SIX TO SIXTEEN.
INTRODUCTION.
Eleanor and I are subject to _fads_. Indeed, it is a family failing. (Bythe family I mean our household, for Eleanor and I are not, evendistantly, related.) Life would be comparatively dull, up away here onthe moors, without them. Our fads and the boys' fads are sometimes thesame, but oftener distinct. Our present one we would not so much as tellthem of on any account; because they would laugh at us. It is this. Wepurpose this winter to write the stories of our own lives down to thepresent date.
It seems an egotistical and perhaps silly thing to record thetrivialities of our everyday lives, even for fun, and just to pleaseourselves. I said so to Eleanor, but she said, "Supposing Mr. Pepys hadthought so about his everyday life, how much instruction and amusementwould have been lost to the readers of his Diary." To which I replied,that as Mr. Pepys lived in stirring times, and amongst notable people,_his_ daily life was like a leaf out of English history, and his casequite different to the case of obscure persons living simply andmonotonously on the Yorkshire moors. On which Eleanor observed that thesimple and truthful history of a single mind from childhood would be asvaluable, if it could be got, as the whole of Mr. Pepys' Diary from thefirst volume to the last. And when Eleanor makes a general observationof this kind in her conclusive tone, I very seldom dispute it; for, tobegin with, she is generally right, and then she is so much more cleverthan I.
One result of the confessed superiority of her opinion to mine is that Igive way to it sometimes even when I am not quite convinced, but onlyhelped by a little weak-minded reason of my own in the background. Igave way in this instance, not altogether to her argument (for I am sure_my_ biography will not be the history of a mind, but only a record ofsmall facts important to no one but myself), but chiefly because I thinkthat as one grows up one enjoys recalling the things that happened whenone was little. And one forgets them so soon! I envy Eleanor for havingkept her childish diaries. I used to write diaries too, but, when I wasfourteen years old, I got so much ashamed of them (it made me quite hotto read my small moral reflections, and the pompous account of myquarrels with Matilda, my sentimental admiration for the handsomebandmaster, &c., even when alone), and I was so afraid of the boysgetting hold of them, that I made a big hole in the kitchen fire oneday, and burned them all. At least, so I thought; but one volume escapedthe flames, and the fun Eleanor and I have now in re-reading this hasmade me regret that I burned the others. Of course, even if I put downall that I can remember, it will not be like having kept my diaries.Eleanor's biography, in this respect, will be much better than mine; butstill, I remember a good deal now that I dare say I shall forget soon,and in sixteen more years these histories may amuse us as much as theold diaries. We are all growing up now. We have even got to speaking of"old times," by which we mean the times when we used to wade in thebrooks and----
But this is beside the mark, and I must not allow myself to wander off.I am too apt to be discursive. When I had to write leading articles forour manuscript periodical, Jack used to laugh at me, and say, "If itwasn't for Eleanor's disentangling your sentences, you'd put parenthesiswithin parenthesis till, when you got yourself into the very insideone, you'd be as puzzled as a pig in a labyrinth, and not know how toget back to where you started from." And I remember Clement--whogenerally disputed a point, if possible--said, "How do you know shewouldn't get back, if you let her work out each train of thought inpeace? The curt, clean-cut French style may suit some people, whosebrains won't stretch far without getting tired; but others may have moresympathy with a Semitic cast of mind."
This excuse pleased me very much. It was pleasanter to believe that mystyle was Semitic, than to allow, with Jack, that it tended towards thatof Mrs. Nickleby. Though at that time my notion of the meaning of theword Semitic was not so precise as it might have been.
Our home is a beautiful place in the summer, and in much of spring andautumn. In winter I fancy it would look dreary to the eyes of strangers.At night the wind comes over the top of Deadmanstone Hill, and down thevalley, whirls the last leaves off the old trees by the church, andsends them dancing over the closely-ranged gravestones. Then up throughthe village it comes, and moans round our house all night, like somemiserable being wanting to get in. The boys say it does get in, morethan enough, especially into their bedrooms; but then boys alwaysgrumble. It certainly makes strange noises here. I have more than onceopened the back-door late in the evening, because I fancied that one ofthe dogs had been hurt, and was groaning outside.
That stormy winter after the Ladybrig murder, our fancies and the windtogether played Eleanor and me sad tricks. When once we began to listenwe seemed to hear a whole tragedy going on close outside. We coulddistinguish footsteps and voices through the bluster, and then astruggle in the shrubbery, and a _thud_, and a groan, and then a roar ofwind, half drowning the sound of flying footsteps--and then an awfulpause, and at last faint groaning, and a bump, as of some poor woundedbody falling against the house. At this point we were wont to summoncourage and rush out, with the kitchen poker and a candle shapeless withtallow shrouds from the strong draughts. We never could see anything;partly, perhaps, because the candle was always blown out; and when westood outside it became evident that what we had heard was only thewind, and a bough of the old acacia-tree, which beat at intervals uponthe house.
