While I and the two maids had been undergoing the dull labour mentioned
in the preceding chapter, all the others had been attending to their
gardens, and they all flocked to tea, laden with fruit and decorated
with flowers, looking so pretty and happy that I could not but think,
whatever our lot, we should retain our spirits and cheerfulness to the
end. Schillie came last, dragging with her a heap of unknown lichens,
creepers, and mosses, on all of which she wanted me to hold a
consultation as to what they could be.
Having made some highly-satisfactory guesses, and also having discovered
amongst our books one on Botany, and another on Natural History of all
kinds, and also the Travels of a Gentleman in the West Indies, that gave
a very accurate account of all the productions natural to the climate we
were in, she was in an especial good humour.
Sybil begged earnestly that the house might be in the gothic style,
which upset Schillie a little, but she pooh, poohed it off, until Serena
came out with a vehement hope that it might be a Swiss cottage. "Swiss
fiddlestick," retorted Schillie, "my dear girls, if you think I shall
break my back and spoil my hands ornamenting a house for you, you will
find yourselves wonderfully deceived." She had very pretty small white
hands. Gatty thought it would be delightful to cut down a tree, and
muttered something about the impossibility of learning lessons and
building a house at the same time. In this she was unanimously supported
by several youthful voices, and Madame was already appealing to me by
looks of a most pathetic kind (she had the most extraordinary horror of
a holiday that I ever saw), and Schillie, on seeing her look, exclaimed,
"Well, Madame, you are certainly not of the same species as I am. I
should be only too willing to give them holidays every day if I were
their governess." "Yes, Madame," said Sybil, "and she acts up to it; for
when you were ill, I heard her say to the little girls that she would
give them a whole holiday that day because they had had only half a one
the day before." Madame looked horror-stricken, and mournfully shook her
head at Schillie.
_Mother._--"Come, come, now, about this house. Where shall we put it
up!"
Many places were suggested, and at last, partly because there were so
many trees there, partly because we fancied it more sheltered, and
partly because it was such a lovely spot, we fixed upon the little
valley or glade which was sheltered by the cliffs on one side and by a
thick wood on the other. In the centre was the great tree which had
bewildered us so by its strange movements while under the influence of
the great Anaconda. Inland, beyond the tree, was the pretty peaceful
lake, and a sloping terrace took us down to it.
Great impatience was now manifested on all sides to begin; Madame alone
was in low spirits. It had been decreed by the higher powers that, until
we could see how we got on in this new and unusual work for feminine
fingers, it was as well to employ the whole force of the island;
besides, after being screwed up in the caverns, where lessons and Madame
were met at every corner, and there was no escape, a little holiday
would be a great boon. The piano had been sadly damaged by the wet, so
we begged her to set it right, that it might be ready for the new
drawing room.
We all drew plans of the house first, and, to the surprise of everybody,
Schillie's was undoubtedly the best. So the little Mother was well
bullied for being so disgusted at having to build a house, and yet
taking the trouble of making such a good plan. She was made clerk of the
works on the spot. Gatty's plan had consisted of merely one square. "On
one side we can sleep," she said, "and on the other sit and do all we
have to do." "But where are we to eat?" said Sybil. "Oh, I think nothing
so stupid as having regular meals," said Gatty. "When I have a house of
my own, I never intend to order anything, but I shall go to the cupboard
and eat when I am hungry." "But," said Winny, "I don't see a cupboard
in your plan, Gatty." "Oh, we will stick one up somewhere, little one,"
returned Gatty.
The high spirits with which every one began their allotted tasks rather
gave way under the fatigue and hard work, so unusual to delicate
fingers. Gatty had earnestly begged to cut down the tree, with Jenny,
Oscar, and Schillie to help. Sybil's hands were too slight and small to
hold the hatchet, so she had to collect grass and moss with the young
ones. The first tree that was cut down, how often it was anathematized,
it seemed determined not to come down. Hot and panting we sat down one
after another to rest, and a sort of vague notion kept running in our
heads, if one tree is such a trouble, what shall we do having to cut
down so many. But Schillie was not to be daunted by a tree; taking a
great glassful of porter, she called on us all to set to work again,
partly laughing at us, partly praising us, and especially animating us
by her energetic example; at length down came our first tree with a
delightful crash. And happy were the boys, sitting astride on the
branches, and sawing away as if they received wages for all they did.
