‘Davy isn’t here!’ Pippa said urgently.
‘Oh, don’t take on, Pippa, he can’t have gone far. The trouble is where? Glen will be out in half an hour.’
Pippa turned on her furiously. ‘I don’t care when he comes put, Rena, all I care is that Davy is missing. Have you looked in his room?’
‘And your room and every other room. The garden. The orchard. I even went down to the chicken run. That deplorable boy—’
‘He could have gone into the planting.’ Like most of the estates in the Highlands area, the Franklin property included a small afforestation section where softwood was being raised. Though it was called the planting, the trees had been in for some years, and were fairly well advanced, mostly pine, already spreading their branches to meet and form a concealing green tent. Pippa had walked through once and nearly lost herself among the identical trees. If Davy had ventured in—
Brushing past Rena, Pippa ran out of the room, then out of the house, down past the cultivation, the stables, the piggery, orchard, the resting paddocks.
‘Davy,’ she called, ‘Davy!’
She was aware that in parkland like this there was little fear of the boy being lost, that Rena was probably right when she had contemptuously dismissed, ‘Oh, don’t take on, he can’t have gone far.’ But even in a little distance the strain could be too much for her brother in his delicate state. Also, if he had ventured into the planting ... the forest, he called it ... he could have panicked when he found himself, as Pippa had, walking round in circles, and, being a child, not had the sense to know that in such a small afforestation it was not far to the open fields again.
Reaching the deep green and plunging into it, Pippa called once more, ‘Davy! Davy! It’s Pippa, Davy. Stand quite still then shout out my name, darling.’ She waited, but there was no answer.
She combed the woods thoroughly. At any other time she would have rejoiced in the cool pine tang of the needles brushing her face, the soft carpet of the fallen ones beneath her feet, but not now.
Stumbling over roots she kept up her searching and calling, then found she was climbing a small rise. At the bottom of the rise a little stream purled by, and now she found a new fear. She ran forward and was relieved to see that the brook was quite shallow, but often deep pools formed at intervals, she knew, and she looked nervously up and down stream, wondering which way to search.
Then to her surprise she saw a patch through the trees. She must be out of the planting, but on the other side to Franklin’s. Crag Crag’s side. Sobbing a little in relief, she ran forward, past more tilled ground, some of it under cultivation, then at last she saw the house, not elegantly two-storeyed like Uncle Preston’s but leisurely and spreading. The sort of a house you expected from a big countryman. Strictly Western-style.
Snatching a breath, she began to run again, but already she had run too fast for too long, and a sharp pain halted her. She refused to accept the pain and pushed herself forward once more, her heart pumping so acutely in its effort to cope that at last she was forced to stop definitely, not only stop but sink to the ground.
When Crag joined her a moment afterward, he just left her like that, wisely waiting for her to recover, checking Davy, who was by his side, that he did the same.
Davy’s scolding, ‘You naughty girl to run like that, you always tell me not to’ were the sweetest words Pippa felt she had ever heard. She knew she was going to cry, and that was something she never did in front of Davy, but how to stop the relieved tears?
Then she found she could cry in safety, for the brown man was telling Davy to come and see something, and they were both gone. By the time they returned, her breath had returned, and her eyes were dry. Davy forgot about his admonishment in the excitement of whatever it was the man had shown him, but Crag Crag found time to say as they followed Davy, who was leading the way triumphantly to the Crag house: ‘He’s right, you know, you were a naughty girl. Why?’
‘I thought you understood the position,’ she said stiffly, and she nodded briefly to her brother. ‘I told you in the train—’
‘Oh, that.’ He gave a hunch of his great shoulders. ‘But you were worrying for yourself, not for the scrubber. What good could that do?’
‘It was Davy concerning me, of course,’ she defended. ‘He could have got lost in the planting and worked himself up to a pitch which could be dangerous. Then there’s a stream and—’
She stopped. Stopped her progress as well as her answer to him, for he had paused to pack his eternal pipe, and halted her with him. She felt infuriated with him for his calmness, for his deliberation. Except that Davy now was too far ahead she would have grabbed her brother’s hand and returned him at once and without any more explanation to Uplands.
