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Nicky-Nan, Reservist, a novel by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
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Chapter 13. First Aid |
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_ CHAPTER XIII. FIRST AID "I hope, Mary-Martha," said Miss Oliver, pausing half-way up the hill and panting, "that, whatever happens, you will take a proper stand." "You are short of breath. You should take more exercise." Mrs Polsue eyed her severely. "When an unmarried woman gets to your time of life, she's apt to think that everything can be got over with Fruit Salts and an occasional dose of Somebody's Emulsion. Whereas it can't. I take a mile walk up the valley and back every day of my life." "I don't believe you could perspire if you tried, Mary-Martha." "Well, and _you_ needn't make a merit of it, . . . and if you ask _me_," pursued Mrs Polsue, "one half of your palpitation is put on. You're nervous what show you'll make in the drawing-room, and that's why you're dilly-dallyin' with your questions and stoppages." "Mrs Steele and me not being on visiting terms--" Miss Oliver started to explain pathetically. "Yes, I know it was my _duty_ to call when they first came: but what with one thing and another, and not knowing how she might take it--Of course, Mary-Martha, if you insist on walking ahead like a band-major, I can't prevent it. But it only shows a ruck in your left stocking." Mrs Polsue turned about in the road. "You were hoping, you said, that I'd be taking a proper stand? If that woman comes any airs over me--" She walked on without finishing the sentence. "She's every bit as much afraid as I am," said Miss Oliver to herself, as she panted to catch up; "the difference being that I want to put it off and she's dying to get it over." Aloud she remarked, "Well, and that's all I was saying. As like as not they'll be trying to come it over us; and if we leave it to Hambly--" "_Him?_" Mrs Polsue sniffed. "You leave it to me!"
"Stiff" indeed but faintly describes Mrs Polsue's demeanour in the drawing-room; where, within a few minutes, were gathered Mrs Pamphlett, Mr Hambly, Dr Mant (who had obligingly motored over from St Martin's), five or six farm wives, with a husband or two (notably Farmer Best of Tresunger, an immense man who, apparently mistaking the occasion for a wedding, had indued a pair of white cotton gloves, which he declined to remove, ignoring his wife's nudges). Four or five timid "women-workers," with our two ladies and the host and hostess, completed the gathering. Mrs Steele opened the business amid an oppressive silence, against which all the Vicar's easy chat had contended in vain. "I hope," she began nervously, "that at such a time none of you will object to my using the word I want to use, and calling you 'friends'? . . . My friends, then--It was at my husband's suggestion that I invited you to meet this afternoon--because, you know, _somebody_ must make a beginning." "Hear, hear," put in Dr Mant encouragingly. Mrs Steele's voice grew a little firmer. "We thought, too, that the Vicarage might be the most convenient place on the whole. It is a sharp walk up the hill for those of you who live in Polpier itself: but our stables being empty, the farmers, who come from farther and just now at greater sacrifice, escape a jolting drive down into the village and back." "Hear, hear," repeated Dr Mant. He was thinking of the tyres of his car. But this time he overdid it, and fetched up Mrs Polsue as by a galvanic shock. "If interruptions are to be the order of the day," said Mrs Polsue, "I'd like to enter my protest at once. I don't hold, for my part, with calling public meetings--for I suppose this _is_ a public meeting?" she asked, breaking off, with a challenging eye on the Vicar. "By no means," he answered with quick good-humour. "It's a meeting by invitation, though--as my wife was about to explain--the invitations were meant to include _friends_ of all creeds and parties." "It's for a public purpose, anyhow?" "Certainly." "Then I may be saying what doesn't meet with your approval, or Mrs Steele's, or the company's: but that's just my point. I don't hold with meetings for public business being called in a private house. Because if things are done that you don't approve of, either you sit mum-chance out o' politeness, or else you speak your mind and offend your host and hostess." Mr Hambly was about to interpose, but the Vicar checked him with a quick movement of his hand. "Mrs Polsue's is a real point; and, if she will allow me to say so, she has put it very well. Indeed, I was going to propose, later on, that we hold our future meetings in a place to be agreed on. This is just a preliminary talk; and when a dozen people meet to discuss, it's handier as a rule to have some one in the chair. . . . You agree? . . . Then for form's sake, I propose that we elect a chairman." "And I propose Mrs Steele," added Mr Hambly. "Seconded," said Farmer Best. "Damn it!" "William!" his spouse ejaculated. (She knew that he detested Mrs Polsue, whom he had once described in private as "the p'isenest 'ooman that ever licked verdigris off a farthing.") "'Tis all right, Chrisjana," he responded in a muffled voice, with head abased as nearly between his calves as a protuberant stomach allowed. "But one o' the castors o' this here chair has given way. . . . Beggin' your pardon, ma'am,"--he raised a face half-apoplectic but cheerful, and turned it upon his hostess--"but I totalled up seventeen score when last weighed. There's no damage done that can't be set right with a screw-driver afore I go." Then, with another turn-about that embraced the company, "Proposed an' seconded that Mrs Steele do take the chair. Those in favour say 'Hi!'