CHAPTER XXIII
“Theland is positively hilarious!” Christian remarked, from the library window, looking out on the April afternoon. “I’ve never seen Crump smile before, but to-day the dear old thing is frivolling like a child!”
Callander left his books at the table and came to his side.
“It’s like the rest of us—throwing up its hat because you’re about again. Thank Heaven you’re on your feet at last!”
“I’ve been a horrid nuisance, I’m afraid,” Christian said remorsefully, “but I’m not going to bother you any more. Even my head doesn’t dither when I walk. You’ve all been frightfully good to me.”
“It’s just possible that we liked it,” Callander answered drily. “And you certainly did your best to escape our attentions.”
“Yes, I suppose I had a narrow squeak. I wish my grandfather’s taste in pillars had been less elaborate. The last thing I remember seeing was the clock-face. I’ve been haunted by clocks all the time I was bad—great, staring, white-moon-things, always striking eleven! You’ll think I’m a morbid ass——”he turned his shoulder rather nervously—“but I can’t help feeling that if she—my mother—hadn’t been under the Tree at that hour, I should have been the one to go. It meant to have one of us. I suppose, after a manner of speaking, she saved my life.”
“More than time she did something for you!” Callander growled, and apologised in the same breath, since she was dead and defenceless.
ThatLyndesay mask, at least, he had never seen lifted.
“You’ll be glad the tree is gone, surely?” he added. “It ought to be a relief to feel that you have a decent chance of dying quietly of Anno Domini like the rest of us.”
Christian shrugged his shoulders.
“I feel—lonely!” he confessed rather shame-facedly. “It’s absurd to let a tree make any difference, and most people would think I was talking off the top. But there’s a hole in my life like the hole in the lawn. I can’t explain. It’s there, that’s all. You’ll have to prop me pretty hard, Callander, old man!”
“I’ll send for another bottle of that tonic,” the other answered in his matter-of-fact way. “You’ll take hold all right when once you’re thoroughly strong. As for being lonely—that’s easily mended. Every man crosses a desert sometime in his life, and you’ve passed yours. You’ll be marrying before long, of course.”
Christian flushed violently with the transparent colour of the convalescent.
“That’s hardly likely. Crump has a way of destroying the balance of things. It either dwarfs or ennobles me. I want a woman to see me as I am—not through a series of magic mirrors.”
“You’ve got Crump on the brain—you Lyndesays!” Callander grunted impatiently. “Why on earth shouldn’t a girl be glad to marry you for your own sake, I’d like to know? I’m not in the habit of throwing flowers at people, but you must have a pretty good idea what I think of you, by now. Try some decent girl, and see if she doesn’t think the same.”
“I did try,” Christian replied quietly, “and the answer was as I told you. Crump!”
Callander stared at him for a moment in silence.
“Queer!” he muttered to himself at last, turning away. He had not guessed that things had gone as far as that, nor could he understand why Christian should be so blind. Deb’s secret was plain enough to him. She must have deliberately placed Crump as a barrier between herself and the man she loved. But again why? Or did the matter lie at the door of the inscrutable Lyndesay whom the Tree had taken? He stayed by the window, puzzling, as Christian turned restlessly back into the room.
“She was quite frank with me. She told me that if she married me it would not be for myself but for what I could give her, and she wouldn’t do it. Shesaid it wasn’t fair. I’m not blaming her—she was straight all through—but it’s not very encouraging to one’s personal estimate, is it? You see, I’ve not exactly had a surfeit of love. Nobody wanted me as a child, and if you’re not loved as a child, you find it hard to believe that anybody can love you afterwards. But we were good friends, and we were in sympathy. I had begun to think she might care, in spite of my background, even though she had taken Stanley——” He pulled himself up sharply, and then went on again—“You know, of course, I suppose? It can’t be a secret from you. There’s only one woman——” and poor Callander echoed the words under his breath, looking out at the calling spring day.
