WE had cold bacon for lunch that day. There was not much of it. I took
it to be the bacon we had not eaten for breakfast. But on a clean dish
with parsley it looked rather neat. It did not suggest, however, a lunch
for four people, two of whom had been out all the morning in the open
air. There was some excuse for Dick.
“I never heard before,” said Dick, “of cold fried bacon as a _hors
d’œuvre_.”
“It is not a _hors d’œuvre_,” explained Robina. “It is all there is for
lunch.” She spoke in the quiet, passionless voice of one who has done
with all human emotion. She added that she should not be requiring any
herself, she having lunched already.
Veronica, conveying by her tone and bearing the impression of something
midway between a perfect lady and a Christian martyr, observed that she
also had lunched.
“Wish I had,” growled Dick.
I gave him a warning kick. I could see he was on the way to getting
himself into trouble. As I explained to him afterwards, a woman is most
dangerous when at her meekest. A man, when he feels his temper rising,
takes every opportunity of letting it escape. Trouble at such times he
welcomes. A broken boot-lace, or a shirt without a button, is to him
then as water in the desert. An only collar-stud that will disappear as
if by magic from between his thumb and finger and vanish apparently into
thin air is a piece of good fortune sent on these occasions only to those
whom the gods love. By the time he has waddled on his hands and knees
twice round the room, broken the boot-jack raking with it underneath the
wardrobe, been bumped and slapped and kicked by every piece of furniture
that the room contains, and ended up by stepping on that stud and
treading it flat, he has not a bitter or an angry thought left in him.
All that remains of him is sweet and peaceful. He fastens his collar
with a safety-pin, humming an old song the while.
Failing the gifts of Providence, the children—if in health—can generally
be depended upon to afford him an opening. Sooner or later one or
another of them will do something that no child, when he was a boy, would
have dared—or dreamed of daring—to even so much as think of doing. The
child, conveying by expression that the world, it is glad to say, is
slowly but steadily growing in sense, and pity it is that old-fashioned
folks can’t bustle up and keep abreast of it, points out that firstly it
has not done this thing, that for various reasons—a few only of which
need be dwelt upon—it is impossible it could have done this thing; that
secondly it has been expressly requested to do this thing, that wishful
always to give satisfaction, it has—at sacrifice of all its own
ideas—gone out of its way to do this thing; that thirdly it can’t help
doing this thing, strive against fate as it will.
He says he does not want to hear what the child has got to say on the
subject—nor on any other subject, neither then nor at any other time. He
says there’s going to be a new departure in this house, and that things
all round are going to be very different. He suddenly remembers every
rule and regulation he has made during the past ten years for the
guidance of everybody, and that everybody, himself included, has
forgotten. He tries to talk about them all at once, in haste lest he
should forget them again. By the time he has succeeded in getting
himself, if nobody else, to understand himself, the children are swarming
round his knees extracting from him promises that in his sober moments he
will be sorry that he made.
I knew a woman—a wise and good woman she was—who when she noticed that
her husband’s temper was causing him annoyance, took pains to help him to
get rid of it. To relieve his sufferings I have known her search the
house for a last month’s morning paper and, ironing it smooth, lay it
warm and neatly folded on his breakfast plate.
“One thing in this world to be thankful for, at all events, and that is
that we don’t live in Ditchley-in-the-Marsh,” he would growl ten minutes
later from the other side of it.
“Sounds a bit damp,” the good woman would reply.
“Damp!” he would grunt, “who minds a bit of damp! Good for you. Makes
us Englishmen what we are. Being murdered in one’s bed about once a week
is what I should object to.”
“Do they do much of that sort of thing down there?” the good woman would
enquire.
“Seems to be the chief industry of the place. Do you mean to say you
don’t remember that old maiden lady being murdered by her own gardener
and buried in the fowl-run? You women! you take no interest in public
affairs.”
“I do remember something about it, now you mention it, dear,” the good
woman would confess. “Always seems such an innocent type of man, a
gardener.”
