The Lark (Nesbit)/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV
"Don't be frightened," said a voice in the deep dark of the summer-house. "I'm not a burglar. I'll strike a light."
There was the scratch and spurt of a match, by whose light the girls saw vaguely the figure of a man rising from one of the wicker-chairs.
"But if you're not burglars what are you doing here?" It was Jane who spoke.
"Sheltering from the rain. I am so very sorry if I startled you," said the intruder, striking another match.
"But why here?"
"It seemed convenient. I see now I had no right, but who could have thought that you would come here through the wild night and the rain?"
"But who are you?" Jane persisted.
Suddenly Lucilla said, "Why, of course, it's Mr. Dix!"
"Yes," said the stranger, "I am that wretched outcast."
"Of course you are," said Jane. And then she and Lucilla first became aware that ever since the first squeak of the basket-chair they had been clinging to each other, as people do in romances, clutching each other's arms and keeping very close together. Their clasp now relaxed.
"But how" Lucilla was beginning, but Jane stopped her.
"Not here," she said, "Mr. Dix can probably climb the wall somewhere and pick up our key. He can explain all about everything afterwards."
"Where is your key?" asked the voice in the dark. And Jane, in a few simple words, explained where their key was.
"And of course you can get over the wall and get the key and give it to us through the gate, and then we can go and get the garden padlock-key. It's quite easy to climb up one of the buttresses inside and drop down outside, but then you can't get back again. I should have gone myself but I didn't like leaving my friend alone in the garden, because, you see, it might really have been burglars."
"But," said he, "I have a key on my bunch that opens that padlock—that's how I got in. Padlocks are all alike. And then I thought it wasn't safe to leave it unlocked, so I went back and locked it." And he struck another match.
"How simple everything is when you understand it," said Jane; "and do stop striking matches. It only makes it darker afterwards. Go along and get that key, please. It's lying on the path outside the gate. We'll meet you at the garden-house door. It's quite near the gate."
"I must strike another match," he said apologetically, "or I shall go barging into you as I go out."
He struck one, sidled past them, and was gone.
"What shall we do?" Lucilla whispered.
"Go home, of course. He can stay in the summer-house if he likes. I daresay it'll seem luxury after his prison life."
"No," said Lucilla, "don't let's. I can't bear not to know why he came at night instead of to tea, and whether he's really a gentleman burglar and came down just to burgle us, or whether . . ."
"All right," said Jane recklessly. "Come on. There's only one thing certain. We asked him to tea and he hasn't had that tea. Let's light up in the garden room and have tea again—again and again, until we extort his full confession. I'm very wet and very cold. We'll have a fire. Thank goodness we collected those sticks and fir-cones! If he is a burglar the fire will camouflage the tea-pot and things."
When the candles were lighted in the garden room the three looked at each other—wet, draggled, streaked with green and brown from the caresses of the old shrubs, blinking with dazzled eyes in the candlelight; they looked at each other—doubtfully—anxiously. Then suddenly Jane laughed, Lucilla laughed; Mr. Dix laughed too, but only a very little—as became an outcast.
"Who says life isn't a lark?" said Jane.
"Not I, certainly," said Mr. Dix, "but I implore you to let me explain"
"Not yet," said Jane; "better light the fire—there's wood in that cupboard. And we'll boil the kettle; whatever happens, Mr. Dix, you shall have that tea that we invited you to."
"I ought to insist on explaining myself and then go away at once," said Mr. Dix, dealing expertly with wood and paper, "but no human being could resist your kindness."
After that he said no more till the table was set out with tea-things and what remained of the afternoon's cakes. The tea was brewing in the second best brown tea-pot, and Lucilla was beginning to apologise because they had drunk all the milk in the afternoon, when she stopped short at: "I'm so sorry . . ."
She had seen his boots. At least, she had seen one of them. The other was only half a boot. The sole was gone. This was all too plainly to be seen as he knelt to put more wood on the fire. There was quite an appreciable interval before she went on ". . . that we drank all the milk this afternoon. But there's lemon."
••••••
"And now," said Jane, very brisk and businesslike, handing is third cup of tea to Mr. Dix, "first we'll tell you how we came to be taking refuge in the summer-house in the middle of the night, and then you shall tell us how you did."
Their story was quickly told. "So you see," said Jane. "Now for your adventures."
"My simple story," said Mr. Dix, almost placidly, "is this. I started to walk from London, and it was further than I expected. My boots are not what once they were; and it came on to rain, and having come so far I thought I would at least go on, and mark down your house, so to speak, so that I should find it more easily when I came to explain, if I ever could, why I hadn't turned up at the proper time. When I got here I found that I could not possibly walk home again to-night. The sole of my right boot had deserted in the mud. I saw the angle of your summer-house roof. I saw that the house was locked up, and I burgled your garden. I had a key that fitted. That's the worst of those cheap padlocks—there is always a key that fits them. And if you ask me why I didn't go back by tram or train, I can only confess that it was because I had no money. And now let me thank you once again for your angel kindness, and say good-bye."
"Oh no!" said both the girls. And Jane said: "We can't possibly let you go like this. You've told us a little—won't you tell us all about everything, and why you haven't any money, and what you're going to do?"
"I'll tell you anything you're good enough to want to know. I was a clerk in an insurance office. I enlisted in 1914. They promised to keep my job for me—they didn't. My people went to New Zealand just before the war. I hope and expect to get work. I get employment benefit, as they call it. It's a pound a week. Affluence, of course. But I spent most of last week's on advertisements—that's why things are worse than usual. Of course I ought to have told some lie—said I was engaged for Sunday—but I couldn't. It's such a long time since I've talked to anyone. I wanted so much to see you both again. And I've behaved like a fool and frightened you in that wretched summer-house, and I don't know how to look you in the face."
