A carpenter of the name of Bates was called in, so distant a relative of
Mrs Bowater's apparently that she never by nod, word, or look
acknowledged the bond. Mr Bates held my landlady in almost speechless
respect. "A woman in a thousand," he repeatedly assured me, when we were
grown a little accustomed to one another; "a woman in _ten_ thousand.
And if things hadn't been what they was, you may understand, they might
have turned out different. Ah, miss, there's one looking down on us
could tell a tale." I looked up past his oblong head at the ceiling, but
only a few flies were angling round the chandelier.
Mrs Bowater's compliments were less indirect. "That _Bates_," she would
say, surveying his day's handiwork after he was gone, "is all thumbs."
He was certainly rather snail-like in his movements, and spent most of
his time slowly rubbing his hands on the stiff apron that encased him.
But I minded his thumbs far less than his gluepot.
Many years have passed, yet at the very whisper of his name, that
inexpressible odour clouds up into my nose. It now occurs to me for the
first time that he never sent in his bill. Either his memory failed him,
or he carpentered for love. Level with the wide table in the window
recess, strewn over with my small Persian mats, whereon I sat, sewed,
read, and took my meals, Mr Bates constructed a broad shelf, curtained
off on three sides from the rest of the room. On this wooden stage stood
my four-poster, wardrobe, and other belongings. It was my bedchamber.
From table to floor he made a staircase, so that I could easily descend
and roam the room at large. The latter would have been more commodious
if I could have persuaded Mrs Bowater to empty it a little. If I had
_kept on_ looking at the things in it I am sure I should have gone mad.
Even tact was unavailing. If only there had been the merest tinge of a
Cromwell in my character, the baubles that would have been removed!
There were two simpering plaster figures--a Shepherd and
Shepherdess--nearly half my height on the chimney-piece, whom I
particularly detested; also an enlarged photograph in a discoloured
frame on the wall--that of a thick-necked, formidable man, with a bush
of whisker on either cheek, and a high, quarrelsome stare. He made me
feel intensely self-conscious. It was like a wolf looking all day into a
sheep-fold. So when I had my meals, I invariably turned my back on his
portrait.
I went early to bed. But now that the autumnal dusks were shortening, an
hour or two of artificial light was necessary. The flare of the gas
dazzled and stupefied me, and gave me a kind of hunted feeling; so Mrs
Bowater procured for me a couple of fine little glass candlesticks. In
bed I sometimes burned a wax-light in a saucer, a companionable thing
for night-thoughts in a strange place. Often enough I sat through the
evening with no other illumination than that of the smouldering coals,
so that I could see out of the window. It was an endless source of
amusement to withdraw the muslin curtains, gaze out over the darkened
fields beyond the roadway, and let my day-dreams wander at will.
At nine o'clock Mrs Bowater would bring me my supper--some fragments of
rusk, or of bread, and milk. My food was her constant anxiety. The
difficulty, as she explained, was to supply me with _little_ enough to
eat--at least of cooked food: "It dries up in the winking of an eye." So
her cat, Henry, fared more sumptuously than ever, though the jealous
creature continued to reject all my advances, and as far as possible
ignored my existence. "Simple victuals, by all means, miss," Mrs Bowater
would admit. "But if it don't enjoy, the inside languishes; and you are
not yet of an age that can fall back on skin and bone."
The question of food presently introduced that of money. She insisted on
reducing her charges to twenty shillings a week. "There's the lodging,
and there's the board, the last being as you might say all but
unmentionable; and honesty the best policy though I have never tried the
reverse." So, in spite of all my protestations, it was agreed. And I
thus found myself mistress of a round fifty-eight pounds a year over
and above what I paid to Mrs Bowater. Messrs Harris, Harris, and Harris
were punctual as quarter-day: and so was I. I "_at once_" paid over to
my landlady L13 and whatever other sum was needful. The "charity" my
godmother had recommended began, and, alas, remained at home. I stowed
the rest under lock and key in one of my grandfather's boxes which I
kept under my bed. This was an imprudent habit, perhaps. Mrs Bowater
advocated the Penny Bank. But the thought of my money being so handy and
_palpable_ reassured me. I would count it over in my mind, as if it were
a means to salvation; and became, in consequence, near and parsimonious.
Occasionally when she had "business" to transact, Mrs Bowater would be
off to London. There she would purchase for me any little trifle
required for the replenishment of my wardrobe. Needing so little, I
could afford the finest materials; my sovereign was worth at least sixty
shillings. Rather than "fine," Mrs Bowater preferred things "good"; and
for this "goodness," I must confess, she sometimes made rather alarming
sacrifices of appearance. Still, I was already possessed of a
serviceable stock of clothes, and by aid of one of my dear mother's last
presents to me, a shiny Swiss miniature workbox with an inlaid picture
of the Lake of Geneva on the lid, I soon became a passable needlewoman.
