THE APPEAL TO CÆSAR
So far all had gone well with the project of calling on Lord Andore to
tell him about his unfortunate tenant and the week-ending admirers of
her cottage. But at Lord Andore’s lodge gate a check occurred.
As the long gate clicked itself into place after they had passed
through it, an elderly person in a black cap with violet ribbons put
her head out of the lodge window and said:
‘No, you don’t!’
‘Yes, we do,’ said Charlotte unguardedly.
‘No village children allowed in,’ said the black and violet cap.
‘We aren’t,’ said Charles. And then the cap disappeared only to
reappear a moment later at the lodge door, on the head of a very
angry old lady with a very sharp long nose, who might have been Mrs.
Wilmington’s grandmother.
‘Out you go, the way you came,’ she said; ‘that’s the order. What do
you want, anyhow?’
‘We’ve got a bouquet for Lord Andore,’ said Caroline, showing it.
‘Keep it till the fifteenth,’ said the woman; a silly thing to say, for
no bouquet will keep a fortnight. ‘No village people admitted till the
gala and fête when his lordship comes of age. You can come then. Out
you go. I’ve no patience,’ she added; and it was quite plain that she
had not.
They had to go back. I wish I could conceal from you that Charles put
out his tongue at her as he passed. It is a dreadful thing to have to
relate, and my only comfort is that Caroline and Charlotte did not do
it. Charlotte made a face, but Caroline behaved beautifully.
Only, when they were out in the road again, it was Caroline who said,
almost ‘between her set teeth’ as heroes do in moments of crisis, ‘You
know that broken paling we passed?’ The others instantly understood.
They went back, found the broken paling and slipped through. It was
Caroline’s dress that was really badly torn. Charlotte’s was only
gathers, which you can tuck into your waistband and it only makes a
lump and the skirt rather uneven lengths, and it was not the fence
but a nail that tore Charles’s stocking so badly.
[Illustration: Found the broken paling and slipped through.]
The shrubbery in which they found themselves was very thorny and
undergrowthy, and nearer to the lodge than they would have chosen. They
could see its white walls quite plainly every now and then, and they
feared that it, or the managing director of it, might be able to see
them. But it makes all the difference whether you are looking for a
thing or not, doesn’t it? And certainly the last thing the cap woman
expected was that any one should dare to defy her.
So, undiscovered and unsuspected, the children crept through the
undergrowth. The thorns and briars scratched at the blue muslins, no
longer, anyhow, in their first freshness, and Charlotte’s white hat
was snatched from her head by a stout chestnut stump. The bouquet,
never the handsomest of its kind, was not improved by its travels. But
misfortunes such as these occur to all tropical explorers, and they
pressed on. They were all very warm and rather dirty when they emerged
from the undergrowth into the smooth spacious park, and, beyond a belt
of quiet trees, saw the pale grey towers of the castle rise against the
sky. They looked back. The lodge was not to be seen.
‘So _that’s_ all right,’ said Caroline. ‘Now we must walk fast and yet
not look as if we were hurrying. I think it does that best if you take
very long steps. I wish we knew where the front door was. It would be
awful if we went to the back one by mistake, and got turned back by
Lord Andore’s my-myrmidons.’
‘I expect his back door is grander than our front,’ said Charlotte; ‘so
we shan’t really know till the myr-what’s-its-names have gone for us.’
‘If we’d had time to disguise ourselves like grown-ups—Char, for
goodness’ sake tear that strip off your hat, it looks like a
petticoat’s tape that’s coming down,’ said Caroline—‘they’d have
thought we’d come to call, with cards, and then they’d have had to show
us in, unless he wasn’t at home.’
‘He must be at home,’ said Charlotte, tearing a long streamer from the
wretched hat, which now looked less like a hat than a fading flower
that has been sat on; ‘it would be too much if he wasn’t.’
They passed through the trees and on to a very yellow gravelled drive,
hot and gritty to the foot, and distressing to the eye. Following this,
they came suddenly, round a corner, on the castle. It was much bigger
than they expected, and there seemed to be no doubt which was the
front entrance. Two tall grey towers held a big arched gateway between
them, and the drive led straight in to this. There seemed to be no
door-bell and no knocker, nor, as far as they could see, any door.
