quarter of the town. There were the most beautiful blue and yellow
fruit plates and dishes, enough to make a thousand homes happy. They
were so pretty that I danced with rage upon the pavement. I bought
all I wanted and rearranged my list for the third time. It was getting
dreadfully expensive. Cousin Jemima’s “three-eleven-three” had left her
now, and she had been reduced to a pin-cushion at ninepence-halfpenny.
Pauline’s soup-bowl was exchanged for a set of fruit-dishes which
were much nicer, and then I remembered that she wanted one of my new
photographs. I had ordered a dozen and they must be disposed of. I
went home and rearranged my list again, which left me with two glass
powder-boxes over.
When James came in and said, “Have you thought at all about Christmas
presents?” I could scarcely answer coherently. He asked whether I could
spare him any, and I told him that there were two powder-boxes he could
have with pleasure. But that was no good, as none of his relations use
powder. It was early-closing day, so we could not get anything else. He
told me he had six boxes of cigarettes that I might have for my people
if I could let him have something more suitable for his grandmother and
the vicar’s children, so I gave him Pauline’s children’s sweets, and
Cousin Jemima’s pin-cushion, and some of the Chinese dishes, and began
all over again. This time there were three powder-boxes left, and my
godson and James’s uncle were unprovided for. (James’s uncle was in a
nursing home, so it was particularly important that he should have a
cheery Christmas.) I suggested that we should tell him I was sending
a photograph, but that James had spilt ink on it and I had ordered
another specially, which would come in a few days. Meantime we were
sending a powder-box to each of his nurses. “He will have a much gayer
time like that than with ordinary presents,” I added hopefully. Clara
came in then and said that Mullins had finished putting up the holly,
and was there any message.
“I believe that the orthodox Christmas message is Peace and Goodwill,”
I said. “Tell Mullins that I wish him peace and shall be glad of some
myself.” Clara withdrew with the message, but came back to say that
Mullins wished us both the compliments of the season, and was there
anything else? I had only two halfpennies left, so I told Clara to tell
him that if he were as wise as he pretended to be it was his part to
bring gold at Christmas, not to ask for it, but that there was a small
bottle of myrrh in the bathroom----However, James said I was not to be
silly, so we borrowed a message from Ruth and promised to pay her back
in the morning if she would get rid of Mullins. And then we did up our
parcels, all but the powder-boxes. It was too late when I remembered
that I might have given one to Mullins; he could have made himself look
quite freshened up for Christmas with it.
There was an extraordinary demand for messages next day; even the
lamplighter and the dustman longed to hear what I had to say. Some of
them even sent books in which to record the messages, and that did it.
“Mr. Jones’s book--and is there any message, please?”
I forgot what I had said to Ruth about forgiving Mr. Jones if he
omitted to bring the sausages and the stuffing. His record for the past
year was blacker than any recording angel would have put up with. I
tore James’s fountain-pen from his pocket and wrote:
“_When Jones’s villain asks to-day
A Christmas message, thou shalt say,
‘Here is a shilling in my name.’
Unfortunately it never came!_”
On Christmas Eve parcels began to arrive. Some were from people to
whom, I remembered with a pang, nothing had been sent. The hopeless
muddle of my scratched list had resulted in some names passing through
my head without any definite settlement. But there was still time.
“Come to the book-shop, quick!” I said to James.
We took a taxi and rattled to the book-shop; but there--as the most
unreasoning person I know often says--“I lost my reason.” James gave
it the first flick by saying three times, “Won’t they have read that?”
I was so irritated over the whole thing that I said, unless he could
manage to hurry up the Day of Judgment before to-morrow, I couldn’t
possibly tell, after which he, very properly, refused to help me. The
counter was full of books of a kind I never read, and detest to look
at: but I suppose some one reads them or they would not be there.
“Reminiscences of a Conchologist,” “Historic Moments with the Queens
of Saxony” (this might be amusing, but it wasn’t, because public
characters have a way of keeping their best historic moments out of
the press), “Leaves from my Asparagus Bed,” by a lady gardener, “Ad
Nauseam” (this was bound in mauve leather, cost eighteen pence and was
of a suitable size for packing, but I knew I could not write a letter
with it that would carry conviction). James was fidgeting about the
shop all this time. “Do please find something for Caroline,” I said to
him.
