Erica laughed for the study was indeed in a state of chaos. Books were stacked up on the floor, on the mantel piece, on the chairs, on the very steps of the book ladder. The writing table was a sea of papers, periodicals, proofs, and ma.n.u.scripts, upon which there floated with much difficulty Raeburn"s writing desk and the book he was reading, some slight depression in the surrounding ma.s.s of papers showing where his elbows had been.
"About equal to Teufelsdroch"s room, isn"t it?" he said, smiling.
"Everything united in a common element of dust." But, really, after the first terrible day of your absence, when I wasted at least an hour in hunting for things which the tidy domestic had carefully hidden, I could stand it no longer, and gave orders that no one was to bring brush or duster or spirit of tidiness within the place."
"We really must try to get you a larger room," said Erica, looking round. "How little and poky everything looks."
"Has Greyshot made you discontented?"
"Only for you," she replied, laughing. "I was thinking of Mr.
Fane-Smith"s great study; it seems such a pity that five foot three, with few books and nothing to do, should have all that s.p.a.ce, and six foot four, with much work and many books, be cramped up in this little room."
"What would you say to a move?"
"It will be such an expensive year, and there"s that dreadful Mr. Pogson always in the background."
"But if a house were given to us? Where"s Tom? I"ve a letter here which concerns you both. Do either of you remember anything about an old Mr.
Woodward who lived at 16 Guilford Square?"
"Why, yes! Don"t you remember, Tom? The old gentleman whose greenhouse we smashed."
"Rather!" said Tom. "I"ve the marks of the beastly thing now."
"What was it? Let me hear the story," said Raeburn, leaning back in his chair with a look of amus.e.m.e.nt flickering about his rather stern face.
"Why, father, it was years ago; you were on your first tour in America, I must have been about twelve, and Tom fourteen. We had only just settled in here, you know; and one unlucky Sat.u.r.day we were playing in the garden at "King of the Castle.""
"What"s that?" asked Raeburn.
"Why, Tom was king, and I was the Republican Army; and Tom was standing on the top of the wall trying to push me down. He had to sing:
""I"m the king of the castle! Get down, you dirty rascal!"
And somehow I don"t know how it was instead of climbing up, I pushed him backward by mistake, and he went down with an awful crash into the next garden. We knew it was the garden belonging to No. 16 quite a large one it is for the hospital hasn"t any. And when at last I managed to scramble on to the wall, there was Tom, head downward, with his feet sticking up through the roof of a greenhouse, and the rest of him all among the flower pots."
Raeburn laughed heartily.
"There was a brute of a cactus jammed against my face, too," said Tom.
"How I ever got out alive was a marvel!"
"Well, what happened?" asked Raeburn.
"Why, we went round to tell the No. 16 people. Tom waited outside, because he was so frightfully cut about, and I went in and saw an old, old man a sort of Methusaleh who would ask my name, and whether I had anything to do with you."
"What did you say to him?"
"I can"t remember except that I asked him to let us pay for the gla.s.s by installments, and tried to a.s.sure him that secularists were not in the habit of smashing other people"s property. He was a very jolly old man, and of course he wouldn"t let us pay for the gla.s.s though he frightened me dreadfully by muttering that he shouldn"t wonder if the gla.s.s and the honesty combined cost him a pretty penny."
"Did you ever see him again?"
"Not to speak to, but we always nodded to each other when we pa.s.sed in the square. I"ve not seen him for ages. I thought he must be dead."
"He is dead," said Raeburn; "and he has left you three hundred pounds, and he has left me his furnished house, with the sole proviso that I live in it."
"What a brick!" cried Tom and Erica, in a breath. "Now fancy, if we hadn"t played at "King of the Castle" that day!"
"And if Erica had not been such a zealous little Republican?" said Raeburn, smiling.
"Why, father, the very greenhouse will belong to you; and such a nice piece of garden! Oh, when can we go and see it, and choose a nice room for your study?"
"I will see Mr. Woodward"s executor tomorrow morning," said Raeburn.
"The sooner we move in the better for there are rocks ahead."
"The "we" refers only to you and Erica," said Aunt Jean, who had joined them. "Tom and I shall of course stay on here."
"Oh, no, auntie!" cried Erica in such genuine dismay that Aunt Jean was touched.
"I don"t want you to feel at all bound to have us," she said. "Now that the worst of the poverty is over, there is no necessity for clubbing together."
"And after you have shared all the discomforts with us, you think we should go off in such a dog-in-the-mangerish way as that!" cried Erica.
"Besides, it really was chiefly owing to Tom, who was the one to get hurt into the bargain. If you won"t come, I shall--" she paused to think of a threat terrible enough, "I shall think again about living with the Fane-Smiths."
This led the conversation back to Greyshot, and they lingered so long round the fire talking that Raeburn was for once unpunctual, and kept an audience at least ten minutes waiting for him.
No. 16 Guilford Square proved to be much better inside than a casual pa.s.ser in the street would have imagined. Outside, it was certainly a grim-looking house, but within it was roomy and comfortable. The lower rooms were wainscoted in a sort of yellowish-brown color, the upper wainscoted in olive-green. There was no such thing as a wall paper in the whole house, and indeed it was hard to imagine, when once inside it, that you were in nineteenth-century London at all.
Raeburn, going over it with Erica the following evening, was a little amused to think of himself domiciled in such an old-world house. Mr.
Woodward"s housekeeper, who was still taking care of the place, a.s.sured them that one of the leaden pipes outside bore the date of the seventeenth century, though the two last figures were so illegible that they might very possibly have stood for 1699.
Erica was delighted with it all, and went on private voyages of discovery, while her father talked to the housekeeper, taking stock of the furniture, imagining how she would rearrange the rooms, and planning many purchases to be made with her three hundred pounds. She was singing to herself for very lightness of heart when her father called her from below. She rand down again, checking her inclination to sing as she remembered the old housekeeper, who had but recently lost her master.
"I"ve rather set my affections on this room," said Raeburn, leading her into what had formerly been the dining room.
"The very place where I came in fear and trembling to make my confession," said Erica, laughing. "This would make a capital study."
"Yes, the good woman has gone to fetch an inch tape; I want to measure for the book shelves. How many of my books could I comfortably house in here, do you think?"
"A good many. The room is high, you see; and those two long, unbroken walls would take several hundred. Ah! Here is the measuring tape. Now we can calculate."
They were hard at work measuring when the door bell rang, and Tom"s voice was heard in the pa.s.sage, asking for Raeburn.
"This way, Tom!" called Erica. "Come and help us!"
But a laughing reference to the day of their childish disaster died on her lips when she caught sight of him for she knew that something was wrong. Accustomed all her life to live in the region of storms, she had learned to a nicety the tokens of rough weather.
"Hazeldine wishes to speak to you," said Tom, turning to Raeburn. "I brought him round here to save time."
"Oh! All right," said Raeburn, too much absorbed in planning the arrangement of his treasures to notice the unusual graveness of Tom"s face. "Ask him in here. Good evening, Hazeldine. You are the first to see us in our new quarters."