by Grant Allen
“Rosalba,” Mrs. Mallory said, with a tinge of gentle hesitation in her voice, “come with me into the back room here.”
I followed her, more than half aware what was the nature of the “little business” she was about to propose to me.
She seated me by her side on the sofa and took my hands in her own, as she was fond of doing. I think since the barrier prevented her from kissing me, she liked to make use of the only other outlet permitted for her feelings. She looked lovely in her loose pale-rose-spotted tea-gown. “My dear child,” she began, in a constrained tone, “it has struck me more than once since you came to me that I have a duty to perform to you.”
“Not at all, dear Mrs. Mallory!” I answered, nestling towards her with a vague premonition of her meaning. “I dropped from the clouds upon you, a mere waif and stray: you have been kind and good to me; but you owe me no duty.”
She demurred. “Still, you have been of use to me too, my child. You have made my picture.”
“Oh yes, I know that,” I replied, with a certain tightening of the muscles of the throat. “If I had not been of use, how could I have consented to remain with you?” And I rubbed myself against her with a cat-like sense of pleasure in the mere proximity.
She pressed my hand harder and gazed into my swimming eyes with a curious surprise. “What an odd little thing you are!” she cried. “I never can make out where you got all these feelings.”
“I fancy feelings are mostly born in one.”
“I believe they must be. But, Rosalba, this is what Mr. Stodmarsh — and I — want to speak to you about. Has it ever occurred to you that you cannot always be a model?”
“My dear Mrs. Mallory, what a question to ask a butterfly. ‘T is like the ant and the grasshopper in the fable. I am a grasshopper, voyez-vous, sauterelle, sauterelle — flitting here, flitting there — a touch, and pouf, je saute. I make it a religion to take no heed for the morrow.”
Mrs. Mallory looked grave. She was not born in Bohemia. “All the more reason, then, dear, why I should take heed for it on your account. You are growing towards womanhood, my child, and you are much, very much, too old for your years. Moreover, you are clever. Does it ever strike you that perhaps you have genius?”
“I can’t say it does,” I answered, stroking her soft hand; “but I know I can make up little plays and am a good mimic.”
“Now, what do you think you will do when you grow up to be a woman?”
“Go on the stage, I suppose,” I announced in haste; “or else write books; or else — marry somebody. Quite the proper number of things, you see — three courses open to me.”
“Rosalba, cant you be serious a minute?”
I started. “Dear Mrs. Mallory, don’t look at me like that with those reproachful eyes, or I shall burst out crying. I am appallingly serious. — I — well, I try to be flippant so as to keep my heart up.”
She looked again into my eyes and saw it was true. I was holding back my tears with a violent effort.
“Go on the stage — no,” she went on, “with your temperament that would be a pity; I foresee grave dangers for you. Write books — that must be as your development may decide.
But the third alternative is, after all, the most probable — marry.”
“It is woman’s sphere, they say,” I answered, blinking. I had read that mysterious catchword in the papers.
“Now, whatever happens to you, we have this to consider. You ought, with your abilities, to have a more regular education.”
“I have had the best,” I answered; for on that point I was positive.
“Still, it might be supplemented; and Mr. Stodmarsh desires to supplement it. He has made a proposition to me. He wants you to let him undertake the charge of your education.”
“Send me to school?”
“Yes, send you to school, and make a lady of you.”
I looked up, almost hurt. “No, no; not that; not make a lady; there, again, I believe I was born so.”
Mrs. Mallory sat on the arm of the sofa and bent over me. “You are right, Rosalba. I spoke hastily. Bring out more clearly the lady within you, I meant. Do you think you would care to accept his offer?”
I paused and hesitated. My experiences on the road had made me in many ways older than my age. “It is a big question,” I answered. “There are so many things to consider. Of course, I have not been brought up like other girls. I don’t know whether, after the free life I have led, I could be mewed up in a classroom, could stand the restraints, the iron clamps of a school; and I don’t know whether—”
“Whether what?”
