“It hurts to be given a hopeless task and keep at it till it breaks you! Three quarters of that stuff should be put away! Why don’t you say so and go on strike until it’s done?”
The smile was gone. She straightened herself a little.
“Please, please-you mustn’t. My aunt has been most kind in taking Jenny in, and it has meant everything for her. We really had no claim. Anything I can do in return-”
“I know, I know-and it’s not my business, and all the rest of the conventionalities! Let’s take them as said and get down to brass tacks. It is really impossible for you to have a sensible talk with Miss Crewe? After all, she can probably remember how many women it used to take to do what she expects you to take on single-handed.”
“It was a different world, a different life. She hasn’t the least idea how long anything takes to do. There was a cook, and a kitchenmaid, and a between maid, and a woman up from the village three times a week to scrub, and a butler, and a parlourmaid, and two housemaids. And everything went like clockwork.”
“She tells you all that, and she can’t see?”
“No, she really can’t. She just thinks they were lazy and overpaid, and that there is no entertaining now, so of course it is all quite easy.”
A light shiver went over her.
He said impulsively, “You’re cold-I mustn’t keep you. But I haven’t said anything like all I’m going to.”
A big warm hand swallowed hers up, held it a moment, and then let go. He went out on to the porch, and down the steps, and into his car and drove away.
CHAPTER 4
Mrs. Stubbs’ cooking was all that Miss Crewe had said. The parlour at the Holly Tree was warm and bright and comfortable-old leather chairs well broken in, a red tablecloth to replace the white one when his meal had been cleared away, and a row of fascinating objects on the shelf over the fireplace. Craig sat gazing at them and considering how much he preferred this homely warmth and comfort to the dreary bygone grandeurs of Crewe House. Sèvres and ormolu were all very well in their time and place, but for everyday fireside comfort give him the yellow cow with a lid in her back which was really a cream-jug, the milk being put in at the lid and pouring out of the mouth; the cup and saucer of copper lustre with its bands of raised fruits and flowers on a ground of bright sky blue; the mug with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in lilac and grey, the Great Exhibition in the background, and the date 1851 displayed in silver. There were also some rather intriguing wooden candlesticks with what looked like little heaps of cannon-balls piled at the four corners of the base, and a tall pottery jar with a picture of a khaki-clad soldier of the South African War and the dates 1899-1901. Below on either side of the hearth there were two very large pink shells which took him back to his boyhood, when he used to stand in front of a dreadful little muddle-shop which he passed on his way to school, looking in and coveting just such another pair.
Mrs. Stubbs came in, hoped he had everything to his liking, and stayed for a cosy little chat. The shells were brought back by a great-uncle who had taken to the sea. The cow and the lustre cup and saucer had come down from her great-grandmother. “And I don’t hold with all this throwing out and putting in a lot of silly rubbish. New it may be, and the fashion it may be, but I don’t hold with it. When the young people come in they can do as they choose, and I suppose when I’m in my grave I shan’t mind, not even about my granny’s yellow cow that she used to allow me to stroke Sundays for a very particular treat. Oh, well, every dog has his day, as the saying is, and no use troubling oneself that I can see. Makes your blood go sour, and then what are you like to live with! Better laugh as long as you can and hold your tongue when you can’t!”
He went up to Crewe House in the morning, and Rosamond let him in. He found Jenny bright-eyed, flushed, and very grown-up indeed.
“How do you do, Mr. Lester? You must have thought it very silly of me yesterday to mistake you for a doctor, because of course you are not in the least like one. Rosamond has told me about your coming down from Pethertons, and she says I mustn’t expect you to publish anything. But then I never did- not really. Only you will talk to me about it, won’t you, and not just say it’s no use and I must wait till I’m older. You don’t know what a curse it is being young and have everybody say you can’t do any of the things you want to do because of it.”
He said,
“I shan’t do that, because there’s quite a lot you can do now, and I’d like to talk to you about it very much.”
Her hands were at her breast, painfully clasped. The brilliant eyes answered. Rosamond, leaning over to lay a hand on her shoulder, was vehemently pushed away.
“Well,” he said, “writing is a trade. If you want to write you’ll have to learn it. Take any conversation. There are the words, there is also the way the people look and move, and the tone of voice they use, and when you come to write that conversation down all you have got is the words. And they are not enough. Somehow, by hook or by crook, you have got to make up for the colour, the life, and the sound which you can’t transfer to paper.”
“How?”
“That’s what you’ll have to find out. For one thing, written dialogue has got to be better than the ordinary stuff that people talk. It must have more life and go in it. The colours must all be brightened. There must be more individuality. The clever people must be cleverer and the silly ones sillier than they would be in real life, or you won’t get them across at all, and your book will be dull. Then you want to watch your reading rather carefully. Don’t read too much of any one author, or you will find you are copying him, and that is fatal. You’ll have to read the standard authors, because they lay down a good foundation and you won’t be able to do without it. And as you read, just notice how they get people in and out of rooms, or from one place to another-how they produce what is called atmosphere-that sort of thing. They all do it different ways, so you won’t be in danger of copying any one in particular.”
Jenny nodded vigorously.
“And then-you probably won’t like this, but it’s important- write of things you know something about.”
Jenny’s already feverish colour deepened.
“If everyone did that, there would be a lot of dull books! I don’t want to write about the things that happen every day- I’m bored with them! What can I write about here?”
Dangerous ground. He hastened away from it.
“Well, you live in a village, and a village has people in it just the same as a town has, or a South Sea island, or a castle in Spain. It’s the people and what goes on in their lives that makes things interesting-or dull.”
For the first time her hands relaxed. The flush began to fade. She said slowly,
“Sometimes you can’t think what was in their minds. Nobody could with Maggie.”
“Who is Maggie?”
“A person in the village. She just walked out of the house one evening and never came back.”
Rosamond threw him an uneasy glance. He ignored it.
“Why did she do that?”
“Nobody knows why.”
He said, “Tell me about it in your own way-as if it was a story you were writing.”
“I don’t know how to begin.”
He laughed.
“That is always one of the difficult things.”
She thought for a bit, and then shook her head vehemently.
“I can’t do it like that. I can tell you what happened.”
“All right-go ahead.”
She nodded.
“You mustn’t think about it being a story-it’s just something that happened. But it’s not interesting, or romantic, or anything like that-it’s just a bit frightening. Maggie lived with her father and mother in a cottage in the village. You can see it from the bottom of our drive, only they don’t live there now. The father and mother were quite old, and Maggie wasn’t at all young, or nice-looking or anything like that. And about a year ago, at eight o’clock in the evening when it was quite dark, she finished her ironing and said to her mother, ‘I’m just going out for a breath of air. I won’t be long.’ And no one ever saw her again.”