Red Rowans Part 21

"We should not come into the drawing-room with dirty boots if we did, should we, Alice dear? Just look at him, Mrs. Woodward! He isn't fit for ladies' society, is he?"

Lord George gave a hasty glance at his boots, swallowed his tepid washings of the teapot with a muttered apology, and retired, leaving his wife to breathe freely.

"That must be Miss Carmichael, I suppose," she remarked easily. "I am beginning to be quite anxious to see this paragon, Paul."

"Nothing easier," replied her brother, shortly; "if you will be ready at three to-morrow afternoon, I'll take you over and introduce you."

Positively she felt relieved when, with some excuse about seeing whether the sportsmen had returned, he left the drawing-room. It was like being on the brink of a volcano when he was there, and yet, poor, dear old fellow, he behaved very sweetly.

She said as much to him, being clever enough to take his real affection for her into consideration, during a brief quarter of an hour's respite from duty which she managed in his business-room before dinner.

"I wish _I_ had a snuggery like this, Paul," she said, plaintively shaking her head over his long length spread out on one side of the fire, and Lord George's on the other, "but women always bear the brunt of everything. If the barometer would go up I could manage; but it _will_ go down, and though I've taken away the one from the hall, Major Tombs has an aneroid in his room, and _will_ speak about it. And Ricketts--I have had her for five years, George, you remember--gave me warning to-day. It seems Jessie took advantage of the fire in Ricketts's room to dry one of Paul's wet suits, and Ricketts thought it was a burglar. She went into hysterics first, and now says she never was so insulted in her life."

Paul laughed. "Would it do any good if I apologised?"

"Wish it had been mine," grumbled Lord George. "This is my last coat but one, and the sleeves of it are damp. I can't think why the d.i.c.kens the women can't turn 'em inside out."

"Oh! of course, it's the women again, George, but the footman wants to know if he is expected to grease boots, and I don't know what to say.

Someone used to grease them, I remember----"

"Oh! if it comes to that," said Paul, hotly, "I'll grease 'em myself.

Why should you bother, Blanche?"

"Now that is _so_ like a man! Someone must bother; and really servants are so troublesome about boots, though I must own one would think you men were centipedes; there are fifty pairs in the laundry at present.

And Mrs. Woodward says her husband has smoked too many cigars and drunk too much whiskey and soda. As if it were my fault." Poor Lady George spoke quite tearfully.

"Well, I offered to take him out, but he said his waterproof wasn't waterproof. What the d.i.c.kens does a man mean by coming to the West Highlands without a waterproof? One doesn't expect anything else in a woman, of course, but a man!"

Lady George dried her eyes disconsolately. "Oh! it is no use, George, importing the antagonism of s.e.x into the matter. It is bad enough without that. If we only had a billiard-room I could manage. Do you know I think it quite criminal to build a house in the country without one."

"There are the Kindergarten toys, my dear," suggested her husband; "the children seem to have tired of them."

"Oh, don't try to be funny, please!" retorted his wife; "that would be the last straw. And nurse says it is because they cannot get out that they are so cross. Just when I was counting on them, too, as a distraction."

"Well, Blazes was that effectually this morning," replied her husband, with an air of conviction; "he howled straight on end for two hours, and when I went into the nursery to see what was up, I found the poor little beggar sobbing over some grievance or another."

Lady George flushed up. "It was only because he couldn't come down with the others--I really can't have him; he is so unreasonable, and Mrs. Woodward doesn't believe in my system."

"Never mind, my dear Blanche," said her brother, consolingly. "It seems to answer nicely with good children, and children ought to be good, you know. And the barometer is going up, it really is."

"For wind, I suppose," replied his sister, tragically. Apparently it was for wind; at any rate, Will Cameron coming up to see the laird on business next day observed casually that this must be about the end of it; an optimistic remark which has a certain definite significance in a land of gales. Even the sportsmen were driven to the cold comfort of examining the action of each other's weapons with veiled contempt, discussing the respective merits of each other's accoutrements, from cartridge cases to leggings, and trying to forget that the wild weather was making the birds still wilder than they had been already.

