them that's not here to use them, and even pretending that they are, if
that will bring peace of mind, Mr. Hodges."
He rubbed his clean shaven chin with his hand.
"Well, well!" he said at last. "Well, well, well! You're a good girl,
Miss Umbleby, and a kind one, that's certain. I never thought o' such
a thing. Maybe it's all right, though. But who could understand a
woman, anyway?"
"That's not much to understand," said I, shortly, and left him staring
at me.
She came in late in the afternoon with the rabbit under her arm and
there was Mr. Hodges in the drawing-room laying out the tea--we always
had everything done as if the master was there, and guests, for the
matter of that; she insisted on it. He knew his place as well as any
man, but his eye fell on the rabbit and he looked very queer and nearly
dropped a cup. She saw it and began to tremble and go white, and it
came over me then that now or never was the time to clinch matters or
she'd nearly die from shame and I couldn't soothe her any more.
"Perhaps Hodges had better go out and bring in the rest of the toys,
ma'am," I says, very careless, not looking at her. "It's coming on for
rain. And he can take an umbrella ... shall he?"
She stiffened up and gave a sort of nod to him.
"Yes, Hodges, go," she said, half in a whisper, and he bit his lip, and
swallowed hard and said, "Very good, madam," and went.
Well, after that, you can see how it would be, can't you? One thing
led to another, and one time when she was not well for a few days and
rather low, I actually got the two little cribs down from the garret
and ran up some white draperies for them. She'd hardly let me leave
her, and indeed there was not so much work that I couldn't manage very
well. She gave all her orders through me and I was well pleased to do
for her and let Mr. Hodges manage things, which he did better than poor
old Shipman, I'll be bound. By the time we told her about Shipman's
death, she took it very easy--indeed, I think, she'd have minded
nothing by that time, she had grown so calm and almost healthy.
Mr. Hodges would never catch my eye and I never talked private any more
with him, but that was the only sign he didn't approve, and he never
spoke for about a month, but joined in with me by little and little and
never said a word but to shrug his shoulders when I ordered up a tray
with porringers on it for the nursery (she had a bad cold and got
restless and grieving). I left her in the nursery with the tray and
went out to him, for I saw he wished to speak to me at last.
"Dr. Stanchon would think well of this, if he was here. Is that your
idea, Miss Umbleby?" he said to me, very dry. (The doctor had never
come back, but gone to be head of a big asylum out in the west.)
"I'm sure I don't know, Mr. Hodges," I answered. "I think any doctor
couldn't but be glad to see her gaining every day, and when she feels
up to it and guests begin to come again, she'll get willing to see them
and forget the loss of the poor little things."
"The loss of _what_?" says he, frowning at me.
"Why, the children," I answered.
"What children?"
"Master Robertson, of course, and Miss Winifred," I said, quite vexed
with his obstinacy. (I had asked her once if the baby was named after
her and she nodded and went away quickly.)
"See here, my girl," says he, "there's no good keeping this up for my
benefit. _I'm_ not going into a decline, you know. I know as well as
you do that she couldn't lose what she never had!"
"Never had!" I gasped. "She never had any children?"
"Of course not," he said, steadying me, for my knees got weak all of a
sudden. "That's what's made all the trouble--that's what's so
unfortunate! D'you mean to say you didn't know?"
I sank right down on the stairs. "But the pictures!" I burst out.
"If you mean that picture of Mr. Robertson Childress when he was a
little lad and the other one of him and his sister that died when a
baby, and chose to fancy they was _hers_," says he, pointing upstairs,
"it's no fault of mine, Miss Umbleby."
And no more it was. What with poor old Shipman's ramblings and the
doctor's words that I had twisted into what they never meant, I had got
myself into a fine pickle.
"But what shall I do, Mr. Hodges?" I said, stupid-like, with the
surprise and the shock of it. "It'd kill her, if I stopped now."
"That's for you to decide," said he, in his reserved, cold way, "I have
my silver to do."
Well, I did decide. I lay awake all night at it, and maybe I did
wrong, but I hadn't the heart to see the red go out of her cheek and
the little shy smile off her pretty mouth. It hurt no one, and the
mischief was done, anyway--there'd be no heir to Childerstone, now.
