IX
THE NEW SHOP
Aged about Fifteen. The Cave, in July.
It wasn't a job I liked. Nor would almost anybody. Still people can't say very much to a girl, and I had been at school and so had lost my – what shall I call it? – "sensitiveness."
As Sir Toady says, the golden rule is a first-rate thing – when you leave school. Even with a little addition, it flourishes there too. But you don't want to set up as a Christian martyr at school, I can tell you. It was very noble in the time of St. Francis, and Dr. Livingstone, and these people, and now-a-days there are people to whom we have to send our sixpences – people we never see. Perhaps I shall be one when I am older, but at school – these are Sir Toady's words – you find out what boy has a down on you and down him first! It saves trouble.
Afterwards you can be as sweet and child-like as possible, and go about the world taking people in with blue Madonna eyes all your life. But at school, if you don't want to have the life of a dog, it has got to be different.
Hugh John, of course, says that the principle of school life is for everybody to obey one person. But, you see, that person is Hugh John. If they don't, most likely he will hammer them. And afterwards he will prove how they were wrong. He will do it at length, and at breadth, and at depth, and unto the fourth dimension, till even fellows who can stand up to his fists give in to him so as not to get lectured – or "jawed" as they ignorantly call it. For really what Hugh John says could be taken down and printed right off in a book.
And you have got to believe it, too. For he is always ready to support his opinion, in the same manner as the Highland chief in Kidnapped. "If any gentleman is not preceesely satisfied, I shall be proud to step outside with him."
Joined to this faculty for laying down the law, he possesses an admirable barbaric power of enforcing it, which would have been invaluable in feudal times, and is not without its uses even now.
Well, three days after I went and called on Mrs. Donnan. It came about quite naturally. She is a first-class person to call upon. No fuss or anything – only you have to catch her on the hop. This time I saw her in the garden gathering gooseberries, and in a moment she had her sunbonnet half off her head, and the basket dropped in the furrow, but I was upon her before she could get away.
"Oh, Mrs. Donnan, do let me help you!" I said.
"But, Miss – " she began, not knowing how to go on.
"I should love it," I added quickly, "and I promise not to eat a single one. In fact I shall whistle all the time!"
"Oh, miss," she said, all in a flurry, "you know it is not that! You or any of your family are only too welcome to come, and take as many as they like."
"If you want to keep any for the preserving pot," I said, smiling at her, "I should advise you not to say that to my entire family. There are certain members of it who are capable of cleaning up the branches as your dog Toby there would clean a bone!"
"Oh, you mean Master Toady," she said, all dimples in a moment at the recollection. "He comes here often. But the garden is large, and bless him! even he can't eat more than he can. More than that, he often leaves a rabbit, or even a brace – and my man havin' been a butcher, is remarkable fond of a bit o' game."
"Yes," I said, "my brother's shootings are like your garden, extensive. Still, it is a wonder how he can keep them up on a shilling a day, and all but twopence of it deferred pay!"
"It is a wonder, now I come to think of it!" said the good lady meditatively. "He must be a careful lad with his money!"
"What I wonder at," – I went on talking as soon as I had got her settled back again at the picking of the gooseberries – "is that you never thought of making the prettiest little shop-window in the world of your cakes and pasties and jams and candies. You know nobody can make them in the least like you. Besides, I have spoken to my father and others who know lots more about it, and every one is sure that such a thing would be a great boon to Edam, and that you are the very person to take it in hand. It would not be like an ordinary shop. For every one knows that your husband has made his fortune and retired. But it would give you something to do. Shall I speak to Mr. Donnan about it?"
The poor woman flushed with pleasure at the very idea. So much I could see. Yet she hesitated.
"HE would never consent – his position – his politics – Oh, no!" Mrs. Donnan considered that I had better not speak to the master – at least not then.
However, I thought differently, and it was after the good lady had asked me to stay to tea that my chance came.
Donnan came in, fanning himself with his broad-brimmed Panama. Things had not been going well that afternoon. Nipper had been busy on account of a rush of trade, and had not welcomed his father's criticisms too gratefully. You see, the old man was accustomed to find fault with Nipper's management, and that day there had been a shortage of ice in the shop and a corresponding shortage in Nipper's temper.
