“What a good thing it is,” she thought, as she followed him through the crowd in the direction of the bawling bookies, “that I’ve reached an age when I can laugh at these ridiculous insinuations. If I were a young thing like Peggy, I’d be miserable, and refuse to have anything to do with him simply because those three wretches have made up their minds that I have a tendresse for him!”
Suddenly she caught sight of them steaming in what Oliver would have called “line ahead” towards the totalisator. Miss Pringle herself led the way, bowing and smiling with insufferable graciousness on all her acquaintances. Miss Jelly and Miss Cissie followed in her wake, less majestic, but sufficiently striking in their home-made hats to justify the stares which were levelled at them. It seemed impossible that they should be able to pick out individuals among such a throng, but Susan had forgotten her escort’s conspicuous size, and under-estimated the lynx-keenness of the sisters’ eyes. Miss Jelly sighted them first, drew Miss Cissie’s attention to the pair, then passed on the information to Miss Pringle. Instantly six gimlet eyes swivelled round, the better to observe them, three heads in feather-trimmed hats strangely reminiscent of an Alpine guide’s were bent together in conclave; then the gambling spirit presumably over-powered both curiosity and disapproval for the time being. The sisters hastened on their way to the tote; and Jed Armstrong chuckled sardonically. Evidently he was quite alive to the interest he and Susan had aroused.
“They’ll be busy picking us to pieces now,” he said. “Your reputation will just be a ruckle of bare bones when those old hoodie-crows have done with it!”
“I don’t see why,” Susan protested with spirit.
“No?” he said, in a gently inquiring tone which made her want to stamp. “I like you in that red hat.”
Susan had not recovered from the shock occasioned by this remark when he made their bets with the bookie, who loudly lamented the grievous loss caused to him and his fraternity by “them blistering totes”.
Dauntless won. With the help of Jed Armstrong’s glasses Susan saw the brown horse carrying their colours, red and gold, slide past the favourite to win by a length.
“Pretty good,” said her companion contentedly. “I put ten bob on for you, didn’t I? You should have let me make it more. At eight to one. You get four pounds. I like to see a horse I know do well.”
“So do I,” said Susan with shameless greediness. “When I make money by it.” .
Returning from collecting their winnings, Susan with four dirty pound notes making a pleasant bulge in her usually empty notecase, they came upon her brother and Charles Crawley. The two might have been posing for companion pictures of Joy and Grief, for while Oliver’s face radiated satisfaction, that of Charles was exceeding downcast. He had, it presently appeared, indulged a mistaken fancy for a complete outsider which had finished fifth. Oliver, on the other hand, had profited by Jed’s good advice and put no less than five pounds on Dauntless.
“Forty quid, thanks to you, Jed!” he exclaimed. “I feel like a blinking capitalist!”
“You ought to feel like an extravagant, reckless idiot,” Susan cried, aghast at his having risked a sum which would have made a considerable hole in their finances if he had lost. “I wish you’d remember, Oliver, that you are a laird with twenty pence!”
“No, my love. A laird with forty beautiful paper quidlets,” he retorted gaily. “You’re jealous, you are!”
“I made four pounds myself,” said Susan with dignity. “Didn’t I?” But Jed Armstrong was not listening.
“Here come some more losers,” he announced with a broad grin. “Cissie, Jelly and Bell have backed the wrong horse, I doubt.”
Charles had wandered away, but Oliver and Susan turned to see the Misses Pringle approaching like a little band of mourners. Loss was written large on their grieving countenances, the very plumes of the jaunty hats drooped dismally over their wearers’ rather pink noses.
“Poor old things!” said Oliver with the generous commiseration of one who had been winning. “They oughtn’t to be allowed out alone to a place like this.”
“Backed a wrong ’un?” asked Jed with callous geniality as the sisters joined them.
“Certainly not!” said Miss Pringle, rearing up her long neck and giving him a Medusa-look, which entirely failed in its object of freezing him.
