Part 5

Shan’t nodded; then she jumped up and down in her chair and did dangerous things with her spoon, and the porridge within the spoon, and the only-aunt-in-the-world had to tell her to sit still and to put her spoon down or to finish her porridge. It is extraordinary the dulness of the alternatives grown-ups offer children, always ending up with “or else.”

“Or else what?” ask the children, always hoping, perhaps, that the grown-ups will think of something new—going to bed early, no jam for tea, are ridden to death. There is no child that doesn’t despair at the lack of enterprise shown by grown-ups in the inventing of punishments for crimes which are not strictly punishable. Why shouldn’t Shan’t, if she chose, wave her spoon in the air at the thought of Diana’s return? She didn’t make the porridge: it wasn’t her fault it was made wet and squashy—and splashable about.

“I will ask her,” said Aunt Elsie; and she meant it, too, and if she just mentioned the prospect of a dance—was it not perfectly justifiable? She had not suggested it. If Mrs. Sloane chose—to be so kind—

Aunt Elsie went to her writing-table and she wrote until she found Shan’t biting the edge of the table. Then she left off writing to show Shan’t the teeth-marks she had made. Shan’t was intensely interested, but not in the least surprised. Why, she was making them on purpose all the time! Didn’t Aunt Elsie think she was? It was then Aunt Elsie determined that Uncle Marcus should have his furniture bitten. It would do him all the good in the world. To her letter she added a post-script—“Tell Mr. Maitland he can have Shan’t for a few days if he likes. This is, I believe, the arrangement we made. She can then return a few days before you come back—” And Elsie folded the letter, feeling she was doing the right and honourable thing—while Shan’t, with her chin resting on the edge of the table, made tiger faces at her. Aunt Elsie knew Mr. Maitland gave large sums for furniture and that his furniture consisted of “pieces.” Shan’t should set her mark upon them.

At that moment the door opened and in walked Diana.

“Darlings!” she cried, snatching up Shan’t and putting her on Aunt Elsie’s lap so that she might hug them both together and so make up for lost time.

“Why did you come?” asked Aunt Elsie; “not that; but how did you get away?”

“Quite easily.”

“You haven’t—?”

“Of course not: he’s a dear, but London is hot—and Shan’t is a darling and the only-aunt-in-the-world—is—”

“I am just offering him Shan’t,” said Aunt Elsie.

“Writing to him?”

“No, I was writing to you—”

“Well, write to him; say I have arrived. Say I look so well—”

“You do, darling—you do!”

“Yes—and add that you can’t take Shan’t to the seaside this year.”

“Oh, do—take me to the seaside,” moaned Shan’t.

“You tell Uncle Marcus that Aunt Elsie won’t take you to the seaside, Shan’t, poor little thing!”

“Don’t say _won’t_,” said Aunt Elsie.

“What shall I say, then?” asked Shan’t.

“Say _won’t_,” said Diana.

“She won’t—she won’t—she wo-n’t,” murmured Shan’t.

“It is delightful to have you back,” said Aunt Elsie, as arm in arm she and Diana went round the garden, leaving Shan’t to write to Uncle Marcus—a rash thing to do—“with re-al ink,” sighed Shan’t.

It was rather curious, but that very morning Mr. Pease, remembering what Mrs. Sloane had said, determined to go and sit in Miss Carston’s garden. He quite saw it was the politic thing to do. Then Miss Carston couldn’t think what she would be almost bound to think—

Mr. Watkins had thought over that brambly, overgrown path to which Mrs. Sloane had referred. At last he remembered the source from which the idea had flowed. It was from a Persian poem. Any idea Mr. Watkins must always run to ground. If any new idea were to burst upon Bestways it must come from him. He could bear a woman to be anything rather than original. He would have talked more if he could have afforded to. But his thoughts were to him as valuable as jewels, he must keep them until he could be paid for them. He couldn’t afford to be amusing like ordinary people. But still the thought that had inspired Mrs. Sloane had been a wise one—Of course, if he only went to Miss Carston’s garden when Miss Diana was there, Miss Carston would think—that he only went—what would she think? He would therefore go at once. So by three o’clock on the day Diana came home two men had passed through the garden gate, and the first person they each came upon, of course, was Diana.

Mr. Pease was the first to find her. “You here!” he exclaimed. “Well—I am—surprised—I mean I really am—do you know why I came to-day?”

