At Home with the Jardines
L >> Lilian Bell >> At Home with the JardinesThere was no furnace fire, and the water was not turned on. I ran back
and Aubrey shouted for the carriage, just turning out of the grounds,
to come back.
"Go to the plumbers!" I said, incoherently, "and to the electric light
men, and to the agents, and see where the men are, and bring some
brooms and buckets and send me a grocer's boy."
He turned away, breathing vengeance. I felt sorry for Mr. Close.
"And to the telephone company!" I cried, after the departing carriage.
"And to--" but the driver lashed his horses, and I had to give up.
I went back to Mary in her best dress.
"Finished, is it?" she said, sniffing with indignation. "I suppose the
agent thought we were flies, and could move in on the ceiling--as
that's the only thing I can see about the house that's finished!"
"Wait until Mr. Jardine sees the agent!" I said, ominously. "Then
something else will be finished, besides the ceiling."
"I hope he'll kill him!" said Mary, pleasantly.
It was a real pleasure to witness the dismay in Mr. Close's face when
Aubrey returned, bringing him, mentally, by the scruff of the neck. I
have seen terriers yanked back to look at things they have "worried" in
much the same manner that Mr. Close was fetched to Peach Orchard.
"Just look, Mr. Close, if you please," I said, ominously polite. "You
telephoned me yesterday and said you had been here personally and seen
with your own eyes that everything was finished and the house in
perfect readiness for us to move in."
Mr. Close refused to meet my accusing eye. He turned green.
There are more ways than one of calling a man a liar. And some are
safer than others.
"Did you really have the smoke test put through the plumbing as you
said you did?" I asked.
Mr. Close eagerly produced the bill.
Plumber's bills are conclusive evidence.
"Did you have the range cleaned and the water-back examined?" demanded
Aubrey.
Mr. Close swore that he did. Aubrey led him captive around the house
and showed him the confusion thereof, Mary grimly following. I think
Close preferred Aubrey to me, and me or anybody to Mary, for Mary's
very spectacles were bristling with anger. She could see herself, in
her best dress, having to clean up that mess so that the furniture
could be moved in.
Then Aubrey's men began to arrive. The man with the chandeliers. The
carpenters to lay the floors. The man from the water office. My negro
cleaning woman and the grocer's boy. Fortunately, the cleaning woman
had brought a broom, a mop, and a bucket.
As there were no fires, Aubrey and Mr. Close made one in the furnace;
Mary and the grocer's boy--or rather the grocer's boy under Mary's
direction--built one in the range, while I set the woman to sweeping
one floor for the carpenters to begin on.
Suddenly I heard hurried feet running up the cellar stairs. The water
man had turned the water on from the street, and it was gaily pouring
into the cellar. Mr. Close is a fat man, but he ran like a jack-rabbit
to that water main, and shut it off. Then without daring to
face--Mary, he started to town for a plumber.
He had not been gone half an hour when the water-back blew up.
Fortunately, no one was in the kitchen at the time, but the cleaning
woman turned from black to a dirty gray with fright, and without
further ado went home. I can't say that I blamed her. Aubrey was busy
putting out the furnace fire and bailing out the cellar, so he did not
know of that defection.
However, a culmination of such calamities, instead of smiting me to the
earth, aroused every drop of fighting blood in my whole body.
I went out on the porch to think it over, and as I thought I began to
laugh. I laughed until Aubrey heard me and thought I was crying. He
came hurrying out, with a face full of anxiety, saying, before he saw
me:
"Never mind, dear! I know this is hard on you, but--"
"Well, I'll be--!"
Both of those remarks were Aubrey's. He was much relieved, however, to
discover that I was not cast down by all these disasters. In fact, our
moving partook more of the delights of camping out than orthodox
housekeeping, and I soon discovered expedients.
The only fire which did not bid fair to blow our heads off was one in
the grate in the hall. On this we boiled water and made tea, and for
that first luncheon we satisfied ourselves with sardines and devilled
ham sandwiches. But as we were obliged to cook on that grate for six
days, I may as well record now that we grew into expert cooks,
attempting eggs in all forms, batter-cakes, hoe cakes, fried mush,
bacon, ham, chops, toast, and fried potatoes,--in fact, no woman knows
how much she can cook on a common little hard coal grate until three
hungry people are dependent on it for three meals a day.
