Miss Buncle Married (15 page)

Barbara gradually learned these things about the Marvells. She learned, too, that the Marvells, like all savages, had superstitions and taboos. Trivvie would rather have died than walk under a ladder, and she was miserable for days if a mirror were broken, or a black cat crossed her path, or if she saw a solitary magpie in the wood. There were certain words that must never be said, and certain trees which Trivvie never passed without touching lightly with her hand. Barbara never learned more than a tenth of all these strange rites and never knew the meaning nor the origin of those she saw; she doubted whether the Marvells themselves knew the meaning or the origin of them.

The Marvells continued to play in the garden and Barbara continued to find excuses for their misdemeanors; she excused them to herself, and to Miss Foddy, and also to Arthur, who was legitimately annoyed at the damming of the stream (Arthur would have been even more annoyed if he had heard about the elephant pit, but Barbara kept that piece of wickedness to herself), but sometimes it was difficult to find excuses, and, sometimes, quite impossible, and at last Barbara decided that she must just take the Marvells as she found them and make the best of it.

Meanwhile, Sam came down to The Archway House for several long weekends. It was essential that he should get the full benefit of his riding lessons, and Arthur and Barbara liked having him, and it required very little hinting on Sam's part to wangle an invitation out of Uncle Arthur. He was rather a subdued Sam, Barbara thought, subdued and slightly vague at times, and he had lost a good deal of his youthful cheek which had amused them so much during his first visit. She spoke to Arthur about it.

“I wonder what's the matter with Sam,” she said.

“Sam!” echoed Arthur. “There's nothing the matter with Sam. He's settling down now and really working. You were quite right about him, Barbara.”

“Perhaps he's working too hard,” said Barbara anxiously.

Arthur roared with laughter.

The truth was that Sam was worrying about Jerry. He was not getting “any forrader” with Jerry, and he couldn't understand it. He came down and rode; he met her at tea with Barbara; he walked home with her several times through the winter's nights; but, although Jerry was polite and friendly, she held him at arm's length, and no wiles, no stratagems could break down the invisible barrier she had erected. Sam couldn't understand it at all. He was not used to this kind of treatment, and he could usually do what he liked with the female species of his acquaintance. Girls went down like ninepins before him—in vulgar parlance they threw themselves at his head—but the one girl that he wanted was absolutely unapproachable. If Jerry had wanted to complete her conquest of Sam and bind him to her with fetters of steel, she could not have taken a surer or more certain way of achieving her object, but Jerry didn't want Sam; she had made up her mind to that. She was far too frank and straightforward to act one thing and mean another, and her unapproachable manner was intended to show Sam that she had no use for him—to warn him off.

Jerry had no use for Sam, but she had plenty of use for Barbara (if the expression can be allowed), and she and Barbara became friends. There was ten years difference in their ages, but that did not seem to matter. Jerry was old and wise for her years, and Barbara was young for hers. Sometimes Barbara felt that Jerry was older than herself. It was natural in a way, for Barbara had led a very sheltered life, and Jerry had shouldered responsibilities, and there is nothing more aging to the young than responsibilities bravely shouldered, and troubles courageously borne. Jerry had her meed of both, and she came and poured them out to Barbara and felt all the better for it. She told Barbara some of her troubles—but not all—she told her all about the horses, their spavins and their overreaches, and Dough-Boy's cough, and the blue roan who had turned out to be a crib-biter, and she told her about the owners of the horses, and how exacting and unreasonable they were; and she told her about the frightful worries she was having with her maids; but she didn't tell Barbara much about Archie, because, for one thing, she felt it wasn't very fair to Archie to discuss him, and, for another, Archie's delinquencies were not very suitable to be retailed
in
toto
to an innocent like her new friend. So, when Barbara inquired after her brother, Jerry replied vaguely that he was “living in town” or “still looking for a job—it's so difficult to find a job nowadays,” and Barbara had no idea that Archie's vagaries were causing his sister wakeful nights.

Mr. Tupper (of Messrs. Tupper, Tyler, & Tupper) was also concerned about Archie Cobbe's behavior, though not to the extent of allowing it to interfere with his slumbers. He visited Jerry one afternoon—much to her amazement—and besought her to make her brother find suitable employment.

“He's looking for a job, but he can't find one,” said Jerry firmly, for, whatever her own opinion of Archie might be, she was loyal to the backbone and nobody but herself had any right to criticize him.

