‘Tell me how to bear so blandly the assuming ways of wild young
people!
‘Truly they would be unbearable if I had not also been unbearable
myself as well.’—GOETHE.
When Mr. Crosby had told the Barrys that he would come down next day for
a game of tennis, they had not altogether believed in his coming, so
that when they see him from afar off, through the many holes in the
hedge, walking towards them down the village street, surprise is their
greatest sentiment.
‘Susan,’ says Dominick solemnly, pausing racket in hand, ‘it must be
you. I always told you your face was your fortune, and a very small one
at that. You’ll have to marry him, and then we’ll all go and live with
you for ever. That’ll be a treat for you, and will doubtless make up for
the fact that he is emulating the Great Methuselah. If I can say a good
word for you, I—Oh, how d’ye do, Mr. Crosby? Brought your racket, too, I
see. Carew, now we’ll make up a set: Mr. Crosby and—’
‘Miss Susan, if I may,’ says Crosby, looking into Susan’s charming face
whilst holding her hand in greeting. There are any amount of greetings
to be got through when you go to see the Barrys. They are all always _en
évidence_, and all full of life and friendliness. Even little Bonnie
hurries up on his stick, and gives him a loving greeting. The child’s
face is so sweet and so happily friendly that Crosby stoops and kisses
him.
‘Certainly you may,’ says Susan genially; ‘but I’m not so good a player
as Betty. She can play like anything. But to-day she has got a bad cold
in her head. Well’—laughing—‘come on; we can try, and, after all, we can
only be beaten.’
They are, as it happens, and very badly, too, Mr. Crosby, though no
doubt good at big game, being rather a tyro at tennis.
‘I apologize,’ says he, when the game is at an end, and they have all
seated themselves upon the ground to rest and gather breath; ‘I’m afraid
Su—Miss Susan—you will hardly care to play with me again.’
‘I told you you could call me Susan,’ says she calmly. ‘Somehow, I
dislike the Miss before it. Betty told you Miss Barry sounded like Aunt
Jemima, but I think Miss Susan sounds like Jane.’
‘Poor old Jane! And she’s got such an awful nose!’ says Betty. ‘I think
I’d rather be like Aunt Jemima than her.’
‘Susan hasn’t got an awful nose,’ says Bonnie, stroking Susan’s dainty
little Grecian appendage fondly. ‘It’s a nice one.’
‘Susan is a beauty,’ says Betty; ‘we all know that. Even James went down
before her. Poor James! I wonder what he is doing now.’
‘Stewing in the Soudan,’ says Carew.
‘He was always in one sort of stew or another,’ says Dominick, ‘so it
will come kindly to him. And after Susan’s heartless behaviour—’
‘Dom!’ says Susan, in an awful tone. But Mr. Fitzgerald is beyond the
reach of tones.
‘Oh, it’s all very well your taking it like that now,’ says he; ‘but
when poor old James was here it was a different thing.’
‘It was not,’ says Susan indignantly.
‘Are you going to deny that he was your abject slave—that he sat in your
pocket from morning till night—well, very nearly night? That he followed
you from place to place like a baa-lamb? That you did not encourage him
in the basest fashion?’
‘I never encouraged him. Encourage him! That boy!’
‘Don’t call him names, Susan, behind his back,’ says Betty, whose
mischievous nature is now all afire, and who is as keen about the
baiting of Susan as either Carew or Dom. ‘Besides, what a boy he is! He
must be twenty-two, at all events.’ This seems quite old to Betty.
‘What did you do with the keepsake he gave you when he was going away?’
asks Carew. He is lying flat upon the warm grass, his chin upon his
palms, and looks up at Susan with judicial eyes. ‘What was it? I forget
now. A lock of his lovely hair?’
‘No,’ says Betty; ‘a little silver brooch—an anchor.’
‘That means hope,’ says Dominick solemnly. ‘Susan, he is coming back
next year. What are you going to say to him?’
‘Just exactly what everybody else is going to say to him,’ says Susan,
who is now crimson. ‘And I didn’t want that horrid brooch at all.’
‘Still, you took it,’ says Betty. ‘I call that rather mean, to take it,
and then say you didn’t want it.’
‘Well, what was I to do?’
‘Refuse it, mildly but firmly,’ says Mr. Fitzgerald. ‘The acceptance of
it was, in my opinion, as good as the acceptance of James. When he does
come back, Susan, I don’t see how you are to get out of being Mrs.
