Ivy Compton-Burnett: Elders and Betters

“The other was an easy kitchen, Miss Anna,” said Ethel, with a note of reproach.

“Homelike,” uttered Cook.

“You often said it was crowded and stuffy.”

Ethel and Cook sent their eyes round this one, as if they would not call attention to its attributes.

“A place is always ten times as nice as it seems on the first day,” said Jenney, allowing for an only partial acceptance of her words. “And now they would like to see their room. People cannot feel at home until they are comfortable upstairs.” She made the last two words sound in natural conjunction.

“We shall not be able to unpack,” said Ethel, in a tone without feeling.

“Did you not bring your luggage?” said Anna. “Is that all you brought in the cab? You might as well have walked.”

“Cook could not have walked, Miss Anna. A quarter of a mile is her limit.”

“But the man could have put your luggage on the cab. That would not have imposed much strain upon her.”

“The fly could not take our large trunks, Miss Anna. So we thought we might as well bring what we needed for the night.” said Ethel, her tone not disguising the ominous touch in her words.

“Well, I would not waste a cab like that.”

“Oh, Cook has often hailed a fly to save her a hundred yards, Miss Anna,” said Ethel, sufficiently exhilarated by this difference for her face to clear.

“Well, it is your own fault that you can’t get properly established.”

Jenney’s eyes wavered at the light use of such words.

Ethel laid hold of her portmanteau and Cook’s handbag, and Cook rose and stood emptyhanded, ready to give all her strength to the coming ordeal.

“I have the valises,” said Ethel.

“I will lead the way and show you the lie of the land,” said Anna, springing from her seat and running from the room, by way of an object lesson upon the situation.

Cook and Ethel met each other’s eyes with a slight, simultaneous smile, and followed without hastening their steps.

Jenney moved about with a dubious air, putting things in place, or rather disposing them so as to give the best impression. In a moment Ethel re-entered, still bearing her bags, and walked up to her.

“I think Cook will be able to stand it, Miss Jennings,” she said without a change on her face.

Jenney’s features showed no sign of emulating this control, and Ethel gave her a stiff smile and walked from the room. Anna came breathlessly into the kitchen, flung herself into a chair and stretched out her limbs.

“Well, what a lot of effort and contrivance! They force us to do their business as well as our own.”

“They are good women at heart,” said Jenney. “I like Ethel very much.”

“I never get that kind of feeling for them. I always feel a being apart, as if there were a kind of barrier between us.”

“We let them do a good many personal things for us, said Jenney.

“I would not say that. Useful, material things, if you will, but I do not use the term, personal, quite so easily. We could never make a friend of one of them, or I never could. Well, I think my little manœuvre had its effect.”

“There are a good many stairs. We can’t alter that,” said Jenney, resting her eyes on Anna’s prostrate form, as if unable but to recognise that she had not done so.

“Oh, they are so much stronger than we are. They are brought up to be tough from birth,” said Anna, dropping her hands over the sides of her chair in the manner proper to her different training.

“And is that good for them or for us?” said Jenney, in a drier tone.

“It fits in for us both,” said Anna, idly.

“We are very dependent on them.”

“And they on us. They have to earn their living. And they will not do it by jibbing at a few stairs.”

When the footsteps of Cook and Ethel were heard, or rather those of Ethel, as Cook’s made no sound, Anna rose and made a parade of rushing from the room.

“I can’t face any more fuss and trouble. If you are so fond of them, stay and cope with their moods.”

Jenney remained and enjoyed an equal chat with Cook and Ethel. Her position between the family and them gave her an opportunity for living in two sets of lives, and she could not have lived in too many. She relinquished the easiest chair to Cook, who took it with an air of being helpless in such a matter.

“Here is the cold food,” said Jenney. “There are only the vegetables to be done now.”

Ethel rose and without discontinuing her talk, turned back her cuffs and moved to the sink. To prepare the vegetables was Cook’s work, but Ethel placed no reliance on her strength, even though it had been fostered from birth. Perhaps this was further evidence that their intimacy was not of the earliest.

“It is a comfortable bedroom,” said Ethel at length, lifting something out of the water.

“And they are good beds,” said Cook, in the voice of one whose thoughts would turn to this item.

“You must go to yours in good time to-night,” said Jenney.

Cook sighed at the meaning under the words, and by leaning back with her feet raised, contrived that the prospect should be as little removed as possible.

“I can wash up the dinner things,” said Ethel. “The cooking I never could take to.”

“I was always inclined to the skilled work,” said Cook. “And it is better for Ethel to have the place where her height tells.”

“She looks very nice when she is waiting at table,” said Jenney.

Ethel’s expression did not change, as it might have at a new idea.

“There is Mr. Bernard coming up the drive,” she said, in a tone that did not seem to introduce another subject. “I thought the gentlemen were to come to-morrow.”

“Mr. Bernard does not follow others,” said Cook. “Some can be a law to themselves.”

Bernard Donne entered the house, exchanged a word with his sister, and descended to the basement.

“Three stairs at one step,” said Ethel, looking at Cook with an approach to a smile.

Cook returned the smile in a manner that did credit to her sympathies, considering the sphere in which they were required to function.

“He is never detained by Miss Anna,” she said.

“Well, Jenney,” said the eldest son of the family, “I do not feel that this house will ever be a home to me.”

“You will have some tea, sir?” said Cook, who had risen and replaced the kettle on the stove.

“I will have any comfort that is available. And I will have it here. It is known that the kitchen is the nicest room in the house.”

Cook and Ethel met this remark in a natural silence.

“It is not so far from your dinner time, sir,” said Ethel, on a note of warning.

“One meal never spoils me for another. It only prepares me for it. I never know why food is a sort of inoculation against other food. Food is not an illness.”

Bernard Donne spoke in an almost serious tone. He was a large, nearly stout young man of thirty-two, with a full, pink face, broad, ordinary features, and bright, unusual, grey eyes. He had indolent, heavy movements, and actually depended on full and frequent meals to avoid fatigue. He had a way of remaining still, while his eyes roved and danced from one thing to another. As Ethel brought his tea, he drew her into a chair by his side.

“It is something that we do not go alone from the cradle to the grave.”

Ethel hastily rose, adjusted her cuffs and returned to the sink, as if this position were more secure for her.

“Anna spoke coldly and almost harshly to me, Jenney. She said my room was not ready, and that the dinner would be cold.”

“Your room will be comfortable, sir,” said Ethel. “And the vegetables will be hot.”

“I have never heard of them cold. And the rest of the dinner must be what I have not heard of at all.”