The confectioner next door had a window of cakes with knobs running round them like castle-ramparts—Simnel cakes they called them. Then it must be Simnel Sunday—Mothering Sunday—to-morrow! A slip of paper pasted on the wet pane informed him that it was. The old custom was gone, leaving, as in the case of so many customs, merely something in the way of eating as its memorial. He remembered hearing the parson preach about it, last year; how the farm lads used to go home to their mothers, taking flowers with them. Francey had been in the choir, and they had driven home together. If he slept at Lockholme to-night, it would be Mothering Sunday by the time he reached the Pride. Seemed appropriate, somehow. Perhaps, after all, he had been right not to go with Michael—so he tried to comfort the puzzle out of his heart. In any case, he might take the old folk a remembrance of some kind, even though it might not be over and above well received, in view of the lost passage-money. Shag for the old dad—that would do him all right!—but his mother was a harder problem. He had often heard her say she had all she wanted and a bit over. After a while, he sneaked ashamedly into the florist’s and bought some violets, large, dewy and sweet. The girl watched with amusement as he sank them gingerly into a capacious pocket. He would put them in water at Lockholme, if he could possibly escape Denny’s inquiring eye.
The boisterous wind that had roared through the town all morning was still as high as ever when they drove out in the late afternoon, calming no whit even at the dead ebb of the tide, and it was raining with the same steady violence. Crouching low against it, Lup was glad that he had not to meet it on the Northern marsh. He wondered if Michael had got his horse to face the driving storm, or whether he had had to trudge at its head—a weary-enough job even for a young man. He had done well to stay with Denny. Yet, at the first turn leading to the marsh, he threw off the rug and put out a foot to the step.
“I doubt I’d best be making tracks for home, Thomas! It’ll be a bit of a drag across the moss, but better now than when tide gets turned. We’re in for a wild night, by the look of it, an’ there’ll be no getting to the Pride after dark. It’ll be dark soon, an’ all.”
Denny expostulated.
“Losh save us, man, you’ll never win out to the Pride to-night! Light’ll be gone afore you’re at Ladyford, and Mrs. Dockeray’ll never let you cross door a second time.” He had set his heart on taking Lup down to the supper, and, in spite of the rain, was still aglow with “Dragon” confidence. “What’s got you, Lup? You’re as queer as Dick’s hatband! You’ve never Brack’s bee in your bonnet, surely?”
“How’s the tide?” Lup asked, unmoved.
“Sometime after midnight. Nowt to speak of. There’s nobody looking for trouble on the marsh, barrin’ Brack, as I said. Holliday o’ Pippin has yon prize beasts o’ hisn down on the low land, an’ there’s sheep in plenty out an’ all. Tide’s low, I tell you, and it’s only been blowing since morn. We’ve seen many a worse day, you an’ me. Come on with you, lad! I tell you what it is”—he brought out the joke that had been going round all day—“it’s yon lass o’ Dockeray’s you’re after. We all know what skifted you to Canada, but I reckon you found you couldn’t quit, after all!”
And again Lup put his purpose by, yielding his last chance for fear of a woman’s eyes.
The turn was passed, and Denny’s stepper, eager for home, rocked over the bridge and along by the towering wall of Doestone, which, with the swaying, dripping trees facing, formed a darkening avenue in the quickening night. Then up the hill and sharp to the right, sliding down towards the west. Once on the low land, with nothing betwixt them and the sea, the whole panorama of sky and sand lay blended before them in one buffeted veil of gray, torn by the sheets of rain. Only Denny’s voice kept the horse to the wind, and now and again they had to draw into a curve of the hedge for breath.
“We’ll fair catch it, coming back from the ‘Duke’!” Denny observed, in one of these pauses. “But it’ll likely blow itself out by daylight, an’ tide’s nowt, as I said.”