“Mrs Butler—I’m so sorry; what’s happened?” asked Ellen helplessly. Silencing Father’s gleeful interpolations as best she could, she listened to Mrs Butler’s indignant but probably accurate account of her grievances.
Last night, it seemed, Mrs. Butler had poured her milk into the brown earthenware jug which she always used—and which Miss Fortescue herself had asked her always to use, if Miss Fortescue remembered?—and she had put it, as she always did, on the shelf in the pantry which had been allotted to her—again by Miss Fortescue herself, if Miss Fortescue would be kind enough to recall that fact. And this morning, when she came into the kitchen, she found the jug standing in the middle of the table, half empty—she had left it full to the brim—and surrounded by this mad spattering of milk. “As if someone had whirled it round his head just for the devilment of it,” she finished, her eyes fastened balefully on Mr Fortescue.
“What some women can never understand,” interposed that gentleman, “is that if a vessel is full of liquid, and you bang it down here there and everywhere——” Again he demonstrated, and this time succeeded in dislodging a small slop of milk, at which he pointed in triumph.
“You see? I told her——”
“Yes—but Father …” protested Ellen. “Don’t you see—it might make a spill of milk, like that; but it couldn’t possibly——”
“In any case,” interrupted Mrs Butler icily, “I was not aware that I was in the habit of ‘banging’ utensils about. And considering that of all the eleven things broken in this kitchen since we’ve shared it with you not a single one was broken by me or Mr Butler—not even that teacup which was my own personal possession, part of a valued set——”
“I know—I know,” said Ellen hastily. “And I’m still trying to replace it for you, you know—they think they will be able to match it. Of course I know you didn’t bang the jug down, I was only trying to make Father see——”
“Make him see! You’re wasting your time, Miss Fortescue. Can’t you see he’s mad? He’s as crazy as a coot! ‘Banging’ the jug down, indeed! He ought to be in a Home!”
Ellen was silenced. She could hardly say: “He’s not mad at all, he’s only trying to annoy you”; and before she had thought of any other plausible defence of her parent, Mrs Butler had launched into another topic:
“Another thing, Miss Fortescue—I wouldn’t have mentioned it if it hadn’t been for all this”—she gestured towards the panorama of milk before them—“I wouldn’t have said anything, because I know yours is a very—what shall I say? I don’t want to be offensive—a very informal way of running an establishment of this sort. But I do feel, don’t you, Miss Fortescue, that once a room has been let for a certain agreed rent, then that room should be considered the private domain of the tenant? If other people are allowed to run in and out when they please, it really isn’t the same. Is it, now? You do see that, don’t you, Miss Fortescue?”
“Of course.” Ellen was at a loss. “Of course they shouldn’t. Has anyone been going into your rooms, Mrs Butler?”
“Well, of course, I dare say it’s only your cousin’s children—though I do think, myself, that even in the case of children a certain respect for other people’s property should be encouraged. I don’t like to say anything to their mother myself” (why did she suppose Ellen liked it either?), “but perhaps you could mention it to her? It would come better from you.”
Ellen sighed at the familiar phrase, and once more asked Mrs Butler what had happened. “I hope nothing has been damaged?” she added anxiously.
“No—not damaged, exactly. I wouldn’t say damaged. It’s just the candlesticks, you know, the old silver candlesticks that I always keep on the sideboard in our sitting-room, just as they were when we took the room—we never use that sort of thing, you know, and anyway I wouldn’t like to, seeing they aren’t ours. I’m very particular about anything like that, as you know. Well, as I was saying, I never touch them—just to polish them once a week, that’s all, and then put them back just as they were. Well, this morning I found them right in the middle of the table, set out as if it was for a party—you know. And the big oak carving chair—we never use that either—it was pulled out at the head of the table, for all the world as if someone had been sitting there, presiding over a dinner party! It’s no harm, of course; it’s just—unsettling—to feel that someone has been in the room like that. You’ll speak to your cousin, won’t you, about the children? I’d hate to feel I have to lock the door every time I go out. It’s a nasty feeling, isn’t it, locking doors all the time?” Mrs Butler paused. “I’m sure it’s only the children,” she finished, in slightly louder tones, and staring fixedly at Mr Fortescue.
