answer when I asked for tea on the lawn, and she always brought it all
on one tray, with the cakes piled on the top of the bread and butter
and scones; moreover, she staggered and panted to impress me with its
weight, and held up her dress and suffered for the rest of the week
from sore throat, “owing to wetting me feet on the grass.”
The woods were at least a quarter of an hour’s walk from the house and
across a ditch.
“Certainly, in the woods,” I said, “and if by any chance I should be
alone for tea after all, you can come round a longer way. That will
give you almost as much trouble.”
I wondered at first how I should explain my way of living to Perrin,
and whether he would make me give up much that I held dear. Would he
allow many of what Clara called the “goings on” of my house? But, to
my surprise, he did not mind at all; in fact, I understood that he
preferred many of the people whom Mrs. Van Dieman so much disliked
to Mrs. Van Dieman herself. I could see that he thought most of the
stars of the neighbourhood a poor lot. “His late lordship never
thought much of them he let his place to each year,” he told me. I
should have liked to hear about these objectionable tenants, but I
saw that Perrin’s gems must be gathered when and where they fell; he
gave nothing of value for the asking. However, with patience and care,
I learned by and by some of the reasons why the usurpers had failed
to please. He told me once, in a fit of irritation, that a young
commercial gentleman from Sheffield, who took his late lordship’s
place one year, seemed to have very little idea of how things should
be. He seemed, for instance, to think that the place belonged to him.
This seemed to me rather hard when I remembered how little James and I
heeded the ownership of the frowsy creature to whom we paid rent for
our delightful house in Palmerston Road. If it had not been for James’s
uncle, I should not have dared to put forward this view. As it was, I
said timidly: “But, after all, I suppose they were owners for the time
being, Perrin.” He was not offended, on the contrary he gave the idea
his indulgent consideration, but it would not do.
“We hardly regard the town builders, ma’am, as on a par with the
families as have owned the property for generations.”
I probed delicately for more horrible details.
“He spoke of the Master of the Hounds, ma’am, as the Captain of the
Dogs.”
There was a solemn silence. I could do nothing but murmur expressions
of sympathy and disgust; but my thoughts took suddenly a fantastic turn
and I mentally christened our present leader of county society the
“Mistress of the Cats,” hunting impossible birds to a well-deserved
social death. I awoke from my dream of delight and waited. “Mr.
Huggins” (that was the name of the commercial gentleman) “went so far
as to request me to bring the gramophone on to the lawn on Sunday
afternoon. Fortunately, I had disabled my arm at the time and the
doctor considered it inadvisable for me to attempt weights of any kind,
so the second footman obliged them; otherwise I should have been in
great difficulty.”
I still think that Perrin did the poor things injustice, and that if
his late lordship had ordered a barouche full of gramophones to be
brought on to the lawn, my friend would have adjusted his prejudices
and his arm to meet the case. His dislike was due to a primitive
suspicion of an alien tribe whose size and shape and smell offended
him. Just as I feel about Mrs. Simpson--I am not running her down in
any way.
There was an awful moment of anxiety when it occurred to me that Perrin
might want me to play games, but, on thinking it over, I decided that
he would not wish it unless I played very well indeed, and that I knew
was an impossibility. I could not face the idea of tennis while he was
bringing out the tea or announcing visitors. My legs would be sure to
get entangled in his eye and then all would be over between us. We were
obliged to get a victoria and a pair of horses soon after he arrived,
as he disliked my coming in tired and dusty from paying visits. Of
course, that meant a footman too, as I hate a victoria with one horse,
and nothing would induce me to drive behind two horses and one man--if
there is only one man to two horses the man’s hat gets fluffy at once,
also it is impossible to make one man’s coat fit properly; so long as
there are two horses, it is always loose behind the shoulders and his
white collar behaves like the setting sun. So there we were, involved
in endless expense and all because of Perrin. But oh! the relief of it!
