As a professional aunt must live somewhere, if only to simplify the
delivery of telegrams, it is as well perhaps to explain where I live and
why. The answer to the where, is London, and to the why, because it
is the best place for all professionals to live in. Many were the
suggestions that I should live in the country. Careful relatives and
good housewives saw a chance of cheap and fresh eggs, cheap and large
chickens, and cheap and freshly gathered vegetables, which showed, in
the words of Dr. Johnson, a triumph of hope over experience, for I have
always found that there are no eggs so dear as those laid by the hens of
friends, no chickens so thin as those kept by relatives, no vegetables
so expensive as those grown by acquaintances. But a professional aunt
would of course be expected to make special terms, although her hens,
like those of other people, would eat corn, and railways would charge
just the same for carrying her goods, whether they were consigned to
sisters-in-law or not, and the expense of the carriage is the reason
invariably given why things are so dear when bought from friends.
Friends, too, have a way of sending chickens with their feathers on,
whereas the chickens one knows by sight, laid in rows in poulterers'
shops, have no association with feathers. Don't you dislike the country
friend who asks you to spend a night, and then tells you at breakfast
that the pillow you slept on was filled with the feathers of departed
hens known and loved by her?
Then there was Nannie, and my living in London added a great importance
to her position. She became at once chaperon, housekeeper, counselor,
and friend. It was a great joy to her to think that she shielded me
from the dangers of London; and she would willingly have fetched me
from dinners and parties generally, and saw nothing incongruous in the
announcement, "Miss Lisle's nurse is at the door."
"Not that I should be at the door," said Nannie; "I never go anywhere
but what I am asked inside and treated as such." Nannie still thinks of
us as children, and will continue to do so, no doubt until she who has
rocked so many babies to sleep shall herself be enfolded in the arms of
Mother Earth--and tenderly bidden to sleep.
Personally I had a leaning toward a flat, so many of my friends told me
of the joys of shutting it up when one goes away, which, by the way, I
find they never, or very rarely, do. But Nannie didn't hold with flats.
It is curious what things people don't hold with. After reading of a
terrible murder in a railway carriage, I cautioned my little housemaid,
who was going home one Sunday, to be careful not to be thrown out of
a window. She replied, "I don't hold with girls who are thrown out of
windows."
Well, Nannie didn't hold with flats. To please me and to show her
open-mindedness, she went with me to look at flats, but there was a
tactless integrity about her criticism. I discovered that she judged of
everything from a nursery point of view; and when I ventured to suggest
that, as there were no children, a nursery was not of very great
importance, she said, "You never can tell." In this instance I felt I
could most distinctly tell, and wondered whether I might too tell Nannie
of something I didn't hold with. But I didn't. I remember once long ago
one of us asking Nannie if any one could have children without being
married, and Nannie answered in a very matter of fact voice, "They can,
dear, but it's better not." Anyhow, she didn't hold with flats. "There's
the porters for one thing," she said. That, of course, settled it, and
we looked at small houses.
"I suppose you will get married one of these days," she said, as we
stood on a doorstep waiting to be let in.
"Perhaps no one will have me," I said.
"Well, they might; people marry you least expect to. Look at Maria
Dewberry; you would never have--"
The door opened, or we will presume so, as my knowledge of Maria's
movements after her surprising marriage is nil.
Looking over houses is not without excitement, and certainly not without
surprises; but I was spared the experience some unknown person had who
came one day to see our house when we all lived in London, but happened
to be away. Having a house in the country, we very often did let the
London house, which accounts for the agent's mistake.
One day, just as Archie was going out, he found on the doorstep a
charming lady with a very pretty daughter.
"May we see over the house?" she asked.
"Certainly," said Archie.
He showed them all over the house, from cellar to garret. He says he
initiated them into the mysteries of the dark cupboard, and he says he
showed them everything of historic interest in the family. The daughter,
he vows, was tremendously interested. When they had seen everything and
Archie had brought them back to the hall, the charming mother said, "And
when is the house to let?"
