The Runaways (15 page)

‘So he is,' said Nan slowly. ‘But all the same he wanted us to listen.'

She closed the window again and turned back to the room. It gave her a shock, for it seemed as though
some man had left it only ten minutes ago. His cloak lay over the back of a tall carved chair and his gloves were on the knee-hole writing desk. In one corner of the room were fishing-rods, sticks, and riding-crops, and on the mantelpiece above the big empty hearth were racks of pipes and jars of tobacco. Three walls of the room were lined with glass cases containing ancient treasures, bead necklaces and pottery figures of birds and men, and bookcases full of books, and above these were pictures of ruined temples and cities, and fierce heads of wild beasts, snarling tigers, and weird heads with horns. On the fourth wall, one on each side of the window looking on the garden of the fountain, hung two large maps, one of central Africa and one of Egypt.

‘Egypt!' said Nan. ‘Look, Betsy. It's Egypt, where Father is.' There was no response from Betsy and Nan did not look round, so intent was she on the map. Egypt, where Father was. It seemed to bring him here into the room with her. She stood close to the map, tracing the blue ribbon of the Nile with her finger and names that she knew. Then there was a sudden crash behind her and she swung round. ‘Betsy!' she said. ‘What have you done?'

Well might she ask. Betsy had pulled out one of the drawers of the writing desk and pulled it a bit too far. The whole thing had fallen to the ground, spilling papers and bundles of letters all over the floor. Betsy, a child not easily intimidated, was intimidated now and on the verge of tears. ‘The drawer has a brass handle like a lion's head,' she said, ‘and I just wanted to see if it would pull out.'

‘Well, it has pulled out,' said Nan and her voice was so dry that she sounded like Uncle Ambrose at his most sarcastic. It was bad enough, she thought, to walk into a room in a strange house without permission, even though it was by mistake, without pulling out drawers and scattering their private contents on the floor. ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Betsy,' she said. ‘Now we must pick them all up and put them back.'

This was the first time in her life that Betsy had heard her dear Nan speak to her in anger and the shock of it, on top of the shock of the falling drawer, brought the tears over the verge. Seated beside Nan on the floor she wept like a cataract.

Nan was too angry to comfort her. With grimly folded lips she began gathering up the scattered papers and putting them back in the drawer. One bundle of letters, tied with a scarlet silk ribbon, had burst open in its fall. The ribbon, frayed with age, had snapped and the letters were all over the floor. Picking them up, she saw that they were in a handwriting she knew, and she went cold all over, for it was Emma Cobley's handwriting. Not knowing what she did, drawn by that
writing as a fascinated bird is drawn to hop nearer to a snake, she began to read. They were love letters, written by Emma to Hugo Valerian. Nan had come across some gentle love letters in books she had read, but never anything like these, and the wild and vivid language both fascinated and repelled her. There was nothing gentle about this love. It was like a tempest, all rolling protestations of undying adoration shot through with fiery flashes of anger, threats, and reproaches.

Suddenly Nan dropped the letters and her face went scarlet with shame. What was she doing, reading letters that were not hers? That was a dreadful thing to do. It was far worse than what Betsy had done. She was so upset that she began to cry too and her tears dripped down on to the letters as she gathered them together again, retied the red ribbon and put them at the back of the drawer.

‘And what, may I ask, are you two children doing?'

Nan scrambled to her feet and curtsied to a very dignified and very angry old lady. She was so stiffened by annoyance that she looked as though she would never be able to bend again. One hand rested on her ebony stick and the other on Abednego's shoulder, and the rings on them sparkled like ice and her eyes flashed blue ice-fire. Abednego, with Gertrude in his arms, shook his head and chattered more in sorrow than in anger. Nan's tears had been checked by the shock and she wiped her eyes and blew her nose and was done with it, but Betsy wept on. She did not weep often, but when she did the thing it was thoroughly done.

