Chapter VIII: The First Day

The ayah, who had set down the guest's things, closed the door behind her without a sound. As the girl removed her hat she was rapidly opening the bag and taking from it such things as she needed. Then, placing a chair before the tiny mirror, she invited Olwen to be seated, with a mute gesture of obeisance.

Hardly realising what was required of her the girl sat down. Kneeling before her, her new attendant swiftly unlaced her thick boots and held the little feet in her hands with a caressing touch, as though she would have chafed warmth into them.

"Too much cold," she muttered, relinquishing them as if unwillingly and putting on the buckled shoes. Then, rising before the girl had recovered from her astonishment, she took a linen wrapper which hung upon a chair, passed it over the young lady's shoulders, pulled out her hairpins, and let loose the rippling cascade of hair.

"You are very kind, but, please, I don't expect you to wait on me; I do all these things for myself," expostulated Olwen in some embarrassment.

"Missee, let ole ayah brush her hair--so long since me had pretty memsahib to dress," murmured the cooing voice. The brush passed through with a motion firm yet gentle; it tingled, as though there were hypnotism in the touch. It seemed to leave the mass burnished and gleaming with a new beauty. In a very few minutes all was deftly coiled once more, following the usual style in which its owner dressed it, but done twice as well as she could ever accomplish.

Hot water was in readiness, and having washed her hands the visitor, feeling strangely refreshed, was ready to follow her silent-footed guide down that weird winding stair. When they reached the front door they did not emerge into the hall, but walked on, in the thickness of the wall, to a small, tapestry-hung doorway which opened into the dining-room.

In this room two large windows had been cut;, one was semicircular and set just under the arch of the barrel vault at the south end. It was too high to afford a view, but the sun streamed down through it. On the west wall an oriel had been built out, and this commanded a fine prospect of the river valley below and the rising ground beyond.

As Olwen entered she came upon the mother and son unawares, and the last words of what they were saying were clearly audible to her. Mrs. Guyse had made some remark which ended with "all the easier to manage," and Ninian, before he realised the visitor's presence, replied with some bitterness, "I'm not so sure."

As they became conscious of her they fell silent. Nothing in the words themselves, but something in the silence, suggested that they had been talking of her.

They sat down to table, the ayah waiting upon them. Under the high window in the south wall was a hatch, communicating with the adjacent kitchen, and through this the dishes were passed by Mrs. Baxter. The food was abundant and very well cooked and served.

Both the Guyses seemed distressed that their guest drank only water; and after cheese had been served Sunia reappeared with a tray of coffee, which seemed to be an innovation from the manner in which Mrs. Guyse received it.

"Do Missee good. Missee must drink something," lured the Hindu in explanatory fashion.

Olwen was prompt in polite protest, but Ninian remarked that it was a jolly good scheme, and he couldn't think why they didn't always have it. When the ayah had left the room he said to his mother, "She seems to have taken to Miss Innes."

"Yes. A very good thing. She's so troublesome with her likes and dislikes," said Mrs. Guyse peevishly. She rose from the table and stood in an irresolute fashion, glancing first at Olwen, then at her son with much the expression a dog wears when he is wondering whether his master will take him for a walk.

"What are you going to do, Nin?" she asked.

"Got to go over to Lachamigg with Ezra. The blizzard has broken down the new fencing, and we'll have all the ground game in after those young trees."

"Oh! Then you can't entertain Miss Innes." She glanced vaguely at the girl who stood by the oriel in the sunshine, which turned her burnished hair into a nimbus. Madam cleared her throat. "Do you think you can amuse yourself for a while, Miss Innes? I am going to have my afternoon nap," she said with a silly little laugh.

"O please don't study me in any way; of course I don't want entertaining! Why, I've come here to be useful. Let me make you comfortable for your rest. Do you lie down in this room?"

"Oh, no, upstairs in my own boudoir. I never sit down here in winter. Don't come up. I would rather you did not. I shall come down to tea at five."

Olwen begged so earnestly to be allowed to carry her book and shawl upstairs that this was conceded. At the door of her sitting-room, however, the lady shut out her companion with decision, and Olwen, not daring to face the arctic cold of her bedroom, returned with reluctance to the dining-room, where Ninian still sat, finishing his pipe.

There was a shabby old sofa and two or three comfortable chairs by the fire, and on a sunny day such as this the room seemed eminently habitable. The girl went again to the western oriel and surveyed the scene beneath her. The tower stood on the sheer verge of the precipitous hill, but beneath this window there was a very narrow path, from which steps led downward. The whole hillside was thickly covered with trees, and the tops of these, snow-laden, appeared from above like a mountain range in miniature. Among the woods in the vale below there was a wide stream, now blocked with ice and snow, but, as she imagined, lovely in summer-time.

