III
She was an apparition, a presence requiring announcement and explanation, evidently wishing to forestall all social preliminaries. Young, tall, radiant, lovely, dressed in a manner determined by both the fact and humour of her journey, she was a brush of Paris given free play. “Did you think I had got snapped down in an old box like that poor girl—what’s her name?—the one who was poking round in the celebrated poem? You dear, delightful man, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you, mum?”
“That you’re so perfectly—perfect! You’re ever so much better than anyone has ever said. You’re everything in the world you ought to be, and not the shade of a shade of anything you oughtn’t!”
Chivers gaped. “Well, mum, I try!”
“Oh, no, you don’t—that’s just your charm! I try, but you do nothing: here you simply are—you can’t help it!”
He fairly fell back. “Me, mum?”
She took him in at the eyes. “Yes, you too, you positive old picture! I’ve seen the old masters—but you’re the old master! ‘The good and faithful servant’—Rembrandt van Rhyn: with three stars. That’s what you are!”
“I find it a bit of a strain, mum,” Chivers candidly replied, “fairly to call it—to keep up with what you do say.”
“That’s just what everyone finds it!” She laughed, in constant movement, observing, comparing, taking notes. “You’re so fatally right and so deadly complete that I can scarcely bear it. What do you call it—a royal salute, a hundred guns?”
“I saw as soon as you arrived, mum, that you were looking for more things than ever I heard tell of!”
“Oh, I had got you by heart, from books and drawings and photos; I had you in my pocket when I came. It’s all here, every inch of it, and now at last I can do what I want!”
“And pray, mum, what might that be?”
“Why, take you right back with me—to Missoura Top.”
“Do I understand you, mum, that you require to take me?”
She embraced him. “Do you mean to say you’d come—as the old Family Servant? Then do, you nice real thing: it’s just what I’m dying for—an old Family Servant! I want a first-rate second-hand one, all ready made. You’re the best I’ve seen yet, and I wish I could have you packed—put up in paper and bran—as I shall have my old pot there.” She whisked about. “Don’t let me forget my precious pot!” She appealed to Chivers, who shuffled sympathetically to the table where the object had been placed. “Don’t you just love old crockery? That’s awfully sweet old Chelsea.”
He took up the piece with tenderness. “Where is it I’ve known this very bit?” Suddenly it came to him. “In the pew-opener’s front parlour!”
“No, in the pew-opener’s best bedroom: on the old chest of drawers, with those ducks of brass handles. I’ve got the handles too—I mean the whole thing; and the brass fender and fire-irons, and the chair her grandmother died in.”
Chivers rocked in the high wind of such transactions. “You did right to take this out, mum, when the fly went to the stables. Them flymen do be cruel rash with anything delicate.” Returning the pot to its niche, his nervousness tripped him—a false movement, a knock, a gasp, a shriek, a complete little crash. The pot lay on the pavement in several pieces, and Chivers stood blue with fear. “Mercy on us, mum—I’ve brought shame on my old grey hairs!”
She laughed through her own little shriek. “Oh, but the way you take it! You’re too quaint to live! The way you said that now—it’s just the very ‘type’! That’s all I want of you now—to be the very type. It’s what you are, you poor dear thing, for you can’t help it. There was a type in the train with me—the ‘awfully nice girl’ of all the English novels. She couldn’t help it either.” Her face, watching his fragments rattle in his hands, was a beneficent reflection of her manner. “By the way, the girl was coming right here. Has she come?”
Chivers crept solemnly back. “Miss Prodmore is here, mum. She’s having her tea.”
“Yes, that’s exactly it—they’re always having their tea!”
“With Mr. Prodmore—in the morning-room,” he supplemented. “Captain Yule’s in the garden.”
“Captain Yule?” She gave an “Oh!” “The new master? He had never—so much as seen the place.”
“Before today—his very own?” This too ended in a laugh. “Well, I hope he likes it!”
“I haven’t seen many, mum, that like it as much as you.”
She made a motion with her handsome head. “I should like it still better if it were my very own!”
“If it wasn’t against my duty I could wish it were! But the Captain, mum, is the lawful heir.”
“That’s another of your lovely old things—I adore your lawful heirs! He has come to take possession?”
“He’s a-taking of it now.”
“What does he do and how does he do it? Can’t I see?” Chivers looked blank. “There’s no grand fuss?”
“I scarce think him the gentleman to make any about anything.”
She had to resign herself. “Well, perhaps I like them better when they don’t!” She prepared to make way. “I also—have taken possession!”
Chivers rose to her. “It was you, mum, took it first!”
“Ah, but for a poor little hour! He’s for life.”
“For mine, mum, I do at least hope.”
She made the circuit of the place, picking up her jacket. “I shall think of you, here together.” Then abruptly: “Do you suppose he’ll be kind to you?”
His hand turned the matter over. “He has already been, mum.”
“Then be sure to be so to him!” The house-bell sounded. “Is that his bell?”
“I must see whose!” And Chivers hurried out.
Left alone, she stood with happy possession oddly mingled with desperate surrender, examining a small framed plaque of enamel with hungry tenderness. “Why, bless me if it isn’t Limoges! I wish awfully I were a bad woman: then I’d just quietly take it!” On hearing a sound behind her, she started like a guilty thing—but, recovering, kept the object familiarly in her hand as she turned to the gentleman who had stopped in the open doorway. Captain Yule, coming in from the garden.
“Oh, Captain Yule, I’m delighted to meet you! It’s such a comfort to ask you if I may!”
His surprise kept him dumb a moment. “If you ‘may,’ madam?”
“Just be here and poke round! Don’t tell me I can’t now, because I already have! I got round your lovely servant—if you don’t look out I’ll grab him. If you don’t look out, I’ll grab everything.” She gave him fair notice with amazing serenity. “That’s what I came over for—just to lay your country waste. Your house is a wild old dream; and you’ve got some quite good things. Don’t coyly pretend you haven’t!” She thrust her enamel before him, but he held it blankly, his attention absorbed in the woman. “Don’t you know anything? Why, it’s Limoges!”
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