--the contrary 'No.' . . . The Hi's 'ave it." (Farmer Best was Vice-Chairman of the Board of Guardians, and knew how to conduct public business.) Mrs Steele resumed her little speech. A pink spot showed upon either cheek, but she spoke bravely. "I suppose the first thing to be done is to see, as tactfully as we can, that during these first few weeks at any rate the wives and families of the men who have gone away to fight for us suffer no want. There are other ways in which we can be useful--And I take it for granted that all of us women, who cannot fight, are longing to be useful in some way or other. . . . There is the working of socks, scarves, waistcoats, for instance; the tearing and rolling of bandages; and Dr Mant, who has so kindly driven over from St Martin's, tells me that he is ready to be kinder still and teach an Ambulance Class. . . . But our first business--as he and Mr Hambly agree--is to make sure that the wives and children of our reservists want neither food nor money to pay their rent. . . . They tell me that in a few weeks the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families Association will be ready to take much of this work off our hands, though acting through local distributors. Indeed, the Vicar--indeed, my husband has already received a letter from the District Secretary of the Association asking him to undertake this work. In time, too, no doubt--as Government makes better provision--that work will grow less and less. But we have not even arrived at it yet. Until it is set going these poor women and children may be short of money or the food that money buys. So the proposal is to raise a few pounds, form a War Emergency Committee, and tide matters over until a higher authority supersedes us. For in the interval a neighbour may be starving because her husband has gone off to fight for his country. None of us, surely, could bear the thought of that?" Mrs Steele's voice had gathered confidence, with something of real emotion, as it went on; and an approving murmur acknowledged her little speech. Her husband, whose eyes had kindled towards the close, was in the act of throwing her an applausive glance when Mrs Polsue's voice cut the silence sharply. "I don't understand this talk about a Soldiers' and Sailors' Association, or whatever you call it. Are we a part of it, here in this room?" "Oh, no," the Vicar answered. "We are here merely to discuss forming an Emergency Committee, to provide (among other things) present relief until the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families Association-- dreadful name!--until the S.S.F.A., as we'll call it, is ready to take over the work." "And then we shall be cold-shouldered out, I suppose?" "Dang it, ma'am!" put in Farmer Best. "What matter who does the work, so long as the poor critters be fed meantime?" [Here we should observe that while Mrs Polsue had a trick of sniffing that suggested a chronic cold in the head, Farmer Best suffered from an equally chronic obstruction of the respiratory organs, or (as he preferred to call them) his pipes. As from time to time he essayed to clear one or another of these, the resultant noise, always explosive, resembled the snort of a bullock or the _klock_ of a strangulated suction-pump. With these interjections Mrs Polsue on the one hand, Farmer Best on the other, punctuated the following dialogue. And this embarrassed the company, which, obliged in politeness to attribute them to purely physical causes, could not but own inwardly that they _might_ be mistaken for the comments--and highly expressive ones--of mutual disapprobation.] "Danging it don't answer my question--nor banging it," persisted Mrs Polsue. "I want to know more about this Association, and where _we_ come in. . . . Just now, Mrs Steele was talking about a District Secretary and local distributors--which looks to me as if the whole business was cut-and-dried." "There's nothing cut an' dried about _me_, ma'am." Farmer Best's sharp little eyes twinkled, and he chuckled obesely. "Again Mrs Polsue has the right of it," answered the Vicar. "Perhaps I should have explained at the beginning that this War, coming upon us so suddenly, has taken the S.S.F.A. somewhat at unawares, in Cornwall at any rate. The machinery exists--in skeleton; but there still wants the _personnel_ to work it. In our District, for instance--" "District?" snapped Mrs Polsue. "What's a District?" The Vicar pulled a wry face. "The Districts at present correspond with the Deaneries in the diocese." "O-oh, indeed? Ha!" "There is worse to come, Mrs Polsue." He laughed frankly. "You asked, 'Who are the local distributors?' A present rule of the Association--which I beg you to believe that I regret--provides for two agents in each parish, to report and advise on cases: the Parson, and one of the Guardians." "--And that's me, ma'am. _Honk!