Parson's Nine

by Noel Streatfeild

  “I know. ‘They twain shall be one flesh,’ ” agreed Esdras.

  Miss Love’s head appeared at the window.

  “Good morning, Vicar; good morning, Mrs. Churston; good morning, children. I just popped round to have a few words with you about the jumble sale,” she added to David.

  “We’ve a governess comin’, Miss Love,” shrilled Judith, hopping excitedly on one foot.

  “Really! Isn’t that nice. Won’t you be a clever little girl!”

  “And me and Esdras are going to school,” Tobit put in.

  “Because Esdras knew too much Bible,” Judith explained.

  “Too much Bible!” Miss Love turned an amazed face to Catherine. “Whatever does she mean?”

  Catherine, afraid to start an argument, shook her head vaguely. So Judith continued:

  “When Samson was sick in the cab that time he was new, it was because he’d been eatin’ meat, so Esdras said—”

  Catherine, painfully conscious that not only Miss Love, but David were listening intently to the story, broke in hurriedly:

  “Now, darling, all that’s a long time ago, and both daddy and Miss Love want to talk about jumble sales. I think you had better all go up to the nursery.”

  As the children climbed the stairs, Judith’s shrill voice could be heard:

  “Now I wouldn’t call last week a long time ago, would you, Esdras?”

  Miss Crosby arrived cold, depressed, tired, and nervous, to find Catherine on the platform holding in check five children and a dog, all wildly excited, and charmed to see her. In the face of so much cheerfulness and enthusiasm her depression dropped off her like a discarded coat, and she walked the short distance to the Vicarage, with her shabby trunk pushed behind her on a barrow, feeling more one of a family than she had done since she was a child, and actually been a fragment, if an unconsidered one, of a family of her own.

  All the children wanted to help her unpack, but she refused to have the boys.

  “You girls may come and help, with pleasure, but I can’t have all you boys in my bedroom.”

  It was an unaccustomed sensation for the boys to be segregated from their sisters and deprived of something that they had. They went up disconsolately to the nursery.

  “Nannie,” grumbled Tobit, “Miss Crosby won’t let us help her unpack, only Judith and Esther.”

  “An’ quite right, too; doesn’t want a lot of great boys looking at her bits of things.”

  “What’s the difference in a lot of great girls looking,” Esdras argued.

  Nannie threw a knowing look at Minnie.

  “Us women must have some advantages,” she said.

  Esdras angrily kicked the rocking-horse.

  “A lot of sounding brasses and tinkling cymbals, women are,” he muttered.

  Judith and Esther sat on Miss Crosby’s bed. They gazed entranced at her possessions. Everything she owned seemed to live in its special cotton case—fat bulgy cotton cases, little square cotton cases—large flat cotton cases, one after another they were popped quickly and neatly away in the drawers.

  “A very good idea having such ones, I do think,” said Judith. “Everything might be old an’ torn inside, an’ no one wouldn’t never know.”

  Miss Crosby smiled and shook her head at her.

  “I never have anything torn, Judith. ‘A stitch in time’ is a motto which has been a very good friend to me.”

  She began unpacking her photographs and little decorations: a pink-and-white crocheted hair-tidy; a large lace pin cushion, encircled by a wide yellow satin frill, which filled the children with admiration; a green velvet double photo frame of her father and mother, and, far more interesting to Judith and Esther, pictures of former pupils.

  “This,” said Miss Crosby, placing a large silver frame in the centre of the mantelpiece, “is Lady Alice Bone, as she was then.”

  The children looked at Lady Alice. She was a sad-faced, thin little girl, with a heavy fringe. She was wearing the stuffy, much frilled, buttoned, pleated and gathered frock, which had been considered suitable wear for a little girl fifteen years before. Looking down at their own short comfortable sailor dresses, they felt sorry for Lady Alice.

  “She was such a dear child,” Miss Crosby continued. “Such friends we became. I was with her for ten years, and although she is married now, and has a little girl of her own, she never forgets to send me a card for my birthday and at Christmas.” She picked an expensive frame out of her trunk and planted it on Lady Alice’s left. Three, pretty little Jewesses smiled out of it. “These are Rachel, Miriam, and Rosa Goldschmidt, such clever little girls. I hope I shall find you two just as clever.”

