July 1st.
She has been now over five weeks under my roof, and I have put off the
evil day of explaining her to Judith; and Judith returns to-morrow.
I know it is odd for a philosophic bachelor to maintain in his
establishment a young and detached female of prepossessing appearance.
For the oddity I care not two pins. _Io son’ io_. But the question that
exercises me occasionally is: In what category are my relations with
Carlotta to be classified? I do not regard her as a daughter; still less
as a sister: not even as a deceased wife’s sister. For a secretary she
is too abysmally ignorant, too grotesquely incapable. What she knows
would be made to kick the beam against the erudition of a guinea-pig.
Yet she must be classified somehow. I must allude to her as something.
At present she fills the place in the house of a pretty (and expensive)
Persian cat; and like a cat she has made herself serenely at home.
A governess, a fat-checked girl, who I am afraid takes too humorous
a view of the position, comes of mornings to instruct Carlotta in the
rudiments of education. When engaging Miss Griggs, I told her she must
be patient, firm and, above all, strong-minded. She replied that she
made a professional specialty of these qualities, one of her present
pupils being a young lady of the Alhambra ballet who desires the
particular shade of cultivation that will match a new brougham. She
teaches Carlotta to spell, to hold a knife and fork, and corrects such
erroneous opinions as that the sky is an inverted bowl over a nice flat
earth, and that the sun, moon, and stars are a sort of electric light
installation, put into the cosmos to illuminate Alexandretta and the
Regent’s Park. Her religious instruction I myself shall attend to, when
she is sufficiently advanced to understand my teaching. At present she
is a Mohammedan, if she is anything, and believes firmly in Allah. I
consider that a working Theism is quite enough for a young woman in her
position to go on with. In the afternoon she walks out with Antoinette.
Once she stole forth by herself, enjoyed herself hugely for a short
time, got lost, and was brought back thoroughly frightened by a
policeman. I wonder what the policeman thought of her? The rest of the
day she looks at picture-books and works embroidery. She is making
an elaborate bed-spread which will give her harmless occupation for a
couple of years.
For an hour every evening, when I am at home, she comes into the
drawing-room and drinks coffee with me and listens to my improving
conversation. I take this opportunity to rebuke her for faults committed
during the day, or to commend her for especial good behaviour. I also
supplement the instruction in things in general that is given her by the
excellent Miss Griggs. Oddly enough I am beginning to look forward to
these evening hours. She is so docile, so good-humoured, so spontaneous.
If she has a pain in her stomach, she says so with the most engaging
frankness. Sometimes I think of her only, in Pasquale’s words, as a
bundle of fascination, and forget that she has no soul. Nearly always,
however, something happens to remind me. She loves me to tell her
stories. The other night I solemnly related the history of Cinderella.
She was enchanted. It gave me the idea of setting her to read “Lamb’s
Tales from Shakespeare.” I was turning this over in my mind while she
chewed the cud of her enjoyment, when she suddenly asked whether I would
like to hear a Turkish story. She knew lots of nice, funny stories. I
bade her proceed. She curled herself up in her favourite attitude on the
sofa and began.
I did not allow her to finish that tale. Had I done so, I should
have been a monster of depravity. Compared with it the worst of
Scheherazade’s, in Burton’s translation, were milk and water for a
nunnery. She seemed nonplussed when I told her to stop.
“Are oriental ladies in the habit of telling such stories?” I asked.
“Why, yes,” she replied with a candid air of astonishment. “It is a
funny story.”
“There is nothing funny whatever in it,” said I. “A girl like you
oughtn’t to know of the existence of such things.”
“Why not?” asked Carlotta.
