Seedtime and Harvest

Otago Witness, Issue 3111, 29 October 1913, Page 62

Seedtime and Harvest

By STELLA M. DURING, Author of “Love’s Privilege,” “In Search of Herself,” “Between the Devil and the Deep Sea,” “Malicious Fortune,’’ “Deringham’s Daughter,” etc., etc.

THE NOVELIST. [Published by Special Arrangement,)

[Copyright.]

CHAPTER XV

§H, how funny—how funny it was ! And how funny—how funny you look!” So Kitty, with the backs •of both hands .prersed hard against her rosy mouth to stifle the laughter that threatened to ruin everything. For Brian had been treated to what Truscott called a “dressing down,” delivered in Truscott’s very best manner. He had been taught at scgne length to “ hannle a mowing machine and to lead a “ powney,” with various sarcastic references to the evident and quite unexpected need for such instruction, and now he stood hot, angry, and resentful, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other, conscioiis to his backbone that he looked every bit as ridiculous as he felt. But by and by the fun of the thing appealed to him, too. He looked sideways at Kitty with a twinkle in his eye. “The old chap can use his tongue, can t he?” he said in a cautious undertone. “I haven’t been as properly pulverised since I was in knickerbockers. Kitty, ought you to be here? Isn’t it unwise, to say llie least of it?”

“ Oh, I can’t help it. I must speak to vou—there is so much I want to hear. Get on with your work, for heaven’s sake!” in sudden tragic remembrance. “But every time you come to the top again I can say something. Htay? Of course, I'm going to stay —here —with my book!’ seating herself on a big mossy stone, beside which trickled the tiny stream that fed the tiny lake. “No one will think anything of it; I often sit here. Oh, Brian, go on !” The mowing machine rattled away, but it came back again quicker than ever that pony had been asked to mount the slope before. Kitty was ready with her question, though she looked anywhere but at Brian as she put it. “ How have you got on—so far?”

“ All right!” ‘ Brian patted the pony as it stood panting ’on the ton of the rise. “ They are all very nice to me, except old Truscott.” “Yes; but he’s the one who matters meat,” with dismay. “ Brian, you can carry it through, can’t you?” v Brian busied himself turning the machine precisely according to instructions. Nothing was clearer to him than the impossibility of carrying through the plan into which, in his ignorance, he had allowed Kitty to persuade him, but it seemed cruel*to say so thus early.

“I can do my best,” he said, and rattled off again. The note of doubt in his voice by no means escaped Kitty’s qilick ear. “What is it you are afraid of?” she asked, as dice again the pony stood with drooping ears and tail, taking a breather. “Everything!” said Brian, succinctly; if Kilty suspected, she might as well know the truth. “It isn’t as if ” Boom ! —Boom ! —Boom ! A big bell tolled from somewhere. Brian lifted his head, acutely aware that the sound had a personal significance. “It’s the servants’ dinner bell,” said Kitty. “Gracious! Is it one 'o’clock? Brian, you’ll have to go; and oh, your manners ! Dear, you mustn’t be too polite. If you could manage to oat with your knife, -and make a horrid noise when you drink your Soup —just once!" “Nut at all!” laughed Brian. “The question is not will my manners be too good, but will they be good enough for the servants’ hall ?* There’s evidently a very precise code. What am I to do with the pony?” “ I don’t know. Leave him here, I suppose.” But Brian suddenly knuckled his forehead and strode away in the direction of the hothouses. The boy was beckoning him. He found Truscott busily cleaning his ’ budding-knife before he put it back in its case.

“An’ what will I do with the pony, sir?” he asked meekly. “ Tiring him in,” was the sour reply. “ He wants ’is bellv-full. same as you.” So Brian went back to unharness tho patient little beast awaiting him. “ Brian,” breathed Kitty, staring hard at the hook she held upside down, “ when can I see you—to really talk? Can you get out at night?” “ Impossible!" struggling with a refractory buckle. “ I’m sleeping at the Lodge. We shall probablv go to bed at nine o'clock, and there isn’t a window I could squeeze mvself through in all that picturesque little edifice. What we should do if the little rat-trap caught fire ” “Then in the morning—quite early.” “ I shall l>e at work by five—and before that it's dark. We can’t make plans, Kittv ; we shall just have to trust to luck, and ” “ So there you are ! . Mamma has been looking for you everywhere. She wants to know who made your last habit, and how much it cost.” It was Ella, trailing a little avalanche of slicks and stones behind her with tlie tail of her musljn skirt, and looking charming in the rosy shade of a big red paras'ol. “Come now, will you. Kitty?” she went on. “ Mamma wants to get the letter off

before lunch. Is that the new undergardener?” as Kitty, her face set and still, walked rapidly towards the house. “ What a very nice-looking young man.” To Ella a young man was always a young man, whatever his*'social niche might happen to be. “Are you well, Kitty? You are looking oddly white.” “ I’m quite well, thank you.”

