The Eldest Son Part 3

d.i.c.k took his cigarette out of his mouth and looked at it.

"When I marry," he said decisively, "it will probably be a woman of nearer thirty than twenty."

The Squire made the best of it. "Oh, well--as long as she's not over thirty," he said. "Girls don't marry so young as they used to.

But--well, you must think of an heir, d.i.c.k."

d.i.c.k made no reply to this, and the conversation ended.

CHAPTER III

EXIT MISS BIRD

Miss Bird arose on the next morning to find her window glazed with frost, and it was characteristic of her and of the house in which she had lived for over thirty years that her first thought was, "No hunting to-day"; although the deprivation could not be expected to hold any disappointment for herself, or indeed to affect her in any way.

Her second thought marked a drop to the sombre uneasiness in which she had spent wakeful hours during the night. She would not rise many more times in this familiar room, nor look out on to a scene which she had come to know so well at all seasons of the year that she could not help loving it. She would have liked to see the trees of the park, for a farewell, in their early June dress, the gra.s.s about them powdered with the yellow of b.u.t.tercups. But she hoped so to see them again. She had been made to feel that she was parting from friends, that she was by virtue of her long and faithful service part of the family, that she would not lose them altogether. The Squire had said the day before, when he had made known to her that he had heard of her projected departure, "You must come and see us, you know, Miss Bird. The house won't be like itself without you."

Could anything be more gratifying--and from such a man? Mrs. Clinton, of course, had been kindness itself, had said just the right things to make a person feel herself valued, and said them as if she meant them, as no doubt, dear lady, she did, for she was always sincere. And the darling children had cried--she should never forget that as long as she lived--when she had told them that she was going. Here the simple lady found a tear trickling down her own sharp nose, and put a hairpin in her mouth while she wiped it away.

It seemed impossible that she should really be going. It was just upon thirty years since she had first come to Kencote, and it seemed like yesterday. She summoned up a rueful little smile when she recalled, in the light of her now a.s.sured position as "a member of the family," her palpitating nervousness on her introduction to the great house, so different from anything she had known. She had never been "out"

before. She had had a good education, for those days, in the day school that her mother, the doctor's widow, and her elder sister had carried on in a little town in which she had been born, and had taught in it till she was twenty-eight. Then, after deep consultation, she had answered Mrs. Clinton's advertis.e.m.e.nt, and, her references having proved satisfactory, had been engaged to impart the rudiments of education to a child of five, which she had modestly thought she was as capable of doing as anybody, and at a salary that seemed to her munificent.

She remembered arriving at Kencote on a spring evening and being received by Mrs. Clinton, the pretty young wife and mother, who had been almost as shy as herself, but had been so anxious that everything should be "nice" for her that she had soon lost her awe of the big house and the many servants; and even the figure in the background from which all the splendour around her emanated lost some of its imaginative terror, since the lady of the house had proved so accessibly human. She had thought the little boy, whom she had been taken to see in bed, a darling, and so quaint when he asked her solemnly if she could jump a pony over a log, because he could. She had liked his quiet, elderly nurse, who had come to talk to her in her schoolroom when he had gone to sleep. She had called her "miss," and shown that she had no wish to "presume," but only the wish to be friendly, and they had, in fact, remained friends for years. She had been greatly pleased with the size and comfort of her schoolroom, which she had entirely to herself, to read or write or play the piano in, outside hours of lessons, which were at first as short as was conceivably possible. And she had not in the least expected that there would be a maid for the schoolroom, who was, as she wrote to her sister, practically her own maid, calling her in the morning and bringing her a cup of tea, lighting a fire for her every evening in her bedroom as a matter of course, and indeed treating her as if she might be the mistress of the house.

She had been happy at Kencote from the first, although she had been a good deal alone, for until her little pupil had grown bigger she had had all her meals sent up to her in the schoolroom, except on Sundays, when she lunched downstairs in charge of little d.i.c.k. Those were nervous occasions, for it took her a long time to get used to the Squire--the young Squire, as he was then--with his loud laugh and hearty ways, who used to chaff her at table in a way to cause her uneasiness, although he was never anything but kind, and she was a.s.sured, even when she blushed deepest, that his manner was only intended to put her at her ease and make her feel "one of the family."

She had soon lost any awe she may have started with of Mrs. Clinton, although her respect for that lady's character had only grown with the pa.s.sage of time. Mrs. Clinton used to sit with her sometimes in the schoolroom, and in the summer time they would work under the big lime in the garden while little d.i.c.k played about on the lawn. Miss Bird's simple gaiety of heart had had play, and her rather breathless volubility had never been checked by any stiffness on the part of Mrs.

