Etheldreda the Ready.

by Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey.

CHAPTER ONE.

The first part of the Christmas holidays had gone with a roar. The Saxon family in conclave agreed that never before had they had so good a time. Invitations poured in; amus.e.m.e.nt after amus.e.m.e.nt filled up afternoon and evening; parents and friends alike seemed imbued with a wholly admirable desire to make the season one gay whirl of enjoyment, and then, suddenly, just after the beginning of the New Year, the atmosphere became mysteriously clouded.

What was the matter? n.o.body knew. One day the sky was blue and serene--the next, the shadow was in possession. Mr Saxon looked suddenly old and bleached, and hid himself persistently in his study; Mrs Saxon sat at the head of the table with the air of one braced to perform a difficult task, listened vacantly to her children's prattle, and smiled a twisted smile in response to their merry outbursts of laughter. Two days later Miss Bruce, the governess, was summoned hastily to return from her holiday-making and take charge of the household, while Mr and Mrs Saxon set forth to pay a mysterious visit to their country house, which as a rule was left severely to the caretaker's mercies until spring was well advanced.

What in the world could have induced two people who were obviously worried and depressed to leave town and go down to that dull, deserted house in the depth of the winter? The Saxons discussed the subject with their wonted vivacity, and from the many divergent points of view with which they were accustomed to regard the world in general.

They were six in all, and as true Saxons in appearance as they were in name, being large, fair, flaxen-haired creatures, of the type which is unfortunately growing rarer year by year.

Rowena, tall and stately, had already reached the stage when womanhood and girlhood meet, but her undeniable beauty was somewhat marred by an air of self-consciousness, which was in truth more than half due to a natural shyness and diffidence in adapting herself to new conditions.

Hereward, the Sandhurst cadet, and Gurth, the Eton stripling, were as handsome a pair as one could wish to meet. Etheldreda, with her flowing golden locks, widely open grey eyes and alert, vivacious features, might have sat as a type of a bonnie English schoolgirl, while the twins, Harold and Maud, were plump, pleasant-looking creatures, devoted to each other, who in holiday time could be turned into convenient f.a.gs for their elders and betters. Good old Harold could always be depended upon to do his duty with resignation, if not cheerfulness, but Maud was one of those const.i.tutionally stupid people who are nevertheless gifted with sudden flashes of sharpness apt to prove embarra.s.sing to their companions. The Saxons, to use their own expressive parlance, were always "a trifle wary" in dealing with Maud, for what that young lady thought she promptly _said_, and said without reserve, choosing, as it seemed, out of pure "cussedness" the very moment of all others when they would have had her silent.

Discussions and guesses alike failed to suggest any reasonable explanations of Mr and Mrs Saxon's mysterious behaviour, and Miss Bruce steadily refused to be drawn, though there was a certain something in her manner which convinced her charges that she was in the secret.

And then on the morning of the fifth day the blow fell, in the shape of a short, decisive note ordering the young people to pack their belongings and repair down to "The Meads" for the remainder of the holidays. The mandate was so firm and decisive that there was no hope of escape. The girls might cry and the boys might storm, but both realised the uselessness of protest. a.s.sisted by Miss Bruce and Nannie, once nurse and now schoolroom maid, the melancholy preparations were made in time to allow the party to catch the three o'clock train from Victoria.

To secure a carriage in which they could travel alone and be able to talk as they pleased was the ambition of the four elders, and while Miss Bruce was busily looking after the luggage, they took possession of a corridor coupe, slammed the door, and blocked the window with determined faces, though deep in each heart lurked the conviction that Miss Bruce's morbidly acute conscience would feel it her duty to interfere.

"Nix for the Spider!" hissed Gurth, prising a hockey-stick against the handle of the door the while he gazed with elaborate calm at a poster on the station wall. It was inevitable that a person named Bruce should be given the nickname of "Spider" by young people who disdained correct appellations as heartily as did the Saxons, and, indeed, the busy little black figure darting to and fro on the platform might have been much less aptly named. She hustled the twins and Nannie into a carriage, turned her head to look for her elder pupils, and, upon realising the position, reared her head with the fighting gesture which they knew so well. For a moment, as she stood facing the coupe window, it seemed absolutely certain that she would insist upon joining the party, and so spoiling sport for the whole of the journey, but even as she looked her expression altered, a flicker of something--what was it?--affection, sympathy, pity pa.s.sed over her face, she turned without a word, entered the carriage wherein the twins were seated, and disappeared from sight.

The plot had succeeded, but their success had left the conspirators dumb with wonder and surprise.

"I say! what's taken her all of a sudden?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Gurth. Hereward whistled loudly, while Dreda, ever the prey of her emotions, began to flush and quiver beneath the p.r.i.c.kings of remorse.

"Oh, poor dear! Oh, she _saw_! She saw we didn't want her! What brutes we are! Gurth, go!--go quickly, before the train starts, and tell her to come in here at once!"

"Not I! What a turncoat you are, Dreda! Of course she saw! We _meant_ her to see. You were the worst of the lot, scowling as if she were an ogre. Don't be a little sneak!"