"Oh! it's not to let," said Archie.
He says he assured them it was no trouble at all, etc.!
In every small house we went, Nannie trudged laboriously up to the
top, and I heard her murmuring, "Night, day," as she went backward and
forward, from one room to the other. At last we found a small house in
Chelsea of which she thoroughly approved. She couldn't exonerate the
agent from all blame in saying that there were views of the river from
the window. "Not but what there might be if we, leaned out far enough,
but we can't because of the bars." It was the very bars that had
attracted her in the first instance, from the outside. Bars meant a
nursery. Iron bars may not make a cage, but they undoubtedly make a
nursery.
She stood at the top window and looked out on the green trees, and a
blackbird was obliging enough, at that very moment, to sing a love-song.
Perhaps it was about nurseries, and Nannie understood it; at all events
she decided there and then to take the house. "Of course," she said, "I
know there's no nursery wanted, but I don't hold with houses that can't
have nurseries in them, if they want to." That gave me an idea! It came
like a flash. Nannie should have her nursery!
Of course this all happened some years ago, when the home at Hames was
broken up. With the help of Diana I managed it beautifully. It was kept
a dead secret. Diana collected, or rather allowed me to collect, all the
things Nannie had specially loved in the home nursery, which I am sure
cost Diana a pang, as she was very anxious her children should abide by
tradition and grow up among the things their father had loved as a boy;
but she sent them all, even the rocking-horse, to me for my nursery.
The walls I had papered just as our nursery had been papered. Even the
old kettle was rescued from oblivion, and stood on the hob. It was
so old that any jumble sale would have been pleased to have it. The
kettle-holder hung on the wall, with its cat on a green ground, which
had been lovely in the day of its youth. One of us had worked it; Nannie
of course knew which. The tea-set was there with its green, speckled
ground.
But while all this was being arranged, Nannie had a very bad time. It
was not for long, certainly, but she said it was pretty bad while it
lasted. To insure the complete secrecy of our nursery plan, we arranged
that she should go to Hames while we were doing it all, never thinking
of what she would feel on going into the Hames nursery and finding all
her treasures gone, and finding another woman reigning in her place; for
all through our grown-up years the nursery had been left for Nannie as
it had been when we were children. The nurse in her place hurt most.
"'Mrs.' here and 'Mrs.' there, certificated and teaching. It's all very
well, but I'm not sure they don't go too far in this teaching business.
No amount of teaching will--Well, it's there, so what's the use? I
expect Eve knew how to handle Cain right enough."
"He wasn't very well brought up, though, Nannie," I said.
"Poor child!" said Nannie. "How do we know it wasn't Abel's fault? He
may have been an aggravating child; some are born so, and I've seen a
child, many a time, go on at another till he's almost worried him
into a frenzy just saying, 'I see you,' over and over again, does
it sometimes. Children will do it, of course; besides, there were no
commandments then, and you can't expect children to do right without
rules and regulations. That's all discipline is, rules and regulations,
which is commandments, so to speak."
"You think, then, Nannie," I said, "that Eve forgot to tell Cain not to
kill Abel?"
"Well," said Nannie, "Eve had a lot to do; we can't blame her. She must
have had a lot to do. Think what a worry Adam must have been: he had no
experience, no nothing; he couldn't be a help to a woman, brought up as
he was, always thinking of himself as first, as of course he was! Now,
there's Parker--he is a good husband: he rolls the beef on Sunday to
save Mrs. Parker trouble, and prepares the vegetables; he is a good
husband, no trouble in the house whatsoever. He never brings in dirt,
Mrs. Parker says, wipes his feet ever so before he comes, on the finest
day just the same."
I thought the comparison a little hard on Adam, but still I didn't say
so, and Nannie reverted to the modern nurse, after informing me that men
and horses were sacred beasts!
