Chapter Eleven.
Keturah.
The house at Easney was merrier and more noisy than it had been for some time on the day of Pennie’s return, but the house at Nearminster went back at once to its old gravity and silence. Had it always been so still and quiet? Miss Unity wondered. If so, she had never noticed it until Pennie had come and gone. Now it seemed so strange and unaccustomed that it made her quite restless and unable to settle down to her usual morning employments. She tried them one after another in vain. It was of no use. She could neither add up her accounts, nor read her newspaper, nor do her wool-work with the least satisfaction.
Almost without knowing it she went aimlessly into her bed-room, and from there into the little pink-chintz room which had been Pennie’s. Betty had already made it so neat and trim that it looked forlornly empty with no signs of its late owner. So Miss Unity thought at first, but glancing round it she saw that careless Pennie had left her thimble on the table, and one of her dancing shoes in a corner.
Miss Unity picked up the thimble and fitted it absently on to the top of her own finger. How Pennie had disliked sewing, and dancing too, and how very very glad she had been to go home that morning! How she had flung herself upon Nancy and smothered her with kisses; how happy and smiling her face had looked as she drove away from the door, talking so eagerly to her sister that she had almost forgotten to wave a last good-bye to Miss Unity at the window.
“Well, it was natural, I would not have it otherwise,” said Miss Unity to herself as she finished her reflections; “it is right that the child should love her home best.”
But she sighed as she went back to the sitting-room and took up her work again. Opposite to her was the high-backed chair in which Pennie had spent so many weary hours, bending with a frown over Kettles’ garments. But the chair was empty, and there was something in the way it stood which so annoyed Miss Unity that she pushed it up against the wall almost impatiently. Then her eye fell on a pile of white clothes neatly folded on a side-table. Pennie had finished them all, and Miss Unity had promised that she and Nancy should come over and present them to Kettles before long. From this her thoughts went on to Kettles herself, and Anchor and Hope Alley. At this moment Betty appeared at the door with a face full of woe.
“I’ve just had an accident, Miss,” she said.
Betty’s accidents usually meant broken china, but this time it was something worse. She had sprained her wrist badly.
“You must go at once to the doctor, Betty,” said Miss Unity, looking nervously at the swollen member; “and, oh dear me! it’s your right one isn’t it?”
“Yes, Miss, worse luck,” said Betty.
“We must have someone in,” continued Miss Unity still more nervously; “you ought not to use it, you know, for a long time.”
“I don’t want no strangers, Miss,” said Betty with a darkening face, “they break more than they make. I can make shift, I daresay, with my left hand.”
“Now you know that’s quite out of the question, Betty,” said her mistress, doing her best to speak severely, “you couldn’t lift a saucepan, or even make a bed. You must certainly have someone. Some nice respectable char-woman.”
“There’s ne’er a one in the town,” said Betty, “as you’d like to have in the house. I know what they are—a lazy gossiping set.”
Miss Unity rose with decision.
“I shall go and ask Mrs Margetts at the College to tell me of someone trustworthy,” she said, “and I do beg, Betty, that you will go at once to the doctor.”
But though she spoke with unusual firmness Miss Unity was inwardly very much disturbed, and she quite trembled as she put on her bonnet and started off to see old Nurse. For Betty, like many faithful old servants, was most difficult to manage sometimes. She had ruled Miss Unity’s house single-handed so long that she could not endure the idea of help, or “strangers in the kitchen,” as she called it. Miss Unity had never dared to suggest such a thing until now, and she felt very doubtful as to its success, for she foresaw little peace in the house for some time to come. Complaints, quarrels, changes, wounded feelings on Betty’s part, and so on; a constant worry in the air which would be most distressing to anyone of an orderly and quiet mind. Poor Miss Unity sighed heavily as she reached the College and climbed Nurse’s steep staircase.
Nurse was full of sympathy, but before she could bring her mind to the question of charwomen she had to go over all her experience of sprains and what was best for them—how some said this, and some said exactly the opposite, and how she herself, after trying all the remedies, had finally been cured by some stuff which folks called a quack medicine, but she thought none the worse of it for that. Miss Unity sat patiently and politely listening to all this, and at last gently repeated:
“And do you know of a respectable woman, Mrs Margetts, who would come in and help Betty for a time?”
Nurse shook her head. “There’s no one, I’m afraid, Miss, not one that Betty would like to have. You see she’s rather particular, and if a person isn’t just so, as one might say, it puts her out.”
Miss Unity knew that only too well.
“I must have someone,” she said; “you see Betty will be helpless for some time; she can’t do much with one hand.”
