Sweethearts at Home Part 12

You simply can't surprise Hugh John. A momentary glitter in a pair of rather close-lidded gray eyes--that is the most you can expect from him.

It was at the stile at the entrance into the High Wood that I found them. Elizabeth Fortinbras was seated on the top spar nursing her knees, and sucking the sorrel stems which Hugh John handed up one by one. They never looked at one another, but I saw in a moment (trust a girl!) that I would interrupt their talk. Just fancy _me_ playing gooseberry! No, thank you, kind sir, she said! Besides, I knew very well that Elizabeth did not consult her father--and her mother was not worth consulting.

There remained only Hugh John. Of course she could have asked me, but what girl would have taken my advice when she could get Hugh John's?

I don't know what they said--of course not. I did not ask. But what I _do_ know is that Elizabeth and Hugh John talked just as he and I would have done when taking counsel together up in the Cave or at the Feudal Tower.

Sir Toady was better advised than to attempt to make fun, and though the Grown-ups might lift their eyebrows, even they had confidence in Hugh John. Sometimes they asked his advice themselves--though I never heard of their going so far as to take it. Grown-ups, to my thinking, get narrow-minded. Perhaps Hugh John will too some day. But now at least he always just sees the one thing to do, and does it--the one thing another ought to do, and tells him of it.

Well, he never went to the new confectionery shop. He would pa.s.s it without lifting an eyelid--though I will wager that each time he did so Elizabeth Fortinbras saw him--and Hugh John knew that she did. And each was the happier for the knowledge.

To me Elizabeth's determination seemed to brighten all that part of Edam. It was quite near our house, only just outside the gates. Behind the counter Elizabeth made a slender figure in black and white. Black dress well fitting, a present from Mrs. Donnan, large turn-back cuffs, and a broad Eton collar. It was no wonder that the business throve--I mean the business which was under the charge of Elizabeth Fortinbras.

The other "down town" suffered exceedingly.

You see, Nipper Donnan could not be in two places at the one time. And he found he had innumerable occasions to consult his father, or to have something mended by his mother. He could not possibly obtain the information or the reparations down town. Hence he spent much of his time hanging about the new confectionery shop opposite the Market hill.

He became learned in the semoph.o.r.e signaling of the trains on the two little railways which diverged at Edam Junction. These he explained to Elizabeth.

His step-mother secretly encouraged him. Nothing would have pleased her better than for Nipper to "settle down" with such a daughter-in-law. But she knew, perhaps better than his own mother would have done, that this strong, incult, fighting Nipper had little chance with a girl like Elizabeth Fortinbras, whose chief friend and confidant was a certain gray-eyed lad with a perpendicular frown of thought between his brows.

But Nipper kept on. He thrashed one Hector McLean for blowing a kiss towards the shop-window from the far side of the Market d.y.k.e. All day long he thought what high and n.o.ble thing he could do for Elizabeth's sake--such as having marble slabs, and water running all the time between double plate-gla.s.s, or dressing all his a.s.sistants in blue, fresh and fresh every day! You see, Nipper's imagination was limited.

But once or twice his father came in and surprised him leaning over the counter. He regarded his son for a moment with dull, murky eyes; and then, quite abruptly, ordered him out. The third time this happened he followed Nipper outside and explained to him the consequences of this malingering--_imprimis_, he would get his head broken. _Item_, he would be "backward with his term installment"! _Tertio_, if he were, he need expect no mercy from his father; and in conclusion, he had better "get out of that, and stay out!" He, Butcher Donnan, was not a fool. He knew all about what he was after, if the womenfolk did not! And he was not going to have it! There! Nipper was warned!

His comings and goings did not, indeed, make much difference to Elizabeth. Often he was a nuisance, "lounging and suffering"--looking, as she said afterwards, "like a blue undertaker attached to a steel-yard." His expression spoiled sales. He looked acid drops. His jealousies poisoned the very strawberry shortcake on which Mrs. Donnan's heart prided itself.

On the other hand, he was useful when there were heavy weights to be lifted, boxes of materials for the little store-room at the back.

Elizabeth could not move these, so she had either to unpack them on the street, or wait till Butcher Donnan drove his blue-and-gold wagon into the yard.

But Nipper delighted to show his strength, and would pick up a huge case, swing it on his shoulder, and deposit it wherever told. These were his moments of great joy, and almost repaid him for not being able to eat.

For Nipper's appet.i.te had suffered. He indulged himself in startling neckties, and, as his girth shrank, the waistcoats which contained it became more and more gorgeous.

Poor Nipper! He could only gaze and wonder--that is, when there was no lifting to be done. His tongue forsook him when called upon to answer the simplest remark. When Elizabeth, taking pity upon him, asked about his week's receipts, he answered vaguely that he did not know.

Hearing this, she turned about, bearing a tray full of almond-cake fresh from Mrs. Donnan's hand, and said, "Nipper, do you mean to say you do not keep track of your sales? Why, you will get cheated right and left.

Bring the books up to-night and I will go over them for you!"

To Nipper this seemed an opportunity too good to be lost. He imagined their two heads bent over the records of the down town shop, and perhaps also in time a corresponding approachment of ideas.

