Two Maiden Aunts Part 14

'You are very like your mother, Angelica, very like indeed.'

I don't think there could have been a merrier party than that Christmas dinner party at Oakfield Place.

Captain Maitland held the same opinion as a wise man who once said that 'it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas time, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.' And the captain had the power of not only being quite childishly happy himself, but of making those about him feel the same. The room was all bright with holly, and when pretty Patty had brought in the Christmas goose, and the captain had handed Angelica with courtly politeness to her place on his right hand, he set himself to keep the whole party laughing, and succeeded very well. For he told stories about Christmases at sea, and days when he was a boy at Oakfield Place, and got into sc.r.a.pes and out again like other boys who had not grown up into heroes. And then he positively asked Mr. Crayshaw if he hadn't some stories of sc.r.a.pes to tell, now that they were all making confessions. And before Betty's eyes had got back to their natural size, after her amazement at the idea of Cousin Crayshaw in a sc.r.a.pe, that gentleman was answering, with a sort of little cackle which really was almost a laugh, that he did remember once being out after time on a half-holiday, and finding the school-gate shut and climbing over it, and that his coat caught on the top and he hung there till it tore.

And at the thought of Cousin Crayshaw hanging on a nail, Betty at any rate hid her face and laughed till she cried, and I believe Angel wasn't far behind her, and, most wonderful of all, Cousin Crayshaw didn't mind a bit. And when dinner was over, and they had drunk to 'Present Company' and 'Absent Friends,' and Mr. Crayshaw had proposed 'The Navy' in quite a fine speech, and Captain Maitland had proposed 'The Law' in a still finer one, then Patty came in with a twinkle in her eyes and moved away the table and pushed the chairs against the walls. And then the captain remarked that it was a cold night, and wouldn't it be a good thing if they were to warm their feet a little?

And the next minute there was the sound of Kiah's wooden leg in the pa.s.sage, and there he was with his fiddle, and the Rogers, all in their Sunday clothes, just behind him. And Patty ran to put down a line of mats, because wooden legs were not good for polished floors. And the captain made Angel such a bow, as if she had been Queen Charlotte herself, and hoped she would put up with an awkward old sailor for a partner, and he was sure Pete would show them the way with Miss Betty.

And G.o.dfrey did his very best to copy the captain as he gave his hand to Nancy. And then happened the most wonderful thing that ever had happened in Oakfield, for as Kiah struck up 'Off she goes!' Mr.

Crayshaw suddenly went up to fair-haired Patty, who hardly knew where to look, and told her he had not danced for twenty years, but Christmas seemed the time for a frolic, and he would ask her to help him.

Then, when even Nancy and G.o.dfrey were breathless, there came in one of Martha's best cakes and a big plate full of oranges. And the captain called upon Kiah for a song, which Kiah sang readily enough, and played for himself, too, on the fiddle, with the music a good way behind the words. And then they all joined in the chorus of 'Hearts of Oak,' and after that Angel's sweet voice started 'G.o.d rest you, merry gentlemen.'

And then out with the lights and in with the blazing dish of snap-dragon! How valiant G.o.dfrey was in pulling out plums for every one; how very, very nearly Betty set her lace ruffles on fire; what queer shadows the flickering light threw on the wall, and how strange the eager faces looked when the captain threw a handful of salt on the fire and the flame burnt blue, while Nancy got half frightened and hid behind Patty's skirts! But at last all the raisins had been pulled out and the fire was dying, and positively there was the clock striking ten! What a time of night for G.o.dfrey and Nancy to be out of bed!

But, as the captain said, who looks at the clock at Christmas time? So Martha and her daughters curtsied themselves out of the room, and Mr.

Crayshaw stood at the door talking quite cheerily with old Kiah, while Betty kept Pete back a minute to ask about her linnet, which was ill--Pete knew so much about birds.

G.o.dfrey had climbed into the window seat, and was peeping between the curtains to see if it looked like another frost.

'Look at the stars, Aunt Angel dear, aren't they bright? Is the Wise Men's Star there still, do you suppose? That's the Plough, isn't it?

If one was up in the Plough could one see Oakfield, do you think?'

'I used to like to think one could,' said the captain, who had come up behind them. 'Many's the time, when I was a little bit of a middy, I used to watch the stars and feel quite friendly to them because they could see home. And the Plough, when I could see it, was a real old friend, I knew the look of it so well from this window.'

