Anthony Lyveden Part 36

"I believe I am," said Anthony.

"I beg your pardon," said Miss Strongi'th'arm with an elaborate courtesy. "Thank you very much for enduring me for three minutes. If I'd----"

Her hunter broke into a trot.

"No, no," cried Anthony, running beside her. "Please walk again." She pulled the horse up. "I didn't mean to be rude. I meant----"

"I should leave it alone," said Andre. "You'll only make it worse.

You're much too honest. Besides, I love the country, and I--I think,"

she added dreamily, "I can understand."

"Can you?"

The eagerness in Anthony's voice was arrestingly pathetic, and Andre started at the effect of her idle words.

"I--I think so. I've given water to a thirsty plant.... I suppose the grat.i.tude of a landscape..."

"That's it," said Lyveden excitedly. "You've got it in one. The place is so pathetically grateful for every stock and stone you set straight, that you just can't hold your hand. And all the time the work's so fascinating that you don't deserve any thanks. You seem to get deeper in debt every day. You're credited with every cheque you draw. If I stopped, it'd haunt me."

"It is plain," said Andre, "that, when you die, 'Gramarye' will be graven upon your heart. All the same, are you sure you were meant for this? Aren't there things in life besides the straightening of stocks and stones?"

"The War's over," said Lyveden.

"I know. But there was a world before 1914. I think your occupation's wonderful, but isn't it a little unnatural--unfair to yourself and others--to give it the whole of your life? As estates go, I fancy the possibilities of Eden were even more amazing than those of Gramarye--I daresay you won't admit that, but then you're bia.s.sed--and yet the introduction of Eve was considered advisable."

"With the result that ..."

Miss Strongi'th'arm laughed.

"With the result that you and I are alive this glorious day, with our destinies in our pockets and the great round world at our feet. I wonder whether I ought to go into a nunnery."

"I've tried kicking the world," said Anthony, "and I'm still lame from it. And Fate picked my pocket months and months ago."

"So Faint Heart turned into the first monastery he came to," said Andre, leaning forward and caressing her hunter's neck. "What d'you think of that, Joshua?"

As if by way of comment, the horse snorted, and Anthony found himself joining in Miss Strongi'th'arm's mirth.

"There's hope for you yet," gurgled that lady. "Your sense of humour is still kicking. And that under the mud appears to be a sc.r.a.p of a dog. When you take your final vows, will you give him to me?"

"In my monastery," said Lyveden, "monks are allowed to keep dogs.

There is also no rule against laughter."

"Isn't there, now?" flashed Andre. "I wonder why? There's no rule against idleness either, is there?" She laughed bitterly. "Rules are made to cope with inclinations. Where there's no inclination----" She broke off suddenly and checked her horse. Setting her hand upon Lyveden's shoulder, she looked into his eyes. "You laughed just now, didn't you? When did you last laugh before that?"

Anthony stared back. The girl's intuition was uncanny. Now that he came to think of it, Winchester and his little band never laughed over their work--never. There was--she was perfectly right--there was no inclination. Eagerness, presumably, left no room for Merriment. Or else the matter was too high, too thoughtful. Not that they laboured sadly--far from it. Indeed, their daily round was one long festival.

But Laughter was not at the board. Neither forbidden, nor bidden to the feast, she just stayed away. Yet Mirth was no hang-back....

Anthony found himself marvelling.

"Who are you?" he said suddenly,

For a second the brown eyes danced; then their lids hid them. With flushed cheeks the girl sat up on her horse.

"Who am I? I'm a daughter of Eve, Major Lyveden. Eve, who cost Adam his Gramarye. So you be careful. Bar your door of nights. Frame rules against laughter and idleness--just to be on the safe side. And next time a girl drops her crop----"

"I hope," said Anthony gravely, "I hope I shall be behind her to pick it up and have the honour of her company to turn a mile into a furlong."

"O-o-oh, blasphemy!" cried Andre, pretending to stop her ears.

"Whatever would Gramarye say? Come on, Joshua."

The next moment she was cantering up the broad white way....

As she rounded a bend, she flung up an arm and waved her crop cheerily.

Anthony waved back.

Miss Valerie French sat in her library at Bell Hammer, with her elbows propped on the writing-table and her head in her hands. She had been free of the great room ever since she could remember. Long before her father's death she had been accustomed to sit curled in its great chairs, to lie upon the huge tiger-skin before the hearth, or gravely to face her father across that very table and draw houses and flights of steps and stiff-legged men and women with flat feet upon his notepaper, while Mr. French dealt with his correspondence. Always, when the picture was completed, it would be pa.s.sed to him for his approval and acceptance; and he would smile and thank her and audibly identify the objects portrayed; and, if he were not too busy, they would remind him of a tale, the better to follow which she must leave her chair and climb on to his knee....

Then he had died--ten years after her birth, nine years after her mother's death. There were who said he had died of a broken heart--a heart broken nine years before. It may have been true. Valerie loved the room more than ever....

When she was come of age, she made it her boudoir. Flowers and silks and silver lit up its stateliness. Beneath the influence of a grand piano and the soft-toned cretonnes upon the leather chairs, the solemnity of the chamber melted into peace. The walls of literature, once so severe, became a kindly background, wearing a wise, grave smile.

