Kitabı oku: «The Freelands», sayfa 20

“There’s nobody now for Derek to save. Oh, if you’d seen that poor man in prison, Dad!”

And the only words of comfort Felix could find were:

“My child, there are thousands and thousands of poor prisoners and captives!”

In a truce to agitation they spent the rest of that three hours’ journey, while the train rattled and rumbled through the quiet, happy-looking land.

CHAPTER XXXV

It was tea-time when they reached Worcester, and at once went up to the Royal Charles Hostel. A pretty young woman in the office there informed them that the young gentleman had paid his bill and gone out about ten o’clock; but had left his luggage. She had not seen him come in. His room was up that little staircase at the end of the passage. There was another entrance that he might have come in at. The ‘Boots’ would take them.

Past the hall stuffed with furniture and decorated with the stags’ heads and battle-prints common to English county-town hotels, they followed the ‘Boots’ up five red-carpeted steps, down a dingy green corridor, to a door at the very end. There was no answer to their knock. The dark little room, with striped walls, and more battle-prints, looked out on a side street and smelled dusty. On a shiny leather sofa an old valise, strapped-up ready for departure, was reposing with Felix’s telegram, unopened, deposited thereon. Writing on his card, “Have come down with Nedda. F. F.,” and laying it on the telegram, in case Derek should come in by the side entrance, Felix and Nedda rejoined John in the hall.

To wait in anxiety is perhaps the hardest thing in life; tea, tobacco, and hot baths perhaps the only anodynes. These, except the baths, they took. Without knowing what had happened, neither John nor Felix liked to make inquiry at the police station, nor did they care to try and glean knowledge from the hotel people by questions that might lead to gossip. They could but kick their heels till it became reasonably certain that Derek was not coming back. The enforced waiting increased Felix’s exasperation. Everything Derek did seemed designed to cause Nedda pain. To watch her sitting there, trying resolutely to mask her anxiety, became intolerable. At last he got up and said to John:

“I think we’d better go round there,” and, John nodding, he added: “Wait here, my child. One of us’ll come back at once and tell you anything we hear.”

She gave them a grateful look and the two brothers went out. They had not gone twenty yards when they met Derek striding along, pale, wild, unhappy-looking. When Felix touched him on the arm, he started and stared blankly at his uncle.

“We’ve seen about Tryst,” Felix said: “You’ve not done anything?”

Derek shook his head.

“Good! John, tell Nedda that, and stay with her a bit. I want to talk to Derek. We’ll go in the other way.” He put his hand under the boy’s arm and turned him down into the side street. When they reached the gloomy little bedroom Felix pointed to the telegram.

“From me. I suppose the news of his death stopped you?”

“Yes.” Derek opened the telegram, dropped it, and sat down beside his valise on the shiny sofa. He looked positively haggard.

Taking his stand against the chest of drawers, Felix said quietly:

“I’m going to have it out with you, Derek. Do you understand what all this means to Nedda? Do you realize how utterly unhappy you’re making her? I don’t suppose you’re happy yourself – ”

The boy’s whole figure writhed.

“Happy! When you’ve killed some one you don’t think much of happiness – your own or any one’s!”

Startled in his turn, Felix said sharply:

“Don’t talk like that. It’s monomania.”

Derek laughed. “Bob Tryst’s dead – through me! I can’t get out of that.”

Gazing at the boy’s tortured face, Felix grasped the gruesome fact that this idea amounted to obsession.

“Derek,” he said, “you’ve dwelt on this till you see it out of all proportion. If we took to ourselves the remote consequences of all our words we should none of us survive a week. You’re overdone. You’ll see it differently to-morrow.”

Derek got up to pace the room.

“I swear I would have saved him. I tried to do it when they committed him at Transham.” He looked wildly at Felix. “Didn’t I? You were there; you heard!”

“Yes, yes; I heard.”

“They wouldn’t let me then. I thought they mightn’t find him guilty here – so I let it go on. And now he’s dead. You don’t know how I feel!”

His throat was working, and Felix said with real compassion:

“My dear boy! Your sense of honour is too extravagant altogether. A grown man like poor Tryst knew perfectly what he was doing.”

“No. He was like a dog – he did what he thought was expected of him. I never meant him to burn those ricks.”

“Exactly! No one can blame you for a few wild words. He might have been the boy and you the man by the way you take it! Come!”

Derek sat down again on the shiny sofa and buried his head in his hands.

