CHILDREN OF THIS
JEAN, A PORTRAIT
She was remarkable in the first place because she never rode in a
perambulator like other children; either she walked--on bare, shapely,
pink feet--or her own personal attendant, Elspeth (a very tall woman
indeed), carried her in a plaid slung over one of her broad shoulders.
Elspeth despised the “bit barrows” of the other nurses, and was quite
strong enough to have carried Jean’s mother as well as Jean. “She will
go barefoot,” Elspeth would say, “till she iss seven, and when she iss
a woman she will walk like a queen, and not like a hen!”
Jean, if possible, went bareheaded as well as “barefoot,” and perhaps
that is the reason why her hair is so abundant, so curly, so full of
golden light that in the sunshine it almost makes you blink. Moreover,
her eyes are big and blue. Sunshine and rain, and kind fresh winds have
tinted her face with the loveliest warm browns and pinks; she is not
yet five years old, and she can dance the sword dance! It is really a
great sight to see Jean’s pink feet twinkling in and out between two
unsheathed swords of her father’s, and he is a proud man.
Yet there never was such a “girly” girl as Jean.
She has an enormous family of dolls--for her adorers all bring dolls,
and _they_ are as the sands of the sea in number--she takes a motherly
interest in them all, both dolls and adorers, but her inseparable
companion is one “Tammy,” an ancient and dirty-faced rag soldier; with
arms and legs resembling elongated sausages, a square body, no feet,
and a head shaped like a breakfast “bap.” Not an attractive personality
to the uninitiated, but he and Jean were as Ruth and Naomi. It is
something of a sorrow to her that the exigencies of Tammy’s figure do
not admit of a kilt, just as she puzzled all last summer in sorrowful
surprise that her father never once donned the uniform she so admires.
Jean’s people live at a house on the Terrace, which has at the back a
shady old-fashioned garden with a big square lawn in the centre. There
Jean’s brothers, Colin and Andrew, played cricket, while Jean fielded
or drilled her dolls under the trees. In the evening, after dinner,
there would be a sound of men’s voices and an occasional thrum of the
banjo under those same trees, and a cheerful clink of glasses, while
men with brown faces and trim, well-set heads laughed and rejoiced in a
coolness that concealed no malaria.
Jean’s father had a reprehensible habit of bringing her, wrapped in a
blanket, out into the garden at ten o’clock at night, when she would
be handed about from knee to knee like a superior sort of refreshment.
To be fetched out of bed in this fashion would have been upsetting
to some children, but Jean, with an adorable sleepy smile, would make
herself agreeable for half an hour or so, and when carried back and
tucked into bed--always by her father--fell asleep again directly,
and never seemed a scrap the worse. On such occasions she was always
expected to sing. She never sang anything but Scottish songs--mournful
or martial, mostly Jacobite, and her repertory was enormous. While
other children were learning “Little Jack Horner,” or “Hey diddle
diddle!” Jean, thanks to Elspeth, learned “Hey Johnny Cope,” or “Cam’
ye by Athol,” and her voice was as the voice of Katherine of France,
“broken music,” for her voice was music, and her English broken.
Sometimes a belated passer-by would wait outside to listen in wonder to
someone singing in the clearest baby voice:
Sing Hey, my bra’ John Hielandman,
Sing Ho, my bra’ John Hielandman,
and at the end of each refrain she always kissed her father, for
there was no one in the world to match with him in Jean’s eyes.
She absolutely declined to sing the last verse after that day upon
which she discovered what “hanging” meant, Colin and Andrew having
suspended Tammy from the apple tree. At times, Jean could raise her
voice otherwise than in song, and on that occasion the whole Terrace
resounded with her shrieks.
Next door there dwelt a very grumpy gentleman. With that easy
confidence in a neighbor’s neighborliness generally manifested by
people who have lived much abroad, Jean’s father, on taking up his
quarters, had written asking permission to put some wire-netting on
the top of the party wall to prevent cricket balls going over. To his
immense surprise he received a curt and discourteous refusal, which
terminated in a warning to the effect that, if balls did come over,
there they would have to stay, as the writer would in no circumstances
have boys running in and out of his house, and there was no back
entrance. Of course balls went over; but Colin and Andrew found an
unexpected ally in Mr. Knagg’s housekeeper, who threw the balls back
again without consulting him; and Mr. Knagg felt rather aggrieved that,
as yet, he had found no cause for complaint. Complaint in some form or
other was as the breath of life to him; he had gone to law with so many
of his fellow-townsmen that his society was no longer sought after, and
his exceedingly clean steps were untrodden by strangers. He intended at
first to complain that the banjo-playing in the garden disturbed him at
his studies, when he happened to hear Jean sing “This iss no my plaid,”
and somehow he gave up the idea.
Colin and Andrew possessed a “mashie” each, and a game of “putting
golf.” It was reserved for Sunday afternoons as being of a quiet and
decorous nature.
But one Sunday afternoon Andrew forgot to “putt,” and gave his ball
a drive that lifted it high over the wall into the next garden. Now,
the wall was too high to climb; besides, the fear of Mr. Knagg was
upon them, and the housekeeper was out--they had seen her go. They had
only two balls, and it was yet a long two hours off teatime. Father and
mother were both out. They retired to consult Jean under the trees.
“If he wasn’t such an old beast, I’d go and ask for it myself,” growled
Andrew.
“You wouldn’t get it if you did,” said Colin the practical.
“Why shouldn’t Jean go? He’d give it to her,” suggested Andrew, who had
noted the weakness of his sex where Jean was concerned.
“Of course he would. You must go, Jean. Hurry up!”
“What, all on my lonely?” exclaimed Jean in pained astonishment.
“Oh, we’ll come with you to the door and ring the bell for you, and
then cut away before he can open it. Then you ask him nicely. Come on,
Jean!”
She seldom long opposed her brothers. She had what Elspeth called a
“tender head,” and strongly objected to having her hair pulled. Between
them they marched her up the flagged path to Mr. Knagg’s front door,
rang loudly, and departed precipitately.
Maighda, the great deerhound who shared with Elspeth the guardianship
of Jean, rose from amidst the company of dolls, where she had been
reposing, and walking gravely into the front garden, jumped the iron
fence, and joined Jean at the top of the steps.
Jean clasped Tammy firmly with one arm and coiled the other round
Maighda’s neck as the door opened rather noisily to disclose an
irate-looking little gentleman in gold-rimmed _pince-nez_.
“If you please,” began Jean, in a still, small voice, “there iss a wee
ball-y wass putted into your garden--will I get it?”
Mr. Knagg stood staring at his strange visitors, while Jean rubbed one
pink foot over the other and Maighda sniffed at him dubiously. Tammy,
with his customary reserve, betrayed no emotion whatever.
“Come!” said Mr. Knagg shortly, holding out his hand. As Jean
disappeared Colin and Andrew flew into the back garden and swarmed up
an apple tree, whence they surveyed their sister’s proceedings with
interest.
“Wonder why men are so much decenter to girls than to us?” mused Andrew.
“Oh, well; his housekeeper likes us best, anyway. Everyone’s got their
cranks.”
“Fore,” cried a clear little voice, and the ball fell with a soft
“plop” at the foot of the apple tree.
