That Jane Price!
WHEN Abigail announced, “Mrs. Price says can you spare a minute to see
her, please, ma’am,” you would have known by the toss of her nose that
the lady-caller was not very _nearly_ related to the aristocracy.
As a matter of fact, Mrs. Price, or “that Jane Price,” as she is
more usually styled, is held in no great esteem in our village. Yet
everything is said to fulfil some useful purpose, and if Mrs. Price
does nothing else, at least she and her family serve as conspicuous
moral warnings and give us something to throw up our hands about at
intervals, when we exclaim:
“_Did_ you EVER!!”
She is a widow of ample and well-fed proportions, owning her cottage,
some bees and a pig, and apparently getting a fairly good living out of
doing remarkably little sewing. If, under a mistaken sense of duty, you
strive to encourage local industry, and seek to engage her services,
she has to consider before she consents to undertake the bit of sewing
you offer her to do, at three times the amount you would have to pay
for having it done in town. And as often as not she replies that she
“really _can’t_ oblige you” this time, as she’s got a “spell” on cruel
bad, that has gone all down her back to her knees, making her head
feel nohow.
You turn away not even worried about her condition, since she seems as
cheerful as a daisy and as comfortably complacent as a cow. And you
also know, even though you may have been acquainted with the lady only
a few months, that however cruel the spell may be, and however long it
may last and prevent her working, her children will be some of the most
elaborately dressed in the Sunday school, and from the cottage door
there will radiate the most appetising of odours as regularly as the
mealtimes come round.
How it is that she manages to do so well with so little visible means
of subsistence, only a stranger would stop to inquire. The residents
know only too well that her pockets are large; that the shawl she
invariably wears on weekdays has voluminous folds; that her carrying
and stowing-away capacity is almost worthy of a professional conjurer.
Kleptomania (to give it as refined a name as we can) is her besetting
sin. Unfortunately her family follow in her footsteps.
Mrs. Price seems to have a positive gift for turning everything to
profitable account; and her methods of raising money are as ingenious
as they are varied.
Knowing her idiosyncrasies, I asked Abigail where she was at the
moment.
“In the kitchen, sitting in my wicker easy-chair,” Abigail replied,
still with elevated nose. “She just walked right in and plumped herself
down.”
Whereupon I indicated, by dumb pantomime, that she was on no account
to be left there without personal oversight; and Abigail intimated, by
means of nods and becks and wreathèd scowls, that she was keeping her
left eye on the visitor, over her shoulder, even while she was talking
to me. We both knew that all was fish that came to Mrs. Price’s net,
and she would negotiate with absolute impartiality a piece of soap, a
duster, or a half-crown, should they lie in her way.
* * * * *
Not long before, Miss Bretherton, the Rector’s niece, a middle-aged
lady who keeps house for him, had tried to give one of the Price
girls—Esmeralda by name—a good start in life, taking her into the
rectory kitchen. But things disappeared with such alarming rapidity
during the first month she was in residence, that she had to be sent
back home again.
She left on a Saturday after middle-day dinner. In the afternoon the
house was observing the all-pervading quiet that was customary on
Saturdays while the Rector was in his study preparing for Sunday.
Miss Bretherton, requiring something in the dining-room that adjoined
the study, went in on tiptoe so as not to disturb him, when, to her
amazement, she came upon the discharged Esmeralda sitting on the floor
beside an open sideboard cupboard where some jars of pickles were
stored, ladling out pickled walnuts as fast as she could into one of
the maternal pudding basins. Seeing Miss Bretherton, she just picked up
her basin, walnuts and all, and hastily retired the same way that she
had come, through the French window.
Now, obviously her ex-mistress—over fifty years of age and liable
to rheumatism—couldn’t chase after her in house-slippers and minus
a bonnet, seeing it was raining; so the bereft lady just closed the
sideboard door and communed with her own feelings, womanfully stifling
her desire to burst into the study and tell the Rector about it, even
though it was his Saturday silence time.