“You don’t look it! Really, I don’t think you ought to sit out in the full sun with no hat on like that. If it doesn’t injure your health it will your complexion. No, not that way,” as Kitty would have turned towards the open windows of the morning room. “Papa has visitors, and he took them in there. Police officers, he said they were. It’s something to do with that horrid shooting affair up in Scotland. You are not going to listen, are you, Kitty?” as Kitty turned rigid and stiff where she stood. ** You can’t help being interested, of course, but you needn’t let your interest betray you into tricks as mean as that. Come along, Kitty, they are coming out. You don’t want t’o be questioned, do you?”

The horrid possibility galvanised Kitty into life. Conscious in every nerve of the footsteps of three men crunching the gravel behind her, somehow she reached the open door by Ella’s side. But on the steps she turned, fascinated by the nearness of the peril. Yes, it was the big policeman she had seen at the inquest, looking odd and Unfamiliar in his undress suit of salt-and-pepper dittoes, but quite unmistakable. Another man. was with him —a stranger. Kitty’s dazed eyes fastened irresistibly upon his bulging pockets. Wore there handcuffs in them?- Handcuffs intended for Brian?” “I "know nothing of him—nothing whatever,” she heard her father say, “ beyond the fact that he was a fellow-guoet of my daughter’s at Heatherstones. He has not been here. As a matter Of fact, we have had nq visitors of any kind since Sunday. , Know ! Of course, I should know. No one could possibly come here without my knowing. Every assistance! Of course, we will. -Very had—very bad indeed. You may depend upon me —you may depend upon us all ”* “Kitty,” remonstrated Eila, “you are listening.” “Yes,” acknowledged Kitty desperately, “ I am! So would you if you had been through it all, like I have.” But she need not have done so, for at lunch the colonel’s one subject was his astonishing and unexpected visitors of the morning. “It seems the chap has bolted,” he was saying as Kitty- slipped info her seat. “What chap?” asked his wife, “and I think you might describe him differently, Ronald.” v “ The chap they ray shot poor Gane,” replied the colonel tranquilly. Selina found so - much fault with his phraseology that he was beginning to ignore her criticisms. “Looks very bad, doesn’t it. not to dare to face the investigations? But. why should they look for him here? That’s what I can’t understand. Of course, Kitty knew him —just know him, but there was nothing in a few weeks’ acquaintance that should have led them here!” Kitty raised her -eyes velvety as pansy petals to her father’s face.. How certain our elders always are that they know everything ! “Asked me if he had written! Why should he write? That’s what I want to know, when he is practically a stranger to all 'of us. I’ve promised to wire at once if he does turn up. But he won't. Why should he? Kitty, my pot, you’re not eating anything. What’s the matter?” “I—l’m a little faint,” confessed Kitty. Acknowledgment of some kind ‘was inevitable, for the room was going round. “ I have been out—in the garden ” “ Sitting in the sun without her hat,” finished Ella crisply. “I told her she would suffer for it.” “ Go and lie down, pussie,” suggested her father with concern, but with a desperate effort Kitty recovered her hold upon herself. She must—she must know what else had happened. “No, dad, I’m all right.” she assured him, drinking thirstily of the water be poured out. and forcing herself into calmness. “ I’ll eat my luncheon presently. Have they—have they gone away?” “Who: Those officers? Yes, for the present.” “Then will they come again?” “They may, any time. It seems there’s a warrant out against Mac.” “Oh,” breathed Kitty, “if only we could find Donald !”

