Part 7

'Parsons say the war has taught us many things,' said Ross, 'but I never expected it would teach you to go without a fire because it happened to be expensive. Why, it's a modern miracle, and ought to be reported to the Pope.'

'But it's difficult to get, as well.'

'Then we'll buy millions of logs and cartloads of peat,' he said. 'You're not going to sleep in this room without a fire, or any other room for the matter of that. Why, it's like an ice-house after India. Come on, Nannie, help me to get this female gear out of my dug-out. Don't be cross, old girl!'

But I was cross. I hate being called a 'female' and my clothes 'gear.' Why do I always live with cavemen who will have their own way and trample on my deepest feelings? I determined, however, that I would try again and said, 'But the mattress has such lumps and----'

'I adore lumps; how can you be so selfish, Meg?'

'But I don't want to be turned out of my room like this.'

'Well, that's what I keep on saying,' said Ross. 'How inconsistent women are. What time is dinner? Can I have a bath?'

'Just turned it on, sir,' said Brown, coming into the room and beginning to unpack!

So I left them. When Ross went downstairs I heard him call back, 'Sam, there are several things in my room that I don't want. I've left them in the middle of the floor, get rid of them.' And I wondered how Sam would carry out my brother's impossible orders, as landladies 'don't like things moved.' I peeped in as I went down. Brown was gazing at a weird assortment: all the antimacassars, some of the texts, the case of birds, and the ship in the glass bottle, the hair tidy like a balloon (which I rescued for the Gidger) and last but not least the 'Believer's Vision,' which Ross had taken off the wall and stood upside down upon the pile, in a frantic effort to save his faith from shipwreck.

I went down to dinner, and Brown waited. Liver and bacon! with that variety of mashed potato which my refined relative has from his earliest youth called 'worms.' I refused the liver and took some bacon; so did Ross, remarking that he 'Never could eat "works."'

Brown handed Ross the next course, which was rice pudding.

'Why do you bother to offer me this filth?' said Ross indignantly to Brown, 'you know I never touch it. What's the other stuff, jelly? I'll have some of that.'

'Packet,' said Brown, 'by the look of it, sir; shouldn't recommend it.'

But I, determining not to be dainty, said it looked jolly good and I would have some.

'Take it away, Brown, she's not going to eat hoofs and get a pain in her gizzard to start off with. Give her some pudding.'

Ross helped himself liberally to bread and butter and cheese.

'What funny butter,' he observed.

'Margarine, sir.'

'Oh, how tiring,' said Ross, pushing it away, 'give me a clean plate. Why _can't_ they colour it blue?'

Coffee consisted of a jug of hot milk and some black stuff in a bottle.

We adjourned to the fire and I had quite a nice supper of hot milk and biscuits, apples, and chocolates; and we talked and talked, and got a bit levelled up with life after five years of separation.

Then I went to bed. But, oh, not to sleep. The family's appalling habit of leaving doors half open prevented that, and I heard Ross say to Brown when he came up to bed (his voice does carry so), 'What's to be done, Sam, they can't stop here?'

'Certainly not, Master Ross. Never saw such a dinner in my life, though the cooking was all right.'

'Yes, it's the stuff they cooked that's wrong. Can't you do something?' said Ross vaguely. Sam has always seemed to be able to do the things that put our muddles right.

'Well, you see, sir,' said Brown, 'it's a bit awkward; Mrs Ellsley seems to be paying very little, and food is expensive.'

'Have you ever known my sister pay very little for anything if it was possible to pay a lot?'

'No, sir, and that's what I can't understand about it.'

'But how much _is_ she paying, then?' inquired my brother.

'Six guineas, sir.'

'But aren't there always extras in a place like this?' said Ross vaguely, searching his mind for recollections of lodgings at the sea. 'Don't they always make the profits out of--cruets, I think they call it?'

'Miss Margaret don't seem to have gone into any details,' said Brown.

'No,' agreed Ross, 'she wouldn't. But I should have thought you could feed two women and a child better than that for eighteen pounds a week. Well, they'll have to pay more, that's all.'

'But it isn't eighteen pounds,' said Brown.

'You said it was just now,' said Ross, 'six guineas each.

'But it was two guineas that was meant, sir. Six guineas for the lot of them.'

I heard my brother sink into a seat and scrape his feet along the floor, as he does when the burden of life becomes too heavy to be borne standing up.

