CHAPTER I

Produced by Carrie Fellman and Charles Aldarondo

THIS FREEDOM

By A. S. M. Hutchinson

“With a great sum obtained I this freedom.”--ACTS xxii, 28.

CONTENTS

PART ONE--HOUSE OF MEN

PART TWO--HOUSE OF WOMEN

PART THREE--HOUSE OF CHILDREN

PART FOUR--HOUSE OF CARDS

PART ONE--HOUSE OF MEN

CHAPTER I

Rosalie’s earliest apprehension of the world was of a mysterious and

extraordinary world that revolved entirely about her father and that

entirely and completely belonged to her father. Under her father, all

males had proprietory rights in the world and dominion over it; no

females owned any part of the world or could do anything with it. All

the males in this world--her father, and Robert and Harold her brothers,

and all the other boys and men one sometimes saw--did mysterious and

extraordinary things; and all the females in this world--her mother, and

Anna and Flora and Hilda her sisters, and Ellen the cook and Gertrude

the maid--did ordinary and unexciting and generally rather tiresome

things. All the males were like story books to Rosalie: you never knew

what they were going to do next; and all the females were like lesson

books: they just went on and on and on.

Rosalie always stared at men when she saw them. Extraordinary and

wonderful creatures who could do what they liked and were always doing

mysterious and wonderful things, especially and above all her father.

Being with her father was like being with a magician or like watching

a conjuror on the stage. You never knew what he was going to do next.

Whatever he suddenly did was never surprising in the sense of being

startling, for (this cannot be emphasised too much) nothing her father

did was ever surprising to Rosalie; but it was surprising in the sense

of being absorbingly wonderful and enthralling. Even better than reading

when she first began to read, and far better than anything in the world

before the mysteries in books were discoverable, Rosalie liked to sit

and stare at her father and think how wonderful he was and wonder what

extraordinary thing he would do next. Everything belonged to him. The

whole of life was ordered with a view to what he would think about it.

The whole of life was continually thrown off its balance and whirled

into the most entrancing convulsions by sudden activities of this most

wonderful man.

Entrancing convulsions! Wonderful, wonderful father with a bull after

him! Why, that was her very earliest recollection of him! That showed

you how wonderful he was! Father, seen for the first time (as it were)

flying before a bull! Bounding wildly across a field towards her with

a bull after him! Wonderful father! Did her mother ever rush along in

front of a bull? Never. Was it possible to imagine any of the women she

knew rushing before a bull? It was not possible. To see a woman rushing

before a bull would have alarmed Rosalie for she would have felt it was

unnatural; but for her father to be bounding wildly along in front of a

bull seemed to her perfectly natural and ordinary and she was not in the

least alarmed; only, as always, enthralled.

Her father, while Rosalie watched him, was not in great danger. He came

ballooning along towards Rosalie, not running as ordinarily fit and

efficient men run, but progressing by a series of enormous leaps and

bounds, arms and legs spread-eagling, and at each leap and bound always

seeming to Rosalie to spring as high in the air as he sprung forward

over the ground. It would not have surprised Rosalie, who was then about

four, to see one of these stupendous leaps continue in a whirling flight

through mid-air and her father come hurtling over the gate and drop with

an enormous plunk at her feet like a huge dead bird, as a partridge once

had come plunk over the hedge and out of the sky when she was in a lane

adjacent to a shooting party. It would not have surprised her in the

least. Nothing her father did ever surprised Rosalie. The world was his

and the fulness thereof, and he did what he liked with it.

Arrived, however, from the bull, not as a ballooning bird out of

the sky, but as a headlong avalanche over the gate, Rosalie’s father

tottered to a felled tree trunk, and sat there heaving, and groaned

aloud, “Infernal parish; hateful parish; forsaken parish!”

Rosalie, wonderingly regarding him, said, “Mother says dinner is waiting

for you, father.”

Her mother and her sisters and the servants and the entire female

establishment of the universe seemed to Rosalie always to be waiting for

something from her father, or for her father himself, or waiting for or

upon some male other than her father. That was another of the leading

principles that Rosalie first came to know in her world. Not only were

the males, paramountly her father, able to do what they liked and always

doing wonderful and mysterious things, but everything that the females

did either had some relation to a male or was directly for, about, or on

behalf of a male.

Getting Robert off to school in the morning, for instance. That was

another early picture.

There would be Robert, eating; and there was the entire female

population of the rectory feverishly attending upon Robert while he ate.

Six females, intensely and as if their lives depended upon it, occupied

with one male. Three girls--Anna about sixteen, Flora fourteen, Hilda

twelve--and three grown women, all exhaustingly occupied in pushing out

of the house one heavy and obstinate male aged about ten! Rosalie used

to stand and watch entranced. How wonderful he was! Where did he go to

when at last he was pushed off? What happened to him? What did he do?

There he is, eating; there they are, ministering. Entrancing and

mysterious spectacle!

Robert, very solid and heavy and very heated and agitated, would be

seated at the table shoving porridge into himself against the clock.

One of his legs, unnaturally flexed backward and outward, is in the

possession of Rosalie’s mother who is on her knees mending a hole in his

stocking. The other leg, similarly contorted, is on the lap of Ellen

the cook, who with very violent tugs, as if she were lashing a box, is

lacing a boot on to it. Behind Robert is Anna, who is pressing his head

down with one hand and washing the back of his neck with the other. In

front of him across the table is Hilda, staring before her with bemused

eyes and moving lips and rapidly counting on drumming fingers. Hilda is

doing his sums for him. Beside him on his right side, apparently engaged

in throttling him, is Gertrude the maid. Gertrude the maid is trying

to tear off him a grimed collar and put on him a clean collar. Facing

Gertrude on his other side is Flora. Flora is bawling his history in his

ear.

Everybody is working for Robert; everybody is working at top speed for

him, and everybody is loudly soliciting his attention.

“Oh, do give over wriggling, master Robert!” (The boot-fastener.)

“‘Simon de Montford, Hubert de Burgh, and Peter de Roche.’ Well, say it

then, you dreadful little idiot!” (The history crammer.)

“Oh, master Robert, do please keep up!” (The collar fastener.)

“Keep down, will you!” (The neck washer.)

“Four sixes are twenty-four and six you carried thirty!” (The

arithmetician.)

“Robert, you must turn your foot further round!” (The stocking-darner.)

“‘The Barons were now incensed. The Barons were now incensed. The Barons

were now incensed.’ Say it, you ghastly little stupid!”

“Do they make you do these by fractions or by decimals?... Well, what do

you know, then?”

Entrancing spectacle!

Now the discovery is by everybody simultaneously made and simultaneously

announced that Robert is already later in starting than he has ever been

(he always was) and immediately Rosalie would become witness of the last

and most violent skirmish in this devoted attendance. Everybody rushes

around hunting for things and pushing them on to Robert and pushing

Robert, festooned with them, towards the door. Where was his cap? Where

was his satchel? Where was his lunch? Where were his books? Who had seen

his atlas? Who had seen his pencil box? Who had seen his gymnasium belt?

Was his bicycle ready? Was his coat on his bicycle? Was that button on

his coat?

With these alarums at their height and the excursions attendant on

them at their busiest, another splendid male would enter the room

and immediately there was, as Rosalie always saw, a transference of

attendance to him and a violent altercation between him and the first

splendid male. This new splendid male is Rosalie’s other brother,

Harold. Harold was eighteen and him also the entire female population

of the rectory combined to push out of the rectory every morning. Harold

was due to be pushed off half an hour later than Robert, and as he was

a greater and more splendid male than Robert (though infinitely lesser

than her father) so the place to which he was pushed off was far more

mysterious and enthralling than the place to which Robert was pushed

off. A school Rosalie could dimly understand. But a bank! Why Harold

should go to sit on a bank all day, and why he should ride on a bicycle

to Ashborough to find a bank when there were banks all around the

rectory, and even in the garden itself, Rosalie never could imagine.

Mysterious Harold! Anna had told her that men kept money in banks;

but Rosalie had never found money in a bank though she had looked; yet

banks--of all extraordinary places--were where men chose to put their

money! Mysterious men! And Harold could find these banks and find this

money though he never took a trowel or a spade and was always shiningly

clean with a very high collar and very long cuffs. Wonderful, wonderful

Harold!

Robert was due to be pushed off half an hour before Harold was due to be

pushed off, but he never was; the two splendid creatures always clashed

and there was always between them, because they clashed, a violent scene

which Rosalie would not have missed for worlds. A meeting of two males,

so utterly unlike a meeting of two females, was invariably of the most

entrancingly noisy or violent description. When ladies came to the

rectory to see her mother they sat in the drawing-room and sipped tea

and spoke in thin voices; but when men came to see her father and went

into the study, there was very loud talking and often a row. Yes, and

once in the village street, Rosalie had seen two men stand up and thump

one another with their fists and fall down and get up and thump again.

When two women, her sisters or others, quarrelled, they only shrilled,

and went on and on shrilling. It was impossible to imagine the collision

of two women producing anything so exciting and splendid as invariably

was produced by the collision of two males.

As now----

In comes Harold in great heat and hurry (as men always were) with his

splendid button boots in one hand and an immense pair of shining cuffs

in the other hand.

“Haven’t you gone yet, you lazy young brute?”

“No, I haven’t, you lazy old brute!”

Agitated feminine cries of “Robert! Robert! You are not to speak to

Harold like that.”

“Well, he spoke to me like that.”

“Yes, and I’ll do a jolly sight more than speak to you in a minute if

you don’t get out of it. Get out of it, do you hear?”

“Shan’t!”

“Robert! Robert! Harold! Harold!”

“Well, get him out of it, or he’ll be sorry for it. Why is he always

here when I’m supposed to be having my breakfast? Not a thing ready, as

usual. Look here, where I’m supposed to sit--flannel and soap! That’s

washing his filthy neck, I suppose. Filthy young brute! Why don’t you

wash your neck, pig?”

“Why do you wear girl’s boots with buttons, pig?”

Commotion. Enthralling commotion. Half the female assemblage hustle the

splendid creature Robert out of the door and down the hall and on to his

bicycle; half the female assemblage cover his retreat and block the dash

after him of the still more splendid Harold; all the female assemblage,

battle having been prevented and one splendid male despatched, combine

to minister to the requirements of the second splendid male now

demanding attention.

Busy scene. Enthralling spectacle. There he is, eating; shoving sausages

into himself against the clock just as Robert had shovelled porridge

into himself against the clock. One ministrant is sewing a button on to

his boot, another with blotting paper and hot iron is removing a stain

from his coat, divested for the purpose; one is pouring out his coffee,

another is cutting his bread, a third is watching for his newspaper by

the postman. And suddenly he whirls everything into a whirlpool just as

men, if Rosalie watches them long enough, always whirl everything into a

whirlpool.

“Oh, my goodness, the pump!”

Chorus, “The pump?”

“The bicycle pump! Has that young brute taken the bicycle pump?”

“Yes, he took it. I saw it.”

Commotion.

“Catch him across the field! Catch him across the field! Where are

my boots? Where the devil are my boots? Well, never mind the infernal

button. How am I going to get to the bank with a flat tyre? Can’t some

one catch him across the field instead of all standing there staring?”

Away they go! Rosalie, seeking a good place for the glorious spectacle,

is knocked over in the stampede for the door. Nobody minds Rosalie.

Rosalie doesn’t mind--anything to see this entrancing sight! Away they

go, flying over the meadow, shouting, scrambling, falling. Out after

them plunges Harold, shirt-sleeved, one boot half on, hobbling, leaping,

bawling. Glorious to watch him! He outruns them all; he outbellows

them all. Of course he does. He is a man. He is one of those splendid,

wonderful, mysterious creatures to whom, subject only to Rosalie’s

father, the entire world belongs. Look at him, bounding, bawling!

Wonderful, wonderful Harold!

But Robert is wonderful too. If it had been Anna or Flora or Hilda

gone off with the pump, she would have been easily caught. Not Robert.

Wonderful and mysterious Robert, wonderfully and mysteriously pedalling

at incredible speed, is not caught. The hunt dejectedly trails back. The

business of pushing Harold out of the house is devotedly resumed.

And again--enthralling spectacle--just as the reign of Robert was

terminated by the accession of Harold, so the dominion of Harold is

overthrown by the accession of father. Harold is crowded about with

ministrants. Nobody can leave him for a minute. Rosalie’s father

appears. Everybody leaves Harold simultaneously, abruptly, and as if by

magic. Rosalie’s father appears. Everybody disappears. Wonderful father!

Everybody melts away: but Harold does not melt away. Courageous

Harold! Everybody melts; only Harold is left, and Rosalie watching; and

immediately, as always, the magnificent males clash with sound and fury.

Rosalie’s father scowls upon Harold and delivers his morning greeting.

No “Good morning, dear,” as her mother would have said. “Aren’t you gone

yet?” like a bark from a kennel.

“Just going.”

Wonderful father! A moment before there had been not the remotest sign

of Harold ever going. Now Harold is very anxious to go. He is very

anxious to go but, like Robert, he will not abandon the field without

defiance of the authority next above his own. While he collects his

things he whistles. Rosalie shudders (but deliciously as one in old Rome

watching the gladiators).

“Do you see the clock, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Well, quicken yourself, sir. Quicken yourself.”

“The clock’s fast.”

“It is not fast, sir. And let me add that the clock with which you could

keep time of a morning, or of any hour in the day, would have to be an

uncommonly slow clock.”

Harold with elaborate unconcern adjusts his trouser clips. “I should

have thought that was more a matter for the Bank to complain of, if

necessary. I may be wrong, of course----”

“You may be wrong, sir, because in my experience you almost invariably

are wrong and never more so than when you lad-di-dah that you are right.

You may be wrong, but let me tell you what you may not be. You may not

be impertinent to me, sir. You may not lad-di-dah me, sir.”

“Father, I really do not see why at my age I should be hounded out of

the house like this every morning.”

“You are hounded out, as you elegantly express it, because morning after

morning, owing to your disgustingly slothful habits, you clash with me,

sir. My breakfast is delayed because you clash with me, and the house

is delayed because you clash with me, and the whole parish is delayed

because you clash with me.”

“Perhaps you’re not aware that Robert clashes with me.”

“Dash Robert! Are you going or are you not going?”

He goes.

“Bring back the paper.”

He brings it back.

Wonderful father!

Rosalie’s father gives a tug at the bell cord that would have dislocated

the neck of a horse. The cord comes away in his hand. He hurls it across

the room.

Glorious father!

There was a most frightful storm one night and Rosalie, in Anna’s bed

with Flora crowded in also and Hilda shivering in her nightgown beside

them, too young to be frightened but with her sister’s fright beginning

to communicate itself to her, said, “Ask father to go and stop it.”

“Fool!” cried Flora. “How could father stop the storm?”

Why not?