Clinton. Mr. Beach, the Rector of Kencote, and the Squire's half-brother, had always treated her with consideration, and his wife had made her feel at home in the rectory, and expected her to visit there occasionally on her own account. The Squire's six maiden aunts at the dower-house, all but one of whom were now dead, had also treated her kindly, but in a rather more patronising manner. She had not minded that. She had quite agreed with the opinion which underlay everything they said and did, though it was seldom expressed in words, that the Clintons of Kencote were great people in the land, and her native humility had led her to accept gratefully the attentions paid to her by them and their neighbours, and to "presume" on it no more than little d.i.c.k's nurse had presumed on her own mild gentility.

She had found little d.i.c.k rather a handful as he grew older, but she had coped successfully with him, by the expenditure of much energy of speech and action, and had courageously beaten the beginnings of learning into his brain, so that he took a good place at his first school, and she was not disgraced. By that time Humphrey was ready for her guiding hand, and then Walter, and a few years later, Cicely, hailed with joy as a pupil whom she might train up to the fine finish; for there could be no talk of school for a girl Clinton, and Miss Bird's success with d.i.c.k had given her a high place as an instructress in the Squire's estimate of her abilities, so that there was never any idea of her being some day superseded, and the years at Kencote stretched happily in front of her.

Cicely was nine, and Frank, the sailor, seven, when the twins arrived.

The day of their birth was a good day in Miss Bird's annals. It meant more years still at Kencote, and by this time the idea of living with any other family would have been most distressing to her. And yet she would have had to seek another situation but for the arrival of the twins, for when she should have finished with Cicely she would be fifty only, and would not have put by enough money to enable her to retire.

These are the hards.h.i.+ps of a governess's lot, and Miss Bird had them fully in her mind, saving and skimping all through the fruitful years for a time when not only the opulences of existence in a house like Kencote should be hers no longer, but it might be difficult to make ends meet at all. The twins lifted a weight off her mind, which, with all her daily cheerfulness and courage, had never been quite absent from her; for another nine or ten years would just enable her to provide for her old age, and she knew that those nine or ten years would be hers if she could only keep her health, of which there seemed no reasonable doubt. "It is not many women in my position who are as fortunate as I," she had written to her sister at the time. "The Squire, who _roared_ with laughter when he heard of the birth of the darling babies, said to me the first time he saw me afterwards, 'Well, that fixes _you_ for another twenty years, Miss Bird.' And he added in a way which you might think profane if you had not heard him say it, 'Thank G.o.d, eh?'"

Well, here was the end of those happy years, which seemed to have sped like a week or two since the birth of the twins. She had seen Walter and Cicely married and had dandled their babies. She had shared Mrs.

Clinton's daily anxiety during the long months d.i.c.k had served in South Africa, and had taken his award of a D.S.O. almost as a personal compliment. She had been glad at all the joys of the family and saddened with their sorrows. She had seen the Squire grow from a handsome young man to an elderly one, and Mrs. Clinton's hair turn nearly white. She had boxes and drawers full of the presents she had received at Christmas and on her birthdays, which had never been forgotten, and the photographs of Clintons of all ages from babyhood upwards were displayed on every available standing place in her room.

They were more to her than her sister or her sister's children, but the call had come to her to leave them and to go to a place where she would have to work hard and anxiously for the rest of her life on a very small pittance and in very narrow surroundings, and it had never occurred to her to s.h.i.+rk it. It had all fitted in--she felt that she had been "guided." The teaching which she had never doubted that she was able to give to Cicely now seemed to her inadequate for the finish of the twins' education, but she did doubt, now that her departure had been settled for her on other grounds, whether she would have had the strength to say so and cut herself adrift of her own accord. Here was matter for thankfulness--that she had been led to see what her duty was, and to do it. She would always have Kencote to look back to, and she was indeed fortunate to have spent the best part of her life in such a place, and with such people.

The twins came in as she was finis.h.i.+ng her toilette, to take her down to breakfast. This was a reversal of the procedure of the past, when it had been the first of her daily duties to hunt them out of whatever spot out of doors or in to which their vagrant fancy had led them, and see that they appeared to the public eye duly washed, combed, and brushed. They embraced her, enveloping her wizened form with their exuberant youth, like flowers round a peastick, and she was moved to the depths of her being, though all she said was, "Now, Joan 'n' Nancy, don't be rough. You can love a person without untidying her hair."

"Are your nails quite clean, Starling darling?" asked Joan, taking one of her hands and examining it.

"And are you quite sure you've brushed your teeth properly?" enquired Nancy.

"Now don't _tease_, Joan 'n' Nancy," said Miss Bird, disengaging herself. "I shall only be here another week and you must try and be _good_ girls and let me go away remembering that."

"Joan was saying this morning as we were dressing," said Nancy, "that she was very sorry now to think of all the trouble she had given you, Starling darling, and if she could have the time over again she would behave very differently."

"Idiot!" retorted Joan. "It's you who have given the trouble.

