Chapter Two.
A Happy Thought.
Thurston House, the abode of the Rendell family, was one of those curiously-constructed houses which are only to be met with in old-fashioned neighbourhoods. It stood directly on the high road, a big grey building which could boast of no architectural beauty, and which indeed presented a somewhat cheerless aspect, with its wire blinds and tall, straight windows. A gaunt, town-like house—such was the impression made upon the casual passer—by; but appearances are apt to be deceptive, and that same stranger would have speedily altered his impression, if he had been taken round the garden to view the other side of the house. It was almost impossible to believe in such a different aspect! From one side a busy high road, strings of cyclists, char à bancs driving past, bearing parties of brawling trippers, clouds of dust, the echo of the drivers’ horns, and the continued whirl of wheels; and on the other—deep bay windows looking on to a lawn of softest green, winding paths shaded with grand old trees, and, beyond all, a meadow stretching down to the riverside, where punt and canoe stood waiting in happy proximity, and clumps of bamboos flourished in eastern luxuriance.
“Our country house,” the girls called the rooms facing south, “Our town house,” those at the front; but though they adored the garden, and spent every available moment out of doors, the busy high road still held an attraction of its own. Mrs Rendell had her own entertaining rooms at the back of the house, but the girls were faithful to the little porch chamber which had been their property since childhood—a quaint little den built over the doorway, with a window at each of the three sides, through which an extended view was afforded of the comings and goings of the neighbourhood.
“I love this dear little bower,” sighed Lilias sentimentally. “There’s something so quaint and old-world about it. I feel like Elaine in her turret-chamber, looking out upon the great wide world.”
“And it’s such sport watching the people pass, especially on rainy days when the wind is high, and they are trying to hold up their dresses, and carry an umbrella and half a dozen parcels at the same time!” cried Nan with a relish. “Last Saturday was the very worst day of the year, and all the good housewives went past to shop. Chrissie and Agatha and I offered a prize to go to the one who guessed rightly who would have the muddiest boots. It was lovely watching them! Old Mrs Rowe, clutching her dress in front, and showing all her ankles, while at the back it was trailing on the ground; Mrs Smith, stalking like a grenadier, with a skimpy skirt and snow-shoes a yard long; dear, sweet little Mrs Bruce, as neat as ever, with not a single splash; and Mrs Booth, splattered right up to her waist, with boots as white as that rag. I had her name on my paper, so I got the prize, and spent it in caramels. I’m getting rather tired of caramels—I’ve had such a run on them lately. I must turn to something else for a change.”
“You are getting too old to eat sweets, Nan,” said Lilias severely. “You ought to set the children a better example. If all the money you spend at the confectioner’s was put together, you would be surprised to find how much it was. And it’s bad for your teeth to eat so much sugar. Why don’t you save up, and put it to some really good use?”
“Such as frilling, and ribbons, and combs for the hair!” suggested Nan slily, rolling her eyes at the younger girls, who chuckled in the consciousness that Lilias had got her answer this time at least, since every one knew well how her pocket-money went! “What is your idea of something useful, my dear? We’d be pleased to take into consideration any scheme which you may have to propose, but in its present form the suggestion is somewhat vague.”
“My dear child, you know as well as I do that there are a hundred different ways. The only difficulty is to choose.” Lilias stared out of the window, trying hard to cudgel up one idea out of the specified hundred, in case she should be pressed still further. That was the worst of Nan, she always persisted on pushing a subject to the end. “You—er—you might help the poor of the parish!”
“Just what we do! I heard the vicar say myself that Mrs Evans was a striving little woman who ought to be supported. If we took away our custom—”
“I mean the really poor. Mrs Evans would not shut up shop for the want of your threepenny-pieces, but the Mission at Sale is always short of funds. If you had a collecting-box, you could send in a subscription at Christmas.”
“‘The Misses Margaret, Elsa, Agatha, and Christabel Rendell—four and sixpence halfpenny,’” quoted Chrissie derisively. She marched across the room and stationed herself with her back to the fire, her thin face looking forth from a cloud of hair, an expression of dignified disdain curling her lips. “How important it sounds, to be sure! It’s all very well talking about saving up, Lilias, but it’s not so easy to do with sixpence a week, and birthdays every month, and Christmas presents, and pencils and indiarubbers, and always seeing fresh things in the shop-windows that you want to buy. It’s not that I wouldn’t like to help: if I had a sovereign, I’d give it at once, but I won’t be put down in the list for eighteenpence, and that’s all I could save, if I tried, from now to Christmas. I gave a threepenny-bit to old ‘Chairs to mend’ only last Saturday, and one the week before to a woman who was begging. I am most charitably disposed!”
