Miss Mayne yielded. The affair threatened to develop into a scene;
she felt self-conscious and embarrassed.
"Very well," she consented, and held out her hand to Jane. "Put it
on the tip, it's too small for me to wear."
Jane complied, but Cornelius James intervened and pounced on her
extended finger. "No, no," he cried, "properly! You must have all
the luck!" and thrust the gold circle over her knuckle.
Miss Mayne tugged at it unavailingly. The blush had gone and a look
of annoyance creased her brows. "It won't come off," she murmured.
"Never mind," said Graeme; "don't worry. We'll have tea, and then
Mrs. Mackworth shall bring you some soap and warm water. Tea's ready
now."
"I'd rather----" began the girl, and stopped. She had made enough
fuss over the wretched thing, she decided. "Very well," she said
reluctantly, and they descended to the dining-room, and the
Gargantuan repast Graeme had prepared.
As the meal progressed, the friendly relations Graeme had established
with the children increased to something approaching intimacy. Miss
Mayne's annoyance disappeared and her whimsy of a smile returned.
The incident of the ring was forgotten, and no one mentioned it.
Only she remained somehow conscious of it as she sat with her hand
unobtrusively concealed from view upon her lap.
Tea was nearing its conclusion when the butler entered and approached
Graeme's chair.
"The two Miss Smedleys, sir, have called. I said her Ladyship was
away, but they said, if they might, they'd like to see you for a
minute."
"See _me_!" groaned the victim. "Oh, who wouldn't sell his little
farm and go to sea? Why do they want to see me?"
"Couldn't say, sir," said the butler, with faint disapproval in his
tone.
Graeme gazed at him with undisguised panic in his face.
"Look here, Hobbes," he said, "I'm not going to face those man-eaters
alone. You can show 'em in here. I suppose they'll have to have
tea."
Then to the children, who sat wide-eyed and silent during this
confab, he appealed. "You'll all help me, won't you?"
"Rather!" exclaimed Cornelius James, all his martial instincts
aroused by the reference to man-eaters, but quite at a loss as to
what was expected of him.
"Course we'll help," echoed Georgina, with something nearer
comprehension.
"Well, then, you must just pretend I'm your father."
"What fun!" cried Jane, and they rose as the door opened and the
Misses Smedley stood, somewhat taken aback, on the threshold.
"How d'you do," said Graeme advancing. "I hope you don't mind a
schoolroom tea round the dining-table, but the fact is, I--when the
children are here--we always have tea together."
The Misses Smedley bowed confusedly to Miss Mayne.
"We won't stop, ta fearfully all the same--we only wanted to ask you
to act in some theatricals," said Josephine; "they're next week, and
we're in a tearing hurry. Think it over and let us know as soon as
you can."
"_I_," said Graeme. "Do you mean you want _me_ to act?" He turned
to the party round the table. "Children, can you imagine your father
acting in amateur theatricals?"
The response was an outburst of unbridled merriment, in course of
which Cornelius James, seated next to Miss Mayne, upset his teacup.
The Misses Smedley took advantage of the ensuing confusion to beat a
retreat.
"Well," said Alicia, "we just popped in on the off-chance you would,
don't you know, being next-door neighbours, and all that kind of
thing. Now we must fly off and beat up someone else." Her insolent
eyes roved round the table. She appeared to be preoccupied with some
mental arithmetical calculation.
"Won't you have some tea first?" said Miss Mayne. The instant she
had spoken she regretted it, but the intimacy of the afternoon, the
feeling of knowing almost as much about the house and its contents as
the owners, perhaps some faint promptings of loyalty to her sex,
produced a spontaneous offer of hospitality that she knew was not
hers to make.
"No, thanks really," said Josephine, already in retreat. "We haven't
time now. Good-bye, and do try to persuade your husband to help us
with these wretched theatricals."
Graeme and Miss Mayne stared blankly at each other. Through the open
window came the sound of a car being cranked furiously.
The children's faces were eyeing their elders as if uncertain how to
take this unexpected turn of events.
"They don't really eat men, do they?" said the awed voice of
Cornelius James.
"You don't honestly think----" began Miss Mayne, her colour once more
supplanting her smile. "Oh, couldn't you tell them--run out and say
I--we----"
Graeme hastened after the visitors with belated promptings of
conscience and the laws of hospitality, but before he reached the
hall the splutter of gravel and the hum of the engine told the
listeners in the dining-room he was too late.
