Book: A Flat Iron for a Farthing

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[Illustration: Mrs. Bundle (see p. 3).]


A FLAT IRON FOR A
FARTHING

or

Some Passages in the Life of
an only Son



by

Juliana Horatia Ewing



Illustrated by

M. V. Wheelhouse



George Bell & Sons

London

1908.

* * * * *

Dedicated

TO MY DEAR FATHER,

AND TO HIS SISTER, MY DEAR AUNT MARY,

IN MEMORY OF

THEIR GOOD FRIEND AND NURSE,

E. B.

OBIT 3 MARCH, 1872, AET. 83.

J. H. E.

* * * * *




PREFACE


An apology is a sorry Preface to any book, however insignificant, and
yet I am anxious to apologise for the title of this little tale. The
story grew after the title had been (hastily) given, and so many other
incidents gathered round the incident of the purchase of the flat iron
as to make it no longer important enough to appear upon the title
page. It would, however, be dishonest to change the name of a tale
which is reprinted from a Magazine; and I can only apologise for an
appearance of affectation in it which was not intended.

As the Dedication may seem to suggest that the character of Mrs.
Bundle is a portrait, I may be allowed to say that, except in
faithfulness, and tenderness, and high principle, she bears no
likeness to my father's dear old nurse.

It may interest some of my child readers to know that the steep street
and the farthing wares are real remembrances out of my own childhood.
Though whether in these days of "advanced prices," the flat irons, the
gridirons with the three fish upon them, and all those other valuable
accessories to doll's housekeeping, which I once delighted to
purchase, can still be obtained for a farthing each, I have lived too
long out of the world of toys to be able to tell.

J. H. E.

* * * * *




CONTENTS


CHAP.

I. MOTHERLESS

II. "THE LOOK"--RUBENS--MRS. BUNDLE AGAIN

III. THE DARK LADY--TROUBLE IMPENDING--BEAUTIFUL, GOLDEN MAMMA

IV. AUNT MARIA--THE ENEMY ROUTED--LONDON TOWN

V. MY COUSINS--MISS BLOMFIELD--THE BOY IN BLACK

VI. THE LITTLE BARONET--DOLLS--CINDER PARCELS--THE OLD GENTLEMAN NEXT
DOOR--THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS

VII. POLLY AND I RESOLVE TO BE "VERY RELIGIOUS"--DR. PEPJOHN--THE
ALMS-BOX--THE BLIND BEGGAR

VIII. VISITING THE SICK

IX. "PEACE BE TO THIS HOUSE"

X. CONVALESCENCE--MATRIMONIAL INTENTIONS--THE JOURNEY TO OAKFORD--OUR
WELCOME

XI. THE TINSMITH'S--THE BEAVER BONNETS--A FLAT IRON FOR A FARTHING--I
FAIL TO SECURE A SISTER--RUBENS AND THE DOLL

XII. THE LITTLE LADIES AGAIN--THE MEADS--THE DROWNED DOLL

XIII. POLLY--THE PEW AND THE PULPIT--THE FATE OF THE FLAT IRON

XIV. RUBENS AND I "DROP IN" AT THE RECTORY--GARDENS AND GARDENERS--MY
FATHER COMES FOR ME

XV. NURSE BUNDLE IS MAGNANIMOUS--MR. GRAY--AN EXPLANATION WITH MY
FATHER

XVI. THE REAL MR. GRAY--NURSE BUNDLE REGARDS HIM WITH DISFAVOUR

XVII. I FAIL TO TEACH LATIN TO MRS. BUNDLE--THE RECTOR TEACHES ME

XVIII. THE ASTHMATIC OLD GENTLEMAN AND HIS RIDDLES--I PLAY TRUANT
AGAIN--IN THE BIG GARDEN

XIX. THE TUTOR--THE PARISH--A NEW CONTRIBUTOR TO THE ALMS-BOX

XX. THE TUTOR'S PROPOSAL--A TEACHERS' MEETING

XXI. OAKFORD ONCE MORE--THE SATIN CHAIRS--THE HOUSEKEEPER--THE LITTLE
LADIES AGAIN--FAMILY MONUMENTS

XXII. NURSE BUNDLE FINDS A VOCATION--RAGGED ROBIN'S WIFE--MRS.
BUNDLE'S IDEAS ON HUSBANDS AND PUBLIC-HOUSES

XXIII. I GO TO ETON--MY MASTER--I SERVE HIM WELL

XXIV. COLLECTIONS--LEO'S LETTER--NURSE BUNDLE AND SIR LIONEL

XXV. THE DEATH OF RUBENS--POLLY'S NEWS--LAST TIMES

XXVI. I HEAR FROM MR. JONATHAN ANDREWES--YORKSHIRE--ALATHEA _alias_
BETTY--WE BURY OUR DEAD OUT OF OUR SIGHT--VOICES OF THE NORTH

XXVII. THE NEW RECTOR--AUNT MARIA TRIES TO FIND HIM A WIFE--MY FATHER
HAS A SIMILAR CARE FOR ME

XXVIII. I BELIEVE MYSELF TO BE BROKEN-HEARTED--MARIA IN LOVE--I MAKE
AN OFFER OF MARRIAGE, WHICH IS NEITHER ACCEPTED NOR REFUSED

XXIX. THE FUTURE LADY DAMER--POLLY HAS A SECRET--UNDER THE
MULBERRY-TREE

XXX. I MEET THE HEIRESS--I FIND MYSELF MISTAKEN ON MANY POINTS--A NEW
KNOT IN THE FAMILY COMPLICATIONS

XXXI. MY LADY FRANCES--THE FUTURE LADY DAMER--WE UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER
AT LAST

XXXII. WE COME HOME--MRS. BUNDLE QUITS SERVICE

* * * * *




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


MRS. BUNDLE _Frontispiece_

THE LANK LAWYER WAGGED MY HAND OF A MORNING, AND SAID, "AND HOW IS
MISS ELIZA'S LITTLE BEAU?"

"BLESS ME, THERE'S THAT DOG!"

"MR. BUCKLE, I BELIEVE?"

SHE ROLLED ABRUPTLY OVER ON HER SEAT AND SCRAMBLED OFF BACKWARDS

POLLY AND REGIE IN THE "PULPIT" AND THE "PEW"

"ALL TOGETHER, IF YOU PLEASE!"

IT WAS ONLY A QUIET DINNER PARTY, AND MISS CHISLETT HAD BROUGHT OUT
HER NEEDLEWORK

* * * * *




A FLAT IRON FOR A FARTHING

CHAPTER I

MOTHERLESS


When the children clamour for a story, my wife says to me, "Tell them
how you bought a flat iron for a farthing." Which I very gladly do;
for three reasons. In the first place, it is about myself, and so I
take an interest in it. Secondly, it is about some one very dear to
me, as will appear hereafter. Thirdly, it is the only original story
in my somewhat limited collection, and I am naturally rather proud of
the favour with which it is invariably received. I think it was the
foolish fancy of my dear wife and children combined that this most
veracious history should be committed to paper. It was either
because--being so unused to authorship--I had no notion of
composition, and was troubled by a tyro tendency to stray from my
subject; or because the part played by the flat iron, though
important, was small; or because I and my affairs were most chiefly
interesting to myself as writer, and my family as readers; or from a
combination of all these reasons together, that my tale outgrew its
first title and we had to add a second, and call it "Some Passages in
the Life of an only Son."

Yes, I was an only son. I was an only child also, speaking as the
world speaks, and not as Wordsworth's "simple child" spoke. But let me
rather use the "little maid's" reckoning, and say that I have, rather
than that I had, a sister. "Her grave is green, it may be seen." She
peeped into the world, and we called her Alice; then she went away
again and took my mother with her. It was my first great, bitter
grief.

I remember well the day when I was led with much mysterious solemnity
to see my new sister. She was then a week old.