“Seems to be a special breed of them at Ditchley-in-the-Marsh,” he
answers. “Here again last Monday,” he continues, reading with growing
interest. “Almost the same case—even to the pruning knife. Yes, hanged
if he doesn’t!—buries her in the fowl-run. This is most extraordinary.”
“It must be the imitative instinct asserting itself,” suggests the good
woman. “As you, dear, have so often pointed out, one crime makes
another.”
“I have always said so,” he agrees; “it has always been a theory of
mine.”
He folds the paper over. “Dull dogs, these political chaps!” he says.
“Here’s the Duke of Devonshire, speaking last night at Hackney, begins by
telling a funny story he says he has just heard about a parrot. Why,
it’s the same story somebody told a month ago; I remember reading it.
Yes—upon my soul—word for word, I’d swear to it. Shows you the sort of
men we’re governed by.”
“You can’t expect everyone, dear, to possess your repertoire,” the good
woman remarks.
“Needn’t say he’s just heard it that afternoon, anyhow,” responds the
good man.
He turns to another column. “What the devil! Am I going off my head?”
He pounces on the eldest boy. “When was the Oxford and Cambridge
Boat-race?” he fiercely demands.
“The Oxford and Cambridge Boat-race!” repeats the astonished youth.
“Why, it’s over. You took us all to see it, last month. The Saturday
before—”
The conversation for the next ten minutes he conducts himself, unaided.
At the end he is tired, maybe a trifle hoarse. But all his bad temper is
gone. His sorrow is there was not sufficient of it. He could have done
with more.
Woman knows nothing of simple mechanics. A woman thinks you can get rid
of steam by boxing it up and sitting on the safety-valve.
“Feeling as I do this morning, that I’d like to wring everybody’s neck
for them,” the average woman argues to herself; “my proper course—I see
it clearly—is to creep about the house, asking of everyone that has the
time to spare to trample on me.”
She coaxes you to tell her of her faults. When you have finished she
asks for more—reminds you of one or two you had missed out. She wonders
why it is that she is always wrong. There must be a reason for it; if
only she could discover it. She wonders how it is that people can put up
with her—thinks it so good of them.
At last, of course, the explosion happens. The awkward thing is that
neither she herself nor anyone else knows when it is coming. A husband
cornered me one evening in the club. It evidently did him good to talk.
He told me that, finding his wife that morning in one of her rare
listening moods, he had seized the opportunity to mention one or two
matters in connection with the house he would like to have altered; that
was, if she had no objection. She had—quite pleasantly—reminded him the
house was his, that he was master there. She added that any wish of his
of course was law to her.
He was a young and inexperienced husband; it seemed to him a hopeful
opening. He spoke of quite a lot of things—things about which he felt
that he was right and she was wrong. She went and fetched a quire of
paper, and borrowed his pencil and wrote them down.
Later on, going through his letters in the study, he found an unexpected
cheque; and ran upstairs and asked her if she would not like to come out
with him and get herself a new hat.
“I could have understood it,” he moaned, “if she had dropped on me while
I was—well, I suppose, you might say lecturing her. She had listened to
it like a lamb—hadn’t opened her mouth except to say ‘yes, dear,’ or ‘no,
dear.’ Then, when I only asked her if she’d like a new hat, she goes
suddenly raving mad. I never saw a woman go so mad.”
I doubt if there be anything in nature quite as unexpected as a woman’s
temper, unless it be tumbling into a hole. I told all this to Dick. I
have told it him before. One of these days he will know it.
“You are right to be angry with me,” Robina replied meekly; “there is no
excuse for me. The whole thing is the result of my own folly.”
Her pathetic humility should have appealed to him. He can be
sympathetic, when he isn’t hungry. Just then he happened to be hungry.
“I left you making a pie,” he said. “It looked to me a fair-sized pie.
There was a duck on the table, with a cauliflower and potatoes; Veronica
was up to her elbows in peas. It made me hungry merely passing through
the kitchen. I wouldn’t have anything to eat in the town for fear of
spoiling my appetite. Where is it all? You don’t mean to say that you
and Veronica have eaten the whole blessed lot!”
