The decision to go back to the Country of the Green Pastures had come to William like a lightning flash. For days he had known that he must write and tell John what had happened, but he had put it off. Now, clinging blindly to possession of the Green Pastures because he knew Véronique’s salvation to lie within them, he knew that John was the man to help him. Given the chance, he would know how to secure what was his by right from the marauder. . . . Good shepherds always have this instinctive wisdom, William told himself.
“Pack me up what I’ll need,” he said to his wife. “Just what will go in a saddlebag. Yes, my dear. Now, at once.”
Marianne, though she was inwardly raging, was obliged to obey. Intense emotion had once again tapped William’s hidden strength. It was Véronique’s illness, she supposed, that had let it loose upon her now. When she had been ill, she remembered with a pang of jealousy, he had remained weak and pliable as ever. Yet it was odd of him to go away with the child ill. What was he after, she wondered uneasily, as she packed for him.
William, meanwhile, was saying good-by to Véronique.
“I’m off home for a couple of nights, darling,” he said to her. “Just to see how John is getting on alone. Anything you would like me to bring you?”
He spoke casually, yet he watched her closely, and he did not miss the quick light that came to her eyes at the mention of “home.”
“Any messages for John?” he asked.
But she was lying now with her eyes shut, and only murmured, “No.”
The monosyllabic reply cheered him. Had John meant nothing to her, she would have sent a whole string of polite messages.
2
It was evening when he reached the valley. Was it only a few short weeks that he had been away? The joy of seeing the beloved place again was as deep as any he had known. And never had the valley looked more exquisite. The shadows of evening lay deep and tranquil over the Green Pastures, the beautiful homestead, and its flower-filled garden, but above, the mountain peaks were lit with the colors of sunset. William drew rein and sighed with deep contentment. He loved this place. Even more than the Island of his boyhood he loved this home that had been made for Véronique.
John was leaning over the garden gate smoking a pipe in the cool of the evening. He showed no surprise at the sight of William, merely removed his pipe, grinned, and opened the gate. “Come on in,” he said. “I’ve a stew cooking.”
Its delicious smell greeted William as he entered the kitchen. He looked quickly round. Everything was spotlessly neat and clean. All Véronique’s little treasures were in the right places, and where she had been accustomed to put bowls of flowers John had put them also. One of her aprons, that in the excitement of the departure for Dunedin she must have thrown down and forgotten, had been carefully folded by John and placed upon the settle. A spotless cloth was upon the table, and the supper was laid—for two.
William looked at the extra place and gaped. “You weren’t expecting me, were you?” he asked.
John was always truthful. He flushed brick red and answered, “No.”
William understood. That practical, sensible man John Ogilvie had his daydreams too. He was living here with the wraith of his wife Véronique.
William, caught spying on something that was not intended for his eyes, also became brick red. “I’ll go and have a wash,” he mumbled. “Find some clean clothes.”
“The stew will be ready by the time you come down,” said John.
He asked no questions while William dealt with the stew, and William, more hungry and tired than he had realized, was grateful to him. John was the perfect host, sensitively considerate, his very presence a welcome as warm as his crackling wood fire. . . . One was glad of a fire even on summer evenings in these mountain pastures.
John’s fire? William had fallen so easily into the role of guest that it was not until the end of the meal that he realized suddenly that the wood on the hearth was his, the food his, the crockery, the house, all his. Yet he left it to John to push back his chair and rise first, and to reach down the purple tobacco jar from the mantelpiece. “Thanks,” said William gratefully, filling his pipe with his own tobacco, and hesitated a moment, waiting for John’s invitation to sit down on his own settle. That seemed the right way of it, somehow. Whatever his mind might be saying as to the rights of ownership, he realized with a shiver of dismay that his spirit had abdicated. His spirit had made a vow and was already following some path to a goal that the less clear-sighted mind had not as yet perceived, though it shrank from it with an instinctive fear.
“Cold?” asked John in surprise. “Have a whiskey?”
“Yes,” said William. “Neat. I’ve a damned unpleasant story to tell you.”
John heard it out without a word, and when it was finished, William at first forbore to look at him. When at last he did look, he saw the man beside him with a face blanched beneath his tan, his pipe out, and his drink untouched. His hands gripped the arms of his chair with so tense an anger that it looked as though they would never unclench again.
William took the anger to himself. “I’m sorry,” he said humbly. “I’ve been every sort of a fool.”
John made a mighty effort, unclenched his hands and put his pipe aside. “No,” he said thickly. “But Mrs. Ozanne—” He pulled himself up sharply, picked up his glass and drowned what he would have liked to say about Marianne in good, strong, fiery Scotch whiskey. William made no attempt to justify his wife. It would not, he realized, have been of the slightest use.
“I should have let you speak to Véronique long ago,” he said abjectly.
“No,” said John. “You were quite right. She was not ready.”
“I should never have given way and let her go to Dunedin.”
“Even now it may turn out that you did right,” said John. “Would she ever have realized that this place is her place if she had not gone out into the world and felt like a lost soul there? That was how it worked with me. If my father had not sent me to that damn school at Dunedin, I might have been eating my heart out for a wider life at this moment.”