The mere fact that he did not wear cuffs that came off, and rattled,
and were left about on tables, gave me much peace of mind, and, best
of all, I basked in the certainty that although he might direct my
actions, he would never interfere with my thoughts as Clara did. I
could hear her thinking and having feelings all over the house; but
Perrin did all his thinking in the pantry, never permitting himself
to indulge his brain in my presence. I knew that when Clara said she
“hadn’t an idea,” it meant that her mind was so seething with folly
that it was likely to burst forth into reproach at any moment. When I
asked Perrin where my thimble and scissors were, he said that he would
ascertain, which meant that he withdrew respectfully to the pantry and
there brought his mind to bear on all the places where an addle-headed
female was most likely to have left such things, and then he looked
until he found them. He helped me a great deal in the training of young
George, the footman. I told George one day that he must not gather his
coat-tails round him and leap from the box as if it were a burning
building. “Thank you, ma’am,” he replied shyly, “Mr. Perrin has already
mentioned it. I was not going to do it after to-day.” But even then it
was not quite right, and I had to appeal for help to Perrin. “George’s
descent from the box is not quite right yet, Perrin, and I don’t know
how to explain. Only, I am not sure whether he reminds me most of a
chimpanzee or a sailor.”
“Quite so, ma’am. I will see that he practises from the shelves of
the pantry cupboard,” said Perrin; and in a week it was impossible
to detect how George reached the ground. Once, Perrin was ill, and
we all moped like sick canaries. George lost his head and forgot the
coffee spoons, the silver and glass lost their sparkle and sat about
all anyhow on the table. But behind the scenes the gloom was lightened,
although the meals were irregular and bad owing to Ruth preparing soup
and jelly for Perrin which she carried to him herself. The housemaids
stole into the garden for flowers for the invalid’s room, and, one day,
delighted cackles announced the fact that Mr. Perrin felt well enough
to shave himself, and that Ruth and Lizzie held the glass while Mr.
George prepared the soap. I sent him books and papers of a masculine
kind, such as I thought he looked as if he would read. He sent his
duty and found them most enjoyable, but I believe now that in the
kingdom downstairs where Perrin reigns the habits of the Court are less
Victorian than I supposed, and the sceptre is garlanded with flowers.
_CHAPTER XVIII_: THE DRESSMAKER
I can never think of Miss McGregor without adding the adjective “bitty”
to her name: Bitty Miss McGregor or Miss Bitty McGregor. She sat always
in such a snowstorm of bits, that by the end of the day I felt it must
be necessary to dig her out before she could leave her work. Praise
of Miss McGregor (which was given freely, for we all love her) was
qualified by comments on her “bittiness,” but even that was not so
bad as the pins. The mouthfuls of them which she threw out all over
the floor! Nurse reckoned, after reading an article in the _Strand
Magazine_, that if all the pins that Miss McGregor disgorged during the
day were collected and fastened together, they would form a chain as
long as the cable between America and England. She never ate anything
but pieces of cheese, with some cold strong tea, so I conclude that if
claret and tannin make ink, as I once read they do, cheese and tannin,
mixed, make pins, that is if they are eaten by a dressmaker; just as a
cow makes different things out of grass to what Nebuchadnezzar did. I
certainly do not remember buying pins.
What I did complain of was the “slipping-on.” She glided into the
kitchen when I was wrestling with the beef, and asked me to slip on
an evening bodice. There are, undoubtedly, people who can give their
minds to an evening bodice on the top of a large breakfast and attend
to the beef at the same time. Mrs. Simpson[A] could, I am sure, for one
sees the effect of the beef on her bodices, which sometimes have such a
sensible, dead look about them.
The bodices do not affect the beef in any way or lighten its weight,
because nothing makes any difference to beef. It knows just what and
where it intends to be, and no one can divert it from its purpose.
During my early married life I foolishly attempted to keep the beef
out of the house on Sunday, because I detest habit, and that any food
or person should acquire the habit of coming at one particular time
makes its company less of a pleasure than if it took its chance and
dropped in.
I gave the order that no beef “in any shape or form” was to come
into my house on Sunday. The butcher repeated my order in the shop,
whereupon the beef turned purple and indignant.
“What!” it said, puffing and blowing, “I am not to come? There must be
some mistake. They cannot have Sunday without me; I am part of the day
itself. If I am not present at the table there will be no Sabbath, and
then where shall we all be? Here’s a pretty kettle of fish! I insist on
going--stop that mutton--it must not leave the shop.”
