May Sinclair

“ And now all the lamps were lit, every doorway was a golden shaft, every window a golden square; the whiteness of its walls quivered and the blurred edges flowed into the dark of the garden. It was the fragile shell of a sacred and a burning light.
She did not go in all at once. She crossed the river and went up the hill through the beech-wood. She walked there every evening in the darkness, calling her thoughts home to sleep. The Easter moon, golden-white and holy, looked down at her, shrined under the long sharp arch of the beech-trees ”

“ Harding's premonitory fears and tremblings; Harding's exalted sensibility; Harding's abominable vision of the world, that vision from which the resplendent divinity had perished; Harding's flight before the pursuing Terror. She was sitting now as Harding had sat when she found him crouching over the hearth in that horrible room with the drawn blinds. It seemed to her that to have a madness of your own would not be so very horrible. It would be, after all, your own. It could not possibly be one-half so horrible as this, to have somebody else's madness put into you. ”

“ But he, his visible image, and her fear of it, persisted even while the interior darkness, the divine, beneficent darkness rose round her, wave on wave, and flooded her; even while she held him there and healed him; even while it still seemed to her that her love pierced through her fear and gathered to her, spirit to spirit, flame to pure flame, the nameless, innermost essence of Rodney and of Bella. ”

“ She knew vaguely that once, as she had turned the corner of the wood, there had been horrors, and that the divine beauty of green pastures and still waters had appeared to her as a valley of the shadow of evil, but she had no more memory of what she had seen than of a foul dream, three nights dead. She went at first uplifted in the joy of her deliverance, drawing into her the light and fragrance of the young morning. Then she remembered Harding Powell. She had noticed as she passed the Farm house that the blinds were drawn again in all the windows. That was because Harding and Milly were gone. ”

“ You could not transmit the Power through a broken crystal—why, not even through one that had a flaw.
There had been a flaw somewhere; so much was certain. And as she searched now for the flaw, with her luminous sanity, she found it in her fear. She knew, she had always known, the danger of taking fear and the thought of fear with her into that world where to think was to will, and to will was to create. But for the rest, she had tried to make herself clear as crystal. And what could she do more than give up Rodney? ”

“ At last Milly's voice crept through, strained and thin, feebly argumentative, the voice of a thing defeated and yet unconvinced.
"I don't understand you, Agatha. You say it isn't you; you say you're only a connecting link; that you do nothing; that the Power that does it is inexhaustible; that there's nothing it can't do, nothing that it won't do for us, and yet you go and cut yourself off from it—deliberately—from the thing you believe to be divine."
"I haven't cut myself off from it."
"You've cut Harding off," said Milly. "If you refuse to hold him." ”

“ She knew how marvellously it had answered with dear Agatha (not that Agatha ever was, or could be, where he was, poor darling) . And besides, Agatha herself was an attraction. It had occurred to Milly Powell that it might do Harding good to be near Agatha. There was something about her; Milly didn't know what it was, but she felt it, he felt it—an influence or something, that made for mental peace. It was, Mrs. Powell said, as if she had some secret.
She hoped Agatha wouldn't mind. It couldn't possibly hurt her. He couldn't. The darling couldn't hurt a fly; he could only hurt himself. ”

“ They had been always that pitiful, desperate stirring of the dust to hide the terror, the futile throwing of the dust in the poor thing's eyes. As if he couldn't see through it. As if, with the supernatural lucidity, the invincible cunning of the insane, he didn't see through anything and provide for it. It was really only his indestructible urbanity, persisting through the wreck of him, that bore, tolerantly, temperately, with Milly and her plans. Without it he might be dangerous. With it, as long as it lasted, little Milly, plan as she would, was safe. ”

“ She remembered how with some resurgent, ultimate instinct of surrender she had sunk on the floor of her room, flung out her arms across the bed in the supreme gesture of supplication, and thus gone, eyes shut and with no motion of thought or sense in her, clean into the blackness where, as if it had been waiting for her, the thing had found her.
It had found her. Agatha was precise on that point. She had not found it. She had not even stumbled on it, blundered up against it in the blackness. ”

