Instead of the Thorn

by Georgette Heyer

“I don’t quite see it. The niceness seems to be on your side. I’ll thank you properly when you come to fetch Christopher.”

  “Please, don’t!” Elizabeth said. “Would you like to speak to Stephen again?”

  “Not a bit, thanks. Till Thursday, then.”

  “Yes. Goodbye.”

  “Short and sweet,” Stephen remarked. “I gather we are to fetch the Cherubic One on Thursday?”

  “How clever of you!” she said, dimpling. “Stephen, won’t it be fun?”

  “We shall see,” he said. “Rather strenuous fun if I know anything about Christopher.”

  “I don’t mind that,” she answered.

  Christopher celebrated the first evening of his visit by howling lustily for “Marmar.” Nana exhorted him in vain; Elizabeth’s blendishments increased his tears. Stephen appeared upon the scene, and there fell a slight lull. Christopher sat up.

  “Look here, my worthy nephew, how do you suppose I am to work when you kick up this unholy din? What’s the matter?”

  “Don’t ask him that, for heaven’s sake!” Elizabeth said hastily.

  “Want Marmar!” sobbed Christopher.

  “Oh, Lord!” Stephen said ruefully.

  “Pick him up!” demanded Christopher, who generally referred to himself in the third person.

  Stephen obeyed.

  “Anything else I can do for you, my lord?”

  “Take him downstairs,” Christopher advised him.

  “What do you think?” Stephen asked.

  “I think he ought to stay in bed,” Elizabeth answered, “but perhaps it would be more peaceful if he came down to the library for a bit.”

  So Christopher was carried downstairs, and regaled with three chocolates and the story of the Three Bears. He then fell asleep, and was cautiously conveyed up to bed. Having proved himself to have very much the master-mind he proceeded, during the rest of his visit, to rule his hosts with a rod of iron. The only person who could withstand him was Nana. With considerable sagacity Christopher attached himself to his uncle and aunt, and spent his time in riotous living. His chief joy was to accompany Elizabeth in the pony-trap when she went shopping, and to hold the reins. On one of these expeditions he was introduced to Lady Ribblemere, and when she bent to embrace him, backed quickly, and requested her to go away.

  “I—I think it’s because you have a large hat on,” Elizabeth said, in excuse for his behaviour. “He—he doesn’t like them.”

  “He does,” Christopher said firmly.

  “Aren’t you going to give me a nice kiss, dear?” Lady Ribblemere coaxed him.

  Christopher shook his head violently.

  “Kiss Hector,” he said, and nearly fell out of the trap in his efforts to clasp the wolf-hound round the neck.

  “Dear me, he is a very sturdy little fellow,” Lady Ribblemere said. “What are you going to be when you’re grown up, Christopher?”

  Christopher considered the point at length.

  “Engine-driver,” he said presently. “Ta-ta!” He waved his hand inexorably, and requested Timothy to Gee-up.

  When his summary dismissal of Lady Ribblemere was reported, between giggles, to his uncle, Stephen tossed him up in his arms and told him that he showed great discrimination. Christopher grasped his coat collar and struggled for words.

  “He had—a wide on the pony!” he informed Stephen. “Auntie held him on.”

  Stephen reflected that Auntie had never been so gay as now, when she was in such demand. It was a surprise to him when she romped with Christopher; all self-consciousness left her; again and again rippling laughter came, so that he laid down his pen to watch her, and to listen. Or he would be drawn into the game, much to Christopher’s delight, and would impersonate an engine, or a pony, mostly of the runaway order, for his nephew’s amusement.

  Nana unearthed aged picture-books from one of the box-rooms, and these Christopher perused, with the aid of his hosts. He sat upon the floor with his aunt on one side and his uncle on the other, and the book open on his lap. One fat finger pressed hard upon a luridly coloured cow.

  “Moo-cow.”

  His hearers applauded nobly. A catechism followed.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Jeremiah,” Stephen said.

  “Oh! What’s he doing?”

  “Chewing the cud.”

  “Don’t be so feeble,” laughed Elizabeth.

  “Well, you tell him.”

  “Not at all. I’m not a novelist.”

