Part 13

We smuggled out some nighties, so that the maids shouldn't see, and a blue dressing-gown, and a little quilted coat to match, and some soft blue shoes, and a cap or two, and a shawl and pretty things like that to suit an invalid, and when I got to Mrs Williams's house I packed them all in her own suit-case and brought her in a cab to Gidger's Cottage.

Nannie solemnly unpacked for her, and said,--

'How pretty your things are, ma'am, if you won't think it a liberty for me to say so,' which was considerably more tactful than my remark about the nighties. And the invalid blushed quite nicely and looked at me reprovingly.

Daddy always said that Nannie couldn't tell a lie and came out in a cold perspiration if she even tried, but I think her first and last will be forgiven her. So we got Mrs Williams to bed, she was very exhausted. The doctor came and said that she was threatened with appendicitis and that if this attack could be warded off she ought to be sent to the sea and get quite strong and then have the operation.

While I was waiting in the firelight for dinner a chastened Ross appeared. He slipped his arm round me and hid his face in my hair.

'Oh, Meg,' he said, 'I am a beast.'

'I was wrongfully accused!'

'Nannie told me about the ripping things you've given her; I ought to be kicked for saying it.'

'Oh, Ross, what rot, what about that fat case of notes?'

'Well, I can't give him my new kilt, can I?' with a ghost of a laugh. 'I wish I hadn't been so cool to the chap, but clothes with the remains of the last meal on simply make me curl up. I can't help it, I do try and not let it show. I will be deadly civil now, I'll have my party smile on all the time,' said my repentant brother.

Ross in white rags of penitence so amused me that I felt I would like to keep him humble a little longer. The boot is nearly always on the other leg, so I said, very gravely, hoping he wouldn't feel me giggle,--

'You see, Ross, it was your damnable temper and your accursed pride.'

Then with amazing suddenness the boot was on the usual leg. 'I won't have you say those words, Meg, and understand if I let you have these people here, you're not to get fagged out. Michael says so in every letter he writes me. I shall wire for a nurse for her in the morning, and you're to get somebody extra in the kitchen, and as you don't seem able to manage those women, I've told Sam to do something. Michael sent me a prepaid wire to-day saying you'd said you were hungry, and what was being done about it.'

I was just about to protest when Mr Williams came into the hall, so the conversation changed abruptly. He was quite spruced up, shaved, and looked heaps better. I saw Ross give one fastidious glance at the spotted clothes, but he was very nice to him at dinner and talked with charming deference. When half a spoon of soup went down the ill-used coat, I saw Ross slowly freeze and curl up, but he violently uncurled himself and said, 'Oh, rotten luck, sir,' and helped poor Mr Williams mop it up.

I slipped upstairs quite early to see how the invalid was, and found her inclined to be sleepy, and as I bent over her she whispered, 'I can't thank you, but "Inasmuch," He said.'

Ross peeped round my door about eleven and found me writing.

'Did _I_ do it all right at dinner, Mrs Ellsley?' he began, mimicking 'My 'Ilda.' 'You look quite sweet in that cap and jacket, Meg.' And then he added hastily, lest I should be puffed up with pride like Pau-Puk-Keewis, 'but I thought Michael had forbidden you to read in bed.'

'He has, but I'm not reading, I'm just writing.'

'Humph,' said Ross, 'could I--would it--do you think it would offend him if I got Sam to--brush and--er sponge them, Meg? Goodness,' he ejaculated, pulling out his watch, 'do you know what the time is?'

'Twenty past,' I said, looking at mine.

'Twenty past what?'

'I don't know, the hour hand slips round, but twenty past anything can't be late; if it were five to, now, it might be different, Ross.'

'Well, anyway, give me that pen, Meg. You're not going to write another word, and I'll have that watch mended to-morrow. Give it me.'

So I handed that over, too, and produced a pencil

'Well, I'm dashed,' said Ross, and took that also.

'Oh, do let me finish my letter to Michael, Ross. The Titmouse posts it in the morning. I only want to write just one more thing.'

'You may say,' said Ross, handing it back, '"I am a very disobedient wife, Michael."'