“ Having once held him, and having healed him, she had no right—as long as the Power consented to work through her—she had no right to let him go.
She began again from the beginning, from the first process of purification and surrender. But what followed was different now. She had not only to recapture the crystal serenity, the holiness of that state by which she had held Rodney Lanyon and had healed him; she had to recover the poise by which she had held him and Harding Powell together. And the effort to recover it became a striving, a struggle in which Harding persisted and prevailed. ”

“ She could conceive that, if it had not been for Rodney Lanyon, she might have had the courage to have gone on. She might have considered that she was bound to save Harding, even at the price of her own sanity, since there was her word to Milly. But it might be questioned whether by holding on to him she would have kept it, whether she really could have saved him that way. She was no more than a vehicle, a crystal vessel for the inscrutable and secret power, and in destroying her utterly Harding would have destroyed himself. ”

“ Why, Agatha, when it's goodness and purity itself——?"
"Goodness and purity are terrible. We don't understand it. It's got its own laws. What you call prayer's all right—it would be safe, I mean—I suppose it might get answered anyway, however we fell short. But this—this is different. It's the highest, Milly; and if you rush in and make for the highest, can't you see, oh, can't you see how it might break you? Can't you see what it requires of you? Absolute purity. I told you, Milly. You have to be crystal to it—crystal without a flaw." ”

“ Agatha was silent. That was what she must never tell her, not even to make her understand. She did not know what Milly was trying to think of her; Milly might think what she liked; but she should never know what her terror had been and her danger.
Agatha's silence helped Milly.
"Nothing will make me believe," she said, "that it was your fear that did it. That would never have made you give Harding up. ”

“ It came, solemn and pure and still, out of the tumult of her tenderness and pity; but it was too awful for pity and for tenderness; it aspired like a flame and lost itself in light; it grew like a wave till it was vaster than any tenderness or any pity. It was as if her heart rose on the swell of it and was carried away into a rhythm so tremendous that her own pulses of compassion were no longer felt, or felt only as the hushed and delicate vibration of the wave. She recognised her state. It was the blessed state desired as the condition of the working of the gift. ”

“ She heard the stirring of the corruption that Life was; the young blades of corn were frightful to her, for in them was the push, the passion of the evil which was Life; the trees as they stretched out their arms and threatened her were frightful with the terror which was Life. ”

“ But though it was dreadful to "work" her gift that way, to make him do things, there was another way in which she did work it, lawfully, sacredly, incorruptibly—the way it first came to her. She had worked it twenty times (without his knowledge, for how he would have scoffed at her!) to make him well.
Before it had come to her, he had been, ever since she knew him, more or less ill, more or less tormented by the nerves that were wedded so indissolubly to Bella's. He was always, it seemed to her terror, on the verge. And she could say to herself, "Look at him now!" ”

“ They dropped the subject. They turned to other things and talked a little while, sitting with him in his room with the drawn blinds. From time to time when they appealed to him, he gave an urbane assent, a murmur, a suave motion of his hand. When the light went, they lit a lamp. Agatha stayed and dined with them, that being the best thing she could do.
At nine o'clock she rose and said good-night to Harding Powell. He smiled a drawn smile.
"Ah—if I could sleep——" he said.
"That's the worst of it—his not sleeping," said Milly at the gate.
"He will sleep. He will sleep," said Agatha. ”

“ That's my point," said Milly.
"Mine is that here or anywhere—wherever he is—there mustn't be any fear. How can he get better if we keep him wrapped in it? You're not afraid. You're not afraid."
Persistent, invincible affirmation was part of her method, her secret.
Milly replied a little wearily (she knew nothing about the method) .
"I haven't time to be afraid," she said. "And as long as you're not——"
"It's you who matter," Agatha cried. "You're so near him. Don't you realise what it means to be so near?" ”

