She is different from Lady Scilly, whom he is beginning slightly to detest. Sometimes he looksquite glum when she is ordering him about, but he obeys. What do married women do to men to make them their slaves as they do, and yet one can see by their eyes that they don’t want to? And why are the women themselves the last to see that the servant wants to give notice and would willingly forfeit a month’s wages to be allowed to leave at once? Lady Scilly is just like a mistress who avoids going down into her own kitchen to order dinner, at a time when relations are strained, lest the cook takes the chance of giving her warning. Lady Scilly is the least bit afraid of Simon’s cooling off, and just now prefers to give him his orders from a distance.
She calls Lord Scilly “Silly-Billy,” and “my harmless, necessary husband.” He is not dangerous, and he certainly is useful, for she really could not go about alone wearing the hats she does. She has one made of a whole parrot, and a coat made of leopard skins. I like Lord Scilly. He is rather fat, and knows it. He has a hoarse sort of voice, and yet I don’t think he drinks much. Perhaps it is the open-air life that he leads among horses and dogs and grooms; at Summer Meetings and Doncaster, and so on. He is well known as a fearless rider, and risks his neck with the greatest pleasure. If I were Lady Scilly, I should much prefer him to George, though not to Simon. His chest is broader than George’s, and he is taller than Simon, but then she isn’t married to either of those. Marriage is like the rennet you put into the junket—it turns it!
He seems quite used to the kind of wife he has got. He isn’t at all anxious to change her. He hardly ever talks about her—even to me. That is manners. Even George has got that sort of manners, so that half these smart people don’t realize that my father has got a wife, or ever had one! They might, if they liked, and after all, if Mother doesn’t choose to know his friends, he cannot force her! She won’t go out with him, though she makes no difficulties about our going. She likes us to go, as it opens our eyes and gives us chances. Her business is to see that we are clean and have nice hair not to disgrace him, and we don’t, or he would soon chuck us.
Lord Scilly always insists on our being asked to the picnics and parties they give. He likes us. He takes more notice of us than she does. I think he is a very lonely man, and quite glad of a little notice and attention even from a child. He is very observant too, I don’t believe much goes past his eye. He thinks of everything from the racing point of view. Once when Lady Scilly and Ariadne were both standing on either side of Simon, receiving about an equal share of his attention, or so it seemed, Lord Scilly suddenly chuckled and said—
“I back the little ’un!”
He always talks of and to Ariadne as if she were very young indeed, and it is the surest way to rile her. She never forgave Mrs. Ptomaine a notice of hers on the dresses at some Private View or other, when she alluded to Ariadne’s frock as worn by “a very young girl.” Lord Scilly thinks a girlought to be able to stand chaff, and is always testing her.
Ariadne had a birthday while we were at Whitby, and it fell on the day fixed for a picnic to Robin Hood’s Bay. Simon sent her a present by the first post in the morning, a fan that he had written all the way to London for, in payment of some bet or other he had invented—I suppose he did not think it right to give an unmarried girl a present without some excuse like that?—and of course Mother and Aunt Gerty and I gave her something, and even George forked out a sovereign. That was all she expected, and not even that.
However, all the way driving to the picnic, Lord Scilly kept telling her that he was going to give her something as well; I was sure he was only teasing her, for there are no shops worth mentioning in Robin Hood’s Bay, so I advised her to brace herself for a disappointment.
The moment he got to Robin Hood’s Bay, he was off by himself, and away quite ten minutes, coming back with a showy paper parcel. At lunch he gave it her with a great deal of ceremony, so that everybody was looking. It was worse than I even had thought, a hideous china mug with “A Present for a Good Girl” on it in gilt letters. Ariadne has it now, only the servants have washed off the gilt lettering, using soda as they will. The baby was christened in it. But I am anticipating.
I had my eye on her as she untied the parcel, hoping and wondering if she would stay a lady inher great disappointment? She did. She thanked him quite formally and prettily for his charming present, though I saw her lip tremble a very little. I was awfully pleased with her, and so was Simon Hermyre, for I saw he particularly noticed her behaviour. As for the Scillys, their nasty little joke fell rather flat in consequence of Ariadne’s discretion.
It was a most fearfully hot day. We all sat on the cliff in tiers, and talked about the delightful golden weather which was so oppressive and beastly that there was nothing to do but lie about and smoke. So they did. The men mopped their foreheads when they thought no one was looking, and the women usedpapier poudréeslyly in their handkerchiefs. Only Ariadne had none to use, and kept cool by sheer force of will. I was all right, being only a child.
Ariadne was sitting a little apart, with me, and she was writing a Poem to the sea, and she told me in a whisper as far as she had got—
“The patient world about their feetLay still, and weltered in the heat.”
“The patient world about their feetLay still, and weltered in the heat.”
“What else could it do but lie still?” I said, and suddenly just then Simon got up—
“I say! I’m going to take the kids for a sail! Bring your new mug, Missy, and take your tiny sister by the hand, so that she doesn’t fall and break her nose on the cliff steps.”
After the mug incident I don’t see how anybody could have objected, or tried to prevent Ariadnefrom taking the advantages of being treated as a baby, and I expect that was what Simon thought. Anyhow, Ariadne got up, and went with Simon and me as bold as any lion. It is a well-known fact that Lady Scilly can’t stand the sea in small quantities like what you get in a boat, though of course she goes yachting cheerfully. None of the others were enough interested in Simon to care to move, and take any exercise in this heat. George gave her an approving little nod as she passed him.
We had a lovely sail of a whole hour’s duration. We had an old boatman wearing his whiskers stiffened with tallow, who told us he had been a smuggler, and treated Ariadne and Simon as if they were an engaged couple, out for a spree, with me thrown in for a make-weight. It came on to blow a little, and got much cooler. Ariadne lost her hat, and had to borrow a red silk handkerchief of Simon’s and tie a knot in it at all four corners and wear it so. She looked most proud and happy, as if she had on a crown, not a hat.
When Lady Scilly saw the latest thing in hats, she cried out, “Oh, my poor Ariadne!” and helped her to hide herself more or less in the waggonette going home. I didn’t know before how becoming the cap was!
