Chapter V: Part 5

"Of a Saturday" Mrs. Gegg "hearth-stoned" the whole of her back kitchen till its spotlessness rivalled that of the whitewashed walls. The placid expectancy of Saturday evening had settled on the village. Mary, tired by her long day's painting, was resting upon the slippery horsehair sofa, and meditating on the impossibility of reproducing on canvas the brilliant transparency of young green larches, when her landlady burst into the room, positively breathless with passion. "Just you come 'ere, miss, and see what that, there mishtiful young imp o' darkness been and done: I'll warm 'im so's 'e shan't forget it in a 'urry!" Mary hastily followed the woman into the sacred back kitchen, and there in a corner near the pump crouched Jethro, one arm curved above his head to protect it from a renewal of the rain of blows that had just fallen, while the floor was decorated by a monochrome landscape, painted by Jethro with Mrs. Gegg's blue-bag.

Mary gazed at it with astonishment. With strong certainty of touch the child had splashed in by means of the coarse blue the stretch of hills that met his eyes every time he went out at Mrs. Gegg's front door. The queer impressionist sketch had atmosphere, distance, and, above all, perspective. "Oh, Mrs. Gegg!" cried Mary, holding back the angry little woman with her strong arms as she was advancing across the picture to wreak fresh vengeance upon Jethro, "leave it! leave it till Monday, and I'll give you blue and whitening to last you a twelve-month. It is a wonderful picture! Some day you will be proud of him. He couldn't help it. We none of us gave him anything to draw on. Why didn't you tell me, child, that you could draw like this?"

Astonishment was cooling Mrs. Gegg's wrath. She had heard, nay, upon one occasion seen, that a pavement artist in distant Gloucester earned good money, though it was but a poor trade. Then there was Miss Cardross, always messing with paints and things;--perhaps she really knew something about it. "If you will leave the picture where it is till Monday," continued Mary, "I will ride over to Colescombe to-morrow and persuade an artist friend to come and look at it, and we will see what can be done for Jethro. Please, Mrs. Gegg!" And Mary got her way.

* * * * *

"You must leave him where he is," said the great art critic to Mary when he had inspected the frescoed floor. "He may be a genius. I think he is. All the more reason to leave him alone just now. Give him paper and paints--lots of them; don't lose sight of him and we'll help him when the right time comes. It hasn't come yet."

So Mary left him in the peace of the kindly Cotswold hills. And while Bellini's Madonna smiles down upon him from the whitewashed attic wall, while sun and cloud make light and shadow for him on beech-clad slope and grassy plain, and life is full "of mysteries and presences, innumerable, of living things," we need not pity Jethro. For, even as one who wandered long ago upon the steeps of far Fiesole found infinite potentialities among solitary places and pleasant pastoral creatures, even so in time to come the little Cotswold peasant may enter into his inheritance in that kingdom where "every colour is lovely and every space is light. The world, the universe, is divine; all sadness is a part of harmony, and all gloom a part of peace."

*XIV*

*THE DAY AFTER*

The election was over and Patsey was sad, for her father had lost his seat. Patsey could not altogether understand why her father should be so anxious to sit in that particular House in London when he had so many comfortable chairs in his own. But at eight years old a little girl cannot expect to understand everything, and she was a very humble-minded child. She loved her father dearly, and whatever he wanted, she wanted too, very much indeed; so that when she went downstairs that morning to pour out his coffee, and found him looking so pale and tired in spite of his gay pink coat and beautiful white breeches, for he was going out hunting, she gave him an extra big hug and laid her soft cheek against his, saying, "Dear, dear dad," quite a number of times, and big tears forced themselves out of her eyes and ran down her cheeks, although she did her best to keep them back. As her father kissed her he tasted the wet, salt little cheek, and held her away from him, exclaiming, "How now, Pat! What's the matter? You mustn't fret. We're sportsmen, you know, and we must take a defeat like gentlemen; no grousing. The umpire's decision has gone against us and we must abide by it. Look at me! If I'd been in I'd have been going off to make bad speeches in stuffy committee-rooms; as it is, I'm off for a good day's sport in beautiful soft weather. Which is best, do you think?"

Patsey tried to smile, but she knew very well which her father would have liked best, and her tears came afresh.

"He's a dirty Radical," she sobbed, "a nasty, common working man. I can't think how they could like him better than you--so clean and handsome and good."

Her father wiped the wet little face with his big silk handkercliief, and took her up on his knee.

"I'd rather you didn't repeat what you hear the servants say, Pat," he said gravely. "It's largely a case of 'let the best man win,' and we'll hope he has."

So Patsey cheered up, poured out her father's coffee, and they talked about pleasanter things than the election till she went out on to the steps to see him ride away.

Then everything seemed very flat, for life had been rather exciting lately. It is true that Patsey had never been allowed to take an active part in the election, her father expressing himself somewhat strongly in condemnation of such candidates as "turned their little daughters into sandwich-men and their young sons into phonographs"; but she had been permitted to wear a blue rosette when she drove into the town with her governess. And sometimes people who knew her cheered her as they passed, and it was pleasant to feel so important.

It was curious, too, that although all the servants were so loud in their abuse of the new member, they none of them seemed in the least cast down by the result of the election; and Patsey's gentle little soul was puzzled by a partisanship that loudly disparaged the conqueror while yet it held no sympathy for the vanquished.

