Miss Ashley's school for young ladies, situated in its own grounds on
Campden Hill, was considered one of the best in England; a day or two
after they got back from Oxford, Philip announced to Sylvia that he was
glad to say Miss Ashley would take her as a pupil. She was a friend of
his family; but he had sworn her to secrecy, and it had been decided
between them that Sylvia should be supposed to be an orphan educated
until now in France.
"Mayn't I tell the other girls that I've been an odalisque?" Sylvia
asked.
"Good heavens! no!" said Philip, earnestly.
"But I was looking forward to telling them," she explained. "Because I'm
sure it would amuse them."
Philip smiled indulgently and thought she would find lots of other ways
of amusing them. He had told Miss Ashley, who, by the way, was an
enthusiastic rationalist, that he did not want her to attend the outward
shows of religion, and Miss Ashley had assented, though as a
schoolmistress she was bound to see that her other pupils went to church
at least once every Sunday. He had reassured her about the bad example
Sylvia would set by promising to come himself and take her out every
Sunday in his capacity as guardian.
"You'll be glad of that, won't you?" he asked, anxiously.
"I expect so," Sylvia said. "But of course I may find being at school
such fun that I sha'n't want to leave it."
Again Philip smiled indulgently and hoped she would. Of course, it was
now holiday-time, but Miss Ashley had quite agreed with him in the
desirableness of Sylvia's going to Hornton House before the term began.
She would be able to help her to equip herself with all the things a
school-girl required. He knew, for instance, that she was short of
various articles of clothing. Sylvia could take Miss Ashley completely
into her confidence, but even with her he advised a certain reticence
with regard to some of her adventures. She was of course a woman of
infinite experience and extremely broad-minded, but many years as a
schoolmistress might have made her consider some things were better left
unsaid; there were some people, particularly English people, who were
much upset by details. Perhaps Sylvia would spare her the details?
"You see, my dear child, you've had an extraordinary number of odd
adventures for your age, and they've made you what you are, you dear.
But now is the chance of setting them in their right relation to your
future life. You know, I'm tremendously keen about this one year's
formal education. You're just the material that can be perfected by
academic methods, which with ordinary material end in mere barren
decoration."
"I don't understand. I don't understand," Sylvia interrupted.
"Sorry! My hobby-horse has bolted with me and left you behind. But I
won't try to explain or even to advise. I leave everything to you. After
all, you are you; and I'm the last person to wish you to be any one
else."
Philip was humming excitedly when they drove up to Hornton House, and
Sylvia was certainly much impressed by its Palladian grandeur and the
garden that seemed to spread illimitably behind it. She felt rather shy
of Miss Ashley herself, who was apparently still in her dressing-gown, a
green-linen dressing-gown worked in front with what Sylvia considered
were very bad reproductions of flowers in brownish silk. She was
astonished at seeing a woman of Miss Ashley's dignity still in her
dressing-gown at three o'clock in the afternoon, but she was still more
astonished to see her in a rather battered straw hat, apparently ready
to go shopping in Kensington High Street without changing her attire.
She looked at Philip, who, however, seemed unaware of anything unusual.
A carriage was waiting for them when they went out, and Philip left her
with Miss Ashley, promising to dine at Hornton House that night.
The afternoon passed away rapidly in making all sorts of purchases,
even of trunks; it seemed to Sylvia that thousands of pounds must have
been spent upon her outfit, and she felt a thrill of pride. Everybody
behind the various counters treated Miss Ashley with great deference;
Sylvia was bound to admit that, however careless she might be of her own
appearance, she was splendidly able to help other people to choose jolly
things. They drove back to Hornton House in a carriage that seemed full
of parcels, though they only took with them what Miss Ashley considered
immediately important. Tea was waiting in the garden under a great
cedar-tree; and by the time tea was finished Sylvia was sure that she
should like Miss Ashley and that she should not run away that night,
which she had made up her mind to do unless she was absolutely contented
with the prospect of her new existence. She liked her bedroom very much,
and the noise that the sparrows made in the creeper outside her window.
The starched maid-servant who came to help her dress for dinner rather
frightened her, but she decided to be very French in order to take away
the least excuse for ridicule.
Sylvia thought at dinner that the prospect of marriage had made Philip
seem even older, or perhaps it was his assumption of guardianship which
gave him this added seriousness.
"Of course, French she already knows," he was saying, "though it might
be as well to revise her grammar a little. History she has a queer,
disjointed knowledge of--it would be as well to fill in the gaps. I
should like her to learn a little Latin. Then there are mathematics and
what is called science. Of course, one would like her to have a general
acquaintance with both, but I don't want to waste time with too much
elementary stuff. It would be almost better for her to be completely
ignorant of either."
"I think you will have to leave the decision to me, Philip," said Miss
Ashley, in that almost too deliberately tranquil voice, which Sylvia
felt might so easily become in certain circumstances exasperating. "I
think you may rely on my judgment where girls are concerned."
