At Home with the Jardines Part 26

She had given me specific directions about serving the meals, and had made me lay in a supply of jam for breakfast, and had implored me to serve cold meats and joints and things as the English do, and to please her I had promised. But that first night at dinner Lady Mary turned to me and said, with a sweetness and grace not to be reproduced:

"Mrs. Jardine, I have come over here to live among you and to be as little unlike you Americans as possible. I cannot forget that it was the American dollar that made it possible for Wemyss to gain poor dear mamma's consent to our marriage, and I am correspondingly grateful.

Now, won't you do me a favour? Won't you please leave off doing anything for us in the English manner, because of your desire to please us, and mayn't I see in your house just how Americans live.

Particularly your breakfasts. I have heard that they were so jolly--not a bit like ours, and I am keen to taste your hot breads!

Fancy! I never saw any in my life."

I fairly gasped with delight, and as for the maids, I was afraid they were going to kiss Lady Mary. It removed an awful strain.

"Certainly," I beamed. "I will do anything I can for you."

"If she does," declared Jimmie, "there won't be a queer American thing for you to learn after you leave Peach Orchard. You'll have seen 'em all."

"That is what I should like," said Lady Mary, in her deep, beautiful voice. "And Wemyss would, too."

Sir Wemyss, who spoke but seldom, here removed his cigar, for we had gone into the billiard-room after dinner, and said:

"Jardine, you don't know how a little place like this appeals to me.

Now our places in England are all so large that they take an army of servants to run them, and the gardening and all that are done by one's men. But here with only yourselves you can do so much. You can feed your own chickens, you can prune your own trees, you can do such a lot yourselves. I should think it would be great fun."

We were much flattered by this view of it, and Mrs. Jimmie and Bee were plainly impressed.

"My sister is very fond of her life here," declared Bee. "I found Peach Orchard a perfect pastoral when I first came."

Jimmie had been smoking thoughtfully, with a frown of perplexity on his brow. Suddenly he spoke.

"I think Sir Wemyss is right," he answered. "Now, why not all of us take a hand at farming, so to speak, while we are here? I never have, but I know I could. Anyhow I mean to try. To-morrow, let's go at it and prune the trees."

"It is not the proper season to prune trees," observed Sir Wemyss.

"That should be done in the early spring, before the sap begins to run."

Jimmie looked disappointed.

"Those apple-trees are no good," said the Angel, with tact, "so it couldn't possibly hurt to prune them or cut them down if you want to.

They are a perfect eyesore to me the way they are."

To my surprise, both Jimmie and Sir Wemyss looked pleased. It was so palpably the wrong thing to do that I should have supposed as good a husbandman as Sir Wemyss would refuse. But the joy of doing evidently led him to accept the Angel's tactful permission to ruin our apple-trees, if by so doing he could interest our guests.

"The very thing!" said Sir Wemyss, with the nearest approach to enthusiasm I ever had seen in him. "Let's prune the trees by all means."

"How charming!" said Bee. "Isn't it delightful to be your own gardener! You have no idea how domestic my sister is, Lady Mary. She superintends her house quite like an Englishwoman. Did you know that we make all our own b.u.t.ter here at Peach Orchard, Sir Wemyss? And I verily believe that Faith knows every chicken on the place by name.

She is really at her best on a farm."

Jimmie's cigar blinked as if he had winked with it. Mrs. Jimmie almost permitted herself a wry face at the idea of turning her one week with the Lombards to such poor account, and at first I feared that this plan would quite spoil her pleasure, to say nothing of Bee's. But if you have noticed, the hostess has very little to do with a modern house-party, except to get her people together. After that, they manage things to suit themselves.

At any rate, it occurred that way at my house-party. I had little to do except to trot uncomplainingly in the rear of the procession, for when once Lady Mary made farming fas.h.i.+onable by her personal interest, Bee, who always out-Herods Herod, became so bucolic that she nearly drove the hens off their nests in order to hatch the eggs personally.

On the second day from the date of his letter, Billy arrived. Bee and I went to meet him. The train did not stop at Clovertown, so we had to drive about ten miles. I shall never forget that child's face as he saw his mother. It twitched with feeling, but he felt himself too great a boy to cry--especially over joy. _I_ cried heartily. I always do! And Billy comforted me in his sweet, babyish fas.h.i.+on that I remembered he used when he was in kilts.

Billy became friends with old Amos that first evening, and that sufficed, for Amos had enriched my own childhood, and I knew that nothing which could amuse or instruct would be omitted.

Billy felt that he and Jimmie, Aubrey, Captain Featherstone, and Sir Wemyss const.i.tuted the men of the household. When I asked him why he did not include Mr. Beguelin, he put his hands behind him, spread his short legs apart, and said:

"Well, you see, Miss Tats, Mr. Beguelin has just been married, and bridegrooms don't count."

Things went smoothly enough that first day while my people were becoming acquainted. Then it was Jimmie, dear blessed old, maladroit, hot-tempered Jimmie, always so completely at home in a business deal, and always so pathetically awkward and so confidently bungling in domestic crises, who supplied us with sufficient material for a book on "How Not to Prune Trees Properly."

