Miss Buncle Married

by D. E. Stevenson

  Arthur had heard such glowing accounts of the place that he was in no way prepared for what he saw, so he was immeasurably disappointed, nay he was horrified beyond words. He had visualized a comfortable, cozy sort of house, and he beheld a ruin. Barbara must be mad, he thought miserably. He was quite certain she was mad when she opened the door of a dank, dusty apartment behind the drawing-room and showed him his study.

  “You can have all your books here—won’t it be cozy?” she exclaimed, looking round the dismal place with a rapt expression in her eyes. “You’ve always wanted a room of your very own, haven’t you?”

  “It’s rather—dark,” he objected feebly.

  “That’s only because of the tree in front of the window,” she replied. “We’ll have that cut down, of course. Monkey puzzles are horrid anyhow, so it won’t be any loss.”

  “I wonder if there are any rats,” Mr. Abbott remarked, hoping it would choke her off.

  “Oh, there are,” said Barbara airily, “there are rats. Mr. Tyler told me about the rats when I went back and saw him at his office. But we can easily get rid of rats—you poison them off.”

  To do Barbara justice she had no idea that Arthur was not delighted with the house. She was so enchanted with it herself that it never crossed her mind that there could be any two opinions about it. And Arthur was afraid to say too much; he had not forgotten the strange way that Barbara had behaved when he suggested staying on at Sunnydene. It had given him a shock, a very severe shock. At the back of his mind was the unexpressed, almost unconscious fear, that if he did not approve of this house (which had obviously bewitched Barbara) she would buy it herself, out of the proceeds of her books, and leave him behind at Sunnydene. This being so, his protests were extremely feeble—so feeble that Barbara never noticed them.

  She dragged him round the place, pointing out its amenities with eager pride, and then she hauled him off to the lawyer’s office to buy it. Mr. Abbott followed miserably. He saw that his wife intended to have the house at all costs. He only hoped that she would not allow this fact to become apparent in the transactions. But he need not have been anxious on this score, for Barbara was no fool. She intended to acquire The Archway House, but there was no sense in paying a fancy price for it. Barbara wanted to spend “a lot of money” on the house, and if they got it cheap, there would be all the more to spend on doing it up.

  Mr. Tupper was evidently recovered from his indisposition; it was he, and not the junior partner, who received them and conducted the business. Barbara veiled her eagerness from Mr. Tupper with admirable self-control; she pointed out that they would have to spend a lot of money on repairs before The Archway House could be made habitable. This was so obvious that Mr. Tupper was forced to agree.

  It was Arthur, of course, who did most of the talking. Barbara sat in the shabby leather chair and threw in a few words now and then. She listened to all that was said with intense interest. It really was amazing, she thought, you bought a house as easily as you bought a hat—or very nearly. It was most extraordinary! She was sorry not to see Mr. Tyler again; she had liked the little man. His pompous manner had intrigued her—especially as she had seen through it, and below it, to the very human and rather pathetic core of the little man himself. Mr. Tupper was not nearly so nice—he was dry and businesslike—a lawyer and nothing more. There was no royal welcome forthcoming on this occasion, and it was quite easy to refuse the glass of sherry which he offered her—Mr. Tyler would not have taken her refusal so lightly, so casually as this. Of course Mr. Tyler thought I was somebody else, Barbara reflected (as she sat by the window and watched Arthur sip his sherry with obvious enjoyment) and I suppose that was why he was so nice to me. He thought I was that Matilda woman—Lady Something-or-other Cobbe—already the memory of the incident was fading from her mind, but it was to return later.

  “There are rats,” she said, breaking into the discussion with dramatic suddenness. “We can’t pay all that for a house with rats in it, you know.”

  “Rats—oh, I think not,” deprecated Mr. Tupper with an indulgent smile, “I think not. Ladies are sometimes—”

  “But there are, really,” asserted Barbara confidently. “Mr. Tyler told me himself, the first day I was here.”

  The lawyer’s eyebrows rose in surprise. He began to say something and then changed his mind about it. “Mr. Tyler must have been mad—mistaken, I mean,” he amended, frowning. But the price came down a little all the same. It was quite possible that there were rats in The Archway House, quite possible, and his instructions were to sell the place for what he could get. It had been empty for years and the owner needed the money badly.

  The price came down gradually to a figure that even Arthur considered a bargain. It was quite a ridiculous price. He bought the house, and then, with a magnificent gesture, he gave it to his wife.

  Barbara was enchanted. What a husband! What a house! It was the most marvelous present she had ever had. Her gratitude was quite embarrassing. Arthur was a little uncomfortable about it. They had decided long ago that Arthur was to buy the house, and Barbara was to “do it up.” Arthur had got off very easily with his part of the bargain—he had bought a ruin for half nothing—but Barbara’s part was going to cost a small fortune. It was only fair—so thought Mr. Abbott—that the house, which was going to cost Barbara more than himself, should belong to her when it was finished. He tried to explain all this to his wife as they drove home to Sunnydene together, but Barbara only saw what she wanted to see—the amazing generosity of her husband, and the superlative beauty of her house.

