Chapter IX: Aunt Marian's Store-Room

"Now, Fred, listen to me," observed Harry the following morning, when, breakfast being over, they all sallied out in front of the house for a stroll, "if you are going to come it over me in this way I won't stand it, and that's an end of it."

"How come it over you?" said Fred slowly and indifferently, as he pretended to follow the flight of a distant wood-pigeon.

"I mean sticking me into Coventry, and riding your high horse."

"I'll ride any horse I like, high or low, without asking your leave."

"Very well, ride away, and do just as you like; but if you go on with these airs to Kathleen and me which you have kept up all yesterday afternoon and this morning, I'll go my way, that's all."

"Well, and what's your way, may I ask?"

"Simply, I shall go straight to Aunt Marian's boudoir and let her hear the whole matter out, every word and syllable from beginning to end; for, to tell you the truth, I am getting dog-tired of this kind of life. When we came here first I was as jolly as a sand-boy, and now I'm sick of the place, and of everybody and everything."

"Well, that's not my fault."

"It is your fault, it's altogether your fault; for every atom of this wretchedness has come out of that odious heap of stones which you put into your can."

"Humbug! how on earth can that harm you? If it hurts any one it's me, and that's my own affair."

"How can a thing be only your affair, when it has made, and does make, so many people miserable?"

"You are talking simple rubbish, Harry, and I defy you to prove one word of what you say, except, indeed, so far as concerns yourself and Kathleen; and as any one with two eyes in his head can see what a pleasure it is to you both to be miserable, I don't see how you can blame me for it."

Harry's face and eyes perfectly flamed with indignation at Fred's justification of his conduct, and a host of passionate words came rushing hotly to his lips, but Maurice's voice being heard in the shrubbery-walk close at hand, he constrained himself to silence, and walking a step or so forward he picked some pebbles from the gravelled walk and began slinging them at random across the lawn.

"And what's more," cried Fred, roused to a sudden recollection by the sound of his cousin's voice, "I don't see what right you have to call me a sneak and a cheat, and all that, when you go peaching on me behind my back to Maurice, and setting all kinds of suspicions afloat about me, when you may be quite as wrong as--as--"

"As you are," replied Harry shortly. "But as I said before, I'm sick of this sort of life, and of this house and this place; and jolly and delightful as I thought it at first, I'd a million times rather be at home now; and if things don't change from what they are soon, I'll write and ask father and mother to come over for us."

"Bosh!" said Fred, "as if father or mother would come even if you did write. Of course they wouldn't, unless there was some good reason for bringing them over, and I'd like to know where you'd find that."

"Easily enough," murmured Harry beneath his breath; and then, having remained a long ten minutes looking at the beds of flowers all about and around him, he turned towards his brother, and, with quite another tone of voice and expression of face, exclaimed,--"Fred."

"Well."

"Listen; I'll say it all for you, if you like."

"Say what?"

"I'll go now and see Aunt Marian, and make everything straight, you'll see, when I have told her all; and how at the beginning you didn't mean--at least--well, never mind, I'll promise you I'll say it the best way it can be said; and then we shall both be so awfully glad when it's off our minds, shan't we, Fred?"

"I am sure I don't know," replied Fred, swinging his long legs backwards and forwards beneath the iron chair on which he had seated himself; "you always make such mountains out of mole-hills, a fellow never knows what your opinion is worth. I can't for the life of me see that I've done anything so very wrong; in fact, I should never have thought of it a second time, only you and Kathleen pulled such awfully long faces at me, that you turned me sour and cross whether I would or not; and for all I know, if you had left me alone I might have set the whole thing straight in a jiffy."

Fred had a way of putting things that often puzzled Harry sorely, and made him feel for the time as if wrong were right and right wrong; and as Fred now sought to shove the burden of his fault on Harry's shoulders, so Harry began to wonder and question himself if it might not be quite true what his brother said, and that, if he had only left him alone, he would have seen the right course to take, and have followed it. "I know I always do bungle things," replied he humbly; "and I know people hate being bothered into things."

It was Fred's turn now to grow distressed and uneasy. He made no reply for some minutes to Harry's last speech, but kept his eyes fixed on a large fuchsia in a neighbouring bed, evidently thinking anxiously on some subject. At last he said, with a nervous effort to appear quite at his ease, "I'll tell you, Hal, what I'll do. As you seem to take it so much to heart, as soon as ever I go home I'll have a talk with mother on the whole affair, and tell her exactly how the land lies; and if she thinks I oughtn't to keep the prize, I'll give it up, or I'll get her to return it, which comes to the same thing, and that will set all to rights, won't it, Harry?"

