Mrs. Wilson contrived, by pantomime before she spoke, to express her perfect patience under extremest trial, inflicted on her by an impudent suggestion that she hadn"t made her position clear. She would, however, state her case once more with incisive distinctness. To that end she separated her syllables, and accented selections from them, even as a resolute hammer accents the head of a nail.
"Have I not told you dis_tinct_ly"--the middle syllable of this word was a sample nailhead--"a _thou_sand times that what I wish you to do--however much you may shirk doing it--is to _speak_ to Laet.i.tia--to remonstrate with her about the encouragement she is giving to this young man, and to _point out_ to her that a girl in her position--in short, the duties of a girl in her position?" Mrs. Wilson"s come-down at this point was an example of a solemn warning to the elocutionist who breaks out of bounds. She was obliged to fall back arbitrarily on her key-note in the middle of the performance. "Have I said this to you, Mr. Wilson, or have I not?"
"Speaking from memory I should say _not_. Yes--certainly _not_. But I can raise no reasonable objection to speaking to Laet.i.tia, provided I am at liberty to say what I like. I understand that to be part of the bargain."
"If you mean," says the lady, whose temper had not been improved by the first part of the speech; "if you mean that you consider yourself at liberty to encourage a rebellious daughter against her mother, I know too well from old experience that that is the case. But I trust that for once your right feeling will show you that it is your _plain duty_ to tell her that the course she is pursuing can only lead to the loss of her position in society, and probably to poverty and unhappiness."
"I can tell her you think so, of course," says the Professor, drily.
"I will say no more"--very freezingly. "You know as well as I do what it is your _duty_ to say to your daughter. What you will _decide_ to say, I do _not_ know." And premonitory rustles end in a move to the door.
"You can tell her to come in now--if you like." The Professor won"t show too vivid an interest. It isn"t as if the matter related to a Scythian war-chariot, or a gold ornament from a prehistoric tomb, or _variae lectiones_.
"At least, Septimus," says the apex of the departing skirts, "you will remember what is due to yourself and your family--_I_ am n.o.body--so far as not to encourage the girl in resisting her mother"s authority." And, receiving no reply, departs, and is heard on the landing rejecting insufficient reasons why the drugget will not lay flat. And presently issuing a mandate to an upper landing:
"Your father wishes to speak to you in his library. _I_ wish you to go." The last words not to seem to abdicate as Queen Consort.
Laet.i.tia isn"t a girl whom we find new charms in after making her mother"s acquaintance. You know how some young people would be pa.s.sable enough if it were not for a lurid light thrown upon their ident.i.ty by other members of their family. You know the sister you thought was a beauty and dear, until you met her sister, who was gristly and a jade.
But it"s a great shame in Tishy"s case, because we do honestly believe her seeming _da capo_ of her mother is more skirts than anything else.
We credit their respective _apices_ with different dispositions, although (yes, it"s quite true what you say) we don"t see exactly from what corner of the Professor"s his daughter got her better one. He"s all very well, but....
Anyhow, we are sorry for Tishy now, as she comes uneasily into the library to be "spoken to." She comes in b.u.t.toning a glove and saying, "Yes, papa." She was evidently just going out--probably arrested by the voices in the library.
"Well, my dear, your mother wishes me to speak to you.... H"m! h"m!
By-the-bye," he interrupts himself, "it really is a very extraordinary thing, but it"s just like work-people. A man spends all his life laying carpets, and the minute he lays mine it"s too big or too small."
"The man outside? He"s very tiresome. He says the pa.s.sage is an unusual size."
"I should have taken that point when I measured it. It seems to me late in the day now the carpet"s made up. However, that"s neither here nor there. Your mother wishes me to--a--to speak to you, my dear."
"What does she want you to say, papa?"
"H"m--well!--it"s sometimes not easy to understand your mother. I cannot say that I have gathered precisely what it is she wishes me to say. Nor am I certain that I should be prepared to say it if I knew what it was."--Tishy brightened perceptibly.--"But I am this far in sympathy with what I suppose to be her meaning"--Tishy"s face fell--"that I should be very sorry to hear that you had made any binding promises to any young gentleman without knowing more of his antecedents and connexions than I suppose you do at the present about this--a--musical friend of yours--without consulting me." The perfunctory tone in which he added, "and your mother," made the words hardly worth recording.
But perhaps the way they, in a sense, put the good lady out of court, helped to make her daughter brighten up again. "Dear papa," she said, "I should never dream for one moment of doing such a thing. Nor would Mr. Bradshaw dream of asking me to do so."
"That"s quite right, my dear--quite enough. Don"t say anything more.
I am not going to catechize you." And Tishy was not sorry to hear this, because her disclaimer of a binding promise was only true in the letter. In fact, our direct Sally had only the day before pounced upon her friend with, "You know perfectly well he"s kissed you heaps of times!" And Tishy had only been able to begin an apology she was not to be allowed to finish with, "And suppose he has...?"
