Parson's Nine

by Noel Streatfeild

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Do you think, Miss Crosby, that mummy being away will count as fasting in Lent?”

  It was Shrove Tuesday. The matter of Lent-keeping had evidently been discussed privately by the children, for while Judith was speaking, Esther kept her eyes anxiously on Miss Crosby’s face.

  “But you don’t fast, do you?” Miss Crosby looked puzzled. “Fasting is not for people of your age.”

  “Well,” Judith explained, “daddy says he leaves it to us to do what we like, but he’s not s’posin’ we’ll like jam or cake or—”

  “Sweets nor nuffin’ nice,” Esther added mournfully.

  “So you see,” Judith continued, “we don’t never eat any ’cept on Sundays.”

  At this point Esther burst into tears.

  “I jus’ can’t bear it, to think there’s a whole forty days an’ forty nights fas’ in front of me.”

  Miss Crosby took the problem of Lent-keeping to Nannie.

  “Well, it’s this way, Miss Crosby. Mrs. Churston doesn’t hold with fasting for children, specially not so tiny as these. Nor she doesn’t hold with these strict Sundays they keep, but she won’t interfere with the Vicar on religious things. ’Tisn’t exactly that he wants them to fast, but he sort of thinks it will be a treat for them.”

  “Do you think that this year, as their mother is away, he’ll see that it’s a mistake to let them have depressing food? Plain bread-and-butter is depressing food for children.”

  “No harm in trying.”

  It was the first time Miss Crosby had sought an interview with David. She knocked at the study door.

  “Can I bother you a moment?”

  She explained her errand. She put it badly.

  “But, Miss Crosby, you’ve been misinformed. Nobody presses the children to give up anything in Lent; it’s I their own choice. In their childish way they are trying to put into practice the things they have been taught.”

  “No pressure of any sort is brought to bear on them?”

  “No, indeed, fasting must always be a matter of free will, or it’s useless. I will have a little talk with the children about it after tea.”

  At breakfast the next morning there was honey and strawberry jam. Miss Crosby pulled a dish towards her.

  “Have some honey, Judith?”

  “It’s Lent!” Judith exclaimed, looking shocked.

  “Have some honey if you want it, Judith. God doesn’t want an unwilling sacrifice.”

  “Thank you, Daddy, I wasn’t wantin’ any.”

  Miss Crosby was furious. What had their father said in his little talk to the children last night? Couldn’t he see the smug little hypocrites he was making of them? Judith’s self-satisfied “I wasn’t wanting any,” when she was really longing for some. She looked at the head of the table. David was making his breakfast off a cup of sugarless tea and a piece of dry bread. His face was shining with inward happiness. Fasting was to him a sublime opportunity. “Whom am I to judge?” thought Miss Crosby humbly.

  It was the same over Sabbath-keeping. Ever since she had been with them the children’s Sundays had been a thorn in her flesh. She herself was a normally religious woman. She believed in saying her prayers, and going to matins on Sundays, and attending Holy Communion once a month. But she considered that the children’s Sundays were enough to drive them out of churches for good. Surely, as soon as they were allowed to decide for themselves, it would be a miracle if they ever attended a service again. Already Judith had a letter from Esdras which said:

  “Sundays are nice at school church just once with lots of hims and not always a sermon Sundays are nicer at school than at home.”

  The Vicarage Sundays began on Saturday nights, when, after the children were in bed, Nannie and Miss Crosby put away in a cupboard all the weekday toys and books, and replaced them with others from what the children called “the Sunday cupboard.”

  “What he thinks is,” Nannie explained, giving a jerk of her head to indicate David in his study, “that it’s a treat for the children to have these things out. ’Tisn’t at all. Of course they won’t have their best things put away. So what lives in this Sunday cupboard is just rubbish. Often enough I’ve heard them may, ‘Oh, look, Nannie, this is all broken. Hadn’t it better go in the Sunday cupboard?’”

