Chapter IV: A Young Lady’s Chastening--Phase One

That afternoon I was sitting glum and glowering in my lodge, while the water for my tea was boiling on the fire, when I heard a light step in the passage; and the next moment she stood before me. I had the will and the opportunity now to regard her, here in secure possession of my own. She, not I, was the intruder. But my steady inquisition failed to abash her. She was too confident of her own charms, I suppose.

“Pray forgive me, Mr Gaskett,” she said, with a twinkling civility. “I wanted to see the hermit with my own eyes.”

“And not with Lady Skene’s or Mr Pugsley’s?” I asked.

She laughed.

“You bear a grudge long.”

“I have so little else to bear out of the past,” I said.

Her eyes became serious.

“Well, I was a beast,” she said. “And now I’m a young lady.”

“Excuse me. The distinction may be without a difference.”

“And wasn’t I right then,” she cried, with a flush, “to question your gentle origin!”

“I daresay,” I said. “But I owe you no consideration for the question. It was none of your business; and I haven’t forgiven you for it, and never shall.”

She seemed to breathe a little quickly, as if distressed. Then she sat down in a chair, and crossed her legs, and bent forward to scrutinise me.

“Richard,” she said, “what a brown strong man you have grown into; and rather taking-looking, too! I _was_ an odious little pig--there! but girls grow up, you know. I don’t remember my little past self with pleasure, I can tell you. Won’t you forgive me and be friends?”

“What have you come home for? To be married?”

“O! What a question!”

“The sooner the better, for me.”

She bit her underlip. I could have thought it was a swollen red enough little affair already.

“Why for you?” she asked.

“You can’t expect me to welcome your reappearance,” I said.

“Can’t I?” she answered. “Well, looks ought to count for something with you by now. Don’t they?”

“I mature slowly, Miss Christmas.”

“Call me Ira.”

“Certainly I sha’n’t. It would be presumption.”

“I don’t know that it would. My father’s father was a chemist. I have found that out. He kept a shop and invented a pill and made a fortune over it. People would take it. It became a sort of infection. A royal princess caught it, and then it was all over with him. He bought a pedigree, in Wardour Street, and imposed it on the world. It would swallow anything from him.”

“Well, my father’s father never invented anything that I know--not even a family. I date from yesterday; and, as to pills, the pillmaker’s granddaughter was the bitterest I ever had to swallow.”

She was not offended, it seemed.

“That’s right,” she said. “I told you to punish me. I have deserved it, I know. But tell me if I’m pretty.”

I looked at her calmly. It was certainly wonderful how the _petite drôlesse_ in her had developed, amplified into something bewitching; but it was the adolescence of a witch, I thought. Her hair was umber gold, with pale green lights in it, and drawn back in loose wings from her forehead, and tied into a club at the nape of a very white neck. Her cheeks were a little lean, but pitted with the old dimples at pleasure; and the whole contour of her face was frankly girlish--soft and kind but for the eyes. Or at least I thought so. There seemed a knowledge in their artless honesty, born of depths below the blue. Blue, I say! I don’t know to this day if they are blue or green. It depends upon their point of view, whether it be sky or verdure.

She was slender and smooth-limbed; a fragrant enough creature but for the odour of memory. I answered her deliberately.

“Not to me. _I_ have had no finishing education. I am still governed by childish prejudices. I daresay you will be a success elsewhere.”

She sighed a little, and got to her feet.

“It is a shame,” she said, and very handsomely. “You have been neglected shamefully, I know. But I’ve no right to speak. I wish you thought me pretty.”

“Well, so do I,” I said. “But, what does it matter? You are an heiress.”

She stood regarding me seriously for a little. Then all of a sudden, to my amazement, her eyes blinked with tears. I stared at her, speechless.

“Yes, I know,” she said; “it’s very silly. But you’ve no idea how you’ve been on my mind. It was at Dinan, first, and then in London, where I began to get things into their proper proportions--my own insignificance among the number. You were somehow always in the background of my thoughts--wasn’t that funny? You know, you were a very good-looking child, Richard; or perhaps you don’t know. I was horribly jealous of you, anyhow.”

“Well, well,” I said. “And how about Lady Skene, Miss Christmas? Are you still in favour with her and Mr Pugsley?”

“_Ce que femme veut, Dieu le veut_,” she answered, laughing with a little twinkle through her tears. “She is a very beautiful woman, and therefore what she thinks must be right. I wish you would show me your poem after Mr Pugsley.”

“What poem? But all that stuff is over. I have burnt everything I ever wrote.”

“What a misanthrope you have become. But I don’t wonder. Am I to go now?”

“You are keeping me from my tea.”

“Won’t you let me serve it for you?”

“I serve myself; and I intend to for the future.”

“There is a story--did you ever read it?--of a shepherd who plucked a flower in a field, and brought it home and put it in water; and every night the flower turned into a beautiful girl, who swept and dusted his room for him, and set his meal, and was a flower again by the time he came down. But one night he caught her, and after that she had to remain a woman and serve him.”

“Thank you. But I don’t see the point, for I haven’t plucked you, and I don’t think you beautiful. You had better go. What would Lady Skene say?”

“I am my own mistress. Lady Skene can say what she likes. Do let me wait on you.”

A sudden mutiny of retaliation seized upon me. What did it matter? I felt quite hard and cold to the girl. “Very well,” I said, and sat down.

She busied herself at once; poured the hot water; made the tea; stood behind me while I ate and drank. I took pains to do both imperturbably and at length. She never spoke the while. At the end I got up, and pushed the fragments together.

“Now,” I said, “you can have your tea on the scraps, if you like. I am going out.”

I left her seated quietly at the table.