Section 2 of 13 - Table of Contents
"I do most sincerely 'ope and trust you'll be 'appy, Madam," Mrs.
Cloke gasped, when she was told the news by the kitchen fire.
"Goodness! It isn't a marriage!" Sophie exclaimed, a little awed;
for to them the joke, which to an American means work, was only
just beginning.
"If it's took in a proper spirit"--Mrs. Cloke's eye turned toward
her oven.
"Send and have that mended to-morrow," Sophie whispered.
"We couldn't 'elp noticing," said Cloke slowly, "from the times
you walked there, that you an' your lady was drawn to it,
but--but I don't know as we ever precisely thought--" His wife's
glance checked him.
"That we were that sort of people," said George. "We aren't sure
of it ourselves yet."
"Perhaps," said Cloke, rubbing his knees, "just for the sake of
saying something, perhaps you'll park it?"
"What's that?" said George.
"Turn it all into a fine park like Violet Hill"--he jerked a
thumb to westward--"that Mr. Sangres bought. It was four farms,
and Mr. Sangres made a fine park of them, with a herd of faller
deer."
"Then it wouldn't be Friars Pardon," said Sophie. "Would it?"
"I don't know as I've ever heard Pardons was ever anything but
wheat an' wool. Only some gentlemen say that parks are less
trouble than tenants." He laughed nervously. "But the gentry, o'
course, they keep on pretty much as they was used to."
"I see," said Sophie. "How did Mr. Sangres make his money?"
"I never rightly heard. It was pepper an' spices, or it may ha'
been gloves. No. Gloves was Sir Reginald Liss at Marley End.
Spices was Mr. Sangres. He's a Brazilian gentleman--very sunburnt
like."
"Be sure o' one thing. You won't 'ave any trouble," said Mrs.
Cloke, just before they went to bed.
Now the news of the purchase was told to Mr. and Mrs. Cloke alone
at 8 P.M. of a Saturday. None left the farm till they set out for
church next morning. Yet when they reached the church and were
about to slip aside into their usual seats, a little beyond the
font, where they could see the red-furred tails of the bellropes
waggle and twist at ringing time, they were swept forward
irresistibly, a Cloke on either flank (and yet they had not
walked with the Clokes), upon the ever-retiring bosom of a
black-gowned verger, who ushered them into a room of a pew at the
head of the left aisle, under the pulpit.
"This," he sighed reproachfully, "is the Pardons' Pew," and shut
them in.
They could see little more than the choir boys in the chancel,
but to the roots of the hair of their necks they felt the
congregation behind mercilessly devouring them by look.
"When the wicked man turneth away." The strong, alien voice of
the priest vibrated under the hammer-beam roof, and a loneliness
unfelt before swamped their hearts, as they searched for places
in the unfamiliar Church of England service. The Lord's Prayer
"Our Father, which art"--set the seal on that desolation. Sophie
found herself thinking how in other lands their purchase would
long ere this have been discussed from every point of view in a
dozen prints, forgetting that George for months had not been
allowed to glance at those black and bellowing head-lines. Here
was nothing but silence--not even hostility! The game was up to
them; the other players hid their cards and waited. Suspense, she
felt, was in the air, and when her sight cleared, saw, indeed, a
mural tablet of a footless bird brooding upon the carven motto, "
Wayte awhyle--wayte awhyle."
At the Litany George had trouble with an unstable hassock, and
drew the slip of carpet under the pewseat. Sophie pushed her end
back also, and shut her eyes against a burning that felt like
tears. When she opened them she was looking at her mother's
maiden name, fairly carved on a blue flagstone on the pew floor:
Ellen Lashmar. ob. 1796. aetat 27.
She nudged George and pointed. Sheltered, as they kneeled, they
looked for more knowledge, but the rest of the slab was blank.
"Ever hear of her?" he whispered.
"Never knew any of us came from here."
"Coincidence?"
"Perhaps. But it makes me feel better," and she smiled and winked
away a tear on her lashes, and took his hand while they prayed
for "all women labouring of child"--not "in the perils of
childbirth"; and the sparrows who had found their way through the
guards behind the glass windows chirped above the faded gilt and
alabaster family tree of the Conants.
