When they spoke at last
it was evident that a conversation long fallen silent was being revived.
"But where is your husband
taking you?" asked Diana in her practical voice.
"To an aunt," said Mary;
"that's just the joke. There really is an aunt, and we left the children
with her when I arranged to be turned out of the other boarding-house down
the road. We never take more than a week of this kind of holiday, but sometimes
we take two of them together."
"Does the aunt mind
much?" asked Rosamund innocently. "Of course, I dare say it's very narrow-minded
and -- what's that other word? -- you know, what Goliath was -- but I've
known many aunts who would think it -- well, silly."
"Silly?" cried Mary
with great heartiness. "Oh, my Sunday hat! I should think it was silly!
But what do you expect? He really is a good man, and it might have been
snakes or something."
"Snakes?" inquired Rosamund,
with a slightly puzzled interest.
"Uncle Harry kept snakes,
and said they loved him," replied Mary with perfect simplicity. "Auntie
let him have them in his pockets, but not in the bedroom."
"And you --" began Diana,
knitting her dark brows a little.
"Oh, I do as auntie
did," said Mary; "as long as we're not away from the children more than
a fortnight together I play the game. He calls me `Manalive;' and you must
write it all one word, or he's quite flustered."
"But if men want things
like that," began Diana.
"Oh, what's the good
of talking about men?" cried Mary impatiently; "why, one might as well
be a lady novelist or some horrid thing. There aren't any men. There are
no such people. There's a man; and whoever he is he's quite different."
"So there is no safety,"
said Diana in a low voice.
"Oh, I don't know,"
answered Mary, lightly enough; "there's only two things generally true
of them. At certain curious times they're just fit to take care of us,
and they're never fit to take care of themselves."
"There is a gale getting
up," said Rosamund suddenly. "Look at those trees over there, a long way
off, and the clouds going quicker."
"I know what you're
thinking about," said Mary; "and don't you be silly fools. Don't you listen
to the lady novelists. You go down the king's highway; for God's truth,
it is God's. Yes, my dear Michael will often be extremely untidy. Arthur
Inglewood will be worse -- he'll be untidy. But what else are all the trees
and clouds for, you silly kittens?"
"The clouds and trees
are all waving about," said Rosamund. "There is a storm coming, and it
makes me feel quite excited, somehow. Michael is really rather like a storm:
he frightens me and makes me happy."
"Don't you be frightened,"
said Mary. "All over, these men have one advantage; they are the sort that
go out."
A sudden thrust of wind
through the trees drifted the dying leaves along the path, and they could
hear the far-off trees roaring faintly.
"I mean," said Mary,
"they are the kind that look outwards and get interested in the world.
It doesn't matter a bit whether it's arguing, or bicycling, or breaking
down the ends of the earth as poor old Innocent does. Stick to the man
who looks out of the window and tries to understand the world. Keep clear
of the man who looks in at the window and tries to understand you. When
poor old Adam had gone out gardening (Arthur will go out gardening), the
other sort came along and wormed himself in, nasty old snake."
"You agree with your
aunt," said Rosamund, smiling: "no snakes in the bedroom."
"I didn't agree with
my aunt very much," replied Mary simply, "but I think she was right to
let Uncle Harry collect dragons and griffins, so long as it got him out
of the house."
Almost at the same moment
lights sprang up inside the darkened house, turning the two glass doors
into the garden into gates of beaten gold. The golden gates were burst
open, and the enormous Smith, who had sat like a clumsy statue for so many
hours, came flying and turning cart-wheels down the lawn and shouting,
"Acquitted! acquitted!" Echoing the cry, Michael scampered across the lawn
to Rosamund and wildly swung her into a few steps of what was supposed
to be a waltz. But the company knew Innocent and Michael by this time,
and their extravagances were gaily taken for granted; it was far more extraordinary
that Arthur Inglewood walked straight up to Diana and kissed her as if
it had been his sister's birthday. Even Dr. Pym, though he refrained from
dancing, looked on with real benevolence; for indeed the whole of the absurd
revelation had disturbed him less than the others; he half supposed that
such irresponsible tribunals and insane discussions were part of the mediaeval
mummeries of the Old Land.
While the tempest tore
the sky as with trumpets, window after window was lighted up in the house
within; and before the company, broken with laughter and the buffeting
of the wind, had groped their way to the house again, they saw that the
great apish figure of Innocent Smith had clambered out of his own attic
window, and roaring again and again, "Beacon House!" whirled round his
head a huge log or trunk from the wood fire below, of which the river of
crimson flame and purple smoke drove out on the deafening air.
He was evident enough
to have been seen from three counties; but when the wind died down, and
the party, at the top of their evening's merriment, looked again for Mary
and for him, they were not to be found.