Parson's Nine

by Noel Streatfeild

  In his mind, David was doubtful if this was exactly what he wanted. Catherine was always in such a hurry. All this “Send a telegram today and see him tomorrow” atmosphere prevented that self-communing from which alone, he felt, right decisions spring. He would have liked to have discussed the subject further, to reassure himself that Catherine felt as strongly as he did on Church teachings and atmosphere, a point on which he sometimes felt doubts. But Catherine was as usual hurrying, this time into a dressing-gown.

  “I’ll see about that telegram after breakfast,” she called over her shoulder as she flew out, bound for the nursery, from which shrieks had been issuing for the last ten minutes.

  By the fire in the night-nursery, Nannie was sitting with a newly washed Maccabeus on her knee. He was screaming to the full extent of his lungs, as was Manasses, who was being dressed by Minnie. In a corner with his face to the wall stood Sirach, shaking with sobs. The twins sitting up in their beds waiting to be dressed were fighting over a stuffed monkey. Loud angry voices could be heard from the day-nursery across the passage. Catherine, surveying all this woe from the doorway, wondered where, in her role of justice-cum-ministering angel, to begin. Nannie jerked her head towards Sirach.

  “That’s who started the trouble,” she said grimly. “Got out of bed the wrong side this morning. Minnie brings him in here to sew a button on his shirt, and for me to hear his prayers. He fidgets enough to beat the band while the button’s being sewed on, and then, as if he hadn’t given trouble enough, he kneels down and is downright blasphemous.”

  At this point Sirach redoubled his howls. Catherine called him to her. He came unwillingly, his nose and eyes streaming. She cleaned him up with her handkerchief, and with a soothing arm placed round him partially stopped his tears. She asked him gravely why he hadn’t said his prayers properly. He set his lips in a thin line, and refused to answer.

  “Come on, darling, explain to mummy. Did you mean to be naughty?”

  “No!” burst from Sirach like a bomb.

  “Kneel down then, darling, and say them properly to me.”

  “ ‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild—’ ”

  Sobs and hiccups broke up the words, but he got safely through to the end, then startled Catherine by a series of sharp, nervous barks.

  “There!” said Nannie triumphantly. “You see ‘um.”

  Catherine led a now screaming Sirach down to the drawing-room.

  “Now be quiet,” she said sternly. “Why did you bark at the end of your prayers?”

  It took some time to calm him sufficiently to get an explanation, but at last it came.

  “I did fink Samson wouldn’t never go to heaven if he didn’t say no prayers.”

  “So you were saying some for him? Well, I’m glad you’ve explained, because it wasn’t naughty at all.” Here Catherine paused for invention, admitting that Sirach was right according to his lights, but terribly conscious that Nannie would never stand for barks at morning and evening devotions. “But you needn’t do it any more,” she went on. “Dogs say their own prayers.”

  “Do vey!” exclaimed Sirach, charmed by a vision of Samson kneeling by his basket, night and morning with folded paws. “If we watched him could we see him?”

  “No, darling, he says them to himself.”

  “In bed?” questioned Sirach, shocked, having been brought up to consider such a method wrong, except when ill.

  “No, standing, I think,” said Catherine, painfully conscious that she was out of her depth, and that such fairytales were not the right way to teach a child. “Now we are going back to the nursery, and I want you to tell Nannie you are very sorry.”

  “Why? I aren’t. You said I wasn’t naughty.”

  “Sorry for crying, then, and upsetting the babies. You see, if you bigger ones cry, they get frightened and cry, too.”

  In the nursery, breakfast had begun.

  “Nannie,” said Catherine hurriedly. “Sirach wants to say he’s sorry.”

  “That’s a good boy.” Nannie handed him his porridge.

  “Sorry vat I cried and frightened the babies. But mummy said vat—”

  “Now, darlings, what are you all going to do today—?” Catherine threw into the breach.

