the lamberts as a rule took things easy in the morning. breakfast was at any time that was suitable to the convenience and appetite of each individual; the things were generally cleared away by half-past eleven or twelve, a matter of half an hour lost in the forenoon[pg 284] made little difference in the revolution of their day.
at half-past ten on the morning of miss hancock's descent upon her, fanny was seated at the breakfast-table. it was a glorious day, filled with the warmth of summer, the scent of roses, and the songs of birds. a letter from her father lay beside her on the table; it had arrived by the morning's post, and contained great news—good news, too, yet the goodness of it was not entirely reflected in her face.
the worries of life were weighing on miss lambert; james hancock's unanswered letter was not the least of these. she had laughed on receiving it, then she had cried. she had written three or four letters in answer to it, beginning, "dear mr hancock," "my dear mr hancock," "please do not think me horrid," etc.; but it was no use, each was a distinct refusal, yet each seemed either too cold or too warm. "if i send this," said she, "it will hurt him horribly, and he has been so kind. oh dear! why will men be so stupid, they are so nice if they'd only not worry one to marry them. if i send this[pg 285] it will only make him think that i will 'have him in the end,' as susannah says. i wish i were a man."
besides love troubles household worries had their place. james had gone very much to pieces morally in the last few days. he had taken diligently to drink, the writing and quoting of poetry, and the pawning of unconsidered trifles; between the bouts, in those fits of remorse, which may be likened to the fata morgana of true repentance, he had expended his energy on all sorts of household duties not required of him: winding up clocks to their destruction, smashing china, and scattering coals all over the place in attempts to convey over-full scuttles to wrong rooms and in the face of gravity. the effect upon susannah of these eccentricities can be best described by the fact that she lived now most of her time with her apron over her head. housework under these circumstances became a matter of some difficulty.
it wanted some twenty minutes to eleven when the "brougham with celluloid fittings," containing miss hancock, drove up the drive and stopped before "the laurels."
[pg 286]
miss hancock stepped out and up the steps, noticing to the minutest detail the neglect before and around her.
she gave her own characteristic knock—sharp, decided, and business-like; she would also have given her own characteristic ring, but that the bell failed to respond, the pull produced half a foot of wire but no sound, and the knob, when she dropped it, dangled wearily as if to say, "now see what you've done! n'matter, i don't care."
she waited a little and knocked again; this time came footsteps and the sound of bars coming down and bolts being unshot, the door opened two inches on the chain, and the same pale blue eye and undecided-coloured fringe that had appeared to mr bevan, appeared to the now incensed miss hancock.
just as the rabbit peeping from its burrow sees the stoat and recognises its old ancestral enemy, so susannah, in miss hancock, beheld the foe of herself and all her tribe.
"is miss lambert at home?" asked the visitor sharply.
"yus, she's in."
"then open the door, i wish to see her."
[pg 287]
susannah banged the door to, not to exclude the newcomer, but simply to release the chain. then she opened it again wide, as if to let in an elephant.
susannah had not presented a particularly spruce appearance on the day when mr bevan called and we first met her, but this morning she was simply—awful.
a lock of hair like a bight of half-unravelled cable hung down behind her ear, her old print dress was indescribable, and she had, apparently, some one else's slippers on. she had also the weary air of a person who had been watching in a sick room all the night.
miss hancock took this figure in with one snapshot glance; also the hall untidied, the floor undusted, the dust-pan and brush laid on the stairs, a trap for the unwary to step on; the grandfather's clock pointing to quarter to six, and many other things which i have not seen or noticed, but which were clear to miss hancock, just as nebul? and stars which, looking in the direction of i cannot see, are clear to the two-foot reflecting telescope of the yerkes observatory.
susannah escorted the sniffing visitor into[pg 288] the library, dusted with her apron the very same chair she had dusted for mr bevan, said, "i'll tell miss fanny," and left the room, closing the door with a snap that spoke, not volumes, but just simply words.
the night before, after the other members of the household had retired, james had taken it into his head to sit up in the library over the remains of the fire left by fanny. the room, as a consequence, reeked of stale tobacco, a tumbler stood on the table convenient to the armchair. needless to say, the tumbler was empty.
miss hancock looked around her at the books, at the carpet, at the general litter. she came to the mantelpiece and touched it, looked at the tip of her gloved finger to assay the quantity of dust to the square millimetre, said, "pah!" and sat down in the armchair. a pink un of george lambert's lay invitingly near her on the table; she picked it up, glanced at the title, read a joke, turned purple, and dropped the raciest of all racing papers just as fanny, fresh and charming, but somewhat bewildered-looking, entered the room.
