Once again the situation had to be faced. This time Abner was in no doubt as to what must be done. Those lonely days on the cold upland had given him time to think. He now realised that as far as finding work in the Lesswardine district went he was definitely beaten, and that every day that he spent at Wolfpits must make him more and more a drag upon the resources of the family. The obvious thing for him to do was to turn his early experiences at Mawne to account, to set off southward for the coal valleys and work as a miner underground. On the Welsh coalfield, wages ran high and he might be sure of earning enough to keep himself in comfort and to supply the Wolfpits household with a living that would seem luxurious after their long privations. In solitude this determination had been easily made, and the feeling that something definite was in view had made him happier and better pleased with himself; but when he left the Pentre and came to lay his plans before Mary, his course did not seem so clear or so free from complications.

During their three months of hardship their relations had undergone a curious change. Mary’s outburst of jealous anger when she learned the true cause of his dismissal from The Dyke, had swept through her like a storm, stripping her heart of its hidden grudges and reservations. It passed, leaving her weak, bewildered, and yet happy. It was as if this sudden tempest, while almost destroying her, had snapped the last threads that bound her to her old life. All the past was broken. It rolled away from her in a tumult of spent cloud, and in the serene silence that followed she came to herself, realising that she was alone in the world with Abner and her children. It was like the bewildered calm that comes after an escape from death; the hushed birth of a new world; a strange, unearthly quiet.

In this new state she found herself most eager to atone for the endless, wordless contest that she had waged against him. She knew that she could never repay him a hundredth part of what he had given her and suffered at her hands. The money was nothing. What he had sacrificed for her was his freedom, a hard denial for a man in the prime of youth. And so, thinking gratefully of his goodness toward her and of his unfathomed patience, she began to dwell tenderly on other aspects of the man: his splendid, supple strength, his honest eyes, the straightness and simplicity of his whole nature, and to compare them, instinctively, with what she knew of her husband: his superficial charm, his persuasive manners, and his callous heart: all those qualities that she had been taught by bitterest experience to hate and to mistrust. It was in this light that Abner seemed to her most wonderful. And she had used him like a shrew! Every natural impulse of kindness in him she had checked and thwarted! Pride had made her thankless; prudishness had hardened her. She was detestable, and if he hated her she had only herself to thank for it.

But did he hate her? She hoped, fervently, that he did not. She could not bear that he should hate her. It pained her even to think that she owed his kindness to the fact that he had given some promise to George, and in the simplicity of his nature felt that he must redeem it. She knew that he was fond of the children and could not bear to see them suffer; but that was not enough for her. Her new being craved for a personal devotion. If that were not forthcoming she felt that she would have little left in the world, that her life must be finally bitter and useless. And she knew that she was far too young for any such finality. She hated the pride that had brought her to this, and resolved to proclaim her new humility by every means in her power.

Abner himself was sensible of the change in her attitude toward him. During the time of his work at the Pentre, he became aware of it. Little by little, for she was far too cautious to make the change a sudden one, she was demolishing the barrier that she had built so carefully between them, and he, reluctantly, had accepted. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, they were nearing once more the point which they had reached in a moment of stress and abandonment on the night of the white mist six months before, the moment when he had seen her transfigured, or rather revealed, as the one woman in the world whom he wanted, body and soul.

In all those hard days not a single chilling word passed her lips, not a single intolerable silence drove him away from her. Her kindness made her beautiful, but the nearness of her beauty frightened him and he withdrew himself, having once cruelly burnt his fingers at that flame. He was happy, but could not trust his happiness, not because any scruples of honour pricked him, but because he feared a new rebuff.

Even though he dared not believe in her submission he could not escape the influence of her tenderness. The lean days were the best he had ever known at Wolfpits: even if he had had money to spend he would not have gone elsewhere, and every moment that brought him nearer to the inevitable parting on which he had decided, made the idea of it more painful and more difficult. It now seemed to him monstrously unreasonable that when such complete happiness was in his grasp he should wilfully renounce it. And yet, what else could he do? A sense of the futility of her kindness made him shrink from it.