There is one thing—she admits it herself—that exhausts Veronica’s
patience: it is unjust suspicion.
“Do I look as if I’d eaten anything for hours and hours?” Veronica
demanded. “You can feel my waistband if you don’t believe me.”
“You said just now you had had your lunch,” Dick argued.
“I know I did,” Veronica admitted. “One minute you are told that it is
wicked to tell lies; the next—”
“Veronica!” Robina interrupted threateningly.
“It’s easy for you,” retorted Veronica. “You are not a growing child.
You don’t feel it.”
“The least you can do,” said Robina, “is to keep silence.”
“What’s the good,” said Veronica—not without reason. “You’ll tell them
when I’ve gone to bed, and can’t put in a word for myself. Everything is
always my fault. I wish sometimes that I was dead.”
“That I were dead,” I corrected her. “The verb ‘to wish,’ implying
uncertainty, should always be followed by the conditional mood.”
“You ought,” said Robina, “to be thankful to Providence that you’re not
dead.”
“People are sorry when you’re dead,” said Veronica.
“I suppose there’s some bread-and-cheese in the house,” suggested Dick.
“The baker, for some reason or another, has not called this morning,”
Robina answered sweetly. “Neither unfortunately has the grocer.
Everything there is to eat in the house you see upon the table.”
“Accidents will happen,” I said. “The philosopher—as our friend St.
Leonard would tell us—only smiles.”
“I could smile,” said Dick, “if it were his lunch.”
“Cultivate,” I said, “a sense of humour. From a humorous point of view
this lunch is rather good.”
“Did you have anything to eat at the St. Leonards’?” he asked.
“Just a glass or so of beer and a sandwich or two,” I admitted. “They
brought it out to us while we were talking in the yard. To tell the
truth, I was feeling rather peckish.”
Dick made no answer, but continued to chew bacon-rind. Nothing I could
say seemed to cheer him. I thought I would try religion.
“A dinner of herbs—the sentiment applies equally to lunch—and contentment
therewith is better,” I said, “than a stalled ox.”
“Don’t talk about oxen,” he interrupted fretfully. “I feel I could just
eat one—a plump one.”
There is a man I know. I confess he irritates me. His argument is that
you should always rise from a meal feeling hungry. As I once explained
to him, you cannot rise from a meal feeling hungry without sitting down
to a meal feeling hungry; which means, of course, that you are always
hungry. He agreed with me. He said that was the idea—always ready.
“Most people,” he said, “rise from a meal feeling no more interest in
their food. That was a mental attitude injurious to digestion. Keep it
always interested; that was the proper way to treat it.”
“By ‘it’ you mean . . . ?” I said.
“Of course,” he answered; “I’m talking about it.”
“Now I myself;” he explained—“I rise from breakfast feeling eager for my
lunch. I get up from my lunch looking forward to my dinner. I go to bed
just ready for my breakfast.”
Cheerful expectancy, he said, was a wonderful aid to digestion. “I call
myself;” he said, “a cheerful feeder.”
“You don’t seem to me,” I said, “to be anything else. You talk like a
tadpole. Haven’t you any other interest in life? What about home, and
patriotism, and Shakespeare—all those sort of things? Why not give it a
square meal, and silence it for an hour or two; leave yourself free to
think of something else.”
“How can you think of anything,” he argued, “when your stomach’s out of
order?”
“How can you think of anything,” I argued, “when it takes you all your
time to keep it in order? You are not a man; you are a nurse to your own
stomach.” We were growing excited, both of us, forgetting our natural
refinement. “You don’t get even your one afternoon a week. You are
healthy enough, I admit it. So are the convicts at Portland. They never
suffer from indigestion. I knew a doctor once who prescribed for a
patient two years’ penal servitude as the only thing likely to do him
permanent good. Your stomach won’t let you smoke. It won’t let you
drink—not when you are thirsty. It allows you a glass of Apenta water at
times when you don’t want it, assuming there could ever be a time when
you did want it. You are deprived of your natural victuals, and made to
live upon prepared food, as though you were some sort of a prize chicken.
