The Runaways (10 page)

‘Eight,’ said Timothy.

‘I told you he was eight,’ Betsy said. ‘Don’t you remember? The same age as your little boy when –’

Lady Alicia silenced her with a gesture. ‘Children,’ she said sharply, ‘should not speak until they are spoken to. Abednego, stop chattering and serve these gentlemen with queen cakes.’

Upon entering the room, Robert had seen out of the corner of his eye the silver tray upon a side table with its delicate cups and saucers of flowered china and a plate of little cakes. The spillikin players had evidently finished their tea some while ago, but there were a few cakes left, iced in pink, white and green with half a cherry on top of each. Robert and Timothy sat on the two footstools indicated by Lady Alicia and Abednego handed the cakes to them. They ate in silent appreciation of Moses’ skill as a chef and Lady Alicia turned to Betsy.

‘Is there not another child?’ she asked.

‘Nan,’ said Betsy. ‘Robert, where’s Nan?’

‘She and Ezra and Absolom are looking for you in the wood,’ said Robert. ‘We’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

Lady Alicia now made the most surprising remark. ‘I should like to meet Nan,’ she said. ‘You must bring her to see me another day.’ Then seeing the children’s astonishment, she went on, ‘You have doubtless been told that I am an eccentric recluse. It’s true that I don’t like being visited, but I believe in bowing to the
inevitable
and the Linnet family is, I think, as inevitable as the sun and the rain. You have risen upon my darkness, fallen upon my drought, and it is just possible that you may do me good.’

Quietness fell upon the room when she stopped speaking and for a minute or two the children did not like to break it. Then, just as Robert opened his mouth to make a chivalrous reply, a most appalling noise broke out somewhere below them in the house, yowling and caterwauling, shouts and bangs and bumps. Abednego, casting Gertrude to a place of safety on top of the bookcase, shot from the room, Robert and Timothy hard at his heels, and presently loud monkey screams and small-boy Red Indian yells were added to the din. Betsy would have gone too but for Lady Alicia’s hand grasping the gathers of her frock at the back. It was a strange thing, Lady Alicia looked such a very frail old lady, but pull as she might, Betsy could not free herself.

‘Bow to the inevitable, Betsy,’ said Lady Alicia. ‘You do not leave this room except in my company. Find me my stick.’

Betsy found it and they left the room together, Lady Alicia holding Betsy’s hand extremely firmly. She was a little lame, but with swishing silken skirts and tapping high heels she walked quite quickly along the passage. They were just turning to go down a short flight of steps towards the hubbub when suddenly they had to flatten themselves against the wall because a black shape leapt up at them from the passage below. They saw his blazing eyes as large as saucers as he sped by them, yet when they looked after him, all they could see was a little black cat running away for dear life down the passage.

The pursuit was hard on the poor little creature’s heels, Moses, Robert, Timothy, and Abednego. ‘Come back!’ Lady Alicia called after them. ‘You’ll only make
fools of yourselves. No one ever catches a cat.’ She might not have spoken for all the notice they took and the noise of the pursuit died away in the distance. She and Betsy went sedately back to the boudoir and ate the last two queen cakes to steady their nerves.

And presently the four males came back and they did look rather foolish. ‘Explain yourself, Moses,’ said Lady Alicia.

‘That’s a bad cat, milady,’ said Moses. ‘Comes into the house but don’t catch the mice. What he come for? Timothy, he thinks he sees him in the little empty room halfway up the stairs. Moses goes to look. Cat there. Moses goes to make an end of that cat. Moses gets his hands on the cat’s throat, milady, but the cat swells and Moses’ fingers go down and down through like deep moss, and no throat. But the cat yowled and caterwauled and then he grow small as mouse and run away through Moses’ legs. But the smaller that cat got, milady, the louder he yowled.’

‘What ridiculous nonsense, Moses,’ said Lady Alicia. ‘And how very wrong of you to try and kill a cat. Poor little creature. I’m glad he got away.’

Abednego began to chatter in a manner which though incomprehensible was obviously in support of Moses’ ideas, and Robert said, ‘Please, it is true. We saw what Moses saw.’ And Timothy said, ‘It happened like that before in the shop.’