"Are you really in earnest?" asked Harry, his whole face glowing from the sudden and unlooked-for relief; "for if you are, I'll say you're a brick, and no mistake."

"Of course I'm in earnest; I'm not quite such a hypocrite as you take me for."

"Indeed, Fred, I don't take you for a hypocrite or anything the least like it; only, I'm so awfully glad you're going to do it: for mother will be sure to know what's right; and I'm such a gaby, I daresay it is I who have been making a great fuss about nothing all the time."

"Well, at any rate, let's all try to be jolly for the rest of the time we are here; Aunt Marian will think we are a set of prigs with the way we have been going on, looking glum, and morose, and stupid, when all the others were bursting their sides with laughter. You'll cheer up now, Harry, won't you?"

"Cheer up? why, I feel as if I could make one good flying leap over sun, moon, and stars, and the equator into the bargain;" and Harry, to prove the truth of his words, made one good flying leap over the end of the iron seat, alighting somewhat ignominiously on the other side, with face, hands, and knees in close contact with the sharp gravel on the pathway.

"I say, Hal, old boy, that's what one might call a cropper of the first water," cried a cheery voice in our fallen hero's ears, as he raised himself up and shook himself free from the gravel and dust which adhered to both hands, and to the knees of his trousers; "if you make such a bad shot at the equator, you'll be likely to come to grief, and get impaled on the North Pole, or something of the kind. But I've been looking for you everywhere, for don't you remember you and I were to have a game at chess to-day, and as we can't have it in the afternoon on account of the jam having to be put away, I thought we might as well have a shy at it now."

"All square," replied Harry cheerfully. "I'm game for any fun going, from pitch and toss to manslaughter, only I warn you, you'll get the worst of it; for I feel as if I could fight Goliath this morning, I'm so sprag and hearty in myself."

"If you make as good a shot at the game as you did at the iron chair a moment ago, I'm afraid I shall get the worst of it," replied Maurice laughing, "especially as I'm by no means in a serene temper. I've been worriting at the old mother for the last hour to give me out the Japanese chess-men which she has locked up in her store-room; but she won't do it, for she says the old wooden ones are quite good enough for us younkers; and though I coaxed, and bullied, and teased, it was all no good, so we must put up with what we have got, and be satisfied."

"They must be awfully precious men," said Harry open-eyed, for he had never heard his aunt refuse Maurice anything before.

"Precious is no word for it. They are all of the most exquisite carved ivory. Every piece is a curiosity in itself: the castles are all on elephants' backs, and the king and queen are the grandest old coves going; and as to the knights, they are simply A1, all of them mounted on horseback, and with banners in their hands. Oh, I do wish I could even have shown them to you, but mother didn't seem to like my asking her."

"I wonder why; I confess I for one would have given a good deal to have a peep at them," said Fred, who, having a lathe of his own at home, and being a decided genius in the art of carving, took delight in looking at anything new and curious in his favourite art.

Maurice scarcely looked at Fred or noticed his remark, but addressing himself to Harry, cried, "I am sorry, now that I think of it, that I nagged at mother so much about them; for it's dawning on me that these very chess-men were a present from my poor father, which arrived at home just after mother heard of his death, and I am sure that is why she does not like to have them knocked about."

"But we need not knock them about, need we?" asked Fred, again seeking to obtain a hearing.

"If you mean that you wish me to ask mother for them again, I'm going to do no such thing," Maurice answered, with scarcely the amount of politeness in his tone due to one's guest, and especially as Fred fancied he heard him add in a lower tone, "least of all for you."

"I am sure I don't care whether you do or not," replied Fred in sudden heat at the tone and words of his cousin. "I dare say I have seen finer chess-men than any you could show me, so you need not trouble yourself to be any ruder than you are by nature."

Maurice merely turned round and stared Fred full in the face with an expression of contempt and unbelief which did not tend to allay the rising fire in his cousin's breast, and, without addressing another word to him, he moved nearer to Harry, who had been standing by, an unhappy spectator of the scene.

"Come along and let's begin our game," he said, "or we shall only have got well into the heat of it all when it will be time to stop. Come along, I say;" and Maurice, taking Harry under his arm without casting another glance in Fred's direction, walked off with him towards the Hall, and through the oak doorway into the house.

Fred remained seated outside for a considerable time longer, and the reverie which he fell into in his solitude was of no very amiable kind.