The baronet's pew was on the right of the aisle. After service
its inhabitants moved forth without haste, but so as to block
effectively a dusky person with a large family who champed in
their rear.
"Spices, I think," said Sophie, deeply delighted as the Sangres
closed up after the Conants. "Let 'em get away, George."
But when they came out many folk whose eyes were one still
lingered by the lychgate.
"I want to see if any more Lashmars are buried here," said
Sophie.
"Not now. This seems to be show day. Come home quickly," he
replied.
A group of families, the Clokes a little apart, opened to let
them through. The men saluted with jerky nods, the women with
remnants of a curtsey. Only Iggulden's son, his mother on his
arm, lifted his hat as Sophie passed.
"Your people," said the clear voice of Lady Conant in her ear.
"I suppose so," said Sophie, blushing, for they were within two
yards of her; but it was not a question.
"Then that child looks as if it were coming down with mumps. You
ought to tell the mother she shouldn't have brought it to
church."
"I can't leave 'er behind, my lady," the woman said. "She'd set
the 'ouse afire in a minute, she's that forward with the matches.
Ain't you, Maudie dear?"
"Has Dr. Dallas seen her?"
"Not yet, my lady."
"He must. You can't get away, of course. M-m! My idiotic maid is
coming in for her teeth to-morrow at twelve. She shall pick her
up--at Gale Anstey, isn't it?--at eleven."
"Yes. Thank you very much, my lady."
"I oughtn't to have done it," said Lady Conant apologetically,
"but there has been no one at Pardons for so long that you'll
forgive my poaching. Now, can't you lunch with us? The vicar
usually comes too. I don't use the horses on a Sunday"--she
glanced at the Brazilian's silver-plated chariot. "It's only a
mile across the fields."
"You--you're very kind," said Sophie, hating herself because her
lip trembled.
"My dear," the compelling tone dropped to a soothing gurgle,
"d'you suppose I don't know how it feels to come to a strange
county--country I should say--away from one's own people? When I
first left the Shires--I'm Shropshire, you know--I cried for a
day and a night. But fretting doesn't make loneliness any better.
Oh, here's Dora. She did sprain her leg that day."
"I'm as lame as a tree still," said the tall maiden frankly. "You
ought to go out with the otter-hounds, Mrs. Chapin. I believe
they're drawing your water next week."
Sir Walter had already led off George, and the vicar came up on
the other side of Sophie. There was no escaping the swift
procession or the leisurely lunch, where talk came and went in
low-voiced eddies that had the village for their centre. Sophie
heard the vicar and Sir Walter address her husband lightly as
Chapin! (She also remembered many women known in a previous life
who habitually addressed their husbands as Mr. Such-an-one.)
After lunch Lady Conant talked to her explicitly of maternity as
that is achieved in cottages and farm-houses remote from aid, and
of the duty thereto of the mistress of Pardons.
A gate in a beech hedge, reached across triple lawns, let them
out before tea-time into the unkempt south side of their land.
"I want your hand, please," said Sophie as soon as they were safe
among the beech boles and the lawless hollies. "D'you remember
the old maid in 'Providence and the Guitar' who heard the
Commissary swear, and hardly reckoned herself a maiden lady
afterward? Because I'm a relative of hers. Lady Conant is--"
"Did you find out anything about the Lashmars?" he interrupted.
"I didn't ask. I'm going to write to Aunt Sydney about it first.
Oh, Lady Conant said something at lunch about their having bought
some land from some Lashmars a few years ago. I found it was at
the beginning of last century."
"What did you say?"
"I said, 'Really, how interesting!' Like that. I'm not going to
push myself forward. I've been hearing about Mr. Sangres's
efforts in that direction. And you? I couldn't see you behind the
flowers. Was it very deep water, dear?"
George mopped a brow already browned by outdoor exposures.
"Oh no--dead easy," he answered. "I've bought Friars Pardon to
prevent Sir Walter's birds straying."
A cock pheasant scuttered through the dry leaves and exploded
almost under their feet. Sophie jumped.
"That's one of 'em," said George calmly.
