God's Sparrows. Philip Child
talking nonsense. Charles, you’re a scatterbrain.”
“On the contrary,” said Charles, “I think Euphemia has hit on a charming idea — really, Euphemia, I must look into the Druids. I say I like beauty, Miss Thatcher. Yes — beauty. Beauty in nature, you know. Fauns and satyrs and so on. Pan ready to twitch the nymph’s last garment off, you know. I quote from Browning, of course, Miss Thatcher.… Don’t you?”
“Whutt? You’re a mischievous young man! And you’re trying to tease an old lady. But you can’t. I understand young folks. Like ’em, too!”
“I bet you do!” said Charles enthusiastically.
“Nobody,” asserted Murdo crisply, “pays the slightest attention to Charles. He is a rattle.”
“Charming to have you home again, my dear Murdo,” said Charles.
Murdo turned his back on Charles and stumped away. Piercers of the veil. Bosh! Nymphs and satyrs. Rubbish! That made him think of the children. Little pagans! he thought. Bound to be.… “I suppose I’d better see them.”
He spoke to Maud and she called the children into the room.
Joanna came first and curtsyed to him. Murdo humphed — “Sort of thing Maud would teach a child!” — but he was pleased; the girl was graceful, a Burnet.
“Well, goddaughter?” he said. He did not smile, but the grimness melted from his face.
Alastair marched up with a confident grin, his hand outstretched, looking the image of Charles; he was followed by Dan, hanging back unwillingly. “This is the mischievous one,” said Maud smiling at Alastair, “very annoying sometimes, and very lovable.” The high spirits shining in the boy’s face moved her so that she could not help hugging him. Who could resist Alastair when he smiled at you? She turned to Daniel who was standing awkwardly, waiting to be noticed: he did not go out to people like Alastair. Maud put her arm about him, too, and gave him a special hug because she had noticed Alastair first. “My two dear boys!” she said. Dan was undemonstrative and often he gave her such a queer feeling: as if she were a stranger to her own son. Even now he was stiff and resisting beneath her arm. “Dan is the silent one,” she said, “he runs deep. Alastair is like his mother, Dan like his father.”
Murdo looked at Dan. The boy was hostile to him. “Are you afraid of me, my boy?” he said.
“No, sir!” said Dan promptly.
“I see. Well, sullen he may be, hangdog he is not!” Nothing ever prevented Murdo from saying what he thought; he believed that character, like water, should find its own level, especially within a family. He addressed Maud over Dan.
“Is this the one who —” But Maud stopped him with a warning glance and whispered: “Prends garde! We don’t speak of it. It’s to be forgotten.”
Murdo muttered thoughtfully. “It may be a mistake to ignore it with the boy. Um, yes. I shouldn’t be surprised if he thinks of it more than you imagine. He’s sullen, that boy.”
Pen’s other brother, Daniel Thatcher, was peering nearsightedly across the room at his young wife. Tessa was a butterfly. She flitted about the room chattering to anybody and everybody about anything or nothing; though, once she came lightly to rest beside her husband, putting her hand on his sleeve and smiling up at him confidentially without saying anything. He was still a little afraid of her, wondering what a sober old stick such as he should say to a young girl who happened to be his wife; and he watched her coming into her careless youth not without a pang.
Daniel was not the only one who watched Tessa Thatcher. Like Maud, she was really a Burnet, the children’s second cousin. Two months before on her eighteenth birthday, she had been married to Daniel (“a birthday present that won’t wear out, my dear Tessa,” said the irrepressible Charles), and she epitomized in her small self Burnet fire and Burnet recklessness. Secretly, the Burnets wondered how the marriage would turn out. “Such a charming, high-spirited girl,” said Fanny to Maud. “It would be a pity if — Do you think it will do, Maud? Daniel’s a splendid man. Tessa needs ballast.”
“Perhaps. But a Burnet and a New England puritan?”
“I married one.”
“Yes, but you two are of an age. And besides, you have poise.… Well, we’ll see.” Fanny, who was forty and unmarried, was sceptical of most marriages.
Tessa was pretty and vivacious, therefore Charles came to talk to her. He liked to pronounce her name; it made him think of a peal of bells or of curls flung upward from a nymph’s forehead.
Eyes dancing, Tessa seized his arm and swung him round to face her. “Good afternoon Uncle Charles. I hear you don’t like me!”
Charles’s age was near enough to hers to make the “uncle” piquant. Joyously, he adjusted his mind to a skirmish. “Now who could have told you that! I only said it in the family.”
“Then it is true? You did say it.… Charles, what did you say, really?”
Charles liked to say outrageous things with a charming smile. “I told your mother,” said he, “that you were a graceful brat; ‘unspanked but graceful’ was the phrase I used. I was annoyed because you were flirting with green youths — with my junior at the bank, if you want to know. It interferes with his bookkeeping and makes a lot of trouble for me.”
“But I didn’t.”
“You have all the stability of a kitten. You can’t help it: champagne bubbles and you flirt.… Like you? You’re my dearest enemy.… Heard anything else about me, Mrs. Thatcher?”
“Yes,” said Tessa spitefully, “I heard you lost a lot of money buying stocks on margin — do they call it?”
“And claws, too,” murmured Charles. “Oh, that ? Unlucky in money — you know the rest of it, Tessa.”
“Are you lucky in love, Charles?”
“It is a family characteristic, Tessa,” said Charles bowing with mock gallantry.
The children, according to their different natures, considered this thing that was presently to be done to them. Dan was rebellious. Alastair, always willing to take a new experience in his stride, felt rather important. But Joanna was so excited that she could not wait another minute for the ceremony to begin. She stood beside her mother, who was talking to Fanny, and tugged at her sleeve.
“In a minute, dear,” said her mother and went on talking. Joanna was an imaginative and believing little girl, and she wondered what it would feel like when you were made into a Christian. Would it be like a miracle? Like the devils coming out of the sick man and going into the herd of swine? She felt queer and tickly in the pit of her stomach.
“When will it start, Mother? Mother, when will it start?” she whispered urgently, and sidling up to her mother, she took her arm and put it round her own shoulders.
“Presently, dear. Now, Joanna, I want you to talk to your Great-Aunt Joanna. She’s your godmother. Remember to curtsy and to speak into her trumpet. And if she asks you questions, dear, answer her truthfully and politely.”
Great-Aunt Joanna, perhaps dozing a little, perhaps fallen into a reverie, did not at first notice her great-niece , so Joanna took the ear trumpet and breathed into it the word “godmother.” She thought her great-aunt looked fearfully like the picture of the witch in Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.
The old lady turned her head as quickly as a bird, and saw that the child was frightened. “You need not curtsy to me, little Joanna,” she said kindly. “I like little girls. When I was young, people used to frighten me, too, but you must not be afraid of me. Come here, goddaughter.” She made Joanna sit on a leather hassock and smiled down at her.… “She is a beautiful child,” the old lady thought, “but such an odd, elfin, little face.”
She said to Joanna:
“Do you know, Joanna, that