‘I feel like Jack the Giant Killer,’ said Charles; ‘only there isn’t a
trumpet to blow.’
His voice, though he spoke almost in a whisper, sounded loud and hollow
under the echoing arch of the gateway.
Beyond its cool depths was sunshine, with grass and pink geraniums
overflowing from stone vases. A fountain in the middle leapt and sank
and plashed in a stone basin.
There was a door at the other side of the courtyard—an arched door with
steps leading up to it. On the steps stood a footman.
‘He’s exactly like the one in _Alice_,’ said Caroline; ‘courage and
despatch.’
The footman looked curiously at the three children, hot, dusty, and
untidy, who advanced through the trim parterre. His glance dwelt more
especially on the battered bouquet, on Charlotte’s unspeakable hat, and
the riven stocking of Charles.
‘If you please,’ said Caroline, her heart beating heavily, ‘we want to
see Lord Andore.’
‘’Slordship’s not at heum,’ said the footman, looking down upon them.
‘When will he be back?’ Charlotte asked, while Caroline suddenly wished
that they had at least brought their gloves.
‘Can’t say’m sheur,’ said the footman, doing something to his teeth
with a pin; and his tone was wondrous like Mrs. Wilmington’s.
‘We want very much to see him,’ said Charles. ‘You see we’ve brought
him a bouquet.’
‘I see you ’ave—have,’ said the footman, more like Mrs. Wilmington than
ever. ‘Would you like to leave it? It’ll be a surprise for his Lordship
when ’e comes in,’ and the footman tittered.
‘He _is_ here, then,’ said Caroline. ‘I mean, he’s not in London?’
‘His Lordship is _not_ in London,’ said the footman. ‘Any other
questions? Always happy to say me catechism, ’m sheur.’
The children turned to go. They felt the need of a private consultation.
‘Any particular neem?’ said the footman, and tittered again.
‘’Slordship’ll be dying to know who it was called,’ and once more he
tittered.
Charlotte turned suddenly and swiftly.
‘You need not trouble about our names,’ she said, ‘and I don’t believe
Lord Andore knows how you behave when he’s not there. He doesn’t know
_yet_, that is.’
‘No offence, Miss,’ said the footman very quickly.
‘We accept your apology,’ said Charlotte; ‘and we shall wait till Lord
Andore comes in.’
‘But, I say! Look here, you know’—the footman came down one step in his
earnestness—‘you can’t wait here, you know.’
‘Oh yes, we can,’ said Caroline, sitting down on the second step. The
others also sat down. It was Charles who said, ‘So there!’ and Caroline
had to nudge him and say, ‘Hush!’
‘We never called before at a house where they didn’t ask you in and
give you a chair to sit on. But if this is that kind of house,’ said
Charlotte grandly, ‘it does not matter. It is a fine day, luckily.’
‘Look here,’ said the footman behind them, now thoroughly uneasy, ‘this
won’t do, you know. There’s company expected. I can’t have a lot of
ragged children sitting on the steps like the First of May.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Charlotte, without turning her head; ‘but if you
haven’t any rooms fit to ask us into, I’m afraid you’ll _have_ to have
us sitting here.’
The three sat staring at the bright garden and the dancing fountain.
‘Look here,’ said the footman, weakly blustering; ‘this is cheek.
That’s what this is. But you go now. Do you hear? Or must I make you?’
‘We hear,’ said Caroline, speaking as calmly as one can speak when
one is almost choking with mingled rage, disappointment, fear, and
uncertainty.
‘And I defy you to lay a finger on your master’s visitors,’ said
Charlotte. ‘How do you know who we are? We haven’t given you our names.’
The footman must have felt a sudden doubt. He hesitated a moment,
and then, muttering something about seeing Mr. Checkles, he retired,
leaving the children in possession of the field. And there they sat, in
a row, on Lord Andore’s steps, with the bouquet laid carefully on the
step above them.
It was very silent there in the grey-walled courtyard.