  “Not me,” said Esther, comfortably. “Judith’s clever, she could read quite big words when she was five, mummy tole me so. But me! I’m more’n five an’alf an’ I can’t read ‘tall.”

  “Well, I’ll soon put that right,” Miss Crosby laughed to her over her shoulder. She was placing almost with reverence a simply-framed photograph of a young woman on the table by her bed.

  “Who’s that?” asked Judith.

  “That is Mrs. Pankhurst, a very wonderful woman. I’ll tell you about her some day. I got to know her very slightly when I lived in Manchester. I was there looking after these people.” She planted a picture of a boy and a girl on Lady Alice’s right. “These are my twins, Sarah and Dan O’Brien.” She smiled at the photograph affectionately. “Such naughty children they were; I will tell you a lot of tales of my twins by and by.”

  “We have twins, too,” remarked Judith. “Ours is called Baruch an’ Susanna. Ours isn’t very naughty, though. Baruch is a little sometimes, but Susanna isn’t never, she’s just fat an’ silly.”

  “When you goes away will you keep us in a frame like these other chil’rens?” Esther enquired hopefully.

  “When I go away,” Miss Crosby repeated rather drearily. “Yes, I hope so. But” she added brightly, “you must not talk of my going away yet, Esther. Why, I’ve only just arrived, you know. But when the sad day comes and I do have to leave you, I very much hope your mummy will give me a photograph of you all.”

  “Yes, to remember us by,” agreed Judith.

  “No, not to remember you by—I could never forget the children I have taught; but I think photographs help to make a room look homelike.” She glanced round the rather bleak, unfamiliar bedroom with a contented smile, seeing nothing but her hair-tidy marking the dressing-table hers, the children on the mantelpiece, their familiar faces proving the room her home, the large linen nightdress case embroidered with blue daisies by Lady Alice lying solidly on the bed to say conclusively, “This is Miss Crosby’s room.” She pushed her trunk under the bed, washed her hands, and ran her comb through her scanty hair, then turned to the children.

  “There now, I’m quite ready. Will you show me your schoolroom?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Catherine planned to start her journey to the South of France on the evening of the day the boys departed to school. She felt that one big break was kinder to the children.

  Up to the actual moment when the train came in to the station, both Esdras and Tobit had been too excited to be depressed. Such a mass of new possessions had fallen on them, wooden tuck-boxes, clothes of every sort, endless half-crowns. But with the arrival of the train, when Judith, Esther, and Sirach set up a concerted wail, and Samson’s lead had to be handed to one of the lucky ones who were staying behind, the glory faded from their brand-new bowlers and overcoats, the money in their pockets ceased to have a reassuring jingle, and before Catherine’s pitying eyes they seemed to shrink smaller and smaller. Tobit, who was an enthusiastic gardener, made himself doubly pathetic, for he leaned out of the carriage window, and in a broken little voice begged them all to please let him know the first moment his crocuses flowered, and not to pick his snowdrops, and to tell him the instant th
ere was any sign of life in the polyanthus he had planted last summer. He had said all this innumerable times during the last few days, but he looked so tiny repeating it in the carriage window that it was all Catherine could do to restrain herself from pulling him back onto the platform, telling him he wasn’t going after all. It was especially hard when, unable to control them any longer, his tears began to fall.

  “You mustn’t cry, Tobit,” said David. “It won’t help you, and it’s a grand thing to remember, when the train starts, that you managed not to. Look at Esdras, he’s going with you, but he doesn’t think it anything to cry about.”

  “It’s diff’rent for Esdras,” sobbed Tobit. “He thinks he’s a Christian martyr being thrown to lions, so of course he’s brave, but I’m not, because I know it’s just school.”

