More Bywords Read online

  9.-What a delightful sight is a large family of young things together! The party is complete, for the Druces arrived yesterday evening in full force, torn from their bucolic life, as Martyn tells them. My poor dear old Margaret! She does indeed look worn and aged, dragged by cares like a colonist's wife, and her husband is quite bald, and as spare as a hermit. It is hard to believe him younger than Martyn; but then his whole soul is set on Bourne Parva, and hers on him, on the children, on the work, and on making both ends meet; and they toil five times more severely in one month than the professor and his lady in a year, besides having just twice as many children, all of whom are here except the schoolboys. Margaret declares that the entire rest, and the talking to something not entirely rural, will wind her husband up for the year; and it is good to see her sitting in a basket-chair by my mother, knitting indeed, but they both do that like breathing, while they purr away to one another in a state of perfect repose and felicity. Meantime her husband talks Oxford with Martyn and Mary. Their daughter Jane seems to be a most valuable helper to both, but she too has a worn, anxious countenance, and I fear she may be getting less rest than her parents, as they have brought only one young nursemaid with them, and seem to depend on her and Meg for keeping the middle-sized children in order. She seems to have all the cares of the world on her young brow, and is much exercised about one of the boxes which has gone astray on the railway. What do you think she did this morning? She started off with Avice at eight o'clock for the S. Clements station to see if the telegram was answered, and they went on to the Convalescent Home and saw the Oxford dressmaker. It seems that Avice had taken Uchtred with her on Sunday evening, made out the place, and gone to church at S. Clements close by-a very long walk; but it seems that those foolish girls thought me too fine a lady to like to be seen with her in her round hat on a Sunday. I wish they could understand what it is that I dislike. If I objected to appearances, I am afraid the poor Druces would fare ill. Margaret's girls cannot help being essentially ladies, but they have not much beauty to begin with-and their dress! It was chiefly made by their own sewing machine, with the assistance of the Bourne Parva mantua-maker, superintended by Jane, 'to prevent her from making it foolish'; and the effect, I grieve to say, is ill-fitting dowdiness, which becomes grotesque from their self-complacent belief that it displays the only graceful and sensible fashion in the place. It was laughable to hear them criticising every hat or costume they have seen, quite unaware that they were stared at themselves, till Charley told them people thought they had come fresh out of Lady Bountiful's goody-box, which piece of impertinence they took as a great compliment to their wisdom and excellence. To be sure, the fashions are distressing enough, but Metelill shows that they can be treated gracefully and becomingly, and even Avice makes her serge and hat look fresh and ladylike. Spite of contrast, Avice and Jane seem to be much devoted to each other. Pica and Charley are another pair, and Isa and Metelill-though Metelill is the universal favourite, and there is always competition for her. In early morning I see the brown heads and blue bathing-dresses, a-mermaiding, as they call it, in the cove below, and they come in all glowing, with the floating tresses that make Metelill look so charming, and full of merry adventures at breakfast. We all meet in the great room at the hotel for a substantial meal at half-past one, and again (most of us at least) at eight; but it is a moot point which of these meals we call dinner. Very merry both of them are; Martyn and Horace Druce are like boys together, and the girls scream with laughter, rather too much so sometimes. Charley is very noisy, and so is Meg Druce, when not overpowered by shyness. She will not exchange a sentence with any of the elders, but in the general laugh she chuckles and shrieks like a young Cochin-Chinese chicken learning to crow; and I hear her squealing like a maniac while she is shrimping with the younger ones and Charley. I must except those two young ladies from the unconscious competition, for one has no manners at all, and the other affects those of a man; but as to the rest, they are all as nice as possible, and I can only say, "How happy could I be with either." Isa, poor girl, seems to need our care most, and would be the most obliging and attentive. Metelill would be the prettiest and sweetest ornament of our drawing-room, and would amuse you the most; Pica, with her scholarly tastes, would be the best and most appreciative fellow-traveller; and Jane, if she could or would go, would perhaps benefit the most by being freed from a heavy strain, and having her views enlarged.

