The Girls of St. Wode's

Dinner passed quickly, for all three girls were hungry; and when they retired to the drawing-room Mrs. Chetwynd suggested a little music.

“Eileen, my darling, you sing, don’t you?” she said, turning to the younger of the twins.

“Oh, dear me, no, mother; I have not the ghost of a voice,” replied Eileen.

“But I thought that your teacher, Miss Fox, spoke highly of your musical talents?”

“She said I should play well if I practiced hard; but I did not think my very moderate gift worth cultivating,” replied Eileen, yawning slightly as she spoke. “You see, unless one has genius, there is not the least use in the present day in being musical. Only genius is tolerated; and then I don’t ever mean to be ornamental. My vogue in life is the useful. The music of the ordinary school-girl, after years of toil, is merely regarded as an accomplishment, and generally as an unpleasant one; therefore I have let my music drop.”

“Dear, dear! How extraordinary of Miss Fox not to let me know,” said Mrs. Chetwynd. “Well, Marjorie, you at least play?” said her mother.

“Yes, mother,” in a somewhat solemn style. “I can give you one of Bach’s fugues, if you like.”

“Do so, my dear. I have spent a great deal of money on your music, and should like to hear the result.”

Marjorie rose, went to the piano, sat down, and began to thunder loudly. She had scarcely any taste for music, and she played several wrong notes. Mrs. Chetwynd had a carefully trained ear, and she quite shuddered when Marjorie crashed out some of her terrible discords.

Having finished the fugue, which took a considerable time, the young girl rose from the piano amid a profound silence. Eileen had turned away and was engrossed in a book on cookery which she had picked up from a side-table. She was muttering to herself half-aloud:

“Take of flour one ounce, butter, cream, three eggs, and – ”

“What are you doing, Eileen?” said the mother.

Eileen made no reply.

Marjorie seated herself on a chair near her mother.

“I hope you liked that fugue?” she said. “I took tremendous pains learning it. I got up every morning an hour earlier than the others during the whole of last term, simply because I intended to play that fugue of Bach’s to you.”

“It was a great pity, dear,” began Mrs. Chetwynd; then she sighed and stopped.

“A pity, mother? What in the world do you mean?”

“Nothing, love; we will talk of all those things to-morrow.”

“What a terrible day to-morrow promises to be,” said Marjorie, glancing towards Eileen. “I can see that mother is going to let the vials of her wrath loose. Oh yes, you dear old mammy, you are – you cannot deny it. But we are not such dreadful girls after all. All we want to do is this: we want to go our own way.”

“Your own way, Eileen – your own way?”

“Yes, mammy, our own way; and you can go yours. Then we shall get on together like a house on fire. Now, what are you winking at me for, Letitia?”

“I was not winking at you,” said Letitia. “I was wondering if Aunt Helen would like to hear me sing.”

“Certainly, my dear; but I never knew before that you had a voice.”

“I have only a little voice; but I have made the most of my opportunities. I won’t sing if you would rather not.”

“On the contrary, dear; I should like to hear you.”

“A ballad, I suppose?” said Letitia.

“Yes; I am fond of ballads. What do you know?”

“All the usual ones, I think,” replied Letitia. “I will sing ‘Robin Adair’ if that will suit you.”

“I am fond of ‘Robin Adair,’” said the widow; “but few people can render those beautiful words to satisfaction.”

Letitia volunteered to try. She sat down to the piano; her accompaniment was fresh and rippling, her voice clear, not particularly strong, but wonderfully true. It had a note of sympathy in it too, which rang through the old room.

Mrs. Chetwynd put down her knitting with a sigh of pleasure. The two girls sat with their hands lying idly in their laps, and gazed at their cousin.

When the old ballad came to an end, Mrs. Chetwynd felt tears not far from her eyes.

Oh, if only Eileen and Marjorie were like Letitia!

Marjorie suddenly jumped to her feet.

“Are you crying, mother?” she said, going up to her mother. “Oh, it’s just like that wicked Lettie. To hear her sing you would suppose that she was the most sentimental creature in the world: but don’t you believe a word of it, mammy. She has not one scrap of sentiment in her composition; she is the most worldly-wise little soul that I have ever come across. – Now, Lettie, don’t be a humbug; sing something in which your real feelings appear – a modern love-song, for instance, or something about fine dress, or nothing to wear, or anything else in your real style. It’s positively wrong of you to deceive mother in the way you are doing.”

