CHAPTER XV
AMELIA GIVES ME NOTICE
It is said that the young look forward and the old look backward. I am still young enough, I suppose, to live chiefly in the future—a beautiful future, with Dimbie ever as the central figure. But should I live to be an old woman, and send my thoughts backward through the years, a smile will rise to my lips unbidden at the memory of a certain dinner at which Peter and Amelia played prominent parts.
I have to put down my manuscript book for a moment while I laugh. Amelia is, I know, watching me through the pantry window. She will be considering that this is one of my "dotty" moments. For anyone to lie under an apple tree and apparently laugh at nothing at all is to Amelia a strange and sad sight.
Wait a while, Amelia, you may see stranger things yet. Life contains infinite possibilities for those who have even the smallest sense of humour. At present that sense with you is lacking. Let us hope that it is not altogether void, but in an embryo stage waiting for development.
To you the dinner last evening was not in the least amusing. In fact, the tears you shed later on were very bitter. Of course, lookers-on always see most of the game, and had I been in your place I admit I should have been very angry; for Peter is capable of arousing in the human breast passions which are anything but Christian.
Let me relate the story as it sounded to my ears from the drawing-room. It is a source of regret to me that I cannot be present at meals, for the bicycle-room is not large enough to hold both the dining-table and my Ilkley couch. Still, with both doors set wide apart I can hear most of what is going on.
Peter's voice carried better than Amelia's; he is used to drilling. Mother's sounded like punctuation marks—notes of exclamation and interrogation, gentle little apostrophes, and full stops. But Peter was not to be stopped. This is how he began to annoy Amelia:—
THIS IS HOW HE BEGAN
"What's this?" A stab of a fork.
"Don't you know, sir?"
"No, I don't."
"Not seen lamb before?"
"Do you call this burnt cinder lamb?"
Mother, gently, "I think it looks beautifully cooked, just nicely browned."
"Of course you do. You can eat anything. Some people have the digestion of an ostrich."
Amelia, breaking in, "Please don't carve it that way, sir. We eats the bottom side first—that was Tompkinses' way—and next day when it's turned over it looks as though it had never been touched, quite respectable like."
Peter: "Am I carving this cinder or are you?"
Amelia (calmly, but as I knew ominously): "Neither of us, sir, at this partickler minute. But p'r'aps you will be startin' before it's cold."
Sounds of splashings of gravy, and hurried exit of Amelia (I guessed to fetch a cloth).
"It's the best table-cloth, sir, double damux, and has to last a fortnight."
"A what?"
"A week for dinner, and followin' week for breakfast."
"A piggish habit!"
"A what, sir?"
"A piggish habit. Are there no laundries or washerwomen about here?"
"Plenty, sir, but we don't want to over-work 'em. Will you give me a bit of the knuckle for the mistress, she likes knuckle. It's not often she gets meat for her dinner, only beef and lamb and mutton, no pork or veal or beefsteak pie. That's the knuckle, sir, the other end."
Splutterings and drill language from Peter.
"And what does she have then?" asked mother.
"A whitin', mum, mostly."
"She looks like it."
"And you'd look like it too, sir, if you was to lie still, flat on your back, day after day."
Arrival of Amelia with my tray. Confidential whispering. The meat will have to be hashed to-morrow, as it's been carved so disgracefully. I cheer her up to the best of my ability.
Return of Amelia to dining-room.
"What's this vegetable supposed to be—seakale or asparagus?"
"Neither, sir" (chuckling). "It's salsify. Thought you wouldn't know it, as you don't seem to be up in the names of things."
I bury my face in my serviette and hold on to the tortoise.
"It's like stewed sawdust."
"Is it, sir? The cookery book says it's like vegetable hoyster."
"Vegetable what?"
"Vegetable hoyster."
"I don't understand you" (thunderingly). "Speak plainly, girl."
"Do you know what gentlefolks buys off stalls at the seaside and eats with lemon and cyenne?" (An apparent effort to keep calm.)
