THE DEVENTER GIRLS
I suppose this is as good a place as any to bring in and explain the
daughters of the house of Deventer. I had known them ever since I could
remember. First as "kids" to be properly despised, then as long-legged,
short-skirted, undistinguishable entities, useful at fielding, but
remarkably bad at throwing in to the wicket.
During our long stay at the _lycee_ these creatures had been at schools
of their own. Their hair had gradually darkened and lengthened, so that
it could be more easily tugged. It had been gathered up and arranged
about their heads at a period which synchronised with the lengthening of
their skirts, and the complete retirement of the ankles which had once
been so freely whacked with hockey sticks and even (I regret to say)
kicked at football practice.
There was no great difference in age between the girls. They might have
been triplets, but denied the accusation fiercely and unanimously, with
more of personal feeling than seemed necessary. Often as court of last
appeal the arbitration of their mother had to be referred to. In her
gentle cooing voice she would give the names of the various medical men
who had ushered them into the world. These were settled in various
mineralogical centres.
"There was Doctor Laidlaw of Coatbridge. He was Rhoda Polly's. A fine
sharp man was Doctor Laidlaw, sandy-whiskered, but given to profane
swearing. Not that he ever swore in _my_ presence, but he had the name
for it among the colliers and ironworkers."
"It's from him," insinuated Hugh, "that Rhoda Polly gets her
vocabulary."
"That's as it may be," his mother would reply patiently, her thoughts
travelling before her to pick out number two.
"Let me see. For Hannah I had Doctor Butterworth--Tom Butterworth of
Barrow-in-Furness--and of all the upsetting conceited creatures on this
earth, commend me to Tom. Tom-Show-a-Leg he was called, because he came
to the balls in knee-breeches and silk stockings. But for all that I
will never deny that he did his duty by Hannah, though at times I had my
own adoes to keep Dennis from heaving him out of the window.
"And there was Liz, poor thing. She had to put up with a 'locum' at
Herbestal, in Belgium, before your father came here. There was not an
English doctor in the place, but it made no great difference, for Madame
Batyer was wiser than a whole college of doctors, and I will always
think that beginning to be used to the language so soon has improved
Liz's French accent!"
Obviously it was impossible for me during my salad days to escape from
falling in love with one or other of these three pretty girls. I solved
the question by falling in love with all three in turns, the rotation of
crops being determined chiefly by whose vacations coincided with mine.
This bred no jealousies, for the girls were large-minded, and at that
time a sweetheart more or less had no particular significance for them.
Rhoda Polly was the learned one; she had been to college at Selborne,
and still retained in speech and manner something Oxonian and aloof. But
really she was gentle and humble-minded, eager with sympathy, and only
shy because afraid of proffering it where it was not wanted. Rhoda Polly
was a creamy blonde with abundant rippling hair, clearly cut small
features, and the most sensitive of mouths. Yet she was full of the most
unselfish courage, ready for long smiling endurances, and with that
unusual feminine silence which enables a woman to keep her griefs to
herself and even to deceive others into thinking she has none.
Did anyone want anything, Rhoda Polly would find it. Had two tickets
only been sent for the theatre, Rhoda Polly would not mind staying at
home. Rhoda Polly never minded anything. She did not cry half the
afternoon like Hannah over a spoilt dress, nor fall into any of Liz's
miniature rages. She was Rhoda Polly, and everybody depended upon her.
The girls confided in her largely, and never expected her to have any
secrets of her own for truck, barter, or exchange.
Hannah had been delicate always--or at least had been so considered by
her mother.
Her character had been formed between her mother's favour and her elder
sister's habit of giving way rather than face an argument. She was dark
and slender, placidly sure of being always right, and of looking best in
a large picture hat with a raven plume.
Hannah had been sent to school near Lausanne, which was kept by the
daughter of the famous Froebel, assisted by a relative of the still more
famous Pestalozzi. An English lady was in residence at the
Pestalozzi-Froebel Institute, to teach the pupils the aristocratic
manners, so rare and necessary an accomplishment in a country where the
President of the Republic returns from his high office to put on his
grocer's apron, and goes on weighing out pounds of tea at the counter of
the old shop which had been his father's before him.
Liz was all dimples and easy manners, the plaything of the house. She
knew she could do no wrong, so long as she went on opening wide her eyes
of myosotis blue, now purring and now scratching like a kitten; she
would often dart away for no reason whatever, only to come back a minute
after, having apparently forgotten the cause of her brusque
disappearance. She was accordingly a good deal spoilt, not only by the
young engineers who frequented the Chateau Schneider, but by her parents
and sisters as well.
One of the former, asked the reason of a decided preference for Liz,
declared that it was because she could never be mistaken for a French
convent-bred girl. It was pointed out to him that the same might be said
for the other two, but he stuck to his point. Rhoda Polly with her
Oxford manner of condescending to undergraduates, and Hannah with the
Pestalozzi Institute refinements, might speak and look as if they had a
duenna hidden in the background, but Liz--never! She was more likely to
box somebody's ears.