Cousin Cinderella

by Sara Jeanette Duncan

  It was Miss Game’s flat that finally attracted us—Miss Henrietta Game’s. The agent had told us he “thought” it was a third-floor flat, which prepared us to find it under the roof; but that did not matter, he might just as well have thought the truth; by this time we liked roofs. It was the fifth, the top one of the Court Flats, close to the Underground and all omnibuses.

  We were very drawn to the person who let us in. She was broad and red, with an air of perceiving slowly and acting firmly. She looked like duty squared in a kitchen apron, under a rather smudgy cap, and she was exactly the right size for the passage. I mean she took it all up, so that until she turned round we were unable to get in. She looked at us with a spark of caution in her eye, as if she recognised in us the emergency she had always to be prepared for; and the civility about the lower part of her face was very reserved. She was bent in the honest way that does not impair usefulness, and she moved with more than middle-aged deliberation. Indeed, we could see that she was otherwise much more than middle-aged; she was the oldest kind of English servant, the kind we had expected to see everywhere, but this was the very first. We gazed at her with pleasure and interest, and as she manœuvred us in we saw over her shoulder Miss Henrietta Game, in hair-curlers and dressing-gown, fly across the hall from the drawing-room to the bedroom opposite. That is an embarrassing feature of many London flats. Once people are admitted there is no evading them except by the fire-escape.

  We followed this good woman to the drawing-room, and wondered a little why she did not leave us there. She picked up the Lady’s Pictorial where Miss Game had dropped it beside her chair, and looked vainly round the carpet for threads. That brought her to the end of her resources, and she took up a patient, respectful stand near the door, with the air of wishing she could think of something else to do. Involuntarily I glanced round to help her; but it was all fearfully tidy, there was nothing to suggest. Then I saw that Graham was looking at her deliberately, with gentle, calm, curious enquiry. It wasn’t of the least use, she meant to stand her ground and be looked at, if necessary; but it was plain she was aware of his gaze and suffering; and I wished he wouldn’t. She kept her own eyes steadily and with deference on the mantel ornaments; but she clasped and unclasped her hands upon her apron, and moved mechanically a little nearer to the door. I began to wonder whether she would really hold out, when Miss Game came in and she disappeared instantly. Then I realised what she had stayed for, and why Graham was indignant; and I looked round immediately to see what I could have taken if I had had the chance. My eye rested on the mantel ornaments,—there were a great many,—and when I saw Miss Game looking at them, too, I felt myself blush. There were quite fifty or sixty mantel ornaments, mostly animals, with painful expressions and elongated necks.

  Miss Game wore eye-glasses, and that made her look perhaps even more suspicious. She hesitated at the door and decided to come in; she advanced to the middle of the room and decided to sit down. We could see her deciding everything, behind her eye-glasses, and hesitating first.

  “We have come about your flat,” I said, when I saw she was a little more decided.

  “I was thinking of letting it,” said Miss Game, looking at us intently.

  “We heard you were,” I replied, “from the agent. It seems a nice flat.”

  “I have had it for six years,” said Miss Game, as if she were most unwilling to part with it.

  “That speaks well for the flat,” said Graham, and Miss Game answered, as if to make a reservation:

  “It suits me. It has one drawback,” she added hastily—“I ought to tell you at once. The bells.”

  “The bells?” we asked together.

  “Of St. Mary Abbotts’. You see,” she said, indicating the window, “how near we are. I do not object to the regular services; it’s the peals. A great many people seem to marry at St. Mary Abbotts’; and they all think they must have peals. It’s a drawback to these flats, and I always mention it.”

  “I wonder if one would, in London!” said Graham, more to me.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I wouldn’t.”

  “Would what?” asked Miss Game.

  “Have one’s wedding pealed in London,” explained Graham. “Tell so many people who would not care. Annoy people in flats. Rejoice with nothing. Would you, yourself?”

  “Oh! I,” said Miss Game, as if she could not entertain the idea. But I thought she looked at Graham with a conciliated air. “You could, of course, keep the window shut,” she said. “And that is better for the blacks, too.”

  “The blacks?” I repeated.

  “From the chimneys. They come in worse in a top flat than anywhere. And ruin your chintzes,” she continued, almost in a tone of confidence. “Should you require everything fresh calendered?”

  Graham and I glanced at one another. We were not acquainted with the verb to calender.

  “Perhaps we shouldn’t,” I said weakly, and Miss Game looked relieved.

  “If I calendered for you coming in you would have to calender for me going out,” she said.

  “Then don’t let us,” I said at a venture, seeing that she didn’t want to.

  “Why should we?” said Graham, putting up a bluff; but at that Miss Game took alarm again. You must never go too fast in England.

  “Then there’s the Underground,” she said dissuadingly.

  “Yes,” said Graham; “very convenient, I’m sure. The agent mentioned it.”

  “That man,” said Miss Game severely, “is little short of dishonest. The Underground is much too convenient. It is almost beneath us. You can hear it and feel it.”

  “Not smell it?” I put in anxiously.

  “Every quarter of an hour all day long. No, not smell it, so far as I have noticed,” replied Miss Game. “There it is, now!”