"You must be quiet, sir," said Mrs. Bundle, a new member of our
establishment, "and not on no account make no noise to disturb your
dear, pretty mamma."

Repressed by this accumulation of negatives, as well as by the size
and dignity of Mrs. Bundle's outward woman, I went a-tiptoe under her
large shadow to see my new acquisition.

Very young children are not always pretty, but my sister was beautiful
beyond the wont of babies. It is an old simile, but she was like a
beautiful painting of a cherub. Her little face wore an expression
seldom seen except on a few faces of those who have but lately come
into this world, or those who are about to go from it. The hair that
just gilded the pink head I was allowed to kiss was one shade paler
than that which made a great aureole on the pillow about the pale face
of my "dear, pretty" mother.

Years afterwards--in Belgium--I bought an old mediaeval painting of a
Madonna. That Madonna had a stiffness, a deadly pallor, a thinness of
face incompatible with strict beauty. But on the thin lips there was a
smile for which no word is lovely enough; and in the eyes was a pure
and far-seeing look, hardly to be imagined except by one who painted
(like Fra Angelico) upon his knees. The background (like that of many
religious paintings of the date) was gilt. With such a look and such a
smile my mother's face shone out of the mass of her golden hair the
day she died. For this I bought the picture; for this I keep it still.

But to go back.

I liked Mrs. Bundle. I had taken to her from the evening when she
arrived in a red shawl, with several bandboxes. My affection for her
was established next day, when she washed my face before dinner. My
own nurse was bony, her hands were all knuckles, and she washed my
face as she scrubbed the nursery floor on Saturdays. Mrs. Bundle's
plump palms were like pincushions, and she washed my face as if it had
been a baby's.

On the evening of the day when I first saw Sister Alice, I took tea in
the housekeeper's room. My nurse was out for the evening, but Mrs.
Cadman from the village was of the party, and neither cakes nor
conversation flagged. Mrs. Cadman had hollow eyes, and (on occasion) a
hollow voice, which was very impressive. She wore curl-papers
continually, which once caused me to ask my nurse if she ever took
them out.

"On Sundays she do," said Nurse.

"She's very religious then, I suppose," said I; and I did really think
it a great compliment that she paid to the first day of the week.

I was only just four years old at this time--an age when one is apt to
ask inconvenient questions and to make strange observations--when one
is struggling to understand life through the mist of novelties about
one, and the additional confusion of falsehood which it is so common
to speak or to insinuate without scruple to very young children.

The housekeeper and Mrs. Cadman had conversed for some time after tea
without diverting my attention from the new box of bricks which Mrs.
Bundle (commissioned by my father) had brought from the town for me;
but when I had put all the round arches on the pairs of pillars, and
had made a very successful "Tower of Babel" with cross layers of the
bricks tapering towards the top, I had leisure to look round and
listen.

"I never know'd one with that look as lived," Mrs. Cadman was saying,
in her hollow tone. "It took notice from the first. Mark my words,
ma'am, a sweeter child I never saw, but it's _too_ good and _too_
pretty to be long for this world."

It is difficult to say exactly how much one understands at four years
old, or rather how far one quite comprehends the things one perceives
in part. I understood, or felt, enough of what I heard, and of the
sympathetic sighs that followed Mrs. Cadman's speech, to make me
stumble over the Tower of Babel, and present myself at Mrs. Cadman's
knee with the question--

"Is mamma too pretty and good for this world, Mrs. Cadman?"

I caught her elderly wink as quickly as the housekeeper, to whom it
was directed. I was not completely deceived by her answer.

"Why, bless his dear heart, Master Reginald. Who did he think I was
talking about, love?"

"My new baby sister," said I, without hesitation.

"No such thing, lovey," said the audacious Mrs. Cadman; "housekeeper
and me was talking about Mrs. Jones's little boy."

"Where does Mrs. Jones live?" I asked.

"In London town, my dear."

