Читать книгу The Fortress - Hugh Walpole - Страница 8

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Walter Herries had told Jennifer that the building of his house on High Ireby was at once to begin. It was not, however, until the month of March 1830 that the foundations were first laid—and it happened that Jennifer was there to see.

Jennifer never recovered from that shock of the encounter with Walter on the night of the Summer Fair. It was the climax to a series of events that stretched back to that old Ball of her youth, and possibly, behind that again, to her earliest nursery escape from reality. She did not know now—she had not an analytic mind—what had happened to her or indeed why anything had ever happened to her at all. She was an old woman—this year saw her sixtieth birthday—but for all her years she felt herself to be still a young girl most unjustly treated by everyone.

In the early days—they seemed to her to be as recent as last evening—she had never had justice. Her beauty had brought her nothing: everything had been always just awry. She would have been the Duchess of Wrexe and a great woman of the world had not the Duke been so unpleasant a young man and the position of great lady so tedious and wearisome. She would have been a quiet beauty in the country had not Francis, her husband, been a weakling. She would have been a splendid Mistress had not her lover been a clod. She would have been a triumphant Mother had her children loved her. She would be now mistress of her house had not Judith taken selfishly everything out of her hands. Always injustice, everywhere injustice. No one saw what she was and no one cared.

The sluggish slackness in her that had ruined her life she did not perceive, for we never catch the causes of our fate, so clear to everyone around us. She might even now have been a fine tragic figure had she had the intelligence to look noble, the energy to tidy her hair, the wisdom to have reticence.

She had never had dignity or wisdom; she had been always the slave of trifles, small jealousies, degrading idleness, lazy avoidances of trouble.

But the terror of Walter struck into her character as a snake strikes. She was poisoned in all her being. The infection spread slowly, but from the moment that Judith consented to stay and took the house into her hands, Jennifer was lost. She had now nothing to do but brood over Walter. She cowered beneath his shadow, unable to move, waiting the awful moment.

As his shadow grew ever more terrible the figures immediately around her became themselves shadows. John had once been her darling, Judith’s Adam a pleasure, the servants agreeable, her daughter Dorothy ‘a good girl,’ Judith herself, although a tyrant, exceedingly useful and a safeguard.

After her scene with Walter all these were as unsubstantial to her as figures on a tapestry. She might have been still a fine woman; she had yet all her height, her hair (once so lovely) was white with, if she had cared, a fine lustre in its silver. But she was untidy, careless, a slattern. Any old clothes did for her, her hair escaped its pins, she would tap-tap in loose slippers, an old shawl over her shoulders, from room to room. Only her eyes were good, and the blaze in them, their intensity, belied all the rest of her, so that they were like a bright fire in a lumber-room. She would begin sentences and not finish them, eat food greedily and suddenly abandon it, pet John and Adam eagerly and then look at them as though she did not know them. The servants disregarded her; they took their orders from Madame.

Judith knew that terror was of an especial danger to anyone of even part Herries blood. She had seen, in all her active varied life, that the history of the Herries, as of so many British families, was that of a building impregnable, as its builders thought, to the attacks of all outside forces. But the outside forces are strong and immortal. Nothing tempts their malicious humour so thoroughly as the complacency of the builders. Here they twist a chimney, there a window rattles, now the wind sweeps wildly up the ordered garden, the iron-sheathed door shudders, a picture falls, the carpet rises on the floor.

Jennifer’s parents had been typical Herries, good, complacent, satisfied, laughing at imagination. Jennifer, so lovely, their pride, their joy, must be safe if any Herries was. Who would dare to touch her? So, in their love for her, they took from her all her defences. Now, when a vision of another world more real than the Herries one might have saved her, she had no vision. And Judith could not help her.

From the moment of Walter’s threat, for two years and a half, she waited. But life does not allow you to wait. No one knew what the matter with her was and, more tragically, no one cared. Her children had loved her, but Dorothy was all for comfort and found her uncomfortable, while John, after he knew of the reasons for his father’s suicide, shrank, against all his will and wish, from contact. Moreover, he had now something so absorbing in his life that his mother was dim to him, as he was to her.

Judith could have loved her because she pitied her and pity, with Judith, was maternal; but daily contact with Jennifer’s laziness, carelessness, selfishness, turned pity into impatience, and when Judith was impatient she was at her worst.