Next morning, Sunday, just as she was buttoning her gloves, preparatory
to crossing the rectory lawn by the short cut to the church, the cook
came to her with the agitated inquiry: Had the mistress done anything
with the leg of mutton left by the butcher yesterday morning?
No, of course not! Why should she? etc.
Well, they hunted high and they hunted low, and the church bell gave
its final peremptory clang when they were still hunting, but no leg
of mutton was found either in the master’s boot cupboard, or under
the bed in the spare room, or in the bookcase in the library, or in
the woodshed, or in any other of the equally likely places which they
searched. Indeed, no one had ever expected that it would be found once
its absence was discovered; they just looked darkly at each other
and murmured, “That Esmeralda, of course.” Cook declares that her
mistress added “the good-for-nothing baggage” under her breath; but I
can’t credit that of Miss Bretherton, who always manages to maintain a
wonderful calm and self-restraint under the most trying circumstances.
At any rate, she told cook they must have fried ham and eggs for
dinner—if you ever heard of such a thing on a Sunday at the rectory!
and the Archdeacon of Saskatchewan preaching in the morning on behalf
of the C.M.S. too!
Moreover, Miss Bretherton was ten minutes late for church, a thing
never known before in the memory of the oldest inhabitant; and then,
still more remarkable, instead of waiting to speak to people after
church, she set off at a terrific pace for Mrs. Price’s cottage, and
walked in to find the kitchen full of a delightful aroma, and a fine
leg of mutton just being taken from the roasting-jack by Esmeralda and
placed on the table, which was already adorned with a saucer containing
pickled walnuts.
Miss Bretherton knew better than to say, “That’s my leg of mutton.” Our
village understands all about “having the law on ’un,” if anyone upsets
their feelings in any way. Therefore, swallowing hard, and determining
for the hundredth time not to lose her temper, she said, “Where did you
get that leg of mutton from, Mrs. Price?”
Had the woman replied, “From the butcher,” that would have been fairly
incriminating, because, of course, we don’t require more than one sheep
a week for home consumption in the village, and, as everybody knows,
each sheep has only two legs, and it wouldn’t require a Sherlock Holmes
to track those two legs any week in the year. As it happened, this
week’s other leg had gone to my house. Had Mrs. Price claimed it as her
own, she would have been undone.
But she was too shrewd for that; she promptly replied, with a look of
surprised innocence at such a strange question being asked by Miss
Bretherton at such a time—
“That leg of mutton, do you mean, miss?” (as though there was a meat
market to choose from!) “Yes; ain’t it a fine one; it weighs seven
pound, if it weighs an ounce.” (Miss B. knew that; she had studied the
butcher’s ticket only that morning.) “I couldn’t get it into the oven,
so we had to roast it afore the fire. I expect you find the kitchen a
bit ’ot. But as I was saying” (Miss B. had to press her lips together
very hard), “it ain’t often as I get a windfall like this, but my
brother-in-law come up to see us yesterday from Penglyn, and he brought
it me for a birthday present; that’s why I had to send ’Sm’ralder round
to the rectory in the afternoon to fetch my pudding basin as she’d left
behind—the one she brought round that day with some new-laid eggs in,
what I give her for a present for cook’s mother who were bad.”
Miss Bretherton pressed her lips still tighter, and walked out. She
knew the brother-in-law wouldn’t speak to “that Jane” if he met her
in the same lane—such was the love between the two families—much less
bring her a leg of mutton; besides, he had none too many joints for his
own family. She also knew that cook’s mother had not been ill, and if
she had, it wouldn’t have been Mrs. Price who would have supplied the
new-laid eggs.
But she also knew the futility of attempting to circumvent a woman of
this type, and she hated to have her stand there and tell still more
untruths, the children hovering round.
So she returned silently, and served the ham and eggs, and listened
while the Archdeacon explained the difference between Plain Cree and
Swampy Cree (which, he was surprised to find, she had hitherto confused
in her mind, or at best regarded as one and the same language) with
all the Christian grace and forbearance she could muster.