CHAPTER II

Flora’s sharp and astounding reply to that question of Rosalie’s

was recalled by Rosalie, with hurt surprise at Flora’s sharpness and

ignorance, when, shortly afterwards, she found in a book a man who

could, and actually did, stop a storm. This was a man called Prospero in

a book called “The Tempest.”

She was never--that Rosalie--the conventional wonder-child of fiction

who reads before ten all that its author probably never read before

thirty; but she could read when she was six and she read widely and

curiously, choosing her entertainment, from her father’s bookshelves,

solely by the method of reading every book that had pictures.

There was but one picture to “The Tempest,” a frontispiece, but it

sufficed, and at the period when Rosalie believed the ownership of

the world to be vested in her father and under him in all males, “The

Tempest,” because it reflected that condition, was the greatest joy of

all the joys the bookshelves discovered to her. She read it over and

over again. It presented life exactly as life presented itself to the

round eyes of Rosalie: all males doing always noisy and violent and

important and enthralling things, with Prospero, her father, by far the

most important of all; and women scarcely appearing and doing only

what the men told them to do. Miranda’s appearances in the story were

indifferently skipped by Rosalie; the noisy action and language in the

wreck, and the noisy action and language of the drunkards in the wood

were what she liked, and all the magic arts of Prospero were what she

thoroughly appreciated and understood. That was life as she knew it.

Rosalie’s father, when Rosalie thought the world belonged to him and

revolved about him, was tall and cleanshaven and of complexion a dark

and burning red. When he was excited or angry his face used to burn as

the embers in the study fire burned when Rosalie pressed the bellows

against them. He had thick black eyebrows and a most powerful nose. His

nose jutted from his face like a projection from a cliff beneath a clump

of bushes. He had been at Cambridge and he was most ferociously fond of

Cambridge. One of the most fearful scenes Rosalie ever witnessed was on

one boat-race day when Harold appeared with a piece of Oxford ribbon in

his buttonhole. It was at breakfast, the family for some reason or other

most unusually all taking breakfast together. Rosalie’s father

first jocularly bantered Harold on his choice of colour, and

everybody--anxious as always to please and placate the owner of the

world--laughed with father against Harold. But Harold did not laugh.

Harold smouldered resentment and defiance, and out of his smouldering

began to maintain “from what chaps had said” that Oxford was altogether

and in every way a much better place than Cambridge. In every branch of

athletics there were better athletes, growled Harold, at Oxford.

Rosalie has been watching the embers in her father’s face glowing to

dark-red heat. Everybody had been watching them except Harold who,

though addressing his father, had been mumbling “what chaps had said” to

his plate.

“Athletes!” cried Rosalie’s father suddenly in a very terrible voice.

“Athletes! And what about scholars, sir?”

Harold informed his plate that he wasn’t talking about scholars.

Rosalie’s father raised a marmalade jar and thumped it down upon the

table so that it cracked. “Then what the dickens right have you to talk

at all, sir? How dare you try to compare Oxford with Cambridge when you

know no more about either than you know of Jupiter or Mars? Athletes!”

He went off into record of University contests, cricket scores, running

times, football scores, as if his whole life had been devoted to

collecting them. They all showed Cambridge first and Oxford beaten and

he hurled each one at Harold’s head with a thundering, “What about that,

sir?” after it. He leapt to scholarship and reeled off scholarships and

scholars and schools, and professors and endowments and prize men, as

if he had been an educational year-book gifted with speech and with

particularly loud and violent speech. He spoke of the colleges of

Cambridge, and with every college and every particular glory of every

college demanded of the unfortunate Harold, “What have you got in Oxford

against that, sir?”

It was awful. It was far more frightening than the night of the storm.

Nobody ate. Nobody drank. Everybody shuddered and tried by every means

to avoid catching father’s rolling eye and thereby attracting the

direct blast of the tempest. Rosalie, who of course, being a completely

negligible quantity in the rectory, is not included in the everybody,

simply stared, more awed and enthralled than ever before. And with much

reason. As he declaimed of the glories of the colleges of Cambridge

there was perceptible in her father’s voice a most curious crack or

break. It became more noticeable and more frequent. He suddenly and most

astoundingly cried out, “Cambridge! Cambridge!” and threw his arms out

before him on the table, and buried his head on them, and sobbed out,

“Cambridge! My youth! My youth! My God, my God, my youth!”

Somehow or other they all slipped out of the room and left him

there,--all except Rosalie who remained in her high chair staring upon

her father, and upon his shoulders that heaved up and down, and upon the

coffee from an overturned cup that oozed slowly along the tablecloth.

Extraordinary father!

Rosalie’s father had been a wrangler and one of the brilliant men of his

year at Cambridge. All manner of brilliance was expected for him and of

him. He unexpectedly went into the Church and as unexpectedly married.

His bride was the daughter of a clergyman, a widower, who kept a small

private school in Devonshire. She helped her father to run the school

(an impoverished business which, begun exclusively for the “sons of

gentlemen,” had slid down into paying court to tradesmen in order to get

the sons of tradesmen) and she maintained him in the very indifferent

health he suffered. Harold Aubyn, the brilliant wrangler with the

brilliant future, who had begun his brilliance by unexpectedly entering

the Church, and continued it by unexpectedly marrying while on a holiday

in the little Devonshire town where he had gone to ponder his future (a

little unbalanced by the unpremeditated plunge into Holy Orders) further

continued his brilliance by unexpectedly finding himself the assistant

master in his father-in-law’s second-rate and failing school. The

daughter would not leave her father; the suitor would not leave his

darling; the brilliant young wrangler who at Cambridge used to dream of

waking to find himself famous awoke instead to find himself six years

buried in a now third-rate and moribund school in a moribund Devonshire

town. He had a father-in-law now permanent invalid, bedridden. He had

four children and another, Robert, on the way.

It was his father-in-law’s death that awoke him; and he awoke

characteristically. The old man dead! Come, that was one burden lifted,

one shackle removed! The school finally went smash at the same time.

Never mind! Another burden gone! Another shackle lifted! Dash the

school! How he hated the school! How he loathed and detested the lumping

boys! How he loathed and abominated teaching them simple arithmetic (he

the wrangler!) and history that was a string of dates, and geography

that was a string of capes and bays, and Latin as far as the

conjugations (he the wrangler!) how he loathed and abominated it! Now a

fresh start! Hurrah!

That was like Rosalie’s father--in those days. That way blew the cold

fit and the hot fit--then.

The magnificent fresh start after the magnificent escape from the morass

of the moribund father-in-law and the moribund school and the moribund

Devonshire town proved to be but a stagger down into morass heavier and

more devastating of ambition. He always jumped blindly and wildly into

things. Blindly and wildly into the Church, blindly and wildly into

marriage, blindly and wildly into the school, blindly and wildly, one

might say, into fatherhood on a lavish scale. Blindly and wildly--the

magnificent fresh start--into the rectory in which Rosalie was born.

It was “a bit in the wilds” (of Suffolk); “a bit of a tight fit” (L200 a

year) and a bit or two or three other drawbacks; but it was thousands

of miles from Devonshire and from the school and schooling, that was the

great thing; and it was a jolly big rectory with a ripping big

garden; and above all and beyond everything it was just going to be a

jumping-off place while he looked around for something suitable to his

talents and while he got in touch again with his old friends of the

brilliant years.

It was just going to be a jumping-off place, but he never jumped off

from it; a place from which to look around for something suitable, but

instead he sunk in it up to his chin; a place from which to get in touch

again with his friends of the brilliant years, but his friends were all

doing brilliant things and much too busy at their brilliance to open up

with one who had missed fire.

The parish of St. Mary’s, Ibbotsfield, had an enormous rectory, falling

to pieces; an enormous church, crumbling away; an enormous area, purely

agricultural; and a cure of a very few hundred agricultural souls,

enormously-scattered. Years and years before, prior to railways, prior

to mechanical reapers and thrashers, and prior to everything that took

men to cities or whirled them and their produce farther in an hour than

they ever could have gone in a week, Ibbotsfield and its surrounding

villages and hamlets were a reproach to the moral conditions of the

day in that they had no sufficiently enormous church. Well-intentioned

persons removed this reproach, adding in their zeal an enormous rectory;

and the time they chose for their beneficent and lavish action was

precisely the time when Ibbotsfield, through its principal land-owners,

was stoutly rejecting the monstrous idea of encouraging a stinking,

roaring, dangerous railway in their direction, and combining together by

all means in their power to keep the roaring, dangerous atrocity as far

away from them as possible.

It thus, and by like influences, happened that, whereas one generation

of the devoutly intentioned sat stolidly under the reproach of an

enormous and thickly populated area without a church, later generations

with the same stolidity sat under the reproach of an enormous church,

an enormous rectory and an infinitesimal stipend, in an area which a man

might walk all day without meeting any other man.

But the devout of the day, not having to live in this rectory or preach

in this church or laboriously trudge about this area, did not unduly

worry themselves with this reproach.

That was (in his turn) the lookout of the Rev. Harold Aubyn--also his

outlook.

He is to be imagined, in those days when Rosalie first came to know him

and to think of him as Prospero, as a terribly lonely man. He stalked

fatiguingly about the countryside in search of his parishioners, and his

parishioners were suspicious of him and disliked his fierce, thrusting

nose, and he returned from them embittered with them and hating them. He

genuinely longed to be friendly with them and on terms of Hail, fellow,

well met, with them; but they exasperated him because they could not

meet him either on his own quick intellectual level or upon his own

quick and very sensitive emotional level. They could not respond to his

humour and they could not respond, in the way he thought they ought to

respond, to his sympathy.

He once found a man--a farm labourer--who in conversation disclosed a

surprising interest in the traces of early and mediaeval habitation

of the country. The discovery delighted him. In the catalogue of a

secondhand bookseller of Ipswich he noticed the “Excursions in the

County of Suffolk,” two volumes for three shillings, and he wrote and

had them posted to the man. For days he eagerly looked in the post

for the grateful and delighted letter that in similar circumstances he

himself would have written. He composed in his mind the phrases of the

letter and warmed in spirit over anticipation of reading them. No letter

arrived.

When he came into the rectory from visiting he was always asking, “Has

that man Bolas from Hailsham called?” Bolas never called. He furiously

began to loathe Bolas. He was furious with himself for having “lowered

himself” to Bolas. Bolas in his ignorance no doubt thought the books

were a cheap charity of cast-off lumber. Uncouth clod! Stupid clod!

Uncouth parish! Hateful, loathsome parish! For weeks he kept away from

Hailsham and the possible vicinity of Bolas. One day he met him. Bolas

passed with no more than a “Good day, Mr. Aubyn.” He could have killed

the man. He swung round and pushed his dark face and jutty nose into the

face of Bolas. “Did you ever get some books I sent you?”

“Ou, ay, to be sure, they books----”

He rushed with savage strides away from the man. All the way home he

savagely said to himself, aloud, keeping time to it with his feet,

“Uncouth clod, ill-mannered clod, horrible, hateful place! Uncouth

clods, hateful clods, horrible, hateful place!”

That was his attitude to his parishioners. They could not come up to

the level of his sensibilities; he could not get down to the level of

theirs.

With the few gentle families that composed the society of Ibbotsfield he

was little better accommodated. They led contented, well-ordered lives,

busy about their gardens, busy about their duties, busy about their

amusements. His life was ill-ordered and he was never busy about

anything: he was always either neglecting what had to be done or doing

it, late, with a ferocious and exhausting energy that caused him to

groan over it and detest it while he did it. In the general level of his

life he was below the standard of his neighbours and knew that he was

below it; in the sudden bounds and flights of his intellect and of his

imagination he was immeasurably above the intel-lects of his neighbours

and knew that he was immeasurably above them. Therefore, and in both

moods, he commonly hated and despised them. “Fools, fools! Unread,

pompous, petty!”

At the rectory, among his family, he seemed to himself to be surrounded

by incompetent women and herds of children.

He was a terribly lonely man when Rosalie first came to know him and

thought of him as Prospero. He is to be imagined in those days as a

fierce, flying, futile figure scudding about on the face of the parish

and in the vast gaunt spaces of the rectory, with his burning face and

his jutting nose, trying to get away from people, hungering to meet

sympathetic people; trying to get way from himself, hungering after the

things that his self had lost. In his young manhood he was known for

moods of intense reserve alternated by fits of tremendous gaiety and

boisterous high spirits. (“A fresh start! Hurrah!” when release from the

school came. “What does anything matter? Now we’re really off at last!

Hurrah! Hurrah!”) In his set manhood, when Rosalie knew him, there were

substituted for the fits of boisterous spirits, paroxysms of violent

outburst against his lot. “Infernal parish! Hateful parish! Forsaken

parish!” after the ignominy of flight before the bull. “Blow the dinner!

Dash the dinner! Blow the dinner!” after wrestling a soggy steak from

his pocket and hurling it half a mile through the air. These and that

single but terrible occasion of “Cambridge! Cambridge! My youth! My God,

my God, my youth!”

A terribly lonely man.

CHAPTER III

The Aubyn family occupied only a portion of the enormous rectory. There

was a whole floor upstairs, and there were several rooms on the ground

and first floors, that were never used, were unfurnished except for odds

and ends of lumber left behind by the previous vicar, and were never

entered. Rosalie once explored them all, systematically though very

fearfully, and also very excitedly. She was searching for some one, for

two people.

In the household she knew her father and her mother, her brothers and

sisters and the servants; but there were two mysterious inhabitants of

whom she often heard but whom she never saw and never could find. It

used to frighten her sometimes, lying awake at night, or creeping about

the house of an evening, to think of those two mysterious people hidden

away somewhere and perhaps likely to pounce on her out of the dark. What

did they eat? Where did they live? What did they do? What were they?

One of these two eerie and invisible people was heard of from her

father. Several times Rosalie had heard him, when talking to persons

not of the family, speak of “my wife.” The other eerie and invisible

creature was heard of from her mother: “My husband.”

Where were they? Of all the mysterious things which Rosalie used to

wonder over in those days, this undiscoverable “wife” and “husband” were

the most mysterious of all, and more mysterious than ever after that

day on which, walking on tiptoe for fear of coming upon them suddenly,

holding her breath and pausing in fearful apprehension before entering

the untenanted rooms upstairs, she explored the whole house in search of

them. She got to know all sorts of little odds and ends about them; that

the wife felt the cold very much, for instance, for she had heard her

father say so; and that the husband did not like mutton, for her mother

told that to Mr. Grant the butcher: and she was often hot on their

tracks for she had heard her father say, “My wife is upstairs” and had

rushed upstairs and searched; and her mother say, “My husband is in the

garden,” and had run into the garden and hunted. But all these clues

only deepened the mystery. They were never to be found.

It was mysterious.

Then one day the wife (she heard) fell ill, and through her great

concern about that--for she was profoundly interested in these people

and used to feel awfully sorry for them, hidden away like that perhaps

with no fire and nothing to eat but mutton--the mystery was explained.