_" added Farmer Best. "I'm what Parson called the skelliton of the machinery." He wound up with a wink at the company, and a wheezy laugh. "You may titter, all of you!" Mrs Polsue glared about her. "But if ever there was hole-and-corner sectarianism in this world--And _this_ is what we've come to listen to!" "You han't done much listenin' up to now, ma'am." "Forgive me," Mrs Steele interposed, as Dr Mant looked at his watch. "I don't know much about rules of the chair; but I really think you are all out of order. We are not yet discussing the Association or its rules, but whether or not we shall form a Committee to look after these poor people until something better is done for them. We in this room, at all events, belong to very different denominations. I--I hope we meet only as Christians." Farmer Best slapped his thigh. "Bray-vo, ma'am! and you never spoke a truer word." "I only wish to add," the Vicar persisted, "that before any outside society works in this parish, I shall urge very strongly that the parish nominates its agents: and that I hope to have the pleasure of proposing Mrs Polsue and Mr Hambly. One more word--" "Certainly not." His wife cut him short with a sharp rap on the table. "I can rule _you_ out of order, at all events!" Everybody laughed. Even Mrs Polsue was mollified. "Well, I managed to drag the truth out at last," was her final shot, as the meeting resolved itself into Committee and fell to business.
Farmer Best--it should here be observed--with all his oddities, was an exemplary Poor Law Guardian. He had small personal acquaintance with Polpier itself: the steepness of the coombs in which it lay was penible to a man of his weight: yet, albeit by hearsay, he knew the inner workings of the small town, being interested in the circumstances of all his neighbours, vividly charitable towards them, and at the same time no fool in judging. Of the country-folk within a circuit of twelve miles or more his knowledge was something daemonic. He could recount their pedigrees, intermarriages, numbers in family; he understood their straits, their degrees of affluence; he could not look across a gate at a crop, or view the state of a thatch, but his mind worked sympathetically with some neighbour's economies. He gave away little in hard money; but his charities in time and personal service were endless. And the countryside respected him thoroughly: for he was eccentric in the fashion of a true Englishman, and, with all his benevolence, you had to get up early to take him in. Nor was Farmer Best the only one to doubt Mrs Polsue's fitness for her place in the sub-committee. Mrs Steele spoke to her husband very positively about it as he helped to water her begonia-beds in the cool of the evening. "You were weak," she said, "to play up to that woman: when you know she is odious." "The more reason," he answered. "If you're a Christian and find your neighbour odious, you conciliate him." "Fiddlesticks!" "My dear Agatha--isn't that a somewhat strong expression, for you?" She set down her watering-pot. "Do you know what I _want_ to say?" she asked. "I _want_ to say, 'Go to blazes!' . . . When I said the woman is odious, do you suppose I meant odious to me or to you?" "O-oh!" The Vicar rubbed the back of his head penitently. "I am sorry, Agatha--I was thinking of the time she gave you this afternoon." "She will give those poor women a worse time--a dreadful time!" said Mrs Steele, with conviction. He picked up his watering-pot in such a hurry as to spill a tenth or so of its contents into his shoes; swore under his breath; then laughed aloud. "I'll bet any money they'll get upsides with her, all the same. Lord! there may be fun!" His wife eyed him as he emptied the watering-pot spasmodically over the flowers. "As a rule you have so much more imagination than I. . . . Yet by fits and starts you take this business as if it were a joke. And it _is_ War, you know." The Vicar turned away hurriedly, to fetch more water. On the Sub-Committee for House to house Visiting--the Relief Committee, as it came to be called--were elected: (1) For Polpier--Mrs Polsue, Miss Alma Trudgian (in Mrs Polsue's words, "a pitiful Ritualist, but well-meaning. _She'll_ give no trouble"), the Vicar, and Mr Hambly. (2) For the country side of the parish--Mr and Mrs Best, "with power to add to their number." On the passing of this addendum, Farmer Best uttered, apparently from the roof of his palate, a noise not unlike the throb of the organ under the dome of St Paul's, and the mysterious words, "Catch me!" Next was formed a Sub-Committee of Needle-Workers, to make hospital-shirts, knit socks, &c. It included Miss Charity Oliver; and Mrs Steele undertook to act as Secretary and send out the notices. --Next, a Sub-Committee of Ways and Means, to collect subscriptions, and also to act as Finance Committee. The Vicar, Mr Best, Mr Hambly, with Mr Pamphlett for Honorary Treasurer. Mrs Pamphlett (a timid lady with an irregular catch of the breath), without pledging her husband, felt sure that under the circumstances he wouldn't mind. Then Dr Mant unfolded a scheme of Ambulance Classes. He was one of those careless, indolent men who can spurt invaluably on any business which is not for their private advantage. (Everybody liked him; but he was known to neglect his own business deplorably.) He could motor over to Polpier and lecture every Saturday evening, starting forthwith. Mrs Steele undertook to write to the Local Education Authority for permission to use the Council Schoolroom. At this point the parlour-maid brought in the tea.
