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"US"
An Old Fashioned Story
by
MRS MOLESWORTH
Author of "carrots", "cuckoo Clock", etc.
With Illustrations by Walter Crane
[Illustration: IN ANOTHER MOMENT TOBY'S NOSE WAS IN THE BOWL TOO, TO
TOBY'S SUPREME CONTENT!--p. 26. _Front_]
[Illustration]
London:
MacMillan & Co. Ltd
1899
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
HOW THEY CAME TO BE "US" 1
CHAPTER II.
BREAD AND MILK 20
CHAPTER III.
QUEER VISITORS 40
CHAPTER IV.
BABES IN A WOOD 59
CHAPTER V.
TIM 79
CHAPTER VI.
TOBY AND BARBARA 100
CHAPTER VII.
DIANA'S PROMISE 119
CHAPTER VIII.
NEW HOPES 139
CHAPTER IX.
CROOKFORD FAIR 156
CHAPTER X.
A BOAT AND A BABY 177
CHAPTER XI.
A SAD DILEMMA 197
CHAPTER XII.
GOOD-BYE TO "US" 218
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
IN ANOTHER MOMENT TOBY'S NOSE WAS IN THE BOWL TOO,
TO TOBY'S SUPREME CONTENT Front.
FROM BEHIND SOME STUBBLE A FEW YARDS OFF ROSE THE
FIGURE OF THE YOUNG BOY WHOM THE CHILDREN HAD
SEEN WALKING BEHIND THE GIPSIES--WHISTLING
WHILE HE CUT AT A BRANCH HE HELD IN HIS HAND Page 74
"HERE'S SOME SUPPER FOR YOU. WAKE UP, AND TRY
AND EAT A BIT. IT'LL DO YOU GOOD" 89
"THEY WANT OUT A BIT," SHE SAID. "THEY'RE TIRED
LIKE WITH BEING MEWED UP IN THERE ALL DAY AND
NEVER A BREATH OF AIR--NO WONDER" 132
"UPON MY WORD THEY ARE SOMETHING QUITE OUT OF THE
COMMON," HE SAID; "I WOULDN'T HAVE MISSED
THEM FOR A GOOD DEAL. WHAT A KING AND QUEEN
OF THE PIGMIES, OR 'BABES IN THE WOOD,' THEY'D
MAKE" 173
"I DO FINK WHEN US IS QUITE BIG AND CAN DO AS US
LIKES, US MUST HAVE A BOAT LIKE THIS, AND ALWAYS
GO SAILING ALONG" 195
"She is telling them stories of the wood,
And the Wolf and Little Red Riding-Hood."
_The Golden Legend._
CHAPTER I.
HOW THEY CAME TO BE "US."
"Blue were their eyes as the fairy-flax,
Their cheeks like the dawn of day."
LONGFELLOW.
A soft rather shaky sort of tap at the door. It does not all at once
reach the rather deaf ears of the little old lady and tall, still older
gentleman who are seated in their usual arm-chairs, one with his
newspaper by the window, the other with her netting by the fire, in the
exceedingly neat--neat, indeed, is no word for it--"parlour" of Arbitt
Lodge. In what part of the country this queerly-named house was--is
still, perhaps--to be found there is no particular reason for telling;
whence came this same queer name will be told in good time. The parlour
suited _its_ name anyway better far than it would that of
"drawing-room," which would be given it nowadays. There was a round
table in the middle; there were high-backed mahogany chairs against the
wall, polished by age and careful rubbing to that stage of dark
shininess which makes even mahogany pleasant to the eye, and with seats
of flowering silk damask whose texture must have been _very_ good to be
so faded without being worn; there were spindle-legged side-tables
holding inlaid "papier-maché" desks and rose-wood work-boxes, and two or
three carved cedar or sandal-wood cases of various shapes. And, most
tempting of all to my mind, there were glass-doored cupboards in the
wall, with great treasures of handleless teacups and very fat teapots,
not to speak of bowls and jugs of every form and size; and everything,
from the Indian box with the ivory chessmen to the china Turk with his
long pipe of green spun-glass, sitting cross-legged on the high
mantelpiece between a very sentimental lady and gentleman, also of
china, who occupied its two ends,--_everything_ was exactly and
precisely in its own place, in what had been its own place ever since
the day, now more than thirty years ago, when Grandpapa, the tall old
gentleman, had retired from the army on half-pay and come to settle down
at Arbitt Lodge for the rest of his life with Grandmamma and their son
Marmaduke. A very small Marmaduke, for he was the only one left of a
pretty flock who, one after the other, had but hovered down into the
world for a year or two to spread their tiny wings and take flight
again, leaving two desolate hearts behind them. And in this same parlour
at Arbitt Lodge had _that_ little Marmaduke learned to walk, and then to
run, to gaze with admiring eyes on the treasures in the glass cupboards,
to play bo-peep behind the thick silken curtains, even in _his_ time
faded to a withered-leaf green, to poke his tiny nose into the bowl of
pot-pourri on the centre table, which made him sneeze just exactly
as--ah! but I am forgetting--never mind, I may as well finish the
sentence--just exactly as it made "us" sneeze now!
