by Edith Nesbit
No, it began before that. How was it it began? He, meanwhile, was talking of Schubert’s songs.
The strains of a waltz sounded. “I ought to play that,” he said, “it’s my brother’s turn to dance.” And Lucilla, entering the drawing-room on his arm, met herself in the mirror of the cupids, and almost felt as though the kiss on her hand were branded on her cheek.
“How different I look!” she thought. And then, as if one adventure in one evening were not enough, Mr. Tombs murmured as they waltzed: “Let us go round the garden the minute the music stops; the paths are quite dry. I have something really important to say to you.”
“All right,” said Lucilla. She could not say ‘No.’ To do so would be to admit to herself that she feared that Mr. Tombs also might desire to act Venetian charades and imprint velvet salutes upon hands like lilies. Also, at the very bottom of her mind something lurked that was not unlike a sort of curiosity to know how, if at all, Mr. Tombs would act his charade. L’appetit vient en mangeant, so they say, and if Mr. Tombs did act Venetian charades she would not be taken by surprise this time. Gently but firmly, with true dignity and self-possession, she would put Mr. Tombs in his place, would show him that she was not to be flattered and fooled like a silly, inexperienced girl, because she was, of course, something quite different.
So as the dance ended she allowed herself to be led through the French window and round by the shrubbery and by winding walks to the sundial.
“Do sit down,” said Mr. Tombs; “there are cushions. I brought them out after the last dance.”
“What did you do with Miss Antrobus?”
“Oh, I brought her out too. That’s right. I’ll sit here.” He lowered himself to the brick step at her feet. Lucilla felt a little shiver of anxiety. Surely he wouldn’t begin exactly as Mr. Thornton had. (She remembered now how he had begun.) Did all men say precisely the same things at dances? Perhaps it was a formula, like, “May I have the pleasure?” Was he going to say...? He was.
“I’ll sit at your feet. It’s my proper place,” he said, and instantly opened a new gambit; “because I want to be as humble as possible, and I want you not to resent what I’m going to say and snub me. Promise.”
“But how do I know that I oughtn’t to snub you?” Lucilla asked.
“Don’t tempt me to say things that you might want to snub me for. Though I should never — I mean in affairs of my own I am not accustomed to being snubbed. I never advance except on sure ground.”
(“Oh, what is he going to say?” Lucilla asked herself. “Does he mean that I’ve encouraged him? Oh, I wish I hadn’t come. What an awfully nice voice he has!”) “You said you wanted to say something important,” she found herself saying aloud. “Why not say it?” (“Come, that’s not so bad! Very neat and frosty.”)
“I will,” said he. “I don’t know why I hesitate. I won’t. Here goes. It’s about Miss Antrobus.”
“Oh,” said Lucilla flatly, and began to fan herself, though the night air was cool and fresh all about her. “And what about Miss Antrobus?”
“I’m afraid she’s going to be a nuisance. She’s made up her mind that you have not been at all kind to your aunt, and that the poor old lady has been sent away to some sort of home or institution.”
“Good gracious!” said Lucilla feebly.
“She says that Miss Lucas has never been allowed to be alone with any of us; that you have never been at home when Miss Lucas was with us; that Miss Quested has been disgracefully neglectful of your aunt — has never once spoken to her except to say good-night; that neither of you have ever shown the faintest interest in the old lady’s ailments; that the old lady has never been outside the house since the day we all came, until you sent her away. Then when Miss Antrobus has offered to read to her or take her out you and Miss Quested have always thrown cold water on her proposals. She says she’s determined to sift the matter to the bottom. If there’s a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Aunts, she’ll set it on to you.”
“Oh dear!” said Lucilla. “Oh, my goodness, how perfectly awful!”
“I thought you’d like me to tell you about it,” Mr. Tombs went on, “ and at once, because I don’t know what she’ll do or say next.”
“Oh, rather I” said Lucilla eagerly, quite forgetting what it was that she had more than half expected him to tell her. “ I think it’s most awfully decent of you. But what can I do? I feel all to pieces. What can I do?”
“Well, if I were you,” said Mr. Tombs slowly, “I should tell her all about your aunt.”