We all went out to the apple-trees early in the morning. As usual, Sir Wemyss was dressed for the part. Why is it, I wonder, that the British always find themselves dressed for the occasion? I believe, if an Englishman were wrecked in mid-ocean, with only a hat-box for baggage, that out of that box he could produce bathing-trunks in which to drown properly.

The Angel was frankly and simply disreputable, his idea of being properly clad for farm-work being to be ragged wherever possible and faded all over. Jimmie, however, wore his ordinary business clothes, patent leather shoes, and a derby hat. And as events transpired, I was glad of it. I love to think of Jimmie pruning trees in patent leathers and a derby.

Being, as I say, confident, Jimmie, who never had seen a tree pruned, waited for no instructions, but sprang nimbly upon a barrel, and, standing on his tiptoes, reached up and snipped at the lower branches.

Sir Wemyss took a ladder and his pruning-knife, and disappeared from view into the thickest part of the tree. But hearing the industry of Jimmie's scissors, he parted the branches and called out:

"I say there, old man! You are cutting off twigs. These are the things which need to go--these suckers. See?"

"Yes, Jimmie," I said, pleasantly. "You are not tr.i.m.m.i.n.g a hedge, you know. You are--"

Alas, that accidents are always my fault! Jimmie turned to glare at me, and the treacherous barrel-head gave way, letting him down most ungently into its middle, and rasping his s.h.i.+ns in the descent in a manner which must have been particularly trying to one of delicate sensibilities.

I sank down suddenly in gasps of unregenerate laughter, for the barrel-head was a tight fit, and as Jimmie endeavoured to climb out, the barrel climbed too, giving him a strange hoop-skirt effect, which went but sadly with the derby hat.

Jimmie grinned sheepishly as the Angel extricated him, and placed a strong board on the barrel for him to stand upon in safety.

Then Jimmie decided to saw a dead limb off, and leave the pruning to Sir Wemyss. So he took the saw and went valiantly to work, but it was tiresome, so he leaned his weight against the limb and industriously sawed his prop off, which sent him flying almost into Lady Mary's lap.

He saved himself by his nimbleness, but this time Jimmie was mad--uncompromisingly mad.

He said little, however, but seated himself in the cooling and tranquil vicinity of his Madonna-faced wife, while watching the Angel and Sir Wemyss reduce the refractory tree to symmetry and healthfulness without effort and without disaster.

His failure and particularly Bee's and my ghoulish laughter had nettled him, however, and he was determined to recover himself as well as regain his place in our esteem.

All day he wandered around, seeking a suitable opportunity, all the while watching me craftily to see if I suspected his design. But I gave no sign, which plainly lightened the burden he was carrying.

Lady Mary trained my crimson rambler rose over the dining-room window and cut flowers for all the vases. This was ordinarily my work, and I loved it, but it gave her pleasure, and above all it gave her a home pleasure which she had missed. I asked her if she would train the roses every day while she was with us, taking the work off my hands.

She coloured softly as she gladly consented, and went prettily and importantly to work.

Artie Beg, having just come home from a prolonged honeymoon, was frequently obliged to go into town for a few hours' conference with his partner, and Cary, from being one of the most energetic of guests, had developed a tendency to talk of nothing in the world except her husband, and, when no one would listen to her, of sitting apart with her hands folded in her lap and a dreamy look in her eyes as if only her body were present at my house-party. Her mind was plainly in Wall Street.

I may not be believed, but Christianity and the love of G.o.d were working in my heart when the next afternoon I asked Jimmie's help in a piece of work which it did not seem possible for him to fail in.

The side porch has a great curving, bulging iron trellis for the honeysuckle, and I keep the vines so thinned out that I can have boxes of flowers growing on the porch railing, which only need what sunlight comes filtering through the honeysuckle. By cutting the blossoms every day I obtain the result I wish, and on this occasion I had cut all I could reach, and I asked Jimmie to cut those which were beyond me.

These boxes at the bottom were only as wide as the porch railing, but flared out on both sides in order to hold more earth, and all were painted green. Now in that particular box, shaded by the honeysuckle, I had, with infinite care, coaxed sun-loving dwarf nasturtiums to grow, because their gorgeous colouring looked so well next to the box which held my ferns.

I had planted the nasturtiums in early spring in the box in the greenhouse, shading the colours from pale yellow at each end to a glorious orange and crimson in the middle. Each plant was perfect of its kind and growing and blooming riotously before I took the box, which was some fourteen feet long, and with my own hands nailed it to the porch railing, and its ends to two pillars.

It never occurred to me that Jimmie would be foolish enough to try to _stand_ on the edge of that box, for of course, while I am no carpenter, I drove my nails to cope with wind-storms, not a great man, who--oh, well! I might have known that Jimmie would do something.

He could have reached all I wanted from the porch, but of course, though I only stepped through the French window to lay my flowers down, in that instant Jimmie had sprung upon that slanting edge of my poor, frail little box, and in that instant the mischief was done. The box tilted and flung Jimmie forward against the curving trellis, which began to creak and groan alarmingly. All my precious nasturtiums were pitched headlong into the flower-beds below, and for once Jimmie shrieked my name in accents of the acutest entreaty.