  10.-A worthy girl is Jane Druce, but I fear the Vicarage is no school of manners. Her mother is sitting with us, and has been discoursing to grandmamma on her Jane's wonderful helpfulness and activity in house and parish, and how everything hinged on her last winter when they had whooping-cough everywhere in and out of doors; indeed she doubts whether the girl has ever quite thrown off the effects of all her exertions then. Suddenly comes a trampling, a bounce and a rush, and in dashes Miss Jane, fiercely demanding whether the children had leave to go to the cove. Poor Margaret meekly responds that she had consented. "And didn't you know," exclaims the damsel, "that all their everyday boots are in that unlucky trunk?" There is a humble murmur that Chattie had promised to be very careful, but it produces a hotter reply. "As if Chattie's promises of that kind could be trusted! And I had told them that they were to keep with baby on the cliff!" Then came a real apology for interfering with Jane's plans, to which we listened aghast, and Margaret was actually getting up to go and look after her amphibious offspring herself, when her daughter cut her off short with, "Nonsense, mamma, you know you are not to do any such thing! I must go, that's all, or they won't have a decent boot or stocking left among them." Off she went with another bang, while her mother began blaming herself for having yielded in haste to the persuasions of the little ones, oblivious of the boots, thus sacrificing Jane's happy morning with Avice. My mother showed herself shocked by the tone in which Margaret had let herself be hectored, and this brought a torrent of almost tearful apologies from the poor dear thing, knowing she did not keep up her authority or make herself respected as would be good for her girl, but if we only knew how devoted Jane was, and how much there was to grind and try her temper, we should not wonder that it gave way sometimes. Indeed it was needful to turn away the subject, as Margaret was the last person we wished to distress.

  Jane could have shown no temper to the children, for at dinner a roly-poly person of five years old, who seems to absorb all the fat in the family, made known that he had had a very jolly day, and he loved cousin Avice very much indeed, and sister Janie very much indeeder, and he could with difficulty be restrained from an expedition to kiss them both then and there.

  The lost box was announced while we were at dinner, and Jane is gone with her faithful Avice to unpack it. Her mother would have done it and sent her boating with the rest, but submitted as usual when commanded to adhere to the former plan of driving with grandmamma. These Druce children must be excellent, according to their mother, but they are terribly brusque and bearish. They are either seen and not heard, or not seen and heard a great deal too much. Even Jane and Meg, who ought to know better, keep up a perpetual undercurrent of chatter and giggle, whatever is going on, with any one who will share it with them.

  10.-I am more and more puzzled about the new reading of the Fifth Commandment. None seem to understand it as we used to do. The parents are content to be used as equals, and to be called by all sorts of absurd names; and though grandmamma is always kindly and attentively treated, there is no reverence for the relationship. I heard Charley call her 'a jolly old party,' and Metelill respond that she was 'a sweet old thing.' Why, we should have thought such expressions about our grandmother a sort of sacrilege, but when I ventured to hint as much Charley flippantly answered, "Gracious me, we are not going back to buckram"; and Metelill, with her caressing way, declared that she loved dear granny too much to be so stiff and formal. I quoted-

  "If I be a Father, where is My honour?"

  And one of them taking it, I am sorry to say, for a line of secular poetry, exclai
med at the stiffness and coldness. Pica then put in her oar, and began to argue that honour must be earned, and that it was absurd and illogical to claim it for the mere accident of seniority or relationship. Jane, not at all conscious of being an offender, howled at her that this was her horrible liberalism and neology, while Metelill asked what was become of loyalty. "That depends on what you mean by it," returned our girl graduate. "Loi-auté, steadfastness to principle, is noble, but personal loyalty, to some mere puppet or the bush the crown hangs on, is a pernicious figment." Charley shouted that this was the No. 1 letter A point in Pie's prize essay, and there the discussion ended, Isa only sighing to herself, "Ah, if I had any one to be loyal to!"