“So am I,” agreed Agatha—“especially when it’s cold. Rags wouldn’t be so bad in summer, but they must be awfully draughty in winter. And I spend less in sweets than any of the others, because my teeth ache. I’ve often wished we could do something for the Mission; but I’m so poor, and I sha’n’t get any goose-money till autumn. I wish we could think of some plan by which we could make some more. Chrissie and I are always talking about it. There seems so few ways in which girls of fourteen can make money. We thought of writing and asking the editor of the employment column; but mother laughed at us, and said it was nonsense. It’s not nonsense to us!”
“If we could only have a sale of work,” said Lilias slowly. She was still staring dreamily out of the window, and hardly realised what she was saying, but the other four girls turned sharply towards each other, and a flash of delight passed from one pair of eyes to the other.
“Ah-ah!” sighed Elsie.
“Splendiferous!” cried Nan.
“How simp-lay love-lay!” drawled Christabel, with the languid elegance of manner for which she was distinguished; and Agatha beamed broadly all over her good-humoured face, oblivious of the sufferings of the poor in the prospect of her own amusement.
“What fun we should have! I’d bake the cakes and manage the refreshment stall! Tea and coffee, threepence a cup; lemonade, fourpence; fruit salad, sixpence a plate!”
“I’d sell toffee in tins, and have a pin-cushion table, and make every single soul I know give me a contribution.”
“I’d give my new oak bracket. No, it’s too big. I couldn’t spare that; but I’d carve something else; and make little brass trays and panels. ‘High art stall: Miss Margaret Rendell. Objects of bigotry and virtue to be handed over to her,’ and don’t you forget it!”
“I’ll take visitors out in the punt at threepence a head. I’m so stupid that I can’t do any work, but the idea is mine, and that ought to count for something,” said Lilias; and a vision rose before her eyes of a slim white figure gracefully handling the pole as the punt glided down the stream. Punting was a most becoming occupation; on the whole she could not have hit on a pleasanter manner of helping the cause. “I daresay I shall make quite a lot of money!” she added cheerfully; and her sisters laughed with the half-indulgent, half-derisive laughter with which they were accustomed to greet Lilias’s sayings. She was so sweetly unconscious of her own selfishness, and looked so pretty as she turned her big bewildered eyes from one to the other, that they had not the heart to disturb her equanimity.
“The punt is a good idea,” admitted Nan, “for people are always pleased to go on the river, and we must turn our advantages to account. A garden sale, that’s what we must have! Little tables dotted about the lawn beneath Japanese umbrellas; tea in a tent, and seats under the trees. We can use all the properties that mother keeps for her garden parties, and make it just as pretty and attractive as can be. I shouldn’t wonder if we made a lot of money, for we shall be so original and ingenious. People are so stupid in this world. I always feel I could do things so much better myself. Who wants to go to a stuffy old bazaar in the Mission Room? No one does! They go from a sense of duty. Mother groans and says, ‘Oh dear, if I could only give a subscription and be done with it! More cosies and chairbacks! I’ve a drawerful already!’ And bazaar things are hideous! Father gave me ten shillings to spend at the Christmas sale, and I wandered round and round like a lost sheep, and couldn’t see a single thing that I wanted. In the end I bought a cover for Bradshaw. It wasn’t a bit useful, for I never have a Bradshaw; but it was the nicest thing I saw. Now, let us solemnly resolve not to have anything on our stalls that will not reflect credit on our judgment. Nothing ugly, nothing useless, nothing vulgar—”
“Impossible, my dear! Can’t be managed. It’s the law of Nature that the kindest-hearted people have the least taste. I don’t know why it should be so, but it is, and I’ll prove it to you. If we announced that we were going to have a sale of work and asked for contributions, who would be the first people to respond?” Christabel thrust out her left hand and began checking off the fingers with dramatic emphasis. “Miss Ross,—Mrs Hudson,—Mary Field,—old Jane Evans. ‘So pleased to hear that the dear children are interesting themselves in the welfare of their poor brothers and sisters, and I’ve brought round a few wool mats as a little expression of sympathy!’—that’s Mrs Ross! Then Mary Ann would hobble up with a parcel wrapped up in a handkerchief, and kiss us all twice over, and say, ‘I’ve brought round a piece of my own fancy work, lovies, as a contribution for your sale. My sight is not what it used to be, and it’s difficult to get the material one would like in this little place; but shaded silks always look well, and I made the fringe myself out of odd pieces of wool.’ And that’s not the worst! Mrs Hudson would paint bulrushes on cream-pots, and forget-me-nots on tambourines, and come round bristling with importance. ‘I always find fancy work is overdone at sales, so I thought a little of my hand-painting would be acceptable! No one needs more than a dozen cosies, but every one is glad of an extra tambourine!’ ... It’s easy to talk, my dear, but what could you do when it came to the point? There’s nothing for it but to smile, and look pleased.”
