Deb turned from earnest contemplation of a window of tinned fruits
to find the Hon. Mrs. Stalker’s carriage at the grocer’s steps, that
august personage herself enthroned therein, wearing a fur garment of
such dimensions as to send all the Crump cats scuttling for shelter
to the nearest drain. The coachman touched his hat, but the great
lady appeared to find the street perfectly empty, though Deb stared
defiantly, her back to the tinned fruits. Silver-hair Savaury of
Tasser, marking the situation from the Post-Office, hurried to her
relief.
He bestowed a sweeping bow upon furred grandeur as he passed, and the
Honourable smiled and put out a hand, for Savaury of Tasser was “quite
all right,” and not to be ignored by anybody; but Savaury merely waved
a lavender glove gracefully in her face, and, throwing her an airy
“Rejoiced to see you, dear lady! So sorry--important business,” pulled
up in front of Deb. “Can you come to dinner?” he added loudly, with his
back to greatness, and all Crump heard him.
A faint giggle came from somewhere behind the Honourable’s tiger-skin,
but Deb was too upset to catch it. She looked at her knight with more
doubt than gratitude in her eyes.
“Thanks very much--I don’t think I can----” She hesitated, praying for
escape, and Savaury snorted and waved his glove again.
“Oh, of course you can come! I insist. You can tell me about the new
stop on the organ. I can’t manage it--so tiresome! And Petronilla
thinks she’s got mumps or appendicitis or something. It will do her
good to have a dinner-party. When? Oh, let me see! Hardly to-morrow,
of course--no! Shall we say Wednesday?--yes! Now don’t be tiresome
and send us back word. May I walk with you as far as the park? Oh,
you’re not going that way? I’m sorry.” The Honourable was about to
descend personally upon the shop, and he raised his voice as Deb fled.
“Petronilla sent you a message, by the way. Wants you to go with her to
the Cantacute concert--Verity’s performance, you know. And don’t forget
about Wednesday!”
A second chuckle came from the victoria, and he looked round quickly.
Slinker’s wife, glowing like a rose in her dark furs, leaned towards
him.
“Won’t you ask me, too?” she begged prettily. “Don’t pretend you don’t
know me just because we haven’t been introduced. My grandfather was
your grandfather’s stable-boy at Tasser, so that’s quite a bond, isn’t
it, and ought to make us friends on the spot! Do ask me to dinner,
there’s a dear thing. I want to meet that nice girl ever so badly.”
“But--but--my dear lady----!” Savaury stammered helplessly, clutching
at his hat, and dropping the lavender glove to a slushy bed.
“I’m not a lady. I’m old Steenie Stone’s daughter. But I’m an imitation
Lyndesay, nowadays, for my sins, so you can ask me to dinner quite
comfortably, without upsetting your ancestors.”
“Of course--of course!” Savaury managed a gallant smile. “But I was not
aware that you were--going out--and--there’s Miss Lyndesay!” he bungled
desperately, hoping fervently that the men-servants were not listening.
“Oh--etiquette!” Slinker’s wife flapped her big muff contemptuously.
“It’s a bit late to start being conventional about this affair, isn’t
it--Stanley’s general behaviour, I mean, and mine?” He cocked a nervous
ear, and she shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, it’s all right! They know a
good deal more about it than you do. I belong to them, you see, so I
don’t value their opinion like you aristocrats!”
She smiled at him enchantingly, and he responded involuntarily, though
inwardly sadly pained.
“As for Miss Lyndesay, she’ll get used to me. People do, you know. Mrs.
Stalker’s taking me back with her to tea, so I _am_ going out, you see.
And I’m just dying to know that girl, so you’ll ask me, won’t you?”
“Certainly--only too delighted--honoured--enraptured!” Savaury
murmured, as fascinated as any rabbit by a boa-constrictor. “But you
must admit it will be a little bit _awkward_.”
“Oh, well, I’ll bring Christian along as well,” she said kindly,
“and then, if things are going wrong, you can shove him in between.
Christian’s a beautiful buffer. Don’t you fret. We’ll worry through,
somehow, and come up smiling. Wednesday? All right. You’re a duck!”
“I eat quite decently at table!” she called after him, as he turned
rather blindly up the street, “and I don’t need introducing to a
finger glass. And--oh, yes!--I always take a fork to sweets. Thought
I’d better tell you--save you worrying, don’t you know!” and he could
hear that she was still laughing as he stumbled, gasping, into the
saddler’s, and gave a lengthy order for tea-cakes.
