Penny Plain Part 32

And please be firm. I find that collectors are apt to be very lazy and unconscientious. Indeed, one told me frankly that in her district she only went to the people she knew. That isn't the way to collect. The only way is to get into each house--to stand on the doorstep is no use, they can so easily send a maid to refuse--and sit there till they give a subscription. Every year since I took it on there has been an increase, and I'll be frightfully disappointed if you let it go back."

Mrs. Jowett looked depressed. She knew herself to be one of the worst collectors on record. She was guiltily aware that she often advised people not to give; that is, if she thought their circ.u.mstances straitened!

"I don't know," she began, "I'm afraid I could never sit in a stranger's house and insist on being given money. It's so--so high-handed, like a highwayman or something."

"Think of the cause," said Mrs. Duff-Whalley, "not of your own feelings."

"Yes, of course, but ... well, if there is a deficit, I can always raise my own subscription to cover it." She smiled happily at this solution of the problem.

Mrs. Duff-Whalley sniffed.

"'The conies are a feeble folk,'" she quoted rudely. "Well, good-bye. I shall send over all the papers and collecting books to-morrow. Muriel and I go off to London on Friday _en route_ for the south. It will be pleasant to have a change and meet some interesting people. Muriel was just saying it's a cabbage's life we live in Priorsford. I often wonder we stay here...."

Mrs. Duff-Whalley went home a very angry woman. After dinner, sitting with Muriel before the fire in the glittering drawing-room, she discussed the matter.

"I know what'll be the end of it," she said. "You saw what a fuss Miss Reston made of Jean the other day when we called? Depend upon it, she knew the money was coming. I dare say she and her brother are as poor as church mice--those aristocrats usually are--and Jean's money will come in useful. Oh, we'll see her Lady Bidborough yet.... I tell you what it is, Muriel, the way this world's managed is past speaking about."

Mrs. Duff-Whalley was knitting a stocking for her son Gordon (her hands were seldom idle), and she waved it in her exasperation as she talked.

"Here are you, meant, as anyone can see, for the highest position, and instead that absurd little Jean is to be c.o.c.ked up, a girl with no more dignity than a sparrow, who couldn't keep her place with a washerwoman.

I've heard her talking to these cottage women as if they were her sisters."

Muriel leant back in her chair and seemed absorbed in balancing her slipper on her toe.

"My dear mother," she said, "why excite yourself? It isn't clever of you to be so openly annoyed. People will laugh. I don't say I like it any better than you do, but I hope I have the sense to purr congratulations.

We can't help it anyway. You and I aren't attracted to Jean, but there's no use denying most people are. And what's more, they keep on liking her. She isn't a person people get easily tired of. I wish I knew her secret. I suppose it is charm--a thing that can't be acquired."

"What nonsense, Muriel! I wonder to hear you. I'd like to know who has charm if you haven't. It is a silly word anyway."

Muriel shook her head. "It's no good posing when we are by ourselves. As a family we totally lack charm. Minnie tries to make up for it by a great deal of manner and a loud voice. Gordon--well, it doesn't matter so much for a man, but you can see his friends don't really care about him much. They take his hospitality and say he isn't a bad sort. They know he is a sn.o.b, and when he tries to be funny he is often offensive, poor Gordon! I've got a pretty face, and I play games well, so I am tolerated, but I have hardly one real friend. The worst of it is I know all the time where I am falling short, and I can't help it. I feel myself jar on people. I once heard old Mrs. Hope say that it doesn't matter how vulgar we are, so long as we know we are being vulgar. But that isn't true. It's not much fun to know you are being vulgar and not be able to help it."

Mrs. Duff-Whalley gave a convulsed e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, but her daughter went on.

"Sometimes I've gone in of an afternoon to see Jean, and found her darning stockings in her shabby frock, with a look on her face as if she knew some happy secret; a sort of contented, brooding look--and I've envied her. And so I talked of all the gaieties I was going to, of the new clothes I was getting, of the smart people we know, and all the time I was despising myself for a fool, for what did Jean care! She sat there with her mind full of books and poetry and those boys she is so absurdly devoted to; it was nothing to her how much I bucked; and this fortune won't change her. Money is nothing--"

Mrs. Duff-Whalley gasped despairingly to hear her cherished daughter talking, as she thought, rank treason.

