“If you are not careful, April,” I said, “you’ll be a genius when you
grow up and disgrace your parents.”
Miss Jones looked as though she did not like Germans. I am afraid she
despises us because she thinks we are foreigners—an attitude of mind
quite British and wholly to her credit; but we, on the other hand,
regard _her_ as a foreigner, which, of course, makes things
complicated.
“Shall I really have to have this strange girl?” I asked, addressing
nobody in particular and not expecting a reply.
“You need not have her,” said the Man of Wrath composedly, “but you
will. You will write to-day and cordially invite her, and when she has
been here twenty-four hours you will quarrel with her. I know you, my
dear.”
“Quarrel! I? With a little art-student?”
Miss Jones cast down her eyes. She is perpetually scenting a scene, and
is always ready to bring whole batteries of discretion and tact and
good taste to bear on us, and seems to know we are disputing in an
unseemly manner when we would never dream it ourselves but for the
warning of her downcast eyes. I would take my courage in both hands and
ask her to go, for besides this superfluity of discreet behaviour she
is, although only nursery, much too zealous, and inclined to be always
teaching and never playing; but, unfortunately, the April baby adores
her and is sure there never was any one so beautiful before. She comes
every day with fresh accounts of the splendours of her wardrobe, and
feeling descriptions of her umbrellas and hats; and Miss Jones looks
offended and purses up her lips. In common with most governesses, she
has a little dark down on her upper lip, and the April baby appeared
one day at dinner with her own decorated in faithful imitation, having
achieved it after much struggling, with the aid of a lead pencil and
unbounded love. Miss Jones put her in the corner for impertinence. I
wonder why governesses are so unpleasant. The Man of Wrath says it is
because they are not married. Without venturing to differ entirely from
the opinion of experience, I would add that the strain of continually
having to set an example must surely be very great. It is much easier,
and often more pleasant, to be a warning than an example, and
governesses are but women, and women are sometimes foolish, and when
you want to be foolish it must be annoying to have to be wise.
Minora and Irais arrived yesterday together; or rather, when the
carriage drove up, Irais got out of it alone, and informed me that
there was a strange girl on a bicycle a little way behind. I sent back
the carriage to pick her up, for it was dusk and the roads are
terrible.
“But why do you have strange girls here at all?” asked Irais rather
peevishly, taking off her hat in the library before the fire, and
otherwise making herself very much at home; “I don’t like them. I’m not
sure that they’re not worse than husbands who are out of order. Who is
she? She would bicycle from the station, and is, I am sure, the first
woman who has done it. The little boys threw stones at her.”
“Oh, my dear, that only shows the ignorance of the little boys. Never
mind her. Let us have tea in peace before she comes.”
“But we should be much happier without her,” she grumbled. “Weren’t we
happy enough in the summer, Elizabeth—just you and I?”
“Yes, indeed we were,” I answered heartily, putting my arms round her.
The flame of my affection for Irais burns very brightly on the day of
her arrival; besides, this time I have prudently provided against her
sinning with the salt-cellars by ordering them to be handed round like
vegetable dishes. We had finished tea and she had gone up to her room
to dress before Minora and her bicycle were got here. I hurried out to
meet her, feeling sorry for her, plunged into a circle of strangers at
such a very personal season as Christmas. But she was not very shy;
indeed, she was less shy than I was, and lingered in the hall, giving
the servants directions to wipe the snow off the tyres of her machine
before she lent an attentive ear to my welcoming remarks.
“I couldn’t make your man understand me at the station,” she said at
last, when her mind was at rest about her bicycle; “I asked him how far
it was, and what the roads were like, and he only smiled. Is he German?
But of course he is—how odd that he didn’t understand. You speak
English very well,—very well indeed, do you know.” By this time we were
in the library, and she stood on the hearth-rug warming her back while
I poured her out some tea.
“What a quaint room,” she remarked, looking round, “and the hall is so
curious too. Very old, isn’t it? There’s a lot of copy here.”
The Man of Wrath, who had been in the hall on her arrival and had come
in with us, began to look about on the carpet. “Copy?” he inquired,
“Where’s copy?”
