"Yes," said Augusta Wyndham, "if there is a young man who suits me all
round it's Mr. Carr. Yes," she said, standing very upright in her short
skirts, with her hair in a tight pig-tail hanging down her back, and
her determined, wide open, bright eyes fixed upon an admiring audience
of younger sisters. "He suits me exactly. He's a kind of
hail-fellow-well-met; he has no nonsensical languishing airs about him;
he preaches nice short sermons, and never bothers you to remember what
they are about afterwards; he's not bad at tennis or cricket, and he
really can cannon quite decently at billiards; but for all that, if
_you_ think, you young 'uns, that he's going to get inside of Gerry, or
that he's going to try to pretend to know better than Gerry what I can
or can't do, why you're all finely mistaken, so there!"
Augusta turned on her heel, pirouetted a step or two, whistled in a
loud, free, unrestrained fashion, and once more faced her audience.
"Gerry said that I _could_ give out the library books. Now is it likely
that Mr. Carr knows more of my capacities after six months' study than
Gerry found out after fifteen years?"
"But Mr. Carr doesn't study _you_, Gus. It's Lilias he's always looking
at," interrupted little Rosie.
"You're not pretty, are you, Gus?" asked Betty. "Your cheeks are too
red, aren't they? And nurse says your eyes are as round as an owl's!"
"Pretty!" answered Augusta, in a lofty voice. "Who cares for being
pretty? Who cares for being simply pink and white? I'm for intellect.
I'm for the march of mind. Gerry believes in me. Hurrah for Gerry! Now,
girls, off with your caps, throw them in the air, and shout hurrah for
Gerry three times, as loud as you can!"
"What an extraordinary noise the children are making on the lawn," said
Lilias to Marjory. "I hear Gerald's name. What can they be saying about
Gerald? One would almost think he was coming down the avenue to see the
state of excitement they are in! Do look, Meg, do."
"It's only one of Gussie's storms in a tea-cup," responded Marjory,
cheerfully. "I am so glad, Lil, that you found Gerald and Val hitting
it off so nicely. You consider them quite a model pair for affection
and all that, don't you, pet?"
"Quite," said Lilias. "My mind is absolutely at rest. One night Val
puzzled me a little. Oh, nothing to speak of--nothing came of it, I
mean. Yes, my mind is absolutely at rest, thank God! What are all the
children doing. Maggie? They are flying in a body to the house. What
can it mean?"
"We'll know in less than no time," responded Marjory, calmly. And they
did.
Four little girls, all out of breath, all dressed alike, all looking
alike, dashed into the drawing-room, and in one breath poured out the
direful intelligence that Augusta had mutinied.
"Mr. Carr forbade her to give away the library books," they said, "and
she has gone up now to the school-room in spite of him. She's off; she
said Gerry said she might do it, long ago. Isn't it awful of her? She
says beauty's nothing, and she's only going to obey Gerry," continued
Betty. "What shall we do? She'll give all the books away wrong, and Mr.
Carr will be angry."
They all paused for want of breath. Rosie went up and laid her fat red
hand on Lilias' knee.
"I said it was you he stared at," she remarked. "_You_ wouldn't like
him to be vexed, would you?"
The words had scarcely passed her lips before the door was opened, and
the object of the children's universal commiseration entered. A deep
and awful silence took possession of them. Lilias clutched Rosie's
hand, and felt an inane desire to rush from the room with her.
Too late. The terrible infant flew to Adrian Carr, and clasping her
arms around his legs, looked up into his face.
"Never mind," she said, "it _is_ wrong of Gussie, but it isn't Lilias'
fault. She wouldn't like to vex you, 'cause you stare so at her."
"Nursie says that you admire Lilias; do you?" asked Betty.
"Oh, poor Gussie!" exclaimed the others, their interest in Lilias and
Carr being after all but a very secondary matter. "We all do hope you
won't do anything dreadful to her. You can, you know. You can
excommunicate her, can't you?"
"But what has Augusta done?" exclaimed Carr, turning a somewhat flushed
face in the direction not of Lilias, but of Marjory. "What a frightful
confusion--and what does it mean?"
Marjory explained as well as she was able. Carr had lately taken upon
himself to overhaul the books of the lending library. He believed in
literature as a very elevating lever, but he thought that books should
not only be carefully selected in the mass, but in lending should be
given with a special view to the needs of the individual who borrowed.
