“Mummie!”
Johnnie dashed down the stairs and met her in the hall, but, as usual, he eluded her kiss.
Edward followed more slowly.
“Mummie, will you play with us?”
“Will you read to us?”
“You’re always out, aren’t you?” said Johnnie pathetically, and quite untruly.
His mother contented herself with giving him a look. She knew that Johnnie knew that she knew when he was merely playing for effect.
“Have you been good while I’ve been away?” Laura enquired, sincerely anxious for reassurance, and remembering too late that all the modern books on education stressed the importance of always taking for granted that no child ever had been, could be, or would be anything but good.
“Yes, very,” said Edward glibly.
“Not so very, at tea,” his brother reminded him. “I only upset my milk by an accident, and we wouldn’t finish our crusts.”
“Well,” said Laura, and took them into the drawing-room. “What shall I read? It’s Edward’s turn to choose.”
Edward looked timidly at his mother. He liked the Peter Rabbit books, and Tales about Bad Little Kittens, and even Nursery Rhymes with plenty of pictures. Laura did not smile upon her elder son’s taste in literature. She read the Bad Little Kittens when he asked for them, in rather a chilly voice, for fear of creating a repression in Edward, but she kept her enthusiasm for Johnnie’s favourite Tales from the Classics and Stories from English History. Both her children were well aware of this, as Laura guiltily realised.
“Hercules, please,” said Edward rather faintly.
She saw that he was making a great effort to conform to his mother’s standards, and felt both remorseful and impatient.
“I’ll just take off my hat—”
Laura threw off her hat and coat in the hall, noted with a passing distaste in the oval looking-glass on the wall that her hair always emerged untidy from under any hat, and that her nose required powdering, and went straight to the drawing-room and began to read.
Edward did not listen at all, and Johnnie listened intently, but earnestly bit his nails.
“Johnnie — your fingers— ‘So Hercules went to the marshes where those terrible birds—’ Johnnie, dear — and Edward, don’t kick the furniture— ‘these terrible birds lived. They were called the Stymphalian birds.’”
“They had brass beaks,” from Johnnie.
“Yes, don’t interrupt, darling, and don’t make me speak to you again about your fingers, or I shall stop reading.”
“‘Now before he went, Hercules had taken the precaution—’ Do you know what that means, Edward?”
“Yes,” said Edward hastily.
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
Laura, who was almost always mysteriously tired after quarter of an hour spent in the undisturbed company of her children, suddenly felt too jaded to point out Edward’s failure, alike in intelligence and in truthfulness, with that pleasant, gentle reasonableness recommended by all her little modern books. So instead she said wearily and injudiciously, “Tell him, Johnnie.” And Johnnie did so, and received in return a sulky look from his senior.
“It won’t do to let Edward get jealous, poor darling,” thought Laura, as she had thought a great many other times.
She resumed the Labours of Hercules.
At half-past six there was a knock at the door.
“Here’s nurse,” said Laura — too brightly, as she herself felt. “Now I’ll put in a marker, so that we shall know the place to-morrow. Good-night, darlings.”
“Must we go to bed, mummie?”
“Certainly you must. I’ll come up and say good-night to you.”
“What about five more minutes?” Johnnie coaxed, his pleading far more nearly effectual than Edward’s whining.
Laura glanced at nurse, a modern, efficient-looking young woman, not much over thirty.
Nurse had on her offended face.
Laura “did not know the cause of this not infrequent catastrophe, and in all probability never would know it, since nurse was of those who “prefer not to say” when interrogated. But she did know that this was no evening for a display of maternal weakness.
“Not to-night, darling. Now say good-night — you can go and find daddy in the study before you go up, and don’t keep nurse waiting.”
A display of consideration which left nurse quite unmoved, as Laura noticed out of the corner of her eye.
Johnnie elected to be naughty.
He cast himself upon the floor, shrieked, and clung to the legs of the furniture.