She saw what was happening, knew that she deserved it, and in order that she might justify herself she now tried to play on his affection for the children, to create an atmosphere of interdependence among the four of them, to bind him closer to her with a web of many strands each so slender that he need not be aware of the process. But he felt the light pressure of the net in which he was being entangled; he struggled to free himself. And she saw the convulsions of his struggle and feared to lose him. The thrill of this new, half-hidden conflict held her.

On the Saturday night before his last week at the Pentre, he kept back five shillings of his earnings. By working from dawn till sunset each day he had managed to put in many hours of overtime, so that he was able to give her half a sovereign clear. It seemed to him a good opportunity for breaking the news of his plan to her. Sooner or later the word must be spoken. She held the gold coin in her hand and looked at him inquiringly.

‘You’ll be two bob short this week,’ he said, ‘but if any one knows how to manage, you do. After that I reckon things’ll begin to look up a bit.’

She flushed with a sudden pleasure.

‘Abner!’ she cried. ‘You don’t mean to say that Mr Williams is going to keep you on?’

‘Not he!’ said Abner. ‘There’s not more than four or five days left of the stone picking, and I can tell you I’m not all that sorry. My back’s fair broke at it! No, I’m thinking of a change. I might stay on round here a year before I find another job worth calling one. They’ve got a down on you and me, these farming chaps, them and your old mother. There’s only one thing to be done as I can see. And that’s what I’ve kept five bob back for to-night.’

‘I don’t understand, Abner,’ she said, understanding only too well.

‘Of course you don’t. Well, I’ll tell you. While I’ve been up on the hill I’ve had a good few hours for thinking. I’ve reckoned it all up square. There’s about four month as you’ll have to hang on here afore old George comes out, and you can’t keep the lot of us for four odd month on nothing. That’s clear enough, bain’t it?’

She assented.

‘So I thought like this. What’s the use of a chap of my sort, that’s learned a trade and all, and can pick up good money at it, going round cadging work from a lot of beggars that don’t mean to give it me? I’ve had a bellyful of farmers’ promises, I have, and I tell you straight!’

Again she said: ‘Yes . . .’

‘And so this is how I see it. The only thing left for me when I’ve finished along with old Williams is to take a turn down Swansea way.’

‘Swansea?’ she cried.

‘That’s it. I looked it up Sunday in the time-table on Llandwlas station, and asked about the fare. You go down through Builth and Brecon and Neath, and five bob’ll do it. There’s plenty of work going in the Western Valleys, they say, and good money and all. You can pick up two pound ten a week, without killing yourself either. They say lodging’s dear, but I reckon I can send you a clear pound easy: postal orders you can change at Mainstone and nobody know where they come from. I ought to have done it before. I know that. But now it looks like as if there’s nothing else.’

While he spoke he was walking up and down the little room, never looking at her. Her eyes followed him, but her heart fell within her. He finished and faced her. She could scarcely answer him.

‘You mean that you must go away . . . leave me?’

‘That’s the ticket,’ he said. ‘I ought to have done it afore. If I had they’d have left you alone.’

‘But you can’t,’ she said. ‘You can’t!’

‘You can’t live on nothing,’ he said brutally.

She could not listen to reason. She was beyond reason now.

‘No, no,’ she cried. ‘Abner, you mustn’t go!’

He set his will against her. She stood and trembled before him, but he would not face her for fear that he should be softened. He kept silence.

‘You can’t,’ she cried again. ‘I couldn’t face it . . . the loneliness! I couldn’t, really! This place . . . all alone. No, Abner, you can’t!’

‘It’s not for so long,’ he reassured her. ‘What’s four month? After that you’ll have George back again.’

‘George!’ she cried. ‘Oh, don’t speak of it! You’re cruel!’

Her words came as a shock to him. It was now many months since they had spoken of George. Since the evening of his letter she had not even mentioned his name to the children nor encouraged Abner to talk about him. Abner saw the fateful direction in which the tide was drifting, and held steadily to his course.

‘It’s not so long since,’ he said, ‘that you told me to go away if I wanted to. The time they tried to get you to go and keep house for the parson. I reckon you’ve changed about a good bit since then.’

