“I promised to introduce you to Mrs. Benson, uncle,” she exclaimed, as she perceived that I was watching her, and willy-nilly, I was taken forcible possession of, and soon found myself occupying the chair left vacant by Sir Harry.
“We can so very seldom persuade Mary to stay with us; and when she does come, her visits are so brief that we are obliged to make a great deal of them whilst they last,” was part of Justina’s introduction speech; and on that hint I commenced to speak of the charms of the country and my wonder that Mrs. Benson did not oftener take occasion to enjoy them. But barely an answer, far less an idea, could I extract from my niece’s valued friend. Mrs. Benson’s brown eyes were not once raised to meet mine, and the replies which I forced from her lips came in monosyllables. I tried another theme, but with no better success; and had just decided that she was as stupid as she looked, when, to my great relief, the professor arrived with a message from Lady Trevor, and bore his wife off into another room.
Several days passed without bringing forth much incident. The gentlemen spent most of their time in the shooting-covers or hunting-field, and did not meet the ladies until evening re-assembled them in the drawing-room; on which occasions I used to get as far as I could from Lady Trevor and the professor’s wife, and in consequence generally found myself in the vicinity of Sir Harry and Lady Amabel. Yet, free and intimate as seemed their intercourse with one another, and narrowly as, in Justina’s interest, I watched them, I could perceive nothing in their conduct which was not justified by their relationship, and treated it as a matter of the smallest consequence, until one afternoon about a fortnight after my arrival at Durham Hall.
With the exception of Sir Harry himself, who had business to transact with his bailiff, we had all been out shooting, and as, after a hard day’s work, I was toiling up to my bedroom to dress for dinner, I had occasion to pass the study appropriated to the master of the house, and with a sudden desire to give him an account of our sport, incontinently turned the handle of the door. As I did so I heard an exclamation and the rustle of a woman’s dress, which were sufficient to make me halt upon the threshold of the half-opened door, and ask if I might enter.
“Come in, by all means,” exclaimed Sir Harry. He was lying back indolently in his arm-chair beside a table strewn with books and papers,—a little flushed, perhaps, but otherwise himself, and, to my astonishment, quite alone. Yet I was positive that I had heard the unmistakable sound of a woman’s dress sweeping the carpet. Involuntarily I glanced around the room; but there was no egress.
Sir Harry caught my look of inquiry, and seemed annoyed. “What are you staring at, Wilmer?” he demanded, in the curtest tone I had yet heard from him.
“May I not glance round your den?” I replied courteously. “I have not had the honour of seeing it before.”
Then I entered into a few details with him concerning the day’s sport we had enjoyed; but I took care to be brief, for I saw that my presence there displeased him, and I could not get the rustle of that dress out of my mind. As I concluded, and with some remark upon the lateness of the hour, turned to leave the room, a cough sounded from behind a large Indian screen which stood in one corner. It was the faintest, most subdued of coughs, but sufficiently tangible to be sworn to; and as it fell upon my ear I could not help a change of countenance.
“All right!” said my host, with affected nonchalance, as he rose and almost backed me to the door. “We’ll have a talk over all this after dinner, Wilmer; sorry I wasn’t with you; but, as you say, it’s late. Au revoir!” and simultaneously the study door closed upon me.
I was very much startled and very much shocked. I had not a doubt that I was correct in my surmise that Sir Harry had some visitor in his room whom he had thought it necessary to conceal from me; and though Hope suggested that it might have been his wife, Common Sense rose up to refute so absurd an idea. Added to which, I had not traversed twenty yards after leaving him before I met Justina attired in her walking things, and just returning from a stroll round the garden.
“Is it very late, uncle?” she demanded, with a smile, as we encountered one another. “I have been out with the children. Have you seen Mary or Lady Amabel? I am afraid they will think I have neglected them shamefully this afternoon.”
I answered her questions indifferently, thinking the while that she had no occasion to blame herself for not having paid sufficient attention to Lady Amabel Scott, for that it was she whom I had surprised tête-à-tête with Sir Harry Trevor, I had not a shadow of doubt.
Well, I was not the one to judge them, nor to bring them to judgment; but I thought very hard things of Sir Harry’s cousin during the dressing hour, and pitied my poor niece, who must some day inevitably learn that it was a true instinct which had made her shrink from her beautiful guest. And during the evening which followed my discovery, I turned with disgust from the lightning glances which darted from Lady Amabel’s blue eyes, and the arch smile which helped to make them so seductive. I could no longer think her beauty harmless: the red curves of her mouth were cruel serpents in my mind; poisoned arrows flew from her lips; there was no innocence left in look, or word, or action; and I found myself turning with a sensation of relief to gaze at the Quakerlike attire, the downcast eyes, and modest appearance of the professor’s wife, whilst I inwardly blamed myself for having ever been so foolish as to be gulled into believing that the flaunting beauty of Lady Amabel Scott was superior to Mrs. Benson’s quiet graces.
I did not have much to say to Sir Harry Trevor during that evening: indignation for his deception towards Justina made me disinclined to speak to him, whilst he, for his part, seemed anxious to avoid me. For a few days more all went on as usual: my host’s affability soon returned, and every one, my niece included, appeared so smiling and contented, that I almost began to think I must have been mistaken, and that there could have been no real motive for concealing Lady Amabel in Sir Harry’s room, except perhaps her own girlish love of fun. I tried to think the best I could of both of them; and a day came but too soon when I was thankful that I had so tried.
It was about a week after the little incident related above that Sir Harry Trevor was shooting over his preserves, accompanied by his guests. We had had a capital day’s sport and an excellent luncheon—at which latter some of the ladies had condescended to join us—and were beating the last cover preparatory to a return to Durham Hall, when the report of a fire-arm was quickly followed by the news that Sir Harry Trevor had been wounded.
I was separated from him by a couple of fields when I first heard of the accident, but it did not take me long to reach his side, when I perceived, to my horror, that he was fast bleeding to death, having been shot through the lungs by the discharge of his own gun whilst getting through the hedge. I had seen men die from gunshot wounds received under various circumstances, and I felt sure that Sir Harry’s hours were numbered; yet, of course, all that was possible was done at once, and five minutes had not elapsed before messengers were flying in all directions—one for the doctor, another for the carriage, a third for cordials to support the sinking man; whilst I entreated Mr. Warden Scott and several others to walk back to the Hall as though nothing particular had happened, and try to prevent the immediate circulation of the full extent of the bad news. Meanwhile, I remained by the wounded man, who evidently suspected, by the sinking within him, that he was dying.
