Algernon Blackwood (18 page)

'Oh, there you are!' he exclaimed. 'How you do dart about, to be
sure!'

And the answer, if any, was invariably of the cheeky order—

'One can't keep still here; there's not room enough.'

Or, worse still—

'I must get past you somehow!' This, needless to say, from Monkey, who
first made sure her parents were out of earshot.

But he liked it, for he recognised this proof that he was accepted and
made one of the circle. These were tentative invitations to play. It
made him feel quite larky, though at first he found his machinery of
larking rather stiff. The wheels required oiling. And his first
attempt to chase Miss Impudence resulted in a collision with Jane Anne
carrying a great brown pot of home-made jam for the table. There was a
dreadful sound. He had stepped on the cat at the same time.

His introduction to the cat was the immediate result, performed
solemnly by Jimbo, and watched by Jinny, still balancing the jar of
jam, with an expression of countenance that was half amazement and
half shock. Collisions with creatures of his size and splendour were a
new event to her.

'I must advertise for help if it occurs again!' she exclaimed.

'That's Mere Riquette, you know,' announced Jimbo formally to his
cousin, standing between them in his village school blouse, hands
tucked into his belt.

'I heard her, yes.' From a distance the cat favoured him with a single
comprehensive glance, then turned away and disappeared beneath the
sofa. She, of course, reserved her opinion.

'It didn't REALLY hurt her. She always squeals like that.'

'Perhaps she likes it,' suggested Rogers.

'She likes better tickling behind the ear,' Jimbo thought, anxious to
make him feel all right, and then plunged into a description of her
general habits—how she jumped at the door handles when she wanted to
come in, slept on his bed at night, and looked for a saucer in a
particular corner of the kitchen floor. This last detail was a
compliment. He meant to imply that Cousin Henry might like to see to
it himself sometimes, although it had always been his own special
prerogative hitherto.

'I shall know in future, then,' said Rogers earnestly, showing, by
taking the information seriously, that he possessed the correct
instinct.

'Oh yes, it's quite easy. You'll soon learn it,' spoken with feet wide
apart and an expression of careless importance, as who should say,
'What a sensible man you are! Still, these
are
little things one has
to be careful about, you know.'

Mother poured out tea, somewhat laboriously, as though the exact
proportions of milk, hot water, and sugar each child took were
difficult to remember. Each had a special cup, moreover. Her mind,
ever crammed with a thousand domestic details which she seemed to
carry all at once upon the surface, ready for any sudden question,
found it difficult to concentrate upon the teapot. Her mind was ever
worrying over these. Her husband was too vague to be of practical
help. When any one spoke to her, she would pause in the middle of the
operation, balancing a cup in one hand and a milk jug in the other,
until the question was properly answered, every t crossed and every i
dotted. There was no mistaking what Mother meant—provided you had the
time to listen. She had that careful thoroughness which was no friend
of speed. The result was that hands were stretched out for second cups
long before she had completed the first round. Her own tea began
usually when everybody else had finished—and lasted—well, some time.

'Here's a letter I got,' announced Jimbo, pulling a very dirty scrap
of paper from a pocket hidden beneath many folds of blouse. 'You'd
like to see it.' He handed it across the round table, and Rogers took
it politely. 'Thank you very much; it came by this morning's post, did
it?'

'Oh, no,' was the reply, as though a big correspondence made the date
of little importance. 'Not by
that
post.' But Monkey blurted out
with the jolly laughter that was her characteristic sound, 'It came
ages ago. He's had it in his pocket for weeks.'

Jimbo, ignoring the foolish interruption, watched his cousin's face,
while Jinny gave her sister a secret nudge that every one could see.

'Darling Jimbo,' was what Rogers read, 'I have been to school, and did
strokes and prickings and marched round. I am like you now. A fat kiss
and a hug, your loving—' The signature was illegible, lost amid
several scratchy lines in a blot that looked as if a beetle had
expired after violent efforts in a pool of ink.

'Very nice indeed, very well put,' said Rogers, handing it gravely
back again, while some one explained that the writer, aged five, had
just gone to a kindergarten school in Geneva. 'And have you answered
it?'

