At Home with the Jardines
L >> Lilian Bell >> At Home with the JardinesJack, the bulldog, assisted in our preparations with much getting under
our feet and many hearty tail-waggings. Little he knew what was to
follow!
Bee carefully gave me my position at the right, and took her own.
"Now," she said, "there are two equally correct ways of sitting in a
victoria, neither of which you are doing."
I was quite comfortable, but I immediately sat up.
"It depends upon what you have on," Bee proceeded. "If you are
tailor-made and it is morning, you sit straight like this. If it is
afternoon and you are all of a Parisian fluff, you recline like this
and put your feet as far out on the cushion as you can. It shows off
your instep."
"It comes very near showing off your garter," I said, indignantly.
"You needn't expect me to lie down like that and put my feet on the
coachman's back. Aubrey would have a fit."
"You are positively low," said Bee, straightening herself. I giggled
helplessly at her instructions. They were so beyond my power to carry
them out properly.
"Can't I sit like this? Can't I be comfortable? What's a victoria
for, anyhow?" I demanded.
"Call the dog!" was Bee's only answer.
I called him. He came to the step, his tongue hanging out, his stumpy
tail wagging.
"What'll you have, girls?" he seemed to say.
"Get in here! Come up, Jack!" I coaxed, patting the seat invitingly.
Jack put one paw on the step, and wagged his tail harder. Old Amos's
shoulders shook.
"Don' reckon you all will git dat dorg into de kerredge, Miss Faith,"
he said. "Look lake he smell a trick."
It certainly did look as if he smelled treachery, for nothing could
persuade him to enter our chariot. Finally the stable-boy lifted him
bodily. Bee seized a paw and I his two ears, and thus protesting we
dragged him to a position between us. He was badly frightened by such
treatment, but remembering that I had been his friend in times past,
his tail fluttered amiably. I gave a hurried order to Amos to drive
out quickly, but as the carriage began to move, Jack's big body
trembled violently, and he lifted up his voice in a howl of protest
which woke the echoes. He tried to jump out, but as both Bee and I had
our arms around him, more in anxiety than affection, however, he
realized that we desired his society, and forbore to escape. Jack is a
good deal of a gentleman, you see, albeit primitive in his methods of
showing his discomfort.
"He'll soon stop," said Bee, encouragingly. "He feels strange at
first."
But he didn't stop. The more familiar his surroundings became, the
more we passed horses and dogs he knew, the keener became his
humiliation at driving by in enervating luxury, where once he had
trotted pantingly in the dust and heat. His howl changed to a deep
bay, and the bay to a long-drawn wailing, which was so full of pain
that the passers-by made audible comments. As for me, I was afraid
every moment that we would be arrested by a member of the S. P. C. A.,
but fortunately the populace seemed to think we were on our way to the
veterinary surgeon for a dangerous operation.
"Poor fellow!" said one, "you can see he is injured by the way they are
holding him!"
"Ain't them ladies kind-hearted now to take that ugly-lookin' old
bulldog in that fine carriage to the doctor!" said a factory-girl.
Bee crimsoned.
"Stop laughing!" she said to me in a savage aside. "I wish I could
stuff my handkerchief down his throat. Won't he ever stop?"
"It seems not!" I answered, cheerfully. "And we really can't consider
that there is any more style to this manner of driving than if we
belonged to the _hoi polloi_ who drive with their husbands, and let
their dogs follow, can we?"
Bee gave me a look.
"I believe you are pinching him to make him howl," she said.
At that unjust accusation I took my arms away from Jack's neck, and
feeling the affectionate embrace of his lawful mistress relax, he
violently eluded Bee's, and with a flying leap he was out and away,
safely restored to his doggish dignity.
By this time quite a little crowd had collected, and Amos's shoulders
were shaking unmistakably. Both these things annoyed Bee. The crowd
was pitying her. Amos was laughing at her,--two things which could not
fail to vex. She can bear being envied to the verge of being wished a
violent death with equanimity, but to be pitied or ridiculed? Haughty
Bee! She forgot herself, and gave the order herself to drive fast, and
the way we drove back to Peach Orchard gave Jack something to do to
keep up with us. We may have lacked the style of our driving out, but
Bee said the pace was good for the sorrels. To me it savoured of the
pace of fugitives from justice.
