CHAPTER IX
Inthe middle of the long, steep hill up which the village of Crump climbed, Augustus sat firmly on the best green velvet footstool out of his mother’s parlour. He was not a model son. Though still in petticoats, and the owner of soft brown eyes and a head of girlish silken hair, his extraordinary determination rendered him far from easy to live with. To desire was to have—with Augustus. He had never any doubts as to the attainment of his end.
His mother, the wife of a prosperous cattle-dealer, came to the door of the low, pink-washed house, and demanded the footstool in peremptory terms, but Augustus merely turned his back upon her, and she retired discomfited, not daring to resort to physical suasion. For Augustus had a voice, and she feared it.
Larruppin’ Lyndesay came rocketing over the hill with his cap pulled over his eyes, sitting apparently on the back of his neck. Augustus surveyed his approaching end with the utmost serenity, and stirred not an inch. He was so small that Larrupper nearly missed seeing him altogether, and only managed to stop, his heart in his mouth, when a stout Dunlop tyre was grazing the minute figure with its sashround its knees. Rising in his seat, he peered over the screen at the lord of the street.
“Treasonable offence, obstructin’ the King’s Highway!” he informed him severely. “’Tisn’t playin’ the game, hidin’ behind a pebble like that—’tisn’t really! Don’t mind if I ask you to move, do you, old chap?”
But Augustus, thrusting his thumb into his mouth, merely turned upon him a large gaze of such supercilious condescension that he withdrew his demand on the spot, reversed the car meekly and took a standing jump at the kerb of the green, landing with a rattle that seemed to loosen every bolt. A second rush wedged him neatly between the ancient posts of the churchyard gate, where he was discovered by Deb, coming out of the church, followed by a hound-dog of sorts, full of smiles. She stared at him in amazement.
“What in the name of goodness are you doing, Larry?” she demanded unkindly. “Bringing the car to be christened? I do wish you’d behave decently inmyvillage, whatever you do in your own or in Verity’s. Take the horrid thing away at once!”
Larrupper, with a final effort, wrenched his new mudguards into freedom, and pushed back his cap, panting,
“I’m hanged if I can understand why life should be so disappointin’!” he grumbled, turning pathetic eyes upon her stern countenance. “I had to climb up here to avoid slaughterin’ somebody’s baby, an’then you come along an’ pitch into me for jackin’ up my own mudguards! By the way, what are you doin’ with one of Christian’s chickens?”
Deb looked down at the smiling pup at her feet, flapping a curving tail lustily against her skirt.
“It fell upon me an hour ago,” she explained worriedly, “and I’m afraid it thinks it has acquired me. We’ve been playing hide and seek all over the village, and it always wins. I’ve had an awfully expensive time with it, too. It sampled all the cheeses in Turner’s, and ran a cat to earth in an open box of biscuits. I thought I’d escaped it when I rushed in to try the new organ-stop, till I suddenly saw its nose sticking out from under the altar! Do please haul it into the car and run it up to the kennels.”
“Right you are! Sling it over.” Larrupper stretched out an inviting hand, and the puppy backed promptly. “Come on up—up, my beauty! Here, boy—here! Good dog—good old dog—nice little dog—hang the brute, I’m afraid it isn’t havin’ any!”
Deb stooped for the hound, but it flopped round to the back of her, and it was only after a wild, teetotum chase that she succeeded in grabbing it. Breathless and dishevelled, she pushed her limp prey into the car, and stood back; whereupon it eluded Larry’s grasp with an eel-like wriggle, and instantly fell out again.
“You’ll have to come, too,” Larrupper said, alternately shrieking with laughter and trumpeting everyhunting call he could think of, but Deb shook an obstinate head.
“No. I’m not coming in that direction at all. It’s got to go in the car whether it likes it or not. You can hold it all right if youtry. And I’m sure there must be something wrong with you, Larry, when so young a dog hates you horribly at first sight!”
Five times she bundled it into the motorist’s arms, and five times it escaped him with ease, rushing back to the girl with ecstatic recognition; but the sixth time Larry grabbed hard and drove away like the wind; and a Cruelty Inspector rushed his bicycle in front of him, and demanded his name and address.