You are sent to bed at eleven, and dressed in hygienic clothing that
makes no pretence to fit you. Talk of being hen-pecked! Why, the
mildest husband living would run away or drown himself, rather than
remain tied for the rest of his existence to your stomach.”
“It is easy to sneer,” he said.
“I am not sneering,” I said; “I am sympathising with you.”
He said he did not want any sympathy. He said if only I would give up
over-eating and drinking myself, it would surprise me how bright and
intelligent I should become.
I thought this man might be of use to us on the present occasion.
Accordingly I spoke of him and of his theory. Dick seemed impressed.
“Nice sort of man?” he asked.
“An earnest man,” I replied. “He practises what he preaches, and whether
because, or in spite of it, the fact remains that a chirpier soul I am
sure does not exist.”
“Married?” demanded Dick.
“A single man,” I answered. “In all things an idealist. He has told me
he will never marry until he can find his ideal woman.”
“What about Robina here!” suggested Dick. “Seem to have been made for
one another.”
Robina smiled. It was a wan, pathetic smile.
“Even he,” thought Robina, “would want his beans cooked to time, and to
feel that a reasonable supply of nuts was always in the house. We
incompetent women never ought to marry.”
We had finished the bacon. Dick said he would take a stroll into the
town. Robina suggested he might take Veronica with him, that perhaps a
bun and a glass of milk would do the child no harm.
Veronica for a wonder seemed to know where all her things were. Before
Dick had filled his pipe she was ready dressed and waiting for him.
Robina said she would give them a list of things they might bring back
with them. She also asked Dick to get together a plumber, a carpenter, a
bricklayer, a glazier, and a civil engineer, and to see to it that they
started off at once. She thought that among them they might be able to
do all that was temporarily necessary, but the great thing was that the
work should be commenced without delay.
“Why, what on earth’s the matter, old girl?” asked Dick. “Have you had
an accident?”
Then it was that Robina exploded. I had been wondering when it would
happen. To Dick’s astonishment it happened then.
Yes, she answered, there had been an accident. Did he suppose that seven
scrimpy scraps of bacon was her notion of a lunch between four hungry
persons? Did he, judging from himself, imagine that our family yielded
only lunatics? Was it kind—was it courteous to his parents, to the
mother he pretended to love, to the father whose grey hairs he was by his
general behaviour bringing down in sorrow to the grave—to assume without
further enquiry that their eldest daughter was an imbecile? (My hair,
by-the-bye, is not grey. There may be a suggestion of greyness here and
there, the natural result of deep thinking. To describe it in the lump
as grey is to show lack of observation. And at forty-eight—or a trifle
over—one is not going down into the grave, not straight down. Robina
when excited uses exaggerated language. I did not, however, interrupt
her; she meant well. Added to which, interrupting Robina, when—to use
her own expression—she is tired of being a worm, is like trying to stop a
cyclone with an umbrella.) Had his attention been less concentrated on
the guzzling of cold bacon (he had only had four mouthfuls, poor
fellow)—had he noticed the sweet patient child starving before his very
eyes (this referred to Veronica)—his poor elder sister, worn out with
work and worry, pining for nourishment herself, it might have occurred to
even his intelligence that there had been an accident. The selfishness,
the egotism of men it was that staggered, overwhelmed Robina, when she
came to think of it.
Robina paused. Not for want of material, I judged, so much as want of
breath. Veronica performed a useful service by seizing the moment to
express a hope that it was not early-closing day. Robina felt a
conviction that it was: it would be just like Dick to stand there
dawdling in a corner till it was too late to do anything.
“I have been trying to get out of this corner for the last five minutes,”
explained Dick, with that angelic smile of his that I confess is
irritating. “If you have done talking, and will give me an opening, I
will go.”
