Back to Billabong Part 3

"Ah," said his stepmother freezingly, "and where will you take her?"

Bob hesitated.

"There are plenty of places--" he began.

"Not for a young girl alone. Cecilia is very ignorant of England; you could not be with her. Your father would not hear of it. You must remember that Cecilia is under his control until she is twenty-one."

"My father has never bothered about either of us," Bob said bitterly.

"He surely won't object if I take her off your hands."

"He will certainly not permit any such thing. Whatever arrangement he made during your aunt's lifetime was quite a different matter. If you attempt to take Cecilia from his control you commit an illegal action,"

said Mrs. Rainham--hoping she was on safe ground. To her relief Bob did not contradict her. English law and its mysteries were beyond him.

"I don't see that that matters," he began doubtfully. His stepmother cut him short.

"You would very soon find that it matters a good deal," she said coldly.

"It would be quite simple for your father to get some kind of legal injunction, forbidding you to interfere with your sister. Home training is what she needs, and we are determined that she shall get it. You will only unsettle and injure her by trying to induce her to disobey us."

The hard voice fell like lead on the boy's ears. He felt very helpless; if he did indeed s.n.a.t.c.h his sister away from this extremely unpleasant home, and their father had only to stretch out a long, legal tentacle and claw her back, it was clear that her position would be harder than ever. He could only give in, at any rate, for the present, and in his anxiety for the little sister whom Aunt Margaret had always trained him to protect, he humbled himself to beg for better treatment for her. "No one ever was angry with her," he said. "She'll do anything for you if you're decent to her."

"She might give less cause for annoyance if she had had a little more severity," said Mrs. Rainham with an unspoken sneer at poor Aunt Margaret. "You had better advise her to do her best in return for the very comfortable home we give her." With which Bob had to endeavour to be content, for the present. He went off to find Cecilia, with a lowering brow, leaving his stepmother not nearly so easy in her mind as she seemed. For Bob had a square jaw, and was apt to talk little and do a good deal; and his affection for Cecilia was, in Mrs. Rainham's eyes, little short of ridiculous.

Thereafter, the brother and sister took counsel together and made great plans for the future, when once the Air Force should decide that it had no further wish to keep Captain Robert Rainham from earning his living on terra firma. What that future was to be for Bob was very difficult to plan. Aunt Margaret had intended him for a profession; but the time for that had gone by, even had the money been still available. "I'm half glad that it isn't," Bob said; "I don't see how a fellow could go back to swotting over books after being really alive for nearly five years."

There seemed nothing but "the land" in some shape or form; they were not very clear about it, but Bob was strenuously "keeping his ears open"--like so many lads of his rank in the early months of 1919, when the future that had seemed so indefinite during the years of war suddenly loomed up, very large and menacing. Cecilia had less anxiety; she had a cheerful faith that Bob would manage something--a three-roomed cottage somewhere in the country, where he could look after sheep, or crops, or something of the kind, while she cooked and mended for him, and grew such flowers as had bloomed in the dear garden at Fontainebleau. Sheep and crops, she was convinced, grew themselves, in the main; a person of Bob's ability would surely find little difficulty in superintending the process. And, whatever happened, nothing could be worse than life in Lancaster Gate.

Neither of them ever thought of appealing to their father, either for advice or for help. He remained, as he had always been to them, utterly colourless; a kind of well-bred shadow of his wife, taking no part in her hard treatment of Cecilia, but lifting not a finger to save her. He did not look happy; indeed, he seldom spoke--it was not necessary, when Mrs. Rainham held the floor. He had a tiny den which he used as a smoking-room, and there he spent most of his time when at home, being blessed in the fact that his wife disliked the smell of smoke, and refused to allow it in her drawing-room. n.o.body took much notice of him.

The younger children treated him with cool indifference; Bob met him with a kind of strained and uncomfortable civility.

Curiously enough, it was only Eliza who divined in him a secret hankering after his eldest daughter--Cecilia, who would have been very much astonished had anyone hinted at such a thing to her. The sharp eyes of the little c.o.c.kney were not to be deceived in any matter concerning the only person in the house who treated her as if she were a human being and not a grate-cleaning automaton.

"You see 'im foller 'er wiv 'is eyes, that's all," said Eliza to Cook, in the privacy of their joint bedroom. "Fair 'ungry he looks, sometimes."

