We all hoped that Mr. Bowser would find he liked Aunt Gerty well enough
to wish to relieve us of her, but we evidently wished it so strongly
that he did not see his way to obliging us. These things get into the
air somehow, and put people off. Of course Aunt Gerty herself wished it
more than anybody, and she was feeling considerably annoyed as she
completed the arrangements for a rather seedy sort of autumn tour, which
she would not have had to do if she could have pulled it off with the
brewer. She wreaked her vexation on us, us and Mother, who was very
patient, knowing what poor Aunt Gerty was feeling. But Ariadne, who was
feeling very much the same way, and had to suffer in silence, resented
it, and when Aunt Gerty hustled her, hustled back in spite of her broken
heart.
George left for Scotland. He _says_ he is going to shoot with the
Scillys. I don't know why, but I have a fancy he has gone to Ben
Rhydding, all alone, to cure his gout. It didn't matter. It was settled
that we were to go to stay with Christina in Northumberland.
Ariadne didn't like going straight on from Whitby, because she would
have preferred to get her country outfit in London; but of course the
difference on fares made that impossible. It is one of the curious
things about Finance, that George should make so much money, and we
should still have to think of a beggarly three hundred miles or so at a
penny a mile. That is what it costs third-class, as of course we go. The
all-the-year-round conservatory at Cinque Cento House costs George three
hundred a year alone to keep up, and the Hall of Arms (as it is written
up over the door) at the back of the house must be done up every few
months. It is all white (five coats!) to set off George's black velvet
fencing costume and his neat legs.
George has _so_ much taste. He simply lives at Christie's. He cannot
help buying cabinets and chairs at a few hundred pounds apiece. He says
they are realizable property. Ariadne and I would like to realize them.
The great point with Ariadne was how to dress suitably for Christina's.
I said same as London, only shorter and plainer. Ariadne hankered after
a proper _bonâ fide_ shooting toilette. She had the sovereign George
gave her for her birthday, and two pounds she had made by a poem, and
another Mother gave her. She looks much best dressed quietly, nothing
mannish or exact suits her, for it at once brings out the
out-of-drawing-ness of her face, which is of the Burne-Jones type. She
has grown to that, being trained up in it from her earliest years. All
types can be acquired. In the face of this, she went out and bought a
_Miriam's Home Journal_, and selected a pattern of Stylish Dress for the
Moors, and got a cheap tailor in the town to make it up for her. Ye
Gods, as Aunt Gerty says! I used to go with her to be fitted. It was a
heart-breaking business. They took her in and let her out, kneeling
about her with their mouths full of pins so that you couldn't scold them
lest you gave them a shock and drove all the pins down their throat, and
the little tailor kept saying, "A pleat here would be beneficial to it,
Madam," or to his assistant, "Remove that fulness there!" till there
wasn't a straight seam left in it, it was all bias and bulge.
Ariadne cried over the way that skirt hung for an hour when it came
home. "Too much of bias hast thou, poor Ariadne," I said to her,
imitating the pompous tailor; but although I chaffed her I went to him
and made him take ten shillings off the bill.
I couldn't help thinking of a real country girl like Almeria Hermyre,
when Ariadne put this confection on for the first time in the
privateness of our bedroom. It was brown tweed turned up with "real cow"
as Ben said; there is even a piece of leather stitched on to her
shoulder where she is to rest her gun. Ariadne, who once pulled one leg,
that I daresay he could easily spare, off a daddy-long-legs, and
considered herself little better than a murderer!
Ben, who was present at this private view, did not like her in it, and
told her so. He is so truthful that he never waits to be asked his
opinion. So long as he didn't tease her about Simon Hermyre, it did not
matter, but he is quite a gentleman, though rough. Indeed, nobody
mentioned Simon, though I could not help thinking of him a good deal in
connection with Ariadne's new dress. I was sure we should see him
somewhere in Northumberland. It isn't as big as America, and where there
is even a faint will there is generally a way. Ariadne was thinking of
him when she bought a billycock hat on purpose to stick in a moorcock's
wing Simon had once given her that he had shot. I did not interfere, for
I thought if he saw her in it he might think some other fellow had given
her a moorcock's feather; there are plenty of them about, and plenty of
fools to shoot them.
I myself did not make much preparation. Just a new elastic to my hat,
and new laces to my boots. How delightful it is to care for no man! How
it simplifies life! All this bother about Ariadne has choked me off love
for a long while to come. I don't care if it never comes my way at all.