“She throws very well for a girl,” said Colin as he dropped onto the
grass. “Let’s finish the game.”
“What do you mean by ‘fore’?” asked Mr. Knagg.
“Heads, you know,” said Jean; but her host was more puzzled than ever,
for he had not even a bowing acquaintance with the royal and ancient
game. They stared at each other in silence for a minute, then Jean,
remembering that one of the most important precepts of her clan was to
accept no service without rendering some return, said shyly: “Will I
sing you a song?”
“Pray do!” exclaimed Mr. Knagg; and his eyeglasses flew off his nose,
he frowned so hard.
“My love’s in Germanie--send him hame! send him hame! My love’s in
Germanie--send him hame!” Jean only sang three verses. Elspeth never
taught her the last two, and when the last notes full of longing had
died away, she added cheerfully: “But he iss at home just now.”
“Who is?”
“My father. Nearly all my songs iss about father.”
“Really!” ejaculated Mr. Knagg, and blew his nose noisily. “So that’s
Scotch?”
“All my songs iss Scottish. I promised Elspeth, and I will know them
all some day. Goot-bye!” and Jean, settling Tammy more comfortably on
her arm, prepared to depart. As she spoke she had lifted her face to be
kissed, and Mr. Knagg kissed her.
“He iss a dull man,” said Jean confidentially to Colin; “but he was
douce enough to me.”
The man in question sat in his favorite chair and read his Sunday
newspaper upside down. It was thirty-five years since he had kissed a
child!
Colin and Andrew were at school, father and mother had gone out in the
dog-cart, taking Maighda with them for the run, Elspeth was ironing
frocks, and Jean entertaining Tammy and all the dolls at tea on the
lawn. Suddenly she threw back her head and listened--no one had such
quick ears as Jean--the color rushed to her face, and she scampered
across the grass, round by the side of the house, and out at the garden
gate; bareheaded, with flying rosy feet, she raced to the end of the
terrace, and as she ran the sound which so excited her grew louder. It
was the pipes!
Would she find “the regiment,” she wondered? Had it come to show what
Elspeth called “this wee stuck-up bit towney” what real John Hielandman
were like? Jean pictured the frowning castle and windy Esplanade, the
steep, stony street, flanked by tall grey houses, down which “the
regiment” “in tartan plaid and philabeg” swept with swinging steps.
That was the setting in which she knew her father’s men. How would they
look in this trim Southern town? And would she dare to stop them to ask
after her friends?
No, it was not a march the piper was playing, and very soon she
discovered that there was no regiment--only a solitary piper playing
the “Keel Row,” with a crowd of unkempt children following him.
Jean pushed in among the children, who made way for this hatless,
shoeless person in some astonishment.
“He iss not the ‘Forty-second,’ nor the ‘Gordons,’ nor the ‘Seaforth,’”
said Jean to herself, “and why will he wear two tartans?” Then, pulling
at the piper’s kilt, she cried shrilly, above the skirl of the pipes:
“Can you play ‘Oran an Aoig’?”
The piper took the chanter out of his mouth, and smiled down at the
eager, upturned face, asking: “_Wot_, my dear?”
“‘Oran an Aoig,’” repeated Jean eagerly.
“Sorry I cawn’t oblige you, but I never ’eard tell of that toon,” and
the “Keel Row” sounded with renewed and aggressive vigor.
Jean loosed her hold of the kilt and turned to go. There was something
uncanny in the speech of this piper, and as she looked more closely,
a certain incongruity in his uniform which chilled and disappointed
her. The children, however, having recovered from their surprise at her
sudden appearance in their midst, decided to have some fun with Jean,
and she speedily discovered that to be the only shoeless person in a
heavily shod crowd is to be in a most unpleasant minority. Also, she
had never been alone in the street before.
Mr. Knagg heard the pipes on his way home to lunch, and having the
greatest abhorrence of all street noises, holding that they were, every
one, “disturbing to the peace of His Majesty’s lieges,” was hurrying
across the road to expostulate with the perpetrator of this new outrage
upon his ears, when he caught sight of a familiar shining in the very
middle of that rabble of children. He laid about him with his white
cotton umbrella, presently emerged from the crowd, bearing a very
tearful Jean in his arms, and hailed a cab. The cab and the dog-cart
drove up to Jean’s door at the same moment. Mr. Knagg left Jean on the
pavement and stalked into his house.
“I said he was a douce man,” sobbed Jean, in the safe shelter of her
father’s arms; “but it wass a pittence piper, not one of ours at all.”
They say that she felt the deception even more than the bruises on her
toes. Her father never managed to thank Mr. Knagg though he called
three times.
* * * * *
“Of course the master’s gone to the war with the regiment. He only got
six months’ leave, after all, and Miss Jean talks and sings about him
all day long, and the mistress just listens. But she says if Master
Colin and Master Andrew were older, she’d send them, too; for there’s
aye been some of our family for the men to follow.” Elspeth left
Mr. Knagg’s housekeeper standing at the wire fence, for she “never
encouraged clash.”
In the wintry days her neighbors saw less of Jean, as play in the
garden was impossible. But even then the pink feet splashed bravely
through the puddles and over the wet stones.
One evening about six, just as Mr. Knagg was turning into the Terrace,
a newspaper boy, shouting with raucous voice, proclaimed: “Serious
British Reverse!” “’Ighland regiment trapped and cut to pieces!” The
old gentleman darted across the road, crying: “Stop that infernal din,
and I’ll buy every rag you’ve got! Don’t come down here again, mind!”
He hurried down the Terrace with a great bundle of pink papers under
his arm. Just outside his own house he paused and looked up. Jean’s
nursery window was open at the top, the curtains were not drawn, and
the room was full of rosy light. Suddenly a child’s voice soared into
the stillness:
He’s as brave as brave can be;
Send him hame, send him hame!
He’s as brave as brave can be;
Send him hame!
Mr. Knagg took off his hat and bent his head.
THE DOLL’S-HOUSE FLAGS (1917)
To begin with the youngest.
“Me an’ the war’s the same age,” said Jasper, for Jasper was born on
August 4th, 1914.
Perhaps that was why he manifested such a decided and independent
disposition almost from his earliest months.
It may have been that everybody was so busy he was more thrown upon his
own resources than are babies in more leisurely times. But whatever the
reason, he ran about when he was one, talked fluently--if in somewhat
impressionistic fashion--when he was eighteen months old, and by the
time he was two he had attained very definite characteristics.
Barbara came next, four long years older than Jasper. She had a round,
rosy face and kind brown eyes that readily filled with tears, and her
little heart overflowed with love and pity for the wounded.
Alison was quite old when war broke out. She could remember times when
sweets “were nothing so very much--everybody eat them,” when “gentlemen
often had _two_ eggs for breakfast and lots of other things as well,”
when “Mummy could buy anything she liked in shops, and nearly everybody
had motors.”
Alison was six when Jasper was born.
Tall and pale was Alison, with straight black hair that reached her
waist. She took the war very seriously indeed, and was implacable in
her conviction that nothing else mattered. She was even rather shocked
that mummy could take comfort in the thought that it would probably be
over before Jasper was old enough to join up.
Then there was George.
