The Wooden Shepherdess (22 page)

Once nights had begun to grow chilly they slept as close to the fire as they could; and Augustine would never forget that night when he woke by the dying embers, in darkness smelling of spruce and with stars big as glittering eggs up above in between the tree-tops, roused by the plain-song of timber wolves seeking their meat from God—what men call howling.... Yet neither night nor day was there ever a wolf to be seen: not a shadow slinking between the daylight trunks, nor even at night the greenish glint of a pair of eyes in the light of a firebrand.

Presently even the midday sun was losing its strength and they met the earliest warning wisps of a powdery snow so light that they waved in the wind like smoke. This was the season when even the bears move south and begin to think about sleep: so the young men made what city-wards haste they could before getting caught out there by the white Canadian winter.

Once they were back in the city, Augustine had barely had time to think any more about “home” before there came thicker falls of a heavier snow which patted the face like fingers, and froze to eyebrows and lashes, and curtained from sight the opposite side of the street—even hid the friend you could reach to touch with your hand. Then the weather turned fine again, with horse-drawn sleighs on the streets and the air so cold that breathing it felt like taking in needles of ice. But it wasn't so much this phenomenal cold out of doors as the heating inside the houses which sent him hurrying round to the shipping-office at last: for Augustine had stood the heat of a North American summer—just, but the ovenish indoor heat of a North American winter defeated him. Either he had to get back to an English country-house winter so imperceptibly warmer indoors than out, or die.

It pleased as well as surprised him when Anthony said that he thought of visiting Europe too: they could share a cabin.

*

Augustine had cabled to have his Bentley sent to the docks: so at Mellton tea-time the pair arrived together hot-foot (or rather, hot-tire) from Southampton.

While Anthony gazed at the fine Jacobean front of the largest private house he had ever seen, a welcoming Wantage opened the door; and Augustine was shocked to see how much his old friend had aged in so little more than a year. He was thinner than ever, and balder: the lump on his throat was bigger, his eyes stuck out even further....

And there was Polly, and—Lord, how Polly had grown! He would hardly have known her.... But Polly had turned unaccountably shy: she hid her face in her mother and wouldn't look at him, let alone speak. So the meeting they both had been longing for ended in merely the mousy smell in his nose of little-girl's hair as he stooped to the back of her head, being all he could get at to kiss. For the truth was that out of the two of them not only Polly had “grown”; and poor conservative Polly had no need of looking to tell her the changes which time and absence had wrought in her cherished Augustine. That voice from the hall might still over there have seemed laughably British; but here it had sounded distinctly American....

So Augustine was back at Mellton at last; and (after those first few minutes) surprised to find how little had anything changed. This woke him up to the fact of how much he had changed himself: he found himself looking at Mellton with more of a critical eye, and wondered how Mary could stick it—this dead-alive life spent running a great big house that was perfectly able to run itself while Gilbert fooled around with his politics. Mary had got in a groove: it was time for Augustine to wake her up....

As for Mary—delighted as Mary was at having him back—she noticed how much more sure of himself he seemed; but she only thought how often that merely betokened a “self” no longer so worth being sure of, for Mary as well as her child was convinced any change in the old Augustine must be for the worse. Meanwhile Wantage was telling Cook how Mr. Augustine's frame had thickened: he moved his limbs in a different way, perhaps just a little abrupt and clumsy for one of the gentry.... Indeed it was only Gilbert who (grudgingly) thought him even a trifle improved—apart from his accent of course, but that would soon wear off in civilized company.

Because of this Great Occasion Polly had come down to tea; but she sat all the time with her eyes glued to her plate.

Indeed they were fortunate having a stranger like Anthony there as a lightning-conductor: he charmed both his hosts, and his polished manners put everyone else on their mettle.

So much, then, for growth and the passage of time: except that after Augustine had gone up to change, and observed laid out on his bed his evening clothes which so long had hung in a Mellton cupboard, he sadly reminded himself that those cute little moccasins made by a genuine Indian squaw and intended for Polly would also be much too small: at best they might one day do for Susan Amanda....

