by Grant Allen
Dudu particularly desired me to study Guy de Maupassant. He looked over my work with the stern eye of a schoolmaster. “You do not pay enough attention to your verbs,” he would say. “Just look at Maupassant’s! French verbs sparkle and coruscate. English verbs lurk unseen. But that is not all. French verbs clamp the whole together; like the piers of a Gothic church, they support and sustain the entire fabric. English verbs, like pegs on a clothes-line, serve only to restrain a loose flapping mass of nouns and adjectives. Aim at strengthening your verb-vocabulary; if you make that strong, all the rest will follow.”
And this to the wayfarer that had learnt literature on the highroads of France, improvising little plays for the village mothers!
Nevertheless, I felt his advice was right. I recognised now that writing was an art, and that Dogberry was mistaken in his pretty belief that it came by nature.
John Stodmarsh was kind about instructing me too: he took under his direction my studies in logic and political economy. On both of these subjects he lent me books and gave me impromptu lectures. I read Mill and Jevons in my leisure hours to please him. But somehow, though it sounds ungrateful to say so, I could never take quite the same interest in John’s lucid explanation of the relations between capital and labour, or in his sedative discourses on spheres of political influence, that I took in Arthur Wingham’s remarks on rhythm in French sentences. Their soporific quality — But John was really an excellent fellow. If I have ever laughed at him my laugh had no malice in it.
About Dudu’s own art I will not trust myself to speak. He preached a Gospel in his pictures. ‘T was a vigorous, original, personal Gospel — a virile evangel; strong meat for men; the world has not yet accepted it Like Robert Browning’s Grammarian, “He’s for the morning.” Perhaps some day I may write about Dudu’s Gospel. But not just yet I do not feel my wings strong enough.
Dear, modest, self-effacing, calm-souled Dudu! He held his Gospel so strenuously that he forgot to advertise. And the world to-day (as General Booth knows) is converted by advertisement.
CHAPTER XVI
A SLIGHTED COMMANDMENT
I CALL the upper and the nether gods to witness that I was guiltless of intent to wreck Miss Westmacott’s happiness. But towards the end of my third year at the High School for Young Ladies an Event happened.
It was a Tuesday; and Tuesday afternoon was always a half-holiday at ours as at other High Schools. For you may naturally imagine, Events were not likely to occur in Miss Westmacott’s establishment except on half-holidays.
I had had a slight altercation that morning with Her Imperturbability. It arose out of a question of faith and morals. As a rule, Miss Westmacott left all such questions severely alone, so far as I was concerned. She was afraid of them, three deep. In the first place, she was aware of the fact that I had been brought up a Catholic. In the second place, she knew that unhappily, by my guardian’s wish, I was exempt from all manner of religious instruction. And in the third place, she was never quite sure what unexpected bombshell a child of the open air, a southern woman, reared by One-eyed Calenders and Italian organ-grinders, might fling broadcast at any moment among the innocent English ranks of the Select Young Ladies. She pictured them gaping open-mouthed at my blazing indiscretions. To be foreign, to be a Papist, to be the ward of a gentleman of agnostic leanings, and to have been dragged up on the highroads of continental Europe — can you figure to yourself a more appalling combination of adverse circumstances in the eyes of a Survival in a crimped cap and corkscrew ringlets?
So Miss Westmacott as a general principle excepted me altogether, not merely from those lessons in the names of Jewish kings and the doubtful doings of Assyrian harems which go by the comical name of “religious instruction,” but also from such casual moral remarks as she addressed to her classes in the course of other subjects. She feared I might draw her into irreverent discussions, or question the finality of her ethical principles. On this special occasion, however, à propos of I forget what particular Plantagenet prince, she happened to lay down the general law that implicit respect as well as implicit obedience was due from children to parents. “You must honour your father and your mother,” she remarked in her massive way, with a clenching nod of the crimped cap, “not merely because they possess qualities deserving of honour, but also because it is God’s ordinance.”
“How can you honour them, though, if they have no qualities that command respect?” I objected. “That’s clearly ridiculous.”