For five generations it had been the same--a son and a daughter to
every pair, and the old place about as dear to each son, as I made out,
as ever his wife or child could be. General Washington had stopped the
night there, and some great French general that helped the Americans
had come there for making plans to attack the British, and Colonel
Robertson Childress that then was had helped him. They had plenty of
English kin and some in the Southern States, but no friends near them,
on account of my mistress's husband having to live in Switzerland for
his health and his father dying young (as he did) so that his mother
couldn't bear the old place. But as soon as Mr. Robertson was told he
was cured and could live where he liked, he made for Childerstone and
brought his bride there--a stranger from an American family in
Switzerland--and lived but three months. If anybody was ever alone, it
was that poor lady, I'm sure. There was no big house like theirs
anywhere about--no county families, as you might say--and those that
had called from the village she wouldn't see, in her mourning. And yet
out of that house she would not go, because he had loved it so; it was
pitiful.
There's no good argle-bargling over it, as my mother used to say, I'd
do the same again! For I began it with the best of motives, and as
innocent as a babe, myself, of the real truth, you see.
I can shut my eyes, now, and it all comes back to me as it was in the
old garden, of autumn afternoons--I always think of Childerstone in the
autumn, somehow. There was an old box hedge there, trimmed into balls
and squares, and beds laid out in patterns, with asters and marigolds
and those little rusty chrysanthemums that stand the early frosts so
well. A wind-break of great evergreens all along two sides kept it
warm and close, and from the south and west the sun streamed in onto
the stone dial that the Childress of General Washington's time had had
brought over from home. It was set for Surrey, Hodges told me once,
and no manner of use, consequently, but very settled and home-like to
see, if you understand me. In the middle was an old stone basin, all
mottled and chipped, and the water ran out from a lion's mouth in some
kind of brown metal, and trickled down its mane and jaws and splashed
away. We cleaned it out, she and I, one day, _pretending we had help_,
and Hodges went to town and got us some gold fish for it. They looked
very handsome there. Old John kept the turf clipped and clean and
routed out some rustic seats for us--all grey they were and tottery,
but he strengthened them, and I smartened them up with yellow chintz
cushions I found in the garret--and I myself brought out two tiny
arm-chairs, painted wood, from the loft in the coach house. We'd sit
there all the afternoon in September, talking a little, me mending and
my mistress embroidering on some little frocks I cut out for her. We
talked about the children, of course. They got to be as real to me as
to her, almost. Of course at first it was all what they _would_ have
been (for she was no fool, Mrs. Childress, though you may be thinking
so) but by little and little it got to be what they _were_. It
couldn't be helped.
Hodges would bring her tea out there and she'd eat heartily, for she
never was much of a one for a late dinner, me sewing all the time, for
I always knew my place, though I believe in her kind heart she'd have
been willing for me to eat with her, bless her! Then she'd look at me
so wistful-like, and say, "I'll leave you now, Sarah--eat your tea and
don't keep out too late. Good-bye--good-bye..." Ah, dear me!
I'd sit and think, with the leaves dropping quiet and yellow around me
and the water dripping from the lion's mouth and sometimes I'd close my
eyes and--I'll swear I could hear them playing quietly beyond me! They
were never noisy children. I'll say now something I never mentioned,
even to her, and I'd say it if my life hung by it. More than once I've
left the metal tea-set shut in the biscuit box and found it spread out
of mornings. My mistress slept in the room next me with the door open,
and am I to think that William Hodges, or Katey, crippled with
rheumatism, or that lazy old John came down and set them out? I've
taken a hasty run down to that garden (we called it the children's
garden, after a while) because she took an idea, and seen the swing
just dying down, and not a breath stirring. That's the plain gospel of
it. And I've lain in my bed, just off the two cribs, and held my
breath at what I felt and heard. She knew it, too. But never heard so
much as I, and often cried for it. I never knew why that should be,
nor Hodges, either.
There was one rainy day I went up in the garret and pulled the old
rocking-horse out and dusted it and put it out in the middle and set
the doors open and went away. It was directly over our heads as we sat
sewing, and--ah, well, it's many years ago now, a many and a many, and
it's no good raking over too much what's past and gone, I know. And as
Hodges said, afterward, the rain on the roof was loud and steady....