With the family she was going towards church one Sunday morning and

she heard her father tell a lady that “my wife” was not very well

that morning and couldn’t come. Rosalie during the service prayed very

earnestly for the wife’s recovery and took the opportunity of praying

also that she might be permitted to see the wife “if she is not very

frightening, O Lord, and the husband too, if possible, for Jesus

Christ’s sake, amen.”

And at lunch, having thought of nothing else all the morning, there was

suddenly shot out of her the question, “Father, is your wife any better

now?”

Rosalie commonly never spoke at all at meals; and as to speaking to her

father, though it is obvious she must have had some sort of intercourse

with him, this famous question (a standing joke in the house for

years) was the single direct speech of those early years she ever could

remember. She spoke to her father when she was bidden to speak in the

form of messages, generally about meals being ready, or relative to

shopping commissions he had been asked to execute; but he was far too

wonderful, powerful and mysterious for conversation with him on her

own initiative. “Father, is your wife any better now?” stood out in her

later recollection, alone and lonelily startling.

There was from all the company an astounded stare and astounded gasp;

all the table sitting with astounded eyes, forks suspended in mid-air,

mouths half open in astonishment, and Rosalie sitting in her high chair

wonderingly regarding their wonderment. What were they staring at?

There was then an enormous howl of laughter, led by Rosalie’s father,

and repeated, and louder than before, because it was so very unusual

for the family to be laughing in accord with father. Gertrude, the

maid, fled hysterically from the room and laughter howled back from the

kitchen.

Rosalie’s father said, “You’d better go and ask your mother.” Her mother

had stayed in bed that day with a chill.

Robert “undid” Rosalie--a wooden rod with a fixed knob at one end went

through the arms of her high chair and was fastened by a removable knob

at the other end--and Rosalie slid down very gravely, and with their

laughter still echoing trod upstairs to her mother’s bedside and related

what she had been told to ask, and, on inquiry, why she had asked it. “I

only said ‘Father, is your wife any better now?’” and on further inquiry

explained her long searching after the undiscoverable pair.

Rosalie’s mother laughed also then, but had a sudden wetness in her

eyes. She put her arms about Rosalie and pressed her to her bosom and

cried, “Oh, my poor darling!” and explained the tremendous mystery. Wife

and husband, Rosalie’s mother explained, were the names used by other

people for her father and her mother. A man and a woman loved one

another very, very dearly (“as I loved your dear father”) and then they

lived together in a dear house of their own and then God gave them dear

little children of their own to live with them, said Rosalie’s mother.

This thoroughly satisfied Rosalie and completely entranced her,

especially about the presentation of the dear little children. She would

have supposed that naturally it thoroughly satisfied Anna and Harold

and Flora and the others; and the point of interest rests here, that

Rosalie’s mother also believed that this explanation of marriage and

procreation completely satisfied Anna at sixteen and Harold in the Bank

at eighteen. She never gave them any other explanation of the phenomenon

of birth; and it is to be supposed that, just as she instructed them

that God sent the dear little children, so she believed that God, at the

right time, in some mysterious way, communicated the matter to them in

greater detail. Years and years afterwards, Flora told Rosalie that

when Rosalie was born all the children were sent away to stay with a

neighbour and not allowed to return till Rosalie’s mother, downstairs,

was able to show them the dear little sister that God had surprisingly

delivered at the house, as it were in a parcel.

One is given pain by a state of affairs so monstrous; but one suffers

that pain proudly because one belongs, proudly, to a day in which

nothing but stark truth may go from mother to child, not even fairy

stories, not even Bible stories. Rosalie’s mother is gone and her kind

is no more, and in the graces and the manners of this day’s generation

one perceives, proudly, the inestimable benefits of the passing of her

kind. Lamentable specimen of her kind, she had no interests other than

her home and her husband and her children and the pleasures and the

treasures and the friends of her husband and her children. She belonged

to that dark age when duty towards others was the guiding principle of

moral life; she came only to the threshold of this enlightened age in

which duty to oneself is known to be the paramount and first and last

consideration of life as it should be lived.

Rosalie’s mother, whose name had been Anna Escott, kept at the bottom of

a drawer five most exquisite little miniatures. They were in a case of

faded blue plush, and they had been in that case and at the bottom of

one drawer or another ever since the girl Anna Escott, aged twenty, had

placed them in the case, then exquisitely blue and new and soft, and

given up painting miniatures forever, in order to devote her whole time

to looking after her invalid father and the failing preparatory school

that was his livelihood.

Rosalie was herself nearly thirty when she first saw the miniatures. She

was come back to the rectory from the pursuits that then occupied her to

visit, rather impatiently and rather vexedly, her mother on what proved

to be her death bed. She was tidying her mother’s drawers, impatient

with the amazing collection of rubbish they contained and hating herself

for being impatient, while her mother, on the bed, patiently watched

her; and she came upon the case and opened it and stared in astonishment

and admiration at the beauty of the five miniatures.

She asked her mother and her mother told her she had painted them. “I

used to do that when I was a girl,” said Rosalie’s mother.

All Rosalie’s impatience was drowned and utterly engulfed in a most

dreadful flood of emotion. She set down the case on the bed and flung

herself on her knees beside her mother and clasped her arms about her.

“Oh, mother, mother! Oh, beloved little mother!” But that is out of its

place.

Yes, that girl Anna Escott, who had an exquisite talent, and all sorts

of fond dreams of its development, gave it up wholly and entirely and

forever when her mother died and her father said, “I would like you,

Anna dear, to give up your painting and come and look after me and the

school now.”

Anna said, “Of course I will, Papa. It’s my duty. Of course I will.”

Girls did that, and parents and husbands asked them to do that, in the

days when Rosalie’s mother was a girl.

Rosalie’s mother gave away everything, first to her father, then to

her husband, then to her children. She believed the whole of the Bible,

literally, as it is written, from the first word of Genesis to the last

word of Revelations. She taught it as literal, final and initial

truth to all her children, and one knows how wickedly wrong it is now

considered to teach children that the Bible-stories are true. She taught

them the whole of the Bible from books called “Line Upon Line,” and “The

Child’s Bible,” and in stories of her own making, and from the Bible

itself. Regrettably, the ignorantly imposed-upon children loved it! Till

each child was eight she taught them everything at her knee. All the

nursery rhymes, and all the Bible, and reading out of “Step by Step,”

and then “Reading Without Tears,” and then, in advancing series, the

“Royal Readers,” and writing, first holding their hands, and then--first

in pencil and afterwards with pens having three huge blobs to teach you

how to place your fingers properly--in copybooks graded from enormous

lines which had brick-red covers to astoundingly narrow little lines

enclosing pious and moral maxims which had severe grey covers; and the

multiplication tables and then simple arithmetic; and General Knowledge

out of “The Child’s Guide to Knowledge,” which asked you “What is

sago?” and required you to reply by heart, “Sago is a dried, granulated

substance prepared from the pith of several different palms.” “Where are

these palms found?” “These palms are found in the East Indies.”

Likewise history out of Mrs. Markham and “Little Arthur”; also, at a

ridiculously early age, how to tell the time and how to know the coinage

of the realm and its values; also, whether girl or boy, the making

of kettle-holders by threading brightly coloured wools through little

squares of canvas; also very many pieces of poetry: “Oft had I heard of

Lucy Grey,” and “It was the Schooner Hesperus” and hymns--also learnt

by heart and sung while Rosalie’s mother played the piano--“We are but

little children weak,” and “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.”

All these things were taught at her knee to each child in turn by

Rosalie’s mother, and each was taught out of the self-same books,

miraculously preserved by Rosalie’s mother; the backs of most of them

carefully stitched and re-stitched, and marked all through by the dates

of each child’s daily lesson, written in pencil by Rosalie’s mother. The

dates ranged from 1869 when Harold was being taught and when the books

were fresh and clean, and Rosalie’s mother fresh and ardent with her

first-born, to 1884, when Rosalie was being taught, and the books

very old and thumbed and most terribly crowded with pencil marks, and

Rosalie’s mother no longer fresh but rather worn, but teaching as fondly

and earnestly as ever, because it was her duty. Literally at the knee of

Rosalie’s mother these things were taught. On her knee with one of her

arms about you for the Bible teaching; and standing at her knee, hands

behind you, for the teaching of most of the rest. Yes, that was the

early education, and the manner of the education, of Rosalie and of her

brothers and sisters, and one perceives with indignation the spectacle

of a mother wasting her time like that and wasting her children’s time

like that.

Rosalie’s mother did everything in the house and she was always doing

something in the house--for somebody else. She never rested and she

was always worried. Her brows were always wrinkled with the feverish

concentration of one anxiously doing one thing while anxiously thinking

of another thing waiting to be done. She had a driven and a hunted look.

Now Rosalie’s father had a driving and a hunting look.

Rosalie’s father in his youth threw away everything. Rosalie’s mother

throughout the whole of her life gave away everything. Rosalie’s father

was a tragic figure dwelling in a house of bondage; but he was at least

a tragic king, ruling his house and venting his griefs upon his house.

Rosalie’s mother was a tragic figure and she was a tragic slave in the

house of bondage. The life of Rosalie’s father was a tragedy, but a

tragedy in some measure relieved because he knew it was a tragedy and

could wave his arms and shout and smash things and hurl beefsteaks

through the air because of the tragedy of it. But the life of Rosalie’s

mother was an infinitely deeper tragedy because she never knew or

suspected that it was a tragedy.

Still, that is so often the difference between the tragedy of a woman

and the tragedy of a man.

CHAPTER IV

The very great difference between her father and her mother maintained

in Rosalie that early perception of the wondrousness of her father. She

loved her mother, but in the atmosphere surrounding her mother there was

often flurry and worry and there was nothing whatever in her mother to

mystify and entrance by sudden and violent eruptions of the miraculous.

She did not love her father for he was entirely too remote and awe-ful

for love, but he entranced her with his marvellousness. This maintained

in her also her perception of the altogether greater superiority of all

males over all females.

Rosalie came into her family rather like a new little girl first

entering a boarding school. When she was about four, and first beginning

to realise herself, the next in age to her was Robert, who not only was

at the immense distance of ten, but was of the male sex and therefore

had a controlling interest in the world. Then was Hilda who was twelve,

then Flora fourteen, then Anna towering away in sixteen, and then Harold

utterly removed in the enormous heights of eighteen, second only to

Rosalie’s father in ownership of the world and often awfully disputing

that supreme ownership.

So they were all immeasurably older than Rosalie; and they were not only

immeasurably older but, which counted for much more, they all had their

fixed and recognised places in their world just as girls of several

terms’ experience have their recognised places in their school, and for

Rosalie there seemed to be no place at all, just as for new girls there

is no place. Her brothers and sisters all had their fixed and recognised

places, their interests, their occupations, their friendships: they

all knew their own places and each other’s places; they had learnt

to respect and admit each other’s places; they knew the weight of one

another’s hand in those places; they were accustomed to one another;

they tolerated one another.

It was all very strange and wonderful and mysterious to Rosalie.

She was, as it were, pitchforked into this established and regulated

order and to find a place for her was like trying to fit a new spoke

into a revolving wheel. It cannot be done; and with Rosalie it could

not be done. The established wheel went on revolving in its established

orbit and the new spoke, which was Rosalie, lay outside and watched

it revolve. Intrusions within the circumference of the wheel commonly

resulted in a sharp knock from one of the spokes. No one was in any

degree unkind to Rosalie, but there was no proper place for her and

everybody’s will was in authority over her will. She rather got in the

way. To be with her was not to enjoy her company or to enjoy battle with

her and the putting of her company to flight. To be with her was to have

to look after her, and in the community of the rectory, every member,

when Rosalie came, was fully occupied in look-ing after itself and

defending itself from the predatory excursions of any other member.

What happened was that in time, just as a slight and negligible body

cannot be in the sphere of a powerful motion without being affected by

it, so Rosalie began to move sympathetically to the wheel but on her own

axis. She moved round with the wheel but she was not of the wheel and

she never became really incorporated with the wheel. The spokes were

revolving with incredible rapidity when she first, began to notice them

and they always remained relatively faster. There she was, sitting and

watching and wondering; and the twig grows as it is bent or as it is

left to bend. She looked on and absorbed things; and the first and by

far the deepest of her settled perceptions was that, though she was

subject to all powers, all girls and women were themselves subject to

the power of all boys and men.

Up to the age of eighteen, six years represents an enormous gulf in the

relative ages of brothers and sisters. You have only to figure it out in

the case of Rosalie to realise how far behind she was always left, and

why, though one of a family of six, she occupied a position outside the

group and was a watcher of them rather than a sharer with them. She was

four when Robert the next above her was ten, which is a baby against a

sturdy and well-developed giant; when she was eight Robert was fourteen,

which is a greater gulf than the first; when she was twelve Robert was

eighteen which, from eighteen’s point of view, is as the difference

between an aged man and an infant; and when she was sixteen Robert was

twenty-two, which is a schoolgirl against one of the oldest and most

experienced periods of life. She came in as a new little girl in a big

school; when she had been there eight years--counting from four, when

first she was conscious of arrival--she was still relatively the same:

there she was, twelve, with Robert eighteen and the others twenty,

twenty-two, twenty-four and twenty-six.

But there she is at eight when she had had four years’ experience from

the day of first seeing her father leaping before the bull and thinking

it was perfectly natural that he should leap before the bull. She had

learnt a tremendous lot in that second four years. She knew at eight

that the world did not belong to her father and that on that night of

the storm Flora was right to call her a fool for believing that he could

stop the storm. She knew he was not nearly so wonderful as she used

to think he was; but he was still enormously wonderful and, which she

thought rather curious, she began to see that he rather liked showing

her how wonderful he was. He could sharpen a pencil wonderfully, and he

could eat a herring wonderfully. The thing discovered was that he

was very proud of how wonderfully he could sharpen a pencil or eat a

herring. Strange father!

“Who sharpened that pencil? Your mother? H’nf! I should think so! No

woman can sharpen a pencil. Now look at me. Watch. I hold it in my left

hand, see? Arm supported against my body. Now look how I cut at it.

Bold, strong strokes, see? No niggling at it as if a mouse was nibbling

it; long, bold sweeps, slashes. See! Look at that. Ah, drat! That’s

because I was holding it down for you to see. Watch again. There! There,

that’s the way to sharpen a pencil. Look at that. Do you see that long,

firm point? See how clean and long those strokes are? That’s the way to

sharpen a pencil. Show that to your mother.”

He was as pleased with himself and as proud as if he had turned the

pencil into gold.

Funny father!

Or how to eat a herring.

“Herrings! Well, a herring is one of the most delicious fish, if it’s

eaten properly. There’s a right way to eat a herring and a wrong way.

Now watch me and I’ll show you how to eat a herring. Rosalie, watch.”

“Rosalie, dear,” (from her mother) “watch while your father shows you

how to eat a herring.”

All eyes on father demonstrating how to eat a herring!