She faltered and stopped. The colonel looked sharply at her. Her lips were unsteady and very pale ; her eyes were wide and full of trouble —a trouble that was not sympathetic, but personal; and he had by no means failed to notice that significant plural pronoun “we.” “ Whv ?” he asked bluntly. “ Well, things would be a little different for—for Mr Hie—if they could.” “Then you believe in him?” “Of course I believe in hie;!' He is as innocent as I am.” She flushed scarlet as she spoke, and the colonel was still watching her. When luncheon-was over he sat down ton one of the seat* on the gravelled terrace, and drew Kittv on io his knee. “ T in afraid what happened up in Scotland upset you a good deal, pussie,” he said, and remembered that it was not the first time lie had said it. “ It was pretty had.” agreed Kitty, and burrowed her fac“ into bis neck. “You knew,this young Rae, then, prettv well?” “ Pretty well.” “And von liked him?” “ Yes.”' “Much?” Xo answer. The colonel put his hand up and touched his darling’s soft hair. “ Was there ;mv likelihood at anv time that he might write to you, pussie?” “ He —he might have done.” “ But he ■didn’t ?” “-Xo. daddie.” “He showed his good se;>se,” growled the colonel. “ I wouldn't have thought

muchoof him if he had, with an accnsation of that sort hanging over him.” But his little girl had felt it, that was evident. Was this what had been wrtmg with her since she came hack from Scotland ? The sudden doubt of his own omniscience that afflicts all parents at times crept over him. Had more happened during Kitty’s six weeks in Scotland than he knew ? But nothing much could have happened in six weeks. So the colonel comforted himself, forgetting how swiftly moved the wheels of circumstance when ha was in his teens. A footstep sounded in the sunny quiet. A young man with a light fork in his hand was on his way to the vegetable garden. The colonel kissed his little more than once, and put her off his knee. Serious complications for Kitty ? Ridiculous ! It seemed but a few days since she had worn her curly hair down her back.

“ 'there goes that new fellow from Sir William Price's,” he said. “ I must go and ask Truscott what he thinks of him.”

CHAPTER XVI. The sight of a young rustic, blue of eye, rosy of countenance, carefully dressed in his best, his hair well oiled, his bronzed and work-hardened hands well washed, a carnation in his mouth and a cap on his bead, leaning over a gate awaiting his Tair ladyc, is by no means uncommon in any part of rural England on a summer Sunday afternoon. Such a one might have been seen by any passer-by who cared to look at him standing at the entrance of a pretty little copse about five miles from Whitethorns on the afternoon of that Sunday in September. Very evidently he was \ waiting for his sweetheart, who, by all the canons of correct happenings, should have been a buxom lassie in a clean print frock, wearing a straw hat with cotton roses on it and carrying a prayer book, a handkerchief, and a sprig of southernwood. Was she? By no manner of means. The gal at sight of whom this particular young rustic’s eyes flashed into eaper re- ' cognition was dressed in a grey bicycling suit very evidently made by a first-class tailor. She was riding a cycle, her shoes bore the name of a Bond street maker, her stockings were of silk, and on her white blouse was pinned a tiny watch carrying her initials in diamonds. Altogether in appearance she was very far removed from the kind of girl one would expect to find keeping tryst with a young rustic at a gate on a summer Sunday afternoon. Yet at sight of this particular young rustic the dainty little lady jumped otf her bicycle, thrilling and all aglow. “Bilan! Oh, Brian, dear!” she said. He put his arms about her and kissed her. There was no talk now of holding back, of wating till his innocence should be made clear to all men. For weal or woe he and Kitty were facing this thing together. Then with a gasp of belated ' caution he looked up the lane and down the lane, but fortunately no one was there. Holding Kitty in one arm and wheeling her bicycle with the other, he le.d her to a tiny clearing, where the bracken rose breast-high all around, and a mossy old tree, bent in some long-forgotten storm, made a comfortable seat for one. With a hand on either side of her waist he lifted her, and sat her lightly in the . crook. Kitty smiled down at him. “ How did you manage?” she asked a little breathlesslv.

“ Quite easily. It seems I am allowed every second Sunday from three till eight. Truscott asked me, quite civilly for him, whether I would like this Sunday or next, and, of course, I said this. I had to provide myself with an aunt living six miles off to overcome the flattering determination of one of the maids to come with me ” “Which one?’’ asked Kitty quickly. “ Mabel, the under-housemaid. Turner, I think you call her upstairs.’’ “ Oh, Turner—yes. I don’t like her,” said Kitty, and realised that she had only just discovered the fact. “ Neither do I. But there’s another girl. a sweet little thing, Phoebe ” “ She's mine.” “ Yes, I know, and she has absorbed a good deal of her mistress’s personality. That’s why we took to one another from the first. I get on with her Al.” “And how do you get on with the others?” “I think I—puzzle them a little." I see Truscott watching me sometimes, though I aay as little as possible. Truscott is the danger, Kitty; I believe he thoroughly dislikes me. Now cook and I are famous friends. I have won her heart complolelv ; I’m so deeply respectful.”

