Moor Fires Part 2

"You'd complain if he didn't."

"Of course I should--of course! I'm so dull that I'm really grateful to him, but I'm so dull that I have to tease him, too. It's only clutching at straws, and Daniel likes it."

"He's wasted half a crown on his tie, though. I'm going to tell him that you're not to be trusted."

"Then I shall devote myself to Zebedee."

"You won't influence Zebedee's ties," Helen said, "or his collars--the shiniest ones I have ever seen."

"She won't influence him at all, my good Helen. What's she got to do it with?"

"This!" Miriam said, rising superbly and displaying herself.

"Shut her up, somebody!" John begged. "This is beastly. Has she nothing better to do with herself than attracting men? If you met a woman who made that her profession instead of her play, you'd pa.s.s by on the other side."

Miriam flushed, frowned, and recovered herself. "I might. I don't think so. I can't see any harm in pleasing people. If I were clever and frightened them, or witty and made them laugh, it would be just the same. I happen to be beautiful." She spread her hands and waved them.

"Tell birds not to fly, tell lambs not to skip, tell me to sit and darn the socks!" She stood on the fender and looked at herself in the gla.s.s.

"Besides," she said, "I don't care. I'm not responsible. If Notya hadn't buried us all here, I might have been living a useful life!" She cast a sly glance at John. "I might be making b.u.t.ter like Lily Brent."

"Not half so good!"

She ignored that, and went on with her thoughts. "I shall ask Uncle Alfred what made Notya bring us here."

She turned and stood, very slim in her dark dress, her eyelids lowered, her lips parted, expectant of reproof and ready with defiance, but no one spoke. She constantly forgot that her family knew her, but, remembering that fact, her tilted eyebrows twitched a little. Her face broke into mischievous curves and dimples.

"What d'you bet?"

"No," Helen said, thinking of her stepmother. "Notya wouldn't like it."

"Bah! Pish! Faugh! Pshaw--and ugh! What do I care? I shall!"

"Oh, a rotten thing to do," said John.

"And, anyhow, it doesn't matter," Helen said. "We're here."

"Rupert?" Miriam begged.

"Better not," he answered kindly. "Not worth while." He lay back in a big chair and watched the world through his tobacco smoke. He had all Miriam's darkness and much of her beauty, but he had already acquired a tolerant view of things which made him the best of companions, the least ambitious of young men. "Live and let live, my dear."

"I shan't promise. I suppose I'm not up to your standards of honour, but if a person makes a mystery, why shouldn't the others try to find it out? That's what it's for! And there's nothing else to do."

"You're inventing the mystery," Rupert said. "If Notya and our absent parent didn't get on together--and who could get on with a man who's always ill?--they were wise in parting, weren't they?"

"But why the moor?"

"Ah, I think that was a sudden impulse, and she has always been too proud to own that it was a mistake."

"That's the first sensible thing any one has said yet," John remarked.

"I quite agree with you. It's my own idea."

"I'm a young man of penetration, as I've told you all before."

"And shoved into a bank!" John grumbled.

"I like the bank. It's a cheerful place. There's lots of gold about, and people come and talk to me through the bars."

"But," Helen began, on the deep notes of her voice, "what should we have done if she had repented and taken us away? What should we have done?"

"We might have been happy," Miriam said.

"John, what would you have done?" Helen persisted.

"Said nothing, grown up as fast as I could, and come back."

"So should I."

Rupert chuckled. "You wouldn't, Helen. You'd have stayed with Notya and Miriam and me and looked after us all, and longed for this place and denied yourself."

"And made us all uncomfortable." Miriam pointed at Helen's grey dress.

"What have you been doing?"

Helen looked down at the dark marks where her knees had pressed the ground.

"It will dry," she said, and went nearer the fire. "Zebedee says old Halkett's ill."

"Drink and the devil," Rupert hummed. "He'll die soon."

"Hope so," John said fervently. "I don't like to think of the bloated old beast alive."

"He'll be horrider dead, I think," said Helen. "Dead things should be beautiful."

"Well, he won't be. Moreover, nothing is, for long. You've seen sheep's carca.s.ses after the snows. Don't be romantic."

"I said they should be."

"It's a good thing they're not. They wouldn't fertilize the ground.

Can't we have supper?"

"Here's Notya!" Miriam uttered the warning, and began to poke the fire.

The room was entered by a small lady who carried her head well. She had fair, curling hair, serious blue eyes and a mouth which had been puckered into a kind of sternness.

"So you have come back, Helen," she said. "You should have told me. I have been to the road to look for you. You are very late."

"Yes. I'm sorry. I met Dr. Mackenzie."

"He ought to have brought you home."

"He wanted to. I got turbot for Uncle Alfred. It's on the kitchen table."