The Wonderful Garden or The Three Cs

‘We shall be wanting some flowers,’ she said, ‘to send in a letter. And it’s too wet to go and get them. I thought perhaps William would.’

‘Flowers ain’t William’s business, nor yet his pleasure,’ said the gardener, ‘or he wouldn’t ’ave a dead un in his button-hole like what he’s got.’ He pointed to William’s coat, hanging on a saddle-perch and still bearing in its button-hole the withered rose of secrecy.

‘Perhaps you would, then?’ Caroline suggested. ‘I want four red roses, no – five, and ten buds. And is there any stephanotis? I think it means absent friends.’

‘No, there ain’t,’ said the gardener.

‘Well, then, traveller’s joy. That means safety.’

‘Plenty of that – nasty weed,’ said the gardener, but not unkindly. ‘Right you are, Miss. I’ll bring ’em to the dining-room window to save my boots on cook’s flagstones.’

‘So that’s all right,’ said Caroline, returning to the others. ‘We’re to go at twelve. Only now we must write to Aunt Emmeline and send her the traveller’s joy, because I said we wanted to send it in a letter. Yes, you must, too, Charles. We shall be doing an unselfish act, because I’m sure no one wants to write to Aunt Emmeline, and she says unselfishness makes the sun shine on the cloudiest days.’

‘All right, we’ll try it on,’ said Charles, but not hopefully; and soon there was a deep stillness, broken only by the slow scratching of pens.

Presently the gardener brought the roses and clematis to the window.

‘That’s what you want?’ he asked, handing in the wet red and green bouquet.

‘Quite,’ said Caroline; ‘and do you know it’s just as well you hadn’t any stephanotis, because I see it doesn’t mean what I thought it meant. It means ‘Will you accompany me to the East?’ and Aunt Emmeline would have been so upset wondering what we meant.’

‘She wouldn’t ’a been the only one,’ said the gardener, and clumped away on those boots which were not considered suitable for cook’s flagstones.

When the letters were done, it was only eleven o’clock, and it was decided that, as Rupert must have had his breakfast, it wouldn’t be unfeeling to play desert islands, just to pass the time till it should be twelve.

The dining-room table made an excellent island, and the arm-chair was a ship which held the three of them, and could, with reasonable care, be wrecked quite safely on the deep waters of the hearth-rug. The card-table from the window, turned wrong way up, made a charming raft; and the girls’ pinafores, fastened to the poker and tongs, did for sails. You steered with the fire-shovel and brought bags of biscuit (which looked like cushions) from the good vessel, the Golden Vanity, which, disguised as the sofa, lay derelict across the Carpet Bay. It was a grand game, and when some one began to say ‘Twelve o’clock,’ the shipwrecked sailors were quite astonished. The person who began to say ‘Twelve,’ was, of course, the tall clock with the silver face inlaid with golden roses.

‘We ought to go at once,’ said Caroline, putting the masts back in the fender; ‘but if we leave everything like this, the Wil-cat – ’

‘We’ll clear up,’ said Charlotte with a noble effort, ‘to make up for being beastly yesterday. You go, Caro. We’ll come out as soon as we’ve done, and stand in the door till you tell us it’s all right.’

‘That’s jolly decent of her,’ Charles told Caroline. ‘And I say the same.’

‘Jolly decent of you,’ said Caroline, and went.

It was still raining. Caroline stood at the back door with a rose and two buds in her hand, and watched the rain splashing in the puddles and on to the sack-covered shoulders of the gardener and the gardener’s boy and the stable boy as they went off to their dinners. As soon as she could be quite sure that they had really gone and wouldn’t be likely to come back for anything they’d forgotten, she ran across to the harness-room.

‘Here’s your new secret rose,’ she said, ‘and now can I see Rupert? The others’ll be out directly.’

‘Go and tell them to stay where they be,’ said William crossly; ‘there won’t be much secret rosing left if you’re all hanging about here. And Mrs. What’s-her-name’s equivalent to a bit of secret nosing herself, if you come to that. Hurry up now, afore they comes along.’

The others were not pleased, but they had to own that most likely William knew best.

Thus it was Caroline alone who followed William through the stable and up the ladder into the straw-loft, which at first seemed to have nothing in it but straw, very dark in the corners and very yellow under the skylight.

