'Please meet the 11.20 train.'
So the family turned up at the station _en masse_, but instead of the
lady we expected, there descended from the guard's van a beautiful and
dignified Great Dane with a label round his neck.
'For Meg's baronial hall. A thank-offering, sent with "Hove from a
modern Lussy."'
Or, at any rate, that's what it looked like. Monica does write so badly.
The Gidger kissed the thank-offering promptly, and was rewarded with a
large lick.
'Oh, _don't_ wash me with your flannel,' she exclaimed.
Then we all introduced ourselves, and Ross observed as he edged away
from a very wet tongue,--
'He must be first cousin to the dog in the Bible that was so kind to the
poor beggar; you'd better call him "Moreover," after him, Meg.'
'What dog, and what beggar?' I asked.
'Gracious, child, for a Bishop's daughter you don't know much Church
history, and haven't you heard that old chestnut either? Why, when
Lazarus was laid at the rich man's gate, Moreover, the dog, came and
licked his sores.'
Our Moreover is a splendid person. Directly he arrived at the house he
walked into the hall, and laid himself down by the great open fire, and
looked positively Elizabethan.
On the way home Ross dashed into the post office to send some telegrams.
'Aren't I a fool never to have thought of it before,' he said fervently,
but what he hadn't thought of he declined to say, so I just agreed with
the fool part.
After luncheon I slipped over to see Mrs Williams. The curate opened the
door himself, looking haggard, with black rings round his eyes and
yesterday's beard still on his chin.
'I called to inquire for Mrs Williams and to bring her some flowers and
grapes. I hope she's better,' I said.
His hand shook as he took the little basket. 'How kind of you, won't you
come up and see my wife, she's a little better to-day, but I have been
up with her all night. I've just taken her some tea. I'll fetch
another cup.'
'Please don't bother about tea for me,' I said. 'I'm sure your maids
will have enough to do.'
'We haven't any maids.'
'But who is doing for you, then?'
'I do the best I can,' and he opened the bedroom door. If you could
have seen that room and its little white-faced occupant. There was no
carpet on the floor, no fire, though it had turned quite cold. It was
all very clean, but, oh, the poverty of it. The poor little woman was
propped up with two thin pillows and a sofa cushion, and had beside her
a cup of half-cold tea and a bit of bread and margarine.
'Oh, Alfred, you oughtn't to have let Mrs Ellsley up. I'm not tidy,'
and she patted her hair and smoothed out the crumpled sheet.
'You look quite sweet,' I said, 'but I'm afraid you aren't well, and as
you have no maids is there anything I can do for you both; what does the
doctor say?'
'I haven't had the doctor.'
'She won't let me fetch him,' said her husband, 'though I have begged
her to.'
'Oh, but do let me send, Mrs Williams. I am sure you ought to see him.'
'No, no,' she cried, getting very agitated, 'I shall be better in the
morning.'
So I sat with her a little while and chatted and then tried once more
about the doctor, but in vain. She would 'be better in the morning.'
'But, Mrs Williams, it would ease your husband's mind so; do tell me why
you won't.'
Then, because she was so very tired and weak and ill, at last she told
me. She had had attacks of internal pains several times during the
winter, and the expense and medicine had used up all their little
savings, and with a burst of bitter tears she said they owed five
pounds, and had nothing more of value they could sell; and so on--all
the piteous tale--of high prices and an income so minute that only by
the most careful management and hard work could it be made to do in
ordinary times. Gradually all the little jewels had gone and bits of
plate, the food had been cut down, and she had had to turn her clothes
and patch and mend and work till all her strength had gone, and now that
she was ill it was 'All too much for Alfred.' The poor little soul
turned faint and sick then from sheer exhaustion and lack of food. I
sent her Alfred flying out for milk: there was only tinned stuff in the
house, 'it went farther,' and with a reckless hand I beat up their only
egg, which he informed me anxiously he had been saving for her
to-morrow's dinner. And then I flung the last few drops of brandy in
the glass and made her drink it all and eat some tiny sandwiches, and a
few grapes. The food revived her and a scrap of colour came into her
cheeks.
