Miss Buncle Married (3 page)

“Never you mind what there is,
madame
,” Dorcas told her, “I'll see you get something tasty. Off you go back to the poor gentleman, and leave it to me.”

She turned off the iron as she spoke, and bustled away to see what she could find, leaving Barbara to return to her suffering husband.

Thus it was that the Abbotts had a very comfortable little meal together, and spent a quiet evening by the fire. It was extraordinarily pleasant and peaceful despite the problem that vexed their minds. The problem was so absurd that they could not help laughing over it, but it was a very real problem all the same.

“I don't see what we're to
do
,” said Barbara, for perhaps the twentieth time. “You can't have a headache every night, can you?”

Arthur agreed that he couldn't. “It's gone now, anyhow,” he admitted.

“How angry Mrs. Copthorne would be!” Barbara exclaimed, with a little gurgle of delight.

No solution to the problem was arrived at that night, but the following morning at breakfast Arthur hit on the one and only way out of their dilemma. It came to him quite suddenly in the middle of reading Messrs. Faction & Whiting's advertising announcements, it came to him as a ray of light, a veritable inspiration straight from heaven—they would
move.

1.
Mrs. Abbott's “past” may be discovered in
Miss Buncle's Book
by the same author.

There straightaway ensued a strenuous period for Barbara Abbott—it was she, of course, who was to find the perfect house (obviously Arthur could not be expected to range the Home Counties looking at houses—he had his work to do). Barbara flung herself into her task with all her energy—she really enjoyed it, for she was of an adventurous spirit. She visited house agents; she answered advertisements; she advertised in the papers and waded through the replies. She ranged the countryside daily in her small car—which she could now drive with a fair degree of competence—Kent and Surrey, Essex and Bucks became familiar country to Barbara. She visited big houses and small houses, old houses and new houses; houses with no water at all and houses that stood ankle deep in water. She visited houses buried in trees, dark and gloomy as the tomb, and houses set upon hilltops where the four winds blew through the flimsy masonry and the doors banged all day long, but she saw nothing that pleased her, nothing that satisfied her. The truth was Barbara had a picture of the ideal house in her mind's eye. It had arisen, all unsought, that first morning when Arthur had said, “A nice house, further out of town, with a nice garden—trees and things.” The picture in Barbara's mind was a concrete picture, quite incapable of alteration, and nothing she saw approximated to the picture, so nothing she saw would do.

Every night when Barbara returned to Sunnydene, worn out and bedraggled with her fruitless search, Arthur would inquire, “Well, any luck today? Seen anything?” and Barbara would reply with invariable truthfulness, “I've seen five houses (or nine or three, as occasion demanded) but none of them are any good.” And she would add, hopefully, “But I'm going to Farnham tomorrow (or it might be Hatfìeld). The agents have told me about a house
there
which sounds as if it might do.”

As week succeeded week Arthur began to despair. “Surely you've seen something that might suit us!” he would say; and Barbara would reply, somewhat wearily, but still firmly and hopefully, “Not yet.”

In one way their original problem was solved, for Barbara now possessed a splendid excuse for shirking the little dinners and the bridge. She was far too tired when she returned from house-hunting, far too tired out to go to parties, and Arthur was so devoted that nothing would induce him to go out and leave her alone. One or two hostesses were so misguided as to insist on the Abbotts accepting their hospitality, but they did not repeat their mistake. Barbara was genuinely tired after her long days in the open air, and her bridge was so deplorable that even her best friends were annoyed. At Mrs. Copthorne's she actually fell asleep in a corner of the sofa before the gentlemen had finished their port, and, as her husband forbade anyone to waken her, she slumbered peacefully the whole evening, while one table was obliged to play “cutthroat,” and everyone talked in whispers. It really was not good enough, and now that those charming Fitz-Georges had taken Oak Lodge, there were plenty of people to make up two—or even three tables—without bothering about the Abbotts.

So the Abbotts were left in peace, and, gradually, they drifted out of the social whirl and were partially forgotten; and people felt (as people do, when they know that their friends are leaving the neighborhood) that it was really not much good bothering about the Abbotts anymore.

So the weeks passed and April came, and the tiny garden of Sunnydene was full of yellow daffodils, blowing gaily in the breeze; and one fine Saturday morning Mr. Abbott came down to breakfast wearing his golfing shoes and a brand new suit of plus-fours which became him mightily.

Barbara looked up from the letter she was reading and said, “Oh! You're wearing it today! I like it awfully; it makes you look so nice and big.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Abbott, well satisfied with his wife's praise. “Yes, I thought I would. I'm playing with John,” and he sat down to his breakfast, feeling at peace with the world.

