Sweethearts at Home

Perhaps, being exceptionally good children, you are not sorry for naughty Rooty. ("Oh, yes, we are! We are!") But, anyway, his father was sorry for him, though all the time he was promising him the best "hiding" he had ever had in his life when he got him safe back again. ("Bet he never got a whack!" said Sir Toady, who is an authority on the subject.) So, locking the children in and putting the key in his pocket, the Little Green Man and his wife went away over the moorland to look for the Ugly Gray Dwarf. The man did not want the woman to come. But she begged of him, weeping, saying that she would go "human" if she were left (and among the Green People that is a terrible word, and a yet more terrible thing1). So in the end the Little Green Man let her come.

Then she wanted to go direct to the cave, but her husband, who had had a lot of experience, showed her how impossible and foolish that was. For the Gray Dwarf would just lie down behind a big bowlder and wait for them. Then he would stun them with a log or strangle them with his long twisty fingers as they went by.

So instead they went all the way round by John Knox's Pulpit and the Folds Firs, that they might turn the flank of the enemy, and so come at his cave by a way he would never expect. It was a narrow cleft between two rocks up which they had to come – the Little Green Man and his woman. They crawled and crawled, noiseless as earth-worms on a plowed field. All the while the eyes of the Little Green Man shot out small sparkles of fire, though the lids of them were closed so that they showed like slits in a drying plaster wall.

After a long climb they looked over a ridge of many bowlders and much heather – the Little Green Man and his woman close behind him. And at the sight they saw there the wife would have screamed out and run forward. For she was a real woman, you see, though little and green. Only her husband was prepared for her, knowing, after so many years, exactly what she would do. So he first put the palm of his hand across her mouth to keep in the scream, and next gave her the pouch of arrow-heads to hold. Then with a pair of tweezers made of bent wood he lifted the little poisoned flakelets of flint and dropped each into a split in the arrow-head. Then his wife deftly bound each of them about with green cord – for that was her part of the business. She forgot about screaming when she had anything to do.

Then the Little Green Man peered cautiously from behind a rock, first giving his wife a good push with his foot as a warning – but, of course, you know, kindly.

He found himself looking down into a dell surrounded by many high granite rocks, which made access difficult to the Grisly Cave. The Dwarf was busy about the great black iron pot in which he was getting ready to boil Little Rooty. The Green Man saw his boy stripped of his suit of velvet, and trussed up neck and knee ready for cooking, while every time the Ugly Gray Dwarf approached he gave him a kick in passing to make him more tender, grinning and whetting a carving-knife all the time on a monster "steel" that hung by his side.

So you may believe that in a moment the Green Man had his bow strung taut, and his heart beat as the dull glitter of the arrow-point, from which the green stuff was still dripping, came into line with the hairy throat of the wicked Dwarf.

"CLIP!"

That was the smacking sound of the bow-string going back to the straight.

"IZZ – IK!"

That was the sound of the little elf arrow, dropping green juice from its willow-leaf-shaped head, every drop of which was death.

The "IK!" was when the elf shaft struck the Gray Dwarf and the point broke off in his throat. He said nothing for a moment, but the knife that was in his hand to cut up Little Rooty with clattered on the stones, while he himself fell with a "squelch" like a big heap of wet clothes thrown down on the laundry floor on washing-day morning.

Then they cut Little Rooty's bonds, and took him home on his father's back, his mother carrying the bow and the precious bag of arrow-heads. But instead of the sound beating his father had promised him, they gave Rooty (and all the other children) corn-cake and bramble jam, nut paste, raspberry short-bread, and heather honey made into toffee. They danced on the tree-tops all the night long, and illuminated all the windows of the Bogle Thorn with glow-worms – who, in consideration of the circumstances, gave their services gratis. As for the Gray Dwarf, they never bothered any more about him, and I dare say if you care to go up by the Grisly Cave at the end of Deep Dooms Wood on the right, as you turn to the Falls of Drumbledowndreary, you may find his bones unto this day.

The end of the story of the Little Green Man, as Father told it for Fifteen Years, anyway.