"Well, about nurses, 'Mrs.' before a nurse's name doesn't soothe a
fretful child, nor make her more patient or loving. It might make her
less patient, if she took to wishing the 'Mrs.' was real instead of
sham; some women are like that, all for marrying. I dare say," said
Nannie, when going over her experiences, "my face did look blank when I
missed all my treasures, but f said nothing, although it was a blow when
I thought of all the lovely times you had had with that rocking-horse.
You remember the hole in it? Well, that was cut out solid because of all
the things that were inside that rocking-horse; almost all the things
that had been lost for years we found in that horse. My gold chain, for
one thing, to say nothing of other things. The tail came out, and that
is how the things got lost. The boys, always up to mischief, just popped
anything they came across down that hole and put in the tail again, so
no one knew anything about it. Well, then, your father lost something
very special, I forget what, and there was a to-do! And Jane said she
believed there was a power of things down that rocking-horse, so we got
Jane's sister's young man, who was a carpenter, or by way of being,
to come and cut out a square block out of the underneath--well, the
stomach--of that horse--and then we found things! Things we had lost
for years. Then we put the block back, and no one would have noticed
particularly, not unless they had looked. Well, that's what I missed,
the rocking-horse, but still I said nothing. Then we had tea out of new
cups, and still I said nothing, because tea-cups will get broken, and
you can't expect young girls to take care of cups like we did. The
kettle-holder was gone! Then Mrs. David came in. Oh! she is lovely and
like your mother in some ways,--the ways of going round and speaking
to every one,--and she laid her hand on Betty's head, just as I've seen
your mother do a hundred times on yours, and that was hard to bear.
Anyhow, it's a good thing it wasn't some one else who got Hames. There
's that to be thankful for. It begins with 'Z,' you know."
"Nannie!" I said.
"Z for Zebra," said Nannie.
When the new nursery was all ready, Nannie was sent for. A dozen times
that day I ran up that narrow staircase, and in the morning I laid the
tea to see how it would look, and it looked so pretty that I left it.
At four o'clock the fire was lighted and the kettle was put on to boil.
Nannie drove up in a four wheeler. I was in the hall to meet her.
She lingered to look at everything. She went round and round the
dining-room, up to the drawing-room, even into the spare room, but no
word of nursery. "Which is my room?" she said.
"It's upstairs," I said. "Won't you come and look at it?"
"There's no hurry, is there, miss?"
I could see it was the nursery floor she dreaded.
"Well, there is rather a hurry, Nannie," I said. "I am so anxious to see
if you like all the house."
At last I got her upstairs. I threw open the nursery door. It was too
sudden, no doubt. At the sight of the kettle, the rocking-horse, the
tea-set, she burst into tears.
"Dear, dear Nannie," I said, "it is your own nursery; it's all from
Hames."
She paused in her sobs. "The robin mug's wrong," she said, and she
moved it to the opposite side of the table; "he always sat there." "He"
applied to a little brother who had died, not to the mug.
"It's a very small nursery, Nannie," I said apologetically.
"Well, there are no children to make it untidy," she answered.
So Nannie and I settled down in our nursery, and through the darkening
of that first evening she talked to me of my mother. It seems to me very
wonderful how one woman can so devotedly love the children of another,
but was it not greatly for the love of that other woman that Nannie
loved us so much? It is her figure, I know, that Nannie sees when she
shuts her eyes and re-peoples the nursery in her dreams,--that lovely
mother, the center of that nursery and home; that mother so quick to
praise, so loath to blame, so ready to find good in everything, so
tender to suffering, so pitiful to sin!
"Tell me about her when she was quite young, Nannie," I said.
And Nannie talked on, telling me the stories I knew by heart and loved
so dearly; and then, I remember, she started up.
"What is it, Nannie?" I asked.
"I thought she was calling," she replied; "I often seem to hear her
voice."
Dear Nannie! I believe she is ready to answer that call at any moment,
for all the love of her new nursery.
That is how I came to live in London.