“Take him on, sir! Give him a taste of the old stuff. Topple him over! Lakin’ Lyndesay! Lakin’ Lyndesay! Give him Crump——!” and it seemed to Christian that he himself was borne bodily upon the wind of tumult as his name ran from mouth to mouth.
The men on the platform gathered round him urgently; the oldest tenant clung to his arm, quaveringly imploring, eager to see him justified; and even Larrupper added his pithy persuasion.
“Get along down, Laker, an’ break the beggar’s neck!” he growled. “Or if it’s not dainty enough handlin’ for Lyndesay of Crump, I’ll sail in an’ do it myself!”
“No, no, Larry! I can’t have you landing in the police-court,” Christian laughed, torn between his hunger for the game and the memory of an extorted promise. Perhaps, too, as Larrupper had so delicately hinted, Lyndesay of Crump was loth to meet the upstart challenger, but the primitive man at least was all agog to prove his mettle. He looked hesitatingly round the urgent faces, the sea of entreaty surging in his ears. The events of the long day had swung him far from his normal temperate attitude, and at that moment he did not care greatly what he did or by what influence he was led. More than one tie had been definitely broken during the last few hours, and the promise might as well break with the rest.
Only Callander hesitated, driven by his undertaking to Deborah, and, curiously enough, his very protest clinched consent. Callander had never seen him wrestle, Christian remembered suddenly, and his boyish vanity rose to back his natural desire. Fate had used him none too kindly, that day, leaving him with a sense of having been found wanting, of having missed by an ace a gift he was not strong enough to hold. He felt humiliated, sunk in his own eyes, and he longed to set himself right at least on this, his own peculiar ground. Moreover, Callander had never seen him wrestle! Afterwards, he remembered how that touch of innocent folly had swung the balance on the fatal side.
He caught Harker’s eye and nodded, and instantly the hard-used caps soared up once more; and as he shook himself free from the exultant press, he saw old Parker beckoning him anxiously from a door behind.
“You’ll excuse me taking the liberty, sir,” the butler apologised, trembling in every limb with excitement, “but I ventured to slip down, just to see what was going on, and at the same time I brought the old rig down with me! You see, Mr. Christian, I thought they’d like as not want you to turn out, and I didn’t fancy the things not being on the spot, so I hope you’ll excuse me having brought them along. Oh, sir! It’s like old times, isn’t it?—and mind you give him a bit of Crump’s best!”
That was sufficient, if any extra pressure were needed, and they disappeared behind the stage, while the umpires growled the meeting into a semblance of order, and Harker flung himself down to rest, his heart beating fast in spite of his outward indifference.
It is always the dependants of an old house who nurse and keep alive any feud that may be going—the family servants, the old keepers, the workmen on the estate. Theirs it is to see that the bad blood should be kept running, no matter how sweetly, on the part of the masters, righteousness and peace may have kissed each other. Crump and Whyterigg had shaken hands and buried the knife, but Christian’s old nurse would not sit at meat with Rishwald’s chauffeur, nor the head gardener so much as exchange a cutting with Whyterigg’s horticultural head. Harker was well come for this sort of thing, being a son of the now-pensioned Whyterigg coachman and a lady’s maid also bred on the spot, who had handed on to him their lusty hate of Crump almost as a sacred duty. “Whyterigg thieves” and “Crump liars” had constituted the common interchange of courtesies between the boys of the two villages, and though education and sport had done much to root out the old feudal folly, the opprobrious term still rankled in Harker’s mind. He now held a Whyterigg farm, but until the present year he had been with an uncle in Cumberland, so that he knew nothing of Christian beyond his sporting reputation, seeing him through the smoked glass of inherited hostility more as a symbol than as a man. In his mind had always been a half-formed determination to meet Lakin’ Lyndesay on this one possible ground of equality, and now his opportunity had arrived. He meant to make the most of it. The old coachman and the lady’s maid would surely weep tears of joy if he could carry home a victory over Crump.
There was a stir on the platform, heads turning to the inner door framing the illuminated countenance of the old butler; and then Christian ran down into the ring, his nerves thrilling to the affectionate recognition flung him from all sides. He wore the pale orange they all knew, his fair head shining against the black Crump cedar embroidered on the chest; and as he stood, waiting, the full light falling upon his bright, frank expression and clean-limbed grace, Harker, approaching, was conscious of unwilling and deeply heretical admiration. And Callander’s heart warmed to his young employer, for all that he guessed him to be the unconscious barrier to his dearest desire.