Part 9

'But surely, Ross, not knowing a thing doesn't make a person "white." If you know a lot and don't say them, by the grace of God, I should have thought that was being "white."'

*CHAPTER XI*

The Gidger came in from a drive bursting with excitement and importance.

'Muvver, _I've_ found you a house, it's the darlingest you ever saw, very old, and the drawing-room has got a pump in it, and there's a pig, too.'

'In the drawing-room, Gidger?' Ross inquired; 'that sounds as if it might do. Your mother likes a pig under her bed, and so did her grandmother.'

'Nannie and I went all over it, muvver. One of the bedrooms has a funny little place leading out of it, the lady said she thought it was a powdering closet.'

'Get the telegraph forms and tell Mr Cardew Thompkins we're suited,' cried Ross, getting up in a great hurry. 'Of course it's _the_ house; you're a jewel, Gidger. We never in our wildest moments hoped for a powdering closet.'

'I don't know what the drainage is like,' said Nannie.

'Fancy talking of drainage and a powder closet in the same century,' said Ross indignantly, 'let's have lunch at once, Meg, and catch the Longcross bus and go and see it.'

We had a bit of a scrimmage to catch the bus. It starts from the other inn, called The Ramping Cat. The guide-book says 'it is a small but well-conducted hostelry on the main road to London.' It seems an unfortunate name to have chosen for a place with so high a moral tone. However, as we got half-way to it we saw the bus, looking, as Ross expressed it, 'about to weigh anchor, and we're late as usual.' So I ran on ahead to ask the man to wait for Ross, as I didn't want his arm to be joggled.

The bus was a quaint affair, a kind of square sarcophagus on wheels, the door opened in two bits like a stable, and the driver informed us that 'the upper part 'ad jammed that tight he couldn't get it open no'ow.' So we crawled into the beastly thing's bowels (I quote my brother), but after we had started the upper part flew open, and nothing I could do (or Ross say) would induce it to remain shut, so at last we gave it up as a bad job and left it idly flapping in the breeze.

Presently the bus stopped and the man poked his head in at the window and said,--

'I'm sorry to 'ave to ask you, mum and sir, to get down, but the 'orse is going to throw a fit.'

We hastily descended and found the poor beast trembling violently and looking wretched.

'Does he often have them?' inquired Ross.

'No,' said the man, 'only if 'e's upset about anythink--when the young lady come up in the yard and asked me to wait, I thought 'e was going to throw one, but I 'oped we'd get to Longcross before 'e did.'

'Goodness!' said Ross, hurrying me away, 'what a perfectly ghastly effect your face seems to have on animals, Meg; I should think we'd better walk back unless you could buy a thick veil in the village. If you come out here to live you'll have to buy a motor; that poor beast's health would soon be undermined if you used the bus constantly!'

The little brown house, as the Gidger called it, turned out to be two cottages, one of which is at present occupied by the owner, who is moving shortly. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that it is really one biggish house, which, about fifty years ago was divided into two small ones, each with an acre of garden. By taking down a partition and unblocking a doorway or two, it could be restored to its original state. It stands on the slope of a hill overlooking miles of common which will soon be ablaze with gorse, and in the distance there is a low ridge of purple hills with a crown of fir trees.

Most of the rooms have windows at each end, an arrangement I like, as it is delightful to follow the sun round. There is the most glorious old roof you can imagine, with beautiful curves and crooked chimneys, lovely, warm, red tiles and mossy eaves.

There are eight bedrooms and an oak-panelled hall, with a fireplace big enough to sit in and a place for your elbow and your pint pot. There is only one modern fireplace in the whole house. Most of the bedrooms lead out of one another, and some of 'the domestic offices,' as Mr Cardew Thompkins would call them, are a little unusual. The larder, for instance, is in the present dining-room, and so is the back door, so that while you are at lunch your butcher might arrive. But these are details which, no doubt, could be altered. There is a powdering closet, also a pump, not actually in the drawing-room, as the Gidger said, but in the 'potato shed,' which leads immediately out of it. The potato shed has a glass roof and will make a tiny conservatory.

