The Baker’s Daughter

by D. E. Stevenson

  Sue glanced at him again and saw that he was far away, lost in dreams, and had forgotten her existence. She was quite sure that he was not even thinking about his wife or the mean trick she had played on him. Sue did not know what artists thought about when their faces wore that strange rapt expression, and, because she was interested to know, she followed his eyes and saw that he was gazing out of the window. A cloud, white and billowy as eiderdown, was sailing across the sky, trailing its gray shadow across the sunlit hill.

  “Gorgeous!” he said softly. “Could you ever get the feeling of that softness—even Constable—but you might try—”

  I don’t believe he would notice whether I was here or not, said Sue to herself with a little secret smile.

  Chapter Six

  It was, of course, a ridiculous idea that Mr. Darnay would not notice whether she was there or not—Sue chuckled over it herself at the time—but she found, as the day wore on, that her idea was not very far from the sober truth. She stayed and cooked Mr. Darnay’s midday meal and, because she was sorry for the horrible way his wife had treated him, she took a lot of trouble over the meal. She gave him soup and curry (made from some cold meat that she found in the larder) with snow-white rice and crisp little curls of potato. She also made a coffee soufflé with a crystallized cherry on the top. She had to go look for him when the meal was ready and, after some trouble, she found him on the riverbank painting a willow tree. He was so engrossed in his work that she had some trouble in making him come, but at last she managed to drag him back to the house.

  It’s dreadful, Sue thought as she trotted off to the kitchen for her own dinner. It’s simply dreadful. He’ll never remember to cook anything for himself; he’ll just starve. He’s thin enough already. She decided to stay and cook his supper and then go. He would have to stop painting when dusk fell and then she could talk to him and show him where everything was. Sue was rather pleased with her cleverness in perceiving that an artist’s working hours must necessarily be limited by the fall of dusk, but she found that although she had been right in her presage she was wrong in her deduction.

  Mr. Darnay certainly gave up painting when it grew dark, but he shut himself up in his studio and was no more getatable than before. She peeped in to tell him that the butcher had called and to ask him what she should order and saw him standing before a large table covered with bottles and bowls and knives. He was measuring powder and mixing liquids and pounding up something in a pestle and mortar for all the world like a chemist. She shut the door softly and came away, for it was obvious that no good could be had out of him until he had finished what he was doing.

  The butcher’s van man was surprised to see Sue at Tog’s Mill.

  “Are ye here for long, Miss Pringle?” he asked with interest.

  “I’m here to oblige,” Sue told him. “Have you got a nice wee bit of pope’s-eye, Mr. Farquharson?”

  “I’ll cut ye a piece,” he declared, diving into his van until nothing but his legs were visible. There was a short silence while he cut the meat, and then he inquired amicably, “How would ye like a sheep’s heid, Miss Pringle? I’ve a good one left.”

  “No,” replied Sue shortly.

  “Och, ye’d better take it,” he told her, handing it out of the van as he spoke. “It’s a real nice heid—I never saw a meatier one—and ye can have it for saxpence.”

  It was certainly a fine head, and Sue would have taken it like a shot if she had been staying on, for it would make nourishing soup, and nourishing soup was exactly what Mr. Darnay needed, but Sue was not staying on, so it was no good.

  “No,” she replied regretfully. “I’m not needing a head today. I’ll just take the meat, thank you. Is there any news, Mr. Farquharson,” she added inquiringly, for, although she had only been at Tog’s Mill for twenty-four hours, she felt as if she had been cut off from the outer world for weeks.

  “News?” he inquired. “What kind o’ news? The Spanish government has taken yon place wi’ the queer name—is that the kind o’ news ye’re meaning?”

  “Franco’ll get it back from them,” said Sue confidently. “Franco’ll win.”

  “Franco!” exclaimed the van man scornfully. “He’ll no win. He’s nought but a rebel—ye’re surely not on his side, Miss Pringle?”

  “I am, then,” Sue declared. “I like Franco. He’s got a nice face. I saw a photo of him in the papers.”

