Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes - What Timmy Did

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"_I_ certainly shouldn't if I were a rich bachelor," she said laughing;
and yet somehow what he had just said hurt her.

As for Radmore, he felt just a little jarred by her words. Had she quite
forgotten all that had happened in that long ago which, in a sense,
seemed to belong to another life? He hadn't, and since his arrival
yesterday certain things had come back in a rushing flood of memory.

"I've something to do in the garden now." Janet was smiling--she really
did feel perhaps rather absurdly relieved. Like Timmy, she didn't care
for Mrs. Crofton, and the mere suspicion that Godfrey Radmore had come
back here to Old Place in order to carry on a love affair had disturbed
her.

"By the way, how's McPherson?" he asked abruptly. "He _is_ a splendid
gardener and no mistake! I've never seen a garden looking more beautiful
than yours does just now, Janet. I woke early this morning and looked
out of my window. I suppose McPherson's about--I'll go out and speak to
him."

Her face shadowed. "McPherson," she said slowly, "was one of the first
men to leave Beechfield. He was perfectly fit, and he made up his mind to
go at once. You know, Godfrey--or perhaps you don't know--that the Scotch
glens emptied first of men?"

"D'you mean...?"

She nodded. "He was killed at the second battle of Ypres. He was sent to
the Front rather sooner than most, for he was a very intelligent man, and
really keen. I've got a boy now, a lad of seventeen--not half a bad sort,
but it does seem strange to give him every Saturday just double the money
I used to give McPherson!"

She went out, through into the garden, on these last words, and again
there came over Radmore a feeling of poignant sadness. How strange that
he should have spent those weeks in London, knowing so little, nay, not
knowing at all, what the War had really meant to the home country.

He opened the door into the corridor, and listened, wondering where they
had all gone. He had some business letters to write, and he told himself
that he would go and get them done in what he still thought of in his
mind as George's room. He had noticed that the big plain deal writing
table was still there.

He went upstairs, and when he opened the bedroom door, he was astonished
to find Rosamund kneeling in front of George's old play-box, routing
among what looked like a lot of papers and books.

"I'm hunting for a prescription for father," she said, looking up. "Timmy
thinks he put it in here one day after coming back from the chemist's at
Guildford." She looked flushed, and decidedly cross, as she went on: "No
one's taught Timmy to put things in their proper place, as we were taught
to do, when we were children!"

Radmore felt amused. She certainly was very, very pretty, and did not
look much more than a child herself.

"Look here," he said good-naturedly, "let me help. I don't think you're
going the right way to work." He felt just a little bit sorry for Timmy;
Rosamund was raking about as if the play-box was a bran-pie.

Bending down he took up out of the box a bundle of envelopes, copybooks,
and Christmas cards. Then he sat himself down on a chair in the window,
and began going through what he held, carefully and methodically.

Suddenly through the open door there came a cry of "Miss Rosamund, I want
you!"

Rosamund got up reluctantly. "Nanna's a regular tyrant!"

"Leave all this to me," he said. "I'll find the prescription if it's
here."

She went off, and almost at once he came to a folded bit of paper.
Perhaps this was the prescription? He opened it, and this is what he
read:--

March 12, 1919. This is the happiest day of my life. One of my
godmothers has died and left me L50. I am going to buy two nanny-goats,
a boy and a girl. They will have kids, and I shall make munny. We shall
then have a propper cook, and I shall never help Betty wash up any
more. I wish my other godmother would die. She is very genrus and
kind--she would go strait to Heaven. But she is very hellfy.

Poor little Timmy! Dear little unscrupulous child of nature! Would Timmy
wish him, Godfrey Radmore, dead, if some accident were to reveal to him
what a great difference it would make to them all? He hoped not. But he
couldn't feel sure, for, from being well-to-do the Tosswills must have
become poor, painfully and, to his mind, unnaturally poor.

Further search proved the prescription was not in the play-box, and he
went downstairs. Still that same unnatural silence through the house.
Where could Timmy be? Somehow he felt that he wanted to see Timmy and
find out about the nanny-goats. He feared his godson's expectations of
wealth had not been fulfilled, but he supposed that there was a "propper
cook," probably the lack of her had been quite temporary.

He wandered into the drawing-room. In the old days all five sitting-rooms
had been in use. Now four of them were closed, and the drawing-room was
everybody's meeting place. Dolly was there working a carpet-sweeper
languidly.