The butcher wrung his hands in protest, and said he knew he should get
into trouble, but the beef replied: “Not a word, Sir, not a word.” It
bustled out of the shop into the basket and arrived at my door, where
it insisted on being delivered by the boy. But Ruth had her orders and
was firm.
“Just you go back,” she insisted.
“But what about my wife,” blustered the beef, “my wife the rhubarb
tart? If I am not to take my place upon the board neither shall my wife
attend; she shall not be served without me.”
“Just keep quiet, please,” said Ruth. “We’re not having tart; we’re
having soufflé and mutton cutlets, so now be off with you.”
There was a frightful scene, but I persevered for three weeks. Then I
went away for a fortnight, and, while I was gone, the beef came back
and curried favour with Ruth. He poisoned her mind about the busy day
Monday was, with the washerwoman and all, and how convenient he was to
eat cold; no mess, no second vegetable, just salad out of the garden,
and so on. I was powerless against the pair of them; but now I always
cut him with a blunt knife. Sometimes I cook him on Saturday night,
and he has to appear cold in the middle of the day on Sunday, which he
dislikes as much as being tarred and feathered with strange sauces and
trimmings.
But to return to Miss McGregor.
“No,” I said, “I won’t. You can slip it on the beef if you like, he
hates being garnished, and perhaps it will keep him in his place. Put
a whole mouthful of pins in him if you like, and then snip him into
shreds.”
Miss McGregor took no more notice than if I had been reciting poetry
to myself. “If you wouldn’t mind just slipping it on now,” she said,
with gentle persistence; “I won’t keep you a minute--unless you have
anything else you could give me to do. You said something about
altering a skirt.”
The back door bell rang.
“I think it’s Jones’s boy,” said Ruth. “Have you decided what you will
have for dinner?”
“If you please, ma’am,” said Louise, appearing at the kitchen door, “is
there a parcel to go back to Huggins’s?”
“It will be the buttons for your coat,” said Miss McGregor, “did you
decide----”
I heard my daughter’s voice on the stairs: “Mother!” she called.
“Mother! Miss Mathers wants to know if it is going to rain, because,
if so, shall I wear my old coat? She says it isn’t fit to go out in,
but it is too cold for the other, unless you would like me to put on a
woolly, and I haven’t got one, so shall I----”
I dashed up the kitchen stairs. They got Miss McGregor out of the
flour-bin afterwards, less damaged than I could have wished. Anne
picked herself up, and decided to chance the weather as offering the
least risk of the two. Jones’s boy, and Huggins’s boy, and Ruth, and
the beef, and Louise came to some decision amongst themselves about the
buttons and the curry.
When I came back from a pleasant morning in the woods, I heard that
Miss McGregor was looking for me to slip on a bodice, and the efficient
female had called.
“Has Mrs. Simpson been?” I asked.
“I beg pardon, ma’am,” said Perrin, “who did you say?”
“Oh, it was nothing,” I replied. “I half expected a Mrs. Simpson; in
fact I thought I saw her in the drive. She would have attended to Miss
McGregor at once.”
The efficient female said I looked tired, and was anything the matter?
“No,” I said, “nothing particular; but do you always slip on things
when you are asked--that is, when there is a dressmaker in the house?”
“Oh, never,” she assured me. “I have a stand made to exactly my own
shape, and they never need to trouble me at all.”
“But can you judge how a thing will look with a great red twill bust
and a stump sticking out of it?”
“Oh, perfectly; it only needs a little imagination.”
When she had gone, I went to Miss McGregor. “Look here,” I said, “you
slip the things on the housemaid and pretend she is me. It only needs a
little imagination.”
Miss McGregor was sitting in a shower of bits. She took no notice of my
suggestion.
“I have got on as best I could,” she said, dispersing her last mouthful
of pins all over her tiny chest. I was feeling a good deal better, and
said I would slip on the garment. The picture she was to copy showed
a slim and graceful creature with a long piece of soft material wound
simply under one shoulder and over the other, caught in at the waist
with a buckle, and falling in folds across the side of a very clinging
underskirt. What I saw in the glass was a rain-water tub (surmounted
by my head) covered with a closely gathered frill which was neatly
sewn along the edge of the lid. The lid itself had some folds of the
material arranged with geometrical precision round the place where the
head came out.
