Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes - What Timmy Did

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All at once Timmy exclaimed in his shrill voice:--"I like macaroni
cheese. Why shouldn't I have a little to-day, too? Here, Tom, you take
my meat, and I'll have your macaroni cheese." He did not wait for Tom's
assent to this peculiar proposal, and was proceeding to effect the
exchange when Tom muttered crossly, while yet, or so Radmore fancied,
casting rather longing eyes at Timmy's plate.

"You know perfectly well you've got to have meat to drive the ghosties
out of your silly head."

Timmy submitted with a grunt of disappointment, and the meal proceeded.
Again Radmore felt surprised and puzzled. Was it conceivable that the
whole family--with the exception of Mr. Tosswill, Jack and Timmy, had
become so High Church that Friday was with them a meatless day?

CHAPTER XI

After her visitors had gone, Mrs. Crofton had come back slowly,
languidly, to her easy-chair.

It was too warm for a fire, yet somehow the fire comforted her, for she
felt cold as well as tired, and, yes, she could admit it to herself,
horribly disappointed. How stupid men were--even clever men!

It was so stupid of Godfrey Radmore not to have come to see her, this the
first time, alone. He might have found it difficult to have come without
one of the Tosswill girls, but there was no reason and no excuse for his
being accompanied by that odious little Timmy. It was also really unkind
of the boy to have brought his horrid dog with him. Even now she seemed
to hear Flick's long-drawn-out howls--those horrible howls that at the
time she had not believed to be real. What a nervous, hysterical fool
she was becoming! How long would she go on being haunted by the now
fast-disappearing past?

There came back to Enid Crofton the very last words uttered by Piper, the
clever, capable man who, after having been Colonel Crofton's batman in
the War, had become their general factotum in Essex:--"Don't you go and
be startled, ma'am, if you see the very spit of Dandy in this 'ere
village! As me and your new lad was cleaning out the stable-yard this
morning, a young gentleman came in with a dog as was 'is exact image.
After a bit o'course, I remembered as what we'd sent one of Juno's and
Dandy's pups to a place called Beechfield this time last year--'tis that
pup grown into a dog without a doubt!"

It was certainly a bit of rank bad luck that there should be here, in
Beechfield, a dog which, whenever she saw it, brought the image of her
dead husband so vividly before her.

She had just settled herself down, and was turning over the leaves of one
of the many picture papers which Tremaine had bought for her on their
jolly little journey on the day of her arrival at The Trellis House, when
there came a ring at the door.

Who could it be coming so late--close to seven o'clock? Enid Crofton got
up, feeling vaguely disturbed.

The new maid brought in a reply-paid telegram, and Mrs. Crofton tore
open the orange envelope with just a faint premonition that something
disagreeable was going to happen:--"May I come and stay with you for the
week-end? Have just arrived in England. Alice Crofton."

Thank Heaven she had been wrong as to her premonition! This portended
nothing disagreeable--only something unexpected. The sender of this
telegram was the kind, opulent sister-in-law whom she always thought of
as "Miss Crofton."

Going over to her toy writing-table, she quickly wrote on the reply-paid
form:--"Miss Crofton, Buck's Hotel, Dover Street. Yes, delighted. Do come
to-morrow morning. Excellent eleven o'clock train from Waterloo.--Enid."

As she settled herself by the fire she told herself that a visit from
Miss Crofton might be quite a good thing--so far as Beechfield was
concerned. Her associations with her husband's sister were wholly
pleasant. For one thing, Alice Crofton was well off, and Enid
instinctively respected, and felt interested in, any possessor of money.
What a pity it was that Colonel Crofton had not had a fairy godmother!
His only sister had been left L3,000 a year by a godmother, and she lived
the agreeable life so many Englishwomen of her type and class live on the
Continent. While her real home was in Florence, she often travelled, and
during the War she had settled down in Paris, giving many hours of each
day to one of the British hospitals there.

The young widow's mind flew back to her one meeting with Alice Crofton.
It was during her brief engagement to Colonel Crofton, and the latter's
sister, without being over cordial, had been quite pleasant to the
startlingly pretty little woman, who had made such a fool of her brother.

But at the time of Colonel Crofton's death, his sister had been truly
kind. She had telegraphed L200 to her sister-in-law from Italy, and this
sum of ready money had been very useful during that tragic week--and even
afterwards, for the insurance people had made a certain amount of fuss
after Colonel Crofton's sad suicide, "while of unsound mind," and this
had caused a disagreeable delay.