"Where's everybody?" he asked.

"I think Betty and Timmy are still in the scullery. I don't know where
Rosamund is."

"I suppose _I_ can go into the scullery?"

She looked at him dubiously. "Yes, if you'd like to--certainly. Betty
loves cooking and all that sort of thing. I hate it--so in our division
of labour, I do the other kind of housework." She looked ruffled and he
told himself, a little maliciously, that she was not unlike a lazy,
rather incompetent, housemaid. "If it's Timmy you want," she continued,
"I'll go and see if he can come."

"Please don't trouble. I'll find him all right."

Radmore went out into the passage. As the baize door, which shut off the
kitchen quarters, opened, he saw his godson and Rosamund before they saw
him, and he heard Rosamund say, in a cross tone: "It only means that
someone else will have to help her; I think it's very selfish of you,
Timmy."

From being full of joy Timmy's face became downcast and sullen.

"Hullo!" Radmore called out, "I want you to show me the garden, Timmy.
Where's Betty?"

"She's in the scullery, of course. I tell you I _have_ done, Rosamund.
You _are_ a cruel pig--"

"Come, Timmy, don't speak to your sister like that."

It ended in the three of them going off--Rosamund to look for the
prescription, and the other two into the garden.

* * * * *

Nanna waddled into the scullery: "I'll wipe up them things, Miss
Betty," she said good-naturedly; "you go out to Mr. Godfrey and Master
Timmy--they was asking for you just now."

Betty hesitated--and then suddenly she made up her mind that, yes, she
would do as Nanna suggested.

In early Victorian days women of Betty Tosswill's class and kind worked
many of their most anxious thoughts and fears, hopes and fancies, into
the various forms of needlework which were then considered the only
suitable kind of occupation for a young gentlewoman; and often Betty,
when engaged on the long and arduous task of washing up for her big
family party, pondered over the problems and secret anxieties which
assailed her. Though something of a pain, it had also been to her a great
relief to realise that the living flesh and blood Godfrey Radmore of
to-day had ousted the passionately devoted, if unreasonable and violent,
lover of her early girlhood. In the old days, intermingled with her deep
love of Radmore, there had been a protective, almost maternal, feeling,
and although Radmore had been four years older than herself, she had
always felt the older of the two. But now, in spite of the responsible,
anxious work she had done in France during the War, she felt that the
roles were reversed, and that her one-time lover had become infinitely
older than she was herself in knowledge of the world.

Old Nanna hoped that Miss Betty would go upstairs and change her plain
cotton dress for something just a little prettier and that she would put
on, maybe, a hat trimmed with daisies which Nanna admired. But Betty did
nothing of the sort. She washed her hands at the sink, and then she went
out into the hall, and taking up her big plain old garden hat went
straight out into the keen autumnal air.

And then, as she caught sight of the tall man and of the little boy,
she stayed her steps, overwhelmed by a flood of both sweet and bitter
memories.

During the year which had followed the breaking of her engagement there
had been corners and by-ways of the big, rambling old garden filled with
poignant, almost unbearable, associations of the days when she and
Godfrey had been lovers. There had been certain nooks and hidden oases
where it had been agony to go. She had considered all kinds of things as
being possible. Perhaps her most certain conviction had been that he
would come back some day with a wife whom she, Betty, would try to teach
herself to love; but never had she visioned what had now actually
occurred, that is Radmore's quiet, commonplace falling-back into the
day-to-day life of Old Place.

All at once she heard Timmy's clear treble voice:--"Hullo! There's
Betty."

Radmore turned and said something Betty did not hear, and the child went
off like an arrow from the bow. Then Radmore, turning, came towards her
quickly. She had no clue to the strange look of pain and indecision on
his face, and her heart began to beat, strangely.

When close to her:--"Betty," he said in a low voice, "I want to tell you
that I didn't know about George till last night. How could you think I
did?"

"I suppose one does think unjust things when one's in great trouble," she
answered.

He felt hurt and angry and showed it. "I should have thought you would
all have known me well enough to know that I should have written at
once--at once. Why, the whole world's altered now that I know that George
is no longer in it! Perhaps that sounds foolish and exaggerated, as I
never wrote to him. But I think _you'll_ know what I mean, Betty? It was
all right, as long as I knew he was somewhere, happy."

