Constance Holme

“ She loves you.”
“She loves—Crump.”
“Of course she loves Crump!” Callander burst out angrily. “Heavens, man! You talk as though it were a crime! She loves Crump in a way that you can’t even begin to imitate, for all it’s your own property. Don’t you know yet why she would have married your brother? Have you spent hours at Kilne, watching her while the old man talked, and not guessed? Or can’t you discriminate between mere vanity and greed and the pure flower of devotion? If you think it’s money that draws her, you’re wrong. If you think it’s even pride of race, you’re wrong! ”

“ It is always the dependants of an old house who nurse and keep alive any feud that may be going—the family servants, the old keepers, the workmen on the estate. Theirs it is to see that the bad blood should be kept running, no matter how sweetly, on the part of the masters, righteousness and peace may have kissed each other. Crump and Whyterigg had shaken hands and buried the knife, but Christian’s old nurse would not sit at meat with Rishwald’s chauffeur, nor the head gardener so much as exchange a cutting with Whyterigg’s horticultural head. ”

“ How was a chap to do otherwise when at last he saw the old look in Deb’s eyes, and heard Roger Lyndesay, standing at his window, say “Thank God!” as a man before a High Altar? Deb had put her hand on his head and soothed him in the quaint, motherly way she kept for Larry only, and for the first time he found himself able to tell her of his other trouble that had taken the brightness out of the sun. He had been too chilled by her strange aloofness to mention Verity before, but now he gave her as much of the story as he loyally could, and Deborah’s intuition told her the rest. ”

“ There was a stir on the platform, heads turning to the inner door framing the illuminated countenance of the old butler; and then Christian ran down into the ring, his nerves thrilling to the affectionate recognition flung him from all sides. He wore the pale orange they all knew, his fair head shining against the black Crump cedar embroidered on the chest; and as he stood, waiting, the full light falling upon his bright, frank expression and clean-limbed grace, Harker, approaching, was conscious of unwilling and deeply heretical admiration. ”

“ And would they sit in the dark, alone and perfectly content, watching the lights of Crump across the black water as men watch shrine-candles in the dim church of their worship? These things, that made the life of his soul, were the natural heritage of a son of Kilne, who needed scant initiation into their mysteries. But there was no son at Kilne; only a daughter, into whose hands the birthright of love and service could never fall. ”

“ So Deb had been a lonely little girl in a lonely house,—a rather fierce, intensely reserved little girl, pure Lyndesay and no Morton whatever, a strange little girl who loved the woods and the silent places, and rarely made friends with anybody in her own station. She was bred in awe of Crump, and held aloof from the Lyndesay boys in a mood that was half reverence and half resentment, though for Lionel, to whom these sentiments did not apply, she had her moments of kindly condescension. ”

“ He had been sent to school early, and William Lyndesay, to whom life had given most things at second hand except a certain bitter sense of humour, had been content to remain outside his child’s heart, busying himself with ordering the estate of his supplanter. Yes, they had all worn masks, Christian thought: his father, smilingly impersonal and aloof; his mother, obstinately and apparently unreasonably cruel; he, himself, puzzled and hurt but finally acquiescent; while as for Slinker—he laughed rather cynically—it would appear that Slinker had worn as many masks as a troupe of mummers! ”

“ She had been made of the warm, living earth, the crisp wind, the soft, gray-blue sky. Given every tie that binds a human to the soil, she “belonged” to the land by heritage, by affinity and by love.
Nettie and Larrupper were at their heels by the time they reached the top gate of all, which Larry fastened with great deliberation in the face of a panting horde behind, while his companion stamped with impatience and entreated him to come on, for hounds were still in full cry below. ”

“ Oh, Nettie, how did you keep away?”
She shook her head, smiling.
“That isn’t in me—how should it be? How should generations of horse-dealing draw any human soul magically to Crump? The house is dumb for me—in spite of the hundred tongues it keeps for you. The land says nothing—no more than it says to every other soul that springs from it and goes back to it. It is our mother—we others. To you, it is your child.” ”

“ He saw Anthony’s arm go round the woman he loved, and Nettie’s head sink to its place at last.
That was love, then—the thing of which Deborah had said he knew nothing; the going into a place apart of two souls, for whom even the dark avenue of death could hold no fear. Nettie had been his comrade, his strong stay, but for Anthony she would be only a woman, weak for the glory of his strength. Not in comradeship alone lay the secret, not even in mutual reliance and support, unless crowned and welded by the unpurchasable magic, lacking which the highest must stay sealed. Deb had been right ”

“ You’ve learned quality’s ways such as I never learned—fine talk and fine manners, dinners, carriages and footmen. What-like would farm-life seem to you, now? You’ve had a gentleman to your husband—a liar and a wastrel, happen, but a Lyndesay and quality for all that. Dixon of Dockerneuk’s not quality, and you’d remember it—ay, and I’d know you remembered! It would be hell for both of us. If once you’re quit of your own folk, there’s never any getting back in this world, for it’s you that changes, no matter how you may think things look the same. There’s no help—no way out. ”

“ There was a long pause; and then, just as she made an effort to speak, Augustus, reaching too far in a vain endeavour to persuade the steering-wheel to continue his journey, fell heavily to the floor. Larrupper spun round on the instant and snatched him up, taking him in his arms and soothing him with [281] a skill very surprising in a young man whose solicitude had hitherto been mainly expended upon motors. Verity listened in amazement to nursery endearments apparently quite at home on his lips, and a faint smile, first amused and then tender, came to her own. ”