I don't know why I should have thought of the rocking-horse, and she
not that was always thinking and planning for them. Hodges said it was
because I had had children. But I could never have afforded them any
such toy as that. Still, perhaps he was right. It was odd his saying
that (he knew the facts about me, of course, by that time) being such a
dry man, with no fancy about him, you might say, and disliking the
whole subject, as he always did, but so it was. Men will often come
out with something like that, and quite astonish one.
He never made a hint of objection when I was made housekeeper, and that
was like him, too, though I was, to say so, put over him. But he knew
my respect for him, black silk afternoons or no black silk, and how we
all leaned on him, really.
And then Margaret came, as I said, and it was all to tell, and a fine
mess I made of it and William Hodges that settled it, after all.
For Margaret wanted to pack her box directly and get off, and said
she'd never heard of such doings and had no liking for people that
weren't right.
"Not right?" says Hodges, "not right? Don't you make any such mistake,
my girl. Madam attends to all her law business and is at church
regularly, and if she's not for much company--why, all the easier for
us. Her cheques are as sensible as any one's, I don't care who the man
is, and a lady has a right to her fancies. I've lived with very high
families at home, and if I'm suited, you may depend upon it the place
is a good one. Go or stop, as you like, but don't set up above your
elders, young woman."
So she thought it over and the end of it all was that she was with us
till the last. And gave me many a black hour, too, poor child, meaning
no harm, but she admired Hodges, it was plain, and being younger than I
and far handsomer in a dark, Scotch way, it went hard with me, for he
made no sign, and I was proud and wouldn't have showed my feelings for
my life twice over.
Well, it went on three years more. I made my little frocks longer and
the gold fish grew bigger and we set out new marigolds every year, that
was all. It was like some quiet dream, when I've gone back and seemed
a girl again in the green lanes at home, with mother clear-starching
and the rector's daughter hearing my catechism and Master Lawrence sent
off to school for bringing me his first partridge. Those dreams seem
long and short at one and the same time, and I wake years older, and
yet it has not been years that passed but only minutes. So it was at
Childerstone. The years went by like the hours went in the children's
garden, all hedged in, like, and quiet and leaving no mark. We all
seemed the same to each other and one day was like another, full,
somehow, and busy and happy, too, in a quiet, gentle way.
When old Katey lay dying she spoke of these days for the first time to
me. She'd sent up the porringers and set out glasses of milk and made
cookies in heart shapes with her mouth tight shut for all that time,
and we never knowing if she sensed it rightly or not. But on her
deathbed she told me that she felt the Blessed Mary (as she called her)
had given those days to my poor mistress to make up to her for all
she'd lost and all she'd never had, and that she'd confessed her part
in it and been cleared, long ago. I never loved any time better,
looking back, nor Hodges either. One season the Christmas greens would
be up, and then before we knew it the ice would be out of the brooks
and there would be crocuses and daffodils for Mr. Childress's grave.
She and I took all the care of it and the key to the iron gate of it
lay out on her low work table, and one or other of us always passing
through, but one afternoon in summer when I went with a basket of June
roses, she being not quite up to it that day, there on the flat stone I
saw with my own eyes a little crumpled bunch of daisies--all nipped off
short, such as children pick, and crushed and wilted in their hot
little hands! And on no other tomb but his. But I was used to such as
that, by then....
Margaret was handy with her needle, and I remember well the day she
made the linen garden hat with a knot of rose-colour under the brim.
"You don't think this will be too old, do you, ma'am?" she said when
she showed it to my mistress, and the dear lady was that pleased!
"Not a bit, Margaret," she said and I carried it off to Miss Winifred's
closet. Many's the time I missed it after that, and knew too much to
hunt. It was hunting that spoiled all, for we tried it....
And yet we didn't half believe. Heaven help us, we knew, but we didn't
believe: St. Thomas was nothing to us!
Margaret was with us three years when the new family came. Hodges told
us that Hudson River property was looking up and land was worth more
every year. Anyway, in one year two families built big houses within a
mile of us and we went to call, of course, as in duty bound. John
grumbled at getting out the good harness and having the carriage
re-lined, but my mistress knew what was right, and he had no choice. I
dressed her very carefully, and we watched her off from the door, a
thought too pale in her black, but sweet as a flower, and every inch
full of breeding, as Hodges said.