“Yes, I’m sure it’s the children,” lied Ellen vaguely. It didn’t sound in the least like either of them. Jeremy never played at anything, so far as Ellen could see; and though Adela might conceivably have played at giving an imaginary dinner party, it would have involved a tremendous amount of fuss and clatter, and assembling of properties, and yelling of requests to adults in every direction. Such an enterprise could not possibly have escaped Ellen’s notice—let alone leaving the chosen table bare and tidy afterwards except for the candlesticks.
The whole thing seemed to defy explanation; as did the litter of jars and papers that lay around the old stove. With a resigned shrug of the shoulders, Ellen set to work to tidy the kitchen, while Father hung about with an infuriating air of having proved his point. Simply by watching her, he managed to convey that all this clearing up she was having to do corroborated everything he had said; and when the long lost preserving thermometer turned up among the litter of objects tipped off the stove, his jubilation was unbounded.
“I told you that woman had hidden it!” he cried exultantly as Ellen handed it to him. “I’ve always said, the kind of woman who’ll dash about causing all this confusion——”
Ellen didn’t argue. She wiped up the mysterious spattered milk from floor and table; and when, a few minutes later, she noticed that there was a trail of milk drops leading across the hall, up the stairs, and right up to the Rose Room, she wiped that up too. Naturally, it did not strike her as any more peculiar than the rest of the peculiar traces found that morning.
CHAPTER XIV
THAT SAME MORNING the builders arrived in full force. They came just before eight, and so unexpected was this promptness, and so cheery and purposeful was the tumult with which they brought four more boards into the hall and leaned them across Mrs Butler’s door, that Ellen was filled with remorse at her former expectations of inefficiency and delay. She was delighted to see that the little fat one, the one who was always in trouble with the foreman, was once again of the party—he seemed to be for ever getting himself sacked and reinstated by the firm. She found his friendly grin and his fascinating domestic troubles a great moral support, particularly when the foreman was around. Indeed, the latter gloomy gentleman often seemed to Ellen to take on the character of a common enemy, for he seemed to disapprove of the things Ellen wanted done almost as much as he disapproved of Howard’s (that was the little man’s improbable name) inefficiency at doing them.
The workmen’s effect on the household was electric. At the first thunderous indication of their arrival, all the tenants emerged from their various rooms like hibernating creatures at the first spring sunshine, and proceeded to bombard Ellen with the pent-up requests of the last six months.
Could she, yelled Melissa over the banisters, just get them to look at the fireplace in her living-room where it was coming away from the wall? And the kitchen window, too, which stuck when you opened it more than six inches? And behind the skirting-board in the bedroom——
But Ellen missed the remainder of these bellowed instructions, for already Mrs Butler, agog with similar troubles, was creeping—uncomplainingly in her excitement—past the boards which barricaded the door of her sitting-room. Forgetful of her recent grievances, she excitedly invited Ellen in to look at the bulge in the bedroom ce
iling; also at the loose boards under the window. On display too was a suit of Mr Butler’s with spots of mould on it from where the damp was working up through the floor of the cupboard; and there was an electric socket which sparked and sputtered in a most alarming way whenever Mrs Butler plugged the Hoover into it. The demonstration which followed, in which the socket triumphantly vindicated its mistress’ complaints by ceasing to work altogether, was concluded, rather unsatisfactorily from Mrs Butler’s point of view, by Ellen’s having to hurry upstairs again. For even old Mrs Hammond, in her dim, closely sealed lair in the old nursery, had felt something of the invigorating wind of miscellaneous complaint that was blowing through the house. She had already, at this hour of the morning, managed to get into dressing-gown and slippers, and had padded out on to the landing to show Ellen once again the three-legged wicker chair. The fourth leg, rotted and splintered, had long been reposing in a place of honour on Mrs. Hammond’s mantelpiece in accordance with her pathetic (and totally unshakable) belief that it simply needed gluing on “next time you have a minute, dear”.
