Parents and Children Page 8

  ‘You will soon be in your little bed,’ said Eleanor to Nevill.

  ‘By Hatton.’

  ‘Yes, unless you would like to begin to share a room with Gavin.’

  ‘By Hatton,’ said her son, looking puzzled and uninterested.

  ‘Yes, for a little while you can stay with her.’

  ‘All night. Stay with Hatton all night.’

  ‘How soon are you going away?’ said Gavin, to his father.

  ‘In about seven days.’

  ‘That is a week,’ said Honor.

  ‘All night, all night,’ said Nevill, beating his hand on his mother’s knee.

  ‘Yes, yes, all night. Honor, talk nicely to Father about his going. Tell him how you will miss him.’

  Honor began to cry; Fulbert put his arm about her; Nevill gave her a look of respectful concern; Gavin surveyed her with a frown.

  ‘There, dry your eyes and don’t lean against Father,’ said Eleanor. ‘He is as tired as you are, at the end of the day. She was hiding her feelings, poor child.’

  ‘She didn’t hide them,’ said Gavin.

  ‘She tried to; she did not want to upset Father. You mind about his going too, don’t you?’

  ‘If we say we mind, he knows,’ said Gavin, who was successfully hiding his own jealousy of his sister’s interest.

  ‘Father will be gone away. Gallop-a-trot,’ said Nevill, illustrating this idea of progress.

  ‘Nevill doesn’t know much,’ said Gavin.

  ‘Well, he is only three,’ said Eleanor. ‘Neither did you at that age.’

  ‘Father come back soon,’ said Nevill, showing his grasp of the situation.

  ‘I think I knew more,’ said Gavin.

  ‘We shall expect good reports of your lessons, if you talk like that.’

  ‘It is boys at school who have reports,’ said Gavin, mindful of James’s experience.

  ‘Mother meant a verbal report,’ said Honor, causing her parents to smile.

  ‘You will soon be able to go to school,’ said Eleanor, to her son. ‘You won’t always have a governess.’

  ‘James sometimes has Miss Mitford. I could always have her.’

  ‘Do you mean you want to learn with Honor?’

  ‘No,’ said Gavin, true to his principle that real feeling should be hidden.

  ‘Good night, Mother,’ said Nevill, approaching Eleanor with small, quick steps.

  ‘Good night, my little boy. So you are a horse again.’

  ‘Puff, puff, puff,’ said Nevill, in correction of her idea.

  ‘He has passed to the age of machinery,’ said Fulbert.

  ‘Is that age three?’ said Gavin.

  ‘Father means to a different date,’ said Honor.

  ‘The boy may be right that he can be educated at home,’ said Fulbert.

  Eleanor made a mute sign against such reference to Honor, which she believed to be lost upon her daughter, though the point at issue was the latter’s intelligence.

  ‘I don’t feel I have a great deal in common with Mother,’ said Honor, as the door closed upon her parents.

  Mullet looked at her in reproof and respect.

  ‘In common?’ said Gavin.

  ‘You have had enough education for tonight. There must be something left for the governess to teach you,’ said Hatton, producing mirth in Mullet. ‘Now I am taking Nevill to bed. You must not stay up too long.’

  ‘Will you tell us about when you were a child, while you do Honor’s hair?’ said Gavin to Mullet.