"Oh, Muriel, how you can! And your poor father working so hard to make a pile so that we could all be nice and comfortable. And you were his favourite, and I've often thought how proud he would have been to see his little girl so smart and pretty and able to hold her own with the best of them. And I've worked too. Goodness knows I've worked hard. It isn't as easy as it looks to keep your end up in Priorsford and keep the villa-people in their places, and force the County to notice you. If I had been like Mrs. Jowett you would just have had to be content with the people on the Hill. Do you suppose I haven't known they didn't want to come here and visit us? Oh, I knew, but I _made_ them. And it was all for you. What did I care for them and their daft-like ways and their uninteresting talk about dogs and books and things! It would have been far nicer for me to have made friends with the people in the little villas. My! I've often thought how I would relish a tea-party at the Watsons'! Your father used to have a saying about it being better to be at the head of the commonalty than at the tail of the gentry, and I know it's true. Mrs. Duff-Whalley of The Towers would be a big body at the Miss Watsons' tea-parties, and I know fine I'm only tolerated at the Tweedies' and the Olivers' and all the others."

"Poor Mother! You've been splendid!"

"If you aren't happy, what does anything matter? I'm fair disheartened, I tell you. I believe you're right. Money isn't much of a blessing. I've never said it to you because you seemed so much a part of all the new life, with your accent and your manners and your little dogs, but over and over when people snubbed me, and I had to talk loud and brazen because I felt so ill at ease, I've thought of the old days when I helped your father in the shop. Those were my happiest days--before the money came. I had a girl to look after the house and you children, and I went between the house and the shop, and I never had a dull minute. Then we came into some money, and that helped your father to extend and extend. First we had a house in Murrayfield--and, my word, we thought we were fine. But I aimed at Drumsheugh Gardens, and we got there. Your father always gave in to me. Eh, he was a hearty man, your father. If it's true what you say that none of you have charm, though I'm sure I don't know what you mean by it, it's my blame, for your father was popular with everyone. He used to laugh at me and my ambition, for, mind you, I was always ambitious, but his was kindly laughter. Often and often when I've been sitting all dressed up at some dinner-party, like to yawn my head off with the dull talk, I've thought of the happy days when I helped in the shop and did my own was.h.i.+ng--eh, I little thought I would ever live in a house where we never even know when it's was.h.i.+ng day--and went to bed tired and happy, and fell asleep behind your father's broad back...."

"Oh, Mother, don't cry. It's beastly of me to discourage you when you've been the best of mothers to me. I wish I had known my father better, and I do wish I could remember when we were all happy in the little house.

You've never been so very happy in The Towers, have you, Mother?"

"No, but I wouldn't leave it for the world. Your father was so proud of it. 'It's as like a hydro as a private house can be,' he often said, in such a contented voice. He just liked to walk round and look at all the contrivances he had planned, all the hot-rails and things in the bathrooms and cloakrooms, and radiators in every room, and the wonderful pantries--'tippy,' he called them. He couldn't understand people making a fuss about old houses, and old furniture, grey walls half tumbling down and mouldy rooms. He liked the new look of The Towers, and he said to me, 'Mind, Aggie, I'm not going to let you grow any nonsense like ivy or creepers up this fine new house. They're all very well for holding together tumbledown old places, but The Towers doesn't need them. And I'm sure he would be pleased to-day if he saw it. The times people have advised me to grow ivy--even Lady Tweedie, the last time she came to tea--but I never would. It's as new-looking as the day he left it....

You don't want to leave The Towers, Muriel?"

"No--o, but--don't you think, Mother, we needn't work quite so hard for our social existence? I mean, let's be more friendly with the people round us, and not strive so hard to keep in with the County set. If Miss Reston can do it, surely we can."

"But don't you see," her mother said, "Miss Reston can do it just because she is Miss Reston. If you're a Lord's daughter you can be as eccentric as you like, and make friends with anyone you choose. If we did it, they would just say, 'Oh, so they've come off their perch!' and once we let ourselves down we would never raise ourselves again. I couldn't do it, Muriel. Don't ask me."