"That is a river down there in the valley?" she asked after a time of silent contemplation.

"It is a river. So kind of you to throw the poor dog a bone--I mean a word."

She glanced at the book in his hand. "Which is French for saying that I interrupt your reading!"

He tossed the book aside, rose and came to the window. "That's the Guyseburn. It runs into the Irthing. It's a bad-tempered stream; the one thing it will not stand is a bridge. I've tried several times to make a way across, just down below here, but it was whisked away every winter, so I must wait until I can afford something different. Lower down, where the cliff comes nearer the water, we have got one of these chain bridges, which is safe but wobbly. You won't like it much when you first cross, especially if the water's high."

"This is a wonderful place," she said, surveying the barrel vault; "more like a cathedral crypt than a dining-room. Have you always lived here?"

"Oh, no. Only for the last ten years. In my father's day it was used as a shooting-box, but when he died I had to come here and farm the little bit he had left us to keep the wolf from the door. He was a rare waster was my father, but a very fine gentleman. Would have suited you first rate."

"Oh! You think I like wasters?"

"I feel sure you like fine gentlemen."

"Do you? Well, I don't know myself. I never met one that I know of. My grandfather is very simple, you might say Spartan in his habits. My uncle, George Whitefield, is a successful manufacturer, loud and pushing. My own father was a Bohemian--a waster, too, perhaps you would call him, but I loved him best of all."

"Rum, that. Fancy your liking a man who didn't consider appearances! You, whose code is founded on prunes and prisms."

"Yes, I suppose I _am_ very conventional. I am glad you have found it out so soon," she replied at once, declining provocation.

"My father used to say he was the fulfilment of the old saying in this country," went on Ninian--

"'_No Guyse_
_Is ever wise_
_Until he dies._'

"Rather awful to be born with a name so easy to tack rhymes to. How do you like this?

"'_Any Guyse_
_With green eyes_
_Will tell you lies._'"

Instinctively she raised her look to his. The strong sunlight was upon both their faces, emphasising her curious colouring--the warm skin too dark for the hair and the heavy lashes. She thought that his eyes were like those of a leopard, green and golden, flashing an unspoken menace.

"I should think that rhyme is founded on fact," she remarked.

"Thought you'd say that. The first time you have been obvious, I will admit that much. Well, I must be off, or it will be dark by the time we get to the farm. Think you can live without me till five?"

"I'll have a try. It's a thing I've often done before. What time, if any, does the post go out?"

"If the drifts are not too deep the postman will arrive here to-morrow morning about ten, and he will take your letter back with him. I hear he couldn't get through this morning, but we will hope for better luck next time. Anyway, your folk won't be anxious. You sent a message from Caryngston, didn't you?"

With these words he went out into the vestibule. She heard him whistling for his dog, and presently the sound of the oak door banging.

"If what I wanted was change, indeed it seems that I have found it," was her reflection, as she sat down by the warm hearth.

As she did not, so far, know where the library was, and had no idea of the sort of cataloguing required, she felt unable to make any move in the direction of commencing her new work. Madam had definitely sent her off duty until five, and she had therefore no scruple in sitting down to begin a letter to Aunt Ada. She made this letter a good deal more sanguine than her present frame of mind, for she did not wish to let them know how depressed she felt, nor how out of place and forlorn. She dwelt upon the surprising nature of her situation from the architectural standpoint, the piquant experience of being weather-bound at the country inn, and her first experience of a sleigh drive.

She wrote until the last red streak died in the western sky above the thick woods across the Guyseburn. Then she laid down her pen, wondering a little that she was not frightened at finding herself alone in this vaulted chamber. So wondering, her eyes closed, and she slipped into dreamland, only awakened by the entrance of a stout, middle-aged woman carrying a lighted lamp.

"Eh, but I've woke ye up!" said she, standing with her hands on her hips and contemplating the small girl in the large chair.

"Nobbut a bairn, so you are," she went on, "but ayah says you're a real beauty." She looked critical, as though her own judgment did not endorse that of the Hindu. "Happen ye're tired out, after sooch a long drive in t' snaw?" she suggested.

Olwen was tickled by the woman's honesty, and laughed out "Perhaps I am," she admitted, "and you may be able to raise your opinion of my looks after a while in this good air. I'm a town-bred creature; all this wild moorland is like a fairy tale to me."

