The morning after Janet Tosswill's call at Rose Cottage, Rosamund
followed her step-mother into the drawing-room immediately after
breakfast, and observed plaintively that it did seem strange that "Enid"
was never asked to Old Place. "We take anything from her, and never give
anything back," she said.
Janet, who had a certain tenderness for the pretty black sheep of the
family, checked the sharp retort which trembled on her lips. Still, it
was quite true that Rosamund had more than once been kept to lunch at The
Trellis House, and that on the day of Nanna's accident Mrs. Crofton had
issued a sort of general invitation to supper to the young people of Old
Place--an invitation finally accepted, at Betty's suggestion, by Godfrey
Radmore and Rosamund.
Janet admitted to herself that they did owe Mrs. Crofton some civility.
If the thing had to be done, it might as well be done at once, and so,
when Rosamund had reluctantly gone upstairs to do her share of the
household work, his mother beckoned Timmy into the drawing-room, and told
him that she would have a note ready for him to take to The Trellis House
in a few minutes.
"Oh, Mum, do let Jack take it!" the boy exclaimed. "I can't go to The
Trellis House with Flick, and it's such a bore to shut him up."
"Why can't Flick go with you?"
"Mum! Don't you remember? Mrs. Crofton is _terrified_ of dogs. Do let
Jack take it!"
"But are you sure Jack is going there this morning?" she asked, and then
she remembered Miss Pendarth's ill-natured remark.
"He goes there every morning," said Timmy positively, "and this morning
he's going there extra early, as he's lending Mrs. Crofton our best
preserving pan. She wants to make some blackberry jam."
And then there occurred one of those odd incidents which were always
happening in connection with Timmy and with which his mother never knew
quite how to deal. He screwed up his queer little face for a moment,
shaded his eyes with his hand, and said quietly: "I think Jack is just
starting down the drive now. You'll catch him if you'll open the window
and shout to him, Mum--it's no good my going after him--he wouldn't come
back for _me_."
Janet Tosswill got up from her writing-table. She opened the nearest
window and, stepping out, looked to her right. Yes, there was Jack's
neat, compact figure sprinting down the long, straight avenue towards the
gate. He was holding a queer-looking, badly done up parcel in his hands.
"Jack! Jack! Come here for a minute--I want you," she called out in her
clear, rather high-pitched voice.
He slackened, and it was as if she could see him hesitating, wondering
whether he dare pretend he had not heard her. Then he turned and ran back
down the drive and across the wide lawn to the window.
"What is it?" he asked breathlessly. "I'm late as it is! I'm taking one
of our preserving pans to The Trellis House. The fruit was all picked
yesterday."
"I won't be a moment. I want you to take a letter for me to Mrs. Crofton.
I'm asking her to come in to dinner to-night."
She turned back into the room and, sitting down, took up her pen: "Timmy?
Go into the scullery, and help Betty for a bit."
After her little son had left the room, she called out to Jack, "Do come
inside; it fidgets me to feel that you're standing out there."
After what seemed to Jack Tosswill a long time, though it was only three
minutes, his step-mother turned, and held out her note: "She needn't
write--a verbal answer will do. If she can't come we shall have done the
civil thing."
And then, thinking aloud, she went on: "Somehow I don't expect her to
stay long in Beechfield. She's too much of a London bird."
"I don't suppose she would have come at all if she had known what a
beastly, inhospitable place Beechfield is," said Jack sharply. Though he
was in such a hurry to be off, he waited in order to add: "She's been
here nearly a month, and you've never called on her yet--it's too bad!"
Janet Tosswill flushed deeply. Jack had not spoken to her in such a tone
since he was fifteen.
"What nonsense! She must be indeed silly and affected," she exclaimed,
"if she expected me to pay her a formal call, especially as we had her in
to supper the very first day she was here! I might retort by saying that
she might have sent or called to know how poor old Nanna was! Everyone in
the village has done so--but then your friend, Jack, is not what my
father used to call '18 carat'!"
"I think it's we who are not '18 carat,'" he answered furiously. "We have
shown Mrs. Crofton the grossest discourtesy, and I happen to know that
she feels it very much."
Janet Tosswill looked at her elder stepson with a feeling of blank
amazement. It had often astonished her to notice how completely Jack had
his emotions and temper under control. Yet here he was, his face aglow
with anger, his voice trembling with rage.
Poor Janet! She had had long days of fatigue and worry since the old
nurse's accident, and suddenly she completely lost her temper. "I don't
want to say anything unkind about the little woman, but I do think her
both silly and second-rate. I took a dislike to her when she behaved in
such a ridiculous manner over Flick."
"You were almost as frightened as she was," said Jack roughly.
"It's quite true that I was frightened for a moment, but only because
I was afraid for Timmy."
"I can tell you one thing--she won't come here again to supper unless
I can give her my word that all our dogs are really shut up. And I fear
I must ask you to undertake to see that Timmy does not let Flick out
after I _have_ shut him up."