WHENGeorge came, he took out a family subscription to the weekly balls at the Saloon, and we go, Ariadne and I. Mother will not and Aunt Gerty may not. Mother expressly stipulates that she shall refrain from doing as she wishes in this one particular, and as Aunt Gerty is mother’s guest, she has to please her hostess. She grumbles a good deal at George’s bearishness to her, in depriving her of any source of amusement in this dull place, but as a matter of fact she is very much taken up with Mr. Bowser. He was Ariadne’s umbrella man. The Umbrella dodge came off with Aunt Gerty, and this unpoetical two became fast friends on the cliff-walk one rainy day. Mr. Bowser is a rich brewer, and very much mixed up with the politics of this place. He owns three blocks of lodging-houses on the Front. Of course Simon Hermyre’s people won’t have anything to do with him. It would be awkward if Ariadne married Simon and Bowser had previously married Ariadne’s legal aunt. If Aunt Gerty does marry Mr. Bowser, then I do think George would be justified in cutting himself off from us all. To be the brother-in-law of Mr. Bowser would bethe ruin of him. Well, chay Sarah, Sarah! as George says sometimes. At any rate we have no right to interfere with Aunt Gerty trying to do the best she can for herself. She is awfully kind to us and very loyal, Mother says, and she never gets a good word from George to make her anxious to pleasehim. Mother gives her plenty of rope in the Bowser business, on condition she doesn’t try to squeeze herself into the Saloon dancing set where George’s friends go.
The dancing at the Saloon is very poor. The balls are only an excuse for going out on the Parade and watching the sea with a man. I like to watch it best myself, without a man. I like to see the whole dark sheet of water far away, and the thin white line near by that is all there is to tell one where the little waves are lying flattened out on the shore. The tide slips in so softly, minding its own business through the long evening while the idiots above galumph about and dance polkas in the great hall inside, with flags from the Crimea on the walls that flap in the draught of the North wind, and remind us constantly that we are hung over the sea.
There is a nice boy I like—he is twelve, quite young, and doesn’t need conversing with. I simply take him about with me to prevent people meeting me and saying, the way they do, “What, child, allalo-oneby yourself?” which is so irritating.
He never interferes, he trusts me, he likes me. He is the son of Sir Edward Fynes of Barsom, and they keep horses. I might say they eat horses anddrink horses and sleep on horses there. Ernie wants me to like him, so he brought me a list of his father’s yearlings, with their names and weights and what they fetched at the sale written out in his own hand. It interested him, so he thought it would interest me. It must have taken him hours to do, and when he put it into my hand, and ran away, what amusement do you think I could get out of this sort of thing?
And so on for a page of foolscap. Rather an odd sort of love-letter, but I saw he meant it, and didn’t tease him.
Ernie and I moon about all the evening and watch the others. It is not etiquette to interfere with a lady who has her own cavalier, and that is why I annex Ernie, as Lady Scilly does Simon. We don’t dance. I don’t care to begin the dance racket till I am out and forced, not I, nor do I suppose the grown-ups want a couple of children getting into their legs and throwing them down. No, I watch them, and Ernie watches me.
Simon Hermyre and Lady Scilly dance half the time together. I suppose it isde rigueur. And when they are not dancing they are talking of money. I have heard them. I don’t mind listening, for, of course, money isn’t private. And I think it revolting to talk business on moonlight nights by the sea. They argue about bulls and bears and berthas,which puzzled me at first, till Ernie told me they did not mean either animals or women. Simon is not at all interested in any of them. Ernie (who is at Eton) says it is because he has nothing on, and only talks about stocks to please her.
Simon does not talk about dirty money when he is with my sister, he does not talk much about anything, and yet they seem to be enjoying themselves. Perhaps Ariadne is a rest after Lady Scilly?
One damp evening, Ariadne and he came out of the big hall together, but before she sat down in her white dress on one of the iron seats outside, Simon carefully wiped it with his handkerchief, though it hadn’t been raining. Then, without thinking apparently, he put it up to his own forehead.
“Phew! I’m hot,” he said. “It’s a weary old world! Hope I die soon!”
Simon talks broad Yorkshire, I notice. Lady Scilly had been Simon’s partner before Ariadne, and I had passed with my boy—that’s what the grown-up women always call their special men!—just as Simon had taken out his nice gold-backed pocket-book with his initials in diamonds that I envy him so.
“Blow these wretched figures! They won’t come!” I heard him say.
“On they come fast enough, not single spies, but in battalions,” Lady Scilly had answered pettishly; “what I complain of is that they won’t go! See if you can’t pull me through, dear boy.”
I thought it indecent of her to make poor Simon do her sums for her, on a heavenly night like this, when the tide is fully in, and all you can see through the white rails of the Esplanade is a soft creeping heap of dark water, like a pailful of ink. Simon now got up and looked down into it, and his forehead became one mass of wrinkles, like a Humphrey’s iron building.
And Ariadne got up too, and looked into the water with him, but she said nothing. I know her pretty well, and that it was because she had nothing to say, and as he evidently didn’t want her to say it, it didn’t matter. She had put her hand on the railing, and it looked very nice and white in the moonlight somehow, quite like a novel heroine’s, so she is repaid for her trouble and expense in almond paste-balls. Simon Hermyre looked at it, as I used to stand and look at a peach or an apple on the wall when I was little. He would have liked to pick it, as I would the apple or peach, and hold it tight in his own hand, I thought, but he didn’t, but sighed instead and said—
“I wish I had a mother!” That wretched Ernie boy began to giggle. I nearly smothered him, for I wanted to hear what Ariadne would say.
“Do you?” she said. “I have.”
Did any one ever hear anything so stupid and obvious? Yet Simon seemed to like it, for the next thing he said was—
“Why don’t I know your mother? I expect she is gentle and sweet like you.”
I have no doubt Ariadne would have been imbecile enough to answer Yes, not seeing the pitfall there was hidden in the words, but at that very moment George and Lady Scilly came out with a lot of other people. They came drifting along to the balustrade where we were, and Lady Scilly put her hand on Simon’s shoulder very lightly, and George put his heavily on Ariadne’s.
Simon whisked away his shoulder and wriggled as much as he dared. Ariadne of course could not move at all. She said afterwards she felt as if it was her own marriage-service, and that George was “giving this woman away” quite naturally. He likes to see her with Simon and shows it, it is the only time in his life that he is what they call fatherly.
Lady Scilly gave Simon two taps. “I love this thing, you know,” she said to George. Then, going a little way back—“Just look at them! Isn’t it idyllic? Romeo and Juliet spooning on a balcony over the sea instead of over a garden, and with a squawking gull instead of a nightingale to listen to. And I—poor I—am Romeo’s deserted Rosaline. Did Rosaline take on Mercutio, I wonder, when she had had enough of Romeo?”
She glared up at George, and the moonlight caught her face the wrong way and made her look old. All the same, she would not have dared to say all this if she hadn’t felt sure of Simon, and it proved that he hadn’t been silly enough to make her think it worth while to be jealous of Ariadne.
“I always thought Mercutio by far the most interesting character in the piece. Come, good Mercutio! Romeo, fare—I mean flirt well!”