'Do you mean to say, Sam, that the landlady proposes to provide rooms, beds, food, baths, boots, fires, cruets, and----' here Ross searched violently in his mind for more things which Mrs Tremayne was willing to provide, 'and "Believer's Visions" for two pounds a week each? Why, she's a public benefactor.'

'That's the price, sir. She said she asked six guineas and the lady agreed without arguing, as her lodgers usually do.'

'Well, of course, that's the explanation, Sam. She thought she meant "each."'

'The "she's" me,' I said to myself, to make it clearer in my mind.

'Not a doubt about it, sir,' said Sam.

'Funny things, women,' said my brother reflectively, 'never seem able to make a proper arrangement with a hotel, or book a cabin. The only mess I ever got into on a ship was when I let one of my aunts book my berth going out to--I forget where----'

'Indeed, sir,' said Brown, with interest.

'Yes, wrote and said she'd booked my berth but the ship was full and I'd have to share a cabin with a Captain Booth. Hoped I didn't mind. I loathed it, of course.'

'Of course,' said Brown.

'However, there was nothing to be done but put up with it, so I prayed it might be the Captain Booth in the 4th Lancers that I knew a bit. Where were you, Sam, that time?'

'Typhoid.'

'Oh, yes, of course. Well, I got down to the ship and turned in early, as I was dead done after--forget what I'd been doing; kept half an eye on the door to see what my stable companion was going to be like, and then Captain Booth came in.'

'Was it Captain Booth of the 4th Lancers?' asked Brown.

'Salvation Army lass,' said Ross laconically, and Brown laughed, as he used to do in Uncle Jasper's woods.

Suddenly somebody knocked violently on the wall.

'Anybody ill, do you think?' asked my brother.

'Oh, no, sir, making too much row--laughed a bit too loud, I expect, woke up the other lodgers.'

'What a rum place,' observed my brother, and then there was silence till the water ran in the bath, and the house for a few moments was turned into a pond with a polar bear in it.

Then I went to sleep.

*CHAPTER VI*

Brown has, apparently, been 'doing things' the last few days. Particularly nice breakfasts turn up now, a maid lights my fire and the bath water is hot. Ross informed me that he had taken on the running of the show, but that, with the best will in the world, Mrs Tremayne could not supply butter, so he'd wired to Aunt Constance for a supply, and that if I could put up with marmalade till it arrived it would ease his mind.

I have recovered my temper, too, and have decided that cavemen have their advantages. The one with whom my lot is cast at the moment knows how to stoke a fire, if nothing else. The millions of logs have begun to arrive, too, so at any rate we shall be warm. Ross says it's a pity I didn't live in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, for then I could have got really thawed on the days they lighted the burning fiery furnace.

The other occupants of the house are two maiden ladies--'artists.' Ross calls them the 'spiders,' because they entice into their parlour all their friends and acquaintances, and encourage them to buy their 'pictures,' and they borrow; oh, how they borrow! It is 'Could Mrs Ellsley kindly lend some ink?' or 'We have run out of notepaper and should be so obliged, etc.' Yesterday their newspaper hadn't come. 'Would Captain Fotheringham spare his for ten minutes?' Captain Fotheringham spared it with a very ill grace, but as the ten minutes became fifteen, and then twenty, and then thirty, he announced his intention of singing Hymn 103 outside their door.

'Why a hymn?' I inquired.

'Because it expresses in concise, lucid, clear, and unbiased language the perfectly intolerable situation which has arisen,' and he departed down the passage, singing loudly, 'My Times are in thy hand.'

Alas! this afternoon we are in deep disgrace, for the Spiders have given notice, and are going in about a week, because of us.

They object, it seems, to meeting Brown on the stairs and landings, and to the number of baths we have. Since we arrived there is never any hot water left for washing their blouses. The climax came, apparently, this morning. Brown goes into the bathroom about 7.30 a.m. and cleans the bath. I saw him do it once at home, so I know what happens. He sprinkles it all over with some powder in a tin, and then scrubs and scours it till you'd think all the enamel would come off. And then he washes it out with hot water and a brush on a long handle, and then dries it, and cleans the taps, and wipes the floor, and puts out soap and heaps of towels, turns the cold tap on and then goes along to Ross and says 'Bath's ready, sir.'