“Respectful! Brian, how can you?” “Quite easily. I assure you my respect is genuine. The skill with which cook rules her little kingdom awakens my profound admiration. And in her purple satin on Sunday afternoon, Kitty, you should r,cc her ! I was betrayed into opening the door for her to-day, and she was gratified past, words. ‘ Was yt>u a footman before you was a gardener?’ she asked me. But I assured her I had never aspired to such heights—that all the situations I had ever held had been as under-gardener. ‘ An’ a precious poor one you be !’ put in Truscott from behind. “Then isn't ho satisfied?” "Satisfied? How can he be? Gardening isn’t the simple and easy matter that in our ignorance we imagined; it is a skilled profession. I don’t know the uses of half the tools in the shecT. I don’t know the names of half the flowers in the borders. He gives me directions. He tells me to do things—Kitty, it’s awful! He came to me yesterday, ‘ Jest take the siccatewers and go over them ramblers, he said. ‘ Here’s all the fine growin’ weather goin’ by. an’ I’ve never had a minnit to touch ’em !’ I found the ‘ siccatewers’ easily enough, but what was I to do with them? Would Vou have known?” Kitty shook her head forlornly. Why was gardening so unnecessarily difPxrt’” “ I cut off all the little shabby hits where the flowers had been —it was all I could think of at first. And suddenly I

saw, or I thought I did, what he wanted me to do—l was to prune them. So 1 set to work and cut bff all the long lovely green stems that were tossing about all over the place, and just as I had finished one bush Truscott came to see what I was doing. I wish—no, I don’t. The old fellow is an artist in language, Kitty, am. that time he surpassed himself. I’d cub off every flower for next year —every one. It was the old wood I ought to have cut out, not the new. But how was I to know that?” Kitty stooped and kissed him. How indeed ! “And in the afternoon, when he had a bit got over things,” he said, ‘ And now go and fetch they pay-renyuls that’s in the corner of the greenhouse. ’Tis time they was in long ago.’ Kitty, what are perennials ?’” “ Canterbury bells—and polyanthuses, and things,’ said Kitty, not too confidently. “ Yes, so I thought. But I couldn’t find one in the greenhouse, and I went and told him so. Great Corks ! how he stormed! It seemed they were seeds he wanted to sow for next year. I didn’t knbw one did sow them.” “ Neither did I,” said Kitty forlornly. “ So you see, darling, I was right—-it was a mad idea.” “ No, Brian —it was a good idea; it has saved vou once, anyhow,” and then and there Kitty told him of the coming of the police officers twb days ago. Brian listened, very grave and still. It seemed to bring chillingly close the danger in which he stood—the discovery it was now more than ever needful to avert. And how avert it in a situation bristling with difficulties —difficulties that in his folly he had brought upon himself. The most pressing loomed large before his eyes now. “He will complain to jour father. Kitty; I know he will. And the colonel will write to Sir William Price, asking him what he means by sending him such an out-and-out foozler ” “ No, he won’t. Dad will pay you jbuv wages up to the end of the month, and say, ‘My good fellow, you don’t suit Truscott, and you had better go!’ I know. He has done it before. And you can go to Bristol and take a room there, and still be Mr Samuel Coles, an undergardener looking for a place, but afraid you won’t get it because, unfortunately, vou haven’t, given satisfaction in j'bur last. Oh, Brian, it was worth it!” Brian’s face cleared a little. Perhaps it was, , If events followed one another us Kitty arranged them, certainly it was worth it. But events have a little way of arranging themselves, and Brian knew it. Suppose if they refused to follow one another as Kitty had planned ! Kitty turned' her watch over, looked at it, and give a little jump. “Oh, I must go already,” she said. “ It’s ever so much later than I thought. If I don’t start at once I can’t bo homo by tea-time; we always have tea early on Sundays, and if mamma finds out I' have been careering about all over the country on a bicycle —that’s the pleasant way she puts it—on a Sunday afternoon 1 shall never, never hear the end bf it. And we haven’t settled anything yet—not when I can speak to you again, or anything!” “There’s one thing you must not do, darling,” said "Brian gravely, “and that is speak to me in the garden. You have done it more than once during the last few days, and I’m certain those girls are watching you.”

