IN AN OLD-FASHIONED HOUSEHOLD
"Home-keeping hearts are happiest,
For those that wander they know not where
Are full of trouble and full of care—
To stay at home is best."
LONGFELLOW.
HEATHER'S cheeks were scarlet with mortified shame, when she and her
sister were turned out of their cousin's room by Abigail.
"She—she almost makes me hate her," she said in a vehement whisper;
"but I am sure Mrs. Carter will not stand much from her. I know it is
wrong, but I hope she will be well snubbed; and I shall enjoy seeing
it!"
Bluebell took the matter lightly. She was a happy-hearted girl with an
affectionate sunshiny disposition, and viewed life at present through
rose-coloured spectacles. She had also a keen sense of humour, and she
laughed now at the remembrance of Abigail's face when Heather inquired
for the cup of tea.
"Never mind," she said, "we must not expect Abigail to be different now
from what she always is. She is too old to change. Did you see what a
lot of luggage Mrs. Carter has brought? I think she is lovely, don't
you?"
"Yes," assented Heather, warmly. "I have never seen any one like her.
Now let us come into the drawing-room. I wish Abigail would have had
the holland covers taken off. I can't bear them."
Mrs. Carter did not make her appearance till dinner was on the table.
In fact, she was ten minutes behind time, and came down in a black
satin dress with low neck and short sleeves, apologizing very prettily
for keeping them waiting. The girls were too well-bred to show their
feelings, but cast many a shy admiring glance at her through their long
lashes. The pearls round her neck, the glittering bracelets on her
white arms and sparkling rings upon her fingers, all appealed to their
love of beauty.
She talked and chatted with them on the most trivial subjects through
the meal. Abigail moved to and fro with a grim face, and an aching
heart. When she had finally left the room, Mrs. Carter came to more
personal matters.
"Have you girls ever been to school?"
"No."
"Then who has educated you?"
"Grandmother."
"I always heard her spoken of as a very clever and cultivated woman,"
Mrs. Carter said slowly. "I wonder what she taught you?"
"Everything," said Bluebell, rashly. "We used to work five hours every
day, often six."
"Do you know anything of Algebra, Latin, or Mathematics?"
Bluebell's face fell.
"No."
"How many languages can you speak?"
"We know French fairly well, a little German and Italian."
"Can you sing and play?"
"Heather can play the harp. And I can sing a little. I am not very fond
of music."
"Grandmother used to say," said Heather, thoughtfully, "that a woman
should be thoroughly grounded in history and geography. She should have
plenty of general knowledge, so that she could always be at ease in
literary society and conversation. A little music was essential, but
the main duties in her life would be housekeeping; and this I think
Bluebell and I know to our finger ends."
"Tell me what you can do," said Mrs. Carter, looking kindly at them.
"We will tell you what we do do," said Bluebell, vivaciously. "Heather
keeps the accounts, she is better at it than I am. She also looks after
a small farm that belongs to us. We get our butter and milk from it,
and every week the farmer comes up and does business with her in the
study. He says she 'do have a wunnerful head.' She also has charge of
the store cupboard, and orders dinner every day. I make all the jam,
and potted meat, and pickles, and everything of that sort, and we have
a tiny dispensary with simple remedies for the village people, which
is my province. The linen cupboard is in my charge too, and I look
after all the mending. Sometimes we make jellies and broth for the sick
people in the village. Grandmother would have us both learn cooking.
She said a woman ought to know it thoroughly, and we can do most
things, can't we, Heather?"
Heather assented, adding, "You see, we are a small household, but the
villagers look to us for everything. They come up once a week during
the winter for soup, and there are always some old and sick who want
special attention."
"I dare say your grandmother was more sensible than most people of
the present day," said Mrs. Carter. "I do not hold with this college
education for women, but times have changed. It is not every girl who
is placed in such comfortable circumstances as you are. Now I should
like to know if you are all Quakers here?"
"No, we have never been brought up so," said Heather. "There are no
Friends about here. Abigail and Rachael used to attend a little meeting
in the town, but it is too far for them to walk, and they generally
go to chapel. Grandmother never left the house for seven years before
she died. Bluebell and I walk over to church, which is two miles away.
Mr. Monk is the rector. He is very old and very poor, and we don't see
much of him. He comes to us when he wants any special relief for a
parishioner."