But then his long-unaccustomed efforts to fight his way into an overstarched evening shirt cut short all further reflection, and caused him to shout across the passage to Anthony: “Say, how in heck does a tortoise get into its shell?”

*

Augustine was right: Wantage had certainly aged. The pains in his back were worse, and his palpitations were something chronic. His thyroid was bigger; the Mistress had said that the next time the doctor came to the house she would get him to take a look. Meanwhile he suffered a lot from his temper nowadays too: he would bite off poor Maggie Winter's head over nothing, and all the younger maids were properly scared of him. “Nervy?”—Well, yes; but how could he help his nerves being edgy a bit when nowadays nothing went right?

The latest disaster was Jimmy—that Jimmy he'd loved as a son, and so often chastened like one. For when Jimmy was just about ready at last for a Second Footman he'd got himself caught in the shrubbery fooling around with that little chit of a kitchen-maid, Lily. When Lily had started to swell—the pair of them barely sixteen—they'd
both
of them had to be sacked.... That was the end of Jimmy in Service of course. But Ted had helped over Maggie's Nellie, and Wantage had hoped if he wrote to his brother Ted in Coventry, Ted might have took Jimmy on and taught him bicycles. Now Ted had wrote there were too many Coventry boys themselves out of work for that: apprentices served their time on a pittance, but due for a skilled man's tenpence-halfpenny an hour were sacked and a new boy took.

Ted had said to tell Mrs. Winter her sister was well and the baby coming on fine.... Yet now it was gone nine o'clock, and he'd let the whole day slip by without passing the good news on—so took up with Jimmy he'd been, on top of his work.

Once Wantage had left the gentlemen over their port (the Master and Mr. Augustine and Mr. Augustine's American), having no Jimmy to help any longer he'd ought to be making a start on those silvers to wash and the glasses; but likely as not would have barely got into his apron before the coffee was rung for.... And then he'd got to fetch up the near-champagne for the Servants' Ball: for tonight there was mistletoe hung in the Servants' Hall, there'd be dancing from ten till mid-night (and half the Gardens and Stables bamboozled away from the straight-and-narrow by giggling hussies, you bet your bottom!). As Wantage pushed through the green baize door from beyond it came startled squeaks and a scurry of feet—them females, stark staring crazy the lot of them! Maggie had offered him one till the new boy came.... No fear! Sure as eggs if feather-head girls like them gave a hand with his silvers they'd wash the spoons in with the forks—or something equally daft, so he'd have to wear his palms sore rubbing out the scratches....

But then came the sound of the bell. “All right, I heard you!” he muttered, and paused at the drawing-room door to make quite sure he was wearing his proper benevolent butler's face.

Wantage was stumbling up the cellar steps with the champagne-type when he called to mind that letter from Ted with its news about Nellie: he'd better deliver the message now before he forgot it again.

Wantage was panting a bit as he pulled back his favorite basket-chair well away from the fire—and flopped. For crumbs! he could do with a few minutes' rest.... These days the dear old Room was its own self again, now Nellie was gone. In the brass Benares vase there was holly instead of flowers, the same as on every Christmas Eve for time out of mind.... No changes ever in here—unless that was new, that scratch on the “Cherry-ripe” frame?

Relaxing, he stretched his legs till his hip-joints cracked like a couple of pistol-shots; and “Letter from Ted,” he began. But when he had told her the good news at last, all Maggie vouchsafed was something about him neglecting his Herbal Balm for those joints.... The ungrateful bitch! His loose plate chittered against his few sound teeth like the castanets and he barely managed to swallow the sudden bile in his throat.... But “Hold hard, Fred!” he admonished himself: “Get a grip, before you say something you know you'll be sorry for....”

Meanwhile Maggie was thinking: “So Nellie is well, says he!
And
the baby coming on fine! Then he doesn't know much....” For what of the letter she'd had from Nellie herself which said little Syl had come out with the measles—bad, but that Nellie durstn't let on because of her pupils with Christmas coming which anyhow meant no teaching and so no pay? That Brother Ted was a broken reed: he'd encouraged Nellie to come there and teach, but almost as soon as she'd got to Coventry Nellie had written that pupils were harder to find than what Mr. Wantage had said and she'd have to move into cheaper lodgings. That meant moving to somewhere right in the warren-like middle of town and traveling out to her pupils in Earlsdon or Hearsall Common by tram or bus—or walking, to save the fare.