He was an American and the same age as Alison and lived quite near,
though after the unfriendly fashion of London, they might never have
known him but that it happened his mummy and theirs worked at the same
hospital.
He was an “only,” and when they first knew him went as a day boy to
a preparatory school quite a long way off; but as time went on and
transport of every kind became more crowded and difficult, he came to
do lessons with Alison and Barbara.
Nothing made Barbara so happy as to be allowed to visit the “dear poor
ones” in the hospital where mummy worked; but when she first saw the
blind soldiers from St. Dunstan’s and they were explained to her, it
seemed as though she really could not bear the knowledge. The children
lived on the south side of Regent’s Park, and Nannie always took them
there for their walks.
“Will they never be able to see?” she would ask piteously.
“I fear not in this life,” was Nannie’s invariable answer.
“Not anything? Ever?”
“Nothing at all. But they are very brave, Miss Barbara; _they_ don’t
cry.”
For days after when Barbara met them in Regent’s Park, her mouth would
go down at the corners, and though she did not actually cry she was,
as nurse said, “queer and quiet” for a long time afterward. Their
inexorable doom weighed on her little soul, and even her serene faith
in a kind God and protecting angels and the “tender Shepherd” of her
prayers was somewhat shaken that such a cruel thing could be. Ah! if
they could only have met _Him_! He would have “touched their eyes”
and all would have been well. Perhaps some day---- In the meantime
the fairies--and she believed in them as firmly as in the heavenly
hierarchy itself--came to her aid, and by some process of reasoning she
decided that the blinded soldiers were under an enchantment. That a
wicked ogre, a German ogre, had taken away their sight (even as trolls
and cruel step-mothers and evilly disposed fairies blinded her favorite
heroes in the “Tales from the Norse”), but that some day a kind fairy
or wise, friendly beast would put them in the way of getting their eyes
back again. Surely among all the animals in the Zoo there would be one
who knew exactly under what tree in the Park the healing dew might be
found.
She never spoke of the St. Dunstan’s men as blind, but as the “poor
enchanted ones,” to distinguish them from the “dear poor ones” of the
hospital, and she would never speak of “Blindman’s Buff,” but always of
“Enchanted Buff.”
Jasper had learned to salute and was immensely proud of himself. Every
man in khaki or hospital blue that came in his way, from brass-hats to
the most newly joined recruits, received his respectful and ecstatic
salutation. Two-foot-six in a white Persian lamb coat and white gaiters
would stand rigidly to attention and bring up a diminutive hand clad in
a white glove smartly to his forehead. If the man he desired to honor
happened to be in hospital blue, he then kissed his hand to express
affection as well as respect. When the warrior in question perceived
Jasper he invariably returned the courtesy with _empressement_.
Generals were most punctilious in this matter, and when Jasper saw
one coming he would trot forward, plant himself firmly in the line
of vision of the eyes under the brass hat, and, rosy and triumphant,
wait till Nannie came up, announcing proudly: “I t’luted ’im _and_ he
t’luted me.”
Everyone smiled upon Jasper. He was so small and round and earnest,
and his absurd hair curled around the edge of his cap in the most
entrancing fashion. He knew he was popular and enjoyed it amazingly.
Therefore was he surprised and chilled when one day, having as usual
trotted ahead of Nannie, he stopped opposite two blue soldiers resting
on a seat in the park and they took not the slightest notice of him.
They seemed to be looking right at him as he stood at salute, but they
neither “t’luted,” nor did they smile or speak.
Jasper kissed his hand.
Still no response.
He kissed his hand, and blew the kiss right at them.
Puzzled, he looked from one to the other. They weren’t asleep. Their
eyes were wide open, and their faces kind and patient, but they didn’t
seem a bit glad to see him.
They just took no notice--no notice at all. And Nannie came up with the
pram.
“I t’luted ’em,” he said in rather trembling tones, quite unlike his
usual strong treble, “but they don’t seem to like me.”
“Eh, what?” said one of the men suddenly. “What’s that?”
Nannie said something hurriedly in a low voice. “He’s only two and a
bit,” she added. Then, “It’s too cold for you to be sitting there. Have
you lost your bearings?”
“That’s about it,” said the man who had first spoken. “Perhaps you’ll
put us on our way. It’s time we were getting back.”
“We’ll go with you. Give him your hand, dear, and bring him along.”
“I _did_ t’lute ’em,” Jasper said again, feeling that an important
ceremony had somehow been scamped.
Both the men stood up, and the one who had spoken to Nannie jogged his
friend with his elbow, saying: “And so do we salute you, young man,”
and they both did.
The man put down his hand and touched the top of Jasper’s Persian lamb
cap, and laughed:
“What a big man!” he said.
And hand in hand they followed Nannie to St. Dunstan’s.
* * * * *
“Now you know what it’s like for the poor enchanted ones,” Barbara
said, taking her hands from Jasper’s eyes.
Jasper looked very solemn. “Poor ’chanted ones,” he echoed; “I’ll
t’lute ’em and kiss my hand _and_ kirtsey ne’st time I meet ’em.”
“You talk to them, my dear,” said sensible Nannie; “they’ll like that
better than all your salutin’s.”
This Jasper was most ready to do at great length in his little high
voice that the poor enchanted ones came to recognize a long way off.
But all the same he never failed to “t’lute and kiss his hand _and_
kirtsey.” No signs of respect and affection could be too much, Barbara
said.
“It’s the worst thing of all, so we must love them most.”
Fairies and angels were inextricably mixed up in Barbara’s mind, and
when her mother came to kiss her good-night on Christmas Eve, she
murmured sleepily: “I simply can’t ’astinguish between God and Father
Christmas, so I mus’ just let it alone.”
Even the toys were much affected by the war. Jasper’s Teddy Bear wore
an expression not unlike the pathetic puzzled look of his brethren
in the Mappin Circle, now that nobody threw them buns, sat they on
their tails never so pleadingly. Alison had made him the brassard of a
special constable, and he always wore it when he went out with Jasper
in the pram. The lady dolls had all become V.A.D.’s or bus conductors
or window-cleaners, and one quite recent acquisition was a land girl.
As for the doll’s house, it wore a martial yet festive air, for the
flags of all the allies were stuck in a tight band of string with which
Alison had bound it thrice just under the roof.
It was not a new doll’s house. In fact as doll’s houses go it was
almost venerable. It had belonged to grannie’s mother, and was built in
the early part of Queen Victoria’s reign. Unlike modern doll’s houses,
it did not open in front. In front it was square and solid, with two
large windows on either side of the door, which had glass panels, and
actually opened and shut, and there were three oblong windows on the
next floor. The roof was made of real little slates, with chimneys at
either end of it. The ground floor was a shop, with two black counters
that could be taken out and dusted, and the walls were fitted with
innumerable shelves and cupboards. It was a silversmith’s shop, and
on the brass plates under the windows were, on one, “David Strachan,
Silversmith and Jeweler,” on the other, “By Appointment to Her Majesty
Queen Victoria.” By which it could be seen that it was a Scottish
jeweler’s shop, for nobody called “Strachan” could be of any other
nationality. Moreover, there were tiny toddy-ladles of various sizes
among the stock-in-trade.