“Where are you going today, Barbara?” he inquired, for it was now an established custom in the Abbott household that Barbara should sally forth early every day and return late. Arthur would have been surprised at any deviation from this fixed routine. He would have been even more surprised (by this time) if the truly Herculean efforts of his wife had produced a suitable house for his inspection, so inured to disappointment had he become.

“It's a place called Wandlebury,” Barbara replied. “The agents told me about it yesterday—The Archway House, Wandlebury—I may as well look at it, I suppose.”

“By all means,” agreed Mr. Abbott with cheerful hopelessness.

“It seems awfully difficult to get just exactly what we want,” complained Barbara, a trifle wearily.

“Yes it does, doesn't it?” he agreed again. “As a matter of fact, you know, there's no
real
need
for us to leave here. It's very convenient for town, and it's really very peaceful now that we don't have to go out at night.”

“But it's only because I'm house-hunting that we don't have to,” Barbara reminded him. “It would all start again if I stopped being out all day.”

This was true, of course, so there was nothing more to be said.

Barbara glanced at the clock, and saw with dismay that it was nine-thirty. It was the hour at which she repaired to the kitchen to interview Mrs. Rast about the food. She rose reluctantly; not only did she actively dislike Mrs. Rast, but she always felt that nine-thirty was a bad hour at which to order food—the worst hour in the day for that arduous and uncongenial task. At nine-thirty Barbara was glutted with bacon and eggs and drugged with coffee, and invariably felt as if she never wanted another mouthful of food in her life. She knew, of course (academically), that by lunchtime she would feel quite differently about the matter, and would welcome a succulent meal cooked to perfection by Mrs. Rast—nay, she would even be annoyed if it were not forthcoming—but she could not really and truly believe it.

Barbara had never done any housekeeping before she was married. In the old days at Tanglewood Cottage she had left the food question entirely to Dorcas. Dorcas had ordered what was required, and had fed Barbara on boiled neck-of-mutton or stew, and milk puddings, with an occasional pie to vary the monotony, and Barbara had eaten it meekly. Food did not interest her in the least; it was a necessity, not a pleasure (indeed it was not until she was married that Barbara realized it was possible to be interested in what you ate), but Arthur, though by no means a glutton, liked his food, and liked it to be of good quality, well cooked, and of reasonable variety. Barbara found it difficult.

It was impossible to continue to leave the food question to Dorcas—for Dorcas had now become a maid—and, as such, had nothing whatever to do with food—Mrs. Rast would not have stood it, and Arthur would never have eaten such meals as Dorcas chose. This being so, Barbara was forced to take an interest in food and, moreover, forced to take an interest in food at nine-thirty a.m., when she was full to the brim with a solid mass of breakfast, and in no condition to exercise her selective faculties.

Mrs. Rast was no help; she took a delight in being no help to Barbara. For years Mrs. Rast had run the house, ordered everything, and fed Mr. Abbott as a gentleman should be fed, but now that he had gotten married she knew her place. (Let the new wife arrange the meals—he'd soon see the difference—said Mrs. Rast darkly.) Every morning she stood and looked at Barbara with her head on one side and her arms folded across her thin chest and said, “Yes, madame,” “No, madame,” or “I really couldn't say, madame. Just as
you
like, of course,” while Barbara gazed at her, and tried vainly and desperately to think of something that Arthur would like to eat, and wondered whether Mrs. Rast knew how disagreeable she looked, and whether it was any pleasure to her to look like that.

It was not only to her new mistress that Mrs. Rast was disagreeable; she was disagreeable to everyone. She quarreled with everyone; she fought with her husband week in and week out. Sometimes for days at a time this extraordinary couple was not on speaking terms with each other, and, when this happened, they communicated with each other by writing. Barbara had come across the slate which they used during hostilities, and had read the curt message written upon it in Rast's niggling hand “She Wants Tea at Four.” Arthur was aware of all this; he had had the Rasts for years and had found them excellent servants. He laughed at their peculiarities—but Barbara couldn't laugh. To Barbara there was something very horrible about it, and she felt that the bad feelings harbored by the Rasts lay like a cloud upon the house. (It was the only cloud that marred the clear sky of her married life.) She would look at Rast, as he handed her the vegetables, and mark his tight lips, the streaks of ill-temper engraved from nose to chin, and the deep wrinkle between his narrow-placed eyes, and she would think, with a little shudder: there's hatred in that man, and deceit and cruelty—all sorts of slimy things—and Mrs. Rast is worse. Sometimes she felt as if the Rasts had filled the house with a miasma of wickedness, and would be impelled to rush to the windows and throw them wide open to let in the fresh air.

