MANY tutors had come and gone, and much had been endured both from the
children’s point of view and from that of the instructors.
But time went on unheeding, and Gwen and Dacre were lying under an old
cherry-tree in the orchard one day late in August.
The sun shone aslant through the crimson-tinted leaves above them, and
threw flickering rosy shadows across the faces of the two as they lay
there in the cool grass, with wisps of fern under their heads for
pillows.
Dacre, however, seemed to benefit but little from this arrangement; his
head was oftener off its support than on; he twisted and turned and
wriggled and plunged, even his toes moved visibly through his thick
boots.
He was supposed to be reading, and kept up the pretence from time to
time, but the words conveyed no sense to his restless eyes, that moved
as if they were on wires. Now and again he got irritated and threw the
book down with a snort.
The sister and brother spent much of their time together nowadays; fate
had perhaps quite as much to do with this close companionship as
inclination, the groom’s boy and his like, except at stolen moments,
being for Dacre things of the past.
This and various other reforms had been brought about by Mr. Fellowes
and one tutor of an exceptionally strong mind.
While Dacre wriggled, his sister lay quite still on her back with her
legs stretched out, and with a considerable reach of stocking visible
between the edge of her frock and her shoes. She had one arm curled
round her neck with the sharp elbow stuck out uncompromisingly in
Dacre’s direction. It was useful as a buffer and saved her many a lunge.
The other hand held a book, a queer old edition of Elia, which she was
deeply sunk in until she fell to watching Dacre with a look of curious
mockery on her red curled lips.
“I’d give my eyes to go to school!” burst out the boy after an interval
of comparative silence. Mutterings never counted in Dacre.
“So you have said six times this afternoon, not to mention the mutters,”
said the girl, “what do you want to go to school for?”
“You know without any telling.”
“I want to hear again.”
“To jeer at a fellow, I suppose?”
“I won’t jeer, and I might help you,” she said with a laugh.
He looked at her face dubiously, it was inscrutable enough, but the
mockery had left her lips.
“I want to go, I hate to be here, Greggs is a big enough fool but not
quite so much as the others, he ain’t all bad, I’ll say that. But what’s
he to other boys and cricket and football and larks—oh, you know!”
“I wonder why on earth they let you read _Tom Brown_ when such heaps of
books are forbidden,” said Gwen reflectively. “They have brought all
this on themselves,” she added, knitting her brows in the exact manner
of her mother. “We have to bear what we earn, we hear that often enough,
I don’t see why they shouldn’t apply it to themselves. Dacre, you’re an
awful ass, if I wanted all those things I should have had them long
ago.”
“All very well to say that,” grunted the boy, “I’d like to know how.”
“I’ll tell you,—I’d worry till I got them.”
“I worry pretty well as it is,” he said with a self-satisfied grin.
“Yes, in a stupid squally way—you get into a rage and make a row and an
ass of yourself generally, then you get punished and repent, or pretend
to,—anyway nothing is heard of you till the next bout. You might be a
dead cat for all the importance you are—of course you’re forgotten, and
they go on working in peace.
“Now if I wanted a thing and wanted it badly I should take good care
never to be forgotten; I should let them see there was to be no peace as
long as I was in the house; I should make myself felt from the garrets
to the kitchen; I should gain my end,” she concluded with calm finality.
By this time the sun had forsaken their tree and had flickered on to one
nearer the west, and in the evening light her face gleamed out almost
ghastly in its pallor.
“Gwen, you’re queerer and queerer! Why don’t you do all this for
yourself? You are quiet enough now, nothing only sulky, why don’t you do
what you say I ought to, yourself?”
“For what?” was the sharp retort. “I don’t want boys and cricket and
football and larks.”
“What do you want then?”
She jumped up from her pillow and looked out after the westering sun,
her eyes dark and dilated, her red lips parted.
“What do I want?” she slowly repeated, “I want—oh, you would not
understand what I want, but worrying won’t get it.”
She caught up her book again and threw herself face downwards on the
sward.
“That’s the way! You’ll never tell me anything,” said Dacre angrily.
“I’ll tell you one thing, and that’s I’ll help you to go to school, and
you’ll go if you aren’t a common ass, and if you’ll do all I tell you.”
“Golly! I’ll do anything in the world for you if you’ll only get me out
of this hole,” he blurted out in a spluttering fit of gratitude.
