CHAPTER XXII
With the Pigs so happily gone, and Mrs. Doveton still filling with admirable contrast the gap left by Mrs. Adela Dadd, with the mature maids doing their work as by well-oiled machinery, with Gladys to see to the shop and Mr. Dix to see to the garden, a spell of peace settled on Cedar Court, and Jane and Lucilla tasted for a few days the habitual calm and leisure of the really well-to-do.
They advertised anew for paying guests and for a cook.
"And until we get answers," said Jane, "we may as well enjoy ourselves. Let's pretend we're the idle rich."
"I should like to be rich," said Lucilla, "and I daresay I could manage to be idle, though I believe it's more difficult than you'd think; but I certainly shouldn't ever be rich and idle. Doesn't it make you want to hang people to lamp-posts when you see them with bags of money and not the faintest idea what to do with it? The only thing they seem to think of are motors . . ."
"And guzzling," said Jane.
"I don't blame them for having nice things to eat," said Lucilla firmly. "I should do that myself. What I blame them for is not enjoying things. They have everything they want, every day—and, of course, a peach is just dessert to them and not the fruit of Paradise,"
"If you ever write poetry," said Jane with conviction, "it'll be about things to eat."
"No," insisted Lucilla; "but if I were rich I'd live just nicely—like this—and every now and then I'd have something sudden and splendid—six peaches for breakfast, or roast chicken every day for a week—and then go back to plain mutton for a bit."
"You would spend your whole income on food then?" Jane said innocently.
"Yes, cat, I would," said Lucilla—"or nearly all. But I shouldn't eat it all myself. I should give lots of it away. 'The Responsibilities of the Really Rich.' Let's write a book about them, Jane. You want to help the hard-up. How are you to know which are the respectable ones?"
"And why are we to care?"
"You can't help everybody, and you have to choose, and you may as well choose people your help is likely to be some help to."
"I believe everybody knows more people that help would be a help to than they have money to give the help with."
"Yes. There's our Mr. Dix—wants a market garden."
"Well, he's got it, hasn't he?" said Lucilla shortly.
"And Mr. Rochester—he wants a job."
"Not acutely, I think."
"Well, then there's our Mr. Doveton—he wants to better himself; one could help there. Mr. Simmons wants to give up carpentering and grow herbs and better the world. Gladys wants"
"Gladys wants someone to go out with—and she's got it."
"So have we, come to think of it. Lucy, do you think a chaperone could have any real objection—any just objection, I mean—to one's going on the river on Sundays with two perfectly respectable young men?"
Two such excursions had, indeed, been part of the leisured happiness of that halcyon time.
"A real chaperone might have real objections," said Lucilla. "I don't know. But we are each other's chaperones—and we have more sense."
"Yes," said Jane doubtfully. "At the same time, don't you think there's something to be said for aunts? 'The Aunt in the Home; Her Use and Abuse.' It would do for another little book. But I don't mean a really abusive aunt. Just a nice, comfortable aunt to admire your jewels and your singing and be a little bit shocked at your slang, and say, 'I may be old-fashioned, but I don't think I would, my dear, if I were you.' It would give a sort of solidity to the establishment, like a mahogany sideboard or a dinner-table that lets out."
"I never," said Lucilla, sewing placidly at a pink print gown in process of remodelling, "I never thought you'd hanker after chaperones."
"It isn't chaperones I want," Jane explained, winding and unwinding the yard measure. "But I should like to have someone who knows the rules. We may be doing quite wrong and not knowing it. There was a play once, or a book or something, called 'The Girl Who Took the Wrong Turning.' For anything we know, we may be taking the wrong turning a hundred times a day. We've nothing to guide us."
"We've got our own common sense," Lucilla pointed out.
"Yes, but it isn't common sense that makes those rules. It's something deep and mysterious that we don't understand. Why, even in little things . . . Is it common sense that decides that you mustn't eat apple-pie with a spoon or take mustard with mutton? Is it common sense that says you must always wear a hat in church except when you're being confirmed?"