Beautiful dream! Foredoomed to failure, however. For Elizabeth, after a few questions, took up the books to her own room, and on the morrow furnished the disappointed Nipper with a few startling statistics as to receipts and expenditure.

"And what would you advise me to do?" said Nipper humbly.

"Oh, I don't know," said Elizabeth. "Ask Hugh John from the House in the Wood. He will tell you, if anybody can. He advised me to come to help your mother. If it had not been for him, I should not have been here now!"

The gleam of jealousy (which is yellow, and not green) in his eyes altered Nipper's countenance completely.

"Ah, Hugh John indeed!" he thought. That, then, was the explanation, was it? This coldness was owing to Hugh John--a boy, little more than a boy--while he, Nipper, was a man, a Councillor, with a shop and income of his own!

Yet he remembered, when he was already well-nigh Hugh John's present age, and the c.o.c.k of all Edam, tying a pale-faced, determined little boy to a ring in a wall down in the dungeon of an ancient castle. He had determined then to make the cub give in, and there had been some sick work with string-twisting and wire-pincers. He did not care to think about that. But even then the cub had beaten them all. They had been good friends since--that is, in a way. But was it written in the Book of Fate (in which Nipper believed) that they should fight for the mastery on another and far more dangerous arena? It seemed preposterous, but still--well, he would see Hugh John and put the case to him, as Elizabeth had said.

Then, so Nipper told himself, he would know! Well--_he might_--supposing that Hugh John had been even as the young butcher, blushing half-a-mile away when a lissom, upright form and gait as of wind-blown corn told the world the important news (for Nipper Donnan) that Elizabeth Fortinbras was coming up the street in a hurry.

Hugh John listened quietly. Bygones were long bygones between him and Nipper. The "smoutchies" smoutched no more, but were (most of them) good servants of the King or honorable citizens of Edam. Already one wore the V. C., and for his sake and in the general interests of peace Hugh John tolerated those who remained. He even liked Nipper Donnan, and had no idea of the gusts of angry fury that were tearing his poor ignorant heart to pieces.

"Advise you--well, I don't know much about it," said Hugh John. "If it is a matter of your books, you had better show them to your father. No?

You don't want to do that. Very well, then, tell me what Elizabeth Fortinbras said--exactly, I mean."

"Said I was to come to you--tell you about the week's deficit, and ask your advice."

"Then you must tell me _all_ about it!" said Hugh John, calmly impartial. Nipper gave some figures of entrances and exits, marts and sales, gross, retail, and monthly book-debts.

"Hum!" said Hugh John, after a minute's thought, "if I were you I should get rid of the whole indoor crowd, and work the business myself for a month or two, with a couple of 'prentices _and_ the toe of my boot!"

Hugh John's eyes were distant, grave, thoughtful--Nipper's little, black, and virulent with suppressed anger. But the Thinker had grown man of action also, and Nipper felt no security that he could win a victory against Hugh John even with his fists. As to the mind, he felt instinctively the grip of his master. _That_ was not to be gainsaid.

"Yes," he said, jerking out his words like leaden pellets on a table, "I suppose that _is_ the plan. I will fire the whole lot this very night!"

Hugh John nodded quietly.

"It will be best!" he said, and the advice once given, his mind would have pa.s.sed to another question had not Nipper recalled him suspiciously.

"Has my father not been speaking to you?" he growled ungraciously.

"Your father? No, not that I remember!" said Hugh John, staring in wonder.

"Nor my--Mrs. Donnan, I mean?"

"Never spoke to her in my life, I believe--Sis has, though!"

"_Nor Elizabeth?_"

Nipper's eyes were like gimlets now, but the calm serenity in those of Hugh John baffled them.

"Elizabeth Fortinbras? Oh, yes," said Hugh John tranquilly, "when she wants to ask me about anything--as you are doing now--then she speaks to me."

"_Is that all?_" Nipper's face worked. His lips were bitten so close that the words had almost to force themselves between the clenched teeth. Hugh John regarded him a moment gravely, as he did all things, with gaze unhurried, undismayed. Then he put his hands in his pockets and turned his back on Nipper with only the words, "Enough for you to know, anyway!"

And if ever Nipper came near striking any one a dastardly blow from behind, it was Hugh John who was in danger and at that moment.

XII

FIGS AND FIG-LEAVES

_September 23. And my Age still going Sixteen._

It was the week before Hugh John went to college that what I am going to tell took place. September is almost always nice about Edam--with the corn standing white in stooks all down the valley, waving blonde half-way up the sides of the wide glen, and looking over into it from the heights of Kingside still as green as gra.s.s. Yes, in our part September is wonderfully quiet and windless--generally, that is. Yet withal, there is the stir of harvest about the farm-town, the merry whirr of the "reaper" over the hedge, and always the clatter of voices as the workers go homeward in the twilight. The big scythe is now only used about our house for "opening up" a field. After that the horses pull the red-and-blue "McCormick" round as neatly as a toy. The squares get less and the yellow stooks rise, as it were, out of the very ground.