Princess Puck

So Bill was packed off to Ashelton, and then Polly proceeded to settle things to her own complete satisfaction. She saw the house in Bayswater and settled that; she saw the parents of the few pupils remaining to her and settled them very completely; and then she wound up her connection with Wrugglesby with but few difficulties and not a single regret.

“Well, I cannot say I ever cared for it,” she said when Bella expressed some natural sorrow at leaving the town which had been her home for nearly seven years. “I never was fitted for a pokey little place like this; I need a wider life.”

“It may be pokey,” Bella declared with tears in her eyes, “but I like it, and I am sorry to leave it, and to leave the shabby old house and the shabby old furniture.”

“We are not leaving the furniture,” Polly said quickly. “We are taking all we want with us, and only selling what is of no use to any of us. You and Theresa have each chosen what you wanted; one can’t keep all the rubbish.”

The last was added very decidedly, for there had been some discussion about the furniture. Bella had fallen in quietly enough with Polly’s judicious arrangements, but Bill, who cherished ridiculous sentiments about old and cumbersome articles of furniture, had disputed Polly’s decision article by article, winning sometimes, losing sometimes, and only desisting when it was obvious that the little house at Bayswater could hold no more. All this had taken place during the visits she and Theresa occasionally paid the cousins at Wrugglesby during the time of the settlement. It was all over now, arranged finally some days ago; Polly was only afraid of reopening the question. The three were assembled for the last time at Langford House, Robert having driven Bill to Wrugglesby that afternoon to see the last of the old place and the old associations. There was nothing at all to be done, it was really nonsense for her to come, Polly said, and was not at all surprised that Bill did not arrive till almost dark.

Robert had been delayed in starting, and when Wrugglesby was reached Bill would not be driven to the house, but got down from the dog-cart at the stables and walked, with something clinking forgotten in her pocket, down the familiar streets, saying a silent good-bye. It was a grey, gusty afternoon, the first of October. There were dead leaves in the quiet corners,—all the corners were quiet here—and the wind came now and then whirling them about her feet. It was a good wind, fresh and sweet for all its strength, and the girl felt she loved it; it was the home-wind to her, the wind of the Eastern Counties. And the greyness and the peace and the great sense of space and abundant room were home to her, the land of the Eastern Counties, not grand at all, but still and wide, and very, very dear.

She stood a moment on the outskirts of the little town looking across the well remembered country. Then she turned and walked home through the small, ill-paved streets, past the familiar shops,—those with the new fronts, those with the old many-paned windows; past the police-station, the Georgian house with the legend County Police set over the door; past the church with its ancient burying-ground where, five steps above the town, Aunt Isabel slept under the dark green grass and fluttering sycamore leaves; past genteel houses with small gardens where sunflowers lingered with hollyhocks and dahlias still unhurt by frost; past each familiar thing until at last, just as the lamps in the town were being lighted, Langford House was reached.

But the cousins who received her knew nothing of Bill’s lonely walk, nor yet of the something which clinked in her pocket. Indeed, she herself did not think of the last immediately; she did not think of it until after Bella had made the remark on her regret at leaving Wrugglesby. Bill did not speak of her regret, and as for Polly, she had none of which to speak. “As we have got to go some time,” she said, “it may as well be now as later; better in fact, for though the lease is not up till Christmas, we could not expect to get such another chance of a house as the one now offered.”

To which wisdom Bella assented; after all, leaving the house now did not concern her so very much, for in any circumstances she would have had to leave before the spring, as Jack insisted that they should be married in February. Mrs. Dawson, though she had at first objected to this arrangement, finally came to the conclusion that since it was inevitable it might as well be soon as late. Indeed after a time she came to accept it with so much meekness (other people called it pleasure) that she invited Bella to come to Greys when Polly left Wrugglesby and stay there till the winter set in. Therefore Bella, though she assented to them, cannot be said to have had a very personal interest in Polly’s plans.

As for Bill, on this particular afternoon she said nothing even with regard to the furniture, except that in reply to Polly’s emphatic remark to the effect that they could not take all the rubbish with them, she said she hoped it would get a good home and be well treated. Polly considered such sentiments foolish in the extreme and, having said so, dismissed the subject from her mind and remarked: “I flatter myself that we have done very well on the whole.”

Bella agreed, but Bill corrected. “It is not we but you who have done it. It was you who cadged the house in London on very low terms, you who first impressed Mrs. Dawson with the fact that we are a nice family,—oh yes, she likes Bella for herself now, but she began by liking you, or rather what she takes you to be. You arranged that, just as you arranged the contract for the repairs of this house at the end of the lease. You are a champion cadger, Polly, whatever else you are.”

Polly was not certain whether to be pleased or offended by this tribute. “I think you have a great deal to thank me for,” she said complacently; “I am glad you appreciate it, though I object to the word cadger.”

“What shall I say?” Bill asked, “If you don’t cadge things what do you do? Acquire them?”

“Well, yes, perhaps I do,” Polly admitted; “yes, I suppose I have the acquisitive faculty.”

“I should say you have.”

“So have you,”—Polly did not like Bill’s tone. “I am sure you have it; people give you things and you don’t refuse them.”

Bill laughed and went over to the fireplace, the something in her pocket clinking audibly as she moved.

“What is that?” asked the inquisitive Polly.

“Oh, I had forgotten.” Bill put her hand into her pocket. “It is something I brought to show you,” she said, and drew out first a piece of crumpled paper in which the articles had been wrapped and then two large old-fashioned shoe-buckles.

“What are they?” Polly made a pounce on one.

“Where did you get them?” Bella took the other from the table where Bill had put them. “What are they?”

They gleamed in the fading light as the cousins held them, gleamed and shimmered with wonderful changing splendour, flashing when the firelight touched them and found a dozen answering tongues of flame.

“Paste,” Polly said, “old paste; they must be worth a lot of money.”

“Diamonds,” Bill corrected.

“Diamonds? Nonsense! They might be worth as much as a hundred pounds apiece if they were!”

“They are diamonds,” Bill persisted, “though they can’t be worth that. They are mine.”

“Yours?” Polly almost screamed. “Diamonds—and yours? Talk about the acquisitive faculty!”

Bill flushed. “I did not acquire them,” she said rather illogically; “at least, I hated to have them, and I have promised to give them to somebody as a wedding-present, not yet, some day, when there is a wedding. I will give them back,—I don’t care what you say,—you need not think about selling them,—they are not going to be sold.”

“Don’t talk nonsense to me,” was Polly’s answer. “If they are diamonds they shall be sold, that is, if you have any right to them, which I am sure you have not. They must be paste!”

Bill took the buckle out of her hand, Bella placing the fellow on the table beside it: “Are they really diamonds?” she asked. “How did you come by them, and whose were they?”

Bill stood looking at them a moment as they flashed in the firelight. “They were Peter Harborough’s shoe-buckles,” she said.