All morning it rained, but after lunch the sun came out, and Patsey's governess, who had a cold, bade her put on her overshoes and go and play in the garden, for half an hour by herself.

Now, Patsey's father had given her a bicycle just a week before, and although she was not yet an expert rider, still, she could get along, and it struck her that it would be a good opportunity to practise by riding up and down the drive. A stray gardener helped her on, and she found herself riding so beautifully that when she came to the lodge and saw that the great gates were open, the spirit of adventure seized upon her and bore her through them, out on to the high road.

Patsey had never been in the road alone in all her life before, so that she felt most bold and daring, and the feeling was so new and delightful that she rode on for half a mile, finally turning into a quiet lane that led to the cemetery which lay a couple of miles outside the town. Here it was very muddy, and Patsey had not gone very far before her bicycle skidded violently. She tried to save herself with one foot, but it twisted under her, and she came down with the bicycle on the top of her.

When she tried to get up again she found that one of her ankles was horribly swollen and painful, and that she couldn't stand. It was a very woebegone little figure that sat weeping at the side of the road. The "fond adventure" had indeed ended disastrously, and Patsey bitterly repented her of her enterprise, and longed for her governess or nurse.

It was such a lonely road. Except on Sundays, when people went to take flowers to the cemetery, hardly any one went up or down, and the awful prospect of sitting there till some one should come from home to look for her--and why should they look for her in that particular road?--confronted Patsey with chilly menace.

The January sunshine faded early, and she began to feel very cold.

Presently she heard quick footsteps coming from the direction of the cemetery, and a man appeared in sight. As he reached the prostrate bicycle and the doleful little figure seated beside it, he stopped, exclaiming, "Hullo! What's to do here? Have you tumbled off, my dear? I wouldn't sit there, though, it's so wet."

"I can't get up," poor Patsey faltered; "I've hurt my foot; it's all gone fat and funny, and it does pain so. I can't stand. Oh, could you? could you--call in at my home on your way back and tell them to send the carriage for me? It would be so very kind of you. Do you think you could----?"

The man stooped down and looked at the poor little foot. He touched it gently and shook his head, saying, "It's rather a bad sprain, I fear; just tell me where you live and I'll carry you home. Then they can get a doctor and have it fomented and bound. I'd best tie it up now as well as I can, so as not to shake you more than I can help."

The man took out a large handkerchief of brilliant yellow silk, and Patsey shuddered. "Oh, please don't!" she cried. "I mustn't wear anything yellow, not to-day of all days; it would be so disloyal to daddie. If it must be tied up, please take mine--but I don't think it need be."

As Patsey dragged a damp and dirty little square of once-white cambric from her pocket the man laughed.

"That's no use," he said. "If little Tory ladies go and sprain their ankles just like common folk, they must bear a bandage even if it's the wrong colour."

And without more ado this masterful man bound up the little foot with his gaudy handkerchief very deftly and kindly.

"I hope we shan't meet anybody," said Patsey, when he had lifted her into his arms, having carried the bicycle behind the hedge for safety. "It would be so unkind of me to wear yellow to-day."

The man turned and looked sharply at the pale little face so close to his own, and gave a low whistle.

"Do you know who I am?" Patsey asked with dignity.

"And do you know who _I_ am?" demanded the man.

There flashed an illuminating ray of remembrance into Patsey's mind. She had seen this man before, and he was no other than the "Labour candidate" who had stolen her father's seat.

There was silence for a minute till Patsey said earnestly, "If you know who I am, you need not wonder that I biject to wear anything yellow." Then, for Patsey's father had taught her that other people have political opinions too, "And perhaps you biject just as much to carrying a little blue girl."

The man laughed and held her a little closer as he said, "Far from objecting, I like carrying this little blue girl exceedingly. It's a long time since I carried any little girl," he added sadly.

"Haven't you any little girls of your own?" she asked curiously.

"My little girl lies yonder," said the man, nodding his head in the direction of the cemetery.

Patsey lifted her arm and put it round his neck that he might carry her more easily, and, forgetting all about the yellow handkerchief, exclaimed, "How sad! I _am_ so sorry. My mummy is buried there too. Was your little girl ill a long time? My mummy was, months and months. Was your little girl eight, too, like me?"

"She was just ten when she died," the man said quietly, "but she was nothing like so big or so heavy as you, poor little lass! She died because I could get neither food nor firing for her, and I've just been to her grave...." The man paused, and in quite a different tone continued, "And that's why I stand in your father's shoes to-day, little lady, and perhaps I may help to make it better for other little girls by and by."

"I wish my daddie had known," Patsey said softly. "He would have sent you everything you wanted for her; he would indeed. He's so good to the poor."

The man gave a hard little laugh.

"I've no doubt of it," he said, "but, you see, that's not what we want. We're not over-fond of charity, some of us. Besides, charity's a bit uncertain. What we want is to be able to give our little girls food and firing our own selves. Yes, charity's a bit uncertain and children's appetites uncommonly regular."

"Were you hungry and cold too?" asked Patsey.

Again the man laughed that queer, hard laugh. "It don't hurt a man to be hungry and cold occasionally," he said grimly, "but too much of it breaks a man's spirit. It's seeing them belonging to him hungry and cold and not being able to help them that puts the devil into a man. I beg your pardon, little lady, but there's no other word."

