The young man that Ariadne loves is a more than friend of Lady Scilly,
and I knew him first. He was there that day I lunched for the first
time. On rice-pudding, I remember. Ariadne hardly knew him till we came
here, though they had both taken part in Christina's wedding. He had
just noticed her then; for once she was well turned out. On the strength
of that notice she asked him to call, and he didn't; he would call now
if she asked him, but we don't want him coming to the house on the quay,
for we couldn't insulate Aunt Gerty.
He stays with Lady Scilly in the house she has taken in St. Hilda's
Terrace. Irene Lauderdale is there. He hates Irene, and contrives never
to be in her company more than he can help! That's one to us.
His own family lives up in the dales, Pickering way. George stayed there
once, when Lady Hermyre was alive, and builds a sort of little
recitation on what he observed in his friend's house. Whatever isn't
ormolu is buhl. There are six Portland vases along the cornice of the
house containing the ashes of the family. Portraits of stiff horses and
squat owners all the way up-stairs. Everything, including the butler,
excessively _collet monté_, excepting the portraits of the ladies of the
family, frowning ascetically over their own bodices _décolleté à
outrance_. Sir Frederick is one of the most prominent racing men of
Yorkshire, and the stables are model, but the house isn't. Prayers, bed
at ten, no bridge, and early breakfast, and prayers again. I don't think
George will ever be asked again, but I don't wonder Lady Scilly was able
to get hold of Simon. _She_ doesn't frown over her _décolleté_ bodices,
and she is amusing in her silly way. Simon hangs round like one of those
young fox-hound puppies "at walk" that one sees in the villages, and
Lord Scilly looks after his future and got him into the Foreign Office.
I believe, though, Lord Scilly twigs about Ariadne caring for him, that
Lady Scilly doesn't, or else she would not let him out so freely. She
would be like most teachers and insist on her pupil's finishing his
term. A wise woman would not have brought Irene Lauderdale down here, to
preoccupy her. It will take her all her time to keep Simon away from
Ariadne, if once I give my mind to it. I do. Ariadne and Simon don't
make appointments, but they keep them. I am generally there, but I don't
count. There is the Geological Museum on the Quay, which is never used
for anything but casual appointments, and the old Library, where they
have all the three-volume people, Mrs. Gaskell and Miss Jewsbury and
Mrs. Oliphant. Ariadne and I read three a day regularly. We sometimes
meet Simon on the quay, when we are carrying a whole hodful, and
Ariadne won't let him carry them for her, she doesn't like him to know
that she is reading all about Love.
Simon doesn't really want to find out. He never wants very much
anything. He never fights any point. That is what I like about him, and
hate about Bohemians. They never glide or slip over things, they always
scrape and drag and insist. But people who have got their roots in the
country, as Simon has, are simple and not fussy and have no fads. I
wonder what Simon thinks of George? It is the last thing he would tell
me or Ariadne. He likes Mr. Aix, rather, but he would not, perhaps, if
he had read any of his novels? Mr. Aix makes him laugh, and I like to
hear his nice little curly laugh. If only Simon's eyes were bigger, he
really would be very handsome. Ariadne's, however, are big enough for
two.
This is the first time she has ever been in love, she says, and it
hurts--women. It doesn't hurt a man who loves in vain, only clears up
his ideas a little, and shows him the kind of girl he really does want
when the first choice refuses him. A refusal from first choice only
sends him straight off with his heart in his mouth to second choice, who
is waiting for the chance of him. I am sure that is the way most
marriages are made--hearts on the rebound. The first girl is a true
benefactor to her species, and gets her fun and her practice into the
bargain. Ariadne has now reduced this to a system, from novels. In
refusing, you must remember to hope after you have said that it can
never be, that you will at least always be friends. With regard to
accepting, she thinks and I think, that the nicest way is to hide your
burning face on the lapel of his coat and say nothing, and then when you
come up again the rough stuff of his coat has made you blush, a thing
neither Ariadne nor I have ever been able to manage for ourselves.
