CHAPTER XXIX.
‘Ther is ful many a man that crieth, “Werre, werre,” that wat ful litel what werre amounteth. Werre at his begynnyng hath so greet an entre and so large, that everywight may entre when him liketh and lightly find werre; but certes what ende schal falle thereof, it is not lightly to knowe!’
‘Nothing will do for these beastly hens, it seems, but the garden,’ says Betty indignantly. ‘Susan, stand there, you—no, there!’—gasping.
‘Oh, they’ve scratched up all the mignonette,’ cries Susan, rushing to the point indicated—an escallonia bush in which three culprit hens are lurking. ‘Were there ever such wretches? And plenty of food in the yard, too! It isn’t as if they were starved. Cush! cush! Bother them! Theywon’t come out. Have you got a stick, Betty?’
‘Here’s one. I declare I’m out of breath from hunting them. And the cock is the worst of all. I hope I’ll live to see the broth he is made into; not that I’d touch it—it would be too full of all malice and bitterness. Hi! hi!’ with a frantic dab at the hens with her stick beneath the too friendly escallonia—‘there is one of them, Susan; run—run to the gate! She’s going that way. Ah! you’ve got that, any way.’
‘That,’ I regret to say, is a stone directed with unerring aim by Betty, and received by the hen on her shoulder with a shock that makes her bound, not only into the air, but ‘over the garden wall’ and into the yard beyond, with a haste that perhaps she calls undue. And now Susan has routed out the other two, and, with a cackling that would rouse the dead, they rush after their companion towards that spot in the wall that is easiest for the purposes of ingress and egress from the yard to the garden. Susan racesafter them, ‘shoo-ing’ with all her might, generously supported by Betty and her shower of small stones. So ardent, so bloodthirsty, is the chase, it is matter for wonder that the hens, having once gone through such an encounter, could ever brave it again. But hens are amongst the bravest things living—Amazons in their own line. It is indeed popularly supposed in our neighbourhood that the souls of those defunct termagants have entered into them, and, at all events, there does not rest a doubt now in the minds of Susan and Betty that in half an hour’s time those hens will have returned to the charge, as fresh as ever.
‘We must get a wire netting put up along there,’ says Betty angrily. ‘What’s the good of our planting seeds and roots and things for the amusement of those abominable hens? And why should they think there are more grubs under a picotee than under a common daisy?’
‘I wish there was a netting put up,’ says Susan, who is distinctly flushed. ‘But who’sgoing to do it? Father won’t. Wiring costs something, and there would be a good bit of it to be put up there’—pointing to the long wall.
‘Maybe Dom would, when he gets his next half-year’s allowance.’
‘I don’t think you ought to ask him,’ says Susan. ‘He is not our brother, you know.’
‘He’s nearly as good,’ says Betty.
‘Still, he isn’t, and I, for one, wouldn’t ask him.’
‘I would. The only thing is that perhaps father wouldn’t like it.’
‘I know he wouldn’t.’
‘What’s to be done, then? Are we to spend our time hunting these blessed hens until the day we die? If so’—tragically—‘I hope that day will come full soon. Oh, I declare, there’s the cock! Run, Susan, run! Oh, the villain! the ringleader! Catch him, Susan! Oh, there, he’s gone under the laurels! Oh, the artful thing!’
‘No he isn’t,’ cries Susan; ‘he’s over there, near you. I see his leg. This side—thisside, Betty. Ah, now you have him! Hold him—hold him tight.’ Betty has caught hold of the king of the yard, and is dragging him ruthlessly from his hiding-place. There are yells from the cock, and muttered execrations from Betty. But finally the cock has the best of it. With a whir and a whoop he makes a last grand sprint, and once again knows the splendours of freedom.
Away he goes down the garden-path, and away go the girls after him.
‘Squawk, squawk, squawk!’ cries the cock; and ‘Oh, if I catch you!’ cries Betty, under her breath. Her breath is, indeed, running very short. Susan’s has given way entirely.
‘Oh, he is going to the tennis-ground!’ shrieks Betty distractedly; and, indeed, the cock, with a view of circumventing the enemy, is making for that broad course.
At the rustic gateway, however, that leads to it from the garden, a third enemy appears upon the scene—an enemy that takes off his hat, and makes such a magnificent attack with it that the cock, disheartened, gives wayin turn, retreats,chassésa little, and finally, with a wild skirl, swoops over the garden wall after his wives, and is gone.
‘It was a famous victory!’ cries Mr. Crosby, when the defeat of the cock is beyond doubt.
He is looking at Susan. Such a lovely, flushed, and laughter-filled Susan! A Susan with soft locks flying into her beauteous eyes. A Susan with soft parted lips, and breath coming in little merry gasps.
‘You were just in time,’ cries she, running up to him, with happycamaraderiein her smile. ‘But for you, we should have been hunting him all over the place. What lucky fortune brought you at this moment?’—smiling blandly into his eyes and giving him her hand. ‘Just happening to be passing by?’
‘No, I was coming to see you all,’ says Crosby. He has nearly stopped at the ‘you,’ but she looks so young, so without a thought behind her, that he feels it would be useless. She would not understand, and even if she did it would only annoy her. A girlof the world—that would be different. She would laugh at this suggestion of a flirtation; but Susan—
‘Well, come and see us all,’ says Betty gaily. ‘We’re all round the corner, I fancy.’
