Penelope's English Experiences

Mrs. Bobby bought her place only a few months ago, for she lived in Cheltenham before Mr. Bobby died. The last incumbent had probably been of Welsh extraction, for the cottage had been named ‘Dan-y-cefn.’ Mrs. Bobby declared, however, that she wouldn’t have a heathenish name posted on her house, and expect her friends to pronounce it when she couldn’t pronounce it herself. She seemed grieved when at first I could not see the absolute necessity of naming the cottage at all, telling her that in America we named only grand places. She was struck dumb with amazement at this piece of information, and failed to conceive of the confusion that must ensue in villages where streets were scarcely named or houses numbered. I confess it had never occurred to me that our manner of doing was highly inconvenient, if not impossible, and I approached the subject of the name with more interest and more modesty.

“Well, Mrs. Bobby,” I began, “it is to be Cottage; we’ve decided that, have we not? It is to be Cottage, not House, Lodge, Mansion, or Villa. We cannot name it after any flower that blows, because they are all taken. Have all the trees been used?”

“Thank you, miss, yes, miss, all but h’ash-tree, and we ‘ave no h’ash.”

“Very good, we must follow another plan. Family names seem to be chosen, such as Gower House, Marston Villa, and the like. ‘Bobby Cottage’ is not pretty. What was your maiden name, Mrs. Bobby?”

“Buggins, thank you, miss. ‘Elizabeth Buggins, Licensed to sell Poultry,’ was my name and title when I met Mr. Bobby.”

“I’m sorry, but ‘Buggins Cottage’ is still more impossible than ‘Bobby Cottage.’ Now here’s another idea: where were you born, Mrs. Bobby?”

“In Snitterfield, thank you, miss.”

“Dear, dear! how unserviceable!”

“Thank you, miss.”

“Where was Mr. Bobby born?”

“He never mentioned, miss.”

(Mr. Bobby must have been expansive, for they were married twenty years.)

“There is always Victoria or Albert,” I said tentatively, as I wiped my brushes.

“Yes, miss, but with all respect to her Majesty, them names give me a turn when I see them on the gates, I am that sick of them.”

“True. Can we call it anything that will suggest its situation? Is there a Hill Crest?”

“Yes, miss, there is ‘Ill Crest, ‘Ill Top, ‘Ill View, ‘Ill Side, ‘Ill End, H’under ‘Ill, ‘Ill Bank, and ‘Ill Terrace.”

“I should think that would do for Hill.”

“Thank you, miss. ‘Ow would ‘The ‘Edge’ do, miss?”

“But we have no hedge.” (She shall not have anything with an h in it, if I can help it.)

“No, miss, but I thought I might set out a bit, if worst come to worst.”

“And wait three or four years before people would know why the cottage was named? Oh no, Mrs. Bobby.”

“Thank you, miss.”

“We might have something quite out of the common, like ‘Providence Cottage,’ down the bank. I don’t know why Mrs. Jones calls it Providence Cottage, unless she thinks it’s a providence that she has one at all; or because, as it’s just on the edge of the hill, she thinks it’s a providence that it hasn’t blown off. How would you like ‘Peace’ or ‘Rest’ Cottage?”

“Begging your pardon, miss, it’s neither peace nor rest I gets in it these days, with a twenty-five pound debt ‘anging over me, and three children to feed and clothe.”

“I fear we are not very clever, Mrs. Bobby, or we should hit upon the right thing with less trouble. I know what I will do: I will go down in the road and look at the place for a long time from the outside, and try to think what it suggests to me.”

“Thank you, miss; and I’m sure I’m grateful for all the trouble you are taking with my small affairs.”

Down I went, and leaned over the wicket-gate, gazing at the unnamed cottage. The brick pathway was scrubbed as clean as a penny, and the stone step and the floor of the little kitchen as well. The garden was a maze of fragrant bloom, with never a weed in sight. The fowl cackled cheerily still, adding insult to injury, the pet sheep munched grass contentedly, and the canaries sang in their cages under the vines. Mrs. Bobby settled herself on the porch with a pan of peas in her neat gingham lap, and all at once I cried:—

“‘Comfort Cottage’! It is the very essence of comfort, Mrs. Bobby, even if there is not absolute peace or rest. Let me paint the signboard for you this very day.”

