They had the sitting-rooms, No. 6 and No. 7. “Sixes and Sevens” we called them, and certainly that’s what they were always at. They stayed three weeks, while their house in London was being painted and done up inside and out; and if they had stayed much longer, I think mad I should have gone. When they came I had picked up my strength again wonderfully, and was quite well; but when they went away I was reduced to such a state of nervousness that if a door banged I jumped out of my chair and burst into a perspiration.
One day we had a letter from a lady in London, asking if we had two sitting-rooms and four bedrooms to spare, and giving a list of the family she wanted to bring with her, if we could accommodate them for a fortnight. Mrs. Owen Wales was the name on the lady’s card, and it was a very good address. So we wrote back to say that we had the bedrooms to spare, and also two nice sitting-rooms—No. 6 and No. 7. She had asked us to give her an idea of our terms for such a party for three weeks; but Harry said it was no good making a reduction, as large families were sometimes more trouble than small ones, and our terms were quite moderate enough. So I wrote a nice polite letter, and said what our regular charges were, and that as we had only limited accommodation, and were generally full, we couldn’t make any reduction, but they might rely upon every attention being paid to their comfort.
One or two letters passed before the thing was settled, and then one day we had a telegram ordering fires to be{224} lighted in both sitting-rooms and dinner to be ready at 6.30 for six people, in the largest sitting-room.
They arrived about half-past five—Mr. and Mrs. Owen Wales and two young gentlemen and two young ladies and a maidservant.
Mr. Owen Wales was a very short and very stout gentleman of about fifty-five, with the reddest hair and whiskers I ever saw in my life. Mrs. Owen Wales was about fifty, I should say, but she was six feet, if she was an inch, and a fine women in every way; in fact, I may say a magnificent woman. The two sons, Mr. Robert and Mr. David, were fine, tall young men, taking after the mother. One was twenty-two and the other nineteen, and the daughters, Miss Rhoda and Miss Maggie, were both tall, too, and neither of them, I should say, would see twenty again. Pryce, the lady’s-maid, was the queerest lady’s-maid I ever saw in my life. She said she was forty to one of our girls, who asked the question delicately; but she was sixty if she was a day. She was one of those hard-faced, straight-up-and-down, hawk-eyed, eagle-nosed old women that never laugh and never smile, and seem to have been turned out of a mould hard set, and never to have melted.
I soon saw what I had to deal with in Mrs. Pryce (she was a Miss, but was always called Mrs. by her own request,) directly she got out of the fly, that came on first with the luggage.
She began to order me about, if you please, before she had been inside the door a second, and to give me directions what was to be done, as if I had never had a respectable person stay at my hotel before.
I listened to what she had to say quietly, and I said, “Very good; I will call the chambermaid, and she will attend to you.”
She looked at me in a supercilious sort of way, and said, “Humph!” out loud, and growled something to herself, which I know as well as possible, though I didn’t hear it, was that she supposed I was above my business.
Now, that is a thing nobody can say of me with truth; but I never could submit to be sat upon; and nothing puts my back up quicker than for anybody to try it on,{225} especially people who are always giving themselves airs and showing off.
After she’d gone upstairs with the chambermaid and the man who carried the luggage up, to see it put in the proper rooms, I said to my husband, “Harry, there’ll be trouble with that person before we’ve done with her—you mark my words.” Harry said, “Well, my dear, don’t you begin making it,” which made me turn on him rather spitefully. One would have thought, to hear him say that, that I was inclined to quarrel with people and to make words, which I never was, and I hope I never shall be; though, of course, a great deal depends upon the health you are in and the condition of your nerves. You have a baby who is teething, and keeps you awake night after night for a fortnight, and I think Job himself would have lost his patience and turned snappy. And that was what had happened to me with my second—a dear little girl, with the loveliest dark eyes you ever saw in your life, and more like me than Harry, with the prettiest ways a baby ever had, till the teething began, and then the poor mite, I am bound to say, she didn’t show her mother’s amiability of temper. (Ahem! Harry.)
“Well, of all the impudent things I ever saw! I left my papers on my desk while I ran downstairs to go to the stores cupboard with cook, and that impudent husband of mine has been reading my manuscript, and has put in that nasty remark. I shan’t scratch it out—it shall stand there as a lasting disgrace to him. It will show young women what they have to expect when they get married, and how little men appreciate a woman who lets them have their own way, and doesn’t make herself a tyrant.
And talking about tyrants, if ever there was one in this world it was that Mr. Owen Wales. That little bit of a fellow, who, as Harry said, was only a pair of red whiskers on two stumps, made his big wife and his big family tremble before him. But I shall come to that presently.
It was as much as I could do to keep from saying, “Oh!” and giggling right out when they all got out of the fly, and the little man walked in like a small turkey-cock surrounded by his giant family. They really looked{226} giants and giantesses by the side of him; but not one of them spoke a word or offered a remark, leaving everything to “Pa.”
Harry said afterwards it reminded him of a little bantam cock when Mr. Owen Wales first strutted in; but there wasn’t much of the bantam when he began to crow—I mean when he began to speak. It was more like a bassoon. He had the deepest and gruffest voice I ever heard. Really, you would wonder how such sounds could come out of a little man’s throat.
