It comforted Priscilla to find that almost the whole village wanted to come and cook for her, or as the women put it “do” for her. Their cooking powers were strictly limited, and they proposed to make up for this by doing for her very completely in other ways; they would scrub, sweep, clean windows, wash, — anything and everything they would do. Would they also sew buttons on her uncle’s clothes? Priscilla asked anxiously. And they were ready to sew buttons all over Fritzing if buttons would make him happy. This eagerness was very gratifying, but it was embarrassing as well. The extremely aged and the extremely young were the only ones that refrained from offering their services. Some of the girls were excluded as too weedy; some of the mothers because their babies were too new; some of the wives because their husbands were too exacting; but when Priscilla counted up the names she had written down she found there were twenty-five. For a moment she was staggered. Then she rose to the occasion and got out of the difficulty with what she thought great skill, arranging, as it was impossible to disappoint twenty-four of these, that they should take it in turn, each coming for one day until all had had a day and then beginning again with the first one. It seemed a brilliant plan. Life at Creeper Cottage promised to be very varied. She gathered them together in the village shop to talk it over. She asked them if they thought ten shillings a day and food would be enough. She asked it hesitatingly, afraid lest she were making them an impossibly frugal offer. She was relieved at the cry of assent; but it was followed after a moment by murmurs from the married women, when they had had time to reflect, that it was unfair to pay the raw young ones at the same rate as themselves. Priscilla however turned a deaf ear to their murmurings. “The girls may not,” she said, raising her hand to impose silence, “be able to get through as much as you do in a day, but they’ll be just as tired when evening comes. Certainly I shall give them the same wages.” She made them draw lots as to who should begin, and took the winner home with her then and there; she too, though the day was far spent, was to have her ten shillings. “What, have you forgotten your New Testaments?” Priscilla cried, when more murmurs greeted this announcement. “Don’t you remember the people who came at the eleventh hour to labour in the vineyard and got just the same as the others? Why should I try to improve on parables?” And there was something about Priscilla, an air, an authority, that twisted the women of Symford into any shape of agreement she chose. The twenty-four went their several ways. The twenty-fifth ran home to put on a clean apron, and got back to the shop in time to carry the eggs and butter and bread Priscilla had bought. “I forgot to bring any money,” said Priscilla when the postmistress — it was she who kept the village shop — told her how much it came to. “Does it matter?”
“Oh don’t mention it, Miss Neumann-Schultz,” was the pleasant answer of that genteel and trustful lady; and she suggested that Priscilla should take with her a well-recommended leg of mutton she had that day for sale as well. Priscilla shuddered at the sight of it and determined never to eat legs of mutton again. The bacon, too, piled up on the counter, revolted her. The only things that looked as decent raw as when they were cooked were eggs; and on eggs she decided she and Fritzing would in future live. She broke off a piece of the crust of the bread Mrs. Vickerton was wrapping up and ate it, putting great pressure on herself to do it carelessly, with a becoming indifference.
“It’s good bread,” said Mrs. Vickerton, doing up her parcel.
“Where in the world do you get it from?” asked Priscilla enthusiastically. “The man must be a genius.”
“The carrier brings it every day,” said Mrs. Vickerton, pleased and touched by such appreciation. “It’s a Minehead baker’s.”
“He ought to be given an order, if ever man ought.”
“An order? For you regular, Miss Neumann-Schultz?”
“No, no, — the sort you pin on your breast,” said Priscilla.
“Ho,” smiled Mrs. Vickerton vaguely, who did not follow; she was so genteel that she could never have enough of aspirates. And Priscilla, giving the parcel to her breathless new help, hurried back to Creeper Cottage.
Now this help, or char-girl — you could not call her a charwoman she was manifestly still so very young — was that Emma who had been obliged to tell the vicar’s wife about Priscilla’s children’s treat and who did not punctually return books. I will not go so far as to say that not to return books punctually is sinful, though deep down in my soul I think it is, but anyhow it is a symptom of moral slackness. Emma was quite good so long as she was left alone. She could walk quite straight so long as there were no stones in the way and nobody to pull her aside. If there were stones, she instantly stumbled; if somebody pulled, she instantly went. She was weak, amiable, well-intentioned. She had a widowed father who was unpleasant and who sometimes beat her on Saturday nights, and on Sunday mornings sometimes, if the fumes of the Cock and Hens still hung about him, threw things at her before she went to church. A widowed father in Emma’s class is an ill being to live with. The vicar did his best to comfort her. Mrs. Morrison talked of the commandments and of honouring one’s father and mother and of how the less there was to honour the greater the glory of doing it; and Emma was so amiable that she actually did manage to honour him six days out of the seven. At the same time she could not help thinking it would be nice to go away to a place where he wasn’t. They were extremely poor; almost the poorest family in the village, and the vision of possessing ten shillings of her very own was a dizzy one. She had a sweetheart, and she had sent him word by a younger sister of the good fortune that had befallen her and begged him to come up to Creeper Cottage that evening and help her carry the precious wages safely home; and at nine o’clock when her work was done she presented herself all blushes and smiles before Priscilla and shyly asked her for them.
