CHAPTER XIXI can't manage my 'staff,' I wish I were an Eastern Queen, then I should sort of call the eunuchs when I wanted anything, instead of which the maids do exactly what they like. Ross says if I won't let Sam 'do something' I must put my own foot down.The S.P. brings my early tea in a silver teapot instead of the little brown chap I told her I preferred. So I hid the beastly thing under my bed, hoping she would take the hint and see I really meant it. She came and asked me if that was where I wished the silver kept in future!Then when I ordered the dinner to-day I said to Dulcie, 'Send in the junket in the old blue china bowl, please.' It came in that silver dish we use for cutlets. So I wouldn't eat the junket—said it would taste of mutton cutlets, and after lunch the S.P. rowed me for saying the silver wasn't clean, which I hadn't even thought of, for she keeps it beautifully.Putting my foot down made my face so hot that I retired to my bedroom to recover, but alas! Fitzbattleaxe was making the day hideous with his howls. He was lodged on a ledge in my chimney, just out of reach, and was apparently afraid to jump the precipice into my bedroom.So I tied my hair up in a handkerchief, put on a nightgown to protect my dress, and laid down comfortably on the hearthrug with my head up the chimney. At intervals I waved a bit of liver at the kitten and said in my most persuasive manner, 'Littlekittycatpoorpussycometomissusdidums.' This seemed to entertain the kitten very much as it responded by rubbing its back violently against the chimney and incidentally dislodging a good deal of soot over me, while it sniffed ecstatically at the liver.'Goodness,' said Ross, bursting like a cyclone into the room, 'what a sight you look; is that kitten still there? Mr Williams is downstairs. Are you giving that little beast meat, Meg; how many times have I warned you that it's illegal to give rations to rodents.''It isn't a rodent,' I said, sitting up in the fireplace, 'and it's not rations either, it's offal.'A frozen look of horror slowly overspread my brother's open countenance.'Offal,' he queried, 'could itpossiblyhave been offal you said?''Yes,' and I began to get little creeps down my spine as I did as a child when I'd been naughty, 'it's offal, edible offal.''The word "edible" does not excuse the word offal.''They call it that in theTimes,' I said meekly.'There are many things in theTimeswhich it is better not to repeat in polite society, Margaret.''I don't call your society polite, far from it,' I rejoined. 'What does Mr Williams want?''Oh, my angel, he wants a lot of things: a shave, for instance, and a bath and a clean collar, and his clothes brushed, and his nails cut, and snow-white flowers against his hair, and a heap of things like that.''I expect he's very poor,' I said, waving the liver at Fitzbattleaxe.'Unless he's behind with his water rate, he could have most of his present needs supplied by turning on the tap. He's asked to see you.''Well, I can't see him like this, can I?''You certainly can't. You look like the back of a cab, Meg!''Do tell me sensibly what he says,' I implored.Ross pulled his mouth down at the corners, closed his eyes and put his hands together as if in prayer. '"My dear wife is laid aside with an internal chill, she is, therefore, unable to be present at the class for female confirmation candidates this afternoon, and as the vicar is away, I ventured to think that Mrs Ellsley might be good enough to speak a few words of exhortation in her place, hymn 547, let us pray."''How can you be so absurd?' I said.'Oh, why do curates talk like that? Why can't this man wash? Why can't he be modern and human? Why can't he say, "Hallo, old bean, my wife ain't in the pink, got a pain in her breadbasket or something. Priceless washout, too, as it's her turn to spout to the gals. Just blew in to see if your sister would help me out of a hole and come and do a pi-jaw stunt, what!"'Here my disgusting twin retched realistically into the soap dish, murmuring 'He makes me sick.''Your vulgarity is simply awful, Ross, do stop, you make me feel quite ill.''I venture to think, my misguided young friend——' began Ross again.'You know what happened to the children in the Bible,' I interrupted, 'who mocked at their betters: a frightful animal jumped out at them and——'Here I gave a piercing scream as the kitten suddenly decided to risk it, and landed unexpectedly in the middle of my stomach.'Just so,' said Ross with a howl of laughter, 'I never saw a better illustration of it in my life.'And now I want to ask the General Public something.Couldyou tell me why, because a person's mother once fell off the top of a step-ladder, a person should never be allowed to go on the top step herself? It seems such a ridiculous thing to hand on from father to son.'Gracious,' I said, when I was rowed for it to-day, after Mr Williams had departed, 'because mother did it, it's a thousand to one I won't. I don't know the actuary figures, but it practically insures me against it, Ross.''I don't care,' said that gentleman, 'I won't have it, and that's all there is about it.''How can you be so ridiculous. You don't mind if I go up a tree, and I've done everything that you've done always. If you don't think it's dangerous for me to climb and hunt and ski, why on earth should you kick at the