‘I say,’ whispered Charles, ‘let’s go. We’ve got the better of _him_,
anyhow. Let’s do a bunk before he comes back with some one we can’t get
the better of, thousands of stately butlers perhaps.’
‘Never,’ said Charlotte, whose hands were cold and trembling with
excitement. But Caroline said:
‘I wish Mr. Checkles might turn out to be a gentleman, the everyday
kind that we know. Lords’ servants seem more common than other
people’s, and I expect the Lord’s something like them. They say, Like
master like man.’
As if in answer to Caroline’s wish, a door in the wall opened,
showing a glimpse of more garden beyond, and a jolly-faced youth came
towards them. He was a very big young man, and his clothes, which
were of dust-coloured Harris tweed, were very loose. He looked like
a sixth-form boy, and Charles at once felt that here was a man and a
brother. So he got up and went towards the new-comer with the simple
greeting, ‘Hullo!’
‘Hullo!’ said the sixth-form boy, with a friendly and cheerful grin.
‘I say,’ said Charles confidentially, as he and the big boy met on the
grass, ‘there isn’t really any reason why we shouldn’t wait here if we
want to?’
‘None in the world,’ said the big boy; ‘if you’re sure that what you’re
waiting for is likely to come, and that this is the best place to wait
for it in.’
‘We’re waiting for Lord Andore,’ said Caroline, who had picked up the
bouquet and advanced with it. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come, because we
don’t understand English menservants. In India they behave differently
when you call.’
‘What have the servants here done?’ the youth asked, frowning, with his
hands in his pockets.
‘Oh, nothing,’ said Charles in a hurry; ‘at least, I mean, we accepted
his apologies, so we can’t sneak.’
‘I wouldn’t call it sneaking to tell _you_,’ said Caroline confidingly,
‘because, of course, you’d promise on your honour not to tell Lord
Andore. We don’t want to get other people’s servants into trouble when
we’ve accepted their apologies. But the footman _was_ rather——’
At this moment the footman himself appeared at the top of the steps
with an elderly whiskered man in black, whom the children rightly
judged to be the butler. The two had come hastily out of the door, but
when they saw the children and their companion, the footman stopped as
if, as Charles said later, he had been turned to stone, and only the
butler advanced when the youth in the Harris tweed said rather shortly,
‘Come here, Checkles!’ Checkles came, quickly enough, and when he
was quite close he astonished the three C.’s much more than he will
astonish _you_, by saying, ‘Yes, m’lord!’
‘Tea on the terrace at once,’ said the Harris-tweeded one, ‘and tell
them not to be all day about it.’
Checkles went, and the footman too. Charlotte always believed that the
last glance he cast at her was not one of defiance but of petition.
‘So you’re him,’ Charles was saying. ‘How jolly!’
But to Caroline it seemed that there was no time to waste in
personalities, however flattering. Lord Andore’s tea was imminent.
He was most likely in a hurry for his tea; it was past most people’s
tea-time already. So she suddenly held out the flowers, and said,
‘Here’s a bouquet. We made it for you. Will you please take it.’
‘That’s awfully good of you, you know,’ said Lord Andore; ‘thanks no
end!’ He took the bouquet and smelt it, plunged his nose into the
midst of the columbine, roses, cornflowers, lemon verbena, wistaria,
gladiolus and straw.
‘It’s not a very nice one, I’m afraid,’ said Caroline; ‘but you can’t
choose the nicest flowers when you have to look them out in two books
at once. It means Welcome, fair stranger; An unexpected meeting; We
are anxious and trembling; Confidence—no, we left that out, because we
hadn’t any; and Agreement, because we hope you will.’
‘How awfully interesting. It _was_ kind of you,’ said Lord Andore, and
before he could say any more Charlotte hastened to say:
‘You see, it’s not just an ordinary nosegay, please, and don’t thank
us, please, because it wasn’t to please you but to serve our own ends,
though, of course, if we’d known how nice you are, and if we’d thought
you’d care about one, we would have, in a minute.’
‘I see,’ said Lord Andore, quite as if he really had seen.
