EXIT MISS BIRD
Miss Bird arose on the next morning to find her window glazed with
frost, and it was characteristic of her and of the house in which she
had lived for over thirty years that her first thought was, "No hunting
to-day"; although the deprivation could not be expected to hold any
disappointment for herself, or indeed to affect her in any way.
Her second thought marked a drop to the sombre uneasiness in which she
had spent wakeful hours during the night. She would not rise many more
times in this familiar room, nor look out on to a scene which she had
come to know so well at all seasons of the year that she could not help
loving it. She would have liked to see the trees of the park, for a
farewell, in their early June dress, the grass about them powdered with
the yellow of buttercups. But she hoped so to see them again. She had
been made to feel that she was parting from friends, that she was by
virtue of her long and faithful service part of the family, that she
would not lose them altogether. The Squire had said the day before,
when he had made known to her that he had heard of her projected
departure, "You must come and see us, you know, Miss Bird. The house
won't be like itself without you."
Could anything be more gratifying--and from such a man? Mrs. Clinton,
of course, had been kindness itself, had said just the right things to
make a person feel herself valued, and said them as if she meant them,
as no doubt, dear lady, she did, for she was always sincere. And the
darling children had cried--she should never forget that as long as she
lived--when she had told them that she was going. Here the simple lady
found a tear trickling down her own sharp nose, and put a hairpin in
her mouth while she wiped it away.
It seemed impossible that she should really be going. It was just upon
thirty years since she had first come to Kencote, and it seemed like
yesterday. She summoned up a rueful little smile when she recalled, in
the light of her now assured position as "a member of the family," her
palpitating nervousness on her introduction to the great house, so
different from anything she had known. She had never been "out"
before. She had had a good education, for those days, in the day
school that her mother, the doctor's widow, and her elder sister had
carried on in a little town in which she had been born, and had taught
in it till she was twenty-eight. Then, after deep consultation, she
had answered Mrs. Clinton's advertisement, and, her references having
proved satisfactory, had been engaged to impart the rudiments of
education to a child of five, which she had modestly thought she was as
capable of doing as anybody, and at a salary that seemed to her
munificent.
She remembered arriving at Kencote on a spring evening and being
received by Mrs. Clinton, the pretty young wife and mother, who had
been almost as shy as herself, but had been so anxious that everything
should be "nice" for her that she had soon lost her awe of the big
house and the many servants; and even the figure in the background from
which all the splendour around her emanated lost some of its
imaginative terror, since the lady of the house had proved so
accessibly human. She had thought the little boy, whom she had been
taken to see in bed, a darling, and so quaint when he asked her
solemnly if she could jump a pony over a log, because he could. She
had liked his quiet, elderly nurse, who had come to talk to her in her
schoolroom when he had gone to sleep. She had called her "miss," and
shown that she had no wish to "presume," but only the wish to be
friendly, and they had, in fact, remained friends for years. She had
been greatly pleased with the size and comfort of her schoolroom, which
she had entirely to herself, to read or write or play the piano in,
outside hours of lessons, which were at first as short as was
conceivably possible. And she had not in the least expected that there
would be a maid for the schoolroom, who was, as she wrote to her
sister, practically her own maid, calling her in the morning and
bringing her a cup of tea, lighting a fire for her every evening in her
bedroom as a matter of course, and indeed treating her as if she might
be the mistress of the house.
She had been happy at Kencote from the first, although she had been a
good deal alone, for until her little pupil had grown bigger she had
had all her meals sent up to her in the schoolroom, except on Sundays,
when she lunched downstairs in charge of little Dick. Those were
nervous occasions, for it took her a long time to get used to the
Squire--the young Squire, as he was then--with his loud laugh and
hearty ways, who used to chaff her at table in a way to cause her
uneasiness, although he was never anything but kind, and she was
assured, even when she blushed deepest, that his manner was only
intended to put her at her ease and make her feel "one of the family."
