CHAPTER XIX.

‘A secret is in my custody if I keep it; but if I blab it, it is I that am prisoner.’

The Rector has come in, and has stayed to have a cup of tea with Mr. Crosby. Lady Millbank declares herself charmed and very jealous. He never leaves his beloved books to see her! Mr. Barry smiles, and then falls back upon the memories of Crosby’s father that are always so dear to him. He is a tall, gaunt man, severe, with a far-away look, and the indifferent air of those who live with dead authors, and who are, besides, a little worried by the money transactions of life.

To have to think of the daily needs is hateful to Mr. Barry, who ought to have been a bachelor, with nothing but his notesto worry him, living in a world in which he could sit loosely. Even now he sometimes forgets how time flies, and to tell him that Susan is almost a woman grown would have roused him to quite an extraordinary wonder. The world goes on whilst he stands still, and to-day the dragging of him out of his shell, even to the ordinary business of a drawing-room conversation, has bewildered him. After a little while he retires.

His sermons, his visits to the sick, the poor (he never visits the rich unless they specially send for him)—all these things concern him. But when he knows himself happiest is when his study-door is shut for the night to all intruders, and he can read, read, read, until the little hours begin to chime.

As Crosby entered the drawing-room, Susan felt her heart stand still. She rose mechanically, and held out her hand to him as he came up to her, but she did not lift her eyes. She felt vaguely conscious that she had flushed over cheek and brow. Such a blush! So quick! so deep! Oh, he musthave seen it, and known the meaning of it!

If he did, he made no sign whatever; and until the departure of Lady Millbank he devoted himself to the Rector.

When Lady Millbank rose to say good-bye, Susan told herself that now at last the ordeal was at an end, and that he would go too. But, apparently, he had no intention whatever of stirring. And the climax came when Dom and Carew asked him to come out into the garden and have a cigarette. The cigarettes were Dom’s. Mr. Crosby seemed only too willing to accept this lively invitation, and Dom, thrusting his arm through Betty’s, asked her to come along with him.

‘And you, Miss Barry,’ says Crosby, now walking up deliberately to Susan, who is still sitting in her shady corner. The elder Miss Barry had gone out into the hall to bid Lady Millbank a last adieu, and tell her of the latest misdoings of the young women of the Christian Association in Curraghcloyne. ‘I hope you will come too.’

‘Oh yes, Susan, come on,’ says Betty. ‘It’s lovely outside to-day, and father won’t be able to see the smoke through the beech hedge.’ The Rector objects to smoking, so that Dom and Carew have quite a time of it keeping their pipes and cigarettes out of his way.

‘I hope you will come,’ says Crosby. He is bending over Susan now, and he has distinctly lowered his tone. ‘Do you know, I have come over to-day to see and thank you. I felt it quite my duty to do it.’

‘To thank me?’ For the first time during the afternoon Susan looks straight at him. Her large and lovely eyes are full of wonderment. ‘To thank me?’

‘Yes, indeed; I have great cause to be grateful to you,’ says Mr. Crosby, with such extreme earnestness and gravity that she rises. What if, after all, she was wrong, and the thief was not really Mr. Crosby?

A cousin perhaps—a disagreeable one: cousins are very often disagreeable, and often, too, more like one than one’s ownbrothers are. Of course, if he was a kinsman, Mr. Crosby would be very grateful to her for hushing up the whole affair, and telling nobody. And yet——

Again she lifts her eyes and studies his face. No, not even twins were ever so alike as this man and the man that stole the cherries.

‘Are you coming?’ calls Betty impatiently, and Susan moves forward. In a moment she is stepping from the low sill of the Rectory drawing-room on to the little plot of grass beneath, disregarding Mr. Crosby’s hand as he holds it out to help her.

She and he are well behind the others now, and Crosby speaks again.

‘You don’t ask me why I am grateful,’ says he reproachfully. ‘Don’t you care to know? I care to tell you. I have had it on my mind since that day in the garden. You remember?’