And Rosalie used to notice this about the watching eyes. Her mother’s

eyes--most anxiously and nervously upon the operation, as if watching a

thing she would soon be called upon to perform and would not be able to

perform; the eyes of Robert (14) sulkily; of Flora (18) admiringly (it

was getting to be a complaint in the family circle that Flora “sucked

up” to father); the eyes of Anna (20) wearily; the eyes of Harold (22)

contemptuously.

The herrings (a very frequent dish at the rectory, so much cheaper than

meat) came headless to the table. First father nipped off the tail with

a firm, neat stroke. Then he deftly slit the herring down the stomach.

It fell into two exact perfectly divided halves. Then he lifted out the

backbone, not one scrap of flesh adhering to it, and laid it on the

side of his plate. Then four firm pressures of his knife and the little

lateral bones were exactly removed and exactly laid on the backbone.

Next a precise insertion of his fork and out came the silvery strip

known to Rosalie as “the swimming thing” and was laid in its turn upon

the bones, exactly, neatly, as if it were a game of spillikins. “Now

pepper. Plenty of pepper for the roe, you see. There. Now.”

And in about six mouthfuls father’s plate would be as clean as when it

was brought in, decorated rather than marred by the exquisitely neat

pile of the backbone, the tail, the little bones, and the silvery

swimming thing. “There! Delicious! That’s the way to eat a herring”;

and he would direct a glance at the plate of Rosalie’s mother. Rosalie’s

mother made a herring into the most frightful mess it was possible to

imagine. She spent the whole of her time in removing bones from her

mouth; and her plate, when she was half-way though, looked to contain

the mangled remains of about two dozen herrings. “Very few women know

how to eat a herring,” Rosalie’s father would say.

Wonderful father! How to sharpen a pencil, how to eat a herring, how to

do up a parcel, how to undo a parcel, how to cut your finger nails, how

to sit with regard to the light when you wrote or read, how to tie a

knot, how to untie a knot. Clever father, natty father!

Yes, still enormously wonderful father; but also rather strangely proud

of being wonderful father. Rosalie now was constantly being struck

by that. It began to give her rather a funny sensation. She couldn’t

describe the sensation or interpret it, but it was a feeling, when

father was glowing with pride over one of these things he did so

wonderfully well--a feeling of being rather uncomfortable, shy,

ashamed--something like that. She contracted the habit when father

beamed and glowed and looked around for applause of giving a sudden

little blink.

And it was the same in regard to Robert and the same in regard to

Harold. Robert at the height of his exhibitions of his wonderfulness

caused the funny feeling and the blink in her; and Harold at the height

of his exhibitions of his wonderfulness caused the funny feeling and the

blink in her. And the wonderfulness of Robert was always being shown off

by Robert, and the wonderfulness of Harold was always being shown off by

Harold. Men liked showing off how wonderful they were....

When Rosalie was about nine, she one day was permitted to have Lily

Waters in to tea with her. Lily Waters was the Doctor’s little girl,

also nine. For a great treat they had tea together out of Rosalie’s

doll’s tea service in the room called the schoolroom. Robert came home

unusually early from school and came into the schoolroom and began to

do wonderful things before the two little girls. He spoke in a very loud

voice while he did them. He stood on a footstool on his head and clapped

his boots together. He held his breath for seventy-five seconds by the

clock. He took off his coat and made Lily and Rosalie tie a piece of

string around his biceps and then he jerked up his arm and snapped the

string. Wonderful Robert! Lily screamed with delight and clapped her

hands, and the more she screamed and clapped, the louder Robert talked.

He did still more wonderful things. He held a cork to the flame of a

match and then blacked his nose and blacked a moustache with the cork.

He did a most frightfully daring and dangerous thing. He produced the

stump of a cigarette from his pocket and lit it and blew smoke through

his nose. Wonderful Robert! Lily went into ecstasies of delight. Rosalie

also went into ecstasies but also strongly experienced that funny

feeling. While Robert held his breath till his eyes bulged and till his

face was crimson, and while he danced about with his nose blacked, and

while he held the cigarette in his fingers and puffed smoke through his

nose--while he did these things Rosalie glanced at Lily (squealing) and

felt that funny feeling of being rather shy, uncomfortable, ashamed;

something like that; and blinked. Wonderful though Robert was, she felt

somehow rather glad when at last he went.

And just the same with Harold. At supper one night, Rosalie’s father not

being present, Harold talked and talked and talked about a call he had

paid at the house of some ladies in Ashborough. Wonderful Harold, to pay

a call all by himself! It appeared that he had been the only man there,

and when Rosalie’s mother said, “I wonder you didn’t feel shy, Harold,”

he said with a funny sort of “Haw” sound in his voice, “Not in the

least. Haw! Why on earth should I feel shy? Haw.” He had evidently very

much entertained the party. The more he talked about it the more Rosalie

noticed the funny “Haw.” “They must have been very glad you came,”

Rosalie’s mother said.

Harold put the first and second fingers of his right hand on his collar

and gave it a pull up. “I rather--haw--think they were,” Harold said.

“Haw.”

Rosalie gave that blink.

Years afterwards, when she was grown up, a grown man boastfully

said something in her presence, and in a flash were recalled father

dissecting a herring, Robert holding his breath till he nearly burst,

Harold hitching up his collar and with the “haw” sound saying, “I rather

think they were.” In a flash those childhood scenes, and instantly with

them interpretation of the funny feeling and the blink that they had

caused: they had been the rooting in her of a new perception added to

the impregnably rooted impression of the wonder and power of men,--the

perception that men knew they were wonderful and powerful and liked to

show off how wonderful and powerful they were.

They were superior creatures but they were apt to be rather

make-you-blinky creatures; that was the new perception.

On the day after her eighth birthday, the birthday itself being a

treat and a holiday, Rosalie began to do lessons with Hilda. Hilda, at

sixteen, had “finished her education” as had Anna and Flora at the same

age. Harold, who had been a boarder at a Grammar School, had stayed

there till he was eighteen; and Robert, ultimately, continued at

Helmsbury Grammar School till he was eighteen. It was apparent--and it

was another manifestation of the greater importance of males--that boys

had more education to finish, or were permitted longer to finish it,

than girls.

The school at which Anna, Flora and Hilda thus in the eight years

between leaving their mother’s knee at eight and completing their

education at sixteen, learnt everything it was possible to know, was

kept by two very thin ladies called (ungrammatically) the Miss Pockets.

The Miss Pockets were daughters of the former vicar of St. Mary’s and

inhabitant of the rectory, and on their father dying and Mr. Aubyn

coming, they established themselves in a prim villa near-by and did what

they called “took in pupils.” They were very thin, they had very long

thin noses, they were always very cold, and from the sharp end of the

long thin nose of the elder Miss Pocket there always depended, much

fascinating Rosalie, a shining bead of moisture.

Rosalie’s chief recollection of the Miss Pockets was of being constantly

met by them as she approached the age of eight, and of them always, on

these occasions, fondling icy hands about her neck and saying to her

father or her mother, “And when will our new little pupil be coming to

us?”

But no direct reply was ever given to this question, either by Rosalie’s

mother, who was always made to look uncomfortable when it was asked by

the Miss Pockets, or by Rosalie’s father who always seemed to jut out

his nose at it and make the Miss Pockets look thinner and colder than

ever.

On the morning of her eighth birthday, Rosalie received from the Miss

Pockets by post an illuminated text provided with a piece of red cord

for hanging on the wall and inquiring, rather abruptly,

“Who Hath Believed Our Report?”

Rosalie thought at first this was a plaintive question directly from

the Miss Pockets in their capacity as school-teachers and therefore

as licensed makers of reports; but immediately afterwards saw “Isaiah”

printed under it in discreet characters--

“Who Hath Believed our Report? --Isaiah.”

and concluded that it was Isaiah who had believed it. On the back was

written in the tall, thin handwriting of the Miss Pockets, “To our

dear little pupil Rosalie, on her eighth birthday, from Agnes and Lydia

Pocket.”

In the afternoon, the Miss Pockets called at the rectory and there was

evidently some high mystery about their visit. Rosalie was in the study

looking for a drawing pin wherewith to affix her illuminated card to the

wall. Hilda ran in. “The Miss Pockets. Where’s father? Come out,” and

Rosalie was hurriedly run out and shut into the dining-room, leaving the

vindication of Isaiah in the matter of the report on the table. Opening

the door to a chink, Rosalie saw the Miss Pockets, shivering, the

permanent decoration on the nose of the elder Miss Pocket very

conspicuous and agitatedly swinging, ushered into the study, and

presently her father follow his jutty nose into the study after them,

and very shortly after that the Miss Pockets driven out as it were by

the jutty nose and looking thinner and colder than ever before.

Miss Lydia Pocket, who had lost the appendage to her nose and looked

curiously undressed and indelicate without it, was saying feebly, “But

it was understood. We always thought it was understood.”

They shuddered away; and when Rosalie went into the study immediately

afterwards to recover her card, there was upon the word Isaiah, as

though somebody had literally thrown doubt upon his belief of the

report, a large damp spot.

On the following day, Rosalie began lessons with Hilda.

CHAPTER V

The lessons with Hilda period lasted till Rosalie was twelve. “Take her

off your mother’s hands. That’s what you’ve left school for,” was her

father’s instruction to Hilda; and so there was Rosalie, put out from

her mother’s knee to the schoolroom like a small new ship out from the

haven to the bay; and there was that small mind of hers come in to the

company of Hilda and of Flora and of Anna with the obsession that men

were infinitely more important and much more wonderful than women. She

knew now that the world did not belong to men in the literal sense, but

belonged, as her mother had instructed her, to God; but she knew with

the abundant evidence of all that went on about her that everything in

the world was done for men and that women were largely occupied in

doing it; and she knew, from the same testimony, that men were much more

interesting to watch than women, rather in the way that dogs were much

more interesting than cats. Men, like dogs, were much more satisfactory:

that was it. Her mind was throwing out feelers towards the wonders of

the world and this was the feeler that was most developed. She came

to her sisters very highly sensitive to the difference between men and

women. And her sisters showed her the difference.

Anna was twenty then. Anna had “finished her education” four years ago.

She had left school “to help your mother in the house”; and when Flora,

two years later, finished her education and left school for the same

purpose, she found Anna grooved in the business of helping her mother in

the house and she was not in the least anxious to help Anna out of the

grooves and herself become imbedded in them.

This annoyed Anna.

Rosalie used to hear Anna say to Flora a dozen times a day, “I really

don’t see why you should be the one to do nothing but amuse yourself all

day long. I really don’t.”

Flora used to say, “Well, you’ve always done it”--whatever the duty in

dispute might be--“so why on earth should I?”

Then either Anna’s face would give a twitch and she would walk out of

the room, or her face would get very red and there would be a row.

Or sometimes Flora to Anna’s “I really don’t see why--” would say

enticingly, “Don’t you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Then ask the Pope,” and Flora would give a mocking laugh and run away

out of the reach of Anna’s fury.

The sting in this was that Anna was suspected of having Roman Catholic

tendencies.

Flora was very pretty and had a gay, bold way. Anna was not pretty. She

had a great habit of compressing her lips, especially in encounters with

Flora, and somehow her face gave the impression that her lips always

were compressed. That was the expression it normally had; it was only

when Rosalie saw Anna actually compress her lips that she realised they

had not been compressed before. It was as though she was always annoyed

about something and then, when she compressed her lips, a little more

annoyed than usual. She had also a permanent affliction which much

puzzled Rosalie. Young men friends of Harold’s frequently called at the

rectory, and one afternoon, when two of them called, Anna was the only

one at home to entertain them (except Rosalie). Flora and Hilda rushed

into the drawing-room, directly they came in, and shortly afterwards

Rosalie saw Anna come out. Anna stood in the hall quite a long time with

her lips compressed, and then went into the dining-room and sat down,

but almost at once got up again and went back into the drawing-room, and

Rosalie heard Flora call out, “You can’t join in now, Anna. You can’t

join in now. We’re in the middle of it.” Shrieks of laughter were going

on. When the young men went, Flora and Hilda, who had their hats on,

walked away with them. Anna was left at the door. When the girls came

back Anna said to Flora, “I do think you might have told me you’d

arranged to go with them to see it.”

Flora said, “Oh, darling, I thought the Pope had told you.”

They had the worst row Rosalie had ever heard them have. Anna did not

come down to supper. After supper, when Rosalie was in the room with

only Harold and her father and mother, her mother spoke of the scene

there had been between Anna and Flora and it was then that Rosalie heard

for the first time of Anna’s most strange affliction. Harold said, “Of

course, the fact of the matter is that ever since Flora left school,

Anna’s had her nose put out of joint.”

Rosalie felt most awfully sorry for Anna. Often after that she used to

stare at Anna’s nose and the more so because there was nothing visible

the matter with it. Anna’s nose was a singularly long and straight nose;

now if it had been Flora’s nose that was out of joint!--for Flora’s nose

turned up in a very odd way. Rosalie slept in Anna’s room and that same

night, Anna’s disjointed nose and every other part of her face and head

being covered with the clothes when Rosalie went up to bed, Rosalie,

unable to sleep for curiosity and sympathy, got out of bed and lit the

candle and went across to look at Anna’s nose, and very gently felt it

with her finger. Absolutely nothing amiss to be seen or felt! But the

lashes of Anna’s eyes were wet and there were stains of tears upon the

upper side of the mysterious nose. It was true, then, for obviously it

hurt. And yet no sign!

Rosalie got back into bed feeling of her own nose rather anxiously.

Rosalie used formerly to sleep in Hilda’s room and Flora with Anna, but

she was changed one day by her sisters (without being consulted or

given any reason) and the new arrangement was continued. Anna was very

devotional. She used to say enormously long prayers night and morning.

She prayed in the middle of the night also, Rosalie used to think at

first, awakened and hearing her voice, but later found out that Anna

was talking in her sleep, a thing that was mysterious to Rosalie and

frightening. The room of Flora and Hilda, adjoined Anna’s and often at

night, when Rosalie was awakened by Anna undressing and lay watching her

at her immense prayers, the chattering voices of Flora and Hilda could

be heard through the wall and shrieks of high laughter. At that, Anna’s

shoulders used to shudder beneath her nightgown and she used to twist

herself lower on her knees. For some reason this also used rather to

frighten Rosalie.

Sometimes, but very seldom, Flora and Hilda used to quarrel; sometimes,

and more often, Hilda and Anna; nearly every day, as it seemed to

Rosalie, Anna and Flora. Rosalie got to dislike these quarrels very

much. They went on and on and on; that was the disturbing unpleasantness

of them. The parties to them would sit in a room and simply keep it

up forever, not arguing all the time, but between long pauses suddenly

coming out with things at one another; or they wouldn’t speak to one

another sometimes for days together, and all sorts of small enterprises

of Rosalie’s were interfered with by these ruptures of relations.

