High and low, rich and poor, in Troy Town there are seventy-three
maiden ladies. Under this term, of course, I include only those who
may reasonably be supposed to have forsworn matrimony. And of the
seventy-three, the two Misses Lefanu stand first, as well from their
age and extraction (their father was an Admiral of the Blue) as
because of their house, which stands in Fore Street and is faced with
polished Luxulyan granite--the same that was used for the famous Duke
of Wellington's coffin in St. Paul's Cathedral.
Miss Susan Lefanu is eighty-five; Miss Charlotte has just passed
seventy-six. They are extremely small, and Miss Bunce looks after
them. That is to say, she dresses them of a morning, arranges their
chestnut "fronts," sets their caps straight, and takes them down to
breakfast. After dinner (which happens in the middle of the day) she
dresses them again and conducts them for a short walk along the
Rope-walk, which they call "the Esplanade." In the evening she
brings out the Bible and sets it the right way up for Miss Susan, who
begins to meditate on her decease; then sits down to a game of ecarte
with Miss Charlotte, who as yet has not turned her thoughts upon
mortality. At ten she puts them to bed. Afterwards, "the good Bunce
"--who is fifty, looks like a grenadier, and wears a large mole on
her chin--takes up a French novel, fastened by a piece of elastic
between the covers of Baxter's "Saint's Rest," and reads for an hour
before retiring. Her pay is fifty-two pounds a year, and her
attachment to the Misses Lefanu a matter of inference rather than
perception.
One morning in last May, at nine o'clock, when Miss Bunce had just
arranged the pair in front of their breakfast-plates, and was sitting
down to pour out the tea, two singers came down the street, and their
voices--a man's and a woman's--though not young, accorded very
prettily:--
"Citizens, toss your pens away!
For all the world is mad to-day--
Cuckoo--cuckoo!
The world is mad to-day."
"What unusual words for a pair of street singers!" Miss Bunce
murmured, setting down the tea-pot. But as Miss Charlotte was busy
cracking an egg, and Miss Susan in a sort of coma, dwelling perhaps
on death and its terrors, the remark went unheeded.
"Citizens, doff your coats of black,
And dress to suit the almanack--
Cuckoo--"
The voices broke off, and a rat-tat sounded on the front door.
"Say that we never give to beggars, under any circumstances,"
murmured Miss Susan, waking out of her lethargy.
The servant entered with a scrap of crumpled paper in her hand.
"There was a woman at the door who wished to see Miss Lefanu."
"Say that we never give--" Miss Susan began again, fumbling with the
note. "Bunce, I have on my gold-rimmed spectacles, and cannot read
with them, as you know. The black-rimmed pair must be up-stairs, on
the--"
"How d'ye do, my dears?" interrupted a brisk voice. In the doorway
stood a plump middle-aged woman, nodding her head rapidly. She wore
a faded alpaca gown, patched here and there, a shawl of shepherd's
plaid stained with the weather, and a nondescript bonnet. Her face
was red and roughened, as if she lived much out of doors.
"How d'ye do?" she repeated "I'm Joanna."
Miss Bunce rose, and going discreetly to the window, pretended to
gaze into the street. Joanna, as she knew, was the name of the old
ladies' only step-sister, who had eloped from home twenty years
before, and (it was whispered) had disgraced the family. As for the
Misses Lefanu, being unused to rise without help, they spread out
their hands as if stretching octaves on the edge of the table, and
feebly stared.
"Joanna," began the elder, tremulously, "if you have come to ask
charity--"
"Bless your heart, no! What put that into your head?" She advanced
and took the chair which Miss Bunce had left, and resting her elbows
on the table, regarded her sisters steadily. "What a preposterous
age you both must be, to be sure! My husband's waiting for me
outside."
"Your husband?" Miss Charlotte quavered.