“ And in that place it flew from she saw Harding Powell.
He was crouching under the hedge as she had crouched when she had hidden from him. His face was horrible, but not more horrible than the Terror that had gone behind her; and she heard herself crying out to him, "Harding! Harding!" appealing to him against the implacable, unseen Pursuer.
He had risen (she saw him rise) , but as she called his name he became insubstantial, and she saw a Thing, a nameless, unnameable, shapeless Thing, proceeding from him. A brown, blurred Thing, transparent as dusk is, that drifted on the air. ”

“ Except Rodney when his inn was full, nobody ever came to Woodman's Farm; and Agatha's house, set down inside its east gate, shared its isolation, its immunity. Two villages, unseen, unheard, served her, not a mile away. It was impossible to be more sheltered, more protected and more utterly cut off. And only fifteen miles, as the crow flies, between this solitude and London, so that it was easy for Rodney Lanyon to come down.
At two o'clock, the hour when he must come if he were coming, she began to listen for the click of the latch at the garden gate. ”

“ There is no striving and no crying in the world which you would enter. There is no more appeasing where peace is. You cannot make your own terms with the high and holy Power. It is not enough to give yourself for Rodney Lanyon, for he is more to you than you are yourself. ”

“ It was then as if what went through her had charged her nerves of sight to a pitch of insane and horrible sensibility. The green of the grass, and of the young corn, the very colour of life, was violent and frightful. ”

“ You're tired, Aggy. Well—not now, not to-day. But later, when you're rested, won't you?"
"Oh, Milly, dear Milly, if I could ..."
"You can. You will. I know you will ..."
"No. You must understand it. Never again. Never again." ”

“ She knew that every intermission would be followed by a relapse, and Harding's state did not admit of any relapses.
Of course, if time had counted, if the thing was measurable, she would have been afraid of losing hold of Rodney Lanyon. She held him now by a single slender thread, and the thread was Bella. She "worked" it regularly now through Bella. He was bound to be all right as long as Bella was; for his possibilities of suffering were thus cut off at their source. Besides, it was the only way to preserve the purity of her intention, the flawlessness of the crystal. ”

“ Milly urged her on. Milly, in Milly's own words, sustained her. She praised her; she praised the Secret, praised the Power. She said you could see how it worked. It was tremendous; it was inexhaustible. Milly, familiarised with its working, had become a fanatical believer in the Power. But she had her own theory. She knew of course that they were all, she and Agatha and poor Harding, dependent on the Power, that it was the Power that did it, and not Agatha. But Agatha was their one link with it, and if the link gave way where were they? Agatha felt that Milly watched her and waylaid her ”

“ I thought Milly wasn't going to tell you."
"She didn't tell me."
Agatha said nothing. She was bound to accept his statement. Of course, he must have known that Milly had broken her word, and he was trying to shield her.
"I mean," he went on, "that whether she told me or not, it's no matter. I knew."
"You—knew?"
"I knew that something was happening, and I knew that it wasn't the place. Places never make any difference. I only go to 'em because Milly thinks they do. Besides, if it came to that, this place—from my peculiar point of view, mind you—was simply beastly. ”

“ What did suffer was the fine poise with which she, Agatha, had held Rodney Lanyon and Harding Powell each by his own thread. Milly had compelled her to spin a stronger thread for Harding and, as it were, to multiply her threads, so as to hold him at all points. And because of this, because of giving more and more time to him, she could not always loose him from her and let him go. And she was afraid lest the pull he had on her might weaken Rodney's thread.
Up till now, the Powells' third week at Sarratt End, she had had the assurance that his thread still held. ”

“ And again she said it was the place, the wonderful, wonderful place.
"If you want it to last," Agatha said, "don't go on thinking it's the place."
"Why shouldn't it be? I feel that he's safe here. He's out of it. Things can't reach him."
"Bad news reached him to-day."
"Aggy—what?" Milly whispered in her fright.
"His sister is very anxious about her little girl."
"What's wrong?"
Agatha repeated what she had heard from Harding Powell.
"Oh——" Milly was dumb for an instant while she thought of her sister-in-law. Then she cried aloud.
"If the child dies it will make him ill again!" ”