Part 8 (1/2)
”Then when I get tired of that I may go to school--if I feel like it.
Aunt Miriam says she knows of one that would just do. Not Eton or Rugby, or anything like that; a school for younger boys. This one is in a beautiful big house, Aunt Miriam says, with lots of grounds and things about. Park, you know, like Windsor. And deer in it. And the house was built in the reign of Charles the First.”
”Bet you don't even know when that was. What's the use in having that kind of place for a school, anyway?”
”St. Barnabas,” replied Harry with hauteur, ”was built in the reign of Queen Victoria.”
”Queen nothing! Gosh, if you talk rot like this now, what'll you be when you've been over there a while?”
”Then I may go to Eton, or one of those places, later.” This was merely to bring a rise; Harry had no idea of completing his education anywhere but at St. Barnabas'.
”Yes, a fine time you'd have there! A fine time you'd have with those kids. Lords, Dukes, and things. Gosh, wouldn't you be sick of them, and oh, but they'd be sick of you!”
”Oh, I don't know,” said Harry; ”good fellows, lords. Some of them, that is. I might be made one myself, in time, who knows?”
”Yes, you might, mightn't you?” James was laughing now. ”Nothing more likely, I should think. Lord Harry, Earl Harry!”
Harry replied in kind, and hostilities ensued.
This was all more or less as it should be, and the mutual att.i.tude was maintained up to the actual moment of sailing--after it, indeed, for when Harry last saw his brother he was standing on the very end of the dock and shouting ”Give my love to the earls!” and similar pleasantries to the small head that protruded itself out of the great black moving wall above him; above him now, and now not so much above, but some distance off, and presently not a great black wall at all, but the side of a perfectly articulate s.h.i.+p, way out in the river.
Uncle James and his wife, also their eldest child, Ruth, a girl of nine or thereabouts, all came down to the dock with James to see the travelers off, and as they arrived hours and hours, as Miriam put it, before there was any question of sailing, there was a good deal of standing about in saloons and on decks and talking about nothing in particular, pending the moment when gongs would be rung and people begin to talk jocularly about getting left and having to climb down with the pilot. They all went down to see the staterooms, which adjoined each other and were p.r.o.nounced satisfactory. Aunt Cecilia said she was glad Harry could have his window open at night without a draught blowing on him, and Aunt Miriam remarked that it was nice to have the s.h.i.+p all to one's self, practically, which was so different from Coming Over, and Uncle James added that when he crossed on the _Persia_ in '69 as a mere kid, there were only fifteen people in the first cabin and none of them ever appeared in the dining room after the first day except himself and the captain. After this, conversation rather lagged and there was a general adjournment to the deck. A few pa.s.sengers, accompanied by their stay-at-home friends and relations, wandered about the halls and stairways, saying that autumn voyages were not always so bad and that you never could tell about the ocean, at any season; which amounted to admitting that they probably would be seasick, though they hoped not.
Our friends, the Wimbournes, had little to say on even this all-absorbing topic, for Harry, who had crossed once before, had proved himself a qualmless sailor, and Aunt Miriam had crossed so often that she had got all over that sort of thing, years ago.
Uncle James was presently despatched to see what mischief those boys were getting that child into, and the two ladies wandered into the main lounge and sat down.
”Anything more different than the appearance of a steams.h.i.+p saloon while the s.h.i.+p is in dock from what it looks like when she is careering round at sea can hardly be imagined,” murmured Lady Fletcher, pleasantly, with no intention of being comprehended or replied to. Mrs. James' polite and conscientious rejoinder of ”What was that, Miriam?”--she had not, of course, been listening--piqued the other lady ever so slightly. It was not real annoyance, merely the rather tired feeling that comes over one when a companion sounds a note out of one's own mood.
”Oh, nothing; merely what a difference it makes, being out on the open sea.”
”Yes, doesn't it?... Harry will--”
”Harry will what?”
”Nothing.” Mrs. James blushed a little. She was going to say, ”Harry will have to be looked out for, or he will go climbing over places where he shouldn't and fall overboard,” or something to that effect, but she decided not to, fearing that her sister-in-law would think her fussy.
Lady Fletcher accepted the omission, and went on to talk of the next thing that came into her mind, which was Business. There were some Lackawanna shares, it appeared, part of Harry's property, the dividends on which James was going to pay regularly to the London banker for defraying Harry's expenses, and James might have forgotten to do something, or else not to do something, in connection with these. Lady Fletcher wandered on to American railroad stock, making several remarks which, in the absence of brothers, with their satirical smiles, remained unchallenged. Poor Aunt Cecilia, who could neither keep on nor off her sister-in-law's line of thought, unluckily broke in on the Union Pacific with the malapropos remark:
”Miriam, Harry has got to be made to wear woolen stockings in the winter, no matter what he says ...”
Lady Fletcher was amused. ”I declare, Cecilia,” she said, ”you think I am no more capable of taking care of that boy than of ruling a state!”
But Mrs. James did not smile in reply; the remark came too near to describing her actual state of mind.
”Well, Miriam, with four children of one's own, one may be expected to learn a thing or two; it isn't all as easy as it seems. Beside, I am fond of the boy; I suppose I may be excused for that ...”
”I can certainly excuse it; I am fond of him myself.” Lady Fletcher was trying to conceal her irritation. Perhaps the suavity of her tone was a little overdone; at any rate, it only served to make Mrs. James' face a little rosier and her voice a little harder as she replied:
”I suppose you think, Miriam, that because I have four children of my own to fuss over, I might be expected to let the others alone, and I daresay you're right; but all that I know is, my heart isn't made that way. I have noticed you during these last weeks, and I am sure that you have felt as I say. But if you think that because I have four of my own to love, and therefore have less to give to those two motherless boys, you are mistaken. The more you have to love, the more you love each one of them, separately--not the less, as you might know if you had children of your own ...”
She stopped, unable to say any more. Her words were much more cruel than she intended them to be; that is, they fell much more cruelly than she meant them to on Lady Fletcher's ears. She had no idea, of course, of the deep though vain yearning for offspring of her own that filled her sister-in-law's bosom; Miriam could not possibly have expressed this, the deepest and most tragic thing in her life, to Cecilia. She was made that way. The more poignantly she felt what she had missed, the more determinedly she concealed every trace of her feeling from the outside world.