She had soon lost any awe she may have started with of Mrs. Clinton,
although her respect for that lady's character had only grown with the
passage of time. Mrs. Clinton used to sit with her sometimes in the
schoolroom, and in the summer time they would work under the big lime
in the garden while little Dick played about on the lawn. Miss Bird's
simple gaiety of heart had had play, and her rather breathless
volubility had never been checked by any stiffness on the part of Mrs.
Clinton. Mr. Beach, the Rector of Kencote, and the Squire's
half-brother, had always treated her with consideration, and his wife
had made her feel at home in the rectory, and expected her to visit
there occasionally on her own account. The Squire's six maiden aunts
at the dower-house, all but one of whom were now dead, had also treated
her kindly, but in a rather more patronising manner. She had not
minded that. She had quite agreed with the opinion which underlay
everything they said and did, though it was seldom expressed in words,
that the Clintons of Kencote were great people in the land, and her
native humility had led her to accept gratefully the attentions paid to
her by them and their neighbours, and to "presume" on it no more than
little Dick's nurse had presumed on her own mild gentility.
She had found little Dick rather a handful as he grew older, but she
had coped successfully with him, by the expenditure of much energy of
speech and action, and had courageously beaten the beginnings of
learning into his brain, so that he took a good place at his first
school, and she was not disgraced. By that time Humphrey was ready for
her guiding hand, and then Walter, and a few years later, Cicely,
hailed with joy as a pupil whom she might train up to the fine finish;
for there could be no talk of school for a girl Clinton, and Miss
Bird's success with Dick had given her a high place as an instructress
in the Squire's estimate of her abilities, so that there was never any
idea of her being some day superseded, and the years at Kencote
stretched happily in front of her.
Cicely was nine, and Frank, the sailor, seven, when the twins arrived.
The day of their birth was a good day in Miss Bird's annals. It meant
more years still at Kencote, and by this time the idea of living with
any other family would have been most distressing to her. And yet she
would have had to seek another situation but for the arrival of the
twins, for when she should have finished with Cicely she would be fifty
only, and would not have put by enough money to enable her to retire.
These are the hardships of a governess's lot, and Miss Bird had them
fully in her mind, saving and skimping all through the fruitful years
for a time when not only the opulences of existence in a house like
Kencote should be hers no longer, but it might be difficult to make
ends meet at all. The twins lifted a weight off her mind, which, with
all her daily cheerfulness and courage, had never been quite absent
from her; for another nine or ten years would just enable her to
provide for her old age, and she knew that those nine or ten years
would be hers if she could only keep her health, of which there seemed
no reasonable doubt. "It is not many women in my position who are as
fortunate as I," she had written to her sister at the time. "The
Squire, who _roared_ with laughter when he heard of the birth of the
darling babies, said to me the first time he saw me afterwards, 'Well,
that fixes _you_ for another twenty years, Miss Bird.' And he added in
a way which you might think profane if you had not heard him say it,
'Thank God, eh?'"
Well, here was the end of those happy years, which seemed to have sped
like a week or two since the birth of the twins. She had seen Walter
and Cicely married and had dandled their babies. She had shared Mrs.
Clinton's daily anxiety during the long months Dick had served in South
Africa, and had taken his award of a D.S.O. almost as a personal
compliment. She had been glad at all the joys of the family and
saddened with their sorrows. She had seen the Squire grow from a
handsome young man to an elderly one, and Mrs. Clinton's hair turn
nearly white. She had boxes and drawers full of the presents she had
received at Christmas and on her birthdays, which had never been
forgotten, and the photographs of Clintons of all ages from babyhood
upwards were displayed on every available standing place in her room.
They were more to her than her sister or her sister's children, but the
call had come to her to leave them and to go to a place where she would
have to work hard and anxiously for the rest of her life on a very
small pittance and in very narrow surroundings, and it had never
occurred to her to shirk it. It had all fitted in--she felt that she
had been "guided." The teaching which she had never doubted that she
was able to give to Cicely now seemed to her inadequate for the finish
of the twins' education, but she did doubt, now that her departure had
been settled for her on other grounds, whether she would have had the
strength to say so and cut herself adrift of her own accord. Here was
matter for thankfulness--that she had been led to see what her duty
was, and to do it. She would always have Kencote to look back to, and
she was indeed fortunate to have spent the best part of her life in
such a place, and with such people.
