Back To Billabong - Mary Grant Bruce
"Yes, that's all right," she said. "Now, my hat, Cecilia--it's in the
bandbox under the bed. I can't stoop in this dress, that's the worst
of it. And my gloves are in that box on the chest of drawers--the white
pair. Hurry, Cecilia, my appointment is for four o'clock."
"Mine was for three o'clock," said the girl in a low voice.
"Oh, well, you should manage your work better. I always tell you that.
Nothing like method in getting through every day. However, Bob is only
your brother--it would be more serious if it was a young man you were
meeting. Brothers don't matter much."
Cecilia flamed round upon her.
"Bob is more to me than anyone in the world," she cried. "And I would
rather keep any other man waiting."
"Really? But I shouldn't think it very likely that you'll ever have to
trouble about other young men, Cecilia; you're not the sort. Too thin
and scraggy." Mrs. Rainham surveyed her own generous proportions in the
glass, and gathered up her gloves with a pleased air. For the moment she
could not possibly believe that anyone could have referred to her as "an
over-ornamented pie." "Good-bye, Cecilia; don't be late for tea." She
sailed down the stairs.
Even the bang of the hall door failed to convey any relief to Cecilia.
For the second time she toiled upstairs, to the bare freshness of her
little room. Generally, it had a tonic effect upon her; to-day it seemed
that nothing could help her. She leaned her head against the window,
a wave of homesick loneliness flooding all her soul. So deep were its
waters that she did not hear the hall door open and close again, and
presently swift feet pounding up the stairs. Someone battered on her
door.
"Cecilia! Are you there?"
She ran to open the door. Bob stood there, a short, muscular fellow, in
Air Force blue, with twinkling eyes. She put out her hands to him with a
little pitiful gesture.
"Don't say that horrible name again," she whispered. "If anyone else
calls me Cecilia I'll just go mad."
Bob came in, and flung a brotherly arm round her shoulders.
"Has it been so beastly?" he said. "Poor little Tommy. Oh, Tommy, I saw
the over-ornamented pie sailing down the street, and I dived into a side
alley until she'd gone out of range. I guessed from her proud and happy
face that you'd been scarified."
"Scarified!" murmured Cecilia. But Bob was not listening. His face was
radiant.
"I couldn't wait in the park any longer," he said. "I had to come and
tell you. Tommy, old thing--I'm demobilized!"
CHAPTER II
THE RAINHAMS
It was one of Mrs. Mark Rainham's grievances that, comparatively late
in her married life, she should suddenly find herself brought into
association with the children of her husband's first marriage. They were
problems that Fate had previously removed from her path; she found it
extremely annoying--at first--that Fate should cease to be so tactful,
casting upon her a burden long borne by other shoulders. It was not
until she had accepted Mark Rainham, eleven years before, that she found
out the very existence of Bob and Cecilia; she resented the manner of
the discovery, even as she resented the children themselves. Not that
she ever dreamed of breaking off her engagement on their account. She
was a milliner in a Kensington shop, and to marry Mark Rainham, who
was vaguely "something in the city," and belonged to a good club, and
dressed well, was a distinct step in the social scale, and two unknown
children were not going to make her draw back. But to mother them was
quite another question.
Luckily, Fate had a compassionate eye upon the young Rainhams, and was
quite willing to second their stepmother's resolve that they should come
into her life as little as possible. Their father had never concerned
himself greatly about them. A lazy and selfish man, he had always been
willing to shelve the care of his small son and daughter--babies were
not in his line, and the aunt who had brought up their mother was only
too anxious to take Bob and Cecilia when that girl-mother had slipped
away from life, leaving a week-old Cecilia and a sturdy, solemn Bob of
three.
