He crossed the yard with quick steps. A light burned in one of the sheds, throwing a fitful flicker upon the heaps of straw and the pools of dung-coloured water. Some animal, there — a horse or a cow or a pig — was probably giving birth to young.
From the farm-yard he emerged into the cottage-garden, and stumbling across this, he knocked at the first door he reached. There was not the least sound in answer. Dead unbroken stillness reigned, except for an intermittent shuffling and stamping from the watcher or the watched in the farm-yard behind.
He knocked again, and even the sounds in the yard ceased. Only, high up among the trees above him, some large nocturnal bird fluttered heavily from bough to bough.
For the third time he knocked and then the door of the next house opened suddenly, emitting a long stream of light into which several startled moths instantly flew. Following the light came a woman’s figure.
“If thee wants Lintot,” said the voice of this figure, “thee can’t see’ im till along of most an hour. He be tending a terrible sick beast.”
“I want to see Ninsy,” shouted Philip, knocking again on the closed door.
“Then thee must walk in and have done with it,” returned the woman. “The maid be laid up with heart-spasms again and can open no doors this night, not if the Lord his own self were hammering.”
Philip boldly followed her advice and entered the cottage, closing the door behind him. A faint voice from a room at the back asked him what he wanted and who he was.
“It is Philip,” he answered, “may I come in and see you, Ninsy? It is Philip — Philip Wone.”
He gathered from the girl’s low-voiced murmur that he was welcome, and crossing the kitchen he opened the door of the further room.
He found Ninsy dressed and smiling, but lying in complete prostration upon a low horse-hair sofa. He closed the door, and moving a chair to her side, sat down in silence, gazing upon her wistfully with his great melancholy eyes.
“Don’t look so peaked and pining, Philip-boy,” she said, laying her white hand upon his and smiling into his face. “’Tis only the old trouble. ’Tis nothing more than what I expect. I shall be about again tomorrow or the day after. But I be real glad to see ’ee here! Father’s biding down in the yard, and ’tis a lonesome place to be laid-up in, this poor old house.”
Ninsy looked exquisitely fragile and slender, lying back in this tender helplessness, her chestnut-coloured hair all loose over her pillow. Philip was filled with a flood of romantic emotion. The girl had always attracted him but never so much as now. It was one of his ingrained peculiarities to find hurt and unhappy people more engaging than healthy and contented ones. He almost wished Ninsy would stop smiling and chattering so pleasantly. It only needed that she should shed tears, to turn the young man’s commiseration into passion.
But Ninsy did not shed tears. She continued chatting to him in the most cheerful vein. It was only by the faintest shadow that crossed her face at intervals, that one could have known that anything serious was the matter with her. She spoke of the books he had lent her. She spoke of the probable break-up of the weather. She talked of Lacrima Traffio.
“I think,” she said, speaking with extreme earnestness, “the young foreign lady is lovely to look at. I hope she’ll be happy in this marriage. They do say, poor dear, she is being driven to it. But with the gentry you never know. They aren’t like us. Father says they have all their marriages thought out for them, same as royalty. I wonder who Miss Gladys will marry after all! Father has met her several times lately, walking with that American gentleman.”
“Has Jim Andersen been up to see you, Ninsy,” put in Mr. Wone’s emissary, “since this last attack of yours?”
The fact that this question left his lips simultaneously with a rising current of emotion in his heart towards her is a proof of the fantastic complication of feeling in the young anarchist.
He fretted and chafed under the stream of her gentle impersonal talk. He longed to rouse in her some definite agitation, even though it meant the introduction of his rival’s image. The fact that such agitation was likely to be a shock to her did not weigh with him. Objective consideration for people’s bodily health was not one of Philip’s weaknesses. His experiment met with complete success. At the mention of James Andersen’s name a scarlet flush came into the girl’s cheeks.
“No — yes — no!” she answered stammering. “That is — I mean — not since I have been ill. But before — several times — lately. Why do you look at me like that, Philip? You’re not angry with me, are you?”
Philip’s mind was a confused arena of contradictory emotions. Among the rest, two stood out and asserted themselves — this unpardonable and remorseless desire to trouble her, to embarrass her, to make her blush yet more deeply — and a strange wild longing to be himself as ill as she was, and of the same disease, so that they might die together!
“My father wanted me to ask you,” he blurted out, “whether you would use your influence over Jim to get him to help in this election business. I told my father Jim would do anything you asked him.”
The girl’s poor cheeks burned more deeply than ever at this.
“I wish you hadn’t told him that, Philip,” she said. “I wish you hadn’t! You know very well I have no more influence over James than anyone else has. It was unkind of you to tell him that! Now I am afraid he’ll be disappointed, for I shall never dare to worry Jim about a thing like that. You don’t take any interest in this election, Philip, do you?”
From the tone of this last remark the young anarchist gathered the intimation that Andersen had been talking about the affair to his little friend and had been expressing opinions derogatory to Mr. Wone’s campaign. She would hardly have spoken of so lively a local event in such a tone of weary disparagement, if some masculine philosopher had not been “putting ideas into her head.”
“You ought to make him join in,” continued Philip. “He has such influence down at the works. It would be a great help to father. We labouring people ought to stand by one another, you know.”
“But I thought — I thought—,” stammered poor Ninsy, pushing back her hair from her forehead, “that you had quite different opinions from Mr. Wone.”
“Damn my opinions!” cried the excited youth. “What do my opinions matter? We are talking of Jim Andersen. Why doesn’t he join in with the other men and help father in getting up the strike?”
“He — he doesn’t believe in strikes,” murmured the girl feebly.
“Why doesn’t he!” cried the youth. “Does he think himself different, then, from the rest of us, because old Gideon married the daughter of a vicar? He ought to be told that he is a traitor to his class. Yes — a traitor — a turn-coat — a black-leg! That’s what he is — if he won’t come in. A black-leg!”
They were interrupted by a sharp knock at the outer door. The girl raised herself on her elbow and became distressingly agitated.
“Oh, I believe that is Jim,” she cried. “What shall I do? He won’t like to find you here alone with me like this. What a dreadful accident!”
Philip without a moment’s delay went to the door and opened it. Yes, the visitor was James Andersen. The two men looked at one another in silence. James was the first to speak.
“So you are looking after our invalid?” he said. “I only heard this afternoon that she was bad again.”