After the tap came a kind of little pattering and scratching, like baby
taps, not quite sure of their own existence; then, had Grandpapa's and
Grandmamma's ears been a very little sharper, they could not but have
heard a small duel in words.
"_You_, bruvver, my fingers' bones is tired."
"I _told_ you, sister," reproachfully, "us should always bring old
Neddy's nose downstairs with us. They never hear _us_ tapping."
Then a faint sigh or two and a redoubled assault, crowned with success.
Grandmamma, whom after all I am not sure but that I have maligned in
calling her deaf--the taps were so very faint really!--Grandmamma looks
up from her netting, and in a thin but clear voice calls out, "Come in!"
The door opens--then, after admitting the entrance of two small figures,
is carefully closed again, and the two small figures, with a military
salute from the boy, a bob, conscientiously intended for a curtsey, from
the girl, advance a step or two into the room.
"Grandmamma," say the two high-pitched baby voices, speaking so exactly
together that they sound but as one. "Grandmamma, it's '_us_.'"
Still no response. Grandmamma is not indifferent--far from it--but just
at this moment her netting is at a critical stage impossible to
disregard; she _thinks_ to herself "wait a moment, my dears," and is
quite under the impression that she has said it aloud; this is a
mistake, but all the same "my dears" do wait a moment--several moments
indeed, hand-in-hand, uncomplainingly, without indeed the very faintest
notion in their faithful little hearts that there is anything to
complain of--there are _some_ lessons to be learnt from children long
ago, I think,--while Grandmamma tries to secure her knots.
Look at them while they stand there; it is always a good plan to save
time, and we have a minute or two to spare. They are so alike in size
and colour and feature that if it had not been that one was a boy and
the other a girl, there would have been no telling them apart. Before
Duke was put into the first stage of boy-attire--what that exactly was
in those days I confess I am not sure--they never _had_ been told apart
was the fact of the matter, till one day the brilliant idea struck
Grandmamma of decorating little Pamela with a coral necklace. She little
knew what she was about; both babies burst into howling distress, and
were not to be quieted even when the unlucky beads were taken away; no,
indeed, they only cried the more. Grandmamma and Nurse were at their
wits' end, and Grandpapa's superior intelligence had at last to be
appealed to. And not in vain.
"They must _each_ have one," said Grandpapa solemnly. And so it had to
be. In consequence of which fine sense of justice and firm determination
on the part of the babies, they went on "not being told apart" till, as
I said, the day came when Marmaduke's attire began to be cut after a
different fashion, and by degrees he arrived at his present dignity of
nankin suits complete. Such funny suits you would think them
now--funnier even than Pamela's white frock, with its skirt to the
ankles and blue-sashed waist up close under the arm-pits, for even if
she walked in just as I describe her you would only call her "a
Kate-Greenway-dressed little girl." But Marmaduke's light yellow
trousers, buttoning up _over_ his waistcoat, with bright brass buttons,
and open yellow jacket to match, would look odd. Especially on such a
very little boy--for he and Pamela, as they stand there with their
flaxen hair falling over their shoulders and their very blue eyes gazing
solemnly before them, wondering when either of the old people will think
fit to speak to "us"--Pamela and he are only "six last birfday."
