‘So bright a tear in Beauty’s eye,
Love half regrets to kiss it dry.’
As Susan appears, the guilty ones upon the tennis-ground move
simultaneously towards her, Betty with a shy little rush, and holding
out to her her racket.
‘Come and have another game, Susan, and you, too, Mr. Crosby.’
‘Yes, do,’ says Carew. ‘Tea will be here in a moment.’ He evidently
holds this out as an inducement to Crosby to remain. Mr. Fitzgerald
nobly backs him up.
‘Also Aunt Jemima!’ he says enthusiastically.
This joke, if it is meant for one, is a dead failure. No one even
smiles. Susan, who is feeling a little shy, and is horribly conscious
that, in spite of Crosby’s assurances, her eyes are of a very tell-tale
colour, is fighting with her brain for some light, airy, amusing remark
that may prove to all present that she had only run away from them in
mere search of physical exercise, when suddenly the rather forced smile
dies upon her lips, and her eyes become fixed on some object over there
on her right.
‘What is it, Susan—a ghost?’ asks Dom, who is equal to most occasions.
‘No,’ says Susan, in a low voice. ‘But—this is the third time. And look
over there, at that sycamore-tree in the Cottage garden. Do you see
anything?’
‘See what? “Is there visions about?” asks Dom. ‘Really, Susan, you ought
to consider our nerves. Is it the “Bogie Man,” or—’
‘It is a girl,’ says Susan. ‘There, there again! Her face is between
those two big branches. Mr. Crosby’—eagerly—‘don’t you see her?’
‘I do,’ cries Carew suddenly. ‘Oh, what a lovely face!’
It may be remembered that the Rectory and the Cottage are only divided
by a narrow road and two high walls. At the farthest end of the Cottage
grounds some tall trees are standing—a beech, two elms, and a sycamore.
All these uprear themselves well above the walls, and cast their shadows
in summer, and their leaves in winter, down on the road beneath. They
can be distinctly seen from the Rectory tennis-court, and, indeed, add a
good deal of charm to it, the road being so narrow, and the walls so
much of a height, that strangers often think the trees on the Cottage
lawn are actually belonging to the Rectory.
‘Yes, I see too,’ says Crosby, leaning forward.
‘Yes, yes!’ cries Betty. ‘But is it a girl?’
And now a little silence falls upon them.
Over there, peeping out between the leaves of the soft sycamore-tree, is
a face. There is nothing to tell if it be a boy’s or a girl’s face, as
nothing can be seen but the shapely head; and its soft abundant tresses
of chestnut hair are so closely drawn back into a knot behind that they
are hidden by the crowding branches. The eyes are gleaming, the lips
slightly parted. So might a Hamadryad look, peering through swaying
leaves.
‘It’s the prisoner,’ says Jacky, in an awestruck tone.
‘The apparition, you mean,’ corrects Mr. Fitzgerald severely.
‘Prisoners, as a rule, have bodies, spooks have none. Jacky, you lucky
creature, you have seen a ghost.’
‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ asks Betty in an anxious tone.
‘A most pertinent question?’ says Fitzgerald, who is taking the
situation with anything but the seriousness that is so evidently
demanded of it. ‘But, as I have before remarked, there is no body to go
by, and naturally no clothes. It is therefore unanswerable.’
Crosby has said nothing. He is, indeed, deeply occupied with the face.
So this is Wyndham’s tenant. A very lovely one.
Again a slight doubt arises in his mind about his friend. And yet
Wyndham had seemed thoroughly honest in his explanation.
‘I know it’s a girl,’ says Susan, with decision. ‘Jacky has seen her;
and what a pretty one! Oh, there, she’s gone!’ And, indeed, the
Hamadryad, as if becoming suddenly conscious of the fact that they are
looking at her, draws back her head and disappears. ‘I’m afraid she saw
us,’ says Susan contritely. ‘She must have thought us very rude. I’ll
ask father to let me call on her, I think. She must be very lonely
there. And even if she is only Mrs. Moriarty’s niece, still, she must
have been educated to make her look like that.’
‘Perhaps,’ says Crosby, speaking with apparent carelessness, and looking
direct at Susan, ‘she might not like to be called upon. I have been
given to understand that she is not a niece of Mrs. Moriarty’s, and—’
‘No, but what, then?’ asks Carew.