However, her sense of an untruthfulness that was more than merely technical was based not so much on the bare fact of a kissing-relation having come about, as upon a particular example. She knew it was the merest hypocrisy to make believe that the climax of that interview at Riverfordhook, where there were the moonrise and things, did not const.i.tute a pledge on the part of both. However, Tishy is not the first young lady, let me tell you--if you don"t know already--who has been guilty of equivocation on those lines. It is even possible that her father was conniving at it, was intentionally accepting what he knew to be untrue, to avoid the trouble of further investigation, and to be able to give his mind to the demolition of that ignoramus. A certain amount of fuss was his duty; but the sooner he could find an excuse to wash his hands of these human botherations and get back to his inner life the better.
Perhaps it was a sense of chill at the suspicion that her father was not concerned enough about her welfare that made Laet.i.tia try to arrest his retirement into his inner life. Or it may have been that she was sensitive, as young folk are, at her new and strange experience of Real Love, and at the same time grated on--sc.r.a.ped the wrong way--in her harsh collision with her mother, who was showing Cupid no quarter, and was only withheld from overt acts of hostility to Julius Bradshaw by the knowledge that excess on her part would precipitate what she sought to avert.
Whatever the cause was, her momentary sense of relief that her father was not going to catechize her was followed by a feeling that she almost wished he would. It would be so nice to have a natural parent that was really interested in his daughter"s affairs. Poor Tishy felt lonely, and as if she was going to cry. She must unpack her heart, even if it bored papa, who she knew wanted to turn her out and write. She broke down over it.
"Oh, papa--papa! Indeed, I want to do everything you wish--whatever you tell me. I _will_ be good, as we used to say." A sob grew in her throat over this little nursery recollection. "Only--only--only--it isn"t really quite true about no promises. We haven"t made them, you know, but they"re _there_ all the same." Tishy stops suddenly to avoid a sob she knows is coming. A pocket-handkerchief is called in to remove tears surrept.i.tiously, under a covering pretence of a less elegant function.
The Professor hates scenes worse than poison, and Tishy knows it.
"There, there! Well, well! Nothing to cry about. _That"s_ right." This is approval of the disappearance of the pocket-handkerchief--some confusion between cause and effect, perhaps. "Come, my child--come, Laet.i.tia--suppose now you tell me all about it."
Tishy acknowledges to herself that she desires nothing better. Yes, papa dear, she will, indeed she will, tell him everything. And then makes a very fair revelation of her love-affair--a little dry and stilted in the actual phrasing, perhaps, but then, what can you expect when one"s father is inclined to be stiff and awkward in such a matter, to approach it formally, and consider it an interview? It was all mamma"s fault, of course. Why should she be summoned before the bar of the house? Why couldn"t her father find his way into her confidence in the natural current of events? However, this was better than nothing.
Besides, we softened gradually as we developed the subject. One of us, who was Mr. Bradshaw at first, became Julius later, with a strong lubricating effect. We began with sincere attachment, but we loved each other dearly before we had done. We didn"t know when "it" began exactly--which was a fib, for we were perfectly well aware that "it"
began that evening at Krakatoa Villa, which has been chronicled herein--but for a long time past Julius had been asking to be allowed to memorialise the Professor on the subject.
"But you know, papa dear, I couldn"t say he was to speak to you until I was quite certain of myself. Besides, I did want him to be on better terms with mamma first."
Professor Wilson flushed angrily, and began with a knitted brow, "I wish your mother would----" but stopped abruptly. Then, calming down: "But you are quite certain _now_, my dear Laet.i.tia?" Oh dear, yes; no doubt of that. And how about Julius? The confident ring of the girl"s laugh, and her "Why, you should hear him!" showed that she, at least, was well satisfied of her lover"s earnestness.
"Well, my dear child," said the Professor, who was beginning to feel that it was time to go back to his unfinished ignoramus, tyro, or sciolist; "I tell you what I shall do. When"s he coming next? Thursday, to dinner. Very well. I shall make a little opportunity for a quiet talk with him, and we shall see."
The young lady came out of the library on the whole comfortabler then she had entered it, and finished b.u.t.toning that glove in the pa.s.sage.
As she stood reflecting that papa would really be very nice if he would shave more carefully--for the remains of his adieu was still rasping her cheek--she was aware of the voice of the carpet; she heard it complain, through the medium of its layer, or stretcher, who seemed to mean to pa.s.s the remainder of his days scratching the head of perplexity on the scene of his recent failure to add to his professional achievements.