Robina told him that she had done talking. She gave him her reasons for
having done talking. If talking to him would be of any use she would
often have felt it her duty to talk to him, not only with regard to his
stupidity and selfishness and general aggravatingness, but with reference
to his character as a whole. Her excuse for not talking to him was the
crushing conviction of the hopelessness of ever effecting any improvement
in him. Were it otherwise—
“Seriously speaking,” said Dick, now escaped from his corner, “something,
I take it, has gone wrong with the stove, and you want a sort of general
smith.”
He opened the kitchen door and looked in.
“Great Scott!” he said. “What was it—an earthquake?”
I looked in over his shoulder.
“But it could not have been an earthquake,” I said. “We should have felt
it.”
“It is not an earthquake,” explained Robina. “It is your youngest
daughter’s notion of making herself useful.”
Robina spoke severely. I felt for the moment as if I had done it all
myself. I had an uncle who used to talk like that. “Your aunt,” he
would say, regarding me with a reproachful eye, “your aunt can be, when
she likes, the most trying woman to live with I have ever known.” It
would depress me for days. I would wonder whether I ought to speak to
her about it, or whether I should be doing only harm.
“But how did she do it?” I demanded. “It is impossible that a mere
child—where is the child?”
The parlour contained but Robina. I hurried to the door; Dick was
already half across the field. Veronica I could not see.
“We are making haste,” Dick shouted back, “in case it is early-closing
day.”
“I want Veronica!” I shouted.
“What?” shouted Dick.
“Veronica!” I shouted with my hands to my mouth.
“Yes!” shouted Dick. “She’s on ahead.”
It was useless screaming any more. He was now climbing the stile.
“They always take each other’s part, those two,” sighed Robina.
“Yes, and you are just as bad,” I told her; “if he doesn’t, you do. And
then if it’s you they take your part. And you take his part. And he
takes both your parts. And between you all I am just getting tired of
bringing any of you up.” (Which is the truth.) “How did this thing
happen?”
“I had got everything finished,” answered Robina. “The duck was in the
oven with the pie; the peas and potatoes were boiling nicely. I was
feeling hot, and I thought I could trust Veronica to watch the things for
awhile. She promised not to play King Alfred.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“You know,” said Robina—“King Alfred and the cakes. I left her one
afternoon last year when we were on the houseboat to watch some buns.
When I came back she was sitting in front of the fire, wrapped up in the
table-cloth, with Dick’s banjo on her knees and a cardboard crown upon
her head. The buns were all burnt to a cinder. As I told her, if I had
known what she wanted to be up to I could have given her some extra bits
of dough to make believe with. But oh, no! if you please, that would not
have suited her at all. It was their being real buns, and my being real
mad, that was the best part of the game. She is an uncanny child.”
“What was the game this time?” I asked.
“I don’t think it was intended for a game—not at first,” answered Robina.
“I went into the wood to pick some flowers for the table. I was on my
way back, still at some distance from the house, when I heard quite a
loud report. I took it for a gun, and wondered what anyone would be
shooting in July. It must be rabbits, I thought. Rabbits never seem to
have any time at all to themselves, poor things. And in consequence I
did not hurry myself. It must have been about twenty minutes later when
I came in sight of the house. Veronica was in the garden deep in
confabulation with an awful-looking boy, dressed in nothing but rags.
His face and hands were almost black. You never saw such an object.
They both seemed very excited. Veronica came to meet me; and with a face
as serious as mine is now, stood there and told me the most barefaced
pack of lies you ever heard. She said that a few minutes after I had
gone, robbers had come out of the wood—she talked about them as though
there had been hundreds—and had with the most awful threats demanded to
be admitted into the house. Why they had not lifted the latch and walked
in, she did not explain. It appeared this cottage was their secret
rendezvous, where all their treasure lies hidden. Veronica would not let
them in, but shouted for help: and immediately this awful-looking boy, to
whom she introduced me as ‘Sir Robert’ something or another, had appeared
upon the scene; and then there had followed—well, I have not the patience
to tell you the whole of the rigmarole they had concocted. The upshot of
it was that the robbers, defeated in their attempt to get into the house,
had fired a secret mine, which had exploded in the kitchen. If I did not
believe them I could go into the kitchen and see for myself. Say what I
would, that is the story they both stuck to. It was not till I had
talked to Veronica for a quarter of an hour, and had told her that you
would most certainly communicate with the police, and that she would have
to convince a judge and jury of the truth of her story, that I got any
sense at all out of her.”
