The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe frantic masterThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The frantic masterAuthor: Mrs. Douglas PulleyneRelease date: March 27, 2024 [eBook #73273]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: London: Chapman and Hall Ld, 1927Credits: Al Haines*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRANTIC MASTER ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The frantic masterAuthor: Mrs. Douglas PulleyneRelease date: March 27, 2024 [eBook #73273]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: London: Chapman and Hall Ld, 1927Credits: Al Haines
Title: The frantic master
Author: Mrs. Douglas Pulleyne
Author: Mrs. Douglas Pulleyne
Release date: March 27, 2024 [eBook #73273]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Chapman and Hall Ld, 1927
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRANTIC MASTER ***
BY
DOUGLAS PULLEYNE
AUTHOR OF "SPRING SORREL"
"And in particular I may mention Sophocles the poet, who was once asked in my presence, 'How do you feel about love, Sophocles? Are you still capable of it?' To which he replied, 'Hush, if you please; to my great delight I have escaped from it, and feel as if I had escaped from a frantic and savage master.'"The Republic of Plato.
CHAPMANAND HALL LD.
LONDON : MCMXXVII
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The incident, in essentials true, of the soldiers in the railway carriage, overheard by "Cyprian," is the seed from which this book grew. To explain his attitude, it is, therefore, included with acknowledgments to that Editor of the"PIONEER"who first recorded it for me. "Shoan and the Mermaid" is also true, as an example of a tale told to the Nicobarese by a traveller, and retold by them, and may be found in Sir Richard Temple's Census Report, preserved to the best of my belief in the Offices of the Chief Commissioner in the Andamans.
I make no apologies to my old friends, Scarecrow, Friend-of-England and others for describing them under their own names, feeling sure that they would expect no evil magic to come of it. To the workers of the Mission at Car Nicobar, one of whom it is well-known spent twelve years in the islands translating the Prayer Book into Nicobarese, I would say that little Jellybrand is only the portrait of a type I have met—of which is the Kingdom of Heaven, and which neither looks for nor will find recognition on earth for much simple heroism.
A somewhat delightful brother of mine may be inclined to suspect a portrait in "Peter." Let me assure him that I have known many Peters.
Printed in Great Britainby Burleigh Ltd., atTHE BURLEIGH PRESS,Bristol
WRITTEN FORA SOLDIER, A DOCTORANDA SCIENTIST
YOU THREE,
This fulfilled promise, possibly, by now, nearly forgotten by you, will find the four of us in different countries, or even different continents; but find you it will, to recall to your minds a memory of five long weeks, during which we formed a perfect square; when, alike under the Colombo palms or the hot rocks of Aden, among the lights of Port Said or in the shadow of Gibraltar, the discussion, ever and again, would veer round to that which the fool hath said in his heart.
People on this earth evolve and alter; it is to you, as I knew you then, that this is addressed. Try to put back the clock and think as you thought then.
I have still in your neat hand-writing, "C"—I wonder whether your prescriptions are as clear to read?—the account of your conversion to that Spiritualistic Theosophy which used to make "L.B." impatient. I inserted the page in the first book I wrote for you all, but which, to the agent's surprise, I suddenly withdrew, doubting lest I was still too near the Three of you and those endless conversations to have made my characters impersonal enough and, also, doubting the fairness of putting into cold print anything which had been given me in the special circumstances of our friendship.
So Cyprian and Ferlie come late on the scene to show you by their problem much that I have left unsaid (even to you, "L.B.") during the star-spangled nights in tropical waters and, afterwards, in the grey streets of Westminster and those greyer and darker streets elsewhere, down which the Other Half live and the Men in Black go to and fro.
Let me say now, since it was hardly permitted for me to tell you then, that what you did was one of the bravest things I have ever known a man do. This, in case you have, in retrospection, doubted and regretted the impulse as abnormal or unbalanced.
Some travellers across my horizon last winter recognized your photograph, and I gathered from them that you are now on the way to be reckoned among the Senior and the Great.
To you, "C," I have always wished to confess, in acknowledgment of your wisdom as physician and psychologist, that your warning nearly came true and, two years ago, I thought a great deal about it, and you, in hospital.
And of you, "L.L.": I have often wondered whether you found your Golden Girl according to Le Gallienne? Well, I owe much to the passing of our ships: hence this dedication.
I have only the one wish for you all Three, but particularly will "L.B." understand it: it is, that to the end of the voyage you may be able to trust the Pilot you have chosen.
Under a signature only part familiar to you,
Yours,H. E. DOUGLAS-PULLEYNE
THE FRANTIC MASTER
When a man has been turned down by the Only Girl (although she isn't, and never was) and, subsequently, finds her present in the same batch of dinner-guests as himself, it is hardly to be expected that he will prove the life and soul of the party.
But, thought Mrs. Carmichael, vexed with herself for a blundering hostess who ought to have known, and still more vexed with Cyprian Sterne for not having waited until after the 17th to try his luck with Muriel, there was no need for him to gloom at his soup as if he were gauging its depths for a suicidal dive and there was no need for him to have waved aside the champagne. Champagne was clearly indicated on the occasion, medicinally, if not (as she felt inclined to insist, herself, despite appearances) in felicitation.
Cyprian always showed himself so ridiculously sensitive. And Muriel looked so ... adamant. Yes, that was the word; hard and bright like a crystal prism you could not see through clearly, however often the attractive suggestion of buried rainbows within might tempt you to hold it close to your eyes. With the closeness even the rainbows became blurred.
"An incarnation of the three B's which constitute the Perfect Woman," said her men-admirers.
Brain, Beauty and Breeding. All by heredity. No wonder she behaved as if she had the right to wealth also, of a standard not to be extracted from the scholarly pockets of Cyprian and his like.
Had he a like? Mrs. Carmichael doubted. She wondered what mislaid edition of Persian verse or Grecian ethics was, even now, spoiling the symmetry of his evening coat. A little bowed, the shoulders, even when he stood upright. The scrutiny of the very blue eyes a little fixed when he addressed you with that air of seeing behind things which betrays the short-sighted. Interesting, the long dreamy face, but hardly handsome. And his acknowledged cleverness did not flash in your face like Muriel's, so that, waiving her awareness of his Double Firsts at Oxford and all that, she had been heard to tick him off as "a dry old stick." Encouraging his transparent admiration the while. Minx!
One had wished he would hurry up and propose and get the inevitable yearnings for a premature grave over and then forget. And now he had completed the first item on that programme—most inconsiderately before the 17th—and the yearnings were upon him and he was ruining his end of the dinner-party.
Muriel sat opposite him and it was comprehensible that he should not want to look at her and, therefore, incomprehensible why he insisted on trying to.