“So tiresome!” he condoled with himself, peering round the doorpost
to make sure that the coast was clear before emerging. “Really a most
distressing occurrence, not to say calamitous. And yet, without doubt,
a decidedly pleasant woman! But, goodness gracious, how am I to tell
Petronilla!”
Petronilla took it very well on the whole, being a woman of character,
whose quietly-regal demeanour was equal to most situations; but it
was a distinctly nervous host and hostess that waited their guests on
Wednesday evening in the long, low-ceiled room, where the lamplight
caught the flowers in the old punch-bowls, and the firelight rippled
along the shining surface of chintz and deep-tinted china, and warmed
the mellow delicacy of the miniatures on the walls.
“If only she would come _first_--Deborah, I mean!” Savaury agitated,
all black and white and pink and silver, waving eyeglasses distractedly
on the hearth-rug. “Then I could take her aside and just _explain_
to her, while you kept the others away till she settled down. I wish
you’d have let me tell her beforehand, just to get her broken _in_; and
then--well, then----”
“_Then_ she wouldn’t have come!” Petronilla finished serenely.
“Well, no, I don’t suppose she would. But you must admit it’s simply
_horrid_, not to say _painful_! Suppose she won’t bow, or goes out and
walks home in the mud? And I ordered such an extremely nice dinner!”
“She won’t do that. Deborah is too well-bred to make her hosts
uncomfortable. What _I’m_ wondering is how the High Sheriff will take
the horse-dealer’s daughter. He’s a Radical, you know. And I’d quite
forgotten that Crump used to owe Whyterigg a grudge--oh, dear! Still,
it’s a very long time ago, and one can’t ask just _any_body to meet
Mr. Lyndesay, even if it _is_ only Christian. But a horse-dealer’s
daughter! Perhaps she’ll get on with the parson.”
“Don’t you pin your faith to the parson!” (Savaury seemed to have
followed this curious speech with perfect ease). “Mrs. Stanley isn’t
the parson-sort, from what _I_ saw of her. Oh, I don’t mind _anything_
if only Deborah doesn’t try to shoot her! I hope to goodness she’ll
come first!”
But Deborah did not come first. She came last, hoping to escape the
painful minutes before dinner, so that the stage was fully set by the
time she entered the warm, delicately-tinted room. The High Sheriff was
discussing the exact date of the carved fireplace with his hostess,
dropping an occasional lofty remark to Christian, while Slinker’s wife,
her dark head framed by an alcove panelled in yellow satin brocade, and
crowned by the blue and gold of old Worcester on a white shelf, dragged
the Arevar parson across Canada with a celerity which left him gasping.
The High Sheriff’s sister and the parson’s sister sat together on the
broad chintz sofa, listening politely to the Crump doctor, who was
saying nothing. They had been born to sit on sofas out of the limelight.
Deb took in the group at a glance, and for a moment she stood still
in the middle of the room, lifting her head with the startled grace
of Christian’s fallow deer, every line of her rigid with reproach
in her white gown, casting a steady look of condemnation at the
conscience-stricken Savaury, who prepared for any catastrophe in that
fateful second.
But Petronilla saved the situation. Leaving the High Sheriff with a
weighty sentence hanging in the balance, she moved placidly forward,
took the girl’s hand and kissed her; then flung her into Mrs. Slinker’s
arms before she had time to retreat.
Slinker’s wife made no attempt to hold her; merely gave her a
courteous bow and smile, and continued to expand the parson’s mind,
at the same time manœuvring Christian skilfully and unobtrusively
forward. Deborah found herself inquiring after the runaway puppy in
perfectly normal tones, though the miniatures swam round her, and a
helpless fury possessed her galloping heart. It was not until she met
the disapproving gaze of the High Sheriff’s sister that she became
fighting-cool. The High Sheriff’s sister had cut her in Witham.
To-night Deborah Lyndesay cut the High Sheriff’s sister.
Yet the dinner passed smoothly, for all the high tension and the
warring sympathies. It was a frantic situation, as everybody realised,
but convention has its own transforming magic. Savaury, in after years,
when the terror of it had left him, was known to say that it was the
most successful dinner he had ever given. Perhaps everybody made a
special effort, even the sofa-people. Perhaps the spice of danger in
the air lent the touch of excitement necessary to brilliance. Perhaps
both accounted for it--or neither. Perhaps just the wizardry of Mrs.
Slinker, with her heart knocking for admittance at Dockerneuk gates.
