THE MORNING AFTER
‘Wake up!’ whispered Charlotte, sitting up very wide awake and pinching
her sister gently but firmly.
‘Why?’ Caroline asked, very warm and sleepy. ‘We aren’t called yet, and
it’s quite dark.’
‘Called!’ Charlotte echoed in contempt. ‘And the curtains aren’t drawn,
so of course it’s dark. Wake up, silly; don’t you remember?’
‘All right!’ Caroline murmured, and went to sleep again.
‘You can’t have forgotten yesterday, and how we were detectives, and
you were Sherlock Holmes wrong way out, and about Rupert, Rupert,
Rupert?’
And at that Caroline did wake up, and sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes.
‘Isn’t it glorious?’ Charlotte asked, jumping up and down on the bed;
‘our splendid secret and the rose and everything? I do think we’re
lucky, don’t you?’
‘I suppose so,’ Caroline answered, yawning; ‘but what are we going to
do with him?’
‘Conceal him, of course,’ Charlotte answered briskly, ‘and answer for
him with our lives. Until the answer comes to the Indian letter.’
‘The letter didn’t go, you know,’ Caroline reminded her, and put one
foot out of bed.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Charlotte asked. ‘You don’t seem a bit
keen.’
‘I don’t feel keen,’ Caroline answered. ‘I wish it hadn’t happened.
I feel as if I didn’t want to do anything but to be quiet and have
nothing happen, like it used to. My inside mind feels quite stiff and
sore.’
‘That’s using it so much yesterday; being so clever, you know. Of
course your mind feels stiff. It isn’t used to it,’ said Charlotte
brightly, bounced off the bed and ran to draw the curtains. ‘Oh!’ she
said, and stood quite still with the curtain in her hand.
‘What?’ Caroline asked anxiously, for the tone was tragic.
‘It’s raining,’ said Charlotte; ‘that’s all. Hard.’
‘How awful,’ said Caroline.
Somehow no one had expected it to rain. The sun had shone now for days
and days, and it had seemed as though it must always go on shining.
‘Rupert won’t be able to hide in the wood, will he?’ said Charlotte
after a dismal silence.
‘Oh, Charlotte,’ said Caroline in deep reproach, holding up her little
silver watch, ‘it’s only a quarter to five. I’m going to sleep again.
You know how thin and rotten you feel in the afternoon if you get
up too early. Come on. Perhaps it won’t be raining when it’s proper
getting-up time.’
But it was, as hard as ever. And it was a dismal little
breakfast-party. The dining-room, usually so sunny and delightful at
this hour, was sombre and brown and dull. The books all looked like
lesson-books, and even the portrait of the Lady with the ruff had but
little interest for the children. It seemed as though some one had
turned off all sunshine and all magic at the very meter.
Anxiety about Rupert mingled with the usual wet-day feelings, and every
one was at first too miserable even to tell the others how miserable it
was.
Almost in silence Caroline poured out the milk, Charles served the
bacon, and Charlotte handed the toast. And quite in silence they ate
and drank. But breakfast soon began its healing work, and before it
came to the marmalade, Charlotte was able to say:
‘This is the time to do something desperate. I’ll have some tea,
please, Caro. Aunt Emmeline says it’s a dreadful drug and people take
it instead of beer. I don’t like it,’ she hastened to add. ‘It’s only
to show how desperate we are.’
‘Yes, but your drinking tea won’t help Rupert. He’ll be soaked in the
woods,’ said Caroline heavily.
‘Still, he’ll be safe,’ Charles pointed out. ‘No one will go looking
for him in the sopping wet. I’ll have tea too. Let’s call it a carouse
in the smugglers’ cave.’
But the others thought this was going a little too far.
‘I don’t feel as if we ought to play till we know about Rupert and
whether he’s had any breakfast. And I know the Wilming-cat won’t let us
go out in the rain,’ Charlotte said.
‘One of us must go out and see William, that’s all,’ said Caroline.
‘I’ll go if you like, and chance the Wil-cat. No; we can’t all go.
People notice you so much more if there’s a lot of you.’
Thus William at work in the harness-room was visited by a small figure
in a damp mackintosh and a red tam-o’-shanter frosted with raindrops.
‘Where is he?’ it whispered, ‘and has he had his breakfast?’
‘Now you be off, Miss,’ said William, very loud and plain. ‘I ain’t
up to talking so early. My jaws is hung crooked with talking so much
yesterday. Be off with you.’ As he spoke he pulled a piece of chalk
from his pocket and wrote on the table:
‘Come at 12,’ and smeared it out with his cuff, just as the gardener
came to the door and said:
‘Don’t look like clearing up.’
Caroline understood.
‘We shall be wanting some flowers,’ she said, ‘to send in a letter. And
it’s too wet to go and get them. I thought perhaps William would.’
