B008O6ZWTG EBOK

by Elizabeth Goudge

  Isaac and Polly returned to the kitchen in characteristic fashion, Isaac with the slow step of a guilty conscience, for his coat was nowhere to hand, Polly with the alacrity of a quiet one, for she considered she had a perfect right to sit down in her own kitchen on a Sunday evening. If the gentry chose to invade it that was not her fault. Both had returned for the sole purpose of defending the other. Knowing this Emma stood between them slowly removing her cloak and drawing off her black kid gloves. Isaac had entertained the great Dean to tea in the kitchen in his shirt sleeves. He had praised Isaac, and sent an almost affectionate message to Polly. Shame and jealousy tore at her, and hatred that seemed almost a physical thing rose like a surge of hot blood from her breast to her throat and would have strangled her had she not given it an outlet. With a savage and skillful gesture she swept the little wooden toys off the dresser into the black silk apron she wore and flung them on the fire.

  10. Bella

  1.

  IN the reaction of next morning the Dean was not so sure about those angelic wings and could only trust that he had not done great harm. He was well aware that his visit had seriously disturbed Miss Peabody, and that in escaping from her himself he had left Isaac and Polly behind him to bear the brunt of whatever it was he had unwittingly stirred up. He should have remained and talked with her a little. The fact was that she had much alarmed him and he had fled. Fear he was accustomed to, for he was not inside himself the fearless man that his height and courage had led men to suppose, but by the grace of God he had not until yesterday run away from what alarmed him. Miss Peabody had taken him by surprise, entering suddenly upon a moment of relaxation when his armor, so to speak, was on the floor. Yet he was deeply ashamed because relaxation, while life lasted and evil endured, was not permissible except in prayer in the presence of God. The poor woman was not evil, she was he believed highly virtuous, but she was not good and the absence of love left a most dangerous vacuum. “Much ashamed, much ashamed,” he murmured, and knew that when opportunity offered he must go and see her, though he did not want to. He said to himself that Miss Montague in urging him to take a little joy had forgotten the alarming contingency of life. The gentle stream of his friendship with Peabody was showing every sign of developing into a roaring cataract.

  And now he must see Havelock about the boy. “Where does Mr. Havelock live, Garland?” he asked as Garland helped him into his cloak to go to matins.

  “Mr. Abraham Havelock lives at number twenty Worship Street, sir,” said Garland. “His son Mr. Giles at number seventeen. But their office is in the market place, sir.”

  “I want to see Mr. Abraham Havelock after matins,” said the Dean. “Will he be at home or at the office?”

  “On a Monday morning, at home, sir,” said Garland, who knew every detail of the private lives of the inhabitants of the Close and Worship Street by a process of suction, his mind lifting the knowledge out of the sacred ground of the ecclesiastical precincts as the sun draws vapor from the earth. “Being elderly, Mr. Abraham leaves Monday morning to Mr. Giles. Monday morning at an office can be difficult, sir.”

  “No doubt, no doubt,” said the Dean. “Thank you, Garland. Much obliged.”

  “I’ll send a message, sir,” said Garland.

  “Message?” asked the Dean.

  “Asking Mr. Abraham Havelock to wait upon you, sir.”

  “I thank you, no,” said the Dean. “I will wait upon Mr. Havelock.”

  And he went away to matins leaving Garland much perturbed, for it was contrary to all his ideas of propriety that the Dean should wait upon anybody except the Bishop and Miss Montague. Nor, skillfully trained by Garland, had he done so before. Garland was not happy as he washed up the breakfast silver in his pantry. The Dean was most unaccountable just now. And Garland rather disliked these queer warm spells in late autumn. Indian summers, he believed people called them. For the first time in his life he dropped a silver spoon upon the floor and stooping to pick it up bumped his head on the draining board. He could have wept.

