About three o'clock that afternoon Priscilla saw quite clearly what
she had dimly perceived in the morning, that if there was to be
domestic peace in Creeper Cottage she must bestir herself. She did not
like bestirring herself; at least, not in such directions. She would
go out and help the poor, talk to them, cheer them, nurse their babies
even and stir their porridge, but she had not up to this point
realized her own needs, and how urgent they could be and how
importunate. It was hunger that cleared her vision. The first time she
was hungry she had been amused. Now when it happened again she was
both surprised and indignant. "Can one's wretched body _never_ keep
quiet?" she thought impatiently, when the first twinges dragged her
relentlessly out of her dejected dreaming by the fire. She remembered
the cold tremblings of the night before, and felt that that state
would certainly be reached again quite soon if she did not stop it at
once. She rang for Annalise. "Tell the cook I will have some luncheon
after all," she said.
"The cook is gone," said Annalise, whose eyes were more aggressively
swollen than they had yet been.
"Gone where?"
"Gone away. Gone for ever."
"But why?" asked Priscilla, really dismayed.
"The Herr Geheimrath insulted her. I heard him doing it. No woman of
decency can permit such a tone. She at once left. There has been no
dinner to-day. There will be, I greatly fear, n--o--o--supp--pper."
And Annalise gave a loud sob and covered her face with her apron.
Then Priscilla saw that if life was to roll along at all it was her
shoulder that would have to be put to the wheel. Fritzing's shoulder
was evidently not a popular one among the lower classes. The vision of
her own doing anything with wheels was sufficiently amazing, but she
did not stop to gaze upon it. "Annalise," she said, getting up quickly
and giving herself a little shake, "fetch me my hat and coat. I'm
going out."
Annalise let her apron drop far enough to enable her to point to the
deluge going on out of doors. "Not in this weather?" she faltered,
images of garments soaked in mud and needing much drying and brushing
troubling her.
"Get me the things," said Priscilla.
"Your Grand Ducal Highness will be wet through."
"Get me the things. And don't cry quite so much. Crying really is the
most shocking waste of time."
Annalise withdrew, and Priscilla went round to Fritzing. It was the
first time she had been round to him. He was sitting at his table, his
head in his hands, staring at the furnisher's bill, and he started to
see her coming in unexpectedly through the kitchen, and shut the bill
hastily in a drawer.
"Fritzi, have you had anything to eat to-day?"
"Certainly. I had an excellent breakfast."
"Nothing since?"
"I have not yet felt the need."
"You know the cook Lady Shuttleworth sent has gone again?"
"What, that woman who burst in upon me was Lady Shuttleworth's cook?"
"Yes. And you frightened her so she ran home."
"Ma'am, she overstepped the limits of my patience."
"Dear Fritzi, I often wonder where exactly the limits of your patience
are. With me they have withdrawn into infinite space--I've never been
able to reach them. But every one else seems to have a knack--well,
somebody must cook. You tell me Annalise won't. Perhaps she really
can't. Anyhow I cannot mention it to her, because it would be too
horrible to have her flatly refusing to do something I told her to do
and yet not be able to send her away. But somebody must cook, and I'm
going out to get the somebody. Hush"--she put up her hand as he opened
his mouth to speak--"I know it's raining. I know I'll get wet. Don't
let us waste time protesting. I'm going."
Fritzing was conscience-stricken. "Ma'am," he said, "you must forgive
me for unwittingly bringing this bother upon you. Had I had time for
reflection I would not have been so sharp. But the woman burst upon
me. I knew not who she was. Sooner than offend her I would have cut
out my tongue, could I have foreseen you would yourself go in search
in the rain of a substitute. Permit me to seek another."
"No, no--you have no luck with cooks," said Priscilla smiling. "I'm
going. Why I feel more cheerful already--just getting out of that
chair makes me feel better."
"Were you not cheerful before?" inquired Fritzing anxiously.
"Not very," admitted Priscilla. "But then neither were you. Don't
suppose I didn't see you with your head in your hands when I came in.
Cheerful people never seize their heads in that way. Now Fritzi I know
what's worrying you--it's that absurd affair last night. I've left off
thinking about it. I'm going to be very happy again, and so must you
be. We won't let one mad young man turn all our beautiful life sour,
will we?"