Why had she been at such definite pains to keep Christian in the dark? he wondered, his mind revolving ceaselessly round the same point. What held her back from all she needed most? Not fear of Mrs. Lyndesay or of County tongues, he was sure of that; nor, indeed, any shirking of the future. Whathadheld her? And at that moment Christian quite unconsciously gave him his answer.
“She said I did not love her,” he continued from the leather arm-chair into which he had dropped rather wearily, in spite of his boasted strength. He might almost have been speaking to himself, and Callander kept his back turned, guessing that nothing but the dependence of recent illness would have led him to unveil his mind so frankly.
“Perhaps if you’re not loved, you don’t learn tolove—no, that’s a rotten way of looking at it! It’s a poor sort of creature that can’t persuade a woman that he wants her. Yet I cared, and I couldn’t do it. Or perhaps I didn’t care enough—then.”
Callander made no answer, for he heard steps along the hall. He saw now what had happened; why Deb, who would have sold her soul for Crump, had yet flung it aside. The decision had evidently been final—Christian would not approach her again, nor would she ever attempt to bring him back. The way was clear for himself, if he chose to take it. He, at least, would have no difficulty in persuading a woman that he loved her! The older, harder, stronger man shrugged his shoulders mentally, and then reminded himself that Christian had scarcely had a chance, since Deb had wilfully misled him. Yet in this, as in all similar cases, it was up to each man to look to himself. He had only to keep his mouth shut, and Christian would never know what he knew—what Deb’s face had told him under the lantern on the old bridge. They were best apart, too, these fated Lyndesays, with their fanatical harbouring of terrible tradition and drear belief. It would be folly for them to marry, he told himself, and was instantly reproached by the memory of Christian’s frank eyes and the bright freshness of Deb’s presence. Well, well—granted, however grudgingly—should a man yet be forced to cut his own throat—to send another hot-footed to the woman he loved? Need a steward serve his master beyond thelimits of good business faith? Only a fool would do it, or an idealist like Roger Lyndesay, in whom feudal loyalty was little less than monomania.Hehad no forbears urging sacrifice, no passionate creed to draw his will; nothing but his own ethical standard and the tender filament of a woman’s happiness.
His unseeing eyes rested on the clean world outside, as he listened vaguely to the stammering agitation of a voice behind him, and Christian’s quiet, encouraging replies.
After all, it was not a question either of Christian or of himself, but of Deb. Curious that he should have taken so long to compass that—he who had sneered and shrugged at his master’s slackness in loving! He had looked at it from the man’s point of view; suddenly he saw it from the woman’s. At least both she and Christian must have their chance. It was an ironic fate that had thrust the bestowal of it into his hands—he had a sudden wild impulse to laugh aloud and beat at the heavy glass before him. It was too much to ask—a thousand times too much; yet the very passion that had created the situation clamoured to him to comply. With characteristic abruptness and decision he yielded, accepting, and turned his attention to the scene in progress.
Just inside the door Gaskarth stood, cap in hand, sponsor, it seemed, for the dogged, miserable figure by the library table. Harker had had a bad time since the wild March night that had ended so disastrously for Crump. The still figure of his adversaryhad sobered his intoxication of hate, and in spite of the threatening faces round him he had insisted upon stopping for the doctor’s verdict. The latter’s shaken head had roused the crowd to a frenzy from which Harker had had a very narrow escape, but Gaskarth had got him safely out at last, shoved him on his own bicycle and sent him home.
“Not because I care a foot of lead piping what happens to you,” he informed him frankly, “but because I don’t want Crump Wrestling Academy figuring in the police-news. You couldn’t see you were heaving him at that d—d pillar, and you felled him right enough, though more by good luck than good management, I’ll swear. I don’t like your game, and I mean to keep wide of you, but I’ll not have you lynched on Crump ground.Hewouldn’t have liked it. Me and Lakin’ Lyndesay—wefight fair!”
This was bad enough, but his reception at home was worse.