  Matins over, the Dean forged his way down Worship Street, peering shortsightedly from side to side in an effort to locate number twenty, oblivious of those who touched their hats to him, talking to himself. “Much ashamed, much ashamed,” he said, for he had just realized that for many years past he had been guilty of a most contemptible arrogance. Why should he expect doctors, solicitors, bank managers and the humbler clergy (though not dentists owing to obvious technical difficulties) always to wait upon him as though he were a crowned head? He was not. He was a humble servant of the Master who had girded himself with a towel and knelt on the floor to wash the feet of twelve poor men. Abbot William de la Torre, and all the abbots and priors after him down to Prior Hugh, had done the same every Maundy Thursday, but he did not, nor did he think the twelve old men at the almshouses would appreciate the gesture if he should try to do so. Times changed and there was no greater tyranny than that of social custom, but he was to blame that he had let it fasten about him with quite such octopus strength. He would try now, God helping him, to loosen the coils a little.

  He was at number twenty. It was at the humbler end of the beautiful winding Georgian street, the end nearest the market place. Those who had at one time resided in the Close lived at the Cathedral end, the slightly less privileged at the town end, poised as it were on the delicate tightrope between trade and gentility. But the houses at the town end of Worship Street were just as beautiful as the others, if a little smaller. They lacked the porches and fluted pillars of the larger houses but they had fanlights over their front doors, white doorsteps snowily scrubbed, beautifully spaced windows kept scrupulously clean and shining, and an air of contented solid comfort that was very reassuring. They did not look like houses in which anything could go very wrong. To pass them was to think of shining beeswaxed floors, pots of jelly on a scrubbed shelf and a walled garden behind the house where nectarines grew on the south wall. None of the houses in Worship Street was quite the same. Some had two windows on each side of the front door, others only one. Virginia creeper grew on some, wistaria on others. Number twenty was covered with a vine whose leaves were now deep crimson and pale gold. They made a brilliant setting for the green front door and the brightly polished brass knocker.

  The Dean knocked and stood waiting, and he was conscious of a sudden lightness of heart that a little overcame his nervousness, for in spite of its Georgian dignity there was something about this trim gay exterior that reminded him of a doll’s house. He had of course never possessed a doll’s house, but in his childhood there had been a little girl who had one, a child with a blue bow in her hair, and out of the mist of the ages he remembered that it had been a green door, or was it a blue door? He was trying to remember when suddenly, noiselessly, this one opened, letting out the warm scent of geraniums and the piercing cacophony of a canary rejoicing in the beauty of the day. The rosy-cheeked maid who opened the door wore a pink print dress and a mobcap and apron and was so terrified when she saw the Dean that her wits deserted her.

  “Is Mr. Abraham Havelock at home?” asked the Dean sepulchrally.

  “Yes, sir. No, sir. Yes, sir. Will you please to come in?”

  “Mr. Abraham Havelock is disengaged?”

  “No, sir. Yes. I mean Squire Richards is with him, in from the fen. But he can go away and come later. I’ll tell Mr. Havelock, sir.”

  “Do no such thing, I beg,” said the Dean. “I would not wish to discommode the squire, who has come from far. I will wait. I am quite at leisure, quite at leisure.” He looked a little helplessly at the scared little maid. “Could I sit here in the hall?”

  But at this preposterous suggestion she came to her senses. “Oh no, sir! Mr. Havelock would not think that right. Will you please to sit in the dining room? There’s a fire there.”

  “Much obliged, much obliged,” said the Dean, and was ushered into a room at the right of the front door, and into the presence of the canary.

  When he came
to himself a little, for even for his deaf ears the noise was terrible, he found he still had his top hat on his head and was grasping his stick because he and the little maid had both been too nervous to separate him from them in the hall. Much distressed he laid them beside his chair on the floor. The room was bright and warm and geranium-scented, and would have been quiet but for the canary. Just by him on the mantelpiece there was a clock that was probably ticking but he could not be sure because of the canary. He got up to look at it. It was a very elegant pedestal clock surmounted by two little brass owls. He was thankful for their silence. He sat down again. The room was very warm and the canary very loud. His head ached and presently he closed his eyes.