‘Look,’ said Crag Crag, still doing his packing and tapping thing with the tobacco, ‘you shouldn’t have run like that, it did nobody any good. It did Davy no good ... you worrying over him never does any good. Children live in the present, not the past nor the future. They’re such little scrubbers they have nothing in the past to regret and nothing in the future to fear, so they’re content.
‘Then’ ... giving her no chance to edge in ... ‘it did you no good. You’re still out of breath.
‘Then’ ... lighting the pipe he had been busy on ... ‘it did me no good.’ His match made a little scratching sound.
‘I fail to see where you come into it.’
‘Shall I tell you, then?’ He had started walking once more, had taken her along with him, but now he stopped again. Stopped abruptly.
‘No,’ she said hurriedly, not knowing why her heart was keeping up its thumping so long. ‘No, it doesn’t matter. I’m sorry I was so foolish, and I do see your point. It would have put you out had I collapsed in your grounds.’
He did not comment on that at once. He looked her burningly up and down, then he said deliberately: ‘When I was at school we used to call kids like you stinkers. You know damn well I wasn’t thinking of that.’
Now was her turn to ask, ‘What, then?’ but Pippa blurted instead, ‘Davy has reached your house.’
She saw that the house was named briefly (and rather clownishly, she considered) simply: ‘Ku’.
‘Meaning shelter,’ the brown man said, guessing her scorn. ‘That’s what it is for me. Home is up north, at Falling Star.’
‘Rather elaborate for a mere shelter,’ she remarked. ‘Oh, naughty Davy, he’s gone in.’
‘He was there before, so why not now? It was the scrubber who saw you running out of the planting.’ They had reached the wide verandah by this, and he stood aside and nodded for Pippa to climb shallow steps into a long cool hall.
‘It’s not like Uncle Preston’s,’ Pippa murmured, for she could think of nothing else just then to say.
‘It’s the same as the big country house. Big country men only know one style—long halls, rooms each side, verandahs all round-like the brim of a hat. Makes for coolness, only coolness isn’t needed much here, not in the Southern Highlands.’ He laughed. ‘But it didn’t matter to my father, for being a big country man he naturally put in chimneys everywhere. They all go out and up. It’s not what you’d call perfect planning building a cool house and having to make it warm, but I’m glad he built big country style, I like the look of a fire.’
‘So do I,’ chirruped Davy from the fireside of the room into which Crag had led Pippa, ‘especially when you make toast.’
‘Davy,’ reprimanded Pippa, ‘you shouldn’t have run away like this. Why did you?’
‘I didn’t want to see another doctor. I’m always seeing doctors. So I thought I’d ask Crag. But Crag’s been telling me about Manager and how he had this bad leg.’
‘Your Falling Star manager?’ asked Pippa politely, and Davy went into peals of laughter.
‘No, he’s a bay, and so is Major, but Captain is grey, and Taffy is—’
‘Get back to Manager,’ said Crag.
‘Well, Manager had to see the vet. Then h
e had to see him again. And again.’ A big breath. ‘Then again. But in the end—’
‘In the end?’ Pippa’s throat was dry.
‘He won a hurdle. They have these races up in the big country, you know. Real jockeys and pretend jockeys ... I mean not jockeys who are jockeys all the time. The real jockeys wear silks, but the others wear overalls or jeans or crash helmets even. So Manager won by not missing out on the vet. And I’ll do the same, Pippa, because Crag says—’
Crag says. Crag says. The little voice went on and on, not giving Pippa a chance to insert, ‘Yes, dear, but now we have to go home.’
At length she did, though. She said accusingly to Davy: ‘Your vet is at Uplands right this minute and you’re not there to be checked, so you’ll never win a hurdle.’
‘Reckon he will from now on, though, eh, scrubber?’ drawled Crag. ‘Reckon he’ll remember Manager.’ He looked narrowly at Pippa, asking: ‘Is this vet one Glen Burt?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I reckon I needn’t drive you back. I reckon Rena will be scorching up the drive any minute now.’ A short knowing laugh.
