CHAPTER III

WHAT A CUPBOARD CONTAINED

THE day had been wet and cheerless. Orris had hardly moved from her chair in the library, except to go to and fro between her big table and the bookcase. She had seen Pippa at mealtimes, but the child was much engrossed in turning a big wooden box into a dolls' house. Anita was helping her, and with her clever fingers was making a very good job of it.

The Rector appeared at tea-time. It was his first call, and Orris found him a very pleasant visitor.

When he departed, she accompanied him to the hall door, and for a moment looked over the wide vista of dusky fields and pine woods, and above them a pale lemon sky. The rain had stopped. The sun was having his innings for a few brief moments before he finally disappeared. Orris stood with parted lips breathing in the fresh pure air, and enjoying it as she did so. Then she suddenly bethought herself of Pippa, who usually came to her at this hour. Leisurely she mounted the broad oak steps, calling "Pippa! Pippa, come along, my sweet!"

There was no sudden rush of flying footsteps; no response to her call. She hastened her steps. Pippa very quiet, meant Pippa in mischief, and when she found the nursery door locked, she shook her head.

"Oh, Pippa," she cried, "you must never lock me out. Open the door at once."

There was a fumbling of the lock, and Pippa appeared, with big mysterious eyes.

"What is the matter, darling? Why are you locked in alone?"

Pippa retreated to the hearthrug, where she stood dancing up and down on her toes with clasped hands and big open eyes and mouth.

"Nita is at her tea. I've been enjoying myself 'normously."

"I'm so glad. What's up, you monkey? You had better confess."

Pippa smiled tremulously, then pursed her lips primly together.

"It's a secret, Aunt Ollie."

Orris stood still and waited. Pippa's secrets were never of long duration. It was a question of patience.

Then suddenly the child darted to the big hanging cupboard at the end of the room.

"I've got a man here," she cried triumphantly; and then she flung open the door. "And he isn't a buggler!" she added.

Orris had occasion to be startled when a tall figure appeared from behind Pippa's dressing-gown and coats and confronted her. He was dressed in a rough tweed shooting suit, had a lean, rather pleasant-looking face, very broad shoulders, and was unmistakably a gentleman.

"You little traitor!" he said, turning to Pippa. "A nice keeper of secrets you are!"

"I couldn't! It just bursted right through me," said Pippa contritely.

The man looked so crestfallen, and the child so proudly elate, that Orris, after gazing helplessly at them both, surprised herself and them by a mellow peal of laughter.

"I can't help it," she gasped. "They say laughter is caused by sudden surprise. Will you give me some explanation of this extraordinary proceeding on your part?" She turned to the stranger as she spoke.

He did not look in the least uncomfortable, but drew forward an easy chair for her near the fire, and got hold of another for himself.

"Let us all sit down and be comfortable," he said; "there's no reason why we should not be. And then I'll tell you all, and anything you would like to know. It begins and ends with Snuffy, the person you call Mrs. Snow. I've always called her Snuffy, because as a small kid, she was perpetually saying to me, 'That's enough—that's enough, Master Jock.' It soon becomes 'snuff' if you say it fast enough!"

He was turning to Pippa now, who was regarding him with admiring eyes.

"The first question I would like to ask is, how did you get here?" said Orris gravely.

She resented his light gay manner, though light was dawning upon her as to his identity.

"Snuffy refused me admittance this morning. And that put my back up."

"Oh, let me tell her," interrupted Pippa. "It was so 'lovely,' Aunt Ollie! He came climbing up my wall, and looked in at the window, like the prince in my fairy-book does to the lovely princess shut up in her tower. And I opened the window a teeny bit and said:

"'Are you a prince?' And he said, 'I see you're a princess.' So then o' course he came in, and he sat down on the floor and told me a story about a alligator and him on the other side of the world. And then we heard you calling, and he said he must be hid, or he would shock you, so I hid him."

The man laughed.

"That's that!" he said. "Just in a nutshell. I spent the first half of my life here, and I was furious when Snuffy kept up her old grudge against me, and shut me out. I wasn't aware that the old nursery was inhabited till I climbed up and saw the light. I meant to go downstairs decorously, and confront Snuffy again on the inside of the door, and insist upon being presented to the lady in possession."