The twins came in as she was finishing her toilette, to take her down
to breakfast. This was a reversal of the procedure of the past, when
it had been the first of her daily duties to hunt them out of whatever
spot out of doors or in to which their vagrant fancy had led them, and
see that they appeared to the public eye duly washed, combed, and
brushed. They embraced her, enveloping her wizened form with their
exuberant youth, like flowers round a peastick, and she was moved to
the depths of her being, though all she said was, "Now, Joan 'n' Nancy,
don't be rough. You can love a person without untidying her hair."
"Are your nails quite clean, Starling darling?" asked Joan, taking one
of her hands and examining it.
"And are you quite sure you've brushed your teeth properly?" enquired
Nancy.
"Now don't _tease_, Joan 'n' Nancy," said Miss Bird, disengaging
herself. "I shall only be here another week and you must try and be
_good_ girls and let me go away remembering that."
"Joan was saying this morning as we were dressing," said Nancy, "that
she was very sorry now to think of all the trouble she had given you,
Starling darling, and if she could have the time over again she would
behave very differently."
"Idiot!" retorted Joan. "It's you who have given the trouble.
Starling has often said that if it weren't for your example I should be
a very good girl, haven't you, Starling darling?"
"You would _both_ be good girls if it wasn't for the other's example,"
replied Miss Bird. "And you can be dear good girls as good as gold and
I hope you will when the new governess comes to teach you."
"I hope we shall, but I doubt it," said Joan.
"You see, Starling darling, what we would do for you we couldn't be
expected to do for a stranger whom we didn't love, could we?" said
Nancy.
Miss Bird was moved by this, and would have liked to embrace the
speaker, with words of endearment. But she had grown rather wary of
exhibiting affection towards her pupils, who were apt to respond so
voluminously as to leave her crumpled, if not actually dishevelled.
"Well, if you love me as much as you say you do," she said, "you will
remember all the things I have told you; now are you _quite_ ready for
breakfast, because it is time to go down?"
"We told Dick you would like him to kiss you before you went, and I
think he will," said Joan innocently, as they went down the broad
staircase all three abreast.
"Now, Joan, if you _really_ said a thing like that--oh, take care! take
care!" Miss Bird had tried to stop on the stairs and withdraw her arm
from Joan's, who, assisted by Nancy on the other side, had led her on
so that she tripped over the next step, and would have fallen but for
the firm grasp of the twins. She was led into the dining-room,
protesting volubly, until she saw that Mrs. Clinton and Dick were
there, when the episode ended.
When breakfast was over the Squire surprised her by asking her
immediate attendance in his room, to which she followed him across the
hall in a flutter of apprehension. It would not be quite true to say
that she had never been into this room during the thirty years of her
sojourn at Kencote, but it was certainly the first time she had entered
it on the Squire's invitation. He did not ask her to take a seat, nor
did he take one himself, but stood in front of the fire with his coat
tails over his arm and his hands in his pockets.
"There's a little matter of business I should like to settle with you,
Miss Bird," he said. "You've lived here a considerable number of
years, and you've done remarkably well by us and the children. If
everybody did their duty in life as well as you, Miss Bird, the world
'ud be a better place than it is, by George! Now I want to do a little
something for you, as you've done so much for us, and I've talked it
over with Dick, and we are going to buy you a little annuity of fifty
pounds a year, which with what my wife tells me you've saved will put
you out of anxiety for the future; and I'll tell you this, Miss Bird,
that I never--Eh, what! Oh, my good woman ... God's sake ... here,
don't take on like that ... Gobblessme, what's to be done?"
For Miss Bird, overcome by this last great mark of esteem, had broken
down and was now sobbing into her handkerchief. Knowing, however, the
Squire's dislike of a scene she succeeded in controlling herself, and
addressed him with no more than an occasional hiccup. "I beg your
pardon, Mr. Clinton; I couldn't help it and it's too much and I thank
you from the bottom of my heart and shall never forget it as long as I
live and it's just like all the rest of the kindness I've received in
this house which I could never repay if I lived to be a hundred."