‘Of course I’ve changed,’ she said. ‘I was a fool then. I didn’t know what I wanted. It’s different now.’ She paused, and then returned instinctively to her first words. ‘You can’t! You can’t!’

‘You’re talking wild,’ he said brusquely. ‘I’ve thought it all out. It’s the only thing. You’ll have the comfort you’m used to, you and the kids. You won’t find it all that lonely with your stomachs full. It’s the bad times we’ve been having that makes you talk like that.’

Still she protested. ‘No, no, it isn’t. I couldn’t bear it. It’s like taking the life away from me.’

He didn’t wait to think what she meant. He was angry that she should increase the difficulty of his parting.

‘It’s no good talking to you,’ he said, ‘if you can’t see sense. I can’t take you along with me, can I?’

‘Why not?’

She stood before him, meek, submissive. He was overwhelmed. Through all those months he had schooled himself so thoroughly that this sudden, voluntary surrender staggered him. His heart melted within him; the blood beat in his wrists. The past shrivelled away in that moment’s flame. The future was a blaze of light, and in the present he saw nothing but the woman of his desire. There had been no one like her. In all his lighter loves he had been able to see himself from without as a creature fevered with appetite. But now he was lost. He knew nothing in the world but Mary: her softened eyes, the curve of her lips, the thrill of her yielding body. He picked her up in his arms, holding her so that her breath came quickly on his cheek, and strained her toward him as though, by doing so, he might make her a part of himself. Even if he killed her with his strength in that moment she was made his, clasped immutably to him in the surrounding darkness. Their lips were joined in eager kisses. Her proud body gave itself to his arms. Her eyes were closed: her lips infinitely happy.

‘Mary, Mary . . .’ he whispered to her, rejoicing in the sound of her name. But his voice was strange, distant, thick with passion, and his clasping hands could not be certain that they held her. They followed every curve of her body, seeking to know if it were really she. His tongue stumbled on phrases that had never come to him before.

‘Mary, my little one, my beauty! Did I use you rough? Did I hurt you?’

She shook her head and smiled back at him, full of content. She herself, shyly daring, allowed her hands to caress his head, stroking his hair, his ears, his neck. And the light contact of her fingers maddened him, finding strange nerves that had never felt before, awakening new yearnings.

At last she opened her eyes.

‘The lamp’s flaring,’ she said, in a curious, toneless voice. Smiling gently she freed herself from his arms and turned down the wick. He followed her, feeling that she was escaping him. Never again should she escape him. Obedient to his will she came back to him.

‘Us bain’t gooin’ to wait for the parson, bin’ us?’ he said, and when she would not answer: ‘Durs’n’t you, wench? We’ve waited above a bit, us two!’

‘There’s the children,’ she said, lowering her eyes. ‘I thought I heard Morgan cry out in his sleep.’

‘Bless them!’ he said. ‘And don’t I love every bone in their bodies as if they was my own?’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know. And they’re so fond of you.’

‘It’s because they’m yours,’ he said. ‘So what does it matter?’

‘Don’t ask me. Poor sweet lambs! Oh, Abner, where am I?’

‘You’m here with me, wench! In my arms. You belong to me, Mary. There’s nought can take you away from me. I don’t let you go now I’ve got you. Not a minute, not a second!’

‘I can’t take it in,’ she said. ‘If Mrs Mamble could see through the wall! To think of all that people have said of us!’

‘They can say it again. They’re welcome now! Talk? They can talk their damned heads off. We’ve been through all that!’

‘I should just think we have,’ she sighed. ‘They can’t touch us now. Abner! Abner!’She clung to him and kissed him again and again. ‘Ah, Abner, don’t ask me!’ she said. ‘Just let things happen as they will.’

She hid her face against him.

‘But afterward,’ she whispered. ‘What can we do? How can we get away, Abner? I feel as if something might stop us. Let’s get away at once. Let’s go. I can’t bear waiting!’

He laughed at her. ‘To-night?’

‘No, to-morrow.’

