Now the same gust of rain that was disputing with Laura every inch of
her downward path, buffeting her face, twisting invisible hands in her
hair, and sopping her shoes till she slipped and slithered down the
clay-lined runnels of the road, had already more glorious insults to its
credit; for it had bespattered unconcernedly, as it soughed past him,
the comfortable person as well as the immaculate bicycle of Mr. H. J.
Cloud. Henry Justin, no less, who, on this particular October Saturday
at half-past four of what should have been a fine afternoon, was a week
short of his sixteenth birthday; discreetly placed alike in his form and
his house, near enough to the heights to satisfy Mrs. Cloud and his own
dignity, yet not near enough to cause him any responsible discomfort;
pleased as usual with himself, and more or less tolerant of his world;
cycling home from school, to spend the Sunday with his mother.
But the hoyden rain, abetted by her partner the wind, had driven
dripping fingers between the collar of Henry Justin and the tanned neck
of Henry Justin, with no more emotion than if it had been the neck and
collar of the shivering insignificance in the reefer coat a mile or so
away up the road: had trailed damply over him and across him, dulling
his nickel work and tipping his hat over his eyes, and shrilling on
ahead again without even paying him the compliment of waiting for his
opinion of her. It was brief. He jumped off his bicycle and, with a
thrust-out underlip and a glance at the threatening sky, gave the
exclamation which stood with him for acquiescence, dissent, interest,
indecision, or (as in this instance) annoyance, the economical
exclamation that Laura, in a goaded moment, will refer to as a grunt.
But she will withdraw the expression unreservedly as soon as her better
self once more supervenes. Which is typical of Laura, of the rebel
temper and the Quaker conscience.
But that is to come.
We should be talking of Justin, a hundred yards ahead of us, opening a
gate into a field of stubble, disposing himself comfortably beneath a
convenient haystack till the rain should be over. To do him justice,
Justin would have walked through it contentedly enough, rather enjoying
the sluicing downpour, certainly without a thought of his clothes, which
were as he liked them, old and shapeless and comfortable; but he would
not ride. He was as near an old maid about his possessions as a healthy
boy can be, and the idea of exposing his fine new bicycle simply did not
occur to him. He had lifted it like a baby across the stones and
stubble, and had the absorbed face that his mother loved as he polished
its bespattered handlebars with his handkerchief, picked a straw from
its chain, and, propping it in the lee of the wind, covered it with his
coat, as a premature prince might cover a sleeping beauty with still a
week of her hundred years to run. Thereon, climbing to the low shelf
above it, he raked together a pillow of hay, settled himself against it
with another grunt—contentment this time, for the hay was soft and
scented and the corner screened alike from wind and rain—and drew a
small book and a large apple from his pocket. Justin never neglected
either of his inner men. The apple was a pippin, and the book’s author a
discovery of Justin’s. He recommended him to every one. I think his name
was Carlyle.
He had been reading for half an hour, more and more slowly, for the
haystack-drowse that is not the least of the spells of the Witch of Kent
was creeping over him, when his ear was caught by a rustle that might
have been a mouse in the wall of the stack, or a sparrow stealing straw,
or the leaves of his own book—it had slipped from his fingers—fluttered
by the air. He opened his eyes, idly surprised to find that they had
been closed, but, seeing nothing but rain-laced sky and sodden field,
made no objection to their shutting out that blank prospect again, when
the rustle recommenced, punctuated with jumping sounds as of a small dog
scrambling on to a forbidden sofa, and finally by a voice, as small and
soft and breathless a voice as he had ever heard.
“If you please,” said the voice, “if, if you please—could you tell me
the way to the Crystal Palace?”
Justin sat up and stared. Facing him, on the edge of the shelf of hay,
hooked to it insecurely by fingers and little digging chin, hung a small
peaked countenance, wreathed in drenched elf-locks, with eyes like black
diamonds set in rain-washed, wind-whipped cheeks.
Justin was too well-fed to be imaginative. And the creature after all
had spoken, had asked him something in good enough English: on its
bewildering head it wore the most ordinary child’s sailor cap with a
gilt lettering on the ribbon—H.M.S. _Indomitable_; yet, for a ridiculous
instant, its fugitive, bodiless air beguiled him, and he could have
believed himself agape before a changeling, a come-by-chance of wind and
rain, a fairy nothing, gone with the sky’s first dispelling streak of
blue.