"Have you no friends? Surely this is not the only big house in the
neighbourhood?"
"Our squire lives eight miles off. We don't know him. Grandmother never
visited. Our doctor is an old bachelor, and he lives six miles away. We
never meet any one in our own station of life!"
"What a life!"
After this ejaculation, Mrs. Carter seemed lost in thought, and then
they moved into the drawing-room. She made Heather play to her, and
when she was seated at the harp, and Bluebell leant back in a low chair
by the fire to listen, Mrs. Carter looked at her young cousins with
greater interest than ever. Heather played some old Scotch airs, and
then drifted into "Il Trovatore." Her touch was light and sweet, and
Mrs. Carter was charmed with the grace and spirit with which she played.
"I feel," she said, when Heather had come to the fire, and taken a seat
opposite hers, "that I am in a dream. I have gone back a generation. Do
you know that you are utterly unlike most girls of your own age?"
"We have never seen any," said Heather, simply; "at least only the
farmers' daughters, and the villagers."
"Did your grandmother expect you would live and die here in seclusion?"
"We thought, till your letter came, that we should have to do it," said
Bluebell. Then she added, with a laughing light in her eyes, "Heather
was meditating a bold stroke for freedom; may we tell you about it? You
won't be shocked?"
"I do not think you two little Puritans will be likely to shock me,"
was the amused reply. "Tell me, by all means."
Then Heather spoke in hushed tones, with a backward glance at the door,
for fear of Abigail's form appearing.
"It is Abigail. She rules us with a rod of iron. You saw how she sent
us from your room before dinner. She has been worse than ever since
grandmother died. She treats us like tiny children. And Bluebell and I
are children no longer. We are mistresses here; we have our own money.
Grandmother left everything to us. I know all about it, for I have
been over it with Mr. Brody. We have quite enough money to live very
comfortably, and—and to travel."
"Yes," put in Bluebell, "and we were going up to London by ourselves.
We had hardly settled whether we should dismiss Abigail from our
service, or run away without telling her. Of course she would never
have allowed us to go to London, we knew that. It would have been more
dignified to send her away, but it would have taken a lot of courage to
do it, and she is—well—very awe-inspiring!"
"I think we should have been driven to do it," said Heather. "I could
not have run away from our own home like a coward; and I have felt
lately things were getting desperate. You have come and solved the
difficulty. It will be all right now."
"By that you mean I am to do battle on your behalf? Well, we will see."
When tea was brought in by Abigail, she saw the new-comer on the best
of terms with the two girls, who, with flushed cheeks and bright eyes,
were listening to some of her London experiences. Abigail went out to
Rachael, and in tones of despair exclaimed—
"She has bewitched them with her airs and graces. They didn't even so
much as look at me when I went in! They're drinking in the poison, and
it will be the ruin of their young lives. And I have to stand by and
say nothin'!"
She wrung her hands, and Rachael looked aghast at the imperturbable
Abigail being so deeply moved.
"We must trust them to the Lord," she said soothingly. "Maybe Mrs.
Carter is only young and giddy. She will find this a dull place to
linger in. She will come and go, and, when once in London, will forget
all about them again. Don't you fret now, don't, for mercy's sake!"
Abigail shook her head, but said no more. She would not tell Rachael
her worst fears.
Prayer-time came, and Bluebell very simply asked Mrs. Carter to lead
the devotions. She laughed and declined, but watched her young cousin
sit up and conduct them with an amused and yet softened look in her
eyes.
"And now you are going to bed," she said afterwards. "Well, I will too;
it is not much beauty sleep that I get in town!"
But when she was up in her bedroom, she did not retire to rest. Drawing
up the writing-table to her fire, she wrote a long letter to her
husband. And this was what she wrote:—
"DEAREST OLD HAL,—I think I have tumbled into one of the quaintest and
most out of the world households in existence. I have to pinch myself
sometimes to make sure that I am not dreaming. How I wish you were here
to enjoy it with me. For enjoying it I am, and that most thoroughly.
Where shall I begin? With the house itself, I think. It is one of those
thoroughly comfortable old-fashioned residences, with thick walls, and
picturesque corners and gables, casement windows and deep window-seats,
plenty of good old oak about it.