‘Nobody will know it’s any different till we’re gone,’ he said. ‘They can’t say worse of us than they have done.’

‘They will. . . . Of course they will. They can’t help seeing. Mrs Mamble . . . an old woman like that sees everything. I shall look different. I know I shall, if it’s only that I’m happy.’

He laughed as he kissed her. ‘Bin yo’ happy, my love?’

‘Oh, Abner!’

‘Three or four days’ll see me finished up at old Williams’s. He done us a good turn, and don’t you forget it. Besides that you couldn’t get ready by to-morrow. You’ll take a few days over that, and I’ll go on and look for a home.’

‘No, no, Abner!’ she cried. ‘Don’t leave me now! Don’t you leave me! If ever I lose sight of you now something will happen. I know it as sure as sure.’

‘You’m a baby, that’s what you are!’ he said, teasing. He gathered her up in his arms and talked foolishly to her.

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I mean it. I’m as serious as I can be.’

‘A damned sight too serious for me!’ he grumbled.

‘We must all go together. In three days I can be ready. No, two.’

‘In that case every one’ll see us. You’m all the other way now.’

‘I don’t care who sees us now,’ she said passionately. ‘What does it matter? Let it take its chance! It’s nothing to us. I’m so sick of their talk that it means nothing to me.’She became thoughtful once more.

‘Abner,’ she said suddenly, ‘tell me truly, when did you first want me?’

Again he teased her.

‘What does that matter?’

‘I want to know,’ she protested.

And he told her of the night at Redlake when he had stood burning in the moonlight beneath the jasmine-covered windows of the inn.

‘I knew, I knew!’ she said softly. ‘I couldn’t sleep that night. The time we’ve lost, us two! Oh, how I hate myself! It was nearly the same with me. Just when we’d missed our way and my legs ached so that I felt I couldn’t walk another step. Poor little Morgan, and the bottle of pop you promised him! And then those strange sea-birds crying up in the dark. Do you remember how I turned on you and told you I hated the sight of you? That was when I loved you. Then and ever since.’

‘We’ve been through something, one time and another,’ he said.

She laughed softly.

‘It’s like a long courtship,’ she said. ‘George and I only knew each other six weeks before we were married.’

It amazed her to find that now she could speak of George without discomfort. Her mind ran swiftly over those early days.

‘Abner,’ she said, ‘I feel sorry for George now, don’t you?’

‘Don’t speak of him!’ said Abner seriously.

‘You’re jealous . . .’

‘Don’t speak of him. I gave old George my word. I’ve not been a pal to George.’

‘You’re a funny boy,’ she said, loving him with her eyes.

‘I want to forget old George,’ he said obstinately.

‘Then I won’t speak of him, Abner. What time is it?’

She put her hand into his waistcoat pocket and took out his watch. The sweet familiarity of the action entranced him. His eyes followed her fingers, and the newly conscious turn of her head as she looked at it.‘Ten o’clock,’ she said. ‘Who’d have thought it?’

She rose, and again she abandoned herself to his arms. Then she left him suddenly and went before him, never looking back. He followed with the little lamp in his hand. At the foot of the stairs he stopped.

‘What’s the matter?’ she whispered, turning. ‘Aren’t you coming?’

‘There’s a step outside,’ he said. ‘Some one on the garden path.’

‘Whoever can it be at this time? Take the light to the door and see.’

The darkness of the staircase engulfed her as he opened the kitchen door and peered outside.

‘Who’s that?’ he called.

‘Is that you, Abner?’ a voice replied. ‘Now I thought I see’d a light. I guessed you’d have gone up over by this.’

‘What do you want, Mr Drew?’

‘You wait while I do get my breath back,’ said the old man. He had evidently been drinking and walked unsteadily. ‘Ah, that’s better! Well, Abner, I’ve a’ been down to the Buffalo to-night for a quart, and I thought as how I’d bring ’ee a bit of downright good news I heared. Yes, old Mrs Malpas she’ve got news from Shrewsbury—whether it be by letter or word of mouth I can’t say for certain—as young George have behaved himself so well into prison that they’m going to knock off part of his time. Any day this week he may be coming home along, so they says, and I thought I’d better bring the news quick to his missus.’