"No. But we've got to be happier somehow. Climbing is exhausting work."

She stooped and picked up the two small dogs that lay on a cus.h.i.+on beside her. "Isn't it, Bing? Isn't it, Toutou? You're happy, aren't you?

A warm fire and a cus.h.i.+on and some mutton-chop bones are good enough for you. Well, we've got all these and we want more.... Mother, perhaps Jean would tell us the secret of happiness."

"As if I'd ask her," said Mrs. Duff-Whalley.

CHAPTER XX

"Marvell, who had both pleasure and success, who must have enjoyed life if ever man did, ... found his happiness in the garden where he was."--From an article in _The Times Literary Supplement._

Mrs. M'Cosh remained extremely sceptical about the reality of the fortune until the lawyer came from London, "yin's errand to see Miss Jean," as she explained importantly to Miss Bathgate, and he was such an eminently solid, safe-looking man that her doubts vanished.

"I wud say he wis an elder in the kirk, if they've onything as respectable as an elder in England," was her summing up of the lawyer.

Mr. d.i.c.kson (of d.i.c.kson, Staines, & d.i.c.kson), though a lawyer, was a human being, and was able to meet Jean with sympathy and understanding when she tried to explain to him her wishes.

First of all, she was very anxious to know if Mr. d.i.c.kson thought it quite fair that she should have the money. Was he _quite_ sure that there were no relations, no one who had a real claim?

Mr. d.i.c.kson explained to her what a singularly lonely, self-sufficing man Peter Reid had been, a man without friends, almost without interests--except the piling up of money.

"I don't say he was unhappy; I believe he was very content, absolutely absorbed in his game of money-making. But when he couldn't ignore any longer the fact that there was something wrong with his health, and went to the specialist and was told to give up work at once, he was completely bowled over. Life held nothing more for him. I was very sorry for the poor man ... he had only one thought--to go back to Priorsford, his boyhood's home."

"And I didn't know," said Jean, "or we would all have turned out there and then and sat on our boxes in the middle of the road, or roosted in the trees like crows, rather than keep him for an hour out of his own house. He came and asked to see The Rigs and I was afraid he meant to buy it: it was always our nightmare that the landlord in London would turn us out.... He looked frail and shabby, and I jumped to the conclusion that he was poor. Oh, I do wish I had known...."

"He told me," Mr. d.i.c.kson went on, "when he came to see me on his return, that he had come with the intention of asking the tenants to leave The Rigs, but that he hadn't the heart to do it when he saw how attached you were to the place. He added that you had been kind to him.

He was rather gruff and ashamed about his weakness, but I could see that he had been touched to receive kindness from utter strangers. He was amused in a sardonic way that you had thought him a poor man and had yet been kind to him; he had an unhappy notion that in this world kindness is always bought.... He had no heir, and I think I explained to you in my letter that he had made up his mind to leave his whole fortune to the first person who did anything for him without expecting payment.

You turned out to be that person, and I congratulate you, Miss Jardine, most heartily. I would like to tell you that Mr. Reid planned everything so that it would be as easy as possible for you, and asked me to come and see you and explain in person. He seemed very satisfied when all was in order. I saw him a few days before he died and I thought he looked better, and told him so. But he only said, 'It's a great load off my mind to get everything settled, and it's a blessing not to have an heir longing to step into my shoes, and grudging me a few years longer on the earth.' Two days later he pa.s.sed away in his sleep. He was a curious, hard man, whom few cared about, but at the end there was something simple and rather pathetic about him. I think he died content."

"Thank you for telling me about him," Jean said, and there was silence for a minute.

"And now may I hear your wishes?" said Mr. d.i.c.kson.

"Can I do just as I like with the money? Well, will you please divide it into four parts? That will be a quarter for each of us--David, Jock, Mhor, me."

Jean spoke as if the fortune was a lump of dough and Mr. d.i.c.kson the baker, but the lawyer did not smile.

"I understood you had only two brothers?"

"Yes, David and Jock, but Mhor is an adopted brother. His name's Gervase Taunton."

"But--has he any claim on you?"