Cousin Cinderella

by Sara Jeanette Duncan

  But Towse’s second had the advantage of being her romance. She told me about it one day when we were going over the things from the wash. She had known him ever since he was so high, and they had been sweet’earts, “if you will excuse me, miss,” at school. Then he enlisted and went on foreign service, and she thought no more about him.

  “Because, if you will excuse me, miss,” she said in all modesty, “he never was as much to me as I was to ’im, miss.”

  So it gave her no trouble whatever to marry the under-gardener. Time passed and she buried him, and the daughters, being brought up very strict, got good places and good ’usbands, too, if I would excuse her. Towse never would speak to me of love or matrimony without apologising; I longed to tell her that I didn’t really mind. And Towse herself was out at service again, when one day the regiment came back.

  “Not as I knowed it, ’m—miss—though I daresay it was in the papers,” said Towse.

  “And you met him, Towse, walking in the Park in uniform of a Sunday afternoon, very sunburnt; I know you did!” I cried.

  “No, ’m—no, miss. I might ’ave, but I didn’t. ’E come with the milk,” she replied, as if she had not yet got over the astonishment of it.

  “And you recognised him!”

  “No, miss. ’E reckonised me,” said Towse, beaming. “‘Why, Louiser, is that you?’ he said, Louiser being my maiden name, miss. Them was his very words. And I said pretty distant, I said: ‘What if it is Louiser?’ and he said: ‘Don’t you know Tom?’”

  “Had he lost an arm?” I asked breathlessly. Somehow I thought to be delivering milk he must have lost something.

  “’E stood there as sound as you or me, miss. And that very evenin’ he ast me again, miss.”

  “And did you accept him at once, Towse?”

  “No, ’m—no, miss; that I did not. ‘Go along,’ I said; ‘you’re old enough to know better.’ But there it was, miss. ’E come twice a day with the milk, mornin’ and evenin’, and every time he’d ’ave his answer yes or no. It wore me out, miss, it did reely.”

  “But—but it has been satisfactory, I hope, Towse.”

  “Yes, miss, I’ve got nothing to complain of, not to compare with what many ’as. He’s a quiet, respectable man, and as often as not when I go ’ome of an evening I find him comfortable in bed; and as fond of my married daughters, miss, as if they’d a-bin ’is own.”

  Sometimes in those early days when we had not so much to think about Graham and I would argue which husband Towse was most faithful to; and a little thing decided it, to our minds, in favour of the under-gardener. We were agreeing that we hated calling her Towse, like that, as if she were a man. Miss Game had handed her on to us under that name, and she herself seemed cheerful and contented to answer to it; but we didn’t like it, and we couldn’t get used to it. I knew it was a custom of the country, and one was familiar with it of course in English novels, where it looks arrogant and nice, in a literary sense; but it is different in real life. In Canada we still manage to observe whether a servant is a man or a woman; we are not differentiated so far from them that we can’t see that, and we thought it barbarous not to.

  “‘By the Ilyssus there was no Wragg, poor thing!’” said Graham, who often remarked that there was one great, hopeful and satisfying feature about the English—you could always quote their own authors against them. Graham thinks that to recognise a defect, even nationally, is the most interesting stage toward overcoming it, and that one reason why you enjoy life so much in England is because they are always walking round themselves there and suggesting improvements. But that has nothing to do with Towse.

  “She is too old for Louiser,” I said.

  “Much,” said Graham. “But why not ‘Mrs.’? Ask her if she wouldn’t prefer ‘Mrs.’ It’s hers by law, twice over. Tell her she might as well go without her apron as without her proper title. Say that we find it indecent and illegal. Tell her it hurts our feelings.”

  “I wish you would!” I said. “She may reply that she doesn’t like being called above herself. She would never dare to answer you in that way.”

  “No,” said Graham, “I can’t. I’m beginning to know my place, too. But if she does you might tell her that in the East a cook is called ‘Kalifa,’ or the skilled one. Ask her if she would object to being called ‘Kalifa, or the skilled one.’ You may say I have set my heart on it.”