Also, Mr. Donnan's more general perambulation had not turned out well. Some rude and vagrant boys had dug out the pet wasp-nest he had been saving up for the next dark night, and there were green flies all over his best Lasalle rose-tree. Two of his best Dorkings had "laid away."
"I don't want any tea to-day, Cynthia!" he grumbled crossly. And without looking at me he went to the sofa and threw himself down with a heavy creaking of furniture.
"My dear," said his wife, "surely you have not seen this young lady who has come to do you the honor of taking tea with you?"
"Nonsense," said I, "as long as there are such cakes to be had at New Erin Villa, the honor is all on my side."
But the polite Irishman was already on his feet.
"Miss Sweetheart – Miss Sweetheart!" he said, "what a blind old hedge-carpenter ye must have thought me! And you your own folks' daughter, and your father treating me like a long-lost brother, and instructin' me on hist'ry and the use of the globes!"
So we had tea, the prettiest little tea imaginable, with Mrs. Donnan going about as soft-footed as a pussy cat, and purring like one too.
Butcher Donnan looked after her with a kind of sudden bitterness. "It's all very well for her," he said; "she makes her life out of such things, but what is there for me to do? I'm about at the end of my tether!"
"Why, help her!" said I.
"Help her!" he muttered, not understanding. "Me, Butcher Donnan – why, the girl is mazed! I can't do housework!"
But I soon showed him I was not so mazed as he thought. He was tired of doing nothing. He wanted a change. Very well then; here was this little house right at the top of Edam Common, with the railway station opposite, and everybody's business taking him that way two or three times a day. What Edam wanted was a confectioner's shop. His wife was dying to have one. He would look a fine figure of a man in a white overall and cap! Hugh John had said it!
He whistled softly, and his little, deep-set eyes twinkled.
"I might ha' known," he said, "when I saw that long-legged brother of yours looking at me as if to calculate what I was good for. He's the fellow to make plans. Now the other – "
Here he laughed as he remembered Sir Toady Lion.
"More like me when I was his age!" he said. "But about the pastry-cook foolishness. What put that into his head?"
"It isn't foolishness," I answered, "and nobody that I know of ever puts anything into Hugh John's head!"
"He certainly is a wonder!" ("Corker" was what he said.)
Then I explained. One side of the villa was certainly expressly designed for a shop, the drawing-room and back drawing-room having side connections with the kitchen, only needed to be fitted with shelves and counters. The other side of the house and all above stairs might remain intact.
To my surprise Mr. Donnan never said a word concerning his position, his political aspirations, his illuminations, and disporting of the green harp of Ireland.
"But what are we to do with Cynthia's parlor furniture?" he asked instead. I could see a look of joy flash across his wife's face.
"Donnan," she said, "we will make the empty room above into a parlor. It's a perfect god-send. That boy should be paid by Government to make plans for people!"
Butcher Donnan bent his brows a moment on his wife. "Oh, you are in it, are you, Cynthia? Then I suppose I may as well go and order my white apron and cap?"
"Think how well they will become you!" said his wife, who also must have kissed the Blarney stone – the old one, not the new.
I agreed heartily. Butcher Donnan heaved a sigh. "And me, that never was seen but in decent blue," he said, "me to put on white like a mere bun-baker – and at my time of life!"
I said that it was certainly scandalous, but seeing that he would have nothing to do with the work except to sell, and arrange the windows for market-days, it would not matter so much.
"I shall need a small oven!" said his wife, "and a new set of French 'casserole molds' (which is to say patty-pans) and some smaller brass pans, also – "
"Perhaps I was wrong," I interposed cunningly, "to lead Mr. Donnan into so much expense."
I knew that, if anything, this would fetch him, and it did.
"Expense, is it? Expense, Miss Sweetheart! Ha, Ha!" He slapped his pocket. "Ask your friend Mr. Anderson down at the Bank (not that he will tell you!) whether Butcher Donnan is a warm man or not? He did not retire on four bare walls and a pocket-handkerchief of front-garden like some I could tell you of. Cynthia, you shall have all the brass pans you want, and as for the front shop – well, there won't be the like of it, not as far as Dumfries! We shall have a van too, gold and blue!"