"Not a sneak!" protested Dreda, hotly. "S'pose I did. I can be sorry, can't I? She looked so--_sick_! It made me feel mean."

"All right! Go in to the other carriage, then, and suck up! We don't want her here, but there's room for you in there, if you like to change!

Say the word! We are off in a minute!"

Etheldreda blushed, shuffled, and tossed her pigtail, but made not the slightest attempt to move from her place, whereat her brothers and sister chuckled with easy amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Oh, Dreda, in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light thingummy aspen made.

When pain and anguish wring the brow, She nothing does, but makes a row."

The mutilated lines were the contributions of the two schoolboys, while Rowena looked down her nose once more, and dismissed the subject in a few scathing remarks.

"You might realise by this time that Dreda's sentiments have not the smallest influence on her actions! The Spider was evidently suffering from a spasm of repentance. Quite time, too! She has made herself most objectionable the last few days, sighing and groaning about the house, and looking as if her heart were broken. If _we_ can stand breaking our engagements and giving up all the fun of the holidays, I don't see why she need grumble. But she is always like that--unsympathetic and absorbed in herself. It's a mystery to me, for what has she got to be absorbed in? To be old, and ugly, and poor, and to have no home or any people that count--there can't possibly be any personal interest in life! Her only hope would be to live for others, and of that, poor dear, she is incapable!"

Rowena folded her hands on her lap, turned her well-cut profile to the window, and sighed in an elderly, forbearing fashion, at which the two boys grinned broadly, while impetuous Dreda burst once more into speech.

"Rowena, I _hate_ you when you talk like that! Don't be so self- righteous and horrid! It's not for you to criticise other people. The Spider is not a patch on you for selfishness, and if she has a poor time of it, that's all the more reason why you should be charitable, and try to cheer her up. You'll be old yourself some day, and ugly too! Fair people always fade soonest. I read that in the toilette column of a magazine, so it's true, and I shouldn't wonder if you grew nut-crackery, too. Your nose is rather beaky even now. You needn't be so proud!"

Rowena turned her head to look round the carriage with a gently tolerant smile.

"Our dear Dreda teaches us a lesson in charity, does she not?" she demanded blandly. That was all the response she deigned to make, but it was enough to reduce her sister to a crimson confusion, and to rouse Gurth to impatient anger.

"Oh, leave off nagging, you two!" he cried loudly. "If you don't drop it, I'll be off into a smoker at the first stop. Fight it out to-night when you are alone, if you can't agree; but let us off when we are caged up in the same pen. Here! Let's have a game of `Roadside cribbage.'

Bags I the left side! Now then, Dreda, I choose you first. Hereward can take Rowena. Buck up! We have got to win this time."

Etheldreda shot a glance of grat.i.tude from the grey eyes which were such eloquent exponents of her thoughts. To be so championed by Gurth was worth far more than the temporary suffering inflicted by Rowena's sharp tongue, and she set herself valiantly to be worthy of his choice.

"Roadside cribbage" was a game patronised for years by the Saxon family on their railway journeys, and consisted merely in dividing forces, staring steadily out of opposite windows, and scoring for the various objects perceived, according to a quaint but well understood method.

Thus, a bridge over a river counted as five marks; a quarry, ten; a windmill, twenty; a fire, fifty; a motor car, minus one; while the ubiquitous bicycle was worth only three per dozen. These, and other objects too numerous to repeat, mounted but slowly towards the grand total of a hundred, but there remained one--just one rare chance of winning success at a stroke, for the compet.i.tor who had the luck to spy a cat looking out of a window might cry, "Game!" on the instant, even if he had not so far scored a single point. It can easily be understood that the best chances of spotting this valuable spectacle came as the train slackened steam before entering a station. Then, as one regarded the backs of dreary tenement houses, it really seemed inevitable that some household cat should wish to take the air, or to regard the world from the vantage of dusty, unwashed sills! Inevitable, yet with the perversity of cat nature, it was extraordinary how seldom this all-to- be-desired vision burst upon the view. "It's not fair!" Rowena cried.

"You have all the poor houses on your side, and poor houses have always more cats than rich ones. A cat for every floor. We ought to change sides between every station, like cricket!"

"Fudge! You've got the open country. Look out for pigs and quarries...

We've had no luck with cats for the last three journeys. On the whole, I think yours is the best side."

"Why didn't you choose it yourself, then?"

"Charity!" answered Gurth, shortly, with a twinkling glance at his partner, who happened to be at the same time his favourite sister, despite her many and obvious faults. If he had been asked to describe Dreda's character, he would have said in his easy schoolboy language that she was a bit of a sham, perhaps, but then all girls were shams more or less, and if you kept her off high falutin', she was a decent sort, and always ready to do a fellow a good turn.