The arrangement suited Mark Rainham very well. Aunt Margaret's house
at Twickenham was big enough for half a dozen babies; the children went
there, with their nurse, and he was free to slip back into bachelor
ways, living in comfortable chambers within easy reach of his club and
not too far, with a good train service, from a golf links. The regular
week-end visits to the babies suffered occasional interruptions, and
gradually grew fewer and fewer, until he became to the children a vague
and mysterious person named Papa, who dropped from the skies now
and then, asked them a number of silly questions, talked with great
politeness to Aunt Margaret--who, they instinctively felt, liked him
no better than they did--and then disappeared, whereupon every one
was immensely relieved. Even the fact that he generally brought them a
packet of expensive sweets was as nothing beside the harrowing knowledge
that they must kiss him, thereby having their faces brushed with a large
and scrubby moustache. Aunt Margaret and nurse did not have to endure
this infliction--which seemed to Bob and Cecilia obviously unfair. But
the visits did not often happen--not enough to disturb seriously an
existence crammed with interesting things like puppies and kittens, the
pony cart, boats on the river that ran just beyond the lawn, occasional
trips to London and the Zoo, and delirious fortnights at the seaside
or on Devonshire moors. Cecilia had never known even Bobby's shadowy
memories of their own mother. Aunt Margaret was everything that
mattered, and the person called Papa was merely an unpleasant incident.
Other little boys and girls whom they knew owned, in their houses,
delightful people named Daddy and Mother; but Cecilia and Bob quite
understood that every one could not have the same things, for possibly
these fortunate children had no puppies or pony carts. Nurse had pointed
out this, so that it was perfectly clear.
It was when Cecilia was eight and Bob eleven, that their father married
again. To the children it meant nothing; to Aunt Margaret it was a bomb.
If Mark Rainham had happened to die, or go to the North Pole, she would
have borne the occurrence calmly; but that he should take a step which
might mean separating her from her beloved babies shook her to her
foundations. Even when she was assured that the new Mrs. Rainham
disliked children, and had not the slightest intention of adding Bob and
Cecilia to her household, Aunt Margaret remained uneasy. The red-haired
person, as she mentally labelled her, might change her mind. Mark
Rainham was wax in her hands, and would always do as he was told. Aunt
Margaret, goaded by fear, became heroic. She let the beloved house at
Twickenham while Mr. and Mrs. Rainham were still on their honeymoon;
packed up the children, her maids, nurse, the parrot and most of the
puppies; and kept all her plans a profound secret until she was safely
established in Paris.
To the average Londoner, Paris is very far off. There are, of course,
very many people who run across the Channel as easily as a Melbourne man
may week-end in Gippsland or Bendigo, but the suburban section of
London is not fond of voyaging across a strip of water with unpleasant
possibilities in the way of choppiness, to a strange country where most
of the inhabitants have the bad taste not to speak English. Neither Mark
Rainham nor his new wife had ever been in France, and to them it seemed,
as Aunt Margaret had shrewdly hoped it would, almost as though the
Twickenham household had gone to the North Pole. A great relief fell
upon them, since there could now be no question of assuming duties
when those duties were suddenly beyond their reach. And Aunt Margaret's
letter was convincing--such a good offer, suddenly, for the Twickenham
house; such excellent educational opportunities for the children, in
the shape of semi-English schools, where Bob and Cecilia might mix with
English children and retain their nationality while acquiring Parisian
French. If Mark Rainham felt any inward resentment at the summary
disposal of his son and daughter, he did not show it; as of old, it was
easier to let things slide. Aunt Margaret was given a free hand, save
that at fourteen Bob returned to school in England; an arrangement that
mattered little, since all his holidays were spent at the new home at
Fontainebleau--a house which, even to the parrot, was highly reminiscent
of Twickenham.
Bob and Cecilia found life extremely interesting. They were cheery,
happy-go-lucky youngsters, with an immense capacity for enjoyment; and
Aunt Margaret, while much too shrewd an old lady to spoil children,
delighted in giving them a good time. They found plenty of friends in
the little English community in Paris, as well as among their French
neighbours. Paris itself was full of fascination; then there were
wonderful excursions far afield--holidays in Brussels, in the South
of France, even winter sporting in Switzerland. Aunt Margaret was
determined that her nurselings should miss nothing that she could give
them. The duty letters which she insisted on their writing, once a
month, to their father told of happenings that seemed strangely remote
from the humdrum life of London. "By Jove, the old lady gives those
youngsters a good time!" Mark Rainham would comment, tossing them across
the table to his wife. He did not guess at the dull rage that filled her
as she read them--the unreasoning jealousy that these children should
have opportunities so far beyond any that were likely to occur for her
own, who squabbled angrily over their breakfast while she read.
"She seems to have any amount of money to spend on gadding about," she
would say unpleasantly.
"Oh, pots of money. Wish to goodness I had some of it," her husband
would answer. Money was always scarce in the Rainham household.
