Chapter X: Their Future Home

MRS. LAIRD'S birthday welcomed her with bright sunshine and a cloudless blue sky. True was in her bedroom long before breakfast time, presenting her wonderful handkerchiefs, and chattering gaily about the delights in front of them.

"Run away, chatterbox," said Mrs. Laird at length, "or Grannie will be late for breakfast."

"I'll go this very minute."

But her hand on the door handle, she paused.

"Isn't it a very comfortable feeling, Grannie, that Miss Darling is in our house? I thought about it direckly I woke."

"And that was Grannie's first thought too," said Mrs. Laird.

The car came round very soon after breakfast. The luncheon basket was packed in, plenty of rugs taken in case it might be chilly, and then Mrs. Laird, Sara, and True were tucked up comfortably on the broad seat together. Graham drove himself. They sped away through the busy streets, past the collieries with their high shafts and smoky surroundings, along a straight dusty road where the coal dust seemed to begrime all the fresh green foliage of bush and tree.

Then they climbed slowly a long, steep hill, and then had a wonderful glimpse of the moor stretching away in flat marshes and gentle undulations of heather-covered slopes. The air was fresh and pungent; they passed a fir wood, then some coverts, and at last turned into a real country lane which led them slowly down to some tall iron gates flanked by a high brick wall. Through the gates they sped up a short avenue of beeches, and then swept round before the old red brick house.

Very sunny and homey it looked that morning. The lawn in front wanted mowing, the flower-beds were untidy and overgrown, the drive beginning to show weeds in great patches over it. But the house stood serene and sweet. A white jasmine was just coming out and overhung the porch. Japonica was framing the lower windows, and an ancient magnolia mounted nearly to the roof on one side of the house.

Graham had the keys, and unlocked the door himself as there was no caretaker.

The hall was broad and roomy, the oak staircase went up from it at the back. There was a high dado of oak panelling round the hall. Out of it on one side spread a long drawing-room with five windows. Behind it a comfortable smoking-room overlooking a side Dutch garden with tiled paths. On the other side of the hall was the dining-room, a similar size to the drawing-room, with the same five windows, and behind that a very pleasant morning-room which opened on one side into a conservatory, and looked out at the back upon a rose garden.

Sara was delighted with this room.

"I know some people do not care to be in a room next to a conservatory, but I love it. I remember we had a room at my old home like this, and I remember as a child how I loved the scent of the heliotrope and lemon verbena that grew in it."

Then they went out and looked over the kitchen premises which were rather extensive, but all in good repair. True was anxious to explore the garden, but Graham said that Sara must see the rest of the house first. The rooms on the next floor were all sunny and spacious. True pointed out to Sara the one she had chosen for her.

"You can see the dear little church and village between the hills out of the window, and the moor is over there too. Don't you like it, Miss Darling?"

"I like every room that I see," said Sara, enthusiastically.

And then they went to the room which had a western outlook, and which Graham thought would suit his mother for a sitting-room. She said at once how much she would like it. The top floor contained the nurseries, and at the back some servants' rooms. True was delighted with the nurseries, for they had been papered with a paper illustrating the Nursery Rhymes, and in one corner cupboard she had found a headless doll in an old wastepaper basket.

Mrs. Laird looked about her with a soft, tremulous smile. She was wondering if a few years hence, pattering feet and baby voices would be heard up here from her sitting-room below. And Sara walked through the rooms, her hand on Graham's arm, and her grey eyes misty with dreamy hope.

When the house was thoroughly explored, they went downstairs and brought cushions and rugs in from the car and spread them in the sunny drawing-room. Then the luncheon basket was unpacked, and they all did justice to their meal. Afterwards, Mrs. Laird said she would like to sit and rest there. Graham had found an old garden chair in the conservatory, and he brought it in and tucked her up so comfortably in it, that she had quite a long nap. Whilst she was resting, True was scampering round the old garden, and Sara and Graham paced the paths together.

"Do you like our future home?" he asked her gently. "Knowing how fond you were of the country and of a garden, I could not bear to think of bringing you into a town house, and when I at last found this, it seemed to fit you."

"It is quite palatial," said Sara, laughing, "but I do like it very much. I always think houses have their atmosphere, and I am sure this must have had a happy one."

"In any case you would soon make it a happy one," said Graham. "Shall I ever forget your first few weeks at Felstone Corner? What a miserable atmosphere you came into! An ugly house, comfortless rooms, rough ignorant servants, my poor mother in the depths of woe, and a rough surly silent man."

"No," said Sara, quickly, "a weary sad, patient man, content to think nothing of his own prospects and happiness, wholly absorbed in ministering to the wants of his invalid mother. Before I had been a week with you, I admired you from the bottom of my heart!"

