CHAPTER X

A WEIGHTY BUSINESS

I have always had a tender feeling about the great Idiot Asylum which teaches its children by means of keeping shop, with real pennies and real sweeties.

Now if there was one thing on which Julia Whittaker prided herself, it was that she could carry color in her eye. A great many people have the same belief, and it is a point upon which a very large number entirely deceive themselves.

On the very afternoon of the day that they had decided on the chintz for the curtains and covers, the sisters hied themselves to that part of London which is familiarly known as "the High Street." Knowing that their mother would be away from the Park during all the hours which intervened between breakfast and dinner, so the girls determined that they would get something which would serve as lunch in one of the large shops in Kensington High Street which catered for that particular meal. Thus they had several hours before them for selection and consideration.

"Maudie," said Julia, as they walked into the carpet room at John Barker's, "there's one thing we've never given a thought to."

"What's that?" asked Maudie.

"The blinds. And, mind you, the blinds will cost us a pretty penny."

"Won't those we have do?" Maudie suggested.

"Oh Maudie!"

"No, I suppose they won't," Maudie admitted.

"Of course," Julia went on, "mother was right enough when she had those green blinds to match the bedrooms at the back of the house--they were quite good enough for a playroom, but they would be horrid for us. Well, that keeps us down to the idea of a cord for the carpet. We want to look at carpets," she said to a gentlemanly young man who came up asking her pleasure. "No, nothing so expensive as that," she continued, casting reflective eyes upon a very beautiful carpet square. "We want something that will be--I think you call them a cord--something in deep blue, or deep crimson, or a rich green."

"I'm afraid," said the young man, shaking his head doubtfully, "that we haven't anything quite in those colors. We have a blue, and we have a terra-cotta. What size, madam?"

Well, I needn't go through the process of buying a cheap carpet. The transaction ended by the two girls purchasing a carpet which, as Julia remarked, was really almost too ugly for words. It was not an ugly carpet as carpets for that price go--it would have been admirable in a bedroom, but for a sitting-room with a delicate Louis XV paper, with exquisite chintzes to match, it was certainly not a little out of keeping.

"After all, the carpet doesn't matter," said Julia, with an air of making the best of it, "so long as it's unobtrusive and neat."

"I believe plain felt would have been the best," said Maudie, eyeing the carpet with much disfavor.

"They don't wear, do they?" said Julia, appealing to the young man.

"No, a felt carpet doesn't wear, madam. It sweeps up into a good deal of fluff, and it's apt to induce moths in the house, and we really don't find them very satisfactory. It looks very nice at first," he ended with a flourish, as if their brains were enough to fill up the rest of the sentence.

"Yes, I think so, too. Well, we'll have it, Maudie, eh? It will do for us to begin with," she added in a whisper. "Now tell us, where are the blinds?"

"I can show you the blinds, madam. They are in the other end of the department."

I must confess that the blinds were another blow. Mind you there were five windows to provide for--two single windows and a large bay of three lights.

"These blinds are ruinous," remarked Maudie, as the young man drew down one rich linen and lace specimen after another.

"I am afraid," said Julia, "we must have something more simple than that."

"A good blind, madam, is worth its money. Blinds don't wear out like carpets," said the young gentleman. "I should personally recommend this one. Yes, it is rather dear to begin with, but it gives the window an air, and it will clean again and again and again. Perhaps your house is in a very smoky district."

"No, it isn't. We live in Northampton Park."

"Ah, then I should recommend these--I should really. They will be more satisfaction to you afterwards. A carpet is a very different thing. You are walking on a carpet every day, and it's hidden by other things, but blinds, unless you are having curtains quite stretched across the window, blinds are always in view. Really, I should recommend these."

And eventually they did buy them; and then they bade their tempter adieu and went across the road to look into furniture. Well, the furnishing of a room is always more or less a matter of taste, a matter of individual taste, I may say, and the two girls that afternoon displayed their individual taste in a most extraordinary manner. They bought the most curious and unnecessary articles. First of all they fell in love with a most elaborate over-mantel, which was ready to be enameled in any color that the purchaser desired, or which might be stained to simulate oak. For its centre it had a square of looking-glass with beveled edges, and it had many little cupboards and shelves and pillars. It was a most elaborate creation. Then Maudie fell in love with a couple of Japanese vases. They were exceedingly meretricious in their art; they were the most modern specimens of that style of Japanese handicraft which is produced exclusively for the English market. The English have much to answer for, and the prostitution of Japanese art, like the prostitution of art in India, is among the sins for which one day England will surely be called upon to justify herself. The price of these vases was twelve-and-nine-pence. You know perhaps what it is to buy your first piece of porcelain, either new or old. It's like that first downward step out of the rigid paths of honesty which leads eventually to the gallows. The Whittaker girls took the step at a jump.

The consequences were disastrous. Oh, the rubbish they bought that day, the absurd little tables that turned over almost with being looked at, the ridiculous plant stands, the preposterous little cupboards for hanging on the wall. Then they must needs have a horrible curtain of reeds and beads and string, and a three-fold screen, which was a marvel of cheapness because it was the last one left in stock. Then their taste went to Venetian glass--such Venetian glass!--some modern faience from Rouen, and some Wedgewood which surely would cause the originator of that great art to turn in his grave could he have beheld it. Fans they bought also, and a gypsy pot for a coal pan, and then they remembered that they must have a fender, and they did themselves rather nicely in a black curb with a brass railing. Then they reminded each other that they must have a set of fireirons, and then they went off to see the basket chairs.

