Читать книгу The Old Pincushion: or, Aunt Clotilda's Guests - Molesworth Mrs. - Страница 1

No, Kathie, I don't believe you care one bit; I really don't,' said Neville reproachfully.

Kathie was seated as she loved to be – on the edge of a rather high table. Her skirts were short and her legs were long; from her present elevation she could swing the latter about delightfully. She gave them an extra energetic fling before she replied to her brother, and then, trying her best to look concerned and distressed, and only succeeding in giving to her funny little face an expression of comical demureness, she turned to Neville, —

'I do care. You haven't any right to say I don't. If I didn't care for myself, I'd care because you do, and because they do. I'm not a – a – unnatural monster. I'd cry if it was my way, but you know it isn't; and a good thing too. A nice life I'd have had here,' with great contempt, 'if I'd been a crying child like little Philippa Harley. She's tired everybody out. But what's more, I do care for myself too. I've been looking forward to them coming home, and nice proper holidays, like other children. Yes, indeed, I should just think I had.'

'Holidays only!' Neville repeated. 'It would have been much better than holidays – for you, any way. They wouldn't have left you here. I'd have stayed at school, I suppose – boys must; but I don't mind school. I'd like it very well if I had a home besides.'

Kathie did not seem to have noticed his last words. A new expression had come into her face, as she repeated softly to herself, 'They wouldn't have left me here. I never thought of that.'

'You'll begin to care really now, I suppose,' said her brother, rather bitterly. 'I didn't think you were so selfish.'

The little girl faced about at that.

'I'm not selfish – at least, if selfish means only caring about oneself and not about other people. I don't pretend not to care about myself too. I'm one of the people in the world as well as being myself. I should care for myself. But I care for others too. I'm sorry for you, and for them, though not as sorry as for you, because I know you and I don't know them. That's natural. I can't pretend to care for them the same as if I knew them. People who want their children to care a lot for them shouldn't leave them when they're too little to remember, and never see them again for years and years.'

'It isn't much "shouldn't" about it,' the boy replied. 'It's nothing but "can't." Papa and mamma would be only too glad to come home if they could. I'm sure you might know that, Kathie.'

'Well, I've been looking forward to their coming as well as you,' said Kathie, rather grumpily. 'I'm sure I've thought about it ever since last year, when mamma wrote they'd be sure to come before this next summer. I don't see but what if that hor – ' she stopped; 'if that old aunt wouldn't leave papa anything else, she might at least have left him money enough to come home on a visit, as she had promised to pay it.'

'Kathie,' said Neville, in a rather awe-struck tone, 'you shouldn't speak that way when she is dead.'

'I don't see any harm in it,' the little girl replied, undauntedly. 'She should have settled things properly, and then we could have felt nicely sorry about her. I don't understand you, Neville – I don't think you're fair to me. First you scold me for not being sorry and not caring, and then when you've regularly worked me up, you turn upon me for saying what I feel.'

Neville looked rather at a loss.

'I don't mean to do that,' he said. 'I suppose the truth is, I'm so dreadfully disappointed that I don't know what to say. But I must be going, Kathie. I suppose you don't want me to leave you the letter?' and as he spoke he half held out to her an envelope he held in his hand.

Kathie shook her head.

'No, you'd better keep it. You'll answer it at once, I suppose. I shouldn't know what to say. You tell them from me that I'm awfully sorry, and I'll write next week.'

'And,' Neville went on, 'about writing to Aunt Clotilda? Can't you write to her, Kathie? Mamma says one of us should.'

'Well, you'd do it far better than I. I shouldn't like to send it without you seeing it first, any way. I don't feel inclined to write to her – I think she's been very stupid – she might have managed better if she really cares for them as she makes out.'

'Kathie!' said Neville – this time with real displeasure in his tone, 'I do think that's too bad of you. Poor Aunt Clotilda! You see, papa says she is almost the most to be pitied of anybody. And there's another thing, Kathie: I don't think it's right of you always to speak of papa and mamma as "they" or "them." It's not – not respectful; not as if you cared for them.'

'Oh, bother!' said Kathie; 'if you're going to begin again about my not caring, Neville, I just wish you'd go. I'm tired of explaining to you, and – there; I must go. Miss Eccles is sending for me;' and as the footsteps her quick ears had heard coming along the passage stopped at the door, Kathleen slid down from the table, and stood erect and demure, as a girl of seventeen or so, with a sharp, dark face looked in.

'Miss Powys,' she said, 'it is time to get ready for dinner. You must be up-stairs in five minutes;' and so saying, disappeared.

