"ROSEBUDS."
"To one who has been long in city pent,
'Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven."
KEATS' _Sonnets_.
I suppose it is true, as older people say, that things very seldom turn
out as one expects. Sometimes they are not so bad as one feels sure they
will be--and very often, or almost always, they are not so nice as one
has thought they would be, if one has been fancying and picturing a
great deal about them. And any way, they are never quite _what_ one
expects. I am beginning to find this out for myself now--looking back, I
can recollect very few nice things in my life that have turned out as
nice as I had imagined them. But of these few, Rosebuds was one, and
that has made me always remember with particular distinctness all about
our first acquaintance with the dear little place. I think I could tell
_everything_ about our arrival there, exactly how each room looked, and
what we had for tea--oh, how hungry we were that first evening! and I
seem to feel again the feeling of the snowy white sheets and the sort of
faint hay-ey--Tib said it was lavender--scent in our beds when we got
into them that first night--very tired, but very happy.
What plans we made for the next day--how we settled to get up with the
sun, to ramble about and see everything--and how, after all, we slept,
of course, much later than usual! Still, it was a delicious waking. Do
you know how beautiful a first waking in the real country is when you
have been a long time in London? There is a sort of clear stillness
in the air that you can _feel_, and then a cock crows--with quite a
different crow from the poor London cocks, I always think, and hens
cluck a little, just under your window perhaps; or, best of all, a
turkey gobble-wobbles and some ducks quack--perhaps there is a rush of
all together if your window happens to be not far from the poultry-yard,
and the girl is coming out with the creatures' breakfast--and further
off you hear a moo from some cows, and nearer, and yet more distant, the
clear sweet notes of the ever busy little birds as they pass by on their
way up to who knows where? Oh, it is too delicious--and when you hear
all those sounds, as you are lying there still dreamy and sleepy,
there is a sort of strangeness and _fairy-ness_--I must make up that
word--that makes you think of Red Riding-hood setting off in the early
morning to her grandmother's cottage, or of the little princess who went
to live with the dwarfs to keep house for them.
But I must come back to the evening before--the evening, that is to say,
of our arrival at Rosebuds. It had been a pouring wet day when we left
London (it went on pouring till we were only about half-an-hour from our
journey's end); and just at the last moment grandpapa had got a telegram
which stopped his coming with us. He grumbled a little, but I don't
think he had been looking forward with _much_ pleasure to the journey in
our company, and though we thought it our duty to look grave, and Tib
said gently, "What a pity!" I don't think _we_ minded much either.
Indeed, to tell the real truth--and it isn't any harm telling it in
here, as grandpapa will never see this story--I think it was his not
being with us, and our feeling so lovelily free and unafraid, that made
that first evening at Rosebuds so delightful.
_And_ Mrs. Munt!--oh, yes, it had to do with Mrs. Munt. There never was
anybody so nice as Mrs. Munt--there never could be!
But I _must_ go straight on, and not keep slipping a little bit
backwards, and hurrying on too far forwards, this sort of way. Well
then, as I was saying, it rained and rained all through the three hours'
journey, or at least two hours and a half of it, so that we all felt
rather doleful and shivery, and Liddy began hoping there'd be no mistake
about the carriage from the inn meeting us at the station, as grandpapa
had told her it should. Poor Liddy was rather inclined to get nervous
when she was thrown on her own resources.
"Never mind, nursey," we said, all three, to comfort her; "we can easily
walk if it isn't there. You know grandpapa said it was only about half
a mile, and we've got our big cloaks on--the rain wouldn't hurt us."
But Liddy still looked rather unhappy, till suddenly from her side of
the railway carriage Tib called out, "It's clearing up--it's clearing up
splendidly; and oh, Gussie! do look--there's such a lovely rainbow!"
