"Don"t!" exclaimed Eustace sharply. "You don"t know what a wreck in the dark is like, or you wouldn"t talk like that. There isn"t time to know anything. We didn"t know Aunt Dorothy was left."
"I should have known," said Herbert, with all the confidence of ignorance, "and I would have stayed and drowned with her."
He broke off short, rose abruptly, and stumbled in a queer, blind way from the room. He could not bear that any one should witness his grief.
Brenda turned a tear-stained face from the window and stared at the trio now standing close together.
"He isn"t thinking what he is saying," she said chokily; "but we are so frightfully unhappy about Aunt Dorothy--and this seems to make it worse--I mean that she might so easily have been saved. Of course you didn"t really know her, so you can"t understand. But ever since our mother died Aunt Dorothy--"
But here Brenda"s voice broke utterly, and she, too, hurriedly left the room.
"Well," exclaimed Nesta, "I think it just horrid of them. I shall never, never like them now."
Eustace turned a pair of surprised brown eyes upon her.
"Won"t you?" he said wonderingly. "Why, I like them better than I did, ever so much."
"What!" Nesta said, "you like them better for saying a horrid thing like that? To make out it was Peter"s fault! Poor little Peter, who was so nearly drowned himself!"
"It wasn"t that part I was thinking of," said Eustace, "but just how they loved her. Somehow I never thought of it before. Same way we love mother, I guess; and I don"t know what I should have thought if mother had been drowned saving some one else"s brother."
Nesta stared at him blankly. There were things about Eustace lately that she did not understand. She knew nothing of Bob"s maxim about looking at two sides of a question, so she could see no reason for the strange things he sometimes said, and he was far too reticent to have explained.
"Well, all I can say is, I wish we had never come," said Nesta for about the twentieth time. "Nothing is nice, and it will be more hateful than ever now they feel like that about Peter. We had better tell mother and father, and ask them to take us away."
"What"s that I hear?" said an astonished voice at the door.
The children all jumped and turned round, for there stood their grandfather. They were speechless with dismay; they could not have pictured a worse thing happening.
"What did you say, Nesta?" asked Mr. Chase again, in a tone that made the twins" hearts stand still.
He looked angry, surprised, and very commanding. But how were they to repeat what they had been saying? Nesta remembered they had been warned not to speak of Aunt Dorothy before him. Eustace felt it would be mean and ungenerous to get Herbert into trouble behind his back. But Peter had no such scruples. Dropping his head into his arms on the table, he broke out sobbingly,--
"Herbert says it was me drowned Aunt Dorothy."
"What!" exclaimed Mr. Chase incredulously; "he surely never said such a thing? Explain this to me, Eustace, at once."
His tone was so severe that the boy literally shook. He had never seen any one really angry in his life before.
"He didn"t say quite that," Eustace said with difficulty; "he only meant it was because of Peter."
"Kindly give me his exact words," Mr. Chase said, still in that awful voice.
Eustace closed his thin lips tight, with an expression that meant wild horses would not drag it from him. His grandfather scanned his face closely, then turned to Nesta.
"As Eustace seems to have lost his tongue, I must ask you to tell me what Herbert said in exactly his own words."
Nesta glanced furtively at her twin, but she was angry with Herbert and saw no reason why he should be protected.
"He said," she replied, "if Peter had not been at the other side of the boat, and Aunt Dorothy had not had to go and find him, she wouldn"t have been drowned. He said we all went away and left her--"
"How dared he!" Mr. Chase thundered. "I am ashamed that a grandson of mine should have behaved in such a way. Whatever he thought, he had no right to say such a thing."
"He--he was most fearfully unhappy," said Eustace nervously.
"That is no excuse for his making other people so too," Mr. Chase replied. "Eustace, go and tell Herbert to come here at once."
It was a disagreeable errand, and the boy whitened as he turned to obey. Mr. Chase"s prompt, old-fashioned methods were something new to him. Fault-finding at home had always been reserved for quiet talks alone with father or mother; they were never made big public affairs like this.
