Peter out of the garden and into the nursery, and there tidied them up
with emphasis. Joan showed fight a bit but not much; Peter was thinking
of something else and was just limp. Then Mary took them down to the
living-room, the big low room with the ingle-nook and the dining-table
in the far bay beside the second fireplace. There they beheld a large
female Visitor of the worst sort. They approached her with extreme
reluctance, impelled by Mary’s gentle but persistent hand. The Visitor
was sitting in the window-seat with Aunt Phyllis beside her. And Aunt
Phœbe was standing before the little fireplace. But these were
incidental observations; the great fact was the Visitor.
She was the largest lady that Peter had ever seen; she had a plumed hat
with black chiffon and large purple bows and a brim of soft black stuff
and suchlike things, and she wore a large cape in three tiers and a
large black feather boa that hissed when she moved and disseminated
feathers. Her shoulders were enormously exaggerated by a kind of vast
epaulette, and after the custom of all loyal Anglicans in those days her
neck was tightly swathed about and adorned with a big purple bow.
Everything she wore had been decorated and sewn upon, and her chequered
skirts below were cut out by panels and revelations of flounced purple.
In the midst of this costume, beneath the hat and a pale blonde fuss of
hair, was set a large, pale, freckled, square-featured face with two
hard blue eyes and a fascinating little tussock of sandy hair growing
out of one cheek that instantly captured the eye of the little boy. And
out of the face proceeded a harsh voice, slow, loud, and pitched in that
note of arrogance which was the method of the ruling class in those
days. “So _these_ are our little Wards,” said the voice, and as she
spoke her lips wrinkled and her teeth showed.
She turned to Phyllis with a confidential air, but spoke still in the
same clear tones. “Which is the By-blow, my dear, the Boy or the Gel?”
“Lady Charlotte!” exclaimed Phyllis, and then spoke inaudibly,
explaining something.
But Peter made a note of “By-blow.” It was a lovely word.
“Not even in Black. They ought to wear Black,” he heard the big lady
say.
Then he found himself being scrutinized.
“Haugh!” said the big lady, making a noise like the casual sounds
emitted by large wading birds. “They both take after the Sydenhams,
anyhow. They might be brother and sister!”
“Practically they are,” said Aunt Phœbe.
Lady Charlotte confuted her with an unreal smile. “Practically _not_,”
she said decisively.
There was a little pause. “Well, Master Stubland,” said the Visitor
abruptly and quite terrifyingly. “What have _you_ got to say for
yourself?”
As Peter had not yet learnt to swear freely, he had nothing to say for
himself just at that moment.
“Not very Bright yet,” said Lady Charlotte goadingly. “I suppose they
have run wild hitherto.”
“It was poor Arthur’s wish——” began Aunt Phyllis.
“We must alter all that now,” Lady Charlotte interrupted. “Tell me your
name, little boy.”
“Peter Picktoe,” said Peter with invention. “You going to stop here
long?”
“So you’ve found your tongue at last,” said Lady Charlotte. “That’s only
your nickname. What’s your proper name?”
“Can we go out in the garden now, Auntie?” said Peter; “and play at
By-blows?”
“Garden now,” said Joan.
“He’s Brighter than you seem to think,” said Aunt Phœbe with gentle
sarcasm.
“Commina _Garden_,” said Joan, tugging at Peter’s pinafore.
“But I must ask him his name first,” said Lady Charlotte, “and,” with
growing firmness, “he must tell it me. Come! What is your name, my
dear?”
“Peter,” prompted Mary.
“Peter,” said Peter, satisfied that it was a silly game and anxious to
get it over and away from this horror as soon as possible.
“And who gave you that name?”
“Nobody; it’s mine,” said Peter.
“Isn’t the poor child even _beginning_ to learn his Catechism?” asked
Lady Charlotte.
“Yes, the garden,” said Aunt Phœbe to Mary, and the scene began to close
upon the children as they moved gardenward. Joan danced ahead. Peter
followed thoughtfully before Mary’s gentle urgency. What was that last
word? “Cattymism?” Then a fresh thought occurred to him.
“Mary,” said Peter, in an impassioned and all too audible undertone;
“look. She’s got a Whisker. _Here!_ Troof!”
“It was my brother’s _wish_,” Phyllis was explaining as the children
disappeared through the door....
“It isn’t the modern way to begin so early with rote-learning,” said
Aunt Phœbe; “the little fellow’s still not five.”
“He’s a pretty good size.”
