Two Worlds and Their Ways (33 page)

“We did not know then that we were to lose Clemence.”

“Why did she desert us, Lady Shelley?” said Gwendolen.

“She was the cleverest of any of us. Things are quite
different without her,” said Esther, attracting Maria's eyes by her sudden utterance.

“We thought she would tread the thorny path of learning at our side,” said Verity.

“And that to her it would not be thorny,” said Maud.

“How kind you all are! Clemence could find many pretty things to say about you. So fresh and nice as you all look,” said Maria, taking the arm of the nearest and leading the way to the drawing-room. “I cannot feel much pride in the little ragamuffin herself. She ought to have profited more by your example. Her father is waiting to meet you; he has been looking forward to the day.”

“Let me introduce Miss Tuke, Lady Shelley,” said Miss Chancellor.

“Oh, kind Miss Tuke! I know her well by name,” said Maria, putting her other arm through the latter's, and continuing suitably to talk of her in the third person, as she had not looked at her face. “She was so good to Clemence when she was ill. I do not know Clemence's reason for keeping you in the hall.”

This did not matter, as the girls knew and understood it, an instinct to postpone the meeting of family and friends.

“Now here you all are! This is kindness indeed,” said Sir Roderick, sending his eyes over the girls in open appraisement. “Now come and sit down and talk to me. I am not going to waste this opportunity.”

The girls obeyed him with an ease and success that suggested a regard for effect. Miss Chancellor rested her eyes on them. Lesbia did not do so. Clemence leaned back in her chair, already pale with her experience.

“Now you two should have things in common,” said Maria, with a hand on the shoulders of Miss Chancellor and Miss Petticott. “You must be initiates in many of the same mysteries.”

“We have Clemence in common, Lady Shelley, and that is a foundation you share with us,” said Miss Chancellor,
who inclined to her hostess's company. “Or rather that we share with you.”

“And you share it too,” said Maria, transferring a hand to Miss Tuke. “Though I do not know why we should choose that particular foundation.”

Miss Petticott and Miss Tuke looked at each other, suddenly exchanged a handshake and fell into fluent talk. Maria turned to Miss Chancellor and discussed education with lively interest, and the latter gave of her best and had her reward. Sir Roderick's talk with the girls resolved itself into a discussion on equal terms with Maud, and the others transferred their attention to Clemence.

“I feel as if I had always lived here,” said Gwendolen. “I suppose anyone who had, would always have done it. It feels as if things had always been the same.”

“Even the clothes,” murmured Verity.

“Yes, Clemence, both your dress and your mother's are those you wore on the day you came to school,” said Esther, in a tone of interest. “We saw your mother from the window.”

“Are they?” said Clemence, idly.

“Don't you remember?” said Verity.

“I daresay I should, if I threw my thoughts back over all that time.”

“The Petticoat!” said Verity, with her covert smile, indicating the bearer of this nickname.

“Yes, but do not let her hear you call her that.”

“Would she mind what we do?”

“I daresay not. But she might not like me to have told you.”

“What is there to like about it?” said Gwendolen. “Verity, why are you not on your proper behaviour as a guest?”

“I suppose because Maud's back is turned,” said Verity, locking her hands behind her head, and then glancing at Miss Chancellor and withdrawing them.

“What a lot Miss Tuke and Miss Petticott have to say to
each other!” said Esther. “Miss Tuke does not generally open her mouth.”

“They look rather alike,” said Verity. “No, I do not mean alike; rather as if they were somehow in the same sort of world.”

“Well, I daresay they are,” said Clemence. “Miss Petticott is not a qualified person like your mistresses. We have Sefton's tutor to teach us their sort of subjects.”

“Where is your brother, Clemence?” said Gwendolen.

“He will be coming in presently, when his friends are here.”

“Is he having friends too, today?”

“Yes, from his school. They are coming by a later train. He left the school at the end of the term, as I did.”