It appeared to have the same effect upon humanity. Sam Woodward, who had been a thorn in poor Lady George's side from the beginning, fell out with the only man who could tolerate him, and thereafter told his sister it was a beastly hole, and that he meant to make the _mater_ give him some oof, when he would cut and run to some place where they weren't so beastly stuck up. Mr. Woodward, senior, after roaming about disconsolately waiting for the post, was only appeased by Lady George's suggestion that he would be doing yeoman's service to the cause of civilisation if he composed a letter to the Postmaster-General, calling attention to the disgraceful irregularity in her Majesty's mails to Gleneira; whereupon he retired into the library and wasted several sheets of foolscap.

It was on the children, however, that the weather had the most disastrous effect; so much so that Lord George, returning in the afternoon from a blow with Paul--whose patience had given way over a point-blank refusal on the under footman's part to stop another hour if he was not allowed a fire in his room before dinner--found his wife in the nursery standing helplessly before Blazes, who, in his flannel nightgown, was seated stolidly on the floor. Adam and Eve, meanwhile, were eyeing the scene from their beds, where, however, they had a liberal supply of toys.

"Oh, George!" she cried appealingly, "he has such a hard, hard heart; and I am sure he must get it from your side of the family, so _do_ you think you could do anything with him?"

"Put him to bed like the others," suggested his father, weakly, showing signs, at the same time, of beating a retreat, but pausing at the sight of his wife's face, which, to tell the truth, was not far from tears.

"So I have, but he gets out again, and nurse can't hold him in all the time. Besides, it was Mrs. Woodward's fault for being so disagreeable about my system; but the children were naughty, poor dears; only, of course, Adam and Eve went to bed when they were told--you see, they are _reasonable_, and knew that if they _did_ they would be allowed to come down again to dessert--and then they didn't really mind going to bed to please me, the little dears. But Blasius actually slapped Mrs.

Woodward's face, and then she said he ought to be whipped. So we had quite a discussion about it, and, in the heat of the moment, I told Blasius he must stop in bed till he said he was sorry. And now I can't make him stop in bed or say a word. He just sits and smiles."

Here their mother's tone became so unlike smiles that Adam and Eve, from their little beds, begged their ducksom mummie not to cry, even though Blazes was the baddest little boy _they_ had ever seen.

"If he won't say it, you can't make him," remarked Lord George aside, with conviction. "If I were you I'd chance it."

"But I can't. You see, I told Mrs. Woodward I could manage my own children, and so I've made quite a point of it with Blasius. I can't give in."

Lord George, who was in the Foreign Office, and great on diplomatic relations, whistled softly. "Always a mistake to claim when you can't coerce--or retaliate." Then he added, as if a thought had struck him, "Look here! has he had his tea? No! then hand him over to me; I'll put him in the little room by the business room. n.o.body will hear him there even if he does howl, and as he gets hungry he will cave in, I expect. At any rate, he can't get out of bed there, and I don't think he can like it."

But for some unexplained reason, possibly original sin, Blasius elected to be quite cheerful over the transfer. He informed the nurse, as she put on his dressing-gown, that he was going to "'moke with daddy," and when he reached the little bare room, which was almost a closet, he tucked the same dressing-gown round his little legs very carefully as he plumped down on the floor.

"Blazeth's goin' to stay here a long, long time," he said, confidently. "Dood-night, daddy dear."

In fact, he was so quiet that more than once his father, smoking in the next room, got up to open the door softly and peer in to see if by chance any evil could have befallen the small rebel; only to retire finally, quite discomforted by the superior remark that "when Blazeth's horry Blazeth's 'll let daddy know." To retire and meditate upon the mysterious problem of fatherhood, and that duty to the soul which, somehow or another, you have beckoned out of the unknown. In nine times out of ten, thoughtlessly, to suit your own pleasure; in ninety-nine times out of a hundred to bring it up to suit your own convenience, to minister to your amus.e.m.e.nt, to justify your theories.

Lady George, coming in with the falling twilight, when the duties of afternoon tea were over in the drawing-room, found her husband, minus a cigar, brooding over the fire.