‘I’m sure you don’t,’ said Caroline; ‘don’t be polite, please. Say
if you don’t understand. What we want is justice. It’s one of your
tenants that had the cottage in your father’s time before you, and
they’re turning her out because there are some week-endy people think
the cottage is so pretty, with the flowers she planted, and the arbour
her father made, and the roses that came from her mother’s brother in
Cambridgeshire. And she said you didn’t know. And we decided you ought
to know. So we made you the nosegay and we came. And we ought to go,
and here’s her name and address on a bit of paper, and I’m sorry it’s
only pencil. And you _will_ see justice done, won’t you?’
‘It’s very kind of you,’ said Lord Andore slowly, ‘to take so much
interest in my tenants.’
‘There,’ said Charlotte; ‘of course we were afraid you’d say that. But
we didn’t mean to shove our oar in. We just went in for ginger-beer,
and Caro found her crying, and there’s a hornbeam arbour, ever so old,
and a few shillings a week can’t make any difference to you, with a
lovely castle like this to live in. And the motto on the tombs of your
ancestors is Flat Justicia. And it’s only bare justice we want; and we
saw the tomb on Sunday in church, with the sons and daughters in ruffs.’
‘Stop!’ said Lord Andore. ‘I am only a poor weak chap. I need my tea.
Come and have some too, and I’ll try to make out what it’s all about.’
‘Thanks awfully,’ said the three C.’s, speaking all together. And
Caroline added, ‘We mustn’t be long over tea, please, because we’ve got
to get home by half-past six, and it must be nearly that now.’
‘You shall get back at half-past six all right,’ said Lord Andore,
and led the way, a huge figure in the dust-coloured clothes, through
the little door by which he had come, on to a pleasant stone terrace
with roses growing all over and in and out and round about its fat old
balustrades.
‘Here’s tea,’ he said. And there it was, set on a fair-sized table with
a white cloth—a tea worth waiting for. Honey and jam and all sorts of
cakes, and peaches and strawberries. The footman was hovering about,
but Charles was the only one who seemed to see him. It was bliss to
Charles to see this proud enemy humbly bearing an urn and lighting a
spirit-lamp to make the tea of those whom he had tried to drive from
even the lowly hospitality of Lord Andore’s doorstep.
‘Come on,’ said the big sixth-form-looking boy, who was Lord Andore;
‘you must be starved. Cake first (and bread and butter afterwards if
you insist upon it) is the rule here. Milk and sugar?’
They all drank tea much too strong for them, out of respect to their
host, who had forgotten that when he was a little boy milk was what one
had at tea-time.
And slowly, by careful questioning, and by making a sudden rule that
no one was to say more than thirty-seven words without stopping, Lord
Andore got at the whole story in a form which he could understand.
‘I _see_,’ he would say, and ‘_I_ see,’ and then ask another question.
And at last when tea was really over, to the last gladly accepted peach
and the last sadly unaccepted strawberry, he stood up and said:
‘If you don’t mind my saying so, I think you are regular little bricks
to have taken all this trouble. And I am really and truly very much
obliged. Because I do mean to be just and right to my tenants, only
it’s very difficult to know about things if nobody tells you. And
you’ve helped me a lot, and I thank you very much.’
‘Then you will?’ said Charlotte breathlessly.
‘Not let her be turned out of her cottage, she means,’ Caroline
explained.
‘She means the Mineral woman,’ said Charles.
‘Of course I won’t,’ said Lord Andore; ‘I mean, of course, I will. I
mean it’s all right. And I’ll drive you home, and if you’re a minute or
two late, I’ll make it all right with uncle.’
The motor was waiting outside the great arch that is held between the
two great towers of Andore Castle. It was a dream of a car, and there
was room for the three C.’s in front beside the driver, who was Lord
Andore himself.
The footman was there, and the proudest moment of the day for
Charles was that in which Lord Andore gave the petition bouquet into
that footman’s care, and told him to see that it was put in water,
‘Carefully, mind; and tell them to put it on the dinner-table to-night.’
