I
The coming of the new year meant the going of the Jampot,and the going of the Jampot meant the breaking of a life-time's traditions.
The departure was depressing and unsettling;the weather was--as it always is during January in Glebeshire--at its worst,and the Jampot,feeling it all very deeply,maintained a terrible Spartan composure,which was meant to show indifference and a sense of injustice.She had to the very last believed it incredible that she should really go.She had been in the old Orange Street house for eight years,and had intended to be there until she died.She was forced to admit that Master Jeremy was going beyond her;but in September he would go to school,and then she could help with the sewing and other things about the house.The real truth of the matter was that she had never been a very good servant,having too much of the Glebeshire pride and independence and too little of the Glebeshire fidelity.
Mrs.Cole had been glad of the opportunity that Hamlet's arrival in the family had given her.The Jampot,only a week before the date of her departure,came to her mistress and begged,with floods of tears,to be allowed to continue in her service.But Mrs.Cole,with all her placidity,was firm.The Jampot had to go.
I would like to paint a pleasant picture of the sentiment of the Cole children on this touching occasion;something,perhaps,in the vein of tragi-comedy with which Mr.Kenneth Graham embroiders a similar occasion in his famous masterpiece--but in this case there was very little sentiment and no tragedy at all.They did not think of the event beforehand,and then when it suddenly occurred there was all the excitement of being looked after by Rose,the housemaid,of having a longer time with their mother in the evening,and,best of all,a delightful walk with Aunt Amy,whose virginal peace of mind they attacked from every possible quarter.
The Jampot left in a high state of sulks,declaring to the kitchen that no woman had ever been so unfairly treated;that her married sister Sarah Francis,of Rafiel,with whom she was now to live,should be told all about it,and that the citizens of Rafiel should be compelled to sympathise.The children were not unfeeling,but they hated the Jampot's sulks,and while she waited in the nursery,longing for a word or movement of affection,but wearing a face of stony disapproval,they stood awkwardly beholding her,and aching for her to go.She was the more unapproachable in that she wore her Sunday silks and a heavy black bonnet with shiny rattling globes of some dark metal that nodded and becked and bowed like live things.
Hamlet,who had,of course,always hated the Jampot,barked at this bonnet furiously,and would have bitten at it had it been within his reach.She had meant to leave them all with little sentences about life and morals;but the noise of the dog,the indifference of the children,and the general air of impatience for her departure strangled her aphorisms.Poor Jampot!She was departing to a married sister who did not want her,and would often tell her so;her prospects in life were not bright,and it is sad to think that no inhabitant of the Orange Street house felt any sorrow at the sight of the last gesticulating wave of her black bonnet as she stepped into the old mouldy Polchester cab.
"The King is dead--long live the King!"The Jampot as a power in the Cole family has ceased to be.
The day following the Jampot's departure offered up the news that,for the first time in the history of the Coles,there was to be a governess.The word "governess"had an awful sound,and the children trembled with a mixture of delight and terror.Jeremy pretended indifference.
"It's only another woman,"he said."She'll be like the Jampot--only,a lady,so she won't be able to punish us as the Jampot could."I expect that Mr.and Mrs.Cole had great difficulty in finding anyone who would do.Thirty years ago governesses were an incapable race,and belonged too closely either to the Becky Sharp or the Amelia type to be very satisfactory.It was then that the New Woman was bursting upon the scene,but she was not to be found amongst the governesses.No one in Polchester had learnt yet to cycle in rational costume,it was several years before the publication of "The Heavenly Twins,"and Mr.Trollope's Lilys and Lucys were still considered the ideal of England's maidenhood.Mrs.Cole,therefore,had to choose between idiotic young women and crabbed old maids,and she finally chose an old maid.I don't think that Miss Jones was the very best choice that she could have made,but time was short.
Jeremy,aided by Hamlet,was growing terribly independent,and Mr.
Cole had neither the humour nor the courage to deal with him.No,Miss Jones was not ideal,but the Dean had strongly recommended her.
It is true that the Dean had never seen her,but her brother,with whom she had lived for many years,had once been the Dean's curate.
It was true that he had been a failure as a curate,but that made the Dean the more anxious to be kind now to his memory,he--Mr.Jones--having just died of general bad-temper and selfishness.
Miss Jones,buried during the last twenty years in the green depths of a Glebeshire valley,found herself now,at the age of fifty,without friends,without money,without relations.She thought that she would be a governess.
The Dean recommended her,Mrs.Cole approved of her birth,education and sobriety,Mr.Cole liked the severity of her countenance when she came to call,and she was engaged.
"Jeremy needs a tight hand,"said Mr.Cole."It's no use having a young girl.""Miss Jones easily escapes that charge,"said Uncle Samuel,who had met her in the hall.
The children were prepared to be good.Jeremy felt that it was time to take life seriously.He put away his toy village,scolded Hamlet for eating Mary's pincushion,and dragged out his dirty exercise-book in which he did sums.
