Parents and Children (10 page)

‘You know, Eleanor, or rather I suppose you do not, that you treat your children as if they were men and women.' Fulbert had a right to make this criticism, as he did not fall into the error.

‘I am simply myself with them. It is best to be natural with children.'

‘You overdo it, my dear. You prevent them from being the same. And each child needs a separate touch and a separate understanding.'

‘I doubt the wisdom of making any sort of difference.'

‘It needs to be done in a certain way,' said Fulbert, feeling that there was an example before his wife.

Eleanor gave a little laugh.

‘I wonder you like to leave them with their feeble mother.'

‘You are not without support, my dear.'

‘I feel I could not leave them for any reason.'

‘It is a good thing I can do so for the right ones. I am going for their sakes. I am sure you will give yourself to them. I can only put you in my place.'

‘There is no one whom I could leave in mine,' said Eleanor, believing what she said. ‘No one else would have the nine of them always in her thoughts. I ought to be saying good night to the three youngest at the moment.'

‘That is a duty I shall be pleased to share with you. And I do not pity you for being left with it.'

They mounted to the nursery and found its occupants nearing the end of their day.

‘You will soon be in your little bed,' said Eleanor to Nevill.

‘By Hatton.'

‘Yes, unless you would like to begin to share a room with Gavin.'

‘By Hatton,' said her son, looking puzzled and uninterested.

‘Yes, for a little while you can stay with her.'

‘All night. Stay with Hatton all night.'

‘How soon are you going away?' said Gavin, to his father.

‘In about seven days.'

‘That is a week,' said Honor.

‘All night, all night,' said Nevill, beating his hand on his mother's knee.

‘Yes, yes, all night. Honor, talk nicely to Father about his going. Tell him how you will miss him.'

Honor began to cry; Fulbert put his arm about her; Nevill gave her a look of respectful concern; Gavin surveyed her with a frown.

‘There, dry your eyes and don't lean against Father,' said Eleanor. ‘He is as tired as you are, at the end of the day. She was hiding her feelings, poor child.'

‘She didn't hide them,' said Gavin.

‘She tried to; she did not want to upset Father. You mind about his going too, don't you?'

‘If we say we mind, he knows,' said Gavin, who was successfully hiding his own jealousy of his sister's interest.

‘Father will be gone away. Gallop-a-trot,' said Nevill, illustrating this idea of progress.

‘Nevill doesn't know much,' said Gavin.

‘Well, he is only three,' said Eleanor. ‘Neither did you at that age.'

‘Father come back soon,' said Nevill, showing his grasp of the situation.

‘I think I knew more,' said Gavin.

‘We shall expect good reports of your lessons, if you talk like that.'

‘It is boys at school who have reports,' said Gavin, mindful of James's experience.

‘Mother meant a verbal report,' said Honor, causing her parents to smile.

‘You will soon be able to go to school,' said Eleanor, to her son. ‘You won't always have a governess.'

‘James sometimes has Miss Mitford. I could always have her.'

‘Do you mean you want to learn with Honor?'

‘No,' said Gavin, true to his principle that real feeling should be hidden.

‘Good night, Mother,' said Nevill, approaching Eleanor with small, quick steps.

‘Good night, my little boy. So you are a horse again.'

‘Puff, puff, puff,' said Nevill, in correction of her idea.

‘He has passed to the age of machinery,' said Fulbert.

‘Is that age three?' said Gavin.

‘Father means to a different date,' said Honor.

‘The boy may be right that he can be educated at home,' said Fulbert.

Eleanor made a mute sign against such reference to Honor, which she believed to be lost upon her daughter, though the point at issue was the latter's intelligence.

‘I don't feel I have a great deal in common with Mother,' said Honor, as the door closed upon her parents.

Mullet looked at her in reproof and respect.

‘In common?' said Gavin.

‘You have had enough education for tonight. There must be something left for the governess to teach you,' said Hatton, producing mirth in Mullet. ‘Now I am taking Nevill to bed. You must not stay up too long.'