The new tenant of The Trellis House had her lonely dinner brought in to
her on a tray, and then, perhaps rather too soon--for she was not much of
a reader, and there was nothing to while away the time--she went upstairs
to her pleasant, cosy bedroom, and so to bed.

But, try as she might, she found it impossible to fall asleep; for what
seemed to her hours she lay wide awake, tossing this way and that. At
last she got up, and, drawing aside the chintz curtain across one of the
windows, she looked out. The window was open, and in the eerily bright
moonlight the upper part of the hill on which Beechfield village lay
seemed spread before her. There were twinkling lights in many of the
windows--doubtless groups of happy, cheerful people behind them. She
felt horribly lonely and depressed as well as wide awake to-night.

In her short, healthy life, Enid Crofton had only had one attack of
insomnia. During the ten days that had followed her husband's sudden
death--for the inquest had had to be put off for a day or two--she
had hardly slept at all, and the doctor who had been so kind a friend
during that awful time, had had to give her a strong narcotic. To his
astonishment it had had no effect. She had felt as if she were going
mad--the effect, so he had told her afterwards, of the awful shock she
had had.

To-night she wondered with a kind of terror whether that terrible
sleeplessness which had ended by making her feel almost lightheaded was
coming back.

She turned away from the window, and, getting into bed again, tried to
compose her limbs into absolute repose, as the doctor had advised her to
do. And then, just as she was mercifully going to sleep, there floated
in, through the open window, a variant on a doggerel song she had last
heard in Egypt:--

"The angels sing-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling,
They've got the goods for me.
The bells of hell ring ting-a-ling-a-ling
For you, as you shall see."

Enid Crofton sat up in bed. She felt suddenly afraid--horribly,
desperately afraid. As is often the case with those who have drifted away
from any form of religion, she was very superstitious, and terrified of
evil omens. During the War she had been fond of going first to one and
then to another of the fashionable sooth-sayers.

They had all agreed as to one thing--this was that her husband would die,
and of course she had thought he would be killed at the Front. But he had
come through safe and sound, and more--more _hateful_ than ever.

One fortune-teller, a woman, small, faded, commonplace-looking, yet with
something sinister about her that impressed her patrons uncomfortably,
had told Enid Crofton, with a curious smile, that she would have yet
another husband, making the third. This had startled her very much, for
the woman, who did not even know her name, could only have guessed that
she had been married twice. Enid Crofton was not given to making
unnecessary confidences. With the exception of her sister-in-law, none of
the people who now knew her were aware that Colonel Crofton had been her
second husband.

She lay down again, and in the now dying firelight, fixed her eyes on the
chintz square of the window curtain nearest to her. She shut her eyes,
but, as always happens, there remained a square luminous patch on their
retinas. And then, all at once, it was as if she saw, depicted on the
white, faintly illuminated space, a scene which might have figured in one
of those cinema-plays to which she and her house-mate, during those happy
days when she had lived in London, used so often to go with one or other
of their temporary admirers.

On the white, luminous background two pretty little hands were moving
about, a little uncertainly, over a window-ledge on which stood a row of
medicine bottles. Then, suddenly the two pretty hands became engaged in
doing something which is done by woman's hands every day--the pouring of
a liquid from one bottle into another.

Enid Crofton did not visualise the owner of the hands. She had no wish to
do so, but she did see the hands.

Then there started out before her, with astonishing vividness, another
little scene--this time with a man as central figure. He was whistling;
that she knew, though she could not hear the whistling. It was owing to
that surprised, long-drawn-out whistling sound that the owner of the
pretty hands had become suddenly, affrightedly, aware that someone was
there, outside the window, staring down, and so of course seeing the task
on which the two pretty little hands were engaged.

Now, the owner of that pair of now shaking little hands had felt quite
sure that no one could possibly see what they were engaged in doing--for
the window on the ledge of which the medicine bottles were standing
looked out on what was practically a blank wall. But the man whose long,
surprised whistle had so suddenly scared her, happened at that moment to
be sitting astride the top of the blank wall, engaged in the legitimate
occupation of sticking bits of broken bottles into putty. The man was
Piper, and doubtless the trifling incident had long since slipped his
mind, for that same afternoon his master, Colonel Crofton, had committed
suicide in a fit of depression owing to shell shock.

