Sweethearts at Home Part 23

In a book, of course (a proper book, I mean), I ought to have asked Ciss all sorts of questions, and said that in everything which did not affect the honor of the house of Picton Smith I was at her service. And so on.

But of course ordinary girls don't talk like that now-a-days. If you have what our sweet Maid calls a "snarl" against anybody--why, mostly every one plays hockey now, and it is the simplest thing in the world to "take a drive at her shins, and say how sorry you are afterwards"! So at least (the Maid informs me) some girls, who shall be nameless, have been known to do at her school.

I waited for Cissy to tell me of the dreadfully mean thing she had done.

But of course I a.s.sured her first that, whatever it was--yes, _whatever_--I should do just what she wanted done to help her. For I knew she would do the same for me.

Then she told me that in her first anger about the telegram--for she had been far more angry about that than about the sending back the other half of the crooked sixpence--a thing which really mattered a thousand times more (but of course that was exactly like a girl!)--she had put the telegram, and both parts of the crooked sixpence, and all of Hugh John's letters she could find--chiefly the short and simple annals of a Rugby "forward"--in a lozenge-box--and (here Cissy dropped her voice) _sent them all, registered, to Elizabeth Fortinbras_!

XXV

"NOT EVEN HUGH JOHN!"

"To Elizabeth--Elizabeth Fortinbras!" I cried. Here was a new difficulty. If only people would not do things in a hurry, as Hugh John says, they would mostly end by not doing them at all!

"What sort of a girl is this Elizabeth Fortinbras?" Cissy Carter asked.

"She is only a shop-girl after all, isn't she?"

I set Cissy right on this head. There were shop-girls _and_ shop-girls.

And this one not only came of a respectable ancestry, but had been well educated, was the heiress of Erin Villa, and would succeed to one of the best businesses in Edam!

"Is she pretty?"

Oh, of course I had foreseen the question. It was quite inevitable, and there was but one thing to say--

"Come to the shop and see for yourself!"

But Cissy hung back. You see, she had done a perfectly mad thing, and yet was not quite ready to make it up with the person concerned--especially when Cissy was Colonel Davenant Carter's only daughter just home from Paris, and when, in spite of my explanations, Elizabeth was little more to her than a "girl behind a counter"!

You may be sure that I put her duty before her--yes, plainly and with point. But Cissy had in her all the pride of the Davenant Carters, and go she would not, till I told her plump and plain that she was afraid!

My, how that made her jump! She turned a little pale, rose quietly, adjusted her hat at the mirror, took off her watch-bracelet and gave it to me to keep for her.

"I will go and see this Elizabeth Fortinbras now--and alone!" she said, with that nice quiet dignity which became her so well. I would greatly have liked to have gone along with her. But, first of all, she had not asked me, and, secondly, I knew that I had better not.

Cissy Carter had to see Elizabeth alone. Only they could arrange matters. Still, of course, both of them told me all about it afterwards, and it is from these two narratives that the following short account is written out.

Elizabeth was in the front shop, busy as a bee among the sweet things, white-ap.r.o.ned, and wearing dainty white armlets of linen which came from the wrist to above the elbow. Then these two looked at each other as only girls do--or perhaps more exactly, attractive young women of about the same age. Boys are different--they behave just like strange dogs on being introduced, sulky and ready to snarl. A young man seems to be wondering how such a contemptible fellow as that other fellow could possibly have gained admittance to a respectable house. Only experienced women can manage the business properly, putting just the proper amount of cordiality into the bow and handshake. Grown men--most of them, that is--allow their natural feeling of boredom to appear too obviously.

At any rate Cissy and Elizabeth took in each other at a glance, far more searching and exhaustive as to "points" than ever any man's could be.

Then they bowed to each other very coldly.

"Will you come this way?" said Elizabeth, instantly discerning that Cissy had not come to New Erin Villa as a customer. Accordingly she led the way into the little sitting-room, all in pale creamy _cretonne_ with old-fashioned roses scattered upon it, which her own taste and the full purse of Ex-Butcher Donnan had provided for her.

"Be good enough to take a seat," said Elizabeth Fortinbras. But she herself remained standing.

Now you never can tell by which end a girl--or a woman, for that matter--will tackle anything. All that you can be sure of is that it will not be the obvious and natural one--the one nearest her hand. So Cissy, instead of coming right out with her confession and having done with it, began by asking Elizabeth if she knew a Mr. Hugh John Picton Smith.

"He is my friend!" said Elizabeth, very quiet and grave, standing with one hand in the pocket of her ap.r.o.n and the other hanging easily by her side.

"And nothing more?" said Cissy, looking up at her very straight.

"I must first know by what right you ask me that question!" said Elizabeth. And then, her lips quivering (I know exactly how) a long minute between pride and pitifulness, Cissy did the best thing in the world she could have done to soften Elizabeth Fortinbras. She struggled an instant with herself. Her pride gave way exactly as it had with me, and she began to sob quietly and continuously.

Elizabeth took one step towards her. Presently her cool, strong arms were about Cissy's neck, who struggled a second or two like a captive bird, and then the next Elizabeth was soothing her like an elder sister.

"Yes, dear, I know--I know! You did a foolish thing. But then it was to me. I understood! I understand! It does not matter! No one else need know!"