By this time they had turned into Patsey's own drive. The sun was setting behind the house, gorgeous and golden, and the mellow light fell full on the face of the "dirty Radical" who carried Patsey. She considered him carefully. It was a sad face, strong and lined with hardship and suffering, but there was something in the expression of his eyes that made her forget his politics, and she patted his shoulder, saying warmly, "I hope you will succeed, indeed I do."

Her father, still in his muddy hunting things, was standing on the steps looking anxiously down the drive. When he saw them he ran forward, exclaiming anxiously, "Patsey, my darling, what has happened?"

"It's all right, daddie," Patsey called back. "I've had a spill off my bicycle, and this ... gentleman found me and has carried me all the way home."

Patsey's father smiled a whimsical smile as he held out his arms for her, and as the muddy little figure changed hands, he said, "You are evidently determined to benefit _all_ your constituents, sir."

The Labour member smiled too, but his face was very sad as he answered, "You might have my place and welcome, if I could have what you hold in your arms."

Without another word he turned and walked swiftly down the drive. Patsey's father neither called after him, nor did he follow; but he held his little daughter very close.

That night Patsey added an extra petition to her usual prayers. It was: "Please, dear God, let the kind Radical man what carried me, get what he wants for all the other little girls."

*XV*

*A COUP D'ETAT*

Roger stood at the nursery window apparently watching the driving rain, but in reality puzzling, with knit brows, over a situation he could by no means understand, although he was painfully conscious of its vague discomfort. When a small boy loves both his parents dearly, and it is gradually but most effectually brought home to him that he cannot show affection for the one without in some subtle fashion appearing to hurt the other, the said small boy finds himself in a _cul de sac_ none the less final that its walls are by no means clearly defined. Older people than Roger realise that the only way out of a _cul de sac_ is to go back the way you came; but he, having no idea how he had got there, could not do this; in fact, it was only that very morning that he awoke to the fact that he _was_ there.

It was in this wise. His mother was changing the ornaments in the drawing-room--she had changed her drawing-room about once a week lately, lest it should get to look "set"--and she had moved the easel holding the big portrait of her uncle, the Dean, over to the corner by the piano. Roger assisted her, admiring her arrangement, as he admired everything about his mother, and she said,

"I hope you will grow up like your uncle Ambrose, sonnie!"

Roger was by no means sure that he echoed her wish. He had once visited the deanery and found the atmosphere somewhat oppressively dignified.

"Why, mother dear?" he asked.

"Because"--and a certain tone in her voice puzzled Roger--"he is a stainless gentleman."

"I think I'd rather be like father," he said meditatively; "that would do just as well. To be a dean you've got to be a parson first, and I'd much rather be a soldier, like father."

His mother turned her head hastily so that the child could not see her face.

"You can be like your uncle in character whatever your profession; it is there I would have you resemble him."

"But," interrupted Roger, "father's a stainless gentleman too, isn't he? And he's much more jollier than Uncle Ambrose."

His mother did not answer, and to the child such silence seemed charged with chilly omen. He did not ask her, as he longed to do, what she exactly meant by a stainless gentleman. He was sure that in some incomprehensible fashion the stainlessness of great-Uncle Ambrose reflected unfavourably upon his father and resented it accordingly. He was also sure that this enviable quality had nothing to do with personal cleanliness, for there was no one in the whole world so clean and smart as father. Why, when he drove to a distant meet, he wore "two pinafores," one in front and one behind, to keep his leathers spotlessly white; the said pinafores, by the way, doing much towards reconciling Roger to the wearing of his bib at meals.

The nursery window was open and the soft spring rain whispered pleasant things to the grass; but Roger did not listen. For the first time in his life he was weighing evidence; and the worst of it was, that, do as he would, the bulk of the evidence all went into one scale.

"They're just as fond of _me_," he thought to himself, "but somehow they're never with me together." There were no jolly drives into the town now--those drives in the high dog-cart when he would sit between them rapturously thinking that never had little boy such resplendent parents. Now, mother always went in the "bucket" with his little sisters, and when father took him out driving, mother did not even come and stand on the steps to wave them a farewell. She never sat on father's knee now, or called him a "ridiculous boy," or untied his necktie, or rumpled his hair. She seemed always to sit as far off as possible, and when she did look at her big, jolly husband, there was that in her expression which Roger felt he would rather not understand.

The truth was that Roger the elder and Lettice his wife, having been at one time rather demonstratively fond of one another, found it somewhat difficult to keep up appearances since such time as began the state of affairs their little son so deprecated. Lettice certainly flattered herself upon the secrecy and dignity with which she attended to the linen less well-bred people will sometimes insist upon hanging up to the public gaze even before it has gone through the cleansing process, and was quite unconscious that all the while her servants discussed the affair exhaustively, her friends pronounced the position untenable, and her little son grieved and wondered, casting about in his child mind for some way of clearing an atmosphere which even he felt was so charged with electricity as to be well-nigh intolerable.

The rain ceased whispering, but the trees took up the story and rustled importantly, shaking their glistening leaves at the sun who winked lazily in the west. The two little sisters called to Roger to come and have tea with the dolls; but he shook his head impatiently, thrusting it between the bars of the window that he might not hear them. A robin on the hawthorn hedge below regarded him in friendly fashion and sang a song of coming summer; but Roger saw nothing but a blurred little splash of crimson against the green, for his eyes were full of tears.