"No need for 'im to be 'ungry, if 'e 'ad the sperrit of a man," said Cook practically. "Ain't she 'is daughter?"

"Well, yes, in a manner of speakin'," said Eliza doubtfully. "But there ain't much of father an' daughter about them two. I'd ruther 'ave my ole man, down W'itechapel way; 'e can belt yer a fair terror, w'en 'e's drunk, but 'e'll allers tike yer out an' buy yer a kipper arterwards.

Thet's on'y decent, fatherly feelin'."

"Well, Master don't belt 'er, does 'e?"

"No; but 'e don't buy 'er the kipper, neither. An' I'd ruther 'ave the beltin' from my ole man, even wivout no kipper, than 'ave us allers lookin' at each other as if we was wooden images. Even a beltin' shows as 'ow a man 'as some regard for 'is daughter."

"It do," said Cook. "Pity is, you ain't 'ad more of it, that's the only thing!"

CHAPTER III

PLAYING TRUANT

"Demobilized! Oh, Bob--truly?"

"Truly and really," said Bob. "At least, I shall be in twenty-seven days. Got my orders. Show up for the last time on the fifteenth of next month. Get patted on the head, and told to run away and play. That's the programme, I believe, Tommy. The question is--What shall we play at?"

Cecilia brushed the hair from her brow.

"I don't know," she said vaguely. "It's too big to think of; and I can't think in this awful house, anyhow. Take me out, quick, please, Bobby."

"Sure," said Bob, regarding her with an understanding eye. "But you want to change or something, don't you, old girl?"

"Why, yes, I suppose I do," said Cecilia, with a watery smile, looking at her schoolroom overall. "I forgot clothes. I've had a somewhat packed morning."

"You look as if this had been your busy day," remarked Bob. "Right-oh, old girl; jump into your things, and I'll wait on the mat. Any chance of the she-dragon coming back?"

"No; she's gone out to tea."

"More power to her," said Bob cheerfully. "And the dragon puppies?"

"Oh, they're safely out of the way. I won't be five minutes, Bob. Don't shut the door tight--you might disappear before I opened it."

"Not much," said Bob, through the crack of the door. "I'm a fixture.

Want any shoes cleaned?"

"No, thanks, Bobby dear. I have everything ready."

"From what the other fellows say about their sisters, I'm inclined to believe that you're an ornament to your s.e.x," remarked Bob. "When you say five minutes, it really does mean not more than five and a half, as a rule; other girls seem to mean three-quarters of an hour."

"I get all my things ready the night before when I'm going to meet you,"

said Cecilia. "Catch me losing any time on my one day out. You can come back again--my coat's on the hanger there, Bobby." He put her into it deftly, and she leaned back against him. "If you knew how good it is to see you again--and you smell of clean fresh air and good tobacco and Russia leather, and all sorts of nice things."

"Good gracious, I'll excite attention in the street!" grinned Bob. "I didn't imagine I was a walking scent-factory!"

"Neither you are--but everything in this house smells of coal-smoke and cabbage-water and general fustiness, and you're a nice change, that's all," said Cecilia. They ran downstairs together light-heartedly, and let themselves out into the street.

"Do we catch a train or a 'bus?"

"Oh, can't we walk?" Cecilia said. "I think if I walked hard I might forget Mrs. Rainham."

"I'd hate you to remember her," Bob said. "Tell me what she has been doing, anyhow, and then we won't think of her any more."

"It doesn't sound much," Cecilia said. "There never is anything very much. Only it goes on all the time." She told him the story of her day, and managed to make herself laugh now and then over it. But Bob did not laugh. His good-humoured young face was set and angry.

"There isn't a whole lot in it, is there?" Cecilia finished. "And no one would think I was badly off--especially when the thing that hit me hardest of all was just dusting that awful drawing-room while she plays her awful tunes. Yes, I know I shouldn't say awful, and that no lady says it--that must be true because Mrs. Rainham frequently tells me so--but it's such a relief to say whatever I feel like."

"You can say what you jolly well please," said Bob wrathfully. "Who's she, I'd like to know, to tell us what to say? And she kept you there all the afternoon, when she knew you were due to meet me!--my hat, she is a venomous old bird! And now it's half-past four, and what time does she expect you back?"

"Oh--the usual thing; the children's tea-time at six. She told me not to be late."

Bob set his jaw.