“What was the sense you did get out of her?” I asked.
“Well, I am not sure even now that it is the truth,” said Robina—“the
child does not seem to possess a proper conscience. What she will grow
up like, if something does not happen to change her, it is awful to
think.”
“I don’t want to appear a hustler,” I said, “and maybe I am mistaken in
the actual time, but it feels to me like hours since I asked you how the
catastrophe really occurred.”
“I am telling you,” explained Robina, hurt. “She was in the kitchen
yesterday when I mentioned to Harry’s mother, who had looked in to help
me wash up, that the kitchen chimney smoked: and then she said—”
“Who said?” I asked.
“Why, she did,” answered Robina, “Harry’s mother. She said that very
often a pennyworth of gunpowder—”
“Now at last we have begun,” I said. “From this point I may be able to
help you, and we will get on. At the word ‘gunpowder’ Veronica pricked
up her ears. The thing by its very nature would appeal to Veronica’s
sympathies. She went to bed dreaming of gunpowder. Left in solitude
before the kitchen fire, other maidens might have seen pictured in the
glowing coals, princes, carriages, and balls. Veronica saw visions of
gunpowder. Who knows?—perhaps even she one day will have gunpowder of
her own! She looks up from her reverie: a fairy godmamma in the disguise
of a small boy—it was a small boy, was it not?”
“Rather a nice little boy, he gave me the idea of having been,
originally,” answered Robina; “the child, I should say, of well-to-do
parents. He was dressed in a little Lord Fauntleroy suit—or rather, he
had been.”
“Did Veronica know how he was—anything about him?” I asked.
“Nothing that I could get out of her,” replied Robina; “you know her
way—how she chums on with anybody and everybody. As I told her, if she
had been attending to her duties instead of staring out of the window,
she would not have seen him. He happened to be crossing the field just
at the time.”
“A boy born to ill-luck, evidently,” I observed. “To Veronica of course
he seemed like the answer to a prayer. A boy would surely know where
gunpowder could be culled.”
“They must have got a pound of it from somewhere,” said Robina, “judging
from the result.”
“Any notion where they got it from?” I asked.
“No,” explained Robina. “All Veronica can say is that he told her he
knew where he could get some, and was gone about ten minutes. Of course
they must have stolen it—even that did not seem to trouble her.”
“It came to her as a gift from the gods, Robina,” I explained. “I
remember how I myself used to feel about these things, at ten. To have
enquired further would have seemed to her impious. How was it they were
not both killed?”
“Providence,” was Robina’s suggestion: it seemed to be the only one
possible. “They lifted off one of the saucepans and just dropped the
thing in—fortunately wrapped up in a brown paper parcel, which gave them
both time to get out of the house. At least Veronica got clear off. For
a change it was not she who fell over the mat, it was the boy.”
I looked again into the kitchen; then I returned and put my hands on
Robina’s shoulders. “It is a most amusing incident—as it has turned
out,” I said.
“It might have turned out rather seriously,” thought Robina.
“It might,” I agreed: “she might be lying upstairs.”
“She is a wicked, heartless child,” said Robina; “she ought to be
punished.”
I lent Robina my handkerchief; she never has one of her own.
“She is going to be punished,” I said; “I will think of something.”
“And so ought I,” said Robina; “it was my fault, leaving her, knowing
what she’s like. I might have murdered her. She doesn’t care. She’s
stuffing herself with cakes at this very moment.”
“They will probably give her indigestion,” I said. “I hope they do.”
“Why didn’t you have better children?” sobbed Robina; “we are none of us
any good to you.”
“You are not the children I wanted, I confess,” I answered.
“That’s a nice kind thing to say!” retorted Robina indignantly.
“I wanted such charming children,” I explained—“my idea of charming
children: the children I had imagined for myself. Even as babies you
disappointed me.”
