LETTERS TO A MOTHER
One morning, not long after this, there came to Miss Bibby at “Greenways” a letter from Thomas Bibby in the city.
Thomas was the sole male member of the family of Bibby, and was a hard-headed young clerk in the commercial department of a big evening newspaper. He had been brought up by his sisters;—there were three more Misses Bibby scattered about the State, teaching, or in similar positions of trust to the “Greenways” Miss Bibby. And they were all inclined to be literary. Clara Bibby wrote verse; if you happened to be a reader of obscure country newspapers you would frequently come across a poem entitled Australia—my Country, or Wattle Blossom, with the signature “Clara L. C. Bibby” beneath it. Alice, the quietest, gentlest little person in the world, wrote vehement articles in the suburban Woman’s Political Organ. And Grace had actually brought out a book. A [p73] publisher had been touched at her despair when he handed her back her useless MS., and suggested she should compile a cookery book for him, which after a little time of dignified sulking she did; and the book came out and, there being room for it, had a most successful sale. And Grace, quite pleased and surprised, positively taught herself to cook from it, and found the subject so full of interest that she abandoned her heroines and started a second volume of Cookery Hints for Busy Housewives. But it galled the pride of Agnes, the “Greenways” Miss Bibby, and Clara, the poetess, and Alice, the Woman’s Voice, that she signed it with her own name. They were confronted everywhere with Bibby’s Cookery Book.
Thomas, after he had finished being brought up by these ladies, surprised every one by his faculty for business. They took him in his eighteenth year to the editor of an evening paper who was known to them, and begged that he should be received into the office to gain an insight into literary life, as they hoped in a few more years he would become a novelist.
“Suppose I’ll have to give you a trial,” growled the editor to the sulky-looking novelist-to-be, when the ladies had fluttered away. “Here you are, here’s a bank manager made a mess of his accounts—no roguery [p74] about it, simple confusion, and he goes and shoots himself and his wife—can you turn that into a novel of two hundred words?”
“No, I can’t,” said Thomas, who hated all things literary. Then his sulky look vanished and his eyes brightened. “But I tell you what I could do—go and straighten out the poor chap’s accounts.”
“Here,” said the editor, “you’d better go downstairs, my fine fellow, and ask Mr. Gates to give you a stool in the office.”
So Thomas became a valued clerk in the counting-house. And presently when a foolish, feminine speculation swept away the income of the sisters, Thomas established himself as guardian of their bank-books, and general business man of the family.
The sisters, though a little money was still left, decided to take situations as governesses and companions, telling each other it would widen their outlook on life, and give them experiences that might prove invaluable in their literary work. Judge and Mrs. Lomax felt themselves fortunate when Miss Agnes Bibby, with such unquestionable credentials, appeared in answer to their advertisement for some one to take charge of their family during their absence.
And now came a letter from Thomas in the city to Agnes at “Greenways”:—
“Here’s a chance for you if you can only take it. We’ve just heard that writing chap, Hugh Kinross, has gone to Burunda for a holiday. The beggar has dodged every attempt at an interview, though we and every other paper, for the matter of that, have lain for him in every possible place. Well, I was talking to the editor the other day—he’s no end affable to me, and often has a chat—and I happened to say you were at Burunda. And he said, ‘Burunda! why that’s where Kinross is taking a holiday. Tell her to get any interesting information she can about him, and I’ll pay her well for it. If she can manage an interview—a woman can rush in sometimes where a man fears to tread—I’ll give her six guineas. Yes, and take one of the stories with which she is always bombarding me, hanged if I won’t!’
“You can see it’s worth trying for, old girl. Six guineas down for the interview, and say another four for a short story, not counting getting into print at last. Go in and win, say I. I’m sending with this an English mag. or two, with interviews in to show you the style of thing they need.
“You can easily find him out; he’s sure to be at one of the hotels. Dog him on a walk some day, and then when you’ve got him cornered somewhere where he can’t escape, [p76] whip out your note-book and make him hold up his arms. Butter him up a bit, and he’ll give in; he’s not been famous long enough not to feel inclined to purr if you rub him the right way.
“He’s written two or three books; Liars All is one of them. They’re not in your line, of course, but I must say they’re not at all bad. Well, go in and win.
“Yours,
“Tom.
“PS.—I banked thirteen pounds six to-day for Grace—more royalties from the Cookery Book. Why don’t you try something in the same line? Poultry Keeping for Retrenched Incomes, for instance; it would sell like penny ice creams on a heat-wave day.”
Miss Bibby, after reading this letter for the third time that day, hastened into the dining-room where the children were awaiting her, a red spot on her cheek, and a hole burning inside her sleeve near her elbow, where, being pocketless as any modern woman, she had tucked the letter.
“She exacted half-an-hour a day at the piano, from each of the little girls.”
She kept her thoughts away from it only by desperate expedients, such as sternly reminding herself that her time at present was paid for by Judge Lomax, and therefore belonged absolutely to him. Later in the [p77] day it would be a different matter, but now to her duties,—
“Pauline, Lynn, get out your pens this moment;—no, Muffie, you must write in pencil, you have spoiled the cloth with the ink you have spilled;—yes, yes, in a minute; Max, you sit here, dear, on the nice high chair, and then you can reach beautifully.”
