He saw a kind, moved, understanding look come over her eyes, and firm, generous mouth, and quickly, man-like, he pressed his advantage.
"Look here," he said coaxingly, "don"t you think we might hit on some kind of compromise? Won"t you allow me just to get some sort of temporary housekeeper who can look after things while poor Nanna is laid up?"
She shook her head. "I don"t think any of us would like that," she said.
"But I daresay I have become too much of a Martha."
She got up, feeling painfully afraid that she was going to cry again.
"I don"t see why I shouldn"t do as Timmy said--change my ap.r.o.n, I mean, and go into the drawing-room. For one thing, I should like to see Mrs.
Crofton"s dress. Tom says she looks a regular peach! That"s his highest form of praise, you know."
Radmore suddenly resolved to say something which had been on his mind of late. "Don"t you think that Jack"s making rather a fool of himself over that pretty little lady?"
Betty looked across at him with the frank, direct gaze that he remembered so well. "I"m afraid he is," she answered. "He and Janet had quite a row about her this morning. He seemed to think we had been rude to her; he was most awfully huffy about it. But I suppose saying anything only makes things worse in such a case, doesn"t it?"
"I don"t see why I shouldn"t speak to _her_. She and I know each other pretty well. She was a desperate little flirt when I first knew her in Egypt." And then, as he saw a look cross her face to which he had no clue, he added hastily:--"She"s quite all right, Betty. She"s quite a straight little woman."
"I"m sure she is," said Betty cordially.
She was wondering, wondering, wondering what G.o.dfrey really thought of Enid Crofton? Whether or no there had been a touch of jealousy in what he had said about Jack just now? He had said the words about Jack"s making a fool of himself very lightly. Still there had been a peculiar expression on his face.
During the last fortnight, while doing the hundred and one things which fell to her share, Betty had given the subject of Enid Crofton and G.o.dfrey Radmore a good deal of thought, while telling herself all the time that, after all, it was none of her business--now.
All at once she became aware that Radmore was looking hard at her. "Look here," he exclaimed, coming up close to where she was again engaged in drying and polishing the heavy old crystal goblets. "I want to ask you a favour, Betty. It"s absurd that I should be here, with far more money than I know what to do with, while the only people in the world I care for, are all worried, anxious, and overworking themselves. Janet says it"s impossible to get a cook. What I want to do if you"ll let me--" he looked at her pleadingly, and Betty"s heart began to beat: thus was he wont to look at her in the old days, when he wanted to wheedle something out of her.
"What I want to do," he went on eagerly, "is to go up to London to-morrow morning and bring back a cook in triumph! Life has taught me _one_ thing,--that is that money can procure anything." As she remained silent, he added in a tone of relief, "There, that"s settled! You go up to bed now. I"ll be off early in the morning, and we"ll have a cook back by lunch-time."
"Indeed you won"t!" She faced him squarely. "I know you mean very kindly, G.o.dfrey--I know exactly how you feel. I"ve often felt like that myself; you feel that
""Sympathy without relief Is like mustard without beef."
"That"s the organ-grinder"s motto, and a very good motto, too. But we"re the exception which proves the rule. We"re grateful for your sympathy, but we don"t want your relief."
As he gazed at her, both dismayed and very exasperated, she went on, speaking a little wildly:--"Mustard"s a very good thing. I think I needed a little mustard just now to binge me up!"
"But that"s perfectly absurd!" he exclaimed. "Why not have the beef as well as the mustard? And look here. I don"t think it"s fair to me." He stood, looking straight at her, his face aglow with feeling. And again it was as if the old G.o.dfrey of long ago, the G.o.dfrey that had been impetuous, hot-tempered, unreasonable, and yet so infinitely dear to her, who stood there, so near to her that had she moved, he must have touched her. She sat down, and unseen by him, she put her two hands on the edge of the well-scrubbed table, and pressed her fingers down tightly. Then she smiled up at him, and shook her head.
"You"re treating me like a stranger," he protested doggedly; "however badly I"ve behaved, I"ve not deserved that."
He was looking down at her hair, the lovely fair hair which had always been her greatest beauty--the one beauty she now shared with Rosamund. He wondered if it would ever grow long again. And yet now he told himself that he did not want to see her different from what she had become.
"Treating you like a stranger? You"re the first visitor we"ve had to stay at Old Place since the Armistice."
As he said nothing, she went on, a little breathlessly, "D"you remember what a lot of people used to come and go in the old days? That was one of the nice things about Janet. She loved to entertain our friends, even our acquaintances. But now we never have anybody. It shows how we feel about you that we are having you here, like this. But we can only do it if you"ll take us as we are."
"Of course I take you as you are," he said aggrieved, "but I don"t see why I shouldn"t do my little bit, when it"s so easy for me to do it.
People talk such rot about money! They"ll take anything in the world but money from those who--" he hesitated, and then boldly brought out the word--"love them."
"And yet," said Betty quietly, "you yourself contemptuously rejected the money that father wanted to give you when he could well afford it--the day you left Beechfield nine years ago."
He hesitated, unutterably astonished, and yes, very much moved, too, at this, her first reference to their joint past.
