Part 10

The staff, therefore, consists of the Titmouse, and the Stench for outside, and the Superior Person (commonly called the S.P.), the cook, who rejoices in the name of Dulcie, and 'my 'Ilda' for the house. Nannie insists she can manage for me and all the nursery part, if 'my 'Ilda' does the scrubbing.

It has turned very cold again after the thaw, and the frost made everything exceedingly slippery, the roads are like glass.

At dinner I said to Ross,--

'Aren't the paths slippery? Positively I could hardly get home this afternoon; I took one step forward and slid back two.'

'Do think, my dear,' said Ross, 'do try to use your brains, if you have any. If you had really taken one forward and two back you'd have found yourself back at the station.'

'I did, so took a taxi home, didn't you hear me drive up?'

'Humph,' said Ross. (I don't often get one in, do I?)

I am going to keep chickens and rabbits, as the meat question is difficult, and cockerels and young bunnies will help to feed the family. I suggested a goat, but Ross is dead off that. He thinks the Stench _and_ a goat will be too much for the S.P. and Dulcie.

I intend the Gidger to know all about animals and flowers and how they breed and propagate. Nature is beautiful and ignorance unlovely. So I shall not tell my little girl lies or half truths about sex, but shall unfold the facts of life gradually as she is able to bear them, so that her heart and mind may become as beautiful as her face promises to be.

Then some day she may go to her husband, not in that awful state of ignorance, fright, and misery that some call 'innocence,' but with a wide, sweet, sane knowledge of the beautiful mysteries of life.

*CHAPTER XIII*

Ross seems better. He is sleeping some hours each night without the bromide. I never heard how much of that Brown got him to take.

When I inquired how the knee was, Sam said,--

'Keeps pretty level with the arm, miss--ma'am, I should say.'

Now what does he mean by that?

There has been another thaw and everything is distinctly mucky, but yesterday, after lunch, I put on my shortest skirt and my oldest hat, the one with the pheasant wing in it that Michael likes, and we tramped over the dripping meadows to call on 'Uncle John.' 'Aunt John' opened the door. She was resplendent in black silk with a necklace of melon seeds and a pair of the most enormous pearl ear-rings, that even Cleopatra might have envied.

She invited us into the little front parlour. This room was almost entirely filled with a full-sized grand piano, which 'Uncle John' had bought at a sale cheap, owing to the fact that most of the notes were missing, 'But then,' as he explained, 'look at the case, real Hebony.'

He came in a few minutes after, looking a perfect ragamuffin in his stained overalls and battered hat, not at all a suitable mate for the resplendent vision in silk and melon seeds. The pair rather reminded me of Uncle Jasper and Aunt Constance--she dressed for dinner in all her finery and jewels and he just come in from grubbing out a foundation of a buried abbey. And 'Aunt John' looked at 'Uncle John' in much the same way that Aunt Constance looks at Uncle Jasper under the same circumstances.

'Fair caught, I am,' he exclaimed affably, shaking hands all round; 'ain't had it off yet, then?' he said to Ross by way of cheering up an invalid. And then with great pride he added, reverting to his first paragraph, 'but the missis fair makes up for it, don't she, always dressed up like a 'am bone of an afternoon is Sarah.'

'Well, mum,' he said, turning to me, 'I got your letter, and it's a fair blow, that it is; I don't say but what wall-papers ain't expensive and likely to go up, but if you could 'ave afforded the yaller with the cream stripe I think it would 'ave fair made the place. Perhaps if you wrote and told yer 'usband 'ow much better I say it would look 'e might be willing to do a bust for once, especially as you don't seem to cost 'im much in clothes,' and he glanced at my plain tweed skirt.

Here Ross tittered, as I happened to have mentioned at lunch the price I had paid for the garment in question.

''Owever, it ain't for me to say,' said 'Uncle John,' 'owe no man nothing is my motter and always 'as been, and it ain't always that I could give the wife a silk dress for the afternoon, is it, Sarah?'

Sarah, with ready tact, changed the conversation by offering us tea, and observed that John was always 'a bit free with his tongue.'