Then Ross goes and splashes it all up, and scatters soap about and swamps the floor, and then, after breakfast, Brown cleans it just the same all over again for me, only this time it's the hot tap, and Nannie comes and says 'Bath's ready, dearie, hurry up now.' What would Ross say if Brown suddenly said, 'Hurry up, now, dearie,' and if he wouldn't stand it, why do I?

Well, for some reason or other this morning Ross went along to his bath before Brown called him. He had on his new dressing-gown. His taste is lurid and flamboyant, and Aunt Constance aids and abets him. This was a really scrummy one, dull purple silk, with pink flamingoes. And Aunt Constance had had bath shoes made to match with baby flamingoes on the toes. She does spoil him abominably.

Well, Ross, resplendent in his purple and flamingoes, lounged in a chair and smoked a cigarette, while Brown put the last polish on the taps and 'chucked the towels about,' as Ross expressed it. Brown was silently absorbed in taps and Ross in watching him, when, suddenly, the door was flung wide open and a Spider entered in a red flannel dressing-gown, rather short, with a collar that had bits chewed out (I quote my brother, he means pinked) while its feet were thrust in red felt shoes. It had no cap on, but its hair was screwed into a tight, 'round button on the top,' like the panjandram, and it was in a temper hot and hissing.

Ross got up hurriedly and surveyed the apparition, feeling a little at a disadvantage, with his hair rough and with pink flamingoes. Brown stood at petrified attention by the bath.

'Oh, is it possible,' said the artist, for it was one of the sisters I told you of, 'is it humanly possible that this room is _still_ occupied?'

'I've only just come,' my brother remarked.

'But that man has been here at least half an hour,' said the red flannel dressing-gown.

'Have you, Brown?' asked Ross.

'I've had to clean the bath, madam,' said Brown.

'But surely,' said the Spider, 'surely the bath doesn't need cleaning. I'm sure Mrs Tremayne keeps everything most beautifully. It really is absurd. It's the same in the mornings, and at night, and sometimes before dinner. The man's always in here, and I feel the time has come to put my foot down. We all pay the same, and baths are included in the price.'

So Ross, with that courtesy which he can't help showing to a woman, even if he's furious with her, said 'I'm extremely sorry, but if you will tell my man after breakfast what time it is convenient to you for me to have my bath, I will fit in with you and will speak to my sister also. See to it, Brown, will you?' and he turned away to close the conversation.

But the Spider's conversation was not so easily closed, and she was just about to begin again. However, she had bargained without Brown. Brown had his orders, he had been told to 'see to it,' and meant to. Somehow he hustled the little woman out and, with 'My master is waiting to have his bath, madam,' he closed the door on the little spitfire, and Ross exploded comfortably.

After luncheon they gave notice. 'Jolly good job, too,' says Ross. But I feel sorry we've annoyed them, though I shall go in and possess my Naboth's vineyard with great pride and pleasure.

Ross is only pretty well; he gets a good deal of pain and is sleeping badly, but he generally manages to be cheerful, when he can't he goes upstairs and stays there till the bout is over.

This evening he came into my room to say 'Good-night,' and his mind seemed full of dressing-gowns. 'Meg,' he demanded, 'is your dressing-gown red?'

'Yes,' I said, 'the one I'm using at the moment happens to be red.'

'But is it flannel?'

'No, but it's something quite as thick. Estelle thought it would be warmer for me. It's over there, if you'd like to see it.'

He picked up the soft crimson thing that Estelle had made for me when I first landed.

'Why, Meg, it looks like an evening dress.'

'Yes, but it buttons down the front, that's where the difference is.'

'Do you always button it, then, when you put it on?'

'Oh, always,' I replied, 'don't people usually?'

'I dunno,' he said, 'only this morning she had got hers sort of draped across her tummy, kept together with the belt knotted. When you walk about the passages in hotels, Meg, don't you wear a cap or something?'

'My dear child,' I observed, 'where do you think I was dragged up?'

*CHAPTER VII*

Fairy hands have been at work. Instead of a shining white world all is green again. There has been a very rapid thaw. The frost has gone and little brooks of melted snow are running down the lanes and paths. Tiny green spikes have appeared in all the garden as if by magic. There is even a half-drowned primrose out, telling that spring is coming very soon this year.