Peter (shouting): "Winkles!"
Amelia (with fine scorn): "My friends don't buy winkles; it's only common folks as does that. My friends buy hoysters."
"Oh, oy—sters!"
"Yes, hoy—sters."
"You can bring in the next course, Angelina."
"Amelia, sir. You're that bad in your memory——" Rest of sentence finished in hall and kitchen.
Gentle murmur from mother.
"I shall!" (loudly). "It's a treat to speak to a girl with a bit of sense, though she is an impudent hussy, after our sleek-tongued fools—yes, fools, every one of them!"
Clattering of saucepans in kitchen and stamping of Amelia across the hall with the pudding. I could not remember what I had ord—suggested in the way of pudding, and I hoped it would meet with Peter's approval.
"Is this a pudding?"
"Yes, sir."
"I thought puddings stood up straight?"
"Not all of 'em, sir. Some is a bit weak-kneed in the joints."
Was she poking fun at Peter's gouty legs?
"What's inside it?"
"Here's a knife and fork, sir. You'll soon find out."
"What's inside it?"
"P'r'aps it's a spoon you are wantin' as well."
"I don't eat red-currant pudding."
"Sorry, sir. Just keep quiet till the next course, sir.
"Keep quiet!" (Yells.) "What do you mean?"
"The mistress's nerves gets upset with a bit of noise."
"Your mistress seems to get upset with the slightest provocation."
"She does, sir. I saw her cryin' not so long ago over a bunch of honeysuckle. She was took reg'lar bad—red eyes and nose."
"Well, of course she'll miss gathering it this year. The deuce knows why women like picking things full of d—ahem! abominable insects. But they're born that way—born stupid."
I surprised a gentle note almost in the first part of his sentence which filled me with wonder. Was Peter really sorry for me?
And as though he were ashamed of his unwonted softness his next remark made Amelia skip. I could distinctly hear her skip, and it made me laugh. Few people can make her run, let alone skip.
"This pudding makes me sick, girl. It smells of suet, reeks of suet. Remove it at once!" he thundered.
She stood her ground for a moment.
"But the mistress hasn't had any."
"Remove that pudding!"
"But supposin' Mrs. Macintosh wants another helpin'" (waveringly).
"Mrs. Macintosh won't require any more pudding. Mrs. Macintosh is going to take a liver pill. Too much pudding would be bad for her."
"But——"
"Take out this pudding!"
The windows rattled, and Amelia bolted—not into the kitchen but into here, and after planking the pudding down on to Dimbie's arm-chair, said—
"If you please, mum, I must leave."
"Leave?" I echoed in astonishment.
"Yes, mum. I could not stop another minute—not for a thousand pounds down—with that gentle—I mean man in the house. Either he must go or me."
Before I could check myself I had smiled, for had not Amelia called Peter a gentle, the offspring of a meat-fly—the horrible creature with which I had fished as a little girl? And—Amelia took instant offence at my smile. Not being able to follow my train of thought, she imagined I was laughing at her.
"To-night," she said.
"To-night!" I cried, not wishing to echo her words, but surprise bereft me of an original mode of speech.
"I must leave you to-night."
I lay back and looked at Amelia—at her leaning, high-heeled shoes, at her pearl necklace, at her befrilled apron, at her perky cap, at her tightly-curled fringe. Could all these things be leaving me to-night, leaving me forever? I should miss them, I knew, so accustomed does one become to familiar objects. I wondered where they would go, how long it would be before Amelia stitched the right-hand string to her apron instead of pinning it there? My eyes rose slowly from the apron, upon which they had been resting, to her necklace. Whose gaze, instead of mine, would rest upon those pearls? Then I reached Amelia's face—her soap-shone, eager face. This brought me to the girl herself. She, Amelia, who had seemed so devoted, she was going to leave me——
"To-night!" broke in Amelia sternly.
"Yes, yes," I said quickly.