They turned away and left Simon grinding his little pearly teeth.
“I consider all that inbeastlytaste!” he said, whacking the rail with Ariadne’s fan. Of course it broke, and Ariadne cried out like a baby when you have smashed its favourite toy.
Simon was thoroughly out of temper with all the world, Ariadne included. Lady Scilly had called him Romeo; well, he was jealous of Mercutio! Such is man—and boy! He spoke quite crossly to Ariadne.
“I’ll give you a new one. I’ll give you twenty new ones. Let us go in and dance—dance like the devil!”
Ernie told me a great deal about Lady Scilly after they had all gone in. He knows a lot about her, through his father, who has a place near the Scillys in Wiltshire. He says his father says that at this present moment she hasn’t got a cent to call her own; what with gambling, and betting, she is fairly broke. I wish, then, she would try to borrow money off George—just once—for that would choke him off her soonest of anything, and then he would perhaps be nicer to mother?
Ariadne would not go to bed at all that night. She sat in the window, eating dried raisins, just to keep soul and body together. And all the time her affairs were progressing most favourably. She wasvexed because she saw that Lady Scilly did not consider her worth being jealous of. I told her she was never nearer getting Simon than now when he was bringing a heart that Lady Scilly had bruised by sordid monetary considerations to her, to stroke and make well by her soothing ways. And Ariadne is soothing, she can do the silence dodge well. She is a regular walking rest-cure, I tell her, for those that like it.
Simon was unusually nice to her all the next week, just as I prophesied he would be. Then an untoward event happened.
There were dances at the Saloon only once a week. Next night a conjuror came to the Saloon Hall, called Dapping, and Aunt Gerty took us, paying one shilling each for us. There were worse seats, only sixpence, but there were also better, viz. the first four rows were three shillings. The Scilly party with Irene Lauderdale were in them, and on the other side, very obviously keeping themselves to themselves, there was Sir Frederick Hermyre and Almeria, and a severe woman aunt, and Simon in attendance. The Hermyres were staying all night at the hotel, and he had to be with them for once, waiting on his father, not on Lady Scilly. It couldn’t have been as amusing for him as her party, that laughed and joked, but still Simon as usual looked quite happy as he was. He would have thought it rude to look bored, and he did look so nice and clean, with his littleretroussénose next to his father’s beak, and Almeria’s large knuckle-dusterof a proboscis framing them. I don’t suppose Simon even knew Ariadne and I were there, for we were a long way behind, and he doesn’t love Ariadne enough yet to scent her everywhere. Next us was Mr. Bowser, Aunt Getty’s mash, as she calls him. I believe she had told him we were to be there. Ariadne and I were disgusted at being mixed with Bowser, and tried to make believe we were a separate party, and talked hard to ourselves all the time. Ariadne was in a white muslin she had made herself—window-curtain stuff from Equality’s sale. It was pretty, but casual. She never will have patience to overcast the seams or settle which side they are to be on, definitely. She had made her hat too, of chiffon with a great trail of ivy leaves over the crown. I wished she had been dressed more soberly, considering the company we were in.
I wasn’t attending very much, but presently I heard Mr. Dapping with Mr. Bowser, who as a leading citizen had gone on the stage, planning out a sort of trick. Dapping was first blindfolded, and Bowser was to go into the body of the hall and pretend to murder some one, and Dapping would tell him afterwards whom he had murdered. Dapping even went off the platform so as to be quite sure not to see, and Mr. Bowser came down the gangway in the middle, shaking his snub head about as he selected a victim—and he had actually the cheek to choose Ariadne!
He didn’t ask Aunt Gerty or Ariadne either, if he might take this liberty, but just seized Ariadneby her thin muslin shoulder, and pretended to drive a knife into her back. It all happened before she had time to stop him. She wriggled, but of course they thought she was acting up. Then he sat down, quite pleased with himself, beside Aunt Gerty, and Mr. Dapping was released and his eyes unbandaged, and he came plunging down the gangway till he came to our row. He was intensely excited and puffing like a steam-engine, very disagreeable to hear.
He seized Ariadne by the same shoulder Bowser had murdered her at, and shook her, saying, “This is the victim!”
It made Ariadne horribly common, Aunt Gerty said afterwards, though she might easily have prevented it and told Bowser to hit one of his own class! Anyhow, poor Ariadne turned all the colours of the rose and the rainbow, and nearly cried for shame. She might as well have been on the stage, for she was just as public. All the Scilly party had of course turned round and were staring with all their eyes. Sir Frederick and Almeria never moved at all. Poor Simon did,—just once—and I saw his scared, disgusted face looking over his shoulder. I had never seen him look like that before. It was awful!
The conjuror went calmly on to the next trick, but poor Ariadne had been thoroughly upset. She whispered to me, “I can’t stand any more of this. I believe I shall faint!”
That wasn’t true, I knew, she can’t faint if shetries, but still any one could see that she was feeling very uncomfortable.
I said to my aunt, “We are going, Ariadne and I. You can stay behind if you like.”
And we got up and passed out amid a row of sympathetic—that was the worst of it—faces. Of course Aunt Gerty followed us out presently, and scolded Ariadne all the way home for allowing herself to be made a victim of. Ariadne never spoke, till we got in and up in our room. Then she burst out crying.
“He will never speak to me again. I know he won’t. He is very proud, and I have disgraced him—disgraced him before his order!”
“You can’t disgrace that until you are married to him, I suppose, and now you never will be.”
“No,” Ariadne said, meekly, “I am unworthy of him.”
“You are very weak!” said I, “but on the whole I consider it was Aunt Gerty’s fault. Brewing away like that and not attending to her charges!”
Ariadne cried and hocketed, as the cook used to say, all night, and I tried to comfort her and tell her that Simon would probably come to call next day to show thatnoblesse oblige, and that he didn’t think anything of it. Of course when I remembered his face, I didn’t suppose he would ever care to see a girl who had been pummelled, first by Bowser and then by Dapping, again.
All next day Ariadne would not go out. She said she could not meet the eye of Whitby. It rainedluckily. Next day she still wouldn’t, and as it was one of the best days we have had, I began to think that she was going too far with her remorse, and was quite cross with her.
“No one ever remembers anything that happened to some one else,” I said; “and they can’t see that your shoulder is black and blue under your gown.”
“I feel as if I had been publicly flogged, and I had on my white muslin too,” she moaned, though I don’t know what she meant, that it had made a more conspicuous object, or was bad for the dress, or what.
“I know one thing,” she gulped. “Aunt Gerty or no Aunt Gerty, I shall cut Mr. Bowser next time I see him—cut him dead.”
“Why not? He murdered you.”
