'For him delicious flavours dwell
In Books, as in old muscatel,'
he's quite a decent landlord. There are no leaky roofs on his estate.
Daddy says it's because of his feudal mind. I don't know if that is why
the whole village seems like a family. We are interested in all the
cottage folk, and they in us, just as our fathers were before us. Uncle
Jasper looks after their material interests and Daddy saves their souls;
Ross bosses all the boys, and I cuddle the babies, while Aunt Constance
is like that lady in E. B. Browning's poem, whose goodness was that
nice, invisible sort. She too
'Never found fault with you, never implied
Your wrong by her right, and yet men at her side
Grew nobler, girls purer, as through the whole town
The children were gladder that pulled at her gown.'
Father is an Evangelical, but my Aunt Constance is what the village
people call a little 'high' in her religion. She would like flowers and
candles, too, in church, if daddy would have them, which he won't, and
she keeps the fast days, but unostentatiously. Yet she and father live
in harmony and love, and only laugh a little at each other!
But my cousin Eustace annoys me. He is so good and holy. He is short
and thin and pale and vacillating, and wears overcoats and carries an
umbrella. In fact, he is everything that his mother and father aren't.
Ross doesn't get on with him, and finds him 'tiring.' Daddy says he is
a throwback. I asked Eustace once if one of his ancestors could possibly
have been a nun as he is so like a monk himself. He said I was simply
abominable and wouldn't speak to me all day. In the evening he said he
was sorry, as quite obviously I didn't know what I was talking about.
Naturally I wouldn't speak to him then. Such a way to apologise!
Nannie was our old nurse, but since mother died she has been
housekeeper. She is a comfortable kind of person. Any one who is
tired, or cold, or hurt, or hungry, or very small is always Nannie's
'lamb,' though how the radiant six-foot-one and still-growing Ross can
come under that category I don't know, unless it's because he's always
hungry. But he has ever been, and is, and will remain, her 'lamb.'
Father is Uncle Jasper's brother and not an easy person to explain. He
is a handsome, great tall thing, and a mixture of Dante and horses,
dogs, humility, sport, and autocracy, but he is most adorable and has a
divine sense of humour. Aunt Constance says he is a mystic, but I don't
know what she means. I have never been able to understand how he came
to be a parson at all, for every inch of him is soldier. He has got a
temper, too, only he doesn't lose it when most people lose theirs. He's
dreadfully difficult about some things. He is so fastidious about
clothes, especially mine. I think his eyes must magnify like a
shaving-glass. He sees holes which are perfectly invisible to me. There
is in me a certain carelessness about the things that show (I _must_ be
perfect underneath), but a button off my shoe doesn't really worry me
unless the shoe comes off. A jag in my tweeds leaves me cold, and the
moral aspect of a hole in my glove doesn't weigh with me at all.
Besides, as I said to father one day when I was being rowed,--
'If I have a _hole_ in my skirt it would appear as if I had just torn
it, but if I have a darn it would look like premeditated poverty.'
My brother Ross is going into the army. He's awfully like father if you
leave out Dante and the humility part and shove in a perpetual bullying
of his sister. But he's not a mystic. Oh, dear, no! He loves this
world with all its pomps and horses, adores its vanities, its coloured
socks and handkerchiefs and ties. He is a radiant person with a great
capacity for friendship. He is nice to every one until a chap spills
things down his clothes, and then my brother slowly freezes and curls up
and is 'done with him.'
He and I do not always dwell together in harmony and love. We 'fight'
most horribly at times, but I adore him really, though I wouldn't let
him know it. It would be frightfully bad for him. I run my male things
on the truest form of kindness lines. They always loathe it.
And mother? Oh, I can't write about her at all, even though it's so
long since she died; she was half Irish and so pretty and so gay. She
fell off a step ladder one day when she was gathering roses, and Ross
found her unconscious, and that night she died. I couldn't understand
why a broken arm should kill her till daddy explained that the hope of
another little son went with her, too. Father's eyes have never looked
the same since; there is still a hurt look in them.
Then there's Sam. He is not a relative, but always seems like one; he
is the jolly boy who lives at Uncle Jasper's lodge and is Ross's
greatest friend and most devoted slave. Why, when Ross first went to
Harrow Sam ran away from home and turned up as the school boot-boy (and
got an awful licking from my brother for his pains), and now as Ross is
at Sandhurst he has got taken on there, too. He will do anything to be
within a hundred miles of Ross. I come in for a share of his devotion
because I am his idol's sister. What that boy doesn't know about
fishing, birds' eggs, and the Hickley woods isn't worth knowing. But
Sam has been known to turn and rend Ross for his good (I love to see him
doing it), just as Brown, Sam's father, who is head gardener at the
Manor House, turns and rends Uncle Jasper once every ten years or so,
when his ideas have become too archaic to be borne by any man who wants
to make some alterations to improve the gardens.
*CHAPTER III*
We have a family skeleton. It is my Aunt Amelia. She isn't illegitimate
or anything like that. This book is quite respectable. Nor is she
thin. She has a high stomach and is as proud as it is high. She always
wears black broche dresses, even the first thing in the morning. Nannie
says they are most beautiful quality and would stand alone. She adorns
herself with cameo brooches and rings with hair inside, and she wears
square-toed boots and stuff gloves that pull on without buttons. Daddy
says all Evangelicals do, except his daughter.
