In a far room the dead mother lay unaware of her son as he of her; and out on the smooth lawn the uprooted cedar spread its huge branches like a monster octopus flung dead. It had had a dramatic end, Nettie thought, shuddering in remembrance. One Lyndesay it had carried with it, and another seemed far on the road. It was certainly true that the Lyndesays went out violently and not as other folk. Yet, if Christian lived, surely the spell would now be broken for all time? If Christian lived—! She looked at the still, fair head with earnest affection, the tears rising to her eyes, and a past conversation floated back into her mind. The gruesome link between the master and his forbears was gone for ever. If Christian lived, he would be left standing alone.
CHAPTER XXII
Augustus began the afternoon by a dastardly theft. Meeting a lady of similar age and costume (three years and a short serge frock), inordinately inflated by the possession of a small Union Jack, he took it from her by silent force, and without the slightest change of expression on his deadly serious countenance. When she had been reduced to dismal shrieks on somebody’s doorstep, he marched into the Bank and demanded a copper from the manager, who, finding him intimidating to the last degree, hastily handed him the required sum from his own pocket.
Larruppin’ Lyndesay’s car was standing empty in front of the “Bunch of Acorns,” at the mercy of any marauder, and Augustus did not hesitate a moment. Even at that age he had a cultivated taste in cars. He did not require telling that the long, shining monster was of the best of its kind, and therefore worthy in all respects of his attention. Leaving the Bank with the air of a man who had paid in fully a quarter of a million, he crossed the road, flag in hand, and climbed with some difficulty into the front seat.
The manager came to his door to watch developments. A ribald crowd of small boys gathered round the car, pointing out the awful penalties certain to befall the offender when discovered; but Augustus, unmoved as the soft spring sky above him, sat serenely on the padded seat, swinging his small, bare legs, and clasping his pirated Jack tightly to his bosom.
Larrupper came out presently, followed by an obsequious landlord. His air of reckless cheerfulness seemed to have vanished completely; he looked older and thinner, and his eyes were tired, like those of a man who has kept anxious vigils.
“Well, good-day, Mr. Lionel!” the landlord was saying. “It’s fine news that Mr. Christian’s going on all right. We’ve all been terribly anxious. I’ll see about those siphons you ordered, sir, and—oh, great snakes!”
He had caught sight of Augustus.
“If it isn’t that there limb of Satan, making free as usual with other folks’ property! Excuse me, sir, I’ll soon get him out of this. He’s the worst boy in the place!”
“Boy?” Larrupper queried, looking at the petticoat and the silken hair.