  All day it was the same, a little tact there, someone to be comforted here, Catherine felt her nerves rubbing raw. Middle-day saw another fracas in the nursery. Baruch was the culprit. White-faced and frightened, but stubborn, he leant back in his chair and refused to eat his dinner.

  “It’s sheer naughtiness, too,” said Nannie. “For he started eatin’ it as nicely as possible. Then Minnie says, ‘This turkey makes nice mince,’ and on that my lord spits out what he has in his mouth, and won’t eat any more.”

  “Why won’t you eat it, Baruch?” his mother asked gently.

  He didn’t answer, but turned to her terrified blue eyes—eyes which acknowledged the awful power vested in grown-ups, but equally mirrored that courage which had made him spit out the turkey.

  “Susanna, why won’t Baruch eat his turkey?”

  “Hasn’t no fevvers.”

  Catherine was convinced there was more to it than that—that in some way the knowledge that it was turkey he was eating had frightened the child.

  “Give him bread-and-milk instead,” she directed gravely.

  This order had guile. Bread-and-milk, except in case of illness, was a punishment. If Baruch were only being naughty, he would come to his senses when threatened with it. At the same time she was not openly siding with one of the children against Nannie, who would certainly consider she had ordered it as a punishment. Nannie got up with a grim smile, and put on some milk to boil, expecting a wail from Baruch, but he made no sound. Only, as Minnie took away his minced turkey, a look of real relief came over his little face.

  By the time the children were in bed, and Maud’s grumbling shut away in the servants’ sitting-room, and Nannie dispatched to friends in the village, Catherine felt such a feeling of relief that she laughed at herself. “I must be needing that holiday, if I let such silly things tire me so.” David came in. “Come on, tackle him now,” she urged herself.

  “I shall have to go to town at the end of the week, to interview governesses. I’ve sent an advertisement to the Times. When I’ve got her, and seen her safely installed, and got Esdras and Tobit off to school, I mean to go away for a change.”

  “You are feeling ill?” David asked anxiously.

  “No, not ill, tired. In need of new energy.”

  “You will go to your mother?”

  “No. I thought of going to the South of France.” She tried to say it naturally, but even as she spoke, she realised how reckless it sounded.

  “The South of France!” David was scared. She must be ill to think of going as far as that. It must be her lungs. She must be hiding something from him.

  It took her some time to allay his fears, and having allayed them she was faced with the inevitable: “Then why?”

  She made a desperate effort. But how to make a saint who sees all the glory of life in “The daily round, the common task,” grasp the point of view of the ordinary person? How make him realise that since you can only live once, surely some fragment of that once should be given to enjoyment? How, when he has spent the last ten years in one spot, and is willing to spend the rest of his life there, make him understand the outlook of a woman who has produced a baby year after year in the same village, but who is not satisfied, who resents it with every fibre of her being, who aches to see something new? Catherine failed with David. Alternately she frightened and hurt him. Frightened him each time she said she needed a change, and hurt him when she explained it was not for her body but her. Even when they got into bed, David was still trying to understand. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t understand her wanting to go away, actually wanting to leave her husband, and children, and home. H
e could not get over so amazing a wish.

  “Catherine, have you prayed about it?”