When the thunderbolt of war fell upon the world, Aunt Margaret, after
the first pangs of panic, stiffened her back, and declined to leave
France. England, she declared, was not much safer than anywhere else;
and was it likely that she and Cecilia would run away when Bob was
coming back? Bob, just eighteen, captain of his school training corps,
stroke of its racing boat, and a mighty man of valour at football, slid
naturally into khaki within a month of the outbreak of war, putting
aside toys, with all the glad company of boys of the Empire, until such
time as the Hun should be taught that he had no place among white men.
Aunt Margaret and Cecilia, knitting frantically at socks and mufflers
and Balaclava helmets, were desperately proud of him, and compared his
photograph, in uniform, with all the pictures of Etienne and Henri and
Armand, and other French boys who had played with him under the trees at
Fontainebleau, and had now marched away to join him at the greater game.
It was difficult to realize that they were not still little boys in
blouses and knickerbockers--difficult even when they swooped down from
time to time on short leave, filling the quiet houses with pranks and
laughter that were wholly boyish. Even when Bob had two stars on
his cuff, and wore the ribbon of the Military Cross, it would have
astonished Aunt Margaret and Cecilia very much had anyone suggested that
he was grown up.
Indeed, Aunt Margaret was never to think of him as anything but "one of
the children." Illness, sudden and fierce, fell upon her after a long
spell of duty at the hospital where she worked from the first few months
of the war--working as cook, since she had no nursing experience, and
was, she remarked, too old to learn a new trade. Brave as she was, there
was no battling for her against the new foe; she faded out of life after
a few days, holding Cecilia's hand very tightly until the end.
Bob, obtaining leave with much difficulty, arrived a few days later, to
find a piteous Cecilia, white-faced, stunned and bewildered. She pleaded
desperately against leaving France; amidst all the horror and chaos that
had fallen upon her, it seemed unthinkable that she should put the sea
between herself and Bob. But to remain was impossible. Aunt Margaret's
English maids wanted to go back to their friends, and a girl of
seventeen could scarcely stay alone in a country torn by two years of
war. Besides, Aunt Margaret's affairs were queerly indefinite; there
seemed very little money where there had formerly been plenty. There was
no alternative for Cecilia but England--and England meant the Rainham
household, and such welcome as it might choose to give her.
She was still bewildered when they made the brief journey across the
Channel--a new Channel, peopled only with war-ships of every kind, from
grim Dreadnoughts to submarines; with aircraft, bearing the red, white
and blue circles of Britain, floating and circling overhead. Last time
Cecilia had crossed, it had been with Aunt Margaret on a big turbine
mail boat; they had reached Calais just as an excursion steamer from
Margate came up, gay with flags and light dresses, with a band playing
ragtime on the well-deck, and people dancing to a concertina at the
stern. Now they zig-zagged across, sometimes at full speed, sometimes
stopping dead or altering their course in obedience to the destroyer
nosing ahead of them through the Channel mist; and she could see the
face of the captain on the bridge, strained and anxious. There were
so few civilians on board that Cecilia and the two old servants were
greeted with curious stares; nearly all the passengers were in uniform,
their boots caked with the mud of the trenches, their khaki soiled with
the grime of war. It was all rather dream-like to Cecilia; and London
itself was a very bad dream; darkened and silent, with the great beams
of searchlights playing back and forth over the black skies in search of
marauding Zeppelins. And then came her father's stiff greeting, and the
silent drive to the tall, narrow house in Lancaster Gate, where Mrs.
Rainham met her coldly. In after years Cecilia never could think without
a shudder of that first meal in her father's house--the struggle to
eat, the lagging talk round the table, with Avice and Wilfred, frankly
hostile, staring at her in silence, and her stepmother's pale eyes
appraising every detail of her dress. It was almost like happiness again
to find herself alone, later; in a dingy little attic bedroom that smelt
as though it had never known an open window--a sorry little hole, but
still, out of the reach of those unblinking eyes.
For the first year Cecilia had struggled to get away to earn her own
living. But a very few weeks served to show Mrs. Rainham that chance
had sent her, in the person of the girl whose coming she had sullenly
resented, a very useful buffer against any period of domestic stress.
Aunt Margaret had trained Cecilia thoroughly in all housewifely virtues,
and her half-French education had given her much that was lacking in
the stodgy damsels of Mrs. Rainham's acquaintance. She was quick
and courteous and willing; responding, moreover, to the lash of the
tongue--after her first wide-eyed stare of utter amazement--exactly as a
well-bred colt responds to a deftly-used whip. "I'll keep her," was Mrs.