Then, in a voice quiet as the falling of summer rain among the misty isles of the West, Elizabeth added, "_Not even Hugh John!_"

XXVI

HAUNTS REVISITED

I think we were all a bit unstrung after this. It was a good many weeks before Cissy could bring herself to speak about Elizabeth Fortinbras, and then it was in a rush, as, indeed, she did everything. It was one afternoon, over at Young Mrs. Winter's. Mrs. Christopher Camsteary (who always was as superior as a p.u.s.s.y-cat with a new blue ribbon about her neck, all because her husband kept three gardeners, one of whom blacked the Camsteary boots) happened to remark that there was "a rather ladylike girl" in those butcher-people's sweet-shop opposite the station.

"She _is_ a lady!" said Cissy Carter, lifting up her proud little chin with an air of finality.

And, indeed, there was, in Edam at least, no discussing with Miss Davenant Carter on such a matter. Mrs. Christopher Camsteary, whose husband, greatly to his credit, had made a large fortune in cattle-feeding oilcake ("in the wholesale, of course, you know, my dear!"), could not, even if she had wished, contradict the daughter of ten generations of Davenant Carters as to who was a lady and who not! So it was settled that, whenever Cissy Carter was in the room, Elizabeth Fortinbras was a lady. Which must have been a great comfort to her!

Well, the following summer-time when the good days came--perhaps because everybody, including even Hugh John, was a little tired and "edgy"--father took us all off to his own country.

I was the one who had seen the most of it before, as you may see if ever you have read the book called _Sweetheart Travelers_ that father wrote about our gypsyings and goings-on. Of course (all our family say "of course"--and it all fills up first-rate when the man comes to count the pages up for printing)--well, of course I had forgotten a good deal about it, only I read over the book on the sly, and so was posted for everything as it came along.

This time we did not go on "The-Old-Homestead-on-Wheels," as we called the historic tricycle, but in the nicest and biggest of all wagonettes, with two lovely horses driven by a friend of ours with a cleverness which did one's heart good to see. His name was "Jim." We called him so from the first, and he was dreadfully nice to all of us, because he had been at school with father. This made us think for a good while that it was because of his superior goodness and cleverness there that so many people were glad to remember that they had been at school with father.

Jim, when we asked him, said that it was so, but Hugh John immediately smelt a rat. So he asked another and yet older friend of father's, named Ma.s.sa--because, I think, he sang negro melodies so beautifully. (Who would have thought that they sang "c.o.o.n" songs so long ago?--but I suppose it was really just a kind of "boot-room music," or the sort of thing they play on board trip-steamers, when the trombone is away taking up a collection, and everybody is moving to the other side of the deck!) Well, Ma.s.sa came along with us and Jim one lovely Sat.u.r.day to see the place where my great-grandmother had kept sheep "on the bonny banks of the Cluden" a full hundred years ago.

Somehow I always liked that. It means more to a girl than even father's misdeeds, the hearing about which amuses the boys so.

However, it really was about those that I began. So, reluctantly, I must leave the little hundred-year-old girl keeping her sheep on the green holms of Cluden, and tell about father and his wonderful influence.

Ma.s.sa said that we were not to tell on him, and of course we promised.

This is not _telling_, but only writing all about it down in my Diary--quite a different thing. Well, Ma.s.sa said that when "Mac" and he had "done anything," they used to climb up different trees as quickly as they could, and then, when father came after them (he was not our father then, of course, but only Roman Dictator and Tyrant of Syracuse), he could only get one of them. For while he was climbing the tree occupied by one, the other could drop out of the branches and cut and run. It was a good way, especially for Number Two, who got away--not quite so fine, though, for Number One, who was caught. Whenever a new boy visited the town and the Dictator was seen coming along, they ran the stranger up a tree and introduced him from there, as it were, lest, by mistake, a worse thing should befall him! Really it is difficult to believe all this, even when Ma.s.sa swears it. Because father, if you let his pet books alone and don't make too big a row outside the _chalet_ when he is working, hardly minds at all what you do. We don't really recognize him in the Roaring Lion, going about seeking whom he might devour, of Mr.

Ma.s.sa's legends.

So Sir Toady, in the interests of public information, asked Mr. Ma.s.sa if the boys of that time were not pretty bad. And Mr. Ma.s.sa said that they were, but that "they were not a patch on your----" He stopped just at the word "your," for father was coming round the corner. And, do you know, I don't believe he has quite lost his influence with Mr. Ma.s.sa even now. It is a fine thing, Hugh John says, to be such a power for good among your fellows. He had that sort of power himself at school, and he managed to keep it, even though fellows ever so much bigger came while he was there.

Well, no matter; what I keep really in my heart, or maybe like an amulet about my neck, is the memory of the little hundred-year-old girl (that is, she _would_ be if she were alive now) tending sheep and twining daisy-chains on the meadows by the Water of Cluden, with the Kirk of Iron-gray glinting through the trees, and Helen Walker (which is to say Jeanie Deans) calling in the cows to be milked at the farm across the burn.

Now I don't know how _you_ feel, but the story of this great-grandmother of mine always seems sort of kind and warm and sacred to me, a mixture of the stillness of an old-fashioned Sabbath and the first awakening hush when you remember that it is your birthday--a sort of religious fairyland, if you know what I mean--like "playing house" (oh, such a long time ago!) with Puck and Ariel and the Queen of the Fairies, while several of the very nicest people out of the Bible stories sat in the shade and watched--perhaps Ruth and, of course, her mother-in-law, and David when he was very young, and kept sheep also. He would certainly come to see our play--his shepherd's crook in his hand, and his eye occasionally taking a survey of great-grandmother's flocks and herds to see that there were no lions or bears about!

Yes, I know it's fearfully silly. Of course it is. But, all the same, I have oftener put myself happily to sleep thinking about that, and with the music of the Cluden Water low in my ear, than with all the wisdom that ever I learned at school! So there!