The back of the house faces south-west and is a regular sun-trap. Both the cottages are half-timbered and pargetted, with splendid beams and diamond-leaded windows, and roses and honeysuckle everywhere, and such a garden!--all on a slope, of course, with little steps here and there to break the levels, flowers, strawberries, and vegetables all mixed up, and lots of trees, and bush fruit, and a little copse with bluebells; already the exciting green spikes are showing, and there are a few snowdrops out.

It's the dream-house, and the Gidger found it!

We have got through a tremendous lot of business since we first saw the cottage, and I hope Michael will think we have done all the sensible things we ought. Ross telegraphed to the lawyers and they sent down a surveyor yesterday afternoon to value it and see it wouldn't tumble down the moment we bought it. The verdict is 'that it will outlast many a modern villa.' I wanted a builder to give me an estimate for doing it up. I asked the owner, who advised me to go to Jones, who had always given her satisfaction. So to Jones I went. He is the quaintest character. His hair and his whiskers grow with such velocity that on a Friday night he is double the size he was the previous Saturday, after his weekly hair-cut. He wears old stained overalls and a battered hat, and altogether looks a most frightful ruffian, the sort of person one would prefer not to meet in a dark lane. But his eyes redeem him, they are so blue and clear. The second time I saw him he said,--

'Have you any relations in the Isle of Man, mum?'

'No,' I said, 'why?'

'Oh, because my wife comes from there, and she was a Miss Ross, and when the captain come to the door yesterday, so nice and friendly like, my wife says to me afterwards, "I do see Uncle John in 'im.'" (How delightful these unexpected relationships are, and I suppose he thinks I call my brother by his surname!)

The house needs very little doing up, but I should like it distempered throughout, and 'Uncle John' says that the alterations I want in 'the domestic offices' can be quite easily managed. Even now I can't describe it. I have a confused impression of beams and panelling, diamond-leaded windows with wreaths of creeper, but, ah, wait till I have filled the sweet old rooms with flowers and oak and firelight and comfy chairs and books and cushions--how Michael will love it--I am intrigued at the prospect of living in Gidger's gorgeous cottage, I shall be so disappointed if the 'black beast' won't buy it.

Charlie Foxhill is home on leave and wired to-day, while I was out, to know if we could give him dinner and a bed to-night. Ross telegraphed to say 'No, but we can give you an apology for the one and a series of lumps for the other.' So dear old Charlie duly arrived--beaming. It's so nice to see all one's pals. He is as amusing as ever, and has the same quaint diffidence, and bubbles over with jokes and absurdities. We asked after his mother.

'Oh, still steeped in saints,' he answered, sighing.

After dinner he started holding on to the mantel-piece with both hands and bending first one knee and then the other.

Ross inquired, with his beautiful natural courtesy, if he were endeavouring to qualify for entrance into the County Asylum, and then Charlie gave one of those absurd answers that veil his real meaning.

'Oh, no, my dear chap, but I'm going to try my luck with Monica next week. I want to talk intelligently to her father, so I've mugged up patent manures and the lost ten tribes till I'm blue in the face, and am not perfectly clear now whether it's the fertiliser or the tribes that's got mislaid. As they have family prayers and my knees do crack so abominably, I'm trying to get them a bit looser. It might prejudice my chances if they think I ain't used to kneeling down. What.'

'Well, you aren't, are you?' asked my brother.

'Well, no,' said Charlie, 'to be perfectly candid, I'm not--I get too much of it at home.'

'Which is the particular pill you never can swallow?' asked Ross.

'Virgin birth,' said Charlie. 'I think He was quite a good man, but I'm not prepared to say He was divine.'

'Are you prepared to say He was a humbug and the bastard son of Mary, then?' demanded Ross.

'No, not that either, quite,' said Charlie.

'Well, He must be one or the other, for there's nothing in between,' remarked my brother. 'Here, chuck over the cigarettes,' and the conversation changed rather hurriedly to Germans.

This morning when Charlie saw the Gidger he swore that Monica was _not_ his fate. (I wonder if Michael would think him a suitable person on whom to bestow his daughter's hand in marriage as Charlie wants to wait for her.)

But before he went to the station, and I was alone with him for a little while, he let me see his soul for just a moment.