Diana had no idea.

“Because I thought you weren’t here.”

There was a pause. “Why are you laughing, Miss Diana? I mean I came because you weren’t here, so that I might come when you were.”

“I see!”

“Do you, really?”

And Mr. Pease hastened to say that if he only came when she was there it would look as if—

“You came to see me?”

Mr. Pease said he felt he had somehow or other not said quite what he meant to say.

Diana quickly assured him she knew exactly what he had meant to say—that he really came to see Aunt Elsie, but that if he waited till Aunt Elsie had her niece back, then it would look as if it was the niece he had wanted to see. It was very clever of him—and Aunt Elsie would never suspect.

“That isn’t in the least what I meant; it was rather the other way round.”

“And Mr. Watkins, why does he come to sit in Aunt Elsie’s garden?”

Across the lawn, towards the fount of his inspiration, knowing not she was there, came Mr. Watkins, murmuring as he walked: smiling as apt phrases broke from his lips—“rippling rhythmetic phrases,” he would have called them. He spoke to his sisters, the bees; sang to his brothers, the birds; conscious all the while of the suitability of his garb and the length of his hair. If Diana were but there to see! Diana was there and she saw, and she looked at Mr. Pease. Mr. Pease looked away. He carried Christianity to the length of never making fun of another less well placed than himself, and well placed he now was; next to Diana. And Diana, as she sat, had no other side. A matter for congratulation to any man, or child, who loves. To halve sides may mean an acute mental agony. On Diana’s other side rose a pillar of rambling roses, of which no man could be jealous. Mr. Pease had not got so far as to be jealous of the breezes that played in his lady’s hair, or of the roses that fluttered their petals over her. He left such things to Watkins.

“Well, Watkins?” he said.

“Is it _well_?” questioned Watkins, from despondent habit; then he caught sight of Diana. The spring went from his walk, the lilt from his voice. She had come back and Pease had known she was coming. Pease without a sense of honour was no longer his friend—the past must be as though it had never been. Never again would he confide in Pease: never again read him his poems: share his Sunday sausages.

“This is delightful!” he said, looking first at Pease, then at the pillar of roses that stood as it were on Diana’s left hand; finally he sank down at Diana’s feet. “Now tell me—everything,” he said; “what saw you in London?”

“Men and things—things and men,” said Diana.

“Just men?”

“Yes, just men, and unjust—poets and policemen.”

“Bad poets?”

“Bad poets.”

“And what did the poets do?”

“One sold bootlaces for a living.”

“And does he yet live?”

“No, he died.”

“Who got the bootlaces?”

“The policeman got the bootlaces.”

“Who gave him—a button-hook?” asked Shan’t, remembering that Uncle Marcus could not lace or unlace his boots without one.

“What a strange thing,” said Mr. Watkins. “Out of the mouth of babes and—and yet—why strange? Strange that it should be true that out of the—”

“Aren’t we getting in a bit deep?” asked Mr. Pease, who felt that the poet was trespassing on his ground. Poets in general he handed over to Watkins to play with as he liked, but the Bible—and as a future bishop—button-hooks—well, after all, they were his province.

“What nonsense we talk!” said Diana; “I propose we go in to tea.”

“_You_ ought to propose,” said Shan’t to Mr. Pease; “you could if you liked—and _you_,” she said, nodding at Mr. Watkins; “couldn’t they, Diana?”

“They might.”

“Will you?” Shan’t said, turning to Mr. Pease; “do let him, Diana.”

Diana thought it better not. It was too hot—too delicious a day altogether to spoil.

Shan’t was very disappointed. She slipped her hand into that of the curate. “_You_ do—” she whispered,—“it would be such fun. Then you could be married—wouldn’t you like it?”

Mr. Pease said he would like it very much—only people never did propose on Wednesdays.

“On what days, then?”

“Only on Saturday afternoons—at half-past three—on half-holidays—”

“Truthfully?”

“More or less—”

“I am going to the seaside,” said Shan’t, “with my darling uncle”—this unctuously.

“Are you? That will be delightful.”

“I thought you were goin’ to say, ‘Oh, that will be joyful,’ but that’s about dying, isn’t it?”

Mr. Pease thought it was.

“Do you think it’s such a very joyful thing to die?”