'Oh, no offence intended, I'm sure,' said 'Uncle John,' but the dear soul has it firmly fixed in his mind that we are rather poor, and he keeps assuring me that he will keep expenses down as much as possible. He will begin the work on Friday, with the owner's consent, although the deeds will not be actually signed by then. I hope we shall be in 'Our House' by the middle of March.

When we returned from calling on 'Uncle John' I found a letter asking me to go to Staple Inn this week to sign some deeds. But why should they want me to do that when Ross has Michael's Power of Attorney? I asked my brother if he knew, but he professed the most profound ignorance of everything in heaven and earth, except the evening paper (which was private).

So I had to possess my soul in patience all night, and this morning when we got to the lawyer's office I discovered two conspiracies.

Fancy! Michael has given me the cottage. Isn't it too sweet of him? I was quite overcome when the lawyer said that the deeds were to be in my name. I have never had anything of my own like that before, except L2 a year paid quarterly, that an old cousin left me.

When the lawyer had congratulated me on my elevation to the position of a landed proprietor, he said, 'And now, my dear young lady, I have another piece of news which will, I think, make you an even more radiant vision than you are at the moment.'

'Oh, lor!' Ross whispered, 'that's another 13/4 for poor old Michael; the larger the lie, Meg, the bigger the bill!'

And then the lawyer told me that all the family silver and the old furniture had been stored all these years by daddy's orders for me if I cared to have them.

My brother and I were so excited that we could hardly stop to say 'good-bye' to our legal adviser, but tumbled head-first downstairs and into a taxi. Ross exhorted the Jehu to drive furiously to the Furniture Depository, where I found all my treasures, all the things that in the old days made home, that had acquired a special value from their association quite apart from their intrinsic worth. I sat in the chair of the nine devils and cried for the days when mother used the things, wept because daddy had been so thoughtful, and because I badly wanted to hear him say the old joke I loved as a kiddie, 'Oh, can't you see the ninth devil? I can!'

I found in store the eight old wheel-back chairs which were used in the servants' hall at home and the two arm-chairs to match, which were always set at either end of the long table for the cook and parlourmaid. Woe betide any lesser lights that dared to sit in those seats of the mighty! Fashion changes rapidly, however, and they will be our best, oh, very best dining-room chairs, with little flat cushions added, perhaps, for comfort. Then there is mother's grandmother's gate leg table, it used to stand in the hall for cards and letters, but that will be used for us to dine at. I seem to see the flowers on it and the little pools of light made by the glass and silver and the soft reflection of the shaded candles on the oak.

I shall set the chair of the nine devils beside the fire. The corner cupboard with the one side longer than the other will do for glass and salts and peppers, but as our dining-room is low, it must stand instead of hang as it used to do at home. Alas for Aunt Amelia's feelings, the cupboard door is panelled and the four divisions form a cross! Then there is a funny old Devonshire dresser made of deal, with three deep drawers, that we used in the school-room. It will do for a sideboard, and the drawers, if divided and lined with green baize, will hold the forks and spoons. It is painted black and has fascinating drop handles. There is a hard, uncompromising Elizabethan air about it that just matches the heavy beams in the ceiling. There is a splendid old brass Chinese incense burner amongst the ornaments, and somewhere in one of my multifarious boxes I have a flaming square of crimson with that glorious embroidery only Chinese people produce. It shall be made into a cushion for the black oak chair, and be the only splash of colour in the room. One or two of the pictures will look quite nice. There is a quaint print, in an old maple frame--Speech Day at Christ's Hospital--rows of stately dames mixed up with Mayors and Aldermen and maces sit round the hall, listening to one of the pupils reciting an ode. The pride and agony on the headmaster's face near by is funny. 'Will he remember it all? Such a credit to the school.' This at home used to be in an attic, but I loved it because, the glass being cracked, it made the Mayor appear to squint. Evidently daddy remembered this, for he had written on the back on a bit of stamp paper, 'For Meg,' that was what started the tears.