Daddy used to tell the children an entrancing serial story about the
inhabitants of this wonderful house, whereof most of the plenishings
remained in their original form, though Mr. and Mrs. Strachan, the two
shop assistants, and the baby, had been renewed from time to time,
but always as nearly as possible resembling their predecessors. Thus
it came about that Mr. Strachan had side-whiskers--daddy painted them
himself--a stock and peg-top trousers, and Mrs. Strachan a crinoline
and an amazingly slender waist; while Jenny, the maid, who slept in
a box-bed in the kitchen, had a mob-cap and always wore her sleeves
rolled up. The bedroom of Mr. and Mrs. Strachan was much bemuslined,
and the parlor had green rep chairs and a round table.
“It’s all of our doll’s house,” Barbara used to say. “It doesn’t belong
to anyone partickler. Grannie said so.”
“George’s, too,” Jasper always added. He couldn’t bear George to be
left out of anything.
And perhaps because George was an American he was a little less on his
dignity than an English boy of the same age. He didn’t despise girls,
he treated them in a comradely fashion that Alison and Barbara greatly
appreciated. And Jasper adored him, for George realized that a person
might be not quite three, with nether garments so abbreviated as to
be almost indistinguishable from petticoats, with woolly gaiters and
shoes so small they refused to make a martial tramp, however much one
tried--and yet the said person might possess the most boyish soul in
the world.
Therefore was George made free of the doll’s house, and assisted Alison
with the serial story which she had taken over since that day, early
in the war, when daddy went with his Territorial battalion to France.
It was on New Year’s Day in 1917 that George brought Alison the
American flag for the doll’s house. It was a beautiful little silk one,
and he had selected it himself at Selfridge’s.
“I’d like Mr. Strachan should have it,” he said. “We want the allies to
win. You bet we do.”
But Alison shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I hate not to take
it--I’ll have it myself if you like, but it can’t go on the house. Not
yet it can’t. America’s not in, you see.”
“After all,” said George, “we’ve done a good bit, haven’t we? Look at
my dad--he’s been driving an ambulance--he gave it himself--ever since
the beginning of the war, and he’s been wounded.”
“I know,” Alison answered, “I know all that, but”--and her grave
little face was set like a flint--“you’re not in it yet, you’re not
_fighting_, and only countries that are fighting _with_ us can have
their flags on the doll’s house. Mr. Strachan’s most partickler about
that. My daddy’s been wounded twice.”
“Wouldn’t he have it at the back?” Barbara suggested. She couldn’t bear
people to be hurt, and George looked very much hurt.
“No, thank you,” he said haughtily. “If it can’t be put with the
others, you needn’t have it at all. It’s a great flag.”
“I know,” said Alison, “and I’m awfully sorry. Mr. Strachan would love
it the minute you’re really in ... but till you are----”
“We’re in right enough,” George said bitterly, “in up to the neck.
Mother says so. It’s only the President hasn’t said ‘Go’ yet--you know
what Governments are, ‘waiting and seeing,’ and all that rot. Look at
your own! And everybody getting killed all the time.”
“I know,” Alison said. “But that’s what makes the difference. We _are_
getting killed, all the time, even here in London.”
George put the little flag in his pocket. “I came to wish you a happy
New Year, Alison,” he said with an effort to speak pleasantly. “I’ll
have to get you something else. There’s some little silver things for
the shop for you, Barbara, and a machine-gun for Jasper. Perhaps the
partickler Mr. Strachan wouldn’t mind having that on his roof to fire
at the Huns when they come over.”
“Won’t you let me keep the flag?” Alison asked. “Then if ever
America....”
“If ever,” George interrupted scornfully. “That’s all you know about
it. If you’ll wait you’ll jolly well see this time. And you won’t wait
long!”
But he kept the flag in his pocket; and that night he put it in an
envelope to keep it clean.
George was right. She didn’t have to wait so very much longer, for on
April 6th, America declared war on Germany, and he appeared directly
after breakfast waving a Stars and Stripes large enough to have covered
the doll’s house like a tablecloth, so they hung it out of the nursery
window instead, and Jasper “t’luted” it when he went out in his pram.
And Alison got the little flag from George and put it between that of
England and France on the doll’s house, and he further presented the
Strachans with two little khaki gunners to man the gun on the roof, for
there were rumors to the effect that London would get it particularly
hot that summer. The Huns were so angry about America.
That very morning great-uncle Jasper came to see the children, and gave
each of them, including George, a bright new half-crown.
Jasper was much pleased with his, and refused to be parted from it
even after Nannie had dressed him to go out. He declared he would hold
it exceedingly tight and not “jop” it. Nannie had taken him with her
down to the kitchen to get the list of wanted groceries from cook,
and before you could say “knife” he had raced into the scullery,
mounted a chair, and thrust the new half-crown down into one of the
divisions of the knife-machine, proclaiming triumphantly that it was
“a bid money-box.” And there the half-crown remains to this day unless
somebody has been demobilized who understands Kent’s knife-machines.
Nannie hated to take Jasper to shops instead of the Park, but she
had to do it sometimes because things had to be got and there was no
one else to fetch them; besides, the “pram was handy for parcels.”
He thoroughly enjoyed these expeditions and certainly cheered up the
shopping of other people.
That morning when they arrived at the grocer’s there was the usual
tired, cross-looking throng of housewives bearing string bags,
irascible old gentlemen with leather ones, and the inevitable slate
with the restrictive announcement: “No Matches. No Jam. No Bacon. No
Tea. No Cheese. No Lard.”
“Tut, tut,” muttered Nannie. “No cheese again!”
“No tzeeze adain,” Jasper instantly repeated, but in ringing tones that
might have indicated glorious news, and everybody laughed.
“Bless his heart,” said Nannie when she got home, “he does his bit as
well as anybody.”
Alison was always ready enough to take care of Jasper, and was
thoroughly trustworthy as regards letting no harm befall him; but she
looked upon such “minding” in the light of “war work,” and her methods
were somewhat austere.
She was annoyed that he should constantly interrupt mummy when she
read aloud the latest war news from _The Times_ by frivolous calls for
admiration of his clock-work rabbit, and that mummy never failed to
respond. And Alison was positively shocked that he could go on playing
absorbedly with the said rabbit even when mummy read to them a letter
from daddy in France.
She forgot that, for Jasper, daddy was chiefly known as a picture in
a frame that stood on a table by mummy’s bed, whereof he kissed the
glass, making a smudge on it, every night when he had said his prayers;
whereas the familiar rabbit was furry and comforting to carry, and went
across the floor in a succession of exciting hops when it was wound up.
After all, Jasper was but a very little boy.
As for Barbara, she followed where Jasper led. Barbara was no sort of
use for minding. Yet she could devise most delightful games, and gave
dolls’ tea-parties when all the vanished delicacies that used to grace
such festivities before the war appeared again. So lavish was she with
chocolate éclaires and cream buns and “white and pink sugar cakes” that
Alison, the conscientious, was moved to expostulate, exclaiming: “What
about the rationing, Barbara?”
“There’s no war in fairyland,” Barbara answered serenely, “and this is
a fairy tea, so you can have as many lumps of sugar as ever you like.”