Max firmly refused the nice high chair, which he long had considered beneath the dignity of a man with a pocket, and had to be established as usual on two or three fat music books placed on a “grown-up” chair.
There were no regular lessons during the holidays, but Mrs. Lomax having said vaguely, at leaving, that she hoped the little girls would not have quite forgotten their scales, and how to write and read, before the governess returned, Miss Bibby had considered it her duty to see to these things.
So she exacted half an hour a day at the piano from each of the little girls, and faithfully sat beside them saying: “One, two, three, four, don’t droop your wrists, Lynn; one, two, three, four, count, Pauline; one, two, three, four, thumb under, Muffie.”
And she established two letter hours a week, and saw to it that the children wrote to their parents in their best hand for one page, though she allowed a “go-as-you-please” for the other pages, judging that that would give [p78] most pleasure across the wash of the Pacific seas.
“My dearest Mummie and Dad,” wrote Pauline this afternoon, “I played my Serenade through yesterday without one single solitary mistake.”
Then she looked up with trouble in her eyes.
“Miss Bibby,” she said, “you know just where you turn over and the chords begin, are you sure I didn’t play D flat there, instead of D natural?”
Miss Bibby started guiltily; as silence had settled slowly down over the room her thoughts began to drop nearer and nearer to her elbow.
“I don’t remember, dear,” she said; “didn’t I praise you—didn’t we say you could tell mother that you had it quite correct at last? Yes, I remember quite well.”
Pauline sighed. There was no help for her spiritual difficulty here. That doubtful D flat had made her toss restlessly for half an hour before she slept last night. She was consumed by the desire to write the glorious news to her mother, and even Miss Bibby, exigent Miss Bibby, had said the piece was perfect. But Pauline herself had a lurking, miserable doubt in her mind; she seemed to recollect just one mistake, just one tiresome finger jumping up to a black note, when it should have played a white one with a slur. She stared wretchedly at the written statement [p79] before her. Suppose it were not true—think of writing a lie, an actual lie to mother! But, indeed, if she really knew for certain that she had played D flat she would not dream of writing so. It was the doubt that tormented. She had better not write so certainly—yes, she would add something that would leave the question more open. “Perhaps” was the word, of course,—“perhaps” excused many, many things. She read over the beginning once more, imagining it to be her mother’s eye perusing.
“‘My dearest Mummie and Dad,—I played my Serenade through this morning without one single solitary mistake perhaps.’” Oh, how the wretched word pulled one up, tarnished the brilliant achievement!
“Pauline, you cannot have finished; sit down,” said Miss Bibby.
Pauline shook her head gloomily. “I can’t write yet,” she said; “I think I’ll just go and play it over once more to be certain. That might have been D flat.”
“Oh,” said Miss Bibby excusingly, for the Serenade was long, like the lay of the Last Minstrel. “Mother won’t mind, dear—just say you played it very well, and I was much pleased.”
But Pauline shook her head wretchedly.
“I think I’ll play it again,” she said, and [p80] crossed over to the piano with melancholy eyes.
Lynn was wrestling with her first page.
“‘Dearie mother, we don’t cough so mush’ (how do you spell cough, Miss Bibby? There’s a horrid g or q in it somewhere, I know)—‘I don’t smudg so mush.’ I wish (Oh, dear, you said we oughtn’t to say we wished she’d come back, didn’t you, Miss Bibby, cause she might stop enjoying herself? What else could I put after ‘I wish’? I’ve got that written).”
“Suppose you say you wish you could write better,” suggested Miss Bibby.
“I suppose that will have to do,” said the little girl sadly. “No, I’ll tell you, ’cause I don’t much want to write better, I’ll say I wish words would ryum better. Look at beauty, nothing will go with it but duty, and duty is such a ugly word in a song, isn’t it?”
“No, I think it is a beautiful word,” said Miss Bibby; she expected herself to say this, and was not disappointed.
“Well, I don’t,” sighed Lynn. “I could have made a lovely song this morning. It began—
‘Oh, the bush is full of beauty,
And the flowers are full of love,’
but I couldn’t go any farther, ’cause there was nothing to ryum but that horrid duty.”
[p81]
“I think you could have made it very pretty, dear, with that word,” said Miss Bibby. “And say rhyme, Lynn, not ryum. You could have said,—
‘Oh, the bush is full of beauty,
And the flowers are full of love,
And if we do our duty,
We——we——’
—something like that, you know, dear.”
“‘We’ll soon get up above,’”
finished Lynn discontentedly. “No, I didn’t want it to go like that; it was just going to be a springy sort of a song, with wild birds in it, not a lessony sort.”
“Well, get on with your letter, my dear,” said Miss Bibby, who was often helpless before the fine instinct for the value of words with which Lynn had been gifted.