Only once did this nearly give out, and that was when, after she had
apologised to their guest for such frugal fare and had briefly outlined
the reason for the same, the Rector looked with his usual absent-minded
benignity through his glasses at his plate, and said—
“Well, my dear, I hadn’t noticed any difference: I thought this was
what we usually have for dinner on Sundays.”
Just think of it! And for the Archdeacon to go home and tell his wife!
So like a man!
* * * * *
This much as a general survey of Mrs. Price’s characteristics. She
doesn’t make an idyllic picture, I admit, nor seem likely to be in
the running for a stained glass window in the Parish Room. But then
villages no less than towns are made up of varied assortments of human
nature—and don’t forget we are none of us perfect.
Nevertheless, making all allowances for human frailty, you don’t
wonder that I wasn’t anxious for Mrs. Price to have the free run of my
kitchen, and Abigail, remembering that she had left her purse on the
dresser, hurried back.
I finished the letter I was writing, and then went out to see her. As
I approached, I could hear her:
“‘Sally,’ he says, ‘don’t let the kids fergit me,’ and then ’e was
gone. It’s this new disease they’ve got from America—the ‘germs,’ they
calls it—and they do say as ’e makes a beautiful corpse, though I
shouldn’t never have thought it of ’e, the Prices being none of them
pertickerlelly well favoured, even if he was me own pore husband’s
brother. But thur, thur, I say speak nothing but good of them what’s
gone.”
She rose when I appeared, and, with a good deal of side-tracking on to
irrelevant matters, chiefly connected with the excellence of her own
children, she explained that her late husband’s brother had just died
“over to Penglyn,” a little town fifteen miles away across the hills,
and in a most un-get-at-able corner of the county.
The funeral was to-morrow, and neither she nor the family of the
deceased had a scrap of black, “leastways, exceptin’ this bonnet,
which don’t look really respeckful to ’im as is gone, being me own
husband’s own brother.” I admit the item that had been placed upon
her head—whether for use or adornment it was hard to decide—resembled
a jaded hen’s nest more than anything else! The rest of her attire
consisted of a green skirt, a crimson blouse, and a very light fawn
coat (portions of costumes that had started life in considerably
higher social circles in the village), and a purple crochet scarf.
Dimly it occurred to me that I had not seen Mrs. Price in bright
colours before, for although she never wore the conventional widow’s
weeds, she was usually in something black or dark; the matrons
in our village haven’t gone in for skittish skirts or glaring
colour-combinations as yet! I concluded, however, that her black
clothes were too shabby. She was saying—
“And I didn’t know where to turn, m’m. Everybody saying they hadn’t
none when I called, and there didn’t seem to be a soul left to go to,
and that pore dear sister-in-law of mine—leastways same as, being me
poor husband’s brother’s wife—with not a scrap to put on ’cept his best
overcoat what she’s cuttin’ down for one of the boys.
“And then I bethought me of you, it come to me all of a suddint. I put
down the pan of ’taters I was peeling and come straight up. ’Sm’ralder
says to me, ‘But, mother, you can’t wear that ole bonnet up to _that_
house!’ But I says to her, ‘It’s certain I can’t wear what I haven’t
got, and the Queen haven’t sent me one of her done-with crowns yet.’ So
I just come as best I could.”
I was a little surprised to hear that she had been refused at every
door, for, irrespective of personal reputation, the better-off
residents are always very good to any of the villagers who may be
in want or in trouble; indeed, we have only one mean woman among us,
she who once remarked to a paid lady-companion, newly-arrived from a
freezingly cold journey, and badly in need of a cup of tea to eke out
her skimpy cold-mutton-bone lunch: “I’m sure you will enjoy a glass
of water. We have really _beautiful_ water here. Pray help yourself
when_ever_ you like.”
* * * * *
Still, it was possible no one had had any black.
I meditated a moment on my own wardrobe and Mrs. Price’s capacious
waist-measure! Virginia’s things would be still less use, as she is the
size of a sylph.
“I’m afraid I haven’t anything that would fit you in the way of a
skirt,” I began, “but I’ve a large winter jacket if you don’t think it
will be too warm for June.”