  Before breakfast on Sunday mornings all the children who could read learned the collect for the day. Immediately after breakfast they had to repeat it, and were then taught the Catechism till the elder children were taken to matins. Then a walk, middle-day dinner, and picture books from the Sunday cupboard to look at until the three o’clock children’s service. Then home, tea, hymns till bedtime.

  In private the children hated the day.

  “’Nother nasty ole Sunday.”

  But for David the myth continued that the whole day was something special, a kind of treat. Miss Crosby, who had an honest mind, was revolted. To her way of thinking, it was immoral. “All this pretence,” she would mutter to herself. Sometimes a guest would mention Sunday. David would look round at the children with a happy smile.

  “We love our Sundays, don’t we, darlings?”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  Miss Crosby writhed. Yet she knew David was sincere. He would have been broken-hearted if he had realised that his children were lying for his benefit. “It’s one of those things it’s my duty to have a good talk with Mrs. Churston about when she comes back,” she told herself.

  Catherine came home in Holy Week. So did Esdras and Tobit.

  “Almost it makes Holy Week nice,” said Judith contentedly.

  Catherine felt a different person. Her mind seemed to have been spring-cleaned, her soul stretched. Outwardly she had ceased to look a shabby country parson’s wife. She had become smart. Baruch, who loved pretty colours and soft materials, couldn’t stop stroking her.

  “P’itty Mummy, p’itty Mummy.”

  Esdras and Tobit had not changed at all, save that they possessed an amazing selection of slang expressions, also, until snubbed by Miss Crosby, a tendency to brag and swagger.

  Easter over, with its plethora of services and its egg-hunt for the children, they packed up and went to stay at Blexted Castle with David’s father. Miss Crosby, Nannie and Minnie went with them. It was a yearly affair, and to Nannie at least a time of great anxiety, for the Castle was fall of servants, and there was also Grand-nannie to contend with, who had been nurse to David and his brothers, and who now stayed on in the old nurseries in charge of the linen. Nannie and Grand-nannie were really good friends, but yearly, before they started, Nannie worked herself up into a perfect frenzy, lest the children’s clothes should fall below the expected standard, and Grand-nannie and “those maids” scoff. All the year she hoarded garments in preparation for the visit.

  “Whose smart little boots are those?” asked Miss Crosby, watching her pack.

  “Well, nobody’s, so to speak. They’re a little French pair that were sent three years ago to the jumble. I said to Mrs. Churston they were too good for a jumble; would she buy them for us? I knew they wouldn’t fit any of these children, too narrow, but every year I take them to the Castle, and each night I put them out to be cleaned, so those maids can see we’ve one good pair of boots at least.”

  “The children have very nice clothes,” Miss Crosby comforted.

  “They look all right. But you know how it is in these big families. What was smart when Esdras had it has got a bit shabby by the time it reaches Baruch. Same with the girls; what was a real nice little turnout on Judith, hangs all anyhow when it gets to Susanna. Besides, you know how it is in a nursery; there’s a lot of sharing. This, now.” She held up a fluffy blue dressing-gown. “I call it ‘Brotherly Love. Let brotherly love continue,’ you know. Of course it’s not the only dressing-gown we have, but it’s the only one I’ll have worn at the Castle! ‘What! Going
to the bathroom?’ I say. ‘Well, then, put on ‘Brotherly Love.’”

  To Catherine the visit was unrelieved boredom. Her mother-in-law had died when David was a baby. Since then Mrs. Pliss, the housekeeper, had run the house. No women visitors ever appeared, for David was the only one of the brothers who had married, and no female cousins, aunts or friends ever set foot in the house. Her father-in-law was gallant in an old-fashioned way in the mornings, and in a drunken way in the evenings. But he spent his day writing in his library, and considered that she should be quite contented with a piece of sewing in the drawing-room, unshrouded from its dustsheets for her benefit; with an occasional drive behind the slow old horses, and with meeting her male relatives three times a day at long, heavy meals. David, for whose benefit the visit was really arranged, was worried and miserable the whole time he was in the house. He loved the place, he loved every man and tree on it. Everywhere he went it was the same story: leaking roofs, broken fences, rotting timber. His brothers were shocking landlords, a byword in the countryside. No good speaking to his father, who left the estate to his sons, and buried himself in his writing. No good speaking to his brothers, who merely told him to “mind his own bloody business.” Sick at heart, there was nothing left to David but prayer. Great as was his Belief in the power of prayer, he longed for something more militant.

