Miss Buncle's Book

by D. E. Stevenson

  “Go away, I’m busy,” said Miss Buncle without raising her head.

  “Now, Miss Barbara, don’t be contrary,” said Dorcas, firmly. “I’ve poached you an egg, and you can’t go wasting eggs at two and eleven a dozen.”

  “Eat it yourself, then,” suggested the author.

  “I’ll do no such thing,” Dorcas replied. “Come along now, Miss Barbara, do. You hadn’t much dinner you know, and I’m quite sure you didn’t get no tea worth talking about at that old skinflint’s party.”

  “I had none,” said Barbara, raising a flushed face from her writing table.

  “There,” cried Dorcas triumphantly, “what did I tell you?”

  “If you bring the egg here I’ll eat it,” said Barbara in despair. “Only for goodness’ sake go away and don’t talk to me—”

  Dorcas went away. She was beginning to get used to living in the house with an author. It was not comfortable, she found, and it was distinctly trying to the temper. Dorcas often thought with regret of the good old days when the dividends had come in punctually, and Miss Barbara had been an ordinary human being; taking her meals at regular hours, going up to bed as the clock struck eleven, and coming down for breakfast in the morning as the clock struck nine.

  I believe hens would have been less bother after all, Dorcas thought, as she prepared a tray with the poached egg, a cup of cocoa, and two pieces of brown toast set out upon it in appetizing array. Authors! said Dorcas to herself with scornful emphasis. Authors indeed! Well, I’ll never read a book again but what I’ll think of the people as has had to put up with the author, I know that. Preparing meals, and beating the gong, and going back ’alf an hour later to find nobody’s ever been near them, and the mutton fat frozen solid in the dish, and the soup stone cold—and them ringing bells at all hours for coffee, “and make it strong, Dorcas—make it strong!” and them writing half the night, and lying in bed half the day with people toiling up to their bedrooms with trays. Authors, poof! Dorcas thought to herself, but I never could abide hens neither. And she took up the tray and marched across the hall and pushed open the door of the study with one foot, crunched heedlessly over the foolscap-covered floor, and dumped the tray down on the foolscap-covered desk.

  “Go away,” said Barbara impatiently. Her pen was still skimming over the paper like a bird.

  “Well I’m not going, then,” Dorcas replied. “Not till I see you eat that egg and drink that cocoa with my own eyes, I’m not. For as soon as ever my back’s turned you’ll forget all about it.”

  Barbara knew she was cornered. She took up the knife and fork and made short work of the poached egg.

  “I was hungry,” she admitted in a surprised voice.

  “Well, and what did you expect?” inquired Dorcas. “With no tea, and as much dinner as would fatten up a fly—anybody would be hungry, I should think. Drink up your cocoa, Miss Barbara, before it gets cold and nasty.”

  The meal was soon disposed of. Dorcas picked up the tray and made for the door—

  “Oh, and Dorcas—”

  “Yes, Miss Barbara.”

  “I’d like a cup of coffee about eleven—before you go up to bed—and make it strong, Dorcas.”

  “Yes, Miss Barbara,” said Dorcas. She pulled a face at the author’s bent back and shut the door firmly.

  ***

  On Friday morning Barbara lay in bed just as Dorcas had expected. She was worn out with the spate of inspiration which had kept her chained to her desk until the early hours of the morning.

  “Well, you do look a ghost and no mistake,” Dorcas said, as she contemplated the recumbent figure of her mistress, and noted with dismay the dark smudges beneath Miss Buncle’s eyes.

  “I know,” said Barbara, “I was writing nearly all night, that’s why.”

  “You’d better take a few days off it,” Dorcas advised, “or we’ll be having Dr. Walker here, wanting to know what’s wore you out like that.”

  “Oh, I can’t do that,” replied Barbara. “It’s only just beginning to—to roll along smoothly, and Mr. Abbott’s in a hurry for it. I must stick into it for a bit. Perhaps later on I might take a few days—”

  “I’d be willing to try hens, Miss Barbara, if you’re agreeable.”

  “Hens?” inquired Barbara, toying with her bacon distastefully.

