Dimbie and I—and Amelia
by Mabel Barnes-Grundy · English · Gutenberg #47003 · 452,379 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Dimbie and I—and Amelia
Author: Mabel Barnes-Grundy
Release date: September 29, 2014 [eBook #47003]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DIMBIE AND I—AND AMELIA ***
[Illustration: Cover art]
[Frontispiece: MARGUERITE]
DIMBIE AND I
--AND AMELIA
BY
MABEL BARNES-GRUNDY
_Author of_ "_Hazel of Heatherland._"
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
_Copyright_, 1906
By THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY
_Copyright_, 1907
BY THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY
Published, March, 1907
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
WHICH INTRODUCES DIMBIE
CHAPTER II
NANTY DISCOURSES ON THE WRITING OF BOOKS
CHAPTER III
ON AMELIA, FLUES, AND DRAIN-BAMBOOS
CHAPTER IV
DIMBIE'S BIRTHDAY
CHAPTER V
A LETTER FROM MISS FAIRBROTHER
CHAPTER VI
SORROW OVERTAKES ME
CHAPTER VII
DR. RENTON BREAKS SOME NEWS TO ME
CHAPTER VIII
DIMBIE COMFORTS ME
CHAPTER IX
AMELIA EXPRESSES HER OPINION OF ME
CHAPTER X
I DISCOVER THAT DR. RENTON IS IN LOVE
CHAPTER XI
MY FIRST CALLER
CHAPTER XII
NANTY CHEERS ME UP
CHAPTER XIII
UNDER THE APPLE TREE
CHAPTER XIV
MOTHER AND PETER ARRIVE ON A VISIT
CHAPTER XV
AMELIA GIVES ME NOTICE
CHAPTER XVI
FOREBODINGS
CHAPTER XVII
MY WORST FEARS ARE REALISED
CHAPTER XVIII
DIMBIE ROLLS A GREAT LOAD FROM MY HEART
CHAPTER XIX
WE INHERIT A FORTUNE
CHAPTER XX
PROFESSOR LEIGHRAIL PAYS US A CALL
CHAPTER XXI
JANE FAIRBROTHER'S IMPENDING VISIT
CHAPTER XXII
A LITERARY LADY HONOURS ME WITH A VISIT
CHAPTER XXIII
I SURPRISE DR. RENTON'S SECRET
CHAPTER XXIV
MUSINGS ON AUTUMN AND THE ARRIVAL OF JANE
CHAPTER XXV
AN ENGAGEMENT, AND I TELL JANE MY STORY
CHAPTER XXVI
DIMBIE TAKES PETER AND AMELIA IN HAND
CHAPTER XXVII
A DISCUSSION ABOUT A WEDDING GOWN
CHAPTER XXVIII
PREPARATIONS FOR A WEDDING
CHAPTER XXIX
JANE'S WEDDING
CHAPTER XXX
THE DEATH OF A LITTLE BLACK CHICKEN
AN AFTERWORD
ILLUSTRATIONS
Marguerite . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
Peter has spent his spare time building canoes
Professor Leighrail
This is how he began
Marguerite, I don't want to frighten you
Your will will always be mine, Marguerite
Dimbie and I--and Amelia
CHAPTER I
WHICH INTRODUCES DIMBIE
Outside, the world is bathed in sunshine, beautiful, warm, life-giving
spring sunshine.
Other worlds than mine may be shivering in a March wind, but my own
little corner is simply basking.
The chestnut in the frog-pond field at the bottom of the garden is
holding forth eager arms, crowned with little sticky, swelling buds, to
the white, warm light. The snowdrops and crocuses have raised their
pretty faces for a caress, and a chaffinch perched in the apple tree
is, in its customary persistent fashion, endeavouring to outsing a
thrush who keeps informing his lady-love that she may be clever enough
to lay four speckled eggs, but her voice, well--without wishing to be
too personal--would bear about the same relation to his as the croak of
those silly frogs in the field would bear to the note of his esteemed
friend Mr. Nightingale, who was still wintering in the south.
Yes, there is sunshine out of doors and sunshine in my heart. So much
sunshine, that in my exuberance I have only just refrained from
embracing Amelia, in spite of her down-at-heel, squeaky shoes, rakish
cap, and one-and-three-ha'penny pearl necklace.
You will surmise I have had a fortune left me by my great-uncle. I
don't possess a great-uncle. That I have been the recipient of a new
Paris hat. Wrong. That someone has said I am the prettiest girl in
the county. Bosh! That Peter has ceased to bully mother. That will
happen when the millennium arrives.
Oh, foolish conjecturer! You will never guess. It is something far
more delightful than any of these things. I will whisper it to you.
"Dimbie is coming home this evening." You smile while I ecstatically
hug Jumbles. "Dimbie's a dog?" you hazard. "A white, pink-eyed,
objectionable Maltese terrier." I chuckle at your being so very wrong.
You are not brilliant; in fact, you are stupid.
Dimbie's a husband. _My_ husband. And he's been away for three days
at the bedside of his sick Aunt Letitia, who lives in Yorkshire. I
think it is most unreasonable for any aunt to live in Yorkshire and be
ill when we live in Surrey. It is so far away. Anyhow, Dimbie shall
never go away again to Aunt Letitia, sick or well, without taking me
with him. For I find I cannot get on at all without him. When I turn
a retrospective eye upon the years without Dimbie, it seems to me that
I did not know the meaning of the word happiness.
I was foolish enough to say this to Peter just before I was married,
and he sniffed in the objectionable way which mother and I have always
so specially disliked. It sounds undutiful to speak of father thus,
but he does sniff. And I might as well remark in passing that I am
very far from being attached to Peter, as I always call him behind his
back, being less like a father than anyone I have ever met. I am sorry
that this should be so, but I didn't choose him for a parent. Parents
have a say in their children's existence, but you can't select your own
progenitors. Were this within your power, General Peter Macintosh and
I would only be on distant bowing terms at the moment, certainly not
parent and child. And yet mother would be lonely without me, although
I have left her. Poor, darling mother! That is my one trouble, the
fly in the ointment; her loneliness, her defencelessness.
I do not mean that Peter kicks her with clogs, or throws lamps at her
head. But he worries her, nags at her.
Now Dimbie never nags. I think it was his utter unlikeness to Peter
that first attracted me. Peter is small and narrow in his views;
Dimbie is large in every sense of the word. Peter has green eyes;
Dimbie has blue. Peter has a straight, chiselled nose--the Macintosh
nose he calls it: Dimbie has a dear crooked one--an accident at
football. Peter has---- But I think I'll just keep to Dimbie's
"points" without referring to General Macintosh any further--well,
because Dimbie is incomparable.
I met him first in an oil-shop in Dorking. I was ordering some varnish
for one of Peter's canoes. Since Peter "retired," which, unfortunately
for mother and me, was many years ago--he having married late in
life--he has spent his spare time in a workshop at the bottom of the
garden building canoes which, up to the present, he has never succeeded
in getting to float. But that is a mere detail. No one has ever
expressed a wish to float in them, so what matters? The point is that
this arduous work kept him shut up in his workshop for many hours away
from mother and me. It was then we breathed and played and laughed,
and Miss Fairbrother, my governess, read us entrancing stories and
taught me how to slide down the staircase on a tea-tray and do other
delightful things, while mother kept a sharp look-out for the advance
of the enemy.
[Illustration: PETER HAS SPENT HIS SPARE TIME BUILDING CANOES]
Well, Dimbie and I got to know each other in this little oil-shop. I,
or my muslin frock, became entangled in some wire-netting, which really
had no business to be anywhere but at an ironmonger's, and Dimbie
disentangled me, there being no one else present to perform this kindly
act, the shopman being up aloft searching for his best copal varnish.
We were not engaged till quite six weeks had elapsed after this,
because Peter would not sanction such a proceeding. He said I must
behave as a general's daughter, and not as a tradesman's; and when I
pointed out that royalties frequently became engaged after seeing each
other about half a dozen times, and that publicly, he just shouted at
me. For years mother and I have been trying to persuade Peter that we
are not soldiers, but he doesn't appear to believe us. He only gave
his consent in the end to our engagement because he was tired and gouty
and wanted to be let alone.
Dimbie was like the importunate widow, and he importuned in season and
out of season, from break of day till set of sun. He neglected his
business, took rooms in Dorking, would fly up to the city for a couple
of hours each day, and spent the rest of his time on our doorstep when
he wasn't allowed inside the house. Peter tried threats, bribery,
shouting, drill language of the most fearful description; but Dimbie
stuck manfully to his guns, and at last Peter was bound to admit that
Dimbie must have come of some good fighting stock. Dimbie admitted
most cheerfully that he had, that his great-great-grandfather had
stormed the heights of Abraham and Wolfe. At which Peter laid down his
arms and briefly said, "Take her!" And Dimbie did so at the very
earliest opportunity, which was during the Christmas holidays. And so
I am his greatly-loving and much-loved wife.
Much loved I know I am by the very way he looks at me, strokes my hair,
whispers my name, stares angrily at Amelia when upon some pretext she
lingers in the room after bringing in coffee and won't leave us alone.
Ah, that being alone! How delightful it is. We have enjoyed that best
of all. We had so few opportunities before we were married, Peter
appearing to think it was our duty to play whist each evening, with
most cheerful countenances; and were I, out of sheer desperation, to
trump his best card, he would scream with annoyance.
But I'm not getting on with Dimbie's points. I think his dearest
friend, or even his wife or mother, would be over-stepping the strict
boundary-line of truth were they to describe him as handsome. He's not
handsome. For which Nanty, mother's old schoolfellow, says I should be
deeply grateful. Handsome men, she tells me, have no time to admire
their own wives, so taken up are they with their own graces, which is a
pity for the wives.
In addition to the crooked nose I mentioned Dimbie has also a crooked
mouth, giving him the most humorous, comical, and at the same time the
most kindly expression. I wouldn't have Dimbie's mouth straight for
the world. It droops at the left corner. He opines that he was born
that way, that it must be a family mouth, at which his mother is
extremely indignant. She asserts that the mouths in her family at any
rate were quite perfect, and that this droop is the result of a horrid
pipe which was never out of the corner of his mouth, alight or dead,
throughout his college days. Dimbie laughs at this, and says shall he
grow a moustache to cover up the defect, and I say No, he shan't.
The crook of his mouth and nose happen to be in opposite directions, so
even when he's depressed he looks quite happy and amused.
Nature, trying to balance things up a little, then gave him jolly,
blue, twinkling eyes, and crisp brown hair with little kinks in it.
He will be thirty-one on the second of next month. His mother, whom I
have only once seen and that was at our wedding, doesn't approve of his
telling his age to any casual inquirer in his usual direct manner, for
it naturally gives her own age away. Mrs. Westover, Nanty says,
imagines she would pass for under forty when the wind is in the west.
"Why west?" mother and I had cried together.
"A soft damp west wind will make a woman look ten years younger," said
Nanty sagely. "It is a north wind which works such havoc with her
complexion."
Mother and I have learnt a great deal from Nanty one way or another,
and the funny part of it is that the information which doesn't matter
always seems to stick in my memory, while important things go, which
Dimbie says is the way of the world.
Dimbie is "on" the Stock Exchange. Peter calls it a sink of iniquity
and its denizens liars and thieves. One of the liars and thieves
married me on the strength of a good deal in Rio Tintos. Rio Tintos
must be beautiful things to have been the means of giving us so much
happiness. Dimbie says they are not, that they are just plain copper
mines in Spain. Dimbie is mistaken. Copper is one of the most
beautiful of metals with its red-gold, warm colour. It is the most
romantic of metals. A tin mine in Cornwall would never have done for
us what Rio Tintos have done, I feel convinced. The dictionary says
copper was perhaps the first metal employed by man, which makes it
doubly interesting to me. Each day I scan the financial column of the
paper to see if Rio Tintos are up or down. Dimbie says he has no
interest in them now, and smiles at my eagerness, but it makes no
difference. The words stand to me for happiness, and I shall search
for them always.
CHAPTER II
NANTY DISCOURSES ON THE WRITING OF BOOKS
When I casually mentioned to Nanty--yesterday afternoon over our
tea--that I had begun to write a book I was unprepared for her
opposition, which almost amounted to a command that I should do nothing
of the kind. But then she misunderstood me from the very beginning,
which was only natural now I come to reflect upon it, added to which
she has a disconcerting habit of jumping to conclusions.
At the outset of our conversation her manner was depressed as she
looked into the fire.
"Ah, well," she said at length, "it can't be helped! I suppose you
mean a first-person, diary, daily-round sort of book?"
I nodded, pleased at her acumen.
"It is the worst and most tiresome kind, but perhaps it will be best
for your poor husband."
"My poor husband!" I echoed.
"Yes."
"Will you kindly explain?"
"It will be difficult, but I'll try."
She settled herself in her chair more comfortably.
"It appears to me that women, dear Marguerite, write books from several
motives, the principal being that, unknown to herself, a woman will get
rid in this way of her own self-consciousness. It is hard on the
public; it is a blessing in disguise to her friends."
"Nanty!"
"I don't say you are of that sort. Why, I believe the child's eyes are
actually full of tears!" she added in consternation.
"Go on," I said.
"But you're going to be hurt."
I shook my head.
"Well, I will add at once that I should not expect to find in the pages
of your book as much self-consciousness as is customary in a young girl
of your years. General Macintosh is not a person to encourage
illusions about oneself. To live with him must be an education,
painful but liberal."
I smiled faintly.
"Some women write books because they are lonely. An absorbing
occupation, even if badly performed, helps to pass the time, and they
yearn to see themselves in print. In fact, all writers yearn to see
themselves in print--a most natural desire on their part, but one to be
discouraged in this age of over-publication. Other women write because
they say they '_love_ it.' I am not sure that this type isn't the
worst of the lot. They imagine because they love it that they must
necessarily do it well. Not at all, the deduction is a poor one. I
love bridge, but rarely pull off a 'no trumper.'
"And a few, a _very_ few, write because they have really something to
say, something to tell. Something new--no, not new, there is nothing
new under the sun, but a fresh way of telling an old story. A burning
force, something stronger than themselves, which is another name for
genius, compels them to speak, to give their message, and the world is
the gainer. Now why do you want to write? Which of these four
impulses is yours?"
She rose and drew on her gloves.
"A burning force stronger than myself, which is another name for
genius."
She laughed.
"You're not offended with me?" she asked as I conducted her to the gate.
"Just a teeny bit, Nanty."
"Well, you mustn't be."
She took my two hands in both of hers.
"I couldn't dream of permitting you to sulk with me, little Marguerite.
I've known you since the days when you wore a pinafore and had to be
slapped for washing some snails in the best toilet ware in my spare
room before throwing them to the ducks--nasty child. It seems hard to
discourage you, to talk to you thus, but whatever in the name of
fortune has put such a dreadful idea into your head?"
"Do you think it so dreadful?"
"Terribly dreadful!" she returned. "I knew an authoress--I beg her
pardon, I mean an author--who after a small success with her first
book--nasty, miry sort of book it was too--left her husband, quite a
decent man as men go, with red hair and freckles (they lived in the
country), and went to London to see life as she called it, which meant
sitting on the top of a penny omnibus and eating rolls and butter at an
A.B.C. She wore her hair _à la_ Sarah Bernhardt, and expected to have
an intrigue, which never came off, the lady being past forty and plain
at that. When her second edition money--I think it got into a second
edition--was finished she was very glad and thankful to creep back to
her husband, who in a big, magnanimous way took her in, which I
wouldn't have done. Then I knew another author--successful fifth
edition this was--whose head became so swelled that some cows in a
field--she was lying in a ditch composing--took it for a mangel-wurzel
one day and ate it."
"Do you expect me to laugh here?" I asked.
"Not at all," she reassured me. "I only want to impress you before it
is too late. I have one more case. A poor girl wrote a book called
_Awakenings_, or some such title. A reviewer on an ultra-superior,
provincial paper, the _Damchester Guardian_ I think it was, cut it to
pieces with the cleverness, cruelty and ruthlessness of extreme youth.
The critic must have been young, for only youth is really hard. There
was not a good word for it; it was described as maudlin, sentimental
twaddle. The girl--she was a fool of course, but we can't all be born
clever--committed suicide. This was a bit of rare good luck for her
publisher, for he got an advertisement for nothing, and sold forty
thousand copies of the book in three months."
Nanty paused for breath. John, the coachman, looked respectfully ahead
and pretended he didn't mind waiting; and I called her attention to our
bank of crocuses.
"Don't like crocuses," she said.
I laughed.
"Still obstinate?"
"No," I replied, "I gave up my book over my second cup of tea."
"Dear Marguerite," she said, kissing me. "I am sure you will make your
husband very happy."
"I hope so."
"You're bound to, if you are as earnest as all that about it. Your
face looks like--like--a toadstool!"
"Thank you," I laughed.
"I'm not going to say pretty things to you. You get quite enough from
that silly Dimbie of yours. But now tell me before I go, just to
satisfy my curiosity, what is your reason for wishing to write this
book? I always thought you such a simple child."
I closed the carriage door and looked away.
She leaned forward and turned my face round.
"Why, she's actually blushing!" she ejaculated.
"Home," I said to John, wresting my face away.
"But it's not home," she contradicted, "and won't be home till you tell
me why you are blushing like a peony."
"Nanty," I cried, "you are too bad."
"Marguerite, why are you looking so guilty and ashamed?"
"I'm not," I said stoutly.
"You are."
"Why should I look ashamed?"
"That's what I want to get at. I ask you the simplest question, upon
which your countenance becomes that of a criminal run to earth."
"Pictorial exaggeration," I said lightly. "And, Nanty, I'm catching
cold. Remember it is only March."
"Take this rug," she replied coolly. "I shall not let you go till you
give me your reason for wishing to appear in print."
"But I don't," I said with heat.
"You said you did."
"Never. You imagined that. I simply said I was writing a book--a
daily-round sort of journal, as you described it. I never referred to
publication."
Nanty turned up her veil and stared at me for some seconds.
"Well, well, well!" she said at length. "I wonder you didn't say so
sooner."
"You never gave me an opportunity. At my first words you were off at a
tangent, and then I became interested in your awful experiences."
She sat back and laughed.
"The impudence of the child drawing me like this. If you don't want
your books published write fifty of them. It will keep you well out of
mischief and do nobody any harm."
Then she fell into a brown study, and I prepared to tiptoe softly
through the gate, when she cried suddenly--
"Wait! You have still not told me why you are doing this scribbling.
I should have thought you would have found plenty to do without
writing. There is your house--your sewing----"
"You will laugh."
"I won't."
"Promise."
"I promise."
"Well," I began, "I----"
Nanty was looking at the sunset.
"I want to write, I must write," I went on more firmly, "because I am
so--happy. It sounds silly, ridiculous, I know, and you won't
understand, but----"
I paused. Nanty was still looking at the sunset. "You see, I was
never very happy before I was married because of Peter--father, I mean.
You have visited us often, so you know. You know how he worries poor
mother. It was impossible to be happy. But now it is all so
different, so wonderful, so tranquil, that I sometimes feel almost sick
with happiness. It is too good to last, it cannot last. I am
sometimes frightened. And I cannot let Dimbie know how I feel. Once
you told me not to let the man I loved be too sure of it. The moment
in which a man knows he has gained your love he ceases to value it."
"Did I say that?"
"Yes, you said that to me the day I was married. So what am I to do?
I can't tell Amelia; I can't write it to mother, for Peter would sneer.
I must have an outlet for my feelings, or they will overwhelm me. When
I have sung and danced and rushed round the garden after Jumbles I can
fly to my book. I can enter, 'Dimbie is a dear,' 'Dimbie is _my_
husband, and he will be home in half an hour.' 'One Tree Cottage is
the sweetest spot on earth, and I, Marguerite Westover, am the happiest
girl in the world.' When the last half hour before his homecoming
hangs heavily I can enter all the events of the day. It will pass the
time. In the years to come, when I am an old, old woman, I can turn
back the pages and read again of my first wonderful year. It will be a
book only for myself, only for my eyes. That which Dimbie could not
understand I can put between its covers. A man, I imagine, cannot
always understand the way a woman feels about things that touch her
deeply, like--well, like when Dimbie and I say our prayers together.
And the song of a bird, a thrush woke us the other morning. It was
perched on a bough in a shaft of warm sunlight, and was pouring out its
little heart just as though it were breaking with happiness. My eyes
were full of tears, and Dimbie saw them. He said--well, he didn't
understand. He thought I was sad, and I couldn't explain even to him
that my tears were of joy. And Amelia--she looks at me so when six
o'clock comes and I cannot keep my feet still. I brush up the hearth
and put Dimbie's slippers to warm, and cut the magazines, and place our
two chairs side by side, very close together, and put a daffodil in my
hair, and go to the window, and wander to the kitchen, and go to the
front door, and back to the kitchen to see how the meat is doing,
and----"
I broke off, for Nanty had held up her hands for me to cease, and when
she turned to me her eyes were full of tears.
"Write your book, Marguerite," she whispered. "Write your book." Then
she stooped and kissed me, and then she gave a laugh, but there was a
little sob in it.
I looked at her wonderingly.
"You say I told you to hide your love from the man you have married. I
take the words back. Better too much love than too little between
husband and wife, for theirs is a union dependent on much affection and
sacrifice if they would be happy. And God forbid that sorrow,
disillusionment shall ever enter into your life. God forbid that you
shall ever be lonely, stretch out a hand at night and find emptiness,
pour out your troubles and find a deaf ear turned to you, offer a
caress which is met with a curse."
Her voice was so low I could hardly catch the bitterness of her words.
"But can such things ever be?" I cried.
She laughed a little dry laugh.
"I have known of them. It would seem that some marriages were not made
in heaven."
I thought of Peter and mother. Had Nanty's marriage been unhappy too?
