Algernon Blackwood (16 page)

Jimbo, busy over school tasks, with a huge slate-pencil his crumpled
fingers held like a walking-stick, watched and listened in silence. He
was ever fearful, perhaps, lest his superior man's knowledge might be
called upon and found wanting. Questions poured and crackled like
grapeshot, while the truth slowly emerged from the explanations the
parents were occasionally permitted to interject. The personality of
Cousin Henry Rogers grew into life about them—gradually. The result
was a curious one that Minks would certainly have resented with
indignation. For Cousinenry was, apparently, a business man with
pockets full of sovereigns; stern, clever, and important; the sort of
man that gets into Governments and things, yet somewhere with the
flavour of the clergyman about him. This clerical touch was Jane
Anne's contribution to the picture; and she was certain that he wore
silk socks of the most expensive description—a detail she had read
probably in some chance fragments of a newspaper. For Jinny selected
phrases in this way from anywhere, and repeated them on all occasions
without the slightest relevancy. She practised them. She had a way of
giving abrupt information and making startling statements
a propos
of nothing at all. Certain phrases stuck in her mind, it seemed, for
no comprehensible reason. When excited she picked out the one that
first presented itself and fired it off like a gun, the more inapt the
better. And 'busy' was her favourite adjective always.

'It's like a communication from a company,' Mother was saying, as she
handed back the typewritten letter.

'Is he a company promoter then?' asked Jinny like a flash, certainly
ignorant what that article of modern life could mean.

'Oh, I say!' came reproachfully from Jimbo, thus committing himself
for the first time to speech. He glanced up into several faces round
him, and then continued the picture of Cousin Henry he was drawing on
his slate. He listened all the time. Occasionally he cocked an eye or
ear up. He took in everything, saying little. His opinions matured
slowly. The talk continued for a long time, questions and answers.

'I think he's nice,' he announced at length in French. For intimate
things, he always used that language; his English, being uncertain,
was kept for matters of unimportance. 'A gentle man.'

And it was Jimbo's verdict that the children then finally adopted.
Cousin Henry was
gentil.
They laughed loudly at him, yet agreed. His
influence on their little conclaves, though never volubly expressed—
because of that very fact, perhaps—was usually accepted. Jimbo was so
decided. And he never committed himself to impulsive judgments that
later had to be revised. He listened in silence to the end, then went
plump for one side or the other. 'I think he'll be a nice man,' was
the label, therefore, then and there attached to Mr. Henry Rogers in
advance of delivery. Further than that, however, they would not go. It
would have been childish to commit themselves more deeply till they
saw him.

The conversation then slipped beyond their comprehension, or rather
their parents used long words and circumventing phrases that made it
difficult to follow. Owing to lack of space, matters of importance
often had to be discussed in this way under the children's eyes,
unless at night, when all were safe in bed; for French, of course, was
of no avail for purposes of concealment. Long words were then made use
of, dark, wumbled sentences spoken very quickly, with suggestive
gestures and expressions of the eyes labelled by Monkey with, 'Look,
Mother and Daddy are making faces—something's up!'

But, none the less, all listened, and Monkey, whose intuitive
intelligence soaked up hidden meanings like a sponge, certainly caught
the trend of what was said. She detailed it later to the others, when
Jinny checked her exposition with a puzzled 'but Mother could never
have said
that
,' while Jimbo looked wise and grave, as though he had
understood it all along, and was even in his parents' councils.

On this occasion, however, there was nothing very vital to retail.
Cousin Henry was to arrive to-morrow by the express from Paris. He was
a little younger than Daddy, and would have the room above him in the
carpenter's house. His meals he would take at the Pension just as they
did, and for tea he would always come over to the Den. And this latter
fact implied that he was to be admitted into intimacy at once, for
only intimates used the Den regularly for tea, of course.