Priscilla was alone in her parlour reading. She referred her, as her habit was, to Fritzing; but Fritzing had gone out for a little air, the rain having cleared off, and when the girl told her so Priscilla bade her come round in the morning and fetch the money.
Emma’s face fell so woefully at this — was not her John at that moment all expectant round the corner? — that Priscilla smiled and got up to see if she could find some money herself. In the first drawer she opened in Fritzing’s sitting-room was a pocket-book, and in this pocket-book Fritzing’s last five-pound note. There was nothing else except the furnisher’s bill. She pushed that on one side without looking at it; what did bills matter? Bills never yet had mattered to Priscilla. She pushed it on one side and searched for silver, but found none. “Perhaps you can change this?” she said, holding out the note.
“The shop’s shut now, miss,” said Laura, gazing with round eyes at the mighty sum.
“Well then take it, and bring me the change in the morning.”
Emma took it with trembling fingers — she had not in her life touched so much money — and ran out into the darkness to where her John was waiting. Symford never saw either of them again. Priscilla never saw her change. Emma went to perdition. Priscilla went back to her chair by the fire. She was under the distinct and comfortable impression that she had been the means of making the girl happy. “How easy it is, making people happy,” thought Priscilla placidly, the sweetest smile on her charming mouth.
XVIII
Bad luck, it will be seen, dogged the footsteps of Priscilla. Never indeed for a single hour after she entered Creeper Cottage did the gloomy lady cease from her attentions. The place was pervaded by her thick and evil atmosphere. Fritzing could not go out for an airing without something of far-reaching consequence happening while he was away. It was of course Bad Luck that made the one girl in Symford who was easily swayed by passing winds of temptation draw the lot that put the five-pound note into her hands; if she had come to the cottage just one day later, or if the rain had gone on just half an hour longer and kept Fritzing indoors, she would, I have no doubt whatever, be still in Symford practising every feeble virtue either on her father or on her John, by this ti
me probably her very own John. As it was she was a thief, a lost soul, a banished face for ever from the ways of grace.
Thus are we all the sport of circumstance. Thus was all Symford the sport of Priscilla. Fritzing knew nothing of his loss. He had not told Priscilla a word of his money difficulties, his idea being to keep every cloud from her life as long and as completely as possible. Besides, how idle to talk of these things to some one who could in no way help him with counsel or suggestions. He had put the money in his drawer, and the thought that it was still unchanged and safe comforted him a little in the watches of the sleepless nights.
Nothing particular happened on the Thursday morning, except that the second of the twenty-five kept on breaking things, and Priscilla who was helping Fritzing arrange the books he had ordered from London remarked at the fifth terrific smash, a smash so terrific as to cause Creeper Cottage to tremble all over, that more crockery had better be bought.
“Yes,” said Fritzing, glancing swiftly at her with almost a guilty glance.
He felt very keenly his want of resourcefulness in this matter of getting the money over from Germany, but he clung to the hope that a few more wakeful nights would clear his brain and show him the way; and meanwhile there was always the five-pound note in the drawer.
“And Fritzi, I shall have to get some clothes soon,” Priscilla went on, dusting the books as he handed them to her.
“Clothes, ma’am?” repeated Fritzing, straightening himself to stare at her.
“Those things you bought for me in Gerstein — they’re delicious, they’re curiosities, but they’re not clothes. I mean always to keep them. I’ll have them put in a glass case, and they shall always be near me when we’re happy again.”
“Happy again, ma’am?”
“Settled again, I mean,” quickly amended Priscilla.
She dusted in silence for a little, and began to put the books she had dusted in the shelves. “I’d better write to Paris,” she said presently.
Fritzing jumped. “Paris, ma’am?”
“They’ve got my measurements. This dress can’t stand much more. It’s the one I’ve worn all the time. The soaking it got yesterday was very bad for it. You don’t see such things, but if you did you’d probably get a tremendous shock.”
“Ma’am, if you write to Paris you must give your own name, which of course is impossible. They will send nothing to an unknown customer in England called Neumann-Schultz.”
“Oh but we’d send the money with the order. That’s quite easy, isn’t it?”
“Perfectly easy,” said Fritzing in an oddly exasperated voice; at once adding, still more snappily, “Might I request your Grand Ducal Highness to have the goodness not to put my Æschylus — a most valuable edition — head downwards on the shelf? It is a manner of treating books often to be observed in housemaids and similar ignorants. But you, ma’am, have been trained by me I trust in other and more reverent ways of handling what is left to us of the mighty spirits of the past.”
“I’m sorry,” said Priscilla, hastily turning the Æschylus right side up again; and by launching forth into a long and extremely bitter dissertation on the various ways persons of no intellectual conscience have of ill-treating books, he got rid of some of his agitation and fixed her attention for the time on questions less fraught with complications than clothes from Paris.
