I see us linking arms and, with our mother between us, so mend the pace that she would reach home almost breathless. Nevertheless, we would hurry indoors and shoot the bolt behind us like people who knew themselves pursued.
Perhaps my mother"s fear had grounds we children never knew. But we knew that the sound of a door shut, and a bolt shot, was music in her ears.
Her changed "home" face was like summer come again. She would help us to strip off our wraps, and, all in a glow, we would go flying to the haven of our pretty fire-bright room with its gay chintzes, its lamps and flowers. One of us would ring for tea; another would draw chairs about the blaze. My mother"s part was to close the heavy inside shutters, to let down across the panels the iron bar, and draw the curtains.
"_Now_ we are safe and sound!" she would say.
I do not pretend to explain, for I do not know how it was that, though we loved our walks, Bettina and I came to share her sense of danger.
In the beginning we may have felt the flight home to be merely a kind of game. A playing at Prisoner"s Base with the threshold of Duncombe House for goal. When we reached there (and only in the nick of time!) we had escaped our enemy, whether Colonel Dover or another. We had won. We had barred him out.
That feeling lasted warm, triumphant, until bed-time. Then, heavy wooden shutters, even with iron all across, were no avail. Another enemy, craftier, deadlier than any that might haunt the heath at dusk, had got into the house. He was in hiding all the cheerful part of evening, when lights and voices were about. At bed-time, in dim pa.s.sages, you felt his breath on the back of your neck. He never faced you. Always he was behind you. But he was never at his deadliest while you had your shoes and stockings on. He waited behind curtains or under the bed, to clutch at your bare feet as you jumped in.
I try not to read into the influences about our childhood more than was there.
Perhaps our fears had no obscurer origin than the humble domestic fact that my mother never trusted the servants with the locking-up of the house. We saw her go the rounds each night, holding a candle high to bolts, or low to locks and catches. I believe now she may have had only some natural fear, in that lonely place, of robbery. But for us children the Dread was harder to fight against, being bodyless.
As everyone knows, except those most in need of knowing--I mean children--every old house is an orchestra of ghostly sound. One room at Duncombe, in particular, was an eerie place to sit in when the winds were out. You heard a kind of unearthly music played there on winter evenings. Sounds so remote from any whistling, moaning, or other wind instrumentality, that Bettina and I spoke of it in whispers: "Now the organ"s playing."
Our mother heard it, too. At the first note she would lift her eyes and listen. We had an obscure feeling that she heard more than we--a something behind the music. Something which we strained to catch, and often seemed upon the verge of understanding.
There is no more characteristic picture of my mother in my mind than that which shows her to me with needle arrested over work slipping off her knee, or holding a page half-turned, her lifted face wearing that look, listening, foreboding.
There is something more expressive in the white of certain eyes than in the iris. The white of my mother"s eyes was a crystalline blue-white. It caught the light and glistened. It seemed to respond more sensitively, to have more "seeing" in it than was in the pale blue iris. The contrast of heavy dark lashes may have lent the eye that almost startling look when the fringe of shadow lifted suddenly, and the eyeball answered to the light.
There was nothing the least tragic about my mother"s usual looks or moods. She was merely gentle and aloof.
She helped us to be very happy children; and if she made us sometimes most unhappy, she did so unconsciously. And she did so only at times when she must have been unhappy, too.
She played for us to dance. And she played for us to sing. But after Bettina and I had gone through our gay little action songs, and after we had sung all together our glees and catches, we would be sent upstairs to do lessons in the morning-room--which was our schoolroom under the cheerfuller name.
Then, sitting alone, between daylight and dark, our mother would sing for herself songs of such sadness as youth could hardly bear. I think we were not expected to hear them. We would open the windows on that side in mild weather to hear the better. But the songs were sadder when we heard them faintly. Have you ever noticed that?
I would sit trying to fix my mind on lessons, listening to that music she never made for us.
