Oh, dear! Oh, dear! said she. Wait a moment. Let me put down these silly things, and she put the bottle of oysters and the pine on a little carved chair. What have you got in your button-holecherries? She took them out and hung them over his ear.
Dont do that, darling. They are for you.
So she took them off his ear again. You dont mind if I save them. Theyd spoil my appetite for dinner. Come and see your children. They are having tea.
The lamp was lighted on the nursery table. Mrs. Fairfield was cutting and spreading bread and butter. The three little girls sat up to table wearing large bibs embroidered with their names. They wiped their mouths as their father came in ready to be kissed. The windows were open; a jar of wild flowers stood on the mantelpiece, and the lamp made a big soft bubble of light on the ceiling.
You seem pretty snug, mother, said Burnell, blinking at the light. Isabel and Lottie sat one on either side of the table, Kezia at the bottomthe place at the top was empty.
Thats where my boy ought to sit, thought Stanley. He tightened his arm round Lindas shoulder. By God, he was a perfect fool to feel as happy as this!
We are, Stanley. We are very snug, said Mrs. Fairfield, cutting Kezias bread into fingers.
Like it better than towneh, children? asked Burnell.
Oh, yes, said the three little girls, and Isabel added as an afterthought: Thank you very much indeed, father dear.
Come upstairs, said Linda. Ill bring your slippers.
But the stairs were too narrow for them to go up arm in arm. It was quite dark in the room. He heard her ring tapping on the marble mantelpiece as she felt for the matches.
Ive got some, darling. Ill light the candles.
But instead he came up behind her and again he put his arms round her and pressed her head into his shoulder.
Im so confoundedly happy, he said.
Are you? She turned and put her hands on his breast and looked up at him.
I dont know what has come over me, he protested.
It was quite dark outside now and heavy dew was falling. When Linda shut the window the cold dew touched her finger tips. Far away a dog barked. I believe there is going to be a moon, she said.
At the words, and with the cold wet dew on her fingers, she felt as though the moon had risenthat she was being strangely discovered in a flood of cold light. She shivered; she came away from the window and sat down upon the box ottoman beside Stanley.
In the dining-room, by the flicker of a wood fire, Beryl sat on a hassock playing the guitar. She had bathed and changed all her clothes. Now she wore a white muslin dress with black spots on it and in her hair she had pinned a black silk rose.
Nature has gone to her rest, love,
See, we are alone.
Give me your hand to press, love,
Lightly within my own.
She played and sang half to herself, for she was watching herself playing and singing. The firelight gleamed on her shoes, on the ruddy belly of the guitar, and on her white fingers
If I were outside the window and looked in and saw myself I really would be rather struck, thought she. Still more softly she played the accompanimentnot singing now but listening.
The first time that I ever saw you, little girloh, you had no idea that you were not aloneyou were sitting with your little feet upon a hassock, playing the guitar. God, I can never forget Beryl flung up her head and began to sing again:
Even the moon is aweary
But there came a loud bang at the door. The servant girls crimson face popped through.
Please, Miss Beryl, Ive got to come and lay.
Certainly, Alice, said Beryl, in a voice of ice. She put the guitar in a corner. Alice lunged in with a heavy black iron tray.
Well, I have had a job with that oving, said she. I cant get nothing to brown.
Really! said Beryl.
But no, she could not stand that fool of a girl. She ran into the dark drawing-room and began walking up and down Oh, she was restless, restless. There was a mirror over the mantel. She leaned her arms along and looked at her pale shadow in it. How beautiful she looked, but there was nobody to see, nobody.
Why must you suffer so? said the face in the mirror. You were not made for suffering Smile!
Beryl smiled, and really her smile was so adorable that she smiled againbut this time because she could not help it.
VIII
Good morning, Mrs. Jones.
Oh, good morning, Mrs. Smith. Im so glad to see you. Have you brought your children?
Yes, Ive brought both my twins. I have had another baby since I saw you last, but she came so suddenly that I havent had time to make her any clothes yet. So I left her How is your husband?
Oh, he is very well, thank you. At least he had an awful cold but Queen Victoriashes my godmother, you knowsent him a case of pineapples and that cured it immediately. Is that your new servant?
Yes, her names Gwen. Ive only had her two days. Oh, Gwen, this is my friend, Mrs. Smith.
Good morning, Mrs. Smith. Dinner wont be ready for about ten minutes.