Philip hastened to assure Miss Ashley that he was not presuming to
dictate to her greater experience of education; he only wished to lay
stress on the subjects that he considered would be most valuable for
the life Sylvia was likely to lead.
"I have a class," said Miss Ashley, "which is composed of older girls
and of which the routine is sufficiently elastic to fit any individual
case. I take that class myself."
Sylvia half expected that Miss Ashley would suggest including Philip in
it, if he went on talking any longer. Perhaps Philip himself suspected
as much, for he said no more about Sylvia's education and talked instead
about the gravity of the situation in South Africa.
Sylvia was vividly aware of the comfort of her bedroom and of the
extraordinary freshness of it in comparison with all the other rooms she
had so far inhabited. Miss Ashley faintly reminded her of her mother,
not that there was the least outward resemblance except in height, for
Miss Ashley's hair was gray, whereas her mother's until the day of her
death had kept all its lustrous darkness. Yet both wore their hair in
similar fashion, combed up high from the forehead so as to give them a
majestic appearance. Her mother's eyes had been of a deep and glowing
brown set in that pale face; Miss Ashley's eyes were small and gray, and
her complexion had the hard rosiness of an apple. The likeness between
the two women lay rather in the possession of a natural authority which
warned one that disobedience would be an undertaking and defiance an
impossibility. Sylvia rejoiced in the idea of being under control; it
was invigorating, like the delicious torment of a cold bath. Of course
she had no intention of being controlled in big things, but she was
determined to submit over little things for the sheer pleasure of
submitting to Miss Ashley, who was, moreover, likely to be always right.
In the morning, when she came down in one of her new frocks, her hair
tied back with a big brown bow, and found Miss Ashley sitting in the
sunny green window of the dining-room, reading the _Morning Post_, she
congratulated herself upon the positive pleasure that such a getting up
was able to give her and upon this new sense of spaciousness that such a
beginning of the day was able to provide.
"You're looking at my dress," said Miss Ashley, pleasantly. "When you're
my age you'll abandon fashion and adopt what is comfortable and
becoming."
"I thought it was a dressing-gown yesterday," Sylvia admitted.
"Rather an elaborate dressing-gown." Miss Ashley laughed. "I'm not so
vain as all that."
Sylvia wondered what she would have said to some of Mabel's
dressing-gowns. Now that she was growing used to Miss Ashley's attire,
she began to think she rather liked it. This gown of peacock-blue linen
was certainly attractive, and the flowers embroidered upon its front
were clearly recognizable as daisies.
During the fortnight before school reopened Sylvia gave Miss Ashley a
good deal of her confidence, and found her much less shocked by her
experiences than Philip had been. She told her that she felt rather
ungrateful in so abruptly cutting herself off from Mabel, who had been
very kind to her; but on this point Miss Ashley was firm in her
agreement with Philip, and would not hear of Sylvia's making any attempt
to see Mabel again.
"You are lucky, my dear, in having only one person whose friendship you
are forced to give up, as it seems to you, a little harshly. Great
changes are rarely made with so slight an effort of separation. I am not
in favor personally of violent uprootings and replantings, and it was
only because you were in such a solitary position that I consented to do
what Philip asked. Your friend Mabel was, I am sure, exceedingly kind to
you; but you are much too young to repay her kindness. It is the
privilege of the very young to be heartless. From what you have told me,
you have often been heartless about other people, so I don't think you
need worry about Mabel. Besides, let me assure you that Mabel herself
would be far from enjoying any association with you that included
Hornton House."
Sylvia had no arguments to bring forward against Miss Ashley;
nevertheless, she felt guilty of treating Mabel shabbily, and wished
that she could have explained to her that it was not really her fault.
Miss Ashley took her once or twice to the play, which Sylvia enjoyed
more than music-halls. In the library at Hornton House she found plenty
of books to read, and Miss Ashley was willing to talk about them in a
very interesting way. Philip came often to see her and told her how
much Miss Ashley liked her and how pleased they both were to see her
settling down so easily and quickly.
The night before term began the four assistant mistresses arrived; their
names were Miss Pinck, Miss Primer, Miss Hossack, and Miss Lee. Sylvia
was by this time sufficiently at home in Hornton House to survive the
ordeal of introduction without undue embarrassment, though, to Miss
Ashley's amusement, she strengthened her French accent. Miss Pinck, the
senior assistant mistress, was a very small woman with a sharp chin and
knotted fingers, two features which contrasted noticeably with her
general plumpness. She taught History and English Literature and had an
odd habit, when she was speaking, of suddenly putting her hands behind
her back, shooting her chin forward, and screwing up her eyes so
fiercely that the person addressed involuntarily drew back in alarm.