Mr. Pease hesitated. He had no wish to die. He raised his eyes to the heavens above him: they looked their best, he was sure, from where he stood: his eyes to the waving tree-tops; they had not whispered half the secrets they had to tell him. He looked at the daisy-sown lawn; at Diana who walked a few paces in front of him; at Shan’t who walked beside him. He didn’t want to die; he wanted desperately to live. To live till that day when he should be asked to pay the bill for some blue stuff such as Shan’t’s frock was made of. Blue stuff like that must be fairly cheap. It was not much to aspire to—the blue cottony stuff, he meant! His grasp tightened on the hand of Shan’t.

“You do squeeze hard,” she said—“it makes my hand so hot, like when you hold daisies, you know.”

“I was afraid I might lose you,” he explained, releasing her hand.

“I wouldn’t run away, it would be rude—wouldn’t it? Only if I go to the sea—that won’t be so very rude—” Then she added: “I didn’t want to leave go—not specially.” She slipped her hand in his.

“That would be different,” said Mr. Pease, referring to the visit to the seaside.

“Why would it be?”

“Because—the sea is always different from anything else in the world. There will be deep, deep golden sands at the sea—there are none here—and there will be crabs and starfish—and babies of all sizes—and shapes—round and square—think of that!”

“Squ-are?” queried Shan’t; “I don’t think they could be that.”

“I think so.”

“I don’t think their mothers would let them.”

“Perhaps you’re right.”

“Gardens are square in London—aren’t they?”

Mr. Pease said, of course they were. Perhaps he was thinking of square gardens.

“What else will there be at the sea?”

“There will be coast-guardsmen.”

“What are they like?”

“They are great big men—and they have beards—and they look through telescopes—and they never tell you what they see.”

“Not if you asked them very nicely, wouldn’t they?”

“No, not even then.”

“P’r’aps they don’t see anything.”

“I believe you have lighted on a great truth.”

“What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“What you said.”

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s play something else. You be funny—or something—or shall we _just_ have tea?”

Mr. Pease thought, just have tea. It was so much easier than being funny.

Meanwhile Mr. Watkins thought he had proposed to Diana and was in an agony of mind not knowing whether she knew it or not. If she did not know it, he thought he would leave things alone. But if she knew he had proposed, he would be equally willing to let things stand. Glad to let them! But he had been rushed, as it were, into a declaration. The perfidy of Pease had upset him; the prettiness of Diana had distracted him. And yet he had always vowed that nothing should ever induce him to marry a pretty woman. True beauty must be strange: must not be admired of the people—or understood by the crowd. He would rather be one of those who admired “the other sister far more.” It showed discrimination: argued a critical faculty. Diana was too obviously pretty. He didn’t suppose any one had ever argued the point. Therefore she did not come up to what he had set as his standard. But still, if he had proposed—he was quite glad—quite. It was possible he had been so subtle, disguised his meaning so cleverly that Diana had not seen whither he was drifting. Mr. Watkins decided to go by the size of the tea she was able to eat.

Diana was able to eat quite a good tea. The colour in her cheeks neither deepened nor paled, and she forgot whether Mr. Watkins liked sugar or not in his tea. So he decided he had carried subtlety too far. Or perhaps it had served him well. He would be better able to judge of that later on. To-morrow morning! After proposing he had always heard it was the next morning that tells.

* * * * *

Night had come. Shan’t had been asleep for hours. Diana was asleep. Only Aunt Elsie was awake—and she asked of herself this question—“Is she in love and has she told _him_?”

* * * * *

_He_, alone in London, asked of himself the same question: “Is she in love—and has she told _her_?” If he had known that Aunt Elsie lay awake, as he lay awake, wondering, he would have been happier.

* * * * *

In a Government House far, far away, two people asked of each other the same question. The red carpet was rolled up, the band had gone to bed, the tiara was taken off, and the A.D.C.’s were no longer “studies in scarlet and gold,” but were presumably asleep, dreaming of trout streams and England; and Sibyl and her husband sat together—Sibyl with her hair in two long plaits looking absurdly like Diana. Her husband loved her like that. It amused him to see how young she looked. And the dinner? How had it gone off? They did not talk of dinners. They sat for some time saying nothing. The air was heavy with the scent of flowers, a breeze blew through the open windows. “What is Diana doing?” asked Sibyl. “No, don’t bother about the difference in time. Supposing it is _there_ what it is _here_—what is she doing?”