‘Lack of balance in the male mind,’ said Lady Alicia.

Betsy opened her mouth to remind Lady Alicia of how she herself had leaned back against the wall as Frederick went by. Then she shut her mouth again,
for she had become very fond of Lady Alicia and women must hold together.

The little clock on the mantelpiece suddenly chimed six and Robert looked at it in dismay. ‘I think we ought to go,’ he said. ‘Nan and I have to do lessons with Uncle Ambrose from six to seven and if we don’t turn up we get no supper.’

Lady Alicia thoroughly understood the seriousness of the situation. ‘Go at once,’ she said. ‘Present my compliments to your uncle and tell him from me that you were unavoidably delayed.’

‘Could you put that in writing?’ asked Robert. His own diplomacy delighted him. What were diplomats worth a year?

‘A very good idea,’ said Lady Alicia. ‘Abednego, my inkpot, pen, and paper.’ He brought them to her from her escritoire and she wrote the note and folded it into an elegant cocked hat. ‘Here you are,’ she said. ‘Come again and bring Nan. Abednego, show them the quickest way out. Moses, clear away the tea things. Goodbye, my dears.’

She held out her hand, and Robert and Timothy kissed it and Betsy kissed her cheek, and then they followed Abednego. He ran at tremendous speed and they tore at his heels down several passages, flew down the great carved staircase, across the hall, through an archway and down a long echoing passage. They came to the kitchen and through it to the yard where Ezra, Nan, and Absolom were putting Rob-Roy back into the cart and fastening the straps.

‘Betsy!’ cried Nan, opening her arms wide, and instantly there was such a touching scene of family reunion, that
if Abednego had not had Gertrude waiting for him upstairs, he would have been affected to the point of tears. As it was, jumping on to the parapet of the well, he did sniff a bit, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. Moses, arriving in the kitchen with the tea things at this point, came out to the back door step, beamed at them and most surprisingly began to sing. He had a wonderful voice, deep and strong like thunder rolling in the hills. The rollicking tune was the same to which Ezra had sung in the middle of the night, but the words were different.

To the sound of his singing they piled themselves up on top of the beds and things in the cart and drove away. As the distance grew between them, they could no longer hear the words of his song, but Ezra lifted up his voice and carolled forth a last verse.

Driving home, Betsy and the boys chattered to Nan and Ezra of their adventures, but Nan said nothing about Daft Davie. In a very short time she had become very attached to him and she did not want to talk about him to hilarious children in a bumping cart. Later, perhaps, when they had quieted down. Going through the
shrubbery
did not seem to take so long as it had before and it did not seem quite so dark. All the same, they were glad to get out of it and be back again on the green, though a little alarmed to see a huge ugly bulldog, like the one on the sign, sitting in the inn doorway, and Frederick sitting outside the shop washing behind his ears. Frederick, looking small and innocent, did not even look up when they drove past him, but the bulldog growled.

‘That’s the second time today we’ve seen Frederick washing behind his ears,’ said Robert.

‘Andromache was washing behind her ears this morning,’ said Timothy.

‘It’s going to rain,’ said Ezra.

It was half past six when they reached home and in spite of Lady Alicia’s note they felt apprehensive. They washed their hands and face in the kitchen and presented
themselves
before Uncle Ambrose in the library. Timothy and Betsy came too, for though they were not involved in this, the Linnets always presented a solid front in time of trouble, and trouble was certainly present in the person
of Uncle Ambrose sitting at the table with a back like a ramrod and a face like a stone gargoyle on a
cathedral
, Hector on his shoulder growing taller and taller as the children crossed the miles of carpet which separated them from the door and Uncle Ambrose. Just as Hector’s head appeared to touch the ceiling the journey ended at last and they stood before their uncle.

‘Half an hour late,’ he said in a voice of thunder. ‘Explain yourselves.’

