The next day Stanley's car, fraught with Felix and a note from Clara,
moved swiftly along the grass-bordered roads toward Joyfields. Lying
back on the cushioned seat, the warm air flying at his face, Felix
contemplated with delight his favorite countryside. Certainly this
garden of England was very lovely, its greenness, trees, and large,
pied, lazy cattle; its very emptiness of human beings even was pleasing.
Nearing Joyfields he noted the Mallorings' park and their long Georgian
house, carefully fronting south. There, too, was the pond of what
village there was, with the usual ducks on it; and three well-remembered
cottages in a row, neat and trim, of the old, thatched sort, but
evidently restored. Out of the door of one of them two young people had
just emerged, going in the same direction as the car. Felix passed them
and turned to look. Yes, it was they! He stopped the car. They were
walking, with eyes straight before them, frowning. And Felix thought:
'Nothing of Tod in either of them; regular Celts!'
The girl's vivid, open face, crisp, brown, untidy hair, cheeks brimful
of color, thick lips, eyes that looked up and out as a Skye terrier's
eyes look out of its shagginess—indeed, her whole figure struck Felix as
almost frighteningly vital; and she walked as if she despised the ground
she covered. The boy was even more arresting. What a strange, pale-dark
face, with its black, uncovered hair, its straight black brows; what a
proud, swan's-eyed, thin-lipped, straight-nosed young devil, marching
like a very Highlander; though still rather run-up, from sheer
youthfulness! They had come abreast of the car by now, and, leaning out,
he said:
“You don't remember me, I'm afraid!” The boy shook his head. Wonderful
eyes he had! But the girl put out her hand.
“Of course, Derek; it's Uncle Felix.”
They both smiled now, the girl friendly, the boy rather drawn back into
himself. And feeling strangely small and ill at ease, Felix murmured:
“I'm going to see your father. Can I give you a lift home?”
The answer came as he expected:
“No, thanks.” Then, as if to tone it down, the girl added:
“We've got something to do first. You'll find him in the orchard.”
She had a ringing voice, full of warmth. Lifting his hat, Felix passed
on. They WERE a couple! Strange, attractive, almost frightening.
Kirsteen had brought his brother a formidable little brood.
Arriving at the cottage, he went up its mossy stones and through the
wicket gate. There was little change, indeed, since the days of Clara's
visit, save that the beehives had been moved farther out. Nor did any
one answer his knock; and mindful of the girl's words, “You'll find him
in the orchard,” he made his way out among the trees. The grass was long
and starred with petals. Felix wandered over it among bees busy with the
apple-blossom. At the very end he came on his brother, cutting down a
pear-tree. Tod was in shirt-sleeves, his brown arms bare almost to the
shoulders. How tremendous the fellow was! What resounding and terrific
blows he was dealing! Down came the tree, and Tod drew his arm across
his brow. This great, burnt, curly-headed fellow was more splendid to
look upon than even Felix had remembered, and so well built that not
a movement of his limbs was heavy. His cheek-bones were very broad and
high; his brows thick and rather darker than his bright hair, so that
his deep-set, very blue eyes seemed to look out of a thicket; his level
white teeth gleamed from under his tawny moustache, and his brown,
unshaven cheeks and jaw seemed covered with gold powder. Catching sight
of Felix, he came forward.
“Fancy,” he said, “old Gladstone spending his leisure cutting down
trees—of all melancholy jobs!”
Felix did not quite know what to answer, so he put his arm within his
brother's. Tod drew him toward the tree.
“Sit down!” he said. Then, looking sorrowfully at the pear-tree, he
murmured:
“Seventy years—and down in seven minutes. Now we shall burn it. Well, it
had to go. This is the third year it's had no blossom.”
His speech was slow, like that of a man accustomed to think aloud. Felix
admired him askance. “I might live next door,” he thought, “for all the
notice he's taken of my turning up!”
“I came over in Stanley's car,” he said. “Met your two coming along—fine
couple they are!”
“Ah!” said Tod. And there was something in the way he said it that was
more than a mere declaration of pride or of affection. Then he looked at
Felix.
