I HAVE no “at home” day. I confess it reluctantly, knowing what a state
of social forsakenness this implies. But it is wonderful how you can
manage to occupy your time with the simple little duties of an editor’s
office, till you never feel the lack of greater events!
Not that I am cut off from acquaintances thereby; decidedly not. They
are kind enough to turn up on Saturday afternoons and take their chance
of finding me in; and when they do, with one accord they proceed to
pity me for all the “at homes” I’ve missed during the week, and they do
their best to make me bright and happy for the short half-holiday I am
able to take from work, while I just sit with my hands in my lap and
give myself up to being entertained.
I don’t do knitting on such occasions, unlike Miss Quirker who, when
I chance to call, remarks, “You’ll excuse my going on with this sock,
won’t you?—then I shan’t feel that I’m _entirely_ wasting my time!”
For weeks I had been feeling that, no matter what happened, I simply
must get away from London for a change of scene and a change of
noise—not a holiday; holidays had been out of the question for some
time past, with the major portion of the office staff at the front.
We had been postponing and postponing going away, feeling that it was
unpatriotic to be out of town when there was so much work to do. But
at last I decided some fresh air was imperative, and arranged to spend
a little time at my cottage on the hillside, Virginia and Ursula, my
two most intimate friends, accompanying me, as the Head of Affairs was
abroad on important business.
It seemed such long, long months since I had heard anything about the
Flower-Patch. True, I had left Mrs. Widow (the villager who is supposed
to look after the house in my absence) a bundle of stamped, addressed
envelopes, when last I was down, begging her to send me an occasional
letter, giving me news of the cottage, and telling me how the flowers
were getting on, and whether the rose arches had blown down, and when
the wild snowdrops in the orchard were in bloom, and if there were
many apples on the new trees we had planted, and whether the lavender
cuttings had taken hold, etc. I felt that a few details of this
description might help to keep my brain balanced amid the tumult and
terror of the War.
Mrs. Widow wrote regularly every month, and this is the type of letter
she always sent:—
“Dear Mam. i hope your well, my newralger has been
cruell bad but it is Better now. my daugters baby ethel
have two teeth. she is a smart Baby but do cry a lot.
Mrs Greens little girl have had something in her throat
taken out. doctor says its had a noise. John Green have
been called up but I expec you dont know none of them
As they lives 3 mile above Monmouth. Mrs Greens sister
lives to Cardiff she had a boy last week. i hope the
master is well. Its the Sunday School versary tomorror.
Thank you for the money. glad to say everything all
rite.
Yours
MRS WIDOW.”
I suppose the correct thing would be to call the letters “human
documents”; but as the humans mentioned in the documents are, as often
as not, people of whom I have never heard, the record of anniversaries,
illnesses, births, deaths, and marriages that she sends regularly each
month (as a receipt for cash received), are seldom either illuminating
or exciting. There was nothing for it but to go down and glean
impressions first hand.
It was known that I was going out of town the following week,
therefore a collection of callers had looked in, and they were doing
their utmost to “liven me up” one afternoon in February, and we were
having a lovely time explaining to each other how highly strung our
respective doctors said we were when they insisted that we must take a
complete rest. It appeared—after a lavish amount of detail—that we each
suffered from far too active a brain; I found I was by no means the
only one!
We also were most communicative about the brilliancy of our
children—not that we said it because we were their mothers, you
understand; fortunately, unlike other mothers, we were able to take
quite detached views of our own children, and regard them from a purely
impersonal standpoint; a great gain, because it enabled us to see how
really exceptional they were.
I was not expected to contribute anything under this heading, save
copious notes of exclamation on hearing what the various head masters
and mistresses had said regarding the genius of the respective
children. It was simply amazing to sit there and just contemplate how
indebted the world would ultimately be to these ladies, for having
bestowed such prodigies on their day and generation; for evidently
there wasn’t one of my guests who owned a just-ordinary child! No,
these young people were all the joy and pride of their teacher, and
the way all of them would have passed their exams, (if they hadn’t
also possessed too active brains, like their mothers), was positively
phenomenal.
There was one exception though—a boy at Dulwich, who was notorious for
his adhesion to the lowest place in the form. But his mother, not one
whit behind the others in her proud estimate of her son, confided to me
that, for her part, she shouldn’t think of allowing Claude to be high
up in the form. His ability was so marked, that the doctor said he must
at all costs be kept back. Besides, you always knew that a school that
put its brightest and most brilliant boys at the bottom of the class
never showed favouritism or forced the children unduly.
