“What kept you—came in between? Why did you never want to take your place?”
Slinker’s wife looked up and up to where the quiet smoke of Dockerneuk chimneys curled in the pure air.
“Because I had once seen something better,” she said, “and after I had done the irrevocable thing, the remembrance of that better thing came back to me. I saw quite plainly what a good man was worth, and the worth of a good man’s love—just everything that Slinker couldn’t mean to me, in spite of Crump. I might have taken it before, and come out all right in the end. But after that I couldn’t have taken it and saved my soul alive.”
“What stopped you, Nettie dear?”
“A little thing—a very little thing. Just the sound of a two-horse grass-cutter on a summer morning. It was miles away from here, in another part of England, in an hotel in some beastly little town; but soon after dawn I woke as if some one had whispered, and, far away, ever so far, I heard the whirr and the click and the call to the horses. And the smell of the hay—that came too; and all it stood for—all it stood for! I couldn’t stop after that. I told Slinker I was going, and I went; and I never had anything to do with him afterwards. I knew then what I wanted—what I had wanted without knowing; and though I couldn’t have it, I could at least refuse anything less. Crump was less, Lyndesay of Crump was less—and Nettie Stone the most wretched, ashamed reptile that ever crawled the earth!”
Christian kissed her hand.
“Thank you for marrying Slinker,” he said. “You belong to me, now, and I shall not be so lonely any more. Thank you for marrying Slinker.”
CHAPTER VI
Deb found her father in his usual place by the window, looking out over the road and the rush-edged river, and up the slope of the park to the plantation outlined against the sky. The Estates Gazette was in his hand, but he was not reading; he was looking out at the land he loved. He was always looking out.
He turned as she entered, and she tried to smile, for in the transparent old face was a content that she had sorely missed during the last, long, trying weeks. The trouble was dying, now, and the spell which had made his chief happiness in life had hold of him once more.