We supplemented this by the chafing-dish. Aubrey says that I should
say the grate fire supplemented the chafing-dish, for nobody knows what
can be done with one--in real, urgent housekeeping, I mean, such as
ours, until one has tried. It makes a perfect double boiler, and as
for a _bain Marie_, well, I used to cream potatoes in the top part, and
when they were all done but the simmering of the cream to thicken it, I
used to put tomatoes in the bottom part to stew, and put the potato
part back on the tomatoes for a cover and to keep hot. Did you ever
try that?
The kitchen range was discovered to be ruined, the pipes being
completely full and solid with rust. It is a miracle that some of us
were not killed by the explosion. Mary cheerfully declared her regret
that Mr. Close had not been bending over the stove with his lie in his
throat when the water-back remonstrated. Mary is quite firm in her
ideas of making "the punishment fit the crime--the punishment fit the
crime."
But we enjoyed it--that is, Aubrey and I enjoyed it. Mary wanted us to
go to an hotel and stay until things were in order, and send the bill
to Mr. Close. But even though her suggestion was made at two o'clock
in the afternoon and no vans had yet appeared, I was firm in my
decision to sleep in Peach Orchard that night.
My courage had in the meantime been buoyed up by the fact that the
telephone had been put in, and my friend, the grocer's boy, had brought
me reinforcements in the shape of plates, tumblers, pots, pans, brooms,
buckets, and supplies, and had further completed my rapture by
promising me a kitten.
About three o'clock, I, as lookout, descried the big red vans, each
drawn by four horses, at the foot of the hill.
Now Clovertown is not full of hills, rather it consists of hills. It
is not quite as bad as Mt. St. Michel, for that is all one, but
Clovertown consists of a series of small Mt. St. Michels, equally
steep, precipitous, and appalling to climb, also equally lovely and
bewitching when once you have climbed.
The moving men seemed to realize their steepness, for they put all
eight of the horses to one van and bravely started up the hill. But
alas, they were New York horses, and only capable of dodging elevated
pillars and of keeping their footing on icy asphalt. They were not
used to climbing trees, as we afterward discovered Clovertown horses to
be quite capable of doing. So, after straining and pulling and being
cruelly urged to a feat beyond their strength, we had our first taste
of the neighbourliness of the people on the next estate. Their head
man, called familiarly Eddie Bannon, came to our rescue.
"Take all them horses off," he said, "and I'll pull you up the hill
with my team of blacks."
We were grateful, but politely incredulous. What! One pair of horses
accomplish a feat which eight had been unable to do.
I grew feverishly excited in watching the exchange. It was a picture
to see the incredulity on the countenances of the van men. They tried
not to show it, for that would have been impolite, but Eddie Bannon saw
it, and grinned at their unbelief.
When the blacks were in the traces, Bannon took the reins. One of the
men offered him a long wicked-looking whip, but he spurned it.
"No," he said, "if the blacks won't pull for love, they won't for a
beating."
So then he spoke to them. Willing hands started the wheels. The
gallant little blacks, looking like a pair of ponies before the huge
van, seemed to lie flat on their bellies as they strained forward,
digging their sharp little hoofs into the hillside. The van gave an
inch--two! A foot! Then urged by their master's voice, and for very
pride of home and race and breed, the gallant blacks pulled for dear
life, and in a quarter of an hour the van was at our door, and they
were switching their tails and stamping their hoofs and shaking their
intelligent heads in the pride of victory.
As for Bannon, he stroked and praised them in an ecstasy of
self-vindication, and was refusing the van man's offer to buy them at
"a hundred dollars apiece more than they cost."
Those horses pulled our three vans up our hill, if you will believe it,
and seemed rather to enjoy the grind they had on the other horses, so
that, in a fever of appreciation, I had to go and feed apples and sugar
to all ten of them, and to remind the blacks that the New York horses
had been pulling those vans since midnight, all of which I begged them
to take into consideration, while not in the least depreciating their
own glorious achievement.
The initiated need not be told how, when hardwood floors are being
laid, furniture is moved from room to room to accommodate the
carpenters, and the uninitiated will not be interested at the recital.
It must be experienced to be appreciated.
We lived through it. We learned not to object when the ice-box was set
up in the hall so near the grate that the drip-pan had to be emptied
every hour, and the iceman had to come twice a day. We learned to step
over rolls of rugs and to bark our shins on rocking-chairs and to trip
over hidden objects with only a pleasant smile.
We screened one porch entirely, and furnished it as a study for Aubrey.
