"But don't you find it dull, dear?" said George, loyally doing his best not to worry as the months went by.
"I've been so busy putting my house in order I haven't had time to think," said she. "Do you?"
"No--no. If I could only be sure of you."
She turned on the green drawing-room's couch (it was Empire, not Heppelwhite after all), and laid aside a list of linen and blankets.
"It has changed everything, hasn't it?" she whispered.
"Oh, Lord, yes. But I still think if we went back to Baltimore "
"And missed our first real summer together. No thank you, me lord."
"But we're absolutely alone."
"Isn't that what I'm doing my best to remedy? Don't you worry. I like it--like it to the marrow of my little bones. You don't realize what her house means to a woman. We thought we were living in it last year, but we hadn't begun to. Don't you rejoice in your study, George?"
"I prefer being here with you." He sat down on the floor by the couch and took her hand.
"Seven," she said, as the French clock struck. "Year before last you'd just be coming back from business."
He winced at the recollection, then laughed. "Business! I've been at work ten solid hours to-day."
"Where did you lunch? With the Conants?"
"No; at Dutton Shaw, sitting on a log, with my feet in a swamp. But we've found out where the old spring is, and we're going to pipe it down to Gale Anstey next year."
"I'll come and see to-morrow. Oh, please open the door, dear. I want to look down the passage. Isn't that corner by the stair-head lovely where the sun strikes in?" She looked through half-closed eyes at the vista of ivory-white and pale green all steeped in liquid gold.
"There's a step out of Jane Elphick's bedroom," she went on--"and his first step in the world ought to be up. I shouldn't wonder if those people hadn't put it there on purpose. George, will it make any odds to you if he's a girl?"
He answered, as he had many times before, that his interest was his wife, not the child.
"Then you're the only person who thinks so." She laughed. "Don't be silly, dear. It's expected. I know. It's my duty. I shan't be able to look our people in the face if I fail."
"What concern is it of theirs, confound 'em!"
"You'll see. Luckily the tradition of the house is boys, Mrs. Cloke says, so I'm provided for. Shall you ever begin to understand these people? I shan't."
"And we bought it for fun--for fun!" he groaned. "And here we are held up for goodness knows bow long!"
"Why? Were you thinking of selling it?" He did not answer. "Do you remember the second Mrs. Chapin?" she demanded.
This was a bold, brazen little black-browed woman--a widow for choice--who on Sophie's death was guilefully to marry George for his wealth and ruin him in a year. George being busy, Sophie had invented her some two years after her marriage, and conceived she was alone among wives in so doing.
"You aren't going to bring her up again?" he asked anxiously.
"I only want to say that I should hate any one who bought Pardons ten times worse than I used to hate the second Mrs. Chapin. Think what we've put into it of our two selves."
"At least a couple of million dollars. I know I could have made--" He broke off.
"The beasts!" she went on. "They'd be sure to build a red-brick lodge at the gates, and cut the lawn up for bedding out. You must leave instructions in your will that he's never to do that, George, won't you?"
He laughed and took her hand again but said nothing till it was time to dress. Then he muttered "What the devil use is a man's country to him when he can't do business in it?"
Friars Pardon stood faithful to its tradition. At the appointed time was born, not that third in their party to whom Sophie meant to be so kind, but a godling; in beauty, it was manifest, excelling Eros, as in wisdom Confucius; an enhancer of delights, a renewer of companionships and an interpreter of Destiny. This last George did not realise till he met Lady Conant striding through Dutton Shaw a few days after the event.
"My dear fellow," she cried, and slapped him heartily on the back, "I can't tell you how glad we all are. Oh, she'll be all right. (There's never been any trouble over the birth of an heir at Pardons.) Now where the dooce is it?" She felt largely in her leather-boundskirt and drew out a small silver mug. "I sent a note to your wife about it, but my silly ass of a groom forgot to take this. You can save me a tramp. Give her my love." She marched off amid her guard of grave Airedales.
The mug was worn and dented: above the twined initials, G.L., was the crest of a footless bird and the motto: " Wayte awhyle--wayte awhyle."