Mrs. Bobby was most complacent over the name. She had the greatest confidence in my judgment, and the characterisation pleased her housewifely pride, so much so that she flushed with pleasure as she said that if she ‘ad ‘er ‘ealth she thought she could keep the place looking so that the passers-by would easily h’understand the name.

Chapter XXIII. Tea served here

It was some days after the naming of the cottage that Mrs. Bobby admitted me into her financial secrets, and explained the difficulties that threatened her peace of mind. She still has twenty-five pounds to pay before Comfort Cottage is really her own. With her cow and her vegetable garden, to say nothing of her procrastinating fowl, she manages to eke out a frugal existence, now that her eldest son is in a blacksmith’s shop at Worcester, and is sending her part of his weekly savings. But it has been a poor season for canaries, and a still poorer one for lodgers; for people in these degenerate days prefer to be nearer the hotels and the mild gaieties of the larger settlements. It is all very well so long as I remain with her, and she wishes fervently that that may be for ever; for never, she says, eloquently, never in all her Cheltenham and Belvern experience, has she encountered such a jewel of a lodger as her dear Miss ‘Amilton, so little trouble, and always a bit of praise for her plain cooking, and a pleasant word for the children, to whom most lodgers object, and such an interest in the cow and the fowl and the garden and the canaries, and such kindness in painting the name of the cottage, so that it is the finest thing in the village, and nobody can get past the ‘ouse without stopping to gape at it! But when her American lodger leaves her, she asks,—and who is she that can expect to keep a beautiful young lady who will be naming her own cottage and painting signboards for herself before long, likely?—but when her American lodger is gone, how is she, Mrs. Bobby, to put by a few shillings a month towards the debt on the cottage? These are some of the problems she presents to me. I have turned them over and over in my mind as I have worked, and even asked Willie Beresford in my weekly letter what he could suggest. Of course he could not suggest anything: men never can; although he offered to come there and lodge for a month at twenty-five pounds a week. All at once, one morning, a happy idea struck me, and I ran down to Mrs. Bobby, who was weeding the onion-bed in the back garden.

“Mrs. Bobby,” I said, sitting down comfortably on the edge of the lettuce-frame, “I am sure I know how you can earn many a shilling during the summer and autumn months, and you must begin the experiment while I am here to advise you. I want you to serve five-o’clock tea in your garden.”

“But, miss, thanking you kindly, nobody would think of stoppin’ ‘ere for a cup of tea once in a twelvemonth.”

“You never know what people will do until you try them. People will do almost anything, Mrs. Bobby, if you only put it into their heads, and this is the way we shall make our suggestion to the public. I will paint a second signboard to hang below ‘Comfort Cottage.’ It will be much more beautiful than the other, for it shall have a steaming kettle on it, and a cup and saucer, and the words ‘Tea Served Here’ underneath, the letters all intertwined with tea-plants. I don’t know how tea-plants look, but then neither does the public. You will set one round table on the porch, so that if it threatens rain, as it sometimes does, you know, in England, people will not be afraid to sit down; and the other you will put under the yew-tree near the gate. The tables must be immaculate; no spotted, rumpled cloths and chipped cups at Comfort Cottage, which is to be a strictly first-class tea station. You will put vases of flowers on the tables, and you will not mix red, yellow, purple, and blue ones in the same vase-”

“It’s the way the good Lord mixes ‘em in the fields,” interjected Mrs. Bobby piously.

“Very likely; but you will permit me to remark that the good Lord can manage things successfully which we poor humans cannot. You will set out your cream-jug that was presented to Mrs. Martha Buggins by her friends and neighbours as a token of respect in 1823, and the bowl that was presented to Mr. Bobby as a sword and shooting prize in 1860, and all your pretty little odds and ends. You will get everything ready in the kitchen, so that customers won’t have to wait long; but you will not prepare much in advance, so that there’ll be nothing wasted.”

“It sounds beautiful in your mouth, miss, and it surely wouldn’t be any ‘arm to make a trial of it.”

“Of course it won’t. There is no inn here where nice people will stop (who would ever think of asking for tea at the Retired Soldier?), and the moment they see our sign, in walking or driving past, that moment they will be consumed with thirst. You do not begin to appreciate our advantages as a tea station. In the first place, there is a watering-trough not far from the gate, and drivers very often stop to water their horses; then we have the lovely garden which everybody admires; and if everything else fails, there is the baby. Put that faded pink flannel slip on Jem, showing his tanned arms and legs as usual, tie up his sleeves with blue bows as you did last Sunday, put my white tennis-cap on the back of his yellow curls, turn him loose in the hollyhocks, and await results. Did I not open the gate the moment I saw him, though there was no apartment sign in the window?”