She had been alone ever since I could remember. The mistress of a
handsome house, lovely garden...
Nanty broke in----
"And when you write your book, don't let it all be of Dimbie. Some
women haven't got a Dimbie, and women are the principal readers of
women's books. Enter as well all the little worries and cares which
are bound to crop up sooner or later, so that the contrast between your
life and the life of some lonely, unloved woman may not be too cruel.
She will laugh at Amelia's smashing the best china, enjoy your
misfortunes, cheer up when Dimbie is down with typhoid and not expected
to live."
"But you forget my book will only be for myself. I don't know enough
to write one for other people. Dimbie says I am very ignorant."
"Oh, of course! And that after all is the best sort of book, the one
you write for yourself. Some publisher will be saved endless care and
worry. Your friends will be saved the necessity of turning down side
streets when they see you coming along--they have barely four-and-six
for one of the classics, or a book they really want, let alone yours."
I laughed.
"You are not polite."
"No, Marguerite; I love you, and I want to save you from your friends.
But perhaps some day when it is finished, when your year is over, when
you are too busy, like so many modern girls, to do anything but play
golf and bridge, or there may be another interest in your life, you
might let me have a look at it. A manuscript written out of sheer
happiness might be interesting, though a trifle tiresome. There has
been _The Sorrows of Werther_. Why not _The Joys of Marguerite_?
Besides, your grammar and punctuation might require some correction."
"Nanty," I said, "you are making fun of me, and I'm very cold."
"Marguerite," she commanded, "give me another kiss, and then I'll go.
I have enjoyed my afternoon with the little bride."
"I hear the whistle of Dimbie's train."
"What an astonishing thing!" she remarked sarcastically.
"I mean, won't you stay and see him?"
"No, I won't. I'm going home."
"John must have been interested in our conversation."
"John grows deafer each day," she said as she drove away.
I wandered down the lane to meet Dimbie, and presently he turned the
corner.
CHAPTER III
ON AMELIA, FLUES, AND DRAIN-BAMBOOS
"Put down your worries," said Nanty, so I must perforce enter Amelia
and the kitchen boiler. The boiler won't yield hot water, and Amelia
says that isn't her fault, that she wasn't the plumber who put it
there, and she can't be expected to get a flue-brush into a hole the
size of a threepenny-bit.
When I said I thought she put it up the chimney she asked me what for.
"To clean the flue, of course," I retorted, a little irritably; and she
replied with fine scorn that flues didn't grow up chimneys, but at the
backs of fire-grates and other un-get-at-able places.
Ever since Amelia came to us her object appears to have been the
sounding the depths of my ignorance, with the idea of putting us in our
proper positions. I don't mean that she wishes to be the mistress
exactly, and sit with Dimbie in the drawing-room while I peel potatoes
in the back kitchen; but she wishes me to understand that she knows I
am a silly sort of creature, and she will do the best she can for me,
seeing that she is one of the "old-fashioned sort" who still take a
kindly and benevolent interest in their master and mistress.
Not that Amelia is old-fashioned really, with flat caps and
elastic-sided cloth boots, such as mother's servants wear. She is an
entirely modern product. She knows how to do the cake-walk, and wears
two-strapped patent slippers, with high Louis heels which turn over at
a most dangerous angle, looking more like two leaning towers of Pisa
than decorous, respectable "general's" heels. But she is old-fashioned
in the sense that she appears to have our interests most tremendously
at heart, is quite painfully economical, is forever scrubbing and
cleaning, and calls me "mum" instead of "madam" when she isn't calling
me "miss."
Just now she invited me to go and see how far she had got the brush up
the flue. She was hurt because Dimbie had said _he_ should have to get
up early and see what he could do about the hot water. In fact, she
had laughed derisively behind the roller-towel. She thinks no more of
Dimbie's capabilities than of mine.
I went, and was much impressed by the length of the flue-brush and its
pliability. Amelia had raked out the fire, and, with sleeves rolled
back, showed me what she could do with flues. It was like being at a
conjuring entertainment. The brush flashed about like lightning, got
into impossible places, curved, wriggled, and once I thought that
Amelia herself was about to disappear up the chimney. I clutched at
her legs and brought her down. Her face was glowing and black in
places.
"Now, mum," she panted, "if there's no hot water, is it my fault? If
Amelia Cockles can't get no hot water, no livin' mortal can, includin'
the master hisself. I'll show him to-night."
"Oh, don't, Amelia! Don't do it again! It's so difficult and
dangerous, you might get stuck," I pleaded. "We'll have a new boiler."
"It's not the boiler," she pronounced; "it's where it's been put."
"Well, we'll have it moved. Where would you like it?"
She was guarded in her answer.
"I'm not sure as you can move boilers about like furniture. We must
think it over."
She drew the brush from the flue, and I now saw it in its entire length.
"Wherever did you get it from?" I knew Dimbie and I hadn't bought it
when we furnished.
"From the ironmonger's, of course."
"Was it expensive?" I asked carelessly. I wondered if it were a
present from Amelia to us.
"Sixpence ha'penny. I sold some bottles and rubbish to the
donkey-stone man."
"All that for sixpence halfpenny?" I ejaculated, ignoring the
donkey-stone man, of whom I had never heard before.
Amelia eyed me a little pityingly.
"Would you care to see the drain-bamboo, mum? _That cost fourpence._"
"The drain-bamboo?"
"The thing we push down the drains to keep 'em clean and save bad
smells."
"Yes, please."
Amelia produced it. It was tied up in coils, and as she cut the string
it shot across the kitchen floor and narrowly escaped my ankles. I
didn't like the drain-bamboo at all, it was a nasty, sinuous thing, and
I asked Amelia to remove it at once.
"Have you any further contrivances, I mean unusual ones, concealed
about the premises?" I inquired.
"Them are not unusual. I can't think where you was brought up if you
haven't seen a flue-brush before, mum."
"I was born in Westmoreland first and then Dorking."
Amelia looked at me.
"I mean I was born in Westmoreland and then removed to Dorking."
Amelia flurries me so at times I hardly know what I am saying. "I
never went into the kitchen much," I added apologetically.
"P'r'aps your ma helped the general?"
"Oh, no, we hadn't a general."
"No servant?" in great astonishment.
"We had a servant, but not a general."
"A help?"
"No, we'd four servants. You see, my father suffers from gout, and he
requires a lot----"
"Cook, kitchen-maid, housemaid, parlour-maid?" interrupted Amelia,
ignoring my explanation.
"That was it."
Amelia put some coal on the fire, which she had relit, with a
considerable amount of noise.
"No wonder you're hignorant, mum."
Amelia never leaves an "h" out, but in moments of stress occasionally
puts one in. On the whole she speaks well for a Cockney born, and
educated in the Mile End Road. Of course all her "a's" are "i's," but
I find it difficult to transcribe them. "I tell Dimbie I know I shall
pick up the vernacular as I am peculiarly imitative; and he says he
hopes I won't, as it is not pretty."
"Beggin' your pardon for sayin' such a thing, but it's evidently not
your fault, and p'r'aps you'll improve as time goes on. You've time to
learn."
I tried to feel cheered at the hopes Amelia held out to me, and
prepared to leave the kitchen, feeling a little annoyed with mother for
neglecting my education so far as flue-brushes and drain-bamboos were
concerned.
"How old are you, mum? You'll hexcuse me askin' you."
I hesitated. Were Amelia to know that I was two years her senior would
she despise me more than ever?
"Never mind, mum. No ladies likes to tell their ages. In my last
place--Tompkinses'--the oldest daughter, Miss Julia, used to begin a
chatterin' to the canary for all she was worth when anybody so much as
mentions how old they was, and the way time was passin'. New Year's
Eve was the worst, when the bells was tollin'. I've known her wake
that poor canary up, when it had gone to bed, and say, 'Dicky, Dicky,
pretty Dick,' and it thought the incandescent light was the sun, and
had its bath straight away."
"Oh, I'm not so bad as that," I laughed, "I'm twenty-three!"
Amelia blacked her face more than ever in her surprise.
"Bless my soul! Who'd have thought it? In that white dress you wears
at night you looks like a bit of a thing who has just got out of
pinifores. Twenty-three! You're older than me, and never seed a
flue-brush before."
"Perhaps you have always been brought up with them?" I suggested.
"I could handle one at six, or my mother would have let me know what
for."
She swelled with pride at the retrospection of her infant capabilities.
"You were evidently most clever. Perhaps you were born grown up. Some
people are."
She considered this.
"I was always smart for my years."
"And I wasn't. I think I must have developed slowly, Amelia. When you
were cleaning flues I was nursing dolls. Perhaps it was my parents'
fault. I was the only child."
"And I'm the eldest of fourteen."
"Dear me!" I said. "And are they all expert flue cleaners?"
"Eight of 'em is in heaven."
She sounded as sure of this point as the exasperating little cottage
girl.
"You'd better get on with your work; I'm interrupting you," I said, as
I walked to the door.
About every third day I make this remark to Amelia with the faint hope
of impressing upon her that _I_ am the mistress of the establishment.
Then I carefully close the kitchen door behind me, barricade myself in
the dining- or drawing-room, and sit down and think about her. I am
sure Amelia has not the slightest idea of how her figure looms in my
mental horizon. I don't want to think about her. Dimbie or mother or
Nanty are much pleasanter subjects, but I can't help it; she is the
sort of person you _must_ think about.
Nanty found her for me.
She said, "You and Dimbie will require someone extremely capable.
Amelia Cockles exactly answers to this description."
Now what worries me is whether to sit down quietly and let Amelia
manage us and be happy, or whether to endeavour to uphold our dignity
and be uncomfortable.
Were I to put such a question to Dimbie he would say, "Let's be happy."
But this happiness is qualified when she gives us roly-poly pudding
more than once every ten days. It is a pudding for which I have always
had a peculiar dislike. I will order, I mean suggest, that we shall
have a thatched house pudding for dinner. I mention my liking for
brown thatch, not straw-coloured thatch. I sit with an expectant
appetite, and a roly-poly appears, white, flabby, and bursting at its
ends with raspberry jam. Reproachfully I look at Amelia, but her
return gaze is as innocent and ingenuous as a little child's. She
would have me believe that I never even so much as mentioned a thatched
house pudding. Dimbie sends up his plate for a second helping. While
Amelia goes for the cheese course I say, "Do you think you could like
roly-poly a little less, only a _little_ less?" And Dimbie, passing up
his plate for a third helping, says he will try, but it will be
difficult, as Amelia makes such ripping ones, and of course she enters
the room at the moment and hears him. She hears everything. I think
she must fly between the kitchen and dining-room when she waits at
dinner, or have spring boots concealed beneath the hall table.
I happened to mention the roly-poly to Nanty, and she said, "Be
thankful she can make a pudding at all, or you might have to make it
yourself." There was an assumption in her manner that I couldn't, and
I didn't argue the point. It is useless arguing with Nanty.
There is another point in Amelia's disfavour to put against her
admitted capability--she squeaks. Her shoes squeak and her corsets
creak, and her breathing is conducted in a series of gasps--long ones
when she sweeps a room, short ones when she hands the potatoes at
dinner. She seems to want oiling at every point of vantage, like a
bicycle. Sometimes I lie awake at night and discuss or try to discuss
with Dimbie the possibilities of stopping the squeaking.
"Tell her to wear cloth boots like your mother."
"Mother doesn't wear cloth boots," I contradict.
"I thought you said she did," he murmurs sleepily.
"No, our servants wear them."
"Well, tell Amelia to do the same."
"She won't."
"Then I give it up."
"Dimbie," I say coaxingly, "before you go quite, quite off, couldn't
you suggest a remedy for squeaking? Oil would spoil the carpets."
"Fill 'em with corn," comes the amazing suggestion.
"You put corn in wet shoes, dear donkey," I shout, trying to clutch him
back from that beautiful land of oblivion to which all of us, happy or
unhappy, healthy or sick, young or old, are so glad to go, when like
little children we are just tired. But he had gone. Nothing short of
a thunderbolt would bring him back till the morrow.
And when that morrow came I suggested to Amelia that she should dip the
shoes into water.
"Why not boil 'em, mum, with a little washing powder?"
Her face was stolid, but there was a hint of irony in her voice. With
dignity I walked from the kitchen, barricaded myself, and once again
sat down to think about her. The squeaking was unendurable; the
creaking of the corsets was nearly as bad. For these two things I
could not give her notice; besides, I should never dare to give anybody
notice.
A little later on I caught her in the hall in an old pair of wool-work
slippers embroidered with tea-roses which had belonged to Dimbie, but
which I had surreptitiously banished to the boxroom. She was in the
midst of a cake-walk; her chest was stuck out like a pouter pigeon's,
and one tea-rose was poised high in the air.
"_Amelia!_" I shouted, scandalised, "what are you dreaming of? Have
you taken leave of your senses?"
She brought the tea-rose to earth with a bang, and stood like a soldier
at attention.
"Beg pardon, mum. Didn't know you was there, or I wouldn't have done
it. But I was so happy at thinkin' how pleased you would be in seein'
me in these here shoes, as you have took such a dislike to the others."
"But I'm not pleased," I rejoined. "I could not think of permit--of
approving of your wearing wool-work slippers for answering the
front-door bell."
"It never rings, mum."
"It will when callers begin to arrive; and when you receive your next
month's wages I shall be glad, Amelia, if you will buy a pair of cloth
flat-heeled boots or shoes. Kid are expensive, but cloth is
beautifully cheap."
"You mentioned them before, mum. P'r'aps you'll remember. I never
have and never could wear black cloth shoes. It would be like walkin'
about with a pair of funerals on your feet. They'd depress a nigger
minstrel. Anything else to meet you. White tennis shoes? They're
soft and don't squeak."
"No, Amelia," I said wearily, "white tennis shoes would be worse than
the wool-work. We'll dismiss the subject. It is said that a man can
get accustomed even to being hanged. I may learn to like your shoes in
time, and even regard their noisiness as music."
And I went back to the drawing-room and closed the door. The subject
was finished, and so Amelia continues to squeak.
CHAPTER IV
DIMBIE'S BIRTHDAY
I find, in accordance with Nanty's advice, that I kept Dimbie well out
of the last chapter; but he's bound to figure pretty largely in this,
for he's had a birthday. A birthday cannot very well be touched upon
without referring to the person interested, and Dimbie was extremely
interested because of the omelet Amelia made him for breakfast.
On the morning previous I said to Amelia--
"To-morrow is the master's birthday. Now what shall we give him for
breakfast? It must be something very nice."
"Pigs' feet."
"Pigs' feet?" I ejaculated.
"Yes, mum. Pigs' feet boiled till juicy and tender, and red cabbage."
"But it's for breakfast," I repeated.
"Yes, mum. You mentioned that."
"But you can't eat pigs' feet for breakfast."
"Mr. Tompkins' brother-in-law, Mr. München, was dead nuts on it."
Her attitude was unshaken.
"But wasn't he German, Amelia?"
"P'r'aps he was," she admitted.
"Ah," I said triumphantly, "that makes all the difference."
"What about brawn or sausages, or black puddings or ham, mum?"
"You see they're all--pig," I said hesitatingly.
"Well, you're not Jews, mum. Tompkinses had a friend who----"
"I want something novel," I cut in, leaving the friend till another
time. "I want something we have not had before."
She thought a moment. Then her countenance brightened.
"I know, mum, savoury duck."
"Don't be ridiculous," I commanded. "We're wasting time."
"It isn't a duck really, mum. P'r'aps you thought it was?"
"When you say a duck, I naturally think you mean a duck."
I was getting tired.
"But I don't. It's made of the insides of animals mixed with onions.
You buy them at tripe-shops, and they're real good."
I felt myself turning sick.
"Amelia," I said, trying to be patient, "will you remember it's
breakfast we are discussing. I've called your attention to the fact
several times. I think it will have to end in an omelet--a nice, light
omelet. Do you know how to make one?"
Now Amelia will never allow that she doesn't know everything in the
world, so her reply was guarded.
"It's made of eggs."
"Of course," I rejoined.
"And milk and butter----"
The milk might be right, but I wasn't so sure about the butter.
Amelia pounced on my hesitation.
"Why, I believe you don't know how to make one yourself, mum."
I was bound to confess that I didn't.
"My opportunities to cook have been few," I explained. "The little I
know was learned at a cookery class."
Amelia sniffed derisively.
"And a lot you'd learn there, mum--hentries and hoary doves, I suppose?"
"Hoary doves!" I repeated wonderingly, and vaguely thinking of a very
ancient white-haired dove.
"Yes, them silly things rich folks begins their dinners with--anchovies
and holives."
"You mean _hors-d'oeuvres_?" That I suppressed a smile should go to my
good account, I think.
"That's it, only my tongue won't twist round it like yours."
"And where have you met them?" I inquired with interest.
"At Tompkinses'!"
"And did they have them every night?"
"No, just at dinner parties." She spoke in an airy, careless fashion.
"I see," I said, greatly impressed.
Amelia had been accustomed to _hors-d'oeuvres_ at dinner parties, and
yet she condescended to live with us.
I looked with unusual interest at her closely-curled fringe, her sharp,
eager features, and her shamrock brooch. I listened to her squeaking;
it was the corsets this time. Sometimes a bone cracks in them like the
report of a small pistol, and I think to myself, "Well, there is one
less to break." But the number never seems to diminish. I fancy she
must have a horde of bones, a sort of nest-egg of bones, put by, and as
soon as one cracks it is promptly replaced by a sound one.
Occasionally one bores through her print bodice, and then she puts a
patch on the place, a new print patch, which rarely matches the rest of
her dress. I counted four one day. She will look like a patchwork
quilt soon, and I feel a little depressed at the prospect.
I roused myself with an effort to Dimbie's birthday and the breakfast.
Amelia had produced the cookery book, and was rapidly reading out loud
various recipes for every variety of omelet.
"Stop," I said, "I'm getting muddled."
It ended in our selecting a savoury parsley omelet.
"I hope it will be nice," I said anxiously.
"Of course it will be nice. You leave it to me, mum. I've got a hand
_that_ light the master will be wishin' he had a birthday every day of
his life."
The birthday morning dawned clear and beautiful. My first thought was
of the omelet. I rose softly, dressed quickly, and went out into the
garden with the hope of finding a few flowers to put at the side of
Dimbie's plate. A fresh, springy scent met me everywhere--damp earth,
moist trees, sun-kissed, opening, baby leaves. I inspected our apple
tree, which stands in the middle of the lawn, with close attention. It
is the only tree we possess. I looked for a promise of blossom.
"Perhaps ... yes, in a month's time," I said. I wandered down the
garden to the fence which divides us from the frog-pond field. A
garden set at the edge of a field is a most cunning device, especially
when the field contains well-grown trees (which hang over the fence,
dipping and swaying and holding converse of the friendliest description
with your own denizens of the garden) and a frog-pond into the bargain.
The croaking of frogs may not be musical, but it may be welcomed as one
of the surest notifications of the advent of spring. Mr. Frog is
courting Miss Frog. He says, "Listen to my voice," on which he emits a
harsh, rasping sound, somewhat resembling the note of the corncrake.
Miss Frog is probably very impressed. So are Dimbie and I.
"So countrified," says Dimbie, drawing a long, deep breath of the
sweet, pure air.
"So far from the madding crowd," say I. "Who ever hears a frog near
the big, noisy towns?"
By and by we shall see little black eggs, embedded in a gelatinous
substance, floating about the surface of the water. Later on there
will be tadpoles, and then more frogs.
The beech tree, I think, is the most kindly disposed of all the
brethren to us dwellers of the garden. A lime nods to the apple tree,
which is exactly in its line of vision, but the beech leans and leans
over the fence, craning its neck, holding out long, beautiful branches,
which so soon will be decorated with a delicate lace-work of the most
exquisitely tender of all the spring greens. The beech is a long time
in unfolding her treasures--the sycamore and chestnut can give her many
days; but when she does consent to open out her leaves, what a wealth
of beauty!
On this morning I thought I could almost see them uncurling in the
sunshine, hear them laughing at their old friend the lime. I could
have dallied with them, anxious to hear what they had to say, what sort
of a winter had been theirs, but Dimbie and breakfast must be waiting
for me.
I sped into the house, just in time to see Dimbie removing the dish
cover. I paused in the doorway to witness his smile of pleasure at
finding an omelet--a savoury parsley omelet--before him, but no smile
came. In its place was a blank look of inquiry.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"What's this?" he returned.
"An omelet." I walked quickly to the table.
"Oh, is it?" he said quite politely.
We stood together and looked at the thing, was very small and thin, and
hard and spotty.
"I thought it was veal stuffing." He was grave and still quite
courteous.
"It looks like a bit of old blanket," I observed.
"It doesn't look wholesome, do you think so?"
"I think it looks most unwholesome." I put my hand on the bell.
"Wait," he said, "Amelia might be hurt: let's give it to Jumbles."
But Jumbles was a wise cat. He smelt it, stood up his hair on end, and
walked away. And so we burnt it.
When I ordered some bacon to be cooked Amelia asked me how we had
enjoyed the omelet.
"It was a little small," I said evasively.
"Just a little small," said Dimbie cheerfully.
"That must be the fault of the egg-powder, there was no eggs in the
house," she said as she bustled out of the room.
Dimbie peeped at me and I peeped at Dimbie, and we both broke into
suppressed laughter.
"I always said she was the most resourceful girl I had ever met."
"She is," I groaned; "and I thought it would be such a beautiful
surprise to you."
"It was, dearest," he assured me; "never was so surprised at anything
in my life."
I handed him my present and looked at him anxiously. Would this too be
a disappointment? He had talked of pipe-racks so frequently--of the
foolish construction of the ordinary rack, which, supporting the bowl
of the pipe at the top, naturally encourages the evil-tasting nicotine
to flow down the stem. This I had had made specially for him of the
most beautiful fumed oak. The bowls of his pipes could now rest
sensibly, the stems pointing skywards. His pleasure was unfeigned. He
left his breakfast to hang it up and kiss me.
