The Lark (Nesbit)/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
You cannot quarrel comfortably in the street, nor in the Tube, but a third-class railway carriage, if you have it to yourselves, offers every facility for recriminations.
Jane replied with chill venom to Lucilla's intense reproaches and assured her that she had only herself to thank.
"It is entirely owing to you," she said several times, "that this youthful jail-bird is coming to peck at our seed-cake. I should only have written to him, as I said. But I was obliged to make up for your—forgive me if I say rudeness."
"I believe you go out of your mind sometimes," Lucilla repeated more than once; "the things you do—the things you say!"
Jane replied.
Lucilla retorted.
And so on. You know the sort of thing?
But between London Bridge and New Cross, Jane suddenly laughed.
"Let's stop," she said. "I'm sorry I lost my temper. Let's kiss and be friends."
"And now you can laugh!" Lucilla complained.
"I can't help it. You know I can't help it. I never could keep on quarrelling—on and on, I mean. My temper's all you say it is, but it doesn't last, and then suddenly I can't help seeing how silly it all is, and then I laugh and say I'm sorry."
"You go on being hateful just as long as you like," said Lucilla hotly, "and when you're tired of it you expect the other person to be tired of it at exactly the same minute, and to kiss and be friends the moment you say so, just as if nothing had happened."
"I know I do! And it's not fair! But she is going to forgive me and kiss and be friends all the same, isn't she? I am a little beast, Luce."
"Don't be so superior. You go into these rages and then you make a merit of apologising for them. You positively wallow and revel in apologies."
"I know," said Jane again. "It's the very least I can do. It's very aggravating for you, but it's the only really satisfying thing for me. If you weren't an angel, Luce, you'd never stand me for a day."
"That's right," said Lucilla, "now try flattery!"
"No—but look here!" said Jane earnestly. "Do let's make it up. Because we've got such lots to talk over. And really, it is rather awful about that boy coming on Sunday to tea. I didn't at all mean to ask him, but I lost my temper and I lost my head—no, I'm not wallowing—and I simply couldn't stop myself. I wish I hadn't."
"And whatever made you ask him to Cedar Court?"
"I thought it seemed less intimate. I do wish I hadn't."
"Couldn't we get out of it? Write and put him off?"
"We haven't his address. No, events must take their course. We needn't have him for a gardener. But perhaps we really can help him. Perhaps he'll tell us more about himself. Do you remember, Lucy, the first day we went to Cedar Court—not the dark day, but when we first saw the garden, and you said what have we done to deserve this? Perhaps we shall deserve it a little bit if we help the wretched Dix."
"If we're going in for philanthopy," Lucilla said, "I think it would be better to begin with ugly old women—not with handsome young men."
"So you did think him handsome?"
"I thought he had a"
"Not a nice, kind face! No"
"No. I was going to say an almost classic profile. It's very romantic and all that to put out helping hands to people with classic profiles and lazy blue eyes, but"
"But you think it's more meritorious to help old washer-women who squint? Well, if it had been a squinting washer-woman I'd exchanged yells with, and she'd told me she was looking for work, I do think I should have felt inclined to send the washing to her. It isn't my fault that the waxwork turned into a live, classic profile. Oh, Luce, what a shock it was! I think we ought to be thankful it wasn't worse. Suppose one of the murderers had come alive!"
••••••
It was next morning at breakfast that Jane said: "I have thought it all over, and I have done with dissipation and the life of pleasure."
"Dear me!" said Lucilla across the tea-pot.
"Yes, it's—what was it old Gravy used to call it?—'morally disintegrating.' Look at us. We spend week after week in humble toil—not a breath of dissension; my will's your pleasure, and your pleasure's my law. We might have been doves or seraphs or dormice. That's the influence of honest labour, my child. Then we go out gallivanting—become mere pleasure-seekers—and at once we fly at each other's throats like sharks or alligators. Influence of dissipation."
"That wasn't dissipation; it was the young man."
"It always is, I believe," Jane admitted; "but then, dissipation so often turns out to be the young man—at least, in books he is never quite out of it. The scenes of dazzling worldliness would be incomplete without him. Come on, let's get down to the shop."
"We shall probably find a young man there too," said Lucilla dryly.
"Oh, well—he doesn't count," Jane said. "He's all on the side of honest toil. Besides, he's got an uncle: a rich uncle, If the miserable Dix had had an uncle he might be in a very different position to-day. Come on, I say. Down with dissipation! Long live the shop!"
The shop was indeed becoming very engrossing. As more and more flowers budded and bloomed in the lovely, neglected garden of Cedar Court, business became more and more brisk, and the bag of money that had to be carried home nightly was heavier and heavier.
The peonies were out now—great balls of splendid crimson—and the white balls of the gueldre rose, sheaves of violet and purple flags, the wide graceful arches of Solomon's seal, armfuls of lilac sweet as Spring herself, tall tulips rosy and white and gold, the yellow stars of the leopard's bane—oxslips, cowslips, and always forget-me-nots; the garden room was a bower of beauty, and behind the changing glory of the spring flowers the old-panelled walls were changing bit by bit—a little at a time they were gradually regaining their ancient beauty of grey oak, as the meretricious gas-green veil was slowly scraped away. By Jane and Lucilla? Well, not altogether.
Mr. Simmons's faith in his old boss had not been wholly justified. Science has not yet found a solvent which will remove paint instantaneously without injuring the surface of the wood below. There is no royal road to the hidden oak, and even the most accomplished chemist will be driven to fall back on plain old-fashioned scrubbing and careful scraping. Scrubbing and scraping is hard work for ladies. Mr. John Rochester liked hard work; he said so, more than once.
