The Lark (Nesbit)/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII
"You'll like to see the stables and all that?" said Mr. John Rochester. And they agreed, but without eagerness. Stables and cottages, once so gladly welcomed, now seemed only additional responsibilities. It was not till they had passed through the double gate in the wall—the gate which they had believed to open on to the road—and seen the stable-yard surrounded by stables and outbuildings, and the two cottages beyond—quite pretty cottages standing in neglected gardens—that Jane was roused to a faint enthusiasm.
"I do like this," she said; "look how lovely the May-bushes are, and that single rose over the door just coming out, and the vine all over the side! And the grass and the interesting little weeds coming up among the cobble-stones in the stable-yard! Do you think there's any furniture in the cottages, Mr. Rochester?"
There was; and it was rather attractive furniture—plain deal and elm in the kitchen and mahogany in the best parlour—not the gimcrack plush and machine-carved walnut made-to-sell that has ousted the old strong, solid wood and horse-hair cloth.
"Made to last, you see," Mr. Rochester exerted himself to point out; "all fitted together like Chinese puzzles—no nails, only wooden pegs and screws."
"How is it," Lucilla wondered, also exerting herself to converse, "that old furniture is so nice and new furniture's so nasty."
"I suppose because the new furniture is made to sell. Designs that can be made by the thousand, held together with glue and tacks. If the buyers don't look out when they're buying, so much the worse for them. The old furniture was made to last and it was bought to keep—to be handed down from father to son and mother to daughter."
"How nice!" said Lucilla, detained by politeness while Jane explored shelves and chiffoniers. "That's what I think is so jolly about Hope Cottage—my aunt having lived there when she was young and her people before her."
"Yes," said Mr. Rochester, one eye on Jane and one on the conversation. "In the old days young couples set up house with what could be spared from the furniture at home with a few new pieces made for them. In those days, you know, a man ordered his furniture to measure as he orders his coat now—chose the wood, the shape, the size, the fittings, the handles, the drawers and the shelves, and so on. Now the young people go to Tottenham Court Road and order home a houseful—or a flatful—of gimcrack rubbish, sticky with varnish, with imitation brass, imitation inlay, and machine-carving. There'll be none of it left to leave to their children—that's one comfort. It'll all break up before its owners do, even. But I go maundering on. Forgive me. It's a subject I feel rather strongly about."
"Oh, so do I," said Lucilla kindly. But he said no more; only, asking leave to light a cigarette, leaned out of the window among the framing vines and smoked in silence, broken after a few minutes by Lucilla's ingenuous, "I wasn't bored about the furniture, Mr. Rochester, I liked it, really!" And even then he said no more, only smiled at her, and went on smoking.
Jane meanwhile ran upstairs and down, peered into cupboards and up chimneys, with an alertness which she had not shown in Cedar Court. "I believe you'd rather have this place than Cedar Court," said Rochester at last, when he and Lucilla had followed Jane to the wash-house.
"Not at all," said Jane cheerfully, replacing the lid on the copper. "I was only thinking it would be the very thing for Mr. Dix."
"Oh!" said Rochester, stiffening. "You lodge your gardener then?"
"We can now, you see," Jane explained. "That's the best of it. Did you notice whether there were any blankets, Lucy?"
Lucy hadn't, and Jane flitted out up the narrow stairs to settle this serious question.
Lucilla and Rochester stood outside the door under the climbing cherry-coloured rose, waiting for her. Lucilla noted that his brow was thunderous, his lips closely set.
"I am afraid," she thought to him, "that you are a very bad-tempered man. I don't care—I'll rub it in, then."
"I do hope you'll like Mr. Dix," she said, "He seems awfully nice. So kind and—and sunny."
"Sweet fellow," said Mr. Rochester.
"And I don't think really it was so very rash of Jane to insist on having him for a gardener. Do you?"
"I've no means of judging," he said, still black as thunder. And then Jane joined them with the information that there were plenty of blankets but they seemed to be rather damp.
"It would never do for Mr. Dix to take cold," said Rochester politely. "Can I light a fire and fill hot-water bottles or anything?"
Jane looked at him curiously.
"No, thank you," she said. "Mr. Dix isn't at all helpless. I think he'll manage here splendidly. Thank you so much for showing us everything, I do like this cottage—I think it's perfectly ducky."
"I'm glad there's something you like," he said; and again she looked curiously at him.
"Oh, but I love it all! It's splendid!" she said. "It's so splendid that I feel knocked all of a heap—don't you, Lucy?"
