‘I must apologise for Uncle. I really cannot understand his treating you in this cavalier way. I do hope you’ll find everything all right. Mrs Ruddle is not very intelligent.’
Harriet assured Miss Twitterton that Bunter would see to everything, and they succeeded at length in extricating themselves. Their return to Talboys was remarkable only for Peter’s observing that unforgettable was the epithet for Miss Twitterton’s parsnip wine and that if one was going to be sick on one’s wedding night one might just as well have done it between Southampton and Le Havre.
Bunter and Mrs Ruddle had by now been joined by the dilatory Bert (with his ‘trousis’ but without his gun); yet even thus supported, Mrs Ruddle had a chastened appearance. The door being opened, and Bunter having produced an electric torch, the party stepped into a wide stone passage strongly permeated by an odour of dry-rot and beer. On the right, a door led into a vast, low-ceilinged, stone-paved kitchen, its rafters black with time, its enormous, old fashioned range clean and garnished under the engulfing chimney-breast. On the whitewashed hearth stood a small oil cooking-stove and before it an arm-chair whose seat sagged with age and use. The deal table held the remains of two boiled eggs, the heel of a stale loaf, and a piece of cheese together with a cup which had contained cocoa, and a half-burnt candle in a bedroom candlestick.
‘There!’ exclaimed Mrs Ruddle. ‘If Mr Noakes ’ad let me know, I’d a-cleaned all them things away. That’ll be ’is supper wot ’e ’ad afore ’e caught the ten o’clock. But me not knowing and ’avin’ no key, you see, I couldn’t. But it won’ take me a minnit, m’lady, now we are here. Mr Noakes took all ’is meals in ’ere, but you’ll find it comfortabler in the settin’-room, m’lady, if you’ll come this way-it’s a much brighter room, like, and furnished beautiful, as you’ll see m’lord.’ Here Mrs Ruddle dropped something like a curtsy.
The sittingroom was, indeed, ‘brighter’ than the kitchen. Two ancient oak-settles, flanking the chimney-piece at right angles, and an old-fashioned American eight-day clock on the inner wall, were all that remained of the old farmhouse furniture that Harriet remembered. The flame of the kitchen candle, which Mrs Ruddle had lit, danced flickeringly over a suite of Edwardian chairs with crimson upholstery, a top-heavy sideboard, a round mahogany table with wax fruit on it, a bamboo what-not with mirrors and little shelves sprouting from it in all directions, a row of aspidistras in pots in the window-ledge, with strange hanging plants above them in wire baskets, a large radio cabinet, over which hung an unnaturally distorted cactus in a brass Benares bowl, mirrors with roses painted on the glass, a chesterfield sofa upholstered in electric blue plush, two carpets of violently coloured and mutually intolerant patterns juxtaposed to hide the black oak floor-boards-a collection of objects, in fact, suggesting that Mr Noakes had furnished his house out of auction-sale bargains that he had not been able to resell, together with a few remnants of genuine old stuff and a little borrowing from the stock-in-trade of the wireless business. They were allowed every opportunity to inspect his collection of bric-a-brac, for Mrs Ruddle made the round of the room, candle in hand, to point out all its beauties.
‘Fine!’ said Peter, cutting short Mrs Ruddle’s panegyric on the radio cabinet (‘which you can hear it lovely right over at the cottage if the wind sets that way’). ‘Now, what we want at the moment, Mrs Ruddle, is fire and food. If you’ll get some more candles and let your Bert help Bunter to bring in the provisions out of the back of the car, then we can get the fires lit-’
‘Fires?’ said Mrs Ruddle m doubtful accents. ‘Well, there, sir-m’lord I should say-I ain’t sure as there’s a mite of coal in the place. Mr Noakes, ’e ain’t ’ad no fires this long time. Said these ’ere great chimbleys ate up too much of the ’eat. Oil-stoves, that’s wot Mr Noakes ’ad, for cookin’ an’ for settin’ over of an evenin’. I don’t reckollect w’en there was fires ’ere last-except that young couple we ’ad ’ere August four year, we’n we had sich a cold summer-and they couldn’t get the chimbley to go. Thought there must be a bird’s nest in it or somethink, but Mr Noakes said ’e wasn’t goin’ to spend good money ’aving they chimbleys cleared. Coal, now. There ain’t none in the oil-shed, that I do know-without there might be a bit in the wash-us-but it’ll have been there a long time,’ she concluded dubiously, as though its qualities might have been lost by keeping.