Sylvia, to whom this gesture became very familiar, used to wonder if in
the days of her vanity Miss Pinck had cultivated it to avoid displaying
her fingers, so that from long practice her chin had learned to replace
the forefinger in impressing a fact.
The date was 1689, Miss Pinck would say, and one almost expected to see
a pencil screwed into her chin which would actually write the figures
upon somebody's notebook.
Miss Primer was a thin, melancholy, and sandy-haired woman, who must
have been very pretty before her face was netted with innumerable small
lines that made her look as if birds had been scratching on it when she
was asleep. Miss Primer took an extremely gloomy view of everything, and
with the prospect of war in South Africa she arrived in a condition of
exalted, almost ecstatic depression; she taught Art, which at Hornton
House was no cure for pessimism. Miss Hossack, the Mathematical and
Scientific mistress, did not have much to do with Sylvia; she was a
robust woman with a loud voice who liked to be asked questions. Finally
there was Miss Lee, who taught music and was the particular adoration of
every girl in the school, including Sylvia. She was usually described as
"ethereal," "angelic," or "divine." One girl with a taste for painting
discovered that she was her ideal conception of St. Cecilia; this
naturally roused the jealousy of rival adorers that would not be
"copy-cats," until one of them discovered that Miss Lee, whose first
name was Mary, had Annabel for a second name, the very mixture of the
poetic and the intimate that was required. Sylvia belonged neither to
the Cecilias nor to the Annabels, but she loved dear Miss Lee none the
less deeply and passed exquisite moments in trying to play the Clementi
her mistress wanted her to learn.
"What a strange girl you are, Sylvia!" Miss Lee used to say. "Anybody
would think you had been taught music by an accompanist. You don't seem
to have any notion of a piece, but you really play accompaniments
wonderfully. It's not mere vamping."
Sylvia wondered what Miss Lee would have thought of Jimmy Monkley and
the Pink Pierrots.
The afternoon that the girls arrived at Hornton House Sylvia was sure
that nothing could keep her from running away that night; the prospect
of facing the chattering, giggling mob that thronged the hitherto quiet
hall was overwhelming. From the landing above she leaned over to watch
them, unable to imagine what she would talk about to them or what they
would talk about to her. It was Miss Lee who saved the situation by
inviting Sylvia to meet four of the girls at tea in her room and
cleverly choosing, as Sylvia realized afterward, the four leaders of the
four chief sets. Who would not adore Miss Lee?
"Oh, Miss Lee, _did_ you notice Gladys and Enid Worstley?" Muriel
ejaculated, accentuating some of her words like the notes of an unevenly
blown harmonium, and explaining to Sylvia in a sustained tremolo that
these twins, whose real name was Worsley, were always called Worstley
because it was impossible to decide which was more wicked. "Oh, Miss
Lee, they've got the most _lovely_ dresses," she went on, releasing
every stop in a diapason of envy. "Simply _gorgeously_ beautiful. I do
think it's a shame to dress them up like that. I do, _really_."
Sylvia made a mental note to cultivate this pair not for their dresses,
but for their behavior. Muriel was all very well, but those eyebrows
eternally arched and those eyes eternally staring out of her head would
sooner or later have most irresistibly to be given real cause for
amazement.
"Their mother likes them to be prettily dressed," said Miss Lee.
"Of course she does," Gwendyr put in, primly. "She was an actress."
To hell with Gwendyr, thought Sylvia. Why shouldn't their mother have
been an actress?
"Oh, but they're so conceited!" said Dorothy. "Enid Worsley _never_ can
pass a glass, and their frocks are most frightfully short. _Don't_ you
remember when they danced at last breaking-up?"
"This is getting unbearable," Sylvia thought.
"I think they're rather dears," Phyllis drawled. "They're jolly pretty,
anyway."
Sylvia looked at Phyllis and decided that she was jolly pretty, too,
with her golden hair and smocked linen frock of old rose; she would like
to be friends with Phyllis. The moment had come, however, when she must
venture all her future on a single throw. She must either shock Miss Lee
and the four girls irretrievably or she must be henceforth accepted at
Hornton House as herself; there must be none of these critical sessions
about Sylvia Scarlett. She pondered for a minute or two the various
episodes of her past. Then suddenly she told them how she had run away
from school in France, arrived in England without a penny, and earned
her living as an odalisque at the Exhibition. Which would she be, she
asked, when she saw the girls staring at her open-mouthed now with real
amazement, villain or heroine? She became a heroine, especially to
Gladys and Enid, with whom she made friends that night, and who showed
her in strictest secrecy two powder-puffs and a tin of Turkish
cigarettes.
There were moments when Sylvia was sad, especially when war broke out
and so many of the girls had photographs of brothers and cousins and
friends in uniform, not to mention various generals whose ability was as
yet unquestioned. She did not consider the photograph of Philip a worthy
competitor of these and begged him to enlist, which hurt his feelings.
