Sweethearts at Home Part 22

I would have given all I possessed--not usually much at most--to have accompanied my brother. But a look from father checked me. As you can see from his books, it is not so very long since he was young himself.

Though, of course, he seems fearfully old to us, I know he does not feel that way himself.

So perforce I had to wait patiently, turning over that dreary music till somebody came into the room, and then I was released. I knew it was Elizabeth Fortinbras who was outside, but for all that I did not even go to the door to see.

After what seemed a very long while Hugh John came in. He was looking rather pale.

"Can I go to the Edam Post Office?" he asked. "I shall not be long."

But though he asked politely, he was gone almost before permission could be given.

He told me all about it when he came back. I had been at the window, and had seen Hugh John and Elizabeth Fortinbras ride off together. For any one who saw them there was but one thing to think. They looked so handsome that any other explanation seemed inadmissible. Only we at home knew different.

"Sis," he said, when at last we got out to the gun-room, which father uses occasionally for smoking in, "there never was a girl like Elizabeth Fortinbras!"

At this I whistled softly--a habit for which I am always being checked, and as often forgetting.

"_And what about Cissy Carter?_" I asked.

He looked at me once with a kind of "If-you-have-any-shame-in-thee, girl, prepare-to-shed-it-now" manner, before which I quailed. Then he told me how Elizabeth had ridden out to tell him of the treachery of Meg Linwood. Together they had made out an urgency telegram, had found the post-master, and had dispatched it to Paris that very night.

It said: "_Half silver token lost. If sent you by mischievous persons, please return immediately to its owner, Hugh John Picton Smith._"

"And that, I think, covers the case--she will understand!" said Elizabeth Fortinbras.

But low in her own heart, as she rode up the long steep street to New Erin Villa, she added the rider, "That is, if she is not a goose!"

XXIII

HONOR THY DAUGHTER!

But, alas! Cissy Carter _was_ a goose! In the well-meant telegram she saw only a new machination of the enemy--perhaps even of Elizabeth Fortinbras. And the heart in the Boulevard d'Argenson became, for the moment, sadder than ever. Also Madame asked for an explanation in a tone to which the proud little daughter of Colonel Davenant Carter had been quite unaccustomed. She resented Madame Rolly's interference rather more sharply than wisely. Whereupon she was told that her father would be requested to remove her, if, on the morrow, she was not ready with an explanation, in addition to the apology which Madame, perhaps correctly, considered her due.

Now it chanced that Colonel Carter, finding himself with a week-end to spare in London, had crossed the Channel to give himself the treat (and his daughter the surprise) of dropping in upon her unexpectedly. He could not have come more to the purpose so far as that daughter was concerned. Or more malapropos from the point of view of Madame Rolly.

As many people know, the good Colonel, once the devoted slave of Sir Toady Lion, was occasionally exceedingly peppery. And when he arrived with his pockets bulging with good things, only to find "his little girl" in tears--and, indeed, brought hastily down from the room in which she had been locked--his military ardor exploded.

"If, Madame," he is reported to have said, "I am to understand that you cannot keep discipline without having resort to methods more suitable to a boy of eight than to a young lady of eighteen, it is time that I undertook the responsibility myself! Cecilia, go up to your room. I will settle with Madame. And by the time that is done--the--ah--baggage-cart will be at the door--as sure as my name is G-rrrrrumph--G-rrrumph--G-rrrummph!"

And, indeed, the "baggage-cart" (in the shape of a small omnibus) was at the door. Although really, you know, the Colonel's name was not as he himself affirmed.

"And now, Missy," growled the Colonel in his finest Full-Bench-of-Justices manner, "kindly tell me what you have been doing!"

For, very characteristically, the Colonel, though entirely declining to listen to a word of accusation against his daughter from Madame Rolly, reserved to himself the right of distributing an even-handed justice afterwards. His method on such occasions is just the reverse of father's, as we have all learned to our cost. Our father would have listened gravely to all that Madame had to recount of our misdeeds. Then he would have nodded, remarked, "You did perfectly right, Madame! In anything that you may propose, I will support you--so long, that is, as I judge it best that my child shall remain at your school!" For father's first principle in all such matters is, "Support authority--receive or make no complaints--and, above all, work out your own salvation, my young friend!"

And though it sometimes looks a bit hard at the time, as Hugh John says, "It prepares a fellow for taking his own part in the world, as you soon find you have jolly well to do if you mean to get on."