Do not suppose that he was always in the garden room during shop hours. Far from it. Many a scrub and scrape did he administer in the late evenings when he whistled at his lonely work and enjoyed the solitude as your real worker does enjoy it. Many a morning's sun from a sky flushed with rose and gold peeped through the branches of the cedars and lighted Mr. Rochester at his task. Still, there were times when his scrubbings and scrapings coincided with the selling of the flowers, and while the two girls arranged their beautiful stock-in-trade, made and sold their bouquets, and struggled with their day-book and their cash, he honourably kept himself to himself and scraped away in the background exactly like a real workman. If you think that two ladies ought not to have allowed a comparative stranger (Mr. Dix was now the positive one) to do so much for them, I can only remind you that it is difficult to repel a determined assistant—unless you wish to quarrel with it; also that Mr. John Rochester, as the nephew of their landlord, had a certain natural footing, as it were, in Cedar Court; further, that the presence of one to whom sums had no terrors was really a boon to the business, that they really did want to get rid of the gas-green paint, and that soda did take the skin off their hands. But why seek to labour the point? The girls often gave each other dozens of good reasons why it was so right and natural for Mr. Rochester to be so often in the garden room—any one of which would be sufficient to convince any young person. Anyhow, there he very often was.
As the week matured, and still more as it declined, the imminent visit of Mr. Dix loomed larger and larger and less and less desirable in the eyes of his prospective hostesses. Jane, in particular, found herself on Saturday contemplating with positive dismay this terrible tea-party. She hesitated to express her sentiments to Lucilla—she had no desire to revive the discussion that had raged on the train coming home last Monday.
That Saturday was a very special day, for on it, at last, the traces of the gas-green paint vanished, and the garden room was again as it had once been—soft-coloured wood from floor to ceiling. Mr. Rochester had brought most interesting cakes to celebrate the completion of the great work. It was as they ate these companionably, admiring the oak-panelling and now and then breaking off to attend to customers, that Jane yielded to an unexplained impulse, and said suddenly:
"We're going to have tea here to-morrow as well. A Mr. Dix is coming. Won't you come too?"
"It would be very nice," Lucilla put in before he could answer, "but as Mr. Dix is coming to talk about business, I am afraid Mr. Rochester would find it rather dull."
On which more than hint Mr. Rochester acted instantly, and lied obligingly about an unfortunate engagement with an old friend to play tennis.
"At Wimbledon," he added, remembering just in time how he had told the girls he had no friends at Leabridge.
"You're lucky," said Jane, telling herself that she admired his readiness to be snubbed. "I wish we could get tennis. Yes, I know there's a local club, but we mustn't go making acquaintances. They only eat up your time."
"There's a tennis-lawn here, you know,"said Mr. Rochester. "We could get it in order again, but you'd want a man with a scythe before you could put the mowing-machine over it. By the way, this garden does want a gardener—or gardeners."
Lucilla trembled, but Jane let the opening pass.
"Yes, it does," she said smoothly. "We shall have to think about it, But I've never seen any tennis-lawn. Whereabouts is it?"
"Behind the stables."
"But we've never seen any stables!" said Lucilla.
"Beyond the cottages."
"But there aren't any cottages!"
"Ladies, ladies," said Mr. Rochester, "you haven't half explored your domain. Did you never open the big double door in the garden wall?"
"It's locked."
"Where did you think it led?"
"To the road, I suppose. We never thought about it. Oh, let's go and explore now this minute."
"You can't leave the shop," Lucilla reminded her.
"Besides, the key isn't here; but I'll bring it to-morrow—I mean on Monday."
"Could you perhaps bring it to-morrow," suggested Lucilla, "after you get back from—Wimbledon?"
"About seven? Certainly."
So it was settled.
••••••
And now it was Sunday afternoon. The garden room, all traces of the shop removed, showed itself as a charming parlour elegantly prepared for the reception of the felonious Dix.
One of Aunt Lucy's prettiest tea-cloths embroidered in soft blues and pinks lay between Aunt Lucy's Sheraton tea-tray and the round table. Aunt Lucy's silver tea-service littered upon it among the blue and white of the Chinese cups and saucers. There were flowers, in studied moderation: a few rosy tulips, half a dozen flags among Solomon's seal, and some purple lilac—but you cannot be moderate with lilac.
Both girls were a little endimanchées: when you wear opaque pinafores all the week you desire on Sundays the delicate silky-diaphanous.
It was five o'clock, and the kettle had boiled on the spirit-lamp and had been suppressed because the visitor had not arrived, and it was no use making tea yet. There had been rain in the morning, and every leaf and bud of the garden was newly washed and sparkling in the sun.
Lucilla was conscious of a sudden relenting.
"Do you know," she said, "I'm almost glad you did ask him. Think what it will be to him to see a garden like this after prison."
"Or even after London," said Jane. "Hush, here he is!"
But it was not Mr. Dix. It was a much older man. He came in at the open door, and he did not say, "How do you do?" or "How are you?" or "Good afternoon," or any of the things that Mr. Dix might have been expected to say. He looked at the flowers, looked at the tea-table, and he looked at the walls—and then he said in a voice (as Jane remarked later) exactly like the voice of the biggest of the three bears in the story:
"Who's been messing about with the panelling?"
And he had every right to ask, for he was their landlord, Mr. James Rochester, unexpectedly returned from Spain. And at any moment the footstep of the prison bird Dix might sound on the gravel.
"Who did this?" repeated Mr. James Rochester, more like the bear than ever.