For the fifth time Ellen explained to her that this was impossible; that the chair was really useless now and should be thrown away; and that Mrs Hammond was welcome to one of the armchairs from downstairs instead. A little disappointed, helpless to the point of imbecility (Ellen thought irritably) Mrs Hammond shook her head.
“No, thank you, dear,” she sighed. “I have a fancy for wicker, you know, always have done. Mr Hammond, now, he used to be just the opposite, he always used to say there was no real comfort in a wicker chair. Funny, isn’t it? But there, you can’t help the way you’re made, can you, dear? None of us can’t.”
With which rather random solace, and still clutching her precious leg, Mrs Hammond retreated into her still closely curtained fastness; and Ellen submitted, rather limply, to a brisk conducted tour of the deficiencies of Melissa’s domain—with those of the bathroom, which wasn’t particularly Melissa’s, thrown in.
“Yes, all right, I’ll speak to them about it,” lied Ellen feebly, withdrawing her gaze from the ominous flakes of rust that Melissa had so smugly dislodged from behind the pipes. She wished Melissa would hurry up and go to work. It would cost hundreds of pounds if you tried to do everything that wanted doing in this house; and anyway, what about that disapproving foreman?
“You told us just the roof, Miss,” he would say, consulting that malevolent little pad of his that never failed to prove a customer wrong. “Of course, if you’d let us know in the first place that you’d be wanting plastering, and plumbing, and all the lot … And of course we’d have to make out a new estimate…. And Mr. Alsopp is very busy just now….”
At this point Ellen knew she would wilt; so why not wilt straight away, and save the whole humiliating scene? Anyway, she must hurry back to the kitchen now, give Father his breakfast, and get the gooseberry jam on the stove before they all came trooping down for their 9.30 tea.
The workmen’s tea. It was always an uneasy, embarrassing business, because you couldn’t be sure that they wouldn’t rather go off down the road to the café and have a proper break by themselves. They wouldn’t like to say so, of course … and you couldn’t not offer them tea … it was all very difficult….
Well, Howard at least seemed to be enjoying Ellen’s tea and rock buns. Ellen glanced round at him, gratified, as she stood at the stove slowly stirring the dark, heaving mass of fruit and sugar. What a nice little man he was, she reflected, even though he had already sawn the wrong lengths off two of the boards. While the others seemed reduced to awkward mumbles by Ellen’s presence, and were swallowing their tea as quickly as possible, as though it were some necessary medicine, Howard was sipping his with uninhibited enjoyment, leaning over it with both elbows on the table, and munching cake after cake.
“Bit of all right, eh?” he flattered Ellen as he took his third. “Wish my old lady could make cakes like this! She’s a one for the tins, my old lady. Don’t do you the same good, does it, not stuff out of tins?”
Ellen’s tentative agreement with this theory triggered off a long and exciting story. It appeared that Howard had had a bit of an argument with his old lady last weekend, on this very subject. It had started over the corned beef and baked beans at Saturday supper; and by the time the tinned steak and tinned peas were being opened for Sunday lunch, Howard’s son-in-law, his wife’s sister, and the landlady, had all joined in. As far as Ellen could make out, the teams had been well matched, and scoring remarkably even, until Howard’s side scored the winning point by marching off to the pub for lunch—where, it being past two by now, they were served with corned beef and baked beans.
How this topic led first to Howard’s opinions on Space Travel and then to the poor plumage of his landlord’s budgerigar, Ellen never quite knew; but it was just as Howard was emphasising the necessity of giving a budgerigar plenty of cuttle-bone that the telephone began to ring.
At once Howard jumped guiltily to his feet; and Ellen, almost equally guiltily, dropped the spoon with which she had been absent-mindedly stirring the jam. For the last half-hour she should have been attending to Cousin Laura and helping her to dress; and Howard should have been sawing up lengths of board. Their eyes met for a moment in mutual, though diverse, guilt. The foreman—God—somebody—had caught them out; for there was the telephone ringing.
