THE MINERAL WOMAN
Next day Rupert felt more alive, as he explained.
‘Now, look here,’ he said at breakfast, ‘suppose we go and discover the
North Pole.’
‘That _would_ be nice,’ said Caroline; ‘the attics? We’ve never
explored them yet.’
‘No, attics are for wet days,’ said Rupert.
‘Not the real North Pole, you don’t mean?’ said Charles, quite ready
to believe that Rupert might mean anything, however wonderful and
adventurous.
‘No,’ said Rupert; ‘what I thought of was a _via medias res_.’
‘Latin,’ explained Charles to the girls.
‘It means a middle way. You ask your uncle to let us take our lunch
out, bread and cheese and cake will do; and to not expect us till
tea-time, and perhaps not then. We’ll just go where we think we will,
and shut our eyes when we pass signposts and post-offices. We might get
lost, you know, but I’d take care of you.’
‘We mustn’t disturb the Uncle,’ Caroline reminded them. ‘We promised.
Not for a week.’
‘Write him a letter,’ said Rupert. And this is the letter they wrote.
At least Caroline wrote it and they all signed their names.
‘Dearest Uncle’ (‘Dearest is rot,’ said Charles, looking at Rupert to
be sure that he thought so too; ‘put Dear’).
‘But Dear is rottener,’ answered Caroline, going on; ‘it’s what you say
to the butcher when you write about the ribs that ought to have been
Sir Something. _I_ know.’
Please may we go out for the day and take our lunch,
bread and cheese and cake would do, Rupert says he will
take care of us, and not expect us home till tea, and
perhaps not then, with love
CAROLINE
CHARLOTTE
CHARLES.
‘Rupert can’t sign because he’s “he” in the letter. Only the “we’s” can
sign,’ said Caroline. And Harriet took the letter to the Uncle, and the
Uncle wrote back:
By all means. I am sure you will remember not to
administer spells internally or externally to any one
you may meet. Be home by half-past six. If anything
should detain you, send a telegram. I enclose 2s. 6d.
for incidental expenses.—Your dearest
UNCLE.
‘How sweet of him,’ the girls agreed, and Charles wanted to know what
sort of expenses he meant.
‘“Incidental”? Oh, if you want an apple or some chocks in a hurry and
don’t happen to have any on you,’ Rupert explained. ‘Or ginger beer.
Or raw eggs to suck as you go along; they’re very sustaining when all
other food’s despaired of.’
The Uncle must have given orders, for Harriet soon brought in four neat
brown-paper parcels.
‘Your lunches,’ she said. ‘Hope you’ll enjoy yourselves. You’ve got a
nice day for your outing. Bring me a keepsake, won’t you? from wherever
it is you’re going to.’
‘Of course we will,’ said Charlotte. ‘What would you like?’
But Harriet laughed, and said she was only talking.
They put on their thinnest clothes, for it was a very hot day, and they
got William to cut them ash-sticks, ‘in case we want to be pilgrims
with staffs,’ said Charles. The girls were very anxious for Rupert to
wear his school blazer, and so flattering were their opinions of it,
and of him, and of it on him, and of him in it, that he consented.
Charles wore _his_ school blazer, and the girls’ frocks were of blue
muslin, and they had their soft white muslin hats, so they looked
very bright and yet very cool as they started off down the drive with
their ash-sticks over their shoulders and their brown-paper parcels in
knotted handkerchiefs dangling from the ends of the sticks.
‘Who shall we be?’ Charlotte asked, as they passed into the shadow of
the woods where the road runs through to the lodge gate.
‘I’ll be Nansen,’ said Charles. ‘I wish we had some Equismo dogs and a
sledge.’
‘It’s Eskimo,’ said Rupert.
‘I know it is,’ said Charles.
‘I don’t believe you did,’ said Rupert, and Charles turned red and the
girls looked at each other uncomfortably.
‘I didn’t say I did,’ Charles answered. ‘Not when I said it first. I
meant I know now you’ve told me. It looked like Equismo in the books.’