“Oh, thank you, m’m. It’s only the first week in June. I’m a _very_
chilly person” (no one looking at her buxom proportions would have
thought so!), “and a thick jacket is just what I’m needin’ terrible
bad. And if you had a skirt, it ’ud be jest the size for my pore dear
sister-in-law. Ah, I can feel for her, being a widow myself, and left
with them children. She said to me on’y yesterday, ‘Jane, do try to get
me a black skirt from anywhere, if on’y you can.’ She says——”
“But you told me just now that you hadn’t seen her since before her
husband died,” blurted in Abigail, forgetful of her usual good manners,
and begrudging to see the family wardrobe being disbursed in this way,
as she rather regarded my coats and skirts as her perquisites.
Mrs. Price turned full upon Abigail that look of surprised innocence
that stood her in such good stead. “She said it in a letter she writ me
yesterday,” she replied with dignified composure.
Finally I told her I would look her out something if she sent Esmeralda
up for it in the evening. Mrs. Price lingered to recite further tales
of woe to Abigail, till she, kind girl, in spite of her private
estimate of the lady, bestowed on her a pair of black lisle thread
gloves, as she spoke so pathetically about having to go to the funeral
with bare hands and not being able to afford any gloves.
* * * * *
When Virginia came in from “sticking” sweet peas in the garden, I told
her about Mrs. Price.
“Well, I don’t consider her a worthy object for charity as a rule,” she
remarked. “But at the same time, if Fate kindly supplies me with an
opportunity to get rid of that big black hat of mine that I’ve never
liked and never intend to wear again, I’m not the one to disregard it,
especially as it will save my carrying that huge hat-box back to town.
But whether she or the ‘sister-in-law-same-as’ wears it, either will
find it good weight for the money.”
So we left the winter jacket, and the hat, and a black blouse Ursula
added to the parcel, and my black cloth skirt for the sister-in-law,
against Esmeralda should come for them. And then we started out to make
some calls.
* * * * *
Passing Miss Primkins’ house, we just stopped to leave a book I had
promised to lend her. Miss Primkins is a pleasant middle-aged lady, of
very small independent means, who lives in a cottage by herself. The
door stood open as usual. She looked over the stairs when I knocked,
then explained that she would be down in a moment if we would go in.
“I’ve been turning out things in the box-room—in order to find a little
black for that Mrs. Price. Her husband’s brother has just died, and the
funeral is to be to-morrow, and she says no one in the place has any
black in hand. So she came and asked me if I would mind _lending_ her a
black mantle!—_lending_ it to her indeed!
“I asked her what she had done with that black dolman I gave her not
three months ago—you remember that dolman trimmed with black lace that
I was rather fond of? I bought it—oh, it must be at least ten years
ago—for my uncle’s funeral. It was trimmed with two bands of crêpe,
one about four inches deep, and the other three inches, or perhaps
two-and-three-quarters; very stylish it looked, too. Then I had the
crêpe taken off and some black silk put on it—very good ottoman silk it
was—that had originally been part of a black silk dress belonging to
my sister. Next I had it covered with fancy net with velvet appliqué
for a change—not that I liked it, or would have thought of having it
done had I known what it was going to cost. But they do take you in so
at those town shops; why, I could have got a new dolman for what it
cost to cover that one! And then it lasted no time, used to catch in
everything, so I had next to no wear out of that.
“I had it taken off, and the dolman _thoroughly_ turned—every bit; and
the dressmaker put on some fringe, a sort of wavy fringe; but I had to
have it taken off, because that Gladys Price, when she came home for
a holiday, had on a silk coat trimmed with fringe exactly like it, so
there again I got taken in, as you might say.
“After that, I put my brown fur trimming on it, but for the winter
only; and then for the summer I put on some deep black lace. I hadn’t
had that lace on more than six months when I gave her the dolman. (I
remember quite well sitting up late that night to pick the lace all
off it.) Altogether, you can’t say I had so much wear out of any of it,
and it was a constant expense. And yet, would you _credit_ it, when I
asked her what she had done with it, she said it had ‘wored out’! Why,
_I_ could have had it another ten years in good use, without its being
‘wored out.’ She’s a thriftless woman, that’s what she is. Still, I
suppose it isn’t for us to judge her.”