“Oh—material, you know, for a book. I’m just jotting down what strikes
me in your country, and when I have time shall throw it into book
form.” She spoke very loud, as English people always do to foreigners.
“My dear,” I said breathlessly to Irais, when I had got into her room
and shut the door and Minora was safely in hers, “what do you think—she
writes books!”
“What—the bicycling girl?”
“Yes—Minora—imagine it!”
We stood and looked at each other with awestruck faces.
“How dreadful!” murmured Irais. “I never met a young girl who did that
before.”
“She says this place is full of copy.”
“Full of what?”
“That’s what you make books with.”
“Oh, my dear, this is worse than I expected! A strange girl is always a
bore among good friends, but one can generally manage her. But a girl
who writes books—why, it isn’t respectable! And you can’t snub that
sort of people; they’re unsnubbable.”
“Oh, but we’ll try!” I cried, with such heartiness that we both
laughed.
The hall and the library struck Minora most; indeed, she lingered so
long after dinner in the hall, which is cold, that the Man of Wrath put
on his fur coat by way of a gentle hint. His hints are always gentle.
She wanted to hear the whole story about the chapel and the nuns and
Gustavus Adolphus, and pulling out a fat note-book began to take down
what I said. I at once relapsed into silence.
“Well?” she said.
“That’s all.”
“Oh, but you’ve only just begun.”
“It doesn’t go any further. Won’t you come into the library?”
In the library she again took up her stand before the fire and warmed
herself, and we sat in a row and were cold. She has a wonderfully good
profile, which is irritating. The wind, however, is tempered to the
shorn lamb by her eyes being set too closely together.
Irais lit a cigarette, and leaning back in her chair, contemplated her
critically beneath her long eyelashes. “You are writing a book?” she
asked presently.
“Well—yes, I suppose I may say that I am. Just my impressions, you
know, of your country. Anything that strikes me as curious or amusing—I
jot it down, and when I have time shall work it up into something, I
daresay.”
“Are you not studying painting?”
“Yes, but I can’t study that for ever. We have an English proverb:
‘Life is short and Art is long’—too long, I sometimes think—and writing
is a great relaxation when I am tired.”
“What shall you call it?”
“Oh, I thought of calling it _Journeyings in Germany_. It sounds well,
and would be correct. Or _Jottings from German Journeyings_,—I haven’t
quite decided yet which.”
“By the author of _Prowls in Pomerania_, you might add,” suggested
Irais.
“And _Drivel from Dresden_,” said I.
“And _Bosh from Berlin_,” added Irais.
Minora stared. “I don’t think those two last ones would do,” she said,
“because it is not to be a facetious book. But your first one is rather
a good title,” she added, looking at Irais and drawing out her
note-book. “I think I’ll just jot that down.”
“If you jot down all we say and then publish it, will it still be your
book?” asked Irais.
But Minora was so busy scribbling that she did not hear.
“And have _you_ no suggestions to make, Sage?” asked Irais, turning to
the Man of Wrath, who was blowing out clouds of smoke in silence.
“Oh, do you call him Sage?” cried Minora; “and always in English?”
Irais and I looked at each other. We knew what we did call him, and
were afraid Minora would in time ferret it out and enter it in her
note-book. The Man of Wrath looked none too well pleased to be alluded
to under his very nose by our new guest as “him.”
“Husbands are always sages,” said I gravely.
“Though sages are not always husbands,” said Irais with equal gravity.
“Sages and husbands—sage and husbands—” she went on musingly, “what
does that remind you of, Miss Minora?”
“Oh, I know,—how stupid of me!” cried Minora eagerly, her pencil in
mid-air and her brain clutching at the elusive recollection, “sage
and,—why,—yes,—no,—yes, of course—oh,” disappointedly, “but that’s
vulgar—I can’t put it in.”
“What is vulgar?” I asked.
“She thinks sage and onions is vulgar,” said Irais languidly; “but it
isn’t, it is very good.” She got up and walked to the piano, and,
sitting down, began, after a little wandering over the keys, to sing.
“Do you play?” I asked Minora.
“Yes, but I am afraid I am rather out of practice.”