Leonard’s voice on the long-distance line sounded so strange that at first Ellen did not recognise it; and even when she did, the conversation over the buzzing chirruping wire was very unsatisfactory.
Was he getting on all right? Was what getting on all right? He—himself—his business. Was it ALL RIGHT? My dear girl, don’t shout like that, just speak clearly and quietly. Who did you say is all right?
“Your mother,” improvised Ellen, cutting her conversational losses. “YOUR MOTHER,” she repeated in a shout, when speaking clearly and quietly had proved as ineffectual as it usually does on these occasions.
“What about her?” yelled Leonard, his voice, from anxiety or irritation, fairly cracking the line. “Is she all right? Not upset about anything?”
“No,” screamed Ellen. “But, Leonard—I hope you won’t mind. I’ve got her here. At home. What? AT HOME, I said! HOME. You see——”
“Tonight about nine,” came Leonard’s answer. “And, Ellen——”
But here the three pips cut across the conversation, if such it could be called, and Ellen thankfully laid down the receiver, quite hoarse after the frustrating and pointless interchange. With a little start, she turned to see Cousin Laura standing quietly at her elbow. The old lady had evidently managed after all to dress herself without assistance, and she was waiting with a sort of eager expectancy that faded as she saw Ellen replace the receiver.
“Not for me, then?” she said, disappointment settling over her features. “I thought the call might be for me.”
“It was Leonard,” said Ellen, and added, with compunction, “I’m sure he’d have wanted to speak to you, but I didn’t know you were up yet. I didn’t want to wake you after your tiring day yesterday.”
“Well, never mind, it doesn’t matter,” said the old woman. “There’s nothing I specially want to say to Leonard. It was another call I was expecting—from my lawyer. He hasn’t rung, has he? A Mr Cartwright?”
“No, I’m afraid he hasn’t,” said Ellen. “Is it very urgent?”
“Yes. Well, perhaps not—I hope not,” said the old lady with a wry little smile. “It’s a little difficulty about my will, you see—just a technical matter, but I’d like to get it cleared up. As to whether it’s urgent—well, who can say?”
Ellen’s bracing assurances on this point were cut short. Cousin Laura did not even seem to hear them, for she went on:
“You know, don’t you, dear, that I’m leaving all my money to Leonard. It seems the natural thing—though I do sometimes feel that I’d have liked some of it to go to you, Ellen. You’ve always been a dear good girl and a great comfort to me
. But after all, it’ll come to the same thing, won’t it, when you and Leonard are married?”
“Of course it will,” said Ellen, a little evasively. Poor Cousin Laura, fondly imagining that she was the possessor of thousands of pounds to leave to whom she pleased, while really she was penniless, utterly dependent on the charity of her stepson. The deception was a merciful one, of course; it was designed to save the old lady’s pride, and was very much to Leonard’s credit. But was it entirely wise? Ellen had once or twice before wondered if the old lady’s real dignity might not have been better served by the truth; and she was glad when Cousin Laura reverted to a less delicate subject.
“No telephone call? No letter? It’s very strange. Really very strange. Not like Mr Cartwright at all—what can he be about?”
Cousin Laura’s voice had become tremulous, almost tearful. Ellen sought hastily to console her.
“You’ve been standing too long,” she exclaimed, taking her companion’s arm. “Come along into the garden and sit down—I’ve put your comfortable chair out there ready. Look how lovely the sun is this morning again!” As she gently urged her charge in the direction of the garden she added:
“I expect your letter’s waiting for you at Leonard’s flat. Neither of you have been there, you know, since yesterday morning. I’ll slip over and see, if you like, before lunch.”
“Oh, thank you, dear, that would be very kind.”
Cousin Laura spoke absently, a little wearily; and almost as soon as Ellen had helped her into her chair she fell into a heavy sleep.
*
Ellen returned from her quest baffled, and a little annoyed. Mrs Clarke had received her rather guardedly, explaining that Mr Rivers had given her very particular instructions that any letters that came for his stepmother should be kept until his return.
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