‘Yes,’ says Susan. She stops short, and confronts him with flushed cheeks and nervous eyes, but a little touch of courage that sitsmost charmingly upon her. ‘I do remember. You—you were the man who——’ She hesitates.

‘Stole the cherries?’ suggests he.

‘No’—coldly—‘who sat on the top of the ladder and made fun of me.’

There is a little silence.

‘That is a most unkind speech,’ says Crosby at last. ‘After all, I don’t feel as grateful now as I did a minute ago. I came here to-day to thank you for looking so kindly after my property, and you meet me with an accusation that absolutely strikes me dumb.’

At this Susan cannot refrain from bitter jest.

‘True,’ says she scornfully; ‘one can see how silent you are.’

Mr. Crosby regards her with apparent awe, tempered with grief.

‘If you persist in your present course,’ says he, ‘I shall commit suicide. There will be nothing else left for me to do.’

‘In the meantime,’ says Susan, withastonishing spirit, ‘you had better come into the garden. They are expecting you.’

Not so very much, after all. Betty, Carew, and Dom Fitzgerald are engaged in a lively discussion on Miss Barry’s wild attack on the unoffending Sarah in church this morning, and, in the delights of it, have almost forgotten Mr. Crosby. The children are playing about on the tennis-ground below, and Crosby’s eyes fall on Bonnie, as with great difficulty, and with the help of a stick, he tries to follow little Tom. Jacky, in the distance, is stretched on his stomach reading.

‘Those are your brothers?’ asks Crosby, looking more deliberately at Bonnie, whose charming little face, though pale and emaciated, attracts him.

‘Yes, I have four brothers and one sister.’

‘Five brothers, I thought.’

‘Oh no; Dominick Fitzgerald is our cousin. He lives with us nearly altogether, and father is coaching him for the Indian Civil.’

‘Oh, I see. That little brother’—gently indicating Bonnie—‘does not look very strong.’

‘No, he had rheumatic fever, and he has not been’—correcting herself hastily, as though it is impossible to her to say the more terrible word—‘very strong since.’

‘What a beautiful face!’ says Crosby involuntarily. And, indeed, the loveliest flower of all this handsome Barry family is the little suffering cripple child.

Susan is conscious for a moment of a choking in her throat. Oh, her little lovely darling brother! To hear him praised is a great joy to her, but with the joy follows pain unutterable. If only she had looked more closely after him! And poor, poor mamma, who had told her to be a mother to him! Then, all at once, she remembers the cherries, and how he had enjoyed them, and a queer passion of feeling, arising first of all from the fact that Crosby had admired the child, makes her turn to him.

‘Mr. Crosby, I want to tell you something,’ says she timidly; ‘those cherries that you sent me’—he is about to tease her again, to pretend he knows nothing of the gift, buther face, pale now and filled with a strange but carefully-held-back emotion, keeps him silent—‘they gave Bonnie a happy half-hour. No matter how I am feeling towards you, about your pretending to be—you know—still, if only for the pleasure your cherries gave Bonnie, I feel intensely thankful to you. He is not strong, as you see. They say he will never be strong again, and it was my fault; for I forgot him one day—one day—and mamma was dead too. I was cross to you about your pretending to be a thief—I hope you won’t mind me?’

It is such a childish speech, and there is such tragedy in the dark eyes! She has not broken down at all. There is not a suspicion of tears in her low, clear young voice, but that the child’s ill-health is a constant grief to her is not to be doubted for a moment.

‘If it comes to that,’ says he slowly, ‘it is I who ought to apologize. And the worst of it is, I haven’t an apology ready. The plain truth is that I couldn’t resist thesituation. If I could hope that you would try to forgive me——’

He breaks off. Susan has looked at him, and through the deep gloom of a minute ago a smile has broken on her face. Such a smile! It makes her look about twelve years old, and is indescribably pretty. ‘What a lovely child!’ says Crosby to himself. She holds out her hand to him frankly.

‘But don’t tell anybody,’ says she, in an eager little whisper.

‘Tell! “Is thy servant——” But the brother over there catching cold on the grass with a book before him—he was with you, I think.’