‘Where is he?’ Caroline asked, and the straw rustled and opened, revealing Rupert, rather tousled and strawy about the head, and the bright eyes and black ears of a small fox-terrier.

‘I hid when I heard you on the ladder,’ he said. ‘You can’t be too careful.’ He spoke in a low hoarse voice.

‘Now I’ll keep about down in the stable,’ said William, ‘and if I whistle, you lay low.’

He retreated down the ladder, and they heard him say ‘Over’ to one of the horses.

‘I wish this was over,’ said Rupert, rather fretfully.

‘It is beastly having it rain,’ said Caroline sympathetically; ‘but it’ll be fine to-morrow, I expect, and I’ve brought you a secrecy rose.’ He took it and said ‘Thank you!’ but not enthusiastically. ‘And,’ she went on – ‘wait till I get it out – it’s rather a tight fit for my pocket – I’ve brought you Robinson Crusoe, and a pencil and paper to really write to your father and mother. And I’ll post it as soon as the rain stops.’

‘Well, you are a brick,’ he said. ‘I shall be all right with something to read. But you’ve simply no idea how slow time goes when you’re in concealment. I can’t think how those Royalist chaps stood it as they did; and the Man in the Iron Mask and Sir Walter Raleigh and Mary Queen Of.’

‘I am sorry,’ said Caroline again. ‘How long will it take to get an answer from India?’

‘Oh, weeks,’ said Rupert wearily. ‘I was just thinking I couldn’t stick it, and perhaps I’d better really run away to sea, only not Hastings, of course. But it doesn’t seem so bad now I’ve got the book, and Pincher’s rather jolly, and you too, of course,’ he added with sudden politeness.

‘Tell me all about last night.’ Caroline settled comfortably into a nest of straw. ‘What happened after we left you?’

‘Oh, William came and brought me in and gave me a rug and the dog and some more bread and cheese. And bread and bacon this morning.’

‘I say, you are hoarse.’

‘Oh, it’s nothing. I say, don’t think me a pig, but I should like something to eat. I feel as if I’d been eating bread and cheese and cold bacon for long years, and it’s all fat – the bacon is, I mean.’

Caroline said how stupid it was of her and she’d bring him something when the men went home to their teas. And then suddenly there seemed to be nothing more to say.

There was a silence, broken by Rupert’s putting his head under the blanket to cough in a suppressed manner.

‘I hope you haven’t taken a chill,’ said Caroline with motherly anxiety. ‘Aunt Emmeline says you never take them if you keep your windows open at night; but of course you can’t here, because there aren’t any.’

‘No,’ said Rupert. ‘I say, do you play chess, or draughts, or halma or anything?’

‘I could bring them,’ she said; ‘but I only know the moves at chess and when you bring down the Queen and the Bishop, and the other person is called the Fool’s Mate – only they always see it before you get it finished.’

‘I’ll teach you,’ said Rupert yawning. ‘I say, everything is pretty beastly, isn’t it? It’s jolly in India. I wish I was there.’

‘So do I,’ said Caroline. ‘At least I don’t mean that. But I wish you were not so mizzy.’

‘There ought to be a Society for the Prevention of Schools,’ Rupert went on; ‘then everything would be all right.’

‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Caroline; ‘I think this is a dumpy day. I felt quite flat this morning, as if nothing mattered. But it got better. I’ll look in my book when I get back and see if there’s any flower that means cheer up. And if there is I’ll bring it to you, and perhaps it will work a cheering charm on you.’

Caroline herself, sitting among the straw, wrinkling her forehead in the effort to think of some way of cheering the prisoner, was almost a cheering charm herself. Rupert perhaps felt something of this, for he said:

‘I’m all right. Only I feel so jolly rotten.’

‘You write the letter,’ said Caroline. ‘I don’t feel half as flat as I did. I’ll think of all sorts of things to amuse the captive. And I’ll bring you – ’

William whistled below. The two children stiffened to the stillness of stone and held their breaths. Voices. Mrs. Wilmington’s voice.

‘Have you seen Miss Caroline, William?’ she was saying. ‘I am afraid she has run out in the reen.’