THE HEROINE
It was William who, when they had searched house and garden and park
for nearly an hour, greeted the two as they trailed forlornly into the
stable-yard on the last wild chance of finding her there. By this time
both were thoroughly sorry and remorseful, and very anxious indeed to
know what had become of their sister.
‘I suppose you haven’t seen Caroline anywhere about?’ they said to
William, who was sitting in the harness-room door, with a rose in his
button-hole, smoking a black clay pipe.
‘She was out in the garden a bit back,’ he said; ‘give me this ’ere
button-hole. She’s a sister to be proud on, she is.’
‘Why?’ asked Charles blankly.
‘What she done this morning,’ William answered.
‘I suppose she thought it was right.’
‘I don’ know about right,’ said William, scratching his ear. ‘Anyhow
she went down along towards where you was messing about in the wood
this morning. Just after dinner she went with a book under her arm and
her pinny full of roses. I’m coming along that way myself when I’ve
finished my pipe.’
Charlotte and Charles went down slowly to the wood, and they were both
very uncomfortable. However right Caroline might have been....
‘I can’t understand how she _can_—the very place where _he_ was—all
safe only this morning,’ said Charlotte, and walked slower than ever.
They went so slowly that William had almost caught them up before they
had reached the wood.
Just before they turned in among the dappled shadows of the wood,
Charles said, ‘Did you hear that?’
‘Yes,’ said Charlotte; ‘it’s only Caro talking to herself.’ And they
went on. They did not hear any more talking, and when they reached the
lair Caroline was sitting there silent with a splash of red rose colour
beside her among the fern.
‘Oh, Caro!’ cried Charlotte, almost weeping and flumping down beside
her sister; ‘I’m sorry we were horrid. We see now you must have
thought you were being Spartan-boyish or something. And it’s too
perfectly horrid. And do let’s make it up; do.’
‘I did think you’d more sense,’ said Caroline, but she kissed Charlotte
too, ‘or that you’d know that I had—more sense, I mean. And directly I
began to tell you, you said _That_.’ She sniffed. It was plain that she
had been crying.
Charles sat down. ‘I’m sorry too,’ he said handsomely. ‘Now let’s talk
about something else. Our only hope is to forget poor Rupert.’
‘I’ll try to forget him,’ Charlotte said; ‘but he _was_ such a nice
boy. I suppose you had to do it, Caro. But, oh, I do wish he was back
again.’
Here Charlotte began to cry.
‘Oh, don’t!’ said Caroline, putting her arm round her; ‘do you mean to
say you don’t understand yet? I’d no idea you could be so silly.’
‘I don’t think she’s silly at all,’ said Charles loyally. ‘_I_ wish he
was here too.’
‘He _is_ here,’ said Caroline in an exasperated whisper; ‘just behind
you. We thought you might be some one else, so he hid. Come back,
Rupert; it’s only them.’
And from the tangled thicket Rupert put forth a head very rough as to
the hair, which bristled with twigs and pine-needles.
‘Then you didn’t run away to sea?’
‘Not much,’ Rupert answered, leaning on his elbows and showing only the
head and shoulders part of him.
‘But the letter said——’
‘That was _her_,’ Rupert explained, pointing at Caroline with his head.
(That looks odd when you read it, but if you try, you will find that
it is quite easy to do.) ‘That was her. It was all her. I’ll never say
anything about girls being muffs again. She absolutely ran the show.
She’s a brick.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ said Caroline with hot ears.
‘But _what_ did she do?’
‘Took them off the scent. Tell them all about it,’ said Rupert.
‘No, you,’ said Caroline, rolling over and burrowing her nose among the
roses.
‘Well, it was like this. After you’d gone off, I was in a blue funk,
and I don’t mind owning it. And when she came back I thought it was the
Police, and about all being lost except honour—and precious little of
that. Then she explained it all to me, and I got my boots off.’
‘Explained _what_?’ Charles had to ask.
‘Her plan, you duffer; her glorious Sherlock-Holmes plan.’
‘You _might_ have told us,’ Charlotte couldn’t help saying.
‘How could I? All among William and the Police?’
‘Well, go on.’
‘She’d got her pocket-book, and I wrote that letter. She thought of
that too. And I gave her my hankey, and she carried my boots off in her
hand, and when she got to the swampy place she put them on and made the
footmarks.’
‘I stamped them in as deep as I could,’ Caroline broke in, ‘and I found
the fence and got out and put the letter, and simply tore back round by
the lodge. Didn’t you notice how hot I was? I saw the Murdstone man,
but I’d got my sun-bonnet. He was cutting the heads off nettles with
his stick like some one in the French Revolution.’
‘And she led them off the scent completely. They’d have been certain
to find me here, with the fern all trampled about. She thought of that
too,’ Rupert said.
‘But where were you then?’
‘Up that tree.’ He pointed to a leafy beech. ‘I saw you all go by, your
Police with his nose on the ground like any old hound. Not one of you
looked up. She’s a regular A1, first-class brick, if you ask me. And
now if you can hide me a bit here till I’ve written to my people and
got an answer—— Yes, she is a brick. And I shall always stand up for it
that bricks are bricks even if they’re only girls.’
‘You do make such a fuss,’ said Caroline, delighted with his praise and
trying not to be, and feeling it the duty of a modest heroine to turn
the subject. ‘And now I thought we’d be the Royal Order of the Secret
Rose. The rose is the emblem of secrecy. Two buds and a full-blowner
you have to wear. It’s the badge.’
She chose flowers and buds from the crimson heap and presented them to
the others. The needed pins she produced from the front of her pinafore.
‘I’ve got one too,’ said Rupert, grinning from his covert. ‘A badge, I
mean, and——’
‘Hush!’ whispered Charlotte; ‘there’s some one coming. It’s William!’