“What have you come for, old man?”
Felix smiled. Quaint way to put it!
“For a talk.”
“Ah!” said Tod, and he whistled.
A largish, well-made dog with a sleek black coat, white underneath, and
a black tail white-tipped, came running up, and stood before Tod, with
its head rather to one side and its yellow-brown eyes saying: 'I simply
must get at what you're thinking, you know.'
“Go and tell your mistress to come—Mistress!”
The dog moved his tail, lowered it, and went off.
“A gypsy gave him to me,” said Tod; “best dog that ever lived.”
“Every one thinks that of his own dog, old man.”
“Yes,” said Tod; “but this IS.”
“He looks intelligent.”
“He's got a soul,” said Tod. “The gypsy said he didn't steal him, but he
did.”
“Do you always know when people aren't speaking the truth, then?”
“Yes.”
At such a monstrous remark from any other man, Felix would have smiled;
but seeing it was Tod, he only asked: “How?”
“People who aren't speaking the truth look you in the face and never
move their eyes.”
“Some people do that when they are speaking the truth.”
“Yes; but when they aren't, you can see them struggling to keep their
eyes straight. A dog avoids your eye when he's something to conceal; a
man stares at you. Listen!”
Felix listened and heard nothing.
“A wren;” and, screwing up his lips, Tod emitted a sound: “Look!”
Felix saw on the branch of an apple-tree a tiny brown bird with a little
beak sticking out and a little tail sticking up. And he thought: 'Tod's
hopeless!'
“That fellow,” said Tod softly, “has got his nest there just behind us.”
Again he emitted the sound. Felix saw the little bird move its head with
a sort of infinite curiosity, and hop twice on the branch.
“I can't get the hen to do that,” Tod murmured.
Felix put his hand on his brother's arm—what an arm!
“Yes,” he said; “but look here, old man—I really want to talk to you.”
Tod shook his head. “Wait for her,” he said.
Felix waited. Tod was getting awfully eccentric, living this queer,
out-of-the-way life with a cranky woman year after year; never reading
anything, never seeing any one but tramps and animals and villagers. And
yet, sitting there beside his eccentric brother on that fallen tree, he
had an extraordinary sense of rest. It was, perhaps, but the beauty
and sweetness of the day with its dappling sunlight brightening the
apple-blossoms, the wind-flowers, the wood-sorrel, and in the blue sky
above the fields those clouds so unimaginably white. All the tiny
noises of the orchard, too, struck on his ear with a peculiar meaning,
a strange fulness, as if he had never heard such sounds before. Tod, who
was looking at the sky, said suddenly:
“Are you hungry?”
And Felix remembered that they never had any proper meals, but, when
hungry, went to the kitchen, where a wood-fire was always burning, and
either heated up coffee, and porridge that was already made, with boiled
eggs and baked potatoes and apples, or devoured bread, cheese, jam,
honey, cream, tomatoes, butter, nuts, and fruit, that were always set
out there on a wooden table, under a muslin awning; he remembered, too,
that they washed up their own bowls and spoons and plates, and, having
finished, went outside and drew themselves a draught of water. Queer
life, and deuced uncomfortable—almost Chinese in its reversal of
everything that every one else was doing.
“No,” he said, “I'm not.”
“I am. Here she is.”
Felix felt his heart beating—Clara was not alone in being frightened
of this woman. She was coming through the orchard with the dog; a
remarkable-looking woman—oh, certainly remarkable! She greeted him
without surprise and, sitting down close to Tod, said: “I'm glad to see
you.”
Why did this family somehow make him feel inferior? The way she sat
there and looked at him so calmly! Still more the way she narrowed her
eyes and wrinkled her lips, as if rather malicious thoughts were
rising in her soul! Her hair, as is the way of fine, soft, almost
indigo-colored hair, was already showing threads of silver; her whole
face and figure thinner than he had remembered. But a striking woman
still—with wonderful eyes! Her dress—Felix had scanned many a crank
in his day—was not so alarming as it had once seemed to Clara; its
coarse-woven, deep-blue linen and needle-worked yoke were pleasing to
him, and he could hardly take his gaze from the kingfisher-blue band or
fillet that she wore round that silver-threaded black hair.