"It"s what I say to the guv"nor"--thus ran his Jeremiad--"in dealin"
with these here irregular settin"s out, where nothin"s not to say parallel with anything else, nor dimensions lendin" theirselves to accommodation. "Just you let me orfer it in," I says "afore the final st.i.tchin" to, or even a paper template in extra cases is a savin" in the end." Because it stands to reason there goes more expense with an ill-cut squint or obtoose angle, involvin" work to rectify, than cut ackerate in the first go-off. Not but what ruckles may disappear under the tread, only there"s no reliance to be placed. You may depend on it, to make a job there"s nothin" like careful plannin", and foresight in the manner of speakin". And, as I say to the guv"nor, there"s no need for a stout brown-paper template to go to waste, seein" it works in with the under-packin"." And much more which Tishy could still hear murmuring on in the distance as she closed the street door and fled to an overdue appointment with Sally, into whose sympathetic ear she could pour all her new records of the progress of the row.
To tell the whole of the prolonged pitched battle that ensued would take too much ink and paper. The Dragon fought magnificently, so long as she had the powerful backing of her married daughter, Mrs. Sowerby Bagster, and the skirmishing help of Athene. This latter was, however, not to be relied on--might go over to the enemy any moment. Mrs.
Bagster, or Clarissa, who was an elder sister of Laet.i.tia"s, became lukewarm, too, on a side-issue being raised. It did not appear to connect itself logically with the bone of contention, having reference entirely to vaccination from the calf. But it led to an exaggerated sensitiveness on her part as to the responsibility we incurred by interference with what might (after all) be the Will of Providence.
If this should prove so, it would be our duty not to repine. Clarissa contrived to surround the subject with an unprovoked halo of religious meekness, and to work round to the conclusion that it would be presumptuous not to ask Mr. Bradshaw to dinner. Only this resulted absolutely and entirely from her refusing to have her three children all vaccinated from the calf forthwith, because their grandmother thought it necessary. The latter, finding herself deserted in her hour of need by a powerful ally--for three whole children had given Clarissa a deep insight into social ethics, and a weighty authority--surrendered grudgingly. She tried her best to make her invitation to dinner take the form of leave to come to dinner, and partly succeeded. Her suggestions that she hoped Mr. Bradshaw would understand the rules of the game at the table of Society caused the defection of her remaining confederate, Athene, who turned against her, exclaiming: "He won"t eat with his knife, at any rate!" However, it was too late to influence current events. The battle was fought and over.
The obnoxious young man didn"t eat with his knife when he came, with docility, a day after he received the invitation. Remember, he appears originally in this story as a chosen of Cattley"s, one warranted to defy detection by the best-informed genteelologist. He went through his ordeal very well, on the whole, considering that Egerton (from friendship) was always on the alert to give him tips about civilised conduct, and that Mrs. Wilson called him nearly every known dissyllabic name with _A_"s in it--Brathwaite, Palgrave, Bradlaugh, Playfair, and so on, but not Bradshaw. She did this the more as she never addressed him directly, treating him without disguise as the third-person singular in a concrete form. This was short-sighted, because it stimulated her husband to a tone of civility which would probably have risen to deference if the good lady had not just stopped short of insult.
Egerton and the only other male guest (who was the negative young pianist known to Sally as Somebody Elsley) having found it convenient to go away at smoking-time to inspect the latter"s bicycle, the Professor seized his opportunity for conversation with the third-person-singular. He approached the subject abruptly:
"Well, it"s Laet.i.tia, I understand, that we"re making up to, eh?"
Perhaps it was this sudden conversion to the first person plural that made the young man blush up to the roots of his hair.
"What can I say?" he asked hesitatingly. "You see, Professor Wilson, if I say yes, it will mean that I have been p-paying my addresses, as the phrase is...."
"And taking receipts?"
"Exactly--and taking receipts, without first asking her father"s leave.
And if I say no----"
"If you say no, my dear young man, her father will merely ask you to help yourself and pa.s.s the port (decanter with the little bra.s.s ticket--yes, that one. Thank you!). Well, I see what you mean, and we needn"t construct enigmas. We really get to the point. Now tell me all about it." We don"t feel at all sure the Professor"s way of getting to the point was not a good one. You see, he had had a good deal to do with young men in early academical phases of existence--tutorships and the like--and had no idea of humming and hawing and stuttering over their affairs. Besides, it was best for Bradshaw, as was shown by the greater ease with which he went on speaking, and began telling the Professor all about it.
"I shouldn"t be speaking truthfully, sir, if I were to pretend things haven"t gone a little beyond--a little beyond--the exact rules. But you"ve no idea how easily one can deceive oneself."
"Haven"t I?" The Professor"s mind went back to his own youth. He knew very well how easily he had done it. A swift dream of his past shot through his brain in the little s.p.a.ce before Bradshaw resumed.
"Well, it was only a phrase. Of course you know. I mean it has all crept on so imperceptibly. And I have had no real chance of talking about it--to _you_, sir--without asking for a formal interview. And until very lately nothing Laet--Miss Wilson...."
"Tut-tut! Laet.i.tia--Laet.i.tia. What"s the use of being prigs about it?"
"Nothing Laet.i.tia has said would have warranted me in doing this. I _could_ have introduced the subject to Mrs. Wilson once or twice, but...."
"All right. I understand. Well, now, what"s the exact state of things between you and Laet.i.tia?"