I am always being caught up by her questions. I tried to explain; but
it was difficult. If I had told her that a maiden’s mind ought to be
as pure as the dewy rose she would not have understood me. Probably
she would have thought me a fool. And indeed I am inclined to
question whether it is an advantage to a maiden’s after career to
be dewy-roselike in her unsophistication. In order to play tunes
indifferently well on the piano she undergoes the weary training of many
years; but she is called upon to display the somewhat more important
accomplishment of bringing children into the world without an hour’s
educational preparation. The difficulty is, where to draw the line
between this dewy, but often disastrous, ignorance and Carlotta’s
knowledge. I find it a most delicate and embarrassing problem. In fact,
the problems connected with this young woman seem endless. Yet they do
not disturb me as much as I had anticipated. I really believe I should
miss my pretty Persian cat. A man must be devoid of all aesthetic sense
to deny that she is delightful to look at.
And she has a thousand innocent coquetries and cajoling ways. She has a
manner of holding chocolate creams to her white teeth and talking to you
at the same time which is peculiarly fascinating. And she must have some
sense. To-night she asked me what I was writing. I replied, “A History
of the Morals of the Renaissance.” “What are morals and what is the
Renaissance?” asked Carlotta. When you come to think of it, it is a
profound question, which philosophers and historians have wasted vain
lives in trying to answer. I perceive that I too must try to answer
it with a certain amount of definition. I have spent the evening
remodelling my Introduction, so as to define the two terms axiomatically
with my subsequent argument, and I find it greatly improved. Now this is
due to Carlotta.
The quantity of chocolate creams the child eats cannot be good for her
digestion. I must see to this.
July 2d.
A telegram from Judith to say she postpones her return to Monday. I have
been longing to see the dear woman again, and I am greatly disappointed.
At the same time it is a respite from an explanation that grows more
difficult every day. I hate myself for the sense of relief.
This morning came an evening dress for Carlotta which has taken a month
in the making. This, I am given to understand, is delirious speed for
a London dress-maker. To celebrate the occasion I engaged a box at the
Empire for this evening and invited her to dine with me. I sent a note
of invitation round to Mrs. McMurray.
Carlotta did not come down at half-past seven. We waited. At last Mrs.
McMurray went up to the room and presently returned shepherding a shy,
blushing, awkward, piteous young person who had evidently been crying.
My friend signed to me to take no notice. I attributed the child’s lack
of gaiety to the ordeal of sitting for the first time in her life at
a civilised dinner-table. She scarcely spoke and scarcely ate. I
complimented her on her appearance and she looked beseechingly at me, as
if I were scolding her. After dinner Mrs. McMurray told me the reason of
her distress. She had found Carlotta in tears. Never could she face me
in that low cut evening bodice. It outraged her modesty. It could not be
the practice of European women to bare themselves so immodestly before
men. It was only the evidence of her visitor’s own plump neck and
shoulders that convinced her, and she suffered herself to be led
downstairs in an agony of self-consciousness.
When we entered the box at the Empire, a troupe of female acrobats were
doing their turn. Carlotta uttered a gasp of dismay, blushed burning
red, and shrank back to the door. There is no pretence about Carlotta.
She was shocked to the roots of her being.
“They are naked!” she said, quiveringly.
“For heaven’s sake, explain,” said I to Mrs. McMurray, and I beat a
hasty retreat to the promenade.
When I returned, Carlotta had been soothed down. She was watching some
performing dogs with intense wonderment and delight. For the rest of
the evening she sat spell-bound. The exiguity of costume in the
ballet caused her indeed to glance in a frightened sort of way at Mrs.
McMurray, who reassured her with a friendly smile, but the music and the
maze of motion and the dazzle of colour soon held her senses captive,
and when the curtain came down she sighed like one awaking from a dream.
As we drove home, she asked me:
“Is it like that all day long? Oh, please to let me live there!”
A nice English girl of eighteen would not flaunt unconcerned about my
drawing-room in a shameless dressing-gown, and crinkle up her toes in
front of me; still less would she tell me outrageous stories; but she
will wear low-necked dresses and gaze at ladies in tights without the
ghost of an immodest thought. I was right when I told Carlotta England
was Alexandretta upside-down. What is immoral here is moral there, and
vice-versa. There is no such thing as absolute morality. I am very glad
this has happened. It shows me that Carlotta is not devoid of the better
kind of feminine instincts.