"That is hardly my role," said Orris quietly. "Pippa and I are birds of passage. You must be old Miss Muir's nephew, who went abroad."

"The scamp and blackguard and ne'er-do-weel. Don't I look it? Isn't scrambling up the old ivy roots and frightening an innocent babe just what is expected of such a character?"

"But I wasn't frightened. You couldn't frighten me," said Pippa, darting forward and perching herself on his knee. "I knewed you weren't a buggler; you told me so."

"I'm a bad hat," the stranger said, but his hand caressed the curly head.

And Orris, looking at him calmly and critically, liked him on the spot. He had humorous, kindly grey eyes, and his face, though tanned and weather-worn, had no signs of dissipation; he looked as if he had lived out-of-doors by night and day. His lips and chin were determined, and he had, for a man, a peculiarly sweet smile.

"Cousin Letitia," he went on; "or Mrs. Calthrop, as you know her, left orders with Snuffy that in her absence I was not to be admitted to the house. She guessed I would come racing over the ocean when my poor aunt departed this life, but why she should grudge me a sight of the old place I don't know. I hear her son has been left everything—so virtue is rewarded. How he stuck to the old library! And oh, how he hated it!"

Orris looked up questioningly.

"Did he attempt my job?"

"My dear Miss Bright Eyes—I don't know your name, so have coined one for you—my uncle and aunt were simply demented over their library. Personally they did not care for books, but a neighbour, a Mr. Dunscombe, on one unfortunate occasion told them that they possessed an untold mine of wealth in their books. He is a writer himself, and wanted to avail himself of several books of reference.

"About two hundred years ago, the Muirs came from Scotland and settled here, and they bought the old library with the house. It had belonged to some Charter-houses for many generations, but the family had died out. The books were in hopeless confusion. I suppose you see that. So my uncle began to make a catalogue. He had no gift for languages, and when he saw Persian, Chinese, Italian, and ancient Egyptian scripts, he gave it up in despair.

"Then I was called into the breach. I had been to Oxford, and had slipped through my term there fairly creditably, so of course I was the one to do it. I was set down in that dry and dusty library, and expected to work seven or eight hours a day. A perfect catalogue must be made and I was to do it. I stuck it for seven months, and then I struck. There was a row! I decamped for a time, and wandered over the Continent for a few years, till my uncle died.

"Then I came home and was received by my aunt with open arms, but Cousin Letitia and son had come to share her loneliness, and dear Edmund had accepted the post as librarian. I did not somehow fit in. I discovered Edmund making away with some valuable old MSS. He parted with them to a Jewish bookseller in town—a man I happened to have had some dealings with, when I was home before. I promptly exposed him—very impulsive and rash! Cousin Letitia never forgave me. My aunt was slipping under her powerful and persuasive personality. Snuffy likewise succumbed to it. She and I never could hit it off. From a boy I had teased her, and she cannot understand or take a joke. I expect you've found that out, haven't you?

"Well, there was nothing for me to do. I wanted to take over the home farm, that would have been a job after my own heart! But my aunt would not hear of it. It was a divided camp—secretly my aunt favoured me, but she was timid, and had not the courage of her convictions. And a man has no chance against a clever woman's tongue. I don't know to this day how it was my aunt was poisoned against me, but I saw, though the house had been my home since I was three years old, it was to be my home no longer.

"So, to cut a long story short, I said good-bye to them all, and went off to New Zealand. For ten years I have been farming there, and now I come back to find her gone, and my cousin in possession. No, I am wrong; it is you and this wee elf in possession. Let me warn you against expending your health and strength among those books. It will be the work of a life-time to get them in proper order. And if they mean to sell the whole, just sort the books into lots—according to the language—" He paused for breath.

"Oh, do talk to me now," pleaded Pippa. "Will you take me down to the stream to-morrow, where you used to catch the little frogs?"