About half-past two they were still sitting over the eggs and bread and butter that Priscilla ordered three times a day and that Fritzing ate with unquestioning obedience, when the Shuttleworth victoria stopped in front of the cottage and Lady Shuttleworth got out. Fritzing, polite man, hastened to meet her, pushing aside the footman and offering his arm. She looked at him vaguely, and asked if his niece were at home.
“Certainly,” said Fritzing, leading her into Priscilla’s parlour. “Shall I inquire if she will receive you?”
“Do,” said Lady Shuttleworth, taking no apparent notice of the odd wording of this question. “Tussie isn’t well,” she said the moment Priscilla appeared, fixing her eyes on her face but looking as though she hardly saw her, as though she saw past her, through her, to something beyond, while she said a lesson learned by rote.
“Isn’t he? Oh I’m sorry,” said Priscilla.
“He caught cold last Sunday at your treat. He oughtn’t to have run those races with the boys. He can’t — stand — much.”
Priscilla looked at her questioningly. The old lady’s face was quite set and calm, but there had been a queer catch in her voice at the last words.
“Why does he do such things, then?” asked Priscilla, feeling vaguely distressed.
“Ah yes, my dear — why? That is a question for you to answer, is it not?”
“For me?”
“On Tuesday night,” continued Lady Shuttleworth, “he was ill when he left home to come here. He would come. It was a terrible night for a delicate boy to go out. And he didn’t stay here, I understand. He went out to buy something after closing time, and stood a long while trying to wake the people up.”
“Yes,” said Priscilla, feeling guilty, “I — that was my fault. He went for me.”
“Yes my dear. Since then he has been ill. I’ve come to ask you if you’ll drive back with me and see if — if you cannot persuade him that you are happy. He seems to be much — troubled.”
“Troubled?”
“He seems to be afraid you are not happy. You know,” she added with a little quavering smile, “Tussie is very kind. He is very unselfish. He takes everybody’s burdens on his shoulders. He seems to be quite haunted by the idea that your life here is unendurably uncomfortable, and it worries him dreadfully that he can’t get to you to set things straight. I think if he were to see you, and you were very cheerful, and — and smiled, my dear, it might help to get him over this.”
“Get him over this?” echoed Priscilla. “Is he so ill?”
Lady Shuttleworth looked at her and said nothing.
“Of course I’ll come,” said Priscilla, hastily ringing the bell.
“But you must not look unhappy,” said Lady Shuttleworth, laying her hand on the girl’s arm, “that would make matters ten times worse. You must promise to be as gay as possible.”
“Yes, yes — I’ll be gay,” promised Priscilla, while her heart became as lead within her at the thought that she was the cause of poor Tussie’s sufferings. But was she really, she asked herself during the drive? What had she done but accept help eagerly offered? Surely it was very innocent to do that? It was what she had been doing all her life, and people had been delighted when she let them be kind to her, and certainly had not got ill immediately afterwards. Were you never to let anybody do anything for you lest while they were doing it they should get wet feet and things, and then their colds would be upon your head? She was very sorry Tussie should be ill, dreadfully sorry. He was so kind and good that it was impossible not to like him. She did like him. She liked him quite as well as most young men and much better than many. “I’m afraid you are very unhappy,” she said suddenly to Lady Shuttleworth, struck by the look on her face as she leaned back, silent, in her corner.
“I do feel rather at my wits’ end,” said Lady Shuttleworth. “For instance, I’m wondering whether what I’m doing now isn’t a great mistake.”
“What you are doing now?”
“Taking you to see Tussie.”
“Oh but I promise to be cheerful. I’ll tell him how comfortable we are. He’ll see I look well taken care of.”
“But for all that I’m afraid he may — he may—”
“Why, we’re going to be tremendously taken care of. Even he will see that. Only think — I’ve engaged twenty-five cooks.”
“Twenty-five cooks?” echoed Lady Shuttleworth, staring in spite of her sorrows. “But isn’t my kitchenmaid — ?”
“Oh she left us almost at once. She couldn’t stand my uncle. He is rather difficult to stand at first. You have to know him quite a long while before you can begin to like him. And I do
n’t think kitchenmaids ever would begin.”
“But my dear, twenty-five cooks?”
And Priscilla explained how and why she had come by them; and though Lady Shuttleworth, remembering the order till now prevailing in the village and the lowness of the wages, could not help thinking that here was a girl more potent for mischief than any girl she had ever met, yet a feeble gleam of amusement did, as she listened, slant across the inky blackness of her soul.
Tussie was sitting up in bed with a great many pillows behind him, finding immense difficulty in breathing, when his mother, her bonnet off and every trace of having been out removed, came in and said Miss Neumann-Schultz was downstairs.
“Downstairs? Here? In this house?” gasped Tussie, his eyes round with wonder and joy.
“Yes. She — called. Would you like her to come up and see you?”
“Oh mother!”
Lady Shuttleworth hurried out. How could she bear this, she thought, stumbling a little as though she did not see very well. She went downstairs with the sound of that Oh mother throbbing in her ears.
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 78