'Now,' I said sternly, 'I'm going to fetch a cab, and roll you up in
blankets and take you to my house and nurse you up a bit.'
Of course she protested, said it was impossible.
'Why?' I demanded.
Oh, heaps of reasons, gave a few, hadn't a clean nightie, for one thing,
she had only two and had been too ill to wash the other. She had so
hoped there would have been some in the last parcel from the Charitable
Clothing Fund.
'But I have simply dozens,' I wailed. Yes, I know, there wasn't an
ounce of tact in that remark, but I was thinking of my own luxurious
room, fires every night, all the pettings and scoldings I get if I'm not
well, and how nobody asks me if I will have the doctor or takes the
slightest notice of me if I say I won't, and of all the clothes I'd got
and the general and disgusting air of affluence there is about the
family. I hated myself and all my relatives. Yes, I did, the whole
blessed lot of them.
'But I couldn't leave my husband,' said Mrs Williams.
'Of course, he's coming too, my spare room is crying out for visitors.'
'But we are strangers, you can't take us in like this.'
'But it was "a stranger and ye took Me in," He said. Oh,' I continued,
throwing grammar to the winds, 'why didn't He tell a person what to do
when the stranger won't be took in.'
She laughed at that and then consented. So I flew home and told the
tale to Ross and Nannie in the nursery.
'Poor young thing,' said Nannie, 'but she'll soon get better here.' So
I sent the Gidger flying to the Titmouse for heaps of flowers, and the
S.P. scuttling round to get the spare room ready for her and the
dressing-room for him, and the Stench off on a bicycle to ask the doctor
to look in, and 'My 'Ilda' for a cab. After that I said to Nannie,
'Come and help me look out some things for her, nighties and something
pretty to sit up in.'
And then I turned to my brother, who was sitting silently.
'Why, Ross, I couldn't do anything else? You don't mind Mr Williams
coming, do you?' Suddenly his Irish grandmother came on top, and he
exploded violently and unexpectedly in that way he has.
'What a system,' he stormed, 'what a church, that can so sweat its
ministers that their families have not enough to eat, and gentlefolk are
reduced to wearing other people's old clothes and being glad to get
them. It's enough to make one sick, and I suppose they call it "holy
poverty." It wouldn't make me feel very holy to see my wife hoping some
beastly society would send her an old nightgown and have the cheek to
call it charity. Surely if it's necessary to help the clergy at all we
ought to give the best we can, as if we were giving to Him. Anyway, I
won't have you give Mrs Williams your old clothes, Meg. If it wasn't
that Michael was so disgustingly well off it might be you. Thank
goodness I've got plenty of money; here, buy her all she wants and if it
isn't enough tell me,' and he pitched into my astonished hands all the
loose money from his pockets and a note-case stuffed with notes. 'And
then you ask me if I mind,' he stormed, 'when the boot is on the other
leg. He may mind meeting me. I wasn't decently civil when he called
the other day, sneered at him because he looked unbrushed, when he'd
probably been up all night. Why, I'm not fit to black his boots. It's
all my accursed temper and my damnable pride.' And he flung out of the
nursery into his own room and slammed the door.
'Oh, Nannie,' I said, 'isn't he funny? he hasn't been in such a bate for
years; of course I never meant to give her my old clothes.'
'Of course you didn't, dearie, he'll remember in a minute, don't you
fret.'
'Shall I go after him and tell him so?'
'Oh, I should let him bide, poor lamb.'
'So I let him 'bide,' though anything less like a lamb than Ross at that
moment wasn't conceivable.
We smuggled out some nighties, so that the maids shouldn't see, and a
blue dressing-gown, and a little quilted coat to match, and some soft
blue shoes, and a cap or two, and a shawl and pretty things like that to
suit an invalid, and when I got to Mrs Williams's house I packed them
all in her own suit-case and brought her in a cab to Gidger's Cottage.