“Just wait till I get this for the vicar,” he answered, hunting in his
pocket. I asked what it was and he held it up.
“But you can’t have that!” I said, “I want it. It is the very thing for
Caroline; and the vicar won’t read it. Here! this is much better for
him.” I took up a book with a beautiful picture on the cover. A masked
bishop digging up a corpse from the hearthstone, under the very nose of
an expiring cook.
“The vicar is such a darling,” I said, “you must give him something
nice. He loves excitement, and told me himself that the lending
libraries are so stupid; they send him nothing but shop, and he does
not know what to ask for.”
James gave in, and, as it turned out, made the success of the year
with his present. Caroline wrote me the warmest letter of thanks for
the book from which I had rescued the vicar. It was a serious, blue
cloth work called “In Tune with the Indefinite.” She is a thoroughly
bad woman, as worldly as Lot’s wife, and without a spark of generosity
in her composition. She said she simply loved mysticism, and had been
wanting this particular book ever since it came out.
I forgave Mr. Jones on Christmas Day and tried to think well of Mullins
and the others. I also gave the boy half a crown on the second of
January, explaining that I was sorry for the delay; there had been a
slight mistake as to the time for which it was ordered. I hoped he
would not be inconvenienced by receiving it in the following year
instead.
_CHAPTER XIII_: THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR
If I had been clairvoyant enough to foresee the arrival of the Buttons
in the house next door, I should have looked for another dumping-ground
for my domestic burdens, and, quite likely, have found myself side
by side with other and worse Buttons; so I dare say it was for the
best--or the least bad anyhow. When we took our house the adjoining
Bijou was empty. I had forgotten (being, as the efficient female says,
a little excitable) that it might some day be filled.
We were very happy for two years; then Satan began to find occupation
for our landlord, at whose bidding the Buttons sprang up like fungus
on the lawn of the empty house. I came home after a short holiday to
find them thriving upon their evil juices. There were then two parent
Buttons and three young ones. Six years later there were eight young
ones, “and all by the same father,” as a friend who was staying with us
remarked with surprise. In the mission field, where I understand that
human life is often fostered for table purposes, the Buttons would be
invaluable, but for a civilised country there were too many of them,
added to which (as it they wanted adding to!) they kept animals and
birds and every kind of creature with a voice whom they could lay hands
on.
What deaf idiot can have floated the idea of there being dumb animals
in the world to claim our affection and respect? When I find a dumb
animal I shall love it with all my heart and soul. As for those animals
that already exist, it would be as reasonable to speak with tears in
our eyes about dumb foreigners because they make life intolerable with
vociferations we do not understand.
I used to read books about the Great African Silence, dreaming about
it as a Mussulman dreams of Paradise. If there is a certain hour known
as cock-crow why may not other hours be apportioned in the same
way and devoted to a particular animal? If this were done I could
arrange my day. I would not go to bed until after cock-crow, I would
do my shopping at dog-bark, and arrange to dine with a friend during
caterwaul. As it is there is no method about the nuisance; it is all
adrift and mixed up. And in the case of the Buttons there were the
children, who welded single aggravations into one vast outrage.
They used to disperse themselves for conversation, when reasonable
people approach one another. They planted one in the turret at the top
of the house, another at the bottom of the garden, a third and fourth,
within quarrelable distance, at the drawing-room window, while the
fifth remained in a distant potting-shed, and then they began; the dumb
animals acting as chorus.
“Ron----ald?” (From the turret.)
“Ye----s?”
“What are you doing?”
“Wh----at?”
“Wha----t--are--you--do----ing?”
“Mending my boat.”
“Wha----t?”
“Men----ding--my--boa----t.”
“Mend----ing--your--wha----t?”
“My bo----at.”
“Your--co----at?”
“Bo----o----at.” (“Bow--bow--bow!----Bow--bow--bow!----Bouff!”)
“Down, Spot----Spot! Spot! Spot!” (Whistling) “Peow, weow, weow----”
“Jimmy----”
“Wh----at?”
“Mother says, do you want your hammer?”
“Wh----at?”
“Mother says--do--you--want--your--hammer?”
(It would not be right to say what I did with that hammer in my mind,
because a sin thought of is a sin committed in the eye of Goodness.)