"Father, what's a stainless gentleman?" he asked as they went together in the evening to feed the big carp in the pond.

Roger the elder stopped in the middle of the path. He took his cigar out of his mouth and cleared his throat.

"Well, sonnie, I suppose it's a man who runs very straight, who never plays the fool, and does idiotic things, for the doing of which he has to pay Jew prices--a very good man, you know. But why? What d'you want to know for?"

"Well, mother said Uncle Ambrose is a 'stainless gentleman,' and she hoped I'd be like him when I'm grown up."

"For the matter of that, sonnie, so do I. You couldn't have a better model."

"I'd rather be like you, fardie, dear--much rather." And Roger took his father's hand in both his own, and squeezed it hard.

The elder Roger said nothing for a minute, but he grew very red. How was he to tell the faithful little soul at his side that his ideal was by no means a high one?

"You'll grow up very much the sort of man you want to be, sonnie. So mind and want to be the best sort going."

"Well, 't all events, I shan't be like Uncle Ambrose. He's too fond of sitting still."

"You'll be fond of sitting still when you're his age," said his father, with a sigh of relief.

They fed the carp, and Roger almost forgot his troubles, till, on returning to the house, they saw his mother on the tennis court with the little girls. She called to him to come and play cricket with his sisters.

"Will you come too, father?" he asked, pulling at his father's hand.

The elder Roger looked somewhat wistfully at the little group inside the netting on the tennis court. His little daughters kissed their fingers to him, calling to him to come; but his wife had turned her back upon him, and she had a most expressive back. He shook his head at the children, muttering something about letters to write, and turned to walk slowly towards the house.

"I'll bowl to you if you come, Roger; the grass is really quite dry again!" called his mother. Roger stood still in the drive, looking from one to the other of his parents both with their backs to him. Lettice looked over her shoulder and saw her husband's departing figure. "Come, my son!" she called, with a queer little catch in her sweet voice. "I've hardly seen you all day."

Roger went round the netting till he found an opening and pushed through. His mother came to meet him, and put her arm round his shoulders. He pointed to his father, who was walking slowly away with bent head.

"Don't you think fardie looks rather lonely?" he asked.

Lettice looked after her husband. "I don't think he is lonely, sonnie: he has so many--other friends." But the boy was not convinced.

Roger's mother bowls uncommonly well, but he did not enjoy the cricket. He kept contrasting it with that of last year. Then father always played too, and one day mother bowled him clean, and there was great shouting and excitement. "It was jollier cricket then!" he reflected sadly.

The elder Roger went and sat in the gun-room. He had to relight his cigar three times, and his reflections, although engrossing, did not seem pleasant.

"Will she never understand," he muttered, "that a man may care and yet play the giddy, and that he may play the giddy and not care a damn? What an almighty fool I've been!"

When the children had gone to bed Lettice went and sat in the newly arranged drawing-room.

"It's perfectly hideous!" she exclaimed; "I can't sit here!"

But she did sit there, staring at nothing for a good half-hour till the dressing-bell rang. In the evening she took up that very wise book, _On the Face of the Waters_, and read in what manner Kate Erleton had refused "her chance."

When little Roger woke next morning he remembered that something very pleasant was to happen that day. He was going with his father to the riding-school in the town to see a pony, and on that pony, if it proved suitable, he was to go hunting next winter. As the full significance of this tremendous occurrence was brought home to him in the shape of a pair of new and very stiff gaiters, he felt equal to negotiating the very biggest bullfinch; which may account for what happened half an hour later, as he stood in the hall waiting for the dog-cart.

The rain had come on again, heavy "Mayish rain," as Roger called it, but they didn't mind about that. His father was standing in the doorway looking very big in a wide white macintosh. His mother ran downstairs with her own macintosh cape for the little boy. As she reached the bottom step, the elder Roger came back into the hall. Perkins, who had been in "father's regiment" when father first joined, stood at the door with a rug over his arm, looking imperturbable as usual.

Lettice stooped to kiss her little son as she buttoned the cape at his neck. He caught at her hands as they fumbled with the stiff button, and said loudly,

"Kiss father too, mother dear, and wish us luck!"

Perkins turned his head quickly, looking back into the hall. Lettice felt the small insistent hands upon her own, and heard her husband's quick breathing just behind her. There flashed into her brain the thought that here and now was her "chance." She turned quickly and lifted up her small proud face towards her husband.

There was a flutter and flash of white macintosh in the dusky hall as Roger the elder caught his wife up in his arms and carried her into the dining-room. The door shut with a bang, and little Roger was left alone with Perkins, who blew his nose and waved the rug, exclaiming, in an excited whisper---

"Bless your 'eart, sir, you've done it!"

Roger stood on the steps and waited; the smart little groom drove the dog-cart round and round the drive; ten minutes passed, and still father did not come.

"I'm rather afraid we shall miss the 'ppointment," said Roger, and made as if to go after his parents into the dining-room; but Perkins caught him by the shoulder and pulled him out on to the steps again, exclaiming fiercely,

"No, you don't, Master Roger--not for _your_ life!"

Another five minutes, then the dining-room door opened: with a swish and swither of silk petticoats his mother flew upstairs two steps at a time.