"What does your aunt say? Is she going to be friendly with me?" His eyes met Orris's grave scrutiny with great composure. "I really have no black deeds on my conscience. I have just been a hard-working farmer. You can't be a villain if you love the earth as I do. It is men and cities who make criminals. And I am staying with Dunscombe. He and I came back in the same boat part of the way. I only landed at Southampton three days ago. And Burton, my aunt's lawyer, was the one who has given me the news."

"Were you expecting to come into this property yourself?"

He smiled.

"It wasn't a shock to me to find the cousins first. I believe my aunt thought I had gone to the bad. I used to write occasionally, but I never had a line from her."

"Oh, Aunt Ollie, I think he's a 'dear' man," cried Pippa, not understanding all the conversation, but gathering from Orris's face that she was rather doubtful of the stranger. "Do have his bed made up in one of the big empty rooms. Mummy would love to see him, and she's coming very soon."

Orris could not help laughing, and Jock Muir joined her.

"That's right," he said. "Now we're all friends, and we'll just go down and confront Snuffy, and then I'll get back to my host. She must understand that your friends are not to be shut out."

"I don't see what right she has to keep 'you' out," said Orris.

And then there was a slight cough outside the door, and the person under discussion appeared.

To say she was startled is too mild a way of putting it. She was dumbfounded.

"I thought it might be the Rector," she explained. "I heard a man's voice, and I could not understand how he had come upstairs."

"And you little thought to see me, Snuffy! But here I am, completely at home, as you see, and very interested in the present inmates of Pinestones."

Orris pitied Mrs. Snow's confusion.

"I know all about Mr. Muir," she said to her; "and I really do not think Mrs. Calthrop would wish you to shut the door in his face. As he is staying in the neighbourhood, it is only natural that he should give you a call. Mrs. Calthrop told me I should be free to receive any visitors, so I am sure you will admit him next time he comes."

"I won't run away with any of the plate, Snuffy, I assure you. But I think I can claim my two cricket cups on the dining-room sideboard, and there's that trunk of mine in the attic. I shall have to overhaul that."

Mrs. Snow drew herself up to her full height as she replied:

"I am responsible to Mrs. Calthrop now, Master Jock. I am in her service, and, difficult as it may be, I try to carry out her orders. I will have your belongings sent to your present address, sir, if you will give it to me."

"I'm staying at the Manor," said Jock good-humouredly. "I won't be hard on you, Snuffy, for it's good for you that you can transfer your allegiance so thoroughly. I am here because I determined to be here, and when it comes to a pitched battle between us, I generally come off victor. But I shan't trouble you much—not at present. After all, it may be the house that you care most for. The inhabitants are regarded by you as useful in helping you to stay on."

Then he stood up and held out his hand to Orris, whilst Mrs. Snow beat a retreat without another word.

"Good-bye. We shall meet again. I seem to have taken up all the time in pouring out my life's history to you. Can't think why I did it. I'm not generally so communicative."

"I've been very interested, and I am entirely sympathetic," said Orris, wincing at the strength in his grip.

"Oh," cried Pippa, "will you climb up into my nursery another day?"

He shook his head.

"My legs are not so agile as they were. I thought nothing of it as a boy, but we shall see a lot of each other, little elf. And we won't let Snuffy get the better of us."

He strode out of the room, and down the stairs. Pippa ran after him, and kissed her hand to him from the corridor above.

"I wiss you would stay and go to bed here," she cried. "But you're my friend now for evermore, and I'll tell God in my prayers to-night that if Mrs. Snuffy locks you out-of-doors again, He had better send His Angel to open it without a key, like He did for Peter."

Then she came back to her aunt and stood in front of her, looking up into her face with her mischievous eyes.

"Auntie Ollie, he is a 'darling' man! Nobody has ever climbed up into a window where I was before. Wasn't it quite a 'venture?"

"It was, most assuredly, Pippa. But I wouldn't advise you to welcome and harbour 'any' strange man who climbs in at a window."

"No, I wouldn't," said Pippa thoughtfully; "not if he had a red nose and was dirty. When do you think he'll come and see us again?"

"We won't think any more about him. Now, won't you let me have a look at this wonderful dolls' house?"