My breath forsook me.
“Dear Miss McGregor,” I murmured, “you have not snipped all the stuff
into small bits, have you? If you look at the picture you will see it
is made all in one. Just folded round quite simply, beginning from one
corner--so----”
“I couldn’t quite understand how you would get it on and off the other
way, Mrs. Molyneux,” she said, after a minute’s thoughtful silence,
“and the effect is just the same. I have arranged the folds so that
they hide the join.”
I stood entranced by my reflection; I even began to take a morbid
interest in it, as I saw how we depend for our personal attraction on
clothes; it opened such a world of speculation amongst my friends. The
knowledge was comforting to this extent: that there is more hope in a
petition to one’s dressmaker to take back the dress she gave and change
it than there would be in a request to one’s parents for a different
face.
With as little show of alteration as I could manage, I unripped the
gathers, and taking a corner of the stuff I wrapped it round my form
in the way I wanted, and stuck in a hat-pin to secure the last bit.
“There,” I said triumphantly, “that is the way I want it to go.”
Miss McGregor observed me with patient scepticism.
“I don’t quite see how I am to arrange that,” she remarked.
“You must not arrange it on any account,” I said. “It is to stay just
like that.”
“But how are you going to get out of it?”
“Like this,” I replied, slipping the whole thing off my shoulders like
a skin. “How I get back again next time is your concern; you are a
dressmaker. Dresses like these are worn every day in Paris.”
“Well, I don’t understand how they do it,” replied the forbearing
creature.
“You remind me,” I told her, “of a plumber we had here last spring.
Mr. Molyneux gave him an order, and the man asked how he was to do it.
‘I don’t know,’ Mr. Molyneux said, ‘I am not a plumber.’ The silly man
replied: ‘Well, I am a plumber and I don’t know.’ Now please don’t be
like the plumber; we had quite enough of that sort of thing with him.”
Miss McGregor poised herself upon one leg, cocked her head on one side,
and said it wasn’t the way of the stuff.
I know her ways by this time, so I said I was going out to tea.
It was certain that nothing would induce her to spend an idle
afternoon, and she would therefore be driven to exercise her brain on
the problem. I threatened her with every sort of violent and painful
death, including a famine of pins, if she altered a single fold, and
when I came home in the evening the dress was skilfully arranged. Miss
McGregor is quite sure that if I would slip the things on fourteen
times a day between meals she would understand better what I wanted,
but I know for a fact she is wrong.
An industrious clerk might as well say to a poet: “If you tell me what
you want to say in your poem I will write it for you and you can run
your eye over it every ten minutes to see if it is right.”
James says that, so far as he can understand my criticism of Miss
McGregor, that is just about what I expect her to do, otherwise why
can’t I make the dress myself like the poet makes his poem.
But it is well known that only unreasonable people achieve miracles.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] See chapter xiv.
_CHAPTER XIX_: THE LADY’S MAID
Louise was a treasure: more than that, she _is_ a treasure, for I have
her still, and love her the more since it became a certainty that she
would not marry Perrin. I forget whose fault it was that I got a maid
for myself. Probably Perrin was at the bottom of it; in fact, now I
come to think of it, I remember that I began to find it increasingly
difficult to get the upper housemaid to fold up my clothes after I had
dressed for dinner. That undoubtedly was owing to Perrin’s influence.
Before he came there was always plenty of amusement for the housemaid
in my room. She added finishing-touches to her hair in front of my big
looking-glass, she experimented with the pots and pans on the toilet
table, she tried on my hats--I came unexpectedly into my room one day
and noticed that she was putting away three hats which I had not worn
for a week. I remarked how annoying it was the way hats would hop
about a room, and apologised for the trouble they were giving her. She
covered me with moral dust and ashes by the pleasant smile with which
she answered, as she straightened her hair, that it was no trouble,
she enjoyed handling pretty things, so I was obliged to give her one
of the hats to show my repentance. After that I vowed that never again
would I trifle with sacred feminine instincts. She was so pretty I am
not surprised that Perrin sent for her in the evenings to talk to him
while he made George wash up, but it was very inconvenient for me.
