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  “Come across to my wife and have a cup of tea. Buried in these dam holes a fellow gets such a boor. Do come — my little wife is lonely — come just to see her.”

  My mother smiled and thanked him. We turned to go. My mother hesitated in her walk; on the threshold of the room she glanced round at the bed, but she went on.

  Outside, in the fresh air of the fading afternoon, I could not believe it was true. It was not true, that sad, colourless face with grey beard, wavering in the yellow candle-light. It was a lie — that wooden bedstead, that deaf woman, they were fading phrases of the untruth. That yellow blaze of little sunflowers was true, and the shadow from the sun-dial on the warm old almshouses — that was real. The heavy afternoon sunlight came round us warm and reviving; we shivered, and the untruth went out of our veins, and we were no longer chilled.

  The doctor’s house stood sweetly among the beech trees, and at the iron fence in front of the little lawn a woman was talking to a beautiful Jersey cow that pushed its dark nose through the fence from the field beyond. She was a little, dark woman with vivid colouring; she rubbed the nose of the delicate animal, peeped right into the dark eyes, and talked in a lovable Scottish speech; talked as a mother talks softly to her child. When she turned round in surprise to greet us there was still the softness of a rich affection in her eyes. She gave us tea, and scones, and apple jelly, and all the time we listened with delight to her voice, which was musical as bees humming in the lime trees. Though she said nothing significant, we listened to her attentively.

  Her husband was merry and kind. She glanced at him with quick glances of apprehension, and her eyes avoided him. He, in his merry, frank way, chaffed her, and praised her extravagantly, and teased her again. Then he became a trifle uneasy. I think she was afraid he had been drinking; I think she was shaken with horror when she found him tipsy, and bewildered and terrified when she saw him drunk. They had no children. I noticed he ceased to joke when she became a little constrained. He glanced at her often, and looked somewhat pitiful when she avoided his looks, and he grew uneasy, and I could see he wanted to go away.

  “I had better go with you to see the vicar, then,” he said to me, and we left the room, whose windows looked south, over the meadows, the room where dainty little water-colours, and beautiful bits of embroidery, and empty flower-vases, and two dirty novels from the town library, and the closed piano, and the odd cups, and the chipped spout of the teapot causing stains on the cloth — all told one story.

  We went to the joiner’s and ordered the coffin, and the doctor had a glass of whisky on it; the graveyard fees were paid, and the doctor sealed the engagement with a drop of brandy; the vicar’s port completed the doctor’s joviality, and we went home.

  This time the disquiet in the little woman’s dark eyes could not dispel the doctor’s merriment. He rattled away, and she nervously twisted her wedding-ring. He insisted on driving us to the station, in spite of our alarm.

  “But you will be quite safe with him,” said his wife, in her caressing Highland speech. When she shook hands at parting I noticed the hardness of the little palm; — and I have always hated an old, black alpaca dress.

  It is such a long way home from the station at Eberwich. We rode part way in the bus; then we walked. It is a very Hong way for my mother, when her steps are heavy with trouble.

  Rebecca was out by the rhododendrons looking for us. She hurried to us all solicitous, and asked Mother if she had had tea.

  “But you’ll do with another cup,” she said, and ran back into the house.

  She came into the dining-room to take my mother’s bonnet and coat. She wanted us to talk; she was distressed on my mother’s behalf; she noticed the blackness that lay under her eyes, and she fidgeted about, unwilling to ask anything, yet uneasy and anxious to know.

  “Lettie has been home,” she said.

  “And gone back again?” asked Mother.

  “She only came to change her dress. She put the green poplin on. She wondered where you’d gone.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I said you’d just gone out a bit. She said she was glad. She was as lively as a squirrel.”

  Rebecca looked wistfully at my mother. At length the latter said:

  “He’s dead, Rebecca. I have seen him.”

  “Now thank God for that — no more need to worry over him.”

  “Well! — He died all alone, Rebecca — all alone.”

  “He died as you’ve lived,” said Becky with some asperity. “But I’ve had the children, I’ve had the children — we won’t tell Lettie, Rebecca.”

  “No ‘m.” Rebecca left the room.

