NINE: BIRTHDAY TEA
Annesat down to tea on the following afternoon, with the four Sothebys, round an iced cake with thirteen candles, in the rather dark little room where she had retired to hide her tears after Plough Monday, darker now, for it was raining outside. There were chocolate biscuits in glass dishes and crackers lying on the table between the plates. But in spite of the air of jollity, and of Rachel’s excitement, Anne felt just as she had done on the first occasion she had entered the room: anxious to escape.
Rachel had met her at the door, they had kissed, and she had given the little girl a pair of fur-lined slippers as a birthday present, but immediately afterwards Mrs. Sotheby had begun to introduce her to Richard and he had no sooner cut his mother short by saying that they were acquainted already, when the grocer came up and said: “Miss Dunnock, this is my son Richard of whom I think I have spoken to you....”
“Miss Dunnock and I have met,” said Richard,and Anne added: “Richard and I are old friends already,” but at once became aware that what she said was the wrong thing, for there was an expression of astonishment, almost of alarm, possibly even of disapproval, on Mr. Sotheby’s face. Certainly he seemed nervous as he said: “Well, well, since I find we are all acquainted let us sit down to tea.”
The difficulties of the introduction were forgotten in the excitement of cutting the cake, and it was not long before the last of the crackers was pulled; a yellow paper crown was found for Mr. Sotheby; there were paper caps for the rest of the company, and though several of the mottoes alluded to Christmas, they were read aloud with pleasure and received with delight.
“It is too bad, Richard,” said Mr. Sotheby over his third cup of tea. “You are going away the day after to-morrow, and you have never painted the portrait of your mother, for which I have asked so often.”
Anne felt numb on hearing that Richard was going away in two days’ time: “Why didn’t he tell me that?” she asked herself, but without noticing her look the grocer went on: “You have spent all your time out sketching the old manor house, but you have not shown us any of your work.”
“He brought it back to-day,” said Mrs. Sotheby. “But I haven’t seen it.” Richard was reluctant to show his picture, but at last he left the room, and it was only then, seeing Rachel was trembling, and upset about something, that Anne suddenly remembered that the Sothebys might easily recognize the figure of the girl in the foreground, engaged in doing up her hair.
Richard lifted an eyebrow at her as he put the canvas on the mantelpiece, and there was a long silence, a silence which grew alarming, and Anne knew that she had been recognized.
“This figure is you, Miss Dunnock,” said the grocer at last, speaking stiffly.
“Miss Dunnock came by while I was making tea for Richard,” said Rachel in her precise tone, and everyone in the room breathed more freely. “She stayed to tea with us.”
“And she was good enough to pose for me while I drew a sketch of her to put into the foreground,” said Richard.
“It was very kind of you, to be sure,” said his father.
“I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself, Richard,” said Mrs. Sotheby. “Putting Miss Dunnock into your horrid picture like that; you haven’t done her justice at all. I should scarcely have recognized her.” And the grocer’swife gave Anne a little smile to tell her that she did not mind Richard’s having painted her instead of the portrait that his father wanted.
“I should never have sat to him,” said Anne, “if I had known that he ought to have been painting your portrait,” but Mr. Sotheby was saying that he had to be off on business.
“Very, very kind of you to come on Rachel’s birthday,” he said as he left the room.
“No, indeed, there is hardly any resemblance at all,” said Mrs. Sotheby. “Anyone might think it was one of the Puttys come home again.”
“Who are the Puttys?” asked Anne.
“What, you don’t mean to say that you have never heard of the Puttys!” exclaimed Rachel and her mother together, and Richard, who had been looking glum since he had shown his picture, added: “Yes, you ought to hear that story, since you are the only other person that has turned the ploughmen away.”
“How can you say such a thing, Richard!” said Mrs. Sotheby. “You know how that came about by mistake,” but Anne asked:
“Did the Puttys have their doorstep ploughed up?”
“No, not the Puttys,” was the answer, and as Anne seemed mystified but eager to hear more Richard said: “Come, mother, tell Miss Dunnockthe whole story from the beginning.” And Rachel also added her request for the story.
“Well, wait a moment till I have cleared away the tea-things,” said Mrs. Sotheby, work that was soon done with both Rachel and Anne helping. While they were out of the room Richard seized the opportunity to take his canvas off the mantelpiece. He hid it in the woodshed and came back feeling happier.
