Читать книгу Lalage's Lovers - George A. Birmingham - Страница 5

Table of Contents

There is a short cut which leads from my house to the church, and therefore, of course, to the rectory, which stands, as rectories often do, close to the church. The path—it can only be used by those who walk—leads past the garden and through a wood to the high road. It was on this path, a quarter of a mile or so from the road, that I met Canon Beresford, about ten days after my interview with Lalage in the pigsty. Certain wood pigeons of low morality had been attacking our gooseberry bushes. My mother, instigated by the gardener, demanded their destruction, and so I went out with a gun. I shot two of the worst offenders. The gardener discovered half digested fruit in the dead bodies, so I am sure that I got the right birds and did not unjustly execute the innocent. Then I met the Canon. He displayed no interest whatever in the destruction of the wood pigeons, although his garden must have suffered quite as much as ours. I remarked that it was nearly luncheon time and asked him to return with me and share the meal. He was distraught and nervous, but he managed to quote Horace by way of reply:

“Destrictus ensis cui super impia

Cervice pendet, non Siculae dapes. …”

The Canon’s fondness for Horace accounts, I suppose, for the name he gave his daughter. His habit of quoting is troublesome to me; because I cannot always translate what he says. But he has a feeling for my infirmity and a tactful way of saving my self-respect.

“If you had a heavy, two-handed sword hanging over your head by a hair,” he explained, “you would be thinking about something else besides luncheon.”

“What has the Archdeacon been doing?” I asked.

The Archdeacon is a man with a thirst for information about church affairs, and he collects what he wants by means of questions printed on sheets of paper which he expects other people to answer. Canon Beresford, who never has statistics at hand, and consequently has to invent his answers to the questions, suffers a good deal from the Archdeacon.

“It’s not the Archdeacon this time,” he said. “I wish it was. The fact is I am in trouble again about Lalage. I am on my way up to consult your mother.”

“Has Miss Battersby been complaining?”

“She’s leaving,” said the Canon, at once. “Leaving, so to speak, vigorously.”

“I was afraid it would come to that. She wasn’t the sort of woman who’d readily take to swearing.”

“I very nearly did,” said the Canon. “She cried. It’s curious, but she really seems fond of Lalage.”

“Did she by any chance force her way into the pigsty and find the Anti-Cat?”

Canon Beresford looked at me and a smile hovered about his mouth. “So you’ve seen that production?” he said. “I call it rather good.”

“But you can hardly blame Miss Battersby for leaving, can you?”

“She didn’t see it,” said the Canon, “thank goodness.”

“Then why on earth is she leaving? What else can she have to complain of?”

“There was trouble. The sort of trouble nobody could possibly foresee or guard against. You know Tom Kitterick, don’t you?”

“The boy who cleans your boots? Yes, I do. A freckly faced brat.”

“Exactly. Well, it appears that Miss Battersby is rather particular about her complexion, and——”

“Lalage tried the stuff on Tom Kitterick, I suppose.”

“Yes. She used the whole bottle, and Miss Battersby found out what had happened and complained to me. She was extremely nice about it, but she said that the incident had made her position as Lalage’s governess quite impossible.”

“Lalage, of course, smiled balmily.”

“Calmly,” said the Canon. “She told me herself that the word was calm, though it looked rather like ‘balm.’ Anyhow, that was the last straw. Miss Battersby goes next week. The Archdeacon——”

“I thought he’d come in before we’d done.”

“He did his best to be sympathetic and helpful. He said yesterday, just before he went to Dublin, that what Lalage requires is a firm hand over her. That’s the sort of thing a bachelor with no children of his own does say, and means of course. Any man who had ever tried to bring up a girl would know that firm hands are totally useless, and, besides, I haven’t got any. ‘Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno. …’ Don’t try to translate that if you’d rather not. It simply means that I’m not the man I used to be. I hate trying to cope with these domestic broils. That’s why I’m going up to see your mother.”

The drawn sword did not really interfere with the Canon’s appetite, but he refused to smoke a cigar after luncheon. I went off by myself to the library. He followed my mother into the drawing-room. I waited, although I had a good many things to do, until he joined me. He sighed heavily as he sat down.

“Lalage is to go to school after summer,” he said.

“My mother,” I replied with conviction, “is sure to be right about a matter like that.”

“I suppose she is; but Lalage won’t like it.”

The Canon sighed again, heavily. I tried to cheer him up.

“She’ll enjoy the companionship of the other girls,” I said. “I daresay she won’t have a bad time. After all, a girl of fourteen ought to have friends of her own age. It will be far better for her to be running about with a skipping rope in a crowd of other damsels than to be climbing chestnut trees and writing parodies in lonely pigstys.”