  The children loved staying with Grandfather. Everything was so different from home—from the funny little bedrooms where they slept to the housekeeper’s room where they ate their meals. As soon as they arrived, and had greeted Sims the butler—a firm friend, and one good any afternoon for a game of cricket—they careered upstairs to find Grand-nannie. But however fast they ran, David was before them. They found him kissing her, and listening humbly while she told him he was looking thin, and while he was in the house he was to come up three times a day.

  “Just for a spoonful of my tonic. I never have got you through a winter without it.”

  Then David would feel in his pockets, and after a hunt produce a little parcel. Handkerchiefs or a needle case—he always chose something himself. Grand-nannie would fumble with the paper wrapping, and say admiringly as she opened it:

  “You always were the boy for knowing just what I wanted.”

  The children, waiting to catch Grand-nannie’s eye, felt jealous. It was incredible that Daddy had ever been little, needing a nannie, but anyway, now he was grown up, it was silly. Nannies were for children.

  This year they had two new friends to present, so they were doubly impatient. Grand-nannie smiled at Miss Crosby.

  “Do you needle? You and I must have some long talks while we’re needling.”

  They lifted Samson on to her knee. All the children told her at once how they came by him, and why they had christened him Samson. Grand-nannie patted him. He licked her face. She nodded.

  “I always make friends with dogs. I don’t know anything about them, but I just treat them as human bein’s, and I find it answers all right.”

  “Had Daddy a dog when he was little?” asked Judith.

  “No, not your father. Your uncles had a lot. Not for pleasure exactly, workin’ dogs they were, trainin’ for the shooting and that. Your father had a kitten; ‘Slyboots’ he called it. He set wonderful store by that kitten. I remember one winter it took sick. I nursed it like it was one of my boys, here in a basket, in this very room. Many a night I thought it had slipped through my fingers, but it didn’t; it turned the corner at last, but even then it was three weeks before I got that cat on its feet again.”

  Meals in the housekeeper’s room were always fun. They began staidly while Sims was in the room. He came in to carve and to eat the first course with them. But when the pudding arrived he received his helping, and took it away to eat it in the servants’ hall. Sims playing cricket with the children was one person, Sims at meals was another. The conversation was formal and dreadfully dull, the children thought.

  “I hear, Mr. Sims, they are making changes up at the Hall.”

  “I believe that is so, Mrs. Pliss.”

  “They say Sir Charles is slippin’ away, Mr. Sims.”

  “Indeed, Mrs. Pliss.”

  “It’s to be hoped he lingers till the autumn. With all the mournin’ they’ve worn in that house, they don’t want to get back into their blacks, just as they’ve taken to their greys.”

  “No, indeed, Mrs. Pliss.”

  But directly Sims’ back was turned, Mrs. Pliss was a different woman.

  “Now what have you rapscallions been doing this morning?” Then in an aside to Miss Crosby, “I have to make a little refined conversation with Mr. Sims when he is in the room. It puts him at his ease, and makes him forget he is mixing with his superiors.”

  The children only saw their grandfather twice a day. Every morning, as soon as they had finished breakfast, they formed in a line behind Esdras, and together with Samson and the household dogs, went to the dining-room. There each child in turn leaned on the high carved arms of Grandfather’s chair, and received a kiss, and a titbit off his fork. The dogs got a pat and a titbit. In the evening the procession was formed again, this time without the dogs. They went to the library, and there found Grandfather in a shiny leather armchair, drinking whisky. Once more they were kissed. This time their titbit was a crystallized violet.

  This year Grandfather decided that as neither of his elder sons looked like marrying, he should consider Esdras his heir. Having reached this decision, he ordered that Esdras should come down to dinner. “Must get to know the boy.”