XVIII

THE BEAD CURTAIN

Hugh John set about his task of seeing Elizabeth Fortinbras in his own way. He chose his own time – a pleasant blowy afternoon when in all the vale of Edam there was nothing much doing. A sleepy place, Edam, on such a day – the morning calm, the forenoon disturbed only by a rattling red farm cart or two come in to bring meal and take back guano, then the afternoon drowned in the Lethe of a Scottish village in full summer-time. Hugh John looked in at the shop to inquire about the wasps. They had bothered Elizabeth a good deal at first, but Hugh John had devised traps with great ingenuity, though little success, before he thought of a hanging curtain of blue and green beads in the doorway which his father had brought back from Spain. It had lain in the garret ever since, and Hugh John simply appropriated it for the use of Elizabeth Fortinbras.

But Butcher Donnan, returning to a waspless shop, was brought up standing on the threshold – his mouth agape, his eyes stocky in his head, and his hand mutely demanding explanations from "Mary-and-the-Saints."

I think in her heart Elizabeth Fortinbras was a little afraid. Not only had no such article ever been seen in Edam, but it was out of the power of Edam and the Edamites to conceive such a thing as a door made of large blue and green beads, which they had to lift up and let down behind them, with the clashing of castanets before a play-acting booth.

Happily Hugh John was there, sitting calmly in the back kitchen watching Mrs. Donnan making currant short-bread.

"Hugh John!" Elizabeth Fortinbras called out, with, it must be owned, a little trouble in her voice.

"Certainly; come in, Mr. Donnan!" said Hugh John courteously, running to hold the trickling, clicking curtain aside for the ex-butcher to pass. "A little curious till you get used to it, don't you think, Mr. Donnan? But it will stir Edam. It will draw custom, and – what I put it up for – keep out the wasps and bluebottles! Oh, yes, my father brought it from Spain. It is quite an ordinary thing there. Indeed, I got the idea from him."

"But," said Butcher Donnan, slowly recovering his speech, "I must see your father about the price of it to-morrow – if I am to keep it."

"My father – sell that?" said Hugh John, coldly surprised. "He would as soon eat it!"

"But I can't take it from you, young master. It may be a valuable article."

"Take it – who asked you to take it?" demanded Hugh John. "I gave it to Elizabeth Fortinbras myself as a present on the occasion of her adoption, and if you want her as a permanence, I am afraid you must take the bead curtain along with her!"

"What, she has consented?" cried Butcher Donnan, forgetting everything.

But Mrs. Donnan, who was listening, put the short-bread into the oven quickly, and came out. She had begun to learn the tones of Hugh John's voice. She understood at once.

"My daughter!" she cried, and, opening wide her arms, kissed her. Butcher Donnan paused a moment, uncertain, and then, nudging his wife: "I ought to, I know," he said, "but just you do it for me – the first time." So Mrs. Donnan kissed Elizabeth again, and the Butcher wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, as if he had just had something good to drink. Then they looked about for Hugh John to make him share in the family joy, but that young gentleman, guessing ahead something of their intention, had disappeared with his usual thoroughness and absence of fuss. Some recognition from Elizabeth, privately bestowed, he was in no way averse to, the time being dusky and the place far from the haunts of men. But at mid-afternoon, opposite the railway station, and behind a green and blue bead curtain to which Edam had not yet awakened – on the whole, it is small wonder that Hugh John decided upon the better part of valor.

Safe in his cave on the hillside, he wiped his heated brow and congratulated himself on his escape. Perhaps he would not have rejoiced quite so much had he known that Sir Toady, entering at that moment in quest of gratuitous toffee scrapings, found himself at once heir to all the affection which was really his brother's due. Sir Toady accepted such things as they came in his way, much as a cat drinks from stray cream-jugs, but without giving particular thanks for them. His motto, slightly changed from the rhyming proverb, was ever —

"He that will not when he can,

He's not at all my sort of man!"