“Shameful, sir! Something shameful!” he stormed, snatching out a notebook, and propping his machine against Larry’s new paint. “Dog was hanging head downwards out of the car—a sight I’d never thought to see in a civilised land—on my word, sir, never! Valuable dog, too, I should say, knowing a bit about dogs and given that way myself, and likely to suffer for it all its days if not put out of its misery at once and shot!”
Larrupper signalled wildly for help, and Deb came up running, weak with hysterical laughter, to be fallen upon rapturously by the quite unharmed devil in the machine.
“Tell the man it’s Christian’s——” Larry began desperately, horribly alarmed by the party in uniform, but the last unfortunate word merely drove the enemy into further frenzied scrapings of paint.
“Christian is just what itain’t, sir—anythingbut!—More like them there savage caballyairos, over in Spain! Oh, the dog’s the lady’s, you say, sir, is it? Makes it all the worse then, being two of you. Your name and address as well, miss,ifyou please!”
It took some time to convince him of the purity of their intentions, and when he finally let them go, it was only on conditions.
“You’ll kindly take the dog along yourself, miss,” he announced firmly, still eyeing Larrupper with distinct distrust. “Oh, I’ve no doubt the gentlemanmeantwell and all that kind of thing, but to go ’anging an ’armless dog out by the ’eels isn’t exactly nice behaviour tomyway of thinking. So you go along with him, miss, and then I’ll be satisfied.”
“But I can’t—shan’t—won’t—don’t——!” Deb protested weakly, but he waved her objections to the winds.
“Don’t let us have any more arguments, miss,” he entreated plaintively. “’Tisn’t a very pleasant subject, now is it, when all’s said and done? Not one as you mightdwellon. You get in, and I’ll hand you the dog.”
They drove away thoroughly chastened, even the puppy having been quiescent in the inspector’s grasp, and poor Larry slammed on top speed, seething with exasperation.
“I might have known any sort of a dog-thing would bring me bad luck!” he groaned dismally. “This’ll be fine hearin’ for old Dock, won’t it? It’s sure tobe rampin’ all over the village before we’re well up at the kennels. Why on earth couldn’t you come at the beginnin’, Debbie dear, an’ save us makin’ a cinematograph of ourselves?”
“I told you I didn’t mean to know you,” she answered firmly, “and I’m not coming up to the kennels in spite of the inspector, so you can just stop and let me out at Kilne as you pass. Don’t you think if you put the puppy under your arm—so—and covered it up with the rug—so—?” She prepared for active experiment, but Larry edged away with a jump, nearly pulling the car into a passing butcher.
“Lord, no, Deb! Keep away. I won’t have it! An’ you’re not even to think of gettin’ out. What’s the bettin’ old Fuss-pot isn’t trackin’ us for all he’s worth? You’ve got to deliver your own goods, so don’t be makin’ any more bones about it. I don’t know what I’ve done that you can’t bear ridin’ with me,” he added, very hurt. “We’ve had some rippin’ spins together, you an’ I, an’ now you won’t even let me take you the length of the park!”
“How’s Verity?” she asked, to change the subject, and Larrupper groaned again.
“It’s simply heart-rendin’! Whenever I drop in, she’s up to her eyes in music and ankle-deep in patterns of clothin’. She’s havin’ some sort of a sing-song, you know, an’ she’s trainin’ crowds of the awfullest people you ever saw in your life to sing an’ dance an’ sit up an’ beg. She’s never any time for me, nowadays, an’ I feel like drownin’ myself,Debbie dear. If I fall in of a mornin’, she’s always busy makin’ blots with tails to them, an’ if I stop long enough I have to listen while she sings the blots to see if they’re in the right place. In the afternoon she’s dancin’ out of a book with a chair or a table or Larry Lyndesay, or any other sort of a block that happens to be standin’ about doin’ nothin’; an’ in the evenin’ every blessed squawker in the place is there, makin’ night hideous, so I never get any notice worth mentionin’. It’s sickenin’, I can tell you!”
“You’re not half firm enough with her, Larry, and you’re a donkey to stand the way she treats you. Why don’t you pack her in your pocket and carry her off to the nearest registry-office, without asking her anything about it?”
But Larry shook his head.