I agreed with her heartily, and then listened to the confidences
of another caller, a near neighbour (this one was without children,
brilliant or otherwise), who told me that she had felt it her patriotic
duty in war time to do all she could with her own two hands in the
house; she had therefore cut down her fourteen indoor servants to nine;
and she assured me she found that they could really manage quite well
with this small number. Of course I looked politely incredulous; who
wouldn’t, knowing that there was her husband as well as herself to be
waited upon?—and I raised my eyebrows interrogatively, as though to
inquire how she ever succeeded in getting even the simplest war-meal
served with so inadequate a staff! But before she had time to tell me
how she managed, the door opened and Mrs. Griggles was announced. And
as, whenever Mrs. Griggles is announced, it is the signal for everyone
who can to fly, I was not surprised to see furs and handbags being
collected, and in a few more minutes the newcomer and I had the drawing
room to ourselves.
Mrs. Griggles is a woman with, let us say, a dominant note; not that I
object to that; every woman nowadays simply must have a dominant note
if she is to keep her head above water (women’s war-work has proved
a boon in that respect), and some of them are more trying than Mrs.
Griggles’ pursuit of charity recipients. There is the moth-ball lady,
for instance, who’s perennial boast is that the moth never come near
_her_ furs; the nuisance is that no one else can come near them either.
Then there is the educational lady, who runs a serial story on the
iniquities of our educational methods. “The whole system is wrong,
abso-_lute_-ly wrong, from beginning to end,” she declaims. My one
consolation is, that she would be far less pleased if it were right,
since she would then have nothing to rail about.
But my greatest bugbear is the inquisitorial lady—generally eulogized
by the Vicar, when he is stuck fast for an adjective, as “_very_
capable.” She starts right away, in the middle of a piece of best
war-cake, with a clear cut inquiry such as: “Does your husband wear
striped flannel shirts under his white ones?” Hurriedly you try to
decide on the safest reply. But she has you either way! If you say Yes,
she explains how injurious it is to wear coloured stripes; they may be
a deadly skin irritant, for all you know. If you say No, she holds up
hands of amazement that any woman can neglect the man of her heart in
such a way, and instructs you in the necessity for his wearing flannel
in addition to his vests.
Mrs. Griggles is a mere picnic beside the inquisitorial lady, for at
least you know what her theme will be; whereas with the other you never
know where she will open an attack.
Mrs. Griggles’ mission in life is to be generous and charitable. “It
is so beautiful to feel that you have done another a kindness, no
matter how small,” she constantly remarks. And I’ll say this for Mrs.
Griggles, I never knew anyone able to do so many kindnesses in the
course of the year—at other people’s expense! And I never knew anyone
more generous—with other people’s possessions.
Where her own belongings are concerned, she is the very soul of rigid
economy; why they didn’t co-opt her on to the War Savings Committee I
cannot understand.
Only once has she been known to give away anything of her own, and
that was a paper pattern of a dressing jacket that she cut out in
newspaper from the tissue original which she had borrowed from a friend.
Whenever I see the lady looming in the offing, I find myself mentally
running over my wardrobe, to see what coat or skirt I can spare for
the sad case she is probably just starting in a hairdresser’s shop; or
wondering whether I have any sheets for a sick woman; or whether the
stock of knee-caps I purchased at the last Bazaar is quite exhausted;
or whether the kitchen would rebel if she does send every week for the
tea-leaves; or whether I’ve given away all the Surgical-Aid letters.
You never know what request she will make. Yet she doesn’t irritate
me, as she does some people, simply because I regard her as a
Charity-Broker; her work is distinctly useful, and, up to a certain
point, praiseworthy, if she didn’t make quite such a song about her own
benevolence and ignore the part in it played by other people.
She saves my time by hunting out cases that may, or may not, need help;
and if she glows when she bestows my money or my boots upon them—well,
I glow too, with the thought of my own kindness and beneficence. And
anything that can make anybody glow in this vale of tears, isn’t to be
despised.
Of course I wasn’t surprised when she began, with her second mouthful,
“By the way, dear, I’ve _such_ a distressing case I’m needing a little
help for; really quite _heart_-breaking.”
