Grannie

Front matter

Book, w 4 7 £

(bpmM 0 . ?j

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT;

II

If Patricia had not given me a pen, Bounce a blotter and Putts a pig, I should possibly never have written to Jordan Rivers, and probably my life would have continued its quiet course, gently ordered in all its paths by Claudia; which paths are herbaceously bordered, on the one side (in summer time) by delphiniums and larkspurs and sweet-williams, and penstemons and Canterbury bells, and lupins and hollyhocks; by lilies and by everything that should be found in the garden of a really happy old woman: on the other side bordered by lavender hedges, sweetbriar hedges, and by everything of most delicious scent that Londoners grow and smell in their dreams.

Since Claudia has given me permission to write, I shall write of her. That I am an anxiety to her I know. She forgets that I managed many years without her, and that without me she possibly wouldn't have lived to manage any one; which would have been a pity, since she does it exceedingly well and without apparent effort.

She partly manages many things — schools, Sunday and secular; clubs, men’s, boys’ and girls’; holds meetings, political and social; tells the young men in the village what things they should do, and still more definitely what things they should not do. In the folly of my old age I should have left that to their own good taste and judgment. Claudia calls spades spades and, incidentally, rakes rakes. She belongs to societies which busy themselves, not only with this generation, but about the generations to come. In my young day the generation to come was a thing dreamed of by mothers who were slow to speak of these dreams except in prayer ; and since prayer is a thing that comes from the heart and not through the lips, none knew of these prayers. But they were good prayers for all that, and the answers to them the mothers learned to read in the touch of their children’s hands, in the purity of their children’s hearts, and in the laughter on their children’s lips. But I must own Claudia does not compare unfavourably with the young women of my day. There is something very splendid and forceful about her, and other qualities softer and gentler will come. And when all that force can do has been done, the muscles 16 of her arms may relax and into the softness of their curves may creep, I hope, little children. But they should be sons, for it is not given to all mothers of sons to be the right mothers to bring up sons. As fearless as the sons must she be who would make them brave, as gentle must they be as she is who would make them strong.

How indignant Claudia would be if she could know of what I am writing. And no doubt she does, for nothing escapes her.

Of my daughters, Cynthia is married happily and well. And my Bettine is married most happily, but not too well, as the world counts happiness, or pretends to think it counts happiness.

Personally, I believe there is no woman so worldly as not to be touched, either with sympathy or envy, at the sight of married lovers.

Ralph, my eldest son, is married and reigns in his father’s stead at Winthorpe. He has three children — two like unto himself and a third like unto their mother. I could wish them all like her. She, on her part, rejoices in that they resemble Ralph. But she likes me to say I wish they were like her, so I say it and she slips her hand into mine and says “You darling,” when it is most obviously she who is the darling. Her eyes encourage the world to say please, and are quick to respond with thank you. Her name is Isla and she comes from the west coast of Scotland, and there is the freshness and softness of mists and moors in her eyes, and in her voice the sound of purling waters — especially when she laughs, which she does often and softly. Above everything else she has made me grandmother to Putts. It is an absurd name; but it is mine for him, and his for me is Grannie Patts — just as absurd. I don’t suppose any other foolish old woman would even answer to it, unless for reasons of politeness or because she was deaf. Certainly no sane woman would rejoice in it as I do.

There can be few boys like Putts. He has what our old nurse Benny calls “a way with him.” He says, “If I was a little clock, Grannie Patts, no one should wind me but you!” It is no use whatever other old women saying they wouldn’t warm to a compliment so delicately expressed, because I simply shouldn’t believe them. Putts laughs just as his mother laughs and for even less reason, and he has her dimples, which, combined 18 with a powdering of freckles on his absurd nose, and eyes set sufficiently wide apart, make him a very attractive little man. I am supposed to spoil him, which supposition no doubt has some foundation; but the stories are added too quickly and are built upon fiction. I have a theory that love spoils no one. But it must be the real thing.

Of girl grandchildren I have many — among them Patricia. If I have a favourite — but I have not! So soon as I think I love Patricia best, up pops a vision of Bounce. So round, so soft, so delicious a thing of four is she, that I could not say I loved any one better. If I did she would frown and frown and frown till she laughed, and when she laughs she laughs till she aches, and then she gasps “Oh, pelese top!” when it rests entirely with her whether I stop or not. She is the youngest daughter of my second son Dick.