The chairs were drawn up round the fire, Rachel sitting at Anne’s knee and holding her hand, and Mrs. Sotheby began:
“What you children call the ‘Burnt Farm’ is really the ruins of a manor house; the squire lived there, Captain Purdue, and since the burning there has been no squire at Dry Coulter. I can remember him very well: a tall man who had been a captain in the navy, and he certainly thought a great deal about appearances. One could tell that just by looking at him; what one could not have told was that he cared a great deal about money too.”
“You have forgotten to say that he had been dismissed the service,” Richard reminded his mother.
“Well, his ship was wrecked, you know, and he left the navy after that; I have heard that he was turned out because of it, but I do not reallyknow,” said Mrs. Sotheby. “Certainly he was a very unlucky man, but at first all went well; he had a fine house, built in the time of King Charles II (Oliver’s men had burnt the old house down in the civil wars), and a wonderful garden (he had a whole greenhouse full of arum lilies in the winter), his horses were famous, and his dairy cows won prizes. At that time there was not a gentleman’s place for miles round that was kept up better. But I should have said that Captain Purdue was married, to a very good-looking lady indeed. She was a good deal younger than he was, and I think she came from the Channel Islands. But they had no children.”
There was the jangle of the shop bell. Mrs. Sotheby broke off her sentence and started to her feet, but Rachel had slipped out into the shop before her, and they could hear a woman saying that she had just run across for a bar of soap, and then, when she had made her purchase, ask: “It is your birthday, isn’t it, Rachel? Many happy returns! How does it feel to be grown up?” and the little girl answer: “Very pleasant indeed, thank you very much, Mrs. Papworth.”
“The first of the Captain’s misfortunes,” continued Mrs. Sotheby, “was that his wife ran away from him, and it was not long after thatbefore he was killed in an accident. He was having his barn altered; it was an old building, nearly as old as the house, and he wanted to make it a couple of feet higher and was having the roof raised on jacks. They got one side of it up some inches, and then the foreman sent for him to tell him that it couldn’t be done. The Captain went to see for himself but he would not listen to anything the men said, but gave the word to go on with the work, and they had not given the screws on the other side half a dozen turns before the main beam broke in two and the whole roof fell in on them. Captain Purdue was standing just underneath, and was killed, and three of the men were badly injured. You see it was no one’s fault but his own, and indeed it was very lucky that others were not killed beside himself.”
“But how did the house get burnt, and what had the ploughmen to do with it?” asked Anne.
“Nothing at all,” answered Mrs. Sotheby with a laugh. “But some of the most ignorant of the men said that his bad luck was because they had ploughed the doorstep up. That’s why it was so wrong of them to behave like that to your father if they really believe what they say. But I don’t think they do believe such things nowadays:everyone laughs at them, but I think people will do anything if it is the custom.”
“So they are expecting us to have bad luck?” asked Anne with her face suddenly serious.
Richard looked at her rather maliciously and laughed.
“Yes, we all expect you to run away from home and your father to fall out of a tree and break his neck while he is putting a young bird back into its nest.”
Richard laughed at this while his mother exclaimed: “How dare you talk like that, Richard!”
“He is only being a tease,” said Rachel, looking up at Anne. “I have got used to it now, and pay no attention to him.”
“Finish the story, mother,” said Richard, and Anne added her voice to his. “Please finish the story. I am waiting to hear how the house was burnt down. Then I shall go home and buy some fire extinguishers.”