“I can’t get away from him. He’s been with me all day. I see him all the time.”

That the boy was really haunted was only too apparent. How to attack this mania? If one could make him feel something else! And Felix said:

“Look here, Derek! Before you’ve any right to Nedda you’ve got to find ballast. That’s a matter of honour, if you like.”

Derek flung up his head as if to escape a blow. Seeing that he had riveted him, Felix pressed on, with some sternness:

“A man can’t serve two passions. You must give up this championing the weak and lighting flames you can’t control. See what it leads to! You’ve got to grow and become a man. Until then I don’t trust my daughter to you.”

The boy’s lips quivered; a flush darkened his face, ebbed, and left him paler than ever.

Felix felt as if he had hit that face. Still, anything was better than to leave him under this gruesome obsession! Then, to his consternation, Derek stood up and said:

“If I go and see his body at the prison, perhaps he’ll leave me alone a little!”

Catching at that, as he would have caught at anything, Felix said:

“Good! Yes! Go and see the poor fellow; we’ll come, too.”

And he went out to find Nedda.

By the time they reached the street Derek had already started, and they could see him going along in front. Felix racked his brains to decide whether he ought to prepare her for the state the boy was in. Twice he screwed himself up to take the plunge, but her face – puzzled, as though wondering at her lover’s neglect of her – stopped him. Better say nothing!

Just as they reached the prison she put her hand on his arm:

“Look, Dad!”

And Felix read on the corner of the prison lane those words: ‘Love’s Walk’!

Derek was waiting at the door. After some difficulty they were admitted and taken down the corridor where the prisoner on his knees had stared up at Nedda, past the courtyard where those others had been pacing out their living hieroglyphic, up steps to the hospital. Here, in a white-washed room on a narrow bed, the body of the big laborer lay, wrapped in a sheet.

“We bury him Friday, poor chap! Fine big man, too!” And at the warder’s words a shudder passed through Felix. The frozen tranquillity of that body!

As the carved beauty of great buildings, so is the graven beauty of death, the unimaginable wonder of the abandoned thing lying so quiet, marvelling at its resemblance to what once lived! How strange this thing, still stamped by all that it had felt, wanted, loved, and hated, by all its dumb, hard, commonplace existence! This thing with the calm, pathetic look of one who asks of his own fled spirit: Why have you abandoned me?

Death! What more wonderful than a dead body – that still perfect work of life, for which life has no longer use! What more mysterious than this sight of what still is, yet is not!

Below the linen swathing the injured temples, those eyes were closed through which such yearning had looked forth. From that face, where the hair had grown faster than if it had been alive, death’s majesty had planed away the aspect of brutality, removed the yearning, covering all with wistful acquiescence. Was his departed soul coherent? Where was it? Did it hover in this room, visible still to the boy? Did it stand there beside what was left of Tryst the laborer, that humblest of all creatures who dared to make revolt – serf, descendant of serfs, who, since the beginning, had hewn wood, drawn water, and done the will of others? Or was it winged, and calling in space to the souls of the oppressed?

This body would go back to the earth that it had tended, the wild grass would grow over it, the seasons spend wind and rain forever above it. But that which had held this together – the inarticulate, lowly spirit, hardly asking itself why things should be, faithful as a dog to those who were kind to it, obeying the dumb instinct of a violence that in his betters would be called ‘high spirit,’ where – Felix wondered – where was it?

And what were they thinking – Nedda and that haunted boy – so motionless? Nothing showed on their faces, nothing but a sort of living concentration, as if they were trying desperately to pierce through and see whatever it was that held this thing before them in such awful stillness. Their first glimpse of death; their first perception of that terrible remoteness of the dead! No wonder they seemed to be conjured out of the power of thought and feeling!

Nedda was first to turn away. Walking back by her side, Felix was surprised by her composure. The reality of death had not been to her half so harrowing as the news of it. She said softly:

“I’m glad to have seen him like that; now I shall think of him – at peace; not as he was that other time.”

Derek rejoined them, and they went in silence back to the hotel. But at the door she said:

“Come with me to the cathedral, Derek; I can’t go in yet!”

To Felix’s dismay the boy nodded, and they turned to go. Should he stop them? Should he go with them? What should a father do? And, with a heavy sigh, he did nothing but retire into the hotel.

