They had it packed up and stowed in the dogcart. She carried the china gingerly on her knee for fear of breakage. Her eyes danced. After years of poverty, this careless throwing away of money was delightful.
When they reached home she made Daborn take everything out and carry it into the dining-room—the dining-parlor, as Gainah persisted in calling it. There was a strong smell of raw onion from the kitchen; it was being packed away in wide-mouthed bottles, with alternate slices of beet and a savory bath of spiced vinegar. Gainah came in, her hands dyed with onion juice.
Pamela was excitedly unswathing her treasures from yards of tissue paper.
“We’ve bought a few things,” she said pleasantly. “Sit down and look at them. That is an Indian god.” She held out an abominable brown figure. “Jethro was saying that the place wanted improving—bringing up to date. Of course, you never hear of the newest things down here. How should you? I got these cushions for the settle, and this—isn’t the embroidery lovely?—for the piano. A piano should never have its back against the wall. It is an ugly piece of furniture; its form is all against it. I told Jethro that there should have been a grand in that big room. That is the only endurable form of piano.”
She was chattering the artistic jargon of a belated æsthete who had boarded at the house in Bloomsbury. Gainah hardly seemed to hear her. She had toppled down into one of the high-backed, rush-seated chairs, and was nervously moving her stained hands on her lap.
“Don’t you like these rugs?” Pamela cut the string with one of the heavy buck-handled knives which was on the dinner-table. “They are to be thrown down in odd corners—anywhere. You can’t have too much color in a room. I must go and take my hat off.” She glanced at the waiting dinner-table and stacked her purchases carefully on the horsehair sofa. “I’ll arrange everything this afternoon. By tea-time you will hardly recognize the place. Cousin Jethro is so kind; he says that if I haven’t thought of everything he will drive me into Liddleshorn again to-morrow. These green glasses are for flowers. I must arrange them every day for dinner in schemes of color. There! That is one thing I forgot—an embroidered centerpiece. And we might have candle-shades, too. Those candlesticks,” she glanced at some heavy ones of Sheffield plate on the oak sideboard, “are the rage in London just now.”
She ran out of the room. Gainah did not stir from her chair by the yawning hearth on which the first fire of the season smoldered. She gazed fixedly in her vacant way at the trash on the sofa. Only one thing that Pamela had said worked in her slow brain: “Jethro was saying that the place wanted improving.”
She looked at the gaudy plates and jars; then thought of the delicate family china which was locked away in the little closet leading out of the keeping-room. She looked at the red and yellow brackets, the ornaments, and then looked round at the distempered walls, against which stood the beautiful golden oak, every piece of which she had tended as if it were a child. Every week she had rubbed that oak with beeswax and turpentine. Every week she had washed the china bowls and figures on the shelf. Every week for more than thirty years! She knew now that the landmarks of those years were going to be swept away. Her face grew harsh and vindictive—the face of a worn old panther—worn, old, feeble, but still with claws. Pamela, who meant everything in the kindest spirit possible, and who never doubted that her efforts would be received with gratitude, was breeding tragedy. Gainah, in the upright chair, her mournful eyes roving sluggishly round the ancestral furniture that she loved, was working up to a climax.
Why should this girl—this pert jade, this strange cousin on the mother’s side—ruin the lives of her elders? Why should she sneer at rustic customs which were old enough to be as sacred as the Bible?
Gainah’s mental attitude changed from injury to rebellion. She began to ask herself stupidly, with an agonized questioning of her slow brain, if Pamela could not be got rid of, banished from Folly Corner. How should she lift from the farm the shadow thrown across it? She only wanted to serve her master in her old faithful way, according to her own lights. She had brought him up from his birth. She almost believed that she was his mother. She had even chosen his wife for him. Nancy Turle wouldn’t have taken the housekeeping keys. She clutched at them as they weighed down her apron pocket. Pamela should never take them either. Nancy Turle would never have spent money like water at Liddleshorn. She glowered at the brightly colored stuffs and crockery.