“That’s very much what your mother said. I wish I could think so. I’m dreadfully afraid that, brought up as she has been, she’ll have a bad time of it.”

“Anyhow, she won’t have half, as bad a time as the schoolmistress.”

I had hit upon the true line of consolation. The Canon smiled feebly, and I pursued my subject.

“There won’t, of course, be pigstys in the school, but——”

“I don’t think a pigsty is absolutely essential to Lalage’s comfort.”

“Probably not. Lalage isn’t the sort of girl who is dependent for her happiness on the accident of outward circumstance. You know, Canon, that our surroundings are not the things which really matter most. The philosophic mind——”

I had unthinkingly given the Canon his opportunity. I could see a well-known quotation actually trembling on his lips. I stopped him ruthlessly.

“I know that ode,” I said. “It’s one I learned at school, but it doesn’t apply to Lalage. She isn’t in the least content with things as she finds them. That’s her great charm. She’s more like Milton’s Satan.”

I can quote too, though only English poets, unless after special preparation beforehand. I intended to shoot off some lines out of “Paradise Lost” at the Canon, but he would not listen. He may not have liked the comparison suggested.

“I have to be off,” he said. “Lalage is waiting to hear what your mother has settled. I mustn’t keep her too long.”

“Did you tell her you were coming up here for advice?”

“Of course I did. She quite agreed with me that it was the best thing to do. She always says that your mother is the only person she knows who has any sense. Miss Battersby’s sudden resignation was rather a shock to her. She was in a curiously chastened mood this morning.”

“She’ll get over that all right,” I said. “She’ll be bringing out another number of the Anti-Cat in a couple of days.”

I spent two hours after the Canon left me watching the building of a new lodge at my back gate. My mother professes to believe that work of this kind, indeed of any kind, is better done if I go and look at it. In reality I think she is anxious to provide me with some sort of occupation and to interest me in the management of such property as recent legislation has left to an Irish landlord. But she may be right in supposing that the builders build better when I am watching them. They certainly build less rapidly. The foreman is a pleasant fellow, with a store of interesting anecdotes. I give him tobacco in some form and he narrates his experiences. The other workmen listen and grin appreciatively. Thus a certain sedateness of progress is ensured and all danger of hasty building, which is, I understand, called jerry building, is avoided.

At five o’clock, after I had heard some twenty or thirty stories and the builders had placed in position about the same number of stones, I went home in search of afternoon tea. My mother was in the drawing-room, and Miss Battersby was with her. She too, had come to ask advice. I am sure she needed it, poor woman. What she said about Lalage I do not know, for the subject was dropped when I entered the room, but Miss Battersby’s position evidently commanded my mother’s sympathy. Shortly after leaving the rectory she was established, on my mother’s recommendation, in Thormanby Park. Lord Thormanby, who is my uncle, has three daughters, all of them nice, well-disposed girls, not the least like Lalage. Miss Battersby got on well with them, taught them everything which well-educated girls in their position ought to know. She finally settled down as a sort of private secretary to Lord Thormanby. He needed some one of the sort, for as he grew older he became more and more addicted to public business. He is at present about sixty-five. If he lives to be seventy and goes on as he is going, Miss Battersby will have to retire in favour of some one who can write shorthand and manipulate a typewriter. She will then, I have no doubt, play a blameless part in life by settling flowers for Lady Thormanby. But all this is still a long way off.

I was naturally anxious to hear Miss Battersby’s version of the experimental treatment of Tom Kitterick’s complexion. I hoped that my mother would have told me the story voluntarily. She did not, so I approached the subject obliquely after dinner.

“The Archdeacon,” I said, “was lamenting to me this morning that Mrs. Beresford died while Lalage was still a baby.”

My mother seemed a little surprised to hear this.

“He takes the greatest interest in Lalage,” I added. “She’s a very attractive little girl.”

“Very,” said my mother. “But I thought the Archdeacon went to Dublin yesterday. He certainly told me he was going. Did he come back at once?”

“So far as I know he hasn’t come back.”

“Then when did he say——”

“He didn’t actually say it at all. He hardly ever says anything to me. I so seldom see him, you know.”

This at least was true. Although the seat of the archdeaconry is in Drumbo, a town which contains our nearest railway station and which is our chief centre for local shopping, I had not spoken to the Archdeacon for more than three months. My mother seemed to be waiting for an explanation of my original remark. I gave her one at once.

“But it’s exactly the kind of thing the Archdeacon would have said if he hadn’t been in Dublin and if I had met him and if our conversation had happened to turn on Lalage Beresford.”