I felt my cheeks burn. “Whether — I could ever — care for Mr. Stodmarsh.”
Mrs. Mallory started. “What a strange child it is! Then you have guessed what he means, Rosalba?”
“I am not a fool, dear Mrs. Mallory. Partly guessed it; partly overheard various scraps of conversation. My ears are too quick. And you yourself said, ‘The third alternative is the most probable — marry.’”
She smoothed my hair with her hands. “You are right, my dear child. He wants you to — to care for him.”
“Of course,” I answered. “If it were not for that, how could I consider his proposal? He would not want to educate me except for some good reason; I must be able to make him some return for his kindness. The question is — suppose, when I grow older, I don’t desire to marry him?”
She seized my arm, half frightened. “Rosalba,” she said, drawing my head towards her lap, “you are alarmingly wise for your years. I daren’t even tell John Stodmarsh how fully you understand and enter into his plan. He would be shocked at your understanding it. But since you do understand, you are quite right in considering this question. Now, my dear child, I want to speak earnestly to you. You have great gifts, and I think they should be cultivated. You have great abilities, and I think they should be developed. John Stodmarsh is a most honourable and excellent man, much respected by all who know him—”
“So much so that they call him the prince of prigs,” I murmured half inaudibly.
She held her breath, a little distressed. I repented me of my saying. “But I can see he is a gentleman, and an able man, and one who would always do what was right,” I added.
“He is. And what you have to ask yourself is this: do you think you could undertake, if he sent you to school, to work hard and try to fit yourself for the position in life—”
“To which he might be pleased to promote me? Like the Grand Sultan with a favourite slave. Well, I will think about it, dear lady!” She pursed her mouth at me wistfully. A kiss trembled there, irresolute. I could see she was deeply anxious to do what she judged to be for my best. After all, I was very young. I tried to think for myself, but it is difficult for a girl, before the Great Awakening has come upon her, to realise what such an engagement means. I buried my face in Mrs. Mallory’s sleeve. “Do you wish it?” I asked, trembling.
“If you can promise it without wronging yourself. It is such a rare chance in life for you.”
I flung myself upon her. “You dear!” I cried, “I can’t bear to go away from you. But if you wish it — why, to please you, I would marry twenty John Stodmarshes.”
She seemed somehow to feel that the bare acceptance of that hypothetical position broke down the barrier; for all at once, with a sudden yielding, she clasped me to her bosom, and for the first time kissed me.
“I never had a daughter, dear,” she whispered. “Now you shall be a daughter to me.” J was very happy because Mrs. Mallory had kissed me. I think at the time that episode counted for much more with me than John Stodmarsh’s offer.
She paused awhile, letting her hand lie in mine. “And if you should find,” she went on, “when you are older, and better able to judge of these things, that you cannot give John Stodmarsh your heart, I am sure he is too good and too honourable a man to insist upon your accepting him.”
“Dear signora!” I cried, “a bargain is a bargain. If he educates me, it i
s with a particular condition. If I accept the education, I accept the condition. I have considered the matter, and I promise to take him. Suppose you wish me to go to school, to school I go at once, even though it means that I must go away from you. But — I may come and be painted in my holidays, mayn’t I?”
“You may!” she cried, clasping one arm around me. “Rosalba, you have twined your tendrils somehow round my heart; I shall want to be painting you always.”
She led me to the door. Her suavities of outline as she moved were lovely. “John,” she said, entering the other room, “Rosalba consents.”
He laid down a book he had taken out of the little black bag he always carried — I looked at it afterwards, and saw it was Poor-Law Reform — with a somewhat distracted air. “Oh, does she?” he said at last, nursing his left knee. “Well, I am glad of that. — Rosalba, I wish you to consider me henceforth as your guardian. — I will discuss the question of a suitable school with you to-morrow, Linda. Meanwhile, perhaps you will oblige me by getting this child civilised garments, will you? Nothing too fine, you know; simple, ladylike English garments. Without pretending to be an expert in ladies’ costume, I would venture to suggest as a basis grey cashmere — I think it is called cashmere — a sort of soft, drabby, self-coloured woollen material. You understand my wishes?”