‘I might fetch up a bucket or so of coal from the cottage, mum,’ suggested Bert.
‘So you might, Bert,’ agreed his mother. ‘My Bert’s got a wonderful ’ead. So you might. And a bit o’ kindlin’ with it. You can cut across the back way-and, ’ere, Bert-jest shet that cellar door as you goes by-sech a perishin’ draught as it do send up. And, Bert, I declare if I ain’t forgot the sugar-you’ll find a packet in the cupboard you could put in your pocket. There’ll be tea in the kitchen, but Mr Noakes never took no sugar, only the gran, and that ain’t right for ’er ladyship.’
By this time, the resourceful Bunter had ransacked the kitchen for candles, which he was putting in a couple of tall brass candlesticks (part of Mr Noakes’s more acceptable possessions) which stood on the sideboard, carefully scraping the guttered wax from the sockets with a penknife with the air of one to whom neatness and order came first even in a crisis.
‘And if your ladyship will come this way,’ said Mrs Ruddle, darting to a door in the panelling, ‘I’ll show you the bedrooms. Beautiful rooms they is, but only the one of ’em in use, of course, except for summer visitors. Mind the stair, m’lady, but there-I’m forgettin’ you knows the ’ouse. I’ll jest pop the bed again the fire, w’en we get it lit, though damp it cannot be, ’avin’ been in use till last Wednesday and the sheets is aired beautiful, though linen, which, if folks don’t suffer from the rheumatics, most ladies and gentlemen is partial to. I ’opes as you don’t mind them old fourposters, miss-mum-m’lady. Mr Noakes did want to sell them, but the gentleman as come down to look at there said as ’ow they wasn’t wot ’e called original owing to bein’ mended on account of the worm and wouldn’t give Mr Noakes the price ’e put on ’em. Nasty old things I call ’em-w’en Ruddle and me was to be wedded I says to ’im, “Brass knobs,” I ses, “or nothink”-and, being’ wishful to please, brass knobs it was, beautiful.’
‘How lovely,’ said Harriet, as they passed through a deserted bedroom, with the four-poster stripped naked and the rugs rolled together and emitting a powerful odour of mothballs.
‘That it is, m’lady,’ said Mrs Ruddle. ‘Not but what some o’ the visitors likes these old-fashioned things-quaint, they calls ’em-and the curtains you will find in good order if wanted, Miss Twitterton and me doin’ of ’em up careful at the end of the summer, and I do assure you, m’lady, if you and your good gentleman-your good lord, m’lady-was a-wantin’ a bit of ’elp in the ’ouse you will find Bert an’ me allus ready to oblige, as I was a-sayin’ only jest now to Mr Bunter. Yes, m’lady, thank you. Now, this’-Mrs Ruddle opened the farther door-‘is Mr Noakes’s own room, as you may see, and all ready to okkerpy, barrin’ ’is odds-and-ends, which it won’t take me a minnit to put aside.’
‘He seems to have left all his things behind him,’ said Harriet, looking at an old-fashioned nightshirt laid ready for use on the bed and at the shaving tackle and sponge on the washstand.
‘Oh, yes, m’lady. Kept a spare set of everythink over at Broxford, ’e did, so ’e ’adn’t to do nothing but step into the ’bus. More often at Broxford than not ’e was, lookin’ after the business. But I’ll ’ave everythink straight in no time only jest to change the sheets and run a duster over. Maybe you’d like me to bile yer a kittle of water on the Beetrice, m’lady-and’-Mrs Ruddle’s tone suggested that this consideration had often influenced the wavering decision of prospective summer visitors-‘down this ’ere little stair-mind yer ’ead, mum-everythink is modern, put in by Mr Noakes w’en ’e took to lettin’ for the summer.’