Her father hoped she was in bed.

Diana in bed! Countless memories there—delicious memories. Memories that brought tears to the mother’s eyes—and because of the tears in her eyes, to the father’s eyes too.

“And—Dick?”

Again they were both silent. They were never so silent as when they talked of their children—there was so much to say.

“And Shan’t?”

There was another silence; then Sibyl said: “I wonder if she is in love?”

“I suppose it’s possible at her age.”

“She’s nineteen.”

“That doesn’t seem possible.”

“I sometimes hope she will marry—”

“He’s not good enough.”

“You don’t know who I was going to say?”

“It makes no difference,” said Diana’s father.

* * * * *

And one of the aides-de-camp asked of himself the same question. “Is she in love?” and he was properly and horribly and happily miserable.

Before he got into bed he took from his despatch-case a photograph (he had stolen it, by the way) and put it on the table beside his bed. “Good-night, you darling,” he whispered; “you’ll wait till you’ve seen me, won’t you? I mean—you’ll give me a chance before you fall in love?” And he fell asleep, thinking, and he slept, dreaming, of Diana. And Diana hardly knew of his existence—never dreamed that the prayers of an A.D.C. committed her every night to God’s safe keeping, until he should be able to keep guard over her himself.

Her mother had mentioned once or twice that Captain Hastings was fond of weeding.

Captain Hastings would not have slept so well as he did had he known that was all Lady Carston had said about him. He hated weeding—except as a means to an end. What had she done, he would have asked, with all the beautiful things he had said about love and marriage and life in general, and His Excellency in particular, if she had not sent them on to her whose photograph had inspired them?

IX

_A man may build his house on what he wills, A child with sand her painted bucket fills._

Diana wrote to her uncle and said poor Shan’t wanted to go to the seaside, but Aunt Elsie could not manage to take her there. Poor little Shan’t! She did so love the sea, and her legs were so pale!

“Selfish woman,” said Marcus; “why couldn’t she make an effort?” To some children the seaside was an absolute necessity. If she wouldn’t he would, and he wrote and said so.

From then onwards, until the day came on which he took Shan’t to the seaside, he lay awake at night pondering on many things—buttons and strings—hooks and eyes—strings and buttons—hooks and strings—buttons and eyes—and he wondered if there were any place at which an uncle—anxious to learn—could be instructed in the dressing and undressing of a small niece on the sands—under the shadow of an upturned boat—on the beach of a favourite watering-place? Would it be possible to go to a watering-place that was not a favourite? Then as he fell asleep there rose before his closing eyes the vision of a house on wheels—cream to palish pink in colour—which boasted of two side windows and dropped steps from its front door. He had seen such buildings years ago—bathing-machines! And in a bathing-machine the uncle found shelter. They are safer, and wiser and better things, than aunts. Where Aunt Elsie might have helped him, the bathing-machine got him out of a difficulty, and protected him.

Marcus Maitland had forgotten what the seaside was like. It compared in no way with the shores of a sea loch in Scotland—where the peace and beauty are indescribable; where he had many a time watched the swift sweep of the gulls on the wing—the diving of terns. He had seen seals swimming about—wise old men of the sea. He had heard, up on the hill, the croak of the raven; had seen the shadow on the hillside of an eagle’s wings: and there were no babies. An uncle could sit at peace: with no violent aunt in the background. But a favourite watering-place! It was hotter than he had remembered it—more glaring: the people on the beach were less attractive: the babies less pink and less plentiful than the advertisements had promised. Not less plentiful in a way, but they did not stretch right across the beach away to the horizon, hand in hand, nor did they smile at him an invitation to arise and bathe. They squatted in groups about the sand, making castle puddings. Nurses knelt beside them. Nannies, with rugs and bags and baskets, and bottles—and mackintoshes even, and umbrellas, on hot days; and large quantities of white needle-work—garments for the children. It distressed Marcus to think that all this time there was nothing being made for Shan’t. All along the beach, so far as he could see, nurses sewed. Her wardrobe would get terribly out of date. But she didn’t seem to mind; she was very happy. The tucking-in of petticoats had been less difficult than Marcus had imagined: in fact he began to wonder if these things came naturally to men, as they were supposed to come to women. Perhaps in all men there lay dormant the paternal instinct. Certainly, whether the instinct were there or not, he took to this sort of thing amazingly naturally. That he looked the part he never thought. He knew himself to be an uncle, so never thought of himself as anything else.