“Wilmer!” he gasped, “old fellow, have I settled my hash?”
“I trust not, Sir Harry,” I commenced; but I suppose that my eyes contradicted my words.
“Don’t say any more,” he replied, with difficulty. “My head a little higher—thanks. I feel it will soon be over.”
And so he lay for a few moments, supported on my knee, with his fast glazing eyes turned upward to the December sky, and his breath coming in short, quick jerks.
The men who had remained with me seemed as though they could not endure the sight of his sufferings; one or two gazed at him speechless and almost as pale as himself; but the majority had turned away to hide their feelings.
“Wilmer,” he whispered presently, but in a much fainter voice than before, “it’s coming fast now;” and then, to my surprise, just as I thought he was about to draw his last breath, he suddenly broke into speech that was almost a sob—“Oh, if I could only have seen her again! I wouldn’t mind it half so much if I could but have seen Pet again! Call her, Wilmer; in God’s name, call her!—call Pet to me—only once again—only once! Pet! Pet! Pet!” And with that name upon his lips, each time uttered in a shorter and fainter voice, and with a wild look of entreaty in his eyes, Sir Harry Trevor let his head drop back heavily upon my knees and died.
When the doctor and the carriage arrived, the only thing left for us to do was to convey the corpse of its master back to Durham Hall.
For the first few hours I was too much shocked by the suddenness of the blow which had descended on us to have leisure to think of anything else. In one moment the house of feasting had been turned into the house of mourning; and frightened guests were looking into each other’s faces, and wondering what would be the correct thing for them to do. Of my poor niece I saw nothing. The medical man had undertaken to break the news of her bereavement to her, and I confess that I was sufficiently cowardly to shrink from encountering the sorrow which I could do nothing to mitigate.
As I passed along the silent corridors (lately so full of mirth and revelry) that evening, I met servants and travelling-cases at every turn, by which I concluded, and rightly, that the Christmas guests were about at once to take their departure; and on rising in the morning, I found that, with the exception of Lady Amabel and Mr. Warden Scott, who, as relatives of the deceased, intended to remain until after the funeral, and the professor and Mrs. Benson, on whose delicate frame the shock of Sir Harry’s death was said to have had such an effect as to render her unfit for travelling, Durham Hall was clear.
Lady Amabel had wept herself almost dry: her eyes were swollen, her features disfigured, her whole appearance changed from the violence of her grief, and every ten minutes she was ready to burst out afresh.
We had not been together half-an-hour on the following morning before she was sobbing by my side, entreating me to give her every particular of “poor dear Harry’s” death, and to say if there was anything she could do for Justina or the children; and notwithstanding the repugnance with which her conduct had inspired me, I could not repulse her then. However she had sinned, the crime and its occasion were both past—Sir Harry was laid out ready for his burial, and she was grieving for him.
I am an old man, long past such follies myself, and I hope I am a virtuous man; but all my virtue could not prevent my pitying Lady Amabel in her distress, and affording her such comfort as was possible. And so (a little curiosity still mingling with my compassion) I related to her in detail, whilst I narrowly watched her features, the last words which had been spoken by her cousin. But if she guessed for whom that dying entreaty had been urged, she did not betray herself.
“Poor fellow!” was her only remark as she wiped her streaming eyes—“poor dear Harry! Used he to call Justina ‘Pet?’ I never heard him do so.”
Whereupon I decided that Lady Amabel was too politic to be very miserable, and that my pity had been wasted on her.
Of Mrs. Benson I saw nothing, but the professor talked about attending the funeral, and therefore I concluded that my niece had invited them, being such intimate friends, to remain for that ceremony.
On the afternoon of the same day I was told that Justina desired to speak to me. I sought the room where she was sitting, with folded hands and darkened windows, with nervous reluctance; but I need not have dreaded a scene, for her grief was too great for outward show, and I found her in a state which appeared to me unnaturally calm.
“Uncle,” she said, after a moment’s pause, during which we had silently shaken hands, “will you take these keys and go down into—into—his study for me, and bring up the desks and papers which you will find in the escritoire? I do not like to send a servant.”
I took the keys which she extended to me, and, not able to trust myself to answer, kissed her forehead and left the room again. As I turned the handle of the study door I shuddered, the action so vividly recalled to me the first and last occasion upon which I had done so. The afternoon was now far advanced, and dusk was approaching: the blinds of the study windows also were pulled down, which caused the room to appear almost in darkness. As I groped my way toward the escritoire I stumbled over some article lying across my path, something which lay extended on the hearth-rug, and which even by that feeble light I could discern was a prostrated body.
With my mind full of murderous accidents, I rushed to the window and drew up the blind, when to my astonishment I found that the person over whom I had nearly fallen was no other than poor little Mrs. Benson, who was lying in a dead faint before the arm-chair. Fainting women not being half so much in my line as wounded men, I felt quite uncertain in this case how to act, and without considering how the professor’s wife had come to be in the study or for what reason, my first impulse was to ring for assistance. But a second thought, which came I know not how or whence, made me lift the fragile, senseless body in my arms and carry it outside the study door into the passage before I called for help, which then I did lustily, and female servants came and bore the poor “quiet-looking little lady” away to her own apartments and the care of her husband, leaving me free to execute the errand upon which I had been sent. Still, as I collected the desk and papers required by my niece, I could not help reflecting on the circumstance I have related as being a strange one, and could only account for it in my own mind by the probable fact that Mrs. Benson had required some book from the late Sir Harry’s shelves, and, miscalculating her strength, had left her bedroom with the design of fetching it, and failed before she could accomplish her purpose. I heard several comments made on the occurrence, during the melancholy meal which we now called “dinner,” by her husband and Lady Amabel Scott, and they both agreed with me as to the probable reason of it; and as soon as the cloth was removed the professor left us to spend the evening with his wife, who was considered sufficiently ill to require medical attendance.
We were a rather silent trio in the drawing-room—Lady Amabel, Mr. Scott, and I—for ordinary occupations seemed forbidden, and every topic harped back to the miserable accident which had left the hall without a master. The servants with lengthened faces, as though attending a funeral, had dumbly proffered us tea and coffee, and we had drunk them without considering whether we required them, so welcome seemed anything to do; and I was seriously considering whether it would appear discourteous in me to leave the hall and return on the day of the funeral, when a circumstance occurred which proved more than sufficiently exciting for all of us.
