"How do you do, Mr. Mason?"
The young man drew himself together with a start. Suddenly he perceived that the young girl standing in the shade of the porch was not his sister, but a stranger. He looked at her with astonishment,--at the elegance of her dress, and the neatness of her small gloved hand.
"I beg your pardon, Miss, I"m sure! Did you want anything?"
The visitor laughed. "Yes, I want a good deal! I came up to see my cousins--you"re my cousin--though of course you don"t remember me. I thought--perhaps--you"d ask me to dinner."
The young man"s yawns ceased. He stared with all his eyes, instinctively putting his hair and collar straight.
"Well, I"m afraid I don"t know who you are, Miss," he said at last, putting out his hand in perplexity to meet hers. "Will you walk in?"
"Not before you know who I am!"--said Laura, still laughing--"I"m Laura Fountain. Now do you know?"
"What--Stephen Fountain"s daughter--as married Miss Helbeck?" said the young man in wonder. His face, which had been at first vague and heavy with sleep, began to recover its natural expression.
Laura surveyed him. He had a square, full chin and an upper lip slightly underhung. His straight fair hair straggled loose over his brow. He carried his head and shoulders well, and was altogether a finely built, rather magnificent young fellow, marred by a general expression that was half clumsy, half insolent.
"That"s it," she said, in answer to his question--"I"m staying at Bannisdale, and I came up to see you all.--Where"s Cousin Elizabeth?"
"Mother, do you mean?--Oh! she"s at church."
"Why aren"t you there, too?"
He opened his blue eyes, taken aback by the cool clearness of her voice.
"Well, I can"t abide the parson--if you want to know. Shall I put up your pony?"
"But perhaps you"ve not had your sleep out?" said Laura, politely interrogative.
He reddened, and came forward with a slow and rather shambling gait.
"I don"t know what else there is to do up here of a Sunday morning," he said, with a boyish sulkiness, as he began to lead the pony towards the stables opposite. "Besides, I was up half the night seeing to one of the cows."
"You don"t seem to have many neighbours," said Laura, as she walked beside him.
"There"s rooks and crows" (which he p.r.o.nounced broadly--"craws")--"not much else, I can tell you. Shall I take the pony out?"
"Please. I"m afraid you"ll have to put up with me for hours!"
She looked at him merrily, and he returned the scrutiny. She wore the same thin black dress in which Helbeck had admired her the day before, and above it a cloth jacket and cap, trimmed with brown fur. Mason was dazzled a moment by the milky whiteness of the cheek above the fur, by the brightness of the eyes and hair; then was seized with fresh shyness, and became extremely busy with the pony.
"Mother"ll be back in about an hour," he said gruffly.
"Goodness! what"ll you do with me till then?"
They both laughed, he with an embarra.s.sment that annoyed him. He was not at all accustomed to find himself at a disadvantage with a good-looking girl.
"There"s a good fire in the house, anyway," he said; "you"ll want to warm yourself, I should think, after driving up here."
"Oh! I"m not cold--I say, what jolly horses!"
For Mason had thrown open the large worm-eaten door of the stables, and inside could be seen the heads and backs of two cart-horses, huge, majestic creatures, who were peering over the doors of their stalls, as though they had been listening to the conversation.
Their owner glanced at them indifferently.
"Aye, they"re not bad. We bred "em three years ago, and they"ve taken more"n one prize already. I dare say old Daffady, now, as looks after them, would be sorry to part with them."
"I dare say he would. But why should he part with them?"
The young man hesitated. He was shaking down a load of hay for the pony, and Laura was leaning against the door of the stall watching his performance.
"Well, I reckon we shan"t be farmin here all our lives," he said at last with some abruptness.
"Don"t you like it then?"
"I"d get quit on it to-morrow if I could!"
His quick reply had an emphasis that astonished her.
"And your mother?"
"Oh! of course it"s mother keeps me at it," he said, relapsing into the same accent of a sulky child that he had used once before.
Then he led his new cousin back to the farmhouse. By this time he was beginning to find his tongue and use his eyes. Laura was conscious that she was being closely observed, and that by a man who was by no means indifferent to women. She said to herself that she would try to keep him shy.
As they entered the farmhouse kitchen Mason hastened to pick up the chairs he had overturned in his sudden waking.
"I say, mother would be mad if she knew you"d come into this scrow!" he said with vexation, kicking aside some sporting papers that were littered over the floors, and bringing forward a carved oak chair with a cushion to place it before the fire for her acceptance.
"Scrow? What"s that?" said Laura, lifting her eyebrows. "Oh, please don"t tidy any more. I really think you make it worse. Besides, it"s all right.
What a dear old kitchen!"
She had seated herself in the cushioned chair, and was warming a slender foot at the fire. Mason wished she would take off her hat--it hid her hair. But he could not flatter himself that she was in the least occupied with what he wished. Her attention was all given to her surroundings--to the old raftered room, with its glowing fire and deep-set windows.
Bright as the April sun was outside, it hardly penetrated here. Through the mellow dusk, as through the varnish of an old picture, one saw the different objects in a golden light and shade--the bra.s.s warming-pan hanging beside the tall eight-day clock--the table in front of the long window-seat, covered with its checked red cloth--the carved door of a cupboard in the wall bearing the date 1679--the miscellaneous store of things packed away under the black rafters, dried herbs and tools, bundles of list and twine, the spindles of old spinning wheels, cattle-medicines, and the like--the heavy oaken chairs--the settle beside the fire, with its hard cushions and scrolled back. It was a room for winter, fashioned by the needs of winter. By the help of that great peat fire, built up year by year from the spoils of the moss a thousand feet below, generations of human beings had fought with snow and storm, had maintained their little polity there on the heights, self-centred, self-supplied. Across the yard, commanded by the window of the farm-kitchen, lay the rude byres where the cattle were prisoned from October to April. The cattle made the wealth of the farm, and there must be many weeks when the animals and their masters were shut in together from the world outside by wastes of snow.
Laura shut her eyes an instant, imagining the goings to and fro--the rising on winter dawns to feed the stock; the shepherd on the fell-side, wrestling with sleet and tempest; the returns at night to food and fire.
Her young fancy, already played on by the breath of the mountains, warmed to the farmhouse and its primitive life. Here surely was something more human--more poetic even--than the tattered splendour of Bannisdale.
She opened her eyes wide again, as though in defiance, and saw Hubert Mason looking at her.
Instinctively she sat up straight, and drew her foot primly under the shelter of her dress.
"I was thinking of what it must be in winter," she said hurriedly. "I know I should like it."
"What, this place?" He gave a rough laugh. "I don"t see what for, then.
It"s bad enough in summer. In winter it"s fit to make you cut your throat. I say, where are you staying?"