第92章 The Awakening (10)

Involuntarily she slackened her pace and waited, smiling for him to cross the fence; but, to her amazement, after an instant in which his eyes held her as if rooted to the spot, he turned hastily away and walked rapidly in the opposite direction.For a breath she stood motionless, gazing blankly into space; then, as she went on again, she knew that she carried with her not the wonder at his sudden flight, but the clear memory of that one moment's look into his eyes.A century of experience, with its tears and its laughter, its joy and its anguish, its desire and its fulfilment, seemed crowded into the single instant that held her immovable in the road.

CHAPTER IV.The Meeting in the Night When Christopher turned so abruptly from Maria's gaze he was conscious only of a desperate impulse of flight.At the instant his strength seemed to fail him utterly, and he realised that for the first time in his life he feared to trust himself to face the imminent moment.His one thought was to escape quickly from her presence, and in the suddenness of his retreat he did not weigh the possible effect upon her of his rudeness.A little later, however, when he had put the field between him and her haunting eyes, he found himself returning with remorse to his imaginings of what her scattered impressions must have been.

Between regret and perplexity the day dragged through, and he met his mother's exacting humours and Cynthia's wistful inquiries with a curious detachment of mind.He had reached that middle state of any powerful emotion when even the external objects among which one moves seem affected by the inward struggle between reason and desire--the field in which he worked, the distant landscape, the familiar faces in the house, and those frail, pathetic gestures of his mother's hands, all expressed in outward forms something of the passion which he felt stirring in his own breast.It was in his nature to dare risks blindly--to hesitate at no experience offered him in his narrow life, and there were moments during this long day when he found himself questioning if one might not, after all, plunge headlong into the impossible.

As he rose from the supper table, where he had pushed his untasted food impatiently away, he remembered that he had promised in the morning to meet Will Fletcher at the store, and, lighting his lantern, he started out to keep the appointment he had almost forgotten.He found Will overflowing with his domestic troubles, and it was after ten o'clock before they both came out upon the road and turned into opposite ways at the beginning of Sol Peterkin's lane.

"I'll help you with the ploughing, of course," Christopher said, as they lingered together a moment before parting; "make your mind quite easy about that.I'll be over at sunrise on Monday and put in a whole day's job."Then, as he fell back into his own road, he found something like satisfaction in the prospect of driving Will Fletcher's plough.

The easy indifference with which he was accustomed to lend a hand in a neighbour's difficulty had always marked his association with the man whose ruin, he still assured himself, he had wrought.

It was a dark, moonless night, with only a faint, nebulous whiteness where the clouded stars shone overhead.His lantern, swinging lightly from his hand, cast a shining yellow circle on the ground before him, and it was by this illumination that he saw presently, as he neared the sunken road into which he was about to turn, a portion of the shadow by the ice-pond detach itself from the surrounding blackness and drift rapidly to meet him.In his first start of surprise, he raised the lantern quickly above his head and waited breathlessly while the advancing shape assumed gradually a woman's form.The old ghost stories of his childhood thronged confusedly into his brain, and then, before the thrilling certainty of the figure before him, he uttered a single joyous exclamation:

"You!"

The light flashed full upon Maria's face, which gave back to him a white and tired look.Her eyes were heavy, and there was a strange solemnity about them--something that appealed vaguely to his religious instinct.

"What in heaven's name has happened?" he asked, and his voice escaped his control and trembled with emotion.

With a tired little laugh, she screened her eyes from the lantern.

"I had a talk with grandfather about Will," she answered, "and he got so angry that he locked me out of doors.He had had a worrying day in town, and I think he hardly knew what he was doing--but he has put up the bars and turned out the lights, and there's really no way of getting in."He thought for a moment."Will you go on to your brother's, or is it too far?""At first I started there, but that must have been hours ago, and it was so dark I got lost by the ice-pond.After all, it would only make matters worse if I saw Will again; so the question is, Where am I to sleep?""At Tom Spade's, then--or--" he hesitated an instant, "if you care to come to us, my sister will gladly find room for you."She shook her head."No, no; you are very kind, but I can't do that.It is best that I shouldn't leave the place, perhaps, and when the servant comes over at sunrise I can slip up into my room.If you'll lend me your lantern I'll make myself some kind of a bed in the barn.Fortunately, grandfather forgot to lock the door.""In the barn?" he echoed, surprised.