Nurse nodded, and pursed up her lips in deep thought.
“You wouldn’t like a little gal, Miss?” she asked suddenly.
“A little girl!” repeated Miss Unity in some dismay.
“I was thinking p’r’aps that it wouldn’t put Betty about so much,” continued Nurse. “You see she could make a girl do things her way where she couldn’t order about a grown woman, and really there’s some girls of fourteen or so’ll do as much work, and do it most as well with someone to look after ’em.”
“But,” said Miss Unity, “don’t they break things dreadfully?”
Nurse laughed. “Why there’s all sorts, Miss,” she said. “Some are naturally neat-handed and sharp. It’s the dull stupid ones that has the heavy hands in general.”
“Well,” said Miss Unity hesitatingly, “supposing Betty should like the idea—do you know of one who could come?”
She had a sort of feeling that Nurse was thinking of Kettles, so that her answer was hardly a surprise.
“There’s the little girl Miss Pennie was so set on. She could come, for her mother’s about again now, and a decent woman she is, though she’s so badly off.”
A month ago the bare idea of having anyone from Anchor and Hope Alley into her house would have been impossible to Miss Unity; but Pennie had made her so familiar with the name and affairs of Kettles, and she had taken so much interest in making her clothes, that it no longer seemed so strange. Still, what would Betty say? A girl out of Anchor and Hope Alley, who had never been in a decent house before! It was surely too bold a step.
“You see, Miss,” went on Nurse, “it isn’t as if you wanted her to wait on you, or to open the door or such like. All she’s got to do is to help Betty below stairs, and to make beds, and so on. She’ll soon learn, and I’ll be bound she’ll answer better than a char-woman.”
Miss Unity took her departure with this bold idea becoming more and more fixed in her mind. There was a great deal in what Nurse had said, if she could only induce Betty to look at it in the same way; and above all how delighted Pennie would be, when she next came, to find Kettles not only wearing the clothes she had made; but actually established in the house. It all seemed to fit in so well that Miss Unity gathered courage. She had come out that morning feeling depressed and worried, and as though everything would go wrong; but now, as she turned into the Close, wondering how she should best open the subject to Betty, she was quite stirred and interested.
Betty had come back from the doctor with her arm in a sling. She was to keep it as still as possible, and on no account to try to use it.
“So you see, Betty,” said Miss Unity earnestly, “the importance of having someone to help you in your work.”
“Yes, Miss,” said Betty, with suspicion in every feature, and quite prepared to object to any person her mistress had secured.
“And I have made up my mind,” went on Miss Unity, “not to have a char-woman.”
“Ho, indeed, Miss!” said Betty, still suspicious.
“I know you object to them,” said her mistress, “and Mrs Margetts advises me to try a little girl she knows, who lives near here.”
If possible she would avoid the mention of Anchor and Hope Alley.
“It’s for you to please yourself, Miss,” said Betty stiffly.
“Of course it would be an immense advantage to the girl to be under a competent servant like yourself, for although she’s intelligent she has never been in service before. Miss Pennie was very much interested in her,” added Miss Unity as an afterthought.
If Betty had a soft corner in her heart for anyone but her mistress it was for Pennie. She did not at all approve of Miss Unity’s taking up with these new fancies, but to please Pennie she would put up with a good deal. It was with something approaching a smile that she said:
“Oh, then, it’s the little girl out of Anchor and Hope Alley, isn’t it, Miss? Her as Miss Pennie made the clothes for and used to call Kettles?”
“Well,” said Miss Unity reluctantly, “I am sorry to say she does live there, but Mrs Margetts knows her mother well, and she’s a very deserving woman. We sha’n’t call the girl Kettles—her name is Keturah. You’ll have to teach her, you know, Betty,” she added apologetically.
As to that, Betty had no objection. She had a deal rather, she said, have a girl who knew nothing and was willing to learn, than one who had got into wrong ways and had to be got out of them. In short, she was quite ready to look with favour on the idea, and to Miss Unity’s great surprise it was settled without further difficulty that Kettles was to come on trial.
With her usual timidity, however, she now began to see the other side of the question, and to be haunted by all sorts of misgivings. When she woke in the middle of the night dreadful pictures presented themselves of Kettles’ father stealing upstairs with a poker in his hand in search of the plate-basket. She could hear the dean saying when the theft was discovered:
“Well, Miss Unity, what can you expect if you will have people in your house out of Anchor and Hope Alley?”
It would no doubt be a dreadful risk, and before she went to sleep again she had almost decided to give up the plan altogether. But morning brought more courage, and when she found Betty ready to propose that the girl should come that very day she could not draw back.
