Longmeadow

It was all I could do to keep Mrs. Johnston from killing that dog when she saw what he did to the bride cake. She pushed past me for a better view and put her hands on her hips which them is some hips if you’ve ever seen ’em.

“Why Mrs. Tell,” she cried, “I worked for three days on that cake and then that great horrid cur spoils it in a minute. It took ten pounds of butter to make it and now there it lies in smithereens!”

“Now, now,” I said to her. “It’s only cake.” It’s my job to calm her, for Miss Maria likes a peaceful attitude here at Longmeadow. It’s true, there’s a mess to clean up from that dog and that horse and them little boys which I do not know whether to laugh or cry. But cleaning messes is something I am right good at, even if I must cut a corner here or there. It’s what I’m for. And don’t I get my practice here at Longmeadow.

My name is Margery Tell. Grady, who is groundskeeper here, and Nancy, who was married today, are my grandchildren. I am the housekeeper at the manor house and thus must keep the keys at my waist and my wits about me, even on my granddaughter’s wedding day.

It’ll make you sigh to look at Nan and her Bert, for there’s a true love match there. Watching them together recalls to me my David, for when we were young just a sideways glance from me could pink his face all over. That was long ago though sometimes still, when I lie abed in the morning, I forget he ain’t next to me and feel for his leg with mine, though he’s been in the ground these ten years.

But this is no time to be mulling, no indeed. I left Mrs. Johnston staring very mournful at that cake and went to tell the maid to get her apron, which I have seen her flirting this last half hour at least.

Earlier this morning, just after the wedding service in the church, we all walked together to the manor lawn where there were tents set up very pretty. There was Miss Maria tall and straight, which that new bustle of hers is right chic. She welcomed every guest with a hand shake as is our way here at The English Cooperative Society of Longmeadow, for we don’t curtsey to no one, nor bow.

It was a large party. Longmeadow’s old men sat together smoking them clay pipes they like so well. A group of village ladies ate ice creams, and Lord, them hats. Children hung from trees like they was Red Indians which I did not scold for this was a happy day. The great green lawn stretched down to the sea yonder.

I spied Miss Alta who is Miss Maria’s youngest, under an awning and under her veil both, for she must be careful of the sunburn.

“Miss Alta,” said I going up to her, “I have brought you this glass of lemonade, for the day’s hot, ain’t it.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Tell,” said she taking the cup. “This thing stifles.” She was talking about her veil, which she put back from her face to drink, for I guess she thought she was safe enough being under the tent.

We watched together as Miss Juliet, who is Miss Alta’s older sister, pulled my Nancy to the maypole to claim her ribbon.

“Ain’t she the prettiest thing,” I sighed. Miss Alta looked at me with them weird eyes of hers, which I guess I don’t often sound so soft so maybe she was surprised.

“She makes a lovely bride,” she said nodding.

As we watched, three of them Arum House ladies came forward to grasp a ribbon at the pole as well. They were guests at Longmeadow and so had been invited to the wedding, which there was nothing I could do about that though it made me sick to my stomach.

“Do you know,” said Miss Alta sort of sudden, “that my parents modeled Arum House on Marie Antoinette’s rural pleasure house at Versailles? That’s where the queen played at being a milkmaid while her people starved.”

I have heard of Marie Antoinette, for Mr. Charles may he rest in peace had used to talk about that very queen and how she got her head chopped for living too high, but I didn’t care to know more about her just then, for I wasn’t in a learning mood.

The Arum ladies, which ladies is one word for what they are, are different from the regular Longmeadow girls at the maypole, for both their age and their many ruffles. They had a look on their faces like they were at a servant’s ball which we used to have them here before Mr. Charles and Miss Maria changed Longmeadow from a regular country estate to what we are now.

“….so like slumming,” I heard one of them say, as she pranced. Her friend shushed her.

Suddenly there came a crashing. The white stag that lives on the far edge of the property charged from the trees right out onto the lawn where we were gathered. After him came Miss Alta’s Great Dane dog she calls Bodger and that dog’s a shedder, with his chain broke and dragging, barking fit to beat the band. All three of them Arum House ladies screamed, and one of them—the plump one-- sat herself right down on the ground, her ruffles splayed about her.