There are a few silhouettes in black frames with acorns on the top. One is of Grandpa Fotheringham as a baby, and his mother has written the date at the back and added, 'Very like my little boy, so dear to me.' There is a painting, black with age, of one of my mother's family. She is a severe-looking old lady, with rather a low-necked bodice (too low for a Bishop's relative), but I forgot she was on the distaff side. She has huge, full, puff sleeves and her head is entirely covered with a large muslin cap with a goffered frill all round her face, tied under her chin. That must hang near the silhouettes, I think. I found in a box a funny old sampler framed in an ancient black and gilt frame. It is a picture, beautifully sewn in faded silks, of a little girl and a lamb sitting under a tree in a meadow, which looks damp, and her home is in the distance at the back. She, too, is in a low-necked gown, with short sleeves, and she wears a muslin erection on her head. She is loving the lamb, which is extremely woolly. He is made entirely of French knots, so if you know what those are you will know how very woolly that lamb is. There is a pair of small shoes peeping out from under the little girl's gown, they are red. Somehow I feel that they are her best ones, and I don't believe her mother knows she's got them on. They look most unsuitable for a damp meadow, and the lamb will step on them in a minute, and then there'll be trouble. She'll probably cry.

When I got home I found a batch of letters and a picture from Uncle Jasper. It is a copy of one in the cathedral library at Canterbury. I will copy out a bit of his letter, which is so typical of the darling pet:--

'I am sending you a copy, painted by a pal of mine, of the Mediaeval Portrait of Queen Ediva. I expect you never heard of the lady, Little 'un, but she was the second wife of Edward the Elder, A.D. 961. Do try to remember that date. She was a great benefactress to Christ Church Priory, which I suppose you know is Canterbury Cathedral. In the picture you will see she is dressed in her royal robes and crown. Notice the beautiful jewelled and enamelled morse which fastens her ermine-lined cloak. The original is painted on wood and is presumably of the latter part of the fourteenth century. It is signed I.P.F., and if he's the chap I think he is, the date will be about 1392. You can hang it in the dining room of your ridiculous cottage. Why don't you say what the date of it is, instead of jawing about the creepers and leaded windows, which I expect are modern.'

Alas, there are no old deeds, so I do not know the date.

There was a letter from Aunt Constance, such a sad one. She asks me if I would like the Manor House nursery furniture for the Gidger. She has been saving it for her grandchildren, but now that Eustace has finally decided, there will never be any little folk to use the pretty things. Ross ejaculates at intervals, after reading the letter,--

'Oh, my hat! I simply couldn't, and when he could fight, too!'

No, I don't think the monastic life is the one for Ross.

So poor Aunt Constance, being a soldier's daughter, eats her heart out because her Eustace cannot see his way to fight and pray. Well, it's a funny throw-back.

Aunt Amelia acknowledged my letter telling her of my plans in thoroughly characteristic fashion. There is a good bit about the Devil in her epistle. She thinks 'one's days might better be occupied these solemn times than in amassing possessions and lands, marrying and giving in marriage'; but Michael and I are married, and it's only one house, and as to land, two acres and a cow is considered a minimum, and I've left out the cow. She 'hopes that the Vicar is faithful, and wears a black gown,' that the Gidger is showing signs of grace, and that I have been able to purge from the child's young mind the recollection of that dreadful recitation, taught her by some ungodly friend of her poor afflicted nephew.

'Does she mean me?' asked Ross indignantly.

'Yes, you're the afflicted one, and Captain Everard is the person who----'

'Well, old Everard does know some tales, I admit,' said Ross, 'but go on.'

'Oh, I can't bear to read any more of it out.' I threw the letter at him.

'Why does she always spell devil with a capital "D"? I should have thought the smallest she could write was good enough for that old beast,' remarked my brother as he handed the missive back.

*CHAPTER XIV*

I don't know if the day in London was too much for Ross, but he had a bad 'go' of pain in the night and cussed with great enthusiasm after breakfast because he couldn't light his own pipe. Somehow he cannot strike a match with his left hand, though heaps of men do it, I believe. Half an hour after the outburst Sam appeared with a vase filled with spills.

'Why these funny things?' said Ross, picking one up.

'Spills, sir, light them at the fire, sir; can't get matches.'

'Oh,' said Ross, and tried one. 'Why, Sam, this is a brain wave. I can light my own pipe.'

'Can you, sir,' said Sam, going away contented. He is so thoughtful in those little ways. He gives Ross such a very perfect service. Sam never attempts to serve two masters. He is wholehearted for his one.

