XXIII
HONOR THY DAUGHTER!
But, alas! Cissy Carter
was
a goose! In the well-meant telegram she saw only a new machination of the enemy – perhaps even of Elizabeth Fortinbras. And the heart in the Boulevard d'Argenson became, for the moment, sadder than ever. Also Madame asked for an explanation in a tone to which the proud little daughter of Colonel Davenant Carter had been quite unaccustomed. She resented Madame Rolly's interference rather more sharply than wisely. Whereupon she was told that her father would be requested to remove her, if, on the morrow, she was not ready with an explanation, in addition to the apology which Madame, perhaps correctly, considered her due.
Now it chanced that Colonel Carter, finding himself with a week-end to spare in London, had crossed the Channel to give himself the treat (and his daughter the surprise) of dropping in upon her unexpectedly. He could not have come more to the purpose so far as that daughter was concerned. Or more malapropos from the point of view of Madame Rolly.
As many people know, the good Colonel, once the devoted slave of Sir Toady Lion, was occasionally exceedingly peppery. And when he arrived with his pockets bulging with good things, only to find "his little girl" in tears – and, indeed, brought hastily down from the room in which she had been locked – his military ardor exploded.
"If, Madame," he is reported to have said, "I am to understand that you cannot keep discipline without having resort to methods more suitable to a boy of eight than to a young lady of eighteen, it is time that I undertook the responsibility myself! Cecilia, go up to your room. I will settle with Madame. And by the time that is done – the – ah – baggage-cart will be at the door – as sure as my name is G-rrrrrumph – G-rrrumph – G-rrrummph!"
And, indeed, the "baggage-cart" (in the shape of a small omnibus) was at the door. Although really, you know, the Colonel's name was not as he himself affirmed.
"And now, Missy," growled the Colonel in his finest Full-Bench-of-Justices manner, "kindly tell me what you have been doing!"
For, very characteristically, the Colonel, though entirely declining to listen to a word of accusation against his daughter from Madame Rolly, reserved to himself the right of distributing an even-handed justice afterwards. His method on such occasions is just the reverse of father's, as we have all learned to our cost. Our father would have listened gravely to all that Madame had to recount of our misdeeds. Then he would have nodded, remarked, "You did perfectly right, Madame! In anything that you may propose, I will support you – so long, that is, as I judge it best that my child shall remain at your school!" For father's first principle in all such matters is, "Support authority – receive or make no complaints – and, above all, work out your own salvation, my young friend!"
And though it sometimes looks a bit hard at the time, as Hugh John says, "It prepares a fellow for taking his own part in the world, as you soon find you have jolly well to do if you mean to get on."
But Cissy knew her father, and promptly set herself to cry as heartbrokenly as she could manage on such short notice. Colonel Davenant Carter gazed at her a moment with a haughty and defiant expression. But as Toady Lion had once said of him, "I teached him to come the High Horsicle wif ME!" So now, as the rickety omnibus jogged and swayed over the Parisian cobbles, Cissy wept ever more bitterly, till the old soldier had to entreat her to stop. They would, so it appeared, soon be at his hotel. Even now they were passing his club, and "that old gossiping beast, Repton Reeves," was at the window. If it got about that he, Colonel Davenant Carter, had been seen driving down the Rue de Rivoli with a damsel drowned in floods of tears – why, by all the bugles of Balaclava, he would never hear the end of it. He might as well resign at the club. All which, as Cissy sobbed out in the French language, was "exceedingly equal" to her! But it was very far indeed from being "égal" to the peppery Colonel. And at last, as the sobs increased in carry and volume, he was reduced to the ignominious expedient of personal bribery.
"Look here, Cissy," he said in tremulous tones, "we absolutely
can't
go into the courtyard of the Grand Hotel like this! Now, if you will be a good girl, and will stop this instant, I will drive you up the Rue de la Paix, and there I will buy – !"
"
What?
" said Cissy, looking up with eyes that still brimmed ready for action.
