Miss Buncle Married (6 page)

“And you'll like that, won't you?” she said to the house (Mr. Pinthorpe had disappeared upstairs to open the shutters in the bedrooms). “You'll like it when I've made you all nice, and washed your face and brushed your hair for you. You've been waiting for me all this time, and now I've found you.”

Barbara poked about, opening doors, and re-creating the whole house in her mind. She discovered a smaller room beyond the drawing-room, and gave it to Arthur on the spot. It should be his study—a proper “man's room.” There were dead flies on the windowsill and cobwebs in every corner, and the old-fashioned basket-grate was broken and red with rust, but Barbara saw it cozy and comfortable with a brown carpet on the floor, and two comfortable leather chairs before a blazing log fire. We shall sit here on cold nights, she told herself delightedly, and listen to the wind howling in the trees.

The rooms upstairs were large and square; they were quite as disreputable as those on the ground floor and Barbara was quite as pleased with them. She opened the window in “her” bedroom and gazed out—the view was perfect. Beyond the trees was a graceful line of hills, patterned with fields and small dark copses. Barbara had never possessed a “view” before—a view of her very own. Tanglewood Cottage was buried in tall trees, and Sunnydene was set among rows of villas, each a replica of itself. If there ever had been any doubt at all in Barbara's mind as to the desirability of The Archway House, it was gone now. “
This is my house
,” she said, and sat herself down on the broad window seat in a possessive manner.

Mr. Pinthrope had finished his god-like occupation of bringing light into dark places, and now he returned to the lady who had been given into his charge, and stood and stared at her. She
was
a rum one (he reflected) sitting there and looking out of the window. Most people, seeing a house for the first time, poked into every corner, and complained about the dirt, and asked all sorts of searching questions about the drains, and the water supply, and whether it was built on sandy soil. Mr. Pinthorpe had been told to give this lady every facility and all the information she desired. He had given her every facility by opening up the place, and he was now prepared to be put through a catechism regarding the hidden merits and demerits of the house. He could answer quite comfortably and truthfully about the drains and the water, for they were in Messrs. Tupper, Tyler, & Tupper's charge, and the roof was sound—he knew that. And he knew that if he were asked whether the place were damp the right reply was that “it only needed firing,” because it was so obviously damp that it was no use to deny it. Some people asked one thing, and some people another—there was no hard-and-fast rule. You said the best you could of a house and made as little as possible of its glaring defects. Mr. Pinthorpe rather prided himself upon the way he could show off houses.

But Barbara didn't want to ask any questions about the house—none at all. There was no need for her to ask questions since she had definitely and irrevocably made up her mind to have it. She looked at Mr. Pinthorpe as if she were seeing him for the first time and didn't much like the look of him.

“Go away,” she said quietly—almost casually.

“Go away!” echoed Mr. Pinthorpe, unable to believe his ears.

“Yes,” said Barbara, waving her hand vaguely. “Go away. I want to—to think.”

He looked at her doubtfully; should he obey this extraordinary request, or not? He had been sent to look after her and he was therefore responsible both for her and for the house. Supposing he went away and left her, and she
took
something, where would he be then? He looked round the room, and considered the matter—there was nothing she could take, nothing at all. There was nothing in the house except dust, and cobwebs, and dead flies.

“All right,” he said, “I'll wait for you downstairs.”

She scarcely seemed to hear what he said (just waved her hand for him to go) and Mr. Pinthorpe felt rather annoyed. She
was
rum! She had been so matey coming along the street, and now she seemed to have forgotten his existence—she
was
rum. He sighed, went downstairs, and sat down on the front doorstep in the sun. Then he took his book out of his pocket and got on with the story.

When Mr. Abbott was brought to see the house his wife had selected, he was positively aghast. He saw it as it was, and not as it might become. It happened, most unfortunately, to be a wet day, rather dark and chilly for the time of year. The rain blew against the tall bare windows in gusts, the paper hanging from the walls flapped dismally. There was a dankness in the air, and a musty smell permeated every room; there were cobwebs in every corner; the plaster was peeling off the walls and falling from the ceilings in fine gray flakes. The truth was that Barbara would have been wiser to put off Arthur's visit and to have brought him down to see The Archway House on a dry sunny day, but this never occurred to her for a moment. She was so besotted with The Archway House herself, that she had no qualms at all about Arthur's reaction to it.

Arthur had heard such glowing accounts of the place that he was in no way prepared for what he saw, so he was immeasurably disappointed, nay he was horrified beyond words. He had visualized a comfortable, cozy sort of house, and he beheld a ruin. Barbara must be mad, he thought miserably. He was quite certain she was mad when she opened the door of a dank, dusty apartment behind the drawing-room and showed him his study.

“You can have all your books here—won't it be cozy?” she exclaimed, looking round the dismal place with a rapt expression in her eyes. “You've always wanted a room of your very own, haven't you?”

“It's rather—dark,” he objected feebly.

“That's only because of the tree in front of the window,” she replied. “We'll have that cut down, of course. Monkey puzzles are horrid anyhow, so it won't be any loss.”

“I wonder if there are any rats,” Mr. Abbott remarked, hoping it would choke her off.