James. That brooch is a regular binder. How does it seem to you, Mr.
Crosby?’
‘You see, I haven’t heard all the evidence yet,’ says Crosby, who is
looking at Susan’s flushed, half-angry, wholly-delightful face. James,
whoever he is, seems to have been a good deal in her society at one
time.
‘There’s no evidence,’ says she wrathfully, ‘and I wish you boys
wouldn’t be so stupid! As for the brooch, I hate it; I never wear it.’
‘Well, if ever anyone gives me a present I shall wear it every day and
all day long,’ says Betty. ‘What’s the good of having a lover if people
don’t know about it?’
‘Is that so?’ says Mr. Fitzgerald, regarding her with all the air of one
to whom now the road seems clear. ‘Then the moment I become a
millionaire—and there seems quite an immediate prospect of it just now—I
shall buy you the Koh-i-Noor, and you shall wear it on your beauteous
brow, and proclaim me as your unworthy lover to all the world.’
‘I will when I get it,’ says Betty, with tremendous sarcasm.
‘The reason you won’t wear it,’ says Carew, alluding to Susan’s despised
brooch, ‘is plain to even the poor innocents around you. Girls, in spite
of all Betty has said, seldom wear their keepsakes. They get cotton wool
and wrap them up in it, and peep at them rapturously on Christmas Day or
Easter Sunday, or on the beloved one’s birthday, or some other sacred
occasion. What’s James’s birthday, Susan?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Susan; ‘and I don’t know, either, why you tease me
so much about him. He is quite as little to me as I am to him.’ Her
voice is trembling now. They have gone a little too far perhaps, or is
the memory of James ‘stewing in the Soudan’ too much for her? Whichever
it is, Mr. Crosby is growing anxious for her; but all the youngsters are
now in full cry, and the proverbial cruelty of brothers and sisters is
well known to many a long-suffering girl and boy.
‘Oh, Susan,’ says Betty, ‘where does one go to when one tells
naughty-naughties? Dom; do you remember the evening just before James
went abroad, when he went into floods of tears because she wouldn’t give
him a rosebud she had in her dress? It took Dom, and me, and Carew, and
a pint of water to restore him.’
At this they all laugh, even Susan, though very faintly and very
shamefacedly. Her pretty eyes are shy and angry.
‘He wanted a specimen to take out with him to astonish the natives,’
says Carew. ‘You were the real specimen he wanted to take out with him,
Susan, but as that was impracticable just then (it will probably be
arranged next time), he decided on taking the rosebud instead.’
‘He wanted nothing,’ says Susan, whose face is now bent over Bonnie’s as
if to hide it. ‘He didn’t care a bit about me.’
‘Indeed he did, Susan.’
A fresh element has fallen into the situation. Everyone looks round. The
voice is the voice of Jacky—Jacky, who, up to this, has been as usual
buried in a book. This time the burial has been deeper than ever, as the
day before yesterday someone had lent him Mr. Stevenson’s enthralling
‘Treasure Island,’ from which no one can ever extract themselves until
the very last page is turned. Jacky, since he first began it, has been
practically useless, but just now a few fragments of the conversation
going on around him have filtered to his brain.
Now, in his own peculiarly disagreeable way he adores Susan, and
something has led him to believe that those around her are now
depreciating her powers of attraction, and that she is giving in to them
for want of support. Well, he will support her. Poor old Jacky! he comes
nobly forward to her rescue, and as usual puts his foot in it.
‘He liked you better than anyone,’ says he, in his slow, ponderous
fashion, glaring angrily at Betty, with whom he carries on an undying
feud. ‘Why, don’t you remember how he used to hunt you all over the
garden to kiss you!’
Tableau!
Betty leads the way after about a moment’s awful pause, and then they
all go off into shrieks of laughter. Jacky, alone, sullen, silent, not
understanding, stands as if petrified. Susan has pushed Bonnie from her,
and has risen to her feet. Her face is crimson now; her eyes are full of
tears. Involuntarily Crosby rises too.
‘He used not,’ says poor Susan. Alas! this assertion is not quite true.
‘And even if he did, you’—to the horrified Jacky—‘should not have told
it. You, Jacky’—trembling with shame—‘I wouldn’t have believed it of
you! It was hateful of you! You’—with a withering glance around—‘are all
hateful, and—and—’
She chokes, breaks down, and runs with swift-flying feet into the small
shrubbery beyond, where lies a little summer-house in which she can hide
herself.