What Timmy Did Part 30

"If you'll wait here, I'll get my husband."

While Mrs. Trotman had left the room, Radmore remarked: "I've made up my mind what to say to Trotman, so please don't interrupt."

And Timmy listened silently to the explanation his G.o.dfather gave of Josephine's strange behaviour of the night before. It was an explanation that squared with the facts--at any rate, according to the speaker's point of view--for Radmore told the famous vet that the cat, upset by the sight of a strange dog, had flown at a lady and bitten her. He added frankly that the doctor had suggested that the animal should be kept under observation, and then he managed to convey that money was no object, as the cat was a cherished pet sent from France during the War.

Everything was soon arranged, for Mr. Trotman was a man of few words.

Radmore gave his own name and the address of Old Place, and then, just before leaving the house, he put down a 5 note on the table.

The st.u.r.dy, grizzled old man took up the note and held it out to his new client. "I'd rather not take this, sir, if you don't mind," he said a little gruffly. "We'll send you in a proper bill in due course. You needn't be afraid. The cat shall have every care, and of course, if things should go wrong--you know what I mean--I'll at once give you a telephone call. But, as far as I can tell, you're right, and it was just fear for her young made her behave so." He turned to his wife. "Now then, mother, you just get back to bed! I'll see to these gentlemen, and to poor p.u.s.s.y."

They shook hands with Mrs. Trotman, and then the famous vet took them down the trellised path and stood in the doorway till they got into the car.

"I'm glad to have met you, Mr. Trotman," Radmore called out heartily.

"I'd like to come over here one day, and go over your place."

As they raced up towards the Downs, Radmore suddenly turned to Timmy: "The more time goes on, the more it's borne in on me that there's nothing like the old people of the old country." And as the boy, surprised, said nothing for once, he went on, "I hope that the stock won't ever give out."

"How d'you mean?"

"Well, take those two people, that man and woman. We get them out of their warm, comfortable bed in the middle of the night, they knowing nothing about us, except that we bring a cat which may be mad; and yet they take it all in the day's work; they're civil, kindly, obliging--and the man won't take money he hasn't earned! I call that splendid, Timmy.

You might almost go the world over before you'd find a couple like that--anywhere but in England."

They drove on and on, and then all at once, Radmore, glancing down to his left, saw that Timmy had fallen asleep. Now Timmy, asleep, looked like an angelic cherub, and so very different from his usual alert, inquisitive, little awake self. And there welled up in Radmore's heart the strangest feeling of tenderness--not only for Timmy but for the whole of the Tosswill family--not only for the Tosswill family, but for the whole of this st.u.r.dy, quiet, apparently unemotional world of England to which he had come back.

The human mind and brain work in mysterious ways. Radmore will never know, to the day of his death, the effect that this curious night drive had on the whole of his future life. He was not a man to quote poetry, even to himself, but to-night there came into his mind some words he had heard muttered by a corporal in Gallipoli:

"What do they know of England Who only England know?"

When he had left his homeland, now nearly ten years ago, he had been in a bitter mood. It had seemed to him that his own country was rejecting him with scorn. But now his heart swelled proudly at the thought of the old country--of all that she had endured since then. He had thought England altered and very much for the worse, when he was in London on his two brief "leaves" during the War, but now he knew how unchanged his country was--in the things that really matter....

When he had come back for good, this summer, he had looked forward to an easy, selfish life--the sort of life certain men whom he had envied as a boy used to lead before the war.

Radmore knew, as every man who has lived to the age of thirty-two must know, that marriage brings with it certain cares, responsibilities, and troubles, and so he had deliberately made up his mind to avoid marriage, though he had been conscious the while that if he fell violently in love, then, perhaps, half knowing all the time that he was a fool, he might find himself pushed into marriage with some foolish girl, or what was perchance more likely, with a pretty widow.

To-night he realised with a sort of shame that there were moments--he was glad that they were only moments--when he felt uneasily yet strongly attracted to Enid Crofton, and that though he knew how selfish, how self-absorbed and, yes, how cruel she could be. For well he knew she had been cruel to her elderly husband. He was sorry now that she had come to Beechfield. She had become an irritating, disturbing element in his life.

Radmore had looked at every eligible property within a radius of twenty miles of Old Place, but though some of them did not fall far short of the ideal he had in his mind, he hadn't felt as if he wanted any of them.