Novels tell you all sorts of things, for instance, when and what to
resent, otherwise you might say thank you! for what is really an
affront. Out on the Cliff Walk the other day, it came on to rain, and a
man offered to lend Ariadne his umbrella, and see her to her own door. A
harmless, nay useful proposal. But my sister knew--from novels--that
that sort of thing leads to all sorts of wickedness, and that she must
unconditionally, absolutely refuse. She was broken-hearted at having to
sacrifice her best hat, but bravely bowed and refused his offer, and
went off in the rain, feeling his disappointed eyes right through the
back of her head, and hearing the plop-plop of the rain-drops on the
crown of her hat all the way home. But she had behaved well. That was
her consolation.
Aunt Gerty took that man on afterwards--she met him turning out of the
reading-room at the saloon, and he offered the very same umbrella! Aunt
Gerty accepted it, and hopes to accept the owner too some day, for it
was Mr. Bowser.
Ariadne goes the wrong way to work. Her one idea when she gets on at all
with any man--and she does get on with Simon, that is certain--is to
collar him, to curtail his liberty, and give him as many opportunities
of being alone with her as she can. She says it is an universal feminine
instinct. Very well, if she chooses to be guided by this wretched
feminine instinct, she will muff the whole thing. She should let the
idea of being alone with her come from him, lead him on to propose it,
and manage it himself, and then--squash it!
Men are very easily put off or frightened; a racehorse isn't in it with
them. To feel at ease, they must be made to think that it is all quite
casual, that nobody has arranged anything, and that as for themselves,
though there is no harm in them, no one particularly wants them. If they
can get it into their heads that they won't be conspicuous by their
absence, they buck up immediately, and want to be in your pocket. When
one is at a theatre, one is quite comforted by the sight of Extra Exit
stuck up here and there, although I dare say if you came to thump at
those doors in despair you would find it no go!
So when Ariadne makes a face at me to leave her, I don't see it. I sit
tight, wherever we are, knowing that young men adore being chaperoned.
And at parties, if you notice, the one woman they never throw a word to
is the woman they adore, and mean to secure. They want to marry her, not
talk to her. The casual Society girl will do for that. Ariadne sometimes
comes back from a party quite disconsolate, because so-and-so hasn't
said a word more than was strictly necessary for politeness to her.
"Excelsior!" I said. "I do really believe he is thinking of it."
Simon always seems to have plenty of pocket-money, and gives to beggars
in the street. Yet his eyes are little, and Cook always said that that
goes with meanness. Anyway they are very bright, like an animal that you
come on suddenly in a clump of green in a wood, perhaps I mean a hare?
He always sees jokes first, and looks up and laughs. He is very keen on
hunting, and singing, but his father snubs him, and says he doesn't ride
as straight as Almeria, and has no more voice than an old cock-sparrow.
He would see better to ride if he wasn't short-sighted, anyway. I don't
believe he ever reads, except Mr. Sponge's Tour and Mr. Jorrocks'
something or other, and books in the Badminton Library. He knows a
little history, about St. Hilda and the Abbey, and I shouldn't be
surprised to hear that he thought she was some sort of ancestress of
his, and that Cædmon was a stable-boy about his Aunt Fylingdales'
estate.
I feel quite like a mother to him, and Ariadne loves him passionately,
and is leaving off eating for his sake. Not on purpose exactly, but
because she is so worried about him. He is awfully nice to her, but he
never gets any nicer. He is nice to anybody; it is only because Ariadne
is the only girl in the set here about his own age, that it seems as if
it would be neat and right that he should fall in love with her. I am
not quite sure that Simon can fall in love, it is the dull men who do
that best, not the universal favourites. But if Simon has any love
latent, I am anxious to get it all for Ariadne.
She hates herrings now, and doesn't care for cream. She lives
principally on jam-tarts and cheese-cakes. It is the proper thing to go
about eleven in the morning to that shop on the quay and eat tarts and
cheese-cakes standing, and watch people pass, and the bridge opening and
shutting to let tall funnels go through. Ariadne sometimes has to wade
through half-a-dozen tarts before Simon and Lady Scilly and the dogs and
the rest of them come round the corner of Flowergate, and surely it is a
pity to spoil your complexion for the sake of any young man in the
world? No digestion could stand the way Ariadne treats hers for long.
She plays it very low down on her constitution generally. She won't go
to bed till awfully late, but sits by the window telling her sorrow to
the sea and the stars, and writing poems to the harbour-bar, that never
moans that I know of. Luckily, as yet, it doesn't show in her face that
she has been burning the midnight oil, or candles. She burns three short
fours a night sometimes that she buys herself. She has made three pounds
altogether by writing poems that Mr. Aix puts in an American paper for
her. She doesn't let Simon know that she publishes, for it would
discredit her in his eyes. He says there's no harm in girls scribbling
if they like, but he is jolly well glad his sister doesn't.