She said almost inaudibly:--"I think that he is happy somewhere. You
know--but no, you don't know--that George was a born soldier. Those
months after he joined up, and until he was killed, were, I do believe,
by far the happiest of his life. He always said they were."

As he made no answer she went on:--"I'll show you some of his letters
if you like, and father will show you the letters that were sent to
us--afterwards."

By now they had left the garden proper, and were walking down an avenue
which was known as the Long Walk. It was here that they two, with George
always as a welcome third, used to play "tip and run" and "hide and seek"
with the then little children.

"Tell me something about the others," he said abruptly. "I'm moving in a
world unrealised."

She smiled up into his face. Somehow that confession touched her, and
brought them nearer to one another.

"Jack frightens me a bit, you know--he's so unlike George. And then the
girls? Is it true what Timmy says--that Rosamund wants to be an actress?"

There was a slight tone of censorious surprise in his voice, and Betty
reddened.

"I don't see why she shouldn't be an actress if she wants to be! Father's
making her wait till she's twenty-one."

"Let me see," he said hesitatingly, "Dolly's older than Jack, isn't she?"

"Oh, no. Dolly will only be twenty next Thursday."

There came over her an overwhelming impulse to tell him something--the
sort of thing she could only have told George.

"You know that pretty old church at Oakford?"

He nodded.

"Well, Mr. Runsby is dead. They've got a bachelor clergyman now, and
Janet and I think that he's becoming very fond of Dolly! He's away just
now, or you would have already seen him. He's very often over here."

"I should have thought--" He hesitated in his turn, but already he was
falling again into the way of saying exactly what he thought right out to
Betty--"that with you and Rosamund in the house, no one would look at
Dolly!"

Betty blushed, and for a fleeting moment Godfrey saw the blushing,
dimpling Betty of long ago.

"Rosamund has the utmost contempt for him. As for me, he never sees
me--I'm always in the kitchen when he comes here." She added with a touch
of the quiet humour he remembered, "I don't think Dolly's in any danger
from me!"

"_Why_ are you always in the kitchen, Betty?" he asked. "Is it really
necessary?"

"Yes, it really is necessary," she answered frankly. "Father's got much
poorer, and everything's about a hundred times as dear as it was before
the War. But you mustn't think that I mind. I like it in a way--and it
won't last for ever. Some of father's investments are beginning to
recover a little even now, and prices are coming down--"

They had now come back to the garden end of the Long Walk. "I must go
now," she said. "Would you like me to send out one of the girls to
entertain you?"

He shook his head. "No, I think I'll stroll about the village for a bit."

They both felt as if the first milestone of their new relationship had
been set deep in the earth, and both were glad and relieved that it was
so.

Radmore walked about a bit, admiring Janet's autumnal herbaceous borders,
and then he remembered a door that he had known of old which led from the
big kitchen garden into the road. If it was open he could step out
without walking across the front of the house.

He turned into the walled garden, and walked quickly down a well-kept
path past the sun-dial to the door. It was open. He walked through it,
and then, with a rather guilty feeling--a feeling he did not care to
analyse--he made his way round the lower half of the village till he
reached the outside wall of The Trellis House.

There he hesitated for a few moments, but even while he was hesitating he
knew that he would go in. Before he could turn the handle the door in the
garden wall was opened by Enid Crofton herself. Radmore was surprised to
see that she was dressed in a black dress, with the orthodox plain linen
collar and cuffs of widowhood. It altered her strangely.

He was at once disappointed and a little relieved also, to find Jack
Tosswill in the garden with her. But soon the three went indoors, and
then, as had often been Mrs. Crofton's experience with admirers in the
past, each man tried to sit the other out.

At last the hostess had to say playfully:--"I'm afraid I must turn you
out now, for I'm expecting my sister-in-law, Miss Crofton."

And then they both, together, took their departure; Radmore feeling that
he had wasted an hour which might have been so very much more profitably
spent in going to see some of his old friends among the cottagers. As to
Jack Tosswill, he felt perplexed, and yes, considerably put out and
annoyed. He had been a good deal taken aback to see how close was the
acquaintance between Mrs. Crofton and Godfrey Radmore.

