In a Quiet Village

by S. Baring-Gould

My dear father, who was an enthusiast for novelties, bought every possible invention that conduced to the saving of time by cooks—patent egg-boilers, lemon-squeezers, apple-parers, digesting pots, &c. These the cooks “chucked” up into the lumber place with mighty disdain, and went on in their old ways. Moreover, into it went all the pans that they had left unscoured till rust had eaten through them, all the kettles that began to leak, by letting them fall on the stone floor; a coffee roaster that the then reigning cook refused to use, because it was less trouble to employ ready-roasted coffee; a mortar, the bottom of which had been knocked out, because she would pound almonds in it on her lap instead of on the table; a tobacco canister in which bird’s-eye was kept for a lover when he came on a visit. In fact, this garret was an emporium of objects illustrative of kitchen wastefulness, and indicative of my father’s good-nature.

No one ever visited this garret except the cook when “chucking away” some of “master’s newfangled nonsense,” or when putting away some damaged article out of reach of her mistress’s eye, consequently it was wholly given over to rats, that raced about in it with a boldness only equalled by that of cook when she looked straight into my mother’s eyes and said there never had been, so long as she had been in the house, one of these articles my mother missed, as the coffee-roaster, or the china mortar, or the stewing pan, or the bronchitis kettle; or when my father sent inquiries about such articles as the lemon-squeezer, or the apple-parer, or the cream-whipper.

The rats got their pickings in this garret: they licked out the dirty frying-pans in which was grease, they consumed the contents of the pie-dishes that had been burnt in the oven with crust adhering to them, and nibbled at the rabbit-skins that had been put away there to be sold to the rag-and-bone man when he came round.

I knew of this garret, and loved it, loved it almost as dearly as did the rats. My mother and father did not like my visiting it, as I came away from it very dirty in hands and face, and with clothing often torn by nails; and cook never would endure that I should visit it for reasons of her own. Consequently, visits to it were surreptitious, and made at rare intervals.

We had, when I was about thirteen, a maid of the name of Cicely Crowe; she was an excellent servant, with a passionate love of neatness, did her work well and conscientiously, but had not the most amiable disposition or the most gracious manner. She was not a bad-tempered woman, never violent, but, just as a diamond is said to be off colour if the least lacking in absolute clearness, so may she be said to have been off temper. She was very kind-hearted, but it seemed to go against her pride to do a kind thing in a kind way. She never saw the good in anything, only the faults. We all liked Cicely, but we all wished she would try to be more pleasing. However, we have each our blurs in this world, one in one way, one in another, and had Cicely’s mood been sunny, and her manner sparkling, why she would have been snapped up at once, and half the young men in the village would have been quarrelling as to who should have her. It was just this uncertainty in her temper which deterred them, and kept her in our service so many years.

She was a very pretty girl, was Cicely, with brown hair, so neat that never was a hair out of place, and with large hazel eyes, and such a complexion!—cream and strawberry were nothing to it, and the colour palpitated under her transparent skin like the flush of the evening sun on far-off delicate clouds.

The lads of the village said to each other, “What a lass that Cicely is, but—” And our friends said to my mother, “What a very nice, respectable servant girl you have in Cicely.” “Oh dear, yes,” answered my mother, “she is everything that could be desired, but—” And her fellow-servants all said, “We have nothing to say against Cicely, but—” And we children remarked to each other, “Cicely is tremendously nice, but—” No one ever got any further than “but—,” for no one could bring it over the lips to say a word in depreciation of Cicely.

Now it fell out all on a summer’s day that cook had gone off for a holiday, and the kitchen-maid had sickened with measles and been sent home, and with great trepidation, and with a tremulous voice, and an appeal in her eyes, my mother had asked Cicely if she would, under the circumstances, boil the potatoes and the greens for the early dinner on that Sunday. There was nothing to roast, nothing to stew; cook had made cold pies and shapes, and so on, to last till her return.

Cicely replied ungraciously that everything was put on her, but she supposed she must do it, and then turned her back on my mother and went off to change her gown. As I have said, it was Sunday. I had a sore throat, and so was not allowed to go to church, and was bidden remain at home, not go outside the doors, and keep myself warm.

Now I had calculated on this, and had borrowed a rat-trap from the gardener, and when Cicely was upstairs putting on such garments as she deemed suitable for peeling potatoes and shelling peas, and cooking them, I slipped up the stairs into the garret, hugging the trap, and holding a piece of cheese-rind I had surreptitiously seized on and had roasted over my candle. I was resolved on spending the time whilst my parents were at church in catching a rat. There was a loose slate in the roof and I tilted this up, peeped out, and watched my father and mother, brothers and sisters, and the governess stalk away from the front door in their Sunday suits, with prayer-books under their arms, and I saw my dear mother pick off sundry bits of “fluff,” ends of thread, &c., which her eye detected on the children’s clothes.