‘Coming home . . .?’ said Abner, dazed.

‘Yes. ’Tis not onusual, they do say. If she’s abed you can tell her in the marnin’. Wish ’ee good-night, Abner.’

‘I’ll tell her. Thank’ee for looking in.’

‘Oh, that’s nothing! ’Tis only natural. Good-night!’

‘Good-night, Mr Drew.’

He closed the door. The light fell on Mary, standing pale at the foot of the stairs.

‘He’s coming back,’ said Abner.

‘I heard. When?’

‘He couldn’t say certain. In a day or two.’‘Abner!’

‘Well, there it is! We’re only just in time, my girl.’ She stood mute, paralysed. He wished she would speak.

‘It’s no good your standing there,’ he said. ‘Go on up. I’ll hold the lamp.’

She did not move.

‘I can’t take it in,’ she said.

He put the lamp down on the table again and held out his arms.

Still she did not move.

‘Mary . . .!’

She obeyed, came to his arms, shuddering, shaken with sobs, and through her tears he kissed her, comforting: ‘Mary, don’t cry now, don’t cry . . .’

‘What did I tell you?’ she wailed. ‘Abner, I knew, I knew! I told you something would happen. Thank God it came in time! We’ve not a minute to think. Two or three days! Abner, we must go to-morrow.’

He did not answer her, for his mind was deeply troubled.

‘I think I can manage if you leave it to me,’ she said. He held her closer. ‘What does it matter if we take nothing away? Only just a few clothes for me and the children. I can leave everything tidy, just as it was when he went.’ She hesitated, for she remembered the tea-set that she had pawned in Shrewsbury. He would miss that. Then she realised, thankfully, that it was her wedding present, not his.

‘Nearly everything,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think it’s better that we should start with nothing? In lodgings at first. Won’t it be strange?’ She laughed softly. ‘And not a soul to know! It’s beginning life all over again. Oh, Abner, my love!’

So she spoke, confidently, at times almost gaily, and he made believe that he was listening to her, humouring her childishness.

‘And isn’t it lucky,’ she said, ‘that Mr Drew’s working up at the Pentre. You won’t need to go there yourself. If you get up early you can catch him before he goes and send up a message to the farm. It isn’t as if it mattered your breaking your word to Mr Williams. People must make allowances, mustn’t they?’

He did not answer her, and she became conscious of his brooding.

‘Abner! What’s up with you? Tell me! You’re frightening me. Abner!’

‘We can’t go to-morrow,’ he said.

‘But, Abner, we must, we must! Two or three days, he said. He might even be a day early. He might come to-morrow. Think of it, Abner! I should die.’

‘If George is coming home like that we can’t go.’

‘Abner, are you mad? What’s come over you?’

‘I don’t know. Naught’s come over me. It’s hearing his name sudden like that. It’s like a judgment. It makes you think.’

‘Judgment!’ she scoffed. ‘Oh, Abner, haven’t we thought enough? Haven’t we been thinking for six months? I’m sick of thinking!’

‘Like a warning. Just the very second. If he’d come an hour later . . .’

‘What’s the difference, Abner? If he’d come to-morrow or in a week’s time it would be no different. We’d made up our minds, Abner, we’re not children. Things like that don’t count. Whether you’ve had me or not, I’m yours. You know that.’

She clung closer to him, but his mind would not accept the sway of her emotion. He freed himself from her hands, and the movement swept her into a passion.

‘Abner!’ she cried. ‘Don’t do that! Don’t! You’ll kill me . . . kill me!’

‘George is my pal,’ he said stolidly. ‘I gave old George my word. We shook hands on it, George and me. “Abner,” he said, “you’m the only pal I’ve got that I can trust.”’

‘Oh, that’s it, is it?’ she cried, and her voice went shrill. ‘That’s it? What children men are! Gave George your word! Don’t you see that you’ve broken your word already . . . broken it long ago, ever since you thought of me like that? And then you say you love me! That isn’t love, Abner, not my kind anyway!’

