CHAPTER X
Slinker’swife was restless on Christmas Eve. At dinner, she talked in feverish snatches, and ate nothing; and when the dismal meal was over at last, she wandered nervously from room to room, lifting blind after blind to look at the white waste of the park. Christian followed her like a puzzled dog, oppressed once more by the mighty loneliness which had lifted a little since her coming, until she turned on him brusquely with a little jump.
“For goodness’ sake, Laker, don’t go trailing after me like a broken bootlace! I’m a bundle of nerves to-night, and not fit to speak to—the snow, I suppose.” She shivered, looking almost fearfully at the inky spectres of the avenue flung upon the sinister white of the hill. “How near it is! Somehow it makes me feel as if I couldn’t breathe. Life can make you feel like that, too; as if you’d fastened yourself into your coffin, and couldn’t get out.”
“And couldn’t—couldn’tget out!” she repeated, beating her hands on the frosty pane; and the next instant had opened the hall-door and was half-way down the steps before he realised that she had gone. Springing after her, he caught her arm and drew her back forcibly into the warmth.
“What’s the matter with you to-night, Nettie? You’re not a bit like yourself! This isn’t the weather for moonlight walks, and I can’t have you catching your death of cold while you’re in my charge. Come and sit by the fire, and let us talk.”
He struck the log with his foot, sending up a shower of sparks, but she drew away from him, and back again to the door. He looked at her in surprise. He had never seen her like this—her eyes wide, every nerve tensely strung.
“I’m going out!” she said quickly. “Don’t try to stop me. I’m not ragging, Youngest One—Imustgo! Yes, fetch me something to put on, like an old dear, only be quick about it.”
He brought a coat and a scarf and wrapped her in them, and gave her his hand down the slippery steps; but when he would have come further she checked him imperatively.
“I’m going alone,” she said, pushing him gently from her, “so scoot back at once, Laker child! I’m not going far, and I’m going alone. I shan’t take any harm, so don’t get excited, and if you dare to sit and freeze on the steps, I’ll leave Crump to-morrow! I can’t stop in the house to-night, and that’s all there is about it. It’s full of Slinker from garret to cellar, and I just can’t bear it. Couldn’t you feel him at dinner—that awful ghost-walk of a dinner? I wondered how you could sit in your chair and swallow your port! He was there all the time—just shrieking to come back! Oh, Christian!—suppose he should?”
He took her hand again, looking at her with concern.
“Why, Nettie, there’s certainly something very wrong with you! Come back into the house and sing something, and let’s be happy. There is nothing to be afraid of. How could there be anything to be afraid of on Christmas Eve?”
She clung to his fingers, staring up at the house.
“I should hear Slinker singing along with me. He had a voice, you remember—a queer sort of voice like an owl squawking in the night! Christian—suppose that window opened up there, and Slinker’s face looked out—Slinker’s face—Christian——!”
He gave her a peremptory little shake.
“Stop that at once—do you hear? And you’re just coming back with me this instant, so you can make up your mind to do as you’re told for once, instead of twisting the whole world round your little finger!”
She shook her head, pulling herself together with a trembling sigh and a smile.
“No, I’m going on. It’s all right, Youngest One. I’m quite sane, and perfectly fit to be loose. Go in and wait for me in the hall, and brew me some nice warm gruel to drink when Christmas comes in. I’m going to the place where I’m safest in the whole world. Oh, if I’d only guessed it, long ago!”
He watched her disappear up the avenue, a dark speck on the purity of the white track, walking firmly and with purpose, and then he returned reluctantly to thaw himself, keeping an eye on the half-open doorthe while. No sound came to him from any part of the house but the creak of the stairs and the running talk of the fire. In the oak chair with the high back he looked very young and very lonely—the new master sharing his shadowed home with his ghosts.
Slinker’s wife walked fast—fast, like a woman going to meet her lover—and her heart beat and the colour burned in her cheek. She clasped her hands tight in the wide sleeves of Christian’s coat, and her breath came unevenly on the frosty air. Leaving the arch of the avenue for the full moonlight, she saw beneath her a wide sheet of bright ice, and, to the right, the long, low buildings of Dockerneuk Farm. She stopped then as if a hand had barred her way, trembling violently and leaning against the stoup of the gate.