“All about my aunt?”
“Yes, tell her the truth, you know.”
“But—” said Lucilla.
“Yes, I know,” said Mr. Tombs. “She’ll be awfully annoyed at having been taken in, I daresay, but anything’s better than her going to societies about your affairs.”
“Taken in?” repeated Lucilla automatically, and not with any hope of continued concealment.
“Well, you know,” said Mr. Tombs gently, “you did it most awfully well, and I didn’t tumble to it myself till the third evening. Your acting’s been magnificent. I should tell her the first thing to-morrow. Treat it as a joke — tell her it’s gone far enough. Of course I’ll pretend to have been taken in all the time too; that’ll make it easier for her.”
““And the others — must I tell them too?”
“No necessity at all,” said Mr. Tombs.
“Oh, they’re beginning to play again; we must go in,” said Lucilla, jumping up. “Mr. Tombs, you really are a lamb to have warned me. I’ll tell her to-morrow.”
This, you would have thought, was enough to complete the evening’s happenings. But no. After a most enjoyable fox-trot, the elder Mr. Thornton asked leave to tell Lucilla that Miss Antrobus “had the knife into her,” and advised her to own that she, Lucilla, and she only, had been, in truth, Aunt Harriet.
“You acted splendidly,” he said. “No one could have spotted you; only we’re professionals, you see — and even we didn’t catch on for the first day or two. It was Miss Quested’s cold, cynical indifference to her aunt that opened my wife’s eyes and gave the show away.”
“Do you think anyone else guesses?”
“Oh no,” said Mr. Thornton eagerly. “Rochester and Dix and Tombs are absolutely deceived. You ought to go on the stage — such acting, by an amateur; so delicate, so sustained — it was absolutely a triumph. If only Miss Quested had acted the good niece a hundredth part as well as you acted the good aunt... But she didn’t. If you’ll allow me to advise you, you’ll let the cat out of the bag to Miss Antrobus at the earliest possible moment.”
Mr. Rochester found an opportunity to say, “Hilda Antrobus is on the war-path. I should own up if I were you.”
And Mr. Dix crowned the evening by saying, “You’ll have to tell Miss Antrobus. She thinks your aunt has been unkindly used — and she’s so generous and fine: she hates unkindness. You’ll have to undeceive her. She won’t be hard on you. She’s the soul of goodness and gentleness. And so strong and faithful with it. She loathes deception of any kind, that’s all. Have it out and get it over. Clear the sky. She’ll forgive you.”
“Oh, will she?” said Lucilla. And that night she entered Jane’s room expressly to say:
“Serpent, this is your work,” and to tell Jane all the events of the evening. Well — perhaps not quite all.
CHAPTER XXX
“Now you clear out,” said Jane next morning. “Go right off into the garden while I tackle the Antrobus and the halberdiers and the engines of war. It was all my doing, and I’ll take what’s left of the bother. You’ve had more than your share, you poor old martyr. I’ll do it directly after breakfast.”
But it appeared that Miss Antrobus had gone out before breakfast and had not returned. Lucilla wondered miserably whether the anxious reformer had gone to interview the Society for the Protection of Aged Relatives. After breakfast she withdrew to the garden with basket and scissors, and it was here that
Mr. Thornton — the one called Bill — came upon her among the early chrysanthemums.
“I say,” he began, “about last night. I want you to forget it.”
Charles Reade supplied Lucilla with a sufficiently apt quotation.
“Never remind a lady of what you wish her to forget,” she said.
“Now that’s most awfully good of you,” he said. “But I do want to say that I really am not the bounding ass you must be thinking me. The fact is, my profession doesn’t bring me the acquaintance of people like you and your cousin. And the war was so damnable — I beg your pardon. And the afterwards. Do you know, we three nearly starved before we got hold of a paying profession — I mean paying engagements? Oh, we’re all right now, but — that sort of thing half turns your head. We’ve slept on the Embankment, we three — yes, really. And now we’re all right again it’s true. But — anyhow — say you forgive me?”