Simon is proud of his sister Almeria, and thinks her a "splendid girl."
She lives at their place with her widowed father, eight miles inland,
and only comes to Whitby when rough weather and wrecks are expected.
Then every one walks up and down the pier, and hopes that a hapless
barque will come drifting to their very feet. I don't mean we actually
want there to be a wreck, but if it has to be, it may as well be where
one can see it. For Ariadne has a tender heart, and when Aunt Gerty put
the loaf upside down on the trencher the other day, Ariadne at once
kindly put it on its right end again, for a loaf upside down always
betokens a wreck, and she knows all the superstitions there are.
The two piers here are so awkwardly placed that in rough weather the
poor boats can't always clear them. So it is a regular party on the pier
when the South Cone is hoisted at the coastguard-station. Irene
Lauderdale wears a little shawl over her head like a factory girl. It
can't blow away, she says. She has been photographed like that, with
Lord Fylingdales. They say she is going to marry him, and do what Aunt
Gerty refused to do.
I don't know if they are a very united family, but certainly his sisters
chaperon him most carefully, and have taken care to be great friends
with Irene, so as to have an excuse for being always with her. Lord
Fylingdales never gets a chance of seeing her alone. Dear Emily (Lady
Fenton) and dear Louisa (Mrs. Hugh Gore) are devoted to dear Irene, and
she thinks it is because she is so nice, so good form, not because she
is so nasty. They perfectly loathe and detest her. I heard Lady Fenton
abusing her to some one, talking in the same breath of Almeria Hermyre
as "one of us." The sisters would prefer Lord Fylingdales to marry his
cousin Almeria, of course, but her get-up is simply appalling. She wears
plain skirts and pea-shooter caps, and no fringe. George says she has
the most uncompromising forehead he ever saw--a _front candide_ with a
vengeance! I should think she soaps it well every morning, it looks like
that.
Her father is about as queer as an old family can make him. I wish some
one would tell me why if you came in with the Conqueror you are
generally queer, or without a chin? Why do you always marry your near
relations? Do you get queerer as you go on? No one ever answers these
questions. Sir Frederick Hermyre has acres of stubbly chin, true, but he
takes it out in queerness. He always wears white duck trousers, like the
pictures of Wellington, whom he is rather like. He says "what is the
good of being a gentleman if you can't wear a shabby coat?" and does
wear it. His house at Highsam is a show house, only they don't show it.
They are too careless, and too untidy, and too mean in the shape of
housekeepers. One day some Whitby tourists went over to Saltergate in a
break, and strolled up his drive to look at the Jacobean Front, and met
Sir Frederick, as shabby as usual; he had been working in a stone quarry
he has there, I believe.
"Did you wish to see me?" he asked the front tourist politely.
"Thanks, old cock, any extra charge?" said the tourist. It was of course
all the fault of those old trousers and linen coat, and I have heard
that Sir Frederick was not so very angry, and stood the man a glass of
beer. He is a Liberal in spite of owning land. Simon is a Conservative.
Eldest sons are always different politics to their fathers. We never see
the old man hardly except on these stormy pier parties, and then he
stalks up and down the pier with his daughter among us all, and though
he isn't exactly rude to anybody, he never seems to hear or care to hear
what anybody is saying. Blood tells. Lady Scilly has given him up in
disgust long ago; he simply answered her straight as long as he could,
and when he didn't understand her, he just shook his head and grinned
and turned away.
Simon stood by, looking rather like a little whipped dog. He is awfully
afraid of his father, who isn't proud of him, but of Almeria, who he
says has got all the brains of the family, and ought to have been the
boy.
Simon tried introducing Ariadne to Almeria, but Ariadne's fringe proved
an insuperable barrier. As for Ariadne, Almeria's naked forehead made
her feel quite shy, she said, such a double-bedded kind of forehead as
that needed covering. I said, all the same, she was an idiot not to make
friends with Simon's sister, for he had obviously a great respect for
the girl's opinion. She might have plenty of sense in spite of her bald
forehead and clumpers of boots! But it was no use, they stood glaring at
each other like two Highland cattle, while Simon was trying to invent a
mutual bond between them.