The rest of the dancers dropped their ribbons and scattered, except for Miss Juliet who ran towards Bodger to snatch up his chain, only before she could get to him, he bumped the table that held the bride cake, which toppled and split wide open. Bodger, which that dog is always hungry, lost interest in the stag, which had bolted who knows where, and had turned to the broken cake along with every child at the party. We were all of us still gaping when very sudden a man on horseback burst from the woods— after the stag maybe--or perhaps after Bodger—maybe both—but when he saw what he was riding into—the wedding party, or the remains of it-- he pulled back his horse so hard that it reared up and threw him to the ground.

Miss Maria ran to him; I did too, but by the time I got there, he was already sitting up and wincing. He was smiling at Miss Maria so I guessed he was alright.

I looked around me. Nancy was looking right tearful at the ruination of her wedding, so I made to go to her, but Bert got there first. He knelt down in front of her and pulled her very gentle onto his one knee, and jollied her out of her tears, until she was smiling again. It’s his right now and his duty too to help his little wife, not her granny’s no more, which I was both happy and sad together. I turned my attention to that cake and Lord. Jimmy Redder, all of eight years old, was like to taking a bath in it, while several boys watched and laughed, so I took Jimmy and another boy besides by the ears to talk to them about the difference between right and wrong. Out of the corner of my eye I spied Mike who labors down to Arum House. He was helping the plump ruffled lady to her feet. She was grinning at him very broad and his hand was on her waist, which I glared at him so hard he felt it and looked up at me and then away. I do not blame him for being ashamed.

When I finished with them boys, I went to where Miss Juliet and Miss Alta was surveying the scene together from underneath Miss Alta’s tent. “Good Lord,” I said to them, “there’s a jumble for you.”

Miss Alta nodded and then she said, “Who’s that man, do you suppose? The one who was thrown?”

“John Somerday, I heard him say to Mother,” said Miss Juliet. “I judge he’s a painter by his cases.”

“One of them new artists,” I put in. “Miss Maria told me to expect him.”

“I hope he’s alright,” said Miss Alta, which her eyes is bad so may be she couldn’t see him sitting up and talking to her mother.

“Looks to be, “said Miss Juliet and then, “I wonder: do you think Bodger will sicken from eating so much? He’s so big I can’t restrain him.”

“Let him eat cake,” said Miss Alta, which she made Miss Juliet smile when she said it, and that ain’t easy.

My people have worked for Pendergrasts here at Longmeadow for as long as anyone can remember. Our families are tied together as string and cheese. My father was a groom to old Mr. Pendergrast, and his before him, and weren’t my parents delighted when I went into service at the manor at the tender age of thirteen. “Just fancy,” said my mother, “to be in the great house and see all the lovely things!”

When Mr. Charles and Miss Maria first married, they lived much as others like them do, what with their seasons in London and their shooting parties and fancy suppers with guests.

But then, when the old Mr. Pendergrast died, and Mr. Charles inherited, he began to read about places like they had in America and in England too, and he studied on them and then he decided that’s how he wanted Longmeadow to be: a place where no one bows to no one else and having a peerage don’t make the world spin. It was, he told us, a radical notion, which we figured that out for ourselves.

First thing, Mr. Charles and Miss Maria gathered us into the church to tell us about how Longmeadow was to change. I remember: some of the men would fret if a woman dared to raise her hand to ask a question, some were drunk, often we didn’t have no idea as to what Mr. Charles was getting at, which he was apt to talk very high, about men and wars we hadn’t none of us ever heard of, and philosophies none of us cared about. I recall that we all laughed when Jack Cord muttered, “Oh, sorry, we was busy shoveling shit and missed our lessons the day they was a’teaching that.”

But when Miss Maria spoke, it was different. Mr. Charles could speak to high born, but not to us. But Miss Maria could carry any room, high or low for she is a tall lady who walks into the middle of a hall and looks you in your eye when she talks to you. Mr. Charles might think the things up, but without her to say them, it didn’t much matter if he thought a way to get to the moon and harvest the cheese, did it.

“While it is true,” she might say, walking into the aisle of the church where we were assembled, “that Mr. Pendergrast has inherited the whole of Longmeadow…”

I daresay we were all of us thinking that indeed that’s a quantity of inheriting. What with the fields and the forests and farms, the lake and them manors and all. And the village to support it. And, then of course, us. Now, it ain’t like he could really inherit us, not really….but then again, maybe a person as rich as Mr. Pendergrast could do after all.

“Mr. Pendergrast understands,” Miss Maria went on, “that a place as grand as Longmeadow can exist only by the grace of the people who support it with their labors-- whether as blacksmiths or snake catchers or farmers or a million other vital tasks. It is only by your effort, your skill, your cunning, that Longmeadow thrives!”