Robina looked astonished.
“You, Robina, were the most disappointing,” I complained. “Dick was a
boy. One does not calculate upon boy angels; and by the time Veronica
arrived I had got more used to things. But I was so excited when you
came. The Little Mother and I would steal at night into the nursery.
‘Isn’t it wonderful,’ the Little Mother would whisper, ‘to think it all
lies hidden there: the little tiresome child, the sweetheart they will
one day take away from us, the wife, the mother?’ ‘I am glad it is a
girl,’ I would whisper; ‘I shall be able to watch her grow into
womanhood. Most of the girls one comes across in books strike one as not
perhaps quite true to life. It will give me such an advantage having a
girl of my own. I shall keep a note-book, with a lock and key, devoted
to her.’”
“Did you?” asked Robina.
“I put it away,” I answered; “there were but a few pages written on. It
came to me quite early in your life that you were not going to be the
model heroine. I was looking for the picture baby, the clean, thoughtful
baby, with its magical, mystical smile. I wrote poetry about you,
Robina, but you would slobber and howl. Your little nose was always
having to be wiped, and somehow the poetry did not seem to fit you. You
were at your best when you were asleep, but you would not even sleep when
it was expected of you. I think, Robina, that the fellows who draw the
pictures for the comic journals of the man in his night-shirt with the
squalling baby in his arms must all be single men. The married man sees
only sadness in the design. It is not the mere discomfort. If the
little creature were ill or in pain we should not think of that. It is
the reflection that we, who meant so well, have brought into the world
just an ordinary fretful human creature with a nasty temper of its own:
that is the tragedy, Robina. And then you grew into a little girl. I
wanted the soulful little girl with the fathomless eyes, who would steal
to me at twilight and question me concerning life’s conundrums.
“But I used to ask you questions,” grumbled Robina, “and you would tell
me not to be silly.”
“Don’t you understand, Robina?” I answered. “I am not blaming you, I am
blaming myself. We are like children who plant seeds in a garden, and
then are angry with the flowers because they are not what we expected.
You were a dear little girl; I see that now, looking back. But not the
little girl I had in my mind. So I missed you, thinking of the little
girl you were not. We do that all our lives, Robina. We are always
looking for the flowers that do not grow, passing by, trampling
underfoot, the blossoms round about us. It was the same with Dick. I
wanted a naughty boy. Well, Dick was naughty, no one can say that he was
not. But it was not my naughtiness. I was prepared for his robbing
orchards. I rather hoped he would rob orchards. All the high-spirited
boys in books rob orchards, and become great men. But there were not any
orchards handy. We happened to be living in Chelsea at the time he ought
to have been robbing orchards: that, of course, was my fault. I did not
think of that. He stole a bicycle that a lady had left outside the
tea-room in Battersea Park, he and another boy, the son of a common
barber, who shaved people for three-halfpence. I am a Republican in
theory, but it grieved me that a son of mine could be drawn to such
companionship. They contrived to keep it for a week—till the police
found it one night, artfully hidden behind bushes. Logically, I do not
see why stealing apples should be noble and stealing bicycles should be
mean, but it struck me that way at the time. It was not the particular
steal I had been hoping for.
“I wanted him wild; the hero of the book was ever in his college days a
wild young man. Well, he was wild. It cost me three hundred pounds to
keep that breach of promise case out of Court; I had never imagined a
breach of promise case. Then he got drunk, and bonneted a bishop in
mistake for a ‘bull-dog.’ I didn’t mind the bishop. That by itself
would have been wholesome fun. But to think that a son of mine should
have been drunk!”
“He has never been drunk since,” pleaded Robina. “He had only three
glasses of champagne and a liqueur: it was the liqueur—he was not used to
it. He got into the wrong set. You cannot in college belong to the wild
set without getting drunk occasionally.”