‘Flowers ain’t William’s business, nor yet his pleasure,’ said the
gardener, ‘or he wouldn’t ’ave a dead un in his button-hole like what
he’s got.’ He pointed to William’s coat, hanging on a saddle-perch and
still bearing in its button-hole the withered rose of secrecy.
‘Perhaps _you_ would, then?’ Caroline suggested. ‘I want four red
roses, no—five, and ten buds. And is there any stephanotis? I think it
means absent friends.’
‘No, there ain’t,’ said the gardener.
‘Well, then, traveller’s joy. That means safety.’
‘Plenty of that—nasty weed,’ said the gardener, but not unkindly.
‘Right you are, Miss. I’ll bring ’em to the dining-room window to save
my boots on cook’s flagstones.’
‘So that’s all right,’ said Caroline, returning to the others. ‘We’re
to go at twelve. Only now we must write to Aunt Emmeline and send her
the traveller’s joy, because I said we wanted to send it in a letter.
Yes, you must, too, Charles. We shall be doing an unselfish act,
because I’m sure no one wants to write to Aunt Emmeline, and she says
unselfishness makes the sun shine on the cloudiest days.’
‘All right, we’ll try it on,’ said Charles, but not hopefully; and soon
there was a deep stillness, broken only by the slow scratching of pens.
Presently the gardener brought the roses and clematis to the window.
‘That’s what you want?’ he asked, handing in the wet red and green
bouquet.
‘Quite,’ said Caroline; ‘and do you know it’s just as well you hadn’t
any stephanotis, because I see it doesn’t mean what I thought it meant.
It means ‘Will you accompany me to the East?’ and Aunt Emmeline would
have been so upset wondering what we meant.’
‘She wouldn’t ’a been the only one,’ said the gardener, and clumped
away on those boots which were not considered suitable for cook’s
flagstones.
When the letters were done, it was only eleven o’clock, and it was
decided that, as Rupert must have had his breakfast, it wouldn’t be
unfeeling to play desert islands, just to pass the time till it should
be twelve.
The dining-room table made an excellent island, and the arm-chair was
a ship which held the three of them, and could, with reasonable care,
be wrecked quite safely on the deep waters of the hearth-rug. The
card-table from the window, turned wrong way up, made a charming raft;
and the girls’ pinafores, fastened to the poker and tongs, did for
sails. You steered with the fire-shovel and brought bags of biscuit
(which looked like cushions) from the good vessel, the _Golden Vanity_,
which, disguised as the sofa, lay derelict across the Carpet Bay. It
was a grand game, and when some one began to say ‘Twelve o’clock,’ the
shipwrecked sailors were quite astonished. The person who began to say
‘Twelve,’ was, of course, the tall clock with the silver face inlaid
with golden roses.
‘We ought to go at once,’ said Caroline, putting the masts back in the
fender; ‘but if we leave everything like this, the Wil-cat——’
‘We’ll clear up,’ said Charlotte with a noble effort, ‘to make up for
being beastly yesterday. You go, Caro. We’ll come out as soon as we’ve
done, and stand in the door till you tell us it’s all right.’
‘That’s jolly decent of her,’ Charles told Caroline. ‘And I say the
same.’
‘Jolly decent of _you_,’ said Caroline, and went.
It was still raining. Caroline stood at the back door with a rose and
two buds in her hand, and watched the rain splashing in the puddles and
on to the sack-covered shoulders of the gardener and the gardener’s boy
and the stable boy as they went off to their dinners. As soon as she
could be quite sure that they had really gone and wouldn’t be likely
to come back for anything they’d forgotten, she ran across to the
harness-room.
‘Here’s your new secret rose,’ she said, ‘and now can I see Rupert? The
others’ll be out directly.’
‘Go and tell them to stay where they be,’ said William crossly; ‘there
won’t be much secret rosing left if you’re all hanging about here. And
Mrs. What’s-her-name’s equivalent to a bit of secret nosing herself,
if you come to that. Hurry up now, afore they comes along.’
The others were not pleased, but they had to own that most likely
William knew best.
Thus it was Caroline alone who followed William through the stable
and up the ladder into the straw-loft, which at first seemed to have
nothing in it but straw, very dark in the corners and very yellow under
the skylight.
‘Where is he?’ Caroline asked, and the straw rustled and opened,
revealing Rupert, rather tousled and strawy about the head, and the
bright eyes and black ears of a small fox-terrier.
‘I hid when I heard you on the ladder,’ he said. ‘You can’t be too
careful.’ He spoke in a low hoarse voice.
‘Now I’ll keep about down in the stable,’ said William, ‘and if I
whistle, you lay low.’
He retreated down the ladder, and they heard him say ‘Over’ to one of
the horses.
