CHAPTER XXVIII
"That girl," said Mrs Doveton, "she's an epidemic."
"?" said Jane and Lucilla.
"An epidemic, miss—she's catching, like measles and whooping-cough. She catches every man she comes near, and the more the merrier, so she thinks." Mrs. Doveton breathed heavily.
"Sit down and tell us all about it," Lucilla said comfortably, and a green velvet armchair creaked to Mrs. Doveton's acceptance of the invitation.
"There aren't no bounds to her," Mrs. Doveton went on. "There's Mr. Simmons, he's hooked all right; and there's the butcher's young man—she was out with him Tuesday week; and the very boy that brings the daily papers, she stopped him in the shrubbery to ask him riddles."
"Well, there's no harm in that," said Jane. "Some people think riddles amusing. I don't myself, but some people do."
"Some riddles is all right, like 'Why is Westminster Abbey like the fender?' and 'Why is a hen crossing the road like Guy Fox?' But when it comes to asking him what animal falls down from the clouds—well!"
"What animal does? I didn't know any animal did," said Lucilla.
"That's what the young boy said, miss. And then that Gladys, she says, 'Don't know what animal falls from the clouds? Why, the reindeer.' See, miss?—the rain-Dear. Just an excuse for calling the very paper boy 'Dear.' And chucks him under the chin, she does, and asks him whether he ain't looking for a sweetheart."
"It's very silly of Gladys," said Lucilla, trying not to smile. "I'll speak to her."
But Jane laughed and said: "It's very funny, don't you think? But, dear Mrs. Doveton, why should it upset you?"
"It's not respectable, miss, that's why. I never see such a gell. Asks the postman what his young lady's name is, just to find out if he's got one, because, if not, here's Gladys all ready and willing."
"I suppose the postman can take care of himself," said Lucilla.
"Let's hope so, I'm sure," said Mrs. Doveton gloomily, beating the palm of her hand on the arm of her chair; "but there's them as can't. The girl's like a raging lion going to and fro seeking who she may walk out with."
"I thought it was Simmons," said Jane.
"So it was, and is, and ought to be," said Mrs. Doveton earnestly. "He's a sober, solid man that won't hurt to have his head turned for a week or two, but, once married, he'll be master. But meantime here's the gell going this way and that, and bursting out here, there and everywhere like a November cracker. And there's no knowing who'll be hurt before she's pinned down for good and the sauce knocked out of her."
"I don't suppose the postman" Lucilla began, but Mrs. Doveton went on unregarding.
"Young gells like her ought to be put in homes, or labelled 'Dangerous.' She doesn't stick at anything. She's been writing to my Herb. Yes, Miss Jane, well may you look! I thought it was his receipt from the Polytechnic and I opened it, little thinking. And it was to thank him ever so for the lovely chocs., and 'Friday evening, same time and place,' and 'So long, old dear,' and seventeen crosses in blue ink." Mrs. Doveton sobbed and dabbed her eyes with a blue-chequered duster.
"And I've got no hold over the girl. Herbert I can control, or could. But not Gladys, Nobody can. Show her a young man and she's off like a spider after a fly—or more like a dog after a rabbit, for there's no sitting quiet and watching about her."
"But if she's fond of Herbert and he's fond of her? . . ."
"Bless you," said Mrs. Doveton, "she ain't fond of anybody. It amuses her to see 'em jigging on the end of a string, But my Herbert's a serious young man, and he looks to better himself and rise in life, and then she butts in and spoils everything for him and does herself no good. It's for all the world like a mouse falling into a pan of cream-no benefit to any of the parties concerned."
"All right," said Jane, "you speak to Herbert and I'll speak to Gladys."
"I've spoke to Herb," said Herbert's mother, "and he says not to interfere, and I don't know what roseate hues of early dawn a true woman can cast over a young man's life. Lor'," said Mrs.Doveton in a burst of exasperation, "I wish all young gells could be married and put out of the way the minute they leave school. A gell ought to be married young. It's best for her—keeps her out of mischief—and she soon gets two or three little weights hanging on to her apron-strings to keep her steady. Young gells is best married."
"And young men?" Jane asked.
"Let 'em keep single as long as they can," said Mrs. Doveton, "for a young man married is a young man marred."
••••••
"It would be a queer world if Mrs. Doveton had the arranging of it," said Lucilla as the door closed behind the anxious mother. "Come on, let's go and tell Gladys not to."
