Sisters Part 8

"Couldn't explain, I'm sure. It was borne in on me, somehow."

"You did not see me."

"I don't want to see, in your case. I feel you."

There was another brief silence, and then she rustled off a step or two.

"Well, good-night! I just came out to look for a book I left here somewhere."

"What book?" "It doesn't matter. It is too late to read tonight, anyhow."

"It spoils books to leave them out all night. I will help you to find it." He got up, and pretended to look about. "It is not on this seat--"

"Perhaps Miss Keene has taken it in. She is always after me to pick up my litters. It won't rain, anyway, so it doesn't matter."

"No, it won't rain tonight. Awfully nice night, isn't it? I came over here to get a quiet smoke and let those fellows subside a bit. I could not stand their noise, and the place is stifling."

"I'm afraid so. I'm so sorry we have to put you there; but you know--"

"Oh, of course! I don't mind a bit. It is hot indoors, wherever you are. If it were not for the mosquitoes, it would be nice to sleep in hammocks under the trees this weather." "I have often thought so. I can't breathe shut up. Rose is in my room tonight, and she seems like a whole crowd. I had to come out to cool myself." "And to get your book.

What book was it?" "The--er--Clough's poems." "How many copies have you?--because one of them has been in my pocket for two days."

"Well, I don't want it. Good-night!"

She put out her hand. He took it and held it. The moonlight now was very bright, but not bright enough to reveal his smile or her blush.

However, neither could be hidden from the second sight of love. "Don't go yet, Debbie. I never get a word with you these days, you are so taken up with all sorts of people. And you haven't had time to get cool yet. I know you haven't--by the feel of your hand."

She tried to withdraw it, but did not try very hard.

"My dear boy," she trembled, "do you know what time it is? It must be simply ALL hours."

"What does that matter? We are not keeping anybody up." "And there's tomorrow to be considered. Christmas Eve is always such a busy, tiring--"

"Sufficient for the day. Let us take things as we can get them.

Besides, you will sleep all the better for it. Five minutes more or less--"

He pulled gently but firmly at the imprisoned hand. "Well, just five minutes--although it's really--"

She was drawn down to the bench beside him, and the man in the moon, as he looked into their s.h.i.+ning, happy eyes, seemed to wink knowingly.

"Oh, Debbie, isn't it a heavenly night? Oh, Debbie!" His arms went round her, and she simply melted into them. "Oh, my love!..."

Five minutes! It ran to an hour and a half before she scudded across the lawn to bed.

And it was Mary, the busy housekeeper, who, on her busiest day, drove to the station to meet Guthrie Carey and the baby, and the baby's cheap and temporary child-nurse.

Mary, though she was not Deb, was too sweet and good for words. She put the little hired girl on the front seat with the groom, and sat in the body of the waggonette to talk to Guthrie and to take care of his child. There was no awkward shyness on her part now, and no boredom on his. Little Harry fused them. She had remembered to bring fresh milk and rusks for a possibly hungry baby, and he sat on her lap as she fed him, and cooed to her when his mouth was not too full, and seemed to forget that any other foster-mother had ever existed. His father's relieved and astonished pleasure in the sight was only equalled by Mary's pleasure in seeing his pleasure. "Isn't he a jolly little cuss, Miss Pennycuick?" "He is a perfect darling," crooned Mary, kissing him.

And, in fact, Harry Carey was a fine, clean, wholesome child, as worthy of his old family as any born under the ancestral roof.

Mary shouldered him as if he belonged to her when they arrived at Redford, shortly before the dinner hour.

"Now, Mr Carey, you must go to the bachelors' quarters, I am sorry to say; but he will not miss you, since you have been away from him for so long. He knows me now," said Mary proudly, "and I will take charge of him. You may safely leave him to us now."

"Indeed, yes, I know that," said the thankful parent, and hastened to his new quarters to receive the greetings and chaffings of the young bachelors, and to dress himself for dinner, while Mary carried the baby into the house, calling on Keziah Moon to come to her, the inadequate nurse-girl trailing at her heels.

The house party gathered in the glazed corridor of the "middle part"--a long, narrow room, that had once been a verandah, and that led to the new big dining-room--to await the summons to the meal. Here Deb, beautiful in limp white silk that showed up the lovely carmine of her cheeks, came forward to welcome the returned guest with an eager warmth that sadly misled him. He sat down to his dinner a few minutes later with his head in a whirl and his appet.i.te nowhere, as an effect of that cordial pressure of the hand, those tender eyes, and that deep-hued blush upon him.

Then, as he came to himself, there crept into his mind a sense that things had been happening while he was away. All the eyes around the table seemed continually to turn either towards Deb, who, still flushed, and bestowing absent-minded smiles upon anybody and anything, was certainly different from her usual stately self; or upon Claud Dalzell, who sat beside her, and seemed to have appropriated some of her lost dignity; or upon Mr Pennycuick, who fumbled oddly with carving knife and gravy spoon, and gave other evidences, Guthrie thought, of having been upset and shaken. The young man was still fumbling himself for light upon these mysteries, when they were dispelled by a shock that for the moment stunned him.

Mr Pennycuick called for a certain brand of wine long famous at his board. When it came, and the bottles were being sent round, he stood up, with a trembling goblet in his hand. The eyes round the table dropped--all but Guthrie's, which stared at the old man.