‘I wish _this_ was over,’ said Rupert, rather fretfully.
‘It is beastly having it rain,’ said Caroline sympathetically; ‘but
it’ll be fine to-morrow, I expect, and I’ve brought you a secrecy
rose.’ He took it and said ‘Thank you!’ but not enthusiastically.
‘And,’ she went on—‘wait till I get it out—it’s rather a tight fit for
my pocket—I’ve brought you _Robinson Crusoe_, and a pencil and paper
to really write to your father and mother. And I’ll post it as soon as
the rain stops.’
[Illustration: ‘If I whistle, you lay low.’]
‘Well, you are a brick,’ he said. ‘I shall be all right with something
to read. But you’ve simply no idea how slow time goes when you’re in
concealment. I can’t think how those Royalist chaps stood it as they
did; and the Man in the Iron Mask and Sir Walter Raleigh and Mary Queen
Of.’
‘I _am_ sorry,’ said Caroline again. ‘How long will it take to get an
answer from India?’
‘Oh, weeks,’ said Rupert wearily. ‘I was just thinking I couldn’t stick
it, and perhaps I’d better really run away to sea, only not Hastings,
of course. But it doesn’t seem so bad now I’ve got the book, and
Pincher’s rather jolly, and you too, of course,’ he added with sudden
politeness.
‘Tell me all about last night.’ Caroline settled comfortably into a
nest of straw. ‘What happened after we left you?’
‘Oh, William came and brought me in and gave me a rug and the dog and
some more bread and cheese. And bread and bacon this morning.’
‘I say, you _are_ hoarse.’
‘Oh, it’s nothing. I say, don’t think me a pig, but I should like
something to _eat_. I feel as if I’d been eating bread and cheese and
cold bacon for long years, and it’s all fat—the bacon is, I mean.’
Caroline said how stupid it was of her and she’d bring him something
when the men went home to their teas. And then suddenly there seemed to
be nothing more to say.
There was a silence, broken by Rupert’s putting his head under the
blanket to cough in a suppressed manner.
‘I hope you haven’t taken a chill,’ said Caroline with motherly
anxiety. ‘Aunt Emmeline says you never take them if you keep your
windows open at night; but of course you can’t here, because there
aren’t any.’
‘No,’ said Rupert. ‘I say, do you play chess, or draughts, or halma or
anything?’
‘I could bring them,’ she said; ‘but I only know the moves at chess
and when you bring down the Queen and the Bishop, and the other person
is called the Fool’s Mate—only they always see it before you get it
finished.’
‘I’ll teach you,’ said Rupert yawning. ‘I say, everything is pretty
beastly, isn’t it? It’s jolly in India. I wish I was there.’
‘So do I,’ said Caroline. ‘At least I don’t mean that. But I wish you
were not so mizzy.’
‘There ought to be a Society for the Prevention of Schools,’ Rupert
went on; ‘then everything would be all right.’
‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Caroline; ‘I think this is a dumpy day.
I felt quite flat this morning, as if nothing mattered. But it got
better. I’ll look in my book when I get back and see if there’s any
flower that means cheer up. And if there is I’ll bring it to you, and
perhaps it will work a cheering charm on you.’
Caroline herself, sitting among the straw, wrinkling her forehead in
the effort to think of some way of cheering the prisoner, was almost a
cheering charm herself. Rupert perhaps felt something of this, for he
said:
‘I’m all right. Only I feel so jolly rotten.’
‘You write the letter,’ said Caroline. ‘I don’t feel half as flat as I
did. I’ll think of all sorts of things to amuse the captive. And I’ll
bring you——’
William whistled below. The two children stiffened to the stillness of
stone and held their breaths. Voices. Mrs. Wilmington’s voice.
‘Have you seen Miss Caroline, William?’ she was saying. ‘I am afraid
she has run out in the reen.’
‘She’s up in the loft, Mum,’ said William. ‘I let her go up just to
’ave a peep. ’Ere, Miss, you come along down. You seen all there is to
see.’
Caroline rustled through the straw and down the ladder. Mrs.
Wilmington, cloaked and with a brown plaid shawl over her head, stood
in the stable door.
‘I’m quite dry, really I am,’ said Caroline, as William climbed the
ladder to padlock the trap-door.
‘You best come in at once,’ said Mrs. Wilmington. And at that moment a
faint sound was heard from the loft. Rupert had coughed again.
‘What’s that?’ Mrs. Wilmington asked, pausing on one galosh to listen.
‘My dawg’s up there,’ said William; ‘’e catches rats now and again.’
‘It was a strange noise for a dog,’ said the housekeeper with a
thoughtful air.
‘Weren’t it now?’ said William admiringly. ‘Can’t think ’ow they does
it! You wouldn’t believe the noises dogs make when they’re after rats.