  “No. I waste enough of God’s time as it is, asking for things I’m never likely to get. I’m not going to bother Him about a thing I’m going to have. I’m right about this holiday, darling, but don’t try to grasp my point of view; just accept it as one of those queer things about me you’ll never understand. Goodnight.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Catherine discovered that selecting a governess was a terrifying experience. She saw seven, all of whom seemed willing to come to her, or at least to give her a trial. She felt she was getting on with them splendidly when they talked about themselves, but awkward and a fool when she had to ask them questions—questions she knew every mother ought to ask a prospective governess, but which somehow they seemed to resent. It was the educational questions which she was sure should have been at her fingertips, and which were actually on a piece of paper, which tried her most. She didn’t like to hold the paper up, so she squinted at it surreptitiously under her muff as it lay on her knee, and as she did so, felt six of the seven governesses eyeing her with contempt. The seventh only smiled. Catherine was doubtful if this was tolerance, or merely that experience had taught her to expect an extremely low brand of intellect from mothers, but it drew her to the seventh. Miss Crosby her name was. She had a thin, eager face, clever grey eyes, blinking behind gold-rimmed glasses, a neat little black hat perched on top of hair that had been red, but was now partly striped with grey. Catherine, safely through her list of educational questions, having discovered that Miss Crosby possessed all, and more qualifications than any normal mother could want, plunged into religion. With the other six, the question as to whether they were not only churchgoers, but Church of England ones, had not been a success, as though they realised it was a point which should have been mentioned in the advertisement, and since it was not, was now urged for, in fact, insisted on, by a husband. Two had looked hurt, as though being Church of England, and devout attendants at the services thereof, was as natural to everyone as having a bath, and they had answered hurriedly and huffily: “Oh, of course.” Two weren’t, and didn’t pretend they were, being Scotch and Presbyterian in the one case, and Irish and a Roman Catholic in the other. The remaining two had answered, “Yes,” but added that they expected to be free on Sundays to go where they liked, a state of affairs Catherine felt certain David wouldn’t dream of allowing. How different was Miss Crosby’s reply:

  “Are you Church of England?” Catherine almost whispered, feeling crushed by the other six.

  “Ah!” Miss Crosby answered. “That, Mrs. Churston, is just what I was going to ask you.”

  Ask her! What a question, thought Catherine. Who could be more utterly Church of England than she was, living almost in the churchyard of one, as it were?

  “Why, yes. My husband’s a clergyman—a vicar. Very much a clergyman and a vicar.”

  “Now that is just what I want. The truth is,” here Miss Crosby leaned forward and dropped her voice to a whisper, “I’ve been with a family of Jews.”

  “Of what?” asked Catherine, who owing to the whispering hadn’t caught the last word.

  “Of Jews,” repeated Miss Crosby, still in a whisper, but rather louder. “Believe me, dear Mrs. Churston, I had to leave. For some time I had been feeling that perhaps such a house for a Christian—though they were charming people, charming. But when their little boy was born! Well, that decided me! Such curious customs. Not at all what I was used to.”

  “What customs?” enquired Catherine, enormously interested.

  “Well, well, I cannot go into that now.” Miss Crosby glanced round the hotel lounge where the interview was being held with a look which showed that in her opinion such walls had most decided ears. “Please tell me about your children. How many of them are there? And if I should come to you, which of them should I teach?”

  It was at this point that Catherine realised that she must have Miss Crosby. It seemed she loved all teaching, but on hearing that Judith was clever, she glowed and took on the radiance peculiar to those fulfilling divine missions. Clever girls were her mission, her life-work.

  “Boys are all right,” she said to Catherine. “They have every opportunity to train their brains, but a girl, however brilliant, very rarely has a chance. Believe me, Mrs. Churston, it is only thanks to great ambition, and a fine library, that I am where I am today. If I had depended on the education my father gave me—Well! It’s hard to say where I’d be.”

  Catherine looked at her in surprise. Where did she consider she had got to? Surely being a governess was no great pinnacle to have reached? She studied Miss Crosby more intently, as flushed with enthusiasm she dilated on the education of women, and suddenly realised the surprising truth, that your actual niche in the world isn’t what matters, it’s how you see yourself in relation to life that counts.

  “When could you come to me?” she asked.

  The eagerness and emotion died out of Miss Crosby’s face, to give place to the hunted look of one whose funds are running low.

  “Well, I left the Goldschmidts’ six weeks ago, and I’ve had a jolly holiday, so I think I may say I’m ready any time you want me—”

  “In about a fortnight, then?”

  “A fortnight!” There was the faintest anxious, calculating pause. “Yes, Mrs. Churston, that will suit me perfectly.”