"I could make it simply sweet; but, oh, my dear boy! I think even
your inartistic soul would stand aghast at the colours and style of
the decorations within! I have been sitting in the drawing-room, and
inwardly shuddering all the time at my surroundings. I should think it
was furnished sixty or seventy years ago, in the most hideous fashion
of our grandmothers, and has never touched since—all gilt and white,
with the crudest colours all bunched together, a large long room with
four windows. Not a plant or flower in it. Chairs and sofas in brown
holland.
"Fancy worsted-work screens, and glass cases of flowers, stuffed birds,
and fruit. Well, you're a man; and I can't write to you as I should to
a woman, so I will stop. Every room is the same. And yet, with it all,
it is thoroughly comfortable, though so inharmonious. I have not seen
the grounds, but I believe the garden is not a large one. There are
dense shrubberies in all directions. The household goes by clockwork.
You never saw such old characters as the two Quaker servants. They and
a small boy do all the work of the house between them. How they manage
it, I don't know, for I can give them credit for keeping everything
in the most beautiful order. The linen and plate are the very
best—exquisite, in fact—but I always heard that Quakers were noted for
those two items in their households.
"And now I come to the girls. I wonder what you will think of them!
I foresee a bright future for them after a little training. Of course,
they are in the most hideous garbs imaginable, but it says much for
their natural grace that they draw attention to themselves, and not
to their dress. They hold themselves well, and are, as far as I have
seen them yet, without a trace of self-consciousness. Perfectly simple
and natural, but oh, so undeveloped! And yet, sometimes, when I say to
myself what babies they are, they will startle me with some words of
wisdom or depth of feeling that I feel I don't possess myself! They are
tall, slim maidens, with the most lovely eyes and hair, and delicate
features and complexions, as like as two peas. I don't yet know them
apart.
"They are guarded by a regular dragon, whom I am longing to fight
and subdue. She sees in me everything that is evil, and is fiercely
determined that I shall not carry off her nurselings. I don't yet
know what I shall do with them, but they are too pretty to waste
their sweetness on the desert air. Tell me what you advise. Can't you
run down from Saturday to Monday? Don't get into mischief while your
'missis' is away, and tell Cyril that if I find the slightest whiff of
tobacco in my drawing-room when I return, he shall receive his 'congé'
immediately. Don't go to too many theatres, and remember I may be at
home any day, so will catch you out before you know it! Your loving—
"IDA."
"P.S.—Imagine no afternoon tea, dinner at six o'clock, and an
old-fashioned tea-table with hot-buttered toast and cakes, wheeled
into the drawing-room at nine o'clock! Prayers at ten, and then to
bed; and if you could have seen the sweet gravity with which one of
these children conducted our devotions, and the calm air with which she
handed me a huge Bible, I think you would have longed to be good as I
did!"
The next morning Mrs. Carter begged to be shown over the house, and
whilst Heather was attending to her housekeeping, Bluebell took her
round. The study, which had been the girls' nursery and schoolroom in
former years, was rather a gloomy-looking room, but opened into a small
greenhouse, in which was a large cage of canaries filling the air with
their songs. Bluebell's plants and flowers looked flourishing; she was
a born gardener, and knew how to pot, plant, and graft to perfection.
She took her cousin out into the garden, which had a long stretch of
green turf edged with old elm trees, and a few flower beds; and a very
small kitchen garden was beyond.
"We get most of our vegetables from the farm. Heather will take you
over to see that. We sometimes go there, and make the butter. When
Annie was ill—she is the farmer's wife; she used to help in the house,
and married our gardener who is now the farmer—when she was ill, after
her last baby was born, Heather and I went down and made the butter
every day!"
"You are most industrious young people. I shall be quite afraid of you.
I am sure you never do anything wrong—now, do you?"
Bluebell's laugh rang out merrily.
"Abigail would tell you how many scoldings we get in a day! But do you
know," and the girl's eyes were almost serious as she turned them upon
her cousin, "since we have been our own mistresses, we don't seem to
have got into half so many scrapes. In fact, when we are left to do
exactly as we like, we find that there is no temptation to do what we
ought not to do."
"The moral is that you should be always left to yourselves, isn't it? I
am afraid you will not be willing to hand yourselves over to my keeping
for a little, will you?"
Bluebell looked up eagerly.
"Are you going to offer to take us away with you?"
"I haven't said so. We must talk over it with your sister."