The Tree of Knowledge Part 29

"G.o.dfrey," said Miss Charlotte, "this is your sister Elaine."

The boy stared a moment. Elaine's face was crimson--tears stood in her eyes; her appearance was altogether as eccentric as it well could be, for she wore the Sunday dress and hat to do him honor. To him, used as he was to slim girls in tailor-made gowns, with horsy little collars and diamond pins, perfectly-arranged hair, and gloves and shoes leaving nothing to be desired, the effect was simply unutterably comic. He surveyed his half-sister from head to foot, and burst into a peal of laughter. It was all too funny. His aunt was funny, the horse and trap funnier still; but this Elaine was funniest of all.

"What a guy!" he said to himself, a sudden feeling of wrathful disgust taking the place of his mirth, as he angrily reflected that this strange object bore the name of Brabourne. Aloud he said:

"I beg your pardon for laughing, but you have got such a rum hat on; I suppose anything does for these lanes." Then before anyone could dare to remonstrate, he was up on the box with the reins in his hand. "Now then, Johnnie," said he to the outraged Acland, "up with you. I'm going to drive this thing--is it a calf or a mule? Or is it a cross between an elephant and a pig? I suppose you bring it down for the luggage. What sort of a show have you got in your stables, eh?"

To this ribald questioning, Acland, white with fury, made answer that the Misses Willoughbys had only one horse at present; at which the boy laughed loudly, and confided to him his opinion that "their friends must be an uncommon queer lot, for them to dare to show with such a turn-out."

This dust and ashes Acland had to swallow, watching meanwhile the stout horse, Taffy, goaded up the hills with a speed that threatened apoplexy, and das.h.i.+ng down them with a rattle which seemed to more than hint at broken springs.

And Elaine and her aunt sat inside, with G.o.dfrey's portmanteau for company, and said never a word. Low as had been Miss Willoughby's expectations, little as she had been prepared to love the outcome of the Orton training, certainly this boy exceeded her severest thought; he out-heroded Herod.

Elsa was simply choked; she could not say one word. She scrambled out of the wagonette at the door with a face from which the eagerness of hope had gone, to be replaced by a burning, baleful rage. She was furious; her self-love had been cruelly wounded, and hers was not a nature to forget. Of course she said nothing to her aunts. They had never encouraged her to divulge her feelings to them, and she never did. She rushed away to her old nursery, to stamp and gesticulate in a wild frenzy of anger and hurt feeling.

Meanwhile G.o.dfrey walked in, scowling. He had expected dulness, but nothing so terrible as this promised to be. Sulkily he ordered Venom, the bull-dog, to lie down in the hall, and stumbled into the drawing-room to shake hands, with ill-suppressed contempt, with all his step-aunts, who sat around in silent condemnation.

Miss Ellen spoke first, thinking in her kindness to set the shy boy at ease.

"You will be glad of some tea after your long journey; you must be thirsty."

"Yes, I am thirsty; but I'm not very keen on tea, thanks. I'd sooner have a B and S, if you have such a thing; or a lemon squash."

There was a dead silence.

"Oh, don't you mind if you haven't got it," he said, easily; "a gla.s.s of beer would do."

After a moment's hesitation Miss Ellen rang the bell, and ordered "a gla.s.s of ale," and then Miss Charlotte found her voice, and told their guest to go and chain up his dog in the stable.

"Oh, all right! I'll go and cheek the old Johnnie with the stiff collar," he said; and so sauntered out, leaving the ladies gazing helplessly each at the other.

All tea-time the visitor was considerably subdued, perhaps by the close proximity and severe expression of the sisterhood; but after tea Miss Charlotte told Elsa to put on her hat and take her brother round the garden. Once out of sight, Master G.o.dfrey's tongue was loosed.

"Whew! What a set of old cats!" he cried. "Have you had to live with them all your life? I'm sure I'm sorry for you, poor beggar."

Elsa's smouldering resentment was very near ablaze.

"What's the matter with my aunts?" she asked, defiantly.

"What's the matter with your aunts? By Jove! that's good. What's the matter with _you_, that you can't see it? Such a set of old cautions!"

he burst into loud laughter. "But you've lived with them till you're almost as bad! I never saw such a figure of fun! I say, what would you take to walk down Piccadilly in that get-up? I'm hanged if I'd walk with you, though?"

"How dare you?" Elsa's cheeks and eyes flamed, she shook with pa.s.sion.

"How dare you speak to me like that? I hate you," she cried, "you rude, detestable child. I wish I had never seen you! Why do you come here? And I--I--I--was looking forward so to having you--I was! I was! I wish you had never been born--there!"