I dont think you ought to introduce me to the servant. I think I ought to just begin talking to her.
Well, shes more of a lady-help than a servant and you do introduce lady-helps, I know, because Mrs. Samuel Josephs had one.
Oh, well, it doesnt matter, said the servant carelessly, beating up a chocolate custard with half a broken clothes peg. The dinner was baking beautifully on a concrete step. She began to lay the cloth on a pink garden seat. In front of each person she put two geranium leaf plates, a pine needle fork and a twig knife. There were three daisy heads on a laurel leaf for poached eggs, some slices of fuchsia petal cold beef, some lovely little rissoles made of earth and water and dandelion seeds, and the chocolate custard which she had decided to serve in the pawa shell she had cooked it in.
You neednt trouble about my children, said Mrs. Smith graciously. If youll just take this bottle and fill it at the tapI mean at the dairy.
Oh, all right, said Gwen, and she whispered to Mrs. Jones: Shall I go and ask Alice for a little bit of real milk?
But someone called from the front of the house and the luncheon party melted away, leaving the charming table, leaving the rissoles and the poached eggs to the ants and to an old snail who pushed his quivering horns over the edge of the garden seat and began to nibble a geranium plate.
Come round to the front, children. Pip and Rags have come.
The Trout boys were the cousins Kezia had mentioned to the storeman. They lived about a mile away in a house called Monkey Tree Cottage. Pip was tall for his age, with lank black hair and a white face, but Rags was very small and so thin that when he was undressed his shoulder blades stuck out like two little wings. They had a mongrel dog with pale blue eyes and a long tail turned up at the end who followed them everywhere; he was called Snooker. They spent half their time combing and brushing Snooker and dosing him with various awful mixtures concocted by Pip, and kept secretly by him in a broken jug covered with an old kettle lid. Even faithful little Rags was not allowed to know the full secret of these mixtures Take some carbolic tooth powder and a pinch of sulphur powdered up fine, and perhaps a bit of starch to stiffen up Snookers coat But that was not all; Rags privately thought that the rest was gun-powder And he never was allowed to help with the mixing because of the danger Why, if a spot of this flew in your eye, you would be blinded for life, Pip would say, stirring the mixture with an iron spoon. And theres always the chancejust the chance, mind youof it exploding if you whack it hard enough Two spoons of this in a kerosene tin will be enough to kill thousands of fleas. But Snooker spent all his spare time biting and snuffling, and he stank abominably.
Its because he is such a grand fighting dog, Pip would say. All fighting dogs smell.
The Trout boys had often spent the day with the Burnells in town, but now that they lived in this fine house and boncer garden they were inclined to be very friendly. Besides, both of them liked playing with girlsPip, because he could fox them so, and because Lottie was so easily frightened, and Rags for a shameful reason. He adored dolls. How he would look at a doll as it lay asleep, speaking in a whisper and smiling timidly, and what a treat it was to him to be allowed to hold one
Curve your arms round her. Dont keep them stiff like that. Youll drop her, Isabel would say sternly.
Now they were standing on the veranda and holding back Snooker, who wanted to go into the house but wasnt allowed to because Aunt Linda hated decent dogs.
We came over in the bus with mum, they said, and were going to spend the afternoon with you. We brought over a batch of our gingerbread for Aunt Linda. Our Minnie made it. Its all over nuts.
I skinned the almonds, said Pip. I just stuck my hand into a saucepan of boiling water and grabbed them out and gave them a kind of pinch and the nuts flew out of the skins, some of them as high as the ceiling. Didnt they, Rags?
Rags nodded. When they make cakes at our place, said Pip, we always stay in the kitchen, Rags and me, and I get the bowl and he gets the spoon and the egg-beater. Sponge cakes the best. Its all frothy stuff, then.
He ran down the veranda steps to the lawn, planted his hands on the grass, bent forward, and just did not stand on his head.
That lawns all bumpy, he said. You have to have a flat place for standing on your head. I can walk round the monkey tree on my head at our place. Cant I, Rags?
Nearly, said Rags faintly.
Stand on your head on the veranda. Thats quite flat, said Kezia.
No, smarty, said Pip. You have to do it on something soft. Because if you give a jerk and fall over, something in your neck goes click, and it breaks off. Dad told me.
Oh, do lets play something, said Kezia.
Very well, said Isabel quickly, well play hospitals. I will be the nurse and Pip can be the doctor and you and Lottie and Rags can be the sick people.