I’d heard it all before, and instantly decided that my mackintosh
could go; it was rather too skimpy for the fuller skirts that the
season had ushered in. Likewise the plaid blouse; the pattern was very
disappointing now it was made up; piece goods are so deceptive. And I
would gladly part with the vermilion satin cushion embroidered with
yellow eschscholtzias, that had lain in a trunk in the attic since the
last Sale of Work but two, if the distressing case could be induced to
believe that it needed propping up in bed. But the rest of my goods I
meant to cling to with all the tenacity of a war-reduced woman with no
separation allowance. I hadn’t one solitary woollen garment to spare,
no matter _how_ rheumaticky the heartbreak might be.
But it turned out that it wasn’t clothes she was wanting, at least,
only as a side issue. Her main need was for a few weeks of fresh air,
a happy home, plenty of good plain food and good influence (this last,
she told me, was _most_ important, and that was why she had thought at
once of coming to me) for a girl who had just had a bad break-down,
through overwork and underfeeding in a cheap-class boarding house where
she had been the maid of all work. Nothing the matter with her that you
could put your finger on, but just a general slump—though Mrs. Griggles
put it more choicely than that.
The girl’s biographical data included: a grandmother who attended Mrs.
Griggles’ mothers’ meeting regularly, though she had to hobble there,
one of the cleanest and most respectful women you could ever hope to
meet; a mother who had died in the Infirmary at her birth, a father who
had never been forthcoming, and an upbringing in the workhouse schools.
I hadn’t been exactly planning to take on an orphan at that time: they
are proverbial for their appetites, and the butcher’s book hadn’t led
my thoughts in that particular direction, any more than the dairyman’s
weekly bill. All the same, when Mrs. Griggles showed me how plain my
duty lay before me, naturally I said: “Send her and her grandmother
round to see me this evening.” I was even more anxious to see the
grandmother than the girl; for I had long ago given up all hope of ever
meeting again such a phenomenon (or perhaps it should be phenomena,
being feminine) as a woman who was clean as well as respectful!
* * * * *
They arrived promptly. The grandmother seemed a sensible, hard-working
body, who had migrated from Devonshire to London when she married; for
over forty years she had lived, or rather existed, in the back-drifts
of our great city with never a glimpse of her native village. Yet——
On my writing table there stood a bowl of snowdrops, in a mass of
sweet-scented frondy moss, with sprigs of the tiny-leaved ivy; they had
arrived only that morning from the Flower-Patch among the hills. When
she saw them, the old woman clasped her hands with genuine emotion.
“Oh, ma’am, _how_ they ’mind me of when I was a girl!” she exclaimed.
“And with that moss and all! Why, I can just feel my fingers getting
all cold and damp as they used to when I did gather them in the lane
’long by our house—it seems on’y yesterday, that it do!” and tears
actually came to her eyes.
I decided on the spot that her granddaughter should have the freshest
of air and the best of food (to say nothing of unlimited good
influence) for the next month, at any rate.
As for the granddaughter herself, I think she was the most utterly
dejected, forlorn, of-no-account-looking girl I have ever set eyes
on. She told me she was twenty (though her intelligence seemed about
fourteen), and her name was Eileen. It was noticeable, however, that
her grandmother, in the fit of reminiscent absent-mindedness occasioned
by the snowdrops, called her Ann.
It wasn’t that she looked ill; hers was an expression of hopelessness;
the look that comes to a young thing from a course of systematic
unkindness from which it has neither the wit nor the courage to escape.
Since she had left the Parish Schools, she had apparently drifted
from one place to another, each worse than the last. Fortunately her
grandmother had kept a firm hold of her, and had done her best to keep
her clean—both in body and mind; but her whole appearance said as
plainly as any words, that no one else had ever taken the slightest
personal interest in her, or given her anything to hope for.
Her hair was screwed round in a small tight knot in the nape of her
neck, and kept there by two huge hairpins the size of small meat
skewers; her dress was merely a dingy-black shapeless covering, not
even a fancy button to brighten it; her hat was a plain all-black
sailor. She had that blank, dazed look that one so often sees when
lower-class children are brought up in masses, where individual
attention is impossible.
I told them that I was going down to the West of England the following
week, and if she thought she could stand the quiet, and the absence of
shops and people, Eileen could come for a month, and just breathe the
fresh air and do her best to get strong.
