“I suppose you were flattering yourself you’d lost me!” he observed,
falling into step, “but I took care to notice when you scurried away.
It’s no use trying to disguise yourself in the hedge--the flowers
aren’t out yet!” he added quaintly, clinching the compliment with a
whimsical smile. “Are you sure you’re not too tired to walk? It’s been
a long day, you know. I had the cart sent back, in case you preferred
to drive--Clark’s with it in the lane by the Bracewells’. I told him to
wait about for another ten minutes.”
“I’d rather walk, thanks,” Deb replied. “There’s a short cut out of
Halfrebeck over Linacre. It’s not very far, really, and very straight.
Why didn’t you go in to tea?”
“Because I’m coming to tea with you,” he said easily. “I want to sit on
your big fender-stool with my feet on the fire-irons, and drink tea out
of a brown tea-pot. The Lyndesays always have brown tea-pots. It’s a
rule of the house. The Bracewells have a silver Queen Anne with a crest
grown in Edward VII, and you sit on somebody Chippendale or somebody
else Adams, and scrape their elegant legs with your muddy boots.”
This was not like Christian, and she wondered greatly what had occurred
after her abrupt departure. She could not guess that, when he joined
her over the hedge, he had been hot with resentment at the treatment
she had received.
“Oh, yes, we’ve got the brown tea-pot,” she responded curtly. “Father
wouldn’t dream of countenancing any other. It’s very silly, of
course--no, it isn’t! Father’s quite right. He’s always right. Except
when he goes hunting by proxy!” she added rather wearily, for the
excitement of the day was passing, and the strain beginning to tell.
“I’m awfully sorry about last night!” Christian said hurriedly.
“Callander told me everything. You don’t mind, do you? I’m afraid
my mother must have meant it, though I’d give anything to prove I
was wrong. It was a cruel thing to do--nothing can excuse or condone
it, but we’ve got to remember that she is still breaking her heart
over Stanley and--and all that happened. She has nothing against Mr.
Lyndesay, of course.”
“She has--me!” Deb answered bitterly. “Oh, it’s I who have been to
blame, all through, I suppose! _I_ earned him that blow in the face. I
ought to be shot. Yet I’d do it again!” she added hardly, setting her
teeth. “You none of you understand, except perhaps Mr. Callander, but I
don’t care. I’d do it again!”
They had paused at a gate on the last slope dividing them from the
road below, where the dead beech-leaves stood out in bright strips
on the black hedges. The land was darkening fast against the evening
sky. The earth-line opposite, rising again gently, was fringed with a
border of feathery brown fingers etched against the opal. The fresh
morning breeze had dropped. The long, straight road was empty except
for a plough-boy whistling piercingly sweet. In the uppermost bough of
a thin young pine, straight as a lance of God, a thrush flung them its
largesse of golden song. And always the rooks went home, flying high
with the promise of good weather.
“We must put things right, somehow,” Christian said with determination.
“We can’t allow him to be hurt again. But I haven’t much influence with
my mother, you know. She was wrapped up entirely in Stanley--she had
nothing left for me. And yet they were unhappy together--we were all
unhappy. It seems a bit hard that we Lyndesays should never be allowed
the every-day home contentment of other folk.”
“There is more than one curse on Crump!” Deb said, frowning. “We are
dreamers of dreams, all the lot of us--even Larry--and we carry sorrow
in our hands like a guarded gem. Your mother, too, although she seems
so cold. And my father is the King-Dreamer of us all. I sometimes think
he is the Dream of Crump itself.”
Christian nodded assent. “But Slinker--Slinker had no dream,” he said
slowly.
“I’m not so sure about that! It was a long way off, perhaps, but he
would have come to it in the end. He would have sold Dockerneuk without
compunction, but he left us Kilne. I once saw him half kill a keeper
for starving the deer, though he kicked his own spaniel the moment
after. The herd is so old, you know. He used to take off his hat to
it, laughing. And you remember that he wouldn’t allow the Antiquarian
Society to search the Pixies’ Parlour? It wasn’t just disobligingness,
as you all thought. He didn’t want strange hands digging up his
ancestors’ soil, though he stripped the woods to pay his betting-book.