“I’m not wantin’ her on those terms,” he said. “I’ve got a little pride still stickin’, for all I’m her ladyship’s football, an’ when she comes to me it’ll have to be jumpin’ an’ willin’, an’ not by the hair of her head.”
“Then you’ll never get her,” Deb replied, lifting the puppy in her arms as the kennels hove in sight. “Verity’s the sort that has to be captured, and if you don’t sail in and do it, you may go on playing round till the Judgment. Youmustput your foot down, Larry!”
“No!” Larry set his mouth. “No. She’s just a little bit above herself an’ ready to ride the world at present, but it won’t go on for always. Some day,she’ll find that life isn’t all beer an’ skittles an’ top o’ the mornin’, an’ when she scrambles out of the ditch she’ll be glad to see me sittin’ in the hedge. Till then I can wait—though I’m not sayin’ but the hedge is a bit thorny!” He heaved a sigh. “Hi! Hold on! Where are you goin’?” for Deb had slipped off the car as they neared the gate.
“There isn’t any need to drive in,” she said, avoiding the puppy’s wild and wet farewells. “I’ll shoot the thing inside—it will wander up all right—and then perhaps you will be kind enough to run me back home.”
Larrupper agreed; but the next instant, catching sight of two figures above in the field, and with a dim remembrance of a café conversation floating through his mind, made his first effort at diplomacy.
“Oh, but I’m forgettin’ I’ve to see old Brathay!” he announced, bending to gaze at a perfectly satisfactory lubricator. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just drive right up an’ give him a hail. I want to ask him about some—you know—what-d’you-call-em—what’s-its-names!”
Deb hesitated, looking at him suspiciously.
“Oh, of course—if youwantto go——!” she began reluctantly, a little puzzled. “But I can see hounds are all out, and you know Brathay always has a fit if there’s a motor within a mile of the pack.Iknow! I’ll wait here with the car while you run up to the kennels; and you can take the puppy with you.”
“Not much!” Larry refused flatly. “I wouldn’ttouch the thing with a ten-foot pole. I’m simply a yawnin’ death-trap for dogs—it would never reach its cubby-hole alive. An’ if you think I’m goin’ to leave you waitin’ in the mud like a beastly chauffeur—how do, Laker, old man! Where have you been puttin’ yourself all the week?”
“Rather neat groupin’!” he congratulated himself, leaning anxiously over a sound and blameless wheel, while Deb swung round with the puppy in her arms, to meet Christian’s pleasant smile and a grave bow from the stranger beside him.
“One of the puppies”—she explained hurriedly and incoherently, put out by the sudden encounter, though unaware of Larrupper’s machinations. “Wandering about the village—cheese—had Brathay missed it? Yes, it looked a good one—and such jolly things they were, too, weren’t they?—oh, only too glad, ofcourse—anybody would—and it was more than time that she was getting back.”
“But I want to show you our improvements,” Christian protested, taking the hound from her, and introducing his companion. “Mr. Callander—Miss Lyndesay—my cousin, Larrup—I say, Lionel, what on earthdoyou call yourself? Mr. Callander’s frightfully pleased with the kennels, I do want you to look round and give everything your blessing—please!”
“Tell your father what’s doin’, an’ all that kind of thing,” Larry supplemented, with amazing readiness, and again clapped himself on the back, for sheyielded at once. She never denied her father information concerning the least detail of the estate.
She walked up the field between the two men, puzzling out a means of escape, and listening vaguely to Christian’s thanks for her salving of the puppy, while Larry followed with the car, hooting furiously at inquisitive noses and waving sterns. Her last visit to the kennels had been made with her father and Stanley—the conversation including “points” on the one side, and “The Merry Widow” on the other. She had wondered why hounds had met Stanley with distant recognition while greeting her father with effusive joy; and she had wondered, moreover—but what was the use of wondering,now?
“I’m hunting them myself, this season,” Christian was saying. “I used to hunt them for Sl——” he cast a glance at his agent—“for Stanley, you remember, when I was at home. Sl—Stanley—wasn’t keen on the sport—left it to Brathay, as a rule. It’s good exercise, if you care about that kind of thing, and now that I’ve given up the games——”
Larrupper let out a yell that brought the old keeper racing down the hill with his heart in his mouth.
