Sweethearts at Home

Eben was laid up for several days, owing to an accident which happened to him when Butcher Donnan returned from his journeyings afield. It is understood that Nipper also remonstrated with him, without, however, the use of many words.

The van had therefore to be put out of commission for several days till another arrangement was possible. And again it was Hugh John who, with his eyelids half closed and looking at the bright landscape through the long three-draw telescope, cut the knot with a carelessly breathed suggestion.

"Why not ask Elizabeth Fortinbras?"

"They would never dare!" said I. "Old Fortinbras thinks himself no end of a swell!"

"Yes," said Hugh John, with tranquil irony, "he has failed in at least four businesses – last of all in a stamp-shop at East Dene, while the Donnans have only succeeded in one – and are on the point of making another fortune in the second. But let them ask Elizabeth. She will not say 'no'!"

"What of her mother?" I said – "her father?"

"Her mother cannot support her – her father won't. In six months she will have to support them both!" said the philosophic Hugh John. "You ask Lizzie. Lizzie is a sensible girl."

I asked Hugh John how he knew.

"Oh, just – I know!" he answered shortly. And in another than Hugh John I should have suspected something. Because, you know, Elizabeth Fortinbras is a very pretty girl – not beautiful, but with a freshness and charm that does far better, a laugh that is hung on a hair-trigger; not much education, of course, because her stupid old frump of a mother – yes, I can say it, though Lizzie would not – has never permitted her to be long away from her, but must be served like a duchess in her room on pretext of headaches and megrims.

Being without a servant, she leaves Elizabeth to do all the housework, and all that she knows she has learned from the books I have lent her – and, as I now begin to suspect, Hugh John also.

"And where is Elizabeth?" I said, for I saw the three-draw glass hovering in the neighborhood of the Fortinbras Cottage.

"Why, where should she be?" cried Hugh John. "At this hour of Monday morning she will certainly be hanging out the week's wash! There, put your eye down, don't stir the telescope, and you will see her. Also her sister Matilda sitting under a tree doing nothing but reading the latest story her mother has got out of the library!"

Hugh John's grasp of detail was something marvelous.

And, indeed, as I looked, through the tremble of the heat-mist the slender figure of Elizabeth Fortinbras jigged into view. She was standing on tiptoe, like the girl in the old illustrated nursery Caldecott, when

"By came a blackbird and snapped off her nose."

Which would certainly have been a pity in Elizabeth's case, for the nose was a very pretty saucy one, and worthy of a better fate. She had on a short skirt. Her feet were thrust into sandals, and her white working blouse, open at the neck, had red peas on it. Concerning all which points Hugh John had nothing to learn.

Now I had always liked Elizabeth. There was something wild-wood and gay as a bird about her. She wore the simplest dresses, made by herself, and when she played in our woods there was a good deal of tomboy about her. She was older than any of us, and had often been our leader in high-spy or at running through the wood.

I could run faster, but (as Hugh John said) I ran like a boy, with my hands clasped and my elbows in. As for the way that Elizabeth ran, that was quite different. She ran – just like Elizabeth.

But the way she tossed about the youngsters was a sight. She romped with them among the hay. She thought nothing of bringing back Maid Margaret on her back for miles and miles, with a hop and a skip at every second pace, as if only to show how lightly her burden sat astride her shoulders, and how entirely impossible it was for Elizabeth herself to walk along in a sedate and ladylike way. Like a questing collie, she constantly left the highway. You could see her mount a bank as if she had wings. She was wayward, uncertain as a bird, fitful as a butterfly, changing her purpose with the whim of the children. Indeed, there was no one, in the opinion of all of us when we were little, like Elizabeth Fortinbras.

It was like spying out some shy fleeing wood-nymph to see her, with a few long, easy movements, springing and bounding across the stepping-stones of the upper river – or, the petticoat held daintily high, all in a faint flurry of white spray and whiter feet, negotiating the shallow ford at the first Torres Vedras when we were paddling there in the hot days.

Yet, when once across, she never seemed to have "shipped a drop," as Sir Toady Lion asserted in his best naval manner.

Rather, be it said, she gave herself a shake like a scudding swallow that has dipped its wing a little too deep in the pond, and lo! our Elizabeth was dry again. She never had so much as to preen a feather.