  “He’s eating,” Christopher said.

  “That’s what I said,” Stephen pointed out.

  “Didn’t!” Christopher said scornfully. He turned to Elizabeth. You tell me ’about him.”

  So Elizabeth related a long story concerning the cow, punctuated by comments and stern questions from the auditor. Ribald suggestions came from Stephen, and a remark that the story would make fine melodrama.

  Elizabeth ran dry at last, and ended the tale. Christopher digested it in silence, and looked so seraphic that Elizabeth hugged him and cried:

  “Oh you noble angel!”

  Over his head she met Stephen’s eyes, and grew rather paler as she read the thought in them. She put Christopher down. Did Stephen want a son so badly? Their eyes held for a moment, her’s wide with dawning realization. It was Stephan who looked away first, and who flushed, not Elizabeth.

  “What is you staring at uncle for?” demanded Christopher, displeased at Elizabeth’s sudden neglect of himself.

  “Was I, Darling,” she said, bending over him.

  Stephan rose.

  “I must get on with my work,” he said, rather strained, and went out of them room.

  Anthony and Cleopatra came at the end of the month to claim their offspring. Christopher welcomed them jubilantly, and in a state of wild excitement tried, in one sentence, to tell his mother all that he had done.

  The Ruthvens stayed over the weekend, and the faithless Christopher had no further use for his aunt and uncle. He proceeded to tell Cynthia of Auntie’s unheard of stupidity in various minor details.

  “Marmar, when Auntie barfed him she didn’t put a towel in the airwing cupboard!” he said in a shocked voice. “An’ she didn’t put his socks on afore his vest!”

  “My son this is awful,” Cynthia said solemnly. “I hope you told her how to do it properly.”

  “He did,” Elizabeth said, grimacing.

  “Most conscientiously,” Stephen nodded. “Even my way of telling well-worn stories was hopelessly wrong.”

  “I shall miss him awfully,” Elizabeth sighed.

  Cynthia looked up for an instant, but said nothing.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  In March Elizabeth came hurrying into the library one morning in a state of great agitation.

  “Stephen, what am I to do? They’re trying to rope me into the Mothers’ Union or something. Meetings and blankets and horrible coal tickets!”

  “Who’s trying to rope you in?”

  “Lady Ribblemere, and Mrs. Edmondston, and Mrs. Fraser. I don’t want to, Stephen!”

  “Well, don’t,” he said coolly.

  “Yes, but everybody seems to belong to the Union, or whatever it is.”

  “All the more reason for keeping out of it.”

  “But I don’t know how to keep out of it without being rude! They all urge me to join and help my fellow-creatures. I don’t want to.”

  “My darling, there’s no earthly reason why you should. You’re much too young. Say I won’t hear of it.”

  “They wouldn’t believe me. And it seems too rude and disobliging to refuse.”

  Stephen pointed an accusing finger.

  “Elizabeth-Anne, depart!”

  “I don’t see that I’m being Elizabeth-Anne-ish at all. Lady Ribblemere’s an awful bore, but she’s been very nice to me, and I don’t want to seem churlish. Besides, what’ll they think of me?”

  “Most of ’em will wish they’d been courageous enough to stand out too.
”

  “Do you suppose they will?” Elizabeth said dubiously. She looked out into the garden, and the sight of the daffodils nodding beneath the window seemed to make her more indignant. “The idea of wanting me to go to meetings in a stuffy hall when the flowers are all coming up, and my speckled hen’s eggs nearly due to hatch out!”

  “Disgraceful!” Stephen agreed, controlling his quivering lip.

  “I shan’t join.”

  “No, don’t.”

  Elizabeth’s pet lamb appeared on the lawn.

  “The angel! I don’t care what they think! They haven’t got a lamb to look after. Oh, it’s eating the hyacinth buds!” She ran out to coax the lamb away from the flower-beds. To Lady Ribblemere, who called to ask her for the last time to join the committee, she extended a polite but firm refusal. She surprised Lady Ribblemere, but she surprised herself more.

  She thought how delighted Mr. Hengist would be if he could hear. Elizabeth-Anne was dying, slowly but surely.