"Buck up!" her husband shouted after her, and his voice sounded as though he'd got a dreadful cold; then, to Roger, "Mother is coming too, to see about the pony; and just look what a lovely day it's turned."

Roger thrust his hand into his father's, who held it very tight, but he didn't say anything at all.

There are the makings of a statesman in Roger.

*XVI*

*THE STACEYS OF ELCOMBE HOUSE*

After Harry went to school Paul and I had breakfast as well as lunch with father and mother, unless there happened to be a great many visitors. This was interesting because the letters came at breakfast and we heard the news.

It is curious how the most epoch-making intelligence is often given quite quietly with no flourish of trumpets, no preparation; just as the most momentous decisions are almost always made at once, without much reflection.

In the middle of May--I remember it was such a beautiful morning and tulips blazed in the herbaceous border opposite the window--mother looked up from her letters and said: "Measles is very bad in Fiammetta's school. Mr. Glyn has taken her away, and as soon as the quarantine is over he wants us to have her here for the rest of the summer, as he needs to go to America this month."

I couldn't speak. It was so tremendous.

Fiammetta here! for the rest of the summer! and summer had only just begun.

"Well," said father, "that seems to me a very sound suggestion--but what'll he do with Miss Sparling?"

She was the lady who kept house for him.

"She'll go off on a round of visits and they'll shut the house. We were to have the child in any case in the holidays, so it's only a month or two sooner. It will be nice for you, Janey, to have her"--and mother smiled at me.

Nice for me!

I mumbled something suitable: but I felt too strongly to do more than mumble. There was a singing in my ears and a lump in my throat ... but father understood, for he said: "It will be pleasant to have the little blue maid again: eh, Janey?" and I nodded at father and father nodded at me. Then he opened the newspaper and didn't look at me any more, and I was grateful.

"I wonder," said Paul, "how many more plays she's been to. We shall be able to act them all when she's told us."

A year ago she had come to us, this child, so utterly different from any other child we knew; come to us, and, for me, had changed and widened and vitalised the whole essential part of my being.

At first I wasn't even sure that I liked her. She _was_ so different: but gradually I discovered that in this difference lay her mysterious elusive charm.

Little blue-gowned Fiammetta, always quaint, always picturesque, always and entirely unexpected. At first her somewhat superior and grown-up attitude irritated us extremely, but very soon we found that this was but a thin veneer acquired by much contact with grown-up people of a type we seldom saw. Beneath it was the child, a veritable child--whimsical, imaginative affectionate, ever-various--with a power of suggesting and carrying through new and fascinating forms of play that even Paul could not equal, Paul who had imagination enough to stock ten families.

But we regarded the vagaries of our younger brother with suspicion and some scorn. He was so young. What is eight compared to eleven? And Harry, now alas! exiled at a preparatory school, was twelve. Harry, my guide, philosopher and friend, reft from me for long periods of the year.

We had seen her once since last summer--just once, in the Christmas holidays, when Harry, Paul and I, in charge of Miss Goodlake, our governess, went for two long, crowded, glorious days to London. We stayed out at Hampstead, where Mr. Glyn had taken a house that Fiammetta might as a day-girl go to a nice school there.

But when you are seeing things all day long you can't seem to see people, and Fiammetta herself was swamped in a sea of other wonders and impressions.

Now she was really coming back and I should get some good of her.

And the very week she came back we had to go from Friday to Monday to stay with Uncle Edward and Aunt Alice over at Elcombe House.

I never wanted to go there, and desired it less than ever just then; but Aunt Alice is mother's sister and it had been arranged for weeks, and when mother suggested that I couldn't go because Fiammetta was coming, they invited her too with the utmost cordiality. So there was no getting out of it.

As it happened, it proved a more amusing visit than usual.

"What's the matter with them, Janey, that you groan so?" Fiammetta asked that Friday morning. "Don't you _like_ your cousins?"

Put crudely like that, it sounded rather bad. I hedged.

"I _like_ them well enough, but I hate going there, to stay. It's so stiff somehow, everything's always arranged for one--you'll see."

"I like Teddy," Lucy announced--plump, placid Lucy, who had come into our room in nurse's wake while she packed our things for Sunday. "I _love_ Teddy," Lucy continued, "he and me's both five."

"If," nurse remarked severely, "you was a bit more _like_ your cousins, Miss Janey, it would be better for all parties. Very nicely brought-up young ladies they are, and full of accomplishments."

That was it. They _were_ so full of accomplishments. Hermy (her name was Hermione), only a year my senior, was already learning to paint in oils and studied Italian. Viola, eighteen months younger, could play quite difficult music and danced by herself at tea-parties, clad in classic draperies. Teddy--it was father who called him Teddy, and the name stuck, though Uncle Edward disliked it extremely--was the best of them: moon-faced, good-natured and absolutely simple, a well-meaning, quite ordinary little boy with no airs or graces. Teddy, so Harry said, was "awfully decent."

"You haven't explained," Fiammetta insisted. "What's your uncle like?"

"It's no use," I exclaimed, "I can't explain--you wait. Perhaps," I added hopefully, "you'll like him."

When Uncle Edward bought Elcombe House, only eight miles off, we children rejoiced: for now, we thought, there could be no possible reason for the "Eeny-Peenies," as we called the girls, coming to stay with us. But we had reckoned without the hospitality of the Staceys. We were everlastingly being invited to stay with them, and of two evils this was by far the greater. They were always--Uncle Edward, the two governesses, Hermy and Vi--trying to improve us, especially me.

