THE SCRATCHELLS AT HOME.
MR. SCRATCHELL occupied a large red brick house at the beginning of
the village street, a house that had once been one of the best, if
not the best in Little Yafford, but which, in its present degenerated
state, looked a very shabby habitation as compared with the smart
Gothic villas of the Great Yafford professional men and tradesmen who
had retired into gentility at Little Yafford. It had been built by
a wealthy brewer, and still adjoined a thriving brewery. But as the
age grew more civilized, the brewer removed his domestic life from
the immediate vicinity of his vats and casks to a stuccoed mansion in
fifteen acres of meadow land, _par excellence_ Park. There was a good
garden behind the substantial roomy old house, and more outbuildings
than the Scratchells had any worthy use for--but which made a
wilderness or playground for the children, and for Mrs. Scratchell’s
poor little family of fowls, which always had a shabby uncombed look,
as of neglected poultry, but which laid more eggs than Mrs. Piper’s
pampered Dorkings and Cochin Chinas.
Here the Scratchells had lived for the last twenty years, Mr.
Scratchell holding his tenement upon a repairing lease, which seemed
to mean that he was to grub on in the best way he could in dilapidated
premises, and never ask his landlord to do anything for him. Perhaps
when the lease ran out there would be complications; but Mr. Scratchell
hoped that, being a lawyer himself, he should be a match for any lawyer
his landlord might set upon him, and that he should find a loophole
whereby to escape the question of dilapidations.
It was a gaunt, dreary-looking house in its present state of decay. The
garden was all at the back, and the front of the house came straight
upon the village street, an advantage in the eyes of the younger
Scratchells, as the few passers-by who enlivened the scene came within
half a yard of their inquisitive young noses, which were generally
glued against the window-panes in all intervals of leisure.
The Scratchell girls did not go to school. That was a luxury which
their father’s limited means could not afford them. They were educated
at home by their mother, in that desultory and somewhat spasmodic form
which maternal education, where the poor house-mother has a multitude
of other duties, is apt to assume.
Taking all things into consideration, it must be allowed that Mrs.
Scratchell did her work very well. She turned the four girls into
the shabby old schoolroom at eleven o’clock every morning--after
they had helped her to make the beds, dust the rooms, and wash the
breakfast-things. She set them down to their French exercises or their
ciphering, their maps or their English analysis, while she went to
the kitchen to see after the dinner, which generally meant to cook
it, and at twelve she came into the schoolroom with her huge motherly
workbasket--full of stockings to be darned, and under garments to be
pieced--some of them arrived at a stage when piecing seemed little
short of the miraculous--and sat down to hear her children read history
or polite literature in their shrill monotonous voices, while the busy
needle never ceased from its labour.
Pinnock’s Goldsmith and darning cotton must have been curiously
interwoven in poor Mrs. Scratchell’s mind, and it must have been a
little difficult for her to dissociate the embarrassments of Telemachus
from the intricacies of her domestic patchwork.
In this wise, however, the young Scratchell girls contrived to get
educated, perhaps pretty nearly as well as the general run of girls,
at home or abroad. The humble and old-fashioned education which Mrs.
Scratchell had received herself she handed down to her daughters. She
could not teach them German, or Italian, for she had never learnt those
languages. She could not ground them in the Latin tongue, for in her
day Latin had been considered an exclusively masculine accomplishment.
She could not teach them the use of the globes, for she had no globes;
nor natural science, for she scarcely knew what it meant. But she made
them plough laboriously through Noel and Chapsal’s French grammar,
until they knew it thoroughly. She taught them English, and Roman,
and Grecian history till they could have set you right upon the dates
and details of any great event you could mention. She made them very
familiar with the geography of this globe, and the manners and customs
of its inhabitants; and she taught them a good deal about common
things, which might or might not be useful to them in after life.
Upon this particular afternoon Mrs. Scratchell and her five daughters
were assembled in the schoolroom busied with a task of all-absorbing
interest. They were making their winter dresses, and the threadbare
carpet was strewed with shreds and patches of dark blue merino, while
the somewhat stuffy atmosphere was odorous with glazed lining.
It was a shabby old panelled room, from whose wainscot almost all the
paint had been worn and scrubbed away in the progress of years. But
though the paint was mostly gone a general drabness remained. Narrow
drab moreen curtains hung beside the straight windows--an oblong
mahogany table, with those treacherous contrivances called flaps,
occupied the centre of the room, and was now covered with bodices,
and sleeves, and pockets, and skirts, in various stages of being.