Davy’s attention was on a racing manual Crag had handed him, so there was no need to talk carefully. Pippa knew that when Davy read he read with all of him, everything else was excluded.
‘I expect she will,’ she agreed. ‘She plans to use Davy.’
‘You don’t object?’
‘Not so long as my brother has attention.’
‘What about you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You don’t want attention yourself? This doctor’s attention? You see, I’ve met Burt.’
‘I haven’t.’ Her colour was high.
‘Then when you do you mightn’t like the way Rena has things worked out.’
‘Oh, really—’
‘Yes, really. He’s an exceptional fellow. Handsome, too. You mightn’t like sitting back while Rena does a maternal act in flowing veil and what-have-you to spring a trap that could have been yours.’
‘Actually you mean you don’t like it,’ she said angrily. ‘Not from Rena.’
‘Me?’ He was patently surprised.
‘Oh, don’t give me that,’ flung Pippa. ‘You said yourself in the train that you had to see Rena to find out what gives.’
‘Remember what I say, don’t you,’ he said, absurdly pleased, or anyway, Pippa found it absurd.
‘Also,’ she continued coldly, ‘Uncle Preston told me of your semi-agreement with Rena.’
‘Not semi on his part,’ grinned Crag. ‘Old Preston was all for it. That is’ ... thoughtfully ... ‘failing—’
He did not finish, and Pippa said as she had before: ‘Really.’
‘Don’t repeat that any more,’ appealed Crag. He waited, then: ‘Look, Pippa’ ... Pippa, Pippa revolted ... ‘I’ll put you straight. There was a semi-agreement. I’m sick of being a bachelor, and I don’t mind admitting it.’
‘Time running out and all that?’ caustically.
‘Exactly. But I still wasn’t so keen that I would have rushed into it. As it happened I didn’t need to. I was the rushed one.’
‘That’s very ungallant. It’s also untrue.’
‘It’s not ungallant. Rena Franklin ran after me like you just ran after the scrubber. Oh, I was flattered all right. Just down from the bush and a girl storms me. A beautiful one. Only—’ A quiet smile.
‘It’s not true,’ interrupted Pippa. ‘You rushed Rena, and she got sick of it. Everyone rushes her, except Glen Burt, and that’s why—’
‘You believe that?’ He looked at her incredulously.
‘Why not?’
‘You wouldn’t think of believing that she’s running away instead?’
‘You just said she ran after you.’
‘Yes, but she didn’t mean to catch up. Oh, no, not our Rena.’
‘I simply can’t follow you,’ Pippa said after a little pause. ‘It’s all so contradictory. You said she rushed you, then you say she was running away. It makes no sense. But I do advise you’ ... briskly now ... ‘to — to court Rena differently. Don’t be so—so susceptible. Then you might win.’
‘And you think that’s what I want?’
‘You have said so, haven’t you? You spoke about that design of man and woman’ ... her cheeks flushed ... ‘and how it has to have its start.’
‘Reckon I did say that,’ he nodded, ‘only I was forgetting something else, something the old man once told me.’
‘Uncle Preston?’
‘My old man. My dad. His life and my mother’s life together was the only kind I wanted.’ He took up his pipe. ‘I asked Dad once how—well, how you knew.’ He turned the pipe over in his big hand. For Crag Crag, Pippa thought, he actually looked shy.
‘Yes?’ she asked gently, wondering at her gentleness.
‘He said ... my father said it was a thousand candles.’
‘All lit up?’ Davy was looking up from the horse book now.
‘All lit together, scrubber. Reckon I forgot it for a while, but do you know what’—he was lighting the pipe now—‘I’ve remembered it again.’
‘Absence doesn’t always make the heart grow fonder,’ nodded Pippa crisply, ‘now that you’re near to Rena again you’ve remembered it.’