We had now papered and painted the house from top to bottom. We had
put in gas, telephone, and electric light, and when we could no longer
think of any further way to spend money, we turned our attention to the
garden.
I longed for old Amos, my uncle's gardener and coachman in Louisville.
His experience would be invaluable, and as the estate had been divided
and no one had any use for the old grizzled negro, they let me have
him. I adored Amos. It was he who had attended to all my childish
pleasures on the plantation when I went there to visit, and, in turn,
he thought "Miss Faith honey" could do no wrong. It is a comfort to
have some one in one's childish memory who thinks one can do no wrong,
even if it is only a servant.
So old Amos came and made flower-beds, and persuaded us to buy a pair
of horses in addition to the one we had hitherto modestly used, and
thus, with the aid of friends' and judicious servants' advice, we were
by way of being landed proprietors, and came to look upon Peach Orchard
as an estate.
Then the grocer's boy gave me the promised kitten, a common tiger
kitten, which we named Mitnick, and soon afterward we acquired not only
one cow, but several, our especial pride being an imported Guernsey,
which figures quite prominently in my narrative further on. And as
Aubrey's unwonted prosperity continued, we endeavoured not to let our
riches increase too fast, by spending every cent upon which we could
lay our hands on the place. But who, who owns a country place, can
help it? Or who would help it if he could?
We raised our own flowers and vegetables regardless of expense. We
could have ordered American Beauties from New York every day for what
our hollyhocks and clove pinks and common annuals cost us. We planted
five bushels of potatoes and dug three and a half, which made them come
to a dollar a bushel more than if we had bought them at the grocer's.
And as to our milk and cream--I once heard the Angel say to Jimmie when
they came out for a visit:
"Which will you have, old man? A glass of champagne or a glass of
milk? They both cost the same!"
But what of it? Weren't they _our_ cows which gave the milk? And
weren't they _our_ potatoes which rotted in the ground, and _our_
chickens which died before we could kill them? It was the pride of
ownership which ate into our lives and made us quite sickening to our
friends whose tastes ran to pink teas and hotel verandas, while we,
poor fools, lived each day nearer to the soil, and loved more dearly
the earth which nourished us.
CHAPTER IX
HOW BEE TRIED TO MAKE US SMART
Bee had spent nearly all the time since we were married in Europe, and
had never, therefore, paid the Angel and me a visit. But this very
afternoon she was to arrive.
The arrival of one's sister need not necessarily mean anything as
alarming as a smallpox scare, but if you knew the somewhat
revolutionary methods, adopted with a ladylike quiet and a well-bred
calm, which characterize Bee's visits to her relatives, you would
excuse our somewhat flurried preparations to entertain her. In
addition to our natural desire to do our best for her, Bee had sent a
letter clearly setting forth the style of entertainment she expected of
us, and indicating that no paltry excuses would be taken for our not
coming up to her wishes.
Aubrey was at first for open rebellion.
"If she will take us as she finds us, Bee will be welcome to come and
stay as long as she likes," he said, while her letter was still fresh
in our minds.
"She won't," I said, with conviction. Bee is my sister, or to speak
more accurately, I am Bee's sister. "She will come prepared to make
radical changes in our mode of living, in everything from our religion
to the way we have hung the pictures."
Aubrey used one small unprintable word.
"Furthermore," I added, "she will be so smooth and plausible about it,
that you will not object to carrying out her wishes."
The Angel gave me a look.
"If we carry out her wishes, do you think that will be the reason?" he
asked, quietly.
"No," I cried, impulsively. "It will be because as a host or as
anything else you are an Angel."
But he is also a diplomat, as his next remark will show.
"As we are incapable with such generic instructions," he said, tapping
Bee's letter with his pipe, "of knowing just how we must make ourselves
over to suit her, and as Bee is never quite happy unless she is
managing other people's affairs, suppose we wait until she comes and
gives us specific orders?"
This was what I considered the height, climax, and acme of hospitality.
"Only," he warned me as we drove to the station to meet her, "try to
remain, within bounds. The only thing I ha--criticize about Bee is
that she makes such a coward of you. Remember when she tries to
browbeat you, that _I_ consider your taste and common sense better than
hers, and that in any stand you take I am back of you, no matter what
it is."
I pressed the Angel's hand gratefully. Bee's train was appallingly
near, and my blissful married independence was rapidly degenerating
into my former state of jelly-like sisterly dependence.