  ‘Yes, I will give you the last chapter of my childhood,’ said Mullet, entering on an evidently accustomed and congenial task, with her eyes and hands on Honor’s head. ‘For I don’t think I was ever a real child after that. You know we lived in a house something like this; a little smaller and more compact perhaps, but much on the same line. And I was once left behind with the servants when my father was abroad. Not with a grandpa and a grandma and a mother; just with servants, just with the household staff. And I found myself alone in the schoolroom, with all the servants downstairs. I was often by myself for hours, as I had no equal in the house, and I preferred my own company to that of inferiors. Well, there I was sitting, in my shabby, velvet dress, swinging my feet in their shabby, velvet shoes; my things were good when they came, but I was really rather neglected; and there came a ring at the bell, and my father was in the house. “And what is this?” he said, when he had hastened to my place of refuge. “How comes it that I find my daughter alone and unattended?” The servants had come running up when they heard his ring, when his peremptory ring echoed through the house. “Here is my daughter, my heiress, left to languish in solitude! In quarters more befitting a dog,” he went on, looking round the rather battered schoolroom, and saying almost more than he meant in the strength of his feelings. “Cast aside like a piece of flotsam and jetsam,” he continued, clenching his teeth and his hands in a way he had. “When I left her, as I thought, to retainers faithful to the charge of my motherless child. Enough,” he said. “No longer will I depend on those whose hearts do not beat with the spirit of trusty service. People with the souls of menials,” he went on, lifting his arm with one of his rare gestures, “away from the walls which will shelter my child while there is breath within me.” And there he stood with bent head, waiting for the servants to pass, almost bowing to them in the way a gentleman would, feeling the wrench of parting with people who had served him all his life.’ Mullet’s voice changed and became open and matter-of-fact. ‘And there we both were, left alone in that great house, with no one to look after us, and very little idea of looking after ourselves. It was a good thing in a way, as the crash had to come, and I think Father felt it less than he would have in cold blood. He was a man whose hot blood was often a help to him.’ Mullet gave a sigh and moved her brows. ‘But I think his death was really caused by our fall from our rightful place.’

  ‘So then you were left an orphan,’ said Gavin.

  ‘Yes, then came the change which split my life into halves.’

  ‘Would your father have liked you to be a nurse?’

  ‘Well, in one sense he had the gentleman’s respect for useful work. In another it would have broken his heart,’ said Mullet, hardly taking an exaggerated view, considering her parent’s reaction to milder vicissitudes.

  ‘What happened to the house?’ said Honor.

  ‘It was sold to pay debts. My father was in debt, as a man in his place would be.’

  ‘He really ought not to have kept all those servants.’

  ‘Well, no, he ought not. But he could hardly change from the way his family had always lived.’

  ‘Were they all paid?’

  ‘If a farthing to a dependent had been owing, Miss Honor, I could never have held up my head,’ said Mullet, straightening her neck to render further words unnecessary.

  ‘You told us you had a maid of your own. But you didn’t have one then.’

  ‘My last nurse was on the way to a maid. But I was quite without one on that day when my father came home; absolutely without,’ said Mullet, with evident attention to accuracy. ‘I was entirely at the mercy of all those servants downstairs.’

  ‘Is Grandpa in debt?’ said Gavin.

  ‘Now if you talk about what I tell you, I shall only tell you the tales I tell to Nevill.’

  ‘You ought to say Master Nevill.’

  ‘Well, so I ought in these days. But the old days drag me back when I talk about them. Now remember these things are between ourselves.’

  ‘Wouldn’t people believe you?’ said Honor.

  ‘I daresay they would not,’ said Mullet, with a little laugh at human incredulity.

  ‘I don’t think Mother would.’

  ‘Sometimes I can hardly believe myself in my own early life,’ said Mullet, fastening Honor’s hair with a rapid skill acquired in a later one, and using a sincere note that was justified.

  ‘There are Daniel and Graham on the stairs,’ said Gavin.

  �
�Your big brothers have come to see you,’ said Mullet, in a rather severe tone. ‘And you can put things like stories out of your head.’

  This was hardly the purpose of the newcomers, who had found their study occupied by Luce and a friend, and hoped to find the nursery free at this hour of its occupants.

  ‘You are going to bed, I suppose?’ said Daniel.

  ‘When we do go,’ said Gavin.

  ‘Well, that is now,’ said Daniel, supplanting him in his chair.

  Gavin recovered it; his brother displaced him and he returned; Graham and Honor enacted the same scene; the struggle resulted in screams and mirth, and in the course of it Honor knocked her head and wept with an abandonment proportionate to her excited mood. Hatton arrived with her fingers to her mouth, and Nevill under her arm, and made warning movements towards the floors beneath. Gavin was checked in a disposition to maintain the sport in spite of the consequences to his sister, and Nevill from under Hatton’s arm made a hushing sound and raised his finger with the appropriate gesture.

  Hatton became oblivous of her late anxiety, and directed Mullet’s attention to Honor.