Paul didn't fit as to age, and his temperament was, apparently, even less adaptable than mine. Whenever Paul went, there was trouble. Lucy and Teddy were the best of friends, but nurse and the Staceys' nurse couldn't hit it off at all. Harry was safe at school, therefore the lot generally fell upon me to go ... and I hated it.

This time I felt it would not be so bad because Fiammetta was there, and Fiammetta was capable of holding her own with dozens of Staceys.

In the first place, she was a well-known poet's only child. They would respect her for that. In the second place, people who tried to patronise Fiammetta were riding for a fall. That I had seen proved, over and over again. Paul was like that too, but then Paul was only one of us, and they looked down on us. Uncle Edward looked down on father. I knew it, I felt it. I resented it intensely.

Uncle Edward had a way of condemning amusements that he didn't care about by calling them "rather horrid" in a high thin voice that was far more condemnatory than the loudest fulminations of ordinary folk. Both hunting and shooting fell under this ban, and father liked both. As for fishing, Uncle Edward considered it the last resource of the mentally effete. Agricultural pursuit; he dismissed as "rather bucolic," and father farmed his own land and was extremely keen about everything that concerned it. Whist and Bridge--Bridge had just begun to be popular--he described as "dreadful games"; in fact, he "loathed all cards" except Patience. He was an expert in Patience, knowing quite forty different kinds; but he didn't care for it unless at least three people watched him do it--which was dull for the selected three.

He was a slim, small man, whom no mortal ever saw without his pince-nez--I believe he slept in them--with a pale, regularly-featured face, clean-shaven and legal-looking. He was delicate, took immense care of himself, and cultivated a large and healthy crop of dislikes. His sense of smell was painfully acute, and many quite ordinary odours, that do not offend less sensitively constituted mortals, were, to him, quite unbearable. Tobacco he could not endure. When father went to Elcombe House he had to creep away to the furthest point of the most distant garden to enjoy the smoke he could in no wise forgo. And when he returned, Uncle Edward always sniffed delicately and looked pained.

A cut melon caused Uncle Edward to feel unwell, and I do believe if any one had eaten an apple in front of him he would have fainted outright.

We arrived just before tea. Hermy and Vi met us in the hall and walked upstairs one on either side of Fiammetta, leaving me to follow by myself. They showed us our rooms--we had one each--and they left me in mine while they both accompanied Fiammetta to hers.

After tea, presided over by Mademoiselle and Fraeulein, Teddy suddenly demanded, "What have you done with the poet?"

"What poet?" asked Fiammetta, for Teddy's remark was evidently addressed to her, his round eyes never left her face.

"The poet you belongs to. Where have you put him?"

"I don't," Fiammetta said rather huffily, "_put_ my father anywhere--do you?"

"He's not a poet," Teddy said, quite unmoved by her disapproval. "He's only an or'nary father."

"_Indeed_ he's not," cried Viola; "he's very _ex*traordinary--*most_ gifted," she added complacently.

Teddy continued to stare at Fiammetta.

"You haven't _told_ me," he continued.

"Told you _what_?"

"--where he is."

"He's in London, if you mean my daddie."

"_Must_ he stay there?"

"Of course not, if he doesn't want to."

"Then why doesn't he come here with you?"

"Because he's in London, I tell you."

"Doesn't he _want_ to come here?"

"I suppose not," said Fiammetta, whose patience was nearly exhausted. "Do you always ask so many questions?"

"I always _ask_," Teddy replied candidly, "but people never tells me all I want to know. Sometimes they don't even answer."

"I should think not," cried Viola. "A little boy like you! Run away and play with your horse and cart. Fiammetta has come to see _us_, not you."

"_Have_ you?" the downright Teddy asked wistfully.

"I've come to see all of you," Fiammetta said graciously, "though I'm really staying with Janey, you know."

"Perhaps you'll come and stay with us too, mother said; without Janey, for a bit," Hermy suggested.

Fiammetta stared.

"Without Janey?" she repeated. "Why?"

Hermy looked rather uncomfortable.

"Well, in case Janey didn't care to come, you know," and Hermy put her arm round Fiammetta.

Fiammetta drew herself away: "I shouldn't like it at all without Janey, thank you," she said stiffly; "she's my greatest friend."

Hermy and Viola looked at each other and then at me, as though they were considering me in a new light. Teddy, who had not done his sister's bidding and was still hanging on the outskirts of our little group, said suddenly, "I'll come and stay with both of you whenever you ask me, wivout Nana," and he thrust a sticky little hand into mine. My heart went out to him, and I gave the hot small hand a squeeze. Teddy and I were of the inarticulate, but we understood one another.

Viola turned ostentatiously to Fiammetta. "Would you," she asked sweetly, "like to see me dance? Fraeulein will play for me, and we have half an hour before we go down to father in the drawing-room."

"No, thank you," Fiammetta replied with the utmost decision: "I see plenty of girls dancing at school, and I can dance myself--perhaps you'd like to see _me_ dance?"

"I think," Viola said hastily, "that we'd better neither of us dance just now, lest we get too hot. Shall we go out into the garden till reading time?"

This we did.