“I ca----n’--t he----a--r.”
“Kwakee--scrwaak.” (From the parrot.)
“Bow--bow--bow!----bow!----Bow--bow--bow!----bow!”
“Cock--a--doodle--do!”
“Co--rr----a--warra--corrawarra.” (From the hen.)
Dog-bark and child-call lasted nearly until cock-crow came round
again, because the Buttons, like the poor, keep their little ones up
rather late. They trundled rattly things along the gravel, and joked
loudly with papa after he came home, until half-past ten at night. We
only needed cries of “Salt!” “Herrings!” and “Murder!” to give us the
flavour of life at its fullest.
By way of side-shows there were the gramophone, and the pianola, and
the annual baby (who never slept very well), and Mrs. Button’s singing,
and the flirtations of the cook’s cat.
We enjoyed occasional precious lulls when Mrs. Button had a baby or
the children were down with some disease. Even then there were always
a few who had recovered first or who had not yet developed it; and as
the animals did not get infectious diseases, and their confinements
in no way interfered with their usual routine, the “Corrawarraing”
and “Cockadoodling” and “Bowing” went on all the year round. It never
took Mrs. Button more than a fortnight to have a baby, and during that
time the monthly nurse sang almost as loudly in the garden as Mrs.
Button used to do in the drawing-room, so, altogether, the lulls did
not amount to very much. We always stayed at home during the Buttons’
summer holiday for the pleasure of being without them; besides which,
we got an extra month’s peace by going away ourselves as soon as they
came back.
I never could see any point in the Button family; they seemed to serve
no useful end. They fed, and moved about, and multiplied exceedingly,
yet never ate each other up, nor burrowed, nor became destructive in
their neighbours’ gardens. But they were neither grateful to the eye
nor could they be used for sport or for the table.
Mr. Button went every day to some mysterious place of business, where
persons gave him good money to do for them what they could equally
well have done for themselves; it was probably dull work, and Mr.
Button did not mind doing it. It suited both parties that the work
should go on, because the money they gave him made it possible for him
to go on being Mr. Button, which was what he liked. Mrs. Button also
liked him to go on being what he was, and they were so contented that
they continued to make more and more young Buttons, just because it
seemed a pity not to. I am quite certain that was the only reason that
moved them to such an important step.
I have never seen children who so clearly as the young Buttons showed
that it did not matter in the least whose children they were, any
more than it matters which particular couple of rabbits own the young
ones nibbling on the lawn. They were just the young Buttons. If their
parents had happened to be the Duttons, or the Scruttons, or the
Muttons, it would have suited them quite as well--so long as cook
didn’t leave. That really would have mattered after she had got into
their ways.
I have known the Button family now for some years, and never have I
heard or seen them do anything that could not have been equally well
said or done in a different way. “It will do as well as any other” is
a favourite saying with all of them. Once, when the Buttons were away,
their life’s history shaped itself in my thoughts, falling more or less
into rhyme because they are so monotonous. There had been a new baby
lately, and the butcher’s cart was at the door again:
_Archibald Button carved the mutton
Upon a Sunday morning,
His family beside him see!
The dining-room adorning._
_The pudding’s placed before his wife,
Who shares his uneventful life.
He chose her on the oddest ground,
Because her views were all so sound._
_Their family consists of these--
Two pairs of twins, one set of threes,
Besides two others later on
Who followed quickly one by one._
_’Twas James and Wilhelmina who
First broke on his enraptured view;
Tom, Kate, and Anne succeeded soon
And twins again the following June._
_When these arrived you might have thought
They had as many as they ought,
But no, they only said, “How nice,”
And called them Gus and Beatrice._
_Two years elapsed till some one said,
“Poor Mrs. Button is in bed.”
She rose again and with her came
An infant girl without a name._
_They called her Mary as Papa
Desired it after Grandmama.
And then when Alice came next year
They named her from an aunt so dear._
_When little Herbert’s birth was past
These parents brave had done at last.
No more the task before them lay
What names they at the font should say._
_From parents such as I describe
Young children can no sin imbibe.
Behold them, therefore, meek and good,
All sitting waiting for their food._
_Sound common sense and upright deeds
Will furnish all their daily needs.
