CHAPTER II

THE OLD HOUSE

"NOW, my Pippa, wake up! We are going to get out."

The child had been wildly excited for the first half of the journey. Her tongue and limbs were in perpetual motion. Climbing up and down on the seat to see out of the window, putting her head out of it when she had a chance, peeping out in the corridor and addressing every one she saw out there, planting her Teddy bear in all sorts of impossible positions, and chatting ceaselessly to Anita and her aunt. Orris was very thankful when, after a substantial lunch had been eaten, Pippa grew quieter, pillowed her head against her aunt's shoulder, and finally dropped into a sound sleep, which lasted till they arrived at their destination. Orris had started on her journey early in the day, as she wanted to arrive before dark; and now, as they gathered up their belongings and followed the porter out into the road, bright golden sunshine greeted them. A shabby old private omnibus was waiting for them.

The Muirs had been far too old-fashioned to start a car. Their carriage and horses had been sold. The 'bus was the only vehicle that occupied the roomy coach-house and the old cob started off now at a pace somewhere between a walk and a trot. Orris sat back and regarded the country road with some interest. Pippa had hardly recovered from her sleep, so was silent. Steadily they wound round, up-hill all the way. The air got keener and fresher.

Then they reached the busy little market town of Spenbury on the top of the hill; they jogged along the cobbled streets, past an old square-towered church, a covered market-place and a long row of shops, and then long rows of pines appeared on either side of them. The sun was setting now, and sank like a red ball of fire through the slender stems of the pines. Pippa caught a glance of it and was roused at once.

"How does the sun know to the very right minute when he has to go to bed, Aunt Ollie? I wish he'd forget to-night and not go quite so punctil. I don't like roads when they're dark, do you?"

"We shall be home before dark, darling. I think we are only three miles out of the town which we have passed already. Can you smell the pines, Pippa? I think they are my favourite trees."

Pippa did a good deal of sniffing, and then announced—

"I smell kittens in the straw."

Orris laughed.

"You mean you smell straw. I think the 'bus has a stable smell, musty and fusty—but not kittens."

"Our kittens in Cannes were 'always' in straw," said Pippa firmly.

They were climbing another hill now, and then crossed a wild bit of heath. At last some big iron gates appeared, and a high wall on either side of them. There was a little lodge inside, and the gates were opened by a woman. Pippa kissed her hand to her in her friendly little way. The drive was bordered with thick masses of evergreen, but in a very few minutes they came upon a square substantial old stone house, with a low wing on each side of it covered with ivy.

"Look, look! There are candles in the windows!" cried Pippa.

But it was only the reflection of the red shining sun, and Orris smiled at her small niece.

"It's just kissing the house good-night before it goes to sleep, Pippa. We are here at last. Isn't it a dear old house?"

"It's 'rather' like a castle," said the child.

They ascended some broad stone steps and the door was opened promptly by an awkward-looking youth. A wide hall confronted them. At the farther end, there was a wide fireplace with a blazing log fire. An old oak staircase rose from the middle of the hall. There were no stair carpets or rugs, and Orris shivered a little as she stood on the black-and-white flagged floor. Then, with a little bustle and importance, an elderly servant came forward to greet them.

"Good evening, ma'am. Mrs. Calthrop will doubtless have told you that I am cook-housekeeper here. Mrs. Snow is my name. Twenty-seven years I've lived here. She's asked me to make you comfortable whilst you are here. I've prepared the old nurseries for the little lady; they're in the west wing over the library, and, thinking she might be lonely, I've given you the big bedroom close to her. But you can take your choice to-morrow. I thought you'd like to be over the library, but I'll have you moved into one of the south rooms, if you prefer it. Now, Dan, what are you staring at? Get the luggage in 'at once!'"

From a very gentle suave voice, Mrs. Snow turned into a perfect virago as she glared at the unfortunate youth. Then she added in an aside to Orris:

"These country boys are impossible to train. I remember the time when a butler and three footmen were in our service. Now I am running the house with a tweeny and a housemaid and this lout who is supposed to do the parlour work. Of course, I have been by myself for a couple of months now. Mrs. Calthrop finds it dull, but I'm hoping she'll settle in before long. When they've travelled a bit she tells me they mean to come home."