As usual, she was worth looking at. Those very fair women, particularly when dressed in soft watery greens, recalled old legends of sirens who floated gold hair about their insinuating bodies, luring mankind by music and provocative laughter to its destruction despite the warning, eternally present, of white bones on the sand.
A pity that Cyprian's mental vision was as myopic as his physical when it came to those bones.
Mrs. Carmichael could see them quite clearly herself: here, the skull of Major Ames (a nice little man, and of course, that hunting tragedyhadproved an accident, although at the time They said...) there, the femur, rather nobbly, of Maurice Waring who had parted, not exactly with his life, to be sure, but certainly with his wife since sighting the siren's shining head. But those two had never got on anyhow, and if, eventually, he managed the divorce ... how much more nearly would he and Muriel prove birds of a feather than she and poor Cyprian with his good old-fashioned conviction that this modern laxity in matrimonial matters was a national menace. Refreshing, to find a man like Cyprian, even though as he was not safely religious one was inclined to wonder, when it came to personal influence, would Muriel...? Mrs. Carmichael's subconscious musings (for consciously she was smiling eager attention to ex-Colonel Maddock's—he was now, by virtue of a dead American wife, by way of being a millionaire, which is far better—account of his last yachting cruise, and praying Providence for the strength and the strategy to resist suggestions that she and Robin should join him next time) were shattered by the despairing howl of what sounded like a soul in torment. Only, it emanated from regions too nearly at the top of the house to be described as "nether."
"It's that child again," remarked Robin accusingly down the long table, interrupted in an intense discussion with Miss Mabel Clement, the playwright: "I have always said we would suffer for it if you were so weak with her in the beginning."
"To any child born in the East, English nursery-life is impossibly terrifying," and Mrs. Carmichael apologetically sought the support of her guests. "Since Peter went to school she has had to sleep alone. It's all very well for Robin to call me weak but I can't believe it is good for a child's nerves to..."
Another wail crescendoed to the uttermost heights of horror and died away.
"That noise does not improve mine," Robin Carmichael answered dryly: "What is the nurse thinking of?"
"It's her evening out."
And, inwardly, his wife sighed for their return to Burma where servants did not have evenings out, and ... and people were too enslaved to official etiquette to show their feelings at dinner-parties.
A chair grated harshly back, rumpling the rug on the polished parquet floor.
"Let me go up to her for a moment," said Cyprian, "I undertook to visit the nursery when I arrived but was told she had gone to sleep."
Well, if it would take his mind off himself and his stricken face from the vicinity of the Hon. Mrs. Porter, who was beginning to wear a worried look. Mrs. Carmichael knew that Robin would say that it was all wrong, of course, in the morning, but she could hardly let Ferlie howl throughout dinner and, if the parlour-maid went up, Rose would have to hand round the fish single-handed and she was under notice to go, and therefore, under no obligation to behave. In Burma there had always been someone to sit with Ferlie if she woke.
"Tell her to go to sleep at once then," and Ferlie's mother favoured Cyprian with an indulgent smile. His fondness for the child was really too quaint. In the circumstances, pathetic.
The incident might well arouse Muriel's better nature ... but no, not quite.
It would, in all likelihood, encourage her worse one, since she was no character in a book written with a mission behind it. Already her clear eyes were glinting humorously and something she remarked to Captain Wright, in an undertone, had just made that young gentleman, who never at any time required much encouragement to giggle, choke violently into his napkin. Why couldn't Cyprian realize that he didn't in the least want Muriel, but a Womanly Woman of Yesterday?
* * * * * *
Meanwhile, Cyprian, incapable of perceiving his desire for any woman, save one who was the figment of his own imagination, clothed in a blurred semblance to Muriel Vane, mounted the stairs to an airy room with a sloping roof which lent queer profundities to the dancing shadows born of Ferlie's night-light. Found Ferlie sitting up among the pillows with the sheet over her head and the fear of the devil in her soul. Ferlie, at seven, was afraid of darkness, being accidentally buried alive, and wolves. Not lions and tigers: only wolves. This, since she had never seen a wolf; though tigers, looking loose and heavy, had been marched across her horizon more than once by excitedly shouting coolies, when everyone was in holiday camp and Mr. Carmichael had been out shooting. They inspired sympathy rather than respect in that condition, and lions, naturally, slipped into the same category of beasts one's father could, if he so desired, bring home on poles and transform into carpets for the bungalow. Wolves were different. She had a book concerning their activities in a land called Siberia. They chased people there for miles and miles over stuff like ground-rice pudding, commonly known as "snow," and even ate the sleigh. England, in which she now found herself, might very easily resemble Siberia in this particular: it was cold also, and snow came with cold. The birth of the being-buried-alive fear dated from a conversation overheard between her parents anent the accuracy of the Bible with regard to the reappearance from the grave of one, Lazarus.
Her father was a thoughtful sceptic, but Ferlie did not find him out for many years. Her mother's views were founded on the Book of Common Prayer and the story, "There, but for the Grace of God ..." though she was divided in her mind whether Bunyan had invented the one and Gladstone said the other, or vice versa. Her own father, a bishop, and a busy one, had rather taken her catechism for granted when he confirmed her, on the assumption that a daughter educated in a godly ecclesiastical household and never exposed to the youthful heresies of a boarding-school must necessarily be in a perpetual state of knowledgeable grace. And he had passed on his gaiters as a matter of course before retiring to her elder brother.
Her husband explained away miracles by Euclidean methods which struck terror to her orthodox heart.
"A possible and recorded case of suspended animation," had been his verdict on Lazarus. "Occurs every day. ReadHudson's Psychic Phenomena." Mrs. Carmichael had no intention of doing any such thing.
"There are countless instances of people being buried alive," continued Mr. Carmichael. And, after racking his brains for two, cited them in clear convincing tones. Ferlie had scooped the last grains of melting sugar out of an empty cocoa-cup and thoughtfully left the room. Mrs. Carmichael vaguely hoped that God was not listening to the conversation and then forgot all about it. So did Robin. Ferlie remembered. Always at night in this England, deprived of her patiently crooning Burmese nurse, she remembered. The wigwam of sheets and blankets was to shut out Fear.
She knew the footsteps on the stairs which were coming to the rescue now; though he was not, in his customary accomplished fashion, taking two steps at a time.
"Is that you, Cyprian?"
"Yes, old lady."
"I thought it might be Satan."
"Why Satan?"
She came out of her fastness with a shudder.
"They call him the Prince of Darkness, you know. This is the witching hour when I think he probberly might..."
"Might what?" Vainly he tried to sort the tumbled bed-clothes. Her Viyella night-dress was dripping wet.
"Might take an' bury me in the Tomb," said Ferlie in a hoarse whisper. Cyprian tried to make his laugh aggressively reassuring.
"Who on earth suggested such nonsense to you?"
"It can't be nonsense if it's in the Bible. An' in a book by a man named Hudson. He makes the kitchen soap 'cos Cook told me so when I asked. He must be clever for every person to buy his soap. An' he buried Lazarus."
It was beyond Cyprian's power to disentangle her from this web. The servants must have been frightening the child. It was common knowledge that the best of nurses were often grossly imaginative.
He stroked the russet mop of fluff resting against his shoulder and resorted to practical conversation. Except that it concerned her own private affairs and was therefore connected with Teddy-bears, the duck-pond in the park, the little-girl-next-door, and other important personages of summers six to ten, it was conducted as gravely as though they were of an age.
Cyprian did not really understand anything about talking down to a child's level and that was why Ferlie loved him. She detected the simple sincerity behind his sometimes complicated language and when he used words beyond her ken it was seldom she failed to grasp the drift.
Neither the child nor the man realized that each being sensitive to a fault, they affected one another atmospherically and their true conversation existed in emotions experienced side by side rather than in sentences interchanged. Thus, to-night, her quick intuition arrived at the cause of that veiled look in his eyes.
"Are you going to be married to that Vane girl?" she enquired, betraying instantaneously to Cyprian that there were those who disapproved of his matrimonial projects.
He answered, "No," quietly, after an instant's pause.
"Why not?" asked Ferlie suspiciously. "Nurse says she's a hussy."
"No one should have said such a thing to you."
"It wasn't to me: it was to Rose. Rose used to live in her house, an'..."
"It doesn't matter what either Rose or Nurse says," said Cyprian. "But who told you about my marrying anyone, Ferlie?"
"I think that was just in my head," struggling to remember where the impression had first indented itself upon her responsive brain. "Why aren't you...?"
He saw there was no help for it and replied patiently, "She does not want to marry me; that's all."
"Then she's a dam fool," said Ferlie with complete conviction. He was genuinely shocked.
"You must never say that of anyone, dear, even if you don't like them."
"Dad says it of mostly all peoples, whether he likes them or not."
"That's different."
"How?"
"He's grown-up."
"How can grown-ups...?"
"And he's a man," Cyprian went on, desperately aware that he was not doing very well. "Ladies don't use such words."
Then Ferlie played her trump card. "Miss Vane does," she said coldly.
Cyprian preserved a masterly silence. Good gracious! she was modern enough, of course. Muriel! There was music in her name ... and in her throat when she sang ... and in the delicate hands moving over the keys of the grand piano downstairs; for she always played to them after dinner in the evenings. She had the whitest throat he had ever seen and the most beautiful hands.
"Whydo people always want to marry other people?" insisted his companion, alive to mysteries unsolved and femininely peevish in consequence. Cyprian considered this himself before attempting to clear it up.
"I suppose they grow lonely living just for themselves," he said at last.
"I don't believe that there girl would make loneliness feel better," declared Ferlie.
"You don't understand, dear." She cuddled his sleeve, ecstatically sympathetic with that which shedidunderstand, his tone of voice.
"Are you so sorry you can't get married, Cyprian? Why not make Miss Cartwright marry you astead? She'd do it, I daresay, 'f I begged her formysake. She says she'd do most things for me, only not run upstairs backwards at her timerlife. An' she cooks lovely choclick fudge. Miss Vane can't, I'm sure. You ask her."
"I think you are probably right about that."
"Then we've settled it," much relieved. "I wouldn't go marrying anyone myself 'less they had a hand for fudge. I'll tell Miss Cartwright to-morrow that you want to get married to her this directly immejantly, an' I was to ask her not to say 'No' like Miss Vane."
"Good God!" exclaimed Cyprian rousing himself. "I beg your pardon—I mean—you must never say that, Ferlie. But neither must you say anything to Miss Cartwright. Promise! It's just—you see, this must be a dead secret between you and me, about Miss Vane and all." Happy thought! He might trust Ferlie to the stake with their numerous unique secrets.
"But, Cyprian, why..."
"Dear, my dear," said the man, speaking more to the beauty of her upturned face than to the child, "when you want to marry it is only the one person who counts. The one person with all her faults and weaknesses—because those, too, are part of her. Chocolate fudge (and there are more kinds of that than you know) doesn't come into it with the averagely decent man. You just love the person or you don't. You will understand all about it some day, when you are older."
The comforting arms which stole round his neck might have understood all about it now.
"Do you really love that Miss Vane?"
"Heaven help me, I do!"
"Can't you stop if you want to?"
"Apparently not; but one doesn't want to. That's the ridiculous part ... the thing grips you, like invisible iron hands, to drag you along a road of withered flowers, forcing you to breathe the rot of that Dead Sea fruit which fills the air with the bitter fumes of jealousy and passion.... Fruit?"
"Cyprian, didn't you not bring me up a cryssalized apricot?"
He nearly chuckled as he stumbled back along his "withered paths" to Reality.
"Sorry, Little Thing. I forgot. You shall have a whole box to-morrow."
"I shan't get a moment's peace to eat them unless we have it as a secret," she suggested wheedlingly.
"Oh!" he cried, delightedly hugging her, "You'll be a woman so much too soon."
"Mother says..." she began dreamily, and that reminded him.
"She said I was to tell you to go to sleep at once."
"Such a silly sort of thing to say to a child!" said Ferlie, palpably quoting, "Sleep is like that marrying feeling of yours: it can't be made to go or stop ... Cyprian..."
"Well!"
"You did a wriggle. You aren't goin' away."
"Not if you'll shut your eyes," he undertook feebly. "But, you know, there is really nothing to be afraid of, Ferlie, whether I am here or not."
She knew better. "And that's another thing you can't let go nor stop, neither," she told him.
Considering it, with her head growing heavier every moment against his shoulder, Cyprian came to the conclusion that she was right. The darkness deepened about them as someone shut the door between hall and stairs.
"Cyprian."
"Dear."
"Whoever you get married to, you will always like me best, won't you?"
"Why, of course," said Cyprian. "Of course..."
Her breathing became contentedly regular.
* * * * * *
Downstairs, Muriel Vane had been very clever at his expense.
More like a siren than ever, perched behind the looming rock of the grand piano, a few gleaming threads of escaping hair picked out against the background of polished wood, while, every now and again, her fingers rippled the accompanying chords of some haunting French song.
She usually sang in French.
"To shock folk in legitimate ignorance," she informed Captain Wright, leaning over her with every symptom of shortly shedding his bones in the vicinity.
"Dear Muriel!" placidly reproved Mrs. Carmichael. She did not understand sung French, or for that matter, any but the brand which, by dint of firm repetition, brings you your hot water and "Du thé—pas chocolat. Pas!" in Parisian hotels at eight a.m.
Muriel's sort of French was of little use to anyone but foreigners, and there were so seldom foreigners present.