So Jennifer was alone with her terror.

As the time advanced, that terror took strange forms. High Ireby became a place of extraordinary fascination for her. It was several miles from Uldale and uphill for most of the way, but day after day she walked through the fields, climbed the slope and then stood, under the trees, gazing at the lovely scene—the walls of a ruined cottage, a small wood of whispering trees, remnants of a garden patch, and the long slope of the melancholy fields with the village and house of Uldale tucked into the hollow.

To the right were the sprawling slopes of Blencathra and Skiddaw. They lay against the sky like the careless limbs of a giant sleeper under an enormous coverlet tossed into casual shapes. She knew here all weathers, all seasons. She would stand against the ruined wall, under the trees, a tall, motionless old woman in a tawdry hat, clutching her shawl, staring in front of her. She became a familiar figure to the inhabitants of the village near by. It was not strange that she should soon have a reputation for madness, but she was not mad in the least. She would stand there, or sit on a tumbled stone, and reflect, in a lazy way, on her misfortune—not on any very definite misfortune but on the general way in which she was ill-treated and neglected. Sometimes she would determine that on her return to Uldale that day she would tell them all what she thought of them—Judith, John, Dorothy, even Mr. Rackstraw—but she never did. Partly it was too much trouble, partly when she was once again in the comfortable parlour at Uldale drinking tea before the fire or, in the summer, sitting under the tree on the lawn in the sunshine, she was cosy like a cat and smiled, lazily, on everyone.

She had too, all this time, marvellous health. Nothing ailed her.

She had perhaps the idea, as she stood in the little wood, day after day, that thus she was defying Walter. During all these two years she never saw him in the flesh. He became the more monstrous because she did not see him.

Then one day at last the thing happened. That March there was a late fall of snow. During the first week of that month a blizzard blew across the North, adding discomfort to all the hardships that the poor people were, at that time, already suffering. Waters were frozen, the sun, when it broke through, turned the snow-ridges into shining marble, the crows were spots of ink on the virgin fields.

She had had a cold for a week, and Judith had kept her in bed, but as soon as she was up she strode across the fields again, her shawl flapping behind her, climbed the hill and walked into a multitude of men.

Trees were falling. It seemed that on every side of her the trees were tumbling. The walls of the ruined cottage were no more. Men walked measuring the ground. A fire was lit on the snow and illuminated the broken whiteness of the scene that stretched back into the farther shadows of the wood.

As she stood back in the road hidden by two huge horses from whose nostrils steam struck the air, a tree fell with a great crash and a groan that seemed to come from her own heart. Men shouted joyfully, and some boys, muffled against the cold, danced round the fire.

She stepped into the middle of the road and several of them saw her. Two gentlemen on horseback, attended by little Peach, Walter’s agent, were watching the proceedings: one of them was the architect, Mr. Humphrey Carstairs from London, the other, young Julius Hopper, a clever lad working in old Mr. Bonner’s office in Keswick. Old Mr. Bonner was the oldest, stupidest and laziest architect in the North of England, and no one despised him quite so deeply as did young Julius. Young Julius was slim and dark and exceedingly handsome in his high-collared dark green overcoat; Carstairs was squat, thick, his head almost hidden in the curves of his plum-coloured capes. He bent low in his saddle; he suffered severely from rheumatism.

He turned and saw the strange woman in the old-fashioned hat, drawn to her full height in the middle of the snowy road. He stared, then turned to young Julius. ‘Who’s the old body in the shawl?’ he asked.

Young Julius stared also. He knew who she was: his first thought was that this would be amusing for Walter Herries if he rode over that afternoon. His second was of alarm. She looked crazy; he knew, of course, of the feud. She might have a pistol under that shawl of hers. He was a warm young man, fond of life, very ambitious. He had no desire to die as yet. Another tree fell; men were dragging branches across the snow that blew in little smoky spirals of silver into the air. The flames of the fire leaped, and an old man sitting by it, with a great red comforter round his neck and yellow mittens, began to play on a fiddle. The mittens made his fingers clumsy, but the men liked the music and worked with a better will.

‘She’s a Mrs. Herries from Uldale yonder,’ young Julius whispered. ‘She’s a sort of cousin of Walter Herries.’ Then he added: ‘I’ll go speak to her.’

