Next morning, as though they were fearful of too much happiness, they turned their backs on Surrey and went away into Kent. But all the houses they saw there seemed ugly and angular, and the hills all seemed scarped instead of rounded. After an unkind lunch in a grim hotel Dawkins said to the chauffeur the word Nina had been waiting for, and they flew by crossroads into Surrey again and pulled up in the little yellow lane outside the Other House with its white gate and white bridge and green hedges.
And the inside of the Other House was just as nice as the outside. It was not a modern house—not aggressively modern—for the architect had not made the usual modern point of elimination of waste space and stairs. There was a long corridor up-stairs and another down-stairs, with awkward bends in them and with two steps down in each, very inconvenient for a carpet-sweeper, but homelike, somehow, and the front windows looked straight at the bulging chest of Summer Hill with its gorse bushes and heather. As far as Dawkins’ unpractised eye could tell, the kitchens and pantries and coal-cellar were practical enough—and if not he could afford to spend money on them—and the house itself was in good enough condition to warrant preliminary inquiries and the outlay of a surveyor’s fee. He raised his eyebrows at Nina as they stood and looked at each other in the bare drawing-room where the wintry sun came through the naked windows.
And Nina said, “Yes. Ooh,yes.”
“Right you are, old lady,” said Dawkins, “I think we’ve got it this time.”
Then they fled back to the agent’s and Dawkins took an option on the Other House, and finally they reached the hotel with Nina’s mind a pleasant confusion of cupboards and staircases and white bridges over little rivers.
Dawkins was perforce learning a great deal, and his lessons recommenced as soon as the surveyor had announced that there was no radical defect in the Other House—a decision which coincided with the receipt by Dawkins of a check from Mr. Carver for a further eight thousand pounds. He wanted to furnish and decorate the Other House, but he felt that he could not decide on matters so important without skilled advice. A preliminary inspection of showrooms convinced him that he was not competent to choose between oak and mahogany, and he had a vague idea that his taste in wall-papers would not be good enough to help establish the Hawk’s daughter in the society which was her due. Furthermore, he wanted to learn to drive a motorcar (Dawkins had been sufficiently poor all his youth never to have acquired the art) and that meant leaving Nina alone for hours at a time, which he was unwilling to do. In the end a prolonged inspection of newspaper advertisements brought him into touch with the Dalton and Weston Agency.
Dawkins had a rough time explaining to Mrs. Weston, that stiff-collared, pince-nezed queen of scholastic agents, exactly what he wanted. He wanted a governess for a little girl—no, not his daughter, his adopted daughter. But he also wanted some one to help him choose the wall-paper and furniture of a house he was buying, and to engage servants for him, and supervise his housekeeping. No, he was not maried.
“M’m,” said Mrs. Weston. “And the little girl would be at home all day?”
“Well,” said Dawkins, “I rather thought of sending her to school after Christmas. Day school, only, that is. There is rather a good girls’ school at——”
“M’m,” said Mrs. Weston.
Mrs. Weston’s basilisk glare through her pince-nez convinced Dawkins that he was asking a great deal, that he was asking the Agency to find him some one who would be hard to find—and that, of course, was just what Mrs. Weston wanted him to think. Dawkins felt hot under his collar, and he wriggled in his chair like some naughty little boy. Never before had he realized what a nasty piece of circumstantial evidence an adopted daughter could be. People simply didn’t adopt daughters, unless they weren’t all they should be. And Dawkins was further asking Mrs. Weston to find him a lady who would risk her maidenhood by living in the same house with him. He began to apologize for his very existence.
However, when at last Mrs. Weston had thoroughly brought Mr. Dawkins to heel (she had a little husband at home who bullied her, and she had to get her own back on the other sex somehow), she triumphantly vindicated the reputation of Dalton and Weston by producing Miss Lamb, whom Dawkins met by appointment at his second visit there and engaged thankfully, on the spot.
Miss Lamb was a Bachelor of Arts and a spinster of parts. She had taken her degree at London University some time last century and she held additional diplomas in Domestic Science and kindred subjects which fully entitled her to double the rôles of chatelaine and governess. She had taught at schools and in the houses of the rich; one of her pupils had since become a celebrated lady novelist, and a little boy she had taught had become a Member of Parliament, but a single interview with her would have absolved her, in anybody’s judgment, of responsibility for either occurrence. She was a little fluttering woman, spectacled and tight waisted (there was a corset somewhere in the depths under that spotless blouse) and she fell in love with Dawkins on the spot. No man had ever wormed his way into the cloistered calmness of Miss Lamb’s inner soul—no man had ever tried to. But the heart under Miss Lamb’s pathetic, little, flat bosom beat quite rapidly as she regarded Dawkins’ big muscular form in his blue suit, and his blue eyes and light hair with the golden lights in it, and his clipped mustache and the lines at the corners of his eyes and the flushed tan of his cheeks. Dawkins always impressed women as seeming absurdly young, and flat-chested little Miss Lamb straightway began to lavish on him the inexhaustible affection she had poured out all her life on generation after generation of careless little ingrates of one quarter his years.