Harker had found himself up against a second feudal precept that seemed curiously opposed to the first, yet ran with it amicably enough. “Hate Crump, but leave it alone!” was the second article of the family creed. The old coachman’s inbred respect for “quality” suffered a rude shock at the news that his son had laid violent hands upon a Lyndesay. Worldly diplomacy, too, had its say, and very much to the point. This might mean the stopping of the pension and other disasters. Everybody knew—everybody, that was, but a daft lumphead—thatRishwald 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,thatit 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!”
All this struck Harker as distinctly unfair, which was scarcely surprising, and when, after a public reproof from Rishwald, he found himself shunned not only in his own and the opposing village but also at Witham market, the bitterness in his heart strengthened like a fed flame. He hadn’t been given the belt, either, though, to do him justice, that was not by any means his first grievance. Still, he had won it. Taken altogether, it was an unrewarding world.
With Christian’s first move towards recovery, however, had come a curt groom riding to the door with a shortly-delivered note, equally shortly received. The address was in Callander’s hand, but the faintly-pencilled words within were Christian’s own. Harker stared at them sullenly, fiercely-drawn brows shading miserable eyes.
“Your match,” said the straggling letters—“not to blame—going strong,”—the painful effort of them carrying to his hard wretchedness a frank kindliness that was like the touch of a tender hand upon aching eyes. He said nothing about the letter, but afterthat, he was found time and again at Crump for news, the signed “C. de L.” in his pocket giving him courage to face each hostile reception. And to-day he had gone boldly to Gaskarth, and begged him to procure him an interview. Lakin’ Lyndesay’s star pupil, adamant at first, had at last eyed him with gradually relaxing hauteur.
“Of course, if you’re wanting to do the right thing, it’s not formeto stand in your way!” he observed kindly. “I’m a sportsman myself. And of course I can get you in to see Mr. Christian, if I choose. Mr. Christian, he says—‘Geordie,’ says he, ‘you’re heartily welcome, nightorday!’ Happen you could creep in along behind. I hope this here mix-up will learn you not to go about getting yourself disliked in future.”
He had engineered the introduction quite successfully, and now Harker found himself stuttering unready, half-sullen apologies, desperately wishing himself out of it, and cursing Gaskarth for his well-meaning murmurs from the door.
“There’s no need for apology,” Christian stopped him quickly. “It was a fair enough fight, and I’ve no complaint to make. Of course you didn’t mean to throw me off the mat! Who but an idiot would think you did?” He looked round sharply at Callander. “Has anything been said to him? Has he been blamed?” and frowned at his agent’s lifted eyebrows. “If there is any show of feeling, you can tell the offenders I’ll deal with them myself. I’mnot dead or likely to be, and I’ll have no more ill-will grow out of this affair, so please let that be generally understood!”
“He has the belt, of course?” he added suddenly, and stared coldly as Callander shrugged his shoulders, and Gaskarth, red to the roots of his hair, glared at the carpet. “No? I’ll have something to say to the committee about this! If it was forgotten on the night, it should have been sent to him later. He won it, of course. Our match was merely an exhibition. You must have known what my wishes would be; you should have seen they were carried out. Whereisthe belt, by the way?”
“Here, I believe,” Callander answered gruffly, opening a cupboard and showing the prize within. The eternal Lyndesay revulsion had left him staggered, as usual. This was not by any means the doubting boy he had so casually despised. “Some of the committee turned up with it, next day. Might have been a snake by the way they handled it! They wouldn’t hear of anything being done until you could deal with the matter yourself.”
“The apology is undoubtedly owed toyou.” Christian addressed the wrestler, standing up, but when he would have handed him the belt, Harker shook his head again as he had shaken it before.
“I want naught with it!” he said ungraciously, yet with an undertone that was almost pleading, and his sponsor in the background went crimson a second time and drew circles with his boot-toe.
“You’ve got to take it whether you want it or not!” Christian said decidedly. “It’s your property, and I’ll be hanged if I’ll have it on the premises! And see here, my man, there’s something else that’s been weighing on my mind all the time I was ill. We didn’t finish that round in the orthodox manner. Let’s put it right, now!”