“For example,” said Miss Maria, with us hung on every of her words, “Mrs. Kyle, here, has worked hard all of her life, has she not?” Mrs. Kyle, standing hunched over, the very picture of a sad old one, might look up at Miss Maria, thanks on her face for being remembered.

We listened.

“And as you know, she gave both of her sons to England, one in the Crimean and one in India?”

We nodded.

“And thus,” said Miss Maria, “is it not our duty now to care for her the way her sons would have, were they still with her? If you, sir,” and here she turned towards Lucas Vander, one of the loudest of the grumblers, his grandparents having come from the Dutch land where they can squeeze a half-penny like you’d pick a tick from your dog’s ear, “if you, sir, were to be lost in battle or at work, would you not wish for your mother to be cared for, to live out her days in peace?” Lucas Vander nods, his eyes a mite pink. (Miss Maria’s a smart one: she knows how them Vander boys love their mam.)

At first, we was all suspicious of Mr. Charles. Don’t it seem strange now: us so afraid of something new we couldn’t hear what he had to offer. But people are often stupid. I learned that as a child.

When I was but nine years old, my father carried me to a harvest fete up here at Longmeadow Manor—before Mr. Charles inherited, when his parents were still living like the Pendergrasts had always lived. There was refreshment for us all and they was giving away oranges and lemons, a rare treat. There were two lines in front of the table, a long one and a short one, and no one would leave the line they was in, even if it meant they could get to the oranges quicker. They was stuck. I wanted to shift lines but my father said not to. “Hush and wait,” he said, “and you’ll have yours.”

Well, it’s hushing and waiting that kept the men in the pubs and the children without their letters and the floors dirt and the poor ones hungry until Mr. Charles and Miss Maria commenced what they called their Grand Experiment.

Before Mr. Charles altered Longmeadow, you’d only look around the estates for a moment before you’d find a tumbledown shack-- or three or seven-- tucked on the edge of town, stuffed with a widow and her pack of brats eating the clay from their yard for lack of anything better. Now, thanks to Mr. Charles’s grand idea and how he made it work, those widows live together in a house set aside for them and their children go to school and learn a trade. Before the changes, you’d see a right many men in the pubs, drunk as sailors, ready to go home and slap their wives. Now those same men are busy making the chairs Longmeadow’s famous for and down to ale with supper.

Things are certainly different than they used to be. The farmers must take apprentices, the guild pays the artisans when the selling ain’t good, everyone works, the poor are looked after, everyone has a place. The grumblers still grumble, to be sure, for they don’t keep as much as they once did, and are forced to share what they have, but mostly Longmeadow’s like a great clock ticking away very regular and it all came from Mr. Charles’s head.

I well recall those first days when they were trying to figure it all out. Miss Maria and Mr. Charles hosted very many guests from all over Britain and France and even America, those who had tried something like it and had stories to tell about it. And they would talk and sometimes shout too, late into the night. Lord, the house was like a inn, and Mrs. Johnston kept two girls busy with peeling and plucking day after day.

One afternoon, as I passed by the open drawing room door, Mr. Charles called me in. He sometimes liked to say his ideas to me, to see what I thought of them, like I was to speak for the lot of us Longmeadows. When I walked into the room, I saw, to my vast horror, that him and his guests had rolled the carpet back, and covered the floor with paper, which they were writing all over with black crayon.

“Mrs. Tell,” said Mr. Charles looking up from where he was on his hands and knees, “do just come in and look at this—it’s a plan for the workshops I have in mind, for the artisans to demonstrate their trades to the public. Do you see? Just here the turning shop and here the glassblowers? And here the weavers? And, oh look, just here: an opening where we shall build a platform—perhaps a pavilion! For music and lectures, but out of doors, do you see…oh, indeed this is marvelous!” And he jumped up and caught Miss Maria around the waist and danced a step or two with her while she laughed and laughed as did their guests.

And me? All I could do was thank the good Lord that just the day before I’d had four footmen (this was back when there were footmen, which I miss them days) to come and carry out them carpets- all of ’em Turkey, all of ’em heavy as corpses--to be beat, and two maids to sweep and wash that floor. And what if I hadn’t! Lord, it stopped my heart to think of Mr. Charles rolling back them carpets to see a mess of dust and dog hair—for Bodger’s grandsire, he blowed his hair just as much and more than what his grandson does now, which life would be a sight easier if that dog could hold onto his fur some.