Dick has been married just long enough to be possessed of Patricia, and the silly old boy hasn't got accustomed to it yet, which in eighteen years he might have done. Besides being father to Patricia he has other business, which takes him to the city every morning. And every evening he comes back to Patricia, in the schoolroom for choice, where in winter she toasts muffins for him while he tells her all he has been doing and saying and thinking during the day. And he imagines Patricia tells him all she has been doing and saying and thinking; but this old grandmother knows she may tell him something of what she has been doing and saying, but very, very little of what she has been thinking, for the very excellent reason that she is eighteen, and at that age thoughts are dreams set to sacred music.

Anna, Dick’s wife, has money, and when he married her I remember the mothers of other sons laying their hands on mine and saying in soft voices, punctuated with sighs, “How lucky he is!” as no doubt he was. Every man must hold himself so who wins the woman he loves. He who continues to love the woman he has won is still luckier.

But I have a suspicion that when Dick looks his tenderest and kindest, it is Patricia who returns the look with the swift little smile that will win her more than her father’s love, and Dick knows that and is beginning to feel jealous of that smile, or rather of the man who shall bring it to Patricia’s eyes, for it is with her eyes she smiles best.

Hugh, my youngest son, is unmarried, and occasionally comes back to us for week-ends, at which times Benny becomes deliriously busy. With her I am content to share him. But at night it is she who tucks him up. That reward, for all the nights he kept her awake in years gone by, she has earned.

Without Benny neither Claudia nor I would know when to change from winter to summer underclothes. One might suppose it to depend on our feelings; but it does not. It entirely depends on Benny's, and, in strict accordance with her ideas on the subject, so do I at all events change mine.

Among the many things that bind me to Benny is the memory of the child we loved and lost. Together at his bedside years ago we watched, she and I. As anxiously as I watched she watched, as sleeplessly, as patiently, as hopefully, as prayerfully, with the mother-light in her eyes, the breaking ache in her heart.

When the child left us, it was Benny's strength that upheld me. It was she who bade me look beyond the darkness of this world's night. It was she who, to awaken my dead heart, led me to the bedside of my Bettine, then a baby. It is Benny now who reminds me of a hundred things I have forgotten — words he said, looks he gave, things he thought.

Benny has in her keeping the key of the gates of a world of her own and of that child's. And I imagine that when she comes to the gates of heaven she will find her key fits. To heaven there are many gates, and one master-key fits them all. It is made to the pattern of love and the mould has never been broken, because Nannies are careful people.

None of Benny's earthly keys fit anything. “But, ma'am," he says, “there's always the wardrobe to fall back upon"; which cryptic saying means that once, in a dilemma arising from lost keys, the wardrobe key did fit my box. Benny has ever since then, along with my clothes, put her faith in wardrobes. There is a little of her faith in every nook and cranny of our house — and her world.

It is the Bennys of England who are her greatest and most enduring monuments. Is that, perhaps, why there is no corner in Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's for the nurses of England's 22 greatest men? many of whom owe much of their greatness, and their monuments entirely to the teaching of those women who guided and guarded them as children. Perhaps in the hearts of those men were raised monuments to those women, and a true Nannie would rather live in the hearts of those she loved than stand carved in marble before the eyes of thousands to whom she was never known.

For Nannies are shy people. They seldom get beyond the other side of the drawing-room door, and very often no more than a kindly hand appears, and the sound of a voice is heard encouraging the child to go to its own mother. Few Nannies would dare to say, “She won’t hurt you, darling,” but some would like to.

When I told Claudia my little idea about the nurses of England having no monuments raised to them, she, being for the moment of a socialistic turn of mind, begged me to remember that most of England’s greatest men had had no nurses at all.

“But, Claudia,” I said, “think of the children no older than themselves who took care of them.”

“Ah! there, mother darling, you defeat your own argument. It is the woman pure and simple, not the nurse !”

So now I keep my little ideas to myself, for of course Claudia is right — a nurse after all is nothing but a woman, and every woman — at heart — a nurse.

Ill

I received another letter from Guy in answer to mine.

“Thanks awfully for the pound I quite understand about the pistole besides it's gone. I’m going to buy a underhand gramaphone from a chap, he calls it that because it isn’t bran new. I told him he needn’t but he’d rather. I’ve taken a passing fancy to it, so I’m going to buy it. You can listen to it so that’s fair. You can play it backwards but it isn’t really so good I don’t advise you to only you may if you like. We don’t always want to do the things we may, worse luck. The gramaphone is kind of yours. — Your loving, Guy.