Jasper was a cause of anxiety at these functions, because he _would_
put a whole plate in his mouth at once. The V.A.D. doll fell over
backward, she was so shocked. Such voluptuous gastronomic joys as
chocolate éclaires and cream buns woke no responsive thrill in Jasper’s
breast, for he had never either seen nor tasted one or the other, so
when called upon to pretend to eat something, he seized the nearest
thing of handy size.
* * * * *
The children’s house had a basement, but George’s mother lived in a
beautiful Willet house that had none, so that autumn he and his mother
and their maids used to run over “to spend the raid” with Jasper’s
household when the first maroons sounded.
After the Zeppelin raids the doll’s house had been brought down from
the nursery to a room in the basement where there was a gas fire,
and the children used to play with it and enact many thrilling dramas
while the raids were going on. As George had prophesied, London got it
particularly hot during the harvest moon of 1917, with five raids in
eight nights.
They had all just got back from a holiday in the country and, with the
exception of Barbara, who was gun-shy and hated the noise, they really
felt the strain far less than the grown-ups.
Jasper usually slept most of the time in his mother’s arms, but after
a particularly loud crash would rouse himself to murmur with sleepy
complacency: “That was a good one. We got ’em that time.”
But Barbara, when the barrage was unusually deafening and prolonged,
remarked rather piteously: “How it must ’asturb the poor angels!”
It was during the very last raid of all, in May of the following
year, that something happened to the doll’s house. It was on a Sunday
night, and the maroons didn’t start till eleven o’clock. George and
his household hurried over as soon as he had got some clothes on, and
Jasper woke up and was very talkative and cheerful. Arrayed in a blue
dressing-gown and bed-shoes, he ran about the room, interfering with
George and his sisters in their arrangement of the Strachan family, and
shouting lustily in concert with the louder crashes.
He wasn’t often allowed to touch the interior of the doll’s house,
for his methods were too Bolshevist, and he was inclined to instigate
conduct wholly opposed to the characters of so _douce_ and respectable
a family.
That night Barbara insisted that Jeannie, the maid, and the baby should
take refuge under one of the counters, while Mr. and Mrs. Strachan and
the shop assistants crouched behind the other.
It happened that just then Jasper had developed a mania for collecting
smooth, round stones, and Alison had suggested he should form an
ammunition dump to supply the Strachans’ machine-gun. This dump he
was allowed to build near the stumpy little low oak table on casters
that had supported the doll’s house from the time it was first built.
Mummy had carefully explained to him that he must on no account throw
the stones _at_ anything, because Jasper came of three generations of
left-hand bowlers, and had already shown that he could throw a ball in
the direction he wanted it to go. So far he had never thrown a stone
either at things or people, for he was a kind little soul and no more
disobedient than the generality of small boys of three. But he carried
a stone in his hand all day long unless Nannie discovered it and took
it from him. He liked the feel of it, its smoothness, its roundness,
its vast potentialities.
That night he had been shooed away from the doll’s house half a dozen
times, for Alison and George were absorbed in a thrilling play in which
the Strachans captured a German spy who was guiding enemy air-craft by
means of forbidden lights.
Just as the “Archies” were barking their loudest, and an unmistakable
bomb dropped somewhere, Jasper, on the other side of the room, gave a
whoop and let fly the stone he had in his left hand straight at the
doll’s-house roof. It took one of the wooden chimneys broadside on
and broke it clean off, narrowly missing the massed heads of his two
sisters and George, which were luckily almost inside the house absorbed
in the spy drama.
It also cracked some of the neat little slates on the roof.
There was a general consternation and excitement, and Jasper scurried
across the room to secure another stone from the dump, when he would
have undoubtedly had a shot at the other chimney had not Nannie caught
him and held him tight.
Then it was that Alison astonished her family, for instead of demanding
instant and condign punishment for her destructive little brother, she
danced about the room and burst into poetry, shouting at the top of her
voice:
The Strachans are in the War Zone, their house has been hit,
They’ve caught a bad spy and they’re all done their bit.
“She’s a most onaccountable child, Miss Alison,” said Nannie to cook
next day; “she was actually sorry that the stone didn’t go right
through the roof, an’ you’d have thought she’d have gone on ever so ...
anyway, it kept them from caring much about the raid.”
CONCERNING CHRIS AND EASTER (1916)
Easter is the only girl, a sort of happy afterthought at the end of
a long family of five boys, with six years between her and her next
brother.
Chris is the only precious child, born after a good many years of
marriage to devoted and adoring parents.
Easter doesn’t think much of boys. They are common as blackberries in
her family and she is keenly sensible of her own distinction in having,
as she puts it, “chosen to come as a girl.”
Thus it came about that her mental attitude struck Chris with something
of a shock; not wholly unpleasant; stimulating; the tingle of
resentment tempered by a thrill of amused surprise. It was so odd and
new to meet anyone who felt like that.
Besides, till he came to live in Easter’s village he had been rather
lonely, and she supplied a felt want. Especially had this been so
in the last two bewildering years, for his parents had seemed less
absorbed in him than was quite dutiful. And for the last year his
father had vanished altogether to that mysterious place that swallowed
up so many pleasant and familiar folk; that overshadowing, omnipotent,
vastly extending region known as “the front.”
Easter, on her part, welcomed the society of Chris. She, too, was
lonely by reason of the very same cause as Chris. Little girls were
scarce in that village and Easter’s mother was busy all day long with
war work of one sort and another, and owing to the same cause Chris’s
governess, Miss Radley, only gave him her society during the bare hours
of lessons, which lessons had for some time been shared by Easter.
Now Easter was much better at lessons than Chris; much quicker, in
most things far more intelligent and receptive. Only in arithmetic did
Chris shine, and in this subject he had soared away from Easter and did
abstruse calculations in the end of the book all by himself with Miss
Radley.
Easter was born on an Easter Day, and this year she was eight years
old. Chris was born on Christmas Day, and last Christmas he was eight.
Therefore, in spite of his prowess in arithmetic, he maintains that he
is a year older than Easter.
“Weren’t you born in 1908?” he demands sternly.
“Ye-es,” answers Easter, “on an Easter Sunday. They _were_ so pleased.”
“And I,” says Chris, “was born in 1907. Take seven from eight and what
remains?”
“One, but it isn’t a real, whole one,” Easter objects.
No one knows this better than Chris, but he stoutly maintains: “A
year’s a year, and you’re either born in it or you’re not--so there.”
However, in spite of this and many other differences of opinion, they
had decided to get married when they came to what Easter’s nurse calls
“a suitable age.”
As a rule Chris follows blindly where Easter leads, giving in to her
stronger will and considerably stronger body, though not always without
protest.
Easter is tall for her age and very muscular. She has a gentle,
early-Victorian, regularly featured, delicately tinted face, with a
high forehead, abundant curly, fair hair, and large pathetic blue
eyes that are entirely misleading. In fact, her appearance is as
unlike her real character as it is possible for such an extremely
agreeable exterior to be. She looks all softness and gravity and gentle
melancholy. Whereas she is a ruthless and determined young person
who cares nothing for “moral suasion” and less for punishments and
penalties, provided she gets her own way.
Chris, on the contrary, is soft-hearted and easily ruled through his
affections. He would rather not be disobedient and troublesome unless
such breakings of the law are expressly commanded by Easter.