"Emptied out of a sack," said Lucilla, who had just finished reading Sandra Belloni.
"And now I think we'd better show Mr. Dix his house and then get home. No, we needn't unlock the garden room again—we have everything."
"Not everything," said Rochester. "Here are the keys of Cedar Court."
Jane took the mass of jingling iron in both hands. "What a lot of them!" she said. "Which is the key of the Bluebeard chamber? I'm sure there must be one."
"I'm sure there isn't," said Lucilla.
"Miss Quested's quite right. There's always a Bluebeard chamber," said Rochester; "only you never know which it is—and you never know which is the key."
"Do you mean really? Or are you being mystical and like Mæterlinck?"
"I don't think so. I can't believe somehow that Mæterlinck ever really enjoys a joke. Now I do—and it seems to me that my uncle has made the joke of his life in going off to a monastery in Thibet, where Tm sure they don't want him, and leaving you saddled with a large, ugly house that I'm sure you don't want."
"Oh, but we do!" said both girls.
"Thank you for them kind words, lady," said Rochester, and Lucilla noted approvingly that he really did seem to be making an effort to put the black dog up the chimney. "But it is a joke, isn't it? And I appreciate it so much that I should like to point out that my uncle isn't the Cham of Tartary."
"I suppose not—no," said Jane, who was wondering about several things.
"No, nor is he a Median or a Persian monarch. I mean that what he says doesn't necessarily have to be so. He thought you'd love to have Cedar Court. But if you don't want it—why, you've only to say so, and it's 'as you were' for all of us."
"For all of us? Do you mean . . .?" Jane stopped.
"She means, are you to be a sort of gentlemanly duenna, to see that we do exactly what you think Uncle James would like?" Lucilla put in.
"Lucilla," said Jane, "I didn't mean that in the least. I meant . . . Oh, it doesn't matter," she ended, finding it unexpectedly difficult to say what she did mean. "But I do want to understand"
"Forgive me," said Rochester, "for interrupting you, but don't you think that what you really want—what we all want—is tea?"
"I'm sure Mr. Dix must want his," said Jane.
"You were saying," said Rochester, "before we began that tiring tramp through those disheartening rooms, you were saying that this was the birthday of your life. Will you boil the kettle?—and I will nip up on my bike and get a birthday cake, and let's have a birthday party. It needn't commit you to taking over Cedar Court if you don't want to. May I?"
"Oh, please do!" said Jane, with sudden heart-warming cordiality—"and perhaps when you come back we shall know whether we're dreaming or not"; and as he disappeared down the drive Lucilla said: "You'd have thought he'd have had the sense to tell us about the house and go. It would have been quite different if you and I had explored it alone. Why couldn't he see that?"
"Oh, people are like that," said Jane, fanning herself with a chestnut leaf; "if they bring you a box of chocolates they must stay to see you eat them. I daresay it's natural after all," she added, with an air of a woman of the world. "We mustn't be too hard on him."
••••••
"I believe," said Mr. Dix, stretching himself on the rough, newly-mown lawn, "that heaven will be exactly like this. Green leaves and grass—sun and shade. And tea. And cake. And ices."
For there had been ices, brought by Mr. Rochester in a basin in a cloth in a basket—ices not wholly melted before they could be eaten.
And strawberries," said Lucilla, finishing hers.
"And agreeable conversation and delightful company," said Jane. "I felt someone ought to say that, and why not me?"
"Why not indeed?" said Mr. Rochester.
They were all feeling the better for their tea.
"I think," said Lucilla didactically, "we ought to be most frightfully happy."
"It's not a moral obligation," said Mr. Dix, "for me, at least. It's a ravishing and irresistible compulsion. When I look at the cedars and the lawns and the fountains and think of Baker Street"
"We ought to get that fountain playing again," said Rochester, all the engineer in him leaping to life at the words; "but why Baker Street?"
"That is the name of the Inferno from which I was restored, no longer ago than yesterday, to the world where roses are red and leaves are green. Only those who have known Baker Street can see how green leaves are and feel the full colour of roses."
"I suppose you don't play tennis, Mr. Dix?" Mr. Rochester asked abruptly.
"I didn't in Baker Street, of course," Mr. Dix answered serenely, "but in other spheres . . . You do, of course?"
"A little," said Rochester, who rather prided himself on his game.
