"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 long 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 awakened 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.