Changing Winds

"That's very English," Henry thought; "in Ireland we know all about our servants!"

"Well, I _think_ 'e's 'er 'usband," Magnolia replied. "Any'ow, 'e was drunk when 'e come!..."

They had a.s.sumed that Mrs. Clutters was a widow, a childless widow....

"I've seen 'im 'angin' about two-three times, an' when I said to 'er, 'Mrs. Clutters, there's your friend 'angin' about the corner of the street, she tole me to mind me own business, an' then she 'urried out.

Of course, it 'adn't got nothink to do with me, 'oo 'e was, an' when she tole me to mind me own business, I took the 'int...."

"Do you know where he lives?" Gilbert asked.

"No, sir, I don't. When she told me to mind me own business!..."

The approach of Death had made Magnolia amazingly garrulous. She said more to them that morning than she had said to them all the rest of the time she had been in their service... and mixed up with her reminiscences of what Mrs. Clutters had said to her and what she had said to Mrs. Clutters, there was a continual statement of her fear and dislike of death, followed by the a.s.sertion that no one 'ad ever died in a house she'd worked in before.

"You'd think she was blaming us for it," Gilbert said afterwards.

"Well, you'd better go and ask her to tell you where her husband lives,"

Henry said to her, but she shrunk away from him when he said that.

"Oh, I couldn't go near no one what was dyin'," she said. "I ain't used to it, an' I don't like it!"

Ninian shoved her aside. "I'll go," he said.

"We'd better get some one to look after her," Gilbert proposed when Ninian had gone. "Magnolia's no d.a.m.n good!..."

"No, sir, I ain't... not with dead people I ain't!"

"Clear out, Magnolia!" Gilbert shouted at her. "Go and make the beds or sit in the kitchen or something!"

"Yes, sir, certainly, sir!" Magnolia answered, and then she left the room.

"I've never felt such a helpless a.s.s in my life before," Gilbert went on when she had shut the door behind her. "I simply don't know what to do!"

"We can't do anything," Henry murmured. "Dunroon said he'd come in again in a short while. Perhaps

He got hold of the telephone book and began to turn over the pages rapidly.

"What are you looking for?" Gilbert asked.

"Nursing Homes," he answered.

"That's no good. Let's send round to Dunroon's!..."

"He won't be there!"

"Some one'll be there. We'll ring 'em up!..."

Dr. Dunroon's secretary was there, and she knew exactly what to do. "Oh, very well," she said in a voice so calm that Gilbert felt rea.s.sured.

"I'll send some one round as soon as possible!"

Ninian came down the stairs before they had finished telephoning to Dr.

Dunroon's secretary.

"I'm going to fetch her husband," he whispered to Henry, and then he left them.

4

"Let's go out," Gilbert said suddenly to Henry.

The nurse had arrived, and was busy in attendance on Mrs. Clutters.

Magnolia, full of the antagonism which servants instinctively feel towards nurses, was maintaining a grievance in the kitchen. "Givin' 'er orders, as if she was some one!" she was mumbling to herself. "Too bossy, she is!..."

"It's no good trying to do any work to-day," Gilbert went on. "I... I couldn't make up things with her... up there!"

They told Magnolia that they would have their meals out, and that she need not trouble to cook anything for them, and they sent for the nurse and explained their circ.u.mstances to her. "That's all right," she said cheerfully, "I'll look after myself!"

They set off towards Hampstead, but after a while they found themselves returning to Bloomsbury. They could not keep away from the house....

They tried to eat a meal at the Vienna Cafe, but they could not swallow the food, so they paid their bill and went away. They wandered into the British Museum, and tried to interest themselves in Egyptology....

"This female," said Gilbert, pointing to the mummy of the Priestess of Amen-Ra, "is supposed to bring frightful ill-luck to you if you squint at her. There was a fellow at Cambridge who was cracked about her...

used to come here in vac. and make love to her... sit here for hours spooning with a corpse. I often wanted to smack his face for him!"

"Pose, I expect!" Henry replied. "I should have thought it was rather dull to get smitten on a woman who's as dead as this one is...."

They remembered Mrs. Clutters....

"Let's go back and see what's happened," Gilbert said, turning away from the case which held the Priestess....

Ninian met them in the hall. "She's dead," he said. "Her husband's in the kitchen. I found him in a lodging-house in Camden Town, and I should say he's a first-cla.s.s rotter!"

5

They sat together that evening without speaking. There was to have been a meeting of the Improved Tories to talk over Roger's plan for enlarging the Army and mitigating the problem of unemployment. They could not get messages to people in time, and so part of the evening was spent in whispered explanations at the door to those who turned up.

"I think I'll go to bed," Ninian said, but he did not move, nor did any of them move. It was as if they wished to keep together as long as possible.

Magnolia, red-eyed from weeping, had come to them earlier in the evening, declaring that she was frightened.

"What are you afraid of?" Roger snapped at her.

"'Er!" she answered.

"But she's dead!..."

"Yes, sir," Magnolia said, "that's why! I don't like goin' upstairs be meself, sir!..."

"Oh, rubbish, Magnolia!" Roger exclaimed.