‘Crag,’ she said bitterly, ‘why did you tell me—tell us—’
‘Sorry, Pippa, let me be first. Because I have to show you something. It must have happened yesterday.’ He was drawing up the jeep now, sweeping her out and down to one of their few little gullies. She had never noticed this small scoop before, and she cried out in pleasure at its tiny saucer of water, and there in the middle of the water actually one pink lily, now past its prime, almost drooped down ... but it had bloomed.
‘Spring,’ said Crag proudly, ‘was yesterday. Now what did you want to say, Pippa? Pippa. Pippa—Oh, my little love ...’
For Pippa was crying, crying brokenly. It seemed bitterly unfair to her that this was the last offering for Davy. ‘You told me ... you told us ...’ Then abruptly her words were trailing off in a wonder instead of a resentment. Had Crag just said: ‘My little love’?
She looked up at him, looked extractingly. So he, too, had caught that glance between Dom and Rena, and now that he was out of the running, out of a lovely girl’s heart, he was trying for a second-best.
‘Don’t cry, tell me, Pippa,’ Crag was urging.
‘This isn’t spring,’ she answered, coming back to Davy, ‘only one withered flower. So Davy has had his last spring after all.’ She looked at him with accusation as though he had done it himself.
‘I’m sorry that it’s all we have to offer,’ he admitted humbly.
‘But you said it was the most spring in all the world.’
‘It was once ... five years ago,’ he recalled. ‘There were carpets of flowers, forests of grass. This place occasionally does miracles like that. Who knows, Pippa, there may be another bursting another year.’
‘You said there was the most spring—’ she repeated doggedly.
‘I also said “sometimes”,’ he sighed. As she still looked at him in anger, he went on, ‘If it’s not next year we’ll have to wait for the year after ... then the year after that. But while we’re waiting ... the three of us, Pippa ... the doctors will be finding something for Davy. Rena has told me what Glen Burt said ... what could come from this new breakthrough.’
‘But it has to be now, not then, otherwise—’
‘Don’t you believe that. I put a poultice on him, remember?’
‘Oh, don’t be foolish, Crag.’
‘Don’t you be, Pippa. The scrubber believed in that poultice, and I do, too. I really mean I believe in his belief, so we’ll keep him believing, and we’ll keep him waiting for spring. And we’ll keep this’ ... he plucked out the lily ... ‘just between us.’
‘But it takes more than that,’ she said dully, ‘it takes more than belief and a poultice.’
Then I have it for you. The F.D. has been looking Davy over regularly ... you didn’t know that, did you? The last time he did he said: “This boy is coming back to us so fast I can’t keep up.” ’
‘Oh, Crag, he didn’t say that. Doctors don’t.’
‘All right then, he said “Pulse ... temperature ... breathing ... metabolism.” He said the rest. After which he said “I’m amazed.” Yes, Pippa, that’s true.’
She stood dumbly, knowing she mustn’t believe it, though yearning to. Then she whispered, ‘Crag, it can’t—’
‘It has to last till spring. One spring. And I reckon Falling Star can keep on putting that back until the scrubber’s good and ready. Look what we’ve done this time.’ He threw the tired lily away.
She watched it flutter to the scoop of water, float there.
‘Did the F.D. really say—’
‘What a disbeliever you are! Do you want to ring him for yourself? You shouldn’t need to, Pippa, you have your own two eyes.’
Yes, she had her eyes, and they had seen Davy s eyes, brighter and bluer than they had ever been. She had seen his little body, browner, firmer, stronger. She had seen—
But could—could Davy wait?
Crag’s arms were around her ... she had not noticed them slip there ... and he whispered, reading her as he always did: ‘He’ll wait, wife.’
She stiffened in the arms at that, remembering the ‘second-best’, and she said bleakly, ‘I have to talk to you about that.’
‘I have to talk to you about it myself, Mrs. Crag. Do you remember when we first started this fool arrangement—’ Fool arrangement. So he was going to ask for a release.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Do you remember the terms we made and how they could be broken?’
‘Yes,’ she said again.
‘I made no firm promise ... I left that much open ... but I also said that until you said... ’ He looked at her and waited, but she did not speak.
After he had waited for a long while and she still did not speak he sighed, ‘Just as well I left that loophole, Pippa, because I’m not wasting any more time. You’re Mrs. Crag, and that’s the way it’s to be. Do you hear?’
‘I hear, but I can’t believe you. Not with “impulse” ... “see it this way” ... “chaos to the heart.” ’ As he looked back uncomprehending, she called angrily, ‘Oh, Crag, can’t you understand, I heard. I heard you and Rena talking on the verandah that night.—Crag?’
For Crag was laughing at her, saying, ‘Oh, that?’
‘That,’ he went on, ‘was for Rena. That was what impulse, Rena’s impulse and Dom’s impulse, had done to two people. It had brought chaos to the heart.’
‘Then it wasn’t your impulse of loving Davy?’
‘Loving the scrubber was never that.’
‘It wasn’t your impulse of accepting me as well?’