Graham shook his head, then went on—

"What changes you wrought! How quietly you went to work, how slowly but surely you brought sunshine into every dark corner of that house! I don't know which time I loved best, the summer evenings when I came home to find you in your cool white gown amongst your beloved flowers tending and watering them with a look of love upon your face, or the winter nights when I used to steal upstairs and see you sitting by my mother's side in the firelight, with your guitar upon your knee, singing those bewitchingly sweet little songs of yours. I was so afraid that you would stop when you saw me that sometimes I used to slip out of my boots at the bottom of the stairs and creep up noiselessly and sit on the top stair outside my mother's room listening to all of it. How did you manage to content yourself in those first miserable days?"

"I was always hoping for better times," said Sara; "and I loved the lake and the hills and the country. And when once your mother began to get better, how happy I was!"

"Would you like to go back there again?" asked Graham.

Sara shook her head.

"I don't think I should care to live there. It was a desolate bit of country, wasn't it? Very beautiful, but no friends are there now. Do you regret leaving it? Tell me truly, Graham. Does this town life suit you?"

"I am getting to enjoy the work. I understand the men much better, and I think they are getting to understand me. And I see now the principles which were the mainspring of my cousin's good works. I told you once, Sara, that I would leave all the religious part of the work to you. I don't want to do that now."

Sara looked up at him with sweet earnestness.

"What a difference that will make to me! Don't you see, Graham, that having the same aim and object in life, you and I will be drawn much nearer together than if you went your way and I mine?"

"I see that you were right, as you always are, when you sent me away from you."

Then they wandered round the garden. The long sloping lawn in front of the house, with its group of old cedars at the farthest end, the herbaceous borders under the old brick walls, the rose garden, and the small Dutch garden, and the winding walk through a shrubbery of rhododendrons and azaleas, all were visited in turn. Sara felt as if she were in a dream. Once Graham referred to her brother.

"I pity him, when you have to leave him. What will he do?"

Sara smiled.

"He will console himself. He is very fond of May Agnew. I told you about her, and his only fear is that she does not care for him, but the other day I discovered that she did. And I quite understand men marrying again. They become accustomed to women and cannot get on without them."

Then she stopped.

"Don't think I am meaning anything personal."

"I told you," said Graham, quietly, "that I considered my marriage an interlude. You ought to have been my first and only wife, Sara. You know that."

Sara did not reply. She gazed over the old garden dreamily.

Graham, seeing her sweet wrapt face, asked her to give him her thoughts.

"I was resolving to make up to you, if I could, for all your lonely barren years!"

Graham caught her in his arms and kissed her.

"One day with you now has more than compensated me for all those bygone years," he said.

And then they were interrupted by True, who wanted to show Sara a squirrel up a tree. They did not get any more time alone, for the builder arrived and business was done with him for the rest of the afternoon. They all returned home in the car in time for tea, having had a very enjoyable day.

In the evening, Mrs. Laird asked Sara to sing to them. She willingly did so, and many of Mrs. Laird's old favourites were asked for. Then just before Mrs. Laird went to bed she asked for the hymn that had first touched and quickened her soul. Sara sang it sweetly and softly as she always did, but with passionate warmth in some parts of it, and Graham listened entranced. It had new meaning to him now.

"'Souls of men, why will ye scatter
Like a crowd of frightened sheep?
Foolish hearts, why will ye wander
From a love so true and deep?'"

When Sara had finished it, he said—

"We shan't be able to let you go, Sara. I can't think how mother and I have existed without you all this time."

"When will you come back?" asked Mrs. Laird.

"I am going to give her a month to get herself ready: no longer," said Graham with determination.

Sara looked up at him with a shake of the head.

"Give me till June," she said, "the month of June! What do you say to being married on Midsummer Day? Your builder said he could complete the repairs and decorations by the beginning of June!"

"It's too far off."

"Time will soon remedy that."

They finally settled upon Sara's date.

Mrs. Laird retired to bed, and Sara and Graham were alone.

A little bright fire was in the grate, as the evening was chilly. She sat in a chair, in unconscious grace, her eyes dreamily and happily gazing into the red-hot coals. Graham stood warming his back, his dark eyes fixed upon her.

Then he spoke slowly—

"Sara darling, we must get away alone together. I love my mother and I love the child, but I want you, and you only. I am selfish. I have always had to see you and talk to you before others, now I want to have you all to myself. I will not bring you to our home directly after marriage. Where shall we go?"

Sara looked up at him and smiled, but her heart beat quickly.

"I want a honeymoon," he said.

"Then," said Sara, "let us go back to Felstone, and see the lake once more. I love it so. And I could see that poor old herb doctor again and Agnes his daughter."

"I would want you to see no one but me," said Graham. "I have never been really with you—never told you half that is in my heart. We will go back there if you wish. I don't care where it is, as long as we are together. Do you think I shall make you happy, Sara? Or rather shall I add to your happiness?"

His tone was somewhat wistful.

Sara rose from her seat. Then she turned towards him—

"You have worked for the happiness of every woman you have come across," she said with her soft laugh; "do you think that I shall be your first failure? Oh, Graham, life has had its clouds as well as sunshine, for both of us, but now that we belong to each other, I feel that I can weather an eternity of storms if you are by my side."

And then Graham held her in his strong arms, and was content.

THE END

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