Mrs. Bobby was overcome by the magic of my arguments, and as there were positively no attendant risks, we decided on an early opening. The very next day after the hanging of the second sign, I superintended the arrangements myself. It was a nice thirsty afternoon, and as I filled the flower-vases I felt such a desire for custom and such a love of trade animating me that I was positively ashamed. At three o’clock I went upstairs and threw myself on the bed for a nap, for I had been sketching on the hills since early morning. It may have been an hour later when I heard the sound of voices and the stopping of a heavy vehicle before the house. I stole to the front window, and, peeping under the shelter of the vines, saw a char-a-bancs, on the way from Great Belvern to the Beacon. It held three gentlemen, two ladies, and four children, and everything had worked precisely as I intended. The driver had seen the watering-trough, the gentlemen had seen the tea-sign, the children had seen the flowers and the canaries, and the ladies had seen the baby. I went to the back window to call an encouraging word to Mrs. Bobby, but to my horror I saw that worthy woman disappearing at the extreme end of the lane in full chase of our cow, that had broken down the fence, and was now at large with some of our neighbour’s turnip-tops hanging from her mouth.

Chapter XXIV. An unlicensed victualler

Ruin stared us in the face. Were our cherished plans to be frustrated by a marauding cow, who little realised that she was imperilling her own means of existence? Were we to turn away three, five, nine thirsty customers at one fell swoop? Never! None of these people ever saw me before, nor would ever see me again. What was to prevent my serving them with tea? I had on a pink cotton gown,—that was well enough; I hastily buttoned on a clean painting apron, and seizing a freshly laundered cushion cover lying on the bureau, a square of lace and embroidery, I pinned it on my hair for a cap while descending the stairs. Everything was right in the kitchen, for Mrs. Bobby had flown in the midst of her preparations. The loaf, the bread-knife, the butter, the marmalade, all stood on the table, and the kettle was boiling. I set the tea to draw, and then dashed to the door, bowed appetisingly to the visitors, showed them to the tables with a winning smile (which was to be extra), seated the children maternally on the steps and laid napkins before them, dashed back to the kitchen, cut the thin bread-and-butter, and brought it with the marmalade, asked my customers if they desired cream, and told them it was extra, went back and brought a tray with tea, boiling water, milk, and cream. Lowering my voice to an English sweetness, and dropping a few h’s ostentatiously as I answered questions, I poured five cups of tea, and four mugs for the children, and cut more bread-and-butter, for they were all eating like wolves. They praised the butter. I told them it was a specialty of the house. They requested muffins. With a smile of heavenly sweetness tinged with regret, I replied that Saturday was our muffin day; Saturday, muffins; Tuesday, crumpets; Thursday, scones; and Friday, tea-cakes. This inspiration sprang into being full grown, like Pallas from the brain of Zeus. While they were regretting that they had come on a plain bread-and-butter day, I retired to the kitchen and made out a bill for presentation to the oldest man of the party.

Feeling five and threepence to be an absurdly small charge for five adult and four infant teas, I destroyed this immediately, and made out another, putting each item fourpence more, and the bread-and-butter at one-and-six. I also introduced ninepence for extra teas for the children, who had had two mugs apiece, very weak. This brought the total to six shillings and tenpence, and I was beset by a horrible temptation to add a shilling or two for candles; there was one young man among the three who looked as if he would have understood the joke.

The father of the family looked at the bill, and remarked quizzically, “Bond Street prices, eh?”

“Bond Street service,” said I, curtsying demurely.

He paid it without flinching, and gave me sixpence for myself. I was very much afraid he would chuck me under the chin; they are always chucking barmaids under the chin in old English novels, but I have never seen it done in real life. As they strolled down to the gate, the second gentleman gave me another sixpence, and the nice young fellow gave me a shilling; he certainly had read the old English novels and remembered them, so I kept with the children. One of the ladies then asked if we sold flowers.

“Certainly,” I replied.

“What do you ask for roses?”

“Fourpence apiece for the fine ones,” I answered glibly, hoping it was enough, “thrippence for the small ones; sixpence for a bunch of sweet peas, tuppence apiece for buttonhole carnations.”

