CHAPTER XXII. WHITE HEATHER.
"Kate," said Lomax, a few days after his adventure with the preacher, "not a stroke of work shall I do this morning; the sun is hot, and the breeze cool, and altogether it's a day in a hundred. Come out with me, and we'll lie in the heather and look up at the sky. It will do you good, little woman."
The sweetness of a wifely confession came between their glances nowadays. There was a new wonder in meeting each other's eyes, and Kate nestled close to his arm on the slightest pretext. She came to him now, and ruffled the hair away from his forehead.
"What a forgetful boy you are. One day you make your mother promise to come and see me, and the next you forget all about it. Only, I wish we could have had our morning together," she added wistfully.
"Fie on you for a witch! I never used to forget anything to do with mother before I knew you. Would you like to walk as far as Marshcotes, and we can all come back together?"
"I don't think I ought, Griff. The doctor may know nothing about it—he probably doesn't—but he was very anxious that I should not do much walking."
"Then you shall wait here for us. Get the maid to pack up a hamper; I'll bring mother, and we will find a picnic ground somewhere on Gorsthwaite Moor. You need not walk more than a mile all told, and it is a sin for you to miss a day like this."
But Griff did not reach Marshcotes. His stride slackened to a saunter, and even the saunter was too much exertion by the time he had gone half the distance. Knowing that Mrs. Lomax would pass him on her way to Gorsthwaite, he tumbled into a warm bed of heather, lit his pipe, and watched the shifting colours of the moor. The pulsing crimson-purple of the heather, shot here and there with fainter splashes of heliotrope, the hoarse chuckle of the grouse, and shriller wail of the plover, the peaty reek creeping from a rush-girdled marsh on his right—all these things were emphatic in their assertion that it was exceeding good to be alive. His thoughts went out to the child that was to be born to him: pride in his race, and zeal for its continuance, quickened the paternal instinct in him; he travelled far into the future, and saw another Lomax at the Manor, strong as himself, who would poach as his fathers had poached before him, who would ride fearlessly and fight like a man, and keep a big slice of his heart for the love that should one day come to him.
The sunlight grew fainter. A fitful breeze ruffled the heather-tops. A haze crept across the sky, from the horizon upwards. The sun failed altogether, and flying squadrons of mist appeared, now making eager forward rushes, now wheeling, gyrating, eddying to and fro in their efforts to dodge the pursuing breeze. The mist-wreaths grew denser; they turned but little now, and fled across the darkening purple like a band of hunted witches.