But to be called a “muff” is more than he can bear, and rather than
Easter should think this of him he will offend his whole dynasty of
friends.
* * * * *
Chris and Easter were sitting under a hedge brilliant with scarlet hips
and cloudy with “traveler’s joy.” The hedge topped a fairly steep
bank, with a ditch full of muddy water at the bottom of the bank.
A heated argument was in progress as to the names of their eight
daughters. Easter had already chosen the names, and they ran as
follows: Irene, Semolina, Rosalind, Majorca, Minorca, Vinolia, Larola,
and Salonica. Chris objected to Semolina and Vinolia.
“I hate semolina,” he observed gloomily, “almost as bad as I hate rice.”
“But it sounds so much nicer.”
“And Vinolia, too--greasy stuff you smear on chapped legs.”
“It’s got a lovely smell,” said Easter.
“And why,” demanded Chris, who was in a bold and captious mood, “should
there be eight of ’em? Why can’t there be some boys?”
“I won’t have boys, I tell you,” Easter declared firmly. “Girls are far
prettier.”
“_Are_ they?” asked Chris incredulously. “I’ve never seen any pretty
ones.”
Instead of asking “Where are your eyes?” Easter said huffily, in
life-like imitation of nurse: “That’s as it may be. Anyway they wear
far prettier clothes.”
“You don’t,” Chris pointed out.
Easter looked down at her extremely short and faded navy-blue skirt,
at her long legs stuck out in front of her, at her muddy boots, at the
large hole in the knee of her stocking. Save for the said skirt she
was dressed almost exactly like Chris, in muffin cap, reefer and brass
buttons.
“Sometimes I do,” she maintained; “but anyway, Irene, Semolina, and
Rosalind, and Majorca, and Minorca, and Vinolia, and Larola, and
Salonica will all have lovely frocks, silk ninon, with sashes. Chris,
they’ll be perfectly sweet, and we’ll make them walk two and two in
front of us to church.”
“I tell you,” Chris declared, unmoved by this entrancing vision, “that
I don’t _want_ so many daughters. I don’t like them, I don’t want ’em
and I won’t have ’em.”
“Then,” Easter ejaculated in breathless tones that should have warned
him, “I shan’t marry you.”
“I don’t care,” the callous Chris announced. “The country wants men. I
heard my daddy say so the last time he was home. There’s far too many
women as it is. They can’t fight.”
“Can’t they?” the indignant Easter exclaimed ironically, and giving
Chris a vigorous and wholly unexpected push, rolled him down the steep
bank and into the ditch with a mighty splash; and then, adding insult
to injury, she dug her heels into the wet grass, and taking off with
skill and surety, jumped over his prostrate body on to the road,
whereupon she ran away, laughing derisively.
Chris got most uncommonly wet, for the bottom of the ditch was slimy
and soft. Even after he had struggled to his feet they slipped about
and sank in far over the tops of his boots. And when he did manage to
scramble up the bank to the road, he certainly looked a deplorable
object, covered with mud and green slime and with water oozing from
every bit of him. He stamped his feet and rubbed them on the wet grass
that bordered the road without much visible betterment.
There was no going back through the village in such a plight, so
he climbed the first five-barred gate he saw and started on a long
cross-country journey that was to bring him home by unfrequented ways.
He found the unfrequented ways, for he didn’t meet a soul, but he lost
his bearings altogether. The wind got up and there followed cold, gusty
showers of rain and hail. He felt chilled and miserable and dreadfully
tired. Field after field he traversed and yet found no familiar
landmarks, till, having toiled uphill over a heavy ploughed field, he
reached a road that stood fairly high, and below him on the far horizon
he recognized the square tower of his own church. He plodded on and on
till at last he trotted wearily up his own drive, and there he saw that
not only Miss Radley but the three maids were all gathered on the steps
of the front door. The moment Miss Radley saw him she ran toward him,
exclaiming:
“Oh, Chris! Where _have_ you been? We were getting so anxious. Do you
know it’s half-past five? My dear boy, how wet you are! Come in and get
changed at once.”
The maids went back into the house when they saw Chris, and Miss Radley
hurried him in and upstairs, not even waiting to make him wipe his feet.
“We’ve been so anxious,” she repeated. “I went to Easter’s, and she
said you’d parted ever so long ago. Why did you go off by yourself like
that?”
Chris was half in, half out of his sailor blouse by this time, and
mumbled something about having got tired of Easter.
Miss Radley didn’t worry him much with questions, nor did she comment
severely upon his dirty state. She was extraordinarily kind and got her
hands all over mud in helping him to take off his boots; and it was
not until he was lying luxuriously in a hot bath that it struck him
as odd that his mother didn’t come to him. All the time, too, he had
the feeling that Miss Radley wanted to tell him something and yet she
couldn’t seem to begin.
“Where’s mummy?” he asked at last. “Isn’t she back yet? I wish she’d
come and talk to me.”
Miss Radley looked queerly at him, almost as though she were going to
cry. “Chris dear,” she said, and waited for quite a long time, “mummy
has had to go away....”
“Away! For the night? Where to? Why?”
“Chris dear”--again Miss Radley seemed to find it difficult to go
on--“she had a telegram, just after you went out, from the War Office,
asking her to go at once. Your father is in a hospital at Boulogne,
very ill ... wounded.”
“Dangerously wounded?” asked Chris, who was familiar with war terms.
Miss Radley nodded, and two tears ran down her cheeks. “That’s what it
said.”
“I think,” said Chris, “I’d like to get out of this bath now.”
When he was dressed he didn’t seem to want the long-delayed tea, even
though there was a beautiful brown egg and lovely buttered toast. In
spite of the hot bath and a bright fire in the schoolroom he felt
horrid, cold trickles running down his back all the time. He was
extremely tired, too, yet only conscious of one overwhelming want--to
be taken on his mother’s knee and comforted. Miss Radley took him on
hers and sat with him right in front of the fire. She was very kind and
told him how sorry mummy had been to go off in such a hurry without
saying good-bye, but there was just one train that would reach London
that night if she caught it at the junction; and the squire, Easter’s
father, had driven her himself in his motor, and they just managed; and
she was crossing to France that night in charge of a brother officer of
dad’s--she had her passport long ago.
Every now and then Miss Radley lightly touched his face, which was
very hot, and then she would hold his hand, which was very cold.
Half-asleep, Chris would murmur from time to time, “dangerously
wounded,” but somehow he couldn’t feel about it as he knew he ought to
feel. Though he adored his daddy, all he felt was this overpowering
ache of longing for his mother.
Easter’s scornful refusal to have any boys in her family had hurt him
very much. He felt lonely and pushed out, somehow; and he badly wanted
the one person who never failed in her appreciation of little boys,
even if they were thin and small and not particularly good looking, and
could not run so fast as ... certain little girls. He was conscious of
being all these undesirable things, and yet he was convinced it was a
great and glorious thing to be a boy, even if Easter didn’t think so.
Once, after a long and acrimonious discussion with her on this very
subject, he had said to his mother: “I choosed to come as a boy, didn’t
I?”
“God chose,” said his mother gravely.