  So one day when we were quite sympathetic and I hadn’t brought a dripping umbrella into the kitchen for a long time, I said: “Towse, we can’t bear to call you Towse any longer.”

  She looked frightened, and replied: “Why, miss, whatever is the objection?”

  “There isn’t any objection,” I said, for in England an objection is a very serious thing to have; “there’s a prejudice. We want to call you ‘Kalifa, or the skilled one,’ as they do in the East. Do you mind?”

  “Oh, miss!” she said, “it sounds like the name of a cat.”

  “Does it?” I asked; “but it’s really a compliment, Towse. Think of it—’ Kalifa, or the skilled one.’”

  She said nothing, but put some plates on the dresser in order to turn her back on the suggestion.

  “Compliments is more than I can expect at my age, miss; and to hear you say ‘Kalifa, or the skilled one’ I couldn’t ever get used to think you was a-speakin’ to me!”

  “Well, never mind,” I said hurriedly, because she was feeling for her apron. “What we really want is to call you Mrs. Towse. Towse is illegal and it hurts our feelings, and we don’t think it’s proper respect to—to you at your age, Towse.”

  Towse smiled broadly—it was like the sun coming out.

  “That ain’t the law, miss, if you’ll excuse me; but how could you be expected to know the rights of it in England? Mrs. Towse I once was, but can’t ever expect to be again, miss, not since I married my second. But nobody can say a word agin the Towse without the Mrs., miss, which I ain’t denyin’ don’t rightly belong to it; and havin’ charred all my first’s lifetime, miss, I got used to it, and not bein’ one to be fond of change I didn’t make none, miss, when I married again, not so far as mistresses was concerned, if it’s just the same to you, miss.”

  “Certainly,” I said feebly. “All right, Towse. But what is the name of your second?”

  “Bargus, miss.”

  Graham when I told him said it was a kind of bigamy backwards on Towse’s part, and both of us found it difficult to remember whether it was her first or her second that was dead, until we had actually seen Bargus. Towse asked as a favour whether she might cook his dinner for him in the kitchen of a Sunday, that being the only day of the week on which he could get a hot one, and of course we said she could. And well do I remember the first Sunday he came and my embarrassment. She being up to her elbows in something I just went to the flat door myself.

  “Oh, come in, Bargus!” I said; “Towse is in the kitchen.”

  He did not reproach me by so much as a look; but if he spoke to Towse afterwards it was no more than she deserved.

  Oh, Towse was a dear comfort—and such an honest soul! In that matter of the Sunday dinner, for example, we always supposed, of course, that it came out of the pantry, that Bargus, in a quiet way, dined with us on Sundays. Until once just before he arrived, I went into the kitchen and found Towse lifting a savoury leg of pork out of its pot, which I knew could not be for us, and a hurried glance discovered other foreign items upon the kitchen table. It was a little humiliating; we had been thinking Towse so shrewd to dine her husband on Sundays at our expense; and Graham was indignant, and said Towse’s private larder couldn’t go on.

  “What’s good enough for us is good enough for Bargus,” he said.

  “Well,” I said, “if you like to interfere with Towse’s principles you can stop it.”

  Then there was the shilling a week I gave her for a special purpose. There is no use in concealing what it was—it was bath-money. Towse had been scrupulously brought up to wash her face, but
she was a large person and the flat was a small flat, and, in short, I thought that a complete warm bath once a week would be good for us all, and that the shilling would put her in mind of it. I called it bath-money to save her feelings, as she was accustomed to speak of beer-money; and I am sure she used it once. But the second week she said it had given her the lumbago cruel, and if it was just the same to me she would leave off the practice. How many would have gone on taking the shilling and not taking the bath? It was not a thing you could point to.