"That's the other end of the riddle," Sophie whispered, when he saw her that evening. "Read her note. The English write beautiful notes."
The warmest of welcomes to your little man. I hope he will appreciate his native land now he has come to it. Though you have said nothing we cannot, of course, look on him as a little stranger, and so I am sending him the old Lashmar christening mug. It has been with us since Gregory Lashmar, your great-grandmother's brother--
George stared at his wife.
"Go on," she twinkled, from the pillows.
--mother's brother, sold his place to Walter's family. We seem to have acquired some of your household gods at that time, but nothing survives except the mug and the old cradle, which I found in the potting-shed and am having put in order for you. I hope little George--Lashmar, he will be too, won't he?--will live to see his grandchildren cut their teeth on his mug.
Affectionately yours, ALICE CONANT.
P.S.--How quiet you've kept about it all!
"Well, I'm--"
"Don't swear," said Sophie. "Bad for the infant mind."
"But how in the world did she get at it? Have you ever said a word about the Lashmars?"
"You know the only time--to young Iggulden at Rocketts--when Iggulden died."
"Your great-grandmother's brother! She's traced the whole connection--more than your Aunt Sydney could do. What does she mean about our keeping quiet?"
Sophie's eyes sparkled. "I've thought that out too. We've got back at the English at last. Can't you see that she thought that we thought my mother's being a Lashmar was one of those things we'd expect the English to find out for themselves, and that's impressed her?" She turned the mug in her white hands, and sighed happily. "'Wayte awhyle--wayte awhyle.' That's not a bad motto, George. It's been worth it."
"But still I don't quite see--"
"I shouldn't wonder if they don't think our coming here was part of a deep-laid scheme to be near our ancestors. They'd understand that. And look how they've accepted us, all of them."
"Are we so undesirable in ourselves?" George grunted.
"Be just, me lord. That wretched Sangres man has twice our money. Can you see Marm Conant slapping him between the shoulders? Not by a jugful! The poor beast doesn't exist!"
"Do you think it's that then?" He looked toward the cot by the fire where the godling snorted.
"The minute I get well I shall find out from Mrs. Cloke what every Lashmar gives in doles (that's nicer than tips) every time a Lashmite is born. I've done my duty thus far, but there's much expected of me."
Entered here Mrs. Cloke, and hung worshipping over the cot. They showed her the mug and her face shone. "Oh, now Lady Conant's sent it, it'll be all proper, ma'am, won't it? 'George' of course he'd have to be, but seein' what he is we was hopin'--all your people was hopin'--it 'ud be 'Lashmar' too, and that'ud just round it out. A very 'andsome mug quite unique, I should imagine. 'Wayte awhyle--wayte awhyle.' That's true with the Lashmars, I've heard. Very slow to fill their houses, they are. Most like Master George won't open 'is nursery till he's thirty."
"Poor lamb!" cried Sophie. "But how did you know my folk were Lashmars?"
Mrs. Cloke thought deeply. "I'm sure I can't quite say, ma'am, but I've a belief likely that it was something you may have let drop to young Iggulden when you was at Rocketts. That may have been what give us
an inkling. An' so it came out, one thing in the way o' talk leading to another, and those American people at Veering Holler was very obligin' with news, I'm told, ma'am."
"Great Scott!" said George, under his breath. "And this is the simple peasant!"
"Yiss," Mrs. Cloke went on. "An' Cloke was only wonderin' this afternoon--your pillow's slipped my dear, you mustn't lie that a-way--just for the sake o' sayin' something, whether you wouldn't think well now of getting the Lashmar farms back, sir. They don't rightly round off Sir Walter's estate. They come caterin' across us more. Cloke, 'e 'ud be glad to show you over any day."
"But Sir Walter doesn't want to sell, does he?"
"We can find out from his bailiff, sir, but"--with cold contempt--"I think that trained nurse is just comin' up from her dinner, so 'm afraid we'll 'ave to ask you, sir ... Now, Master George--Ai-ie! Wake a litty minute, lammie!"
