Hugh John set about his task of seeing Elizabeth Fortinbras in his own
way. He chose his own time--a pleasant blowy afternoon when in all the
vale of Edam there was nothing much doing. A sleepy place, Edam, on such
a day--the morning calm, the forenoon disturbed only by a rattling red
farm cart or two come in to bring meal and take back guano, then the
afternoon drowned in the Lethe of a Scottish village in full
summer-time. Hugh John looked in at the shop to inquire about the wasps.
They had bothered Elizabeth a good deal at first, but Hugh John had
devised traps with great ingenuity, though little success, before he
thought of a hanging curtain of blue and green beads in the doorway
which his father had brought back from Spain. It had lain in the garret
ever since, and Hugh John simply appropriated it for the use of
Elizabeth Fortinbras.
But Butcher Donnan, returning to a waspless shop, was brought up
standing on the threshold--his mouth agape, his eyes stocky in his head,
and his hand mutely demanding explanations from "Mary-and-the-Saints."
I think in her heart Elizabeth Fortinbras was a little afraid. Not only
had no such article ever been seen in Edam, but it was out of the power
of Edam and the Edamites to conceive such a thing as a door made of
large blue and green beads, which they had to lift up and let down
behind them, with the clashing of castanets before a play-acting booth.
Happily Hugh John was there, sitting calmly in the back kitchen watching
Mrs. Donnan making currant short-bread.
"Hugh John!" Elizabeth Fortinbras called out, with, it must be owned, a
little trouble in her voice.
"Certainly; come in, Mr. Donnan!" said Hugh John courteously, running to
hold the trickling, clicking curtain aside for the ex-butcher to pass.
"A little curious till you get used to it, don't you think, Mr. Donnan?
But it will stir Edam. It will draw custom, and--what I put it up
for--keep out the wasps and bluebottles! Oh, yes, my father brought it
from Spain. It is quite an ordinary thing there. Indeed, I got the idea
from him."
"But," said Butcher Donnan, slowly recovering his speech, "I must see
your father about the price of it to-morrow--if I am to keep it."
"My father--sell _that_?" said Hugh John, coldly surprised. "He would as
soon eat it!"
"But I can't take it from you, young master. It may be a valuable
article."
"Take it--who asked you to take it?" demanded Hugh John. "I gave it to
Elizabeth Fortinbras myself as a present on the occasion of her
adoption, and if you want her as a permanence, I am afraid you must take
the bead curtain along with her!"
"What, she has consented?" cried Butcher Donnan, forgetting everything.
But Mrs. Donnan, who was listening, put the short-bread into the oven
quickly, and came out. She had begun to learn the tones of Hugh John's
voice. She understood at once.
"My daughter!" she cried, and, opening wide her arms, kissed her.
Butcher Donnan paused a moment, uncertain, and then, nudging his wife:
"I ought to, I know," he said, "but just you do it for me--the first
time." So Mrs. Donnan kissed Elizabeth again, and the Butcher wiped his
mouth with the back of his hand, as if he had just had something good to
drink. Then they looked about for Hugh John to make him share in the
family joy, but that young gentleman, guessing ahead something of their
intention, had disappeared with his usual thoroughness and absence of
fuss. Some recognition from Elizabeth, privately bestowed, he was in no
way averse to, the time being dusky and the place far from the haunts of
men. But at mid-afternoon, opposite the railway station, and behind a
green and blue bead curtain to which Edam had not yet awakened--on the
whole, it is small wonder that Hugh John decided upon the better part of
valor.
Safe in his cave on the hillside, he wiped his heated brow and
congratulated himself on his escape. Perhaps he would not have rejoiced
quite so much had he known that Sir Toady, entering at that moment in
quest of gratuitous toffee scrapings, found himself at once heir to all
the affection which was really his brother's due. Sir Toady accepted
such things as they came in his way, much as a cat drinks from stray
cream-jugs, but without giving particular thanks for them. His motto,
slightly changed from the rhyming proverb, was ever--
"He that will not when he can,
He's not at all my sort of man!"