They always tell me that I am a little in love with Elizabeth myself, and I am not ashamed of it. Once, from his hiding-place, Hugh John showed me a young dainty fawn come stepping lightly through the wood. I saw it skip airily across the Esk below the second Torres Vedras, ascend the bank in three bounds, walk demurely across the road like a maiden coming out of church, look about her as if gathering her skirts for something daring, and then, with one sidelong bound, swift and light, lo, she was over the high paling and lost in the wood!

Elizabeth Fortinbras would have done it just like that, as gracefully and as unconsciously. But to think of her taking a place in the Donnan's Confectionery shop – surely his good angel had for once forsaken Hugh John – plan-maker to the world in general, and private domestic Solomon!

"Go and ask Elizabeth Fortinbras!" said Hugh John – and he said it as if he had good reason to know that Elizabeth would accept. Though that might only be his usual accent of quiet certainty. You see, Hugh John compels belief. Confidence accrues to his lightest guess, which is not accorded to Sir Toady on his oath. It is a shame that any one should be so favored by nature in the matter of his word. I, being a girl, am suspected of inaccuracy, Sir Toady of "monkeying," and Maid Margaret of knowing nothing about the matter.

But Hugh John may be inaccurate. He may be "monkeying" in secret, and he may know less than any one else about any matter. Nevertheless he is accredited like a plenipotentiary. He moves like Diogenes, his tub unseen about him. A calm certainty accompanies him. He inspires confidence, blind as that of a bank cashier in the multiplication table. All, too, without break, without insistence. To look at, he is just a tall lad, with singularly quiet manners, who looks at you fixedly out of gray eyes very wide apart. Only – you believe him.

But that is the reason why, in my secretest heart, as soon as Hugh John said, "Ask Elizabeth Fortinbras!" I knew that Elizabeth Fortinbras would accept.

I had to ask her myself. Or rather I took Mrs. Donnan with me, who did as she was told, smiling and stammering apologies in the proper places. As for me, I said what Hugh John had advised me to say, in our last long talk together up in the Cave.

Of course it was no use in the world consulting Elizabeth's parents. Her father was lost in dreams of making another fortune by a new and original butter-cooler which would put all others out of the market. Her mother, fretful and fine-ladyish, would declare that she could not do without her. But I knew that it would be an exceedingly good thing for her younger sister to get her nose taken out of the Penny Novelette. If Elizabeth went, she would have to do the housework, and so might yet save her soul – though as yet she had shown no signs of possessing any.

We talked to Elizabeth, however, or at least I did, without any mention of this. There were many knick-knacks about, on the mantelpiece, on the tables, on brackets set in corners – all the work of that ingenious, useless man, Mr. Robert Fortinbras. As we talked, Elizabeth moved gracefully about among these, her duster never hurried, never idle.

I never saw any one who could "play at work" as Elizabeth could. Any one else would have sat down and received her guests. Not so Elizabeth. If we chose to come at eleven o'clock in the morning – well, we must take her as we found her. In another quarter of an hour, if we stayed, we would be asked to come into her kitchen, and watch her peeling potatoes. And that would have seemed quite natural – not only to Elizabeth, but to us.

Elizabeth did not reply hastily. She heard me out without sign either of consent or of refusal. Mrs. Donnan, stout and motherly, purred acquiescence. Yes, they would give her the warmest welcome – if she cared to stay, the happiest home. But no doubt she would prefer to return to her own home at nights.

The next words which reached our ears were Elizabeth all over. "If I come, I shall stay," she said, "because if I went home, the work of the house would simply be left till I got back!"

The reason was clear, and almost the consent.

"Had you not better consult your father and mother?" I said, a little breathlessly, having been brought up in the faith of obedience to parents.

But in this matter Elizabeth, taught by long experience, had evolved other methods.

"I will tell them," she said simply. "When do you want me to begin? Monday? Very well!"

And it was on Tuesday that Nipper Donnan began to neglect his business.

XI

ELIZABETH

September 11 of the same year. Going Sixteen now.

Now I suppose you think this is going to be a love-story. But it isn't – at least not so far. And I am sure the hero won't be either of the two you think – not, that is, Hugh John or Nipper Donnan.