‘Ah, Jacky and I are chums!’ says she. This seems to settle the question. It occurs to Mr. Crosby that it would be rather nice to be chums with Susan, and he vaguely wonders if she would accept a chum who was not one of the family. Is Dominick a chum? But, then, he is one of the family. When Susan has chums, does she trust them—havelittle secrets with them? If so, he may clearly rise to the desired position in time. He is conscious of a sense of exhilaration as he tells himself that Susan once regarded him as a thief, and that he is bound by her to keep that regard a secret.

‘Oh, there you are, Mr. Crosby!’ says Carew, stopping in his discussion with Betty; ‘come here and sit down.’

‘Don’t sit on Betty, whatever you do,’ says Dominick from his place beside her on the grass; ‘she’d be sure to resent it. She takes after our own particular auntie in the way of temper. Susan, my darling’—making a grab at Susan’s ankle, which she has learned from long practice to avoid—‘come and sit down by me. No? Your brainpower must be weak. Have a cigarette, Mr. Crosby. You need not mind the girls. It is all we can do to keep our “baccy” from them.’

‘If I wanted your nasty “baccy,”’ says Betty, ‘it isn’t likely you would be able to keep it from me. Give Mr. Crosby a match.’

‘Thanks, I have one,’ says Crosby. He had accepted Dom’s offer of a cigarette without hesitation, and, indeed, would have smoked it to the bitter end rather than offend any member of the little group around him. They all please him; they all seem in unison with him—frank, happy, rollicking youngsters, without a scrap of real harm amongst them. Perhaps the secret of their success with Crosby lies in the fact that, in spite of his being well in the thirties, he is still a boy himself at heart, with a spice of mischief in him not to be controlled. The cigarette, however, proves very tolerable, and Susan having seated herself where he can distinctly see her, he feels that he is going to spend an uncommonly pleasant afternoon.

‘It’s a shame to say Betty’s got a temper,’ says Susan. ‘I’m sure she hasn’t—not a bad one, any way.’

‘You needn’t defend me, Susan,’ says Betty, clasping her long, lean arms behind her head. ‘I prefer to do it for myself,and’—with a fell glance at the doomed Dominick—‘I think I know where revenge lies.’

‘I give in!’ cries Mr. Fitzgerald frantically. ‘Betty, pax!’

‘Never,’ says Betty.

‘If you burn my fly-book a second time, I warn you that there will be murder,’ says Dom; and then Betty has mercy.

‘A public retractation, then!’ demands she viciously.

‘A hundred of them. I swear to you, Mr. Crosby, that I wronged her, and that her temper is like that of an angel, and not a bit like our Aunt Jeremiah’s’—softly, ‘May I be forgiven!’

‘Did you hear her in church?’ asks Carew, turning to Crosby. ‘Aunt Jemima, I mean, not Betty. She was mad with Sarah this morning——’

Crosby looks rather helplessly round him.

‘Another sister?’ asks he.

‘No, no,’ says Susan, whilst the others explode; and Crosby, unable to resist theirgaiety, joins in the merriment. ‘A servant——’

‘Had a magenta feather in her hat!’ cries Betty, roaring with laughter, ‘and Aunt Jemima hates feathers, and——’

‘This is my story, Betty,’ interrupts Carew; ‘I insist on telling it. When the Paradise hymn began, Aunt Jemima saw the feather——’

‘Pounced upon Sarah!’ cries Susan, who is nearly in hysterics. ‘Oh, did you see her? She sang the most dreadful things at her until the poor girl nearly fainted, and——’

‘And then our only auntie punched her in the back with her Prayer-book,’ puts in Dom. ‘Really, Betty, I did wrong you! You aren’t in it with her. She cussed and swore like anything, but worse than all, Susan, was her ribald rendering of music-hall songs within the sainted precincts of the church.’

‘Nonsense, Dom! you spoil the story by exaggeration.’

‘Exaggeration! My dear girl, didn’t you hear her? Why, she was shouting it! She got rather mixed up in the music—I’m bound to say the two times are not the same—but she managed it wonderfully. You heard her, Carew, didn’t you?

‘“Where did you get that hat?”