I think this was Ariadne’s first sorrow, and lasted quite a week. She would only go out after dark, to hide her shame from every eye. Mother encouraged her, and said she knew how she must feel. To Aunt Gerty she said several times, “Never again!” which is the most awful thing to say to any one. It meant that Aunt Gerty wasn’t to be trusted with girls, and especially George’s girls. Mother gave it her well.
“You should have prevented Ariadne from letting herself down like that! I shall never hear the end of it from George.”
“George indeed! Why wasn’t George looking after his own precious kids then? I don’t think he’s got any need to talk! My Lord Scilly will behaving a word with him some of these days, or I shall be very much surprised!”
“You hold your wicked, lying tongue!” was all Mother said to her. Mother, somehow, hasn’t the heart to be hard on Aunt Gerty.
I could have told Aunt Gerty that Lord Scilly was keeping quite calm. He can manage Lady Scilly well enough. I have heard him say so. “Paquerette knows the side her bread is buttered as well as any woman living! She is a right good sort, is Paquerette, only she likes to kick her heels a bit! She and I understand each other!”
He talks like this, as if they were like Darby and Joan, but Lady Scilly doesn’t agree with him, or says she doesn’t. “Scilly and I,” she once said to Ariadne, “are an astigmatic couple.” She meant, she explained, that they are like two eyes whose sight is different. I fancy his is the long-sighted eye.
Well, this little row was soon over as far as Mother and Aunt Gerty were concerned. George’s scolding was short and sweet, Aunt Gerty said, and she couldn’t possibly dislike him more than she did already. But Ariadne could not get over her disgrace for ages. She still wouldn’t stir out of the house, but I went out regularly and policed Lady Scilly and Simon. Of course this contretemps to Ariadne has had the effect of throwing them into each other’s arms worse than ever. They became inseparable. If Lady Scilly had only known it, Simon’s being near her made her look quite old andanxious, whereas she made him look young and bored.
One morning I stood and watched them leaning over the wooden rail of the quay. Everybody leans there in the mornings, it’s fashionable, and if you lean a little forward or backward you can either see or not be seen by the person who is hanging over it a few yards further on. The boats were as usual unloading their big haul of herrings, and the sleepy-eyed sailors (they have been up all night!) were sitting smoking lazily on the edges of the boats. Lady Scilly was in white linen, so awfully pure and angelic-looking that the little boys dabbed her with fish-scales as they passed her. She was talking to Simon about money earnestly, and took no notice. She was telling him that Lord Scilly likes money so much that he didn’t ever like to let it out of his hands. What business of Simon Hermyre’s is it, I should like to know, what Lord Scilly chooses to do with his money? Everybody seems to think Simon is going to be rich, because he is the son of Sir Frederick Hermyre, but that is no criterion. He always seems to have plenty of pocket-money, but I still think it mean of a full-grown woman to borrow money of a boy.
“Do let me have the pleasure,” he kept saying, and “Do let me!” and goodness knows why, for she seemed to be in no hurry to prevent him! I suppose it is why people like Simon so much, that he always seems to be trying to do what they want in spite of themselves.
“Then that is settled, thank the Lord!” I heard him say at last. (My sailor buffer between me and her had begun to talk to a man below, and rather drowned their conversation.) “Just look at that sheet of silver on the floor of the boat—all one night’s haul! Suppose it was shillings and half-crowns?”
“Yes, only suppose! And the sailors treading carelessly about in it, as you might in the train of one of my silver-embroidered dresses! It is very like a full court-train, isn’t it, the one you are going to have the privilege of paying for?”
Simon said yes it was, but he didn’t seem to like her quite so much as he did since she gave in and let him pay her bill. He seemed to have grown a little bit older all of a sudden, he had a sort of aged, pinched look come over his face.
Then I saw, I positively saw, the thought of my sister Ariadne come there and make him handsome and boyish again, and I wriggled past my sailor and came round behind her and said, “How do you do?”
Lady Scilly having done with Simon for the moment, left him and went to speak to Mr. Sidney Robinson and George, who had just come up from their bathe.
“How is your sister?” Simon asked me.
“Very well, thank you—at least I mean not very well——”
“I don’t wonder. I was so sorry for her the other night.”
“Did you loathe her? Your face looked as if you did.”
“Nothing of the kind! But if I ever get a chance of doing that brute Bowser some injury I’ll—— And the people she was with——? I beg your pardon, but that young lady who was in charge of you both—wasn’t it her business to prevent Miss Vero-Taylor’s good-nature being imposed upon?”
He meant Aunt Gerty, of course. I made up my mind in a second what was best to do for the best of all.
“Oh,thatperson,” said I. “She wasn’t anything to do with us. Miss Gertrude Jenynge, playing at the Saloon Theatre, I believe?”
“I think that your sister should not be allowed to go to places like that alone.”
“Why, I was with her!”
“What earthly good are you, you small elf?” asked Simon seriously and kindly, smiling down at me. “I wish to goodnessmysister——”
I know what he meant. That he wished he could persuade Almeria to take to Ariadne and boss her about. But he didn’t say it. He is so prim and reserved about his family. He simply asked to be remembered to Ariadne, and that he was going to stay with some people at a place called Henderland in Northumberland.
“Henderland,” said I, “that’s near where Christina lives.”
“Who is Christina?”
“Why, George’s old secretary. She is a Mrs. Ball now. You were her best man.”
“Peter Ball’s! Good old Ball! So I was. Bless me.‘Have you forgotten, love, so soon—Thatchurchin June?’Yes, of course I used to call her the Woman who Would—marry the good Ball, I mean. I shall be over there some time next month shooting. She gave me a general invitation.”
He wouldn’t say when he was likely to be at Rattenraw, it is a little way men have of defending themselves against girls like Ariadne. Now Ariadne and I had a particular invitation to go and stay with Christina for a fortnight, as it happened, and if Ariadne had been having this talk instead of me, she would have told him, and tried to pin him down to a time, but I was wiser. I said “Good-bye” quite shortly, as if I wasn’t at all interested in his movements, and went home. I was a little ashamed of one thing, I had told a lie about Aunt Gerty and denied her before men, as the Scripture says. But it was not for my own sake. Fifty Aunt Gertys can’t hurt me, but one can do Ariadne lots of harm and ruin her social prestige. On the way home I thought what I would do, and did it at lunch.
“Please, Aunt Gerty,” I said, “if you meet me on the quays or anywhere when I am talking to Mr. Simon Hermyre, I must beg of you not to be familiar with me, for I have told him that you were no relation, and I gave him your stage name when he asked me who you were.”