‘A tenant of Mr. Wyndham’s. He is a friend of mine, you know; and he
told me lately he had grown very tired of the Cottage, and was willing
to take a tenant for it. This lady is, I presume, the tenant.’
‘The more reason why we should call upon her,’ says Susan.
‘But isn’t she very young,’ says Betty, ‘to be a tenant all by herself?’
This startling suggestion creates a slight pause.
‘To be young is not to be beyond misfortune,’ says Crosby at last, in a
grave and very general tone. ‘No doubt this young lady has lost her
father and mother, and is obliged to—er—do without them.’
This is distinctly lame.
‘Poor thing!’ says Susan sympathetically.
‘We might ask her over here sometimes,’ says Carew.
‘But if she has lost her parents lately,’ puts in Crosby hastily, ‘she
might, perhaps—one should not even with the best intentions force one’s
self upon people in such deep grief as hers.’
‘She wasn’t in mourning, any way,’ says Betty, who can always tell you
to a pin what anyone is wearing; ‘she had a little blue bow near her
neck.’
Crosby recovers from this blow with difficulty.
‘At all events,’ says he, ‘I have heard through Wyndham that she desires
privacy at present. No doubt when she feels equal to receiving visitors
she will let us all know.’
‘No doubt,’ says Dominick, who has been studying Mr. Crosby closely, and
with covert amusement.
‘I’ll ask Mr. Wyndham about her,’ says Susan. ‘I think she would be
happier if she could tell about her sorrow. One should be roused from
one’s griefs, father says. And even if out of mourning—I didn’t see any
blue bow, Betty—still, I am sure she must be sad at heart.’
‘Well, consult your father about it,’ says Crosby, as a last resource.
In spite of his affection for Wyndham, he has doubts about his tenant.
At this point Jane appears, bringing a tray, on which are cups and
saucers, teapot and cream ewer, some bread-and-butter and sponge-cake.
Susan had spent the morning making the sponge-cake on the chance of Mr.
Crosby’s coming. They had decided in conclave that it would be better to
have tea out here on the pleasant grass (though there is no table on
which to put the tray) rather than in the small and rather stuffy
drawing-room. They had had a distinct fight over it with Miss Barry; but
Dominick, who can succeed in anything but his exams, overcame her, and
carried the day.
‘Put the tray down here,’ says Betty, with quite an air, seeing that
Susan has given way a little beneath the want of the table—‘down here on
the grass near me. I’ll pour out the tea’—this with a withering glance
at Susan, who is slightly flushed, and apparently ashamed of herself.
‘We haven’t any rustic table yet, Mr. Crosby,’ says Betty, with immense
aplomb, ‘but were going to have one shortly’—this with all the admirable
assurance of a fashionable dame who has just been ordering a garden
tea-table from one of the best London houses. She nods and smiles at
him. ‘Dom is going to make it. Susan’—with a freezing glance at that
damsel—‘do you think you could manage to cut the sponge-cake?’
‘Cut it!’ says Jacky, who is sharp to see that the idolized Susan is
being sat upon, and who still feels that he owes her reparation of some
sort. ‘Why couldn’t she cut it? She made it.’
Susan bursts out laughing. It is too much, and they all follow suit.
‘What! you made it?’ cries Crosby, taking up a knife and beginning a
vigorous attack upon it. ‘Why didn’t you make it bigger when you were
about it? The fact that it is your handiwork has, judging by myself,
made us all frightfully hungry. Thank Heaven, there is still
bread-and-butter, or I don’t know what would become of us.’
They are all laughing still—indeed, their merriment has quite reached a
height—when Susan, looking over her shoulder, nearly drops her cup and
saucer, and sits up as if listening.
‘Someone is coming,’ says she.
‘Aunt Jemima,’ indignantly declares Betty, who is sitting up too.
Tramp, tramp, tramp comes a foot along the gravel path that skirts the
side of the house away from them. Tramp, tramp; evidently two of the
heaviest feet in Christendom are approaching.
‘You’re right,’ whispers Dom; ‘’tis “the fa’ o’ her fairy feet.” Aunt
Jemima, to a moral.’
And Aunt Jemima it is, sweeping round the house with her head well up,
and the desire to impress, that they all know so fatally well, full upon
her.
‘Don’t stir, Mr. Crosby; I really beg you won’t. This is a rather
_al-fresco_ entertainment, but I know you will excuse these wild
children.’ Here the wild children gave way silently, convulsively.