'Oh, yes. I answered it the same day, you see.' It was, perhaps, a
foolish letter for a man to have in his pocket. Still—it was a
letter.

'Good! What a capital secretary you'll make me.' And the boy's flush
of pleasure almost made the dish of butter rosy.

'Oh, take another; take a lot, please,' Jimbo said, handing the cakes
that Rogers divined were a special purchase in his honour; and while
he did so, managed to slip one later on to the plates of Monkey and
her sister, who sat on either side of him. The former gobbled it up at
once, barely keeping back her laughter, but Jinny, with a little bow,
put hers carefully aside on the edge of her plate, not knowing quite
the 'nice' thing to do with it. Something in the transaction seemed a
trifle too familiar perhaps. She stole a glance at mother, but mother
was filling the cups and did not notice. Daddy could have helped her,
only he would say 'What?' in a loud voice, and she would have to
repeat her question for all to hear. Later, she ate the cake in very
small morsels, a little uncomfortably.

It was a jolly, merry, cosy tea, as teas in the Den always were. Daddy
wumbled a number of things in his beard to which no one need reply
unless they felt like it. The usual sentences were not heard to-day:
'Monkey, what a mouthful! You
must
not shovel in your food like
that!' or, 'Don't
gurgle
your tea down; swallow it quietly, like a
little lady'; or, 'How often have you been told
not
to drink with
your mouth full; this is not the servants' hall, remember!' There were
no signs of contretemps of any kind, nothing was upset or broken, and
the cakes went easily round, though not a crumb was left over.

But the entire time Mr. Rogers was subjected to the keenest scrutiny
imaginable. Nothing he did escaped two pairs of eyes at least. Signals
were flashed below as well as above the table. These signals were of
the kind birds know perhaps—others might be aware of their existence
if they listened very attentively, yet might not interpret them. No
Comanche ever sent more deft communications unobserved to his brother
across a camp fire.

Yet nothing was done visibly; no crumb was flicked; and the table hid
the pressure of the toe which, fortunately, no one intercepted.
Monkey, at any rate, had eyes in both her feet, and Jimbo knew how to
keep his counsel without betrayal. But inflections of the voice did
most of the work—this, with flashes of brown and blue lights,
conveyed the swift despatches.

'My underneath goes out to him,' Monkey telegraphed to her brother
while she asked innocently for 'jam, please, Jimbo'; and he replied,
'Oh, he's all right, I think, but better not go too fast,' as he wiped
the same article from his chin and caught her big brown eye upon him.
'He'll be our Leader,' she conveyed later by the way she stirred her
cup of tea-hot-water-milk, 'when once we've got him "out" and taught
him'; and Jimbo offered and accepted his own resignation of the
coveted, long-held post by the way he let his eyelid twiddle in answer
to her well-directed toe-nudge out of sight.

This, in a brief resume, was the purport of the give and take of
numerous despatches between them during tea, while outwardly Mother—
and Father, too, when he thought about it—were delighted with their
perfect company manners.

Jane Anne, outside all this flummery, went her own way upon an even
keel. She watched him closely too, but not covertly. She stared him in
the face, and imitated his delicate way of eating. Once or twice she
called him 'Mr. Rogers,' for this had a grown-up flavour about it that
appealed to her, and 'Cousin Henry' did not come easily to her at
first. She could not forget that she had left the
ecole secondaire
and was on her way to a Geneva Pension where she would attend an
ecole menagere
. And the bursts of laughter that greeted her polite
'Mr. Rogers, did you have a nice journey, and do you like
Bourcelles?'—in a sudden pause that caught Mother balancing cup and
teapot in mid-air—puzzled her a good deal. She liked his quiet answer
though—'Thank you, Miss Campden, I think both quite charming.' He did
not laugh. He understood, whatever the others might think. She had
wished to correct the levity of the younger brother and sister, and he
evidently appreciated her intentions. He seemed a nice man, a very
nice man.

Tea once over, she carried off the loaded tray to the kitchen to do
the washing-up. Jimbo and Monkey had disappeared. They always vanished
about this time, but once the unenvied operation was safely under way,
they emerged from their hiding-places again. No one ever saw them go.
They were gone before the order, 'Now, children, help your sister take
the things away,' was even issued. By the time they re-appeared Jinny
was halfway through it and did not want to be disturbed.

