But how could the shadowy god of Squire John’s widow and Squire Ralph’s bastard express its pleasure or displeasure?
Could the sad-eyed cavalier come forth from his gilt picture frame and say: “Let the family end!”? Could Sir Benjamin come forth with his marble smirk and say: “Let the family end!”? Could the Crusader uncross his feet, or John Ashover lift the slab from his more recent dissolution, and cry with one united sepulchral voice: “Let the family be as though it had never been!”?
Without a word interchanged these two crack-brained old people, the elegant lady and the social outcast, let their wild fancies circle round the figure of Cousin Ann — Cousin Ann, who seemed dedicated by Nature herself to be a mother of distinguished offspring. It was incredible that a girl like that should really betray them. But what was she doing? It looked like callous, careless, cynical caprice; Girls have ways of getting hold of men. They have absolutely sure ways when they can be persuaded to sacrifice their pride.
The unspoken thoughts of the two fanatics grew queerer and madder every moment, as the November mist, blending with the smoke of the bonfire, darkened the windows of the room.
“What can I do?” murmured Mrs. Ashover at last, making a pitiful little movement with one thin arm toward her companion. But the Corporal had lifted himself up very straight now and sat bolt upright, his long fingers on the arms of the chair, his little eyes almost shut.
“With buck-rabbits who won’t come to’t, with buck-ferrets who won’t come to’t, with hound-dogs who won’t come to’t, ’tis only a matter of putting the right mate to ’em; shutting her up with him and taking yourself off. You know that and I know that. It’s only a question of the hour and the maid.”
The matter-of-fact gravity of the Corporal and the outrageousness of his suggestion so tickled the old lady’s nervous fancy that she clapped her hands to her face and burst into a peal of hysterical laughter.
She laughed until the tears ran down between her fingers; but even then, deep down underneath her collapse, she was conscious that a set of fantastic possibilities, like blocks of erratic tesseræ, were forming themselves into a kind of pattern. It was all so mad and strange. But who could tell? She knew there were powers and forces in the world that would sometimes carry to a conclusion what was imagined when they refused to yield an inch to what was willed.
She was suddenly aware of a crazy desire to bring the Corporal upon the scene. It could do no harm for him to see Rook; it could do no harm for him to see Cousin Ann. It would gratify a perverse longing in her for him to see the intruding woman herself. Let the bastard deal with the mistress. There would be an ironic justice in that. She thought deeply for a minute, biting her lip and tapping the ground with her stick.
It couldn’t do any harm; that was certain. Rook had always treated the old man well and Lexie, before he got ill, had been in the habit of spending hours with him.
She glanced at the clock on Granfer Dick’s mantelpiece. How the days were closing in! It was only a quarter to five now. If they started together at once they might find the whole party still sitting over tea; and what was more natural than that she should have asked the Corporal to escort her home? Then he would see the woman. John was dead but John’s brother would see the enemy in the house.
She felt like some beleaguered chatelaine who could bring up at need a trusty freelance ready for anything. The adventure appealed to the old woman’s youthful spirit. It appealed to a vein of superstition in her, too. The Corporal was a queer character. Perhaps he had the evil eye! Perhaps he would strike God’s own terror into the heart of the creature. Her mind ran off down a long avenue of wild conjectures. Perhaps John’s brother would whisper such murderous threats into the wretch’s ear that one of these fine days she would pack her things without a word and be off into the void!
The hands of the clock in that little empty room were still short of the hour of five when the mistress of Ashover, leaning on the Corporal’s arm, was struggling up the slope that led to the Scotch firs.
“Tu-whit — tu-who! Tu-whit — tu-who!” came the voice of Binnory, and they fancied they could hear a long-drawn answering wail from the depths of the Antiger Woods.
It was getting very dark before they were halfway up the hill. The November night, rolling like a great brown-coloured wave across the earth, gathered up their human excitement into its own dark heart and diffused it over the misty woods and leaf-strewn lanes. The fatality of old age mingled with the fatality of vast dim vegetable forces moving to obscure dissolution.
Caw! Caw! Caw! came the cry of solitary belated birds, following their companions from the ploughed fields of the valley to the trees on Antiger Great Knoll; and the voice of the rooks became the voice of the night itself, that great primordial winged thing, woeful and yet undespairing, lamentable and yet consolatory; full of whispers and murmurs, of premonitions and memories, wherein the beginning of things reaches forward to the end of things and the end of things reaches backward to the beginning.
Mrs. Ashover’s arm trembled as it rested on the Corporal’s; and the old man himself had frequently to delay their ascent in order to take breath.
And yet something that was stronger than their decrepitude seemed to draw them both on. Was it that the actual flame of life in this man and this woman was leaping high and fierce just then because of some occult emotional understanding that was older and deeper than this present business? Had Joan Ashover from the very first felt more tenderly for this brother of her “John” than she herself had realized?
Perhaps some of these shadowy clumps of furze bush, dripping with wet white mist and smelling of dead wood and fungous growths, by the side of which they rested, were old enough to recall other encounters between these two, wherein the wild vagaries of the human heart had been fecund of astounding self-deceptions!
They were standing now beneath the great trunks of Heron’s Ridge and both the old people drew into their lungs the chill, muddy, pungent breath of the distant water meadows as it came up to them across the flooded river.
Very old they both felt as they breathed that chilly breath! The little lady’s outburst of adventurousness flagged, wilted, sank. The first coming on of the night, with its unsealings and releases, was a very different thing from the established nocturnal power that now sank its foundations into one abyss and lifted its ramparts into another!
She drew her arm stiffly out of the Corporal’s and turned her face round to him. They could see little of each other’s expression but John’s brother was not surprised when she said in a faint querulous voice: “It’s too late to-night. They will all have separated. I couldn’t bring them together. That woman will have gone to her room, to my son’s room. You’d better leave me here, Corporal. No! No! I couldn’t think of taking you farther. You are older than I am, my friend. Good-night, Corporal!”
A few minutes later a slim figure with bowed head and weary limbs was descending the hill to the south through the rabbit burrows of Battlefield, while a gaunt figure with bowed head and weary limbs was descending the hill to the north through the rabbit burrows of Dorsal.
An electric current sent in a bee line through the clay heart of Heron’s Ridge would have connected those two figures; but not for long.
Tu-whit — tu-who! Tu-whit — tu-who! wailed the owls of Antiger Great Knoll; but no one listened to them except the idiot; and he was too occupied with stamping out the ashes of Granfer Dick’s bonfire to give them back their cry.