But I am going to tell the story of the strangest, the delicatest friendship I have ever seen – that of Hugh John, my brother, and Elizabeth Fortinbras.

He is the youngest hero you can imagine, but somehow is much more like a young man who has shaved himself very close than the schoolboy he is.

Nothing puts Hugh John out. When he has some big festival to attend along with father, he sits quiet and self-possessed, doing his part without a quiver on his face. As far as looks go, he could easily be the chairman. The clean-cut outlines of his face do not denote hardness. Only he is of the Twentieth Century, and an adept at concealing his sensations – even from his parents, with whom he is great friends.

But, for all that modernity, there is something essentially knightly, and even knight-errant, about our Hugh John. An elder time has touched him. Ideas growing, alas! extinct – are natural to him. A chivalrous Cromwellian is perhaps the nearest I can come in the way of definition. For years he was the only one in the house (except Fuz, of course) who sustained Roundhead as against Cavalier. Yet all his outer man (surely a boy has an "outer man" when he is six feet high) is that of the Collegians who rallied about the King at Oxford, and swept away the train-bands with Rupert the Prince at Marston Moor. But Hugh John agrees with Mr. Prynne as to the Unloveliness of Love-Locks, and no Sergeant-Major could carry a closer cropped head of hair.

Also the mind within him is one that abhors restraint. That is, in thinking. In acting, he obeys as a principle all justly constituted authorities. Also, if he is in authority, he will insist upon obedience even unto the shedding of blood.

Only the mind is free and untrammeled. Obedience includes only acts. Thought with him is free, liberal, critical, large.

But Hugh John is generally shy with the girls who come to our house. He retires to one of his fastnesses, a lonely David in some unknown Engedi. He blots himself out. Simply, he is not– so far, that is, as the rest of the house is concerned. But he has the most sharply defined and sudden affinities. He will see a girl for the first time – the most reserved, unlikely girl, shy as himself. He will go up to her, and lo! as like as not, five minutes afterwards they will pair off like two schoolboys arm in arm.

Grown-up People, after a certain while, forget how their own friendships were formed – how much was chance, how little intention, and they judge us in the light of what they now think they were. They are "out" every time with Hugh John.

For instance, I know Somebody who was afraid he was going to fall in love with Elizabeth Fortinbras. No such good luck! I knew. The first time I surprised them having a good talk together I saw that Elizabeth would take advice from that gray-eyed boy with a man's thoughts which she would scorn from any one else.

It was the day after we had been to see the Donnans. When I got home, Hugh John had merely said, "When does Elizabeth begin?"

"Monday," said I; "but how in the world did you know?"

"I did not know that!" he answered gravely, as usual.

You simply can't surprise Hugh John. A momentary glitter in a pair of rather close-lidded gray eyes – that is the most you can expect from him.

It was at the stile at the entrance into the High Wood that I found them. Elizabeth Fortinbras was seated on the top spar nursing her knees, and sucking the sorrel stems which Hugh John handed up one by one. They never looked at one another, but I saw in a moment (trust a girl!) that I would interrupt their talk. Just fancy me playing gooseberry! No, thank you, kind sir, she said! Besides, I knew very well that Elizabeth did not consult her father – and her mother was not worth consulting. There remained only Hugh John. Of course she could have asked me, but what girl would have taken my advice when she could get Hugh John's?

I don't know what they said – of course not. I did not ask. But what I do know is that Elizabeth and Hugh John talked just as he and I would have done when taking counsel together up in the Cave or at the Feudal Tower.

Sir Toady was better advised than to attempt to make fun, and though the Grown-ups might lift their eyebrows, even they had confidence in Hugh John. Sometimes they asked his advice themselves – though I never heard of their going so far as to take it. Grown-ups, to my thinking, get narrow-minded. Perhaps Hugh John will too some day. But now at least he always just sees the one thing to do, and does it – the one thing another ought to do, and tells him of it.

Well, he never went to the new confectionery shop. He would pass it without lifting an eyelid – though I will wager that each time he did so Elizabeth Fortinbras saw him – and Hugh John knew that she did. And each was the happier for the knowledge.