* * * * *
We had to hurry on. I wanted to call on Miss Bretherton, who had
sprained her ankle and needed commiseration. We found her in that state
of suppressed and bottled-up-in-a-Christian-manner irritation that
is common to very active women who are suddenly tied to a chair with
some of their machinery out of gear; and, like most other women under
similar conditions, she was trying to do ten times as much as she ought
to have done, in order to prove to everybody that there was nothing the
matter with her.
“You’ll just have to come into the midst of all this muddle,” she
sighed, “for I can’t move myself into another room.”
“Sorting things for a jumble sale?” I inquired, looking at sundry piles
of garments strewn about her.
“It almost amounts to that; though I really started out to get a few
things together for a woman in the village who seems to be rather
needy at the moment, that Jane Price. Her brother-in-law has just
died—you remember Zebadiah Price, who lived at Briar Bush Cottage
before they took a little place at Penglyn? We lost sight of them after
they left here—it’s such a cross-country place they’ve gone to. I’m
rather surprised they haven’t asked the Rector to bury him, he thought
a good deal of Zebadiah; but all the same I’m glad they haven’t, for it
takes you the best part of a day to cover that fifteen miles, and he
has a slight cold. It seems she’s going to the funeral to-morrow.
“I admit there are several women in the parish I should feel a greater
pleasure in helping—she does try my patience at times—but I felt I
ought to do what I can in this particular case, as she doesn’t seem
able to get any black from anyone else. Everybody says they gave theirs
to the last jumble sale, she tells me, though _I_ didn’t see any of it!
“She is wanting some for Zebadiah’s family too; they are left in
bad straits, she says. I was only too glad to find that she and
her sister-in-law have buried the hatchet at last; they’ve been at
loggerheads for years; she really spoke very nicely about it. She
said the older she got the more she felt life was too short to spend
it in quarrelling, and at a time like this she thought bygones should
be bygones. I don’t like to misjudge the woman,” Miss Bretherton
continued with a sigh. “Sometimes she seems so anxious to do right. Her
bringing up was against her. And yet——” And then the Rectoress closed
her lips firmly determined to say no uncharitable thing, even about
“that Jane Price.”
I’m afraid I didn’t think too highly of Mrs. Price at that moment.
I remembered the parcels of black garments waiting at my house and
again at Miss Primkins’. Moreover, Mrs. Price’s occasional lapses into
fervent piety annoyed me very much, because I suspected they were
developed for my benefit. She always gave me a long recital of woes and
financial difficulties whenever she saw me, and invariably finished
up with, “But thur, thur, I don’t let it worry me, for I always say,
‘The Lord will provide.’” I much objected to her taking the Name in
vain in this manner, more especially as it generally happened that she
gave Providence every assistance in the matter by helping herself to
anything that lay within reach of her hand!
* * * * *
We did not stay long at the rectory, as I wanted to call on the lady
of the manor. She kept us waiting a few minutes before she appeared;
but explained, as she apologised for the delay, “I’ve just turned out
five trunks, two cupboards, and four chests of drawers—and goodness
knows how many more I should have set upon if you hadn’t come!
It’s a pastime that seems to grow upon one like taking to drink or
gambling—the more you have the more you want!
“I only meant to look through one chest for a black bonnet I thought
I had put there—I’m trying to find some funeral wear for that Mrs.
Price. Her husband’s brother has died, Zebadiah Price; they live over
the hills at Penglyn. While he was alive, she hadn’t a good word to say
for his wife; but now he’s gone, her conscience seems to worry her, and
she says she feels the very least she can do is ‘to show respeck to the
remains,’ and she wants to help his family. So I’ve been going over a
good deal of ancient history in my search for garments calculated to
show a sufficiency of respect. She said she was afraid that what she
had on might give a wrong impression.”
