Actions and Reactions

Affectionately yours,

ALICE CONANT.

P.S. – How quiet you’ve kept about it all!

“Well, I’m – ”

“Don’t swear,” said Sophie. “Bad for the infant mind.”

“But how in the world did she get at it? Have you ever said a word about the Lashmars?”

“You know the only time – to young Iggulden at Rocketts – when Iggulden died.”

“Your great-grandmother’s brother! She’s traced the whole connection – more than your Aunt Sydney could do. What does she mean about our keeping quiet?”

Sophie’s eyes sparkled. “I’ve thought that out too. We’ve got back at the English at last. Can’t you see that she thought that we thought my mother’s being a Lashmar was one of those things we’d expect the English to find out for themselves, and that’s impressed her?” She turned the mug in her white hands, and sighed happily. “‘Wayte awhyle – wayte awhyle.’ That’s not a bad motto, George. It’s been worth it.”

“But still I don’t quite see – ”

“I shouldn’t wonder if they don’t think our coming here was part of a deep-laid scheme to be near our ancestors. They’d understand that. And look how they’ve accepted us, all of them.”

“Are we so undesirable in ourselves?” George grunted.

“Be just, me lord. That wretched Sangres man has twice our money. Can you see Marm Conant slapping him between the shoulders? Not by a jugful! The poor beast doesn’t exist!”

“Do you think it’s that then?” He looked toward the cot by the fire where the godling snorted.

“The minute I get well I shall find out from Mrs. Cloke what every Lashmar gives in doles (that’s nicer than tips) every time a Lashmite is born. I’ve done my duty thus far, but there’s much expected of me.”

Entered here Mrs. Cloke, and hung worshipping over the cot. They showed her the mug and her face shone. “Oh, now Lady Conant’s sent it, it’ll be all proper, ma’am, won’t it? ‘George’ of course he’d have to be, but seein’ what he is we was hopin’ – all your people was hopin’ – it ‘ud be ‘Lashmar’ too, and that’ud just round it out. A very ‘andsome mug quite unique, I should imagine. ‘Wayte awhyle – wayte awhyle.’ That’s true with the Lashmars, I’ve heard. Very slow to fill their houses, they are. Most like Master George won’t open ‘is nursery till he’s thirty.”

“Poor lamb!” cried Sophie. “But how did you know my folk were Lashmars?”

Mrs. Cloke thought deeply. “I’m sure I can’t quite say, ma’am, but I’ve a belief likely that it was something you may have let drop to young Iggulden when you was at Rocketts. That may have been what give us an inkling. An’ so it came out, one thing in the way o’ talk leading to another, and those American people at Veering Holler was very obligin’ with news, I’m told, ma’am.”

“Great Scott!” said George, under his breath. “And this is the simple peasant!”

“Yiss,” Mrs. Cloke went on. “An’ Cloke was only wonderin’ this afternoon – your pillow’s slipped my dear, you mustn’t lie that a-way – just for the sake o’ sayin’ something, whether you wouldn’t think well now of getting the Lashmar farms back, sir. They don’t rightly round off Sir Walter’s estate. They come caterin’ across us more. Cloke, ‘e ‘ud be glad to show you over any day.”

“But Sir Walter doesn’t want to sell, does he?”

“We can find out from his bailiff, sir, but” – with cold contempt – “I think that trained nurse is just comin’ up from her dinner, so ‘m afraid we’ll ‘ave to ask you, sir… Now, Master George – Ai-ie! Wake a litty minute, lammie!”

A few months later the three of them were down at the brook in the Gale Anstey woods to consider the rebuilding of a footbridge carried away by spring floods. George Lashmar Chapin wanted all the bluebells on God’s earth that day to eat, and – Sophie adored him in a voice like to the cooing of a dove; so business was delayed.

“Here’s the place,” said his father at last among the water forget-me-nots. “But where the deuce are the larch-poles, Cloke? I told you to have them down here ready.”

“We’ll get ‘em down if f you say so,” Cloke answered, with a thrust of the underlip they both knew.

“But I did say so. What on earth have you brought that timber-tug here for? We aren’t building a railway bridge. Why, in America, half-a-dozen two-by-four bits would be ample.”

“I don’t know nothin’ about that,” said Cloke.

“An’ I’ve nothin’ to say against larch – IF you want to make a temp’ry job of it. I ain’t ‘ere to tell you what isn’t so, sir; an’ you can’t say I ever come creepin’ up on you, or tryin’ to lead you further in than you set out – ”

A year ago George would have danced with impatience. Now he scraped a little mud off his old gaiters with his spud, and waited.

“All I say is that you can put up larch and make a temp’ry job of it; and by the time the young master’s married it’ll have to be done again. Now, I’ve brought down a couple of as sweet six-by-eight oak timbers as we’ve ever drawed. You put ‘em in an’ it’s off your mind or good an’ all. T’other way – I don’t say it ain’t right, I’m only just sayin’ what I think – but t’other way, he’ll no sooner be married than we’ll lave it all to do again. You’ve no call to regard my words, but you can’t get out of that.”

“No,” said George after a pause; “I’ve been realising that for some time. Make it oak then; we can’t get out of it.”

THE RECALL

I am the land of their fathers,
In me the virtue stays;
I will bring back my children,
After certain days.
Under their feet in the grasses
My clinging magic runs.
They shall return as strangers,
They shall remain as sons.
Over their heads in the branches
Of their new-bought, ancient trees,
I weave an incantation,
And draw them to my knees.
Scent of smoke in the evening,
Smell of rain in the night,
The hours, the days and the seasons
Order their souls aright;
Till I make plain the meaning
Of all my thousand years
Till I fill their hearts with knowledge,
While I fill their eyes with tears.

GARM – A HOSTAGE

One night, a very long time ago, I drove to an Indian military cantonment called Mian Mir to see amateur theatricals. At the back of the Infantry barracks a soldier, his cap over one eye, rushed in front of the horses and shouted that he was a dangerous highway robber. As a matter of fact, he was a friend of mine, so I told him to go home before any one caught him; but he fell under the pole, and I heard voices of a military guard in search of some one.

The driver and I coaxed him into the carriage, drove home swiftly, undressed him and put him to bed, where he waked next morning with a sore headache, very much ashamed. When his uniform was cleaned and dried, and he had been shaved and washed and made neat, I drove him back to barracks with his arm in a fine white sling, and reported that I had accidentally run over him. I did not tell this story to my friend’s sergeant, who was a hostile and unbelieving person, but to his lieutenant, who did not know us quite so well.

Three days later my friend came to call, and at his heels slobbered and fawned one of the finest bull-terriers – of the old-fashioned breed, two parts bull and one terrier – that I had ever set eyes on. He was pure white, with a fawn-coloured saddle just behind his neck, and a fawn diamond at the root of his thin whippy tail. I had admired him distantly for more than a year; and Vixen, my own fox-terrier, knew him too, but did not approve.

“‘E’s for you,” said my friend; but he did not look as though he liked parting with him.

“Nonsense! That dog’s worth more than most men, Stanley,” I said.

“‘E’s that and more. ‘Tention!”