  No sooner was the house hers than Barbara filled it with plumbers, joiners, electricians, and decorators. The peace of the sunlit rooms was disturbed by the noise of hammering and of men’s voices, by the sound of heavy footsteps clattering on the parquet floors. The dust swirled from forgotten corners in choking blinding clouds, and settled again over everything in a thick gray film. Charwomen with buckets of dirty water cluttered the stairs, and crawled patiently over the floors waging an endless battle with the dirt. The place was an inferno, and Barbara drove its denizens like a whirlwind. She cajoled the foremen and bullied the underlings from morning to night—sometimes, when occasion seemed to demand a change of tactics, she reversed the process. The workmen were all terrified of Mrs. Abbott; she was the most impatient lady they had ever met.

  Barbara’s efforts to make The Archway House a place for heroes to live in were hindered and impeded to an alarming extent by “the ghost.” She had never seen this apparition herself but apparently she was unique in this. Local charwomen refused to come and work in the haunted house, and those recruited from other districts soon got to hear of it and faded away mysteriously with their work half done. None of them would remain in the house after the workmen had left, and this was trying, because it was only after the workmen had left that the field was clear for the cleaning to be done. The ghost was a very annoying sort of ghost—a kind of Poltergeist—an embodiment of mischief. Its great delight seemed to consist in hindering the work. Pails and brooms and workmen’s tools disappeared from their rightful places and were discovered, hours later, in different parts of the house. Barbara soon got extremely sick of the ghost. But she carried on bravely with all her preparations—no ghost on earth was going to make the slightest difference to her arrangements. She worked like a slave herself and saw that everyone else worked like a slave. And through it all the ghost continued to play a villain’s part. It appeared to charwomen and sent them into hysterics; it appeared to workmen and interfered with their work. Some said it was a tall figure in white draperies, that wrung its hands and coughed dismally, others said it was headless and moved with the clanking of chains.

  Weeks passed, and gradually out of the chaos, a pattern emerged, and The Archway House began to look like a human habitation. As the time drew near for the furnishing of the rooms Barbara began to feel a little anxious. She was ful
ly aware of the limitations of her taste, and she was desperately keen to have everything right, to choose for her house the sort of furniture that the house would like. Nothing—or very little—that had been suitable for Sunnydene or Tanglewood Cottage was suitable for The Archway House. She and Arthur were agreed on this—and she was to have a free hand to get what she liked. It was a delightful prospect, of course, but it was also very perplexing. Barbara spent long hours thinking it over and wondering what she should do. I shan’t try to have period furniture, she thought, I should only do it all wrong and it would look silly. I shall just have ordinary, plain furniture—rather large, because of the rooms being so big and high—plain, comfortable furniture and not too much of it.

  This was sensible and right in theory but the details still worried her. It was easy to say “plain comfortable furniture” but when it came to choosing the actual pieces she found it extremely difficult to decide. Which of the hundred-odd suites of chesterfield sofas and easy chairs would her house like—that was the question—and how would the things look when they were removed from their neighbors and stood alone in the drawing-room of The Archway House. “I can’t decide now,” said Barbara, to the polite young man who had spent the whole afternoon showing her his stock. “I can’t possibly decide now. I shall have to think about it.” The polite young man could have slain Barbara then and there, but he controlled his desires and replied wearily, “Just as you like, Moddam.”

  Barbara spent the following day at The Archway House, harrying the electricians who had slacked off a little in her unavoidable absence. It was a warlike sort of day, but, after the electricians had gone, Peace descended and spread her gleaming wings in the empty rooms. Barbara wandered round gloating over her treasure. She tiptoed through the silent house. How still it was without the workmen, how restful and refreshing! Barbara felt herself to be part of the silence. The house welcomed her, and the welcome made her feel happy and at home. Slowly she became aware of Unseen Presences in the empty rooms—the aura of those who had lived in the house and loved it. And these Unseen Presences were friendly toward her, they welcomed her coming—she was sure of it—they would do her no harm. There was nothing ghostly about this aura, nothing supernatural, nothing frightening, it was more a sort of warm atmosphere, comfortable to the spirit as the warmth of a good fire is comfortable to the body.

  How funny it would be if I saw the ghost, Barbara thought; it’s funny, really, that I haven’t seen it before. And then she reflected that it was “funny” about the ghost in more ways than one, for the ghost was obviously unfriendly to her (in that it hindered her activities in every way it could). It was a malign ghost, and yet the atmosphere of the house was friendly—how could that be?

  She wandered into the empty drawing-room and gazed round, trying to see it furnished with the furniture she had looked at in the store. The chesterfield here, and the chairs there; the china cabinet against the bare wall, the bureau in the corner near the window—how would it look? She paced it out, and reflected, and paced it out again. She went to the window and stood there looking out. The gardens were beginning to look better now. The grass had been cut and the paths weeded. But there was still moss on the steps leading down to the terrace and the gray stone lions which stood on either side of the steps were cracked and discolored with damp. I must speak to Grimes about that, Barbara thought.

