CHAPTER XII
All observant (or is it only unobservant?) persons must surely have remarked that children seem to grow up suddenly in a night like Jack’s bean-stalk. The child that only yesterday we dandled in our arms, to-day runs about and talks with the best of us, and to-morrow he will be married, and the day after to-morrow his children in their turn will be beginning the whole curious magic mushroom-growth over again for another generation! So those who only in the last page saw Caroline Shepley in long clothes will perhaps not be altogether surprised to recognise her on this page as a child of six years, trotting along the pavements under the charge of a very good-looking young nurse-maid.
Seven years had not changed the ambitions of Mrs. Shepley; but they had been transferred during that period, and now she was no longer ambitious for herself, but for her beautiful little daughter Caroline.
‘Carrie must have a maid of her own, like other gentlefolk’s children,’ she had said, and though her husband laughed at the idea as pretentious nonsense, he made no further objections, and Mrs. Shepley engaged the services of a young woman, Patty Blount, whose duty it became to walk out daily with little Caroline, as is the custom in all well-regulated families.
Patty, though not eminently conscientious in other matters, performed this duty with the most praiseworthy regularity. No sooner had the hall-clock chimed eleven than this punctual young person issued from the door of the little house in Jermyn Street leading Caroline by the hand. Their walks had a curious sameness, tending as they almost invariably did in the direction of St. James’ Square; and Carrie, a conversational little person, noticed that about the hour of their walk Patty was curiously absent-minded. She was always looking round her, and sometimes would even fairly stand still, with an air of expectation as if she were waiting for some one.
At last one morning as they sauntered through the Square, the door of one of the houses opened, and a young gentleman, Carrie’s senior by some four years, came down the steps attended by a tall man-servant wearing prune liveries. Carrie, who was feeling very dull at that moment, poor child, plucked her careless companion by the skirt.
‘See, Patty,’ she whispered; ‘there is a boy who must be nearly my own age.’
Patty was not absent-minded now. She seemed to have suddenly wakened up; and giving Carrie that curious dragging shake which seems an hereditary action in the nurse-maid class, she turned her head pointedly in the opposite direction from the approaching figures, and hurried Carrie along the Square at a great pace.
‘You should think shame, Miss Carrie, to be a-noticin’ of strangers in the streets,’ she said.
They passed the boy and the tall footman as she spoke, and turned the corner of the Square. A moment later Carrie heard a voice behind them address Patty, and turning round she beheld the tall footman walking alongside.
‘Lor’, Mr. Peter,’ exclaimed Patty, all affability and surprise. Then she shoved Carrie before her, and the footman shoved his charge before him, and they turned back into the Square again, apparently by mutual consent.
The children looked at each other dumbly for a moment.
‘What’s your name?’ then says Carrie, taking the initiative.
‘Philip-William-Richard-Frederick-Sundon-Meadowes.’
‘Oh, that’s far too long; I can never say that.’
‘Well, Phil they call me.’
‘Yes, that will do; I am called Caroline—I was named after my grandmother.’
‘I was named after my grandfather. I never saw him; he was dead long before I began.’
‘Was he? my grandfather is still alive,’ said Carrie. ‘But he is not like my father at all; I love my father more than any one.’
‘Well, do you know, Caroline, I do not love my father at all,’ said Phil with curious candour. As he spoke he turned and looked at Carrie with a pair of wonderfully glittering grey eyes.
‘O, what strange eyes you have, Phil! Why do they cut into me?’ cried Carrie.
Phil was rather offended. ‘My eyes are quite as good as yours, Caroline,’ he said. ‘I think I shall return to Peter.’ And with an air of great dignity he fell back a step or two. But Peter and Patty were deep in conversation, nor would they allow themselves to be interrupted for all Phil’s dignity. So after a minute or two of sullenness, Phil was forced to rejoin Carrie, and make overtures of peace by silently placing a hand on the hoop she trundled, and giving an interrogative grunt. Carrie had nothing to forgive: the pavement was clear before them for many tempting yards, and off they ran with shouts of pleasure.
‘This is where I live,’ said Phil, as they reached the house he had appeared from. ‘Look, Carrie, when Peter is in good temper, or if I can catch my father as he goes out, I can get them to put me on their shoulders, and then I am so high up that I can get my hand into the torch-snuffer; it comes out black, I can tell you!’
Carrie looked longingly at the torch-snuffer; she too would have liked to blacken her plump white fingers.
‘Shall I ask Peter? he looks pleased,’ said Phil.
‘Do,’ urged Carrie in great excitement, peering up into the snuffer. ‘ ’Tis like an iron nightcap,’ she added.
‘ ’Tis not often Peter will do it, for you see he has to wash my hands,’ said Phil. ‘Father is better. O good luck, Carrie, here he comes!’ for as the children stood together on the steps, the great door with its iron knocker swung open, and a man came out, closing the door behind him.