“Oh, there are,” said Barbara airily, “there
are
rats. Mr. Tyler told me about the rats when I went back and saw him at his office. But we can easily get rid of rats—you poison them off.”

To do Barbara justice she had no idea that Arthur was not delighted with the house. She was so enchanted with it herself that it never crossed her mind that there could be any two opinions about it. And Arthur was afraid to say too much; he had not forgotten the strange way that Barbara had behaved when he suggested staying on at Sunnydene. It had given him a shock, a very severe shock. At the back of his mind was the unexpressed, almost unconscious fear, that if he did not approve of this house (which had obviously bewitched Barbara) she would buy it herself, out of the proceeds of her books, and leave him behind at Sunnydene. This being so, his protests were extremely feeble—so feeble that Barbara never noticed them.

She dragged him round the place, pointing out its amenities with eager pride, and then she hauled him off to the lawyer's office to buy it. Mr. Abbott followed miserably. He saw that his wife intended to have the house at all costs. He only hoped that she would not allow this fact to become apparent in the transactions. But he need not have been anxious on this score, for Barbara was no fool. She intended to acquire The Archway House, but there was no sense in paying a fancy price for it. Barbara wanted to spend “a lot of money” on the house, and if they got it cheap, there would be all the more to spend on doing it up.

Mr. Tupper was evidently recovered from his indisposition; it was he, and not the junior partner, who received them and conducted the business. Barbara veiled her eagerness from Mr. Tupper with admirable self-control; she pointed out that they would have to spend a lot of money on repairs before The Archway House could be made habitable. This was so obvious that Mr. Tupper was forced to agree.

It was Arthur, of course, who did most of the talking. Barbara sat in the shabby leather chair and threw in a few words now and then. She listened to all that was said with intense interest. It really was amazing, she thought, you bought a house as easily as you bought a hat—or very nearly. It was most extraordinary! She was sorry not to see Mr. Tyler again; she had liked the little man. His pompous manner had intrigued her—especially as she had seen through it, and below it, to the very human and rather pathetic core of the little man himself. Mr. Tupper was not nearly so nice—he was dry and businesslike—a lawyer and nothing more. There was no royal welcome forthcoming on this occasion, and it was quite easy to refuse the glass of sherry which he offered her—Mr. Tyler would not have taken her refusal so lightly, so casually as this. Of course Mr. Tyler thought I was somebody else, Barbara reflected (as she sat by the window and watched Arthur sip his sherry with obvious enjoyment) and I suppose that was why he was so nice to me. He thought I was that Matilda woman—Lady Something-or-other Cobbe—already the memory of the incident was fading from her mind, but it was to return later.

“There are rats,” she said, breaking into the discussion with dramatic suddenness. “We can't pay all that for a house with rats in it, you know.”

“Rats—oh, I think not,” deprecated Mr. Tupper with an indulgent smile, “I
think
not. Ladies are sometimes—”

“But there are,
really
,” asserted Barbara confidently. “Mr. Tyler told me himself, the first day I was here.”

The lawyer's eyebrows rose in surprise. He began to say something and then changed his mind about it. “Mr. Tyler must have been mad—mistaken, I mean,” he amended, frowning. But the price came down a little all the same. It was quite possible that there
were
rats in The Archway House, quite possible, and his instructions were to sell the place for what he could get. It had been empty for years and the owner needed the money badly.

The price came down gradually to a figure that even Arthur considered a bargain. It was quite a ridiculous price. He bought the house, and then, with a magnificent gesture, he gave it to his wife.

Barbara was enchanted. What a husband! What a house! It was the most marvelous present she had ever had. Her gratitude was quite embarrassing. Arthur was a little uncomfortable about it. They had decided long ago that Arthur was to buy the house, and Barbara was to “do it up.” Arthur had got off very easily with his part of the bargain—he had bought a ruin for half nothing—but Barbara's part was going to cost a small fortune. It was only fair—so thought Mr. Abbott—that the house, which was going to cost Barbara more than himself, should belong to her when it was finished. He tried to explain all this to his wife as they drove home to Sunnydene together, but Barbara only saw what she wanted to see—the amazing generosity of her husband, and the superlative beauty of her house.

No sooner was the house hers than Barbara filled it with plumbers, joiners, electricians, and decorators. The peace of the sunlit rooms was disturbed by the noise of hammering and of men's voices, by the sound of heavy footsteps clattering on the parquet floors. The dust swirled from forgotten corners in choking blinding clouds, and settled again over everything in a thick gray film. Charwomen with buckets of dirty water cluttered the stairs, and crawled patiently over the floors waging an endless battle with the dirt. The place was an inferno, and Barbara drove its denizens like a whirlwind. She cajoled the foremen and bullied the underlings from morning to night—sometimes, when occasion seemed to demand a change of tactics, she reversed the process. The workmen were all terrified of Mrs. Abbott; she was the most impatient lady they had ever met.