“Oh, it was only nonsense,” said Lucilla, bold in the autumn sunshine; “ don’t let’s fuss. You might carry these into the shop for me, will you?” She pressed a bundle of stiff twiggy, dewy-wet chrysanthemums on him and went on down the row, snipping busily here and there among the foam of flowers, creamy and pink and golden. She cut far more than were needed and carried them to the shop. Here she resolved to stay till Jane should have dealt with Miss Antrobus; though she had a sinking feeling that it would rather be Miss Antrobus who would deal with Jane.
Gladys was there, of course, and all Gladys’s talk was of Mr. Thornton — the one called Bill. Unerring instinct, a sort of impish clairvoyance, guided Gladys in all matters pertaining to “walking out” and the sentiments which lead to such perambulations. Lucilla felt hotly that Gladys knew, as well as if she had been present, that there had been “something” last night, something not quite in the usual order of things, between her and “that Mr. Thornton — the one as ain’t married.”
“When he come in just now,” said Gladys, “with them flowers, I knew that instant minute as he’d got something on his mind. Do you think his young lady’s been being ‘aughty to him, miss?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Lucilla.
“I should think twice afore I cast him off for ever, if I was her. He’s a gentleman, he is — his hair-brushes has silver backs. Oh no, that’s Mrs. Thornton, to be sure, but it’s all in the family. And he gives me five bob when I sewed on the bows on his evening shoes.”
Lucilla defended herself with the heaviest of the account-books.
“Don’t talk,” she said. “I’m busy. In fact you might as well go and see if you can help Mrs. Doveton. I’ll take the shop for an hour or two.”
“If I was his young lady I should throw him a kind word. I should throw him a kind word. It don’t do to let ’em get too down-hearted,” said Gladys. “If they gets too miserable they makes away with themselves sometimes.”
“Have any of your sweethearts committed suicide, Gladys?” Lucilla could not help asking.
“I wish you wouldn’t use that low word, miss. No, none of the gentlemen I’ve walked out with ain’t gone so far as that. When I said make away with themselves, I meant making away to some other young lady not worth his notice most likely. All right, miss, I’m going....”
She went, and almost at once Miss Antrobus darkened the door.
“Good morning,” she said, not smiling. “Can I have ten shillings’ worth of flowers for the hospital? Chrysanthemums, I think. Not any white ones, please.”
“Have you seen Jane this morning?” Lucilla asked. “No, I have been out since seven, on business.”
Then Lucilla perceived that the gods did not intend this particular piece of work to be for Jane’s doing.
“Look here,” she said, fumbling with the flowers, “I want to talk to you.”
“Yes? “ said Miss Antrobus.
“About the aunt,” said Lucilla, teasing the wet blossoms. “Yes? Was there some mistake in the address you gave me last night?”
“No,” said Lucilla, “there isn’t any mistake; there isn’t any address; there isn’t any aunt. It was all a silly trick. I was the aunt, dressed up. Jane was looking for you to tell you, but — —”
Here, prompt as to a cue, Jane came pattering down the very stairs by which she had first tumbled into the garden room.
“I say, Luce, I can’t find her anywhere,” she began. “Oh!” She ended on a different note and stopped short, face to face with Miss Antrobus.
“I was just telling Miss Antrobus — shut the door, Jane,” said Lucilla, pale and determined—”about there not being any aunt really.”
“Yes,” said Jane, “but I meant to tell you because it was really entirely my fault. My cousin didn’t want to do it. She hated doing it. She only did it to please me — to get me out of a hole.”
“Your cousin dressed up to please you, and impersonated an aunt — an aunt who does not exist?”
“Yes, I did,” Lucilla affirmed. “I used to feel such a pig when you were so nice to me, but I didn’t know how to get out of going on with it. I do hope you’ll forgive us for playing such a trick on you.”
“But why? “ said Miss Antrobus. “Why?”
“Because,” said Jane—”no, Lucy, it’s no good, and I can’t help it if it does offend people. This was why, Miss Antrobus. Mrs. Rochester came here being superior and patronising — wanting to see our chaperone. She almost said you wouldn’t come here unless there was some old lady. So I thought, ‘If Mrs. Rochester wants old ladies I daresay we can supply them.’ I was in an awful rage. And I said there was an aunt — Aunt Harriet — just to shut Mrs. Rochester up — and then, of course, there had to be one. And I’m very sorry if you’re annoyed about it, but really I can’t see that it’s done anyone any harm, and if Mrs. Rochester hadn’t come here interfering and hinting that we weren’t capable of looking after our own affairs it would never have happened.”