He held out his hand, and Harker, after a moment’s hesitation, sent his own to meet it, his brain in a whirl. There must be something hopelessly wrong with the universe if he could feel himself deliriously honoured by a handshake from Lyndesay of Crump!
“I like that hold better than another of yours I’ve tried!” Christian added cheerfully but with meaning, and Harker dropped his head as Gaskarth dragged him out.
“An’ serve you darned well right!” he observed pleasantly, drawing a breath of relief as they left the house. “Nearly wore me to chewed string, that you did, sliding down me like a bloomin’ water-chute! It’s a rotten game to be always slipping holds—water-chutin’ the other chap into a wax! I don’t approve of your style no more than I like your pretty way of taking prizes, but I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You come down now and again of an evening for a bit of a friendly tussle, an’ happen I’ll learn you better ways!”
Callander shut the door after the men and strode back into the room.
“I’m sorry about the belt!” he said abruptly.
“Of course the fellow ought to have had it, but at the time we felt more like using it to him than handing it over with a smile. Still, as you say, I should have known your wishes. I am here to know them.” Christian gave him a friendly nod of understanding, and he shut his teeth hard, setting his will at the last fence with a desperate lift. Then—“You must go to her!” he almost shot at him.
Christian stared for a moment, his mind travelling backward; then shook his head.
“I have no right.”
“You have the best right of all. 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 knowyetwhy 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! And it certainly isn’t the trappings of riches, your servants and your forty bedrooms and your oak staircases and all the rest of it. It’s every blade of grass springing upon Crump land; it’s every furrow turned in Crump soil; every tree that draws life from it, andevery sunset painted on its woods. She’s not the last of the branch for nothing, and above all, it’s certainly not for nothing that she’s Roger Lyndesay’s child. You’ll wonder how I know. Well, she didn’t tell me—not consciously; but Idoknow, just as I know she loves you, though it’s needless to say she never told methat. She knows best why she denied it to you—that’s no business of mine. Anyhow, it’s true, and you can take my word for it. Anybody but a morbid, star-gazing Lyndesay would have guessed it for himself!”
He stopped as abruptly as he had begun, picking up a bottle from the mantelpiece, and turning to the door. “I’ll drop this as I pass,” he went on, in his normal tone, and when Christian protested that a servant could take it, putting out a hand to the bell, he checked him brusquely.
“Iam your servant!” the older man answered, with a kind of grim affection, and went out, slipping the bottle into his pocket.
Roger Lyndesay was sitting in the porch, serenely content in the tranquil spring evening, which was yet full of crying life, from the lambs calling behind the house to the birds in the new green wonder of the trees. Deb came behind him, and had to put her hand on his shoulder before he turned his eyes from the fresh spring garment of the park.
“We did our best, didn’t we, Deb?” he asked, looking up at her with a kind of mystic exaltation.“We gave it all we could. It hasn’t suffered in our charge, has it?”
He was following out some silent train of thought, but she did not need to ask what he meant. The pronoun set her heart beating. For once she was included; for once he saw her definitely linked to the long Kilne chain.
“Oh, yes, we’ve done our best!” she answered, with a thrill in her voice. “We’ve put it first, always. We have given it—ourselves. And it will never really forget, whoever may come after us!”
She stepped outside, and for a moment stood looking at the splendid old man, framed like a delicate pastel by the clematised porch. Of those dearest to us we have always one picture readiest to our hearts, and this was to be her memory of him, returning all her life in times of stress, with its atmosphere of fine achievement come to its evening peace.
Turning at last, a sudden yearning took her towards the park. She began to walk quickly, without knowing why, climbing the shoulder of the hill, and when Nettie hailed her unexpectedly across the turf, she had a curious feeling of having been checked on a definite errand. But Nettie evidently had need of her, and she allowed herself to be drawn across to the avenue and up towards Dockerneuk.
“I know you’re in one of your ‘back to the land’ moods,” Mrs. Slinker said apologetically. “I could tell that by the way you were walking. But do spare yourself to me just for half an hour. There issomething I must do, and I’m not brave enough to do it alone.”