"Ah, ye'll soon get your fill o' that," said Mrs. Baxter calmly. "Dooll, that's what it is oop here. Woon day joost t' same as lasst, all the year roond."

"Why, it doesn't snow all the year round, surely! I just long to see this valley in summer-time."

"Oo, ay, it's fine soomer-time, I will say that," replied the north-country woman, taking a white cloth from a drawer and spreading it on one end of the table. As she laid tea she continued to talk, explaining that both she and her husband were born in that part of the world and were used to solitude, cold and monotony. In return, Olwen told her of her own town-life, and how she had never hitherto known what it was to live without taxi-cabs, telephones and typewriters.

Just as the deeply interested Mrs. Baxter had brought in the covered dishes of hot cake and the silver tea-pot, the front door was heard to bang, there was a sound of scraping and stamping feet, and with a wild scurry some big creature hurled itself against the door leading from the hall, which yielded, and a golden collie bounced in, rushed to the hearth, and stopped short at sight of a stranger there ensconced, backing, with shoulders hunched and a threatening growl.

"Eh, the brute!" cried Mrs. Baxter, catching him by the collar. "Muster Nin, here's Daffie showing his teeth at the yoong leddy."

Nin from without shouted some abuse, and the dog bounded back to his master. When they returned together soon after the man effected an introduction, made the dog shake a paw, and instructed Olwen to bestow a sweet cake upon him in token of alliance.

Madam now appeared, a shawl over her shoulders, entering, as Olwen had done, by way of the tapestry hangings.

What conversation there was at tea turned upon the broken fencing. Nin said the ground was as hard as iron, no repair was possible, but Ezra and he had done their best with some wire netting. Madam had evidently no conversation, apparently no ideas. Olwen remembered what her son had said of her, and felt a vague pity. She herself made little effort to talk, but what she did say fell flat, since the master of the house was apparently tongue-tied before his mother.

"Do you play billiards?" he suddenly asked.

"A very little. The Whitefields have a table, but I am much out of practice."

"Not much reach," said Nin, with another scornful glance at her lack of inches. "Well, the one solitary thing that is good here is the billiard table."

"A billiard-room--here?" cried Olwen, hardly polite in her surprise.

"A billiard-room here!" he mimicked derisively. "Come upstairs and you shall see. Knocking the balls about helps to keep one from suicide during the long winter nights."

"Only I don't play," said Madam.

"Well, I shan't cut holes in your table. I do just know how to hold a cue," said Olwen. "If you have a great deal of skill and patience you may be able to teach me to play."

"Good notion. Plenty of chance for flirtation in teaching a girl to play billiards. Shall have to allow you to stand on the table for your long shots, I should think," said the young man with apparently no sense of his own ill-breeding.

Olwen made no reply to this, glancing at Madam to see how she took this kind of language to her new companion upon the first evening.

Nin nudged his mother. "Look at her! She simply can't stand my cheek!"

"I don't wonder," rapped out his mother with sudden emphasis. "Why do you behave so intolerably?"

Ninian looked somewhat taken aback. "Crushed again," he said. "What chance has one poor man against two ladies? Daff, come here and take my part. Shall I teach you to bite the nasty cross things--eh?" He caressed the dog as it stood between his knees. "Sorry I introduced you to the school-marm, Daff. She likes poodle dogs, trained to walk on their hind legs and show off. She's got no use for simple rustics like you and me--have you, Miss Innes?"

"But perhaps rustics can be educated?" she suggested with a smile, unwilling to snub him too decidedly before his mother.

"Hallo!" with an instant change from bravado to soft insinuation. "Will the school-marm undertake our education?"

"That depends upon your wish to learn."

"I simply long to learn! I'll be a model pupil. When shall we begin? A lesson in manners after tea, a lesson in deportment after supper, a lesson in charm before breakfast, and----"

"A lesson upon holding your tongue in between each, I should think," cut in his mother suddenly, and evidently to his surprise.

"The first lessons would have to be language lessons," remarked Olwen demurely. "I couldn't tell you anything until we could understand one another. At present we don't."

"Now what, precisely, do you mean by that?" sharply.

She smiled provokingly. "I can't explain in words you would understand."

He turned himself round in his chair, leaned his elbow on its back, his chin in his hand, and stared fixedly.

"It's a deal," he then said. "When does the first lesson come off?"

"That," she replied with a very small smile, "will depend upon what time I have to spare after my other duties are all done."