He bent down and kissed her hand. "Permit me to accompany you at
least," he begged. "I cannot endure--"
But she shook her head; and as she presently walked through the rain
holding Fritzing's umbrella,--none had been bought to replace hers,
broken on the journey--getting muddier and more draggled every
minute, she felt that now indeed she had got down to elementary
conditions, climbed right down out of the clouds to the place where
life lies unvarnished and uncomfortable, where Necessity spends her
time forcing you to do all the things you don't like, where the whole
world seems hungry and muddy and wet. It was an extraordinary
experience for her, this slopping through the mud with soaking shoes,
no prospect of a meal, and a heart that insisted on sinking in spite
of her attempts to persuade herself that the situation was amusing. It
did not amuse her. It might have amused somebody else,--the Grand
Duke, for instance, if he could have watched her now (from, say, a
Gothic window, himself dry and fed and taken care of), being punished
so naturally and inevitably by the weapons Providence never allows to
rust, those weapons that save parents and guardians so much personal
exertion if only they will let things take their course, those sharp,
swift consequences that attend the actions of the impetuous. I might,
indeed, if this were a sermon and there were a congregation unable to
get away, expatiate on the habit these weapons have of smiting with
equal fury the just and the unjust; how you only need to be a little
foolish, quite a little foolish, under conditions that seem to force
it upon you, and down they come, sure and relentless, and you are
smitten with a thoroughness that leaves you lame for years; how
motives are nothing, circumstances are nothing; how the motives may
have been aflame with goodness, the circumstances such that any other
course was impossible; how all these things don't matter in the
least,--you are and shall be smitten. But this is not a sermon. I have
no congregation. And why should I preach to a reader who meanwhile has
skipped?
It comforted Priscilla to find that almost the whole village wanted to
come and cook for her, or as the women put it "do" for her. Their
cooking powers were strictly limited, and they proposed to make up for
this by doing for her very completely in other ways; they would scrub,
sweep, clean windows, wash,--anything and everything they would do.
Would they also sew buttons on her uncle's clothes? Priscilla asked
anxiously. And they were ready to sew buttons all over Fritzing if
buttons would make him happy. This eagerness was very gratifying, but
it was embarrassing as well. The extremely aged and the extremely
young were the only ones that refrained from offering their services.
Some of the girls were excluded as too weedy; some of the mothers
because their babies were too new; some of the wives because their
husbands were too exacting; but when Priscilla counted up the names
she had written down she found there were twenty-five. For a moment
she was staggered. Then she rose to the occasion and got out of the
difficulty with what she thought great skill, arranging, as it was
impossible to disappoint twenty-four of these, that they should take
it in turn, each coming for one day until all had had a day and then
beginning again with the first one. It seemed a brilliant plan. Life
at Creeper Cottage promised to be very varied. She gathered them
together in the village shop to talk it over. She asked them if they
thought ten shillings a day and food would be enough. She asked it
hesitatingly, afraid lest she were making them an impossibly frugal
offer. She was relieved at the cry of assent; but it was followed
after a moment by murmurs from the married women, when they had had
time to reflect, that it was unfair to pay the raw young ones at the
same rate as themselves. Priscilla however turned a deaf ear to their
murmurings. "The girls may not," she said, raising her hand to impose
silence, "be able to get through as much as you do in a day, but
they'll be just as tired when evening comes. Certainly I shall give
them the same wages." She made them draw lots as to who should begin,
and took the winner home with her then and there; she too, though the
day was far spent, was to have her ten shillings. "What, have you
forgotten your New Testaments?" Priscilla cried, when more murmurs
greeted this announcement. "Don't you remember the people who came at
the eleventh hour to labour in the vineyard and got just the same as
the others? Why should I try to improve on parables?" And there was
something about Priscilla, an air, an authority, that twisted the
women of Symford into any shape of agreement she chose. The
twenty-four went their several ways. The twenty-fifth ran home to put
on a clean apron, and got back to the shop in time to carry the eggs
and butter and bread Priscilla had bought. "I forgot to bring any
money," said Priscilla when the postmistress--it was she who kept the
village shop--told her how much it came to. "Does it matter?"