“She shows no signs of feeling like a lost soul,” groaned William. “To the eye she appears to be a wildly excited young woman preparing to play the chief role in the wedding of the season. . . . And it’s not far off, either.”
“No time to lose.” agreed John, and got up. “You go and get a good night’s rest. I’ll see Murray tonight, for the Green Pastures must carry on without either of us for a few days, and be back first thing in the morning with my mother and the light buggy. She’s a tough traveler, is my mother. It won’t take the three of us long to get back to Dunedin.”
William’s jaw dropped, for he was slightly scared of that dour, upright Scotswoman Mrs. Ogilvie, though grateful to her for the tender love she had always shown Véronique. Marianne couldn’t abide her. There would be the devil and all to pay if she were to turn up at their lodgings. What was John getting at?
“My mother is necessary,” said John firmly. “I’m not going to compromise Véronique in any way. She is not yet my wife.”
3
Véronique lifted her lavender print gown down from the wardrobe and slipped it over her head. She had not worn it since the journey from home. She had thought it smart then, but after only a few hours in Dunedin she had realized that it was hopelessly countrified and had put it away in disgrace. But now she felt quite tenderly sentimental toward it, almost as though it had belonged to her great grandmother.
She moved quietly, for this getting up and dressing was contrary to orders. The doctor had told her that she might go into the parlor tomorrow, when William was expected home again, but that she must stay in bed today. She had meant to obey, but her room was so hot, and she felt so restless. Her head would be better, she thought, if she could sit by the window and get a little air. And seated by the window she did feel much better. And how
blessed it was to be alone. All her life she had liked to be alone sometimes, and in the Country of the Green Pastures there had been plenty of opportunity for solitude; walks and rides alone, spells of solitary gardening, of reading in the kitchen window; she had not realized how precious they had been, and how necessary to her, until she had lost them in this thronging social life in which one never seemed to be alone for a single instant, and one’s head never stopped aching.
How was she going to live this life? It was partly to find the answer to this question that she had got up, for it is difficult to think in bed, and she needed to think.
“You had better keep quite quiet, darling, and not see Frederick for a few days,” Marianne had said to her on the first day of her illness, and an overwhelming relief had flooded her. But the relief had quickly been followed by appalled dismay. Relieved not to see Frederick, when she loved him so? Relieved not to see Frederick? Why? Through feverish days and nights she had sought for the reason, and found it.
She had lost her heart to a man she knew nothing about just because he had looked so exactly like the lover of her dreams; and in his early considerate gentleness, his promise of faith, that had combined so wonderfully with his thrill and dash, he had behaved like him too. It was only on the night of the Andersons’ ball that he had begun to show her something of the kind of man whom Frederick Ackroyd really was, and she had begun to realize that in a man of flesh and blood, thrill and dash do not exist side by side with gentleness and consideration; nor with single-minded attachment to one woman only. There was the rub. If she was not the first woman in Frederick’s life, instinct told her that she was not at all likely to be the last.
She sighed and shivered, and looked round the empty room as though for help. As yet it had scarcely occurred to her to go back on her bargain; she still fancied herself in love with Frederick, he had vowed a hundred times that without her he was a lost man, and she was no quitter. Her problem was to find the strength to tackle the job she had taken on. For though the thought of saving a man was as deliciously attractive to her as to any woman of her generation, she was without the self-confidence that had been Marianne’s upon the deck of the Green Dolphin. Marianne had known herself possessed of strength of both body and will, but Véronique at this moment knew herself possessed of neither. . . . And so she looked about her for the needed strength, as though she would find it lying like a golden ball upon the floor. . . . But it was not there.
4
Meanwhile Marianne sat in the parlor in a state of some anxiety. She was glad when she heard a man’s heavy tread upon the stairs. . . . William back a day earlier than he had expected. . . . In spite of his having been so tiresome lately, she would be glad to have him back.
But it was not William who entered, it was John Ogilvie, and that after a knock that was merely perfunctory.
“Good afternoon, ma’am.” He had taken her hand and was smiling down at her very kindly, but as usual she found the directness of his gaze both disconcerting and exasperating. And what a clodhopper he looked, even though he wore his best coat and had evidently had a good wash and brush-up before coming to see her. Accustomed as she was now to the elegance of Frederick, the thickness of his boots, the rude strength of his hand clasp and the slight scent of naphthaline that came from his best coat (obviously a man is no gentleman if his coat smells of naphthaline, for obviously he wears it but seldom) affected her most unfavorably.
“Do sit down,” she said coldly. “Is my husband with you?”
“Yes we drove from home together; Mr. Ozanne, my mother, and I. My mother and I are taking a little holiday. Mr. Ozanne is with her now, helping her to find comfortable lodgings, while I’ve come to see you. You’ll say it should have been the other way round, but he thought she’d like the rooms you had when you first came here, so he went himself. . . . And I was eager to see you and Véronique.”
