The Red House. Эдит Несбит
I remember that I had to move half a ton of mixed valuables to find the tea-kettle, when, after two hours of breathless energy, we heard the van's retreating wheels, and were moved towards the kitchen by one common longing—for tea.
Chloe got the tea, and I cleared it away. Harriet reluctantly consented to wash up the tea-things.
“But,” she added, and it really was like a blow in the wind, “I must get away before dark. No, it ain't no manner of use talking. There's ghosts in this 'ouse, and I wouldn't sleep under this 'ere roof, not for any wages you could offer.”
In vain we besought her to reconsider this decision.
“Mother always said to me, ‘Don't you never lay your 'ead on your pillow in a 'ouse where there's ghosts, or you'll see 'em walk—safe as eggs. It runs in our family,’ says she; ‘my mother's second cousin see a calf without a 'ead walkin' on the church-yard wall, as plain as the nose on your face,’ says she. And I can't go agin my own mother, so if it's convenient to you, sir, I'll leave as soon as I've dried the tea-things.”
“If it's convenient!” said Chloe. And then we both began to laugh. That saved the situation, besides making Harriet uncomfortable. We let her go, because we could not help it, and we set out our supper—it was tinned salmon and bread—on a sheet of newspaper, because we couldn't find any table-cloths.
And we washed our hands with mottled soap, because the brown Windsor soap had hidden itself away somewhere. And we dried them on Chloe's apron, because the towels were mislaid. And we made some cocoa, because the ginger-ale could not, at the moment, be found. It never was found, by-the-way. The search for lamps being fruitless, we walked together to the village in the cool, pale evening, and, returning with a pound of candles in a blue paper, it seemed natural to wander round the shadowy gardens, slowly wrapping themselves in the blue veil of the summer night. The stars came out, one by one, and a little moon that had been like a cloudy ghost through the gold of the afternoon seemed to wash her face with liquid light, and set to work shining in bright earnest. The house seemed very chill, very dark, very silent, as we let ourselves in. The most energetic search and half a box of wax vestas failed to find us a single candlestick. How we regretted, then, the empty bottles left behind at the Bandbox!
At last we set up our candles by melting the ends and sticking them in tea-saucers. Then I broke up a packing-case and made a fire in our room. By a fortunate accident, Chloe, looking for her brush and comb, found the blankets. We went round the house and closed all the shutters.
“Now,” said Chloe, cheerfully, “we really are at home.”
I looked round on the unspeakable confusion—the whole Bandboxful of our effects emptied out, as it were, “tumbled out of a sack” upon the floor, and I said,
“Yes.”
The birds woke us in the morning; such an orchestra as I had never even imagined. Sleep seemed fled forever. It was I who went down to light the fire for breakfast. It was good to fling back the shutters and window-sashes, and to lean out through the drifted net of green jasmine leaves and taste the fresh sweets of the morning.
Presently Chloe came and leaned beside me. The whole world seemed blue and green and gold; the trees and the grass sparkling in the dewy sunshine, and on the bright turf the long, black, tree shadows.
“I never saw shadows like these,” Chloe breathed; “they're quite different to the evening ones. And there's no one next door! Oh, it is very good!” The birds sang, the sun shone softly, the swan in the moat spread wide wings, preening his white feathers. A purple haze covered the hills. It was indeed “very good.” The wood began to crackle. I looked at my watch. Five o'clock.
“We must always get up at half-past four,” Chloe said. “I had no idea anything could be so beautiful. Think of the poor silly people who only get up at eight.”
I thought of them, and I knew that very soon we should once more be numbered among that pitiable band.
But I said nothing. We cleared away the breakfast and made our room tidy, and every now and then she would stop to clap her hands—once there were two flat-irons and a duster in them—and to say:
“Oh, isn't it perfect? Isn't it amusing and interesting and thrilling, and everything anything can possibly be?”
We arranged a scheme of disentanglement, and applied it to our goods. Chloe dived into the mass and came up with treasures, which under her directions I bore to the situations she indicated. But many things seemed homeless, and the command, “Oh, I don't know—anywhere—on the kitchen-table,” grew so frequent that the kitchen-table groaned beneath its load, and even the tall dressers showed signs of repletion.
But we got one room clear—the white parlor, Chloe called it. It was really half panelled in oak—painted, of course, by some vandal middle-Victorian hand—but still charming, with its carved garlands and flourishes, its high mantelpiece and odd corners. We swept it; we put down our best carpet and hearth-rug; we brought in our oak gate-table and our polished beechwood chairs with the rush seats, and the corner cupboard, and the little bow-legged oak sideboard; we put some green Flemish pots on the mantel-piece. Chloe ran out and came back with half a dozen late tulips, and when she had set them on the table in a jar of Chinese willow-pattern (hand-work, none of your transfers), why, then we had a “room ready,” a refuge, as Chloe said.
We also carted the remaining chaos into the kitchen.
“Because I give that up,” she said; “we can't get that clear for ages.” So pictures and curtains, and all the things that take time to their fixing, were carried away. And the swept hall looked large and beautiful, especially when we had cleaned the red and white of the marble inlaid floor with a wet broom and a pail of water.
As I rubbed the broom vigorously over a discolored square of the marble, I was suddenly conscious of a guilty feeling. Analyzed, the sensation frightened me. I was becoming interested in these details. And I had not once thought about my work, though to-morrow was the day for my article in the Weekly Wilderness. It had never even entered my head to dream that I could ever be interested in cleaning a floor. Yet here I was calling joyously to Chloe, deep in a packing-case in the kitchen:
“It's coming the same color as the other.”
“It won't be when it's dry,” she said, “but I've found the corkscrew and the lamps. One of them is wrong way up and full of paraffine. At least it was. It's anywhere you like now.”
I carried my pail and broom into the kitchen.
“My dear,” I said, “have you found my shaving-brush?”
“Why?” she asked. “Do you want to put it down on the parlor mantel-piece?”
The very thought appalled me, and the fact that it did so appalled me still more deeply.
I pointed out that a shaving-brush is useful for other purposes than for putting down on things, and presently we found it involved in a pair of lace curtains.
We had lunch in the garden.
And then Yolande's furniture suddenly loomed at our gates. We had wholly forgotten it. The white parlor had to be reorganized to accommodate her oak settle. The piano we boldly ordered into the drawing-room, where it lived out long days of lonely grandeur. Her furniture was really charming—Chippendale chairs and a Sheraton bureau, pictures by the dozen and lovely crocks by the score. The men who moved her things had linen jackets, and they were not scented like Charley. They actually put things where we wanted them. We stood by in humble amazement. But when they asked where they should hang the pictures, we looked at each other, almost speechless with wonder and gratitude. They hung the pictures, they asked for a broom, and, if ours had not been wet, they would have swept up the dust their careful feet had not been able to help bringing in. They dusted the furniture, and asked if there was anything else they could do. I said there was not, and felt in my pocket for silver, far more than I could afford. But Chloe said:
“Oh yes! How kind of you! Do please ask every one you know if they know of a servant. We haven't one, and you see—”