XIX

THE DISCONTENT OF MRS. NIPPER DONNAN

When Mr. Robert Fortinbras heard of his daughter's determination, he declared that he renounced her for ever. But after thinking the matter over, and especially on being reminded by Hugh John that one day she would become heiress of no mean part of the Donnan wealth, he consented to a limited forgiveness, on condition that in the meantime she should do something for her father and mother. But her sister Matilda openly revolted, saying that she always knew Elizabeth meant to shove the housework off on her, and that she did not care if not a dish was ever washed in that house again. Elizabeth reminded her that, far from idling at New Erin Villa, she was on foot from morning till night. Also that nine times out of ten when she came home she found Matilda asleep on the sofa, with a penny novelette flung on the floor beside her. There was a feeling of strain for a moment, but Elizabeth presented her sister with a striped blouse and half-a-dozen stand-up collars, which promptly brought forth the declaration, "Oh, Elizabeth, you mustn't mind what I say. It is only mother's nagging that does it, but I do love you!" Which may or may not have had to do with the striped blouse and the half-dozen collars. On the whole, there was a certain feeling of satisfaction in the house of Mr. Robert Fortinbras that Elizabeth was so well provided for, and that in a day of trouble she might even assist the brilliant adventurer with some of the gold of that unimaginative citizen, Mr. Ex-Butcher Donnan.

But Miss Elizabeth Fortinbras, though the best daughter in the world – with only one exception that I know of personally – had no idea of encouraging the busy idleness of her father, or the foolishness of the rest of the family. She had found a business that suited her, and she would in nowise interest herself less in it now that she was, so to speak, the present partner and future heiress in the concern.

There was but one person discontented, Mrs. Nipper Donnan. She was jealous of the white-curtained cottage, the trim garden, which began to blossom where she had hung out her clothes. Chiefly, however, she hated Elizabeth Fortinbras and "that Hugh John Picton Smith," who, strangely enough, was her abhorrence – though it was not his habit to ignore any one, but only to pass on his way with a grave bow.

Hugh John was an uncomfortable person to quarrel with. His great bodily strength and long practice in the art of boxing rendered him a man of peace whose very presence made for reconciliation. In the neighborhood of Edam he was President Roosevelt's "moral policeman with a big stick." Even at home he held over the head of an offender a baton of honor and "the right thing to do."

At school, it is to be feared that his discipline was sterner. There he argued but seldom. He was the centurion who said, "Do this!" and the other fellow did it. But then, it was a good thing to do, and the head master generally considered him as his best ally.

He was father's constant companion on his walks, and to hear them debate in that precious half-hour in the dining-room after dinner was to escape suddenly from the smallness of the world about, and find oneself on the high Alps of thought where the sun shone early and late, where the winds blew clean and cold, and thought was free exceedingly. Neither counted anything as to be accepted merely because they had been told it upon authority. They searched and compared, the man and the boy, Hugh John's finely analytic mind steadied and gripped by the elder experience. Their talk was not the talk of father and son, but rather of two seekers – Hugh John declaiming high, direct, often fierce, while through the smoke of a contemplative cigarette father went on smiling gently, now waving a hand in gentle deprecation, dropping a word of moderation here, qualifying a statement there – the son holding strictly for law and justice, of the firmest and most inexorable, the father dropping counsels of mercy and that understanding which is the forgiveness of God, being, as always, a Tolerant of the Tolerants.

I know that those who have read the two books called after Sir Toady Lion may fail a little to recognize my elder brother. But nevertheless this is the same who in his time wept because as a little child with a wooden sword he had been saluted by the Scots Grays, the same also who fought the "smoutchies"; and if I have said nothing about a certain notable Cissy Carter, it is only because, though I know, in the meantime I have promised not to tell.

It will easily be understood that with such an adversary Mrs. Nipper Donnan, ex-kitchen-maid at Erin Villa, stood little chance. Hugh John listened patiently and gravely, his head slightly bent in the pensive and contemplative way which was then his principal charm. He heard that he had interfered where he had no business, that Mrs. Nipper Donnan knew that he had always hated her husband, that, while as good as engaged to Colonel Carter's daughter, he was walking the lanes with Elizabeth Fortinbras – yes, and plotting and planning to get a fortune for her – a fortune which would make beggars of her husband and herself, and strip an only son of his inheritance.

To the angry woman Hugh John made no reply. He only kept silence, with that gentle irony which is his present manner with those who grow quarrelsome – that is, if they are not of his own sex and (approximately) age.