"My sister writes a little," he said.
"Only for nothing in the Parish Magazine," said Almeria, witheringly.
--"And goes about," he went on, "with a hammer collecting----"
"Bedlamites and Amorites," said I, to make them laugh.
They didn't laugh, and Simon continued--
"And pebbling and mossing and growing sea anemones in basins."
Then I got excited, and as Ariadne stood mum, I supported the
conversation.
"And isn't it funny to feel them claw your finger if you put it in their
mouth--well, they are all mouth, aren't they?"
"And stomach!" said Almeria, turning away politely.
Ariadne had hardly said a word, but had left the conversation to me. But
any one could see that these two never could get on. Ariadne looked as
she stood on the pier, plucking at bits of hair that would get loose,
just like a pale butterfly caught in the rain, while Almeria stood as
fast as a capstan and as stumpy. And the abominable thing was, that
Almeria was not in the least rude. She was always civil, perfectly
civil--but civility is the greatest preserver of distances there is if
people only knew.
Simon gave her up as far as Ariadne was concerned. He stuck to Ariadne,
but did not neglect other girls or any one else for her sake, and so
compromise her. He has got a lot of tact. Ariadne hasn't any, but she is
gentle and easily led, and Simon is the kind of boy who is going to grow
masterful, and likes a girl who gives him the chance of standing up for
her and managing for her. Perhaps he is a little bit sorry for her. Not
because she is so dreadfully in love with him; he isn't conceited enough
to see that, or Ariadne would have shown him long ago. He is sorry for
her because she gives herself away so in so many ways, looking pretty
all the time. That is important, for it is no good looking pathetic,
unless you look pretty as well. He chaffs her about her fluffy hats that
go all limp in the salt sea-spray, and her pretty thin shoes that let
the water in, and her hair that never will stay where she wants it. She
has got into the way of continually arranging herself, patting a bow
here, pulling her sleeves down over her wrist, and arranging her hair.
"Always at work!" he says suddenly, and Ariadne's guilty hands go down
like clockwork. It isn't rude, the way he says it. He looks at her
kindly, not cheekily. It is that kind sort of fatherly look that I like,
and that makes me think he is fond of Ariadne.
She is different from Lady Scilly, whom he is beginning slightly to
detest. Sometimes he looks quite glum when she is ordering him about,
but he obeys. What do married women do to men to make them their slaves
as they do, and yet one can see by their eyes that they don't want to?
And why are the women themselves the last to see that the servant wants
to give notice and would willingly forfeit a month's wages to be allowed
to leave at once? Lady Scilly is just like a mistress who avoids going
down into her own kitchen to order dinner, at a time when relations are
strained, lest the cook takes the chance of giving her warning. Lady
Scilly is the least bit afraid of Simon's cooling off, and just now
prefers to give him his orders from a distance.
She calls Lord Scilly "Silly-Billy," and "my harmless, necessary
husband." He is not dangerous, and he certainly is useful, for she
really could not go about alone wearing the hats she does. She has one
made of a whole parrot, and a coat made of leopard skins. I like Lord
Scilly. He is rather fat, and knows it. He has a hoarse sort of voice,
and yet I don't think he drinks much. Perhaps it is the open-air life
that he leads among horses and dogs and grooms; at Summer Meetings and
Doncaster, and so on. He is well known as a fearless rider, and risks
his neck with the greatest pleasure. If I were Lady Scilly, I should
much prefer him to George, though not to Simon. His chest is broader
than George's, and he is taller than Simon, but then she isn't married
to either of those. Marriage is like the rennet you put into the
junket--it turns it!
He seems quite used to the kind of wife he has got. He isn't at all
anxious to change her. He hardly ever talks about her--even to me. That
is manners. Even George has got that sort of manners, so that half these
smart people don't realize that my father has got a wife, or ever had
one! They might, if they liked, and after all, if Mother doesn't choose
to know his friends, he cannot force her! She won't go out with him,
though she makes no difficulties about our going. She likes us to go, as
it opens our eyes and gives us chances. Her business is to see that we
are clean and have nice hair not to disgrace him, and we don't, or he
would soon chuck us.