"No, dear, that's religion," said Lucilla.
"And all those other rules about what you may and mayn't do with young men? You may dance with them, but you mustn't let them hold your hand or put their arms round your waist except when you're dancing."
"Why, of course not!"
"Jamesie said you must never write letters to gentlemen; but suppose there's something important that you want to say and you won't be seeing them?"
"Common sense would settle that—for me," said Lucilla, biting off her cotton.
"Gravy said a young lady must never invite a young gentleman to call. Well, we don't have callers, but we ask gentlemen to dinner—that's worse, I suppose?"
"Dinner is more emphatic than calling, certainly. Why are you beating about the bush like this, Jane? Out with it! What have you been doing?"
"I? Nothing but what you have too, so you can't score off me there. It's what we've both been doing."
"We've not done anything wrong," said Lucilla stoutly.
"Of course not—don't be silly! But have we been behaving like really nice girls?"
"You must have been talking to the servants," said Lucilla scornfully. "The voice is the voice of Jane, but the mind is the mind of 'Sweet Pansy Faces' or the 'Duke and the Dairymaid.'"
"We aren't the only people in the world."
"How true!" said Lucilla. "And you haven't got it out yet. Can't you? In plain English?"
"Well, then, do you think Mr. Dix thinks we're not behaving as ladies do behave, or do you think he looks down on us for not knowing the rules and doing just what we think we will?"
"I'm quite sure he doesn't," said Lucilla; "he's not such an idiot. Why don't you ask me what I think Mr. Rochester thinks?"
"I wasn't thinking of him," said Jane. (Oh, Jane!) "I was wondering whether Mrs. Dix in New Zealand would approve of the company her dear boy's keeping."
"If you were really wondering that," said Lucilla, "it's time you had something to occupy your mind. Come along. Let that poor little worried yard measure alone and let's go and pick the rest of the black currants."
They went. "But you weren't really wondering that," said Lucilla to herself, as they crouched under the thick-leaved, strong-scented bushes. " You were thinking something quite different and yet exactly like it." Aloud she said:
"Currants are jollier to pick than gooseberries, aren't they, though your hands do get so grubby? At any rate, there aren't any thorns."
"I'd rather be wounded than be grubby," said Jane.
"Oh, don't be symbolic and Maeterlincky," said Lucilla.
"I wasn't," said Jane.
There was something to occupy minds and tongues and fingers when the answers to the advertisements began to come in.
Mrs. Adela Dadd—they had themselves chosen her from among a crowd of applicants; how, after this, could they rely on their own judgment?
Jane put it to Mrs. Doveton. "We don't really know anything about choosing people to work for us," she said, sitting on the kitchen table and watching Mrs. Doveton shredding black currants daintily with a silver fork. "Of course, I mean out of the people we can choose from. We wanted to choose you, Mrs. Doveton dear, but you wouldn't be chosen. It wasn't till we were in the depths of a dreadful scrape that you came and dug us out, like the angel you are."
"You do talk so," said Mrs. Doveton. "What is it you want now?"
"Well," said Jane, "we want two things, and they haven't anything to do with each other."
"I don't know that I wouldn't rather you put off making cocoanut-ice again till I get these currants out of the way—if it's that," said Mrs. Doveton. "That" was one of the sweet busy-nesses that had ruffled the surface of the perfect calm.
"It isn't cocoanut ice," Jane assured her; "it's much more serious."
"It's not to ask me to stay on permanent, I do hope and trust," said Mrs. Doveton, "because"
"No, no," said Jane. "I should never dare to ask you that again, ever. But I do wish you'd see all these people for me." She waved a sheaf of letters. "You've had experience; you know what sort of questions to ask them; you know what you ought to expect them to do; you know what wages they ought to have and what sort of references are good and what not. Oh, Mrs. Doveton, do be a duck and see them for me!"
Mrs. Doveton did not refuse, but she murmured something about not being particular fond of taking things upon herself, and it was plain that she said less than the truth.