CHAPTER XXXVI

It was calm, with a dark-blue sky, and a golden moon, and the lighted street full of people out for airing. The great cathedral, cutting the heavens with its massive towers, was shut. No means of getting in; and while they stood there looking up the thought came into Nedda’s mind: Where would they bury poor Tryst who had killed himself? Would they refuse to bury that unhappy one in a churchyard? Surely, the more unhappy and desperate he was, the kinder they ought to be to him!

They turned away down into a little lane where an old, white, timbered cottage presided ghostly at the corner. Some church magnate had his garden back there; and it was quiet, along the waving line of a high wall, behind which grew sycamores spreading close-bunched branches, whose shadows, in the light of the corner lamps, lay thick along the ground this glamourous August night. A chafer buzzed by, a small black cat played with its tail on some steps in a recess. Nobody passed.

The girl’s heart was beating fast. Derek’s face was so strange and strained. And he had not yet said one word to her. All sorts of fears and fancies beset her till she was trembling all over.

“What is it?” she said at last. “You haven’t – you haven’t stopped loving me, Derek?”

“No one could stop loving you.”

“What is it, then? Are you thinking of poor Tryst?”

With a catch in his throat and a sort of choked laugh he answered:

“Yes.”

“But it’s all over. He’s at peace.”

“Peace!” Then, in a queer, dead voice, he added: “I’m sorry, Nedda. It’s beastly for you. But I can’t help it.”

What couldn’t he help? Why did he keep her suffering like this – not telling her? What was this something that seemed so terribly between them? She walked on silently at his side, conscious of the rustling of the sycamores, of the moonlit angle of the church magnate’s house, of the silence in the lane, and the gliding of their own shadows along the wall. What was this in his face, his thoughts, that she could not reach! And she cried out:

“Tell me! Oh, tell me, Derek! I can go through anything with you!”

“I can’t get rid of him, that’s all. I thought he’d go when I’d seen him there. But it’s no good!”

Terror got hold of her then. She peered at his face – very white and haggard. There seemed no blood in it. They were going down-hill now, along the blank wall of a factory; there was the river in front, with the moonlight on it and boats drawn up along the bank. From a chimney a scroll of black smoke was flung out across the sky, and a lighted bridge glowed above the water. They turned away from that, passing below the dark pile of the cathedral. Here couples still lingered on benches along the river-bank, happy in the warm night, under the August moon! And on and on they walked in that strange, miserable silence, past all those benches and couples, out on the river-path by the fields, where the scent of hay-stacks, and the freshness from the early stubbles and the grasses webbed with dew, overpowered the faint reek of the river mud. And still on and on in the moonlight that haunted through the willows. At their footsteps the water-rats scuttled down into the water with tiny splashes; a dog barked somewhere a long way off; a train whistled; a frog croaked. From the stubbles and second crops of sun-baked clover puffs of warm air kept stealing up into the chillier air beneath the willows. Such moonlit nights never seem to sleep. And there was a kind of triumph in the night’s smile, as though it knew that it ruled the river and the fields, ruled with its gleams the silent trees that had given up all rustling. Suddenly Derek said:

“He’s walking with us! Look! Over there!”

And for a second there did seem to Nedda a dim, gray shape moving square and dogged, parallel with them at the stubble edges. Gasping out:

“Oh, no; don’t frighten me! I can’t bear it tonight!” She hid her face against his shoulder like a child. He put his arm round her and she pressed her face deep into his coat. This ghost of Bob Tryst holding him away from her! This enemy! This uncanny presence! She pressed closer, closer, and put her face up to his. It was wonderfully lonely, silent, whispering, with the moongleams slipping through the willow boughs into the shadow where they stood. And from his arms warmth stole through her! Closer and closer she pressed, not quite knowing what she did, not quite knowing anything but that she wanted him never to let her go; wanted his lips on hers, so that she might feel his spirit pass, away from what was haunting it, into hers, never to escape. But his lips did not come to hers. They stayed drawn back, trembling, hungry-looking, just above her lips. And she whispered:

“Kiss me!”

She felt him shudder in her arms, saw his eyes darken, his lips quiver and quiver, as if he wanted them to, but they would not. What was it? Oh, what was it? Wasn’t he going to kiss her – not to kiss her? And while in that unnatural pause they stood, their heads bent back among the moongleams and those willow shadows, there passed through Nedda such strange trouble as she had never known. Not kiss her! Not kiss her! Why didn’t he? When in her blood and in the night all round, in the feel of his arms, the sight of his hungry lips, was something unknown, wonderful, terrifying, sweet! And she wailed out:

“I want you – I don’t care – I want you!” She felt him sway, reel, and clutch her as if he were going to fall, and all other feeling vanished in the instinct of the nurse she had already been to him. He was ill again! Yes, he was ill! And she said:

“Derek – don’t! It’s all right. Let’s walk on quietly!”

