Penny Plain. O. Douglas
never know why people talk so much about youth. What does being young matter if you're awkward and dull and shy as well? I'd far rather be middle-aged and interesting."
"That," said Pamela, as she laid her treasures back in the box, "is one of the minor tragedies of life. One begins by being bored with being young, and as we begin to realise what an asset youth is, it flies. Rejoice in your youth, little Jean-girl, for it's a stuff will not endure. … Now we'll go downstairs. It's too bad of me keeping you up here."
"How you have changed this room," said Jean. "It smells so nice."
"It is slightly less forbidding. I am quite attached to both my rooms, though when Mawson and I are both here together I sometimes feel I must poke my arms out of the window or thrust my head up the chimney like Bill the Lizard, in order to get room. It is a great disadvantage to be too large for one's surroundings."
The parlour was as much changed as the bedroom.
The round table with the red-and-green cover that filled up the middle of the room had been banished and a small card-table stood against the wall ready to be brought out for meals. A Persian carpet covered the linoleum and two comfortable wicker-chairs filled with cushions stood by the fireside. The sideboard had been converted into a stand for books and flowers. The blue vases had gone from the mantelshelf and two tall candlesticks and a strip of embroidery took their place. A writing-table stood in the window, from which the hard muslin curtains had been removed; there were flowers wherever a place could be found for them, and new books and papers lay about.
Jean sank into a chair with a book, but Pamela produced some visiting-cards and read aloud:
"MRS. DUFF-WHALLEY. MISS DUFF-WHALLEY.
THE TOWERS, PRIORSFORD.
"Who are they, please? and why do they come to see me?"
Jean shut her book, but kept her finger in as if hoping to get back to it soon, and smiled broadly.
"Mrs. Duff-Whalley is a wonderful woman," she said. "She knows everything about everybody and simply scents out social opportunities. Your name would draw her like a magnet."
"Why is she called Duff-Whalley? and where does she live? I'm frightfully intrigued."
"As to the first," said Jean, "there was no thought of pleasing either you or me when she was christened—or rather when the late Mr. Duff-Whalley was christened. And I pointed out the house to you the other day. You asked what the monstrosity was, and I told you it was called The Towers."
"I remember. A staring red-and-white house with about thirty bow-windows and twenty turrets. It denies the landscape."
"Wait," said Jean, "till you see it close at hand. It's the most naked, newest thing you ever saw. Not a creeper, not an ivy leaf is allowed to crawl on it; weather seems to have no effect on it: it never gets to look any less new. And in summer it is worse, for then round about it blaze the reddest geraniums and the yellowest calceolarias and the bluest lobelias that it's possible to imagine."
"Ghastly! What is the owner like?"
"Small, with yellowish hair turning grey. She has a sharp nose, and her eyes seem to dart out at you, take you all in, and then look away. She is rather like a ferret, and she has small, sharp teeth like a ferret. I'm never a bit sure she won't bite. She really is rather a wonderful woman. She hasn't been here very many years, but she dominates everyone. At whatever house you meet her she has the air of being hostess. She welcomes you and advises you where to sit, makes suitable conversation and finally bids you good-bye, and you feel yourself murmuring to her the grateful 'Such a pleasant afternoon,' that was due to the real hostess. She is in constant conflict with the other prominent matrons in Priorsford, but she always gets her own way. At a meeting she is quite insupportable. She just calmly tells us what we are to do. It's no good saying we are busy; it's no good saying anything. We walk away with a great district to collect and a pile of pamphlets under one arm. … Her nose is a little on one side, and when I sit and look at her presiding at a meeting I toy with the thought that someone goaded to madness by her calm persistence had once heaved something at her, and wish I had been there to see. Really, though, she is rather a blessing in the place; she keeps us from stagnation. I read somewhere that when they bring tanks of cod to this country from wherever cod abound, they put a cat-fish in beside them, and it chases the cod round all the time, so that they arrive in good condition. Mrs. Duff-Whalley is our cat-fish."
"I see. Has she children?"
"Three. A daughter, married in London—Mrs. Egerton-Thomson—a son at Cambridge, and a daughter, Muriel, at home. I think it must be very bad for the Duff-Whalleys living in such a vulgar, restless-looking house."
Pamela laughed. "Do you think all the little pepper-pot towers must have an effect on the soul? I doubt it, my dear."
"Still," said Jean, "I think more will be expected at the end from the people who have all their lives lived in and looked at lovely places. It always worries me, the thought of people who live in the dark places of big cities—children especially, growing up like 'plants in mines that never saw the sun.' It is so dreadful that sometimes I feel I must go and help."
"What could you do?"
"That's what common sense always asks. I could do nothing alone, but if all the decent people tried their hardest it would make a difference. … It's the thought of the cruelty in the world that makes me sick. It's the hardest thing for me to keep from being happy. Great-aunt Alison said I had a light nature. Even when I ought to be sad my heart jumps up in the most unreasonable way, and I am happy. But sometimes it feels as if we comfortable people are walking on a flowery meadow that is really a great quaking morass, and underneath there is black slime full of unimagined horrors. A paragraph in the newspaper makes a crack and you see down: women who take money for keeping little babies and allow them to die, men who torture: tales of horror and terror. The War made a tremendous crack. It seemed then as if we were all to be drawn into the slime, as if cruelty had got its fangs into the heart of the world. When you knelt to pray at nights you could only cry and cry. The courage of the men who grappled in the slime with the horrors was the one thing that kept one from despair. And the fact that they could laugh. You know about the dying man who told his nurse some joke and finished, 'This is the War for laughs.'"
Pamela nodded. "It hardly bears thinking of yet—the War and the fighters. Later on it will become the greatest of all sagas. But I want to hear about Priorsford people. That's a clean, cheerful subject. Who lives in the pretty house with the long ivy-covered front?"
"The Knowe it is called. The Jowetts live there—retired Anglo-Indians. Mr. Jowett is a funny, kind little man with a red face and rather a nautical air. He is so busy that often it is afternoon before he reads his morning's letters."
"What does he do?"
"I don't think he does anything much: taps the barometer, advises the gardener, fusses with fowls, potters in the garden, teaches the dog tricks. It makes him happy to feel himself rushed, and to go carrying unopened letters at tea-time. They have no children. Mrs. Jowett is a dear. She collects servants as other people collect prints or old china or Sheffield plate. They are her hobby, and she has the most wonderful knack of managing them. Even now, when good servants seem to have become extinct, and people who need five or six are grubbing away miserably with one and a charwoman, she has four pearls with soft voices and gentle ways, experts at their job. She thinks about them all the time, and considers their comfort, and dresses them in pale grey with the daintiest spotted muslin aprons and mob caps. It is a pleasure to go to the Jowetts for a meal, everything is so perfect. The only drawback is if anyone makes the slightest mark on the cloth one of the silver-grey maids brings a saucer of water and wipes it off, and it is apt to make one nervous. I shall never forget going there to a children's party with David and Jock. Great-aunt Alison warned us most solemnly before we left home about marking the cloth, so we went rather tremblingly. There was a splendid tea in the dining-room with silver candlesticks and pink shades, and lovely china, and a glittering cloth, and heaps of good things to eat—grown-up things like sandwiches and rich cakes, such