Furze the Cruel Part 30

"Nothing, darling. But he wants to know something about your parents."

"I told him. I don't know anything."

"But Weevil must know."

Somehow that had not occurred to Boodles. Perhaps Weevil did know, and for reasons of his own had kept the information from her.

"I'll ask him," she promised. "But Mr. Bellamie has been to see daddy.

Why didn't he ask him?"

"Weevil told him he is your grandfather."

"You mean my old daddy-man is my grandfather?" cried Boodles, very much astonished. "Why hasn't he told me then?"

"Hasn't he?"

"Never."

Aubrey was too young to care; but he certainly felt suspicions about Weevil, and thoughtlessly expressed them by saying: "I suppose he was telling the truth."

"Of course he was," said Boodles. "Old daddy couldn't tell a lie however much he wanted to. It would hurt him so badly he would groan and grunt for a week. What else did he tell your father?"

"He didn't say. But, darling, you'll find out."

"Oh, Aubrey," she said pathetically. "Do you care?"

"Lovely little thing, of course I don't. Your parents must have been the best and nicest people that ever lived, or you wouldn't have been so sweet. But you see, darling, my people worry no end about name and family and all that sort of rubbish, and if they think any one is not what they call well-born they kick up no end of a smother."

"Well-born," murmured Boodles. She was beginning to comprehend at last, to recognise the existence of that grim thing called convention, and to feel a sort of misty shadow creeping up the wood. She felt something on one of her fingers, and it seemed to her that the pretty ring, which she loved so much, was trying to work itself off. "Well-born," the child murmured to herself. "Whatever does it mean?"

This was what being eighteen meant. Boodles was learning things.

"I must have had a father and mother," she said, though in a somewhat dubious manner.

Aubrey only hummed something unintelligible, and wished the cloud out of her eyes.

"Now I must find out all about them?"

"I expect my people would like to know, dear," he said.

"If I can't find out, Aubrey?" she went on, in a moist kind of way.

"Then you will have to take mine," he said as lightly as he could.

Boodles stopped, turned away, began to play with a golden frond of bracken almost as bright as her hair, and began to cry as gently as an April shower. She had been on the point of it all the afternoon; and she persuaded herself it was all because Aubrey was going away, although she knew that wasn't true. It was because she was finding out things.

"Don't," she sobbed. "It's doing me good,"

However, Aubrey took her in his arms and tried to pet her, and that did her as much good as anything, although she went on crying.

"Can't give me yours--you silly! They won't be given. They don't want me to love you, they hate me, and your mother kissed me--she did--on my mouth."

"Mother is very fond of you, darling. She is really," Aubrey whispered as quickly as he could. "She said you were perfect, and father agreed with her, and said you would be all that a girl could be, if--if--"

"Go on," murmured Boodles. "It won't hurt. I've got hold of you. I'm taking all the starch out of your collar."

"Never mind what he said."

"We don't say good-bye until you have told me. I'll hang on to you. Stop you, perhaps. Oh, Aubrey, you are going away--that's why I'm crying.

Your father said I should be a nice little girl, if--go on."

"If you had a name," said Aubrey, with an effort.

Boodles let him go and stepped back. She looked rather nice, with her eyes in the rain, and her head in the sunshine.

"What does that mean, Aubrey?" she said, almost fiercely.

"Nothing whatever to me, darling. Don't be silly," he said tenderly.

"It's only father's nonsense. He thinks so much of his name because it's a fossilised old concern which has been in the county since Noah. He doesn't want me to marry you, only because he's afraid your people may not have lived about here since Noah. If you went and told him you're a Raleigh or a Cruwys he would lay his pedigree at your feet and ask you to roll on it."

"Not well-born. No name," said Boodles, aloud this time. "I think we have been silly babies. I seem to have grown up all at once. Oh, Aubrey, was it you and I who used to walk here--years ago?"

He bent and took her face between his hands and kissed the pretty head.

"We never bothered about names," sobbed Boodles.

"We are not bothering now--at least I'm not. It's all the same to me, darling."

"It's not. It can't be. How silly I was not to see it before. If your parents say I'm not--not your equal, you mustn't love me any more. You must go away and forget me. But what am I to do? I can't forget you,"

she said. "It's not like living in a town, where you see people always pa.s.sing--living as I do, on the moor, alone with a poor old man who imagines horrors."

"Listen, darling." Aubrey was only a boy, and he was nearly crying too.

"I'm not going to give you up. I'll tell you the whole truth. My people wanted me not to see you again, but I shall tell them that things have gone too far with us. They won't like it at first, but they must get to like it. I shall write to you every week while I am away, and when I come back I shall tell father we must be married."

"I wouldn't, not without his consent. I shall go on loving you because I cannot help it, but I won't marry you unless he tells me I may."

"Well, I will make him," said Aubrey. "I know how to appeal to him. I shall tell him I have loved you ever since you were a child, and we were promised to each other then, and we have renewed the promise nearly every year since."

"Then he will say you were wicked to make love to the first little red-headed girl you could find, and he will call me names for encouraging you, and then the whole world will explode, and there will be nothing left but lumps of rock and little bits of me," said Boodles, mopping her eyes with his handkerchief. She was getting more cheerful.

She knew that Aubrey loved her, and as for her name perhaps it was not such a bad one after all. At all events it was not yet time for the big explosion. "I'm only crying because you are going away," she declared, and this time she decided she meant it. "What a joke it would be if I turned out something great. I would go to Mr. Bellamie and ask him for his pedigree, and turn up my nose when I saw it, and say I was very sorry, but I must really look for something better than his son, though he has got a girl's face and is much prettier than I am. Oh, Aubrey,"

she cried, with a sudden new pa.s.sion. "You have always meant it? You will be true to your little maid of the radiant head? I don't doubt you, but love is another of the queer puzzles, all flaming one time, all dead another, and only a little white dust to show for all the flame. The dust may mean a burnt-out heart, and I think that is what would happen if you gave me up."

He satisfied her in the usual way, declaring that if they ever were separated it would be by her action, not by his. She would have to unfasten the lover's knot. Then they went on. It was getting late, and the short day was already in the dimsies. They stood beside the gate, saying good-bye, not in two words, but in the old method which never grows musty. They pa.s.sed on, the gate slammed, and they were outside; only just outside, but already they were lost and could not have found their way back; for the wand of the magician had been waved over "our walk," and fairyland had gone away like smoke to the place where babies come from.

Weevil was sitting in the dark, mumbling and moaning, when Boodles came in. He was in the seventh h.e.l.l of misery, as he had been for a walk and discovered beneath a hedge a rusty iron trap with its jaws fastened upon the leg of a rabbit. The creature had been caught days before, as decomposition had set in, and as it was only just held by one leg it must have suffered considerably. Such a sight is quite one of the common objects of the country, therefore Weevil ought not to have been perturbed; only in his case familiarity failed to breed indifference. He sat down in the dark, and as soon as the child entered began to quaver his usual grievance: "What right have they to make me suffer? Why may I not go a walk without being tortured? What right have the brutes to torment me so?"

"Groaning and grunting again, poor old man," said Boodles cheerfully, rather glad there was no light, as she did not want him to see she had been crying. "You must laugh and be funny now, please, for I've come home dreadful tired, and if you go on worrying I shall begin to groan and grunt too. I'm ready to have my boots taken off."

"Don't talk like that. Your throat sounds all lumpy," the old man complained, getting up and groping towards her in the dark. "What have you been doing--quarrelling?"