‘It is the most charming entertainment I have been at for years,’ says
Crosby pleasantly. ‘Where will you sit? Here?’ He is quite assiduous in
his attentions, especially about the rug on which she is to sit—not his
rug, at all events; Susan has half of that.
‘Thank you,’ says Miss Barry, ‘but I need not trouble you; I do not
intend to stay. I merely came out to see if these remarkably
ill-mannered young people were taking care of you.’
She speaks with a stiff and laboured smile upon her lips, but an evident
determination to be amiable at all risks.
‘Won’t you have a cup of tea, Aunt Jemima?’ asks Susan timidly.
‘No, thank you, my love. Pray don’t trouble about me. I’—with a crushing
glance at poor Susan—‘have no desire whatever to interfere with your
amusement. I hope’—turning to Crosby—‘later on I may be able to see more
of you, but to-day I am specially busy. I have many worries, Mr. Crosby,
that are not exactly on the surface.’
‘Like us all,’ says Crosby, nodding his head gravely. ‘Life is full of
thorns.’
‘Ah!’ says Miss Barry. She feels that she has now ‘impressed’ him
indeed, and is satisfied.
‘We travel a thorny road,’ says she.
Crosby sadly acquiesces.
‘True,’ says he.
‘Adieu,’ says she. She makes him an old-fashioned obeisance, and once
again rounds the corner and disappears.
‘I don’t think it was very nice of you to make fun of her,’ says Susan
reproachfully to Crosby.
‘Fun of her! What do you take me for?’ says he. ‘Make fun of your aunt
because I said life was full of thorns? Well’—with argument looming in
his eye—‘isn’t it?’
‘Thorns?’ She pauses, as if wondering. ‘Oh no,’ says she. It seems a
pity to disturb so sweet a faith; and Crosby, with a renunciatory wave
of his hand, gives up the impending argument.
‘Awful lucky she went away so soon!’ says Carew, as the last bit of Aunt
Jemima’s tail disappears round the corner. ‘She’d have led us a life had
she stayed. She’s been on the prance all day on account of those
Brians.’
‘Yes, isn’t it awful?’ says Betty.
‘Who are the Brians?’ asks Crosby.
‘Farmers up on the hill over there’—pointing far away to the south.
‘Very well-to-do people, you know, with their sons going into the
Church, and their daughters at a first-class school in Birmingham. Aunt
Jemima, thinking to help them on their road to civilization, sent them a
bath—one of the round flat ones, you know—as a present last month,
hearing that they were expecting the girls home for their holidays,
and—’
Here Betty breaks off, and goes into what she calls ‘kinks’ of laughter.
‘Well?’ says Crosby, naturally desirous of knowing where the laugh comes
in.
‘Ah, that’s it!’ says Dom. ‘Really, Betty, I think you might hold on
long enough to finish your own story. It appears Aunt Jemima went up to
the farm yesterday, and found that they had taken the bath as an
ornament, and had nailed it up against the sitting-room wall with four
long tenpenny nails, and—’ Here, in spite of his lecture to Betty, Mr.
Fitzgerald himself gives way, and, falling back upon the grass, shouts
with laughter.
‘They took it,’ gasps Carew, ‘as some curio from some barbarous
country—a sort of shield, you know; a savage weapon! They had never seen
a bath before. Oh my!’ He, too, has gone into an ecstasy of mirth. ‘I
expect they thought it was straight from South Africa.’
‘Poor Aunt Jemima!’ says Betty, when she can speak. ‘It must have been a
blow to her.’
‘Talking of blows,’ says Carew, turning to her sharply, and somewhat
indignantly, ‘I never knew anyone blow their nose like you, Betty;
you’ve been at it now since early dawn.’
‘Well, I can’t help it,’ says Betty, very rightly aggrieved, ‘if I have
got a cold in my head.’
‘I’ve a cold, too,’ says Jacky dismally—Jacky is always dismal—‘but it
isn’t as bad as Betty’s. My head is aching, but Betty’s nose is only
running.’
A frightful silence follows upon this terrific speech. Mr. Fitzgerald,
who can always be depended upon at a crisis, breaks it.
‘Not far, I trust,’ says he, with exaggerated anxiety. ‘We could hardly
spare it. Betty’s nose is the one presentable member of that sort in the
family.’
Betty, between the pauses of this speech, can be heard threatening
Jacky. ‘No, no; never! I won’t give it now. You’re a little wretch! Even
if I promised to give it I don’t care. I’ll take it back. You shan’t
have it now.’
