In due time George and Sophie asked each other that question, and put it aside. They argued that the climate--a pearly blend, unlike the hot and cold ferocities of their native land--suited them, as the thick stillness of the nights certainly suited George. He was saved even the sight of a metalled road, which, as presumably leading to business, wakes desire in a man; and the telegraph office at the village of Friars Pardon, where they sold picture post-cards and pegtops, was two walking miles across the fields and woods.
For all that touched his past among his fellows, or their remembrance of him, he might have been in another planet; and Sophie, whose life had been very largely spent among husbandless wives of lofty ideals, had no wish to leave this present of G.o.d. The unhurried meals, the foreknowledge of deliciously empty hours to follow, the breadths of soft sky under which they walked together and reckoned time only by their hunger or thirst; the good gra.s.s beneath their feet that cheated the miles; their discoveries, always together, amid the farms--Griffons, Rocketts, Burnt House, Gale Anstey, and the Home Farm, where Iggulden of the blue smock-frock would waylay them, and they would ransack the old house once more; the long wet afternoons when, they tucked up their feet on the bedroom"s deep window-sill over against the apple-trees, and talked together as never till then had they found time to talk--these things contented her soul, and her body throve.
"Have you realized," she asked one morning, "that we"ve been here absolutely alone for the last thirty-four days?"
"Have you counted them?" he asked.
"Did you like them?" she replied.
"I must have. I didn"t think about them. Yes, I have. Six months ago I should have fretted myself sick. Remember at Cairo? I"ve only had two or three bad times. Am I getting better, or is it senile decay?"
"Climate, all climate." Sophie swung her new-bought English boots, as she sat on the stile overlooking Friars Pardon, behind the Clokes"s barn.
"One must take hold of things though," he said, "if it"s only to keep one"s hand in." His eyes did not flicker now as they swept the empty fields. "Mustn"t one?"
"Lay out a Morristown links over Gale Anstey. I dare say you could hire it."
"No, I"m not as English as that--nor as Morristown. Cloke says all the farms here could be made to pay."
"Well, I"m Anastasia in the "Treasure of Franchard." I"m content to be alive and purr. There"s no hurry."
"No." He smiled. "All the same, I"m going to see after my mail."
"You promised you wouldn"t have any."
"There"s some business coming through that"s amusing me. Honest. It doesn"t get on my nerves at all."
"Want a secretary?"
"No, thanks, old thing! Isn"t that quite English?"
"Too English! Go away." But none the less in broad daylight she returned the kiss. "I"m off to Pardons. I haven"t been to the house for nearly a week."
"How"ve you decided to furnish Jane Elphick"s bedroom?" he laughed, for it had come to be a permanent Castle in Spain between them.
"Black Chinese furniture and yellow silk brocade," she answered, and ran downhill. She scattered a few cows at a gap with a flourish of a ground-ash that Iggulden had cut for her a week ago, and singing as she pa.s.sed under the holmoaks, sought the farm-house at the back of Friars Pardon. The old man was not to be found, and she knocked at his half-opened door, for she needed him to fill her idle forenoon. A blue-eyed sheep-dog, a new friend, and Rambler"s old enemy, crawled out and besought her to enter.
Iggulden sat in his chair by the fire, a thistle-spud between his knees, his head drooped. Though she had never seen death before, her heart, that missed a beat, told her that he was dead. She did not speak or cry, but stood outside the door, and the dog licked her hand. When he threw up his nose, she heard herself saying: "Don"t howl! Please don"t begin to howl, Scottie, or I shall run away!"
She held her ground while the shadows in the rickyard moved toward noon; sat after a while on the steps by the door, her arms round the dog"s neck, waiting till some one should come. She watched the smokeless chimneys of Friars Pardon slash its roofs with shadow, and the smoke of Iggulden"s last lighted fire gradually thin and cease. Against her will she fell to wondering how many Moones, Elphicks, and Torrells had been swung round the turn of the broad Mall stairs. Then she remembered the old man"s talk of being "up-ended like a milk-can," and buried her face on Scottie"s neck. At last a horse"s feet clinked upon flags, rustled in the old grey straw of the rickyard, and she found herself facing the vicar--a figure she had seen at church declaiming impossibilities (Sophie was a Unitarian) in an unnatural voice.
