Susan Settles Down

by Molly Clavering

  “I doot,” said the driver cheerily as he groped his way into an ice-cold, pitch-black hall with an assortment of luggage, “Mrs. Bald’s forgot ye.”

  A vengeful voice made answer with terrifying suddenness in that Stygian interior. “I’ll ha’e the law on ye, Gibbie Johnston, for misca’in’ an honest wumman that’s auld enough tae be yer mither—ay, an’ wad ha’e been if ye hadna cast oot wi’ ma puir wee lass!”

  The words were quite incomprehensible to Susan, but the tone in which they were uttered boded ill for any who came in contact with the speaker. She withdrew hastily to the gravel outside, where Oliver was grappling with hat-box and dressing-case.

  “Wrong?” he echoed in reply to his sister’s quavering question. “Oh, no, nothing’s wrong. It’s only Mrs. Bald and Gibbie. He used to walk out with her daughter before he married someone else, and she bears him a grudge. It will be all right, Susan. Don’t worry.”

  A flickering light in the hall, and a cry from the faithless Gibbie of: “Come awa’ in, Miss Parsons. The lamp’s lighted!” seemed to bear witness to the truth of his words, and not without some inward trepidation, Susan entered the house of Easter Hartrigg.

  The evil-smelling oil-lamp which burned sulkily on a table showed a vista of dark hall, and a forlorn heap of rugs and suit-cases planted in the centre of the floor, where no one coming in could avoid falling over them. Oliver promptly did so, and cursed heartily, to the evident amusement of Gibbie, who uttered a hoarse chuckle from the darkness outside. Susan was more than thankful to find that of the voice, or its owner, there was no trace, except a distant booming and a clattering of pots behind some closed door in the rear. She had no desire to cope with a possibly drunk and certainly angry cook in her present state of weariness.

  “There’s one thing certain,” she said about an hour later, sniffing. “We are going to dine off fried fish, Oliver.”

  “Well—perhaps—” he answered doubtfully. “And perhaps not. It’s Friday, you see—”

  Before Susan had time to ask the meaning of this cryptic remark, the door of the dingy room in which they were sitting beside a smouldering fire, was thrown open, and a tousle-headed young woman in a dirty apron bounced in.

  “Yer supper’s waitin’ on ye!” she announced and, bursting into wild giggles, instantly fled.

  Meeting Oliver’s glance of apologetic pride as he said, “I told her that when you came she was to announce dinner properly,” Susan suppressed a wish to giggle wildly herself.

  “Is that Mrs. Bald’s daughter?” she asked instead.

  “Yes; that’s Bernice.”

  “Bernice! How—how overpowering.” Susan was awed by this grandeur. “Bernice Bald. And is she the girl the taxi-driver didn’t marry?”

  “Yes, the same,” said Oliver. “I think myself she’s a bit weak in the top story, but she’s quite well-meaning.”

  As they proceeded down an uncarpeted stair, Susan could not help thinking that Gibbie Johnston had shown remarkably good sense in not marrying Miss Bald, who added to her lack of intelligence a face like that of an elderly rabbit, with a rabbit’s bulging eyes and prominent teeth.

  The dining-room was enveloped in an atmosphere of thick blue smoke strongly redolent of fried fish, through which the beams of an unshaded lamp on the table struggled fitfully, like a lighthouse in a fog.

  “Do you still tell me that we aren’t going to have fish?” asked Susan, coughing, as they seated themselves at a table which looked as though an earthquake had disarranged it after it had been laid.

  “I’m absolutely certain we’re not,” Oliver asserted, peering through the haze at the mutton-bone with a few unappetizing scraps of dry meat clinging to it, which lay in a plate before him. Susan was confronted by a lordly dish of waxen boiled potatoes. Their numerous black eyes seemed to return her stare malevolently. An enamelled kitchen pie-dish beside them held tinned peaches floating wanly in pale syrup. While she gazed in stupefied silence at this astonishing repast, he went on desperately: “Mrs. Bald and Bernice are Catholics, you see, and it’s Friday. They always have fried fish on Fridays.”

  “But don’t they let you have it too?”

  “No,” he admitted, “they don’t. And after once eating fish fried by Mrs. Bald I decided that there are worse meals than cold mutton and bread and cheese. But I told her she’d have to manage to produce some sort of a sweet when you came.”