Pippa danced back to her nursery. For a time her thoughts were turned into another channel, until her prayer-time came.

Her aunt, who always came to her for that occasion, was sitting in the low chair by the nursery fire, and Pippa in her blue dressing-gown was kneeling by her and with bent head and clasped hands was murmuring her usual formula in the most angelic voice. She very often made startling postscripts to her prayers, so Orris was not surprised at her sudden energetic appeal.

"And oh, please, God, bless my dear man, and make Aunt Ollie love him as much as I do, and ask him to a tea-party very soon. And never, never let Mrs. Snuffy get the better of us." Then she jumped up. "He said she shouldn't, you know, Aunt Ollie, but I think God had better help us, hadn't He? Because she thinks the house belongs to her more than to us."

"And I think she is right, for it is her home, and we are here only for a time. But, my darling, you mustn't call her Mrs. Snuffy; she would be very angry if she heard you. And I don't like angry people. I want to live in peace."

"I won't to her face," said Pippa earnestly. Then she scrambled into bed. "He's rather like a grown-up Peter Pan, isn't he?"

"Go to sleep and forget him," said Orris, kissing the little upturned face.

But she herself found her mind full of Jock Muir. She wondered that there had been so little bitterness in his tone when telling her how, quietly and thoroughly he had been defrauded of his home.

"He is either the most clever dissembler or the most angelic of men. I wonder which he is," she mused. "And why should he torture himself by staying in the neighbourhood, and subjecting himself to the ignominy of being shut out of his rightful property by a housekeeper? I can't understand it. Well, it is none of my business. I must occupy myself with books and not men."

She worked with extra vigour for the next few days, and though sunshine streamed in upon her, and birds trilled out their love-songs outside the library window and Pippa more than once danced in upon her with coaxing requests to come out to play, Orris shook her head and fingered her old leather books in a determined way.

"I'm here to work, and work I must. The history of this old house, and the different members of the family have nothing to do with me, except that I am in Mrs. Calthrop's pay, and am bound to work for her."

And then one morning, when she entered the room, prepared to begin her work, she was startled to see a tall figure sitting lazily on the low broad window-sill close to her desk. The window was open, and Jock Muir was coolly smoking his pipe, one leg inside the window, the other out.

When he saw her come in, he took out his pipe, slipped one leg over, and stood outside on the grass, giving her a little courteous bow, and a flush of amused recognition in his grey eyes.

"Good morning. I've been waiting for you. How are you getting on?"

"Slowly. I long for more knowledge—especially about Persian and Indian books. I wish I knew some scholar who could help me."

"Dunscombe could. He's been ransacking Persia for copy quite lately."

He had resumed his seat on the window-sill, and Orris sank into her chair with a helpless feeling that she could not prevent this interruption.

"Is he the friend you are staying with? The author?"

"Yes. I'll bring him over—or—we won't offend Snuffy's extreme conscientiousness—suppose you come to tea with us to-morrow afternoon? Four o'clock, and bring the elf."

"You are startlingly unconventional. Can I walk into a stranger's house an uninvited guest?"

"I thought I had given you an invitation. Hang it all, Miss Bright Eyes, Dunscombe and I have knocked about in the world too much to stand on ceremony. If you want help, he's the man to help you."

"My name, Mr. Muir, is Orris Coventry."

He smiled at her.

"Thank you. I'm a very independent person, eh? What do you think of the house? Rather mouldy, isn't it?"

"I really have not been over it. My small niece has been into all the rooms that she dares. Mrs. Snow has a good many locked up, and she does not consider that we should take liberties, or explore farther than our own wing, and the rooms apportioned to us there."

"Oh, she's a Tartar. Don't let her bully you. I must come and show the elf the powder-room. She will love it. Do you approve of these huge old houses being kept up for the sole benefit of one or two people?"

"They are many of them historic," said Orris. "I personally love old places. The atmosphere is perfectly different to a newly built house."

"One of the Georges stayed here once. I think that's the only bit of history Pinestones has. When I was a boy, I had many wild dreams of what I would do here when I grew up. You see they always told me I should inherit it. I was going to turn the east wing into an almshouse for all the old servants and workpeople, and the west wing into a cottage hospital for the sick children—that's the nursery wing where you are, and then I was going to live in the middle part of it myself, and rule them all, old and young, with a rod of iron."