And, indeed, most of them are, the children in the far distance chasing butterflies with a net just constructed by Dom, whilst he and Carew are listening with apparently engrossed interest to their aunt, who, with curls shaking and an air of general excitement about her, is holding forth.
‘Is that you at last, Susan?’ says she, shaking her curls more vigorously than ever. ‘Where have you been?—How d’ye do, Mr. Crosby?—I must say, Susan, you are never to be found when wanted.’
‘The hens got into the garden,’ begins Susan, colouring a little beneath this rebuke uttered before Crosby.
‘Oh, hens! What are hens,’ cries Miss Barry tragically, ‘when human beings are dying?’
‘Dying?’
‘Yes. I’ve just been to see poor dear Miss Blake, and I really believe she is at death’s door.’
‘Oh, I am sorry!’ says Susan.
‘She’s been at that uncomfortable portal for the past year,’ says Betty, with distinct scorn. ‘In my opinion, it would take a lot of pushing to make her pass it.’
‘Elizabeth, this frivolity is absolutely disgraceful,’ says Miss Barry, directing a withering glance at Betty, who, it must be said, bears up beneath it with the utmost fortitude. ‘Dr. Mulcahy was with her. I’ve always thought him a distinctly vulgar person, and really, after what he said of poor Miss Blake to-day, I feel justified in my opinion.’
‘What did he say, auntie?’
‘I hardly like to repeat it. An insult to a poor dying creature seems impossible, doesn’t it, Mr. Crosby? But I heard him myself. After all, why should not I speak? One ought to expose monsters. My dear’—to Susan—‘Lady Millbank had called to ask how Miss Blake was—at least, I supposeit was for that purpose—but she mumbles so, on account of those false teeth of hers, no doubt, that I scarcely heard what she was saying. But I did hear what Dr. Mulcahy said to her a moment afterwards. He was speaking of poor dear Kate Blake, and I distinctly heard him say she was “low”!’ Miss Barry pauses dramatically, but, beyond a smothered sound from Dom, nothing is heard.
‘Aren’t you shocked, Susan, or must I believe that the young people of this generation are devoid of feeling. A Mulcahy to call a Blake “low”! It struck me as so abominable a piece of impertinence that I went away on the instant. I don’t know, of course, how Lady Millbank took it, but I hope she put down that insolent man without hesitation. Fancy a Blake being called “low”! Why, poor dear Kate! she is as well born as ourselves.’
‘But, auntie—’
‘Nonsense, my dear! Don’t talk to me. You children would find an excuse for anyone.’
‘It was only that I think he meant that she was not so very well—’
‘Born? Not so well born as the rest of us? You must be mad, Susan! A creature like Dr. Mulcahy to talk of birth at all is absurd. Why, his father was a draper in Dublin. But that he should cavil at Kate Blake’s birth is outrageous. Why, the Blakes—’ She stops, as if overcome by wrath, and Dom takes up the parable.
‘I thought you knew, Susan,’ says he reproachfully, but in a cautious tone, heard only by the youngsters of the party, ‘that it was poor Miss Blake’s forefather who planted that tree of good and evil over which Adam came such a cropper.’
After this it is a relief to everybody when Miss Barry, with a singularly brief farewell to Crosby, betakes herself to the house. It is quite as well she has gone so soon, as Carew and Dominick were in the last stages of convulsive laughter, and could not certainly have held out much longer.
‘I say, isn’t Aunt Jemima a regular corker?’says Dom presently, addressing everybody in general.
‘She didn’t understand,’ says Susan, who feels a little sorry that her aunt should appear in so poor a light before a man like Crosby, who is, of course, accustomed to a fashionable world and its ways.
‘I think she has a very kind heart,’ says he promptly, seeing her distress and smothering the laughter that is consuming him. ‘Of course, she had no idea that the doctor was alluding to Miss Blake’s state of health.’
‘You knew,’ says Susan, with a touch of indignation, turning to Carew. ‘Why didn’t you make it clear to her?’
‘Why, indeed?’ retorts he. ‘You tried to do it, and how did you come off? Catch me explaining her mistakes to Aunt Jemima. More kicks than ha’pence for my pains.’
Bonnie has come over to Susan, and, casting his crutches aside, has slipped into her arms, his head upon her knee—a head that she strokes softly, softly, until at last the little lad falls fast asleep.
‘He had such a bad night,’ says Susan, as Crosby now comes up and seats himself beside her.
‘I expect that means that you had a bad night too.’
‘Oh no’—reddening—‘I—I’m all right. But he—’
‘It seems absurd,’ says Crosby suddenly, ‘that a child like that should be a prey to rheumatism? Are you sure the doctors have told you all the truth?’
‘I think so.’
‘But are they reliable authorities?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ says Susan, sighing. ‘But’—gently—‘don’t let me trouble you with our sorrows; tell me of yourself. Your sister is coming, you say.’
‘For my birthday. Yes, next month.’
‘Your birthday?’
‘I told you, didn’t I? It will be in a few days now.’
‘A few days!’ Susan’s voice is low, as usual, but primed with a curiosity that she has much difficulty in suppressing.
‘The third of August. It always makes me feel like Ah Sin, Bret Harte’s Chinee—soft, you know. Katherine is coming for the great occasion. That’s my sister’s name, Katherine. You will like her, I think.’
‘Is she like you?’ asks Susan.