Part 17

“Then I’ll make a good selection, and have them sent home for you to choose from,” she replied, her face suffused with that joy-radiance that invariably overtakes a woman who starts out shopping with a blank cheque in her handbag.

She certainly did make a good selection; I almost wished it hadn’t been quite so good, then at least I should have known what to send back. But as it was, every fresh box I opened, I exclaimed, “Isn’t that lovely! I _must_ have _that_!” till presently the room was a billowy sea of tissue paper and beautiful garments that looked as though hands had never touched them. I thought I was quite hardened and proof against lures of this kind; but the snare of it simply enmeshes you before you know where you are. As my bedroom was soon full to overflowing, I said the rest of the things had better go into a spare room. Very soon the spare rooms were full too. And so we went on like that!

Why didn’t I put the things away in drawers and wardrobes? Simply because every such receptacle I possessed was full to distraction before the trousseau things started to arrive! Did you ever know a woman who possessed a drawer or a wardrobe peg that wasn’t already over full, and she pining for more space? So for weeks we had to hop over piles of cardboard boxes no matter what room we entered, and scrabble up more bales of tissue paper and things to make room on the sofa for the friend who called to bring her good wishes in person.

Still, I have always thought that a strong argument in favour of a woman getting married is the fact that she, presumably, comes in for additional drawers and wardrobes. Hence I looked forward to getting into my new home with considerable satisfaction in view of the purchase of extra furniture.

“Yes, I know it’s a bit crowded just now,” I agreed, when Virginia suggested I should set up a shop with “Modes et Robes” over the door, because she had estimated that I shouldn’t need to buy any tissue paper for eleven years and five months. “But I shall have _heaps_ of spare room when I get into the new house; I really shan’t know what to do with so many chests of drawers!”

But alas! in spite of the additional furniture, I am still squeezing things into drawers that would be so much more useful if made of elastic india-rubber instead of wood. And I am still flattening garments into wardrobes that are so bulgingly full that I wonder sometimes whether the looking-glass will stand the inside pressure. And still I don’t seem to have a rag fit to wear.

But the moving process was even worse than the trousseau. The very thought of it was turning my brain to stone.

When I mentioned my quakings about the moving to the Head of Affairs, he said airily, “Don’t you give a solitary thought to _that_. Just go away for a couple of days’ holiday, and when you come back you will find everything as right as can be in the new house. You don’t need to touch a thing or pack an atom. The men do _everything_. Now, why bother your head with unnecessary worrying?” etc.

I seemed to think I had heard the same remark made in the dim past when we removed from one house to another in my early days. I also remember that the brother of Virginia and Ursula said the very same thing to them when they moved, and they, acting on masculine advice, had the greatest difficulty, ultimately, in ever finding any solitary thing they possessed (including themselves) among the ruins. So I decided to postpone the couple of days’ holiday and face the worst.

There is no need to go into details about that move. Those who have been through it know exactly how many months it takes to find such things as the corkscrew, the buttonhook, the oil-can belonging to the sewing-machine, the one hammer that has its head fixed on firmly.

They know the joy with which you fall on the missing sofa cushions when they are eventually discovered done up with spare bedding in the attic—that everyone has been too tired to undo; and the affectionate greetings bestowed on the hall clothes-brush when it is at length found—in company with the dog’s whip—in a drawer one has forgotten in a small table. Of course, it’s very satisfactory when the perspiring gentleman who has packed—and then unpacked again—all the china comes to announce, “Not a single piece is cracked or chipped, madam;” but when you survey the piles of crockery and glass on the kitchen dresser and table and window-ledge and mantelpiece, that haven’t yet found an abiding-place, and see the pantries full to overflowing, a lurking thought comes that perhaps it might have been an advantage if he _had_ smashed a few dozens of the multitudinous array of cups and saucers and plates and dishes that seem woefully superfluous at the moment!

As there seemed a good bit still to do, I said I would dispense with the conventional “tour,” proper to the occasion, and spend the time trying to dispose of the twenty-seven British workmen, supposed to be house-decorating, who were cheerfully in possession (and apparently regarding their posts as life appointments) when our goods arrived at the door, despite our having let them live in the house rent free for two months previously.

It was a little difficult to follow their twenty-seven lines of argument as to why they should remain with us permanently, with Abigail continually at my elbow presenting a tradesman’s card and explaining—

“Please, ma’am, this man says he served the people who were here before; but I’ve told him he’s the ninth fishmonger who has said that to-day.”

Or else it would be, “There’s a man at the door says he served the last people with groceries. Can I tell him to run back and get some soap? I can’t find where the men put our packets, and it will be quicker than sending to the Stores. I suppose you don’t happen to have seen it, m’m? Cook and I have looked everywhere. But we’ve found the anchovy sauce, and the carpet beater. Where _do_ you think they had packed them——” and so on.

But I determined to do my wifely duty in making a happy home for the man who had had the courage to marry me.

I was politely attentive when interviewed by a near-by magnate who was anxious to propose the Head of Affairs for the Conservative Club. I accepted particulars supplied me by the secretary of the Golf Club, who felt we were the very people the club needed. I tried to understand when the gardener explained the peculiarities of the greenhouse heating apparatus, and the danger that would threaten if anyone but himself entered the greenhouse.

I endured the postman knocking at the door a dozen times a day to inquire if we lived there, only to point out to us that we didn’t when we had assured him that we did. I informed the sweep that everything was quite satisfactory thank you, and I should hope to have the pleasure of meeting him again.