In spite of her new happiness there was still about Slinker’s wife a touch of the fear that had surprised Christian on Christmas Eve. The late tragedy had left a sinister shadow upon her well-balanced mind and splendidly sane outlook. The Lyndesay atmosphere had caught even Nettie Stone in the mesh of its creeping dread. The old horror was upon her, and she could not fight it. Not yet—not evenyethad she eluded Crump.
“It holds me!” she said passionately, as they went up. “Twice I’ve escaped from it, and twice it has brought me back. It can’t bring me a third time, can it? Can it, Deb? But I’m afraid! Just because I’m happy, I’m afraid. I remember scoffing at Christian’s morbid fancies, but now I’m a hundred times worse myself. They’re his inheritance, though,—and yours. You’re entitled to your imaginings, but a horse-dealer’s daughter has no business to be jabbering about the clutch of ghosts. They’re dead—I know they’re dead!—and yet I feel that both Stanley and his mother would get between me and my happiness if they could!”
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 againstDeb 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.
Deborah took the opportunity to wish him happiness, and the reserved Northerner thanked her shyly, sending his quiet eyes back to his fields, with the far-off gaze of those who look abroad from dawn till eve.
“It’s grand to have Mr. Christian about again!” he observed presently, changing the subject as soon as courtesy allowed. “He’s a bit over-white and slender, yet, but he’ll mend of that. You’ve seen him, of course, Miss Deborah?”—and all his native politeness could not completely conceal his surprise when Deb shook her head.
“His own people haven’t had much chance of seeing him,” Nettie put in quickly, coming to the rescue. “Half the County has been sitting on the doorstep for weeks, and of course the people who knew him least were the ones who came oftenest. Parker and I have had a fearful time chasing the old worries off the premises. Lots of them brought things to eat—Heaven alone knows why! Parker was simply raving, but the under-servants enjoyed them frightfully. Other people left tracts, and the Bracewells brought everything you could think of, from primroses to puzzles—horrid little brain-stretchers that made Christian’s head wiggle themoment he saw them. The Whyterigg car has been over, every day——” She caught Anthony’s smiling, gently-chiding gaze, and dropped her own, but went on firmly. “Mr. Rishwald’s dreadfully upset about the whole affair—wrote Christian yards on the matter. He sent him an old silver porringer for his beef-tea, and—do you know?”—she looked laughingly at Deb—“it turned out to have the Crump crest on it!”
She drew the girl out of the yard with a gay nod to her lover, but in the lane she was silent until they stopped at the gate of the old Norman church.
“Do you mind coming in?” she asked. “This is where I was making for. I’ll tell you why, inside.”
“Anthony is having the banns put up on Sunday,” she announced abruptly, when they stood in the dimness of the ancient church, looking up, past the stone pillars and the gloom of the screen, to the Dutch lamps swinging before carved mullion and mellow glass. “I can’t stay on at Crump, now that Christian is all right again, and Heaven knows I’m glad enough to go but for him! But there’s a step to be crossed before I get to Dockerneuk, and oh, Deb, I’m afraid to put out my foot!”
She drew her up the aisle and stopped, pointing down; and under her finger Stanley’s name rose to them from the stone slab before the chancel-steps. Over the family vault where Slinkin’ Lyndesay lay buried, Nettie his widow would have to pass to her joy.
“I wanted to be married in a registry-office,” she went on—“another church—anywhere—but Anthony’s mother has set her heart on being present, and she’s too infirm to go far. How can I refuse anything to his mother? But I’m frightened—fool that I am!—frightened that Slinker will rise up and come between us, even at the last! Oh, Deb, if I should never get to Anthony, after all!”