"Oh don't mention it, Miss Neumann-Schultz," was the pleasant answer
of that genteel and trustful lady; and she suggested that Priscilla
should take with her a well-recommended leg of mutton she had that
day for sale as well. Priscilla shuddered at the sight of it and
determined never to eat legs of mutton again. The bacon, too, piled up
on the counter, revolted her. The only things that looked as decent
raw as when they were cooked were eggs; and on eggs she decided she
and Fritzing would in future live. She broke off a piece of the crust
of the bread Mrs. Vickerton was wrapping up and ate it, putting great
pressure on herself to do it carelessly, with a becoming indifference.
"It's good bread," said Mrs. Vickerton, doing up her parcel.
"Where in the world do you get it from?" asked Priscilla
enthusiastically. "The man must be a genius."
"The carrier brings it every day," said Mrs. Vickerton, pleased and
touched by such appreciation. "It's a Minehead baker's."
"He ought to be given an order, if ever man ought."
"An order? For you regular, Miss Neumann-Schultz?"
"No, no,--the sort you pin on your breast," said Priscilla.
"Ho," smiled Mrs. Vickerton vaguely, who did not follow; she was so
genteel that she could never have enough of aspirates. And Priscilla,
giving the parcel to her breathless new help, hurried back to Creeper
Cottage.
Now this help, or char-girl--you could not call her a charwoman she
was manifestly still so very young--was that Emma who had been obliged
to tell the vicar's wife about Priscilla's children's treat and who
did not punctually return books. I will not go so far as to say that
not to return books punctually is sinful, though deep down in my soul
I think it is, but anyhow it is a symptom of moral slackness. Emma was
quite good so long as she was left alone. She could walk quite
straight so long as there were no stones in the way and nobody to pull
her aside. If there were stones, she instantly stumbled; if somebody
pulled, she instantly went. She was weak, amiable, well-intentioned.
She had a widowed father who was unpleasant and who sometimes beat her
on Saturday nights, and on Sunday mornings sometimes, if the fumes of
the Cock and Hens still hung about him, threw things at her before she
went to church. A widowed father in Emma's class is an ill being to
live with. The vicar did his best to comfort her. Mrs. Morrison talked
of the commandments and of honouring one's father and mother and of
how the less there was to honour the greater the glory of doing it;
and Emma was so amiable that she actually did manage to honour him six
days out of the seven. At the same time she could not help thinking it
would be nice to go away to a place where he wasn't. They were
extremely poor; almost the poorest family in the village, and the
vision of possessing ten shillings of her very own was a dizzy one.
She had a sweetheart, and she had sent him word by a younger sister of
the good fortune that had befallen her and begged him to come up to
Creeper Cottage that evening and help her carry the precious wages
safely home; and at nine o'clock when her work was done she presented
herself all blushes and smiles before Priscilla and shyly asked her
for them.
Priscilla was alone in her parlour reading. She referred her, as her
habit was, to Fritzing; but Fritzing had gone out for a little air,
the rain having cleared off, and when the girl told her so Priscilla
bade her come round in the morning and fetch the money.
Emma's face fell so woefully at this--was not her John at that moment
all expectant round the corner?--that Priscilla smiled and got up to
see if she could find some money herself. In the first drawer she
opened in Fritzing's sitting-room was a pocket-book, and in this
pocket-book Fritzing's last five-pound note. There was nothing else
except the furnisher's bill. She pushed that on one side without
looking at it; what did bills matter? Bills never yet had mattered to
Priscilla. She pushed it on one side and searched for silver, but
found none. "Perhaps you can change this?" she said, holding out the
note.
"The shop's shut now, miss," said Laura, gazing with round eyes at the
mighty sum.
"Well then take it, and bring me the change in the morning."
Emma took it with trembling fingers--she had not in her life touched
so much money--and ran out into the darkness to where her John was
waiting. Symford never saw either of them again. Priscilla never saw
her change. Emma went to perdition. Priscilla went back to her chair
by the fire. She was under the distinct and comfortable impression
that she had been the means of making the girl happy. "How easy it is,
making people happy," thought Priscilla placidly, the sweetest smile
on her charming mouth.