  “You and Lettie will have the money,” said mother to me. There was a sum of four thousand pounds or so. It was left to my mother; or, in default to Lettie and me.”

  “Well, Mother — if it’s ours, it’s yours.”

  There was silence for some minutes, then she said, “You might have had a father — ”

  “We’re thankful we hadn’t, Mother. You spared us that.”

  “But how can you tell?” said my mother.

  “I can,” I replied. “And I am thankful to you.”

  “If ever you feel scorn for one who is near you rising in your throat, try and be generous, my lad.”

  “Well — ” said I.

  “Yes,” she replied, “we’ll say no more. Sometime you must tell Lettie — you tell her.”

  I did tell her, a week or so afterwards.

  “Who knows?” she asked, her face hardening.

  “Mother, Becky, and ourselves.”

  “Nobody else?”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s a good thing he is out of the way if he was such a nuisance to Mother. Where is she?”

  “Upstairs.”

  Lettie ran to her.

  CHAPTER V

  THE SCENT OF BLOOD

  The death of the man who was our father changed our lives. It was not that we suffered a great grief; the chief trouble was the unanswered crying of failure. But we were changed in our feelings and in our relations; there was a new consciousness, a new carefulness.

  We had lived between the woods and the water all our lives, Lettie and I, and she had sought the bright notes in everything. She seemed to hear the water laughing, and the leaves tittering and giggling like young girls; the aspen fluttered like the draperies of a flirt, and the sound of the wood-pigeons was almost foolish in its sentimentality.

  Lately, however, she had noticed again the cruel, pitiful crying of a hedgehog caught in a gin, and she had noticed the traps for the fierce little murderers, traps walled in with a small fence of fir, and baited with the guts of a killed rabbit.

  On an afternoon a short time after our visit to Cossethay, Lettie sat in the window seat. The sun clung to her hair, and kissed her with passionate splashes of colour brought from the vermilion, dying creeper outside. The sun loved Lettie, and was loath to leave her. She looked out over Nethermere to Highclose, vague in the September mist. Had it not been for the scarlet light on her face, I should have thought her look was sad and serious. She nestled up to the window, and leaned her head against the wooden shaft. Gradually she drooped into sleep. Then she became wonderfully childish again — it was the girl of seventeen sleeping there, with her full pouting lips slightly apart, and the breath coming lightly. I felt the old feeling of responsibility; I must protect her, and take care of her.

  There was a crunch of the gravel. It was Leslie coming. He lifted his hat to her, thinking she was looking. He had that fine, lithe physique, suggestive of much animal vigour; his person was exceedingly attractive; one watched him move about, and felt pleasure. His face was less pleasing than his person. He was not handsome; his eyebrows were too light, his nose was large and ugly, and his forehead, though high and fair, was without dignity. But he had a frank, good-natured expression, and a fine, wholesome laugh.

  He wondered why she did not move. As he came nearer he saw. Then he winked
at me and came in. He tiptoed across the room to look at her. The sweet carelessness of her attitude, the appealing, half-pitiful girlishness of her face touched his responsive heart, and he leaned forward and kissed her cheek where already was a crimson stain of sunshine.

  She roused half out of her sleep with a little, petulant “Oh!” as an awkward child. He sat down behind her, and gently drew her head against him, looking down at her with a tender, soothing smile. I thought she was going to fall asleep thus. But her eyelids quivered, and her eyes beneath them flickered into consciousness.

  “Leslie! — oh! — Let me go!” she exclaimed, pushing him away. He loosed her, and rose, looking at her reproachfully. She shook her dress, and went quickly to the mirror to arrange her hair.

  “You are mean!” she exclaimed, looking very flushed, vexed, and dishevelled.

  He laughed indulgently, saying, “You shouldn’t go to sleep then and look so pretty. Who could help?”

  “It is not nice!” she said, frowning with irritation.

  “We are not ‘nice’ — are we? I thought we were proud of our unconventionality. Why shouldn’t I kiss you?”

  “Because it is a question of me, not of you alone.”

  “Dear me, you are in a way!”

  “Mother is coming.”