Janet Tosswill held out her hand. "I think you'd better give me that note
back," she said curtly. "We certainly don't want anyone here of the kind
you have just described. From something Godfrey said to me it's clear
that Mrs. Crofton's horror of dogs is just a pose she thinks makes her
interesting. Why, her husband bred terriers; Flick actually came from
there! And Godfrey says that she herself had a little dog called by the
absurd name of 'Boo-boo' to which she was devoted."
"'Boo-boo' was the exception that proves the rule," answered Jack hotly.
"As for Colonel Crofton, it was beastly of him to breed terriers, knowing
how his wife felt about dogs! She told me herself she would never have
married him if she had known there was any likelihood of that coming to
pass. She feels about dogs as some people feel about cats."
"I never heard such nonsense!"
"Nonsense?" he repeated in an enraged tone. "It isn't nonsense! The best
proof that that horror of dogs is instinctive with her is the effect that
she herself has on every dog she comes across. That was shown the evening
she was here."
"Really, Jack, that's utterly absurd! Flick was not thinking of her at
all. Something in the garden had frightened him. Your father feels sure
that it was a snake which he himself killed the next morning." And then,
for she was most painfully disturbed by this scene between herself and
Jack, she said quietly: "I'm sorry that Mrs. Crofton ever came to
Beechfield. I didn't think there was anyone in the world who would make
you speak to me as you have spoken to me now."
"I hate injustice!" he exclaimed, a little shamefacedly. "I can't think
why you've turned against her, Janet. It's so mean as well as so unkind!
She has hardly any friends in the world, and she thought by the account
Godfrey gave of us that _we_ should become her friends."
"It's always a woman's own fault if she has no friends, especially when
she's such an attractive woman as Mrs. Crofton," said Janet shortly. She
hesitated, and then added something for which she was sorry immediately
afterwards: "I happen to know rather more about Mrs. Crofton than most of
the people in Beechfield do."
She spoke with that touch of mysterious finality which is always so
irritating to a listener who is in indifferent sympathy with a speaker.
"What d'you mean?" cried Jack fiercely. "I insist on your telling me what
you mean!"
Janet Tosswill told herself with Scotch directness that she had been a
fool. But if Jack was--she hardly knew how to put it to herself--so--so
bewitched by Mrs. Crofton as he seemed to be, then perhaps, as they had
got to this point, he had better hear the truth:
"Mrs. Crofton made herself very much talked about in the neighbourhood of
the place where she and her husband settled after the War. She was so
actively unkind, and made him so wretched, that at last he committed
suicide. At least that is what is believed by everyone who knew them in
Essex."
"I suppose a woman told you all this?" he said in a dangerously calm
voice.
"Yes, it was a woman, Jack."
"Of course it was! Every woman, young or old, is jealous of her because
she's so pretty and--so--so feminine, and because she has nothing about
her of the clever, hard woman who is the fashion nowadays! The only
person who does her justice in this place is Rosamund."
"I disapprove very much of Rosamund's silly, school-girlish, adoration of
her," said Janet sharply.
She was just going to add something more when she saw Timmy slipping
quietly back into the room. And all at once she felt sorry--deeply
sorry--that this rather absurd scene had taken place between herself and
Jack. She blamed herself for having let it come to this pass.
"I daresay I'm prejudiced," she exclaimed. "Take this note, Jack, and
tell Mrs. Crofton that Flick shall be securely shut up."
"All right." Jack shrugged his shoulders rather ostentatiously, and
disappeared through the window, while Janet, with a half-humorous sigh,
told herself that perhaps he was justified in condemning in his own mind,
as he was certainly doing now, the extraordinary vagaries of womankind.
She turned back to her writing-table again. However disturbed and worried
she might feel, there were the weekly books to be gone through, and this
time without Nanna's shrewd, kindly help.
Suddenly she started, for Timmy's claw-like little hand was on her arm:
"Mum," he said earnestly, "do tell me what Colonel Crofton was really
like? Did that lady--you know, I mean the person Jack thinks is jealous
of Mrs. Crofton--tell you what he was like?"
"No--yes--oh, Timmy! I'm afraid you must have been listening at the door
just now?"
"I didn't like to come in," he said, wriggling uneasily. "I've never
heard Jack speak in such an angry way before. He was in a wax, wasn't he?
But, Mum, do tell me what Colonel Crofton looked like--I do _so_ want to
know."
She put down her pen, and turning, gazed down into the child's eager,
inquisitive little face.
"Why should you wish to know, Timmy?" She spoke rather coldly and
sternly.
She was sorry indeed now that she had been tempted to repeat what was
perhaps after all only the outcome of Miss Pendarth's unconscious
jealousy of the woman who had made a fool of the man she had loved as a
girl. It was unfortunately true that Olivia Pendarth had an unconscious
prejudice against all young and pretty women.