I had taken the desk, papers, and keys, and delivered them into my niece’s hands, and I had ventured at the same time to ask whether it would not be a comfort to her to see Mrs. Benson or some other friend, instead of sitting in utter loneliness and gloom. But Justina had visibly shrunk from the proposal; more than that, she had begged me not to renew it. “I sent for you, uncle,” she said, “because I needed help, but don’t let any one make it a precedent for trying to see me. I couldn’t speak to any one: it would drive me mad. Leave me alone: my only relief is in solitude and prayer.”
And so I had left her, feeling that doubtless she was right, and communicating her wishes on the subject to Lady Amabel Scott, who had several times expressed a desire to gain admittance to her widowed cousin.
Judge, then, of our surprise, equal and unmitigated, when, as we sat in the drawing-room that evening, the door silently opened and Justina stood before us! If she had been the ghost of Sir Harry himself risen from the dead, she could hardly have given us a greater start.
“Justina!” I exclaimed, but as she advanced toward us with her eyes riveted on Lady Amabel, I saw that something more than usual was the matter, and drew backward. Justina’s countenance was deadly pale; her dark hair, unbound from the night before, flowed over the white dressing-gown which she had worn all day; and stern and rigid she walked into the midst of our little circle, holding a packet of letters in her hand.
“Amabel Scott,” she hissed rather than said as she fixed a look of perfect hatred on the beautiful face of her dead husband’s cousin, “I have detected you. You made me miserable whilst he was alive—you know it—with your bold looks and your forward manners and your shameless, open attentions; but it is my turn now, and before your husband I will tell you that—”
“Hush, hush, Justina!” I exclaimed, fearful what revelation might not be coming next. “You are forgetting yourself; this is no time for such explanations. Remember what lies upstairs.”
“Let her go on,” interposed Lady Amabel Scott, with wide-open, astonished eyes; “I am not afraid. I wish to hear of what she accuses me.”
She had risen from her seat as soon as she understood the purport of the widow’s speech, and crossed over to her husband’s side; and knowing what I did of her, I was yet glad to see that Warden Scott threw his arm about her for encouragement and support. She may have been thoughtless and faulty, but she was so young, and he was gone. Besides, no man can stand by calmly and see one woman pitted against another.
“Of what do you accuse me?” demanded Lady Amabel, with heightened colour.
“Of what do I accuse you?” almost screamed Justina. “Of perfidy, of treachery, toward him,” pointing to Mr. Warden Scott, “and toward me. I accuse you of attempting to win my dear husband’s affections from me—which you never did, thank God!—and of rendering this home as desolate as it was happy. But you failed—you failed!”
“Where are your proofs?” said the other woman, quietly.
“There!” exclaimed my niece, as she threw some four or five letters down upon the table—“there! I brought them for your husband to peruse. He kept them; generous and good as he was, he would have spared you an open exposure, but I have no such feelings in the matter. Are you to go from this house into another to pursue the same course of action, and perhaps with better success? No, not if I can prevent it!”
Her jealousy, rage, and grief seemed to have overpowered her; Justina was almost beside herself. I entreated her to retire, but it was of no avail. “Not till Warden Scott tells me what he thinks of his wife writing those letters with a view to seducing the affections of a married man,” she persisted.
Mr. Scott turned the letters over carelessly.
“They are not from my wife,” he quietly replied.
“Do you dare to say so?” exclaimed Justina to Lady Amabel.
“Certainly. I never wrote one of them. I have never written a letter to Harry since he was married. I have never had any occasion to do so.”
The widow turned towards me with an ashen-grey face, which it was pitiful to behold.
“Whose are they, then?” she whispered, hoarsely.
“I do not know, my dear,” I replied; “surely it matters little now. You will be ill if you excite yourself in this manner. Let me conduct you back to your room;” but before I could do so she had fallen in a fit at my feet. Of course, all then was hurry and confusion, and when I returned to the drawing-room I found Lady Amabel crying in her husband’s arms.
“Oh, Warden dear,” she was saying, “I shall never forgive myself. This all comes of my wretched flirting. It’s no good your shaking your head; you know I flirt, and so does every one else; but I never meant anything by it, darling, and I thought all the world knew how much I loved you.”
“Don’t be a goose!” replied her husband, as he put her gently away from him; “but if you think I’m going to let you remain in this house after what that d——’d woman—— Oh, here is General Wilmer! Well, General, after the very unpleasant manner in which your niece has been entertaining us, you will not be surprised to hear that I shall take my wife away from Durham Hall to-night. When Lady Trevor comes to her senses you will perhaps kindly explain to her the reason of our departure, for nothing under such an insult should have prevented my paying my last respects to the memory of a man who never behaved otherwise than as a gentleman to either of us.”
I apologised for Justina as best I was able, represented that her mind must really have become unhinged by her late trouble, and that she would probably be very sorry for what she had said by-and-by; but I was not surprised that my arguments had no avail in inducing Mr. Scott to permit his wife to remain at Durham Hall, and in a few hours they had left the house. When they were gone I took up the letters, which still lay upon the table, and examined them. They were addressed to Sir Harry, written evidently in a woman’s hand, and teemed with expressions of the warmest affection. I was not surprised that the perusal of them had excited poor Justina’s wrathful jealousy. Turning to the signatures, I found that they all concluded with the same words, “Your loving and faithful Pet.” In a moment my mind had flown back to the dying speech of poor Sir Harry, and had absolved Lady Amabel Scott from all my former suspicions. She was not the woman who had penned these letters; she had not been in the last thoughts of her cousin. Who, then, had been? That was a mystery on which Death had set his seal, perhaps for ever. Before I retired to rest that night I inquired for my poor niece, and heard that she had Mrs. Benson with her. I was glad of that: the women were fond of one another, and Justina, I felt, would pour all her griefs into the sympathising ear of the professor’s wife, and derive comfort from weeping over them afresh with her. But after I had got into bed I remembered that I had left the letters lying on the drawing-room table, where they would be liable to be inspected by the servants, and blow the breath of the family scandal far and wide. It was much past midnight, for I had sat up late, and all the household, if not asleep, had retired to their own apartments; and so, wrapping a dressing-gown about me, and thrusting my feet into slippers, I lighted my candle, and descended noiselessly to the lower apartments. But when I reached the drawing-room the letters were gone: neither on the table nor the ottoman nor the floor were they to be seen; and so, vexed at my own carelessness, but concluding that the servants, when extinguishing the lights, had perceived and put the papers away in some place of safety, I prepared to return to my own room.