"How clever you are, Marg," he said. "How did you know?"
"You have sometimes mentioned it."
He laughed.
"I have derived a considerable amount of useful information from you
one way or another. I may even become capable in the end."
"There's no knowing," he agreed.
Then we fell to making our plans for the day. It was not often that
Dimbie took a holiday, we must make the most of it. We would cycle to
some pine woods at Oxshott which we knew well and loved greatly. We
would lunch there by the side of a little pool set in a hollow--Sleepy
Hollow we called it. It would be warm there and sunny, for the trees
had withdrawn to the right and left, and it was open to the sun and
rain and wind of heaven. When we had rested we would go to a dingle
where I knew primrose roots were to be found. What corner and nook and
hidden by-way and bridle-path in our beautiful Surrey were unknown to
me? I had flown to them from Peter. I had spent long days in the
fields, on the commons, in the pine woods away from Peter. My bicycle
was a friend in need. Peter couldn't cycle. Nothing short of a
motor-car could catch me on my bicycle. Peter hadn't a motor-car.
Motor-cars, bicycles, and truant girls were an invention of the devil.
I would laugh in my sleeve, while Peter swore.
I am introducing Dimbie to a lot of my old haunts. Two on their
travels are better than one.
Amelia packed our lunch and asked when we would be home.
"It is impossible to say," I told her. "When one rides away into the
country or into a sunset or into a moonrise one may never return."
And Amelia stared as she does sometimes when I cannot keep the laughter
and happiness out of my voice.
"There's the steak," she said.
"Cook it when we come in," I called as I followed Dimbie through the
wooden gate--which is such a joy to me, as it might have been iron--and
down the lane.
How glorious it was as we spun along the smooth, red roads, and felt
the sun and wind on our faces, and breathed spring--for spring was
everywhere!
"Go on in front, Marg," commanded Dimbie. "I want to look at the sun
on your hair. It's like pure gold."
I humoured his fancy.
"I want to feel it," he called, "to stroke it, it looks quite hot.
Let's stop for a rest."
We dismounted, and sat down on a bank.
"You won't ruffle it?" I said.
"No," he replied, "I'll be awfully careful."
Then he stroked the back of my head the wrong way, the dear old way he
has always stroked it.
"I _do_ love you, sweetheart," he murmured, kissing the nape of my
neck. "There never was a Marguerite like mine."
It is at such moments that the tears come unbidden, tears of intense
happiness.
Will Dimbie ever realise how much I love him? My words are few. I
remember what Nanty said, although she has now recalled her advice. I
don't seem to be able to let Dimbie know what he is to me. Human
language is not sufficient, speech is so bald. Sometimes in the night,
when he is asleep, I press my lips to his kinky hair, but I'm always
afraid he will awake and find me out, and I whisper, "God, I thank Thee
for Dimbie."
A lark was singing rapturously above us far away out of sight, a thrush
was breathing forth liquid notes of silver, and a little golden gorse
bush was giving of its best and sweetest to the inmates of the grassy
lane.
What a beautiful thing is a lane in which the grass runs softly
riotous. A street of pure gold, as it were transparent glass, was what
St. John saw in his vision. To me such a street, hard and metallic,
would be a disappointment. I want in my heaven cool, grassy lanes,
soothing and comforting to tired feet.
"What a birthday!" said Dimbie. "I want always to stop at thirty-one,
and sit on a bank with you and look at your hair in the sun,
sweetheart."
"You'd get tired of it."
"Never," he vowed. "What a lucky thing it was for me your getting
mixed up in that wire netting. Girls are very helpless."
"But they manage somehow to get out of their difficulties," I laughed,
and we sat a little closer. "Marguerite," he said suddenly, "would you
like a--child?"
I felt the colour rise to my cheeks as I shook my head.
He stooped and kissed me.
"I'm so glad," he whispered. "I wouldn't either. We don't want anyone
but each other, do we?"
"Perhaps--some day," I faltered.
"Well, perhaps _some_ day," he assented a little reluctantly. "People
with children seem so beastly selfish to everybody _but_ the children.
They've no thought for anybody else, no interest. You say to 'em, 'My
house was burnt down last night.' They look a little vague and reply,
'How unfortunate. Johnny has contracted measles.' Really anxious to
impress them, you go on to tell them that your mother has just died
from heart failure, and they say, 'How distressing. Mary has passed
her matric.' You want to curse Mary, but you daren't. They represent
all that is holy, all that is extraordinary (in their own eyes), all
that is happiness; they are parents. You stand outside the door of the
holy of holies. You know not the meaning of the words life, joy,
fatherhood, motherhood. The sun and the moon only shine for them. The
stars twinkle, and the flowers bloom, only for the children."
He paused and sighed deeply. I laughed, and patted his hand.
"How do you know all this?"
"I have a married sister, remember. When she went abroad with Gladys
and Maxwell I was unfeignedly relieved. They were getting on my
nerves, father included."
"But this is the age of children, remember, the golden age. Before
they were kept in the background, now----"
"They are never off the foreground," said Dimbie gloomily. "They are
in the drawing-room monopolising the entire attention of the guests.
If the guests don't want 'em the mothers are pained. You are a
heartless brute, selfish and self-centred. It never seems to strike
them _they_ are the ones who are self-centred."
"But that is not the poor children's fault," I said. "Children are
dears when they are properly trained."
"No, perhaps not. The children _might_ be jolly, simple,
unself-conscious little beggars if they got the chance, but they don't.
As it is, most of 'em are detestable."
"But"--I began.
"Come on, Marg," he said, helping me up. "You can't make out a good
case for the modern parents however hard you try. Let us be getting
on."
We made straight for Sleepy Hollow and our pool when we arrived at the
woods, and set our cloth at the edge of its banks. Such a quiet pool,
it might be fast asleep. No insects hum o'er its unruffed surface. No
birds twitter in the tall sedges which hug it on three sides. No fish
rise, for what would be the use when there are no insects or flies.
Away in every direction the pine trees stretch, filling the air with
their clean, resinous odour.
We spread our mackintoshes in the very sunniest spot, and Dimbie threw
himself on his back, while I sat cross-legged in tailor fashion.
"Don't you want any lunch?" I asked presently.
"Rather," he returned, sitting up. "What have you got--omelets?"
"That," I said, "is disagreeable of you. Amelia's efforts were well
meant."
"Hope she won't have any more," he said, with his mouth full of pie.
"Amelia will never cease to surprise us as long as she lives with us.
She is a curious mixture of extreme cleverness and astonishing
simplicity. And I believe her heart's in the right place, though it is
difficult to tell, so surrounded is it by bones and patches."
I fell to thinking of her, and forgot Dimbie and the lunch. Amelia
will have much to answer for, for displacement of my thoughts. Before
I only thought of Dimbie; now Amelia edges in, try as I will to keep
her out. Why should my mind be taken up with a Cockney girl educated
in the Mile End Road? I object.
Dimbie took me away from her.
"By Jove, isn't it stunning here! The sun is as hot as in June. I
want a series of birthdays in which to ride away with you farther and
farther till we reach the sea. Then we can sit upon the sands and tell
glad stories of our love. And you must always wear that blue serge
frock and let the sun wander through your hair as it is doing now."
"Are you quite sure there is nothing more you want?" I inquired.
"Yes, I want to kiss you--that little spot on your right cheek which is
pink and sunburnt."
"Well, you can't," I replied. "If you move you will upset the claret
and glasses."
"Don't care," he said, and as he kissed me a man appeared from among
the pine trees.
"Oh!" we both ejaculated, shooting back our heads.
He stood and looked at us with an amused expression.
"Don't mind me," he said quite politely, seating himself on the stump
of a tree pretty close to us.
"But I am afraid we do," Dimbie said equally politely.
"I've seen that sort of thing dozens of times," he continued in a
detached sort of manner.
We sat and eyed him indignantly.
"In fact, I rather like it," he went on imperturbably.
"Oh, do you?" Dimbie's sarcasm was sharp as a knife.
"Yes, I find it refreshing after my work. I am a balloonist, and have
done considerable research work in aerial flight. I built an aerodrome
once, a steam-driven flying machine. It went about a quarter of a mile
and killed my mother on the way."
"Oh!" I said, shocked. Dimbie was staring at the sky.
"Yes; sad, wasn't it? But she was eighty-seven. And I am sure, could
she have had the choice, she would have preferred a sudden, practically
painless death to a long, lingering illness."
"So did you build this aerodrome on purpose to finish her off?" I
inquired with interest.
Dimbie smothered a laugh, and the man looked at me thoughtfully, but
didn't seem offended.
"Well, no," he replied, "I can hardly say that. I merely meant that it
was just a bit of luck for my mother. I hope, by the way, I am not
disturbing you."
"Not very much," I answered, before Dimbie could speak.
"That's right. I don't like being _de trop_, or in the way; get
yourself disliked."
There seemed to be nothing to say to this, and Dimbie and I peeped at
one another and endeavoured not to laugh.
[Illustration: PROFESSOR LEIGHRAIL]
The stranger looked at us thoughtfully, benevolently almost. His face
was extremely thin and worn, his hands delicate, and his boots too
large for him. There was a refinement about his whole personality
above the ordinary, and I liked him.
"Have some lunch?" Dimbie said, beginning to unbend. "There isn't any
pie left, but there's lots of bread and cheese and some fruit."
"No, thank you. I have some lunch in my pocket, so with your
permission I will eat it with you."
He produced an envelope, and taking out a brown lozenge began to suck
it. When he had finished this he extracted a second, and then a third.
Then from his coat pocket he produced a tin cup, dipped it into a
stream which feeds the pool, drank, returned it to his pocket, and
leant back in a finished way.
"Is that all you are going to have?" I couldn't resist asking in
astonishment.
"Yes," he said. "Being a balloonist, I am obliged to eat sparingly, so
take my meat in a concentrated form. I'm one of the thinnest men in
Great Britain, and usually wear two coats to hide my lean appearance.
Would you like to feel my ribs?"
He asked this simple though somewhat unusual question in exactly the
same way as a man might ask you to see his Velasquez.
"No, thank you," we both said together.
"They're worth feeling," he said, a little disappointed.
We assured him of our belief in his veracity.
"A bit prudish, eh?" He turned towards me.
"Not in the least," I replied indignantly; "but to be quite candid, I'm
not very interested in your ribs. You see, we don't know you very well
yet," I added, to soften the blow.
"Where do you live?" he asked.
We told him in guarded language.
"Within two miles of Leith Hill. Pretty country?"
We nodded.
"What's the name of your house?" was his next question.
"Have you taken a great fancy to us?" Dimbie inquired sweetly.
"Very," he said. "Don't remember taking a greater fancy to anybody.
You seem so ridiculously happy and young."
Dimbie's and my face, I fear, wore the expression of happiness fleeting.
"I'm going now," he said rising. "If you had favoured me with the name
of your house I might have dropped in on you some day from my balloon."
This sounded rather interesting.
"One Tree Cottage," we said together.
He laughed.
"Might have known it would be a cottage. You both look so exactly like
a cottage--lattice windows, roses and honeysuckle thrown in. Quite
common-place, if you only knew it."
"Good afternoon, sir," said Dimbie in an extinguishing voice.
The stranger smiled good-humouredly.
"Now you're going to get offended with me," said he, "and I am sorry.
But you take my word for it, there are scores of young couples in
lattice-windowed cottages--or would like to be in lattice-windowed
cottages--with honeysuckle and roses and a baby. It's the craze now to
live in a cottage. We avoided them as you would the plague in my young
days--insanitary, stuffy, no gas, no hot water, floors with hills in
them, walls with mould in them, skirtings with rats in them. Yours is
like that, I expect."
We vouchsafed no reply.
"And your drains--I expect they're all wrong. Most cottage drains are
abominable."
"We have a drain-bamboo," I said eagerly. "Amelia uses it regularly."
"Amelia sounds a sensible young person. I should like to see her and
the cottage. I'm interested in young people. I was young myself once,
though you mightn't think it."
"Perhaps it was some time ago," I observed.
"Yes, it's a long time." His eyes became reminiscent. "I jumped into
an old man the day my wife died, very old. Then I took up ballooning.
I thought that might prove the surest method of ending myself--short of
suicide. Don't like suicide--unpleasant and dramatic." He still spoke
with cheerful detachment.
"And are you a professional balloonist--ascend from the Crystal Palace
and that sort of thing?" I asked.
He looked at me with amused surprise, I imagined, for an instant; in
fact, he laughed.
"Oh, no, I am not a professional. I am engaged on various work.
Generally pretty busy. Ballooning is my hobby. If you've plenty to do
you can't be lonely."
"We shall be very glad to see you," I said, suddenly feeling very sorry
for this eccentric person. A shadow had crept across his face as he
had spoken. How dreadful to be lonely, I thought. "Our village is
Pine Tree Valley. We searched about till we found a place set among
the pines. I love them so. Perhaps you will dine with us one evening?"
"It is very kind of you," he said quickly, "but I never dine with
people. They invariably eat fattening, indigestible things. If I went
out to dinner I shouldn't have ribs like knife blades." He spoke quite
proudly. "But I should like to call and see the baby."
"There isn't a baby." Dimbie's voice was irritable, and my cheeks were
scarlet.
"I'm sorry," he said. "We hadn't one either."
"And did you mind?" I asked.
"Not a bit while Amabella was alive. But when she died I was a great
deal alone, and the house seemed big and empty. I think it is a
mistake not to have children." He looked at me a trifle severely.
"We've only been married a little over three months," Dimbie explained
apologetically.
"Ah, well, that makes a difference, of course. You've got plenty of
time. Good-bye, and may I give you my card?"
He fished one out of the pocket which contained the tin mug. It was a
little soiled and wet.
"It is unnecessary to give me one of yours," he said with a smile. "I
don't want to know your name. I shall just ask for Mr. and Mrs.
Smilingface, who live in a tiresome, typhoid-inviting, creeper-covered
cottage. Good-bye," and before we could speak he had gone.
With interest we examined the card:--
Mr. MONTGOMERY LEIGHRAIL,
THE GREY HOUSE,
ESHER.
Dimbie sat down and opened his blue eyes so wide that the crook in his
nose moved in sympathy.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"Marg," he said solemnly, "do you know what you have done?"
"No," I replied; "hurry up and tell me."
"You have refused to feel the ribs of one of the greatest scientists of
the world. That was Professor Leighrail."
"Well, he ought to have known better than to have asked me," I said,
refusing to be impressed.
At which Dimbie fell back and chuckled softly for some minutes.
CHAPTER V
A LETTER FROM MISS FAIRBROTHER
Beyond the fact that I have received a letter from Miss Fairbrother,
there seems to be nothing of any real importance to-day to enter in my
"daily-round." I call my journal my "daily-round," though it isn't
anything of the kind, for I only scribble in it when I have nothing
else to do, and when I am waiting for Dimbie to come home. I always
seem to be waiting for Dimbie to come home, and yet I don't always
write in my "daily-round"; I wait for moods. Dimbie calls it my recipe
book. He says it looks like one, with its ruled lines and mottled
brawn stiff covers. He wants to read it, but this I won't permit. I
say, "Dimbie, within those covers are the meanderings of a new wife, I
mean a newly-made wife. It could be of no interest to you to read: 'I
have ordered two pounds of steak for dinner. Amelia is unusually
squeaky to-day,' but they are of vital interest to me." Journals can
only be of interest to the people who write them. There are, of
course, exceptions, such as Pepys and Evelyn--I have not read either of
them, but they may have made notes of really important events. I
don't, for I have none to note. Besides, I never know the date.
Properly constructed journals have dates. I only know the month we are
in. I have an idea whether it is the beginning or the end, but if
anyone were to say to me, "What is the day of the month?" I should be
extremely flurried. I always find, too, that people who ask you the
date know it much better themselves. If you say it is the sixteenth
they flatly contradict you and say they are sure it is the seventeenth.
Peter was always like that. He would sit down at the writing-table in
the library with a calendar hanging right in front of his nose, and
would suddenly pounce upon poor mother with, "What is the date?"
Mother, not knowing any more about dates than I, would gently refer him
to the calendar. Peter would not be referred to calendars. Mother
should know dates the same as other sensible people. Then there would
be ructions. Peter would show mother and me what could be done with an
ordinary pair of lungs. I used to think what splendid bellows Peter's
lungs would make. One day I ventured upon this to him, I asked him to
blow up the fire. I shall never forget the result. His facial
contortions and the noise he made were out of the common.
I am wondering if he makes those noises now. Mother was always a
little gentler and more yielding to him than I, so perhaps the house is
quieter since I left. I don't see them very much. Not possessing a
carriage, and the journey by train being a little cross country, we do
not exchange many visits. Peter won't allow mother to come alone, and
of course when he comes everything is spoilt. He does not believe in
private confidential talks between women. He says that most of it is
ill-natured gossip, and I have never heard mother say an unkind word of
anybody in her life.
I did not mean to write of Peter this morning. My head was full of
Miss Fairbrother.
Such a delightful letter from her. Dimbie was as much interested in it
as I. She says--
"'I am thirty-five to-day. Yes, I have reached half the allotted age
of man. The Psalmist was a little mean and skimpy, I think, to limit
one's years to threescore and ten. Probably he was old for his age,
having crowded a good deal into his life. And all those wives and sons
of his were enough to make any man feel tired.'"
I looked up and laughed.
"Go on," said Dimbie.
"'Thirty-five will appear to twenty-three a great and mysterious
age--mysterious in the way that death is mysterious; a state at which
to arrive at some dim and future period--very dim, very far off when
you are but twenty-three.
"'And yet my years sit lightly upon me. I can still run, though not so
swiftly as of old. I can still laugh, though India is very hot and
very sad in some of its aspects. I still wear cotton frocks--perhaps
the last foolishly; but what is one to do in an Indian climate, and
when one has to count up the pennies in readiness for the old age which
_must_ come? Muslin I eschew as being too airy and girlish for one of
rounded proportions, but mercerised cotton is my salvation. Praised be
the Lancashire cotton mills! Do you happen to have met with mercerised
cotton? It is deceitful, for it tries to cheat you into believing that
when you don it you straightway have a silken appearance. It may
deceive _you_, but it certainly does not deceive the other women of the
station. You read in their uplifted glance "six-three," which means
sixpence three farthings. You don't care dreadfully, for are you not
cool and most suitably attired as a governess?
"'You ask me, dear Marguerite, what I am doing. I am still existing in
a pink bungalow endeavouring to teach two poor, hot, sticky children.
Of course it is cool now, but the hot weather will return once more,
and then they are going home to that cool, green garden whose other
name is England, and my work will be finished. This makes the fourth
batch of children who have left me during the years I have been here.
And now that garden is calling me, calling me with a voice not to be
resisted, and I too am "going home."
"'You, little old pupil, will be one of the first persons upon whom I
shall leave cards. Marguerite married is a person of importance now.
Her two fair pigtails went "up" long ago, but she will always remain
the little old pupil to me.
"'Then, too, I badly want to see this wonderful husband of yours. He
won't be nice to me. A young husband, I think, is rarely devoted to
his wife's old friends. But I shan't mind. I shan't resent it. I
shall understand.'"
I stopped again to laugh up at Dimbie, who was leaning over me.
"She seems a very sensible woman," he remarked.
"There never was anyone quite so sensible as Miss Fairbrother," I
returned. "She could even manage Peter in a fashion, and mother was
devoted to her. One of the very cleverest things mother ever did was
to find Miss Fairbrother."
"Please finish," said Dimbie, "or I shall miss my train."
"'Your charming present, for which many thanks, has already raised me
some inches in the eyes of the women out here. For long they have been
trying to persuade me into wearing a hair-frame. You will probably
know the thing I mean--a round, evil-looking, hairy bolster, over which
unpleasantness you comb your own hair, hoping to delude mankind into
the belief that you have come of parentage of Samsonian
characteristics. Now this beautiful jewelled comb of yours adds
somewhat to my stature when, with an attempt--somewhat feeble, I
fear--at high coiffured hair, I swim, like Meredith's heroines, or try
to swim, into dinner. They almost pardon my lack of a bolster when
their eyes rest upon such modishness. A little less
spinster-governess, they think. And I translate their thought and
smile.
"'Always your most affectionate,
"'EGOIST.'"
"Egoist, indeed!" I said musingly, as I folded the letter and took a
photograph out of my desk--a photograph of a strong, smiling face, with
low, broad forehead, over which the hair was parted on one side, clear,
unflinching eyes, and large mobile mouth.
"Why don't you put her into a frame somewhere about the room?" asked
Dimbie. "It is a fine face."
"Because I promised her she should never be on view. She imagined she
was plain. I think clever people are as sensitive about their looks as
stupid."
"Perhaps so," said Dimbie, with a fine disregard of all trains. "Was
she very clever?"
I was pleased at his interest in my much-loved governess.
"I don't know," I replied. "I am not clever enough to know. But
whatever she said seemed to me intensely interesting. Mother and even
Peter were inclined to hang on her words. She was so witty, so gay;
she had such a sense of humour. You see, she was only twenty-eight
when she left. She came to us when she was twenty, just after taking a
most fearful degree. Mother says Peter most strongly objected to this
degree; that he said women should only take things like measles and
scarlet fever, and be feminine, remembering their place in nature, and
not try to be clever; and that if only Miss Fairbrother would do her
hair properly and wear white-lace petticoats, she even might get
married--there was no telling. And mother argued that she did not wish
Miss Fairbrother to be married till she had thoroughly grounded me and
prepared me for that high-class boarding school, Lynton House.