"Well, your nerves are better, at any rate," said she. "Did you
tell 'em you'd bought the thing to play with?"
"No. That was where my nerve broke down. I only made one bad
break--I think. I said I couldn't see why hiring land to men to
farm wasn't as much a business proposition as anything else."
"And what did they say?"
"They smiled. I shall know what that smile means some day. They
don't waste their smiles. D'you see that track by Gale Anstey?"
They looked down from the edge of the hanger over a cup-like
hollow. People by twos and threes in their Sunday best filed
slowly along the paths that connected farm to farm.
"I've never seen so many on our land before," said Sophie. "Why
is it?"
"To show us we mustn't shut up their rights of way."
"Those cow-tracks we've been using cross lots?" said Sophie
forcibly.
"Yes. Any one of 'em would cost us two thousand pounds each in
legal expenses to close."
"But we don't want to," she said.
"The whole community would fight if we did."
"But it's our land. We can do what we like."
"It's not our land. We've only paid for it. We belong to it, and
it belongs to the people--our people they call 'em. I've been to
lunch with the English too."
They passed slowly from one bracken-dotted field to the
next--flushed with pride of ownership, plotting alterations and
restorations at each turn; halting in their tracks to argue,
spreading apart to embrace two views at once, or closing in to
consider one. Couples moved out of their way, but smiling
covertly.
"We shall make some bad breaks," he said at last.
"Together, though. You won't let anyone else in, will you?"
"Except the contractors. This syndicate handles, this proposition
by its little lone."
"But you might feel the want of some one," she insisted.
"I shall--but it will be you. It's business, Sophie, but it's
going to be good fun."
"Please God," she answered flushing, and cried to herself as they
went back to tea. "It's worth it. Oh, it's worth it."
The repairing and moving into Friars Pardon was business of the
most varied and searching, but all done English fashion, without
friction. Time and money alone were asked. The rest lay in the
hands of beneficent advisers from London, or spirits, male and
female, called up by Mr. and Mrs. Cloke from the wastes of the
farms. In the centre stood George and Sophie, a little aghast,
their interests reaching out on every side.
"I ain't sayin' anything against Londoners," said Cloke,
self-appointed clerk of the outer works, consulting engineer,
head of the immigration bureau, and superintendent of woods and
forests; "but your own people won't go about to make more than a
fair profit out of you."
"How is one to know?" said George.
"Five years from now, or so on, maybe, you'll be lookin' over
your first year's accounts, and, knowin' what you'll know then,
you'll say: 'Well, Billy Beartup'--or Old Cloke as it might
be--'did me proper when I was new.' No man likes to have that
sort of thing laid up against him."
"I think I see," said George. "But five years is a long time to
look ahead."
"I doubt if that oak Billy Beartup throwed in Reuben's Ghyll will
be fit for her drawin-room floor in less than seven," Cloke
drawled.
"Yes, that's my work," said Sophie. (Billy Beartup of Griffons, a
woodman by training and birth, a tenant farmer by misfortune of
marriage, had laid his broad axe at her feet a month before.)
"Sorry if I've committed you to another eternity."
"And we shan't even know where we've gone wrong with your new
carriage drive before that time either," said Cloke, ever anxious
to keep the balance true with an ounce or two in Sophie's favour.
The past four months had taught George better than to reply. The
carriage road winding up the hill was his present keen interest.
They set off to look at it, and the imported American scraper
which had blighted the none too sunny soul of "Skim" Winsh, the
carter.
But young Iggulden was in charge now, and under his guidance,
Buller and Roberts, the great horses, moved mountains.
"You lif' her like that, an' you tip her like that," he explained
to the gang. "My uncle he was roadmaster in Connecticut."
"Are they roads yonder?" said Skim, sitting under the laurels.
"No better than accommodation roads. Dirt, they call 'em. They'd
suit you, Skim."
"Why?" said the incautious Skim.
"Cause you'd take no hurt when you fall out of your cart drunk on
a Saturday," was the answer.
"I didn't last time neither," Skim roared.
After the loud laugh, old Whybarne of Gale Anstey piped feebly,
"Well, dirt or no dirt, there's no denyin' Chapin knows a good
job when he sees it. 'E don't build one day and dee-stroy the
next, like that nigger Sangres."
