“I don’t doubt it! Nevertheless, the fact remains that no Crump owner has ever died peacefully of senile old age. We go out fighting, hunting, shooting—moving, anyhow—always rebelling, never acquiescing; and generally in pretty good time. We do not die as most other men die.”
“That’s swank, if you like!” she answered him teasingly, and he coloured hotly, biting his lip. “No! Don’t curl up. There never was anybody less side-y than you, Christian. But you’ve got the family-feel very strong. It showed in Slinker, too, at times, though you never believed it was there. He said things like that, occasionally—generally when he had had too much to drink.”
His face clouded a little, and she turned squarely upon him.
“Look here, Laker, you’ve got to learn to bear it! I’m not your sort, and I never shall be; and if I’m to go on living here for the present, as you say you wish, you must get accustomed to my way of talking, and the things I may shoot out at any moment, even if they do drive the footmen into hysterics, and old Parker into dropping the beef. If I’m to stop, I’ll not be glossed and veneered and shoved into a glass case. I’m not a Lyndesay, in spite of Slinker. I’m Nettie Stone, the horse-dealer’s daughter; and if I can’t use my native unparliamentary language under your venerable roof, I must go and use it out in Canada or some other place where ears are less tender and the air is free!”
“I beg your pardon!” he replied, very gently, and with a ceremonious but perfectly sincere inclination, and this time it was she whose colour rose.
“Oh, you—you aristocrat!” she said under her breath, with a little laugh; and he parted suddenly with his new-born dignity, and flung himself boyishly beside her.
“Heavens, Nettie, how serious we’re getting! And all because of a silly old tree-thing! Let’s skip back a page. Tell me some more of your impressions of our cranky old family.”
“Well, I can’t help thinking it’s just idiotic,” she went on, “to sit round watching that old trunk flapping a curse at you without so much as trying to answer it back. You can’t really like the idea that you may find yourself shoved into Eternity at any minute in the twenty-four hours. Anybody with half a yard of backbone would have gone out and talked to the gloating old ghoul with a bill-hook, centuries since, before it got into its stride.”
“I suppose the real reason is that it is part of ourselves, by now,” he answered thoughtfully. “It may have been superstition in the first place; cussed pride, later on; but for myself it is just simply that I would sooner put a bullet through my skull than give orders for the tree to be destroyed. It’s a link between owner and owner—myself and all the other freaks gone before—(that must be how I look at it unconsciously)—and to break that link would mean annihilation of spirit more terrible than any possible annihilation of body. I’ve got all the other fellows looking on and lending a hand, you see. If the tree went, I should be left standing alone.”
Again she looked at him curiously, as at something not wholly within her comprehension.