Storm in a Teacup

by Eden Phillpotts

From Dene a mighty hill climbs southward to Cornworthy village. “The Corkscrew” it is called, and men merciful to their beasts choose a longer and more gradual ascent. But not a few of the workers engaged at the paper mill tramped this zig-zag steep six days out of every seven, and among these Lydia Trivett, the mother of Medora, could boast twenty years of regular perambulation. Only on rare occasions, when “Corkscrew” was coated with ice, did she take the long detour by the little lake above the works.

She had lived at Ashprington until her husband died; then she and her daughter came to live with her brother, Thomas Dolbear, of Priory Farm. He was a bachelor then; but at forty he wedded; and now Medora had her own home, while her mother still dwelt with Mr. Dolbear, his wife, Mary, and their increasing family.

Lydia was a little brisk woman of fifty—the mistress of the rag house at the mills. She was still comely and trim, for hard work agreed with her. A very feminine air marked her, and Medora had won her good looks from her mother, though not her affectation, for Mrs. Trivett was a straightforward and unassuming soul. She had much to pride herself upon, but never claimed credit in any direction.

Priory Farm stood under a great slope of orchard and meadow, upon the crown of which the priory ruins ascended. The farm was at the bottom of a hill, and immediately opposite climbed the solitary street of Cornworthy village capped by the church. The church and the old Cistercean ruin looked across the dip in the land at each other.

Now, on Sunday afternoon, Lydia, at the garden gate of her brother’s house, started off six children to Sunday school. Five were girls and one was a boy. They ranged from twelve years old to three; while at home a two year old baby—another girl—remained with her mother. Mary Dolbear expected her tenth child during the coming spring. Two had died in infancy. She was an inert, genial mass of a woman, who lived only for her children and the business of maternity. Her husband worshipped her and they increased and multiplied proudly. Their house, but for Lydia’s sleepless ministrations, would have been a pigstye. They were indifferent to dirt and chose to make all things subservient to the demands of their children.

“The cradle rules the world, so enough said,” was Tom Dolbear’s argument when people protested at the chaos in which he lived. He was a stout man with a fat, boyish face, scanty, sandy hair and a narrow forehead, always wrinkled by reason of the weakness of his eyes. He had a smile like a baby and was indeed a very childish man; but he knew his business and made his farm suffice for his family needs.

In this house Lydia’s own room was an oasis in a wilderness. There one found calm, order, cleanliness, distinction. She trusted nobody in it but herself and always locked the door when she left for work.

It was regarded as a sacred room, for both Mary and her husband reverenced Lydia and blessed the Providence that had sent her to them. They treated her with the greatest respect, always gave way to her and recognised very acutely the vital force she represented in the inert and sprawling domesticity of their establishment. Once, when an idea was whispered that Tom’s sister might leave him, Mary fell absolutely ill and refused to eat and drink until she changed her mind and promised to stay.

To do them justice they never took Lydia for granted. Their gratitude flowed in a steady stream. They gave her all credit and all admiration, and went their philoprogenitive way with light hearts.

Now Mrs. Trivett watched her nieces and nephew march together in their Sunday best along the way to Sunday school. Then she was about to shut the wicket and return up the garden path, when a man appeared on the high road and a fellow worker at the Mill accosted her.