"There's no time like the present," began the host, "if a thing has to be done." He repeated this strange and embarra.s.sing introductory remark, and then spent some time in clearing his throat and blowing his nose, and trying to wipe up the wine he was shaking over. When the fidgets had seized upon the whole company, he rushed his fence. "Ahem!

I must ask you, my friends, to fill your gla.s.ses in honour of an event--an event--that has just transpired in our midst--that--that I am sure will interest you all--that--in short, my dear daughter Deborah--and the man of her choice--who knows, I hope, what a lucky dog he is--"

"He does!" Claud interjected; and there was eager dumb-show all round the table, everyone--again excepting Guthrie--leaning forward to cast wreathed smiles at the seated couple. "I have given my consent," said Mr Pennycuick--"I have given my consent. My daughter shall be happy in her own way--and I hope he'll see to it that she gets all she bargains for. He is the son of my oldest friend, a man that was better than a brother to me--the whitest, straightest--But there's no words to say what he was. Only, the son of such a man--anybody with Billy Dalzell's blood in him--ought to be--if he isn't--"

"He is!" sang Deb, in her rich, ringing voice. "Oh, please, don't say any more, father!"

"Well, my dear, I know I am no hand at speech-making, but I can wish you luck, both of you, and I do. And I want our friends here--old friends of the family--to do the same. Good wishes mayn't bring good fortune, but for all we know they may do something towards it; and anyway, she may as well have all her chances. Ladies and gentlemen, long life and happiness to Deborah Pennycuick and her husband that is to be!"

A general turmoil broke out, gla.s.s-clinkings, cheers, handshakings; kissings, with a sob or two from the overwrought. And Guthrie, with no heart upon his sleeve, bowed and drank with the rest. When the demonstration was over, and the company back in its chairs, Dalzell was left standing. His bride-elect sat beside him, her elbow on the table, her face shaded by her hand.

"On behalf of my dear wife that is to be," said Claud, with a quiet mastery of himself that was in striking contrast to the old man's agitation, "and as a grateful duty of my own, I beg to thank you all, and especially Mr Pennycuick, for this great kindness--for your generous sympathy with us in our present happiness. Mr Pennycuick seems to have a doubt--natural to anyone in the circ.u.mstances, but inevitable in a father--the father of such a daughter--as to my being qualified to appreciate the gift he has just bestowed upon me; I can a.s.sure him, and all of you, that I am overwhelmed with the sense of my good fortune, and of my unworthiness of it. I am unworthy--I admit it; but it shall be the business of my life to correct that fault--if it is a fault, and not merely a misfortune that I cannot help. To the best of my power I will prove--by deeds, not words--that I do know her value." Deb's hand under the table here stole towards his that hung at his side, and he stood holding it until he finished speaking. "Fortune has been kind in granting me the means to surround her with material comfort--to give so rare a jewel the setting appropriate to it; for the rest, I must trust to her generosity. I feel quite safe in trusting to it. We have known each other--I believe we have loved each other--from childhood; I hope Mr Pennycuick will take that as some guarantee that his little misgivings are unnecessary." The orator twisted his moustache, and glanced down at the bowed head beside him. "She seems to be a little taken aback by the suddenness of this public announcement, but I can say that it does not come a moment too soon for me. Mr Pennycuick has made me a proud man. I glory in my position as his daughter's affianced husband; I wish to parade it as openly as possible. However, to spare her, I will say no more just now. Ladies and gentlemen"--bowing to right and left--"I thank you again."

He sat down amid thunders of applause; and leaning back in his chair, he looked straight and full at Guthrie Carey. Guthrie Carey, erect, calm as a stone image, returned the look steadily. There was absolutely no expression in his eyes.

CHAPTER VIII.

Carey junior joined the Christmas party after breakfast, and was handed round. Mary introduced him. He was spick-and-span, with s.h.i.+ning cheeks and a damp and glossy top-knot, and his blue eyes stared at the strange crowd stolidly for several minutes before he suddenly crumpled up his face and uttered a howl of terror.

"What is it?" queried Dalzell, with raised brows, pretending that he had never seen such a thing before.

"It's a baby," Frances explained, dancing round it. "Baby!

Baby!"--shaking the new rattle that was one of its Christmas gifts--"look at me, baby! It is Mr Carey's baby. Oh, come and speak to him, Mr Carey! He is frightened of so many strangers."

The stalwart father in the background glowered upon the son disgracing him. Red as beetroot, embarra.s.sed and annoyed, he strode forward. The yelling infant cast one glance at him, and yelled louder than before.

"I shouldn't have let him come," the sailor growled. He had got up from the wrong side of the bed that morning, and was in the mood to regret everything, even that he had been born. "I don't know what possessed me to let you be bothered with the brat. I'll ring for his nurse."

This was unanimously objected to. The ladies gathered round, with honeyed words and tinkling baubles to pacify the little guest. Deborah s.n.a.t.c.hed him from her sister's arms, and ran with him into the garden, where she tossed him, still writhing and wailing, up and down, and dipped his face into flowers, and played other pranks calculated to enchant the average baby. This baby turned on her for her pains, and having slapped her cheeks, grabbed her beautiful hair and tore it down about her ears. The next instant he felt the weight of the hand from which his own had derived its strength.

"You brute!" cried Deb, s.h.i.+elding the offending little arm from a second blow. "A great big man like you, to strike a tender mite like this!"

"'Tender' is hardly the word," the irate parent sneered. "And mite as he is, he is not to do things of that sort." Guthrie glared at her sacred locks, dishevelled. "I'm awfully sorry. He shan't do it again.