  “You give up writing and we’ll try hens,” wheedled Dorcas. “My nephew has a fine hen-farm in Surrey. He’d be willing to start us off with a few, and give us some hints—”

  The author sat up in bed and gazed at her in amazement. “Dorcas, I could never give up writing now,” she said, incredulously (nor could she; the vice had got her firmly in its grip, as well ask a morphinomaniac to give up drugs). “You don’t know how exciting it is, Dorcas. It just sweeps you along and you’ve no idea of the time—”

  “I guessed that much,” interpolated Dorcas, grimly.

  “And look at the money I’ve made,” continued the complacent author. “A whole hundred pounds, and more coming soon, Mr. Abbott says. How long would it take to make a hundred pounds out of hens?”

  Dorcas knew a little about her nephew’s profits, and she was forced to admit, regretfully, that it might take years to make a clear hundred pounds out of hens.

  “Well, you see,” said Barbara triumphantly, “it would take years of work and worry to make a hundred pounds out of hens, and I can make it quite easily in a few months just by enjoying myself.”

  “I’m not enjoying myself.”

  “I know it’s trying for you, but I can’t help it, I really can’t. When I feel it all bubbling over in my head it just has to come out, or I’d burst or something—you can have all my clothes if you like.”

  Dorcas looked at her in consternation—what new horror was this? Had the strain of writing all night deranged the poor lady’s brain, or did she contemplate remaining in bed for the rest of her life, and having trays brought up to her?

  “All your clothes, Miss Barbara?” echoed Dorcas.

  “Yes, all of them,” replied Miss Buncle, waving a negligent hand toward the wardrobe. “Take them all away, out of the cupboard and the drawers. You can give some of them to your niece if you like—or sell them. Do whatever you like with them, Dorcas, but don’t bother me about it.”

  “You’ll feel better after you’ve had a nice sleep,” Dorcas suggested, anxiously.

  Barbara yawned, “Yes, I am sleepy,” she admitted, “I feel all empty and peaceful. I should think people feel exactly like this after they’ve had a baby—”

  “Really, Miss Barbara, I don’t know what you’ll say next,” complained the scandalized Dorcas.

  Barbara giggled, and snuggled down in bed. “I’ll sleep till lunch time,” she announced.

  Dorcas took up the breakfast tray and left the room—all was peace.

  Barbara Buncle slept, and as she slept she dreamed that she was walking down the village street. There was a kind of misty radiance in the air, so she knew that this was Copperfield. She walked along with a springy step and her beautifully polished brown shoes hardly touched the ground. She was so happy—she was always happy in Copperfield. Everything always went right in Copperfield: people did as she wanted them to do, they were never rude about her book, they were never cross or patronizing. In Copperfield she had everybody under her thumb—even Mrs. Horsley Downs was obliged to obey her orders. Mrs. Horsley Downs couldn’t walk across the street unless Barbara allowed her to. In Copperfield Barbara herself was just as she wanted to be; she was younger, and prettier, and more attractive. People looked at her as she passed, not because she was a “sight,” but because she was pleasant to behold. Her hair was beautifully dressed, her clothes were perfect, her petticoat never hung down below her skirt, her stocking never developed a hole in the heel—in fact she was not Barbara Buncle anymore, she was Elizabeth
Wade.

  Elizabeth Wade it was, who tripped along the Copperfield streets that fine morning. Elizabeth Wade clad in a complete new outfit from Virginia’s little shop. She was wearing the bottle-green coat with the gray fur collar and the little hat to match, and beneath the bottle-green coat was the jumper suit which went with it so beautifully.

  Elizabeth Wade went into the bakery to buy buns.

  “I can recommend these, Miss,” said Mrs. Silver with a smile. “These are full of electricity. Please let me send up a dozen for you to try; there will be no charge to you, of course, Miss.”

  Miss Wade gave her gracious consent and left the shop. How pleasant it was to be so popular! The sun was streaming down and filling the High Street with its golden beams, Elizabeth was dazzled by the brightness of the light. She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again she saw the Golden Boy. He was dancing along in the middle of the street playing on his pipe—lifting it up toward the sky and bending down again, first to one side and then to the other; bending and swaying from side to side, up to the sky and down to the ground, and all the time the music flowed from his pipe, a thin clear trickle of notes.

