling," said Bobby with gentle conviction.

"You will never allow that I am," said Rosemary in the same dead tone. "But I have got to be allowed to grow up some time. I shall be eighteen very soon, and I can't stand being treated as if I were only eight any longer. You left off whipping me because I got too big, not because I never deserved it any more. You will have to leave off punishing me for the same reason."

"My dear," said Bobby very decidedly, "I shall punish you as often as you deserve it. Now, will you move and let me get the tea?"

But Rosemary stood motionless. "I haven't finished," she said. "Aunt Bobby, you're making a mistake. You're doing it out of love, I daresay, but that doesn't make it any better. I've got to grow up, whether you try to hold me back or not. I've got to have room to grow, freedom of action and thought. Girls of my age—heaps of them—are out in the world, making their own living. I have never seen the world yet. I've got to see it. I mean to see it!" A sudden quiver of passion forced itself through the dreary flatness of her voice. "I'm going out into it to make my own living like the rest."

"You are talking great nonsense, dear," said Bobby patiently. "In another six or seven years perhaps we will discuss this question. But certainly not yet."

"We are going to discuss it now!" said Rosemary, and what had been a mere quiver in her voice rang out in open challenge. "In another six or seven years, the best time for work—the starting time—will be over. I won't wait till I'm twenty-five before I begin to live. I'm going to live now! If you try to hold me in, well, I shall break away, that's all. I shall simply have to. And—and it won't be my fault, Aunt Bobby. It'll be yours!"

The words were spoken—words over which she had been brooding for hours. She stood pulsing with excitement, all her girlish face aglow with it—the impassivity dropped from her like a garment.

"Rosemary!" said Bobby.

Her voice held a deep reproach, but she said no more than that. It was not the moment for speech, and she realized it. This quivering eager child was all alive for the sparkling draught of life, and though she knew she must withhold it, she would not face an open conflict just then. She saw that Rosemary was strung up for conflict, and for that very reason she forebore. By patient insistence when the fire had died down, not by a desperate battle of wills, could she hope to gain the day.

Rosemary winced again at the pain in the beloved voice. She had known that the struggle would cost a good deal, but to yield now was to lose everything. She dared not give ground.

"I can't help it," she said. "I don't want to hurt you. It's hurting me too. But it's got to be faced somehow. I'm not a child any longer. I'm a woman. You were not a child at my age, and I know you didn't wait till you were twenty-five to grow up. Why, you—you were engaged when you were nineteen,—just a year older than I am now."

"Rosemary!" Bobby's voice was no longer tender; it had a ring of sternness. "I will not have this from you. I don't know what has come to you during these last few days, but I will have no more of it. When you are sorry, I will listen to you; but not before."

"Sorry!" flung back Rosemary. Her slender figure stiffened with the word, and in the leaping firelight her eyes shone like blue flames. "Sorry—when I'm fighting for my freedom and for everything in life worth having! Oh, Aunt Bobby, how can you misunderstand so hopelessly? Surely you are not so old that you have forgotten?"

Bobby was facing her, but as a new strength seemed to enter into Rosemary, her own strength seemed to wane. She went back a step and leaned her hands upon the wooden back of the chair from which she had just risen.

She did not speak at once, and when she did, her voice came almost in a whisper. "My dear," she said, "I don't think I can discuss this any further now. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I am getting old. Anyhow—" her voice had a piteous note—"I can't go on."

"Aunt Bobby!" Rosemary was close to her in an instant. "What is it? Aren't you well?"

Bobby drew back from her. It was her final effort. "I am not ill," she said, "but I am tired. Light the lamp, dear, and we will have tea."

"You are tired!" said Rosemary, compunction mingling with half-startled doubt in her voice. She had never heard such an admission from Bobby before. "But of course you are tired after last night."

"After to-day!" corrected Bobby gently.

"I know," said Rosemary hastily. "I've been a beast. But—Aunt Bobby—it isn't all beastliness that has made me say what I have. Do believe that, won't you? Don't—don't be angry with me for growing up!"

Bobby's arms came out to her. She could no longer deny the impulse. But as Rosemary went into them with a passionate warmth and clasped her fiercely close, she murmured soft words over her that went straight to the girl's heart.

"My darling, don't be angry with me either for wanting to keep you safe! My precious baby girl! My Rosemary!"