The footman said ‘Yes, m’lord,’ as though he had never seen the bouquet
before. Charlotte’s proudest moment was when the woman at the lodge
gate had to curtsey when the motor passed out.
Rupert was waiting for them at their own lodge gate, and when he saw
the motor, his eyes grew quite round like pennies.
‘Oh, do stop, it’s Rupert,’ said the three C.’s; and Rupert was bundled
into the body of the car, where he travelled in lonely splendour. Yet,
even after that, and when the motor had gone away, and the three C.’s
had told him all their adventures and the splendid success of their
magic nosegay, Rupert only said:
‘It’s Chance, I tell you. It’s just accidental. Co—what’s its
name—incidence. It would all have happened just the same if you hadn’t
taken that hideous old mixed assorted haystack with you.’
‘Still disagreeable?’ said Charlotte brightly.
‘Oh, been all the same, _would_ it?’ said Charles; ‘that’s all you
know.’
[Illustration: Rupert was bundled into the body of the car.]
‘It’s _not_ all I know,’ said Rupert; ‘as it happens, I know heaps of
things that you don’t. And I could find out more if I wanted to. So
there!’
‘Oh, Rupert, don’t be cross,’ said Caroline, ‘just when we’re all so
happy. I _do_ wish you’d been there, especially at tea-time.’
‘I’m not cross,’ said Rupert. ‘As it happens, I was feeling extra jolly
until you came home.’
‘Oh, _don’t_,’ said Caroline; ‘do let’s call it Pax. We haven’t told
you half the little interesting things that happened yet. And if you
can’t believe in the magic, it’s your misfortune. We know you can’t
help it. We know you don’t unbelieve on purpose. We know we’re right,
and you think you know you are.’
‘It’s the other way round,’ said Rupert, still deep in gloom.
‘I _know_ it is, when _you_ think it, and when we think it, it’s the
other way,’ said Caroline. ‘Oh, Pax! Pax! Pax!’
‘All right,’ said Rupert. ‘I had a good swim. Your Mr. Penfold’s not
half a bad sort. He taught me a new side-stroke.’ But it was plain that
Rupert’s inside self still felt cloudy and far from comfortable.
* * * * *
Next day the three C.’s and Rupert, in the middle of Irish stew, were
surprised by the sudden rustling entrance of Mrs. Wilmington.
‘A person wishes to see you,’ she said to Caroline; ‘quite a poor
person. I asked her to wait till dinner was completed; but she says
that she hopes you will see her now, as she ought to commence going
home almost at once.’
‘Of course!’ said Caroline; ‘it must be the Mineral woman.’
‘She seemed to me,’ said Mrs. Wilmington, ‘to have an animal face.’
But Caroline was already in the hall, and the figure that rose
politely from the oak chair was plainly—though disguised in her Sunday
clothes—that of the Mineral woman.
‘Oh, Miss!’ she said; ‘oh, Miss!’ She took hold of both Caroline’s
hands and shook them, but that was not enough. Caroline found herself
kissed on both cheeks, and then suddenly hugged; and ‘Oh, Miss!’ the
Mineral woman said; ‘oh, Miss!’ And then she felt for her handkerchief
in a black bag she carried, and blew her nose loudly.
Mrs. Wilmington had gone through the hall very slowly indeed; but even
she could not go slowly enough not to be gone by the time the Mineral
woman had, for the time being, finished with her nose. And as Mrs.
Wilmington went through the baize door, she heard again, ‘Oh, Miss!’
Mrs. Wilmington came back five minutes later, and this time she heard:
‘And it’s all right, Miss; and two bright new five-pound notes “to buy
more rose trees with,” and a letter in his own write of hand thanking
us for making the place so pretty; and I’m to be tenant for life, Miss.
And it’s all your doing, bless your kind heart. So I came to tell you.
I never thought I should feel like I do about any strange little gell.
It was all your doing, Miss, my dear.’
Which was a very mysterious and exciting thing to be overheard by any
housekeeper who was not in the secret. And a very heartwarming and
pleasant thing to be listened to by a little girl who was.
‘You see,’ said Caroline, when she had told the others of the Mineral
woman’s happiness, ‘the magic always works.’