"They're very ugly," said Maudie.

"And they're not very comfortable," rejoined Julia. "But there, we have spent such a lot of money already that we certainly must get our chairs before we think of anything else."

"And we have no small chairs."

"No, we haven't. I don't know where we shall get small chairs--we can't possibly afford expensive ones."

"If I were you, ladies, I should go and look in the second-hand furniture department," suggested the young lady who was convoying them round the basket department.

"Yes, that's a good idea. We might pick up some odd chairs there. That's a good idea," said Julia. "Well, then, Maudie, if we have those two big lounge chairs and those two little occasional chairs, that ought to do us very well."

"Will you have them cushioned, madam?"

"Cushioned? Of course we ought to have them cushioned. Is there much difference in the price?"

"Oh, no, madam, not very much. Cushions in a pretty cretonne are quite inexpensive."

So eventually, without any reference either to the carpet or the wall-paper, or the chintz curtains and covers, they chose a pretty cretonne of a nice salmon-pink shade. And then they went to the second-hand department and looked out two or three occasional chairs, which were in reality the most sensible purchases that they made.

I wish I could adequately paint the scene the following morning, when the van conveying all the purchases, with the exception of the blinds and the chairs, which had still to be cushioned, drew up at the door of Ye Dene. First of all came the carpet, which was promptly laid down and tacked into position.

"It clashes with everything," said Maudie, quite tragically.

"I don't think it does. It goes quite well with that blue in the wall-paper. I carried the color in my eye," said Julia. "And, after all, it won't show much. There's a lot to go on it."

And true enough, compared with the other things, the carpet was absolutely inoffensive.

"You would like the over-mantel put up, lady?" said the workman who laid the carpet.

"Yes, I think so."

"You wouldn't like to have it enameled first?"

"No, I think we'll keep it as it is," Julia replied. "Don't you think so, Maudie?"

"Oh yes," said Maudie, in a voice of complete despair, "keep it as it is."

Honestly, I do not know how to describe this room, the room that had started so well. With a few articles of real Louis Quinze furniture to give it a tone, and the rest decently shrouded in the exquisite chintz which the girls had chosen, the room might have been one whose equal was not to be found in the length and breadth of the Park. As it was, it ended by having the air of a bazaar stall, put together by somebody who did not properly understand the business.

"There, that looks awfully nice and cosy behind the couch," said Julia, eyeing with much satisfaction the three-fold screen, which was of a vivid scarlet embroidered in garish colors. "At least it will do when the couch gets its pretty new frock on."

"And what are you going to do with this?" asked Maudie, holding up a mass of bright-colored beads and string depending from a lath.

"I thought we would hang it over that window."

"But you want them over all the windows."

"Well, do you know I really don't know what we did have that for. Look here, we've gone on the conventional line in this room, let's start and have something that's not at all conventional. We'll hang it on one side of the bay window--yes, just up there."

"Well, we can't fix it up ourselves. We'll have to get one of Broxby's men to come in."

"It will look awfully well," said Julia, "and it will screen off that part of the room. Maudie," she went on, breaking off sharp as a new idea struck her, "what on earth were we thinking of? We ought to have had a window seat."

"That would have been a good idea--I wonder we never thought of it," Maudie cried.

"Well, we can't now," said Julia in a very matter-of-fact tone, "because we haven't any money left. As it is, I don't believe thirty pounds will cover all we spent yesterday."

"Neither do I, for when the blinds come you'll find they will be ever so much dearer than we bargained for. Shall we stand this tall bamboo thing for plants here?"

"Yes--just in front of where the reed and bead curtain is to go. Well, then, since we haven't a window seat," Julia went on, "we must put one of the big wicker chairs there."

"But who's going to sit there alone?"

"Oh, we can put a small occasional chair beside it. The man can sit on that."

"And a table?"

"Yes--oh yes, I should put a table for their tea-cups. Well, then, when the piano comes--and by-the-bye don't forget we have to go up to-day and choose it--when the piano comes, what do you say to standing it out here?"

"It would not look bad."

"And this wicker chair like that--a little table there--"

"Oh, it will be exquisite! There won't be another room in the Park like it."

"And there are all these things, Julia," said Maudie, looking down upon a great dust-sheet on which were spread the rest of their many purchases. "I don't know where we shall put everything. All these little knick-knacks and odds and ends, they are awfully quaint and funny and pretty, but I'm sure I don't know what we are to do with them. Here, you have got the eye; you must say just where they are to go."

And Julia, having the eye, did say where they were to go; in fact, with her own energetic hands she spread them about the room--crawling beetles, grinning devils, spotted cats with exaggerated green eyes, odds and ends of pottery, glass and porcelain.

"Do you think we need have that over-mantel enameled?" she asked Maudie at last.

"No, I should have it stained black--ebonized, that's the word," said Maudie, looking round. "As it is, the room is too new, too ornate, too dazzlingly modern. There isn't a touch of shadow in it anywhere--it's like a face without any eyelashes."