“What about—” She searched her mind desperately. “What about—? Have we any prunes?”
“I don’t think we have, madam.”
Laura didn’t really think so either. It had been a forlorn hope.
With a supreme effort Laura said, “We’ll have pancakes. There are plenty of lemons. Now what about dinner to-night?”
With the least possible assistance from Gladys, dinner to-night was outlined. A savoury instead of a sweet, as usual. Mercifully, Alfred never wanted a sweet at night. Feeling as though all food would be entirely distasteful to her for ever more, Laura left the larder and went to the kitchen. From the kitchen—where she saw Faunt-leroy eating cold bacon on the floor, and indirectly rebuked Gladys by sending him outside—Laura proceeded to the store-cupboard, and after a distasteful five minutes there, compelled herself to say: “Please send Nellie to me in the drawing-room as soon as she’s cleared the dining-room table.”
“I was wishing to speak to you about Nellie, madam.”
From an automaton, devoid of ideas, Gladys suddenly became a person of unsurpassed eloquence.
“I don’t want to make unpleasantness, I’m sure, but I don’t think Nellie and me can work together, not if she goes on the way she has done. It’s the same every time she goes out—”
“I know. Well, I’m going to speak to Nellie this morning, and I think you’ll find—”
“What I say is, it isn’t fair. And nurse’ll tell you the same, madam. If her and me can get in at ten o’clock, why can’t Nellie? What I say is, it’s not fair on nurse and I.”
“It isn’t fair on me, either,” remarked Laura, but this was an aspect of the case that did not interest Gladys in the least.
“No’m, that’s what I say; it isn’t fair on me and nurse. I’ve never had to speak like this about any girl that I’ve worked with before, but Nellie’s been queer-like ever since I came here.”
“Yes, well, Gladys, you’re quite right to tell me if things aren’t going well,” said Laura unhappily. “Send Nellie to me in the drawing-room. I think you’ll find things will be different.”
Gladys committed herself to no fallacious expressions of optimism, and Laura left the kitchen, feeling as though her own stock of vitality for the day was already exhausted.
She supposed that she must, beyond a doubt, be the worst housekeeper in England.
The door of the drawing-room flew open, and the two little boys came in, leaving muddy tracks upon the carpet.
“Edward, your boots!”
“Mummie,” said Edward earnestly, “do birds ever climb trees?”
Detachment of a high order is the reaction of the maternal mind to the inconsequence of childhood.
“Not exacdy climb them,” Laura said. “Go and wipe your boots, darling. Birds alight on trees when they’re flying about, don’t they?”
“What is alight?”
“Tell him, Johnnie. And wipe your boots on the mat, both of you.”
“Alight is stopping to sit down,” said Johnnie.
Laura experienced the faint thrill of pride that Johnnie’s lucidity always brought to her.
“Is to-day Sunday, mummie?”
“No, darling, it’s Tuesday. The day before yesterday was Sunday. Your boots, Johnnie.”
Edward went outside and wiped his boots on the mat “Johnnie, darling, don’t make me say it so often.”
The house-parlourmaid Nellie appeared at the door of the drawing-room.
“Oh, Nellie——Boys, go into the dining-room and wait for Miss Lamb. She’ll be here directly. Come in, Nellie.”
Laura seated herself before her writing-table.
“Mummie, why can’t I stay in here?”
“Because it’s lesson-time, darling.”
“Bother!” said Johnnie.
“Bother,” said Edward imitatively.
Laura’s exasperated nerves would have welcomed the relief of slapping them both. The instinct of civilised generations behind her, no less than the knowledge that violence would only result in breeding more violence, restrained her.
“Go away, boys; I really mean it. Edward, hurry up.” Her voice sharpened, because she knew that Edward could be easily intimidated.
He went out of the room.
“Johnnie, dear—”
“Mummie, Nellie knows a whole poem called The Wreck of the Hesperus.’ Isn’t she clever?”
He smiled up at Nellie, who laid her hand on his curls, looking apologetically at Laura.