"And I recollect Peter snorted at this, and said that if Miss
Fairbrother could just manage to knock a little writing, reading, and
arithmetic into my head and teach me to sew and knit, he, for one,
would be satisfied. And he forbade anyone--man or woman--to instruct
me in the art of painting flowers, afterwards to be framed and stuck on
his walls. I cannot convey to you the scorn in his voice as he shouted
the words 'painting flowers.'"
"I think he was right there," said Dimbie.
"So do I," I laughed; "but Peter had forgotten that the painting of
still life was a product of a bygone age. To imagine Miss Fairbrother
teaching me such an art would be to imagine her teaching me how to
embroider wool-work pictures. Granny worked two fierce cats with
spreading, startled whiskers, in Berlin wool. They adorn my old
nursery walls to this day. Miss Fairbrother made up lovely, exciting
tales about them and their habits, and for some little time, till I
grew older, I was under the impression they left their frames at night
and sported on the tiles. We called them Mr. Chamberlain and Mr.
Balfour."
"I must go," said Dimbie. "The cats are most interesting, and so is
Miss Fairbrother, but I have our living to make. What do you say to
asking her to visit us for a bit when she arrives?"
He spoke in a nonchalant way, and I looked up quickly. He had said he
shouldn't have anyone to stay with us under twelve months. His back
was turned to me, so I couldn't see his face.
"Do you want her?" I asked.
"_I_ want her? Certainly not. But you sound so keen on her,
and--_she_ sounds lonely."
"Dear Dimbie," I said, "you are a pet. I appreciate your
unselfishness, but----"
"Well, write and ask her before I change my mind. I dare say she'll
have the sense to clear off and leave us alone in the evenings."
"But shall you care dreadfully?" I queried.
He laughed.
"Well, not dreadfully. No man hankers after a strange woman in the
house, especially when he's already got a dear one like you. But I
want you to be happy, Marg." His voice became very tender. "I don't
want you to be lonely. I want your days to be a perpetual delight."
He crossed the room and stroked the back of my head.
"And so they are," I replied, laying my cheek on his sleeve. "One long
delight. Sometimes I wonder why God has given _me_ so much happiness.
I don't deserve it any more than anyone else. Peter, all my worries
are behind me; in front of me is joy. I seem to have stepped on to a
little green island of content, set in the midst of a sun-kissed ocean.
The waves lap the shores lovingly; the breezes linger in our hair with
a caress. You and I are alone, Dimbie."
And he laid his lips on mine for a moment, and then he left me.
CHAPTER VI
SORROW OVERTAKES ME
I take up my writing again, or rather my book is propped up in front of
me, and I wonder how long ago was that. It tires my head to think. My
dates are more confused than ever. I know it is May, but what part of
May? I look out of my window--the bed has been wheeled into the
window--and I see the chestnut is crowned with its white lights, and
the broom bush near the gate is a mass of golden blossom. It is the
end of May; it must be nearly June, for they tell me the season is
late, that there has been much cold and rain. I am almost glad to have
missed that. I like my May to be smiling and gladsome, not frowning
and petulant. But to-day she has put on her best bib and tucker, and
with the conceit of a frail human being I weave the pleasant fancy that
it is done in my honour. "They are giving me a welcome, nurse," I say.
"The apple tree is rosy pink with pleasure at my greeting blown to it
through the window."
And nurse, putting on her bonnet and cloak to go out, tells me to hush
and not talk so much.
They have been telling me to hush for so long it seems; but now I am
tired of hushing, tired of being good.
I told Dr. Renton this yesterday, and he smiled and said it showed I
was getting better. "Not getting, got," I returned. "When may I get
up?" And he said he would come and tell me on Wednesday; and this is
Monday, three o'clock in the afternoon, and I have forty-eight long
hours to get through before I know.
Nurse is just a trifle cross with my impatience. She becomes irritable
when I talk about getting up. She says how would I like to lie for
some months; and I reply not at all--that it would be quite impossible
for Dimbie to get along without my being ever at his elbow, and that it
would be still more impossible for me to remain in a recumbent position
when an upright one is possible.
I was glad of this "lying down" when I was in pain. Pain! There was a
time when I had not known the meaning of the word. It had passed me
by, left me alone. I had seen it on a few people's faces; then I
thought it was discontent, now I know it was pain.
How do people bear it--always? keep their reason? Does God try them
till they are just at breaking-point, and then gently remove them? or
send them the blessing of unconsciousness?
They say I lay for hours away in a world of my own. I did not flinch
when they touched me, moved me, laid me on my bed, left me in the hands
of the doctors.
And yet I would have stayed if I could--kept my brain unclouded to help
Dimbie when he picked me up, disentangled me (he always seems to be
disentangling me from something) from the wrecked bicycle, and laid me
away from that terrible wall. I did so want to help him. His white,
set face recalled me a moment from the haze of unconsciousness which
was settling upon me, and I whispered, "Dimbie, dear!" but I never
heard his answer. The mist became an impenetrable fog, and I left him
alone with his difficulties.
I don't know now what I wanted to say.
He teazes me with lips that won't keep steady, and says I wished to
know if my hat were straight.
"Dear goose," I protest, "it was something to do with the black chicken
my wheel caught against in my headlong flight down the hill. I tried
to dodge it--it was such a nice, wee black chicken, but it dodged too,
and--I couldn't help it." And the tears tremble in my eyes--just from
weakness. "I think I wanted you to go back up the hill and help it,
for we were both in a very sorry plight."
And Dimbie, to my surprise, turns away to the window and says we shall
have rain. If it had rained every time Dimbie has predicted it during
my illness we should have been obliged to take refuge in an ark and
float about the surface of the waters.
I am very cheerful now. I am getting better. What joy, what hope
those words contain for those who have been sick and sorry. I wiped
away the last tear this morning when mother went. Peter's letters had
become so tiresome that I told her she had better go. And as I threw a
kiss to the back of her pretty bonnet as she disappeared through the
gate the tear was for her and not for myself.
"I would like to cut Peter for life, and I would but for your sake,
poor dear little mother," I murmured savagely. And nurse, who entered
the room at that moment, said, "You've moved."
"Yes," I replied, a little guiltily; "but as the pain has almost gone,
I thought it could not do any harm just to sit up for a moment and
watch mother go."
"You've sat up?" she cried in dismay.
"Yes." I snuggled my head down on the pillow. "I think I'll have a
little sleep now, nurse."
"I shall tell Dr. Renton and Mr. Westover." Her voice was relentless.
"If you do I shall sit up again, and refuse to take my beef-tea," I
asseverated. "Besides, it is sneaky to tell tales."
Her lips twitched as she poured some beef-tea into my feeder.
"If you sit up again I shall give up the case."
Her voice reminded me of the stone wall I had smashed against, and I
told her so; but she was not to be moved.
"Will you give me your faithful promise that you will not sit up again?
I am responsible to Dr. Renton and Mr. Rovell. I have nursed Mr.
Rovell's cases for years, and I do not wish to lose his work."
She stood over me like an angel with a flaming sword.
"I promise, nursey, dear," I said meekly. "But you won't take my
manuscript book from me? I can write quite easily lying down. You
see, it has stiff covers."
"You can keep that," she conceded. "Are you doing French exercises?"
"No," I said gravely. "At present I am writing what you might call
'patience exercises.' When I am at work I forget how long it is before
Mr. Westover will be home. I forget my back. I forget General
Macintosh and my other worries. I am so absorbed in keeping my
spelling and grammar in order that I have no time for other matters.
You see, if I were to di--go before my husband, he might wish to see
these exercises, and I should not like him to smile at my mistakes."
"You are not going before Mr. Westover," she said briskly. "All my
patients think they are going to die. I am not altogether sorry, as
they are so sorry for themselves that it keeps them absorbed and out of
mischief. Were they not taken up in picturing their husbands flinging
themselves on to their graves in a frenzy of grief they might be
picking their bandages off."
I giggled and choked into my beef-tea.
"I hate beef-tea," I said when I had recovered. "Besides, it is only a
stimulant, and not a food."
"How do you know that?" she asked.
"I saw it in mother's medical book." I spoke carelessly.
"Where is it?" Her voice was sharp.
"Down the bed."
She dived gently but firmly under the clothes and removed the book
which I had had such trouble in purloining from mother by bribing
Amelia.
"Is there anything else you have read in it?"
"No," I said, "I've not had time. I was just running through the index
when my eye caught the word beef-tea."
"What were you going to look for?"
"Spines," I returned promptly. "As mine has gone a bit wrong I thought
I would like a little information about it."
"And I'm just glad I caught you in time," she said sternly. "That is
why I like nursing men so much better than women. Men are too scared
about themselves to go poking their noses into medical books, but women
are so curious about their own cases that there is no holding them in.
They look at their charts--I have seen them doing it in hospital when
the nurses' backs were turned. They take their own temperatures, feel
their own pulses, and ask a thousand questions which no sensible nurse
would dream of answering."
"I have not asked silly questions," I argued.
"No, because up to now you have been far too poorly. What is it you
want to know?"
"When I may get up," I said eagerly.
"Well, you won't find that in a medical book. Did you expect to do so?"
"Oh, no. I wanted to find out of what spines are made; the diseases to
which they are subject," I said rather lamely.
"Yours isn't a disease, but an accident. Dr. Renton will tell you fast
enough when you may get up." She put the book into a drawer.
"It seems so long to Wednesday."
"He is not coming till next week."
"Not till next week," I said blankly, "and this is only Monday. He
said he would come on Wednesday."
"No, he didn't. You assumed that he would."
"Well, I call it most neglectful."
"There is nothing to come for now," she said soothingly. "It is a good
way from Dorking to Pine Tree Valley, and of course, as he said, there
is no good in running up a long bill."
"I don't believe he said that," I cried heatedly.
"Perhaps he didn't," she admitted; "but you mustn't excite yourself. I
am going to lower the blinds. You said you were sleepy."
"I never was so wide awake in all my life," I almost sobbed. "I think
it is mean of Dr. Renton. I did so want to get up this week and smell
the wallflowers before they were quite over. I think they were late in
flowering for my sake. I put them in and they waited for me, and now I
shall miss them."
"I will bring some in for you to smell."
"It won't be the same," I cried petulantly. "You don't understand,
nurse. To enjoy wallflowers to the full the sun must be shining upon
them, and you must stand a little away from the bed, and the west wind
must come along gently, bearing in its arms the scent--just a breath of
warm fragrance, and--well, that is the way to enjoy wallflowers,
and--oh, nurse, I do so want to bury my face in them." I tailed off to
a wail.
She walked to the window and lowered the blind.
"If you carry on in this way you will never smell wallflowers again."
She was cross. "I shall leave you now, and perhaps you'll be calmer
when I come back."
"Oh, nurse," I said penitently, "don't go. I will be good. And I want
you to read me _Peggy and Other Tales_. You read it so beautifully."
_Peggy_ is a dear black book which belonged to mother when she was a
little girl. It was my especial favourite when I was seven, and it has
been quite the most suitable form of literature for a weak, fractious
invalid with a hazy brain and wobbly emotions.
Nurse laughed as she picked up the book.
"Are you not tired of it?"
"No," I replied. "_Peggy_ comforts me very much. And when you have
finished her, you might read me something out of _Ecclesiastes_. It is
not that I am feeling religious or think I am going to die, but the
language is so musical and grand: '_Or ever the silver cord be loosed,
or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain,
or the wheel broken at the cistern._' It is the repetition of the word
'broken' I like. Now had I been writing the verse I should have
searched about for another verb--smashed, cracked--and straightway the
beauty of the lines would have been spoiled. But Solomon was so sure
of himself. He knew the word 'broken' was just the right word even if
used three times and so he used it."
Nurse sat and looked at me with surprise chasing across her face.
"Dear me," she said, "I never notice things like that when I am
reading."
"What do _you_ notice?" I inquired.
"Oh, I don't think I notice anything. I just want to hurry on to where
the man proposes."
"But men don't often propose in the Bible, with the exception of
Jacob," I said laughing.
"I didn't refer to the Bible. I was thinking of books generally."
"You mean you never notice how a book is written. You just want to get
on with the plot."
"That's it," she agreed. "I hate descriptions. They tire me to death,
especially as to how the characters feel inside about things. Heroines
are the worst of all. They commune with themselves for hours over the
merest trifles."
"Do you mean as to whether they will get a new dress, or engage a man
to put a new washer on the bathroom tap which drips?"
"Oh, no," she said, a little impatiently, "I can't explain; it is not
over things like that they worry themselves. But you look tired. You
are talking too much. I will read you to sleep."
She spoke with finality, and picked up the book.
As she read aloud in a somewhat sonorous voice I lay and watched the
tree-tops. "Next week," I thought, "I shall be out of doors once more.
I shall visit the frog-pond with Dimbie. I shall wander through the
fields with him. His arm will clasp mine, as I shall be weak, and we
shall sit and rest under a white hawthorn hedge. The scent will be
heavy on the still evening air. The fields of clover and wheat
will----" And at this point I left _Peggy_ and nurse, and fell asleep.
CHAPTER VII
DR. RENTON BREAKS SOME NEWS TO ME
The week has passed at last--in the daytime on leaden feet, on wings of
gold in the evening when, as the clock has struck six, Dimbie and
happiness have entered my room hand in hand.
"Only four more days, dear one," Dimbie has said hopefully.
"Only three more days. Nurse must begin to air your tea-gown."
"Only two more. I am putting bamboo poles through the small wicker
chair. You may not be able to walk at first, and nurse and I will
carry you. I could manage you alone, you are only a feather in weight,
but I might hurt you--such a frail Marguerite my little wife looks."
"Is it the drain-bamboo you are using?" I ask demurely. "For Amelia
might object." And Dimbie laughs like a happy boy.
"Only one more day. To-morrow you will meet me at the door. Nurse
will help you there, and then she will go away, and--we shall be
alone." His voice vibrates with happiness and my cheeks glow.
"Have you missed me, Dimbie?" I whisper. "Have you enjoyed pouring out
your own tea and finding your slippers and working in the garden alone?"
And he smiles tenderly and says he hasn't missed me one little bit, and
can't I see it in his face? And nurse who comes into the room says
"Ahem!" Her throat often seems a little troublesome.
And now to-morrow has come. Dr. Renton may walk in at any minute, and
I press my finger to my wrist to try to hush the beating.
Nurse has put me into my best blue silk jacket, and my hair has been
done--well, not in the very latest Parisian mode, but its two plaits
are tied with new blue ribbons. She has propped me up so that I may
see the lane and know the exact moment in which Dr. Renton may drive
down it.
I persuaded her to go for her walk as soon as lunch was over. I told
her Dr. Renton never came, as she herself knew, much before half-past
three, and that I felt unusually well.
And as soon as ever I heard the click of the gate and knew she had gone
I rang the tortoise--the bell which always lives on the other
pillow--for Amelia.
She appeared, very dirty.
"Why, you're not dressed," I said.
"Did you ring to tell me that, mum? Because I knewed it."
Her attitude was not that of impertinence, but of inquiry.
"Oh, no," I replied quickly. "I want you to bring me up one of the
volumes of the encyclopædia. I don't know the number, but it will have
SPI on the back."
I spoke nervously, for I felt guilty. I was about to embark upon an
act of deception. Would Amelia detect me? But, for a wonder, she left
the room without a comment.
In a minute she was back.
"There is no volume with SPI on it," she announced. "There is one with
SIB and SZO on it, mum."
"That will do," I said eagerly. "It will be in that."
She brought it with a running accompaniment of squeaks and gasps.
"Three at a time, mum."
"Three at a time! What?" I inquired.
"Stairs, mum."
"Well, then," I said, "it is very foolish of you, Amelia. Your
breathing resembles a gramophone when you wind it up. I shan't require
anything further, thank you; but please get dressed. I should like you
to be neat when Dr. Renton arrives, and he will probably have tea with
me. I don't know how it is you are so late."
"I do, mum."
"Why?"
My question was answered by another.
"Have you any idea what I do after lunch, mum? Do you think I am
skipping or playing marbles?"
"Oh, no," I said hastily, "I am sure you are not, Amelia."
"Well, then, I'll tell you what I do, so as you won't be wonderin' why
I'm not dressed by half-past two." She spoke volubly. "I washes up
the lunch things--nurse's now as well; she's too grand to so much as
put a kettle on. Then I sweeps up the kitchen, sides up the hearth,
brushes the kettle, cleans the handle----"
"What do you do that for?" I asked with interest.
"For fun, of course."
"_Amelia!_" I said rebukingly.
"Beggin' your pardon, mum, but it seemed such a foolish
question--meanin' no offence to you. I cleans the handle, which is
copper here--it was brass at Tompkinses'--to get the dirt and smoke
off. You never got your hands black in lifting _my_ kettle, did you
now?"
"I don't think I have ever lifted it," I rejoined.
"Oh, well," she said in a superior way, "of course you can't know; but
people who knows anything at all about a house knows that generals'
kettles are mostly black. Then I scrubs the table, dusts the kitchen,
feeds the canary, and waters the geranium, which is looking that
sickly-like I'm ashamed of the tradespeople seeing it. The butcher
only says to me yesterday, 'I see you are a bit of a horticulturist,
miss.'"
She stopped, breathless.
"You certainly are very busy," I said.
"Busy isn't the word. I'm like a fire-escape from morning till night."
I think she meant fire-engine, and I was not sorry when she departed,
for I was anxious to get to my encyclopædia.
I turned the pages rapidly--Sphygmograph, Spice Islands, Spider,
Spikenard, Spinach, Spinal Cord. "Ah, here we are!" I said
delightedly. In a moment my spirits drooped. "See Physiology, vol.
xix. p. 34. For diseases affecting the Spinal Cord, see Ataxy
(Locomotor), Paralysis, Pathology, and Surgery."
I gave a deep sigh. I always have disliked the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_. From the moment Dimbie introduced it to our happy home I
have had a feeling of unrest. It appears to think you have nothing to
do with your time beyond playing "hunt the slipper" with it. You wish
to look up a subject like dog. With a certain amount of faith and hope
you approach your encyclopædia. Dog refers you to Canine. You check
your impatience. Canine refers you to Faithfulness. A bad word, if
you were a man, would then be used; but you are not a man, so you only
stamp your foot. Faithfulness refers you to Gelert, and you hurt
yourself rather badly as you replace the volume. You give up dog. You
would prefer your pet dying before your very eyes to searching any more
heavy volumes.
When Dimbie first saw the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ advertised in the
Daily Mail he became very enthusiastic, and after talking about it for
some time commented upon my lack of interest in the subject.
"Why, Marg, they are giving it away!" he cried.
"Oh," I said, rousing myself, "that is quite a different thing. I like
people who give books away. When will they arrive?"
"When I said, 'Giving it away,'" Dimbie explained, hedging, "I meant
that the payments would be by such easy instalments that we couldn't
possibly miss them. And a fumed oak bookcase will be thrown in free."
I became interested in the bookcase, and when it arrived I wasn't, for
it was black and varnishy and sticky, and very far removed from fumed
oak as I knew it. I gave it to Amelia for her pans, and we ordered
another from the joiner, who charged us £4 for it, money down, as we
were strangers.
We don't find the payment of the instalment each month in the least
easy. In fact, we almost go without fire and food to meet it.
I rang the tortoise sharply. The encyclopædia should be made to
divulge that which I wished to know. I would not be hoodwinked.
"Please bring me volumes PHY, LOC, PAR, PAT, and SUR," I said to
Amelia, who was buttoning her black bodice all wrong. "And where's
your cap?"
"In my pocket, mum." She produced it, fastening it on wrong end
foremost with two hair-pins which once might have been black.
"It is an unsuitable place to keep it," I pronounced. "And where are
your cuffs?"
Amelia smiled.
"They've melted, mum. I forgot they was india-rubber, and I put them
into the oven after washing them, and when I went for them they was
just drippin'."
I sighed deeply.
"Well, bring me the volumes. Do you remember which I mentioned?"
"No, mum."
"I will write them down for you."
"Why not have the whole forty, mum?" she said, as she took the slip of
paper.
"Those five will be sufficient, thank you," I said coldly.
Her panting was naturally excessive as she laid the volumes on the bed.
"They are rather heavy for me to lift, Amelia," I said. "Please open
PHY for me and turn over the leaves till you come to Physiology, and
then go and see about some tea. I don't feel I can wait till four
o'clock to-day."
"Would you like some drippin' toast, mum? I've got some lovely beef
drippin' from the last sirloin which master carved all wrong. He cut
it just like ribs--I mean the under-cut--instead of across. He'd have
catched it if he'd been Mrs. Tompkins' husband."
"But he isn't, you see." My manner was extinguishing.
"You're a bit cross, mum?" she suggested.
"No, Amelia, I'm not, only tired--tired of waiting for Dr.
Renton--tired, sick to death of lying here. Do you know how long I
have lain here?"
"Seven weeks come Wednesday," she replied promptly.
"No, Amelia. You have miscalculated. You have minimised the period of
time. I have lain here," and I stretched my arms wide, "a thousand
days and nights, a million days and nights; and each day and night has
stretched away to eternity."
"Lawks, mum!" Her corsets cracked.
"Lawks! doesn't express it, Amelia. Go now and put on the kettle with
the clean copper handle. No dripping toast, thank you. I am sure
nurse would disapprove. She has a tiresome habit of disapproving of
most things. Besides, I don't feel like common fare. I want something
to take me out of myself and to uplift me. Something delicate, subtle,
ambrosial. Do you know what ambrosial means? No? Ambrosia means food
for the gods. I want food for the gods--iced rose leaves, a decoction
of potpourri to assuage my thirst. Go, Amelia, and make speed to do my
bidding."
And Amelia, with bulging eyes, has gone. I could hear her muttering to
the landing furniture, "Just a bit dotty in the head like Ned Wemp, the
village softy. Poor thing, no wonder she's queer at times. She _did_
bump her head."