“Sorry, I thought you’d gone down over the favourite,” he said. “You all look as if you’d lost money—”
“Oh, Mr. Armstrong, so we have!” cried Miss Cissie in wailing accents. “That wicked man in the totalisator has—”
“I have been grossly defrauded,” said Miss Pringle, as usual cutting her youngest sister’s remark in two. “And I shall write to the papers about it, about the disgraceful mismanagement of the totalisator, and the impertinence of the operators. I have never cared to deal with a bookmaker, such a low class of man! But the totalisator is equally as dishonest!”
“Poor Bell put two shillings on Mr. Hepburn’s horse Dauntless,” Miss Cissie burst out again in Miss Pringle’s pause for much-needed breath. “It was such a pretty horse, wasn’t it? And we all thought the jockey’s colours most artistic—and she got a ticket for her money at the little window, so like a railway booking-office, and when she took the ticket back again after the race, the man, such a rude, horrid person—said it was the wrong number!”
“He had the impertinence to refer me to the notice printed above the windows,” said Miss Pringle, “and accused me—me of carelessness, in not examining my ticket sooner! ‘My good man,’ I said to him reasonably, ‘surely that is your business, not mine.’ But I shall demand compensation—”
“We trusted him, and he has cheated poor Bell!” cried Miss Cissie.
“I always understood that the tote was fool-proof,” murmured Oliver.
“Thirteen-and-twopence lost,” added Miss Jelly in sepulchral tones. “I must say that the dishonesty, practised by these persons has ruined my afternoon!”
“. . . actually told Bell that she was old enough to take care of herself!” concluded Miss Cissie.
“Well, well,”, said Miss Pringle rather hastily, “don’t let our misfortunes spoil the pleasure of others. We saw you, Miss Parsons, and no doubt Mr. Armstrong was able to help you to back a winner.”
“Mr. Armstrong,” said Susan sedately, “has been most kind.”
“But what will Mrs. Holden say to this desertion of her?” cried Miss Pringle, who was plainly bursting with spleen and more than ready to vent her own disappointment on all within reach. “I am sure she must have been relying on you—”
“Primrose is all right,” responded Jed Armstrong with unmoved stolidity. “She’s with friends of her own.”
“In-deed. Delightful for her. . . . Er, Miss Parsons, I wonder if you could spare me a moment or two?” said Miss Pringle, almost every other word in italics. Susan could see from her glittering eye that she was about to impart, doubtless in “strict confidence, dear Miss Parsons,” the knowledge which she charitably hoped would prove completely shattering, not realizing that this project had already been rendered harmless by Peggy Cunningham’s confidence.
Obediently Susan turned, prepared to receive the news that Mr. Armstrong’s affections were engaged otherwise, with an assumption of entire surprise, when there came an interruption.
“I say, Sue darling!” said Charles in his soft voice, which yet was distinctly audible to the whole party. “I suppose you haven’t a cigarette on you? I’ve run out of them.”
The effect of this endearment, uttered in public with the ease of long practice, was like an electric shock to the Misses Pringle. They wilted instantly and visibly and when, on Susan’s handing over her cigarette-case to Charles, he said cheerfully: “Thank you, my sweet,” their discomfiture was complete.
Susan knew at once that any danger of hearing about Jed Armstrong’s private and personal affairs from Miss Pringle was now averted, since in her experience no man addressed a young woman in such term
s unless he was engaged to her. But a little demon of amused malice prompted her to say sweetly: “Yes, Miss Pringle? There was something you minded to say to me, I think, wasn’t there?”
Miss Pringle’s confusion would have been pitiful to witness in anyone less deserving of being routed. “No—no, my dear Miss Parsons—nothing of importance. I can let you know by post—” And almost without farewells she and her satellite sisters hurried away.
“Hullo!” exclaimed Charles, who was not accustomed to seeing females of any age flee him as the plague. “Have I frightened your friends the Miss Pinpricks away?”
“Looks like it,” said Oliver. “They never run from me.”
Jed Armstrong uttered a short laugh. “They’re off!” he said. “Gone to spread the news that you and Miss Parsons are engaged likely.”
“Good luck to them,” said Charles equably. “I’m all for it. Nothing I should like better. What d’you say, Susan?”
