BILL.
Theresa and Bella Waring were beauties when they came to Miss
Brownlow’s seven years ago, well-educated, well-informed, used to the
ways of society (of small professional society), and possessed of sixty
pounds a year between them. Their father had been dead some years then;
it was their mother’s death which sent them and their sixty pounds to
Langford House. Theresa came to help with the teaching, Bella to finish
her education first, and afterwards to fill her sister’s place. Of
course Miss Brownlow received them gladly, loved them warmly, mothered
them to the best of her ability. She would have done that for any
number of nieces, and she did it heartily for these four. Polly felt
angry as she thought of their numbers, and thought contemptuously of
the Brownlow family and its faculty for dying. There had been five Miss
Brownlows originally; one died young, three married first and then
died at their earliest convenience, leaving their children as a legacy
to the remaining sister who neither married nor died. She, possessed
of short views, a large heart, and an inexhaustible supply of hope,
welcomed them with open arms. Two of them she had to adopt entirely;
the other two, Theresa and Bella, came to her better endowed, better
equipped, and at a more convenient age.
And what had they done with their advantages? Polly put the case to
herself with contemptuous irritation. Bella, so she summed it up, Bella
at twenty-two had done nothing; Theresa at twenty-six had contrived to
marry a small farmer. No doubt his family had originally been good,
but one cannot live on a good family, especially if it is all but
extinct; and the goodness did not prevent Robert from being a farmer
in a small way, and an unsuccessful one too. He was undoubtedly a poor
speculation; his tastes were expensive, his inclinations horsey, his
income small, his tendencies apoplectic; he would soon, no doubt, die,
and die suddenly, leaving Theresa no better off than she was a year
ago. Really these two girls were stupid, as stupid as the Brownlow
family. And yet their mother had been the best of the five sisters,
according to all accounts; the strongest as well as the prettiest,
for she had managed to live to quite a respectable age. Possibly her
daughters were like her; they were sensible enough for any ordinary
occasion but they were not, in Polly’s opinion, able to take advantage
of adverse circumstances. “They would die off easily,” she thought,
“and they haven’t an idea between them worth mentioning.”
Polly was not like the Brownlow family. She took after her father,
a dubious advantage, and she flattered herself that she had ideas
worth,--well, something, although perhaps they were not always quite
suitable for public mention. She also had an easy conscience, and
in her youth some little acquaintance with social byways. She had a
tenacious hold on life, and was not likely to follow her mother’s and
aunts’ example and die easily. “So has Bill,” she thought; “she is
silly and she is ugly, but she won’t fade out of the world in a hurry,
though I can’t see what good she will ever be in it.”
This last sentiment found something like an echo, albeit unexpressed,
in the minds of two other inmates of Langford House, the two boarders
Carrie and Alice. They were quiet, inoffensive girls, a year or two
younger than Bill, and forced by circumstances to have more of her
company than they desired. The greater part of the day the three were
together, and for the night they shared one room so that the sisters’
nocturnal confidences had to be held in common with their companion.
It must be admitted that Carrie and Alice did not altogether like
Bill, though they felt a sort of superior pity for her which was not
all unpleasant. On the evening when Miss Brownlow and her nieces were
planning Bill’s future good, Carrie and Alice were giving her a little
advice while going to bed. It was on the subject of hairdressing,
Carrie thinking it was time Bill coiled her hair on the top of her head.
“It’s quite time,” she concluded. “Are you going to wait till you are
eighteen? When are you going to do it up?”
Bill considered: “To-morrow,” she said at last.
“To-morrow?” Carrie repeated, and Alice added: “You can’t, you haven’t
got any hairpins.”
“I’ll get some of Bella’s.”
“You can’t,” Carrie said again, and turning to the glass began to
arrange her own hair.
“Miss Waring has gold-coloured hairpins,” Alice remarked; “you could
not use them.”
“Why not?”
“Because it would look horrid to have brass hairpins sticking out of
your hair.”
“Is that all?” Bill did not seem impressed.
Carrie turned away from the glass. “That is how I shall do my hair,”
she said. “I shall do it up the day I leave school, the very day.”
“I like plaits better,” Alice observed; but Bill examined the
head-dress thoughtfully, and then asked: “And what else will you do
when you leave school,--besides your hair, I mean?”
“Besides my hair? How ridiculous you are!” Carrie did not seem
displeased by the question. She condescended to answer it rather fully,
and as she took off her shoes and stockings talked of the possibilities
of evening parties, the certainty of afternoon calls, the charms of
long dresses, and of the young men who stayed at the Rectory. Alice
joined in this explanation, and in fact the sisters were soon talking
to and for each other only, having almost forgotten Bill’s presence
until she exclaimed suddenly: “Men! It’s all men! Why are they nicer
than women?”
She was sitting on her pillow in her favourite position, her knees
drawn up, her elbows resting upon them, and her chin framed in her
hands; she was looking straight in front of her and only turned her
eyes on the sisters when she spoke. They objected to her method of
looking round without turning her head; that, in addition to the
impropriety of the remark, made Carrie answer severely: “Men are not
nicer than women; nobody thinks so except those who are fast.”
“Yes, they are nicer. You think so, Polly thinks so, Bella thinks so,
every girl thinks so, though I don’t see why.”
“You don’t know any men”; this was said with great contempt.
