IN HOMESPUN
BY E. NESBIT
LONDON 1896
THESE tales are written in an English dialect--none the less a
dialect for that it lacks uniformity in the misplacement of
aspirates, and lacks, too, strange words misunderstanded of the
reader.
In South Kent villages with names ending in 'den,' and out away on
the Sussex downs where villages end in 'hurst,' live the plain
people who talk this plain speech--a speech that should be sweeter
in English ears than the implacable consonants of a northern
kail-yard, or the soft one-vowelled talk of western hillsides.
All through the summer nights the market carts creak along the
London road; to London go the wild young man and the steady young
man who 'betters' himself. To London goes the girl seeking a
'place.' The 'beano' comes very near to this land--so near that
across its marches you may hear the sackbut and shawm from the
breaks. Once a year come the hoppers. And so the cup of the hills
holds no untroubled pool of pastoral speech. This book therefore
is of no value to a Middle English scholar, and needs no glossary.
E. NESBIT.
KENT, _March_ 1896.
CONTENTS
THE BRISTOL BOWL 1
BARRING THE WAY 24
GRANDSIRE TRIPLES 38
A DEATH-BED CONFESSION 58
HER MARRIAGE LINES 75
ACTING FOR THE BEST 104
GUILTY 125
SON AND HEIR 146
ONE WAY OF LOVE 160
COALS OF FIRE 170
THE BRISTOL BOWL
MY cousin Sarah and me had only one aunt between us, and that was my
Aunt Maria, who lived in the little cottage up by the church.
Now my aunt had a tidy little bit of money laid by, which she
couldn't in reason expect to carry with her when her time came to
go, wherever it was she might go to, and a houseful of furniture,
old-fashioned, but strong and good still. So of course Sarah and I
were not behindhand in going up to see the old lady, and taking her
a pot or so of jam in fruiting season, or a turnover, maybe, on a
baking-day, if the oven had been steady and the baking turned out
well. And you couldn't have told from aunt's manner which of us she
liked best; and there were some folks who thought she might leave
half to me and half to Sarah, for she hadn't chick nor child of her
own.
But aunt was of a having nature, and what she had once got together
she couldn't bear to see scattered. Even if it was only what she had
got in her rag-bag, she would give it to one person to make a big
quilt of, rather than give it to two persons to make two little
quilts.
So Sarah and me, we knew that the money might come to either or
neither of us, but go to both it wouldn't.
Now, some people don't believe in special mercies, but I have always
thought there must have been something out of the common way for
things to happen as they did the day Aunt Maria sprained her ankle.
She sent over to the farm where we were living with my mother (who
was a sensible woman, and carried on the farm much better than most
men would have done, though that's neither here nor there) to ask if
Sarah or me could be spared to go and look after her a bit, for the
doctor said she couldn't put her foot to the ground for a week or
more.
Now, the minister I sit under always warns us against superstition,
which, I take it, means believing more than you have any occasion
to. And I'm not more given to it than most folks, but still I always
have said, and I always shall say, that there's a special Providence
above us, and it wasn't for nothing that Sarah was laid up with a
quinsy that very morning. So I put a few things together--in Sarah's
hat-tin, I remember, which was handier to carry than my own--and I
went up to the cottage.
Aunt was in bed, and whether it was the sprained ankle or the hot
weather I don't know, but the old lady was cantankerous past all
believing.
'Good-morning, aunt,' I said, when I went in, 'and however did this
happen?'
'Oh, you've come, have you?' she said, without answering my
question, 'and brought enough luggage to last you a year, I'll be
bound. When I was young, a girl could go to spend a week without
nonsense of boxes or the like. A clean shift and a change of
stockings done up in a cotton handkerchief--that was good enough for
us. But now, you girls must all be young ladies. I've no patience
with you.'
I didn't answer back, for answering back is a poor sort of business
when the other person is able to make you pay for every idle word.
Of course, it's different if you haven't anything to lose by it. So
I just said--
'Never mind, aunt dear. I really haven't brought much; and what
would you like me to do first?'
'I should think you'd see for yourself,' says she, thumping her
pillows, 'that there's not a stick in the house been dusted yet--no,
nor a stair swep'.'
So I set to to clean the house, which was cleaner than most people's
already, and I got a nice bit of dinner and took it up on a tray.
But no, that wasn't right, for I'd put the best instead of the
second-best cloth on the tray.
'The workhouse is where you'll end,' says aunt.
But she ate up all the dinner, and after that she seemed to get a
little easier in her temper, and by-and-by fell off to sleep.