“If you please,” the creature began again anxiously, and stopped. There
was a sound of yielding hay, and before Justin could stretch out a hand
it had disappeared with some suddenness. There was a scuffle and a bump,
and Justin thought he heard a whimper. He rolled lazily to the edge of
the shelf and looked over. The child—he could see now that it was a
little girl—was standing below him in the crushed stubble, brushing
mournfully with a handful of the treacherous hay at the mud that
plastered its wisp of skirt. It had the gallantest air of assuring
itself that nothing on earth should induce it to cry; though its eyes,
as it lifted them to Justin again, had that shimmering brilliance that
only unshed tears can give. But it returned to the charge.
“If you please——” Then, with a sudden alluring solicitude, “It’s only
me. I’m not a tramp. Oh, I hope I didn’t frighten you?”
“Well—it was a bit of a shock.” Justin looked amused. “I may get over
it.”
“I’m so sorry. It’s fearful meeting tramps, isn’t it?” She had all the
Kent child’s horror of its bogey in her voice. “That’s why I was
frightened, too. I thought you were one, at first——”
Justin murmured his gratification.
She amended anxiously.
“Oh, only from far off. But even if you were, I _had_ to ask the way.
And when I saw the bicycle I knew you couldn’t be. It’s a lovely
bicycle.” She regarded it with wistful admiration and, insensibly,
Justin thawed, like any other male child between eight and eighty, to
the feminine intelligence that appreciated his hobby.
“It’s not bad,” he admitted, stretching out a long arm to twitch
modestly at the bicycle’s covering, much as a woman straightens the hat
that a man’s glance has told her is becoming. “Humber, you know.”
She nodded eagerly.
“They’re the best, aren’t they? Mother’s is a Swift. She’s going to have
a Humber, though, when she comes back. She’s going to teach me to ride,
then. She promised. I began, you know, before she went away. I could
jump off splendidly as long as there was grass to fall on, but I
couldn’t jump on. But Aunt Adela won’t let me practise at all now. I
wonder——” her face lit up, “Oh—do you suppose there are bicycles at the
Crystal Palace?”
He looked down at her amusedly.
“Why, of course. There’s a track. Races. Awful sport. You ought to get
your mother to take you one day, if you’re so keen.”
“Oh, she will,” Laura assured him happily. “She always does what I want.
I’ll get her to, directly after tea. Unless——” she glanced up at the
heavy sky. “Oh, I oughtn’t to be talking. I must get on. I shall be so
dreadfully late. If you’ll just tell me which road to take——” She
paused. “I suppose—is it specially your haystack?” she hinted
delicately.
“Why?”
“Because, if you didn’t mind—if you’d help me up—it’s so high——”
Justin leant over good-naturedly and held out his hands to her. She
caught at them and was swung up with a crow of delight.
“You’re stronger than Mother!”
He threw her gently from him on to the hay.
“Here, don’t splash me all over. You’re as wet as the Thames.” For her
dripping hair had whipped across his face.
“Horrid, sergy wet!” She sniffed at herself in delicate disgust.
“Well, and now you’re up, what do you want to do?”
“There’s a cross-roads further on. I saw it from Beech Hill.” She
tiptoed. “Yes, there! I couldn’t see from the road. D’you see? Through
that tree—level with the nest. Which of them ought I to take?”
“Where to?”
“Why—I told you—the _Cœlestial City_.”
“The _Cœlestial_—that’s in the _Pilgrim’s Progress_! Is it a game?”
“A game!” She was disappointed at such futility in the big,
pleasant-faced boy she was beginning to like. “As if——” Then she broke
off, enlightened. “Oh, I see—you call it the Crystal Palace, too. So
does Nurse. Shall I get there by tea-time, do you think?”
“To the Crystal Palace? You! My good kid! Some one’s been pulling your
leg. It’s miles to the Crystal Palace.”
“Oh, no,” she assured him. “It’s only the enchantment that makes it look
far. It’s close—it’s quite close, really. I saw it myself from Beech
Hill—as bright as bright——”
“Beech Hill!” He regarded the diminutive athlete incredulously. “You
walked from Beech Hill today? By yourself? Rot!”
“Oh, yes!” But he could see that his surprise or some thought of her own
disquieted her. She jerked herself to her knees from the comfort of the
hay. “I think I’ll be getting on now,” she said, with transparent
politeness and a sidelong glance at him.
Now Justin was placidly accustomed to take things as they came—rain,
haystacks, or nixies interested in Humber bicycles. But as he examined
her more closely, it was apparent even to his indifference that, for all
her dishevelment, there must somewhere be a nursemaid in search of this
particular nixie. Her shyness, rounded by courtesy, was not the mere
coltishness of the village child. A vague sense of responsibility
mingled in his mind with a good deal of amusement.