And I am laughing weakly. I feel, after all, unequal to tackling the
encyclopædia. I feel faint with waiting and watching for Dr. Renton.
It is half-past three. I heard nurse come in a few minutes ago. I
hear Amelia rattling the tea-cups. But the sound doesn't cheer me.
Somehow, why I cannot say, fear has gripped me at the heart. And I
cannot laugh it away. Why is Dr. Renton so long in coming?
"'He cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!'"
* * * * *
Dr. Renton has been here. And I have sent nurse away so that I may
fight it out alone before Dimbie comes home. I broke down a little
before Dr. Renton, but I mustn't cry before Dimbie. I must always try
to remember that. He has quite enough worries of his own. I must
never cry before Dimbie.
Dr. Renton's words keep slowly repeating themselves in my brain: "To
lie for twelve months is hard, but--supposing it had been life-long
crippledom, that would be harder."
"Supposing it had been life-long crippledom!"
I must go on saying it over and over again till I feel patient, till I
feel grateful for only being asked to bear the lighter burden. But,
oh, how long it seems! How very long! To think that I must lie quite
still. And this was to have been my first year of happiness, the first
year in which I was free to roam at my will, free to stretch my wings
away from Peter's cramping influence.
It seems a little hard.
"But supposing it had been life-long crippledom!" I must learn to be
patient.
* * * * *
I think I might have helped Dr. Renton, made it less difficult for him
to tell. But I was selfish. Instinctively I knew what was coming--his
rugged face was more rugged than usual--and yet I clasped my hands and
cried, "How long you have been. When may I get up? Oh, say to-day. I
_do_ so want to go to the door to meet Dimbie. I ache to go and meet
him. I hear the latch of the garden gate, his footstep on the gravel;
then my spirit like a bird flies to meet his, and--Amelia meets him.
Speak, Dr. Renton. Say it quickly. Say I may get up."
And all the answer he made was to pick up one of the volumes of the
encyclopædia and walk to the window.
There was silence for a moment, and that silence told me all.
"But my pulse is steady, doctor, dear," I cried with a sob in my voice.
"My temperature is normal. My eyes are clear. My colour is good. I
am _quite_ well again."
"I wish to God you were!" he said almost savagely.
"What is the matter with me?" I spoke more quietly. His evident
emotion frightened me into a momentary calmness. I might as well know
the worst or best and get it over. My heart beat thickly, and I closed
my eyes. I had known Dr. Renton long enough to feel sure that whatever
he told me would be the truth. And the truth was that I was to be on
my back for a whole year; to be lifted from my bed to a couch, and from
the couch back again to bed; that I might be wheeled from one room to
another on the ground floor, but must never walk.
Never walk! As one in a dream I heard his words. Dully and with
unseeing eyes I stared through the window. By and by I should get used
to the idea, used to being still. _What would Dimbie say_?
I turned to the doctor quickly.
"Does my husband know?"
"No," he replied.
"Why haven't you told him?"
"I wanted to make sure."
"And you are sure now? There is no other way--treatment, massage?" I
spoke breathlessly.
"There is no other way. But a year will pass quickly. You must be
brave."
"But I didn't want it to pass quickly," I cried bitterly. "Don't you
understand this was to have been my year--my wonderful year?"
"There will be other years," he began gently. "You are young,
Marguerite. All your life is before you. There will be next year----"
"But next year will not be the same as this. Go, Doctor Renton; leave
me. I am going to cry, and you will be angry. You hate tears. But I
must cry before Dimbie comes home, and the time is passing. Unless I
cry I--I shall break in two."
The tears were raining down my face as I spoke, and Dr. Renton swore
lustily, as he has always done when upset.
"Good-bye," I said, smiling through my tears. "Your language will
deprave Jumbles."
He held my hand between his.
"You know I am sorry. I am a poor hand at expressing what I feel."
"I know," I replied. "No girl ever had a kinder doctor."
"I shook you when you were a little girl with measles for running
barefoot about the passages." He was patting my hand.
"Do you mean you want to shake me now?" I asked.
"Yes, if you cry any more," he said a little grimly, but the expression
in his eyes was very kind.
"I'll try not to," I whispered tremulously.
"That's a brave girl," he said. "Good-bye, keep up your heart, and
we'll get you well." And I lay and cried for half an hour.
CHAPTER VIII
DIMBIE COMFORTS ME
Dimbie went very white when I told him. He walked to the window and
stared for some time at the gathering darkness. I had chosen this
hour, knowing my face would be in shadow. It is so much easier to
control one's voice than one's features. Jumbles rubbed his face
against my shoulder. I could hear Amelia singing, "Her golden hair is
hanging down her back." She sounded cheerful and happy. Nurse had
gone to the village to post a letter. She would be back soon to
"settle" me for the night. Why didn't Dimbie speak--say something? I
wanted to be comforted as only Dimbie could comfort me.
A little sigh broke from me, and in a second his arms were round me and
I was held very closely.
"My poor little girl," he murmured. "I _am_ sorry for her."
"Oh, Dimbie," I whispered, clinging to him, "can you bear with me if I
have a little grumble? I meant to be so brave to you, to put on such a
bright face, not to let you hear _one_ word of repining; but I want to
let it all out, oh, so badly. You only can understand how I feel,
because you know and love me best. And after to-night I will try never
to speak of it again."
For answer he pillowed my head on his shoulder and kissed my eyes and
hair and lips.
"You see," I said, looking across the garden, which was shadowy and
mysterious, to the frog-pond field, "I don't think I should have felt
it quite so much if it had been next year. We should have been an old
married couple by then, and have got used to everything--to all the
wonderfulness of being together alone, I mean without mother and Peter."
"I shall never get used to that," said Dimbie with emphasis.
"Yes, you will," and I assumed an old married woman's air. "It seems
incredible now, when we have been husband and wife for only five
months. How do you feel when you say, 'My wife'?"
"Thrill all over."
"So do I," I laughed, "when I say, 'My husband.' I feel quite shy, and
imagine people must be laughing at me. But--have you ever seen Peter
getting excited over those two words, 'My wife'?"
"Never," said Dimbie. "But," indignantly, "you are not surely going to
compare me with Peter?"
"I am not going to compare you with anyone. But just think of all the
couples you know who have been married, say--longer than two years."
"Shan't."
I laughed and kissed his ear. Then I became grave.
"Now listen to my words of wisdom. I am going to speak for some time,
tell you all my thoughts, and you mustn't interrupt. You and I love
each other very much, and we are always going to love each other very
much--at least we hope so. But this would have been our one wonderful
year. This would have been the year when we should have walked upon
the heights very close to the sun and stars. This would have been our
year of enchantment, when the weeds on the wayside would have blossomed
as the rose, and the twitter of every common sparrow would have been to
us as the liquid note of the nightingale. This would have been the
year when we should have wandered down dewy lanes, and, looking into
each other's eyes, would have found a something there which would have
caused our hearts to swell and our pulses to beat.
"On June evenings we should have gathered little wild roses and plunged
our faces into fragrant meadow-sweet, and laughed at the croaking of
the frogs in the pond and had supper in the garden under the apple
tree, loth to leave the sweetness of a summer night. In July we should
have sat in the bay or gathered moon daisies; and I, forgetting I was
Marguerite married, would have whispered, 'He loves me, he loves me
not;' and you, flinging down, your hat on to the grass, would have
knelt in front of me and behaved in a manner most foolish and yet most
delightful. In August we should have had our first holiday together.
What scanning of maps and reading of guide-books! Cromer, we would
settle--poppy land. We would laze on the heather at Pretty Corner and
look at the blue sea. Too many people we would remember, and fix on
the Austrian Tyrol. Baedekers would be bought, trains looked up, only
to find that when we had paid Amelia's wages and the poor rate our bank
balance was very small. And finally we should have found our way to
some old-world Cornish fishing village, where we should have bathed and
walked, and fished from an old boat. In September we should have
cycled along beautiful autumn-scented lanes, dismounting at Oxshott,
and wading ankle-deep through the pine woods, would have silently
thanked Cod for the flaming beauty of the birches silhouetted against
the quiet sky. In November we should have tidied up our garden and
planted our bulbs for the spring--crocuses and daffodils, especially
daffodils, for do we not love them best of all the spring flowers? And
then Xmas would have come, with its merry-making and festivities, and
our beautiful year would have ended on a night when with clasped hands
and full hearts we should have listened to the tolling of the bell for
its passing--the dear, kind old year which had brought us such joy,
such complete contentment."
I finished with a break in my voice, and, forgetting all my brave
resolutions, two big tears dropped on to Dimbie's hand which held my
own.
"Poor little sweetheart! My own dear wife," he said, "I am sorry for
you, so sorry I cannot express it. But why shouldn't such a year as
you picture be ours when you are strong and well once more? This first
year of our marriage shall be an indoor year. You shall be
Marguerite-sit-by-the-fire, knitting and making fine embroidery, and
later on you shall be my Marguerite of the fresh air, of the sun and
the wind, and we will still have our wonderful year."
I shook my head.
"It could never be the same," I replied. "I may sound sentimental,
Dimbie, but I am a woman and know. Men are very ignorant about love,
only women know. Men imagine that romance will last beyond the first
year as well as love, but women know better. Besides, men don't care
about its lasting, it tires them, bores them; but women care, oh, so
much. They can't help it, they are born that way. Men are
tremendously keen on gaining the object of their affection, and when
they have got it they regard it calmly, affectionately, unemotionally.
It is a possession: they are glad for it to be there, and almost
annoyed when it is absent--not exactly because they miss the
possession's companionship, but it has no right to be anywhere but at
its own fireside. Men go to golf, tennis, race meetings, fishing on
their Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. They are quite surprised at the
possession being a little sorry and hurt at first at their not wanting
to go about with her as they did in that first wonderful year. The
possession is unreasonable, exacting; she wants to tie her husband to
her apron strings. She has no right to be lonely--there are the
children, and if there are no children she must make interests of her
own; or--she might even take to golf so long as she isn't extravagant
and ambitious, and expect to play with Haskells or her own husband.
"All these are platitudes, you will say; but there never were truer
platitudes. Ah, if husbands would only realise and accept the fact
that woman is the other half of man, but diverse, how much happiness
there would be. Diverse! He loved her for her feminine attributes
before marriage--for her weaknesses if you like to call them such. Why
doesn't he after? A true, good woman doesn't want a great deal. A
gentle word, a caress, a look of love and understanding from the man
she loves are far more to her than coronets. A woman likes to be
wanted, and I don't think it is vanity. Watch her smile if her husband
marks her out of a large crowd for a little attention. The other women
there may be young and beautiful; she is little and old and faded, and
wears a shabby gown--but her husband _wants_ her. Women are never
happier than when they are wanted. And how quick they are, how
instantly they divine when an act of courtesy is performed for them
from duty only and not from affection. I once heard a man curse when
his wife asked him to hold her umbrella on a wet night when she was
struggling with the train of her gown and her slippers. They were
dining out, and couldn't afford cabs. She was frail, and he was big
and strong. She just caught at her breath. Through the years she had
learnt wisdom, a greater wisdom than Solomon could ever teach. She
realised that this man would stand by her in a tight place, and with
that she must be content. It was unreasonable of her to hanker after
the little words of love and kindness which make life so sweet. He was
faithful to her, he didn't drink or gamble or go to clubs. He gave her
£25 a year for her clothes, and he 'kept' her. What more could she
possibly want? And if he swore at her, and told her she looked old,
and why couldn't she dress like other women, it was only his little
way, and didn't mean anything."
I paused.
"And so, and so that is why I am grieved at the loss of our first year."
Dimbie sat in silence for a moment, and when he moved and gently placed
my head on the pillow I was startled by the expression of his face.
"You speak from your experience of the manner in which your father has
treated your mother," he said at length slowly, "and that is a little
hard on other men. Do you think I shall ever cease to want you,
Marguerite?"
"I don't know," I replied.
"Yes, you do." His voice was stern.
"I cannot answer for the future."
"You have no faith in me?"
"You see, I shall be a helpless log, a useless invalid for twelve
months or even longer," I said. "It will be a great strain on your
love."
He dropped my hand and made to go away.
"Don't go," I cried.
"Do you think my love would stand the test of your being an invalid for
even twenty years?"
I did not answer.
"Do you?" he said, dropping on to his knees and looking into my eyes.
"Do you, Marguerite, wife?"
"Yes," I whispered.
"Thank God for that!" he said. "I was beginning to think--I was afraid
you did not understand me; that you were fearful at having given
yourself to me; that you did not love me, in fact, as I love you, for
where there is love there is no fear." He laid his cheek to mine,
murmuring, "Marguerite! Marguerite!" and so we sat till the darkness
fell and nurse came in.
CHAPTER IX
AMELIA EXPRESSES HER OPINION OF ME
And so I have settled down to my year of inactivity, of schooling my
temper, of a constant looking for and waiting for Dimbie, and of a
perpetual wrestling with Amelia.
When I told the last-named of my misfortune she just stood and stared
at me. I thought she could not have understood, or surely there would
be a word of sympathy. She was kind at heart I knew.
"Twelve whole months on my back," I repeated plaintively.
"And never have a bath, mum?"
"Don't be silly," I said irritably. "Of course arrangements will be
made for my baths. And all the rooms are to be rearranged. The doctor
wishes me to be carried downstairs. The dining-room is to be turned
into my bedroom, then I can be wheeled across to the drawing-room each
day; and the smoke-room will be used for meals.
"The smoke-room is full of bicycles and photographic rubbish," she said
argumentatively.
"Well, they can be moved. Don't throw stumbling-blocks in the way of
every suggestion. Are you not sorry for me?" I said.
"Very, mum," she assured me with warmth. "I knows how you will take
on. No one is never satisfied with anythink in this world. Now here,
I would give my very heyes to be a grand lady reclinin' on a couch in a
beautiful tea-gown, readin' novels, and drinkin' egg and sherry twice a
day."
"You would get very tired of it," I sighed.
"Well, you'll have to have a settled hoccupation, mum--makin' wool mats
like the work'us people, though I must say as they don't like it. My
uncle says they used to be quite peaceful and happy till them Brabazon
ladies came along and taught 'em how to make wool mats and rush
baskets. They worried about the patterns of them mats till the old men
was drove fairly silly. P'r'aps you could write poetry. You has a bit
of a look sometimes of a person--I mean a lady who _could_ write
poetry. There was a poet as visited Tompkinses'--a sickly-looking gent
with hair like a door-mat and a complexion like leeks which has been
boiled without soda. Tompkinses was very proud of knowing him, and the
heldest Miss Tompkins used to wear her canary-coloured satin blouse
when he came to dinner. When the wine was offered him he always said,
'No, thanks,' in a habstracted way, but when it went round the table
again, as wine does, he'd fill a tumbler, and frown at the ceiling, and
pretend he didn't know what he was doing."
"And do I look like a leek that has been boiled without soda?" I asked
faintly.
"Oh, no, mum," Amelia replied with comforting haste, "not quite so bad
yet. You've looked more like a love-lies-bleeding just lately since
you had your accident--though the master seems satisfied. Everybody's
tastes is different. Love-lies-bleeding is not my fancy. I like
something handsome and straight up like a sunflower or pee-ony.
Writin' poetry would help to pass the time, and you has some of the
tricks this poet had. He'd stand and stare at the moon, when he was in
the garden with Miss Tompkins, and mutter to it like someone gone daft.
He fairly skeered me; and he'd take on at catchin' sight of a vi'let as
though he'd met a cockroach."
"Well?" I asked, trying to see the connection.
"Well, mum, I catched you carryin' on in just the same way in the
garden on master's birthday. You was starin' up at the sky at a
lark--I was going to the ashpit--and I heard you say softly to
yourself, 'Bird, thou never wert.' I couldn't help hearing you, and I
wondered whether you thought it was a kitten or a spider."
I laughed, though I didn't want to do so. I was hideously depressed at
the thought of that glorious spring morning and now--but Amelia was so
very ridiculous.
I watched her dusting, which was vigorous and thorough, and wished she
would put Ruth, a picture above the mantelshelf, at a more decorous
angle.
"I have been thinking that you won't be able to manage the housework
alone without my assistance, Amelia," I observed, when she had finished
brandishing the duster about and had stopped squeaking. "We shall have
to engage a charwoman to help you a couple of days a week. We can't
afford another servant, I am sorry, but a charwoman will be very
helpful. Then if I sent all the washing out I think you could manage.
Oh, and I will have a window cleaner," I added encouragingly.
I thought she would be pleased. I imagined servants loved charwomen.
I know I should were I a servant--so nice to have someone to talk to,
and into whose willing ear to pour tales about the mistress. But
Amelia snorted so violently she made me jump.
"Charwoman!" It would be difficult to convey the scorn in her voice.
"Charwoman helpful?"
"Aren't they?" I inquired.
Amelia flung herself towards the door.
"You'd never seen a flue-brush, mum, and now you asks if a charwoman is
helpful."
I remained silent, overwhelmed by my own ignorance.
Amelia fetched a piece of wet, soapy flannel, and applied it to some of
her own finger-marks on the white door. I felt glad she was working
off her feelings in this way.
"What do they go out for?" I said at length.
"Just to rob the silly folks who engages 'em," she replied laconically.
"Are they all like that?"
"Everyone as I met. It took me best part of a day to clean up after
her as came to Tompkinses'. She swilled herself in beer and tea, had
meat three times a day, and hung tea and butter round her waist under
her skirt just like a bustle when she went away in the evening."
"But surely she was an exception?" I commented.
"No, mum, they're all like that, every one of 'em," she replied firmly.
"But how are you going to manage now I am laid up?"
She hesitated for a moment, perhaps out of consideration for my
feelings, but her own got the better of her.
"I shall manage all right," said she briskly. "In fact, I shall get
along much better. Your helping hindered me terribly, mum. I hope as
I'm not hurtin' your feelin's. You see," she added kindly, "you 'adn't
been used to work, not with four servants; and when you did anythink I
always had to be runnin' after you to wipe up the mess. You said you'd
fill the lamps; well, you did when you wasn't putting the paraffin on
the table--there was that to scrub, and your gloves and scissors to put
away. And the day as you said you'd make a puddin', well--the sultanas
was lying about like blackbeetles, mum, and flour all over the place
just like a snowstorm. And it was, 'Amelia, put the pan on, please,'
and 'Amelia, take it off,' and 'Amelia, put some coal on the fire, the
puddin' water's stopped boilin',' and 'Amelia, the puddin's boiled
dry.'"
She stopped for breath, and I looked drearily through the window.
"Hope you're not offended, mum, but I wanted you to hunderstand as how
I could manage all right."
"I quite understand," I replied. "No, I am not offended. I am afraid
I am not of much use in the world, Amelia," and I sighed.
"But the master doesn't seem to want you any different, mum," she said
comfortingly. "He sits and looks at you as though you had won a prize
at a show. Mr. Tompkins used to stare at his black prize Minorca just
in the same hidentical way."
"His black Minorca?" I repeated vaguely.
"Yes, mum. One of his hens as got a first prize, and was a rare layer."
"Oh!" I murmured.
"I must go now," she said, "and put the potatoes on for your lunch.
And don't you fret about the work, mum. As soon as ever nurse has
gone, who makes a power of mess, I shall have plenty of time and to
spare, and can put a patch on my pink body."
"What, another?" I almost shouted. "That will make the seventh."
She regarded me with uplifted brows.
"You don't want the bones of my stays to come through, mum?"
"Oh, no," I assured her quickly. "But is it necessary to have quite so
many bones? I have only about six altogether."
She looked me up and down with an eye devoid of any admiration.
"Of course, I don't wear corsets at all now," I hastened to explain.
"My figger has always been my strong point, mum, and I'm not goin' to
let myself go. Of course, you're thin, mum, so it doesn't matter so
much. But people who lets themselves go always has big waists, like
the statues in picture galleries. I once went to a show in
Whitechapel, and I says to the girl who went along with me 'I'd be
downright ashamed if I couldn't show a smaller waist than that Venus.'
I expect yours will be pretty big when you gets about again," with
which comforting prediction she retired to the lower regions and left
me with this pleasing prospect and my own thoughts, which were not of
the most cheerful description. It is hard to be told that one is of no
use in the world, and to be compared with a black prize Minorca,
however good a layer!
CHAPTER X
I DISCOVER THAT DR. RENTON IS IN LOVE
Nurse has gone, and I am not overwhelmed with grief. I could quite see
that within another week the kitchen would have been turned into a
pugilistic ring, and she and Amelia would have settled their grievances
in a fight.
Amelia has said, with her nose in the air, "Seems to think I am just
here to wait on her, mum. Nurses halways imagines they're duchesses,
and just took to nursin' out of pilanthropy."
And nurse has said kindly, "I don't want to worry you, Mrs. Westover,
but probably _that_ girl is here just as a temporary, or I shouldn't
speak; but really her impertinence is----"
"She is _quite_ permanent," I have hastened to assure her, at which she
too has stuck her nose in the air; and so they have gone about as
though the law of gravitation was reversed, and their noses permanently
drawn heavenwards.
I am downstairs in the drawing-room. I found awaiting me an invalid
couch--an Ilkley--low and luxurious, with soft down cushions cased in
silk of a lovely golden hue--a couch contrived to ease the weariness of
tired people. They have pushed it into the window, and from here I can
see all my friends of the garden--the apple tree best loved of all, for
is it not our very _own_ tree, growing on our domain? One has a
peculiar affection for one's own possessions. Not that I am anything
but grateful to the beech in the frog-pond field for casting its cool
shadow across the lawn; but it belongs to somebody else--perhaps some
farmer who hardly knows of its existence.
My descent from the upper regions was somewhat perilous. We--Amelia,
nurse, and I--wanted to take Dimbie by surprise, so nurse said she
would superintend my removal. As a matter of fact, she did nothing of
the kind, for Amelia superintended it.