“Which girls?" asked Kitty faintly, though she knew quite well. “We must arrange something, of course,” he went on, “ but at present 1 I don’t quite see what. i'ou must not come near me, Kitty.” “I could write to yon.” “ I’m afraid not. I —l hate to have to object to everything, but all the servants’ letters go up. to the house in the bag. Kitty, and your father opens it. He •would know your handwriting.” “I don’t mean post it, silly !” said Kitty gave him a little shake. “ I mean hide it somewhere in the garden—somewhere we could both get at easily. Under that mossy stone, for instance, that I sat on the first day when you cut the grass by the lake and Truscott scolded you so. Then we could say anything that ever we liked to one another.” “You would have to be careful, darling.”^ “ So I Avould be—very careful.” “ But the mischief is, I don’t think you can be,” said Brian desperately. “Your plottings and machinations are as transparent as Pantaloon’s at Christmas time. I’m sure if anybody had seen you coming round the end of the hothouse last night you only needed slow music and someone to say, ‘ Let us dissemble ’ !” and Brain shouted with laughter at the recollection. Kitty shot an indignant look at him, but she laughed a little, too. “ You don’t think anyone did see me, do you?” she asked. “ Fortunately, no, though one never can answer for those two sweet sisters of yours. I believe they take it in turns to perambulate the garden since—since ” “ You don’t think they suspect anything, do you?” “ No darling —no!” in earnest reassurance; for Kitty’s very lips were while. “ But—but Ella means cutting you out, sweetheart, if she can,” he finished laughing. and blushed to his hair. Kitty jumped out of the curve of the trunk and stood beside him, very straight and tall. “ You don’t mean that she would lower herself,”' she began, and stopped at sight of something quizzical in Brian’s eyes “That’s different,” she said quickly. “J know yon are not really an undergardener ; but she ” Once again Kitty broke off her sentence in the middle. Did Ella, too, guess that he was not —well, quite as other nndcrgardeners ? The uneasy little wonder rode with her all the way home, and weighted her saddle

and clogged her pedals and made of the five miles five-and-twenty. Tea was almost over when she slipped, as quietly as she could, into the drawing room. “ You are late, my dear,” said Mrs Calvert with , a touch of reproof, and her cold and critical eye took in the crispness of Kitty’s muslin frock and the unwonted swoothness of her hair. “ Yes, I know,” she returned, and added no apology. Etta and EJla never apologised when they are late. ‘‘Where have you been?” asked Etta, making room for her on the sofa. “ 1 have just come downstairs,” replied Kitty, blushing a little at the equivocation, and froze into silence at the laugh in Etta’s eyes. *The colonel handed her her tea-cup and some bread-and-butter. ‘‘So I’m afraid I shall have to get rid bf him,” he said, and evidently it was the end of a tale that was told. Kitty a eyes rose in a frightened flash. Get rid of whom? ‘‘Truscott complains dreadfully. He says he is absolutely useless. Yet he came to me with excellent recommendations. I don’t understand it at all.” ‘‘l never believe in written characters,” remarked his tvife. “ But this was not a written character, my dear —that is, it was not the kind of written character you are thinking of. I wrote myself tb Sir William’s head gardener, and his reply was all I could have desired. He spoke highly of young Coles—very highly indeed. But Truscott says he hardly knows one end of a spade from the other.” “ It may be,” the colonel went on, ‘‘that it’s just being in a fresh place, and all that. The fellow’s very shy. Can’t get a word out of him. 1 have asked T ruscot to try him another week and see how he gets on. If he doesn’t do better bv the week-end I shall send him packing.” ‘‘Poor Kitty! She will bo sorry,” said Ella to her sister in a silken undertone. But undertones carry far in a silent room, and the words floated past the two for whom they were intended. The colonel put down his teacup and looked at his elder stepdaughter. His grey moustaches bristled a little, the fine, thin ridge of his aristocratic nose went quite white. “ That’s—rather an unusual thing to say, Ella,” he remarked quietly. “What do you mean by it?” (To be continued.)