"A gold bracelet!" said her father tentatively, but still quite uncertain of his effect.
"Boohoo!" said Cissy Carter, dropping her face once more between her hands.
"Goodness gracious," cried the Colonel, invoking his favorite divinity, "what can the girl want? A gold watch, then?"
"Real gold this time, then!" said Cissy, who had been "had" once before, and, even with an aching heart, was properly cautious.
"You shall do the choosing yourself!" said her father, thinking that he had conquered. But Cissy knew her opportunity – and the relative whom fate had given her. The tears welled again. Her bosom was shaken by timely sobs.
"Well, what then, Celia – really, this becomes past bearing! Why, we are nearly at the hotel!"
Cissy glanced up quickly. "A gold bracelet
with
a gold watch, then!" she sighed gently.
And this is the truth, and the whole truth, as to why Colonel Davenant Carter gave his arm to a radiant and beautiful daughter in the courtyard of the Grand Hotel – a daughter, also, who lifted up a prettily-gloved hand (twelve buttons), and at every fourth step
looked at the time
!
XXIV
CISSY'S MEANNESS
Miss Cecilia Davenant Carter had been at home a good many weeks before she came to see me. Of course Hugh John was now at college, and doubtless that made a difference. But she had never stayed away so long before, and whatever reason Cissy might have to be angry with Master Hugh John, she had not the least right to take it out on ME!
However, she came at last – chiefly, I think, to show me the gold watch on her wrist. This she wanted so badly to do that it must have hurt her dreadfully to stay away as long as she did. So she sat fingering it, but not running to ask me to admire it, as a girl naturally does. Of course I took no notice, though it made me feel mean. We talked about the woods and the autumn tints (schoolgirls always like these two words – they remind them that it is the season for blackberries and jam), till at last I was thoroughly ashamed of myself. So I went over to Cissy, and said, "I think that's the prettiest bracelet I ever saw in all my life!"
And she said, "Do you?" looking up at me funnily. "Do you really?" she repeated the words, looking straight at me.
"Yes, I do indeed!" I answered. And – what do you think? – the next moment she was crying on my shoulder! Of course I understood. Every girl will, without needing to be told. And as for men (and "Old Cats"), it is no use attempting to explain to them. They never could know just how we two felt.
But Cissy had really nothing in the least "catty" about her. "Quite the reverse, I assure
you
!" as the East Country folk say. She even took it off and let me try it on without ever warning me to be careful with it. And that, you know, is a good deal for a girl who is "not friends" with your own brother, and has only had a new "real-gold" watch-bracelet for three or four weeks.
But then, Cissy could never be calm and restful like Elizabeth Fortinbras. Cissy did everything in a rush, and so, I suppose, got somehow closer to the heart of our impassive Hugh John just on that account. Elizabeth Fortinbras was too like my brother to touch him "where he lived," as Sir Toady would say.
Well, after a while Cissy stopped crying, and took my handkerchief without a word and quite as a matter of course (which showed as clearly as anything how things stood between us).
Then she said, "Priss, do you know, I did an awfully mean thing, and I want you to help me to make it all right again!"
In a book, of course (a proper book, I mean), I ought to have asked Ciss all sorts of questions, and said that in everything which did not affect the honor of the house of Picton Smith I was at her service. And so on.
But of course ordinary girls don't talk like that now-a-days. If you have what our sweet Maid calls a "snarl" against anybody – why, mostly every one plays hockey now, and it is the simplest thing in the world to "take a drive at her shins, and say how sorry you are afterwards"! So at least (the Maid informs me) some girls, who shall be nameless, have been known to do at her school.
I waited for Cissy to tell me of the dreadfully mean thing she had done. But of course I assured her first that, whatever it was – yes,
whatever
– I should do just what she wanted done to help her. For I knew she would do the same for me.