'Good-bye, Kathie,' said Neville, as he kissed her. 'It was kind of Mr. Fanshaw to let me come, wasn't it? And – oh! I forgot – Mrs. Fanshaw's going to write to Miss Eccles to ask if you may spend next Wednesday with us – all day: that's to say, to come to dinner and stay till the evening. I'm to fetch you walking, and bring you back in a hansom.'

'That will be splucious!' said Kathie, her eyes sparkling. 'Oh! I say, I do hope old Eccles will let me go.'

A slight look of annoyance crossed the boy's face. He disliked to hear his little sister talking slang, or any approach to it.

'Old Eccles!' he repeated. 'I wish you wouldn't say that, Kathie. "Splucious" I don't mind – it was our own nursery word.'

'Neville, you are a prig!' said Kathie. 'However, I'll forgive you in return for the good news. Good-bye till Wednesday, and do thank them awfully. I do wish old Eccles was like them.'

And already, in the prospect of the immediate pleasure, more than half forgetting the important bad news which her brother had come to tell her, Kathleen flew along the passage, and up-stairs two steps at a time, by way of working off some of her excitement.

She was only twelve years old, though, to judge by her height, she might have been older. But she had the thin, lanky look of a fast-growing child; there was nothing the least precocious about her.

'She is such a baby still,' thought Neville, as he made his way soberly along the street. 'I suppose she can't help it,' he went on, with a vague idea of excusing her to himself for he scarcely knew what. 'But I do wish, oh! how I do wish they were coming home! Five years more, papa says; five years more it will be. It won't matter for me so much. I've been so fortunate in being with the Fanshaws; and any way, I'd have had to be going to a big school by now. But for Kathie, she'll be seventeen, and she won't have been with mamma for eleven years. It doesn't seem right, somehow. And just now, when everything might have been easy. Oh dear! I wonder why things go wrong when they might just as well go right!'

Neville Powys was only thirteen and a half, barely eighteen months older than Kathleen. But in mind and temperament he was twice her age. And he seemed to himself to have grown years older since that very same morning when the Indian mail had brought the letter which had been the reason of his visit to his sister.

It had been a terrible disappointment to him, and he had hoped for thorough sympathy from Kathie. Yet again, perhaps it was well that she had not taken it to heart so acutely as he. She was less happily placed under Miss Eccles' trustworthy, but cold and unloving care, than he in the Fanshaw family. And had she been of a more sensitive or less buoyant nature, she might have been in some ways dwarfed and crushed painfully. But she was strong and elastic; so far, her six years of stiff and prim school life had done her no harm beyond leaving her, in several ways, as much of a 'baby' as when they had first begun. Still, Neville's instinct that it was more than time that Kathie should be in other hands, that the 'womanliness' in her would suffer unless there were some change, was a correct one.

'If only Mrs. Fanshaw could have had her too,' he said to himself, as he had often said before.

But that he knew was impossible. The Fanshaws had four boys of their own, and no daughter, which had naturally led to their taking only boy boarders.

'I don't like to make things worse by writing to mamma that I don't think Kathie is improving,' he went on, thinking. 'I know it must be very difficult for them to pay what they do for us. And Mrs. Fanshaw always says that Miss Eccles' school is far better, though it is old-fashioned and prim, than many of those great, big, fashionable, girls' schools, which cost twice as much.'

Suddenly a thought struck him.

'I don't see why I shouldn't write about Kathie to Aunt Clotilda,' he said to himself. 'She is free now, even though she's poor. She might surely have Kathie with her if papa gave what he does to Miss Eccles. And she's often said she would have had us every holiday if Mrs. Wynne hadn't been so old and queer. I think Aunt Clotilda must be nice – she is so fond of papa. She might at least have Kathie there on a visit.'

And with a rather more hopeful feeling about things in general since this idea had struck him, poor Neville rang at Mr. Fanshaw's door, which he had now reached.

He had met with plenty of sympathy from his kind friends in his disappointment. It was Mrs. Fanshaw who had suggested to her husband to give the boy an hour or two's holiday to go off to see his sister, though not an orthodox day for the two meeting, and who had furthermore promised the invitation which had so delighted Kathleen. But a feeling of loyalty prevented Neville's telling how slightly the bad news seemed to have affected the little girl, and besides this, a sort of instinct that the less family matters are talked of out of the family the better, made him resolve not to say very much more about the matter in the Fanshaw household.

What the bad news was it is quite time to explain.