"He"s dead," she said, without preface.
"Old Iggulden? I was coming for a talk with him." The vicar pa.s.sed in uncovered. "Ah!" she heard him say. "Heart-failure! How long have you been here?"
"Since a quarter to eleven." She looked at her watch earnestly and saw that her hand did not shake.
"I"ll sit with him now till the doctor comes. D"you think you could tell him, and--yes, Mrs. Betts in the cottage with the wistaria next the blacksmith"s? I"m afraid this has been rather a shock to you."
Sophie nodded, and fled toward the village. Her body failed her for a moment; she dropped beneath a hedge, and looked back at the great house.
In some fashion its silence and stolidity steadied her for her errand.
Mrs. Betts, small, black-eyed, and dark, was almost as unconcerned as Friars Pardon.
"Yiss, yiss, of course. Dear me! Well, Iggulden he had had his day in my father"s time. Muriel, get me my little blue bag, please. Yiss, ma"am.
They come down like ellum-branches in still weather. No warnin" at all.
Muriel, my bicycle"s be"ind the fowlhouse. I"ll tell Dr. Dallas, ma"am."
She trundled off on her wheel like a brown bee, while Sophie--heaven above and earth beneath changed--walked stiffly home, to fall over George at his letters, in a muddle of laughter and tears.
"It"s all quite natural for them," she gasped. "They come down like ellum-branches in still weather. Yiss, ma"am." No, there wasn"t anything in the least horrible, only--only--Oh, George, that poor shiny stick of his between his poor, thin knees! I couldn"t have borne it if Scottie had howled. I didn"t know the vicar was so--so sensitive. He said he was afraid it was ra--rather a shock. Mrs. Betts told me to go home, and I wanted to collapse on her floor. But I didn"t disgrace myself. I--I couldn"t have left him--could I?"
"You"re sure you"ve took no "arm?" cried Mrs. Cloke, who had heard the news by farm-telegraphy, which is older but swifter than Marconi"s.
"No. I"m perfectly well," Sophie protested.
"You lay down till tea-time." Mrs. Cloke patted her shoulder. "THEY"ll be very pleased, though she "as "ad no proper understandin" for twenty years."
"They" came before twilight--a black-bearded man in moleskins, and a little palsied old woman, who chirruped like a wren.
"I"m his son," said the man to Sophie, among the lavender bushes. "We "ad a difference--twenty year back, and didn"t speak since. But I"m his son all the "same, and we thank you for the watching."
"I"m only glad I happened to be there," she answered, and from the bottom of her heart she meant it.
"We heard he spoke a lot o" you--one time an" another since you came. We thank you kindly," the man added.
"Are you the son that was in America?" she asked.
"Yes, ma"am. On my uncle"s farm, in Connecticut. He was what they call rood-master there."
"Whereabouts in Connecticut?" asked George over her shoulder.
"Veering Holler was the name. I was there six year with my uncle."
"How small the world is!" Sophie cried. "Why, all my mother"s people come from Veering Hollow. There must be some there still--the Lashmars.
Did you ever hear of them?"
"I remember hearing that name, seems to me," he answered, but his face was blank as the back of a spade.
A little before dusk a woman in grey, striding like a foot-soldier, and bearing on her arm a long pole, crashed through the orchard calling for food. George, upon whom the unannounced English worked mysteriously, fled to the parlour; but Mrs. Cloke came forward beaming. Sophie could not escape.
"We"ve only just heard of it;" said the stranger, turning on her. "I"ve been out with the otter-hounds all day. It was a splendidly sportin"
thing--"
"Did you--er--kill?" said Sophie. She knew from books she could not go far wrong here.
"Yes, a dry b.i.t.c.h--seventeen pounds," was the answer. "A splendidly sportin" thing of you to do. Poor old Iggulden--"
"Oh--that!" said Sophie, enlightened.