Nevertheless, her adventures as an odalisque were proof in the eyes of
the girls against martial relations; their only regret was that the
Exhibition closed before they had time to devise a plot to visit the
Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels and be introduced by Sylvia to the
favorites of the harem.
Miss Ashley was rather cross with Sylvia for her revelations and urged
her as a personal favor to herself not to make any more. Sylvia
explained the circumstances quite frankly and promised that she would
not offend again; but she pointed out that the girls were all very
inquisitive about Philip and asked how she was to account for his taking
her out every Sunday.
"He's your guardian, my dear. What could be more natural?"
"Then you must tell him not to blush and drop his glasses when the girls
tell him I'm nearly ready. They _all_ think he's in love with me."
"Well, it doesn't matter," said Miss Ashley, impatiently.
"But it does matter," Sylvia contradicted. "Because even if he is going
to marry me he's not the sort of lover one wants to put in a frame, now
is he? That's why I bought that photograph of George Alexander which
Miss Pinck made such a fuss about. I _must_ have a secret sorrow. All
the girls have secret sorrows this term."
Miss Ashley shook her head gravely, but Sylvia was sure she was laughing
like herself.
Sylvia's chief friend was Phyllis Markham--the twins were only
fourteen--and the two of them headed a society for toleration, which was
designed to contend with stupid and ill-natured criticism. The society
became so influential and so tolerant that the tone of the school was
considered in danger, especially by Miss Primer, who lamented it much,
together with the reverses in South Africa; and when after the Christmas
holidays (which Sylvia spent with Miss Ashley at Bournemouth) a grave
defeat coincided with the discovery that the Worsleys were signaling
from their window to some boys in a house opposite, Miss Primer in a
transport of woe took up the matter with the head-mistress. Miss Ashley
called a conference of the most influential girls, at which Sylvia was
present, and with the support of Phyllis maintained that the behavior of
the twins had been much exaggerated.
"But in their nightgowns," Miss Primer wailed. "The policeman at the
corner must have seen them. At such a time, too, with these deadful
Boers winning everywhere. And their hair streaming over their
shoulders."
"It always is," said Sylvia.
Miss Ashley rebuked her rather sharply for interrupting.
"A bull's-eye lantern. The room reeked of hot metal. I could not read
the code. I took it upon myself to punish them with an extra hour's
freehand to-day. But the punishment is most inadequate. I detect a
disturbing influence right through the school."
Miss Ashley made a short speech in which she pointed out the
responsibilities of the older girls in such matters and emphasized the
vulgarity of the twins' conduct. No one wished to impute nasty motives
to them, but it must be clearly understood that the girls of Hornton
House could not and should not be allowed to behave like servants. She
relied upon Muriel Battersby, Dorothy Hearne, Gwendyr Jones, Phyllis
Markham, Georgina Roe, Helen Macdonald, and Sylvia Scarlett to prevent
in future such unfortunate incidents as this that had been brought to
her notice by Miss Primer, she was sure much against Miss Primer's will.
Miss Primer at these words threw up her eyes to indicate the misery she
had suffered before she had been able to bring herself to the point of
reporting the twins. Phyllis whispered to Sylvia that Miss Primer looked
like a dying duck in a thunder-storm, a phrase which she now heard for
the first time and at which she laughed aloud.
Miss Ashley paused in her discourse and fixed Sylvia with her gray eyes
in pained interrogation; Miss Pinck's chin shot out; Miss Lee bit her
under lip and tenderly shook her head; the other girls stared at their
laps and tried to look at one another without moving their heads.
Phyllis quickly explained that it was she who had made Sylvia laugh.
"I'm awfully sorry, Miss Ashley," she drawled.
"I'm glad to hear that you are _very_ sorry," said Miss Ashley, "but
Sylvia must realize when it is permissible and when it is not
permissible to laugh. I'm afraid I must ask her to leave the room."
"I ought to go, too," Phyllis declared. "I made her laugh."
"I'm sure, Phyllis, that to yourself your wit seems irresistible. Pray
let us have an opportunity of judging."
"Well, I said that Miss Primer looked like a dying duck in a
thunder-storm."
The horrified amazement of everybody in the room expressed itself in a
gasp that sounded like a ghostly, an infinitely attenuated scream of
dismay. Sylvia, partly from nervousness, partly because the simile even
on repetition appealed to her sense of the ridiculous, laughed aloud for
a second time--laughed, indeed, with a kind of guffaw the sacrilegious
echoes of which were stifled in an appalled silence.
"Sylvia Scarlett and Phyllis Markham will both leave the room
immediately," said Miss Ashley. "I will speak to them later."
Outside the study of the head-mistress, Sylvia and Phyllis looked at
each other like people who have jointly managed to break a mirror.
"What will she do?"
"Sylvia, I simply couldn't help it. I simply couldn't bear them all any
longer."