“Give up the games? You’re rottin’, Laker! Give up the wrestlin’ and the jumpin’ an’ the footer an’ the—Brathay, my good idiot, the whole blessed lot are as safe as houses, as you could see for yourself if you were any use at countin’!”
“I do mean it,” Christian replied, looking at theground. “I’ve—there’s a lot to see to, now, you know, and games are rather a waste of time—I suppose.”
“Footlin’ piffle! You don’t mean to be gluin’ yourself to the place all your life, do you? Your agent will keep it runnin’ all right if he’s a decent chap; an’ youarea decent chap, aren’t you, Mr.—afraid-your-name’s-gone-missin’?Slinkerhad time for playin’ round a bit, we all knowthat!Slinkerhad his little hobbies——”
“Your engine has stopped, Lionel.”
“Who’s mindin’? Crump’ll jog along in the same old cart-track without you everlastin’ly shovin’ behind; and hang it all, man, you’ll be wantin’ a bit of amusementsometime! What’s worryin’ younow, Brathay dear? I wish you’d run away an’ play!”
“Can’t count more than fifteen couple, sir. Rest must be somewheres about, and hounds is that curious—likely they’re some of them underneath.”
“An’ likely they’re roostin’ inside the bonnet as well, you—you old Buff Orpin’ton! Now look here, Brathay. I’m doin’ no harm on your rubbishin’ premises, an’ I won’t be hustled off for all the over-fed, under-run hounds in creation!”
“You make hounds that nervous, sir! They’re very easy upset.”
“You’re dreamin’, Brathay! Why, the darlin’s simply dote on engines. I’ve never been out with them yet but they’ve gone steamin’ full lick for theline whenever a train came along. Laker, tell him I won’t be bullied!”
“Do you good!” Christian smiled, nodding to the old keeper; and the sounds of violent altercation followed him as he led the way to the kennels. Brathay and Larrupper were joyful enemies of long standing.
“I remember now!” Callander said suddenly, as they reached the door. “I saw a picture of you somewhere in wrestling-kit—one of the papers, I forget which—and your nickname—‘Lakin’’ Lyndesay, isn’t it? I thought I knew your face.”
“That’s it.” Christian looked uncomfortable. “Some bounder caught me with a camera, I suppose. It’s a good game——” He broke off abruptly. “You remember old Rosebud, of course, Deborah?”
He spoke the name stiffly but with determination, definitely sealing their distant relationship and their slight but ancient acquaintance. “The Lyndesays stood by you!” she found herself quoting inwardly, as she caressed the old hound, and took the puppies in her arms, while Christian pointed out the alterations in the buildings. Callander, who had an artist’s eye, looked with interest from the quiet young master to the bright face of the kneeling girl lifted above the soft heads of white and tan. He remembered Christian well enough, now—had heard of him at Grasmere, at Olympia, at the Highland Games. It was a curious record for a son of so proud and ancient a family, but perhaps it was better than the one leftby his brother. Already his ears were filled with the gossip running rife in the countryside, and, watching the clear eyes and the brave bearing of the heroine of the drama, he wondered greatly where the truth of the matter lay. Not in the mere sordid love of riches, surely, nor in the foolish, flattered vanity of youth? Behind, he felt, was something deeper, out of reach.
There was no sign of Larrupper when they came out, and Brathay, with a grim face, his fingers shut upon a lordly tip, explained that he had evicted him without ceremony; whilst Larry, who had instructed him thereto, chuckled with Machiavellian glee as he raced homeward.
“I will walk back with you, if I may,” Christian said, opening the little gate of the stile. “Shall we go by the park?” And when Deb hesitated—“Why, surely you don’t prefer the road, do you?” he added, in surprise.
She did not answer—she could not tell him she had never set foot in the park since the day of Stanley’s death—and while she stood silent, Callander bade them good-bye and struck off towards the marsh. Christian kept his hand on the gate.
“There will be frost to-night,” he said, looking over the land. “The deer will be making for the buckhouse. The beeches are stripping fast, and the river is like glass. Do you really prefer the road?”