The bedrooms at Durham Hall were situated on either side of a corridor, and fearful of rousing the family or being caught in deshabille, I trod on tiptoe, shading my candle with my hand. It was owing to this circumstance, I suppose, that I had reached the centre of the corridor without causing the least suspicion of my presence; but as I passed by the apartment where the remains of my unfortunate host lay ready for burial, the door suddenly opened and a light appeared upon the threshold. I halted, expecting to see emerge the figure of my widowed niece, but lifting my eyes, to my astonishment I encountered the shrinking, almost terrified, gaze of the professor’s wife. Robed in her night-dress, pallid as the corpse which lay within, her large frightened eyes apparently the only living things about her, she stood staring at me as though she had been entranced. Her brown hair floated over her shoulders, her feet were bare; one hand held a lighted candle, the other grasped the packet of letters of which I had been in search. So we stood for a moment regarding one another—I taking in these small but important details; she looking as though she implored my mercy and forbearance. And then I drew back with the gesture of respect due to her sex, and, clad in her white dress, she swept past me like a startled spirit and disappeared.
I gained my own room, but it was not to sleep. A thousand incidents, insignificant in themselves, but powerful when welded into one, sprang up in my mind to convince me that Justina and I and everybody had been on a wrong tack, and that in the professor’s wife, the “quiet-looking little lady” with her Quaker-like robes, downcast eyes and modest appearance, in the “best friend” that my niece had ever possessed, I had discovered the writer of those letters, the concealed visitor in Sir Harry’s room, the “Pet” whose name had been the last sound heard to issue from his dying lips. For many hours I lay awake pondering over the best course for me to pursue. I could not bear the thought of undeceiving my poor niece, whose heart had already suffered so much; besides, it seemed like sacrilege to drag to light the secrets of the dead. At the same time I felt that Mrs. Benson should receive some hint that her presence in Durham Hall, at that juncture, if desired, was no longer desirable. And the next day, finding she was not likely to accord me an interview, I made the reception of the missing letters a pretext for demanding one. She came to her room door holding them in her hand, and the marks of trouble were so distinct in her face that I had to summon all my courage to go through the task which I considered my duty.
“You found these in the drawing-room last night?” I said, as I received them from her.
“I did,” she answered, but her voice trembled and her lips were very white. She seemed to know by instinct what was coming.
“And you went to find them because they are your own?” She made no answer. “Mrs. Benson, I know your secret, but I will respect it on one condition—that you leave the Hall as soon as possible. You must be aware that this is no place for you.”
“I never wished to come,” she answered, weeping.
“I can believe it, but for the sake of your friend, of your husband, of yourself, quit it as soon as possible. Here are your letters—you had better burn them. I only wished to ascertain that they were yours.”
“General Wilmer”—she commenced gaspingly, and then she turned away and could say no more.
“Do you wish to speak to me?” I asked her gently.
“No—nothing; it is useless,” she answered with a tearless, despairing grief which was far more shocking to behold than either Justina’s or Lady Amabel’s. “He is gone, and there is nothing left; but thank you for your forbearance, and good-bye.”
So we parted, and to this day, excepting that she is released from all that could annoy or worry her, I have learned nothing more. How long they loved, how much or in what degree of guilt or innocence, I neither know nor have cared to guess at; it is sufficient for me that it was so, and that while Justina was accusing the beautiful Lady Amabel Scott of attempting to win her husband’s heart from her, it had been given away long before to the woman whom she termed her dearest friend—to the woman who had apparently no beauty, or wit, or accomplishments with which to steal away a man’s love from its rightful owner, but who nevertheless was his “loving and faithful Pet,” and the last thought upon his dying lips.
Professor and Mrs. Benson never returned to Durham Hall. It was not long afterwards that I heard from my niece that his wife’s failing health had compelled the professor to go abroad; and to-day she writes me news from Nice that Mrs. Benson is dead. Poor Pet! I wonder if those scared brown eyes have lost their frightened look in heaven?
I believe that Justina has made an ample apology for her rudeness to Lady Amabel and Mr. Warden Scott. I know I represented that it was her duty to do so, and that she promised it should be done. As for herself, she is gradually recovering from the effects of her bereavement, and finding comfort in the society of her sons and daughters; and perhaps, amongst the surprises which I have already spoken of as likely to await us in another sphere, they will not be least which prove how very soon we have been forgotten by those we left in the world behind us.
CHIT-CHAT FROM ANDALUSIA.
A couple of springs ago, business compelling some friends of mine to cross over into Spain, I gladly accepted the cordial invitation they extended to me to visit with them that “splendid realm of old romance.”
Our destination was Utrera, a small town situated between Seville and Xeres, and lying in the midst of those vast plains so often mentioned in the Conquest of Granada.
I confess that I was rather disappointed to find how hurriedly we passed through Madrid and Seville, and I longed to be permitted to linger for a little space within their walls; but ours was not entirely a party of pleasure, and a diversion was soon created in my thoughts by our arrival at Utrera, which, from a distance, presented a most Oriental appearance. The houses, many of which are built in the Moorish fashion and dazzlingly white, stand out clearly defined against the deep blue southern sky; the tall tower of Santiago, with little perhaps but its unusual height to recommend it to a stranger’s notice, has, nevertheless, an imposing appearance; and even a palm tree, which, solitary and alone, rears its stately head in the centre of the town, puts in its claim for adding in no small degree to the effect of the whole picture. Notwithstanding, with all the combined advantages of white houses, tall towers, solitary palm trees and romantic situations, I would advise no one who is not a traveller at heart or intent upon his worldly profit to fix his residence in this primitive little Andalusian town.
We first took up our quarters at the posada, with the intention of remaining there during our stay, but were soon obliged to abandon the idea, for, though the best inn in Utrera, it was most uncomfortable, and noisy beyond description.