There was an old horsehair sofa against the wall, loaded with books,
slates, and desks which had been thrust aside to make room for the more
agreeable pursuit of dressmaking. There were a dozen chairs of various
shapes and make, the odds and ends of a sale-room or a broker’s shop.
No ornament or beautification of any kind had ever been attempted in
the schoolroom. The apartment was unpretendingly hideous; and yet the
Scratchell children were fond of it, and looked back to it in after
years as the dearest room in the world. Perhaps the only thing that
could be called good in it was the wide old fireplace, with its blue
and white Dutch tiles, basket grate, and capacious hobs, which were so
convenient for cooking toffy or roasting chestnuts.
Bella was at work with her mother and sisters. She had a natural gift
for dressmaking, as she had for many things, and was the general cutter
out and contriver, and the family arbiter upon fashion. It was she who
decided how the sleeves were to be made, and whether the skirts were to
be plain or flounced.
She sat among them this afternoon, her busy scissors crunching and
grinding over the table, cutting and slashing with quite a professional
ease and audacity.
‘What a correct eye and what a steady hand you have, Bella!’ said her
mother, admiringly. ‘It’s quite wonderful.’
‘I’d need have something, mother,’ sighed Bella, ‘as I’ve no money.’
‘True, my dear. There’s a great deal wanted to make up for the loss of
that. One feels it every day.’
‘Every day,’ echoed Bella. ‘Why not say every hour, every moment? When
doesn’t one feel it? It is a steady gnawing pain, like toothache.’
‘But Providence has made you so bright and clever, dear. That’s a great
consolation. There’s Miss Harefield now, I don’t suppose _she_ could
make herself a dress.’
‘I doubt if she could thread a needle,’ said Bella. ‘But I’d change
places with her any day.’
‘What, Bella! and be almost alone in the world? Without a mother--or
sisters--or brothers!’
Bella did not say whether she would have borne this latter loss, but
she looked at the four lanky girls in shabby frocks and grubby holland
pinafores, dubiously, as if her mind was not quite made up as to their
value in the sum of life.
Just then there came a sharp double knock at the street door, and the
four girls rushed to the window and glued their noses against the
panes, like four small jelly-fishes holding on by suction.
Bella ran across the room and pushed her four sisters on to the floor
in a tumbled heap of brown holland and faded green merino.
‘You horrid vulgar creatures!’ she exclaimed to these blessings. ‘Don’t
you know that a visitor can see you? Gracious!’ she exclaimed, ‘it’s
Mrs. Dulcimer, and in her best bonnet. Run up and change your gown,
mother, and do your hair up better. I can go and receive her. I’m tidy.’
Bella was more than tidy. She would have been presentable anywhere,
with her shining plaits of fair hair, her fresh pink and white
complexion, perfectly fitting black silk dress, and neat collar and
ribbon. Bella was a young woman who would have moved heaven and
earth for the sake of a good gown, and who knew how to take care of
her clothes and make them last twice as long as other people’s--an
invaluable wife for a poor curate, surely, as Mrs. Dulcimer thought.
Bella went smiling into the best parlour. It was a very shabby old
room to be called best, but it was always kept clean and tidy, and
Bella had taken a good deal of pains with it, and had even spent a
little of her hardly-earned money to brighten it. The faded chintz was
enlivened with starched muslin antimacassars. There was a rustic basket
of ferns and flowers in each of the windows, there were a few little
bits of Oriental china, the relics of bygone prosperity, on the narrow
mantelpiece, there were some water-colour fruit and flower pieces of
Bella’s on the walls, neatly framed, and hung with smart blue ribbons,
instead of the commonplace picture cord.
Mrs. Dulcimer had taken an approving survey of everything, while
waiting for Bella’s appearance.
‘Mamma will be down in a minute,’ said Bella, when they had shaken
hands. ‘She has been working at our blue merino dresses, and her hands
were all over dye. She is so pleased at the idea of your coming to see
her.’
‘It is such a time since I have called on her. I feel quite ashamed.
But I have so many calls to make.’
‘Yes, and you are so good to every one. Mamma is so grateful for your
kindness to me.’
‘It is nothing, Bella. I only wish I could be kinder. You are such a
good industrious girl. I wish I could see you comfortably settled in
life.’
Bella blushed and smiled. Mrs. Dulcimer’s mania for match-making was
notorious. It was an amiable propensity, but did not always work well.
‘Don’t worry yourself about me, dear Mrs. Dulcimer. I have no wish to
get settled. I should be sorry to leave poor mamma. I can help her in
so many little ways, you know.’
