“It reaches back to the beginning of things,” she answered, smiling. “Won’t it tire you?”—but when he shook his head and sat up, drawing her against his shoulder, she opened her heart with the passionate relief that only those know who have carried locked lips through hungering years.
“Do you remember what a queer little child I was, Christian? Lots of people disapproved of me, and some kind souls thought I was what Brathay would call ‘nickt i’ the head.’ I was allowed to do pretty much what I liked after my mother died, and I spent most of my time wandering about the estate, until I knew every corner of it as well as Kilne itself. I wouldn’t take any notice of the ‘quality’—shut my mouth tight when they spoke to me, and looked as though they were trying to steal me; but anybody that worked on the land I took to my heart on the spot. All the ploughmen were my friends, the hedgers and ditchers, the beaters and beckwatchers, down to the poachers! Even the fearsomeness of keepers I tamed, and they let me go where I chose—they made me as free of the woods as any other wild fledgeling. And old Brathay—ask him sometime what we were to each other in those days—the queer little child and the big huntsman! There was Bowness, too, a wild youngster kicked out of Whyterigg, whom my father shaped into the finest keeper on Crump. And Moorhouse and Fleming—oh, and heaps more—they were my education! Do you wonder that I lived and breathed Crump, with such surroundings, Father talking of nothing else, and all the old books to my hand? I was bred to it, too.” She gave the same ecstatic laugh. “I’m not afraid to say it, now. You’ve given me the right!
“It didn’t mean anything special to me at first. It was just part of me, that was all. And then, one day, as all the Lyndesays do, I found my dream. I had been reading the list of Crump stewards, saying the names aloud until I reached my father’s, and it came to me suddenly that this splendid inheritance of service was mine—the birthright of me, Deborah Lyndesay; and I ran out into the park and flung myself on the grass, kissing it, and saying over and over again—‘I, too, will serve Crump! I, too! I, too!’ sobbing for sheer joy. And then two workmen passed up the path to the Hall.”
She paused a moment, and by the restraint in her tone when she went on he guessed that the childish tragedy was as new and terrible to her to-day.
“My father was riding below them on the road, and they touched their hats as he went by. One of them stopped to look after him. ‘The last of the Kilne Lyndesays!’ I heard him say. ‘The best and the finest—and the last. It’s a sad pity!’
“‘There’s a lass, though, isn’t there?’ said the other, and the first man laughed as though he had made a joke.
“‘Ay, and what use of that?’ he said scathingly. ‘What can a lass do for Crump? As far as that goes, Roger Lyndesay might as well have neither chick nor child. Nay, he’s the last, worse luck! The lass doesn’t count.’
“Oh, Christian, it’s a long fall from Heaven! I’m broken and wounded to this day. My dream shattered in my hands. I was my ancestors’ child, but I could not follow in their steps. I had all the love, all the courage, even the knowledge, but—I was a girl. I could not put my hand to the plough and drive a single foot in the Kilne furrow, though the heritage of desire was born in me as fiercely alive as in any son. Do people never think that a girl may feel these things, too—suffer and burn to follow in her fathers’ steps and make herself one with them in her quota of good work? I never spoke of it. Nobody has ever known—not even my father; but the longing of it drove back upon me, eating the soul out of me. Even when I was away the thought of Crump was a more vivid thing to me than the world around me; and when I came back it was like a resurrection—the pain of resurrection, too! Oh, Christian—that first year—— Each day I lived as a man before execution, knowing that one of them would bring my real life to an end.
“Then at last came—the way out. Stanley. It was the woman’s only way out. You’ll try to understand, Christian, won’t you—won’t you? I knew what he was—it was impossible to live under Crump’s very shadow and not know—but beyond and above all that he was something to me that he couldn’t possibly be to anybody else. To begin with, he was Lyndesay of Crump, and I, Roger Lyndesay’s daughter. With us lay the right to give him anything we chose, our last coin to help him, our sword-hand to save him—even ourselves. It’s a right that can only be bought by perfect service—that’s why so few people know what it means. But we know. Then, Stanley—needed me. Through me he reached out to the dream, and I could feel him struggling. That is why I’ve never blamed him, even in my thoughts. Because I loved Crump so much, I filled a want in him that was sometimes hungry and cried; and after a while he could not let me go. He—needed me.”
“As I need you!” Christian’s voice answered her, low and passionate. For the first time, a thrill of sympathy vitalised the bond between his brother and himself.