"My dear, I know. Oh, I think it was wonderful of you."
Sylvia laughed heartily for the third time, and just at this moment the
twins, who were the original cause of all the commotion, came sidling up
to know what everybody had said.
"You little beasts with your bull's-eye lamps and your naughtiness,"
Phyllis cried. "I expect we shall all be expelled. What fun! I shall get
some hunting. Oh, three cheers, I say!"
"Of course you know why Miss Primer was really in such a wax?" Gladys
asked, with the eyes of an angel and the laugh of a fairy.
"No, let me tell, Gladys," Enid burst in. "You know I won the toss. We
tossed up which should tell and I won. You _are_ a chiseler. You see,
when Miss Primer came tearing up into our room we turned the lamps onto
her, and she was simply furious because she thought everybody in the
street could see her in that blue-flannel wrapper."
"Which, of course, they could," Sylvia observed.
"Of course!" the twins shrieked together. "And the boys opposite
clapped, and she heard them and tried to pull down the blind, and her
wrapper came open and she was wearing a chest-protector!"
The interview with Miss Ashley was rather distressing, because she took
from the start the altogether unexpected line of blaming Phyllis and
Sylvia not for the breach of discipline, but for the wound they had
inflicted upon Miss Primer. All that had seemed fine and honest and
brave and noble collapsed immediately; it was impossible after Miss
Ashley's words not to feel ashamed, and both the girls offered to beg
Miss Primer's pardon. Miss Ashley said no more about the incident after
this, though she took rather an unfair advantage of their chastened
spirits by exacting a promise that they would in common with the rest of
the school leaders set their faces against the encouragement of such
behavior as that of the twins last night.
The news from South Africa was so bad that Miss Primer's luxury of grief
could scarcely have been heightened by Phyllis's and Sylvia's rudeness;
however, she wept a few tears, patted their hands, and forgave them. A
few days afterward she was granted the boon of another woe, which she
shared with the whole school, in the news of Miss Lee's approaching
marriage. Any wedding would have upset Miss Primer, but in this case the
sorrow was rendered three times as poignant by the fact that Miss Lee
was going to marry a soldier under orders for the front. This romantic
accessory could not fail to thrill the girls, though it was not enough
to compensate for the loss of their beloved Miss Lee. Rivalries between
the Cecilias and Annabels were forever finished; several girls had been
learning Beethoven's Pathetic Sonata and the amount of expression put
into it would, they hoped, show Miss Lee the depth of their emotion when
for the last time these frail fingers so lightly corrected their touch,
when for the last time that delicate pencil inscribed her directions
upon their music.
"Of course the school will _never_ be the same without her," said
Muriel.
"I shall write home and ask if I can't take up Italian instead of
music," said Dorothy.
"Fancy playing duets with any one but Miss Lee," said Gwendyr. "The very
idea makes me shudder."
"Perhaps we shall have a music-master now," said Gladys.
Whereupon everybody told her she was a heartless thing. Poor Gladys, who
really loved Miss Lee as much as anybody, retired to her room and cried
for the rest of the evening, until she was consoled by Enid, who pointed
out that now she _must_ use her powder-puff.
For Sylvia the idea of Miss Lee's departure and marriage was desolating;
it was an abrupt rending of half the ties that bound her to Hornton
House. Phyllis, Miss Ashley, and the twins were all that really
remained, and Phyllis was always threatening to persuade her people to
take her away when the weather was tolerably warm, so deeply did she
resent the loss of hunting. It was curious how much more Phyllis meant
to her than Philip, so much, indeed, that she had never confided in her
that she was going to marry Philip. How absurd that two names so nearly
alike could be in the one case so beautiful, in the other so ugly. Yet
she was still very fond of Philip and she still enjoyed going out with
him on Sundays, even though it meant being deprived of pleasant times
with Phyllis. She had warned Philip that she might get too fond of
school, and he had smiled in that superior way of his. Ought she to
marry him at all? He had been so kind to her that if she refused to
marry him she would have to run away, for she could not continue under
an obligation. Why did people want to marry? Why must she marry? Worst
of all, why must Miss Lee marry? But these were questions that not even
Miss Hossack would be able to answer. Ah, if it had only been Miss
Hossack who had been going to marry. Sylvia began to make up a rhyme
about Miss Hossack marrying a Cossack and going for her honeymoon to the
Trossachs, where Helen Macdonald lived.
All the girls had subscribed to buy Miss Lee a dressing-case, which they
presented to her one evening after tea with a kind of dismal
beneficence, as if they were laying a wreath upon her tomb. Next morning
she went away by an early train to the north of England, and after
lunch every girl retired with the secret sorrow that now had more than
fashion to commend it. Sylvia's sorrow was an aching regret that she had
not told Miss Lee more about herself and her life and Philip; now it was
too late. She met the twins wandering disconsolately enlaced along the
corridor outside her room.