  We heard a distant friendly rumble, and two of the mantel ornaments shook. “It’s much worse than that late at night or in the early morning,” Miss Game told us. “As a matter of fact, I always get up by it.”

  “That would be a real good use to put it to,” said Graham approvingly; and Miss Game considered him in silence.

  “You are the third to apply,” she said. “One was a lady who was separated from her husband and the other was a gentleman with dogs.” We felt a glow of superiority.

  “It is interesting in a way,” Miss Game admitted; “letting, one sees a great deal of human nature.”

  I looked at Graham in the hope that he would find a suitable reply; but he was taken up with a wood-engraving on the wall, a kind of document, one of those things that are three or four hundred years old at a glance. Miss Game saw that his attention was attracted by it.

  “Yes, I would leave that up,” she said. “That is King Charles the First at the top, and a copy of verses supposed to have been written by him when he was lying in the Tower. An appeal to the Almighty. The language is very extravagant.”

  “Oh, well!” said Graham. “So were the circumstances, weren’t they?”

  “But it’s of no consequence,” Miss Game assured us, “because the King never wrote them at all. It was probably one of his bishops.”

  “It’s exactly the sort of language,” said Graham, perusing it, “that would be used by a king in a tower, with curls like that. He may have plagiarised from some bishop, but I can’t help thinking that he wrote it. Anyhow, he claimed it, for there’s his signature.”

  “I have been told by a gentleman in the British Museum,” said Miss Game uncompromisingly, “that it’s a forgery. It may be a plagiarism, too, for all I know.”

  My brother looked grieved, but he did not, of course, dispute the British Museum. “I call that stretching veracity too far,” he said simply, and Miss Game considered him further.

  “Well,” said Graham, getting impatient, which was foolish of him, for it wasn’t nearly over yet, “if you wish to let your flat, madam, we are looking for one. Our references are pretty good; and we would make any arrangement that is customary about the re
nt. As we have never been married we have never been separated, and we own no dogs in this country. May we see the other rooms?”

  Once more Miss Game hesitated.

  “I have never let to Americans,” she said.

  “We are not Americans; we are Canadians,” replied Graham quite calmly, as if it were of no importance. “I would have been proud to be an American if it had happened that way; but as it didn’t happen to happen I am prouder to be what I am.”

  Miss Game looked as if she didn’t see the necessity for pride in either case.

  “Isn’t it very much the same thing?” she asked.

  “No, madam, it isn’t,” replied Graham firmly.

  “Oh!” she said. “Well, I’m rather disappointed. I’ve always wanted to let to Americans.”

  I trembled for what Graham might say; but he only looked at her.

  “They are first-rate people to do business with, madam,” he informed her, and turned to me.

  “Then perhaps we had better go,” he said, taking up his hat.

  “Oh, but you haven’t seen it!” said Miss Game hastily. “It may suit you, you know, after all,” and she led the way to the dining-room. In the dining-room there was an odd little sideboard carved with the Apostles, and Miss Game told us it was made of wood that came out of the Armada. By now, of course, we knew we could believe her; and as we followed her out of the room Graham pinched me, harder than was necessary, and said: “Don’t make any fuss about terms.”

  I made no fuss, but Miss Game made a great deal. She went back to St. Mary Abbotts’ and talked so much about that and other places of worship in the neighbourhood that I saw she would never let us have her flat until she knew what our denomination was. When I mentioned casually that we belonged to the English Church it made a difference at once. It was then that she directed my attention to the drawing-room carpet. It should be swept, she said, from the door to the window, and from the wall to the fireplace, on account of the nap, and she looked at me anxiously.

  “If necessary,” I said, “I will sweep it myself.”

  I think she thought this showed a proper spirit; but she did not take me to particularly mean it, so I added: “Often I have had to do it,” at which, Graham declared, she bounded away from us again. However, she came back.

  “You’ll have to have the chimneys cleaned, you know, before you leave. It doesn’t cost much. And the windows washed—that’s two shillings. The porter does it. Maids are not allowed to, at this height, by law.”

  “That’s something,” I said to Graham, “to write to mother.”

  “About the bath-room tank,” Miss Game continued. “I don’t know. You will have to fight it out with the landlord. He maintains I ought to clean it, and I maintain he ought to clean it. I’ve done it once, and he has done it once. It’s five-and-six. You will have to do the best you can.”

  We bowed submissively.

  “I know you’ll want to have the window open in the kitchen, but if you put it up from the bottom I believe the oven won’t heat.”

  “Thanks for telling us,” I said. “I do hate a slow oven.”

  Miss Game stared. “The kitchen eight-day I should expect you to wind up every Wednesday night with your own hands. And if it stops there is a very good little man ”

  “Docs it often stop?” I asked anxiously, and Graham said:

  “There’s no occasion for you to worry about the clock, madam. I’m rather fond of playing with clocks. It will be a pleasure to me to keep it in order.”

  It gave Miss Game a bad fright, but it was quite successful. She was silent with alarm for a moment.

  “However,” she said, “I’m not bound to leave you a kitchen clock, am I? I think we had better let it run down. It has been in my family since 1800.”