"I know I did," he said at last, "and I was a fool to do it. That cheque of Mr. Tosswill"s would have made all the difference to me during certain awful weeks in Australia when I didn"t know where to turn for a shilling.
I"ve been right up against it--the reality of things, I mean--and I know both how much and how little money counts in life. It counts a lot, Betty."
"I"ve been up against the reality of things, too," said Betty slowly, "and I"ve learnt how very little money counts. You"d have known that, if you"d been with the French Army. That was the difference between the French and the English. The French _poilu_ had no money at all, and the English Tommy had plenty. But it made no difference in the big things."
CHAPTER XVIII
Meanwhile Timmy, upstairs, had performed what was for him quite an elaborate toilet. He possessed a new Eton suit of which he was secretly proud, for in this as in so many things unlike most little boys, he took great care of his clothes, and had an almost finicking dislike to what was rough or untidy. His two younger sisters" untidiness was a perpetual annoyance to him, and he still felt sore and angry at the way Rosamund had upset his toy-box when looking for that old prescription.
To-night he felt queerly excited and above himself. After-dinner coffee had been made in a way Betty had learnt in France, and she had foolishly allowed him to drink a cup of the strong, potent, delicious fluid. This had had a curious effect on him, intensifying his already acute perceptions, and making him feel both brave and bold as well as wary--wary Timmy Tosswill always was.
And now he was eagerly debating within himself whether he could carry out an experiment he had an eager wish to try. It had filled his mind, subconsciously, ever since he had slipped quickly in front of his brother Jack to open the front door to Mrs. Crofton, a couple of hours ago.
Mrs. Crofton was very much of a town lady, and she had actually been accompanied, during her short progress through the dark village, by her parlourmaid. When Timmy opened the front door, she had been engaged in giving the girl a few last directions as to how a lighted candle was to be left out for her in her hall, for she had brought her latchkey with her. After ringing the bell, the lady and her maid had moved away from the door a little way, and Timmy, staring out at the two figures, who stood illumined by the hall light out on the gravel carriage drive, had seen Something Else.
He did not invariably see Mrs. Crofton accompanied or companioned by that of which he had spoken to his mother. Sometimes days would go by and he would see nothing, though he was a constant, if never a welcome, visitor at The Trellis House.
Then all at once, sometimes when she was in the garden, at other times in the charming little parlour, Timmy would see the wraith of Colonel Crofton, and the wraith of Colonel Crofton"s terrier, Dandy, looking as real as the flesh-and-blood woman beside whom they seemed to stand.
Sometimes they appeared, as it were, intermittently, but now and again they would stay quite a long time.
As long as he could remember, Timmy had been aware of what Nanna expressed by the phrase "things that were not there," and he was so accustomed to the phenomena that it did not impress his own mind as anything very much out of the way, or strange.
Dr. O"Farrell had always shown a keen interest in Timmy"s alleged visions and presentiments. Like so many country doctors of the old school, he was a man not only of great natural shrewdness, but of considerable intellectual curiosity, and, from his point of view, by far the most inexplicable of the little boy"s a.s.sertions had concerned a long vanished building which had stood, for something like three centuries, close to the parish church, right on the main street of the village.
One Easter Sunday, Timmy, coming out of church, had excitedly exclaimed that he saw to his right a house where no house had been up to yesterday.
His sisters had laughed at him and his mother had snubbed him. But when Janet had told Dr. O"Farrell of her little boy"s latest and most peculiar claim to having seen something which was not there, the doctor had gone home and looked up an old county history, to find that up to Waterloo year there had still been standing in the pretty little hamlet of Beechfield, a small Elizabethan manor-house which had figured in the t.i.tus Oates conspiracy.
But to return to the evening of Mrs. Crofton"s second visit to Old Place.
Timmy had given his mother his word of honour that Flick should not be released from the stable till their visitor had left. But no casuist ever realised more clearly than did Timothy Tosswill, the delicate distinctions which spread, web-like, between the spirit, and the letter, of a law. And while he moved nimbly about his bedroom, the plan, or rather the plot he had formed, took formal shape.
Josephine, Timmy"s white Angora cat, was now established in a comfortable basket in a corner of the scullery. There she lay, looking like a ball of ermine, with her two ten-days old kittens snuggling up close to her.
Josephine was a nervous, fussy mother, but she was devoted to her master, and he could do with her anything he liked.
Very softly he crept past Nanna"s door, and as he started walking down the back staircase, he heard voices.
Then Betty and G.o.dfrey were still in the scullery? That was certainly a bit of bad luck, for though he thought he could manage his G.o.dfather, he knew he couldn"t deceive Betty. Betty somehow seemed to know by instinct when he, Timmy, was bent on some pleasant little bit of mischief.
He need not have been afraid, for as he slowly opened the door at the bottom of the stairs, Betty exclaimed, "I"m going into the drawing-room after all! But first I must run upstairs and make myself tidy. You two go on, and I"ll follow as soon as I can."
She ran past Timmy, and at once the boy said firmly to Radmore, "I"m going to take my cat, Josephine, into the drawing-room. Ladies who hate dogs nearly always like cats."