"What on earth does the fellow mean by treating me in that way?" he growled angrily as the two figures disappeared in the doorway; "he has as much manners as a bear. I'll soon let Aunt Marian hear, if he goes on with any more of his cocksputtiness. It was not to have us spoken to and stared at as if we were a set of Yahoos, that she invited us here. No, no; my fine Master Maurice, I'll not stand such humbug from any one, least of all from you; so you'd better not try it on with me again, that's all." And while Fred vented his anger in such-like idle threats, he raked the path to and fro with his walking-cane, until he had scarred the evenly strewed gravel with unseemly lines and bars.

Nor when luncheon time arrived, and all the party assembled once more in the dining-room, did matters seem more agreeable or promising for Fred. Aunt Marian, who, as usual, presided at the head of the table, seemed preoccupied and out of spirits. Now and then, when Fred looked furtively up, he fancied her eyes were fixed uneasily on him; but the instant their looks met she started, blushed, and turned her head another way. Could it be that the affair about the chess-box was weighing on her mind, or what? But why then need she look so anxiously at him? And Fred tried, as he could not reason the matter out, to push it from his mind altogether, and determined not to look again in her direction.

After luncheon Aunt Marian made a decided effort to brighten up, and, calling all her guests together, she invited them to follow her to the store-room, that she might give them directions where the various jams were to be stored away; and also, she wished to show them some curiosities which she had packed away down there for greater safety, until a wonderful Chinese cabinet which she was expecting from London should arrive to hold them.

All those who did not know the downstairs region of the left wing of the Hall, were enchanted and surprised with the immense rows of dungeon-like rooms which branched off in all directions from the landing under Lady Brinsley's boudoir; and much interest was excited when she came to a full stop opposite a door at the foot of, or rather underneath the flight of stairs which led from the underground region to the upper world.

"I have had my store-room built here purposely," she said putting a large key into the key-hole; "because the flue of the kitchen chimney runs parallel to the shelves along the wall, and thus everything on them is kept dry and free from must. You must not all crowd into the store-room at once, but come in six or seven at a time, and I will show you whatever there is worth seeing; and I must only trust to the honour of the company at large, that, when I am no longer here to superintend the proceedings, anything any of you wish to see you will look at with your eyes, and not with your fingers; for some of my curiosities are of a very fragile kind, and a rough touch or an awkward hand might entirely destroy them. You will be careful all of you, won't you?" she said looking around; "and you, Maurice, and you, Harry Malcomson, I leave you both as my aides-de-camp to see that nothing on my curiosity-shelf is touched or meddled with."

There was a general clamour of assent to Lady Brinsley's wishes, and loud assurances were given by those gathered round her that nothing should be stirred or injured in any way; and then the key was turned in the door, and as many as the room could hold were admitted.

Once inside, what a delicious odour there was of good things,--oranges, figs, raisins, biscuits, gingerbread, plum-cake; and how the dishes and open boxes of preserved fruits glanced from out the darker corners of the shelves!

The stairs overhead were so broad that the store-room was an unusually wide one, and by degrees, most of the party squeezed in so as to be able to catch a view of the case which Lady Brinsley had just lifted from the shelf overhead, and which Maurice, in a voice of superior knowledge, declared to be the gem of the peep-show.

And a most curious and wonderful affair it was when it was placed on the shelf in the window, and the light from the passage outside fell full upon it.

"This," said Aunt Marian, as she took a gold key from her watch-chain and placed it in the lock of the outside case, "this is a Japanese miniature barrel organ, and when I lift off this cover you will see what a strange piece of mechanism it is. Here, Maurice, give me a helping hand," and, assisted by her son, Lady Brinsley removed the outside sandalwood box, and revealed a most perfect and beautiful representation of a mimic stage, on the boards of which several figures in Japanese costume were standing, while a wonderfully painted and enamelled woodland scene at the back made everything appear strangely real and life-like.

Lady Brinsley, having given all the children time to see the stage and its occupants, pushed back a round silver peg at the side of the box, and at once, to the sound of a curious tinkling and somewhat unmusical music, the figures began moving about the stage, extending their arms in entreaty, throwing back their heads in haughty attitudes of refusal or pride, and, in fact, imitating in excellent style the effects of an operatic scene.

Fred pressed forward and gazed with a rapt eagerness at the toy. It was a thing after his own heart, and all troubles and doubts were for the moment forgotten, as he sought to puzzle out the mechanism of the wonderful Japanese automaton.