  Graham looked regretful, but consented.

  “I should keep a closet,” said Miss Game, and we said: “Why, of course,” and she went on to particularise about the house-linen. She was far from openhanded in house-linen; and I had to ask her, diffidently, more than once, how we were to go to the wash. In spite of the most portentous signs from Graham I fought for four pairs of sheets, and got them —she expected us to do, on some rotary principle, with three.

  “Blankets,” she said; “two to each bed is all I ought to give you; but I can’t put them away on account of the moths, so I’ll leave the rest between the mattresses.”

  “Implying,” said Graham carefully, “that we may use them when necessary. We might give them a shake now and then.”

  “I shouldn’t have any objection. Eight towels ”

  “But we both love towels!” I said in despair.

  “I was going to say ‘are all I’ve got.’ You see, I’m not ”

  “A brother and sister. No,” I said. “And, of course, if you haven’t got them we can buy them.”

  “Brooms and brushes,” said Miss Game, “I ought not by rights to leave out, but if you will promise to take care of them ”

  I really couldn’t and wouldn’t. I turned.

  “No,” I said firmly. “I will not promise to take care of your brooms and brushes. You can put them in the closet.”

  “There isn’t room,” said Miss Game calmly.

  “Then would it be possible,” contributed Graham innocently, “to take them with you?”

  “To the South of France! No, I must stand my chance,” said Miss Game. “One thing more—the fender. Do you use Home Glow polish?”

  “I don’t know what I use—in England,” I said, and I didn’t care. I was getting quite worked up. I could feel Graham’s eye upon me, and saw the flat disappearing, as it were, out of the window; but I didn’t care.

  “We use no other,” said Graham boldly.

  “I am very particular about that. And, oh! the most important thing of all; Towse—who let you in. You would have to take Towse—she knows about everything. I never let without Towse.”

  “Can that be her beautiful name!” exclaimed Graham, and was going to take Towse with outstretched arms; but I stepped in.

  “I don’t think there will be any difficulty about Towse,” I said coldly.

  It was much the more proper way of dealing with Miss Game. As I told Graham afterwards, she would have produced an aged relation next, and we should have had to take that, too—and take care of it.

  “In that case,” said Miss Game, giving us a last scrutiny, “I think I will let to you. I really want to get to the South of France.”

  Graham, I have no doubt, would have fallen upon her neck; but I kept my head, though it was exactly, oh, exactly, what we wanted.

  “If we take it,” I said, “you must arrange to put all those things”—I indicated the menagerie on the mantelpiece.

  “Where?” asked Miss Game breathlessly.

  “In the closet,” said I.

  She said she would with such satisfaction that we always wondered under what circumstances she was robbed of a mantel animal, and which one it was.

  “Old maids,” remarked Graham, “will love anything,” but he did not say that until Miss Game was safely in the South of France.

  CHAPTER III

  I NEVER shall forget the day we moved in, and the young man came from the agent. It was one of the first things we noticed, the number of young men in London who come on different errands and seem to have a legitimate excuse for ringing the bell and being taken into different parts of your flat. They are often quite smooth and sleek, with black coats and unimpeachable collars, like the young man from the agent, or they may wear respectable billy-cocks like the young man about the electric light, or billy-cocks on the back of the head like the young man about the gas cooking-stove, or merely cloth caps like the young man from Barker’s by mistake; but they all have little narrow books sticking out of their coatpockets; and they all come and ring, and worry Towse, who drats them behind their backs, though they treat her with the utmost respect. They seem to form a class by themselves, a kind of sub-profession so small to be so respecta
ble, and so respectable to be so small; and one wonders whether they stay in it always, and how much you can be when you get to the top. They look finished and accomplished, as if their purpose in life was entirely achieved in becoming the young men from the agent; and they take themselves as seriously as possible. Very likely they marry, and bring up funny little respectable families in some funny little respectable suburb; and if so, what are they when they grow up? Perhaps they find an opening in sharpening pencils for their fathers.

  The young man from the agent came when Graham was out. Towse showed him into the drawing-room, and didn’t wait, as I was there; and he said in a cultivated voice that he had come in connection with the inventory. His manner was very grave, and thoughtful, and considerate. I asked him to sit down.

  “I thought Miss Game made the inventory,” I said. “She told me she would.”

  “She did, miss. At least, Mr. Mott made it for her, on her behalf, this morning. Here it is. Mr. Mott has sent me to go over it with you, on your behalf.”

  “I wish you would tell me what for?” I said. I was completely tired out after moving in, and when you feel like that, to have people coming making trouble on your behalf is ridiculous.

  “For your protection, miss,” said the young man from the agent.

  “From Miss Game?” I asked. The idea of wanting protection from Miss Game seemed foolish. “She doesn’t seem a person likely to inflict an injury.”

  The young man coughed and looked pained. “You see, miss, you have taken over from Miss Game, and Miss Game will have to take over from you, so it would be more satisfactory to both parties. You ought to know what you’re responsible for, now, oughtn’t you?”

  “Miss Game’s inventory will tell me that,” I said; “and she knows what is here much better than I do. And I have confidence in Miss Game. She would never put down things that weren’t there.”