With what he felt to be exceptional bravery (for it was possible enough that she concealed a pistol) he dragged his horse’s head round and rode towards her. She never moved, but stood there in the road, staring at the men, the fallen trees, the old man in the bright red comforter. Young Julius raised his hat.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs. Herries.’ Then he said, smiling: ‘Very wintry for March, ma’am.’

He wasn’t sure that she saw him. He moved his horse a little to the right.

Then she said: ‘What is going on here?’

He was able now to see her eyes, the pallor of her face, something dignified in her isolation. He spoke with the greatest politeness as he answered:

‘Why, ma’am, Mr. Walter Herries of Westaways is to build a house here.’

‘Indeed?’ She nodded her head. ‘A house of some size?’

‘Oh yes. It is to be a very fine place indeed—gardens and a fountain, magnificent stables. A lonely spot, though, to have chosen. Mr. Carstairs there from London is the architect.’

‘What is your name?’

She looked at him directly and there was something in her eyes that touched him very truly.

‘My name, ma’am, is Hopper—Julius Hopper. I am assistant to Mr. Bonner, the architect in Keswick. I know your son, Jack Herries, well. We are very good friends.’

‘Ah, yes, my son.’ Her eyes went back to the fire that seemed to have a great fascination for her. The thin, reedy, uncertain squeak of the fiddle came whining through the sharp air.

‘And how long will it be in the building?’

‘A considerable while, ma’am. Mr. Herries wishes everything to be of the best.’

‘Ah. . . . He wishes everything to be of the best. . . .’

‘Yes, ma’am. And these are not easy times. Although so many are without employment, it is not easy to get good workmen and wages are high. As soon as we have Reform things will be better.’

‘You believe in Reform?’

‘I do indeed, ma’am. We shall have Revolution else, like the French.’

‘You are wrong.’ She spoke with slow consideration, as though she beat every word upon the ground. ‘Reform itself is Revolution. The country will be ruined. The country is in any case ruined.’

‘I hope not indeed.’

‘Ah, you are young. . . .’

She moved away from him up the road. His horse stepped beside her. He would never forget that odd, tall, black figure with the crazy hat, moving against the snow. He thought after that it had been a kind of omen, but he was a sane practical young man who did not believe in omens, although out of habit he avoided walking under a ladder.

She came so far and then saw Peach. Mr. Carstairs had come down from his horse and now he and Peach were studying a plan. Jennifer scarcely knew Peach, and yet his short bow-legged figure was in some way familiar to her. She looked up at Julius, and he, not knowing what to say, remarked:

‘The snowdrops are doing bravely in spite of the snow.’ There was a great patch of them under the trees. Some of them were already trodden down and, as he looked, two men, carrying a log, tramped upon the patch.

‘Oh, the snowdrops!’ She put her hand on his knee, leaning up to him. ‘Tell Walter Herries what he is destroying.’

She turned and walked swiftly down the road, catching her shawl more closely about her. The three men turned to watch her.

Meanwhile at Uldale, as it happened on that same afternoon, Judith assisted by Dorothy Herries was entertaining four lady callers—old Miss Pennyfeather, Mrs. Leyland of The Ridge, Bassenthwaite, and her two daughters Nancy and Bella.

Miss Pennyfeather had been driven over by Judith, who had been taking luncheon with her in Keswick; the Leylands had come over from Bassenthwaite in their barouche. All the ladies were very pleasantly animated: the three elders, their heads together, near the fire, and the girls laughing and chattering by the window.

For the Leyland girls this was an adventure. Dorothy Herries, blooming with health and good temper, was two years older than Nancy and Bella, who were twins and were wanting to be married, for they were already twenty years of age and soon it would be too late. They were nice simple girls who had never been to London and only visited the theatre in Newcastle and were eager for gossip and adventure. They were pale, flaxen, tall and slim, and dressed alike. They wore dresses of poplin, colour violette de Parme, with heart-shaped bodices and the corsages long and tight at the waist. They had hats of rice straw with very wide brims, trimmed with anemones. Each thought the other looked bewitching, for they were generous and warm-hearted by nature.