"Why, of course. Did you suppose, because I ran away to act, that I
wasn't an honest woman?" She stretched out her left hand; and there
was a thin gold ring on her third finger. "He isn't much of an
actor, poor dear. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he has
been hissed off two-and-thirty stages in Great Britain alone.
Indeed, he's the very worst actor I ever saw, although I don't tell
him. But as a husband he's sublime."
"Are there--" Miss Charlotte began, and broke down. "Are there," she
tried again, "are there--any--children?"
"Ah, my dear, if there were, I might be tempted to repent."
"Don't you?" jerked out Miss Bunce, turning abruptly from the window.
There was a certain sharp emotion in the question, but her face was
in the shadow. Joanna regarded her for a moment or two and broke
into a laugh.
"My dears, I have been an actress and a mother. I retain the pride
of both,--though my little one died at three months, and no manager
will engage me now, because I refuse to act unless my husband has a
part. Theoretically, he is the first of artists; in practice--
You were asking, however, if I repent. Well, having touched the two
chief prizes within a woman's grasp, I hardly see how it is likely.
I perceive that the object of my visit has been misinterpreted.
To be frank, I came to gloat over you."
"Your step-sisters are at least respectable," Miss Bunce answered.
"Let us grant that to be a merit," retorted Joanna: "Do I understand
you to claim the credit of it?"
"They are very clean, though," she went on, looking from one to the
other, "and well preserved. Susan, I notice, shows signs of failing;
she has dropped her spectacles into the teacup. But to what end,
Miss--"
"Bunce."
"To what end, Miss Bunce, are you preserving them?"
"Madam, when you entered the room I was of your way of thinking.
Book after book that I read"--Miss Bunce blushed at this point--
"has displayed before me the delights of that quick artistic life
that you glory in following. I have eaten out my heart in longing.
But now that I see how it coarsens a women--for it _is_ coarse to
sneer at age, in spite of all you may say about uselessness being no
better for being protracted over much time--"
"You are partly right," Joanna interrupted, "although you mistake the
accident for the essence. I am only coarse when confronted by
respectability. Nevertheless, I am glad if I reconcile you to your
lot."
"But the point is," insisted Miss Bunce, "that a lady _never_ forgets
herself."
"And you would argue that the being liable to forget myself is only
another development of that very character by virtue of which I
follow Art. Ah, well"--she nodded towards her stepsisters--"I
ask you why they and I should be daughters of one father?"
She rose and stepped to the piano in the corner. It was a tall
Collard, shaped, above the key-board, like a cupboard. After
touching the notes softly, to be sure they were in tune, she
drew over a chair, and fell to playing Schumann's "_Warum?_" very
tenderly. It was a tinkling instrument, but perhaps her playing
gained pathos thereby, before such an audience. At the end she
turned round: there were tears in her eyes.
"You used to play the 'Osborne Quadrilles' very nicely," observed
Miss Susan, suddenly. "Your playing has become very--very--"
"Disreputable," suggested Joanna.
"Well, not exactly. I was going to say 'unintelligible.'"
"It's the same thing." She rose, kissed her step-sisters, and walked
out of the room without a look at Miss Bunce.
"Poor Joanna!" observed Miss Susan, after a minute's silence.
"She has aged very much. I really must begin to think of my end."
Outside, in the street, Joanna's husband was waiting for her--a dark,
ragged man, with a five-act expression of face.
"Don't talk to me for a while," she begged. "I have been among
ghosts."
"Ghosts?"
"They were much too dull to be real: and yet--Oh, Jack, I feel glad
for the first time that our child was taken! I might have left him
there."
"What shall we sing?" asked the man, turning his face away.
"Something pious," Joanna answered with an ugly little laugh, "since
we want our dinner. The public has still enough honesty left to pity
piety." She stepped out into the middle of the street, facing her
sisters' windows, and began, the man's voice chiming in at the third
bar--
"In the sweet by-and-bye
We shall meet on that be-yeautiful shore." . . .