DOT AND LARRIE FALL OUT
'And though she is but little, she is fierce.'
The cottage was a delightful place. It was built of weatherboard, not
the kind that overlaps, but that with a groove between each board. The
verandah was very wide and ran round the four sides; that was Larrie's
great extravagance when he improved the place.
'Where's a fellow to smoke when it's hot or wet if there isn't a decent
verandah?' he said.
He and Dot had walked miles upon it in the early months of the year, he
with his pipe in his lips and a look of great content in his eyes, she
with her hands linked at the back of her neck or slipped around his
arm.
There was a profusion of hammocks and lounges and chairs that made you
lazy to look at them. That was Dot's extravagance. On one side the outer
wall was of yellow and white roses that flowered eternally, on another,
wistaria with delicate down-dropping blooms. The third--the kitchen
side--was passion-vines, and the fourth was clear, and showed a grand
sweep of country, and all the Sydney vista.
There was a narrow hall and a painted front door, on either side of it
long French windows opening, one into the dining-room, the other into
Dot's beautiful little drawing-room.
She had spent a week thinking out the furnishing of that room, and
nearly all her mother's wedding-present cheque upon it.
'No, I won't have a carpet,' she said when her mother was dwelling upon
the advantages of Brussels over Wilton pile, 'and no, I won't have felt,
it's too stuffy looking; and if you buy me a proper tapestry suite I
shall set fire to it. In India people furnish sensibly, but in
Australia, which must be nearly as hot, they do everything in English
style.'
The little mother ceased her suggestions, and Dot worked her own will
with really charming effect.
The room was rather low, and the walls and ceiling tinted a delicate
green. There was a large centre square of white matting, fringed at the
edge and a border of pale green around it. The three French windows had
long soft curtains of white with pale green frills. No two chairs were
alike. They were of rattan and pith, and bamboo in quaint shapes. One
had a flat sea-green cushion of plush, one a triangular one of silk with
frills of coral pink; there was a lovely pith sofa lounge, wide,
inviting, with a pile of pillows in cool Liberty silk. In a corner the
piano stood, a beautiful instrument though very plain. It was not draped
in art muslin, and it had no photos or _bric-à-brac_ on it to jingle and
spoil the wonderful music Dot brought forth from it. A great lamp stood
beside it with a green crinkled paper canopy, restful to the eye.
In another corner there was a low bookcase running along the wall;
volumes of Browning caught the eye, Tennyson, William Morris, Shelley,
Keats, all the gods.
There was a sandal wood writing-table, with silver handles and silver
equipments, a silver lamp with a rose-leaf shade, and a photo of baby in
a silver chased frame.
There was not a tambourine on the walls, not a single fan pocket, not a
plaque. Half-a-dozen pictures perhaps, bits of exquisite colouring
chiefly in long narrow gold frames; a sunset at Manly Lagoon, a bit of
the Kanimbla valley, with summer upon it, a water colour of the road
above Mossman's Bay, a woman's face, pale and unspeakably beautiful,
painted against a background of purple velvet, some chrysanthemums,
tawny yellow and brown.
One or two engravings as well. 'Wedded' in an oak frame hung over the
piano. Dot said the man was Larrie's very counterpart; when she sang she
used to look up at it and feel glad he was her husband. On a tall easel
on a table there was the 'Peacemaker.' Larrie said the little girl was
Dot. There were bits of quaint china on the little tables, and a few
photographs, not many. Flowers there were in all possible places.
Daffodils and spiky leaves in the windows, roses and 'shivery' grass on
the tables, low vases of violets and primroses, tall ones of jonquils.
Dot dusted this room herself every morning, then before she could put
the duster away, the piano would tempt her, and the rest of the house be
forgotten. But for Peggie what a place it would have been!
Peggie was a real Cornstalk. She was fully five-feet-eleven, and had
impossibly long arms and an impossible number of freckles. But she had
also all a Cornstalk's warm, honest heart; she was devoted to Dot and
Larrie, and absolutely worshipped the baby. She made no better a servant
as far as work went, than the average untrained Australian girl; but she
was wonderfully learned in the ways and wants of babyhood, and so was
invaluable to Dot who was absurdly ignorant. When Larrie had engaged
her twelve months ago at a Sydney registry office, he had asked her
name.
'Marjorie Dorothy Pegerton,' she said.
'Ah!' said Larrie, 'that's a high day and holiday name, shall we say
Mary on week days?'
'Marjie, some folks call me,' she answered. 'Or there's Dolly--I'm not
particular--you can even call me Peg if you like, Mr--what was it the
gentleman said your name was?'
'Armitage,' said Larrie, 'and let us decide on Peggie; it is unique, and
altogether charming in these days.'
