Back to Billabong Part 6

"It's her business to do what I tell her," said Mrs. Rainham, finding her voice, in an explosive fas.h.i.+on that made a pa.s.sing policeman glance up curiously. "She knew I had company, and expected her help. I had to see to the children's tea myself. And how do I know where she's been?--gallivanting round to all sorts of places! I tell you, young lady, you needn't think you're going to walk in here at midnight as if nothing was the matter."

"I never expected to," said Cecilia cheerfully. "But it was worth it."

Bob regarded her in solemn admiration.

"I don't think we gallivanted at all reprehensibly," he said. "Just dinner and a theatre. I haven't made much claim to her time during the last four years, Mrs. Rainham; surely I'm ent.i.tled to a little of it now."

"You!" Mrs. Rainham's tone was vicious. "You don't give her a home, do you? And as long as I do, she'll do what I tell her."

"No; I don't give her a home--yet," said Bob very quietly. "But I very soon will, I a.s.sure you; and meanwhile, she earns a good deal more than her keep in her father's house. You can't treat her worse than your servants--"

Cecilia suddenly turned to him.

"Ah, don't, Bob darling. It doesn't matter--truly--not a bit." With the end of the long penance before her, it seemed beyond the power of the angry woman in the doorway to hurt her much. What she could not bear was that their happy evening should be spoiled by hard and cruel words at its close. Bob's face, that had been so merry, was sterner than she had ever seen it, all its boyishness gone. She put up her own face, and kissed him.

"Good night--you mustn't stay any longer. I'll be all right." She whispered a few quick words of French, begging him to go, and Bob, though unwillingly, gave in.

"All right," he said. "Go to bed, little 'un. I'll do as I promised about writing." He saluted Mrs. Rainham stiffly. "You'll remember, Mrs. Rainham, that she stayed out solely at my wish--I take full responsibility, and I'll be ready to tell my father so." The door closed behind Cecilia, and he strode away down the street, biting his lip. He felt abominably as though he had deserted the little sister--and yet, what else could he do? One could not remain for ever, brawling on a doorstep at midnight--and Tommy had begged him to go. Still--

"Hang it!" he said viciously. "If she were only a decent Hun to fight!"

In the grim house in Lancaster Gate Cecilia was facing the music alone.

She listened unmoved, as she had listened many times before, to the catalogue of her sins and misdeeds--only she had never seen her stepmother quite so angry. Finally, a door above opened, and Mark Rainham looked out, his dull, colourless face weakly irritable.

"I wish you'd stop that noise, and let the girl go to bed," he said.

"Come here, Cecilia."

She went to him hesitating, and he looked at her with a spark of compa.s.sion. Then he kissed her.

"Good night," he said, as though he had called her to him simply to say it, and not to separate her from the furious woman who stood looking at them. "Run off to bed, now--no more talking." Cecilia ran upstairs obediently. Behind her, as she neared her attic, she heard her stepmother's voice break out anew.

"Just fancy Papa!" she muttered. Any mother sensations were lost in wonder at her father's actually having intervened. The incredible thing had happened. For a moment she felt a wave of pity for him, left alone to face the shrill voice. Then she shrugged her shoulders.

"Ah, well--he married her," she said. "I suppose he has had it many a time. Perhaps he knows how to stop it--I don't!" She laughed, turning the key in the lock, and sitting down beside the open window. The glamour of her happy evening was still upon her; even the scene with her stepmother had not had power to chase it away. The scene was only to be expected; the laughter of the evening was worth so every-day a penalty.

And the end of Mrs. Rainham's rule was nearly in sight. Not even to herself for a moment would she admit that there was any possibility of Bob failing to "make good" and take her away.

She went downstairs next morning to an atmosphere of sullen resentment.

Her father gave her a brief, abstracted nod, in response to her greeting, and went on with his bacon and his Daily Mail; her stepmother's forbidding expression checked any attempt at conversation.

The children stared at her with a kind of malevolent curiosity; they knew that a storm had been brewing for her the night before, and longed to know just how thoroughly she had "caught it." Eliza, bringing in singed and belated toast, looked at her with pity, tinged with admiration. Cook and she had been awakened at midnight by what was evidently, in the words of Cook, "a perfickly 'orrible bust-up," and knowing Cecilia to have been its object, Eliza looked at her as one may look who expects to see the scars of battle. Finding none, but receiving instead a cheerful smile, she returned to the kitchen, and reported to Cook that Miss Cecilia was "nuffink less than a neroine."

But as that day and the next wore on, Cecilia found it difficult to be cheerful. That she was in disgrace was very evident, Mrs. Rainham said no more about her sins of the night before; instead, she showed her displeasure by a kind of cold rudeness that gave a subtle insult to her smallest remark. The children were manifestly delighted. Cecilia was more or less in the position of a beetle on a pin, and theirs was the precious opportunity of seeing her wriggle. Wherefore they adopted their mother's tone, openly defied her, and turned school-hours into a pandemonium.

