The cost of wings, and other stories

I

THE first thing I remember being told is that I was a Parksop, and the second that it was worth while living, if only to have that name. Some years after, it dawned upon me that we had got very little else.

Father was a landed proprietor upon a reduced scale, and a parent on a large one. There were twelve of us, counting Prenderby, who had passed into the Army a few years previously, and passed out of it later on at the unanimous request of his superior officers. Father cut him off with a shilling—which he forgot to send him—and sternly forbade him to bear the name of Parksop any more. He has done well since, and attributes his rise in life entirely to that deprivation. Nobody ever writes to Prenderby except Charlotte.

If an abnormally fat girl could possibly be the heroine of a romantic love story, Charlotte—“Podge,” as she has been nicknamed ever since I can remember—would stand in that relation to this narrative. But, you know, such a thing isn’t possible. If it had been, Belle, who comes in between Podge and Prenderby, and is the acknowledged beauty of the family, having all the hereditary Parksop points besides several of her own, nobody would have wondered.

How did the story begin? With Roderick and me—coming home to spend a vacation. It was likely to be a pretty long one, for the Head of the School had behaved in a most ungentlemanly way, showing absolutely crass insensibility, as father said, to the advantage of having one of the best names in England on his school list, while it remained written at the bottom of a check for fifty-nine pounds, odd shillings, and half-pence, marked by a groveling-spirited bank cashier “No Assets.”

You may guess Roddy and me didn’t grumble much—the Parksops have never been strong in grammar and orthography, so I’m not going to apologize for a slip here and there—didn’t grumble much at hearing that we were to stay at home for the present, and be “brought on” by the curate in Euclid and Latin and Greek, and all the rest of the rot. He wouldn’t strike for wages, father knew, because for one thing he was very modest and shy, and for another he was spoons on Belle. If he wasn’t, why was he always glaring at our pew in church? And for the same reason we shouldn’t be overworked—a thing the most reckless boys acknowledge to be bad for them. So the morning after our return we went down to breakfast feeling as jolly as could be.

Father shook hands with us in his lofty way. We could see that he was deeply indignant with the Head from the way in which his aquiline nose hooked itself when we gave him a letter we’d brought with us. We almost wished we had torn it up, because, having made up our minds to go fishing that morning, we had meant to ask him for the key of the old boat house by the pond, where the punt was kept, which key, with a disregard of opportunity quite unnatural, as Roddy said—in a man with so large a family—he always kept hidden away.

Belle gave us two fingers to shake and her ear to kiss, and the others, as many as were allowed to breakfast with the elders, crowded round, and then Podge came bouncing in and hugged us for everybody. We didn’t care about the hugging, because it was such a smothering business, like sinking into a sea of eiderdown, Roddy used to say, who was imaginative for a Parksop. And here, as it’s usual to describe a heroine—though I don’t acknowledge her for one, you know—it would be best to describe Podge a little.

It describes her kind of temper pretty well to say that she didn’t mind being called Podge—even before strangers. The name describes her exactly. You couldn’t tone it down and call her plump; she was simply one of the fattest girls you ever saw. Her large face was rosy, and usually beamed, as people say in books, with smiles and good temper. Her hair was black, and done up in the way that took the least time, and her eyes were black and bright, and would have been big if her face had been a little less moonlike. She had little dumpy hands and little dumpy feet, rather pretty—in fact, the only family landmarks, as Belle said, that had not been effaced by the rising tide of fat. In a regular story there is always something about the heroine’s waist: not that I give in to Podge being—you know! I suppose she had a waist; at least, it was possible to tell where her frock bodies left off and her skirts began—then. It isn’t now! The frocks were always old, because whenever Podge had a new one she gave it to Belle, and you couldn’t deny that Belle did them more justice. Then, she had a nice kind of voice, though the Parksop drawl had been left out of it, and I think that’s all—except that, considering her beam, she moved about lightly, and that she always sat down like a collapsing feather bed and got up like an expanding balloon.

