“Laziness, my dear, sheer laziness,” she said sturdily. Gillian looked at her gravely. “Sure?” she asked, “you are sure that you are quite well? You looked so tired—your face was quite white.”
“Quite sure—unbeliever! And you—did you have a good time; did you remember to take your tonic, and did you keep warm?”
Gillian laughed softly and stood up, ticking off the items on her fingers. “I did have a good time, I did remember to take my tonic, and this heavenly coat has kept me as warm as pie—Nina Atherton taught me that. That nice family considerably enlarged my vocabulary,” she added with enjoyment, slipping out of a heavy fur coat and coming back to perch on the arm of Miss Craven’s chair.
“Not yours only,” was the answer, “Peter was quoting the husband this afternoon.”
They were both silent for a moment thinking of the three charming Americans who had spent a couple of months at the Towers the previous summer, bringing with them an adored scrap of humanity and a host of nurses, valets and maids.
Then Gillian drew her arm closer around Miss Craven.
“Alex pressed me to stay until to-morrow, I had the greatest trouble to get away. But I promised to come back this afternoon, and, do you know, Aunt Caro, I had the queerest feeling this morning. I thought you wanted me, wanted me urgently. As if you could ever want anybody urgently, you self-reliant wonder.” She gave the shoulder she was caressing an affectionate hug. “But it was odd, wasn’t it? I nearly telephoned, and then I concluded you would think I had taken leave of my senses.”
Miss Craven sat very still.
“I should have,” she replied, and hoped that her voice appeared more natural than it sounded to herself. Gillian laughed.
“Anyhow, I’m glad you had Mr. Peters to cheer your solitary tea. I hated to think of you being alone.”
“He didn’t. He left early. But Barry condescended to take pity on me.”
“Mr. Craven!” There was the slightest pause before she added: “I thought he scorned le five o’clock. He’s not nearly so domesticated as David.”
“As who, my dear?” asked Miss Craven, staring. Gillian gave another little laugh.
“Oh, that’s my private name for Mr. Peters—he doesn’t mind—he spoils me dreadfully—‘the sweet singer in Israel’—you know. He has got the most beautiful tenor voice I have ever listened to.”
“Peter—sing! I’ve never heard him sing,” said Miss Craven in wonder, and she looked up with a new curiosity. “I’ve known him for thirty years, and in less than that number of months you discover an accomplishment of which everybody else is ignorant. How did you manage it, child?”
“By accident, one evening in the summer. You were dining out, and Mouston and I had gone for a ramble in the park—it’s gorgeous there in the crepuscule—and we were quite close to the Hermitage. I heard him and I eaves-dropped—is there such a word? It was so lovely that I had to clap and he came out and found an unexpected audience on the windowsill. Wasn’t it dreadful? He was so dear about it and explained that it was a very private form of amusement, but since the cat was out of the bag there was an end of the matter, only he positively declined to perform in public. I bullied him into singing some more, and then he walked home with me.”
“You twist Peter round your little finger and trade on his good nature shamelessly,” said Miss Craven severely, but her teasing held no terrors.
“He’s such a dear,” the girl repeated softly, and slipping off the arm of the chair she went to the fire and knelt down to put back a log that had fallen on to the hearth and was smouldering uselessly. Miss Craven looked at her as, the log replaced, she still knelt on the rug and held her hands mechanically to the blaze. She had an intense and wholly futile longing to speak what was in her mind and, demanding confidence for confidence, penetrate the secret of the heart that had confided to her all but this one thing. Little by little through no pressure but by mere telepathic sympathy, reserve had melted away and hopes and aspirations had been submitted and discussed. But of this one thing there could be no discussion. Miss Craven realised it and stifled a regretful sigh. Even she, dear as she knew herself to be, might not intrude so intimately. For by such an intrusion she might lose all that she had gained. She could not forfeit the confidence that had grown to mean so much to her, it was too high a price to pay even for the knowledge she sought. She must have patience, she thought, as she ran her fingers with the old gesture through her grey curls. But it was hard to be patient when any moment might bring the summons that would put her beyond the ken of earthly events. To go, leaving this problem still unsolved! She set her teeth and sat rigid, gripping the oak rails of the chair until her fingers ached, battling with herself. She looked again at the slim kneeling figure, the pale oval face half turned to her, the thick dark hair piled high on the small proud head glistening in the firelight. A thing of grace and beauty—in mind and body desirable. How could he hesitate....
“Barry was riding—all day—in this atrocious weather. He came in soaked,” she said abruptly, almost querulously, unlike her usual tolerant intonation. There was no immediate answer and for a moment she thought she had not been heard. The girl had moved slightly, turning her face away, and with a steady hand was building the dying fire into a pyramid. She completed the operation carefully and sat back on her heels flourishing the tiny brass tongs.
“He’s tough,” she said lightly, unconsciously echoing Peters’ words and apparently heedless of the interval between Miss Craven’s remark and her own reply. She seemed more interested in the fire than in her guardian. Laying the tongs away leisurely she came back to Miss Craven’s chair and settled down on the floor beside her, her arms crossed on the elder woman’s knee. She looked up frankly, a faint smile lightening her serious brown eyes.
“I don’t think Mr. Craven wants any sympathy, cherie,” she said slowly, “I reserve all mine for Yoshio, he fusses so dreadfully when the ‘honourable master’ goes for those tremendous long rides or is out hunting. Have you noticed that he always waits in the hall, to be ready at the first moment to rush away and get dry clothes and a hot bath and all the other Oriental paraphernalia for checking chills and driving the ache out of sore bones? I don’t suppose Mr. Craven has ever had sore bones—he is so splendidly strong—and Yoshio certainly seems determined he never shall. Mary thoroughly approves of him, she’s a fusser by nature too; she deplores his heathenism but says he has more sense than many a Christian. Soon after we came here I found him in the hall one day staring through the window, looking the picture of misery, his funny little yellow face all puckered up. He saw me out of the back of his head, truly he did, for he never turned, and tried to slip away. But I made him stay and talk to me. I sat on the stairs and he folded himself up on the mat—I can’t describe it any other way—and told me all about Japan, and California and Algeria and all the other queer places he has been to with Mr. Craven. He has such a quaint dramatic way of speaking and lapses into unintelligible Japanese just at the exciting moments—so tantalising! They seem to have been in some very—what do you say?—tight corners. We got quite sociable. I was so interested in listening to his description of the wonderful gardens they make in Japan that I never heard Mr. Craven come in and did not realise that he was standing near us until Yoshio suddenly shot up and fled, literally vanished, and left me planteel! I felt so idiotic sitting on the stairs hugging my knees and Mr. Craven, all splashed and muddy, waiting for me to let him pass—I was dreadfully frightened of him in those days,” the faintest colour tinged her cheeks. “I longed for an earthquake to swallow me up,” she laughed and scrambled to her feet, gathering the heap of furs into her arms and holding them dark and silky against her face. “You shouldn’t have encouraged in me a love of beautiful furs, Aunt Caro,” she said inconsequently, with sudden seriousness. “I’ve sense enough left to know that I shouldn’t indulge it—and I’m human enough to adore them.”