They had never been to Uldale before on a visit, and this was a great adventure. ‘Madame’ was a ‘character’ through the whole countryside, and it was wonderful to be entertained in her parlour. Or was it Mrs. Herries’ parlour? People said that she was mad and walked about the country singing songs to herself—mad, poor thing, because her husband had discovered her with her lover and he had killed himself. Very shocking, but how romantic! And then her son John was so handsome, the best-looking young man in the North, a little sad and pensive as a good-looking young man ought to be. (For they adored Thaddeus of Warsaw and Mrs. Cuthbertson’s Santo Sebastiano and Mrs. Meeke’s Midnight Weddings.) Dorothy on the other hand—whom they loved at sight—was not melancholy at all and laughed all the while.

Then there was ‘Madame’s’ boy whom they did hope they’d get a sight of. He was, of course, illegitimate, which made him so interesting, although everyone knew who the father had been. He should have been romantic and melancholy, but people said that he was ugly and silent and kept to himself. Nevertheless, it would be adorable to see him!

While they laughed and chattered by the window they tried to keep an ear open for the company by the fire. For Miss Pennyfeather did say such shocking things and their mother (Mrs. Leyland was stout and jolly) had told them that on no account were they to listen to Miss Pennyfeather’s wickedness, so they were naturally all ears.

But the ladies seemed to be talking of nothing but Reform, Lord John Russell, and of Brougham’s attack on Lady Jersey in The Times, and how bitter she was against Reform, and so on, and so on—dull stuff!

Then Dorothy let it out that next month ‘Madame’ and her son were to go to London to stay with some relations. That was exciting! To go to London! To see the great Simpson at Vauxhall, to visit the new Zoological Gardens in Regent’s Park, to attend a Masquerade in the Argyll Rooms, to catch a glimpse of the Duke, and best of all the Theatre, the Surrey, the Royalty, or Sadler’s Wells.

They knew all about it; it was as though they had been in London all their lives. They looked across to the fire and that little upright dominating woman in her crimson dress with the huge sleeves; they stared (as unobtrusively as politeness insisted) at her small pale face, her neat grey hair, her ivory cane, and watched her bright eyes, her smile, the tapping of her small foot on the carpet. People said that she was the daughter of a gipsy and that her father, although of the finest family, had been a rogue and vagabond. And here she was, with her illegitimate boy, behaving as though she were Queen of England. Ah! what a romantic afternoon they were having!

It was made yet more splendid by the entrance of John Herries. Both girls, at sight of him, had the same thought. What a lover he would make! But there was something that told them at once that he was not for them. He came over to them and made himself very charming. His voice was soft and gentle. Yes, he was melancholy, although he teased his sister and chaffed them about their beaux at a recent Ball in Keswick. But they felt that his mind was elsewhere.

What a hero of a novel he would make! He was too gentle to be truly Byronic, but he would suit The False Step exactly! How beautifully he went and paid his devoir to their mother, with what ease! And yet he was in no way effeminate, quite unlike that horrid William d’Arcy of Threlkeld, or, on the other hand, that oaf, young Osmaston.

Well, it was time for them to be going. Darkness would soon swallow the pale saffron twilight. Already the candles were lit in the room. Mrs. Leyland rose to make her adieux when the door opened and the strangest figure stood in the doorway.

Jennifer stood there, her hat a little askew, her long thin fingers clutching her shawl. She could see but indistinctly. The candle-light blinded her, coming in as she did from the dark snow-shine road. But she saw Judith.

‘Judith! Judith! He has begun to build!’

The cry, shrill, poignant, broke the comfortable cosiness of the room into fragments. Jennifer had awaked at last.

‘Judith! They are trampling on the snowdrops. . . . The trees are falling!’

She stumbled forward, her hat ever more askew as she moved, and Judith, coming to her, caught her hand.

‘Wait, Jennifer. There are guests here. . . .’

Mrs. Leyland, good and kind woman as she was, did the right thing. She chattered:

‘Well, I’m sure. . . . How do you do, Mrs. Herries? A cold afternoon to be out in. You must be weary, and a cup of tea will be the very thing. And now we must be going. So very dark, although William is a most careful driver. We brought him from Newcastle with us. He was always careful from a boy. Might William be summoned, Mrs. Herries? Thank you. Most kind. Come, girls. William will have the horses in in an instant. He is always so prompt. It has been truly most delightful. I’m sure. . . .’

But Jennifer was not to be silenced by any chatter. She saw only one thing, one terrible thing, before her eyes—and she must declare it. Judith had seated her on the sofa, had pulled the bell-rope, was pouring a cup of hot tea. Dorothy had come round to her mother. The girls stood in the window, not knowing quite what they should do but enthralled by what they saw and heard. John had gone to hasten Mrs. Leyland’s horses.