top of a step-ladder?''Well, we won't argue about it, Margaret.''I loathe twins,' I grumbled.And he said he did, too, the sort that spat fire when a chap tried to take care of them.Suddenly the bottom dropped out of the world, and everything that I had thought solid, stable, and immovable came crashing about me, and my brother, for the first and last time in all his life was 'meek' to me and said,—'Please, darling, because I found mother after she smashed herself up so badly.'It was that tide in the affairs of men which had I taken at the flood would have tamed the lion to eat out of my hand. Oh, wasn't I a fool to say,—'Oh, all right, Ross.'But there it is, and I know now what that poor darling felt when he wroteParadise Lost.CHAPTER XXA telegram came from Monica this morning saying,—'Please meet the 11.20 train.'So the family turned up at the stationen masse, but instead of the lady we expected, there descended from the guard's van a beautiful and dignified Great Dane with a label round his neck.'For Meg's baronial hall. A thank-offering, sent with "Hove from a modern Lussy."'Or, at any rate, that's what it looked like. Monica does write so badly.The Gidger kissed the thank-offering promptly, and was rewarded with a large lick.'Oh,don'twash me with your flannel,' she exclaimed.Then we all introduced ourselves, and Ross observed as he edged away from a very wet tongue,—'He must be first cousin to the dog in the Bible that was so kind to the poor beggar; you'd better call him "Moreover," after him, Meg.''What dog, and what beggar?' I asked.'Gracious, child, for a Bishop's daughter you don't know much Church history, and haven't you heard that old chestnut either? Why, when Lazarus was laid at the rich man's gate, Moreover, the dog, came and licked his sores.'Our Moreover is a splendid person. Directly he arrived at the house he walked into the hall, and laid himself down by the great open fire, and looked positively Elizabethan.On the way home Ross dashed into the post office to send some telegrams. 'Aren't I a fool never to have thought of it before,' he said fervently, but what he hadn't thought of he declined to say, so I just agreed with the fool part.After luncheon I slipped over to see Mrs Williams. The curate opened the door himself, looking haggard, with black rings round his eyes and yesterday's beard still on his chin.'I called to inquire for Mrs Williams and to bring her some flowers and grapes. I hope she's better,' I said.His hand shook as he took the little basket. 'How kind of you, won't you come up and see my wife, she's a little better to-day, but I have been up with her all night. I've just taken her some tea. I'll fetch another cup.''Please don't bother about tea for me,' I said. 'I'm sure your maids will have enough to do.''We haven't any maids.''But who is doing for you, then?''I do the best I can,' and he opened the bedroom door. If you could have seen that room and its little white-faced occupant. There was no carpet on the floor, no fire, though it had turned quite cold. It was all very clean, but, oh, the poverty of it. The poor little woman was propped up with two thin pillows and a sofa cushion, and had beside her a cup of half-cold tea and a bit of bread and margarine.'Oh, Alfred, you oughtn't to have let Mrs Ellsley up. I'm not tidy,' and she patted her hair and smoothed out the crumpled sheet.'You look quite sweet,' I said, 'but I'm afraid you aren't well, and as you have no maids is there anything I can do for you both; what does the doctor say?''I haven't had the doctor.''She won't let me fetch him,' said her husband, 'though I have begged her to.''Oh, but do let me send, Mrs Williams. I am sure you ought to see him.''No, no,' she cried, getting very agitated, 'I shall be better in the morning.'So I sat with her a little while and chatted and then tried once more about the doctor, but in vain. She would 'be better in the morning.''But, Mrs Williams, it would ease your husband's mind so; do tell me why you won't.'Then, because she was so very tired and weak and ill, at last she told me. She had had attacks of internal pains several times during the winter, and the expense and medicine had used up all their little savings, and with a burst of bitter tears she said they owed five pounds, and had nothing more of value they could sell; and so on—all the piteous tale—of high prices and an income so minute that only by the most careful management and hard work could it be made to do in ordinary times. Gradually all the little jewels had gone and bits of plate, the food had been cut down, and she had had to turn her clothes and patch and mend and work till all her strength had gone, and now that she was ill it was 'All too much for Alfred.' The poor little soul turned faint and sick then from sheer exhaustion and lack of food. I sent her Alfred flying out for milk: there was only tinned stuff in the house, 'it went farther,' and with a reckless hand I beat up their only egg, which he informed me anxiously he had been saving for her to-morrow's dinner. And then I flung the last few drops of brandy in the glass and made her drink it all and eat some tiny sandwiches, and a few grapes. The food revived her and a scrap of colour came into her cheeks.'Now,' I said sternly, 'I'm going to fetch a cab, and roll you up in blankets and take you to my