XI
Never in her life had Frida enjoyed anything so much as those first fourhappy days at Heymoor. She had come away with Bertram exactly as Bertramhimself desired her to do, without one thought of anything on earthexcept to fulfil the higher law of her own nature; and she was happy inher intercourse with the one man who could understand it, the oneman who had waked it to its fullest pitch, and could make it resoundsympathetically to his touch in every chord and every fibre. They hadchosen a lovely spot on a heather-clad moorland, where she could strollalone with Bertram among the gorse and ling, utterly oblivious of RobertMonteith and the unnatural world she had left for ever behind her.Her soul drank in deep draughts of the knowledge of good and evil fromBertram's lips; she felt it was indeed a privilege to be with him andlisten to him; she wondered how she could ever have endured that old badlife with the lower man who was never her equal, now she had once tastedand known what life can be when two well-matched souls walk it together,abreast, in holy fellowship.
The children, too, were as happy as the day was long. The heath washeaven to them. They loved Bertram well, and were too young to be awareof anything unusual in the fact of his accompanying them. At the littleinn on the hill-top where they stopped to lodge, nobody asked anycompromising questions: and Bertram felt so sure he could soon completehis arrangements for taking Frida and the children "home," as he stillalways phrased it, that Frida had no doubts for their future happiness.As for Robert Monteith, that bleak, cold man, she hardly even rememberedhim: Bertram's first kiss seemed almost to have driven the very memoryof her husband clean out of her consciousness. She only regretted, nowshe had left him, the false and mistaken sense of duty which had kepther so long tied to an inferior soul she could never love, and did wrongto marry.
And all the time, what strange new lessons, what beautiful truths, shelearned from Bertram! As they strolled together, those sweet Augustmornings, hand locked in hand, over the breezy upland, what new insighthe gave her into men and things! what fresh impulse he supplied to herkeen moral nature! The misery and wrong of the world she lived in camehome to her now in deeper and blacker hues than ever she had conceivedit in: and with that consciousness came also the burning desire of everywakened soul to right and redress it. With Bertram by her side, she feltshe could not even harbour an unholy wish or admit a wrong feeling; thatvague sense of his superiority, as of a higher being, which she had feltfrom the very first moment she met him at Brackenhurst, had deepened andgrown more definite now by closer intercourse; and she recognised thatwhat she had fallen in love with from the earliest beginning was thebeauty of holiness shining clear in his countenance. She had chosen atlast the better part, and she felt in her soul that, come what might, itcould not be taken away from her.
In this earthly paradise of pure love, undefiled, she spent three fulldays and part of another. On the morning of the fourth, she sent thecountry girl they had engaged to take care of the children, out on themoor with the little ones, while she herself and Bertram went off alone,past the barrow that overlooks the Devil's Saucepan, and out on the openridge that stretches with dark growth of heath and bracken far away intothe misty blue distance of Hampshire. Bertram had just been speaking toher, as they sat on the dry sand, of the buried chieftain whose bonesstill lay hid under that grass-grown barrow, and of the slaughteredwives whose bodies slept beside him, massacred in cold blood toaccompany their dead lord to the world of shadows. He had beencontrasting these hideous slaveries of taboo-ridden England, past orpresent, with the rational freedom of his own dear country, whither hehoped so soon with good luck to take her, when suddenly Frida raised hereager eyes from the ground, and saw somebody or something coming acrossthe moor from eastward in their direction.
All at once, a vague foreboding of evil possessed her. Hardly quiteknowing why, she felt this approaching object augured no good to theirhappiness. "Look, Bertram," she cried, seizing his arm in her fright,"there's somebody coming."
Bertram raised his eyes and looked. Then he shaded them with his hands."How strange!" he said simply, in his candid way: "it looks for all theworld just like the man who was once your husband!"
Frida rose in alarm. "Oh, what can we do?" she cried, wringing herhands. "What ever can we do? It's he! It's Robert!"
"Surely he can't have come on purpose!" Bertram exclaimed, taken aback."When he sees us, he'll turn aside. He must know of all people on earthhe's the one least likely at such a time to be welcome. He can't want todisturb the peace of another man's honeymoon!"
But Frida, better used to the savage ways of the world she had alwayslived in, made answer, shrinking and crouching, "He's hunted us down,and he's come to fight you."
