Part 2 (1/2)
”No, she ain't.”
”And don't contradict. Your mamma's husband is your papa, who lives in London.”
”What's the good of _him_!”
Mrs. Fursey's reply appeared to me to be unnecessarily vehement.
”You wicked child, you; where's your commandments? Your father is in London working hard to earn money to keep you in idleness, and you sit there and say 'What's the good of him!' I'd be ashamed to be such an ungrateful little brat.”
I had not meant to be ungrateful. My words were but the repet.i.tion of a conversation I had overheard the day before between my mother and my aunt.
Had said my aunt: ”There she goes, moping again. Drat me if ever I saw such a thing to mope as a woman.”
My aunt was ent.i.tled to preach on the subject. She herself grumbled all day about all things, but she did it cheerfully.
My mother was standing with her hands clasped behind her--a favourite att.i.tude of hers--gazing through the high French window into the garden beyond. It must have been spring time, for I remember the white and yellow crocuses decking the gra.s.s.
”I want a husband,” had answered my mother, in a tone so ludicrously childish that at sound of it I had looked up from the fairy story I was reading, half expectant to find her changed into a little girl; ”I hate not having a husband.”
”Help us and save us,” my aunt had retorted; ”how many more does a girl want? She's got one.”
”What's the good of him all that way off,” had pouted my mother; ”I want him here where I can get at him.”
I had often heard of this father of mine, who lived far away in London, and to whom we owed all the blessings of life; but my childish endeavours to square information with reflection had resulted in my a.s.signing to him an entirely spiritual existence. I agreed with my mother that such an one, however to be revered, was no subst.i.tute for the flesh and blood father possessed by luckier folk--the big, strong, masculine thing that would carry a fellow pig-a-back round the garden, or take a chap to sail in boats.
”You don't understand me, nurse,” I explained; ”what I mean is a husband you can get at.”
”Well, and you'll 'get at him,' poor gentleman, one of these days,”
answered Mrs. Fursey. ”When he's ready for you he'll send for you, and then you'll go to him in London.”
I felt that still Mrs. Fursey didn't understand. But I foresaw that further explanation would only shock her, so contented myself with a simple, matter-of-fact question.
”How do you get to London; do you have to die first?”
”I do think,” said Mrs. Fursey, in the voice of resigned despair rather than of surprise, ”that, without exception, you are the silliest little boy I ever came across. I've no patience with you.”
”I am very sorry, nurse,” I answered; ”I thought--”
”Then,” interrupted Mrs. Fursey, in the voice of many generations, ”you shouldn't think. London,” continued the good dame, her experience no doubt suggesting that the shortest road to peace would be through my understanding of this matter, ”is a big town, and you go there in a train. Some time--soon now--your father will write to your mother that everything is ready. Then you and your mother and your aunt will leave this place and go to London, and I shall be rid of you.”
”And shan't we come back here ever any more?”
”Never again.”
”And I'll never play in the garden again, never go down to the pebble-ridge to tea, or to Jacob's tower?”
”Never again.” I think Mrs. Fursey took a pleasure in the phrase. It sounded, as she said it, like something out of the prayer-book.
”And I'll never see Anna, or Tom Pinfold, or old Yeo, or Pincher, or you, ever any more?” In this moment of the crumbling from under me of all my footholds I would have clung even to that dry tuft, Mrs. Fursey herself.
”Never any more. You'll go away and begin an entirely new life. And I do hope, Master Paul,” added Mrs. Fursey, piously, ”it may be a better one.