  The train began to move. Esdras, with an exalted expression, pushed Tobit to one side, and leaning out of the window, quoted with tragic fervour:

  “‘—our soul is bowed down to the dust: our belly cleaveth unto the earth.’” Then, just as the carriage vanished round a bend, he raised one hand as though in blessing and added: “I forgive you all.”

  Catherine sent the three eldest of her remaining children out to tea. She warned them she would be gone when they got back, but they couldn’t believe her. Seeing her sitting in the drawing-room so exactly the same as usual, it seemed incredible that she was really going to start that day on a journey which should miraculously end in France—a country so far confined to geography books.

  “Queer I do think,” Judith prattled to Miss Crosby, as, carrying their indoor shoes, the children started out to their tea, “that mummy should be goin’ to see such ones.”

  “A very great people, the French,” said Miss Crosby, improving the shining hour.

  “We knows all about French,” explained Esther. “It was in a geography book, what mummy had when she was a little girl. ‘The French are a gay and polite people, fond of dancing and light wines.’”

  Miss Crosby looked really shocked.

  “Dear me, you surely must know something more of the French than that?”

  “No.” Judith dismissed the entire French nation with a gesture. “That’s all there is ’bout French.”

  “But, my dears, the French are in many ways a wonderful people. Why, Jeanne d’Arc was a French­woman.”

  The children looked blank.

  “What! Never heard of Jeanne d’Arc? Now remind me, and I will tell you about her at lessons tomorrow.”

  They arrived home to find Catherine gone, and David upstairs playing elephants with the twins. Esther and Sirach ran up to join in the game. Judith turned to the drawing-room, and stood with quivering lips staring at its unbelievable emptiness. She had often seen it empty before, but it had never felt like this. Miss Crosby laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “Don’t cry, will you, Judith? All your life you’ll have to put up with things that hurt. Learn to say now—I’m going not only to bear this without complaining, but I’m going to bear it alone.” Then in a different voice she added: “I really came to ask you if you’d help me to hang up some maps in the schoolroom.”

  Dry-eyed, Judith followed her.

  They began lessons the next morning. Judith from nine to twelve, Esther from nine to eleven, and Sirach for one hour, fitted in some time during the morning. The twins were not to begin lessons till the autumn, after their fourth birthday.

  They proved a difficult party to cope with. Judith was quick for her age, Esther slow for hers, and Sirach, although he struggled for a short while with the reading-book, was at his happiest with a paper-mat to weave. Miss Crosby’s inclinations were towards letting the younger two fend for themselves, and concentrating upon Judith, but her conscience wouldn’t let her; she had to give equal attention to them all. But from eleven to twelve she had Judith to herself, and she let herself go.

  “Look, Judith, dear.” Her eager finger would point to a picture of Jeanne d’Arc, Elizabeth Fry, Florence Nightingale, Flora Macdonald, or some other distinguished woman. “This was—”

  Then she would tell the distinguished one’s history, with such animation and enthusiasm that Judith would sit spellbound. Always Miss Crosby finished her story in the same way.

  “Doesn’t that just teach us that if only we women would believe it, we are just as capable, if not more so, of doing the great things of this world as any man.”

  Until at last one day she had the reward of her oratory, for Judith, her cheeks flushed, her eyes shining, jumped to her feet.

  “I shall be a great woman!”

  Nannie and Miss Crosby got on splendidly. Nannie considered this happy state of things to be due to the way she had kept her promise to Catherine. In reality it was due to the fact that Miss Crosby was tact itself, and Nannie, whatever she might say to the contrary, glad to have the elder children off her hands. The only trouble which occurred between them the whole time Catherine was away was not of their making.

  It had been arranged, to avoid quarrels, that Samson should go out with the nursery party one day, and with Miss Crosby, Judith, and Esther the next. One afternoon early in February, Nannie had to go to a dressmaker in the village. It was her “dog day,” us the children called it, but since Samson was at his worst at the dressmaker’s, a former dog visitor having mistaken the purpose of table legs, Nannie offered her day to the schoolroom. The conversation took place in the nursery, with the result that before Miss Crosby could open her mouth she was interrupted by a shrill scream of protest from Sirach.

