Читать книгу The Little Vanities of Mrs. Whittaker - John Strange Winter - Страница 8

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There is something very alluring in the idea of kicking down conventions, yet if this be carried too far, it is possible that all the feminine virtues will follow suit. A woman bereft of all the feminine virtues is as pitiable a sight as a head which has been shorn of its locks.

A couple of years went by, and again the circumstances of the Alfred Whittakers were improved. For the old lady whose husband had courted her for seven long years was taken ill and quite suddenly died. Her death affected and upset Regina very much. It happened that she had not been over to her old home for several days, though Regina, although she was such a good wife, had continued to be also an extremely good daughter, and usually contrived to visit the old people at least twice a week. Just at this time, however, some trifling indisposition of little Julia’s had kept her from paying her usual visit to her parents.

“Here is a letter from my father,” she said one morning at breakfast to Alfred. “He seems to think mother is not very well.”

“Oh, poor dear, poor dear. You had better go across and see her.”

“Yes. I should have gone yesterday but for the child not being quite well,” Regina responded.

“Anyway, she’s all right to-day—well enough for you to leave her with nurse. You had better go across and spend the day, and I’ll come round that way and fetch you home in the evening.”

To this arrangement Regina agreed, and she went over to her father’s house as soon as she had concluded arrangements for the children’s meals. She did not, however, return to Fairview—as their house was called—that evening with Alfred. No, she remained under the paternal roof for a few days, and then, when she at length returned to her home and her children, she was accompanied by the old man, who was as a ship without a rudder when he found himself bereft of the wife for whom he had served, even as Jacob served seven years for Rachel.

It was the beginning of the end for old Mr. Brown. He declined absolutely to go back to the house where he had lived so long and so happily, and took up his permanent abode at Fairview. Very soon the better part of the furniture, and certain priceless possessions with which there was no thought of parting, were transferred from the one house to the other, the old domicile was done up and eventually let, and then, as so often happens with old people who have been uprooted from their regular life, Mr. Brown sank into extreme illness.

Poor man, he had never been ill in his life, and he took to it badly. One paralytic stroke succeeded another, and, at last, after a few months of much repining and wearing suffering, he passed quietly away, his last words being that he was going to rejoin his dear wife on the other side.

It was then that the Alfred Whittakers left Fairview.

“I shall never fancy the house again since poor father’s death,” said Regina on the evening of the funeral.

“No, I can quite believe that,” returned Alfred Whittaker, sympathetically. “Well,” he added after a pause, “you will be able to afford a larger house if you want it.”

“I should like a larger garden,” said Regina. “I think children brought up without a garden are generally unhappy little creatures, and ours are getting big enough to enjoy it.”

By that time Julia was nine years old, and Maud, of course, two years older still. Their father and mother therefore gave notice to their landlord, and cast about in their minds for some new and desirable neighborhood which would contain a new and desirable residence.

They decided eventually on purchasing a house in the most artistic suburb of London, that which is known among Londoners as Northampton Park. They were lucky enough to find a house to be sold at a reasonable price in the main road of this quaint little village. It stood well back from the traffic, having a long garden between the gate and the entrance. The gate was rustic and wooden, and was decorated with an art copper plate of irregular shape, on which the name of the house was embossed in quaint letters extremely difficult to read—“Ye Dene.”

“Why,” asked Julia, when she and her sister were taken to see the new domicile, “why do you call our new house Ye Den? Is it a den?”

“Ye Dene, dearest—Ye Dene. It is old English spelling,” said Regina. “I think it is rather pretty, don’t you Alfie?”

“H’m, the house is nice enough, and you youngsters will enjoy the garden, which is far better than you have ever had before. I believe it costs a lot of money to alter the name of a house; in fact, I don’t know whether one is allowed to or not. I’ll find out.”

But, somehow, they took possession of their new home without finding out whether it was possible to alter the name thereof.

“What about headed paper, Queenie?” said Alfred, when they were at breakfast on the second morning after their entrance into the new domicile.

“Headed paper? Oh yes, we must have that, dear.”

“Well, will you stick to calling the house Ye Dene?”

“Well,” said Regina, “I went for a little turn yesterday, and I took note of all the houses and what their names were. I passed Charles Lodge and George Cottage, and The Poplars, The Elms, The Quarry, The Nook, Ingleside, High Elms, The Briars, and a dozen different variations of the same, such as Briar Cottage, High Elms Cottage, and so on; but I didn’t see any other house that seemed to be connected with this one. I rather like the name, and that queer, irregular-shaped copper plate will be a sort of landmark when our friends come from town to see us.”

“How would it be,” suggested Alfred, “to have the shape of the plate reproduced for our address—a kind of scroll the shape of that with ‘Ye Dene’ in the middle?”

“Yes, that’s a good idea,” said Regina. “But you will have to put Northampton Park within the shield, or else it will look very odd.”

“Well, look here,” said he, “I’ll take the pattern of it and see what Cuthberts can suggest.”

The result of this conversation was that Cuthberts, the celebrated notepaper dealers, made a very pretty suggestion embodying the shield, the name of Ye Dene and the further postal address, and the Whittakers finally decided that they would not trouble to alter the name of their new residence.

