CHAPTER XV
“I supposeyou 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!Iearned 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-leavesstood 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 wayoff, 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 thenote 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!”