  Elizabeth was not in the least surprised, why should she be surprised? He was her own Golden Boy, not the hybrid creature that had appeared upon the cover of Disturber of the Peace. He was her own Golden Boy, she had created him herself. He passed quite close to Elizabeth Wade, as she stood in the doorway of the bakery, and disappeared up the hill.

  The bright light faded. Elizabeth rubbed her eyes and opened them to find her faithful slave standing at her bedside with a large tray. The sun was shining in at her open window and the birds were twittering blithely among the leaves of the ivy which covered Tanglewood Cottage.

  “I’ve had a lovely sleep, Susan,” said Elizabeth/Barbara, stretching her arms.

  “It’s Dorcas,” said that worthy in a humoring voice. “It’s your own Dorcas, Miss Barbara. Here’s your dinner; sit up now and take it while it’s nice and hot. Look, I got a little pigeon for you—isn’t that nice now? And Mr. Abbott’s just rung up on the telephone to say he’s coming down this afternoon to see you, and here’s a postcard from Paris—it’s come by air.”

  Barbara sat up the better to deal with this mass of information. Copperfield had vanished, and with it Elizabeth Wade. It was Barbara who held out her hand for the postcard, not Elizabeth Wade. The postcard was a highly colored photograph of the Eiffel Tower and written upon it in Dorothea Bold’s large round hand was the following amazing message: “Enjoying our honeymoon tremendously. Love from us both. Dorothea Weatherhead.”

  “They’re married, Dorcas,” exclaimed Barbara.

  “That’s what I thought, Miss Barbara,” Dorcas replied. (We must not blame Dorcas too severely. Postcards are fair game, and it was not every day that one arrived from Paris—by airmail too. It would have been scarcely human if Dorcas had not glanced at it as she took it from the postman—and Dorothea’s hand was particularly round and clear.) “That’s just what I thought they were,” said Dorcas, “and a very nice couple they’ll make. I expect it’s Disturber that’s done it.”

  “D’you really think it could be?” Barbara said, with her eyes like saucers. “D’you really think so, Dorcas? I would be glad if I thought that. D’you think they read my book and went straight off and got married? How wonderful it is!”

  She lay back and thought about the mighty power of the pen, quite oblivious of the fact that her nice pigeon was getting cold.

  ***

  When she had thought about it enough, and finished her lunch, Barbara got up and had a hot bath. Her new garments had arrived—Virginia had kept her promise faithfully—and Barbara decided to wear one of her new frocks this afternoon. A bath seemed a fitting preliminary to the donning of the slinky, soft, wine-colored creation which lay curled up in its neat brown box all padded out with rustling tissue paper.

  When she had bathed, and dressed, and finished doing her hair, Barbara slipped the frock very carefully over her head and turned to look at herself in the long mirror which swung on a wooden frame beside her chest of drawers. She was quite startled at the change in her appearance—it was Elizabeth Wade who looked back at her from the quicksilver depths of the mirror (not Barbara Buncle at all). Elizabeth Wade with flushed cheeks and bright eyes enhanced by the deep red frock which swept in a pretty curve to her ankles, and added a couple of inches to her height.

  The doorbell rang while she was still contemplating Elizabeth and she went downstairs to greet Mr. Abbott.

  “You don’t mind my turning up like this,” Mr. Abbott said. “I had a slack afternoon and there were one or two things I wanted to talk to you about—”

  He stopped suddenly and gazed at his hostess in surprise. He was a mere man, of course, and he had not the remotest idea what had caused the amazing difference in Miss Buncle’s appearance. He only knew that she was much more attractive than he had thought, much prettier too, and years younger—

  “I must have been blind,” he said aloud.

  “Blind?” inquired Barbara.

  “Oh, I mean—er—I had some difficulty in finding your house again,” explained Mr. Abbott, “couldn’t have been looking where I was going or something—”

  “Well, anyway, here you are,” said Barbara smiling at him. She was full of self-assurance today and happy in her mastery of the situation. She was Elizabeth of course; that was the reason for it. Elizabeth Wade always knew what to do and say on every occasion—how unlike Barbara Buncle!