“ 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 cast one glance at the dark pile of the house as they passed; then sat back, silent. Crump blinds had dropped on more than a dead master.
“It’s an unforgiving sort of night!” Christian said dreamily from his corner, as they rolled down the last of the avenue, the great trees clashing overhead. “On nights like this I believe Westmorland breaks her heart for some old sin of long ago. She beats at the heavens, and they are brass. God does not hear. Brathay is like an old hen with hounds, isn’t he?” ”

“ The older men, who had known him from childhood, crowded round him, grasping his hand, while the lads in the background eyed him with reverent awe, for he held a record that could not be beaten by any in the room.
He passed the gauntlet of outstretched hands by gradual degrees, and came laughing to the platform, where a chair had been kept for him, and a morose Larrupper greeted him with a dismal nod. The cheering was still raising the roof as he took his seat in the centre, and the Crump men came out en masse to give him a final yell. ”

“ You mean to marry Christian as you would have married his brother—for Crump!”
There was a pause, and then Deb said—“It is true!” as she had said once before on a similar night of storm, in the library downstairs.
The other looked at her with a certain cold wonder.
“Lyndesays are all ambitious,” she said, “all ambitious and all proud. I myself am a Lyndesay born, as you know. But you are more ambitious, prouder, surer of yourself than any of us. You would seize Crump in the teeth of all right feeling, decency and respect, grasping an honour snatched from the very hand of the dead. ”

“ With another scarcely-breathed whistle he released her, and turned to hasp the gate and give a final look up the soaring fell, skirted with bracken, crowned by sullen rocks. Rain sprang round—sprang to meet a devil’s galloper of satin panels and shining brass, hurled at a criminal speed along the narrow, curving road—sprang and disappeared. She was quite dead when Dixon and the chauffeur drew her out from between the heavy wheels.
A group of those children who always appear miraculously at every untoward occurrence, thrust frightened faces through a break in the hedge. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Under the hill the Hall sheltered, no longer a crouching thing of menace but a man’s quiet hearth-place, breathing peace. The rooks were coming back, calling their way over park and village, ploughing steadily through the pure air to their nests in the dim woods. The two lonely young figures followed them: Crump folk all—going home. ”

“ It wouldn’t have been so bad if Slinker had loved her and wanted her too badly to remember that he had some wretched sort of a wife already. Well, we’ll leave it at that! What do I care? But you mustn’t blame her too much. It’s because she’s one of your own people that you feel as you do—that she shouldn’t have stooped to a man like that for a reason like that. You could forgive a stranger who had done it—a woman who wasn’t a Lyndesay born and bred; you could forgive—Nettie Stone, the horse-dealer’s daughter! ”

“ He now held a Whyterigg farm, but until the present year he had been with an uncle in Cumberland, so that he knew nothing of Christian beyond his sporting reputation, seeing him through the smoked glass of inherited hostility more as a symbol than as a man. In his mind had always been a half-formed determination to meet Lakin’ Lyndesay on this one possible ground of equality, and now his opportunity had arrived. He meant to make the most of it. The old coachman and the lady’s maid would surely weep tears of joy if he could carry home a victory over Crump. ”

“ The hall-door opened, and Verity, scattering a few Mormon tracts at random over the sofa, flung herself at the piano and dashed into the new war-song—“Way for the Women!” just as the Vicar was announced; only to be conscious, as she rose to greet him, of the utter futility of her dramatic efforts.
“The man sees nothing but the inside of his own head!” she told herself, as she welcomed him prettily, and watched him settle himself among the Mormons. “It’s a real waste of time trying to be artistic with him, and I think I’d better take Larry’s advice and give it up.” ”

“ They were folding the sheep at Dockerneuk, and the air was thrilling with the deep call of the mothers and the tremolo answer of the lambs. Dixon was by the farmyard wall, watching his flock come in, but he turned at Nettie’s voice, and came to meet them, his slim little collie pressing himself delicately against [299] Deb for notice. The old farm had the worn grayness of fine age set in the unutterably fresh youth of earth and atmosphere. The same quality of patient dignity breathed alike from Dixon and his background, making them one. ”

“ Augustus had sat still as the Sphinx through this interview, and indeed Larry had forgotten him completely, until a finely-modelled little hand crept presently into his line of vision, and planted firm little fingers on the steering-wheel. He found himself staring at it as if fascinated—it was so soft and round, so dimpled, and so—small. The arm peeping from the muffler was soft and round too; it seemed ridiculous that it should ever grow an iron bunch of muscle like his own, handle a heavy car, or send a man to destruction by a wrestler’s chip. ”

“ Rishwald had been much at Crump of late, bent on friendly terms and even more, and he was hardly likely to look favourably on the affair. It might mean that the young man would have to leave the farm, and serve him right an’ all, that it would! Nobody but a fool would have got himself into the mess—this to an accompaniment of lady’s maid’s tears and a lament like a soughing wind—“Poor Mr. Christian! Poor, dear lad!” ”

“ I’ll tell you everything when I come back, dad. We’ll follow every ring, and cover every yard, and struggle together through every spiky fence. You’ll feel as though you’d tramped every inch, you’ll see, instead of sitting quietly in your own arm-chair. And you’ll be able to correct Mr. Callander about all sorts of things when he comes for his next lesson in Crump geography. Nothing is so upsetting to your sense of locality as running rings round the same hill and crossing the river every ten minutes. ”

“ You were feeling chivalrous up at Linacre, and I was lonely, thinking of the day when I should have to leave Kilne. That’s not sufficient foundation for a lifetime together, and we knew it well enough, even then. Let’s go back to what we were. After all, no—no harm—has been done.”
“No harm?” Christian echoed. “It depends what you mean by that. How can we go back? And of course these two weeks count! Do you think a man ever feels the same towards a woman after he has once thought of her definitely as his wife, even for a day? It’s absurd to talk like that. ”