They were too trim, too new--in a word, too suburban. Even the very old houses had been transformed by their owners much as The Trellis House had been transformed, into something to suit modern taste. He told himself that he must begin looking again--looking in real dead earnest, going farther afield.

Absorbed in his thoughts, he had driven on and on, almost mechanically, till suddenly they came to four cross-roads. He drew up under a sign-post, jumped out and struck a match, and as he read the painted words he realised, with vexation, that he had gone a good bit out of his way. There was nothing for it now but to go on till they struck the Portsmouth Road. It was the quietest hour of the twenty-four, and it was very unlikely they would meet with anyone who could put them right.

And then, while going up a lane, which he knew to be at any rate in the right direction, he came to a park gate. Just within was a lodge, and in one of the windows of the lodge there shone a light. Again Radmore stopped the car and jumped out, Timmy still heavily asleep.

He went up to the door of the lodge and rapped with his knuckles. It opened and revealed a young woman, fully dressed. "What do you want?" she exclaimed, in a frightened voice.

"I've lost my way," he said, "and seeing a light in your window, I ventured to knock. I've no idea where I am--I want to get to Beechfield."

"Beechfield? Why, you're nigh forty miles from there," she said, surprised.

"Can you tell me how I can get on to the Portsmouth Road?"

"Aye, I think I could do that; but stop your engine, please--I've a little girl in here as is very ill."

He ran out and did what she asked. Then he came back, and as she took him into her tiny living-room, he saw that there were tears rolling down her tired face.

"Is your child very ill?" he asked.

She nodded. "Doctor says if she can get through the next two days she may be all right."

"Is your husband with you?"

She shook her head. "I'm a widow, sir; my husband was killed in the War.

I'm only caretaking here. When the house up there is sold, they'll turn me out."

"I'm looking for a country house. Perhaps I'll come over and see it one day. Is it an old house?"

"Well," she said vaguely, "it isn't a new house, sir. It's a mighty fine place, and they do say it's going dirt cheap." And then she added slowly, "There's a map hanging in the kitchen. It was hanging up yonder in the servants' hall but I brought it down here, as so many people asks the way."

It was an old-fashioned country road map, and Radmore, bending down, saw in a moment where he was, and the best way home; and then feeling in a queer kind of mood, a mood in which a man may do a strange and unexpected thing, he took out of his pocket the 5 he had offered to Mr. Trotman.

"Look here," he said, "I'd like you just to take this and get your little girl whatever you think necessary when she's on the mend. She'll want a lot of care, eh?"

Twice the woman opened her mouth, and found she couldn't speak.

He held out his hand, and she squeezed it with her thin, work-worn fingers. "I do hope G.o.d will bless you, sir!" she said. And he went back to the car, feeling oddly cheered.

It was past five when Radmore and Timmy crept like burglars through one of the back doors of Old Place. He sent the boy straight up to bed, but he himself felt hopelessly wide awake, so he went out of doors again, into Janet's delightful scented garden, and tramped up and down a bit to get warm. Suddenly he knew that he was hungry. Why shouldn't he go into the scullery and brew himself a cup of tea?

As he went into the kitchen, he saw on the table a kettle, a spirit stove, a cup and saucer, tea caddy and teapot, even a thermos full of hot water--everything ready to make an early cup of tea. He left the thermos alone, and filled up the kettle at the scullery sink.

Radmore was still very much of an old campaigner. Still it was a long time since he had made himself a cup of tea, and he became a little impatient for the cold water took a long time to boil.

The kettle was just beginning to sing, when the door which led to the flight of stairs connecting the scullery with the upper floors of the house opened quietly, and Betty appeared--Betty, in a becoming blue dressing-gown, which intensified the peachy clearness of her skin, and the glint of pale gold in the shadowed fairness of her hair. Morning was Betty's hour. As the day wore on, she was apt to become f.a.gged and worried, especially since Nanna's accident.

Just for a moment she looked very much taken aback, then she smiled, "I've come down to make a cup of tea for Nanna."

"So I suppose, but _you_ must have a cup first. See, I'm making some for you."

"Are you?" She tried not to show the surprise she felt.

"While you're having it, we'll make Nanna a cup of tea with the water in the thermos there. But where's the milk?"

He saw her face from merry become sad. "I always save some milk for Josephine," she said. "I'll go and get it now. But we mustn't use it all; I must save some for that poor cat."