Did she? She walked beside him over the springy turf, while the red ball of the sun dipped towards thebay, wondering why every channel of love should be always first and foremost a channel of pain. The quiet of the old woods etched black against the yellow sky caught her by the throat. The silver river smote her like a sword. The homing rooks called the heart out of her. And the land—the green, good homeland around and beneath her—ah!didshe prefer the road?
“How quiet the hills are!” Christian broke silence, half-way across the park. “Have you ever noticed how the first frost stills them like the touch of a cold finger? In summer they are almost restless, but as the winter strengthens they gradually fall asleep. I like them best asleep.”
She made no reply, and he felt rebuffed. Perhaps she did not care for that sort of thing. Perhaps, as his mother had said, it was the house that called her, the position and pride of place—he thought suddenly of her pictured eyes in Slinker’s room, and put the charge from him self-reproachfully; then remembered that she had seemed to prefer the road, and was chilled anew.
Down in a hollow a couple of panting, writhing forms thrust apple-red cheeks over each other’s shoulder, and he checked at once, forgetting the girl in his sudden interest.
“The Younger Generation!” he laughed, watching the herculean if highly unscientific efforts of the children, and, drawn gradually nearer in spite of himself, began to issue instructions.
“Your hold is too high, Jimmy. Get your feet more apart—you, whatever your name is. Now! right foot—lift—strike inside—got him!”
He came back to Deb apologetically, after superintending the traditional handshake of etiquette.
“I’m ever so sorry to have kept you standing about, waiting! You must think I’m horribly rude, and of course you’re wanting to get home. I’ve always been crazy about the sport—I suppose because it’s our own. It’s a fine thing for a county to have its own game, to feel that it’s bred in the very bone of you, and that it calls you as it calls no one else on earth. It marks a county’s character, too, keeps it individual and strong. And I couldn’t let them go on making a muddle of it, could I? You see, it’s at the start that things matter. Catch them early—that’s the way to get style. Later on, when a man’s set——” He looked at her averted head. “But of course all this can’t possibly interest you.”
“Can you tell me the time?” she asked, without turning. (Would they never cross the park?) And then, almost as if the words had been dragged out of her—“It’s a fine sport,” she added, and again Christian wondered, not knowing that his speech had put the final touch to the fierce passion of heritage which was tearing her asunder as she walked dumbly at his side.
On the bridge he stopped again, to look through the frost-mist on the river to Crump bare and lone against its black shield of woods and the cold sky overhead;but Deborah hurried on, and as she turned the corner, saw him still gazing. She had another picture of the bridge now for all time—one that had Christian’s face clear-cut by the frosty light against the darkening slope of the hill.
He caught her up before she reached the house.
“You’re the only Lyndesay I ever knew who didn’t stop on that bridge!” he said reproachfully. “Nearly everybody stops on bridges, haven’t you noticed it? It must be because they feel a little bit nearer Heaven. But you didn’t stop, and I’m afraid you preferred the road!”
She looked up at him, conscious that he guessed at the existence of her mask, yet ready to fight for it at all costs.
“Perhaps I did!” she answered casually, and stood aside to let her father greet him in the porch.
Christian sat for long in the little, lamp-lit parlour overlooking the river, while the old man told him tales of farm and field with the easy memory and sure knowledge of one who carries recollection in his heart. Deborah came down at last to find them standing at the window, the fair head close to the white one, and Roger Lyndesay’s hand marking the curve of the hill under the sharp light of the risen moon.
“Cappelside?” the old man was saying. “I could find my way to Cappelside in a blinding blizzard! ’Twas there I courted my wife, as my father before me. Lyndesay stewards love all Crump better than their own souls, but they love Cappelside best. Theywill be found there, sure enough, when the earth gives up its dead!”
“How you feel about the old place!” Christian exclaimed. “It’s home to me, of course, but if love alone were a claim, you’d have a better right to it than I. Yes, and by right of work, too, your own and your fathers’, Crump should be yours, Mr. Lyndesay!”
“Crumpismine!” Roger Lyndesay returned, with curious emphasis and conviction. “Do you think either deed or descent could give it me as the long years of labour and knowledge have done? You are master and I am only servant and lover, but I own it in my heart. Crumpismine!”
Christian’s voice was very gentle as he bade the old man good-night. “I will try to hold it worthily for you,” he said; then smiled whimsically at Deb. “Butyoupreferred the road!”