First of all she made me put up my hair. She said I could not "boss
the show" with it hanging down in two plaits. I reflected that were I
to dress it as high as the Eiffel Tower I should not be able to boss
_her_, but I did not mention this. Next she picked up _her_ end of the
chair and fairly ran with me down the stairs, nurse being bound to
follow. I closed my eyes and held my breath, and when I opened them
again I found myself staring at two gorgeous yellow flags decorated
with portraits of the King and Queen. They had certainly not been
there on the last occasion of my being in the drawing-room. The King
wore a top-hat and carelessly held a cigar in his kid-gloved hand. The
Queen, poor thing, was extremely _decolletée_, and wore mauve roses in
her hair. The King, in morning dress, seemed out of place to me by the
side of such grandeur on the part of his spouse.
Amelia broke into my musings.
"Thought we would have a bit of decoration, like the Jubilee, mum, in
your honour, so I got them flags in the village."
She looked at me expectantly, and nurse sniffed.
The sniff annoyed me.
"It was extremely kind of you, Amelia," I said warmly. "Thank you very
much."
"And the Hilkley, mum? The master got that, and we smuggled it into
the house without your hearing anythink that was going on. And he's
been wheeling it about hever since, trying to get the best persition,
where the sun wouldn't catch your eyes, and where you could see the
garden and the happle tree."
"I think it is lovely. Please lift me on to it, nurse. _You_ will
have to lift me to-morrow, Amelia," I said soothingly.
She watched the proceeding carefully, and with gentle hand arranged the
cushions. The hand was rough and coarsened by hard work, but I felt
that it would ever be ready to do my service.
I told them to leave me, as I wanted to be alone. I wanted to think.
Now that I was downstairs I wished to review my position. The familiar
aspect of the room, the furniture--which Amelia had pushed against the
walls with an undesirable effort at neatness--conjured up a thousand
pleasant memories. It had been on a snowy winter afternoon when Dimbie
and I had first come home. How peaceful, how delicious the warm,
fire-lit room had seemed after the rush of hotel life! We sat in the
gloaming talking, planning out our lives, what we would do, where we
would go; and now--ah! when should I cease to chafe at lying still? I
thought of all the people who had had to lie so much--Mrs. Browning,
Stevenson, and they had seemed so patient over years of ill-health--and
my inactivity was but for one year, and yet I was not patient.
* * * * *
Doctor Renton came into the room, bearing in his arms a great bunch of
roses.
"From your mother," he said; "she came round with them this morning.
She wanted to come with me."
"And why didn't she?" I felt my eyes kindle.
"You know," he replied with a shrug.
"Peter is a beast!" I said.
He smiled.
"You are evidently better. I am glad to find you downstairs. How did
you manage the removal?"
I described it fully, and he laughed.
"That girl of yours is a brick. I should keep her."
"She wouldn't go," I said.
"She will help you not to be lonely. Have you made any friends here
yet?"
"No," I returned. "I believe some people called when I was ill. But I
don't want anybody."
"You only want your husband?"
I nodded.
"You seem uncommonly fond of one another."
"Of course," I said.
To my surprise he sighed and walked to the window. I noticed his
figure was a little bent and his hair grey. I had known Dr. Renton all
my life, but for the first time it came to me that he was lonely.
"Why have you never married?" I asked suddenly. He surely wanted a
wife.
He started, and then smiled.
"All young married people want to know that of their friends," he said
evasively.
"I think you would have made an awfully nice husband, and--it seems
such a pity that you should be alone."
He picked up one of the roses which I had untied and held it to his
face.
"How do you mean, a pity?"
"Why, that you should be in that great big house at Dorking by yourself
when there are so many women in the world. They seem to overflow. I
don't know what is to be done with them all."
"So you want to marry me for the sake of reducing the number of
spinsters?" He laughed.
"Well, not exactly," I replied. "But I feel you have lost so much--you
and the woman you ought to have married."
"How do you know there was one?" he asked sharply.
I smiled.
"I guessed," I said. "I am quite brilliant at times. Where is she?"
"In India."
He stopped abruptly on the word, and from his attitude I realised he
would have given much to recall it. I felt I had been impertinent.
"Forgive me----" I began.
"Not at all," he said. "I don't mind. It's rather a relief to speak
of it. You--you are still in love, and will understand. Once there
was a time when I looked forward to being married. I looked forward
greatly. I thought of it morning, noon, and night."
"Well?" I said gently.
"She went abroad."
"But why? Didn't she return your love?"
"I--I don't know."
"You don't know?" I raised my voice.
"No."
"Didn't you tell her?"
"You see, she went off so quickly. She was in such a deuce of a hurry
to get abroad."
"What do you call a hurry?"
Dr. Renton shuffled.
"Perhaps you knew her for three months?"
"I knew her for two years."
"And you call two years a hurry?" I endeavoured to keep the sarcasm
out of my voice.
"Of course, I didn't know if she cared anything about me."
"Did you expect her to propose to you?"
"Oh, no, certainly not."
"I see, you dangled about her for two years. In fact, you almost
compromised her. Then you were astonished at the poor woman running
away. Year after year you played fast and loose with her----"
"I don't call two years year after year," he interrupted meekly.
"I do," I said severely. "Dimbie was only six weeks."
He laughed.
"We are not all made of the same stuff as Dimbie." He spoke so humbly,
so unlike his usual decided self, that I began to feel sorry for him.
"And do you think this woman will ever come back?"
"I wish to God she would," he said, with an intensity that startled me.
"Why, I do believe you still care for her," I said.
"Of course I do," he returned with asperity. "I thought I mentioned
that."
"No, you didn't. You simply said you had driven a woman to India.
Poor thing, my heart bleeds for her. I expect her tears have made a
sort of railway cutting down her cheeks, and she will be prematurely
aged."
Dr. Renton grunted.
"If you still care for her, may I ask why you don't follow her, or
write to her?"
"That is what I have asked myself a thousand times a day," he cried,
walking up and down the room. "For years I have been asking myself."
"Years!" I said in dismay. "Is it years?"
He nodded.
"Then I am afraid you are too late." I sighed.
"Of course I am. I've been a fool. Now it is too late."
"I'm very sorry."
He held out his hand.
"Good-bye."
"Can nothing be done?" I wondered.
"I'm afraid not, Marguerite."
"But you would be so happy married."
"Do you think all married people are happy?"
"No, according to Nanty few of them are. But I think _you_ would have
been, and I am sure of your wife. You are so strong and kind. I
always think of you in the same way as I think of Miss Fairbrother."
"Oh!" he said, turning his face away.
"Yes, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary and thirsty land. You
are both such comforting people. Do you remember Miss Fairbrother, my
old governess?"
"Yes," he said, and he walked quickly to the door and went out.
CHAPTER XI
MY FIRST CALLER
Yesterday morning Dimbie said to me--
"Have any of those beastly women called yet?"
"What women?" I asked in surprise.
"Why, the women who live round here, of course. I suppose there are
one or two knocking about? I saw a lady with thick ankles and a
Wellington nose come out of the Old Grange."
"No, she's not been," I said laughing. "We've only been here six
months, and we're poor. If they came in a hurry it would look as
though they wanted to know us."
"And I'm jolly sure we don't want to know them."
Dimbie was heated.
"Of course we don't, dear; but they won't realise that."
"Still, it would be rather nice if somebody dropped in occasionally to
have a chat with you and discuss Amelia," he said.
"I don't want to discuss Amelia," I retorted.
"I wish Nanty would come a bit oftener."
"It is a long way for her to drive. Why do you wish to cram the house
with women?" I said plaintively. "I have quite enough to do with my
reading, mending, sewing, and writing without being inundated by a lot
of strange females."
His dear face brightened.
"So long as you don't feel lonely and the days long, that's all right."
He stroked my head the wrong way.
"I'm not a bit lonely," I said. "No one could be lonely or dull who
had an Amelia; and now the weather is so warm and lovely I lie for
hours under the apple tree. June herself is more than a companion. I
think I am going to read; I cut the magazines, take out a new novel,
and then I lie with eyes half closed looking at the gifts June has
lavished with prodigal hand, listening to the whisperings of leaves and
grass and flowers."
"What a patient, plucky little girl," he whispered.
"Patient!" I cried, when he had gone, and the click of the gate told me
another long day had to be lived through alone. "Patient!"
But how glad I am he doesn't know.
The little lazy insects seem so happy to be doing nothing. They spread
their wings in the warm sun, and rub their little legs together from
sheer contentment at just being alive. They regard with ill-concealed
scorn the aggressive busyness of the bees in the syringa bush, who,
like all working things, are kicking up a tremendous fuss about their
efforts. "Laziness, doing nothing," the insects say, "breed peace and
contentment." "But what about enforced laziness--lying still on a
couch?" I cry.
Oxshott Woods are calling me. I want to lie on the warm, scented
pine-needles, with the sun filtering through the branches of the sad,
stately trees on to my face; I want my senses to be lulled into that
beatific repose which only Nature sounds can achieve. One thinks that
woods--pine woods--on a calm day are still; but lie and listen
carefully, and one will marvel at the multitude of sounds, at the
little hoppings and twitterings, and scurryings and crawlings and
peckings. You are far too lazy to turn your head, but you are
conscious that little bright eyes have you well in focus, that a
movement on your part will cause fear and confusion in the settlement,
so--you don't turn your head. You like to know that they are there,
and presently you fall asleep, and who knows what they do then?
And I am to miss all this. The woods may call, but I must lie still.
The wild-rose hedges may send messages to me on the soft south wind,
invitations to view their loveliness, but I must refuse them all. I
must wait for another year.
Amelia is anxious to wheel me into the lane. Dimbie is more anxious,
but I say "no." Who that is injured is not sensitive? I dread the
encountering of curious eyes, of eyes that even might be pitying.
I want to be left alone in the garden with the birds and insects. They
don't allude to my misfortune, they don't pity me. They always say the
right thing.
* * * * *
As though in direct answer to Dimbie's inquiry, the woman with the
thick ankles from the Old Grange has called.
I must have fallen asleep, for I was dreaming most foolishly and
beautifully that Dimbie and I were in a meadow making daisy-chains,
when I was rudely brought back to my own drawing-room--Amelia had
wheeled me into the house as the sun had gone--by hearing her say, "A
lady to see you, mum."
A little irritably--for I didn't want to leave the daisy-chains--I
looked round for the lady, but she wasn't there.
"She's on the doorstep, mum. Will you see her?"
"Of course," I said. "You must never leave people on the doorstep; it
is very rude."
"What about old clothes women, mum?"
I ignored her question, which seemed to me unusually foolish, and asked
her what she meant by wearing the tea-rose slippers, which I had
expressly forbidden.
"Go and change them." I commanded, "when you have announced the lady."
Her "announcing" was unusual. "The lady, mum. Sit down, please." At
which she pushed a chair behind my visitor's legs with so much force
that she simply fell on to it.
"You must excuse my servant," I said apologetically when Amelia had
vanished. "She is utterly untrained but invaluable." I held out my
hand as I spoke, which the lady touched coldly.
"My name is Mrs. Cobbold, and I live at the Old Grange," she announced
with a trumpet note.
"Oh, of course, Amelia forgot to mention it," I said politely.
"She didn't know it." She was aggrieved now.
"She could hardly mention it then," I said smiling, wishing to cheer
her up. But this simple and natural comment appeared to have the
opposite effect, for her brow lowered, and the jet butterfly in her
bonnet quivered ominously.
"I have called because I heard you were a--an invalid, Mrs.
Westover--that you were confined to your couch."
Her deportment dared me to contradict her.
"It is very kind of you," I said pacifically.
"Not kindness, but duty."
"Which makes your effort all the more praise-worthy," I said gently.
She looked at me sharply--through her pince-nez which gripped her nose
very tightly--suspiciously almost, but she misunderstood me. I had not
intended to be sarcastic. I was really touched at the sacrifice she
was evidently making on my behalf. I felt she was a district
visitor--probably the right hand of the vicar of the parish. She must
need refreshment. She wore the look of one whose tongue clove to the
roof of her mouth.
I rang the tortoise, and requested Amelia to bring tea.
"No tea for me, thank you," Mrs. Cobbold quickly interposed.
"I'm sorry," I said. "Perhaps you won't object to my having a cup?"
"Certainly not, but I never take anything between meals."
She seemed quite proud about this.
"Really!" I murmured interestedly. "But tea is a meal with me."
There was a pause. I could hear Amelia singing, "Now we shan't be
long," which meant she was reaching out the best tea-things. The best
tea-things appear to uplift her in a curious way. Perhaps by using
them she feels we are gradually rising to the social status of the
Tompkinses, who had an "at home" day with netted d'oyleys, and tea
handed round by Amelia herself on a silver salver.
I wondered if Mrs. Cobbold could hear her singing. I felt sure she
would strongly disapprove of any maid indulging in such vocal flights,
and in spite of myself I laughed. Our eyes met: hers were green and
hard, and in their depths I discovered that she disapproved of the
mistress more than of the singing maid.
I smiled again--I couldn't help it; and then I racked my brain for
something interesting and polite to say.
Mrs. Cobbold forestalled me.
"When is it expected? if I may venture to ask you."
"In about ten minutes."
"Gracious goodness!" she ejaculated, springing heavily to her feet.
"Whatever's the matter?" I cried, nearly falling off the couch.
"I thought--I was led to understand that----" she stammered and broke
off.
"Well?" I said, gazing at her in unconcealed astonishment.
"That--that--you will pardon my mentioning it, but--I am a mother
myself. And I was quite interested in hearing that the population of
Pine Tree Valley was about to be increased. But I did not imagine it
would be so soon."
I lay and stared at her. She had reseated herself, and again wore the
district visitor air. Was she mad or--suddenly, in a flash, the drift
of her remarks became clear to me. I strangled a laugh.
"The increase in the population of Pine Tree Valley has nothing to do
with me," I said, a little coldly.
She looked disappointed.
"I am suffering from an accident."
"Oh," she said grudgingly.
"I am afraid you are disappointed."
"The vicar's wife has misinformed me."
"Perhaps she has been gifted with a vivid imagination," I suggested.
"It is unfortunate, as it might get her into trouble."
Mrs. Cobbold looked or rather glared at me over the top of her glasses.
I was relieved when Amelia appeared with tea. I even forgave her for
her tea-rose slippers, which in her excitement she had omitted to
change. Casually I inspected the three-decker bread and butter and
cake-stand. I felt sure that Amelia would have upheld the honour and
glory of the family by "doing" the thing nicely. The first plate was
beyond reproach, nicely-cut bread and butter reposing on best netted
d'oyley. Mrs. Cobbold's parlour-maid could have done no better. But
the second plate made me pause. What was it? I rubbed my eyes. Did I
see a lonely macaroon garnished by a ring of radishes--pointed red,
fibrous radishes, with long green tops--arranged with a mathematical
precision, or did I not? I leaned forward for a closer
inspection--perhaps they were chocolate radishes or almond radishes.
My breath came quickly, and a jet butterfly smote me on the
forehead--Mrs. Cobbold had also leaned forward. The butterfly hurt me.
_That_ I didn't mind. What I _did_ object to was Mrs. Cobbold's
impertinent curiosity. If we chose to garnish a macaroon with radishes
it was none of her business.
"Won't you change your mind and have some tea?" I said, recovering
myself. "Macaroons and radishes are _so_ nice together--a German tea
delicacy." I nibbled the end of one of the radishes as I spoke, and
found it so hot my eyes watered.
"No, thank you," she almost snorted. "Are you German?"
"Oh, no," I replied, "I am quite English with just a few foreign
tastes." I covertly dropped the radish down the side of the couch as I
spoke.
"Where were you born?"
"I was born in Dorking, I mean Westmoreland," I said wanderingly. I
was debating as to what had come over Amelia.
"So you are north-country really?" Her voice was patronising.
"Yes," I returned, "isn't it interesting?"
She again regarded me with suspicion.
"North-country people are becoming quite rare. Perhaps you have
noticed it? Everybody comes from the south."
She did not speak.
"And you," I inquired gently, "are you a native of Pine Tree Valley?"
"No," she replied shortly, "but I have lived here ever since I was a
girl."
"So long?" I said thoughtlessly. And she rose and offered me her hand,
which felt like a non-committal Bath oliver.
"It has been so kind of you to come to see me," I said, shaking the
biscuit up and down.
She unbent a little.
"I will try to come again, but won't promise. My days are so full. Do
you know any of the people here?"
"No," I admitted.
"The Honourable Mrs. Parkin-Dervis not called?"
"No."
She looked perplexed and annoyed.
"But she told me she was coming. She heard that you were confined to
the house."
"She's not been," I said. "I am sorry. I suppose she always leads the
way in the question of calling upon new people. But you needn't feel
you have committed yourself. You see, I shan't be able to return your
call, so please don't feel you must come again unless you want to."
"It's not that," she said; "but, you see, my days are so full."
"Of course they are," I agreed warmly. "I shall quite understand, Mrs.
Cobbold. I'm so sorry Amelia is not here to show you out, but were I
to ring the tortoise for ten minutes she wouldn't come. She is
chopping wood--perhaps you hear her. Amelia never takes the slightest
notice of anybody when she is chopping wood--they are Hudson's Dry Soap
boxes--the more one rings the louder she chops."
"If she were my maid," said Mrs. Cobbold, "I'd make her----"
"No, you wouldn't," I interrupted. "You think you would, but you
wouldn't. We thought the same when she first came to us, but now we
don't. Good-bye."
Through an unfortunate accident the tortoise rang loudly as I spoke. I
caught my sleeve in its tail, and it sounded as though I were cheering
Mrs. Cobbold's departure. She left the house with a flounce and a
flourish. We may meet again in another world, but I am certainly not
on Mrs. Cobbold's visiting list in this.
When I heard the garden gate bang I rang for Amelia.
"I am never at home to that lady," I said.
Amelia stared.
"Where will you be, mum?"
"I shall be here, of course. Don't you understand, I shall not see
her."
"Am I to say that?"
"You're to say, 'Not at home.'"
"I can't say that if you are." Her face was stolid.
"Amelia," I cried, "return to your soap boxes quickly, or I might fling
the tortoise at you."
"But----"
"_Go!_" I said, and with a loud crack of a bone she departed, filled
with amazement.
CHAPTER XII
NANTY CHEERS ME UP
A day has come when it is gusty and wet.
Last night the sun, which has been so kind to us of late, disappeared
red and angry, leaving behind it a sky of flaming glory.
I said to Dimbie that perhaps we had not been sufficiently grateful to
his majesty, that we had begun to take him for granted, and that we
should never make the sun feel cheap.
And so to-day the little forget-me-nots and velvety, sweet-faced
pansies have laid their heads on mother earth, driven there by squalls
of angry wind and rain, and the long branches of the beech tree in the
frog-pond field are waving and bending and shaking out their wealth of
still tender green leaves with fine abandon.
I am solicitous for the sweet-peas. Dimbie has been late in putting in
the sticks for them to climb up, and their hold is slight and wavering.
Two long hedges of Eckfords and Tennants and Burpees, and that
loveliest of all sweet-peas, Countess Cadogan, flank the lawn on either
side. In a few days they will all be out, and I shall lie in the midst
of a many-hued, blossoming sweetness. So much have I to be thankful
for. A cripple in town would stare at brick walls, yet to-day only
discontent sits at my side.
I am cold--rain in summer makes the inside of a creeper-covered cottage
very chilly. The water drips from the leaves of the clematis--drips,
drips. I want to be up and doing. The rain on my cheek in the woods
and lanes would be gracious and sweet-scented. The raindrops lying in
the heart of the honeysuckle would be as nectar for the gods. But a
rainy world when one is a prisoner within four walls is truly
depressing, and there will be no Dimbie to-night.
Dimbie, dear, do you know how much I miss you? The heart of your
Marguerite calls for you, calls for you.
You say you will be back soon, but you don't know. Little old ladies
take a long time to die. The flame flickers and flares up and flickers
and gutters, and is so long in going out. What am I saying? Dimbie,
forgive me, dear. I don't want Aunt Letitia to die. I am praying for
her to get better. Ill or well, she needs you, or she would not have
sent for you, for her message was: "I know your wife wants you, but I
want you more; and it will only be for a few days, and then you may
return to her. I would much like to have seen Marguerite, but----"
What does that "but" mean I wonder? Does she know that the journey is
nearly over? And Dimbie says that that journey has been one of great
loneliness, borne with a great patience and cheerfulness. I think God
will create a separate heaven for very lonely women. He will give them
little children and a love that passeth all understanding. The love
that has been withheld from them in this world will be given to them a
thousandfold in the New Jerusalem.
I am always sorry for lonely women.
* * * * *
Nanty came in breezy and fresh and wet, and my loneliness vanished.
"I have told John to put up in the village, and I can stay with you for
a couple of hours," she announced, removing her cloak. "And you have
been crying."
I shook my head.
"Well, there are two tears at the back of your eyes ready to fall."
"Not now," I said.
"What's been the matter?"
"Dimbie's away."
"Dear me!" she said with comical gravity. "Been away long?"
"He went this morning."
She laughed outright.
"What did you have for lunch?"
"Fish."
"What sort of fish?'
"A whiting."
She sniffed.
"A cold, thin whiting with its tail in its mouth, devoid of any taste
and depressing in its appearance?"
"That exactly describes it," I said laughingly.
"Did you eat it?"
"No, Amelia is going to make it into a fish pie for to-morrow's lunch."
"Amelia seems to be of an economical turn of mind."
"Painfully so," I agreed.
Nanty rose and rang the bell.
"Bring tea at once, please," she said when Amelia appeared, "and a
lightly-boiled egg for your mistress with some hot, buttered toast, and
light the fire."
Amelia's eyes bulged.