‘Yes, my dear, I know what an excellent daughter you are. A good
daughter will always make a good wife. But in a large family like yours
the sooner a girl marries the better. Let me see, now, how many sisters
have you?’
‘Four.’
‘Four! good gracious! Five girls in one family! That’s quite dreadful!
I can’t see where five husbands are to come from. Not out of Little
Yafford, I am afraid.’
‘But, dear Mrs. Dulcimer, we are not all obliged to marry.’
‘My poor child, what else are you to do? There is nothing between that
and being governesses.’
‘Then we must all be governesses. I had rather be a tolerably contented
governess than a miserable wife.’
‘But you might be a very happy wife--if you marry the man who loves
you.’
Bella blushed again, and this time more deeply. Did Mrs. Dulcimer know
or suspect anything? Bella’s heart thrilled strangely. To be loved, how
sweet it sounded! To have her life all at once transformed to something
new and strange, lifted out of this dull level of poverty-stricken
monotony, in which it had crept on for all the years she could remember!
‘I must wait till the true lover appears, Mrs. Dulcimer,’ she answered
quietly, though the beating of her heart had quickened. ‘I have never
met him yet.’
‘Haven’t you, Bella? You may have met him without knowing it. I have an
idea that Cyril Culverhouse is very fond of you.’
Now if Bella had heard Mrs. Dulcimer express such an idea in relation
to any one but herself, she would have given the notion exactly its
just value, which would have been nothing--for it was Mrs. Dulcimer’s
peculiar faculty to evolve ideas of this kind from her inner
consciousness--but, applied to herself, the notion had a startling
effect upon Bella’s nerves and brain.
Could it be? Cyril--her ideal preacher--the man whose earnest eyes
had made her tremble strangely, at odd times, when her own eyes met
them suddenly. Cyril, the only being who had ever made her feel the
littleness of her own views and aspirations, and that, despite all
her gifts, she was a very poor creature. That Cyril could care for
her--value her--love her--it was too bright a dream! She forgot that he
was little better off than herself--that he could do nothing to lift
her out of her dull life of aching poverty. She forgot everything,
except that it would be the sweetest thing in the world to be loved by
him.
‘Indeed, Mrs. Dulcimer, you must be mistaken’, she said, her voice
trembling a little. ‘Mr. Culverhouse has not given me a thought--he has
never said one word that----’
‘My dear, he is too honourable to say anything until he felt himself in
a position to speak plainly, and that would hardly be till he has got a
living. But the Church will not be such slow work for him as it is for
most young men, you may depend. He has great gifts.’
‘He has indeed,’ sighed Bella.
This idea of a living opened quite a delicious picture before the eye
of fancy. Bella saw herself a vicar’s wife--a person of importance
in the village--like Mrs. Dulcimer--inhabiting some pretty vicarage,
full of old china, and modern furniture, surrounded with smiling lawns
and flower-beds, instead of the gooseberry bushes, cabbage rows, and
general utilitarianism and untidiness of the Scratchell garden. And
with Cyril--her Cyril--for the companion of her days. Imagination could
paint no fairer life.
‘I don’t say that anything has been said, my love, even to me,’ said
Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘But I am long-sighted in these matters. I can see very
far ahead.’
This was true, for Mrs. Dulcimer’s apprehension had often been so far
in advance of fact that she had seen inclinations and nascent loves
that had never existed--and had sometimes worried the victims of these
fancied affections into ill-advised matrimony. Most of Mrs. Dulcimer’s
happy couples began, like Benedick and Beatrice, with a little aversion.
Mrs. Scratchell now appeared, smooth as to her hair and shiny as to
her complexion, and with an unmistakable appearance of having just
changed her gown. She saluted the Vicar’s wife with the old-fashioned
curtsey which had been taught her in her boarding-school days, and
seemed almost overcome when Mrs. Dulcimer shook hands with her.
‘I’m sure I don’t know how I can thank you for all your goodness to
Bella,’ said the grateful mother.
‘Indeed, I want no thanks, Mrs. Scratchell. We are all very fond of
Bella at the Vicarage. She is so bright and clever. What a help she
must be to you!’
‘She is indeed. I don’t know what we should do without her. She’s the
only one of us that can manage her father when he’s out of temper.’
‘What a good wife she would make for a man of limited means!’
‘She would know how to make the most of things,’ answered Mrs.