He smiled at her again, and he was still holding her hand in that awful strenuous grip of his, and both from the smile and the hand clasp there came to her the distinct impression that he was sorry for her, that he wanted to arm her with his own strength against some blow. How dared he? To Marianne pity from an inferior was a definite insult.
“I’m afraid you won’t see Véronique,” she said curtly. “She is unwell and in her room. . . . Your mother won’t like those lodgings,” she added. “They are most uncomfortable.”
“It won’t be for long,” said John. “If all goes well, I hope we shall start for home again in a day or two. I can’t leave the farm for long.”
“I am astonished that you should leave it at all,” said Marianne. “I thought you were supposed to be caring for it in our absence. And what a very long journey to take for so short a time. I am surprised your mother thought it worth the exertion.”
“Mother and I are fond of Dunedin,” said John. “I was at school here, you know.”
There was a short silence. John was sitting well back in his chair and looked as though he meant to stay forever.
“I shall, of course, call upon your mother,” said Marianne graciously, but she stifled a small sigh, for she did so dislike Mrs. Ogilvie.
“That will be very kind of you, ma’am.”
John paused, ruminating like a cow. What a heavy, stupid fellow he was. And what a vulgarly loud voice he had. When he spoke again, it seemed to Marianne, afflicted with a headache as she was, to be an absolute shout. Oh, these boorish manners! She had become accustomed to such cultured voices lately.
“Are those lodgings really so uncomfortable, ma’am?” he asked loudly.
“Most uncomfortable,” said Marianne. “And deadly dull. At the end of a cul-de-sac.”
John looked troubled. “Mother won’t like that,” he said. “She wanted to see a bit of life. I suppose, ma’am, you don’t know of any others that would suit her better?”
Bother the man! But he was looking at her with the trustfulness of a nice child who knows the grownup is going to be helpful, and she heard herself answering, “In the next road I believe there are some quite respectable rooms with a far more lively aspect.”
He beamed and shifted himself a little forward in his chair. “I’ll go at once, ma’am, if you’ll excuse me, and tell her about them.” Then, just as her hopes were rising, he seemed to change his mind, shifted back again, and raised his voice even louder. “But I must pay my respects to Véronique first.”
“But I have already told you that you cannot,” snapped Marianne lowering her voice in the dim hope that that would cause him to lower his. “She is unwell and confined to her room.”
“In bed, ma’am?”
“Yes. In bed. And I do implore you, Mr. Ogilvie, to remember her condition and speak a little lower. I am most anxious about her.”
“In bed!” roared John in considerable consternation. “Is that wise, ma’am, in this stifling weather? Don’t you think that a little fresh air—”
He did not finish his sentence, and Marianne was given no opportunity to express the rage that rose in her at this unwarrantable criticism of her nursing of her own child, for the door opened and in came Véronique, wearing her old lavender gown, her hair tumbled, her checks flushed and her eyes shining, so glowing with delight that her appearance gave the complete lie to her mother’s description of her delicate condition.
“John!” she cried. “I heard your voice right across the passage in my room. How are you, John? Oh, it’s good to see you! How are the hoggets, John, and my pony? And the garden? Have you kept my plants watered, as you promised? Oh John, it is good to see you! How are the dogs? Has Nell had her litter yet?”
He had jumped up at her entrance, and she had gone to him with the most unmaidenly eagerness, and was holding his hand as she poured out her questions in an eager flood, giving him no time to answer. Not that he seemed to want to answer. He just stood there smiling at her, and the look on his face gave Marianne s
uch a shock that it was as though the ground opened at her feet. It was out of a sort of daze that she heard John speaking, and the voice that slipped in between Véronique’s eager questions was so low and gentle that it was impossible to think that it belonged to the same man who had bellowed so loudly a moment before. “My mother is with me, Véronique, and your father is helping her to find lodgings. I’m just going to join them. Will you come too? Your mother and I were just saying that you needed some fresh air.” He smiled at Marianne over Véronique’s head. “Have we your permission, ma’am?”
Marianne clutched at her scattered wits. “No, Mr. Ogilvie. She is not fit for walking.”
“But I have my buggy here, ma’am. I left it tied to the lamp post. Surely a little carriage exercise—”
“It’ll do me all the good in the world, Mamma,” interrupted Véronique. “Back in a moment, John.” And like a whirlwind she flew out of the room, and like a whirlwind she returned, her hat askew on her disordered curls and her shawl clutched in her hand. “Good-by, darling Mamma,” she cried, embracing her mother with the exuberance of a little girl of twelve. “I’ll be back before you’ve had time to miss me.”
And then they were gone, and Marianne, stunned, sank into a chair. The discovery that John Ogilvie was in love with Véronique had upset her completely. Yet why? Véronique was safely engaged to another man, and even had she not been, it was unthinkable that she should marry her father’s shepherd. Marianne pulled herself together. She was being ridiculous. That feeling that she had always had, that John was a menace and a portent in her life, was just nonsense. . . . He was such a stupid fellow. . . . She picked up her sewing and tried to stop thinking about him.
Yet as she set her stitches, her thoughts going back over the past interview, the thought kept intruding—was he so stupid?
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