It’s the way it takes ’em, you see.’
‘I see,’ said Mrs. Wilmington, and turned away, picking her galoshed
steps delicately, and followed by Caroline, who now ventured to breathe
again, and splashed in all the puddles.
‘Your uncle,’ said the housekeeper, taking off her shawl and shaking it
at the back door, ‘was inquiring for you. He does not weesh you to go
out in the reen.’
‘No,’ said Caroline.
‘And I always understood,’ said the housekeeper, ‘that young ladies
was, were, better away from low company.’
‘If you mean William,’ began Caroline hotly, but Mrs. Wilmington
interrupted her with—
‘I mean dogs in straw-lofts. Now you know.’
Caroline decided to get Mrs. Wilmington a soothing bouquet as soon as
the rain cleared off.
‘Your uncle’s in the dining-room,’ said the housekeeper. ‘Wipe your
shoes on the mat, please.’
From the dining-room came the sound of talking. Caroline heard:
‘You see, uncle, you just sit on the wreck and we’ll come and rescue
you with the raft.’
She paused in the doorway. Could it be true that the Uncle was playing?
No, it could not.
‘Thank you,’ said the Uncle; ‘I feel safer on the wreck. I’m glad
you’ve been having a game,’ he said, blinking kindly at her.
‘I hope you don’t mind the room being a little untidy, uncle,’ said
Caroline. For, indeed, the others had decided that the clearing-up
bargain was off, and had gone on with the game.
‘Not at all, if you don’t break things,’ he said a little nervously.
‘We’re most _awfully_ careful,’ Charles explained. ‘You see we keep the
raft on the carpet for fear of scratching it.’
‘_I_ think it polishes it, being dragged about on this Turkish sea,’
Charlotte told them.
‘And so you’re not dull, even on this rainy day? I feared you might
find it wearisome.’
‘Oh _no_,’ said every one; ‘it’s the loveliest house in the world.’ And
Charlotte asked him kindly how his magic was getting on.
‘Poorly,’ he said; ‘poorly. And yours?’
There was a silence, full of the thoughts of the magic of fern-seed and
of the great Rupert-secret.
‘We’ve invented a Secret Society,’ Caroline said difficultly and in
haste: ‘the Secret Society of the Rose. You wear one full blown rose
and two buds, you see.’
‘I see. And what is the secret?’ asked the innocent and kindly uncle.
Everyone became scarlet except the Uncle, who looked more like oyster
shells than ever, and said:
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘We’d tell you in a minute if we could. But you see it _is_ a Secret
Society.’
‘I see. I am very sorry I was so indiscreet. But tell me this,’ he
added hastily. ‘You haven’t broken anything, have you?’
‘Not a thing.’
‘I thought you wouldn’t,’ the Uncle assured them. ‘Mrs. Wilmington was
of opinion that you would break almost everything in the house. But
that was before she saw you, of course. If you _do_ break anything
you’ll tell me, won’t you?’
‘Of course,’ they answered in various tones of surprise.
‘Quite so. I might have known. I wish I could do something to amuse
you. If you had any friends in the neighbourhood you might have
the carriage and drive out to see them. But of course you have no
acquaintances here.’
‘The clergyman is a friend of ours,’ Charles remarked.
And Caroline said if only they might go and see him.
‘By all means,’ said the Uncle; ‘bring him back to tea with you. I am
sincerely glad to find that you are making yourselves at home.’
With that he went away.
‘Do you think that was snarkasm? About making ourselves at home?’
Charles asked.
‘Not it,’ Charlotte assured him. ‘I’m sure the Uncle’s open as the day.’
‘All the same we’d better clear up,’ said Charlotte, and on the word
Harriet came in to lay the cloth. Mrs. Wilmington followed. And it was
she who cleared up, with pinched lips and a marked abstaining from
reproaches.
The children dined alone, and the cook remarked on the sudden growth
of their appetites. How was she to know that generous double helpings
of beef, Yorkshire pudding, potatoes, summer cabbage, rhubarb pie and
custard were hidden behind the books on the dining-room shelf, for the
later refreshment of a runaway boy at present lurking in the straw-loft?
‘We must put the things in tumblers,’ Caroline said, ‘because plates
would be missed; but the tumblers live in the sideboard, and there are
dozens.’
So a row of tumblers, containing such greasy things as never before had
profaned their limpid depths, stood in a row like beakers on the bench
of a secret laboratory.
‘It’s all very well,’ said Charlotte, replacing the last book and
ringing the bell, ‘but how shall we get them to him?’
‘William will manage it at tea-time,’ Caroline was sure.
‘But we’ve got to bring the clergyman home to tea.’
‘Oh, bother!’ was the remark that sprang to the lips of Caroline. ‘I
never thought of that.’