She repeated the words under her breath, as the last bird dropped behind the hill; and he took both her hands in his, for the night was coming, and they must go. He spoke again, but she did not hear him, nor the golden singer still swaying on the young pine. All she knew was that Crump folk had gone home, leaving Deborah Lyndesay behind, and that never in all her life would she find her way thither. At her father’s death she would have to go south, and that would be the end of things for her. If she married Christian, rightly or wrongly, she would still belong to Crump. It was the one way left; yet she fought hard, for she knew she was wronging him—and always the land cried to her in answer. The power stronger than herself drove her as she looked him in the face at last.
“I’m not brave enough to refuse,” she said wistfully. “Surely we care enough to make it right? But oh, Christian, I doubt you’re patting me on the head!”
CHAPTER XVI
Verity put a hand round the curtain and waved wildly, and Larruppin’ Lyndesay, who had been at the beck of those fingers too long not to recognise them under any circumstances, stopped trying to sell programmes to people who had them already, and shouldered his way on to the stage, where a crowd of piqué nightmares, rather terrible in their exaggerated make-up, were busy settling themselves upon insecure pedestals.
The gas smelt vilely, and already the whole place was hot and airless. Larry tugged uneasily at his stiff collar, and wriggled uncomfortably in his evening clothes. He was frightfully sleepy too, having been out on the moor all day, and he wondered how on earth he should ever pull through the sing-song without a snore. He met Verity’s agitation rather unsympathetically, looking gloomily at the dainty little figure in its short skirt and coquettish hat, and wished she were out in the rain with him in a Burberry, and only the painting of Nature on her face. Billy-boy Blackburn, it seemed, had not yet put in an appearance, and Verity was beginning to be alarmed.
“Oh, of course I can start out an’ hunt for him, if you like,” Larry said morosely. “I shan’t have to go scoutin’ very far. The Red Lion is his favourite restin’-place. If not, there’s the Brown Cow,—just as soothin’. Never say die. But if he doesn’t turn up without bein’ booted, I should say leave him where he’s roostin, an’ plank along without him.”
“We can’t! He’s the making of the whole thing. Everybody depends on him.” Verity looked worried and rather helpless, a totally fresh attitude to which the young man’s heart warmed. “Do have a look for him, Larry! We ought to start in a minute.”
“All right. I’ll see where the bounder’s hidin’,”—Larry turned, obedient though disapproving,—“but I warn you I shall make a point of usin’ my own discretion. If I find him goin’ strong, I shall detain him on licensed premises, an’ you can send old Grange runnin’ at ten o’clock to shove us both under the pump!”
Verity’s heart smote her for a moment. Perhaps it was scarcely fair to send young Lionel Lyndesay scouring after a doubtful blacksmith through a series of equally doubtful pubs; and moreover she was a little afraid of her black donkey, to-night. He looked older, and, being tired, much less sunny and complaisant. Indeed, there was something almost grim about his bullet head and big shoulders and his grumbling bass. For the first time she felt him tug at his leading-strings.
She laid her hand rather timidly on his arm, and he wanted to kiss her on the one bit of eyebrow which had escaped the pencil, but the whole effect was distasteful to him, and again he thought longingly of Burberries and a certain bog on the moor that had played him desperately false.