Innumerable things in Rosalie’s life seemed to her to depend on the

mutual good will of two quarrellers; many books, some old toys, walks,

combined games with Carlo who was Anna’s and Rover who was Flora’s;

innumerable delights with such seemed to be unexpectedly stopped because

of “Oh, no, if you prefer to be with Anna you can stay with Anna”; or,

“Oh, no. If you like Flora’s paints so much you can use Flora’s brushes;

these are my brushes.” A quarrel would in any case produce a strained

atmosphere in which everything became unnatural and this strained

atmosphere went on and on and on.

And the thing that Rosalie noticed was the complete difference between

these quarrels of her sisters and the quarrels between Harold and

Robert. Robert was rising between the years of fourteen and eighteen in

those days and Harold between twenty-two and twenty-six. Most violent

quarrels sometimes sprung up between them but they were physically

violent, that was the point, and after swift and appalling fury, and

terrible kicks from Robert and horrifying thumps from Harold they were

astonishingly soon over and done with and forgotten. On one awful day,

Rosalie saw Robert and Harold rolling on the floor together. Robert

bumped Harold’s head three most frightful bumps on the floor and said

between his teeth, “There! There! There!” Harold twisted himself up and

hurled Robert half across the room and then rushed at him and punched

him with punches that made Robert go, “Ur! Ur! Ur!”

Rosalie, at her age, ought to have cried with grief and dismay or to

have run away screaming; but instead she only watched with awe. With

terrified awe, as with the terrified awe that an encounter of tigers or

of elephants at the Zoo might arouse; but with awe and no sort of grief

as her sole emotion. Men were different. There it was again! They

did these fearful things, and these fearful things were much more

satisfactory to behold, not nearly so disturbing and aggravating to

watch, as the interminable bickerings of the quarrels of her sisters.

Her brothers’ quarrels were entirely different in all their aspects. In

the quarrels of her sisters, one or the other invariably cried if the

bickering went far enough. These two men, though Robert especially might

have been excused for bellowing, just solidly and only, with fearful

gasps, thumped and clutched and strove. Not a tear! Her sisters’

quarrels were always carried by one or the other to her mother or her

father. How extraordinarily different Robert and Harold! Their sole

anxiety was that neither father nor mother should be told! If any

one threatened to tell, the two, sinking their private heat, would

immediately band together against the talebearer. Extraordinary men! To

that particularly ferocious struggle that has been described, Anna

and Hilda had been attracted by the din, when Robert, overpowered, was

receiving terrible chastisement, and with cries and prayers had somehow

separated them. Behold, the very first coherent thing these two men did

was, while they still panted and glared upon one another, to unite in a

mutual threat.

“And look out you don’t go telling father or mother,” panted Harold to

the girls.

“Yes, mind you jolly well don’t,” panted Robert.

Anna said she certainly would.

Both the extraordinary creatures unitedly rounded on Anna. It might have

been thought that the battle had been, not between them, but between

them and the sisters who had saved them one from another. Astounding

men!

And most astounding of all to Rosalie was that at supper, little

more than an hour later, Harold and Robert presented themselves as

on exceptionally good terms of friendship. They talked and laughed

together. They had a long exchange of views about some football teams.

Harold laid down the law about the principle of four three-quarters in

Rugby football instead of three and Robert listened as to an oracle.

They had not been so friendly for weeks. And an hour before-! Yes, men

were different.

And Rosalie found that her sisters, too, knew how different and how

superior men were. Flora and Hilda seemed to Rosalie always to be

talking about men. Flora used to come into the schoolroom while Rosalie

was at her lessons and talk to Hilda. Rosalie was very fond of her

lessons and Hilda was an uncommonly good teacher and took a great

interest in leading Rosalie along the paths she had herself so recently

followed. But directly Flora came in, Hilda’s interest was entirely

diverted to what Flora had to say and to what she had to say to Flora,

and it was always about men,--boys or men. Rosalie would at once be put

to learning passages or working out exercises and Flora and Hilda would

go over to the window and talk. They talked mostly in whispers with

their heads close together; they laughed a good deal; they showed one

another letters. Often they came over to the table and wrote letters.

And they used to look up from their whisperings and say, “Go on with

your lessons, Rosalie.”

But it was very difficult to go on while they whispered and laughed

and it was also very troublesome to have Hilda’s most interesting

explanations suddenly cut short by the entrance of Flora. Rosalie began

to have the habit of saying “Oh, dear!” and going “Tchk!” with her

tongue when Flora came in. Also restlessly to say “Oh, dear!” and go

“Tchk!” when the whisperings and the laughing about men went on and

distracted her attention while she tried to do her exercises.

A new aspect of men began to grow out of this. Rosalie began to feel

rather aggrieved against boys and ten. They interfered.

And this went further. Just as boys and men spoilt lessons so they

began to spoil walks. While Hilda attended the Miss Pockets’ school and

Rosalie was taught by her mother, it was always her mother with whom

Rosalie took walks. Anna “never cared to go out” and Flora, whose

position in the house was more like that of Harold and Robert, did much

as she liked, and “dragging Rosalie about for walks” as she expressed

it, was not one of the things she liked. Rosalie therefore went out with

her mother until Hilda took her off her mother’s hands, when the taking

off included not only education but exercise. At the beginning, Hilda

showed herself as enthusiastic and as entertaining a walker as she

was teacher. She was ready for jolly scrambles through woods and over

fields, she was as keen as Rosalie on damming little watercourses, and

exploring woodland tracts, and other similar delights, and she had a

most splendid knowledge of the names of plants and flowers and birds

and insects and delighted to tell them to Rosalie. Rosalie had loved the

walks with her mother, always holding her dear hand, but she loved much

more, though in a different way, the walks with Hilda.

Then men began, in Rosalie’s private phrase, to “ruin” the walks.

First Flora took to joining the walks and she and Hilda talked and

talked together and always, as it seemed, about men, and Rosalie

just trailed along with them, their heads miles above hers and their

conversation equally out of her reach. But even that was not so bad as

it became. At least there were only her sisters and sometimes they

did talk to her, or sometimes one or other would break off from their

chatter and cry “Oh, poor Rosalie! We’ve not been taking the least

notice of you, have we? Now, what would you like to do?” And perhaps

they would run races, or perhaps explore, or perhaps tell her a story,

and Rosalie’s spirits would come bursting out from their dulness and all

would be splendid.

Not so when on the walks men, from being talked of, began to be met.

There were at Robert’s Grammar School certain young men who were in

no way connected with the school but were the “private pupils” of the

headmaster and were reading for the universities. One day Hilda started

for the walk in her church hat and Flora also in her church hat and her

church gloves. They walked very fast; Rosalie could hardly keep up. And

then at a corner of a lane they suddenly started to walk very slowly

indeed, and suddenly again at a stile, two of these young men were met.

The young men raised their hats much farther than Rosalie had ever seen

a man raise his hat and one of them said, “Well, you have come then?”

Flora said, “Well, we just happened to be strolling along this way.”

Then she said, “You needn’t imagine we came to see you!” which Rosalie

thought very rude; but the young men seemed to like it and all of them

laughed a great deal.

Presently they all started to walk together, Hilda and Flora in the

middle and one of the young men on either side. The walk lasted much

later than the walks usually lasted and the whole way Rosalie trailed

along behind; and on the whole afternoon the only words addressed to

Rosalie by her sisters came just as, the young men hav-ing taken their

leave a mile away, they were turning in at the rectory gate. Flora then

said, “Rosalie, darling, don’t tell mother or father or any one that we

met any one.” And Hilda said, “Yes, remember, Rosalie, you’re not to say

anything about that.”

After that, the young men were met, and the four walked, and Rosalie

trailed, nearly every day.

One of these young men was called Mr. Chalton and the other Mr. Ricks.

Like all men, and even more so, they were splendid and wonderful. They

had silver cigarette cases and smoked a lot, and they wore most handsome

waistcoats and ties, and some of their conversation that came back to

Rosalie, trailing behind, was of very wonderful and exciting things they

had done or were going to do. Mr. Holland, the headmaster of the Grammar

School, was the terror of Robert’s life, but it appeared that Mr.

Chalton and Mr. Ricks were not in the least afraid of Mr. Holland, and

they talked a great deal of what they would do to him if he ever tried

to interfere with them and a great deal of what they did do in the

way of utterly disregarding him. They were undeniably splendid and

wonderful, but they utterly ruined Rosalie’s walks and they greatly

intensified Rosalie’s new feelings towards men and boys,--that men and

boys were a great nuisance and spoilt things.

Time went along. Other young men were met. In the holidays, quite

a number of young men came for their vacations to their homes in

Ibbotsfield and the surrounding district. Certain of these, unlike

the Grammar School private pupils, called openly at the rectory on one

pretext or another, but they were nevertheless also met secretly by

Flora and Hilda, ruined the walks precisely as Messrs. Chalton and Ricks

had first ruined them, and were on no account to be mentioned by Rosalie

to her father or mother.

The reason for this secrecy was never explained to Rosalie and the

secrecy oppressed Rosalie. It took not only the form of being a thing

she was not able to tell to her mother, and Rosalie was in the habit of

telling everything she did to her mother, but it took also the form

of mysterious and vaguely alarming perils during the walks. An immense

watchfulness was kept up against chance encounters with people. One of

the party would often cry, “Look! Who’s this?” and the young men

would separate from the girls and appear as if they were walking by

themselves. Sometimes they would break right away and run off and not

be met again. Very often Rosalie would be sent on ahead to a turning and

told to come back at once if anybody was to be seen and then would be

examined as to who the person was. Sometimes she was posted to keep

watch while the girls and the young men slipped off somewhere, over

a gate or into a barn. She got to know by sometimes rushing in with

warnings that Flora and Hilda on these occasions smoked the young men’s

cigarettes. Then when they got home, they would rush up to their room

and wash their teeth and put scent on themselves. And invariably when

the young men took their leave at the end of a walk there would be long

and close whisperings in which were always to be heard the words, “Well,

say you were--” or “Look here, we’ll say we were--” and generally, “Go

away, Rosalie. There’s nothing for you to listen to.”

It all had the effect of making Rosalie feel unhappy and rather

frightened. She sometimes asked, “Why mustn’t I say anything to mother?”

She was always told, and only told, “Because father doesn’t like us

meeting men.”

No reason why father should not like them meeting men was ever given,

and Rosalie, ceaselessly disturbed by the concealment, could never

imagine what the reason could be. There could be no reason that she

could imagine; and she was thus immensely taken aback when one evening

at supper her father made a most surprising statement: “The girls have

no chance of ever meeting men in this infernal place.”

Amazing!

Rosalie’s father had been abusing Ibbotsfield and everything that

pertained to Ibbotsfield. Some question of expenses had started him. He

was storming in his wild way, addressing himself to Rosalie’s mother

but haranguing at large to all, everybody sitting in silence and with

oppressed faces, avoiding looking at one another and avoiding especially

the eyes of father. They were literally ground down with poverty,

Rosalie’s father was saying. He didn’t know what was going to happen to

them all. “It’s all this place, this infernal, buried-alive place. The

girls ought to be moving about and seeing people. How can they? Very

well. My mind’s made up. There’s my brother Tom in India. He could

have one of the girls. There’s your sister Mrs. Pounce in London. She’s

Rosalie’s godmother. What’s she ever done for Rosalie? Very well. My

mind’s made up. I shall write to Tom and I shall write to Belle. I shall

tell them how we are situated. It’s humiliating to have to tell them but

what’s humiliation? I’m accustomed to humiliation. Ever since we came

here, I have eaten the bread and drunk the water of humiliation. Now the

children are growing up to share it. What can they do in this loathsome

and forsaken and miserable place? What chance have the girls got? Can

you tell me that?”

He glared at Rosalie’s mother. It was clear that he regarded her as to

blame. Rosalie thought that her dear mother must be to blame. Her mother

looked so beaten and frightened. There was glistening in her eyes.

Rosalie’s heart felt utterly desolated for her mother. She wished

like anything she could say something for her dear mother. Then most

amazingly the chance to say something came.

“Can you tell me that?” cried Rosalie’s father. “What chance have the

girls of ever meeting men in this infernal place?”

Rosalie burst out, “Oh, but father, nearly every day--”

“Rosalie, don’t interrupt!” cried Flora very sharply.

“Rosalie, be quiet!” cried Hilda.

Father glared and then went on and on.

It was the beginning of a chain of most startling upheavals. It was

also, and the upheavals were also, a new manifestation to Rosalie of

the all-importance of men. After supper, in the first place, Flora and

Hilda, taking Rosalie very severely to task for her perilous outburst,

explained to her that the men they met were not the kind of men that

father meant they ought to meet. It was necessary, it was essential,

they explained, for every girl to meet men she could marry. That was

what every girl had to do. Men--surely you understand that, Rosalie--had

all the money and everything and met girls and asked them to marry.

Those men sometimes met on walks, you little stupid, were too young and

had no money yet. “There, that’s enough,” they explained. “Anyhow, we

shan’t be meeting them much more. One of us is probably going to India;

you heard what father said, didn’t you?... Well, of course you can’t

understand properly. You will when you’re grown up. Surely that’s quite

enough for you to understand at present.... How can a woman live if she

doesn’t marry, stupid? She must have money to live and it is men who

have the money.... Well, of course they do because they earn it; look

at Harold; and Robert will have money when he’s a little older.... Well,

how can women? Now, I said that’s enough and it is enough.”

It was enough and most satisfactorily enough for one purpose. It was

the first explanation of men as a race apart from women that Rosalie had

ever received and it precisely bore out all that she had conceived about

them. It affirmed her perception of the wonder and greatness of men as

compared with women. It intensified that perception.

Wonderful men! Marvellous and most fortunate men!

And then the chain of most startling upheavals began. Father wrote to

Uncle Tom in India. Father wrote to Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce,

in London. What he wrote was not to be known by Rosalie, outside the

rectory wheel. The others knew, for father, with enormous pride at his

wonderful epistolatory style in his voice, was heard reading the

letter to them. But the others, of course, knew also what Rosalie never

realised, the grinding poverty of the rectory. She knew no other life

than the herrings, the makeshifts, and the general shabbiness of

the rectory. It was not till long afterwards that, looking back, she

realised the pinching and the screwing that served--almost--to make ends

meet.

So father wrote. India was far, London was near. Aunt Belle’s reply

came while the letter to Uncle Tom was still upon the sea. Such a reply!

Wonderful father to win such a reply from Aunt Belle! “You see what it

is to be able to write a telling and forceful letter!” cried father.

Such an exciting reply! Aunt Belle was coming on a visit “to talk it

over and see what she could do.”

Aunt Belle came.

CHAPTER VI

Oh, a red carpet, a red carpet for Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, to come

into the story! And if at the end of the red carpet there could be an

“At Home” in the splendid drawing-room of Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce,

at Pilchester Square, Notting Hill, an At Home with about sixty-five

ladies crammed into it, all of them wives of most successful and

well-off men, mostly retired from the Indian Army and the Indian Civil

Service, and all of them chattering ecstatically, and nibbling, and

pluming themselves, and tinkling their teacups, and Aunt Belle, Mrs.