“Oh, did he ask?” said Aunt Gerty, jumpingabout. “He must have seen me somewhere. InTrixy’s Trustperhaps? I made a hit there. Well, child, you may as well bring us together. Use my professional name, of course.”
“All right,” said I. I did not tell her Simon was off to-morrow. Now don’t you call that eating your cake and having it!
WEall hoped that Mr. Bowser would find he liked Aunt Gerty well enough to wish to relieve us of her, but we evidently wished it so strongly that he did not see his way to obliging us. These things get into the air somehow, and put people off. Of course Aunt Gerty herself wished it more than anybody, and she was feeling considerably annoyed as she completed the arrangements for a rather seedy sort of autumn tour, which she would not have had to do if she could have pulled it off with the brewer. She wreaked her vexation on us, us and Mother, who was very patient, knowing what poor Aunt Gerty was feeling. But Ariadne, who was feeling very much the same way, and had to suffer in silence, resented it, and when Aunt Gerty hustled her, hustled back in spite of her broken heart.
George left for Scotland. Hesayshe is going to shoot with the Scillys. I don’t know why, but I have a fancy he has gone to Ben Rhydding, all alone, to cure his gout. It didn’t matter. It was settled that we were to go to stay with Christina in Northumberland.
Ariadne didn’t like going straight on from Whitby,because she would have preferred to get her country outfit in London; but of course the difference on fares made that impossible. It is one of the curious things about Finance, that George should make so much money, and we should still have to think of a beggarly three hundred miles or so at a penny a mile. That is what it costs third-class, as of course we go. The all-the-year-round conservatory at Cinque Cento House costs George three hundred a year alone to keep up, and the Hall of Arms (as it is written up over the door) at the back of the house must be done up every few months. It is all white (five coats!) to set off George’s black velvet fencing costume and his neat legs.
George hassomuch taste. He simply lives at Christie’s. He cannot help buying cabinets and chairs at a few hundred pounds apiece. He says they are realizable property. Ariadne and I would like to realize them.
The great point with Ariadne was how to dress suitably for Christina’s. I said same as London, only shorter and plainer. Ariadne hankered after a properbonâ fideshooting toilette. She had the sovereign George gave her for her birthday, and two pounds she had made by a poem, and another Mother gave her. She looks much best dressed quietly, nothing mannish or exact suits her, for it at once brings out the out-of-drawing-ness of her face, which is of the Burne-Jones type. She has grown to that, being trained up in it from her earliest years. All types can be acquired. In the face ofthis, she went out and bought aMiriam’s Home Journal, and selected a pattern of Stylish Dress for the Moors, and got a cheap tailor in the town to make it up for her. Ye Gods, as Aunt Gerty says! I used to go with her to be fitted. It was a heart-breaking business. They took her in and let her out, kneeling about her with their mouths full of pins so that you couldn’t scold them lest you gave them a shock and drove all the pins down their throat, and the little tailor kept saying, “A pleat here would be beneficial to it, Madam,” or to his assistant, “Remove that fulness there!” till there wasn’t a straight seam left in it, it was all bias and bulge.
Ariadne cried over the way that skirt hung for an hour when it came home. “Too much of bias hast thou, poor Ariadne,” I said to her, imitating the pompous tailor; but although I chaffed her I went to him and made him take ten shillings off the bill.
I couldn’t help thinking of a real country girl like Almeria Hermyre, when Ariadne put this confection on for the first time in the privateness of our bedroom. It was brown tweed turned up with “real cow” as Ben said; there is even a piece of leather stitched on to her shoulder where she is to rest her gun. Ariadne, who once pulled one leg, that I daresay he could easily spare, off a daddy-long-legs, and considered herself little better than a murderer!
Ben, who was present at this private view, did not like her in it, and told her so. He is so truthful that he never waits to be asked his opinion. Solong as he didn’t tease her about Simon Hermyre, it did not matter, but he is quite a gentleman, though rough. Indeed, nobody mentioned Simon, though I could not help thinking of him a good deal in connection with Ariadne’s new dress. I was sure we should see him somewhere in Northumberland. It isn’t as big as America, and where there is even a faint will there is generally a way. Ariadne was thinking of him when she bought a billycock hat on purpose to stick in a moorcock’s wing Simon had once given her that he had shot. I did not interfere, for I thought if he saw her in it he might think some other fellow had given her a moorcock’s feather; there are plenty of them about, and plenty of fools to shoot them.
I myself did not make much preparation. Just a new elastic to my hat, and new laces to my boots. How delightful it is to care for no man! How it simplifies life! All this bother about Ariadne has choked me off love for a long while to come. I don’t care if it never comes my way at all. But I am only fourteen, and have not got the place in my head ready for it yet, anyway. I don’t believe that Love is a woman’s whole existence any more than it is a man’s. We are like ships, made in water-tight compartments, so that if something goes wrong with one compartment the whole concern isn’t done for. Until I am old enough to set a whole compartment aside for Love, I can be easy and watch the others wallowing. Life is one huge party to me, and the girls who are not out yet watching it throughthe bannisters and getting a taste of the ices now and then.
I don’t study dinners at home, we have never given one in Cinque Cento House. George entertains a good deal at the Club, when he can get Lady Scilly or some one like that to play hostess and give the signal to rise for him, a thing, somehow, that no man ever seems capable of doing for himself.
Mother and Aunt Gerty saw us off for Morpeth, at Whitby station. Aunt Gerty looked far more excited than just seeing a couple of nieces off could make her, and I soon saw the reason of it, Mr. Bowser was leaving by the same train! He went first-class of course, which was annoying for Aunt Gerty, as that made him be at the other end of the train, too far off to see how prettily she kissed her nieces good-bye, and bought themFunny Bitsand chocolate creams. We got the creams anyhow. Children often profit by their elders’ foolish fancies.
Mother wouldn’t even let us kiss her out of the carriage-window for fear the train started and we got dragged out, and sure enough we did go on suddenly, in that slidy, masterful way trains have. I have a particular affinity to trains. My great-grandfather built an engine and had it called after him. When he was dying, he was taken in his chair to where the Great Northern trains pass every day, and drew his last breath as the Scotch Express rattled by.
To return. I noticed that Aunt Gerty looked awfully pleased about something, and kept stickingher hip out in an engaging way she has, and I concluded that Mr. Bowser had at last spotted her and thrown her an encouraging nod, perhaps blown her a kiss, only he is perhaps not quite low enough for that? But whatever it was, it made her happy. Oh, if they only could all get the man they wantat the timethey want him, what a nice place the world would be, for children at any rate! All grown-up people’s tempers come because they can’t get what they want. And here was I, boxed up with one who hadn’t got what she wanted, for a whole blessed day! She was simply weltering in love, if I may say so. She had a penny note-book ready to write poetry in, and meant to dream and write and cry for four hours. I had a nice improper six-penny of my Aunt Gerty’s, but I scarcely hoped that Ariadne would allow me to enjoy it.