We began to look about us, therefore, and were soon installed in a small but beautifully clean and cool-looking house in a street leading out of the plaza, and found no reason to be discontented with our abode. It boasted of a pleasant patio (or inner courtyard) and a wide verandah or gallery, into which our rooms opened. As the days grew warmer (and very warm indeed they grew after a while) this patio was our greatest comfort; for, following the example of our neighbours, we had it covered with an awning, and spent the greater part of the day, seated with our books or work, beside its mimic fountain. But if we gained in material comfort by exchanging the noisy and dirty posada for apartments of our own, we had also drawn down upon ourselves the burden of housekeeping, which we found in Spain to be no sinecure. Some friends who had resided a few months in the town, and acquired a fair knowledge of the language, manners, and customs of the natives of Utrera, volunteered to send us a maid, warranted honest and a tolerable proficient in the art of cookery. But she proved a care-full blessing. To give her her due, she possessed one good quality, and we found by experience that it was about the only one she or her sisterhood could boast of: she was very fond of water. The floors of our new house were formed of stone, partially covered by strips of matting which were easily removed; and we soon lived in a perpetual swamp. Antonia was always both ready and willing to “clean up,” and never seemed happier than when dashing water in all directions, or brushing away vigorously at the matting with her little short-handled broom.
By the way, I wonder why Spanish women prefer to bend double over their sweeping, instead of adopting our easier method of performing the same operation? In vain did I strive to convince Antonia of the advantages attendant on the use of a broom with a long handle: she only smiled, shook her head, and went obstinately on her weary way.
The water for our own consumption was drawn daily from the Moorish aqueduct just outside the town, and brought to us by the aguador, an old fellow who wore a rusty black velvet turban hat stuck full of cigarettes, besides having one always in his mouth. He would pour the water from his wooden barrels into a large butt which stood in the kitchen; but as we discovered that he (together with all who felt so inclined) dipped his glass, with the fingers that held it, into the reservoir whenever he wished to quench his thirst, we speedily invested in a filter.
We soon found that it was utterly impossible to infuse any ideas of cookery or housework into the head of the fair Antonia. If we showed her how to lay the tablecloth and place the dishes, she eyed us with surprise, bordering on contempt, that ladies should perform such menial offices; and the next day all our instructions were as though they had never been. It was the same with everything, until we decided that it was far less trouble to wait on ourselves, and our life at Utrera resolved itself into a picnic without an end.
Nevertheless, when we arose one morning to find that Antonia (wearied perhaps of English suggestions) had quietly walked off and left us to shift entirely for ourselves, we felt inclined to think that we had undervalued her. But she had received her wages on the day before, and we learned afterward that under those circumstances it is a common thing for Spanish servants to quit their places without any warning, and return home for a while to live at their ease on the produce of their labour.
Our next attendant was Pepa, a bright, dark-eyed girl, who always looked so picturesque, with a spray of starry jessamine or scarlet verbena coquettishly placed in her black hair, that it was impossible not to overlook her misdemeanours. She had such an arch way of tossing her head and shaking her long gold earrings that there was no resisting her; and indeed Pepa was but too well aware of the fact herself, and made the best use of her knowledge.
But the dinners were still our bêtes noires, and in these, notwithstanding all her prettiness, she could help us little better than her predecessor. The meat which we procured was simply uneatable, but happily animal food is little needed in those southern climes, and we had plenty of game. Hares, partridges, and wild ducks were most abundant; and a woman used constantly to call on us with live quails for sale, which she would despatch by sticking one of their own feathers into their brains.
Of course, everything was more or less spoiled which we entrusted to the tender mercies of our handmaid; but fortunately there were no epicures amongst us, and we generally received the goods the gods provided with contentment if not gratitude, and had many resources to turn to in order to eke out a distasteful meal. The bread was excellent, and we always had an abundance of oranges, chestnuts, melons, and pomegranates; so that, under the circumstances, we were not to be pitied.
But one day Pepa, disheartened by her repeated failures, begged to be allowed to serve us a Spanish dinner, after tasting which, she affirmed, we should never desire to eat any other; and having received the permission of her mistress, she set to work, and at the usual hour triumphantly placed the national dish of “puchero” upon the table. We gathered round it rather doubtfully, but after the first timid trial pronounced it, “not so bad, though rather rich.” It seemed to contain a little of everything—beef, lard, garlic, garbanzos (or small, hard beans), lettuce, pepper, potatoes, and I know not what besides; and the mixture had been kept simmering in an earthenware pot for hours. The next dish served by Pepa was “gaspacho,” or a Spanish salad, which is mixed quite differently from an English one, and to most tastes not so palatable. And then she placed before us a large dish of rice, profusely sprinkled with cinnamon, and various small cakes fried in oil; and Pepa’s Spanish dinner (which, by the way, was only a sample, I suppose, of the most ordinary national fare), was concluded.
We were thankful that it had been sufficiently good to enable us to praise it enough to give her satisfaction, though we were compelled to adopt more than one ruse in order, without hurting her feelings, to escape having the same feast repeated every day.
There are not many “lions” in Utrera, but, such as they are, of course we visited them. The principal one perhaps is in the vaults beneath the church of Santiago, but we were scarcely prepared for the ghastly spectacle which met our gaze there. It appears that, many years ago, while digging for some purpose round the church, the workmen found several bodies, which, owing to some peculiar quality of the soil in which they had been buried, were in a wonderful state of preservation; and, by order of the authorities, they were placed in upright positions against the walls of the church vaults. The old sacristan, who acted as our cicerone, pointed out the bodies to us with his lighted torch, and directed our attention especially to one, evidently that of a very stout woman, which had still a jacket and skirt clinging to it. Strange to say, the bodies were all clothed, although in most cases it had become difficult to distinguish the garments from the remains, for all seemed to partake of the same hue and texture. It is a humbling sight to look upon the dead after they have turned again to their dust, and with but a semblance of the human frame left clinging to them, as though in mockery of our mortality. We could not bear to see the idlers who had followed our party down into the vaults jeering at the appearance of these poor carcases, and touching them in a careless and irreverent manner. Had we had our way, they should all have been tenderly consigned again to the bosom of their mother earth, and we experienced a strange sensation of relief as we turned our backs upon them and emerged once more into the open air.
The principal object of a stroll in Utrera is a visit to the Church of Consolation, which stands on the outskirts of the town, at the end of a long walk bordered with lines of olive trees. At intervals along the way benches are placed, and here on Sundays and feast-days the inhabitants congregate as they come to and from the church. The latter is an interesting edifice, though its architecture is unpretending enough.
Its nave is lofty, and on the white-washed walls hang hundreds of little waxen and silver limbs, and effigies, with articles of children’s clothing and an endless assortment of plaited tails of hair. These are all offerings made to “Our Lady of Consolation,” in fulfilment of vows or as tokens of thanksgiving for recovery from sickness; and there is something very touching in the idea of these women giving up their most cherished possessions (for every one knows how justly proud the Spanish are of their magnificent hair) as tributes of gratitude to her from whom they have received the favours.