"We've been doing some summer cleaning, the fire'll make dirt."
"Light the fire at once, please, your mistress is cold, the dirt is of
no importance; her comfort should be considered before anything else."
"But it's summer----"
"Matches!" said Nanty sternly, and Amelia produced a box like lightning.
Nanty knelt down and removed the fire-screen. Amelia stood and watched
her.
"That is not getting tea and toast," said Nanty, without looking round.
"I'm not dressed, mum----" began Amelia argumentatively.
"Tea and toast!" thundered Nanty, and Amelia fled.
"How brave you are," I said.
She laughed.
"I'm certainly not going to be bossed by a young person like Amelia
Cockles. How does she suit you?"
"I've never thought of how she suits us, but I think we suit her,
although we are not grand like the Tompkinses."
"Who are the Tompkinses?" asked Nanty, settling herself comfortably in
an arm-chair.
"Don't you remember the people she lived with before she came to us?
They knew a poet, and gave dinner parties and had _entrées_ and
_hors-d'oeuvres_--hoary doves she calls them."
"But does she look after you well?"
"Yes," I said, "so long as I don't interfere with her cleaning. She is
a great cleaner, that is her weakest point. Economy is another; she is
too careful. Because I told her we were not rich she seems to think we
must live on potato parings. Then she wears squeaky, high-heeled
shoes, a pearl necklace, and puts on to her print bodies--as she calls
them--innumerable patches. Against these bad qualities we must set her
honesty, early rising, and devotion to me. She has taken me in hand
since the day she entered the house. She thinks, deep down in her
heart, that I am one of the poorest creatures she has met. She has
compared me on different occasions to a love-lies-bleeding and a black
prize Minorca hen. Yet I know she would go through fire and water for
me. She dresses me in the morning with a gentleness and patience
unsurpassed by any nurse, and the tenderness with which she lifts me
from the bed to the couch has caused me to marvel. You ask me how she
suits us. Now I come to think about it, I wouldn't be without Amelia
Cockles for the world."
She entered as I finished speaking, and placed the tea-tray in front of
me, eyeing Nanty with undisguised hostility.
Nanty returned the look with placidity.
"I s'pose you think I have been starving her?"
"No," said Nanty cheerfully, "I am sure you would do nothing of the
kind. Your mistress has just been telling me how good you are to her."
Amelia's face softened.
"No one could help being good to a lady like her--she _is_ a lady," and
she flounced out of the room.
Nanty smiled. "You cannot be very dull so long as that young person is
in the house." She pushed my couch nearer the fire, broke the top off
my egg, and ordered me to begin to eat.
"It is lovely having you here," I said, "I was just beginning to be
dull. What made you come this wet day?"
"Your husband wired for me."
"So you knew he was away?"
"Yes," she returned, "and I went straight away to see if I could
persuade Peter to let your mother come and stay with you during your
husband's absence."
"And----" I cried.
"Your father had just succeeded in getting a canoe to float on the
duck-pond--personally I think it was on the bottom, but I did not
suggest that--and in the flush of victory he said she could come the
day after to-morrow. Ah, that's better," she finished as the blood
rushed into my cheeks. "You looked as white as a ghost when I came in."
"You _are_ clever," I said.
"Yes," she agreed, "in some things."
A smile hovered round her mouth.
"I wonder if you had been Peter's wife----"
"God forbid!" she broke in.
I laughed.
"It will be delightful having mother."
"Do you find the days long?"
"When it's wet."
"Do you still find vent for your happiness in the pages of a manuscript
book?"
I nodded.
She looked at me with incredulous eyes.
"You still find your year--what was it you called it--wonderful?"
"I have Dimbie."
"And an aching back."
"That would be worse if I hadn't Dimbie."
"No man is worth such love from a woman."
"Mine is," I said indignantly.
"Well, don't flash out at me like that. He must be an exception."
"Of course he is."
"And all women think the same when they are first married."
"Nanty, you are a pessimist."
"Optimists are tiresome and always boring."
"They add to the cheerfulness of the world."
"They depress me and always put me in a bad temper. You say it is
horribly cold, and they remind you that frost keeps away disease. You
say it is windy, and they reply that it is bracing. You have lost your
pet dog, and they suggest that you might have lost your favourite
horse. People who always say, 'Never mind, cheer up!' are aggravating
in the extreme. I like people to weep when I weep and laugh when I
laugh. I don't like my friends to make light of my troubles and
practically suggest that I am a coward."
She poked the fire with vigour.
"So you would like me much better if I were to howl about my accident."'
"Exactly, it would be much more natural and human."
"But what about Dimbie?"
"Oh, of course if you bring Dimbie into everything it will be
impossible for you to behave in a rational way."
I laughed gently, and Nanty frowned at the fire.
"If I were to howl Dimbie's year would be spoiled."
"I don't believe in wives being unselfish to their husbands; it spoils
them. Men are quite selfish enough as it is."
"How down upon men you are, Nanty. Have you not met any nice ones?" I
asked.
"Dimbie is not bad as men go. But give him a few years; he will be as
disagreeable as the rest."
"I met a very nice man the other day," I said, refusing to be annoyed.
"It was just before my accident--a Professor Leighrail."
"Professor Leighrail!" A great astonishment lay in Nanty's eyes. "A
very thin man?"
"Yes, he invited us to look at his ribs. His wife, Amabella, is dead."
"Amabella dead?" she repeated.
I nodded.
"He took up ballooning, as he thought it would be the quickest way of
ending himself."
Nanty started, and then poured herself out another cup of tea.
"Do you know him?"
"I knew him some years ago."
"He once asked you to be his wife."
Nanty dropped her spoon with a clatter.
"Did he tell you?"
"Of course not," I laughed, and hugged Jumbles who lay on the couch
beside me. "I knew by your face, Nanty, dear. Why didn't you accept
him?"
"Because I was a fool." She spoke bitterly. "I should have been happy
with that man. As it was, he--grew fond of Amabella. Didn't he?" She
turned on me with a pounce.
"I--I think so," I stammered; "but I don't suppose he ever loved her as
much as he loved you. I should fancy from her name she was a
bit--pussy-catty."
Nanty smiled a little grimly.
"Men like domestic, sit-by-the-hearth women. I feel sure Amabella
mended his socks regularly and brushed his clothes."
"They wanted brushing the other day," I said reflectively, "and his
boots were miles too big for him--they were like canoes." And I went
on to relate where we had met him, what he had had for his dinner, and
how he was coming to call upon us in his balloon.
"It is a dangerous game," said Nanty crossly as she rose to go.
"But he is lonely and unhappy," I protested.
"So are lots of people," she snapped. "I have been lonely for twenty
years, and I get stouter every day."
"His ribs are like knife blades," I observed.
"He was always thin. I have not seen him since I was a girl, but I
have followed his career. I knew he would make a name for himself. He
was always dabbling in some mess--ruined his mother's bed-quilts--and
wore badly-fitting clothes. It's strange you should meet him," she
finished musingly.
"Would you like his address?" I asked quietly.
"No, I wouldn't, thanks, but--I shouldn't mind meeting him here some
day. It would be pleasant to have a chat about old times."
"Rather dangerous, I should say."
"You always were an impertinent child," she said as she stooped to kiss
me.
The love affairs of my friends are multiplying, I thought, when she had
gone--Dr. Renton's and now Nanty's.
CHAPTER XIII
UNDER THE APPLE THEE
I am under the apple tree trying to be busy. In front of me lies a
waif and stray garment--a flannel petticoat. There is no house mending
to do--everything is new and holeless. Dimbie had a trousseau as well
as I. Occasionally he will wear a small hole in one of his socks, the
mending of which will take me half an hour, then my work is finished.
So I have taken to waif and stray garments and deep-sea fishermen's
knitting in self-defence.
Were I not engaged on this I should be making wool-work mats like the
old men in the workhouse--I can see it in the tail of Amelia's eye; so
I keep a garment well to the front, ready to pick up at the sound of
her first footstep, which, being squeaky, fortunately warns me of the
advance of the enemy.
Now but for Amelia I should be only too content to laze through the
summer--just staring at the sky and the soft, white, fleecy clouds
through the breaks in the foliage of the apple tree; for though I do
nothing I am tired, always tired. Perhaps it is the warmth of the
summer, for the rain and cold are gone. By and by I am going to be
very energetic, and do little things for Amelia, whether she considers
it helpful or otherwise. I shall peel apples in the autumn when the
weather is cooler, and stone the plums for jam, and skin the mushrooms.
But now I want to be idle. I just want to watch the bird and insect
life of the garden.
Much to my delight, a colony of ants has settled at the base of the
apple tree. I get Amelia to wheel the couch close to their
head-quarters, and I lean over and gently drop little things in front
of the openings to their tunnels. Sometimes a tiny bit of twig lies
across their front door, or a cherry-stone bars the cellar entrance;
and then what excitement and confusion reign, what a twinkling of a
myriad tiny legs! Nine strong, able-bodied men are requisitioned to
tackle the cherry-stone. I smile and chuckle as I picture one excited
ant--who is not eager to tell the news?--rushing off to inform the
others that he has discovered a thunderbolt lying at their cellar-door,
and they must marshal their forces for an attack. And then what a
straining and pushing and levering there is! First six men arrive;
they look like policemen. Presently one rushes away and brings back
three more. They then sort of take their bearings, trotting in and out
of the front door and eyeing with indignation the obstacle that lies in
their path.
"Hurrah!" I cry as they lever the cherry-stone the fraction of an inch;
and Amelia, appearing at the front door, says--
"I beg your pardon, mum."
Amelia certainly has a most tiresome habit of cropping up at the tense
moments of life. Should I call, gently at first, "A-me-li-a," and then
louder, "A-ME-LI-A!" and then in stentorian tones, "A-ME-LI-A!" finally
degenerating into cat-calls and war-whoops, she wouldn't dream of
hearing me; but when I apostrophise the thrush which comes to sing in
the apple tree of an evening, or encourage the ants in their labours,
or laugh at the ridiculous wagtails bobbing up and down the lawn, she
appears suddenly and stands and stares at me.
Just now I said, "You shouldn't stare at me"; and when she replied,
"You're so pretty, mum," I felt hers was the gentleness of the dove and
the cunning of the serpent combined.
I had been trying to persuade her not to whiten the front-door step,
which is of cool grey stone. She appears to regard it in the same
light as a kitchen-hearth bestowed by a bountiful Providence. She
smears it with wet donkey-stone, and when dry it gleams and
scintillates in the hot sun with dazzling intensity. Then she attacks
the scraper, which she polishes with a black-lead brush till it
resembles the kitchen kettle after "siding up." You cannot prevent
Amelia from "siding up." Every now and again she "sides up" me. She
says my hair is untidy and approaches me with a brush. She suggests
that the wearing of a pearl necklace round my throat, the collar of
which is cut low for comfort, would smarten me up. She picks up my
slippers, which I have kicked on to the grass, and compels me to put
them on in case I have callers.
She constantly threatens me with these callers. She dangles them in
front of me when I am idling with _The Vicar of Wakefield_, and offers
to bring me my best hat, as "that Liberty garden thing is shabby and
old-fashioned." She thinks the vicar may call. He has been laid up
for some weeks; but he is better, and it is his _bounded_ duty to call
to see a poor sick lady.
I gently bring her back to the discussion of the step, and after some
stubbornness on her part she asks if I would like it done like the
Tompkinses'. Knowing that the Tompkinses are superior people,
indulging in "hoary doves" at their dinner, I say "Yes" without any
further parley, trusting to their good taste.
Mother is coming to-morrow, and I know just how she is feeling about
me. She will be thinking if ever her daughter Marguerite wanted her it
will be now--now, when she is lonely and tired and without Dimbie. Her
dear face will be brimful of joy at being wanted by anyone, and at the
prospect of getting away from Peter. She would not own up to the last.
If ever there was a loyal, patient soul in this world it is mother.
She won't allow herself to believe that Peter is selfish and
domineering. He is her husband, and with a wavering curve of her sweet
lips she pronounces him as just tiresome.
And, best of all, I know she will like being here without Dimbie. She
likes him, she admires him, but she is secretly jealous of him. I
believe I should be too if I had a daughter married. When a child
gives herself into somebody else's keeping the mother is dethroned; the
child--always a child in the mother's eyes--takes her joys and sorrows
to her husband. He bandages the little cut leg, figuratively speaking,
kisses the crushed fingers, wipes away the tears of sorrow. The mother
has to take a back seat, and her heart is sore. When Dimbie and I, in
the short days of our engagement, would try to slip away to another
room, to be by ourselves, I have seen mother close her eyes and heard
her give a little gasping sigh. She would smile bravely when her eyes
caught mine, but I had heard the sigh, and though my heart ached at the
thought of leaving her alone with Peter, I was unable to keep the
happiness away from my own eyes and voice. Poor little mother! It is
hard, but it was ever thus. You left your mother, and I in turn have
left you. It is one of Nature's edicts--cruel it may seem, but not to
be resisted. Were Dimbie to call, I should follow him to the end of
the world, I know.
But during the days mother is with me I mean to let her have it all her
own way. I shall pretend that Dimbie is dethroned. I shall not talk
of him; at least, I shall try with unusual strength not to speak of
him, beyond mentioning the bare fact that he is well and ministering to
the wants of Aunt Letitia.
And we shall also not talk of Peter more than we can possibly help.
Long ago we decided that Peter must be a tabooed subject between us.
"We might be led into saying things about your father which we ought
not to say," mother had implied without putting it into so many words,
and I had nodded.
"Besides, he might--he might have been so much worse."
I fear I looked doubtful about this point, for she added quickly, "He
doesn't steal."
"No," I admitted, "he is certainly not a thief."
"And he doesn't drink."
"No."
"And he doesn't gamble."
"No," I conceded somewhat grudgingly.
"And----" she hesitated.
"He doesn't go off with other men's wives, you want to say."
"That's it. Your father is--is quite moral."
"It's a pity he is," I said laughing. "If only he would run away with
someone you could get a divorce."
Dear mother looked terribly shocked, and glanced fearfully at the door.
"It's all right," I reassured her; "he's resting in the library,
overcome by your insubordination. He's not used to it. He lunged at
me with his stick because he detected me in a smile, but I dodged him."
I remember mother smiled faintly, and told me I ought not to dodge him.
This conversation took place after an unusually violent outburst on
Peter's part because he had lost his best gold collar stud, which he
accused mother of having taken. And when she tremblingly said that she
had never in her life worn anything around her neck but a lace tucker,
which did not necessitate the wearing of a gold stud, he said lace
tuckers were foolish fripperies, and that she ought to wear a linen
collar the same as other sensible women. And when mother protested
that her neck was not long enough, he replied snappily: "Then stretch
it till it is. You are a woman without any resources."
I smile as I conjure up dear mother's expression of countenance when he
said this. She usually, with unquestioning obedience to Biblical
commands, turned her other cheek to him for a smite, but on this
occasion she didn't do anything of the kind. She simply turned her
back on him, drew herself up to her full height of five feet nothing,
and pranced out of the room. I say pranced, because she did prance,
just like a thoroughbred horse chafing at the bearing rein. Peter
watched this prancing with unconcealed astonishment; in fact, he put up
his monocle and stared at the closed door. Now if mother had only
pranced a little oftener. Peter might have been a much better behaved
person. But mother is not of the stuff of which people like Amelia and
Napoleon are composed. She is not a ruler, and she is not a fighter.
She cannot stand up for herself, and so Peter has taken advantage of
her sitting position--which sounds as though I were referring to a hen,
and not to mother at all.
I find on turning back the pages that I said mother was rarely disloyal
to Peter, that she pronounced his selfishness and bad temper as "just
tiresomeness." Still, the worm _will_ turn sometimes, and on this
occasion she did turn. To-morrow she will probably ignore him
altogether--glad to get away from an unpleasant subject.
I am full of delightful anticipations of the peaceful time she and I
will spend together under the apple tree. At first she will lean
forward when I speak to her as though she had been deafened by a storm.
To live with Peter is to live in a succession of storms, and when
mother reaches the calmer spaces of the world she wears an almost dazed
expression. I must speak very slowly and gently till she becomes
accustomed to being in a quiet haven. We will chat in the mornings and
doze in the warm afternoons and discuss Amelia in the evenings. I know
I shall be unable to resist discussing Amelia with mother. She will be
so interested in her not wearing cloth boots. She will be so surprised
at my having given in. She gives in herself over every question in
life, great or small. But she is quite surprised if other people do
the same, especially her own daughter. She imagines I have inherited
some of Peter's characteristics, which Heaven forbid. She thinks his
bullying is strength of character. Ah, little mother, I am not strong,
if you only knew it. I am as weak as water towards people I love.
You, Dimbie and Nanty could do anything with me.
Amelia has been to tell me that we are out of Shinio, and shall she run
to the village. She didn't call it Shinio, but Shiny. She has quite
an extraordinary affection for the evil-smelling stuff, and is always
"requiring" it.
"But you won't be cleaning anything this afternoon," I said. "You are
dressed, and it must be nearly five o'clock."
"It's for the brasses to-morrow morning," she answered in a tired
voice, as though she were weary of explaining things to me. "It's
kitchen-day, and I do my steels and brasses before breakfast."
"Oh, of course," I murmured hastily while looking for my purse, which I
can never find, and which she unearthed with lightning rapidity from
under the tortoise.
I handed her sixpence, but she didn't go.
"Anything further?" I asked pleasantly.
"No, mum; but I was just considerin' if we couldn't alter your
pocket--put it in front of your tea-gown, a sort of flap-pocket
right-hand side, like motorists and golfists and cyclists has."
"Put a flap-pocket on my right-hand side," I repeated. "But I don't
motor or golf or cycle."
"No, mum, but it might help you not to lose your purse so frequently,
and save you and me a lot of trouble. I expect you lies on your pocket
mostly?"
"I do nothing of the kind," I replied coldly, "for I haven't got one."
"There!" she said triumphantly, "I might have knowed it. I'll fix you
one up in two shakes. I'm a good hand at sewing. Have you a bit of
white serge like your gown, mum?"
"No, I haven't; and I forbid your putting a pocket on me anywhere."
She looked surprised at my warmth.
"All right, mum; I won't if you don't wish it. I only thought it would
save time. You see, when the purse isn't lost the tortis is. The
tortis is a beggar for gettin' away. See now, it's slippin' down the
Hilkley at this minute." She caught it by the tail and placed it on
the little table which always stands at the side of my couch. "The
creature might be alive," she finished, shaking her fist at it.
"Don't be ridiculous, Amelia," I commanded, endeavouring not to laugh.
"I will try and not lose it so often, but things _do_ disappear."
"Yes, mum, they do," she responded gravely. "If nothing was ever lost,
like hair-pins, the world wouldn't hold 'em." With which oracular
remark she swept down the garden path to the gate, her two heels
leaning over at a more dangerous angle than usual.
I drew Dimbie's letter--he writes every day, sometimes twice--from
beneath the cushions, and read it over for--well, I won't say how many
times, but one passage I already knew off by heart:--
"Dear one, I am glad that you miss me--very glad, isn't that cruel? If
you want me, how much more do I want you, my poor little girl. I long
to put my arms round you and kiss your big, wistful eyes--kiss away the
wistfulness, which only came with your suffering, and I will do it when
I come home.
"Aunt Letitia is slowly sinking. She is not suffering, and her mind is
quite clear. She has asked a great many questions about you, and has
even laughed feebly at Amelia and her household arrangements--I mean
_your_ household arrangements. For the squeaking and cracking of bones
and wearing of unsuitable slippers she has no suggestions to offer.
She says there is always _something_. With old Ann it has been a
misfit in artificial teeth. They have moved horribly, and the gums
have gaped at her, but she has not considered this of sufficient
importance to give Ann notice.
"I wired to Nanty to know how you were. You don't tell me in your
letters, bad girl. I shall scold and slap you when I get home, as well
as kiss you."
I glanced carefully round to see that neither Amelia nor Jumbles were
watching me, and holding the letter to my lips, I kissed it over and
over again.
CHAPTER XIV
MOTHER AND PETER ARRIVE ON A VISIT
I said that mother and I were going to have a peaceful and happy time
together--that we should chat in the mornings, doze in the afternoons,
and discuss Amelia in the evenings. We are doing none of these things.
We are expending our entire energies, and mine are very feeble, in
soothing Peter and trying to keep him in a good temper, for Peter
arrived with mother a couple of days ago on a visit to One Tree Cottage.
I _will_ say that it wasn't dear mother's fault. She even stooped to
equivocation, or, to put it plainly, lying to keep him away. She told
him that she didn't know by which train she was coming, when she knew
perfectly well. She told him our spare-room bed would only hold one.
Oh, mother! And she told him that there had been burglaries in the
neighbourhood of Dorking, and it would be unsafe to leave the house to
servants. To all of which he said, "Pooh!"
From what I can gather he lay in waiting at the station like a
detective in plain clothes, and pounced upon mother just as she was
saying to Mary, the parlourmaid, "Good-bye; you will take great care of
the master, and give him kidneys with his bacon twice a week."
"No, she won't," he said sardonically as he limped into the carriage,
"for she won't get the chance. I am coming with you, Emma. I refuse
to be left to the mercy of servants when my gout is so troublesome. It
is most selfish and unreasonable of you to suggest such a thing. I am
as much to be considered as Marguerite," at which he planked himself
firmly on to the seat opposite to mother and glowered at her.
