JUSTICE
The great discovery was Charlotte’s. When they got home and found
that the Uncle had gone to Tonbridge for the day, every one felt that
something must be done, and Rupert began to write out the telegram to
his godfather. It was quite a nice telegram, very long, and explaining
everything perfectly, but Mrs. Wilmington unexpectedly refused to lend
more than ninepence, so it could not be sent. Caroline sat rocking
herself to and fro, with her fingers in her ears to shut out Charles’s
comments and advice, and tried in vain to think of some way of using a
spell to help the Mineral woman.
‘It’s no use, you know,’ Charles said, ‘looking up the spells in the
books until we know how we’re going to use it.’ And Caroline had to
agree that this was so. So she rocked herself and racked her brains and
felt herself growing slowly more and more stupid, as you do when you
are trying very hard to think of something that has made up its mind
that it is not going to be thought about.
‘You see,’ Charlotte went on, ‘we mustn’t give the wicked cousin
anything to eat to make him good, and most likely we couldn’t get at
him to make him eat it, even if we were allowed. What a pity we can’t
get at the Lord with a foreign education, weak from a child. I daresay
we could make him take things. When you’re weak from a child they give
you just anything.’
‘That’s true,’ said Rupert. ‘I knew a chap with a flat chest that had
cod-liver oil given him—with oranges. But he said even the oranges
weren’t worth it.’
‘But we aren’t allowed to give people things to eat,’ Charlotte
reminded him.
‘Besides,’ Rupert reminded _her_, ‘we don’t know the weak Lord’s
address.’
‘I do,’ said Caroline, taking her fingers out of her ears, though
really she could hear almost as well with them in.
‘Then,’ said Charlotte, ‘let’s go and see him. Let’s appeal to Cæsar.’
‘But he’s got two addresses,’ said Caroline, ‘and we don’t know which
he’s at. I mean, the Mineral woman didn’t.’
‘Try both,’ suggested Rupert.
‘But one’s in London,’ said Caroline. ‘The Mineral woman said: “He’s
all right: he’s got the castle and he’s got his mansion in Belgrave
Square; I can’t expect him to bother about me and my little house.”’
Charlotte sprang up. ‘Let’s go to the castle, and if he’s not there,
we’ll get another take-your-lunch-with-you-cheese-and-cake-will-do day
and go to London and see him there.’
The brilliant daring of this idea made the others gasp.
‘Do you mean go _now_?’ said Caroline.
‘Why not? There’s lots of the day left. It’s not half-past three yet.’
‘You don’t know where the castle is,’ Rupert objected.
‘Yes, I do,’ said Caroline; ‘so there! William said the day of the
Rupert hunt—he said, “I hoped the boy’d got into the castle grounds.
Milord’s men ’ud have sent Poad about his business pretty sharp if he’d
gone trespassing there.” So it can’t be far off.’
‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Charlotte. ‘You know uncle said the day
after we’d been Rosicurians would we like the carriage to go and see
Mr. Penfold, only we didn’t, because we knew he’d gone to Canterbury.
Now if we could only persuade William that going to see Lord Andore
is the same thing as going to see Mr. Penfold, and that to-day is the
same as the other day, well then—— People think so much more of you if
you go in a carriage—servants, I mean, and people who don’t know about
sterling worth, and its being better to be good than pretty, and all
not being gold that glitters.’
‘And what will you do when you get there?’ Rupert asked doubtfully.
‘Why, give him a bunch of magic flowers, and tell him about the Mineral
woman.’
‘You’ll look very silly,’ Rupert told her, ‘driving up to a lord’s
house with your two-penny-halfpenny flowers, when he’s got acres of
glass most likely.’
‘I don’t care if he’s got miles of glass, and vineries and pineries of
every modern inconvenience. He hasn’t got flowers that grow as true and
straight as the ones in the wonderful garden. Thomas told me nobody
had in all the country-side. And they’re magic flowers, ours are. Oh,
Rupert, I wish you wouldn’t be so grown-up.’