When every one had been given a full view of the theatre, it was packed up in its box and replaced with some difficulty by Maurice on an upper shelf. Fred followed it with longing eyes as it was returned to the safe keeping of the store-room and its surroundings; and as he did so his glance chanced to fall on another and smaller case close beside it, on which he could see painted in black letters the word "fragile."

"What is in that other box?" he asked curiously; "may we have a look at it also?"

"No, dear; I never open that box," replied Lady Brinsley, in a nervous and somewhat hesitating voice; "its contents are very brittle, and, besides, I have other reasons."

"But what are the contents?" cried Fred, so anxious to satisfy his curiosity, that his aunt's hesitation and distress did not affect him as it would otherwise probably have done.

"Chess-men," she answered shortly, "ivory chess-men.

"Oh!" sighed Fred, "these are the men I suppose Maurice wanted so much to show Harry. Might we not even take one look into the box? we were all so much disappointed."

"Speak for yourself, please," cried Maurice angrily; "neither Harry nor I care a straw whether we see them or not."

"You said you did care very much this morning," retorted Fred, in newly kindled wrath at Maurice's words and manner. "You were quite vexed that you had not been allowed to have them, and you grumbled precious loud about it."

"Shut up, will you. If you had the tact or the good taste of a hen-sparrow, you would know when to leave off a disagreeable subject."

"Maurice, Maurice," said Lady Brinsley reprovingly.--"Suppose now, you all set about the jam and its arrangement," she added cheerfully. "You will find a little wooden ladder in the passage by the pantry which will enable you to pack away a good deal on the high shelves."

Thus the subject of the chess-men dropped for the present; but Fred and Maurice regarded each other with no friendly eyes, and Harry was consequently uneasy and distressed. He felt inclined to take his brother's side in this argument, for he thought Maurice had spoken very roughly to Fred before such a large company, and yet he could not but fear it was his own insinuations on the occasion of the jam covering that had set Maurice so much against Fred. However, in the general laughter, and fun, and jollity which went on, the carrying down the trays of jam, and arranging them in order on the shelves, Harry soon forgot his trouble, and amused himself in playing off a series of his own peculiar style of practical jokes, which were of a very harmless nature, and seldom were pushed sufficiently far to give occasion for offence or anger.

Fred was so absorbed in gazing at the varied contents of the store-room, that he gave but small assistance in the labours of the afternoon; the dark nooks of this mysterious apartment, running, as they did, far up beneath the stairs, had a charm for his inquisitive nature which the more playful of his companions could scarcely have understood. And besides all this, Fred had a longing, amounting almost to misery, to raise the lid of the white box labelled "fragile," and take one glimpse at the rare carving of the Chinese chess-men; and, like a true descendant of our first parents, the more he was hindered from prying, the more intense grew the desire for the forbidden pleasure.

But Maurice seemed to have an inkling of this weakness of Fred, and kept constantly within the sombre precincts of the store-room. He sent the others for the jam and remained himself perched on the ladder, the top of which was propped against the very shelf on which stood the box containing the chess-men; and while Maurice kept firm to his post, Fred had but small chance of the much longed-for peep.

"Why aren't you trying for the prize this afternoon, eh? you are so lucky at winning prizes," asked Maurice of his cousin, in a tone which savoured only too little of politeness; "or perhaps you intend to try your old dodge of making a rush for it in the end, and winning in a hand gallop."

"It's a pity," replied Fred, from some dark corner of the store-room, "that twopence was not charged at your school for good manners; but, I suppose, because you're king of your own castle, you may cheek a fellow as much as you like."

"Humph! 'king of my own castle.' Your head seems to be running very much this morning on the chess-line; you'd give a good deal, I dare say, to get one squint inside of this box;" and Maurice laid his great schoolboy hand on the lid of the white case and smiled, it must be confessed in no very pleasant way, at his cousin.

Maurice had such a loathing for a mean or ungenerous action, he could not conceal his contempt for the boy whose conduct circumstances had led him to distrust; and being the eldest son, and having been, in consequence of his father's death, placed in an unusually prominent position, he had not, perhaps, learned to exercise as much self-control on certain occasions as would have been more fitting and becoming at his age; and he saw the red fire leap into his cousin's eye in the gloom of the dark corner where he stood, though it did not make him desist from his uncourteous conduct.

Fred was an eldest son also, and a somewhat spoiled and petted boy, and he was as little prepared to bear with Maurice's contemptuous treatment as Maurice was to bear with him; so words waxed high between them, and the other guests, abashed and frightened, stood aloof from the scene of action and listened with awe not unmixed with dismay to the passionate tones rising higher and higher within the citadel whose closely barred window showed only the shadowy outlines of the combatants within.