"To fight me!" Bertram exclaimed. "Oh, surely not that! I was told bythose who ought best to know, you English had got far beyond the stageof private war and murderous vendetta."
"For everything else," Frida answered, cowering down in her terror ofher husband's vengeance, not for herself indeed so much as for Bertram."For everything else, we have; but NOT for a woman."
There was no time just then, however, for further explanation of thisstrange anomaly. Monteith had singled them out from a great distancewith his keen, clear sight, inherited from generations of Highlandancestors, and now strode angrily across the moor, with great wrathfulsteps, in his rival's direction. Frida nestled close to Bertram, toprotect her from the man to whom her country's laws and the customs ofher tribe would have handed her over blindfold. Bertram soothed her withhis hand, and awaited in silence, with some dim sense of awe, the angrybarbarian's arrival.
He came up very quickly, and stood full in front of them, glaring withfierce eyes at the discovered lovers. For a minute or two his rage wouldnot allow him to speak, nor even to act; he could but stand and scowlfrom under his brows at Bertram. But after a long pause his wrath foundwords. "You infernal scoundrel!" he burst forth, "so at last I'vecaught you! How dare you sit there and look me straight in the face? Youinfernal thief, how dare you? how dare you?"
Bertram rose and confronted him. His own face, too, flushed slightlywith righteous indignation; but he answered for all that in the samecalm and measured tones as ever: "I am NOT a scoundrel, and I will notsubmit to be called so even by an angry savage. I ask you in return,how dare you follow us? You must have known your presence would be veryunwelcome. I should have thought this was just the one moment in yourlife and the one place on earth where even YOU would have seen that tostop away was your imperative duty. Mere self-respect would dictate suchconduct. This lady has given you clear proof indeed that your societyand converse are highly distasteful to her."
Robert Monteith glared across at him with the face of a tiger. "Youinfamous creature," he cried, almost speechless with rage, "do you dareto defend my wife's adultery?"
Bertram gazed at him with a strange look of mingled horror andastonishment. "You poor wretch!" he answered, as calmly as before, butwith evident contempt; "how can you dare, such a thing as you, to applythese vile words to your moral superiors? Adultery it was indeed, anduntruth to her own higher and purer nature, for this lady to spend onenight of her life under your roof with you; what she has taken nowin exchange is holy marriage, the only real and sacred marriage, themarriage of true souls, to which even the wiser of yourselves, the poetsof your nation, would not admit impediment. If you dare to apply suchbase language as this to my lady's actions, you must answer for it tome, her natural protector, for I will not permit it."
At the words, quick as lightning, Monteith pulled from his pocket aloaded revolver and pointed it full at his rival. With a cry of terror,Frida flung herself between them, and tried to protect her lover withthe shield of her own body. But Bertram gently unwound her arms and heldher off from him tenderly. "No, no, darling," he said slowly, sittingdown with wonderful calm upon a big grey sarsen-stone that abutted uponthe pathway; "I had forgotten again; I keep always forgetting whatkind of savages I have to deal with. If I chose, I could snatchthat murderous weapon from his hand, and shoot
him dead with it inself-defence--for I'm stronger than he is. But if I did, what use? Icould never take you home with me. And after all, what could we eitherof us do in the end in this bad, wild world of your fellow-countrymen?They would take me and hang me; and all would be up with you. For yoursake, Frida, to shield you from the effects of their cruel taboos,there's but one course open: I must submit to this madman. He may shootme if he will.... Stand free, and let him!"
But with a passionate oath, Robert Monteith seized her arm and flung hermadly from him. She fell, reeling, on one side. His eyes were bloodshotwith the savage thirst for vengeance. He raised the deadly weapon.Bertram Ingledew, still seated on the big round boulder, opened hisbreast in silence to receive the bullet. There was a moment's pause. Forthat moment, even Monteith himself, in his maniac mood, felt dimly awareof that mysterious restraining power all the rest who knew him hadso often felt in their dealings with the Alien. But it was only for amoment. His coarser nature was ill adapted to recognise that ineffableair as of a superior being that others observed in him. He pulled thetrigger and fired. Frida gave one loud shriek of despairing horror.Bertram's body fell back on the bare heath behind it.