Enid Crofton opened her eyes wide, and the sort of vision, or
nightmare--call it what you will--faded at once.

It was a nightmare she had constantly experienced during the first few
nights which had succeeded her husband's death. But since the inquest she
had no longer been haunted by that scene--the double scene of the hands,
the pretty little hands, engaged in that simple, almost mechanical,
action of pouring the contents of one bottle into another, and the vision
of the man on the wall looking down, slantwise, through the window, and
uttering that queer, long-drawn-out whistle of utter surprise.

When at last Mrs. Crofton had had to explain regretfully to clever,
capable Piper that she could no longer afford to keep him on, they had
parted the best of friends. She had made him the handsome present of
twenty-five pounds, for he had been a most excellent servant to her late
husband. And she had done more than that. She had gone to a good deal of
trouble to procure him an exceptionally good situation. Piper had just
gone there, and she hoped, rather anxiously, that he would do well in it.

The man had one serious fault--now and again he would go off and have a
good "drunk." Sometimes he wouldn't do this foolish, stupid thing for
months, and then, perchance, he would do it two weeks running! Colonel
Crofton, so hard in many ways, had been indulgent to this one fault, or
vice, in an otherwise almost perfect servant. When giving Piper a very
high character Mrs. Crofton had just hinted that there had been a time
when he had taken a drop too much, but she had spoken of it as being
absolutely in the past. Being the kind of woman she was, she wouldn't
have said even that, had it not been that Piper had got disgracefully
drunk within a week of his master's death. She had been very much
frightened then, though not too frightened to stay, herself, within
hail of the man till he had come round, and to make him a cup of strong
coffee. When, at last, he was fit to do so, he had uttered broken words
of gratitude, really touched at her kindness, and frightfully ashamed of
himself.

Lying there, wide awake, in the darkness and utter stillness of
Beechfield village, Enid Crofton reminded herself that she had treated
Piper very well. In memory of the master whom he had served she had also
given him, before selling off her husband's kennel, two prize-winners.
But it is sometimes a mistake to be too kind, for on receiving this last
generous gift the man had hinted that with a little capital he could set
up dog-breeding for himself! She had had to tell him, sadly but firmly,
that she could not help him to any ready money, and Piper had been what
she now vaguely described to herself as "very nice" about it, though
obviously disappointed.

At the end of their little chat, however, he had said something which had
made her feel rather uncomfortable:--"I was wondering, ma'am, whether
Major Radmore might perhaps be inclined for a little speculation? I
wouldn't mind paying, say, up to ten per cent, if 'e'd oblige me with
a loan of five hundred pounds."

She had been astonished at the suggestion--astonished and unpleasantly
taken aback. He had surprised her further by going on:--"I believe as
what the Major is coming 'ome soon, ma'am. Perhaps then I might venture
to ask you to say a word for me? Major Radmore was known in the regiment
as a very kind gentleman."

"I'll do what I can, Piper." She had said the words with apparent
earnestness, but, deep in her heart, she had thought the request totally
unreasonable.

And now it was this conversation which came back to her as she moved
restlessly about in her bed. She wondered uneasily whether she had made
a mistake. Her capital was very small, and she was now living on her
capital, but after all, perhaps it would have been wiser to have given
Piper that L500. She was quite determined not to mix up Piper with
Godfrey Radmore, but she had a queer, uncomfortable feeling that she had
not done with this man yet.

At last she fell into a heavy, troubled, worried sleep--the kind of sleep
from which a woman always wakes unrefreshed.

But daylight brought comfort to Enid Crofton, and after she had had her
early cup of tea and had enjoyed her nice hot bath, she felt quite cheery
again, and her strange, bad night faded into nothingness. She was young,
she was strong, above all she was enchantingly pretty! She told herself
confidently that nothing terrible, nothing _really_ dreadful ever happens
to a woman who is as attractive as she knew herself to be to the sex
which still holds all the material power there is to hold in this strange
world.

During the last three weeks, she had sometimes wondered uneasily whether
Godfrey Radmore realised how very pretty she was. There was something so
curiously impersonal about him--and yet last night he had very nearly
kissed her!

She laughed aloud, gaily, triumphantly, as she went down to her late
breakfast.