So I said, "I am a very disobedient wife, Michael, but I love you" (oh, he's coming for the pencil), "love you--lo----"'

But, of course, I've got another pencil, one must be prepared for such emergencies, but the thing that really rankles is, if he 'lets me'--in _my_ house!

In the silent watches of the night I have decided that if Sam does produce any improvement in the housekeeping I am going to find out how; surely my brain is as good as a man's any day of the week.

*CHAPTER XXI*

I feel anxious about Monica. She hasn't heard from Charlie. I saw her yesterday. She looked very tired, but wouldn't say much--only, 'there's hardly been time yet,' which she knows as well as I do isn't true. So I suppose something has gone wrong there. God doesn't seem to like people to be happy lately. I haven't heard from Michael either the last two days, but I try not to worry. Probably the posts are just hung up again.

Mrs Williams is better, much less pain, and a little fatter, or perhaps it would be more correct to say, rather less thin. The nurse thinks she will be able to get up for a while to-morrow, and that she should go away for a change before her operation.

While I was in the garden sowing seeds, Ross came out to me and said,--

'Meg, excuse me mentioning it, but how much do operations cost?'

'It depends on how much they take out,' I said. '"Why, at one hoperation alone----"'

'Margaret, if you would have the goodness to give me some idea of a figure, and not make me sick, I should be so obliged.'

I looked round wildly for 'some idea of a figure.' The flower seed packet in my hand was numbered 207, so I said,--

'About 207, I should think, and it was "Our Lady of Ventre," Ross, who said that about the "hoperation." As long as it's a quotation, a person can say anything and not be blamed.'

'Your quotations always were about the limit,' he answered, and went indoors again.

A little later in the afternoon Ross was drumming idly on the drawing-room window when he suddenly exclaimed,--

'There are two visitors coming up the path, freaks, too, look at their clothes. My hat, Meg I it's Aunt Amelia, Keziah, and the fydo!'

I don't know if I said before that Keziah is tall and rather angular, with smooth black hair parted down the middle, like Aunt Amelia's, and as the maid is always arrayed in her mistress's cast-off clothes, one description will do for both. On this occasion each wore a funny little black bonnet, and a long voluminous broche skirt, the train of which was held right over the arm, showing acres of white embroidered petticoat. A black jacket, and square-toed, flat-heeled boots, and those awful stuff gloves that pull on without buttons completed an awe-inspiring costume.

Keziah arranged my aunt in an arm-chair and handed over the fydo to her care, and then retired with my pulverised parlourmaid to the servants' hall.

Aunt Amelia was extremely gracious for her, in an early Victorian fashion, 'Hoped we liked our house and had found suitable domestic help.' She then asked in the next breath, without waiting for my answers, what we thought of the church, and when I replied that we liked it very much she said,--

'I'm distressed to hear it, Margaret. It may be a beautiful structure, but do you know the vicar believes in the Virgin Mary?'

Ross got up hurriedly and opened another window, and then my amiable relative started on the family and her friends and proceeded to pick their religious views to pieces, while the fydo wheezed and stank and panted at her feet.

I felt at all costs the conversation must be changed, so I told her rather irrelevantly that we kept chickens, but that we couldn't have many as we hadn't much space.

'Ah, Margaret,' she said, 'if you want space you can always look above.'

'But you can't keep chickens there, Gweat Aunt,' said the Gidger, who had been listening with great interest to the conversation.

My brother looked at me piteously. I don't know how much longer he could have controlled his laughter. Mercifully the fydo got fidgety, so the good lady got up to go. The Poppet observed with deep interest that the loose cover of the chair upon which the visitor had been sitting was all pulled out and wrinkled. She looked up at her great-aunt, and in a voice of the most intense interest, said,--

'Look how you've wuckled up the cover of muvver's chair. You must be cowogated like our hen-house roof.'

Ross became so alarmingly faint that he could only gasp out a choked 'good-bye' and hurry upstairs.

I found him a few minutes later with his head buried in a sofa cushion. 'Oh, what a thing it is to have a corrugated relative!' he gasped. 'Isn't she a priceless female? And their clothes! I must write and tell daddy. How he would have enjoyed it.'