[pg 289]
fanny felt sure that this visit of miss hancock's had something to do with the letter of her brother's. she was relieved when her visitor, after extending a hand emotionless and chill as the fin of a turtle, said:
"i had some business in highgate, so i thought i would take the opportunity of returning your parasol, which you left behind you the other night."
"thanks awfully," said fanny; "it's awfully good of you to take the trouble. please excuse the untidiness; we are in a great upset for—the painters are coming in. won't you come into the breakfast-room? there's a fire there; it's not cold, i know, but i always think a fire is so bright."
she led the way to the breakfast-room, her visitor following, anxious to see as much as she could of the inner working of the lambert household.
she gave a little start at the sight of the breakfast things not removed, and another start at sight of the provender laid out for one small person. the remains of a round of beef graced one end of the board, and a haddock that, had it been let grow, would[pg 290] assuredly have ended its life in the form of a whale, the other; there was also jam and other things, including some shortbread on a plate.
"have you had breakfast?" asked fanny in a hospitable tone of voice.
"i breakfasted at quarter to eight," said miss hancock with a scarcely perceptible emphasis on the "i."
"i know we're awfully late as a rule," said fanny, as they sat down near the window, in and out of which the wasps were coming, and through which the sun shone, laying a burning square on the carpet, "but i hate early breakfast. when i breakfast at eight i feel a hundred years old by twelve. did you ever notice how awfully long mornings are?"
"my mornings," said miss hancock, laying a scarcely perceptible accent on the "my," "are all too short; an hour lost in the morning is never regained. you cannot expect servants to be active and diligent without you set them the example. we are placed, i think, in a very responsible position with regard to our servants: as we make them so they are."
"do you think so?" said fanny, trying to consider what part she possibly could have[pg 291] had in the construction of james and the helpmeet susannah.
"i am sure of it. if we are idle or lazy ourselves they imitate us; they are like children, and we should treat them as such. i ring the bell at half-past five every morning for the maids, and i expect them to be down by six."
"what time do you get up?"
"half-past seven."
"then," said fanny, laughing, "you don't set them—i mean they set you the example, for they are up before you."
"i spoke figuratively," said miss hancock rather stiffly, and eyeing the handmaiden who had just appeared at the door to remove the things.
"give the fish to the cats, susannah," said her mistress, "and be sure to take the bones out; one nearly choked," she said, resuming her conversation with her visitor, "the other morning."
"hum!" said miss hancock, unenthusiastic on the subject of choking cats. "do you always feed your animals on—good food?"
"yes, of course."
"you are very young, and, of course, it is[pg 292] no affair of mine, but i think in housekeeping—having first of all regard to waste—one ought to consider how many poor people are starving. i send all my scraps to the st mark's refuge home, an excellent institution."
"i used to give a lot of food away," said fanny, "but i found it didn't pay, people didn't want it. we had a barrel of beer that no one drank, so i gave a tramp a jugful once, and he made a mark somewhere on the house, and after that twenty or thirty tramps a day called. we couldn't find the mark, so father had to have the whole lower part of the house lime-washed, and the gate pillars. after that he said no more food was to be given away, or beer."
"there are poor and poor. to give beer to a tramp is in my opinion a distinctly wicked act; it is simply feeding the flames of drunkenness, as mr bulders says. you have heard of mr bulders?"
"n—no."
"i must introduce you. i hope you will like him, he is a great friend of ours. your christian name is fanny, i believe. may i call you fanny?"
"yes," said fanny. "how queer it is,[pg 293] nobody knows me for—i mean, everybody always asks me that before i have known them for more——"
"everybody?"
"yes."
"gentlemen, my dear child, surely not?"
"yes, they do."
miss hancock said nothing, but sat for a moment in silence gloating over the girl before her. here was a gold-mine of pure correction—the metaphor is mixed perhaps, but you will understand it. then she said: "and do you permit it?"
"oh, i don't care."
"but i fancy, your father——" miss hancock paused.
"oh, father doesn't mind; every one has called me fanny since i was so high."
"yes, but, my dear girl, you are no longer a child. fathers are indulgent, and sometimes blind to what the world thinks; consider, when you come to marry, when you come to have a husband——"
"oh, i hope it'll be a long time before i come to that," said fanny, in a tone of voice as if general service or the workhouse were the topic of discussion.
[pg 294]
miss hancock took a rather deep inspiration, and was dumb for a moment.
"i understood my brother to say that he had written to you on a subject touching your welfare and his happiness?"
fanny flushed all over her face and neck. only a little child or a very young girl can blush like that—a blush that passes almost as quickly as it comes, and is, perhaps, of all emotional expressions the most natural and charming.