After lunch Ross said that he didn't feel up to going out, and that his "Rev. Mother" wanted him to lie down and take some soothing syrup.

'And are you going to?' I asked.

'Of course I'm not. Do you think I always do what Brown says. The 'Rev. Mother's' the one that will do the lying down,' said my brother grimly.

So I went over to the Gidger's cottage and found it full of ladders, paint-pots, pails of white-wash, workmen knocking down partitions, while 'Uncle John,' his hair and whiskers bristling like a wild man of the woods, whirls in and out like a dog at a fair, glorying in all the mess and confusion. Now that the house is mine, I go round anxiously and point out the flaws and cracks in the walls, and 'Uncle John' says soothingly, 'Oh, yes, mum, it only wants a bit o' mortar, it won't cost you much,' 'a bit o' mortar' is his panacea for all ills. He says the roof is sound except over the powdering closet, which may give trouble, no doubt 'a bit o' mortar will set it right.'

The two partitions are down and the doorways unblocked so that I can now walk through my entire domain without going out in the garden, over the fence and in at the other front door. All the rooms have had one coat of distemper and the drawing-room is finished. The pale cream walls are quite delightful and cry out for water-colours in gold mounts and frames, the oak floors have been beautifully polished, and joy, there are three Persian rugs in the Depository. To-day I bought a pair of plain old iron dogs to rest the logs on in the open fireplace. The casement curtains are to be made of the anemone besprinkled chintz with frills along the top. But, alas, the little curtains cut into more yards of stuff than one would think, and so I must have others in the bedrooms. I went into a shop to-day and asked the man to show me dimity.

'Dimity,' said he with a supercilious stare, '_dimity_, why, good gracious, it's a hundred years old, madam.'

'But my house,' I said with quiet scorn, 'must be at least two hundred and fifty.'

I bought a seventeenth century settee and some deep chairs when I was up in town. They have loose covers made of chintz with a design of birds and baskets printed from the original old wood blocks.

The drawing-room is such a jolly room, very light and bright, with three big windows facing north and east and south. It has only one beam going across the ceiling and none of the sombre dark beauty of the dining-room, so I feel I may be flippant there. I shall have heaps of colour in the covers and curtains. There are a few delightful things of daddy's for this room--a lovely old mahogany corner cupboard with latticed doors, and some bits of china to go in it, bowls and jugs and funny old cups without handles. There are also three beautiful chairs with rounded backs filled in with lattice work painted in black and gold; the gold is very faint and worn in places. The seats are cane and the front legs very spindly, the kind of chair one's heaviest male visitor will inevitably choose. I think they must be French, they are so elegant. No one should sit in them but an old gentleman with powdered hair, delicate lace ruffles, and a little cane, and his lady opposite must have a small patch box, there is one that I can lend her if she likes. None of my men folk will look well in them, unless perhaps my father, in his robes and full lawn sleeves. And I bought an old mahogany bureau with deep drawers and little hidy holes and secret places in it. It was really most expensive, but I asked Ross, and he said Michael's balance at the bank was so indecent that he thought I really must. I don't think we shall want much else; I like space and Michael needs plenty; he will only fall over things if I crowd the rooms too much, and complain that there is nowhere for his legs.

I forgot to say there is a great cupboard in this room with battened shelves for fruit. (I told you the domestic offices were all mixed up), and there are Cox's orange apple trees in the garden. I seem to see a man who will get up suddenly and leave the fire on a winter's night and hie him to the cupboard 'for a map,' but his pockets will bulge suspiciously on his return, and there will be a kind of 'ain't going to be no core' look in his eyes. Then he will lean back in the chair covered with the bird and basket chintz and blatantly and vulgarly eat a Cox's, skin and all, regardless of the fact that he's already had at least one properly at dinner with finger bowls and silver knives and plates. Then I shall say in righteous indignation, 'Where's the map?' and he will say, 'Why, in my pocket, can't you see it sticking out?' 'I can see something round,' I say severely. 'Well, what would you have?' he drawls, 'the world's round, isn't it? It follows that the maps should be round, too.' And he picks up his book again and reads. But I, because the flesh is weak and the man tempted me too far, and because his second apple looks so good, I shall shriek out, 'Oh, now I know how Adam felt, Michael, you old serpent, give me one.' 'You can't eat maps,' he says. 'Oh, yes, I can,' I say, and snuggle down beside the fire and lean against his knee and munch in jolly comradeship, while the tale of cores mounts steadily and sizzles with delightful splutterings in the fire. Ah, well!