A few months later the three of them were down at the brook in the Gale Anstey woods to consider the rebuilding of a footbridge carried away by spring floods. George Lashmar Chapin wanted all the bluebells on God's earth that day to eat, and--Sophie adored him in a voice like to the cooing of a dove; so business was delayed.
"Here's the place," said his father at last among the water forget-me-nots. "But where the deuce are the larch-poles, Cloke? I told you to have them down here ready."
"We'll get 'em down if f you say so," Cloke answered, with a thrust of the underlip they both knew.
"But I did say so. What on earth have you brought that timber-tug here for? We aren't building a railway bridge. Why, in America, half-a-dozen two-by-four bits would be ample."
"I don't know nothin' about that," said Cloke.
"An' I've nothin' to say against larch--IF you want to make a temp'ry job of it. I ain't 'ere to tell you what isn't so, sir; an' you can't say I ever come creepin' up on you, or tryin' to lead you further in than you set out--"
A year ago George would have danced with impatience. Now he scraped a little mud off his old gaiters with his spud, and waited.
"All I say is that you can put up larch and make a temp'ry job of it; and by the time the young master's married it'll have to be done again. Now, I've brought down a couple of as sweet six-by-eight oak timbers as we've ever drawed. You put 'em in an' it's off your mind or good an' all. T'other way--I don't say it ain't right, I'm only just sayin' what I think--but t'other way, he'll no sooner be married than we'll lave it all to do again. You've no call to regard my words, but you can't get out of that."
"No," said George after a pause; "I've been realising that for some time. Make it oak then; we can't get out of it."
THE RECALL I am the land of their fathers, In me the virtue stays; I will bring back my children, After certain days. Under their feet in the grasses My clinging magic runs. They shall return as strangers, They shall remain as sons. Over their heads in the branches Of their new-bought, ancient trees, I weave an incantation, And draw them to my knees. Scent of smoke in the evening, Smell of rain in the night, The hours, the days and the seasons Order their souls aright; Till I make plain the meaning Of all my thousand years Till I fill their hearts with knowledge, While I fill their eyes with tears.
GARM--A HOSTAGE
0ne night, a very long time ago, I drove to an Indian military cantonment called Mian Mir to see amateur theatricals. At the back of the Infantry barracks a soldier, his cap over one eye, rushed in front of the horses and shouted that he was a dangerous highway robber. As a matter of fact, he was a friend of mine, so I told him to go home before any one caught him; but he fell under the pole, and I heard voices of a military guard in search of some one.
The driver and I coaxed him into the carriage, drove home swiftly, undressed him and put him to bed, where he waked next morning with a sore headache, very much ashamed. When his uniform was cleaned and dried, and he had been shaved and washed and made neat, I drove him back to barracks with his arm in a fine white sling, and reported that I had accidentally run over him. I did not tell this story to my friend's sergeant, who was a hostile and unbelieving person, but to his lieutenant, who did not know us quite so well.
Three days later my friend came to call, and at his heels slobbered and fawned one of the finest bull-terriers--of the old-fashioned breed, two parts bull and one terrier--that I had ever set eyes on. He was pure white, with a fawn-coloured saddle just behind his neck, and a fawn diamond at the root of his thin whippy tail. I had admired him distantly for more than a year; and Vixen, my own fox-terrier, knew him too, but did not approve.
"'E's for you," said my friend; but he did not look as though he liked parting with him.
"Nonsense! That dog's worth more than most men, Stanley," I said.
"'E's that and more. 'Tention!"
The dog rose on his hind legs, and stood upright for a full minute.
"Eyes right!"
He sat on his haunches and turned his head sharp to the right. At a sign he rose and barked thrice. Then he shook hands with his right paw and bounded lightly to my shoulder. Here he made himself into a necktie, limp and lifeless, hanging down on either side of my neck. I was told to pick him up and throw him in the air. He fell with a howl, and held up one leg.
"Part o' the trick," said his owner. "You're going to die now. Dig yourself your little grave an' shut your little eye."