"Oh, Sylvia, dearest Sylvia!" they moaned. "We've lost our duet with
Miss Lee's fingering."
"I'll help you to look for it."
"Oh, but we lost it on purpose, because we didn't like it, and the next
day Miss Lee said she was going to be married."
Sylvia asked where they lost it.
"Oh, we put it in an envelope and posted it to the Bishop of London."
Sylvia suggested they should write to the Bishop and explain the
circumstances in which the duet was sent to him; he would no doubt
return it.
"Oh no," said the twins, mournfully. "We never put a stamp on and we
wrote inside, 'A token of esteem and regard from two sinners who you
confirmed.' How can we ask for it back?"
Sylvia embraced the twins, and the three of them wandered in the sad and
wintry garden until it was time for afternoon school.
The next day happened to be Sunday, and Philip came as usual to take
Sylvia out. He had sent her the evening before an overcoat trimmed with
gray squirrel, which, if it had not arrived after Miss Lee's departure,
would have been so much more joyfully welcomed. Philip asked her why she
was so sad and if the coat did not please her. She told him about its
coming after Miss Lee had gone, and, as usual, he had a lot to say:
"You strange child, how quickly you have adopted the outlook and manners
of the English school-girl. One would say that you had never been
anything else. How absurd I was to be afraid that you were a wild bird
whom I had caught too late. I'm quite positive now that you'll be happy
with me down in Hampshire. I'm sorry you've lost Miss Lee. A charming
woman, I thought, and very cultivated. Miss Ashley will miss her
greatly, but she herself will be glad to get away from music-teaching.
It must be an atrocious existence."
Here was a new point of view altogether. Could it really be possible
that those delicious hours with Miss Lee were a penance to the mistress?
Sylvia looked at Philip angrily, for she found it unforgivable in him to
destroy her illusions like this. He did not observe her expression and
continued his monologue:
"Really atrocious. Exercises! Scales! Other people's chilblains! A
creaking piano-stool! What a purgatory! And all to teach a number of
young women to inflict an objectionable noise upon their friends and
relations."
"Thanks," Sylvia broke in. "You won't catch me playing again."
"I'm not talking about you," Philip said. "You have temperament. You're
different from the ordinary school-girl." He took her arm
affectionately. "You're you, dear Sylvia."
"And yours," she added, sullenly. "I thought you said just now that I
was just like any other English school-girl and that you were so happy
about it."
"I said you'd wonderfully adopted the outlook," Philip corrected. "Not
quite the same thing."
"Oh, well, take your horrible coat, because I don't want it," Sylvia
exclaimed, and, rapidly unbuttoning her new overcoat, she flung it on
the pavement at his feet.
Nobody was in sight at the moment, so Philip did not get angry.
"Now don't tell me it's illogical to throw away only the coat and not
undress myself completely. I know quite well that everything I've got on
is yours."
"Oh no, it's not," Philip said, gently. "It's yours."
"But you paid for everything."
"No, you paid yourself," he insisted.
"How?"
"By being Sylvia. Come along, don't trample on your poor coat. There's a
most detestable wind blowing."
He picked up the offending overcoat and helped her into it again with so
much sympathy half humorous, half grave in his demeanor that she could
not help being sorry for her outburst.
Nevertheless, the fact of her complete dependence upon Philip for
everything, even before marriage, was always an oppression to Sylvia's
mind, which was increased by the continual reminders of her loneliness
that intercourse with other girls forced upon her. They, when they
should marry, should be married from a background; the lovers, when they
came for them, would have to fight for their love by breaking down the
barriers of old associations, old friendships, and old affections; in a
word, they would have to win the brides. What was her own background?
Nothing but a panorama of streets which offered no opposition to
Philip's choice except in so far as it was an ugly background for a
possession of his own and therefore fit to be destroyed. It was all very
well for Philip to tell her that she was herself and that he loved her
accordingly. If that were true, why was he taking so much trouble to
turn her into something different? Other girls at Hornton House, when
they married, would not begin with ugly backgrounds to be obliterated;
their pasts would merge beautifully with the pasts of their husbands;
they were not being transformed by Miss Pinck and Miss Primer; they were
merely being supplied by them with value for their parents' money. It
was a visit to Phyllis Markham's home in Leicestershire during the
Easter holidays that had branded with the iron of jealousy these facts
upon her meditation. Phyllis used to lament that she had no brothers;
and Sylvia used to wonder what she would have said if she had been like
herself, without mother, without father, without brothers, without
sisters, without relations, without friends, without letters, without
photographs, with nothing in the whole world between herself and the
shifting panorama from which she had been snatched but the love of a
timid man inspired by an unusual encounter in Brompton Cemetery. This
visit to Phyllis Markham was the doom upon their friendship; however
sweet, however sympathetic, however loyal Phyllis might be, she must
ultimately despise her friend's past; every word Sylvia listened to
during those Easter holidays seemed to cry out the certain fulfilment of
this conjecture.