'I shall do that when I'm a middy,' said G.o.dfrey gravely, 'and I shall think of them seeing my aunts and Oakfield, and they'll think of them seeing me.'

'So you've quite made up your mind to be a middy?' said the captain, with a hand on G.o.dfrey's shoulder.

'Quite,' said the little boy earnestly; 'Aunt Angel says everybody must be useful, like you and Kiah, and she's teaching me to be. I'm like her's and Aunt Betty's little oak-tree, and they hope I shall grow up a very brave sailor. But she's really braver than me, for she says it will be very hard for her not to mind when the Frenchies shoot my leg off, and I don't think I shall mind much.'

Angel's cheeks were crimson at hearing her own words repeated. She looked so very sweet and womanly as she sat there in the window.

They had not lighted the candles again, and only the flickering fire-light played about her, touching her white dress and the curly locks, knotted up high behind her head, with the gleaming pearls among them.

The captain stroked G.o.dfrey's hair.

'Ay, little man,' he said, 'the bravest hearts are the ones we leave at home; and more shame to us that we're not finer fellows when they take so much thought for us.'

Just then Betty called G.o.dfrey, and he ran to bid Pete good-night. The captain stood looking after him.

'His Majesty's navy will be the richer for that lad one day, Miss Angelica,' he said.

Angel flushed with pleasure.

'I do hope so,' she said simply; 'Betty and I are almost afraid sometimes when we think what we want him to be, and that there is only us to teach him and fit him for it.'

'I don't think you need be afraid,' said Captain Maitland quietly; 'the navy is a rough school, Miss Angelica, but so is the world all over, I fancy, and I've known plenty of men who've lived and died on board as pure and simple as if they'd never left home. And they were mostly men who'd such a home life as your little lad to stick by them and keep them straight. Never mind about special training, just give him something to steer by, and trust me he won't go far wrong.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: Chapter VI tailpiece]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Chapter VII headpiece]

CHAPTER VII

HERO AND HEROINES

'For though she meant to be brave and good, When he played a hero's part, Yet often the thought of the leg of wood Hung heavy on her heart.'--A.

Well, Christmas time, like all good things, had to come to an end, and so did the captain's stay at Oakfield. The village seemed very dull for a while after he went. Nancy cried bitterly when she said good-bye to him, and indeed so did Patty, and I fancy Betty shed a few tears in Miss Jane's arbour, she ran away there in such a hurry after watching the captain start, and came back with such red rings round her eyes.

Good-bye is a hard word at any time, and harder still in war time, when it is overshadowed by that unspoken dread lest no future greeting should come in which the parting may be forgotten. As for G.o.dfrey, when the captain was gone he went over to the Place and sat down in the kitchen by the side of Kiah. Kiah would miss the captain more than any one, but the worst part of the going to him was that he was not going too.

'You and me, young master,' he said to G.o.dfrey, as the child sat on a low stool looking up at him, 'our orders is to bide in port. Only you're fitting for a cruise, you see, sir, and I'm just a hulk that'll never be seaworthy again. It don't become us to be asking questions about our orders, we'd better just get to work and do what we can, so I'll be off and chop a bit of firewood for Martha.'

'And I'll go home and learn my spelling,' said G.o.dfrey.

And, indeed, he was back in the parlour and at work before Betty came to look for him, on which she gave herself one of her indignant scoldings, telling herself that G.o.dfrey was ten times more fit to be her bachelor uncle than she was to be his maiden aunt.

And so the little household at the cottage went back to the quiet life in which Christmas had made such a pleasant break. Angel and Betty read French and history together, and helped Penny in the kitchen, and taught G.o.dfrey, and walked with him, and mended for him and built castles in the air for him when he was in bed and asleep; and G.o.dfrey learnt his lessons and played with Nancy, and spent all the time he could with Kiah, and in the twilight sat crushed up between his aunts in the great arm-chair and talked about what he would do when he was big and a sailor. Cousin Crayshaw came down every other Sat.u.r.day and stayed till Monday, and Betty asked herself, as she watched him reading his paper in the evening, whether he could be indeed the same Cousin Crayshaw who had climbed over the school gate, and had danced 'hands across and back again' with Patty for his partner. But, though Cousin Crayshaw did not tell school stories or indulge in country dances at the cottage, still the remembrance of that evening was a link between himself and his young cousins which none of them could forget. The girls did not seem to respect him less because they were less afraid of him and because they ventured to talk about their own pleasures and interests in his presence, and indeed now and then he would ask questions himself, would even call G.o.dfrey to him and want to know about his lessons and how he managed to amuse himself. And as the days got longer the three would coax him into the garden to look at their flowers coming up, and one day Betty boldly offered him an auricula for his b.u.t.ton-hole. And though he seemed a little doubtful at first as to whether such an ornament would become a grave and sober person like himself, yet he let her put it in for him, and after that there was never a Sunday that some flower did not appear on his plate at breakfast, placed there by each of the three in turn. One evening, while he was reading the paper, he looked up to see Angel standing by his chair.

