The Younger Set. Chambers Robert William
Читать онлайн книгу.
kind in all
You say and do
For God made Kit-Ki
The same as you.
She looked doubtfully at Selwyn. "Is it all right to sign a poem? I believe that poets sign their works, don't they, Uncle Philip?"
"Certainly. Drina, I'll give you a dollar for that poem."
"You may have it, anyway," said Drina, generously; and, as an after-thought: "My birthday is next Wednesday."
"What a hint!" jeered Billy, casting a morsel at the dogs.
"It isn't a hint. It had nothing to do with my poem, and I'll write you several more, Uncle Philip," protested the child, cuddling against him, spoon in hand, and inadvertently decorating his sleeve with cranberry sauce.
Cat hairs and cranberry are a great deal for a man to endure, but he gave Drina a reassuring hug and a whisper, and leaned back to remove traces of the affectionate encounter just as Miss Erroll entered.
"Oh, Eileen! Eileen!" cried the children; "are you coming to luncheon with us?"
As Selwyn rose, she nodded, amused.
"I am rather hurt," she said. "I went down to luncheon, but as soon as I heard where you all were I marched straight up here to demand the reason of my ostracism."
"We thought you had gone with mother," explained Drina, looking about for a chair.
Selwyn brought it. "I was commissioned to say that Nina couldn't wait—dowagers and cakes and all that, you know. Won't you sit down? It's rather messy and the cat is the guest of honour."
"We have three guests of honour," said Drina; "you, Eileen, and Kit-Ki. Uncle Philip, mother has forbidden me to speak of it, so I shall tell her and be punished—but wouldn't it be splendid if Aunt Alixe were only here with us?"
Selwyn turned sharply, every atom of colour gone; and the child smiled up at him. "Wouldn't it?" she pleaded.
"Yes," he said, so quietly that something silenced the child. And Eileen, giving ostentatious and undivided attention to the dogs, was now enveloped by snooping, eager muzzles and frantically wagging tails.
"My lap is full of paws!" she exclaimed; "take them away, Katie! And oh!—my gown, my gown!—Billy, stop waving your tumbler around my face! If you spill that milk on me I shall ask your Uncle Philip to put you in the guard-house!"
"You're going to bolo us, aren't you, Uncle Philip?" inquired Billy. "It's my turn to be killed, you remember—"
"I have an idea," said Selwyn, "that Miss Erroll is going to play for you to sing."
They liked that. The infant Gerards were musically inclined, and nothing pleased them better than to lift their voices in unison. Besides, it always distressed Kit-Ki, and they never tired laughing to see the unhappy cat retreat before the first minor chord struck on the piano. More than that, the dogs always protested, noses pointed heavenward. It meant noise, which was always welcome in any form.
"Will you play, Miss Erroll?" inquired Selwyn.
Miss Erroll would play.
"Why do you always call her 'Miss Erroll'?" asked Billy. "Why don't you say 'Eileen'?"
Selwyn laughed. "I don't know, Billy; ask her; perhaps she knows."
Eileen laughed, too, delicately embarrassed and aware of his teasing smile. But Drina, always impressed by formality, said: "Uncle Philip isn't Eileen's uncle. People who are not relations say Miss and Mrs."
"Are faver and muvver relations?" asked Josephine timidly.
"Y-es—no!—I don't know," admitted Drina; "are they, Eileen?"
"Why, yes—that is—that is to say—" And turning to Selwyn: "What dreadful questions. Are they relations, Captain Selwyn? Of course they are!"
"They were not before they were married," he said, laughing.
"If you married Eileen," began Billy, "you'd call her Eileen, I suppose."
"Certainly," said Selwyn.
"Why don't you?"
"That is another thing you must ask her, my son."
"Well, then, Eileen—"
But Miss Erroll was already seated at the nursery piano, and his demands were drowned in a decisive chord which brought the children clustering around her, while their nurses ran among them untying bibs and scrubbing faces and fingers in fresh water.
They sang like seraphs, grouped around the piano, fingers linked behind their backs. First it was "The Vicar of Bray." Then—and the cat fled at the first chord—"Lochleven Castle":
"Put off, put off,
And row with speed
For now is the time and the hour of need."
Miss Erroll sang, too; her voice leading—a charmingly trained, but childlike voice, of no pretensions, as fresh and unspoiled as the girl herself.
There was an interval after "Castles in the Air"; Eileen sat, with her marvellously white hands resting on the keys, awaiting further suggestion.
"Sing that funny song, Uncle Philip!" pleaded Billy; "you know—the one about:
"She hit him with a shingle
Which made his breeches tingle
Because he pinched his little baby brother;
And he ran down the lane
With his pants full of pain.
Oh, a boy's best friend is his mother!"
"Billy!" gasped Miss Erroll.
Selwyn, mortified, said severely: "That is a very dreadful song, Billy—"
"But you taught it to me—"
Eileen swung around on the piano stool, but Selwyn had seized Billy and was promising to bolo him as soon as he wished.
And Eileen, surveying the scene from her perch, thought that Selwyn's years seemed to depend entirely upon his occupation, for he looked very boyish down there on his knees among the children; and she had not yet forgotten the sunken pallor of his features in the Park—no, nor her own question to him, still unanswered. For she had asked him who that woman was who had been so direct in her smiling salute. And he had not yet replied; probably never would; for she did not expect to ask him again.
Meanwhile the bolo-men were rushing the outposts to the outposts' intense satisfaction.
"Bang-bang!" repeated Winthrop; "I hit you, Uncle Philip. You are dead, you know!"
"Yes, but here comes another! Fire!" shouted Billy. "Save the flag! Hurrah! Pound on the piano, Eileen, and pretend it's cannon."
Chord after chord reverberated through the big sunny room, punctuated by all the cavalry music she had picked up from West Point and her friends in the squadron.
"We can't get 'em up!
We can't get 'em up!
We can't get 'em up
In the morning!"
she sang, calmly watching the progress of the battle, until Selwyn disengaged himself from the mêlée and sank breathlessly into a chair.
"All over," he said, declining further combat. "Play the 'Star-spangled Banner,' Miss Erroll."
"Boom!" crashed the chord for the sunset gun; then she played the anthem; Selwyn rose, and the children stood up at salute.
The party was over.
Selwyn and Miss Erroll, strolling together out of the nursery and down the stairs, fell unconsciously into the amiable exchange of badinage again; she taunting him with his undignified behaviour, he retorting in kind.
"Anyway that was a perfectly dreadful