I finished the stairs and tidied up the kitchen, and then I went to
dust the parlour.
Now, my aunt's parlour was a perfect moral. I have never seen its
like before or since. The mantelpiece and the corner cupboard, and
the shelves behind the door, and the top of the chest of drawers and
the bureau were all covered up with a perfect litter and lurry of
old china. Not sets of anything, but different basins and jugs and
cups and plates and china spoons and the bust of John Wesley and
Elijah feeding the ravens in a red gown and standing on a green
crockery grass plot.
There was every kind of china uselessness that you could think of;
and Sarah and I used to think it hard that a girl had no chance of
getting on in life without she dusted all this rubbish once a week
at the least.
'Well, the sooner begun the sooner ended,' says I to myself So I
took the silk handkerchief that aunt kep' a purpose--an old one it
was that had belonged to uncle, and hemmed with aunt's own hair and
marked with his name in the corner. (Folks must have had a deal of
time in those days, I often think.) And I began to dust the things,
beginning with the big bowl on the chest of drawers, for aunt always
would have everything done just one way and no other.
You think, perhaps, that I might as well have sat down in the
arm-chair and had a quiet nap and told aunt afterwards that I had
dusted everything; but you must know she was quite equivalent to
asking any of the neighbours who might drop in whether that dratted
china of hers was dusted properly.
It was a hot afternoon, and I was tired and a bit cross.
'Aunts, and uncles, and grandmothers,' thinks I to myself. 'O what a
stupid old lot they must have been to have set such store by all
this gimcrackery! Oh, if only a bull or something could get in here
for five minutes and smash every precious--oh, my cats alive!'
I don't know how I did it, but just as I was saying that about the
bull, the big bowl slipped from my hands and broke in three pieces
on the floor at my feet, and at the same moment I heard aunt thump,
thump, thumping with the heel of her boot on the floor for me to go
up and tell her what I had broken. I tell you I wished from my heart
at that moment that it was me that had had the quinsy instead of
Sarah.
I was so knocked all of a heap that I couldn't move, and the boot
went on thump, thump, thumping overhead. I had to go, but I was
flustered to that degree that as I went up the stairs I couldn't for
the life of me think what I should say.
Aunt was sitting up in bed, and she shook her fist at me when I went
in.
'Out with it!' she said. 'Speak the truth. Which of them is it? The
yallar china dish, or the big teapot, or the Wedgwood tobaccojar
that belonged to your grandfather?'
And then all in a minute I knew what to say. The words seemed to be
put into my mouth, like they were into the prophets of old.
'Lord, aunt!' I said, 'you give me quite a turn, battering on the
floor that way. What do you want? What is it?'
'What have you broken, you wicked, heartless girl? Out with it,
quick!'
'Broken?' I says. 'Well, I hope you won't mind much, aunt, but I
have had a misfortune with the little cracked pie-dish that the
potatopie was baked in; but I can easy get you another down at
Wilkins.'
Aunt fell back on her pillows with a sort of groan.
'Thank them as be!' she said, and then she sat up again, bolt
upright all in a minute.
'You fetch me the pieces,' she says, short and sharp.
I hope it isn't boastful to say that I don't think many girls would
have had the sense to bring up that dish in their apron and to break
it on their knee as they came up the stairs, and take it in and show
it to her.
'Don't say another word about it,' says my aunt, as kind and hearty
as you please.
Things not being as bad as she expected, it made her quite willing
to put up with things being a bit worse than they had been five
minutes before. I've often noticed it is this way with people.
'You're a good girl, Jane,' she says, 'a very good girl, and I
shan't forget it, my dear. Go on down, now, and make haste with your
washing up, and get to work dusting the china.'
And it was such a weight off my mind to feel that she didn't know,
that I felt as if everything was all right until I got downstairs
and see those three pieces of that red and yellow and green and blue
basin lying on the carpet as I had left them. My heart beat fit to
knock me down, but I kept my wits about me, and I stuck it together
with white of egg, and put it back in its place on the wool mat with
the little teapot on top of it so that no one could have noticed
that there was anything wrong with it unless they took the thing up
in their hands.
The next three days I waited on aunt hand and foot, and did
everything she asked, and she was as pleased as pleased, till I felt
that Sarah hadn't a chance.
On the third day I told aunt that mother would want me, it being
Saturday, and she was quite willing for the Widow Gladish to come in
and do for her while I was away. I chose a Saturday because that and
Sunday were the only days the china wasn't dusted.
I went home as quick as I could, and I told mother all about it.