Rainham's inward resolve. "And she'll earn her keep too!"
There was no doubt that Cecilia did that. Wilfred and Avice saw to it,
even had not their mother been fully capable of exacting the last ounce
from the only helper she had ever had who had not the power to give her
a week's notice. Cecilia's first requests to be allowed to take up work
outside had been shelved vaguely. "We'll find some nice war-work for
you presently". . . and meanwhile, the household was short-handed, Mrs.
Rainham was overstrained--Cecilia found later that her stepmother was
always "overstrained" whenever she spoke of leaving home--and duties
multiplied about her and hemmed her in. Mrs. Rainham was clever; the net
closed round the girl so gradually that she scarcely realized its meshes
until they were drawn tightly. Even Bob helped. "You're awfully young
to start work on your own account," he wrote. "Can't you stick it for
a bit, if they are decent to you?" And, rather than cause him any extra
worry, Cecilia decided that she must "stick it."
Of her father she saw little. He was, just as she remembered him in her
far-back childhood at Twickenham, vague and colourless. Rather to her
horror, she found that the ordeal of being kissed by his large and
scrubby moustache was just as unpleasant as ever. Cecilia had no idea
of how he earned his living--he ate his breakfast hurriedly, concealed
behind the Daily Mail, and then disappeared, bound for some mysterious
place in the city--the part of London that was always full of mystery to
Cecilia. Golf was the one thing that roused him to any enthusiasm, and
golf was even more of a mystery than the city. Cecilia knew that it
was played with assorted weapons, kept in a bag, and used for smiting
a small ball over great expanses of country, but beyond these facts her
knowledge stopped. Mrs. Rainham had set her to clean the clubs one day,
but her father, appearing unexpectedly, had taken them from her hands
with something like roughness. "No, by Jove!" he said. "You do a good
many odd jobs in this house, but I'm hanged if you shall clean my golf
sticks." Cecilia did not realize that the assumed roughness covered
something very like shame.
Money matters were rather confusing. A lawyer--also in the city--paid
her a small sum quarterly--enough to dress on, and for minor expenses.
Bob wrote that Aunt Margaret's affairs were in a beastly tangle. An
annuity had died with her, and many of her investments had been hit by
the war, and had ceased to pay dividends--had even, it seemed, ceased to
be valuable at all. There was a small allowance for Bob also, and some
day, if luck should turn, there might be a little more. Bob did not say
that his own allowance was being hoarded for Cecilia, in case he "went
west." He lived on his pay, and even managed to save something out of
that, being a youth of simple tastes. His battalion had been practically
wiped out of existence in the third year of the war, and after a
peaceful month in a north country hospital, near an aerodrome, the call
of the air was too much for him--he joined the cheerful band of flying
men, and soon filled his letters to Cecilia with a bewildering mixture
of technicalities and aviation slang that left her gasping. But he
got his wings in a very short time, and she was prouder of him than
ever--and more than ever desperately afraid for him.
The children's daily governess, a down-trodden person, left after
Cecilia had been in England for a few months, and the girl stepped
naturally into the vacant position until some one else should be found.
She had no idea that Mrs. Rainham made no effort at all to discover any
other successor to Miss Simpkins. Where, indeed, Mrs. Rainham
demanded of herself, would she be likely to find anyone with such
qualifications--young, docile, with every advantage of a modern
education, speaking French like a native, and above and beyond all else,
requiring no pay? It would be flying in the face of Providence to ignore
such a chance. Wherefore Cecilia continued to lead her step-sisters
and brother in the paths of learning, and life became a thing of utter
weariness. For Mrs. Rainham, though shrewd enough to get what she
wanted, in the main was not a far-sighted woman; and in her unreasoning
dislike and jealousy of Cecilia she failed to see that she defeated her
own ends by making her a drudge. Whatever benefit the girl might have
given the children was lost in their contempt for her. She had no
authority, no power to enforce a command, or to give a punishment,
and the children quickly discovered that, so long as they gave her the
merest show of obedience in their mother's presence, any shortcomings in
education would be laid at Cecilia's door. Lesson time became a period
of rare sport for the young Rainhams; it was so easy to bait the new
sister with cheap taunts, to watch the quick blood mount to the very
roots of her fair hair, to do just as little as possible, and then to
see her blamed for the result. Mrs. Rainham's bitter tongue grew more
and more uncontrolled as time went on and she felt the girl more fully
in her power. And Cecilia lived through each day with tight-shut lips,
conscious of one clear thing in her mist of unhappy bewilderment--that
Bob must not know: Bob, who would probably leave his job of skimming
through the air of her beloved France after the Hun, and snatch an hour
to fly to England and annihilate the entire Rainham household, returning
with Cecilia tucked away somewhere in his aeroplane. It was a pleasant
dream, and served to carry her through more than one hard moment. But it
did not always serve; and there were nights when Cecilia mounted to her
attic with dragging footsteps, to sit by her window in the darkness,
gripping her courage with both hands, afraid to let herself think of the
dear, happy past; of Aunt Margaret, whose very voice was love; least of
all of Bob, perhaps even now flying in the dark over the German lines.