He caught her up in his arms, and she could not speak now for tears. His own face was anguished.‘You’d better kill me and have done with it,’ she sobbed. ‘Far better. Oh, why don’t you kill me right out if you’re going to leave me? I wish I were dead! I do! Abner, if we don’t go away to-morrow I shall lose you. I know it . . . I know it! For my sake, Abner! I’ve had so little happiness.’

He fondled her as she spoke. ‘I’m not going to leave go of you,’ he said. ‘Don’t you ever think that!’ He kissed her tearful face. ‘But I gave old George my word,’ he continued obstinately.

‘Oh, damn your word!’ she cried, violently wrenching herself away from him.

‘Don’t get wild,’ he protested. ‘Listen to me.’

‘I won’t listen. You’re talking wickedly, madly.’

‘You’ve got to listen, my girl!’ He took hold of her and held her with his strength. ‘A chap may go back on his word. Every one knows that. But a man that’s worth calling don’t go slinking away behind another chap’s back like a dog. If old George is coming home he’s got to hear what I say to his face, not find the place empty and say I’ve run away from him. Me and George has got to have this out.’

‘Then take us away first,’ she pleaded, ‘and come back to see him afterward.’

‘You’m talking soft now!’

‘I’m frightened, Abner . . . frightened!’

‘You’ve no need to be while I’m here. I can look after myself and you too. I’m going to see old George and tell him straight. You may like it or lump it. That’s my way.’

She wept, inconsolable. She would not let him comfort her. She hoped that her tears would soften him.

‘Can’t you do just one thing for me, Abner? You’re cruel . . . cruel! You don’t love me. That isn’t love.’

‘I’ve got to do it my own way.’

‘You might just as well kill me.’

‘I’ve never run away from a man yet.’

‘If you don’t take me away from here now,’ she said desperately, ‘you’ll never have me at all. Never! I know it, Abner, it’s our last chance.’

‘It’s been too much for you,’ he said. ‘You can’t see anything clear. I’m not a chap that changes.’She stared at him in silence with sad, resentful eyes. Then she lost control of herself and began to curse the clumsiness of old Drew, who had blundered in on them with his drunken gossip in the middle of the night. ‘I’ll never forgive him!’ she cried. ‘Never!’ She shouted like a drunken woman. Then she stopped and listened intently, just as an animal listens in suspicion. Morgan, awakened by the sound of raised voices, had begun to cry.

‘It’s Morgan,’ she whispered.

‘You’d better go to him,’ Abner replied.

She put her hands to her face.

‘Don’t!’ she cried. ‘Oh, Abner, don’t! You’re driving me!’

‘Go on!’ he said roughly. ‘I’ll put the light out. Got the matches?’

She saw that he meant it, and blindly went.

Slowly, methodically, Abner locked the kitchen door and put out the light. A moment later he himself went upstairs in the dark. Morgan was still sobbing, mechanically, for the sake of hearing his own voice, and as Abner passed the door he was aware of a soft moaning which told him that Mary was crying too. His heart ached, his body yearned for her; but in his brain George Malpas’s words re-echoed: ‘By God, you’re the only pal I’ve got that I can trust!’ In a day or two George would be home, and then the situation must be faced. He could not be a man and run away from it.

He got into bed. Lying there in the dark, listening to the ceaseless creaking of the boards and joists, he cursed himself for a fool. His body was on fire. He knew that he could not possibly sleep, and guessed that Mary surely was awake. He was a damned, soft fool, and nothing more! Lying there with eyes open, staring at the darkness, it seemed to him that he heard a soft step on the stairs. The latch of his door started. His heart dissolved within him. He leapt out of bed, trembling, tingling in every limb. Mary had been wiser. He knew it. She had come to him for comfort. She was his. In a moment she would be sinking warm into his arms. His scruples vanished like a puff of smoke. He heard himself swallow, heard his breath coming in short grunts. He opened the door to meet her, to take her. The stair was empty and dark. A rat scuttled away in the wainscot. A dank, wintry air possessed the house. He slammed the door to, viciously.

Next morning, before Mary had stirred from her bed, he had set out as usual for the Pentre.