Elders and Betters (3 page)

“Well, what a lot of effort and contrivance! They force us to do their business as well as our own.”

“They are good women at heart,” said Jenney. “I like Ethel very much.”

“I never get that kind of feeling for them. I always feel a being apart, as if there were a kind of barrier between us.”

“We let them do a good many personal things for us, said Jenney.

“I would not say that. Useful, material things, if you will, but I do not use the term, personal, quite so easily. We could never make a friend of one of them, or I never could. Well, I think my little manœuvre had its effect.”

“There are a good many stairs. We can't alter that,” said Jenney, resting her eyes on Anna's prostrate form, as if unable but to recognise that she had not done so.

“Oh, they are so much stronger than we are. They are brought up to be tough from birth,” said Anna, dropping her hands over the sides of her chair in the manner proper to her different training.

“And is that good for them or for us?” said Jenney, in a drier tone.

“It fits in for us both,” said Anna, idly.

“We are very dependent on them.”

“And they on us. They have to earn their living. And they will not do it by jibbing at a few stairs.”

When the footsteps of Cook and Ethel were heard, or rather those of Ethel, as Cook's made no sound, Anna rose and made a parade of rushing from the room.

“I can't face any more fuss and trouble. If you are so fond of them, stay and cope with their moods.”

Jenney remained and enjoyed an equal chat with Cook
and Ethel. Her position between the family and them gave her an opportunity for living in two sets of lives, and she could not have lived in too many. She relinquished the easiest chair to Cook, who took it with an air of being helpless in such a matter.

“Here is the cold food,” said Jenney. “There are only the vegetables to be done now.”

Ethel rose and without discontinuing her talk, turned back her cuffs and moved to the sink. To prepare the vegetables was Cook's work, but Ethel placed no reliance on her strength, even though it had been fostered from birth. Perhaps this was further evidence that their intimacy was not of the earliest.

“It is a comfortable bedroom,” said Ethel at length, lifting something out of the water.

“And they are good beds,” said Cook, in the voice of one whose thoughts would turn to this item.

“You must go to yours in good time to-night,” said Jenney.

Cook sighed at the meaning under the words, and by leaning back with her feet raised, contrived that the prospect should be as little removed as possible.

“I can wash up the dinner things,” said Ethel. “The cooking I never could take to.”

“I was always inclined to the skilled work,” said Cook. “And it is better for Ethel to have the place where her height tells.”

“She looks very nice when she is waiting at table,” said Jenney.

Ethel's expression did not change, as it might have at a new idea.

“There is Mr. Bernard coming up the drive,” she said, in a tone that did not seem to introduce another subject. “I thought the gentlemen were to come to-morrow.”

“Mr. Bernard does not follow others,” said Cook. “Some can be a law to themselves.”

Bernard Donne entered the house, exchanged a word with his sister, and descended to the basement.

“Three stairs at one step,” said Ethel, looking at Cook with an approach to a smile.

Cook returned the smile in a manner that did credit to her sympathies, considering the sphere in which they were required to function.

“He is never detained by Miss Anna,” she said.

“Well, Jenney,” said the eldest son of the family, “I do not feel that this house will ever be a home to me.”

“You will have some tea, sir?” said Cook, who had risen and replaced the kettle on the stove.

“I will have any comfort that is available. And I will have it here. It is known that the kitchen is the nicest room in the house.”

Cook and Ethel met this remark in a natural silence.

“It is not so far from your dinner time, sir,” said Ethel, on a note of warning.

“One meal never spoils me for another. It only prepares me for it. I never know why food is a sort of inoculation against other food. Food is not an illness.”

Bernard Donne spoke in an almost serious tone. He was a large, nearly stout young man of thirty-two, with a full, pink face, broad, ordinary features, and bright, unusual, grey eyes. He had indolent, heavy movements, and actually depended on full and frequent meals to avoid fatigue. He had a way of remaining still, while his eyes roved and danced from one thing to another. As Ethel brought his tea, he drew her into a chair by his side.