Butcher Donnan was all on fire now, and when Nipper came in he clapped him on the shoulder, crying that he had better look sharp. He, Butcher Donnan, was going to set up such a shop as never was seen in Edam, and people would never be wanting "fresh meat" any more, but live on pies and shortcake and sweets for ever and ever.
At this Nipper looked no little relieved, and even listened to the details with a secret satisfaction.
"Father," he said, "the shop down town can run itself the first day of the opening of yours. I'm coming up to see you face the public in your new nursing togs!"
"You're an impudent young jackanapes," said his father, clenching his fists, "and if it were not that you have to stick to business and pay me the money you owe me, I would thrash you on the spot, old as you are!"
"Oh, let Nipper alone," said I, as cheerfully as I could, "he has the sweet tooth. I know it well, and I will wager he will yet be one of your best customers!"
"He will bring his money along with him then every time," growled his father. "And now I am off to see Mr. Hetherington, the architect. We must get things ship-shape!"
"But," cried his wife, "you have never tasted your tea!"
"Oh, bother my tea!" said Butcher Donnan, flouncing out, having fallen a victim to Hugh John's dangerous imagination. But he looked in again, his topper hat of Do-Nothing Pride already exchanged for the cap of Edam Commerce.
"Tell that young gentleman of yours," he said, "that, if things turn out well, he is always welcome at our shop, eh, Cynthia? And nothing to pay! And you, Miss Sweetheart, I hope to live long enough to bake your bride's-cake!"
"There he goes!" murmured his wife, "in a week Donnan will think that he has made every single thing in the shop, from the brass weights on the counter to the specimen birthday-cake in the window!"
X
NIPPER NEGLECTS HIS BUSINESS
August eighth. Aged Fifteen.
It is only a month since the Donnans opened their new shop up on the open square facing the market hill, and not far from the railway station. It was one of a row of villas, mostly tenanted by men who had returned from the "pack" – that is, who had made a neat little fortune in the business which calls itself Credit Drapery, but which, perhaps undeservedly, is called much harder names by its clients, especially when its back is turned.
These, being the aristocracy of a Shilling-a-Week and Cent. – per-Cent., objected exceedingly to a mere confectioner's shop thrusting its nose into the midst of their blue-stone walls, picked out by window-sills and lintels of raw-beef Locharbriggs freestone. But they could not help it, and after the chief of them all, Oliphant McGill, had smelt the now floury fist of the Reformed Idler, and been informed what would happen if he "heard a wurrrd out of the heads av wan o' them" – there fell a great peace on Whinstone Villas.
Some even became customers, and the new business increased with wonderous rapidity. Butcher Donnan became Sweet-Cake Donnan, but that made no difference to his force of arm, or to the respect in which he was universally held.
As he had prophesied, it was not long till he had a pale-blue-and-gold covered van on the road, dandily hooded in case of rain, and with two spy-holes so that the driver could see for himself what was coming up behind him.
From the Cave of Mystery high up on Hugh John's hill we could see it crawling along the roads (really it was going quite fast), like a lumpy cerulean beetle, the like of which for brilliance is not to be found in Curtis.
And the driver was Butcher Donnan himself. He knew all the farmers, and as he had made one fortune already, as fortunes went in Edam, the people were the readier to deal with him. Sometimes even the poorest would save up a penny for one of Mrs. Donnan's sponge-cakes. It was soon called the "Watering Cart," because in hot weather you could tell when it had gone along the road by the drip from the ice underneath, by means of which the jellies and confections were kept cool, while in winter the blue-and-gold beetle steamed like a volcano with hot mince-pies. Oh, Butcher Donnan believed in delivering his goods to the customer in the finest possible condition!
But this same Butcher Donnan being now driver and salesman-out-of-doors, and Mrs. Donnan equally busy in the kitchen, it was obvious that some one must be found for the shop. How I should have loved the job! But a certain Eben Dickson, apprentice with Nipper at the down town business, was called in, and so thoroughly proved his liking for the place in the course of a single afternoon that a more permanent and less appreciative successor was sought for.