"I expect I'm too sensitive," Sylvia said to herself. "I expect I really
am common, because apparently common people are always looking out for
slights. I don't look out for them now, but if I were to tell Phyllis
all about myself, I'm sure I should begin to look out for them. No, I'll
just be friends with her up to a point, for so long as I stay at Hornton
House; then we'll separate forever. I'm really an absolute fraud. I'm
just as much of a fraud now as when I was dressed up as a boy. I'm not
real in this life. I haven't been real since I came down to breakfast
with Miss Ashley that first morning. I'm simply a very good impostor. I
must inherit the talent from father. Another reason against telling
Phyllis about myself is that, if I do, I shall become her property. Miss
Ashley knows all about me, but I'm not her property, because it's part
of her profession to be told secrets. Phyllis would love me more than
ever, so long as she was the only person that owned the secret, but if
anybody else ever knew, even if it were only Philip, she would be
jealous and she would have to make a secret of it with some one else.
Then she would be ashamed of herself and would begin to hate and despise
me in self-defense. No, I must never tell any of the girls."
Apart from these morbid fits, which were not very frequent, Sylvia
enjoyed her stay at Markham Grange. In a way it encouraged the idea of
marrying Philip; for the country life appealed to her not as to a
cockney by the strangeness of its inhabitants and the mere quantity of
grass in sight, but more deeply with those old ineffable longings of
Hampstead.
At the end of the summer term the twins invited Sylvia to stay with them
in Hertfordshire. She refused at first, because she felt that she could
not bear the idea of being jealously disturbed by a second home. The
twins were inconsolable at her refusal and sent a telegram to their
mother, who had already written one charming letter of invitation, and
who now wrote another in which she told Sylvia of her children's bitter
disappointment and begged her to come. Miss Ashley, also, was anxious
that Sylvia should go, and told her frankly that it seemed an excellent
chance to think over seriously her marriage with Philip in the autumn.
Philip, now that the date of her final decision was drawing near,
wished her to remain with Miss Ashley in London. His opposition was
enough to make Sylvia insist upon going; so, when at the end of July the
school was swept by a tornado of relations and friends, Sylvia was swept
away with the twins to Hertfordshire, and Philip was left to wait till
the end of September to know whether she would marry him or not in
October.
The Worsleys' home at Arbour End made an altogether different impression
upon Sylvia from Markham Grange. She divined in some way that the
background here was not immemorial, but that the Worsleys had created it
themselves. And a perfect background it was--a very comfortable red
brick house with a garden full of flowers, an orchard loaded with fruit,
fields promenaded by neat cows, pigsties inhabited by clean pigs, a
shining dog-cart and a shining horse, all put together with the
satisfying completeness of a picture-puzzle. Mr. Worsley was a handsome
man, tall and fair with a boyish face and a quantity of clothes; Mrs.
Worsley was slim and fair, with a rose-leaf complexion and as many
clothes as her husband. The twins were even naughtier and more charming
than they were at Hornton House; there was a small brother called
Hercules, aged six, who was as charming as his sisters and surpassed
them in wickedness. The maids were trim and tolerant; the gardener was
never grumpy; Hercules's governess disapproved of holiday tasks; the
dogs wagged their tails at the least sound.
"I love these people," Sylvia said to herself, when she was undressing
on the first night of her stay. "I love them, I love them. I feel at
home--at home--at home!" She leaped into bed and hugged the pillow in a
triumph of good-fellowship.
At Arbour End Sylvia banished the future and gave herself to the
present. One seemed to have nothing to do but to amuse oneself then, and
it was so easy to amuse oneself that one never grew tired of doing so.
As the twins pointed out, their father was so much nicer than any other
father, because whatever was suggested he always enjoyed. If it was a
question of learning golf, Mr. Worsley took the keenest interest in
teaching it. When Gladys drove a ball through the drawing-room window,
no one was more delighted than Mr. Worsley himself; he infected
everybody with his pleasure, so that the gardener beamed at the notion
of going to fetch the glazier from the village, and the glazier beamed
when he mended the window, and the maids beamed while they watched him
at work, and the dogs sat down in a loose semicircle, thumping the lawn
with appreciative tails. The next day, when Hercules, who, standing
solemnly apart from the rest, had observed all that happened, threw a
large stone through the mended window, there was the same scene of
pleasure slightly intensified.
Mrs. Worsley flitted through the house, making every room she entered
more beautiful and more gay for her presence. She had only one regret,
which was that the twins were getting so big, and this not as with other
mothers because it made her feel old, but because she would no more see
their black legs and their tumbled hair. Sylvia once asked her how she
could bear to let them go to school, and Mrs. Worsley's eyes filled with
tears.