“It is something that we do not go alone from the cradle to the grave.”

Ethel hastily rose, adjusted her cuffs and returned to the sink, as if this position were more secure for her.

“Anna spoke coldly and almost harshly to me, Jenney. She said my room was not ready, and that the dinner would be cold.”

“Your room will be comfortable, sir,” said Ethel. “And the vegetables will be hot.”

“I have never heard of them cold. And the rest of the dinner must be what I have not heard of at all.”

“You should have given us notice, sir,” said Ethel in grave reproach.

“So my home is not a place where I can walk in at any minute.”

“The furniture only arrived to-day,” said Jenney.

“Of course you have done wonders in the time,” said Bernard. “But those wonders are not as good as other kinds. Cook, will you join me in a muffin?”

“I should not dare, sir.”

“Why does it frighten you?”

“Cook means that muffins disagree with her,” said Jenney.

“It is an odd idea that muffins don't get on with Cook. It seems to complicate the claims of her calling.”

“I don't often take the risk myself,” said Ethel, in a dispassionate manner.

“You and I will face it together, Ethel.”

“I have had my tea, thank you, sir,” said Ethel, her tone indicating that Bernard's view of consecutive meals was by no means her own.

“What have you done with your luggage, Bernard?” said Jenney in sudden thought.

“I added it to a pile that was waiting at the station.”

“Ours,” said Ethel and Cook, at one moment.

“Mine too now,” said Bernard. “We can have a cosy little unpacking together.”

“Did you walk from the station?” said Jenney.

“Walk? Me? If I had done that, I would have carried the luggage. I got a lift in a cart.”

“A tradesman's cart?” said Ethel, in simple apprehension.

Cook paused in what she was doing, and waited for the answer.

“I think all carts have to do with trade,” said Bernard. “This one had. It was full of closed packages, so I could not tell what trade it was.”

“The man would have told you,” said Jenney, whose interest did not fail in any human matter.

“I don't mean that I was uninterested, or thought it was not my affair. I just did not think to ask, and he did not think to tell me.”

“Well, the cart will not come to the house,” said Ethel.

“The man said it was going to come every morning,” said Bernard.

Cook and Ethel faced this prospect in silence.

“I had better go to Anna, Jenney. She will say that I have hardly spoken to her.”

“And you have not done much more, have you?” said Jenney.

Cook and Ethel followed Bernard with their eyes, as he left the room.

“He is always himself,” said Ethel.

“The tradesmen's cart!” said Cook, with the ghost of a smile.

“Well, he does not look as if he had to,” said Ethel.

“It only wants the dignity to carry it off,” said Cook.

“I wish the luggage was here,” said Ethel, on a wistful note. “It is inconvenient to be kept in an unsettled state.”

“I have sent the master a card,” said Jenney, overcoming any obvious haste to reply. “He is sure to think of it to-morrow. It is the last time I shall send anything to that address.” She ended on a note of sentiment, forgetting that, as she never left the family, it might be also the first time; and Cook and Ethel also forgot it, and moved their heads in sympathy.

“We come to the end of chapters,” said Ethel.

“They go past us,” said Cook, sitting down at the table and laying her hand upon it.

Ethel took a seat at her side and closed her fingers over the hand, and Jenney accepted this as a signal for withdrawing. She also accepted it as the signal of a good deal more, and would have been taken aback by the talk that ensued.

“Miss Jennings will have a front place,” said Ethel, with a sigh.

“If anyone in the house,” said Cook.

“We can't estimate the privilege of living with her,” said Ethel, using words that would have given Jenney not so much a sense of compliment as of security.

“Such an example. And before our eyes,” said Cook, with less feeling for an example in another place.

“You would think that Miss Anna would be influenced by it.”

“A leopard can't change his spots,” said Cook, moving to the stove with an air of accepting the law of immutability for herself.

“The bell! Miss Anna's, of course,” said Ethel.

“What can she want on the first night?” said Cook, with her own ideas of cause and effect.