‘Hillo, Phil! alone? Where hath Peter disappeared to? And who is the lady you have forgathered with?’ he said, as he looked down in amusement at the children. Peter came swinging along the Square, red to his powdered locks, and Patty, overcome with confusion, stood still at some distance and beckoned to Carrie to run to her.
‘O no, sir, I am not alone; Peter is talking to a woman there, and——’ said Phil.
‘And you are following his example,’ laughed Phil’s father. ‘And what is your name, my little lady?’
Carrie was smitten with sudden shyness, and thought of beginning to cry. She thrust her dimpled hand into her eye and rubbed it hard, and did not speak. Peter came up breathless and apologetic.
‘I was but speaking with a friend, sir,’ he exclaimed; ‘an’ Master Phil he did run away along the Square, sir, and——’
‘Tush, Peter, there is little harm done,’ said his master, and would have passed on, but Phil barred his path.
‘If you please, sir, Caroline would like to put her hand into the torch-snuffer: will you lift her?’
‘And what will Caroline’s maid say?’ laughed Phil’s father.
‘Nothing, sir, if you do it,’ Phil urged, and at that his father stooped down and swung Carrie up on to his shoulder, and bade her poke her fingers into the envied grime of the snuffer.
‘And now give me a kiss for it,’ he said; and Carrie, her shyness quite cured by the delightfully black aspect of her fingers, gave the salute with great freedom.
‘Wasn’t that most agreeable?’ asked Phil; he alluded not to the kiss, but to the soot. Patty at this moment, seeing some interference necessary, came forward with a curtsey to claim her charge.
‘I fear I have led your little lady into mischief,’ said Phil’s father to her, smiling very pleasantly. Patty murmured incoherent excuses, curtseyed again, and bade Carrie say good-day to the gentleman. As they walked away Carrie heard Phil’s voice—it was singularly clear—echoing along the quiet Square.
‘Caroline, sir.’ And then, in reply to another question—
‘Caroline, sir; I do not know what else.’ It was well for Carrie that she could not overhear what followed—
‘A child of singular beauty. . . . Peter, who is she?’
‘I—I cannot say, sir. I am slightly acquainted with the young woman as looks after her, sir,’ said Peter, and he looked so ashamed of himself, and so uncomfortable, that his master did not question him further, but passed down the steps, laughing as he went.
Patty on the homeward way was very silent. When they reached Jermyn Street she took Carrie straight up-stairs and closed the nursery door. Then she stood in front of the child menacingly.
‘Mind, Miss Caroline, if ever you do say to master or to mistress one word of meeting with this little gentleman, I’ll—I’ll lock you up in a black hole.’
‘Why, Patty?’ began Carrie.
‘Well, you had best ask no questions, or mayhap I’ll put you in the hole for that,’ said Patty; and then, because in the main she was a good-hearted girl, and hated to frighten Carrie, she kissed the child and assured her over and over again that if no word of this meeting ever crossed her lips, she would have chestnuts to roast on the ribs of the nursery grate, and nuts to eat by the handful.
So Carrie agreed to be silent.
CHAPTER XIII
Now so pleasant and easy is it to tread the primrose path, that after the first difficulty of being silent about her new playmate was got over, Carrie never thought about the matter, and it became quite a daily thing that the children met and walked together while Patty and Peter sauntered in the rear, very much occupied with each other.
Phil was a curious boy, of great strength of character: a hot-tempered, domineering child, horribly clever for his age, very imaginative, and withal sadly spoilt. Peter, it is true, held his young master in very scant reverence, and would speak to him at times with great sharpness, but his was the only control that was ever exercised over the child. Carrie, who had no temper at all, was frightened almost out of her little judgment the first time she saw Phil in one of his worst fits of anger. They were walking in St. James’ Park, and Phil began to throw stones into the water at the water-fowl, spluttering his fine new velvet suit at each splash.
‘Mustn’t be after that game, Master Phil,’ said Peter, and Phil continued his stone-throwing with aristocratic indifference.
‘Did you hear, Master Phil? You’re spoilin’ them new clothes,’ said Peter, and approaching to where Phil stood he forcibly removed the stones from his hands. Phil’s face was convulsed in a moment with horrid passion. He fell on his knees on the walk and scraped up the mud and gravel in handfuls, pelting the stately Mr. Peter’s calves in futile anger.
‘I shall do as I please, Peter; you are a servant, and you shall not stop me throwing stones—there—and there—and there.’ He emphasised each word with another handful of gravel.
Carrie drew away to Patty’s side, shocked into silence. Patty said ‘Lor’,’ and Peter smiled.