  “She—she has,” said Susan shakily, and pointed to the peaches.

  For a second brother and sister sat staring at each other, then with one accord they burst into helpless laughter—and ate bread and cheese.

  Susan, tired with her journey, went early to bed, but sleep refused to visit her, for a variety of reasons, one of which undoubtedly was Bernice’s, or Mrs. Bald’s, inability to make a bed. The intense stillness of the night, after the continuous hum of town which usually lulled her, helped to keep her wakeful. She found a place between two of the mattress’s many humps, and kicked a stone hot-water bottle, which had given her unwary feet a frigid welcome, out of the bed. It promptly revenged itself by breaking on the floor.

  “Damn!” murmured Susan wearily. “Let it lie there till morning!”

  Resigned to wakefulness, she began to make plans for the reorganization of the whole establishment. The chairs and sofas would have to be shrouded in fresh loose covers, the heavy old curtains which hung dismally at every window must be torn down; the chimneys, which apparently had not been swept for a quarter of a century at least, should receive the attentions of the nearest sweep at once. Above all, Mrs. Bald and her daughter would be gently but firmly told that their services were no longer required at Easter Hartrigg. And on this last comforting thought Susan finally drifted off into uneasy slumber.

  2

  Heavy and prolonged thumping on the door woke her after an interval of what seemed like five minutes of blessed oblivion.

  Sleepily she called: “Come in!” and there entered to her Bernice, who by the cold light of day presented an appearance even less pleasing than when seen in the oil-lamp’s sultry gleam. Susan mastered the impulse to shut her eyes tightly, and asked if the bath water was hot.

  “There’s nae watter,” announced the handmaiden in tones of gloomy pride. “The tank’s dry.”

  This was a complication which Susan had never foreseen, and it left her dumb.

  “Ma mither says,” Bernice pursued, “are ye for an egg tae yer breakfast?”

  “Certainly,” said Susan, rallying. “In fact, I could eat two eggs, Bernice, lightly boiled. Three-and-a-half minutes will do.”

  “There’s juist the ae egg in the hoose,” Bernice made answer stolidly. “But it’s a fine big one—ay, a juck’s egg we got frae m’auntie that wis keepin’ them for settin’ in ablow the clockin’ hen. But the hen got rin ower by a cawr—”

  Susan hastily countermanded the egg and asked for tea and toast. As Bernice left the room, she sank back against her nobbly pillow with a feeling of complete disillusionment. Somehow—it must have been the result of reading H.V. Morton, she supposed—she had expected to find reasonable food at least in these wilds, good cooks, charming shy country housemaids, a welcoming manner. . . . Evidently they existed only in the hotels patronized by happy Mr. Morton. . . .

  A deep voice rose from downstairs. “Bairniss! Bairniss! A meenit!”

  “I’m comin’!” answered Bernice in tones of peahen stridency.

  “Whit wis she wantin’?” demanded the voice.

  “She wis wantin’ a bath, an’ two eggs biled for three-an’-a-hauf meenits!” shrilled Bernice, descending.

  “Three-an’-a-hauf meenits! I wonder whit next she’ll be seekin’? I’ll ha’e naethin’ to dae wi’ her an’ her hauf meenits.” Mrs. Bald’s voice rose passionately to a magnificent fortissimo. “As for meenits, hoo am I tae ken them, wi’ yon ’larmin’ clock that disna’ gang the ae time-piece in the hoose?”

  It seemed to Susan that the time had come for her to take a
hand. She rose, flung on a dressing-gown and, emerging from her room, said clearly and firmly over the banisters:

  “Thank yon, Mrs. Bald, but I do not wish an egg for breakfast. Tea and toast in half an hour, please.”

  A silence as of death fell over the lower regions, broken at last by a gusty whisper. “Presairve us! She’s heard a’ we said!”

  Susan retreated, feeling that victory had attended her so far, and thoroughly pleased with her own astonishing courage. The travesty of a meal which Mrs. Bald dignified by the name of breakfast left her, if anything, hungrier after than before it, and she tugged at the antiquated bell-cord in the sitting-room with no uncertain hand. Bernice appeared with a sulky air, after an interval long enough to assert her own independence and to fan Susan’s smouldering anger to white heat.