"If she isn't snivelling, I declare! Just because I don't admire her bed-gown! Pretty little dear, then, didn't it like to be told that it was unbecomingly dressed? There, there, it should wear its things hind-part-before, if it liked, and carry a tallow candle on the tip of its nose, or any other little fancy it may have. As to asking me why I came here," he went on, with a sudden vicious change of tone, "I can tell you I only came because I was sent, and not because I wanted to.

Uncle Fred and Aunt Ottilie are off to Homburg, and want to be rid of me, so they s.h.i.+pped me off here; and Uncle Fred told an awful whopper, for he said it was no end of a jolly place, and I could ride and drive.

Ride what? A bantam c.o.c.k? Drive what? A fantail pigeon, for that's all the live stock I can see on the estate, unless you count the barrel on four legs that brought us from the station, and which the old boy calls a horse; and now where's the tennis-ground?"

"There isn't one."

"Not a tennis-ground? Well, this is pleasant, certainly. Brisk up, whiney-piney, and tell me where's the nearest place I can get any tennis."

"Now look here," said the girl, in a voice thick with emotion, "if you think you are going to speak to me like this, I can tell you you are dreadfully mistaken. How dare you!--how _dare_ you say such things! But I know. It is because the aunts all speak to me as if I were four years old, and order me about. You think you can do it too. But you shan't. I am taller and older than you. I will knock you down if you tease me again--do you hear? I will knock you down, I tell you, you impudent child!"

G.o.dfrey shut his left eye, poked his tongue out of the right-hand corner of his mouth, and leered at his sister.

"You only try, my girl," he said, "you only try, and I'll make it hot for you. You'll find out you had better be civil to me, I can tell you, or I'll make you wish you were dead; so now."

"I shall tell my aunts----!"

"All right! You play the tell-tale, and you see what you'll get. I twig what you want--someone to lick you into shape--you've never had a brother. Well, now I've come, I'm going to spend my time in making you behave yourself and look like a Christian."

She stamped her foot at him; she could hardly speak for wrath.

"Do you know how old I am?"

"No, and don't want to; I only know you're the biggest a.s.s a man ever had for a sister, and that if I can't improve you a little, I won't let Aunt Ottilie have you up to town--for I wouldn't be seen with you; so now you know my opinion."

"And you shall know mine. I think you the most cowardly, rude, detestable boy I ever met. I hate and despise you. I only hope you will be punished well one day for your cruelty to me."

"Well, you are a duffer! Crying if anyone says a word to you! I say, who's the old boy coming up the path, getting over the stile at the end of the terrace?"

The girl glanced up and recognised Mr. Fowler with a sense of pa.s.sionate relief. He was the only person to whom she dared show her moods; in a moment she was sobbing in his arms.

"Why, Elsie, what's this?" asked the quiet voice, as he stroked back her tumbled hair with caressing hand. "Look up, child. Is that G.o.dfrey yonder?"

"Oh, yes--yes--yes! And I hate him!... I ... hate him! I wish he had never come here to make me so unhappy! He is a bad boy! I wish I had never seen him!"

CHAPTER XX.

Here all the summer could I stay, For there's a Bishop's Teign And King's Teign And Coomb at the clear Teign's head, Where, close by the stream, You may have your cream, All spread upon barley bread.

Then who would go Into dark Soho And chatter with dank-haired critics When he can stay For the new-mown hay And startle the dappled crickets?

KEATS.

A great bustle was rife in the little parlor of the "Fountain Head." A hamper was being packed, rugs strapped together, preparations in general being made. The excitement seemed to communicate itself to the village in some mysterious way; and small wonder. It was rarely that so many visitors from London haunted the Combe all at once; rarer still that so mysterious a celebrity attached to one of them; rarest of all that the Misses Willoughby should be giving a picnic-party.

Yet so it was; and the weather, which, under the iron rule of St.

Swithun, had "gone to pieces," as Osmond said, for the past three weeks, had now revived anew, full of heat and beauty and suns.h.i.+ne.

In the doorway of the inn stood Osmond himself, and a tall, fine-looking girl with a brilliant complexion and large hazel eyes.

"What a day for a pic-nic!" she cried, jovially. "And this place--I must freely admit that Wyn, p.r.o.ne as she is to rhapsody, has _not_ overdone it in describing the Combe. Oh, here comes Mr. Haldane, just in time. I hope you know we were on the point of starting without you," said she, with an attempt at severity, as a young man came slowly along the road leading from the village.