  Something touched him. He opened his eyes and saw what he thought was a big starfish lying on his knee. Intensely surprised he looked closer and saw it was a small hand. Almost afraid to look lest the apparition vanish, he put his eyeglasses on his nose and dared to lift his gaze a little higher. A small girl was planted sturdily before him. She wore a starched muslin frock with short puffed sleeves and a frill around the neck. A blue sash encircled that part of her anatomy where in later years a waist would possibly develop, and her yellow curls were kept out of her eyes with a snood of blue ribbon. She was plump, with bracelets of fat around her wrists, and a double chin. He could not guess her age but as her chest was about on a level with his knee he thought it to be tender. She appeared to have plenty of self-confidence and savoir-faire and was addressing him with great fluency, though he could not hear what she said because of the canary. She was not afraid of him.

  Awe and trembling took the Dean. He had always adored small children, especially little girls, but no one had ever known it. Elaine thought he disliked them as much as she did, and even Miss Montague had never guessed that he had this hidden idolatry. For idolatry it was. Children to him were beings of another world. The sight of one stabbed him to the heart, but he never dared to come too close to the heavenly delicacy and innocence that might be frightened and corrupted by his ugliness and sin. Children, he had always thought, were little angels, and had not Bella laid her hand upon his knee he might have continued in this misconception until the end of his days.

  She was now gesturing toward the canary with one fat hand and shaking his knee with the other, and he realized that some stupidity on his part was causing her annoyance. She wished him to take action of some sort and her commands had fallen upon ears both deaf and deafened. He cleared his throat, painfully anxious to assure her of his desire to serve her, but she suddenly turned her back on him and darted away, making for the first time her woman’s discovery that it is generally quicker to do a thing yourself than to ask a man to do it. Grabbing the velvet cloth from a small table as she passed it she leaped into the big chair beside the canary’s cage and swarmed up its padded back, revealing as she did so that she wore the most enchanting lace-trimmed undergarments. Poised on top of the chair back, in an attitude of such extreme danger that the Dean’s heart nearly stopped, she flung the velvet cloth over the canary’s cage. Instantly there was silence, and seldom had silence seemed to the Dean more heavenly. But it was short-lived. Bella, throwing a glance of triumph over her shoulder at the incompetent male, overbalanced, rolled down the chair and off it onto the floor, where she lay and roared in a welter of frills and blue ribbons.

  The Dean came hurrying over to her in much anguish of spirit but just as he reached her she stopped roaring and sat up, for she was not, she found, so badly hurt as she had thought she was. Virtue was not Bella’s strong point but she had grit. Nevertheless she had bumped her head and she put her hand to her curls and hiccoughed.

  “My dear child,” said the Dean, assisting her gently and reverently to her feet, “have you a nurse whom I can summon? I think that I should ring the bell.” He looked around him anxiously. “Is there a bell?”

  But Bella was suddenly herself again. Pushing him vigorously toward his chair she commanded loudly, “Sit on your knee.” Having got him in the correct position she climbed there and said, “Kiss it.” The Dean, his hand behind his ear, was at a loss, “Where I’m bumped,” she said and placed the first finger of her right hand against a fat yellow curl behind her right ear. He kissed the curl, moved by the most extraordinary emotion, and the canary let out a tentative trill beneath the velvet cloth. “Stop that noise, Birdie!” called Bella shrilly.

  “Is it kind to cover him up?” asked the Dean anxiously.

  “Her,” said Bella. “She lays eggs.”

  The Dean felt shaken and tried another topic of conversation. “There are two more birdies on the clock. They are owls, I believe.”

  Bella glanced contemptuously at the clock. “They don’t move,” she said. “The bird in the clock in the shop window moves. He flies out of a little door and wants to come to Bella.” Suddenly she was seized with an attack of heart-rending grief. Laying her head against the Dean’s waistcoat she wept, not noisily now, for the grief was real, but with a couple of low sobs and a tear trickling down her left cheek. “No one will give it to Bella,” she mourned. “Nurse won’t. Grandpa won’t. No one won’t.”

  “Is it a cuckoo clock?” asked the Dean. He found to his joy that he could hear everything Bella said quite easily, so clear was her voice. Other people thought the stiletto clarity of Bella’s voice hardly an asset, but to the Dean it was sweet as the autumnal song of the robins that he could just hear faintly now whenever he passed a garden wall.