Of course not. She soon began bothering. As soon as we were properly started, she pulled up her thousand times too thick veil, badly put on—Ariadne is too simple ever to learn to put on a veil properly as other women do—and looked hard at herself in her pocket looking-glass, and sighed and settled her loose tendril and unsettled it, and pinched her cheek to massage it and restore the subcutaneous deposit the doctor had told her about. She seemed hopeless and sad, for presently she said—
“No, I am not looking beautiful to-day!”
A pretty white tear, like a pearl button, shook on her eyelashes, and I wondered how long she could keep it hanging there? I do believe she wasanxious to look nice because she had an idea she might see Simon at Morpeth. But one never does see people at stations, and personally, I think that Ariadne would be far prettier if she didn’t know she was pretty. It is most unkind and inconsiderate of her so-called friends to keep telling her so. It is just like our horrid lot. In Simon’s set, they would die sooner than pay a girl a compliment to her face. But she has got so hardened to it that I always have to take her down gently, so as not to hurt her, same as one does with invalids.
“It doesn’t matter how you look,” I said, “there is nobody but porters to see you, and you don’t want to mash them and distract them from their work and make them get the points all wrong. I should have thought you preferred being alone. You can write in your book. Let us do George’s dodge, and stand at the window whenever we come into a station and look as repulsive as we can.”
George likes to keep the carriage all to himself, and taught us what to do to secure it, the only time he ever travelled with us. We made a prominent object of Ben, very sticky with lollipops, and managed to be by ourselves all the way.
Ariadne was unwilling to do this now. She sat still in her corner and brooded, and that did just as well, for the would-be passengers looked in and saw her, and made up their minds that she was recovering from scarlet fever, or at least measles. I stood in the window, squarely, and looked ugly for two.I was interested in the country. It is quite hideous between Whitby and Morpeth. The reason is that it is an industrial centre. I began to wish that our eating (kitchen boilers) and keeping warm (coal) didn’t mean so many people having to live black, and whole counties in a blanket of smoke. I don’t think I approve of civilization, if this is what it comes out of?
When the train slowed down at Morpeth, I could not help calling out to Ariadne, “I told you so!” for there was Christina Ball in a muslin dress, with a soft floppy chiffon hat and no veil at all. She was sitting in a little pony-cart, with an ugly child that couldn’t be hers; we saw her from the train. It was a shock to Ariadne, and she was wild to get our box into the cloak-room first and unlock it and get out one of her old dresses. But how could she dress in the waiting-room? And besides, she would be certain to muddle the next thing I told her (and so she did).
We got out of the station and into the trap. Christina had a new pony and couldn’t get down—and it was arranged that our luggage was to come on by carrier, as our wicker trunk would be sure to scratch the smart new dog-cart.
Off we went, I thought, and I am sure Ariadne thought, a little too like the wind. But Ariadne wanted to appear at ease, and casual and countrified, so she pretended to take an interest in the scenery, and said to Christina, “Look at the lovely tone of that verdigris on the pond!”
The ugly child twitched her feet under the rug beside me; she said nothing, but looked it.
“Oh, the duck-weed!” said Christina, who knows Ariadne too well to be amused by anything she says. “Miss Emerson Tree here—allow me to introduce Peter’s American niece, Miss Jane Emerson Tree—calls it the ‘stagnance.’”
The ugly child still didn’t say anything, though “stagnance” was just as absurd a word for mildew on a pond as verdigris, and I began to be quite afraid of one who, though so young, didn’t seem to want to fly out. She turned half round though, and seemed to be staring hard at the body of Ariadne’s shooting dress with its patch on the left shoulder. Christina went on enlightening us about the country and telling us the sort of things we were likely to ask and make fools of ourselves about. I do believe she was afraid of our saying something specially silly before Jane Emerson Tree, and wanted to save us from ourselves.
It came at last, and Ariadne nearly toppled out of the cart. The ugly child spoke in the most strong American accent, and the way she leant upon the last syllable of the worddespisewas the nastiest thing I ever heard.
“Oh, I do justdespiseyour waist!” she said to Ariadne; “I’ve been looking at it all the way we’ve come.”
Christina absently took hold of her whip and then rattled it back in its socket. She then scolded Jane till I should have thought any ordinary childcouldn’t have gone on sitting up, but this one did, never saying a word, but pursed her mouth in till there was hardly a line to be seen. Then Christina began to tell us how dull she had found it living in the country, and how difficult to get acclimatized at first.
“But in the end, the country rubs off on one,” she sighed, “and a good thing too. Oh, the mistakes I made at first! You know that Peter and I have both been staying with the dear Bishop of Guyzance.”
“Oh, Christina, youhavechanged!” said I.
“I know, dear, three services on Sunday and a shilling for the offertory. So different from Newton Hall and Farm Street. As I was saying, I came back from Lale Castle the day before yesterday, post haste, to hatch some chickens——”
“I thought a hen did that?” ventured Ariadne.
“Right you are! I pretended to Peter that it was an insane desire to kiss the baby, but I was an hour in the house before I even thought of the child. The hen was due to hatch fifteen. I interviewed her every hour, much to her disgust. At last, crack!—one came out——”
“You mean chipped the shell,” said Ariadne primly.
“Right again! I put it in a basket by the kitchen fire, the servants shunted it for dinner, it got cold, it died in the night. Yesterday five more happened, I popped them in the mild oven for a minute, just then some one pinched my baby—hescreamed, and went on screaming like an electric-bell gone wrong. I had to go and look after him—cook made a blazing fire, do you see?—I have only saved five out of that brood.”
“How very funny!” said Ariadne, who wasn’t a bit amused.
I was. Christina told us of a little hen Peter had before, who had been used to be set to ducks, and who had learned to march them all down to the nearest pond. The first lot of chickens had been driven to a watery and unfamiliar death.
“Would you like to go and be photographed to-morrow?” she asked Ariadne, and Ariadne was on thequi viveat once. “They all think one an unnatural parent here, if one doesn’t take one’s brood to be perpetuated at Oldfort every year. But the trains there are so awkward for us. I am fighting the railway authorities tooth and nail, trying to persuade them to put on a slip carriage. They do it for Keiller and his marmalade, so why not for me? Say! I am on the pony’s neck! I am going to put the seat back, take the reins a minute!”
Ariadne didn’t of course like her giving them to me, but everybody always sees at once that I am the practical one.
