Page 31 of Follow the Lonesome Trail
“Didn’t I tell you?” he said to Butch when he had recovered himself.
“I’ll have a little talk with them, if you’ll leave us alone for a few minutes,” said Guy. “I think they’ll confide in me.”
And so when the defenders of the crown had gone out, Guy invited the children, who had finished their breakfast, into the big sunny living room. They came a little shyly, but they already liked their host’s looks, and it took him only the few minutes of asking them their names and ages to put them at their ease.
“Now,” he said. “Steady and Butch have been telling me your troubles, but I suspect they’ve gotten them a little mixed.” The children looked sheepish. “Perhaps you can help put things straight for me?”
“I suppose we’d better,” said Margot, with a rueful glance at Theodore. “You see, we didn’tmeanto.”
“You didn’t tell them you were a princess, did you?”
“Oh, no,” said Margot, blushing. “That was a mistake. But I’m afraid we let them go on thinking it, so we wouldn’t have to go to the Orphans’ Home.”
“Suppose you tell me all about it,” said Guy.
There was something different about him from other grown-ups they had known, something so strong and safe and reliable, that made it seem a relief to explain to him, and put everything in his hands. And so the story was told—all about the make-believe play, how it had begun and what it was used for, and how it had got so unaccountably tangled up with real life in Flat Rock. Guy Dunstable did not laugh. Midway through the telling he lifted Dominic onto his knee, watching all three faces as he listened, but seeing also another face he knew with shades ofresemblance to all of them, seeing it in his mind’s eye reflecting weariness, anxiety, loneliness, regret.
He asked, in a carefully controlled voice, about their parents—and that story came out too, its poignancy accentuated by Margot’s simple telling. “Papa was American. Mother ran away with him to get married when she was young. He was always going to make a lot of money, but he didn’t, so after he died we didn’t have any, and Mother had to give music-lessons.”
“Did she write to your uncle all that time? How did she know where he was?”
“He saw the notice of Papa’s funeral in a newspaper, a long while later, and wrote to her, and after that they wrote letters to each other.”
“Did your uncle know she had no money?”
“No,” said Margot. “Mother said something once when she was writing a letter about—about that she had made her bed, but at least she had the consolation of one home tie.”
The Bertram pride—the foolish, gallant Bertram pride. Writing to each other, never letting on how bad the times each had fallen on. At least Clara had had enough sense in the end to ask her brother’s help for her children, though little dreaming how ill he was able to give it.
“I put that in the stories, too, you know,” added Margot. “Mother used to tell us stories about the big beautiful house in England when she was a little girl—so I made it the castle the Queen was exiled from, and always longed to return to one day.”
She added timidly, after a moment’s silence, “Mr. Dunstable—isn’t there some way we could stay out West for a little while? I don’t mean to go on pretending about being in hiding, but couldn’t we work for someone? I can do dishes, and dust, and sew, and Theodore can do chores too…”
“There’ll be no need for that,” said Guy Dunstable, with a surprising firmness in his voice.
“But it isn’trightto go on pretending, is it? And that’s the only other way we can stay on our own. If Mother hasn’t found a situation—”
“Theodore,” interrupted Guy, “go over to my desk and open the bottom one of those small drawers inside it on the left. See the wallet in there? Bring it here.”
Theodore brought it, and Guy unfolded the wallet and produced the tattered picture of an old manor house, and held it out for them to see. “Do you know what this is?” he said.
Margot did not answer. Her face had gone quite pale with astonishment. But Theodore cried out, “Margot, it’s the castle—it’s like the picture in our room, the one Mother painted!”
Guy Dunstable laid the picture down, and put one arm around Dominic and the other around Margot. “You are all going to stay here for a long visit,” he said, “and I’m going to write to your mother and tell her all about your uncle, and how you came here, and invite her to come out for a visit too. She won’t mind your staying here—because you see, she and I were very old friends, back in England when we were children.”
“Stayhere?” said Dominic. “With the cowboys?”
“I don’t think Clara would approve of my putting you in the bunkhouse,” said Guy, laughing, “but here, on the ranch—yes.”
“Itislike one of your stories, Margot,” laughed Theodore, nudging his still speechless sister. “We’ve got friends in secret wherever we go.”
“Would you like that?” said Guy gently, looking down at Margot. She nodded, her eyes brimming with tears.
“I wish we could stay here forever,” said Dominic, who was never slow in making up his mind.
“Well, we’ll see what your mother says,” said Guy carefully, “but if she likes the country, and the people—I think I can find her a situation out here, if she wants to take it.”
The front door banged, and Butch Donnell hurtled into the room, perspiring and agitated. “The marshal’s here!” he panted. “He’s been in Flat Rock and heard everything. Steady’s trying to stall him off—hide the kids—under the bed, or get ’em out the back door—quick!”