  “He says cuckoo,” said Bella. “He says cuckoo, cuckoo, Bella! Cuckoo come to Bella. But they won’t let him come to Bella.” And she wiped away the tear with the back of her hand. It was not followed by another, but the silence that followed was a deep well full of sorrow.

  “Is this clock in Mr. Peabody’s shop?” asked the Dean.

  But Bella had not heard of Mr. Peabody. “A little shop,” she said. “With two little steps to the door. There is a little man inside the shop. He is a fairy man.”

  “Ah!” said the Dean. “That is Peabody.” And then, with that wild impulsiveness which was so foreign to his nature but which seemed to be more and more taking hold of him just now, he said, “Bella, my dear, would you like me to give you that clock?”

  “Yes,” said Bella cheerfully. “Now. We’ll go now.”

  But the door opened and Mr. Abraham Havelock entered in something of a state. “Mr. Dean! I am distressed indeed! But it was not until the departure of Squire Richards that I was informed that you were here. Not for the world would I have kept you waiting. May I offer you my most humble apologies. May I—Bella!”

  There was a certain likeness between Mr. Havelock and his granddaughter, though his once-yellow head was now bald and his magnificent whiskers and mustache snow-white. He was stout and rosy and his eyes, at first sight disarmingly round and blue, were very acute and unblinking. His mouth, though soft and slightly pursed, could show that purposefulness which in the old is called resolve and in the young obstinacy. He was full of resolve now and so was Bella.

  “What are you doing here, Bella?” he asked in a voice of silk. “Go to the nursery at once.”

  Bella adhered. The Dean was conscious of a sense of increased pressure upon his knees, as though the silent and motionless child were putting on weight as she sat there. She looked at her grandfather and her grandfather looked at her. Then he rang the bell.

  “Minnie, take Miss Bella to the nursery,” he said to the little maid.

  Bella adhered.

  “I’d fetch nurse but she’s been took bad,” said Minnie, looking at Bella apprehensively.

  The Dean had been momentarily silent through uncertainty as to where his duty lay. As a schoolmaster he felt that discipline should be upheld, yet Bella undoubtedly had a claim upon his loyalty. His impulsive offer of that cuckoo clock had not perhaps been altogether wise. Like his unpremeditated call on Mr. Peabody he was aware that it was about to have consequences out of all proportion to his initial action. But he could not turn back now. Even
if he had wished to do so Bella would not have permitted it.

  “Mr. Havelock, there is a small legal matter which I would like to discuss with you, if you will be so good as to spare me a few minutes of your valuable time. At the conclusion of our business will you permit me to take Bella for a little walk? Only as far as Mr. Peabody’s clock shop. I should count it a very great pleasure and I will detain her for a short while only.” Then, aware of utter stupefaction in Mr. Havelock, he asked anxiously, “Will it perhaps be too great an exertion for one of her tender years? Should I send for my wife’s carriage?”

  Mr. Havelock pulled himself together. “Mr. Dean, the exertion of which Bella is capable would surprise you. I hesitated only because of—forgive me—the startling nature of your suggestion. That you should be seen walking through the streets of your Cathedral city hand in hand with Bella—well, sir, it will startle the city.”

  The Dean, aware in Mr. Havelock of a resistance to which he was not accustomed, felt a little nettled. And also a little reckless. What did it matter what the city thought? In for a penny, in for a pound. “Would such a course of action be contrary to your wishes, Mr. Havelock?” he asked. “I would not wish to cross them but the fact is that Bella and I have anticipated this outing with considerable pleasure.”

  Mr. Havelock capitulated with grace. He could do no less, with that authoritative note in the Dean’s voice and Bella adhering.

  “You do Bella a great honor, sir. I thank you in her name and my own.” He turned to the little maid. “Minnie, take Miss Bella upstairs and put her things on. When I ring the bell you may bring her in. Bella, go with Minnie.”

  Bella slid demurely to the ground, made a dangerous wobbly curtsy, for owing to her bulk curtsying was not easy for her, and left the room with Minnie in a sweet and biddable manner.