At half-past ten on the morning of Miss Hancock's descent upon her, Fanny was seated at the breakfast-table. It was a glorious day, filled with the warmth of summer, the scent1 of roses, and the songs of birds. A letter from her father lay beside her on the table; it had arrived by the morning's post, and contained great news—good news, too, yet the goodness of it was not entirely2 reflected in her face.
The worries of life were weighing on Miss Lambert; James Hancock's unanswered letter was not the least of these. She had laughed on receiving it, then she had cried. She had written three or four letters in answer to it, beginning, "Dear Mr Hancock," "My dear Mr Hancock," "Please do not think me horrid," etc.; but it was no use, each was a distinct refusal, yet each seemed either too cold or too warm. "If I send this," said she, "it will hurt him horribly, and he has been so kind. Oh dear! why will men be so stupid, they are so nice if they'd only not worry one to marry them. If I send this[Pg 285] it will only make him think that I will 'have him in the end,' as Susannah says. I wish I were a man."
Besides love troubles household worries had their place. James had gone very much to pieces morally in the last few days. He had taken diligently4 to drink, the writing and quoting of poetry, and the pawning5 of unconsidered trifles; between the bouts6, in those fits of remorse7, which may be likened to the Fata Morgana of true repentance8, he had expended9 his energy on all sorts of household duties not required of him: winding10 up clocks to their destruction, smashing china, and scattering11 coals all over the place in attempts to convey over-full scuttles12 to wrong rooms and in the face of gravity. The effect upon Susannah of these eccentricities13 can be best described by the fact that she lived now most of her time with her apron14 over her head. Housework under these circumstances became a matter of some difficulty.
It wanted some twenty minutes to eleven when the "brougham with celluloid fittings," containing Miss Hancock, drove up the drive and stopped before "The Laurels15."
[Pg 286]
Miss Hancock stepped out and up the steps, noticing to the minutest detail the neglect before and around her.
She gave her own characteristic knock—sharp, decided16, and business-like; she would also have given her own characteristic ring, but that the bell failed to respond, the pull produced half a foot of wire but no sound, and the knob, when she dropped it, dangled17 wearily as if to say, "Now see what you've done! N'matter, I don't care."
She waited a little and knocked again; this time came footsteps and the sound of bars coming down and bolts being unshot, the door opened two inches on the chain, and the same pale blue eye and undecided-coloured fringe that had appeared to Mr Bevan, appeared to the now incensed18 Miss Hancock.
Just as the rabbit peeping from its burrow19 sees the stoat and recognises its old ancestral enemy, so Susannah, in Miss Hancock, beheld20 the Foe21 of herself and all her tribe.
"Is Miss Lambert at home?" asked the visitor sharply.
"Yus, she's in."
"Then open the door, I wish to see her."
[Pg 287]
Susannah banged the door to, not to exclude the newcomer, but simply to release the chain. Then she opened it again wide, as if to let in an elephant.
Susannah had not presented a particularly spruce appearance on the day when Mr Bevan called and we first met her, but this morning she was simply—awful.
A lock of hair like a bight of half-unravelled cable hung down behind her ear, her old print dress was indescribable, and she had, apparently22, some one else's slippers23 on. She had also the weary air of a person who had been watching in a sick room all the night.
Miss Hancock took this figure in with one snapshot glance; also the hall untidied, the floor undusted, the dust-pan and brush laid on the stairs, a trap for the unwary to step on; the grandfather's clock pointing to quarter to six, and many other things which I have not seen or noticed, but which were clear to Miss Hancock, just as nebul? and stars which, looking in the direction of I cannot see, are clear to the two-foot reflecting telescope of the Yerkes observatory24.
Susannah escorted the sniffing25 visitor into[Pg 288] the library, dusted with her apron the very same chair she had dusted for Mr Bevan, said, "I'll tell Miss Fanny," and left the room, closing the door with a snap that spoke27, not volumes, but just simply words.
The night before, after the other members of the household had retired28, James had taken it into his head to sit up in the library over the remains29 of the fire left by Fanny. The room, as a consequence, reeked30 of stale tobacco, a tumbler stood on the table convenient to the armchair. Needless to say, the tumbler was empty.