"Can't you see them yourself, miss?" she said. "It's quite easy. I'll tell you all the sort of things you want to ask them."
"Oh, I can't," said Jane. "You see, there are paying guests to see too—and you know what I am. I shall find myself telling the cook she can have breakfast in bed if she likes, and asking the young married lady with husband or brother engaged all day whether she understands plain cooking and if she's an early riser and quick and clean at her work."
"There, now," said Mrs. Doveton, "you see you do know what to ask 'em. And is there many more lodgers coming—if that's what you call them, miss, if I may ask?"
"Oh, we call them Pigs," said Jane frankly; "at least, we used to, but I shall begin calling them lodgers at once. It's much lander—and besides, they are lodgers."
"Boarders, if with meals," said Mrs. Doveton, "I shouldn't have too many at a time, miss, if I was you—not all at once. Make the gells discontented—and you've got a couple that knows their work, that's one thing."
It was evident that in Mrs. Doveton's mind there were other things which knowing their work was not.
"Let me help you with the currants," said Jane, getting another fork. ("A silver one, please, miss," said Mrs. Doveton.) There were a good many currants, but the leaves at the bottom of the basket were showing plainly—leaves streaked with currant-juice and sprinkled with strigs. Jane's hands were deeply dyed again before Mrs. Doveton began to yield.
"Well, miss, if I do see these persons for you, you won't blame me if" she was saying, and Jane was interrupting her with assurances of her complete immunity from blame whatever the creatures turned out like, when the front-door bell rang.
"Good gracious!" said Mrs. Doveton. "I can't go, miss, with my hands this state."
"But where's Forbes? Where's Stanley?"
"They're both out, miss. I gave 'em leave to go together for shopping. Neither of them can trust their own taste when it comes to camisoles. Perhaps Miss Lucy'll go."
"I'll get some of this off in case she's down the garden," said Jane, drawing water from the boiler, but she had made very little impression on the rich purple stains when the bell rang again.
"Oh, bother!" said Jane. "Here, I must go as I am. It may be a priceless Pig—I mean lodger—and it may go away if" She snatched down a towel from the rack, but before her hands were half dried the kitchen door cracked open with a noise like a pistol-shot and Gladys burst in, very highly coloured in the face and very bright as to the eye. "Oh, miss!" she said, and no more.
"Whatever is it now?" Jane asked, in the tone of a camel enquiring as to the exact nature of the last straw. "Why aren't you at the shop?"
"Mr. Herbert was passing, on his way to see you, Mrs. Doveton, and I asked him to keep the shop while I—while I—while I answered the bell." She giggled as one in possession of a secret joke.
"Well, who was it?" Jane asked, more relieved by Gladys's news than Mrs. Doveton appeared to be.
Gladys giggled again. "It's a lady, miss—an old lady—at least . . . And she asked to see you, miss."
"Well, I can't see her," said Jane, turning her purple palms upwards. "Find Miss Lucilla and ask her to see the lady."
"Miss Lucilla wouldn't do, the lady said. It was you, miss, as she wanted to see, Do excuse me going off like this, miss." Gladys was still tittering tremulously. "I don't know what's come over me, I'm sure! It must be the weather or something."
"Did you show her into the drawing-room?"
"Of course, miss," said Gladys virtuously.
"I wish I'd done the flowers this morning," said Jane, at the glass by the window, dabbing at her hair with repressive fingers.
"I drew down the blinds, miss: the lady's eyes is weak—so she says. And oh, miss, I can't help laughing!" It was plain that she could not. "You with your hands like that and all. It do seem a sort of judgment—I mean a providence. Oh, I don't know what I mean!"
"I think you're forgetting yourself, my gell," said Mrs. Doveton sharply. "What's the lady's name?"
"Oh," said Gladys, "didn't I tell you? It's Mrs. Rochester—our young gentleman's ma. What a pity about your hands, miss!"
Well, it certainly was.