Deb found her father in his usual place by the window, looking out over
the road and the rush-edged river, and up the slope of the park to the
plantation outlined against the sky. The _Estates Gazette_ was in his
hand, but he was not reading; he was looking out at the land he loved.
He was always looking out.
He turned as she entered, and she tried to smile, for in the
transparent old face was a content that she had sorely missed during
the last, long, trying weeks. The trouble was dying, now, and the spell
which had made his chief happiness in life had hold of him once more.
He had never questioned the wisdom of his girl’s engagement, and, to
the amazement of the unthinking neighbourhood, he had followed Stanley
respectfully to the grave, showing no outward resentment against his
daughter’s dead lover. Many people thought it strange and almost
inhuman, but Deb understood. What he honoured was not the body of a
wild young blackguard, but the representative of the race which he and
his forefathers had served. He would have done the same had Slinker
wrecked them both, body and soul.
He asked her the state of the market while she ate her late lunch,
and drifted on to inquiries as to the folk she had met in the town.
She mentioned several of his old cronies--_that_ ground was safe
enough--commenting on their health, business and conversation. Then at
last came the question she dreaded.
“Anybody in from Crump?”
He had not meant to ask it, but you cannot put a question every
Saturday for years without becoming more or less its slave. His thin
hand clasped and unclasped nervously on his knee, but when once the
sentence was spoken, he stood by it.
“Christian was in,” she replied, fixing an intent gaze on the mustard.
“He was driving;--yes--the stanhope.” (Cars were nothing accounted of
in the old man’s conservative eyes.) She tried to stop the next words,
but they came in spite of her. “Stanley’s wife was with him.”
The stately old man crimsoned to his snowy hair.
“She is still there, then--that person--old Steenie Stone’s daughter? I
heard she was stopping, but I did not believe it. I could not!”
“Mrs. Lyndesay would not let her go. They say she has taken a fancy to
her. A somewhat embarrassing attention, I should think!” Deb smiled
faintly, paused, and began again. “She--Stanley’s wife--wanted to know
me.”
“To know you? _You!_” The old man was trembling, now. He struck
his ebony stick sharply on the floor. “She presumed to demand an
introduction? You did not grant it, of course?”
Deb shook her head, anathematising herself for opening the subject.
“No, I did not.” Rising, she laid a hand on his shoulder, and turned
him to the window. “The Highland cattle are coming down to drink. Do
you remember where we got them?” (The old steward “we” still clung to
the lips of both.) “Dixon says the hay crop is going to be first-rate,
this year. When will you have the paddock cut?”
But for once the enthralling topic of the hay did not serve to turn his
attention.
“You’ve been crying!” he observed, looking up at her. “Did any one
dare--was anybody rude to you in Witham?”
She slid down on her knees by the sill, and laid her chin on her arms.
“Not rude, dad. Not exactly what you might call rude. Some of them
weren’t precisely on the same planet--that was all! And others came
too near, which was worse; good little Verity, for instance, and dear,
blundering Larrupper.”
“Lionel, do you mean?” he asked quickly. “Then the Lyndesays stood by
you? The Lyndesays sought you out?”
“Oh, dear, yes!” She laughed rather shakily. “The difficulty was to get
away from them! I had to dive into a cheese-shop to escape Christian,
and Larry wanted to bring me home in the car.”
“Then the rest don’t count!” the old man answered, unconsciously
echoing Christian’s words of that morning. That had been his attitude
all through life. God made the Lyndesays, and the rest--didn’t count.
His face cleared, and his eyes went back more restfully to the window.
“I wish I hadn’t gone!” Deb said brokenly. “I thought I was brave
enough, but I found I wasn’t, after all. I’ve always been able to rely
upon myself before, but to-day I went all to pieces. I wish I hadn’t
gone. They all think I should have left the district, I know. They
think it would have shown nice feeling and good taste! But I’ll not
go--they shan’t make me. I’d hear the very ’bus-boy jeering as he drove
me to the station; and I’d come back and fight the lot of them! They
shan’t hound me away from you and the old place, shall they, dad?”
He laid his hand for a moment on her hair, but he did not turn his eyes
from the window.
“The Lyndesays stood by you,” he said again, as if no other argument
were needed; and again he added--“the rest do not count.”
Deb was silent, watching the long-horned cattle paddling blissfully
deep in the cool water. What was the use of trying to explain that
it was Lyndesay kindness that made the real difficulty? At least she
would receive no unwelcome patronage from the mistress of Crump, she
reflected ironically, and fell to wondering how Stanley’s wife had
besieged that fortress so successfully. Presently she began to talk
about the hay once more, and this time her father entered into the
subject with zest. From that, they came back to the cattle again, over
which he shook his head in unwilling admiration. He was a shorthorn
man himself--was still one of the finest shorthorn judges in the
country--and the picturesque, rough-coated beasts looked out of place
to him on Crump land. Deb had the history of half the famous shorthorn
herds in the kingdom before she finally escaped to her own room. That
looked over the park, too. Father and daughter lived half their lives
with their faces turned to Crump.
At least he was happy again, she thought, with a sigh of relief. He
would settle down, now, and under Christian’s rule nothing should
happen on the estate to spoil the old man’s last days. For him, at all
events, there was peace ahead.
Under the big beech on the old bridge, a man and a girl sat on the
low wall, looking down to the bend of the river, bringing back to the
watcher in the creepered house the night when on that very spot Stanley
had asked her to be his wife. Shutting her eyes, she felt again the
warm darkness of the leafy arch, heard the hurry of the water under
her feet, and Stanley himself as no more than a voice in the dusk.
Something that was not Stanley at all had cried to her from without,
and to that, and that only, had she yielded. Stanley was only its
mouthpiece. Could he come back this very night, free to claim her given
word, she knew that she would yield again.