Lord Scilly always insists on our being asked to the picnics and parties
they give. He likes us. He takes more notice of us than she does. I
think he is a very lonely man, and quite glad of a little notice and
attention even from a child. He is very observant too, I don't believe
much goes past his eye. He thinks of everything from the racing point of
view. Once when Lady Scilly and Ariadne were both standing on either
side of Simon, receiving about an equal share of his attention, or so it
seemed, Lord Scilly suddenly chuckled and said--
"I back the little 'un!"
He always talks of and to Ariadne as if she were very young indeed, and
it is the surest way to rile her. She never forgave Mrs. Ptomaine a
notice of hers on the dresses at some Private View or other, when she
alluded to Ariadne's frock as worn by "a very young girl." Lord Scilly
thinks a girl ought to be able to stand chaff, and is always testing
her.
Ariadne had a birthday while we were at Whitby, and it fell on the day
fixed for a picnic to Robin Hood's Bay. Simon sent her a present by the
first post in the morning, a fan that he had written all the way to
London for, in payment of some bet or other he had invented--I suppose
he did not think it right to give an unmarried girl a present without
some excuse like that?--and of course Mother and Aunt Gerty and I gave
her something, and even George forked out a sovereign. That was all she
expected, and not even that.
However, all the way driving to the picnic, Lord Scilly kept telling her
that he was going to give her something as well; I was sure he was only
teasing her, for there are no shops worth mentioning in Robin Hood's
Bay, so I advised her to brace herself for a disappointment.
The moment he got to Robin Hood's Bay, he was off by himself, and away
quite ten minutes, coming back with a showy paper parcel. At lunch he
gave it her with a great deal of ceremony, so that everybody was
looking. It was worse than I even had thought, a hideous china mug with
"A Present for a Good Girl" on it in gilt letters. Ariadne has it now,
only the servants have washed off the gilt lettering, using soda as they
will. The baby was christened in it. But I am anticipating.
I had my eye on her as she untied the parcel, hoping and wondering if
she would stay a lady in her great disappointment? She did. She thanked
him quite formally and prettily for his charming present, though I saw
her lip tremble a very little. I was awfully pleased with her, and so
was Simon Hermyre, for I saw he particularly noticed her behaviour. As
for the Scillys, their nasty little joke fell rather flat in consequence
of Ariadne's discretion.
It was a most fearfully hot day. We all sat on the cliff in tiers, and
talked about the delightful golden weather which was so oppressive and
beastly that there was nothing to do but lie about and smoke. So they
did. The men mopped their foreheads when they thought no one was
looking, and the women used _papier poudrée_ slyly in their
handkerchiefs. Only Ariadne had none to use, and kept cool by sheer
force of will. I was all right, being only a child.
Ariadne was sitting a little apart, with me, and she was writing a Poem
to the sea, and she told me in a whisper as far as she had got--
"The patient world about their feet
Lay still, and weltered in the heat."
"What else could it do but lie still?" I said, and suddenly just then
Simon got up--
"I say! I'm going to take the kids for a sail! Bring your new mug,
Missy, and take your tiny sister by the hand, so that she doesn't fall
and break her nose on the cliff steps."
After the mug incident I don't see how anybody could have objected, or
tried to prevent Ariadne from taking the advantages of being treated as
a baby, and I expect that was what Simon thought. Anyhow, Ariadne got
up, and went with Simon and me as bold as any lion. It is a well-known
fact that Lady Scilly can't stand the sea in small quantities like what
you get in a boat, though of course she goes yachting cheerfully. None
of the others were enough interested in Simon to care to move, and take
any exercise in this heat. George gave her an approving little nod as
she passed him.
We had a lovely sail of a whole hour's duration. We had an old boatman
wearing his whiskers stiffened with tallow, who told us he had been a
smuggler, and treated Ariadne and Simon as if they were an engaged
couple, out for a spree, with me thrown in for a make-weight. It came on
to blow a little, and got much cooler. Ariadne lost her hat, and had to
borrow a red silk handkerchief of Simon's and tie a knot in it at all
four corners and wear it so. She looked most proud and happy, as if she
had on a crown, not a hat.
When Lady Scilly saw the latest thing in hats, she cried out, "Oh, my
poor Ariadne!" and helped her to hide herself more or less in the
waggonette going home. I didn't know before how becoming the cap was!