Pyke Pounce, enthroned in their midst, and owning everything and seeming

to own her five and sixty guests, and chattering and nibbling and

pluming and tinkling more ecstatically than any; and then if there could

come into them beautiful cousin Laetitia (when about fifteen) with sleek

black hair beautifully ribboned behind, and with pale, fine brow, and

wearing the sweetest white frock, and if she could move delightfully

about among her mother’s guests, and then play the sweetest little

trifle on the pianoforte to the delighted murmurs of the five and sixty

guests of her mother (“She’s under Pflunk. The great Pflunk!”); and then

if there could come in from the City Uncle Pyke, Colonel Pyke Pounce,

R.E., (retired) now director of several highly important companies, and

if Uncle Pyke, Colonel Pyke Pounce, R.E., could stand on the hearthrug

with his massy jowl and his determined stomach, and grunt, and rattle

the money in his pockets, and grunt again; and if then there could

come in the new parlour maid of Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, with her

tallness and her deftness and her slight, very slight, insolence of

air, and all the five and sixty gazing upon her as haughty but envious

patricians gazing upon a slave, and when she had gone swishing out if

Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, could tell all the sixty and five of

her tallness, her deftness and her slight, very slight, insolence of

manner----

Oh, if there could be this and these and a fine red carpet, how exactly

and how fittingly would Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, step upon the

scene!

“Dear thing!” That was Rosalie’s portrait and thought of her in long

after years. Dear thing! The drawing-room of her crowded triumphs is now

the shabby drawing-room of a second-rate boarding house; the jolly horse

bus she used so commandingly to stop in the Holland Park Avenue and so

regally to enter (whip-waving driver, cap-touching conductor) long

has given place to a thundering motor saloon that stops wheresoever it

listeth and wherein Aunt Belles and old-clothes women fight to hang by a

strap.

Dear thing! Her ownership of five and sixty guests is exchanged for

ownership of not more than seven and fifty inches of cold earth in

Brompton Cemetery. She is passed and Uncle Pyke, Colonel Pyke Pounce,

R.E., is grunted past to lay himself beside her. They are passed.

Up-reared upon her and upon him is a stupendous granite chunk (in a

way not unlike Uncle Pyke on his hearthrug) erected by their sorrowing

daughter. She is passed; she came into Rosalie’s life and Rosalie

crossed her life and she never forgave Rosalie.

Dear thing! Lie lightly on her, stones!

She came to the rectory “to talk it over and see what can be done” for

a week’s visit, and she stepped out of the cab, all the family assembled

to greet her, a new and most surprising figure such as Rosalie had never

seen before. She was dressed in startling fashions of a most wonderful

richness, and she had immense plumes in her hat that nodded when she

moved and trembled when she stood still, and she was herself either

always nodding with glittering animation or straightening her back and

quivering as if straining at a leash and just about to burst it and go

off. She was like Rosalie’s mother and yet not a bit like her. She was

older and yet terribly brisker and stronger. Those were the days when

frosted Christmas cards were of the artistic marvels of the age, and

Aunt Belle beside Rosalie’s mother somehow made Rosalie think of a

frosted card beside one of the plain cards. When Rosalie’s mother was in

a room you often might not know she was there; but when Aunt Belle was

in a room there seemed to be no one there except Aunt Belle. She began

to talk, in a voice as high as the house, while she was still descending

from the cab on her arrival, and the only time Rosalie ever saw her not

talking was during service in Church on Sunday, when she was alternately

glittering or whispering or else bending down so extraordinarily low

that Rosalie thought she was going to lie prone upon the floor.

Dear thing! She was so kind to Rosalie and so kind to them all, and

yet----And yet they all, except Rosalie who was too small (then) to

appreciate the resented quality in Aunt Belle’s kindness, and Rosalie’s

mother who was too gentle to resent anything, and yet they all, save

Rosalie and her mother, loathed and abominated Aunt Belle. It was her

way of doing things. She gave kind gifts, but it was the way she gave

them. She admired everything and everybody in the rectory, but it was

the way she admired. She said most kind and affectionate things, but it

was her way of saying them.

“Why, how very nice indeed!” That was her insistent comment upon

everything in the rectory. But the tone was, “How very nice indeed--for

you.”

That was the trouble. That was what made Harold (who at twenty-six

was getting very like his father) hurl about a thousand miles over the

garden wall the three apples Aunt Belle gave him as his share of the

“very best apples from the Army and Navy Stores” which she brought down

with other “goodies” for “the dear children”; and made, him grit his

teeth after she had been in the house two days and cry, “Dash her! Poor

relations; that’s how she treats us! I’m dashed if I’m a poor relation.

I’m earning three pound ten a week at the Bank and I bet that appalling

old Uncle Pyke didn’t get it or anything like it at my age!”

Dear thing! “She meant it kindly.” That was the sweet apologetic excuse

with which Rosalie’s mother followed the track of the storms Aunt Belle

aroused and with which she sought to abate them. “She means it kindly.

She means it kindly, dear.”

It should be Aunt Belle’s epitaph. It ought to be graven upon that

granite chunk in Brompton Cemetery. “She meant it kindly!”

Issuing from the cab, Aunt Belle began by kissing Rosalie’s mother in

a most astonishing series of kisses that whizzed from cheek to cheek so

that it was a miracle to Rosalie that the two noses did not collide and

her dear mother’s be knocked right off; and then most enthusiastically

kissed all the family, applying to each the phrase with which she began

on Harold “Well, well, so this is Harold!” (As if it were the most

astounding and unexpected thing in the world that it was Harold.) “So

this is Harold! Why, what a great big clever fellow, and what a comfort

to your dear mother, I am sure!” And then gazed rapturously upon the

house and said to Rosalie’s mother and to them all, “Well, well, what a

very, very nice house, to be sure!”

(“For you!”)

She meant it kindly. Her manner of talking about herself and about her

possessions was not that of bragging or of conscious superiority;

it was, to the whole rectory family, and to all poorer than herself

wherever she met them, that of one entertaining a party of children--of

a kind lady telling stories to a group of round-eyed infants. When she

first had tea on the afternoon of her arrival, she gazed upon the silver

teapot as it was carried in and exclaimed, “Well, well, what a very,

very handsome teapot! And hot-water jug to match! How very, very nice!

Now how ever do you think I keep my water hot at tea? I have a very

nice service all in silver gilt! It looks just like gold! And there’s

a kettle to match with a spirit flame under it. The maid brings in the

kettle boiling and we just light the spirit with a match and there it is

gently boiling all the time!”

Dusk drew in and the lamps were lit. “Lamps!” ecstatically exclaimed

Aunt Belle! “How nice! And Hilda keeps the lamps clean, does she? What a

dear, helpful girl and how very, very bright and nice they are! Now what

do you think? In my house, everywhere, even in the kitchen, we’ve got

this new electric light! Your kind uncle Pyke had it put in for me.

Installed, as they call it. Now, just fancy, all you have is a little

brass knob by each door, and you just touch a little switch, and there’s

your light! No matches, no trouble, just click! and there you are.

Of course it was very expensive, but your Uncle Pyke insisted upon my

having it. He always will insist upon my having everything of the best.”

Dear thing! The echo of her ceaseless tongue brings her exactly to

life again--glittering, chattering, pluming, presenting, praising--her

servants! her house! her parties! her friends! her daughter! her

husband!--Oh, yes, a red carpet! a red carpet for Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke

Pounce, to come into the story, and so (at the end of her visit) into

Rosalie’s life like this:

“And Rosalie is going away to school! To a boarding school in London

where there will be ever so many very nice playmates of her own age, and

such romps, and such good wholesome food, and such nice, kind, clever

mistresses! Why, what a lucky, lucky girl! There, Rosalie, what do you

think of that? You are my godchild, and I and your kind uncle Pyke are

going to send you to school and pay for your education because of course

we are well off and can afford it and your dear mother and father can’t.

There! Now isn’t that delightful? Come and give me a nice kiss then. The

dear child!”

Tremendous moment! Supernal upheaval! First and greatest upheaval of the

chain of upheavals! Rosalie was to go away to school!

That was at the rectory breakfast table on the last morning of the

visit, and that was Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, coming into Rosalie’s

life. “Come and give me a kiss then”; that was kind, kind Aunt Belle,

inviting acknowledgment of her kindness and the kindness of Uncle Pyke

(with a cheque) and the kindness of Cousin Laetitia (with a box of

beautiful cast-off clothes that would do beautifully for Rosalie’s

school outfit). “The dear child!” That was Aunt Belle’s acknowledgment

of Rosalie’s most dutiful and most affectionate and most delighted kiss.

(Most amazed and excited and rather fearful Rosalie! Going to school!

Going away to a boarding school in London!)

“The dear child!” Such a warm and loving kiss from Rosalie! And time

was to prove it the kiss of Judas! Yes, in a few years, “I’ve done

everything for you!” Aunt Belle was to cry. “Everything! And this is the

return I get!”

CHAPTER VII

Next, in its turn, and exactly a fortnight before the beginning of the

term at which Rosalie was to join the boarding school in London, came

the letter from Uncle Tom in India, and with it the beginning of the

second upheaval in the chain of upheavals.

All of this upheaval was very bewildering to Rosalie. She never

understood it properly. At the beginning it had nothing at all to do

with Anna, and yet Anna from the very first reading of Uncle Tom’s

letter--All that Rosalie understood of it was this.

First the letter came. Tremendous excitement! Father in wild excitement,

Flora and Hilda in frantic excitement, everyone in highest excitement.

Father read the letter aloud at breakfast to Rosalie’s mother and to the

girls. Such a splendid letter, said father. Really, Tom was a splendid

fellow, said father. He had wronged Tom. He had thought Tom selfish in

his wealthy indifference. By Jove, Tom wasn’t. “By Jove, the way Tom

wrote almost brought tears to your eyes. Listen to this. Listen, mother.

Listen, you girls.”

Uncle Tom, said the letter, would by all means, old man, have one of the

girls. He’d no idea that things were so bad with you. Poor old man! Why

didn’t you tell us before? He was sending home a small draft to Field

and Company, his bankers, to help towards the girl’s outfit and her

passage money. “‘Which girl shall you send?’ you ask. Well, it’s no

good asking us, old man. You must decide that for yourselves. She’ll be

abundantly welcome, whichever it is, and we can promise her a jolly good

time. We are at Simla most of the year. If you want my advice which girl

to send, send the pretti--”

Father stopped reading.

Rosalie was staring at Anna. Anna’s face, which had been pale, suddenly

went crimson. The suddenness and the violence of it was extraordinary.

One moment she had been pale. In the next, she was burning red. It was

exactly as if a crimson paint had suddenly been dashed over the whole

of her face. It was extraordinary. Whatever was it? That nose of hers,

perhaps? a sudden frightful twinge like Rosalie once had had a sudden

most awful jump in a tooth? But Anna didn’t say anything and no one

but Rosalie seemed to notice it. They were all intent upon father. So

intent! Flora’s eyes were simply shining!

And Flora’s eyes soon after that were shining more than ever. She was

wild with excitement. Rosalie heard the news just before tea. Flora was

going to India to Uncle Tom!

“Oh,” cried Flora, “I’m so excited I simply don’t know what to do with

myself!” It was all arranged. Father had settled it. She was to go in

about six weeks’ time. Very shortly she was to go up to London with

father and buy heaps of clothes and all sorts of things. They were going

to stay at a hotel. “Not with Aunt Belle, thank goodness!” said Flora.

“At a hotel! Fancy that!” Mother wasn’t going and Flora was glad mother

wasn’t going. She would have a much better time with father. Father had

decided everything. He had decided that mother couldn’t leave him in the

rectory with all the housekeeping to look after, and the change would do

him good, and Aunt Belle would be able to help with the shopping. They

were going to see some theatres and all kinds of things and were going

to have a most splendid time and then, soon afterwards--India! “Oh I

shall go mad with excitement in a minute!” cried Flora.

The next thing was in the evening. Rosalie, searching for her mother

to ask her something, could not find her. She went into her mother’s

bedroom and there was the most surprising thing. There was Anna on

her knees by her mother and her head on her mother’s lap and Anna was

sobbing; and she was crying in her sobs, “But it’s my right! I’m the

eldest. It’s my right!”

Rosalie stood there, unnoticed, amazed. Whatever was it?

Rosalie’s mother stroked Anna’s head and spoke very softly, “My darling!

My darling!” She said, “My darling, your father has decided. Your father

knows best. Men always know best, my darling.”

“It’s my right, mother. It’s my right. It’s always Flora. Oh, why should

it always be Flora?”

“Dear Anna. Poor Anna. You must be reasonable, dear Anna. We women must

always be reasonable. Don’t you see that your father thinks of me? He

thinks my eldest girl--my dear eldest girl--ought to stay at home to

look after her mother. It’s on my account, dear Anna. He thinks of me.”

“Oh, mother, what’s the good of telling me that? A lot he thinks of

you or ever has! Why is he going up to London with Flora when it’s your

place to go? A lot he thinks of you! You say we must be reasonable. You

can be. You’ve been unselfish all your life. I can’t be. Not in this.

I’ve never had a pleasure in my life; I’ve never had a chance; I’ve

never had anything done for me. Ever since I can remember it’s always

been Flora, Flora, Flora. Now there’s this. I’m getting on, mother. I’m

nearly twenty-four. What have I got to look forward to? Flora’s younger,

Flora’s different. She’ll have lots of chances of enjoying herself. This

is my right. It’s my right, mother.”

“My dear Anna. My eldest girl. My first dear, sweet girlie. How could I

do without you? How happy we’ve been. How happy we will be.”

Rosalie crept away.

After a time, Flora and her father went away on the great visit to

London. They were to be away over two Sundays. A clergyman was coming

from Ashborough to take service at the church. Rosalie’s father went off

in spirits as high and youthful as the spirits of Flora. For days before

he was quite a different man. Everybody was asked to choose a present

which he would bring back. Everybody chose with much excitement and

chaffing except Anna, who said she could not think of anything. At

meals, father kept on saying how he wished he could regularly make a

point of getting up to town for a bit, it made all the difference being

able to get away from this infernal place for a bit. When herrings were

on the table, he actually came round and did her herring for Rosalie’s

mother and Rosalie’s mother was able to eat the whole of it and said how

delicious it was and how clever father was.

It was all splendid. Rosalie had never known such a jolly spirit in the

house. The only thing that spoilt Rosalie’s happiness in the new jolly

spirit was the nights in Anna’s room. Anna was most frightening to

Rosalie. She prayed now longer than ever, her shoulders moving beneath

her nightgown as if she was shuddering all the time she prayed. And at

night she talked more than ever in her sleep; also she used to get out

of bed at night and walk about the room and talk aloud to herself. It

was frightening.