‘I’m not,’ said Rupert; ‘it’s you that’s silly.’
‘You’re always being different from what we’d made up our minds you
were,’ said Charlotte hotly; ‘there, now it’s out. We were sorry
for you at first. And then we liked you; you were so adventurous and
splendid. And then you catch a cold and go all flat. Why do you do it?’
‘_Non semper vivens arcus_,’ said Rupert, and Charles hung on his
words. ‘You can’t be always the same. It would be dull. Besides, I
got such a beastly cold. And I’d had the adventure. You don’t want to
go on having one dinner after another all day. You want a change. I’m
being sensible, that’s all. I daresay I shall be silly again some day,’
he added consolingly. ‘A chap has to be silly or not _moresuis_, that
means “off his own bat,” Charles.’
‘Yes,’ said Charles, ‘I’ll remember.’
‘Well, look here. I’ll go and try it on with William if you like,’ said
Charlotte; ‘but he likes Caroline best because of what she did on the
Rupert hunt day.’
‘You do rub it in, don’t you?’ said Rupert. ‘I wish sometimes you
_hadn’t_ helped me that day.’
There was a silence. Then Charlotte said, ‘You go, Caro. And Charles,
whatever happens, you must wash your hands. Go on, like a sensible, and
do it now, so as not to waste time.’
‘_Cui bono?_’ said Rupert. ‘It’ll be all the same in a hundred years,
or even in five minutes, if it’s Charles’s hands.’
But Charles went, when Charlotte assured him that if he didn’t they
would go without him. The moment the door closed behind him she turned
to Rupert.
‘Now, look here,’ she said; ‘I know what’s the matter with you. You’ve
got the black dog on your back. I don’t know what dog it is or why. But
you have. You haven’t been a bit nice to-day; you didn’t play up when
you were Rupert of the Rhine—not a bit, you didn’t—and you think we’re
silly kids. And you think you’re letting yourself down by playing with
us. You didn’t think that the first day when we saved you. Something’s
got into you. Oh, I do believe you’re bewitched. Rupert, _do_ you think
you’re bewitched? Because if you are we know how to unbewitch you.’
‘You’re a very silly little girl,’ was all Rupert found to say.
‘Not a bit of it,’ said Charlotte brightly. ‘You only say that because
you haven’t got any sisters of your own, so of course you don’t know.
We’ve been as nice to you as ever we could be, and you’re getting
nastier and nastier. If you like to be nice, _be_ nice. If you don’t,
I shall know it’s not your fault but because you’re bewitched, and I
shall pity but not despise you. So now you know.’
Rupert was twisting and untwisting the fringed tassel of a sofa-cushion
and looking at the floor.
‘So you hate me now, I suppose?’ he said.
‘No, I don’t. But I hate the black dog. I thought you were splendid
at first. And even now I think you’re splendid inside, really. Only
something’s happened. It _is_ like bewitchment, I do think. Couldn’t
you do anything to stop it? I’d help you, really I would. I say, I’m
sorry if I’ve scratched too hard.’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Rupert with what was plainly an effort.
‘Sometimes I’m like this. I feel as if I was some one else. I can’t
explain. Now you can laugh if you like. I only thought I’d tell you.
Don’t tell the others. It’s perfectly beastly. I suppose I _could_ help
it if I knew the way. Only I don’t.’
‘Suppose you had a bath,’ suggested Charlotte. ‘Aunt Emmeline says when
children feel naughty you should always wash their faces; and if it’s
true of children, it must be true of bigger people,’ she added hastily,
answering Rupert’s frown, ‘because your face is made of the same sort
of stuff, however old you are.’
‘That was part of it,’ said Rupert, ‘when I saw the river to-day. Can
you swim? I can. And I promised my father I’d never go into the water
to swim unless there was some man there, and—— My father’s in India,
you know,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘It was he taught me to swim.’ He
walked to the window and looked out. ‘I thought I was going back to
India with him. And then the doctors said some rotten rigmarole, and my
father went without me, and I was all right again three months after,
and I might as well have gone with him, only then it was too late; and
then things began to happen that I never thought could. And nothing
will ever be right again.’
