“How nice!” effusively exclaimed the sister of Mrs. Edwards.
At the word “invalid” a full-grown fantasy had sprung to life within her brain, which was a very active one, of Mr. Ballantyne as a widower and the five children motherless, and herself as an angel of consolation in the bereaved household.
Mrs. Edwards broke into these flights of fancy by enquiring whether Mr. Ballantyne had seen Callie
He said that he had not.
He had understood that the little girl was upstairs with the amah.
“Oh,” said Mrs. Edwards, looking startled.
“No, no, she’s down here. Playing quite happily. I gave her a book myself,” asserted her sister, glancing sharply into every corner of the hall in turn to substantiate her words.
But she had spoken too soon.
Callie was not to be seen.
“I’ll run up and find her,” obligingly exclaimed the sister, instinctively beginning to show Mr. Ballantyne what a treasure she would be to any widower left with five children.
And she sped rapidly away up the stairs.
“Unless you think she ought to rest, I was proposing to take her down to Devonshire this afternoon. There is a good train to Exeter at two o’clock, and it connects with the local train to Culverleigh.”
“She’s quite ready. We haven’t unpacked her boxes.”
“We can take them on a cab to Paddington station, and she can have some luncheon in the refreshment room there.”
Mrs. Edwards agreed. It was her nature, and also the result of her training at the hands of Major Edwards, to agree with whatever was suggested by any man.
She asked, after a minute:
“Have you heard from Mr. Frederic Lemprière lately?”
“No.”
“Or the little girl’s father?”
“No.”
Mrs. Edwards hesitated, looked as if she meant to add something, changed her mind, and said instead:
“Callie is a dear little girl.”
“Very good of you to say so,” returned Mr. Ballantyne gravely.
He was a particularly grave man, with a large weather-beaten face, deeply tanned, very light-blue eyes and a head closely covered with thick red hair.
“My sister won’t be a minute,” Mrs. Edwards asserted, and Mr. Ballantyne said “No?” and silence fell.
It was a positive relief when the sister reappeared, holding Callie by the hand—although less of a relief when it was seen that Callie was in tears.
“This is——” began Mrs. Edwards. “Why, what’s the matter, dear?”
“Nothing,” said Callie.
Tears dripped from her big hazel eyes, which were round and very bright, and down her face, and as each tear reached the corners of her mouth she industriously licked it away.
“She must have hurt herself,” declared Mrs. Edwards’ sister. “She must have pinched her little fingers in the door as we came out of the room. Let auntie have a look, darling.”
Callie shook her head. She had a very large head for her size, and a thick curtain of straight, soft brown hair.
“Auntie only wants to make it better,” said the sister, annoyed.
Mrs. Edwards was annoyed too. Callie looked so small and pathetic and goblin-like—quite unlike the lively little thing who had romped cheerfully on the voyage, often to the great inconvenience of the Edwardses. It might well give Mr. Ballantyne a most misleading impression.
“I’m afraid we’ve spoilt her a little,” she said, with some presence of mind.
Mr. Ballantyne only replied that he thought, if the boxes were ready, they had better start.
“My husband will be so sorry to miss you. He was obliged to go out. You know what it is—after three years in the West Indies”
Mr. Ballantyne bowed a silent assent.
“I have her hat and coat here,” said the sister, proving herself a treasure to the last, and letting the elastic of the hat snap painfully underneath Callie’s chin as she crammed it with brisk efficiency onto her head.
Whilst the trunk was being fetched, and a cab called, Major Edwards returned.
The two gentlemen retreated for a moment to the smoking-room, having ordered whiskey and seltzer-water to be carried there.
“Why didn’t you stay downstairs, as we told you, darling? It wasn’t quite right to be disobedient, was it?”
“And what have you been crying for?”
To both questions, then and on several repetitions, Callie replied that she didn’t know.
The two ladies exchanged a look in which kindliness blended with perplexity. However, their responsibility—for the sister had annexed almost more than her share of it—was now at an end.
When the gentlemen had reappeared, and the hall-porter had procured a four-wheeler and the luggage had been placed upon it, Mrs. Edwards bent down and kissed Callie.
