“I was born at the beck of Crump,” Deb answered, looking up at the old house. “It’s in the blood, and I can’t help it. You can afford to snap your fingers at it, but Kilne must come running if it lifts a hand.”
“I wish to goodness I had snapped my fingers at it!” Mrs. Slinker said sadly, as they went in. (She had not seen Dixon for a month.) “Rishwald dines here to-night,” she added, in a lighter tone. “I’m getting rather worried about him, to tell the truth. I fancy he thinks I’d make a nice match for his Tobies and Queen Annes. No—not there”—as Deb turned instinctively towards the library. “Upstairs, in Stanley’s own room—horrid little smoke-pot! You know it, of course, so I’ll let you go alone; but if she gets really rampant, just let out a yell, and I’ll come up at a gallop.”
She let go the girl’s hand rather reluctantly, for Deb had unconsciously gone white; and then, on a sudden impulse, she stooped and kissed her.
“I’m older than you,” she said, almost apologetically, “older and harder, and I’ve got used to the atmosphere of this mouldy old place. I won’t let it suck the soul out of me. It gets you by the throat, doesn’t it, when you come in? It’s—it’s the old lady!”—she nodded upstairs, a look half-mischievous, half-frightened, on her face—“Mrs. Lyndesay and that vampire of a tree out on the lawn. When they’re gone, please God, there’ll be a clean wind blowing through Crump!”
She disappeared, and Deb, ascending past an open window facing west, was caught in a great blast of air, shaking the pictures on the walls, and shrieking eerily round the eaves, as the tide rose and the gale grew steadily from the sea. She drew in a deep breath of it before she climbed the last stair and knocked at Slinker’s door.
Personality clings to a room long after the occupant is dead, especially if it be left untouched, and as she entered, meeting the portrait’s meaning smile, it seemed to her that Slinker himself was there indeed. She had forgotten the picture, and the shock of it held her captive for a moment, until, dropping her eyes, she met the same disconcerting smile on the cold lips of his mother. Her first words made her start, translating as they did the thought in her mind.
“Oh, yes, he’s here!” Mrs. Lyndesay said coolly. “You felt him when you opened the door—don’t deny it. He is here, all the time, listening when we speak.” She looked round at one of the big chairs by the fire, and Deborah felt a sudden fear thrill the morbid atmosphere already invoked. Yet the eyes that turned back to her were sane enough, and hard as gems are hard, as the light on a new-drawn sword, and the line of Lake hills before rain.
“People never die,” said Mrs. Lyndesay. “You think you’ve got rid of them, but they come back—they always come back. Yet Stanley is dead in the eyes of the world, and Christian follows him. That is sufficient for you. You would have married Stanley; and now you mean to marry—his heir!”
Deborah drew back, the blood surging to her face, for she had never thought of this. Christian had passed his word to say nothing, and she had given no soul on earth a clue to their secret.
“You wonder how I know?” Mrs. Lyndesay asked smoothly. “It is simple—these things are always simple.” She indicated the window looking towards the stables. “One of the boys was talking of you, to-day. He had followed hounds, it seemed, the day of the Crump meet. He informed an assembly of open-mouthed employees that he had seen Christian holding your hand. Does it please you to be meat for gossip in the mart of the stable-yard?”