To me Elizabeth's determination seemed to brighten all that part of Edam. It was quite near our house, only just outside the gates. Behind the counter Elizabeth made a slender figure in black and white. Black dress well fitting, a present from Mrs. Donnan, large turn-back cuffs, and a broad Eton collar. It was no wonder that the business throve – I mean the business which was under the charge of Elizabeth Fortinbras. The other "down town" suffered exceedingly.

You see, Nipper Donnan could not be in two places at the one time. And he found he had innumerable occasions to consult his father, or to have something mended by his mother. He could not possibly obtain the information or the reparations down town. Hence he spent much of his time hanging about the new confectionery shop opposite the Market hill. He became learned in the semophore signaling of the trains on the two little railways which diverged at Edam Junction. These he explained to Elizabeth.

His step-mother secretly encouraged him. Nothing would have pleased her better than for Nipper to "settle down" with such a daughter-in-law. But she knew, perhaps better than his own mother would have done, that this strong, incult, fighting Nipper had little chance with a girl like Elizabeth Fortinbras, whose chief friend and confidant was a certain gray-eyed lad with a perpendicular frown of thought between his brows.

But Nipper kept on. He thrashed one Hector McLean for blowing a kiss towards the shop-window from the far side of the Market dyke. All day long he thought what high and noble thing he could do for Elizabeth's sake – such as having marble slabs, and water running all the time between double plate-glass, or dressing all his assistants in blue, fresh and fresh every day! You see, Nipper's imagination was limited.

But once or twice his father came in and surprised him leaning over the counter. He regarded his son for a moment with dull, murky eyes; and then, quite abruptly, ordered him out. The third time this happened he followed Nipper outside and explained to him the consequences of this malingering —imprimis, he would get his head broken. Item, he would be "backward with his term installment"! Tertio, if he were, he need expect no mercy from his father; and in conclusion, he had better "get out of that, and stay out!" He, Butcher Donnan, was not a fool. He knew all about what he was after, if the womenfolk did not! And he was not going to have it! There! Nipper was warned!

His comings and goings did not, indeed, make much difference to Elizabeth. Often he was a nuisance, "lounging and suffering" – looking, as she said afterwards, "like a blue undertaker attached to a steel-yard." His expression spoiled sales. He looked acid drops. His jealousies poisoned the very strawberry shortcake on which Mrs. Donnan's heart prided itself.

On the other hand, he was useful when there were heavy weights to be lifted, boxes of materials for the little store-room at the back. Elizabeth could not move these, so she had either to unpack them on the street, or wait till Butcher Donnan drove his blue-and-gold wagon into the yard.

But Nipper delighted to show his strength, and would pick up a huge case, swing it on his shoulder, and deposit it wherever told. These were his moments of great joy, and almost repaid him for not being able to eat.

For Nipper's appetite had suffered. He indulged himself in startling neckties, and, as his girth shrank, the waistcoats which contained it became more and more gorgeous.

Poor Nipper! He could only gaze and wonder – that is, when there was no lifting to be done. His tongue forsook him when called upon to answer the simplest remark. When Elizabeth, taking pity upon him, asked about his week's receipts, he answered vaguely that he did not know.

Hearing this, she turned about, bearing a tray full of almond-cake fresh from Mrs. Donnan's hand, and said, "Nipper, do you mean to say you do not keep track of your sales? Why, you will get cheated right and left. Bring the books up to-night and I will go over them for you!"

To Nipper this seemed an opportunity too good to be lost. He imagined their two heads bent over the records of the down town shop, and perhaps also in time a corresponding approachment of ideas.

Beautiful dream! Foredoomed to failure, however. For Elizabeth, after a few questions, took up the books to her own room, and on the morrow furnished the disappointed Nipper with a few startling statistics as to receipts and expenditure.

"And what would you advise me to do?" said Nipper humbly.

"Oh, I don't know," said Elizabeth. "Ask Hugh John from the House in the Wood. He will tell you, if anybody can. He advised me to come to help your mother. If it had not been for him, I should not have been here now!"

The gleam of jealousy (which is yellow, and not green) in his eyes altered Nipper's countenance completely.

"Ah, Hugh John indeed!" he thought. That, then, was the explanation, was it? This coldness was owing to Hugh John – a boy, little more than a boy – while he, Nipper, was a man, a Councillor, with a shop and income of his own!

