Tom was a Welshman, and the native taste for preaching was plainly strong within him this afternoon, so Freddy struck in hastily. “Oh yes, Tom dear, I do see, and I’ll be very discreet. And I do think you’re being simply marvellous and big-souled about the whole thing. And I won’t take to drink; I swear I won’t. That isn’t what interests me in wine at all. I’m really very professional. I’ll say special prayers against the temptation.”
This was not a happy inspiration. Freddy had, within the last year, become rather High Church in her views; St Clement’s was Broad, with a tendency to become Low under stress. Tom took breath for another lecture, but Freddy hurried on.
“It won’t be a secret from Daddy after his birthday, you see. I’ll give him the champagne cider, and explain everything, and I’m sure it will be all right from then on. He might even let me set up a little lab in the house—maybe even a tiny still—”
“I can see your Dad letting his daughter set up a still in his house,” said Tom, using his low D again to achieve an effect of irony. But Freddy was not to be checked. She liked to talk as well as he.
“It’s sure to be a success. It’s good; I can see that. Not a hint of acetification or rope to be seen in a single bottle of the dozen. I took care of sediment before I bottled. And I bottled just at the psychological moment. I bet if Veuve Cliquot had been there she would have been pleased. And now it’s been ten months in bottle and should be quite fit to drink. Of course another year would do no harm, but it’s ready now.”
“I shouldn’t think your Dad was just the man for cider,” said Tom.
“But it isn’t just old common cider. It’s champagne cider. And Morgan O’Doherty says in Life through the Neck of a Bottle that he has tasted champagne ciders which were superior to all but the finest champagnes! And you know that ache Daddy gets in his back on cold days? Well, the doctor says it’s just an ache, but I suspect it’s gravel. And do you know what’s the very best thing for gravel? Cider! It says so in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It says, “The malic acid of cider is regarded as a powerful diuretic which stimulates the kidneys and prevents the accumulation of uric acid within the system.”“
“I told you it was medicine,” said Tom, who was not a man to let a joke perish half-savoured. “Try the Widow Websters Wines for what ails you.”
“Tom,” said Freddy, in a cold voice, “was your Christmas bottle of my blackberry like medicine? Your wife told me she didn’t know where you got it, but that you never let it alone till it was all gone, and you sang Gounod’s Nazarethfour times without stopping and embarrassed her before company. Let’s not hear quite so much about the Widow Webster.”
Tom did not receive this well. But Freddy had reached an age where she no longer felt called upon to submit without protest to the impudence of her elders, even in the case of such a valued friend and ally as Tom. There was a silence, during which Tom continued to do mysterious things with some wilted bits of green stuff which he called “slips”. Freddy, having made her point, was willing to risk a snub by starring up the conversation again.
“Do you think we can keep them out of here?”
“We can try.”
“Daddy said they could do their play in the garden. They don’t really have to come in here.”
“My experience with people who do plays is they have to go everyplace that isn’t locked and they have to move everything that isn’t fastened down,” said Tom, with bitterness. This’ll be the nearest place for them to get their electric power from, and they’ll have a lot of tack they’ll want to store here between practices and the like. What your Dad said to me was, “Give ‘em whatever help they need, and if it gets past bearing, come to me.” Well, I can’t go to him first off and say I don’t want ‘em to use the workshop and toolshed. That’d mean they have to use the garage or part of the cellar, and he won’t want that. They mustn’t get into the house. That is, unless we all want a row with them Laplanders.”
Tom’s grammar was variable. Speaking officially to his employer, it was careful. But for emphasis he relapsed into forms which he found easier and more eloquent. He never spoke of the admirable Swedish couple who headed the indoor staff except as “them Laplanders”.
“But we’ll do our best, won’t we?”
“Yes, Freddy, but I got a hunch that our best isn’t going to be good enough.” And with that Freddy had to be content.
In her daydreams Freddy sometimes fancied that her native city would be known to history chiefly as her birthplace, and this as much as anything shows the extent of her ambition. Salterton had seen more of history than most Canadian cities, and its tranquillity was not easily disturbed. Like Quebec and Halifax, it is a city which provides unusual opportunities for gush, for it has abundant superficial charm. But the real character of Salterton is beneath the surface, and beyond the powers of gush to disclose.
People who do not know Salterton repeat a number of half-truths about it. They call it dreamy and old-world; they say that it is at anchor in the stream of time. They say that it is still regretful for those few years when it appeared that Salterton would be the capital of Canada. They say that it is the place where Anglican clergymen go when they die. And, sooner or later, they speak of it as “quaint”.
It is not hard to discover why the word “quaint” is so often applied to Salterton by the unthinking or the imperceptive; people or cities who follow their own bent without much regard for what the world thinks are frequently so described; there is an implied patronage about the word. But the people who call Salterton “quaint” are not the real Saltertonians, who know that there is nothing quaint—in the sense of the word which means wilfully eccentric—about the place. Salterton is itself. It seems quaint to those whose own personalities are not strongly marked and whose intellects are infrequently replenished.
Though not a large place it is truly describable as a city. That word is now used of any large settlement, and Salterton is big enough to qualify; but a city used to be the seat of a bishop, and Salterton was a city in that sense long before it became one in the latter. It is, indeed, the seat of two bishoprics, one Anglican and one Roman Catholic. As one approaches it from the water the two cathedrals, which are in appearance so strongly characteristic of the faiths they embody, seem to admonish the city. The Catholic cathedral points a vehement and ornate Gothic finger toward Heaven; the Anglican cathedral has a dome which, with offhand Anglican suavity, does the same thing. St Michael’s cries, “Look aloft and pray!”; St Nicholas’ says, “If I may trouble you, it might be as well to lift your eyes in this direction,” The manner is different; the import is the same.
In the environs of the cathedrals the things of this world are not neglected. Salterton is an excellent commercial city, and far enough from other large centres of trade to have gained, and kept, a good opinion of itself. To name all its industries here would be merely dull, but they are many and important. However, they do not completely dominate the city and engross the attention of its people, as industries are apt to do in less favoured places. One of the happy things about Salterton is that it is possible to work well and profitably there without having to carry one’s work into the remotest crannies of social life. To the outsiders, who call Salterton “quaint”, this sometimes looks like snobbishness. But the Saltertonians do not care. They know that a little snobbery, like a little politeness, oils the wheels of daily life. Salterton enjoys a satisfying consciousness of past glories and, in a modest way, makes its own rules.