  “Is she? You had better tell her.”

  Mother was very fond of Leslie.

  “Well, sir,” she said, “why are you frowning?”

  He broke into a laugh.

  “Lettie is scolding me for kissing her when she was playing ‘Sleeping Beauty’.”

  “The conceit of the boy, to play Prince!” said my mother. “Oh, but it appears I was sadly out of character,” he said ruefully.

  Lettie laughed and forgave him.

  “Well,” he said, looking at her and smiling, “I came to ask you to go out.”

  “It is a lovely afternoon,” said Mother.

  She glanced at him, and said:

  “I feel dreadfully lazy.”

  “Never mind!” he replied, “you’ll wake up. Go and put your hat on.”

  He sounded impatient. She looked at him.

  He seemed to be smiling peculiarly.

  She lowered her eyes and went out of the room.

  “She’ll come all right,” he said to himself, and to me. “She likes to play you on a string.”

  She must have heard him. When she came in again, drawing on her gloves, she said quietly:

  “You come as well, Pat.”

  He swung round and stared at her in angry amazement.

  “I had rather stay and finish this sketch,” I said, feeling uncomfortable.

  “No, but do come, there’s a dear.” She took the brush from my hand, and drew me from my chair. The blood flushed into his cheeks. He went quietly into the hall and brought my cap.

  “All right!” he said angrily. “Women like to fancy themselves Napoleons.”

  “They do, dear Iron Duke, they do,” she mocked.

  “Yet, there’s a Waterloo in all their histories,” he said, since she had supplied him with the idea.

  “Say Peterloo, my general, say Peterloo.”

  “Ay, Peterloo,” he replied, with a splendid curl of the lip — ”Easy conquests!”

  “‘He came, he saw, he conquered,’“ Lettie recited.

  “Are you coming?” he said, getting more angry.

  “When you bid me,” she replied, taking my arm.

  We went through the wood, and through the dishevelled border-land to the high road, through the border-land that should have been park-like, but which was shaggy with loose grass and yellow mole-hills, ragged with gorse and bramble and briar, with wandering old thorn trees, and a queer clump of Scotch firs.

  On the highway the leaves were falling, and they chattered under our steps. The water was mild and blue, and the corn stood drowsily in “stook”.

  We climbed the hill behind Highclose, and walked on along the upland, looking across towards the hills of arid Derbyshire, and seeing them not, because it was autumn. We came in sight of the head-stocks of the pit at Selsby, and of the ugly village standing blank and naked on the brow of the hill.

  Lettie was in very high spirits. She laughed and joked continually. She picked bunches of hips and stuck them in her dress. Having got a thorn in her finger from a spray of blackberries, she went to Leslie to have it squeezed out. We were all quite gay as we turned off the high road and went along the bridle path, with the woods on our right, the high Strelley hills shutting in our small valley in front, and the fields and the common to the left. About half-way down the lane we heard the slurr of the scythe-stone on the scythe. Lettie went to the hedge to see. It was George mowing the oats on the steep hillside where the machine could not go. His father was tying up the corn into sheaves.

  Straightening his back, Mr Saxton saw us, and called to us to come and help. We pushed through a gap in the hedge and went up to him.

  “Now then,” said the father to me, “take that coat off,” and to Lettie, “Have you brought us a drink? No; — come, that sounds bad! Going a walk I guess. You see what it is to get fat,” and he pulled a wry face as he bent over to tie the corn. He was a man beautifully ruddy and burly, in the prime of life.

  “Show me, I’ll do some,” said Lettie.

  “Nay,” he answered gently, “it would scratch your wrists and break your stays. Hark at my hands” — he rubbed them together — ”like sandpaper!”

  George had his back to us, and had not noticed us. He continued to mow. Leslie watched him.

  “That’s a fine movement!” he exclaimed.

  “Yes,” replied the father, rising very red in the face from the tying, “and our George enjoys a bit o’ mowing. It puts you in fine condition when you get over the first stiffness.”