Edward took the opportunity of shooting out of the room and disappearing from view.
Laura, exhausted, exasperated, and apprehensive lest Alfred should hear from the study, sought to speak with calm.
“Johnnie, that’s not like a big boy — that’s like a baby. Don’t make that dreadful noise. Go along, now—”
(“Never meet opposition with opposition,” said the little book.)
“You’re making my head ache, Johnnie dear. Please don’t scream.”
Johnnie’s screams appeared instantly to redouble in intensity. Laura looked despairingly at nurse.
“Stop that now,” said nurse in no uncertain tones, and advanced to where Johnnie lay. By a form of ju-jitsu known only in nursery circles, she miraculously jerked him to his feet again.
Laura could not help reflecting how effective physical violence always seemed to be, although so much opposed by every enlightened modern authority. If she were really true to her principles, she would certainly forbid nurse to employ it — but Laura knew only too well that her whole life was one continual compromise between her principles and her sense of expediency.
“Come along and stop that nonsense,” said nurse, and Johnnie followed her, enveloped in a sudden and complete indifference.
“She can just find Edward for herself,” thought Laura childishly, and sank back into her chair.
The house-parlourmaid, Nellie, entered.
“If you please, ‘m, Mrs. Raynor is at the back door and would like to speak to you.”
“You’d better ask her to come in here. And Nellie, if she hasn’t gone at the end of a quarter of an hour, please come and say that I’m wanted.”
Two minutes after the organisation of this inhospitable manoeuvre Laura was saying pleasantly:
“Good evening, Mrs. Raynor. Come in and sit down.”
Mrs. Raynor periodically worked and periodically had a bad heart. She had now come to ask if Laura ever wanted a day’s cleaning done.
“Because, if so, Mrs. Temple, I’d be glad to oblige. I’ve given up the washing.”
Laura reflected that the scrubbing and turning out of the two nurseries, by hands other than her own, always gratified nurse.
She engaged Mrs. Raynor to come early in the following week.
A vague feeling of uneasiness, connected with Mrs. Raynor, lurked at the back of her mind, but it was not until later that she remembered a certain rather anxious week in the previous year, in the course of which Mrs. Raynor had come daily to fill a gap, and had nightly departed with a small bundle under her arm.
(Alfred, when Laura had told him at the time what serious misgivings the bundle roused in her, had replied with an air of matter-of-fact common sense: “But you can easily find out. Just stop her one night and ask her what’s in the bundle.”)
“Well, anyway, I should have had to have her when Nellie leaves. Unless I’ve got a new one by then,” Laura thought.
She had not yet found a house-parlourmaid. Her own advertisement remained unanswered, except by newspapers and agencies, the Registry Office assured her that girls wouldn’t look at the country, and the faint possibilities heard of through the friends of friends who were losing theirs at the end of the month had always evaporated by the time that Laura had persuaded her husband to motor her some forty or fifty miles in search of them.
“Mum-mie-ee!”
/> “All right, darling.”
She went upstairs, and exchanged prolonged good-nights with the hilarious Edward and Johnnie, that left her barely five minutes in which to change into her faded, friendly velveteen tea-gown that had served her for years when she and Alfred had no one staying at Applecourt.
“They are darlings when they are in bed,” she thought, with a little glow at her heart.
The gong rang.
Laura and Alfred went in to dinner, and Nellie waited upon them with that alert efficiency displayed by a departing servant anxious to demonstrate to her employers that they are losing a treasure.
“The boys were having a pillow fight when I went in just now.”
“Were they?” said Alfred. He smiled kindly, if without enthusiasm.
“It’s extraordinary how much better balanced on his feet Johnnie is than poor little Edward. Why, he can bowl him over like a ninepin every time.”
“Can he?”
This time Alfred hadn’t smiled, and the absence of enthusiasm was rather marked.
Laura recollected herself with a start and began to talk about the League of Nations.