Then she told me that in her first anger about the telegram – for she had been far more angry about that than about the sending back the other half of the crooked sixpence – a thing which really mattered a thousand times more (but of course that was exactly like a girl!) – she had put the telegram, and both parts of the crooked sixpence, and all of Hugh John's letters she could find – chiefly the short and simple annals of a Rugby "forward" – in a lozenge-box – and (here Cissy dropped her voice)
sent them all, registered, to Elizabeth Fortinbras
!
XXV
"NOT EVEN HUGH JOHN!"
"To Elizabeth – Elizabeth Fortinbras!" I cried. Here was a new difficulty. If only people would not do things in a hurry, as Hugh John says, they would mostly end by not doing them at all!
"What sort of a girl is this Elizabeth Fortinbras?" Cissy Carter asked. "She is only a shop-girl after all, isn't she?"
I set Cissy right on this head. There were shop-girls
and
shop-girls. And this one not only came of a respectable ancestry, but had been well educated, was the heiress of Erin Villa, and would succeed to one of the best businesses in Edam!
"Is she pretty?"
Oh, of course I had foreseen the question. It was quite inevitable, and there was but one thing to say —
"Come to the shop and see for yourself!"
But Cissy hung back. You see, she had done a perfectly mad thing, and yet was not quite ready to make it up with the person concerned – especially when Cissy was Colonel Davenant Carter's only daughter just home from Paris, and when, in spite of my explanations, Elizabeth was little more to her than a "girl behind a counter"!
You may be sure that I put her duty before her – yes, plainly and with point. But Cissy had in her all the pride of the Davenant Carters, and go she would not, till I told her plump and plain that she was afraid!
My, how that made her jump! She turned a little pale, rose quietly, adjusted her hat at the mirror, took off her watch-bracelet and gave it to me to keep for her.
"I will go and see this Elizabeth Fortinbras now – and alone!" she said, with that nice quiet dignity which became her so well. I would greatly have liked to have gone along with her. But, first of all, she had not asked me, and, secondly, I knew that I had better not.
Cissy Carter had to see Elizabeth alone. Only they could arrange matters. Still, of course, both of them told me all about it afterwards, and it is from these two narratives that the following short account is written out.
Elizabeth was in the front shop, busy as a bee among the sweet things, white-aproned, and wearing dainty white armlets of linen which came from the wrist to above the elbow. Then these two looked at each other as only girls do – or perhaps more exactly, attractive young women of about the same age. Boys are different – they behave just like strange dogs on being introduced, sulky and ready to snarl. A young man seems to be wondering how such a contemptible fellow as that other fellow could possibly have gained admittance to a respectable house. Only experienced women can manage the business properly, putting just the proper amount of cordiality into the bow and handshake. Grown men – most of them, that is – allow their natural feeling of boredom to appear too obviously.
At any rate Cissy and Elizabeth took in each other at a glance, far more searching and exhaustive as to "points" than ever any man's could be. Then they bowed to each other very coldly.
"Will you come this way?" said Elizabeth, instantly discerning that Cissy had not come to New Erin Villa as a customer. Accordingly she led the way into the little sitting-room, all in pale creamy
cretonne
with old-fashioned roses scattered upon it, which her own taste and the full purse of Ex-Butcher Donnan had provided for her.
"Be good enough to take a seat," said Elizabeth Fortinbras. But she herself remained standing.
Now you never can tell by which end a girl – or a woman, for that matter – will tackle anything. All that you can be sure of is that it will not be the obvious and natural one – the one nearest her hand. So Cissy, instead of coming right out with her confession and having done with it, began by asking Elizabeth if she knew a Mr. Hugh John Picton Smith.
"He is my friend!" said Elizabeth, very quiet and grave, standing with one hand in the pocket of her apron and the other hanging easily by her side.
"And nothing more?" said Cissy, looking up at her very straight.
"I must first know by what right you ask me that question!" said Elizabeth. And then, her lips quivering (I know exactly how) a long minute between pride and pitifulness, Cissy did the best thing in the world she could have done to soften Elizabeth Fortinbras. She struggled an instant with herself. Her pride gave way exactly as it had with me, and she began to sob quietly and continuously.