Each of the ladies took some roses and mignonette, and the gentlemen, who did not care for carnations in the least, weakened when I approached modestly to pin them in their coats, a la barmaid.

At this moment one of the children began to tease for a canary.

“Have you one for sale?” inquired the fond mother.

“Certainly, madam.” (I was prepared to sell the cottage by this time.)

“What do you ask for them?”

Rapid calculation on my part, excessively difficult without pencil and paper. A canary is three to five dollars in America,—that is, from twelve shilling to a pound; then at a venture, “From ten shillings to a guinea, madam, according to the quality of the bird.”

“Would you like one for your birthday, Margaret, and do you think you can feed it and take quite good care of it?”

“Oh yes, mamma!”

“Have you a cage?” to me inquiringly.

“Certainly, madam; it is not a new one, but I shall only charge you a shilling for it.” (Impromptu plan: not knowing whether Mrs. Bobby had any cages, or if so where she kept them, to remove the canary in Mrs. Bobby’s chamber from the small wooden cage it inhabited, close the windows, and leave it at large in the room; then bring out the cage and sell it to the lady.)

“Very well, then, please select me a good singer for about twelve shillings; a very yellow one, please.”

I did so. I had no difficulty about the colour; but as the birds all stopped singing when I put my hand into the cages, I was somewhat at a loss to choose a really fine performer. I did my best, with the result that it turned out to be the mother of several fine families, but no vocalist, and the generous young man brought it back for an exchange some days afterwards; not only that, but he came three times during the next week and nearly ruined his nervous system with tea.

The party finally mounted the char-a-bancs, just as I was about to offer the baby for twenty-five pounds, and dirt cheap at that. Meanwhile I gave the driver a cup of lukewarm tea, for which I refused absolutely to accept any remuneration.

I had cleared the tables before Mrs. Bobby returned, flushed and panting, with the guilty cow. Never shall I forget that good dame’s astonishment, her mild deprecations, her smiles—nay, her tears—as she inspected my truly English account and received the silver.

I told her I regretted deeply putting down the marmalade so low as sixpence; but as they had not touched it, it did not matter so much, as the entire outlay for the entertainment had been only about a shilling. On that modest investment, I considered one pound three shillings a very fair sum to be earned by an inexperienced ‘licensed victualler’ like myself, particularly as I am English only by adoption, and not by birth.

Chapter XXV. Et ego in Arcadia vixit

I essayed another nap after this exciting episode. I heard the gate open once or twice, but a single stray customer, after my hungry and generous horde, did not stir my curiosity, and I sank into a refreshing slumber, dreaming that Willie Beresford and I kept an English inn, and that I was the barmaid. This blissful vision had been of all too short duration when I was awakened by Mrs. Bobby’s apologetic voice.

“It is too bad to disturb you, miss, but I’ve got to go and patch up the fence, and smooth over the matter of the turnips with Mrs. Gooch, who is that snorty I don’t know ‘ow ever I can pacify her. There is nothing for you to do, miss, only if you’ll kindly keep an eye on the customer at the yew-tree table. He’s been here for ‘alf an hour, miss, and I think more than likely he’s a foreigner, by his actions, or may be he’s not quite right in his ‘ead, though ‘armless. He has taken four cups of tea, miss, and Billy saw him turn two of them into the ‘olly’ocks. He has been feeding bread-and-butter to the dog, and now the baby is on his knee, playing with his fine gold watch. He gave me a ‘alf-a-crown and refused to take a penny change; but why does he stop so long, miss? I can’t help worriting over the silver cream-jug that was my mother’s.”

Mrs. Bobby disappeared. I rose lazily, and approached the window to keep my promised eye on the mysterious customer. I lifted back the purple clematis to get a better view.

It was Willie Beresford! He looked up at my ejaculation of surprise, and, dropping the baby as if it had been a parcel, strode under the window.

I (gasping). “How did you come here?”

He. “By the usual methods, dear.”

I. “You shouldn’t have come without asking. Where are all your fine promises? What shall I do with you? Do you know there isn’t an hotel within four miles?”

He. “That is nothing; it was four hundred miles that I couldn’t endure. But give me a less grudging welcome than this, though I am like a starving dog that will snatch any morsel thrown to him! It is really autumn, Penelope, or it will be in a few days. Say you are a little glad to see me.”