“My dear Rosalba! what dreadful sentiments! A parent with no qualities that command respect! If you think such unbecoming things yourself, you should at least refrain from suggesting them to your innocent companions.”
“But who could honour a drunkard or a thief?” I asked, growing warm — my logical sense being clearly outraged.
The feebly Roman nose sniffed the air with dilated wings, and the comers of the sleek, camel-lipped mouth went down in little puckers of gathering disapprobation. “My dear Rosalba,” Miss Westmacott said again, her faint moustache bristling, “I was thinking, of course, of girls brought up — well, the girls you meet here — in this class-room — do not associate with thieves or — er — drunkards.” She uttered the painful word with a natural shrinking.
“But we were talking of general principles,”
I retorted. Once set on, I could not withdraw till we had threshed out the question with Latin logic. “You put it generally, that under all circumstances we must honour our fathers and our mothers.”
“I honoured my own dear mother—” Miss Westmacott began. She was pure Anglo-Saxon in her inability to grasp a logical idea.
“Oh yes, of course,” I interrupted. “I can imagine that. I can picture your mother.” I pictured her at once after my accumulated „ knowledge of the insipid miniatures of fifty years ago — an equally massive lady with a still more Roman nose, still stiffer curls, and a still bigger cap with large frills round the edges.
“But how can anyone honour a father or mother who treats her, say, with injustice — gross, palpable injustice?”
Miss Westmacott’s face summed up the sanctions of morality and religion. The faint moustache positively quivered. “Rosalba,” she said briefly, drawing herself up very stiff like an archaic Artemis, “you may consider this a proper subject for argument and debate, I do not; and before these girls, for whose teaching I am responsible, I must request you to abstain from further remarks upon it. It is our clear duty in all stations of life to honour our parents, irrespective of their particular failings or weaknesses. We should shut our eyes to all such. We should decline — nay, more, we should be unable to recognise them. The discussion is now closed. — Ethel Moriarty, what happened to the prince as the result of this unnatural and unfilial conduct? How did Providence frustrate his nefarious plans against the crown of his father?”
In Miss Westmacott’s mind, to ignore was to abolish.
That afternoon we went out for our exhilarating walk, as usual, in Regent’s Park. It was our sole form of exercise. We were crocodiling toward the gate — the elder girls at the crocodile’s head, and the younger ones filing off by degrees toward his tail in the background — when near a corner of the road an old woman came up and began to beg from us. She had been slouching along with a ragged man, but she left him to come towards us. I call her an old woman, because that was how she struck me at first, though on looking nearer I could see she was not so much old as sodden with drink, and aged before her time by want and exposure. She was of a type quite familiar to me — just such a broken-down, ruinous woman-tramp as those who trailed in ill-fitting ghosts of shoes after the One-eyed Calender and the First Murderer. I drew aside my dress as she passed me; Heaven forgive my pride! I did not care now for the hem of my garment to brush against her.
My instructress just in front, under full canvas, with Ethel Moriarty, was talking massively to her but at me on the eternal and immutable duty of implicit obedience to and respect for parents. The will of God
was clear. Miss Westmacott had no room in her brain for doubts: she had fathomed to an ell the mind of Omnipotence. “One knows, of course,” she said in a sleek little deprecating voice, “that there are ranks in society where it must be difficult to some extent for children always heartily to follow that particular commandment; they may have to close their eyes with an effort against the true character of dissolute or abandoned parents; and one admits that in such cases the struggle may be hard — though even there, we know, for duty’s sake it should be fought out and Satan conquered. But happily in our class of life—”
At that precise moment the woman in the road drew near the curb and began in a whining voice, “Ah, thin, me dear young lady, ‘t is yerself that ‘ud be afther helping a poor hungry soul, bless the pretty face of ye, for sorra a bit or a sup has passed my lips—” She drew back with a quick scream: “Holy Mother of God! — shure if it isn’t Rosalba!”