‘Betsy was bringing me to see you and we opened the wrong door,' said Nan. ‘I was looking at the map
of Egypt because my father has just gone there…' She paused, partly because the children never told tales of each other and partly because Betsy's grief had now reached its crescendo.

‘And Betsy pulled a drawer out too far,' said Lady Alicia. She did not raise her voice to dominate Betsy's grief, but she spoke with such icy sharpness that she cut right through it. ‘Betsy, stop crying at once.' Betsy stopped instantly and sniffed. ‘Have you got a
handkerchief
? Then blow your nose. I do not like a sniffing child. Is this the only drawer you have opened may I ask?'

Betsy blew her nose on the handkerchief Nan handed her and gulped. ‘Only this one. It has a lion's head on it.'

Lady Alicia's face softened a little. ‘Ah yes,' she said. ‘Pleasant to pull. Abednego and I heard the crash, but could not at first discover from which room the sound came. I did not expect to find you in my husband's library.' She turned and glanced round the room with interest. ‘Moses keeps it swept and dusted by my orders, but I have not myself entered it since my husband left home for the last time.' She looked at the gloves on the desk and the cloak over the back of the chair. ‘How strange!' she murmured. ‘He has kept this room exactly as Hugo left it. Almost as though he expected him to come back. Very odd. Abednego, assist these young ladies to clear up this mess.'

Abednego put Gertrude on the desk beside Hugo Valerian's gloves and in a few moments the papers had been packed neatly away in the drawer again. ‘Tea, I think,' said Lady Alicia, and turning abruptly she led the way out of the room, down the passage, up another and then they
were at the door of her boudoir, which Abednego opened for her. ‘Abednego, fetch the tea,' she said and swept in.

Once more enthroned in her chair, with Nan and Betsy on chairs facing her, she said, ‘If I am to be often honoured with your company you must have the exact position of my boudoir clear in your minds, my dears. I do not wish you to go blundering about in my house without my permission.'

‘We are very sorry,' said Nan humbly.

‘Of that I am aware,' said Lady Alicia graciously. ‘And we will say no more about it. So you are Nan?' Her blue eyes scrutinized Nan very thoroughly. ‘Plain but pleasing,' was her comment. ‘And so your father is in Egypt. To what part is he going?'

‘He's going up the Nile to a place called Abu Simbel.'

‘Ah!' said Lady Alicia. ‘That is where the great temples are. My husband was last heard of at Abu Simbel.'

This remark had for Nan a most ominous sound and she was thankful to see Abednego come in with the tea. Gertrude was now on his back, hung round his neck in a little hammock made of string. He was looking quite a different person now that he had Gertrude. He looked a cheerful monkey now.

It was while they were drinking tea out of delicate fluted cups like sea-shells, and munching queen cakes, that Nan looked up and for the first time saw the tapestry of the horsemen riding up through the wood with the falcons on their wrists. She put her cup down very carefully and stared and stared.

‘Do you like my tapestry?' asked Lady Alicia and Nan nodded, speechless. ‘It took me years to do. I began
it on the day I became betrothed to my late husband and I only finished it just before he left on his last journey. My husband was a great traveller and so was his father before him. All the Valerians were restless men, never content to stay at home. And so with my needle I painted that portrait of them. A falcon is the Valerian family crest and so they all carry falcons on their wrists. They are riding to a city in the clouds. That is what the Valerian men have always done.'

‘The hill is shaped like Lion Tor,' said Nan.

‘Yes,' said Lady Alicia. ‘My little boy was always wanting to be on top of Lion Tor. He called the Castle Rock a city. He was a Valerian like the rest.'

To Nan, Lady Alicia's voice seemed to come from far away because she was stunned with astonishment. For that picture on the wall in front of her was the picture that Daft Davie had painted on the wall of his cave. She was glad that Betsy was chatting away to Abednego, and he to her in his strange language, for the noise they made covered up, she hoped, her confusion.

