Something Light (22 page)

“No, he didn't. At least, he told us at breakfast—but I don't think one can call that
consulting,”
said Catherine, still readily.

“It must have been rather a surprise?”

Catherine reflected.

“Not exactly. I mean, Dad loves giving us surprises. So that though things may be surprising in themselves, they're not exactly
surprising.”

It was a rather neat piece of dialectic, but little help to Louisa. She pressed on.

“Given that you weren't surprised, how do you feel about the results?”

Once again Catherine reflected.

“Well, how long are you staying?”

Louisa's heart sank. She'd asked for the truth, now here it came!

“That depends a good deal on what you tell me. In fact, on what you and Paul and Toby really think about me. If you could think of me as—well, as a
permanency
—” hazarded Louisa.

The sentence was never finished. Catherine instantly seized its every implication. For a moment she simply stared. Then—

“Louisa!
D'you mean to say you'd marry our Dad?”
cried Catherine.

Ravished by delight and surprise as she was—

“Don't say it!” cried Louisa superstitiously.

“But
would
you?”

“If you and the boys—”

“But, darling Louisa, there's nothing we'd like better!” cried Catherine. “We just didn't dare hope! We're all
for
it!—If you've any doubts, just wait while I fetch Toby and Paul!”

2

“Step-Mamma, your health!” said Paul gravely. “We shall still doubtless address you as Louisa for the moment, but we may as well practice step-mamma too.”

There they sat, the family of Louisa's dreams, assembled dressing-gowned about her bed. Catherine was back on its foot, Paul occupied the dressing stool, Toby squatted on the rug. All had brought tooth mugs, Paul nipped down for a bottle of lime juice and a soda syphon; in which heady mixture (for so in the circumstances it was) to drink Louisa's health.

“Don't say it!” repeated Louisa anxiously. “For heaven's sake don't jump the gun! He hasn't asked me yet.”

“But he will,” said Paul confidently. “We've seen it in his eye. It was only you we had any doubts about, dear Louisa. There must be more to our Dad than one suspected.”

“
I
believe Louisa likes
us,”
said Catherine gently.

“Well, I've always wanted a family,” confessed Louisa. (It wasn't strictly true; she hadn't wanted one until about a week ago. But now that she did, she wanted one so earnestly, the exaggeration was surely forgivable.)

“So do we want a step-mamma,” said Paul warmly. “The fact is, dear Louisa, you've turned up in the absolute nick of time.”

“In fact, if you
hadn't
turned up,” said Catherine dreamily, “I dare say we'd have been found all laid out in sizes beside the gas oven.”

“Being all, you see,” explained Paul, “practically poised for flight on the edge of the family nest. Only it happens to be smeared with birdlime.”

“He means Dad,” glossed Toby.

Louisa was so shaken, her fair picture of the Clark family life seemed to dissolve so suddenly before her eyes, all she could think of to say was, “You shouldn't call your father birdlime.”

3

“I thought it a rather neat metaphor,” apologized Paul. “And it
is
, you know, exactly how he's behaving.”

“You forget how much Louisa doesn't know yet,” said Catherine practically. “We may have given her quite a shock.”

“Yes, you have!” cried Louisa, recovering her forces with a bang. “You ungrateful cubs! Good heavens, with a father who—” She cast about among Mr. Clark's thronging parental virtues for just the most striking example. It was an
embarras de richesses
. However nothing had ever impressed Louisa more than that first sight of Tomboy in his stall. “—Who buys his daughter a
horse
—!” cried Louisa.

Catherine sighed.

“If you only knew,” she said gently, “how I
hate
that horse!”

4

Dismayed and astounded afresh, Louisa instinctively glanced at the boys for confirmation that she'd heard aright. But both nodded gravely.

“It's quite true,” said Paul. “She loathes its guts.”

