CHAPTER V

It was no use wondering now whether or not Peacey had really murmured “Good day, ma’am,” as they parted at the door of the church after their furtive marriage.  She had certainly thought she had heard this ironic respectfulness, and she had stared after him with a sudden dread that under the cream of benignity there might after all be a ferment of malign intention.  But that gait, which was so light and brisk for such a heavy man, had already taken him some distance from her, and he was now entering the yew alley that was the private way from Torque Hall to the churchyard.  The sunlight falling through the interstices of the dark mossy trees cast liver-coloured patches on his black coat.  She had turned and looked down, as she always did when human complexities made her seek reassurance as to the worth of this world, on the shiny mud-flats, blue-veined with the running tides, and green marshes where the redshanks choired.  Her misgiving had weakened at that beauty, for with the logic of the young she thought that if the universe was infinitely good it could not also be infinitely evil, and it had been utterly dispelled by his considerate conduct during the following weeks.

He did not try to see her at all until a day or two before the birth of her child was expected.  Then he came at twilight.  He would not let Grandmother put a match to the lamp in the parlour, and Marion knew from his quiet urgency that he was doing this so that she might continue to wear the dusk as a cloak.  He sat down by the window, his shoulders black against the sunset, and his fat hands, with their appealing air of shame at their own fatness, laid on the little table beside him an old; carved coral rattle and a baby’s dress precious with embroideries.  These he had bought, he said, up in London, where he had had to go for a day to do business with the wine merchants.  He had not seemed to listen to her thanks.  But his hunched shape against the primrose light and the gleaming of his thick white fingers playing nervously with the fragile gifts spoke of a passionate concern for her.  No doubt that concern was sincere.  They told her after her confinement that during the day and night through which her child was slowly torn from her he had not left the house, and at her cries a sweat had run down his face.  That was not unnatural.  An incomplete villainy would vex its designer as any unfinished work of art vexes the artist.  But she interpreted it in the sense that he, knowing what delusions youth has regarding the human capacity for love, had foreseen that she would.