  “I wish to see Mrs. Bald here at once, please, Bernice.”

  Mrs. Bald, however, was engaged on an operation darkly alluded to as “warkin’ wi’ the range” and was not able to attend anyone’s pleasure.

  “Very well,” said Susan with an iciness that masked intense wrath. “Then I shall go to her in the kitchen myself. In the meantime, Bernice, you can dust this room.”

  “It was dustit afore ye got yer breakfast,” she replied.

  “Then,” said Susan, “you can dust it again, and this time please remember that I like the dust removed.”

  Feeling like a dragon breathing fire and smoke, she made her way through a baize-covered door to the kitchen premises along a passage highly scented with mouse and damp; but her spirit quailed when she reached Mrs. Bald’s domain and confronted her. With a dust-cap askew on her grizzled locks, with the natural purple of her complexion striving to make itself seen through a coating of soot and coal-dust, with her massive form enveloped in a man’s old waterproof, she made a sufficiently intimidating spectacle, and only extreme anger kept Susan from trembling visibly.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Bald,” she began at once, before the cook could launch into the recital of complaints that obviously hovered on the tip of her tongue. “I hope you are going to give us a better dinner this evening than the one we had last night.”

  “Is it a better denner?” cried Mrs. Bald, brandishing a dirty flue-brush so close to Susan’s nose that she thought it prudent to retreat a step in self-defence. “Whit mair could ye ask than a nice wee bit cauld mutton wi’ pitawties, an’ thae peaches? I’m sure puir Bairniss had the feet fair walked aff her, traichlin’ awa’ tae Muirfoot for them in a’ the mud, an’ her buits lettin’ in, puir lassie!”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Bald,” said Susan bravely. “Would you mind putting down that brush while I am talking to you? . . . I’m sorry, but I do expect a dinner that is a good deal better, and if you can’t give us one—”

  She was cut short by a torrent of explanation, excuse and abuse which she found very difficult to follow. She did gather, however, among other items, that Mrs. Bald wasna used wi’ these late denners, and that the range was a burnin’ and a cryin’ shame. There were obscure references to her sister in Oriorio—a place-name unrecognizable to the half-deafened Susan—who would be glad to gi’e her a hame; and to other prospective employers, all imploring her services, whom she had had to disappoint for the sake of the Parsons family. Indeed, if it hadna’ been for leavin’ the Commander, puir fallow, she and Bairniss wad ha’e packit up an’ been awa’ three weeks syne, so worn out were they with warstlin’ wi’ the establishment at Easter Hartrigg.

  One salient point impressed itself on Susan’s mind, and as soon as Mrs. Bald paused for breath, she pounced on it. “I take it, then, Mrs. Bald,” she said with deceptive sweetness, “that you are not pleased with the place?”

  Darkly Mrs. Bald muttered that the place was well enough, but some fowk were never satisfied, though you worked your fingers to the bare bane for them. . . . “Ay, an’ there’s an awfu’ nice family in Edinburgh wantin’ me an’ Bairniss. A fine wee hoose wi’ gas-stoves an’ ’lectrick licht. I wis wae tae disappint them, so I wis.”

  “Then don’t disappoint them,” said Susan cordially. “Go to them at once, you and Bernice. Don’t wait until your week is up. I’m sure you will be very much happier in Edinburgh, Mrs. Bald.”

  For a moment it seemed to Susan that she would be attacked with the flue-brush, and she laid her hand, as if casually, on the only likely weapon she could find, which happened to be an exceedingly dirty dishcloth lying on the table in unpleasant proximity to a plate of butter. But while cook and mistress faced one another, Bernice burst upon them in her usual manner of one pursued by a mad bull, and proclaimed breathlessly: “There a man in the droyn-room seekin’ the Commander, an’ a gentleman at the back-door sellin’ combs!”

  By mutual though tacit consent Susan and Mrs. Bald postponed the remainder of their interview. Leaving her domestic staff to deal with the “gentleman at the back-door,” Susan made her way to the drawing-room to explain to this early caller that Oliver was out looking at some fence which was in urgent need of repair.

  An enormous man turned from a window, the light of which, it seemed to Susan’s prejudiced eye, he almost blocked out, and in a deep rumbling voice told her that it was a fine morning.