  CHAPTER V

  WE had no relatives at all in England, cr even, as is more likely with Canadians, in Scotland or Ireland. Father came out with his whole family, including his grandfather and two cousins; he was transplanted, as he often said, root and branch, and mother’s great-grandfather had built his own log house on the Bay of Quinté. We were strangers really, though we knew the flag so well, and had sung “Rule Britannia” since we could sing anything; such strangers that I felt sometimes as if we had rifled the flag out of Westminster Abbey, and found the song in a book of Runic rhymes. There was not a soul, except Towse, upon whom we had any claim; but there were various people we had known in Ottawa whom we hoped to see again; and we had several letters of introduction, one or two from Lord Coddis himself, our Governor-General at home, who had more than once said what a great respect he had for father. Certainly nobody could have been more charming than the Coddises were to us always. People often said it made a great bond with the Throne, the Coddises’ kindness of heart. Of course, they were not without enemies; certain Members’ wives had their remarks to make; but mother, who was devoted to Lady Coddis and had been in her bedroom on the simplest terms, declared she was as natural and unaffected as anyone she had ever met. Lord Coddis was a soldier really—Brigadier-General Lord Coddis of Kafiristan, C.B., in full. He had taken Kafiristan, which was thought to be impregnable, by direct assault, with great gallantry, for the British, but the Kafiristanese had impaired his efficiency by shooting him, so that he had to resign the army; and as he had rank and wealth already, his country felt bound to provide him with an occupation, which was all he asked, and sent him to be our Governor-General. No one could have shown greater gratitude. He brought out a most beautiful Staff; nothing like it had been seen for years. He gave the most charming parties, spent twice as much as his pay came to, and did a great deal to revive the Canadian game of lacrosse. We simply loved seeing him open and prorogue Parliament—the outriders alone, as Graham used to say, were worth the whole price of the entertainment—he did it so handsomely; and I have often heard father remark that his head was as good as his heart; and there was no reason why he shouldn’t be in the confidence of his Cabinet.

  Well, Lord Coddis gave us one or two letters, and you will believe we took care of them; and Mrs. Fullerton gave us another—she was the wife of General Fullerton, the British officer commanding our Militia. Her great idea was to revive the handloom industries of Nova Scotia, but she was otherwise quite unassuming and sprightly and nice; and she said we simply must meet Mrs. Jerome Jarvis—she was such a character; and, of course, we were delighted. We knew she was a character, her picture was constantly in the London fashion weeklies, and I had even seen it in the Society Supplement of the New York Sunday papers. She was prominent in all sorts of ways, but chiefly as a character; novelists were supposed constantly to put her in. Mr. Jerome Jarvis’s picture was never in the papers, though he was living, and important in the City. That was all that was generally said about him, though it was sometimes added that he was devoted to his fascinating wife. I remember mother saying when she read that: “Then I suppose the poor thing has some home life,” and when we asked which poor thing, she answered darkly: “Oh, well, I daresay it cuts both ways!”

  It promised delightfully to meet Mrs. Jerome Jarvis, a person widely renowned for no apparent reason, which was so much more subtle than being celebrated for any of the ordinary ones; and our letter to her was the first little chip we threw out on the great vague, friendly, impenetrable ocean of London.

  We chose a wet day because we thought there would be a better chance of finding her in; though, as Graham said, if people in England made a practice of staying in on wet days! However, you never can tell, and we thought she might be, like mother, far from strong. Nobody, we speculated, could be such a character and be very robust; nobody ever was. Graham said she would be lying on a sofa with “Amiel’s Journal,” and one hand playing in the fur of a large Persian cat. I asked why Amiel, and why the cat, but, of course, he couldn’t explain; he never can. We would have to excuse her getting up, but we would understand somehow that she never did, even when the Prime Minister came to tea; and she would immediately proceed to say several brilliant and remarkable things one after the other.

  “We shall never remember them all,” said Graham, “so you try to seize the first and I’ll stick to the second and so on; and when we get home we’ll write them down. Matthew Arnold praised her intellectual qualities as a child, Mrs. Fullerton told me, and Herbert Spencer frequently dined with her as a middle-aged women. It’ll be a tax on two Canucks like us, Mary; but it’ll be a treat. I only hope she’ll be equal to seeing us.”