This episode, unfortunate as it had proved, would not have dampened
Bee's ardour nor discouraged her in the least, had not Jack taken
matters into his own paws. He seemed to connect Bee with his day of
humiliation, and not only eyed her with deep aversion, but howled
painfully whenever she cornered him. And as for the victoria--to this
day, whenever it is taken out, Jack with one leap is under the barn by
a private entrance which he tunnelled out for himself on that
never-to-be-forgotten day when we endeavoured to introduce a London
fashion by means of him.
Nevertheless, her other suggestions were carried out. The lovely wild
tangle of berry-bushes and long grass was subdued. Our old-fashioned
garden was hidden by a row of firs, while Bee set out beds of cannas
and geraniums. To me it was simply hideous, but the look of
complacency which Bee habitually wore as she thus brought us within the
pale of civilization more than repaid me for any artistic losses we may
have sustained. Bee was my sister and our guest, and could only be
made happy by feeling that her coming had effected changes for the
better and by being constantly entertained. What, then, was more
simple than to content her with such entertainment as she had requested
before she came, and by permitting her to smarten us up? To be sure,
Aubrey used to tell me every night that he was going to dig up the bed
of cannas and coleus the moment her back was turned, but as I, too, was
quite willing to see that done, it seemed to me that I was treading a
somewhat dangerous road with great discretion and a tact I never should
get the credit for. Bee, I felt sure, regarded me as a fool for not
having done all this at the beginning.
At Bee's request we joined the Country Club and the Copsely Golf Club,
and I bought more clothes, and the Angel and I found ourselves in a set
we never had cared for before, but which was amusing enough for a few
weeks or months at most.
But the episode which broke the backbone of Bee's complacency and
virtually gave us back our freedom was this:
True to her word, Bee got us an English coachman and a footman, and put
them into a very smart and highly expensive livery. But the coachman
only lasted a week, having too eagerly imbibed of the flowing bowl and
being discovered by the Angel asleep in his new livery with his head
sweetly pillowed on the recumbent body of the gentlest cow. This
mortified Bee, for the men were, in a sense, her property, so she
dismissed him, had his livery cleaned, and resolutely set herself to
the somewhat difficult task of securing a coachman to fit the livery.
I could, in this, give her no assistance, or, to speak more accurately,
she would permit none, and finally she announced, with an air of
triumph which plainly called for congratulations, that she had secured
what she wanted.
The first time I saw my new coachman, there was something irritatingly
familiar about him. He seemed to know me very well, too, and called me
"Mis' Jardine" with a nod of the head as if we had formerly been pals.
But under Bee's tutelage I was on terms of distant civility with my
menials instead of knowing all their joys and sorrows as in the past.
But Bee was charmed with the _tout ensemble_. She said he matched the
footman better than the Englishman did, because the Englishman was
Irish anyway.
So that first afternoon Bee arranged to go to the Copsely Golf Club
just at the close of the tournament, and to drive up when the porches
would be filled with the players and their friends having tea. Bee
likes to make a dramatic entrance, and often relates in tones of
positive awe how she once saw a Frenchwoman in an opera-cloak composed
entirely of white tulle run the whole length of the Grand Opera House
in Paris in order to make the tulle, which was cut to resemble wings,
float out diaphanously behind her.
So as we bowled smartly along, the sorrels having been reduced by hard
driving until they were models of symmetry, the new victoria shining,
our new liveries glittering in the eyes of the populace, and we
ourselves ragged out, as Aubrey said, as if our motto had been, "Damn
the expense," we certainly felt complacent.
"Now watch him pull the sorrels up," whispered Bee. "I taught him
myself."
With that we arrived almost at a fire-engine pace in front of the
club-house steps, and the carriage stopped. But to our horror, Bee's
coachman leaned so far backward to pull up that his body was perfectly
horizontal, and--yes--I was sure of it, he braced his foot against the
dashboard to get a leverage. I have seen grocery-boys pull up and turn
sidewise on their seats in exactly the same manner.
Bee's face was purple.
The sorrels, unaccustomed to such a jerk of their bits, instantly began
to back, and two men rushed down the steps to our assistance. But Jehu
was equal to the occasion. He slapped the horses' backs with the
reins, and joyously drove our two off wheels up on to the lowest step
of the club-house porch.
In that attitude we paused, and _I_ got out. Bee, after an instant's
hesitation, gracefully followed suit. Nor could you tell from her
placid face that this was not always the way we made our approach.
As for me, I was in a spasm of laughter which Jehu saw.
"I'm sorry, Mis' Jardine," he said, as the gentlemen released the
sorrels' heads, and he prepared to drive off the steps, "but these
horses pulls more than Guffin's mare, and I can't get a purchase on 'em
with this bad hand of mine."