"SHE's the one that knows her own mind," said Pinky, brother to
Skim Winsh, and a Napoleon among carters who had helped to bring
the grand piano across the fields in the autumn rains.
"She had ought to," said Iggulden. "Whoa, Buller! She's a
Lashmar. They never was double-thinking."
"Oh, you found that? Has the answer come from your uncle?" said
Skim, doubtful whether so remote a land as America had posts.
The others looked at him scornfully. Skim was always a day behind
the fair. Iggulden rested from his labours. "She's a Lashmar
right enough. I started up to write to my uncle--at once--the
month after she said her folks came from Veering Holler."
"Where there ain't any roads?" Skim interrupted, but none
laughed.
"My uncle he married an American woman for his second, and she
took it up like a like the coroner. She's a Lashmar out of the
old Lashmar place, 'fore they sold to Conants. She ain't no Toot
Hill Lashmar, nor any o' the Crayford lot. Her folk come out of
the ground here, neither chalk nor forest, but wildishers. They
sailed over to America--I've got it all writ down by my uncle's
woman--in eighteen hundred an' nothing. My uncle says they're all
slow begetters like."
"Would they be gentry yonder now?" Skim asked.
"Nah--there's no gentry in America, no matter how long you're
there. It's against their law. There's only rich and poor
allowed. They've been lawyers and such like over yonder for a
hundred years but she's a Lashmar for all that."
"Lord! What's a hundred years?" said Whybarne, who had seen
seventy-eight of them.
"An' they write too, from yonder--my uncle's woman writes--that
you can still tell 'em by headmark. Their hair's foxy-red
still--an' they throw out when they walk. He's in-toed-treads
like a gipsy; but you watch, an' you'll see 'er throw, out--like
a colt."
"Your trace wants taking up." Pinky's large ears had caught the
sound of voices, and as the two broke through the laurels the men
were hard at work, their eyes on Sophie's feet.
She had been less fortunate in her inquiries than Iggulden, for
her Aunt Sydney of Meriden (a badged and certificated Daughter of
the Revolution to boot) answered her inquiries with a two-paged
discourse on patriotism, the leaflets of a Village Improvement
Society, of which she was president, and a demand for an overdue
subscription to a Factory Girls' Reading Circle. Sophie burned it
all in the Orpheus and Eurydice grate, and kept her own counsel.
"What I want to know," said George, when Spring was coming, and
the gardens needed thought. "is who will ever pay me for my
labour? I've put in at least half a million dollars' worth
already."
"Sure you're not taking too much out of yourself?" his wife
asked.
"Oh, no; I haven't been conscious of myself all winter." He
looked at his brown English gaiters and smiled. "It's all behind
me now. I believe I could sit down and think of all that--those
months before we sailed."
"Don't--ah, don't!" she cried.
"But I must go back one day. You don't want to keep me out of
business always--or do you?" He ended with a nervous laugh.
Sophie sighed as she drew her own ground-ash (of old Iggulden's
cutting) from the hall rack.
"Aren't you overdoing it too? You look a little tired," he said.
"You make me tired. I'm going to Rocketts to see Mrs. Cloke about
Mary." (This was the sister of the telegraphist, promoted to be
sewing-maid at Pardons.) "Coming?"
"I'm due at Burnt House to see about the new well. By the way,
there's a sore throat at Gale Anstey--"
"That's my province. Don't interfere. The Whybarne children
always have sore throats. They do it for jujubes."
"Keep away from Gale Anstey till I make sure, honey. Cloke ought
to have told me."
"These people don't tell. Haven't you learnt that yet? But I'll
obey, me lord. See you later!"
She set off afoot, for within the three main roads that bounded
the blunt triangle of the estate (even by night one could
scarcely hear the carts on them), wheels were not used except for
farm work. The footpaths served all other purposes. And though at
first they had planned improvements, they had soon fallen in with
the customs of their hidden kingdom, and moved about the
soft-footed ways by woodland, hedgerow, and shaw as freely as the
rabbits. Indeed, for the most part Sophie walked bareheaded
beneath her helmet of chestnut hair; but she had been plagued of
late by vague toothaches, which she explained to Mrs. Cloke, who
asked some questions. How it came about Sophie never knew, but
after a while behold Mrs. Cloke's arm was about her waist, and
her head was on that deep bosom behind the shut kitchen door.