This was disarming. Rupert could do no less than thump Charles on the
back and say, ‘Sorry, old man’; and Caroline hastened to say, ‘What
will _you_ be, Rupert?’
‘Why, Rupert, of course. Prince Rupert. He invented Prince Rupert drops
that are glass and crumble to powder if you look at them too hard. And
he fought at Naseby—Rupert of the Rhine, you know. “For Charles, King
of England, and Rupert of the Rhine!”’ he shouted.
‘Oh, I say,’ Charles urged, ‘do let me be Charles if you’re Rupert.
It’s only fair.’
‘You can’t keep changing,’ said Rupert. ‘Besides, Charles had his head
chopped off afterwards.’
‘Well, Rupert died too, if you come to that. You might, Rupert.’
And the girls said, ‘Do let him’; so Rupert said, ‘All right, he didn’t
mind.’
Charlotte said she thought she would be Charles the Second, because he
was a merry monarch; but it was decided that it might be confusing to
have two Charles’s; so she had to be content with being Joan of Arc,
while Caroline was Boadicea.
‘She was British, you see,’ Caroline explained; ‘and Aunt Emmeline says
you ought to support home industries.’
‘Now we all call each other by our play names all day,’ Charlotte said,
‘and if you make a mistake you lose a mark.’
‘Who keeps the marks?’
‘You keep your own, of course—counting on your fingers. And if you did
it ten times, you’d tie a knot in your handkerchief. Aunts do it ten
times if they play often. _We_ don’t.’
Here Boadicea, Joan of Arc, Prince Rupert, and King Charles turned out
of the lodge gate, and the exploring expedition began at seventeen
minutes past ten, precisely. The three C.’s kept up the game, calling
each other by the new names with frequency and accurateness; but Rupert
grew more and more silent, and when Charlotte addressed him as Prince
Rupert the stainless knight, he told her not to be silly.
At a quarter-past twelve, the four children, very dusty, very hot and
rather tired, reached a level crossing. The gates were shut because a
train was coming, and already, as you looked along the line, you could
see the front of the engine getting bigger and blacker, and the steam
from it getting whiter and puffier, and you could feel the vibration of
its coming in the shuddering of the gate as you leaned on it.
The train stopped, in a snorting, panting hurry, at the little
station just beside the gates, let out a few passengers, shook itself
impatiently, screamed, and went on. The big gates across the road swung
slowly back till they stretched across the railway, and the people who
had got out of the train came down the sloping end of the platform and
through the small swing-gates, and the four children, who were crossing
the line, met the little crowd from the train half-way. There were two
women with baskets, a man with a bandy-legged dog, and a girl with a
large band-box partly hidden by brown paper, and—the four children were
face to face with him before they knew that there was any one coming
from that train whom they had rather not be face to face with—the
Murdstone man himself. He was not a yard from them. Rupert threw up his
head and backed a little as if he expected to be hit. The three C.’s
breathed a deep concerted ‘Oh!’ and trembled on the edge of what might
be going to happen. No one knew what Mr. Murdstone’s power might be.
Could he seize on Rupert and take him away? Could he call the police?
Anything seemed possible in that terrible instant when they were
confronted, suddenly and beyond hope of retreat, with the hated master.
And nothing happened at all. The Murdstone man passed by. He gave a
cold, sour, unrecognising glance at the three C.’s, but he never looked
at Rupert. He looked over his head as though Rupert had not been there,
and passed on.
[Illustration: He looked over his head as though Rupert had not been
there.]
Rupert grew very red and said nothing. The girls looked at each other.
‘Let’s walk along by the river,’ said Caroline, ‘and then we’ll tell
you why he didn’t look at you.’
‘You’ll tell me now,’ said Rupert firmly, ‘or I won’t go another step.’
‘He didn’t look at you,’ said Charlotte, ‘because he didn’t see you.
And he didn’t see you because you were invisible just when you wanted
to be.’
‘I didn’t want to be,’ said Rupert; ‘at least—— Oh, well, come on.’
