Chapter XXXV: 'twixt Cup and Lip

"Oh, please wait a minute," said his tormentor; "I have a great deal more to say before we part."

He halted, though chafing against himself for displaying such weakness, and stood, his hands in his pockets, glowering at her small figure, instinct with energy, erect in the sunny enclosure, framed by the grey stones.

She smiled at him, a rapt kind of smile, seeming more occupied with her own thoughts than with him.

"Oh, doesn't it all look different?" she asked.

"I don't know quite what you mean, but everything is different--the whole world is changed since you and I were last here."

"Yes. Utterly changed. The only thing that remains the same is just the very thing I thought would have changed most."

"And that is?"

"You."

"Ah, well, if you think so, that only shows what a little duffer you must be," he snapped.

"All right. I'm a duffer now. That is a change, since you used to look up to me, or pretend you did! However, it doesn't much matter. I want you to do me a very small favour. Walk back with me to Twice-Brewed."

"No fear. What for?"

"I'll explain. I am doing a little tour up in the north--nobody is with me but my maid. I was intending to call at the Pele to-morrow, to leave something there--a little present for Madam and--and you. You were very kind to me when I was with you, and I was so ill afterwards that you never got properly thanked. Now it occurs to me that as we have met I can motor you home, going on afterwards to Caryngston, where I am to stay the night. I have written to the Seven Spears, and Mrs. Askwith expects me. By the way, how were you going to get home if I had not met you?"

"On my feet, of course."

"Well, you may as well come in the car instead."

He considered her, half angry, half amused. "You and your car!"

She laughed out gaily. "It does seem absurd, doesn't it? But you might come and look at it. It's such a nice one. Don't be disagreeable."

"I never need make any effort in that direction. It comes natural."

"It doesn't. You cultivate it because you think it's clever, but you are completely mistaken. Now come along, and be thankful I can go on my own feet to-day instead of having to make use of yours."

"I'm not sure there's any cause for thankfulness in that."

"Oh, you _are_ perverse! You must have got out of bed the wrong side this morning. I wonder how I put up with you; but, you see, I feel a little responsible. Having begun your education and then allowed it to lapse, the least I can do is to be patient with you."

"I have frequently met with assurance," he remarked, "but for sheer brazen impudence, I certainly never met your equal."

"And I don't think you ever will," she replied, as though highly complimented.

Her feet went dancing over the heathery grass, mauve with harebells. Her heart was beating so wildly that she wondered if it could be audible. She had to fight her impulse to turn and cling to him as he strode beside her, gaunt and bony, the marks of suffering plainly on him, but Nin still--the same Nin. She refrained, however. There was something delicious in the present moment. She wanted to prolong it--wanted to know what he would do when he found out that the Pele was his.

Suddenly he spoke. "Well, it will, as a matter of fact, be a convenience to me to get back home quickly," said he, "for I have to put myself inside a tail coat and go and dine with the Kendalls."

"The Kendalls!" she cried ... and, in the extremity of her surprise, the next words came out without her own consent. "Why, what in the world do they want with you now?"

He grinned in the way she knew so well. "You may well ask. Perhaps you haven't heard of poor Noel's death. That leaves me heir to the rotten title, worse luck!"

"Nin," said a low, changed voice from under her hat, "tell me the truth. Are you engaged to her?"

There was a long, dreadful pause. "Yes," he said at last, "I think I am. That is, her father has given his consent. That's what I am going over about to-night."

"And you--and you--you could bear--to come up here--with _that_ in your mind?"

"I came up here," he answered heavily, "to say good-bye to a dream."

They went on for some way in silence. She told herself that no well-conducted young woman could venture farther than she had done in the direction of encouragement. The light went out of the skies, her step flagged, she could have cast herself upon the grass and wept. Yet for very pride she could not say, "Jilt her, marry me!" Had he not sworn with energy that nothing would induce him to marry her?

"Well," said she at last, primly. "I can but hope you will be very happy."

"Happy?" he said with a fierce little snort.

"There's one drawback, Sunia doesn't like her. Sunia does like me. You don't know how many times I have longed for her; my present maid is a kind of fish, she never entertains me with spells or mesmerising or fortune-telling or any of the devices to make time pass agreeably, of which Sunia is mistress. I wonder whether I could tempt her with very high wages to come to me and desert Madam!"

"She won't desert me, even when Miss Kendall is her mistress."

"I don't think you need build on that. Miss Kendall won't keep her a month."

"Jove! I never thought of that!"

"Well, I hope you will, under the circumstances, excuse my having proposed marriage to you this afternoon. I can only say in extenuation that I had no idea your affections were already engaged, or I would have been more discreet. Why, here we are already within sight of the inn. What a little way down it really is! A couple more fields and we are on the road! Goddard must have seen us coming down; he has brought the car along, I see."

They spoke only trivialities until they reached the gate which the chauffeur held open.