And then my brother suddenly turned serious in that funny way he has, and said,--

'But now, wasn't she absolutely putrid, picking holes in everybody who differs in the least degree from herself. I hate that type of "Christian"; you ought to be able to judge Him by His followers, and half the time you can't. Nasty, spiteful old cat, bet her husband wished he'd never married her after the first ten minutes. I don't wonder he kicked the bucket at an early age.'

'Well,' I remarked in a pause, 'you aren't exactly doing the charitable stunt yourself at the moment, are you?'

My brother looked at me lugubriously.

'_Isn't_ it difficult?' he exclaimed. 'Really, I wonder He doesn't chuck me right out of The Service. I'm always letting Him down. Oh, clear out, Meg.'

So I cleared out, and as I passed the top of the back stairs I could see the staff standing on three chairs, craning their necks to catch the last glimpse of Keziah as she followed her mistress down the garden path. When the gate closed on the vision, the staff sighed deeply and said,--'Golly.'

Which seemed to exactly sum up the situation.

'Our Lady of Ventre' remarked,--

'Give my inside quite a turn she did when she first come in the kitchen!'

Then I went in to Sam's little sitting-room.

'I've come to have it out with you, Sam, sit down.'

'Won't hurt me to stand up for five minutes, miss.'

'Sit down when you're told. I'm going to stay hours. Put your leg up properly. Now then,' I observed, when discipline had been unwillingly restored. 'We've had enough to eat since last Friday, have you been interfering in my kitchen, Brown?'

'Sorry, miss, but he told me to, you know.'

'Yes, but do you think that is sufficient reason when I told you not to. You must take a month's notice,' I said severely. 'Who's the mistress of the house, Brown?'

'You are, madam,' and he twinkled at me.

'Well, now, as you are really respectful, I may feel inclined to withdraw the notice if you tell me exactly where I go wrong. Why are we so disliked, let's have the whole truth, what's the matter with us?'

'Everything,' said Sam, surveying me gloomily, 'but some things specially, the silver's one.'

'The silver? Why it's almost all old, some of it's seventeen hundred and something.'

'Well, that's what I'm telling you, miss; it's battered in places, it isn't embossed enough, even a bit of chasing would be better than nothing. And then your clothes----'

'Well, they cost enough.'

'Yes, but they don't look it, then Master Ross----'

'Well, he always looks clean, Sam.'

'Looking clean don't matter, miss, he should try to look rich; then your relatives--what's the good of some of them having titles if you call them plain "father" and "aunt"?'

'You can leave that bit out.'

'I'm not going to. You asked for the whole truth and you're going to get it for once in your life, besides I want that notice withdrawn, I've got a comfortable place.'

'Oh,' I said, 'I _do_ hope you are comfortable, Sam. Do you think your knee is any better? I so wish I could give you a nicer sitting-room and not in front of the house. It's so rotten for you to see us go out for walks and not be able to come.'

Sam has such nice soft eyes. He said he was 'Much obliged, miss.' He is always 'obliged' for such funny things, and never about the things I would be. He's never obliged for his wages, really seems to rather loathe them. Now I would love them, especially if they were paid punctually, which his never are.

'Well, now, miss,' he continued, 'when the letters come, for instance, why can't Master Ross behave like a gentleman and say,--

'"Brown, if there are any communications from his lordship, or from my uncle, Sir Jasper Fotheringham, Bart., or from Lady Amelia Leigh, you may hand them to me on a silver salver and retire." Instead of, "Sam, chuck over anything from father or Aunt Constance, and stick the bills on the mantelpiece."'

'Oh, Sam,' I giggled hopelessly, 'we always pray there mayn't be one from Aunt Amelia.'

'"_Aunt!_" There you go again,' said Sam desperately. 'Is it _any_ good my talking to you?'

'Well, but what about the housekeeping, Sam?'

'Oh, that's worse than anything, apparently. The first morning you went into the kitchen you said vaguely, "We like thick soup better than clear, and junkets when there's any cream from Devonshire, and there are those chickens my uncle sent, I suppose they'd better be used soon." And you seemed to think you'd done the housekeeping for a week,' said Sam severely.

'Well, but that's what mother used----'

'Yes, but not after old Mary died. If you want a thick soup, you must say what they've got to put in it.'