Ethel returned with a grim smile on her face.

“The gentlemen's rooms are to be done the first thing to-morrow. As if that couldn't wait for the morning! Bringing a person up for it! She must do it to assert herself.”

“Those do that, who need to,” said Cook.

“If she thinks I am going to begin them to-night, she makes a mistake,” said Ethel, sitting down and locking her hands round her knees, as if to ensure their leisure.

“There are only four of them for dinner,” said Cook.

“And I daresay Miss Jennings would as soon be down here with us,” said Ethel, as if this partly disposed of Jenney's needs. “To say nothing of Mr. Bernard. I hope the gentlemen will remember the luggage. It was best to bring none of it, as we couldn't bring it all. And these things are nothing to gentlemen, are they?”

THESE MEMBERS OF the household arrived on the next afternoon, bringing the luggage that was nothing to them, by means of several cabs. But they appeared less concerned with it, than those who had left it behind.

“Well, my daughter,” said Mr. Donne, embracing Anna in a conventional but ironic manner, and introducing these qualities into his speech; “so we are united once again. A family roof will continue to hold us together.”

“As the necessary amount of thought and effort has come first,” said Anna, with blunt readiness.

Bernard strolled into the hall and confronted rather than met his father.

“Well, Bernard,” said the latter, in the same tone.

“Well, Father,” said Bernard, as though he found the filial term unsuitable but hard to avoid.

Benjamin Donne was a short, thickly-built man of sixty, with black hair that was not so much varied as confused by streaks of white; round, hazel eyes like his daughter's, but of a darker shade, and set in a network of wrinkles from which hers might always be free; a nose that overshadowed and almost distorted his face; sudden, uncontrolled movements, and an expression rendered enigmatic both by nature and himself. He bent over Anna with his hand on her shoulder, and listened to Jenney with the interest accorded to a guest, the ironic atmosphere pervading all that he did. He was a man at war with himself, and tended to find himself in this relation to other people. His friends took different views of him, some seeing him as harsh and forbidding, and others as a man of natural, if suppressed affections, and both being right. He had been a widower for twelve years, and had not thought of marrying again,
having found the conflicting elements of married life too much. He had greatly desired children, but was sufficiently provided with these.

His two younger sons, who had travelled with him, edged past him and disappeared into the house. Esmond, the elder, was four years younger than Anna, and taller and darker than she, with fairly good features, a developed head, unsettled, grey eyes, a drooping carriage, an irritable and often irritated manner, and a certain uncouthness in person and dress, that in her appeared in manner and speech. He gave a limp hand to the women of his family, less by way of greeting than of indicating that he did not intend an embrace, and turned his eyes on the house with an interest limited to its concern for himself.

Reuben, the youngest by a number of years, evinced the ungainly quality in his physique. He was a boy of thirteen, with coltish, uncontrolled movements, a lively, nervous face, defensive, dark eyes that were sadder than his feelings warranted, and a definite lameness resulting from an early accident. He had a straight but unobservant gaze and a confident, carrying voice, and thought less of his handicap than of what other people thought of it.

Jenney's eyes showed that he was her chief concern; Anna gave him a rough caress; and Ethel took his bag before doing anything else. Neither his father nor his brother had thought of helping him, or rather the latter had not thought of it, and the former had been in the grip of his usual inner conflict. It was his habit to address his young son with ironic courtesy as an equal, but he failed to embarrass him by doing so, as Reuben saw him as an insoluble enigma, and simply withheld his thoughts.

The family had a faintly Jewish look, and biblical names had a way of recurring amongst them, but they neither claimed nor admitted any strain of Jewish blood. The truth was that there had been none in the last generations, and that they had no earlier record of their history.

They went into the drawing-room and faced each other
with a sense of actually doing this. Their reunion in new surroundings showed them each other afresh. Anna was concious of her choice of the house, and wore an absent, indifferent air and hummed faintly to herself, while Claribel had almost the manner of a hostess.