All this time Grandpapa is in happy--no, I won't say "happy," for the
old gentleman is always, to give him his due, pleased to welcome the
children to his presence, "at the right time and in the right manner,"
be it understood--in _complete_ unconsciousness of their near
neighbourhood. There was nothing to reveal it; they had not left the
door open so as to cause a draught, for Grandpapa abhorred draughts;
they were as still and quiet as two little mice, when mice _are_ quiet
that is to say. For often in the middle of the night, when my sleep has
been disturbed by these same little animals who have been held up as a
model for never disturbing any one, I have wondered how they gained this
distinction! "When mouses is quiet, perhaps it's cos they isn't there,"
said a little boy I know, and the remark seems to me worthy of deep
consideration.
Grandpapa was absorbed in his newspaper, for it was newspaper day for
_him_, and newspaper day only came once a week, and when it--the paper,
not the day--did come, it was already the best part of a week old. For
it came all the way from London, and that not by the post, as we
understand the word, but by the post of those days, which meant "his
Majesty's mail," literally speaking, and his Majesty's mail took a very
long time indeed to reach outlying parts of the country, for all the
brave appearance, horses foaming, whips cracking, and flourishing of
horns, not to say trumpets, with which it clattered over the stones of
the "High Streets" of those days. And the paper--poor two-leaved,
miserable little pretence that _we_ should think it--cost both for
itself and for its journey from London, oh so dear! I am afraid to say
how much, for I should be sorry to exaggerate. But "those days" are
receding ever farther and farther from us, and as I write it comes over
me sadly that it is no use _now_ to leave a blank on my page and say to
myself, "I will ask dear such a one, or such an other. He or she will
remember, and I will fill it in afterwards." For those dear ones of the
last generation are passing from us--have already passed from us in such
numbers that we who were young not so very long ago shall ere long find
ourselves in their places. So I would rather not say what Grandpapa's
newspaper cost, but certainly it was dear enough and rare enough for him
to think of little else the day it came; and I don't suppose he would
have noticed the two children at all, till Grandmamma had made him do
so, had it not been that just as they were beginning to be a _little_
tired, to whisper to each other, "Suppose us stands on other legs for a
change," something--I don't know what--for his snuff-box had been lying
peacefully in his waistcoat pocket ever since Dymock, his old
soldier-servant, had brought in the newspaper--made him sneeze. And with
the sneeze he left off looking at the paper and raised his eyes, and his
eyes being very good ones for his age--much better in comparison than
his ears--he quickly caught sight of his grandchildren.
"So ho!" he exclaimed, "and _you_ are there, master and missy! I did not
know it was already so late. Grave news, my love," he added, turning to
Grandmamma; "looks like war again. The world is trying to go too fast,"
he went on, turning to his paper. "They are actually speaking of running
a new mail-coach from London which should reach Sandlingham in three
days. It is appalling,--why, I remember when I was young it took----"
"It is flying in the face of Providence, _I_ should say, my dear,"
interrupted Grandmamma.
The two little faces near the door grew still more solemn. What strange
words big people used!--what could Grandpapa and Grandmamma mean? But
Grandpapa laid down his paper and looked at them again; Grandmamma too
by this time was less embarrassed by her work. The children felt that
they had at last attracted the old people's attention.
"We came, Grandpapa and Grandmamma, to wish you good-night," began Duke.
"And to hope you will bo'f sleep very well," added Pamela.
This little formula was repeated every evening with the same ceremony.
"Thank you, my good children," said Grandpapa encouragingly; on which
the little couple approached and stood one on each side of him, while he
patted the flaxen heads.
"I may call you 'my good children' to-night, I hope?" he said
inquiringly.
The two looked at each other.
"Bruvver has been good, sir," said the little girl.
"Sister has been good, sir," said the little boy.
The two heads were patted again approvingly.
"But us haven't _bo'f_ been good," added the two voices together.
Grandpapa looked very serious.
"Indeed, how can that be?" he said.
There was a pause of consideration. Then a bright idea struck little
Marmaduke.
"I think perhaps it was _most_ Toby," he said. "Us was running, and Toby
too, and us felled down, and Toby barked, and when us got up again it
was all tored."
"What?" said Grandpapa, still very grave.
"Sister's gown, sir."
"My clean white gown," added Pamela impressively; "but bruvver didn't do
it. _He_ said so."
"And sister didn't do it. _She_ said so," stated Duke. "But Nurse said
_one_ of us had done it. Only I don't think she had thought of Toby."
"Perhaps not," said Grandpapa. "Let us hope it was Toby."