Elizabeth took one step towards her. Presently her cool, strong arms were about Cissy's neck, who struggled a second or two like a captive bird, and then the next Elizabeth was soothing her like an elder sister.
"Yes, dear, I know – I know! You did a foolish thing. But then it was to me. I understood! I understand! It does not matter! No one else need know!"
Then, in a voice quiet as the falling of summer rain among the misty isles of the West, Elizabeth added, "
Not even Hugh John!
"
XXVI
HAUNTS REVISITED
I think we were all a bit unstrung after this. It was a good many weeks before Cissy could bring herself to speak about Elizabeth Fortinbras, and then it was in a rush, as, indeed, she did everything. It was one afternoon, over at Young Mrs. Winter's. Mrs. Christopher Camsteary (who always was as superior as a pussy-cat with a new blue ribbon about her neck, all because her husband kept three gardeners, one of whom blacked the Camsteary boots) happened to remark that there was "a rather ladylike girl" in those butcher-people's sweet-shop opposite the station.
"She
is
a lady!" said Cissy Carter, lifting up her proud little chin with an air of finality.
And, indeed, there was, in Edam at least, no discussing with Miss Davenant Carter on such a matter. Mrs. Christopher Camsteary, whose husband, greatly to his credit, had made a large fortune in cattle-feeding oilcake ("in the wholesale, of course, you know, my dear!"), could not, even if she had wished, contradict the daughter of ten generations of Davenant Carters as to who was a lady and who not! So it was settled that, whenever Cissy Carter was in the room, Elizabeth Fortinbras was a lady. Which must have been a great comfort to her!
Well, the following summer-time when the good days came – perhaps because everybody, including even Hugh John, was a little tired and "edgy" – father took us all off to his own country.
I was the one who had seen the most of it before, as you may see if ever you have read the book called
Sweetheart Travelers
that father wrote about our gypsyings and goings-on. Of course (all our family say "of course" – and it all fills up first-rate when the man comes to count the pages up for printing) – well, of course I had forgotten a good deal about it, only I read over the book on the sly, and so was posted for everything as it came along.
This time we did not go on "The-Old-Homestead-on-Wheels," as we called the historic tricycle, but in the nicest and biggest of all wagonettes, with two lovely horses driven by a friend of ours with a cleverness which did one's heart good to see. His name was "Jim." We called him so from the first, and he was dreadfully nice to all of us, because he had been at school with father. This made us think for a good while that it was because of his superior goodness and cleverness there that so many people were glad to remember that they had been at school with father. Jim, when we asked him, said that it was so, but Hugh John immediately smelt a rat. So he asked another and yet older friend of father's, named Massa – because, I think, he sang negro melodies so beautifully. (Who would have thought that they sang "coon" songs so long ago? – but I suppose it was really just a kind of "boot-room music," or the sort of thing they play on board trip-steamers, when the trombone is away taking up a collection, and everybody is moving to the other side of the deck!) Well, Massa came along with us and Jim one lovely Saturday to see the place where my great-grandmother had kept sheep "on the bonny banks of the Cluden" a full hundred years ago.
Somehow I always liked that. It means more to a girl than even father's misdeeds, the hearing about which amuses the boys so.
However, it really was about those that I began. So, reluctantly, I must leave the little hundred-year-old girl keeping her sheep on the green holms of Cluden, and tell about father and his wonderful influence. Massa said that we were not to tell on him, and of course we promised. This is not
telling
, but only writing all about it down in my Diary – quite a different thing. Well, Massa said that when "Mac" and he had "done anything," they used to climb up different trees as quickly as they could, and then, when father came after them (he was not our father then, of course, but only Roman Dictator and Tyrant of Syracuse), he could only get one of them. For while he was climbing the tree occupied by one, the other could drop out of the branches and cut and run. It was a good way, especially for Number Two, who got away – not quite so fine, though, for Number One, who was caught. Whenever a new boy visited the town and the Dictator was seen coming along, they ran the stranger up a tree and introduced him from there, as it were, lest, by mistake, a worse thing should befall him! Really it is difficult to believe all this, even when Massa swears it. Because father, if you let his pet books alone and don't make too big a row outside the
châlet
when he is working, hardly minds at all what you do. We don't really recognize him in the Roaring Lion, going about seeking whom he might devour, of Mr. Massa's legends.