She sank into a seat, covering her face with her hands, but Deb stayed in her place, looking down quietly at the freshly-lettered stone. Here, in the stillness of the sanctuary, she found again the Stanley whom she, and she alone, had known, and for whose sake she had been justified in her own eyes, and on account of whose memory she had never spoken a single bitter word against the man who had so basely deceived her. Only in his own sinister little room did the evil side of him, somehow kept fiendishly alive by his tortured mother, show her to herself as something for ever degraded and unclean. But, standing beside his grave, the balance of things swung true again; she saw her act as dangerous indeed, but not ignoble, misjudged, perhaps, but never sordid, and she took back her self-respect as a gift from the Altar.
Through her abstraction she heard Nettie’s voice, tense and low, like that of one upon whom light has flashed, white and blinding.
“Perhaps it is because I wronged him that I am afraid! I never realised it before, or perhaps I nevercared. I married him rashly, I left him heedlessly, and the vows I made are clamouring for their unpaid toll. Looking back, it seems as if all this trouble and tragedy should be laid at my door. If I had taken up my burden, you at least would have been saved your share. I might have saved his mother—she had some curious feeling for me; and—who knows?—I might have saved Stanley, too!”
But Deb, in that moment of readjustment, without jealousy and without resentment, knew that Stanley would never have touched the highest for any but herself.
“I can’t atone—it isn’t possible. Anthony said there was never any going back in this world, and I thought I had proved him wrong, but every day I see more clearly what he meant. There’s no getting away from the past. All my life Slinker will stand between me and the man I love!”
She rose and slipped her arm through Deborah’s.
“It’s just a year since he died—had you remembered? I came here to ask him to forgive me, to see if he would let me off, but he still hates me—he’ll never let me go. If we could lift the stone, we should see him smiling, so sure of himself and of his power—smiling—smiling—— Deb, I’m not mad, am I? Come home, now, will you, dear? It isn’t any use.”
They turned slowly up through the Crump chapel to the side door, and Deb laid her fingers in passing on the hacked armour of a couple of warriors claspedin each other’s arms. Nettie looked at her inquiringly, and they paused beside the mutilated figures clinging so closely in the hour of death.
“They were Lyndesay brothers,” Deb explained, “and one slew the other for a cup of water when they were lying wounded on some field of battle. But when he saw what he had done, his madness left him, and he would not touch the drink. Instead, he placed the cup on the dead man’s breast, and lay looking at it through long hours until he died. And for many a year after, if any one had wronged a Lyndesay, he placed a cup of water, all unknown, upon his grave, and so the dead was appeased. Of course, the custom vanished centuries ago. I read about it in one of Father’s old books.”
She stopped, puzzled, for Nettie was gazing at her with a curiously-arrested look, as men stare when the hand of a redeeming angel is stretched to them from the skies. Yet she said nothing; only, after a pause, smiled, and went out into the sun.
But before night fell the verger, wondering, found an ancient symbol on the worn slab at the chancel-steps, and for many a year after a cup of cold water cried on Slinkin’ Lyndesay’s mercy. And Anthony Dixon’s wife found peace.
Released by the top lodge, Deb left the road and sped quickly across the turf to the top of the park, like a light-footed thing of the woods homeward boundfor its lair. She did not ask herself why or where she was going, only harried, hurried, hearing her heart beating and the birds calling, and the thin, quickening cry of the lambs on every side. Below, to her left, the stately phalanx of the trees descended to the Hall, where the soft gray smoke lifted its delicate pillars in the still, drawing evening, like folded cobwebs against the towering woods behind. In front, over the dropping parkland and the wide sands, the tranquil opal sky melted into the gauze-blue hills. To the right and far beneath, the heavily-shaded river ringed Cappelside in its shallow bed; and in the hollow by the buckhouse the deer lay close.
Crossing the ridge she dived into the plantation, clinging to the steep face of the slope, and there, leaning against a tree, she found Christian—on Cappelside.
He was looking towards her as she came down, standing with his back against the tree and his head lifted, almost as if he expected her, and she went straight to him without any pause of hesitation and surprise, like one walking in a dream.
“Did you want me?” she asked simply, and Christian answered “Yes!” just as simply, like children crying to and answering each other, and a change he did not understand came over her face, as if some hidden glory had set its lamp to her eyes and caught her whole soul in a quiver of light. She turned from him swiftly and dropped on the ground, hiding her face on her knees.