“I’m sure you’ll be very happy. Goodbye, Callie,” she said kindly.
She had found the responsibility of the extra child on the voyage more of a trial than she had expected when she had impetuously assumed it, and the sight of Callie’s inopportune and unexplained tears had been annoying—but the little thing had been good, and always ready to play with Baby, and Mrs. Edwards felt suddenly quite sorry to part with her.
“Goodbye, dear,” she repeated, and kissed her a second time.
With the tears still raining down her round face, and her head turned over her shoulder to look back at those she was leaving, Callie followed Mr. Ballantyne out of the hotel.
“Poor little thing,” said Mrs. Edwards vaguely.
“I thought Mr. Ballantyne seemed delightful,” said the sister, “but really—I mean, a man having to travel all the way to Devonshire with a small child—his wife must be a very useless person.”
Major Edwards gave it as his opinion that Ballantyne was a sensible fellow and that the most sensible fellows very often chose the silliest wives. He also added a rather abrupt enquiry.
“What was that child crying about?”
Mrs. Edwards said that she couldn’t imagine, and hurried upstairs to see the baby.
The baby was awake, and the amah had dressed him in clean white petticoats and a white frock tied up with blue ribbons.
“Has little missy gone?” she asked wistfully.
“Yes. We shall be going to the country ourselves very soon. Did the little missy come up to say goodbye, amah?”
“Yes, mem. Missy cried. She not want to leave amah and Baby.”
“Was that why she was crying?” Mrs. Edwards asked, surprised.
But the baby was crowing, and holding out his arms to be taken up, and she was too much occupied in playing with him to attend to the amah’s assurances that the little missy was sad because she did not know anybody in England and was homesick, and did not like to say goodbye to little Baby.
As for the sister, who had remained downstairs, she assured Major Edwards that children very often cried for no reason whatever, and that Callie, in particular, could have nothing at all to cry about because she was, luckily, too young to realize any of it.
Chapter II
Culverleigh station was four miles from Rock Place.
A small closed carriage, drawn by a bay horse and driven by the groom-gardener—called Young Hook, it was explained to Callie, to distinguish him from Old Hook, his grandfather, and Poacher Hook, his uncle—met the train.
The Ballantynes’ aunt had also come.
“Here is Callie, Aunt,” said Mr. Ballantyne—now Uncle Tom—in his grave, but friendly, voice.
Aunt was tall, and that was all that could be seen, under the one flickering oil-lamp that hung in the station, but she put her arms round Callie and kissed her as if she was very glad to have her there. Then, still holding her hand, she took her to where the carriage was waiting, and unexpectedly handed her a small packet of ginger-nut biscuits.
“Eat them as we go along. You must have missed your tea.”
Callie was very glad
of the biscuits.
“Is all well at home?” said Uncle Tom. “The carrier can bring up the trunk to-morrow. The bags can come with us.”
Aunt said that everything was all right. She got into the carriage with Callie, and Mr. Ballantyne climbed up onto the box and took the reins himself.
They drove away between enormously tall hedges along very narrow roads. The carriage lamps threw queer little patches of light on the banks, but it was dark and nothing much could be seen.
Twice the horse was stopped, and Uncle Tom and Young Hook descended from their elevation and conscientiously walked up a steep hill, and once the drag was put on and the carriage went very slowly down a hill—equally steep. This time only Young Hook got down and walked.
Then the darkness, which had only been a kind of clear dusk before, became really deep, and the sound of the horse’s hoofs on the road rang out less clearly, and the light from the lamps flickered on serried rows of silvery tree-trunks.
“This is Culverleigh Wood,” said Aunt. “If you look out this side, through the trees, you’ll see the lights from the house.”
Callie looked, and saw the tiny, distant glimmer of lamps alight behind uncovered windows.
“The windows of Rock Place,” said Aunt.
Another hill—short, but of unparalleled steepness—took them to the bottom of the wood, then there was another lane—a cross-roads where the carriage turned sharply to the right—“The other way goes to the village,” said Aunt—and after a few more minutes, came a long high wall, broken by a white-painted gate, and the horse stopped.
On one side of the lane was Rock Place, on the other a meadow, bounded by an iron railing and, at the top corner, a weeping ash overhanging a cow-pond that was thickly fringed with duckweed.