house and nurse you up a bit.'Of course she protested, said it was impossible.'Why?' I demanded.Oh, heaps of reasons, gave a few, hadn't a clean nightie, for one thing, she had only two and had been too ill to wash the other. She had so hoped there would have been some in the last parcel from the Charitable Clothing Fund.'But I have simply dozens,' I wailed. Yes, I know, there wasn't an ounce of tact in that remark, but I was thinking of my own luxurious room, fires every night, all the pettings and scoldings I get if I'm not well, and how nobody asks me if I will have the doctor or takes the slightest notice of me if I say I won't, and of all the clothes I'd got and the general and disgusting air of affluence there is about the family. I hated myself and all my relatives. Yes, I did, the whole blessed lot of them.'But I couldn't leave my husband,' said Mrs Williams.'Of course, he's coming too, my spare room is crying out for visitors.''But we are strangers, you can't take us in like this.''But it was "a stranger and ye took Me in," He said. Oh,' I continued, throwing grammar to the winds, 'why didn't He tell a person what to do when the stranger won't be took in.'She laughed at that and then consented. So I flew home and told the tale to Ross and Nannie in the nursery.'Poor young thing,' said Nannie, 'but she'll soon get better here.' So I sent the Gidger flying to the Titmouse for heaps of flowers, and the S.P. scuttling round to get the spare room ready for her and the dressing-room for him, and the Stench off on a bicycle to ask the doctor to look in, and 'My 'Ilda' for a cab. After that I said to Nannie, 'Come and help me look out some things for her, nighties and something pretty to sit up in.'And then I turned to my brother, who was sitting silently.'Why, Ross, I couldn't do anything else? You don't mind Mr Williams coming, do you?' Suddenly his Irish grandmother came on top, and he exploded violently and unexpectedly in that way he has.'What a system,' he stormed, 'what a church, that can so sweat its ministers that their families have not enough to eat, and gentlefolk are reduced to wearing other people's old clothes and being glad to get them. It's enough to make one sick, and I suppose they call it "holy poverty." It wouldn't make me feel very holy to see my wife hoping some beastly society would send her an old nightgown and have the cheek to call it charity. Surely if it's necessary to help the clergy at all we ought to give the best we can, as if we were giving to Him. Anyway, I won't have you give Mrs Williams your old clothes, Meg. If it wasn't that Michael was so disgustingly well off it might be you. Thank goodness I've got plenty of money; here, buy her all she wants and if it isn't enough tell me,' and he pitched into my astonished hands all the loose money from his pockets and a note-case stuffed with notes. 'And then you ask me if I mind,' he stormed, 'when the boot is on the other leg. He may mind meeting me. I wasn't decently civil when he called the other day, sneered at him because he looked unbrushed, when he'd probably been up all night. Why, I'm not fit to black his boots. It's all my accursed temper and my damnable pride.' And he flung out of the nursery into his own room and slammed the door.'Oh, Nannie,' I said, 'isn't he funny? he hasn't been in such a bate for years; of course I never meant to give her my old clothes.''Of course you didn't, dearie, he'll remember in a minute, don't you fret.''Shall I go after him and tell him so?''Oh, I should let him bide, poor lamb.''So I let him 'bide,' though anything less like a lamb than Ross at that moment wasn't conceivable.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.'DidIdo 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'—inmyhouse!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 XXII 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 broché 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'tit 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, 'Idohope 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 itanygood 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 £207 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 whatamI 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 activelydispleased. Funny old 'David.'CHAPTER XXIIMy 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 £207 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. SuddenlyThe ManI 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. ThenThe Mansaid,—'"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 forHis 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'reallythe 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 atThe Manwho 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 ofThe Man, and I cried, in sudden surrender and adoration,—'"Lord, I will go willingly, because I love You."'And althoughThe Kinghad 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, forThe Mancalled 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 thatHemay 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?'
CHAPTER XIX
I can't manage my 'staff,' I wish I were an Eastern Queen, then I should sort of call the eunuchs when I wanted anything, instead of which the maids do exactly what they like. Ross says if I won't let Sam 'do something' I must put my own foot down.
