She stood up impulsively, her fresh face turned to the distant house, her rounded young figure poised in relief against the sky.
"Inherited or not, idleness, procrastination, are my besetting sins.
Can"t you suggest the remedy, Mr. Siward?"
"But they are only the thieves of Time; and we kill the poor old gentleman."
"Leagued a.s.sa.s.sins," she repeated pensively.
Her gown had caught on the cliff briers; he knelt to release it, she looking down, noting an ugly tear in the fabric.
"Payment for my iniquities--the first instalment," she said, still looking down over his shoulder and watching his efforts to release her.
"Thank you, Mr. Siward. I think we ought to start, don"t you?"
He straightened up, smiling, awaiting her further pleasure. Her pleasure being capricious, she seated herself again, saying: "What I meant to say was this: evils that spring from heredity are no excuse for misconduct in people of our sort. Environment, not heredity, counts. And it"s our business, who have every chance in the world, to make good!"
He looked down, amused at the piquant incongruity of voice and vernacular.
"What time is it?" she asked irrelevantly.
He glanced at his watch. She turned her eyes toward the level sun, conscious, and a little conscience-stricken that it was too late for her to drive to Black Fells Crossing--unless she started at once.
The sun hung low over the pines; all the scrubby foreland ran molten gold in every tufted furrow; flock after flock of twittering little birds whirled into the briers and out again, scattering inland into undulating flight.
The zenith turned sh.e.l.l pink; through clotted shoals of clouds spread s.p.a.ces of palest green like calm lakes in the sky.
It grew stiller; the wind went down with the sun.
Doubtless he had forgotten to tell her the time; she had almost forgotten that she had asked him. With the silence of sunset a languor, the indolence of content, crept over her; she saw him close his watch with the absent-minded air which she already a.s.sociated with him, and she let the question go from sheer disinclination for the effort of repet.i.tion--let the projected drive go--acquiescent, content that matters shape themselves without any interference from her. The sense of ease, of physical well-being invaded her with an agreeable relaxation as though tension somewhere had slackened.
They chatted on, casually, impersonally, in rather subdued tones. The dog returned now and then to see that all was well. All was well enough, it appeared, for she sat beside Siward, quite content, knees clasped in her hands, exchanging impressions of life with a man who so far had been sympathetically considerate in demanding from her no intellectual effort.
The conversation drifted illogically; sometimes he stirred her to amus.e.m.e.nt, even a hushed laughter; sometimes she smilingly agreed with his views, sometimes she let them go, uncriticised; or, intent on her own ideas, shook her small head in amused disapproval.
The stillness over all, the deepening mellow light, the blessed indolence of the young world--and their few years in it--Youth! That was perhaps the key to it all, after all.
"To-morrow," she mused aloud, knees cradled in her clasped fingers, "to-morrow they"ll shoot--with great circ.u.mstance and fuss--a few native woodc.o.c.k--there"s no flight yet from the north!--a few grouse, fewer snipe, a stray duck or two. Others will drive motor cars over bad roads; others will ride, sail, golf--anything to kill the eternal enemy."
"And you?"
"Je n"en sais rien, monsieur."
"Mais je voudrais savoir."
"Pourquoi?"
"To lay a true course by the stars"; he looked at her blue eyes and she laughed easily under the laughing flattery.
"You must seek another compa.s.s--to-morrow," she said. Then it occurred to her that n.o.body could guess her decision in regard to Quarrier; and she partly raised her eyes, looking at him, indolent speculation under the white lids.
She liked him already; in fact she had liked few men as well on such brief acquaintance.
"You know the majority of the people here, or coming, don"t you?" she inquired.
"Who are they?"
She began: "The Leroy Mortimers?"
"Oh, yes."
"Lord Alderdene and Captain Voucher, and the Page twins and Marion?"
"Yes."
"Rena Bonnesdel, the Ta.s.sel girl, Agatha Caithness, Mrs. Vendenning--all sorts, all sets." And, with an effort: "If I"m to drive, I should like--to--to know what time it is?"
He informed her; and she, too indolent to pretend surprise, and finding reproach easier, told him that he had no business to permit her to forget.
His smiling serenity under the rebuke aroused in her a slight resentment as though he had taken something for granted.
Besides, she had grown uneasy; she had wired Quarrier, saying she would meet him and drive him over. He had replied at once, naming his train.
He was an exact man and expected method and precision in others. She didn"t exactly know how it might affect him if his reasonable demand was unsatisfied. She did not know him very well yet, only well enough to be aware that he was a gentleman so precisely, so judiciously constructed, that, contemplating his equitable perfections, her awe and admiration grew as one on whom dawns the exquisite adjustments of an almost human machine.
And, thinking of him now, she again made up her mind to give him the answer which he now had every reason to expect from her. This decision appeared to lubricate her conscience; it ran more smoothly now, emitting fewer creaks.
"You say that you know Mr. Quarrier?" she began thoughtfully.
"Not well."
"I--hope you will like him, Mr. Siward."
"I do not think he likes me, Miss Landis. He has reasons not to."
She looked up, suddenly remembering: "Oh--since that sc.r.a.pe? What has Mr. Quarrier to do--" She did not finish the sentence. A troubled silence followed; she was trying to remember the details--something she had paid small attention to at the time--something so foreign to her, so distant from her comprehension that it had not touched her closely enough for her to remember exactly what this young man might have done to forfeit the good-will of Howard Quarrier.
She looked at Siward; it was impossible that anything very bad could come from such a man. And, pursuing her reasoning aloud: "It couldn"t have been very awful," she argued; "something foolish about an actress, was it not? And that could not concern Mr. Quarrier."
"I thought you did know; I thought you--remembered--while you were driving me over from the station--that I was dropped from my club."
She flushed up: "Oh!--but--what had Mr. Quarrier to do with that?"
"He is a governor of that club."
"You mean that Mr. Quarrier had you--dropped?"
"What else could he do? A man who is idiot enough to risk making his own club notorious, must take the consequences. And they say I took that risk. Therefore Mr. Quarrier, Major Belwether--all the governors did their duty. I--I naturally conclude that no governor of the Patroons Club feels very kindly toward me."
Miss Landis sat very still, her small head bent, a flush still brightening her fair face.