Orris smiled pleasantly at the talkative woman.

"I expect the nursery wing will suit us perfectly. Shall we follow you?"

Up the broad shallow oak stairs, then along a corridor, through a green baize door, and then they were ushered into a big square room which faced the setting sun. Pippa scampered about immediately, peeping into everything. It was plainly but comfortably furnished—a stout oak table in the middle of the room, a couple of easy-chairs, an oak chest, a big cupboard in the wall, and a bookcase with some very shabby books on the shelves. A few chairs, an old roomy couch, and a faded Turkey carpet completed the furnishing. Some coloured prints were on the walls, one descriptive of the Battle of Waterloo, the others chiefly ships. A bright fire was blazing in the grate.

"It isn't damp," said Mrs. Snow; "I've had fires for the past week in all the rooms. It's a long time since they've been used, but I pride myself on keeping the house free from damp. There are two big bedrooms beyond this—one leads out of it."

Orris found all quite satisfactory. She arranged that Pippa, with Anita, should sleep in the night nursery, and she took the other bedroom farther down the passage. The outlook of all the rooms was over a big lawn, with a cedar tree in the middle of it. Beyond were slopes of wild moor and pine woods.

Later on, when Orris and her small niece sat down to a comfortable well-served supper, in what Mrs. Snow called the morning-room downstairs, Orris said to the child:

"Well, Pippa, we've fallen on our feet. I think, if you and I can't make ourselves happy here, we shall deserve to be hung and quartered!"

Pippa laughed merrily.

"I think it's a fairy-palace, Aunt Ollie. I shall play hide-and-seek all over it. Why, I can run my hoop along the passages, they're so never-ending!"

In a few days, they had settled down. The big dining-room and drawing-room remained shut up, as also was the smoking-room. Orris made the small morning-room her sitting-room, and had her meals there. Pippa shared breakfast and lunch with her, but she had her tea and supper in the nursery. Anita, a wonderfully adaptable, good-tempered girl, seemed perfectly content with her surroundings, and Orris started work at once in the old library.

It was the room she loved best in the house. It was in the west wing of the house and was fifty feet long with six great windows all reaching to the floor. Every available inch of wall was packed with shelves and books, most of them with glass doors to preserve them.

Her favourite position was at the big writing-table drawn up between the two centre windows. She looked out over a wide stretch of country, with blue hills in the distance, and sometimes she would drop her catalogue and MSS., and, leaning her elbows on the table and cupping her chin in her hands, would gaze out dreamily over the fields and pine woods and wide expanse of sky. She had the inherited scholarly love for ancient books, but she had also a poet's and an artist's soul. And sometimes she would spring up from her chair and dash out of one of the half-open windows to join her small niece in her play upon the lawn.

Pippa was a very busy little person, and everything that came to hand was thoroughly investigated. Before she had been there a week, she knew the family histories of the servants indoors and out. The cows and pigs and fowls were all individuals to her with characteristics of their own. The trees and shrubs were objects of her interest. She never rested till she knew the names of all, and Randall, the old gardener, would push up his hat and scratch his head, as he was questioned by the eager child.

"Ay, dearie me! 'Tis the Lord A'mighty Himself ye must question when it comes to why one tree beareth fruit, and another nought. But they all bear seed to carry on. And that's the business they were given to do."

"Yes, but I'm quite certain God doesn't want you to be cutting the darling daisies and the dandelions when they come up," she retorted, shaking her curly head disapprovingly; "and that's what you say you do always."

"The A'mighty teached the first gardener, missy. And everythink I do is right; you just think on that."

Pippa was quenched. She stared at the old man with her far-seeing eyes.

"And how many gardeners afore you?" she demanded.

Randall trundled his barrow away out of her reach, muttering, as he did so:

"'Tis the tongue of a female, sure enough, small though she be!"

To Pippa the garden was fairyland. There were winding walks through shrubberies, and a sunk water-garden with a fountain in the middle playing over the Cupids. Pippa called them angels. There was a summer-house at the end of a broad terrace walk, which was under a pergola of beautiful creepers, and there was an old walled fruit and vegetable garden, with mossy paths and box borders. But she would cheerfully leave all these attractions for a walk with her aunt through the pine woods.

