Actions and Reactions

“What I want to know,” said George, when Spring was coming, and the gardens needed thought, “is who will ever pay me for my labour? I’ve put in at least half a million dollars’ worth already.”

“Sure you’re not taking too much out of yourself?” his wife asked.

“Oh, no; I haven’t been conscious of myself all winter.” He looked at his brown English gaiters and smiled. “It’s all behind me now. I believe I could sit down and think of all that – those months before we sailed.”

“Don’t – ah, don’t!” she cried.

“But I must go back one day. You don’t want to keep me out of business always – or do you?” He ended with a nervous laugh.

Sophie sighed as she drew her own ground-ash (of old Iggulden’s cutting) from the hall rack.

“Aren’t you overdoing it too? You look a little tired,” he said.

“You make me tired. I’m going to Rocketts to see Mrs. Cloke about Mary.” (This was the sister of the telegraphist, promoted to be sewing-maid at Pardons.) “Coming?”

“I’m due at Burnt House to see about the new well. By the way, there’s a sore throat at Gale Anstey – ”

“That’s my province. Don’t interfere. The Whybarne children always have sore throats. They do it for jujubes.”

“Keep away from Gale Anstey till I make sure, honey. Cloke ought to have told me.”

“These people don’t tell. Haven’t you learnt that yet? But I’ll obey, me lord. See you later!”

She set off afoot, for within the three main roads that bounded the blunt triangle of the estate (even by night one could scarcely hear the carts on them), wheels were not used except for farm work. The footpaths served all other purposes. And though at first they had planned improvements, they had soon fallen in with the customs of their hidden kingdom, and moved about the soft-footed ways by woodland, hedgerow, and shaw as freely as the rabbits. Indeed, for the most part Sophie walked bareheaded beneath her helmet of chestnut hair; but she had been plagued of late by vague toothaches, which she explained to Mrs. Cloke, who asked some questions. How it came about Sophie never knew, but after a while behold Mrs. Cloke’s arm was about her waist, and her head was on that deep bosom behind the shut kitchen door.

“My dear! My dear!” the elder woman almost sobbed. “An’ d’you mean to tell me you never suspicioned? Why – why – where was you ever taught anything at all? Of course it is. It’s what we’ve been only waitin’ for, all of us. Time and again I’ve said to Lady – ” she checked herself. “An’ now we shall be as we should be.”

“But – but – but – ” Sophie whimpered.

“An’ to see you buildin’ your nest so busy – pianos and books – an’ never thinkin’ of a nursery!”

“No more I did.” Sophie sat bolt upright, and began to laugh.

“Time enough yet.” The fingers tapped thoughtfully on the broad knee. “But – they must be strange-minded folk over yonder with you! Have you thought to send for your mother? She dead? My dear, my dear! Never mind! She’ll be happy where she knows. ‘Tis God’s work. An’ we was only waitin’ for it, for you’ve never failed in your duty yet. It ain’t your way. What did you say about my Mary’s doings?” Mrs. Cloke’s face hardened as she pressed her chin on Sophie’s forehead. “If any of your girls thinks to be’ave arbitrary now, I’ll – But they won’t, my dear. I’ll see they do their duty too. Be sure you’ll ‘ave no trouble.”

When Sophie walked back across the fields heaven and earth changed about her as on the day of old Iggulden’s death. For an instant she thought of the wide turn of the staircase, and the new ivory-white paint that no coffin corner could scar, but presently, the shadow passed in a pure wonder and bewilderment that made her reel. She leaned against one of their new gates and looked over their lands for some other stay.

“Well,” she said resignedly, half aloud, “we must try to make him feel that he isn’t a third in our party,” and turned the corner that looked over Friars Pardon, giddy, sick, and faint.

Of a sudden the house they had bought for a whim stood up as she had never seen it before, low-fronted, broad-winged, ample, prepared by course of generations for all such things. As it had steadied her when it lay desolate, so now that it had meaning from their few months of life within, it soothed and promised good. She went alone and quickly into the hall, and kissed either door-post, whispering: “Be good to me. You know! You’ve never failed in your duty yet.”