“Hi! Stop a minute!” he called. “You! H.M.S. _Indomitable_!”
“My name,” she flashed at him, “is Laura.”
“And mine,” he countered, with a twinkle, “is Justin.”
She gave him a wicked child’s grin.
“Good-bye, Mr. Justin——” and whipped her legs over the side of the
stack.
But Justin could be quick when he chose. His long arm shot out and
caught her by her loose child’s belt. She wriggled in his grip like a
snared rabbit.
“Steady! You’d have walloped right into my bicycle if you’d jumped
then,” he reproached her.
“It wasn’t that! You didn’t stop me for that! You guessed! I saw you
guess!” She faced him quivering, defiant.
“Oh, you _are_ running away then,” he chuckled. “Thought so!”
She turned on him like a leaping flame.
“You’re going to stop me? Oh, and I thought you were nice. Oh, you’re
not going to tell? You couldn’t be such a sneak!”
He flushed a little in spite of his sixteen dignified years. She was
quick to see it. Her tone altered. She appeased him hurriedly.
“Oh, but truly it’s all right. I promise you. Aunt Adela will be angry,
of course, like Mrs. _Christian_—but Mother won’t mind. Mother lives
there, you see. I’m almost certain she’s expecting me. They’re bound to
have opera glasses there, like the _Shepherds_——”
“The _Shepherds_?”
“Oh, you know!” She stamped a muddy foot impatiently. “They lent them to
_Christian_ and _Hopeful_ to see the _City_ through—from _the Hill
called Clear_. But one can see better still from Beech Hill. I almost
saw Mother. She’s sure to be watching for me over the walls. And I’m so
late. I’m so late. Oh, do tell me the way and let me get on. If you
hadn’t seen your mother for months and months and months——” Her mouth
trembled.
“All right! All right! Keep your hair on! Nobody’s going to stop you.”
He was surprised to find himself so concerned with her concern. “But you
can’t go anywhere in this rain,” he told her. “You’d be drowned. You’re
half drowned already. It’s getting worse and worse. You wait till it’s
over and I’ll see if I can’t give you a lift on my step.”
“Oh, would you?” Her eyes adored him. “Oh, could you? Shouldn’t I be too
heavy?”
“But you’d never get to the Palace tonight, you know,” he warned her.
“It’s five miles to the next station.”
“Oh, I mustn’t go by train. It wouldn’t be safe. They all walk in the
_Pilgrim’s Progress_. Indeed, I don’t know whether it’s safe to sit here
so long. The hay’s making me awfully sleepy. You know what the
_Shepherds_ said, _Beware that ye sleep not—and beware_——Oh!” She pulled
herself suddenly to her knees, examining him with eyes of suspicion.
“What’s up?” he demanded.
“It’s all right. Your face isn’t black.” She sank back relieved from the
inspection. “I only wondered for a dreadful minute if you were the
_Flatterer_.” She smiled at him. “One has to be so careful,” she
apologized, “on _Enchanted Ground_.”
He pulled at his ear.
“You seem to be up in Bunyan. I don’t understand this game. Look
here—why don’t you squat down and tell me all about it? I won’t give you
away.”
“Won’t you?” She eyed him wistfully. Her eyes, like any dog’s, said,
“Can I trust you?” and his, though he did not know it, told her that she
might. With that long look she probed and accepted him, never, I think,
through all their tangled future to doubt him again. Exasperation she
might feel, and weariness, and once a very exaltation of contempt; but
never doubt—never any doubt at all that within the limitations of his
nature, he was honest and kind.
And, with belief in him, the film of secretiveness that had formed over
her mind, that was not natural to her, that was but a consequence of her
situation, was wiped away like mist from a window-pane. She did not
realize that she had been longing for a confidant, but she did curl
herself, without more ado, as close as she could wriggle to this
likeable fellow-creature, and began to talk to him at a rate that would
have astonished Aunt Adela. But then Justin did not interrupt her
account of her own pilgrim’s progress to tell her that her stockings
were muddy. And so he heard, sleepily, with his eyes on the steady slant
of the rain, and most of his thoughts far enough away from Laura, all
about Mother, and the twins, and Gran’papa, and the City of Gold, and
what Nurse’s mother had said, and what Laura would do when she got
there—a long, long tale, that reached him in some shape as the Mouse’s
tale reached _Alice_. He was left with a vague notion that Laura was a
rum little kid, also that the mother must be rather a charming person.
He supposed, when the rain stopped, he should have to see the child back
to her home.... Yet it was a bit of a shame to get her into trouble....