Lottie didnt want to play that, because last time Pip had squeezed something down her throat and it hurt awfully.
Pooh, scoffed Pip. It was only the juice out of a bit of mandarin peel.
Well, lets play ladies, said Isabel. Pip can be the father and you can be all our dear little children.
I hate playing ladies, said Kezia. You always make us go to church hand in hand and come home and go to bed.
Suddenly Pip took a filthy handkerchief out of his pocket. Snooker! Here, sir, he called. But Snooker, as usual, tried to sneak away, his tail between his legs. Pip leapt on top of him, and pressed him between his knees.
Keep his head firm, Rags, he said, and he tied the handkerchief round Snookers head with a funny knot sticking up at the top.
Whatever is that for? asked Lottie.
Its to train his ears to grow more close to his headsee? said Pip. All fighting dogs have ears that lie back. But Snookers ears are a bit too soft.
I know, said Kezia. They are always turning inside out. I hate that.
Snooker lay down, made one feeble effort with his paw to get the handkerchief off, but finding he could not, trailed after the children, shivering with misery.
IX
Pat came swinging along; in his hand he held a little tomahawk that winked in the sun.
Come with me, he said to the children, and Ill show you how the kings of Ireland chop the head off a duck.
They drew backthey didnt believe him, and besides, the Trout boys had never seen Pat before.
Come on now, he coaxed, smiling and holding out his hand to Kezia.
Is it a real ducks head? One from the paddock?
It is, said Pat. She put her hand in his hard dry one, and he stuck the tomahawk in his belt and held out the other to Rags. He loved little children.
Id better keep hold of Snookers head if theres going to be any blood about, said Pip, because the sight of blood makes him awfully wild. He ran ahead dragging Snooker by the handkerchief.
Do you think we ought to go? whispered Isabel. We havent asked or anything. Have we?
At the bottom of the orchard a gate was set in the paling fence. On the other side a steep bank led down to a bridge that spanned the creek, and once up the bank on the other side you were on the fringe of the paddocks. A little old stable in the first paddock had been turned into a fowl-house. The fowls had strayed far away across the paddock down to a dumping ground in a hollow, but the ducks kept close to that part of the creek that flowed under the bridge.
Tall bushes overhung the stream with red leaves and yellow flowers and clusters of blackberries. At some places the stream was wide and shallow, but at others it tumbled into deep little pools with foam at the edges and quivering bubbles. It was in these pools that the big white ducks had made themselves at home, swimming and guzzling along the weedy banks.
Up and down they swam, preening their dazzling breasts, and other ducks with the same dazzling breasts and yellow bills swam upside down with them.
There is the little Irish navy, said Pat, and look at the old admiral there with the green neck and the grand little flagstaff on his tail.
He pulled a handful of grain from his pocket and began to walk towards the fowl-house, lazy, his straw hat with the broken crown pulled over his eyes.
Lid. Lidlidlidlid he called.
Qua. Quaquaquaqua answered the ducks, making for land, and flapping and scrambling up the bank they streamed after him in a long waddling line. He coaxed them, pretending to throw the grain, shaking it in his hands and calling to them until they swept round him in a white ring.
From far away the fowls heard the clamour and they too came running across the paddock, their heads thrust forward, their wings spread, turning in their feet in the silly way fowls run and scolding as they came.
Then Pat scattered the grain and the greedy ducks began to gobble. Quickly he stooped, seized two, one under each arm, and strode across to the children. Their darting heads and round eyes frightened the childrenall except Pip.
Come on, sillies, he cried, they cant bite. They havent any teeth. Theyve only got those two little holes in their beaks for breathing through.
Will you hold one while I finish with the other? asked Pat. Pip let go of Snooker. Wont I? Wont I? Give us one. I dont mind how much he kicks.
He nearly sobbed with delight when Pat gave the white lump into his arms.
There was an old stump beside the door of the fowl-house. Pat grabbed the duck by the legs, laid it flat across the stump, and almost at the same moment down came the little tomahawk and the ducks head flew off the stump. Up the blood spurted over the white feathers and over his hand.
When the children saw the blood they were frightened no longer. They crowded round him and began to scream. Even Isabel leaped about crying: The blood! The blood! Pip forgot all about his duck. He simply threw it away from him and shouted, I saw it. I saw it, and jumped round the wood block.