But all this is so distinctly not meant to be heard that no one takes
any notice of it, and any serious consequences are prevented by the fact
that Dominick, rising, throws himself between the puzzled Jacky and the
irate Betty. In the meantime, Crosby draws himself along the rug until
he is even closer to Susan, who now again is looking serious.
‘What is troubling you, righteous soul?’ asks he lightly.
‘How do you know I am troubled? I am not, really.’
‘Yet you are thinking, and very gravely, too.’
‘Ah, that is another thing. I was thinking,’ says Susan gently, ‘of the
girl in there’—nodding towards the Cottage. ‘It must be a very sad thing
to have no one belonging to you.’
‘Sad indeed! But you must not let your sympathy for her run too far
afield. If not a father or mother, she must have—other ties.’
‘Brothers, you mean, or sisters?’
‘Yes, just so—brothers or sisters. They’ll turn up presently, no doubt.’
He looks at her as if waiting for an inspiration, and then it comes to
him.
‘What a sympathetic mind you have!’ says he. ‘And yet you don’t give me
a share of it. You have known me quite a long time now, and I have no
father or mother, yet you have not wept with me.’
‘I didn’t know,’ says Susan. ‘And, besides, there was no long time,
surely. Father told us you had no father or mother, but—have you’—with
hesitation—‘no people belonging to you, Mr. Crosby?’
‘One sister,’ says he.
‘One sister! And why doesn’t she live with you?’
‘Ah, you must ask her that. Perhaps she wouldn’t care about it.’
‘I should think she would love to live with you,’ says Susan. She utters
this bold sentiment calmly, kindly, without so much as a blink of her
long lashes.
Crosby looks at her. Is she real, this pretty child? His inclination to
laugh dies within him; and so dies, too, the inclination to utter the
usual society speech, that with most society girls would have been
considered the thing on an occasion like this. Both are done to death by
Susan’s eyes, so calm, so sweet, so earnest, and so entirely without a
second meaning of any sort.
‘Well, you see, she doesn’t,’ says he.
‘But why?’ asks Susan. She is feeling a little angry with the unknown
sister. To live with Carew, if he were well off enough to have her,
would, Susan thinks, be a most delightful arrangement.
‘It seems she prefers to live with another fellow,’ says he.
Susan stares at him. He nods back at her.
‘Fact,’ says he. ‘Horrid taste on her part, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, I see,’ says Susan slowly. ‘She’s married.’
‘Very much,’ says Crosby. ‘At all events, her husband is. She doesn’t
give him much rope. However, you’ll see her soon, as she is coming to
stay with me. She always makes a point of coming to me for my birthday,
whenever I chance to be in Ireland or England for it. I suppose I must
be going now. I say, you two fellows’—turning to Carew and Dom—‘why are
you so lazy? Why don’t you come up and help me to shoot the rabbits?
They are getting beyond the keepers’ control.’
Dom and Carew glance at each other.
‘Can we?’ says Carew. They seem a little tongue-tied.
‘As often as ever you like. Look here, be up at six to-morrow morning,
and we’ll catch them feeding. And if you will stay and breakfast with
me, it will be a kindness to a solitary man.’
‘Oh, thank you!’ says Dominick rapturously. Carew, however, looks a
little crestfallen, whereupon Dom begins to whisper in his ear. The
words ‘every second shot’ reach Mr. Crosby.
‘If either of you wants a gun, I can find you one,’ says he carelessly,
after which joy unruffled reigns. ‘I make only one stipulation,’ he
adds: ‘that you won’t shoot me.’
‘Oh, hang it, we are not such duffers as that!’ says Carew.
They all laugh at this, and all, as usual, accompany him to the gate to
give him a kind send-off.
As he disappears up the road past the little side-gate of the Cottage,
Dom makes a rush back to the house. ‘I must go and polish up the old
gun,’ says he. Betty follows him, with Tom and Jacky.
‘How kind he is!’ says Susan, turning to Carew. Her tone is warm and
grateful. There is no doubt that Carew’s answer would have been equally
warm, but it never comes.
A little sound—the creaking of a rusty hinge—at this moment attracts his
attention, and Susan’s also. They glance quickly towards the little
green gate of the Cottage.
It is slowly opening!
And now a face peeps out—very cautiously, very nervously.