Boxing day found Catherine faced with cross children and angry servants in an untidy house. Christmas presents that hadn’t yet found homes, decorations inclined to fall down and in any case the worse for wear, and the dismantled Christmas tree, waiting to be fetched for an infants’ treat at the Parish Room on the morrow, giving a shoddy air to the drawing-room. Maud’s voice wakened her; she put down the hot-water can with a bump.
“Please ‘um, that dog’s made a mess all over me ’all, an’ there’s some candle grease got into the draw’n’-room carpet, an’ cook’s come over bad, got the sick ’eddick, says she can’t raise ’er ’ead from ’er piller. Never rains but it pours, does it, mum?”
Catherine greeted this list of woes with a resigned sigh. Cook’s sick headaches took place after any gaiety, and Maud’s complaint about the drawing-room carpet suffering from the Christmas tree candles was a yearly affair, but Samson was different: his behaviour needed a real apology.
“I am sorry about Samson, naughty dog giving you extra work, as if you weren’t busy enough already with cook ill.”
Maud was mollified.
“Ah, well,” she said, crashing back the curtains, “t’isn’t to be wondered at, the way those children fed ’im yesterday was enough to upset any dog. I sez to Master Esdras, ‘If you feeds that dog like that, ’e’ll be sick on you, sure as eggs is eggs.’ An ’e sez, ‘Oh, Maud, I ’ates ’im to miss anythin’, seein’ it’s ’is first Christmas.’ ”
Catherine laughed—“Still, I am sorry, especially as it’s going to be a busy day for you.”
“But there,” said Maud as she clattered out, “cook couldn’t choose a better day for one of ’er turns; all that cold turkey in the ’ouse an’ goodness knows what in the way of jellies and that to be eaten up—”
David sat up, he was taking an extra hour in bed as it was Boxing Day. Catherine, as she poured him out a cup of tea, wondered if this was a good moment to broach the subject of her holiday. She decided to start by the circuitous route of the boys’ school, from there jump to the girls’ governess, and from that foothold spring onto her holiday from the back, as it were. She was frustrated by David. The word school set him off.
On hearing of the legacy he had said the boys must go to his old preparatory school. Catherine had agreed at once, and made him write then and there to see if they could go that term. He had written therefore without much thought. He had always intended to send Esdras to school in the coming autumn, and Tobit two terms later. He had planned to ask his Bishop about a good school which would be especially cheap for the sons of the clergy. At first he had been delighted to think his boys could go to Tomlinson’s, but since despatching his letter, his conscience had troubled him. What did he really know of old Tomlinson? He and his brothers had been educated by him, and thanks to his coaching had got into their public school. But what of his church teaching? Trying to visualise those days, he dimly remembered an atmosphere of intense cleanliness, equalling, if not coming before, godliness; of “sportsmanlike behaviour,” eclipsing in the school valuation all other virtues, and of an eternal hurry and rush and scramble, which left no time for individuality, no space in which an imaginative, contemplative soul could grow. Was this what he wanted for his sons? In anxious disjointed sentences he laid these misgivings before Catherine.
She listened in silence, slowly sipping her tea. She wanted the boys to go to Tomlinson’s: it was where their father and uncles had been, it was suitable, and her legacy made it possible. But she knew David would never be coerced into doing a thing merely because it was suitable; he must be completely sure of the rightness of a thing in his own mind, or he would have no rest. So she said:
“I see, darling. Well, if you feel doubtful about it you must go and see Mr. Tomlinson. As you say, it is many years since you were there, and in any case the man may have changed. It’s a pity, though, you didn’t think of all this before you wrote. Still, that can’t be helped. The thing to do is to send him a wire, and ask him to see you tomorrow.”
In his mind, David was doubtful if this was exactly what he wanted. Catherine was always in such a hurry. All this “Send a telegram today and see him tomorrow” atmosphere prevented that self-communing from which alone, he felt, right decisions spring. He would have liked to have discussed the subject further, to reassure himself that Catherine felt as strongly as he did on Church teachings and atmosphere, a point on which he sometimes felt doubts. But Catherine was as usual hurrying, this time into a dressing-gown.
“I’ll see about that telegram after breakfast,” she called over her shoulder as she flew out, bound for the nursery, from which shrieks had been issuing for the last ten minutes.
By the fire in the night-nursery, Nannie was sitting with a newly washed Maccabeus on her knee. He was screaming to the full extent of his lungs, as was Manasses, who was being dressed by Minnie. In a corner with his face to the wall stood Sirach, shaking with sobs. The twins sitting up in their beds waiting to be dressed were fighting over a stuffed monkey. Loud angry voices could be heard from the day-nursery across the passage. Catherine, surveying all this woe from the doorway, wondered where, in her role of justice-cum-ministering angel, to begin. Nannie jerked her head towards Sirach.
“That’s who started the trouble,” she said grimly. “Got out of bed the wrong side this morning. Minnie brings him in here to sew a button on his shirt, and for me to hear his prayers. He fidgets enough to beat the band while the button’s being sewed on, and then, as if he hadn’t given trouble enough, he kneels down and is downright blasphemous.”
At this point Sirach redoubled his howls. Catherine called him to her. He came unwillingly, his nose and eyes streaming. She cleaned him up with her handkerchief, and with a soothing arm placed round him partially stopped his tears. She asked him gravely why he hadn’t said his prayers properly. He set his lips in a thin line, and refused to answer.