Temptation cannot make them stray;
They much prefer the narrow way._
_A lively tongue perhaps inquires
To what a Button’s mind aspires,
And why on mutton should subsist,
Or why indeed it should exist._
_I cannot say, but this is known
That when the world is upside down,
Amidst the wreck of all that’s stable
The Buttons will be found at table._
_CHAPTER XIV_: HOUSE-MOVING
I have heard Mrs. Beehive say of one of our most prosperous neighbours
that they had “struggled up from the Palmerston Road.” They were
certainly a little battered and jaded when they got there: “there”
being a handsome residential mansion on the edge of the Park. It has
a tennis lawn, a vegetable garden, a garage, four entertaining rooms,
ten bedrooms, butler’s pantry, electric light, ground-floor kitchens,
and every modern convenience--altogether about as much material for
annoyance and waste of time as can well be imagined. By the time Tom
was sixteen and Anne fourteen, our doom was drawing near. In spite
of my resistance, James and I were about to struggle up from the
Palmerston Road; I saw it coming. Our pleasant little house was falling
to bits over our heads. We were eight where we had been but four,
and (this settled it) Ruth was getting angry. She wanted help in the
kitchen, and there was nowhere to put any help at night. James, too,
was bothered by the gramophone; Tom and Anne wanted a tennis lawn;
nurse wanted a room where the dressmaker could sew (she made the
nursery floor so bitty). Nurse even spoke of the bandboxes containing
the winter hats as if they had recently broken out like a plague.
When every one had displayed their grievances, I remembered that I
wanted another room myself in which to escape from them--the aggrieved
parties--a question-proof room if possible with only one door. I had
thought of an underground suite of apartments like that of the Duke
of Portland, with a glass roof. It would have been such a pleasure to
watch the numerous legs of my tormentors as they ran about looking
for me. I told the efficient female that we thought of moving, and
she said: “Ah, I knew you would have to sooner or later.” I assured
her that it was quite undecided, and that if we did move it would be
into a smaller house. The odious creature smiled falsely, and said, of
course that was the ideal life. They themselves never knew what peace
was until they moved into a small house, and one really well-trained
servant could run everything for eight people quite easily. That is all
very well for her. She has given up making ices in boots and omelettes
in hats, and now eats nothing but nuts. She is so vilely efficient
that she secured from her harassed Maker the only sample he had of a
patient husband who can and will digest anything. She kept the pattern
and made a little outfit of children of the same convenient kind. Then,
I suppose, no more were stocked, as, on the whole, there is no great
demand for docile nut-eating men. They do not provide enough incident
for the average household.
When James was thoroughly fired with the struggling-up idea, he set his
mind towards the topmost pinnacle of ambition. A house near the Park
was not enough for him, we must move into the country. “Where does the
country end and the county begin?” I asked. “The county, I understand,
is the thing to aim at.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I always thought it was the whole caboodle,
town and country and all.”
“But, then, where do the county families come from?” I asked.
“The large provincial towns, I believe,” James replied without looking
up from his book.
“Can you live right in town and be a county family?” (Silence.)
“What county families do we know?”
“Oh, the Higginbottams and the Crackers and the Fitzmullets--do go
away.”
“But they all live in the town except the Fitzmullets, who are seven
miles from a railway station.”
“If you don’t go away at once,” said James, “I will see that the whole
county, wherever we are, calls on you, and you will die of a slow,
insidious poison. They will poison your mind and your dress and your
language. Do you see?”
I left the subject then. We shall come back to it later, because the
struggling up of a species from one vantage-point to another is a
fascinating study for those who love Nature, and I have not half got
to the bottom of this county business yet; it is so involved. In the
meantime there was the move itself.
Of all the experiences most calculated to humble the mighty a house
move is the most humiliating. One’s household possessions lose all
reticence, decency and moral sense. They flaunt themselves and cry
aloud to the passers-by for attention. They behave more like Neapolitan
beggars than anything else--maimed beggars on the spree. I have seen
antics performed by my own furniture that made me long to burn down
every city of the Empire and be numbered amongst the beasts of the
field. An undertaker’s work seems wholesome and cheerful compared to
that of the furniture-remover. He gets an ingrained sense of squalor
that corrupts his senses and his memory until ugliness is to him not
only inevitable but appropriate. I met the foreman packer staggering up
our garden path with a wardrobe on his head. In one hand he flourished
a picture (with the glass broken) representing the Duke of Wellington
standing with drawn sword on the top of a mountain; in the other a
fire-screen that was once intended for a jumble sale, but had been
mislaid for years behind the plate-chest.