  We moved across to the standing corn. The sun being mild, George had thrown off his hat, and his black hair was moist and twisted into confused half-curls. Firmly planted, he swung with a beautiful rhythm from the waist. On the hip of his belted breeches hung the scythe-stone; his shirt, faded almost white, was torn just above the belt, and showed the muscles of his back playing like lights upon the white sand of a brook. There was something exceedingly attractive in the rhythmic body.

  I spoke to him, and he turned round. He looked straight at Lettie with a flashing, betraying smile. He was remarkably handsome. He tried to say some words of greeting, then he bent down and gathered an armful of corn, and deliberately bound it up.

  Like him, Lettie had found nothing to say. Leslie, however, remarked:

  “I should think mowing is a nice exercise.”

  “It is,” he replied, and continued, as Leslie picked up the scythe, “but it will make you sweat, and your hands will be sore.”

  Leslie tossed his head a little, threw off his coat, and said briefly:

  “How do you do it?” Without waiting for a reply he proceeded. George said nothing, but turned to Lettie.

  “You are picturesque,” she said, a trifle awkwardly, “quite fit for an Idyll.”

  “And you?” he said.

  She shrugged her shoulders, laughed, and turned to pick up a scarlet pimpernel.

  “How do you bind the corn?” she asked.

  He took some long straws, cleaned them, and showed her the way to hold them. Instead of attending, she looked at his hands, big, hard, inflamed by the snaith of the scythe.

  “I don’t think I could do it,” she said.

  “No,” he replied quietly, and watched Leslie mowing. The latter who was wonderfully ready at everything, was doing fairly well, but he had not the invincible sweep of the other, nor did he make his same crisp crunching music.

  “I bet he’ll sweat,” said George.

  “Don’t you?” she replied.

  “A bit — but I’m not dressed up.”

  “Do you know,” she said suddenly, “your arms tempt me to touch them. They are such a fine brown colour, and they look so hard.”

  He held o
ut one arm to her. She hesitated, then she swiftly put her finger-tips on the smooth brown muscle, and drew them along. Quickly she hid her hand into the folds of her skirt, blushing.

  He laughed a low, quiet laugh, at once pleasant and startling to hear.

  “I wish I could work here,” she said, looking away at the standing corn, and the dim blue woods. He followed her look, and laughed quietly, with indulgent resignation.

  “I do!” she said emphatically.

  “You feel so fine,” he said, pushing his hand through his open shirt-front, and gently rubbing the muscles of his side. “It’s a pleasure to work or to stand still. It’s a pleasure to yourself — your own physique.”

  She looked at him, full at his physical beauty, as if he were some great firm bud of life.

  Leslie came up, wiping his brow.

  “Jove,” said he, “I do perspire.”

  George picked up his coat and helped him into it, saying: “You may take a chill.”

  “It’s a jolly nice form of exercise,” said he.

  George, who had been feeling one finger-tip, now took out his pen-knife and proceeded to dig a thorn from his hand. “What a hide you must have,” said Leslie.

  Lettie said nothing, but she recoiled slightly.

  The father, glad of an excuse to straighten his back and to chat, came to us.

  “You’d soon had enough,” he said, laughing to Leslie.

  George startled us with a sudden, “Holloa.” We turned, and saw a rabbit, which had burst from the corn, go coursing through the hedge, dodging and bounding the sheaves. The standing corn was a patch along the hill-side some fifty paces in length, and ten or so in width.

  “I didn’t think there’d have been any in,” said the father, picking up a short rake, and going to the low wall of the corn. We all followed.

  “Watch!” said the father, “if you see the heads of the corn shake!”

  We prowled round the patch of corn.

  “Hold! Look out!” shouted the father excitedly, and immediately after a rabbit broke from the cover.

  “Ay — Ay — Ay,” was the shout, “turn him — turn him!” We set off full pelt. The bewildered little brute, scared by Leslie’s wild running and crying, turned from its course, and dodged across the hill, threading its terrified course through the maze of lying sheaves, spurting on in a painful zigzag, now bounding over an untied bundle of corn, now swerving from the sound of a shout. The little wretch was hard pressed; George rushed upon it. It darted into some fallen corn, but he had seen it, and had fallen on it. In an instant he was up again, and the little creature was dangling from his hand.