YE DENE
There is something very alluring in the idea of kicking down
conventions, yet if this be carried too far, it is possible
that all the feminine virtues will follow suit. A woman bereft
of all the feminine virtues is as pitiable a sight as a head
which has been shorn of its locks.
A couple of years went by, and again the circumstances of the Alfred
Whittakers were improved. For the old lady whose husband had courted her
for seven long years was taken ill and quite suddenly died. Her death
affected and upset Regina very much. It happened that she had not been
over to her old home for several days, though Regina, although she was
such a good wife, had continued to be also an extremely good daughter,
and usually contrived to visit the old people at least twice a week.
Just at this time, however, some trifling indisposition of little
Julia's had kept her from paying her usual visit to her parents.
"Here is a letter from my father," she said one morning at breakfast to
Alfred. "He seems to think mother is not very well."
"Oh, poor dear, poor dear. You had better go across and see her."
"Yes. I should have gone yesterday but for the child not being quite
well," Regina responded.
"Anyway, she's all right to-day--well enough for you to leave her with
nurse. You had better go across and spend the day, and I'll come round
that way and fetch you home in the evening."
To this arrangement Regina agreed, and she went over to her father's
house as soon as she had concluded arrangements for the children's
meals. She did not, however, return to Fairview--as their house was
called--that evening with Alfred. No, she remained under the paternal
roof for a few days, and then, when she at length returned to her home
and her children, she was accompanied by the old man, who was as a ship
without a rudder when he found himself bereft of the wife for whom he
had served, even as Jacob served seven years for Rachel.
It was the beginning of the end for old Mr. Brown. He declined
absolutely to go back to the house where he had lived so long and so
happily, and took up his permanent abode at Fairview. Very soon the
better part of the furniture, and certain priceless possessions with
which there was no thought of parting, were transferred from the one
house to the other, the old domicile was done up and eventually let, and
then, as so often happens with old people who have been uprooted from
their regular life, Mr. Brown sank into extreme illness.
Poor man, he had never been ill in his life, and he took to it badly.
One paralytic stroke succeeded another, and, at last, after a few months
of much repining and wearing suffering, he passed quietly away, his
last words being that he was going to rejoin his dear wife on the other
side.
It was then that the Alfred Whittakers left Fairview.
"I shall never fancy the house again since poor father's death," said
Regina on the evening of the funeral.
"No, I can quite believe that," returned Alfred Whittaker,
sympathetically. "Well," he added after a pause, "you will be able to
afford a larger house if you want it."
"I should like a larger garden," said Regina. "I think children brought
up without a garden are generally unhappy little creatures, and ours are
getting big enough to enjoy it."
By that time Julia was nine years old, and Maud, of course, two years
older still. Their father and mother therefore gave notice to their
landlord, and cast about in their minds for some new and desirable
neighborhood which would contain a new and desirable residence.
They decided eventually on purchasing a house in the most artistic
suburb of London, that which is known among Londoners as Northampton
Park. They were lucky enough to find a house to be sold at a reasonable
price in the main road of this quaint little village. It stood well back
from the traffic, having a long garden between the gate and the
entrance. The gate was rustic and wooden, and was decorated with an art
copper plate of irregular shape, on which the name of the house was
embossed in quaint letters extremely difficult to read--"Ye Dene."
"Why," asked Julia, when she and her sister were taken to see the new
domicile, "why do you call our new house Ye Den? Is it a den?"
"Ye _Dene_, dearest--Ye _Dene_. It is old English spelling," said
Regina. "I think it is rather pretty, don't you Alfie?"
"H'm, the house is nice enough, and you youngsters will enjoy the
garden, which is far better than you have ever had before. I believe it
costs a lot of money to alter the name of a house; in fact, I don't know
whether one is allowed to or not. I'll find out."
But, somehow, they took possession of their new home without finding out
whether it was possible to alter the name thereof.
"What about headed paper, Queenie?" said Alfred, when they were at
breakfast on the second morning after their entrance into the new
domicile.
"Headed paper? Oh yes, we must have that, dear."
"Well, will you stick to calling the house Ye Dene?"
"Well," said Regina, "I went for a little turn yesterday, and I took
note of all the houses and what their names were. I passed Charles Lodge
and George Cottage, and The Poplars, The Elms, The Quarry, The Nook,
Ingleside, High Elms, The Briars, and a dozen different variations of
the same, such as Briar Cottage, High Elms Cottage, and so on; but I
didn't see any other house that seemed to be connected with this one. I
rather like the name, and that queer, irregular-shaped copper plate will
be a sort of landmark when our friends come from town to see us."
"How would it be," suggested Alfred, "to have the shape of the plate
reproduced for our address--a kind of scroll the shape of that with 'Ye
Dene' in the middle?"
"Yes, that's a good idea," said Regina. "But you will have to put
Northampton Park within the shield, or else it will look very odd."
"Well, look here," said he, "I'll take the pattern of it and see what
Cuthberts can suggest."
The result of this conversation was that Cuthberts, the celebrated
notepaper dealers, made a very pretty suggestion embodying the shield,
the name of Ye Dene and the further postal address, and the Whittakers
finally decided that they would not trouble to alter the name of their
new residence.