So there was. I never before or since saw such a rainbow--it seemed
a very nice welcome for us, and after all, Liddy's fears were quite
without reason. For the queer old "one-horse fly" was waiting for us,
and we all bundled into it and drove off without any mishaps, except
that nurse was sure the packet of umbrellas had been left in the railway
carriage, and stood shouting to the guard to stop after the train was
already moving out of the station, which made us all laugh so, that we
hadn't breath to tell her that it was all safe in the fly.
Though Rosebuds is almost _in_ the village--at least, a very tiny bit
out of it--it is some little way from the station, because for some
reason that I've never found out, the station stands away by itself in
the fields, as if it and the village had quarrelled and wouldn't have
anything to say to each other. I dare say it's not a bad thing that it
is so: the nice country-ness of it all would have been a little spoilt
by the trains whistling in and out, and as it is, we scarcely hear it,
as the railroad is low down and is hardly noticed. And the road from the
station to the village _is_ so pretty. I never, even now, go along it
without remembering that first evening when we drove to Rosebuds in
the clear brightness that comes after rain, the fields and the hedges
glistening with the water diamonds, the little clouds hurrying away as
if they were afraid of being caught, and over all the sort of hush
that seems to me to follow a regular rainy day--as if the world were a
naughty child that had cried itself to sleep with the tears still on its
cheeks.
It is a hilly bit of road--first it goes down, and then it goes up, and
when it comes into the village it does so quite suddenly. You see a
high, ivy-covered wall, which is the wall of the church-yard, and then
comes a row of sweet little alms-houses, and then the inn, and one by
one all the village houses and shops in the most irregular way possible.
Some one said once that it was more like an old German village than an
English one, but I have never been in Germany, so I can't tell, only it
certainly is very unlike everywhere else. We were so pleased to see it
so queer and funny, that we kept tugging each other to look out, first
at one side, and then at the other, and sometimes at both at once. Then
we began wondering which of the houses, as we came to them, could be
Rosebuds, and I think we would have been quite pleased whichever it
was--they _all_ looked so tempting and snug.
But we were all wrong in our guesses, for, as I said, Rosebuds was
quite at the end, and, like the village itself, we came upon it quite
suddenly, turning sharply down a sort of lane so shaded with trees that
you could scarcely see where you were going; then with some tugging at
the old horse, and some swaying of the clumsy old fly, in we drove at an
open gate, and pulled up in front of a low white house, nestling, so to
speak, in thickly-growing, bushy trees.
Never was a house so like its name! The trees were not really planted
so very close as they looked, but it seemed at first sight as if it was
almost buried in them: it stood out so white against their green. It
looks at first sight smaller than it really is, for it extends a good
deal out at the back. But large or small, to us it was just perfection,
and so was the very rosy old woman who stood smiling and bobbing in the
porch. She was so comical-looking that we could hardly help laughing. I
think she must find the world a very good-humoured place, for nobody
_could_ be cross when they look at her!
"Mrs. Munt, ma'am, I suppose?" said nurse as she got down.
And, "Certainly, ma'am," replied Mrs. Munt, and then the two old bodies
shook hands very ceremoniously. It was so funny to see their politeness
to each other. But Mrs. Munt was too eager to see us to waste much time
on Liddy.
"And is these the dear young ladies and gentleman?" she said, hastening
forward as we emerged from the fly. "Dear, dear! to think you should be
so big already, and me never to have seen you before!"
The tears were in her eyes, and we felt rather at a loss what to say or
do. She seemed to know all about us so well that we felt really ashamed
to think--though it certainly was not our fault--that we had never heard
of her till about two days ago. I felt too shy to speak, but Tib held
out her hand.
"I am very glad to see you, Mrs. Munt," she said. "I am the eldest, you
know. I am Miss Ansdell."
A slight shadow of pain crossed the old woman's face.
"Miss Ansdell," she repeated, with a strange sadness in her tone: "yes,
my dear--to be sure--you _are_ Miss Ansdell--Master Gerald's eldest."