  "How you would jockey them!" cried Charley, turning upon her so roughly that the tears came into her eyes; and I must have put on what you call my Government-house look, for Charley subsided instantly.

  11.-Here was a test as to this same obedience. The pupils, who are by this time familiars of the party, had devised a boating and fishing expedition for all the enterprising, which was satisfactory to the elders because it was to include both the fathers. Unluckily, however, this morning's post brought a summons to Martyn and Mary to fulfil an engagement they have long made to meet an American professor at --, and they had to start off at eleven o'clock; and at the same time the Hollyford clergyman, an old fellow-curate of Horace Druce, sent a note imploring him to take a funeral. So the voice of the seniors was for putting off the expedition, but the voice of the juniors was quite the other way. The three families took different lines. The Druces show obedience though not respect; they growled and grumbled horribly, but submitted, though with ill grace, to the explicit prohibition. Non-interference is professedly Mary's principle, but even she said, with entreaty veiled beneath the playfulness, when it was pleaded that two of the youths had oars at Cambridge, "Freshwater fish, my dears. I wish you would wait for us! I don't want you to attend the submarine wedding of our old friends Tame and Isis." To which Pica rejoined, likewise talking out of Spenser, that Proteus would provide a nice ancient nymph to tend on them. Her father then chimed in, saying, "You will spare our nerves by keeping to dry land unless you can secure the ancient mariner who was with us yesterday."

  "Come, come, most illustrious," said Pica good-humouredly, "I'm not going to encourage you to set up for nerves. You are much better without them, and I must get some medusæ."

  It ended with, "I beg you will not go without that old man," the most authoritative speech I have heard either Martyn or Mary make to their daughters; but it was so much breath wasted on Pica, who maintains her right to judge for herself. The ancient mariner had been voted an encumbrance and exchanged for a jolly young waterman.

  Our other mother, Edith, implored, and was laughed down by Charley, who declared she could swim, and that she did not think Uncle Martyn would have been so old-womanish. Metelill was so tender and caressing with her frightened mother that I thought here at last was submission, and with a good grace. But after a turn on the esplanade among the pupils, back came Metelill in a hurry to say, "Dear mother, will you very much mind if I go? They will be so disappointed, and there will be such a fuss if I don't; and Charley really ought to have some one with her besides Pie, who will heed nothing but magnifying medusæ." I am afraid it is true, as Isa says, that it was all owing to the walk with that young Mr Horne.

  Poor Edith fell into such a state of nervous anxiety that I could not leave her, and she confided to me how Charley had caught her foolish masculine affectations in the family of this very Bertie Elwood, and told me of the danger of an attachment between Metelill and a young government clerk who is always on the look-out for her. "And dear Metelill is so gentle and gracious that she cannot bear to repel any one," says the mother, who would, I see, be thankful to part with either daughter to our keeping in hopes of breaking off perilous habits. I was saved, however, from committing myself by the coming in of Isabel. That child follows me about like a tame cat, and seems so to need mothering that I cannot bear to snub her.

  She came to propound to me a notion that has risen among these Oxford girls, namely, that I should take out their convalescent dressmaker as my maid instead of poor Amélie. She is quite well now, and going back next week; but a few years in a warm climate might be the saving of her health. So I agreed to go with Isa to look at her, and judge whether the charming account I heard was all youthful enthusiasm. Edith went out driving with my mother, and we began our tête-à-tête walk, in which I heard a great deal of the difficulties of that free-and-easy house at Oxford, and how often Isa wishes for some one who would be a real guide and helper, instead of only giving a playful, slap-dash answer, like good-natured mockery. The treatment may suit Mary's own daughters, but 'Just as you please, my dear,' is not good for sensitive, anxious spirits. We passed Jane and Avice reading together under a rock; I was much inclined to ask them to join us, but Isa was sure they were much happier undisturbed, and she was so unwilling to share me with any one that I let them alone. I was much pleased with the dressmaker, Maude Harris, who is a nice, modest, refined girl, and if the accounts I get from her employers bear out what I hear of her, I shall engage her; I shall be glad, for the niece's sake, to have that sort of young woman about the place. She speaks most warmly of what the Misses Fulford have done for her.