“I say,” said Susan, in the same light tone, but avoiding his eyes, “that you are talking absolute nonsense, and that the Miss Pringles are dangerous old harpies and ought to be put down.”
“Put down? Do you mean something in the Liverpool Virus line? All same rats?” asked Oliver. “Sound scheme. Whose is to be the hand that does the fell deed?”
“The discovery that Charles and I are not engaged will be quite sufficiently dampening, I expect,” said Susan firmly. “Let’s talk about something interesting—making some money, for instance—”
“I knew Susan would take to racing as soon as she’d won something,” said Oliver. “Just like a woman. Now, my dear, you trot off and put all you’ve got on some unlikely horse with a pretty name, at nice long odds, for the next race, and in a few minutes you’ll find yourself reduced to your original ten bob. That’s how it goes!”
“That is not how mine goes,” said Susan. “I’m going to keep what I’ve won—or rather, what Mr. Armstrong won for me. I shall buy a new hat with it.”
3
“Have you any interest in the last race?” asked Jed later in the afternoon. “Because if you’ve not, come and have some tea.”
Oliver and Charles, intent on taking advantage of a remarkably sound tip which they had been given, had gone off together in sweet accord. Confident that even Miss Pringle would not say very much now, Susan accepted the offer; and presently they were seated at a small table companionably drinking very dark brown tea.
“You’ve been most uncommonly kind,” Susan said, taking a cigarette from the case which he offered to her. “I only hope Mrs. Holden won’t feel proportionately neglected! But you’ve made the day profitable as well as amusing for me, and I’m afraid I have been a good deal of trouble.”
“No trouble at all,” he said surprisingly.
“I sometimes wonder,” said Susan idly, as much for the pleasure of hearing her own voice as anything else, “what you did before we came to live at Easter Hartrigg. I mean, on whom did you exercise all this benevolence?”
“I can’t make head or tail of what you’re driving at when you use those lang-nebbit words,” said Jed Armstrong, but his weather-beaten cheek assumed a darker shade of brick-red, and his eye did not meet Susan’s. It did not require any very great degree of acuteness to gather that formerly his benevolent instincts must have lain fallow.
“You know perfectly well what I mean,” she told him calmly. “(Are you going to eat that rather enticing chocolate cake? Because if not, I will . . . oh, thank you.) Ever since we came to this place you have kept a friendly eye on Oliver and me. Particularly Oliver. I do thank you for that. He’d have been lonely and miserable and missed the Service far more if it hadn’t been for you.”
“I like him,” interposed Jed grudgingly, as if almost ashamed of the fact. “I was damned dull up at Reiverslaw all by myself until you—meaning Oliver, of course—came—”
“Passing over your rather unkind omission of myself,” said Susan, “I am glad you and Oliver are friends. But there’s just one thing I would like to ask you. This job at Wanside. It’s a real Godsend to Oliver, but—did you recommend him to old Mr. Elliot out of pure friendship, or because you really do think he is the man for the job?”
“What d’you take me for?” growled Jed Armstrong. He seemed indignant and Susan realized for the first time that this good-natured giant might be a formidable person when angered. “Of course he’s fit for the job. I wouldn’t recommend my own brother if I had one, unless I thought he could do it properly. That’s not my idea of friendship—nor any man’s!”
“I’m sorry,” murmured Susan. She sounded contrite, but mirth flickered in her grave hazel eyes. “Of course I am a mere woman, and probably lacking in these finer sensibilities. I might have done what you say you never would, you see. You must make allowances for me.”
“Now you’re laughing at me,” he said.
Susan suddenly felt a little ashamed, for after all he had been very good to Oliver, who liked him so much. . . . “I’m not really; and it was rather horrid of me,” she said. “Because of course I know you are quite right.”
“Laugh away,” he invited. “I rather like it.”
But Susan rose and said that it must be time to go home, and she ought to look for Oliver and Charles. “And you must find Mrs. Holden,” she reminded him, since he seemed to have forgotten this necessity.