When the matter was explained to George, he would have sailed at once to their own land, but this Sophie forbade.

“I don’t want science,” she said. “I just want to be loved, and there isn’t time for that at home. Besides,” she added, looking out of the window, “it would be desertion.”

George was forced to soothe himself with linking Friars Pardon to the telegraph system of Great Britain by telephone – three-quarters of a mile of poles, put in by Whybarne and a few friends. One of these was a foreigner from the next parish. Said he when the line was being run: “There’s an old ellum right in our road. Shall us throw her?”

“Toot Hill parish folk, neither grace nor good luck, God help ‘em.” Old Whybarne shouted the local proverb from three poles down the line. “We ain’t goin’ to lay any axe-iron to coffin-wood here not till we know where we are yet awhile. Swing round ‘er, swing round!”

To this day, then, that sudden kink in the straight line across the upper pasture remains a mystery to Sophie and George. Nor can they tell why Skim Winsh, who came to his cottage under Dutton Shaw most musically drunk at 10.45 P.M of every Saturday night, as his father had done before him, sang no more at the bottom of the garden steps, where Sophie always feared he would break his neck. The path was undoubtedly an ancient right of way, and at 10.45 P.M. on Saturdays Skim remembered it was his duty to posterity to keep it open – till Mrs. Cloke spoke to him once. She spoke likewise to her daughter Mary, sewing maid at Pardons, and to Mary’s best new friend, the five-foot-seven imported London house-maid, who taught Mary to trim hats, and found the country dullish.

But there was no noise – at no time was there any noise – and when Sophie walked abroad she met no one in her path unless she had signified a wish that way. Then they appeared to protest that all was well with them and their children, their chickens, their roofs, their water-supply, and their sons in the police or the railway service.

“But don’t you find it dull, dear?” said George, loyally doing his best not to worry as the months went by.

“I’ve been so busy putting my house in order I haven’t had time to think,” said she. “Do you?”

“No – no. If I could only be sure of you.”

She turned on the green drawing-room’s couch (it was Empire, not Heppelwhite after all), and laid aside a list of linen and blankets.

“It has changed everything, hasn’t it?” she whispered.

“Oh, Lord, yes. But I still think if we went back to Baltimore – ”

“And missed our first real summer together. No thank you, me lord.”

“But we’re absolutely alone.”

“Isn’t that what I’m doing my best to remedy? Don’t you worry. I like it – like it to the marrow of my little bones. You don’t realize what her house means to a woman. We thought we were living in it last year, but we hadn’t begun to. Don’t you rejoice in your study, George?”

“I prefer being here with you.” He sat down on the floor by the couch and took her hand.

“Seven,” she said, as the French clock struck. “Year before last you’d just be coming back from business.”

He winced at the recollection, then laughed. “Business! I’ve been at work ten solid hours to-day.”

“Where did you lunch? With the Conants?”

“No; at Dutton Shaw, sitting on a log, with my feet in a swamp. But we’ve found out where the old spring is, and we’re going to pipe it down to Gale Anstey next year.”

“I’ll come and see to-morrow. Oh, please open the door, dear. I want to look down the passage. Isn’t that corner by the stair-head lovely where the sun strikes in?” She looked through half-closed eyes at the vista of ivory-white and pale green all steeped in liquid gold.

“There’s a step out of Jane Elphick’s bedroom,” she went on – “and his first step in the world ought to be up. I shouldn’t wonder if those people hadn’t put it there on purpose. George, will it make any odds to you if he’s a girl?”

He answered, as he had many times before, that his interest was his wife, not the child.

“Then you’re the only person who thinks so.” She laughed. “Don’t be silly, dear. It’s expected. I know. It’s my duty. I shan’t be able to look our people in the face if I fail.”

“What concern is it of theirs, confound ‘em!”

“You’ll see. Luckily the tradition of the house is boys, Mrs. Cloke says, so I’m provided for. Shall you ever begin to understand these people? I shan’t.”