I had wished him luck with Monica in the flippant way one does, when he said,--

'Meg, I'll almost believe in Him if I get her. I shan't care how soon I stop a bullet if I don't.'

'Oh, Charlie,' I exclaimed, holding out my hands to him, 'don't be diffident with her. You know Monica likes her mind made up for her. She always used to let you do it.'

'No, Meg,' he said, 'not about this. She must come to me willingly or not at all.'

But I am frightened for them. I know Monica's irresolution. He will be diffident and seem almost indifferent because he wants her so desperately, and she will be 'difficult' and will forget that it's just his way. She won't know her own mind till afterwards. Sometimes in these war days there is no 'afterwards.'

When we got back from the station Ross presented me with four threepenny bits.

'The charge for the delivery of each package from the station,' he said, 'is threepence.'

'How interesting,' I replied, pocketing the money, 'but I'm not expecting any parcels.'

'Oh, yes, you are, Meg, last night I wrote to four of our relatives and told them you were taking a house--an old one--and that contributions of seventeenth century furniture would be gratefully received.'

'Ross, how could you?' I gasped.

'Oh, it was quite simple,' he said; 'I just wrote what I wanted to say on a piece of paper, folded it carefully and put it into an envelope, and stamped and posted it. Of course, it needs brain; I don't suppose you could do it, Meg.'

'Well, if you've really written----'

'Do you doubt my word?' said Ross indignantly.

'You're a horribly ill-mannered, mercenary, money-grubbing, badly-behaved wretch, Ross; Nannie always said you should never ask for things you wanted.'

'I asked for things _you_ wanted,' said Ross, with the air of a martyr. This was so unanswerable that I changed the conversation hurriedly, and, although I feel that his behaviour is most reprehensible, and I don't know that he's written at all, at the same time it would be exciting if any parcels did arrive.

And now I shall have to begin to think about furniture, if Michael decides to buy the cottage. It will be difficult to choose without him. I wish I had some of the old family things and bits of oak mother and daddy used to have, but everything was sold when he went out to be a missionary. There was a chest that used to stand in the hall at home. It had a lovely carved border, and there was a corner cupboard, too, that I specially loved because one side of it was longer than the other. And the 'chair of the nine devils.' _How_ I would like that. It had eight little devils carved on it and the ninth was the person who sat in it!

*CHAPTER XII*

I am afraid Ross has been doing too much. He has had a dreadful lot of pain since Charlie left. On Sunday I took the law into my own hands and sent for the doctor. I 'got rowed' by my brother for doing it, and by his doctor for not doing it before. I think that life is very hard on women.

'No, he needn't stay in bed,' the doctor said, 'but something must be done about the nights. He has simply _got_ to get some natural sleep.'

So I informed the invalid that I was going to sit up with him, make tea, and read aloud, and perhaps the night would seem a little less long, and he'd get a nice sleep before the morning.

But my brother is not one of those people whose submissive patience is always apparent to the naked eye, and all he said was, quite politely, but _quite_ firmly,--

'You're going to do nothing of the kind.'

'I quite definitely _am_,' I said.

So then there was a little gust of temper.

'Oh, _do_ stop fussing, Meg. You and Sam really are the limit. Anybody would think that I was "going to leave this mortal world of sin, and hatch myself a Cherubim," the way you both go on! When you hear me begin to chip the shell you can both sit up, but not before.'

So then the feathers underneath my skin got ruffled, and I said that he was simply hateful and delighted to worry people who only wanted to be kind to him.

And then he turned into a glacier, so I tried thawing it.

'Please, Ross.'

'No, darling.'

'But if you had something to do in the night it wouldn't seem so long.'

'I have got something to do, Meg.'

'What?'

'Swear,' said my brother laconically.

'Oh, you poor old thing,' I exclaimed.

And then he added, rather hesitatingly, 'Or else try to stick it out and be courteous to Him about it.'

My eyes filled up suddenly with tears. My brother evidently had still that 'picture of Him in his head,' and of course one ought always to be courteous to a person with a crown on, though I've not been decently civil myself lately.

Then Ross, feeling, perhaps, that he had inadvertently been betrayed into 'talking religion' (though he apparently didn't mind trying to 'live it') said irrelevantly, 'I wonder how Charlie has got on?'

