My Little Sister Part 3

I could not bear to see Loring, or Melanie, doing anything for my mother. I think they humoured me, and that Melanie performed her service chiefly by stealth. I know I felt it to be all my doing when the invalid was able to come downstairs.

She sat very near the fire though the day was hot. When she held up her hand to shade her eyes, her hand was different.

Not only thin. Different.

Bettina and I were sorry she would never see the one or two kind people who "called to inquire."

We had come early to know that her refusal to take any part in such meagre "life" as the scattered community offered was indeed founded upon "indisposition," as we had heard; but an indisposition deeper than her malady.

We never knew her to say: these card-playing, fox-hunting people are our inferiors. But she might as well. We read her thought.

When the Marley children went by on ponies, when the Reuters bought their third motor-car, Bettina and I stifled longing and curiosity with the puerilities of infant arrogance: Our mother doesn't mean to return your visit. She doesn't want us to 'sociate with your children.

In our hearts we longed for the society specially of Dora Marley. Betty used to slip out and show Alexandra to Dora. Alexandra was Betty's most glorious doll. When the others couldn't find Betty I knew where to look.

I went secretly, a roundabout way through the shrubberies, to bring Betty in, reluctant and looking back at Dora: "Come again to-morrow?"

One day Dora shook her head.

"Why not?"

She was going back to school. "Aren't _you_ going back to school?" she asked.

"Oh, no," I said, "we don't go to school."

Dora seemed not only surprised, but inclined to pity us.

"You _like_ having to go to school!" I said.

She loved it. "So would you."

"I should hate it!" I said with a pa.s.sion of conviction.

She couldn't think why.

Neither could I--beyond the fact that my mother couldn't go with me. And that she had said of the Marley children, with that high air of pity--"They have the manners of girls who have not been brought up at home."

Dora asked if we didn't hate our governess. She was still more mystified to hear we had never had one.

Even then we did not a.s.sociate that lack with poverty. Rather with the riches of our mother's personal accomplishments, and her devotion for her children. And indeed we may have been partly right. I think if she had been a millionaire she would not willingly have shared with a strange woman those hours she spent with us.

We read a great deal aloud. My mother and I took turns. Bettina used to sit over the embroidery she was so good at, and I so hopeless. Or she would sit under the wild broom in Caesar's Camp watching the birds; or lie curled up on the sofa stroking Abdul, the blue Persian. Indoors or out, I don't think Bettina often listened to the reading. Perhaps that was because we read a good deal of history. Poetry was "for pleasure,"

our mother said. But it had to be translated into singing to be any pleasure to Bettina. I loved it all.

Betty was two years younger than I, but n.o.body would believe I was not the elder by five years, or even six. I was proud of this, seeing in the circ.u.mstance my sole but sufficient advantage over a sister excelling in all things else.

I am not to be understood as having been envious of Bettina. For I recognised her accomplishments as among our best family a.s.sets--reflecting glory on us all; ranking in honour after the respect shown to our mother, and the V. C. our father won in the Soudan. But my thoughtfulness and gravity as a child, my being cast in a larger, soberer mould, lent validity to my a.s.sumption of the right to take care of Bettina. Even to harry her now and then, when her feet outstrayed the paths appointed.

Bettina was not only younger, she was delicate; she had to be protected against colds, against fatigue.

There is, in almost every house, one main concern.

When I look back, I see that in ours the main concern was Bettina. If she had been less sweet-natured, she would have been made intolerable.

But the great need of being loved kept Bettina lovable.

I cannot remember that we ever spent half a day away from each other, or away from our mother, until--but that is to come later.

I feel still the panic that fell on us after the excitement of seeing the good-natured Mrs. Reuter drive up in her motor-car--the first we had encountered at close quarters--a jarring, uncanny, evil-smelling apparition in our peaceful court. Mrs. Reuter leaned out and unfolded her dreadful errand--to invite us children to come and stay at her house in Brighton from Friday to Monday!

We stood there, blank, speechless.

Our mother, with a presence of mind for which we blessed her, said she could not spare us; she was not well; I was a famous little nurse.

Relief and pride rushed together. I could have kissed my mother's feet.

My own could hardly keep from dancing.

"Let me take the little one, then," said this brutal visitor.

The little one burst into large, heart-rending sobs.

Twenty times that afternoon the little one made my mother say: "I will not let anyone take you away--no, never. Very well, you shall not pay visits."

And Betty, suspicious, insistent: "Not _never_?"

"Not never."

Oh, mother! mother! would you had kept your word!

CHAPTER VI

MARTHA'S GOING--YET REMAINING

When I was thirteen years old we lost our ally, Martha Loring. She had been with us since she was fifteen--at first a little scullery-maid.

Later, she was promoted, and became a person much trusted, in spite of her youth and her love of fun.

We had all sorts of games and private understandings with Martha. She was a genius at furnishing a dolls' house. She got another friend of ours to make us a dresser for Alexandra's kitchen. This other gifted person was Peter, one of Big Klaus's sons. He was almost twenty, and he used to bring the vegetables. We did not know why he could never bring us our presents at the same time--perhaps out of fear of the cook, who held strict views upon the wickedness of eating between meals. She was elderly, and very easily annoyed.

She never knew that that clever Peter circ.u.mvented her by climbing over the orchard wall with our red apples and with pockets full of the hazelnuts we loved. Martha Loring told us that, if ever we spoke of these gifts, they would be forbidden, and Peter would never come any more. So we were most careful.

So was Peter.

So careful that he brought his gifts after dark. Martha used to have to go down the garden and wait for them--wait so long, sometimes, that we fell asleep, and only got Peter's presents in the morning.