‘ ’E’s a little imp,’ he said; ‘there’s but the one way to manage him,’ And with that he lifted Phil suddenly to his feet, shook him sharply, and boxed his ears till the child began to cry.
‘There, that’ll settle you,’ he said. He pushed poor Phil before him along the path, and stooped down to brush from his immaculate stockinged legs the marks of this ignoble conflict.
Carrie, being admonished by Patty to rejoin her companion, advanced rather timidly towards him. Phil was quite white now, and shook all over.
‘I think I shall go home now, Peter,’ he said in a very humble little voice; ‘I feel most terribly tired—will you take me home?’
‘Yes, Master Phil,’ said Peter, quite pleasantly, and with adieux to Carrie and Patty, they walked off together up the Mall.
‘Lor’! what a life Mr. Peter do lead with the boy!’ said Patty occultly. Carrie was silent, and watched the retreating forms of the little Phil and the mighty Peter till they became merged in the throng.
As they came to see more and more of each other the children’s intercourse assumed a definite character, which one often notices in childish friendships. Phil, as the elder and more original-minded of the two, assumed as it were command, led the conversation, and Carrie, deeply admiring his powers of mind, and quite content to be commanded, took all her ideas from him. Phil indeed was vastly entertaining to her after the pre-occupied silence of Patty, but sometimes his views rather startled her childish fancy.
They had gone far afield one fine day in late autumn—even to the Park—a world of delight to the children, and Peter and Patty, having seated themselves under one of the trees, Phil and Carrie followed the example of their elders and sat down also.
‘I wish God would come,’ said Phil suddenly, gazing up through the branches above him. ‘Do you not, Carrie?’
‘No—o,’ admitted the feeble-minded Carrie.
‘I do, and I shall tell you why. Peter took me to his meeting-house, where they pray without a book, and they prayed, “Rend the heavens and come down.” Well, since that I’ve lain down whenever I’ve got a chance and looked up into the sky. ’Tis too bright to look into nicely most days, but if God were to make a rent in that blue bit we see’ (he pointed up as he spoke, and Carrie glanced upwards, half expecting to see some Beatific Vision), ‘if He were to make a hole to come down through, you know, we should see something brighter than that behind, I believe. And then He’d come down—oh, like that!’ Phil brought his hands together with a crack that made Carrie jump.
‘I’d be frightened,’ she said, taking a reassuring peep at the placid blue that smiled above them. It showed no signs of cracking open, she thought.
‘Pooh,’ said Phil contemptuously. ‘I believe you had rather that the other God came—the Jesus God. He is quite different, and will not come the same way at all. I fancy He’dwalkinto the town: coming the Richmond way perhaps, about the blossomy time of the year. We would just be walking along Piccadilly perhaps, and we’d see every one turning to look, and . . .’
Phil’s imagination gave out here; he had not given enough of thought to the subject to visualise it perfectly, so he returned to his former and more favourite imagining—
‘Now what pleases me about t’other God coming would be the noise—drums, and bugles. Don’t you love ’em, Carrie? I went with my father to the Horse Guards t’other day. Oh, you should have heard it! Well, God will have gold bugles of course—the ones I heard were just tin, I think—and the gold bugles and God’s drums together, they’d make a noise no one could get away from. Now what do you suppose every one we know would do? I wonder what my father would do? Peter would come running up the back stair to look afterme—I’m sure of that—in case I was afraid. Not that I would be,’ he added hastily.
‘When do you think it will happen?’ asked Carrie, very much awed, though Phil had finished off with a shrill little twirl of laughter.
‘Oh, perhaps next week, or perhaps to-night, Peter says. I believe God will come down on the gilt top of St. Paul’s myself. Such a fine place to land on from the sky,’ continued the little prophet, inspired as all prophets are by a credulous audience. ‘He’d—He’d—oh, I don’t know what I was going to say. Carrie, look round the tree and see if Peter is kissing Patty, for I want to climb the tree, and ’tis safe to begin if he’s doing that.’
Carrie obediently reconnoitred; ‘I think he’s going to,’ she reported. ‘He has his arm round her waist, and he always begins that way.’
‘Come on then,’ said the prophet, leaving the Second Advent unceremoniously behind him, as he addressed himself to the ascent of a very smutty tree-trunk, much to the detriment of his own and Carrie’s finery.
CHAPTER XIV
One day not very long after this Patty came into the nursery breathless and agitated.