"Sing 'Sanson et Dalila'," begged the Hon. Mrs. Porter, feeling surer of her ground when dealing with passion in opera, where, however unbridled, it remained respectably unconvincing to the mind of the British matron.
"I was saving that till Cyprian Sterne had finished rocking the cradle upstairs," said Muriel. "It happens, quite unsuitably, to be his favourite song, and the hand that rocks the cradle rules the girls—in that its action suggests a future peacefully free from that domestic duty for them."
"I have sent up two messages," Mrs. Carmichael anticipated her husband plaintively, "but he replied that he was not feeling very well to-night and would join us after dinner."
"I have repeatedly said——" began Mr. Carmichael, but was firmly interrupted: "I know you have, dear, but if half an hour with Ferlie amuses him, I think it would be better to leave him alone to-night." She looked across, meaningly, at Muriel and closed her lips. Tact was a thing nobody seemed able to acquire who had not been born with it.
Muriel made a little grimace and burst suddenly into a very simple melody:
"J'ai pris un bluet FluetEnclos parmi l'herbeEt quelqu'un m'a dit; Mon Dieu!Il n'est pas de bleu plus bleuQue ce bleu superbe.Moi, qui sais ce que je sais—J'ai souri sans lui rien direCar à tes yeux je pensais—Sans rien dire, sans rien dire."
The notes quickened with heartless mirth, and the pure voice rang out again:
"Au rosiers fleuris j'ai pris."
Mrs. Carmichael, ruminating that the piano, at any rate, kept Muriel out of mischief, here clutched thankfully, decided that the song concerned roses, and framed an intelligent appreciation, on that hypothesis, against its finish.
Cyprian walked into the room as the last verse, reckless with desire, was sweetening the air:
"J'ai pris un pavé, trouvéAu fond de cratèreEt quelqu'un m'a dit, Mon Dieu!Plus dur pavé ne se peutTrouver dans la terre.Moi, qui sais ce que je sais—J'ai pleuré sans lui rien dire,Car à ton cœur je pensais—Sans rien dire... Sans rien dire...."
"I always like songs about flowers, don't you?" queried their hostess of the world.
And "Here you are at last," her husband remarked to Cyprian before Muriel's curving lips could make the most of that joke; "you really should not spoil Ferlie."
"She is such a highly-strung child," the Hon. Mrs. Porter volunteered languidly, waving a gold-tipped ostrich feather, though, had she stopped to consider the matter, she would have discovered that she was cold in her chair near the door.
"Never yet," said Colonel Maddock, who adopted the criticizing privileges of an unofficial uncle in the house, "have I met the fortunate mother whose children were not exceptionally highly-strung. What does the term mean exactly?"
"That they need a disciplined existence," said Mr. Carmichael. "All these modern methods of making things easy for children are wrong. Life is not easy. They must be fitted to overcome difficulties."
"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control!" mocked Muriel, with accusing eyes on Captain Wright who was trying to press her hand behind the music-stand. "I cannot bear a man, particularly, without self-control; and the child is father to the man—in Ferlie's case."
Cyprian dejectedly decided that he had let himself go, rather, at the scene of the proposal. She had looked so infinitely desirable.
"Ferlie was frightened," he said, rather lamely. "I think, perhaps, the servants——"
"There!" cried Mrs. Carmichael. "What did you tell Robin about English servants?"
"You should discipline her out of being frightened," declared Muriel. "Why make it easy for a child to go to sleep with night-lights and such nonsense? Think of all the insomnia she will have to battle against in future years. Let her learn to overcome——"
Mr. Carmichael was looking so stiff that his wife intervened.
"Dear Muriel! You do talk such nonsense. Robin did not mean that."
"No?" Muriel turned limpid eyes on Cyprian. "And what line did you take with her?"
"We talked a little," he said, blinking quickly at the carpet, "and presently she fell asleep. I must thank her for affording me the excuse to get rid of a slight headache."
"I thought you were not yourself at dinner," said Mrs. Porter forgivingly. "You are fond of children?"
"No," said Cyprian, somewhat bluntly. He was not fond of children.
"Really! Ferlie is so devoted to you."
"She is about the first child I have ever addressed, and will probably be the last."
"If she were a normal specimen, the first time you addressed herwouldhave been the last," said Muriel, "I have heard you doing it. I am glad when you are with me you talk down to my level, Cyprian. I have not Ferlie's pristine trust in dictionarial expressions. I should imagine that you were swearing at me half the time."
"I think he talks very good English," said Mrs. Carmichael kindly. "We none of us speak enough like books these days."
Mabel Clement who, during the greater part of the evening had been scrutinizing Muriel and Captain Wright with a view to working them into her new satire, "The Man-Eater," came out of a frowning wilderness of thought, wherein the others had completely forgotten her, to say that the ideal language, as yet unborn, should consist merely of a riot of sound, expressing the emotion it was required to convey.
"Our spelling is execrable, our grammar clumsy, and the elegant diction of the one-time popular novelist of the Jane Austen calibre was affected in the extreme. Life is too short for these chains of superfluous sentences, and far too short for us to master all the tongues of Babel before we can test the mentality of other nations. It should be possible to invent a tongue, common to all, conveying to the brain, by sound, what it is desired to express."
"Let's begin to invent it now," Muriel suggested rapturously: "Colonel Maddock! Whu-u! Why! Whu-u-u! Isn't my meaning perfectly clear?" She tilted her flower-face up to his, drawing in her breath in a series of staccato jerks.
The Colonel grinned down amiably as he inhaled the fragrance of a delicate hair-wash.
"I know!" Captain Wright bawled triumphantly from his corner: "she wants a drink!"
In the storm of merriment which followed, Mabel Clement smiling resignedly, retired again into the fastness of her soul, while Cyprian crossed the room to a tray containing, Eastern fashion, several long bottles and a syphon.
While the party were breaking up in a fizzling glitter of glasses, Mrs. Carmichael drew close and gently touched his sleeve. Then and there the memories were blotted out of occasions when he had wondered how a clever man like Carmichael stood her! Madonna-sweet, her smile at that moment.
"Wait a bit after the others leave," she said in an undertone; "Robin and I have been wondering about your plans. And I want to consult you over Ferlie's school."
The note on which the last word was spoken broke in two. When she and her husband returned to Burma they would be minus encumbrances. Subtly conveying her own need of a little sympathy in the only idiom she knew, Mrs. Carmichael remained unaware that in so doing she represented to Cyprian the beauty of the Essentially Feminine.
She kissed Muriel "Good night," reflecting cattily how boring women's kisses must seem to her after ... and staved off the Colonel's last broad approach to the forthcoming pleasure-cruise in the yacht.
"Good night, Mrs. Porter."
"Good night, dear. Such a pleasant... Yes, thank you, that is my vanity bag, though at my time of life you may well be wondering ... and Muriel with a Vinolia complexion has no business to own such a thing."
"Robin, will you... Ah! Here is the parlour-maid...."
A low-murmured plea from Captain Wright, whose arms encircled Muriel's cloak.... The diamond glitter of answering eyes....
Good night.... Good-night.
"Seems almost a pity," said Mr. Carmichael.
His wife looked her grey-eyed agreement.
"The one post promises security for life, a fixed salary...."
"And is so eminently your line, Cyprian."
"At the moment," said Cyprian, "a secure haven and a tranquil time to brood upon my good fortune in it are the last attractions the world can offer me. I feel restless. I know I am probably being a fool but, since my mother died, there is nothing that need prevent me from being a fool if I so desire."
Mrs. Carmichael had a feeling that any young man who rounded off his sentence with, "if I so desire" at this stage of his career, was intended by Heaven for a University donship and not the vicissitudes of a miner's existence. She was quite right.
"The Company which has offered you the post of Secretarial Manager and What-Not of its—er—machinations," went on Mr. Carmichael, "will, in all likelihood, burst before the year's end and leave you stranded. The Burmese mines are overdone and I hardly believe in this new discovery and your avaricious expectations. What is promised? Rubies?"
"I got such a pretty aquamarine straight from the Mogok mines once," murmured his wife, "through a friend who ..."
"You won't find any rubies, ten to one," warned Robin.
"But I may find something else again which is of even more importance to me," said Cyprian.
Neither of his companions asked what that was. He went on slowly: "Some force outside myself seems to be urging me away from England for the present. I fear the facetious would describe me as a quitter, but, for certain natures, it is always safest to quit ... temptations. I have never dared to do anything else myself, and a superficial peace at Oxford just now would multiply mine unbelievably, though I am sensible of the honour done me by their offer of the appointment."
"You are only twenty-eight, are you not?"
"Yes. For a humble tutor and lecturer to get such a chance..."
"Free house and garden," chirped Mrs. Carmichael, seeing womanly visions and dreaming womanly dreams, "and with prospects of becoming a master in time. What a pity..."
She knew, alas, that Muriel would refuse to be dazzled.
"Well, since you seem to have made up your mind to throw up a good thing for a doubtful one"—Mr. Carmichael never wasted time on vain regrets—"I agree that your science and geological knowledge will be invaluable to your employers and I had better tell you what I have seen of the district."
The talk drifted into generalities, and Mrs. Carmichael began to price Ferlie's winter coat and remind herself to impress it upon the matron at Peter's school that Peter was really an Exceptional Boy. She believed in a private appeal to the only woman in an establishment full of unimaginative men. Pictured the red-roofed bungalow in Rangoon without the children's toys annoying her husband in the verandah. Remembered all the other Colonial mothers and wondered why that made the pain worse instead of better. Rejoiced that she had, at least, got the better of Robin in the matter of Ferlie's education. None of your hard modern schools, over-developing brain and body at the expense of femininity. Reaction must set in soon on this count, and Muriel Vane was nothing if not a warning. There could come a revival of the old-fashioned home-school, where it was so fortunate that the kind Miss Maynes had welcomed the thought of having Peter for the holidays.
They could not have agreed to take just any boy, they had told her—in fact none had, up to date, been offered them—but, in the circumstances, "Why, it is really ourduty, dear Mrs. Carmichael."
Yes, Lady Vigor's daughter had always remained with them and, naturally, they had taken her to the seaside. How impossible, thought Ferlie's mother, to have entrusted Ferlie or Peter to Aunt Brillianna.
Brillianna Trefusis, a maternal aunt of Robin's, who was, nevertheless, not more than five years his senior, was an eccentric lady who travelled a great deal, spoke boldly and wore a disconcerting air suggesting that life amused her. And she did not go to church!
Mused Ferlie's mother, it was all very well for the men-folk to content themselves with prayer by proxy, reaping where their loyal wives had sown, but if the women were also to desert the old and tried paths to that Better Land, Far, Far Away, the chances were that the Judgment would fall due before anyone had reached those Eternal Bowers, and the travellers find themselves shooed into Outer Darkness to the tune of "Depart, ye Cursed!" And Ferlie was so responsive to her surroundings: Aunt B. could easily have raised doubts in her mind as to the authenticity of Lazarus and Jonah, and when once you began to pick and choose...
"No, I am afraid she is still out in the park, Cyprian. What's that? Crystallized apricots? Oh, but you really shouldn't. I could give them to her when she comes in.... Well, if you will ... she's sure to be near the pond. Thank you, Peter is quite well. So odd! He says his form master asked him where he had learnt the secret of perpetual motion. Such a silly sort of thing to say to a child."
Cyprian had never met the exiled Peter, on the occasion of whose swift banishment he had first recognized a kindred spirit in the Ferlie, white-faced and dumb, presented to him in the Carmichaels' drawing-room with the motherly rebuke, "And, Cyprian, this is the one I intended to ask you to be godfather to, only Robin put me off, insisting that you would not know what the term meant."
He visualized Peter, after winning his sister's confidence, as a wiry mortal of nine summers, permanently unlaced boots and an enquiring expression; this last suggesting a soul too perfectly in tune, if not with the Infinite, at least with the Infinitely Annoying, as connected with problems of Eternal Research, for the peace of mind of those in charge of him.
"Isn't it funny, when you come to think of it"—thus Mrs. Carmichael when Cyprian had gone—"that a woman's 'No' can alter the whole course of a man's life?"
"Not nearly so thoroughly as can a woman's 'Yes,' believe me. He is jolly well out of that one."
"The trouble is that you can't persuade him of it. Such an ideal situation for him, Robin. A free house and garden..."
"Nice Society," went on Robin, a little grimly, "church bells within ear-shot, so that one can imbibe atmospheric religion from an arm-chair, and the golf-links closed on Sunday. But you're right: it would have suited him—in the end. If ever I saw an Oxford don in embryo, it is Cyprian."
"He's so Nice," his wife lingered over the word. "One realizes at once how high-principled..."
"Oh, he's all that ... and he listens to the Abbey organ regularly."
"Simple and obtuse," Linda Carmichael continued. "Andshe'squite heartless. Do you know, Robin, sometimes she behaves almost as if she were not a lady."
Mrs. Carmichael couldn't understand why Robin sniggered at this superlative condemnation.
"She wants the Man-with-the-Stick," he briefly summed up Muriel.
Mrs. Carmichael did not pursue that idea. It was so bluntly lowering to the dignity of Womanhood as to make her feel mildly uncomfortable. There were wife-beaters in the slums—very sad—but she always closed fastidious eyes to the thought that among Us, also, the thing called Human Nature could betray itself in crude unmentionable ways.
Exploited as it might be in these days, Human Nature always seemed to her to have an undressed sound.
Her own marriage had been a reticent affair: separate dressing-rooms and so on.
There was something about Muriel, though her father's first cousin was an Earl, which reminded one of the pictures kept in the house because they were classical but which one did not look at very closely and hung in darkish corners of the landing. Necessary to Art but hardly to Life.
* * * * * *
While Cyprian was laying in stocks of quinine, dark glasses and thin pyjamas, and the Carmichaels were busily embracing relations whom they never set eyes on except at the "Ave atque Vale" occupying the two separate ends of their four-yearly "leaves," and while Peter was interesting himself in illicit Natural History during class hours, and Ferlie in members of her own sex as a regiment, in class and out, Muriel was brooding over her bones and finding them tasteless.
She came out of her bath one morning after washing her hair and, having given the damp cloud a desultory rub with a large fluffy towel, tossed that shield from her and paused before the long pier-glass.
"And God, who made that body for delight"—
She quoted under her breath—
"Should there have stayed and left a perfect thing,Nor added to your loveliness a soul.So had He spared you sharpest suffering;Dark waves of night that o'er your spirit roll.And sobs which shake you through the lonely night...."
Where had she read the words? Some literary magazine. Author? Hamilton Fyffe? Was it? Or Fyfe? Remembered she had thought that clever when, very young, she came across it. Someone had scrawled against the margin, "I fear me Fyffe is very inexperienced. No woman without a soul has held a man for long."
Did she want to hold any man for long? Did she ever want to "fall in love"? What bosh it all was—this thirst of milk-blooded girls for the soul-mate.
"It's positively terrifying to see Truth naked," remarked Muriel to her own white reflection. Or was it not better to be free from mental corsets—as well as the ordinary sort? She raised herself on tiptoes, clasping her rounded arms above her head as the thought rippled into merriment across her face: "If Cyprian were my husband and came in now, accidentally, he would apologize and flee, and be too much of a gentleman even to mention it again on our meeting later. He's the type of man who would never forget that though its wife was its wife she was still a 'lady'."
Footsteps, and a knock at her door disturbed these cogitations. A known voice greeted her through it.
"May I come in, Muriel?"
"Oh, is that you, Twinkle? Yes, so far as I'm concerned you can come in. Better leave your gentleman-friend outside on the mat though—for his sake, not for mine."
A thickset, handsome girl entered languidly, took in the situation at a glance and sat down upon the unmade bed.
"You are a One!" Her voice drawled richly. "I suppose I can smoke while you dress?"
"Puff away! I'll have one too while I finish my air-bath. It fills me with optimism to take it in front of the glass."
Twinkle ran critical eyes over this unbashful nymph.
"You're all right," she said candidly. "A bit thin. Thinking of posing as an artist's model?"
"Glory! It never occurred to me."
"It's a possible treatment for your complaint, my dear."
"What do you mean?" A deepening of the carnation tint on Muriel's soft cheek.
Twinkle did not appear to notice.
"Enough eyes on yourtout ensembleto satisfy even your thirst for admiration. The joy of seeing, say, thirty individuals all occupied in reproducing your beauty for general display in some gallery. After-results ...qui sait? The artist's model...."
"Meets artists," finished Muriel, recovering herself: "I am out after bigger game. I had thought of going into training on your lines."
"The stage is over-stocked with people seeking auditions who have not the slightest talent," warned Miss Ruth Levine, commonly known as Twinkle, probably because it was the most unsuitable nickname that could possibly be found for her. "Youmightprove a happy exception."
"I'd get a walking-on chorus part, at any time," Muriel confidently assured her, "with nothing to do but kick and use my eyes."
"M-m! You've been reading some reliable literature, wherein the pure-hearted Gladiola Trevelyan, who is only on this degrading beat in order to supply calves' foot jelly for little cripple sister Winnie at home, finds the young earl's card in her dressing-room. In real life you'll discover it is the son of the local butcher who leaves his in a Rolls Royce and that the marquises' cheques are to be mistrusted more often than honoured."
"Truly enough, gold paint can disguise a lead coronet. We've one in our family—my second cousin's. Anyone is welcome to him for me. Money I must have, Twinkle, or I may as well commit suicide."
"You are doing that by inches while you waste time emptying old pocket-books."
"My little weakness," admitted Muriel frankly. "I take what comes while keeping my eyes on the final goal."
"What the devil is your goal? One man or several?"
"You are an honest woman," laughed Muriel. "I don't mind confessing for your private ear, that I simply do not know." She flung herself face downwards on the tumbled satin quilt, cupping her face in her pink palms.
"To look it in the face: I have seen marriage at close quarters and found it distinctly uninspiring. Father and Mother! My God! How they bore one another! They try to go their separate ways and yet cling to a snarling respectability."
"Why don't they get a divorce?"
"Too expensive. Besides, there is no just cause or impediment. I could forgive them if either had risen to a guilty passion. But that would have smirched the family escutcheon, you see; merely being rude to one another doesn't. Then they have not got me off their hands yet. Dad would sell me to the highest bidder to-morrow. I am marketable stock for some degenerate duke with no age-limit, provided he is rich. Not so easy to find, eh? As for a love-match with an impecunious captain, whose inspiriting moustache bristles to touch one's holy hand before the ring adorns it and, a year later, remains quiescent against one's immovable lip-salve—well, I ask you! Every Sweet Young Thing thinks her matrimonial drama will be acted to muted violins in 'Just a little love, a little kiss,' and is perfectly prepared to 'Give him all her life for this.' Now, I'm not."
"The alternative is a profession. Mannequin?"
"Golly! Not enough men in it. And your Model idea would have to be carried out in dark secrecy. Mother would poison me!"
"You carry out a number of things in secrecy with complete success."
"Pff! Not what you think. I know my market value."
Twinkle's dark gaze became fixed and speculative. "Any of your folk ever died in an asylum?" she enquired suddenly.
"I suppose you are being funny. But, as a matter of fact, my grandmother's sister did, and there was an uncle, who gore-ily cut his throat, of unsound mind. Why? Do I look as if I meditated such a drastic solution of my problems?"
Twinkle decisively knocked out her cigarette and stood up.
"Never mind.... Curiosity, I guess."
Muriel became dimly interested in this dispassionate friend's disapproval of something.
"Do I fill you with disgust?"
"No—with pity," was the unexpected reply. "You don't understand what you are up against, Muriel. But I've seen types like you before; and they are born, not made."
They went out together, presently.
"I have only got till lunch-time," warned the actress. "Matinee at two. Performance again at 8.30. A dog's life!"
"You wouldn't change with me!"
"Holy snakes! I would not!" Her vehemence startled, for the moment, in one so remotely calm. She pulled herself together as quickly. "No, I am fitted for my job. Some day I shall be the Big Noise all right."
Muriel glanced at the sure, emotionless face. Not pretty; La Gioconda, refined and Semiticized—if one might use the word. Beautifully tinted eyes, heavy lidded and calculating, not for gain, but as if their owner were perpetually weighing up the world and did not, like Brillianna Trefusis, find it at all amusing.
That Twinkle's distrait attitude at Marshall's silk-stocking counter was due to Muriel's own looming future the latter never guessed.
"I've seen 'em"—so ran the thoughts of the Jewess—"always devoid of natural feeling at the start, but unable to live without a man's eye upon them. The market value of passion glibly at the tongue's end. Never sentimentally eroto-maniacal; better if they were. Then, suddenly, the day when the craving for admiration merges into sex-realization. No actual desire perhaps, for the love of an individual: no realization of Love in the abstract as a desirable thing. A sudden startled awakening and, with neither religion nor moral sense behind.... If one could warn ... but there is always the chance that I am misreading her and am utterly in the wrong. She's no 'modern' product anyhow."
"Musings without method," remarked Muriel, having lingered to reduce the youth at the ribbon-counter to a state of drivelling imbecility with her smile: "Are you meditating upon some subtle gesture for your great act that will bring the curtain down in a storm of sobs more soul-satisfying than applause?"
"I was simply letting my mind run wild on the subject of heredity as a factor in folks' lives. There are few things admitted heredity now except those which are sexual, and I was wondering how far the psycho-analysts had really got going on that subject, apart from the sex-chart. One has heard of hypnotism as a cure at early stages for ... some things."
"If I went to a hypnotist to be cured of anything," said Muriel, "what's the betting the gentleman in the chair would find the positions reversed and himself masquerading as victim?"
"I have no doubt you'd do your damnedest," said Ruth, dryly.
* * * * * *
It was not long before Cyprian sailed for the East.
Captain Wright, temporarily insane, though he was the only one who did not know it, began to drink at unusual hours. Muriel had taken three months to sicken of him and considered him exceedingly ungrateful. Weak.
Cyprian had shown himself much stronger. He went down to Ferlie's school to say good-bye to her.
"Like an uncle to the child, you know," her mother had told the Misses Mayne; who beamed over the avuncular visit, brooding on the Degrees and reflecting what a good thing it might be should he recommend the school while in the East.
"You will come back soon?"
"It will seem very soon, Ferlie."
"You promise, Cyprian?"
Nothing had ever succeeded in getting a respectful prefix out of Ferlie, though Mrs. Carmichael was uneasy lest the Misses Mayne should not feel quite happy over the familiar mode of address.
"Of course I promise. And I'll write if you will."
"I'll write," said Ferlie, "when I have things to say." A sensible resolution which might be more widely adhered to.
Cyprian carried away with him the memory of delicate hands, laughing eyes and a poignantly sweet voice ... a memory which left the same ache as does a solitary aloof star on a summer evening.
But always it was followed by the haunting comfort of Ferlie's clinging arms.
"French is to be talked from the time the rising-bell rings in the morning to the time the dressing-bell rings for supper at night."
So ran Rule 9, at St. Dorothea's Home School for Girls. It was relaxed on Saturdays at twelve after the hour in the gymnasium.
At ten minutes to twelve the gloomy cavern, known as the Glory Hole, rang with noise which, according to the ancient series of L. T. Meade's school-stories, stocking the library, should have been punctuated with "silvery ripples of girlish laughter." It wasn't. The parrot-house at the Zoo would have been nearer the mark. A harassed prefect presided, noting the names of people who insisted on forestalling the cuckoo-clock.
"Parlez-vous Français, Margery, ou je dirai Mademoiselle."
"Ma foi! N'est-ce pas que c'est douze heures?"
"Le cuckoo a cuckooé, je suis positive."
"Doris, vous sotte-ane, c'est ma place que vous prendre."
Moods and tenses were blandly ignored at St. Dorothea's outside the actual French class.
"Naw," denied Doris, resolutely blocking the partition wherein she had thrust her own gym shoes. "Je partage cet morceau de le shelf avec Ferlie."
"Mais, avant Ferlie, j'ai avez baggé!"
This last effort could not pass muster even on a Saturday.
"Margery, 'bag' n'est pas Français et c'est argot. Prenez un point de conversation."
"Mais si je fait cela je ne peut pas jouez hockey. Soyez une sport, Mary."
There was an understanding that whosoever lost six marks during the week for failing to observe Rule 9 was relegated to the ranks of the crocodile, with the junior class of all, after lunch, instead of being permitted to join in the usual Saturday games.
Margery was a constant offender; and the Fourth Form A. were to play the Fourth Form B.!
"Si vous ne jouerez pas, ce sera un tiroir," prophesied Ferlie ingeniously, after pausing an instant to consider the French for a "draw" at hockey.
The clock whirred. "Cuckoo! Cuckoo!"
"Thank God!" said Margery Craven, piously.
The prefect fled, pretending not to hear.
"I thought you weren't playing either, Ferlie?"
"I am not—that's why I said if you can't play centre-forward in my place the A's will be about level with the B's. You and I combined give the A's the advantage."
"Why isn't Ferlie playing?" asked Doris Martell.
"Don't you know?" and Margery's air was fraught with mystery. "The co-rrespondent from Far Cathay has asked—and obtained—permission to take the Favourite of the Upper Fourth to the Zoo."
"Lucky little beast!"
"How long is he going to stop in England, Ferlie?"
"Only six months this time. Father and Mum never take such short leave, but Cyprian has had malaria..."
"It's a beautiful name," mused Doris with upturned eyes. "No wonder she blushes!"
"Silly ass!"
"What beats me," said Margery, "is how Martha and Mary allow Ferlie to gad about with a genuine trousered male in an expensive tailored suit and all the appurtenances thereof. Because even if he does look forty he's not really your uncle, is he, Ferlie?"
"No, thank the Lord! I shouldn't feel nearly so comfy with him if he were."
"She confesses to feeling comfy with him," Margery informed the others. "Brazen hussy! And she a 'Sunlight Fairy'!"
Ferlie forgot Cyprian in a sudden righteous indignation. "You shut it, Margery! Lot of grinning shriekers! Thought yourselves very funny, didn't you? You wouldn't laugh if it were your mess."
For Ferlie's instinctive courtesy, rooted in a horror of hurting people's feelings and combined with a certain dreamy trustfulness in human nature, characteristic of her, had landed her in a false position which, during the past week, had been the joke of the school.
A dean's wife, far-famed for excellent work among the business girls of the suburbs, and convinced that the road to salvation for all budding womanhood lay via the fold of a Purity Society organized by her, had now conceived the idea of interesting the girls' schools in a campaign of mutual prayer and interchange of friendly letters with these unknown female correspondents of the working-class, all virgin pilgrims up the Hill of Difficulty, pledged not to permit male travellers to carry their bundles nor waste their time in frivolous communications. The Misses Mayne, generally known to their pupils, in terms of disrespectful affection, as "Martha" and "Mary," approved of the plan and accorded the dean's wife half an hour one Sunday afternoon, following Bible Class, to set forth her appeal for supporters in the school.