At the moment he is seated in the sun with his feet on Amelia's fair
white step, which is now covered with a sort Of Egyptian
hieroglyphic--_à la_ the Tompkinses'. When she wheeled me in the other
evening after a long day in the garden, and I caught sight of the step,
I was filled with a great amazement, for I was unaware that Amelia
understood the ancient Egyptian language. A series of curves and dots,
and flourishes and symbolic signs met my gaze. I leaned forward and
translated with fluency [Symbol: water-line]--a water-line, [Symbol:
sun]--the sun, [Symbol: reed]--a reed, [Symbol: night]--night, [Symbol:
hilly country]--hilly country, [Symbol: egg]--egg. Father was a bit of
an Egyptologist, and I had picked up the meaning of a few of the
symbols from him: [Symbol: star]--star, [Symbol: tooth]--tooth,
[Symbol: serpent]--serpent.
Amelia opened her mouth and stared at me, and then shot me into the
house. It is on such occasions that she regards me as "dotty," and
quickly puts me to bed.
Peter is now scraping his boots on the step after carefully dirtying
them in the gooseberry-bed. Amelia is hissing at him through the front
door; she objects to her hieroglyphics being defaced. Peter is not
accustomed to being hissed at, and he will presently come and tell me
what he thinks of Amelia.
I persuaded mother a little time back to wheel me under the apple tree
and sit with me. The grass is still dew-laden, and Peter will not
dare, on account of his gout, to join us till the lawn is dry, hence
his position on the doorstep. Peter's gout has been the one bit of
luck in mother's life since she was married. Being the more active of
the two, she can, when the pressure becomes very great, walk away from
him--in fact, run.
I cannot help rejoicing at Dimbie's being away while Peter is here, for
I am convinced that long ere this Dimbie would have thrown my father
out of the house; and for mother's sake I should not care for such an
ignominious thing to happen to her husband. Besides, he would make
such a mess on the step while he danced about, his customary habit
being, when extra annoyed, to dance a kind of war dance.
When he and mother arrived Amelia rushed into the drawing-room and in
great excitement whispered, "A red-nosed gent has come with your
mother!"
In an instant my mind flew to Peter, but I remained sufficiently
controlled to correct Amelia for saying '"Your mother."
"Is she your step, mum?" she murmured cautiously.
"Certainly not,"' I said. "But it is not polite. You must speak of
her as Mrs. Macintosh. Where have you left them? Why don't they come
in?"
"The gentleman is having a row with the cabby. Don't you hear him?"
She grinned with enjoyment. "He has just called the cabby a grasping,
white-livered Jew. It seems as though he knowed how to take care of
himself."
I did not speak.
"Who is he, mum?"
I pretended not to hear.
"Is he your uncle?"
"He's--my father." I closed my eyes, signifying that the conversation
was finished.
"Never knew you had a father, mum," came in a succession of gasps and
squeaks.
"Of course I have a father," I said excessively crossly. "How do you
suppose I came into the world. Kindly show them in here and go and
unstrap the luggage."
When they appeared, and I had embraced them both, giving mother an
extra squeeze, I said--
"Dear father, whatever has been the matter?"
"That impudent shark has been trying to rob me," he replied, picking up
a vase from the mantelshelf and returning it with a bang.
"What did he charge you?"
"Two shillings."
"Well, that is the right fare, and Dimbie gives an extra sixpence if he
has a portmanteau. What did you give him for the luggage?"
"A piece of my mind, and threatened him with the police for his
impudence."
"Oh, father," I cried, "I am sorry you have made a disturbance. Up to
now we--Dimbie and I--have been respected in the village."
"Have you been to church?" He smiled sardonically.
"N--o."
"Who respects you--the vicar?"
"The villagers have a great respect for us. I--I am sure they have."
"That's all right. They'll respect your father now. They'll know I'm
a man not to be trifled with. How are you?" He shot this last at me
as though he were at Bisley competing for the King's Prize.
"I'm pretty well, thank you."
"Well, you don't look it. You're as thin as a rat. But it's rather
improved you than otherwise, made you look less defiant and assertive."
"Oh, Peter," mother broke in, "Marguerite never looked assertive. I
remember Dimbie saying to me that he had never seen a sweeter face."
"Of course, that is exactly the sort of thing Dumbarton _would_ say,"
he jeered; "but then Dumbarton's an ass."
"Look here, father," I said steadily, "once and for all I wish you to
remember that I will not allow you to call my husband an ass. Yes,
_allow_, I repeat the word." I shivered all over as I spoke. Never,
never had I dared to speak to Peter in such a manner, but my blood was
up. "Dimbie was a brave man to have married into such a family. His
courage was immense there." I clutched the tortoise as I
spoke--clutched it for support, but I kept my head well up, looking at
him defiantly and waiting for the storm.
But it never burst. To my everlasting astonishment Peter remained mute
and just stared at me, stared at me for a full minute, then putting his
hands in his pockets, he said, "Well, well!" and stumped out of the
room.
"There!" I said, "that is the way you should have treated
Peter--_always_."
But mother sat with her hands locked and remained speechless for some
seconds.
"How dared you do it?" she breathed at length.
"Oh, it was quite easy," I replied airily.
"Was it?"
"Well, perhaps not _quite_ easy," I corrected myself, "but fairly easy
when you once get started."
"I never dare start," she said plaintively. "As soon as I open my
mouth I----"
"Shut it again," I said. "But don't in future, keep it well open.
Begin to-night, and I'll help you. Make a firm stand like Horatius."
"What did he do?" she asked with interest.
"He stood alone and--and looked after a gate."
"Oh, I could do that. If your father were a gate----" she began
eagerly.
"What would you do?" inquired Peter, walking into the room and
surveying her from head to foot.
"I--I----" she stammered.
"Don't forget Horatius," I signalled.
"I--I should sit on you!" With which terrific exhibition of courage
she took to her heels and fled.
"I mustn't laugh," I told myself, "or everything will be spoiled."
Peter stood in the middle of the room, staring at the closed door.
"I believe your mother is trying to be funny," he remarked when he had
got his breath.
"Mother is often funny," I murmured.
"I have noticed she has been a bit strange lately."
"Oh?"
"Very secretive."
"Indeed?"
"In fact, deceitful."
"Mother deceitful?"
"Yes, said she didn't know what train she was coming by." He was
beginning to raise his voice.
"Trains don't always start at the time mentioned in Bradshaw. Look at
the South Eastern."
"This was the South Western," he snapped. "I must give her a dose of
medicine."
"A dose of medicine!" I repeated in surprise.
"Yes, calomel. It's her liver, I expect. She has been like this
before. How soon will dinner be ready?"
"When Amelia feels inclined to give it to us."
"Is Amelia the forward young person with the pearl necklace who came to
the door?"
"That is an excellent description of Amelia, but I thought you had seen
her before."
"And does she arrange the hour you are to dine?"
"She arranges the hour in which the potatoes are dried, the meat
dished, the gravy made, and the cabbage chopped. You see, as she does
it all, she naturally knows when it will be ready."
"God bless my soul!" he ejaculated.
"What is the matter?"
"I had no idea you ran your servants in such a shocking manner."
"Servant," I corrected; "and I don't run her, she runs me."
"I wouldn't have believed it."
"You would if you had an Amelia."
"I'd sack her."
"She wouldn't go if I did."
"I'd lock her out."
"She'd break a window and climb through it."
He began to march about the room.
"I'd manage that girl in ten minutes."
"She would hold you in the hollow of her hand in less than five," I
said.
He spluttered.
"What do you take me for?"
"I never know. I've often thought about it," I said gently.
He stopped marching and stared at me.
"I wonder what mother is doing," I said, averting my eyes.
"Your mother," he shouted, rushing towards the door, "is the slowest
woman on God's earth. She'll be doing her hair. _I'll_ bring her
down." And he went to take out of her what, by right, he should have
taken out of me.
"Poor mother!" I sighed.
I much fear we are going to have ructions--Peter and I. A strange and
tremendous courage has come to me. Is it that I know I shall have a
staunch ally in Amelia? One Amelia is surely worth two Peters. And
yet I don't know. Peter has been accustomed to fighting and bloodshed,
and managing his men and out-manoeuvring the enemy most of his life;
and Amelia is only used to managing her mistresses and charwomen. As a
tactician Amelia may be weak. One cannot tell. I am hoping for the
best.
CHAPTER XV
AMELIA GIVES ME NOTICE
It is said that the young look forward and the old look backward. I am
still young enough, I suppose, to live chiefly in the future--a
beautiful future, with Dimbie ever as the central figure. But should I
live to be an old woman, and send my thoughts backward through the
years, a smile will rise to my lips unbidden at the memory of a certain
dinner at which Peter and Amelia played prominent parts.
I have to put down my manuscript book for a moment while I laugh.
Amelia is, I know, watching me through the pantry window. She will be
considering that this is one of my "dotty" moments. For anyone to lie
under an apple tree and apparently laugh at nothing at all is to Amelia
a strange and sad sight.
Wait a while, Amelia, you may see stranger things yet. Life contains
infinite possibilities for those who have even the smallest sense of
humour. At present that sense with you is lacking. Let us hope that
it is not altogether void, but in an embryo stage waiting for
development.
To you the dinner last evening was not in the least amusing. In fact,
the tears you shed later on were very bitter. Of course, lookers-on
always see most of the game, and had I been in your place I admit I
should have been very angry; for Peter is capable of arousing in the
human breast passions which are anything but Christian.
Let me relate the story as it sounded to my ears from the drawing-room.
It is a source of regret to me that I cannot be present at meals, for
the bicycle-room is not large enough to hold both the dining-table and
my Ilkley couch. Still, with both doors set wide apart I can hear most
of what is going on.
Peter's voice carried better than Amelia's; he is used to drilling.
Mother's sounded like punctuation marks--notes of exclamation and
interrogation, gentle little apostrophes, and full stops. But Peter
was not to be stopped. This is how he began to annoy Amelia:--
[Illustration: THIS IS HOW HE BEGAN]
"What's this?" A stab of a fork.
"Don't you know, sir?"
"No, I don't."
"Not seen lamb before?"
"Do you call this burnt cinder lamb?"
Mother, gently, "I think it looks beautifully cooked, just nicely
browned."
"Of course you do. You can eat anything. Some people have the
digestion of an ostrich."
Amelia, breaking in, "Please don't carve it that way, sir. We eats the
bottom side first--that was Tompkinses' way--and next day when it's
turned over it looks as though it had never been touched, quite
respectable like."
Peter: "Am _I_ carving this cinder or are you?"
Amelia (calmly, but as I knew ominously): "Neither of us, sir, at this
partickler minute. But p'r'aps you will be startin' before it's cold."
Sounds of splashings of gravy, and hurried exit of Amelia (I guessed to
fetch a cloth).
"It's the best table-cloth, sir, double damux, and has to last a
fortnight."
"A _what_?"
"A week for dinner, and followin' week for breakfast."
"A piggish habit!"
"A what, sir?"
"A piggish habit. Are there no laundries or washerwomen about here?"
"Plenty, sir, but we don't want to over-work 'em. Will you give me a
bit of the knuckle for the mistress, she likes knuckle. It's not often
she gets meat for her dinner, only beef and lamb and mutton, no pork or
veal or beefsteak pie. That's the knuckle, sir, the other end."
Splutterings and drill language from Peter.
"And what does she have then?" asked mother.
"A whitin', mum, mostly."
"She looks like it."
"And you'd look like it too, sir, if you was to lie still, flat on your
back, day after day."
Arrival of Amelia with my tray. Confidential whispering. The meat
will have to be hashed to-morrow, as it's been carved so disgracefully.
I cheer her up to the best of my ability.
Return of Amelia to dining-room.
"What's this vegetable supposed to be--seakale or asparagus?"
"Neither, sir" (chuckling). "It's salsify. Thought you wouldn't know
it, as you don't seem to be up in the names of things."
I bury my face in my serviette and hold on to the tortoise.
"It's like stewed sawdust."
"Is it, sir? The cookery book says it's like vegetable hoyster."
"Vegetable _what_?"
"Vegetable _hoyster_."
"I don't understand you" (thunderingly). "Speak plainly, girl."
"Do you know what gentlefolks buys off stalls at the seaside and eats
with lemon and cyenne?" (An apparent effort to keep calm.)
Peter (shouting): "Winkles!"
Amelia (with fine scorn): "My friends don't buy winkles; it's only
_common_ folks as does that. My friends buy hoysters."
"Oh, oy--sters!"
"Yes, hoy--sters."
"You can bring in the next course, Angelina."
"Amelia, sir. You're _that_ bad in your memory----" Rest of sentence
finished in hall and kitchen.
Gentle murmur from mother.
"I shall!" (loudly). "It's a treat to speak to a girl with a bit of
sense, though she is an impudent hussy, after our sleek-tongued
fools--yes, fools, every one of them!"
Clattering of saucepans in kitchen and stamping of Amelia across the
hall with the pudding. I could not remember what I had ord--suggested
in the way of pudding, and I hoped it would meet with Peter's approval.
"Is this a pudding?"
"Yes, sir."
"I thought puddings stood up straight?"
"Not all of 'em, sir. Some is a bit weak-kneed in the joints."
Was she poking fun at Peter's gouty legs?
"What's inside it?"
"Here's a knife and fork, sir. You'll soon find out."
"What's inside it?"
"P'r'aps it's a spoon you are wantin' as well."
"I don't eat red-currant pudding."
"Sorry, sir. Just keep quiet till the next course, sir.
"Keep quiet!" (Yells.) "What do you mean?"
"The mistress's nerves gets upset with a bit of noise."
"Your mistress seems to get upset with the slightest provocation."
"She does, sir. I saw her cryin' not so long ago over a bunch of
honeysuckle. She was took reg'lar bad--red eyes and nose."
"Well, of course she'll miss gathering it this year. The deuce knows
why women like picking things full of d--ahem! abominable insects. But
they're born that way--born stupid."
I surprised a gentle note almost in the first part of his sentence
which filled me with wonder. Was Peter really sorry for me?
And as though he were ashamed of his unwonted softness his next remark
made Amelia skip. I could distinctly hear her skip, and it made me
laugh. Few people can make her run, let alone skip.
"This pudding makes me sick, girl. It smells of suet, reeks of suet.
Remove it _at once_!" he thundered.
She stood her ground for a moment.
"But the mistress hasn't had any."
"Remove that pudding!"
"But supposin' Mrs. Macintosh wants another helpin'" (waveringly).
"Mrs. Macintosh _won't_ require any more pudding. Mrs. Macintosh is
going to take a liver pill. Too much pudding would be bad for her."
"But----"
"Take out this pudding!"
The windows rattled, and Amelia bolted--not into the kitchen but into
here, and after planking the pudding down on to Dimbie's arm-chair,
said--
"If you please, mum, I must leave."
"Leave?" I echoed in astonishment.
"Yes, mum. I could not stop another minute--not for a thousand pounds
down--with that gentle--I mean man in the house. Either he must go or
me."
Before I could check myself I had smiled, for had not Amelia called
Peter a gentle, the offspring of a meat-fly--the horrible creature with
which I had fished as a little girl? And--Amelia took instant offence
at my smile. Not being able to follow my train of thought, she
imagined I was laughing at her.
"To-night," she said.
"To-night!" I cried, not wishing to echo her words, but surprise bereft
me of an original mode of speech.
"I must leave you to-night."
I lay back and looked at Amelia--at her leaning, high-heeled shoes, at
her pearl necklace, at her befrilled apron, at her perky cap, at her
tightly-curled fringe. Could all these things be leaving me to-night,
leaving me forever? I should miss them, I knew, so accustomed does one
become to familiar objects. I wondered where they would go, how long
it would be before Amelia stitched the right-hand string to her apron
instead of pinning it there? My eyes rose slowly from the apron, upon
which they had been resting, to her necklace. Whose gaze, instead of
mine, would rest upon those pearls? Then I reached Amelia's face--her
soap-shone, eager face. This brought me to the girl herself. She,
Amelia, who had seemed so devoted, she was going to leave me----
"To-night!" broke in Amelia sternly.
"Yes, yes," I said quickly.
She stood and looked at me defiantly. I don't know why, for I wasn't
speaking.
"How soon shall you start?" I asked for want or something to say.
She did not reply.
"Perhaps you wouldn't mind giving me a little pudding before you go," I
said. "It's getting cold. You put it over there on the chair." And
to my immense surprise she burst into tears.
"Whatever's the matter?" I asked in consternation. "Don't cry, Amelia,
don't cry." I patted the tortoise as Amelia wasn't near enough to pat.
"I--I don't want to go," she sobbed.
"No? Well, don't go," I said soothingly.
"But you want me to."
"I want you to go?"
"Yes."
"Whatever makes you think that?"
"You didn't say as I wasn't to go when I said I was, and I would too."
This was a little involved, but I disentangled it.
"I never thought of saying you were not to go. You seemed to have so
completely made up your mind."
"I wish everybody was all like you," she said, somewhat inconsequently.
"All cripples," I laughed.
She went on sobbing.
"I wonder why you are crying?" I said at length gently.
"Because I don't know where to go at this time of night. It's past
eight, and the roads are full of tramps."
"Well, don't go. Your bedroom is surely comfortable. You've always
said how much you like the pink roses on the wall-paper."
"I couldn't sleep in the same house as that man who calls himself a
gentleman, beggin' your pardon, mum. The same roof shall never cover
us again. And to think he's your father--you're flesh of his flesh,
bone of his bone."
For a moment I wondered whether she would consent to sleep in the shed
with the canoe and Jumbles if we rigged up a hammock. Or could I
persuade Peter to return home if I explained how matters stood? But on
reflection I knew neither of these things could be. Amelia was still
repeating "bone of his bone" in an automatic fashion, when I broke in,
"I can't help that, Amelia. I can't help his being my father." Then
perhaps I behaved foolishly, unfilially, for I took her into my
confidence. But what else was I to do? I am not a diplomatist. I am
not a Talleyrand. Amelia must be kept at any price. The thought of
mother and Peter struggling to light the kitchen fire on the morrow
made me shudder.
"Amelia"----I began.
She took her apron from her eyes, and I became nervous.
"I--I would like some pudding, please, however cold it may be.
And--and what are they doing in the other room?"
"I don't know," she replied, with a gesture indicating, as I took it,
that she didn't care if they were descending the bottomless pit.
"Shut the door," I breathed.
She did so.
"Amelia----" I began again.
"Yes, mum."
"_I_ have felt like that."
"Like what?"
"Like--that I couldn't sleep in the same house as Pet--General
Macintosh."
Her eyes became round.
"Yes, I have," I repeated.
She nodded her head and came closer.
"You see, he is a little difficult, a little difficult, Amelia.
Perhaps his tem--peculiarity has been caused by his gout. He has
suffered a great deal. The servants at home and mother--well, they all
stay on. They don't leave. Do you understand?"
She nodded with complete comprehension.
I now realised how very clever Amelia was.
"I am not well," I went on plaintively, "and mother isn't very strong
and capable, and I don't quite know what I shall do without you.
I'm--I'm afraid I shall die if you leave me. In fact, I'm sure I shall
die----" and my voice tailed off into a moan as I finished.
Amelia twisted her apron into tight rolls, then untwisted them, and
then leaned on her high heels towards the couch.
"Of course, I don't want you to die, mum."
"No?" I said.
"I shouldn't like it to be said as how I finished you off."
"I am sure you wouldn't," I agreed with warmth.
"Well, then, I will stop." There was an uplifted, heroic expression on
Amelia's face. "I'll stop. I'll never leave you, mum--not till the
breath goes out of my body, not till I'm a corpse in my coffin, not
even for the butcher's young man, who was only a-sayin' yesterday as
how I had the finest figger he'd ever come across. I'll work for you
till I drops. I'll just ignore your father, mum. Oh, mum, if
everybody was as gentle and perlite and soft spoken as you I'd die for
'em." And flinging herself upon her knees, she wept against the
Liberty sofa blanket, while I surreptitiously stroked her cap, there
being no hair visible to stroke.
CHAPTER XVI
FOREBODINGS
I am very weary. In the old days, before my accident, it was my boast
that I was never tired. Perhaps the exertion of conciliating Peter, of
trying to keep the peace between him and Amelia, has been too much for
me these sultry days. I know not. But I do know that I am always
tired. The sort of tiredness which makes me say, "Go away, Amelia,"
when she brings my hot water, and lays my tea-gown and brush and comb
on the bed, and the long arduous task of being dressed lies before me.
"Leave me for another hour, please." And of course she argues and says
the water will go cold; and I tell her I prefer it so, closing my eyes
wearily to show that the discussion is finished.
She surveys me, I know, in surprise. How can I be tired when I do
absolutely nothing but lie still, when she is quite fresh after doing
the whole work of the universe? "Amelia, there is a weariness of the
spirit which is greater than that of the flesh. You cannot understand
this. A weariness which leads you to no other desire but that of lying
quite still with your eyes closed, which makes you regard the simple
act of combing out your own hair as tantamount to one of the Herculean
labours. You would almost prefer its being tangled to going through
the exertion of getting it straight. That you would like to
disentangle it for me, I know, but I shudder at the very thought. You
are kind, but you don't understand how very tired I am. I want to rest
a little longer."
Even the prospect of being under the apple tree, in the proximity of my
friends the ants, doesn't tempt me. The dressing has to be got through
first. It hurts--the lifting from the bed to the couch--though Amelia
is very tender. It jars--that being wheeled from the hall on to the
step. I want to be without steps and doors, and corners and turnings
and sudden descents. I want to be on a gentle, inclined plane--on a
soft, billowy cloud, on wings of thistledown. I am tired of my body.
It is troublesome and aching. I would gladly have done with it to-day.
Oh, that I could step out of it and into a new, whole, strong
body--radiant and beautiful--for Dimbie's sake.
It is hard that these bodies have to get so tired before we have done
with them. God sends this weariness, I suppose, to make the passing
easier. I am thinking of Aunt Letitia now. She has gone, she has done
with the world, she knows what is behind the veil.
Dimbie says she just slept herself away. She was conscious almost to
the last, but was too tired even to eat a grape. Then she fell asleep.
Dimbie will be coming home now, but
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