“Perhaps, even, I might help you to get what you want, if you didn’t
make such a deadly secret of it,” he added looking at her as if he might
somehow extract it from her unawares.
But her lips were tightly shut and her eyes looked dead and cold.
“One might as well expect to get blood from a turnip,” muttered Dacre in
the choice vernacular of the groom’s boy. “Oh Lord! that brutal bell,
lessons again! But you like ’em,” he said raising himself slowly and
turning on her vindictively.
“There’s nothing else to like; pick up your book and come. I hate to
look at Gregg’s eyes when we are late, I think he had cats for his
ancestors, and not very long ago either, when he talks quick he always
spits. Oh, that vile bell, we may as well run, he can’t see us from the
school-room window or I wouldn’t give him that much satisfaction.”
“When will you begin the help,” panted Dacre, as they pulled up at the
nearest point out of sight of the school-room.
“I’ll think to-night and tell you—Ugh! Dacre, wipe your face you get so
perspirationy after the shortest run; I never do.”
“No thanks to you, when one can see through you for thinness.”
The next evening when lessons were put away, and the school-room tea
over, Gwen, instead of absorbing herself in a book until bedtime, as she
generally did, took a restless fit. She moved about in a noiseless
sweeping way she had; she threw the window open breathlessly, and craned
her head far into the breezy night.
A sudden gust that was carrying on a wild dance with some maple leaves,
caught sight of her hair and seized on it as a new plaything, or perhaps
mistook it for some of the orange-gold leaves, and swept great lengths
of it out among them till her white face seemed caught in a whirling net
of brilliant gold. When she drew back at last panting, she shut the
window and went over to Dacre.
“You’re pretty tidy,” she said, “for you, but you might just take that
black smudge off your nose. Do I look right?”
“You look as mad as a hatter, but you generally do that, only I think
your hair makes you look madder than ever.”
She caught her hair bodily, gave it a violent shake, then took out her
handkerchief and rubbed her cheeks until they glowed scarlet.
“What are you at, making yourself like a turkey-cock?” demanded Dacre.
“We’ll both go into the library,” said she in a sort of studied calm, “I
heard them go in after dinner and they think I’m sick and don’t eat
enough if I’m white. Come on quick, now, while I’m red.”
Dacre came near and looked into her face with some curiosity.
“You’re madder to-night than I ever saw you,” he observed. “You can go,
you will if you want to, of course,—I’ll not, not if I knows it.”
“If you don’t I’ll do all I possibly can to keep you at home.”
That and her look were decisive. He followed her with an angry snort,
and they went swiftly down the low, broad oak stairs with their winding
curved balustrade, down through the softly-carpeted corridors. When they
reached the library door they stood with one accord, stock-still.
“You’re whiter than ever,” said he.
“Wipe your nose, you’ve rubbed the black all over it instead of off it.
Am I red now?”
“You’re magenta.”
“Come on then.”
When the door opened slowly and showed both their children standing in
the soft glow of the lamps, Mr. and Mrs. Waring started up in some
dismay.
“Is anything wrong, my dears? Are you ill?” cried Mr. Waring, while his
wife came forward nervously and peered anxiously from head to foot of
the two.
By this time even Gwen’s courage had waned and the old feeling of having
come to judgment was fast gaining on her. Dacre was already a flaccid
lump.
“You appear well, dears,” said Mrs. Waring relieved, raising herself
from her inspection, “and Gwen’s colour seems to me to be healthier than
usual.”
Gwen felt smothered and speechless but she made a vehement effort and
got out in an appealing hushed kind of way,
“We are quite well, mother, but we came to see you, we thought you might
have time to talk to us and let us stay a little, we have been good at
our lessons so long.”
The child lifted her eyes as she spoke, and turned them hungrily from
father to mother in a way that sensibly embarrassed them.
Mr. Waring took his finger from between the pages of a book, came
forward, and looked searchingly into his child’s face and then at his
wife, who seemed too astonished to take any active part in the
proceedings.
“Will you not sit down?” he said politely, pulling a couple of chairs
towards the pair, “pray sit down.—You have no objection, dearest, have
you?”
“No, oh no, I am very pleased indeed, and it is also very pleasant to
hear you are advancing in your studies,” said Mrs. Waring rather
supinely. There seemed so very little one could say to one’s children.