‘Lord save us! Miss Carrie, what do you think? Master Phil hath near killed himself! I’m but just in from a message, and who should I meet but Mr. Peter, running like mad, and with never a hat to his head! ’Taint often as Mr. Peter passeth by me in the street, but he waved and passed on without one word, and up to the door of Dr. James and kicks till the door do near split across. When he’d given his message he found time to return to where I was a-standin’—for in troth I had such a terror at the sight of Mr. Peter flyin’ down the street that I stood as if I had the palsy, and must so stand there till he returned. “Well, Mr. Peter,” I said, “you seem pressed for time this day.” “Miss Patty,” saith he (and believe me he could scarce get out the words for agitation),—“Miss Patty, my young master’s near burned to death.” ’
Patty was breathless with agitation herself at this point, and to recover her breath and relieve her surcharged feelings she seized a brush and began to arrange Carrie’s locks with more energy than gentleness. Carrie, deeply stirred by this tale, listened in great anxiety for further details. Patty then proceeded—
‘Being dinner-time, all the house was still, and Master Phil slips from the nursery and into the master’s own room he do go, and commences playing with the log fire. He hath a great fancy for pilin’ on the logs, same as he seeth Mr. Peter a-doing, and he’d lifted one too heavy an’ overbalanced hisself into the fire. He’d on a silk suit with ruffles, and it fired direct, and the whole body of him was blazing in a moment. The master’s gentleman, as was in the dressing-room a-putting away of the master’s clothes, he came running in and pulled Master Phil out from the heart o’ the fire! They’d a business tearing off his clothes! and now there he do lie in the master’s own bed a-screamin’ in agony.’
Carrie was deeply impressed; it was not her nature to weep easily over anything, but she approached the nursery fire and stood gazing at the cruel element that had worked such sad havoc on her poor little playmate.
Patty, with hysteric exclamations, pulled her back and declared she would never have an easy moment again—never. But a few moments later she found it necessary to flounce off to the kitchen, to repeat her tale there with many sappy additions.
Carrie, thus deserted, quietly drew her little chair close to the fire, and looked at the flames with a very serious face. She even extended one of her fat little fingers towards the bars experimentally, withdrawing it, however, with less caution, and a moment later she said ‘Poor Phil!’ with heart-felt compassion.
Patty ran in then, and shook her roughly. ‘What did I say, Miss Carrie?—never beyond the rug, and there you do sit close in to the very blaze! How, Miss Carrie, mind you obey me better, and partickerly in this, never to say one word of Master Phil to the master or the mistress. And if so be you do, well, of this I’m sure as I stand in my shoes: you’ll never play again with Master Phil so long as you live.’
Carrie did not in the least understand the reason of all this mystery about Phil; but she reiterated once more her promise of secrecy.
That night as she curtseyed to her parents at bedtime, she said suddenly—
‘Doth burning hurt, dada?’
Sebastian laughed. ‘Are you going to the stake, Carrie?’ he said.
‘No, notme,’ said Carrie, with some congratulation in her tones.
One day, some three weeks after this, Patty said mysteriously to Carrie that they were going out that afternoon to pay a visit. ‘We are to see Master Phil,’ she said, when they were in the street; and Carrie jumped for joy.
‘O Patty, I am so glad! Is he better? Where are we to see him?’ she cried.
‘In his bed, miss, but mind if ever you do say a word——’
Carrie was quite impatient.
‘You are most strange about Phil, Patty,’ she said; ‘I am sure he is nicer far to speak about than any one else I know.’
‘Oh, well, Miss Carrie, we’ll be going home then; we’ll say no more about the visit,’ said Patty, making a feint of turning back.
‘No, no, ’tis all right, I shall say nothing,’ said Carrie. On the steps of the great house, which Carrie knew quite well now, she saw the familiar figure of Mr. Peter, evidently waiting for them.
‘I’ll trouble you to enter by the back way,’ he said, as he greeted them, and with that he conducted his visitors to the kitchen regions. Everything here was bustle and hurry, for up-stairs dinner was being served. They met a French cook in a white paper cap dashing out of the kitchen with a saucepan in his hand, and ran against another man-servant, as tall as Mr. Peter, who carried a silver dish. Then, leaving these regions, they began to climb long, long stairs, and came out at last on to a polished oak corridor hung with pictures.
‘Lor’, Mr. Peter, this be terrible fine!’ said Patty, quite overawed. Mr. Peter sniffed, and affected great unconsciousness.
‘Walk quiet, if you please,’ he said, ‘and on the carpet, missie; these floors do mark very easy with boot-marks.’
He opened a door very cautiously, and looked into a large fire-lit room. It was very still.
‘ ’Ere’s a visitor for you, Master Phil,’ said Mr. Peter, stepping on tiptoe towards a huge canopied bed which occupied the side of the room and faced the fire. With a sign to Carrie to follow him, Mr. Peter drew back one of the satin curtains, and then, followed by Patty, tiptoed away again into the adjoining room. Carrie crept up to the side of the bed and peered into its tent-like depths. There lay Phil, propped up with pillows, white and thin, his shining restless eyes moving ceaselessly round him.