She has been a widow for many years. Indeed she only lived with her
husband six months from her virginity, and then he died of the
'Ammonia,' as the village children call it. My aunt never goes out
without her maid, Keziah, and she carries a disgusting 'fydo'
everywhere. She talks religion all day long, and quotes texts at
people. She brings out my prickles.
Father says that no one will know what a 'fydo' is, and that I am not to
be disrespectful, because she is a really good woman and has the
missionary spirit. Father is like that, he has a kind of humility that
won't let him say beastly things about any one. My brother is not so
particular. He used to say that he wouldn't let the chaps at school
know he had an aunt who talked about his soul like a little Bethel for
anything this world could offer him. Besides, I should have thought
that any one would know that a 'fydo' is any bloated dog of uncertain
ancestry that stinks and pants.
Our only other relative is daddy's cousin Emily. She lives in Hampstead,
next door but five to Aunt Amelia. Her parrot can say the collect for
the seventeenth Sunday after Trinity.
Cousin Emily is a spinster, but she has a grand passion in her life, and
it is animals. She will have nothing killed, with the result that her
house is overrun with mice and the garden's full of snails. She visits
the poor in the East End and gives away flannel petticoats at Christmas
large enough to fit the dome of St Paul's. The last time father stayed
there she caught a flea in the slums, but of course she couldn't destroy
it. She was greatly agitated and went about the house with the wretched
creature clasped in her arms, as it were, waiting for an inspiration as
to what to do with it. Finally she decided to put it on the cat's back,
and was quite happy till father wickedly said he did not think that
arrangement was fair on the cat.
Then she wished she had thrown it down the cellar stairs, but daddy
teased her and said, 'the poor thing might have broken its leg and lain
amid the wine bottles in anguish, unable even to help itself to brandy
or anything.' The poor old dear thereupon said, 'But, dear cousin, what
shall I do if I find another?' and her dear cousin advised her strongly
to let the house furnished.
But I like her awfully. So does Ross. He says she is a ripping old
bird. She gives us topping presents. She sent me two of the darlingest
white and fawn rabbits, exactly alike, when I was a kiddie. One was
called 'Nada the Lily' and the other 'dear Buckiebuckie,' but I found
the mental strain of life too great when I found ten little rabbits in
dear Buckiebuckie's cage. He seemed so pleased with them, too; that's
what worried me so. He didn't seem to know how wrong it was, and
neither did Nada the Lily, for she sat in placid indifference by her
empty nest box.
Aunt Amelia was staying with us at the time, so I asked her about it,
but she said it was not a nice thing for any little girl to talk about,
especially a clergyman's daughter. I shed tears then and ran out in the
woods, but Nannie followed me,--
'Oh, what an old fool the woman is; how much longer is she going to
stay? Don't you worry, dearie, 'tisn't the first time that a buck and
doe's got mixed, and won't be the last neither. I expect you got 'em
muddled when you cleaned them out.'
Thus Nannie brought a situation, electric with insuperable difficulties,
down to the level of homely everydayness, where I felt I could cope with
it. She is always like that. I changed dear Buckiebuckie's name then to
'Adam and Eve,' because he was the mother of all living and he'd 'ad em!
Somehow, when we were children there always seemed to be trouble when
Aunt Amelia was in the house. We always said dreadful things in front
of her, or else the things we usually said were noticed more.
The very first time she came to stay, when we were six years old, there
were two ructions in as many minutes.
We had a hen at that time called 'The Old Maid,' because she was of
uncertain age and used to peck the others, and as she hadn't earned her
board and keep we had her boiled for luncheon. It was some one's
birthday and we kids were allowed to lunch downstairs. Father carved
and in great disgust said,--
'Whatever bird is this?'
'"The Old Maid," daddy,' said Ross.
'Well, it doesn't seem to have much breast.'
'But then,' as my small brother remarked, 'you wouldn't expect an old
maid to have much, would you?'
I made the next _faux pas_, but it was kindly meant. Aunt Amelia
grumbled that she had been quite chilly in the night and hadn't been
able to sleep, so I said,--
'Mother, couldn't we search the parish for a young virgin for Aunt
Amelia like King David had when he was old and gat no heat?'
Father exploded into his tumbler. But Aunt Amelia said she had hoped
that I would grow up a good, pure woman like my grandmother. Daddy lost
his temper then and said he profoundly hoped his daughter wouldn't grow
up 'a good, pure woman' if it meant that----'
'Anthony!' said mother.
And father said 'Sorry, Biddy,' and asked Aunt Amelia if she'd have some
more bread sauce.
(Mother and daddy always called hot water bottles 'Young Virgins' after
that!)
After lunch we all went down to the lake, and going through the woods I
said something was 'infernal,' and there was a horrid silence. Daddy is
like that, he so seldom says anything. It's what he doesn't say that's
so beastly if he's displeased with one, so I said, 'Mustn't I, daddy?'
and he replied, 'I think you know quite well, darling.'
'But,' I expostulated, 'surely one might sometimes.' I looked round
that wood. 'Why, daddy, I might say we were in fernal regions now, look
at them all up that bank.'