Eben was laid up for several days, owing to an accident which happened to him when Butcher Donnan returned from his journeyings afield. It is understood that Nipper also remonstrated with him, without, however, the use of many words.
The van had therefore to be put out of commission for several days till another arrangement was possible. And again it was Hugh John who, with his eyelids half closed and looking at the bright landscape through the long three-draw telescope, cut the knot with a carelessly breathed suggestion.
"Why not ask Elizabeth Fortinbras?"
"They would never dare!" said I. "Old Fortinbras thinks himself no end of a swell!"
"Yes," said Hugh John, with tranquil irony, "he has failed in at least four businesses – last of all in a stamp-shop at East Dene, while the Donnans have only succeeded in one – and are on the point of making another fortune in the second. But let them ask Elizabeth. She will not say 'no'!"
"What of her mother?" I said – "her father?"
"Her mother cannot support her – her father won't. In six months she will have to support them both!" said the philosophic Hugh John. "You ask Lizzie. Lizzie is a sensible girl."
I asked Hugh John how he knew.
"Oh, just – I know!" he answered shortly. And in another than Hugh John I should have suspected something. Because, you know, Elizabeth Fortinbras is a very pretty girl – not beautiful, but with a freshness and charm that does far better, a laugh that is hung on a hair-trigger; not much education, of course, because her stupid old frump of a mother – yes, I can say it, though Lizzie would not – has never permitted her to be long away from her, but must be served like a duchess in her room on pretext of headaches and megrims.
Being without a servant, she leaves Elizabeth to do all the housework, and all that she knows she has learned from the books I have lent her – and, as I now begin to suspect, Hugh John also.
"And where is Elizabeth?" I said, for I saw the three-draw glass hovering in the neighborhood of the Fortinbras Cottage.
"Why, where should she be?" cried Hugh John. "At this hour of Monday morning she will certainly be hanging out the week's wash! There, put your eye down, don't stir the telescope, and you will see her. Also her sister Matilda sitting under a tree doing nothing but reading the latest story her mother has got out of the library!"
Hugh John's grasp of detail was something marvelous.
And, indeed, as I looked, through the tremble of the heat-mist the slender figure of Elizabeth Fortinbras jigged into view. She was standing on tiptoe, like the girl in the old illustrated nursery Caldecott, when
"By came a blackbird and snapped off her nose."
Which would certainly have been a pity in Elizabeth's case, for the nose was a very pretty saucy one, and worthy of a better fate. She had on a short skirt. Her feet were thrust into sandals, and her white working blouse, open at the neck, had red peas on it. Concerning all which points Hugh John had nothing to learn.
Now I had always liked Elizabeth. There was something wild-wood and gay as a bird about her. She wore the simplest dresses, made by herself, and when she played in our woods there was a good deal of tomboy about her. She was older than any of us, and had often been our leader in high-spy or at running through the wood.
I could run faster, but (as Hugh John said) I ran like a boy, with my hands clasped and my elbows in. As for the way that Elizabeth ran, that was quite different. She ran – just like Elizabeth.
But the way she tossed about the youngsters was a sight. She romped with them among the hay. She thought nothing of bringing back Maid Margaret on her back for miles and miles, with a hop and a skip at every second pace, as if only to show how lightly her burden sat astride her shoulders, and how entirely impossible it was for Elizabeth herself to walk along in a sedate and ladylike way. Like a questing collie, she constantly left the highway. You could see her mount a bank as if she had wings. She was wayward, uncertain as a bird, fitful as a butterfly, changing her purpose with the whim of the children. Indeed, there was no one, in the opinion of all of us when we were little, like Elizabeth Fortinbras.
It was like spying out some shy fleeing wood-nymph to see her, with a few long, easy movements, springing and bounding across the stepping-stones of the upper river – or, the petticoat held daintily high, all in a faint flurry of white spray and whiter feet, negotiating the shallow ford at the first Torres Vedras when we were paddling there in the hot days.
Yet, when once across, she never seemed to have "shipped a drop," as Sir Toady Lion asserted in his best naval manner.