Eustace found Herbert in his own room pacing up and down the floor with his hands in his pockets. He had got control of himself by then, and he turned on his visitor with a look of impatient surprise.
"What do you want?" he said.
"I"m awfully sorry," Eustace began lamely, "but you"ve got to come to grandfather. We were talking about what you said, and he came in without our hearing. He made us tell him the rest, and I"m afraid he--he is going to lecture you."
"You--you told tales?" said Herbert scathingly. Without waiting for a reply he marched past his cousin to the schoolroom. Eustace could not bear to follow and see him humiliated. It would be just a little better for him with one person less present, he thought.
"Grandfather was fearfully severe," said Nesta later, when she had found Eustace prowling about like a bear with a sore head alone in the grounds. "So you see it was a beastly thing to say. He said Herbert was no gentleman if he didn"t apologize."
"And did he?" asked Eustace shortly.
"He said he was sorry if he hadn"t behaved like a gentleman, and it shouldn"t occur again. Most awfully stiffly he spoke, just like a grown-up, and then grandfather said he might go."
"And that before you and Peter!" exclaimed Eustace in tones of disgust. "I"m jolly glad I wasn"t there; it would have made me feel a low-down black-fellow if Herbert had apologized to me. I don"t think Peter behaved like a white man, and I mean to tell him so, too, when I get him to myself."
"Grandfather seems to have taken a fancy to Peter," said Nesta. "He had come up to fetch him when he overheard me. He said Peter had already broken his morning, and he had better have the rest of it and take him a walk. Brenda says she never knew him do such a queer thing before; he is not generally supposed to be fond of children, and that is why we have no meals downstairs."
Every one was surprised at Mr. Chase"s sudden partiality for Peter, but the reason was a very simple one. From Peter he could hear more about Miss Chase than from any one else. No tears choked little Peter"s voice when he described Aunt Dorothy"s first day, or told the story of her quaint mistakes. He quite forgot the sad part of her visit, and lost himself in his stories. The old man led him on from point to point, and learned all that he could of his beloved daughter"s stay in Queensland without Peter"s guessing what he was really doing.
The little fellow was radiantly happy. They walked about the grounds together, and presently Mr. Chase said Peter must learn to ride--he would teach him himself. Accordingly, out went Peter on a little pony with Mr. Chase at its head, and the riding lessons began.
"It doesn"t look as if grandfather thought it was Peter"s fault,"
said Nesta to Eustace; "he seems fonder of him than any one."
If Peter was content, not so the twins. The scene with Herbert had produced a very uncomfortable state of affairs. He no longer played the part of host, but kept out of his cousins" way as much as possible, going out on long expeditions by himself, and never joining the schoolroom party when he could help it.
Nesta thought him detestable, but Eustace had a feeling that Herbert had been very hardly treated in his own home. He could not forget how genuine had been the big fellow"s unhappiness over the awful loss of his beloved aunt, and Eustace could have forgiven much more than the outburst against Peter in the face of such real distress. But he had no chance of showing his sympathy; Herbert would have resented any exhibition of sentiment most haughtily.
Eustace only felt exceedingly awkward whenever he was with him, and wished with all his heart he could awake to find all these unfortunate English experiences nothing but a bad dream.
Between her loyalty to her brother and the sense of courtesy that bade her look after her cousins, Brenda had a very difficult course to steer; being proud and reserved by nature, she only succeeded in being exceedingly stiff in her attempts at civility to the twins.
"It gets horrider and horrider," Nesta said after two or three days of it.
But the secret treaty not to trouble their mother and disturb her enjoyment held good through everything.
"It will come to an end in a year," Eustace said bravely; "and we couldn"t bear it after we got back if we had to remember we had spoiled mother"s trip. She has been longing for it such a long time."
Because they saw so comparatively little of their mother, it was always possible to keep their grievances from her; and she was so certain her children must be sharing the pleasures with herself, it never occurred to her to suspect that anything was wrong.