Miss Antrobus had sat down. Now she bent her head over the flower-table.
“Did Mrs. Rochester say anything about me? Anything special? Cards on the table!” she said sharply, seeing that Lucilla hesitated.
But Jane did not hesitate. “Yes, she did,” she answered, “when she thought she’d got an aunt to say them to. She said that you and Mr. Rochester were secretly engaged, and begged the aunt to give you opportunities of sweethearting and to warn us off. So now you know!”
Lucilla turned startled eyes on the speaker. How could Jane know?
Miss Antrobus raised a brave but scarlet face. “Thank you,” she said. “That is cards on the table. Now for mine. I used to be fond of Mrs. Rochester. When I was a girl I had a passing fancy for John Rochester, and Mrs. Rochester encouraged it. But the war knocked all that nonsense out of my head, and he never looked the same side of the road as I was — never!”
“But how horrible of Mrs. Rochester!” said Lucilla. “ I didn’t know there were people like that — out of books.”
“Oh, well, it seems there are, a few,” said Miss Antrobus drily. “She told me that her Jack had fallen into the toils of a designing girl, a sort of low-class siren, and asked me to come here and put a spoke in the siren’s wheel — be a rescue-party, in fact. And for the sake of old times I agreed to come. Besides, I wanted to see a siren. But, of course, when I saw you two, and when I saw John Rochester with you, I understood — well, that Mrs. Rochester was trying it on again. Only I couldn’t quite make out the aunt.”
“But surely aunts do happen in most families. An aunt was quite probable.”
“Oh yes, but not an imitation aunt. I could not think why you were acting that farce.”
“Do you mean to say,” cried Lucilla, all the actress in her outraged almost beyond endurance, “do you mean to say that you knew I wasn’t a real aunt?”
“Of course I did — almost from the first.”
“But you went on being so nice to me!”
“That was to try to make you do what you have done — own up.”
“And when we would
n’t you tried frightening us?”
“Well, wasn’t it fair? A sort of tit for tat? Pouf! how the atmosphere’s cleared by a little plain speaking! I say, you two girls — let’s be friends, shall we? I believe we shall get on awfully well together now there are no pretences and misrepresentations between us.” And as she smiled at them, holding out a hand to each, they saw, for the first time, that which Mr. Dix had described as a sort of radiant goodness shining from her face.
“Yes, rather!” they said; and Jane added, “It’s most awfully decent of you not to be ratty with us for playing such a trick on you.”
“But,” said Lucilla, struck by a sudden thought, “do you think the others spotted the false aunt?”
“Oh no,” Miss Antrobus assured her, “not one of them! You acted splendidly. I was the only one that had the least suspicion!”
That night Lucilla woke suddenly: very wide awake she was — so wide awake that she knew it would be vain to thump the pillow and turn over. She had better read. Or, better still, write up her diary. The brown morocco volume with the shining lock and her name in gilt letters on it had been the guardian’s present when she was fifteen. She had neglected it lately. True, many interesting things had happened — things that would have impelled the diarist of fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, to pages of chronicle and comment. But there had been nothing which moved nineteen to a record — under lock and key — until... Well, anyhow, Lucilla did now feel that she had neglected her diary too long. It was down in the bureau in the drawing-room. Well, she supposed she could fetch it.
She lit her shaded candle, slipped into the silken blue kimono with the apple-blossom embroidery on it — another of the guardian’s presents — and, candle in hand, crept down the wide stairs. But as she went, the air from an open window blew out her candle. And then she saw below her a yellow streak of light from the drawing-room door. Someone else was up. At three in the morning? Jane, looking for a book? Gladys, looking for traces of secrets in her particular department of knowledge? An insomnolent P.G.? A burglar? Lucilla crept down the remaining stairs and laid an eye to the crack of the drawing-room door. And it was a burglar!