CHAPTER IV
Alfred had been persuaded to drive Laura and the children to the dancing-class at Quinnerton. There was no security that he would repeat this concession weekly, but Laura had thankfully taken advantage of it, with reference in her own mind to the thin end of the wedge. She now sat in the Quinnerton Town Hall, on an uncomfortable seat placed in a draughty position, in the company of half a dozen mothers, a couple of nurses, and three governesses.
In the middle of the room ten little girls and five little boys waved their arms and legs about, with varying degrees of grace, more or less in time to the emphasised rhythm that proceeded from the piano at which sat a chilly-looking but decorative young woman in orange georgette. The senior teacher also wore orange georgette, that stopped short just above her knees, and gave place to pale stockings and heelless orange satin shoes.
She stood gravely facing the class, directing their movements with suave and superior gyrations of her own, and saying from time to time:
“Arms upward raise — knees outward bend — one, and two, and — on the toes, Cynthia — Edward — four, and one, and —— Stop, please.”
The piano abruptly became silent.
“Johnnie Temple, you’re not attending. Nor is Mary Manners. Now I can’t have the whole class interrupted like this. You must pay attention, or go and sit down. Resume, please.”
The piano and the class resumed.
Laura talked to the mother of Mary Manners, who was sitting next to her, wearing a grey squirrel fur coat.
“I always admire Miss King’s appearance so much, don’t you?” said Laura. “So very unlike the dancing mistresses of our day.”
“Yes, isn’t she? And really she gets them on very well. Mary has improved tremendously.”
“Mary has such a good sense of rhythm,” politely said Laura. “I’ve always noticed it.”
“Oh, I don’t know. She doesn’t pay attention to what’s going on, or she could do much better.”
“So could Johnnie.”
“What I feel about Mary is that she could do better, if she’d only concentrate. It’s all there, but she doesn’t try.”
“It’ll come, won’t it? Though, of course, in some children concentration seems to be the natural thing. Now Edward will give his whole mind to anything that interests him, but then, unfortunately, he’s not in the least interested in anything educational, except perhaps mechanical toys. Johnnie, who’s really much cleverer—”
“Mary! Mary dear!”
Mrs. Manners was shaking her head, and hissing in a distressed way through her teeth, and Laura perceived that her conversation was no longer receiving attention. She knew, however, that it had been directed to her own gratification rather than to that of Mrs. Manners, and was not surprised.
On her other side was a very earnest mother whose Cynthia was the star performer of the class.
Mrs. Bakewell, unlike Mrs. Manners, wore no furs, but always wore very plain tailor-made suits, small felt hats that seemed to be poised on the extreme top of her head, and immense chamois-leather gloves.
She had a very bright smile, a large nose, and a large, alert glance.
She turned them all upon Laura and said, with a strange effect of restrained ardour in her manner:
“I think dancing does so much for the little people, don’t you? It helps them to express themselves, I feel.”
“Yes,” said Laura doubtfully. Cynthia Bakewell was beautifully poised on the tips of her toes, although she looked interested and conscientious, rather than spiritually uplifted, but Johnnie was expressing himself by means of trying to make Miss King rebuke him publicly once again and Edward was blowing his nose with great earnestness.
“They teach eurythmics everywhere now,” said Mrs. Bakewell. “My elder girl is at a wonderful school, where the pupils dance in a wood, like nymphs, every evening in the summer.”
“Shall you send Cynthia there? She dances so beautifully already.”
“All my children have always danced, from the time they could walk. I used to play the piano, after tea, when they were wee babies, and they used to get up and dance, without any suggestion from anybody. Cynthia invented a dance when she was only three. It was a Butterfly Dance, and she did it beautifully.”
Laura, as usual, wondered why her children were so unlike other people’s children. If she played the piano at Applecourt after tea, Edward ran out of the room, because he found it boring inside, and Johnnie either wished to thump a humorous imitation beside her, or begged her to leave off and come and play. Never had either shown the slightest indication to invent a dance, or even to dance one which somebody else had invented.