  “I’ve been working so hard,” she told him, sitting down beside the fire and motioning Mr. Abbott to the sofa with a gracious wave of her hand. “Do smoke, Mr. Abbott, won’t you? Dorcas is quite worried about me; she thinks it would be better if we were to try keeping hens.”

  “No, no!” laughed Mr. Abbott, taking a cigarette out of his tortoise-shell case and tapping it gently on his thumb-nail. “No, no, Miss Buncle. We’re not going to let you off so easily. We’re going to keep your nose to the grind-stone. There’s no rest for the bestseller, you know.”

  “Am I really a bestseller?”

  “Pretty good. The reviews have been very helpful—”

  “Helpful!” cried Barbara in amazement. “Some of them said I was immoral and perverted.”

  “I know. It was simply marvelous,” replied Mr. Abbott, holding out his cigarette and watching the smoke curl upward with appreciation and content. “It really was simply marvelous. In my wildest and most optimistic moments I scarcely dared to hope that they would misread you to that extent.”

  “Then—then it was a good thing?”

  “Couldn’t have had better reviews if I had written them myself. The sales leaped up—”

  Barbara was astounded. How strange people were! What an incredible sort of world this business of writing had opened up before her eyes!

  “And how’s Copperfield?” inquired Mr. Abbott. “Anybody found John Smith yet?”

  “No.”

  “There are lots of people out for his blood.”

  “I know,” said Barbara sadly.

  “A Miss King called on me one day,” Mr. Abbott continued with twinkling eyes. “I gathered that she was rather peevish at being banished to Samarkand. And she was followed by a Mr. Bulmer—a sour-faced individual, who wanted a little talk with Mr. John Smith about his wife—”

  “I know,” said Barbara again. “It’s simply dreadful the way they all go on. They had a Meeting here yesterday, and decided that I was to be horse-whipped, only it seemed rather difficult to get volunteers for the job.”

  Mr. Abbott laughed, “First catch your hare—” he said.

  “Captain Sandeman said that too.”

  “Then Captain Sandeman is a sensible man. What about the new novel, Miss Buncle? How is it going?”

  �
�Like mad,” replied Barbara. “But of course it’s all about Copperfield too. I don’t know how to write about anything else—”

  “Don’t worry. You write what you feel you want to write, and never mind what Copperfield says. Copperfield ought to be flattered at being immortalized by your pen.”

  “Now you are laughing at me,” said Barbara, provocatively. It was really Elizabeth who said it of course—Barbara would never have dared—but Mr. Abbott wasn’t to know that his hostess had suddenly changed into a totally different woman.

  “I never laugh at charming ladies,” he told her.

  They sparred in a friendly manner until Dorcas appeared with the tea. Dorcas approved of Mr. Abbott; he was a real London gentleman. To show her appreciation she had made some little cakes and put on her best muslin cap and apron.

  “Smart. That’s what he is,” Dorcas said to Milly Spikes, who had got the afternoon off and was having a cup of tea with her in the kitchen.

  “I like ’em smart,” agreed Milly.

  Dorcas was not very proud of her friendship with Milly Spikes. In fact she would not have admitted its existence. “She likes to come in now and then for a cup of tea,” Dorcas would have said if anyone had hinted that she liked Milly. But Dorcas did like Milly all the same, and, although she frequently told herself that Milly was “low” and not her style at all, she was always very pleased to see Milly and to listen to her gossip. Milly knew everything that happened in Silverstream. She got all the village news from Mrs. Goldsmith, who was her aunt; and the news about the gentry filtered to her ears (which were preternaturally alert, and occasionally glued to keyholes) through the medium of Mrs. Greensleeves. Mrs. Greensleeves was not as reticent about her affairs, and the affairs of her neighbors, as she might have been if she had taken the trouble to understand the mentality of her maid. The remainder of the Silverstream news was garnered by the indefatigable Milly in the kitchens and servants’ halls of Silverstream, where, owing to her good-nature and amusing tongue, she was persona grata with one and all.

  Milly’s tales lost nothing in the telling, and it was “as good as a play” when she really got going, and imitated Mrs. Greensleeves’ somewhat affected tones or described her rages which broke forth periodically when the tradesmen sent in their bills. She heartily despised her employer and spoke of her with contempt—a thing quite definitely “not done” in the opinion of Dorcas—