Algernon Blackwood (15 page)

The servant-girl at once brought in his plate of soup, and he tucked
the napkin beneath his chin and began to eat. From twelve to two the
post was closed; his recreation time was precious, and no minute must
be lost. After dinner he took his coat off and did the heavy work of
the garden, under the merciless oversight of the Widow Jequier, his
sister-in-law, the cash-box ever by his side. He chatted with his tame
corbeau
, but he never smiled. In the winter he did fretwork. On the
stroke of two he went downstairs again and disappeared into the
cramped and stuffy bureau, whose window on the street was framed by
the hanging wistaria blossoms; and at eight o'clock his day of labour
ended. He carried the cash-box up to bed at 8.15. At 8.30 his wife
followed him. From nine to five he slept.

Alone of all the little household the Widow Jequier scorned routine.
She came and went with the uncertainty of wind. Her entrances and
exits, too, were like the wind. With a scattering rush she scurried
through the years—noisy, ineffective, yet somewhere fine. Her brother
had finished his plate of soup, wiped his black moustaches
elaborately, and turned his head towards the kitchen door with the
solemn statement 'Je n'ai pas de viande,' when she descended upon the
scene like a shrill-voiced little tempest.

'Bonjour Mesdames, bonjour Mademoiselle, bonjour, bonjour,' she bowed
and smiled, washing her hands in the air; 'et comment allez-vous ce
matin?' as the little band of hungry governesses rose with one accord
and moved to take their places. Some smiled in answer; others merely
bowed. She made enemies as well as friends, the Widow Jequier. With
only one of them she shook hands warmly-the one whose payments were
long overdue. But Madame Jequier never asked for her money; she knew
the old body's tiny income; she would pay her when she could. Only
last week she had sent her food and clothing under the guise of a
belated little Easter present. Her heart was bigger than her body.

'La famille Anglaise n'est pas encore ici,' announced the Postmaster
as though it were a funeral to come. He did not even look up. His
protests passed ever unobserved.

'But I hear them coming,' said a governess, swallowing her soup with a
sound of many waters. And, true enough, they came. There was a thunder
on the stairs, the door into the hall flew open, voices and laughter
filled the place, and Jimbo and Monkey raced in to take their places,
breathless, rosy, voluble, and very hungry. Jane Anne followed
sedately, bowing to every one in turn. She had a little sentence for
all who cared for one. Smiles appeared on every face. Mother, like a
frigate coming to anchor with a favourable wind, sailed into her
chair; and behind her stumbled Daddy, looking absent-minded and pre-
occupied. Money was uncommonly scarce just then—the usual Bourcelles
complaint.

Conversation in many tongues, unmusically high-pitched, then at once
broke loose, led ever by
la patronne
at the head of the table. The
big dishes of meat and vegetables were handed round; plates were piled
and smothered; knives and forks were laid between mouthfuls upon
plate-edges, forming a kind of frieze all round the cloth; the gossip
of the village was retailed with harmless gusto.
Dejeuner
at Les
Glycines was in full swing. When the apples and oranges came round,
most of the governesses took two apiece, slipping one or other into
little black velvet bags they carried on their laps below the table.

Some, it was whispered, put bread there too to keep them company. But
this was probably a libel. Madame Jequier, at any rate, never saw it
done. She looked the other way. 'We all must live,' was her invariable
answer to such foolish stories. 'One cannot sleep if one's supper is
too light.' Like her body, her soul was a bit untidy—careless, that
is, with loose ends. Who would have guessed, for instance, the anxiety
that just now gnawed her very entrails? She was a mixture of shameless
egotism, and of burning zeal for others. There was a touch of grandeur
in her.