I shrank back into myself. “Mother!” I cried, with a catch in my throat. “Mother!” She took three short steps forward, Agag-wise, like one who treads hot coals. Then she stared into my face. “An’ phwat ‘ud ye be doin’ here,” she asked, still half incredulous, “dressed loike a lady an’ all — ye that run away from home wid a tramp in Italy?”
She made as though she would fling her arms around me. I withdrew in horror. Yet the sense that this was my mother — my mother! — filled me with double shame — shame that she should be such; shame at my shame of her. I could not refuse her embrace; I could notpermit it. I longed for earth to yawn and swallow me whole. I envied Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. But earth in emergencies is always unsympathetic.
“Ye remimber me, Rosalba?” she asked coaxingly.
“Yes, Mother — I remember you.”
I spoke as in a dream. It was too horrible to realise.
Miss Westmacott had halted her line at the first hint of this scene; as I uttered those words, her feebly Roman nose assumed of a sudden a force and vigour of which I should scarce have conceived it capable. “Girls!” she pealed out in a tone of Napoleonic command, “walk straight on to the Park! — Ethel Moriarty, I hold you responsible for the good conduct of all. Go once round the inner circle as usual, and then return to the house. — Rosalba Lupari, stop behind! — All the rest of you, forward immediately, and do not look behind you!”
They marched on like soldiers. Miss Westmacott turned to me with stem severity. “Rosalba Lupari, what do you mean by applying to this vile and degraded creature such a hallowed name as mother?”
My mother pressed forward. “Shure, the young lady is roight, intoirely,” she put in. “Rosalba Lupari, that’s her name; an’ me own is Bridget Lupari by the same token; a’ ‘t is her mother I am; an’ phwat young lady like her could let her own mother want for a bite or a sup in a Crischun country?”
Miss Westmacott held her off at arm’s-length with the handle of her parasol. “I did not address you, creature,” she said. “I addressed Miss Lupari. — Rosalba, what does this mean? Will you have the goodness to say at once and decisively that you have never before beheld this object?”
“I can’t, Miss Westmacott. She is — my mother!”
Miss Westmacott stared at me and then at her. She drew a long breath and paused for half a minute. “Well, I think I may safely say that in all my life—” she began.
“My — mother!” I repeated, gasping.
Miss Westmacott lost words for a while. “Your conduct,” she said at last, when speech was vouchsafed her, “is most unbecoming a lady or a Christian. Your guardian has entrusted you to my care, and it is your duty to obey me. I order you to declare that you have never before set eyes on this monstrous personage; and twice over you decline to follow my plain instructions. Say, ‘This is not my mother!’ Rosalba, I command you.”
“It if my mother,” I replied, faint and ill with horror.
“As you persist,” Miss Westmacott went on “there is but one course open to me.” She held up her parasol to a passing four-wheeler. “Get in, Rosalba Lupari,” she said. I obeyed mechanically.
“Now, creature,” still holding her off with the end of the parasol, “sit there by the driver. — I apologise, cabman, for inflicting this unsavoury being upon you; but you shall be well paid for the inconvenience. — Get up by his side at once. Do you hear me, woman?”
My mother did as she was bid, half dazed. Miss Westmacott took her seat by my side and drove home in ominous silence. Only once did she break it. “This shows the danger of quibbling casuistically with plain moral commands,” she muttered in a high tone, with her moustache all tremulous. “Your guardian stands to you in the place of a parent; he confides you to my care; it is therefore your clear duty to obey me implicitly. But you begin by denying the obligation to obey, and you end by claiming a drunken Irishwoman in the street as your own mother.”
“She is my mother!” I cried. “I do not love her; but I will not disown her.”
We stopped at the school door. “Get down, creature!” Miss Westmacott said; and my mother descended. “Come into this room!” She opened the door of the box-room. “Take that chair!” It was a plain wooden one. “Sit there while I send for this young lady’s guardian!”
My mother said never a word. Whether she was dazed by Miss Westmacott’s masterful manner, or waited to learn what she could make out of this episode, I do not know. But, at any rate, she said nothing.