When the seat was arranged she went bubbling on.
“Next week is our Harvest Festival and School feast, and Ball in the school-house. The gaieties of this Parish! I haven’t had tea with myself for a whole week. I am a very hard worker, you don’t know! Peter says I lie awake at nights thinking of stodgy moral books to recommend for the Village Library. I recommend some, not all, of my late patron’s, your father’s, works. The Vicar here is a dear old dodderer, and was so shocked when I recommended himThe Road to Rome! It’s a book of travel, you know. We have a young man here, too, quite an eligible, he told me so. He is so shy, you see, he says the wrong thing. I wonder whether you’ll make anything of him? To a flirt, all things are possible.”
“I am not a flirt—now,” said Ariadne.
She was nearly giving the whole thing away, only the pony bolted, at least Christina said it was an attempt at bolting. “My God, pony!” she said to it, and it stopped, shocked at her swearing, I suppose.
“And there’s Simon Hermyre in the neighbourhood. Henderland is not more than ten miles off.”
Ariadne at once sat tight—too tight. It was almost painful, and showed in her face too.
Just as we were driving in at the gate of Rattenraw, Jane Emerson Tree spoke again, and actually about Ariadne’s body.
“Any way, it’s on all crooked,” she said, as if she was continuing the previous discussion. Peter came out to meet us, and she was lifted down. They couldn’t, I suppose, leave her sitting and just put her away in the coach-house all night. That is what I should have done, and cooled her hot blood. But I saw how it was when we got in and werehaving tea. She had hers “laced”—I mean brandy in it. Peter is awfully proud of her and thinks she will be a great actress and astonish the world some day. She certainly mimicked Peter to his face. I will let her know if I catch her mimicking Ariadne! Peter enjoyed it. The moment a child is really rude, people think it is going to do great things. I have noticed that. Now I would no sooner think of criticizing a grown-up person’s things to her face as I would of—kissing Emerson Tree’s very ugly mug, though I wouldn’t tell her so, otherwise than by my reluctance to embrace her. Peter calls her “the little witch.”
“The little witch,” he says, “was being neglected, or thought she was, at lunch the other day, and in a trice she called out to the butler, ‘I say, Holmes, old man, look alive with those potatoes, will you!’ You should have seen the old boy’s face!”
I did see the old boy’s face. He was waiting at tea.
Christina told us stories about her all tea-time; she listened quietly as she munched buns. How when she saw the new baby she said, “Dash it all! why it’s bald!” How one rainy day she was lost, and they found her with six of her village friends walking in a straight line down to the pond, barefooted and bareheaded and their mouths open, quacking, and to catch the rain-drops like ducks do. How she has done all the absurd things children do in books, such as aspinalling the cat—as if a cat ever stayed to be aspinalled!—and gunpowder intoovens, and frogs into boots, and hedgehogs into beds. (She says so, but I believe she put the clothes-brush, and Peter mistook it with his feet in the dark!) And once when a noted Socialist man had been staying there and rashly talked before her, she had given away the furniture.
“She went solemnly down the village,” said Christina, “making presents of the unearned increment in the shape of things she didn’t want and I did. Missing tensions of sewing-machines and valves of cycles and stray door-knobs and other bits of rolling stock—all disappeared. When it came to the spare sugar-tongs and my best silver scissors, however, I had to scold her. Oh, she’ll be a great actress some day.”
We listened, and I am sure no one could tell from my face how I disapproved of it all,—unless Duse the second, who, after all, was a child too, twigged how ridiculous they were making her look? Anyhow, after she had made three usual scenes and one extraordinary one because we were there, and had been noisily taken off to bed, they left off discussing her and took up a perfectly safe subject; “shoots” and who to have. Christina teases, she always did, even in the days when she used to put us head first down rabbit-holes.
“Has he a wife?” she asks, whenever Peter proposes a man.
“My dear, I haven’t the slightest idea. All I know is he is a capital shot, and brings down his pheasants in good style!”
“These good shots bring down such bad wives—I mean from the house-party point of view,” she says. “To look at their choice, they would always seem to have fired recklessly into the brown and got pot luck. You see I am boxed up with your friends’ bad shots all day. I can’t possibly make my housewifely duties last all the morning, and I object to have Jane brought down in her best frock and her worst behaviour to make sport for idle women. And she hates grown-up ladies, and has the wit to come in with segments of the Wanny Crag on her boots and her hair full of straws, so as to be sent out of the drawing-room to ‘muck herself up.’”
“I don’t like that phrase, Christina!”
“Don’t be so aggressively pure, Peter!”
Ariadne and I have called him “Pure Peter” ever since, but he is not bad, really. It is a mercy when one’s friends show a little consideration in their marriage, and one mustn’t be too particular, for the world is full of bounders one might have got, and had to be civil to. Peter Ball talks about “Vickings” and keeps a chart of the weather, but except for fussy ways like that, he is quite a gentleman.
ARIADNEgot fatter at Rattenraw, which is humiliating enough to a girl in her position. I can’t say that she kept that up at all well, beyond looking sad, sometimes when she wasn’t thinking, or at meals. She has to pretend to bedistraite, for really she is very all there, and likes her dinner. Peter Ball, carving the roast red beef, holds his knife up in the air to tease her, and says to her, when she won’t answer his question whether she wants some more?—“Thinking of the old ’un, what?” He doesn’t know how near the truth he is, except in age. He knows nothing of Ariadne’s affairs, he prefers not to know, but takes her word for it that she has a secret sorrow connected with a member of his sex.
Jane Emerson Tree doesn’t take any notice of Ariadne or of me either; she is put out at not being allowed to say rude things about us. She is a free-born American citizen. Christina has made Ariadne rip the leather patch off the shoulder of the waist Jane Emerson objected to, and has lent her a common straw sailor hat, which suits her better than the billycock. A sailor hat, you see, isn’t a hat, it is a tile, and so can’t either become or unbecome.