“He is spending money very freely,” Mr. Tupper said. “I happen to know that he is deeply in debt and is making no attempt to curtail his expenses. It is
deplorable
.”

Jerry knew this, too, and deplored it even more deeply than Mr. Tupper, but she was not going to say so. “It's because he knows that money is coming to him,” she said frankly. “It's so very unsettling for a young man.”

Mr. Tupper was shocked at this bald statement; he was also extremely perturbed and uncomfortable, for he was aware that money was not coming to the young gentleman in question. It was an extremely delicate subject.

“It is better not to rely too much upon—ahem—expectations,” he allowed himself to say.

“That's what I think,” Jerry agreed. “And I've told Archie dozens of times. But Archie's very young, and you know what boys are.”

“Archie is now twenty-five,” said Mr. Tupper. “Two years older than you are, I believe.”

“Yes, but then I'm not a boy,” Jerry told him seriously.

He smiled, for he liked Jerry. And then he thought of Archie again, and frowned. “Something must be done,” he said weightily. “As you know, I am one of your trustees, and I cannot allow things to continue in this unsatisfactory way. I shall go up to town and see Archie myself. If he cannot find congenial employment in London he must return to Ganthorne.”

“Yes,” said Jerry without enthusiasm.

“Would it be possible for you to employ Archie here, in your—ahem—business?” inquired Mr. Tupper.

“Oh yes, of course I could,” Jerry said. “I'd love to have him, of course, but you see he doesn't like it—and it's difficult. I mean it's difficult to have a person living with you and being bored.”

“Then he must find employment in London and stick to it,” said Mr. Tupper, rising as he spoke. “I shall tell him so tomorrow, and I shall tell him plainly.”

No wonder Jerry was disturbed. It was all frightfully worrying. Of course, Mr. Tupper made no impression on Archie. He went on as before, and the only thing that Mr. Tupper had accomplished by his interference was to salve his own conscience and to alarm Jerry and make her worry more. Jerry found Barbara very soothing and comforting during this difficult time. It was not necessary to confide in Barbara to gain her sympathy—you just talked to Barbara about odds and ends of things, and you came away feeling a different creature. Jerry rode over to The Archway House as often as she could. They talked about everything under the sun (except erring brothers) and consumed gallons of tea and quantities of crumpets—for Jerry's digestion was quite as good as Barbara's, and she was always hungry at teatime.

It was a very satisfactory friendship, for Barbara profited by it too. Jerry enlarged Barbara enormously. In a new friend we start life anew, for we create a new edition of ourselves and so become, for the time being, a new creature. Barbara had never done this interesting thing before. She had lived all her life in Silverstream and her neighbors were people who had known her from childhood, and therefore had a preconceived idea of her, so engrained, that they never
saw
her at all, any more than they saw the sponge which accompanied them daily into their baths. In creating a new Barbara for Jerry Cobbe, Barbara created a new facet of herself and was enlarged by it. She had no idea she was doing anything of the sort, of course; she merely felt that life had become very interesting, and that she, herself, was more adequate to its demands.

Jerry Cobbe was not the only friend that Barbara made that winter; she was the first and most important, and Mrs. Thane was the second. Barbara went to return the Thanes' call in some trepidation. She expected—on the information received from Mrs. Dance—to find a querulous invalid and a downtrodden daughter, but the Thanes were “not a bit like that.” Mrs. Thane was a woman who had seen a great deal of trouble; she was disciplined to suffering; she was calm and patient; she bore her semi-invalid life and occasional pain with cheerfulness and fortitude. It was not the life she would have chosen (for she had an active mind and was intensely interested in People and Things), but she made the best of it and created a little world of her own. She could not go out into the world, but she created an atmosphere round about her, and the world came to her. Candia Thane was a large young woman, rather awkward in limb and tactless in speech. She was full of undisciplined vitality; impulsive and—to some people of lesser stamina—overpowering. Barbara liked them both (she had lots of stamina, of course). Mrs. Thane commanded her respect and Candia her affection. Candia's rather like
me,
Barbara thought, only more so.

When Barbara arrived, there were two other ladies in the Thanes' drawing-room. She arrived in the middle of a discussion upon international politics. “Look at India,” one of the ladies was saying. “Yes, but look at Japan,” urged the other with intense vehemence. Barbara was introduced to the ladies, of course, but she never heard their names. They were already labeled, much more legibly in her retentive memory, as Mrs. Japan and Mrs. India. She was rather crushed at the farsightedness of the two ladies—what did they see when they looked at Japan and India like that? Did their bird's-eye view take in the whole of these Asiatic countries at a glance? Were India and Japan open before their eyes like a child's picture book? Barbara tried hard to “look at India,” but all she could see was a pink excrescence like a plump baby carrot, sticking out into a pale-blue sea at the southern extremity of Asia. But I haven't got an imagination, she reminded herself sadly.