“Because we haven’t worried his mind yet. Milk, light, play, like a
happy little animal.”
“We must change all that now,” said Lady Charlotte Sydenham with
conviction.
CHAPTER THE FIFTH
THE CHRISTENING
§ 1
Lady Charlotte Sydenham was one of those large, ignorant, ruthless,
low-church, wealthy, and well-born ladies who did so much to make
England what it was in the days before the Great War. She was educated
with the utmost care by totally illiterate governesses who were ladies
by birth, chiefly on the importance and privileges of her social
position, the Anglican faith and Mrs. Strickland’s “Queens of England”;
she had French from a guaranteed Protestant teacher and German from a
North German instructress (Lutheran Protestant), who also taught her to
play the piano with the force and precision of a crack regiment of
cavalry. Subsequently she had improved her mind by reading memoirs and
biographies of noble and distinguished people and by travel amidst
obvious scenery and good foreign hotels. She had married at
two-and-thirty when things were beginning to look rather doubtful for
her.
Old Mr. Sydenham, who had made his money and undermined his health in
India in the John Company days, had been fifty-four, and from the very
outset she had been ever so much too much for him. At sixty-five he had
petered out like an exhausted lode. She had already got an abject
confidential maid into thorough training, and was fully prepared for
widowhood. She hung out big black bonnets and expensive black clothes
upon her projections, so as to look larger than ever, and took her place
and even more than her place, very resolutely, among the leaders of the
county Anglicans.
She had early mastered the simple arts of county family intercourse. Her
style in contradiction was very good, her insults were frequently witty,
she could pretend to love horses, there was no need for her to pretend
to despise and hate tradesmen and working people, and she kept herself
well-informed upon the domestic details of the large and spreading
family of the “Dear Queen.” She was very good at taking down impertinent
people, and most people struck her as impertinent; she could make a
young man or a plain girl or a social inferior “feel small” quicker (and
smaller) than almost any one in that part of Surrey. She was a woman
without vices; her chief pleasure was to feel all right and important
and the centre of things, and to that her maid as a sort of grand
Vizieress, her well-disciplined little household and her choice of
friends ministered. The early fear of “Romanists” in which she had been
trained had been a little dispelled by the wider charities of maturity,
but she held secularists and socialists in an ever-deepening abhorrence.
They planned, she knew, to disturb the minds of the lower classes, upset
her investments, behead the Dear Queen, and plunge the whole world into
vice and rapine and Sabbath-breaking. She interested herself in such
leisure as the care of her own health and comfort left her, in movements
designed to circumvent and defeat the aims of these enemies of God and
(all that was worth considering in) Man. She even countenanced quite
indulgent charities if they seemed designed to take the wind out of the
sails of socialism. She drove about the district in a one-horse carriage
and delivered devastating calls.
Such was the lady whom Arthur had made one of the four guardians of his
little son and niece. He had seen her twice; he had rather liked a short
speech of five sentences she made at a Flower Show, and he had heard her
being extremely rude to a curate. He believed her to be wealthy and
trustworthy and very well suited to act as a counter influence to any
extravagant tendencies there might be in Aunt Phœbe. Also she was
Dolly’s cousin, and appointing her had seemed a sort of compensation for
altering his will without Dolly’s knowledge. Besides, it had been very
unlikely that she would ever act. And he had been in a hurry when he
altered his will, and could not think of any one else.
Now Lady Charlotte was not by any means satisfied by her visit to The
Ingle-Nook. The children looked unusually big for their years and
disrespectful and out of hand. It was clear they had not taken to her.
The nurse, too, had a sort of unbroken look in her eye that was
unbecoming in a menial position. The aunts were odd persons; Phyllis was
much too disposed to accentuate the father’s wishes, and Lady Charlotte
had a most extraordinary and indecent feeling all the time she was
talking to her that Aunt Phœbe wasn’t wearing stays. (Could the woman
have forgotten them, or was it deliberate? It was like pretending to be
clothed when you were really naked.)
Their conversation had been queer, most queer. They did not seem to
realize that she was by way of being a leader in the county and
accustomed to being listened to with deference. Nearly everything she
said they had quietly contradicted or ignored. The way in which the
children were whisked away from her presence was distinctly
disrespectful. She had a right, it was her duty, to look at them well
and question them clearly about their treatment, to see that they had
proper treatment, and it was necessary that they should fully understand
her importance in their lives. But those two oddly-dressed young
women—youngish women, rather, for probably they were both over
thirty—did not themselves seem to understand that she was naturally the
Principal Guardian.