  “You an’ your Franco!” exclaimed Farquharson in disgust. He got into the van and drove off.

  It was not until he had vanished up the road that Sue found she still had the sheep’s head in her hands. She turned it over and looked at it. The man had been right; it was a fine head with plenty of meat on it and very cheap at sixpence.

  “Well, if that isn’t provoking!” she said aloud, and then she smiled to herself and added, “It was Franco’s fault.” She carried it into the larder and put it in a bowl to soak.

  * * *

  When Sue went to call Mr. Darnay for supper she saw that he was “awake” (it was the word she used in her own mind to describe his awareness of everyday matters).

  “Hallo, I thought you’d gone!” he exclaimed in surprise.

  “No,” said Sue gravely.

  He considered her. “Your home is in Beilford, I suppose?”

  “Yes. Mr. Pringle the baker is my father.”

  “I’ll take you home in the car,” Mr. Darnay said. “Yes, that will be best.”

  “And how will you manage?” inquired Sue, speaking somewhat truculently in her nervousness. “How can you cook the food and wash the dishes when you’re working at your painting all day long? The thing’s ridiculous. You’ll just starve. That’s what’ll happen.”

  “You mean you want to stay?” he asked her in amazement.

  “I mean I’m going to stay,” declared Sue boldly. “I’ve taken in a sheep’s head, and you’d never boil it long enough. Where’s the sense in wasting a good head?”

  Mr. Darnay roared with laughing.

  Sue waited patiently until he had finished. “Well?” she said at last.

  “Well, well,” he repeated. “It’s really awfully good of you. We must have it on business terms, of course. What—er—salary do you get? I don’t know much about these things, you see.”

  “I was to get a pound a week,” Sue admitted, somewhat diffidently. “It seems a lot, but Grandfather said it was the thing.”

  “It isn’t a lot at all,” replied Mr. Darnay hastily. “You’re a very good cook. I should have told you how much I enjoyed my lunch, but the fact is I was thinking. Sometimes I lose myself and don’t realize what’s happening. Painting is so exciting, you see.”

  Sue nodded gravely. “You ate it. That’s the main thing,” she said.

  “I’ve had a splendid day,” he continued. “It was so nice and quiet, and I was in the mood for work. You’re sure you want to stay?”

  “Quite sure,” replied Sue, nodding again.

  He sighed—perhaps with relief. “That’s good,” he said. “I see now that it will be much the best thing. What’s your name? I can’t go on calling you ‘look here’ or ‘I say.’”

  “It’s Miss Pringle,” she told him seriously.

  His eyes twinkled. “Of course, how stupid of me! You told me that before, didn’t you, Miss Bun the Baker’s Daughter.”

  Sue knew the game of Happy Families—it had been a great favorite when she and Sandy were small, so she appreciated the jest and retorted immediately, “And you’re Mr. Pots the Painter, I suppose!” She blushed rose red as the words left her lips, for they sounded a wee bit cheeky, but Mr. Darnay didn’t seem to mind.

  “Of course I am!” he cried, laughing heartily. “Mr. Pots the Painter! We shall get on like a house on fire. I can see that.”

  “I’m sure I hope so,” said Sue gravely.

  * * *

 
Sue settled down into a steady routine and soon felt as if she had been at Tog’s Mill all her life. The mornings were occupied by the work of the house, but the afternoons were free, and she made a habit of walking by the river or on the moors. She was back at four for a cup of tea and then the butcher called. Tog’s Mill was so far from the beaten track that the van could not call there in the morning, and indeed, Farquharson made it obvious that he was calling there as a favor and that the small orders she gave him scarcely paid for the gas he used. Sue had known the butcher, Mr. Anderson, since she was a child, and his son was her contemporary at Beilford Academy so she was able to take a strong line with Farquharson. She made him bring her groceries and a copy of the daily paper. She had discovered somewhat to her surprise that no paper at all came to Tog’s Mill and had determined that this state of affairs must not continue. (Sue liked what she called “a keek at the papers” herself, and she was of the opinion that a gentleman like Mr. Darnay ought to read the news.)