“Come on, darling, explain to mummy. Did you mean to be naughty?”
“No!” burst from Sirach like a bomb.
“Kneel down then, darling, and say them properly to me.”
“ ‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild—’ ”
Sobs and hiccups broke up the words, but he got safely through to the end, then startled Catherine by a series of sharp, nervous barks.
“There!” said Nannie triumphantly. “You see ‘um.”
Catherine led a now screaming Sirach down to the drawing-room.
“Now be quiet,” she said sternly. “Why did you bark at the end of your prayers?”
It took some time to calm him sufficiently to get an explanation, but at last it came.
“I did fink Samson wouldn’t never go to heaven if he didn’t say no prayers.”
“So you were saying some for him? Well, I’m glad you’ve explained, because it wasn’t naughty at all.” Here Catherine paused for invention, admitting that Sirach was right according to his lights, but terribly conscious that Nannie would never stand for barks at morning and evening devotions. “But you needn’t do it any more,” she went on. “Dogs say their own prayers.”
“Do vey!” exclaimed Sirach, charmed by a vision of Samson kneeling by his basket, night and morning with folded paws. “If we watched him could we see him?”
“No, darling, he says them to himself.”
“In bed?” questioned Sirach, shocked, having been brought up to consider such a method wrong, except when ill.
“No, standing, I think,” said Catherine, painfully conscious that she was out of her depth, and that such fairytales were not the right way to teach a child. “Now we are going back to the nursery, and I want you to tell Nannie you are very sorry.”
“Why? I aren’t. You said I wasn’t naughty.”
“Sorry for crying, then, and upsetting the babies. You see, if you bigger ones cry, they get frightened and cry, too.”
In the nursery, breakfast had begun.
“Nannie,” said Catherine hurriedly. “Sirach wants to say he’s sorry.”
“That’s a good boy.” Nannie handed him his porridge.
“Sorry vat I cried and frightened the babies. But mummy said vat—”
“Now, darlings, what are you all going to do today—?” Catherine threw into the breach.
All day it was the same, a little tact there, someone to be comforted here, Catherine felt her nerves rubbing raw. Middle-day saw another fracas in the nursery. Baruch was the culprit. White-faced and frightened, but stubborn, he leant back in his chair and refused to eat his dinner.
“It’s sheer naughtiness, too,” said Nannie. “For he started eatin’ it as nicely as possible. Then Minnie says, ‘This turkey makes nice mince,’ and on that my lord spits out what he has in his mouth, and won’t eat any more.”
“Why won’t you eat it, Baruch?” his mother asked gently.
He didn’t answer, but turned to her terrified blue eyes—eyes which acknowledged the awful power vested in grown-ups, but equally mirrored that courage which had made him spit out the turkey.
“Susanna, why won’t Baruch eat his turkey?”
“Hasn’t no fevvers.”
Catherine was convinced there was more to it than that—that in some way the knowledge that it was turkey he was eating had frightened the child.
“Give him bread-and-milk instead,” she directed gravely.
This order had guile. Bread-and-milk, except in case of illness, was a punishment. If Baruch were only being naughty, he would come to his senses when threatened with it. At the same time she was not openly siding with one of the children against Nannie, who would certainly consider she had ordered it as a punishment. Nannie got up with a grim smile, and put on some milk to boil, expecting a wail from Baruch, but he made no sound. Only, as Minnie took away his minced turkey, a look of real relief came over his little face.
By the time the children were in bed, and Maud’s grumbling shut away in the servants’ sitting-room, and Nannie dispatched to friends in the village, Catherine felt such a feeling of relief that she laughed at herself. “I must be needing that holiday, if I let such silly things tire me so.” David came in. “Come on, tackle him now,” she urged herself.
“I shall have to go to town at the end of the week, to interview governesses. I’ve sent an advertisement to the Times. When I’ve got her, and seen her safely installed, and got Esdras and Tobit off to school, I mean to go away for a change.”
“You are feeling ill?” David asked anxiously.
“No, not ill, tired. In need of new energy.”
“You will go to your mother?”
“No. I thought of going to the South of France.” She tried to say it naturally, but even as she spoke, she realised how reckless it sounded.
“The South of France!” David was scared. She must be ill to think of going as far as that. It must be her lungs. She must be hiding something from him.
It took her some time to allay his fears, and having allayed them she was faced with the inevitable: “Then why?”
She made a desperate effort. But how to make a saint who sees all the glory of life in “The daily round, the common task,” grasp the point of view of the ordinary person? How make him realise that since you can only live once, surely some fragment of that once should be given to enjoyment? How, when he has spent the last ten years in one spot, and is willing to spend the rest of his life there, make him understand the outlook of a woman who has produced a baby year after year in the same village, but who is not satisfied, who resents it with every fibre of her being, who aches to see something new? Catherine failed with David. Alternately she frightened and hurt him. Frightened him each time she said she needed a change, and hurt him when she explained it was not for her body but her. Even when they got into bed, David was still trying to understand. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t understand her wanting to go away, actually wanting to leave her husband, and children, and home. He could not get over so amazing a wish.
“Catherine, have you prayed about it?”
“No. I waste enough of God’s time as it is, asking for things I’m never likely to get. I’m not going to bother Him about a thing I’m going to have. I’m right about this holiday, darling, but don’t try to grasp my point of view; just accept it as one of those queer things about me you’ll never understand. Goodnight.”