Orris loved taking her into the woods. She and Pippa would make a little fire of cones and needles, and sit by it, watching the blue smoke rise into the sky, and inhaling the sweet aromatic fragrance of the pines.

There was no village near them, only a small hamlet of houses. The church and village of Veddon Weal was a mile away; their nearest neighbours were the labourers' families who worked on the farm adjoining the house. The postman, who was the local carpenter, occupied the biggest cottage, and the schoolmaster and organist lived in an old toll-house on the high road.

Orris began to feel that Venetia would not stand the isolation of the place, but she enjoyed it; and Pippa's cheeks grew round and rosy, and her appetite increased in a marvellous fashion.

Mrs. Snow soon enlightened Orris as regards her neighbours.

"We've got a pleasant Rector, but his wife gives herself airs, and only visits the county. The Rector has a sister who's little more than a drudge in the house. She's rather a poor hand at visiting, seems too shy to get out her words. The only big house near this is the manor, and belongs to a writer. They say he has a big name in London, but his books are too clever for most of us. He lives in it quite alone, and goes abroad every winter. He's away now. Then there's the two Misses Dashwood. They live next the rectory in a cottage belonging to the Rector. But I don't think you will be troubled with visitors."

"I don't want them," said Orris, with her happy laugh. "I haven't come here to enjoy society, but just to do my job, and enjoy this exhilarating air. I've never lived eight hundred feet above sea-level in my life before. It makes me feel quite skittish!"

She had a feeling that Mrs. Snow did not approve of her light-hearted ways. The good woman seemed to have no humour, and would listen to Pippa's astounding assertions with a solid expressionless face.

"Do you like being tickled, Mrs. Snow?" Pippa asked her one day, when she met her on the stairs. "I'm very fond of tickling persons, 'specially cats.

"We had a cat who always lay on her back and held up her arms to be tickled, she loved it so," Pippa continued.

"I'm sorry I can't be a cat to oblige you," was Mrs. Snow's stiff response. And then she passed on.

And Pippa gazed after her wistfully. She felt sorry for people who did not want to talk to her.

She was more successful with John Tinker, the postman.

She very often ran down the drive to meet him, for he did not arrive till after she had had her breakfast.

"You're my favrit person outside the house," she informed him. "I'm always expectin' letters from my mummy. You're like a everyday Father Chris'mas. You bring us surprises, and we never are quite sure what."

"Ay, missy, I be a pretty powerful sort o' person," responded John. "I often thinks much the same meself. There's nobody, not the king hisself, that holds so many messages o' life and death in his hands. I brings joy and wealth to some folks, and mourning and woe to others."

It was not long before Pippa visited him in his cottage, where he introduced her to his old mother, a comfortable smiling dame of seventy years. Here Pippa made herself completely at home; she helped Mrs. Tinker to iron, to bake cakes, to weed her small garden, and when not with her, she was to be found with John in his workshop watching him work with the greatest interest, collecting his wood shavings—or curls as she called them—and very often coming home with a bunch on each side of her small head, tumbling over her ears.

She also collected a good deal of local gossip. Orris sometimes reproved her for repeating things.

"But I'm so 'normously interested, Aunt Ollie; I like to know every bit about everybody. If John could only get a proper car, he'd take me round with his letters, but his cycle will only hold him and his bags. And there's one house he goes to that has a myst'ry."

"Nonsense, childie."

"It isn't nonsense, Aunt Ollie. Listen! It's a very very old house called Ivy Towers. You can see nothing but ivy, and just bits of windows, and some windows are covered right over, and always, always, always, something happens in that house, and nobody ever lives there over three years."

Orris laughed.

"Things happen, as you call it, to us all, darling. John is an old gossip."

But Pippa was too much in earnest to feel snubbed.

"They die, and they have naxidents, and they lose their money. And it's been empty for a very long time, and now peoples are coming into it, and John says they'll have bad luck."

Orris laughed again. She was not much interested in her neighbours. The library was beginning to engross her life and thoughts. Orris was a true scholar's daughter. She inherited her father's love for books and she dipped into old philosophers' treatises with as much zest as a girl shows over her first novel.

One afternoon she walked over to the village to interview the village laundress. On the way she met two ladies. One of them was vainly trying to reach a bit of flowering palm in the hedge. Being a good head taller than she, Orris came to her help. She was cordially thanked for her services.