  She had made new friends in the neighbourhood, young wives like herself, and Mr. Trelawney. To him she went for advice about her garden. He gave it willingly, and tried hard to make her familiar with botanical terms. Mindful of her first error with him she smiled prettily, and said,

  “It’s no good, Mr. Trelawney. When you say, I should put some Bachelor’s Buttons on the south bed, I know where I am, but when you say Ranunculus something-or-other, I’m absolutely at sea.”

  “It is astonishing how ignorant people are of the most ordinary terms,” he said severely.

  But he was a great help in the garden, because he knew when you had to plant out your boxes of seeds, and where would be the best place to grow sweet-peas, and that if you moved the peonies they wouldn’t flower till a year afterwards.

  What with the garden and the lamb and the broods of fluffy chickens, Elizabeth’s time was fully and happily occupied. So that when Stephen went to London on business she elected to remain at the Halt.

  He was away for a week, and she missed him unutterably. She missed the smell of tobacco in the house, the litter of papers in the library, the litter of ties and shirts in his room. Meals without him were depressing and lonely; the evenings seemed interminable. She realised with a start that she wanted Stephen. Much as she loved the Halt, it was a prison without him. A dozen times in the day she wanted Stephen’s help, or wanted to tell him something that had happened when she was in the village.

  She began to count the days to his return, quite unconsciously. Then, on the last morning, a telegram came to say that he could not get back until three days later.

  A wave of bitter disappointment swept over her. Until the telegram came she had not known how much she was looking forward to Stephen’s return. She felt ill-used and miserable; none of her preparations were of any use now; there would be no cosy talk over the fire that evening.

  Then suddenly she thought, Why am I so disappointed? Why do I feel as though I’d like to go to bed and cry?

  In all her life she had known nothing to equal this strange sensation; she brooded over it, wide-eyed, twisting her fingers. She thought about Stephen, all the mannerisms that were his, everything he did or said. She looked at his empty chair by the desk, and a little, wondering smile came.

  During the days that followed the smile was often on her lips. She had the look of one who hugs some delectable secret.

  The day of Stephen’s homecoming dawned at last. Elizabeth spent a long time over the arrangement of the dinner-menu. She put fresh flowers in all the rooms, and just before tea changed her frock.

  The car purred to the front-door; Elizabeth heard it, and became very busy with the tea-cosy. Stephen’s voice was raised in the hall.

  “’Lisbeth!”

  She went to him, flushed and shy, adorable, and stood temptingly before him. His arms went out, and fell again to his sides.

  “Darling—it’s damned good to see you again,” he said huskily.

  She smiled up at him, and waited. Stephen looked at her, then squared his shoulders.

  “Am I—in time for tea?” he jerked out.

  “It’s just ready,” Elizabeth said.

  They went to the library, and he sat down at Elizabeth’s feet, just as usual. For some time he did not say anything. Elizabeth touched his shoulder.

  “New tie,” she remarked.

  “Yes. Rather nice, isn’t it? I brought you some chocolates, ’Lisbeth, and—and this, if you’ll have it.” Anxiously he watched her open the little velvet case.

  “Oh, Stephen, what a beautiful bracelet! Thank you very, very much!” She held out her hand. “Put it on, please. I’d like you to.”

  He did so; she saw that his fingers trembled slightly.

  “Glad you like it, ’Lisbeth.” His lips brushed her wrist. “Any news?”

  “Heaps. Tell me yours first.”

  “It would bore you. Purely business.”

  “It wouldn’t bore me,” Elizabeth said. “Please tell!”

  “Well, the biggest and best piece of news is that I’ve signed a contract with an American firm of publishers. For the new book.”

  “Stephen, how wonderful! Who are they?”

  “Crosby, Thompson Company.” He went into details. “And, ’Lisbeth, I’m going to have a shot at dramatising ‘Caraway Seeds.’ Think it could be done?”

  She was almost as excited as he was; her eyes shone; she clapped her hands.

  “What fun! Of course it could be done! As soon as you’ve absolutely finished the new book, let’s go and see lots of plays and take notes about stage-craft. Isn’t Mater pleased?”

  “Thrilled to the core. She sent her love, by the way, and said that she was coming to pay us a visit soon. Now let me have your news.”