Before Gerald's marriage Marjory had given away the books, but since
then, for various reasons, they had drifted into Augusta's hands, and
through their means this rather spirited and daring young lady had been
able to inflict a small succession of mild tyrannies. For instance,
poor Miss Yates, the weak-eyed and weak-spirited village dressmaker,
was dosed with a series of profound and dull theology; and Macallister,
the sexton and shoemaker, a canny Scot, who looked upon all fiction as
the "work of the de'il," was put into a weekly passion with the novels
of Charles Reade and Wilkie Collins.
These were extreme cases, but Augusta certainly had the knack of giving
the wrong book to the wrong person. Carr heard mutterings and
grumbling. The yearly subscriptions of a shilling a piece diminished,
and he thought it full time to take the matter in hand. He himself
would distribute the village literature every Saturday, at twelve
o'clock.
The day and the hour arrived, and behold Miss Augusta Wyndham had
forestalled him, and was probably at this very moment putting "The
Woman in White" into the enraged Macallister's hand. Carr's temper was
not altogether immaculate; he detached the children's clinging hands
from his person, and said he would pursue the truant, publicly take the
reins of authority from her, and send her home humiliated. He left the
rectory, walking fast, and letting his annoyance rather increase than
diminish, for few young men care to be placed in a ridiculous
situation, and he could not but feel that such was his in the present
instance.
The school-house was nearly half a mile from the rectory, along a
straight and dusty piece of road; very dusty it was to-day, and a
cutting March east wind blew in Carr's face and stung it. He approached
the school-house--no, what a relief--the patient aspirants after
literature were most of them waiting outside. Augusta, then, could not
have gone into the school-room.
"Has Miss Augusta Wyndham gone upstairs?" he asked of a rosy-cheeked
girl who adored the "Sunday At Home."
"No, please, sir. Mr. Gerald's come, please, Mr. Carr, sir," raising
two eyes which nearly blazed with excitement. "He shook 'ands with me,
he did, and with Old Ben, there; and Miss Augusta, she give a sort of
a whoop, and she had her arms round his neck, and was a-hugging of him
before us all, and they has gone down through the fields to the
rectory."
"About the books," said Carr; "has Miss Augusta given you the books?"
"Bless your 'eart, sir," here interrupted Old Ben, "we ain't of a mind
for books to-day. Mr. Gerald said he'd come up this evening to the
Club, and have a chat with us all, and Sue and me, we was waiting here
to tell the news. Litteratoor ain't in our line to-day, thank you,
sir."
"Here's Mr. Macallister," said Sue. "Mr. Macallister, Mr. Gerald's
back. He is, truly. I seen him, and so did Old Ben."
"And he'll be at the Club to-night," said Ben, turning his wrinkled
face upwards towards the elongated visage of the canny Scot.
"The Lord be praised for a' His mercies," pronounced Macallister,
slowly, with an upward wave of his hand, as if he were returning thanks
for a satisfying meal. "Na, na. Mr. Carr, na books the day."
Finding that his services were really useless, Carr went away. The
villagers were slowly collecting from different quarters, and all faces
were broadening into smiles, and all the somewhat indifferent sleepy
tones becoming perceptibly brighter, and Gerald Wyndham's name was
passed from lip to lip. Old Miss Bates wiped her tearful eyes, as she
hurried home to put on her best cap. Widow Simpkins determined to make
up a good fire in her cottage, and not to spare the coals; the festive
air was unmistakeable. Carr felt smitten with a kind of envy. What
wonders could not Wyndham have effected in this place, he commented, as
he walked slowly back to his lodgings. Later in the day he called at
the rectory to find the hero surrounded by his adoring family, and
bearing his honors gracefully.
Gerald was talking rather more than his wont; for some reason or other
his face had more color than usual, his eyes were bright, he smiled,
and even laughed. Lilias ceased to watch him anxiously, a sense of
jubilation filled the breast of every worshipping sister, and no one
thought of parting or sorrow.
Perhaps even Gerald himself forgot the bitterness which lay before him
just then; perhaps his efforts were not all efforts, and that he really
felt some of the old home peace and rest with its sustaining power.