But I am only fourteen, and have not got the place in my head ready for
it yet, anyway. I don't believe that Love is a woman's whole existence
any more than it is a man's. We are like ships, made in water-tight
compartments, so that if something goes wrong with one compartment the
whole concern isn't done for. Until I am old enough to set a whole
compartment aside for Love, I can be easy and watch the others
wallowing. Life is one huge party to me, and the girls who are not out
yet watching it through the bannisters and getting a taste of the ices
now and then.
I don't study dinners at home, we have never given one in Cinque Cento
House. George entertains a good deal at the Club, when he can get Lady
Scilly or some one like that to play hostess and give the signal to rise
for him, a thing, somehow, that no man ever seems capable of doing for
himself.
Mother and Aunt Gerty saw us off for Morpeth, at Whitby station. Aunt
Gerty looked far more excited than just seeing a couple of nieces off
could make her, and I soon saw the reason of it, Mr. Bowser was leaving
by the same train! He went first-class of course, which was annoying for
Aunt Gerty, as that made him be at the other end of the train, too far
off to see how prettily she kissed her nieces good-bye, and bought them
_Funny Bits_ and chocolate creams. We got the creams anyhow. Children
often profit by their elders' foolish fancies.
Mother wouldn't even let us kiss her out of the carriage-window for fear
the train started and we got dragged out, and sure enough we did go on
suddenly, in that slidy, masterful way trains have. I have a particular
affinity to trains. My great-grandfather built an engine and had it
called after him. When he was dying, he was taken in his chair to where
the Great Northern trains pass every day, and drew his last breath as
the Scotch Express rattled by.
To return. I noticed that Aunt Gerty looked awfully pleased about
something, and kept sticking her hip out in an engaging way she has,
and I concluded that Mr. Bowser had at last spotted her and thrown her
an encouraging nod, perhaps blown her a kiss, only he is perhaps not
quite low enough for that? But whatever it was, it made her happy. Oh,
if they only could all get the man they want _at the time_ they want
him, what a nice place the world would be, for children at any rate! All
grown-up people's tempers come because they can't get what they want.
And here was I, boxed up with one who hadn't got what she wanted, for a
whole blessed day! She was simply weltering in love, if I may say so.
She had a penny note-book ready to write poetry in, and meant to dream
and write and cry for four hours. I had a nice improper six-penny of my
Aunt Gerty's, but I scarcely hoped that Ariadne would allow me to enjoy
it.
Of course not. She soon began bothering. As soon as we were properly
started, she pulled up her thousand times too thick veil, badly put
on--Ariadne is too simple ever to learn to put on a veil properly as
other women do--and looked hard at herself in her pocket looking-glass,
and sighed and settled her loose tendril and unsettled it, and pinched
her cheek to massage it and restore the subcutaneous deposit the doctor
had told her about. She seemed hopeless and sad, for presently she
said--
"No, I am not looking beautiful to-day!"
A pretty white tear, like a pearl button, shook on her eyelashes, and I
wondered how long she could keep it hanging there? I do believe she was
anxious to look nice because she had an idea she might see Simon at
Morpeth. But one never does see people at stations, and personally, I
think that Ariadne would be far prettier if she didn't know she was
pretty. It is most unkind and inconsiderate of her so-called friends to
keep telling her so. It is just like our horrid lot. In Simon's set,
they would die sooner than pay a girl a compliment to her face. But she
has got so hardened to it that I always have to take her down gently, so
as not to hurt her, same as one does with invalids.
"It doesn't matter how you look," I said, "there is nobody but porters
to see you, and you don't want to mash them and distract them from their
work and make them get the points all wrong. I should have thought you
preferred being alone. You can write in your book. Let us do George's
dodge, and stand at the window whenever we come into a station and look
as repulsive as we can."
George likes to keep the carriage all to himself, and taught us what to
do to secure it, the only time he ever travelled with us. We made a
prominent object of Ben, very sticky with lollipops, and managed to be
by ourselves all the way.
Ariadne was unwilling to do this now. She sat still in her corner and
brooded, and that did just as well, for the would-be passengers looked
in and saw her, and made up their minds that she was recovering from
scarlet fever, or at least measles. I stood in the window, squarely, and
looked ugly for two. I was interested in the country. It is quite
hideous between Whitby and Morpeth. The reason is that it is an
industrial centre. I began to wish that our eating (kitchen boilers) and
keeping warm (coal) didn't mean so many people having to live black, and
whole counties in a blanket of smoke. I don't think I approve of
civilization, if this is what it comes out of?