Then I knew who he was! He drove Guffin's grocery wagon for two
months, and had lost three fingers of his right hand!
Poor Bee! But she took it out on me on the way home for not having had
presentable servants before she came.
Now that she has gone, Amos is driving the sorrels again, and they are
getting fat.
CHAPTER X
OUR FIRST HOUSE-PARTY
It was Bee who suggested giving one, but then Bee thought up so many
things for us to do while she was staying with us!
She invited her friends, Sir Wemyss and Lady Lombard, to spend a week
at Peach Orchard, and when they accepted she said, to soothe my fright
at being asked to entertain such grand personages, that if I would
invite other people and make a house-party, it would take much of the
responsibility off my shoulders, as then the guests would entertain
each other.
Then she mentioned Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie, Artie Beguelin and his wife,
Cary Farquhar, and Captain Featherstone, which would make ten of us in
all.
To those who did not know Jimmie, this would seem a small number for a
house-party, but Jimmie in a house all by himself would seem to fill it
to overflowing with people, but they would all be Jimmie.
As I knew how much solid satisfaction it would be to Mrs. Jimmie to be
for a whole week in the same house with so famous a beauty as Lady
Lombard, I acted on Bee's suggestion, and all my people said they would
come.
Bee came gracefully down-stairs one morning before our guests came.
She held a letter in her hand.
"Coffee, Bee?" I asked.
"No, thank you. I had mine in bed."
She wrinkled her brow in perplexity.
"I don't know what to do about it," she murmured.
"About what?"
"Billy. He wants to see me so much, mother writes. She thinks I ought
to come home immediately."
"Let's see," I said. "It's only eight months since you saw your child.
Isn't mother rather absurd?"
Bee lifted her eyes.
"Don't be nasty," she said. "You learned that tone from Aubrey."
Aubrey smiled pleasantly at our guest.
"I didn't!" I said, warmly. "I used to be quite nasty at times before
I was married."
Bee showed her little white teeth in a smile.
"I'm glad to hear you admit it," she said, sweetly.
"If you would like to see Billy so much," said Aubrey, politely, "why
not bring him on here?"
"Could you?" I cried, in delight. To think of having Billy! The lamb
had never been in the country in his life, and he was wild over my
letters about Peach Orchard.
"I can arrange it, if you like," Aubrey went on--mostly to me, for
Billy's mother was silently thinking.
"Do have him, Bee!" I cried. "I won't let him get in your way. He
needn't even sleep in your room. I'll have Norah put up a cot in the
alcove of the rose room. She can sleep there, and dress him and
everything. You won't be annoyed the least bit."
"Well," said Bee, with graceful reluctance, "if you are sure he won't
be in your way, and if Aubrey's cousin will bring him, I see no reason
why he mightn't come."
I almost squealed in my delight. It would certainly be worth while to
see the child's eyes when he first saw the calves and little chickens.
I left both Aubrey and Bee at the table while I rushed up-stairs to see
if the rose room would be just right for him. I made Aubrey promise to
arrange everything by telegraph. Norah loved children, and entered
into my plans with delight. Then I flew out to interview old Amos. He
had told me only a few days before that the boys on the estate next
ours wanted to sell their goats and goat carriages.
The days passed rapidly in preparations, but of all my guests, titled
or otherwise, it was Billy--my Billy--I wanted to see worst. In two
days I got a letter.
"Dear Miss Tats," it ran, "I only write to say that I shall be glad to
come. If I had not written you a long letter so soon ago, I would
write more now. Tell mother to be sure to meet me at the station.
Don't let her forget that I shall arrive at four-sixteen. Your
affectionate little nephew, Billy."
I wept tears of delight over this effusion, and "so soon ago" passed
into the Jardine vocabulary.
In looking back, I think I can safely say that if Bee had known what
would happen at that house-party to shock her English friends, she
would have preferred to discharge her obligations to them by a nice
little Sunday afternoon at Coney Island or an evening in Chinatown.
But fortunately the English are a sensible race, and Sir Wemyss and his
bride, perhaps because of the reasonable way the duchess came around
when she found her daughter bent upon marrying Sir Wemyss, were so
good-humoured and so plainly determined to see naught but good in
America and naught but fun in Americans that they took everything in
good part.
Aubrey, Jimmie, and Sir Wemyss got on capitally from the start, for
before they came Aubrey said:
"What shall I say to them at first--when they come aboard of us, and
before I have got my sea legs on?"