‘Well,’ said Carrie, after the unemotional manner of children.
‘Hullo!’ said Phil. He started up in bed, and then fell back against the pillows with a cry.
Carrie was tremendously impressed by all she saw around her:—the size and grandeur of the room, the satin hangings of the bed, embroidered all over with crests and coats of arms, the silk coverlet under which Phil reposed, the solemn quiet of the room, and the weird whiteness of her little companion’s face.
It was all indelibly stamped upon her memory in a moment, a scene never to be forgotten.
She laid her little hand on the stiff silk cover and found nothing to say.
‘Oh, I’m glad to see you, Carrie,’ said Phil then, who was never at a loss for words. He tossed his head restlessly about as he spoke. ‘They do not let me play, or anything, since I have been ill.’
‘Do you hurt much?’ asked Carrie, to whom pain was an unknown mystery and dignity.
‘Yes, my hands hurt most terribly; see, each finger is tied up by itself in a little bag—that is why I cannot play with anything.’
‘Shall I whistle to you?’ asked Carrie, struck by a sudden inspiration. ‘A friend of my father’s has taught me to whistle, and he says I do it to admiration.’ She jumped on to the edge of the bed, flung back her head, and whistled off a gay little roulade.
Phil laughed delightedly. ‘O do that again; you look like the poodles I saw in Paris. They threw back their heads and howled in a chorus,’ he cried.
‘Well, you pretend you are the other poodle,’ said Carrie; ‘I find it difficult whistling alone. Mr. Tillet, who teaches me, always whistles with me.’
‘Who’s Tillet?’ asked Phil.
‘He’s a soldier—a man my father knows.’
‘A soldier! oh, I suppose he will be a general—they are all generals,’ said Phil.
‘I think he is a bugler—is that the same?—something, I suppose; they all fight.’
‘Well, never mind; do it again, Carrie, ’tis such fun to see you.’
‘My mother does not like me to whistle,’ said Carrie, ‘but my father is ever teaching me new tunes, and Mr. Tillet, so I have to learn, but, if you please, I had rather look round the room, Phil; I want to look into that long mirror.’ So Carrie slipped down off the bed and walked (by irresistible feminine instinct drawn) towards the long French mirror, the like of which she had never seen before, and then she played for a few minutes with the Dresden china dishes on the dressing-table.
‘You take care with my father’s razors,’ warned Phil; ‘but they are not there—I forgot he wasn’t sleeping here. I have this room all to myself, and oh! it’s gloomy at night. You see that big wardrobe over there—well, I think all manner of things come out of it through the night. You see sometimes Peter sits with me, and sometimes nurse, but they both often go asleep, and then——’
Moved by this recital of nightly terrors, Carrie came back to the side of Phil’s bed and took another compassionate look at him.
‘I am so tired of lying here,’ he said crossly. ‘And you know, though my father makes a lot of me when I am well sometimes, he never comes near me now that I am ill—just when I would like him. My father is rather amusing sometimes, you know.’
‘What would he amuse you with?’ asked Carrie.
‘Oh, he teaches me a number of things. He can swear beautifully. I have learnt some of that, but when I used one of his expressions the other day they all laughed at me; ’twas rather hard, I thought. My father said: “Bravely tried, Phil, but you scarce apply it rightly yet,” and they all laughed again. I shall not learn for him again in a hurry.’
Carrie was very sympathetic, and Phil continued—
‘Then I play sometimes with him—we have shilling points; ’tis good fun that, Carrie, but my father says just now I am too cross to play with.’
‘Oh, let me play with you,’ Carrie cried, ‘I have learnt that too.’
Phil rolled over uneasily on his pillows. ‘Peter,’ he called, in a very lordly fashion,—‘Peter, bring a pack of cards.’
Peter obeyed with some reluctance. ‘See you ain’t a-hurtin’ of your hands, Master Phil,’ he said. ‘You let missie shuffle an’ deal, like a good young gen’l’man.’
‘Oh, you be damned, Peter!’ said Phil hastily, and Peter disappeared into the other room, drawing up his shoulders to his ears in a very expressive fashion.
‘Now, you sit on the end of the bed, Carrie, and we’ll have a jolly time,’ said Phil, his ill-temper as quickly gone as it had come.
Carrie scrambled up on to the stiff yellow satin coverlet, and dealt out the cards across it, while Phil obligingly flattened out his poor little burnt knees to form an even table.
They were deep in their game, when Patty came to take Carrie home. Phil’s cheeks were pink with excitement, and he called out to Peter to go away and let them play on. But Peter, with great unconcern, swept together the cards that lay on the quilt and lifted Carrie to the ground.
‘Peter, you are a beast; leave these cards, I tell you!’ cried Phil.
‘Sorry, Master Phil, ’tis too late,’ said Peter, extending his hand towards the cards that Phil still held; ‘missie must be goin’ now.’