When they had reached a green meadow that sloped pleasantly to the
willow-fringed edge of the river Medway, Charlotte said:
‘You _were_ invisible, to him. That’s the magic. Perhaps you’ll believe
in spells now.’
‘But there wasn’t any spell,’ said Rupert impatiently.
And the girls said with one voice, ‘You take off your blazer and see.’
‘I hate hanky panky,’ said Rupert, but he took off the coat.
‘Look, in there,’ said Caroline, turning back that loose fold which
the button-holes are made in—‘_fern-seed_. Char and I seccotined it
on while you and Charles were washing your hands. We meant to ask you
to wish to be invisible when we went into a shop or something, just
to prove about spells, but you did it without our asking. And now you
_will_ believe, won’t you?’
‘I _can’t_,’ said Rupert; ‘don’t talk about it any more. Let’s have the
grub out.’
They opened the parcels and ‘had the grub out,’ and it was sandwiches,
and jam-tarts packed face to face, and raspberries in a card-board box
that had once held chocolates—that was in Rupert’s parcel—and biscuits,
and large wedges of that pleasant solid cake which you still get
sometimes in old-fashioned houses where baking powder and self-raising
flour are unknown.
‘This is the first picnic we’ve ever had by ourselves; don’t you like
it, Prince Rupert?’
Rupert’s mouth was full of sandwich. He was understood to say that it
was ‘all right.’
‘King Charles is gracefully pleased to like it,’ said Charles.
‘Boadicea had better pour out the Rhine wine, for it’s a thirsty day.’
‘Oh,’ said Boadicea in stricken tones, ‘there isn’t any!’
And there wasn’t. Not a drop of milk or water or ginger-beer or
anything drinkable. No nephew or niece of Aunt Emmeline’s was likely to
do anything so rash as drinking water from a strange river to which it
had not been properly introduced, so there was nothing to be done but
to eat the raspberries and pretend that raspberries quenched thirst,
which, as you probably know only too well, they don’t.
This was why, when they had eaten everything there was to eat, and
buried the bits of paper deeply in a hollow tree, so as not to
spoil the pretty picture of green willows and blue-green water and
grass-green grass, they set out to find a cottage where ginger-beer
was sold. There was such a cottage, and they had passed it on the way.
It had a neat gay little garden and a yellow rose clambering over
its porch, and on one of its red brick sides was a pear-tree that
went up the wall with level branches like a double ladder, and on the
other a deep-blue iron plate which said in plain white words ‘Bateyes
Minerals.’ A stranger from Queen Victoria’s early days might have
supposed this to mean that the cottage had a small museum of geological
specimens such as you find now and then in Derbyshire; but Rupert and
the three C.’s knew that ‘Minerals’ was just short for ginger-beer and
other things that fizz.
So, after making sure that they had not lost their two shillings and
their sixpence, they unlatched the white gate and went in.
The front door, which was green and had no knocker, was open, and one
could see straight into the cottage’s front parlour. It was very neat
and oil-clothy, with sea-shells on pink wool mats, and curly glass
vases, and a loud green-faced clock on the mantelpiece. There was a
horse-hair sofa and more white crochet antimacassars than you would
have thought possible even in the most respectable sea-side lodgings. A
black and white cat was asleep in the sun, edged in among the pots of
geraniums that filled the window. In fact, it was a very clean example
of the cottage homes of England, how beautiful they stand!
The thirsty children waited politely as long as they could bear to
wait, and then Caroline tip-toed across the speckless brown-and-blue
linoleum and tapped at the inner door. Nothing happened. So she pushed
the door, which was ajar, a little more open and looked through it.
Then she turned, shook her head, made a baffling sign to the others to
stay where they were, and went through the door and shut it after her.
The others waited; the sign Caroline had made was a secret one only
used in really serious emergencies.
‘I expect there’s a bird in there and she wants to catch it,’ said
Charles; but the others could not believe this, and they were right.
Quite soon Caroline returned bearing a wrinkled black tray with three
bottles of lemonade, three glasses, and the little round wooden thing
that you press the glass marble down with into the neck of the bottle.