"Nevertheless," said Grandmamma, who had quite disengaged herself from
her netting by this time, "Pamela must remember that she is growing a
big missy, and it does not become big misses to run about so as to tear
their gowns."
Pamela listened respectfully, but Grandmamma's tone was not alarming.
The little girl slowly edged her way along from Grandpapa's chair to
Grandmamma's.
"Did you never tear your gowns when you were a little missy,
Grandmamma?" she inquired, looking up solemnly into the old lady's face.
Grandmamma smiled, and looked across at her husband rather slily. He
shook his head.
"Who would think it indeed?" he said, smiling in turn. "Listen, my
little girl, but be sure you tell it again to no one, for it was a
little bird told it to me, and little birds are not fond of having their
secrets repeated. Once upon a time there was not a greater hoyden in all
the countryside than your Grandmamma there. She swam the brooks, she
climbed the trees, she tore her gowns----"
"Till at last my poor mother told the pedlar the next time he came round
he must bring her a web of some stuff that _wouldn't_ tear to dress me
in," said Grandmamma; "and to this day I mind me as if it had been but
last week of the cloth he brought. Sure enough it would neither tear nor
wear, and oh how ugly it was! 'Birstle peas' colour they called it, and
how ashamed I was of the time I had to wear it. 'Little miss in her
birstle-peas gown' was a byword in the countryside. No, my Pamela, I
should be sorry to have to dress you in such a gown."
"I'll try not to tear my nice white gowns," said the little girl; "Nurse
said she would mend it, but it would take her a long time. Grandmamma,"
she went on, suddenly changing the subject, "what does a 'charge' mean,
'a great charge?'"
"Yes," said Marmaduke, who heard what she said, "'a _very_ great
charge.'"
Grandpapa's eyes grew brighter.
"Can they be speaking of a field of battle?" he said quickly. But Duke
turned his large wistful blue eyes on him before Grandmamma had time to
answer.
"No, sir," he said, in his slow earnest way, "it wasn't about battles;
it was about _us_."
"She said _us_ was that thing," added Pamela.
"Who said so?" inquired Grandmamma, and her voice was perhaps a little,
a very little, sharp.
"Nurse said it," said Pamela. "It was when us had felled down, and the
old woman was at the door of her house, and she asked if us was hurt,
and Nurse was vexed, and then she said that."
"What old woman?" asked Grandmamma again.
"Her that makes the cakes," said Duke.
"Oh, Barbara Twiss!" said the old lady in a tone of relief. "Now, my
dear children, kiss Grandpapa and kiss me, and say good-night. I will
explain to you when you are bigger what Nurse meant. God bless you and
give you a nice sleep till to-morrow morning!"
The two little creatures obeyed at once. No "oh, _mayn't_ we stay ten
minutes"'s, "just _five_ minutes then, oh please"'s--so coaxingly urged,
so hard to refuse--of the little ones of our day! No, Marmaduke and
Pamela said their "good-nights" in dutiful fashion, stopping a moment at
the door before leaving the room, there to execute the military salute
and the miniature curtsey, and went off to bed, their curiosity still
unsatisfied, as children's curiosity often had to remain in those times
when "wait till you are big and then you will be told" was the regular
reply to questions it was not easy or desirable to answer otherwise.
There was a moment's silence when they had left the room. Grandpapa's
face was once more hidden in his newspaper; Grandmamma had taken up her
netting again, but it did not go on very vigorously.
"I must warn Nurse," she said at last. "She means no harm, but she must
be careful what she says before the children. She forgets how big they
are growing, and how they notice all they hear."
"It was no great harm, after all," said Grandpapa, more than half, to
tell the truth, immersed in his paper.
"Not as said to a discreet person like Barbara," replied Grandmamma.
"But still--they have the right to all we can give them, the little
dears, as long as we are here to give it. I could not bear them ever to
have the idea that we felt them a burden."
"Certainly not," agreed Grandpapa, looking up for a moment. "A _burden_
they can never be; still it is a great responsibility--a great charge,
in one sense, as Nurse said--to have in our old age. For, do the best we
can, my love, we cannot be to them what their parents would have been.
Nor can we hope to be with them till we can see them able to take care
of themselves."
"There is no knowing," said Grandmamma. "God is good. He may spare us
yet some years for the little ones' sakes. And it is a mercy to think
they have each other. It is always 'us' with them--never 'me.'"