At the end of the table, just where the ivy leaves dropped rather low
from their trailing journey across the ceiling, sat Miss Waghorn, her
vigorous old face wrapped, apparently, in many apple skins. She was
well past seventy, thin, erect, and active, with restless eyes, and
hooked nose, the poor old hands knotted with rheumatism, yet the voice
somehow retaining the energy of forty. Her manners were charming and
old-fashioned, and she came of Quaker stock. Seven years before she
arrived at the Pension for the summer, and had forgotten to leave. For
she forgot most things within ten minutes of their happening. Her
memory was gone; she remembered a face, as most other things as well,
about twenty minutes; introductions had to be repeated every day, and
sometimes at supper she would say with her gentle smile, 'We haven't
met before, I think,' to some one she had held daily intercourse with
for many months. 'I was born in '37,' she loved to add, 'the year of
Queen Victoria's accession'; and five minutes later you might hear her
ask, 'Now, guess how old I am; I don't mind a bit.' She was as proud
of her load of years as an old gentleman of his thick hair. 'Say
exactly what you think. And don't guess too low, mind.' Her numerous
stories were self-repeaters.

Miss Waghorn's memory was a source of worry and anxiety to all except
the children, who mercilessly teased her. She loved the teasing,
though but half aware of it. It was their evil game to extract as many
of her familiar stories as possible, one after another. They knew all
the clues. There was the Cornishman—she came from Cornwall—who had
seen a fairy; his adventure never failed to thrill them, though she
used the same words every time and they knew precisely what was
coming. She was particularly strong on family reminiscences:—her
father was bald at thirty, her brother's beard was so long that he
tied it round his neck when playing cricket; her sister 'had the
shortest arms you ever saw.' Always of youth she spoke; it was
pathetic, so determined was she to be young at seventy. Her family
seemed distinguished in this matter of extremes.

But the superiority of Cornish over Devonshire cream was her
piece
de resistance
. Monkey need merely whisper—Miss Waghorn's acuteness
of hearing was positively uncanny—'Devonshire cream is what
I
like,' to produce a spurt of explanation and defence that lasted a
good ten minutes and must be listened to until the bitter end.

Jimbo would gravely inquire in a pause—of a stranger, if possible, if
not, of the table in general—

'Have you ever seen a fairy?'

'No, but I've eaten Cornish cream—it's poison, you know,' Monkey
would reply. And up would shoot the keen old face, preened for the
fray.

'We haven't been introduced, I think'—forgetting the formal
introduction of ten minutes ago—'but I overheard, if you'll forgive
my interrupting, and I can tell you all about Cornish cream. I was
born in '37'—with her eager smile—'and for years it was on our
table. I have made quantities of it. The art was brought first by the
Phoenicians—'

'Venetians,' said Monkey.

'No, Phoenicians, dear, when they came to Cornwall for tin—'

'To put the cream in,' from the same source.

'No, you silly child, to get tin from the mines, of course, and—'

Then Mother or Daddy, noting the drift of things, would interfere, and
the youngsters would be obliterated—until next time. Miss Waghorn
would finish her recital for the hundredth time, firmly believing it
to be the first. She was a favourite with everybody, in spite of the
anxiety she caused. She would go into town to pay her bill at the
bootmaker's, and order another pair of boots instead, forgetting why
she came. Her income was sixty pounds a year. She forgot in the
afternoon the money she had received in the morning, till at last the
Widow Jequier seized it for her the moment it arrived. And at night
she would doze in her chair over the paper novel she had been "at"
for a year and more, beginning it every night afresh, and rarely
getting beyond the opening chapter. For it was ever new. All were
anxious, though, what she would do next. She was so full of battle.

Everybody talked at once, but forced conversation did not flourish.
Bourcelles was not fashionable; no one ever had appendicitis there.
Yet ailments of a milder order were the staple, inexhaustible subjects
at meals. Instead of the weather,
mon estomac
was the inexhaustible
tale. The girl brought in the little Cantonal newspaper, and the widow
read out selections in a high, shrill voice, regardless who listened.
Misfortunes and accidents were her preference.
Grand ciel
and
quelle horreur
punctuated the selections. 'There's Tante Jeanne
grand-cieling as usual,' Mother would say to her husband, who, being a
little deaf, would answer, 'What?' and Tante Jeanne, overhearing him,
would re-read the accident for his especial benefit, while the
governesses recounted personal experiences among themselves, and Miss
Waghorn made eager efforts to take part in it all, or tell her little
tales of fairies and Cornish cream....