"He's waving good-bye," said Alicia, as the car swerved and rocked
down the avenue, looking back and brandishing her gloves.
"Let him!" snapped Josephine, opening the throttle. "Some men are
the limit. Fancy all those children. Disgusting, I call it. Why,
the eldest was fourteen, if she was a day."
"_She_ looked idiotically young," said Alicia.
"Probably their step-mother. Didn't she look daggers when we walked
in! I suppose she is his wife?"
"'Course she is; didn't you see her wedding ring? I spotted it when
that kid upset his cup and she started mopping up the mess. 'Course
she's his wife."
"H'm," was the comment of the sporting Alicia.
5
Graeme Jakes accompanied his guests as far as the gateway to Glebe
Farm when finally they departed. The sun was dipping behind the
hills and rabbits were showing themselves along the lane; it was a
golden evening of incredible peacefulness, but in Graeme's mind a
shadow of remorse lingered.
"Look here, Miss Mayne," he began awkwardly when a temporary absence
of the children, who had run to greet the farm terrier, made intimate
speech possible. "I'm awfully sorry for the stupid mistake that
Smedley girl made. I feel I am really to blame, although nothing was
further from my mind----"
Miss Mayne was silent and Graeme shot a swift glance at her profile
which, beyond enabling him to note that her eyelashes were long and
curved up a little at the tips, afforded him no comfort. They walked
a few paces through clouds of jigging gnats.
"Shall we not talk about it any more?" said Miss Mayne at length.
"I don't want to talk about it. I only wanted to reassure you, in
case you might feel any annoyance. You see, they'll have found out
the truth by now. They certainly won't waste time making
inquiries----" He smiled grimly. "And if anything more comes of it,
the worst will be a visit of apology to you from the pair of 'em."
He crinkled his eyes in the sunset light and scanned the figures of
the children ahead of them.
"Why!" he murmured. "Of course it's absurd! It's comic! Fancy
me----" and stopped on delicate ground.
Miss Mayne smiled too. "I hope I shall be spared apologies. As long
as they realise at once---- As you say----" She hesitated and drove
the point home. "The idea is--comic! And," she added graciously,
"I'm not in the least angry with you."
So ended Graeme's party. He retraced his steps, puffing furiously at
his pipe, jolted out of the accustomed orbit of his thoughts as
completely as a maiden after her first dance.
On the whole he had enjoyed the afternoon immensely and found himself
wondering why he had never done anything of the sort before. They
were such jolly kids; the brown-faced, impulsive Cornelius James,
aglow with imagination and as affectionate as a puppy; Jane, a
feminine edition of him, with thick hair, "bobbed" above the nape of
her white neck (he had discovered for the first time the witchery
that lies in the back of a child's neck); and Georgina, shy, long
slip of a thing with eyes like a fawn and hints of a not-distant
womanhood in her quick changes of colour and the pretty immature
curves of her young body.
Of Miss Mayne he thought with a queer mixture of compunction and
pleasure. She so obviously would have enjoyed the afternoon had it
not been for the lamentable business of the ring, and the ridiculous
remark addressed to her by Josephine Smedley. Her husband indeed...!
Somehow that possible interpretation never entered his head when he
suggested temporarily adopting the children. The ring she was still
wearing during tea must have been responsible for it. He wished they
had got it off with soap and water when she wanted to, instead of
leaving it till afterwards. "Comic!" The intonation in Miss Mayne's
voice came back to him as she echoed the word. After all, why
comic----?
He wondered, sailor-like, what manner of man her brother had been,
that dead Guardsman who slept "in Flanders' fields." He realised
with an unfamiliar thrill the fearless, frank way she had looked him
in the eyes, the poise of her head, the gay quality of her laugh, and
somehow wished he had had that man for a pal; he, who since boyhood
had never really opened his heart to another human being.
He found a letter from his step-sister awaiting him on his return.
It was a hurried epistle communicating the fact that Sir Malcolm was
in bed with influenza, which at that time was raging in London. It
postponed their return indefinitely and bade Graeme make himself as
comfortable as circumstances permitted in their absence until the end
of his leave.
Perhaps nothing more was necessary than this absence of Lady Manners
from the scene to mature Graeme's friendship with his new
acquaintances.