Letitia looked gently reproachful. She said she did not know any song about nothing to wear, nor any song either about dress; but she would sing “Shadowland” if Mrs. Chetwynd wished it.

This song again brought the widow to the verge of tears. Lettie then rose and shut the piano.

“You at least, my dear, have derived benefit from your education,” she said. “How I wish your dear father and my dear husband were alive to hear you.”

“Father could always see through humbugs,” said Eileen to Marjorie.

“Yes,” replied Marjorie; “but don’t you see whatever mother is she is not a humbug?”

“Only we don’t want Lettie to twist her round her little finger, do we?” said Eileen.

“No; not that it greatly matters. Poor mother. I expect Lettie will do very much what we do; but I’m not sure. We must only wait and see.”

The girls retired to bed; but Mrs. Chetwynd sat up late, wishing much that she had Mrs. Acheson to consult with.

What was to be done if Marjorie and Eileen went on in this peculiar manner which they had done that evening? Really, when everything was considered, they were very little better than Belle, and Belle happened to be Mrs. Chetwynd’s bête noire.

“If only pretty, graceful, accomplished Letitia were my own daughter! She is a dear child, and yet I cannot quite cordially take to her,” thought the widow. “I don’t know what is the matter with her. I have no fault whatever to find. I suppose it is because she is not my own. Now Marjorie and Eileen rub me the wrong way every time they open their lips, and yet I love them with all my heart and soul. How handsome they are too! Anything could be done with them if only they would submit to the ordinary regulations of polite society. What terrible times these modern days are! Mothers have little or no influence over their own children. The children take the upper hand and – keep it. But I just vow that Marjorie and Eileen shall submit to me in my own house. Poor darlings, they are as loving as possible; but they have been under some dreadful pernicious influence. I could never guess that a school so highly recommended as Miss Marchland’s was would send back girls in the condition Marjorie and Eileen are in. No manners, disgraceful in appearance, and no accomplishments. What agony I went through while Marjorie was playing that fugue! She must never attempt to play in public. Eileen, who really had a taste for music, will not cultivate it, because, forsooth, she is not a genius. The two girls mean to be merely useful – merely useful, with eyes like those, and lips and teeth. My dear, dear, ridiculous children, society will soon knock all that nonsense out of your heads. Yes, I must present them both as soon as possible. I shall order their court dresses to-morrow. But that terrible cropped hair – straight too, not a scrap of curl in it. Oh dear, what is to be done; and they are both on such a large scale? They would make handsome boys. What a pity they are not boys. Dear me, I am an unhappy woman. If Letitia were my daughter, it would be plain sailing, but as it is I am at my wits’ end.”

By and by Mrs. Chetwynd went upstairs. She hesitated on the second landing, where her own room was. On the next floor were the girls’ rooms, luxuriously and beautifully furnished. It occurred to her to go up and look at her darlings asleep. She did so, opening the door of Marjorie’s room first. Marjorie was in bed, curled up as her fashion was, with the bedclothes tucked tightly round her. Her cheeks were slightly flushed, and the long black lashes looked particularly handsome as they lay against her rosy cheeks. But what a condition the room was in! What was the good of a maid when girls went to bed in such a state of untidiness? Clothes tossed helter-skelter everywhere; one little shoe near the fireplace, one near the wardrobe; petticoats flopped on the nearest chair; the shabby serge dress, which Mrs. Chetwynd considered only to be fit for the next bag sent from the Kilburn Society, hanging on the brass knob of the bed.

Marjorie sighed in her sleep, and Mrs. Chetwynd bent over her.

“Dear, lovely child, I surely shall be able to mold her to my wishes,” she thought; never considering that Marjorie’s chin, with its cleft in the middle, was full of obstinacy, and that her lips were as firm as they were beautiful.

Mrs. Chetwynd went on to the next room. Eileen was also sound asleep, and her room was also untidy. The girl looked lovely, with her classical features and the long straight lashes lying upon the soft rounded cheeks. Yes, they were both singularly handsome girls, and very like one another. Of course they would do splendidly yet. Perhaps the world would appreciate them all the more for their little eccentricities. They must appear as débutantes at the very first drawing-room. Yes, to-morrow at an early hour, Madame Coray should put their presentation dresses in hand.

