July 5th
I lunched at home, and read drowsily before the open window till four o’clock. Then the splendour of the day invited me forth. Whither should I go? I thought of Judith and Hampstead Heath; I also thought of Carlotta and Hyde Park. The sound of the lions roaring for their afternoon tea reached me through the still air, and I put from me a strong temptation to wander alone and meditative in the Zoological Gardens close by. I must not forget, I reflected, that I am responsible for Carlotta’s education, whereas I am in no wise responsible for the animals or for Judith. If Judith and I had claims one on the other, the entire charm of our relationship would be broken.
I resolved to take Carlotta to the park, in order to improve her mind. She would see how well-bred Englishwomen comport themselves externally. It would be a lesson in decorum.
I do not despise convention. Indeed, I follow it up to the point when it puts on the airs of revealed religion. My neighbours and I decide on a certain code of manners which will enable us to meet without mutual offence. I agree to put my handkerchief up to my nose when I sneeze in his presence, and he contracts not to wipe muddy boots on my sofa. I undertake not to shock his wife by parading my hideous immorality before her eyes, and he binds himself not to aggravate my celibacy by beating her or kissing her when I am paying a call. I agree, by wearing an arbitrarily fixed costume when I dine with him, to brand myself with the stamp of a certain class of society, so that his guests shall receive me without question, and he in return gives me a well-ordered dinner served with the minimum amount of inconvenience to myself that his circumstances allow. Many folks make what they are pleased to call unconventionality a mere cloak for selfish disregard of the feelings and tastes of others. Bohemianism too often means piggish sloth or slatternly ineptitude.
Convention is solely a matter of manners. That is why I desire to instil some convention into what, for want of a more accurate term, I may allude to as Carlotta’s mind. It will save me much trouble in the future.
I summoned Carlotta.
“Carlotta,” I said, “I am going to take you to Hyde Park and show you the English aristocracy wearing their best clothes and their best behaviour. You must do the same.”
“My best clothes?” cried Carlotta, her face lighting up.
“Your very best. Make haste.”
I smiled. She ran from the room and in an incredibly short time reappeared unblushingly bare-necked and bare-armed in the evening dress that had caused her such dismay on Saturday.
I jumped to my feet. There is no denying that she looked amazingly beautiful. She looked, in fact, disconcertingly beautiful. I found it hard to tell her to take the dress off again.
“Is it wrong?” she asked Nvith a pucker of her baby lips.
“Yes, indeed,” said I. “People would be shocked.”
“But on Saturday evening—” she began.
“I know, my child,” I interrupted. “In society you are scarcely respectable unless you go about half naked at night; but to do so in the daytime would be the grossest indecency. I’ll explain some other time.”
“I shall never understand,” said Carlotta.
Two great tears stood, one on each eyelid, and fell simultaneously down her cheeks.
“What on earth are you crying for?” I asked aghast.
“You are not pleased with me,” said Carlotta, with a choke in her voice.
The two tears fell like rain-drops on to her bosom, and she stood before me a picture of exquisite woe. Then I did a very foolish thing.
Last week a little gold brooch in a jeweller’s window caught my fancy. I bought it with the idea of presenting it to Carlotta, when an occasion offered, as a reward for peculiar merit. Now, however, to show her that I was in no way angry, I abstracted the bauble from the drawer of my writing-table, and put it in her hand.
“You please me so much, Carlotta,” said I, “that I have bought this for you.”
Before I had completed the sentence, and before I knew what she was after, her arms were round my neck and she was hugging me like a child.
I have never experienced such an odd sensation in my life as the touch of Carlotta’s fresh young arms upon my face and the perfume of spring violets that emanated from her person. I released myself swiftly from her indecorous demonstration.
“You mustn’t do things like that,” said I, severely. “In England, young women are only allowed to embrace their grandfathers.” Carlotta looked at me wide-eyed, with the fox-terrier knitting of the forehead.
“But you are so good to me, Seer Marcous,” she said.
