A Tatter of Scarlet Part 4

"Maybe not--maybe not, but in this house we mostly go by what the master says. 'Tis more comfortable like all round. Eh, but ye have come in time to be leathered proper. If the lads of the Internationale yonder had been brisk at the firing ye might have gotten off, but as it is the auld man has nothing better to do than attend to ye on the spot!"

This made me a little uncomfortable as to our reception, but Deventer did not seem greatly disturbed.

"You tell me where my sisters are, and then go and find somebody else who will believe your lies, Jack Jaikes!"

The dark young man with the large hands grinned still more.

"Where should the three young ladies be at this time of night but in their beds? Go and take your dose, young gentlemen. No use stopping to think it over. In an hour, maybe, the worst of the sting will be by with--and at any rate there are sofas in the parlour!"

"Get out, Jack Jaikes! Hannah and Liz may be in bed, but I warrant that Rhoda Polly is somewhere on the look-out with a gun ready."

"Correct!" admitted Jaikes, with a chuckle. "I saw her at the window just over this old stone staircase a minute before t'owd man shouted the order for me to let you in."

"Come on then, Cawdor," Hugh cried; "let's find Rhoda Polly!" He ran upstairs as fast as he could, anxious to find his sister before having the first interview with his father. For though he knew that Jack Jaikes had been lying, he could not be sure on what basis of fact so much imagination reposed.

And then there was the message flashed from behind the chimney-pots, "Did anyone send you word that you were to come?"

"You did not want to go and see your father," he whispered, as we stood close together, panting in the dark of the second landing. "You came away with well on a thousand francs in your pocket--got without asking, too. I run a thousand dangers to see my father, and all I am likely to get is a hiding."

The moon was lighting up one side of the landing, and showing where mattresses and corn-sacks had been used to block the windows damaged by rifle fire. The house was wonderfully still, astonis.h.i.+ngly so when one thought how many people were in it on the alert. But we must have made more noise than we had supposed in coming up the stairs, for as we stood here out of breath with the speed of our rush, a voice came calmly from the shadows by the window curtains.

"Come over here, Hugh--and you, Angus Cawdor--I am Rhoda Polly."

CHAPTER V

THE DEVENTER GIRLS

I suppose this is as good a place as any to bring in and explain the daughters of the house of Deventer. I had known them ever since I could remember. First as "kids" to be properly despised, then as long-legged, short-skirted, undistinguishable ent.i.ties, useful at fielding, but remarkably bad at throwing in to the wicket.

During our long stay at the _lycee_ these creatures had been at schools of their own. Their hair had gradually darkened and lengthened, so that it could be more easily tugged. It had been gathered up and arranged about their heads at a period which synchronised with the lengthening of their skirts, and the complete retirement of the ankles which had once been so freely whacked with hockey sticks and even (I regret to say) kicked at football practice.

There was no great difference in age between the girls. They might have been triplets, but denied the accusation fiercely and unanimously, with more of personal feeling than seemed necessary. Often as court of last appeal the arbitration of their mother had to be referred to. In her gentle cooing voice she would give the names of the various medical men who had ushered them into the world. These were settled in various mineralogical centres.

"There was Doctor Laidlaw of Coatbridge. He was Rhoda Polly's. A fine sharp man was Doctor Laidlaw, sandy-whiskered, but given to profane swearing. Not that he ever swore in _my_ presence, but he had the name for it among the colliers and ironworkers."

"It's from him," insinuated Hugh, "that Rhoda Polly gets her vocabulary."

"That's as it may be," his mother would reply patiently, her thoughts travelling before her to pick out number two.

"Let me see. For Hannah I had Doctor b.u.t.terworth--Tom b.u.t.terworth of Barrow-in-Furness--and of all the upsetting conceited creatures on this earth, commend me to Tom. Tom-Show-a-Leg he was called, because he came to the b.a.l.l.s in knee-breeches and silk stockings. But for all that I will never deny that he did his duty by Hannah, though at times I had my own adoes to keep Dennis from heaving him out of the window.

"And there was Liz, poor thing. She had to put up with a 'loc.u.m' at Herbestal, in Belgium, before your father came here. There was not an English doctor in the place, but it made no great difference, for Madame Batyer was wiser than a whole college of doctors, and I will always think that beginning to be used to the language so soon has improved Liz's French accent!"

Obviously it was impossible for me during my salad days to escape from falling in love with one or other of these three pretty girls. I solved the question by falling in love with all three in turns, the rotation of crops being determined chiefly by whose vacations coincided with mine.