But Cissy knew her father, and promptly set herself to cry as heartbrokenly as she could manage on such short notice. Colonel Davenant Carter gazed at her a moment with a haughty and defiant expression. But as Toady Lion had once said of him, "I teached him to come the High Horsicle wif ME!" So now, as the rickety omnibus jogged and swayed over the Parisian cobbles, Cissy wept ever more bitterly, till the old soldier had to entreat her to stop. They would, so it appeared, soon be at his hotel. Even now they were pa.s.sing his club, and "that old gossiping beast, Repton Reeves," was at the window. If it got about that he, Colonel Davenant Carter, had been seen driving down the Rue de Rivoli with a damsel drowned in floods of tears--why, by all the bugles of Balaclava, he would never hear the end of it. He might as well resign at the club. All which, as Cissy sobbed out in the French language, was "exceedingly equal" to her! But it was very far indeed from being "egal" to the peppery Colonel. And at last, as the sobs increased in carry and volume, he was reduced to the ignominious expedient of personal bribery.

"Look here, Cissy," he said in tremulous tones, "we absolutely _can't_ go into the courtyard of the Grand Hotel like this! Now, if you will be a good girl, and will stop this instant, I will drive you up the Rue de la Paix, and there I will buy----!"

"_What?_" said Cissy, looking up with eyes that still brimmed ready for action.

"A gold bracelet!" said her father tentatively, but still quite uncertain of his effect.

"Boohoo!" said Cissy Carter, dropping her face once more between her hands.

"Goodness gracious," cried the Colonel, invoking his favorite divinity, "what can the girl want? A gold watch, then?"

"Real gold this time, then!" said Cissy, who had been "had" once before, and, even with an aching heart, was properly cautious.

"You shall do the choosing yourself!" said her father, thinking that he had conquered. But Cissy knew her opportunity--and the relative whom fate had given her. The tears welled again. Her bosom was shaken by timely sobs.

"Well, what then, Celia--really, this becomes past bearing! Why, we are nearly at the hotel!"

Cissy glanced up quickly. "A gold bracelet _with_ a gold watch, then!"

she sighed gently.

And this is the truth, and the whole truth, as to why Colonel Davenant Carter gave his arm to a radiant and beautiful daughter in the courtyard of the Grand Hotel--a daughter, also, who lifted up a prettily-gloved hand (twelve b.u.t.tons), and at every fourth step _looked at the time_!

XXIV

CISSY'S MEANNESS

Miss Cecilia Davenant Carter had been at home a good many weeks before she came to see me. Of course Hugh John was now at college, and doubtless that made a difference. But she had never stayed away so long before, and whatever reason Cissy might have to be angry with Master Hugh John, she had not the least right to take it out on ME!

However, she came at last--chiefly, I think, to show me the gold watch on her wrist. This she wanted so badly to do that it must have hurt her dreadfully to stay away as long as she did. So she sat fingering it, but not running to ask me to admire it, as a girl naturally does. Of course I took no notice, though it made me feel mean. We talked about the woods and the autumn tints (schoolgirls always like these two words--they remind them that it is the season for blackberries and jam), till at last I was thoroughly ashamed of myself. So I went over to Cissy, and said, "I think that's the prettiest bracelet I ever saw in all my life!"

And she said, "Do you?" looking up at me funnily. "Do you really?" she repeated the words, looking straight at me.

"Yes, I do indeed!" I answered. And--what do you think?--the next moment she was crying on my shoulder! Of course I understood. Every girl will, without needing to be told. And as for men (and "Old Cats"), it is no use attempting to explain to them. They never could know just how we two felt.

But Cissy had really nothing in the least "catty" about her. "Quite the reverse, I a.s.sure _you_!" as the East Country folk say. She even took it off and let me try it on without ever warning me to be careful with it.

And that, you know, is a good deal for a girl who is "not friends" with your own brother, and has only had a new "real-gold" watch-bracelet for three or four weeks.

But then, Cissy could never be calm and restful like Elizabeth Fortinbras. Cissy did everything in a rush, and so, I suppose, got somehow closer to the heart of our impa.s.sive Hugh John just on that account. Elizabeth Fortinbras was too like my brother to touch him "where he lived," as Sir Toady would say.

Well, after a while Cissy stopped crying, and took my handkerchief without a word and quite as a matter of course (which showed as clearly as anything how things stood between us).

Then she said, "Priss, do you know, I did an awfully mean thing, and I want you to help me to make it all right again!"