Miss Hancock looked around her at the books, at the carpet, at the general litter. She came to the mantelpiece and touched it, looked at the tip of her gloved finger to assay31 the quantity of dust to the square millimetre, said, "Pah!" and sat down in the armchair. A Pink Un of George Lambert's lay invitingly32 near her on the table; she picked it up, glanced at the title, read a joke, turned purple, and dropped the raciest of all racing33 papers just as Fanny, fresh and charming, but somewhat bewildered-looking, entered the room.
[Pg 289]
Fanny felt sure that this visit of Miss Hancock's had something to do with the letter of her brother's. She was relieved when her visitor, after extending a hand emotionless and chill as the fin26 of a turtle, said:
"I had some business in Highgate, so I thought I would take the opportunity of returning your parasol, which you left behind you the other night."
"Thanks awfully34," said Fanny; "it's awfully good of you to take the trouble. Please excuse the untidiness; we are in a great upset for—the painters are coming in. Won't you come into the breakfast-room? There's a fire there; it's not cold, I know, but I always think a fire is so bright."
She led the way to the breakfast-room, her visitor following, anxious to see as much as she could of the inner working of the Lambert household.
She gave a little start at the sight of the breakfast things not removed, and another start at sight of the provender35 laid out for one small person. The remains of a round of beef graced one end of the board, and a haddock that, had it been let grow, would[Pg 290] assuredly have ended its life in the form of a whale, the other; there was also jam and other things, including some shortbread on a plate.
"Have you had breakfast?" asked Fanny in a hospitable36 tone of voice.
"I breakfasted at quarter to eight," said Miss Hancock with a scarcely perceptible emphasis on the "I."
"I know we're awfully late as a rule," said Fanny, as they sat down near the window, in and out of which the wasps37 were coming, and through which the sun shone, laying a burning square on the carpet, "but I hate early breakfast. When I breakfast at eight I feel a hundred years old by twelve. Did you ever notice how awfully long mornings are?"
"My mornings," said Miss Hancock, laying a scarcely perceptible accent on the "my," "are all too short; an hour lost in the morning is never regained38. You cannot expect servants to be active and diligent3 without you set them the example. We are placed, I think, in a very responsible position with regard to our servants: as we make them so they are."
"Do you think so?" said Fanny, trying to consider what part she possibly could have[Pg 291] had in the construction of James and the helpmeet Susannah.
"I am sure of it. If we are idle or lazy ourselves they imitate us; they are like children, and we should treat them as such. I ring the bell at half-past five every morning for the maids, and I expect them to be down by six."
"What time do you get up?"
"Half-past seven."
"Then," said Fanny, laughing, "you don't set them—I mean they set you the example, for they are up before you."
"I spoke figuratively," said Miss Hancock rather stiffly, and eyeing the handmaiden who had just appeared at the door to remove the things.
"Give the fish to the cats, Susannah," said her mistress, "and be sure to take the bones out; one nearly choked," she said, resuming her conversation with her visitor, "the other morning."
"Hum!" said Miss Hancock, unenthusiastic on the subject of choking cats. "Do you always feed your animals on—good food?"
"Yes, of course."
"You are very young, and, of course, it is[Pg 292] no affair of mine, but I think in housekeeping—having first of all regard to waste—one ought to consider how many poor people are starving. I send all my scraps39 to the St Mark's Refuge Home, an excellent institution."
"I used to give a lot of food away," said Fanny, "but I found it didn't pay, people didn't want it. We had a barrel of beer that no one drank, so I gave a tramp a jugful40 once, and he made a mark somewhere on the house, and after that twenty or thirty tramps a day called. We couldn't find the mark, so father had to have the whole lower part of the house lime-washed, and the gate pillars. After that he said no more food was to be given away, or beer."
"There are poor and poor. To give beer to a tramp is in my opinion a distinctly wicked act; it is simply feeding the flames of drunkenness, as Mr Bulders says. You have heard of Mr Bulders?"
"N—no."
"I must introduce you. I hope you will like him, he is a great friend of ours. Your Christian41 name is Fanny, I believe. May I call you Fanny?"
"Yes," said Fanny. "How queer it is,[Pg 293] nobody knows me for—I mean, everybody always asks me that before I have known them for more——"
"Everybody?"
"Yes."
"Gentlemen, my dear child, surely not?"
"Yes, they do."
Miss Hancock said nothing, but sat for a moment in silence gloating over the girl before her. Here was a gold-mine of pure correction—the metaphor42 is mixed perhaps, but you will understand it. Then she said: "And do you permit it?"
"Oh, I don't care."
"But I fancy, your father——" Miss Hancock paused.