On the stroke of six a bell was rung from the front door and we all four went to the drawing-room, where Aunt Alice and Uncle Edward awaited us. It was his custom to read to his family every evening at this hour, unless there happened to be a garden-party. Whatever anybody was doing, they were haled to the drawing-room to hear Uncle Edward read aloud.

"Edward reads so beautifully," Aunt Alice always said, and I dare say he did. But no one always wants to listen to the most perfect reading, and this evening I noted with some consternation that Fiammetta was bored, and showed it.

She fidgeted, she yawned, she drummed with her fingers on the edge of her chair. Once she shuffled her feet, and Uncle Edward actually stopped and looked severely at me. I know he gave me the credit for all the small disturbances that occurred that evening, whereas I was still as a mouse, and far too interested in Fiammetta's frank manifestations of _ennui_ to have indulged in any myself.

At that time he was going through a course of Jane Austen, for whose works he had an enthusiastic admiration, and I remember thinking that he was rather like a Jane Austen person himself, and that she would have "done him" uncommonly well. The book he read was _Pride and Prejudice_, most witty and delightful to read in later life. But children miss the real savour of its caustic wit, and I know that it was as much over Fiammetta's head as over mine, even though she was so infinitely better versed in literature of all kinds than I. At seven Uncle Edward ceased, placing a marker in the page as he closed the book.

"Perhaps," he said, "Fiammetta already knows this book by heart and can tell me what comes next."

Fiammetta arose hastily from her chair with evident relief: "Oh, no," she said frankly, "that's not the sort of book one knows by heart. I don't think it's particularly interesting--do you?"

"I think it is a masterpiece," Uncle Edward replied, almost breathless with astonishment. "I hope that in a year or two Viola and Hermione will know it, and many others by the incomparable Jane, as well as they know their multiplication table."

"Do they know that awfully well?" asked Fiammetta. "I don't; the sevens and the nines are so muddling--my daddie quite agrees with me. May we go away now?"

In all my intercourse with Fiammetta, the thing that never failed of its joy and wonder was the way she nonplussed grown-up people. They seemed to have no suitable snub ready for her. She was not in the least impertinent, but neither was she deferential to their superior intelligence. In fact, she made us question sometimes whether they were so very intelligent. She lived on terms of such absolute equality with her father, such understanding affection existed between them, that it never occurred to Fiammetta to conceal her opinions or to pretend she liked things merely to please people who happened to be several years older than herself. She was quite prepared to show Uncle Edward good reasons for her lack of interest in _Pride and Prejudice_ as frankly as she afterwards gave them to me. But she had no opportunity, for I remember Aunt Alice hustled us out into the garden with almost unseemly haste, and we were set to play golf croquet, in which game Viola and Hermione excelled, I was only moderately good, and Fiammetta couldn't play at all. Naturally she did not enjoy herself much.

By lunch time on Saturday she was, as she herself put it, "thoroughly issasperated" with things in general. Never for one moment were we left alone. Something was arranged for every minute. The Staceys believed in organised games; "innocent pastimes varied by intellectual pursuits" was Uncle Edward's curriculum, and it would have been excellent had there been rather less of the innocent pastimes. Until quite recently the Staceys had lived in towns, and they had yet to learn that in the country children can find their own amusements with the greatest ease: that Dame Nature is an excellent M.C., and that the queer plays children invent for themselves are far more entrancing than any game that is played by rule.

Fiammetta looked quite pale and exhausted after a morning spent in rounders, clumps, golf croquet (she rested and watched us during this, as she firmly refused to play, but Fraeulein sat with her lest she should be dull), spelling-game, Puss-in-the-corner, and "Earth, air, fire, and water."

Observe the judicious admixture of active exercise and mental gymnastics.

While I was washing my hands for lunch she came into my room, shut my door--I'm afraid she banged it--locked it, and stood with her back against it.

"Janey, I want to go home," she announced. "I want to go back to the Court this afternoon. Will you ask them to drive us?"

"I can't," I exclaimed, aghast. "It would never do; we've been asked till Monday, and we must stay here till then."

"Why should I stay if I hate it?"

"Because it's all arranged; they'd never forgive us if we went home; it would be so rude."

She began to cry. "I'm so tired," she sobbed, "sick and tired of silly games that one can make so many mistakes in, and they keep showing you all the time. Janey, I can't go on with it."

I was horror-struck. The luncheon gong would ring in two minutes, and if Fiammetta was tear-stained there would be inquiries.

I flew to her with the towel in my wet hands, and put my arms round her. "Don't cry!" I besought her, "if you do, they'll think I've been pinching you, or something," and she began to laugh. She dried her eyes on the towel and then said irrelevantly, "Paul didn't come. Why isn't he here, too, to help bear it?"

"He wasn't asked," I said. "He doesn't do here at all."

"I don't do either," she protested; "it's a shame. When I think of Paul wandering about in that dear garden, _doing exactly what he likes_, I could scream."

"For mercy's sake don't," I said. "They'd want to know why, and _then_ what could you say?"

"Janey, after we've gone to bed and everything's quiet, may I come in and sleep with you? I wouldn't be so miserable then."

"It's a very little bed," I said dubiously, "and you're an awful fidget. I hear you in our room at home. You go round and round like a dog."

"I'll bring my bedclothes and sleep on the floor, and go back very early in the morning, then they'll never know."