Mrs. Mallory demurred. “Oh, John, grey cashmere would not suit her complexion at all. It would simply crush her. Fancy that deep brown skin and those big dark eyes buried in grey cashmere! She must have a touch of scarlet. Leave that to me. It is positively necessary.”
“I bow submission to your artistic opinion. A touch of scarlet if you will; a very modest small touch of scarlet; just as much as you think absolutely indispensable to suit her colouring. You are a judge of these things. But take my grey as the keynote. You catch at what I mean? A sort of modified quakerdom. — She will suit very well, Linda; very well indeed” — this half aside. “She has wit, sprightliness, verve, originality. With a little education — Dear me, I have only just time to get down to Whitehall. Good morning, Linda.” A perfunctory kiss again. “Good morning, Rosalba.” I thought he was going to kiss me too; but he changed his mind, and held his hand out. “I will see you again tomorrow, when we can arrange everything.” And, with a courtly bow, he was off to his hansom.
CHAPTER XIII
CLIPPING MY WINGS
IT is certain that Miss Westmacott’s High School at Fellows Road, South Hampstead, was a typically British institution. Just consider its Britannicisms — its flagrant Britannicity. In the first place, it described itself as a “High School for Young Ladies.” That was a beautiful compromise! There are High Schools for Girls which have achieved success; and success in England means many imitators. But Miss Westmacott’s school added to the imitative title the truly British variant,(so rich in snobbery) “for Young Ladies.” Parents who might have hesitated to entrust their Ethel and their Gwendoline to a High School for mere Girls could safely confide them to Miss Westmacott’s teaching in an atmosphere breathed only by Young Ladies. Then, again, in the selfsame spirit, it spoke of Follows Road as in South Hampstead. That is another sweet touch! A feeling exists that Hampstead is “cultivated,” Hampstead is quietly gentlemanly; so, if you live within a mile and a half of anything that can by any stretch of courtesy be reckoned as Hampstead, you allude to your street as being in “South Hampstead,” or “East Hampstead,” or “North Hampstead,” or “Hampstead Valley.” All these little touches were characteristic of Miss Westmacott’s type. The keynote of her establishment was its selectness, its exclusiveness, its high, lady-like tone — in one word, its snobbishness.
I never felt myself adapted for Miss Westmacott’s.
My guardian — that was how I was to describe John Stodmarsh in future — conveyed me there in person, after Mrs. Mallory had transformed my outer woman from an Italian model to a model English girl — I mean Young Lady. We descended at the door, boxes and all. A prim housemaid ushered us into a prim parlour.
After a decent interval, during which I sat trembling on the edge of my chair, Miss Westmacott entered. For the first time in my life, I felt really frightened. I knew my troubles were about to begin. Born and bred in Bohemia, I shivered to find myself on the coasts of the Philistines.
I raised my eyes and looked at her. Miss Westmacott was an anachronism, in a crimped cap and pepper-and-salt ringlets. Her face was not long, however, but round and sleek, and eminently placid. A faint moustache fringed her upper lip. Her under lip protruded like a camel’s. The nose was feebly Roman. She wore a settled smile of professional amiability. It was the smile begotten of the long practice of interviewing the parent. Like the rain from heaven, it fell on all alike. Her figure was not exactly stout, but massive. I saw at once how John Stodmarsh had selected Her Imperturbability as the director of my education. Knowing me to be a wild and wayward little Italian vagabond, he wished to mitigate my native exuberance by placing me with a lady of reposeful manners and of unblemished respectability. And he succeeded. Her primness was supernatural. I do not know the secret of Miss Westmacott’s antecedents, but I have always suspected that she must have been the outcome of an early indiscretion on the part of Miss Mangnall with Mr. Pinnock. It dawned on me soon that Miss Westmacott, indeed, was the last of her class — what modern science calls a Survival. I doubt if there now exists a single schoolmistress like her. I say “exists,” for though I am not aware whether she is still alive or not, I often fear I must have been the death of Miss Westmacott.