After the two ladies had gone—and they went very soon—Barbara had a nice little chat with the Thanes. In age Barbara was halfway between the elderly mother and the young daughter, and she felt in sympathy with them both. She was of the transition generation, and therefore adaptable.

“Mrs. Gadgeby is very intense,” said Mrs. Thane, “an interesting woman, of course, but slightly tiring.”

“Is that Mrs. India or Mrs. Japan?” Barbara inquired.

Mrs. Thane was naturally a trifle surprised at the question, but when Barbara had explained matters she understood and was amused. It appeared that Mrs. Gadgeby was Mrs. India.

“I shall call her Mrs. Gandhi,” said Candia, giggling.

“But not to her face, I hope,” remonstrated Candia's mother.

“She'd never notice if I did,” replied Candia promptly.

This little incident broke the ice, and the conversation flowed on very comfortably. Mrs. Thane inquired whether Barbara had seen much of her next-door neighbors—the Marvell children. She was pleased to call them “the blue-eyed banditti,” for she was of the generation that delights in Longfellow. Barbara replied that she had seen a good deal of them, and amused her new friends with an account of Trivvie and Ambrose, and their doings. Mrs. Thane was somewhat scandalized but not inordinately so, for she had moved with the times and was wise enough to take things as they were. She had been born in the days when children were taught to venerate the aged, but she had lived long enough to learn that she could count upon no respect from the young.

“In my young days,” said Mrs. Thane smiling whimsically, “in my young days the liver wing of the chicken was given to the grown-ups and now they keep it for the children.”

Candia exclaimed at that. “What rot!” she cried. “You always have the liver wing, Mother.”

“Unless my grandchildren are here,” Mrs. Thane agreed, laughingly. “But I'm lucky, you see. As a matter of fact,” she continued more seriously, “my little remark was intended symbolically. In my youth it was the middle-aged who ruled and the young were “young and foolish” and did not openly protest. But now, it is the other way about; the young think their elders foolish and make it very clear. I've sometimes wondered whether my generation was
really
foolish. A foolish generation sandwiched between two strong-minded clever generations, squashed between two millstones; overridden in youth, by age; stamped upon in age by youth. And the next generation (the children of the people who are now young), what will they be like? Will they be overridden by the strong-minded young, grown to middle age? Will they be stamped upon first by their elders and then by their children? Is it a case of once a doormat, always a doormat?” inquired Mrs. Thane smiling.

“There isn't much doormat about
you
,” Candia said with conviction.

“I'm the exception that proves the rule,” said her mother promptly. “But I've talked quite enough; it's Mrs. Abbott's turn now.”

“I can't talk,” Barbara told them seriously. “At least I can sometimes, but when I start I can't stop, and it's always frightfully muddled. I never know how people manage to say things that they feel. I feel things, of course, but they won't come out. I think there's a kind of block somewhere.”

Barbara came away from the Thanes' feeling pleased with herself and pleased with them—a very agreeable state of mind. They're nice and friendly, she thought. Mrs. Thane's very interesting, and Candia's a dear. She didn't know, of course, that the Thanes were equally pleased with her, but it was so.

“I like her immensely,” Mrs. Thane said, with surprise when Candia returned to the drawing-room after showing Barbara out.

“Oh, you never can go by what Elva Dance says,” replied Candia elliptically.

“Poor Elva!” said Mrs. Thane laughing. “I wonder what she told Mrs. Abbott about us.”

***

When Barbara got home after her visit to the Thanes' she found Jerry Cobbe in her drawing-room.

“They said you wouldn't be long so I waited,” Jerry told her.

“I'm so glad you did,” Barbara exclaimed, pushing a chair up to the fire for her unexpected but ever-welcome guest.

“I wanted to see you ‘specially,'” continued Jerry, “not that I don't always want to see you, but things have happened—”

“What things?” inquired Barbara, with her usual keen interest in the affairs of others.

“Hyacinth and Poppy have GONE,” said Jerry dramatically.

Barbara was aware that these flowery names were the names of Jerry's maids, and she was suitably sympathetic with her friend in the domestic crisis that the departure of her staff had occasioned.