Carrie stood on tiptoe to wave a better adieu to her playmate, but Phil did not notice her; he was gathering together all his sick little strength to avenge himself on the inexorable Peter.
‘There, you devilled flunkey!’ he screamed, pitching the cards into Peter’s face and falling back against the pillows with a sharp cry of pain.
Peter covered the child gently with the bed-clothes, gathered up the cards in silence, and signed to Patty and Carrie to follow him out of the room.
‘That’s some of the master’s speech he’s pickin’ up,’ he said, with a shake of the head; ‘he don’t swear very skilful, as you may see, Miss Patty—no fear but he’ll get at that yet,’ he added, with a half smile, half sigh.
Carrie, rather awed at this scene, took tight hold of Patty’s hand and did not speak till they were well out in the street again.
‘I do not think Phil is very happy,’ she said then.
‘Not he, Miss Carrie—not for all his grand house an’ altogether, for he’s a bad boy he is,’ responded the moral Patty.
CHAPTER XV
It was a long time until Carrie saw Phil again.
‘Master Phil hath gone off to the country to establish his ’ealth,’ Patty said, and it seemed as though he would never return again, Carrie thought; for often as she sighed for her little companion, he did not come, and finally Patty, who seemed to have occult communication with the household in St. James’ Square, informed her that Phil had gone to school. Patty wept as she gave this bit of information, and Carrie, partly, it must be confessed, out of the imitative faculty, wept also at the news. Time, they say, dries every tear—perhaps it does—certainly Carrie’s were soon dried; but she remembered Phil long and tenderly for all that, and used to ask Patty at intervals if she was never going to see him again. Patty always answered these questions with a burst of tears, which response had such a sobering effect upon Carrie that she at last feared to make the inquiry. But one day, fully a year from the date of Phil’s accident, as Patty and Carrie walked round the Square together they met a tall lad, having the shining eyes of Phil, but changed, it seemed, in every other way beyond recognition. He was walking along with another boy, and passed by Carrie with an unregarding stare. Carrie stood still, stamped her little foot in anger, and turned to Patty for sympathy.
‘ ’Twas Phil, Patty!’ she cried, ‘and he passed me without knowing me!’
Patty gave her head an upward toss.
‘Pay no heed to him, Miss Carrie; the men are all alike—not one to mend another,’ she said scornfully. They were passing at that moment the door whence the magnificent Peter had been wont to appear.
Carrie, however, was not so easily answered. She followed Phil’s retreating figure as it disappeared round the Square, before she spoke again, then she said, with great decision—
‘There goes my husband that is to be, Patty.’
‘Lor’! have a care what you say in the streets, Miss Carrie!’ cried Patty, with a delighted giggle.
Thus Phil passed out of Carrie’s life for the time being.
It was not an age of learned women, so though Carrie began her education about this time, she was not the disquieting receptacle of knowledge that modern childhood sometimes is in our progressive age. Carrie learned to read and write, she could do a little arithmetic, and began to sew a sampler of intricate stitchery; but she could not analyse her native tongue, or speak in any other, and I fear even her knowledge of geography was very hazy. Indeed, if the truth must be told about Carrie, she was entirely unintellectual in every way. Lessons were nothing but a pain to her, and as in these days a woman was not thought to add to her charms by wisdom, Carrie was not compelled to pursue her studies after she had attained to a certain very easy standard.
She was compelled, however, to learn all the housekeeping arts, and Mrs. Shepley expected nothing short of perfection in this branch of education. By the time Carrie was thirteen there was a good deal of friction between the mother and daughter. For Carrie, to her want of intellectuality, added a supreme carelessness, which was agonising to her conventional parent. If she had been an incapable girl it would have been different; but Carrie was far from incapable. When she chose, no girl of her age could accomplish any household task better. Yet, where it was a question of pleasure, Carrie would fling aside every duty and amuse herself without a thought. She had indeed a whole-heartedness of joy in living, that would have reconciled almost any one except Mrs. Shepley to her heedless ways. But to her they were unpardonable, and the worst of it all was, that Carrie’s father encouraged her in her careless habits—making it almost useless for her to remonstrate.
How it would have fared between the mother and daughter later in life is hard to say. They were both spared this test. For soon after Carrie’s fourteenth birthday was past, Mrs. Shepley fell ill of a lingering disorder, and lay for many a long month between life and death. Carrie grew less careless in these months of anxiety, grew quieter also, poor child—never shut the doors noisily, and almost forgot how to whistle, while Sebastian went about with a very grave face. Now that Emma was so ill, he recognised what a good wife she had been to him in spite of all her failings, and realised too what it would mean to him should he be left with Carrie motherless on his hands. Whatever Emma’s faults had been, she had been a careful mother, and had given a zealous watchfulness to everything concerning Carrie that he never could have time to give.