Queer, that she shouldn’t be living with her mother.... He wondered what
was behind it all.... And what was the mother doing at the Palace?... He
thought that only the attendants had quarters there....
He roused himself.
“Your mother lives at the Crystal Palace, did you say?” He propped
himself on his elbows, nibbling a straw and frowning meditatively at
Laura, who sat, hugging her knees, hunched like a witch against the wall
of the stack. “Oh, no! She’s only staying there—till she gets well.”
“Then where do you live?”
“Oh, I _live_ with Mother. But I’m staying with Gran’papa.”
“Yes, but where?”
“I told you,” she reminded him reproachfully, “at Brackenhurst. Behind
Beech Hill.”
“Brackenhurst! I didn’t know you said Brackenhurst. Why, I live at
Brackenhurst,” he informed her.
“Oh! Then I’ll see you again.” There was most flattering satisfaction in
her voice.
He continued, unheeding—
“Funny I haven’t run across you before now. Of course—you only came in
May. And we were at the Lakes all the hols. What did you say was your
grandfather’s name?”
“Gran’papa. Gran’papa Valentine.”
“Not old Valentine of Green Gates? Oh, then you’re one of the new
grandchildren! Of course. Oh, I know all about you now. But I
thought—didn’t some one say——?” Before he realized that he must check
himself he had blurted out his perplexity. “But I thought your mother
was dead.” Then, horrified at himself—“that is—I mean to say—of course
it can’t be the same——” and so stopped helplessly.
She made no reply: gave no sign at all that she had even heard him: only
leant motionless against the wall of hay as if some heavy, invisible
blow had pinned her there. And he, pitying her, swearing at himself for
his inadvertence, sat uncomfortably through the silence that had fallen
upon them, fidgeting with his pockets, wishing that he could think of
something to say to her.
He began at last, tentatively, ingratiatingly—
“I say, Laura! I say——”
She lifted her head and looked at him, searchingly, as one looks at the
last link in a chain, in a chain of circumstantial evidence that began
far away with medicine and little white shawls; with black sashes and a
whispering nurse, and the visit to Gran’papa Valentine. She fingered
those links, one by one, recognizing, testing them, and so arrived at
last at the big, worried boy sitting by her in the hay.
“Mother is dead,” she said to him, in a voice that was entirely
unemotional. She was confirming his statement, not questioning it.
“Oh, you know—perhaps—I daresay I muddled names—made a mistake,” he
suggested, because he could not help it. And knew well enough that he
had made none.
“Buried?”
“Oh, well—surely you must understand——” He was distressed. He did not
know how to phrase his answers.
“There was poor Ben——” Her voice quivered. He could not know that she
was re-living a memory, stumbling once more, as she played in the long
grass behind the chicken-run, upon her little old dog who had been
missing for two long days. She remembered her delight, and then her
sudden terror, and the gardener, coming with his big spade. Mother had
been within call. Mother had allayed that grief. Yet Laura had never
quite forgotten the poor stiffened body and the tiny swarming ants.
And now Mother....
She was taken with a fit of shuddering. The dry-eyed sobs that a child
should not know shook her pitilessly.
Justin, wishing desperately that he had his own infallible mother at
hand to whom to surrender a situation that was beyond him, did his
kindly best.
“It’s all right, you know,” he found himself assuring her earnestly.
“It’s really all right. I know—I know—it’s most beastly luck. But it’s
all right——”
He broke off. He might have been the monotonous rain for all the notice
she took of him.
He began afresh—
“Laura,” then, with an effort, “dear old thing—I say, you know, you must
pull yourself together.” He put his hand on her arm, drawing away her
fingers from her face.
She yielded indifferently, letting him do as he pleased.
He had an inspiration.
“It’s all right, you know, about the _Cœlestial City_. She is there, and
you’ll get there some day, don’t you worry—only it isn’t the Crystal
Palace. You’ll have to wait. But you’ll get there some day.”
She lifted heavy eyes.
“When?”
“Oh—I don’t know. When you’re old.”
“As old as you?”
“Oh, older than that—seventy or eighty.”
“Years?”
He nodded.
“It’s seventy days to Christmas. That’s not even one year.” Her voice
trailed into hopelessness.
But at least she had spoken. Justin was pleased with his
resourcefulness. He tried again.
“You know, when you’re grown-up the days go quicker. Oh, yes—they simply
whiz. Honest! You’ll see.”
“Shall I?” She edged a little nearer to him.
“Why, each time you go to bed you’re a day nearer.” He pulled out his
watch. “Talking of bed—do you know it’s half-past five? What’s your
bed-time?”