“Goodness!” she exclaimed. “Both at once?”

“Both at once,” nodded Jerry. “But I'm not really sorry, you know. They were a frightful trial to me. Rose and Ivy were bad enough, but Hyacinth and Poppy were absolutely the limit. What names, too!” continued Jerry wearily, tearing off her beret and throwing it onto the floor. “What names!”

“Yes,” agreed Barbara, nodding sympathetically. “
What
names!
”

“I think Mother would have had a fit if she had had to engage a cook called Hyacinth. Cooks, in Mother's day, were always called Jane, or Ellen, or sometimes Mary—and they could cook, too, which was another advantage.”

Barbara agreed again.

“I know it's dull for them,” said Jerry, trying to be strictly impartial, “and the lamps are a nuisance, of course, but I can't help that. I can't move my house nearer to a cinema to suit my maids, and I can't afford to put electric light into it—I wish to goodness I could.”

“I know,” said Barbara, in her most sympathetic voice. “What
are
you going to do?”

“I'm going to have Markie to live with me.”

“Markie?” inquired Barbara.

“Yes. I rang up Markie yesterday, when Hyacinth and Poppy had gone, and fixed the whole thing. Markie and I can run the house together quite easily, and I can get one of the grooms to come in and do the heavy work. I think it ought to work out all right. I really do—”

“But who—” began Barbara.

“You see Markie is out of a job,” continued Jerry smiling cheerfully, “and when I suggested it she seemed quite pleased at the idea of coming to live with me. It isn't really her line, of course, but—well—she likes me, you see. And, of course, it will be awfully nice for me to have dear old Markie to talk to in the evening. It's a bit dull with nobody there. Archie is still—”

“But who
is
Markie?” demanded Barbara.

“Markie!” exclaimed Jerry, raising her eyebrows in surprise. “Oh, of course, I forgot you don't know Markie. I'm always forgetting you've just come to Wandlebury. I feel as if I'd known you for years, and years, and years.”

Barbara smiled. She was very glad Jerry felt
that
because she felt the same about Jerry, but she was still no nearer knowing who “Markie” was—this mysterious being who was to solve Jerry's domestic problem so satisfactorily.

“Who is Markie?” she asked, for the third time (for Barbara, when her interest was aroused, was a most pertinacious creature). “Who
is
Markie, Jerry?”

“Markie is really Miss Marks, my old governess,” explained Jerry. “I never went to school, you know. Father wouldn't let me, and, of course, I had a splendid time at home with all the horses and hunting, and all that—so I never wanted to go. Sometimes I think it would have been better if I
had
gone to school; I wouldn't have felt so different from other girls—but that's neither here nor there,” she added, “the point is I didn't go to school, I stayed at home and had Markie instead. I had her for ages, and she did all she could to educate me, and it really wasn't her fault that she didn't manage it better. It was partly my fault—I hated lessons—and partly my father's fault. If Father was going to ride he just came and dragged me away from Markie, and, of course, I was delighted—and off we went. What fun it was!” said Jerry, with a sigh for the good old days.

“Yes, it must have been,” agreed her friend.

“Markie's frightfully clever, you know,” Jerry continued, stretching out her legs in their brown jodhpurs. “She's the sort of person who can turn her hand to anything. She can conjugate Latin verbs, or turn out a perfectly scrumptious omelet, or make beds, or keep accounts, and all the time she doesn't think she's being clever at all. She's so nice and kind and sort of
modest
about it. So you see,” Jerry added, looking across at Barbara with her clear, frank, gray eyes, “you see, I'm frightfully lucky to have gotten her.”

Barbara saw that she was. She was indeed frightfully lucky, for she had really had a desperate time with maids.

Ganthorne Lodge was tucked away among the moors. There were no modern conveniences, and the nearest bus route was two miles from the house. Servants hated the place—as well they might—and found nothing to relieve the tedium of their existence except flirting with the grooms or quarrelling with each other. Jerry's problem had been getting more and more acute, and Barbara was thankful that it was now solved in such a satisfactory manner.

“I'm glad,” she said sincerely. “I really
am
glad about it, Jerry. When is Markie coming?”

“Tomorrow,” said Jerry promptly. “You see the poor darling's out of a job. She's a little deaf now, and people don't realize how frightfully marvelous she is. So she simply leaped at the idea of coming back to me as a sort of glorified cook-general—it's rather pathetic, somehow.”