He got up hastily and murmured, 'Caught again,' as the S.P. came along the passage with his tea, and as she came in and I got off the table, he said, 'Very well, madam, I'll see to it,' and I retired with dignity!

At dinner to-night Mr Williams quite warmed up. I suppose it's because his little wife is better. He nearly forgot to be a pallid curl paper and told us tales of the East End parish he had worked in after he returned from Ligeria. He said that some of the poor things were never washed except when they were born and buried, and never entered a church unless to get married, and they're all so ignorant that he found one wedding party kneeling round the font. (I wish to goodness I had got the chance of kneeling round a font again; sometimes the ache for the small son is simply not endurable.) Mr Williams spoke, too, of the awful grinding poverty, and the vice, and how the housing question was responsible for so much. 'It's all a question of money,' he said, 'money can buy everything.'

'Except the Kingdom of Heaven,' said my brother, with one of his gentle looks.

And then the S.P. came in with a note for Mr Williams. It was from his bank, apparently.

'There must be some mistake,' he said aloud. 'Some one has paid in L207 to my account. Oh, Mrs Ellsley,' looking across at me, 'I can't possibly accept such a sum, you know. Why, one never could thank you for half the things you have done already.'

'Mr Williams, I swear it's nothing to do with me, I haven't done it,' and I glanced across at Ross.

'Captain Fotheringham,' said poor Mr Williams, 'can it possibly be you?'

'Do you know, sir, what a captain's pay is?' asked my brother.

'Why,' I exclaimed, rushing in where angels would fear to tread, 'good gracious, Ross can't live on it without an allowance from his godmother.' ('Since deceased,' I added underneath my breath, to make it truthful).

'No, I suppose not,' said Mr Williams (he is so easy to deceive); 'but what _am_ I to think?'

'Well, I should think it was the most amazing bit of luck, sir,' drawled my brother, slightly bored. 'And I wish you'd introduce me to your friend.'

So Mr Williams went upstairs in a state of complete bewilderment to tell his little wife, and Ross was really rather nice to me, though I was not allowed to mention the subject of our recent conversation. However, he did say that I was a nice child not to have given the show away, kissed me once and called me 'Jonathan,' which he only does when he is pleased with one, I mean not actively _dis_pleased. Funny old 'David.'

*CHAPTER XXII*

My visitors departed soon after breakfast to-day in a motor-car with the nurse. Mrs Williams is going to the sea for a month to get quite strong so as to be very brave and have the operation. He is really touching, so is she. It seems such a small thing to have done for such a wealth of gratitude, and that absurd L207 will make it possible for her to go to a proper nursing home, instead of the free ward of a London hospital.

I was rather glad to see them go, although I have learned to like them very much. But for six days I have had no letter from Michael, and yesterday the mail brought me one from father which upset me horribly. He wrote:--

'DARLING--I want to tell you something I have never told any one before. I can hardly write of it even after all these years--But I once saw a vision of my Lord.

'That summer, Meg, after you were married, Ross and I were so wretched without you, that we went down to that little house-boat of Uncle Jasper's on the Helford River.

'One lovely evening, after a wet day, I was in the dinghy fishing when Ross came out in the duck punt and said,--

'"Father, shall I go back and fetch our supper: It's too perfect to go in?"

'So he went back in the duck punt and I went on fishing. Suddenly _The Man_ I told you about the night before your wedding sat down in the dinghy, and as I was about to kneel to Him, He said, just naturally, as a king might to any one he'd known for years,--

'"Oh, Fotheringham, a boat is an impossible place for you to be respectful in!" And He laughed as He said, "Sit down."

'And then after a minute He asked,--

'"Any luck?"

'"No, Sir," I answered.

'"It's because you're anchored; it doesn't do in this river, and you're in the wrong place. I'll take you to a better."

'So He rowed me further down the river towards the sea.

'"Is your line clear of weed?" He asked.

'And I looked and said, "Yes, Sir."

'"Do you ever breathe on your hooks?"

'"No, Sir, is it any good?"

'"Well, those old fishermen always say it's better, why don't you try it?"

'So I did, and I began to catch. Then _The Man_ said,--

'"What about My other fishing?" And at first I didn't answer, because He had mentioned it to me before, and I wanted to refuse, but His eyes compelled me, for all they were so gentle, so I said,--

'"I'm not cut out for that other kind of fishing."