“I can soon run her up a cotton frock, and she can have one of my aprons, and there’s all her other clothes nice and ready,” said Betty in a business-like tone.
So Kettles came, newly clothed from top to toe and provided with plenty of good advice by old Nurse. At first Miss Unity hardly knew she was in the house, for Betty kept her strictly in the background, and hurried her away into corners whenever her mistress appeared in the kitchen. Judging, however, from the absence of complaint that things were going on well, she at last ventured to inquire how Betty liked her new help.
“She’s a sharp little thing, Miss,” said Betty. “Of course she’s strange to the ways of a house, coming from where she does. But she’s willing, that’s the great thing.”
“Can the child read and write?” was Miss Unity’s next question.
But Betty seemed to think she had nothing whatever to do with this part of Kettles’ education.
“I’m sure I don’t know, Miss,” she said. “I’ve enough to do to teach her to sweep a room properly.”
Upon inquiry it was found that Kettles did not even know her letters.
“I never had no time to go to school,” she said, “and I don’t want to, either.”
“But,” said Miss Unity, greatly distressed, “you can’t read your Bible, then, Keturah.”
“Mother, she reads the Bible,” said Kettles, as though that were sufficient.
Miss Unity went upstairs full of uneasy thought. What could be done? She could not send Keturah to school. It would be absurd to provide Betty with help, and then to take it away for half the day. She could not ask Betty to teach her. Finally, she could not let the child remain in this dreadful state of ignorance. There was one way out of the difficulty which stared Miss Unity in the face, however much she tried to avoid seeing it. She could teach Keturah herself in the evening after her work was done. Miss Unity shrank from it. She had never been brought close to poor people, and she had never taught anyone anything in her life. She was as shy of Kettles as though she were a grown-up woman, and it was altogether a most distasteful idea. Do what she would, however, she could not get rid of it. Her sense of duty at length conquered, as usual, and Keturah, with very clean hands and an immense white apron, appeared in the sitting-room one night to take her first lesson.
Miss Unity felt very nervous at first, and it was strange to have Kettles so close to her, but by degrees this wore off, and she even began to feel a sort of pleasure in the lessons. It was no trouble to teach her, for, as Betty said, she was “one of the sharp ones,” and was, besides, eager to do her best. Not because she wished to know how to read, which she rather despised, but because she wanted very much to please her mistress, for whom she had a great admiration.
So things went on very well at Nearminster, both upstairs and down-stairs, and the time soon came when Miss Unity found herself looking forward to the knock at the door, which was followed by the appearance of Kettles and her spelling-book. This interest partly made up for the loss of Pennie, which had left a sad blank in Miss Unity’s life at first. Here was another little living creature she could teach, rebuke, praise, and care for, and if Kettles could not fill Pennie’s place in Miss Unity’s heart, she could at least give it enough to do to keep it warm and active.
Although she would not have confessed it, her interest in the black children of Karawayo began to fade just now, and though she still attended the Working Societies and kept the missionary-box on her hall table, she was much more really concerned about Keturah’s first pot-hooks and hangers.
Meanwhile the new maid showed such marked progress in household matters that Betty gradually allowed her to appear upstairs, and on some occasions to open the door to visitors.
“What a nice, bright little maid you have!” said Mrs Merridew, who was calling one afternoon. “One of the Easney school-children, I suppose. Country girls are so superior.”
“I’ve always noticed that,” said the dean, as Miss Unity paused before replying, “the town children are sharp enough, but they’re generally wicked. And the country children are honest and steady enough, but as a rule they’re so dull.”
Miss Unity listened with the respect she always showed to any remarks of the dean as he went on to enlarge on the subject. Once she would have agreed with him as a matter of course, but now she had a sort of feeling that she really knew more about it than he did. What would he say if he knew that the bright little maid Mrs Merridew had admired came from the very depths of Anchor and Hope Alley?
Time went quickly by, till it was nearly a month since Pennie had gone away, and Keturah had come to help Betty. She had come “on trial” as a stop-gap only, but no one said a word about her leaving yet. Certainly Betty’s wrist was still weak, and this gave Miss Unity an excuse she was glad to have. She almost dreaded the day when Betty should put off her sling and declare herself quite well, for that would mean that there was no longer any reason for keeping Keturah.
“I am thinking, Betty,” she said one morning, “of asking the young ladies from Easney to come over to tea to-morrow. Miss Pennie will be interested to see how well Keturah has got on.”
Betty brightened up at once.
“I’ll see and make some hot-cakes then, Miss,” she said; “them as Miss Pennie likes.”