"_I'm_ Gerald, too," said Gerald himself. "I'm called after grandpapa
and papa. Did you know papa when he was as little as me?"
Mrs. Munt smiled.
"I should think so, indeed--and your grandpapa too," she said. "And this
is Miss Gustava--you're not like the others, my dear. Perhaps you take
after your mamma's family--the Ansdells have all blue eyes and dark
hair. I remember Master Gerald writing about his lady's beautiful light
hair."
"Yes, indeed," said nurse, rather primly, very anxious to put in a word
for her side of the house, "Miss Gussie's hair is very nice, but it's
nothing to what her dear mamma's was."
But we didn't want to stand at the door all the evening while the old
bodies discussed our looks in this way. Gerald, who somehow seemed less
shy with Mrs. Munt than Tib and I, put a stop to it in his own way.
"Mrs. Munt," he said, "I'm dreadfully hungry. I'm only seven years old,
you know, though I look more; and nurse says seven's a hungry age."
"And we're hungry too--Tib and I, though I'm ten and Tib's eleven," said
I. "And we do _so_ want to see all the rooms and everything. Oh, I do
think Rosebuds is far the nicest place in the world."
My words quite gained Mrs. Munt's heart.
"Indeed, miss, I don't think you're far wrong," she said. And then, just
for a moment before going in, we stood and looked round. In front of
the house there was a beautiful lawn, right down to the low wall which
separated it from the high road. And away on the other side of that,
the ground sloped down gradually, so that we seemed to have nothing to
interfere with the view, which was really a very lovely one--right over
the old Forest of Evold, to where the river Rother flows quietly along
at the foot of the Rothering Hills. But children don't care much for
views--it's since I've got big that I've learnt to like the view--we
were much more interested to follow Mrs. Munt into the house, across the
low square hall into a short wide passage, with a window along one side,
and a flight of steps at one end. A door stood open close to the foot
of the stairs, and Mrs. Munt led the way through it into a bright,
plainly-furnished room, where tea was already set out for us.
"I might have got it ready in the dining-room this first evening," she
said, "but I thought master would be coming, and that there'd be his
dinner to see to. This is the old play-room--the school-room as used to
be is now a bed-room--and I thought this would be the best for you to
have quite as your own."
"It will be very nice, I'm sure," said Tib, whom Mrs. Munt looked at as
the eldest. "And there's a door right out into the garden--oh, that will
be nice! won't it, Gussie?"
"So that we can come out and in whenever we like. Yes, I'm glad
of that," I said. "Is the garden big, Mrs. Munt? I hope it is,
because--because we've no chance of being allowed to play in any other,"
I was going to say, but I stopped, and I felt myself grow a little red.
I wondered if Mrs. Munt knew why grandpapa was so strict about our not
making any friends; and I fancied she looked at me curiously as she
replied--
"Yes, Miss Gustava; it's a good big garden, and it's nice to play in,
for there's a deal of rather wild shrubbery--down at the back. Our
young ladies and gentlemen long ago used to say there was nowhere like
Rosebuds for hide-and-seek."
"Who were your young ladies and gentlemen?" I asked quietly. "Papa had
no brothers and sisters, I know."
"Ah! but I was here long before your dear papa's time, Miss Gustava,"
said Mrs. Munt. "I was here when your grandpapa was a boy. I'm five
years older nor master."
"And had _grandpapa_ brothers and sisters, then?" I asked again.
Mrs. Munt grew a little uneasy.
"You must have heard of your uncle, the Colonel, who was killed in
India," she said. "And there was Miss Mary, who died when she was only
fifteen. You must have seen her grave at Ansdell Friars."
I shook my head.
"No, I don't think so. But I do remember the tablet in the church to
Colonel Baldwin Ansdell. I often wondered who he was. You remember it,
Tib? But hadn't grandpapa any other sisters? You said young _ladies_,
Mrs. Munt."