“For the drawing-room, I suppose,” he observed, and passed on. I ran
after him, protesting that both were marked “not to go”; but when I
reached the house I found them in the middle of the drawing-room floor
with seven unspeakable cushions marked “cook’s bedroom,” a warming-pan
(unearthed from heaven knows where), James’s large and particularly
ugly writing-table, and the dining-room carpet neatly tacked down.
The efficient female tells me it is the easiest thing in the world
to move. You just mark everything with the number of the room where
it is to go. But she forgets that a wombat with its brain amputated
could tell at a glance to which room her things belong, and she takes
everything with her. There is a place for every horror and every horror
is in its place. The hat-rack, the dining-room chairs and curtains,
the assorted oddments for the spare bedroom, and the only comfortable
furniture (rather specially dusty velvet with bob fringe) for the
smoking-room. You cannot even mistake the pictures, for all those
belonging to the drawing-room are water-colours with yellow frames,
the dining-room has the “portraits in oils,” those for the bedrooms
are photogravures representing the emotions (and it does not matter
how they are distributed), historical pictures go in the passage, the
agricultural and sporting in the smoking-room, and in the bathroom go
the family groups and churches. So the foreman easily makes a nice
job of it. It is a painful experience to find how easily some one
else can fit us with a suit of circumstances which do not belong to
us, just by expecting them to be ours. They pop a whole environment
to which they are accustomed over our heads and button it round the
neck before we have time to escape. It took me a whole week to free
myself from a certain Mrs. Simpson, into whose form I was buttoned by
the foreman packer with his preconceived notion of what a lady moving
house ought to be like. He had such firm faith in Mrs. Simpson, and
expected so confidently to find her in my house, that his faith removed
the mountain of my individuality, and I became his ideal. His mind was
so steeped in Mrs. Simpson, he was so incapable of recognising the
existence of any married woman but Mrs. Simpson, that he was obliged to
fish Mrs. Simpson out of his pocket and clap her over my head before
he could adjust his mind to understand what I wanted. When he first
came to see me about the arrangements, he looked me up and down and
metaphorically said: “Excuse me, I will just fetch Mrs. Simpson, and
then we shall know where we are.” As he fixed me with his eye, I felt
myself becoming like the lady in an advertisement for tea. I could
feel the chocolate-like richness of the fluid I should pour out for my
lace-begarbed friends who sat amiably smiling round the mixed biscuits
and the cruet. I knew that I had on a speckled blouse with a wired
collar, and a short tweed skirt, and that I looked just thirty-seven,
and was extremely sensible and good-natured. My own house that I loved
so much disappeared under the petrifying expectation of that foreman,
and at the sight of his notebook there sprang up dishevelled pink paper
lamp-shades, photograph frames in the form of banjos and sunflowers,
rickety overmantels, and everything that Mrs. Simpson always had. All
Mrs. Simpson’s past surged into my veins. I remembered how I had gone
with Mr. Simpson (who was rather a darling in those days) to buy our
furniture, and how I, sighing after a heavy day amongst the suites, had
said: “I think we have done everything now except the ornaments for
the drawing-room mantelpiece.”
“Yes,” I said dreamily to the foreman, “everything is to go please--the
drawing-room ornaments--and the overmantel--and the cosy corner--and
the what-not.”
“I beg pardon, m’m,” he interrupted, “they’ll be in the drawing-room, I
suppose. I don’t see what you’re describing here.”
“I am sorry,” said I. “It was your friend, Mrs. Simpson, who put me out
for the moment.”
“I think there must be some slight mistake, m’m,” he said, “I don’t
seem to remember a Mrs. Simpson.”
“No, no,” I answered, making a great effort to possess myself again,
“of course there is no such person; I know that. But now we really must
get on.”
“You leave everything to me, mum,” he assured me, “and we’ll move
everything, just as it is now.”
“But, please,” I begged, “I don’t want everything moved. You know I
said that a few minutes ago. There is a lot of rubbish in the house
that is not to go at all. You will be very careful, won’t you, not to
take what is marked “not to go”?