  ‘If you put on a handkerchief soaked in water, there won’t be much of a bruise in the morning.’

  ‘Then Mother won’t know, will she?’ said Nevill, in a comforting tone.

  ‘Why do you hold that great child?’ said Honor, seeking to counteract the impression she had given.

  ‘Hatton carry him,’ said Nevill.

  ‘Honor will have a pigeon’s egg on her head tomorrow,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Not pigeon’s egg tomorrow,’ said Nevill, in a troubled tone. ‘A nice handkerchief wet with water.’

  ‘We will come and rock you to sleep,’ said Graham.

  ‘Hatton will sit on his little bed,’ said Nevill, in a reassuring manner.

  ‘Be a pony and trot away to it.’

  Nevill agitated his limbs in rebellion against his bondage, and on being set down, trotted round the room and out of it, accepting the opening of the door as necessary and natural.

  ‘Will Honor have a headache in bed?’ said Gavin to Mullet.

  ‘If she does, you must come and fetch me.’

  ‘She can fetch you herself, when she has only knocked her head.’

  ‘The nights are not cold yet.’

  ‘I like cold; I like even ice.’

  ‘He is afraid of the dark,’ said Honor, stooping to gather her belongings. ‘He is almost as afraid as I am. But my head doesn’t hurt any more; I can dispense with this handkerchief.’

  ‘You can dispense with it,’ said Gavin, with more than one kind of admiration.

  ‘Open the door for me. Because I am carrying so much,’ said Honor, indicating that she did not require it on other grounds.

  The pair departed without taking leave of their brothers, who neither noticed nor offered to remedy the omission. They were succeeded by the schoolroom party, who entered the room without any sign of interest as if the change meant nothing to them. They were marshalled by Luce, with the air of a benevolent despot.

  ‘Can we be of any use to you?’ said Daniel.

  ‘Luce said the schoolroom must be aired before supper,’ said Venice.

  James went to a chair and resumed his book.

  ‘Is Miss Mitford proof against chill?’ said Graham.

  ‘She has gone to her room,’ said Isabel.

  ‘I have been wondering if Graham ought to be handed back to her,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Well, she likes her pupils to be of advanced age,’ said Graham.

  Venice laughed.

  ‘Now why is it amusing?’ said Luce, leaning back and locking her hands round her knees. ‘Miss Mitford is older and wiser than Graham. Why should he not learn from her?’

  ‘She is a woman,’ said Venice.

  ‘But knowledge is no more valuable, coming from a man.’

  ‘It is held to be,’ said Isabel. ‘Men are more expensive than women.’

  ‘Isn’t Mitta expensive?’ said Venice, surprised.

  ‘She still seems to me in her own way a person born to command,’ said Luce.

  ‘Few of us can so far fulfil our destiny,’ said Graham.

  ‘I wonder if anyone is born to obey,’ said Isabel. ‘That may be why people command rather badly, that they have no suitable material to work on.’

  ‘I wonder if we are a commanding family,’ said Luce.

  ‘I expect Isabel is right that most families are,’ said Daniel.

  Venice came up as if wishing to join the talk, but at a loss for a contribution.

  ‘So James has learned to read,’ said Graham.

  ‘You are less forward for your age,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Mitta forgot to put that book away,’ said Venice.

  ‘Isn’t James supposed to read it?’ said Luce. ‘Let me see it, James.’

  James passed the book to his sister with disarming obedience.

  ‘An instance of the normal reluctance to obey,’ she said, raising her brows and returning the book.

  Miss Mitford opened the door.

  ‘I have had to come up for you,’ she said.

  ‘True, Mitta,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Supper has been brought in.’

  ‘What is it?’ said Venice, while Isabel turned in milder interest.

  ‘Something made with eggs,’ said Miss Mitford, on a plaintive note.

  ‘It seems that Mitta is old enough to dine downstairs,’ said Graham, as the door closed, or he thought it did.

  ‘The bread of dependence is generally eaten upstairs,’ said Miss Mitford.

  ‘So your speech could not wait for a moment,’ said Daniel.

  ‘It is a pity it did not, Graham,’ said Luce.