“Maria, bring some pastilles and burn them in the room to disinfect this creature,” Miss Westmacott went on, holding her dress away as if pollution might come upon it. “Creature, do not speak to her. — Maria, refrain from asking the creature any questions. — Rosalba Lupari, bring me a telegram-form from the study table.”
I brought it, trembling.
Miss Westmacott read over each word aloud, as she wrote it, with great deliberation, in her calm, well-bred way. “John Stodmarsh, Esq.” — not even in a telegram would she have docked dear John of his Esquiredom for untold gold, let alone a ha’penny—” Local Government Board, Whitehall. Come at once, if possible. Rosalba Lupari has committed a grave indiscretion. — JANET WESTMACOTT.”
I ventured to remonstrate. “Grave indiscretion is so misleading,” I said. “You will fill John’s mind with false surmises.”
Miss Westmacott was adamant. “What I have written I have written,” she replied. “Maria — this at once to the nearest telegraph office!”
Till John arrived, I was shut up in the drawing-room with Miss Westmacott Meanwhile Maria, burning pastilles from time to time, continued to watch and fumigate my mother. It was like Trinculo with Caliban— “most excellent monster!”
When John arrived, Miss Westmacott saw him alone. Then they both adjourned together to the box-room. Below in the drawing-room I heard the confused murmur of voices, sometimes loud and angry, sometimes low and remonstrant. At times my mother sobbed; at times she coaxed and wheedled. Next came a calm — a sudden calm. No sounds reached me. At last the front door opened and Maria went out. When she returned, it was with a cab, and a man whose voice sounded like a policeman’s. As a matter of fact, I learned later he was a commissionaire. I heard my mother’s voice in the hall—” Bless yer honour’s good heart; and may yer honour live for ever an’ doy happy! Shu re ‘t is yer honour that has pity upon a poor broken sowl, far from her friends an’ her counthry and the noble, grand, majestic scaynery of the West Coast of Oireland, where she was born and bred among dacent people! If ever yer honour wants—”
“The cab is Waiting,” John interposed in his driest voice. “Remember; not one step nearer England than Paris or Brussels; no large town; and payable weekly. I stop it if you disobey.”
“Ah, an”t is for yer honour that I’ll be praying all the blessed saints—”
“Come to England, and that instant it ceases.”
I heard the front door shut abruptly, and John murmur to Miss Westmacott. “Well she won’t trouble us again. We are rid of her at any rate. But, pah, what a creature! Will you kind
ly allow me to go upstairs and wash her off my hands, so to speak? Some sense of moral pollution: one needs disinfection. A little eau de Cologne — oh, thanks, how good of you!”
I burst out into the hall, against John’s directions and Miss Westmacott’s. “You haven’t let her go?” I cried. “Oh, you haven’t let her go? I did so want to ask her — about my dear, dear father.”
John’s face was rigid. “Your mother is quite enough,” he answered, “without troubling about your father. But she could tell you nothing. As you may perhaps have guessed, she left him two years ago.”
And the ragged man! With crimson cheeks I managed to stammer out the one word, “Alone?”
“No, not alone,” John answered. And then there was deep silence.
Miss Westmacott knew what “God meant” by everything. I wished I could emulate her. It was a sore trial of faith, a terrible mystery, why He should have given me such a mother.
CHAPTER XVII
NEWS FROM THE MONTI BERICI
I STAGGERED up to my own room for a while to recover from my emotions. Turbulent storms swept through me. I longed, I prayed, I wrestled for annihilation. By and by, John sent me up word that Miss Westmacott and he would like to see me, if I felt capable of an interview. So soon! so soon!
I washed my eyes and descended. John was calm but kind in a certain sober, official, politico-economical fashion. He tried his best not needlessly to hurt my feelings. Up to his lights, I mean; but dear John’s lights on emotional questions were not quite incandescent I do not think he understood how poignantly I was suffering.
“Miss Westmacott and I have been talking this over,” he began in a cumbrous, hesitating way; “and we are both agreed that after what has occurred it will be quite impossible for you to remain at this school any longer.”