I sighed. I knew nothing of London town, and could not prove that Mrs.
Jones had no existence. But I felt dimly dissatisfied, in spite of a
slice of sponge-cake, and being put to bed (for a treat) in papa's
dressing-room. My sleep was broken by uneasy dreams, in which Mrs.
Jones figured with the face of Mrs. Cadman and her hollow voice. I had
a sensation that that night the house never went to rest. People came
in and out with a pretentious purpose of not awaking me. My father
never came to bed. I felt convinced that I heard the doctor's voice in
the passage. At last, while it was yet dark, and when I seemed to have
been sleeping and waking, waking and falling asleep again in my crib
for weeks, my father came in with a strange look upon his face, and
took me up in his arms, and wrapped a blanket round me, saying mamma
wanted to kiss me, but I must be very good and make no noise. There
was little fear of that! I gazed in utter silence at the sweet face
that was whiter than the sheet below it, the hair that shone brighter
than ever in the candlelight. Only when I kissed her, and she had laid
her wan hand on my head, I whispered to my father, "Why is mamma so
cold?"

With a smothered groan he carried me back to bed, and I cried myself
to sleep. It was too true, then. She was too good and too pretty for
this world, and before sunrise she was gone.

Before the day was ended Sister Alice left us also. She never knew a
harder resting-place than our mother's arms.




CHAPTER II

"THE LOOK"--RUBENS--MRS. BUNDLE AGAIN


My widowed father and I were both terribly lonely. The depths of his
loss in the lovely and lovable wife who had been his constant
companion for nearly six years I could not fathom at the time. For my
own part, I was quite as miserable as I have ever been since, and I
doubt if I shall ever feel such overwhelming desolation again, unless
the same sorrow befalls me as then befell him.

I "fretted"--as the servants expressed it--to such an extent as to
affect my health; and I fancy it was because my father's attention was
called to the fact that I was fast fading after the mother and sister
whose death (and my own loneliness) I bewailed, that he roused himself
from his own grief to comfort mine. Once more I was "dressed" after
tea. Of late my bony nurse had not thought it necessary to go through
this ceremony, and I had crept about in the same crape-covered frock
from breakfast to bedtime.

Now I came down to dessert again, and though I think the empty place
at the end of the table gave my father a fresh shock when I took my
old post by him, yet I fancy the lonely evening was less lonely for my
presence.

From his intense indulgence I think I dimly gathered that he thought
me ill. I combined this in my mind with a speech of my nurse's that I
had overheard, and which gave me the horrors at the time--"He's got
_the look_! It's his poor ma over again!"--and I felt a sort of
melancholy self-importance not uncommon with children who are out of
health.

I may say here that my nurse had a quality very common amongst
uneducated people. She was "sensational;" and her custom of going over
all the circumstances of my mother's death and funeral (down to the
price of the black paramatta of which her own dress was composed) with
her friends, when she took me out walking, had not tended to make me
happier or more cheerful.

That night I ate more from my father's plate than I had eaten for
weeks. As I lay after dinner with my head upon his breast, he stroked
my curls with a tender touch that seemed to heal my griefs, and said,
almost in a tone of remorse,

"What can papa do for you, my poor dear boy?"

I looked up quickly into his face.

"What would Regie like?" he persisted.

I quite understood him now, and spoke out boldly the desires of my
heart.

"Please, papa, I should like Mrs. Bundle for a nurse; and I do very
much want Rubens."

"And who is Rubens?" asked my father.

"Oh, please, it's a dog," I said. "It belongs to Mr. Mackenzie at the
school. And it's such a little dear, all red and white; and it licked
my face when nurse and I were there yesterday, and I put my hand in
its mouth, and it rolled over on its back, and it's got long ears, and
it followed me all the way home, and I gave it a piece of bread, and
it can sit up, and"--

"But, my little man," interrupted my father--and he had absolutely
smiled at my catalogue of marvels--"if Rubens belongs to Mr.
Mackenzie, and is such a wonderful fellow, I'm afraid Mr. Mackenzie
won't part with him."

"He would," I said, "but--" and I paused, for I feared the barrier was
insurmountable.

"But what?" said my father.

"He wants ten shillings for him, Nurse says."