“If she wore the same set of glad rags that she had on when she came to
see us, likewise asking for mourning,” Virginia interpolated, “she’d
give the impression of a ragged rainbow gone wrong and turned inside
out, rather than a funeral.”
“Oh, she’s been to you, has she? She told me she couldn’t think of
making so bold as to intrude her troubles on other people, and only
came to me because she knew I had been so kind to Zebadiah years ago
when he was ill; and added that my clothes always suited her so well!”
When we got outside, Virginia suggested with a twinkle that we should
call on a few more people. We did, and at every house we were met with
the sad intelligence of Zebadiah Price’s death and his sister-in-law’s
quest for suitably respectful apparel.
Surely Royalty could not have been more universally mourned—in our
village, at any rate!
* * * * *
Next Sunday we were rather puzzled on entering the church to see an
ample lady clad in the most resplendent of widow’s weeds, sitting in
solitary state in the very front row—a seat usually patronised only by
the halt and maimed.
Her dress and mantle were of dull black silk trimmed with crêpe about
a quarter of a yard in depth. True, it was not quite new, but its cut
and style were unmistakable; anyone who possessed such a dress could
afford to wear it even after its first newness had worn off; it stamped
the wearer as a lady of means. A long weeper, black kid gloves, and a
black-bordered handkerchief completed all we could see of the lady. We
could only conclude that the distinguished stranger must be very deaf
indeed, to take the front seat.
By this time all the congregation as it came in was interested. Such
a stylish stranger would naturally attract attention. She kept her
head devoutly bent, and used the handkerchief frequently; we couldn’t
see her face. She might have been a peeress-in-waiting, judging by the
dignity and decorum of her bearing.
It was just as the Rector was repeating the opening sentences that the
resplendent one turned round to see the effect she was making on the
congregation, and behold—that Mrs. Price!
I am afraid I only just saved myself from making the time-honoured
remark, “_Did_ you EVER!”
* * * * *
“But what I want to know is this,” said Miss Primkins (as several of
us walked together along the high road after church, leaving Mrs.
Price giving details of the funeral, and the innumerable wreaths, to
her friends). “Where did she get those weeds from? There isn’t a widow
among us, nor a relative of a widow, so far as I know. Now who gave
them to her?”
But we none of us knew. It certainly looked suspiciously as though Mrs.
Price had used the poor late Zebadiah as an excuse for dragging the
whole county!
I wasn’t surprised that she herself had donned fresh weeds, for as
we are remarkably healthy upon these hills, we are apt to make the
most of a funeral when it chances our way, and the opportunity to
wear mourning, carrying with it, as it does, a certain personal
distinction, is not to be passed over lightly.
On one occasion I remember meeting a farmer’s wife on Sunday morning
in deep black (that had done duty for several previous family
bereavements), weeping into her handkerchief as she went along the road
to church. We stopped to inquire about her trouble.
“My poor old mother’s gone at last,” she sobbed. We were truly sorry
for her grief, and asked when she had died.
“Well, I ’spect it would be about three or four this morning; that’s
the time they usually go. I had a letter last night saying as how they
didn’t reckon she’d live the night. So she’ll be gone by now. My poor
mother! I’ll never see her again!” and she wept afresh.
I’m glad to say the mother is still alive, and very flourishing.
* * * * *
It was about a fortnight later that Virginia gave me the
wildly-exciting information, culled from the local paper, that some
Roman remains had just been excavated. I murmured “Oh!” in that
absent-minded way people will do when their thoughts are called off the
subject of What shall we have for the midday meal? to higher things.
I was thinking like this: “I did intend to have steak and kidney
pudding, but as the butcher is late, there won’t be time to cook it;
there isn’t enough cold tongue—at least, that knobbly end part is no
use—we have plenty of eggs in the house, so we must just make out with
that soup left over from yesterday and omelettes; or we might easily
have——”
“Either a viaduct or an amphitheatre or a villa; they aren’t sure as
yet which it is,” went on Virginia. “You read about it yourself; it’s
awfully interesting. There; in that column—see? ‘Roman Remains at
Penglyn.’”