Savaury was at her feet before he had swallowed his first fish-bone.
The High Sheriff’s head had turned in her direction by the time the
entrée was served. And when dessert had been reached without fiasco,
she had the whole table listening to her.
Christian looked at her with affectionate admiration; then back
to Deborah at his side, remembering with some bewilderment their
unrewarding stroll across the park, and her steadily-averted head.
To-night she had plenty to say; to-night he saw the curve of her mouth
and the even flash of her teeth, the satisfaction of a clear skin and
the clean line of a cheek that has eight hundred years of breeding
behind it. Glancing from that revealing profile to her hands, so
strangely like his own, for the first time he realised their kinship
with a thrill of pleasure and pride. As for her, she had long ceased to
look at him, for where a man matters, a woman looks at him once for all
time. She knew by heart his easy grace, the light on his hair and the
charm of his quiet eyes.
They were in full tide of a discussion on wire-fencing--amazingly and
volubly interested--when Slinker’s wife leaned forward and addressed
Deborah deliberately across the table. She wore black to-night as a
concession to poor Savaury and his ancestors, and her vivid face rose
from a cloud of soft drapery which spelt Crump’s widow as little as it
spelt horse-dealer’s daughter.
“I want you to tell me, please,” she said, “the way to the wishing-well
in the Pixies’ Wood. Christian says he has forgotten it, and Mrs.
Lyndesay says she never knew it. But of course your father’s daughter
will know it. You _can_ tell me, can’t you?”
“Why, yes!” Deborah answered, without stopping to think. (How could
she resist such a question? Oh, weirdly-wise Mrs. Slinker!) “The
path is lost now, but I knew it well in my childhood, and I couldn’t
forget it if I tried. Old ‘Buck’ Lyndesay fought a right of way over
it, you know, and though he lost, he shut it in the teeth of the law
and everybody else, and by degrees people gave up going, when they got
tired of pulling down the wall in protest. Some say that the well is
lost altogether, but that isn’t true.”
“And how does one start to find it?”
“Oh, it’s easy enough at first. You take the bridle path through the
Home Plantation, and break out along the common to the foot of the
Pixies’ steps. You must shut your eyes when you climb the steps, or the
pixies will turn you blind; and always, always you must pluck the gorse
that grows at the top, and think of the one that you love best, or
you may leave your heart behind you! Then you see the great pine from
which a Lyndesay flew the flag that threw his father’s ship on Aill
Sands; and after that, a long, feathery line of firs like fairy fingers
beckoning from a moss-green velvet sleeve. And on the left, where the
wood sinks and the bracken grows to your waist, the well lies in a
limestone cup----”
She broke off, meeting the wonder in Christian’s eyes, knowing herself
hopelessly betrayed; and Slinker’s wife, too wise to press the
situation further, smiled her thanks, and turned a polite ear to the
High Sheriff, who, either because of his position or his politics,
thought himself justified in addressing her across the parson’s sister
and the dumb doctor.
“Suppose we find it together?” he suggested, kindly. “Christian has
asked me over to lunch, next week, I believe, and I--I collect wells.
I’m sure we could find it together!”
Rishwald was forty and still unmarried, handsome, if pompous, rich
and immensely run after, so that the table gasped at his amazing
condescension, whilst Petronilla offered up spiritual sacrifice to
every fetich she possessed; but Slinker’s wife merely shook her head,
smiling.
“It is only safe to visit a wishing-well with one of three people,” she
said gently; “yourself, another woman, or--the Right Man.” And in the
clear well of wine in her hand she saw Dixon of Dockerneuk’s face.
“So you didn’t _really_ prefer the road!” Christian murmured in
Deborah’s ear, and became acquainted a second time with the back of her
head.
“Yes, I did!” she returned obstinately. “Shall I tell you what I wished
for when I last visited the fairy well? A motor-car!”
“That’s a lie!” Christian said in his gentle voice, and the farthest
person from him was the only other that heard him--the High Sheriff’s
sister--and she had her own reason. Even sofa-people may have longings
eating the heart out of them.
“I’ll prove it to you!” he added quickly. “I’ve had an offer for that
wood, just this last week. There’s some especially fine timber, they
say, and I could do with the cash to spend on the farms. The wood will
be just as fine again in another few hundred years or so. So I’ll write
to-morrow, closing with the offer----”
Although he was prepared in a measure, he started before the Deborah
that faced round on him with blazing eyes and trembling hands.