'Never mind, Mother,' she said, 'they're chronic. They're only little
busy Highlanders!' For 'chronic' was another catch-word at the moment,
and sometimes by chance she used it appropriately. The source of 'busy
Highlanders' was a mystery known only to herself. And resentment, like
jealousy, was a human passion she never felt and did not understand.
Jane Anne was the spirit of unselfishness incarnate. It was to her
honour, but made her ineffective as a personality.

Daddy lit his big old meerschaum—the 'squelcher' Jinny called it,
because of its noise—and mooned about the room, making remarks on
literature or politics, while Mother picked a work-basket cleverly
from a dangerously overloaded shelf, and prepared to mend and sew. The
windows were wide open, and framed the picture of snowy Alps, now
turning many-tinted in the slanting sunshine. (Riquette, gorged with
milk, appeared from the scullery and inspected knees and chairs and
cushions that seemed available, selecting finally the best arm-chair
and curling up to sleep. Rogers smoked a cigarette, pleased and
satisfied like the cat.) A hush fell on the room. It was the hour of
peace between tea and the noisy Pension supper that later broke the
spell. So quiet was it that the mouse began to nibble in the bedroom
walls, and even peeped through the cracks it knew between the boards.
It came out, flicked its whiskers, and then darted in again like
lightning. Jane Anne, rinsing out the big teapot in the scullery,
frightened it. Presently she came in softly, put the lamp ready for
her mother's needle, in case of need later, gave a shy queer look at
'Mr. Rogers' and her father, both of whom nodded absent-mindedly to
her, and then went on tip-toe out of the room. She was bound for the
village shop to buy methylated spirits, sugar, blotting-paper, and—a
'plaque' of Suchard chocolate for her Cousinenry. The forty centimes
for this latter was a large item in her savings; but she gave no
thought to that. What sorely perplexed her as she hurried down the
street was whether he would like it 'milk' or 'plain.' In the end she
bought both.

Down the dark corridor of the Citadelle, before she left, she did not
hear the muffled laughter among the shadows, nor see the movement of
two figures that emerged together from the farther end.

'He'll be on the sofa by now. Shall we go for him?' It was the voice
of Monkey.

'Leave it to me.' Jimbo still meant to be leader so far as these two
were concerned at any rate. Let come later what might.

'Better get Mother out of the way first, though.'

'Mother's nothing. She's sewing and things,' was the reply. He
understood the conditions thoroughly. He needed no foolish advice.

'He's awfully easy. You saw the two gold teeth. It's him, I'm sure.'

'Of course he's easy, only a person doesn't want to be pulled about
after tea,' in the tone of a man who meant to feel his way a bit.

Clearly they had talked together more than once since the arrival at
the station. Jimbo made up for ignorance by decision and sublime self-
confidence. He answered no silly questions, but listened, made up his
mind, and acted. He was primed to the brim—a born leader.

'Better tell him that we'll come for him to-night,' the girl insisted.
'He'll be less astonished then. You can tell he dreams a lot by his
manner. Even now he's only half awake.'

The conversation was in French—school and village French. Her brother
ignored the question with 'va te cacher!' He had no doubts himself.

'Just wait a moment while I tighten my belt,' he observed. 'You can
tell it by his eyes,' he added, as Monkey urged him forward to the
door. 'I know a good dreamer when I see one.'

Then fate helped them. The door against their noses opened and Daddy
came out, followed by his cousin. All four collided.

'Oh, is the washing-up finished?' asked Monkey innocently, quick as a
flash.

'How you startled me!' exclaimed Daddy. 'You really must try to be
less impetuous. You'd better ask Mother about the washing,' he
repeated, 'she's in there sewing.' His thoughts, it seemed, were just
a trifle confused. Plates and linen both meant washing, and sometimes
hair and other stuff as well.

'There's no light, you see, yet,' whispered Jimbo. A small lamp
usually hung upon the wall. Jane Anne at that moment came out carrying
it and asking for a match.