"i did have a letter," she faltered, "and i have tried to answer it, am going to answer it—i am so sorry——"
"i don't see the necessity of being sorry," said the elder lady. "one does not answer a letter of that description flippantly and by the next post; my brother will quite understand and appreciate the cause of delay."
"oh, but it's not the delay i'm sorry for, it's the—it's the having to say that—i can't say what he wants me to say."
miss hancock raised her eyebrows. miss lambert's english was enough to raise a grammarian from the grave, but it was not at the english that miss hancock evinced surprise.
[pg 295]
james hancock was not as old to his sister as he appeared to the rest of the world, though she knew his age to a day and had quoted it as an argument against his marriage; she did not appreciate the fact that he looked every day of his age, and even perhaps a few days over.
it is a pathetic and sometimes beautiful—and sometimes ugly—fact that we are blind to much in the people we live with and grow up with. joan sees darby very much as she saw him thirty years ago, and to miss hancock her younger brother was her younger brother; and her younger brother, to a woman, is never old. besides being in the "prime of life," james was clever; besides being clever, he was rich, very rich. what more could a girl want?
"you mean," said patience, "that you cannot accept his proposition."
"n—no—that is, i'd like to, but i can't."
"if you 'liked' to do it, i do not see what is to prevent you."
"oh, it's not that sort of liking. i mean i'd like to like him, i do like him, but not in the way he wants."
"it is no affair of mine," said miss hancock,[pg 296] "not in the least, but i would urge you not to be too hasty in your reply. think over it, weigh the matter judicially before you decide upon what, after all, is the most important decision a young girl is ever called upon to make."
"i hate myself," broke out fanny, who had been listening with bent head, and finger tracing the pattern on the cloth of the table beside her. "i hate myself. people are always doing me kindnesses and i am always acting like a beast, so it seems to me, but how can i help it?" lifting her head suddenly with a bright smile. "if i were to marry them all, i'd have about fifty husbands, now—more!—so what am i to do?"
miss hancock sniffed; she had never been in the same position herself, so could give no advice from experience. the question rather irritated her, and a smart lecture rose to her lips on the impropriety and immodesty of girls allowing people of the other sex to "care for them," etc., etc., but the lecture did not pass her lips.
since entering the house of the lamberts the demon of order had swelled jinnee-like[pg 297] in her breast, and the seven devils of spring cleaning, each of whose right hands is a cake of soap, and whose left hands are scrubbing-brushes, arose and ramped. the whole place and the people therein, from the bell-pull to the cats'-breakfast-destined haddock, from susannah to her mistress, exercised a fascination upon miss hancock beyond the power of words to describe. she had measured susannah from her sand-coloured hair to her slipshod feet, gauged her capacity for work and her moral ineptitude, and had already dismissed her, in her mind; as for the rest of the business, the ordering of fanny and of her father, whom she divined, the setting of the house to rights and the righting of all the lamberts' affairs, mundane and extra-mundane—this, she felt, would be a work, which accomplished, she could say, "i have not lived in vain." all this might be lost by a lecture misplaced.
"of course you will please yourself," she said. "i would only say do nothing rashly; and in whatever way you decide, i hope you will always be our friend. you are very young to have the cares of a house and the ordering of servants thrust upon you, and[pg 298] any assistance or advice i can give you, i should be very glad to give."
"thanks so much!"
"i would be very glad to call some day and have a good long chat with you; my experience in housekeeping might be of assistance."
"i should be delighted," gasped fanny, who felt like a bird in the net of the fowler, and whose soul was filled with one wild longing—the longing to escape.
"what day shall we say?"
"monday—no, not monday, i have an engagement. tuesday—i am not sure about tuesday. suppose—suppose i write?"
"i am disengaged all next week; any day you please to appoint i shall be glad to come. what a large garden you have!"
"would you like to come round it?"
"yes; i will wait till you put on your hat."
"oh, i scarcely ever wear a hat in the garden. if you come this way we can go out through the side door."
they wandered around the garden, miss hancock making notes in her own mind. as they passed the kitchen window, a face[pg 299] gazed out, a beery, leery face, behind which could be seen the pale phantom of susannah. the face was gazing at miss hancock with an expression of amused and critical impudence that caused that lady to pause and snort.
"did you see that man looking from the window?" she asked.
"yes," said fanny in an agony, "it must have been the plumber; he came this morning to mend the stove. oh, here is your carriage waiting; so glad you called. yes, i'll write."