“And we bought it for fun – for fun!” he groaned. “And here we are held up for goodness knows how long!”

“Why? Were you thinking of selling it?” He did not answer. “Do you remember the second Mrs. Chapin?” she demanded.

This was a bold, brazen little black-browed woman – a widow for choice – who on Sophie’s death was guilefully to marry George for his wealth and ruin him in a year. George being busy, Sophie had invented her some two years after her marriage, and conceived she was alone among wives in so doing.

“You aren’t going to bring her up again?” he asked anxiously.

“I only want to say that I should hate any one who bought Pardons ten times worse than I used to hate the second Mrs. Chapin. Think what we’ve put into it of our two selves.”

“At least a couple of million dollars. I know I could have made – ” He broke off.

“The beasts!” she went on. “They’d be sure to build a red-brick lodge at the gates, and cut the lawn up for bedding out. You must leave instructions in your will that he’s never to do that, George, won’t you?”

He laughed and took her hand again but said nothing till it was time to dress. Then he muttered “What the devil use is a man’s country to him when he can’t do business in it?”

Friars Pardon stood faithful to its tradition. At the appointed time was born, not that third in their party to whom Sophie meant to be so kind, but a godling; in beauty, it was manifest, excelling Eros, as in wisdom Confucius; an enhancer of delights, a renewer of companionships and an interpreter of Destiny. This last George did not realise till he met Lady Conant striding through Dutton Shaw a few days after the event.

“My dear fellow,” she cried, and slapped him heartily on the back, “I can’t tell you how glad we all are. Oh, she’ll be all right. (There’s never been any trouble over the birth of an heir at Pardons.) Now where the dooce is it?” She felt largely in her leather-boundskirt and drew out a small silver mug. “I sent a note to your wife about it, but my silly ass of a groom forgot to take this. You can save me a tramp. Give her my love.” She marched off amid her guard of grave Airedales.

The mug was worn and dented: above the twined initials, G.L., was the crest of a footless bird and the motto: “Wayte awhyle – wayte awhyle.”

“That’s the other end of the riddle,” Sophie whispered, when he saw her that evening. “Read her note. The English write beautiful notes.”

The warmest of welcomes to your little man. I hope he will appreciate his native land now he has come to it. Though you have said nothing we cannot, of course, look on him as a little stranger, and so I am sending him the old Lashmar christening mug. It has been with us since Gregory Lashmar, your great-grandmother’s brother —

George stared at his wife.

“Go on,” she twinkled, from the pillows.

– mother’s brother, sold his place to Walter’s family. We seem to have acquired some of your household gods at that time, but nothing survives except the mug and the old cradle, which I found in the potting-shed and am having put in order for you. I hope little George – Lashmar, he will be too, won’t he? – will live to see his grandchildren cut their teeth on his mug.

Affectionately yours,

ALICE CONANT.

P.S. – How quiet you’ve kept about it all!

“Well, I’m – ”

“Don’t swear,” said Sophie. “Bad for the infant mind.”

“But how in the world did she get at it? Have you ever said a word about the Lashmars?”

“You know the only time – to young Iggulden at Rocketts – when Iggulden died.”

“Your great-grandmother’s brother! She’s traced the whole connection – more than your Aunt Sydney could do. What does she mean about our keeping quiet?”

Sophie’s eyes sparkled. “I’ve thought that out too. We’ve got back at the English at last. Can’t you see that she thought that we thought my mother’s being a Lashmar was one of those things we’d expect the English to find out for themselves, and that’s impressed her?” She turned the mug in her white hands, and sighed happily. “‘Wayte awhyle – wayte awhyle.’ That’s not a bad motto, George. It’s been worth it.”

“But still I don’t quite see – ”

“I shouldn’t wonder if they don’t think our coming here was part of a deep-laid scheme to be near our ancestors. They’d understand that. And look how they’ve accepted us, all of them.”

“Are we so undesirable in ourselves?” George grunted.