“I hope you’ll find many people good to you, Carlotta,” I answered. “But if you continue that method of expressing your appreciation, you may possibly be misunderstood.”
I had recovered from the momentary shock to my senses, and I laughed. She fluttered a sidelong glance at me, and a smile as inscrutable as the Monna Lisa’s hovered over her lips.
“What would they do if they did not understand?”
“They would take you,” I replied, fixing her sternly with my gaze, “they would take you for an unconscionable baggage.”
“Hou!” laughed Carlotta, suddenly. And she ran from the room.
In a moment she was back again. She came up to me demurely and plucked my sleeve.
“Come and show me what I must put on so as to please you.”
I rang the bell for Antoinette, to whom I gave the necessary instructions. Her next request would be that I should act the part of lady’s-maid. I must maintain my dignity with Carlotta.
The lovely afternoon had attracted many people to the park, and the lawns were thronged. We found a couple of chairs at the edge of one of the cross-paths and watched the elegant assembly. Carlotta, vastly entertained, asked innumerable questions. How could I tell whether a lady was married or unmarried? Did they all wear stays? Why did every one look so happy? Did I think that old man was the young girl’s husband? What were they all talking about? Wouldn’t I take her for a drive in one of those beautiful carriages? Why hadn’t I a carriage? Then suddenly, as if inspired, after a few minutes’ silent reflection:
“Seer Marcous, is this the marriage market?”
“The what?” I gasped.
“The marriage market. I read it in a book, yesterday. Miss Griggs gave it me to read aloud—Tack—Thack—”
“Thackeray?”
“Ye-es. They come here to sell the young girls to men who want wives.” She edged away from me, with a little movement of alarm. “That is not why you have brought me here—to sell me?”
“How much do you think you would be worth?” I asked, sarcastically.
She opened out her hands palms upward, throwing down her parasol, as she did so, upon her neighbour’s little Belgian griffon, who yelped.
“Ch, lots,” she said in her frank way. “I am very beautiful.”
I picked up the parasol, bowed apologetically to the owner of the stricken animal, and addressed Carlotta.
“Listen, my good child. You are passably good-looking, but you are by no means very beautiful. If I tried to sell you here, you might possibly fetch half a crown—”
“Two shillings and sixpence?” asked the literal Carlotta.
“Yes. Just that. But as a matter of fact, no one would buy you. This is not the marriage market. There is no such thing as a marriage market. English mothers and fathers do not sell their daughters for money. Such a thing is monstrous and impossible.”
“Then it was all lies I read in the book?”
“All lies,” said I.
I hope the genial shade of the great satirist has forgiven me.
“Why do they put lies in books?”
“To accentuate the Truth, so that it shall prevail,” I answered.
This was too hard a nut for Carlotta to crack. She was silent for a moment. She reverted, ruefully, to the intelligible.
“I thought I was beautiful,” she said.
“Who told you so?”
“Pasquale.”
“Pasquale has no sense,” said I. “There are men to whom all women who are not seventy and toothless and rheumy at the eyes are beautiful. Pasquale has said the same to every woman he has met. He is a Lothario and a Don Juan and a Caligula and a Faublas and a Casanova.”
“And he tells lies, too?”
“Millions of them,” said I. “He contracts with their father Beelzebub for a hundred gross a day.”
“Pasquale is very pretty and he makes me laugh and I like him,” said Carlotta.
“I am very sorry to hear it,” said I.
The griffon, who had been sniffing at Carlotta’s skirts, suddenly leaped into her lap. With a swift movement of her hand she swept the poor little creature, as if it had been a noxious insect, yards away.
“Carlotta!” I cried angrily, springing to my feet.
The ladies who owned the beast rushed to their whining pet and looked astonished daggers at Carlotta. When they picked it up, it sat dangling a piteous paw. Carlotta rose, merely scared at my anger. I raised my hat.