"Why," said Jimmie, "that's dead easy. Say to Lady Mary, 'Let my wife
give you some tea,' and to Sir Wemyss say, 'Old man, how would a
whiskey and soda go?' and there you are right off the bat."
Aubrey said precisely these words, with the most satisfactory result,
for over her third cup of tea I felt very friendly with the beautiful
English woman, and after four whiskies the men were almost sociable.
To our delight, Sir Wemyss was enchanted with Peach Orchard. He
visited the uttermost corners of it. He was charmed with the cows,
admired their breed, almost raved over Jack, the bulldog, whose
pedigree was nearly as long as that of Lady Mary, who was the daughter
of a hundred earls. He gave me many hints about my fine poultry, and
wrote that first night for a pair of his very finest buff cochins to be
sent over from his place in England, which he had just inherited from
his uncle. He showed us where the apple-trees needed pruning, and was
so interested in my attempts at an old-fashioned garden, which Bee had
hidden behind a tall hedge, that he went to fetch Lady Mary to look at
it, and they both volunteered to send me some plants and shrubs from
England, which they declared I needed to complete it.
Bee's face was a study during those few hours. She had honestly tried
to have everything as English as possible for them, and had trained my
poor servants almost to death, with instructions as to what they were
to do during this week. They were outwardly obedient, but inwardly
disrespectful, as I overheard Norah, the housemaid, say to the cook:
"Katie, oh, Katie! We're wor-rkin' for the Four Hundhred now!"
"How do you know we ar-re?" asked Katie.
"The ladies all shtrip fur dinner!"
Jimmie simply shrieked when I told him, but Bee failed to see anything
in it but an excellent reason why Norah should be discharged. Poor Bee!
She had given me specific directions about serving the meals, and had
made me lay in a supply of jam for breakfast, and had implored me to
serve cold meats and joints and things as the English do, and to please
her I had promised. But that first night at dinner Lady Mary turned to
me and said, with a sweetness and grace not to be reproduced:
"Mrs. Jardine, I have come over here to live among you and to be as
little unlike you Americans as possible. I cannot forget that it was
the American dollar that made it possible for Wemyss to gain poor dear
mamma's consent to our marriage, and I am correspondingly grateful.
Now, won't you do me a favour? Won't you please leave off doing
anything for us in the English manner, because of your desire to please
us, and mayn't I see in your house just how Americans live.
Particularly your breakfasts. I have heard that they were so
jolly--not a bit like ours, and I am keen to taste your hot breads!
Fancy! I never saw any in my life."
I fairly gasped with delight, and as for the maids, I was afraid they
were going to kiss Lady Mary. It removed an awful strain.
"Certainly," I beamed. "I will do anything I can for you."
"If she does," declared Jimmie, "there won't be a queer American thing
for you to learn after you leave Peach Orchard. You'll have seen 'em
all."
"That is what I should like," said Lady Mary, in her deep, beautiful
voice. "And Wemyss would, too."
Sir Wemyss, who spoke but seldom, here removed his cigar, for we had
gone into the billiard-room after dinner, and said:
"Jardine, you don't know how a little place like this appeals to me.
Now our places in England are all so large that they take an army of
servants to run them, and the gardening and all that are done by one's
men. But here with only yourselves you can do so much. You can feed
your own chickens, you can prune your own trees, you can do such a lot
yourselves. I should think it would be great fun."
We were much flattered by this view of it, and Mrs. Jimmie and Bee were
plainly impressed.
"My sister is very fond of her life here," declared Bee. "I found
Peach Orchard a perfect pastoral when I first came."
Jimmie had been smoking thoughtfully, with a frown of perplexity on his
brow. Suddenly he spoke.
"I think Sir Wemyss is right," he answered. "Now, why not all of us
take a hand at farming, so to speak, while we are here? I never have,
but I know I could. Anyhow I mean to try. To-morrow, let's go at it
and prune the trees."
"It is not the proper season to prune trees," observed Sir Wemyss.
"That should be done in the early spring, before the sap begins to run."
Jimmie looked disappointed.
"Those apple-trees are no good," said the Angel, with tact, "so it
couldn't possibly hurt to prune them or cut them down if you want to.
They are a perfect eyesore to me the way they are."
To my surprise, both Jimmie and Sir Wemyss looked pleased. It was so
palpably the wrong thing to do that I should have supposed as good a
husbandman as Sir Wemyss would refuse. But the joy of doing evidently
led him to accept the Angel's tactful permission to ruin our
apple-trees, if by so doing he could interest our guests.