Mrs. Chetwynd hesitated a moment before she went into Letitia’s room. It would not be very interesting to look at Letitia asleep; but still, what she did for her own girls she invariably did for her husband’s niece.

Letitia’s room was in exquisite and perfect order, everything put neatly away, and Letitia herself lying in her little white bed with her arms folded across her chest and her hair swept back from her pretty brow. Mrs. Chetwynd could not help feeling drawn to her. She bent and kissed her on her forehead. She had not dared to do this to her own girls, fearing to awaken them.

She then went back to her room, to sleep as best she could.

CHAPTER V – THE MODERN VIEW OF LIFE

The girls came home on Wednesday, and on the following Saturday Mrs. Acheson and Belle were coming to tea. In the meantime Mrs. Chetwynd had gone through more than one stormy scene with Marjorie and Eileen. The girls positively declined to be presented to her gracious Majesty.

“You may get the dresses, mother,” said Eileen, “only I sincerely hope you won’t, for we cannot wear them. We don’t quite know yet what we mean to do with our lives; but fashionable society girls we will not be. Now, mammy, why should we be fashionable girls if we dislike the idea?”

Here Marjorie, notwithstanding her rude words, went on her knees, wound her strong young arms round her mother’s waist, and looked with such imploring eyes into her face that, notwithstanding her anger, Mrs. Chetwynd was touched in spite of herself.

“We should hate it all, you know, dear mammy,” said Marjorie. “I speak for Eileen as well as for myself. – You agree with me, Eileen, don’t you?”

“Of course,” replied Eileen. “Well, Marjorie, have it out with the dear mammy, for I must go at once to see Fowler’s last baby. I am taking it a rattle and some chocolates.”

“You will kill a young infant if you give it chocolate,” said Mrs. Chetwynd, “and I forbid you to go to Fox Buildings. No young ladies from my house must go near such a place.”

“Dear me, mother, why not?” said Eileen.

“Eileen, my dear, I decline to argue with you. Really, when I think of all that you two girls are doing to oppose me, and render my life miserable, I could almost wish that you were back at school.”

“Of course, mother,” said Eileen gravely, “if you positively forbid me to go I will obey you.”

She sat down on the nearest chair and stared hard at her mother.

“I do forbid you, Eileen. Young ladies of eighteen are not allowed to go about London alone.”

“But really, mother, you are mistaken,” said Marjorie; “in these days they are. All that dreadful period of bondage in which the girl of twenty years ago was kept has passed away; the English girl of the present day has her freedom. I have read all about it; I know it to be a fact. College girls, too, have told me. You cannot deny us our birthright, mammy, can you?”

“College girls? What do you know about college girls – those awful, underbred, unwomanly creatures!” said Mrs. Chetwynd.

“You say that, mother, because you do not know them.”

“Well, I do know one thing,” continued Mrs. Chetwynd, her eyes filling with tears. “I cannot imagine what I have done to deserve such girls as you two. I have taken no end of pains with you both. Of course I was obliged to stay in India during your father’s lifetime, which prevented my having as much influence over you as I should otherwise have obtained: but I little thought to come back to such a reward as this. I sent you to the best schools I could afford, and have always attended to your wardrobe, and given you plenty of pocket-money. I have done all that a mother could do, and now just when I was beginning to expect my reward, there come back to me a couple of – ”

“Tomboys, mother darling,” said Marjorie. She wound her arms still tighter round her mother’s waist, and kissed her on her cheek. “Mammy, you’ll get accustomed to us after a bit,” she cried. “We are not in the ordinary groove; but there are hundreds of girls like us. There will be more girls like us year after year; all the modern training tends to it, mammy, and you cannot keep us back. We are in the van, and in the van we will stay. Mammy, we decline to go into society, we decline to turn night into day, we decline to spend unnecessary money upon clothes.”

“And what do you intend to do, Marjorie; if I may venture to ask?” said Mrs. Chetwynd, folding her hands in an attitude of despair. “Having declined so much, is there anything you agree to?”

“Oh yes, lots, mother, now you are becoming reasonable, and we can talk. First of all, what we want to know is, what allowance you will give us both?”

“Your father made an extraordinary will,” said Mrs. Chetwynd. “I cannot understand what made him do it, and I think he was wrong.”

“What was it? Do let us hear,” said Eileen.