To pacify her, I consented to this, well knowing which of us would sleep on the floor. In the afternoon they took us out in the motor, and this we enjoyed, for motors were then something of a novelty, and Uncle Edward did not come.

Tea passed off quite peacefully. After tea Viola again proposed to dance for us, and again Fiammetta politely but firmly gainsayed the suggestion unless she, too, might perform, which was not in the least what Viola wanted.

As the fateful hour of six approached I trembled, especially as Fiammetta left us without any explanation (we were gathered on the lawn in front of the drawing-room windows) and calmly walked into the house. I watched the slim blue figure vanish; presently she returned, carrying one of the Jungle books.

"What's the use of getting that just as we're going in to papa?" asked Hermy.

"It's because I've got to go in to Mr. Stacey that I've fetched it. I don't care for that book about Mr. d'Arcy, so I'll read this."

Hermy and Viola gasped, I quaked, Aunt Alice looked rather frightened; Fraeulein and Mademoiselle regarded Fiammetta with silent admiration.

"I don't think papa would like you to do that, my dear," Aunt Alice said gently. "You see, if he is kind enough to read to us, the least we can do is to listen carefully."

"Why, if we don't want to?" Fiammetta persisted. "If I mayn't read in there, may I stay out here and read?"

"Papa likes us _all_ to be present when he's so good as to read to us," Aunt Alice said more firmly. "It would never do for one of our guests to miss his reading. Give me that book, dear!"

Aunt Alice held out her hand for the book. Fiammetta put it behind her back: "Mrs. Stacey," she said earnestly, "I don't understand. Is it like church? Nurse says we go to church here because it's pleasing to the Almighty--we never go in London, daddie and I. Do we have to listen to Mr. Stacey because it's pleasing to the Almighty, or what?"

Aunt Alice lost her temper. "You must do as you are told," she said shortly. "Give me that book. I see papa at the window; he is ready for us."

With a sigh Fiammetta handed over the Jungle Book and we all filed into the drawing-room.

Uncle Edward sat in his usual chair, carefully placed so that the light fell at exactly the right angle upon his book. We all settled ourselves to listen respectfully, except Fiammetta, who, just as he was about to begin, stood up and said, "Mr. Stacey, do _you_ mind if I go into the garden instead of listening?"

Uncle Edward gazed at Fiammetta in the utmost astonishment: "Don't you want to hear the reading?" he asked.

"Not a bit," Fiammetta said firmly. "I know you do it for kindness and all that, but it _does_ bore me so. I asked Mrs. Stacey, but she seemed to think you'd mind ... you don't, _do_ you?" and she smiled in friendliest fashion at Uncle Edward.

"It is, of course," he said slowly, "a matter of pure indifference to me whether you are present or not."

"Thank you _so_ much," Fiammetta said sweetly. "You don't mind now, do you, dear Mrs. Stacey? And may I have the Jungle Book to take with me?"

She took the book from Aunt Alice's unresisting hands as she passed. She skipped out of the window and across the lawn. She arranged herself in a garden chair with a leg-rest, all in full view of the windows ... and Uncle Edward began to read.

He read for an hour and a half.

Even Aunt Alice looked three times at the clock during the last half-hour.

When at length he did finish, and Hermy and Viola and I were about to flee into the garden to hunt for Fiammetta, who had long ago tired of the Jungle Book and wandered away, he stayed us with a motion of his hand.

"I hope," he said gravely, "that you will let this evening's incident be a lesson to you, an object-lesson as to how a guest should _not_ behave."

Hermy and Viola looked duly disgusted at Fiammetta's conduct; I, as usual when confronted with Uncle Edward, looked foolish. None of the three of us made any remark. "Remember," he said, "that the perfect guest invariably falls in with every custom of his host. He becomes a part of the household. You understand?"

"Yes, papa," said Hermy and Viola in dutiful chorus; "we will always try to."

"And you, Janey, will you lay this lesson to heart?"

"Yes, Uncle Edward," I, too, said meekly; and then, feeling rather mean, I added, "but father says we ought to _ask_ our guests if they like things."

"Certainly," he replied coldly, "in reason; but you cannot disorganise the entire working of a household to please a guest. Especially," he added, with evident annoyance, "when that guest happens to be a spoilt, conceited child."

"I don't think Fiammetta is conceited," I pleaded, "but she's used to saying right out when she hates things----"

"That will do, Janey," Aunt Alice interposed hastily. "Run away, children, and find Fiammetta."

As we ran, I reflected that Uncle Edward certainly did not himself fulfil his definition of the perfect guest. When he stayed with us, poor father couldn't smoke a single pipe in the house, and all fruits that had any sort of a smell were banished from the _menu_.

We found Fiammetta at last in the garage, conversing with the chauffeur.

"He's really a much more interesting man than Mr. Stacey," she confided to me that night when she came to sleep in my bed the floor _was_ hard and rather cold--"he told me about all the accidents he's ever been in."

*XVII*

*A SOLDIER'S BUTTON*

His family could not understand why Teddy had such a passion for soldiers. Certainly his family neither inspired nor shared it.

Papa declared them to be "elementary persons of a low standard of intelligence."

Mummy was mildly negative in her views. She did not, like papa, express actual disapproval of them as a class; they may even have had a dimly-felt attraction for her--she was very like Teddy in some ways--but she was a devoted wife, and it would never have occurred to her to champion any cause or individual disapproved of by papa.