"Oh, father doesn't mind; every one has called me Fanny since I was so high."
"Yes, but, my dear girl, you are no longer a child. Fathers are indulgent, and sometimes blind to what the world thinks; consider, when you come to marry, when you come to have a husband——"
"Oh, I hope it'll be a long time before I come to that," said Fanny, in a tone of voice as if general service or the workhouse were the topic of discussion.
[Pg 294]
Miss Hancock took a rather deep inspiration, and was dumb for a moment.
"I understood my brother to say that he had written to you on a subject touching43 your welfare and his happiness?"
Fanny flushed all over her face and neck. Only a little child or a very young girl can blush like that—a blush that passes almost as quickly as it comes, and is, perhaps, of all emotional expressions the most natural and charming.
"I did have a letter," she faltered44, "and I have tried to answer it, am going to answer it—I am so sorry——"
"I don't see the necessity of being sorry," said the elder lady. "One does not answer a letter of that description flippantly and by the next post; my brother will quite understand and appreciate the cause of delay."
"Oh, but it's not the delay I'm sorry for, it's the—it's the having to say that—I can't say what he wants me to say."
Miss Hancock raised her eyebrows45. Miss Lambert's English was enough to raise a grammarian from the grave, but it was not at the English that Miss Hancock evinced surprise.
[Pg 295]
James Hancock was not as old to his sister as he appeared to the rest of the world, though she knew his age to a day and had quoted it as an argument against his marriage; she did not appreciate the fact that he looked every day of his age, and even perhaps a few days over.
It is a pathetic and sometimes beautiful—and sometimes ugly—fact that we are blind to much in the people we live with and grow up with. Joan sees Darby very much as she saw him thirty years ago, and to Miss Hancock her younger brother was her younger brother; and her younger brother, to a woman, is never old. Besides being in the "prime of life," James was clever; besides being clever, he was rich, very rich. What more could a girl want?
"You mean," said Patience, "that you cannot accept his proposition."
"N—no—that is, I'd like to, but I can't."
"If you 'liked' to do it, I do not see what is to prevent you."
"Oh, it's not that sort of liking46. I mean I'd like to like him, I do like him, but not in the way he wants."
"It is no affair of mine," said Miss Hancock,[Pg 296] "not in the least, but I would urge you not to be too hasty in your reply. Think over it, weigh the matter judicially47 before you decide upon what, after all, is the most important decision a young girl is ever called upon to make."
"I hate myself," broke out Fanny, who had been listening with bent48 head, and finger tracing the pattern on the cloth of the table beside her. "I hate myself. People are always doing me kindnesses and I am always acting49 like a beast, so it seems to me, but how can I help it?" lifting her head suddenly with a bright smile. "If I were to marry them all, I'd have about fifty husbands, now—more!—so what am I to do?"
Miss Hancock sniffed50; she had never been in the same position herself, so could give no advice from experience. The question rather irritated her, and a smart lecture rose to her lips on the impropriety and immodesty of girls allowing people of the other sex to "care for them," etc., etc., but the lecture did not pass her lips.
Since entering the house of the Lamberts the demon51 of Order had swelled52 Jinnee-like[Pg 297] in her breast, and the seven devils of spring cleaning, each of whose right hands is a cake of soap, and whose left hands are scrubbing-brushes, arose and ramped53. The whole place and the people therein, from the bell-pull to the cats'-breakfast-destined haddock, from Susannah to her mistress, exercised a fascination54 upon Miss Hancock beyond the power of words to describe. She had measured Susannah from her sand-coloured hair to her slipshod feet, gauged55 her capacity for work and her moral ineptitude56, and had already dismissed her, in her mind; as for the rest of the business, the ordering of Fanny and of her father, whom she divined, the setting of the house to rights and the righting of all the Lamberts' affairs, mundane57 and extra-mundane—this, she felt, would be a work, which accomplished58, she could say, "I have not lived in vain." All this might be lost by a lecture misplaced.
"Of course you will please yourself," she said. "I would only say do nothing rashly; and in whatever way you decide, I hope you will always be our friend. You are very young to have the cares of a house and the ordering of servants thrust upon you, and[Pg 298] any assistance or advice I can give you, I should be very glad to give."
"Thanks so much!"
"I would be very glad to call some day and have a good long chat with you; my experience in housekeeping might be of assistance."
"I should be delighted," gasped59 Fanny, who felt like a bird in the net of the fowler, and whose soul was filled with one wild longing60—the longing to escape.
"What day shall we say?"
"Monday—no, not Monday, I have an engagement. Tuesday—I am not sure about Tuesday. Suppose—suppose I write?"
"I am disengaged all next week; any day you please to appoint I shall be glad to come. What a large garden you have!"
"Would you like to come round it?"
"Yes; I will wait till you put on your hat."
"Oh, I scarcely ever wear a hat in the garden. If you come this way we can go out through the side door."
They wandered around the garden, Miss Hancock making notes in her own mind. As they passed the kitchen window, a face[Pg 299] gazed out, a beery, leery face, behind which could be seen the pale phantom61 of Susannah. The face was gazing at Miss Hancock with an expression of amused and critical impudence62 that caused that lady to pause and snort.
"Did you see that man looking from the window?" she asked.
"Yes," said Fanny in an agony, "it must have been the plumber63; he came this morning to mend the stove. Oh, here is your carriage waiting; so glad you called. Yes, I'll write."
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1
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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diligent
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| adj.勤勉的，勤奋的 | |
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4
diligently
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| ad.industriously;carefully | |
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pawning
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| v.典当，抵押( pawn的现在分词 )；以（某事物）担保 | |
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bouts
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| n.拳击（或摔跤）比赛( bout的名词复数 )；一段（工作）；（尤指坏事的）一通；（疾病的）发作 | |
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7
remorse
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| n.痛恨，悔恨，自责 | |
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8
repentance
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| n.懊悔 | |
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9
expended
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| v.花费( expend的过去式和过去分词 )；使用（钱等）做某事；用光；耗尽 | |
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10
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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11
scattering
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| n.[物]散射；散乱，分散；在媒介质中的散播adj.散乱的；分散在不同范围的；广泛扩散的；（选票）数量分散的v.散射(scatter的ing形式)；散布；驱散 | |
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12
scuttles
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| n.天窗( scuttle的名词复数 )v.使船沉没( scuttle的第三人称单数 )；快跑，急走 | |
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eccentricities
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| n.古怪行为( eccentricity的名词复数 )；反常；怪癖 | |
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14
apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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laurels
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| n.桂冠，荣誉 | |
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16
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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dangled
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| 悬吊着( dangle的过去式和过去分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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incensed
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| 盛怒的 | |
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burrow
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| vt.挖掘(洞穴)；钻进；vi.挖洞；翻寻；n.地洞 | |
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20
beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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foe
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| n.敌人，仇敌 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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observatory
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| n.天文台，气象台，瞭望台，观测台 | |
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25
sniffing
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| n.探查法v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的现在分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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fin
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| n.鳍；(飞机的)安定翼 | |
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27
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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28
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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30
reeked
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| v.发出浓烈的臭气( reek的过去式和过去分词 )；散发臭气；发出难闻的气味 (of sth)；明显带有（令人不快或生疑的跡象） | |
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assay
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| n.试验，测定 | |
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invitingly
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| adv. 动人地 | |
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racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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provender
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| n.刍草；秣料 | |
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36
hospitable
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| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
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wasps
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| 黄蜂( wasp的名词复数 )； 胡蜂； 易动怒的人； 刻毒的人 | |
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38
regained
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| 复得( regain的过去式和过去分词 )； 赢回； 重回； 复至某地 | |
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scraps
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| 油渣 | |
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jugful
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| 一壶的份量 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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metaphor
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| n.隐喻，暗喻 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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44
faltered
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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45
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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judicially
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| 依法判决地，公平地 | |
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48
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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49
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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50
sniffed
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| v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的过去式和过去分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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51
demon
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| n.魔鬼，恶魔 | |
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52
swelled
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| 增强( swell的过去式和过去分词 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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53
ramped
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| 土堤斜坡( ramp的过去式和过去分词 )； 斜道； 斜路； （装车或上下飞机的）活动梯 | |
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54
fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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55
gauged
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| adj.校准的；标准的；量规的；量计的v.（用仪器）测量( gauge的过去式和过去分词 )；估计；计量；划分 | |
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56
ineptitude
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| n.不适当；愚笨，愚昧的言行 | |
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57
mundane
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| adj.平凡的；尘世的；宇宙的 | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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60
longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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61
phantom
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| n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的 | |
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62
impudence
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| n.厚颜无耻；冒失；无礼 | |
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63
plumber
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| n.(装修水管的)管子工 | |
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