‘Will you tell us about when you were a child, while you do Honor's hair?' said Gavin to Mullet.

‘Yes, I will give you the last chapter of my childhood,' said Mullet, entering on an evidently accustomed and congenial task, with her eyes and hands on Honor's head. ‘For I don't think I was ever a real child after that. You know we lived in a house something like this; a little smaller and more compact perhaps, but much on the same line. And I was once left behind with the servants when my father was abroad. Not with a grandpa and a grandma and a mother; just with servants, just with the household staff. And I found myself alone in the schoolroom, with all the servants downstairs. I was often by myself for hours, as I had no equal in the house, and I preferred my own company to that of inferiors. Well, there I was sitting, in my shabby, velvet dress, swinging my feet in their shabby, velvet shoes; my things were good when they came, but I was really rather neglected; and there came a ring at the bell, and my father was in the house. “And what is this?” he said, when he had hastened to my place of refuge. “How comes it that I find my daughter alone and unattended?” The servants had come running up when they heard his ring, when his peremptory ring echoed through the house. “Here is my daughter, my heiress, left to languish in solitude! In quarters more befitting a dog,” he went on, looking round the rather battered schoolroom, and saying almost more than he meant in the strength of his feelings. “Cast aside like a piece of flotsam and jetsam,” he continued, clenching his teeth and his hands in a way he had. “When I left her, as I thought, to retainers faithful to the charge of my motherless child. Enough,” he said. “No longer will I depend on those whose hearts do not beat with the spirit of trusty service. People with the souls of menials,” he
went on, lifting his arm with one of his rare gestures, “away from the walls which will shelter my child while there is breath within me.” And there he stood with bent head, waiting for the servants to pass, almost bowing to them in the way a gentleman would, feeling the wrench of parting with people who had served him all his life.' Mullet's voice changed and became open and matter-of-fact. ‘And there we both were, left alone in that great house, with no one to look after us, and very little idea of looking after ourselves. It was a good thing in a way, as the crash had to come, and I think Father felt it less than he would have in cold blood. He was a man whose hot blood was often a help to him.' Mullet gave a sigh and moved her brows. ‘But I think his death was really caused by our fall from our rightful place.'

‘So then you were left an orphan,' said Gavin.

‘Yes, then came the change which split my life into halves.'

‘Would your father have liked you to be a nurse?'

‘Well, in one sense he had the gentleman's respect for useful work. In another it would have broken his heart,' said Mullet, hardly taking an exaggerated view, considering her parent's reaction to milder vicissitudes.

‘What happened to the house?' said Honor.

‘It was sold to pay debts. My father was in debt, as a man in his place would be.'

‘He really ought not to have kept all those servants.'

‘Well, no, he ought not. But he could hardly change from the way his family had always lived.'

‘Were they all paid?'

‘If a farthing to a dependent had been owing, Miss Honor, I could never have held up my head,' said Mullet, straightening her neck to render further words unnecessary.

‘You told us you had a maid of your own. But you didn't have one then.'

‘My last nurse was on the way to a maid. But I was quite without one on that day when my father came home; absolutely without,' said Mullet, with evident attention to accuracy. ‘I was entirely at the mercy of all those servants downstairs.'

‘Is Grandpa in debt?' said Gavin.

‘Now if you talk about what I tell you, I shall only tell you the tales I tell to Nevill.'

‘You ought to say Master Nevill.'

‘Well, so I ought in these days. But the old days drag me back when I talk about them. Now remember these things are between ourselves.'

‘Wouldn't people believe you?' said Honor.

‘I daresay they would not,' said Mullet, with a little laugh at human incredulity.

‘I don't think Mother would.'

‘Sometimes I can hardly believe myself in my own early life,' said Mullet, fastening Honor's hair with a rapid skill acquired in a later one, and using a sincere note that was justified.

‘There are Daniel and Graham on the stairs,' said Gavin.

‘Your big brothers have come to see you,' said Mullet, in a rather severe tone. ‘And you can put things like stories out of your head.'