‘Rena?’ If she hadn’t been worried how Rena was going to react to Davy’s absence and not reacting properly herself, Pippa would have said there was a negation in his voice.
‘Here she is now,’ advised Davy, peering out of the window. He added wickedly, ‘Purple with rage.’
Rena certainly looked angry, thought Pippa, joining Davy, she was flushed and actually tousled. She put her arm protectively around her brother.
‘She spits, but so far she doesn’t bite,’ advised Crag calmly from his side of the room. ‘I had a wild cat like that once at Falling Star.’
‘Did you, Crag?’ came in Davy eagerly. ‘Tell me about it.’
‘Later, scrubber. You take your sister out to the kitchen and help her make a pot of tea. I’m going to spread oil.’
Out in the large galley ... big country style again in its capaciousness, in its large centre table ... Davy said, ‘I didn’t see any oil. I wonder if he’s spreading it now.’
‘Yes,’ contributed Pippa, ‘I wonder.’
But by the quietness in the room they had just left, in spite of Crag Crag’s refusal of Rena, Pippa had more an impression of candles. A thousand candles as two people looked across a space at each other. All lit together.
CHAPTER THREE
On their way back to Uplands, Pippa was relieved to find her cousin almost mellow. After Rena’s angry expression as she left her car on the drive to storm into Crag’s Ku ... purple with rage, Davy had said ... she had trembled for her brother. Davy had literally never known an admonishing word, not a seriously admonishing one, all his small life, and the words Rena had seemed about to throw at him had raised all sorts of fears for that sensitive little boy. But either the tea she had brought in or the oil Crag had spread ... Davy was still puzzling over that oil ... had done something. Rena now was quite relaxed.
‘It’s always the way with Crag,’ Rena said quite amiably, negotiating a bend, ‘he calms me down. Actually we two would make good chemistry.’
It seemed an unromantic way to put it, Pippa thought, she preferred candlelight, but she supposed it came to the same thing. Rena’s happy mood also meant no scolding for Davy, and for that she should be pleased, and she was, of course, except ... well, except ... Her lips moved unconsciously. She was not aware she spoke.
Pippa, came in Davy from the back seat, ‘why did you just say candlelight twice? It’s daytime, and anyway, there’s ’lectric here at Tombonda.’
‘Yes, darling.’
‘And ’lectric, too, up at Falling Star. They have plant, Crag told me. It’s not like a plant in the ground, it’s a machine plant, Crag told me.’
‘Yes, darling,’ Pippa said mechanically. She was pleased there w
as no reckoning from Rena, but somehow she still felt oddly heavy.
‘Our Davy,’ Rena was saying cheerfully, ‘wasn’t needed after all. Glen spent a long time on Father.’
‘How is he?’
‘Oh, quite all right, I should say,’ vaguely. ‘After Glen finished the examination I got our doctor on to the topic of Davy, and succeeded in interesting him enough to come out if ... when ... he’s asked. I’m sure of it.’
‘Doesn’t a doctor always do things like that?’
‘I told you before, Pippa, Glen is the frightfully dedicated type. He wouldn’t come just for a fee, there’d have to be a proper reason. I told him what you told me about Davy—that circulatory thing. He was certainly keen. I should say he’ll come whenever I ring.’
‘Thank you.’ Pippa’s voice was dry.
‘The trouble is,’ Rena continued, self-absorbed as usual, ‘he’ll have to meet you, and you know how I feel about that.’
‘I don’t know why.’
‘Oh, come off it,’ said Rena slangily, ‘you must look in the mirror sometimes. You’re pretty, Pippa, something I never expected, otherwise I wouldn’t have had you here. Surely someone somewhere at some time must have told you that.’
‘No one did.’
‘It takes some believing.’
‘Then you’ll just have to believe.’
‘You mean you’ve reached the age of twenty ... you’d be that, Pippa, you were some years junior to me ... and no man has told you!’
‘None.’
‘It takes some believing,’ Rena said again.
‘It’s true. I haven’t met anyone. My life has been taken up with—’ Pippa gave a brief indicative nod of her head.
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