Actions and Reactions Part 7

"And we bought it for fun--for fun!" he groaned. "And here we are held up for goodness knows how long!"

"Why? Were you thinking of selling it?" He did not answer. "Do you remember the second Mrs. Chapin?" she demanded.

This was a bold, brazen little black-browed woman--a widow for choice--who on Sophie's death was guilefully to marry George for his wealth and ruin him in a year. George being busy, Sophie had invented her some two years after her marriage, and conceived she was alone among wives in so doing.

"You aren't going to bring her up again?" he asked anxiously.

"I only want to say that I should hate any one who bought Pardons ten times worse than I used to hate the second Mrs. Chapin. Think what we've put into it of our two selves."

"At least a couple of million dollars. I know I could have made--" He broke off.

"The beasts!" she went on. "They'd be sure to build a red-brick lodge at the gates, and cut the lawn up for bedding out. You must leave instructions in your will that he's never to do that, George, won't you?"

He laughed and took her hand again but said nothing till it was time to dress. Then he muttered "What the devil use is a man's country to him when he can't do business in it?"

Friars Pardon stood faithful to its tradition. At the appointed time was born, not that third in their party to whom Sophie meant to be so kind, but a G.o.dling; in beauty, it was manifest, excelling Eros, as in wisdom Confucius; an enhancer of delights, a renewer of companions.h.i.+ps and an interpreter of Destiny. This last George did not realise till he met Lady Conant striding through Dutton Shaw a few days after the event.

"My dear fellow," she cried, and slapped him heartily on the back, "I can't tell you how glad we all are. Oh, she'll be all right. (There's never been any trouble over the birth of an heir at Pardons.) Now where the dooce is it?" She felt largely in her leather-boundskirt and drew out a small silver mug. "I sent a note to your wife about it, but my silly a.s.s of a groom forgot to take this. You can save me a tramp. Give her my love." She marched off amid her guard of grave Airedales.

The mug was worn and dented: above the twined initials, G.L., was the crest of a footless bird and the motto: "Wayte awhyle--wayte awhyle."

"That's the other end of the riddle," Sophie whispered, when he saw her that evening. "Read her note. The English write beautiful notes."

The warmest of welcomes to your little man. I hope he will appreciate his native land now he has come to it. Though you have said nothing we cannot, of course, look on him as a little stranger, and so I am sending him the old Lashmar christening mug. It has been with us since Gregory Lashmar, your great-grandmother's brother--

George stared at his wife.

"Go on," she twinkled, from the pillows.

--mother's brother, sold his place to Walter's family. We seem to have acquired some of your household G.o.ds at that time, but nothing survives except the mug and the old cradle, which I found in the potting-shed and am having put in order for you. I hope little George--Lashmar, he will be too, won't he?--will live to see his grandchildren cut their teeth on his mug.

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 G.o.dling 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 wors.h.i.+pping 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 G.o.d'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 sc.r.a.ped 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."