‘Pippa, in one minute I’ll—’
‘But I have to know, Crag. I have to know about Rena. You love her.’
‘No,’ Crag said.
‘Then you loved her?’
‘No,’ he said again.
‘You asked her to marry you.’
‘In a way. It was after my father died ... I was returning to Falling Star, and I thought how I would like a son, too ... But you know all that. Perhaps I might never have come to it, asking her, I mean, had Rena not asked first. That’s rotten of me, I know, but it’s the truth. You must have seen yourself how it was afterwards with Glen Burt.’
She had seen it, so she could not deny it. She asked helplessly: ‘Why, Crag, why was she like that?’
‘Because she was running away. Because pride, which was more predominant in Rena than I’ve ever seen it in anyone, stood in her way.’
‘Running?’
‘From Dom. She loved Dom. She loved him from the first moment she saw him ... over in England, I think it was. Because she was Rena and spoiled rotten ... yes, she was spoiled rotten, Pippa ... she had to “buy” him at once, or at least have her father “buy” him for her. Old Franklin was willing enough. He liked Dom.’ Crag took out his pipe. ‘Who wouldn’t?’
Pippa murmured, ‘Go on.’
‘So they purchased the Highlands estate and made Dom the overseer.’ Crag tapped the tobacco. ‘With an end in view. But Hardy was as proud as Rena was. He loved her as much as she loved him, but he could accept no charity, and he wouldn’t be bought. So—’
‘So, Crag?’
‘A man’s stubborn pride stopped him asking what she waited for him to ask, and when Rena asked instead— ‘How do you know this?’
‘I know,’ said Crag, ‘because I was there. I didn’t think much about it then ... I didn’t think much about it afterwards. But it came to me at last that for a girl who had rushed me ... yes, Pippa, rushed me ... Rena was not following up that rush. I asked myself why, and I came up with this: It was because she didn’t really want me and never had. She only wanted out from Uplands, away from Hardy. Because Hardy had said something that Rena had never experienced before. It was NO.’
‘No to what?’
‘No to Daddy’s estate. No to all that Daddy’s money could buy.’
‘But, Crag, how can you say all this?’
‘I heard it. I told you, Pippa. Rena had just suffered a fall
from her hack ... Bunting, I remember. It was following one of her usual spats with Hardy about riding. It seems those two will always be horse-involved. I was riding with them. But it was Hardy who picked her up, and it was to Dom that she looked and said: “This is how it will be, won’t it?” and he looked back at her and shook his head.
‘It meant little to me then, but later, when she attached herself to me ... then attached herself to Glen Burt, I knew she was running away from something. Oh, this pride!’ Crag shrugged his big shoulders.
‘Yes, but Dom had it, too,’ Pippa said loyally, loyal to Rena.
‘But he put it aside when he came up here after her. And for that we have to thank old Franklin. If he hadn’t altered his will like he did ... I often wonder, though, adoring Rena so much, that he—’
‘I think,’ said Pippa, ‘I can explain that.’ She told him of that last afternoon in Uncle Preston’s sick-room, and how she had spoken of Dom as stubborn, proud and determined. How, later, when she had asked Uncle Preston was there anything he wanted, he had answered: ‘You’ve given it to me.’
‘So he clinched it by that will,’ mused Crag. ‘He knew that Dom would never agree to that will in a thousand years, so he kept an ember red and a fire alight. Though I think, Pippa, it could still have gone on and on but for the stallion. You know what, I’m glad about that wrong ’un, Bobby and all. After all, Bobby’s no worse, in fact he’s having a whale of a time in Minta, so we can say the wild feller saved Rena and Dom that thousand years,’ he laughed.
Pippa said thoughtfully, ‘You’re fond of that number, aren’t you? In fact Rupie and Davy intend questioning you about it again. You wrote it down in an order. A thousand candles.’
‘Put into gross they wouldn’t sound so crazy, Crag admitted whimsically. ‘I’m sorry I’ve worried our two bookies.’
‘Rupie was not so worried as puzzled. He reported that you’d said you’d always wanted them and there was no other way.’
‘Sometimes I thought so, Pippa,’ Crag said sadly. ‘I thought that was only for people like my parents.—Do you remember?’
‘Their love was a thousand candles,’ Pippa remembered. She waited for him to go on.
‘I knew the first light of a candle that day in the tram to Tombonda. Ever since then they’ve been lighting up, one by one. But sometimes some went out’ ... he blew his cheeks, then puffed—‘you turned away.
‘You turned away yourself,’ she came back hotly. ‘You said “no ties tied” ... “nothing”... “relax”.’
‘And every syllable seared me, killed me. But what else could I do, knowing—’
‘Knowing, Crag?’
‘That the scrubber had been between us. Oh, I loved him, Pippa, but—
‘But you’re wrong,’ she said quietly. ‘Davy wasn’t there.—Oh, Crag, are you quite mad?’
For the brown man was actually counting up ... holding her tightly to him as he did so ... skipping hundreds, he must be to reach 999 so soon.
‘One thousand, Pippa. A thousand candles.’
She believed it. There was light everywhere.
A Thousand Candles Page 17