“And I want you,” added Miss Unity, “to let Keturah bring up the tea-things. The young ladies don’t know she is here, and it will be a nice surprise for them.”
Betty entering heart and soul into the plot, which Miss Unity had been considering for some days, a letter was despatched to Easney, the cakes made, and Keturah carefully drilled as to her behaviour.
Pennie and Nancy had been expecting the invitation, and were quite ready for it when it came, with Kettles’ new boots and stockings made into a parcel. Andrew might drive them into Nearminster and leave them at Miss Unity’s for an hour, Miss Grey said, and she hoped they would be sure to start back punctually.
“How funny it seems,” said Pennie as the cathedral towers came in sight, “to be going back to Nearminster!”
“Would you like to be going to stop there again?” asked Nancy.
“Well of course I like being at home best,” answered Pennie, “but there were some things I liked at Nearminster. Let me see,” counting on her fingers, “there were Miss Unity, and old. Nurse, and Betty, and Sabine Merridew, and Kettles, and the Cathedral, and the market, and the College. That’s five people and three things. And what I didn’t like were needlework and dancing, and the dean, and Monsieur Deville, and all the other Merridews.”
“I hope Betty’s made hot-cakes for tea,” said Nancy as the carriage stopped at Miss Unity’s door.
“How can she, with only one hand?” said Pennie; and then the door opened and there was Betty herself, with her arm still in a sling, and a face shining with welcome.
“Lor’, Miss Pennie, it do seem natural to see you again, to be sure,” she said with a giggle of delight. “And Miss Nancy’s rosy cheeks too. The mistress is expecting you; run upstairs to her, my dears.”
She went towards the kitchen with a shake of the head and a short laugh, as if she had some inward cause for amusement.
“Betty seems to like having a sprain,” said Nancy, looking at her over the balusters. “I never saw her look so pleased or laugh so much.”
Miss Unity’s welcome was quite as hearty as Betty’s, but she too seemed a little odd, and inclined to give nervous glances at the door as though she expected some one to come in.
“Would you like us to go and help Betty bring up tea?” asked Nancy, noticing this. “We should like it tremendously if you would let us.”
She started up as she spoke, and would have rushed down-stairs in another moment, if Miss Unity had not caught hold of her hand.
“No, my dear; no, thank you; certainly not,” she said hurriedly. “Betty has some one to help her.”
A little disappointed, Nancy sat down again. Her eyes fell on the parcel she held, and she frowned at Pennie to draw her attention to it. Pennie was looking dreamily round the sitting-room with all its old familiar objects. She wondered where Kettles’ clothes, which she had left on the side-table, had been put. What a long time it seemed since she had sat sewing in that high-backed chair! Brought back to the present by Nancy’s deeply frowning glance, she gave a little start and said hurriedly:
“Nancy and I have brought some new boots and stockings for Kettles. May we give them to her with the clothes?”
“And will she be at the College?” put in Nancy, “or can we go to Anchor and Hope Alley?”
Miss Unity’s head gave another nervous jerk in the direction of the door. She had heard a footstep coming upstairs, which was not Betty’s.
“We will see about it after tea,” she said. “You shall certainly see the little girl, as I promised you.”
The door opened as she spoke, and a small maid-servant in a tall cap appeared, bearing a tray. Betty hovered in the background with a face in which pride and laughter struggled together.
Kettles was not used to her new style of dress yet, and held herself stiffly as though she had been dressed up for a joke. The tangled hair which used to fall low on her forehead was tightly brushed back and tucked up in a net. Her face looked bare and unshaded, and several degrees lighter by reason of yellow soap and scrubbing. It was surmounted by a cap of Betty’s, which had been cut to fit her, but was still much too tall for such a small person. Nothing remained of the old Kettles but her eyes, which still had the quick observant look in them of some nimble animal, as she advanced in triumph with her tray.
The children stared in surprise at this strange little figure without any idea that they had seen it before, while Miss Unity and Betty watched them with expectant smiles.
“This is my new little maid,” said Miss Unity.
Kettles dropped a curtsy, and having put down her tray, stood with her arms hanging straight beside her, and her bright eyes fixed on the children.
All at once Pennie gave her sister a nudge.
“Why, don’t you see?” she exclaimed; “I really do believe it’s Kettles!”
“We call her Keturah,” said Miss Unity smiling kindly. “She is a very good little girl. Keturah, this is the young lady who made you all these nice clothes. You must say ‘thank you’ to her.”
Pennie hung shyly back. She did not want to be thanked, and she was quite afraid of Kettles now that she was so neat and clean.
“Do you like them?” she murmured.