‘Look here,’ said Charlotte, ‘I’m _frightfully_ sorry I scratched you,
and about your father and your not going. Look here, don’t come with us
this afternoon. You go down to Mr. Penfold’s. He’s the clergyman. He
said the other day he’d teach Charles to swim, so I know he can. If you
go directly, he’ll take you down to the river and you can drown dull
care in the Medway.’
‘Do you think he’d mind?’
‘Mind? He’d love it,’ said Charlotte. ‘Just go and say the three C.’s
said I could swim, and I can too!’
‘I can’t like that,’ said Rupert; ‘but if you sent me with something, a
book or anything, then I could bring in swimming in a natural sort of
way and see what he said.’
‘Say we said was there any more of the translated Latin book we could
have. Will that do? You know Latin, so that will be all right. I say,
I hope they haven’t gone without us. They’re a most awful time. Look
here, cut off to Mr. Penfold’s before they come back, if you like. I
shall just say you’re gone. You just _go_.’
‘You’re not a bad sort,’ said Rupert, thumping her on the back as he
went out, but keeping his face carefully turned away; ‘I think I will.’
Charlotte and Charles met in the doorway, and the meeting was rather
violent, for both were in a hurry—Charlotte to find out what William
had said and Charles to tell her. I am sorry to say that he had not
been washing his hands, as indeed their colour plainly confessed, but
helping William in the toilet of the horse; for Caroline had succeeded
in persuading William that to-day was, for all practical purposes,
the same as the other day, all the more readily perhaps because Mrs.
Wilmington had come out and said that she didn’t think it was, at all.
And Caro had said she thought perhaps they’d better _all_ wash, and
not just Charles. And William said that he would drive them to Lord
Andore’s lodge gates, because he had to go down to the station to meet
the Master anyhow, and it was on the way, or next door to, but they’d
have to walk back. ‘And we’ve forgotten to decide what flowers to get,
and Caro says bring up the books so that she can look at them while
you’re washing your hands. Because William says he must start in a
quarter of an hour.’
Thus Charles ended breathlessly, adding, ‘Where’s Rupert?’
‘He’s not coming with us. Get down Pope IV, and I’ll get the _Language
Of_’; and carrying the books she went up the wide shallow stairs, three
at once.
There was but little time to make a careful selection of the flowers
most likely to influence a youthful peer. Charlotte was all for
repeating, flower for flower, the bouquet designed for suitors, which
had been so successfully used in the case of Rupert and the Uncle. But
Caroline argued that what suited uncles might very well be the worst
possible thing for lords who were no relations, and that it would be
much better to start afresh with an entirely new floral selection.
‘Look in the _Language Of_, then, while I wash,’ she said. ‘Look for
duty and justice and being kind to the poor.’ Charlotte fluttered the
pages obediently.
‘Jealousy, Jest, Joy, Justice. Gladiolus and sweet-scented tussilage.
What’s tussilage?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Caroline, soaping fervently; ‘try the medicine
book.’ The medicine book admitted that tussilage was another name for
_Tussilago Farfara_, or coltsfoot.
‘But coltsfoot comes in February,’ said Caroline, ‘and we don’t know it
when it’s grown up.’
‘There’s rudbeckia: justice,’ said Charlotte hopefully. But the
medicine book, when consulted, pretended not to know anything at all
about rudbeckia, and as the children knew nothing about it either, it
was ruled out.
‘There’s justice shall be done, Cornflower,’ said Charlotte; and the
medicine book, after saying ‘See Bluebottle,’ informed them that
cornflowers ‘being naturally cold and dry are under the dominion of
Saturn’; also that ‘taken with water of plantain or the greater comfrey
is a remedy againſt the poiſon of the ſcorpion.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Charlotte gaily; ‘it must be sharper than a
scorpion’s teeth to have a wicked landlord. Now——’
‘I’ll look now,’ said Caroline; ‘you wash, quick!’