Yet even an anachronism must accommodate itself somehow to the alien century in which it finds itself dumped down. The survival survives, after all, like the rest of us, by adaptation to its environment. That is why Miss Westmacott, essentially a product of the Georgian age, called her establishment a High School instead of an Academy; and that is why we learned Latin and Algebra and other masculine subjects which Her Imperturbability in her heart of hearts despised as “unwomanly.” She regretted samplers. But here I anticipate.
Miss Westmacott put her folding eye-glasses on the bridge of her feebly Roman nose, and regarded me with a fixed, though amiable, stare, as if I were a botanical specimen. I squirmed a little as I stood, in order to suggest the fact that I belonged in reality to the animal kingdom. Her face was mildly critical.
“So this is your ward, Mr. Stodmarsh?” she began with her vapid smile, after a long inspection. “Well — I am glad to receive her.”
She said, “I am glad to receive her”; but her stare and the intonation of her voice implied, “After all, there is nothing so very outrageous about her!” I knew from her air that John Stodmarsh had prepared her mind beforehand for receiving a veritable Italian savage.
“Oh, I can behave like a Christian,” I interposed, smiling.
Miss Westmacott eyed me with massive serenity. “I am glad of that,” she replied, in a very deliberate voice, her under lip positively drooping; “for I feared, Mr. Stodmarsh, from what you told me of your own opinions, that your ward—”
“But you understand that she is to receive no religious instruction whatever?” my guardian broke in. I learned later that he called himself an Agnostic, which seems to mean a man who professes to know nothing about the constitution of the universe, but to know it a great deal more firmly and dogmatically than other people.
Miss Westmacott smoothed out the folds of her black dress — she lived in a chronic condition of mitigated mourning — and answered in a voice of deprecatory acquiescence, “Oh, certainly, if you desire it, your ward shall be exempted from our usual round of religious lessons; though, naturally, in the course of ordinary teaching—”
“I don’t mind that,” John Stodmarsh interrupted, much to her discomposure — for she was unused to interruption—” I only wish that she should enjoy complete religious freedom.
She was brought up a Catholic—”
“And is even a Catholic still,” I interposed briskly. I did not wish to abjure my birthright for a m
ess of pottage without being even consulted.
My guardian took no notice of my interruption, but went on gravely: “Nevertheless, I desire to afford her every opportunity for modifying her beliefs as circumstances may dictate. No doubt as she finds herself more adequately educated, her ideas will broaden.”
“Into accordance with the doctrines of the Church of England,” Miss Westmacott suggested.
I saw it was likely to become a triangular duel, so I refrained from intervening further. The space between Miss Westmacott’s eyes was narrow. So were her views. I allowed John Stodmarsh and Her Imperturbability to fight it out between them over my prostrate Papist body.
The girls at Miss Westmacott’s — I mean the Select Young Ladies — were a little afraid of me just at first; they feared my outlandish name, my foreign ways, my strange manners. I gesticulated too much to please them. Besides, they questioned me, with the careless ease of youth, about my previous life. I had a Past; and, as I am by nature a frank creature, I told them the whole truth of it — the road, the One-eyed Calender, the First Murderer, and all the rest. This frightened them not a little. Select Young Ladies are unaccustomed to associate with reclaimed vagrants. In time, however, it was noised abroad in the schoolroom that the Brownie, as they called me, could play plays and tell stories. I had insisted on bringing my Italian costume and my theatrical puppets in my box — I cherished a real affection for Juliet and Miranda; and when the girls learnt this, they declared with one accord that the Brownie must show them how she did it. I was willing enough; throughout my life, indeed, I have never been accused of backwardness in displaying my poor little accomplishments. So one evening, about a week after my enrolment in the list of Select Young Ladies, I took out my Italian dress, slipped my dolls into their robes, assumed my most fascinating professional smile, and began my version of Romeo and Juliet.
