It is one sign of our advancing years, we must believe, that Pelleas
and I dislike to be laughed at. Our old servant scolds us all day long
and we are philosophical; but if she laughs at either of us Pelleas
grieves and I rage. Nichola’s “You’ll be laughed at for fashionable”
humbled me.
Pelleas, the morning sun shining on his hair, was picking dead leaves
from the begonias in the window and pretended not to hear.
I looked longingly at my white lady’s-cloth gown but Nichola was
already folding it away. It had ruffles of lace and a chiffon fichu and
was altogether most magnificent. I had had it made for a winter wedding
and as it had not been worn since, I was openly anxious to reappear in
it. And now on occasion of this visit to Cousin Diantha at Paddington
Nichola threatened me with remorse if I so much as took it with me. I
would be “laughed at for fashionable!”
However, Pelleas continuing to pick dead leaves in a cowardly fashion,
there would have been no help for me had not Nichola at that moment
been called from the room by the poultry wagon which drew up at our
door like a god from a cloud. Our steamer-trunk, carefully packed,
stood open before me with room enough and to spare for my white
lady’s-cloth gown.
“Pelleas!” I cried impulsively.
He looked round inquiringly, pretending to have been until that moment
vastly absorbed.
“If I put the gown in,” I cried excitedly, “will you strap the trunk
before she gets back?”
Pelleas wrinkled his eyes at the corners, and it was the look that
means whatever I mean.
In a twinkling the gown was out of its tissues and tumbled in place in
a fashion which would have scandalized me if I had been feeling less
adventuresome. Pelleas, whose hands could have trembled with no more
sympathy if he had been expecting to appear in the gown too, fastened
the straps and turned the key and we hurried downstairs. On the landing
we met Nichola.
“The trunk is strapped, Nichola,” said I firmly.
“You needn’t to hev done that,” she grunted graciously.
We passed her in guilty silence.
“If only there is actually a chance to wear the gown,” I confided to
Pelleas on the train that afternoon, “it will make it all right to have
taken it.”
“What a shocking principle, Etarre,” returned Pelleas, quite as if he
had not helped.
We were met at the Paddington station by something which Cousin Diantha
called “the rig.” It was four-seated and had flying canvas sides
which seemed to billow it on its way. From an opening in the canvas
Cousin Diantha herself thrust out a red mitten as the bony driver was
conducting us across the platform. Our Cousin Diantha Bethune is the
mince-pie-and-plum-pudding branch of our family. We can never think
of her without recollecting her pantry and her oven. And whereas some
women wear always the air of having just dressed several children or
written letters or been shopping, Cousin Diantha seems to have been
caught red-handed at slicing and kneading and to be away from those
processes under protest. She never reads a book without seeming to turn
the leaves with a cook knife and I think her gowns must all be made
with “apron fronts.”
“Ain’t this old times though?” she cried, opening her arms to me,
“ain’t it? Etarre, you set here by me. Pelleas can set front with Hiram
there. My!”
“The rig” rocked up the dingy village street with us, its only
passengers, buttoned securely within its canvas sails so that I could
see Paddington before us like an aureole about the head of Pelleas. But
if a grate fire had been a-light in that shabby interior it could have
cheered us no more than did Cousin Diantha’s ruddy face and scarlet
mittens. She gave us news of the farm that teemed with her offices
of spicing and frosting; and by the time we reached her door we were
already thinking in terms of viands and ingredients.
“What a nice little, white little room,” said Pelleas for example,
immediately we had set our lamp on our bureau. “The ceiling looks
like a lemon pie.” Verily are there not kitchen-cupboard houses whose
carpets resemble fruit jelly and whose bookcases suggest different
kinds of dessert?
Cousin Diantha was bustling down the stairs. She never walked as others
do but she seemed to be always hurrying for fear, say, that the toast
was burning.
“Baked potatoes!” she called back cheerily. “I put ’em in last thing
before I left, an’ Katinka says they’re done. Supper’s ready when you
are.”