  ‘It is not so long since we were Mitta’s pupils,’ said Graham.

  ‘Does that make it better to see you turning out so awkwardly?’ said his brother.

  ‘It may have prepared her for it.’

  ‘And you have been other people’s pupil since.’

  ‘But no one ever taught me as much as dear old Mitta,’ said Graham, in a tone of quotation.

  ‘It will soon be recognized that you have not made suitable progress since.’

  ‘Oh, you and your coming school success!’

  ‘Now why do people despise that kind of achievement?’ said Luce, again with her hands about her knees. ‘Why belittle any kind of gift?’

  ‘We certainly never have any other kind,’ said Graham, as if he were speaking to himself. ‘People who have that sort of success never do anything in after life, but neither do the other people. No one does anything in after life. I see that my only chance has been missed.’

  ‘Be quiet for a moment, boys,’ said Luce, raising her hand. ‘I want to listen to the wheels of the house going round. Yes, Mother is going into the schoolroom to say good night. That means that the dinner gong will soon sound.’

  ‘And Graham will be indulging his vice,’ said Daniel. ‘Can nothing at all be done?’

  Eleanor had entered the room below.

  ‘Well, my dears, have you had a happy day?’

  ‘It has been much as usual,’ said Isabel.

  ‘Well, that is happy, isn’t it? Could you have any more done for you? And you have been out with Father. Surely that prevents the day from being ordinary.’

  ‘Yes, of course it does.’

  ‘And has James had a good day at school?’

  ‘Yes,’ said James. ‘No, I have not been to school.’

  ‘Then weren’t you to have tea in the nursery and go early to bed?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said James, in a tone of sudden recollection.

  ‘You must not forget what we arrange, my boy. Your eyes look tired. What have you been doing?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said James, in an almost wondering manner.

  Eleanor left the subject. Her son’s recent practice of reading had escaped her. She thought of him as a child, to whom a book was a task, a thing he had been long enoug
h for her to form the habit.

  ‘You had better run upstairs, as you don’t seem to have much appetite. Are you too tired to eat? Why, you are sitting on a book.’

  ‘Oh, that chair always seems lower than the others.’

  ‘There are plenty of other chairs. Why choose one so low that you have to put something on it? And surely a cushion would be more comfortable than a book.’

  James looked as if this were a new idea.

  ‘What things boys do! Now kiss me and be off to bed.’

  James embraced his mother with zest, and ran from the room with the lightness of one with no interest behind.

  ‘He is a dear little boy,’ said Eleanor, in the tone of voicing a recent conclusion, which marked her approval of James. ‘Did not anyone – did not either of you girls remember that he was to go to bed?’

  ‘We all four forgot,’ said Miss Mitford. ‘That seems to show it was not an easy thing to remember.’

  Eleanor smiled only to the extent required.

  ‘He is young to remember everything for himself, with several people – with two sisters older than he is, in the room.’

  ‘I am older than he is too,’ said Miss Mitford.

  ‘This is a thing that only concerned himself,’ said Isabel.

  ‘My dear, the little boy’s health is a matter of equal concern to everyone. I am sure Miss Mitford agrees with me.’

  ‘Not that it is of equal concern,’ said Miss Mitford.

  ‘So you will remember another time, my dear,’ said Eleanor, not looking at the governess. ‘Come now and say good night, and then have a happy hour before you go to bed.’

  ‘What is to make our happiness?’ said Isabel. ‘I wish Mother had told us.’

  ‘She could have done so,’ said Miss Mitford.

  ‘I don’t wish she had told us anything more,’ said Venice.

  ‘There are no books I have not read,’ said Isabel.

  ‘You must fall back on your old, tried favourites,’ said Miss Mitford. ‘There is no pleasure equal to it.’

  ‘You don’t think so yourself. You know you would rather have new ones. You have them from the library every week.’

  ‘Yes. One of my few extravagances.’

  ‘One of her two extravagances,’ murmured Venice.

  ‘Mother says she wonders you have time to read them all,’ said Isabel.

  ‘Does she?’ said Miss Mitford, gently raising her eyes. ‘I never forget the claims of my own life.’