Sweethearts at Home

"If, Madame," he is reported to have said, "I am to understand that you cannot keep discipline without having resort to methods more suitable to a boy of eight than to a young lady of eighteen, it is time that I undertook the responsibility myself! Cecilia, go up to your room. I will settle with Madame. And by the time that is done – the – ah – baggage-cart will be at the door – as sure as my name is G-rrrrrumph – G-rrrumph – G-rrrummph!"

And, indeed, the "baggage-cart" (in the shape of a small omnibus) was at the door. Although really, you know, the Colonel's name was not as he himself affirmed.

"And now, Missy," growled the Colonel in his finest Full-Bench-of-Justices manner, "kindly tell me what you have been doing!"

For, very characteristically, the Colonel, though entirely declining to listen to a word of accusation against his daughter from Madame Rolly, reserved to himself the right of distributing an even-handed justice afterwards. His method on such occasions is just the reverse of father's, as we have all learned to our cost. Our father would have listened gravely to all that Madame had to recount of our misdeeds. Then he would have nodded, remarked, "You did perfectly right, Madame! In anything that you may propose, I will support you – so long, that is, as I judge it best that my child shall remain at your school!" For father's first principle in all such matters is, "Support authority – receive or make no complaints – and, above all, work out your own salvation, my young friend!"

And though it sometimes looks a bit hard at the time, as Hugh John says, "It prepares a fellow for taking his own part in the world, as you soon find you have jolly well to do if you mean to get on."

But Cissy knew her father, and promptly set herself to cry as heartbrokenly as she could manage on such short notice. Colonel Davenant Carter gazed at her a moment with a haughty and defiant expression. But as Toady Lion had once said of him, "I teached him to come the High Horsicle wif ME!" So now, as the rickety omnibus jogged and swayed over the Parisian cobbles, Cissy wept ever more bitterly, till the old soldier had to entreat her to stop. They would, so it appeared, soon be at his hotel. Even now they were passing his club, and "that old gossiping beast, Repton Reeves," was at the window. If it got about that he, Colonel Davenant Carter, had been seen driving down the Rue de Rivoli with a damsel drowned in floods of tears – why, by all the bugles of Balaclava, he would never hear the end of it. He might as well resign at the club. All which, as Cissy sobbed out in the French language, was "exceedingly equal" to her! But it was very far indeed from being "égal" to the peppery Colonel. And at last, as the sobs increased in carry and volume, he was reduced to the ignominious expedient of personal bribery.

"Look here, Cissy," he said in tremulous tones, "we absolutely can't go into the courtyard of the Grand Hotel like this! Now, if you will be a good girl, and will stop this instant, I will drive you up the Rue de la Paix, and there I will buy – !"

"What?" said Cissy, looking up with eyes that still brimmed ready for action.

"A gold bracelet!" said her father tentatively, but still quite uncertain of his effect.

"Boohoo!" said Cissy Carter, dropping her face once more between her hands.

"Goodness gracious," cried the Colonel, invoking his favorite divinity, "what can the girl want? A gold watch, then?"

"Real gold this time, then!" said Cissy, who had been "had" once before, and, even with an aching heart, was properly cautious.

"You shall do the choosing yourself!" said her father, thinking that he had conquered. But Cissy knew her opportunity – and the relative whom fate had given her. The tears welled again. Her bosom was shaken by timely sobs.

"Well, what then, Celia – really, this becomes past bearing! Why, we are nearly at the hotel!"

Cissy glanced up quickly. "A gold bracelet with a gold watch, then!" she sighed gently.

And this is the truth, and the whole truth, as to why Colonel Davenant Carter gave his arm to a radiant and beautiful daughter in the courtyard of the Grand Hotel – a daughter, also, who lifted up a prettily-gloved hand (twelve buttons), and at every fourth step looked at the time!

XXIV

CISSY'S MEANNESS

Miss Cecilia Davenant Carter had been at home a good many weeks before she came to see me. Of course Hugh John was now at college, and doubtless that made a difference. But she had never stayed away so long before, and whatever reason Cissy might have to be angry with Master Hugh John, she had not the least right to take it out on ME!

However, she came at last – chiefly, I think, to show me the gold watch on her wrist. This she wanted so badly to do that it must have hurt her dreadfully to stay away as long as she did. So she sat fingering it, but not running to ask me to admire it, as a girl naturally does. Of course I took no notice, though it made me feel mean. We talked about the woods and the autumn tints (schoolgirls always like these two words – they remind them that it is the season for blackberries and jam), till at last I was thoroughly ashamed of myself. So I went over to Cissy, and said, "I think that's the prettiest bracelet I ever saw in all my life!"

And she said, "Do you?" looking up at me funnily. "Do you really?" she repeated the words, looking straight at me.

"Yes, I do indeed!" I answered. And – what do you think? – the next moment she was crying on my shoulder! Of course I understood. Every girl will, without needing to be told. And as for men (and "Old Cats"), it is no use attempting to explain to them. They never could know just how we two felt.

But Cissy had really nothing in the least "catty" about her. "Quite the reverse, I assure you!" as the East Country folk say. She even took it off and let me try it on without ever warning me to be careful with it. And that, you know, is a good deal for a girl who is "not friends" with your own brother, and has only had a new "real-gold" watch-bracelet for three or four weeks.