"If that's all, Regie," said my father, "you and I will go and buy
Rubens to-morrow morning."

Rubens was a little red and white spaniel of much beauty and sagacity.
He was the prettiest, gentlest, most winning of playfellows. With him
by my side, I now ran merrily about, instead of creeping moodily at
the heels of nurse and her friends. Abundantly occupied in testing the
tricks he knew, and teaching him new ones, I had the less leisure to
listen open-mouthed to cadaverous gossip of the Cadman class. Finally,
when I had bidden him good-night a hundred times, with absolutely
fraternal embraces, I was soothed by the light weight of his head
resting on my foot. He seemed to chase the hideous fancies which had
hitherto passed from nurse's daytime conversation to trouble my night
visions, as he would chase a water-fowl from a reedy marsh, and I
slept--as he did--peacefully.

Nor was this all. My other wish was also to be fulfilled, but not
without some vexations beforehand. It was by a certain air and tone
which my nurse suddenly assumed towards me, and which it is difficult
to describe by any other word than "heighty-teighty," and also by dark
hints of changes which she hoped (but seemed far from believing) would
be for my good, and finally, by downright lamentations and tragic
inquiries as to what she had done to be parted from her boy, and
"could her chickabiddy have the heart to drive away his loving and
faithful nursey," that I learned that it was contemplated to supersede
her by some one else, and that if she did not know that I was to blame
in the matter, she at any rate believed me to have influence enough to
obtain a reversal of the decree. That Mrs. Bundle was to be her
successor I gathered from allusions to "your great fat bouncing women
that would eat their heads off; but as to cleaning out a nursery--let
them see!" But her most masterly stroke was a certain conversation
with Mrs. Cadman carried on in my hearing.

"Have you ever notice, Mrs. Cadman," inquired my bony nurse of her not
less bony visitor--"Have you ever notice how them stout people as
looks so good-natured as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths is
that wicked and cruel underneath?" And then followed a series of
nurse's most ghastly anecdotes, relative to fat mothers who had
ill-treated their children, fat nurses who had nearly been the death
of their unfortunate charges, fat female murderers, and a fat
acquaintance of her own, who was "taken" in apoplexy after a fit of
rage with her husband.

"What a warning! what a moral!" said Mrs. Cadman. She meant it for a
pious observation, but I felt that the warning and the moral were for
me. And not even the presence of Rubens could dispel the darkness of
my dreams that night.

Alternately goaded and caressed by my nurse, who now laid aside a
habit she had of beating a tattoo with her knuckles on my head when I
was naughty, to the intense confusion and irritation of my brain, I
at last resolved to beg my father to let her remain with us. I felt
that it was--as she had pointed out--intense ingratitude on my part to
wish to part with her, and I said as much when I went down to dessert
that evening. Morever, I now lived in vague fear of those terrible
qualities which lay hidden beneath Mrs. Bundle's benevolent exterior.

"If nurse has been teasing you about the matter," said my father, with
a frown, "that would decide me to get rid of her, if I had not so
decided before. As to your not liking Mrs. Bundle now--My dear little
son, you must learn to know your own mind. You told me you wanted Mrs.
Bundle--by very good luck I have been able to get hold of her, and
when she comes you must make the best of her."

She came the next day, and my bony nurse departed. She wept
indignantly, I wept remorsefully, and then waited in terror for the
manifestation of Mrs. Bundle's cruel propensities.