It must have been weighing on Emma’s mind also, this matter of how Carrie was to get on without her, but she looked at it in a characteristic light. Almost with her latest breath she called Sebastian to her bedside to pray him to be particular about Carrie’s associates.
‘Let Charlotte Mallow see that Carrie makes no friends out of her own situation in life—beneath her, in fact.’
‘Lord, Emma, the girl’s all right. I am here to protect her,’ said Sebastian.
‘ ’Tis the old trouble, Sebastian—you do not see what I mean.—Ah! let her grow up a gentlewoman.’
‘I’ll do my best, Emma,’ he said.
‘I pray you to send her to church each Lord’s Day,’ pursued Mrs. Shepley. ‘Send her with Charlotte; you have ever been careless of the Church and its mysteries.’
‘To church she shall go,’ said Sebastian—‘if that will make her a gentlewoman,’ he added to himself.
So Mrs. Shepley, with her little gentilities and punctilios, her tactless ways and her zeal for ordinances, went the way of all flesh.
Sebastian was not broken-hearted, though the house felt empty enough, he thought, without poor Emma; and Carrie, after the first solemn months of mourning were over, missed her mother sadly little.
She lived a perfectly happy unconstrained existence, which accorded well with her simple nature. Sebastian, who was nothing if not truthful, sent her to church weekly with Lady Mallow, and these were the dreariest hours of Carrie’s otherwise unclouded childhood. Each Sunday morning Lady Mallow appeared with horrible regularity, driving in a singularly gloomy-looking coach, which seemed to Carrie to swallow her up as she entered it. In silence they drove through the crowded streets (which on Sunday had a way of looking very gloomy too), and the coach drew up before the door of that sad little building, the church of St. Mary Minories. Lady Mallow occupied one of those carved oak pews which to this day you may see mouldering away in the church, and there in its genteel obscurity Carrie sat, with a sinking heart, counting the slow-passing minutes till she could breathe the fresher air of the everyday world again. Patty had once told her that ‘persons of quality was buried in ’eaps under the floor in St. Mary Minories,’ and Carrie’s imagination hovered over this gruesome thought. She somehow connected that damp old smell which clings about the church with the ‘heaps an’ heaps of persons of quality’ lying in their shrouds under the chancel, and each day as she asserted her belief in the resurrection of the body, found herself wondering how the poor dead people would ever work their way up through those slabs of stone. So Carrie required all the fortitude and cheerfulness which she inherited from her father to sustain the ordeal of Sunday’s gloom.
Service once over, however, she stepped into the auntly coach with a much lighter heart. The drive home seemed an altogether different matter from the drive to church, and each step of the way Carrie’s spirits mounted higher and higher, till, when the coach drew up before the door, she could have danced for joy. Bidding a decorous adieu to her aunt, Carrie was handed out by the man-servant, and mounted the steps to the door with the greatest propriety. But it was well that the departing rumble of the wheels hid from Lady Mallow’s ear that whoop of joy which Carrie uttered as she raced into the parlour and flung her arms round her father’s neck, crying out,
‘ ’Tis done—done for another week, sir!’
Mrs. Shepley had never permitted such demonstrative greetings—they were indeed considered a great breach of decorum in those days; but I fear many polite rules were broken in upon by Carrie and her father, who neither of them cared as much as they should have done for the generally received ideas of the society of their day.
Such good friends were Carrie and her father that the girl sought for no friends of her own age; she went about everywhere with Sebastian when he had leisure to escort her, and when he was busy she amused herself at home, very well content with life and all things. In her father’s company she visited many a strange scene; she would go with him to the hospitals sometimes, and—shade of Mrs. Shepley!—how many a sight she saw in these unsavoury tents of disease! Then Carrie entertained all her father’s friends (those motley friends her poor mother had objected to so much), and in many ways grew up with more of the manners of a boy than of a girl. She was singularly free from the sillinesses and affectations of early girlhood, having heard no talk at all of lovers or admiration, nor having ever entered into rivalry with other women in the matter of looks and charm. Carrie was serenely unconscious that the world held a rival for her; she was the first with all the men of her own little world, and as yet she had not gone beyond it. If she compared her own looks with those of other girls, it was merely from curiosity quite untouched by jealous feeling. The fact was only distantly dawning upon her that she was fair beyond the common; just now she took it as her due from Fortune’s kindly hand.