Callie learned to know it all, afterwards.
Rock Place was a converted farm—a fairly large house, built of cob and washed pink, slate-roofed, with a garden in front sloping downhill, and a cobbled yard adjoining, and separated from the garden by a row of outhouses, also of cob and pink-painted, and an iron gate. The outhouses were smothered in wistaria and Virginia creeper, and the gate flanked by a huge flowering magnolia. At the front gate, leading to the lane, were two stout lilac bushes, one purple and one white. Behind the lilac other shrubs and bushes—syringa, guelder roses, more lilacs—and briar roses grew in a tangle that stretched to the kitchen-garden wall. Beyond the wall everything was neat—pear-trees and apple-trees in tidy rows, peach-trees nailed up against red brick, and two enormous fig-trees towering above the wall.
Callie, walking up the little front path with a miniature lawn on either side of it to the porch, caught a breath of a fragrance that was quite new to her—the scent of wet English earth.
“Mind the step of the porch,” said Aunt. The porch was a small glass-roofed verandah, with a clematis growing over one side of it and a yellow rose over the other. The hall door stood open, and Aunt walked into a square tiled hall with a straight narrow staircase at the end of it.
“I’ll take you first into the drawing-room,” she said to Callie. “They’re longing to see you.”
“They” were Awdry and Juliet—the two elder children. Aunt had told Callie all about them, in the carriage. They were fourteen and thirteen, and they liked hunting, and they had red hair, and did lessons with someone called Miss Tansfield, who came every day.
The boys were called Cecil and Reggie, and were at school. They were fifteen, and ten, and Reggie liked riding but Cecil didn’t.
And there was a younger girl, Mona, who was only just nine and inclined, said Aunt, to whine. Cecil was the only one who hadn’t got red hair.
Awdry and Juliet were just exactly as Aunt had described them—much taller than Callie, each with a quantity of red hair curling down to her waist, and with a round, kind face and light eyelashes and a great many freckles.
They both kissed Callie, and seemed as if they were really pleased and excited because she’d come, and Awdry held her hand for quite a long time while Aunt took off her coat and hat and told Juliet to take them upstairs.
It was all much nicer than the London hotel and Mrs. Edwards and her sister.
When her things had been taken off, and Callie had stopped blinking at the lamplight, Aunt took her through an archway in the middle of the room, and she saw that Awdry and Juliet were not the only people waiting for her.
There was a large dark lady spread out on a sofa, nursing a cat; to whom Aunt said:
“Fanny, here’s Callie.”
The dark lady did not move off the sofa, but she said she was very glad that Callie had come, and she hoped she’d be very happy with them, and how was she?
“Quite well, thank you,” said Callie politely.
Her Aunt Fanny looked at her, and she had the largest eyes, Callie thought, that she had ever seen, and the blackest.
All of a sudden she realized that they reminded her of Uncle Fred’s.
“Oh!” said Callie. “Uncle Fred sent you his love. He said, ‘specially Aunt Kate.”
“He ought to have come home with you,” said Aunt Fanny, sighing. “How is he?”
“Quite well, thank you.”
The other aunt, who had come to meet her at the station, was looking at her too.
She wasn’t large and dark like Aunt Fanny, but tall, with brown hair and hazel eyes, and she moved and spoke quickly, sometimes jerkily. She was Aunt Kate, Callie knew, but the others all called her “Aunt”—as though it were her name.
Callie felt sure that they did that because they were fond of her.
“To-morrow you’ll see the dogs,” said Awdry or Juliet—Callie couldn’t tell them apart. “They’re not allowed indoors, they’re too large.”
“And the horses,” said the other one.
Then Aunt said that Callie had better have her supper upstairs and did she like her milk hot or cold? She was taken up the stairs—they were very short—and to a large, light landing where stood a bookcase crammed with books none of which seemed to have any covers, and a very large wardrobe with a label pasted on it saying: Keep this door shut. Two doors opened on to the landing, and one of them, said Aunt, led to the nursery. The other one belonged to the girls’ room. Then there was a passage with very much worn coconut-matting. “Mind you don’t catch your foot in a hole,” said Aunt, catching her own at once and recovering her balance with difficulty. “Your room is rather small, but we thought you’d like to have one all to yourself.”