“At Penglyn? It can’t be Zebadiah,” I commented; “he wasn’t as old as
_that_!”
Nevertheless, we aren’t particular to a few hundred years in our
village. For I remember last year an old woman telling me, “Have
you heard, m’m, of the great news in the village? The Black Prince
is staying at the Inn! Yes, to be sure! And he seems to understand
our language beautiful, he do; though they say he does speak the
foreign to a gentleman what’s staying there with him. The only thing
I was surprised about was to see how young he do look, considering
of his age. Why, I remember hearing tell about him when I was at
school!” Later on I found the historic potentate was a harmless Indian
law-student.
Virginia kept on about the Roman excavations, and announced her
intention of going to see them. I protested that I wasn’t going to
be hauled across a stony mountainous region in a wagonette, and then
change twice by slow train, an hour or so to wait at each change, and
ditto to get back, all to see a few brick walls, when the garden so
badly needed weeding.
She was indignant, said she should prefer to go alone to having
unsympathetic and uninformed society; reminded me of the histories
of nations that had been found embedded in brick walls, waxed
eloquent on the subject of the Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Rosetta
Stone, skipped lightly from the pointed apex of the Pyramids to the
significance of the flat roofs of Thibet, examined the walls of the
buried cities in central Asia, and before I had fully realised that I
was really travelling in the East, I found that she was examining the
designs on the Aztec pottery of ancient Mexico.
Fearing that we should have this sort of thing straight on end for a
week, I said we would go next day, weather permitting, if only she
would help me decide whether to have the omelette plain, or a cheese
omelette, or would they prefer macaroni cheese? I have found in the
past that the crystallisation of thought necessary to follow Virginia,
when she is in an informing mood, creates a vacuum, and then I get a
cold in my head.
I also inquired whether she would prefer to drive all the way, or go by
train.
She replied, still with her eyes glued to the interesting newspaper
treatise on antiquarian relics, that she would rather I settled these
minor details, adding that she always liked to leave the arrangement of
everything to me, as it gave her such opportunities to point out to me
the feebleness of my methods and ideas.
I decided to go with her, simply because I knew that unless she
had some firm, restraining force beside her, she would go and buy
that Roman viaduct, amphitheatre, or villa, and order it to be sent
home; and, for all I knew, she might give _my_ address in a fit of
wandering-mindedness, and what should _I_ do with it when it arrived?
You can’t pack an amphitheatre away in the empty pigsty, and all the
other space was occupied with seedlings and things!
Besides, she has no bump of locality (neither have I, for the matter of
that); but I thought it would look better if two of us were arrested
for wandering about without any visible means of subsistence; at least,
I could say I was her keeper.
Next morning we inquired of the barometer as to the weather prospects.
By the way, that barometer is a unique treasure. V. and U. gave it
to me one birthday; I had long been craving one that was a genuine
antique. There was no doubt about this one—its antiquity, I mean; for
the rest, until you get on speaking terms with it, I admit that it
does seem a trifle ambiguous.
But I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I’ll say no more
on this point, save that we tapped it vigorously; whereupon the long
hand flew wildly round and round one way, while the short hand did a
whirligig, equally excitedly, in the opposite direction.
We waited till they both got tired of spinning round, and then, as the
long hand pointed to “Much Rain,” with leanings towards “Stormy,” we
knew we could rely on a very fine day.
But we tapped it once again, just to make sure it knew its own mind.
After it had wiggled giddily round as before, the long hand stopped
midway between “Set Fair” and “Very Dry.” Of course that confirmed our
former calculations, and we got out our new summer hats, and left our
umbrellas at home. Virginia had worn _her_ new hat indoors most of the
previous day, in order to get her money’s worth out of it, because she
said she never got her money’s worth out of any of her garments, save
her raincoat and her umbrella. [N.B.—Is an umbrella a garment?]