It was sad to note that even when speaking of his favourite sister, Gurth should have felt it necessary to adopt this tone of patronage, but even the stoutest champion of girls cannot but admit that the sense of honour is in them less developed than in boys, and that in moments of irritation they betray a petty spite, of which the more brutal male is incapable. Gurth was conscious that he had faults of his own, but he regarded them leniently as being on an altogether different level from those of his sisters. He was a bit of a slacker, perhaps, but most "men" were slackers, and yet pulled through all right by means of a spurt at the end. His chiefs called him obstinate, but a fellow had to know his own mind if he were to get on in the world, and he jolly well knew that he was right as often as not Masters were awful m.u.f.fs. On the other hand, he hated gush like poison, and was invariably a hundred times better than his word, whereas Dreda could hold forth as eloquently as a parson, with the tears pouring down her cheeks, and her figure trembling with emotion, and the next day forget the very cause of her emotion! The girl was like a fire of shavings, quickly lighted, quickly extinguished, and probably the greatest punishment which she could have sustained would have been compelled to carry on one of her many philanthropic schemes to a deliberate conclusion.

They were all stored up in the family archives--the histories of Dreda's charitable enterprises! The factory girl to whom she was going to write regularly every week, and whose address was lost in a fortnight--the collecting cards beyond number, for which, in the first ardour of possession, subscriptions were extorted from every member of the household, and which were rescued from stray hiding-places at the last possible moment and despatched with odd offerings of twopences and threepences from "A Friend" scribbled in, to fill up the empty s.p.a.ces.

Everyone understood that the "friend" was Dreda herself, and that she might be expected to be correspondingly short in tuck money for some time to come! Never a society did Dreda hear of but she panted to become a member on the spot, and never a society but received her resignation, accompanied by a goodly sum in fines, before six months had run their course.

Closeted with parent and teachers, the girl received numberless lectures on the dangers of a thoughtless and unstable character, and was moved to ardent vows of repentance; but, alone with Maud, her confidante and admirer, she was wont to cast a kindly glamour of romance over her own delinquencies. "It's my heart," she would sigh pathetically. "My heart is so sensitive. It's like an Aeolian harp, Maud, upon which every pa.s.sing breeze plays its melody. I'm a creature of sensibility!" And she rolled her fine eyes to the ceiling, the while Maud snorted, being afflicted with adenoids, and wrinkled her brows in the effort to put her fingers on the weak spot in the argument, the which she felt, but had difficulty in explaining.

"Your heart is hard enough at times!" she said at last. "I suppose the strings get so thin with being everlastingly tw.a.n.ged that they break, and then the breeze can moan as much as it likes without waking a sound.

When you let that poor little puppy lie for two days without any food, for instance--"

"You're a beast!" retorted Dreda with fervour. "You don't understand.

No one does. I'm misunderstood all round. At any rate I'd rather reach the hilltops sometimes than everlastingly crawl along in the mire, like _some_ people I can mention. It's better to have soared and fallen than never to have soared at all!"

Dreda, like most of us, was tender towards her own failings, and resented the criticism of her peers. This afternoon she kept her eyes glued upon the landscape, affecting to be ignorant of Gurth's sly hit, and presently it was balm to her wounded spirit to be able to win the game for herself and her partner, and with a squeal of triumph to point to an upper window in a row of tenement houses, where two erect ears and a pair of yellow eyes could be clearly discerned over the edge of a wooden box filled with miniature fir trees of funereal aspect.

The game was over, and with it had disappeared all disposition to quarrel. Henceforward, to the end of the journey, the four young people chatted amicably together, discussing various subjects of interest, but invariably returning to the one absorbing question of the hour--what could have happened to account for the hasty and mysterious summons to the solitary home in the country at a time when all their interests and pleasures were centred in town?

CHAPTER TWO.

Mr and Mrs Saxon welcomed their children on the threshold of their country home, but a chill seemed to settle on the young people's spirits as they entered the great square hall, which looked so colourless and dreary. As a rule, The Meads was inhabited during the summer months alone, and the children were accustomed to see it alight with sunshine, with doors and windows thrown wide open to show vistas of flower gardens and soft green lawns. In such weather, a house was apt to be regarded merely as a place to sleep in, but now that it would be necessary to spend a great part of the day indoors, it was regarded more critically, and found far from attractive.

The Meads was one of those square, uncompromisingly ugly white houses which are so often to be found in rural England, and which were built at that architecturally unhappy period when old traditions had been cast aside and the modern craze for art was as yet undeveloped. There were plenty of rooms in the house, lofty and s.p.a.cious enough, but as to outline just so many boxes, with four straight walls, and never a niche or an alcove to break the severity of line. The hall was another square, and the staircase ascended straightly to the first landing, where a monstrosity of a stained-gla.s.s window lighted the long corridors beyond.

The furniture was of the same calibre as the house, for, The Meads having been regarded more as a convenient dumping-ground for the children in the summer holidays than as a formal residence, everything that was shabby, injured, or out of date had been weeded from the beautiful town mansion and drafted down to fill up the big square rooms.

Mr Saxon had a shooting-box in Scotland in which he was wont to spend the autumn months, Mrs Saxon had a pa.s.sion for travelling, and could not understand the joy of spending every summer in the same house. The Meads was large, healthy, and convenient, so that while the children were young it had filled a real need, but there was no denying that, regarded as a winter residence, it bore a somewhat chilling aspect.

Gurth looked round the hall with eyes very wide open and nose screwed up in eloquent disapproval.