"I've done it, Blanche," he said defiantly.

"Done what?"

"Beaten him. I knew I should some day."

His wife gave quite a sharp little cry. "Oh, George! and I trusted you. I trusted you so entirely, because you knew it was wrong. And now it can never be undone--never! You have ruined everything--all the confidence, and the love--Oh! George, how could you?"

The man's face was a study, but it was one which few women could understand, for there is something in a righteous disregard of weakness which seems brutal to most of them; for to them justice, like everything else, is an emotion.

"The little beggar bit me," he began, rather sheepishly, and then suddenly he laughed. "He was awfully quiet, you know, and I thought he was really getting hungry; so I went in, and by Jove! Blanche, he had eaten nearly a whole dog biscuit! Paul keeps them there, you know, for the puppy. Well, I felt he had me on the hip as it were, and if it hadn't been for your face, I'd have given in--like a fool. So I sate down and talked to him--like--like a father. And then he suddenly slipped off my knee like an eel, and bit me on the calf. Got tired, I suppose, and upon my soul, I don't wonder--we had been at it for hours, remember. And then--I don't think I lost my temper, Blanche--I don't, indeed; but it seemed to come home to me that it was he or I--a sort of good fight, you know. So I told him that I wasn't going to be bothered by him any more. He had had his fun, and must pay for it, as he would have to do till the day of his death. And then I gave him a regular spanking--yes! I did--and he deserved it."

There was the oddest mixture of remorse, defiance, pain, and pride in her husband's honest face, but Lady George could see nothing, think of nothing, save the overthrow of her system, her belief.

"I wonder you aren't ashamed of yourself!" she cried, quite pa.s.sionately. "It isn't as if he could reason about it as you can--it isn't as if he understood--it is brute force to him, nothing more----"

"That's just it, you see," protested the culprit, feebly, "if he _could_ reason."

"And now the memory must be between you two always, and it isn't as it used to be in the old barbarous days. Parents nowadays care for something more than the old tyranny. We have a respect for our children as for human beings like ourselves. And now you will never be--or at least you _ought_ never to be able to look him in the face again! Just think what it means, George!" Blanche, as she stood there with disclaiming hands and eloquent voice, felt herself no mean exponent of the new order of things, and rose to the occasion. "If he had been a man, you dared not have beaten him, so it was mean, brutal, unworthy. How can you expect the child to forget it? Would you, if you were in his place? No! He will never forget it, and the memory must come between you----"

"Blazeth's horry."

A round, full, almost manly voice, and a round, broad face, seamed with tears, yet strangely cheerful withal, as if, the bolt having fallen, the sky was clear once more.

Blanche dropped to her knees, and, secure in her own conscience, held out her arms to the little advancing figure, but the child steered past them. It was fact, and fact alone, which impressed the st.u.r.dy brain, which day by day was gathering up its store of experience against the hand-to-hand fight with life, which, please G.o.d, would come by and bye--the life which was no Kindergarten game, the life of strange, unknown dangers, against which the only weapon is the sheer steel of self-control. And this was a little foretaste of the fight in which daddy had won; daddy, who could do nothing but clasp the little figure close to his heart as it climbed to his knee, and then walk away with it to the window to hide his own tears.

His wife, standing where Blasius had pa.s.sed her by, could see those two round, red heads, so strangely like each other, though the one had a shock of rough hair and the other was beginning to grow bald. And she could hear that round full voice with a ring of concern in it.

"Blazeth's horry he hurt daddy such a lot. And daddy hurt Blazeths awful; but he's a dood boy now. And oh, daddy! I don't fink them bickeys is half as nice as daddy's--and Blazeths would like one, becauth he's a dood boy."

The storm was over. The sky was clear, and Lord George, as he carried his youngest born pick-a-back upstairs to the nursery, felt that there was a stronger tie between them than there had ever been before; a strange new tie between him and the little soul he had beckoned out of the unknown--the little soul to whom in future "Daddy says not" would represent that whole concentrated force of law and order from which it was at present sheltered, but which by and bye would be its only teacher. And yet, when brought face to face with his wife's arguments, he, being of the dumb kind, could only say: