July 1st.
She has been now over five weeks under my roof, and I have put off the evil day of explaining her to Judith; and Judith returns to-morrow.
I know it is odd for a philosophic bachelor to maintain in his establishment a young and detached female of prepossessing appearance. For the oddity I care not two pins.Io son’ io. But the question that exercises me occasionally is: In what category are my relations with Carlotta to be classified? I do not regard her as a daughter; still less as a sister: not even as a deceased wife’s sister. For a secretary she is too abysmally ignorant, too grotesquely incapable. What she knows would be made to kick the beam against the erudition of a guinea-pig. Yet she must be classified somehow. I must allude to her as something. At present she fills the place in the house of a pretty (and expensive) Persian cat; and like a cat she has made herself serenely at home.
A governess, a fat-checked girl, who I am afraid takes too humorous a view of the position, comes of mornings to instruct Carlotta in the rudiments of education. When engaging Miss Griggs, I told her she must be patient, firm and, above all, strong-minded. She replied that she made a professional specialty of these qualities, one of her present pupils being a young lady of the Alhambra ballet who desires the particular shade of cultivation that will match a new brougham. She teaches Carlotta to spell, to hold a knife and fork, and corrects such erroneous opinions as that the sky is an inverted bowl over a nice flat earth, and that the sun, moon, and stars are a sort of electric light installation, put into the cosmos to illuminate Alexandretta and the Regent’s Park. Her religious instruction I myself shall attend to, when she is sufficiently advanced to understand my teaching. At present she is a Mohammedan, if she is anything, and believes firmly in Allah. I consider that a working Theism is quite enough for a young woman in her position to go on with. In the afternoon she walks out with Antoinette. Once she stole forth by herself, enjoyed herself hugely for a short time, got lost, and was brought back thoroughly frightened by a policeman. I wonder what the policeman thought of her? The rest of the day she looks at picture-books and works embroidery. She is making an elaborate bed-spread which will give her harmless occupation for a couple of years.
For an hour every evening, when I am at home, she comes into the drawing-room and drinks coffee with me and listens to my improving conversation. I take this opportunity to rebuke her for faults committed during the day, or to commend her for especial good behaviour. I also supplement the instruction in things in general that is given her by the excellent Miss Griggs. Oddly enough I am beginning to look forward to these evening hours. She is so docile, so good-humoured, so spontaneous. If she has a pain in her stomach, she says so with the most engaging frankness. Sometimes I think of her only, in Pasquale’s words, as a bundle of fascination, and forget that she has no soul. Nearly always, however, something happens to remind me. She loves me to tell her stories. The other night I solemnly related the history of Cinderella. She was enchanted. It gave me the idea of setting her to read “Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare.” I was turning this over in my mind while she chewed the cud of her enjoyment, when she suddenly asked whether I would like to hear a Turkish story. She knew lots of nice, funny stories. I bade her proceed. She curled herself up in her favourite attitude on the sofa and began.
I did not allow her to finish that tale. Had I done so, I should have been a monster of depravity. Compared with it the worst of Scheherazade’s, in Burton’s translation, were milk and water for a nunnery. She seemed nonplussed when I told her to stop.
“Are oriental ladies in the habit of telling such stories?” I asked.
“Why, yes,” she replied with a candid air of astonishment. “It is a funny story.”
“There is nothing funny whatever in it,” said I. “A girl like you oughtn’t to know of the existence of such things.”
“Why not?” asked Carlotta.
I am always being caught up by her questions. I tried to explain; but it was difficult. If I had told her that a maiden’s mind ought to be as pure as the dewy rose she would not have understood me. Probably she would have thought me a fool. And indeed I am inclined to question whether it is an advantage to a maiden’s after career to be dewy-roselike in her unsophistication. In order to play tunes indifferently well on the piano she undergoes the weary training of many years; but she is called upon to display the somewhat more important accomplishment of bringing children into the world without an hour’s educational preparation. The difficulty is, where to draw the line between this dewy, but often disastrous, ignorance and Carlotta’s knowledge. I find it a most delicate and embarrassing problem. In fact, the problems connected with this young woman seem endless. Yet they do not disturb me as much as I had anticipated. I really believe I should miss my pretty Persian cat. A man must be devoid of all aesthetic sense to deny that she is delightful to look at.
And she has a thousand innocent coquetries and cajoling ways. She has a manner of holding chocolate creams to her white teeth and talking to you at the same time which is peculiarly fascinating. And she must have some sense. To-night she asked me what I was writing. I replied, “A History of the Morals of the Renaissance.” “What are morals and what is the Renaissance?” asked Carlotta. When you come to think of it, it is a profound question, which philosophers and historians have wasted vain lives in trying to answer. I perceive that I too must try to answer it with a certain amount of definition. I have spent the evening remodelling my Introduction, so as to define the two terms axiomatically with my subsequent argument, and I find it greatly improved. Now this is due to Carlotta.
The quantity of chocolate creams the child eats cannot be good for her digestion. I must see to this.
July 2d.
A telegram from Judith to say she postpones her return to Monday. I have been longing to see the dear woman again, and I am greatly disappointed. At the same time it is a respite from an explanation that grows more difficult every day. I hate myself for the sense of relief.
This morning came an evening dress for Carlotta which has taken a month in the making. This, I am given to understand, is delirious speed for a London dress-maker. To celebrate the occasion I engaged a box at the Empire for this evening and invited her to dine with me. I sent a note of invitation round to Mrs. McMurray.
Carlotta did not come down at half-past seven. We waited. At last Mrs. McMurray went up to the room and presently returned shepherding a shy, blushing, awkward, piteous young person who had evidently been crying. My friend signed to me to take no notice. I attributed the child’s lack of gaiety to the ordeal of sitting for the first time in her life at a civilised dinner-table. She scarcely spoke and scarcely ate. I complimented her on her appearance and she looked beseechingly at me, as if I were scolding her. After dinner Mrs. McMurray told me the reason of her distress. She had found Carlotta in tears. Never could she face me in that low cut evening bodice. It outraged her modesty. It could not be the practice of European women to bare themselves so immodestly before men. It was only the evidence of her visitor’s own plump neck and shoulders that convinced her, and she suffered herself to be led downstairs in an agony of self-consciousness.
When we entered the box at the Empire, a troupe of female acrobats were doing their turn. Carlotta uttered a gasp of dismay, blushed burning red, and shrank back to the door. There is no pretence about Carlotta. She was shocked to the roots of her being.
“They are naked!” she said, quiveringly.
“For heaven’s sake, explain,” said I to Mrs. McMurray, and I beat a hasty retreat to the promenade.
When I returned, Carlotta had been soothed down. She was watching some performing dogs with intense wonderment and delight. For the rest of the evening she sat spell-bound. The exiguity of costume in the ballet caused her indeed to glance in a frightened sort of way at Mrs. McMurray, who reassured her with a friendly smile, but the music and the maze of motion and the dazzle of colour soon held her senses captive, and when the curtain came down she sighed like one awaking from a dream.
As we drove home, she asked me:
“Is it like that all day long? Oh, please to let me live there!”
A nice English girl of eighteen would not flaunt unconcerned about my drawing-room in a shameless dressing-gown, and crinkle up her toes in front of me; still less would she tell me outrageous stories; but she will wear low-necked dresses and gaze at ladies in tights without the ghost of an immodest thought. I was right when I told Carlotta England was Alexandretta upside-down. What is immoral here is moral there, and vice-versa. There is no such thing as absolute morality. I am very glad this has happened. It shows me that Carlotta is not devoid of the better kind of feminine instincts.
July 4th.
Judith has come back. I have seen her and I have explained Carlotta.
All day long I felt like a respectable person about to be brought before a magistrate for being drunk and disorderly. Now I have the uneasy satisfaction of having been let off with a caution. I am innocent, but I mustn’t do it again.
As soon as I entered the room Judith embraced me, and said a number of foolish things. I responded to the best of my ability. It is not usual for our quiet lake of affection to be visited by such tornadoes.
“Oh, I am glad, I am glad to be back with you again. I have longed for you. I couldn’t write it. I did not know I could long for any one so much.”
“I have missed you immensely, my dear Judith,” said I.
She looked at me queerly for a moment; then with a radiant smile:
“I love you for not going into transports like a Frenchman. Oh, I am tired of Frenchmen. You are my good English Marcus, and worth all masculine Paris put together.”
“I thank you, my dear, for the compliment,” said I, “but surely you must exaggerate.”
“To me you are worth the masculine universe,” said Judith, and she seated me by her side on the sofa, held my hands, and said more foolish things.
When the tempest had abated, I laughed.
“It is you that have acquired the art of transports in Paris,” said I.
“Perhaps I have. Shall I teach you?”
“You will have to learn moderation, my dear Judith,” I remarked. “You have been living too rapidly of late and are looking tired.”
“It is only the journey,” she replied.
I am sure it is the unaccustomed dissipation. Judith is not a strong woman, and late hours and eternal gadding about do not suit her constitution. She has lost weight and there are faint circles under her eyes. There are lines, too, on her face which only show in hours of physical strain. I was proceeding to expound this to her at some length, for I consider it well for women to have some one to counsel them frankly in such matters, when she interrupted me with a gesture of impatience.
“There, there! Tell me what you have been doing with yourself. Your letters gave me very little information.”
“I am afraid,” said I, “I am a poor letter writer.”
“I read each ten times over,” she said.
I kissed her hand in acknowledgment. Then I rose, lit a cigarette and walked about the room. Judith shook out her skirts and settled herself comfortably among the sofa-cushions.
“Well, what crimes have you been committing the past few weeks?”
A wandering minstrel was harping “Love’s Sweet Dream” outside the public-house below. I shut the window, hastily.
“Nothing so bad as that,” said I. “He ought to be hung and his wild harp hung behind him.”
“You are developing nerves,” said Judith. “Is it a guilty conscience?” She laughed. “You are hiding something from me. I’ve been aware of it all the time.”
“Indeed? How?”
“By the sixth sense of woman!”
Confound the sixth sense of woman! I suppose it has been developed like a cat’s whiskers to supply the deficiency of a natural scent. Also, like the whiskers, it is obtrusive, and a matter for much irritatingly complacent pride. Judith regarded me with a mock magisterial air, and I was put into the dock at once.
“Something has happened,” I said, desperately. “A female woman has come and taken up her residence at 26 Lingfield Terrace. A few weeks ago she ate with her fingers and believed the earth was flat. I found her in the Victoria Embankment Gardens beneath the terrace of the National Liberal Club, and now she lives on chocolate creams and the ‘Child’s Guide to Knowledge.’ She is eighteen and her name is Carlotta. There!”
As my cigarette had gone out, I threw it with some peevishness into the grate. Judith’s expression had changed from mock to real gravity. She sat bolt upright and looked at me somewhat stonily.
“What in the world do you mean, Marcus?”
“What I say. I’m saddled with the responsibility of a child of nature as unsophisticated and perplexing as Voltaire’s Huron. She’s English and she came from a harem in Syria, and she is as beautiful as the houris she believes in and is unfortunately precluded from joining. One of these days I shall be teaching her her catechism. I have already washed her face. Kindly pity me as the innocent victim of fantastic circumstances.”
“I don’t see why I should pity you,” said Judith.
I felt I had not explained Carlotta tactfully. If there are ten ways of doing a thing I have noticed that I invariably select the one way that is wrong. I perceived that somehow or other the very contingency I had feared had come to pass. I had prejudiced Judith against Carlotta. I had aroused the Ishmaelite—her hand against every woman and every woman’s hand against her—that survives in all her sex.
“My dear Judith,” said I, “if a wicked fairy godmother had decreed that a healthy rhinoceros should be my housemate you would have extended me your sympathy. But because Fate has inflicted on me an equally embarrassing guest in the shape of a young woman—”
“My dear Marcus,” interrupted Judith, “the healthy rhinoceros would know twenty times as much about women as you do.” This I consider one of the silliest remarks Judith has ever made. “Do,” she continued, “tell me something coherent about this young person you call Carlotta.”
I told the story from beginning to end.
“But why in the world did you keep it from me?” she asked.
“I mistrusted the sixth sense of woman,” said I.
“The most elementary sense of woman or any one else would have told you that you were doing a very foolish thing.”
“How would you have acted?”
“I should have handed her over at once to the Turkish consulate.”
“Not if you had seen her eyes.”
Judith tossed her head. “Men are all alike,” she observed.
“On the contrary,” said I, “that which characterises men as a sex is their greater variation from type than women. It is a scientific fact. You will find it stated by Darwin and more authoritatively still by later writers. The highest common factor of a hundred women is far greater than that of a hundred men. The abnormal is more frequent in the male sex. There are more male monsters.”
“That I can quite believe,” snapped Judith.
“Then you agree with me that men are not all alike?”
“I certainly don’t. Put any one of you before a pretty face and a pair of silly girl’s eyes and he is a perfect idiot.”
“My dear Judith,” said I, “I don’t care a hang for a pretty face—except yours.”
“Do you really care about mine?” she asked wistfully.
“My dear,” said I, dropping on one knee by the sofa, and taking her hand, “I’ve been longing for it for six weeks.” And I counted the weeks on her fingers.
This put her in a good humour. Now that I come to think of it, there is something adorably infantile in grown up women. Shall man ever understand them? I have seen babies (not many, I am glad to say) crow with delight at having their toes pulled, with a “this little pig went to market,” and so forth; Judith almost crowed at having the weeks told off on her fingers. Queer!
An hour was taken up with the account of her doings in Paris. She had met all the nicest and naughtiest people. She had been courted and flattered. An artist in a slouch hat, baggy corduroy breeches, floppy tie and general 1830 misfit had made love to her on the top of the Eiffel Tower.
“And he said,” laughed Judith, “‘Partons ensemble. Comme on dit en Anglais—fly with me!’ I remarked that our state when we got to the Champs de Mars would be an effective disguise. He didn’t understand, and it was delicious!”
I laughed. “All the same,” I observed, “I can’t see the fun of making jokes which the person to whom you make them doesn’t see the point of.”
“Why, that’s your own peculiar form of humour,” she retorted. “I caught the trick from you.”
Perhaps she is right. I have noticed that people are slow in their appreciation of my witticisms. I must really be a very dull dog. If she were not fond of me I don’t see how a bright woman like Judith could tolerate my society for half an hour.
I don’t think I contribute to the world’s humour; but the world’s humour contributes much to my own entertainment, and things which appear amusing to me do not appeal, when I point them out, to the risible faculties of another. Every individual, I suppose, like every civilisation, must have his own standard of humour. If I were a Roman (instead of an English) Epicurean, I should have died with laughter at the sight of a fat Christian martyr scudding round the arena while chased by a hungry lion. At present I should faint with horror. Indeed, I always feel tainted with savagery and enjoying a vicarious lust, when I smile at the oft-repeated tale of the poor tiger in Dore’s picture that hadn’t got a Christian. On the other hand, it tickles me immensely to behold a plethoric commonplace Briton roar himself purple with impassioned platitude at a political meeting; but I perceive that all my neighbours take him with the utmost seriousness. Again, your literary journalist professes to wriggle in his chair over the humour of Jane Austen; to me she is the dullest lady that ever faithfully photographed the trivial. Years ago I happened to be crossing Putney Bridge, in a frock-coat and silk hat, when a passing member of the proletariat dug his elbows in his comrade’s ribs and, quoting a music-hall tag of the period, shouted “He’s got ‘em on!” whereupon both burst into peals of robustious but inane laughter. Now, if I had turned to them, and said, “He would be funnier if I hadn’t,” and paraphrased, however wittily, Carlyle’s ironical picture of a nude court of St. James’s, they would have punched my head under the confused idea that I was trying to bamboozle them. Which brings me to my point of departure, my remark to Judith as to the futility of jesting to unpercipient ears.
I did not take up her retort.
“And what was the end of the romance?” I asked.
“He borrowed twenty francs of me to pay for thedejeuner, and hisl’annee trentedelicacy of soul compelled him to blot my existence forever from his mind.”
“He never repaid you?” I asked.
“For a humouristic philosopher,” cried Judith, “you are delicious!”
Judith is too fond of that word “delicious.” She uses it in season and out of season.
We have the richest language that ever a people has accreted, and we use it as if it were the poorest. We hoard up our infinite wealth of words between the boards of dictionaries and in speech dole out the worn bronze coinage of our vocabulary. We are the misers of philological history. And when we can save our pennies and pass the counterfeit coin of slang, we are as happy as if we heard a blind beggar thank us for putting a pewter sixpence into his hat.
I said something of the sort to Judith, after she had resumed her seat and I had opened the window, the minstrel having wandered to the next hostelry, where the process of converting “Love’s Sweet Dream” into a nightmare was still faintly audible. Judith looked at me whimsically, as I stood breathing the comparatively fresh air and enjoying the relative silence.
“You are still the same, I am glad to see. Conversation with the young savage from Syria hasn’t altered you in the least.”
“In the first place,” said I, “savages do not grow in Syria; and in the second, how could she have altered me?”
“If the heavens were to open and the New Jerusalem to appear this moment before you,” retorted Judith, with the relevant irrelevance of her sex, “you would begin an unconcerned disquisition on the iconography of angels.”
I sat on the sofa end and touched one of her little pink ears. She has pretty ears. They were the first of things physical about her that attracted me to her years ago in the Roman pension—they and the mass of silken flax that is her hair, and her violet eyes.
“Did you learn that particular way of talking in Paris?” I asked.
She had the effrontery to say she was imitating me and that it was a very good imitation indeed.
We talked about the book. I touched upon the great problem that requires solution—the harmonising and justifying of the contradictory opposites in Renaissance character: Fra Lippo Lippi breaking his own vows and breaking a nun’s for her; Perugino leading his money-grubbing, morose life and painting ethereal saints and madonnas in hisbottega, while the Baglioni filled the streets outside with slaughter; Lorenzo de’ Medici bleeding literally and figuratively his fellow-citizens, going from that occupation to his Platonic Academy and disputing on the immortality of the soul, winding up with orgies of sensual depravity with his boon companion Pulci, and all the time making himself an historic name for statecraft; Pope Sixtus IV, at the very heart of the Pazzi conspiracy to murder the Medici—
“And Pope Nicholas V when drunk ordering a man to be executed, and being sorry for it when sober,” said Judith.
It is wonderful how Judith, with her quite unspecialised knowledge of history can now and then put her finger upon something vital. I have been racking my brain and searching my library for the past two or three days for an illustration of just that nature. I had not thought of it. Here is Tomaso da Sarzana, a quiet, retired schoolmaster, like myself, an editor of classical texts, a peaceful librarian of Cosmo de’ Medici, a scholar and a gentleman to the tips of his fingers; he is made Pope, a King Log to save the cardinalate from a possible King Stork Colonna; the Porcari conspiracy breaks out, is discovered and the conspirators are hunted over Italy and put to death; a gentleman called Anguillara is slightly inculpated; he is invited to Rome by Nicholas, and given a safe-conduct; when he arrives the Pope is drunk (at least Stefano Infessura, the contemporary diarist, says so); the next morning his Holiness finds to his surprise and annoyance that the gentleman’s head has been cut off by his orders. It is an amazing tale. To realise how amazing it is, one must picture the fantastic possibility of it happening at the Vatican nowadays. And the most astounding thing is this: that if all the dead and gone popes were alive, and the soul of the saintly Pontiff of to-day were to pass from him, the one who could most undetected occupy his simulacrum would be this very Thomas of Sarzana.
“Pardon me, my dear Judith,” said I. “But this is a story lying somewhat up one of the back-waters of history. Where did you come across it?”
“I saw it the other day in a French comic paper,” replied Judith.
I really don’t know which to admire the more: the inconsequent way in which the French toss about scholarship, or the marvellous power of assimilation possessed by Judith.
Before we separated she returned to the subject of Carlotta.
“Am I to see this young creature?” she asked. “That is just as you choose,” said I.
“Oh! as far as I am concerned, my dear Marcus, I am perfectly indifferent,” replied Judith, assuming the supercilious expression with which women invariably try to mask inordinate curiosity.
“Then,” said I, with a touch of malice, “there is no reason why you should make her acquaintance.”
“I should be able to see through her tricks and put you on your guard.”
“Against what?”
She shrugged her shoulders as if it were vain to waste breath on so obtuse a person.
“You had better bring her round some afternoon,” she said.
Have I acted wisely in confessing Carlotta to Judith? And why do I use the word “confess”? Far from having committed an evil action, I consider I have exhibited exemplary altruism. Did I want a “young savage from Syria” to come and interfere with my perfectly ordered life? Judith does not realise this. I had a presentiment of the prejudice she would conceive against the poor girl, and now it has been verified. I wish I had held my tongue. As Judith, for some feminine reason known only to herself, has steadily declined to put her foot inside my house, she might very well have remained unsuspicious of Carlotta’s existence. And why not? The fact of the girl being my pensioner does not in the least affect the personality which I bring to Judith. The idea is absurd. Why wasn’t I wise before the event? I might have spared myself considerable worry.
A letter from my Aunt Jessica enclosing a card for a fancy dress ball at the Empress Rooms. The preposterous lady!
“Do come. It is not right for a young man to lead the life of a recluse of seventy. Here we are in the height of the London season, and I am sure you haven’t been into ten houses, when a hundred of the very best are open to you—” I loathe the term “best houses.” The tinsel ineptitude of them! For entertainment I really would sooner attend a mothers’ meeting or listen to the serious British Drama—Have I read so and so’s novel? Am I going to Mrs. Chose’s dance? Do I ride in the Park? Do I know young Thingummy of the Guards, who is going to marry Lady Betty Something? What do I think of the Academy? As if one could have any sentiment with regard to the Academy save regret at such profusion of fresh paint! “You want shaking up,” continued my aunt. Silly woman! If there is a thing I should abhor it would be to be shaken up. “Come and dine with us at seven-thirtyin costume, and I’ll promise you a delightful time. And think how proud the girls would be of showing off theirbeau cousin.”Et patiti et patita.I am again reminded that I owe it to my position, my title. God ha’ mercy on us! To bedeck myself like a decayed mummer in a booth and frisk about in a pestilential atmosphere with a crowd of strange and uninteresting young females is the correct way of fulfilling the obligations that the sovereign laid upon the successors to the title, when he conferred the dignity of a baronetcy on my great-grandfather! Now I come to think of it the Prince Regent was that sovereign, and my ancestor did things for him at Brighton. Perhaps after all there is a savage irony of truth in Aunt Jessica’s suggestion!
And abeau cousinshould I be indeed. What does she think I would go as? A mousquetaire? or a troubadour in blue satin trunks and cloak, white silk tights and shoes and a Grecian helmet, like Mr. Snodgrass at Mrs. Leo Hunter’sfete champetre?
I wish I could fathom Aunt Jessica’s reasons for her attempts at involving me in her social mountebankery. If the girls get no better dance-partners than me, heaven help them!
Only a fortnight ago I drove with them to Hurlingham. My aunt and Gwendolen disappeared in an unaccountable manner with another man, leaving me under an umbrella tent to take charge of Dora. I had an hour and a half of undiluted Dora. The dose was too strong, and it made my head ache. I think I prefer neat Carlotta.
July 5th
I lunched at home, and read drowsily before the open window till four o’clock. Then the splendour of the day invited me forth. Whither should I go? I thought of Judith and Hampstead Heath; I also thought of Carlotta and Hyde Park. The sound of the lions roaring for their afternoon tea reached me through the still air, and I put from me a strong temptation to wander alone and meditative in the Zoological Gardens close by. I must not forget, I reflected, that I am responsible for Carlotta’s education, whereas I am in no wise responsible for the animals or for Judith. If Judith and I had claims one on the other, the entire charm of our relationship would be broken.
I resolved to take Carlotta to the park, in order to improve her mind. She would see how well-bred Englishwomen comport themselves externally. It would be a lesson in decorum.
I do not despise convention. Indeed, I follow it up to the point when it puts on the airs of revealed religion. My neighbours and I decide on a certain code of manners which will enable us to meet without mutual offence. I agree to put my handkerchief up to my nose when I sneeze in his presence, and he contracts not to wipe muddy boots on my sofa. I undertake not to shock his wife by parading my hideous immorality before her eyes, and he binds himself not to aggravate my celibacy by beating her or kissing her when I am paying a call. I agree, by wearing an arbitrarily fixed costume when I dine with him, to brand myself with the stamp of a certain class of society, so that his guests shall receive me without question, and he in return gives me a well-ordered dinner served with the minimum amount of inconvenience to myself that his circumstances allow. Many folks make what they are pleased to call unconventionality a mere cloak for selfish disregard of the feelings and tastes of others. Bohemianism too often means piggish sloth or slatternly ineptitude.
Convention is solely a matter of manners. That is why I desire to instil some convention into what, for want of a more accurate term, I may allude to as Carlotta’s mind. It will save me much trouble in the future.
I summoned Carlotta.
“Carlotta,” I said, “I am going to take you to Hyde Park and show you the English aristocracy wearing their best clothes and their best behaviour. You must do the same.”
“My best clothes?” cried Carlotta, her face lighting up.
“Your very best. Make haste.”
I smiled. She ran from the room and in an incredibly short time reappeared unblushingly bare-necked and bare-armed in the evening dress that had caused her such dismay on Saturday.
I jumped to my feet. There is no denying that she looked amazingly beautiful. She looked, in fact, disconcertingly beautiful. I found it hard to tell her to take the dress off again.
“Is it wrong?” she asked Nvith a pucker of her baby lips.
“Yes, indeed,” said I. “People would be shocked.”
“But on Saturday evening—” she began.
“I know, my child,” I interrupted. “In society you are scarcely respectable unless you go about half naked at night; but to do so in the daytime would be the grossest indecency. I’ll explain some other time.”
“I shall never understand,” said Carlotta.
Two great tears stood, one on each eyelid, and fell simultaneously down her cheeks.
“What on earth are you crying for?” I asked aghast.
“You are not pleased with me,” said Carlotta, with a choke in her voice.
The two tears fell like rain-drops on to her bosom, and she stood before me a picture of exquisite woe. Then I did a very foolish thing.
Last week a little gold brooch in a jeweller’s window caught my fancy. I bought it with the idea of presenting it to Carlotta, when an occasion offered, as a reward for peculiar merit. Now, however, to show her that I was in no way angry, I abstracted the bauble from the drawer of my writing-table, and put it in her hand.
“You please me so much, Carlotta,” said I, “that I have bought this for you.”
Before I had completed the sentence, and before I knew what she was after, her arms were round my neck and she was hugging me like a child.
I have never experienced such an odd sensation in my life as the touch of Carlotta’s fresh young arms upon my face and the perfume of spring violets that emanated from her person. I released myself swiftly from her indecorous demonstration.
“You mustn’t do things like that,” said I, severely. “In England, young women are only allowed to embrace their grandfathers.” Carlotta looked at me wide-eyed, with the fox-terrier knitting of the forehead.
“But you are so good to me, Seer Marcous,” she said.
“I hope you’ll find many people good to you, Carlotta,” I answered. “But if you continue that method of expressing your appreciation, you may possibly be misunderstood.”
I had recovered from the momentary shock to my senses, and I laughed. She fluttered a sidelong glance at me, and a smile as inscrutable as the Monna Lisa’s hovered over her lips.
“What would they do if they did not understand?”
“They would take you,” I replied, fixing her sternly with my gaze, “they would take you for an unconscionable baggage.”
“Hou!” laughed Carlotta, suddenly. And she ran from the room.
In a moment she was back again. She came up to me demurely and plucked my sleeve.
“Come and show me what I must put on so as to please you.”
I rang the bell for Antoinette, to whom I gave the necessary instructions. Her next request would be that I should act the part of lady’s-maid. I must maintain my dignity with Carlotta.
The lovely afternoon had attracted many people to the park, and the lawns were thronged. We found a couple of chairs at the edge of one of the cross-paths and watched the elegant assembly. Carlotta, vastly entertained, asked innumerable questions. How could I tell whether a lady was married or unmarried? Did they all wear stays? Why did every one look so happy? Did I think that old man was the young girl’s husband? What were they all talking about? Wouldn’t I take her for a drive in one of those beautiful carriages? Why hadn’t I a carriage? Then suddenly, as if inspired, after a few minutes’ silent reflection:
“Seer Marcous, is this the marriage market?”
“The what?” I gasped.
“The marriage market. I read it in a book, yesterday. Miss Griggs gave it me to read aloud—Tack—Thack—”
“Thackeray?”
“Ye-es. They come here to sell the young girls to men who want wives.” She edged away from me, with a little movement of alarm. “That is not why you have brought me here—to sell me?”
“How much do you think you would be worth?” I asked, sarcastically.
She opened out her hands palms upward, throwing down her parasol, as she did so, upon her neighbour’s little Belgian griffon, who yelped.
“Ch, lots,” she said in her frank way. “I am very beautiful.”
I picked up the parasol, bowed apologetically to the owner of the stricken animal, and addressed Carlotta.
“Listen, my good child. You are passably good-looking, but you are by no means very beautiful. If I tried to sell you here, you might possibly fetch half a crown—”
“Two shillings and sixpence?” asked the literal Carlotta.
“Yes. Just that. But as a matter of fact, no one would buy you. This is not the marriage market. There is no such thing as a marriage market. English mothers and fathers do not sell their daughters for money. Such a thing is monstrous and impossible.”
“Then it was all lies I read in the book?”
“All lies,” said I.
I hope the genial shade of the great satirist has forgiven me.
“Why do they put lies in books?”
“To accentuate the Truth, so that it shall prevail,” I answered.
This was too hard a nut for Carlotta to crack. She was silent for a moment. She reverted, ruefully, to the intelligible.
“I thought I was beautiful,” she said.
“Who told you so?”
“Pasquale.”
“Pasquale has no sense,” said I. “There are men to whom all women who are not seventy and toothless and rheumy at the eyes are beautiful. Pasquale has said the same to every woman he has met. He is a Lothario and a Don Juan and a Caligula and a Faublas and a Casanova.”
“And he tells lies, too?”
“Millions of them,” said I. “He contracts with their father Beelzebub for a hundred gross a day.”
“Pasquale is very pretty and he makes me laugh and I like him,” said Carlotta.
“I am very sorry to hear it,” said I.
The griffon, who had been sniffing at Carlotta’s skirts, suddenly leaped into her lap. With a swift movement of her hand she swept the poor little creature, as if it had been a noxious insect, yards away.
“Carlotta!” I cried angrily, springing to my feet.
The ladies who owned the beast rushed to their whining pet and looked astonished daggers at Carlotta. When they picked it up, it sat dangling a piteous paw. Carlotta rose, merely scared at my anger. I raised my hat.
“I am more than sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I hope the little dog is not hurt. My ward, for whom I offer a thousand apologies, is a Mohammedan, to whom all dogs are unclean. Please attribute the accident to religious instinct.”
The younger of the two, who had been examining the paw, looked up with a smile.
“Your ward is forgiven. Punch oughtn’t to jump on strange ladies’ laps, whether they are Mohammedans or not. Oh! he is more frightened than hurt. And I,” she added, with a twinkling eye, “am more hurt than frightened, because Sir Marcus Ordeyne doesn’t recognise me.”
So Carlotta had nearly killed the dog of an unrecalled acquaintance.
“I do indeed recognise you now,” said I, mendaciously. I seem to have been lying to-day through thick and thin. “But in the confusion of the disaster—”
“You sat next me at lunch one day last winter, at Mrs. Ordeyne’s,” interrupted the lady, “and you talked to me of transcendental mathematics.”
I remembered. “The crime,” said I, “has lain heavily on my conscience.”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” she laughed, dismissing me with a bow. I raised my hat and joined Carlotta.
It was a Miss Gascoigne, a flirtatious intimate of Aunt Jessica’s house. To this irresponsible young woman I had openly avowed that I was the guardian of a beautiful Mohammedan whose religious instinct compelled her to destroy little dogs. I shall hear of this from my Aunt Jessica.
I walked stonily away with Carlotta.
“You are cross with me,” she whimpered.
“Yes, I am. You might have killed the poor little beast. It was very wicked and cruel of you.”
Carlotta burst out crying in the midst of the promenade.
The tears did not romantically come into her eyes as they had done an hour before; but she wept copiously, after the unrestrained manner of children, and used her pocket-handkerchief. From their seats women put up their lorgnons to look at her, passers-by turned round and stared. The whole of the gaily dressed throng seemed to be one amused gaze. In’ a moment or two I became conscious that reprehensory glances were being directed towards myself, calling me, as plain as eyes could call, an ill-conditioned brute, for making the poor young creature, who was at my mercy, thus break down in public. It was a charming situation for an even-tempered philosopher. We walked stolidly on, I glaring in front of me and Carlotta weeping. The malice of things arranged that ne. neighbouring chair should be vacant, and that the path should be unusually crowded. I had the satisfaction of hearing a young fellow say to a girl:
“He? That’s Ordeyne—came into the baronetcy—mad as a dingo dog.”
I was giving myself a fine advertisement.
“For heaven’s sake stop crying,” I said. Then a memory of far-off childhood flashed its inspiration upon me. “If you don’t,” I added, grimly, “I’ll take you out and give you to a policeman.”
The effect was magical. She turned on me a scared look, gasped, pulled down her veil, which she had raised so as to dab her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief, and incontinently checked the fountain of her tears.
“A policeman?”
“Yes,” said I, “a great, big, ugly blue policeman, who shuts up people who misbehave themselves in prison, and takes off their clothes, and shaves their heads, and feeds them on bread and water.”
“I won’t cry any more,” she said, swallowing a sob. “Is it also wicked to cry?”
“Any of these ladies here would sooner be burned alive with dyspepsia or cut in two with tight-lacing,” I replied severely. “Let us sit down.”
We stepped over the low iron rail, and passing through the first two rows of people, found seats behind where the crowd was thinner.
“Is Seer Marcous still angry with me?” asked Carlotta, and the simple plaintiveness of her voice would have melted the bust of Nero. I lectured her on cruelty to animals. That one had duties of kindness towards the lower creation appealed to her as a totally new idea. Supposing the dog had broken all its legs and ribs, would she not have been sorry? She answered frankly in the negative. It was a nasty little dog. If she had hurt it badly, so much the better. What did it matter if a dog was hurt? She was sorry now she had hurled it into space, because it belonged to my friends, and that had made me cross with her.
Of course I was shocked at the thoughtless cruelty of the action; but my anger had also its roots in dismay at the public scandal it might have caused, and in the discovery that I was known to the victim’s owner. It is the sad fate of the instructors of youth that they must hypocritically credit themselves with only the sublimest of motives. I spoke to Carlotta like the good father in the “Swiss Family Robinson.” I gave vent to such noble sentiments that in a quarter of an hour I glowed with pride in my borrowed plumes of virtue. I would have taken a slug to my bosom and addressed a rattlesnake as Uncle Toby did the fly. I wonder whether it is not through some such process as this that parsons manage to keep themselves good.
The soothing warmth of conscious merit restored me to good temper; and when Carlotta slid her hand into mine and asked me if I had forgiven her, I magnanimously assured her that all the past was forgotten.
“Only,” said I, “you will have to get out of this habit of tears. A wise man called Burton says in his ‘Anatomy of Melancholy,’ a beautiful book which I’ll give you to read when you are sixty, ‘As much count may be taken of a woman weeping as a goose going barefoot.’”
“He was a nasty old man,” said Carlotta. “Women cry because they feel very unhappy. Men are never unhappy, and that is the reason that men don’t cry. My mamma used to cry all the time at Alexandretta; but Hamdi!—” she broke into an adorable trill of a chuckle, “You would as soon see a goose going with boots and stockings, like the Puss in the shoes—the fairy tale—as Hamdi crying.Hou!”
Half an hour later, as we were driving homewards, she broke a rather long silence which she had evidently been employing in meditation.
“Seer Marcous.”
“Yes?”
She has a child’s engaging way of rubbing herself up against one when she wants to be particularly ingratiating.
“It was so nice to dine with you on Saturday.”
“Really?”
“Oh, ye-es. When are you going to let me dine with you again, to show me you have forgiven me?”
A hansom cab offers peculiar facilities for the aforesaid process of ingratiation.
“You shall dine with me this evening,” said I, and Carlotta cooed with pleasure.
I perceive that she is gradually growing westernised.
July 8th.
In obedience to a peremptory note from Judith, I took Carlotta this afternoon to Tottenham Mansions. I shook hands with my hostess, turned round and said
“This, my dear Judith, is Carlotta.”
“I am very pleased to see you,” said Judith.
“So am I,” replied Carlotta, not to be outdone in politeness.
She sat bolt upright, most correctly, on the edge of a chair, and responded monosyllabically to Judith’s questions. Her demeanour could not have been more impeccable had she been trained in a French convent. Just before we arrived, she had been laughing immoderately because I had ordered her to spit out a mass of horrible sweetmeat which she had found it impossible to masticate, and she had challenged me to extract it with my fingers. But now, compared with her, Saint Nitouche was a Maenad. I was entertained by Judith’s fruitless efforts to get behind this wall of reserve. Carlotta said, “Oh, ye-es” or “No-o” to everything. It was not a momentous conversation. As it was Carlotta in whom Judith was particularly interested, I effaced myself. At last, after a lull in the spasmodic talk, Carlotta said, very politely:
“Mrs. Mainwaring has a beautiful house.”
“It’s only a tiny flat. Would you like to look over it?” asked Judith, eagerly, flashing me a glance that plainly said, “Now that I shall have her to myself, you may trust me to get to the bottom of her.”
“I would like it very much,” said Carlotta, rising.
I held the door open for them to pass out, and lit a cigarette. When they returned ten minutes afterwards, Carlotta was smiling and self-possessed, evidently very well pleased with herself, but Judith had a red spot on each of her cheeks.
The sight of her smote me with an odd new feeling of pity. I cannot dismiss the vision from my mind. All the evening I have seen the two women standing side by side, a piteous parable. The light from the window shone full upon them, and the dark curtain of the door was an effective background. The one flaunted the sweet insolence of youth, health, colour, beauty; of the bud just burst into full flower. The other wore the stamp of care, of the much knowledge wherein is much sorrow, and in her eyes dwelled the ghosts of dead years. She herself looked like a ghost-dressed in white pique, which of itself drew the colour from her white face and pale lips and mass of faint straw-coloured hair, the pallor of all which was accentuated by the red spots on her cheeks and her violet eyes.
I saw that something had occurred to vex her.
“Before we go,” I said, “I should like a word with you. Carlotta will not mind.”
We went into the dining-room. I took her hand which was cold, in spite of the July warmth.
“Well, my dear,” said I. “What do you think of my young savage from Asia Minor?”
Judith laughed—I am sure not naturally.
“Is that all you wanted to say to me?”
She withdrew her hand, and tidied her hair in the mirror of the overmantel.
“I think she is a most uninteresting young woman. I am disappointed. I had anticipated something original. I had looked forward to some amusement. But, really, my dear Marcus, she isbete a pleurer—weepingly stupid.”
“She certainly can weep,” said I.
“Oh, can she?” said Judith, as if the announcement threw some light on Carlotta’s character. “And when she cries, I suppose you, like a man, give in and let her have her own way?” And Judith laughed again.
“My dear Judith,” said I; “you have no idea of the wholesome discipline at Lingfield Terrace.”
Suddenly with one of her disconcerting changes of front, she turned and caught me by the coat-lappels.
“Marcus dear, I have been so lonely this week. When are you coming to see me?”
“We’ll have a whole day out on Sunday,” said I.
As I walked down the stairs with Carlotta, I reflected that Judith had not accounted for the red spots.
“I like her,” said Carlotta. “She is a nice old lady.”
“Old lady! What on earth do you mean?” I was indeed startled. “She is a young woman.”
“Pouf!” cried Carlotta. “She is forty.”
“She is no such thing,” I cried. “She is years younger than I.”
“She would not tell me.”
“You asked her age?”
“Oh, ye-es,” said Carlotta. “I was very polite. I first asked if she was married. She said yes. Then I asked how her husband was. She said she didn’t know. That was funny. Why does she not know, Seer Marcous?”
“Never mind,” said I, “go on telling me how polite you were.”
“I asked how many children she had. She said she had none. I said it was a pity. And then I said, ‘I am eighteen years old and I want to marry quite soon and have children. How old are you?’ And she would not tell me. I said, ‘You must be the same age as my mamma, if she were alive.’ I said other things, about her husband, which I forget. Oh, I was very polite.”
She smiled up at me in quest of approbation. I checked a horrified rebuke when I reflected that, according to the etiquette of the harem, she had been “very polite.” But my poor Judith! Every artless question had been a knife thrust in a sensitive spot. Her husband: the handsome blackguard who had lured her into the divorce court, married her, and after two unhappy years had left her broken; children: they would have kept her life sweet, and did I not know how she had yearned for them? Her age: it is only the very happily married woman who snaps her fingers at the approach of forty, and even she does so with a disquieting sense of bravado. And the sweet insolence of youth says: “I am eighteen: how old are you?”
My poor Judith! Once more, on our walk home, I discoursed to Carlotta on the differences between East and West.
“Seer Marcous,” said Carlotta this evening at dinner—“I have decided now that she shall dine regularly with me; it is undoubtedly agreeable to see her pretty face on the opposite side of the table and listen to her irresponsible chatter: chatter which I keep within the bounds of decorum when Stenson is present, so as to save his susceptibilities, by the simple device, agreed upon between us (to her great delight) of scratching the side of my somewhat prominent nose—Seer Marcous, why does Mrs. Mainwaring keep your picture in her bedroom?”
I am glad Stenson happened to be out of the room. His absence saved the flaying of my nasal organ. I explained that it was the custom in England for ladies to collect the photographs of their men friends, and use them misguidedly for purposes of decoration.
“But this,” said Carlotta, opening out her arms in an exaggerated way, “is such a big one.”
“Ah, that,” I answered, “is because I am very beautiful.”
Carlotta shrieked with laughter. The exquisite comicality of the jest occasioned bubbling comments of mirth during the rest of the meal, and her original indiscreet question was happily forgotten.