One by one the governesses rose to leave; each made a comprehensive
bow that included the entire company. Daddy lit a cigarette or let
Jimbo light it for him, too wumbled with his thoughts of afternoon
work to notice the puff stolen surreptitiously on the way. Jane Anne
folded her napkin carefully, talking with Mother in a low voice about
the packing of the basket with provisions for tea. Tea was included in
the Pension terms; in a small clothes-basket she carried bread, milk,
sugar, and butter daily across to La Citadelle, except on Sundays when
she wore gloves and left the duty to the younger children who were
less particular.

The governesses, charged with life for another twenty-four hours at
least, flocked down the creaking stairs. They nodded as they passed
the Bureau window where the Postmaster pored over his collection of
stamps, or examined a fretwork pattern of a boy on a bicycle—there
was no heavy garden work that day—and went out into the street. They
stood in knots a moment, discussing unfavourably the food just eaten,
and declaring they would stand it no longer. 'Only where else can we
go?' said one, feeling automatically at her velvet bag to make sure
the orange was safely in it. Upstairs, at the open window, Madame
Jequier overheard them as she filled the walnut shells with butter for
the birds. She only smiled.

'I wish we could help her,' Mother was saying to her husband, as they
watched her from the sofa in the room behind. 'A more generous
creature never lived.' It was a daily statement that lacked force
owing to repetition, yet the emotion prompting it was ever new and
real.

'Or a more feckless,' was his reply. 'But if we ever come into our
estates, we will. It shall be the first thing.' His mind always
hovered after those distant estates when it was perplexed by immediate
financial difficulty, and just now he was thinking of various bills
and payments falling due. It was his own sympathetic link with the
widow—ways and means, and the remorseless nature of sheets of paper
with columns of figures underneath the horrible word
doit.

'So Monsieur 'Enry Rogairs is coming,' she said excitedly, turning to
them a moment on her way to the garden. 'And after all these years! He
will find the house the same, and the garden better—oh, wonderfully
improved. But us,
helas!
he will find old, oh, how old!' She did not
really mean herself, however.

She began a long 'reminiscent' chapter, full of details of the days
when he and Daddy had been boys together, but in the middle of it
Daddy just got up and walked out, saying, 'I must get over to my work,
you know.' There was no artificiality of manners at Bourcelles. Mother
followed him, with a trifle more ceremony. 'Ah, c'est partir a
l'anglaise!' sighed the widow, watching them go. She was accustomed to
it. She went out into her garden, full of excitement at the prospect
of the new arrival. Every arrival for her meant a possible chance of
help. She was as young as her latest bulb really. Courage, hope, and
generosity invariably go together.

Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun!

Romeo and Juliet.

The announcement of Henry Rogers's coming was received—variously, for
any new arrival into the Den circle was subjected to rigorous
criticism. This criticism was not intentional; it was the instinctive
judgment that children pass upon everything, object or person, likely
to affect themselves. And there is no severer bar of judgment in the
world.

'Who
is
Cousinenry? What a name! Is he stiff, I wonder?' came from
Monkey, almost before the announcement had left her father's lips.
'What will he think of Tante Jeanne?' Her little torrent of questions
that prejudged him thus never called for accurate answers as a rule,
but this time she meant to have an answer. 'What is he exaccurately?'
she added, using her own invention made up of 'exact' and 'accurate.'

Mother looked up from the typewritten letter to reply, but before she
could say, 'He's your father's cousin, dear; they were here as boys
twenty years ago to learn French,' Jinny burst in with an explosive
interrogation. She had been reading
La Bonne Menagere
in a corner.
Her eyes, dark with conjecture, searched the faces of both parents
alternately. 'Excuse me, Mother, but is he a clergyman?' she asked
with a touch of alarm.

'Whatever makes you think that, child?'

'Clergymen are always called the reverundhenry. He'll wear black and
have socks that want mending.'

'He shouldn't punt his letters,' declared Monkey. 'He's not an author,
is he?'