The next tree was more civil, and came down in half the time; the fact
is, we grew more expert, and at last it was but one hour's task among us
all to fell one. In a week we had cleared a good space, sawn and chopped
a vast quantity of wood, and then the clerk of the works ordered me to
get a great feast ready, as the next day she was going to lay, not the
first stone, but the first tree of our house. So we went in great state
to the ceremony, and we took a bottle of wine with us to drink success
to the new house, and the clerk of the works made a very neat and
appropriate speech, in which, however, she showed herself on rather too
familiar terms with her workpeople; and I, in return, proposed, "health
and long life to the clerk of the works," which was received with great
cheering and applause. Madame became quite merry, and having settled the
well-being of the piano, actually offered her services to assist in the
building, and never mentioned lessons the whole day. We had a superb
feast. A magnificent dish of fish, the last piece of beef in our
possession, peas, bacon and beans, roasted yams, a glorious
plum-pudding, with brandy blazing up in the middle, fruit, beautiful to
behold and delicious to taste. Then, after dinner, we sang songs, and
Madame told us some stories, and we went to bed extremely happy, but
nearly as weary of our day's pleasure as we were of our daily work, we
had laughed and talked so much. It was quite a month before the clerk of
the works would allow us to consider our house fit to be looked at, and
I cannot say it was ever quite finished, as we always found something to
alter and arrange in it. It consisted of one hall in the middle, thirty
feet long, twenty feet wide, the walls of which were composed of the
trees we had cut down, a double row of them, the intermediate space
being filled up with everything we could collect in the shape of grass
and moss; the inside was plastered with clay, which, after a while, we
painted, as we had a good store of oils and turpentine and other things,
which had been designed for the ship. On both sides of the hall, we had
what we called lean-tos, the roofs of which began where the roof of the
hall ended, and they sloped down to within four feet of the ground. The
other side, or point of the hall, was the entrance. The sheds on each
side opened into the hall, but had no other outlet. There were two on
each side and one at the end opposite the entrance, which was a kitchen
and scullery. Of the four little side rooms, Schillie and I occupied the
one on the right hand of the door, Madame and the three little girls the
next one, the two maids and two boys opposite us, and the three girls
opposite Madame. The little girls used our room to dress and wash in, so
that Madame's was not intruded upon except at night, and she could keep
it quiet for herself when she wanted to lie down and rest. The bed
places were put just where the roof was lowest, so that, in fact, when
lying down, our faces were within two feet of the roof, but, by this
means, we had more room in which to stand upright and move about. The
kitchen had an outlet at the side. The reason we made our side roofs
slope down so much was to allow the rain to fall off quicker, and to let
hurricanes blow over us, if possible, without finding any resisting
substance the wind could blow away. Then all round our house we planted
the prickly pear, which grew like a weed, so that nothing could attack
our dwelling from the outside, excepting by the door, and that makes me
remember to remark that we had no door at all, and we often laughed at
ourselves for taking such care to guard the sides of the house when we
left open the only place where there was an entrance. However, then we
were under no alarm regarding thieves and robbers. But we had a
sail-cloth curtain, which at night we fastened with bars of wood across,
as much to prevent the wind flapping it to and fro as to hinder anything
getting in; also, each bed-room had a curtain before its door or
entrance. We had a great deal of trouble with the roof it must be
acknowledged, even the clerk of the works stamped her foot, and went so
far as to say, "Hang the roof," to which Sybil demurely replied, "That's
just what we want to do."
We took three spars, one for the middle and two each side, these latter
being placed two feet lower; on these we nailed a strip of sail-cloth
each side, which we tarred and painted very often, especially the
inside, which, at the children's request, was painted in blue, to make
our roof or ceiling look pretty; above the sail-cloth outside we laid a
smooth layer of leaves, and then across we nailed shingles of wood
lapped one over the other, which again were seamed by cross pieces very
strongly fastened. Lucky it was that the walls were so thick, otherwise
such an elaborate roof could never have been supported. When finished,
we all had an argument as to whether it really would resist water, and
Gatty offered, with Serena to help her, to go up and empty buckets of
water on it to try. This handsome offer was declined, as we thought the
rain would do that soon enough, and we were at present too much in love
with our work to bear the shock of finding all our labour was thrown
away. I am afraid of appearing tedious in describing our many mistakes,
our frequent mishaps, and the many blundering contrivances we had.
Certain it is that to the clerk of the works we owed most of our
neatness, to the quick wits of the girls many of our ideas, and one and
all worked with a will. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that the commonest
carpenter in the smallest village would have laughed at the house we
built, and how we rectified gaps with grass and moss, how things warped
one way and others shrunk the contrary, how nails stuck out their points
and their heads were utterly lost, how screws were such a time before
they would ever screw for us, how, animated by the clerk of the works,
few thought of chopped fingers and hammered hands, how others ceased to
shriek at the monstrous spiders, centipedes, lizards and small snakes,
appearing every minute in the grass and moss; and now one and all
agreed, that, in spite of every impediment, we should have the
housewarming dinner and the first usage of our new mansion on the first
Christmas-day we had ever spent on this unknown but lonely island.