Gladys was in the shop; she was in the shop almost all the time now. Jane and Lucilla felt their hands to be full with the much more pleasant duty of entertaining their agreeable and punctually-paying guests.
"Look here, Gladys," said Jane, sitting down between a sieve of apples and a pile of giant marrows, for it was now August, and the shop looked like a Harvest Thanksgiving, "what have you been doing to Herbert Doveton?"
"I ain't done nothing to him."
"Haven't you kissed him?" Jane asked severely.
"Oh, that!" said Gladys. "Oh yes, I kissed him," and she giggled reminiscently. "I thought it would do him good. He was so set up. He's better now—gives you a kiss quite natural. You've no idea reely what he was like to begin with. You'll hardly believe it, miss, I know, but I'm his first. I am reely."
"And are you fond of him?"
"Me, miss? Fond of him? Why, he's more like a dried haddock than a young man. I only tried to show him a bit of life and put him in the way of enjoying himself. For what's life to a young man without a girl to go out with? Why, nothing!"
"Now look here, Gladys," said Jane, very firmly and seriously. "This has got to stop, see? You mustn't show that young man any more life, as you call it. You don't want him, and it worries Mrs. Doveton."
"Mothers can't have it all their own way," said Gladys mutinously.
"Do you keep a list of your sweethearts?" Lucilla asked suddenly.
Gladys actually blushed.
"Not to say sweethearts. I don't like the word anyhow," she said. "But I do make a note of the names of them as I've walked out with—only initials, you know—in the end of me hymn-book. Nobody would know to look at it. Why, I forget myself what the letters stand for sometimes, I do assure you, miss."
"Well," said Lucilla, "you put down H.D., and then you give him up. Will you? To please me?"
"Oh, to please you, miss," said Gladys gracefully. "I'd do more than give up a little thing like that. If you'll lend me a stamp and a ongvelope I'll drop him a line this very minute to tell him cruel fate has come betwixt and it can never, never be."
"And what about Mr. Simmons?"
A curious change came over the face of Gladys: she looked like a child who in the midst of make-believe is reminded of some real and treasured possession.
"Oh, him!" she said slowly.
"Well, if you care anything about him you'd better be careful. Suppose he found out about the others?"
"Oh, you don't understand, miss. I tell him about all the others, every one of them, and what they say and all."
"And doesn't he mind?"
A look of elfish cunning puckered the face of Gladys.
"He don't believe me, miss! He thinks I make it all up to amuse him like. So that's all right. Only if he did find anything out he couldn't never say I hadn't told him, see? So I'm all right whatever happens."
"Well; spare Herbert, anyhow," said Jane, and she and Lucilla escaped to the garden, the final words of Gladys pursuing them: "I'll spare him by the very next post, miss, you may depend."
•••••
Looking back afterwards, it always seemed to Lucilla and Jane that that autumn was the merriest time of their lives. Money was coming in plentifully, both from the house and from the garden, whose resources Mr. Dix was exploiting in a way that seemed to them simply masterly. The balance at the bank was rising like a tide, and the relations between the right and the left hand of the bank-book grew more and more such as we all wish to see. Life was simple and satisfying. Nor was it by pleasure only that it was so entirely filled. There was work. The shop a little; accounts a little j and a good deal of cutting-out and making of clothes—their own and not their own. Miss Antrobus had interests outside Cedar Court. She never spoke of them to Jane or Lucilla, but she poured them into the ear of Miss Lucas in that after-dinner hour which was Lucilla's torture and Jane's remorse. She told of children whose fathers had fallen in France and who now, in the land that was to be a land fit for heroes, lacked food and clothes and everything that makes life comfortable. Did Miss Lucas think her nieces would help? The stuff could be found— it wouldn't cost them anything but time. Miss Lucas was sure they would, and they did.
"But how terrible that they should need charity," said Miss Lucas, clicking the eternal knitting-needles.
"Yes," said Miss Antrobus. "But it's no use our arguing about that. What we've got to do is to see that a few of the little Toms and Sallies are just the least bit more comfortable than they would be without us. That's all we can do just now.
And this they did.
Miss Lucas only lasted three weeks. Lucilla could not endure her any longer. Miss Antrobus's kind attentions and her amiable enquiries became more and more intolerable, and at last Lucilla flatly refused to go on with the business.
