At the Lodge at this time a discussion of some importance was in
progress. The scene was Mrs. Chickerel's bedroom, to which,
unfortunately, she was confined by some spinal complaint; and here she
now appeared as an interesting woman of five-and-forty, properly dressed
as far as visible, and propped up in a bed covered with a quilt which
presented a field of little squares in many tints, looking altogether
like a bird's-eye view of a market garden.
Mrs. Chickerel had been nurse in a nobleman's family until her marriage,
and after that she played the part of wife and mother, upon the whole,
affectionately and well. Among her minor differences with her husband
had been one about the naming of the children; a matter that was at last
compromised by an agreement under which the choice of the girls' names
became her prerogative, and that of the boys' her husband's, who limited
his field of selection to strict historical precedent as a set-off to
Mrs. Chickerel's tendency to stray into the regions of romance.
The only grown-up daughters at home, Ethelberta and Picotee, with their
brother Joey, were sitting near her; the two youngest children, Georgina
and Myrtle, who had been strutting in and out of the room, and otherwise
endeavouring to walk, talk, and speak like the gentleman just gone away,
were packed off to bed. Emmeline, of that transitional age which causes
its exponent to look wistfully at the sitters when romping and at the
rompers when sitting, uncertain whether her position in the household is
that of child or woman, was idling in a corner. The two absent brothers
and two absent sisters--eldest members of the family--completed the round
ten whom Mrs. Chickerel with thoughtless readiness had presented to a
crowded world, to cost Ethelberta many wakeful hours at night while she
revolved schemes how they might be decently maintained.
'I still think,' Ethelberta was saying, 'that the plan I first proposed
is the best. I am convinced that it will not do to attempt to keep on
the Lodge. If we are all together in town, I can look after you much
better than when you are far away from me down here.'
'Shall we not interfere with you--your plans for keeping up your
connections?' inquired her mother, glancing up towards Ethelberta by
lifting the flesh of her forehead, instead of troubling to raise her face
altogether.
'Not nearly so much as by staying here.'
'But,' said Picotee, 'if you let lodgings, won't the gentlemen and ladies
know it?'
'I have thought of that,' said Ethelberta, 'and this is how I shall
manage. In the first place, if mother is there, the lodgings can be let
in her name, all bills will be receipted by her, and all tradesmen's
orders will be given as from herself. Then, we will take no English
lodgers at all; we will advertise the rooms only in Continental
newspapers, as suitable for a French or German gentleman or two, and by
this means there will be little danger of my acquaintance discovering
that my house is not entirely a private one, or of any lodger being a
friend of my acquaintance. I have thought over every possible way of
combining the dignified social position I must maintain to make my story-
telling attractive, with my absolute lack of money, and I can see no
better one.'
'Then if Gwendoline is to be your cook, she must soon give notice at her
present place?'
'Yes. Everything depends upon Gwendoline and Cornelia. But there is
time enough for them to give notice--Christmas will be soon enough. If
they cannot or will not come as cook and housemaid, I am afraid the plan
will break down. A vital condition is that I do not have a soul in the
house (beyond the lodgers) who is not one of my own relations. When we
have put Joey into buttons, he will do very well to attend to the door.'
'But s'pose,' said Joey, after a glassy look at his future appearance in
the position alluded to, 'that any of your gentle-people come to see ye,
and when I opens the door and lets 'em in a swinging big lodger stalks
downstairs. What will 'em think? Up will go their eye-glasses at one
another till they glares each other into holes. My gracious!'
'The one who calls will only think that another visitor is leaving, Joey.
But I shall have no visitors, or very few. I shall let it be well known
among my late friends that my mother is an invalid, and that on this
account we receive none but the most intimate friends. These intimate
friends not existing, we receive nobody at all.'
'Except Sol and Dan, if they get a job in London? They'll have to call
upon us at the back door, won't they, Berta?' said Joey.
'They must go down the area steps. But they will not mind that; they
like the idea.'
'And father, too, must he go down the steps?'
'He may come whichever way he likes. He will be glad enough to have us
near at any price. I know that he is not at all happy at leaving you
down here, and he away in London. You remember that he has only taken
the situation at Mr. Doncastle's on the supposition that you all come to
town as soon as he can see an opening for getting you there; and as
nothing of the sort has offered itself to him, this will be the very
thing. Of course, if I succeed wonderfully well in my schemes for story-
tellings, readings of my ballads and poems, lectures on the art of
versification, and what not, we need have no lodgers; and then we shall
all be living a happy family--all taking our share in keeping the
establishment going.'
'Except poor me!' sighed the mother.
'My dear mother, you will be necessary as a steadying power--a flywheel,
in short, to the concern. I wish that father could live there, too.'
'He'll never give up his present way of life--it has grown to be a part
of his nature. Poor man, he never feels at home except in somebody
else's house, and is nervous and quite a stranger in his own. Sich is
the fatal effects of service!'
'O mother, don't!' said Ethelberta tenderly, but with her teeth on edge;
and Picotee curled up her toes, fearing that her mother was going to
moralize.
'Well, what I mean is, that your father would not like to live upon your
earnings, and so forth. But in town we shall be near him--that's one
comfort, certainly.'
'And I shall not be wanted at all,' said Picotee, in a melancholy tone.
'It is much better to stay where you are,' her mother said. 'You will
come and spend the holidays with us, of course, as you do now.'
'I should like to live in London best,' murmured Picotee, her head
sinking mournfully to one side. 'I HATE being in Sandbourne now!'
'Nonsense!' said Ethelberta severely. 'We are all contriving how to live
most comfortably, and it is by far the best thing for you to stay at the
school. You used to be happy enough there.'
Picotee sighed, and said no more.