“P. C . — The homesickling is better, he’s not a bad little beast.

“P. P. C. — Mr. Barnes has gone all round the world to get fresh air.”

I asked Claudia who Mr. Barnes was, so wise a man he seemed, and when Claudia said he was the science master at Guy’s school, it struck me that Guy, at nine, might well be able to exist without a science master for a bit. Judging by the experiments boys make at home, a scientist must feel, even more than most men, the want, at times, of fresh air.

“Guy hasn’t been asking for things, darling?” said Claudia severely.

“On the contrary, my child, he is offering me the holiday rights of his underhand gramophone, any way I like, backwards or forwards, although he doesn’t recommend it backwards.”

“It’s all very well mummy mine to try and put me off, but those grandchildren do impose upon you. You must be firm and learn to say ‘No.’ ”

I firmly believe my Claudia has made out a time-table by which she would have me live my days. I imagine it to be as follows — it amuses me to imagine it as follows:

8 a.m. Rise.

9. Breakfast lightly.

9.30. Read letters.

10.30. Answer letters, saying “No” to any requests made by daughters-in-law and grandchildren, on principle.

11.30- 11.40. Drink milk, eat biscuit, or, better still, eat biscuit, drink milk.

11.45. Go into the garden, remembering that it is ten minutes to the gardener’s dinnerhour, therefore I must keep off, not only the grass, but everything pertaining to gardens, sick children and church matters.

1- 1.30. Rest and read papers.

1.30. Lunch lightly.

2- 2.30. Rest and read papers again.

3.30. Drive and pay calls, leaving rice puddings, not where I call, but where I visit — a nice distinction.

5. Tea.

5.30- 6.30. Garden, remembering the gardener knows the ages of all my children, their occupations, tastes, the number of my grandchildren, and that he leaves off work at six, and that his wife has rheumatism and needs him to grumble to.

6.30- 7.30. Read something really worth reading.

8. Dinner.

9-10.30. Knit for the poor, 1 purl, 1 plain; play patience or read something light.

11.30. Lights out. “No dreaming, darling !”

Does Claudia imagine it is only at night I dream? Do I keep her time-table? No. I read my letters at breakfast, I say “Yes” to nearly everything my grandchildren ask of me, I pop in and out of the garden, I bolt my biscuit or give it to the puppy, and I gulp down my milk. I play patience in the drawer of my writing-table and close the drawer when I hear Claudia coming. I read the newspaper at every odd moment I choose. I find the most frivolous novels really worth reading, just because I am able to imagine myself mother to the authors, which makes all the difference in the world. Let any one try who has the courage and the imagination.

Now that I am old, it is the book of romance that most appeals to me. The hero I would choose is he who fights most duels and always wins; who loves passionately and wildly, and whose love for a brief moment is spurned, to be returned with fervour at the last. I love to read of couples eloping, of breathless rides in the dead of the night, of pursuers close at the heels of the fugitives. I glory in the darkness that saves them, in the light that blinds them. . . .

“Mother, I'm ashamed of you,” says Claudia 28 when, at eleven o’clock at night, she finds me deep in a book of this kind, and taking away the book, she slips a marker between the pages and says, “To-morrow, darling” ; and I bear it because I have always looked at the end long before that, and Claudia goes to bed thinking me much better than I am, and what would most mothers do if most daughters didn’t think them that?

I live in the country in what is called, and rightly called, a small way. To live in a small way, after living in a comparatively big way, you must do several things and live without many.

To begin with — for three men-servants substitute two women. The one of two women will clean boots less well than the one of three men. But she will put foliage with flowers, and for an old woman which is it better to live with, beautifully arranged flowers or well-blacked boots?

Knowing men, I know which the masculine mind would prefer.

I, on the contrary, choose the well-arranged flowers, because, whether the blacking be put on well by a man or indifferently by a woman, it is effectually licked off by the puppy, who busies himself about the matter while I write.

Claudia gently reminds me that, as it happens, the boots are blacked by the odd man. I am in no way discomfited. The odd man owns the puppy's mother, so the puppy has more than ordinary puppy-right to lick off the blacking if he chooses, because its blackness must remind him of his mother. She, on her part, if she remembers him, may plead for her son because she is never far from the boot-hole, and wouldn’t have to go out of her way to do it.

I live in that part of the country that is held by my daughters-in-law to be salubrious beyond any other.