  Catherine had noted the pause, and a slight contraction of the neatly-darned gloved fingers round a shabby purse.

  “Or if it suits you, I’d like to have you quite soon, say at the end of the week.”

  “At the end of the week!” Miss Crosby’s eyes shone as though she were looking through the gates of Paradise, but she clung to her self-respect. “Well! Well! That is short notice indeed. But to oblige you, Mrs. Churston, I will certainly manage it.”

  Catherine arrived home late—too late to tell the children about Miss Crosby—but she went up to the nursery to break the news to Nannie:

  “Nannie, I’ve engaged a governess. The children are getting too clever for me.”

  “A governess! Well, ’m, you know best. Make for trouble they do though. Neither fish nor fowl they aren’t if you follow me ‘um.”

  “Yes, I know, their position is difficult, and that’s just why I want your help. If they feel in the kitchen that you like, and get on well, with Miss Crosby, they’ll do the same.”

  “Well ’m, I’ll do me best, but stand any interference in me nursery I won’t!”

  “Oh, but of course not, Nannie. I shall turn the little drawing-room into a schoolroom, and she will have authority there, and you will keep it up here. She will take the elder children for their walks, and she can bring Judith, and of course Esdras and Tobit when they are home, down to lunch and breakfast. I have been thinking for some time that nine of them were a great many for you in the nursery.”

  “I haven’t found ’em so, ‘um, an’ I’m sure you’ve never heard me complain.”

  “Indeed no, Nannie, never. But there it is, they are growing up, I’ve got to realise it, too. I hate to lose my babies, I don’t want to make a change. I’d like to keep them all safe and sound in the nursery for ever. Sometimes I think it will be the only time in their lives when they felt really mine.”

  “Tch! tch! tch! Don’t you fret, ‘um. Just because you’ve got this Miss Whatsername coming, that’s no reason to talk as though all the children were grownup an’ gettin’ married tomorrow. Don’t you worry, ’m, you go off on that holiday of yours, an’ me an’ this Miss Whatsername will manage grand.”

  Catherine told the elder children her news the next morning.

  “A governess!” exclaimed Judith ecstatically. “To think that we should have such a one.”

  “ ‘But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the Father.’ ” Esdras quoted. “Only,” he went on, “wi
th us it ought to be appointed of the mother. I don’t suppose daddy even knows she’s coming.”

  “Of course he does,” said Catherine indignantly. “Do you suppose daddy would let someone look after you children he didn’t know all about?”

  “But, mummy,” Tobit objected, “you only saw her yesterday, an’ daddy’s never seen her: how can he know all about her?”

  “Well, darling, I can’t explain all that now, but there are things called references which one takes up,” explained Catherine, thankful that she had written to Mrs. Goldschmidt the moment she reached home.

  David came in. The children flew to him at once.

  “Just think, a governess like what children has in books.”

  “Daddy, is there a governess in the Bible? I can only find about a tutor.”

  “Daddy, have you taken up the governess’s reperences?”

  David had been sitting with a dying parishioner; he hadn’t yet brought his mind back to the earth; he smiled vaguely at the children.

  “What! What’s this about a governess?”

  Six shocked and reproachful eyes were turned to Catherine.

  “Oh, mummy,” gasped Judith. “And you said daddy wouldn’t let someone look after us children that he didn’t know all about.”

  “David,” said Catherine, exasperated. “Don’t you remember that I told you all about Miss Crosby, the governess for the children, directly I got home last night?” A note of annoyance in his wife’s voice could always bring David’s mind down to solid ground.

  “Of course! A governess you saw yesterday. Forgive me, dearest, how stupid of me.”

  “Mummy said you wouldn’t let somebody look after us except you knew all about her, but you don’t know anythin’ about her, do you?” Judith asked, puzzled.

  David pulled himself together.

  “Mummy has met her, and mummy likes her, and I know that anybody mummy likes I shall like. We think the same.”