Without going into the rather peculiar details Nan explained that Betsy had got lost and they had spent a long time looking for her in the wood and in the garden before they finally found her with Lady Alicia. Then Robert presented Lady Alicia’s note and Uncle Ambrose put on his spectacles, read it, said ‘Umph’ and put it in his waistcoat pocket. Hector said ‘Hick’ and a pellet flew out of his beak and landed on top of the dictionary in the centre of the table. It flew open, disclosing beaks and claws and a boot button. Uncle Ambrose tipped them into the wastepaper basket.

‘Hector, having expressed your displeasure, you may now return to the Parthenon,’ he said, and Hector flew to the top of the picture of ruins and a thunderstorm. ‘Timothy and Betsy, go to Ezra, get your supper and go to bed. Nan and Robert sit down. I am tonight instructing you in the rudiments of English grammar in preparation for tomorrow.’

Everyone did as they were told, but it was difficult for Nan and Robert to concentrate upon grammar with the delicious smell of Timothy’s and Betsy’s cocoa and baked apples creeping under the study door. Robert
scarcely tried. His eyes kept slipping round to the clock. Six-forty now. In another twenty minutes it would be his and Nan’s turn for supper.

‘Attention, Robert!’ thundered Uncle Ambrose, frowning.

The grammar lesson was difficult and dry as dust. When the library clock struck seven Robert sighed with relief, but Uncle Ambrose went on talking. The church clock struck seven, but still Uncle Ambrose went on talking. Robert and Nan exchanged anxious glances, but still Uncle Ambrose went on talking and Robert was so dreadfully hungry that he was obliged to interrupt.

‘Uncle Ambrose!’ His relative paused and glanced at him over the top of his spectacles. ‘Nan had no tea. The rest of us had tea with Lady Alicia, though there wasn’t much of it, just some tiny queen cakes, but Nan was looking for Betsy in the wood and she didn’t have anything.’

‘Robert,’ said Uncle Ambrose in a terrible voice, ‘do you remember what I said would happen to you if you interrupted the process of education with conversation upon irrelevant matters?’ Robert remembered the little switch and he blinked. ‘Ah! I see that you do. This time, since your concern is for your sister, I will pass it over, but next time I shall not do so. You thought, I fancy, that this lesson would cease at seven o’clock. You must remember that the time of preparation each evening was agreed upon as one hour. This hour commenced at half past six.’ He glanced at the clock. ‘Resign yourself, Robert, to a further twenty-five minutes of education.’

Robert resigned himself. There was nothing else to do. Seven-thirty came at last and he closed his exercise book with a sigh of relief.

‘Nine o’clock tomorrow,’ said Uncle Ambrose. ‘Sharp. Collected any snails today, Robert? No time? I humbly suggest early rising as the perennial answer to that
perennial
difficulty. Well, get to bed both of you. No supper, of course.’ Robert could say nothing, for fury choked him. A slight twinkle appeared in Uncle Ambrose’s eye. ‘The agreement between us, by which if you remember you were to go supperless to bed if not home by six o’clock, is in no way affected by Lady Alicia’s note. An agreement is an agreement. Good night.’

‘Good night, Uncle Ambrose,’ said Nan gently. Even she thought he was being a bit hard, but she trusted him. Robert bowed with great irony, turned on his heel and followed her from the room with measured tread. Falsely condemned to death, he would not falter on the scaffold.

When the door had closed behind them Uncle Ambrose’s eyes continued to twinkle and a smile softened his grim face to tenderness. The children would have been astonished if they could have seen him at this moment. He said to himself that they must be home by six. He did not consider it safe for them to be out later.

When Nan and Robert went upstairs they found Timothy and Betsy already asleep, and their faces wore that smug look of satisfaction which the faces of the well fed so often wear in sleep, provided they are not having indigestion. Timothy in particular was looking so very smug that Robert shook him awake to hear how he himself had been treated. ‘The old brute!’ he said angrily. ‘I shan’t wash tonight.’

‘Why not?’ asked Nan, for they had opened the door between their rooms so that they could talk to each other.

‘Because the old beast likes us to wash and I’m not going to oblige him,’ said Robert. ‘And because hunger and dirt go together.’ He sagged pitifully at the waist and his eyes had a hollow look. ‘If you’re starving you’re too weak to wash. I wish we had gone to Uncle Edgar at Birmingham. At least he would have fed us.’