‘Yes, he has begun at last, Judith. All his men are there, measuring the ground, and it is to be a huge place with a fountain and fine stabling. All the trees are falling, and they have lit a fire in the snow.’

‘It is Walter Herries,’ Judith explained sotto voce. ‘He has been threatening for a long while that he would build on High Ireby that he may overlook us—and now it seems that he has done it.’

‘Well,’ cried old Miss Pennyfeather. ‘Let him, and much good may it do him! I cannot endure Walter and I don’t care who hears me. Fat overgrown bully! Let him build with his limping child and puny wife! Don’t you worry, Judith. ’Tis all stuff and nonsense! He can’t harm you and he knows it!’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Mrs. Leyland, gazing anxiously at the door for news of her horses. ‘I should think so indeed. So he’s to be our neighbour at Ireby, is he? A pretty neighbour, and so Mr. Leyland will prove to him if he comes bothering our way. Come, girls—William must have brought the horses round.’

But Jennifer looked at them all with startled, staring eyes.

‘He will not be content until he has destroyed us. I knew it from the first. All his windows will look down on us. We must leave Uldale. I always said that he would have his way!’

Judith was sitting beside her. She had one of her hands in hers.

‘Jennifer, Jennifer. . . . You must not be so distressed. Cousin Walter will do us no harm. How can he? What if he does build a house at Ireby? That can do us no harm. Come, come, Jennifer. . . .’

How soft and gentle her voice was, thought the girls, and how crazy Mrs. Herries looked, poor woman, with her hat on one side!

Mrs. Leyland beamed comfortably on them. ‘I am sure Ireby is no place for a house, no place at all. I cannot think why he should choose such a spot, and Westaways good enough for anyone, I should have thought. I always said he was a strange man, and Mr. Leyland, who is downright if any man is, remarked to me only a week back that he was growing far too stout for his health. If he could but give some of his size to his wife, poor woman. . . .’

John appeared in the doorway.

‘Come, girls. Here’s Mr. Herries to say that William has the horses round. Has he not, Mr. Herries? That’s excellent. William is always so prompt. Good day to you. Good day. Good day. Most delightful. Never enjoyed anything more. Come, girls. Too kind of you, Mrs. Herries. It’s time we were moving on, with the snow and everything. . . . You must all come over to Bassenthwaite at the nearest opportunity. Oh, I insist. I take no refusal. So very good of you, Mrs. Herries——’

When the Leylands were out of the room a silence fell. Jennifer drank her tea. Then she rose.

‘There is no peace for us any more here,’ she said. ‘You may laugh, Judith, but it is so. He will destroy us all.’ Then, staring at Miss Pennyfeather as though she were seeing her for the first time, she added: ‘They were trampling on the snowdrops. It is to be a tremendous place with rows of windows. I think I will go to my room.’

She walked out.

Judith sighed.

‘If that isn’t unfortunate! Poor Jennifer! And the Leylands will talk for weeks!’ Then taking Miss Pennyfeather’s arm she added: ‘Janet, come up with me. You are the most sensible woman I know. Talk to her. I’m of no service when she’s like this.’

So Dorothy and John were left alone. Dorothy saw at once that her brother was greatly disturbed; he stood there, fingering his high stock and looking, as she remembered her father had sometimes looked, as though he were going to be sick. At such a time she could not help him. She was good about sensible practical things like a broken leg, a bloody head, a cold in the chest, but when John was in a mood she was uncomfortable as though he were improper. Although she was the soul of good-nature and almost always in a good temper, she resented the states into which her mother and brother sometimes tumbled.

John said at last:

‘Nothing can help mother. Now that she has this in her head.’

‘I’ll see about some linden tea,’ Dorothy said. ‘It has soothed her many a time.’ And relieved at an opportunity of escape, she bustled out.

She had been gone but a moment when Adam came in. Adam was now fourteen and a half. He had filled out in the last two years and was deep of chest, thick across the shoulders. His black hair was always untidy; a lock hung now over his forehead. He was ruddy with health, with the brown colour that made so many who didn’t know him think him a foreigner, but he was English enough all the same, with the broad brow, snub nose, large mouth, square body, short sturdy legs, bright eyes like his mother’s. He was English, too, in his reticence and hatred of demonstration. This affected him now, for he saw at once that John was worried and would need his help. John liked demonstrations: there were times when he wanted Adam to show him that he loved him, and although Adam did love him more than any human thing save his mother, he hated to show it. Oh! how he hated it!