All servants adored Johnnie, who gave them a great deal of trouble and seldom obeyed them—but never spoke to them otherwise than politely. Edward, who was obedient, had no such instinct. He made personal remarks, and the maids merely tolerated him.
“Very clever, darling,” said Laura. “Now run along.”
“When will it be Sunday?”
“In four days. There’s Miss Lamb. Run and open the door for her.”
“It is open.”
Laura knew that it was open, but had hoped that Johnnie didn’t.
“Well, never mind—go!”
To her great relief Johnnie went, and Nellie promptly shut the door behind him.
When she turned round again the smile and the apologetic look alike had entirely disappeared from her face. The expression that had replaced them was one known to Laura, both on the face of Nellie herself and on the faces of several of her numerous predecessors. It was compounded of defiance, obtuseness, and a determination not to be “put upon.”
“Nellie, you were very late again last night,” began Laura. She knew that her cause was just, but the knowledge did not seem to lend her any self-assurance.
The interview ended, as she had all along felt that it would end, in an announcement from Nellie that she “wished to make a change.”
“Very well, I will take a month’s notice from you.”
Now that the blow had fallen, Laura could be calm, and even firm. And anyhow, Nellie had always been unpunctual—a tiresome fault—and house-parlourmaids were easier to get than cooks-general.
She decided to write out an advertisement for the Morning Post, and to visit the Registry Office at Quinnerton.
“Very well. Thank you, Nellie.”
“Thank you, madam.”
Upon these empty courtesies Nellie left the drawing-room.
Laura got up and walked round the room, mechanically straightening the shabby mauve cretonne covers on the armchairs, straightening the piles of music on the top of the cottage piano, and shaking up the little striped purple bolster on the window-seat—all the time rehearsing her interview with Nellie, and thinking out excellent and dignified utterances for herself.
Then she saw that the vases needed refilling, and fetched a little water-can out of the hall. A cold northeast wind blew in through the open door, making her shudder, and adding to her general sense of unpleasing surroundings.
Johnnie’s voice, in loud argument with his daily governess, reached her from behind the closed door of the dining-room.
Laura, physically and morally chilled, sat down before her writing-table.
Applecourt,
Nr. Quinnerton.
March 13th.
Dear Lady Kingsley-Browne,
Thank you so much for your kind invitation. We shall be delighted to come to tea on the 17th, and should so much enjoy meeting Mr. and Mrs. Onslow. I have always admired his work.
Yours affectionately,
Laura Temple.
Lady Kingsley-Browne’s note wasn’t even dated. Laura felt faintly comforted by her own superiority.
All the same, she hadn’t anything decent to wear on Saturday. It was a difficult time of the year for those who could afford only a winter wardrobe and a summer one, neither of which ever seemed to be wholly appropriate to the weather.
The kasha two-piece suit would be all right, but she had no really satisfactory hat to wear with it.
Laura drew a hat on the blotting-paper, frowned, and then wrote other let
ters.
At twelve o’clock she heard Miss Lamb go away and nurse call the boys for their walk. She felt impelled to go to the window and watch them start—sturdy little figures in their covert-coats, without caps or gaiters. Edward was bouncing a ball, and running to catch it. Johnnie was fitting a flower-pot on to Fauntleroy’s head. Laura smiled indulgently, but was relieved when Fauntleroy broke loose and nurse caught Johnnie by the hand. They disappeared through the white gate that led into the lane.
Laura then perceived that she had allowed the drawing-room fire to go nearly out. She was obliged to work at it with the bellows for some time.
Her husband, whose occupation was that of farming his own land, did not come in until one o’clock, when he slightly annoyed Laura by going upstairs to wash his hands exactly five minutes after the gong had been rung.
Edward and Johnnie always had their dinner in the dining-room. No house-parlourmaid had ever consented to the indignity of carrying up the nursery meals, and no consideration would ever induce nurse to fetch her own meals from the kitchen.
The Temples were not allowed by Laura to eat their meals in silence. She had long ago informed Alfred that such a course was uncivilised. Even the little boys were encouraged to talk, provided that they did not interrupt.