My mother admitted frankly that this was true; but she seemed to think my explanation incomplete. I added to it.

“He went on to speak at some length,” I said. “That is to say he would have gone on to speak at some length about the great importance of a mother’s influence during the early years of a girl’s life.”

My mother still looked at me and her face still wore a questioning expression. It was evident to me that I must further justify myself.

“So I’m not doing the Archdeacon any wrong,” I went on, “in putting into his mouth words and sentiments which he would certainly approve. I happen to have forestalled him in giving them expression, but he would readily endorse them. You know yourself that he’s great on subjects like the sacred home influence of a good woman.”

“I suppose,” said my mother after a pause, “that you want to hear the whole account of Lalage’s latest escapade?”

“Miss Battersby’s version of it,” I said. “I heard the Canon’s after luncheon.”

“And that story of yours about the Archdeacon——”

“That,” I said, “was my way of introducing the subject without displaying what might strike you as vulgar curiosity. I have too much respect for you to heckle you with aggressive inquiries as if you were a Chief Secretary for Ireland and I were a Member of Parliament. Besides, I don’t like the feeling that I’m asking blunt questions about Miss Battersby’s private affairs. After all, she’s a lady. I’m sure you’ll appreciate my feelings.”

“Lalage,” said my mother, “is an extremely naughty little girl who will be a great deal better at school.”

“But have you considered the plan from the point of view of the school you’re sending her to?”

“Miss Pettigrew is an old friend of mine and——”

“Is she the schoolmistress?”

“The principal,” said my mother, “and she’s quite capable of dealing with Lalage.”

“I wasn’t thinking of her. As I told the Canon this afternoon, Lalage will probably be very good for her.”

“She’ll certainly be very good for Lalage.”

“I’m not saying anything the least derogatory to Miss Pettigrew. Schoolmasters are just the same. So are the heads of colleges. The position tends to develop certain quite trifling defects of character for which Lalage will be an almost certain cure.”

“You don’t know Miss Pettigrew.”

“No, I don’t. That’s the reason I’m trying not to talk of her. What I’m considering and what you ought to be considering is the effect of Lalage on the other girls. Think of those nice, innocent young creatures, fresh from their sheltered homes——”

“My dear boy,” said my mother, “what on earth do you know about little girls?”

“Nothing,” I said, “but I’ve always been led to believe that they are sweet and innocent.”

“Let me tell you then,” said my mother, “that Lalage has a career of real usefulness before her in that school. Most girls of her age are inclined to be sentimental and occasionally priggish. Lalage will do them all the good in the world.”

I wonder why it is that so many able women have an incurably low opinion of their own sex? My mother would not say things like that about schoolboys, though they are at least equally sentimental and most of them more priggish. She is extremely kind to people like Miss Battersby, although she regards them as pitiably incompetent when their cosmetics are used on stable-boys. Yet she would not despise me or regard it as my fault if some one took my shaving soap and washed a kitchen maid’s face with it.

“So,” I said, “Lalage is to go forth as a missionary of anarchy, a ravening wolf into the midst of a sheepfold.”

“The Archdeacon was saying to me this morning,” said my mother, “that if you——”

“May I interrupt you one moment?” I said. “I understood that the Archdeacon was in Dublin.”

“This,” said my mother, “is another of the things which the Archdeacon would have said if he had been at home.”

“Oh,” I said, “in that case I should particularly like to hear it.”

“He said, or would have said, that if you allow your habit of flippant talking to grow on you you’ll lose all hold on the solemn realities of life and become a totally useless member of society.”

“I quite admit,” I said, “that the Archdeacon would have put it in pretty nearly those words if he had said it. I particularly admire that part about the solemn realities of life. But the Archdeacon’s a just man and he would not have made a remark of that kind. He knows the facts. I hold a commission in the militia, which is one of the armed forces of the Crown; auxiliary is, I think, the word properly applied to it. I am a justice of the peace and every Wednesday I sit on the judgment seat in Drumbo and agree with the stipendiary magistrate in administering justice. I am also a churchwarden and the Archdeacon is well aware of what that means. He would be the first to admit that these are solemn realities. I don’t see what more I can do, unless I stand for Parliament. I suppose a constituency might be found somewhere which would value a man with a good temper and a little money to spare.”

“Perhaps,” said my mother smiling, “we’ll find that constituency for you some day.”

This was the first hint I ever got of my unfortunate destiny. It gave me a feeling of chill. There is nothing I want less than a seat in Parliament; but nothing seems more certain now than that I shall get one. Even then, when my mother made her first smiling reference to the subject, I knew in my heart that there was no escape for me.