“Oh, we've been here a long time. Years,” he said lightly. “All summer?” I persisted, interpreting the exaggeration. “Yes, all the summer.”
I say he would not tell me. Even so early I realised that it was he and not the girls who was to be my chief concern. They were for the most part quite silent; all I could get out of them for a long time was a 'yes' or 'no' given, I generally felt, without any understanding of the question. I did, however, satisfy myself to some extent about their relations to Nuaman.
“You're not brother and sisters,” I had asked direct. “Oh no, not that.”
“Cousins, then?”
“Cousins? I don't understand. What are cousins?”
I explained. “Yes, yes!” he said, when I had disentangled myself from degrees of kinship more complicated than I had realised before trying to define them. “Yes, something of the sort.” And as if repeating the lesson to Marvan and Ianthe he rattled away to them for a minute or two in their own language quoting the word 'cousin' and impressing it upon them, as it seemed.
We spent all that day together, indoors and out, ranging into every part of the park, peeping into every room of the old house except only Dr Ravelin's own. I was amazed at Nuaman's acute observation and knowledge of English birds and animals and flowers. Often, it is true, he did not know the English names, and I had to confess my own ignorance so often that I grew ashamed of myself, but he seemed to know them all in his own language and to distinguish every one without hesitation.
Marvan and Ianthe followed us in cur comings and goings, always reserved and shy and a little behind. He gave them little orders—or what seemed to be orders— in their language, always softly and gaily, and they obeyed promptly, fetching and carrying for him as an English girl might fetch and carry for an adored brother years younger than herself. I had learned, however, that Nuaman and the girls were the same age.
On the whole I remember feeling well content when my first day's work ended at the children's supper time. I went up to my room and surveyed my day. It had been a strenuous one, and there was one more strenuous thing yet to do. I had to meet Nuaman's challenge. Luckily I had sent on all my clothes to Ringstones. I put on my gym shorts and a jersey and a pair of gym shoes and slipped out into the park while the children were still at supper and Dr Ravelin was still in his study.
I found the oak tree again without difficulty. I paced back about as far as Nuaman had done and studied the thing. I had never attempted anything quite like it before, and I could see that it needed good judgment if I was not to bungle it or hurt myself. Then, as I looked at the trunk of the tree, I saw there was something that made it a little easier: a slight, rounded projection at about the six foot mark. That, I decided, after examining it at close quarters, was where Nuaman had got his foothold. I drew back again and went at it. I did better than I expected; I got my foot on the projecting knob but missed my grip on the branch above me. Still, I sprang backwards and landed on my feet without damage. I timed it better the next time and got a good grip on the branch with both hands. From there it was just like an exercise on the beam in the gym, though I wished for my arms' and legs' sake that the branch had been as smooth as the beam. It was easy enough to climb up to the nest at the top of the tree, but, just to make sure that I could do it quickly the next day, I went up and down again. I stood on the lowest branch again, holding lightly on with one hand and surveying my knees and elbows before jumping down. Then I started so that I all but lost my balance when a soft voice said:
“They haven't come back? No, I don't expect they will. I saw them in the wood.”
There he was, dressed now in his green shorts and cream shirt, squatting on the grass below and looking up at me like a good−natured little goblin.
I lowered myself and sat on the branch and said, “Well?”
“I've just finished my supper,” he said. “Shall we go climbing now?”
“Aha!” I said. “Now I'm dressed for it and you're not. We'll climb tomorrow. Just now I'm going to go and wash off this moss and black and make myself respectable for dinner.''
“Yes, your dress is very good,” he remarked gravely. “I like it. You must wear it always.”
“It looks as if I shall need to,” I said. “But I think I shall prefer a pair of slacks if mere is much tree−climbing on the programme. I hadn't realised my skin came off so easily.”
“You know,” he said, when I had swung myself down and we were walking back to the house. “I like girls who can make facts.”
“Make facts?” I repeated, quite baffled.
“Why yes. To jump up to that branch is quite a fact.”
“Oh, I see. You mean a feat. We say, make feats. No we don't. We say, to do feats.” He murmured the words over to himself for a time: fact, feat, fact, feat. Then asked: “Is making a squirrel cage a fact or a feat?”
“Lord!” I said. “Well, I suppose it's a fact that you made it and it would be a feat if I made it.” He laughed, and in spite of his previous mistake I'm sure he saw what I meant.
“Well, but Marvan and Ianthe,” I asked him. “Can they do feats, as you call it?”
“Oh yes, they can,” he replied. “Katia's the one who's not really very good at that kind of feat. But she can run. I hope you will run with me tomorrow.”
“Who on earth is Katia?” I demanded.
He gave me a wondering look. “Why, Katia who puts the things on the table and makes the beds and helps Mrs. Sarkissian.”
“The maid? But she's away, isn't she?”
“Yes, she's away at present,” he replied without much interest. “But look, will you run a race with me tomorrow? With me and Ianthe, if you like?”
He wheedled and insisted so that I had to promise. I reckon myself as good as anybody in the Junior year at Towerton over four−forty yards, but from what I had already seen of Nuaman I foresaw, without any doubt at all, that I should be only a fair second to him.
(5)
A fair second. While I hesitated what course to adopt with the children my role was given me by Nuaman. I may have wondered in what capacity exactly I had come to Ringstones and what I ought to be doing to earn my thirty pounds, but he had no doubts at alclass="underline" I was to be his playmate. It suited me. I don't think I've ever enjoyed any organised games one half so much as the boundless fun of tearing about that Park with Nuaman. I'd never had such a chance to run wild before and I didn't give a hoot that I was behaving more like fifteen than nineteen.
Only in the evenings, dining with Dr Ravelin, and having disguised myself as a young lady, did I have occasional twinges of conscience. I never saw the Doctor in the daytime. He said he kept to his study all day; yet I felt he must now and then catch sight of me and the children in our chasing about the place. He had never commented on the way I behaved and I did not suppose that he expected from a girl of these days the deportment of one of Jane Austen's young ladies, but I certainly had a feeling that the spectacle of me prancing about the park in my skimpy gym trunks or my short Towerton tunic, which I wore most of the time, might jar on him. Might he not, glimpsing me racing bare−legged over the grass, have a wistful vision of long satin skirts sweeping that same grass and the ample folds of a furbelowed frock billowing with decorous grace upon it as ladies picnicked there long ago?
I need not have worried. I discovered that he had quite other visions of the forms that had paced his park before us.
He proposed one evening that we should take a stroll. We went from the table, he in his formal black suit and starched shirt and I in my evening frock, and in the rich light of the sun that was just touching the edge of Ringstones Moor we walked slowly across the grass barred with the shadows of the trees. The stillness and peace of the evening were complete. The three kinds of sounds I recall seemed only to emphasise by their distinctness the purity of the silence that they cut: the clear song of thrushes in the ash−tree tops; the ceaseless monologue of the running water, and the far−carrying bawling—there is no other word for it—of a well−grown lamb from the hill.