'"Not if I breathed on your hooks?"

'We fell silent. Then I thought of the loathing I have always had for slums and dirt and squalor, and especially for natives, and He must have known what I was thinking, for He said,--

'"Isn't it a good thing I didn't have an antipathy for black people--that time I died for you?"

'And I said, "Yes, Sir," because all in a moment I realised how black sin was to the Son of God who in the perfection of His whiteness had been "made sin" that I might become the righteousness of God in Him.

'And then He said, "Anthony, you've been horribly lonely lately, haven't you?"

'"Yes, Sir."

'"And you think I can't comprehend that kind of loneliness, but it's you who don't understand. I have never had My marriage supper--My bride delays to make herself ready.'

'I looked at Him again then, and saw His ache and hunger for _His Church_.

'"Anthony, land and water only divide you from your children, so many of Mine are separated from Me by sin," and I looked at Him again, and saw that He would always be lonely till the last of His children kneel to Him.

'"So, Anthony, what about My other fishing?"

'"I've not forgotten what you chose I should do years ago, Sir, and if you order this I must go."

'"And still----?"

'"And still be Your unprofitable servant, Sir." For all at once I saw that, too.

'"Anthony, is 'I'll go because I'm ordered' _really_ the best that you can say?"

'I looked out over the beautiful river, at the hills I loved, and I thought of the friends I would have to leave, and of the beauty of my old Devonshire home, and my heart ached increasingly for your mother. I looked at Ross, too, coming back in the duck punt--Ross, the last of my immediate family left to me--and I felt that I could only go out to the mission field if I were ordered.

'"Anthony, have you ever heard the old saying, 'Don't look at the thing that is asked for, but at the One who asks'?"

'"No, Sir."

'"Some people say you see then if it's worth while."

'So I looked at _The Man_ who asked, and saw afresh God's Son. And suddenly I perceived the limitless love of Him, and His unbounded sacrifice, and the whole divine patience and perfection and beauty of _The Man_, and I cried, in sudden surrender and adoration,--

'"Lord, I will go willingly, because I love You."

'And although _The King_ had had every right to give the order, He deigned instead to accept my long-delayed submission to His love. And presently He said,--

'"Oh, here's Ross coming back in the duck punt with your supper. I must go."

'But I cried, "Oh, don't leave me, stay to supper with us both."

'"I can't to-night, Anthony, I simply must go in to Plymouth, and there's an old woman in a cottage I must look in at on the way. You come to supper with Me instead on Sunday."

'So He departed over the fields to Plymouth, through clouds and trails of gorgeous blue and gold, and the water was all luminous from His footsteps, and the hills as He passed ablush with rose. As He went the sunset faded, and then suddenly the brightness all came back, for _The Man_ called to me again from the cliff above the water,--

'"Anthony, the climate on that other river isn't fit for English women."

'"Oh, Beloved of my soul," I cried, "I am contented. I would not ask You for her back."

'Then He smiled and my Vision Splendid faded, but He left His peace behind, and the moon rose undimmed out of the ocean where the Helford River runs into the sea.

'And the reason that I've told you this, my dearest little daughter, is that you sound unhappy in your letters. You are haunted by a fear that _He_ may take things from you. But, darling, don't you see that when you have Him you have everything. Oh, Meg, His strength! and the supreme perfection of His eyes. No brush can paint Him, no words describe Him. Oh, darling, won't you be dutiful to Him and leave everything to His most unutterable love?'

But I can't feel like daddy does about things. I can't trust Him. I don't even want to look at the One who asks if it means I have to give up anything. I love all my family so frightfully that I don't know what I would do if He took any of them away. I only hope I would at least be civil to Him. I never could be 'dutiful' about it. I have never really had a trouble, only that dreadful time when darling mother died, but then Michael came along so soon after that it seemed as if God had only taken away one love to give me back an even more perfect one. But since the war it seems to me that God is so relentless and so jealous. He won't share hearts. He will have all or none, and I am growing to feel that it must be 'none' with me. I am like that soul, pursued by the Hound of Heaven; I fear His 'following feet,' I dread lest having Him I must have naught beside.

*CHAPTER XXIII*