‘Nonsense! I didn’t make you fail in your examination —’
‘I didn’t fail in my examination!’ screamed Ned. ‘It’s a lie. It’s a lie. Liars and hypocrites! Am I to be downed because you are liars and hypocrites?’
‘Calling me a liar won’t change the facts,’ said Sarah. ‘You failed because you were ill; that’s no disgrace.’
‘Ill, was I? What are you going to saddle me with next?’
Ned’s voice was less bellicose, and Sarah pressed her advantage.
‘No disgrace at all to be ill. But it will be a disgrace if you deliberately leave yourself unprepared for the next time. And you can’t pass examinations if you don’t go to bed. You know very well what Dr Scrymgeour said.’
‘To hell with Dr Scrymgeour! To hell with you, too! Get out of my room!’
Sarah got steadily enough to the door, and turned round for a parting shot before shutting it:
‘And if you don’t believe you were ill, just go and ask him. Good-night.’
She managed to get downstairs to her room without stumbling. She was shaken, but in some queer way triumphant.
The footsteps above did not worry her so much. She lay in bed listening.
‘I wonder if he’s forgotten all about it,’ she said to herself, ‘and can’t account for it?’
For the first time since Ned’s unreason had bewildered her she saw a glimmering of reasonableness in it.
Ned was apparently walking more aimlessly; there was not so much hammering of his feet on the floor-boards and he stopped more frequently.
Finally she heard him fling himself on the bed, and dragged herself upstairs again to make sure that the gas was turned out.
All was quiet and in darkness.
ONE
I
The sentiment of family reunion that rises in flood over Britain towards the end of every year had always carried John Shand with it, but this year, to his own astonishment, he found himself deliberately surrendering to it long before Christmas. Even in his office he caught himself daydreaming that Lizzie was in Calderwick for Christmas and the New Year. Instead of attending to the papers before him he was conducting Lizzie all over the mill, and she complimented and teased him about the success he had made of it. She stayed with him in the house at Balfour Terrace; they laughed together at breakfast and were still laughing in the evening. They reminded each other, for instance, how they had climbed over their own garden wall and plundered a pear-tree, leading a band of young brigands into their own territory. And finally had to bury half the pears beneath a mound of ivy leaves, after all, although the six of them had eaten and eaten, throwing away larger and larger cores as their appetites began to fail. Not one of the six was left in Calderwick but himself…. On another autumn day they had gathered all the red and yellow leaves they could find because Lizzie swore that she could brew a magic potion out of them. They had brewed it in a silver coffee-pot in the wash-house. She was a little monkey.
He went up one evening to an attic merely to look at an old rocking-chair on which they had once played waves and mermaids, with their legs buttoned into coats and tied up with shawls to resemble fish-tails. The old rocking-chair could still rock valiantly. But Lizzie was – where was she?
Twenty years ago he had torn up her letter and thrown it in the fire. He had sent her a communication through his solicitor, assuring her that an allowance of one hundred and fifty pounds would be paid to her yearly but that her brother wished never to see her again. That allowance had been paid scrupulously, even when he could ill afford it; nobody knew anything about it, not even Mabel. He had insisted on letting Lizzie understand that the money was hers by right, her patrimony, for if she had guessed it was a gift she might have refused it. But she had accepted it. Tom Mitchell sent it to her every quarter. Tom Mitchell must have her address, of course.
He rose from his desk almost in agitation. There was nothing to prevent his writing and inviting Lizzie to come home for Christmas. Nothing, except his own bitter words of twenty years ago, which were vanishing like grains of dust, blown away by the wind of Lizzie’s presence in his imagination.
For an irritable moment or two he caught himself regretting that he had a wife and other responsibilities. How could he explain to Mabel and Aunt Janet that he was going to invite Lizzie? It would set tongues wagging in the town, he knew; and for the first time in his life he wished that he was a vagabond. Could he not shake himself free and set off alone? His imagination, however, which was definite and clear when it played around the familiar scenes of Calderwick, faltered in confusion before the uncertainty of such a journey and the faint suggestion of dishonesty surrounding it. For he would have to pretend that he was going away on business.
His conflicting selves tormented him. But the anguish which contracted his heart when the idea occurrred to him that Lizzie might refuse to see him, or refuse to come, overwhelmed his hesitations. He must see her again; that was all. And he must see her in the most honourable manner, without subterfuge. He would invite her home to Calderwick, let gossip say what it liked, and he would write to her in such a way that if she still cared for him she would not refuse.
He shut himself up in his study for several evenings writing and rewriting the letter: My dear Lizzie. Twenty years ago we were both fools…. That would make her smile; that would make her feel indulgent. But was it not possible that it would only infuriate her? If she had bitterly resented his silence a light and easy attempt to resume their relationship would undoubtedly infuriate her. She might have suffered during these years; she must have suffered; one cannot do wrong with impunity. My dear, dear Lizzie. Will you ever forgive me? But that wouldn’t do; he had been quite right in his attitude; she must have recognized that. Even now he was braving public opinion in asking her home; and his position in Calderwick was now unimpeachable. How impossible it would have been to bring her back twenty years ago! After all, it was she who had been in the wrong, flagrantly in the wrong.
He wished that he knew at least what kind of woman she had become. A hundred and fifty a year must have kept her from sinking into the very gutter, he thought grimly. That, indeed, was why he had settled it upon her. Still, human nature being what it was, as she had taken one wrong step she might have taken many. A woman of ungoverned passions, nearly forty, a coarse licentious figure, his common sense told him, the female counterpart of their father, and, being a woman, ten times worse than their father, that was what he might reasonably expect to find.
He leaned his head on his hands, shutting his eyes. And once again the delight of Lizzie’s presence enveloped him; he could have sworn that she was somewhere in the house, and that they were going to have a vivacious evening together. While his eyes were shut he felt it impossible that Lizzie should have become anything but just Lizzie.
He suddenly realized that her address would be some kind of a clue to her circumstances, and decided to ask Tom Mitchell for the address before writing the letter. This decision somewhat restored his cheerfulness and carried him to the lawyer’s office early next day.
Tom Mitchell had never seen the big man so embarrassed. The childlike look in his eyes was more evident than ever. He stood behind the chair offered to him, refusing to sit down, as if he feared to be drawn into explanations. The lawyer, a small rosy-cheeked old man who was a walking graveyard of family secrets, pulled out a drawer.
‘Ay, weel,’ he said, in an affectedly broad accent, ‘it just happens that Miss Lizzie sent me a letter for you some months syne, with positive instructions that it was not to be given to you unless you speired after her. Man, she must have jaloused that you were going