“Perhaps not,” I admitted. “In the book the wild young man drinks
without ever getting drunk. Maybe there is a difference between life and
the book. In the book you enjoy your fun, but contrive somehow to escape
the licking: in life the licking is the only thing sure. It was the wild
young man of fiction I was looking for, who, a fortnight before the
exam., ties a wet towel round his head, drinks strong tea, and passes
easily with honours. He tried the wet towel, he tells me. It never
would keep in its place. Added to which it gave him neuralgia; while the
strong tea gave him indigestion. I used to picture myself the proud,
indulgent father lecturing him for his wildness—turning away at some
point in the middle of my tirade to hide a smile. There was never any
smile to hide. I feel that he has behaved disgracefully, wasting his
time and my money.”
“He is going to turn over a new leaf;” said Robina: “I am sure he will
make an excellent farmer.”
“I did not want a farmer,” I explained; “I wanted a Prime Minister.
Children, Robina, are very disappointing. Veronica is all wrong. I like
a mischievous child. I like reading stories of mischievous children:
they amuse me. But not the child who puts a pound of gunpowder into a
red-hot fire, and escapes with her life by a miracle.”
“And yet, I daresay,” suggested Robina, “that if one put it into a book—I
mean that if you put it into a book, it would read amusingly.”
“Likely enough,” I agreed. “Other people’s troubles can always be
amusing. As it is, I shall be in a state of anxiety for the next six
months, wondering, every moment that she is out of my sight, what new
devilment she is up to. The Little Mother will be worried out of her
life, unless we can keep it from her.”
“Children will be children,” murmured Robina, meaning to be comforting.
“That is what I am complaining of, Robina. We are always hoping that
ours won’t be. She is full of faults, Veronica, and they are not always
nice faults. She is lazy—lazy is not the word for it.”
“She is lazy,” Robina was compelled to admit.
“There are other faults she might have had and welcome,” I pointed out;
“faults I could have taken an interest in and liked her all the better
for. You children are so obstinate. You will choose your own faults.
Veronica is not truthful always. I wanted a family of little George
Washingtons, who could not tell a lie. Veronica can. To get herself out
of trouble—and provided there is any hope of anybody believing her—she
does.”
“We all of us used to when we were young,” Robina maintained; “Dick used
to, I used to. It is a common fault with children.”
“I know it is,” I answered. “I did not want a child with common faults.
I wanted something all my own. I wanted you, Robina, to be my ideal
daughter. I had a girl in my mind that I am sure would have been
charming. You are not a bit like her. I don’t say she was perfect, she
had her failings, but they were such delightful failings—much better than
yours, Robina. She had a temper—a woman without a temper is insipid; but
it was that kind of temper that made you love her all the more. Yours
doesn’t, Robina. I wish you had not been in such a hurry, and had left
me to arrange your temper for you. We should all of us have preferred
mine. It had all the attractions of temper without the drawbacks of the
ordinary temper.”
“Couldn’t use it up, I suppose, for yourself, Pa?” suggested Robina.
“It was a lady’s temper,” I explained. “Besides,” as I asked her, “what
is wrong with the one I have?”
“Nothing,” answered Robina. Yet her tone conveyed doubt. “It seems to
me sometimes that an older temper would suit you better, that was all.”
“You have hinted as much before, Robina,” I remarked, “not only with
reference to my temper, but with reference to things generally. One
would think that you were dissatisfied with me because I am too young.”
“Not in years perhaps,” replied Robina, “but—well, you know what I mean.
One wants one’s father to be always great and dignified.”
“We cannot change our ego,” I explained to her. “Some daughters would
appreciate a father youthful enough in temperament to sympathise with and
to indulge them. The solemn old fogey you have in your mind would have
brought you up very differently. Let me tell you that, my girl. You
would not have liked him, if you had had him.”
“Perhaps not,” Robina agreed. “You are awfully good in some ways.”
“What we have got to do in this world, Robina,” I said, “is to take
people as they are, and make the best of them. We cannot expect
everybody to be just as we would have them, and maybe we should not like
them any better if they were. Don’t bother yourself about how much nicer
they might be; think how nice they are.”
Robina said she would try. I have hopes of making Robina a sensible
woman.