Neville and Kathleen Powys were the children of an officer in the army. Captain Powys was poor, but not without reasonable hopes of becoming much richer before his boy and girl should have reached the age at which education and the other many advantages which good parents desire for their children, grow expensive and difficult to obtain for those who have very small means. One disadvantage – a disadvantage at all ages – that of separation from their parents, had to be submitted to, however, when Neville and Kathleen were only five and six years old. For at that time Captain Powys's regiment was ordered to India, and he had, of course, to accompany it.

'Never mind – or, at least, mind it as little as you can,' he said to his wife. 'Let us be thankful they are still so young. By the time they are at an age when it really would matter greatly, we may quite hope to be settled at home again.'

And in this hope the last few years had been passed. It was not an unreasonable hope by any means, as you shall hear. Captain Powys had an old cousin, who was also his godmother, by name Mrs. Wynne. And for many years this lady had openly announced her intention of making him her heir. Only last year she had written to beg him to try to get leave to come home for some months, as she felt she had not long to live, and there were many things she wished to say to him. She undertook to pay all the expenses of this visit for himself and his wife, and the little girl Vida, who had been born since their return to India. And as a reason the more for it, she reminded him that it was high time Neville and Kathleen should see their parents again. Captain Powys, as may be imagined, was only too glad to agree to her proposal, and for the last few months the parents in India and the children at home had been counting the weeks – in Neville's case, indeed, almost the days – till they should meet, when, alas! all these plans were dashed to the ground!

Mrs. Wynne died suddenly, and after her death no will was to be found. In consequence of this, all her property would go to a nephew of her husband's, already a rich man, who did not need it, and, to do him justice, scarcely cared for it. This was the news which Miss Clotilda Powys, the children's aunt, who had lived with the old lady and helped to manage her affairs, had to write to her brother in India. And this too was the news contained in the letter from his father which had so distressed poor Neville.

It was a curious story altogether. Clotilda was completely puzzled. Mrs. Wynne was a careful and methodical person, not likely to have delayed seeing to business matters, and just the sort of woman to have prided herself on leaving everything in perfect order. And a day or two before her death she had given her cousin a sealed envelope, on which was written, 'Directions where to find my will;' saying to her at the same time, 'You will see – all will be right for David.' So Miss Clotilda's mind had been quite at rest, till on opening the envelope, a few hours after the old lady's death, she drew forth a blank sheet of note-paper! Even then, however, she was not completely discouraged. That the will was somewhere in the house she felt certain, for she had often heard Mrs. Wynne say that she would trust no important papers to any one's keeping but her own. And in the presence of the lawyer, Mr. Jones, and of Mr. Wynne-Carr, the nephew, a thorough search was made. Every cupboard, every bookcase, every wardrobe, every chest of drawers was turned out – nay, more, the walls were tapped, the planks of the floors examined, for it was a very old and quaintly contrived house, to see if there was any secret place where the will could have been concealed. But all in vain. Every other paper or document of importance was found in its place, neatly labelled in the old lady's own handwriting, in her private secrétaire in the library. But no will! And even though poor Miss Clotilda went on for days and weeks searching, searching, thinking of nothing else by day, dreaming of nothing else by night, all was useless, and it became evident that there would not much longer be any pretext for preventing Mr. Wynne-Carr's taking possession.

Mr. Wynne-Carr behaved well. He had never expected to succeed, and was not eager about it. He could not, however, help himself – he had a son and grandson – he could not give up the property even if Captain Powys could have been brought to accept it from him. But he told Miss Clotilda to take her time. He gave her leave to stay on in the house as long as she liked, and to continue searching. But as weeks went on, her last hopes faded, and she wrote again to her brother, advising him to make up his mind that the will would never be found. Then Captain Powys wrote to Neville – he had put off doing so as long as he could – telling him all, and saying that even the visit to England must be given up, as he had no money to spare for it, and no hopes of gaining anything by it. If Miss Clotilda had not succeeded in finding the will, there was no chance that any one else would.

Neville was old enough, and thoughtful enough, thoroughly to understand the whole. No wonder he was troubled and distressed, and disappointed by Kathie's childishness. He wished his Aunt Clotilda had written to him. It would have made it much easier for him to have confided to her his feelings about his sister. It was many years since Miss Clotilda had seen the children, for she had not left Wales for long, and Mrs. Wynne had never invited the children to visit her. She was too old for it, she said, and she had never had children of her own, and did not understand their ways. So Neville and Kathleen had been entirely left to the care of strangers, though Neville had once or twice been asked to spend some holidays at a companion's house, and Kathie was taken every year to the seaside with two other 'little Indians,' for three weeks by Miss Eccles.

But of real happy home-life neither knew anything, except by hearsay. And Kathleen was not the sort of child to trouble herself much about anything which did not actually come in her way.