She stepped outside, and for a moment stood looking at the splendid old man, framed like a delicate pastel by the clematised porch. Of those dearest to us we have always one picture readiest to our hearts, and this was to be her memory of him, returning all her life in times of stress, with its atmosphere of fine achievement come to its evening peace.
Turning at last, a sudden yearning took her towards the park. She began to walk quickly, without knowing why, climbing the shoulder of the hill, and when Nettie hailed her unexpectedly across the turf, she had a curious feeling of having been checked on a definite errand. But Nettie evidently had need of her, and she allowed herself to be drawn across to the avenue and up towards Dockerneuk.
“I know you’re in one of your ‘back to the land’ moods,” Mrs. Slinker said apologetically. “I could tell that by the way you were walking. But do spare yourself to me just for half an hour. There is something I must do, and I’m not brave enough to do it alone.”
In spite of her new happiness there was still about Slinker’s wife a touch of the fear that had surprised Christian on Christmas Eve. The late tragedy had left a sinister shadow upon her well-balanced mind and splendidly sane outlook. The Lyndesay atmosphere had caught even Nettie Stone in the mesh of its creeping dread. The old horror was upon her, and she could not fight it. Not yet—not even yet had she eluded Crump.
“It holds me!” she said passionately, as they went up. “Twice I’ve escaped from it, and twice it has brought me back. It can’t bring me a third time, can it? Can it, Deb? But I’m afraid! Just because I’m happy, I’m afraid. I remember scoffing at Christian’s morbid fancies, but now I’m a hundred times worse myself. They’re his inheritance, though,—and yours. You’re entitled to your imaginings, but a horse-dealer’s daughter has no business to be jabbering about the clutch of ghosts. They’re dead—I know they’re dead!—and yet I feel that both Stanley and his mother would get between me and my happiness if they could!”
They were folding the sheep at Dockerneuk, and the air was thrilling with the deep call of the mothers and the tremolo answer of the lambs. Dixon was by the farmyard wall, watching his flock come in, but he turned at Nettie’s voice, and came to meet them, his slim little collie pressing himself delicately against Deb for notice. The old farm had the worn grayness of fine age set in the unutterably fresh youth of earth and atmosphere. The same quality of patient dignity breathed alike from Dixon and his background, making them one.
Deborah took the opportunity to wish him happiness, and the reserved Northerner thanked her shyly, sending his quiet eyes back to his fields, with the far-off gaze of those who look abroad from dawn till eve.
“It’s grand to have Mr. Christian about again!” he observed presently, changing the subject as soon as courtesy allowed. “He’s a bit over-white and slender, yet, but he’ll mend of that. You’ve seen him, of course, Miss Deborah?”—and all his native politeness could not completely conceal his surprise when Deb shook her head.
“His own people haven’t had much chance of seeing him,” Nettie put in quickly, coming to the rescue. “Half the County has been sitting on the doorstep for weeks, and of course the people who knew him least were the ones who came oftenest. Parker and I have had a fearful time chasing the old worries off the premises. Lots of them brought things to eat—Heaven alone knows why! Parker was simply raving, but the under-servants enjoyed them frightfully. Other people left tracts, and the Bracewells brought everything you could think of, from primroses to puzzles—horrid little brain-stretchers that made Christian’s head wiggle the moment he saw them. The Whyterigg car has been over, every day——” She caught Anthony’s smiling, gently-chiding gaze, and dropped her own, but went on firmly. “Mr. Rishwald’s dreadfully upset about the whole affair—wrote Christian yards on the matter. He sent him an old silver porringer for his beef-tea, and—do you know?”—she looked laughingly at Deb—“it turned out to have the Crump crest on it!”
She drew the girl out of the yard with a gay nod to her lover, but in the lane she was silent until they stopped at the gate of the old Norman church.