“It was this: By his will, when you leave school and reach the age of eighteen, you are both entitled to one hundred and fifty pounds a year, and you are not to be coerced in the way you spend the money.”

“Hip! hip! hurrah!” cried Eileen. She sprang suddenly to her feet, danced a minute in front of her mother, and then clapped Marjorie on the shoulder.

“Then, of course, everything is plain,” she cried. “We won’t spend any of that money on dress. Who would waste a precious hundred and fifty pounds in stupid things like frocks?”

“Well, children, I shall give you each a proper wardrobe to start with,” said Mrs. Chetwynd. “You have not brought anything fit to be seen from school. Those dresses you have on now are simply disgusting; they are not even clean. I have ordered the carriage, my dears, and am going to take you at once to Madame Coray’s. She will make you two or three everyday dresses and some evening ones.”

“But at least not with our money,” cried Marjorie; “that we cannot permit to be spent in such willful waste. Oh, mother, please, do allow us to dress as we like; do let us order our lives in our own way – do, mammy, do.”

“I must know first of all what is your own way.”

“We want to be useful members of society, and to spend scarcely any money on clothes. We have told you that we do not intend to be presented to Her Majesty.”

“Well, I hope to get you to change your minds yet; but I will not order the presentation dresses to-day.”

“That’s a dear. I knew you would submit. – She is the best little mother in the whole world,” said Eileen, rapturously kissing her parent, and then clasping Marjorie’s hand.

“Then, you will give in all round, mammy dear?” said Marjorie.

“Suppose I say no?” answered Mrs. Chetwynd.

“Then I am afraid – ” said Eileen. She glanced at Marjorie, and Marjorie nodded.

Mrs. Chetwynd suddenly rose.

“Girls,” she said, “don’t say what you are just about to say. I can guess what it is, and I am not prepared to listen. Until you are of age it is your duty to obey me. Notwithstanding your father’s will, and the improper allowance which I am forced to give you both, as long as you are under my roof you must be clothed as I wish, and you must not go to places that I disapprove of. My poor, dear, misguided children, a woman’s true aim when she reaches maturity is to marry a good husband, and to have a happy home of her own.”

“But I never intend to marry,” said Marjorie. “I have not the faintest idea of putting myself under the control of any man. I mean to keep my liberty and have a jolly good, useful time.”

“And so do I,” said Eileen. “I mean to have a very full and very busy life, mother.”

“Ditto,” cried Marjorie.

“Letitia has not yet spoken,” said Mrs. Chetwynd. – “What are your wishes, my love?”

“Well, of course, Aunt Helen, I should like a society-life very much.”

“But you’re just not going to have it, Lettie,” said Eileen. “You’ll have to do exactly what we do. We have no idea of having our own mother fagged to death; an old woman like mother taken out day and night at all hours, just to give you a jolly time.”

“But, really, my dears, I am not an old woman,” said Mrs. Chetwynd indignantly.

“Well, mother, you are not as young as you used to be. You are forty, if you are a day, and no one at forty can be called a chicken. It’s much more healthy for you to go to bed in good time. Oh, I have read a lot about society and all its trash. It just encourages one to be terribly immoral.”

“Immoral! my dear Eileen. It’s awful to hear you speak.”

“But it’s true, mother. For instance, people tell no end of fibs – lies I call them. They say they are not at home when they are; they pretend to be delighted to see a person who in reality they loathe. Oh, I am acquainted with the ghastly round; and if you think I am going to let myself in for it you are mistaken. But, dear old mammy, you shan’t be worried any longer; we will go out with you now, and we’ll be as good as gold, and you shall get us each a new dark-blue serge dress and a new sailor hat, and a pair of thick dogskin gloves. Surely that is enough.”

“And what about evening dresses, and Sunday dresses, and visiting dresses?” said Mrs. Chetwynd.

“As to Sunday dresses,” cried Marjorie, “I don’t see why neat serge dresses should not do quite well for church; and as to visiting dresses, we do not intend to visit in the ordinary sense. The friend who does not wish to see us in our serge costumes we do not intend to cultivate.”

“There are still evening dresses, my dear.”

“But, mother, you are not going to take us out to dinners?”

“You must have one or two dinner dresses,” said Mrs. Chetwynd, “and that is an end of the matter. Go upstairs and put on your hats. I am ashamed to go out with you as matters now stand.”

The two girls left the room linking their arms together. Letitia remained behind.