The morning post brought me a letter from Michael 'written in the mud.' It contains a most amazing suggestion. He asks me to try to find an old house 'such as his soul loveth' and make a home.

Oh, how he must have misunderstood my letters and thought because I frivolled and told him all our stupid jokes that I am happy. How can he imagine I could even contemplate making a home in England without him when it has been the dream of our lives to do it together. Surely he knows by now that 'Home' for me is just that particular bit of mud in Flanders in which his dear feet are embedded, and that any place without him is exile, that life, till he returns, is merely marking time. I don't care if I am talking like a little Bethel.... Ross thinks it's a topping idea. Even Nannie didn't help me. When I told her, all she said was, 'But of course you will if Master Michael wants you to.'

I felt, as I sometimes used to as a child, that 'every one's against me,' and I decided to walk my devils off.

I went downstairs and found Ross reading.

'Going out?' he asked.

'Yes, will you come?'

'No, arm's bothering,' and he took up his book again.

I went for a long tramp, down the quiet lanes and through the little spinneys, but there was no harmony--the old 'washed' feeling wouldn't come. I slipped into the Intercession Service at the little church and tried to pray for Ross and Michael and all the others. War seems very near in England, only a few miles off--those guns--that one hears sometimes in the night. I thought as I sat in church of all the death and desolation, the suffering and the broken hearts and tears. A great horror of the war came over me and a great rebellion. Why does God allow such things? How can I think of Him as a beneficent Being when the world is swamped with cruelty, blood, and separation? I feel like Tommy Vellacott. I don't love God now. I only believe in Him.

When I got home my feet were soaked and my throat sore, so I went upstairs early. I felt better in bed, and decided that I _would_ try to find a house if it would give Michael the least scrap of happiness. If he would feel 'less anxious' about me in a house of our own instead of rooms, why a house it shall be. I grew quite excited and interested (as my feet got warmer), planning the details of our dream--an old, old house, standing in a big garden with long, low rooms full of oak furniture, seventeenth century, for choice, with lots of flowers and sunshine in the summer, and books and candlelight and glowing fires for the winter evenings. But how awful it would be if, when Michael saw it for the first time he should say,--

'This the dream house?--what a nightmare!'

Then Ross came in to say good-night. 'Better?' he queried.

'No, but I'm going to get up to-morrow,' I said defiantly.

'Are you,' he drawled, as though he hadn't the faintest interest in the subject, but there was a look in his eyes somehow I didn't like. 'Why is that wretched kitten up here again?' he said. 'I can hear it wheezing,' and he looked under the bed.

'It's me,' I said.

'It's I,' said Ross.

'Oh, have you got it, too?' (I will not be reproved for grammar by a twin).

'Are you making that noise for fun, Meg?'

'No, I can't help it,' I said crossly.

'Hadn't you better have one of those things on made out of a muslin curtain, with hot muck inside,' he added vaguely, racking his brains for medical knowledge. 'Can't think what the stuff's called.'

'No,' I said violently, 'I hadn't better!'

Presently the house grew quiet and I began to worry over Ross, his bad nights, the constant pain and the absolute refusal to let any one do anything for him; he won't have a fire and snaps Brown's head off if he suggests a doctor. He was really angry with me on Saturday because I--oh, well, it's no use worrying, I reflected, as I mopped my eyes.

Just as I was about to try to compose myself for slumber, with a little folding of the hands to sleep, wishing I could drown the kitten, Nannie came in. You will hardly believe it when I tell you that she carried in between two hot plates the thing that Ross had mentioned, in a muslin curtain.

'Master Ross says,' began Nannie.

'Nannie,' I retorted, and I was furious, 'I simply will not have that beastly thing on just because Ross says so.'

'Well,' said Nannie soothingly, 'have it because I say so, if you'd rather,' and she clapped it on.

And I decided, as she closed the door, that I should run away at dawn.

But the kitten wouldn't stop, and then I started choking. There was dead silence in the house, so I hoped that Ross was sleeping well for once, and I buried my head under the bedclothes and coughed comfortably.

I started up presently with a little shriek to find a giant in pyjamas making up my fire.

'Sorry I frightened you,' said Ross. 'What have you got your head buried for, can't you sleep?'

'No,' I replied.

'But I told you to knock if you wanted me, Meg.'

'I didn't want you,' I said crossly, 'that's why I didn't knock.'