I never knew what took place at that visit, but she came back with a
bright red circle in each cheek and her head very high, and spent all
the evening in the nursery. Alone, of course, for I heard little quick
sounds on the piano in the drawing-room, and the fairy books were gone
from the children's book-shelves, and Margaret found them in front of
the fire and brought them to me....
It was only three days before the new family called on us (a pair of
ponies to a basket phaeton--very neat and a nice little groom) and my
heart jumped into my mouth when I saw there were two children in with
the lady: little girls of eight and twelve, I should say. 'Twas the
first carriage callers that ever I'd seen in the place, and Hodges says
to me as he goes toward the hall,
"This is something like, eh, Miss Umbleby?"
But I felt odd and uncertain, and when from behind the library door I
heard the lady say, "You see I've kept my word and brought my babies,
Mrs. Childress--my son is hardly old enough for yours--only four--but
Helena and Lou can't wait--they are so impatient to see your little
girl!"--when I heard that, I saw what my poor mistress had been at, and
the terrible situation we were in (and had been in for years) flashed
over me and my hands got cold as ice.
"Where is she?" the lady went on.
At that I went boldly into the library and stood by my mistress's
chair--I couldn't desert her then, after all those years.
"Where? where?" my poor lady repeated, vague-like and turning her eyes
so piteous at me that I looked the visitor straight in the face and
getting between her and my mistress I said very calmly,
"I think Miss Winifred is in the children's garden, madam; shall I take
the young ladies there?"
For my thought was to get the children out of the way, before it all
came out, you see.
Oh, the look of gratitude she gave me! And yet it was a mad thing to
do. But I couldn't desert her--I couldn't.
"There, you see, mamma!" cried the youngest, and the older one said,
"We can find our way, thank you," very civil, to me.
"Children have sharp eyes," said the lady, laughing. "One can't hide
them from each other--haven't you found it so?"
"Now what the devil does she mean by that?" Hodges muttered to me as he
passed by me with the tray. He always kept the silver perfect, and it
did one's heart good to see his tray: urn and sugar and cream just
twinkling and the toast in a covered dish--old Chelsea it was--and new
cakes and jam and fresh butter, just as they have at home.
I don't know what they talked of, for I couldn't find any excuse to
stop in the room, and she wouldn't have had it, anyway. I went around
to the front to catch the children when they should come back, and
quiet them, but they didn't come, and I was too thankful to think much
about it.
After about half an hour I saw the oldest one coming slowly along by
herself, looking very sulky.
"Where's your sister, dear?" I said, all in a tremble, for I dreaded
how she might put it.
"She's too naughty--I can't get her to leave," she said pettishly, and
burst into the library ahead of me. My mistress's face was scarlet and
her eyes like two big stars--for the first time I saw that she was a
beauty. Her breath came very quick and I knew as well as if I'd been
there all the time that she'd been letting herself go, as they say, and
talked to her heart's content about what she'd never have a chance to
talk again to any guest. She was much excited and the other woman knew
it and was puzzled, I could see, from the way she looked at her.
Now the girl burst into the talk.
"Mamma, Lou is so naughty!" she cried. "I saw the ponies coming up the
drive, and I told her it was time, but she won't come!"
"Gently, daughter, gently," said the lady, and put her arm around her
and smoothed her hair. "Why won't Lou come?"
I can see that room now, as plain as any picture in a frame: the
setting sun all yellow on the gilt of the rows of books, the streak of
light on the waxed oak floor, the urn shining in the last rays. There
was the mother patting the big girl, there was Hodges with his hand on
the tray, and there was me standing behind my mistress, with her red
cheeks and her poor heaving bosom.
"Why won't Lou come?" she asked the girl again.
"Because," she says, still fretful, and very loud and clear, "because
she is taking a pattern of the little girl's hat and trying to twist
hers into that shape! I told her you wouldn't like it."
My mistress sprang up and the chair fell down with a crash behind her.
I turned (Hodges says) as white as a sheet and moved nearer her.
"Hat!" she gasped. "What hat? _whose hat_?"
There seemed to be a jingling, like sleighbells, all through the air,
and I thought I was going crazy till I saw that it came from the tray,
where Hodges's hand was shaking so, and yet he couldn't take it off.