“Did he leave for any particular reason?” said Esther.

“No, just as I did,” said Clemence, hurrying her words. “He was supposed not to look so well, or to have been overworked or something.”

“If there had been ten of you, would you all have left?” said Verity. “I suppose some of you would have reached the leaving age.”

“Oh, the powers that be, settled it between them. I do not know much about it. My parents seem to like home education best.”

“They may be afraid of your becoming unfitted for home life,” said Esther. “That would have happened soon enough. If you were not relations of Miss Firebrace, you would have had to give a term's notice. I mean, you would have had to pay the fees for the term.”

“We did have to. I heard it being talked about. My father and mother were not very pleased about it.”

“I should think not,” said Gwendolen. “Mine would not have been pleased at all. I should have been made to feel quite guilty.”

“Did you not have to feel guilty, Clemence?” said Esther.

“It was nothing to do with me. School customs are not my fault.”

“Why did you not come back for the one term?” said Verity.

“Oh, I don't know. It was not even suggested.”

“So your parents wasted a term's fees to indulge their inclinations,” said Gwendolen, while three pairs of eyes passed over Clemence's clothes. “I wish mine had as much to spare, and would spend it so easily.”

“People spend on such different things,” said Esther.

“Which life do you really prefer, Clemence?” said Verity.

“It is a good thing that Maud cannot hear, so that we can show our true natures,” said Gwendolen. “She would be so ashamed of us, and so would Miss Chancellor. I should be ashamed of myself, if I were capable of such a feeling.”

“Really, Gwendolen, I think you do yourself an injustice,” said Verity, in idle imitation of Miss Chancellor.

“I have seen no sign in you of such insensitiveness,” said Esther, in the same manner.

“Well, which life do you prefer, Clemence?” said Verity.

“Oh, home on the whole, I suppose. But there were things I liked about school; the changes in teaching and the different people as companions. Home life does incline to be rather the same.”

“You have no affection for us, as we have for you,” said Gwendolen. “I shall give way when we get home, because we never won your heart.”

“You continually promise us a sight of you in tears, Gwendolen, and the promise is never realised,” said Clemence, taking up the mimicry. “Not that we wish it to be.”

“Yes, imitation of everyone is the thing at school now,” said Verity. “You left just in time to escape it.”

“I shall hate home life when I have nothing else,” said Esther.

“Esther, are you thinking what you are saying?” said Verity, changing her voice the next moment to her own. “How old is your brother, Clemence?”

“He is eleven, three years younger than I am.”

“And will his friends be—are his friends of his own age?”

“I suppose so. About that age. I had not thought about it,” said Clemence, her face changing as she thought about it now. There was a pause.

“Why did you ask us all on the same day?” said Esther.

“Oh, I do not know. It was planned in that way. I did not have much to do with it. It was thought we might like to see our friends, and then it was just arranged. Perhaps we said we should like to. I don't remember.”

“I wish my chance words were attended to like that,” said Esther. “You must have to be careful what you say.”

“But I could not suggest that the age of Sefton's friends should be altered,” said Clemence, in a rising tone. “It would have been no good to drop a hint like that.”

“I don't mind what age they are,” said Esther. “What difference does it make to us?”

“None, unless you talk to them. And that you need not do. Indeed, I don't suppose you will have the chance. They will keep together.”

“They will awaken my maternal instincts,” said Gwendolen.

“We can let them do that,” said Verity. “And that will solve any problems.”

“I did not know it presented any problems, just to have some boys about,” said Clemence. “I am too used to Sefton to worry about his age. I don't suppose he troubles about mine. We have all been that age ourselves.”

“Clemence is more of a child since she settled down at home,” said Verity, resting her eyes on her hostess. “She is more as she was when she first came to school.”

“Well, I daresay that is natural,” said Clemence. “We are all children up to a point in our own homes. I expect it is the same with all of you. And we shall have plenty of time to be grown-up.”