I love bright, pure colours, and, my sweeping and dusting and bedmaking
over, and my external mourning for my father at an end, a remarkably
festive figure would confront me in my cheval glass of an afternoon. The
hours I spent in dressing my hair and matching this bit of colour with
that. I would talk to myself in the glass, too, for company's sake, and
make believe I was a dozen different characters. I was young. I pined
for life and companionship, and having only my own--for Mrs Bowater was
rather a faithful feature of the landscape than a fellow being--I made
as much, and as many, of myself as possible.
Another question that deeply engaged my landlady was my health. She
mistrusted open windows, but strongly recommended "air." What insidious
maladies she spied around me! Indeed that September was unusually hot. I
sat on my table in the window like a cricket in an oven, sorely missing
my high open balcony, the garden, and the stream. Once and again Mrs
Bowater would take me for a little walk after sunset. Discretion to her
was much the better part of valour; nor had I quite recovered from my
experiences in the train. But such walks--though solitary enough at that
hour of the day--were straggly and irksome. Pollie's arm had been a kind
of second nature to me; but Mrs Bowater, I think, had almost as
fastidious a disinclination to carrying me as I have to being carried. I
languished for liberty. Being a light sleeper, I would often awake at
daybreak and the first call of the birds. Then the hill--which led to
Tyddlesdon End and Love (or Loose) Lane--was deserted. Thought of the
beyond haunted me like a passion. At a convenient moment I intimated to
Mrs Bowater how secure was the street at this early hour, how fresh the
meadows, and how thirsty for independent outings her lodger. "Besides,
Mrs Bowater, I am not a child, and who could see me?"
After anxious and arduous discussion, Mr Bates was once more consulted.
He wrapped himself in a veritable blanket of reflection, and all but
became unconscious before he proposed a most ingenious device. With Mrs
Bowater's consent, she being her own landlady and amused at the idea, he
cut out of one of the lower panels of her parlour door a round-headed
opening just of an easy size to suit me. In this aperture he hung a
delicious little door that precisely fitted it. So also with the door
into the street--to which he added a Brahmah lock. By cementing a small
square stone into the corner of each of the steps down from the porch,
he eased _that_ little difficulty. May Heaven bless Mr Bates! With his
key round my neck, stoop once, stoop twice, a scamper down his steps,
and I was free--as completely mistress of my goings-out and of my
comings-in as every self-respecting person should be.
"That's what my father would have called a good job, Mr Bates," said I
cordially.
He looked yearningly at me, as if about to impart a profound secret; but
thought better of it. "Well, miss, what I say is, a job's a _job_; and
if it _is_ a job, it's a job that should be made a job _of_."
As I dot the i's and cross the t's of this manuscript, I often think--a
little ruefully--of Mr Bates.
As soon as daybreak was piercing into my region of the sky, and before
Mrs Bowater or the rest of the world was stirring, I would rise, make my
candlelit toilet, and hasten out into the forsaken sweet of the morning.
If it broke wet or windy, I could turn over and go to sleep again. A few
hundred yards up the hill, the road turned off, as I have said, towards
Tyddlesdon End and Loose Lane--very stony and steep. On the left, and
before the fork, a wicket gate led into the woods and the park of empty
"Wanderslore." To the verge of these deserted woods made a comfortable
walk for me.
If, as might happen, any other wayfarer was early abroad, I could
conceal myself in the tussocks of grass and bushes that bordered the
path. In my thick veil, with my stout green parasol and inconspicuous
shawl, I made a queer and surprising figure no doubt. Indeed, from what
I have heard, the ill fame of Wanderslore acquired a still more piquant
flavour in the town by reports that elf-folk had been descried on its
outskirts. But if I sometimes skipped and capered in these early
outings, it was for exercise as well as suppressed high spirits. To be
prepared, too, for the want of such facilities in the future, I had the
foresight to accustom myself to Mrs Bowater's steep steps as well as to
my cemented-in "Bateses," as I called them. My only difficulty was to
decide whether to practice on them when I was fresh at the outset of my
walk, or fatigued at the end of it. Naturally people grow "peculiar"
when much alone: self plays with self, and the mimicry fades.
These little expeditions, of course, had their spice of danger, and it
made them the more agreeable. A strange dog might give me a fright.
There was an old vixen which once or twice exchanged glances with me at
a distance. But with my parasol I was a match for most of the creatures
which humanity has left unslaughtered. My sudden appearance might
startle or perplex them. But if few were curious, fewer far were
unfriendly. Boys I feared most. A hulking booby once stoned me through
the grass, but fortunately he was both a coward and a poor marksman.
Until winter came, I doubt if a single sunshine morning was wasted. Many
a rainy one, too, found me splashing along, though then I must be a
careful walker to avoid a sousing.
The birds renewed their autumn song, the last flowers were blossoming.