"The hat with the rose-coloured ribbon on it," said the girl, "the one
we saw as we drove in, you know, mamma. It's so becoming."
"Sarah! Sarah! did you hear? Did you hear?" shrieked my mistress.
"She saw, Sarah, _she saw_!"
Then the colour went out of her like when you blow out a candle, and
she put her hand to her heart.
"Oh, oh, what pain!" she said very quickly, and Hodges cried, "My God,
she's gone!" and I caught her as she fell and we went down together,
for my knees were shaking.
When I opened my eyes there was only Margaret there, wetting my
forehead, for William had gone for a doctor. Not that it was of any
use, for she never breathed. But the smile on her face was lovely.
We got her on her bed and the sight of her there brought the tears to
me and I cried out, "Oh, dear, oh, dear! she was all I had in the
world, and now----"
"Now you've got me, my girl, and isn't that worth anything to you,
Sarah?"
That was William Hodges, and he put his arm over my shoulder, right
before Margaret, and looked so kind at me, so kind--I saw in a moment
that no one else was anything to him and that he had always cared for
me. And that, coming so sudden, when I had given up all hope of it,
was too much for me, weak as I was, and I fainted off again and woke up
raving hot with fever and half out of my mind, but not quite, for I
kept begging them to put off the funeral till I should be able to be up.
But this, of course, was not done, and by the time I was out of
hospital the turf was all in place on her dear grave.
William had managed everything and had picked out all the little
keepsakes I should have chosen--the heirs were most kind, though Jews.
Indeed, I've felt different to that sort of people ever since, for they
not caring for the house on account of its being lonely, to their way
of thinking, made it into a children's home for those of their belief
as were poor and orphaned, and whatever may have been, the old place
will never lack for children now.
I never stepped foot in the grounds again, for William Hodges, though
the gentlest and fairest of men, never thwarted me but once, and it was
in just that direction. Moreover, he forbade me to speak of what only
he and I knew for a certainty, and he was one of that sort that when a
command is laid, it's best kept.
We've two fine children--girl and boy--and he never murmured at the
names I chose for them. Indeed, considering what my mistress's will
left me and what his master had done for him, he was as pleased as I.
"They're named after our two best friends, Sarah," he said, looking
hard at me, once.
And I nodded my head, but if she saw me, in heaven, she knew who were
in my heart when I named them!
THE CRYSTAL
In reviewing the matter dispassionately, it seems difficult to find
anybody (anybody, that is to say, to whom her career was or is of the
slightest interest) who omits to pronounce Molly Dickett's life an
egregious and shameful failure. I should be sorry for any one, for
instance, who had the hardihood to address her mother on the subject,
for Mrs. Dickett's power of tongue is well known in and beyond local
circles; and since Eleanor married young Farwell, who stands in line
for cashier of the bank forty or fifty years from now, if all goes well
and a series of providential deaths occurs--indeed, ever since Kathryn
became assistant-principal at the high-school (because, as her mother
points out, a mere teacher's position, even in a high-school, may not
be much, but an assistant-principal may be called to consult with the
trustees any day and Kathryn has twice refused a college professorship)
since these family adjustments, I repeat, Mrs. Dickett's tongue has
grown steadily more incisive and her attempts at scaling the fortress
of Mr. Dickett's wardrobe more encouraging.
I believe it to be the simple truth to say that she literally never
mentions her second daughter, and that Molly sends her letters direct
to the factory to be sure that her father gets them--for Mrs. Dickett
is Napoleonic in her methods and would really, I am afraid, stop at
nothing. Any woman who has borne three children and will learn to
drive an electric runabout at the age of forty-five, for the purpose of
taking her husband home from his office in it, is to be reckoned with,
you will agree.
The last time she is known to have referred to the girl definitely was
when she announced the theory that her unfortunate name lay at the
bottom of it all.
"Molly," she is reported to have said, "was named by her father--a
mistake always, I think. The fact that Eleanor was baptised Ella has
little or nothing to do with it; there was never any 'Nellie' or
'Lelie' about it, and at sixteen she began of her own accord to write
it Eleanor. Kathryn I named entirely myself--and after all, what can
Aunt Ella be said to have done for Eleanor? A silver ring and a
bracelet when she graduated! But it was always 'Molly Dickett' all
over the town!"