‘Here,’ she said in a hurry, ‘you go round to the other side of
the cottage, and there’s a hornbeam arbour and a bench and table,
and you’re very welcome to sit there. I’ll tell you all about it
afterwards,’ she added, whispering. ‘Only _do_ take it and go.’
‘But what _is_ it?’ Rupert asked.
‘She’s crying dreadfully. I don’t know what it is yet. Oh, _do go_.’
And she thrust the tray on him and went back through the door with an
air of importance which even the others found just a little trying.
However, they were thirsty and loyal, so they did as they were asked
to do; found the hornbeam arbour, and settled down on the blue-painted
benches to drink their lemonade and tell each other how thirsty they
had been, drawing deep breaths between the draughts to say so with.
Caroline, in the meantime, was in the back kitchen of the strange
cottage gently patting the shoulder of a perfect stranger, who sat with
her elbows on the mangle and her head in her hands crying, crying,
crying.
‘Don’t! oh, please don’t!’ said Caroline, again and again; and again
and again the woman who was crying said, ‘Go away. I can’t attend to
you. Go away!’
She was a middle-aged woman, and her dark hair, streaked with grey, was
screwed up behind in a tight knob. Her sleeves were tucked up, and all
round her were piles of those square boxes with wooden divisions in
which lemonade and ginger-beer travel about. The boxes were dotted with
greeny bottles, some full, some empty, and the boxes were everywhere—on
the sink, under the sink, on the copper, on the bricks, and outside the
open back door.
‘Don’t cry,’ said Caroline in a voice that would have soothed an angry
bear. ‘_Do_ tell me what’s the matter. I might be able to help you.’
‘Oh, go along, do!’ said the woman, trying to dry her eyes with a
corner of a blue-checked apron. ‘You seem a kind little gell, but it
ain’t no good. Run along, dearie.’
‘But,’ said Caroline, ‘if you don’t stop crying, how am I going to pay
you for the lemonade I took when you said I might? Three bottles it
was.’
‘Sixpence,’ said the woman, sniffing.
‘You poor dear,’ said Caroline, and put her arms round the woman’s
neck. ‘Now,’ she said comfortably, ‘you just fancy I’m your own
little girl and tell me what’s the matter.’
[Illustration: ‘I can’t attend to you. Go away!‘]
The woman turned her face and kissed Caroline.
‘Bless you for a silly little duck,’ she said. ‘My own little gell’s in
service over Tonbridge way. It’s silly of me taking on like that. But
it come so sudden.’
‘What did?’ Caroline asked. ‘Do tell me. Perhaps I can help. I’ve got
an uncle, and I know he’d give me some money for you, if that’s it.
And, besides, I can make nice things happen sometimes—I really can.’
‘It isn’t money,’ said the woman drearily, ‘and I don’t know why I
should tell you.’
‘It eases the heart, you know,’ said Caroline; ‘my aunt says it does.
Do tell me. I’m _so_ sorry you’re unhappy.’
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ said the woman, drying her eyes. ‘It’s
silly, I know. But I only heard this morning, and just now it all come
over me when I was sorting out the bottles. I was born in the little
house, you see, and lived here all my life. And now to leave! A week’s
notice too! Where’m I to go to? How’m I to manage? What’m I to get my
living by? You see, being right on the highroad I get all the thirsty
customers as they comes by. Where’m I to go to? There’s a cottage back
by Wright’s farm; ne’er a bit of garden to it, and nobody passes it one
year’s end to another. I’d never sell a single bottle if I lived there
to be a hundred.’
‘But why must you leave here?’ Caroline asked.
‘Gentlefolks,’ said the woman bitterly; ‘got a grand ’ouse of their own
up in London. But they gone and took a fancy to my little bit, ’cause
it looks so pretty with the flowers I planted, and the arbour my father
made, and the roses as come from mother’s brother in Cambridgeshire.