“I don’t know.” She leaned against him with the prompt abandonment of a
child discovering its own fatigue.
“Not far off, anyway! I’ve got to get you home, young woman.”
“Aunt Adela will be angry.” But her tone was merely speculative. Laura
was stone to Aunt Adela’s worst punishments now.
Justin considered. The steadiness of the rain, long overdue, was
prophetic. No chance of its lifting this week-end. No escape, for all
his wasted hour, for Justin’s bicycle. Justin’s bicycle must submit to a
soaking, with Justin and Laura on its back. It had, going by the road
that avoided Laura’s hill-tops, a seven-mile run before it, to reach
even Justin’s end of Brackenhurst. Justin, as he slipped off the damp
haystack and resumed his sopping coat, thought that he and his bicycle
would have done their duty and something over if they escorted Laura
thus far. She could be sent on to Green Gates in the pony-trap, if his
mother did not insist, as he shrewdly suspected she would when she heard
the whole story, on keeping the child over-night, to be coddled against
colds and heartache.
He was not wrong. Mrs. Cloud, once satisfied that no bones had been
broken and that he would take a hot bath and drink a hot posset as soon
as they could be prepared, was ready enough to follow him to the hall
where Laura, numbed with cold and wet and the long ride on Justin’s
cross-bar, sat in a heap where he had left her, like a small trapped
animal: and after a glance, Mrs. Cloud, all soft hair and soft eyes and
soft voice, had forgotten even Justin. A groom had been despatched to
Green Gates indeed; but Laura, warmed and bathed and fed, was settled
for the night in a fire-lit room, in the bed that Justin had outgrown,
and that his mother had not brought herself to give away.
Mrs. Cloud, as the dinner-bell rang, had a motherly good-night, with
tuckings-up and the tenderest of kisses for Laura. But Laura lay
passive, unresponsive, on the pillow that was scarcely whiter than her
face, staring up at Mrs. Cloud with wide, dark eyes.
“What is it, Laura?” Mrs. Cloud smiled down at her.
She murmured something beneath her breath, as a scared child will.
“What is it? Do you want anything?” Mrs. Cloud bent down, her face close
to the unwinking eyes.
“I want——” In a whisper Laura made known her need. “I want the big boy.”
Mrs. Cloud shook her head.
“Not now. You must go to sleep now. You shall see Justin tomorrow.”
“I want——”
“Justin’s having his dinner. He’s so hungry—so tired from his long ride.
He had to carry you, too, you know. You don’t want to call poor Justin
upstairs in the middle of his dinner, do you?”
“No. Oh, no.” Then, with concern—“Poor, tired Justin!”
She lay quiet.
But when Justin, on his way to his own night’s rest, put his head round
the door to see, on Mrs. Cloud’s behalf, “if that child was all right,”
he found her lying as his mother had left her, still with those wide,
unwinking eyes of a watchful dog fixed upon the door.
“Hullo, old thing! Awake still? Want to say good-night?”
She nodded dumbly.
He crossed the room, and stood looking down at her.
“Comfortable?”
She nodded again.
“Sleepy?”
She shook her head.
“Oh, nonsense, you must go to sleep. Look here—you be a good girl and go
to sleep and tomorrow I’ll give you a lesson on Mother’s old bicycle.
Like that?”
She said nothing. He fidgeted. He was at the end of his consolations.
“Well—good-night now.” He turned to go.
Her hand shot out and caught his arm.
“Is it quite true?”
“What?”
“About Mother?”
“’Fraid so.” He moved uneasily, afraid, boylike, of her tears. But she
did not cry.
“Are you sure? Are _you_ sure?”
He nodded.
She turned from him with a sharp movement, so that he could see no more
than the outline of her cheek.
He stood beside her patiently for a time, but she did not move, and he
wondered at last if drowsiness were doing for her all that he could not.
With slow precaution he began to edge away his arm. Instantly her grasp
tightened.
“Oh, I say—you must go to sleep, you know,” he admonished her.
She turned again, lifting herself on her pillow. Her eyes devoured his
face.
“Will you really teach me tomorrow?”
“Of course I will. I’ll give you lessons. We’ll soon have you riding all
over the place.”
“But you’re going away.”
“I come home every week.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Honest?”
“Honest. Good-night, old thing.” He hesitated. Then, his pity for her
conquering his schoolboy code, he bent down and pecked awkwardly at her
cheek.
Instantly he was drawn close, was half choked by little passionate,
clinging arms.
“I’ll love _you_. Oh, I’ll love _you_!” cried Laura desperately.
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