Concealed by scattered tufts of bracken where an enormous beech forked
its roots and cast a golden light from its withering leaves, I would
spend many a solitary hour. Above the eastern tree-tops my Kent
stretched into the distance beneath the early skies. Far to my left and
a little behind me rose the chimneys of gloomy Wanderslore. Breathing in
the gentle air, the dreamer within would stray at will. There I kept the
anniversary of my mother's birthday; twined a wreath for her of
ivy-flowers and winter green; and hid it secretly in a forsaken
blackbird's nest in the woods.
Still I longed for my old home again. Mrs Bowater's was a stuffy and
meagre little house, and when meals were in preparation, none too sweet
to the nose. Especially low I felt, when a scrawling letter was now and
then delivered by the postman from Pollie. Her spelling and grammar
intensified my homesickness. Miss Fenne, too, had not forgotten me. I
pored over her spidery epistles till my head ached. Why, if I had been
so rash and undutiful, was she so uneasy? Even the texts she chose had a
parched look. The thought of her spectacling my minute handwriting and
examining the proof that I was still a child of wrath, gave my pride a
silly qualm. So Mrs Bowater came to my rescue, and between us we
concocted replies to her which, I am afraid, were not more intelligible
for a tendency on my landlady's part to express my sentiments in the
third person.
This little service set her thinking of Sunday and church. She was not,
she told me, "what you might call a religious woman," having been
compelled "to keep her head up in the world, and all not being gold that
glitters." She was none the less a regular attendant at St Peter's--a
church a mile or so away in the valley, whose five bells of a Sabbath
evening never failed to recall my thoughts to Lyndsey and to dip me into
the waters of melancholy. I loved their mellow clanging in the lap of
the wind, yet it was rather doleful to be left alone with my candles,
and only Henry sullenly squatting in the passage awaiting his mistress's
return.
"Not that you need making any _better_, miss," Mrs Bowater assured me.
"Even a buttercup--or a retriever dog, for that matter--being no fuller
than it can hold of what it is, in a manner of speaking. But there's the
next world to be accounted for, and hopes of reunion on another shore,
where, so I understand, mere size, body or station, will not be
noticeable in the sight of the Lamb. _Not_ that I hold with the notion
that only the good so-called will be there."
This speech, I must confess, made me exceedingly uncomfortable.
"Wherever I go, Mrs Bowater," I replied hastily, "I shall not be happy
unless you are there."
"D. V.," said Mrs Bowater, grimly, "I will."
Still, I remained unconverted to St Peter's. Why, I hardly know: perhaps
it was her reference to its pew rents, or her description of the vicar's
daughters (who were now nursing their father at Tunbridge Wells), or
maybe even it was a stare from her husband which I happened at that
precise moment to intercept from the wall. Possibly if I myself had
taken a "sitting," this aura of formality would have faded away. Mrs
Bowater was a little reassured, however, to hear that my father and
mother, in spite of Miss Fenne, had seldom taken me to church. They had
concluded that my absence was best both for me and for the congregation.
And I told her of our little evening services in the drawing-room, with
Mrs Ballard, the parlourmaid, Pollie, and the Boy on the sofa, just as
it happened to be their respective "Sundays in."
This set her mind at rest. Turn and turn about, on one Sunday evening
she went to St Peter's and brought back with her the text and crucial
fragments of Mr Crimble's sermon, and on the next we read the lessons
together and sang a hymn. Once, indeed, I embarked upon a solo, "As
pants the hart," one of my mother's favourite airs. But I got a little
shaky at "O for the wings," and there was no rambling, rumbling chorus
from my father. But Sunday was not my favourite day on Beechwood Hill.
Mrs Bowater looked a little formal with stiff white "frilling" round her
neck. She reminded me of a leg of mutton. To judge from the gloom and
absentmindedness into which they sometimes plunged her, quotations from
Mr Crimble could be double-edged. My real joy was to hear her views on
the fashions and manners of her fellow-worshippers.
Well, so the months went by. Winter came with its mists and rains and
frosts, and a fire in the polished grate was no longer an evening luxury
but a daily need. As often as possible I went out walking. When the
weather was too inclement, I danced for an hour or so, for joy and
exercise, and went swimming on a chair. I would entertain myself also in
watching through the muslin curtains the few passers-by; sorting out
their gaits, and noses, and clothes, and acquaintances, and guessing
their characters, occupations, and circumstances. Certain little looks
and movements led me to suppose that, even though I was perfectly
concealed, the more sensitive among them were vaguely uneasy under this
secret scrutiny. In such cases (though very reluctantly) I always drew
my eyes away: first because I did not like the thought of encroaching on
their privacy, and next, because I was afraid their uneasiness might
prevent them coming again. But this microscopic examination of mankind
must cease with dusk, and the candle-hours passed rather heavily at
times. The few books I had brought away from Lyndsey were mine now
nearly by heart. So my eye would often wander up to a small bookcase
that hung out of reach on the other side of the chimney-piece.