He was in rough country things and his high boots were muddy, for he had been out with Rackstraw, Bennett and the dogs rabbiting and had had a glorious afternoon. When he saw that John’s distress was so real he thought to himself, ‘Let John do what he likes to me if it helps him.’ With a backward glance he threw reluctantly behind him all the happiness of the afternoon, the crisp air, the scent of the snow, the yelping of the dogs, the sunlight breaking in silver across the slow fields.

‘Adam, mother has been to High Ireby. Walter Herries has begun to build.’

‘I knew it,’ Adam said quickly. ‘Bennett told me.’

‘Mother is very unhappy. She came in while the Leylands were here and spoke as though she were crazy. This will send her crazy! If I could do something! How I hate him! He comes nearer and nearer with his sneer and his crooked son and——’ He broke off.

‘Pooh!’ said Adam, cracking his whip against his boot as grown men did. ‘It’s fun, John—fine fun! Why should you care? And your mother will be better now that it’s happened. It has been the waiting for it. . . .’

‘I am afraid of nothing else,’ John went on. ‘Nothing but this. I’m no coward. You know that I’m not. But Cousin Walter, since the days when we were small . . . Do you remember that evening when he rode up to the house and we watched him? And now that I’m managing the estate it brings me closer to him. Oh, Adam, I wish that you and Aunt Judith were not going to London——’

‘It’s grand!’ Adam cried, throwing out his chest. ‘There’ll be the coach and the lights, chimneys smoking and everyone shouting, and mother says we shall go to a theatre——’

‘Adam,’ John broke in. ‘There’s something else. I must tell you. I have been intending so for three months past, but no one knows. It makes everything so difficult——’ He broke off and began to pace the room. Adam, his legs straddling, waited. ‘It’s this. You’re to tell no one, Adam.’

‘No one,’ repeated Adam, and meant it.

‘It’s Elizabeth—Walter’s daughter. We are in love. We have been so for more than two years. It began the night of the Summer Fair.’

‘What!’

‘Yes, yes. . . . Why should it not be? There is no one so lovely, so good, so lovely——’

‘But she is a child, a little girl——’

‘She is your own age, Adam. In two years she will be seventeen——’

‘Elizabeth! His daughter!’

‘Yes, yes. . . . I know all that you can say. I have said it all to myself again and again. But it happened at sight, and now it is for ever. Nothing can change it.’

Love—love of girls and women—as yet seemed to Adam an absurdly inexplicable business, a waste of time, a ludicrous sentimentality. And now this, for a child who was a baby, the daughter of their greatest enemy whom they had sworn always to hate, the sister of the loathsome, deformed Uhland. . . . An impulse to despise John rose in his heart and was at once loyally driven down again.

‘Oh, John!’

‘Do not pity me. Do not laugh. We love one another for ever, and so soon as she is old enough we shall marry.’

‘No, no, you must not!’ Adam caught his arm. ‘Uncle Walter’s daughter! . . . I shall never speak to you again if you do!’

‘Well, then, don’t! I don’t care!’

‘But, John, how can you? For two years? And you’ve been meeting?’

‘Sometimes. But not often. We write.’

Adam turned, with a gesture of disgust as though he would leave the room, but John gripped his shoulder.

Adam, you must listen. You must. You are the only friend I have. The only one. I love you more than anyone in the world save Elizabeth. Again and again we have sworn that nothing should separate us——’

‘Yes, but this——’

‘No; you are young. You don’t understand——’

‘I’m not young.’ Adam broke away. ‘If you wish to love a girl you can, but not his daughter.’

‘But don’t you see? I could not help it. As I breathe so I love her. You will yourself one day——’

John’s eyes caught Adam’s and held him. There was an expression in them that struck to the very depths of Adam’s loyalty and devotion. He knew then that he could never desert John, never, whatever the crisis.

He muttered something, looking away.

‘Mind—it is our secret.’

Adam nodded his head, then said gruffly:

‘I must go to the stables. Caesar has a sore leg. Coming?’