The Wouldbegoods (26 page)

The intelligent Alice divined his thoughts, and the Dentist divined hers – he is not clever enough yet to divine Oswald's – and the two said together –

‘Why not go and see her?'

‘She did say she would like to see us again some day,' Dora replied. So after we had argued a little about it we went.

And before we had gone a hundred yards down the dusty road Martha began to make us wish with all our hearts we had not let her come. She began to limp, just as a pilgrim, who I will not name, did when he had the split peas in his silly palmering shoes.

So we called a halt and looked at her feet. One of them was quite swollen and red. Bulldogs almost always have something the matter with their feet, and it always comes on when least required. They are not the right breed for emergencies.

There was nothing for it but to take it in turns to carry her. She is very stout, and you have no idea how heavy she is. A half-hearted unadventurous person name no names, but Oswald, Alice, Noel, H.O. (Dicky, Daisy and Denny will understand me) said, why not go straight home and come another day without Martha? But the rest agreed with Oswald when he said it was only a mile, and perhaps we might get a lift home with the poor invalid. Martha was very grateful to us for our kindness. She put her fat white arms round the person's neck who happened to be carrying her. She is
very affectionate, but by holding her very close to you you can keep her from kissing your face all the time. As Alice said, ‘Bulldogs do give you such large, wet, pink kisses.'

A mile is a good way when you have to take your turn at carrying Martha.

At last we came to a hedge with a ditch in front of it, and chains swinging from posts to keep people off the grass and out of the ditch, and a gate with ‘The Cedars' on it in gold letters. All very neat and tidy, and showing plainly that more than one gardener was kept. There we stopped. Alice put Martha down, grunting with exhaustedness, and said –

‘Look here, Dora and Daisy, I don't believe a bit that it's his grandmother. I'm sure Dora was right, and it's only his horrid sweetheart. I feel it in my bones. Now, don't you really think we'd better chuck it; we're sure to catch it for interfering. We always do.'

‘The cross of true love never did come smooth,' said the Dentist. ‘We ought to help him to bear his cross.'

‘But if we find her for him, and she's not his grandmother, he'll
marry
her,' Dicky said in tones of gloominess and despair.

Oswald felt the same, but he said, ‘Never mind. We should all hate it, but perhaps Albert's uncle
might
like it. You can never tell. If you want to do a really unselfish action and no kid, now's your time, my late Wouldbegoods.'

No one had the face to say right out that they didn't want to be unselfish.

But it was with sad hearts that the unselfish seekers opened the long gate and went up the gravel drive
between the rhododendrons and other shrubberies towards the house.

I think I have explained to you before that the eldest son of anybody is called the representative of the family if his father isn't there. This was why Oswald now took the lead. When we got to the last turn of the drive it was settled that the others were to noiselessly ambush in the rhododendrons, and Oswald was to go on alone and ask at the house for the grandmother from India – I mean Miss Ashleigh.

So he did, but when he got to the front of the house and saw how neat the flowerbeds were with red geraniums, and the windows all bright and speckless with muslin blinds and brass rods, and a green parrot in a cage in the porch, and the doorstep newly whited, lying clean and untrodden in the sunshine, he stood still and thought of his boots and how dusty the roads were, and wished he had not gone into the farmyard after eggs before starting that morning. As he stood there in anxious uncertainness he heard a low voice among the bushes. It said, ‘Hist! Oswald here!' and it was the voice of Alice.

So he went back to the others among the shrubs and they all crowded round their leader full of importable news.

‘She's not in the house; she's
here
,' Alice said in a low whisper that seemed nearly all S's. ‘Close by – she went by just this minute with a gentleman.'

‘And they're sitting on a seat under a tree on a little lawn, and she's got her head on his shoulder, and he's holding her hand. I never saw anyone look so silly in all my born,' Dicky said.

‘It's sickening,' Denny said, trying to look very manly with his legs wide apart.

‘I don't know,' Oswald whispered. ‘I suppose it wasn't Albert's uncle?'

‘Not much,' Dicky briefly replied.

‘Then don't you see it's all right. If she's going on like that with this fellow she'll want to marry him, and Albert's uncle is safe. And we've really done an unselfish action without having to suffer for it afterwards.'