Still limping, the dog hobbled to the garden-edge, dug a hole and lay down in it. When told that he was cured, he jumped out, wagging his tail, and whining for applause. He was put through half-a-dozen other tricks, such as showing how he would hold a man safe (I was that man, and he sat down before me, his teeth bared, ready to spring), and how he would stop eating at the word of command. I had no more than finished praising him when my friend made a gesture that stopped the dog as though he had been shot, took a piece of blue-ruled canteen-paper from his helmet, handed it to me and ran away, while the dog looked after him and howled. I read:
SIR--I give you the dog because of what you got me out of. He is the best I know, for I made him myself, and he is as good as a man. Please do not give him too much to eat, and please do not give him back to me, for I'm not going to take him, if you will keep him. So please do not try to give him back any more. I have kept his name back, so you can call him anything and he will answer. but please do not give him back. He can kill a man as easy as anything, but please do not give him too much meat. He knows more than a man.
Vixen sympathetically joined her shrill little yap to the bull-terrier's despairing cry, and I was annoyed, for I knew that a man who cares for dogs is one thing, but a man who loves one dog is quite another. Dogs are at the best no more than verminous vagrants, self-scratchers, foul feeders, and unclean by the law of Moses and Mohammed; but a dog with whom one lives alone for at least six months in the year; a free thing, tied to you so strictly by love that without you he will not stir or exercise; a patient, temperate, humorous, wise soul, who knows your moods before you know them yourself, is not a dog under any ruling.
I had Vixen, who was all my dog to me; and I felt what my friend must have felt, at tearing out his heart in this style and leaving it in my garden. However, the dog understood clearly enough that I was his master, and did not follow the soldier. As soon as he drew breath I made much of him, and Vixen, yelling with jealousy, flew at him. Had she been of his own sex, he might have cheered himself with a fight, but he only looked worriedly when she nipped his deep iron sides, laid his heavy head on my knee, and howled anew. I meant to dine at the Club that night; but as darkness drew in, and the dog snuffed through the empty house like a child trying to recover from a fit of sobbing, I felt that I could not leave him to suffer his first evening alone. So we fed at home, Vixen on one side, and the stranger-dog on the other; she watching his every mouthful, and saying explicitly what she thought of his table manners, which were much better than hers.
It was Vixen's custom, till the weather grew hot, to sleep in my bed, her head on the pillow like a Christian; and when morning came I wo
uld always find that the little thing had braced her feet against the wall and pushed me to the very edge of the cot. This night she hurried to bed purposefully, every hair up, one eye on the stranger, who had dropped on a mat in a helpless, hopeless sort of way, all four feet spread out, sighing heavily. She settled her head on the pillow several times, to show her little airs and graces, and struck up her usual whiney sing-song before slumber. The stranger-dog softly edged toward me. I put out my hand and he licked it. Instantly my wrist was between Vixen's teeth, and her warning aaarh! said as plainly as speech, that if I took any further notice of the stranger she would bite.
I caught her behind her fat neck with my left hand, shook her severely, and said:
"Vixen, if you do that again you'll be put into the verandah. Now, remember!"
She understood perfectly, but the minute I released her she mouthed my right wrist once more, and waited with her ears back and all her body flattened, ready to bite. The big dog's tail thumped the floor in a humble and peace-making way.
I grabbed Vixen a second time, lifted her out of bed like a rabbit (she hated that and yelled), and, as I had promised, set her out in the verandah with the bats and the moonlight. At this she howled. Then she used coarse language--not to me, but to the bullterrier--till she coughed with exhaustion. Then she ran round the house trying every door. Then she went off to the stables and barked as though some one were stealing the horses, which was an old trick of hers. Last she returned, and her snuffing yelp said, "I'll be good! Let me in and I'll' be good!"
She was admitted and flew to her pillow. When she was quieted I whispered to the other dog, "You can lie on the foot of the bed." The bull jumped up at once, and though I felt Vixen quiver with rage, she knew better than to protest. So we slept till the morning, and they had early breakfast with me, bite for bite, till the horse came round and we went for a ride. I don't think the bull had ever followed a horse before. He was wild with excitement, and Vixen, as usual, squealed and scuttered and scooted, and took charge of the procession.
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