Breakfast didn’t make the school commons look very foolish. There wasn’t much difference, except that the coffee wasn’t so groundy. Father had his little dish of something special—kidneys, this time—and Roddy, sitting at his right hand—we were treated as guests the first day at home—dived in under his elbow when he was deep in his coffee cup and harpooned half a one. Of course, he had to bolt it before father came to the surface, and Podge was dreadfully anxious, seeing him so purple in the face, lest he should choke.

I did as well as I could with my rasher of bacon and hers, and I remember her whispering to me, just before Nuddles came in with the Squire’s card, that the housekeeping money had been lately more limited than ever. And as I looked across the table, out at the window, and over the green, rolling Surrey landscape—all Parksop property in our ancestors’ times—and remembered that such a small slice of it was left to be divided between such a lot of us, it did occur to me that it would have been better if they—meaning the ancestors—had been a little less Parksopian in the way of not being able to keep what they had got. Then Nuddles, the butler, came in with Squire Braddlebury’s card, and the curtain drew up—we had had a performance of one of the plays of Terence that very half year, and I had done the part of a dumb slave to everybody’s admiration—and the curtain drew up on what would have been “Podge’s Romance,” if Podge had only been thinner.

II

Father broke up the breakfast party with getting up and going out. As a rule nobody dared push back his or her chair until he had finished, and when he took it into his head to read one of the leaders in the Times aloud to us, we had to make up our minds to spend the afternoon. But as a rule he went to the library as soon as he’d done, and worked until lunch. He usually worked leaning back in his armchair, with his feet on a footstool, and a silk handkerchief thrown over his head. He went to the library now, to meet the Squire, whose gruff “Good-morning” Roddy and I heard as father opened the door. He didn’t quite shut it afterward, and as Roddy and I stood by the hall table, carefully sewing up the sleeves of the Squire’s covert coat—for Podge had given us each a neat pocket needle-and-thread case, to teach us to be tidy, she said, and a taste for practical joking isn’t incompatible with lofty lineage—we couldn’t help hearing some of the conversation.

It was most of it on the Squire’s side, and the words “title deeds,” “unentailed,” and “mortgage” occurred over and over again. Then “unpaid,” “due notice,” “neglected,” and, finally, “foreclosure.” Perhaps it was father’s giving a hollow groan at this, and being seen by me through the crack of the library door to tear his hair, beautifully white, without tearing any of it out, that made me listen. At any rate, I left Roddy busy with the coat, and—any other boy, even a Parksop by birth, would have done as much under the circumstances.

Well, I made out that Squire Braddlebury had got father on toast. It became quite plain to me, boy as I was, that he could, whenever he chose, strip us of the last remaining hundreds of our old acres, and send us, generally, packing to Old Gooseberry—with a word. Then he asked father why he thought he didn’t say the word then and there? and father said something about respect for ancient title and hereditary something or other; and Squire Braddlebury, who had made his vulgar money in trade, said ancient title and hereditary something or other might be dee’d. And then——

“I’ll tell you why, Parksop,” he blustered. “It’s because of your girl! When you came to me for money to waste on your gobbling, selfish old self, caring, not you, not one snap whether your family went bare for the rest o’ their lives, so long as you got what you wanted for the rest of yours, I lent you the cash on your title deeds, signed by Edward Plantagenet—and more fool he to waste good land on you! I lent you the cash, I say, because I knew you’d not come up to the mark when pay day came, and I wanted your girl. What’s that you say? Belle! Not if I know it! Sandy hair and aquiline profiles don’t agree with me. I mean Miss Charlotte. She’s a fine, full figure of a woman; she’s a good ’un, too! Don’t I know how she keeps your house a-going? Don’t I know how she makes and mends, plans and contrives, teaches the children when your foreign governesses take French leave, because they can’t get their wages out of you, Parksop, and does the Lord knows what besides! I shouldn’t have spoken so soon, but another fellow’s got his eye on her—Noel, the parson—you know who I mean. I believe they’re secretly engaged, or something.”

“Gracious Heavens!” cried father.

“If they are,” growled the Squire, “it don’t matter. We’ll soon put the curate to the right-about, and on the day I take her to church you’ll get your title deeds back. You’re reasonable, I see. It’s a bargain. So go and fetch her, Parksop; go and fetch her.”