Scratchell, with a sigh; ‘but I really think I’d rather my daughters
kept single all their lives than that they should have to cut and
contrive as I have had. I’ve not a word to say against poor Scratchell.
Poverty tries all our tempers, and his has been more tried than most
men’s. He’s a good father, and a good husband, and I’ve as good
children as any woman need wish to have; but, for all that, I’d rather
my daughters should never marry than that they should marry like me.’
‘Oh, Mrs. Scratchell,’ cried the Vicar’s wife, shocked at this slander
against her favourite institution. ‘Surely now, as a wife and mother,
you have fulfilled woman’s noblest mission. You ought to be proud of
having brought up such a nice family and managed things respectably
upon so little.’
‘Perhaps I ought,’ sighed Mrs. Scratchell. ‘But I don’t feel anything,
except very tired. I was forty-one last birthday, but I feel as if I
were eighty.’
Mrs. Dulcimer did not know what to say. Life had been so easy for her.
All good things had fallen unsolicited into her lap. She had never
known an ungratified want, except her yearning for a new drawing-room
carpet. This glimpse of a pinched, overworked existence came upon her
like a revelation.
‘But you must be so proud of your fine family,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer,
bent on being cheerful; ‘so many of them--and all well and thriving.’
‘Yes,’ sighed the house-mother, ‘they grow very fast, and they have
fine healthy appetites. It’s better to pay the baker than the doctor,
as I always say to Mr. Scratchell when he complains, but the bills
_are_ very heavy.’
‘Now mind, Bella, I shall expect to see you often at the Vicarage,’
said Mrs. Dulcimer, with her sweetest smile. ‘You are not to wait for
Miss Harefield to bring you, but you are to come and see me, you know,
in a friendly way--and bring your work. I know you are clever at fancy
work.’
‘She is clever at everything,’ said the mother, with a doleful pride.
‘I never knew such hands as Bella’s. She can turn them to anything.’
‘Bring your work of an afternoon then, Bella, when your mother can
spare you, and come and sit with me. Mr. Culverhouse often drops in
after tea.’
And then with much hand-shaking and cordiality, kindly Mrs. Dulcimer
took her leave, and went home happy, her mind glowing with triumphant
benevolence, feeling that she had employed her afternoon in a manner
that St. Paul himself must have approved.
‘It’s all very well for Clement to talk about charity being a passive
virtue,’ she reflected. ‘Passive good nature would never get that girl
comfortably married. Five daughters, and the father without a sixpence
to give them! Poor dear girls! Husbands must be found for them somehow.’
Bella Scratchell felt curiously fluttered after the Vicar’s wife
was gone. The noise of the home tea-table, those rough boys, those
boisterous unkempt girls, with hair like horses’ manes, and an
uncomfortable habit of stretching across the table for everything they
wanted, seemed a shade more trying than usual.
‘Now then, Greedy,’ cried Adolphus, the second boy, to his sister
Flora. ‘I would scrape the pot if I was you. Yah!’ looking into an
empty marmalade pot. ‘Not a vestige left. I say, Bella, you might stand
a pot of marmalade now and then.’
The boys were in the habit of making random demands upon Bella’s
private means, but were not often successful.
‘I’m sure you want no temptation to eat bread and butter,’ she said.
‘It would be sheer cruelty to ma.’
What bliss to be away from them all! This noisy circle--the odour of
Dorset butter--the poor mother’s worried looks, and frequent getting up
to see after this and that--the scolding and disputing--the domestic
turmoil.
A lonely old bachelor, looking in through the window at the firelit
room, might perchance have envied Mr. Scratchell his healthy young
family might have thought that this circle of eager faces, and buzz
of voices, meant happiness; yet for Bella home meant anything but
happiness. She was heartily tired of it all.
She pictured herself in that ideal vicarage, with the only man she
had ever admired for her husband. She was thinking of him all through
the confusion of tea-time--the clinking of tea-spoons and rattling of
cups--the spilling of tea--an inevitable feature in every Scratchell
tea party--the fuss about the kettle, with much argumentation between
Mrs. Scratchell and the maid of all work as to whether it boiled or did
not boil--the scrambling for crusts, and general squabbling--through
all she was thinking of Cyril’s earnest face--hearing his thrilling
voice close at her ear.
‘Can it be true?’ she asked herself. ‘Can it be true that he cares for
me--ever so little even? Oh, it would be too much--it would be heaven!’
Here Bertie’s cup of hot tea came into collision with his sister’s
elbow, foundered and went down, amidst a storm of shrill young voices
and maternal expostulation.