She was herself again by the end of tea and then they played spillikins, Nan keeping her eye on the clock. ‘Because of having to be home by six for Robert and I to do our lessons,' she explained to Lady Alicia.

‘If they are late they don't have supper,' said Betsy. ‘I do because I don't have to do evening lessons.'

‘Youth has its blessings,' said Lady Alicia. ‘Do not worry, Nan. I will tell you when you must leave.'

So Nan relaxed and enjoyed her spillikins. She had small, neat, steady fingers and she played nearly as well as Abednego, but not quite. He beat her, to his great delight,
and Lady Alicia gave him a prize, a pink satin ribbon to tie round Gertrude's waist. To Nan and Betsy she gave consolation prizes, a blue velvet snood for her hair to Betsy and to Nan a tiny green silk purse on a green cord to hang about her neck. Nan was not a conceited child, but she couldn't help knowing that during the course of tea and spillikins Lady Alicia had become very fond of her. When it was time to go she came with them to the top of the great staircase and she kissed them both and her hand lingered on Nan's shoulder. ‘My compliments to your uncle,' she said. ‘And I trust he will permit you to visit me again. I am sorry that Moses is not here to see you safely home. He has gone to town to do the shopping. You know your way. Straight down the long passage. The front door is not in use at present.'

‘It was dull today,' said Betsy as they walked home. ‘Nice, but dull. There wasn't Frederick getting into the house and everybody chasing him and Moses getting angry. I wasn't frightened today, but I was dull. I'd rather be frightened than dull.'

‘I think,' said Nan, ‘that I'd rather be dull than
frightened
. But one can't choose, you have to take what comes, Father says. Do your legs ache? Shall I give you a pig-a-back?'

They were home in good time, but there was no sign of the boys and Absolom, and Uncle Ambrose and Nan started work without Robert, Uncle Ambrose looking decidedly grim and Nan trying to work hard enough for two. But though she tried hard, she did not cover herself with glory and presently Uncle Ambrose said,
‘That will do, Nan. Shut your book and tell me what you have been doing this afternoon.'

Nan looked up at him. ‘Stop working?' she asked incredulously.

‘Yes,' said Uncle Ambrose. ‘Stop working and tell me why you have those unbecoming shadows under your eyes. Have you been crying? I dislike a weeping woman, but I dislike even more not knowing the reason for her tears.'

‘I did something dreadful,' said Nan, and she found she was thankful to burst out with it. ‘I read somebody else's letters.'

‘Most reprehensible,' said Uncle Ambrose with interest. ‘Whose? And what was in them?'

‘Emma Cobley's. And they were love letters written by her to tell the squire, Hugo Valerian, how much she loved him.'

Uncle Ambrose's spectacles, that had been placed rather low down on his nose, fell off it on to the table and Hector, who was sitting on the back of his chair, uttered a loud derisive hoot.

‘Hector,' said Uncle Ambrose, ‘return to the Parthenon.' Hector returned and Uncle Ambrose replaced his
spectacles
and looked at Nan over the top of them. ‘You had better tell me how these letters came into your hands,' he said with severity.

Nan told him how they had gone into the wrong room by mistake and what had happened. ‘I didn't mean to read the letters,' she said, the tears beginning to well up again, ‘and when I realised what I was doing I stopped.'

‘Then do not disturb yourself,' said Uncle Ambrose,
‘and do not, I beg, weep. Sin, my dear Nan, lies more in the intention than the actual deed. A reprehensible action which is not premeditated remains
reprehensible
, and should not be repeated, but is not in the eyes of heaven a grave sin. Have a peppermint, my dear, it is difficult to cry whilst sucking.' He took a screw of white paper from his pocket and handed her one and again there came that gleam of interest in his eye. ‘Do you recollect anything that you read?'

Nan shook her head. ‘I didn't read much. It was just that she said she loved him and that if he didn't marry her, as he'd promised he would, dreadful things would happen to him and his family.'