It was at the Park—for I may as well follow the customs of its inhabitants and speak of it as they do—that Mrs. Whittaker began to seriously think of the education of her children.

They made friends slowly. In due course the vicar called upon them, and was followed a little later by his wife. Then the wife of a doctor just across the road made it her business to welcome the newcomers, and the neighbors on either side of Ye Dene called; but, all the same, they made friends slowly.

Mrs. Whittaker made many and searching inquiries into the possibilities of education, and she finally concluded that she would send them to the High School, at which all the youth of the Park received their learning. So, morning after morning, the two quaint little figures set out from Ye Dene at a little after nine o’clock, returning punctually at half-past twelve and sallying forth again about a quarter-past two for the afternoon school, which lasted until four.

What queer, quaint little maids they were! Regina’s own curious taste in dress she did not reproduce in her children. She held lofty theories that little girls should not be made vain by curled hair and flounced frocks. Their hair was therefore cut close to their heads, as if they had been two boys, and they wore curious little Quaker-brown jackets and hoods, which gave them an air of having come out of the ark.

“I regard it as terrible that children, who should be wholly irresponsible and whose troubles will come soon enough, should ever have to think of the care of their clothes,” she said one day to the doctor’s wife across the road.

“For my part,” the lady replied, “I don’t think that you can too early inculcate a proper care of the person into little girls. My own child, who was ten last week, is as particular about the fit and style of her clothes as I am about mine. If you bring girls up, dear lady, to run quite wild, do you not think that you do away with their domesticity, that most precious quality of all women?”

“I am only too anxious to do away with their domesticity,” said Mrs. Whittaker, quietly but very firmly. “You see, Mrs. M’Quade, I am no ordinary woman myself. I have had the education of a man. I have a man’s brain. I believe that in the near future the position of women will be entirely altered.”

“Then you are going to bring your girls up to professions?”

“I am going to bring my girls up to follow the natural bent of their minds. If they show any aptitude for and desire to follow one of the learned professions, neither their father nor I will put any stumbling-block in their way.”

“I see. Have you pushed them on already?”

“No, that is altogether against my principles. I never do anything against my principles. I think that all children should reach the age of seven years before they imbibe any learning, except such as comes through the eye and in a perfectly natural and simple manner. After the age of seven, until ten years old, I believe that lessons should be of the simplest and most harmless description. After that, the brain is strong and is better able to bear forcing.”

“I see. Well, your plan may be a good one; my plan may be a good one. I sent my little girl to a kindergarten when she was four years old, because she was lonely; she was not happy, she was always bored, always wanting somebody to play with her, and she yearned for playmates and little occupations. When she went to the kindergarten, she took to it like a duck to water. She loved her school then, and now that she is in a more advanced class, she is well on with her studies.”

“I see. And you dress her very elaborately?”

“Oh no, not elaborately,” said Mrs. M’Quade. “I always try to dress her daintily and smartly, but never elaborately.”

“It is not in accordance with my principles,” said Regina, loftily. “I have a set fashion for my children, and I intend to keep them to it until they are old enough to choose for themselves. Then they will take to the task of dressing themselves with minds untrammeled by the opinions of other people, even of their own mother. I have always tried so to bring up my girls as to make them thoroughly original in every possible way. They are not quite like other children. They are children as much out of the ordinary as their mother was before them; convention has no part, and shall have no part in their lives whatsoever. Indeed, I may say that conventions is one of the greatest bugbears of my existence.”

“But we must have conventions,” said the doctor’s wife.

“Must we?” said Mrs. Whittaker, with a superior smile. “Ah, I see that you and I, dear Mrs. M’Quade, must agree to differ. Let me give you some tea. I assure you it is quite conventional tea.”

“Thank you very much,” said Mrs. M’Quade, smiling.

In retailing the conversation to her husband that evening, Mrs. M’Quade remarked that it was quite conventional tea. “I should think about one-and-twopence a pound,” was her comment.

“And how did you like the lady?” her husband asked.

“She is an extraordinary woman, a very extraordinary woman. I don’t know that I like her; on the other hand, I don’t know whether there is anything about her to dislike.”

“What age—what size—what sort of a woman is she?” he asked.

“In age something over forty; in person plump and rather comely. A large, solid woman, with no idea of making the best of herself. She had a tea-gown on to-day that would have made the very angels weep.”

“Would any tea-gown make the angels weep?”

“I think that one would. It was a dingy brown and a salmon-pink. Wherever it was brown you wished it was salmon-pink, and wherever it was salmon-pink you wished it was brown, except when you were wishing that it was black altogether, without any relief at all.”

“Dear me! What was it like?”

“Well, it was just the one garment that she should never have worn. She wears old-fashioned stays, and though people may think they don’t matter in a tea-gown, I think stays have more effect on the general cut of a tea-gown than they have on any other garment. I should like to have dressed that lady in a plain coat and skirt from my own tailor, with a loose white front, and a good black hat. But I don’t think anybody would know her.”

“Well, it’s no business of yours, little woman,” said the doctor, cheerily. “And, after all, it’s a new family—children—infantile diseases—servants—people apparently thoroughly well-to-do. Bought the house—done it up inside and out. It isn’t for you and I to quarrel with our bread and butter.”