Olwen came out in a kind of dream. She felt as if she had been to a function which she imagined was a wedding and it had turned out, as sometimes in nightmare, to be a funeral after all.

She addressed Ninian with a self-possessed smile, asking him to sit by Goddard and direct him. Then she got into the car with Parkinson, who proceeded to remove her mistress's wide-brimmed hat and tie her up in her motor-bonnet as they sped along.

It was past five by the time they reached the little road that branched off to the Pele. Olwen stopped the car.

"It is getting so late that, as you have to dress, Mr. Guyse, I will not call upon Madam this afternoon," said she. "I shall hope to give myself that pleasure another time, if I ever come back to this neighbourhood, which, perhaps, is not very likely. Meanwhile, may I trouble you to carry this parcel to her? It is really a present for you, but I think she may share in its enjoyment. Give her my kind remembrances. Good-bye."

Tongue-tied before the two servants, he made his adieux. Now it was he whose eyes eagerly sought for a glance from hers, but in vain. She felt as if one look would break down her pride, and that she would show some inkling of what she was enduring. As on the day when he had put her into the train at Raefell, they parted with barely a farewell. In a couple of minutes the car had become a dark speck upon the moor road to Caryngston.

... She had but just glimpsed the grey tower--had hardly ventured even a glance, so sorely did she fear to give herself away. Now she leaned back in her corner, drawing down her veil to hide the drops that swam in her eyes, yet not daring to give way or to relieve her feelings by any sign of what she was going through.

Caryngston in summer-time was quite an attractive village. Over the porch of the Seven Spears clambered a Gloire de Dijon rose. On the long benches outside the doors sat the hard-bitten northern farmers, enjoying the restful moment. Deb stood in the porch, and her eyes lit up as she recognised the little lady who had come in the snow upon an evening now far back in the mists of that antique period usually alluded to as "before the war."

As they entered the passage, whose very wall-paper was unchanged, each moment, each event of the former occasion revived with poignant freshness.

Deb had plenty to say, the whole war news of the village to give. Her young daughter had married the bootmaker's son the first time ever he came home on leave. She pointed out the house now inhabited by the reunited couple. "And she's a deal luckier than the most of 'em. Her man's only short of one foot, and that's no matter for the boot trade." It was a comfort to find her so absorbed in what she had to impart, as not to be very inquisitive concerning Olwen's own affairs, after once she had expatiated upon the wonderful fate that had befallen the "yoong lass" in having all that "brass" bequeathed to her.

Supper was presently partaken of, and removed. At last, about half-past eight, Olwen was left alone, in the depths of that armchair where once she had sat swelling with resentment at Nin's impertinence. She had told Parkinson to go to bed, and was therefore free to indulge unnoticed in the luxury of red eyes. Her tears flowed fast.

What folly had been hers! She had spent such a sum of money as, following on her large disbursements throughout the war, would make a real difference to her--and this in order to bestow the Pele upon Rose Kendall, the odious girl who had treated Mrs. Guyse's companion with studied insolence. Yet she gave thanks that she had given it. In the first passionate tumult of mortification, upon hearing of his engagement, she had been tempted to withhold the gift. She had put that temptation by. Having started to right a wrong, she could give Nin the one thing he wished to have, even though her own happiness proved to have been permanently lost. She had misjudged him, she had been ungenerous, undiscriminating, and for this she desired to make amends. Ninian, at a time when he knew her father to be dead and his own discreditable secret safe, had yet confessed. She in return, at a time when she knew him to be about to marry another woman, and her own happiness to be lost, yet held to her resolution to make him once more master of the Pele.

By this deed she felt that she proved herself worthy of him.

Though they would never see each other again, yet there would lie between them the memory of high things. It would make a sanctuary of life in the future--that future which loomed before her so long and so dark. As the slow minutes dragged on she fancied Ninian and his betrothed sitting together--left alone, no doubt, by considerate parents, so that they might make love.

Such are the torments of jealousy that Miss Innes was quite exhausted by their keenness.

He had never made love to her. He had never kissed her!

If ever she had hated anyone she hated Rose Kendall at that moment.

She felt as if ages had passed when she began to hear the stir which indicated the closing of the inn for the night: the sound of the kitchen fire being raked out, benches pushed back, voices raised and dying in the distance, the opening and shutting of doors. The hoofs of a horse clattered on the paved market stones, and ceased abruptly. Deb rattled some crockery in a cupboard, and her husband on the other side of the house turned a great key in a lock.

Olwen must go to bed. She lifted a drenched handkerchief and wiped away the drops which still fell fast. She had extinguished the lamp, and was sitting in the dark. Thus she might slip past Deb without exciting remark.

The door opened. She spoke, trying to use a natural voice: "It's all right, Mrs. Askwith; I am not gone to bed, but I am just--going."

The door shut as softly, as swiftly as it had opened. The person who had entered moved round the table in the gloom and came close, standing over her as she cowered back into the depths of the big old porter's chair.