She got his arm tightly in hers and drew him along toward home. By the jerking of that arm, the taut look on his face, she could feel that he did not know from step to step whether he could stay upright. But she herself was steady and calm enough, bent on keeping emotion away, and somehow getting him back along the river-path, abandoned now to the moon and the bright, still spaces of the night and the slow-moving, whitened water. Why had she not felt from the first that he was overwrought and only fit for bed?

Thus, very slowly, they made their way up by the factory again into the lane by the church magnate’s garden, under the branches of the sycamores, past the same white-faced old house at the corner, to the high street where some few people were still abroad.

At the front door of the hotel stood Felix, looking at his watch, disconsolate as an old hen. To her great relief he went in quickly when he saw them coming. She could not bear the thought of talk and explanation. The one thing was to get Derek to bed. All the time he had gone along with that taut face; and now, when he sat down on the shiny sofa in the little bedroom, he shivered so violently that his teeth chattered. She rang for a hot bottle and brandy and hot water. When he had drunk he certainly shivered less, professed himself all right, and would not let her stay. She dared not ask, but it did seem as if the physical collapse had driven away, for the time at all events, that ghostly visitor, and, touching his forehead with her lips – very motherly – so that he looked up and smiled at her – she said in a matter-of-fact voice:

“I’ll come back after a bit and tuck you up,” and went out.

Felix was waiting in the hall, at a little table on which stood a bowl of bread and milk. He took the cover off it for her without a word. And while she supped he kept glancing at her, trying to make up his mind to words. But her face was sealed. And all he said was:

“Your uncle’s gone to Becket for the night. I’ve got you a room next mine, and a tooth-brush, and some sort of comb. I hope you’ll be able to manage, my child.”

Nedda left him at the door of his room and went into her own. After waiting there ten minutes she stole out again. It was all quiet, and she went resolutely back down the stairs. She did not care who saw her or what they thought. Probably they took her for Derek’s sister; but even if they didn’t she would not have cared. It was past eleven, the light nearly out, and the hall in the condition of such places that await a morning’s renovation. His corridor, too, was quite dark. She opened the door without sound and listened, till his voice said softly:

“All right, little angel; I’m not asleep.”

And by a glimmer of moonlight, through curtains designed to keep out nothing, she stole up to the bed. She could just see his face, and eyes looking up at her with a sort of adoration. She put her hand on his forehead and whispered: “Are you comfy?”

He murmured back: “Yes, quite comfy.”

Kneeling down, she laid her face beside his on the pillow. She could not help doing that; it made everything seem holy, cuddley, warm. His lips touched her nose. Her eyes, for just that instant, looked up into his, that were very dark and soft; then she got up.

“Would you like me to stay till you’re asleep?”

“Yes; forever. But I shouldn’t exactly sleep. Would you?”

In the darkness Nedda vehemently shook her head. Sleep! No! She would not sleep!

“Good night, then!”

“Good night, little dark angel!”

“Good night!” With that last whisper she slipped back to the door and noiselessly away.

CHAPTER XXXVII

It was long before she closed her eyes, spending the hours in fancy where still less she would have slept. But when she did drop off she dreamed that he and she were alone upon a star, where all the trees were white, the water, grass, birds, everything, white, and they were walking arm in arm, among white flowers. And just as she had stooped to pick one – it was no flower, but – Tryst’s white-banded face! She woke with a little cry.

She was dressed by eight and went at once to Derek’s room. There was no answer to her knock, and in a flutter of fear she opened the door. He had gone – packed, and gone. She ran back to the hall. There was a note for her in the office, and she took it out of sight to read. It said:

“He came back this morning. I’m going home by the first train. He seems to want me to do something.

“DEREK.”

Came back! That thing – that gray thing that she, too, had seemed to see for a moment in the fields beside the river! And he was suffering again as he had suffered yesterday! It was awful. She waited miserably till her father came down. To find that he, too, knew of this trouble was some relief. He made no objection when she begged that they should follow on to Joyfields. Directly after breakfast they set out. Once on her way to Derek again, she did not feel so frightened. But in the train she sat very still, gazing at her lap, and only once glanced up from under those long lashes.