Barbara's efforts to make The Archway House a place for heroes to live in were hindered and impeded to an alarming extent by “the ghost.” She had never seen this apparition herself but apparently she was unique in this. Local charwomen refused to come and work in the haunted house, and those recruited from other districts soon got to hear of it and faded away mysteriously with their work half done. None of them would remain in the house after the workmen had left, and this was trying, because it was only after the workmen had left that the field was clear for the cleaning to be done. The ghost was a very annoying sort of ghost—a kind
of
Poltergeist—
an embodiment of mischief. Its great delight seemed to consist in hindering the work. Pails and brooms and workmen's tools disappeared from their rightful places and were discovered, hours later, in different parts of the house. Barbara soon got extremely sick of the ghost. But she carried on bravely with all her preparations—no ghost on earth was going to make the slightest difference to her arrangements. She worked like a slave herself and saw that everyone else worked like a slave. And through it all the ghost continued to play a villain's part. It appeared to charwomen and sent them into hysterics; it appeared to workmen and interfered with their work. Some said it was a tall figure in white draperies, that wrung its hands and coughed dismally, others said it was headless and moved with the clanking of chains.

Weeks passed, and gradually out of the chaos, a pattern emerged, and The Archway House began to look like a human habitation. As the time drew near for the furnishing of the rooms Barbara began to feel a little anxious. She was fully aware of the limitations of her taste, and she was desperately keen to have everything right, to choose for her house the sort of furniture that the house would like. Nothing—or very little—that had been suitable for Sunnydene or Tanglewood Cottage was suitable for The Archway House. She and Arthur were agreed on this—and she was to have a free hand to get what she liked. It was a delightful prospect, of course, but it was also very perplexing. Barbara spent long hours thinking it over and wondering what she should do. I shan't try to have period furniture, she thought, I should only do it all wrong and it would look silly. I shall just have ordinary, plain furniture—rather large, because of the rooms being so big and high—plain, comfortable furniture and not too much of it.

This was sensible and right in theory but the details still worried her. It was easy to say “plain comfortable furniture” but when it came to choosing the actual pieces she found it extremely difficult to decide. Which of the hundred-odd suites of chesterfield sofas and easy chairs would her house
like—
that was the question—and how would the things look when they were removed from their neighbors and stood alone in the drawing-room of The Archway House. “I can't decide now,” said Barbara, to the polite young man who had spent the whole afternoon showing her his stock. “I can't possibly decide now. I shall have to think about it.” The polite young man could have slain Barbara then and there, but he controlled his desires and replied wearily, “Just as you like, Moddam.”

Barbara spent the following day at The Archway House, harrying the electricians who had slacked off a little in her unavoidable absence. It was a warlike sort of day, but, after the electricians had gone, Peace descended and spread her gleaming wings in the empty rooms. Barbara wandered round gloating over her treasure. She tiptoed through the silent house. How still it was without the workmen, how restful and refreshing! Barbara felt herself to be part of the silence. The house welcomed her, and the welcome made her feel happy and at home. Slowly she became aware of Unseen Presences in the empty rooms—the aura of those who had lived in the house and loved it. And these Unseen Presences were friendly toward her, they welcomed her coming—she was sure of it—they would do her no harm. There was nothing ghostly about this aura, nothing supernatural, nothing frightening, it was more a sort of warm atmosphere, comfortable to the spirit as the warmth of a good fire is comfortable to the body.

How funny it would be if I saw the ghost, Barbara thought; it's funny, really, that I haven't seen it before. And then she reflected that it was “funny” about the ghost in more ways than one, for the ghost was obviously unfriendly to her (in that it hindered her activities in every way it could). It was a malign ghost, and yet the atmosphere of the house was friendly—how could that be?

She wandered into the empty drawing-room and gazed round, trying to see it furnished with the furniture she had looked at in the store. The chesterfield here, and the chairs there; the china cabinet against the bare wall, the bureau in the corner near the window—how would it look? She paced it out, and reflected, and paced it out again. She went to the window and stood there looking out. The gardens were beginning to look better now. The grass had been cut and the paths weeded. But there was still moss on the steps leading down to the terrace and the gray stone lions which stood on either side of the steps were cracked and discolored with damp. I must speak to Grimes about that, Barbara thought.

She was just making up her mind to leave the place and go home when the front doorbell rang. It pealed loudly through the empty house, startling the echoes—Barbara nearly jumped out of her skin. Her first thought was that it must be the ghost, but that was ridiculous, of course; ghosts didn't ring front doorbells, they drifted in through keyholes or something (Barbara was a little vague as to how they actually got in, but she was perfectly certain that they never rang front doorbells). She listened to the bell for a few moments, thinking what a frightful noise it was making, until she suddenly realized that she had better go and see who it was.

Barbara found a small girl standing on the doorstep, a child with tangled brown hair and a small thin face covered with freckles. She was clad in a bright-blue overall, very short and shapeless, and stained with earth. Her hands and her bare legs were dirty and scarred with scratches. Barbara was amazed when she saw the child; she had expected something much larger—the noise had been so tremendous.

“Oh!” she said feebly. “I couldn't think
who
it was.”

“They're digging up the flags,” said the child, without the usual preliminaries of convention. “You can't
mean
them to.”

“Flags!” echoed Barbara in bewilderment.