'I am longing to know what she said to him, Ross.'

'Let's hope she kissed him "good-night, darling," which is what you're going to do to me now,' said my brother, whose face whitened suddenly as the pain seized him again.

At that moment Sam came in dragging a basket chair.

'I don't intend to argue it out again with you, Brown,' said his master coldly.

'Nor I with you,' said Brown.

The two men looked at one another, and I could almost hear the clashing of their wills.

'I don't feel up to it to-night, Sam.'

'I don't either, Master Ross.'

'Is your knee bad?'

'Putrid. I shan't sleep, anyway.'

'Are you telling me the truth, Brown?'

'I'm not in the habit of lying to you, sir.'

'Sorry,' said Ross, 'of course you aren't. You can stay if you have your bed wheeled in.'

'Thanks,' said the other briefly.

So I left them, and when I returned later with hot milk and biscuits, they were both smoking, each man in his bed, prepared to help the other 'stick it out.' I wondered as I made up the fire and filled their 'baccy pouches for them whether they would swear, or be courteous, during the long hours, and prayed that they might both get some sleep before the morning.

In the night I woke at four o'clock, so I went in to see the invalids. But the dear things were both asleep. He had been 'compassionate' to them instead!

Now, when I wake up at four o'clock there always is a row before the day is out, and to-day was no exception to the rule.

There were three letters by the first post. One from Michael saying that he would buy the cottage, one from Charlie explaining rather bitterly that he supposed he hadn't enough grandfathers, or that the cement was too hard for her to swallow, but anyway Monica had refused him; and one from the lady in question to the effect that 'Charlie didn't seem to mind much.'

I lost my temper then. What a fool Monica is! As usual, I didn't stop to think, but rushed straight up to London and told her so. I interviewed her in the boot cupboard at the hospital.

'You're a fool, Monica,' I said; 'you can't, even at your age, see farther than your nose. You've been so wrapped up all your life in family trees that you've never even seen the flower of Charlie's love.' (I got muddled up with Mr Williams's song. I felt somehow that Monica ought to be willing to lay snow-white flowers against Charlie's hair, and that she wasn't.) 'You've looked up so many pedigrees that you've never noticed his devotion all these years. What's cement when he's got everything else that matters. You've mistaken everything about him. _Not mind_? Why, he worships the ground you walk on, and I suppose presently you'll be sorry and think you _do_ like him after all. You never could make up your mind in time. Never could decide whether you wanted your new dress to be pink or blue, and when your mother spoilt you and gave you both you wished you had chosen shot, and when she gave you that, too, you wished it had been mauve.' (I was too angry and agitated to notice that a dress shot pink and blue _would_ have been mauve.) 'I'm absolutely sick of you. You've played with Charlie. You've let him care for you all these years and never let him speak, and when he does you refuse him. I'm tired of you,' I said. 'I'm done with you. You're too'--(I hesitated here and cast my mind round wildly for a word. I seemed to see my whole vocabulary, printed in columns like a spelling book, down which I ran a mental finger, rejecting them all until I came to 'patrician,' so I said)--'You're too patrician for me,' and I flung out of the boot cupboard.

Having quarrelled with my best friend and made her 'quick all bluggy,' I bolted into a post office and sent a frantic wire to 'Uncle John' to meet me at five o'clock at the cottage to talk about repairs. After that I did a heap of shopping, whirled into a registry office and put my name down for a cook, and was rude to the lady who ran the office because she seemed to imagine I must be dotty to think she could get me one at all, though she took my booking fee all right. Then I got in a panic and wondered whether I really did like the cottage now that it was finally decided, so I rushed home and routed Ross out to walk over to it and help me to make up my mind--like Monica.

The winter sun was setting as we walked up the red brick path, mellowing and beautifying the old place and filling the rooms with soft rose light. I felt quite sure I liked it.

'Uncle John' turned up at five o'clock as requested.

'Now,' said I, walking into what will be the drawing-room, 'what would you suggest here, Jones?'