I waited in vain. The reign of Mrs. Bundle was a reign of peace and
plenty, of loving-kindness and all good things. Moreover it was a
reign of wholesomeness, both for body and mind. She did not give me
cheese and beer from her own supper when she was in a good temper, nor
pound my unfortunate head with her knuckles if I displeased her. She
was strict in the maintenance of a certain old-fashioned nursery
etiquette, which obliged me to put away my chair after meals, fold my
clothes at bedtime, put away my toys when I had done with them, say
"please," "thank you," grace before and after meals, prayers night and
morning, a hymn in bed, and the Church Catechism on Sunday. She
snubbed the maids who alluded in my presence to things I could not or
should not understand, and she directed her own conversation to me, on
matters suitable to my age, instead of talking over my childish head
to her gossips. The stories of horror and crime, the fore-doomed
babies, the murders, the mysterious whispered communications faded
from my untroubled brain. Nurse Bundle's tales were of the young
masters and misses she had known. Her worst domestic tragedy was about
the boy who broke his leg over the chair he had failed to put away
after breakfast. Her romances were the good old Nursery Legends of
Dick Whittington, the Babes in the Wood, and so forth. My dreams
became less like the columns of a provincial newspaper. I imagined
myself another Marquis of Carabas, with Rubens in boots. I made a
desert island in the garden, which only lacked the geography-book
peculiarity of "water all round" it. I planted beans in the fond hope
that they would tower to the skies and take me with them. I became--in
fancy--Lord Mayor of London, and Mrs. Bundle shared my civic throne
and dignities, and we gave Rubens six beefeaters and a barge to wait
upon his pleasure.

Life, in short, was utterly changed for me. I grew strong, and stout,
and well, and happy. And I loved Nurse Bundle.




CHAPTER III

THE DARK LADY--TROUBLE IMPENDING--BEAUTIFUL, GOLDEN MAMMA


So two years passed away. Nurse Bundle was still with me. With her I
"did lessons" after a fashion. I learned to read, I had many of the
Psalms and a good deal of poetry--sacred and secular--by heart. In an
old-fashioned, but slow and thorough manner, I acquired the first
outlines of geography, arithmetic, etc., and what Mrs. Bundle taught
me I repeated to Rubens. But I don't think he ever learned the
"capital towns of Europe," though we studied them together under the
same oak tree.

We had a happy two years of it together under the Bundle dynasty, and
then trouble came.

I was never fond of demonstrative affection from strangers. The ladies
who lavish kisses and flattery upon one's youthful head after eating
papa's good dinner--keeping a sharp protective eye on their own silk
dresses, and perchance pricking one with a brooch or pushing a curl
into one eye with a kid-gloved finger--I held in unfeigned abhorrence.
But over and above my natural instinct against the unloving fondling
of drawing-room visitors, I had a special and peculiar antipathy to
Miss Eliza Burton.

At first, I think I rather admired her. Her rolling eyes, the black
hair plastered low upon her forehead,--the colour high, but never
changeable or delicate--the amplitude and rustle of her skirts, the
impressiveness of her manner, her very positive matureness, were just
what the crude taste of childhood is apt to be fascinated by. She was
the sister of my father's man of business; and she and her brother
were visiting at my home. She really looked well in the morning,
"toned down" by a fresh, summer muslin, and all womanly anxiety to
relieve my father of the trouble of making the tea for breakfast.

"Dear Mr. Dacre, _do_ let me relieve you of that task," she cried, her
ribbons fluttering over the sugar-basin. "I never like to see a
gentleman sacrificing himself for his guests at breakfast. You have
enough to do at dinner, carving large joints, and jointing those
terrible birds. At breakfast a gentleman should have no trouble but
the cracking of his own egg and the reading of his own newspaper. Now
do let me!"

Miss Burton's long fingers were almost on the tea-caddy; but at that
moment my father quietly opened it, and began to measure out the tea.

"I never trouble my lady visitors with this," he said, quietly. "I am
only too well accustomed to it."

Child as I was, I felt well satisfied that my father would let no one
fill my mother's place. For so it was, and all Miss Burton's efforts
failed to put her, even for a moment, at the head of his table.

I do not quite know how or when it was that I began to realize that
such was her effort. I remember once hearing a scrap of conversation
between our most respectable and respectful butler and the
housekeeper--"behind the scenes"--as the former worthy came from the
breakfast-room.

"And how's the new missis this morning, Mr. Smith?" asked the
housekeeper, with a bitterness not softened by the prospect of
possible dethronement.

"Another try for the tea-tray, ma'am," replied Smith, "but it's no
go."

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