Phyllis had been constantly referring to the wishes of this Stubland
person who had married George Sydenham’s Dolly. Apparently the woman
supposed that those wishes were to override every rational consideration
for the children’s welfare. After all, the boy was as much Dolly’s child
as a Stubland, and as for the girl, except that the Stublands had been
allowed to keep her, she wasn’t a Stubland at all. She wasn’t anything
at all. She was pure Charity. There was not the slightest obligation
upon Any one to do Anything for her. Making her out to be an equal with
a legitimate child was just the subversive, wrong-headed sort of thing
these glorified shoddy-makers, the Stublands, would do. But like to
like. Their own genealogy probably wouldn’t bear scrutiny for six
generations. She ought to be trained as a Maid. There were none too many
trained Maids nowadays. But Arthur Stubland had actually settled money
on her.
There was much to put right in this situation, a great occasion for a
large, important lady to impress herself tremendously on a little group
of people insultingly disposed to be unaware of her. The more she
thought the matter over the more plainly she saw her duty before her.
She did not talk to servants; no lady talks to servants; but it was her
habit to think aloud during the ministrations of Unwin, her maid, and
often Unwin would overhear and reply quite helpfully.
“It’s an odd job I’ve got with these two new Wards of mine,” she said.
“They put too much on you, m’lady,” said Unwin, pinning.
“I shall do what is Right. I shall see that what is Right is done.”
“You don’t spare yourself enough, m’lady.”
“I must go over again and again. Those women don’t like me. I disturb
them. They’re up to no good.”
“It won’t be the first Dark Place, m’lady, you’ve thrown light into.”
The lady surveyed her reflection in the glass with a knowing expression.
She knitted her brows, partly closed one eye, and nodded slowly as she
spoke.
“There’s something queer about the boy’s religious instruction. It’s
being kept back. Now why did they get embarrassed when I asked _who_
were the godparents? I ought to have followed that up.”
“My godfathers and godmothers wherein I was made,” murmured Unwin, with
the quiet satisfaction of the well-instructed.
“Properly it’s the business of the godparents. I have a right to know.”
“I suppose the poor boy _has_ godparents, m’lady,” said Unwin, coming up
from obscure duties with the skirt.
“But of _course_ he has godparents!”
“Pardon me, m’lady, but not _of course_.”
“But what do you mean, Unwin?”
“I hardly like to say it, m’lady, of relations, ’owever distant, of
ours. Still, m’lady——”
“Don’t Chew it about, Unwin.”
“Then I out with it, m’lady. ’Ave they been baptized, m’lady, either of
them? ’Ave they been baptized?”
§ 2
Before a fortnight was out Lady Charlotte had made two more visits to
The Ingle-Nook, she had had an acrimonious dispute upon religious
questions with Phœbe, and she was well on her way to the terrible
realization that these two apparently imbecile ladies in the shapeless
“arty” dresses were really socialists and secularists—of course, like
all other socialists and secularists, “of the worst type.” It was
impossible that those two unfortunate children should be left in their
aunts’ “clutches,” and she prepared herself with a steadily increasing
determination and grandeur to seize upon and take over and rescue these
two innocent souls from the moral and spiritual destruction that
threatened them. Once in her hands, Lady Charlotte was convinced it
would not be too late to teach the little fellow a proper respect for
those in authority over him and to bring home to the girl an adequate
sense of that taint upon her life of which she was still so shockingly
unaware. The boy must be taught not to call attention to people’s
physical peculiarities, and to answer properly when spoken to; a certain
sharpness would not be lost upon him; and it was but false kindness to
the girl to let her grow up in ignorance of her disadvantage. Sooner or
later it would have to be brought home to her, and the later it was the
more difficult would it be for her to accept her proper position with a
becoming humility. And a thing of immediate urgency was, of course, the
baptism of both these little lost souls.
In pursuit of these entirely praiseworthy aims Lady Charlotte was
subjected to a series of very irritating rebuffs that did but rouse her
to a greater firmness. On her fourth visit she was not even allowed to
see the children; the specious excuse was made that they were “out for a
walk,” and when she passed that over forgivingly and said: “It does not
matter very much. What I want to arrange today is the business of the
Christening,” both aunts began to answer at once and in almost identical
words. Phœbe gave way to her sister. “If their parents had wanted them
Christened,” said Aunt Phyllis, “there was ample time for them to have
had it done.”