CHAPTER XIII

There is nothing like a meal, especially a good meal, for inducing
between two people an agreeable sense of intimacy. When Enid Crofton and
her elderly sister-in-law passed from the dining-room of The Trellis
House into the gay-looking little sitting-room, with its old-fashioned,
brightly coloured chintz furnishings, and quaint reproductions of
eighteenth-century prints, the two ladies were far more at ease the one
with the other than before luncheon.

Enid, in the plain black woollen gown, with its white linen collar and
cuffs, which she had discarded almost at once after her husband's
funeral, felt that she was producing a pleasant impression. As they sat
down, one on each side of the cheerful little wood fire, and began
sipping the excellent coffee which the mistress of the house had already
taught her very plain cook to make as it should be made, she suddenly
exclaimed:--

"I do want to thank you again for the money you sent me when poor Cecil
died! It was most awfully good of you, and very useful, too, for the
insurance people did not pay me for nearly a month."

These words gave her visitor an opening for which she had waited during
the last hour: "I'm glad my present was so opportune," said Miss Crofton
in her precise, old-fashioned way. "As we have mentioned money, I should
like to know, my dear, how you are situated? I was afraid from something
Cecil told me last time he and I met that you would be very poorly left."

She stopped speaking, and there followed a long pause. Enid Crofton was
instinctively glad that she was seated with her back to the window. She
was afraid lest her face should betray her surprise and discomfiture at
the question. And yet, what more natural than that her well-to-do,
kind-hearted sister-in-law should wish to know how she, Enid, was now
situated?

Cecil Crofton's widow was not what ordinary people would have called a
clever woman, but during the whole of her short life she had studied how
to please, cajole, and yes--deceive, the men and women about her.
Unfortunately for her, Alice Crofton was a type of woman with whom she
had never before been brought in contact; and something deep within her
told her that she had better stick as close to the truth as was
reasonably possible with this shrewd spinster who was, in some ways, so
disconcertingly like what Enid Crofton's late husband had been, in the
days when he had been a forlorn girl-widow's protecting friend and ardent
admirer.

Yet, even so, she began with a lie: "When my mother died last year she
left me a little money. I thought it wise to spend it in getting this
house, and in settling down here." She said the words in a very low
voice, and as Miss Crofton said nothing for a moment, she added
timidly:--"I do hope that you think I did right? I know people think
it wrong to use capital, but the War has changed everything, including
money, and one simply can't get along at all without paying out sums
which before the War would have seemed dreadful."

"That's very true," said Miss Crofton finally.

Enid, feeling on sure ground now, went on: "Why, I had to pay a premium
of L200 for the lease of this little house. But I'm told I could get that
again--even after living for a year or two in it."

Miss Crofton began looking about her with a doubtful air: "I suppose you
mean to spend the winter here," she said musingly, "and then let the
house each summer?"

"Yes," said Enid, "that is my idea."

As a matter of fact, she had never thought of doing such a thing, though
she saw the point of it, now that it was put by her sister-in-law. She
hoped, however, that long before next summer her future would be settled
on most agreeable lines.

"Then I suppose the balance of what your mother left you forms a little
addition to your pension, and to what poor Cecil was able to leave you?"

As the other hesitated, Miss Crofton went on, in a very friendly
tone:--"I hope you won't think it interfering that I should speak as I am
doing? I expected to find you much less comfortably circumstanced, and I
was going to propose that I should increase what I had feared would be a
very small income, by two hundred a year."

Enid was as much touched by this unexpected generosity as it was in
her to be, and it was with an accent of real sincerity that she
exclaimed:--"Oh, Alice, you _are_ kind! Of course two hundred a year
would be a _great_ help. Nothing remains of what my mother left me. But
you must not think that I'm extravagant. I sold a lot of things, and that
made it possible for me to take over The Trellis House exactly as you see
it. But even during the very few days I have been here I have begun to
find how expensive life can be, even in a village like this."

"All right," said Miss Crofton. She got up from her easy chair with a
quick movement, for she was still a vigorous woman. "Then that's settled!
I'll give you a cheque for L100 to-day--and one every six months as
long that is, as you're a widow." Then she smiled a little satirically,
for Enid had made a quick movement of recoil which Alice Crofton thought
rather absurd.

"It's early to think of such a thing, no doubt," she said coolly. "But
still, I shall be very much surprised, Enid, if you do not re-make your
life. I myself have a dear young friend, very little older than you are,
who has been married three times. The War has altered the views and
prejudices even of old-fashioned people."