The walls near the western door of the Church of Consolation are hung with innumerable pictures, each bearing so strong a resemblance to the other, both in style and subject, that they might have been drawn by the same hand. As works of art they are valueless, for even the rules of perspective are ignored in a most comical manner, and with slight variations they all represent the same subject. On one hand is an invalid man, woman or child, as the case may be, and on the other a kneeling figure imploring aid for them of the “Virgin of Consolation,” who is also portrayed appearing to the suppliant, and encircled by a golden halo. Beneath the painting is inscribed the name of the patient, the nature of his disease, and the date of his recovery.
At the back of the church is a large garden belonging to one of the richest proprietors in the neighbourhood of Utrera, and as the midday heat became more oppressive it was a favourite haunt of ours during the cool of the evening, when the air was laden with the perfume of orange blossoms and other sweet-smelling flowers. The owners of the garden permitted it to grow wild, but that circumstance only enhanced its beauty. The orange trees were laden with golden fruit, of which we were courteously invited to gather as much as we pleased. But our visits to this charming retreat were necessarily short, for, as in most southern latitudes, there was scarcely any twilight in Utrera, and it always seemed as though the ringing of the Angelus were a signal for the nights immediately to set in. But what glorious nights they were! The dingy oil-lamps in the streets (for gas is an innovation which had not yet found its way there) were little needed, as the sky always seemed to be one bright blaze of beautiful stars.
The cemetery at Utrera is a quiet spot, surrounded by a high white wall and thickly planted with cypress trees, which give it a most solemn and melancholy appearance. They have the custom there (I am not sure it is not prevalent in other parts of Spain) of burying the dead in recesses in the walls, which are built expressly of an immense thickness; the coffins are shoved into these large pigeon-holes, and the opening is closed with a marble slab, which bears the inscription usual in such cases, somewhat after the fashion of open-air catacombs. But little respect seemed to be shown to the dead.
One day I met some children bearing a bier, upon which was stretched the corpse of a little girl clothed in white garments and with a wreath of flowers placed upon the placid brow. The children, apparently quite unaware of the reverence due to their sacred burden, carelessly laughed and chatted as they bore it along the highway, sometimes sitting down to rest, and then hurrying forward with unseemly haste, as though to make up for lost time. A tall man, wrapped in a huge cloak, and who evidently belonged to the little cortège, followed at a distance, but he too performed the duty at his leisure, and seemed to find nothing extraordinary or out of the way in the children’s want of decorum.
With the exception of periodical visits to the Church of Consolation before mentioned, the people of Utrera rarely seemed to leave their houses. To walk for the sake of walking is an idea which finds little favour with a Spanish lady, and my friends and myself were looked upon as very strange beings for taking so much exercise and caring to explore the surrounding country.
But to our English taste it was pleasant to stroll up the Cadiz road until we reached a small mound situated thereon, which was belted with shady trees and amply provided with stone seats. This elevation commanded the view of a vast extent of country, with the grand frowning hills of the Sierra Nevada in the far distance, which the gorgeous sunsets always invested with a strange, unearthly beauty. The intense solitude of the scene, too, was not without its own peculiar charm. At intervals the silence would be broken by the approach of a picturesque-looking peasant bestriding a mule, the silvery jangle of whose bells had been heard in the calm atmosphere for some time before he made his personal appearance. These muleteers never failed to interrupt the monotonous chants they are so fond of singing, to wish us a friendly “Buenas tardes” (“Good evening”) while proceeding on their way, and then we would listen to the sound of the mule’s bells and the low rich voice of his master until both died away in the distance, and the scene resumed its normal condition of undisturbed tranquillity.
We made an expedition once, by the new railroad, to Moron, a very old town perched on an almost perpendicular rock and visible for miles distant. The heat was intense, but we toiled manfully up the steep and execrably-paved street from the station, and, weary and footsore, were thankful to find ourselves within the cool walls of the fine old church. It possesses some valuable Murillos—one of which, representing the head of our Blessed Lord, is especially beautiful. The altar-rails, screen and reredos are all richly gilt, and the sacristan, taking us into the vestry, unlocked several massively carved chests, which disclosed some valuable plate and precious stones; referring to which, he boasted, with pardonable pride, that Utrera could not produce anything half so handsome. And indeed the inhabitants of Moron may well congratulate themselves on these treasures having escaped the grasp of the French during the war, for the sacristan related to us how everything had been hidden away and miraculously preserved from the hands of the spoiler.
But my chit-chat is drawing to a close. It was not without a certain regret that we bade farewell to Utrera, for during the whole of our stay there we had experienced nothing but kindness from all with whom we had come in contact, and the memory of our sojourn in that little, out-of-the-way Andalusian town, if not fraught with brilliant recollections, will, at all events, take its rank with that portion of the past which has been too peaceful to rise up again to trouble us. And it were well if we could say the same for every part of our storm-ridden lives.
THE SECRET OF ECONOMY.
Apparently, there has been much to say and write lately upon domestic economy. From the time, indeed, that the question of the possibility of marriage upon three hundred a-year was mooted, the subject has never fairly been dropped.
Men, with incomes of less than three hundred a-year, do not seem to like the idea that they are bound in consequence to renounce all thoughts of matrimony, and inquiries respecting the matter from aggrieved bachelors are constantly cropping up in those corners of the weekly papers devoted to correspondence. They have even gone so far lately as to suggest, since it seems impossible in this century of riots and rinderpest to curtail one’s expenses, whether it may not be both lawful and feasible to curtail one’s family.
The question of, on how much, or on how little, a certain number of persons can exist, is certainly one which affects the mass, but which, to be answered with fairness, must be put individually. There are women and women. What one housekeeper can accomplish on three hundred a-year, another cannot effect on three thousand, for it is not incompatible with many luxuries to possess very little comfort; and comfort is, after all, the essence of domestic felicity.
Yet, it is not fair to lay the whole blame of the impossibility of marriage in these days upon a moderate income, on the extravagance of women, for the difficulty is just as often attributable to the disinclination of men to resign the luxuries to which they have been accustomed. For every really extravagantly disposed female mind there may be found two thriftily disposed ones; and had such minds but been endued with the proper knowledge to carry out their efforts to do well, existence might not be found so difficult a matter as it appears to be at present.