There was a scroop and shriek of overstrained springs and tortured leather. The Squire had thrown himself into father’s armchair. I had only time to drag Roddy behind the green baize door that shuts off the servants’ wing from the rest of the house, when father came out of the library.

III

The whole house was topsy-turvy. The secret of the mortgage was out, for one thing. Everybody knew that the Squire had proposed to Podge, that Podge had said “No” to him, in spite of father’s dignified commands, and that the Squire had rushed out of the house, foaming at the mouth, with his coat half on and half off, stormed his way round to the stables, where he saddled his horse himself, and galloped homeward, scattering objurgations, threats, and imprecations right and left.

“Stuck-up paupers! Make Parksop know better! Sell ’em up, stick and stone! Prefer d—d curate to me, Thomas Braddlebury! Fool! Must be crazy!”

Roddy and I and everybody else agreed with him, except Podge. She was regularly downright obstinate. She had given in to all of us all her life, and now, just when her giving in meant so much, she wouldn’t. What was the good of beginning, we asked, if she didn’t intend to go on? We were very severe with her, because she deserved it. Falling in love at her size—like a milkmaid—and with an elderly curate—an old-young man, with shabby clothes and a stoop! Belle had put up with his staring at our pew when he read the Litany on Sundays, but now that she was quite sure he hadn’t been doing it because of her, she regarded it as an unpardonable insult. She stirred up father to write to the Rector demanding Mr. Noel’s instant dismissal, and the Rector sent back an old, unsettled claim for tithe money, and referred father to the Bishop of the diocese.

Meanwhile, Podge was the victim of love. It was really funny. She cried quarts at night, according to Belle. Her red nose and swollen eyes made her funnier still. And old Noel stooped more going about his parish work. He was a gentleman—that was one thing to be said for him—and if two perfectly healthy lives had not stood between him and the title, he’d have been a baronet, with a rent roll worth having, the Rector’s wife said.

They say dropping wears away a stone. We dropped on Podge from morning till night, and she gave in at last. She put on her hat and trotted down to the Rectory—waddled would be the best word. She saw Noel, and had it out vivâ voce. She’d tried to do it by letter—Belle found a torn-up note of dismissal in her room, beginning “My lost Darling.” We yelled over the notion of old Noel being Podge’s lost darling; almost before we’d done yelling she was back again, and had smothered the little ones all round, and gone to the library with a flag of truce—a wet pocket handkerchief—to announce the capitulation to father. She spoke to me afterward, looked appealing, as if she wanted to be praised for doing a simple thing like that for her family! I didn’t praise her, and Roddy gave her even less encouragement.

The Squire was sent for by special messenger, and came without hurrying. He said he was glad she’d come to her senses and showed a proper appreciation of the gifts Providence had placed within her reach. He brought a diamond engagement ring, which wouldn’t go on the proper finger. We laughed again at that; we were always laughing in those days. And he gave father one of the title deeds back, and stayed to dinner, and had a little music in the drawing-room afterward, and kissed Podge when he went away, at which Roddy and I and Belle nearly went into convulsions, and in a little time the wedding day was fixed.

As it came near, Podge didn’t get any thinner. She ate her dinner just as usual, and smothered the children a good deal. She was to have half a dozen or so of them to live with her; she stipulated for that, and the Squire grinned and scowled and said, “All right, for the present!” He turned out to be quite generous, and tipped us sovereigns and Belle jewelry and new frocks, and she said every time she tried them on that she had quite come to regard him as a relative. Everybody had except Podge, and I dare say if you’d asked her she’d have said she was the person whose opinion mattered most. You never know how selfish unselfish people can be till they’re tried! It’s true the Squire was awfully ugly and as rough as a bear, and a little too fond of drinks that made his temper uncertain and his legs unsteady. But he had done a great deal for the family, and women can’t expect us men to be angels.