Nina and Miss Lamb greeted each other coolly enough at first. Nina only held in check her active dislike of this interloper because she knew Mr. Dawkins wanted her to put up with her, and she did not want to bring back to Dawkins’ mouth the little hurt droop that showed so clearly when she did anything he did not like. But later she grew almost comradely over Miss Lamb’s little enthusiasms, and having, with the aid of her diabolical intuition, pierced Miss Lamb’s fragile guard and discovered her blossoming maidenly passion for Mr. Dawkins, she gathered her into the broad-minded toleration she reserved for people who did not matter much one way or the other.
So Miss Lamb left, unregretting, the genteel poverty of the gentlewomen’s hostel where she had been staying, and was installed in the Piccadilly Palace Hotel in the next room to Nina’s, and a sitting-room was engaged where lessons took place each morning. Here for a week or two Nina did sums and made her acquaintance with the First French Course and struggled along the weary pathways of history and geography. But lessons, and walks in the park, even mealtimes, were very unimportant items of the day’s proceedings. Far more exciting were the afternoon runs down to the Other House to see how the decorating was getting on, and whether the new garage was finished; and there were visits to furnishing shops, Nina, Miss Lamb and Dawkins altogether, where miles of carpets were unrolled for their inspection, and sideboards and armchairs and beds were debated upon. Miss Lamb had never been so excited before in all her life. From the age of twenty (and it would not be in good taste to point out how long ago that was) she had lived at schools and colleges and other people’s houses, and now she was being given the deciding voice in planning a home of which she was to be the mistress. Her eyes were very bright behind her spectacles, but it was surprising how sharp those bright eyes were, and with what sound gentlewoman’s taste she rejected the meretricious and the shoddy. Solid furniture Miss Lamb insisted upon, but at the same time she would have it graceful of line and unassuming of appearance. Miss Lamb remembered with a shudder the mausoleum-like heaviness of the furnishings of some of the houses in which she had taught, and the brassy opulence of others. Mr. Dawkins, helplessly out of his depth, left things to her with an openly expressed gratitude that raised Miss Lamb to a seventh heaven of blushing pleasure.
In the evenings when Nina was in bed, and sometimes even, it is to be feared, while Nina was doing her lessons Miss Lamb wa
s all a-flutter with lists and note-books, working things out in a hurried whisper to herself, for she found furnishing a house a big responsibility, and she had to think of everything, curtains and sheets and cups and saucers and coal-scuttles and dish-cloths, and holding a diploma in Domestic Science did not necessarily imply that she could not forget anything. It was all very exciting and delightful and frightening; and there were maids, too, to engage, two half-trained girls, because good servants would not bury themselves in the country.
But a fortnight before Christmas everything was ready, and Dawkins and Nina and Miss Lamb could drive down to the Other House in the motor-car Dawkins had just bought (power and promise of service and stiff price and lack of ostentation were its characteristics—Dawkins had watched Miss Lamb buying furniture) to supervise the assembling of the myriad things Dawkins had bought, and to wait anxiously to view the final result. And Dawkins saw that it was all good, from the light and airy dining-room to the pretty drawing-room and the solid furnishings of his “study,” and his heart was glad within him, and Miss Lamb was very tired.
Chapter XIII
Dawkins had long ago foreseen what it was like to have a home. In his pawnbroker’s-assistant days he had lived in lodgings, and even that period had been cut into unequal halves by his four years’ war service, while since then had come the Hawk’s campaign and the Birds Island interlude. He had never been the man of the house until now, and he savored the new conditions luxuriously. Once upon a time a word from him would swing a captive guerrilla spy kicking horribly at the end of a rope; nowadays he raised a dubious eyebrow at Miss Lamb at the other end of the breakfast table when the toast which Mary the parlor-maid brought in was soft instead of chippy. Instead of frantic thirty-mile marches, shoeless and starving, he now experienced idle walks through the dripping December fields with Nina prancing at his side. It was all different, and somehow he liked it. And the local bank manager greeted him with ever increasing respect as check after check came in from Mr. Carver and his holdings of gilt-edged securities steadily increased.
Dawkins, who had never planned before, spent his time planning nowadays. Long and anxious were the talks he had with Miss Lamb about Nina. Having no first-hand knowledge of children, he was compelled to fall back upon what the books said and what Miss Lamb could suggest. Many of the books waxed maudlin over the unhappy fate of the only child, and Dawkins swore grimly to himself that Nina should never go that way; that was why, with all due respect for Miss Lamb’s teaching abilities, he determined to send Nina to the girls’ day school at Gilding town. That would partly solve the problem—and he was too modest to realize that he himself supplied the remainder of the solution.