"What a nice boy you must have been!"

"I was imbued with the idea that I had been put into the world to do my fellow-creatures a good turn. I had a tutor who talked to me in that style. And what a boy learns when he is seven or eight, he never forgets! But," he added with his flashing smile, "I did not grow up a prig, strange to say! It was the other way about. And for a long time now I've just lived for myself. I have nobody else to live for, or consider."

Orris looked at him thoughtfully, but did not speak.

He went on:

"But I must be doing. Stagnation is too boring for words. I've had a pretty strenuous life on the other side of the ocean. I'd rather break stones on the road than sit in an armchair with a pipe and book all day!"

"I suppose you will return to your work, then?" Orris asked.

"Not a bit of it. Have sold my land and cattle. No. I'm in the mother-country for good or ill."

"I'm afraid you must have sold thinking yourself the heir to this?"

He nodded.

"I meant to come back and have a busy time farming my own land. Out-of-door work is the life for me. I love the earth and all that it contains! You know the Home Farm here is going to pot! My old aunt ought to have replaced Nat Thane when he died, instead of letting his lazy son step into his shoes. If I were master here, I would buy up the adjoining farm, which is getting too much for old Preston—he's between eighty and ninety—and work the two together.

"Have you been over to Preston's farm? The house is my idea of a home. You talk of atmosphere. For a cheery happy one, give me Lilac Farm. As a small boy, I was always made welcome to any meal, and I've never had such teas since. I was there yesterday in the jolly old kitchen, and Preston and I had a confab together. This is my last free day. I am going to work for him for a bit. He wants help badly."

"You're an enigma to me," said Orris, smiling; "if I were in your circumstances, I would keep as far-away as I could from the ones who had disinherited me."

He smiled back at her.

"Ah!" he said. "That's not my idea. Not at all."

Silence fell on them for a few moments. Then Orris broke it.

"The world of books," she said, "rather absorbs me. It is a strange life living amongst clever brains still speaking, though long extinct. I find I must dip into one and another as I take them in my hand, and it always is a marvel to me how sound the advice of the old philosophers is and how applicable to the present day. Human nature never alters. Of course, the one Book above all is the Bible. We can in these most modern days still go to it for all we need. It never fails one. I have been reading bits from Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, and Fénelon. Of course, Fénelon is the most enlightened, but nothing that they say touches one's soul as the Bible does."

"I knew you had a soul, directly I caught sight of you," said Jock lightly; "and a pretty big one for your size. Now mine is an infinitesimal atom. It was bigger when I was a boy, but has gone on shrinking so rapidly that at times I wonder if I possess any at all. By soul I mean the spirit—that's what you mean, isn't it? Let's discuss it? I love an argument."

But Orris suddenly retreated into herself; for she did not know whether he was speaking in earnest or in mockery. And then the library door burst open, and Pippa came dancing in.

"Aunt Ollie! You must come out in the garden. There's a lovely daff come out under the nursery window. It did it in the night. It was only a green stalk yesterday."

Then she saw Jock and made a dash for the window.

He immediately made a feint of alarm, and crashed into the shrubbery near. Pippa hurled herself out of the low window and flew after him. Her joyous cries and shouts, as she chased the elusive Jock, resounded over the old garden.

Orris smiled, then resumed her work. By and by Pippa came in rosy and breathless.

"He's gone, but I catched him at last; and he says he'll wait for us to-morrow at four o'clock outside the big gate, and will show us the way to the Manor. We're going there to tea. Won't it be fun?"

"But, my darling, we haven't been asked to tea."

"Oh, yes; he says Mr. Dunscombe will 'love' us to come. Dan told me he's a very nice genpleum. He used to come and dine here with the old lady, and he used to give Dan half-crowns."

Orris laughed.

"Mr. Jock Muir goes too fast for me. Run away, my pet! I mustn't be disturbed till luncheon."

Pippa disappeared, and Orris had no more interruptions.