  It was pouring by the time our cab got to Rutland Gate, and we looked up more hopefully than ever at the windows behind which she was probably sitting, writing articles for the Fortnightly, or thinking of things to say. It was impossible that she should be out in such weather. We got quite wet paying the cabman.

  “Are you sure you’ve brought the letter?” I said as Graham rang. To calm me he took it out of his pocket-book, and in a moment we were asking if Mrs. Jerome Jarvis was at home. It seemed to me that the man said “No, sir,” almost before he had quite opened the door, so quickly that for an instant, while we dripped with disappointment, we stared at him.

  “Well, when she comes in,” said Graham, “you might give her this,” and handed him the letter, while I produced cards.

  “Yes, sir,” said the man; “Mrs. Jarvis is ’unting in Leicestershire, sir,” and the door closed.

  We stood still while you might count three with the shock of it.

  “Mrs. Jarvis is ’unting in Leicestershire,” repeated Graham mechanically, and turned on me, the ideal shattered in his eyes. “Oh, come on, Mary!”

  He put up his umbrella and gave me his arm, and we walked away together. There was no reason why a character shouldn’t hunt in Leicestershire, but it couldn’t be our character; and you might have felled us to the ground.

  Next day I dashed to the door every time the postman came, but there never was anything from Mrs. Jerome Jarvis, or the next day or the next, for nearly three weeks. We had almost stopped wondering about it when we heard from her—by telegram. It came in with the bacon in the morning; and as Graham was expecting one from a business man in Liverpool, we were in no hurry to open it. Then I read:

  “Much regret bed fortnight bad neuritis do come my din.-party to-morrow for Roeboroughs’ fancy ball hope see you my room after Jerome so much looking forward.—JANICE JARVIS.”

  “Read it again,” said Graham, “and try to imagine the punctuation,” which I did.

  “Well,” said Graham, “what do you think she means?”

  “Why,” I said, “she means to apologise for not having written before, and to ask us to dinner tomorrow night. It’s quite clear.”

  “When her other guests,” said Graham disapprovingly, “are going on to the Duchess of Roeborough’s fancy dress ball?”

  “Well?” I said.

  “And she will be in her room and Jerome is so much looking forward. Why is Jerome so much looking forward?”

  “Because she will be in her room,” I said. “She can’t say she is looking forward, you see, when she’s in bed.”

  “Where she intends, apparently, to receive us afterwards.”

  “We’ve always heard she was a character. But she can’t mean you,” I deprecated.

  “I don’t see how I’m going to depend upon
that.”

  “Well,” I said, “it isn’t anything so very dreadful. Some queen in history always did it.”

  “Contemporary queens don’t,” said Graham firmly; “and anyway ”

  “You didn’t mind her on a sofa,” I reminded him. “But of course, we can refuse.”

  “I think we’d better refuse,” said Graham.

  I was heart-broken to do it; but when Graham represented that he would be obliged either to sit by the bedside of a lady he had never seen before or to stay downstairs with the butler, I had no alternative. I myself was full of allowance for a character; I would have gone gladly; and so when a day or two later Mrs. Jerome Jarvis sent us an invitation to lunch I did not mention to Graham that it had come on a postcard. I thought “How nice and friendly”; but Graham will not always think what you want him to think.

  We wondered very much, as we drove there, whom we should meet. Graham said he had no anticipations, but I noticed he had put on a becoming tie and was inclined to sit up straight and be absentminded.

  “Don’t set your heart on the Archbishop of Canterbury,” he said; and I said I wasn’t, but there were a great many interesting and important people in England besides him.

  “And it’s exciting enough,” I told Graham, “to know that we’ll be the smallest toads in the puddle in any case.”

  He was not really indifferent; he pulled out his watch three times in a block in Knightsbridge and did not contradict me when I said it would be too fearful to be late. It was again a wet day; but the idea of keeping even the least distinguished of Mrs. Jerome Jarvis’s friends waiting put us at last in such a fever that we abandoned our cab and walked out of the block to another. At last we arrived; and the same footman with the yellow-and-black striped waistcoat opened the door, as automatically as before, but wider; and we went in.