Podge was a little too quiet as the wedding drew near. You know, there’s no fun in pinning a cockchafer that doesn’t spin round lively. The presents came in and the invitations went out, the breakfast was planned, the cake came from London, with heaps of other things; but she kept quiet. The night before the wedding it rained. Somebody wanted her for one of the thousand things people were always wanting her for, and she couldn’t be found. She stayed out so long that father sent word to the stablemen and gardeners to take torches and drag the pond. Of course, he was anxious, for you can’t have a wedding without a bride. But why the pond? A thin girl might have tried that without seeming ridiculous, but not a fat one, and Podge couldn’t have sunk if she’d tried! She came in at last among us, looking very queer, and wet to the skin, with only a thin cloak on over her evening dress. She said she’d been to the churchyard, to mother’s grave, praying that we might be forgiven. She laughed the next moment, catching a glimpse of her own droll figure in the drawing-room glass.

Next day was the wedding day. Everybody had new clothes, and the bridesmaids’ lockets had the initials of Podge and the Squire, “C” and “R,” in diamonds. Roddy and I had pins to match—Hunt and Roskell’s. I forget how many yards of white satin went into Podge’s wedding gown, but it measured thirty-eight inches round the waist—no larks. She cried all the way going to church, so that father was nearly washed out of the brougham.

How did the wedding go off? It never came off at all! There were the county people in the smart clothes they’d taken the shine off in London; there were the school children, with washed faces and clean pinafores, and baskets of rose leaves all ready to strew on the path of the happy pair. There were the decorations, palms and lilies, as if the occasion had been a kind of martyr’s festival; and there was the Bishop at the altar rails, with the Rector, waiting to tie the knot; and the Squire, in a blue frock-coat, buff waistcoat, and shepherd’s plaid trousers, with a whole magnolia in his buttonhole, waiting for Podge.

Father tried to lead her up the aisle, but it was too narrow, so he walked behind. Just as she put her foot on the chancel step, out comes old Noel out of the vestry, to everybody’s surprise, looking flushed and excited. He said something I didn’t hear, and then Podge calls out, “Oh, I can’t! Have mercy!” or something like that, and surged down with a flop, like the sound a big wave makes dashing into a cave’s mouth, on the red and white tiles. Old Noel ran to lift her up, but couldn’t do it. The Squire called out, “D—— you! Let my wife alone!” And the Bishop rebuked him for swearing in a sacred edifice. Then father and the Squire and old Noel hoisted Podge up—for two of ’em weren’t strong enough—and tottered with her into the vestry.

What happened? I got in, and so I know all about it. We sprinkled Podge with water, and set fire to a feather duster and held it under her nose, and she came to, with her hair down, and her wreath and veil hanging by one hairpin. And old Noel bent over her, and said, “Dearest Charlotte, there is no need for the sacrifice now!” And he pulled a newspaper out of his pocket and handed it to father, who said, “What! what! how dare you, man?” and then dropped his eye on a paragraph marked in red ink, and said in the best Parksop manner, “I really beg your pardon, Sir Clement! Your uncle and his son both drowned yachting in the Mediterranean? Most deplorable! but really affords you no excuse for—ah—interrupting a solemn ceremony in so extraordinary a manner.” And then he and old—I mean Sir Clement Noel—had a few confidential words in a corner, and I heard old—I mean the Baronet—say, “On my word and honor, a sacred pledge!” And father astounded everybody by turning on the Squire, and telling him in the most gentlemanly way to go about his business, which he did, swearing awfully, while Podge was crying for joy, and Sir Noel comforting her with his arm round her waist—I mean as far as it would go.

That happened three years ago, and Podge and Sir Clement Noel have been married three years all but a week. We all live with Podge and her husband—I don’t think they’ve ever been alone together for a day since their honeymoon. Father is very fond of Charlotte now, and says the baby is a real Parksop. That always makes Sir Clement Noel wild—I can’t think why.

I’ve often thought since, after seeing what they call a domestic drama, that what happened to Podge and Noel might have happened to the hero and heroine of one. Only, a hero never has gray hair and a stoop, and there never yet was a heroine who measured as much as thirty-eight inches round the waist. It’s impossible!