I had forgotten all my shyness now in curiosity. But it was not fated to
be satisfied just then. Nurse suddenly interrupted.
"Miss Gussie, dear, you must wait a while to hear all these things from
Mrs. Munt. The tea's all ready, and I'm sure you're all hungry. Just run
up stairs with Miss Tib to take off your hats, there's a dear. Will you
show us the rooms, Mrs. Munt, please?"
So we were all trotted off again--up stairs this time, though it
scarcely seemed like going up stairs at all, so broad and shallow were
the steps compared with the high-up flights in our London house. And Tib
and I were so pleased with the room which Mrs. Munt told us was to be
ours, that we should have forgotten all about the talk down stairs if
she hadn't made another remark, which put my unanswered question into my
head again.
"Yes, it is a nice room," she said, looking round with pleasure at
the light-painted furniture and the two white beds side by side, the
old-fashioned cupboards in the wall, two of them with glass doors,
letting us see a few queer old china cups and teapots inside; "_and_
so little changed, even to its name. We've always called it the young
ladies' room."
There it was again--the young _ladies_; but nurse was listening
and evidently fussing to get us down to tea. I must trust to
cross-questioning Mrs. Munt some other time.
And the tea was really enough to take up all our attention. There was
everything of country things--fresh eggs, and butter and milk of the
best, and bread, and tea-cakes, and strawberry jam, and potted fish--all
"home-made," of course. I think Mrs. Munt and nurse were really a little
frightened to see how much we ate.
After tea we wanted, of course, to go out, but Liddy decided that it was
too damp, and Mrs. Munt consoled us by giving us leave to go all over
the house, for it was barely six o'clock and quite light. She took us
into the front hall and showed us the dining-room, out of which opened
the study, and beyond that again, what had been the school-room, and
was now grandpapa's bed-room. There was nothing _very_ interesting in
these rooms, though they were all quaint and old-fashioned; and through
all the house there was the sort of clean, fresh, and yet _not new_
feeling--a mixture of faint old scents that cannot be got away, and
wood-fires long ago burnt out, and yet the sweet, pure country air
preventing their being musty or stale--that you never notice except in
an old country house that has been carefully kept, and yet not really
lived in for many years.
And then Mrs. Munt, taking us through the hall again, showed us the door
of the drawing-room, and told us we might look at it by ourselves, which
we were pleased at.
It was _much_ more interesting, for, though a small room, it was filled
with pictures and curiosities. The pictures were mostly miniatures--such
queer things some of them were; gentlemen in uniform and the funniest
fancy dresses, some with wigs down to their waists, some of them with
helmets to make them like Roman soldiers. And ladies to match--some
looking dreadfully proud, with towers of hair on the top of their
heads, and some simpering in a silly way. One of these last was
really rather like Tib when she smiles in what I call her "company"
manner--though it's hardly fair to say that now, as she has really left
it off--and she was very angry at my saying so, and told me that the
most stuck-up-looking one of all was very like _me_; "and it's better
to look silly than to be so horribly proud," she added. We were really
rather near quarrelling, which would have been a bad beginning for our
life at Rosebuds, when we caught sight of an old cabinet in one corner,
of which the top half stood open, showing rows and rows of little
drawers, and here and there queer shaped doors opening into inside
places, where there were more drawers and shelves. It was a Japanese
cabinet, of course--a very old and valuable one. I have never seen one
so large and curious, and it quite absorbed our attention till nurse
came tapping at the door--I don't know why she tapped; I suppose she had
an idea that, as we were in the drawing-room, she must--to tell us it
was time, and more than time, to go to bed.
And though I wanted to talk to Tib in bed about the queerness of there
having been young _ladies_ long ago in this very room, and that Mrs.
Munt evidently didn't want to tell us about them, I was so sleepy, and
so was Tib, that our conversation got no further than, "Tib, don't you
think----" and a very indistinct murmur of "Yes, Gussie, of course I
do," before we were both fast asleep and----