So Sir Toady, in the interests of public information, asked Mr. Massa if the boys of that time were not pretty bad. And Mr. Massa said that they were, but that "they were not a patch on your – " He stopped just at the word "your," for father was coming round the corner. And, do you know, I don't believe he has quite lost his influence with Mr. Massa even now. It is a fine thing, Hugh John says, to be such a power for good among your fellows. He had that sort of power himself at school, and he managed to keep it, even though fellows ever so much bigger came while he was there.
Well, no matter; what I keep really in my heart, or maybe like an amulet about my neck, is the memory of the little hundred-year-old girl (that is, she
would
be if she were alive now) tending sheep and twining daisy-chains on the meadows by the Water of Cluden, with the Kirk of Iron-gray glinting through the trees, and Helen Walker (which is to say Jeanie Deans) calling in the cows to be milked at the farm across the burn.
Now I don't know how
you
feel, but the story of this great-grandmother of mine always seems sort of kind and warm and sacred to me, a mixture of the stillness of an old-fashioned Sabbath and the first awakening hush when you remember that it is your birthday – a sort of religious fairyland, if you know what I mean – like "playing house" (oh, such a long time ago!) with Puck and Ariel and the Queen of the Fairies, while several of the very nicest people out of the Bible stories sat in the shade and watched – perhaps Ruth and, of course, her mother-in-law, and David when he was very young, and kept sheep also. He would certainly come to see our play – his shepherd's crook in his hand, and his eye occasionally taking a survey of great-grandmother's flocks and herds to see that there were no lions or bears about!
Yes, I know it's fearfully silly. Of course it is. But, all the same, I have oftener put myself happily to sleep thinking about that, and with the music of the Cluden Water low in my ear, than with all the wisdom that ever I learned at school! So there!
Of course you mustn't suppose that at the time I said a word of all this even to the Maid, much less to the others. Though I do think that father, who knows a lot of things without being told, partly guessed what I was thinking of. For once when we had all got down to gather flowers, he led me down to the water's edge, and, pointing across the clear purl of the stream to the opposite bank (where is a little green level, with, in the midst, a still greener Fairy Ring), he took my hand and, standing behind me, pointed with it. "It was there!" he whispered.
He did not say a word more. But that was enough. I understood, and he knew that I understood. It was like the old days when we made our travels together, he and I, with the Things of the Wide World running back past us, all beautiful and all sweet as dreaming of plucking flowers in the kindly shade of woods.
Soon after this, on our journey through father's country, we came to a little village – the cleanest and dearest that ever was seen. It was the one after which father had called one of his early books of verse – "Dulce Cor." Here we were very happy, for there was a lovely old Abbey, roofless, of course, but all blooming like one great rose when the sun shone on it at evening and morning. The colors of the stones were so rich with age and mellowing that from the little walk on the other side of the valley it seemed as if the whole had been dipped for a thousand years in a bath of sunset clouds, and then left out among the cornstooks to dry! Even more beautiful and kindly was a certain nice Doctor – only he wasn't the sort that come to see you when you are ill, to tap you on the back and write prescriptions. He took me to see the Abbey, and told me about the Last of all the Abbots, who was so kind that the people would not let him be sent away, but kept him always hidden here and there among them. And about how he died at long and last, "much respected and deeply regretted," as the papers say, even by those who did not go to his church – which, indeed, very few in these parts did.
And though it was, of course, foolish, and I would never have said it to the Doctor himself for worlds, I could not help thinking that this Last of all the Abbots (Gilbert Brown, I think his name was) must have been a