LETTERS TO A MOTHER
One morning, not long after this, there came to Miss Bibby at
"Greenways" a letter from Thomas Bibby in the city.
Thomas was the sole male member of the family of Bibby, and was a
hard-headed young clerk in the commercial department of a big evening
newspaper. He had been brought up by his sisters;--there were three more
Misses Bibby scattered about the State, teaching, or in similar
positions of trust to the "Greenways" Miss Bibby. And they were all
inclined to be literary. Clara Bibby wrote verse; if you happened to be
a reader of obscure country newspapers you would frequently come across
a poem entitled _Australia--my Country_, or _Wattle Blossom_, with the
signature "Clara L. C. Bibby" beneath it. Alice, the quietest, gentlest
little person in the world, wrote vehement articles in the suburban
_Woman's Political Organ_. And Grace had actually brought out a book. A
publisher had been touched at her despair when he handed her back her
useless MS., and suggested she should compile a cookery book for him,
which after a little time of dignified sulking she did; and the book
came out and, there being room for it, had a most successful sale. And
Grace, quite pleased and surprised, positively taught herself to cook
from it, and found the subject so full of interest that she abandoned
her heroines and started a second volume of _Cookery Hints for Busy
Housewives_. But it galled the pride of Agnes, the "Greenways" Miss
Bibby, and Clara, the poetess, and Alice, the _Woman's Voice_, that she
signed it with her own name. They were confronted everywhere with
_Bibby's Cookery Book._
Thomas, after he had finished being brought up by these ladies,
surprised every one by his faculty for business. They took him in his
eighteenth year to the editor of an evening paper who was known to them,
and begged that he should be received into the office to gain an insight
into literary life, as they hoped in a few more years he would become a
novelist.
"Suppose I'll have to give you a trial," growled the editor to the
sulky-looking novelist-to-be, when the ladies had fluttered away. "Here
you are, here's a bank manager made a mess of his accounts--no roguery
about it, simple confusion, and he goes and shoots himself and his
wife--can you turn that into a novel of two hundred words?"
"No, I can't," said Thomas, who hated all things literary. Then his
sulky look vanished and his eyes brightened. "But I tell you what I
_could_ do--go and straighten out the poor chap's accounts."
"Here," said the editor, "you'd better go downstairs, my fine fellow,
and ask Mr. Gates to give you a stool in the office."
So Thomas became a valued clerk in the counting-house. And presently
when a foolish, feminine speculation swept away the income of the
sisters, Thomas established himself as guardian of their bank-books, and
general business man of the family.
The sisters, though a little money was still left, decided to take
situations as governesses and companions, telling each other it would
widen their outlook on life, and give them experiences that might prove
invaluable in their literary work. Judge and Mrs. Lomax felt themselves
fortunate when Miss Agnes Bibby, with such unquestionable credentials,
appeared in answer to their advertisement for some one to take charge of
their family during their absence.
And now came a letter from Thomas in the city to Agnes at "Greenways":--
"Dear old Ag.--
"Here's a chance for you if you can only take it. We've just heard that
writing chap, Hugh Kinross, has gone to Burunda for a holiday. The
beggar has dodged every attempt at an interview, though we and every
other paper, for the matter of that, have lain for him in every possible
place. Well, I was talking to the editor the other day--he's no end
affable to me, and often has a chat--and I happened to say you were at
Burunda. And he said, 'Burunda! why that's where Kinross is taking a
holiday. Tell her to get any interesting information she can about him,
and I'll pay her well for it. If she can manage an interview--a woman
can rush in sometimes where a man fears to tread--I'll give her six
guineas. Yes, and take one of the stories with which she is always
bombarding me, hanged if I won't!'
"You can see it's worth trying for, old girl. Six guineas down for the
interview, and say another four for a short story, not counting getting
into print at last. Go in and win, say I. I'm sending with this an
English mag. or two, with interviews in to show you the style of thing
they need.
"You can easily find him out; he's sure to be at one of the hotels. Dog
him on a walk some day, and then when you've got him cornered somewhere
where he can't escape, whip out your note-book and make him hold up his
arms. Butter him up a bit, and he'll give in; he's not been famous long
enough not to feel inclined to purr if you rub him the right way.
"He's written two or three books; _Liars All_ is one of them. They're
not in your line, of course, but I must say they're not at all bad.
Well, go in and win.
"Yours,
"Tom.
"PS.--I banked thirteen pounds six to-day for Grace--more royalties from
the _Cookery Book._ Why don't you try something in the same line?
_Poultry Keeping for Retrenched Incomes_, for instance; it would sell
like penny ice creams on a heat-wave day."
Miss Bibby, after reading this letter for the third time that day,
hastened into the dining-room where the children were awaiting her, a
red spot on her cheek, and a hole burning inside her sleeve near her
elbow, where, being pocketless as any modern woman, she had tucked the
letter.
[Illustration: "She exacted half-an-hour a day at the piano, from each
of the little girls."]