It was serious. It involved a change in all their lives. Jinny
wondered if it 'would cost Daddy any more money,' or whether
'Cousinenry would bring a lot of things with him,' though not
explaining whether by 'things' she meant food or presents or clothes.
He was not married, so he couldn't be very old; and Monkey, suggesting
that he might 'get to love' one of the retired governesses who came to
the Pension for their mid-day dinner, was squelched by Jimbo with 'old
governesses
never
marry; they come back to settle, and then they
just die off.'

Thus was Henry Rogers predigested. But at any rate he was accepted.
And this was fortunate; for a new arrival whom the children did not
'pass' had been known to have a time that may best be described as not
conducive to repose of body, mind, or spirit.

The arrival of Mr. Henry Rogers in the village—in La Citadelle, that
is—was a red-letter day. This, however, seems a thin description of
its glory. For a more adequate description a well-worn phrase must be
borrowed from the poems of Montmorency Minks—a 'Day of Festival,' for
which 'coronal' invariably lay in waiting for rhyming purposes a
little further down the sonnet.

Monkey that afternoon managed to get home earlier than usual from
Neuchatel, a somewhat suspicious explanation as her passport. Her eyes
were popping. Jimbo was always out of the village school at three. He
carried a time-table in his pocket; but it was mere pretence, since he
was a little walking Bradshaw, and knew every train by heart—the
Geneva Express, the Paris Rapide, the 'omnibus' trains, and the
mountain ones that climbed the forest heights towards La Chaux de
Fonds and Le Locle. Of these latter only the white puffing smoke was
visible from the village, but he knew with accuracy their times of
departure, their arrival, and the names of every station where they
stopped. In the omnibus trains he even knew some of the guards
personally, the engine-drivers too. He might be seen any day after
school standing in the field beside the station, waiting for them to
pass;
mecanicien
and
conducteur
were the commonest words in his
whole vocabulary. When possible he passed the time of day with both of
these important personages, or from the field he waved his hand and
took his cap off. All engines, moreover, were 'powerful locomotives.'
The phrase was stolen from his father—a magnificent sound it had,
taking several seconds to pronounce. No day was wholly lived in vain
which enabled him to turn to some one with, 'There's the Paris Rapide;
it's five minutes late'; or 'That's the Geneva omnibus. You see, it
has to have a very'—here a deep breath—'powerful locomotive.'

So upon this day of festival it was quite useless to talk of common
things, and even the holidays acquired a very remote importance.
Everybody in the village knew it. From Gygi, the solitary gendarme, to
Henri Beguin, who mended boots, but had the greater distinction that
he was the only man Gygi ever arrested, for periodical wild behaviour
—all knew that 'Cousin Henry, father's cousin, you know,' was
expected to arrive in the evening, that he was an important person in
the life of London, and that he was not exactly a
pasteur
, yet
shared something of a clergyman's grave splendour. Clothed in a
sacerdotal atmosphere he certainly was, though it was the gravity of
Jane Anne's negative description that fastened this wild
ecclesiastical idea upon him.

'He's not
exactly
a clergyman,' she told the dressmaker, who for two
francs every Monday afternoon sat in the kitchen and helped with the
pile of indiscriminate mending,' because he has to do with rather big
companies and things. But he is a serious man all the same—and most
fearfully busy always.'

'We're going to meet him in the town,' said Jimbo carelessly. 'You
see, the Paris Rapide doesn't stop here. We shall come back with him
by the 6.20. It gets here at 6.50, so he'll be in time for supper, if
it's punctual. It usually is.'

And accordingly they went to Neuchatel and met the Paris train. They
met their Cousin Henry, too. Powerful locomotives and everything else
were instantly forgotten when they saw their father go up to a tall
thin man who jumped—yes, jumped—down the high steps on to the level
platform and at once began to laugh. He had a beard like their father.
'How
will
they know which is which?' thought Jinny. They stood in
everybody's way and stared. He was so tall. Daddy looked no bigger
than little Beguin beside him. He had a large, hooked nose, brown
skin, and keen blue eyes that took in everything at a single glance.
They twinkled absurdly for so big a man. He wore rough brown tweeds
and a soft felt travelling hat. He wore also square-toed English
boots. He carried in one hand a shiny brown leather bag with his
initials on it like a member of the Government.