From the formal invitation to a return party at Glebe Farm penned by
Georgina and signed by all three children, they passed by rapid
stages to an easy comradeship. In a week the boy and both girls were
as free of the demesne as Graeme was of the noisy teas in the farm
parlour. Further, the latter unearthed a governess cart out of the
stables, and harnessing a fat pony between the shafts, led them off
on long rambling expeditions amongst the thickly-wooded hills, and
lanes drowsy with the scent of honeysuckle.
It is not for me to attempt any convincing record of the
imperceptible stages by which, as the days passed, Graeme fell in
love with Claire Mayne.
She obtruded upon his thoughts as sunlight enters a room past
curtains waving in the breeze, while with the dour perversity of his
queer nature he tried to shut her out.
There were women about whom no one could cherish any illusions; with
these Graeme Jakes was half contemptuously, half pityingly at ease.
But in Claire Mayne he saw someone who approached so exquisitely to
his ideal of womanhood that he dreaded disillusionment. Thus and
thus must his goddess be fashioned, and the first word or act of hers
that betrayed feet of clay would have filled him with bitterness and
disappointment.
However, as time went on, one after another he drew forth timidly
from the secret hiding-place of his soul some fresh idealism; draping
them about his conception of her, until the real and the imaginary
woman blended into that dear, everlastingly inaccessible unreality
which is all mankind's first love.
Transports of this nature are usually apparent enough in the
demeanour; but Graeme Jakes's oriental imperturbability of
countenance gave not the slightest betrayal of the turmoil in his
thoughts.
Claire Mayne herself remained serenely unconscious of anything in the
air more vibrant than a grave friendliness and a shy, half-reluctant
admiration. She would not have been the normal, healthy young woman
she was had she not thought about him a good deal. When the children
were in bed and the stars made visible the dark outline of the hills
opposite, she sat by her open window, with the tiny room behind her
in darkness; there, chin in hand, she tried to assign him to some
known category amongst her limited male acquaintances, and found the
task difficult.
Since girlhood her pet character in fiction had been Alan Breck; not
for his swashbuckling gallantry, nor the efficient way with him in
sword play, but because, as she herself put it, "he wanted looking
after so dreadfully."
Graeme Jakes, in some subtle way that eluded analysis, appealed to
her in much the same manner. His clothes lacked buttons at times and
his hair was generally dreadfully untidy. She would like, she
thought, to brush his hair for him ... in a brisk, sisterly fashion.
The tranquillity of her meditations would have been sorely disturbed
could she have seen the object of her thoughts. Half a mile away,
from a vantage point amid the dewy bracken, stood her devout lover,
watching with all a lover's faculty for self-hypnotism a light
burning behind a blind in one of the upper windows of the farm.
Fondly he watched its orange glow through the darkness until it was
abruptly extinguished, and returned home in a mood of exalted
melancholy. Judge though how greater the melancholy had he realised
the blind screened no other than the conjugal chamber of the farmer
and his wife....
The days went by thus to merge into weeks, and the children's visit
was fast drawing to a close. Graeme, too, had received orders to
attend at the Admiralty for medical survey. The halcyon days were
numbered.
They had planned an expedition to the coast, an all-day affair that
was to include sea-bathing for the children, for the last day. The
sun shone out of a cloudless sky, the air was clear and sweet with
autumn scents, and the cavalcade set forth on the appointed morning
in wild spirits. Mrs. Mackworth had provided lunch and tea, and the
food, together with bathing things, cameras, and all the impedimenta
of a holiday, were piled into the pony cart. Miss Mayne held the
reins and Georgina walked at the pony's head; Jane and her brother
ranged along the hedgerows like a couple of terriers; while Graeme
brought up the rear, outwardly cheerful, but inwardly experiencing
the varied sensations of a man who has decided to propose ere the
going down of the sun to a damsel whose only concern appeared to be
to avoid being left alone in his company.
They reached the sea about noon; Graeme had chosen a little bay where
the sands were safe for bathing. The coast stretched away on one
hand in a waste of dunes and marsh, and on the other rose in indented
cliffs from a rock-strewn beach.
On the top of the cliffs they unpacked the baskets, turned the pony
loose to graze, and, when the children had had their longed-for
bathe, lunched al fresco as might the gods have eaten upon Olympus.
It was after lunch that Graeme made his first anxious bid for the
company of Miss Mayne alone. "Supposing you three go and explore the
caves," he suggested to the children, a clumsy argument which, for
its very ingenuousness, roused no suspicions in that maiden's heart.