When the nights are stormy there is no room so comfortable as the bigkitchen. We first used it for parochial purposes, small night-schools,and so forth. Then one evening, as we strolled in to look for one ofthe dogs, the cook said, "You can sit here, if you like, Miss Eleanor._We_ always sits in the pantry on winter nights; so there'll be no oneto disturb you." And as we had some writing on hand which we did notwish to have discussed or overlooked by other members of the family, wesettled down in great peace and comfort by the roaring fire which themaids had heaped to keep the kitchen warm in their absence.
We found ourselves so cosy and independent that we returned again andagain to our new study. The boys (who go away a great deal more than wedo, and are apt to come back dissatisfied with our "ways," and anxiousto make us more "like other people") object strongly to this habit ofours. They say, "Who ever _heard_ of ladies sitting in the kitchen?"And, indeed, there are many south-country kitchens in which I should notat all like to sit. But we have this large, airy, spotlessly clean room,with its stone floor, its yellow-washed walls, its tables scrubbed tosnowy whiteness, its quaint old dresser and clock and corner cupboardsof shiny black oak, and its huge fire-place and blazing fire all toourselves, and we have abundance of room, and may do anything we please,so I think it is no wonder that we like it, though it be, in point offact, a kitchen. We cover the table, and (commonly) part of the floor,with an amount of books, papers, and belongings of various sorts, suchas we should scruple to deluge the drawing-room with. The fire cracklesand blazes, so that we do not mind the wind, though there are no blindsto the kitchen, and if we do not "cotter" the shutters, we look out uponthe black night, and the tall Scotch pine that has been tossed so wildlyfor so many years, and is not torn down yet.
Keziah the cook takes much pride in this same kitchen, which partlyaccounts for its being in a state so suitable to our use. She "stones"the floor with excruciating regularity. (At least, some people hate thescraping sound. I do not mind it myself.) She "pot-moulds" the hearth infantastic patterns; the chests, the old chairs, the settle, the dresser,the clock and the corner cupboards are so many mirrors from constantpolishing. She says, with justice, that "a body might eat his dinner offanything in the place."
We dine early, and the cooking for the late supper is performed in whatwe call "the second kitchen," beyond this. I believe that what is nowthe Vicarage was originally an old farmhouse, of which this samecharming kitchen was the chief "living-room." It is quite a journey,through long, low passages, to get from the modern part of the house tothis.
One year, when the "languages fad" was strong upon us, Eleanor and Iearned many a backache by carrying the huge vo
lumes of the _DellaCrusca_ Italian dictionary from the dining-room shelves to the kitchen.We piled them on the oak chest for reference, and ran backwards andforwards to them from the table where we sat and beat our brains overthe "Divina Commedia," while the wind growled in the tall old box-treeswithout, and the dogs growled in dreams upon the hearth.
It is by this well-scrubbed table, in this kitchen, that our biographiesare to be written. They cannot be penned under the noses of the boys.
Eleanor finds rocking a help to composition, and she is swingingbackwards and forwards in the glossy old rocking-chair, with a penbetween her lips, and a vacant gaze in her eyes, that becomes almost alook of inspiration when the swing of the chair turns her face towardsthe ceiling. For my own part I find that I can meet the crisis of atrain of ideas best upon my feet, so I pace up and down past the oldblack dresser, with its gleaming crockery, like a captain on hisquarter-deck. Suddenly Eleanor's chair stands still.
"Margery," she says, laying her head upon the table at her side, "I dothink this is a capital idea."
"Yours will be capital," I reply, pausing also, and leaning backagainst the dresser; "for you have kept your old diaries, and----"
"My dear Margery, what if I have kept my old diaries? I've lived in thisplace my whole life. Now, you have had some adventures! I quite lookforward to reading your life, Margery. You have no idea what pleasure itgives me to think of it. I was thinking just now, if ever we areseparated in life, how I shall enjoy looking over it again and again.You must give me yours, you know, and I will give you mine. Yes; I amvery glad we thought of it." And Eleanor begins to rock once more, and Iresume my march.
But this quite settles the matter in my mind. To please Eleanor I wouldtry to do a great deal; much more than this. I will write myautobiography.
Though it seems rather (to use an expressive Quaker term) a "need-not"to provide for our being separated in life, when we have so firmlyresolved to be old maids, and to live together all our lives in thelittle whitewashed cottage behind the church.