The S.P. brings my early tea in a silver teapot instead of the little brown chap I told her I preferred. So I hid the beastly thing under my bed, hoping she would take the hint and see I really meant it. She came and asked me if that was where I wished the silver kept in future!
Then when I ordered the dinner to-day I said to Dulcie, 'Send in the junket in the old blue china bowl, please.' It came in that silver dish we use for cutlets. So I wouldn't eat the junket—said it would taste of mutton cutlets, and after lunch the S.P. rowed me for saying the silver wasn't clean, which I hadn't even thought of, for she keeps it beautifully.
Putting my foot down made my face so hot that I retired to my bedroom to recover, but alas! Fitzbattleaxe was making the day hideous with his howls. He was lodged on a ledge in my chimney, just out of reach, and was apparently afraid to jump the precipice into my bedroom.
So I tied my hair up in a handkerchief, put on a nightgown to protect my dress, and laid down comfortably on the hearthrug with my head up the chimney. At intervals I waved a bit of liver at the kitten and said in my most persuasive manner, 'Littlekittycatpoorpussycometomissusdidums.' This seemed to entertain the kitten very much as it responded by rubbing its back violently against the chimney and incidentally dislodging a good deal of soot over me, while it sniffed ecstatically at the liver.
'Goodness,' said Ross, bursting like a cyclone into the room, 'what a sight you look; is that kitten still there? Mr Williams is downstairs. Are you giving that little beast meat, Meg; how many times have I warned you that it's illegal to give rations to rodents.'
'It isn't a rodent,' I said, sitting up in the fireplace, 'and it's not rations either, it's offal.'
A frozen look of horror slowly overspread my brother's open countenance.
'Offal,' he queried, 'could itpossiblyhave been offal you said?'
'Yes,' and I began to get little creeps down my spine as I did as a child when I'd been naughty, 'it's offal, edible offal.'
'The word "edible" does not excuse the word offal.'
'They call it that in theTimes,' I said meekly.
'There are many things in theTimeswhich it is better not to repeat in polite society, Margaret.'
'I don't call your society polite, far from it,' I rejoined. 'What does Mr Williams want?'
'Oh, my angel, he wants a lot of things: a shave, for instance, and a bath and a clean collar, and his clothes brushed, and his nails cut, and snow-white flowers against his hair, and a heap of things like that.'
'I expect he's very poor,' I said, waving the liver at Fitzbattleaxe.
'Unless he's behind with his water rate, he could have most of his present needs supplied by turning on the tap. He's asked to see you.'
'Well, I can't see him like this, can I?'
'You certainly can't. You look like the back of a cab, Meg!'
'Do tell me sensibly what he says,' I implored.
Ross pulled his mouth down at the corners, closed his eyes and put his hands together as if in prayer. '"My dear wife is laid aside with an internal chill, she is, therefore, unable to be present at the class for female confirmation candidates this afternoon, and as the vicar is away, I ventured to think that Mrs Ellsley might be good enough to speak a few words of exhortation in her place, hymn 547, let us pray."'
'How can you be so absurd?' I said.
'Oh, why do curates talk like that? Why can't this man wash? Why can't he be modern and human? Why can't he say, "Hallo, old bean, my wife ain't in the pink, got a pain in her breadbasket or something. Priceless washout, too, as it's her turn to spout to the gals. Just blew in to see if your sister would help me out of a hole and come and do a pi-jaw stunt, what!"'
Here my disgusting twin retched realistically into the soap dish, murmuring 'He makes me sick.'
'Your vulgarity is simply awful, Ross, do stop, you make me feel quite ill.'
'I venture to think, my misguided young friend——' began Ross again.
'You know what happened to the children in the Bible,' I interrupted, 'who mocked at their betters: a frightful animal jumped out at them and——'
Here I gave a piercing scream as the kitten suddenly decided to risk it, and landed unexpectedly in the middle of my stomach.
'Just so,' said Ross with a howl of laughter, 'I never saw a better illustration of it in my life.'
And now I want to ask the General Public something.
Couldyou tell me why, because a person's mother once fell off the top of a step-ladder, a person should never be allowed to go on the top step herself? It seems such a ridiculous thing to hand on from father to son.
'Gracious,' I said, when I was rowed for it to-day, after Mr Williams had departed, 'because mother did it, it's a thousand to one I won't. I don't know the actuary figures, but it practically insures me against it, Ross.'