"But what about you and Miss Mayne?" inquired Jane.
"Well," said Graeme feebly, "p'raps we'll go and look for seagulls'
eggs along the cliffs."
"Gulls don't lay eggs in September," said Miss Mayne. "Why shouldn't
we all go and explore caves?"
Nothing was further from her mind than the imminence of the proposal
shaping itself on Graeme's lips, but a pretty loyalty to the
children's parents forbade her to let them out of her vision. "A
nice business," said her conscience, "if one of them got hurt. Where
was Miss Mayne? Philandering somewhere out of sight with a Naval
officer.... Well, not philandering exactly, but----"
"I thought perhaps you might be tired," broke in the voice of the
Naval officer upon her meditations.
"Not in the least," she replied. "Come along, we'll all go down to
the beach."
So off they set and awakened the echoes of the shallow caves with
their voices, explored the pools left by the tide; built with the aid
of pieces of driftwood a sand castle that had cockle shells for
windows and a tiny green crab as keeper of the gateway, and through
all the absorption of this light nonsense Graeme was conscious of
Claire Mayne, whether she spoke or was silent, in view or out of
sight, as a man is aware of the sunlight and the wind on his cheek.
She seemed inevitable--inevitable and indispensable.
The children found him dullish and rather distrait.
Curiously enough it was she who at last gave him his opportunity to
speak his heart. The children decreed it was time for their next
bathe, and while they undressed in the shelter of the rocks, Graeme
set about unpacking the tea-things and boiling the kettle. He
watched, kneeling, the three slim forms scamper across the short
stretch of sands in the sunlight to meet the incoming tide, and
suddenly Miss Mayne joined him on the cliff.
"I'll help you," she said; "I can watch the children from here and
cut bread and butter at the same time. They are quite safe."
Her manner was unconcerned; she spoke in the unrestrained note of
comradeship, and stood watching the children capering in the sunlit
waves, with the wind moulding her garments to her long limbs and
drawing loose tendrils of her hair in careless, happy disorder across
the curve of her cheek outlined against the sky.
Graeme knelt observing her, suddenly tongue-tied. You can invent
speeches to a goddess, aye, and deliver them effectively enough to a
silent night of stars, but this radiant, composed girl was flesh and
blood; he could almost see the warm vitality glowing through her
skin. She needed no clap-trap speech about love such as fellows
deliver in novels.... He rose to his feet. The wind and the
sunshine and the sound of the sea seemed to sing and shout together.
"Man! Here's your mate at last!" was the burden of the song.
"Here's the goal of all your heart's desire; the haven of your soul's
adventure! Look at her, shaped for you by incalculable forces and
laws, beautified and perfected and handed down through infinite ages,
to stand thus within your arms' reach. Yours, man, if you can but
win her! Tell her, fool ... tell her."
"I'm glad you came," said the fool, and his voice, husky and
unfamiliar, startled him.
A sound, distinct from the noises of wind and shore, obtruded upon
his consciousness as he spoke, and the girl heard it too, for she
wheeled sharply and stood staring, not at her companion, but back
across the sheep-cropped turf.
Two horses were approaching at a canter, near enough already for
their riders' faces to be discernible. One was Josephine Smedley;
the other, a vapid-faced young man in extravagant equestrian attire.
They drew rein and approached the cliff at a walk, Miss Smedley
waving her whip in greeting. Her companion touched his horse with
the spur, holding it on the curb while it curveted effectively.
"Topping day!" cried Josephine. "Watching the kids bathe, Mrs.
Jakes?"
Graeme heard the girl give a little gasp. She stood quite motionless
for a few seconds and then, still staring at the rider, he heard her
say in a low voice, as if speaking to herself: "This has gone far
enough; it's got to stop." Miss Smedley's cavalier had rather
overdone the spur business and was having considerable difficulty in
controlling his horse, which was plunging and pulling some distance
away.
Graeme stepped forward. "I'll explain," he said. "Miss Smedley----"
"No," interrupted Claire Mayne, "leave this to me. You should have
explained before this." She took a few steps in the direction of the
other girl. "Miss Smedley," she said in a clear voice, "I think it
only right I should tell you I am not married. I am not Mr. Jakes's
wife." She paused, apparently from loss of breath.