"Oh, Mr. Dix," said Lucilla, "why weren't you here a week ago? Then you'd have mown the tennis-lawn and we could have played this evening."
"I'll do it to-morrow," he said eagerly, "but it won't be much good for a week or two, I'm afraid. Still, we could knock the balls about, couldn't we? Where is the court—couldn't we go and look at it now?"
The tennis-courts had a walled space to themselves where once had been a Dutch garden, but in the far-away seventies, when people began to play lawn-tennis, young James Rochester had coaxed his father to lay down these courts—the high walls still trellised with peach and plum and pear made nets needless. It was a beautiful and most unusual arena for the great game.
Mr. Dix examined the turf and pronounced it not to be nearly so bad as he had feared; the standpipe at the corner excited his liveliest commendation.
"We ought to be able to amuse ourselves quite well in a day or two, and get a fairly decent game by next week," he said. "What a glorious place this is! I wouldn't have believed that anything so perfect could be—within a walk of Baker Street."
Lucilla and Jane had fallen back and were talking earnestly.
"Bother Baker Street!" said Mr. Rochester, but he said it to himself. Aloud he said, "Rather a long walk, isn't it?"
"It was," said Mr. Dix—"a very long walk indeed. I lost my way twice, which made it longer. And I couldn't be sure that I hadn't lost everything else as well, which made it longer still. You see," he explained, before Mr. Rochester had time to more than half feel that he had been snubbed, and that he rather deserved it, "you see, I was walking down to interview Miss Quested and Miss Craye about the situation of gardener, and it would have been rather terrible to lose that chance, wouldn't it? I've been out of work for months."
The two men were walking side by side.
"Gardening's your special work then?"
"It's my trade now. It wasn't before the war. But my people had a garden. I know all about it right enough."
Now this pleased Mr. Rochester, because it seemed to admit that he had some claim to have explanations offered to him, and he said:
"I've been at loose ends myself since the war."
"Ah, yes," said Mr. Dix, "but you've got something to tie your loose ends to. I've been absolutely up against it. Nothing but unemployment allowance."
"Now why," Mr. Rochester wondered, "does he tell me this?"
"My people are in New Zealand," Dix went on. "I've had rather a stiff time, in a small way, you know. However, that's all right. And I say . . ." he hesitated. "You're probably worrying yourself, and thinking that I'm a waster, and that your friends have been very unwise in taking a gardener out of the streets like this without even asking for a recommendation, or a character, or whatever you call it. And, if you're feeling that, it's no doubt making you feel uncomfortable. You needn't be uncomfortable. That's what I want to say. I'm all right, see? I'm not a waster. These ladies haven't done a foolish thing in engaging me: they've got a gardener now, that's one thing—and you see how the garden wants one. And I shall make this garden pay. See?"
"I see," said Rochester. "Thank you for explaining."
"There's another thing: I know they'd never tell you, but I want to tell you that these ladies have behaved to me like . . . like . . . well, it was the most perfect thing I've ever seen, and I want you to know it, and to know that I know it, And it's a thing I can never forget or think differently about. Feel more comfortable about it all now?"
"Well, yes;" said Rochester laughing. "I think I do. Miss Quested and Miss Craye are perfectly fearless, perfectly unconventional. They are as brave and as innocent as angels. A man can't help feeling . . ."
" . . . Feeling inclined to surround them with barbed wire, but you can't do it. You could never keep them in a cage. They'd break down the bars to get at anyone who needed help, and give it."
"I believe they would," said Rochester, looking at Mr. Dix's classic profile with less repulsion than he had yet felt.
But then Jane rattled the keys and called to Mr. Dix, and as he turned back towards her Lucilla came forward and met Mr. Rochester, and said softly and confidentially:
"I say, do you mind just coming round the garden with me while Jane shows Mr. Dix his little house? We thought he wouldn't like it perhaps if we told him before you that he's to have it. You see, he's awfully poor, as well as being so nice, and one doesn't want to rub it in and hurt his feelings."
"You needn't have been afraid," said Rochester grimly. "He's just told me that you picked him out of the gutter."
"Did he say that?"
"Not exactly, but he's not ashamed of being penniless and homeless."
"No, he isn't ashamed of anything. He hasn't any Bluebeard chambers. That's what's so fine about him, isn't it? And isn't he awfully good-looking?" Lucilla could not refrain from allowing herself this little malicious pleasure.
"A perfect Adonis," said Mr. Rochester. And you cannot wonder that he liked Mr. Dix less than he had done five minutes before.