Starling has often said that if it weren't for your example I should be a very good girl, haven't you, Starling darling?"

"You would _both_ be good girls if it wasn't for the other's example,"

replied Miss Bird. "And you can be dear good girls as good as gold and I hope you will when the new governess comes to teach you."

"I hope we shall, but I doubt it," said Joan.

"You see, Starling darling, what we would do for you we couldn't be expected to do for a stranger whom we didn't love, could we?" said Nancy.

Miss Bird was moved by this, and would have liked to embrace the speaker, with words of endearment. But she had grown rather wary of exhibiting affection towards her pupils, who were apt to respond so voluminously as to leave her crumpled, if not actually dishevelled.

"Well, if you love me as much as you say you do," she said, "you will remember all the things I have told you; now are you _quite_ ready for breakfast, because it is time to go down?"

"We told d.i.c.k you would like him to kiss you before you went, and I think he will," said Joan innocently, as they went down the broad staircase all three abreast.

"Now, Joan, if you _really_ said a thing like that--oh, take care! take care!" Miss Bird had tried to stop on the stairs and withdraw her arm from Joan's, who, a.s.sisted by Nancy on the other side, had led her on so that she tripped over the next step, and would have fallen but for the firm grasp of the twins. She was led into the dining-room, protesting volubly, until she saw that Mrs. Clinton and d.i.c.k were there, when the episode ended.

When breakfast was over the Squire surprised her by asking her immediate attendance in his room, to which she followed him across the hall in a flutter of apprehension. It would not be quite true to say that she had never been into this room during the thirty years of her sojourn at Kencote, but it was certainly the first time she had entered it on the Squire's invitation. He did not ask her to take a seat, nor did he take one himself, but stood in front of the fire with his coat tails over his arm and his hands in his pockets.

"There's a little matter of business I should like to settle with you, Miss Bird," he said. "You've lived here a considerable number of years, and you've done remarkably well by us and the children. If everybody did their duty in life as well as you, Miss Bird, the world 'ud be a better place than it is, by George! Now I want to do a little something for you, as you've done so much for us, and I've talked it over with d.i.c.k, and we are going to buy you a little annuity of fifty pounds a year, which with what my wife tells me you've saved will put you out of anxiety for the future; and I'll tell you this, Miss Bird, that I never--Eh, what! Oh, my good woman ... G.o.d's sake ... here, don't take on like that ... Gobblessme, what's to be done?"

For Miss Bird, overcome by this last great mark of esteem, had broken down and was now sobbing into her handkerchief. Knowing, however, the Squire's dislike of a scene she succeeded in controlling herself, and addressed him with no more than an occasional hiccup. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Clinton; I couldn't help it and it's too much and I thank you from the bottom of my heart and shall never forget it as long as I live and it's just like all the rest of the kindness I've received in this house which I could never repay if I lived to be a hundred."

"Well, I'm very glad it meets your views, Miss Bird," said the Squire, greatly relieved at the subsidence of emotion, and anxious to escape further thanks. "And I a.s.sure you the obligation's still on our side.

Now, I must write some letters, and I dare say you've got something to do, too."

Miss Bird retired to her bedroom where, unrebuked, she shed her tears of thankfulness, then wiped her eyes and sponged her face and went about the duties of the day.

These did not, this morning, include lessons for the twins, for it was Sat.u.r.day, which was for them a holiday, when complete freedom was tempered only by the necessity of "practising." d.i.c.k had refused to drive them over to Mountfield to see their sister and her babies, but had offered them a walk to the dower-house during the course of the morning.

"I wonder what he wants to go there for?" said Joan, as they went upstairs.

"There's more in this," said Nancy, "than meets the eye."

There did not, however, seem to be more in it than a natural desire to see a house empty which one has always known occupied, and this desire the twins shared. They found d.i.c.k in an affable mood as they walked across the park together--the sort of affectionately jovial mood of which they had occasionally taken advantage to secure a temporary addition to their income. Indeed, it seemed to have brought d.i.c.k himself a reminder of his young sisters' financial requirements, for he asked them, "Have you saved up enough money for your camera yet, Tw.a.n.kies?"

Neither of them replied for the moment, then Joan said rather stiffly, "We shan't be able to buy that for some time."

"Why, you only wanted twenty-five s.h.i.+llings to make it up a month ago, and I gave you a sovereign towards it," said d.i.c.k.

Another short pause, and then Nancy said, "You gave it us!"

"Yes," said d.i.c.k, "to buy a camera. I'm not certain you didn't screw it out of me. I never quite know whether it's my idea or yours when I tip you Tw.a.n.kies. Come now, what have you done with that sovereign?"

"We have spent it on a good object," said Joan. "But we do want the camera most frightfully badly, and if you would like to contribute to the fund again it would save us many weary months of waiting."

"To say nothing of a severe economy painful to our generous natures,"