“If I were not a child with my parents, they would be more unloving towards me,” said Gwendolen.

“I don't know that my family is so fond of my winning infancy,” said Verity, lifting her shoulders. “They don't mind my being myself. If we outnumber the boys, our maternal impulses may overwhelm them. Perhaps we had better suppress them.”

The girls appeared to have no difficulty in doing this when Sefton entered with his friends. They regarded the latter without expression, and gave no sign of distinguishing one from another. Maria saw the position and did not introduce them. Maud moved away from Sir Roderick, as if she had taken enough of his attention, and he gave the boys the welcome he would have given to any guests; and having seen Miss James attracted by some hidden force to Miss Tuke and Miss Petticott, sat down among them and talked with serious interest, asking for accounts of their school life and giving recollections of his own. He obtained light on Sefton without betraying his purpose or without knowing that he did so; and if Bacon gave him what help he could, was no less the gainer, that he was unaware of it. Any jests he made were well received, partly because the boys were amused by them, and partly because they involved no rallying of themselves. When luncheon was announced, he guided them to places that kept them together, and put Sefton at the head of the board, on the ground that he was the host.

“Then Clemence is the hostess and should sit at the other end,” said Maria, rising and preparing to undo the arrangements, without thought of an alternative scheme.

“No, no, my pretty, she is well enough. Leave her among her friends.”

The girls exchanged glances at this description of Maria, and then looked again at the latter, as though to reconsider their impression.

“You should not call me that before strangers, Roderick. They cannot fit the words to a weatherbeaten woman like me.”

“I call you what you are to me, my dear.”

The luncheon was based on youthful ideas of luxury. Sir Roderick saw that the boys could eat without any sense of eyes upon them; Miss Petticott that the girls did much the same; Maria saw to nothing with an unconscious inattentiveness that did its part. Oliver entered the room as everything was under way.

“I could not resist being late, Maria. I wanted to enter at a moment when every eye would be upon me.”

“You should not be so conscious of yourself.”

“I did not think I was. I wanted other people to be conscious of me. I thought that was being conscious of them.”

The girls looked at Oliver and then at Clemence.

“It is my grown-up brother. He will behave in his own way.”

“How are you, Aunt Lesbia?” said Oliver, going to greet his aunt.

Lesbia raised her face for his salute, keeping her eyes from the girls, whose expression perhaps did not invite scrutiny.

“How do you do, Miss James?” said Oliver, moving round the table. “I hope you find you cannot fill my place.”

“That is just how I should put it, Mr. Shelley. The place is formally filled, but it seems to lack the one thing needful.”

“How does your brother know Miss James, Clemence?” said Verity. “I thought she was the matron at your younger brother's school.”

“So she is. He taught music there last term by way of an experiment. He soon gave it up, of course.”

“Was it a sort of joke?” said Gwendolen.

“Yes, and the humour of it soon palled.”

“My sister is betraying my confidence,” said Oliver, playing into Clemence's hands. “Have you given up your music, Holland?”

“No, sir. I learn with the new master.”

“Then he does what I could not do.”

“I mean I have lessons with him.”

“You should say what you mean. How the schoolmaster's touch returns! Is the school different without my brother and me?”

“No, it is the same,” said Bacon. “Of course we wish Sefton was there.”

“And not that I was?”

“Well, that does not make so much difference. Except to the boys who learn music—who have music lessons,” said Bacon, correcting himself without change of tone.

“Do you still eat potted meat, Sturgeon?”

“No, I never take it now.”

“When it was the thing that raised your life to the heights?”

“He did not like the heights,” said Bacon. “They are not always congenial to people.”

“And you yourself still go from strength to strength?”

“Yes, he does,” said Holland.

“He is still a leader of men?”

“Yes,” said Bacon, grinning.

“Did the good fairies preside at his birth?” said Sir Roderick, looking at Bacon.