He spoke in his gruff voice in a short, jumpy way, as if he was ordering a regiment of soldiers about. “Rooms ready?” “Yes, sir; quite ready.” “Fires alight?” “Yes, sir; they have been alight all day.” He grunted, and then he turned to his family, who all stood meek and mute behind him, and said, “Go on!” Well, he didn’t say it—he growled it, and they all turned and went upstairs after the waitress, like school-children, leaving Mr. Owen Wales to settle with the flyman. Our flyman is a very civil flyman, but Mr. Owen Wales bullied him about some trifle till, the poor man told me afterwards, he felt inclined to jump off the box and give the “little beggar” a good shaking. And that’s how I often felt with him afterwards—that I should like to take him up, put him under my arm, and drop him quietly out of the window, to teach him a lesson.
But his family stood in absolute terror of him, especially his wife, who was the dullest, meekest, quietest creature for her size that you ever saw. She could have taken that little man and given him a good shaking at any moment if she had chosen to put out her strength; and instead of that she obeyed him like a dog and trembled if he spoke cross to her or swore.
And he did swear. Not very bad swearing, but still swearing all the same. It was only one word he used, beginning with D; but he would say it as if he was thinking it out loud. This was the sort of thing. “Where did I put my glasses? D——!” “Hasn’t anybody seen them? D——!” “Oh, there they are on the sofa. D——!” “What time is it—half-past ten? D——!” “Which way is the wind this morning—east? D——!” And so on. It was such a habit with him that I think he didn’t know{227} what he did it for. One Sunday I heard him, coming out of church, before the people were out of the doors, say quite out loud, “I have left my Church Service in the pew. D——!” And, turning round to go back, he pushed up against the clergyman’s wife, and apologized, “Beg pardon, ma’am, I’m sure. D——!”
He used to say that word between every sentence he spoke aloud, just like some people grunt between every sentence when they talk; and being such a pompous little man, and so conspicuous with his red hair and whiskers and his stoutness, it made it seem odder than ever, and attracted everybody’s attention.
I believe he was a very clever little man, which perhaps accounted for his queer ways. I was told that he was a very wonderful man at figures; and I think he was under Government, in some great office—at least, I’ve heard so; and this perhaps accounted for his muttering, and thinking, and swearing so much to himself. He really forgot that anybody was in the room, his head being on something else. Sometimes at dinner, when the joint was in front of him, he would help himself and begin to eat, forgetting his wife and family altogether, until one of them would venture to say “Pa.” And then he would look up suddenly, and say quite sharply, “Eh? What? Oh, d——!” and then serve them.
When he was in our hotel he always had one of the sitting-rooms to himself, and he would sit there for hours with a lot of papers, which he had in a big dispatch-box he carried about with him. I suppose he was ciphering, but I couldn’t tell, because he always locked the door, and nobody was allowed to go near when he was there. The only person he was really civil to, and was really afraid of, was Mrs. Pryce, the lady’s-maid. I’m sure that old woman knew something; for he never tried any of his bullying on with her. Sometimes, when dinner was ready, and he was locked in his room, there wasn’t one of them—not his wife, and not his children—who dared go and knock and tell him. They used to send for Pryce to go; and she would march up to the door as bold as brass and knock, and say, quite short, “Dinner, sir.”
If Pryce did that he would come out in a minute; but{228} once, when Pryce was out, his eldest daughter went and gave a feeble little tap after dinner had been ready three-quarters of an hour, and he came out foaming at the mouth, and dancing about in a rage, and roaring and bellowing, like a wild animal that had been stirred up in its cage with a long pole.
The least thing would put him out. I remember when they first came I had to tell him one day that his wife had gone for a walk with the young ladies.
“Mrs. Wales has gone out, sir,” I said.
“That’s not her name,” he said. “D——! Don’t you think you ought to call people who stay with you by their proper name? D——! My name is Owen Wales, D——! not Wales. My wife’s Mrs. Owen Wales; my daughters are Miss Owen Waleses. Don’t chop half our name off, please. D——!”
And with that he went growling and muttering up the stairs, as though he’d been having a fight with another animal over a bone.
I’ve told you that when he was about, the rest of the family were like lambs. Even the sons, grown-up young men as they were, didn’t dare to open their mouths hardly before him; but when he went up to London and left them in the hotel by themselves, oh dear me! you wouldn’t have believed what a wonderful change took place.
Their mamma was just the same quiet, meek, long-suffering creature; but the young ladies and gentlemen were like wild animals, when the keeper’s gone away and has taken the horsewhip with him. All the pa that was in them came out, and they quarrelled and went on at each other awfully; and their poor ma was no more use than a baby to manage them. She used to lie in bed generally when Mr. Owen Wales was away till eleven o’clock in the morning, and the family used to come down at all hours, one after the other, and quarrel over their breakfast.
When Mr. Owen Wales was with us everybody used to be at breakfast at nine sharp, all looking as if butter wouldn’t melt; and woe betide any of them that was a minute late at a meal except himself.
But, oh, the meals when he wasn’t there! It was dread{229}ful. It was the same with dinner as with breakfast. They’d come in one after the other, and quarrel all the time. And one day at dinner Miss Rhoda slapped Mr. Robert’s face, and Mr. Robert threw a glass of water over her, and they all jumped up, and I thought they’d have a free fight. I was so terrified that I dropped the vegetable-dish I was handing round out of my hand on the table............