The clergyman idea was destroyed in a fraction of a second, never to
revive. The company promoter followed suit. Jinny experienced an
entirely new sensation in her life—something none but herself had
ever felt before—something romantic. 'He's like a soldier—a
General,' she said to anybody who cared to listen, and she said it so
loudly that many did listen. But she did not care. She stood apart
from the others, staring as though it were a railway accident. This
tall figure of a cousin she could fit nowhere as yet into her limited
scheme of life. She admired him intensely. Yet Daddy laughed and
chatted with him as if he were nothing at all! She kept outside the
circle, wondering about his socks and underclothes. His beard was much
neater and better trimmed than her father's. At least no crumb or bit
of cotton was in it.

But Jimbo felt no awe. After a moment's hesitation, during which the
passers-by butted him this way and that, he marched straight up and
looked him in the face. He reached to his watch-chain only.

'I'll be your sekrity, too,' he announced, interrupting Daddy's
foolishness about 'this is my youngest lad, Rogers.' Youngest lad
indeed!

And Henry Rogers then stooped and kissed the lot of them. One after
the other he put his big arms round them and gave them a hug that was
like the hug of a bear standing on its hind legs. They took it, each
in his own way, differently. Jimbo proudly; Monkey, with a smacking
return kiss that somehow conveyed the note of her personality—
impudence; but Jane Anne, with a grave and outraged dignity, as though
in a public railway station this kind of behaviour was slightly
inappropriate. She wondered for days afterwards whether she had been
quite correct. He was a cousin, but still he was—a man. And she
wondered what she ought to call him. 'Mr. Rogers' was not quite right,
yet 'Mr. Cousin Henry' was equally ill-chosen. She decided upon a
combination of her own, a kind of code-word that was affectionate yet
distant: 'Cousinenry.' And she used it with an explosive directness
that was almost challenge—he could accept which half he chose.

But all accepted him at once without fear. They felt, moreover, a
secret and very tender thing; there was something in this big,
important man that made them know he would love them for themselves;
and more—that something in him had need of them. Here lay the
explanation of their instant confidence and acceptance.

'What a jolly bunch you are, to be sure!' he exclaimed. 'And you're to
be my secretary, are you?' he added, taking Jimbo by the shoulders.
'How splendid!'

'
I'm
not,' said Monkey, with a rush of laughter already too long
restrained. Her manner suggested a somersault, only prevented by
engines and officials.

But Jimbo was a little shocked. This sort of thing disgraced them.

'Oh, I say!' he exclaimed reproachfully.

'Daddy, isn't she awful?' added Jane Anne under her breath, a sentence
of disapproval in daily use. Her life seemed made up of apologising
for her impudent sister.

'The 6.20 starts at 6.20, you know,' Jimbo announced. 'The Lausanne
Express has gone. Are your "baggages" registered?' And the party moved
off in a scattered and uncertain manner to buy tickets and register
the luggage. They went back second class—for the first time in their
lives. It was Cousin Henry who paid the difference. That sealed his
position finally in their eyes. He was a millionaire. All London
people went first or second class.

But Jimbo and his younger sister had noticed something else about the
new arrival besides his nose and eyes and length. Even his luxurious
habit of travelling second class did not impress them half as much as
this other detail in his appearance. They referred to it in a
whispered talk behind the shelter of the
conducteur's
back while
tickets were being punched.

'You know,' whispered Monkey, her eyes popping, 'I've seen Cousin
Henry before somewhere. I'm certain.' She gave a little gasp.

Jimbo stared, only half believing, yet undeniably moved. Even his
friend, the Guard, was temporarily neglected. 'Where?' he asked; 'do
you mean in a picture?'

'No,' she answered with decision, 'out here, I think. In the woods or
somewhere.' She seemed vague. But her very vagueness helped him to
believe. She was not inventing; he was sure of that.

The
conducteur
at that moment passed away along the train, and
Cousin Henry looked straight at the pair of them. Through the open
window dusk fluttered down the sky with spots of gold already on its
wings.