It is true that the “girl of the period” (not the Saturday Reviewer’s “girl” by any manner of means), is, generally, better dressed and more accustomed to luxury than her mother was before her. But it must be remembered that the expenses of a girl before marriage are regulated by the wishes of her parents, and because they like to see her sail about in the last Parisian fashion, it by no means follows that she will always expect to be dressed the same, or that she will not cheerfully resign some of the luxuries she has been accustomed to, to meet the means of the man who has taken it upon himself to support her.
Apropos of which I have far oftener been called upon to remonstrate with newly-married female friends on their folly in stripping the trousseaux, which had been prepared for them with such care, of all their pretty trimmings of lace and ribbon and embroidery, in order to adorn the little frocks and caps which are scarcely ever noticed but by the mother herself, than to blame them for out-running their husbands’ means in order to procure such vanities.
Various reasons may combine to make the parent, who can afford it, take pleasure in seeing her daughter well dressed. A true mother is naturally proud of a girl’s good looks; and anxious to show them off to the best advantage; or the feeling that her child may not long be with her may make her desirous to please her to the utmost whilst she remains. Of course, the indulgence may arise from lower and more mercenary motives, such as have been attributed for many a long year to the stereotyped “Belgravian mother”; but even in such a case it does not follow that the girl will never be able contentedly to accommodate herself to a lower range of comfort. It is not to be expected that, single-handed, she should put away from her the luxuries which her parents’ income can command; but it remains to be proved whether she will not willingly exchange them to become the mistress of a house of her own, even though it may be smaller than the one to which she has been accustomed. Naturally parents wish to see the children, for whom perhaps they have worked and slaved, comfortably settled in life; and it is folly for men with barely sufficient money to keep themselves to rave against fathers who refuse to sanction their daughters’ starving with them.
But the idea as to what constitutes starvation has risen with the times. A little while ago, it used to be the clergyman with a large family on eighty pounds a-year: a twelvemonth back it rose to the celebrated “three hundred;” and but a few weeks since I heard a lady gravely affirm that any one who contemplated marriage now-a-days with an income of less than two thousand, must be either a madman or a fool.
Knowing my incompetence for the task, I have no intention in this paper of trying to decide on how small a sum it is possible to maintain a family in this luxurious age. I only wish to say a few words upon what I consider to be the secret of the economy which has need to be exercised in these days in the largest household as well as in the smallest.
The order of her household is a true woman’s battle-field, and the better she can manage it, the more comforts she can command, and the more regularity she can enforce upon a small income and with few servants, the greater is the triumph of her victory. If means are unlimited the triumph is lost; and the woman who has a thousand a-year for her housekeeping, and is content to let her husband enjoy no more luxury upon it than his friend who spends five hundred, allowing the surplus to be wasted for want of a little thought or supervision, is not a true woman or a good one. For if prodigality is not a sin in itself, it arises from the indulgence of a combination of sins, amongst which selfishness holds chief rank.
Take the care of her household out of a woman’s hands and what remains for her to do? As a generality she would sit in idleness, for these are not the days when mothers nurse and look after their own children, and, thanks to the sewing machine, the toil of needlework is over, even in the poorest families.
She would probably take up a novel the first thing in the morning, thereby unfitting herself for any solid work for the remainder of the day; or she would waste her time on fancy-work, or unnecessary letter-writing, or on anything but what sensible people who know they will be called to account hereafter for the use they have made of the brains God has given them would do.
And, as a rule, I believe few women would like to be lightened of their trouble in this respect. The sex is uncommonly fond of a “little brief authority,” and even those who have every aid at their command, generally choose to dabble in their housekeeping affairs. And it is just this “dabbling” which does harm, which often increases the expenses instead of lessening them.
I am not a second Mrs. Warren; I have no ambition to try and teach my sex how to manage their husbands, houses and children on two hundred a-year, by wiping out the bread-pan every morning with a clean cloth; and making one stick of wood do the duty of two by placing it in the oven to dry the night before.
Mrs. Warren’s plan of economy is the general one; or rather, she follows the general idea of what economy consists of, namely, in exercising a constant supervision over servants, and straining every nerve to make the leg of mutton last a day longer than it does with other people. And I for my part believe that the women of England will never know the secret of true economy until they have dropped all such petty interference with the kitchen, and learned to guard their husbands’ interests with their heads instead of their eyes. There is no doubt that in order to be thrifty it is necessary in a great measure to limit one’s expenses, and it is a good plan habitually to ask oneself before completing a purchase “Can I do without it?”
In nine cases out of ten debts and difficulties are incurred unnecessarily, for articles which added neither to our respectability nor our comfort, and which, if seriously asked, we should have acknowledged we could have done just as well without. Take the generality of English families, cut off all the superfluities in which they indulge, all the things which are necessary neither to their existence nor their position as gentle-people, and, as a rule, it will be found that such absorb a third at least of their income.
It is not only men who have interested themselves in the questions which have lately sprung up respecting the general rise in prices, and the increasing difficulties which assail the householder. Women are constantly comparing notes with each other; wondering “where on earth” the money can go to, and lamenting the exorbitant weekly bills they are called upon to pay.
Some have tried to meet their increased expenses by diminishing their number of servants; others by curtailing the kitchen fare (the worst and most unprofitable species of domestic economy); a few have gone another way to work, and simply tried with how many superfluities they could dispense; and I think these few have succeeded the best.
It was much the fashion a short time back for women to write to the papers complaining of the worthlessness of their servants, and it was not until more than one impertinent letter reflecting on their mistresses had been published from the pens (or the supposed pens) of servants themselves, that the correspondence was perceived to be infra dig., and dropped. We all know that we are very much in the power of our servants, both as regards comfort and economy; and to regulate their actions, we must sway themselves.
As a class, they are much what they have ever been; their characters varying with the authority placed over them. If ignorant, they are bigoted; if educated, presumptuous; they regard their superiors as their natural enemies, and not one in fifty of them is to be entirely trusted. They no longer look upon the house they enter as their home; they think of it more as a boarding house which they can vacate at their convenience, and themselves as birds of passage, here to-day and gone to-morrow.
To deal with and to control such minds effectually, it needs to show them that ours is infinitely the superior. If we let them perceive that we have no means of keeping watch over them except we do it personally, we lower ourselves to their level, and fail to gain their respect.
Make your servants admire you; make them wonder at the clearness of your perception, the quickness of your calculations, and the retentiveness of your memory, and inwardly they will acknowledge themselves the inferior, and be afraid to disobey.