“Me and God settled it together,” Chris announced complacently, and his
mother got up suddenly and looked in a cupboard for something she never
found.
In Chris’s mind God and Father Christmas were inextricably mixed up.
He had no fear of either one or the other. Both were beneficent and
considerate and ready to give people their choice both as to presents
or other things.
Yet when he was put to bed that night he couldn’t dream of pleasant,
soothing things, but was pursued by eight strong daughters in
embroidered ninon frocks and pink sashes, who formed themselves into
a solid phalanx and drove him to the edge of an awful precipice, and
were just pushing him over ... when he would wake to find Miss Radley
standing beside his bed, looking anxious and troubled, shading a candle
with her hand.
* * * * *
The war had not touched Easter very nearly. Her mother had forbidden
nurse to talk about it to her; and her father (judging her
sensitiveness wholly from her gentle, Early-Victorian appearance) was
careful to keep all frightening or depressing news from her as far
as was possible. All her life she had been sheltered and adored and
spared and spoiled. Her brothers, being so much older, had “given
in” to her from the very first, and although the two eldest were
fighting--one in the navy, the other in the army--their doings did not
seem to affect her particularly. And of the three still at school she
had, of late, seen very little, for in the holidays they were always
doing O.T.C. training, or making munitions somewhere.
Yet one thing had impressed her during the last two years. She was
always hearing that some of their acquaintances had “lost” a son, a
brother, or a husband. They did not talk of “killed” or “missing” to
Easter; but they did speak of this continual and mysterious “loss,” and
with the queer secretive puzzledom of childhood she never asked people
outright what they meant by the phrase.
It worried her, this continual losing. She never heard that these
lost ones got found again. Suppose she herself got lost in this
irretrievable way? How dreadful it would be. What would her family do?
In justice to Easter one must allow that the thought of her people’s
consternation quite overshadowed any possibly unpleasant consequences
to herself.
She had never discussed the question with Chris, who knew a lot
about the war and wanted to talk about it to the exclusion of more
interesting topics--such as daughters. But this was easily overruled.
Moreover, Easter’s mother had decided that far too much was said about
the war in Chris’s hearing, and she had asked Miss Radley to warn him
not to talk about it to Easter lest it should upset her.
Miss Radley had her own opinion of Easter’s sensibility. She had not
taught the children for six months without discovering which was the
more susceptible and imaginative. But she did as she was bid, and Chris
had done his best to obey in his turn. Perhaps in a lofty masculine way
he was rather proud that he should be allowed to know things closely
hidden from the domineering Easter, and was therefore the less anxious
to share his knowledge with her.
He whole-heartedly admired Easter. She was so strong, so good at
things, so invariably cheerful and well, with a never-failing fund of
good spirits and energy. It is very possible that one of her chief
attractions for him lay in the fact that she seemed so entirely outside
those great and grave anxieties that obsessed everybody else.
Easter was brought up to understand that any “career” that she
chose was open to her. She should have an equal chance with any of
her brothers; she might be a doctor for a factory inspector, or a
police-woman, or go in for any art or craft she fancied. Literature,
art, music, even the stage, were to be open to her, should she so
wish. But, so far, her sole ambition was centred in the possession of
a husband, a meek husband, and eight meek daughters to move and have
their being at her decree.
It was the swing of the pendulum with a vengeance.
No one told Easter about Chris’s daddy that afternoon. In the evening
she prepared her lessons with her customary energy and intelligence,
and giggled cheerfully from time to time at the recollection of Chris’s
comical appearance as he lay floundering in the ditch.
“That’ll teach him,” said Easter to herself, “whether it’s to be
daughters or not!”
Next morning at breakfast her mother said: “Miss Radley can’t take you
to-day, Easter dear, so it’s no use your going over. They had very bad
news yesterday, and Mrs. Denver has had to go to France. The major is
very ill.”
“Has Chris gone?” Easter asked.
“No, dear; but Miss Radley sent over a note quite early to say he has
got a bad, feverish cold (he got so wet yesterday--it’s a pity he
didn’t come back with you), and we don’t know what it may turn to. So
you must just take a holiday, for I’m due at the hospital supplies at
ten, and shall be away all day.”
“What’s the matter with Major Denver?”
“I fear,” said her mother, anxiously watching the earnest, delicately
tinted face upturned to hers, “I fear he is very badly wounded.”
“Oh!” said Easter, and she looked very grave.
“Be as happy as you can, my precious,” her mother called to her as she
drove away. “I’ll get home as early as possible.”
That was a very long day for Easter.
For one thing, it rained all the morning; for another, her father had
to go a long way off on business connected with special constables, and
couldn’t take her; and Amelia, the usually cheerful housemaid, went
about the house with red eyes and a perpetual sniff, because she had
heard that morning she’d lost a cousin in the “big push on the Somme.”
Amelia was distinctly depressing.
Easter knitted a few rows of her scarf--the scarf that was always begun
by her and finished by somebody else because she got tired of it.
She found she was missing Chris far more poignantly than was at all
pleasant.
After all, even if he didn’t always quite give in to her, he was good
company; and Easter found herself remembering many kind things he had
done. The chocolates he had always shared so generously, the apples so
unequally divided always in her favor. Once when she fell off a wall
and scratched her hands and tore her frock so badly, he hadn’t laughed,
and he was so seldom rough in play, only when unbearably provoked.
Easter was too honest not to admit that even at the time.
It cleared up in the afternoon and she ran over to the Denvers’ house
to see if Chris was up yet and could play.
Emma, the parlormaid, was firm in her refusal to admit Easter.
“Master Chris is that bad, so feverish it might turn to anything, the
doctor says. Miss Radley said no one was to come in, and she haven’t
left Master Chris a single minute herself. It’s dreadful, and us all in
such trouble about the major, too.”
“You haven’t lost him, have you?” Easter asked.
“Good gracious! no, not yet, so far as we knows. But he’s as bad as
bad, and,” she added, “if anything was to happen to Master Chris and
his ma away an’ all--but, there! I can’t bear to think of it. You run
along home, Miss Easter. I’ll tell Miss Radley you came to ask.”
And the door was shut in Easter’s face.
Next day the news was no better. Even Easter’s mother could not keep
from her the universal anxiety as to Major Denver. He had been their
doctor for a year before the war, and in that time had managed to
endear himself to everybody.
It was said he had taken a country practice because he thought the
bracing air would be good for Chris. Every soul in the village felt a
special right to know the latest news of the major, and Miss Radley had
the telegrams pinned on the front door as soon as she got them.
All day long people came up the drive to read these telegrams, and
presently there was a bit of white paper as well, concerning Chris, for
the doctor’s little son lay grievously sick at home, while his father,
they feared, was dying of his wounds in France. A white-capped hospital
nurse had come to help Miss Radley.
Easter was a very lonely little girl. She felt, too, that in some
inexplicable fashion she was shut out from things, that more was
happening than she was allowed to know; and, worst of all, Chris had so
entirely disappeared that she began to fear that he, too, was lost, and
they were afraid to tell her.
At the end of nearly a week she felt she could not bear this
furtiveness and suspense a minute longer, and she determined to go to
Chris’s house and find out for herself just what had happened and was
happening. She would not ring the bell. She would go round to the side
of the house and see if the schoolroom window was open, and get in and
find Miss Radley and force her to tell the truth. If Chris was lost,
then she, Easter, must herself set forth to find him without more delay.