'Well, mum,' said he, pulling his beard (it was one of his bushy days), 'I should think a nice yaller satin paper with a cream stripe would do 'ere, and a modern grate with a tiled hearth, that could be yaller to match the paper, or if you think that too conspishus you could 'ave it cream to match the stripe. I done one for a lady last week, and it looks a fair treat, that it do.'

I murmured weakly that I was sure it did, and did not venture to meet my brother's eye. Then we passed into the lovely old dining-room, with its oak panelling and beamed ceiling.

'Now 'ere,' said 'Uncle John,' warming to the job, 'you won't 'ave to go to no expense in fillin' up the fireplace; I dun that last year, but I should 'ave a nice gas fire, it saves a deal of work.' But the room he considered needed brightening up. 'A nice red paper, now, and this 'ere old panelling painted white.'

'By Jove,' said the incorrigible Ross, looking at me with a malicious grin, 'it would make the room lighter if you painted all the oak white, Meg, and you could have a green plush carpet and a red table cloth with ball fringe.'

'Uncle John' looked at him approvingly.

'Killing 'Uns ain't spoilt the young genelman's taste, I can see that,' he said, 'but I shouldn't 'ave nothing green, it is too conspishus, the two colours; keep it all red, that's what I say, mum. Walls, carpets, and curtings all to match; what you want to aim at, Mrs Ellsley, is a scheme o' colour, art in the 'ome is what you want; I done up a house for a lady like that, last week, dining-room red, drawing-room yaller, 'all green, bedrooms pink and blue, everythink to match and no expense spared, quite the palace, mum. Why, I could brighten up this old place so as you wouldn't know it.'

Am I lacking in moral courage? Could you have damped his ardour by word of mouth? He was so interested and friendly, so anxious to give the best advice. How could I tell him I wanted nothing but soft cream wash on the walls? and the only awful modern grate, that desecrated the whole house, pulled out? I didn't even want a geyser, his idea of the acme of comfort, ''ot bath of a Saturday night and no trouble.' So I weakly said I would go home and think it over and would write and tell him what I had decided. Ross vanished into the village drapers on the way home and came out waving a pattern of ball fringe.

''Ere yer are,' he giggled, 'best quality seven three, what 'o for art in the 'ome.'

A radiant Gidger met us at the door.

'The first parcel's come, muvver. Oh, Uncle Woss, do cut the string.'

'String,' said Ross, proceeding to try to untie every knot with his left hand, 'string is a very valuable thing, Gidg., and must on no account be wasted. Your cottage is only held up by the wallpaper, which your mother insists on having stripped off, so I expect we shall have to tie it up outside like a parcel.'

'Oh, what a lubberly supwise, muvver.' And, indeed, it was. Aunt Constance had sent us six pairs of real _old_ chintz curtains, enough for all my small windows, I should think. Such lovely soft colours: anemones and leaves on a cream ground, and a border that will make miles and miles of little frills for the top! I am now going to compose a suitable letter to 'Uncle John' about the wallpapers.

Oh, I nearly forgot to say that I have managed to get a cook after all, for 'Uncle John' brought his eldest daughter along with him and suggested I should try her, and as she had an excellent written reference from her last employer, who is now nursing in France, I engaged her on the spot, and Nannie says it's another modern miracle and no other woman ever had my luck!

Then I am keeping on the old man, Tidmarsh, nicknamed the Titmouse, who has always come in for two days a week and done the garden. He can give me full time and knows of a garden boy who will also do the boots and knives and all the other jobs that modern servants won't do. The boy's name is _Tench_. Of course, Ross christened him 'the Stench' at once. The registry office at Tarnley sent a girl up this evening as parlourmaid. She amused me very much by saying, 'I don't consider myself an ordinary servant, I am very superior, and so is my family. I never go out, except to very special places, my mistresses have always been real ladies, they didn't know how to do anything.'

I am afraid I cannot aspire to that standard of gentility, but have engaged her and hope I shan't regret it.

Then the charlady of these rooms said,--

'My 'Ilda wants a place, would she do as 'ousemaid though she is a bit rough and young like?'

She came up to see me, and she proved to be a cheery soul, and perhaps the corners will rub off. I hope the superior parlourmaid won't be too superior to take on the job of training her. In any case there does not seem to be another housemaid in the world, so my choice is somewhat limited.