“I am more than sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I hope the little dog is not hurt. My ward, for whom I offer a thousand apologies, is a Mohammedan, to whom all dogs are unclean. Please attribute the accident to religious instinct.”
The younger of the two, who had been examining the paw, looked up with a smile.
“Your ward is forgiven. Punch oughtn’t to jump on strange ladies’ laps, whether they are Mohammedans or not. Oh! he is more frightened than hurt. And I,” she added, with a twinkling eye, “am more hurt than frightened, because Sir Marcus Ordeyne doesn’t recognise me.”
So Carlotta had nearly killed the dog of an unrecalled acquaintance.
“I do indeed recognise you now,” said I, mendaciously. I seem to have been lying to-day through thick and thin. “But in the confusion of the disaster—”
“You sat next me at lunch one day last winter, at Mrs. Ordeyne’s,” interrupted the lady, “and you talked to me of transcendental mathematics.”
I remembered. “The crime,” said I, “has lain heavily on my conscience.”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” she laughed, dismissing me with a bow. I raised my hat and joined Carlotta.
It was a Miss Gascoigne, a flirtatious intimate of Aunt Jessica’s house. To this irresponsible young woman I had openly avowed that I was the guardian of a beautiful Mohammedan whose religious instinct compelled her to destroy little dogs. I shall hear of this from my Aunt Jessica.
I walked stonily away with Carlotta.
“You are cross with me,” she whimpered.
“Yes, I am. You might have killed the poor little beast. It was very wicked and cruel of you.”
Carlotta burst out crying in the midst of the promenade.
The tears did not romantically come into her eyes as they had done an hour before; but she wept copiously, after the unrestrained manner of children, and used her pocket-handkerchief. From their seats women put up their lorgnons to look at her, passers-by turned round and stared. The whole of the gaily dressed throng seemed to be one amused gaze. In’ a moment or two I became conscious that reprehensory glances were being directed towards myself, calling me, as plain as eyes could call, an ill-conditioned brute, for making the poor young creature, who was at my mercy, thus break down in public. It was a charming situation for an even-tempered philosopher. We walked stolidly on, I glaring in front of me and Carlotta weeping. The malice of things arranged that ne. neighbouring chair should be vacant, and that the path should be unusually crowded. I had the satisfaction of hearing a young fellow say to a girl:
“He? That’s Ordeyne—came into the baronetcy—mad as a dingo dog.”
I was giving myself a fine advertisement.
“For heaven’s sake stop crying,” I said. Then a memory of far-off childhood flashed its inspiration upon me. “If you don’t,” I added, grimly, “I’ll take you out and give you to a policeman.”
The effect was magical. She turned on me a scared look, gasped, pulled down her veil, which she had raised so as to dab her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief, and incontinently checked the fountain of her tears.
“A policeman?”
“Yes,” said I, “a great, big, ugly blue policeman, who shuts up people who misbehave themselves in prison, and takes off their clothes, and shaves their heads, and feeds them on bread and water.”
“I won’t cry any more,” she said, swallowing a sob. “Is it also wicked to cry?”
“Any of these ladies here would sooner be burned alive with dyspepsia or cut in two with tight-lacing,” I replied severely. “Let us sit down.”
We stepped over the low iron rail, and passing through the first two rows of people, found seats behind where the crowd was thinner.
“Is Seer Marcous still angry with me?” asked Carlotta, and the simple plaintiveness of her voice would have melted the bust of Nero. I lectured her on cruelty to animals. That one had duties of kindness towards the lower creation appealed to her as a totally new idea. Supposing the dog had broken all its legs and ribs, would she not have been sorry? She answered frankly in the negative. It was a nasty little dog. If she had hurt it badly, so much the better. What did it matter if a dog was hurt? She was sorry now she had hurled it into space, because it belonged to my friends, and that had made me cross with her.