"If Miss Antrobus can't do without a chaperone," she said, "she must go and look for one somewhere else. Surely Mrs. Thornton is chaperone enough for anything? Besides, what does a girl want with chaperones when she's been a Waac or a V.A.D., or whatever it was that Miss Antrobus was? I could stand it if she wasn't so hatefully civil to the old lady."
"Mr, Tombs is civil too."
"So's everybody if it comes to that. But Mr. Tombs is civil like Sir Walter Raleigh laying down his cloak for an aged queen to walk on. Miss Antrobus . . . well, I think there's such a thing as being too civil by half. Where is she now?"
"Gardening. Mr. Dix says she's a very promising gardener."
"It seems to me that she's a very competent person. She can cook—she told me so. I mean she told Aunt Harriet so. And she understands sick-nursing, and making clothes, and now gardening. She says the more things you can do the more interesting life is."
"I've often said that myself," said Jane, yawning.
"Ah," said Lucilla, "but she does them. And you've got to do what I say. Let Aunt Harriet vanish decently or I shall give the whole show away. I know I shall."
The prize problem party never took place after all, for the problems were solved as soon as propounded. Gladys was "influenced" to take back her gift, on the ground that Othello—who, Mr. Dix said, ought to have been called Desdemona—must be lonely. Why not give him, or her, to Mr. Simmons, who already had other rabbits? Jane and Lucilla explained how much they had enjoyed owning Othello and how they could not bear to stand in his (or her) light if a more agreeable social life seemed to open before him (or her). So Othello went away, and Mr. Dix and his under-gardeners rejoiced.
The problem of the buried silver provided a pleasant dinner-topic. The story of the burglar was told by Lucilla—Aunt Harriet kept her room that evening—and though the story assumed a good deal that hadn't been so, it made quite a good story with Mr. Dix introduced as an anonymous stranger sheltering in the summer-house from the rain.
"And that's months ago," said Mr. Thornton, "and you've left your poor silver there ever since? Why, Dix could have got it out for you in no time."
"He didn't know. Nobody knew. We've only just made up our minds to tell. Because really we must get the silver up again."
"How much is there?" asked the other Mr. Thornton—the one called Bill.
"Oh, just the teapot and milk-jug and sugar-basin. We put the spoons in our pockets."
"We'll get it out for you. Not to-night, because we're playing at that concert. But to-morrow."
And sure enough they did—with fish-hooks and weights coated with birdlime or something sticky. They fished behind the stove, and up came the silver—rather yellow, but not much dented—and not a chip of the panelled mantel-piece disturbed.
"Not at all," they said to the thanks of Lucilla and Jane. "It's a pleasure. I wish you let us do more things for you. Shall we clean the silver? We're rather a dab at that."
And they did it too, amid laughter and jokes—in the summer-house, for fear of Forbes catching them at it. Certainly the Thorntons were very kind as well as very jolly. They really were ideal paying guests.
They were energetic photographers and photographed the girls and the house, reluctant Mrs. Doveton and enthusiastic Gladys. They played at concerts with sufficient frequency to give their presence at home an added value. In all weather they sallied out, their evening dress closely hidden under mackintoshes, their great instruments duly encased, returning often long after everyone had gone to bed. And they were always punctual in the breakfast-room—the two men cheery and attentive and Mrs. Thornton as pretty and as fresh as a pink. They never played their instruments at Cedar Court, though they sang and acted readily enough. "We like a holiday from them when we can get it," Mrs. Thornton explained. "They're our shop. You should never mix the shop and the home."
"I hope your aunt is not seriously ill, you know," said Mr. Thornton that evening, when for the second time Miss Lucas failed to appear in the drawing-room.
"Oh no," said Lucilla, and then suddenly, after a queer little pause: "She's much better. In fact she's gone to Bath to-day with my cousin."
"I should have liked to say good-bye to her," said Mr. Tombs. "We shall miss her, shan't we?" It may have been her guilty conscience that made Lucilla feel almost sure that there had been a twinkle in Mr. Tombs' eye.
But Miss Antrobus said outright: "When did she go?"
"This morning, while you were at your Help for Heroes Committee meeting," Lucilla told her, triumphing in the fact that there had been a space of time in which a dozen Aunt Harriets could have got away without Miss Antrobus's notice.
"I am so sorry I missed seeing her," said Miss Antrobus calmly. "I must write and tell her so. What is her address?"