Such comfort, however, as the room extended was to-day lost upon Valerie. Beyond the fact that it was neither noisome nor full of uproar, Miss French derived no consolation from an atmosphere to which she had confidently carried her troubles for at least twenty years.

The truth is, she was sick at heart. There was no health in her. She had been given a talent and had cast it into the sea. She had stumbled upon a jewel, more l.u.s.trous than any she had dreamed this earth could render, and of her folly she had flung it into the draught. She had suspected him who was above suspicion, treated her king like a cur, unwarrantably whipped from her doors the very finest gentleman in all the world. What was a thousand times worse, he had completely vanished. Had she known where he was, she would have gone straight to him and, kneeling upon her knees, begged his forgiveness. Her pride was already in tatters, her vanity in rags: could she have found him, she would have stripped the two mother-naked. In a word, she would have done anything which it is in the power of a mortal to do to win back that wonder of happiness which they had together built up. It must be remembered that Valerie was no fool. She realized wholly that without Anthony Lyveden Life meant nothing at all. She had very grave doubts whether it would, without him, ever mean anything again. And so, to recover her loss, she was quite prepared to pay to the uttermost farthing. The trouble, was, the wares were no longer for sale; at any rate, they were not exposed to her eyes. The reflection that, after a little, they might be offered elsewhere and somebody else secure them, sent Valerie almost out of her mind. And it might happen any day--easily. The wares were so very attractive.... Moreover, if their recovery was to beggar her, by a hideous paradox, failure to repurchase the wares meant ruin absolute....

When Valerie French had discovered that her jealousy of her lover was utterly baseless, she had had the sense to make no bones about it, but to strike her colours at once. That Anthony was not there to witness her capitulation did not affect her decision. If she was to have their intelligent a.s.sistance, the sooner others saw it and appreciated her plight, so much the better for her. Only her aunt and the Alisons could possibly help at all; to those four she spoke plainly, telling the cold facts and feeling the warmth of well-doing in tearing her pride to tatters. Then she rent her vanity and begged their services to find and, if necessary, plead for her with the ex-officer. The Alisons had promised readily, but there was no confidence in their eyes. Lady Touchstone, however, had sent her niece's hopes soaring.

She had reason, it seemed, to expect a letter. Major Lyveden had promised to let her have his address. And, he being a man of his word, it was bound to come--bound to come....

For more than a month Valerie hung upon every incoming post. Then she knew that the letter had gone astray.

For the hundredth time Miss French read through the three letters which lay before her upon the table, written in the firm, clear hand of Anthony Lyveden. Except she drew upon the store of Memory, she had nothing else at all that spoke of him. Hence the common envelopes became three reliquaries, the cheap thin notepaper relics above all price, piteously hallowed by the translation of the scribe.

The letters affording no comfort, Valerie rose and moved to a great window which looked on to the terrace and thence into the park.

Instantly the memory of one sweet September night rose up before her--a night when he and she had paced those flags together, while music had floated out of the gallery, and the stars had leaped in the heavens, and the darkness had quivered at the breath of the cool night air; when he had wrapped his love in a fairy tale and she had listened with a hammering heart ... when he at last had put her hand to his lips, and she had given back the homage before he could draw away....

The terrace was worse than the letters, and Valerie turned to the books. Idly she moved along the wall, reading the names upon the calf bindings and not knowing whether she read them or no. A sudden desire to look at the topmost shelves made her cross to the great step-ladder and climb to its bal.u.s.tered pulpit. Before she was half-way there the desire had faded, but she went listlessly on. Come to the top, she turned to let her eye wander over the nearest shelf. Old, little-read volumes only met her gaze--Hoole's works, Jessey, John Sadler, Manley.... Of the ten small volumes containing Miss Manley's outpourings, the seventh was out of place, and Valerie stretched out a hand to straighten it. As she did so, she saw the t.i.tle--_The Lost Lover_. For a moment she stared at it. Then she turned and, descending one step of the ladder, sat down on the edge of the pulpit and buried her face in her hands.

We will leave her there with her beauty, her shapely head bowed, her exquisite figure hunched with despair, her cold, white, pointed fingers pressed tight upon those glorious temples, her little palms hiding the misery of that striking face, her knees convulsively closed, that shining foot tucked beneath the other in the contortion of grief. We will leave her there on the ladder, learning that sorry lesson which Great Love only will set its favourites when they have gone a-whoring after false G.o.ds in whom is no faith.

At half-past six upon the following Monday evening Lyveden returned to his cottage with Patch at his heels. In spite of the hard frost, the work had gone well. A bridge had been finished which should laugh to scorn the elements for a long century; a sore-needed staff had been set beneath the arm-pit of a patriarch oak; a truant stream had been tucked into its rightful bed. It had been a good day.

Arrived at his door, Anthony turned and looked upward. The cold white brilliance of the stars stared winking back; the frozen silence of the firmament hung like a magic cloak upon the shoulders of darkness; the pool of Night lay in a breathless trance, ice-cold and fathomless.

Anthony opened the door and pa.s.sed in.

Within three minutes the lamp and lantern were lighted and a fire was crackling upon the hearth; within ten, fuel had been fetched and water drawn from the well; within twenty, the few odd jobs on whose performance the comfort of regularity depended, had been disposed of; and by seven o'clock the Sealyham had had his dinner, and his master, washed and groomed, was free to sit down to a substantial meal.