CHAPTER XVI
Miss Caroline Shepley, up to the age of seventeen years, had perhaps, in her own way, lived as happy a life as it is granted to many young persons to live. She looked like it too; wearing that air of pleased good humour that is a passport to every heart, and blooming like a rose, in spite of the fact that she had never been out of London all her days. Carrie was very tall, with just the same fearless brilliant blue eyes that her father had, but from her mother she had inherited a skin as white as milk, with a clear pink colour in the cheeks, two bewitching dimples, and ringlets of deep red hair. To see her pass along the streets!—— Do they grow now-a-days, these shining beauties that brightened the world of long ago, or is it that they are so common we scarcely regard them? But as time went on, Carrie’s good looks became such as to be quite embarrassing both to herself and to her father, for she could never go out alone, and even in his company attracted a vast deal of attention.
‘Now,’ said Sebastian, ‘I shall send Carrie to the country with her aunt, as she has so often been pressed to go, else her head will be turned altogether.’
Lady Mallow’s establishment certainly promised to be dull enough for safety. Her Ladyship, who was rich enough to indulge in fancies about climate, had taken an idea that London did not suit her health. On her brother-in-law’s suggestion, she had taken a house in the neighbourhood of Wynford, and there was passing the summer months in genteel and plethoric seclusion—for alas! Lady Mallow was becoming stout in middle life. From all he remembered of Wynford twenty years ago, Sebastian smiled to think of the conventual existence poor Carrie might lead there.
‘You must go to the village of Wynford and see where your grandfather sold drugs; but there’s not one of our name left there now,’ he said.
‘Sir! my dear sir! what would my aunt Charlotte say should I propose to visit where any one related to me had traded in anything, at any time?’ said Carrie—and indeed she was right.
So one splendid May morning Lady Mallow’s coach drew up before the door of the Shepleys’ house, and the beautiful Carrie came out upon the steps, drawing on her long gloves, while her baggage was stowed away in the rumble of the coach.
‘Well, Carrie, adieu to you, and Heaven bless you!’ said her father; and Carrie, unconventional as usual, turned suddenly, in the full view of her aunt’s decorous footman, flung her arms round Sebastian, and kissed him tenderly.
‘I do not wish to leave you, sir; I had rather far stay with you,’ she cried; but Sebastian laughed at her, and bade her not keep those spirited animals which her aunt drove ‘waiting upon her sentimentalities.’
The spirited animals waddled off down the street very deliberately, and Carrie sat back in the coach and waved her hand till she was out of sight. Though she had not been altogether pleased to leave home, it would certainly be a new and delightful thing to leave London smoke behind her, and drive far out into the wonderful green country. No train had yet snorted through these fair English meadows, and the depth of their tranquillity was like a dreamless sleep. To the heart that has known sorrow—and perhaps more to the heart that has missed joy—the jubilant burgeoning of spring will sometimes bring an intolerable sadness. But in the first blossom and fairness of her youth, with her sunny childhood barely left behind, with hope ahead, these stainless blue skies, and the rich promise of the bursting leafage, filled Carrie’s heart with a sort of ecstasy. She fairly clapped her hands at the hackneyed old sight of a meadow where lambs were gambolling, and called out to the coachman, praying him to stop and let her buy a drink of milk at a cottage door where a cow was being milked. Towards the end of the day these pleasures began to pall a little, and when at last the coach drew up at Lady Mallow’s door Carrie was not sorry to alight. The forty miles that lay between her and London seemed very long in the retrospect, and a sudden chill of home-sickness fell over her spirit as she entered the decorous portals of her aunt’s abode. ‘I wonder why I ever came,’ she thought. ‘Aunt Charlotte will fidget me to death—and I shall be so dull, and I think London is ever so much nicer than the country.’ We must all be familiar with such misgivings, and familiar too with the extraordinary difference which a night’s rest makes in such a case. Carrie rose up next morning with much more rose-coloured views of life. ‘Aunt Charlotte is vastly dull, but how agreeable to be here!—and O how beautiful, how beautiful!’ she said as she gazed out at the new surroundings, smelt the country sweetness, and longed for breakfast. Lady Mallow, indeed, was quite shocked by Carrie’s appetite. ‘You will become stout, my dear,’ she said. ‘ ’Tis most ungenteel for a young gentlewoman like you to eat so freely!’ Carrie was a little ashamed of herself.
‘You see, madam,’ she explained, ‘I live always with men, and perhaps their example has made me eat as they do. I do not think I shall become very fat, because all my life I have been hungry, and I have not become fat yet, you see.’
The restrictions of her aunt’s society began to press upon Carrie pretty heavily by the afternoon. All morning she had had to sit indoors sewing at her embroidery, then, about two o’clock, she must drive out for a slow airing until dinner, then came two hours more of talk and embroidery, and after supper a game of whist with double-dummy. And outside, while all these golden hours dragged so slowly past, was the grand, twittering, budding spring world waiting to be explored! Carrie beat an impatient tattoo upon the floor with her little foot, and answered Lady Mallow’s questions rather incoherently.