Keturah chuckled faintly. “They’re fine,” she said. “I’ve got ’em all on. I don’t never feel cold now.”
“And,” continued Miss Unity, “this other young lady, whom I think you saw once at Mrs Margetts’, has been kind enough to think of bringing you some nice warm boots and stockings.”
She looked at Nancy as she spoke, but for once Nancy remained in the background, clutching her parcel and staring at Kettles over Pennie’s shoulder. The old Kettles, who had been in her mind all this time, was gone, and Keturah, clean, tidy, and proper, stood in her place. It was too surprising a change to be understood in a moment, and Nancy was not at all sure that she liked it.
Kettles was silent when the parcel was at length opened and presented, perhaps with excess of joy.
“Well I never!” said Betty, advancing to examine the gift. “Keturah’s in luck I will say. Dear, dear, what nice stout boots, to be sure! Well, now,” with a nudge to the silent figure, “she’ll do her best to deserve such kindness, I know. Haven’t you got a word to say to the dear young ladies?”
But Keturah could not be made to speak a word. She dropped her little curtsy, and stood as if turned to stone, clasping the boots and stockings to her chest.
“She ain’t tongue-tied; not as a rule,” said Betty apologetically to the children; “but she hasn’t been much used to presents, and it’s a little too much for her.”
“I think,” said Miss Unity coming to the rescue, “that we must have our tea now, Betty, or the young ladies will have no time—and Keturah can go and try on her new boots and stockings.”
“They’re my size,” said Nancy, speaking for the first time since Keturah’s appearance. “I think they’ll be sure to fit.”
Betty and her little maid having hurried out of the room, Miss Unity’s tea-table became the object of interest. It was always very attractive to the children, because it was so different to school-room tea at Easney.
The dark deep colours of the old Derby china seemed to match the plum-cake in richness; there were Pennie’s hot-cakes in a covered dish, and Nancy’s favourite jam in a sparkling cut-glass tub. In its way, though very different, it was as good as having tea with old Nurse at the College. On this occasion it was unusually pleasant, because there was so much to ask and hear about Keturah.
“Aren’t you glad,” said Nancy, when the whole story had been fully explained, “that you’ve got Keturah instead of a new mandarin?”
“Nancy!” said Pennie, shocked at this bold question.
But Nancy was quite unabashed.
“You know, don’t you,” she said to Miss Unity, “that it was Pennie’s first plan to buy you a new one. The boys promised to help, but I didn’t. And then all sorts of things happened, and there was hardly any money in the box. And then we saw Kettles. And then I made Pennie give up the plan, and save for the boots and stockings. But we never thought then that she’d ever have anything to do with you.”
“It was very good of Pennie to wish to get me a new mandarin,” said Miss Unity, her eyes resting affectionately on her god-daughter.
“She wanted to ever so much,” continued Nancy. “She wouldn’t buy a book she wanted at the fair, on purpose to save her money. But after all, Kettles is much nicer to have, because you can do all sorts of things with her, and the mandarin could only nod his head.”
“If it had not been for Pennie,” said Miss Unity, “I should never have heard or known anything about Keturah. She has given me a new maid instead of a new mandarin.”
“But she’s partly from Nancy too,” said Pennie, “because you see she made me like Kettles and give up the other.”
“She’s partly from Pennie, and partly from me, and partly from Dickie too,” said Nancy thoughtfully. “If Dickie hadn’t had the measles Pennie wouldn’t have stopped here, and if she hadn’t stopped here you would never have heard of Kettles. Dickie did put a penny into the box out of her slug-money. She took it out again, but she wanted to help with the mandarin. And after all she’s helped to give you Kettles.”
“Will she always stay here,” asked Pennie, “after Betty’s arm gets well?”
“If Betty finds her useful I should like her to stay,” said Miss Unity, but as she spoke she felt that she should never have the courage to suggest it.
The matter was, however, taken out of her hands by Nancy, who, as soon as Betty appeared to take away the tea-things, put the question point-blank:
“You’ll like Kettles to stay, won’t you, Betty? because what’s the good of making her look so nice if she’s to go back to Anchor and Hope Alley?”
“I’m quite agreeable to it, Miss Nancy, if it suits the mistress,” said Betty meekly. So the thing was settled at once. Kettles, out of Anchor and Hope Alley, had become Keturah, Miss Unity’s maid in the Close.
“She looks very nice now she’s Keturah,” said Nancy, as the little girls drove away, “but she isn’t funny any more. There was something I always liked about Kettles.”
And Kettles she always remained to the children at Easney, though the name was never heard at Nearminster.