"I had to send them to school," she whispered, sadly. "Because they
_would_ fall in love with the village boys and they were getting
Hertfordshire accents. Perhaps you've noticed that I myself speak with a
slight cockney accent. Do you understand, dear?"
The August days fled past and in the last week came a letter from Miss
Ashley.
MURREN, _August 26, 1900._
MY DEAR SYLVIA,--I shall be back from Switzerland by September 3d,
and I shall be delighted to see you at Hornton House again. Philip
nearly followed me here in order to talk about you, but I declined
his company. I want you to think very seriously about your future,
as no doubt you have been doing all this month. If you have the
least hesitation about marrying Philip, let me advise you not to do
it. I shall be glad to offer you a place at Hornton House, not as a
schoolmistress, but as a kind of director of the girls' leisure
time. I have grown very fond of you during this year and have
admired the way in which you settled down here more than I can
express. We will talk this over more fully when we meet, but I want
you to know that, if you feel you ought not to marry, you have a
certain amount of security for the future while you are deciding
what you will ultimately do. Give my love to the twins. I shall be
glad to see you again.
Your affectionate
CAROLINE ASHLEY.
The effect of Miss Ashley's letter was the exact contrary of what she
had probably intended; it made Sylvia feel that she was not bound to
marry Philip, and, from the moment she was not bound, that she was
willing, even anxious, to marry him. The aspects of his character which
she had criticized to herself vanished and left only the first
impression of him, when she was absolutely free and was finding his
company such a relief from the Exhibition. Another result of the letter
was that by removing the shame of dependence and by providing an
alternative it opened a way to discussion, for which Sylvia fixed upon
Mrs. Worsley, divining that she certainly would look at her case
unprejudiced by anything but her own experience.
Sylvia never pretended to herself that she would be at all influenced by
advice. Listening to advice from Mrs. Worsley would be like looking into
a shop-window with money in one's pocket, but with no intention of
entering the shop to make a purchase; listening to her advice before
Miss Ashley's offer would have been like looking at a shop-window
without a penny in the world, a luxury of fancy to which Sylvia had
never given way. So at the first opportunity Sylvia talked to Mrs.
Worsley about Philip, going back for her opinion of him and feeling
toward him to those first days together, and thereby giving her listener
an impression that she liked him a very great deal, which was true, as
Sylvia assured herself, yet not without some misgivings about her
presentation of the state of affairs.
"He sounds most fascinating," said Mrs. Worsley. "Of course Lennie was
never at all clever. I don't think he ever read a book in his life. When
I met him first I was acting in burlesque, and I had to make up my mind
between him and my profession; I'm so glad I chose him. But at first I
was rather miserable. His parents were still alive, and though they were
very kind to me, I was always an intruder, and of course Lennie was
dependent on them, for he was much too stupid an old darling to earn his
own living. He really has nothing but his niceness. Then his parents
died and, being an only son, Lennie had all the money. We lived for a
time in his father's house, but it became impossible. We had my poor old
mother down to stay with us, and the neighbors called, as if she were a
curiosity. When she didn't appear at tea, you could feel they were
staying on, hoping against hope to get a glimpse of her. I expect I was
sensitive and rather silly, but I was miserable. And then Lennie, who is
not clever, but so nice that it always leads him to do exactly the right
thing, went away suddenly and bought this house, where life has been one
long dream of happiness. You've seen how utterly self-contained we are.
Nobody comes to visit us very much, because when we first came here we
used to hide when people called. And then the twins have always been
such a joy--oh, dear, I wish they would never grow up; but there's still
Hercules, and you never know, there might be another baby. Oh, my dear
Sylvia, I'm sure you ought to get married. And you say his parents are
dead?"
"But he has a sister."
"Oh, a sister doesn't matter. And it doesn't matter his being clever and
fond of books, because you're fond of books yourself. The twins tell me
you've read everything in the world and that there's nothing you don't
know. I'm sure you'd soon get tired of Hornton House--oh, yes, I
strongly advise you to get married."
When Sylvia got back to London the memory of Arbour End rested in her
thoughts like a pleasant dream of the night that one ponders in a summer
dawn. She assured Miss Ashley that she was longing to marry Philip; and
when she seemed to express in her reception of the announcement a kind
of puzzled approval, Sylvia spoke with real enthusiasm of her marriage.
Miss Ashley never knew that the real inspiration of such enthusiasm was
Arbour End and not at all Philip himself. As for Sylvia, because she
would by no means admit even to herself that she had taken Mrs.
Worsley's advice, she passed over the advice and remarked only the signs
of happiness at Arbour End.
Sylvia and Philip were married at a registry-office early in October.
The honeymoon was spent in the Italian lakes, where Philip denounced the
theatrical scenery, but crowned Sylvia with vine-leaves and wrote Latin
poetry to her, which he translated aloud in the evenings as well as the
mosquitoes would let him.