Ruthita took her by the hand. “You didn’t talk to me that way once, Hetty. I’m just Ruthie to you always, and Sir Dante is plain Dannie.”
She looked up and met the laughing reproach in our eyes. Her apron went to her face and her bodice commenced to quiver. “Little did I think when I washed and dressed yer little bodies that I should ever see this day,” she sobbed. “It’s breakin’ me ’eart, that’s what it is, all this quarrelin’. Why shouldn’t I speak to ’im if I wants ter? Why shouldn’t ’e kiss ’is own sister if he likes? Wot’s it matter if all the neighbors was lookin’? There’s too little lovin’ and too little kissin’; that’s wot I say. ’Tain’t right ter be ashamed o’ bein’ nateral. If it ’adn’t ’a’ been for bein’ afraid and ashamed, I might ’a’ married John. The nus-girl next door got ’im. There’s allaws been someone a-lookin’ when I was courtin’—there’s been too little kissin’ in my life, and it’s yer Pa’s fault, if I do say it, wi’ ’is everlastin’ look of ‘Don’t yer do it.’”
“If it’s as bad as all that, Hetty, I’m sure you won’t mind if I——” She made an emotional armful, but between struggling and giggling she allowed me.
We had tea together in the formal dining-room, with its heavy furniture and snug red walls. We made Hetty sit beside us; she protested and was scandalized, but we wouldn’t let her wait. As we talked, the old freedom of happiness came back to Ruthita’s laughter. The mask of enforced prejudices lifted from Hetty’s face. All our conversation was of the past—our adventures, childish mutinies, and punishments. We told Hetty what a tyrant she had been to us. We asked her whether her nightgowns were still of gray flannel. I accused her of being the start of all my naughtiness in the explanation she had given me of how marriages were concocted. It was like putting a wilted flower into water to see the way she picked up and freshened. When she had nothing else to reply, she wagged her head at us, exclaiming, “Oh, my h’eye—what goin’s on! It’s a good thing walls ain’t got ears. What would your poor Pa say?”
We left her and wandered through the rooms together. We only opened the study-door; we did not enter. It had always, even when we had been invited, seemed to have been closed against us. Books lay on the desk, dust-covered. It was allowed to be tidied only in my father’s presence. We both felt that he must know of our trespassing, even though we could not see him. I had the uncanny feeling that he was still there at the table writing; any moment he might glance up, having completed his sentence, and I should hear his voice. Not until we had climbed the stairs did we rid ourselves of the shadow of his disapproval. In the old days when we were romping, we had been accustomed to hear his dreaded door open and his stern voice calling, “Children! Children! What d’you think you’re doing? Not so much noise.” It was something of this kind we were now expecting and with the same sensations of trembling.
The house was memory-haunted. Following our footsteps, yet so discreetly that we never caught them, were a witch-faced girl and a sturdy boy. Where pools of sunlight lay upon the floor we lost them; when we turned into dark passages, again they followed. On entering rooms, we half expected to find them occupied with their playing; when the budding creeper stirred against the walls, it was as though they whispered. They were always somewhere where we were not—either in the room we had just left, or the room to which we were going.
We entered what had been my bedroom. The sun was westering, playing hide-and-seek behind crooked chimneypots. Below us the garden lay in shadow, cool and cloistered.
Kneeling beside the window, with our elbows on the sill, not watching one another’s eyes, we whispered by fits and starts, leaving our sentences unended. Most of what we said commenced with “Do you remember?” and drifted off into silence as the picture formed. It was like flinging pebbles into a pond and watching the circles spreading. One after another memories came and departed—all that we had done together and been to one another in that conspiracy of childhood. There was the pink muffler she had made me, the guinea-pig about which I had lied to her, the tragic departures and wild homecomings of schooldays, and the week when the Bantam had declared his love for her. And there were memories which preceded her knowledge—my quest for the magic carpet. How I wished I might yet find it; I would fly by night to her window and carry her off, re-visiting old happinesses while Lord Halloway lay snoring.
I don’t know how we came to it—I suppose we must have been speaking about Vi. Presently Ruthita said, “You could only love golden hair, could you, Dannie?”
I didn’t know what she was driving at; her voice shook and her face was flushing.