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ Caroline said amazingly. ‘William knows. He’s
one of us. He’s wearing the Royal Rose too.’
‘And he isn’t going to tell?’ Charles could hardly believe it of a
grown-up.
‘No, he ain’t a-going to tell’; it was William who answered, pushing
through the leaves and sitting down squarely on a stump. ‘I don’t give
away a good sport like what Miss Caroline is—not me.’
‘But when did you find out?’ Charlotte asked.
‘I had my suspicions from the first—Miss Caroline going off so artful.
And then when she come back, of course I knew.’
‘Why “of course”?’ Charles wanted to know.
‘Well, nobody except the Pleece would cotton to it as a young lady like
Miss Caroline would set out to give away a runaway dog as ’ad trusted
her, let alone a young gentleman.’
Charlotte and Charles never wish to feel less pleased with themselves
than they did then.
‘An’ the bootmarks,’ William went on; ‘much too deep and plain they
was for anybody as was out to get off, with somebody arter them. Let
alone as I see a bit of young master’s jacket up in the tree as we come
over the park. And the ankercher dropped so handy. Not but what I own
I thought it was all up when we come to that letter. I did think that
was a bit too thick. As if people on the bolt ’ud stop to write letters
and lay them convenient like in the middles of roads. I thought you’d
killed the cat with kindness that time. But no—’e swallowed it all, old
Poad did, like mother’s milk it went down. And so did the schoolmaster.
And off ’e goes. And off _he_ goes. And off _you_ goes to your
dinners, and I come along to the young chap in the tree and fetches
him a bite of something, and whistles him down that all’s serene. And
Miss Caroline she comes along and makes me a member of her ancient
order of Rosy Buffaloes, or whatever it is, and here we are as jolly as
you please, and safe as you please. Only my advice is, tell the Master.’
‘We can’t,’ said Caroline earnestly. ‘It wouldn’t be fair. He might
think it was his duty, or something——’
‘Ah!’ said Charles, relieved; ‘we’re not the only ones. We thought that
of _you_. It’s just the same.’
‘There’s only one difference,’ said Caroline—and this was the only time
she hit back that day, so we may forgive her for it—‘one difference,
and that is that I’m right and you were wrong.’
‘Oh!’ said Charles blankly.
‘Best tell the Master.’ William’s tone was persuasive.
‘You said you were ours to the death.’
‘You asked me if I was, and I wasn’t going to contradict a lady,’
William corrected. ‘And as far as keeping my tongue betwixt my teeth,
and lending a hand in the victualling depart: and a rug and a truss
in the straw-loft that I’ve got the key of, and where the Master
hisself wouldn’t presume to show a nose—as far as that goes, I’m your
man. More especially since I seen your governors, teachers, pastors,
and masters in that nasty white rage with his face all twisted. I
wouldn’t ‘and over a blind kitten to _’is_ tender mercies. But my
advice is——’
[Illustration: ‘Fetches him a bite of something.’]
‘Don’t!’ Caroline implored; ‘because really we can’t, you know.’
‘Well, I must be getting along,’ said William, rising stiffly; ‘I ain’t
talked so much since the election. And I wasn’t a-going to say what you
thought I was a-going to say. What I was a-going to say was, get out
of this. It’s all trampled, and some one’s sure to notice—if it’s only
that Jim. You go deeper into the wood, and come night-time I’ll fetch
him away and bed him down all right. So long!’
He tramped away, crunching sticks and stalks as he went.
‘How glorious,’ Charlotte said slowly, ‘to have a real live heroine for
your sister.’
‘Yes, but,’ Charles asked anxiously, ‘are you sure William will keep
the secret?’
‘I’d answer for him with my life,’ said Rupert. ‘You don’t know how
jolly he was when he brought me the bread and cheese, and water in a
medicine bottle. It tasted a little of camphor. Awfully decent chap he
is!’
‘He can’t help keeping the secret,’ Caroline spoke with impressive
earnestness; ‘he wears the Royal Rose and the twin buds, the badge of
secrecy. If you wear _that_ you simply can’t betray a secret. It says
so in the _Language Of_, page 37.’
She picked up the book from under the roses, fluttered its leaves,
found page 37 and read:
‘“The red or damask rose, full-blown and worn with two of its own buds,
is the emblem and pledge of inviolet”—inviolable, I mean—“secrecy, and
he who wears the Royal Queen of flowers accompanied by two unopened
promises of her future magnificence, by this eloquent symbol binds
himself to preserve uncontaminated the secret trust reposed in him
by the more delicate and fragile portion—fragile and delicate as the
lovely flower which is the subject of our remarks—of the human race.”’
‘I see,’ said Charlotte, relieved; ‘then he can’t tell, even if he
wants to.’
‘If the book knows,’ Charles added.
‘Well, it’s all right, you know,’ said Rupert, ‘because I’m a judge
of human nature, and I know that William is the soul of honour, and
wouldn’t want to tell even if he could.’
‘So that’s all right.’ Charlotte breathed deeply. ‘I say, Rupert,
aren’t you afraid?’
‘What of?’
‘The Police.’
Rupert laughed. ‘I think William was right,’ he said, wriggling out a
little farther from the fern so that the red rose in his button-hole
burst suddenly upon public view; ‘if the Police would swallow that
letter they’d swallow anything. And if the eyes of the whole _vox
populi_ were upon me,’ he ended with a grand if vague remembrance of
old Mug’s careful teaching, ‘Caroline would find a _via media_, or way
out.’
‘Rats!’ said Caroline briefly.
‘I say!’ said Charles, gazing awe-struck, ‘what a jolly lot of Latin
you know!’