Simon Hermyre might have been at Henderland, or at Lord Manham’s, or at Barsom, Sir Edward Fynes’ place; neither places are more than ten miles or so off; but he made no sign, nor did he answer a letter Christina wrote to him, so Ariadne was practically forced to flirt with the only other man of her own rank in the village, besides Peter. He is the Squire of Rattenraw, and lives in the old Hall, and plays the fiddle, and keeps only one servant. Yet he came in before the Conquest. That is what becomes of all our old families. He isn’t old, but very wrinkled. That comes of so frequently meeting the wind and exposure. His corduroy velvet coat and his skin are much of a muchness. He is shy and wild, as Peter remarked of the grouse this year. As I said, he is all there is, here, till Christina’s “shoots” come off, and Ariadne egged him on—the amount of egging on a shy man takes!—to ask her, and then accepted to go out fishing with him. She sat all the afternoon on a bank near by, in a biting North-west wind straight down from the Wanny Crags, that blew the egg off the sandwiches and the froth off the ginger-beer. He asked her if she felt chilly (“Chilly!” she thought) about sixteen times, and said By Gosh when he didn’t catch anything, which was frequent, and “What in thunder’s got ’em?” alluding to the trout, when at last in despair they packed up to go home. Ariadne got back to tea chilled to the bone and disappointed at the heart to find him so coarse without being interesting. She thinks all local farmers and squiresought to be like Mr. Heathcliff inWuthering Heightsand hide a burning lava of passion under their upper crust of cold indifference. Squire Rochester is good and dull. He does admire Ariadne, I daresay, though I am not up in the country signs of love, and it seems the least he could do for a real London beauty who is good enough to sit on a sticky and muddy bank bald of grass and full of worm-holes, and some of them protruding disgustingly as she said, for a whole afternoon watching him not catching fish!
He leaves vegetable marrows and nosegays as big as cabbages “for the ladies” at the back-door, because he is so shy. He squeezes all Christina’s rings into her hands whenever he meets her, but these are as much signs of love for Christina as for Ariadne, and Peter Ball says Ariadne must take care and not to be like “Miss Baxter (whoever she was) who refused a gent before he asked her.”
Christina thinks heisa bit attracted, and that it is a good thing for Ariadne to have a man to play with, in her forlorn condition, and that whatever the Squire gets, even a hopeless passion, that he will be able to get over it. She considers that men have a thicker sort of skin than women, and if they are unhappy, can turn up their shirt-sleeves and get very hot and throw it off. The Squire keeps lots of cattle and is by way of being butcher to the village. Christina buys a whole sheep of him sometimes. He has plenty of distractions, and she always takesthe side of the woman—esprit de corpse, I think they call it. I myself think there should be the same law for men as for women, and I have a great mind to tell the Squire to save his nosegays, for Ariadne is in love with Simon. I even threatened her with thisexposé, and she turned round on me, and said I should be a liar, for shewasn’tin love with Simon. Then, I said, she might as well leave off taking the biggest half of the bed at night and all the looking-glass in the morning and first go at the bath, and other special privileges she has sneaked, because she is supposed to be unhappy. I am willing to make every allowance for one so persecuted by fate, but not for a woman who enjoys all the usual pleasures of her age and sex, as if nothing was the matter. Then she cried, and said I was unkind, that she wanted all the comfort she could get, and went off fishing with the Squire to spite me, that very afternoon! What can one do with a weathercock like that!
Then Church decorating came on, and Ariadne could do without the Squire. We worked all day, and in the evening we doctored our cuts and the places where the Lord had let us get bruised and scratched in smartening up His Church for His Harvest Festival. Ariadne had a big brown bruise done by a jagged pew on her upper leg shaped like a tortoise, and so we called it, so to be able to allude to it at all times and seasons.
At lunch, Christina used to ask Ariadne how her tortoise was, and Ariadne answered demurely thatit was getting a nice pea-green, or a good strong blue, till Peter and the Squire were so much puzzled, that they teased Ariadne till she let it out, and then Peter teased her worse than ever.
Two local ladies hindered us at decoration and we could not get rid of them, as they had pulled their gardens about to give us flowers. But we had to make a rule that we wouldn’t allow gentlemen in the church during decorations. It upset Miss Weeks so that she hammered her fingers instead of the nails, and put flowers into the men’s button-holes instead of threading them into the altar-rails, in fits of absence. Miss Day, the other young lady, agreed with Christina that one must really keep a firm hand on Miss Weeks, and that she herself didn’t care for so many men-folk about, talking their nonsense, and interfering with steady work, but she was sorry, her sailor cousin had just come home and shereelycould not spare more than half-an-hour every other day away from him! We were only decorating for three days.
During the half-hour she did come, however, she and Miss Weeks got on very badly, finding they could not work together, and they had it out in the middle aisle every five minutes or so. Christina and Ariadne had taken the chancel, while these two were responsible for the font, so we did not get mixed up so very much. But when Miss Weeks boxed Miss Day’s ears with a Scarborough lily, and Miss Day retorted with a double dahlia, the Vicar interposed, and ordered them out of his churchjust as the cook orders me out of her kitchen, and it is about as much their own, in either case.
Then we had some peace, and the Vicar used to come himself (he has no wife), and worked very hard at handing flowers to Ariadne, who did not look half bad on top of a ladder, a little weak and tottery, so that she had to be steadied by a strong hand now and then.
At home there was cooking to be done, cakes and pies and things for the village ball and tea-treat. We both cooked. Christina says there is a want of concentration about us, and that the trail of the flour-bin is all over her best chairs. She says it to callers to amuse them and to make them think her witty. Though really, Ariadne’s untidiness is trying. We find baking-powder in our workboxes, and currants as book-markers, and butter—well, everywhere but in the butter-dish! Ariadne goes about with white hair, and Peter Ball complains that the door-handles are sticky. He says that Ariadne’s cakes, when made, will form a capital hunting lunch, sustaining if eaten, and capable of breaking the nastiest fall.
Christina’s cook (cooks are the same, I see, all over the world!) gave her annual notice which is never taken any notice of, just before the Festival, when all the servants are so overworked that they get fractious. Luckily this time something happened to put them in a tearing good temper again. Farmer Dale died, and Christina blessed him forgiving us a good funeral to cheer the household up a bit. So the status was preserved.
On the Sunday morning, of course, we all attended Divine Service. Peter Ball came too and read the lessons. He is called one of the pillars of the church. He once spoke to some men who were lounging about outside while the service was proceeding, and told them that he looked to them to be pillars too. They sniggered, because they felt ashamed, and one of them said, “Ay, Sir, but aren’t we men the buttresses a-leaning up against it and propping it up like?” Peter was only shocked.
We workers could not attend much on this particular occasion, any more than a cook can enjoy the dinner she has cooked. We could not take our eyes off our own special rail that we had wreathed, and kept hoping our flowers wouldn’t topple suddenly because we hadn’t tied them securely enough, or wilt during the sermon. I noticed a curious sort of doll, standing on the altar-steps, dressed in three tissue-paper flounces and a sash. As we came out I asked old John Peacock what it was, and he said, “Why, that wor t’ Kern babby!” I was no wiser. But Ariadne, who dotes on superstitions, said she would ask the Vicar. She wrote him a pretty note in her all backwards hand, and said she felt sure the doll on the altar-steps was a heathen survival of some sort. This was his answer; he was pleased.