‘“Such a sweet pretty cottage to stay in for week-ends,” they says; an’
_I_ may go to the Union and stay there, week in, week out, and much
they care. There’s something like it in the Bible, only there ain’t
no prophets now like there was of old to go and rebuke the folks that
takes away poor folks’ vineyards and lambs and things to make week-end
cottages of. And of course they can pay for their fancy. An’ it comes a
bit ’ard, my dear. An’ that’s all. So now you know.’
‘But that’s dreadful,’ said Caroline; ‘the landlord must be a very
wicked man.’
‘It ain’t _’is_ doing,’ said the woman, sorting bottles swiftly;
‘’e’s but a lad when all’s said and done. Comes of age in a week or
two. Ain’t never been ’is own master yet, so to say. It’s ’is cousin
as manages the property. ’E’s got it into ’is ’ead to screw another
shilling or two out of us somehow; ’ere, there, and everywhere, as they
say. To pay for the harches and the flags when Milord comes of age, I
suppose. Now you see you can’t do anything, so run along, lovey. You’re
a good little gell to trouble about it, and you’re the only one that
has. It’ll come home to you all right, never fear. Kind words is never
lost, nor acts neither. Good day to you, Missy.’
‘Good-bye,’ said Caroline; ‘but I’m not so sure that I can’t do
anything. I’ll ask my uncle. Perhaps he knows my Lord, whoever it is.’
‘Andore,’ said the woman; ‘but nobody don’t know him about here. He’s
been abroad for his education, being weak in the chest from a child.
But it ain’t no good, dearie. I’ll ’ave to go, same as other folks as
’ad to go afore me.’
‘I shall think of something, you see if I don’t,’ said Caroline. ‘I’ve
got an aunt as well as an uncle, and she says you can make things
happen. You just keep on saying, “Everything’s going to be all right.
I’m not going to worry.” And then everything _will_ be all right.
You’ll see. And I’ll come again to-morrow or next day. Good-bye, dear.’
She kissed the woman, paid the sixpence, and went out to the hornbeam
arbour with the air of one who has a mission.
‘Come on,’ she said; ‘I’ll tell you as we go along. No, I’m not thirsty
now. Oh, well, if you’ve saved some for me. That was jolly decent of
you.’ She drank. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘there’s not a moment to be lost;
it’s a matter of life and death to the Mineral woman. Come on.’
And as they went back along the dusty road she told them what had
happened.
‘I must ask the Uncle _at once_ if he knows Lord Andore,’ she said;
‘and he can telegraph to him like he did to India, and then everything
will be all right.’
‘But,’ said Charlotte, ‘we promised we wouldn’t disturb him _for
anything_. Suppose he doesn’t appear at tea?’
‘Then we must do something else,’ said Caroline. ‘It’s the realest
thing I’ve ever had the chance of doing—except you, Rupert,’ she added
politely; ‘and if we can’t get at the Uncle we’ll try a spell. Every
single spell we’ve tried has come right. First the fern-seed; then
the——’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Rupert hastily, ‘and it’s all right to play at. But
this is a real thing. I’ve got a godfather that’s a baronet. I’ll write
to him to go to the House of Lords and tell this Lord Andore. Appeal
to Cæsar himself, don’t you know. How’s that?’
‘Yes, do,’ said Charlotte; ‘but we’ll work the spell as well. We may as
well have two strings to our harp like that blind girl in the picture.
What spell can we do?’
‘We’ll look it up in the books,’ Caroline said importantly; ‘and,
Rupert, if we pull it off and she doesn’t get turned out of her house,
you will believe the spell, won’t you?’
‘I’ll try,’ said Rupert cautiously; ‘and, anyway, I’ll write to my
godfather. Only he’s in Norway. I’d better telegraph, perhaps?’
‘It’ll cost pounds, won’t it?’ said Charles admiringly.
‘Never mind,’ said Rupert carelessly. ‘Mrs. Wilmington will lend me the
chink till I get my allowance. Let’s do the thing properly while we’re
about it. You may as well be hanged for a sheep as——’
‘As a cow. Yes, indeed,’ said Charlotte with approval.