She kept her thoughts away from it only by desperate expedients, such as
sternly reminding herself that her time at present was paid for by Judge
Lomax, and therefore belonged absolutely to him. Later in the day it
would be a different matter, but now to her duties,--
"Pauline, Lynn, get out your pens this moment;--no, Muffie, you must
write in pencil, you have spoiled the cloth with the ink you have
spilled;--yes, yes, in a minute; Max, you sit here, dear, on the nice
high chair, and then you can reach beautifully."
Max firmly refused the nice high chair, which he long had considered
beneath the dignity of a man with a pocket, and had to be established as
usual on two or three fat music books placed on a "grown-up" chair.
There were no regular lessons during the holidays, but Mrs. Lomax having
said vaguely, at leaving, that she hoped the little girls would not have
quite forgotten their scales, and how to write and read, before the
governess returned, Miss Bibby had considered it her duty to see to
these things.
So she exacted half an hour a day at the piano from each of the little
girls, and faithfully sat beside them saying: "One, two, three, four,
don't droop your wrists, Lynn; one, two, three, four, count, Pauline;
one, two, three, four, thumb under, Muffie."
And she established two letter hours a week, and saw to it that the
children wrote to their parents in their best hand for one page, though
she allowed a "go-as-you-please" for the other pages, judging that that
would give most pleasure across the wash of the Pacific seas.
"My dearest Mummie and Dad," wrote Pauline this afternoon, "I played my
Serenade through yesterday without one single solitary mistake."
Then she looked up with trouble in her eyes.
"Miss Bibby," she said, "you know just where you turn over and the
chords begin, are you _sure_ I didn't play D flat there, instead of D
natural?"
Miss Bibby started guiltily; as silence had settled slowly down over the
room her thoughts began to drop nearer and nearer to her elbow.
"I don't remember, dear," she said; "didn't I praise you--didn't we say
you could tell mother that you had it quite correct at last? Yes, I
remember quite well."
Pauline sighed. There was no help for her spiritual difficulty here.
That doubtful D flat had made her toss restlessly for half an hour
before she slept last night. She was consumed by the desire to write the
glorious news to her mother, and even Miss Bibby, exigent Miss Bibby,
had said the piece was perfect. But Pauline herself had a lurking,
miserable doubt in her mind; she seemed to recollect just one mistake,
just one tiresome finger jumping up to a black note, when it should have
played a white one with a slur. She stared wretchedly at the written
statement before her. Suppose it were not true--think of writing a lie,
an actual lie to mother! But, indeed, if she really knew for certain
that she had played D flat she would not dream of writing so. It was the
doubt that tormented. She had better not write so certainly--yes, she
would add something that would leave the question more open. "Perhaps"
was the word, of course,--"perhaps" excused many, many things. She read
over the beginning once more, imagining it to be her mother's eye
perusing.
"'My dearest Mummie and Dad,--I played my Serenade through this morning
without one single solitary mistake perhaps.'" Oh, how the wretched word
pulled one up, tarnished the brilliant achievement!
"Pauline, you cannot have finished; sit down," said Miss Bibby.
Pauline shook her head gloomily. "I can't write yet," she said; "I think
I'll just go and play it over once more to be certain. That might have
been D flat."
"Oh," said Miss Bibby excusingly, for the Serenade was long, like the
lay of the Last Minstrel. "Mother won't mind, dear--just say you played
it very well, and I was much pleased."
But Pauline shook her head wretchedly.
"I think I'll play it again," she said, and crossed over to the piano
with melancholy eyes.
Lynn was wrestling with her first page.
"'Dearie mother, we don't cough so mush' (how do you spell cough, Miss
Bibby? There's a horrid g or q in it somewhere, I know)--'I don't smudg
so mush.' I wish (Oh, dear, you said we oughtn't to say we wished she'd
come back, didn't you, Miss Bibby, cause she might stop enjoying
herself? What else could I put after 'I wish'? I've got that written)."
"Suppose you say you wish you could write better," suggested Miss Bibby.
"I suppose that will have to do," said the little girl sadly. "No, I'll
tell you, 'cause I don't _much_ want to write better, I'll say I wish
words would ryum better. Look at beauty, nothing will go with it but
duty, and duty is such a ugly word in a song, isn't it?"
"No, I think it is a beautiful word," said Miss Bibby; she expected
herself to say this, and was not disappointed.
"Well, I don't," sighed Lynn. "I could have made a lovely song this
morning. It began--
'Oh, the bush is full of beauty,
And the flowers are full of love,'
but I couldn't go any farther, 'cause there was nothing to ryum but that
horrid duty."
"I think you could have made it very pretty, dear, with that word," said
Miss Bibby. "And say rhyme, Lynn, not ryum. You could have said,--
'Oh, the bush is full of beauty,
And the flowers are full of love,
And if we do our duty,
We----we----'
--something like that, you know, dear."
"'We'll soon get up above,'"
finished Lynn discontentedly. "No, I didn't want it to go like that; it
was just going to be a springy sort of a song, with wild birds in it,
not a lessony sort."
"Well, get on with your letter, my dear," said Miss Bibby, who was often
helpless before the fine instinct for the value of words with which Lynn
had been gifted.