Harry alone ventured to draw near enough to the scene of action to catch some of the voluble words of anger and reproach which passed from the lips of both the boys, and his heart burned with a sudden flame of passion when he heard the words "sneak, cheat, robber," hurled at his brother's head by Maurice, who, still standing on the ladder, kept guard over the box marked "fragile."

"Fred, come out; don't listen to him," cried Harry, driven by the force of his feelings to mingle in the fray; "a fellow who calls another a cheat and a sneak, is no gentleman, I don't care who he is."

"I repeat it," cried Maurice. "I say he is a vile, dastardly sneak, and a liar into the bargain; and no one knows it better than yourself."

At these words there was a crash. Impelled at the same moment by an uncontrollable burst of anger, both brothers had rushed upon the occupant of the ladder, and, pushing it violently aside, had sent Maurice head foremost into a trayful of jam pots, and finally sprawling on the floor.

But a couple of sacks broke Maurice's fall, and he only rose with redoubled fury to continue the fray. Harry he merely thrust out into the passage with one lurch of his great strong arm; but Fred he sent whirling back into the darkness with a blow planted right in the middle of his chest, and an accompanying kick which raised him for a moment from the ground only to fall the more heavily on his back, which struck against something sharp protruding from the wall, and he finally rested upon a shelf raised about a foot or so from the ground, and which extended far back to the very end of the store-room floor, and which was, in fact, only a kind of low platform at the further end of the room.

At this moment there was a cry raised somewhere that Lady Brinsley was coming; and Maurice, ashamed and confused, picked up the ladder, and having placed it against the shelf, began arranging the jam pots, in a somewhat irregular manner, it must be confessed, but still it helped to carry off what would have been otherwise a very unpleasant position.

Fred, meantime, who was smarting all over from the fall, and whose shoulder-blade was cruelly bruised by the blow he had received in his descent, sat down moodily on the shelf or step on which he had fallen, and sulkily awaited the issue of his aunt's arrival.

But Lady Brinsley had no wish just now to enter into this embroilment between her son and her nephew, for, to tell the truth, she would have been sorely puzzled what to say; so she merely looked in at the store-room door for a moment and murmured anxiously, "Maurice, dear, do not let there be such a noise downstairs any more. You know I don't dislike a pleasant row, but the sounds which I heard just now were anything but that. Do try to remember that it is our business to make our guests happy, no matter how they have behaved, and even though Fred has--"

"Fred is here to answer for himself," cried Maurice hastily; for he guessed the gloom of the room had concealed his cousin's presence, and he had no wish to mix up his mother unpleasantly in the business.

"What is all this about, Fred?" asked Lady Brinsley, peering anxiously through the darkness for the figure crouched on the step.

"I am sure I don't know," replied Fred in a sullen tone.

"It's all about this confounded--;" Maurice stopped a moment and then continued nervously, "it's all about this unfortunate chess-box, which Fred is determined to have a look at, and which he says as sure as he's alive he'll see some way or other,--and I'm just as determined that he shan't. I wish you would take it upstairs, mother, and lock it up somewhere; for he's such a fellow he would manage to sneak in through a mouse-hole to gain his purpose."

"Maurice, Maurice, indeed I cannot allow you to speak so," said his mother gravely. "You know well I would far rather, whatever pain it might have cost me, have taken down the box and shown it to Fred, than have had this most unpleasant discussion."

"I don't want to see it," said Fred proudly; "only I won't be bullied by him."

"You swore a moment ago you'd see it if you tore the whole window out of its socket," cried Maurice, growing hot and indignant at Fred's denial.

"And so I would, if you tried to stop me from seeing it."

"Then all I can say is, I'll stop you as long as I have hands on my arms or feet on my legs, and not the most distant vision of one of the men shall you ever see,--at least while you are in this house; unless, indeed, mother chooses to show them to you, and that's no business of mine."

"Maurice, let there be an end of this at once," cried Lady Brinsley, in a tone which her son never dared to oppose. "Whatever else you may be doing, you are not behaving like a gentleman, nor will you by your example be likely to influence your cousin for good. If this most unseemly noise continues, I will just lock the store-room door and break up the whole afternoon, which, I think, would be scarcely fair to our other guests."

"All serene," cried Maurice hoarsely; he was not accustomed to being reproved so sharply by his mother, and before Fred, too. "I'll not say another word," he added in a lower voice; "but I'll balk his sneaking tricks for all that."