Bee is one of those persons who, consciously or unconsciously, make you
feel the moment you meet her the difference between your clothes and
hers. I had almost forgotten this, but the second she stepped from the
train I was invisibly informed of the distance between us. I had put
on my best, and Aubrey said I looked very well, but in Bee's first
sweeping glance at me I felt sure that my dress was wrong in the back.
The carriage drove up, and, as Bee stepped into it, I noticed, that the
horses were too fat, and that, while old Uncle Amos might be a comfort,
he certainly was not stylish. I never had thought of these things
before.
In other words, Bee brought the city into too close juxtaposition for
the country to enjoy without a Mark-Tapley effort to come out strong
under trying circumstances.
Our place, Peach Orchard, was old, rambling, and picturesque. But it
was also comfortable. Both the Angel and I hate the idea of pioneering
or of doing without city comforts. So we had put bathrooms in here and
electric lights there, and, by adding city improvements to a country
estate, we had made of Peach Orchard a dear old place. It was a place,
too, over which some people raved, so I was loth to view it through my
critical sister's eyes for fear of permanent disenchantment.
But at first Bee was very polite. She affected an interest in the cows
and the number of hens sitting and how many more chickens we got than
the people whose estate adjoins. She spoke of the butter, which so
filled me with enthusiasm that I sent down to the dairy and had Mary
bring up Katie's last churning to show her. I was so interested in the
colour of the golden rolls in their cheese-cloth coverings that I did
not notice Bee's expression until afterward.
At five Bee asked for tea. There were some hurried whispered
instructions before we got it. But we pulled through that all right.
Then Bee said:
"Who is coming out to-night?"
"Coming out where?" I asked, genially.
"Why, to dine. Surely, you don't dine here alone, just you two, every
evening?"
I looked at Aubrey, and he looked at me.
"To be sure we do! Do you think we are already so bored by each other
that we send to New York for people to amuse us?" I cried, with some
spirit.
"Oh, not at all!" answered Bee, politely. "Only, I thought perhaps,
now that I am here, you would have some one from town for me to talk
to."
"Why, I'll talk to you and so will Aubrey--"
I stopped in confusion. Again it was something in Bee's expression, I
felt the same way when I called her attention to the length of the
sorrels' tails. It reminded me that Bee preferred them docked.
"It is your first night with us, so nobody will be here to-night," I
said, rising to the emergency. "But to-morrow we'll have somebody.
I'll ask the Jimmies!"
"Or perhaps you could get Captain Featherstone from Fort Hamilton,"
suggested Bee.
"That is not likely," I said. "He has so many engagements."
"You might try him--by telephone," suggested Bee again.
"Certainly, I'll ask him," I said, cordially.
Aubrey pressed my handkerchief into my hand with a meaning twinkle in
his eyes, and when Bee went in to dress, he said:
"It will be rather nice to see old Featherstone again, don't you think?"
"Yes, if we can get him," I answered.
"You poor little goose," said Aubrey, "don't you know they have it all
arranged, and that Featherstone won't go beyond earshot of the
telephone until he receives your invitation?"
To be sure! I had forgotten Bee's methods.
Of course it turned out as Aubrey predicted--it always does. Captain
Featherstone accepted with suspicious alacrity.
For three days Bee was polite, and I, who am most easily gulled for a
person who looks as intelligent as I do, was pluming myself upon the
fact that our modest mode of living was proving agreeable to Bee's
jaded European palate. I wondered if she had noticed my housekeeping.
She had not expressed herself in any way, but I wondered if she had
observed how scrupulously neat everything was, that there was no lint
on the floors and what bully things we had to eat.
I was the more eager to know what she thought from the fact that most
of my friends had not hesitated to say that I couldn't keep house, and
the Angel would starve. And once when I wrote home for a recipe for
tomato soup and one of the girls heard of it, she actually sent me this
insulting telegram: "Tomato soup! You! O Lord!"
Which just shows you.
So, on the third day, on seeing Bee cast a critical look around, I
said, unable to wait another minute for the praises I was sure would
come:
"Well, what do you think of us anyway?"
Then I leaned back with the thought in my mind, "Now here is where, as
Jimmie would say, I get a bunch of hot air."
Bee wheeled around on me eagerly, and I smiled in anticipation.
"Do you really want to know?"
"Of course I do!" I cried, impatiently.
"You asked me, you know," she said, warningly.
"I know I did. Go ahead. Tell me."