“By a stroke of luck” (she wrote) she had found an upstairs room at one-and-fivepence a week in one of the courts off Godsell Street; and Maggie could picture her now, in her garret “above the Balloon-woman” (dropsy: the only “balloons” downstairs were the woman's bedridden legs).

*

Maggie had never seen it of course, that entry off Godsell Street. It was under the room where a watchmaker worked, and so dark you instinctively ducked. The entry was flanked by a butcher's shop, and down one side of the cobbled yard ran the ramshackle lean-to shed where he killed his beasts (the City Surveyor called this “Seventeen Court” but to everyone else it was “Slaughterhouse Yard”).

The whole row of dwellings were just one-up-and-one-down, with a single outside tap in the yard for the lot and the sanitation all down at the end. They were centuries old, their woodwork rotten and riddled by mice. The doors from the yard opened straight on the downstairs rooms; and Nellie's stairs led up from behind the Balloon-woman's bed—in a room that was nearly all bed.

In Coventry, Christmas Eve had begun with the scraping of spades. A fall of snow overnight had muffled all sound in the city till just before dawn, when this scraping of spades on the paving-stones had begun.

Dawn had revealed these huddled buildings' usual sordid grime exchanged for a silver beauty; and Nellie had gazed in amazement, for even the narrow yard which her window faced had its share of glistening change. As if by Merlin-magic (all yesterday having been spent re-reading Tennyson's “Morte d'Arthur”) the rusty old lean-to-shed where the beasts were killed was turned to a pure white knightly tournament-tent; and above this mournfully-lowing pavilion the backs of the next-door court were a magical castle wall—each window-sill plumped with its silken cushion of white, where sparrows fluffed into little brown balls dug deep for yesterday's crumbs. Dog-tooth fringes of icicles graced the leaking gutter above; and beside the pavilion door that bundle of poles and the wheel-less pram were turned to a jeweled trophy of arms....

“White Samite, mystic, wonderful!” Even the cobbled yard was a carpet of virgin white till an aged wizard shuffled out in his tattered and ancient Army greatcoat, turned his face to the wall where he stood and stained a patch of the snow with yellow.

Nellie had gone out early to fetch the feverish baby's morning penn'orth of milk (though mostly he sicked it up); but even as early as this the snow in the streets outside was rutted and fanned by skidding lorries and drays as they swerved to avoid a fallen costermonger's horse. There the animal lay spread-eagled, an angry policeman perched on its head while the carter did nothing to get it back on its feet but busied himself collecting the rolling cabbages spilled from his cart, and swore. The three pawnbroker's balls on the corner were turned to a triad of guelder roses.

But even by noon the thaw had begun; and now, when dusk prevented her reading her small-print Tennyson any longer, everything dripped.

“The Lily Maid of Astolat” ... but Nellie's window faced to a biting wind so had to be kept shut as tight as its sagging frame allowed, with the aid of a paper wedge. It was clouded over with steam. The fire in the grate was a tiny glow at the heart of a carefully-husbanded shovel of slack and dust; and the drying napkins strung from wall to wall had filled the air with a pungent chill. In the darkening room the nearly-invisible baby cried and grizzled without intermission, and pawed at his ears with his woolen gloves. But with less than a penn'orth of paraffin left in the bottle it seemed too early to light the lamp, so she wiped a patch of steam from the window and tried to look out.

During the all-day thaw great clods of snow had slipped from the faery tent, revealing the holes in the rusty roof below; and gone was that carpet of virgin white—round the communal tap the melting snow was trodden down to a gray and horrible porridge, which even the kids no longer tried to make into balls. The streets would be ankle-deep in slush, and Nellie's galoshes had holes; but she hadn't eaten all day and the cramp in her stomach told her she'd got to eat something to keep up her strength: so she pinned the throat of her jacket as high as she could with her old jet brooch, abandoned the crying baby and sallied forth in the gloaming.