I nearly asked him to let me have her for half an hour, and I would
tell the under housemaid to turn down the beds a little earlier, so
that she could sit with him until Lizzie was ready, and then I thought
that perhaps he might not like it, and I had better engage a maid of
my own. Besides, a maid would save having that bitty dressmaker in
the house; so Louise came. Why Perrin never took to her I did not at
first understand, though I accepted the fact with secret gratitude.
Louise is rather a horsy person and, I think, preferred walks with
the coachman to sitting in a stuffy room, even with Perrin’s wit to
lighten the atmosphere. Like all horsy people she has a quick, kindly
nature, and none of that touchy indigestion that spoils so many indoor
servants. She is an excellent dressmaker. The only times when I am not
well dressed are on the days preceding any race-meeting of importance;
then she loses her head and behaves like a feverish bird about to lay a
nest-egg.
“Mr. Jenkins’s Hardup seems to be a likely winner for to-morrow,
ma’am,” she says excitedly, brushing my hair with such energy that I
feel I ought to stand up and straighten my legs while she gets up a
good gloss.
“How much have you got on him, Louise?” I ask, setting my teeth.
“Well, ma’am, from what Mr. Pierce tells me of the way he is shaping,
according to to-day’s paper, I think I shall have a bit both ways; not
very much, of course; half a crown, I dare say.”
“You didn’t pick the winner for me last Newmarket as I told you. There,
I am sure that will do beautifully,” I say, trying to escape before
her state of mind leads her to throw a blanket over my hind quarters.
Some day she will do it, and I shall find it difficult to hit exactly
the right note in what I say. On the actual day of the race I can get
nothing done, from the time when she brings my tea in the morning and
forgets the hot water until the evening when she sends me, by the
altogether disapproving Perrin, a paper (with the day’s results marked
in a trembling hand) which she and Pierce have walked three miles to
buy. She begs to be excused, of course, and would I care to glance at
the news.
That is one side of Louise’s character. The other side is very
feminine: loves clothes, and scent, and money, and love-making. She
will never make what is called a good servant because I cannot teach
her not to enjoy her life, and I am bound to say I have not tried.
There is only one serious flaw in her so far as I am concerned, and
that is her passion for dogs. She began by throwing out hints that I
should keep a dog and, when these failed to take effect, she frankly
besought me to keep one. I said: “Louise, I have your master and the
two children. That is quite as much as I care to undertake.”
“Lord love you, ma’am,” she replied, “poor little darlings! you could
keep both, and I would look after him, indeed I would.”
“You can keep an entire pack if you like,” I said, “so long as you
chain them to your bed, and don’t let them dribble and roll over me.”
The poor thing was in ecstasies, and I learned that Mr. Pierce knew of
a splendid bull pup that was wanting a home.
“Remember,” I cautioned her, “if he goes within a mile of the
sewing-room he leaves the world, or at any rate this house, within
the hour.” She promised faithfully and, I believe, spent a sleepless
night planning how he should whittle away his noisy and disorderly
days. She asked me to suggest a name for him, and I said that it would
be a certain comfort and distraction to me if she called him Rose,
but she would not have that, because, in the first place, Rose was a
lady’s name, and he was nothing if not a real gentleman, and the smell
would soon wear off--she had not noticed it, in fact. I then suggested
“Gobble,” “Slop,” “Skid” (because I hated the way he slithered and
skated on the polished floors), “Nebuchadnezzar” (because his nails
were so long and dirty, and he was always choking over bits of grass),
“Keating” (because he appeared to be troubled with them), but she
rejected all these and called him Sam, because there was something in
his bloodshot eyes that reminded her of a favourite cousin who had died.
“That’s a good idea,” I agreed, “let us hope there is something in a
name after all. Did your cousin die of eating too much Limerick lace?”
“Oh, no, ma’am,” she said proudly, “he died of whooping-cough.” (I
have often thought that may be the matter with Sam, was my private
reflection.) “And as for the lace, I do hope, ma’am, you will overlook
that; it was quite a mistake of the poor boy’s. He was after a rabbit
just when I happened to have my work outside, and he was so excited he
never stopped to think.”