  She was just making up her mind to leave the place and go home when the front doorbell rang. It pealed loudly through the empty house, startling the echoes—Barbara nearly jumped out of her skin. Her first thought was that it must be the ghost, but that was ridiculous, of course; ghosts didn’t ring front doorbells, they drifted in through keyholes or something (Barbara was a little vague as to how they actually got in, but she was perfectly certain that they never rang front doorbells). She listened to the bell for a few moments, thinking what a frightful noise it was making, until she suddenly realized that she had better go and see who it was.

  Barbara found a small girl standing on the doorstep, a child with tangled brown hair and a small thin face covered with freckles. She was clad in a bright-blue overall, very short and shapeless, and stained with earth. Her hands and her bare legs were dirty and scarred with scratches. Barbara was amazed when she saw the child; she had expected something much larger—the noise had been so tremendous.

  “Oh!” she said feebly. “I couldn’t think who it was.”

  “They’re digging up the flags,” said the child, without the usual preliminaries of convention. “You can’t mean them to.”

  “Flags!” echoed Barbara in bewilderment.

  “P’raps you call them irises,” said the child impatiently. “Some people do. But you can’t mean them to be dug up and thrown away. They’re so lovely in the spring—all yellow and mauve with spiky gray-green leaves—”

  “You had better come in, and tell me about it,” Barbara said.

  The child followed her into the house and they sat down together on the stairs.

  “I don’t mind about the rest of the garden so much,” the child explained. “After all you’ve bought it, so it’s yours now, and I suppose you can spoil it if you want to. But the flags are down near the stream—miles away from the house. You haven’t ever been down there, have you?”

  “Only once,” Barbara admitted. “I’ve been so busy, you see.”

  “Do you want them dug up and thrown away?” continued the child with some exasperation. “I mean it seems so silly, that’s why I came. I simply had to come. Lanky said it wouldn’t be any good, but I had to try.”

  Barbara was beginning to understand. “Of course I’ll tell them not to,” she said quickly. “I don’t want to spoil anything. You see I just told the men to tidy up the garden.”

  “I suppose you want the garden tidy?”

  “Yes,” replied Barbara in some surprise.

  “We think it’s nicer as it is.”

  “Well, I’m afraid I don’t,” Barbara admitted. “I’m afraid I want the garden tidy, but, of course, I don’t want to take away anything that’s really nice. Men are so stupid,” she added with conviction, “unless you can be after them all the time—and I’ve been so busy with the house.”

  “Oh, the house,” said the child scornfully. “You can do what you like with the house. I hate houses. It’s the garden that matters. We live next door, you see, and we like this garden much better than ours—it’s ever so much nicer for playing in. Of course, if you’re going to have it tidied up it will spoil it frightfully.” She clasped her hands round her dirty bare knees and rocked herself backward, lifting her chin, and shaking back her hair from her forehead. It was an elfin face, pointed and delicate in profile. The eyes were dark and very brilliant beneath the small, but definitely arched, eyebrows.

  “Who are you?” inquired Barbara with interest.

  “Trivona Marvell,” replied the child. “Most people call me Trivvie—you can if you like. I don’t think you’re bad,” she added frankly. “Lanky says you’re a vandal, but I don’t think you’re bad at all. You’ll remember about the flags, won’t you?”

  Barbara said she would. She decided to go down to the stream tomorrow and see what the men were doing. The last thing she wanted was to alter the place—it must remain exactly as it had always been.

  “I suppose we shan’t be able to play here once you’ve really come?” Trivvie inquired hopefully. “I mean you won’t want children in your garden—p’raps you’ve got children of your own?”

  “No,” said Barbara.

  “I think the garden will miss us,” said Trivvie sadly. “I think it will be rather lonely without any children. I think it likes us playing in it, you know.”

  Barbara rose at once—it was a lure she couldn’t resist—hadn’t she always said, from the very beginning, that The Archway House—and incidentally The Archway House garden—was to have what it wan
ted?

  “I don’t mind you playing in the garden a bit,” she proclaimed rashly.

  “Really!” cried Trivvie in amazement. “D’you mean it? Oh, you are decent! I shan’t let Lanky call you a vandal again—not ever. In fact I’ll sock him one, if he does. We shan’t bother you, you know; in fact I don’t suppose you’ll ever see us. We don’t like this part of the garden a bit—just the stream and the wood—so you see it really won’t bother you, will it? As a matter of fact,” she added ingenuously, “as a matter of fact we were going to play in it, anyhow. We had quite decided that—and you’d never have known—but when you were so decent about the flags I thought I’d just see what you said. Even if you’d said, ‘No, we couldn’t,’ it wouldn’t have made any difference.”

  Barbara was struck dumb by this frank statement, and made no reply.

  “Well,” said Trivona, rising and holding out her hand. “I must go now—good-bye. Froggy will be looking everywhere for me, and she gets in such a wax if she can’t find me. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye,” said Barbara, whose voice had returned to her; and then she inquired, for she was exceedingly interested in her fellow creatures, “Who is Froggy?”

  “Oh, Froggy’s our governess,” replied Trivona, standing on one leg in the empty hall, as if poised for flight. “Her real name’s Miss Foddy, you know. And Lanky’s my brother—his real name’s Lancreste, and he’s two years older than me.”