So Lynn continued in a cramped hand, “I wish there were more nice words—duty won’t do.”
This was a sentence calculated to puzzle even parents intelligent as Judge and Mrs. Lomax imagined themselves.
Then the child turned over to her “free” sheet, on which she might write and spell as she pleased, and gazed at it wistfully.
Oh, to purr out her little heart upon it [p82] so that the mother so far away might hear her speaking, whispering, just as if she were cuddled up in the dear arms!
What a tragic thing this was in her hand, this red pen with the end sucked nearly white, so powerful, so powerless!
“I love you,” she wrote, and then covered a line or two with black crosses, that meant a passion of kisses. Oh, to catch at all the words that were surging in her heaving little breast, and to force them down on the white sheet, and to send them away red-hot across the sea!
She dipped wildly in the ink, she breathed hard and held the pen in almost a convulsive way. But the pitiful steel thing only spluttered, and left a few lines of black scribble. Could the mother understand that? Ah, perhaps, perhaps.
“I hop you are well, from Lynn.”
And so concluded the bi-weekly letter, with a big tear as usual, for Lynn simply could not write to mother without crying a little, though for the rest of the time she was a merry little grig.
Muffie was still blissfully untroubled by the need of orthography, and scribbled steadily over four pages, her lips moving all the time to such tune as “‘so we went down the gully and ferns, such a lot. And I got the best of all, and it’s under the house for you in a tin from [p83] Anna, and all of it’s for you in the bushhouse at our proper house and daddie.’”
After a time the Serenade began to get upon the nerves of all the room.
Eleven times did poor Pauline attack it and eleven times did she have a breakdown. It was not always the D flat that caused the downfall, though Miss Bibby found herself listening with nerves a-stretch every time the difficult bar approached. And she felt inclined to cry with thankfulness everytime the child went smoothly past. But then just as surely as her nervous tension released itself, and she began to comfort herself that the concluding page could not fail to go well, a stumble, a slip, a despairing cry from the piano stool, and the whole performance began again.
“Oh, make her stop, Miss Bibby,” implored Muffie; “she intrupts me dreadf’lly, and I’m in the middle of telling about the fat lady that rides on a bicycle.”
“Make her stop,” said Max, she “intlups me worse. I’ll never get my letter done.” Max, except for a wavy line or two in red chalk generally confined his correspondence to enclosing tangible sections of things in which he was interested at the time. To-day he had stuffed into his envelope a clipping from the tail of Larkin’s horse, one of the white daisies Trike was being nourished upon, some shavings of coloured chalks from a box [p84] on which he had just expended his final penny, and a few currants from his last drop cake.
“I’m getting all my chalks mixed up with her intlupting me,” he complained, looking angrily towards the piano where the devoted Pauline still battled madly with the Serenade.
“Pauline, my dear child, I shall go out of my senses if you play the thing again,” Miss Bibby said desperately, as Pauline for the twelfth time began the clashing chords that opened the piece, and served as contrast for the gentler music of the Serenade itself.
“I’ve—I’ve sworn to myself to get it right,” said Pauline wildly. Her lips were quivering, her eyes were full of tears, her very hands were shaking with weariness.
“You shouldn’t swear,” began Miss Bibby.
“The butcher does,” volunteered Max.
“I—I mean it is wrong to bind oneself by a promise one may not be able to keep,” Miss Bibby added hastily. “And you are not to talk to the butcher, Max. Shut the piano now, Pauline, and another time when you are quite calm——”
“I’ve got it w-w-written,” sobbed Pauline, fighting with the keys through a mist of tears.
“You can easily start another letter,” said Miss Bibby distractedly; “don’t mention your music this time—your mother won’t mind.”
[p85]
“No, I can’t stop; I can’t stop,” wailed Pauline, playing on as if under a spell.
At this point Anna stalked into the room.
“Which I’m quite aware it isn’t my place, Miss Bibby; but I’m here to look after the children as well as you,” she said, “and them down with whooping cough that dreadful they can’t eat potatoes, and getting punished like this till the very kettle in the kitchen is ready to scream, and the Missus don’t believe in punishing, no, she don’t, and it’s a good deal longer I’ve lived in the fambly than some people, and knows the ways better, and the tears streaming down the poor child’s face like you never saw.”
Pauline had quivered once or twice during this heated speech, but as it finished she crashed on to D flat yet again, fell off her stool on to the floor, and rolled about screaming with laughter.
Even Miss Bibby was forced to smile a little, for Anna was plainly suffering keenly, and had bottled it up for some time.
“You mean well, Anna,” she said quietly, “even if you don’t express yourself well. You can put on your hat and take the children to the waterfall; it will do you all good, for it will be cool down there. I will go to the post, lock the side door, and put the key under the mat.”
In ten minutes “Greenways” lay still and [p86] peaceful once more among its trees, as if no Serenade had ever troubled its repose. The children were scampering down the gully with Anna following warily, certain she heard a snake at every step.
And Miss Bibby, the letters under her arm, was buttoning her gloves inside the gate, and settling her veil for the walk up to the township.
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