The Red House. Эдит Несбит

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СКАЧАТЬ on “chesties of drawerses,” and Chloe would have followed them, but Harriet came forward with, “Please, 'm, could I speak to you for a moment?”

      “Well?”

      “Please, I should wish to leave at the end of my month. Mother says the place ain't fit for me. The 'ouse is too large and the work is too 'eavy.”

      “But we're going into another house,” said Chloe, cheerfully.

      “Mother don't 'old with movings,” resumed Harriet, “and she says the 'ouse is too large and the work too 'eavy.”

      “Very well; you can go into the kitchen and wait till we're ready to start,” said Chloe, with dignity.

      But when the fat-faced traitress had stumped away down the little passage, Chloe dragged me into the dismantled dining-room and flung her arms round my neck. This was not, I knew, affection. It was merely despair.

      “She's a pig,” said my wife, with tears in her voice. “Her month's up in a week. She might have told us before. And I'm sure we've been kind to her. I gave her that green moreen petticoat, and some stockings and collars and things, only yesterday. And the petticoat was as good as new.”

      “I'll have satisfaction for that outrage, at any rate. A moreen petticoat—and green, too!” I cried. “She must be a stranger to all the higher emotions of our fallen nature. Cheer up, my darling, we'll get another girl right enough—a better one.”

      “We couldn't have a worse,” said she. “Oh, they've broken something. I heard it smash. I do hope it's not the Dresden vases.”

      It was only our best looking-glass, the same in which I had rebelliously dared to shave. “Never mind,” I said. “They'll have to replace it, and Charley will be unlucky for seven years. That's one comfort.”

      It was almost our only one. Reckless as a herd of pigs in mid-flight, yet slow as an army of lame snails, Charley and his confederates packed our Bandboxful of furniture into the dark van that smelled of matting and straw and quarter-day. They broke an “occasional” table, and the door of the corner cupboard, and they smashed on the door-step the great jar of pickled walnuts which my mother-in-law had told me would last us a year. But it was Harriet who, sulkily obeying my order to make herself useful, went to the top of the house to fetch two highly colored texts from the walls of her bed-room, and, returning, fell over the best toilet set, smashing the jug and the soap-dish lid! It was rather a nice set, too, dark green, that Yolande had brought from Italy, and, by us, here, totally irreplaceable. I sent Harriet into the back kitchen then.

      “And don't you come out till we're ready to start,” I said.

      When the last of our “sticks” had been dragged from the house, and the van had been half unpacked to recover my coat and hat, zealously hidden under the dining-room table in the van's centre, and when the forlorn party of chairs and bookcases had been removed from the pavement and once more envanned, we added Harriet, speechless with sulky displeasure, to the van-load; and as we watched them drive off, my heart, at least, was lighter.

      We set up our bicycles ready, and blew up the tires. Then we went all over the little house, “to say good-bye to it,” my wife said. Her face was quite sad now. It was in that horrid little dressing-room that she slipped her hand into mine and said:

      “I didn't think I should be sorry. But I am. Dear little Bandbox—we've been very happy here, haven't we? Oh, do say you think we shall be just as happy there. You do, don't you?”

      A narrator cannot be expected to chronicle all his replies. My answer satisfied Chloe, anyhow, and she consented to dry her eyes on my handkerchief.

      Then we took a last look round, and went out.

      “Good-bye,” we said to our Bandbox, and wished it a happy future.

      “I hope the next people who live in you will be kind to you,” said Chloe, “and keep you clean, and be very happy in you, poor, dear little house.”

      We rode away, turning at the corner for one more last look at our Bandbox. Its bare windows blinked forlornly at us in the June sunlight like the eyes of a deserted orphan. We rode on in silence.

      We passed our furniture about half a mile from the Bandbox. And we had been keeping our tempers for more than two hours in the spacious emptiness of the Red House before the rattle of harness and the scent of Charley's coat announced the arrival of the van.

      Charley and his minions made a hollow pretence of putting the furniture in its place. They did put the bedsteads together, insecurely, and in the wrong rooms; and they set up “chesties of drawerses” against walls. The oak chests they carried to the attic, and the best steel fire-irons were discovered, weeks later, in the cellar. But almost everything—saucepans, crockery, coal-scuttles, books, hearth-rugs, stair-rods, fenders—was dumped on the floors of the hall, the kitchen, and the dining-room. 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.”

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