They all laughed at this, and Mrs. Sotheby continued:
“After Captain Purdue’s death it was nearly a year before the lawyers could find the heirs to the estate, and when they did find them the trouble was to know what to do with them. They called themselves Putty, though the name wasreally Purdue; the father and mother were dead and there were two brothers and two sisters. They had lived all their lives in a tumble-down cottage without proper windows or doors, right out on the Bedford Level, miles from anywhere. The brothers were labourers, ditchers. The elder of the two was called Jack: he was the best of the family but it was difficult to make out what he said. There was no getting anything out of his brother; he was stone deaf and had a cleft palate. The girls were very wild, dirty creatures, and not quite right in the head. When they were sober they were all like wooden images, and they looked very queer when they first came, in the black clothes Mr. Stott had bought for them. Well, they moved into the house, and within a week all the servants left and they were alone there. None of the gentry round would have anything to do with them; nobody went near the house except Dr. Boulder and Mr. Noble, who was the vicar here in those days, and of course Mr. Stott, the lawyer. At first they lived very quietly, only making a fearful mess of the three rooms they used. They were afraid that Mr. Stott could turn them out if he had wanted to, but after they had been there two or three months they grew more confident. And though they were like images if there were other peopleabout, there was plenty of noise when they were by themselves and when they were drunk. Jack used to throw things and his sisters would throw things back. At first they came to ‘The Red Cow’ for drink, and Jack used sometimes to wave Captain Purdue’s hunting crop and threaten to horsewhip anybody who didn’t take his hat off, and one day when he had got very drunk he stood by the monument on the green and made a speech. People could hear him bellowing for miles round, but no one could make out much of what he said except that he was the squire, and that he ought to have been told before, and that he would never be rough with anybody.
“One day when he was in ‘The Red Cow’ one of the men asked him how it was that he didn’t like port wine. That was the first Jack had heard of Captain Purdue’s cellar, for, would you believe it, the Puttys had never been all over the house, and the cellar being locked up they had not troubled to break it open. After they found the wine nothing was seen of them for more than a week and then, one night, we were all woken up with the news that the manor house had caught fire. Everyone in the village turned out to help and the fire engine was fetched from Linton, but it came too late to be any use. Thewhole house was ablaze when we got there; the dairy and stables too, for they were touching the house. The men had made a line from the pond and were passing buckets, but it did no good, for the rooms were very old-fashioned and all the panelling had caught alight by that time, and the staircase too. The flames made it as light as day.”
“What about the Puttys?” asked Anne.
“Well, that was a very dreadful story. Jack Putty had just broken his way out of the house when we got there, but the two girls and the deaf brother were still inside. One of the Peck boys, who went to Wet Coulter afterwards as a ploughman, got out both of the girls, but they were terribly burned, and the brother lost his life. Jack Putty did not seem to understand what was happening at first, but when the fire had taken hold of everything he missed his brother, and then he ran back into the house to find him. He came out again with his clothes alight and jumped into the pond, and then, when he got out, he ran back into the fire again. It was dreadful to see that. He got out alive a second time, and would have gone in a third time, but everyone could see it was no use, and they prevented him; it took four men to hold him. Poor fellow, his feet were terribly burned, but he didn’t seem tomind that, but kept crying out that he must save his brother.
“After that they were all taken to the hospital, and there they found out that the girls were not fit to be about, so they were sent to an asylum for the imbecile. They have been there ever since, but Jack Putty seemed a different man after that. He went out to Australia; Mr. Stott sends him his rent regularly, and Jack sent him word when he got married. The property still belongs to him, of course, and that is how it is that the manor house has never been rebuilt.”
There was a silence in the little parlour, while they turned the story over in their minds. Mrs. Sotheby began to poke up the fire in the grate, and the flames shot up; they had been sitting almost in the dark.
“A wonderful story,” said Richard. “I often think of Jack Putty as a model: a man who was really able to love his brother as himself. That is the only sort of love, love which will sacrifice everything, put up with everything, yet ask for nothing in return. Selfish love is misery, I suppose it deserves to be, but how does one avoid it?”
“Why do you think Jack Putty felt unselfish love?” Anne asked, feeling rather puzzled.
“You don’t think he tried to go back into the fire for the third time because it was gentlemanly, do you? though I’ve no doubt he really was a gentleman,” answered Richard.
“You would not have thought Jack Putty was a gentleman if you had seen him,” said his mother.
“I daresay not, but I should have been wrong ... he was fearless, and he was independent,” said Richard.
“He certainly was not a biddable man,” said Mrs. Sotheby. “But that was the only thing he had in common with his second cousin, Captain Purdue.”
“The Peck boy went in once, to rescue the two girls, but I should not have gone in at all. I don’t think I should go into a burning house even if you or Rachel were inside it. I’m sure if Ginette ... Grandison.... But it’s not a proof of love at all; some people will risk their lives to save a kitten.” He muttered something else, but the others could not catch it.
“I must be going,” said Anne, getting up. “Gracious me, it is past six o’clock.” And thanking Mrs. Sotheby for her story and kissing Rachel, she hurried back through the rain to the vicarage to prepare supper.