Puzzled and slightly alarmed, he stepped to her side and bent over her with an anxious question, and she shook her head without raising it; then threw out her arms and looked up at him with the same brilliant eyes.
“I’ll tell you presently—presently!” she said. “Oh, Christian, you’ve freed me—given me my right to my dream. All my life I thought I was stealing, and it was mine all the time! It’s mine now as long as I live.”
She gave a low laugh of pure ecstasy, and then, meeting his bewildered glance, came back to the reality of things and to the memory of all that had occurred since they had last met. The climb up the park had wearied him and set violet shadows beneath his eyes, tired lines in his thin face. His hands were thin, too, she noticed, pallid with the whiteness of hands that have laid helpless on a counterpane, and in his eyes was still the patient, inward look that comes with dangerous illness. And beyond all that there was an air of desolation strange in so young a man—almost the look of one bowing a beaten head to Fate. Her victorious gladness struck against it, wondering, and with a heart charged to the brim with pity, she stretched out both her hands.
“Oh, how ill you look!” she exclaimed. “How terribly ill and miserable and lonely! What can I do to help you, my dear, my poor dear?”
And Christian, with her face blurred to his eyes, conscious only of his desperate need of her and of herstrength, clung to her tender hands and dropped beside her, hiding his face on her lap.
“Debbie, why did you send me away?” he asked, from his shelter. “Couldn’t you feel that I was yours, even if I didn’t know it myself? You’re all I’ve got in the world, and all I want. You mustn’t send me away again!”
“I’ll keep you till the stars fall!” she answered almost fiercely, closing her arms round him. “I sent you away because I was afraid—afraid for your happiness. I lied to you, but I loved you all the time. I lied to you because I loved you, oh, blind and dearest heart!”
She stooped and laid her lips to his hair, and out of the spring magic every voice cried to her that she had ever loved; the chattering water-voice that has the note of rung silver in it; the liquid gold of the thrush, the diamond-clear whistle of the blackbird; and always the lamb’s appeal and the mother’s anxious answer. The mighty dignity of the ancient trees, foiled by the eternal freshness of springing grass, the smell of the earth, the press of the turf—all that stood for the heritage of Crump reaching forward and so far behind, fused for the moment in the young, pathetic figure at her feet, summoned her soul from the hidden covert where it had crouched so long, afraid; and Christian, looking at her at last with clear eyes, knew that he saw her for the first time.
“Tell me what it all means,” he said, “why youcame to-night—your real self behind the mask—Stanley—everything!”
“It reaches back to the beginning of things,” she answered, smiling. “Won’t it tire you?”—but when he shook his head and sat up, drawing her against his shoulder, she opened her heart with the passionate relief that only those know who have carried locked lips through hungering years.
“Do you remember what a queer little child I was, Christian? Lots of people disapproved of me, and some kind souls thought I was what Brathay would call ‘nickt i’ the head.’ I was allowed to do pretty much what I liked after my mother died, and I spent most of my time wandering about the estate, until I knew every corner of it as well as Kilne itself. I wouldn’t take any notice of the ‘quality’—shut my mouth tight when they spoke to me, and looked as though they were trying to steal me; but anybody that worked on the land I took to my heart on the spot. All the ploughmen were my friends, the hedgers and ditchers, the beaters and beckwatchers, down to the poachers! Even the fearsomeness of keepers I tamed, and they let me go where I chose—they made me as free of the woods as any other wild fledgeling. And old Brathay—ask him sometime what we were to each other in those days—the queer little child and the big huntsman! There was Bowness, too, a wild youngster kicked out of Whyterigg, whom my father shaped into the finest keeper on Crump. And Moorhouse and Fleming—oh, and heaps more—theywere my education! Do you wonder that I lived and breathed Crump, with such surroundings, Father talking of nothing else, and all the old books to my hand? I was bred to it, too.” She gave the same ecstatic laugh. “I’m not afraid to say it, now. You’ve given me the right!