Then Flora and father were in London and tremendous long letters came

from Flora to her mother and to all: they were buying heaps of dresses

and underclothes and white drill coats and skirts and a riding habit and

goodness knows what all. “A regular trousseau!” wrote Flora with

about seventeen marks of exclamation after the word. And all they were

seeing--they had been to the Lyceum Theatre and seen Mr. Henry Irving

and Miss Ellen Terry and to the Savoy and seen “The Mikado.” Every

moment of the day was taken up and half the night. Oh, this was a change

from Ibbotsfield!

Anna would never listen to the letters. When they were read out, she

either would put her fingers in her ears or go out of the room. And yet,

curiously, she often later in the day would say in a funny constricted

voice, “Let me see Flora’s letter. Give it to me, will you please?” And

would take it away and read it by herself.

Anna was stranger and stranger in her manner and in her behaviour at

night. Rosalie came quite to dread the nights. Anna began to pray out

loud. She used to pray over and over again the same thing: “It’s not

that I’m jealous, O Lord. O purge my heart of jealousy. It is that I see

what could be and what ought to be for me and what never will be for me.

I’ve nothing to look forward to, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. It

is hard for women. O God, thou knowest how hard it is for women.”

It was frightening.

Then came the second Sunday of the absence in London. In the night of

Saturday, Rosalie was again awakened by the sounds of Anna and again

heard her praying and again heard “It is hard for women. O God, thou

knowest how hard it is for women.”

She had heard it so often! Anna seemed to have stopped praying. There

was a light in the room and Rosalie saw that Anna, on her knees, had her

head and arms thrown forward on the bed more as if she were asleep than

praying. “It is hard for women.” Rosalie had heard Anna say that so

often. And she was going to be a woman one day. And she had always known

that men were the important and wonderful people of the world. Now Anna

said that for women it was hard and that God knew it was hard. Why?

She peered across again. Anna certainly had done her prayers. She said,

“Anna. Anna. Why is it hard for women?”

Anna started to her knees and turned her body round. “Rosalie! Why are

you awake? You’ve no right to be awake.”

“No, but I am. I woke up. Anna, why is it hard for women?”

“You weren’t meant to hear. You couldn’t understand.”

“But I would like to know, Anna.”

Anna got up and came across to Rosalie’s bed; and by her manner, and by

her voice, and by the tall white figure she was, frightened Rosalie. She

said, “Go to sleep. You can sleep. Why don’t you when you can? One day

perhaps you’ll be like me and can’t.”

It reminded Rosalie of “Sleep on now and take your rest” in the Bible,

and frightened her. Anna said, “It’s hard for women because men can do

what they like but women can’t.” She turned away. She stood still and

said with her back to Rosalie, “I’ve got a longing here.” Her hands were

clasped and she brought them up and struck them against her breast with

a thud. “And I always have had and I always will have. Here. Burning.

Aching. And when you’ve got a longing like that you must--you must--”

Then she said very violently, “I hate men. I hate them. I hate them.”

Then she went very quickly to the candlestick on the dressing table and

fumbled with it to blow it out, and it fell on the ground and broke and

the room was black.

The next day was Sunday. Anna said she would not go to Church as she had

a headache. Rosalie had been invited to spend the day with the little

girl of Colonel and Mrs. Measures and she had lunch and tea there and

then came home. The path from the gate to the house was bounded by a

thick hedge. On the right was the rectory paddock and through the hedge

Rosalie saw that something very strange was going on in the paddock.

Away in the corner where there was a little copse with a pond in the

middle was a crowd of people, some men from the village and her mother

and Robert and some others. Whatever was it? While she peered, Harold

came running out of the group towards the house. His coat was off,

and his waistcoat; and his shirt and trousers looked funny and he ran

funnily. He came near Rosalie and she saw that he was dripping wet.

Had he fallen in the pond? Then two men came round from the back of the

house carrying something, and Harold ran to them and they all ran with

the thing to the pond. It looked like the door of the shed they were

carrying. Rosalie scrambled through the hedge and ran towards the pond.

Some one called out “Here’s Rosalie.” Hilda came out from among the

people and waved her arms and called out, “Go back! Go back! You’re not

to come here, Rosalie! You’re not to come here!” Rosalie stood still.

People were stooping. They had the door on the ground and Harold and

a man were stooping and walking backwards over the door, carrying

something. Presently there was more stooping, and then Harold and Robert

and three men were carrying the door between them and walking as if

the door were very heavy. Whatever was happening? Hilda came running to

Rosalie. She was crying. “Rosalie, you’re to keep away. You’re not to

come into the house yet. I’ll tell you when you can come. Go and stay in

the garden till I tell you.”

Rosalie wandered about by the drive. Whatever was the matter? Robert

appeared with his bicycle. Harold came out after him. “Go to Ashborough

station with it, you understand. See the station master. Tell him

it must be sent off at once. Tell him what has happened.” Robert was

sniffling and nodding. Away went Robert, bending over the handle bar of

his bicycle, riding furiously.

Evening began to come on. Rosalie was wandering at the back by the

stables when Hilda came out through the kitchen door. “Rosalie, I’ve

been looking for you. Rosalie, Anna is--dead.”

They went in through the kitchen. On the big kitchen clothes rail before

the fire were clothes of Anna’s. They were muddy and sopping wet and

steam was rising off them.

Rosalie ran to her mother to cry.

“Ran to her mother to cry.” That’s a thing not to pass over without a

stop. Lucky, lucky Rosalie to have one to whom to take her grief! You

can imagine her small heart’s twistings by those days of sorrow, of

terrifying and mysterious and dreadful things that the child never could

clearly have understood; of grief, of mourning; of atmosphere most

eerie made of whispers, of tiptoe treading, of shrouded windows, of

conversations, as of conspirators, shut off with “Not in front of

Rosalie.” “Hush, not now. Here’s Rosalie.”

Yes, twisting stuff that; but in that “ran to her mother to cry”

something that much more dreadfully twists the heart than those. Those

were for Rosalie--they are for all--but frets upon the sands of time

that each most kind expunging day, flowing from dawn to sunset like a

tide, heals and obliterates. There are no common griefs, and death’s a

common grief, that can be drawn above that tide’s highwater mark. But

there’s that sentence: “Rosalie ran to her mother to cry.” That’s of the

aching voids of life, deep-seated like a cancer, that no tide reaches.

That twists the heart to hear it because--O happy Rosalie!--the aching

thing in life is not having where you can take your weariness. Your

successes, your triumphs, there are a hundred eyes to shine with yours

in those. Oh, it is the defeats you want where to tell--some one you can

take the defeats to, the failures, the lost things; the lamps that are

gone out, the hopes that are ashes, the springs that spring no more,

the secret sordid things that eat you up, that hedge you all about, that

draw you down. Those! To have some one to tell those to! Yes, there’s a

thought that comes with living: Let who may receive a man’s triumphs; to

whom a soul can take its defeats, that one has the imprint of Godhood.

They walk near God.

Awfully frightening days followed for Rosalie. There wasn’t a room that

wasn’t dark and frightening with all the blinds down, and wasn’t a voice

that wasn’t dark and frightening, all in whispers; and then came this

that closed them and that was like a finger pressed right down on

Rosalie.

There was that Rosalie in the church at the funeral service. She sat

at the inner end of the pew with Hilda beside her. The coffin had stood

before the altar all night, with the lamps lit all night, and Rosalie

believed her father had stayed with it all night. He was struck right

down by what had happened, Rosalie’s father. She had heard him, when

Anna lay on the bed, and he crouched beside her, crying out loud, “I

hated my lot! O God, I was blind to this my child that shared my lot!”

Well, there was that Rosalie in the pew beside Hilda, and while she

waited for her father to begin (ever and ever so long he was upon his

knees at the altar, his back to them) while she waited she turned back

the leaves of her prayer book from the burial service and noticed with

a curious interest the correctness of the order in which the special

services came. There, in its order, was the complete record of life.

Rosalie must have had an imagination and she must have had budding then

what was a strong characteristic of her afterwards,--a very orderly

mind. She appreciated the correctness of the order of the services and

she turned them over one by one and could imagine it, like a story:

that record of a life. First the service of Baptism; you were born

and baptised. Then the Catechism; you were a child and learnt your

catechism. Then the Order of Confirmation; you were getting older and

were confirmed. Then the marriage service; you were married. Then the

Order for the Visitation of the Sick: you were growing old and you were

ill. Then the Burial Service; you died. Born, brought up, growing up,

married, ill, dead. Yes, it was like a story. Rosalie turned on. The

next service was called The Churching of Women. It was new to Rosalie.

She had never noticed it before. “Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty

God of His goodness to give you safe deliverance...” Rosalie had heard

the word deliverance used in the Bible in connection with death. She

thought this must be a service special to the burial of a woman--of

Anna. She read the small print. “The woman at the usual time after her

delivery shall come into the church decently apparelled....” Decently

apparelled? Anna was in one of those nightgowns in which Rosalie so

often had seen her praying. “... and there shall kneel down in some

convenient place.” Kneel down? How could she?...

There came upon the book while Rosalie pondered it the long,

black-gloved forefinger of Hilda. It turned back the thin leaves to the

burial service and then pushed over one or two of the thin leaves and

indicated certain places. Then Hilda’s new black hat was touching her

own new black hat, and Hilda whispered, “Where it says ‘brother’ and

‘his’ father will say ‘sister’ and ‘her.’ It’s written for men, do you

see?”

Always for men! Even in the prayer book!

And it was because of men that Anna had drowned herself in the pond.

Over and over again Rosalie had thought of that, wondering upon it,

shuddering at the thought of men because of it. How she came to know

that Anna had not died as ordinary people die, but had drowned herself

in the pond she never could remember. No one told her. Rosalie

was twelve then but the others were all so much older, and were so

accustomed to treating Rosalie as so very much younger, that the pain

and mystery of poor Anna’s death was outstandingly of the class of

things that were kept within the established wheel of the rectory by

“Not in front of Rosalie,” or “Hush, here’s Rosalie.”

The effect was that when Rosalie somehow found out, she felt it to be

a guilty knowledge. She was not supposed to know and she felt she ought

not to have known. And sharing, but secretly, the others’ knowledge that

Anna had drowned herself in the pond, she supposed that they equally

shared with her her knowledge of why poor Anna had drowned herself in

the pond--because of men. She overheard many conversations that assured

her in this belief. “Some man we knew nothing about,” the conversation

used to say. “What else could it have been? Hush, here’s Rosalie.”

And again, after they had all been out of the house to attend what was

called the inquest, “You heard what the coroner said--that there was

almost invariably something to do with a man in these cases. Poor Anna!

Poor darling Anna. If she had only told us. What else could it have

been? Harold, hush! Not in front of Rosalie!”

Of course it was nothing else. It was that. It was men. Anna had said

so. “I hate men. I hate them.” Yes, men had done this to Anna.

Her mind went violently, as it were with a violent clutch of both her

hands, as of one in horrible dark, clutching at means of light, to the

thought that next week she was to be away at school--to be right away

and in the safe middle of lots and lots of girls, and only girls. She

had a frightening, a shuddering, at the thought of men who caused these

terrible things to be done, who mysteriously and horribly somehow had

done this thing to Anna.

The long, black finger poked at the page again. “There. ‘This our

brother.’ Father will say ‘This our sister.’ Do you see, Rosalie? This

our sister.”

A shower of tears sprang out of Rosalie’s eyes and pattered upon the

page.

She wiped them. She set her teeth. A new and most awful concern

possessed her. ‘This our sister.’ Would father remember? When he came

to brother would he remember to say sister? And when ‘his’ would he

remember to say ‘her?’ She searched for the places. A most frightful

agitation seized her that father would forget. What would happen if he

forgot?

And at the very first place father did forget!

They were come from the church to the grave. They were grouped about

that most terrible and frightening pit. Rosalie was clutching her

mother’s dear hand, and in her other hand held her prayer book. There

it was, the first place for the change. Brokenly her father’s voice came

out upon the air, and at his very first word--the fatal word--Rosalie

caught her breath in sharp and agonized dismay.

“Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of

misery....”

She called out--she could not help it--“Father!”

Her mother’s hand, squeezing hers, restrained her.

The broken voice went on “... cometh up and is cut down like a flower.”

She heaved relief. No one had noticed it. It was all right. No one else

had heard the terrible mistake. It was all right. But it was very wrong.

Above all other places this was the place that should have been changed.

Woman... that is full of misery. How could it ever be Man? Anna, in

almost her last words, had said it. “It is hard for women” and that

God knew it was hard for them--“O God, thou knowest how hard it is for

women.”

In the next week she went away to school.

PART TWO--HOUSE OF WOMEN

CHAPTER I

What anybody can have nobody wants; but what only one person can have

there’s a queue to get.

This is an elementary principle of the frailty of human nature, and

knowledge of it, and experience of its mighty truth, used to cause,

during the three holiday periods of the year, a standing advertisement

to appear on the front page of the Morning Post.

“High-class Ladies’ School for the Daughters of Gentlemen of the

Professions has UNEXPECTED VACANCY for ONE ONLY pupil at reduced

terms--Mrs. Impact, Oakwood House School, St. John’s Wood, London.”

ONE ONLY pupil! That was the magic touch.

The very first words addressed to Rosalie by a fellow boarder at Oakwood

House were from a short, sharp-featured girl of her own age, which then

was twelve, who said to her sharply, “You’re a One Only. I can see you

are. Aren’t you a One Only?”

“Well, I’m by myself,” said Rosalie, not understanding but most anxious

to say the right thing.

“Stupid, you’re not,” said the sharp girl, “because I’m with you. Did

your mother see the advertisement in the Morning Post? The advertisement

of this school?”

It happened that Rosalie knew her mother had seen it for Aunt Belle had

shown it to her and to them all. “One of the very best schools,”

Aunt Belle had said. “You see, it’s only quite by chance there was a

vacancy.”

“Yes, she did,” said Rosalie.

“She’s the cat’s grandmother,” said the sharp girl. “Never say ‘she’ for

a person’s name. Well, if your mother saw the advertisement then you

are a One Only at reduced terms, and I knew you were directly I saw you.

Now, tell me. Don’t blink--unless of course you’re an idiot; all idiots

blink. Tell me. Was that dress made for you or was it cut down?”

“It was my cousin Laetitia’s,” said Rosalie.

“Of course it was,” returned the sharp girl very triumphantly. “Every

One Only’s clothes are cut down for her. Poopers! Do you know what a

pooper is? A pooper is half a poop and half a pauper. Every One Only’s

a pooper. Well, now you know what you are. You see that girl over there.

Do you know what she is?”

Rosalie said she did not.

“She’s a Red Indian.”

“Is she?” said Rosalie, much surprised, for the girl did not look in the

least like a Red Indian.

“Ask her,” said the sharp girl. “Do you know what I am?”

Rosalie shook her head.

“Answer,” said the sharp girl.

“No, I don’t,” said Rosalie.

“I’m a Sultan,” said the sharp girl. “All the nice girls are Sultans and

the school belongs to them. Do I look nice?”

“Very,” said Rosalie, though she did not think so.