When the train slowed down at Morpeth, I could not help calling out to
Ariadne, "I told you so!" for there was Christina Ball in a muslin
dress, with a soft floppy chiffon hat and no veil at all. She was
sitting in a little pony-cart, with an ugly child that couldn't be hers;
we saw her from the train. It was a shock to Ariadne, and she was wild
to get our box into the cloak-room first and unlock it and get out one
of her old dresses. But how could she dress in the waiting-room? And
besides, she would be certain to muddle the next thing I told her (and
so she did).
We got out of the station and into the trap. Christina had a new pony
and couldn't get down--and it was arranged that our luggage was to come
on by carrier, as our wicker trunk would be sure to scratch the smart
new dog-cart.
Off we went, I thought, and I am sure Ariadne thought, a little too like
the wind. But Ariadne wanted to appear at ease, and casual and
countrified, so she pretended to take an interest in the scenery, and
said to Christina, "Look at the lovely tone of that verdigris on the
pond!"
The ugly child twitched her feet under the rug beside me; she said
nothing, but looked it.
"Oh, the duck-weed!" said Christina, who knows Ariadne too well to be
amused by anything she says. "Miss Emerson Tree here--allow me to
introduce Peter's American niece, Miss Jane Emerson Tree--calls it the
'stagnance.'"
The ugly child still didn't say anything, though "stagnance" was just as
absurd a word for mildew on a pond as verdigris, and I began to be quite
afraid of one who, though so young, didn't seem to want to fly out. She
turned half round though, and seemed to be staring hard at the body of
Ariadne's shooting dress with its patch on the left shoulder. Christina
went on enlightening us about the country and telling us the sort of
things we were likely to ask and make fools of ourselves about. I do
believe she was afraid of our saying something specially silly before
Jane Emerson Tree, and wanted to save us from ourselves.
It came at last, and Ariadne nearly toppled out of the cart. The ugly
child spoke in the most strong American accent, and the way she leant
upon the last syllable of the word _despise_ was the nastiest thing I
ever heard.
"Oh, I do just _despise_ your waist!" she said to Ariadne; "I've been
looking at it all the way we've come."
Christina absently took hold of her whip and then rattled it back in its
socket. She then scolded Jane till I should have thought any ordinary
child couldn't have gone on sitting up, but this one did, never saying
a word, but pursed her mouth in till there was hardly a line to be seen.
Then Christina began to tell us how dull she had found it living in the
country, and how difficult to get acclimatized at first.
"But in the end, the country rubs off on one," she sighed, "and a good
thing too. Oh, the mistakes I made at first! You know that Peter and I
have both been staying with the dear Bishop of Guyzance."
"Oh, Christina, you _have_ changed!" said I.
"I know, dear, three services on Sunday and a shilling for the
offertory. So different from Newton Hall and Farm Street. As I was
saying, I came back from Lale Castle the day before yesterday, post
haste, to hatch some chickens----"
"I thought a hen did that?" ventured Ariadne.
"Right you are! I pretended to Peter that it was an insane desire to
kiss the baby, but I was an hour in the house before I even thought of
the child. The hen was due to hatch fifteen. I interviewed her every
hour, much to her disgust. At last, crack!--one came out----"
"You mean chipped the shell," said Ariadne primly.
"Right again! I put it in a basket by the kitchen fire, the servants
shunted it for dinner, it got cold, it died in the night. Yesterday five
more happened, I popped them in the mild oven for a minute, just then
some one pinched my baby--he screamed, and went on screaming like an
electric-bell gone wrong. I had to go and look after him--cook made a
blazing fire, do you see?--I have only saved five out of that brood."
"How very funny!" said Ariadne, who wasn't a bit amused.
I was. Christina told us of a little hen Peter had before, who had been
used to be set to ducks, and who had learned to march them all down to
the nearest pond. The first lot of chickens had been driven to a watery
and unfamiliar death.
"Would you like to go and be photographed to-morrow?" she asked Ariadne,
and Ariadne was on the _qui vive_ at once. "They all think one an
unnatural parent here, if one doesn't take one's brood to be perpetuated
at Oldfort every year. But the trains there are so awkward for us. I am
fighting the railway authorities tooth and nail, trying to persuade them
to put on a slip carriage. They do it for Keiller and his marmalade, so
why not for me? Say! I am on the pony's neck! I am going to put the seat
back, take the reins a minute!"
Ariadne didn't of course like her giving them to me, but everybody
always sees at once that I am the practical one.
When the seat was arranged she went bubbling on.
"Next week is our Harvest Festival and School feast, and Ball in the
school-house. The gaieties of this Parish! I haven't had tea with myself
for a whole week. I am a very hard worker, you don't know! Peter says I
lie awake at nights thinking of stodgy moral books to recommend for the
Village Library. I recommend some, not all, of my late patron's, your
father's, works. The Vicar here is a dear old dodderer, and was so
shocked when I recommended him _The Road to Rome_! It's a book of
travel, you know. We have a young man here, too, quite an eligible, he
told me so. He is so shy, you see, he says the wrong thing. I wonder
whether you'll make anything of him? To a flirt, all things are
possible."