"I want to ask you something," said Enid, "d'you think I ought to tell
people that I have already been married twice?"

Miss Crofton told herself quickly that such questions are always put with
a definite reason, and that she probably would not be called upon to pay
her sister-in-law's allowance for very long.

"I don't think you are in the least bound to tell anyone such a fact
about yourself, unless"--she hesitated,--"you were seriously thinking of
marrying again. In such a case as that I think you would be well advised,
Enid, to tell the man in question the fact before you become obliged to
reveal it to him."

There was a pause, and then Miss Crofton abruptly changed the subject by
saying something which considerably disturbed her young sister-in-law.

"I should be much obliged, my dear, if you would tell me a few details as
to my poor brother's death. Your letter contained no particulars at all,"
and as the other made no immediate answer, Miss Crofton went on:--"I know
there was an inquest, for one of my friends in Florence saw a report of
it in an English paper. Perhaps you would kindly let me see any newspaper
account or cuttings you may have preserved?"

"I have kept _nothing_, Alice!" Enid Crofton uttered the words with a
touch of almost angry excitement. Then, perhaps seeing that the other was
very much surprised, she said more quietly:--"The inquest was a purely
formal affair--the Coroner himself told me that there must always be an
inquest when a person died suddenly."

"Oh, but surely the question was raised, and that very seriously, as
to whether Cecil took what he did take on purpose, or by accident? I
understood from my friend that the account of the inquest she saw in some
popular Sunday paper was headed 'An Essex Mystery.'"

Enid felt as if all the blood in her body was flowing towards her face.
She congratulated herself that she was sitting with her back to the
light. These remarks, these questions made her feel sick and faint. Yet
she answered, composedly:--"Both the Coroner and the jury felt _sure_ he
had taken it on purpose. Poor Cecil had never been like himself since the
unlucky day, for us, that the War ended!" And then to Miss Crofton's
surprise and discomfiture Enid burst into tears.

The older lady got up and put her hand very kindly on the younger one's
shoulder:--"I'm sorry I said anything, my dear," she exclaimed; "I'm
afraid you went through a much worse time than you let me know."

"I did! I did!" sobbed Enid. "I cannot tell you how terrible it was,
Alice."

Then she made a determined effort over herself, ashamed of her own
emotion. Still neither hostess nor guest was sorry when there came a
knock at the door, followed a moment later by the entry into the room of
a stranger who was announced by the maid as "Miss Pendarth."

Enid Crofton got up, and as she shook hands with the newcomer she
tried to remember what it was that Godfrey Radmore had said of her
old-fashioned looking visitor. That she was a good friend but a bad
enemy? Yes, that had been it. Then she remembered something else--the
few kind words scribbled on a visiting card which had been left at The
Trellis House a day or two ago.

She turned to her sister-in-law:--"I think Miss Pendarth knew poor Cecil
years and years ago," she said softly.

"Are you--you must be Olivia Pendarth?" There was a touch of emotion in
Alice Crofton's level voice.

"Yes, I am Olivia Pendarth."

Enid was surprised--not over pleased by the revelation that these two
knew one another.

"I suppose it's a long time since you met?" she said pleasantly.

"Miss Crofton and I have never met before," said Miss Pendarth quietly.
"But I knew your husband very well in India, when he and I were both
young. My brother was in his regiment."

"The dear old regiment!" exclaimed Miss Crofton.

Enid Crofton smiled a little to herself. It amused her to see that these
two old things--for so she described them to herself--had so quickly
become friends. "The Regiment!" How sick she had got of those two words
during her second married life! She was sorry that Alice, whom she liked,
should be so queerly like Cecil. Even their voices were alike, and she
had uttered the two words with that peculiar intonation her husband
always used when speaking of any of his old comrades-in-arms.

All the same Miss Pendarth's sudden appearance had been a godsend. Enid
hated going back to the dreadful time of her husband's death.

And then, when everything seemed going so pleasantly, and when Enid
Crofton was still feeling a glow of joy at the thought of the cheque for
L100, one of those things happened which seem sometimes to occur in life
as if to remind us poor mortals that Fate is ever crouching round the
corner, ready to spring. The door opened, and the buxom little maid
brought in two letters on the salver she had just been taught to use.

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