Princess Puck

Theresa and Bella Waring were beauties when they came to Miss Brownlow’s seven years ago, well-educated, well-informed, used to the ways of society (of small professional society), and possessed of sixty pounds a year between them. Their father had been dead some years then; it was their mother’s death which sent them and their sixty pounds to Langford House. Theresa came to help with the teaching, Bella to finish her education first, and afterwards to fill her sister’s place. Of course Miss Brownlow received them gladly, loved them warmly, mothered them to the best of her ability. She would have done that for any number of nieces, and she did it heartily for these four. Polly felt angry as she thought of their numbers, and thought contemptuously of the Brownlow family and its faculty for dying. There had been five Miss Brownlows originally; one died young, three married first and then died at their earliest convenience, leaving their children as a legacy to the remaining sister who neither married nor died. She, possessed of short views, a large heart, and an inexhaustible supply of hope, welcomed them with open arms. Two of them she had to adopt entirely; the other two, Theresa and Bella, came to her better endowed, better equipped, and at a more convenient age.

And what had they done with their advantages? Polly put the case to herself with contemptuous irritation. Bella, so she summed it up, Bella at twenty-two had done nothing; Theresa at twenty-six had contrived to marry a small farmer. No doubt his family had originally been good, but one cannot live on a good family, especially if it is all but extinct; and the goodness did not prevent Robert from being a farmer in a small way, and an unsuccessful one too. He was undoubtedly a poor speculation; his tastes were expensive, his inclinations horsey, his income small, his tendencies apoplectic; he would soon, no doubt, die, and die suddenly, leaving Theresa no better off than she was a year ago. Really these two girls were stupid, as stupid as the Brownlow family. And yet their mother had been the best of the five sisters, according to all accounts; the strongest as well as the prettiest, for she had managed to live to quite a respectable age. Possibly her daughters were like her; they were sensible enough for any ordinary occasion but they were not, in Polly’s opinion, able to take advantage of adverse circumstances. “They would die off easily,” she thought, “and they haven’t an idea between them worth mentioning.”

Polly was not like the Brownlow family. She took after her father, a dubious advantage, and she flattered herself that she had ideas worth,—well, something, although perhaps they were not always quite suitable for public mention. She also had an easy conscience, and in her youth some little acquaintance with social byways. She had a tenacious hold on life, and was not likely to follow her mother’s and aunts’ example and die easily. “So has Bill,” she thought; “she is silly and she is ugly, but she won’t fade out of the world in a hurry, though I can’t see what good she will ever be in it.”

This last sentiment found something like an echo, albeit unexpressed, in the minds of two other inmates of Langford House, the two boarders Carrie and Alice. They were quiet, inoffensive girls, a year or two younger than Bill, and forced by circumstances to have more of her company than they desired. The greater part of the day the three were together, and for the night they shared one room so that the sisters’ nocturnal confidences had to be held in common with their companion. It must be admitted that Carrie and Alice did not altogether like Bill, though they felt a sort of superior pity for her which was not all unpleasant. On the evening when Miss Brownlow and her nieces were planning Bill’s future good, Carrie and Alice were giving her a little advice while going to bed. It was on the subject of hairdressing, Carrie thinking it was time Bill coiled her hair on the top of her head.

“It’s quite time,” she concluded. “Are you going to wait till you are eighteen? When are you going to do it up?”

Bill considered: “To-morrow,” she said at last.

“To-morrow?” Carrie repeated, and Alice added: “You can’t, you haven’t got any hairpins.”

“I’ll get some of Bella’s.”

“You can’t,” Carrie said again, and turning to the glass began to arrange her own hair.

“Miss Waring has gold-coloured hairpins,” Alice remarked; “you could not use them.”

“Why not?”

“Because it would look horrid to have brass hairpins sticking out of your hair.”

“Is that all?” Bill did not seem impressed.

Carrie turned away from the glass. “That is how I shall do my hair,” she said. “I shall do it up the day I leave school, the very day.”

“I like plaits better,” Alice observed; but Bill examined the head-dress thoughtfully, and then asked: “And what else will you do when you leave school,—besides your hair, I mean?”

“Besides my hair? How ridiculous you are!” Carrie did not seem displeased by the question. She condescended to answer it rather fully, and as she took off her shoes and stockings talked of the possibilities of evening parties, the certainty of afternoon calls, the charms of long dresses, and of the young men who stayed at the Rectory. Alice joined in this explanation, and in fact the sisters were soon talking to and for each other only, having almost forgotten Bill’s presence until she exclaimed suddenly: “Men! It’s all men! Why are they nicer than women?”

She was sitting on her pillow in her favourite position, her knees drawn up, her elbows resting upon them, and her chin framed in her hands; she was looking straight in front of her and only turned her eyes on the sisters when she spoke. They objected to her method of looking round without turning her head; that, in addition to the impropriety of the remark, made Carrie answer severely: “Men are not nicer than women; nobody thinks so except those who are fast.”

“Yes, they are nicer. You think so, Polly thinks so, Bella thinks so, every girl thinks so, though I don’t see why.”

“You don’t know any men”; this was said with great contempt.