With a stealthy movement Oswald rubbed his hands as he spoke in real joyfulness. We decided that we had better bunk unnoticed. But we had reckoned without Martha. She had strolled off limping to look about her a bit in the shrubbery. ‘Where's Martha?' Dora suddenly said.

‘She went that way,' pointingly remarked H.O.

‘Then fetch her back, you young duffer! What did you let her go for?' Oswald said. ‘And look sharp. Don't make a row.'

He went. A minute later we heard a hoarse squeak from Martha – the one she always gives when suddenly collared from behind – and a little squeal in a lady-like voice, and a man say ‘Hallo!' and then we knew that H.O. had once more rushed in where angels might have thought twice about it. We hurried to the fatal spot, but it was too late. We were just in time to hear H.O. say –

‘I'm sorry if she frightened you. But we've been looking for you. Are you Albert's uncle's long-lost grandmother?'

‘
No
,' said our lady unhesitatingly.

It seemed vain to add seven more agitated actors to the scene now going on. We stood still. The man was
standing up. He was a clergyman, and I found out afterwards he was the nicest we ever knew except our own Mr Briston at Lewisham, who is now a canon or a dean, or something grand that no one ever sees. At present I did not like him. He said, ‘No, this lady is nobody's grandmother. May I ask in return how long it is since you escaped from the lunatic asylum, my poor child, and whence your keeper is?'

H.O. took no notice of this at all, except to say, ‘I think you are very rude, and not at all funny, if you think you are.'

The lady said, ‘My dear, I remember you now perfectly. How are all the others, and are you pilgrims again today?'

H.O. does not always answer questions. He turned to the man and said –

‘Are you going to marry the lady?'

‘Margaret,' said the clergyman, ‘I never thought it would come to this: he asks me my intentions.'

‘If you
are
,' said H.O., ‘it's all right, because if you do Albert's uncle can't – at least, not till you're dead. And we don't want him to.'

‘Flattering, upon my word,' said the clergyman, putting on a deep frown. ‘Shall I call him out, Margaret, for his poor opinion of you, or shall I send for the police?'

Alice now saw that H.O., though firm, was getting muddled and rather scared. She broke cover and sprang into the middle of the scene.

‘Don't let him rag H.O. any more,' she said, ‘it's all our faults. You see, Albert's uncle was so anxious to find you, we thought perhaps you were his long-lost heiress sister or his old nurse who alone knew the secret of his
birth, or something, and we asked him, and he said you were his long-lost grandmother he had known in India. And we thought that must be a mistake and that really you were his long-lost sweetheart. And we tried to do a really unselfish act and find you for him. Because we don't want him to be married at all.'

‘It isn't because we don't like
you
,' Oswald cut in, now emerging from the bushes, ‘and if he must marry, we'd sooner it was you than anyone. Really we would.'

‘A generous concession, Margaret,' the strange clergyman uttered, ‘most generous, but the plot thickens. It's almost pea-soup-like now. One or two points clamour for explanation. Who are these visitors of yours? Why this Red Indian method of paying morning calls? Why the lurking attitude of the rest of the tribe which I now discern among the undergrowth? Won't you ask the rest of the tribe to come out and join the glad throng?'

Then I liked him better. I always like people who know the same songs we do, and books and tunes and things.

The others came out. The lady looked very uncomfy, and partly as if she was going to cry. But she couldn't help laughing too, as more and more of us came out.

‘And who,' the clergyman went on, ‘who in fortune's name is Albert? And who is his uncle? And what have they or you to do in this galère – I mean garden?'

We all felt rather silly, and I don't think I ever felt more than then what an awful lot there were of us.

‘Three years' absence in Calcutta or elsewhere may explain my ignorance of these details, but still –'

‘I think we'd better go,' said Dora. ‘I'm sorry if we've done anything rude or wrong. We didn't mean to.
Goodbye. I hope you'll be happy with the gentleman, I'm sure.'

‘I
hope
so too,' said Noel, and I know he was thinking how much nicer Albert's uncle was. We turned to go. The lady had been very silent compared with what she was when she pretended to show us Canterbury. But now she seemed to shake off some dreamy silliness, and caught hold of Dora by the shoulder.