This was hardly the purpose of the newcomers, who had found their study occupied by Luce and a friend, and hoped to find the nursery free at this hour of its occupants.

‘You are going to bed, I suppose?' said Daniel.

‘When we do go,' said Gavin.

‘Well, that is now,' said Daniel, supplanting him in his chair.

Gavin recovered it; his brother displaced him and he returned; Graham and Honor enacted the same scene; the struggle resulted in screams and mirth, and in the course of it Honor knocked her head and wept with an abandonment proportionate to her excited mood. Hatton arrived with her fingers to her mouth, and Nevill under her arm, and made warning movements towards the floors beneath. Gavin was checked in a disposition to maintain the sport in spite of the consequences to his sister, and Nevill from under Hatton's arm made a hushing sound and raised his finger with the appropriate gesture.

Hatton became oblivous of her late anxiety, and directed Mullet's attention to Honor.

‘If you put on a handkerchief soaked in water, there won't be much of a bruise in the morning.'

‘Then Mother won't know, will she?' said Nevill, in a comforting tone.

‘Why do you hold that great child?' said Honor, seeking to counteract the impression she had given.

‘Hatton carry him,' said Nevill.

‘Honor will have a pigeon's egg on her head tomorrow,' said Daniel.

‘Not pigeon's egg tomorrow,' said Nevill, in a troubled tone. ‘A nice handkerchief wet with water.'

‘We will come and rock you to sleep,' said Graham.

‘Hatton will sit on his little bed,' said Nevill, in a reassuring manner.

‘Be a pony and trot away to it.'

Nevill agitated his limbs in rebellion against his bondage, and on being set down, trotted round the room and out of it, accepting the opening of the door as necessary and natural.

‘Will Honor have a headache in bed?' said Gavin to Mullet.

‘If she does, you must come and fetch me.'

‘She can fetch you herself, when she has only knocked her head.'

‘The nights are not cold yet.'

‘I like cold; I like even ice.'

‘He is afraid of the dark,' said Honor, stooping to gather her belongings. ‘He is almost as afraid as I am. But my head doesn't hurt any more; I can dispense with this handkerchief.'

‘You can dispense with it,' said Gavin, with more than one kind of admiration.

‘Open the door for me. Because I am carrying so much,' said Honor, indicating that she did not require it on other grounds.

The pair departed without taking leave of their brothers, who neither noticed nor offered to remedy the omission. They were succeeded by the schoolroom party, who entered the room without any sign of interest as if the change meant nothing to them. They were marshalled by Luce, with the air of a benevolent despot.

‘Can we be of any use to you?' said Daniel.

‘Luce said the schoolroom must be aired before supper,' said Venice.

James went to a chair and resumed his book.

‘Is Miss Mitford proof against chill?' said Graham.

‘She has gone to her room,' said Isabel.

‘I have been wondering if Graham ought to be handed back to her,' said Daniel.

‘Well, she likes her pupils to be of advanced age,' said Graham.

Venice laughed.

‘Now why is it amusing?' said Luce, leaning back and locking her hands round her knees. ‘Miss Mitford is older and wiser than Graham. Why should he not learn from her?'

‘She is a woman,' said Venice.

‘But knowledge is no more valuable, coming from a man.'

‘It is held to be,' said Isabel. ‘Men are more expensive than women.'

‘Isn't Mitta expensive?' said Venice, surprised.

‘She still seems to me in her own way a person born to command,' said Luce.

‘Few of us can so far fulfil our destiny,' said Graham.

‘I wonder if anyone is born to obey,' said Isabel. ‘That may be why people command rather badly, that they have no suitable material to work on.'

‘I wonder if we are a commanding family,' said Luce.

‘I expect Isabel is right that most families are,' said Daniel.

Venice came up as if wishing to join the talk, but at a loss for a contribution.

‘So James has learned to read,' said Graham.

‘You are less forward for your age,' said Daniel.

‘Mitta forgot to put that book away,' said Venice.

‘Isn't James supposed to read it?' said Luce. ‘Let me see it, James.'