There were other things, too----” She stopped, frowning again. “What
does it matter? He’s dead--poor Stanley! But Father’s alive, and I’ve
got to keep him happy, and you must help me.”
“There is a way,” Christian said hesitatingly, “though perhaps you may
think I have no right to suggest it. We’re good friends, aren’t we?
and I believe we feel the same about things, though it isn’t often you
show me the real Deborah. We can take care of your father between us,
if you’ll give me the right to take care of you, too. You would have
married Slinker. Can’t you make up your mind to marry me?”
She stepped back, staring at him, the colour leaving her face, but
the surprise was too great to allow any room for self-consciousness.
In all her thoughts of Christian, friendly and even tender as they
had often been, such a possibility had never entered her mind. Their
intercourse had struck the note of comradeship--no more. Even the tie
of their distant relationship had taken them no further. Accustomed as
she was, by now, to his cheerful, impartial friendliness and apparently
unthinking serenity, she had never even vaguely pictured him in love
with her. Nor had she thought of loving him. He was something aloof and
apart, an integral but indefinite part of her dream.
“You cannot be speaking seriously!” she said at last, keeping her voice
even with difficulty. “How could it possibly happen? You know nothing
about me, to begin with--and Stanley hasn’t been dead a year. Mrs.
Lyndesay wouldn’t consent, under any circumstances. And the County----”
“Need we take the County into consideration? As for my mother--she may
rule me in other things, but at least I will choose my own wife!”
He lifted his head, and for the first time she guessed that he, too,
had his share in the strain of iron running through the Lyndesay blood,
in spite of the drifting acquiescence with which he seemed to accept
life. This was the Christian who, as Nettie had prophesied, would some
day learn to stand alone. “As for Slinker”--his voice quickened--“why
should Slinker come between us? God knows we owe him nothing, either
you or I!”
He took her hand as they stood by the gate in the growing dusk, two
lonely young souls caught in the endless maze of temperament and
heritage.
“It all sounds so cold-blooded, doesn’t it, dear? It’s new and strange
at present, but you’ll think it over, won’t you? I’m giving you what
Crump owes you, that’s all. And I’d be good to you, you know that. I’ve
not made much of my life, yet, but you can help me to it, if you will.
I’ve never wanted any woman before, but you leave a blank even when
you pass me in the street. Perhaps you think I haven’t known you long
enough to care, but I do. I want you for my own sake--not for Crump or
your father or any other reason--only for Christian, Debbie dear!”
She listened to the kind voice speaking Larry’s cousinly endearment,
yielding to the clasp of the kind hand, but she did not look at the
earnest young face. This was not love--yet--whatever it might become.
He was reaching out to her, half from quixotic chivalry, half from
an impulse born of affinity and race, but not with the overmastering
desire to which alone a true woman lays down her arms. If she took
him, she would take him as she had taken Slinker, notwithstanding the
deep tenderness in her heart towards him. He was too good for that; a
thousand times too good; and yet--and yet--She looked up at the tired
rooks, slowly forging dimly through the dusk. A few more miles, and
they would be nested safe behind the Hall, in their haven of immemorial
antiquity; and for all the quiet night their rest would be in the home
they loved.
“Crump folk going home!” she observed irrelevantly, her wistful eyes
following their faint flight. “The villagers call them that--did you
know? They say it every night, when they watch them for the weather.
‘Crump folk going home!’”
She repeated the words under her breath, as the last bird dropped
behind the hill; and he took both her hands in his, for the night was
coming, and they must go. He spoke again, but she did not hear him,
nor the golden singer still swaying on the young pine. All she knew
was that Crump folk had gone home, leaving Deborah Lyndesay behind,
and that never in all her life would she find her way thither. At her
father’s death she would have to go south, and that would be the end of
things for her. If she married Christian, rightly or wrongly, she would
still belong to Crump. It was the one way left; yet she fought hard,
for she knew she was wronging him--and always the land cried to her in
answer. The power stronger than herself drove her as she looked him in
the face at last.
“I’m not brave enough to refuse,” she said wistfully. “Surely we care
enough to make it right? But oh, Christian, I doubt you’re patting me
on the head!”