‘No, dear, no,' she said, ‘it's all right, and you must have some tea – we'll have it on the lawn. John, don't tease them any more. Albert's uncle is the gentleman I told you about. And, my dear children, this is my brother that I haven't seen for three years.'

‘Then he's a long-lost too,' said H.O.

The lady said ‘Not now' and smiled at him.

And the rest of us were dumb with confounding emotions. Oswald was particularly dumb. He might have known it was her brother, because in rotten grown-up books if a girl kisses a man in a shrubbery that is not the man you think she's in love with; it always turns out to be a brother, though generally the disgrace of the family and not a respectable chaplain from Calcutta.

The lady now turned to her reverend and surprising brother and said, ‘John, go and tell them we'll have tea on the lawn.'

When he was gone she stood quite still a minute. Then she said, ‘I'm going to tell you something, but I want to put you on your honour not to talk about it to other people. You see it isn't everyone I would tell about it. He, Albert's uncle, I mean, has told me a lot about you, and I know I can trust you.'

We said ‘Yes', Oswald with a brooding sentiment of knowing all too well what was coming next.

The lady then said, ‘Though I am not Albert's uncle's grandmother I did know him in India once, and we were going to be married, but we had a – a – misunderstanding.'

‘Quarrel?' Row?' said Noel and H.O. at once.

‘Well, yes, a quarrel, and he went away. He was in the Navy then. And then… well, we were both sorry, but well, anyway, when his ship came back we'd gone to Constantinople, then to England, and he couldn't find us. And he says he's been looking for me ever since.'

‘Not you for him?' said Noel.

‘Well, perhaps,' said the lady.

And the girls said ‘Ah!' with deep interest. The lady went on more quickly, ‘And then I found you, and then he found me, and now I must break it to you. Try to bear up.'

She stopped. The branches cracked, and Albert's uncle was in our midst. He took off his hat. ‘Excuse my tearing my hair,' he said to the lady, ‘but has the pack really hunted you down?'

‘It's all right,' she said, and when she looked at him she got miles prettier quite suddenly. ‘I was just breaking to them…'

‘Don't take that proud privilege from me,' he said. ‘Kiddies, allow me to present you to the future Mrs Albert's uncle, or shall we say Albert's new aunt?'

There was a good deal of explaining done before tea – about how we got there, I mean, and why. But after the first bitterness of disappointment we felt not nearly so sorry as we had expected to. For Albert's uncle's lady was very jolly to us, and her brother was awfully decent, and showed us a lot of first-class native curiosities and things, unpacking them on purpose; skins of beasts, and beads, and brass things, and shells from different savage lands besides India. And the lady told the girls that she hoped they would like her as much as she liked them, and if they wanted a new aunt she would do her best to give satisfaction in the new situation. And Alice thought of the Murdstone aunt belonging to Daisy and Denny, and how awful it would have been if Albert's uncle had married
her
. And she decided, she told me afterwards, that we might think ourselves jolly lucky it was no worse.

Then the lady led Oswald aside, pretending to show him the parrot which he had explored thoroughly before, and told him she was not like some people in books. When she was married she would never try to separate her husband from his bachelor friends, she only wanted them to be her friends as well.

Then there was tea, and thus all ended in amicableness, and the reverend and friendly drove us home in a wagonette. But for Martha we shouldn't have had tea, or explanations, or lift or anything. So we honoured her, and did not mind her being so heavy and walking up and down constantly on our laps as we drove home.

And that is all the story of the long-lost grandmother and Albert's uncle. I am afraid it is rather dull, but it
was very important (to him), so I felt it ought to be narrated. Stories about lovers and getting married are generally slow. I like a love story where the hero parts with the girl at the garden gate in the gloaming and goes off and has adventures, and you don't see her any more till he comes home to marry her at the end of the book. And I suppose people have to marry. Albert's uncle is awfully old – more than thirty, and the lady is advanced in years – twenty-six next Christmas. They are to be married then. The girls are to be bridesmaids in white frocks with fur. This quite consoles them. If Oswald repines sometimes, he hides it. What's the use? We all have to meet our fell destiny, and Albert's uncle is not extirpated from this awful law.