CHAPTER XII

At the moment that Enid Crofton was telling herself that everything was
going fairly well with her, and that nothing could alter the fact that
she was now, and likely to remain for a long time, a woman likely to
attract every man with whom she came in contact--Godfrey Radmore,
following Janet Tosswill after breakfast into the drawing-room of Old
Place, exclaimed deprecatingly:--"I feel like Rip Van Winkle!'

"Do you?" She turned to him and smiled a little sadly. "It's _you_ that
have changed, Godfrey. Everything here is much the same. As for me, I
never see any change from one year to another."

"But they've all grown up!" he exclaimed plaintively. "You can't think
how odd it seems to find a lot of grown-up young ladies and gentlemen
instead of the jolly little kids who were in the nursery with Nanna nine
years ago. By the way, Nanna hasn't changed, and"--he hesitated, then
brought out with an effort, "Mr. Tosswill is exactly the same."

She felt vexed that he hadn't included Betty. To her step-mother's fond
eyes Betty was more attractive now than in her early girlhood. "I think
the children have improved very much," she said quickly. "Jack was a
horrid little prig nine years ago!"

She hadn't forgiven Radmore. And yet, in a sense, she was readjusting her
views and theories about him, for the simple reason that he, Godfrey
Radmore, had changed so utterly. From having been a hot-tempered,
untameable, high-spirited boy, he was now, or so it seemed to her, a
cool, restrained man of the world, old for his years. In fact it was he
who was now a stranger--but a stranger who had most attractive manners,
and who had somehow slipped very easily into their everyday life. Janet
liked his deferential manner to the master of the house, she enjoyed his
kindly and good-humoured, if slightly satirical dealings with Jack and
with pretty Rosamund, and she was very grateful to him for the way he
treated queer, little Timmy, her own beloved changeling child.

And now something happened that touched her, and made her suddenly feel
as if she was with the old Godfrey Radmore again.

"Look here," he said, in a low, hesitating voice, "I want to tell you,
Janet, that I didn't know till yesterday about George. You'll think me a
fool--but somehow I always thought of him as being safe in India." And
then with sudden passion he asked:--"How can you say that everything is
the same in Old Place with George not here? Why, to me, George was as
much part of Old Place as--as Betty is!"

"We all thought you knew--at least I wasn't sure."

"Thank God _he_ didn't think so poorly of me as that," he muttered, and
then he looked away, his eyes smarting with unshed tears. "Nothing will
ever be the same to me again without George in the world."

As she said nothing, he went on with sudden passion:--"Every other
country in Europe has changed utterly since the War, but England seemed
to me, till last night, exactly the same--only rather bigger and more
bustling than nine years ago." He drew a long breath. "Timmy and I went
into the post-office last evening, and Cobbett asked me to go in, and see
his wife. I thought I remembered her so well--and when I saw her, Janet,
I didn't know her! Then I asked after her boys--and she told me."

"It's strange that a man who went through it all himself should feel like
that," she said slowly.

The door opened suddenly and Rosamund's pretty head appeared: "There's a
message come through saying that your car's all right, and that it will
be along in about an hour," she exclaimed joyfully. To Rosamund, Godfrey
Radmore was in very truth a stranger, and a very attractive stranger at
that.

As a rule, after breakfast, all the young people went their various ways,
but this morning they were all hanging about waiting vaguely for Godfrey
to come and do something with one or all of them. Rosamund was longing to
ask him whether he knew any of the London theatrical managers; Tom was
wondering whether Godfrey would allow him to drive his car; Dolly and
Timmy, as different in everything else as two human beings could well
be, each desired to take him into the village and show him off to their
friends. The only one of the young people who was not really interested
in Radmore was Jack Tosswill. He was engaged just now in looking
feverishly for an old gardening book which he had promised to lend Mrs.
Crofton, and he was cursing under his breath because the book had been
mislaid.

As Rosamund looked in, her step-mother and Radmore both stopped speaking
abruptly, and so after a doubtful moment, she withdrew her head, and shut
the door behind her.

"Tell me about George," he said, without looking at her.

"I think Betty would like to tell you," she answered slowly: "Ask her
about him some time when you're alone together."

"Where is she now?" he asked abruptly.

"In the kitchen I think--but she won't be long."

Jack, looking ruffled and uneasy, very unlike his quiet, cool self, burst
into the room. "I can't think where that old shabby green gardening book
has gone, Janet. Do you know where it is?"

"You mean 'Gardening for Ladies'?"

