CHAPTER IX
AMELIA EXPRESSES HER OPINION OF ME
And so I have settled down to my year of inactivity, of schooling my temper, of a constant looking for and waiting for Dimbie, and of a perpetual wrestling with Amelia.
When I told the last-named of my misfortune she just stood and stared at me. I thought she could not have understood, or surely there would be a word of sympathy. She was kind at heart I knew.
"Twelve whole months on my back," I repeated plaintively.
"And never have a bath, mum?"
"Don't be silly," I said irritably. "Of course arrangements will be made for my baths. And all the rooms are to be rearranged. The doctor wishes me to be carried downstairs. The dining-room is to be turned into my bedroom, then I can be wheeled across to the drawing-room each day; and the smoke-room will be used for meals.
"The smoke-room is full of bicycles and photographic rubbish," she said argumentatively.
"Well, they can be moved. Don't throw stumbling-blocks in the way of every suggestion. Are you not sorry for me?" I said.
"Very, mum," she assured me with warmth. "I knows how you will take on. No one is never satisfied with anythink in this world. Now here, I would give my very heyes to be a grand lady reclinin' on a couch in a beautiful tea-gown, readin' novels, and drinkin' egg and sherry twice a day."
"You would get very tired of it," I sighed.
"Well, you'll have to have a settled hoccupation, mum—makin' wool mats like the work'us people, though I must say as they don't like it. My uncle says they used to be quite peaceful and happy till them Brabazon ladies came along and taught 'em how to make wool mats and rush baskets. They worried about the patterns of them mats till the old men was drove fairly silly. P'r'aps you could write poetry. You has a bit of a look sometimes of a person—I mean a lady who could write poetry. There was a poet as visited Tompkinses'—a sickly-looking gent with hair like a door-mat and a complexion like leeks which has been boiled without soda. Tompkinses was very proud of knowing him, and the heldest Miss Tompkins used to wear her canary-coloured satin blouse when he came to dinner. When the wine was offered him he always said, 'No, thanks,' in a habstracted way, but when it went round the table again, as wine does, he'd fill a tumbler, and frown at the ceiling, and pretend he didn't know what he was doing."
"And do I look like a leek that has been boiled without soda?" I asked faintly.
"Oh, no, mum," Amelia replied with comforting haste, "not quite so bad yet. You've looked more like a love-lies-bleeding just lately since you had your accident—though the master seems satisfied. Everybody's tastes is different. Love-lies-bleeding is not my fancy. I like something handsome and straight up like a sunflower or pee-ony. Writin' poetry would help to pass the time, and you has some of the tricks this poet had. He'd stand and stare at the moon, when he was in the garden with Miss Tompkins, and mutter to it like someone gone daft. He fairly skeered me; and he'd take on at catchin' sight of a vi'let as though he'd met a cockroach."
"Well?" I asked, trying to see the connection.
"Well, mum, I catched you carryin' on in just the same way in the garden on master's birthday. You was starin' up at the sky at a lark—I was going to the ashpit—and I heard you say softly to yourself, 'Bird, thou never wert.' I couldn't help hearing you, and I wondered whether you thought it was a kitten or a spider."
I laughed, though I didn't want to do so. I was hideously depressed at the thought of that glorious spring morning and now—but Amelia was so very ridiculous.
I watched her dusting, which was vigorous and thorough, and wished she would put Ruth, a picture above the mantelshelf, at a more decorous angle.
"I have been thinking that you won't be able to manage the housework alone without my assistance, Amelia," I observed, when she had finished brandishing the duster about and had stopped squeaking. "We shall have to engage a charwoman to help you a couple of days a week. We can't afford another servant, I am sorry, but a charwoman will be very helpful. Then if I sent all the washing out I think you could manage. Oh, and I will have a window cleaner," I added encouragingly.
I thought she would be pleased. I imagined servants loved charwomen. I know I should were I a servant—so nice to have someone to talk to, and into whose willing ear to pour tales about the mistress. But Amelia snorted so violently she made me jump.
"Charwoman!" It would be difficult to convey the scorn in her voice. "Charwoman helpful?"
"Aren't they?" I inquired.
Amelia flung herself towards the door.
"You'd never seen a flue-brush, mum, and now you asks if a charwoman is helpful."
I remained silent, overwhelmed by my own ignorance.
Amelia fetched a piece of wet, soapy flannel, and applied it to some of her own finger-marks on the white door. I felt glad she was working off her feelings in this way.
"What do they go out for?" I said at length.
"Just to rob the silly folks who engages 'em," she replied laconically.
"Are they all like that?"
"Everyone as I met. It took me best part of a day to clean up after her as came to Tompkinses'. She swilled herself in beer and tea, had meat three times a day, and hung tea and butter round her waist under her skirt just like a bustle when she went away in the evening."
"But surely she was an exception?" I commented.
"No, mum, they're all like that, every one of 'em," she replied firmly.
"But how are you going to manage now I am laid up?"
She hesitated for a moment, perhaps out of consideration for my feelings, but her own got the better of her.
"I shall manage all right," said she briskly. "In fact, I shall get along much better. Your helping hindered me terribly, mum. I hope as I'm not hurtin' your feelin's. You see," she added kindly, "you 'adn't been used to work, not with four servants; and when you did anythink I always had to be runnin' after you to wipe up the mess. You said you'd fill the lamps; well, you did when you wasn't putting the paraffin on the table—there was that to scrub, and your gloves and scissors to put away. And the day as you said you'd make a puddin', well—the sultanas was lying about like blackbeetles, mum, and flour all over the place just like a snowstorm. And it was, 'Amelia, put the pan on, please,' and 'Amelia, take it off,' and 'Amelia, put some coal on the fire, the puddin' water's stopped boilin',' and 'Amelia, the puddin's boiled dry.'"
She stopped for breath, and I looked drearily through the window.
"Hope you're not offended, mum, but I wanted you to hunderstand as how I could manage all right."
"I quite understand," I replied. "No, I am not offended. I am afraid I am not of much use in the world, Amelia," and I sighed.
"But the master doesn't seem to want you any different, mum," she said comfortingly. "He sits and looks at you as though you had won a prize at a show. Mr. Tompkins used to stare at his black prize Minorca just in the same hidentical way."
"His black Minorca?" I repeated vaguely.
"Yes, mum. One of his hens as got a first prize, and was a rare layer."
"Oh!" I murmured.
"I must go now," she said, "and put the potatoes on for your lunch. And don't you fret about the work, mum. As soon as ever nurse has gone, who makes a power of mess, I shall have plenty of time and to spare, and can put a patch on my pink body."
"What, another?" I almost shouted. "That will make the seventh."
She regarded me with uplifted brows.
"You don't want the bones of my stays to come through, mum?"
"Oh, no," I assured her quickly. "But is it necessary to have quite so many bones? I have only about six altogether."
She looked me up and down with an eye devoid of any admiration.
"Of course, I don't wear corsets at all now," I hastened to explain.
"My figger has always been my strong point, mum, and I'm not goin' to let myself go. Of course, you're thin, mum, so it doesn't matter so much. But people who lets themselves go always has big waists, like the statues in picture galleries. I once went to a show in Whitechapel, and I says to the girl who went along with me 'I'd be downright ashamed if I couldn't show a smaller waist than that Venus.' I expect yours will be pretty big when you gets about again," with which comforting prediction she retired to the lower regions and left me with this pleasing prospect and my own thoughts, which were not of the most cheerful description. It is hard to be told that one is of no use in the world, and to be compared with a black prize Minorca, however good a layer!