But there was rock in the welter: he did not know that Martha loved him. Had he been aware of her passion, there could have been no straight issue. Blindingly it flashed on him that she might be assailed. He put the thought from him. The contest was unimaginable but so brief that when he came to himself Dussie was still sobbing:
‘I know she’s better than me, but I love you so, oh Luke, I love you so.’
Afterwards he could hardly remember that he had thought of Martha thus. The lightning had been too keen. He was not quite sure that he saw it. But he took his wife in his arms very soberly. They had done playing at love. Henceforward they were man and woman, knowing that life is edged.
Dussie kept her own counsel concerning Martha.
‘She has just to get over it,’ she thought.
So when, in the street, Martha asked, ‘Did Dussie know?’ he looked at her with some surprise.
Martha perceived that she had not been in his innermost counsels. Hardly aware of the action she began to chafe her hands, which were clammy cold. In common daylight the insanity of her supposition − that she might be more to him than Dussie − was glaringly apparent. Hot black shame consumed her. She was too conscious of it to grasp very thoroughly the significance of his departure, but with a resolute mastery of her thoughts she forced herself to attend to what he was saying. She heard much detail about the new practice, the house they were moving into, the date of their going.
‘I wish you were coming too, Marty,’ he said. ‘We shall miss you horribly.’
She heard her own voice saying:
‘I’d have been away from you this year anyhow. I don’t know where I may get a school. Not at home, likely.’
He continued: ‘You’ve meant an awful lot to us. You’ve no idea how much. And do you know, it’s really you that’s sending me off on this new enterprise. They’ve been glorious, these last three years, but too easy. My work − oh well, I’ve done it all right, of course. Old Dunster wouldn’t be so sorry to let me go if I hadn’t. But somehow − well, it hasn’t used enough of me. There was too much over to caper with. Another year or two of this divine fritteration and I’d be spoiled for good solid unrelieved hard labour. I owe it to you to have realized that one must have singleness of purpose. Oh, I’m not condemning the fritteration. Capering’s an excellent habit. But not for me. Not just now. I feel in need of a cold plunge − you know, something strenuous that you have to brace yourself for. A disciplined march. A general practitioner hasn’t much leisure for capering. G.P.’s to be my disciplined march. Instead of a hundred things I’m going to do one.’
And something cracked within her. Suddenly, it seemed, the new self inside, that in the wood had not yet worked out to the surface, had issue. It surged out over her. It took form in a jest. Gaily she cried, throwing her head back and meeting his look:
‘And what about the other ninety-nine?’
‘Dussie will attend to them,’ he said, gay like herself.
Her mind began to work again. G.P.! − But his greatness? He was to have been − what was he not to have been? She saw the destinies she had dreamed for him float past, majestic, proud, inflated. … She found herself saying − and how queer it was, incongruous, unforeseen, that she was laughing over this also, twisting it to jest −
‘So it’s a P. after all. Remember all the P.’s we planned you were to be? Philosopher, Poet, Professor −’
‘Piper, Pieman, Priest. Sounds like prune-stones, doesn’t it? Or there’s Policeman − I’m tall enough. Or Postman. That would be a fate worth considering. A country postie − I’d love that. There I am again, you see! Can’t stick to one thing. A real Philanderer.’
They had reached the door in Union Street.
‘Dussie’s begun to pack already,’ he said. ‘Oh, that’s what I must be − a Packman! Come on up.’
The next five days were like a dream to Martha. Dazedly she helped with the preparations for departure, and stood on the draughty station platform among the crowd that was seeing the travellers off. There was chattering and jesting, and a ringing cheer as the train steamed slowly out. Martha chattered and jested with the others; but the jests she bandied, and the thoughts she had been thinking, had no reality. ‘You have been a fool,’ she told herself: but the accusation had no meaning. Even shame was burned out; nothing had reality but his going. He saw her from the carriage window among the waving group; so gay, so shabby. Almost, he thought − but it was not a thought, so quickly it flitted, so unformulated it remained in the scurry of his mind − almost, he thought, he had rather she had not been gay; but still, a shining symbol, herself the counterpart of the image he had made of her.
She was gay because she was no longer a counterpart. She did not know what she was.
Climbing the long brae home she was overtaken by the lassitude of reaction. She did not seem to have strength enough left in her for passion, but she did not understand that it was only a temporary ebb. ‘I don’t seem to care any more,’ she thought; and later, walking wearily on, with her eyes to the ground, she said to herself, ‘So that’s over,’ and she thought she had only to exercise her will to be again what she was before, passionless, possessed only of herself.
But Martha after all was very ignorant. She could not know that a cataclysm four years in preparing does not spend its forces so easily. The waters were loosened and not to be gathered back.
Trouble for Aunt Josephine
Martha went to the Graduation. She had intended to go, and though the sap and savour were gone from every avocation and she was indifferent as to how she spent the days, it was easier to drift on the stream of former intentions than to force herself to new. Besides, Harrie Nevin was graduating, with Honours in English Language and Literature. She realized with a shock how little she had seen of Harrie recently and how seldom she had visited her thoughts. Of course she must see Harrie capped! But it was a stimulated interest.
For a time she continued to sleep out of doors, though there was no joy in the changing lights or the many voices of the country. She could no longer surrender herself and be lost in the world’s loveliness. She would as willingly have slept in the bedroom beside Madge; she was quite indifferent to where she slept, and it was easier to stay in the bedroom; but that would have provoked comment and question. Anything rather than that! But she was not sorry when the weather broke and she was compelled to stay within.
At the turn of July there was already a hint of autumn. The skies were heavy grey; everything closed in unexpectedly; the wind blustered and squalls of rain broke upon the country, laying the corn in patches. The hips and rowan berries were dull brown that sharpened every day. Soon, the barley was russet. An antrin elm-leaf yellowed. Birds gathered; suddenly on a still day a tree would heave and reeshle with their movement, a flock dart out and swoop, to settle black and serried on the telegraph wires; and after a little rise again in a flock and disappear within the tree. In the wood and among the grasses gossamers floated, tantalizing the face, invisible, but flaring as they caught the sun like burnished ropes of light. Moors and hillsides, railway cuttings and banks beside the roads, glowed with the purple of heather. In a blaze of sun its scent rose on the air and bees droned and hummed above the blossom. Strong showers dashed the sun and the scent. Hairst began. They were cutting the barley. Scythes were out and the laid patches cut patiently by hand. Sometimes a whole field had been devastated, and through the yellow of the heads there gleamed the pink of exposed stalks. Winds rose and dried the grain. Stooks covered the fields. Nights grew longer and sharper. One morning the