“You dare!” she cried, under her breath, but as fiercely as if she
had shrieked. “You dare! You just _dare_ to touch a root of those
trees----!” She saw the trap then and stopped, but she was still
trembling when he rose, laughing, to make way for her, as Petronilla
left the table.
“I was right!” he whispered exultantly. “I was right, and you are a
wicked deceiver. You _didn’t_ prefer the road!”
Later, they played Pope Joan in the hall, with a wonderful old gilded
bowl and mother-of-pearl counters, Rishwald planting himself firmly
beside Mrs. Slinker, and magnanimously paying her double when she won,
though she was both a luckier and a better player than he. There was no
mistaking his complete captivation, and Nettie, as he slid the counters
tenderly towards her, thought of Dixon’s words. She had got into a
different world; she would marry into that world a second time; there
was no going back for those who once stepped out.
Savaury, who detested cards, played soft nothings on a dim piano, and,
at the end of the first game, moved by some unaccountable impulse,
invited the horse-dealer’s daughter to sing. Nettie got up at once,
glad to escape further mother-of-pearl attentions, and went across to
him. She sang “Veils.”
“I drew betwixt us blue mist of the main,
The gray mist of an English winter’s rain,
The black mist of intolerable pain:
Yet, if I draw even Death between us twain,
Through its white mist I still shall see you plain.”
“A silly little song!” Savaury snorted, by way of gratitude. “A
tiresome, silly little song--quite too absurd! For goodness’ sake sing
something else!” and sang the silly little song in his sentimental
little heart for the rest of the night.
Mrs. Slinker laughed. A song, like any other work of art, can only give
you what you bring to it, and Savaury had never needed to shroud his
soul from Petronilla--Petronilla and her Pope Joan bowl, framed in her
old-world hall.
“Sing again!” Savaury commanded; and she sang--
“All in the April evening,
April airs were abroad;
The sheep with their little lambs
Passed me by on the road.
The sheep with their little lambs
Passed me by on the road;
All in the April evening
I thought on the Lamb of God.
The lambs were weary, and crying
With a weak, human cry.
I thought on the Lamb of God
Going meekly to die.
Up in the blue, blue mountains
Dewy pastures are sweet;
Rest for the little bodies,
Rest for the little feet.
But for the Lamb of God,
Up on the hill-top green,
Only a Cross of shame,
Two stark crosses between.
All in the April evening,
April airs were abroad;
I saw the sheep with their lambs,
And thought on the Lamb of God.”
April was in the room when she ended--April, full of the passionate
hope and the heart-break that make each spring an agony of
resurrection. She heard the lambs cry as they turned in at the gate of
Dockerneuk fold. She heard Dixon’s call to his dog and the quick reply.
The soft spring air wrapped her round; the quiet night came up; the
hills sank. And still the lambs called and cried.
Christian heard the blackbird that sings every evening on Crump lawn
all through the spring. Just at dusk it starts, sweet as a harp-string,
and you dare not shut your ears though it tear the very heart out of
you. All you have lost it tells you, and all you have hoped for and may
never find.
And Deborah thought of young grass springing on the land--of the smell
of the brown earth turned by the plough, of the rooks swaggering
bravely in the furrows behind the horses, fearing the servitors
of their spring-feast no more than a human the fingers round a
sacramental cup. And later, when the plough was idle, and the ploughman
gone home, they, too, would turn home to Crump.
Out on the drive, Rishwald’s chauffeur started his engine with the
hardihood of despair, and Mrs. Slinker’s spell was broken. The great
person bade everybody else a hurried adieu in order to spare her a long
moment of farewell.
“Then I may come, next week?” he inquired eagerly. “You will be
there, of course, won’t you? Promise you will!” and went away with a
mother-of-pearl fish tightly clasped in his hand, Petronilla beholding
the departure of her cherished heirloom with well-bred serenity. It was
not until he was four miles home that he remembered it, together with
the facts that his new adoration was old Steenie Stone’s daughter and
barely a ten months’ widow--and didn’t care.
Deb’s hired brougham was waiting too, but there was no sign of the
Crump car, and Christian, remembering that it had been running badly
all day, was for setting out in search. Mrs. Slinker demanded goloshes,
declaring that she would walk home, whereupon Savaury at once offered
his own carriage; but Deb, thinking of his warm horses and autocrat of
a coachman, was suddenly stricken in conscience.
“Won’t you come with me?” she asked, rather shyly, looking full at Mrs.