"How very kind of you! My sister and I are always bringing home spoils from the hedges. Now I wonder if I may ask if you are at Pinestones? And if so, would you—may I call?"

"I shall be delighted," said Orris, smiling. "It is a lonely life after London, but I am too busy to be dull. I expect you are the Misses Dashwood. Mrs. Snow has mentioned your names."

She glanced at the sisters as she spoke. The eldest and most active was rather a striking looking woman—grey-haired, with dark vivacious eyes and bright colouring. She was very upright and quick in her movements. The younger one was fair and pale and fretful-looking.

"Yes, we are the Misses Dashwood—I am Louisa, and my sister is Grace. It is a quiet life here, as you say. I lived in London for thirty years before I came here. We have been in our little cottage over seven years now, and are very happy there."

They turned back with her towards the village, and before they reached it, Orris felt that she had made a friend. Miss Louisa Dashwood was a clever cultured woman, had been principal of a ladies' college for some years, and had taken part in many philanthropic objects after she had retired. Orris wondered how she could have come to the country. But she gathered that it was for her sister's sake. Miss Grace said little, and when she spoke her voice was plaintive and complaining.

"There is no Society, and no Squire since Mr. Muir died, and the Rector is absorbed in botany and in his parish. We just vegetate, and talk about the butcher's wife and her delicacy, and the cobbler's truant son, and the uppishness of our servant-maids."

"I think we are happy in having neighbours to talk about," said Miss Louisa cheerily.

Then, coming to their cottage, a little grey stone building covered with creepers, they parted with Orris, Miss Louisa promising to come and see her in a very few days.

This she did. Her sister did not accompany her. As they sat in the pleasant library together, their talk became rather intimate.

"Do you ever look back and think how wonderful your life has been?" Miss Louisa asked. "Of course, you are young, but even you have had your environment changed once or twice, I expect."

"Yes," assented Orris. "I have had rather a full life up to now. I think it has always been my lot to have others to think about, and that is a blessing, is it not?"

Miss Louisa's eyes sparkled.

"Yes, but it has its dangers. I have had luxury and hard work, and now I have comparative ease, combined with poverty. I felt leaving my work in London, but I've been put into another class, I tell myself. You know 'doing' is sometimes an easier thing than 'being.' Do you follow me? We are too busy sometimes with what we call good works and charity to remember the charity of our Bible."

"How?" asked Orris.

"The perfecting of our personal character. Workers are apt to be very slipshod over virtues. They're easily puffed up, easily provoked, very overbearing and intolerant, too sure of their own powers, too severe on others' failings. They don't shine in their home life. I have been made to see this. I've worked and tried to form character in others; now I find hard work in moulding my own according to the pattern on the Mount! What a prosy person you must think me."

Orris did not think her so. She was intensely interested. And when Mrs. Snow gave her a few more details about the sisters, she was still more so.

"The eldest Miss Dashwood is a proper saint. Her sister, Miss Grace, has fits of epilepsy, and at best she's a discontented soul. Miss Louisa gave up all her work in London, and came to live with her sister when their mother died. I know all about them, for my niece has lived with them these four years or so. Miss Grace fair bullies her sister. She's her willing slave. If she goes out in the afternoon to anything sociable like, and Miss Grace is too ailing to go, Miss Grace cries like a child all the time she's away, and tells her sister when she comes back that she neglects her and doesn't love her, and goes on at her terrible. And Miss Louisa is always bright and cheerful; my niece says 'tis a pleasure to be near her."

"Do they ever come here?" Orris asked. "Does Mrs. Calthrop know them?"

"They're on visiting terms." Then Mrs. Snow slightly changed her tone. "Of course, they'll not be visiting here now. Not till the mistress returns."

Orris laughed her merry laugh. Mrs. Snow's snubs did not affect her in the least.

"You want to keep me in my place, don't you? I assure you I'm much too busy to want visitors. But I have already made Miss Dashwood's acquaintance, and we may see more of each other."

"I'm sure," murmured Mrs. Snow, "I meant nothing slighting." And then she hastily made herself scarce, and Orris laughed again.

"Poor old thing! I suppose she has a supreme contempt for any lady who earns her living. She's a thorough Early Victorian old retainer."