"Yes."

"What on earth d'you want it for?"

"For Mrs. Crofton. Her garden's been awfully neglected."

"I'll find it presently. I think it's in my bedroom."

Again the door shut, and Janet turned to Radmore: "Your friend has made
a conquest of Jack!" She spoke with a touch of rather studied unconcern,
for she had been a little taken aback last evening when Timmy had told
her casually of his own and his godfather's call at The Trellis House.

"My friend?" Radmore repeated uncertainly.

"I mean Mrs. Crofton. The coming of a new person to live in Beechfield is
still quite an event, Godfrey."

"I don't think she'll make much difference to Beechfield," again he spoke
with a touch of hesitation. "To tell you the truth, Janet, I rather
wonder that she decided to live in the country at all. I should have
thought that she would far prefer London, and all that London stands for.
But I'm afraid that she's got very little money, and, of course, the
country _is_ cheaper than town, isn't it?"

"I suppose it is. But Mrs. Crofton can't be poor. I know she paid a
premium for the lease of The Trellis House."

"That's odd." Radmore spoke in an off-hand manner, but Janet, watching
him, thought he felt a little awkward. He went on:--"I know that Colonel
Crofton was hard up. He told me so, quite frankly, the last time I saw
him. But of course she may have had money of her own."

Janet looked at him rather hard. A disagreeable suspicion had entered her
mind. She wondered whether there was anything like an "understanding"
between the man she was talking to and the tenant of The Trellis House.
If so, she wished with all her heart that Godfrey Radmore had kept away.
Why stir up embers they had all thought were dead, if he was going to
marry this very pretty but, to her mind, second-rate little woman, as
soon as a decent time had elapsed?

"What are your plans for the future?" she asked. "Are you going to settle
down, or are you going to travel a bit?" ("After all, he won't be able to
marry Mrs. Crofton for at least another six months," she said to
herself.)

"Oh, I mean to settle down." His answer was quick, decisive, final.

He went on: "My idea is to find a place, not too far from here, that
I can buy; and my plan is to go about and look for it now. That's why
I've hired a motor for a month. Perhaps you'd lend me Timmy, and, if it
wouldn't be improper, one of the girls, now and again? We might go round
and look about a bit."

And then he walked across to where she was standing, and put his hand on
her arm, "How about you?" he asked, "why shouldn't I take you and Timmy a
little jaunt just for a week or so--that would be rather fun, eh?"

She smiled and shook her head.

He took a step back. "Look here, Janet--do try and forgive me--I'm a more
sensible chap than I was, honest Injun!"

"I'm beginning to think you are," she cried, and then they both burst out
laughing.

He lingered a moment. He was longing, longing intensely, to ask her
certain questions. He wanted to know about Betty--what sort of a life
Betty had made for herself. He still, in an odd way, felt responsible
for Betty--which was clearly absurd.

And then Janet Tosswill said something that surprised him very much. "I
think you'd better go round and see some of the people in the village
to-day. I was rather sorry you went off straight to The Trellis House
last evening. You know how folks talked, even in the old days, in
Beechfield?"

He looked uneasy--taken aback, and she felt, if a little ashamed, glad
that she had made that "fishing" remark.

There was a pause, and then he said with a touch of formality: "Look
here, Janet? I'd like you to know that though I've become quite fond of
Mrs. Crofton, I'm only fond--nothing more, you understand? Perhaps I'll
make my meaning clearer when I tell you that I was the only man in Egypt
who knew her who wasn't in love with her."

He saw her face change and, rather piqued, he asked: "Did you think I
was?"

"I thought that you and she were great friends--"

"Well, so we are in a way. I saw a great deal of her in London."

"And you went straight off to see her the moment you arrived here."

"Well, perhaps I was foolish to do that."

What an odd admission to make. He certainly had changed amazingly in the
last nine years!

Then it was Janet who surprised him: "Don't make any mistake," she said
quickly. "There's no reason in the world why you shouldn't marry Mrs.
Crofton--after a decent interval has elapsed. All I meant to say--and
I'd rather say it right out now--is that as most people know that her
husband hasn't been dead more than a few weeks, you ought to be rather
careful, all the more careful if--if your friendship should come to
anything, Godfrey."

"But it won't!" he exclaimed, with a touch of the old heat, "indeed it
won't, Janet. To tell you the truth, I don't think I shall ever marry."

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