“It didn’t mean anything special to me at first. It was just part of me, that was all. And then, one day, as all the Lyndesays do, I found my dream. I had been reading the list of Crump stewards, saying the names aloud until I reached my father’s, and it came to me suddenly that this splendid inheritance of service was mine—the birthright of me, Deborah Lyndesay; and I ran out into the park and flung myself on the grass, kissing it, and saying over and over again—‘I, too, will serve Crump! I, too! I, too!’ sobbing for sheer joy. And then two workmen passed up the path to the Hall.”
She paused a moment, and by the restraint in her tone when she went on he guessed that the childish tragedy was as new and terrible to her to-day.
“My father was riding below them on the road, and they touched their hats as he went by. One of them stopped to look after him. ‘The last of the Kilne Lyndesays!’ I heard him say. ‘The best and the finest—and the last. It’s a sad pity!’
“‘There’s a lass, though, isn’t there?’ said the other, and the first man laughed as though he had made a joke.
“‘Ay, and what use of that?’ he said scathingly.‘What can a lass do for Crump? As far as that goes, Roger Lyndesay might as well have neither chick nor child. Nay, he’s the last, worse luck! The lass doesn’t count.’
“Oh, Christian, it’s a long fall from Heaven! I’m broken and wounded to this day. My dream shattered in my hands. I was my ancestors’ child, but I could not follow in their steps. I had all the love, all the courage, even the knowledge, but—I was a girl. I could not put my hand to the plough and drive a single foot in the Kilne furrow, though the heritage of desire was born in me as fiercely alive as in any son. Do people never think that a girl may feel these things, too—suffer and burn to follow in her fathers’ steps and make herself one with them in her quota of good work? I never spoke of it. Nobody has ever known—not even my father; but the longing of it drove back upon me, eating the soul out of me. Even when I was away the thought of Crump was a more vivid thing to me than the world around me; and when I came back it was like a resurrection—the pain of resurrection, too! Oh, Christian—that first year—— Each day I lived as a man before execution, knowing that one of them would bring my real life to an end.
“Then at last came—the way out. Stanley. It was the woman’s only way out. You’ll try to understand, Christian, won’t you—won’t you? I knew what he was—it was impossible to live under Crump’s very shadow and not know—but beyondand above all that he was something to me that he couldn’t possibly be to anybody else. To begin with, he was Lyndesay of Crump, and I, Roger Lyndesay’s daughter. With us lay the right to give him anything we chose, our last coin to help him, our sword-hand to save him—even ourselves. It’s a right that can only be bought by perfect service—that’s why so few people know what it means. Butweknow. Then, Stanley—needed me. Through me he reached out to the dream, and I could feel him struggling. That is why I’ve never blamed him, even in my thoughts. Because I loved Crump so much, I filled a want in him that was sometimes hungry and cried; and after a while he could not let me go. He—needed me.”
“As I need you!” Christian’s voice answered her, low and passionate. For the first time, a thrill of sympathy vitalised the bond between his brother and himself.
“The letter of your mother’s accusation was true; never the spirit. I would have married Stanley for Crump—for the soil, the soul of Crump—forthis!” She struck her hand passionately on the turf. “Just as I would have married you, dear heart, if I had dared to risk you one single hour of remorse!”
He turned her face and looked into her eyes.
“Kilne does not lapse,” he said. “It comes home, that is all. The chain ends at Crump where it began—you bring it there. Doesn’t that make you ‘count’?”
“Oh, yes, I count at last!” she answered, withthe same vivid content. “Your way and my way, I count in both. Didn’t you know what I meant when I found you? It is said of Crump stewards that they can be drawn to their masters by a thought. You wanted me, and I came at once. Somebody stopped me on the way, and I chafed and ached until they let me go. I didn’t know why I was coming or what drew me, but you called me and I came. To-day I stand in my fathers’ place, and put my hands between yours, and my homage with them. All those gone before know me and own my claim. I, too, can serve. I, too, belong to Crump at last!”
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.