A Yellow Aster · I

CHAPTER I

The stable-yard of Waring Park seemed to be slightly off its head on a certain fine afternoon in June. Such an afternoon as it was, so sweet and so soft, so full of fragrant sleepy haze, that any sound louder than the sing-song of a cricket must have distracted any ordinary nerve-possessing mortal.

On this particular afternoon however, the sole occupants of the yard were the stable-boys, the groom’s urchin, and the under-gardener’s lad, and as none of these had yet reached the level of nerves, whilst the blood of all of them throbbed with the greed for illegal sport in every shape, their state of lazy content was in no way upset by a medley of blood-curdling shrieks, squeals, and gobbles that issued from the throats of a little boy and a big turkey which the boy was swinging round and round by the tail, from the vantage ground of a large smooth round stone, with an amount of strength that was preternatural, if one had judged by the mere length of him and had not taken into consideration the enormous development of the imp’s legs and arms.

The stable-boys grinned, and smoked like furnaces as the show proceeded, and the other two cheered like Trojans, in the cruelty of the natural boy, and it might have gone badly for the turkey, if there had not swooped down upon him and his tormentor, just in the nick of time, a little lean wiry woman, armed with an authority, which even the imp, after one spasmodic struggle, saw best not to gainsay.

“Master Dacre, whatever do you do it for? Do you think the bird has no feelings? There is no sense in such goings-on.”

“There is sense,” spluttered the boy at full speed, “I like bein’ swung and I like swingin’ the turkey, and I’ll learn him to like it too, and if he don’t learn that anyway he’ll learn something else, which is life’s discerpline, which father says I’m learnin’ when you whip me. If I want it, so does the turkey and wuss. I b’longs to higher orders nor beasts and birds.”

Here the grins of the stable-boys broke into hoarse guffaws, and Mary’s ire culminated in a sharp rebuke all round.

“Go to your work, you idle fellows. I told your father long ago, Jim, what ’ud be the latter end of you. As for you, Robert, I could cry when I think of your blessed mother!

“And what business have you in the yard,” she cried, turning on the two younger sinners. “Be off with you this instant. ’Tis easy to see none of the men are about. You two, Jim and Robert, you’d be surprised yourselves if you could see what soft idiots you look with them stumps of pipes between your jaws.

“Look, Master Dacre, look at the bird’s tail. Haven’t you any heart at all? The creature might have been through the furze covert—”

“There’s not a feather broke,” said the boy, after a critical survey, “not one; I believe that tail were made for swingin’ as much as my arms was.”

For an instant words failed Mary and she employed herself hushing the bird into his pen. When she came back, Dacre had disappeared, and the yard seemed to be quite clear of human life, not to be traced even by the smell of shag tobacco.

Pursuit was useless, as Mary very well knew, so she returned to her nursery a good deal down at heart, muttering and murmuring as she went.

“Oh Lord, whatever is to be the end of it all? Learning is the ruin of the whole place, and yet them children is as ignorant as bears, excepting for their queer words and ways. Set them to read a Royal Reader or to tot up a sum, bless you, they couldn’t for the life of them. And the tempers of the two,” she went on, putting the cross stitches on a darn, “their parents had no hand in them anyway. Where they got ’em from the Lord only knows. Tempers, indeed! And from them two blessed babies as bore ’em.” She lifted her head and glanced out of the window.

“Look at ’em,” she whispered, “hand in hand up and down the drive, talking mathymatics, I’ll be bound,” and Mary’s eyes returned to her basket a trifle moist. She had nursed Mrs. Waring and Mrs. Waring’s children, and she was a good soul with a deal of sentiment about her.

As it happened, Mr. and Mrs. Waring were not discussing mathematics. They were just then deeply and solemnly exercised in their minds as to the exact date of a skeleton recently unearthed from some red sandstone in the neighbourhood. They had dismissed the carriage at the hall gates, and were now hot in argument concerning the bones, each holding diametrically opposed views on the subject, and struggling hard to prove his or her side.

Now and again the husband’s voice rose to a pretty high pitch, and his fine mouth was touched with a sneer, and the wife’s eyes flashed and flamed and shot out indignant wrath. Her hat had fallen off far down the drive, and her rings of yellow fluffy hair fell wildly over her forehead, one small hand was clenched in eager protest, but the other was clasped tight in her husband’s.

They always went like this, these two; they had got into the foolish way very early in their acquaintance and had never been able to get out of it.

Suddenly some common hypothesis struck them both at once, and Mrs. Waring cried out with a gasp,

“If we can prove it, I am right.”

“Yes, if you can prove it, darling, that’s the point, and I hope that you never will. Have you any idea, dear love, what the proving of this will undo, what it must upset?”

“I think I have,” she said slowly, her blue eyes gleaming eagerly, “but it seems to me whenever a great hubbub is made about the upsetting of some theory, that it generally ends in being much ado about nothing, and that the new thing that springs from the ashes of the old dead, is infinitely more beautiful than ever its predecessor was, for it is one step nearer the truth.”

“Dearest, we must end our talk,” groaned Mr. Waring, peering with terrified looks through his eyeglasses. “Here is Gwen, most slightly clad and of a bright blue tint, pursued by Mary. I fear very much that story of Boadicea you told her has instigated her to this action. I think, dearest, I will go to the study and work out this question of date.”

Mr. Waring turned nervously and made a gentle effort to disengage his hand from his wife’s, but she clutched him firmly. “Henry,” she cried, “you would not desert me?”

“Oh, my dear,” he gasped, “what can I do? The child must be cleansed and, I presume, punished. I can be of no use,” and he still showed signs of flight, but the horror-stricken eyes of his wife, fixed pleadingly on him, made him waver and wait.