* * * * *
It was market day when we got there, and all the town was of course
wending its way either to or from the market-place. One of the very
first people we ran against was Mrs. Zebadiah Price; but, to our
surprise, she was wearing neither my black cloth skirt nor Ursula’s
black blouse. On the contrary, she was in quite gay attire—a brown
coat and skirt, a blue blouse, a lace collar, a string of pearls as
large as marbles, and a tuscan straw hat trimmed with roses and purple
geraniums. I had known her in the past, when she lived in the village;
so I stopped and spoke to her.
“I was so very sorry to hear of your sad trouble,” I began. Yet
the subdued tones I used and felt necessary to the occasion seemed
curiously out of place beside all that market-day finery.
“Yes, thank you, m’m; it did upset me awful,” she said, looking very
woe-begone.
“I’m sure it did,” I said feelingly.
“You wouldn’t believe how I fretted over ’un. Seems kind o’ foolish I
s’pose when I’ve got the children. But I got that attached to ’un.”
“I can _quite_ understand it,” I murmured sympathetically. “After all,
children can’t take the place of the one that is gone.”
“No, m’m; that’s what I say.”
“And it was very sudden, wasn’t it?”
“Yes’m; taken bad and gone in a few hours,” she continued. “And that
was the second I lost in two months. I don’t have no luck somehow.”
“The second in two months!” I repeated in surprise.
“Yes’m, and I feel that downhearted about it, I don’t think I’ll go in
for another. I said so only last night to my husband.”
“Your husband?” I echoed again. It was beginning to sound like bigamy!
“He said at the time he thought the £15 I give was a swindle for the
brindled cow.”
“The brindled cow?” I said feebly. I really didn’t know what else to
say. Virginia need not have laughed!
Then I rallied my senses. “But I thought you had trouble about a
fortnight ago—your husband, Zebadiah Price—I heard——”
“My Zeb? About a fortnight ago? Let’s see?”—thoughtfully turning her
left eye in the direction of the church spire, and thereby tilting her
hat askew. “Ah, I expect you mean about last February; to be sure, he
did have a touch of this ’ere influenza; and he were a bit queer for a
couple of days, he were: but that was nothing to my losing my calf!”
“I’m glad it was no worse,” I said heartily. “Why, Mrs. Jane Price told
me she was coming to the funeral.”
“_Jane!_” ejaculated Mrs. Zebadiah. “Jane Price said she was coming to
_his_ funeral? Not if I know’d it, and it had been me very own even,
she wouldn’t; the _hussy_—begging your pardon, m’m, for using sech a
word. She knows better than to try to put so much as a shoenail of her
foot inside our door. She never aren’t and she never shan’t. Though for
brazenness there ain’t their beat in the county. Why, p’raps you’ve
heard how that there Gladys Price has started an ole clothes shop in
the town here, right under our very nose, and my husband as respected
as he is. There it is for everybody to read over the door—‘G. PRICE.
Ladies and Gents’ Hemporium’—whatever that may be! Coming to his
funeral, indeed! It makes me _broil_!” And Mrs. Z. went off fairly
sizzling with indignation.
* * * * *
When we had duly found (after long search) and surveyed the Roman
remains (which consisted of three upright stones, something like those
used for kerbstones in the streets, and stood in the middle of a very
boggy field), and had failed to decide whether they were the viaduct,
the amphitheatre, or the villa, I suggested a speedy return to the
station, as it was now coming down a steady drizzle, with indications
of still more to follow. But Virginia said—
“I’d like, while we’re here, just to have a look into the hemporium
window, to see what she has marked that hat of mine.”
When we reached it, behold, it was like taking a regretful look
back into the past, for most of the garments there displayed we
had formerly known when they walked our village street in decorous
Sunday glory. And they included: a grey cloth coat of mine that had
disappeared most mysteriously; a long silk scarf of Ursula’s that, so
far, she had never missed; and a bead-bag I had often admired when
carried by the lady of the manor, and which, we felt sure, she had
never given away.
“Talk about excavating Roman remains!” I exclaimed; but Virginia’s
conversational powers were only equal to “_Did_ you EVER!”
And we damply faded away in the direction of the station.