I accepted the coal man’s many reasons for not having delivered the coal sooner; and I thanked cook for the information that the policeman said he or his mate would always be on point duty at the corner whenever we wanted him.

I filed half a bushel of tradesmen’s price lists and laundry data.

I put the whole household on a milk-pudding diet, rather than waste the numerous samples of milk left, by rival and mutually abusive dairymen, in a row of cans at the side door.

And when a sumptuously apparelled resident called to say that the previous occupant had always contributed liberally to the local working men’s brass band, I tried to look gratified to hear of such generosity—though I had the presence of mind to say I should not be at home on Saturday evening when they proposed to serenade me in the front garden.

Yes, it was a pleasant and peaceful couple of days, and I dare say I should have been all the better for the complete rest, had not the telephone men and the gas stove men called simultaneously with the electrical engineers (who had been summoned to see why the electric light sulked), and, with a unanimity of purpose that was truly beautiful in a world so full of variance, they all set to work to take up floor-boards, in rooms and halls where the carpets and lino had been laid—the twenty-seven standing around and assisting with reminiscence and anecdote.

Then it was that the Head of Affairs put down a firm foot and insisted on the Flower-Patch.

At first Abigail was reluctant to leave such bright scenes in the kitchen as she hadn’t known for several years; but, remembering that a halo of distinction surrounds the bearer of exclusive information, no matter how unimportant, she set off cheerfully next morning, and we followed a day later.

She prided herself on the tactful way she broke her news to the village.

“Hasn’t Miss Klickmann come down ’long with ’ee?” inquired Mrs. Widow and the handy man in unison.

“You’ll never see Miss Klickmann again,” Abigail replied in funereal tones.

“Oh! You don’t tell me so! Poor _dear_ thing! though I knowed she wasn’t long for this world,” and kind-hearted Mrs. Widow started to mop her eyes with her apron. “Was it very suddint at the last?”

“Very!” said the handmaiden. “Couldn’t make up her mind till the very day before the wedding.”

When they had grasped the true state of affairs, and imbibed enough particulars to have filled three newspaper columns, Mrs. Widow hurried off home, and then on to the village, likewise conscious of the halo of distinction. But the handy man paused—

“I wish I’d er knowed a bit sooner,” he said, “then I’d er made an arch with ‘Welcome’ on it as large as you please. Yes, I’d er like to have had an arch. But thur,”—after a moment’s thought—“perhaps I’d better do a bit o’ weedin’ and cut the grass.”

Thus it happened that I was once again going along the road, over which they had carried me only seven months before. It was cold and cheerless then; now it was all flowers and sunshine.

The kindly, motherly soul who lives in the end house was at her gate now, watching for our coming.

“Well there! Well there!” as the wagonette stopped for me to speak to her. “I thought I should never see you again”—and she grasped my hand in her own, having first polished it on her apron, which is always fresh and spotless. “And now here you are. My dear, I’m _that_ glad to see you back, and I do hope you’ll be happy.”

The stalwart fisherman, standing on the river bank, raised his cap—I hadn’t forgotten the good work he had done for me. Miss Jarvis at the village shop came to the door and waved her hand—I remembered the box of violets and moss and little ferns she had posted to the hospital.

In the cottage itself kind hands had been hard at work; it was simply a bower of wild flowers. The walls inside were nearly smothered with trophies of moon daisies, grasses and ferns, and the same scheme of flowers was carried all up the stairs. On the window ledge on the landing were bowls of Sweet Betsy and cow parsley—and such a pretty mixture the crimson and the white flowers made. Upstairs the rooms were gay with bowls of forget-me-nots and buttercups. Downstairs it was wild roses and honeysuckle, with mugs of red clover on the mantelpieces. Being summer, the fire-grates were at liberty, and these were filled with branches of bracken, ivy, silvery honesty seeds, and foxglove. Everything had such a delightfully “misty” effect, by reason of the seeding grasses that had been added lavishly to the flowers.

The only garden flowers in the house were some roses, in the centre of the dinner-table, sent by Miss Jarvis (with some pale green young lettuces) from her garden.

Outside the swallows were twittering, and, like all the other birds, were fussing about their small families. The distant hills were glowing crimson by the acre where the timber had been cut, I knew it was myriads and myriads of foxgloves. Near at hand the Flower-Patch was a mass of nodding blossoms, coupled, with a choice variety of weeds. I wondered where I had better begin, and how I should cope with the bindweed, flaunting itself everywhere that it had no business to be. Had I better start the handy man on it at once, or would it be better to set him to cut the hedges?

But even as I was planning out a good week’s work for him, I saw him coming up the path, a picturesque figure in a blue jersey, a large, shady, rush hat, and carrying, as signs of office, a pitch-fork, a scythe, and a rake; and I heard his voice in the garden speaking to the Head of Affairs: “Good-day to ’ee, sir. I’m main glad to see ’ee, for I calkerlate as how in future I takes my orders from the master.”

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET, LONDON, S.E.

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Transcriber’s Notes:

Obvious punctuation errors repaired. Varied hyphenation was retained as printed.

Page 32, “it” changed to “in” and word “on” added to text (put in; she merely told him to pack them up very securely, as she was going on a long railway)

Page 35, “georgeous” changed to “gorgeous” (with some gorgeous pansies)

Page 112, “crepe” changed to “crêpe” (trimmed with crêpe)

Page 173, “welome” changed to “welcome” (bidding them welcome)

Page 200, “is” changed to “in” (hesitation in saying that)