  “It won’t sound much after yours. But prepare yourself for a tragedy. Two of the ducklings are dead.”

  “Not Samuel?” he said.

  “No, thank goodness. Samuel is as perky as ever. I don’t know what went wrong with the others, and all Nana said was, Ah, well!”

  “How unfeeling!”

  “Wasn’t it? The other piece of news is that Maisie Fletcher has a baby-boy. Mr. Fletcher’s as proud as a peacock about it.”

  “Oh!” Stephen said. Then, rather drearily, he said, “Lucky chap.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes were veiled by her lashes.

  “Flo’s going rather lame. She picked up a thorn, and it was rather deeply embedded. I managed to get it out, though, didn’t I, Flo my darling?”

  Stephen stroked the dog’s silky head absent-mindedly There fell a silence. The maid came to clear the tea away, and Elizabeth picked up her work-bag.

  The days slipped by; it seemed to Stephen that Elizabeth had subtly changed. Again and again he was struck by an intangible something in her attitude, and would stare at her, puzzled. It was almost as though she were coquetting with him, only that was hardly possible. She had never done it; he did not think it was in her nature. But whether she was coquetting or not, the change in her made it doubly hard for him to preserve his friendly calm towards her. One moment she was aloof, the next tantalizingly near. Nothing could have been sweeter than her treatment of him when, for two days, he was suffering from neuralgia. She hovered about with eau-de-cologne, and she was always ready to shake up the cushions. She wore a strange smile, too, so tiny that he wondered whether it really was a smile. It fascinated him, but his arms ached to hold her.

  She was thinking, This is when he’s helpless and docile, dependent on me. I like it.

  She was gentle with him, and sympathetic, and she allowed no one to make a noise in the room. He lay on the sofa, eyes closed, frowning, and from time to time she went to him, to sprinkle more eau-de-cologne on a handkerchief. Once, because she could not resist it, she stroked back an errant strand of hair. Stephen’s eyes flew open. She allowed her hand to rest for a moment near his head, then she went back to her chair, conscious that he was watching her.

  Then Mrs. Ramsay came to stay wit
h them, bringing Thomas, and after three days spoke tentatively to Elizabeth.

  “Darling, how are things with you? Is it easier yet?”

  Elizabeth would not look at her.

  “Yes, mater. Much.”

  “Can I be officious, please? Does Stephen get on your nerves still?”

  Elizabeth shook her head. Stephen had stayed in bed one day when he had had neuralgia, and he had not shaved. Elizabeth had hardly noticed it. That showed her how she had changed.

  “I’m so glad, because he’s such a dear thing,” Mrs. Ramsay said. “So very human. Thomas is chasing the lamb again. How bad of him; Elizabeth, I want you and Stephen to be happy. Tell me when you are.”

  She did not allude to the subject again during her visit, but when she left the Halt, Elizabeth of her own accord put her arms about her, and whispered,

  “Mater, I do love you.”

  Mrs. Ramsay laughed, and kissed her.

  “I hoped you would, darling. Madness and all?”

  “That is the part I love.”

  “Then you’re a new Elizabeth, my dear, because I used to horrify you dreadfully.”

  “What were you and Mater whispering about?” Stephen asked, when his mother was gone.

  “That’s our secret,” Elizabeth answered mysteriously.

  “I don’t think I altogether approve of you and Mater having secrets,” he said solemnly.

  Elizabeth laughed and went away to pick flowers for the drawing-room. It struck him that there was invitation in her backward glance, but he could not be sure.

  Meanwhile his novel grew quickly, and as quickly was typed. Having found that her first, nervous criticisms were received favourably, Elizabeth grew bolder, and had many suggestions to make. On one occasion they came near to quarrelling, and she had to put a check on her tongue. She criticised adversely, forgetting that Stephen was sensitive about his work. When the argument became acrimonious and she saw that he was really angry she began to eat her words, very cunningly, until at last she had smoothed Stephen’s ruffled temper and made him docile again, and repentant. Then he thought over all that she had said, lectured her severely, and went away to rewrite the few pages she had not liked. She was careful not to let him see her triumph.