“It’s just a year since he died—had you remembered? I came here to ask him to forgive me, to see if he would let me off, but he still hates me—he’ll never let me go. If we could lift the stone, we should see him smiling, so sure of himself and of his power—smiling—smiling—— Deb, I’m not mad, am I? Come home, now, will you, dear? It isn’t any use.”
They turned slowly up through the Crump chapel to the side door, and Deb laid her fingers in passing on the hacked armour of a couple of warriors clasped in each other’s arms. Nettie looked at her inquiringly, and they paused beside the mutilated figures clinging so closely in the hour of death.
“They were Lyndesay brothers,” Deb explained, “and one slew the other for a cup of water when they were lying wounded on some field of battle. But when he saw what he had done, his madness left him, and he would not touch the drink. Instead, he placed the cup on the dead man’s breast, and lay looking at it through long hours until he died. And for many a year after, if any one had wronged a Lyndesay, he placed a cup of water, all unknown, upon his grave, and so the dead was appeased. Of course, the custom vanished centuries ago. I read about it in one of Father’s old books.”
She stopped, puzzled, for Nettie was gazing at her with a curiously-arrested look, as men stare when the hand of a redeeming angel is stretched to them from the skies. Yet she said nothing; only, after a pause, smiled, and went out into the sun.
But before night fell the verger, wondering, found an ancient symbol on the worn slab at the chancel-steps, and for many a year after a cup of cold water cried on Slinkin’ Lyndesay’s mercy. And Anthony Dixon’s wife found peace.
Released by the top lodge, Deb left the road and sped quickly across the turf to the top of the park, like a light-footed thing of the woods homeward bound for its lair. She did not ask herself why or where she was going, only harried, hurried, hearing her heart beating and the birds calling, and the thin, quickening cry of the lambs on every side. Below, to her left, the stately phalanx of the trees descended to the Hall, where the soft gray smoke lifted its delicate pillars in the still, drawing evening, like folded cobwebs against the towering woods behind. In front, over the dropping parkland and the wide sands, the tranquil opal sky melted into the gauze-blue hills. To the right and far beneath, the heavily-shaded river ringed Cappelside in its shallow bed; and in the hollow by the buckhouse the deer lay close.
Crossing the ridge she dived into the plantation, clinging to the steep face of the slope, and there, leaning against a tree, she found Christian—on Cappelside.
He was looking towards her as she came down, standing with his back against the tree and his head lifted, almost as if he expected her, and she went straight to him without any pause of hesitation and surprise, like one walking in a dream.