You will always hear servants speak with admiration of a mistress who has (to quote their own phraseology) “eyes in her back;” the fact being that it requires a mind not only educated in the popular sense of the word, but sharpened by friction with the world, to enable one to perceive without seeing; and that is a state to which the lumpish minds of the mass never attain, and which consequently commands their wonder and respect.
The “excellent housekeeper” who trots round her kitchen every morning as a rule, opening each dresser-drawer, and uncovering the soup-tureen and vegetable-dishes, to see that no “perquisites” are concealed therein, may occasionally light on a piece of unhallowed fat, but she loses a hundredfold what she gains. While she imagines she has made a great discovery, her servants are laughing in their sleeves at her simplicity; for they have a hundred opportunities of concealing to her one of finding, and are doubtless as cunning as herself. And for such a mistress—for one who is for ever prying and trying to find out something—the lower classes have the greatest contempt; they will neither obey nor save for her; they will even go the length of wasting in order to annoy.
But, by this, I have not the least notion of maintaining that the members of that community, of whom I said, but a page before, that not one in fifty is to be trusted, are to be left to do the housekeeping by themselves.
A lady of my acquaintance, married to an extremely obstinate man, was asked how she managed to influence him as she did. “Because I never let him know I do it,” was the reply. “I always have my own way, but I make him think my way is his.”
Something of the same sort of management is necessary with servants. Have your own way, but make them imagine that your way is theirs. They are truly but “children of a larger growth.”
But, in order to do this, you must prove yourself cleverer than they are.
Let no one grumble at the stir which has been made lately regarding the improved education of women, nor that public schools and colleges are being organised for their benefit. If the knowledge thus acquired is never needed for the female doctors, and lawyers, and members of Parliament, which, as fixed institutions, England may never see, it will be only too welcome in domestic life; for the usual style of conducting a woman’s education is sadly detrimental to her interests in housekeeping.
What is the use of their being able to play and sing and imperfectly splutter German and Italian, when they are puzzled by the simplest bookkeeping? Hardly a woman of modern times thoroughly understands arithmetic, either mental or otherwise; and many have forgotten, or never properly acquired, even the commonest rules of addition, subtraction, and division. How is it to be expected then that they are fit to be trusted with money, or having it in their hands to lay it out to the best advantage.
But to return to “head-economy,” as it should be exercised with regard to servants.
We will suppose that a mistress, desirous of keeping within her allowance without curtailing the real comfort of her husband and children, has asked herself that simple question—“Can we do without it?” on more than one occasion, and found it answer, in so far that, though several superfluities, such as dessert after dinner, and preserves and cakes for tea have disappeared, all the solid necessaries remain, and the weekly bills are no longer higher than they ought to be. How should she act in order to keep down her expenditure to a settled sum; to be sure that as much, but no more than is needful, is used in the kitchen, the dining-room, and the nursery; and yet to prevent her servants resenting her interference, or exclaiming at her meanness?
It is really very easy, far easier than the other plan, if women would only believe it to be so. It needs no store-room full of hoarded goods, with the key of which the servants are more familiar than yourself; no stated times for measuring out half-pounds of sugar and dispensing tea by ounces; no running down to the lower regions a dozen times a day to give out what may have been forgotten; or to satisfy oneself whether they really do cut joint at the kitchen supper, or revel in fresh butter when they should be eating salt.
But it does require the knowledge necessary to keep the housekeeping books properly. A thorough acquaintance with the prices of articles, and the different quantities which a household should consume; and above all, to have what is commonly called “one’s wits about one.”
If every tradesman with whom you deal has a running account with you; if nothing in his book is paid for but what you have written down yourself; if your cook has orders to receive no meat without a check; has proper scales for weighing the joints as they come in, and makes a note of any deficiency (the checks being afterwards compared with the butcher’s book); it is impossible that the tradespeople can cheat you, and if your money is wasted, you must waste it yourself.
It is an old-fashioned plan to pay one’s bills at the end of each week; but it is a very good one. Little things which should be noticed may slip the memory at a longer period. Besides, it is a useful reminder; it shows how the money is going, and if the tradesmen find you are careful, it makes them so.
Following this plan, a quarter of an hour every morning sees the housekeeping affairs settled for the day, leaving the mistress at leisure to pursue her own avocations, and the cook to do her business in the kitchen. It is simply a glance at the larder, and then to write down all that will be required until that time on the morrow; the dinner and breakfast orders on a slate, and the other articles in the books appropriated to them. After a little while it will be found that the labour is purely mechanical; in a quiet family the consumption is so regular that the weekly bills will scarcely vary, and the mistress’s eye will detect the least increase, and find out for what it has been incurred.
At the close of each month the debit and credit accounts should be balanced, and then, if the allowance is at any time exceeded, it will generally be proved that it has gone on the superfluities before mentioned, and not on the actual expense of maintaining the household. When people talk of the difficulties of “living”, the thoughts of their listeners invariably fly to the cost of bread and meat, and they unite in abusing the tradespeople, who send their children to fashionable schools on the profits which they extort from us. But there are various ways in which men and women can save, besides dispensing with unnecessary eatables.
What woman, for instance, in these days, buying a dress, does not pay twice as much for its being made and trimmed ready for her use as she did for the original material? And who that has feet and fingers, and a sewing machine, could not sit down and make it in a few hours for herself?
But she will tell you, most likely, that she cannot cut out properly, that she has not the slightest taste for trimming, and that she was not brought up to dressmaking like a dressmaker. Ah, my dear sisters! are not these the days when we should all learn? Men may go through life with the knowledge but of one thing—for if they are acquainted with the duties of their profession, they succeed—but women need to know everything, from putting on a poultice to playing the piano; and from being able to hold a conversation with the Lord Chancellor, to clear-starching their husbands’ neckties.
I don’t say we must do it, but I maintain that we should know how.
Men are really needed but in one place, and that is, public life; but we are wanted everywhere. In public and in private, upstairs and downstairs, in the nursery and the drawing-room,—nothing can go on properly without us; and if it does, if our husbands and our servants and our children don’t need us, we cannot be doing our duty.
Above all, we have the training of the mistresses of future households, and the mothers of a coming generation—the bringing up, in fact, of the “girls of the next period.”
If we cannot amend the faults we see in ourselves (an assertion which should be paradoxical to anyone gifted with the least energy), if we think it is too late to sit down in our middle age, and learn to rub the rust off our brains, and to work our heads with our fingers, we can rear them in a different fashion.
If we are wasteful and extravagant and useless—deserving of all the hard things which have been said of us lately, let us at least take heed that our daughters are not the same.