  “It’s mine dog day. I won’t go out wiv’out Samson, I won’t, I won’t. I did p’omise him he was goin’ walkin’ wiv me today.”

  Nannie looked severe.

  “I’ll thank you to give over with that screaming. I daresay if you stop making that noise, kind Miss Crosby will take you out with her, along with the dog and your sisters.”

  “Of course—” Miss Crosby began.

  She was stopped by a howl from Baruch.

  “Oh, Nannie, you did p’omise vat today Samson would be wiv us.”

  “Would be wiv us,” agreed Susanna, who had not heard the conversation, but was agreeing with Baruch on principle.

  Nannie looked despairingly at Miss Crosby.

  “Oh, that everlasting dog! If he was one of God’s angels, the children couldn’t make more fuss of him.”

  “Shall I take the twins, too?” Miss Crosby whispered.

  Nannie wanted time to have a good long talk with the dressmaker. Minnie was in her opinion a poor fool, but even she could hardly fail to keep Manasses and Maccabeus quiet if she had nothing else to do. “Now, you three,” she said, turning a severe eye on Sirach and the twins, “if Miss Crosby is so kind as to take you out, don’t let me hear you haven’t been good, or you know what’ll happen to you when you get home.”

  The party set out, all the children talking at once, none of them waiting for an answer. They sounded like a tree full of birds disturbed at nesting-time. Following Samson’s busy tail, they turned out of the village, and up a lane known as “Greenes.”

  About three weeks before the nursery party had gone up “Greenes.” In the middle of the lane they had encountered a dead and somewhat unpleasant rabbit. Baruch had turned very white at sight of it, had refused any tea when he reached home, and in the evening had run a slight temperature. He was quite all right the next morning, but since then had utterly refused to set a foot in “Greenes,” and Nannie, to avoid further trouble, had given in to him.

  No sooner did Samson turn into “Greenes,” and the rest of the party started to follow him, than Baruch tugged at Miss Crosby’s skirt.

  “Can’t go zere,” he said, pointing up the lane.

  “Can’t go zere,” agreed Susanna.

  “Why not?” asked Miss Crosby, puzzled.

  It chanced that she looked at Susanna as she
asked her question. Susanna, who had long ago forgotten about the rabbit, if she had ever noticed it, and had merely spoken as Baruch’s echo, for lack of any other reply, repeated:

  “Can’t go zere.”

  Miss Crosby decided the twins were behaving as the spoilt babies of the party. She held out a hand to each of them.

  “Come along, dears. You must be good.”

  Susanna at once put out a confiding little paw. But Baruch, scarlet in the face, refused to move.

  “Come on, Baruch.” Miss Crosby spoke firmly. He looked incredibly tiny, she thought, but stubborn as a mule. “Baruch!” She gripped him firmly by the hand, dragging him forward. “You are not to be such a naughty little boy; come on at once.”

  Step by step she dragged him up the lane, till they reached the spot where the rabbit had been. It was no longer there, but Baruch didn’t know this, for his eyes were tight shut, and he was only conscious that his inside had the going-round feeling it had before he was sick. He wasn’t sick; something far more mundane happened.

  “Really, Baruch!” Miss Crosby was exasperated. “You are a naughty little boy. Why couldn’t you have told me you wanted to go somewhere?”

  Baruch looked thoroughly ashamed. He would have burst into tears, had he not suddenly realised that he was standing just where the rabbit had been, and it wasn’t there any more.

  Nannie was furious when she heard what had occurred, bitterly ashamed that one of her children should have behaved so badly in front of “that governess.” But she was a just woman.

  “There it is,” she said. “He’s the funniest little boy. See something he doesn’t like, smell something a bit off, and he’s downright ill. I never knew a child like his lordship.”

  She would have liked to have slapped Baruch as soon as Miss Crosby’s back was turned, but she kept her temper.

  “No jam for you for tea! And I tell you this, young man, next time Miss Crosby offers to take you out, you don’t go; you stay at home with me.”

  “Den me stay wiv you too, Nannie,” said Susanna firmly.