  “It’s like heathens,” she told Farquharson. “Just like heathens. Anything might happen and us not know a thing about it.”

  The van man agreed to lighten the heathen darkness of Tog’s Mill and brought Sue The Scotsman regularly every day, and for this indulgence Sue gave him a cup of tea and argued with him over the conduct of the Spanish War.

  Her father’s van, with its load of new baked scones and cookies, only called twice a week and the ancient van man could not be threatened nor cajoled into calling more often. “Yer father would no’ stand for it,” he declared. “He’s awfy near wi’ the gas. If yer wantin’ me oot three times, it’s himself will hae tae gie the order.”

  Mr. Darnay was out painting all day long—or as long as the light lasted; he had explained to Sue that he was “experimenting with a new medium.” Sue translated this into her own practical language and inquired, “Are you trying to paint in a different way, or is it with different kinds of paints?”

  “It’s both, really,” he told her. “I feel I’ve gotten hold of something that can’t be expressed in the old way. It was getting too easy. I was making too much. Money—”

  “Will you make more money with the new kind of pictures?”

  “No, I shan’t. In fact, I don’t suppose anybody will buy them, but that isn’t the point.”

  Sue understood that this “new medium” was the underlying cause of the quarrel that had resulted in the breakup of the Darnay ménage. She considered the ethics of the case as she roamed down the path by the river’s edge. Darnay felt that this new way of painting was more important than fame and money and the companionship of his wife—that was strange. Could it be right? As she came to know him better, however, Sue began to feel certain that whatever he did, or had done, was right, for she could no more imagine him doing a mean thing than she could spread out her arms and fly. His nature was a pledge of conduct, for he was keen and shining like a sword, contemptuous of hypocrisy and all halfhearted things. Sue had never met anybody the least like him before, never anybody so natural and free and indifferent to what other people thought.

  Sometimes when Darnay was “asleep” as Sue called it (though indeed the word was a poor description of the sort of trance in which he worked) she came and went all day without getting a human glance from his eye. It made her uncomfortable sometimes to have him look at her as though she were not there—he looked at her, Sue thought, as you would look at a sofa or a familiar chest of drawers—but at other times, when he “woke up,” he seemed to feel the need for companionship and would call her into the studio and talk to her or drift into the kitchen and sit on the table and interfere with her work. His visits interfered very seriously with Sue’s work, for his conversation was so difficult to understand, and so interesting—perhaps on that account—that she would stand and listen to him while the pudding boiled over and would forget whether she had salted the potatoes. She was fully aware that he talked to her for want of someone better and that he scarcely knew or cared whether she understood, and at first Sue resented this. It’s all daft nonsense, she told herself comfortingly. But the odd thing was that it wasn’t daft nonsense at all, and Sue, remembering afterward what he had said and pondering the words, would suddenly be enlightened. The things he said kept knocking against her mind until she was forced to wrestle with them and tear out the meaning.

  Sometimes she was annoyed with him, for he did not trouble to be tactful—his mind was too full of his work for him to consider the feelings of his housekeeper—and Sue, like all proud people who find themselves in an inferior position, was easily insulted.

  “You can hear the river plain, tonight,” she said one evening as she brought in his supper and arranged it on the table. Darnay was reading The Scotsman—he read it daily now, accepting it as manna from the skies without bothering himself about how or why it came.

  “I can hear it plainly, Miss Bun,” he declared, without looking up.

  Sue understood the rebuke and resented it. Her hackles rose. “I speak like my neighbors,” she said in a stiff little voice.

  Darnay looked at her and smiled—what a queer bundle of complexities she was! Ignorant as a savage, proud as the devil, independent as be damned, and yet humble and intelligent and kind.

  “You needn’t, Miss Bun,” he told her.

  “I needn’t?”

  “No, because you know better. It’s a kind of inverted pride—”

  “I don’t want to be better than my neighbors. Why should I? They’re good enough for me.”