'You're very difficult to take care of,' said Ross, surveying me from the foot of the bed.

'Not nearly so difficult as you are,' I retorted, all the worry of his continued sleepless nights coming to a head suddenly in my mind, 'you won't let me do a thing for you. I cry about you sometimes.'

'You cry about _me_?' said the giant, suddenly sitting on the edge of the bed.

'Yes,' and I leaned against him; he seemed a friendly sort of giant at the moment.

'When did you cry last?' he demanded.

'To-night,' and I fumbled for a handkerchief I didn't really need.

'Why?' asked the giant.

'Because your arm's so bad, you aren't sleeping, you won't take anything or do anything, or let any one else do anything for you. You're making me perfectly miserable, and as for Sam, you've been absolutely rotten to him all the week.'

'I told Brown to keep every one out of my room when I'd got a "go" on, and he let you in on Saturday.'

'Yes, but Ross,' I said, 'how could he keep me out?'

'He'd had his orders. I can't be responsible for any difficulties that may occur in the carrying of them out,' said Ross obstinately.

'You are hard,' I said.

'Scold away,' grinned Ross.

'No, but you are; you've simply looked through Brown and locked your door, and been cold to me for days.'

'Can't stand disobedience in a soldier,' said Ross, shortly, 'never could.'

'Nor in a sister, Ross?'

But there was no reply.

'Ross,' I exclaimed suddenly, desiring an armistice, 'I'm sorry. I won't come in again, only, if you knew how I worry about you, you'd let me. But,' I added, 'I thought when we embarked on this conversation, that I was rowing you.'

'I haven't said a word,' protested Ross.

'No, I know you haven't, but conscience makes the head uneasy when it wears a crown.'

'Are you feverish, darling?' said Ross anxiously.

'No, but I get quotations mixed at times. Will you forgive me?' I said childishly.

So we smoked the pipe of peace with great contentment, smoked the calumet, the peace pipe, and I said, 'My brother, listen,--

"See the smoke rise slowly, slowly, First a single line of darkness, Then a denser, bluer vapour, Then a snow-white cloud unfolding, Like the tree tops of the forest. Ever rising, rising, rising, Till it touched the top of heaven," Till it broke against the ceiling, Till I sneezed.'

'Meg, I'm sure you're feverish.'

'I'm not.'

'Well, the only thing I've understood that you've said lately was the sneeze.'

'And that,' I observed with pride, 'was the original bit. I always felt I could be a poet if I tried. Now I'm going to finish rowing you.'

'But I thought we'd smoked the pipe of peace, Meg.'

'Oh, that----' I said.

'How like a woman. Fire away, then, and get it off your chest.'

So I fired away and got off all the wrongs of days.

'If you weren't so small,' said Ross, when at last he got a word in, 'I shouldn't feel so inclined to bully you.'

'But that's an awful thing to say. Why, you never ought to hit a man who's smaller than yourself.'

'Looks as if my moral nature is decaying and I seem to be a fair and average all-round beast,' said Ross, with gloom. 'I didn't mean to hurt you, darling. Sorry, little 'un. I'll try to be different,' he promised, as he used when he was naughty as a boy.

'Have some coffee, Meg? Brown put some in my thermy.'

'Yes. I will if you will,' and because my brother was 'trying to be different' he took a cup himself.

'Well, it's time you went to sleep,' remarked the giant, and got up to go.

Outside the door, as he went out, I heard Brown say, 'Can't you sleep, sir,' and then something about 'no dressing-gown with that cold on you.'

'Oh, dry up,' said Ross wrathfully, really trying to be different, 'you're as bad as a wet nurse. Go to bed and stop there, or I'll sack you, Sam.'

So I knew Brown was forgiven, too.

When I woke up next time it was getting light. I fumbled for my watch. It said the hour was twelve, so I knew it must be seven, or it might be eight--the hour hand will slip round, though I can always tell the minutes, which is what one usually wants to know.

Then there was a knock upon my door.

'This,' I thought, 'is my repentant brother. Now, after last night, I must remember to be firm, but kind, and so help him to be different,' and I called 'Come in.'

But an icicle in shirt sleeves entered that I'd seen several times before.

'Meg,' it said, 'you're not to get up.'

'My dear sir,' I said to it (telling myself that I was not afraid of icicles), 'I hadn't the slightest intention of doing such a thing for at least an hour.'