"I want to know," mumbled Timmy, "because I think I do know what he was
like."
"If you know what he was like, then there is nothing more to say."
"I want to be sure," he repeated obstinately.
"But how absurd, Timmy! Why should you want to know about a poor old
gentleman who is dead, and of whom you are not likely ever to hear
anything? I have often told you how horrid it is to be inquisitive."
Timmy paused over that remark. "I want to know," he said in a low
mumbling voice, "because I think I have seen him." He did not look up at
his mother as he spoke. With the forefinger of his right hand he began
tracing an imaginary pattern on the blue serge skirt which covered her
knee.
She looked around apprehensively. Yes, the door was shut. She remembered
that Dr. O'Farrell had told her never to encourage the child's
confidences, but, on the other hand, never to check them.
"I first saw him the evening she came to supper," Timmy mumbled. "They
were walking together down the avenue. I thought he was a real old
gentleman. There was a dog with him, a terrier exactly like Flick, only a
little bigger. Of course I thought it was a real dog too. But now I know
that it wasn't. I know now that it was a ghost-dog. It is _that_ dog,
Mum, that frightens the other dogs who meet them--not herself, as she's
come to think."
"Oh, Timmy,"--Janet felt acutely uncomfortable--"you know I cannot bear
to think that such things really happen to you. If you really think them
I'd rather know, but I'd so much rather, dear boy, that you didn't think
them."
But Timmy was absorbed in what he was saying. "I know now that it was
Colonel Crofton," he went on, "because I've seen an old photograph of
him, Mum. Mrs. Crofton brought a tin box full of papers with her, and
there were some old photographs in it. There was one of an officer in
uniform, and it had written across it, 'Yours sincerely, Cecil Crofton.'
She tore it up the day after she came here, and threw it in the
waste-paper basket, but her cook took it out of the dustbin, and
that's how I saw it."
"How disgusting!" exclaimed his mother, feeling herself now on firm
ground. "How often have I had to tell you, Timmy, not to go into other
people's kitchens and sculleries? No nice boy, no little gentleman, would
do such a thing. Of course it was seeing that photograph made you believe
you saw Colonel Crofton's--"
She stopped abruptly, for she never, if she could help it, used the word
"ghost," or "spirit," to the child.
"Up to now I've always supposed that animals had no souls, Mum, but now I
know they have. I know another thing, too," but there was a doubtful note
in his voice. "I suppose that ghost-dog hates Mrs. Crofton because she
was so unkind to his master. That's why he makes the other dogs fly at
her, I expect--or d'you think it's just because they're frightened that
they do it?"
Janet Tosswill was an unconventional woman, also she was on terms of very
close kinship with her strange little son. Still, she reddened as she
drew him closer to her and said: "Look here, Timmy, I want to tell you
something. I'm sorry now I said what I did say to Jack about Mrs.
Crofton. I ought not to have said it--I'm ashamed of having said it! It
was told me by someone who is rather fond of repeating disagreeable,
sometimes even untrue, things."
Timmy had also grown very red while his mother was making her little
confession. He took up her hand and squeezed it impulsively, as an older
person might have done.
"I think I know who you mean," he said. "You mean Miss Pendarth?"
"Yes," said his mother steadily, "I do mean Miss Pendarth. I think it
quite possible that poor little Mrs. Crofton was never really unkind to
Colonel Crofton at all."
"But you wouldn't like Jack to marry her, Mum, would you?"
Janet felt a shock of dismay go through her. There flashed into her mind
that sometimes most disturbing text--"Out of the mouths of babes and
sucklings...."
"I shouldn't like it at all," she exclaimed, "and I think you're old
enough to understand that such a thing would be impossible. Jack won't
make enough money to keep a wife for years and years." She hesitated, and
then added, speaking to herself rather than to Timmy, "Still, I hope with
all my heart that he won't get foolish about her."
"He _is_ foolish about her," said Timmy positively. "Even Nanna
thinks"--he waited a moment, then said carefully--"that he is past
praying for. She said yesterday to Betty that there were some things
prayers didn't help in at all, and that love was one of them. She says
that Jack's heart has gone out of his own keeping. Isn't that a funny
idea, Mum?"
"It is a terrible idea," and, a little to her own surprise, tears rose to
Janet Tosswill's eyes. Timmy, looking up into her face, felt his heart
swell with anger against the person who was causing his mother to look as
she was looking now.
He moved away a little bit, as if aware that what he was going to say
would not meet with her approval, and then he said in a peculiar voice,
a defiant, obstinate voice which she knew well: "I do wish that Mrs.
Crofton would die--I do hate her so!"
Janet Tosswill looked straight into her little son's face. She felt that
she had perhaps made a mistake in treating Timmy as if he were grown up.
"My dear," she said very gravely, "remember the Bible says--'Thou shalt
not kill.'"
"Of course I know _that_,"--he spoke with a good deal of scorn. "Of
course I want her to die a _natural_ death."