Lady Fairfax shot a glance at the two girls as she went towards the door. 'I told you,' she said, 'just what...' The rest of her sentence was drowned in Mrs. Curnow's greeting.
The household of Garth now gave itself up to an unaccustomed hilarity: a joy that was all the more heartfelt because of the secure, quiet happiness that underlay the merriment. Lady Fairfax's presence successfully bridged the gap between the old and the new; she made Simone feel that her place must always have been at Garth, made Marion look away from the uneasy yesterdays to the ever-brightening morrows. Mistress Keziah, it is true, wore still her old severity, but at times there were hints of the gentleness and love underlying her hard exterior. Even the Admiral, arriving weary and shaken, was fain to throw off with the dusty apparel of his journey the sorrow and grief of the last few weeks.
After one roaring fit of rage at his own folly, and one grim day spent at Plymouth, the old man wisely put the past behind him and settled down at the head of the merry company with supreme content. While seeking from Jeffreys a pardon which he was informed had already been granted by the King, the Admiral had seized the moment to lay down the burden of office as the special magistrate of the Lord Chancellor. And although Lady Fairfax and her brother failed not each to rate the other on the subject of the uselessness of Royal Pardons, there was an unspoken thanksgiving in their hearts; for the Deputy Governor's special courier, who had entered the gates of Exeter an hour after Marion and Roger had ridden out, had carried a death warrant in his saddlebag.
When Sir John Fairfax at last arrived bearing a summons for his wife to return to Her Majesty's service—a summons which included the unwilling Beckenham,—Lady Fairfax begged the Admiral to be allowed to carry her niece back to resume her interrupted visit. But the Admiral professed himself fearful of what might happen. Kensington was a place where one's peace of mind was insecure, and where, moreover, a 'little niece' was apt to change overmuch for her father's liking. When Lady Fairfax asserted that the 'little niece' was merely growing up, the Admiral pished and pshawed. Marion should stay where she was, he said, until Simone could be induced to go over and visit the d'Artois estates. When that happened—the Admiral looked as he spoke at Beckenham walking in the garden with Simone—why, then, he would come and bring Marion himself, perhaps; but he made no promises. And with that Lady Fairfax was obliged to be content.
CHAPTER XXVI
'SUMER IS A-COMEN IN'
Sumer is a comen in,
Loud sing cuccu.
Groweth seed and bloweth mead
And springeth the wood nu.
Sing cuccu.
Another spring had come to the West Country, crying over hill and dale its clear song of joy. Once more salt airs came up from the Channel, once more a delicious unrest filled the hearts of men.
Marion walked out of the house alone and sought the headland crowned with furze whence she and Roger, a year before, had seen the Fair Return sail out of the harbour. The year had made a difference to Marion, adding an indefinable shade of resolution to lip and brow; there was a touch of gravity in the quiet grey eyes, a hint of ripening in the girlish figure.
Something more than the restlessness of spring had driven Marion to the solitude of the cliff side, something more than the emptiness of the house which Simone had just left for a visit to her French home, something more than the realisation that soon she would be in Kensington again with her aunt.