Of course I was shocked at the thoughtless cruelty of the action; but my anger had also its roots in dismay at the public scandal it might have caused, and in the discovery that I was known to the victim’s owner. It is the sad fate of the instructors of youth that they must hypocritically credit themselves with only the sublimest of motives. I spoke to Carlotta like the good father in the “Swiss Family Robinson.” I gave vent to such noble sentiments that in a quarter of an hour I glowed with pride in my borrowed plumes of virtue. I would have taken a slug to my bosom and addressed a rattlesnake as Uncle Toby did the fly. I wonder whether it is not through some such process as this that parsons manage to keep themselves good.
The soothing warmth of conscious merit restored me to good temper; and when Carlotta slid her hand into mine and asked me if I had forgiven her, I magnanimously assured her that all the past was forgotten.
“Only,” said I, “you will have to get out of this habit of tears. A wise man called Burton says in his ‘Anatomy of Melancholy,’ a beautiful book which I’ll give you to read when you are sixty, ‘As much count may be taken of a woman weeping as a goose going barefoot.’”
“He was a nasty old man,” said Carlotta. “Women cry because they feel very unhappy. Men are never unhappy, and that is the reason that men don’t cry. My mamma used to cry all the time at Alexandretta; but Hamdi!—” she broke into an adorable trill of a chuckle, “You would as soon see a goose going with boots and stockings, like the Puss in the shoes—the fairy tale—as Hamdi crying. Hou!”
Half an hour later, as we were driving homewards, she broke a rather long silence which she had evidently been employing in meditation.
“Seer Marcous.”
“Yes?”
She has a child’s engaging way of rubbing herself up against one when she wants to be particularly ingratiating.
“It was so nice to dine with you on Saturday.”
“Really?”
“Oh, ye-es. When are you going to let me dine with you again, to show me you have forgiven me?”
A hansom cab offers peculiar facilities for the aforesaid process of ingratiation.
“You shall dine with me this evening,” said I, and Carlotta cooed with pleasure.
I perceive that she is gradually growing westernised.
July 8th.
In obedience to a peremptory note from Judith, I took Carlotta this afternoon to Tottenham Mansions. I shook hands with my hostess, turned round and said
“This, my dear Judith, is Carlotta.”
“I am very pleased to see you,” said Judith.
“So am I,” replied Carlotta, not to be outdone in politeness.
She sat bolt upright, most correctly, on the edge of a chair, and responded monosyllabically to Judith’s questions. Her demeanour could not have been more impeccable had she been trained in a French convent. Just before we arrived, she had been laughing immoderately because I had ordered her to spit out a mass of horrible sweetmeat which she had found it impossible to masticate, and she had challenged me to extract it with my fingers. But now, compared with her, Saint Nitouche was a Maenad. I was entertained by Judith’s fruitless efforts to get behind this wall of reserve. Carlotta said, “Oh, ye-es” or “No-o” to everything. It was not a momentous conversation. As it was Carlotta in whom Judith was particularly interested, I effaced myself. At last, after a lull in the spasmodic talk, Carlotta said, very politely:
“Mrs. Mainwaring has a beautiful house.”
“It’s only a tiny flat. Would you like to look over it?” asked Judith, eagerly, flashing me a glance that plainly said, “Now that I shall have her to myself, you may trust me to get to the bottom of her.”
“I would like it very much,” said Carlotta, rising.
I held the door open for them to pass out, and lit a cigarette. When they returned ten minutes afterwards, Carlotta was smiling and self-possessed, evidently very well pleased with herself, but Judith had a red spot on each of her cheeks.
The sight of her smote me with an odd new feeling of pity. I cannot dismiss the vision from my mind. All the evening I have seen the two women standing side by side, a piteous parable. The light from the window shone full upon them, and the dark curtain of the door was an effective background. The one flaunted the sweet insolence of youth, health, colour, beauty; of the bud just burst into full flower. The other wore the stamp of care, of the much knowledge wherein is much sorrow, and in her eyes dwelled the ghosts of dead years. She herself looked like a ghost-dressed in white pique, which of itself drew the colour from her white face and pale lips and mass of faint straw-coloured hair, the pallor of all which was accentuated by the red spots on her cheeks and her violet eyes.