She was genuinely delighted—there was no mistake about that. She
seemed quite to wake up, and became almost animated at the thought of
going into the country. _That_ was the thing that appealed to her; and
she looked at me with open-eyed amazement when I told her that the
snowdrops grew wild in the orchard there.
In the orchard? And might she pick a few for herself and send one or
two to her grandmother? Wouldn’t “they” mind if anyone picked some? She
had never seen a violet or a primrose growing wild in her life, though
she had always wanted to.
And she and her grandmother looked and smiled at each other with some
new bond of sympathy.
Heredity will out!
“But,” said the grandmother firmly, almost ashamed of her own
sentimental lapse of the minute before, “of course she will work,
ma’am, and work well—or she’s no granddaughter of mine!—in return for
your great kindness in having her. She can’t pay you in money, but she
can work, and I hope you’ll find her very useful. You’ll do your best
for the lady, won’t you, Ann?”—most severely to the girl.
“Yes, grandmother,” she replied, dropping back into an attitude of meek
dejection. “Of course I’ll do my _very_ best.”
I told them there was no need for her to do more than make her own
bed. Abigail would be there to do all I needed. But the girl protested
she should be happier if she had proper work to do, if only I could
find something I wanted done; and her grandmother insisted that she
hoped she knew her place, and it wasn’t a lady she was born to be, and
therefore I must see that she didn’t sit with her hands idle.
So I said she and the housemaid must settle it between them, and I
summoned Abigail to be introduced to Eileen, and explained that they
would be spending the next week or two together.
Abigail listened, I presume, though her gaze was on the curtain-pole at
the far end of the room; and she finally departed with neither look nor
word that betrayed the slightest consciousness of Eileen’s existence;
Eileen meanwhile looked nervously frightened and more dejected than
ever.
* * * * *
I was by no means surprised when Abigail sought me out next morning
to inquire, if it was all the same to me, might cook go down to the
country this time, in her stead? as her sister was expecting to be
married immediately—well, it might be next week, or the week after, or
next month; she couldn’t say exactly; it all depended on when her young
man got leave. But naturally she, Abigail, wanted to be present at the
wedding; and one couldn’t get up in half-an-hour from Tintern! In any
case, she was having a new dress made, in readiness for the event, and
wanted to go to the dressmaker next Friday.
It would be a most inhuman person who sought to part a girl and her
sister’s wedding; naturally I said on no account must she be away from
London on such an occasion—and please send cook to me.
She came, with pursed lips.
Of course, if Madam wished her to go down to the country, Madam had
only to give instructions, etc.—the inference being that whenever Madam
gave instructions, crowds flew to carry them out!
But her left ankle had been very troublesome lately; Madam probably
remembered that it was all due to the time she turned her foot under
on the rough path in the lower wood the very last occasion she went
down. She had thought of asking for a couple of hours off, to go to
the doctor about it to-morrow; but of course, if there wasn’t time for
that, etc.——
February in the country never did agree with her; always gave her hay
fever, she was never herself for six months after; still, if I wished
her to go next week, etc.——
Only, there was one point on which she would be glad of a clear
understanding before she went: _was she expected to wait on that young
person?_
I told her, no; and she need not wait on me either. I shouldn’t take
either of them down with me. I left it at that—to her surprise.
Then I sought out Eileen and her grandmother, asked if she felt she
could make the fires and wash up, if Mrs. Widow and I did all the rest;
as, if so, I should pay her at the same rate that I paid Abigail. You
should have seen the look of relief that came over her face when she
heard Abigail was not going.
“Oh, I could do _everything_,” she said. “I’d so much rather do it
and be by myself. I’m very strong; and I’m afraid I might upset Miss
Abigail.”
“_Miss_ Abigail!” snorted the old grandmother. “Has to earn her living
same as the rest of us, I suppose! But I’m much more easy in my mind,
ma’am, that Ann is going without her. She’ll look after you well, she
will; you’ll want nothing, her’ll see to that” (slipping back into her
old-time Devonshire), “but she’s not bin used to stuck-up society.”
Thus it came about that instead of the fashionably-attired and
efficient Abigail, I eventually went down to my cottage accompanied by
a girl who looked precisely like an estimable orphan, just stepped out
of some Early Victorian Sunday-school library book; and you felt sure
she would come to an equally virtuous end.
Nevertheless, I didn’t go the following week, as I had planned.