  His eyes traveled down to her feet. “And yet you don’t wear down-at-the-heel shoes,” he said quite casually.

  Sue retired to the kitchen without another word. He was daft, she decided. Down-at-the-heel shoes indeed! No, she wouldn’t be seen dead in such things. She was proud of her feet (and justifiably so, for Sue’s feet were very small and well-shaped). She wouldn’t go slopping about in down-at-heel shoes like Mrs. Watt and old Mrs. Bain, down-at-heel shoes!

  And then quite suddenly she saw—down-at-heel language, what a horrible thought! She pondered it as she held the omelet pan over the fire and eased the crisp edges of the omelet carefully with her knife. Then she slid the omelet onto a hot plate and carried it into the dining room.

  “I see what you mean,” she said as she placed the dish before him on the table.

  Darnay had been reading the weather forecast. He lifted a puzzled face and stared at her.

  “Down-at-heel language,” she explained. “I don’t want to talk like that.”

  “Good heavens, you don’t!” he cried.

  “Could I learn to talk like you?”

  “You mustn’t try,” he declared. “Honestly, Miss Bun, I couldn’t bear it. Your talk is just right for your country. It’s as right as the heather on the hills. You have just enough of the ‘Scots’ to add salt to your conversation—I love to hear you talk—and remember this,” added Darnay seriously. “The old Scots language is a grand language, hoary with tradition. They spoke it at King James’s Court and at the Scottish Bar; poets used it and made it live forever. It was just the one word I was carping at—ungrateful prig that I am.”

  “Plain for plainly,” said Sue, nodding, for every word of the conversation was indelibly printed on her mind.

  “Plain for plainly,” he agreed, “and slow for slowly. That isn’t Scots, Miss Bun; it’s just slovenly down-at-heel English, and somehow or other it always makes me angry. It’s a sort of complex, I suppose,” he added, smiling. “But that’s a poor excuse for my rudeness, I’m afraid.”

  Sue flushed, for an apology always made her feel uncomfortable. “Your omelet’s spoiling,” she said and fled for her life.

  Chapter Seven

  Up till now Sue had always lived in a town (not a very big town, of course, for Beilford is a small, compact place, scarcely straggling outside its sixteenth-century walls). Her life had been in the town, and all her inte
rests, and she knew little more of the country than a city-born urchin. Now, however, on her afternoon walks she began to enjoy the country. She saw it all the better because her walks were solitary, and because her mind was jolted out of the groove in which it had run for so long. This life—busy, useful, independent was so different from her old life that she felt like a different person. In fact, her old life seemed like a dream, and all her problems were shelved to make room for her new interests.

  It was beautiful country, even in its winter bareness. The silver river wound between great rocks, or slipped along silently between green banks, or gurgled over shallow beds of gravel. She saw trout leaping in the pools below the rocks and the silver glint of a salmon as it passed up the river to spawn, and she saw all kinds of birds (some standing by the river’s edge and others flying low over the moving water) and wondered about them and wished she knew their names and how they lived. Down here in the valley by the stream there were little rounded hills, green and friendly, and tall stately trees, graceful in their tracery of bare boughs, but when she climbed onto the moors, she found bigger hills covered with brown withered heather and coarse yellow grass. Jagged rocks stuck out through the thin skin of earth, and drystone dykes flung themselves in sweeping curves over the shoulders of the hills. There were sheep here, small mountain sheep with black faces and black legs, seeking their food among the coarse herbage and scattering in all directions when Sue approached, and there were different kinds of birds—larks and grouse and others that she had never seen before. Here the wind blew cold and clear, and big clouds, white and billowy or dark and threatening, sped before its chill blast trailing their skirts over the far-off tops. In these high places the whole feel of the day could change in a moment from warm friendliness to cold hostility. A cloud moved up and hid the sun, and the very same hills, which had seemed so kind, were suddenly gray and lonely and formidable, and the wind was suddenly chill.