  Jane will be disappointed if I cannot have her rival candidate-a pet schoolgirl who works under the Bourne Parva dressmaker. "What a recommendation!" cries Pica, and there is a burst of mirth, at which Jane looks round and says, "What is there to laugh at? Miss Dadworthy is a real good woman, and a real old Bourne Parva person, so that you may be quite sure Martha will have learnt no nonsense to begin with."

  "No," says Pica, "from all such pomps and vanities as style, she will be quite clear."

  While Avice's friendship goes as far as to say that if Aunt Charlotte cannot have Maude, perhaps Martha could get a little more training. Whereupon Jane runs off by the yard explanations of the admirable training-religious, moral, and intellectual-of Bourne Parva, illustrated by the best answers of her favourite scholars, anecdotes of them, and the reports of the inspectors, religious and secular; and Avice listens with patience, nay, with respectful sympathy.

  12.-We miss Mary and Martyn more than I expected. Careless and easy-going as they seem, they made a difference in the ways of the young people; they were always about with them, not as dragons, but for their own pleasure. The presence of a professor must needs impose upon young men, and Mary, with her brilliant wit and charming manners, was a check without knowing it. The boating party came back gay and triumphant, and the young men joined in our late meal; and oh, what a noise there was! though I must confess that it was not they who made the most. Metelill was not guilty of the noise, but she was-I fear I must say it-flirting with all her might with a youth on each side of her, and teasing a third; I am afraid she is one of those girls who are charming to all, and doubly charming to your sex, and that it will never do to have her among the staff. I don't think it is old-maidish in us to be scandalised at her walking up and down the esplanade with young Horne till ten o'clock last night; Charley was behind with Bertie Elwood, and, I grieve to say, was smoking. It lasted till Horace Druce went out to tell them that Metelill must come in at once, as it was time to shut up the house.

  The Oxford girls were safe indoors; Isa working chess problems with another of the lads, Avice keeping Jane company over the putting the little ones to sleep-in Mount Lebanon, as they call the Druce lodging-and Pica preserving microscopic objects. "Isn't she awful?" said one of those pupils. "She's worse than all the dons in Cambridge. She wants to be at it all day long, and all through the vacation."

  They perfectly flee from her. They say she is always whipping out a microscope and lecturing upon protoplasms-and there is some truth in the accusation. She is almost as bad on the emancipation of women, on which there is a standing battle, in earnest with Jane-in joke with Metelill; but it has, by special orders, to be hushed at dinne
r, because it almost terrifies grandmamma. I fear Pica tries to despise her!

  This morning the girls are all out on the beach in pairs and threes, the pupils being all happily shut up with their tutor. I see the invalid lady creep out with her beach-rest from the intermediate house, and come down to her usual morning station in the shade of a rock, unaware, poor thing, that it has been monopolised by Isa and Metelill. Oh, girls! why don't you get up and make room for her? No; she moves on to the next shady place, but there Pica has a perfect fortification of books spread on her rug, and Charley is sketching on the outskirts, and the fox-terrier barks loudly. Will she go on to the third seat? where I can see, though she cannot, Jane and Avice sitting together, and Freddy shovelling sand at their feet. Ah! at last she is made welcome. Good girls! They have seated her and her things, planted a parasol to shelter her from the wind, and lingered long enough not to make her feel herself turning them out before making another settlement out of my sight.

  Three o'clock.-I am sorry to say Charley's sketch turned into a caricature of the unprotected female wandering in vain in search of a bit of shelter, with a torn parasol, a limp dress, and dragging rug, and altogether unspeakably forlorn. It was exhibited at the dinner-table, and elicited peals of merriment, so that we elders begged to see the cause of the young people's amusement. My blood was up, and when I saw what it was, I said-

  "I wonder you like to record your own discourtesy, to call it nothing worse."

  "But, Aunt Charlotte," said Metelill in her pretty pleading way, "we did not know her."