“Be just, me lord. That wretched Sangres man has twice our money. Can you see Marm Conant slapping him between the shoulders? Not by a jugful! The poor beast doesn’t exist!”

“Do you think it’s that then?” He looked toward the cot by the fire where the godling snorted.

“The minute I get well I shall find out from Mrs. Cloke what every Lashmar gives in doles (that’s nicer than tips) every time a Lashmite is born. I’ve done my duty thus far, but there’s much expected of me.”

Entered here Mrs. Cloke, and hung worshipping over the cot. They showed her the mug and her face shone. “Oh, now Lady Conant’s sent it, it’ll be all proper, ma’am, won’t it? ‘George’ of course he’d have to be, but seein’ what he is we was hopin’ – all your people was hopin’ – it ‘ud be ‘Lashmar’ too, and that’ud just round it out. A very ‘andsome mug quite unique, I should imagine. ‘Wayte awhyle – wayte awhyle.’ That’s true with the Lashmars, I’ve heard. Very slow to fill their houses, they are. Most like Master George won’t open ‘is nursery till he’s thirty.”

“Poor lamb!” cried Sophie. “But how did you know my folk were Lashmars?”

Mrs. Cloke thought deeply. “I’m sure I can’t quite say, ma’am, but I’ve a belief likely that it was something you may have let drop to young Iggulden when you was at Rocketts. That may have been what give us an inkling. An’ so it came out, one thing in the way o’ talk leading to another, and those American people at Veering Holler was very obligin’ with news, I’m told, ma’am.”

“Great Scott!” said George, under his breath. “And this is the simple peasant!”

“Yiss,” Mrs. Cloke went on. “An’ Cloke was only wonderin’ this afternoon – your pillow’s slipped my dear, you mustn’t lie that a-way – just for the sake o’ sayin’ something, whether you wouldn’t think well now of getting the Lashmar farms back, sir. They don’t rightly round off Sir Walter’s estate. They come caterin’ across us more. Cloke, ‘e ‘ud be glad to show you over any day.”

“But Sir Walter doesn’t want to sell, does he?”

“We can find out from his bailiff, sir, but” – with cold contempt – “I think that trained nurse is just comin’ up from her dinner, so ‘m afraid we’ll ‘ave to ask you, sir… Now, Master George – Ai-ie! Wake a litty minute, lammie!”

A few months later the three of them were down at the brook in the Gale Anstey woods to consider the rebuilding of a footbridge carried away by spring floods. George Lashmar Chapin wanted all the bluebells on God’s earth that day to eat, and – Sophie adored him in a voice like to the cooing of a dove; so business was delayed.

“Here’s the place,” said his father at last among the water forget-me-nots. “But where the deuce are the larch-poles, Cloke? I told you to have them down here ready.”

“We’ll get ‘em down if f you say so,” Cloke answered, with a thrust of the underlip they both knew.

“But I did say so. What on earth have you brought that timber-tug here for? We aren’t building a railway bridge. Why, in America, half-a-dozen two-by-four bits would be ample.”

“I don’t know nothin’ about that,” said Cloke.

“An’ I’ve nothin’ to say against larch – IF you want to make a temp’ry job of it. I ain’t ‘ere to tell you what isn’t so, sir; an’ you can’t say I ever come creepin’ up on you, or tryin’ to lead you further in than you set out – ”

A year ago George would have danced with impatience. Now he scraped a little mud off his old gaiters with his spud, and waited.

“All I say is that you can put up larch and make a temp’ry job of it; and by the time the young master’s married it’ll have to be done again. Now, I’ve brought down a couple of as sweet six-by-eight oak timbers as we’ve ever drawed. You put ‘em in an’ it’s off your mind or good an’ all. T’other way – I don’t say it ain’t right, I’m only just sayin’ what I think – but t’other way, he’ll no sooner be married than we’ll lave it all to do again. You’ve no call to regard my words, but you can’t get out of that.”

“No,” said George after a pause; “I’ve been realising that for some time. Make it oak then; we can’t get out of it.”