To-day Laura wanted to tell her husband that Nellie had given notice, but the presence of Edward and Johnnie restrained her. She was obliged, instead, to give some of her attention to the subject of sugar-beet. It might have interested her more, but for her preoccupation about Nellie and the necessity of addressing the boys in frequent parentheses.
“I’m glad they’re taking it up round here. (Edward, not with your mouth full.) Did you say the Home Farm had—(Never let me see you do that again!)—had decided to give it a trial?”
Alfred made a reply which unfortunately Laura did not hear, owing to a mishap of Edward’s with a spoonful of cottage pie.
“I see,” she replied interestedly, and looking almost unnaturally intelligent.
“It’s a good idea, isn’t it?”
“Very,” said Laura emphatically.
“Mummie, do you know what Paris is the capital of?”
“Do tell me, darling.”
“Did you read what the Agricultural Journal said about sugar-beet last week?”
“I haven’t read it yet, Alfred, but it’s on my table.”
“I know it is. I put it there a week ago. It wouldn’t take you five minutes to read—”
“Daddy, do you know what Paris is the capital of?”
“Yes. Don’t interrupt.”
Edward looked rather hurt, and Laura said hastily: “I must read it after lunch. I want to very much indeed. Well, darling, do tell me about Paris.”
“Look! There’s a wasp!” said Edward, quite maddeningly.
“I want to send the Agricultural Journal on to the Men’s Club this afternoon.”
“Yes, I’ll read it before post time, darling.”
Alfred turned to his son.
“Now then, old man, what about Paris?” he said kindly. “You must learn not to interrupt when Daddy and Mummie are talking, you know.”
Edward, who had obviously forgotten all about Paris, looked bored and made rambling and disconnected statements to which neither of his parents paid serious attention.
“How’s the car getting on?” Laura asked, feeling that it was Alfred’s turn.
“I haven’t started on her yet. I shall do that this afternoon.”
“I hope—(Don’t fidget like that, darling)—I hope it won’t—(and do keep your feet still; you’re shaking the whole table)—be so very long before—”
“Pancakes,” said Johnnie brightly.
Laura dispensed the pancakes.
Her hope concerning the car, never a very robust affair, died unuttered and unnoticed.
The conversation continued to be prosaic, lacking in grace, continuity, or purpose.
A vague recollection of a sentence, read somewhere, to the effect that it is always the wife and mother who is primarily responsible for the atmosphere of the home, depressed Laura’s spirits.
Chapter III
At Three o’clock in the afternoon of the following Saturday Laura temporarily ceased to be a wife and a mother, and became a human being. She put on a biscuit-coloured kasha frock and the fur-bordered coat that matched it, and brown, low-heeled crocodile shoes over biscuit-coloured stockings.
When she had adjusted her small, soft velvet pull-on hat, Laura gazed earnestly at herself in the glass.
She thought: “I look nice—but there’s no one to see it, really. Unless—”
Unless was the unspoken tribute paid to romance, that lurking possibility to which Laura woke every morning of her life. She took out a tiny little rouge pad from under the handkerchiefs in the middle drawer of her dressing-table, used it very, very carefully, and then very, very carefully wiped the result off again.
Alfred disliked rouge, but very seldom noticed when she had it on.
From the nursery a loud wail came distinctly. Laura, catching up her gloves, hurried out of the room and along the passage.
It would have been impossible for her to go out of the house with that wail uninvestigated, although she knew that it had no serious significance, that it was in the nature of an isolated, casual wail—not the kind likely to be succeeded by a hurricane of wails—and that her presence, especially in outdoor attire, would hold nothing soothing.
She spent five minutes in the nursery, and found that Alfred, unusually, had brought the car round to the front door punctually, and was waiting for her.
“I’m so sorry,” apologised Laura, energetically returning the frantic hand-waving of the children.