"My dear! My dear!" the elder woman almost sobbed. "An' d'you
mean to tell me you never suspicioned? Why--why--where was you
ever taught anything at all? Of course it is. It's what we've
been only waitin' for, all of us. Time and again I've said to
Lady--" she checked herself. "An' now we shall be as we should
be."
"But--but--but--" Sophie whimpered.
"An' to see you buildin' your nest so busy--pianos and books--an'
never thinkin' of a nursery!"
"No more I did." Sophie sat bolt upright, and began to laugh.
"Time enough yet." The fingers tapped thoughtfully on the broad
knee. "But--they must be strange-minded folk over yonder with
you! Have you thought to send for your mother? She dead? My dear,
my dear! Never mind! She'll be happy where she knows. 'Tis God's
work. An' we was only waitin' for it, for you've never failed in
your duty yet. It ain't your way. What did you say about my
Mary's doings?" Mrs. Cloke's face hardened as she pressed her
chin on Sophie's forehead. "If any of your girls thinks to be'ave
arbitrary now, I'll--But they won't, my dear. I'll see they do
their duty too. Be sure you'll 'ave no trouble."
When Sophie walked back across the fields heaven and earth
changed about her as on the day of old Iggulden's death. For an
instant she thought of the wide turn of the staircase, and the
new ivory-white paint that no coffin corner could scar, but
presently, the shadow passed in a pure wonder and bewilderment
that made her reel. She leaned against one of their new gates and
looked over their lands for some other stay.
"Well," she said resignedly, half aloud, "we must try to make him
feel that he isn't a third in our party," and turned the corner
that looked over Friars Pardon, giddy, sick, and faint.
Of a sudden the house they had bought for a whim stood up as she
had never seen it before, low-fronted, broad-winged, ample,
prepared by course of generations for all such things. As it had
steadied her when it lay desolate, so now that it had meaning
from their few months of life within, it soothed and promised
good. She went alone and quickly into the hall, and kissed either
door-post, whispering: "Be good to me. You know! You've never
failed in your duty yet."
When the matter was explained to George, he would have sailed at
once to their own land, but this Sophie forbade.
"I don't want science," she said. "I just want to be loved, and
there isn't time for that at home. Besides," she added, looking
out of the window, "it would be desertion."
George was forced to soothe himself with linking Friars Pardon to
the telegraph system of Great Britain by
telephone--three-quarters of a mile of poles, put in by Whybarne
and a few friends. One of these was a foreigner from the next
parish. Said he when the line was being run: "There's an old
ellum right in our road. Shall us throw her?"
"Toot Hill parish folk, neither grace nor good luck, God help
'em." Old Whybarne shouted the local proverb from three poles
down the line. "We ain't goin' to lay any axe-iron to coffin-wood
here not till we know where we are yet awhile. Swing round 'er,
swing round!"
To this day, then, that sudden kink in the straight line across
the upper pasture remains a mystery to Sophie and George. Nor can
they tell why Skim Winsh, who came to his cottage under Dutton
Shaw most musically drunk at 10.45 P.M of every Saturday night,
as his father had done before him, sang no more at the bottom of
the garden steps, where Sophie always feared he would break his
neck. The path was undoubtedly an ancient right of way, and at
10.45 P.M. on Saturdays Skim remembered it was his duty to
posterity to keep it open--till Mrs. Cloke spoke to him once. She
spoke likewise to her daughter Mary, sewing maid at Pardons, and
to Mary's best new friend, the five-foot-seven imported London
house-maid, who taught Mary to trim hats, and found the country
dullish.
But there was no noise--at no time was there any noise--and when
Sophie walked abroad she met no one in her path unless she had
signified a wish that way. Then they appeared to protest that all
was well with them and their children, their chickens, their
roofs, their water-supply, and their sons in the police or the
railway service.
"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."
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