He stood up, looking from one kind, puzzled face to the other. "Don't you worry about me—I'm not worth it. I shall be all right."
"You shall," said Jane firmly. "Anyway, come and be our gardener for a bit and see how things go. Will you?"
"It doesn't seem fair—you don't know anything about me."
"But you'll tell us all about yourself—all the rest, I mean," said Jane; "but not to-night. There's only one thing. But first, will you be our gardener?"
"I should just think I would. And you'll see. I do know something about gardening. And the 'one thing'?"
"Don't be angry with us for asking, will you?"
"Of course not," he answered, a faint surprise in his voice. Anything . . ."
"You won't be offended and rush off?"
"Of course not."
"Then," said Jane firmly, "you are going to be our gardener, and we should like to know what it was that you went to prison for."
"I was taken prisoner in 1918—had over a year of it. At Recklinghausen. And I had shell-shock. The hospital I was in—it was all very horrible. I don't a bit mind your asking, but I don't want to talk about it."
"You were a war prisoner? In Germany?"
"Yes." Then their silence and the shame in their eyes struck at him the knowledge of how different an answer it was that they had expected to hear.
"My God!" he said, almost in a whisper. "You thought I'd been in an English prison—that I was a criminal? My God!"
He sat down heavily on the chair from which he had just risen, put his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands.
The girls looked at each other miserably, questioning with their eyes. What could they do? What could they say?
"What have I done?" Jane's eyes signalled.
And Lucilla's replied with sympathy, rather deeply tinged with reproach: "Yes, indeed, what have you?"
By the pleasant light of fire and candle they could see the shoulders of the man shaken a little, as though by laughter; but they knew that no laughter could have followed that cry—the cry wrung from him by an overpowering emotion: "My God!"
Lucilla's eyes signalled to Jane.
"This is your doing," they said. "You have blundered us all into this. Now get us out of it. Say something. Do something. It's your business, not mine."
"All right, I will," Jane's eyes signalled back defiantly. With the least little shrug of the shoulders she rose and went and stood beside Mr. Dix.
"Don't," she said; "please, please don't! We didn't know. We don't know anything, really. We're only silly schoolgirls. Do try to forgive us, won't you?"
At that he screwed his knuckles into his eyes like a school-boy, pushed his chair back and stood up.
"Forgive you?" he said. "You must forgive me for behaving like a baby—but no, there's no excuse for me—but it came on me so suddenly. That you should have believed that I was a criminal and yet treated me as you have done—why—you must have believed that, even when you first asked me to come and see you and to be your gardener! That you should have thought that, and yet been so good to me! Why, I didn't believe there was so much goodness in the world. That sort of thing is enough to bowl a man over. Forgive me for having made such an ass of myself—and"
"Oh, stop!" said Jane in fluttered distress. "It's nothing. I mean it's most awful for us, don't you see—to have thought . . . Oh, don't let's say any more about anything. You're tired out, and no wonder—and so are we. Let's shake hands and be friends and not talk any more nonsense. Look here—we must get home. It must be about a thousand o'clock. Now you aren't going to be silly about this; here's some money—part of the wages, you know." She pressed two notes on him, rejoicing that she happened to have them with her, "Yes, yes, yes, yes! You'll want breakfast to-morrow, and you'll want boots. I hope that's enough, because it's all we've got with, us, and you can stay here to-night and we shall be round about ten. There's a tap just outside the door when you want to wash—and that big chair's quite comfortable. Where's my hat?—oh, here! Where are my gloves?—oh, there! Lucy, help me with my macker. No, please don't talk any more. Good-night, Mr. Dix. Sleep well, and don't worry. We were born lucky"
"I was," he interjected.
"Of course you were. Not another word. Good-night,"
She talked without ceasing till they had got away. The gate was padlocked behind them and his goodnight came to them through the bars. Jane clutched Lucilla's arm as they hurried home in a silence broken only by the sound of their feet splashing through puddles and by Jane's sniffs. Presently Lucilla sniffed too. And then Jane stopped to fumble for her handkerchief.
"Don't you start snivelling!" she told Lucilla sharply, "You haven't anything to cry about. You haven't done anything. You haven't made a perfectly abject idiot of yourself—and insulted one of our own soldiers who fought for us and was hurt and imprisoned and . . ." She stamped on the pavement. "Cry? What's the good? I could kick myself! Always blundering in where anyone with the least sense would at least have held her tongue. Why didn't you stop me?"
"You know it's as easy to stop a steam-roller as it is to stop you when you've got the bit between your teeth," said Lucilla with some truth. "And I wasn't crying. I've caught a cold. And really, I don't think you need worry. He thinks you're an angel."
"What does it matter what he thinks? What's the good of his thinking us angels when I know we're fools—at least, I mean me? Goodness, how wet I am I Look here—let's run. I expect we've both caught the colds of our lives!"
Jane's last words that night were: "What a day! But it has been a sort of lark too . . . all but that one awful bit."
In the garden room Mr. Dix, having taken off what remained of his boots, sat warm by the fire, watching the steam rise from his wet jacket, now hanging from a chair-back before the blaze.
"The dears!" he said. "The splendid, brave, impetuous, quixotic dears! Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful! And to think that only this morning I was asking myself if it was really worth while to go on with life. And all the time there was all this in the world. Beautiful!"