At the close of an earnest address she had suggested that any of them willing to join the League and correspond with another young woman, forlornly in search of true friendship, would hold up a hand.
Ferlie, having arrived late from an imperfectly learnt collect, happened to be sitting at a front desk, eschewed by early arrivals as too nearly under the eye of Martha for perfect ease. Not having paid particular attention to the proceedings, but gleaning from the speaker's tense expression that something was expected of the school—possibly a penny a week to the Blind Babies' Fund—she mechanically raised her hand, wondering the while whether there would be time after the Zoo to take Cyprian to that new tea-shop where you could always get hot dough-nuts, fresh and jammy. Hers was the only hand raised. The role of "Sunlight Fairy," by letter, to a factory girl did not appeal to the Margeries and Dorises of the Upper Fourth, and the senior school members were struggling with finishing exams and wanted no extra correspondence thrust upon them in their scant leisure. Had she only known it, the dean's wife was about the fourth of a series of well-meaning women that term obsessed with schemes for benefiting England's blossoming womanhood. To put it coarsely, St. Dorothea's had "had some."
Margery was the most interested in Ferlie's future radiance as a "Fairy." The dean's wife, impressed by such single-minded strength of character, had invited her to tea and presented her with a blue card depicting a rising sun shooting an inquisitive searchlight on the face of a worried-looking young woman wending her way up a crowded thoroughfare either in quest of true friendship or a factory.
"And it's quite time you began," said Margery severely, at the termination of Ferlie's bitter harangue.
The bell for the reading of the week's marks interrupted them; following which rite a strong smell of Irish stew combined with apple pudding, in the hall, did duty for a lunch menu.
And, "I will not eat the bottom bit of my suet to-day," Margery resolved in a fierce whisper as they filed to their seats.
The conversation over the gravied onions made about four times the volume of sound as on a French day.
The Misses Mayne, one at each end of the long table, beamed indulgently. "Martha," the practical one, who was also the junior of the two sisters, confined her remarks to the state of the hockey field and reminders that stockings were to be changed immediately on the team's return.
"Mary" brightened life at her post by little reminiscences of the ways in which she had spent her Saturdays at school, "when hockey for girls was quite out of the question, my dears," and the Magic Lantern, with views of foreign countries in colours, existed still as a delirious mid-term treat.
All went contentedly until the last helping of apple pudding had been served out, and then Mary settled her glasses and allowed her kindly faded eyes to rest on one particular plate.
"Now, Margery"—a sudden hush followed the raising of the gentle tones—"are you going to conquer that pudding or are you going to let that pudding conquer you?"
The luckless Margery, who had brought an empty paper bag to lunch with felonious intent, started guiltily and reddened to the forehead.
"You know it is by overcoming—always by overcoming—the weaknesses in ourselves that we develop into worth-while members of the world's community," Mary continued.
"Or by coming it over other people," muttered Ferlie, sympathizing with Margery's sensations towards the grey mound of suet pushed to one side of her plate.
"It—it always makes me feel sick, Miss Mayne," faltered Margery hysterically.
"Imagination!" came from Martha's end of the table. "How can good wholesome food make anyone feel sick?"
Margery's mouth took an obstinate curve. She was not going to be intimidated by Martha, anyhow.
That lady, with twenty years' experience of Margeries behind her, probably sensed rebellion and decided the moment had arrived for brisk disciplinary methods.
"Eat it up, Margery, and don't be foolish," she said.
Margery sat very still.
The rest of the table did not want to witness her downfall, nor seem, by respectful silence, to approve the idiosyncrasies of Martha and Mary. Why should anyone eat the beastly pudding who did not want to? The fees were paid just the same.
Strained low-toned comments on the progress of the new tennis court began to be heard; but Mary was wiser than Martha, as of old. Far wiser. Long and humble study of the New Testament had inclined her heart to keep its Law. She ruled, in fact, by love.
"I think we'll leave it to Margery's own Brave Self," she told her sister. "She understands that it is for her own good, mentally and physically, that we desire her to eat it. Do not distress yourself, my child. Just think the matter over carefully and then decide which of your two natures is to Win the Fray. If, to-day, you decide to leave it..."
She smiled watery encouragement at Margery, by this time incapable of eating anything. Lunch finished a little hurriedly.
Said Martha that night in the private sitting-room, where she and Mary were wont to dissect characters and debate the handling of them:
"A little giddy."
"But warm-hearted," defended Mary.
"Shallow," said Martha.
"It is a question of guidance, Sister," insisted Mary.
Martha remained unconverted.
"Obstinacy must be dealt with firmly," she said. "You will be at a loss next Saturday over the apple pudding."
Came a knock at the door, and Margery stood beside the tinted reproduction of the Good Shepherd near it, looking at Mary over the stand crammed with photos of dear departed pupils who, with Youth's heartlessness, had supplied her, since, with no other memories of their passing.
"I've decided to c-conquer the p-pudding," announced Margery. And felt almost rewarded by the spiritual ecstasy of affection in Mary's little eyes.
* * * * * *
Cyprian did not recognize the sisters for the last of a long line of sanctified Englishwomen who, in the past, have run Happy Home-Schools for the daughters of unmodern mothers, many of whom lived abroad and who cherished the suspicion that dear Daphne or Nora would not be prevented from over-working to the detriment of her health at a modern establishment which dealt in Oxford examiners rather than in embroidery classes.
It was Ferlie who grew critical of the Miss Maynes's curriculum, with the conclusion of her fourteenth birthday, and so of their blatant efforts to coerce in the straight and narrow way.
To Cyprian, the sisterless bookworm, the ladies recalled his deceased aunts, a couple who belonged, by rights, to a Victorian novel and at whose separate funerals a special hearse had to be requisitioned for the wreaths.
And all the flowers were symbolically white.
Ferlie, the out-reaching experimentalist, wondered whether such of Cyprian's aunts as remained above ground were exactly the type of people to direct the electrical currents in a houseful of twentieth century youth.
"Mary could have whistled for my brave and better nature," she told Cyprian this afternoon, in relating the incident of the pudding, with a resentment he considered entirely out of proportion to the fact that she had not minded the suet herself. He admitted that, as a sane man, he never ate things which he did not like, nor did he know anybody who, having attained years of discretion, believed such a course necessary to salvation.
"But, you see, it must be difficult, Ferlie, to legislate for so many tastes and, despite certain things of which you may disapprove, the Misses Mayne seem kind to you all."
"I think I could do with less kindness and more common sense," she persisted, "and far less prayer!"