In the middle distance the young man, obviously losing control of his
mount, was shouting something over his shoulder. Miss Smedley
glanced in his direction and then looked Claire Mayne brutally from
head to toe. "Please don't apologise," she said, "I--we suspected as
much." It took the short, hard laugh that followed the words to
drive the insult home. She flicked her horse sharply on the flank
and rode after her escort.
The sound of the horses' hoofs had died away before Miss Mayne spoke.
"Did she mean--was that woman trying to----?" she began, and stopped.
Mechanically she knelt down and began setting out the tea-things as
if in a trance.
"Why didn't you leave it to me?" expostulated Graeme, kneeling beside
her. "I'd have explained properly. She misunderstood ... or
pretended to."
The girl raised a face from which all vestige of colour had fled.
Her eyes were wide and pitiful; she held a sugar basin in one hand,
in the other a butter knife.
"But I did explain," she said. "How could I know...?"
"You should have left it to me," repeated Graeme. He put out his
hand and took the sugar basin from her. She laid the butter-knife
with precision beside the cabbage leaf containing the butter. Their
actions were mechanical and inconsequent, as if the kneeling figures
were two automata actuated by wires.
"I thought I'd left enough to you," she said. "You laughed it over
the first time, as if it were a joke. Perhaps it was a joke. One
would rather look at it in that light. But at least you could have
made sure there would have been no second misunderstanding. No
possibility of my being--being insulted." The colour flamed back
into her cheeks. "And you did nothing--nothing." She bit her lower
lip to control its trembling.
Graeme forced a wan smile. "There wasn't time, then.... But I will
do something--and anyhow, it doesn't matter, really."
"Doesn't matter!" she echoed in frozen tones. "_Doesn't matter_!
You put me in odiously false positions, you expose me to an
outrageous insult ... and you--you laugh and say it doesn't matter!
Oh, this is intolerable!" Angry tears forced themselves to her
eyelashes.
Graeme groped for the hand that fumbled for a preposterous
handkerchief (with what care had that little scrap of cambric been
selected a few short hours before, and with what unconsciousness of
the purpose it would serve!) "Claire! Claire! don't you understand,
I want you to marry me."
She whipped to her feet. "Oh, don't be absurd!" she cried. "Do you
imagine--is this your idea of doing something? Of rep--reparation
for dragging my name--my brother's----" She was weeping now.
From somewhere on the sands below came the voices of the children
returning from their bathe. With a wrung heart Graeme realised his
chance had gone; the children could see them. Miss Mayne turned her
face from the sea. "I'm going for a walk for a few minutes," she
said; "will you all start tea?"
"But won't you give me a chance to speak to you later on?" gasped
Graeme, "just for a second. It isn't anything to do with this
wretched business. I mean I don't want you to marry me just
because----"
Miss Mayne turned a tear-wet face towards him for one instant. "If
you are what I once thought you were--if you even remotely resemble
what I've always heard of Naval officers, you'll never, never broach
this odious topic again, by word or letter or implication."
And with that she went off along the cliff, walking very fast with
her head bent.
Mouldy Jakes fell to buttering a slice of bread.
_Dies irae_! And the night that followed, little better for most of
the participators in that memorable picnic. Tears wetted two pillows
at least; a third remained uncreased until the dawn by the head that
ought to have lain there.
Cornelius James awoke on the morrow to manifold perplexities.
To Jane, his confidante in most tribulations, he unburdened himself
after an early breakfast, what time Miss Mayne and Georgina, the
former heavy-lidded and both uncommunicative, were putting finishing
touches to the packing. The two children were taking a valedictory
stroll round the farm.
"Miss Mayne's been crying," he observed gloomily. He abhorred tears.
Jane confirmed this with a nod that set her curls bobbing. "So's
Georgie."
"I know." Cornelius James's tone was one of exasperation. "I'm
sorry to be leaving Glebe Farm, but I don't cry about it. You're
sorry, too, aren't you, Jane?"
Jane nodded again, but hesitated before disclosing the maiden secret
of another's breast. "'Tisn't that, Georgie wasn't crying 'cos we're
leaving, 'xactly."
"Then _why_?" demanded her brother. He scrambled on to the wall of
the pigsty, and sat moodily dropping bits of stone on the porker's
back.
"You see," explained Jane, not without diffidence, "she's in love."
"What next!" gasped her outraged brother. "Who's she in love with?"