Slinker for the first time. “I can just as easily go round by Crump,
you know, and you really must not think of walking. We may meet the
car on the road.”
So thus the incredible thing happened--Slinker’s wife and Deborah
Lyndesay driving Crump lanes in peace and amity, with a very much
astonished Christian sitting opposite. His trust had not been
misplaced--Nettie Stone _was_ omnipotent, after all! Again he gave her
full meed of admiration; and then again felt the thrill of claiming
pride towards his shadowy kinswoman in the other corner.
“Aren’t they old dears?” Mrs. Slinker laughed affectionately, as they
left Tasser behind them. “Petronilla and Co., I mean. Not that they are
_really_ old, of course, but you feel they must have been rooted there
for centuries. They just _fit_, don’t they? You want to thank them
for being so beautifully in the picture, and you hope they’ll go on
Pope-Joaning for at least another hundred years.”
“Wait till you see Whyterigg!” Christian said, his voice faintly
quizzical as he mentioned Rishwald’s place. “It’s a lot older than
Tasser, and has a priest’s room and a ghost, and suits of armour
running up against you in every passage. You’ve been there many a time,
Deborah, of course?”
“Not I!” Deb answered. “Never once. Wild horses wouldn’t drag Father
into Whyterigg! You’ll remember it was Crump property, once upon a
time, and the Rishwalds got it by some rather curious hanky-panky.
Crump and Whyterigg have never been friendly, you know,” she added,
and both her hearers felt suddenly outsiders.
“Of course. I’d forgotten for the moment,” Christian replied, almost
apologetically. “I’m not half as well up in the family history as I
ought to be. You know much more about Crump than I do.”
“It was my great--three times great--grandfather that was done over
Whyterigg--we were stewards of Crump even then. _You_ might forget that
sort of thing, but _we_ couldn’t. We were responsible, you see.”
“Kleptomania seems to run in the family!” Mrs. Slinker said quaintly,
and they all laughed, thinking of Petronilla’s fish. “I suppose he’ll
have to come to lunch, Christian, but you’d better keep an eye on the
spoons!”
In the lane above the park they met an apologetic chauffeur, waving a
spanner. The car had struck work by the top lodge, and Christian got
out to assist.
“I’m glad the silly old thing stuck!” Mrs. Slinker observed, as they
drove on, leaving him to follow. “Fate doesn’t mean you to pass me by
on the other side--_that’s_ clear, anyhow. You can’t ever really hate
me again, now you have done me a kindness!
“You won’t speak, I know,” she went on impatiently, turning on her
silent companion. “Your class never does! But I’m not afraid of
speaking, and I’m just sick and tired of the whole position. It’s been
a wretched muddle from beginning to end. I invited myself to that
tea-fight to-night, as you may or may not know. It isn’t exactly a
habit of mine--going where I’m not wanted--but I’d have done more
than that for the chance of straightening things out with you. You
mustn’t treat me as though I’d deliberately harmed you. It hurts; and
it isn’t fair. I’ve got my own punishment to grin and bide, as it is.
Anyhow, life’s hard enough without going round collecting enemies for
amusement. Won’t you try to tolerate me? Can’t you be kind to me, as
though Stanley had never existed?”
“‘Kindness’ would be an insult, surely!” Deb said slowly. “I don’t
hate you, of course. I’m not as absurd as that. And you were the more
wronged of the two. But it is an impossible situation. We can never be
friends.”
“‘Never’ is a long word!” Nettie said stoutly. “I deserved what I got,
if it comes to that. I should have stayed with my husband, instead of
leaving him free to run after other more attractive people. But I had
to be quit of him--I can’t pretend anything else. It’s no use blinking
facts, my dear--neither you nor I had any business with Slinker at all,
and we were rightly served. Vanity was the pebble I tripped on--I won’t
ask what was yours. Anyway, there’s no sense in not making the best of
things, and I want to be friends with you--I do! I’m not going back to
Canada if I can help it,” she added, smiling wistfully in the dark,
“so you’ll have to learn to make the best of me. Oh, you _will_!” she
finished passionately, and fell silent; but when she offered her hand
at Crump steps, it was not refused.
The car had caught them up, and Christian, jumping out, was at the
carriage-door when they stopped. He wished to come on to Kilne, but
Deborah would not hear of it, and, as she drove away, took with her
that glimpse of him standing on the steps, smiling; and though she did
not know it, a new spell wove a shuttle through the old. Crump had her
now for all eternity.