This bred no jealousies, for the girls were large-minded, and at that time a sweetheart more or less had no particular significance for them.

Rhoda Polly was the learned one; she had been to college at Selborne, and still retained in speech and manner something Oxonian and aloof. But really she was gentle and humble-minded, eager with sympathy, and only shy because afraid of proffering it where it was not wanted. Rhoda Polly was a creamy blonde with abundant rippling hair, clearly cut small features, and the most sensitive of mouths. Yet she was full of the most unselfish courage, ready for long smiling endurances, and with that unusual feminine silence which enables a woman to keep her griefs to herself and even to deceive others into thinking she has none.

Did anyone want anything, Rhoda Polly would find it. Had two tickets only been sent for the theatre, Rhoda Polly would not mind staying at home. Rhoda Polly never minded anything. She did not cry half the afternoon like Hannah over a spoilt dress, nor fall into any of Liz's miniature rages. She was Rhoda Polly, and everybody depended upon her.

The girls confided in her largely, and never expected her to have any secrets of her own for truck, barter, or exchange.

Hannah had been delicate always--or at least had been so considered by her mother.

Her character had been formed between her mother's favour and her elder sister's habit of giving way rather than face an argument. She was dark and slender, placidly sure of being always right, and of looking best in a large picture hat with a raven plume.

Hannah had been sent to school near Lausanne, which was kept by the daughter of the famous Froebel, a.s.sisted by a relative of the still more famous Pestalozzi. An English lady was in residence at the Pestalozzi-Froebel Inst.i.tute, to teach the pupils the aristocratic manners, so rare and necessary an accomplishment in a country where the President of the Republic returns from his high office to put on his grocer's ap.r.o.n, and goes on weighing out pounds of tea at the counter of the old shop which had been his father's before him.

Liz was all dimples and easy manners, the plaything of the house. She knew she could do no wrong, so long as she went on opening wide her eyes of myosotis blue, now purring and now scratching like a kitten; she would often dart away for no reason whatever, only to come back a minute after, having apparently forgotten the cause of her brusque disappearance. She was accordingly a good deal spoilt, not only by the young engineers who frequented the Chateau Schneider, but by her parents and sisters as well.

One of the former, asked the reason of a decided preference for Liz, declared that it was because she could never be mistaken for a French convent-bred girl. It was pointed out to him that the same might be said for the other two, but he stuck to his point. Rhoda Polly with her Oxford manner of condescending to undergraduates, and Hannah with the Pestalozzi Inst.i.tute refinements, might speak and look as if they had a duenna hidden in the background, but Liz--never! She was more likely to box somebody's ears.

CHAPTER VI

AN OLD MAN MASTERFUL

Deventer and I came upon Rhoda Polly while we were getting our breath after the rush upstairs. We were old friends, and Rhoda Polly did not even put aside her rifle to greet us.

"Come from school without leave--run away--good!" she exclaimed. "Have you made it all right with father?"

"Not yet--that is--the fact is---we thought you might as well come along with us, Rhoda Polly."

"You think there will be a storm, Hugh?"

"Sure of it, but at least you can tell the Pater that Cawdor here is no prodigal. He comes with his father's blessing and a whole pile of paper money."

"Father is among his entrenchments on the roof," said the girl; "better wait till he comes down. He is never quite himself when he is up there and the wind is blowing. Now tell me what made you run away?"

"We are going to enlist among Garibaldi's volunteers, and fight for France--at least that's what Cawdor says. But I mean to stay here till all is safe for mother and you."

At this moment Rhoda Polly nudged us. There was a sound of heavy decided footsteps grating on the steel ladder which led to the roof, then a thump and the noise of feet stamping on the floor above us.

"He has been lying behind the chimney till he is stiff," whispered Rhoda Polly. "Give him time to limber himself."

For a minute all was quiet along the Potomac, and then a mighty voice was heard demanding "those two young rascals."

Deventer's smile was somewhat forced, and it might only have been the moonlight, but he certainly looked both sick and white about the gills.

I was not greatly affected, but then I had not had his discipline. My case and credit were clear. All the same, it was obvious that the Dennis Deventer who captained his forces against the insurgents within the walls of Chateau Schneider, and the seeker after knowledge who prowled about my father's library or listened modestly to his interminable expositions, were very different persons.

"Better not keep him waiting," said Rhoda Polly. "I will take you. He has a room for himself fitted up on the third floor."