'I don't care,' said that gentleman, 'I won't have it, and that's all there is about it.'
'How can you be so ridiculous. You don't mind if I go up a tree, and I've done everything that you've done always. If you don't think it's dangerous for me to climb and hunt and ski, why on earth should you kick at the top of a step-ladder?'
'Well, we won't argue about it, Margaret.'
'I loathe twins,' I grumbled.
And he said he did, too, the sort that spat fire when a chap tried to take care of them.
Suddenly the bottom dropped out of the world, and everything that I had thought solid, stable, and immovable came crashing about me, and my brother, for the first and last time in all his life was 'meek' to me and said,—
'Please, darling, because I found mother after she smashed herself up so badly.'
It was that tide in the affairs of men which had I taken at the flood would have tamed the lion to eat out of my hand. Oh, wasn't I a fool to say,—
'Oh, all right, Ross.'
But there it is, and I know now what that poor darling felt when he wroteParadise Lost.
CHAPTER XX
A telegram came from Monica this morning saying,—
'Please meet the 11.20 train.'
So the family turned up at the stationen masse, but instead of the lady we expected, there descended from the guard's van a beautiful and dignified Great Dane with a label round his neck.
'For Meg's baronial hall. A thank-offering, sent with "Hove from a modern Lussy."'
Or, at any rate, that's what it looked like. Monica does write so badly.
The Gidger kissed the thank-offering promptly, and was rewarded with a large lick.
'Oh,don'twash me with your flannel,' she exclaimed.
Then we all introduced ourselves, and Ross observed as he edged away from a very wet tongue,—
'He must be first cousin to the dog in the Bible that was so kind to the poor beggar; you'd better call him "Moreover," after him, Meg.'
'What dog, and what beggar?' I asked.
'Gracious, child, for a Bishop's daughter you don't know much Church history, and haven't you heard that old chestnut either? Why, when Lazarus was laid at the rich man's gate, Moreover, the dog, came and licked his sores.'
Our Moreover is a splendid person. Directly he arrived at the house he walked into the hall, and laid himself down by the great open fire, and looked positively Elizabethan.
On the way home Ross dashed into the post office to send some telegrams. 'Aren't I a fool never to have thought of it before,' he said fervently, but what he hadn't thought of he declined to say, so I just agreed with the fool part.
After luncheon I slipped over to see Mrs Williams. The curate opened the door himself, looking haggard, with black rings round his eyes and yesterday's beard still on his chin.
'I called to inquire for Mrs Williams and to bring her some flowers and grapes. I hope she's better,' I said.
His hand shook as he took the little basket. 'How kind of you, won't you come up and see my wife, she's a little better to-day, but I have been up with her all night. I've just taken her some tea. I'll fetch another cup.'
'Please don't bother about tea for me,' I said. 'I'm sure your maids will have enough to do.'
'We haven't any maids.'
'But who is doing for you, then?'
'I do the best I can,' and he opened the bedroom door. If you could have seen that room and its little white-faced occupant. There was no carpet on the floor, no fire, though it had turned quite cold. It was all very clean, but, oh, the poverty of it. The poor little woman was propped up with two thin pillows and a sofa cushion, and had beside her a cup of half-cold tea and a bit of bread and margarine.
'Oh, Alfred, you oughtn't to have let Mrs Ellsley up. I'm not tidy,' and she patted her hair and smoothed out the crumpled sheet.
'You look quite sweet,' I said, 'but I'm afraid you aren't well, and as you have no maids is there anything I can do for you both; what does the doctor say?'
'I haven't had the doctor.'
'She won't let me fetch him,' said her husband, 'though I have begged her to.'
'Oh, but do let me send, Mrs Williams. I am sure you ought to see him.'
'No, no,' she cried, getting very agitated, 'I shall be better in the morning.'
So I sat with her a little while and chatted and then tried once more about the doctor, but in vain. She would 'be better in the morning.'
'But, Mrs Williams, it would ease your husband's mind so; do tell me why you won't.'