“May I ask, Letitia,” said Mrs. Chetwynd, “when this madness seized Marjorie and Eileen?”

“It has been coming on gradually,” said Letitia. “It is very bad, I know. I was afraid you would suffer a good deal when they explained themselves.”

“But when did it begin?”

“Well, two or three girls – Americans, I think – joined the school last term, and Marjorie and Eileen became great friends with them; and just about then they began to change. They were always careless with regard to their dress, and would not allow Miss Ross – our English teacher who had us under her special care – to spend the money which you sent on dress at all.”

“And do you mean to tell me that Miss Ross consulted them?”

“Well, Aunt Helen, they had an extraordinary way of pleading their own cause. I cannot understand it. They have saved a good deal of money, if that is any satisfaction.”

“None whatever, child. I have got more money than I know what to do with, and I choose my girls to look nice. Letitia, what a pity it is you are not my own child.”

“For some reasons I wish I were, Aunt Helen.”

“You are so very neat, dear, so very dainty – that is the only word for it. What am I to do with those other two?”

“I am dreadfully afraid you will have to give them their own way.”

“Their own way! Nonsense, my dear! impossible. Children, only eighteen.”

“But old enough, according to your own showing, Aunt Helen, to be presented to the Queen, to enter society, and to marry if suitable husbands come to the fore.”

“Of course; but they would be presented to the Queen by their mother; they would enter society under their mother’s wing; and if they married, their husbands would look after them. Now to allow those wild imps, those irresponsible girls, to have their own way is not to be heard of for a single moment.”

“Well, Aunt Helen, I am sure it will come right in the end. They are queer, obstinate, out-of-the-way girls; but they have got fine characters, and would not willingly pain you. The only thing is that they look at life from a totally different standpoint. I’ll have a right good talk with them, so try not to fret. I will put it to them that it is their bounden duty to yield to you. They often mind what I say when they won’t mind their elders. But is not that the carriage? Had not I better get ready?”

CHAPTER VI – BELLE THE SAGE

Belle Acheson was an ideal scholarly girl of the latter end of the nineteenth century. She wore spectacles, not pince-nez. Her hair was parted smoothly on her forehead and done up in a tiny knot or dab at the back of her neck. Her forehead was high, her complexion sallow, her eyes short-sighted and small. She had a long upper lip, and her mouth was thin and wide. In figure she was extremely spare, her feet and hands were large, and her shoulders angular. She was a plain girl, and she gloried in the fact. Belle Acheson lived altogether for the joys of intellect; to learn was her delight. The more abstruse, the more dry, the science, the more eagerly did Belle absorb it, and make it part of herself. She was a good classical scholar, and was also fond of modern languages. She studied Shakespeare, not for his beauty of language, but for his archaisms. She adored musty professors, and never had a good word to say for an athletic man. Her ambition was to carry off double-firsts, and some people thought that she had a fair chance of obtaining this blue ribbon.

Belle was an inmate of St. Wode’s College, Wingfield. There were four halls of residence at St. Wode’s, and Belle occupied an attic in North Hall. She had been there now for three terms, and had already made a profound impression on her tutors. She amassed knowledge with great rapidity. No nut was too hard for her to crack.

Now, if there was a girl in the entire of England that Mrs. Chetwynd loathed it was Belle Acheson. Mrs. Acheson was Mrs. Chetwynd’s old friend. Their husbands had fought side by side in the same campaigns in India. They had belonged to the same regiment. She felt that nothing would induce her to desert her old friend; but alas! that old friend’s daughter! It was fearful to think that such a girl was coming to pay a visit to Marjorie and Eileen at this important crisis in their lives.

“Can anything be done to prevent it?” said Mrs. Chetwynd on the morning of the fatal day. She was addressing Letitia, who was gradually getting herself more and more into the good woman’s confidence.

“My dear Lettie,” she said, “I would honestly pay twenty pounds to any hansom-driver to let his horse fall between here and Mrs. Acheson’s in order to give Belle a wrench of the arm or a twist of the wrist, or something which would give her sufficient pain to send her home again.”

“Then, as those are your very heathenish wishes, Aunt Helen, you may be quite certain that Belle will arrive in perfect health, without any accident, not in a hansom, but in that two-horse conveyance which is meant for the convenience of the poorer people of London.”

Mrs. Chetwynd sighed.