But then, Cissy could never be calm and restful like Elizabeth Fortinbras. Cissy did everything in a rush, and so, I suppose, got somehow closer to the heart of our impassive Hugh John just on that account. Elizabeth Fortinbras was too like my brother to touch him "where he lived," as Sir Toady would say.

Well, after a while Cissy stopped crying, and took my handkerchief without a word and quite as a matter of course (which showed as clearly as anything how things stood between us).

Then she said, "Priss, do you know, I did an awfully mean thing, and I want you to help me to make it all right again!"

In a book, of course (a proper book, I mean), I ought to have asked Ciss all sorts of questions, and said that in everything which did not affect the honor of the house of Picton Smith I was at her service. And so on.

But of course ordinary girls don't talk like that now-a-days. If you have what our sweet Maid calls a "snarl" against anybody – why, mostly every one plays hockey now, and it is the simplest thing in the world to "take a drive at her shins, and say how sorry you are afterwards"! So at least (the Maid informs me) some girls, who shall be nameless, have been known to do at her school.

I waited for Cissy to tell me of the dreadfully mean thing she had done. But of course I assured her first that, whatever it was – yes, whatever– I should do just what she wanted done to help her. For I knew she would do the same for me.

Then she told me that in her first anger about the telegram – for she had been far more angry about that than about the sending back the other half of the crooked sixpence – a thing which really mattered a thousand times more (but of course that was exactly like a girl!) – she had put the telegram, and both parts of the crooked sixpence, and all of Hugh John's letters she could find – chiefly the short and simple annals of a Rugby "forward" – in a lozenge-box – and (here Cissy dropped her voice) sent them all, registered, to Elizabeth Fortinbras!

XXV

"NOT EVEN HUGH JOHN!"

"To Elizabeth – Elizabeth Fortinbras!" I cried. Here was a new difficulty. If only people would not do things in a hurry, as Hugh John says, they would mostly end by not doing them at all!

"What sort of a girl is this Elizabeth Fortinbras?" Cissy Carter asked. "She is only a shop-girl after all, isn't she?"

I set Cissy right on this head. There were shop-girls and shop-girls. And this one not only came of a respectable ancestry, but had been well educated, was the heiress of Erin Villa, and would succeed to one of the best businesses in Edam!

"Is she pretty?"

Oh, of course I had foreseen the question. It was quite inevitable, and there was but one thing to say —

"Come to the shop and see for yourself!"

But Cissy hung back. You see, she had done a perfectly mad thing, and yet was not quite ready to make it up with the person concerned – especially when Cissy was Colonel Davenant Carter's only daughter just home from Paris, and when, in spite of my explanations, Elizabeth was little more to her than a "girl behind a counter"!

You may be sure that I put her duty before her – yes, plainly and with point. But Cissy had in her all the pride of the Davenant Carters, and go she would not, till I told her plump and plain that she was afraid!

My, how that made her jump! She turned a little pale, rose quietly, adjusted her hat at the mirror, took off her watch-bracelet and gave it to me to keep for her.

"I will go and see this Elizabeth Fortinbras now – and alone!" she said, with that nice quiet dignity which became her so well. I would greatly have liked to have gone along with her. But, first of all, she had not asked me, and, secondly, I knew that I had better not.

Cissy Carter had to see Elizabeth alone. Only they could arrange matters. Still, of course, both of them told me all about it afterwards, and it is from these two narratives that the following short account is written out.

Elizabeth was in the front shop, busy as a bee among the sweet things, white-aproned, and wearing dainty white armlets of linen which came from the wrist to above the elbow. Then these two looked at each other as only girls do – or perhaps more exactly, attractive young women of about the same age. Boys are different – they behave just like strange dogs on being introduced, sulky and ready to snarl. A young man seems to be wondering how such a contemptible fellow as that other fellow could possibly have gained admittance to a respectable house. Only experienced women can manage the business properly, putting just the proper amount of cordiality into the bow and handshake. Grown men – most of them, that is – allow their natural feeling of boredom to appear too obviously.

At any rate Cissy and Elizabeth took in each other at a glance, far more searching and exhaustive as to "points" than ever any man's could be. Then they bowed to each other very coldly.

"Will you come this way?" said Elizabeth, instantly discerning that Cissy had not come to New Erin Villa as a customer. Accordingly she led the way into the little sitting-room, all in pale creamy cretonne with old-fashioned roses scattered upon it, which her own taste and the full purse of Ex-Butcher Donnan had provided for her.

"Be good enough to take a seat," said Elizabeth Fortinbras. But she herself remained standing.

Now you never can tell by which end a girl – or a woman, for that matter – will tackle anything. All that you can be sure of is that it will not be the obvious and natural one – the one nearest her hand. So Cissy, instead of coming right out with her confession and having done with it, began by asking Elizabeth if she knew a Mr. Hugh John Picton Smith.

"He is my friend!" said Elizabeth, very quiet and grave, standing with one hand in the pocket of her apron and the other hanging easily by her side.

"And nothing more?" said Cissy, looking up at her very straight.