She stood and looked at me defiantly. I don't know why, for I wasn't speaking.
"How soon shall you start?" I asked for want or something to say.
She did not reply.
"Perhaps you wouldn't mind giving me a little pudding before you go," I said. "It's getting cold. You put it over there on the chair." And to my immense surprise she burst into tears.
"Whatever's the matter?" I asked in consternation. "Don't cry, Amelia, don't cry." I patted the tortoise as Amelia wasn't near enough to pat.
"I—I don't want to go," she sobbed.
"No? Well, don't go," I said soothingly.
"But you want me to."
"I want you to go?"
"Yes."
"Whatever makes you think that?"
"You didn't say as I wasn't to go when I said I was, and I would too."
This was a little involved, but I disentangled it.
"I never thought of saying you were not to go. You seemed to have so completely made up your mind."
"I wish everybody was all like you," she said, somewhat inconsequently.
"All cripples," I laughed.
She went on sobbing.
"I wonder why you are crying?" I said at length gently.
"Because I don't know where to go at this time of night. It's past eight, and the roads are full of tramps."
"Well, don't go. Your bedroom is surely comfortable. You've always said how much you like the pink roses on the wall-paper."
"I couldn't sleep in the same house as that man who calls himself a gentleman, beggin' your pardon, mum. The same roof shall never cover us again. And to think he's your father—you're flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone."
For a moment I wondered whether she would consent to sleep in the shed with the canoe and Jumbles if we rigged up a hammock. Or could I persuade Peter to return home if I explained how matters stood? But on reflection I knew neither of these things could be. Amelia was still repeating "bone of his bone" in an automatic fashion, when I broke in, "I can't help that, Amelia. I can't help his being my father." Then perhaps I behaved foolishly, unfilially, for I took her into my confidence. But what else was I to do? I am not a diplomatist. I am not a Talleyrand. Amelia must be kept at any price. The thought of mother and Peter struggling to light the kitchen fire on the morrow made me shudder.
"Amelia"——I began.
She took her apron from her eyes, and I became nervous.
"I—I would like some pudding, please, however cold it may be. And—and what are they doing in the other room?"
"I don't know," she replied, with a gesture indicating, as I took it, that she didn't care if they were descending the bottomless pit.
"Shut the door," I breathed.
She did so.
"Amelia——" I began again.
"Yes, mum."
"I have felt like that."
"Like what?"
"Like—that I couldn't sleep in the same house as Pet—General Macintosh."
Her eyes became round.
"Yes, I have," I repeated.
She nodded her head and came closer.
"You see, he is a little difficult, a little difficult, Amelia. Perhaps his tem—peculiarity has been caused by his gout. He has suffered a great deal. The servants at home and mother—well, they all stay on. They don't leave. Do you understand?"
She nodded with complete comprehension.
I now realised how very clever Amelia was.
"I am not well," I went on plaintively, "and mother isn't very strong and capable, and I don't quite know what I shall do without you. I'm—I'm afraid I shall die if you leave me. In fact, I'm sure I shall die——" and my voice tailed off into a moan as I finished.
Amelia twisted her apron into tight rolls, then untwisted them, and then leaned on her high heels towards the couch.
"Of course, I don't want you to die, mum."
"No?" I said.
"I shouldn't like it to be said as how I finished you off."
"I am sure you wouldn't," I agreed with warmth.
"Well, then, I will stop." There was an uplifted, heroic expression on Amelia's face. "I'll stop. I'll never leave you, mum—not till the breath goes out of my body, not till I'm a corpse in my coffin, not even for the butcher's young man, who was only a-sayin' yesterday as how I had the finest figger he'd ever come across. I'll work for you till I drops. I'll just ignore your father, mum. Oh, mum, if everybody was as gentle and perlite and soft spoken as you I'd die for 'em." And flinging herself upon her knees, she wept against the Liberty sofa blanket, while I surreptitiously stroked her cap, there being no hair visible to stroke.