“I should say politely, but firmly, that I could not find it in my heart to deprive them of such treasures—that with so many deserving objects craving support, it would be pure selfishness on our part to monopolise all the good things! Such munificence was far, far more than we deserved, and would they kindly send a little cake instead? They would be delighted, for they are everlastingly giving to some mission or other, and are always in a rush to get work finished. But I don’t propose to let things reach such a climax. I wouldn’t hurt their dear old feelings for the world. So we will say at once that we want cake and fruit, and we shall get the very best of its kind. We must fix our date for the strawberry season; for the human heart is desperately wicked, and people will gladly pay sixpence to sit under trees and eat strawberries and cream, when wild horses wouldn’t drag twopence out of them for a pen-wiper. I expect we shall succeed best with punting and refreshments.”
“If it’s fine! But it won’t be fine—it will pour!” said Elsie gloomily, and wagged her head in the hopeless manner of one who has tasted deeply of the world, and knew its hollowness by heart. If there was by chance a cheerful and a melancholy view to be taken on any subject, Elsie invariably chose the melancholy one, and gloated over it with ghoulish enjoyment. She was never so happy as when she was miserable,—as an Irishman would have had it,—and hugged the conviction that she was “unappreciated” by her family, and a victim of fate. She shed tears over Misunderstood in the solitude of her chamber, and cultivated an expression of patient martyrdom, as most fitted for her condition. Occasionally she forgot herself so far as to be cheery and playful; but her feelings were so ultrasensitive that they were bound to be wounded by some thoughtlessness on the part of her sisters before many hours were over, when she would remember her own unhappiness, and roam away by herself to the other end of the garden to apostrophise the heavens and pity her hard lot. “It will be sure to pour! It always does pour when we want to do anything!” she declared; upon which Nan threw her book into the air and caught it again with a dexterous movement.
“Fiddle-de-dee! It’s going to be a bright, glorious summer day, with just enough sun to be warm and not enough to be hot, and just enough wind to be cool and not enough to be cold. And the grass is going to be dry and the strawberries ripe; and all the pretty ladies and gentlemen are going to drive over from miles and miles around, and spend so much money that they will have none left to take them home. What is the use of croaking? If things go wrong, it’s bad enough to have to bear them at the time; but until then imagination is our own, and we will make the most of it. It will not pour, my dear Raven; so don’t let me hear you say so again! Make up your mind that this sale is going to be a success, and try to bear it as well as you can.”
Elsie looked up at the corner of the ceiling, and arched her eyebrows in resigned and submissive fashion. When the rain did come,—as of course it would,—when all the fancy work was drenched and the pretty dresses spoiled, the girls would remember her prophecy, and be compelled to acknowledge its correctness; but till then she would suffer in silence, and refuse to be drawn into vulgar argument. So she determined, at least; but a fiery temptation assailed her in the form of another objection, so unanswerable that it was not in human nature to resist hurling it at the heads of her companions.
“I hope you are right, I am sure; but, all the same, it is rather early in the day to make arrangements. You are counting without your host. How can you tell that mother will consent to let you have the sale at all?”
And at that the listeners hung their heads and were silent, for it was indeed useless to build castles unless they were first assured of this foundation.