The Rasts quarreled with each other, they were cruel and disagreeable to each other, but they were as one in their hatred of Barbara. She felt their hatred like a solid thing, weighing upon her shoulders. She was their common enemy. They waited upon her, and carried out her orders with exactness and promptitude, but, for all that, she could feel the hatred seeping out of them at every pore. Several times she had tried saying to Arthur, “The Rasts hate me, you know,” and Arthur, usually so understanding, had not understood at all. He had either said, “Nonsense! Nobody could possibly hate you, you're not a hateable person, Barbara,” or else he had said, “They've got more to do, with a lady in the house, but they'll soon get used to it,” and another time he had said, “I don't know why you keep on saying they hate you. They do their work all right, don't they? Well then, what more do you want?” Barbara was constitutionally incapable of describing what she wanted. She struggled for a few moments, and then said, “I wish they'd smile sometimes,” whereupon Arthur had roared with laughter and exclaimed, “Can you imagine old Rast
smiling?
It would split his face. Honestly, Barbara, you would have difficulty in replacing the Rasts—look at the bother other people have with servants.”

This particular morning Mrs. Rast looked more than usually sour. She listened in silence while Barbara arranged the meals for the weekend, and at last she announced that she would like to speak to Mrs. Abbott for a moment.

Barbara was terrified, but she managed to convey her willingness to listen to Mrs. Rast.

“There 'ave bin roomours,” said Mrs. Rast darkly, “I'm not one to listen to roomours, not as a general rule, but when they affects yourself they 'as to be listened to.”

“Rumors?” inquired Barbara.

“Roomours,” agreed Mrs. Rast. “It 'as bin said at table in Rast's 'earing that you are looking for another 'ouse.”

“Yes, of course we are.”

“It seems to Rast and me that we ought to 'ave bin told,” said Mrs. Rast indignantly. “Me and Rast feels after the years we 'ave bin with Mr. Abbott, and given every satisfaction, not to say working our fingers to the bone, we ought to 'ave bin
told
.”

“I thought everyone knew I was looking for a house,” said Barbara in surprise. “What did you think I was doing?”

“What you do isn't nothing to do with us, madame,” replied the unpleasant woman frigidly.

“And anyhow, I haven't found anything yet,” Barbara added.

“It's unsettling,” Mrs. Rast said. “Very unsettling, that's what it is. Me and Rast 'asn't felt so unsettled for years. When you think of all the years me and Rast 'as served Mr. Abbott it's very unsettling to find you aren't trusted.”

Barbara felt sure there must be a good answer to this, but she couldn't find it. She felt, deep within her, that it was unfair. The Rasts had known all along that she was looking for a house—it was a ramp, that was what it was—she felt her anger rising.

“Not
trusted
,” Mrs. Rast continued. “That's what's worrying Rast and me.”

“I'll tell you when I find a house,” Barbara said.

“And may I ask where the new 'ouse will be?” inquired Mrs. Rast with elaborate humility.

“I don't know. I haven't found it yet.”

“It will not be in this neighbor'ood, I presoome.”

“No—no, it certainly won't be here,” said Barbara firmly—the whole object of the move would be annulled if they did not move far enough away.

Mrs. Rast drew back her head and tucked in her chin, it was an ugly gesture, rather like the recoil of a snake before it strikes—“I see,” she said. “Well, Rast and me feels that we would rather not leave the neighbor'ood. It suits us, and we 'ave our friends 'ere—we 'ave ties in this neighbor'ood.”

“You mean…” Barbara could not believe her ears. “You mean you want to leave?”

“I mean we don't want to leave,” said Mrs. Rast significantly, “and what's more, if Mr. Abbott was aware that Rast and me was wedded to the neighbor'ood—so to speak—well, we 'ave bin with Mr. Abbott a long time—we knows 'is ways, you see.”

Barbara did see. It was the most frightful impertinence. She and Arthur were to remain at Sunnydene to suit the Rasts.
Whatever
next?
she thought. She was angry, but she was also frightened—how would Arthur see it? Arthur was already a trifle lukewarm about leaving Sunnydene. She saw the doors of the cage closing and she thought, I shall be here forever and ever, growing old, playing bridge, waited upon by the Rasts. I must be strong, she thought, I must be firm. I'm too Barbara Buncle-ish, that's what's the matter with me. And then quite suddenly her rage rose to the surface, and she wasn't frightened anymore.