Cecilia at last gave up the attempt to keep order. She opened her desk and took out her knitting.

"Well, this is all very pleasant," she said, calmly. "You seem determined to do no work at all, so I can only hope that in time you will get tired of being idle. I can't attempt to teach you any more. I am quite ready, however, if you bring your lessons to me."

"You'll get into a nice row from the Mater," jeered Wilfred.

"Very possibly. She may even punish me by finding another governess,"

said Cecilia, with a twinkle. "However that may be, I do not feel compelled to talk to such rude little children as you any more. When you are able to speak politely you may come to me for anything you want; until then, I shall not answer you." She bent her attention to the mysteries of heel-turning.

The children were taken aback. To pinp.r.i.c.k with rudeness a victim who answered back was entertaining; but there was small fun in baiting anybody who sat silently knitting with a half-smile of contempt at the corners of her mouth. They gave it up after a time, and considered the question of going out; a pleasant thing to do, only that their mother had laid upon them a special injunction not to leave Cecilia, and she was in a mood that made disobedience extremely dangerous. Cecilia quite understood that she was being watched. No letters had yet come from Bob, and she knew that her stepmother had been hovering near the letter-box whenever the postman had called. Mrs. Rainham had accompanied them on their walk the day before; a remark of Avice's revealed that she meant to do so again to-day.

"It's all so silly," the girl said to herself. "If I chose to dive into a tube station or board a motor-bus she couldn't stop me; and she can't go on watching me and intercepting my letters indefinitely. I suppose she will get tired of it after a while." But meanwhile she found the spying rather amusing. Avice popped up unexpectedly if she went near the front door; Wilfred's bullet head peeped in through the window whenever she fancied herself alone in the schoolroom. Only her attic was safe--since to spy upon it would have required an aeroplane.

The third day brought no letter from Bob. Cecilia asked for her mail when she went down to breakfast, and was met by a blank stare from her stepmother--"I suppose if there had been any letters for you they would be on your plate." She flushed a little under the girl's direct gaze, and turned her attention to Queenie's table manners, which were at all times peculiar; and Cecilia sat down with a faint smile. It was time to obey orders and telegraph to Bob.

She planned how to do it, during a long morning when the children actually did some work--since to be rude or idle meant that their teacher immediately retired into her sh.e.l.l of silence, and knitted, and life became too dull. To employ Eliza was her first thought--rejected, since it seemed unlikely that Eliza would be able to get time off to go out. If Mrs. Rainham's well-known dislike for walking proved too strong for her desire to watch her stepdaughter, it would be easy enough to do it during the afternoon; but this hope proved vain, for when she appeared in the hall with her charges at three o'clock the lady of the house sailed from the drawing-room, ready for the march. They moved off in procession; Mrs. Rainham leading the way, with Avice and Wilfred, while Cecilia brought up the rear, holding Queenie's podgy hand.

She had telegraph forms in her desk, and the message, already written, and even stamped, was in the pocket of her coat. There was nothing for it but to act boldly, and accordingly, when they entered a street in which there was a post office, she let Queenie lag until they were a little distance behind the others. Then, as they reached the post office, she turned sharply in.

"Wait a minute, Queenie."

She thrust her message across the counter hurriedly. The clerk on duty was provokingly slow; he finished checking a doc.u.ment, and then lounged across to the window and took the form, running over it leisurely.

"Oh, you've got the stamps on. All right," he said, and turned away just as quick steps were heard, and Mrs. Rainham bustled in, panting.

"What are you doing?"

Cecilia met her with steady eyes.

"Nothing wrong, I a.s.sure you." She had had visions of covering her real purpose by buying stamps--but rejected it with a shrug.

"Thethilia gave the man a pieth of paper!" said Queenie shrilly.

"What was it? I demand to know!" cried Mrs. Rainham. She turned to the clerk, who stood open-mouthed, holding the telegram in his hand. "Show me that telegram. I am this young lady's guardian."

The clerk grinned broadly. The stout and angry lady made no appeal to him, and Cecilia was a pretty girl, and moreover her telegram was for a flying captain. The clerk wore a returned soldier's badge himself. He fell back on Regulations.

"Can't be done, ma'am. The message is all in order."

"Let me see it."

"Much as my billet's worth, if I did," said the clerk. "Property of the Postmaster-General now, ma'am. Couldn't even give it back to the young lady."

"I'll report you!" Mrs. Rainham fumed.

"Do, ma'am. I'll get patted on the head for doin' me duty." The clerk's grin widened. Cecilia wished him good afternoon gravely, and slipped out of the office, pursued by her stepmother.

"What was in that telegram?"

"It was to my brother."

"What was in it?"

"It was to Bob, and that is guarantee that there was nothing wrong in it," Cecilia said steadily. "It was on private business."

"You have no right to have any business that I do not know about."