A mother and daughter began to take notice of Shan’t. One morning they smiled at her and Shan’t smiled back, all over her small person. There was no exclusiveness about this, the younger of his nieces. Diana did at times put her small head up in the air and walk as though the whole world belonged to her—but Shan’t—never! She belonged to the whole world—quite another thing. The next morning the mother smiled again and the daughter dropped her book. Whereas Shan’t would promptly have buried it in the sand, Marcus felt bound to pick it up and restore it to its glowing owner. He was thanked by the young woman with a warmth that surprised him. Her voice throbbed with thankfulness, so much so that he wished he had looked at the title of the book. Was the tribute to the author?

The following morning Marcus would have chosen another place in the sun, but Shan’t liked her old haunts—there was a darlin’ crab—she had promised it to come back—faithfully. Uncle Marcus sought to assure her that where a crab was one day, it was not bound to be the next. The sea took it out—right out!

“Right out—right out,” said Shan’t, and she looked so like crying over the departure of the crab seawards that he made for the spot where it had been, and, of course (so hard on uncles this sort of thing!) there was a crab, “in the very same place”—so Shan’t said—“and,” she added, “it was a darlin’ and it looked so pleased to see me—it smiled!”

This kind of thing, too, it was that distressed Marcus. Ought he, as uncle, to tell her that crabs did not smile, or should he leave it alone. “It’s a darlin’,” she repeated. She stood looking at him in grave displeasure—looked at him under her eyelashes. He had lied. The sea had not taken her darlin’ crab away. She knew it hadn’t. The sea had been falsely accused. Shan’t was ever on the side of the injured. The mother and daughter came along and found Marcus standing thus being judged of Shan’t, and this time they both smiled.

“What a darling!” said the younger of the two women, and Shan’t turned and frowned at her. “Aren’t you?” asked the girl.

“No,” said Shan’t.

“What’s your name?”

“Shan’t-if-I-don’t-want-to.”

“Oh, don’t, please, if you don’t want to.”

“It’s that,” said Shan’t.

“What?”

“Shan’t-if-I-don’t—want—to.”

“I don’t want you to,” said the girl with infinite patience—maternal patience, if Marcus could but have appreciated it. The mother looked to see if it were lost upon the man—and saw it was lost. Therefore she sat down beside Marcus, and Shan’t and the girl—friends by this time—were told to run and play.

The mother opened her sunshade and turned a deeply sympathetic face towards a very miserable and bewildered Marcus. This wasn’t the kind of woman with whom he was at ease. She made him shy, which was a thing he was not accustomed to be. He made other people shy as a rule.

“She’s a dear little child,” said the unwelcome woman.

“She is,” said Marcus. “Do you mind if I smoke?” He had found smoking as efficacious against some kinds of women as it is said to be against some kinds of insects—what kinds has not as yet been specified.

“I love it—my daughter is so fond of it.” Seeing Marcus’s look of indifference, perhaps of repugnance—she could not tell which—she added for safety, “The smell of it.”

“Umph,” said Marcus.

“How old is she?”

“Your daughter?” asked Marcus.

And the mother laughed. “How amusing you are! And yet you don’t feel it, do you? you don’t look it.”

“Umph!”

“My daughter and I said how sad you looked—your whole life, we could see, is centred in that child.”

“Not entirely,” said Marcus, thinking of his collections.

“No? But still for a man alone it is a great responsibility.”

“I’ve got some one with me, thank you, to help—a housemaid, her father’s a coast-guardsman.”

“Of course, yes.”

“It’s the buttons and things, on the beach.”

“Of course, yes. Is she like her mother?”

“Like her mother? Yes, I suppose she is—wider between the eyes, perhaps—a little.”

“Ah, the tragedies of life!” A pause, then she added: “Was she taken early?”

“Who?”

“Her mother—that sacred name.”

“Her mother is abroad.”

“Oh, really, I see, of course. We never thought of that. A man alone with a child always suggests—”

“What?” He was really interested. How he appeared to others was a subject that always held him.

“A widower—bereavement.”

“Oh, no, I’m not a widower, far from it—”