"The very thing!" said Sir Wemyss, with the nearest approach to
enthusiasm I ever had seen in him. "Let's prune the trees by all
means."
"How charming!" said Bee. "Isn't it delightful to be your own
gardener! You have no idea how domestic my sister is, Lady Mary. She
superintends her house quite like an Englishwoman. Did you know that
we make all our own butter here at Peach Orchard, Sir Wemyss? And I
verily believe that Faith knows every chicken on the place by name.
She is really at her best on a farm."
Jimmie's cigar blinked as if he had winked with it. Mrs. Jimmie almost
permitted herself a wry face at the idea of turning her one week with
the Lombards to such poor account, and at first I feared that this plan
would quite spoil her pleasure, to say nothing of Bee's. But if you
have noticed, the hostess has very little to do with a modern
house-party, except to get her people together. After that, they
manage things to suit themselves.
At any rate, it occurred that way at my house-party. I had little to
do except to trot uncomplainingly in the rear of the procession, for
when once Lady Mary made farming fashionable by her personal interest,
Bee, who always out-Herods Herod, became so bucolic that she nearly
drove the hens off their nests in order to hatch the eggs personally.
On the second day from the date of his letter, Billy arrived. Bee and
I went to meet him. The train did not stop at Clovertown, so we had to
drive about ten miles. I shall never forget that child's face as he
saw his mother. It twitched with feeling, but he felt himself too
great a boy to cry--especially over joy. _I_ cried heartily. I always
do! And Billy comforted me in his sweet, babyish fashion that I
remembered he used when he was in kilts.
Billy became friends with old Amos that first evening, and that
sufficed, for Amos had enriched my own childhood, and I knew that
nothing which could amuse or instruct would be omitted.
Billy felt that he and Jimmie, Aubrey, Captain Featherstone, and Sir
Wemyss constituted the men of the household. When I asked him why he
did not include Mr. Beguelin, he put his hands behind him, spread his
short legs apart, and said:
"Well, you see, Miss Tats, Mr. Beguelin has just been married, and
bridegrooms don't count."
Things went smoothly enough that first day while my people were
becoming acquainted. Then it was Jimmie, dear blessed old, maladroit,
hot-tempered Jimmie, always so completely at home in a business deal,
and always so pathetically awkward and so confidently bungling in
domestic crises, who supplied us with sufficient material for a book on
"How Not to Prune Trees Properly."
We all went out to the apple-trees early in the morning. As usual, Sir
Wemyss was dressed for the part. Why is it, I wonder, that the British
always find themselves dressed for the occasion? I believe, if an
Englishman were wrecked in mid-ocean, with only a hat-box for baggage,
that out of that box he could produce bathing-trunks in which to drown
properly.
The Angel was frankly and simply disreputable, his idea of being
properly clad for farm-work being to be ragged wherever possible and
faded all over. Jimmie, however, wore his ordinary business clothes,
patent leather shoes, and a derby hat. And as events transpired, I was
glad of it. I love to think of Jimmie pruning trees in patent leathers
and a derby.
Being, as I say, confident, Jimmie, who never had seen a tree pruned,
waited for no instructions, but sprang nimbly upon a barrel, and,
standing on his tiptoes, reached up and snipped at the lower branches.
Sir Wemyss took a ladder and his pruning-knife, and disappeared from
view into the thickest part of the tree. But hearing the industry of
Jimmie's scissors, he parted the branches and called out:
"I say there, old man! You are cutting off twigs. These are the
things which need to go--these suckers. See?"
"Yes, Jimmie," I said, pleasantly. "You are not trimming a hedge, you
know. You are--"
Alas, that accidents are always my fault! Jimmie turned to glare at
me, and the treacherous barrel-head gave way, letting him down most
ungently into its middle, and rasping his shins in the descent in a
manner which must have been particularly trying to one of delicate
sensibilities.
I sank down suddenly in gasps of unregenerate laughter, for the
barrel-head was a tight fit, and as Jimmie endeavoured to climb out,
the barrel climbed too, giving him a strange hoop-skirt effect, which
went but sadly with the derby hat.
Jimmie grinned sheepishly as the Angel extricated him, and placed a
strong board on the barrel for him to stand upon in safety.
Then Jimmie decided to saw a dead limb off, and leave the pruning to
Sir Wemyss. So he took the saw and went valiantly to work, but it was
tiresome, so he leaned his weight against the limb and industriously
sawed his prop off, which sent him flying almost into Lady Mary's lap.
He saved himself by his nimbleness, but this time Jimmie was
mad--uncompromisingly mad.