Mrs. Waring passed her small hand across her brow, and tried to look
unpreoccupied, but it was hard not to show feeling when a valuable train
of thought was broken, and hours of good work rendered null and void by
this unfortunate intrusion.
Her husband felt keenly for the gentle little woman, and naturally a
slight feeling of irritation smote him as he turned his gaze on his
inconvenient offspring who bore it in stolid silence.
Dacre cast one rapid murderous look on his sister then he sullenly
accommodated himself to his surroundings and sat on like a log.
As for Gwen, her tears were so near the surface that she had to swallow
them with a gulp, her eyes grew dull and lifeless, the brilliant colour
had all faded, and her cheeks had a ghastly, streaky, livid look, from
the scrubbing.
“Would you like something to eat, my dears?” said Mrs. Waring eagerly.
She would not sit down but hovered above her children, she could not
fathom Gwen’s horrid look of temper, and by this time the streaky cheeks
had quite a revolting look. Her mother started at sight of it, and
whispered in quite an audible voice,
“Her skin seems unclean and mottled. Dearest, I will speak to Mary, a
Gregory’s powder I should recommend.”
Gwen’s flush deepened the streaks to lines of blood, and she could
hardly keep from shrieking out her wrath and indignation, but she
controlled herself and said in a harsh level voice,
“We would like nothing to eat, thank you, we’ve had our tea, we came to
see you, you don’t want us. Dacre, I think we might go.”
Then to the absolute staggering of the boy, she turned, caught his hand,
and dragging him along by it went up and stood before her parents, her
eyes gleaming strangely.
“Good-night, mother, good-night, father—oh, good-night!”
“Good-night, my dears,” said Mr. Waring blandly, and seeing that they
still waited he stooped down stiffly and kissed the foreheads of both of
them, then, with the air of a man who has done his duty, he remarked,
“Dacre’s health seems to be more robust than his sister’s, I think you
are wise in recommending something of an anti-febrile nature.”
The children were half out of the room by this time, and Mrs. Waring’s
eyes followed them with a puzzled stare. Something had evidently been
forgotten.
“Ah, of course,” she cried, her face lighting, and running forward she
put a soft detaining hand on a shoulder of each of her children and laid
a small kiss on the middle of Gwen’s cheek. Then she stooped to Dacre
and did the same by him.
She wondered a little as she went up to Mary’s room why Gwen shuddered
when she touched her.
“I wonder if she’s feverish,” she thought.—“Oh, what agonies of
responsibility parents have to endure,” she sighed, with yearning
self-pity, as soon as she reached the head of the stairs.
When the children got to the nursery, Dacre faced his sister with
glaring eyes.
“Beast!” was his sole observation.
“Let me alone, oh, let me alone!” she cried, “and, Dacre, open the
windows, I feel smothered.”
“You should live on the top of a windmill,” he grumbled, but he did as
she bade him, and watched her with some puzzled concern.
She soon recovered from her smothering and drew in her head and leant
against the window in silence for a few minutes, then she said with calm
decision,
“Oh yes, you can go to school, there is neither reason nor justice in
your staying here. They might have prevented it to-night if they’d
liked.”
“How?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t understand.”
“Well, of all the beasts! Girls’ secrets are such fools of things, too!
Don’t look like that, it’s awful with your scratchy face.”
“Oh, go to bed, do!”
“I wish you would, I think you are going to be sick, I’ll call Mary.”
“Dacre, don’t dare to, I’m as well as anything. I wish I was a witch and
could fly over those trees on a broomstick.”
She peered eagerly out of the window, out over the tree tops and the
whirling leaves, up into the dark heavens.
“You look witchy enough now with your awful yellow hair that looks as if
it were alive with fire-flies.”
“Dacre, go to bed, do, I want to think of the plan.”
“Oh, if you want that, I’ll clear, I’d have gone before only I thought
you were going to be sick.”
Gwen turned a half-mocking half-wistful look upon him.
“You’re a good old thing and it isn’t your fault if you are an ass, only
I wish you weren’t,” she said to herself when he had gone, “it wouldn’t
all be so beastly then.”
She went off slowly to her little blue-and-white bedroom and let Mary
put her to bed in a cold silence which she positively refused to break.