“There’s Rishwald,” Callander remarked, looking after it. “Christian will be late. Mrs. Stanley was ready for dinner long since, and kept coming out of her room and signalling me with hair-brushes to know whether you were still in the house.”
“It was good of you to wait,” Deb replied mechanically. Her brain was still numb after the late strain, and she felt dazed by the rushing tumult around her.
“I wanted to walk home with you,” he said simply. “I knew Christian was engaged, and it isn’t a night for a lady to be out alone,” and put his arm before her as he spoke, for a torn branch came whirling heavily to the ground at their very feet.
She could hear the big tide filling the river, and wondered if the sheep were safe on the mosses, and whether the low-lying farms were trembling for the sea-wall. She could not help remembering that on such a night Slinker had gone to his account. On such a night Christian had come into her life; and on this, its counterpart, he was going out of it. A thought struck her, and she half-stopped, looking back to Crump.
“What is it?” Callander asked. “Have you forgotten something? I will go back for it.” But she turned again, shaking her head.
“It was only an old superstition that came into my mind,” she explained, when they came under the lee of the Kilne wall, and she could get her breath. “They say Lyndesays of Crump always die in a gale. I suppose it’s absurd, but it’s a fact that Stanley died on a night like this, and William Lyndesay, too. Of course there is many a storm which brings no disaster, and it can’t be anything but a curious coincidence, but Crump has many a frowning fate against it, as you must have found, by now.”
“Yes, the estate seems to reek with ill-luck,” Callander said thoughtfully. “I’m always running up against samples. And how firmly everybody believes in it, too! This field must not be ploughed—nothing would spring in it. Sheep can’t be heafed on that fell—they would die in a week. In a certain shippon the dobbie milks first; and so on. It has a certain charm for an outsider, but it is awkward from a business point of view, and must be decidedly trying if you take it all to heart.”
“There’s a big wrestling-match on at the Academy, to-night,” he added presently, “and Christian has promised to look in. I’m going up for him, so can keep an eye open to see that the gale does him no harm!” he ended laughingly, as they reached the gate.
“Thanks!” Deb returned, smiling. “It’s all nonsense, I suppose, and you must think me very silly, but I’m just as governed by the old traditions as all the rest.”
“I’m glad you came here,” she added, on a sudden impulse. “I’m glad you’ll have Kilne when we’re gone. It knows you already—don’t you feel it when you come in? I couldn’t have gone away, leaving the house to a stranger.”