For Nina had never known such a splendid companion as Dawkins. He took everything very seriously, and he never laughed and spoiled it all—thanks to his atrophied sense of humor, although Nina did not realize this was the reason. He would talk about all the things Nina wanted to talk about, as equal to equal, and not as adult to child, or, worse, as adult-pretending-to-be-child. He could not do this last, for the simple reason that he could never pretend anything without a week or two to rehearse in. But he would back Nina up loyally in what she did or pretended, for loyalty to the family of Royle was grained into him. He would creep ponderously along hedges at Nina’s heels, ambushing Indians or Germans as the whim took her, and he would take his part in extempore dramas (obeying dumbly and literally the fiercely whispered instructions she interspersed among her own speeches); in fact, he was as companionable and friendly and far more intelligent than any little girl could be. And he had attributes due to his position transcending any little girl’s. He could stand up to irate keepers when they were caught trespassing, and he could carry her on his back across muddy stretches of lanes which otherwise would be impossible to her with the knowledge of an acute-eyed Miss Lamb waiting at home. He had a motor-car which could take them to places too far to reach by walking, and, once you were able to convince him of the urgency of the case, he could always produce silver to buy some vital accessory for drama or game.
That need to convince him kept them friends, curiously enough. For Dawkins had worked out in his mind how it was possible to spoil Nina, and he set himself resolutely not to spoil her. At cost of profound mental exertion he saw to it that he was not always relegated to a subordinate position in the dramas; he stood up manfully for his rights in the games they played; he would not gratify each and every one of her whims as they came along, much as it hurt him sometimes to give a refusal to her guileful pleadings. He reserved to himself the final decision in such cases, although, as Nina found, he was always willing to listen to the arguments she produced. In fact Nina, without noticing, discovered often enough that the search for reasons in her requests would find her wanting, and her whim flickered out for lack of unargumentative opposition. And Dawkins could stoop to cajolery on occasions, and once he had made his decision he was immovable. Dawkins, you see, had once held a high command in a guerrilla army, and there is not much difference between guerrillas and children, when all is said and done.
Those same guerrilla experiences of his, too, had taught him the evils of a divided command. It was inevitable that sooner or later Nina should try to play him off against Miss Lamb, and the other way about, in the way children use instinctively. But Nina never profited by these gambits, for Dawkins’ first question was always, “What does Miss Lamb say?” And when Nina said, “Oh, of course she says I mustn’t, but——”; then Dawkins would reply solidly, “Then you hadn’t better, had you, old lady?” Miss Lamb’s authority (however its direction was modified by the strictly private evening conversations with her employer) was always backed in Nina’s eyes by the terrible, uncontrovertible last word of Mr. Dawkins, which, after one or two little experiences, she never gainsaid. Mr. Dawkins’ frightening quietness, and the impelling gleam in his eyes, reduced even pert little Nina to submission—even at the same time as she knew, in the depths of her, that he would give his life for her were it necessary.
Mr. Dawkins, in his blundering way, was doing his best for her even during those early weeks, including Christmas, before she went to school. His vague ideas that mothers went about planning future friendships for their daughters, and that they entered into society in order to introduce their children there later, led him soberly to apply for membership at the two golf clubs which spread over the outskirts of Gilding town. As ever in this world, the two clubs represented different strata of society, for the Gilding Club admitted Gilding tradesmen and was not in the least particular about its membership, while the Gilding Manor Club was only frequented by the County society and the bluest London blood. And it was inevitable that Mr. Dawkins’ application was accepted by the Town Club and refused by the Manor Club. For who was this newcomer, who had bought quite a small house, and belonged to no London club, and who could not produce even a proposer and seconder? Even Mr. Dawkins expected this, and he shrewdly guessed that the situation would be materially altered when he became a good player and had made friends with those members of the Town Club who were also members of the Manor. Mr. Dawkins bided his time and swore a great oath to become a first-class player of golf as rapidly as possible.
So Christmas came and went, and Mr. Dawkins carved the turkey with due solemnity, and he and Miss Lamb spent an exciting Christmas Eve filling Nina’s stocking (Nina put up with it; of course she was much too old to believe in Father Christmas or anything silly like that); and on Christmas morning Dawkins shamefacedly presented Miss Lamb with a five-pound note, which Miss Lamb accepted with joy in her heart, for her six months’ unemployment before she attained this haven of rest had left her wardrobe very scanty even for a spinster of modest wants. And for three careless weeks after Christmas Nina and Dawkins spent their happy time together, until at last the first day of term dawned and after breakfast found Nina and him in the car together. Nina was bound for her first day at Gilding Girls’ School, and Dawkins, a little self-conscious in his new plus-four
suit (plus-fours were an object of derision to Dawkins when he was younger), was bound for his first lesson in golf from the Gilding town professional. For they had decided that every morning they would travel the two miles into town together, and in the afternoon Dawkins would fetch Nina if he were free, while otherwise she could take the local bus half-way home and be met (until she was more used to it) by Miss Lamb.
The club professional looked Mr. Dawkins up and down, with an appreciative eye for his burly shoulders (in the neat brown suit made by the excellent tailor recommended to Dawkins by the Piccadilly Palace Hotel valet), for his powerful wrists and hands, and for the fierce determination of his craggy features.
“Ye say ye’ve never played before?” he asked.
“No,” said Dawkins.
“And do ye just want to play, or do ye want to play gowf?”
“I want to be a good player, quick,” said Dawkins sturdily.
“That’s what I wanted to know. Ye’ve a weary way ahead of ye,” grinned the professional. “Let’s come and choose some clubs for ye.”