All fell out as she had planned.
The schoolroom window, which opened like a door divided down the
middle, was open, and Miss Radley, with her back to it, sat at the
table, writing.
Easter could move quietly as a cat when it suited her. She came in
without making a sound, and stood just behind Miss Radley, who was so
absorbed she noticed nothing.
“Have you lost Chris, Miss Radley?” Easter asked loudly.
Miss Radley started violently, and Easter came round to her side, and
she noticed that Miss Radley’s usually round, rosy face was pale and
much less round than it used to be.
“Oh, Easter dear, how you startled me! Don’t suggest such a dreadful
thing! We’re awfully anxious, with his mother away and all this other
trouble, but ... we must hope always, always hope--for if anything
happened to Chris....”
“What _has_ happened to Chris?” Easter asked, searching the very soul
of Miss Radley with her large clear gaze.
“He got so wet after he left you that day last week--I can’t think
how--and he got a real bad chill, and now there are all sorts of
complications--and his temperature keeps up so.”
“What are complications?” Easter interrupted.
“You wouldn’t understand.... Oh, Easter, child, don’t stare at me like
that! Aren’t you sorry?”
“I know how Chris got so wet,” Easter said slowly. “I pushed him into
the ditch.”
Miss Radley drew back a little from Easter; then she put out her hand
and laid it on the child’s arm.
“I expect it was only in fun ... you couldn’t know....”
“Can’t I play with him a bit? Is it catching?” Easter’s voice was still
quite loud and matter-of-fact. “It’s rather dull and lonely for me.”
“For _you_!” Miss Radley echoed indignantly. “Don’t you understand?
Don’t you care, you hard child? But you never did care for anybody but
yourself.”
“Does Chris?”
“Yes, indeed he does. He’s always been a dear, kind boy. Easter, you
must go home. I can’t stop to talk to you now. Try to think about other
people a little....”
Miss Radley did not finish her sentence, for Easter had gone from her
as silently as she had come. For a minute the governess sat quite
still. Then she sighed and shivered, and went on with her letter.
Easter fled down the Denvers’ drive and out into the road, but she
didn’t go home. She ran and ran till she could run no more, and
dropping into a walk, turned downhill along a winding lane thickly
bordered by trees so high that they almost met overhead, forming an
arch. The light in this avenue was curiously lurid, for the trees were
beeches, and though rapidly thinning, were still gorgeous in reds and
yellows. The avenue led to a church in the next parish (Easter had run
such a long way), and she had been there quite lately with Chris to
a fruit and flower service in aid of the local hospital. Miss Radley
had taken them both, and now Easter remembered there were very large
vegetable marrows at the base of one of the pillars, and wondered if
they were still there. She and Chris had sat next each other at that
service, and during the sermon he had let her hold his knife. It had a
corkscrew and a thing for taking stones out of horses’ hoofs, as well
as blades, and all were very difficult to open. Chris was good about
lending his things. And he never told of people. What did old Raddles
mean when she called her hard? She did care for Chris, but she wasn’t
going to say so to Raddles. Yet Raddles looked awfully sad. Supposing
they _had_ lost Chris, after all, and were afraid to say? Supposing
she, Easter, got lost, now, to-day? This was a long, lonely, unfamiliar
road, with such a queer light in it. Supposing it were enchanted and
she couldn’t find her way back? Then she would be like all those sons
she had heard about lately. Her heart began to beat very fast. Ah!
somebody was coming up the road. She would ask her way. It would be
dreadful to be lost.
A very tall lady came toward her walking slowly up the hill. She was
dressed in black, with a long thin veil turned back from her face.
She looked restlessly from side to side, as though trying to find
somebody in the shadows. This seemed quite natural to Easter. Timidity
or shyness with strangers was unknown to her. She was glad to see
somebody, and the tall lady’s face was very gentle.
“Have _you_ lost anybody?” Easter asked as they met.
The tall lady stopped, and though she looked straight down at Easter,
the child was uncomfortably conscious that she didn’t really see her.
“I have lost my only son,” said the lady.
“You, too!” cried Easter, and what she could not say to Miss Radley
she found it easy to say now to this pale lady who looked at her so
strangely. “Oh, I _am_ sorry!”
And she took one of the lady’s hands in both her own.
The lady did not draw her hand away; with her eyes still fixed on
Easter’s face with that queer, unseeing look, she said: “Dear child!
And you?”
“Not yet,” said Easter. “Not yet--at least, they say so, but I’m
dreadfully afraid.”
“Don’t be afraid,” said the lady. “Don’t be afraid. That’s what he
always said.”
“Everyone,” said Easter, and her hard little voice grew soft, “everyone
seems losing sons and people. Won’t you never, never find him again?”
Into that lady’s face there leapt a sudden radiance as when a clearly
burning lamp is carried into a dark room. Her eyes were luminous and
bright, and Easter felt that she was really seeing her at last.
“We shall all find them again,” she said almost joyously. “Everyone of
us.”
“Are you sure?” Easter questioned.
“In sure and certain hope,” said the lady.
“In sure and certain hope,” Easter repeated. “I like that. You _are_
sure?”
“Absolutely. Tell me, dear, who is it you are anxious about?”
Hand in hand they had started slowly to mount the hill.
“It’s Chris,” she said. “He plays with me a lot and we do lessons
together ... and they won’t let me see him, and I want to tell him I’m
sorry.”
“But why won’t they let you see him?”
“Because they’re afraid they’ll lose him--I heard _that_, though
Raddles denied it when I asked her.”
“Then he’s ill?”
“I suppose so.”
The lady looked curiously at Easter. There was no doubt whatever that
she was troubled, and yet ... how oddly the child spoke.
As they walked on, hand in hand, the lady said, more to herself than to
Easter: “Does the road wind uphill all the way?”
“No,” said Easter; “when we get to the end of this it’s quite flat.”
When they came to the main road Easter took her hand out of the lady’s.
“I know my way now,” she said. “Good-bye.”
The lady stooped and kissed her. “I should write to Chris if I were
you,” she said. “He’ll probably like a letter very much when he’s a
little better.”
Easter nodded and started to run, with that swift, long-distance,
steady running that had so often worn out Chris; that was his
admiration and his despair. And as she ran she repeated over and over
again: “In sure and certain hope” all the way.
She would write to Chris directly she got in. Her copies were always
neater than his.
But she couldn’t do it the minute she got in, for tea was ready, and
her mother there to have it with her. Her mother looked pleased, too.
Better news had come from France. There was hope that Major Denver
might pull through, after all; and she had seen Miss Radley, and
Chris’s temperature was nearly down to normal.
It was a lovely tea; and directly after it Easter sat down at
her mother’s desk and wrote to Chris. Very large, with beautiful
up-and-down strokes:
“DEAR CHRIS,
“I’m sory I pushed you. Sum of them shall be boys. The ones with the
names you don’t like. Please don’t get lost.
“Your loving
“EASTER.”
She licked the flap of the envelope with copious completeness, and in
one corner of the address, very thick and black, in inch-long printed
letters was the word “EARGUNT.”
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.