Caroline chose red columbine because it meant ‘anxious and trembling’;
‘and I’m sure we shall be _that_ soon enough,’ she said. The medicine
book confirmed her choice by assuring her that columbine was an herb of
Venus, commonly used, with good success, for ‘ſore mouths and throats.’
‘Ours will be, before we’ve done,’ she said. ‘We shall have to explain
to him a lot.’
The liverwort polyanthus, though signifying confidence, was rejected
as being too difficult to find most likely; but the daily rose (‘Thy
smile I aspire to’) seemed the very thing, and it was agreed that lemon
verbena (‘Unexpected meeting’) would be both scented and appropriate.
‘And I’ve got a little straw too,’ said Caroline—‘I got it while
William was harnessing—it did so well with uncle; and wistaria means
‘Welcome, fair stranger,’ so we’ll have that. There was no time to look
these up in the medicine book, except liverwort, and of this they had
only to read that ‘It is true that Mizaldus and others, yea, almoſt all
aſtrological phyſicians hold this to be an herb of Jupiter, but the
truth is it is an herb of Mercury, and a ſingular good herb for all
ſadness of ſpirit,’ when Charles came to say ‘Hurry up! or William will
be off without us.’
‘To gather the flowers will be but the work of a moment,’ said
Caroline; ‘you two go in the carriage, and I’ll tell William to drive
out by the deserted lodge and pick me up at the garden gate.’
Unfortunately the flowers were not easy to find. The gardener had to be
consulted, and thus the gathering of Lord Andore’s presentation bouquet
was the work of about a quarter of an hour, so that William was waiting
and very cross indeed when Caroline came running out of the garden with
the flowers—a mere bundle, and no bouquet, as Charles told her—in her
held-up skirt.
‘No time now to drop people at the lodge gates,’ he said. ‘I’ll set
you down at the turning, and even that I didn’t ought to do by rights,
being late as it is, and I shall have to fan the horse along something
cruel to get to the station in time as it is.’
So the splendour of driving up to the castle in the carriage was denied
them; they could not even drive to the lodge. And all they got, after
all Caroline’s careful diplomatic treatment of William, was, as she
said, ‘just a bit of a lift.’
‘It saves time, though,’ said she, ‘and time’s everything when you’ve
got to be home by half-past six. I do hope Lord Andore’s in, don’t
you?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Charles. ‘I think it would be more noble if we had
to sacrifice ourselves and go to London to see him. We should have to
break open our money-boxes. I’ve always wanted to do that. I do wish
Rupert had been here. He could have made up something to say in Latin,
and then Lord Andore would have had to pay attention.’
‘He’ll have to in English,’ said Caroline quietly, ‘if he’s there. Oh,
I do hope he is! The Mineral woman is most likely crying all this time.
She only stopped for a minute, I’m certain, to sort the bottles because
of the man coming for them with the cart at three. Won’t it be glorious
going and telling her that it’s all right and she needn’t go?’
‘But suppose it all _isn’t_, and she _need_,’ said Charles gloomily.
‘The spells have never failed us yet,’ said Caroline.
‘I believe it’s something to do with the garden and our being the
ancestors of Dame Eleanour,’ said Charlotte; ‘of course it’ll be all
right, Charles.’
‘Rupert didn’t think so.’
‘Rupert doesn’t know as much as we do, when it isn’t Latin,’ said
Charlotte. ‘We’re going to teach Rupert a lot, by and by. You see if we
don’t. All right, William; we’re getting out as fast as we can, aren’t
we?’ for the carriage had stopped, and a voice from the box was urging
them to look slippy.
The carriage rolled away, leaving them at the corner, with the big
bouquet which Caroline had hastily arranged as they drove along.
‘If we see him, you’ll let me tell him, won’t you?’ she said; ‘because
the Mineral woman told about it to me.’ And the others agreed, though
Charles pointed out that the Mineral woman only told her because she
happened to be there.