And I would look across at Bettina"s face, all changed and overcast.
Then I would shut the window.
Bettina ought never to hear such music.
For myself I wondered uneasily what there could be in the beautiful world to inspire a song like that, and to make a lady sit singing it "between the lights."
As I say, when the sound was fainter the sadness of it pierced us deeper still.
As we two sat there, formless fears crept in and crouched in the shadowy places.
Oh, we were glad when Martha Loring"s face appeared, with the lamp and consolatory suggestions of supper.
Better still, the blessed times when the music was too sad even for our mother--when she would break off and come to find us--help us to hurry through our task, and then for reward (hers, or ours?... I never quite knew) open the satinwood cabinet, and take out the treasures and let us see and handle them. All but two. We had been allowed to hold our father"s order and his watch. We had turned over the pretty things he had given her; we knew that I was to have the diamond star, when I grew up, and Betty was to have the pearl and emerald pendant. Only the two bra.s.s b.u.t.tons we might never touch.
We never knew why the bra.s.s b.u.t.tons were so precious. She held them wonderfully--as though they were alive.
And we, too--we were always happier after we had seen them.
We knew that she felt, somehow, safer.
So did we.
CHAPTER V
THE MOTHER"S VOW
We had no knowledge at first hand, of any family life except our own.
But we imagined that we made up for any loss in that direction by following the outward fortunes of one other family, from a reverent distance, but with a closeness of devotion.
In that mysterious world beyond the heath, we divined two exhaustless springs of enthusiasm: the Army and the Royal Family.
The reason for the first is clear.
As for the second, we never guessed that our varied knowledge and intimate concern about the persons of the reigning house was a commonplace in English family life of the not very strenuous sort.
Royal personages presented themselves to our imagination, partly as the Fairy Tale element in life, partly as an ideal of mortal splendour, partly as symbols of our national greatness.
From fairy queens and princes no great step to the sea-king"s daughter, or to her sailor-son, the Prince of Wales. His wife, that Princess of Wales, who even before her marriage had been the idol of England was our idol too--apart from her high destiny as mother of the future King, (the little Prince born in the same year as Bettina)--and mother of that fascinating figure in the story, the solitary Princess of her house, three years younger than the youngest of our family. Our interest in them all received a fresh accession at the birth of Prince Henry; we hailed the advent of Prince George; we felt the succession trebly sure in the fortunate arrival of Prince John. We saw them safely christened; we consulted the bulletins in the _Standard_ and the _Queen_ about their health; we followed their august comings and goings with an enthusiasm undampened by hearing how well they were all being brought up on the incomparable "White Lodge" system, which had been so successfully applied to the little royalties" mamma.
Apart from these Shining Ones, a sense of the variety, the unexpectedness of life to lesser folk, reached us through the changing fortunes of one of the country-houses that ab.u.t.ted on the heath.
It was let to different people, from time to time, for the hunting. If the people had children, they were of palpitating interest to us, even though we never saw much of the children.
Sometimes the fathers and mothers sc.r.a.ped acquaintance with our mother.
If they had seen the Brighton doctor driving up to our door, they would stop to ask how my mother was.
The doctor was a grim man with a stiff grey beard. He said my mother ought to have a nurse. She said she had me.
That was the proudest moment of my childhood.
I had to try very hard not to be glad when she was ill. It was such delight to nurse her. And after all, the only thing she herself seemed to mind about being ill was not having Bettina always with her.
Bettina was too little to understand that one must be quiet in a sick room.
In any case Bettina never wanted to stay indoors. So she would escape, and run about the garden, singing. My mother made us wheel her bed to the window that she might look out. She would lie there, watching Bettina play at church-choir with all our dolls in a row, and tiny home-made hymn-books in their laps.
When a b.u.t.terfly detached the leader of the choir, and Bettina went in chase to the other side of the garden, my mother would say anxiously: "Someone must go down and bring Bettina back."