Rather, be it said, she gave herself a shake like a scudding swallow that has dipped its wing a little too deep in the pond, and lo! our Elizabeth was dry again. She never had so much as to preen a feather.
They always tell me that I am a little in love with Elizabeth myself, and I am not ashamed of it. Once, from his hiding-place, Hugh John showed me a young dainty fawn come stepping lightly through the wood. I saw it skip airily across the Esk below the second Torres Vedras, ascend the bank in three bounds, walk demurely across the road like a maiden coming out of church, look about her as if gathering her skirts for something daring, and then, with one sidelong bound, swift and light, lo, she was over the high paling and lost in the wood!
Elizabeth Fortinbras would have done it just like that, as gracefully and as unconsciously. But to think of her taking a place in the Donnan's Confectionery shop – surely his good angel had for once forsaken Hugh John – plan-maker to the world in general, and private domestic Solomon!
"Go and ask Elizabeth Fortinbras!" said Hugh John – and he said it as if he had good reason to know that Elizabeth would accept. Though that might only be his usual accent of quiet certainty. You see, Hugh John compels belief. Confidence accrues to his lightest guess, which is not accorded to Sir Toady on his oath. It is a shame that any one should be so favored by nature in the matter of his word. I, being a girl, am suspected of inaccuracy, Sir Toady of "monkeying," and Maid Margaret of knowing nothing about the matter.
But Hugh John may be inaccurate. He may be "monkeying" in secret, and he may know less than any one else about any matter. Nevertheless he is accredited like a plenipotentiary. He moves like Diogenes, his tub unseen about him. A calm certainty accompanies him. He inspires confidence, blind as that of a bank cashier in the multiplication table. All, too, without break, without insistence. To look at, he is just a tall lad, with singularly quiet manners, who looks at you fixedly out of gray eyes very wide apart. Only – you believe him.
But that is the reason why, in my secretest heart, as soon as Hugh John said, "Ask Elizabeth Fortinbras!" I knew that Elizabeth Fortinbras would accept.
I had to ask her myself. Or rather I took Mrs. Donnan with me, who did as she was told, smiling and stammering apologies in the proper places. As for me, I said what Hugh John had advised me to say, in our last long talk together up in the Cave.
Of course it was no use in the world consulting Elizabeth's parents. Her father was lost in dreams of making another fortune by a new and original butter-cooler which would put all others out of the market. Her mother, fretful and fine-ladyish, would declare that she could not do without her. But I knew that it would be an exceedingly good thing for her younger sister to get her nose taken out of the Penny Novelette. If Elizabeth went, she would have to do the housework, and so might yet save her soul – though as yet she had shown no signs of possessing any.
We talked to Elizabeth, however, or at least I did, without any mention of this. There were many knick-knacks about, on the mantelpiece, on the tables, on brackets set in corners – all the work of that ingenious, useless man, Mr. Robert Fortinbras. As we talked, Elizabeth moved gracefully about among these, her duster never hurried, never idle.
I never saw any one who could "play at work" as Elizabeth could. Any one else would have sat down and received her guests. Not so Elizabeth. If we chose to come at eleven o'clock in the morning – well, we must take her as we found her. In another quarter of an hour, if we stayed, we would be asked to come into her kitchen, and watch her peeling potatoes. And that would have seemed quite natural – not only to Elizabeth, but to us.
Elizabeth did not reply hastily. She heard me out without sign either of consent or of refusal. Mrs. Donnan, stout and motherly, purred acquiescence. Yes, they would give her the warmest welcome – if she cared to stay, the happiest home. But no doubt she would prefer to return to her own home at nights.
The next words which reached our ears were Elizabeth all over. "If I come, I shall stay," she said, "because if I went home, the work of the house would simply be left till I got back!"
The reason was clear, and almost the consent.
"Had you not better consult your father and mother?" I said, a little breathlessly, having been brought up in the faith of obedience to parents.
But in this matter Elizabeth, taught by long experience, had evolved other methods.
"I will tell them," she said simply. "When do you want me to begin? Monday? Very well!"
And it was on Tuesday that Nipper Donnan began to neglect his business.