“I’d rather walk, thanks,” Deb replied. “There’s a short cut out of Halfrebeck over Linacre. It’s not very far, really, and very straight. Why didn’t you go in to tea?”
“Because I’m coming to tea with you,” he said easily. “I want to sit on your big fender-stool with my feet on the fire-irons, and drink tea out of a brown tea-pot. The Lyndesays always have brown tea-pots. It’s a rule of the house. The Bracewells have a silver Queen Anne with a crest grown in Edward VII, and you sit on somebody Chippendale or somebody else Adams, and scrape their elegant legs with your muddy boots.”
This was not like Christian, and she wondered greatly what had occurred after her abrupt departure. She could not guess that, when he joined her over the hedge, he had been hot with resentment at the treatment she had received.
“Oh, yes, we’ve got the brown tea-pot,” she responded curtly. “Father wouldn’t dream of countenancing any other. It’s very silly, of course—no, it isn’t! Father’s quite right. He’s always right. Except when he goes hunting by proxy!” she added rather wearily, for the excitement of the day was passing, and the strain beginning to tell.
“I’m awfully sorry about last night!” Christian said hurriedly. “Callander told me everything. You don’t mind, do you? I’m afraid my mother must have meant it, though I’d give anything to prove I was wrong. It was a cruel thing to do—nothing can excuse or condone it, but we’ve got to remember that she is still breaking her heart over Stanley and—and all that happened. She has nothing against Mr. Lyndesay, of course.”
“She has—me!” Deb answered bitterly. “Oh, it’s I who have been to blame, all through, I suppose! I earned him that blow in the face. I ought to be shot. Yet I’d do it again!” she added hardly, setting her teeth. “You none of you understand, except perhaps Mr. Callander, but I don’t care. I’d do it again!”
They had paused at a gate on the last slope dividing them from the road below, where the dead beech-leaves stood out in bright strips on the black hedges. The land was darkening fast against the evening sky. The earth-line opposite, rising again gently, was fringed with a border of feathery brown fingers etched against the opal. The fresh morning breeze had dropped. The long, straight road was empty except for a plough-boy whistling piercingly sweet. In the uppermost bough of a thin young pine, straight as a lance of God, a thrush flung them its largesse of golden song. And always the rooks went home, flying high with the promise of good weather.
“We must put things right, somehow,” Christian said with determination. “We can’t allow him to be hurt again. But I haven’t much influence with my mother, you know. She was wrapped up entirely in Stanley—she had nothing left for me. And yet they were unhappy together—we were all unhappy. It seems a bit hard that we Lyndesays should never be allowed the every-day home contentment of other folk.”
“There is more than one curse on Crump!” Deb said, frowning. “We are dreamers of dreams, all the lot of us—even Larry—and we carry sorrow in our hands like a guarded gem. Your mother, too, although she seems so cold. And my father is the King-Dreamer of us all. I sometimes think he is the Dream of Crump itself.”
Christian nodded assent. “But Slinker—Slinker had no dream,” he said slowly.