“I'm always feeding it, and grooming it, and cleaning up after it,” sighed Catherine, “and polishing acres and acres of leather for it, and then when I'm utterly exhausted I have to go out and
ride
it. Even if it snows, I have to come back glowing with healthy exercise, actually my feet are always
frozen
, and start feeding and grooming and polishing—”

“But your father told me,” protested Louisa, “you were mad about horses!”

Catherine returned a patient glance.

“He'd read somewhere in a paper that
all
teen-agers were mad about horses. Just because I quite enjoyed hacking once a week didn't mean
I
was mad about them. But that never occurred to him. Because he's never thought of me as an individual. I was just a mad-about-horses teen-ager.”

“She never
asked
for a horse,” put in Toby loyally. “It just came.”

“As a lovely surprise,” agreed Catherine, with irony. “The day after I left school, there it was. Outside the front door. Lindy holding it and grinning all over her face.—And no wonder, because whatever Dad paid for it, he was rooked. It's a
horrible
horse. But he went and asked her which was my favorite, and she palmed Tomboy off on him …”

“Well, that was when you should have said you didn't want it,” said Louisa sharply.

Catherine looked at her again.

“If
you
found a horse outside the front door, and your father bursting with glee because he was giving you such a wonderful surprise, could
you
have said you didn't want it?”

“Perhaps not,” admitted Louisa.

“People talk about children being ungrateful,” said Catherine somberly. “They don't know what children go through,
not
to be ungrateful. Then Dad led me round to the old out-house—I knew there'd been some sort of alterations going on there, but I thought it was just for improvements—and there was this
lovely
little stable, for me to look after all by myself and ruin my hands.”

There was a brief silence. Though Louisa was beginning to see Catherine's point of view, her sympathies were still far more with Mr. Clark. He might have been in error, but wasn't the imaginative generosity of such a gift something quite remarkable?

“Wasn't it still wonderfully
kind
of him,” persuaded Louisa, “to give you Tomboy?”

“It was a bribe,” said Catherine sternly. “Like the boys' Vespas. To keep me in the nest—because he thought I was mad about horses. What
I
want to be is a nurse—not a stablehand. That's what the row was about, I don't know if you heard, last night.”

5

Now they were back to really important matters. Not that the Tomboy-excursus hadn't been useful in its way; as each young Clark realized, it had softened Louisa up.—She was in fact still recognizing an in the circumstances forgivable error: not horsewomanly, the neatness that had so struck her, the first time she saw Catherine, but a nurse's; apt to meet with confidence the most formidable of Sisters' eyes. Not a bowler hat were those neat braids designed for, but a nurse's cap …

“It's quite true,” repeated Paul, in this fresh context. “It's what she's wanted to do ever since I can remember. She goes to the hospital here every day as an aide. She has to tie Tomboy up with the ambulances.”

“Can you think of anything more
respectable,”
continued Catherine bitterly, “than nursing? From Dad's attitude, you'd think I wanted to join the chorus of the Folies Bergères. Simply because I'd have to live in a hostel! As for the boys—”

“Jets,” said Toby simply.

“Jet engines,” corrected Paul. “D'you know, Louisa, we're both of us such bright boys, Rolls would take us on as apprentices in the next batch? They've practically
applied
for us, through our head. What one means to say,” added Paul, pointedly echoing his sister, “is that one isn't trying to join the Foreign Legion. One would simply have to go and live in carefully selected digs. Only being under age, we need Dad's signature on the dotted line.”

“Matrons want it too,” said Catherine sadly. “That was what the row was about.”

“Couldn't we forge it?” asked Toby suddenly.

“A fat lot of good that would do,” retorted Paul. “He'd come and buy us out, or something equally embarrassing. Besides we now have hope. We have Louisa. As soon as she marries our Dad the whole picture changes, because we shall no more—to quote his favorite sickener—be leaving him all alone.”

Louisa felt it high time to speak up on her own account.

“Yes, but what about
me?”
she demanded indignantly. “You don't seem to realize that what
I
want is a family!”

They regarded her with their usual bright intelligence.