*CHAPTER XV*

Everything now is signed, sealed, and delivered. Gidger's cottage really belongs to me.

I have engaged a most enchanting charwoman: she cleans silver and brass better than any one else in the world, and polishes furniture till it dazzles, but she can't scrub, she has an 'inside.' It is of deep and lasting interest to her, and must be such a consolation on a wet day when one wants a hobby in the house. She is never tired of talking of it. It has a way of cropping up in every conversation, like the head of Charles the First in Mr Dick's memorial. Ross calls her 'Our Lady of Ventre,' which sounds more like a Belgian cathedral than it really is! She is very emaciated and her looks are more 'delicate' than her conversation.

'You see, mum, it's my inside,' she says; 'what I've suffered no one don't know but those what 'as it; why, one hoperation alone they took out----' but I spare you. So I have a second woman to scrub, and between them they are getting the house like a new pin, and it will burst upon the staff in all its pristine and primeval cleanness. I am a little afraid of the staff. I understand that English servants in these days need 'standing up to.' I can manage a man all right, having had a vast experience, and Ross keeps my hand in, but a woman--how does one stand up to her?

To-day the saucepans and baking tins arrived. I was thrilled, so was 'Our Lady of Ventre,' she helped me to unpack them while the other lady scrubbed the shelves.

'Could you wash them, do you think?' I asked.

'Oh, yes, mum, as long as I don't do no scrubbing; you see, it's my----' but I changed the conversation quickly by asking how her husband was.

'I 'ad a field card yesterday' (I wish I had), she answered, ''e was all right then; my 'usband's in the calvery, in the calvery 'e is, always was a one for 'orses.'

'So is mine,' I said.

'Fond of hall dumb hanimals, my 'usband is.'

'Ah, a kind man,' I answered.

''E is that,' she said, waving the lid of a saucepan at me, 'never laid a 'and on me or any of the children, and what I've cost 'im in doctors you never would believe; you see, it's my inside, mum,' and she took a header into it, which I was powerless to prevent. 'Why, when I first went out walkin' with 'im, mum, only nineteen I was at the time, I got such a hawful pain in my inside they took me to the 'orsepital, took me kidney right out they did, never thought I would 'ave lived they didn't. Me young man, 'im what's me 'usband now, you understand, mum, 'e come to see me when I began to git over it a bit; fair upset 'e was when the sister told 'im about me kidney. I says to 'im, "Alb," I says, "I'm sure if we gets married I shall cost you a hawful lot in doctors, and as I lay 'ere," I said, "I've thought it's 'ardly fair to expect a man to feel the same to 'is young woman when she ain't got all 'er orgins, and if you feel you'd rather 'ave some other young lady, why, say so now," I says, and I cried, I did, I was that weak and low, for I thought a deal of Alb, I did, and I didn't want to lose 'im, mum.'

'"Liza," 'e says, "don't never talk like that again, my gal, I'd rather 'ave you with no hinside than any other young lady what's got all her guts." Always one was Alb to speak 'is mind, and 'e fair blubbed, 'e did, 'e was that upset, and then the nurse come along again and sent 'im off, but I never forgot it, mum' (I shouldn't have either), 'and, as I say, I've never 'ad an unkind word from 'im. 'Elped with the 'ousework, too, many a time, and always lights the kitchen fire and brings me up a cup of tea, 'e does, of a morning, suppose that's why I miss 'im so now 'e's in France,' and a tear splashed down into the saucepan she had started washing.

Oh, it was really very sweet: the little woman's eyes were all alight with love at the remembrance of her Alb's renunciation of her 'orgin,' which, after all, was inspired by the same divine spark which caused Dante to adore his Beatrice, Jacob to serve fourteen years for Rachel, and Elizabeth to cry out to Robert,--