  “Is it?” said Susan bleakly, shivering in the vault-like atmosphere of the unused room, which smelt of mould. “I haven’t been out yet—”

  She was disturbed by her crossing of swords with Mrs. Bald, appalled at the prospect of the work that must be done before the house would be comfortable, and in no mood to be sociable, particularly as she knew she must be looking anything but her best.

  Anyhow, it was a most uncivilized hour for a call, and this person in his riding-breeches and muddy boots and leggings ought to have known it.

  “You wanted to see my brother, I think?” she said distantly. “I’m afraid he’s out looking at a fence or something—”

  “He’s taken very kindly to this country,” said the stranger in his deep voice. “Will he be farming the place himself, do you know?”

  “Farming the place?” Susan almost laughed at the absurdity of this question. Oliver farming! Perhaps only those who knew him could appreciate how entirely ridiculous such a suggestion was. “No, I think not.”

  “Well, I’ll go and look him up. He’ll be at the fence I came to see him about, likely,” said he, and made for the door. Reaching it, he turned and said gruffly: “My name’s Armstrong. I march with you.”

  “Oh . . . why?” was all that Susan could find to say in reply. Was this some Scottish form of leave-taking? Apparently not.

  “Why?” he stared at her; then a slow smile began to spread over his wind- and weather-beaten countenance. Looking down at Susan who, a tall young woman, was accustomed to meet the eyes of most men on a level, he explained with an indulgent grin: “I have the place next to Easter Hartrigg.”

  To be caught out in such an idiotic townswoman’s mistake so soon after her arrival, to be laughed at kindly by this gigantic clod-hopping Scotsman, was almost more than Susan could bear. “Indeed?” she said, still more distantly. “Don’t let me keep you from going to find my brother.”

  But he seemed to have abandoned the idea of going. He leaned comfortably against the door, looking at her.

  “And how d’you think you’re going to like living at Easter Hartrigg, Miss Parsons?”

  Thinking of the Herculean tasks that lay in wait, not least among them the summary dismissal of Mrs. Bald and daughter, Susan answered promptly, “Not at all.”

  He nodded. “You don’t look as if it would suit you. Too die-away. But it’s a pity, for your brother’s settling in well—and it was time there was somebody here to take an interest in the place. Tenants aren’t the same, and the last lot here were a poor crowd. You’ll need to remember that your brother is laird of Easter Hartrigg now, you know.”

  “‘A laird and twenty pence, pronounc’d with noise,’” Susan quoted with a rueful smile, forgetting that she was speaking to this extraordinarily rude man, and thi
nking only of the tiny income, so inadequate for a landowner, who needed capital in these hard times, no matter how small his property.

  He looked puzzled. Evidently the words had no meaning for him, and he turned once more to the door. “I’ll go down to the march fence, then,” he said abruptly. “I can find my own way out. Good morning.”

  Susan said “Good morning,” and parted from him without regret. She did not doubt that, as he went with a quick, short stride down the sloping grass field towards a hollow screened by bushes, followed from the window by her resentful stare, he was thinking her an epitome of all that the country-dweller scorns.

  “I daresay he’s laughing at me over that imbecile mistake about the march,” she thought angrily. “And he called me ‘die-away!’ Odious man! And, what an oaf.”

  3

  The remainder of the morning was spent in a dreary pilgrimage from room to room of the neglected house, finding here a large rat-hole in the skirting-boards, there a loose piece of wallpaper flapping, or a badly cracked window-pane, and cobwebs, and the reek of damp everywhere. The repairs spoken of so grandly by Oliver seemed, to his sister’s disgusted amusement, to have consisted solely in putting a few new slates on the roof, though he had nailed unsightly pieces of tin over one or two of the largest rat-holes. Mrs. Bald and Bernice appeared to have done nothing whatsoever.

  “What passes my comprehension,” murmured Susan aloud, leaving the last room to find herself in the upper hall, “is how, in a house where every mirror and picture-glass is clouded as if with steam, and where the walls are discoloured by moist patches, the tank can come to be empty! I must ask Mrs. Bald.”

  Mrs. Bald, being questioned, expressed the pious but singularly unhelpful opinion that it was “the hand o’ Goad.” Bernice, as usual, merely giggled.