Yet he remembered, when he was already well-nigh Hugh John's present age, and the cock of all Edam, tying a pale-faced, determined little boy to a ring in a wall down in the dungeon of an ancient castle. He had determined then to make the cub give in, and there had been some sick work with string-twisting and wire-pincers. He did not care to think about that. But even then the cub had beaten them all. They had been good friends since – that is, in a way. But was it written in the Book of Fate (in which Nipper believed) that they should fight for the mastery on another and far more dangerous arena? It seemed preposterous, but still – well, he would see Hugh John and put the case to him, as Elizabeth had said.

Then, so Nipper told himself, he would know! Well —he might– supposing that Hugh John had been even as the young butcher, blushing half-a-mile away when a lissom, upright form and gait as of wind-blown corn told the world the important news (for Nipper Donnan) that Elizabeth Fortinbras was coming up the street in a hurry.

Hugh John listened quietly. Bygones were long bygones between him and Nipper. The "smoutchies" smoutched no more, but were (most of them) good servants of the King or honorable citizens of Edam. Already one wore the V. C., and for his sake and in the general interests of peace Hugh John tolerated those who remained. He even liked Nipper Donnan, and had no idea of the gusts of angry fury that were tearing his poor ignorant heart to pieces.

"Advise you – well, I don't know much about it," said Hugh John. "If it is a matter of your books, you had better show them to your father. No? You don't want to do that. Very well, then, tell me what Elizabeth Fortinbras said – exactly, I mean."

"Said I was to come to you – tell you about the week's deficit, and ask your advice."

"Then you must tell me all about it!" said Hugh John, calmly impartial. Nipper gave some figures of entrances and exits, marts and sales, gross, retail, and monthly book-debts.

"Hum!" said Hugh John, after a minute's thought, "if I were you I should get rid of the whole indoor crowd, and work the business myself for a month or two, with a couple of 'prentices and the toe of my boot!"

Hugh John's eyes were distant, grave, thoughtful – Nipper's little, black, and virulent with suppressed anger. But the Thinker had grown man of action also, and Nipper felt no security that he could win a victory against Hugh John even with his fists. As to the mind, he felt instinctively the grip of his master. That was not to be gainsaid.

"Yes," he said, jerking out his words like leaden pellets on a table, "I suppose that is the plan. I will fire the whole lot this very night!" Hugh John nodded quietly.

"It will be best!" he said, and the advice once given, his mind would have passed to another question had not Nipper recalled him suspiciously.

"Has my father not been speaking to you?" he growled ungraciously.

"Your father? No, not that I remember!" said Hugh John, staring in wonder.

"Nor my – Mrs. Donnan, I mean?"

"Never spoke to her in my life, I believe – Sis has, though!"

"Nor Elizabeth?"

Nipper's eyes were like gimlets now, but the calm serenity in those of Hugh John baffled them.

"Elizabeth Fortinbras? Oh, yes," said Hugh John tranquilly, "when she wants to ask me about anything – as you are doing now – then she speaks to me."

"Is that all?" Nipper's face worked. His lips were bitten so close that the words had almost to force themselves between the clenched teeth. Hugh John regarded him a moment gravely, as he did all things, with gaze unhurried, undismayed. Then he put his hands in his pockets and turned his back on Nipper with only the words, "Enough for you to know, anyway!"

And if ever Nipper came near striking any one a dastardly blow from behind, it was Hugh John who was in danger and at that moment.

XII

FIGS AND FIG-LEAVES

September 23. And my Age still going Sixteen.

It was the week before Hugh John went to college that what I am going to tell took place. September is almost always nice about Edam – with the corn standing white in stooks all down the valley, waving blonde half-way up the sides of the wide glen, and looking over into it from the heights of Kingside still as green as grass. Yes, in our part September is wonderfully quiet and windless – generally, that is. Yet withal, there is the stir of harvest about the farm-town, the merry whirr of the "reaper" over the hedge, and always the clatter of voices as the workers go homeward in the twilight. The big scythe is now only used about our house for "opening up" a field. After that the horses pull the red-and-blue "McCormick" round as neatly as a toy. The squares get less and the yellow stooks rise, as it were, out of the very ground.