'Please, Cousin Crayshaw,' she said, with the colour coming into her cheeks, 'might I read to you for a little while, if you think I could read well enough?'

'It wouldn't interest you, Angelica,' said her cousin in surprise.

'Oh yes, it would,' pleaded Angel, 'especially if--if you would explain about it to us a little. We think, Betty and G.o.dfrey and I, that we know so dreadfully little about the affairs of the country, and every one ought to care about their country, oughtn't they? and we want to understand about the war, because, you see, we must care about our soldiers and sailors, and Captain Maitland is there, you know.'

And so Mr. Crayshaw, with a half-amused smile, let her try, and positively found Betty's eager questions very interesting, and really enjoyed explaining difficulties with Angelica's earnest eyes looking up at him, so that the little household at the cottage became quite politicians, and followed the army and the fleet on the map with the deepest interest. And Pete's prediction was fulfilled, for Captain Maitland actually found time to write G.o.dfrey a most interesting letter, which lived in G.o.dfrey's pocket and slept under his pillow at night, till it tore to pieces in the folds, after which Angel mended it with paste, and it was locked into a box upstairs of which G.o.dfrey kept the key, lest thieves should get into the house and steal it. They were stirring times, those first years of our nineteenth century, when the news from abroad was of fierce struggles by land and sea, when the talk by the fireside and in the village streets was of an invasion that might be, when Englishmen would have to stand shoulder to shoulder, and fight on their own thresholds for country and home. All these things, the battles and the sieges, the plans and counter-plans, the great names of men who helped to change the fate of Europe, we read in our history books.

The shadow of the war, the anxiety about the present and fear about the future, must have hung like a cloud over our country in those years, and yet, notwithstanding, life went on quietly in the homes which the great danger was threatening, and people worked and played and laughed, and cared more on the whole about their own small affairs than about the big affairs of Europe. And so, though those years when England's enemies were watching her across the narrow seas, and wise men were planning and brave men fighting for her liberties, are so interesting in the history books, there is not very much to tell about the good folks at Oakfield. In those days, when no one had begun to think about railways, country people left home very little, and the changes of the seasons, sowing and reaping, hay-time and harvest, made the chief events of their lives; and though it seemed very important to Oakfield, it wouldn't be very interesting to any one else to hear of the wonderful apple crop in the orchard at the Place, or of how the miller's pony strayed away on the common and was lost for two days, or of how G.o.dfrey and Nancy missed their way when out blackberrying, and came home after dark to find the aunts half distracted and Rogers and Pete searching, all over the country.

'The slow, sweet hours that bring us all things good.'

Those words always seem to me to describe the quiet years when nothing particular happens, when we are growing and learning almost without knowing it, getting, as Captain Maitland had said, something to steer by in harder, busier days to come. G.o.dfrey, when he looked back afterwards, couldn't remember any very big events in his Oakfield life--just daily lessons and daily games, stories from Betty, twilight talks with Angel, hours spent by old Kiah's bench at the Place--and yet those 'slow sweet hours,' more than the stirring days afterwards, were to influence his whole life and make a man of him.

How surprised his young aunts would have been if any one had told them on the day when their nephew first came to Oakfield that it would be Angel who would suggest to Cousin Crayshaw that it was time for him to leave them. Mr. Crayshaw found her standing by his chair one Sunday evening when he awoke from a little doze in which he had been indulging after supper.

'Cousin Crayshaw,' she began hesitatingly, 'have you thought lately what a big boy G.o.dfrey is getting?'

'Big? Yes, yes, of course, very big,' said Mr. Crayshaw in surprise.

'What's the matter, Angelica? Why shouldn't he grow? He looks strong enough, I'm sure.'

'Oh, he's as strong as a little pony,' said Angel proudly; 'but, Cousin Crayshaw, don't you think he's getting rather big for us to teach?'

'Is he troublesome?' asked Mr. Crayshaw doubtfully.