He began by giving her Clara's note, the wording of which he had himself
dictated:
“DEAR KIRSTEEN:
“Though we have not seen each other for so long, I am sure you will
forgive my writing. It would give us so much pleasure if you and the two
children would come over for a night or two while Felix and his young
folk are staying with us. It is no use, I fear, to ask Tod; but
of course if he would come, too, both Stanley and myself would be
delighted.
“Yours cordially,
“CLARA FREELAND.”
She read it, handed it to Tod, who also read it and handed it to Felix.
Nobody said anything. It was so altogether simple and friendly a note
that Felix felt pleased with it, thinking: 'I expressed that well!'
Then Tod said: “Go ahead, old man! You've got something to say about the
youngsters, haven't you?”
How on earth did he know that? But then Tod HAD a sort of queer
prescience.
“Well,” he brought out with an effort, “don't you think it's a pity to
embroil your young people in village troubles? We've been hearing from
Stanley—”
Kirsteen interrupted in her calm, staccato voice with just the faintest
lisp:
“Stanley would not understand.”
She had put her arm through Tod's, but never removed her eyes from her
brother-in-law's face.
“Possibly,” said Felix, “but you must remember that Stanley, John, and
myself represent ordinary—what shall we say—level-headed opinion.”
“With which we have nothing in common, I'm afraid.”
Felix glanced from her to Tod. The fellow had his head on one side and
seemed listening to something in the distance. And Felix felt a certain
irritation.
“It's all very well,” he said, “but I think you really have got to look
at your children's future from a larger point of view. You don't surely
want them to fly out against things before they've had a chance to see
life for themselves.”
She answered:
“The children know more of life than most young people. They've seen it
close to, they've seen its realities. They know what the tyranny of the
countryside means.”
“Yes, yes,” said Felix, “but youth is youth.”
“They are not too young to know and feel the truth.”
Felix was impressed. How those narrowing eyes shone! What conviction in
that faintly lisping voice!
'I am a fool for my pains,' he thought, and only said:
“Well, what about this invitation, anyway?”
“Yes; it will be just the thing for them at the moment.”
The words had to Felix a somewhat sinister import. He knew well enough
that she did not mean by them what others would have meant. But he said:
“When shall we expect them? Tuesday, I suppose, would be best for Clara,
after her weekend. Is there no chance of you and Tod?”
She quaintly wrinkled her lips into not quite a smile, and answered:
“Tod shall say. Do you hear, Tod?”
“In the meadow. It was there yesterday—first time this year.”
Felix slipped his arm through his brother's.
“Quite so, old man.”
“What?” said Tod. “Ah! let's go in. I'm awfully hungry....”
Sometimes out of a calm sky a few drops fall, the twigs rustle, and far
away is heard the muttering of thunder; the traveller thinks: 'A storm
somewhere about.' Then all once more is so quiet and peaceful that he
forgets he ever had that thought, and goes on his way careless.
So with Felix returning to Becket in Stanley's car. That woman's face,
those two young heathens—the unconscious Tod!
There was mischief in the air above that little household. But once more
the smooth gliding of the cushioned car, the soft peace of the meadows
so permanently at grass, the churches, mansions, cottages embowered
among their elms, the slow-flapping flight of the rooks and crows lulled
Felix to quietude, and the faint far muttering of that thunder died
away.
Nedda was in the drive when he returned, gazing at a nymph set up there
by Clara. It was a good thing, procured from Berlin, well known for
sculpture, and beginning to green over already, as though it had been
there a long time—a pretty creature with shoulders drooping, eyes
modestly cast down, and a sparrow perching on her head.
“Well, Dad?”
“They're coming.”
“When?”
“On Tuesday—the youngsters, only.”
“You might tell me a little about them.”
But Felix only smiled. His powers of description faltered before that
task; and, proud of those powers, he did not choose to subject them to
failure.