"She won't give you the chance, then," said Mrs Polsue; "so you needn't fret." "No, I suppose not . . . in a fashion. Still"--Miss Oliver brightened--"she proposed me on the Needlework Committee, and we're to meet at the Vicarage every Wednesday. She looked up at me a moment before mentioning my name, and smiled as nice as possible; you might almost say she read what was in my mind." "'Twould account for her smiling, no doubt." "I don't know what you mean by that. 'Twas in my mind that I'd rather be on that committee than on any other. She's a proper lady, whatever you may say, Mary-Martha. And the spoons were real silver-- I took occasion to turn mine over, and there was the lion on the back of it, sure enough." "I saw you in the very act, and meant to tell you of it later; but other things drove it out of my head. You should have more command over yourself, Charity Oliver." "But I _can't_," Miss Oliver protested. "When I see pretty things like that, my fingers won't stop twiddlin' till I make sure." "By the same argiment I wonder you didn't pocket the spoon. Which was old Lord Some-thing-or-Other's complaint; though I doubt you wouldn't get off so light as he did." "There was the tea-pot, too. . . . I couldn't get nigh enough to see the mark on that, though I tried. Next time, perhaps--though I doubt she won't have the silver out for ordinary workin' parties--" "Tut--the tea-pot was silver right enough. I ought to know, havin' one of my own and a heavier by ounces. No, I don't use it except on special occasions: because you can't make so good tea in silver as in china ware; and clome is better again. But though you lock it away, a silver tea-pot is a thing to be conscious of. I don't hold," Mrs Polsue fell back on her favourite formula, "with folks puttin' all their best in the shop window." "Well, you _must_ be strong-minded! For my part," Miss Oliver confessed, "little luxuries always get the better o' me. I declare that if a rich man was to come along an' promise to load me with diamonds and silver tea-pots and little knick-knacks of that sort, I shouldn' care who he was, nor how ugly, but I'd just shut my eyes and fling myself at his head." "You'd better advertise in the papers, then. It's time," said Mrs Polsue sardonically. She wheeled about. "Charity Oliver, you needn't use no more silly speech to prove what I could see with my own eyes, back yonder, even if I hadn't known it already. You're a weak fool--that's what you are! Those folks, with their pretty manners and their 'how-dee-do's,' and 'I hope I see you well's,' and their talk about all classes bein' at one in those times of national trial and standin' shoulder to shoulder till it makes a body sick--do you reckon they _mean_ a word of it? Do you reckon that if 'twas Judgment Day itself, and you given to eatin' peas with a knife, they'd really want you to luncheon?" "But I _don't_." "I'm puttin' it for the sake of argument--" "Then I wish you wouldn't," Miss Oliver interrupted with some spirit. "--And old Hambly kow-towing like a Puss-in-Boots till I could have wrung his neck for him--and you weakenin' and playin' gentility as you picked it up, like another cat after a mouse--and myself the only one left to show 'em plain that we weren't to be put upon--yes, and after you'd hoped, up to the very door, that whatever happened, I'd take a proper stand!" "Well, and so I did," Miss Oliver admitted defiantly. "But I didn't ask you to make yourself _conspicuous_." _ |
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