“Of course, girls are so different. My two little sons—”
“But Theodore dances quite as well as his sisters,” said Mrs. Bakewell, interrupting.
Laura had forgotten about Theodore. He was at school, and no longer attended the class.
“He said to me the other day: ‘Mama, do the angels dance? If they don’t, I don’t think I want to go to heaven.’”
“Did he? How sweet,” said Laura, in a depressed way.
“It was rather sweet, wasn’t it? He’s only seven, you know. But of course he’s danced ever since he could walk.”
Laura said, “Oh, of course,” as though all the children of her acquaintance, her own included, had danced ever since they could walk — and then felt that her words had sounded inane.
“Cynthia, of course, is much the best of them all,” she added, indicating the class, and in atonement for her tepidity about Theodore.
“It’s very nice of you to say so, but then,” returned Mrs. Bakewell more brightly than ever, “Cynthia has danced ever since she could walk.”
Laura thought: “I wonder whether the mere fact of being a mother does really reduce one, conversationally, to the level of an idiot.” Aloud she said: “Yes, of course.”
“Rest,” cried Miss King smartly, and all the children sank back on to the soles of their feet with relieved expressions on their faces.
Edward rushed to his mother, and Johnnie, whom she wished Mrs. Bakewell to have a good opportunity of looking at, on account of his superiority in good looks to the talented Cynthia and Theodore, walked to the far end of the room and made hideous faces at himself in the looking-glass.
“Is that your little fellow?” said Mrs. Bakewell with a tolerant smile, as Johnnie further distorted his features.
“I can’t think what he’s doing,” murmured Laura, trying to return Mrs. Bakewell’s smile while at the same time shaking her head violently and frowning in the direction of Johnnie.
“Showing off, I daresay,” Mrs. Bakewell observed, more tolerant than ever.
“That was very nice, darling. You’re getting on,” said Laura to Edward, regardless of accuracy.
“I simply hate dancing,” Edward
replied gloomily.
“My little children love dancing.” Mrs. Bakewell turned her large, bright gaze upon Edward. “When Cynthia and her brother Theodore were tiny they used to invent dances. You ask Cynthia to tell you all about it. They had a Windmill Dance and a Butterfly Dance, and all sorts of other dances. They liked dancing better than anything.”
Edward gazed indifferently at Mrs. Bakewell’s smile.
When his silence became embarrassing, Laura gently prompted him.
“That was clever of Cynthia and Theodore, wasn’t it? That’s why Cynthia is so good at dancing now, I expect.”
“Is she good at it?” Edward chillingly remarked, and strolled away without waiting for an answer.
Mrs. Bakewell, her smile as indomitable as ever, said chat children were so delightfully quaint, always, but Lura felt that it was time for her to turn again to Mrs. Manners, who now had Mary seated on her lap.
“What are you doing about Mary’s lessons now, I wonder? I know you were finding it all so difficult a little while ago.”
“It always is difficult, when one lives in the country. My husband says it’s quite out of the question to drive her to and from Quinnerton every day.”
“So does Alfred.”
“It’s with great difficulty that I’ve persuaded him to let me have the car and bring her into the dancing-class once a week.”
“I can’t even do that regularly.”
“Oh well, of course, I drive myself. And unless they’re going to attend regularly, it’s no use at all, is it?”
“It’s better than nothing,” said Laura firmly. “And we’re lucky about teaching. Miss Lamb comes every morning and gives them their lessons.”
“That really is excellent. I,” said Mrs. Manners, “am teaching Mary myself.”
“And do you find it answers?”
“Oh yes. I simply, for the time being, become a teacher pure and simple. We’re perfectly regular — perfectly punctual. Mary knows that the lessons have got to be done, just the same as if she was at school. And of course I always keep a little ahead of her, preparing the lessons.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 283