"I am not a flirt--now," said Ariadne.
She was nearly giving the whole thing away, only the pony bolted, at
least Christina said it was an attempt at bolting. "My God, pony!" she
said to it, and it stopped, shocked at her swearing, I suppose.
"And there's Simon Hermyre in the neighbourhood. Henderland is not more
than ten miles off."
Ariadne at once sat tight--too tight. It was almost painful, and showed
in her face too.
Just as we were driving in at the gate of Rattenraw, Jane Emerson Tree
spoke again, and actually about Ariadne's body.
"Any way, it's on all crooked," she said, as if she was continuing the
previous discussion. Peter came out to meet us, and she was lifted down.
They couldn't, I suppose, leave her sitting and just put her away in the
coach-house all night. That is what I should have done, and cooled her
hot blood. But I saw how it was when we got in and were having tea. She
had hers "laced"--I mean brandy in it. Peter is awfully proud of her and
thinks she will be a great actress and astonish the world some day. She
certainly mimicked Peter to his face. I will let her know if I catch her
mimicking Ariadne! Peter enjoyed it. The moment a child is really rude,
people think it is going to do great things. I have noticed that. Now I
would no sooner think of criticizing a grown-up person's things to her
face as I would of--kissing Emerson Tree's very ugly mug, though I
wouldn't tell her so, otherwise than by my reluctance to embrace her.
Peter calls her "the little witch."
"The little witch," he says, "was being neglected, or thought she was,
at lunch the other day, and in a trice she called out to the butler, 'I
say, Holmes, old man, look alive with those potatoes, will you!' You
should have seen the old boy's face!"
I did see the old boy's face. He was waiting at tea.
Christina told us stories about her all tea-time; she listened quietly
as she munched buns. How when she saw the new baby she said, "Dash it
all! why it's bald!" How one rainy day she was lost, and they found her
with six of her village friends walking in a straight line down to the
pond, barefooted and bareheaded and their mouths open, quacking, and to
catch the rain-drops like ducks do. How she has done all the absurd
things children do in books, such as aspinalling the cat--as if a cat
ever stayed to be aspinalled!--and gunpowder into ovens, and frogs into
boots, and hedgehogs into beds. (She says so, but I believe she put the
clothes-brush, and Peter mistook it with his feet in the dark!) And once
when a noted Socialist man had been staying there and rashly talked
before her, she had given away the furniture.
"She went solemnly down the village," said Christina, "making presents
of the unearned increment in the shape of things she didn't want and I
did. Missing tensions of sewing-machines and valves of cycles and stray
door-knobs and other bits of rolling stock--all disappeared. When it
came to the spare sugar-tongs and my best silver scissors, however, I
had to scold her. Oh, she'll be a great actress some day."
We listened, and I am sure no one could tell from my face how I
disapproved of it all,--unless Duse the second, who, after all, was a
child too, twigged how ridiculous they were making her look? Anyhow,
after she had made three usual scenes and one extraordinary one because
we were there, and had been noisily taken off to bed, they left off
discussing her and took up a perfectly safe subject; "shoots" and who to
have. Christina teases, she always did, even in the days when she used
to put us head first down rabbit-holes.
"Has he a wife?" she asks, whenever Peter proposes a man.
"My dear, I haven't the slightest idea. All I know is he is a capital
shot, and brings down his pheasants in good style!"
"These good shots bring down such bad wives--I mean from the house-party
point of view," she says. "To look at their choice, they would always
seem to have fired recklessly into the brown and got pot luck. You see I
am boxed up with your friends' bad shots all day. I can't possibly make
my housewifely duties last all the morning, and I object to have Jane
brought down in her best frock and her worst behaviour to make sport for
idle women. And she hates grown-up ladies, and has the wit to come in
with segments of the Wanny Crag on her boots and her hair full of
straws, so as to be sent out of the drawing-room to 'muck herself up.'"
"I don't like that phrase, Christina!"
"Don't be so aggressively pure, Peter!"
Ariadne and I have called him "Pure Peter" ever since, but he is not
bad, really. It is a mercy when one's friends show a little
consideration in their marriage, and one mustn't be too particular, for
the world is full of bounders one might have got, and had to be civil
to. Peter Ball talks about "Vickings" and keeps a chart of the weather,
but except for fussy ways like that, he is quite a gentleman.