You can know a thing and yet not always realize it. Gerald knew that he
should never spend another Saturday in the old rectory of
Jewsbury-on-the-Wold. That Lilias' bright head and Lilias' tender,
steadfast earnest eyes would be in future only a memory. He could never
hope again to touch that hair, or answer back the smile on that beloved
and happy face. The others, too--but Lilias, after his wife, was most
dear of all living creatures to Gerald. Well, he must not think; he
resolved to take all the sweetness, if possible, out of this Saturday
and Sunday. He resolved not to tell any of his people of the coming
parting until just before he left.
The small sisters squatted in a semicircle on the floor round their
hero; Augusta, as usual, stood behind him, keeping religious guard of
the back of his head.
"If there is a thing I simply adore," that vigorous young lady was
often heard to say, "it's the back of Gerry's head."
Lilias sat at his feet, her slim hand and arm lying across his knee;
Marjory flitted about, too restless and happy to be quiet, and the tall
rector stood on the hearthrug with his back to the fire.
"It is good to be home again," said Gerald. Whereupon a sigh of content
echoed from all the other throats, and it was at this moment that Carr
came into the room.
"Come in, Carr, come in," said the rector. "There's a place for you,
too. You're quite like one of the family, you know. Oh, of course you
are, my dear fellow, of course you are. We have got my son back,
unexpectedly. Gerald, you know Carr, don't you."
Gerald stood up, gave Carr's hand a hearty grip, and offered him his
chair.
"Oh, not that seat, Gerry," groaned Augusta, "it's the only one in the
room I can stand at comfortably. I can't fiddle with your curls if I
stand at the back of any other chair."
Gerald patted her cheek.
"Then perhaps, Carr, you'll oblige Augusta by occupying another chair.
I am sorry that I am obliged to withhold the most comfortable from
you."
Carr was very much at home with the Wyndhams by now. He pulled forward
a cane chair, shook his head at Augusta, and glanced almost timidly at
Lilias. He feared the eight sharp eyes of the younger children if he
did more than look very furtively, but she made such a sweet picture
just then that his eyes sought hers by a sort of fascination. For the
first time, too, he noticed that she had a look of Gerald. Her face
lacked the almost spiritualized expression of his, but undoubtedly
there was a likeness.
The voices, interrupted for a moment by the curate's entrance, soon
resumed their vigorous flow.
"Why didn't you bring my dear little sister Valentine down, Gerald?" It
was Lilias who spoke.
He rewarded her loving speech by a flash, half of pleasure, half of
pain in his eyes. Aloud he said:--
"We thought it scarcely worth while for both of us to come. I must go
away again on Monday."
A sepulchral groan from Augusta. Rosie, Betty and Joan exclaimed almost
in a breath:--
"And we like you much better by yourself."
"Oh, hush, children," said Marjory. "We are all very fond of Val."
"You have brought a great deal of delight into the village. Wyndham,"
said Carr, and he related the little scene which had taken place around
the school-house. "I'd give a good deal to be even half as popular," he
said with a sigh.
"You might give all you possessed in all the world, and you wouldn't
succeed," snapped Gussie.
"Augusta, you really are too rude," said Lilias with a flush on her
face.
"No, I'm not, Lil. Oh, you needn't stare at me. I like him, and he
knows it," nodding with her head in the direction of Adrian Carr; "but
you have to be born in a place, and taught to walk in it, and you have
had to steal apples in it and eggs out of birds' nests, and to get
nearly drowned when fishing, and to get some shot in your ankle, and
you've got to know every soul in all the country round, and to come
back from school to them in the holidays, and for them first to see
your moustache coming; and then, beyond and above all that, you've got
just to be _Gerry_, to have his way of looking, and his way of walking,
and his way of shaking your hand, and to have his voice and his heart,
to be loved as well. So how _could_ Mr. Carr expect it?"
"Bravo, Augusta," said Adrian Carr. "I'd like you for a friend better
than any girl I know."
"Please, Gerry, tell us a story," exclaimed the younger children. They
did not want Augusta to have all the talking.
"Let it be about a mouse, and a cricket on the hearth, and a white
elephant, and a roaring bull, and a grizzly bear."
"And let the ten little nigger-boys come into it," said Betty.
"And Bo-Peep," said Rosie.
"And the Old Man who wouldn't say his prayers," exclaimed Joan.
"And let it last for hours," exclaimed they all.
Gerald begged the rest of the audience to go away, but they refused to
budge an inch. So the story began. All the characters appeared in due
order; it lasted a long time, and everybody was delighted.