“I think not, miss. I think it’s just as a speculation.”
Renny’s brows drew together in a frown. He was silent a moment, then he asked, — “Where do you live?”
“In Mr. Clapperton’s house, sir. I’m unmarried. Good evening.” With a bow he moved away through the ravine, the gun drooping in his hand.
“Isn’t he polite! And they say he’s a good worker,” Adeline exclaimed as they mounted the steep path toward the house.
“Yes. I wish I might have got hold of him first. Good men are scarce.”
“Perhaps he’ll get tired working for Mr. Clapperton. I can’t imagine any man wanting to stay with him. Their D.P. cook is going to leave because she found a white mouse in her bedroom. Althea simply can’t keep her pets under control, and Mrs. Clapperton is always on her side.”
In the house Renny found Alayne in her bedroom. She was sitting by her dressing table tidying the contents of a small drawer. The light from under a pale green lampshade fell over her, the cool profile, the silvery hair. She had the beauty of a cameo, he thought. She was past fifty but he could not get used to that silver head. He wanted it still to be gold. She turned and smiled at him, yet asked a little anxiously:
“How did the interview go? I hope you were able to keep your temper.”
He grinned. “No. I just told him that, for very little, I’d shake him by the weasand.”
“Renny!” she cried aghast. “How could you use such language to him! Why, you’ve probably made an enemy of him for life and everything has been comparatively peaceful between you since his marriage.”
Renny smiled tranquilly. “He doesn’t know where his weasand is, I’m sure of that.”
“Nevertheless,” Alayne spoke with what Renny called her schoolmistress air, “he will not relish the thought of being taken by it.”
“His latest is the purchase of the Blacks’ place.”
“Oh, well … that can’t interfere with us — no matter if he does build bungalows on it. There are the fields and woods between.”
“Everything matters that spoils the surrounding country. It’s the same everywhere. Corporations and speculators hate beauty. What they really enjoy is to cut down magnificent old trees to widen roads so that there can be more motor traffic — I’d blast every car from the face of the earth if I had my way.”
She was astonished. “Yet you are very pleased with your new car.”
“I know. But, if they were all blasted off the earth, I’d not need one.”
She laid down the bright-coloured scarf that she was folding. It was always a pleasure, he thought, to watch Alayne handle things — surely few women had such pretty wrists.
“I dropped in at Bell’s on the way home,” he said, “and Adeline followed me there. Bell admires her greatly, you can see that. Poor devil — I believe he’s in love with her.”
Alayne said coolly, — “He’s a very foolish man if he imagines that Adeline is interested in him. She’s not interested in any man but you.”
Renny tried not to look too pleased. “Do you think so? Well, she is fond of me. She’s a good child. You must acknowledge, Alayne, that she gives no trouble at all, considering that she’s the very spit of Gran. Why, when Gran was her age she had half a dozen fellows after her. Her mother was almost distraught. Gran told me so.”
“Your grandmother did not adore her father, as Adeline does you. I have a feeling that, when she does fall in love, it won’t be an adolescent affair. I only hope it won’t be the wrong sort of man.” She had finished tidying the drawer and now decisively shut it while adding, — “But I expect he will.”
Renny laughed. “You are pessimistic, aren’t you?”
“Well, things usually turn out that way with girls.”
“You mean they turned out that way with you?”
A small secret smile was her only response.
He said, — “I’ll wager your parents would have looked on me as the wrong sort of man.”
“Auntie didn’t.”
“No — bless her heart!” Tender recollection softened his features, but they hardened as he added, — “In spite of all she’d heard against me.”
How could he refer to that terrible time when she had left him, as she thought, forever, to live with that elderly aunt in her house outside New York? She turned to face him, her eyes bright with anger.
“Renny, how can you?”
“Well, it’s all in the past.”
“Then don’t let us have painful resurrections.”
“What I said was that your aunt liked me, in spite of all she’d heard against me.”
Alayne gave an ironic smile. “All you had to do was to expend a little of your fatal charm on her.”
“Charm is the last quality I thought I had.”
“Oh, you’ve masses of it where women are concerned.” She paced up and down the room trying to calm herself.
“There’s one thing certain. Since that time you have nothing to accuse me of.”
“Do you expect me to compliment you on not having affairs with women?”
“Good Lord!” he exclaimed, irascibly. “How did we get to this point?”
“We got to it through no will of mine.”
He took her hand. “Alayne,” he said, trying to make her look at him, but she drew sharply away.
“You’re determined to be angry,” he accused her.
“Please leave me for a while.”
“Very well.” He spoke with baffled resignation. “Though I don’t know what this is about.” He went to the door and stood there with his hand on the knob, hesitating, thinking that, if he left her now, their next meeting would be embarrassing. She pretended that his physical presence was no longer in the room. She took the pins from her hair and let its silken silver mass fall about her shoulders.
“Do you still want me to go?” he asked.
“Yes.” She began to unbutton her blouse to get herself ready for the evening meal.
He left, closing the door quietly behind him, and crossed the passage into his own room now palely lit by moonlight. He stood by the window looking out at the shapes, so familiar to him, even in the mysterious distortion of this light. “Fifteen years ago,” he thought, “and still she can get so upset over it.” He began to whistle, — “A hundred pipers and a’.” He had left the door of his room open behind him and the clear clean insistence of his whistling came to Alayne’s ears. This tune was singularly irritating to her. It seemed to meet itself at the finish and begin all over again, in endless possibilities of repetition. Subconsciously it was comforting to him. He drew a good breath and the whistle came more loudly. It was as though the hundred pipers, with swinging kilts, advanced through the ravine.
Rags, now sixty-five, and more bent than any man has a right to be at that age, began a muffled beating on the gong in the hall below. Renny went into the bathroom to wash his hands. He heard Ernest coming very slowly up the stairs. With hands half dried he went to meet him, putting an arm about his waist and almost carrying him.
“Thank you, dear boy,” said Ernest panting. “I find the stairs trying.”
“Tell you what, Uncle Ernest, I’m going to have a lavatory put in downstairs, next spring, for you and Uncle Nick.”
“Ah,