"Yes," said Grandpapa, "they love each other dearly;" and as if that
settled all the difficulties the future might bring, he disappeared
finally into the newspaper.
Grandmamma, for her part, _meant_ to disappear into her netting. But
somehow it did not go on as briskly as usual. Her hands seemed to lag,
and more than once she was startled by a tear rolling quickly down her
thin soft old cheek--one of the slow-coming, touching tears of old age.
She would have been sorry for Grandpapa to see that she was crying; she
was always cheerful with him. But of that there was no fear. So
Grandmamma sat and cried a little quietly to herself, for the children's
innocent words had roused some sad thoughts, and brought before her some
pictures of happy pasts and happy "might-have-beens."
"It is strange," she thought to herself, "very strange to think of--that
we two, old and tired and ready to rest, should be here left behind by
them all. All my pretty little ones, who might almost, some of them,
have been grandparents themselves by this time! Left behind to take care
of Duke's babies--ah, my brave boy, that was the hardest blow of all!
The others were too delicate and fragile for this world--I learnt not to
murmur at their so quickly taking flight. But he--so strong and full of
life--who had come through all the dangers of babyhood and childhood,
who had grown up so good and manly, so fit to do useful work in the
world--was there no other victim for the deadly cholera's clutch, out
there in the burning East?" and Grandmamma shuddered as a vision of the
terrible scenes of a plague-stricken land, that she had more than once
seen for herself, passed before her. "We had little cause to rejoice in
the times of peace when they came. It would have seemed less terrible
for him to be killed on the battlefield. Still--it was on the
battlefield of duty. My boy, my own good boy! No wonder she could not
live without him--poor, gentle little Lavinia, almost a child herself.
Though if she had been but a little stronger,--if she could but have
breasted the storm of sorrow till her youth came back again to her a
little in the pleasure of watching these dear babies improving as they
did,--she might have been a great comfort to us, and she would have
found work to do which would have kept her from over-grieving. Poor
Lavinia! How well I remember the evening they arrived--she and the two
poor yellow shrivelled-up looking little creatures. I remember, sad at
heart as we were--only two months after the bitter news of my boy's
death!--Nurse and I could almost have found it in our hearts to laugh
when the ayah unwrapped them for us to see. They were so like two
miserable little unfledged birds! And poor Lavinia so proud of them,
through her tears--what did she know of babies, poor dear?--and looking
so anxiously to see what we thought of them. I _could_ not say they were
pretty--Duke's children though they were." And a queer little
sound--half laugh, half sob--escaped from Grandmamma at the
recollection. But it did not matter--Grandpapa was too deaf to hear. So
she dried her eyes again quietly with her fine lavender-scented cambric
pocket-handkerchief, and went on with her recollections all to herself.
She seemed to see the two tiny creatures gradually--very
gradually--growing plump and rosy in the sweet fresh English air, the
look of unnatural old age that one sometimes sees in very delicate
babies by degrees fading away as the thin little faces grew round and
even dimpled; then came the recollection of the first toddling walk,
when the two kept tumbling against each other, so that even the sad-eyed
young widow could not help laughing; the first lisping words, which,
alas, might not be the sweet baby names for father or mother--for by
that time poor Lavinia had faded out of life, with words of whispered
love and thankfulness to the grandparents so willing to do their utmost.
But it was a sad little story at best, and even Grandmamma's brave old
heart trembled when she thought that it might come to be sadder still.
"What would become of them if they were left _quite_ alone in the
world," she could not help saying to herself. "And though I am not so
old as my dear husband by ten years, I cannot picture myself finding
strength to live without him, nor would a poor old woman like me be much
good to the young creatures if I did! But one must not lose courage, nor
grieve about troubles before they come. For, after all, who would ever
have believed these two poor fledglings would grow up to be two bonnie
bairnies like Marmaduke and Pamela now!"
And for the last time that evening Grandmamma again wiped her
eyes--though these tears were of thankfulness and motherly pride in the
thought of the sweet and pretty children upstairs, who at that moment
were kneeling in their little white nightgowns, one on each side of old
Nurse, as they solemnly repeated after her the Lord's Prayer, and after
that their own evening petitions that "God would bless dear Grandpapa
and Grandmamma, and make 'us' very good children, and a comfort to them
in their old age."