Just at this point he made an opportunity to suggest that in view
of the shocking workmanship revealed in the pipes outside, it would
certainly be wise of me to have the pipes overhauled all through the
house, because one could never tell when one might burst without a
moment’s notice, and a flood of water ruin everything. It would only
necessitate his taking up the floors in the dining-room and the study
and the hall and the kitchens and the greenhouse next the house,
and possibly a landing and bath-room and dressing-room upstairs. As
it was, the pipes might be leaking terribly under the ground-floors
already, disseminating damp and disease throughout the house (though
the servants and I were particularly healthy at the time). There was
a terrible amount of illness about, he continued; next door to him
a little boy had whooping-cough, and the local undertaker, a friend
of his, had just told him trade had never been better; although they
were working day and night they could hardly manage to execute all the
orders. Of course, all this was primarily due to damp.
Even as he spoke he pressed his ample foot so heavily on the hall
floor, that but for a stout linoleum I feel sure he would have gone
through; then he said it looked to him very much as though dry rot had
set in there already, and it would probably be necessary to re-floor
the hall.
In vain I reminded him that it had rained without cessation—so far as
my distraught memory served me—for the past eighteen months, hence
_dry_ rot would seem little short of a miracle. But he only looked at
me in that pitying way builders do when any feminine owner of property
ventures a remark; and he next asked if I had noticed signs of damp
anywhere in the upstairs room? After all, the upstairs pipes might be
leaking too.
Then I remembered, and I told him there undoubtedly was damp upstairs,
now he mentioned it, one patch about two feet square, and another
smaller one. He was instantly alert, said it would certainly be one of
the pipes leading from the cistern; most dangerous, too, for you never
knew when the whole cistern might be flowing down over everything. So
I took him up and showed him the big wet patches on a ceiling, one
dripping with a melancholy hollow sound into a zinc bath Abigail had
placed below; they were on the ceiling directly under that portion of
the roof where his men had played golf each morning, the cistern being
in another part of the house, and no pipes were anywhere near.
He became silent, and I left him meditating, while I went down to see
Virginia, who had come in.
“Ursula and I have been making plans for you,” she began, “as you seem
too distracted to make any for yourself.”
“Distracted! I should think I am; so would you be if you had the
cheerful prospect of a cistern emptying itself on top of you at any
moment—that is to say, if it ever gets full again—and the whole of the
downstairs floor to come up, and dry-rot in the hall, and the Law down
on you because you’ve been harbouring an alien stop-cock, and exactly a
pint of water in the house (apart from that which is coming in through
the roof, of course), and whooping-cough and a watery grave just ahead
of you, and the undertaker too busy to bury you!”
“Just listen to me,” she said soothingly. “You are probably not aware
that you have got the back of your skirt fastened somewhere about your
left hip, and the braiding that ought to be down the centre in front,
is just at your right hand. Now when a woman puts on her clothes like
_that_, it’s a sure sign she needs a little rest. Therefore I’m going
to take you right off to the cottage first thing to-morrow morning;
I’ve told Eileen to be ready; and Ursula is coming in here to assume
charge of affairs till such time as those amiable British workmen see
fit to remove themselves.”
I protested that I was far too necessary to the well-being of London
to be spared at the moment, and widespread havoc would result if I
left town at this juncture. By way of reply, she asked if I would take
some linen blouses with me, as well as my thicker things, in case the
weather turned warmer? And then she summoned Abigail to help her do my
packing.
Next morning, as I was being tenderly placed in the one and only cab
our suburb now possesses, the whole battalion of workmen, embroidered
and otherwise, paused respectfully in the midst of further excavations
and a vastly extended scheme of earthworks they had started upon; and
I saw a look on the face of the Chief Official that plainly said he
considered they were removing me to an asylum none too soon!