So Lynn continued in a cramped hand, "I wish there were more nice
words--duty won't do."
This was a sentence calculated to puzzle even parents intelligent as
Judge and Mrs. Lomax imagined themselves.
Then the child turned over to her "free" sheet, on which she might write
and spell as she pleased, and gazed at it wistfully.
Oh, to purr out her little heart upon it so that the mother so far away
might hear her speaking, whispering, just as if she were cuddled up in
the dear arms!
What a tragic thing this was in her hand, this red pen with the end
sucked nearly white, so powerful, so powerless!
"I love you," she wrote, and then covered a line or two with black
crosses, that meant a passion of kisses. Oh, to catch at all the words
that were surging in her heaving little breast, and to force them down
on the white sheet, and to send them away red-hot across the sea!
She dipped wildly in the ink, she breathed hard and held the pen in
almost a convulsive way. But the pitiful steel thing only spluttered,
and left a few lines of black scribble. Could the mother understand
that? Ah, perhaps, perhaps.
"I hop you are well, from Lynn."
And so concluded the bi-weekly letter, with a big tear as usual, for
Lynn simply could not write to mother without crying a little, though
for the rest of the time she was a merry little grig.
Muffie was still blissfully untroubled by the need of orthography, and
scribbled steadily over four pages, her lips moving all the time to such
tune as "'so we went down the gully and ferns, such a lot. And I got the
best of all, and it's under the house for you in a tin from Anna, and
all of it's for you in the bushhouse at our proper house and daddie.'"
After a time the Serenade began to get upon the nerves of all the room.
Eleven times did poor Pauline attack it and eleven times did she have a
breakdown. It was not always the D flat that caused the downfall, though
Miss Bibby found herself listening with nerves a-stretch every time the
difficult bar approached. And she felt inclined to cry with thankfulness
everytime the child went smoothly past. But then just as surely as her
nervous tension released itself, and she began to comfort herself that
the concluding page could not fail to go well, a stumble, a slip, a
despairing cry from the piano stool, and the whole performance began
again.
"Oh, make her stop, Miss Bibby," implored Muffie; "she intrupts me
dreadf'lly, and I'm in the middle of telling about the fat lady that
rides on a bicycle."
"Make her stop," said Max, she "intlups me worse. I'll never get my
letter done." Max, except for a wavy line or two in red chalk generally
confined his correspondence to enclosing tangible sections of things in
which he was interested at the time. To-day he had stuffed into his
envelope a clipping from the tail of Larkin's horse, one of the white
daisies Trike was being nourished upon, some shavings of coloured
chalks from a box on which he had just expended his final penny, and a
few currants from his last drop cake.
"I'm getting all my chalks mixed up with her intlupting me," he
complained, looking angrily towards the piano where the devoted Pauline
still battled madly with the Serenade.
"Pauline, my dear child, I shall go out of my senses if you play the
thing again," Miss Bibby said desperately, as Pauline for the twelfth
time began the clashing chords that opened the piece, and served as
contrast for the gentler music of the Serenade itself.
"I've--I've _sworn_ to myself to get it right," said Pauline wildly. Her
lips were quivering, her eyes were full of tears, her very hands were
shaking with weariness.
"You shouldn't swear," began Miss Bibby.
"The butcher does," volunteered Max.
"I--I mean it is wrong to bind oneself by a promise one may not be able
to keep," Miss Bibby added hastily. "And you are not to talk to the
butcher, Max. Shut the piano now, Pauline, and another time when you are
quite calm----"
"I've got it w-w-written," sobbed Pauline, fighting with the keys
through a mist of tears.
"You can easily start another letter," said Miss Bibby distractedly;
"don't mention your music this time--your mother won't mind."
"No, I can't stop; I can't stop," wailed Pauline, playing on as if under
a spell.
At this point Anna stalked into the room.
"Which I'm quite aware it isn't my place, Miss Bibby; but I'm here to
look after the children as well as you," she said, "and them down with
whooping cough that dreadful they can't eat potatoes, and getting
punished like this till the very kettle in the kitchen is ready to
scream, and the Missus don't believe in punishing, no, she don't, and
it's a good deal longer I've lived in the fambly than some people, and
knows the ways better, and the tears streaming down the poor child's
face like you never saw."
Pauline had quivered once or twice during this heated speech, but as it
finished she crashed on to D flat yet again, fell off her stool on to
the floor, and rolled about screaming with laughter.
Even Miss Bibby was forced to smile a little, for Anna was plainly
suffering keenly, and had bottled it up for some time.
"You mean well, Anna," she said quietly, "even if you don't express
yourself well. You can put on your hat and take the children to the
waterfall; it will do you all good, for it will be cool down there. I
will go to the post, lock the side door, and put the key under the mat."
In ten minutes "Greenways" lay still and peaceful once more among its
trees, as if no Serenade had ever troubled its repose. The children were
scampering down the gully with Anna following warily, certain she heard
a snake at every step.
And Miss Bibby, the letters under her arm, was buttoning her gloves
inside the gate, and settling her veil for the walk up to the township.