There was but one thing that she could hold to: she voiced it to
herself, over and over with clenched hands, "It can't last for ever! It
can't last for ever!"
And then, after the long years of clutching anxiety, came the Armistice,
and Cecilia forgot all her troubles in its overwhelming relief. No one
would shoot at Bob any longer; there were no more hideous, squat guns,
with muzzles yawning skywards, ready to shell him as he skimmed high
overhead, like a swallow in the blue. Therefore she sang as she went
about her work, undismayed by the laboured witticisms of Avice
and Wilfred, or by Mrs. Rainham's venom, which increased with the
realization that her victim might possibly slip from her grasp, since
Bob would come home, and Bob was a person to be reckoned with. Certainly
Bob had scarcely any money; moreover, Cecilia was not of age, and,
therefore, still under her father's control. But Mrs. Rainham felt
vaguely uneasy, and visions floated before her of the old days when
governesses and maids had departed with unpleasant frequency, leaving
her to face all sorts of disagreeable consequences. She set her thin
lips, vowing inwardly that Cecilia should remain.
Nevertheless it was a relief to her that early demobilization did
not come for Bob. At the time of the Armistice he was attached to an
Australian flying squadron, and for some months remained abroad; then he
was sent back to England, and employed in training younger fliers at a
Surrey aerodrome. This had its drawbacks in Mrs. Rainham's eyes, since
he was often able to run up to London, and, to Bob, London merely meant
Cecilia. It was only a question of time before he discovered something
of what life at Lancaster Gate meant--his enlightenment beginning upon
an afternoon when, arriving unexpectedly, and being left by Eliza to
find Cecilia for himself, he had the good fortune to overhear Mrs.
Rainham in one of her best efforts--a "wigging" to which Avice and
Wilfred were listening delightedly, and which included not only
Cecilia's sin of the moment, but her upbringing, her French education,
her "foreign fashion of speaking," and her sinful extravagance in
shoes. These, and other matters, were furnishing Mrs. Rainham with
ample material for a bitter discourse when she became aware of another
presence in the room, and her eloquence faltered at the sight of Bob's
astonished anger.
Mrs. Rainham did not recall with any enjoyment the interview which
followed--Cecilia and the children having been brushed out of the way
by the indignant soldier. Things which had been puzzling to Bob
were suddenly made clear--traces of distress which Cecilia had often
explained away vaguely, the children's half-contemptuous manner towards
her, even Eliza's tone in speaking of her--a queer blend of anger and
pity. Mrs. Rainham held her ground to some extent, but the brother's
questions were hard to parry, and some of his comments stung.
"Well, I'll take her away," he stormed at length. "It's evident that she
does not give you satisfaction, and she certainly isn't happy. She had
better come away with me to-day."
"Ah," said his stepmother freezingly, "and where will you take her?"
Bob hesitated.
"There are plenty of places--" he began.
"Not for a young girl alone. Cecilia is very ignorant of England;
you could not be with her. Your father would not hear of it. You must
remember that Cecilia is under his control until she is twenty-one."
"My father has never bothered about either of us," Bob said bitterly.
"He surely won't object if I take her off your hands."
"He will certainly not permit any such thing. Whatever arrangement he
made during your aunt's lifetime was quite a different matter. If you
attempt to take Cecilia from his control you commit an illegal action,"
said Mrs. Rainham--hoping she was on safe ground. To her relief Bob did
not contradict her. English law and its mysteries were beyond him.