Children without grandmothers go to Westgate-on-Sea, and for such there is no place better. I am sometimes assured that grandchildren are never really happy unless with their grannie. And if their wish to be with her should coincide with a desire on the part of their mothers to be in Paris, the grannie should be wise enough to show no surprise. She should be old enough to smile the smile that doesn’t show. After all, grannies like to be taken for granted. It pleases them vastly to find themselves not too old or too dull to win the confidence of their children’s children. They are keenly sensitive to the criticism of young people. They would like to see with 30 young eyes, but in some cases they cannot. Old sight is not young sight, and there are things I, for one, cannot see. I cannot see a baby on its mother's knee through the smoke of its mother's cigarette. It is foolish of me. Behind that cloud of smoke I ought to be able to see clearly just the same love that mothers of another generation felt for their children, for it must be there, since a mother is a mother and a baby a baby for all time. But the smoke brings tears to my eyes and dims them. Pretty young mothers, put out your cigarettes while your babies nestle in your arms, if only to please an old grandmother !

Another thing I cannot see is tenderness in ragging, or chivalry in romping. I know well enough that under the guise adopted by every succeeding generation to cloak that which is most sacred, must lie the tenderness that is the only true tie binding husband and wife; but in tearing the cloak to rags it is possible to tear also the garment of gentleness itself which clothes all true lovers. And it would be a grievous pity to do that, for it is a hard thing to mend that which is torn and, mend it never so neatly, the place will show, for the day must come when the man or woman will hold it up to the light to see how it wears.

Claudia thinks my book must be very dull, which no doubt it is. She says ragging is as old as the hills. “You absurd mummy, men and women will always flirt !”

That is more than I can stand. “Flirt, Claudia, of course they will! I would do it myself,” as indeed most women do, whether they know it or not. It is instinctive — or should be.

IV

The name of our house is Anne’s Folly, and I love the name almost as well as I love the house. I like to picture the merry Anne — (for merry she must have been) — building her house as gaily as a bird builds her nest. What a moss lining is to a bird a bow window must have been to Anne. In spite of a difficult and peppery husband, Anne got her way and her windows.

To some prosaic minds a bow window in itself is a folly, for it cannot be said to be necessary to one’s happiness. But Anne perhaps knew that, from the side of a bow window, she would catch a glimpse of her son returning from school quite a second sooner than she would have done had she built dull, flat windows flush with the walls. And that was reason enough.

Anne wore blue ribbons whenever she had the chance, that I know, and a pink rose in her hair on occasions. She had laughing blue eyes, and I can imagine the architect vastly enjoying the planning and building of Anne’s Folly. For he must have been as joyous a young man as he was a happy builder, and the latter he was without doubt, because Anne's Folly is essentially a happy house — a house that laughs in every corner. And to this day birds hold high holiday in the eaves, and sing of the days when there was room at Anne's Folly for everything that loved and laughed and sang. Anne must have found the peppery husband a trial; but I dare say she managed him, and I like to imagine him softening at moments and paying, without a word, the window tax. Particularly must he have softened when he stood with Anne, in a bow window, watching the going of their boy back to school. At that moment poor Anne must have been in sore need of comfort and distraction.

Claudia doesn't believe it was a son Anne watched from the window.

Properly speaking I should live in the dowerhouse of Winthorpe. Ralph, with his cheek against mine, held a brief for the glimpse of Winthorpe to be caught in winter, through the bare branches of the trees. It was just that glimpse I had not the courage to catch. “Please, my boy, let me go," I begged, and he let me go.

If Claudia regrets the dignity that should have clung to her, as squire’s sister, in the village, she does not say so. What she has lost in dignity she has gained in authority. Any one at Winthorpe — of any age at all — might have resented being lectured by the young woman they remembered as a long-legged, harum-scarum child.

Here no one would suspect her legs of anything but length. Her footsteps lead her sedately down sober paths of virtue, and they have never strayed from the high road of earnest endeavour.

We have our struggles — she and I — but I love her well enough to be deeply sorry, and not a little ashamed, when I come off victorious, and she, when victorious, feels just the same. She has reason oftener than I have to feel that particular kind of sorrow, and she expresses it so nicely and so honestly that I love her all the more for that spirit of generosity, and for choice would have her win — sometimes.

