WHEN the purchases from the Oriental department were finally arranged,
Pamela retreated to the door of the keeping-room--the drawing-room as
she had privately determined to call it--and shut her eyes; then,
opening them quickly and glancing comprehensively round, she tried to
imagine what the effect of the room would be on a stranger. The round
walnut table was pushed into a corner and covered with a red and yellow
cloth, on which storks were painted. The piano cut across a corner, and
had its back draped. The brackets were fixed on the wall and upheld
Kaga plates. The mandarin’s petticoat, that had cost a great deal,
nearly covered the green chair, and the green sofa was piled with
cushions. The gaudy rugs did their best to cover up the bunches of pink
Provence roses on the carpet.
Things really made a very good show. The place looked almost civilized.
These were her complacent thoughts as she stood at the door with her
head on one side. Instinctively she went upstairs and put on her best
gown, and arranged her hair in the elaborate way which she reserved for
special occasions. When she came downstairs she shut her eyes again,
then opened them spasmodically. Yes, it would do.
She felt quite excited. Anyone could see that the hand of a person of
taste had touched everything.
A feeling of towns came over her. She looked through the diamond panes
of the long window as if she expected to see hansoms bowling along the
road. Then she sighed and glanced in the mirror again. What was the
good of dressing one’s hair and wearing one’s best gown? Nobody would
call.
Gainah was still in the kitchen. She could hear her grating voice and
slow step. Jethro was tramping over the stubble, his Irish terrier,
Rob, at his heels. She put her softly-puffed head out of the bay window
and called out pleadingly:
“Oh! do come in and look.”
He came across the field--came tolerantly, leisurely, as if he were
good-humoredly indulging the whim of a child. When he opened the door
he seemed too heavy for the transformed room, with its elegant tags of
foreign frippery. He seemed to put it to shame; he brought an
intangible, sterling feeling with him. Pamela, without knowing why,
felt a little less satisfied.
“Do you like it?” she asked nervously.
He dropped into the green chair, his broad hands gripped round the
petticoat, and looked about him with amusement.
“Everything’s crooked,” he said lazily, at last, his mouth drolly
curved and his eyes merry. They were such keen, outdoor eyes; they
seemed to pierce through shams. She was afraid that he saw the pins in
the piano back. She had been obliged to join two lengths of silk
together, and had been too eager to stay and sew it.
“Yes, everything is crooked; that is one of the fundamental rules
of modern decoration,” she told him flippantly. “Piano across one
corner, table across the other; nothing stiff, nothing solid.”
“Umph!”
He was not impressed. He was certainly laughing at the single
knickerbocker of silk into which she had stuck a pot of late musk.
“You’ve blocked the door of the china closet with that jar of
feathers.”
“The china closet! How delightful. It never occurred to me to ask what
was beyond that door.” She tried the handle, then asked him for the
key.
“Gainah has it.”
“I’ll get her to give it me.”
She dashed out into the corridor and met the housekeeper midway.
“I was coming to look for you,” she said, with her unfailing good
temper and self-satisfaction. “I want your opinion on the drawing-room.
There! Isn’t that pretty? Cousin Jethro doesn’t care a bit; but, then,
men are no good at decoration.
“And I want you to give me the key of the china closet,” she added.
A queer flush stole over Gainah’s cheeks, and her distorted hand went
involuntarily to her apron pocket, and her cold eyes sought Jethro’s
beseechingly. Pamela had her palm outspread.
“Yes, we’ll have a look in the closet,” Jethro said easily. “Don’t know
when I went in last. There is a lot of stuff that was my mother’s and
your aunt’s.” As he put in this touch, he glanced meaningly at Gainah,
with the half-timid assertion of a big, kindly man who has been
subjugated by a mean woman.
He wanted her to remember, without troubling him to hurt her by putting
it into words, that Pamela was one of the family, and had a close
interest in the family crockery.
“The closet is only opened once a year, when we clean in spring,”
Gainah said grudgingly. “I don’t want strange fingers handling the
china.”
But she opened the door. Pamela, quite as a matter of course, took the
key off the ring and slipped it into her own pocket.
“It is a mistake to hide old china. The room won’t want locking again,”
she said, gliding over the bare, dusty floor. “What a lovely
collection! I wish I had known, then I need not have wasted money on
Kaga. Anyone can buy that for so much three farthings--farthings play a
most important part in modern decorations, Cousin Jethro.”
She dimpled round at his puzzled face, and threw a conciliatory glance
at Gainah, who had taken up a canary-colored jug with uneven black
lettering straggling round its bulging middle. They were all three in
the tiny room, lighted by one high window, across which the foamy white
rose crept.
“May I look?” Pamela took the canary jug.
“‘Long may we leve.
Happy may we be,
Blest with content,
And from misfortin’ free.’
“Most delightful sentiments, and equally delightful spelling,” she
commented lightly, while Jethro watched her with a growing admiration,
and the cold light slanted through the window on Gainah’s worn,
malevolent face.
“What blue bowls and dishes! What luster! I think they call that
coppery stuff luster.”
“My mother’s best tea set.” Jethro took up a tiny handleless cup with
purplish-pink trails of flowers painted on it.
“Lowestoft, I think.” Pamela cocked her head on one side. “But I know
nothing of china. Therefore I admire it all--that is a very safe rule
in art. Now you and Gainah must run away.” She made a feint of pushing
him toward the door. “I’m going to be busier than ever. All this must
be arranged to the best advantage. Then the door will be left open, and
when next we go to Liddleshorn you must buy a portière.”
