"Only," as Mrs.Bolitho said to her husband, "one thing's certain, she do love 'im with all her heart and soul--poor lamb."When Martin and Maggie had been at the farm about a fort-night, there came to St.Dreot's a travelling circus.This was a very small affair, but it came every year, and provided considerable excitement for the village population.There were also gipsies who came on the moor, and telling the fortunes of any who had a spare sixpence with which to cross their palms.The foreign and exotic colour that the circus and the gipsies brought into the village was exactly suited to the St.Dreot blood.Many centuries ago strange galleys had forced their way into bays and creeks of the southern coast, and soon dark strangers had penetrated across the moors and fields and had mingled with the natives of the plain.Scarcely an inhabitant of St.Dreot but had some dark colour in his blood, a gift from those Phoenician adventurers; scarcely an inhabitant but was conscious from time to time of other strains, more tumultuous passions, than the Saxon race could show.
This coming of the circus had in it, whether they knew it or no, something of the welcoming of their own people back to them again.
They liked to see the elephant and the camel tread solemnly the uneven stones of the village street, they liked to hear the roar of the wild beasts at night when they were safe and warm in their own comfortable beds, they liked to have solemn consultations with the gipsy girls as to their mysterious destinies.The animals, indeed, were not many nor, poor things, were they, after many years' chains and discipline, very fierce--nevertheless they roared because they knew it was their duty so to do, and when the lion's turn came a notice was hung up outside his cage saying: "This is the Lion that last year, at Clinton, bit Miss Harper." There were also performing dogs, a bear, and two seals.
The circus was quite close to the farm.
"I do hope," said Mrs.Bolitho to Martin, "that the roaring of the animals won't disturb you."It did not disturb him.He seemed to like it, and went out and stood there watching all the labours of the gipsies and the tent men, and even went into "The Green Boar" and drank a glass of beer with Mr.
Marquis, the proprietor of the circus.
On the third day after their arrival there was a proper Glebeshire mist.It was a day, also, of freezing, biting cold, such a day as sometimes comes in of a Glebeshire May--cold that seems, in its damp penetration, more piercing than any frost.
The mist came rolling up over the moor in wreaths and spirals of shadowy grey, sometimes shot with a queer dull light as though the sun was fighting behind it to beat a way through, sometimes so dense and thick that standing at the door of the farm you could not see your hand in front of your face.It was cold with the chill of the sea foam, mysterious in its ever-changing intricacies of shape and form, lifting for a sudden instant and showing green grass and the pale spring flowers in the border by the windows, then charging down again with fold on fold of vapour thicker and thicker, swaying and throbbing with a purpose and meaning of its own.Early in the afternoon Mrs.Bolitho took a peep at her lodgers.She did not intend to spy--she was an honest woman--but she shared most vividly the curiosity of all the village about "these two queer ignorant children," as she called them.Standing in the bow-window of her own little parlour she could see the bow-window and part of the room on the opposite side of the house-door.Maggie and Martin stood there looking out into the mist.The woman could see Maggie's face, dim though the light was, and a certain haunting desire in it tugged at Mrs.Bolitho's tender heart."Poor worm," she thought to herself, "she's longing for him to say something to her and he won't." They were talking.Then there was a pause and Martin turned away.
Maggie's eyes passionately besought him.What did she want him to do--to say? Mrs.Bolitho could see that the girl's hands were clenched, as though she had reached, at last, the very limits of her endurance.He did not see.His back was half turned to her.He did not speak, but stood there drumming with his hands on the glass.
"Oh, I could shake him," thought Mrs.Bolitho's impatience.For a time Maggie waited, never stirring, her eyes fixed, her body taut.
Then she seemed suddenly to break, as though the moment of endurance was past.She turned sharply round, looking directly out of her window into Mrs.Bolitho's room--but she didn't see Mrs.Bolitho.
That good woman saw her smile, a strange little smile of defiance, pathos, loneliness, cheeriness defeated.She vanished from her window although he stood there.A moment later, in a coat and hat, she came out of the front door, stood for a moment on the outskirts of the mist looking about her, then vanished on to the moor.
"She oughtn't to be out in this," thought the farmer's wife."It's dangerous."She waited a little, then came and knocked on the door of the other sitting-room.She met Martin in the doorway.
"Oh, Mrs.Bolitho," he said, "I thought I'd go to the circus for half an hour.""Very well, sir," she said.