“Can you understand it, Dad?”

Felix, not much happier than she, answered:

“The man had something queer about him. Besides Derek’s been ill, don’t forget that. But it’s too bad for you, Nedda. I don’t like it; I don’t like it.”

“I can’t be parted from him, Dad. That’s impossible.”

Felix was silenced by the vigor of those words.

“His mother can help, perhaps,” he said.

Ah! If his mother would help – send him away from the laborers, and all this!

Up from the station they took the field paths, which cut off quite a mile. The grass and woods were shining brightly, peacefully in the sun; it seemed incredible that there should be heartburnings about a land so smiling, that wrongs and miseries should haunt those who lived and worked in these bright fields. Surely in this earthly paradise the dwellers were enviable, well-nourished souls, sleek and happy as the pied cattle that lifted their inquisitive muzzles! Nedda tried to stroke the nose of one – grayish, blunt, moist. But the creature backed away from her hand, snuffling, and its cynical, soft eyes with chestnut lashes seemed warning the girl that she belonged to the breed that might be trusted to annoy.

In the last fields before the Joyfields crossroads they came up with a little, square, tow-headed man, without coat or cap, who had just driven some cattle in and was returning with his dog, at a ‘dot-here dot-there’ walk, as though still driving them. He gave them a look rather like that of the bullock Nedda had tried to stroke. She knew he must be one of the Malloring men, and longed to ask him questions; but he, too, looked shy and distrustful, as if he suspected that they wanted something out of him. She summoned up courage, however, to say: “Did you see about poor Bob Tryst?”

“I ‘eard tell. ‘E didn’ like prison. They say prison takes the ‘eart out of you. ‘E didn’ think o’ that.” And the smile that twisted the little man’s lips seemed to Nedda strange and cruel, as if he actually found pleasure in the fate of his fellow. All she could find to answer was:

“Is that a good dog?”

The little man looked down at the dog trotting alongside with drooped tail, and shook his head:

“‘E’s no good wi’ beasts – won’t touch ‘em!” Then, looking up sidelong, he added surprisingly:

“Mast’ Freeland ‘e got a crack on the head, though!” Again there was that satisfied resentment in his voice and the little smile twisting his lips. Nedda felt more lost than ever.

They parted at the crossroads and saw him looking back at them as they went up the steps to the wicket gate. Amongst a patch of early sunflowers, Tod, in shirt and trousers, was surrounded by his dog and the three small Trysts, all apparently engaged in studying the biggest of the sunflowers, where a peacock-butterfly and a bee were feeding, one on a gold petal, the other on the black heart. Nedda went quickly up to them and asked:

“Has Derek come, Uncle Tod?”

Tod raised his eyes. He did not seem in the least surprised to see her, as if his sky were in the habit of dropping his relatives at ten in the morning.

“Gone out again,” he said.

Nedda made a sign toward the children.

“Have you heard, Uncle Tod?”

Tod nodded and his blue eyes, staring above the children’s heads, darkened.

“Is Granny still here?”

Again Tod nodded.

Leaving Felix in the garden, Nedda stole upstairs and tapped on Frances Freeland’s door.

She, whose stoicism permitted her the one luxury of never coming down to breakfast, had just made it for herself over a little spirit-lamp. She greeted Nedda with lifted eyebrows.

“Oh, my darling! Where HAVE you come from? You must have my nice cocoa! Isn’t this the most perfect lamp you ever saw? Did you ever see such a flame? Watch!”

She touched the spirit-lamp and what there was of flame died out.

“Now, isn’t that provoking? It’s really a splendid thing, quite a new kind. I mean to get you one. Now, drink your cocoa; it’s beautifully hot.”

“I’ve had breakfast, Granny.”

Frances Freeland gazed at her doubtfully, then, as a last resource, began to sip the cocoa, of which, in truth, she was badly in want.

“Granny, will you help me?”

“Of course, darling. What is it?”

“I do so want Derek to forget all about this terrible business.”

Frances Freeland, who had unscrewed the top of a little canister, answered:

“Yes, dear, I quite agree. I’m sure it’s best for him. Open your mouth and let me pop in one of these delicious little plasmon biscuits. They’re perfect after travelling. Only,” she added wistfully, “I’m afraid he won’t pay any attention to me.”

“No, but you could speak to Aunt Kirsteen; it’s for her to stop him.”

One of her most pathetic smiles came over Frances Freeland’s face.