Callie said “Thank you,” feeling that it was expected of her.
The room was a very nice one, with pink curtains and a patchwork quilt on the bed, and a tin bath standing on its head in a corner. There were pictures on the wall—a dog in a sun-bonnet and a white cat with a ball—and one over the bed of two very fat cherubs with holy expressions and their eyes turned up—and the dressing-table and the wash-stand and the wardrobe were all of them white. The jug and basin had a pattern of honeysuckle flowers tied with pink bows, and the wallpaper was covered with more honeysuckle and ribbons not tied into bows but wandering about all over the place.
Although Callie could see at once what a very nice room it was, she knew that the moment they left her alone in the dark she would begin to feel frightened, and convinced that there was a tiger under the bed.
However, it wasn’t any use to think of that and perhaps she’d go to sleep at once.
“Cora will come and help you, and give you your supper. She’s the housemaid. And I’ll come and say good-night later,” said Aunt.
Cora came. She was very nice, and told Callie several interesting things: That the other maids were called Ann and Bessie. That Ann was the cook, and Bessie was keeping company with Young Hook, who’d gone to the station to meet Callie and the master.
“Is he the coachman?”
“Groom-gardener,” said Cora, “but more groom than gardener, if you take my meaning.”
She tucked Callie up and said good-night and then picked up the candle.
“I suppose I couldn’t have a light?”
Cora didn’t seem to think so, but she suggested asking Aunt—whom she called Miss Kate—and meanwhile she took away the candle.
It was all right at first.
Then Callie, who hadn’t thought she’d gone to sleep at all, suddenly woke up—and distinctly heard a tiger padding round and round the room.
There was nothing to do except clutch the bedclothes and wait for it to spring.
And then she saw a dark mass crouching in a corner, and it must be a lion, because it couldn’t possibly be anything else. And it went on crouching, and the tiger went on padding. Callie screamed.
After a minute, doors opened, and feet hurried along the passage.
Callie knew they’d be angry, but she couldn’t stop screaming.
The door flew open and there was the blessed light of a lamp in the room. The lion and the tiger instantly removed themselves.
“In heaven’s name,” said Aunt calmly, and advancing to the bedside, “what is the matter?”
Callie, not liking to say that she had been frightened, began to cry—largely from relief, because so evidently no one was angry with her.
Cora appeared from nowhere—still dressed in her print frock and white apron—and clicked her tongue and said “Dear, dear, poor little toad,” and Juliet and Awdry came in wearing red flannel dressing-gowns which made their hair look like marmalade—and they all stood round the bed.
None of them looked in the least vexed, or even surprised.
“Poor Callie!” said one of the girls. And the other one began to stroke her hair.
“Are you afraid of the dark?” intelligently enquired Aunt.
Callie nodded.
“Would you like a night-light?”
“Miss, there bean’t a night-light left in the store-cupboard,” Cora broke in. “Ann were saying so only this morning. ’Tis like a judgment.”
“She must sleep in your room, girls, and one of you must come in here,” said Aunt. The exchange was as dramatic as much running backwards and forwards, dropping of pillows and bolsters, and commands to “Husky or Mona would wake up,” could make it. In the midst of the commotion their father appeared and said that poor Fanny wanted to know what was happening. He was informed, and instead of going down to relieve “poor Fanny’s” mind, sat down on the window-seat in the girls’ room—it had two windows overlooking the garden—and looked through the curtains and told them what a lovely night it was. Callie, peeping out, saw white bars of moonlight lying on the grass and a patch of brighter, warmer light just below the window which Aunt said came from the lamp in the dining-room. Then everybody said good-night all over again, Awdry went away to the small room, and Callie remained in Awdry’s bed, with Juliet in another one, only divided from hers by a bedside table on which stood a picture of a horse, a Bible, a jam-jar with some pink primroses, one riding-glove, a torn copy of Little Folks and a bottle of Maltine down the side of which hung a petrified stream of glutinous brown, ending as a pool in a small pink china saucer with a picture of a church on it.
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