“No, nor any girls either, except you two, and you are nice!” Bill had
an enormous mouth and the beginning of a smile curved it as she spoke.
“Then it is more than you are,” Alice retorted with irritation, “or you
would not talk about men like that.”
“Men aren’t half so amusing as women,” Bill went on, ignoring the last
speech; “and women aren’t half so amusing when men are there. I can’t
see where the attraction comes in with any of them--the rector, the
curates, the masters at the grammar-school, Robert Morton, any of them.”
“Of course they don’t take any notice of you,” Carrie said, and Alice
added: “You only think about people being amusing; you like people whom
you can imitate.”
“That’s why I like you,” Bill said sweetly. “Why do you like
people--men?”
“I don’t like men; you have never heard me speak of them!”
“Heard!” Bill laughed. “I have felt; I have felt you crinkle up for a
boy!”
“You haven’t! How dare you say such things!”
“Why not? Where is the harm? You talk about men to each other, why not
to me? You never have before, but I see no reason why you should not.
Do you consider it wrong to like men? How queer it is; you all like men
and you all pretend you do not. There is a deal of humbug about it.”
“Some people,” Carrie said with severity, “have a sense of decency.”
“A sense of decency? That’s what Adam and Eve had when they hid
themselves; a sense of decency often seems to mean hiding something.”
“You are very wicked!” Alice said scandalised, and would have nothing
more to say to Bill for some time, though after the light was out and
all three were in bed the sisters continued to talk to each other about
the wonderful future, the first ball Carrie would attend, and the
events that would follow.
“And after that,” came the voice from Bill’s bed,--“what are you going
to do after that?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Carrie answered; “marry I suppose. There is a use
for your despised men; you can’t marry without them.”
“Marry--h’m!--Yes, I expect you will marry.”
“Do you really think so? I don’t know--and yet,--yes, I suppose I
should rather like to; not yet of course, but by and by, to marry and
to have several children.”
“Oh, you are sure to; you are like the old white hen with feathers down
her legs; you would make a splendid sitter.”
“Bill!”
“Now what’s the matter? Is it the sense of decency again?”
But the sisters would not answer her question and, having told her so,
went on to say that, as it was forbidden to talk after the light was
out, they were not going to do it any more, especially to her. Then
they went to sleep, leaving Bill to her own reflections. She, thus
left, rolled over on her back and lay staring up into the darkness
above her and thinking. At her age one does not always think with a
definite coherent clearness; dreaming is more to the mind of seventeen.
Bill dreamed, fancies and thoughts flitting to and fro in her mind.
About marriage, for instance; last year Theresa had tried the great
experiment to which Carrie looked forward. Carrie would try it by and
by; she would become Mrs. Somebody and grow staid and stout and placid;
she would talk about “my house” and “my husband”; she would bound the
universe, almost the Kingdom of Heaven by those two; she would wear a
black silk dress and a heavy gold chain like Mrs. Bodling; she would
get fatter and fairer and calmer; she would entirely lose sight of her
feet----
Bill stretched out her own feet, and then lay still to listen. The wind
crept in at the open window and stirred the curtains; the cloth on the
toilet-table flapped idly, reminding her of quiet, slumberous summer
afternoons, of a certain Thursday afternoon in June especially,--it
was in June that Theresa had entered on the great experiment. In
the first freshness of early summer she left the school and the old
routine-work and the narrow, cosy, feminine life and went out to try
a wider, fuller, new life. She was to have a house of her own and a
servant; there had been a lot of talk about the house (here Bill built
an ideal house for herself), a lot of things to be bought, a lot of
new clothes for Theresa. Miss Brownlow and the girls had pinched and
scraped and worked; Bill had been allowed to help a little, though her
work was more strong than neat. Evening after evening Bella and Polly
and Theresa had sat at work with Miss Brownlow--how they seemed to
enjoy it! Theresa must have missed that when she went to her new home;
Bill wondered what she did during those first evenings of the new life.
Then the great day had come; Bill recalled every detail of it. There
had been excitement and bustle and people and flowers, Theresa in her
bridal gown, and everywhere the scent of the little white roses--the
white roses which made Bill think of funerals, though she did not know
why.
Then Theresa had gone away. She kissed them all and cried, and smiled
and cried again, and went. Robert Morton looked rather cross during the
kissing and crying, but nobody seemed to mind. They were quite sure
Theresa was happy, quite sure she had attained to all that she desired;
only Bill thought she must be very lonely. She had also an inward
conviction, founded on nothing, that Theresa would be desperately
disappointed in her venture. There was no reason for these thoughts,
and Theresa had said nothing to suggest them; she seemed happy, and
they all thought her so except Bill, and Bill was so childish that she
could not be expected to know anything about the matter. She had only
once been to Theresa’s home at Ashelton. They had all driven there one
September day and enjoyed it greatly. Bill could recall every detail of
the expedition, her memory was vivid and her experiences few. She had
never been again to Ashelton; she had never been on a visit--
She was growing very sleepy now, and her thoughts became confused with
the words of the cousins who were speaking just outside the door.
“I shall be very glad to have her.”
“You will be more glad to be rid of her; besides, she has no clothes.”
At the Day of Judgment Polly would still be considering her
clothes--she would probably want to let out her garment of
righteousness if--but sleep mastered Bill here.