Then, because she was so very tired and weak and ill, at last she told me. She had had attacks of internal pains several times during the winter, and the expense and medicine had used up all their little savings, and with a burst of bitter tears she said they owed five pounds, and had nothing more of value they could sell; and so on—all the piteous tale—of high prices and an income so minute that only by the most careful management and hard work could it be made to do in ordinary times. Gradually all the little jewels had gone and bits of plate, the food had been cut down, and she had had to turn her clothes and patch and mend and work till all her strength had gone, and now that she was ill it was 'All too much for Alfred.' The poor little soul turned faint and sick then from sheer exhaustion and lack of food. I sent her Alfred flying out for milk: there was only tinned stuff in the house, 'it went farther,' and with a reckless hand I beat up their only egg, which he informed me anxiously he had been saving for her to-morrow's dinner. And then I flung the last few drops of brandy in the glass and made her drink it all and eat some tiny sandwiches, and a few grapes. The food revived her and a scrap of colour came into her cheeks.
'Now,' I said sternly, 'I'm going to fetch a cab, and roll you up in blankets and take you to my house and nurse you up a bit.'
Of course she protested, said it was impossible.
'Why?' I demanded.
Oh, heaps of reasons, gave a few, hadn't a clean nightie, for one thing, she had only two and had been too ill to wash the other. She had so hoped there would have been some in the last parcel from the Charitable Clothing Fund.
'But I have simply dozens,' I wailed. Yes, I know, there wasn't an ounce of tact in that remark, but I was thinking of my own luxurious room, fires every night, all the pettings and scoldings I get if I'm not well, and how nobody asks me if I will have the doctor or takes the slightest notice of me if I say I won't, and of all the clothes I'd got and the general and disgusting air of affluence there is about the family. I hated myself and all my relatives. Yes, I did, the whole blessed lot of them.
'But I couldn't leave my husband,' said Mrs Williams.
'Of course, he's coming too, my spare room is crying out for visitors.'
'But we are strangers, you can't take us in like this.'
'But it was "a stranger and ye took Me in," He said. Oh,' I continued, throwing grammar to the winds, 'why didn't He tell a person what to do when the stranger won't be took in.'
She laughed at that and then consented. So I flew home and told the tale to Ross and Nannie in the nursery.
'Poor young thing,' said Nannie, 'but she'll soon get better here.' So I sent the Gidger flying to the Titmouse for heaps of flowers, and the S.P. scuttling round to get the spare room ready for her and the dressing-room for him, and the Stench off on a bicycle to ask the doctor to look in, and 'My 'Ilda' for a cab. After that I said to Nannie, 'Come and help me look out some things for her, nighties and something pretty to sit up in.'
And then I turned to my brother, who was sitting silently.
'Why, Ross, I couldn't do anything else? You don't mind Mr Williams coming, do you?' Suddenly his Irish grandmother came on top, and he exploded violently and unexpectedly in that way he has.
'What a system,' he stormed, 'what a church, that can so sweat its ministers that their families have not enough to eat, and gentlefolk are reduced to wearing other people's old clothes and being glad to get them. It's enough to make one sick, and I suppose they call it "holy poverty." It wouldn't make me feel very holy to see my wife hoping some beastly society would send her an old nightgown and have the cheek to call it charity. Surely if it's necessary to help the clergy at all we ought to give the best we can, as if we were giving to Him. Anyway, I won't have you give Mrs Williams your old clothes, Meg. If it wasn't that Michael was so disgustingly well off it might be you. Thank goodness I've got plenty of money; here, buy her all she wants and if it isn't enough tell me,' and he pitched into my astonished hands all the loose money from his pockets and a note-case stuffed with notes. 'And then you ask me if I mind,' he stormed, 'when the boot is on the other leg. He may mind meeting me. I wasn't decently civil when he called the other day, sneered at him because he looked unbrushed, when he'd probably been up all night. Why, I'm not fit to black his boots. It's all my accursed temper and my damnable pride.' And he flung out of the nursery into his own room and slammed the door.
'Oh, Nannie,' I said, 'isn't he funny? he hasn't been in such a bate for years; of course I never meant to give her my old clothes.'
'Of course you didn't, dearie, he'll remember in a minute, don't you fret.'
'Shall I go after him and tell him so?'
'Oh, I should let him bide, poor lamb.'
'So I let him 'bide,' though anything less like a lamb than Ross at that moment wasn't conceivable.
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.
'DidIdo 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'—inmyhouse!
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 broché 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'tit 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, 'Idohope 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 itanygood 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 £207 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 whatamI 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 activelydispleased. 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 £207 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. SuddenlyThe ManI 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. ThenThe Mansaid,—
'"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 forHis 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'reallythe 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 atThe Manwho 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 ofThe Man, and I cried, in sudden surrender and adoration,—
'"Lord, I will go willingly, because I love You."
'And althoughThe Kinghad 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, forThe Mancalled 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 thatHemay 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?'