She jumped upon a chair, and lifted bowls and dishes from the top
shelf, making a running comment as she did so.
“I wish I knew printed from painted. This dish is either very valuable
or utterly worthless; some things are just on the borderland. You two
must really go away.” She put out one hand deprecatingly. “There ought
to be some tin tacks, or a ledge, in front of the shelves, so that the
plates could stand up.”
Gainah looked at her, a brilliant, dainty, voluble creature, high up on
a mahogany chair whose back was carved in wheat-ears. She had all the
color and pertness of a bullfinch. She looked at her, this dangerous
republican; looked at white fingers carelessly handling china which
for over thirty years only her own hands had touched. She had grown to
believe that it was hers, that Jethro himself was hers, and the farm
too, with its fat acres and its ripe family tradition. She had been
undisputed queen at Folly Corner the best part of her life. All the
family connections, when they paid Jethro a rare visit, had deferred to
her. Yet not one of them knew the truth--that Jethro’s father had
almost married her.
She thought of that as she watched Pamela standing radiant on the
chair. A horrible pang for the muddles, incomplete past, and a still
more set feeling of bitterest, merciless revenge contracted her heart.
She turned away without a word, leaving the cousins in the china
closet. She sat herself down in the ruins of her temple, and looked
blankly at the devastation wrought by Pamela’s active fingers in two
short hours.
She knew for whom this room had been refurnished more than thirty years
before. Not for Jethro’s mother. She, after the fashion of frugal first
wives, had saved and gone short of household elaborations. The room had
been furnished for _her_. She, Gainah Toat, had been the elder Jethro’s
second fancy. She had been a good-looking woman well within thirty in
those days; while he had been nearer sixty, having married a
middle-aged cousin--of the plain variety of women, warranted to wear
well--when he was fifty or more. But she, Gainah, had inspired him with
positive passion. Bah! She knew what a man’s passion was, and how far
it led him. She knew that it made even a miser like the elder Jethro
dip deeply into his pocket.
She remembered driving with him into Liddleshorn, just as Pamela had
to-day driven in with his son, and choosing the flowery carpet, the
round table, the piano--on which she could never hope to play a note.
Neighbors had condoled with her on the prospect of a new wife at Folly
Corner. She had said nothing, by his wish--he was a taciturn man. But
she remembered the flutter of triumph which had worked behind her dry
lips all the time. She knew that _she_ was to be the bride of whom they
gossiped and about whose appearance they speculated.
What might have been! He had been dead more than thirty years, and she
had dutifully kept the secret of his weakness. Not even Jethro knew
that there had been love passages, of a fairly practical sort--on one
side at least--between Gainah and his father. Her courting scenes had
been seasoned with matter-of-fact reference to the crops or the
prospects of early ducklings. She had always been grim and unbending.
What might have been! If only the master of Folly Corner had not been
pitched out of the high gig. His head had cracked on a heap of big
stones by the road, piled high all ready for autumn breaking.
She remembered so well the day they brought him home. It was on a
Monday, and she had, for once, managed to cut her nails without
thinking of a fox’s tail--sure sign of a present.
That was the present they brought her--the dying body of the
substantial man, who loved her in his common-sense way, who would have
redeemed her from service.
She remembered the day of the funeral. It was a cold day. The bereft
house had seemed to rock and moan with every wail of the agonized wind
outside. The front door, through which they carried the long, wide
coffin, was flung widely back by her orders until the burial service
had been read at the church. If that had not been done there would have
been another death within the year. Bitterly as she had been
disappointed and foiled, she did not want to die. Neither did she want
baby Jethro to die; she loved him a great deal better than she had
loved his father--there was no ulterior motive mixed up with her regard
for the child.
The farmer had not even made a will in her favor. He had not left her
one penny. She stayed on as paid housekeeper, the conclave of relatives
deciding that it would be best. Mrs. Turle, the dead man’s sister, paid
her quarterly. She stayed on. She managed the farm until Jethro grew
up. She managed Jethro--had never left off managing him. She was a
masterful woman.
And now she was to be put aside, like the pair of china figures which
had lost an arm apiece, and which stared at each other hopelessly on
their dim attic shelf.
Jethro came out from the closet, looking handsome and happy. Pamela,
still on the chair, was softly humming a gay little air.
Gainah struggled up from the sofa. She looked at Jethro. She moved her
dry pale lips, and moved her oddly-dressed brown head too. She wanted
to speak to him--to implore, to insist. But the words strangled in
her throat at the sight of his exultant face and shining eyes.
It was useless for age to pit itself against youth. Her time was past.
She knew, although it was gall to admit it, that the girl she hated had
Nature on her side. All her comparisons were drawn from Nature; her
untiring energy of pickle and preserve making had gone hand-in-hand
with Nature.
Didn’t the old potatoes rot off to make room for the new? Wasn’t it
natural?
Her feet moved slowly over the carpet. It had been her choice nearly
thirty-five years before. But it was hardly worn; they rarely used the
keeping-room.
She went into the garden. She looked at the brown stalks of the
summer’s annuals in her borders. They were dead, dry--only fit for the
waste-heap. Yet their young seedlings were green and vigorous. It was
all so simple, so natural. Yet--yet! She was far too practical, too
mentally sluggish, to put the half-formed thought into clear shape.
They were only fit for the waste-heap--but did they want to go there?
Wasn’t there some dumb, desperate struggle against extinction going on
between those brown, sadly swaying stalks?
Then she saw a wagonette pull up at the white gate, saw a head of rich
red hair between the poplars, and hurried indoors to put on her black
silk gown.