Work was long done at the farm. The clash of milk-pails was still, long before. The cattle had had their extra Christmas feed, and the men had gone home. The blinds were drawn. The kitchen had red blinds through which lamp and fire glowed warm. From the parlour a piano tinkled a Christmas hymn.
Slinker’s wife, leaning against the stoup, needed no open doors for her sad eyes. She knew so well the wide kitchen with its open range and oak settle, the spotless stone of the floor, the shining pans, the queer things that hung from the oak rafters, hams and Christmas puddings and great, dry bunches of sage. She knew the parlour, too, with its yellow-keyed, silk-faced piano, its pot dogs, wool mats and vases of honesty, but it was to the kitchen that thepassionate eyes of her mind strayed and stayed. For Dixon would be in the kitchen.
She saw him as she had seen him often in the old days, when the tie of a distant relationship through her mother had brought her to Dockerneuk for many a long week; saw him in his deep wooden chair by the steel fender, his dog’s head against his knee, as they listened together to the little hymn played by his sister’s child. The door would be open between the rooms, she knew. Dixon loved both children and music.
He would be sitting very still in his big chair, with that curious, almost fateful stillness of the men bred in the Dales. His tall, slow-moving figure would be bent a little, his square, quiet hand laid along the smooth wood of the chair-arm, his tranquil face turned towards the fire.
It would be such a good fire, too—Slinker’s wife, through Christian’s warm coat, felt the cold strike her like a knife—a great, roaring, glowing, gladsome fire, filling full the big mouth of the chimney, and flinging splashes of brightness over the half-shadowed room. There would be holly, too, perhaps, and a bunch of mistletoe over the outer door. Dixon had once wanted to kiss her under a bunch of mistletoe. He had held her hands and looked at her with grave eyes, but he would not kiss her in jest. Slinker’s wife, laying her head against the icy stone, knew that the mistletoe might have saved her. But Dixon had not known that you may win or lose the wholeworld with a kiss, or perhaps he had known it too well, and not dared the risk.
The piano stopped suddenly, and the parlour went dark, so that she knew the door into the kitchen had shut. The child was going to bed. Dixon would stoop his tall head to bid her good-night, and presently her feet would patter on the polished, carpetless stair. His old mother would be waiting to settle her warm and safe for the night, and to steal in later with sweeties for her little stocking. Soon he would go upstairs himself, and the lights in Dockerneuk would slide out silently, and when the moon sank the dark would swallow it up as if it had never been. Slinker’s wife hid her face against the stoup and cried aloud, and one of the fine-eared dogs in the stable heard her, and barked quick and deep. The kitchen door opened instantly in response, and Dixon came out into the porch.
He did not need his dog’s repeated signal, for he could see her figure plainly enough under the moon, but some instinct kept him from speaking until he was near enough to discern her face. She stayed quiet, leaning against the stone, and they looked into each other’s eyes.
“It’s sharp to-night,” he said gravely, and saluted her with a raised finger. The tiny action put the whole world between them. “Were you wanting anything of me, Mrs. Lyndesay of Crump?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. I—it’s Christmas Eve. I just—walked up.” She gathered her courageand looked up at him again. “Can I come in?” she begged. “I want to come in—oh, please—let me come in!”
But Dixon shook his head.
“Crump’s your place. You chose Crump. You’d a right to choose for yourself—I’m not denying that. But it’s done, and you must bide by it. You’ve finished with Dockerneuk for ever.”
“No, no! Oh, no, no——!” she stammered, suddenly broken-hearted like a child wrenched from a happiness just within its grasp. She put out her hands, the quick tears running down her face. “Anthony—I’ve come back. Why did you ever let me go? Anthony, take me in!”
And again he shook his head.
“You chose Crump!” he repeated doggedly. “All the wishing in the world won’t change it. You’re Crump, now, and Crump you must bide till you die.” He moved forward. “They’ll be missing you at the Hall. I’ll set you back.”
But she caught his arm, brave through her confidence in the man’s fine nature and his faithful love.