He only called Nipper – and by a series of questions ascertained from him that he knew how Hugh John had been the means of obtaining better terms for him than he had ever hoped for, since his marriage had so offended his father. Hugh John Picton Smith could speak no lie. He, Nipper Donnan, would uphold this against all comers. Even in the days of the smoutchies and the prison vault at the old Castle in the Edam Water he had known it. Even his very enemies had known it, and had taken Hugh John's word before the sworn oath of any one of themselves. He would take it now, and as to his wife, if she said another word – out of the shop she should go! She did go, slamming the door behind her. Nipper stepped across and shot a bar with a jarring sound heard all over the house. Then from behind the counter he thrust forth a hand, hard and massive, towards Hugh John, who took it in his strong grip. They looked at each other in the face, eye to eye. There was a slight shrug of Nipper's shoulders and a toss of his head in the direction of the barred door, which said that a man could not be responsible for his womankind, but as for themselves, had they not fought far too often and too fairly ever to go behind backs to do each other an injury?

XX

TREACHERY!

To-day Hugh John let me see a letter which he had received from Cissy Carter in Paris. As no one will see my diary, and also because there is nothing very private in the letter, I have jotted down as much as I can remember in my locked book. It was written from number twenty of the Avenue d'Argenson, and the date was the day before yesterday. It began without any greetings (as was their custom).

"Hugh John – People have written to me about you and Elizabeth Fortinbras – not nice people like you, me, and the Rat" (this was their unkind and meaningless name for – me, Miss Priscilla Picton Smith). "I don't much care what any one writes, of course. For I know that if ever you change your mind, you will do as you said, and send back your half of the crooked sixpence. You need not put in a word along with it. Only just send the half of the sixpence by the registered letter post, and I shall understand. I promise to do the same by you. – Cissy."

Now it must long have been clear that my brother Hugh John is as careless about his own concerns as he is careful for other people. He naturally took Cissy at her word, and having a conscience quite void of reproach with regard to Elizabeth Fortinbras or any other, very naturally thought no more about the matter.

But he should have been cautious how he disposed of the letter – in the fire, for choice. Only, you see, that was not Hugh John's way. He stuck it in his pocket-book, and pulled it out with his handkerchief just in time for Mrs. Nipper Donnan, on her way home with her groceries, to find it. In the little skin-covered book (which had once been "imitation shark"), wrapped in a piece of tissue-paper, was also the half of a crooked sixpence.

Next morning but two, in far-away Paris, in front of a tall plastered house with big barren windows, Miss Cecilia Carter, walking to and fro with two of her companions, had an odd-looking, ill-addressed packet put into her hand. She opened it with a little glow of expectation – and there in her hand lay the other half of the crooked sixpence!

Cissy Carter did not faint. She did not cry out. There is no record, even, that she went pale. At any rate the school registers bear out the fact that a quarter of an hour after she took her lesson in "theory" from the music-master, Herr Rohrs. She only felt that something had broken within her – something not to be mended or ever set right, something she could not even have the relief of speaking about as the French girls did, rhapsodizing eternally about the officers who rode past the gate, slacking the speed of their horses a little that they might stare up the avenue along which the young girls walked two-and-two, also on the look-out for them.

She had told Hugh John often just what had happened. She had cast it in his face, when the pretty spite of her temper got the better of her, that, some day or other, it would come to this. But in her heart of hearts she had never really thought so for a moment.

Hugh John untrue! Oh, no! That was impossible! It did not enter into the scheme of things.

Yes, certainly, twice, in a fit of "the pet," she had sent hers back to Hugh John. But this was different – oh, so different! How different, only those who knew Hugh John could understand. When he did such a thing, he meant something by it. Hugh John had no silly flashes of temper – like a girl – like her, Cissy Carter.

So she thought to herself as she went about her work, the rodent which we children call the "Sorrow Rat" gnawing all day at her heart, the noise of the class-rooms, ordinarily so deafening, dull and distant in her ear.