“No, nor any girls either, except you two, and you are nice!” Bill had an enormous mouth and the beginning of a smile curved it as she spoke.

“Then it is more than you are,” Alice retorted with irritation, “or you would not talk about men like that.”

“Men aren’t half so amusing as women,” Bill went on, ignoring the last speech; “and women aren’t half so amusing when men are there. I can’t see where the attraction comes in with any of them—the rector, the curates, the masters at the grammar-school, Robert Morton, any of them.”

“Of course they don’t take any notice of you,” Carrie said, and Alice added: “You only think about people being amusing; you like people whom you can imitate.”

“That’s why I like you,” Bill said sweetly. “Why do you like people—men?”

“I don’t like men; you have never heard me speak of them!”

“Heard!” Bill laughed. “I have felt; I have felt you crinkle up for a boy!”

“You haven’t! How dare you say such things!”

“Why not? Where is the harm? You talk about men to each other, why not to me? You never have before, but I see no reason why you should not. Do you consider it wrong to like men? How queer it is; you all like men and you all pretend you do not. There is a deal of humbug about it.”

“Some people,” Carrie said with severity, “have a sense of decency.”

“A sense of decency? That’s what Adam and Eve had when they hid themselves; a sense of decency often seems to mean hiding something.”

“You are very wicked!” Alice said scandalised, and would have nothing more to say to Bill for some time, though after the light was out and all three were in bed the sisters continued to talk to each other about the wonderful future, the first ball Carrie would attend, and the events that would follow.

“And after that,” came the voice from Bill’s bed,—“what are you going to do after that?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Carrie answered; “marry I suppose. There is a use for your despised men; you can’t marry without them.”

“Marry—h’m!—Yes, I expect you will marry.”

“Do you really think so? I don’t know—and yet,—yes, I suppose I should rather like to; not yet of course, but by and by, to marry and to have several children.”

“Oh, you are sure to; you are like the old white hen with feathers down her legs; you would make a splendid sitter.”

“Bill!”

“Now what’s the matter? Is it the sense of decency again?”

But the sisters would not answer her question and, having told her so, went on to say that, as it was forbidden to talk after the light was out, they were not going to do it any more, especially to her. Then they went to sleep, leaving Bill to her own reflections. She, thus left, rolled over on her back and lay staring up into the darkness above her and thinking. At her age one does not always think with a definite coherent clearness; dreaming is more to the mind of seventeen. Bill dreamed, fancies and thoughts flitting to and fro in her mind.

About marriage, for instance; last year Theresa had tried the great experiment to which Carrie looked forward. Carrie would try it by and by; she would become Mrs. Somebody and grow staid and stout and placid; she would talk about “my house” and “my husband”; she would bound the universe, almost the Kingdom of Heaven by those two; she would wear a black silk dress and a heavy gold chain like Mrs. Bodling; she would get fatter and fairer and calmer; she would entirely lose sight of her feet——

Bill stretched out her own feet, and then lay still to listen. The wind crept in at the open window and stirred the curtains; the cloth on the toilet-table flapped idly, reminding her of quiet, slumberous summer afternoons, of a certain Thursday afternoon in June especially,—it was in June that Theresa had entered on the great experiment. In the first freshness of early summer she left the school and the old routine-work and the narrow, cosy, feminine life and went out to try a wider, fuller, new life. She was to have a house of her own and a servant; there had been a lot of talk about the house (here Bill built an ideal house for herself), a lot of things to be bought, a lot of new clothes for Theresa. Miss Brownlow and the girls had pinched and scraped and worked; Bill had been allowed to help a little, though her work was more strong than neat. Evening after evening Bella and Polly and Theresa had sat at work with Miss Brownlow—how they seemed to enjoy it! Theresa must have missed that when she went to her new home; Bill wondered what she did during those first evenings of the new life. Then the great day had come; Bill recalled every detail of it. There had been excitement and bustle and people and flowers, Theresa in her bridal gown, and everywhere the scent of the little white roses—the white roses which made Bill think of funerals, though she did not know why.

Then Theresa had gone away. She kissed them all and cried, and smiled and cried again, and went. Robert Morton looked rather cross during the kissing and crying, but nobody seemed to mind. They were quite sure Theresa was happy, quite sure she had attained to all that she desired; only Bill thought she must be very lonely. She had also an inward conviction, founded on nothing, that Theresa would be desperately disappointed in her venture. There was no reason for these thoughts, and Theresa had said nothing to suggest them; she seemed happy, and they all thought her so except Bill, and Bill was so childish that she could not be expected to know anything about the matter. She had only once been to Theresa’s home at Ashelton. They had all driven there one September day and enjoyed it greatly. Bill could recall every detail of the expedition, her memory was vivid and her experiences few. She had never been again to Ashelton; she had never been on a visit—

She was growing very sleepy now, and her thoughts became confused with the words of the cousins who were speaking just outside the door.

“I shall be very glad to have her.”

“You will be more glad to be rid of her; besides, she has no clothes.”

At the Day of Judgment Polly would still be considering her clothes—she would probably want to let out her garment of righteousness if—but sleep mastered Bill here.