  The other children were envious when they heard of his coming dignity.

  “My goodness!” said Judith. “Dinner downstairs! To think that you should want such a one. Will you stay up an’ drink that port what the uncles an’ Gran’father drinks?”

  “If you do, bags you don’t get drunk,” Tobit observed. “I heard Sims tell Roberts that the uncles can’t sit on their chairs, an’ Daddy sits among them never touchin’ a drop, an’ lookin’ like a blessed saint.”

  “I shall see how I like it,” said Esdras loftily. “If you read your Bible you’d know it’s ‘Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man,’ and, anyway, I expect I’ll prefer to be a blessed saint like Daddy.”

  From his bed Tobit watched Esdras get into his Etons, saw Nannie fuss round him, and marked his departure with an envious sigh. Half an hour later Esdras was back, red in the face, and very cross.

  “What you done?” asked Tobit.

  No answer.

  “You can’t have eaten dinner by now; it takes hours an’ hours.”

  No answer.

  “I expect you ate too fast, and choked, and was sent up for a feeder.”

  “I wasn’t. And I’ll punch your head if you say I was.” Esdras kicked off his shoes. “As a matter of fact, I don’t know what the row was. Grandfather said he didn’t know what the world was coming to, because one of the men what works on the farm came up here and made Grandfather see him, because he wants his house mended. And Daddy started to tell Grandfather that the cottages do need mending, when the uncles began shouting at him. So Daddy said: ‘We’ll discuss it later, Father.’ So when they were all quiet, I said: ‘Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth’, which I thought was a very good quotation, because they are supposed to have their cottages mended as part of their wages; Daddy told me so. And wages is the same as hire. But Grandfather got up, turned all red and blue, and shouted at me: ‘Go to bed, sir,’ just like I was a dog.”

  “Why?” asked Tobit. “What had you done?”

  “I don’t know. Mummy looked all frightened and said, ‘Run along, darling.’ And Sims looked awful queer and had the door waiting open for me.”

  Tobit considered the story. Then he gave it up, and rolled over prepared for sleep.

  “Funny,” he said, �
�grown-ups are.”

  The cloud of last night still hung over the breakfast table when the children trooped in the next morning. Baruch, who had taken his titbit daily with apparent pleasure, chose this morning to spit it out. His grandfather glared at him.

  “What’s this, sir? Spitting out good food? I won’t have it! I won’t have it!”

  Baruch, looking very small and frightened, stood on tiptoe to see over the arm of the chair. He said nothing.

  Catherine looked at him as sternly as she could.

  “Darling, why did you spit out the piece of kidney kind Grandfather gave you?”

  “Didn’t like fork out of his mouf.”

  Later in the day, when the atmosphere had cleared a little, Catherine sought out Miss Crosby, to discuss the situation.

  “Well, both Esdras and Baruch are in dire disgrace with their grandfather. Esdras is not to come down to dinner any more. I wish Baruch wasn’t to come in after breakfast; I know he’ll do the same thing again; he’s only a baby, you can’t reason with him.”

  The children ran by, playing “Follow-My-Leader,” the twins panting in the rear. Esdras, seeing his mother watching, led the way up a ladder to a ledge cut halfway up a hayrick; from there with a whoop he jumped to the ground. He was followed by Tobit, but the two girls refused.

  “We are shorter than you, so we’ve further to jump,” Judith explained.

  Sirach also stopped playing, and rolled on the ground with Samson. Nobody was attending to the twins. Suddenly Catherine, to her horror, saw Baruch at the top of the ladder, and Susanna halfway up.

  “Darlings, come down,” she exclaimed, putting her arm round Susanna.

  But before she could reach Baruch, he had jumped. He fell over, but got up unhurt. Both Catherine and Miss Crosby ran to him.

  “Have you hurt yourself?”

  “It was much too big a jump for a little boy.”

  “Wasn’t big,” said Baruch, and wriggled away.

  “What a funny little boy he is,” sighed Catherine.