They were both very fond of Peggie, she was the stay of the cottage in
all domestic affairs--it would have fallen to pieces but for her, and
the baby--well there is really no knowing what would have happened to
that same baby had it not been for Peggie.
Larrie generally minded the baby on Thursday mornings. It was Thursday
morning now. Peggie was doing her routine work for that time, scrubbing
the bare pine floors of the bedrooms. Larrie and Dot both hated carpets.
Larrie was smoking his third postprandial pipe, and was pacing up and
down one side of the verandah; he would have liked to have gone the
whole distance, but then there was the baby.
It was lying in a hammock in a nest of pillows, and looking with calm,
large gaze out into all the world that appeared through a gap in the
rose creeper. There was the pink flush of recent sleep on its little
soft cheeks, and its hair, the softest, warmest gold in the world, was
all tumbled and curly with washing. It had a wonderful amount of hair
for so young a child, and Dot's pride in it was forgivable, for nearly
all the babies of her acquaintance were bald.
Have you ever kissed a baby's neck? Was ever anything so warm and white
and velvety? The neck of Dot's baby was absolutely beyond description.
Its mouth was red, bowshaped. Sometimes it gave wide wet touches on
Dot's cheeks, and she would whisper excitedly to Larrie that it was
kissing her.
Such wonderful, wondering eyes it had, intensely blue, intensely
earnest. There had been moments when Larrie felt he would give his soul
to know just what his baby was thinking of.
Did you show it a beautiful flower or a low hanging silver moon, a
picture, something bright with colour? it seemed to be looking away far
beyond them and smiling in a faint sweet way, because it saw fairer
things than ever you dreamed of.
Its hands--well, perhaps they were like most babies' hands, but neither
Dot, nor Larrie, nor Peggie, nor the little mother would have allowed it
for a moment. They were like the inside of a flushed, curled, rose-leaf,
and when they closed round your finger, you felt how strangely sweet,
and soft and warm they were. From the long open window came the sound of
Dot's voice, singing. The baby was listening as it lay in the hammock.
Larrie was listening as he smoked, though in a half reluctant way.
When little souls are born, just before they come to us from the
wonderful place of souls, they have to do with a lottery. To a thousand
little blind struggling souls, there are half-a-dozen great good gifts.
Nine hundred and ninety-four draw blanks, but the band of six come down
to us blessed, rejoicing. Dot had been of the six. She had drawn a
voice. Generally Larrie rejoiced because of it.
Not this morning, however. He had been brooding lately over Dot's
deficiencies, and he almost wished she had been of the nine hundred and
ninety-four. For one thing, he could have walked all the four sides of
the verandah if she had been. The thought rankled.
'Dot,' he called in 'a voice.'
Only little bursts of melody answered him. She was singing a rippling
song of Schubert's; it was in keeping with the warm, soft air outside,
the twittering of birds, the faint motion of the gum leaves.
'Dot!' he shouted.
She put a curly little head between the window curtains.
'Well, Larrakin?' she said.
'Come and mind the baby,' he said shortly, 'I want to smoke.'
'But baby doesn't mind smoke at all--do you, small sweet?' she said,
going over to the hammock. 'Oh Larrie, look how uncomfortable he is,
you're a nice one to look after him; and where's his comforter? he'll
have no thumb left presently.'
'I threw it away,' Larrie answered, 'all that indiarubber can't be good
for him, I don't intend him to have another.'
'Stupid!' said Dot. She kissed the baby, tickled it, tossed it, then
laid it down again.
'What did you call me for,' she said. 'I was just enjoying myself.' Her
eyes still had the look of being away in the spheres. 'He's all right
there and it's your turn to mind him, Larrie. I walked him about for an
hour in the night.'
She moved to go in again.
'Stop here when I tell you, and mind him,' he said in an unpardonable
voice.
Dot gave him a surprised look.
'You forget yourself, Larrie,' she said quietly.
She went in and her fingers wandered into the quiet, calm music of one
of Mendelssohn's gondola songs. But she took it in rather hurried time.
Larrie disturbed her when he had this mood on. He came behind her and
lifted her hands off the keyboard.
'Go and mind the child this minute.' The flame in his eyes showed itself
instantly in hers.
'How dare you speak to me like that!' she said.
'Go and mind the child,' said Larrie.
Dot crashed a passionate chord on the piano, she lifted her right hand
for a brilliant run. But Larrie picked her up in his arms and put her
outside on the verandah near the hammock. Then he went in and closed the
drawing-room door behind him.
By the time she had flown round through the dining-room he was locking
the piano.
'How _dare_ you!' Dot said in trembling fury. 'My piano! give me that
key instantly.'
'Go and mind your child,' he said. He was stooping a little, for the key
stuck, since it was never used; his head was almost on a level with the
lid.
The next minute he was standing straight in confused astoundment. Dot
had dealt him a passionate box on the ear, and fled from the room.