All over! Yes, it was all over. Hugh John had wished it so, and from that, she well knew, there was no appeal! And there was (I know it well) one sad little heart the more in that great city of Paris, where (if one must believe the books) there are too many already.

But Cissy did not take offense, and I had my weekly letter as usual. Perhaps it was a little more staid, a little less "newsy," and her interest in Herr Rohrs not quite so profound. But really I put all that down to the cold and headache of which Cissy complained in a postscript – and, not even there, was there a hint as to the other half of the crooked sixpence! Which is a record for one woman – girl, I mean – writing to another.

Hugh John was anything but sentimental, and it was not his habit to take out the relic wrapped in the tissue-paper oftener than the rearrangement of his scanty finances compelled. He would just give his pocket a slap, and if he felt a lump – why, he thought no more about the matter. He was preparing for college, and, knowing no reason why he should be uneasy, he had immersed himself in his books. He had not the smallest idea that the sharkskin purse, empty, lay in Mrs. Nipper Donnan's drawer, or that the two pieces of the crooked sixpence were wrapped together in the same tissue-paper in far-away Paris.

XXI

ADA WINTER AND "YOUNG MRS. WINTER"

While these things were pending, I went one day to the north side of Edam Water to call upon Ada Winter. I had known Ada at school – not in the same class or term, of course, but just because we came from the same place we nodded, if we were not in too great a hurry, when we crossed each other in the playground.

It was not much, but I have noticed that you get more fond of school after you have left it a while. Before, it was "the beastly hole," "Treadmill House," and other pretty little innocent names. Immediately after leaving school, however, it became "the dear old place," a little walled Paradise; and we used to go regularly to the station to see the girls who were still there going off "with smiling faces veiling sad hearts," as Hugh John said – and, of course, as I know now, wishing us all at Jericho.

At any rate I called upon Ada Winter, and among other things we talked about the choir practice at our church, and I asked Ada why she did not go. You see, she had been with me in the school choir, where, as in most choirs, they put the pretty girls in front. (No, I shan't tell where I sat, not I!)

"Why," said Ada, with an inflection which would have been bitter but for its sadness, "why I can't go to choir practice is not because I have lost my voice, as mother tells everybody. But because mother wants to go herself! Some one has got to stay at home."

"But Mrs. Winter – but your mother," I began, "she does not – "

"I know – I know – you need not repeat it," cried Ada, feeling for her handkerchief in a quick, nervous way she always had. "Mother cannot sing a note, and every one there makes fun of the way she dresses! Oh, don't I know!"

And she dabbed at her eyes, while I tried to think of something to say – something that obstinately kept away. I wanted to comfort her, you see, but you have no idea till you have tried how difficult it is to comfort (or even to answer) a girl who talks about her mother like that.

Of course I knew very well that it was all true. Mrs. Winter's youthful toilettes and girlish airs were the talk of the "visiting" good wives of Edam – and very respectable and noticing women these were, even beyond the average of a Scottish "neighborhood" – half village, half town – which is, they say, the highest in the world.

The men thought Mrs. Winter merely "nice looking." A few found her even "nice," and mentioned the fact at home! (Poor ignorant wretches, they deserved what they got!) Was it not evident to every woman (with eyes) in the congregation that Mrs. Winter was obviously, and with malice aforethought, setting her cap at the Reverend Cosmo Huntly, the newly-elected minister of the parish kirk in Edam?

No matter! I had been brought up in the ancient way, and (at least knowingly) I had not forsaken it.

I thought of the "Honor thy father and thy mother," and during the rest of my visit the words lay uncomfortably in the background of my mind.

But for the moment old comradeship prevailed. Even a queer little shamefaced tenderness somehow came over me.

"Poor Ada," I said, "it is a shame. You never get anywhere! We have all the fun, and you have to stop on here in this pokey place!"

"Oh, no," said Ada, dry-eyed, "you forget. There are the hens. When any one calls, mother sends me out to the back to feed the hens!"

We were speaking quietly on the doorstep of a quiet old house in the little main street. The lobby was dusky behind, and the settled smell of ancient furniture, perfectly kept for generations, came through the open door to mingle with the sharp sting of tar, and boats, and the sea which breathed up from the tidal river as through a funnel.