4
They reached Easter Hartrigg in time to avoid a savage shower of rain, and Tara welcomed them to the sitting-room, which a leaping fire made doubly inviting by contrast with the sudden bleakness outside. Oliver, opening the baize swing door leading to the kitchen, shouted plaintively:—“May we have some tea, Donaldina? We’re starving!”
A faintly heard affirmative answer came back, and Oliver joined his sister and Charles at the sitting-room fire.
“I saw a woman at the Races,” said Charles meditatively, “I’ve seen her somewhere before, but I can’t for the life of me remember where.”
“Stranger things have happened,” murmured Oliver.
“Don’t try to be clever. It doesn’t suit your style,” Charles besought him.
Oliver rose and placed a cushion on his guest’s head. The guest, struggling out from under it, fell on him, and in a second the peaceful room was in a turmoil.
“Stop it!” cried Susan, hurriedly moving a table on which preparations for tea had been set out by the faithful Donaldina. “What a pair of babies you are!”
“Ouch!” and “Ah, would you?” grunted the combatants, battling to and fro, breathless with wild laughter. A ring at the front-door bell was unheeded by them, and Susan’s commands that they should cease instantly had no effect. Donaldina opened the sitting-room door on this scene of confusion, and ushered in, to Susan’s relief, no one more formidable than Peggy Cunningham, holding by the hand Cilly and Bun.
“I’m so sorry, Peggy!” cried Susan above the din. “I’ve done my best to make them stop, but it is quite useless.” And to Donaldina, who stood gaping by the door, she added: “Please bring some more cups and things, Donaldina.”
The astonished handmaiden withdrew, and Tara, emerging from the corner to which he had retired in disgust, offered a large black paw to Bun.
“Ooh! Aren’t they naughties?” squeaked Cilly in great delight. “Will you send them to bed without their suppers?”
“I wish I could, Cilly, but they’re too big. Charles, if Oliver won’t pay any attention to me, I think you might at least!”
With a final effort the two regained their feet, and stood, rumpled and untidy, facing the company.
“Hullo!” said Oliver, unperturbed by the fact that his hair was on end and his tie under one ear. “What are you doing here?”
“We’ve been picking brambles,” Peggy explained, after Charles had been introduced. “And it was so fearfully wet that I thought you wouldn’t mind if we came here to shelter till the rain goes off. And Bun fell and cut her knee, and—”
“Poor old lady,” said Oliver,
lifting Bun on to his own knee. “How did that happen?”
“I fell,” said Bun, whose eyelashes were still wet with recent tears, “an’ cut myself on a stone. It wasn’t very talented of me, was it?”
“Not very. But accidents happen, you know,” Oliver said. “Let’s have a look at your wounds.” He untied the handkerchief which had been hastily fastened over her chubby knee. “It’s a bit dirty, isn’t it?” he said to Peggy. “What about some iodine?”
Bun wriggled uneasily. “I don’t much care for iodine,” she murmured. “It nips.”
“It won’t nip for more than a minute, Bun darling,” said Peggy. “And you want it to get better quick, don’t you?”
“Y-yes,” said Bun dubiously.
When Susan and Peggy were about to take her away to wash the cut and apply the iodine, however, Bun remained firmly on Oliver’s knee. “You come, too,” she said. “You put on the iodine.”
“All right.” Oliver set her down, and limped to the door with her.
“You’ve got a sore leg, too!” cried Bun delightedly. Peggy, horror-stricken, realized that it was too late to intervene. To say anything now would only make matters worse; and Susan, though her brows drew together for an instant, did not speak. It was left to Oliver to break the uncomfortable silence.
“So I have!” he exclaimed in tones of cheerful surprise. “And now there’s two of us with sore legs!” said Bun.
“Now there are two of us,” Oliver agreed, and with Bun’s hand in his, they limped carefully from the room after Susan and Peggy. Half-way upstairs, Bun dragged at his hand to stop him.
“Did they put iodine on your leg, too?” she asked.
Oliver’s smile was a little grim. “They did things to it that hurt more than iodine, old lady.”
“Oh! But it’s getting more better now, isn’t it?”
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