(The sight of him so near, after my weeks of loneliness, gave me a feeling so sudden, so sweet, and so vivid that it seemed to smite me first on the eyes, and then in the heart; and at the first note of his convincing voice Doubt picked up her trailing skirts and fled for ever.)

I. “Yes, if you must know it, I am glad to see you; so glad, indeed, that nothing in the world seems to matter so long as you are here.”

He (striding a little nearer, and looking about involuntarily for a ladder). “Penelope, do you know the penalty of saying such sweet things to me?”

I. “Perhaps it is because I know the penalty that I’m committing the offence. Besides, I feel safe in saying anything in this second-story window.”

He. “Don’t pride yourself on your safety unless you wish to see me transformed into a nineteenth-century Romeo, to the detriment of Mrs. Bobby’s creepers. I can look at you for ever, dear, in your pink gown and your purple frame, unless I can do better. Won’t you come down?”

I. “I like it very much up here.”

He. “You would like it very much down here, after a little. So you didn’t ‘paint me out,’ after all?”

I. “No; on the contrary, I painted you in, to every twig and flower, every hill and meadow, every sunrise and every sunset.”

He. “You MUST come down! The distance between Belvern and Aix when I was not sure that you loved me was nothing compared to having you in a second story when I know that you do. Come down, Pen! Pretty Pen!”

I. “Suppose we compromise. My sitting-room is just below; will you walk in and look at my sketches until I come? You needn’t ring; the bell is overgrown with honeysuckle and there is no one to answer it; it might almost be an American hotel, but it is Arcadia!”

He. “It is Paradise; and alas! here comes the serpent!”

I. “It isn’t a serpent; it is the kindest landlady in England.—Mrs. Bobby, this gentleman is a dear friend of mine from America. Mr. Beresford, this is Mrs. Bobby, the most comfortable hostess in the world, and the owner of the cottage, the canaries, the tea-tables, and the baby.—The reason Mr. Beresford was so thirsty, Mrs. Bobby, was that he has walked here from Great Belvern, so we must give him some supper before he returns.”

Mrs. B. “Certainly, miss, he shall have the best in the ‘ouse, you can depend upon that.”

He. “Don’t let me interfere with your usual arrangements. I am not hungry—for food; I shall do very well until I get back to the hotel.”

I. “Indeed you will not, sir! Billy shall pull some tomatoes and lettuce, Tommy shall milk the cow, and Mrs. Bobby shall make you a savory omelet that Delmonico might envy. Hark! Is that our fowl cackling? It is,—at half-past six! She heard me mention omelet and she must be calling, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep.’”

.         .          .        

But all that is many days ago, and there are no more experiences to relate at present. We are making history very fast, Willie Beresford and I, but much of it is sacred history, and so I cannot chronicle it for any one’s amusement.

Mrs. Beresford is here, or at least she is in Great Belvern, a few miles distant. I am not painting, these latter days. I have turned the artist side of my nature to the wall just for a bit, and the woman side is having full play. I do not know what the world will think about it, if it stops to think at all, but I feel as if I were ‘right side out’ for the first time in my life; and when I take up my brushes again, I shall have a new world within from which to paint,—yes, and a new world without.

Good-bye, dear Belvern! Autumn and winter may come into my life, but whenever I think of you it will be summer-time in my heart. I shall hear the tinkle of the belled sheep on the hillsides; inhale the fragrance of the flowering vine that climbed in at my cottage window; relive in memory the days when Love and I first walked together, hand in hand. Dear days of happy idleness; of dreaming dreams and seeing visions; of morning walks over the hills; of ‘bread-and-cheese and kisses’ at noon, with kind Mrs. Bobby hovering like a plump guardian angel over the simple feast; afternoon tea under the friendly shades of the yew-tree, and parting at the wicket-gate. I can see him pass the clock-tower, the little greengrocer shop, the old stocks, the green pump; then he is at the turn of the road where the stone wall and the hawthorn hedge will presently hide him from my view. I fly up to my window, push back the vines, catch his last wave of the hand. I would call him back, if I dared; but it would be no easier to let him go the second time, and there is always to-morrow. Thank God for to-morrow! And if there should be no to-morrow? Then thank God for to-day! And so good-bye again, dear Belvern! It was in the lap of your lovely hills that Penelope first knew das irdische Gluck; that she first loved, first lived; forgot how to be artist, in remembering how to be woman.