“Yes, I could speak to her. But, you see, I don’t count for anything. One doesn’t when one gets old.”

“Oh, Granny, you do! You count for a lot; every one admires you so. You always seem to have something that – that other people haven’t got. And you’re not a bit old in spirit.”

Frances Freeland was fingering her rings; she slipped one off.

“Well,” she said, “it’s no good thinking about that, is it? I’ve wanted to give you this for ages, darling; it IS so uncomfortable on my finger. Now, just let me see if I can pop it on!”

Nedda recoiled.

“Oh, Granny!” she said. “You ARE – !” and vanished.

There was still no one in the kitchen, and she sat down to wait for her aunt to finish her up-stairs duties.

Kirsteen came down at last, in her inevitable blue dress, betraying her surprise at this sudden appearance of her niece only by a little quivering of her brows. And, trembling with nervousness, Nedda took her plunge, pouring out the whole story – of Derek’s letter; their journey down; her father’s talk with him; the visit to Tryst’s body; their walk by the river; and of how haunted and miserable he was. Showing the little note he had left that morning, she clasped her hands and said:

“Oh, Aunt Kirsteen, make him happy again! Stop that awful haunting and keep him from all this!”

Kirsteen had listened, with one foot on the hearth in her favorite attitude. When the girl had finished she said quietly:

“I’m not a witch, Nedda!”

“But if it wasn’t for you he would never have started. And now that poor Tryst’s dead he would leave it alone. I’m sure only you can make him lose that haunted feeling.”

Kirsteen shook her head.

“Listen, Nedda!” she said slowly, as though weighing each word. “I should like you to understand. There’s a superstition in this country that people are free. Ever since I was a girl your age I’ve known that they are not; no one is free here who can’t pay for freedom. It’s one thing to see, another to feel this with your whole being. When, like me, you have an open wound, which something is always inflaming, you can’t wonder, can you, that fever escapes into the air. Derek may have caught the infection of my fever – that’s all! But I shall never lose that fever, Nedda – never!”

“But, Aunt Kirsteen, this haunting is dreadful. I can’t bear to see it.”

“My dear, Derek is very highly strung, and he’s been ill. It’s in my family to see things. That’ll go away.”

Nedda said passionately:

“I don’t believe he’ll ever lose it while he goes on here, tearing his heart out. And they’re trying to get me away from him. I know they are!”

Kirsteen turned; her eyes seemed to blaze.

“They? Ah! Yes! You’ll have to fight if you want to marry a rebel, Nedda!”

Nedda put her hands to her forehead, bewildered. “You see, Nedda, rebellion never ceases. It’s not only against this or that injustice, it’s against all force and wealth that takes advantage of its force and wealth. That rebellion goes on forever. Think well before you join in.”

Nedda turned away. Of what use to tell her to think when ‘I won’t – I can’t be parted from him!’ kept every other thought paralyzed. And she pressed her forehead against the cross-bar of the window, trying to find better words to make her appeal again. Out there above the orchard the sky was blue, and everything light and gay, as the very butterflies that wavered past. A motor-car seemed to have stopped in the road close by; its whirring and whizzing was clearly audible, mingled with the cooings of pigeons and a robin’s song. And suddenly she heard her aunt say:

“You have your chance, Nedda! Here they are!”

Nedda turned. There in the doorway were her Uncles John and Stanley coming in, followed by her father and Uncle Tod.

What did this mean? What had they come for? And, disturbed to the heart, she gazed from one to the other. They had that curious look of people not quite knowing what their reception will be like, yet with something resolute, almost portentous, in their mien. She saw John go up to her aunt and hold out his hand.

“I dare say Felix and Nedda have told you about yesterday,” he said. “Stanley and I thought it best to come over.” Kirsteen answered:

“Tod, will you tell Mother who’s here?”

Then none of them seemed to know quite what to say, or where to look, till Frances Freeland, her face all pleased and anxious, came in. When she had kissed them they all sat down. And Nedda, at the window, squeezed her hands tight together in her lap.

“We’ve come about Derek,” John said.

“Yes,” broke in Stanley. “For goodness’ sake, Kirsteen, don’t let’s have any more of this! Just think what would have happened yesterday if that poor fellow hadn’t providentially gone off the hooks!”

“Providentially!”

“Well, it was. You see to what lengths Derek was prepared to go. Hang it all! We shouldn’t have been exactly proud of a felon in the family.”