I waited for the rest, but I suppose her courage failed her, or else the organ drowned it; at all events, the second line,

‘“Where did you get that tile?”

did not come in. But I think we ought to speak to our auntie, Susan, don’t you? That sort of thing is very well outside, but in a church! Betty, you look as if you’d love to speak to somebody. We’ll put you on for this job. You shall expostulate with Aunt Jemima on her deplorable weakness for low-class comic songs.’

‘I shall leave you to interview her on the subject,’ says Betty.

‘Interview! What a splendid word!’ saysDom. ‘What’ll you sell it for?’ But Betty very properly decides on not hearing him.

Softly, sweetly, the sun is going down, topping the distant hills, and now falling behind them. A golden colour is lighting all around. Overhead the swallows are darting here and there, and from the beds of mignonette in the old-fashioned garden exquisite perfumes are wafted; and now ‘at shut of evening flowers’ faint breezes rise, and corners grow rich in shadows, and from the stream below comes a song that makes musical the happy hours.

Crosby, with a sigh of distinct regret, rises to his feet.

‘I fear I must go,’ says he.

‘What, not so soon?’ cries Carew, getting up too. Indeed, as Crosby persists, though evidently with reluctance, in his determination to leave them, they all get up, the innate courtesy of this noisy group being their best point.

‘Have another cigarette for the walk home?’ says Dom hospitably.

‘We’ll all go with you to the gate!’ cries Betty.

‘I suppose a big traveller like you doesn’t play tennis?’ says Carew diffidently, but with an essence of hope in his tone.

‘Oh, don’t I!’ says Crosby; ‘I’m quite a dab at it, I can tell you! If I were to come down to-morrow afternoon, would there be any chance that any of you would be here to play a game with me?’

He looks at Susan.

‘We’ll all be here!’ cries Betty ecstatically. To have a new element thrown into their daily games seems too enchanting for anything. ‘You will come?’

‘May I?’ says Crosby. Susan has not answered, and now he purposely addresses her.

‘Oh, I hope you will!’ says she cordially. She had been thinking hurriedly if it would be possible to ask him to luncheon—to their early dinner. But with the children and Jane’s attendance! Oh no—a thousand times no! Yet it seems so inhospitable.

‘Thank you, I should very much like to come. It is quite taking pity on an unfortunate bachelor,’ says he. And this being settled, they all in a body prepare to accompany him to the gate. Even little Tom runs up to them, and Bonnie, with uneven steps, hurries as fast as the poor mite can. Susan turns to help him, and Crosby, watching her for a moment, follows her, and, taking the child in his arms, without a word swings him to his shoulder.

At the gate, having bidden them good-bye, and Dom having taken Bonnie on his back for a race home, Crosby looks at Susan.

‘Are you fond of cherries?’ asks he. His face is profoundly grave, but she can see the twinkle in his eyes, and her own give him back a reproachful glance.

This playing with fire is hardly prudent.

‘Sometimes,’ says she demurely.

‘And you, Bonnie?’ asks Crosby, pinching gently the child’s pale pretty cheek as he rests on Dominick’s back. ‘You like them,I’m sure. Well, I’ll send you some to-morrow and every day while they last, and perhaps the red of their cheeks will run into yours. See that it does, now.’

The child laughs shyly, and Crosby turns to Susan again.

‘Good-bye, Miss Barry.’

‘Oh, don’t call her that!’ cries Betty. ‘That makes her sound like Aunt Jemima. Susan, tell him he can call you by your own name.’

This handsome advice ought, thinks Crosby, to fill Susan with angry confusion. But it doesn’t.

‘You may—you may indeed!’ says she, quite sweetly and naturally, looking him fair in the eyes. ‘I should like you to call me Susan, and I am very much obliged to you for promising the cherries to Bonnie.’

She gives him her hand; he presses it, and goes up the road towards his home. A little thorn in his heart goes with him. If he had been her own age, would she soreadily have permitted him to call her Susan? No doubt she regards him as quite a middle-aged old fellow, and truly, next to her youth, that promises to be eternal, he is nothing less.

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