“Then why didn’t you know I was a Sultan? The school belongs to the

Sultans. The One Onlys and the Red Indians are interlopers, especially

the One Onlys. Always shudder when you see a Sultan. Shudder now.”

Rosalie wriggled her shoulders.

“Again, poop.”

Rosalie repeated the wriggle.

“Vanish, poop,” said the sharp girl, and herself sprung away with

mysterious crouching bounds, her head thrust forward, looking very like

Gagool, the witch, in King Solomon’s Mines; and was seen by Rosalie to

pounce upon another small girl who was probably a One Only and, from her

forlorn aspect, certainly a sad and desolated new.

One Onlys, Red Indians, Sultans. They were the three castes into which

the girls divided themselves: One Onlys the poopers brought by the

advertisement; Red Indians the daughters of parents resident in India;

Sultans the proud creatures who paid full fees and took their title from

the nickname of the headmistress--the Sultana. This Oakwood House School

in which Rosalie now found herself was one of those very big old houses

with a spacious, walled-in garden that probably was occupied in the

Fifties somewhere, when St. John’s Wood was out in the country, by a

wealthy old City merchant who rode in to business two or three times

a week, never dreaming that one day London was going to stretch miles

beyond St. John’s Wood, and his imposing residence go dropping down the

scale of fashion eventually to become a school for young ladies who on

their crocodile walks would huddle, giggling, along the kerbstone while

the dangerous traffic roared up and down the Maida Vale highway.

Those crocodiles! There was a news agent’s shop just opposite where the

crocodile used to cross when it went out every morning, and one of the

great excitements of the walk was to get around the corner and see what

the newspaper bills had to tell. There were about forty girls at the

school--a crocodile twenty files long--and on the days of sensational

events the news from the placards used to come flashing back in

emotional little screams from the head of the crocodile, gazing with

goggling eyes, to the tail of the crocodile pressing deliriously up

behind. “The Maybrick Case”; “Jack the Ripper Again”; “Death of the Duke

of Clarence”; “Loss of H.M.S. Victoria”; Rosalie never afterwards could

hear those terrific things referred to without recalling instantly the

convulsions of the crocodile and experiencing within her own bosom the

tumults that contributed their share to the convulsions. She was in the

writhing tail of the crocodile when “Jack the Ripper Again” caused it

almost to swoon, and she was in its weeping head when “Death of the Duke

of Clarence” and “Loss of H.M.S. Victoria” struck its orderly coils into

a tangled and hysterical knot.

Mrs. Impact, who kept this school, was a massive and frightening figure

of doom who wore always upon her head, and was suspected of sleeping

in, a strange erection having the appearance of a straw beehive. She was

called the Sultana and her appearance and her habits seemed to Rosalie

precisely the appearance and habits that would belong to a sultana. The

Sultana appeared virtually never among the girls. The direction of the

discipline and education of the pupils was in the hands of the chief of

the Sultana’s staff of badly paid and much intimidated mistresses. This

chief of staff, by name Miss Ough, but called the Vizier, appeared

from and disappeared into the quarters occupied by the Sultana, and was

popularly supposed to be kept there in a dungeon. If you were near

the door through which the Vizier passed from public gaze there was

unquestionably to be heard shortly afterwards a metallic clank. This was

the portal of the Vizier’s dungeon being closed upon her and was very

shuddering to hear. The Vizier, moreover, like one long incarcerated,

was skeletonized of form, cadaverous and sallow of countenance, and grew

upon her face, as all right prisoners in royal custody grow, a thick

covering of greyish down.

A second known inhabitant of the Sultana’s quarters was Mr. Ponders, her

butler, who sometimes slid into the classrooms in a very eerie way with

messages and whom Rosalie came to know strangely well; a third, but he

did not exactly live in the awful regions, was the Sultana’s husband.

The Sultana’s husband lived in two rooms over the stable. From the front

classroom windows he was to be seen every morning disappearing through

the front gates at about eleven o’clock; very shiny top hat; very tight

tail coat; very tight grey trousers; very tight yellow gloves;

very tight grey-yellow moustache; very tight pasty face; curiously

constricted, jerky gait as though his boots, too, were very tight.

Precisely the sort of chronic, half-tipsy hanger-on one used to see

in billiard rooms or eating cloves in West End bars. By association of

ideas with the orientalism of Sultana he was called by the girls the

Bashibazook.

Junior to Miss Ough, the vizier, were four or five other mistresses, all

known by nicknames. Children are exactly like savages in their horrible

sharpness at picking out physical peculiarities and labelling by them.

One would imagine these governesses, judged by their nicknames, a

deplorable collection of oddities. Actually they must have been a

presentable enough and a capable enough set of spinsters, though

sicklied o’er by the pale cast of indifferent personalities,

indifferently housed, indifferently fed, indifferently paid; all

anaemic, all without any prospects whatsoever, all dominated by and

domineered over by the masterful personality of the Sultana.

Only one of them contributed to the life of Rosalie and this was

“Keggo,” Miss Keggs, who taught mathematics. This Keggo was rather like

Anna in appearance, Rosalie thought, and was most popular of all the

mistresses with the girls, partly because of her bright moments in which

she was a human creature and an entertaining creature; partly because

of her curiously supine periods in which she would be utterly listless,

allow her class to do anything they liked provided they kept perfectly

quiet, and would make no attempt whatsoever to correct idleness or to

impart the lesson of the hour. Miss Keggs had been known to knock over

the inkpot on her desk and sit and watch the ink dripping in a pool

on to the floor without making the least attempt even to upstand the

vessel. No one knew why Keggo had these moods. But it was known that for

her to come into class looking rather flushed was a sign foreshadowing

them.

She appeared to take a fancy to Rosalie from the first, and Rosalie to

her, probably by reason of the fancied resemblance to Anna. She invited

Rosalie to her room and Rosalie loved to go there because the One Onlys

were in a very weak and humble minority in Rosalie’s first term and

were rather hunted by the Sultans who were then particularly strong in

numbers and rich in apparel, in pocket money, and in friends. The poor

little One Onlys led rather abashed lives and they had no chance at all

around the playroom fire where the Sultans stretched their elegant legs

and warmed their shapely toes.

One evening in her first few weeks Rosalie had to take an exercise up

to Miss Keggs, and Miss Keggs’s room was warm, and Miss Keggs like

Anna, and Rosalie lingered and was invited to linger; after that Rosalie

sought and invented reasons for going up to Miss Keggs’s room and Miss

Keggs would nearly always say, “Well, you may stay a little, Rosalie, as

you’re here.”

Miss Keggs’s room was right at the top of the house where were also the

servants’ room and the room shared by Miss Downer and Miss Frost. It was

a long, narrow room with sloping ceiling and the window high up in the

ceiling. In the winter it was warmed with a small oil stove which smelt

terribly when you first went in but to the smell of which you almost at

once got accustomed. It was curious to Rosalie that even in summer when

there was no oil stove there was nearly always a very strong smell

in Miss Keggs’s room. Miss Keggs used eau de Cologne for bathing her

forehead and temples on account of the very bad headaches from which

she said she suffered and the smell was like eau de Cologne but with an

unpleasantly harsh strong tang in it, like bad eau de Cologne, Rosalie

used to think. However, you almost at once got accustomed to that also.

These headaches of Miss Keggs were a symptom of the very bad health from

which she suffered, and on the occasions of Rosalie’s visits to her

room Miss Keggs was very communicative about her ill health. It was the

reason, she told Rosalie, why, alone of all the mistresses, she had a

room to herself instead of sharing one. The Sultana had granted her that

privilege, provided she would use this remote and rather poky attic,

because it was so essential she should be quiet and undisturbed.

“Don’t you have any medicine, Miss Keggs?” said the small Rosalie,

in one part genuinely sympathetic and in the other eager to discuss

anything that would prolong her stay by the warm oil stove.

“Nothing does me any good,” said Miss Keggs wearily. After a minute

she added, “But I really am feeling very bad to-night. Mr. Ponders very

kindly gives me some medicine that relieves my bad attacks. I wonder,

Rosalie, if you could find your way down to Mr. Ponders and give him

this medicine bottle and ask him if he could very kindly oblige me with

a little of my medicine?”

“Oh, I’m sure I could, Miss Keggs,” cried Rosalie, delighted at the

opportunity of doing a service.

Miss Keggs became extraordinarily animated with the feverish animation

of one who, having made up her mind after hesitation, furiously tramples

hesitation under foot.

“Go right downstairs,” directed Miss Keggs, “right down below the hall

into the basement. You know the basement stairs?” She proceeded with her

directions, detailing them most exactly. She accompanied Rosalie to the

door and when Rosalie was a little down the passage sharply called her

back. “And, Rosalie! If you should meet any one--if you should meet any

one, on no account say where you are going or where you have been. On no

account. If it should be known how ill I continue to be, I might be sent

away. They might think I am not strong enough to continue my work here.

Say you have lost your way if you should be met. You are a new little

girl and it is easy to lose your way in this big, rambling house. Keep

the bottle in your pocket and remember, Rosalie, on no account to tell.

On no account.” And so dismissed her.

A creepy business, going down to interview Mr. Ponders! The Sultana’s

butler was only seen by the girls on momentous and thrilling occasions.

He opened the hall door when new little girls arrived with their

mothers, and he would sometimes appear in a classroom and walk

thrillingly to the mistress and thrillingly whisper. This always meant

that for some fortunate girl a parent or an aunt had arrived and that

the presence of the fortunate girl was desired by the Sultana. He was a

shortish, dingy man with a considerable moustache. As he walked between

the desks to deliver his message, his eyes were always glancing from

side to side as though furtively in search of something, and always as

he left the room he would stand a moment with his hand on the door

as though meditating some statement and then suddenly de-termining to

disappear without making it. A rather mysterious and thrilling man.

Come into the basement, Rosalie walked as bid along the passage, then

to the right and then past two doors to the third, whereon she tapped

gently, and when a man’s voice said “Come in,” quaked rather, and went

in. The walls of Mr. Ponders’ room were completely surrounded by narrow

shelves. Beneath the shelves were the closed doors of low cupboards and

on the shelves were ranged many glasses, china and silverware. At one

end beneath the window was a sink with two taps, both dripping. On the

right-hand side was a fire before which in a wicker armchair sat Mr.

Ponders smoking a pipe and reading a newspaper.

“What do you want?” inquired Mr. Ponders.

Rosalie said, “If you please, Mr. Ponders, Miss Keggs is not feeling

at all well and would you be so very kind as to give her some of her

medicine, please?”

Mr. Ponders rose and regarded Rosalie from the hearthrug. “So it’s going

to be you coming for the medicine now, is it?” he said. He looked rather

a mean little man, standing there; not thrilling as when he appeared in

the schoolrooms for there was an unpleasing familiarity in his air, but

still decidedly mysterious, for though he smiled and looked snakily at

Rosalie, he still glanced from side to side as though furtively looking

for something and he still, before committing himself to an action,

paused as though meditating a statement and then suddenly performed the

action as though he had made up his mind not to speak--yet.

“You’re Rosalie, aren’t you?” inquired Ponders, putting his hands in

his pockets and stretching out his stomach like one much at his ease.

“Rosalie Aubyn. You come with your Auntie. What’s your Pa?”

“A clergyman, Mr. Ponders.”

“Oh, he’s a clergyman, is he?” Mr. Ponders’s eyes slid from side to

side, rather as if he had somewhere in the room some confirmation or

some refutation of Rosalie’s statement that he could produce if he could

catch sight of it, and continued thus to slide with the same suggestion

while he playfully put Rosalie through a further examination relative to

her “Auntie,” her “Ma” and her brothers and sisters. He appeared then

to be meditating a question of some other order but instead suddenly

straightened himself, withdrew his hands from his pockets and said,

“Well, you’d better be running along with the medicine.”

He took from Rosalie the bottle Miss Keggs had given her and from his

pockets a bunch of keys. In the lock of one of his cupboards he fitted a

key, paused a meditative moment, then with a decisive action opened the

cupboard and from a tall black bottle very carefully and steadily filled

the medicine bottle. The medicine was dark red. It first ran in a fine

dark red cloud around the inner shoulders and sides of the bottle and

then plunged in a steady stream direct from the larger receptacle to the

smaller.

Rosalie, watching, was moved to say, “How well you pour it, Mr.

Ponders.”

“I’ve poured a tidy drop in my time,” said Mr. Ponders, completing the

operation and corking the medicine bottle. He held it towards Rosalie,

paused in his mysteriously deliberative way, and then suddenly handed it

to her. “And a tidy fair drop for Miss Keggs at that,” he added. He went

to the door, again paused as though uncertain whether to open it, then

opened it for Rosalie to pass out. “Good night,” said Mr. Ponders.

Lucky Mr. Ponders to have for his own a cosy room like that--men, always

for some reason, with the best of everything again! Unpleasing Mr.

Ponders to look at you like that and to speak to you like that--men,

always horrible again! Rosalie, thus thinking, made a swift and

unobserved climb to the attics. Miss Keggs must have heard her coming.

The door was pulled sharply from Rosalie’s hand and there was Miss Keggs

and the bottle almost snatched away from Rosalie. “How long you’ve been!

But you’ve got it! And no one saw you?” Miss Keggs went very swiftly

to the washstand and took up a small tumbler. Clear that she wanted her

medicine very badly. She toppled in the contents of the bottle, its neck

clinking against the glass, the dark red medicine splashing and some

spilling, so differently from Mr. Ponders’s performance of a far more

difficult operation, and with the bottle still in her hand held the

glass to her lips and drank deeply.

Yet there was a funny thing about the draught. It seemed to Rosalie that

Miss Keggs with that eager draught yet did not swallow at once but only

filled her mouth to its capacity. She then swallowed very slowly and

with movements of her cheeks as though she was sucking down the medicine

and tasting it in every portion of her mouth. Colour came into her

cheeks. The medicine certainly appeared to do her immense good.

Miss Keggs’s friendliness towards Rosalie was settled and established

from that night. Thereafter it became a very regular thing for Rosalie

to visit the room of Miss Keggs of an evening; and at intervals,

sometimes twice a week, sometimes not three times in a month, to descend

to the den of Mr. Ponders for the dark-red medicine which did Miss Keggs

so much good and which she always took in that peculiar sucking way from

a full mouth, one would be so long sometimes in swallowing a mouthful,

beginning a sentence and then drinking and then all that time in

swallowing before she completed the sentence, that she several times, by

way of apology, ex-plained the reason to Rosalie. “I have to swallow it

very slowly like that,” explained Miss Keggs, “because that’s the way

for it to do me good. It’s my doctor’s orders.”

“It seems a business,” was Rosalie’s comment.

“Yes, it is a business,” Miss Keggs agreed.

Rosalie added, “How very lucky it is, Miss Keggs, that Mr. Ponders keeps

your medicine.”

“Yes, it’s certainly very lucky,” Miss Keggs agreed.

The effect of her medicine was always to make her very complaisant.