“Ah, don’t turn me away! It’s my home for all you may say—mine as well as yours. I belong to you and to Dockerneuk, though I never knew it until it was too late. You’ll take me back, Anthony—you’ll take me back?”
He gathered her cold hands into his warm ones.
“I’ve thought the world of you always,” he said. “Your place was ready for you ever after I had onceset eyes on you. I could scarce bring myself to bolt the door of a night because it seemed to shut you out, and yet the house had you in every corner. I used to sit of an evening, and think I heard you laugh—you were so close. And in the morning, when I came in from the shippons, I’d look to see your face at the window. But when you married Lyndesay, you shut the door yourself, and I never saw your shadow in the old place again. You went into a different world, and I couldn’t follow you. You’re Crump now, and you’ll never be Dockerneuk no more. 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. You left me and Dockerneuk behind you, and all the longing in the world won’t ever bring you home.”
She tightened her clasp on his, and spoke steadily for the first time.
“There’s no change can harm love,” she said. “I didn’t know when I married Stanley, but I knew soon after. I knew that you were the best thing in mylife—ah, no!—that you were the whole of it! I married Stanley for Crump, right enough, but when once I saw clear, I never raised a finger to take it. I knew where my real place should have been, by then, and I wouldn’t come. I came when he was dead, because, when once I was free, I couldn’t stop away from you and never see you; just as I’ll stay, Anthony, till you take me in, if I’ve to come begging like a tramp every night to ask it!”
“I can’t believe it!” Dixon’s voice was harsh and troubled. “It’s not likely you’ll ever stoop to me, now. Think what folk’ll say—Dockerneuk after Crump! You’ve got to make me sure it’s right before I’ll take the risk for you. I’ll not snatch at what I want, and be hated for it all my days. I couldn’t bide that—to see you eating out your heart for things I couldn’t give you. You’re Mrs. Lyndesay’s darling, nowadays, they say. She’ll find another Lyndesay for you, likely, or some other of the quality.” The first touch of bitterness crept into his voice. “I can’t think you’d ever be happy with me. ’Tisn’t in reason. You’ve got to prove it.”
“How can I prove it better than by being here to-night?” she asked piteously. “Did you ever know Nettie Stone go on her knees before?”
“It’s not enough,” he answered, loosing her hands, and a cloud went over the moon. “It’s not enough! To-night’s to-night, but there’s half a lifetime to think other in. Only prove it, and you’ll find every stone of Dockerneuk calling for you, but till thenwe must go our different ways, and bide it as we may.”
They descended the avenue in silence, to meet Christian speeding anxiously up it. His face lightened when he saw Dixon, though he made no comment, only gave him a Christmas greeting, and pressed Crump hospitality upon him. But Dixon refused obstinately.
“Thank you kindly, sir, but I’d best be getting back. I left the door open, and my old mother’ll likely get feared.Henever asked me, Mr. Christian, and he’s been dead such a short while. I can’t rightly feel that he isn’t still there.”
“You’ve infected him, Nettie!” Christian said, as lightly as he could, when Dixon had vanished among the trees. “You’ve told him all the things you thought you saw, and all the other things you thought you felt.”
“I told him nothing,” she answered bitterly, “but I’m not surprised. He felt the chain at my heel. If you put your life into the hands of a man like Slinker, you’ll never quite escape him after, alive or dead!”
In the hall she slipped out of his coat, and he brought her a steaming glass; and as she took it from him, over the snow-smooth park the bells began to ring. Christian opened the door, and let the joy of them flood the sombre hall. The clock struck in the dimness under the stair, and at the foot of the steps the fiddler broke into his thin, wailing hymn, and theshouter cried them their Christmas mirth. Mrs. Slinker laid her hand lightly on Christian’s shoulder, and kissed him.
“A Merry Christmas to you, Laker, my dear!” she said, with a thrill in her voice and a kindly look. “Here’s luck to Lakin’ Lyndesay!” and she lifted her glass and drank. Then she raised it again, turning south to Dockerneuk. “And here’s the right home to every soul, and to all the lost dogs a-seeking!”