“_We_ are the parents now,” said Lady Charlotte.
“And two of us are quite of the parents’ mind.”
“You forget that I also speak for my nephew Oswald,” said Lady
Charlotte.
“But _do_ you?” said Aunt Phyllis, with almost obtruded incredulity.
“Certainly,” said Lady Charlotte, with a sweeping, triumphant gesture, a
conclusive waving of the head.
“You know he is on his way back from Uganda?” Aunt Phyllis remarked with
an unreal innocence.
Lady Charlotte had not known. But she stood up gallantly to the blow. “I
know he will support me by insisting upon the proper treatment of these
poor children.”
“What can a man know about the little souls of children?” cried Phœbe.
But Aunt Phyllis restrained her. “I have no doubt Mr. Sydenham will have
his own views in the matter,” said Phyllis.
“I have no doubt he will,” said Lady Charlotte imposingly....
Even Mary showed the same disposition to insolence. As Lady Charlotte
was returning along the little path through the bushes that ran up to
the high road where her carriage with the white horse waited, she saw
Mary and the children approaching. Peter saw Lady Charlotte first and
flew back. “Lady wiv de Whisker!” he said earnestly and breathlessly,
and dodged off into the bushes. Joan hesitated, and fled after him. By a
detour the fluttering little figures outflanked the great lady and
escaped homeward.
“Come _here_, children!” she cried. “I want you.”
Spurt on the part of the children.
“They are really most distressingly Rude,” she said to Mary. “It’s
inexcusable. Tell them to come back. I have something to say to them.”
“They won’t, Mum,” said Mary—though surely aware of the title.
“But I tell you to.”
“It’s no good, Mum. It’s shyness. If they won’t come, they won’t.”
“But, my good woman, have you _no_ control?”
“They always race ’ome like that,” said Mary.
“Then you aren’t fit to control them. As one of the children’s
guardians, I—— But we shall see.”
She went her way, a stately figure of passion.
“Orty old Ag,” said Mary, and dismissed the encounter from her mind.
§ 3
“You got your rights like anybody, m’lady,” said Unwin.
It was that phrase put it into Lady Charlotte’s head to consult her
solicitor. He opened new vistas to her imagination.
Lady Charlotte’s solicitor was a lean, long, faded blond of forty-five
or so. He was the descendant of five generations of Lincoln’s Inn
solicitors, a Low Churchman, a man of notoriously pure life, and very
artful indeed. He talked in a thin, high tenor voice, and was given to
nibbling his thumbnail and wincing with his eyes as he talked. His
thumbnail produced gaps of indistinctness in his speech.
“Powers of a guardian, m’lady. Defends upon whafower want exercise over
thinfant.”
“I do _wish_ you’d keep your thumb out of your mouth,” said Lady
Charlotte.
“Sorry,” said Mr. Grimes, wincing and trying painfully to rearrange his
arm. “Still, I’d like to know—position.”
“There are three other guardians.”
“Generous allowance,” said Mr. Grimes. “Do you all act?”
“One of us is lost in the Wilds of Africa. The others I want to consult
you about. They do not seem to me to be fit and proper persons to be
entrusted with the care of young children, and they do not seem disposed
to afford me a proper share in the direction of affairs.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Grimes, replacing his thumb. “Sees t’point t’Chacery.”
Lady Charlotte disregarded this comment. She wished to describe Aunts
Phyllis and Phœbe in her own words.
“They are quite extraordinary young women—not by any stretch of language
to be called Ladies. They dress in that way—like the pictures in the
Grosvenor Gallery.”
“Æsthetic?”
“I could find a harsher word for it. They smoke. Not a nice thing for
children to see. I suspect them strongly of vegetarianism. From
something one of them said. In which case the children will not be
properly nourished. And they speak quite openly of socialism in front of
their charges. Neither of the poor little creatures had been bought a
scrap of mourning. Not a scrap. I doubt if they have even been made to
understand that their parents are dead. But that is only the beginning.
I am totally unable to ascertain whether either of the poor mites has
been christened. Apparently they have not....”
Mr. Grimes withdrew his thumb for a moment. “You are perfectly within
yer rights—insisting—knowing”—thumb replaced—“all thlese things.”
“Exactly. And in having my say in their general upbringing.”
“How far do they prevent that?”
“Oh; they get in my way. They send the children out whenever they feel I
am coming. They do not listen to me and accept any suggestions I make.
Oh!—sniff at it.”