'And don't you, for any sake, tell Sarah a word about it, or quinsy
or no quinsy, she'll be up at aunt's before we know where we are, to
let the cat out of the bag.'
I took all the money out of my money-box that I had saved up for
starting housekeeping with in case aunt should leave her money to
Sarah, and I put it in my pocket, and I took the first train to
London.
I asked the porter at the station to tell me the way to the best
china-shop in London; and he told me there was one in Queen Victoria
Street. So I went there.
It was a beautiful place, with velvet sofas for people to sit down
on while they looked at the china and glass and chose which pattern
they would have; and there were thousands of basins far more
beautiful than aunt's, but not one like hers, and when I had looked
over some fifty of them, the gentleman who was showing them to me
said--
'Perhaps you could give me some idea of what it is you do want?'
Now, I had brought one of the pieces of the bowl up with me, the
piece at the back where it didn't show, and I pulled it out and
showed it to him.
'I want one like this,' I said.
'Oh!' said he, 'why didn't you say so at first? We don't keep that
sort of thing here, and it's a chance if you get it at all. You
might in Wardour Street, or at Mr. Aked's in Green Street, Leicester
Square.'
Well, time was getting on and I did a thing I had never done before,
though I had often read of it in the novelettes. I waved my umbrella
and I got into a hansom cab.
'Young man,' I said, 'will you please drive to Mr. Aked's in Green
Street, Leicester Square? and drive careful, young man, for I have a
piece of china in my hands that's worth a fortune to me.'
So he grinned and I got in and the cab started. A hansom cab is
better than any carriage you ever rode in, with soft cushions to
lean against and little looking-glasses to look at yourself in, and,
somehow, you don't hear the wheels. I leaned back and looked at
myself and felt like a duchess, for I had my new hat and mantle on,
and I knew I looked nice by the way the young men on the tops of the
omnibuses looked at me and smiled. It was a lovely drive. When we
got to Mr. Aked's, which looked to me more like a rag-and-bone shop
than anything else, and very poor after the beautiful place in Queen
Victoria Street, I got out and went in.
An old gentleman came towards me and asked what he could do for me,
and he looked surprised, as though he wasn't used to see such smart
girls in his pokey old shop.
'Please, sir,' I said, 'I want a bowl like this, if you have got
such a thing among your old odds and ends.'
He took the piece of china and looked at it through his glasses for
a minute. Then he gave it back to me very carefully.
'There's not a piece of this ware in the market. The few specimens
extant are in private collections.'
'Oh dear,' I said; 'and can't I get another like it?'
'Not if you were to offer me a hundred pounds down,' said the old
man.
I couldn't help it. I sat down on the nearest chair and began to
cry, for it seemed as if all my hopes of Aunt Maria's money were
fading away like the 'roseate hues of early dawn' in the hymn.
'Come, come,' said he, 'what's the matter? Cheer up. I suppose
you're in service and you've broken this bowl. Isn't that it? But
never mind--your mistress can't do anything to you. Servants can't
be made to replace valuable bowls like this.'
That dried my eyes pretty quick, I can tell you.
'Me in service!' I said. 'And my grandfather farming his own land
before you were picked out of the gutter, I'll be bound'--God
forgive me that I should say such a thing to an old man--'and my own
aunt with a better lot of fal-lals and trumpery in her parlour than
you've got in all your shop.'
With that he laughed, and I flounced out of the shop, my cheeks
flaming and my heart going like an eight-day clock. I was so
flustered I didn't notice that some one came out of the shop after
me, and I had walked a dozen yards down the street before I saw that
some one was alongside of me and saying something to me.
It was another old gentleman--at least, not so old as Mr. Aked,--and
I remembered now having seen him at the back of the shop. He was
taking off his hat, as polite as you please.
'You're quite overcome,' he said, 'and no wonder. Come and have a
little dinner with me quietly somewhere, and tell me all about it.'
'I don't want any dinner,' I said; 'I want to go and drown myself,
for it's all over, and I've nothing more to look for. My brother
Harry will have the farm, and I shan't get a penny of aunt's money.
Why couldn't they have made plenty of the ugly old basins while they
were about it?'
'Come and have some dinner,' the old gentleman said again, 'and
perhaps I can help you. I have a basin just like that.'
So I did. We went to some place where there were a lot of little
tables and waiters in black clothes; and we had a nice dinner, and I
did feel better for it, and when we had come to the cheese, I told
him exactly what had happened; and he leaned his head on his hands,
and he thought, and thought, and presently he said--
...
Baranua