"Tell you what I think of you?" said Bee, looking me over as if to find
a sensitive spot for her blow to fall on. "Well, I think that you are
the most hopelessly _bourgeoise_ mortal I ever knew."
I sat up.
"_Bourgeois_!" I exploded.
"From a woman with social possibilities," she went on, "you have
degenerated into a mere housewife. And you and Aubrey have become
positively--"
She paused in order to be more impressive.
"Domestic!" she hissed at last with such vehemence that I bit my
tongue. As I put in no defence she went on, gathering momentum as she
talked.
"When I heard that you had come to live in one of the smartest towns
along the Hudson, where millionaires are as thick as blackberries, I
said to myself: 'Now they will rise to the occasion.' But have you?
No! I come, fresh from those gorgeous house-parties in England, to
find you and Aubrey no better than farmers and--satisfied with
yourselves! If you could only get my point of view and see _how_
satisfied you are!"
"We are happy,--that's what it is!" I interpolated, feebly.
"Then be miserable, but progress!" cried Bee. "Such a state of social
stagnation as you exist in is a sin against yours and Aubrey's talents."
I was so stunned I forgot to bow at this unexpected compliment.
"Here you are in the midst of smart traps, servants in livery, horses
with docked tails and magnificent harnesses, perfectly contented with
fat, lazy horses, an old negro coachman in a green coat, and carriages
whose simplicity is simply disgusting. There is only one really
magnificent thing about Peach Orchard, and that is the dog."
I felt faint. To have earned the right to live in Bee's eyes only by a
dog's breadth! It was mortifying.
"I don't care so much for myself," pursued Bee, comfortably, "but what
Sir Wemyss and Lady Lombard will say, _I_ don't know."
"Why, they aren't coming here, are they?" I gasped, sitting up.
"They are, if you will invite them. Of course I have nowhere to
entertain them, in return for all they did for me, and I thought
possibly you would ask them here for a fortnight, but since I have seen
how you live--unless, perhaps, you would be willing to be smartened up
a bit?"
Bee looked distinctly hopeful.
"What would you suggest?" I asked, huskily.
Bee cleared her throat in a pleased way.
"First of all, let me be assured that I will not be embarrassing you,"
she said, politely. "You can afford to--to branch out a little?"
"Yes," I said. But my pleasure in the admission was not keen.
"Then," said Bee, "I would advise a coachman and a footman in livery.
I know just where two excellent Englishmen can be got. Then you want
all this made into lawns. You want to exercise the horses more, and
have their tails docked. And above all you want a victoria."
"We have got that," I said. "I was going to surprise you with it. It
came this morning."
"Where is it?" cried Bee, standing up and shaking out her gown.
"In the barn, but perhaps--"
"Let's go and look at it!" exclaimed Bee. Then as we started she laid
her hand kindly on my arm. "And please say 'stables,' not 'barn.' Sir
Wemyss might not know what you meant."
I giggled at this, for ours is so hopelessly a barn. Nobody but a fool
would try to rejuvenate the huge red structure by the word "stables."
It sheltered the lovely, soft-eyed Jerseys, a score of sitting hens in
one retired corner, the horses, the feed, the carriages, and farm
implements. Stables indeed!
Bee walked straight by all the animals, who turned their heads and gave
me a welcome after their several kinds, and stood in delighted
contemplation before the beautiful shining victoria.
"That is a beauty!" she said, at length. "Aubrey certainly knows
what's what, even if you don't. Now I can tell you what has been in my
mind all day long. Oh, do leave that cow alone and listen! Call the
dog!"
Jack, our snow-white bulldog, came at a word. Bee beamed on him.
"It is the latest--the very latest fad in London to drive in a victoria
with a white bulldog on the seat with you!" she said, complacently.
"And Jack will be simply perfect for the part."
"Shall I train Aubrey to run behind with his tongue hanging out, in
Jack's place?" I asked.
"Now there you go--rejecting my simplest suggestion!" cried Bee. "My
simplest, my smartest, and my least expensive! This won't cost you a
penny, and it will attract attention at once."
I closed my eyes for a moment to contemplate just what sort of
attention we would attract if the dog and I drove to the Station to
meet Aubrey.
"Suppose we try it now!" suggested Bee. "Will you have Amos bring out
the horses?"
Bee is always scrupulously polite about not giving orders to my
servants direct, although I have begged her to consider them as her
own. I always think that a hostess who neglects to make her guests
feel at liberty to give an order either is not accustomed to servants
or else stands in too much awe of them.