“And you want to make ’em?”
“I want to do my duty by those two children, Mr. Grimes. It is a charge
that has been laid upon me.”
Mr. Grimes reflected, rubbing his thumb thoughtfully along the front of
his teeth.
“They are getting no religious instruction whatever,” said Lady
Charlotte. “None.”
“Hot was the ’ligion father?” said Mr. Grimes suddenly.
Lady Charlotte was not to be deterred by a silly and inopportune
question. She just paused for an instant and reddened. “He was a member
of the Church of England,” she said.
“Even if he wasn’t,” said Mr. Grimes understandingly, but with thumb
still in place, “Ligion necessary t’welfare. Case of Besant Chil’n
zample. Thlis is Klistian country.”
“I sometimes doubt it,” said Lady Charlotte.
“Legally,” said Mr. Grimes.
“If the law did its duty!”
“You don’t wanner goatallaw fewcan ’void it?” asked Mr. Grimes, grasping
his job.
Lady Charlotte assumed an expression of pained protest, and lifted one
black-gloved hand. Mr. Grimes hastily withdrew his thumbnail from his
mouth. “I am saying, Lady Charlotte, that what you want to do is to
assert your authority, if possible, without legal proceedings.”
He was trying to get the whole situation clear in his mind before he
tendered any exact advice. Most children who are quarrelled over in this
way gravitate very rapidly into the care of the Lord Chancellor; to that
no doubt these children would come; but Lady Charlotte was a prosperous
lady with a lot of fight in her and a knack of illegality, and before
these children became Wards in Chancery she might, under suitable
provocation, run up a very considerable little bill for expenses and
special advice in extracting her from such holes as she got herself
into. It is an unjust libel upon solicitors that they tempt their
clients into litigation. So far is this unjust that the great majority
will spare neither time nor expense in getting a case settled out of
court.
Nor did Lady Charlotte want to litigate. Courts are uncertain,
irritating places. She just wanted to get hold of her two wards, and to
deal with them in such a way as to inflict the maximum of annoyance and
humiliation upon those queer Stubland aunts. And to save the children
from socialism, secularism, Catholicism, and all the wandering wolves of
opinion that lie in wait for the improperly trained.
But also she went in fear of Oswald. Oswald was one of the few human
beings of whom she went in awe. He was always rude and overbearing with
her. From the very first moment when he had seen her as his uncle’s new
wife, he had realized in a flash of boyish intuition that if he did not
get in with an insult first, he would be her victim. So his first words
to her had been an apparently involuntary “O God!” Then he had pretended
to dissemble his contempt with a cold politeness. Those were the days of
his good looks; he was as tall and big as he was ever to be, and she had
expected a “little midshipmite,” whom she would treat like a child, and
possibly even send early to bed. From the first she was at a
disadvantage. He had a material hold on her too, now. He was his uncle’s
heir and her Trustee; and she had the belief of all Victorian women in
the unlimited power of Trustees to abuse their trust unless they are
abjectly propitiated. He used to come and stay in her house as if it was
already his own; the servants would take their orders from him. She was
assuring Grimes as she had assured the Stubland aunts that he was on her
side; “The Sydenhams are all sound churchmen.” But even as she said this
she saw his grim, one-sided face and its one hard intent eye pinning
her. “Acting without authority again, my good aunt,” he would say.
“You’ll get yourself into trouble yet.”
That was one of his invariable stabs whenever he came to see her. Always
he would ask, sooner or later, in that first meeting:
“Any one bagged you for libel yet? _No!_ Or insulting behaviour? Some
one will get you sooner or later.”
“Anything that _I_ say about people,” she would reply with dignity, “is
True, Oswald.”
“They’ll double the damages if you stick _that_ out.”...
And she saw him now standing beside the irritating, necessary Grimes,
sardonically ready to take part against her, prepared even to give those
abominable aunts an unendurable triumph over her....
“I want no vulgar litigation,” she said. “Everything ought to be done as
quietly as possible. There is no need to ventilate the family affairs of
the Sydenhams, and particularly when I tell you that one of the children
is——” She hesitated. “Irregular.”
The thumb went back, and Mr. Grimes’ face assumed a diplomatic
innocence. “Whascalled a love-shild?”
“Exactly,” said Lady Charlotte, with a nod that forbade all research for
paternity. If Joan were assumed to be of Stubland origin, so much the
better for Lady Charlotte’s case. “Everything must be done quietly and
privately,” she said.