One lovely summer morning we had a struggle — a momentous one. On the breakfast-table I found a letter from Isla. To say it was a surprise would be untrue, because Benny had hinted at a glimpse caught of Mrs. Ralph’s handwriting, and I am ashamed to say my prayers, in consequence, had been a little hurried. Not that it shamed me greatly or worried me at all, because the older I grow the more sympathy and kindness and tolerance I attribute to the workings of an Allgoverning Mind. The older I grow the less narrow, bigoted and hard becomes that God, and that He has a sense of humour He has shown in diversities of ways, most particularly perhaps in making both men and baby donkeys.

Well, I hurried and found the promised letter on the top of a pile of others. Our parlourmaid, so far as she is able to judge, arranges my letters in the order of their acceptability, bills at the bottom. This letter from Isla was to ask if I could have Putts for a few days; principally, it appeared, because Putts was pale. She begged me to say “No” if I would rather not have him. “In case you can’t, I have said nothing to him about it.”

Putts pale, Putts pink, it was all the same; he must come whenever he wished and for as long as he liked. I left the rest of the letter unread and rang the bell with more vehemence than is my habit. When I said I had a telegram to send, our sympathetic Bowles put her best Putts foot forward and brought a form and a pencil. 36

At this moment came Claudia, fresh and fragrant, in to breakfast. “Haven’t I told you, darling,” she said, “to eat your breakfast before you read your letters. You are sending a telegram?” she added, closing her hand over mine.

I admitted it, and said hurriedly that it was only to say Putts could come so soon as he liked and for as long as Isla wished.

Claudia put on her most dignified manner — it can be immense, and I sometimes feel how wasted it is in this small village.

“Winthorpe was perfectly healthy when we were children,” she said, skinning the crust from the loaf. She went on to say she imagined I would like her to be perfectly honest with me. Dear child, has she ever been anything but ruthlessly honest with me? “Well?” I said.

“Well, darling, the position is this. I have told a certain Mr. and Mrs. Brace that they may come and stay for a week or for as long as they like, in fact for as long as is necessary. They are coming to recuperate after a year of very strenuous work. Their minds and bodies are worn out. They are greatly interested in a society for the protection of ”

“Of mothers ?” I suggested, becoming, I know, bristly and odious.

But why should people do more than they are fit to undertake and then make others uncomfortable when they break down?

Claudia admitted “of mothers’’ in a sense — the mothers of the people who in the future would count. “You see, I cannot disappoint them,” she said kindly.

“Disappoint who?” I wondered; — those babies who were some day to count, or the Braces, who at that moment counted most uncomfortably in my life? The Braces were the expression of Claudia’s socialistic tendency which began to develop about that time, and which would have grown into something stronger if Mr. James P. Carter had not uprooted it once for all.

Seeing that the Braces were inevitable, I suggested the big bedroom and the dressing-room. Claudia said they would require four rooms — two for themselves, one for the maid, and another for the secretary. There was still room for Putts; but it appeared Putts would worry them; they didn’t care for children. The end of it was I wrote a telegram saying Putts must come later, and Claudia wrote another. Both were handed 38 folded to Bowles. In silence Claudia and I finished our breakfast. What is it that makes some silences so unbearable?

Claudia felt this one so much that she got up and left the room, humming as she went — a hymn tune — of all signs most ominous! A second later she passed the window, her flower-basket on her arm, her scissors twirling on her finger. She had won, and I knew was feeling the pangs of remorse.

A few minutes after Claudia had left the room, and while I was still wondering what excuse I could find to follow her into the garden, Bowles came in to ask if I would kindly read a word for her that she found difficult. It was Claudia's telegram she handed to me. The indistinct word I deciphered easily enough ; less easily I read the rest of the telegram, because my eyes were filled with tears at the generosity and kindliness of my child. She asked the Braces to come at another time. Dear, generous Claudia, it was my turn to show a like generosity. I asked Bowles to ask Benny for my garden hat. While Bowles went to ask Benny to do a thing she could perfectly well have done herself — had she dared! — I tore up Claudia's message and wrote another asking the Braces to come by an afternoon train, on the day arranged by Claudia.

Benny brought my hat. I put it on and I went out to the sweet-pea hedge.

“Claudia?” I called.

“Yes!” said a voice from the other side.

“Darling!”

“Silly old mummy mine!”

“Am I a disagreeable, autocratic old lady?”

A hand was thrust through the tangle of flowers. It was wet with the morning dew. I kissed it. So we made it up, and I never told Claudia her beloved Braces were coming. We avoided the subject; but when the day came I put roses in their separate rooms and prayed for strength to bear with them — the Braces I mean.