Alfred did not say, “You’re not going to the North Pole. You’ll be home again in about two hours from now,” but it was Laura’s misfortune to attribute such definite meanings to his silences, and to clothe them in pungent and unsympathetic language. She often held wordless and impassioned conversations with Alfred, replying to many things that he had not said.
To-day, as they drove, she tried not to think about the difficulty of finding a new house-parlourmaid, nor about Johnnie’s temper, nor about Edward’s loose front tooth, but when she had conscientiously banished these subjects, her mind seemed to become a blank.
If only Alfred would talk about sugar-beet now, instead of at lunch-time, when she couldn’t possibly attend!
There had been a time, however, when Laura would have regarded sugar-beet, viewed as a conversational topic between a man and a woman, as frankly impossible.
“Who are these people we’re going to meet?”
“The A. B. Onslows.”
“Oh yes, of course. Did you say he wrote?”
“Alfred, you know he does. I told you the other day—and you liked that last book of his.”
“I daresay,” said Alfred indifferently.
“Well, don’t talk about books, darling. That’ll be safest, perhaps.”
Alfred made an acquiescent sound.
They drove on in silence. Once Alfred said: “The oak’ll be out before the ash this year, by the look of things.” And once Laura, before she could stop herself, exclaimed: “I do hope Edward’s second teeth won’t be long coming through. Gaps are so dreadfully unbecoming.”
Alfred made no reply, and she tried to hope that he hadn’t heard.
The avenue of the Manor House was a long and winding drive, and the daffodils were in bloom under the trees.
“Much further out than ours,” said Laura resentfully, and five minutes later she said the same thing to Lady Kingsley-Browne, this time in a tone of pleased admiration.
Their hostess was in the morning-room, to which the butler conducted them.
“My dear, how nice of you to come. How are you, Mr. Temple? Very busy, I suppose? The Onslows are so looking forward to meeting you both.”
Laura murmured graceful disclaimers, and followed Lady Kingsley-Browne across the big sq
uare hall to the drawing-room.
Introductions were effected.
Mrs. Onslow, to Laura’s slight relief, was older than herself, less good-looking, and with a figure no longer slim. Her clothes, on the other hand, were expensively beautiful.
A. B. Onslow was tall and attenuated, clean-shaven, and with a manner of rather elaborate geniality. His hair was brightly but unconvincingly dyed.
Lady Kingsley-Browne’s only daughter was poised upon the window-seat, tall, slim, and rather strident, and with an air of almost phenomenal self-possession.
In the opinion of Laura Temple, Bébée Kingsley-Browne was neither pretty, clever, well-behaved, nor virtuous. Nevertheless it was impossible to deny that in some mysterious manner she attracted the admiration, and even the devotion, of a great number of men.
Even Alfred, loyal, unobservant, and non-susceptible, had admitted to Laura that there was something about Miss Kingsley-Browne.
“But what?” Laura had coldly enquired. And Alfred hadn’t been able to say what—but there, he declared, it was.
It was there, too, in the opinion of A. B. Onslow. Laura saw that in exactly five minutes, while she exchanged intelligent observations about bulbs with Lady Kingsley-Browne and Mrs. Onslow.
“But, of course, living in London—”
“Oh, but your lovely garden!” Lady Kingsley-Browne protested.
The Onslows owned a large house at Highgate.
“Mrs. Onslow has the most wonderful Dutch garden; and the rock-plant—”
“One tries to pretend it’s like a garden in the country—but of course—”
“I always think that Highgate—or Hampstead—give one the advantages of both town and country,” Lady Kingsley-Browne declared earnestly. “We do feel rather cut-off down here sometimes.”
“One just can’t get up to London and back in the day,” Laura contributed.
She hoped inwardly that A. B. Onslow was paying no attention to the conversation,
“Shall we have some tea? I think it’s in the library.”
Laura’s subconscious self, that exercised its powers of observation entirely independently of her wishes, and even her principles, rather resentfully noted the faint suggestion that Lady Kingsley-Browne hadn’t even ordered her tea in advance, and couldn’t be perfectly certain in which of her five sitting-rooms the servants might have placed it.
The Way Things Are Page 3