I saw that something had occurred to vex her.
“Before we go,” I said, “I should like a word with you. Carlotta will not mind.”
We went into the dining-room. I took her hand which was cold, in spite of the July warmth.
“Well, my dear,” said I. “What do you think of my young savage from Asia Minor?”
Judith laughed—I am sure not naturally.
“Is that all you wanted to say to me?”
She withdrew her hand, and tidied her hair in the mirror of the overmantel.
“I think she is a most uninteresting young woman. I am disappointed. I had anticipated something original. I had looked forward to some amusement. But, really, my dear Marcus, she is bete a pleurer—weepingly stupid.”
“She certainly can weep,” said I.
“Oh, can she?” said Judith, as if the announcement threw some light on Carlotta’s character. “And when she cries, I suppose you, like a man, give in and let her have her own way?” And Judith laughed again.
“My dear Judith,” said I; “you have no idea of the wholesome discipline at Lingfield Terrace.”
Suddenly with one of her disconcerting changes of front, she turned and caught me by the coat-lappels.
“Marcus dear, I have been so lonely this week. When are you coming to see me?”
“We’ll have a whole day out on Sunday,” said I.
As I walked down the stairs with Carlotta, I reflected that Judith had not accounted for the red spots.
“I like her,” said Carlotta. “She is a nice old lady.”
“Old lady! What on earth do you mean?” I was indeed startled. “She is a young woman.”
“Pouf!” cried Carlotta. “She is forty.”
“She is no such thing,” I cried. “She is years younger than I.”
“She would not tell me.”
“You asked her age?”
“Oh, ye-es,” said Carlotta. “I was very polite. I first asked if she was married. She said yes. Then I asked how her husband was. She said she didn’t know. That was funny. Why does she not know, Seer Marcous?”
“Never mind,” said I, “go on telling me how polite you were.”
“I asked how many children she had. She said she had none. I said it was a pity. And then I said, ‘I am eighteen years old and I want to marry quite soon and have children. How old are you?’ And she would not tell me. I said, ‘You must be the same age as my mamma, if she were alive.’ I said other things, about her husband, which I forget. Oh, I was very polite.”
She smiled up at me in quest of approbation. I checked a horrified rebuke when I reflected that, according to the etiquette of the harem, she had been “very polite.” But my poor Judith! Every artless question had been a knife thrust in a sensitive spot. Her husband: the handsome blackguard who had lured her into the divorce court, married her, and after two unhappy years had left her broken; children: they would have kept her life sweet, and did I not know how she had yearned for them? Her age: it is only the very happily married woman who snaps her fingers at the approach of forty, and even she does so with a disquieting sense of bravado. And the sweet insolence of youth says: “I am eighteen: how old are you?”
My poor Judith! Once more, on our walk home, I discoursed to Carlotta on the differences between East and West.
“Seer Marcous,” said Carlotta this evening at dinner—“I have decided now that she shall dine regularly with me; it is undoubtedly agreeable to see her pretty face on the opposite side of the table and listen to her irresponsible chatter: chatter which I keep within the bounds of decorum when Stenson is present, so as to save his susceptibilities, by the simple device, agreed upon between us (to her great delight) of scratching the side of my somewhat prominent nose—Seer Marcous, why does Mrs. Mainwaring keep your picture in her bedroom?”
I am glad Stenson happened to be out of the room. His absence saved the flaying of my nasal organ. I explained that it was the custom in England for ladies to collect the photographs of their men friends, and use them misguidedly for purposes of decoration.
“But this,” said Carlotta, opening out her arms in an exaggerated way, “is such a big one.”
“Ah, that,” I answered, “is because I am very beautiful.”
Carlotta shrieked with laughter. The exquisite comicality of the jest occasioned bubbling comments of mirth during the rest of the meal, and her original indiscreet question was happily forgotten.
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