Deb had come with the Savaurys. Roger Lyndesay had a horror of stuffy rooms and noisy entertainments. He liked best his own fireside, with a pipe and some queer old book of Westmorland history that had long “s’s” spiking up and down the page. Savaury purchased three programmes from the somewhat abashed parson, and asked if the living required supplementing; then buried his nose in the pink sheet, snorting contemptuously as he recited the items aloud.
“‘I know a lovely garden’—h’m—that’s the chemist, isn’t it? Verbena hairwash, I suppose, and camomile tea. ‘I see you on every side’—the policeman’s wife with the squint. Mrs. Andrews—‘Come where my love lies dreaming’—as if one could, when he’s been in the churchyard these last ten years, and a very good thing, too! Here’s another garden—‘Beautiful Garden of Roses’—(so tiresome never to get away from Nature!) and—dear, dear! This is really too much—‘Leaving yet Loving’—duet by the schoolmaster and the assistant teacher who has just given notice. I shall complain to the County Council!”
Christian leaned back to ask Deborah some question about the performance, and she answered casually, without lifting her eyes from the programme. She had been stopping at Heron, helping Verity with her preparations, so had only seen him once since that mystic hour in the gloaming which had entrapped them both. The “once” had been but a lightning interview snatched in the street while Verity threw skirts at various squawkers’ doors, and they had had little chance of improving the situation, either way. She had impressed silence upon him rather fiercely, and had stayed awake half the night, recalling his hurt and puzzled face. It was all wrong,—she felt it in every nerve—and wondered how long the situation would last. She had started at least half a dozen letters that would have brought it to an end, but always some little thing had stopped her,—some chance word or thought that sent all the springs of longing flowing back in the same direction. How easily things might have been so graciously otherwise, had those fatal words never been spoken on the old bridge! They cared enough,—she almost believed,—understood enough, to have been happy together, with the promise of something greater to come; but Slinker stood between, and across the dawn of the new hope the old doubt lingered in Christian’s eyes. She was taking him as she would have taken Stanley—for Crump. His mother’s words—“You would have married Christian on the same terms!”—haunted him, sleeping and waking, torturing him past endurance. The affinity born of the long day in the open and the quiet evening at dusk had vanished, leaving only a sense of upheaval and strain and helpless bewilderment. Things could not be right, as they were; yet how to mend them? They groped for each other in the dark, and, touching hands, found each a stranger where had been a friend.
Going wearily over the same ground, her eyes resting miserably on the back of Christian’s head, she became suddenly conscious that Callander was watching her, and wrenched her attention back to Savaury and the programme.
Callander had called, the day after the meet, to apologise for his desertion.
“I thought you were coming, too,” he said bluntly, “or they’d never have got me inside! I was just backing out when Lyndesay told Miss Bracewell he was on his way to tea with you, so I knew you were all right. He said something about a fender-stool and a brown tea-pot, and made off after you. I suppose he caught you up?”
“Yes,—in the next field. What did he say about the tea-pot?”
“I didn’t quite grasp it. Something about you having one at Kilne. Miss What’s-her-name said—‘Oh, I quite understand! How sweet of you to admire your poor relations’ tea-pots!’ and Christian looked at her for a whole minute. Then he said—‘Miss Lyndesay and I have an ancestor who made tea for his Queen in a brown tea-pot. Since then, it has been the fashion in our family,’—and went away very politely; and Miss What-d’you-call-her snapped at me for forgetting to shut the gate. She must have put his back up, for Lyndesay never shoves his ancestors down your throat. When we got inside, Miss Braces sent the silver tea-pot back to the kitchen, and ordered an enamel thing with a cracked spout that poured all over the place. Were you long in getting home?”
She forgot how she had answered that. Perhaps not at all. She knew by now that Callander didn’t always need an answer.
“Everybody’s here from everywhere,” Savaury was saying, waving his eyeglasses and turning to stare, as only he could stare, at the people behind. “It’s astonishing how we all turn up at these tiresome old things,—almost as if we couldn’t help it. I suppose we get into the habit, like standing up for the National Anthem, and ordering the usual Christmas dinner even if everybody in the house has dyspepsia. Of course, Verity is quite clever and all that kind of thing, but she’s not very good at taking suggestions. It’s so tiresome when people won’t follow really valuable advice. I often send her heaps of music, but she’s never used a note of it yet. I see Mrs. Gardner is here in her cinematograph dress,—sequins, you say?—oh, possibly, but just as upsetting to the optic nerve. And really, somebody ought to tell Mrs. Broughton that green velvet is unlucky, and you can’t be too careful when you’re just out of the Divorce Court,—well, Petronilla, I suppose Deborah has heard of such a thing in this enlightened age, and you’ve broken that fan over me once already!”