"Well, I'm very glad it meets your views, Miss Bird," said the Squire,
greatly relieved at the subsidence of emotion, and anxious to escape
further thanks. "And I assure you the obligation's still on our side.
Now, I must write some letters, and I dare say you've got something to
do, too."
Miss Bird retired to her bedroom where, unrebuked, she shed her tears
of thankfulness, then wiped her eyes and sponged her face and went
about the duties of the day.
These did not, this morning, include lessons for the twins, for it was
Saturday, which was for them a holiday, when complete freedom was
tempered only by the necessity of "practising." Dick had refused to
drive them over to Mountfield to see their sister and her babies, but
had offered them a walk to the dower-house during the course of the
morning.
"I wonder what he wants to go there for?" said Joan, as they went
upstairs.
"There's more in this," said Nancy, "than meets the eye."
There did not, however, seem to be more in it than a natural desire to
see a house empty which one has always known occupied, and this desire
the twins shared. They found Dick in an affable mood as they walked
across the park together--the sort of affectionately jovial mood of
which they had occasionally taken advantage to secure a temporary
addition to their income. Indeed, it seemed to have brought Dick
himself a reminder of his young sisters' financial requirements, for he
asked them, "Have you saved up enough money for your camera yet,
Twankies?"
Neither of them replied for the moment, then Joan said rather stiffly,
"We shan't be able to buy that for some time."
"Why, you only wanted twenty-five shillings to make it up a month ago,
and I gave you a sovereign towards it," said Dick.
Another short pause, and then Nancy said, "You gave it us!"
"Yes," said Dick, "to buy a camera. I'm not certain you didn't screw
it out of me. I never quite know whether it's my idea or yours when I
tip you Twankies. Come now, what have you done with that sovereign?"
"We have spent it on a good object," said Joan. "But we do want the
camera most frightfully badly, and if you would like to contribute to
the fund again it would save us many weary months of waiting."
"To say nothing of a severe economy painful to our generous natures,"
added Nancy.
"Not till I know what you spent the last contribution on," said Dick.
"You're getting regular young spendthrifts. I shall have to look into
this, or you'll be ruining me by and by."
"Won't you give us anything more unless we tell you?" enquired Joan;
and Nancy amended the question: "Will you give us something more if we
do tell you?"
"I'll see," said Dick. "Come, out with it!"
"Well, it's nothing to be ashamed of," said Joan. "We wanted to buy
the old Starling a really good present, and out of our own money."
"It took the form of a pair of silver-backed brushes with cupids' heads
on them, and cost three pounds seventeen and sixpence," added Nancy.
"They are not cupids, but angels," said Joan, "which are much more
adapted to Starling's tastes."
"Well--cupids or angels--it cleaned us entirely out," concluded Nancy.
Dick put an arm round the shoulders of each and gave them a squeeze as
they walked. "You're a pair of topping good Twankies," he said. "I'll
start your new camera fund. I'll give it you now."
"Thanks awfully, Dick," said Joan, as he took out his sovereign purse,
"but I think we'd rather you didn't. You see, it's rather a special
occasion--the poor old Starling going away--and we wanted to give her
something that would really cost us something."
"I agree with my sister," said Nancy. "But thanks awfully all the
same, Dick. You're always a brick."
"Well, I respect the delicacy of your feelings, Twanks," said Dick.
"But isn't anybody ever going to be allowed to contribute to the camera
fund? How long does the embargo last?"
"There's a good deal in that," said Joan thoughtfully. "Of course we
can't refuse tips for ever, can we, Nancy?"
Nancy thought not. "Let's say in a month from to-day," she suggested.
"If Dick likes to give us something then and happens to remember it--of
course, we shan't remind him--then I think we might accept without
feeling pigs."
"I'll make a note of that," said Dick gravely, "when I get home."