“That's what Cathy thought,” said Paul. “But surely it isn't too late to start?”

“Look at Sarah wife of Abraham,” encouraged Toby.

“Thanks,” said Louisa. “What I'm trying to get into your heads is that I want a family
now
. It's not fair, if I marry your father and you all clear out next day.”

“Ah, but think how we'd come
back,”
said Paul swiftly. “With you here, Louisa, we'd be back whenever we could—rushing home to our step-mamma.”

“Personally, I'd call it ideal,” offered Catherine. “Just think, Louisa—part of the time a blushing bride, then
wham!
a mother of three. If that isn't having the best of both worlds, tell me what is.—Dear, dear Louisa, say you will!”

“But I haven't been asked!” cried Louisa.

“Of course he'll ask you. We know he'll ask you. Then as soon as he feels safe and cozy you can talk to him about us—”

“Only she mustn't leave it too long,” put in Paul anxiously. “We want our applications in.”

“Louisa must handle it as she thinks best. Of course there's no question of her going after just a week—and I dare say our Dad needs a little time.”

“Yes, but before June the thirtieth, or we'll have to wait another year.”

“Well, that gives her nearly a month. That ought to be loads. Then the gates will open—”

“The nest will fall—”

“No more birdlime!”

Louisa looked from one radiant face to another; at something in her glance the children paused.

“We aren't rushing
you
, are we?” asked Catherine anxiously.

“No,” said Louisa. “But aren't you fond of your father at all?”

6

It was as though she'd thrown a cloth over a bird cage. Louisa deliberately allowed the silence that followed to prolong itself, while the children's attention concentrated.

“He's fond of
you
, you know,” said Louisa.

They looked at each other. Tacitly, the word was left with Paul.

“But that's just what we don't,” stated Paul thoughtfully. “Quite honestly,
we
think he's just got a thing about families.
We
think that if we weren't his children, he'd probably rather dislike us.”

“And no wonder,” said Louisa indignantly. “But you are his children, as he's your father. Aren't you fond of him at all?”

Almost unexpectedly, a little catspaw of uneasiness ruffled their calm. As they looked at each other again, Louisa thankfully recognized at least an attempt to be fair.

“When we were little—” began Catherine uncertainly. She broke off, evidently recalling as might a centenarian the days of her youth. “When I was really little, he once made me a Noah's Ark with a gangway.”

“When I was about ten, and had mumps, he read Kipling to me,” acknowledged Paul.

“He used to be pretty good about fireworks, on Guy Fawkes',” recalled Toby.

For a moment, while Louisa held her breath, rockets burst above the roof of a homemade Noah's Ark; a boy sat up in bed listening to the tale of Mowgli …

“If you think we don't
mind
, not loving our father,” said Catherine abruptly, “you couldn't be more mistaken. It's not just that we worry, quite enormously, over what sort of complexes we may be building up; we'd much
rather
love him. Only when he just clamps down like birdlime on all our absolutely vital projects, it makes him very difficult, to love …”

Louisa sat back against her pillows and let a tide of happiness flow over her. How earnestly had she longed to
do
something, for Catherine and Toby and Paul! Now a gift greater than she'd ever contemplated lay within her power: by setting them free to fly, she could give them back their love for their father.

“All right,” said Louisa, as lightly as she could. “I'll do my best. And I promise you not to marry him until he's signed on the dotted lines!”

Catherine kissed her first; then Toby, then Paul.—It was like having a litter of puppies on the bed, thought Louisa; only they weren't puppies, they were a family.

Chapter Twenty-Four

1

Breakfast next morning was even pleasanter than Sunday's. Warm as the sunshine that streamed through the windows, the children's affection streamed out towards Louisa; and now she had no fears of what the fair show might conceal. Moreover they were particularly careful not to embarrass her by any suggestion of complicity; and when Mr. Clark suggested that no doubt Cathy meant to profit by such a fine morning to take Tomboy out early, not one so much as caught her eye.