It was at the Park--for I may as well follow the customs of its
inhabitants and speak of it as they do--that Mrs. Whittaker began to
seriously think of the education of her children.
They made friends slowly. In due course the vicar called upon them, and
was followed a little later by his wife. Then the wife of a doctor just
across the road made it her business to welcome the newcomers, and the
neighbors on either side of Ye Dene called; but, all the same, they made
friends slowly.
Mrs. Whittaker made many and searching inquiries into the possibilities
of education, and she finally concluded that she would send them to the
High School, at which all the youth of the Park received their learning.
So, morning after morning, the two quaint little figures set out from
Ye Dene at a little after nine o'clock, returning punctually at
half-past twelve and sallying forth again about a quarter-past two for
the afternoon school, which lasted until four.
What queer, quaint little maids they were! Regina's own curious taste in
dress she did not reproduce in her children. She held lofty theories
that little girls should not be made vain by curled hair and flounced
frocks. Their hair was therefore cut close to their heads, as if they
had been two boys, and they wore curious little Quaker-brown jackets and
hoods, which gave them an air of having come out of the ark.
"I regard it as terrible that children, who should be wholly
irresponsible and whose troubles will come soon enough, should ever have
to think of the care of their clothes," she said one day to the doctor's
wife across the road.
"For my part," the lady replied, "I don't think that you can too early
inculcate a proper care of the person into little girls. My own child,
who was ten last week, is as particular about the fit and style of her
clothes as I am about mine. If you bring girls up, dear lady, to run
quite wild, do you not think that you do away with their domesticity,
that most precious quality of all women?"
"I am only too anxious to do away with their domesticity," said Mrs.
Whittaker, quietly but very firmly. "You see, Mrs. M'Quade, I am no
ordinary woman myself. I have had the education of a man. I have a man's
brain. I believe that in the near future the position of women will be
entirely altered."
"Then you are going to bring your girls up to professions?"
"I am going to bring my girls up to follow the natural bent of their
minds. If they show any aptitude for and desire to follow one of the
learned professions, neither their father nor I will put any
stumbling-block in their way."
"I see. Have you pushed them on already?"
"No, that is altogether against my principles. I never do anything
against my principles. I think that all children should reach the age of
seven years before they imbibe any learning, except such as comes
through the eye and in a perfectly natural and simple manner. After the
age of seven, until ten years old, I believe that lessons should be of
the simplest and most harmless description. After that, the brain is
strong and is better able to bear forcing."
"I see. Well, your plan may be a good one; my plan may be a good one. I
sent my little girl to a kindergarten when she was four years old,
because she was lonely; she was not happy, she was always bored, always
wanting somebody to play with her, and she yearned for playmates and
little occupations. When she went to the kindergarten, she took to it
like a duck to water. She loved her school then, and now that she is in
a more advanced class, she is well on with her studies."
"I see. And you dress her very elaborately?"
"Oh no, not elaborately," said Mrs. M'Quade. "I always try to dress her
daintily and smartly, but never elaborately."
"It is not in accordance with my principles," said Regina, loftily. "I
have a set fashion for my children, and I intend to keep them to it
until they are old enough to choose for themselves. Then they will take
to the task of dressing themselves with minds untrammeled by the
opinions of other people, even of their own mother. I have always tried
so to bring up my girls as to make them thoroughly original in every
possible way. They are not quite like other children. They are children
as much out of the ordinary as their mother was before them; convention
has no part, and shall have no part in their lives whatsoever. Indeed, I
may say that conventions is one of the greatest bugbears of my
existence."
"But we must have conventions," said the doctor's wife.
"Must we?" said Mrs. Whittaker, with a superior smile. "Ah, I see that
you and I, dear Mrs. M'Quade, must agree to differ. Let me give you some
tea. I assure you it is quite conventional tea."
"Thank you very much," said Mrs. M'Quade, smiling.
In retailing the conversation to her husband that evening, Mrs. M'Quade
remarked that it was quite conventional tea. "I should think about
one-and-twopence a pound," was her comment.
"And how did you like the lady?" her husband asked.
"She is an extraordinary woman, a very extraordinary woman. I don't know
that I like her; on the other hand, I don't know whether there is
anything about her to dislike."
"What age--what size--what sort of a woman is she?" he asked.
"In age something over forty; in person plump and rather comely. A
large, solid woman, with no idea of making the best of herself. She had
a tea-gown on to-day that would have made the very angels weep."
"Would any tea-gown make the angels weep?"
"I think that one would. It was a dingy brown and a salmon-pink.
Wherever it was brown you wished it was salmon-pink, and wherever it was
salmon-pink you wished it was brown, except when you were wishing that
it was black altogether, without any relief at all."
"Dear me! What was it like?"
"Well, it was just the one garment that she should never have worn. She
wears old-fashioned stays, and though people may think they don't matter
in a tea-gown, I think stays have more effect on the general cut of a
tea-gown than they have on any other garment. I should like to have
dressed that lady in a plain coat and skirt from my own tailor, with a
loose white front, and a good black hat. But I don't think anybody would
know her."
"Well, it's no business of yours, little woman," said the doctor,
cheerily. "And, after all, it's a new family--children--infantile
diseases--servants--people apparently thoroughly well-to-do. Bought the
house--done it up inside and out. It isn't for you and I to quarrel with
our bread and butter."