Although Fr?ulein had charge over the girls’ education, Mr Asplin reserved to himself the right of superintending their studies and dictating their particular direction. He was so accustomed to training boys for a definite end that he had no patience with the ordinary aimless routine of a girl’s school course, and in the case of his daughters had carefully provided for their different abilities and tastes. Esther was a born student, a clear-headed, hard-thinking girl, who took a delight in wrestling with Latin verbs and in solving problems in Euclid, while she had little or no artistic faculty. He put her through much the same course as his own boys, gave her half an hour’s private lesson on unoccupied afternoons, and cut down the two hours’ practising on the piano to a bare thirty minutes. Esther had pleaded to give up music altogether, on the ground that she had neither love nor skill for this accomplishment, but to this the vicar would not agree.
“You have already spent much time over it, and have passed the worst of the drudgery; it would be folly to lose all you have learnt,” he said. “You may not wish to perform in public, but there are many other ways in which your music may be useful. In time to come you would be sorry if you could not read an accompaniment to a song, play bright airs to amuse children, or hymn tunes to help in a service. Half an hour a day will keep up what you have learned, and so much time you must manage to spare.”
With Mellicent the case was almost exactly opposite. It was a waste of time trying to teach her mathematics, she had not sufficient brain power to grasp them, and if she succeeded in learning a proposition by heart like a parrot, it was only to collapse into helpless tears and protestations when the letters were altered, and, as it seemed to her, the whole argument changed thereby.
Fr?ulein protested that it was impossible to teach Mellicent to reason; but the vicar was loath to give up his pet theory that girls should receive the same hard mental training as their brothers. He declared that if the girl were weak in this direction, it was all the more necessary that she should be trained, and volunteered to take her in hand for half an hour daily, to see what could be done. Fr?ulein accepted this offer with a chuckle of satisfaction, and the vicar went on with the lessons several weeks, patiently plodding over the same ground without making the least impression on poor Mellicent’s brain, until there came one happy never-to-be-forgotten morning when Algebra and Euclid went spinning up to the ceiling, and he jumped from the table with a roar of helpless laughter.
“Oh, baby! baby! this is past all bearing! We might try for a century, and never get any further. I cannot waste any more time.” Then, seeing the large tears gathering, he framed the pretty face in his hands, and looked at it with a tender smile. “Never mind, darling! there are better things in this world than being clever and learned. You will be our little house-daughter; help mother with her work, and play and sing to father when he is tired in the evening. Work hard at your music, learn how to manage a house, to sew and mend and cook, and you will have nothing to regret. A woman who can make a home, has done more than many scholars.”
So it came to pass that Mellicent added the violin to her accomplishments, and was despatched to her own room to practise exercises, while her elder sister wrestled with problems and equations.
When Peggy Saville arrived, here was a fresh problem, for Fr?ulein reported that the good child could not add five and six together without tapping them over on her finger; was as ignorant of geography as a little heathen, and had so little ear for music that she could not sing “Rule Britannia” without branching off into “God save the Queen.” But when it came to poetry!—Fr?ulein held up her hands in admiration. It was absolutely no effort to that child to remember, her eyes seemed to flash down the page, and the lines were her own, and as she repeated them her face shone, and her voice thrilled with such passionate delight that Esther and Mellicent had been known to shed tears at the sound of words which had fallen dead and lifeless from their own lips. And at composition, how original she was! What a relief it was to find so great a contrast to other children! When it was the life of a great man which should be written, Esther and Mellicent began their essays as ninety-nine out of a hundred schoolgirls would do, with a flat and obvious statement of birth, birthplace, and parentage; but Peggy disdained such commonplace methods, and dashed headlong into the heart of her subject with a high-flown sentiment, or a stirring assertion which at once arrested the reader’s interest. And it was the same with whatever she wrote; she had the power of investing the dullest subject with charm and brightness. Fr?ulein could not say too much of Peggy’s powers in this direction, and the vicar’s eye brightened as he listened. He asked eagerly to be allowed to see the girl’s manuscript book, and summoned his wife from pastry-making in the kitchen to hear the three or four essays which it contained.
“What do you think of those for a girl of fourteen? There’s a pupil for you! If she were only a boy! Such dash—such spirit—such a gift of words! Do you notice her adjectives? Exaggerated, no doubt, and over-abundant, but so apt, so true, so strong! That child can write: she has the gift. She ought to turn out an author of no mean rank.”
“Oh, dear me! I hope not. I hope she will marry a nice, kind man who will be good to her, and have too much to do looking after her children to waste her time writing stories,” cried Mrs Asplin, who adored a good novel when she could get hold of one, but harboured a prejudice against all women-authors as strong-minded creatures, who lived in lodgings, and sported short hair, inky fingers, and a pen behind the ear. Mariquita Saville was surely destined for a happier fate. “When a woman can live her own romance, why need she trouble her head about inventing others?”
Her husband looked at her with a quizzical smile.
“Even the happiest life is not all romance, dear. It sometimes seems unbearably prosaic, and then it is a relief to lose oneself in fiction. You can’t deny that! I seem to have a remembrance of seeing someone I know seated in a big chair before this very fire devouring a novel and a Newton pippin together on more Saturday afternoons than I could number.”
“Tuts!” said his wife, and blushed a rosy red, which made her look ridiculously young and pretty. Saturday afternoon was her holiday-time of the week, and she had not yet outgrown her schoolgirl love of eating apples as an accompaniment to an interesting book; but how aggravating to be reminded of her weakness just at this moment of all others! “What an inconvenient memory you have!” she said complainingly. “Can’t a poor body indulge in a little innocent recreation without having it brought up against her in argument ever afterwards? And I thought we were talking about Peggy! What is at the bottom of this excitement? I know you have some plan in your head.”
“I mean to see that she reads good books, and only books that will help, and not hinder, her progress. The rest will come in time. She must learn before she can teach, have some experience of her own before she can imagine the experiences of others; but writing is Peggy’s gift, and she has been put in my charge. I must try to give her the right training.”
From that time forward Mr Asplin studied Peggy with a special interest, and a few evenings later a conversation took place among the young people which confirmed him in his conclusion as to her possibilities. Lessons were over for the day, and girls and boys were amusing themselves in the drawing-room, while Mr Asplin read the Spectator, and his wife knitted stockings by the fire. Mellicent was embroidering a prospective Christmas present, an occupation which engaged her leisure hours from March to December; Esther was reading, and Peggy was supposed to be writing a letter, but was, in reality, talking incessantly, with her elbows planted on the table, and her face supported on her clasped hands. She wore a bright pink frock, which gave a tinge of colour to the pale face, her hair was unbound from the tight pigtail and tied with a ribbon on the nape of her neck, from which it fell in smooth heavy waves to her waist. It was one of the moments when her companions realised with surprise that Peggy could look astonishingly pretty upon occasion; and Oswald, from the sofa, and Max and Bob, from the opposite side of the table, listened to her words with all the more attention on that account.
She was discussing the heroine of a book which they had been reading in turns, pointing out the inconsistencies in her behaviour, and expatiating on the superior manner in which she—Mariquita—would have behaved, had positions been reversed. Then the boys had described their own imaginary conduct under the trying circumstances, drawing forth peals of derisive laughter from the feminine audience; and the question had finally drifted from “What would you do?” to “What would you be?” with the result that each one was eager to expatiate on his own pet schemes and ambitions.
“I should like to come out first in all England in the Local Examinations, get my degree of M.A., and be a teacher in a large High School,” said Esther solemnly. “At Christmas and Easter I would come home and see my friends, and in summer-time I’d go abroad and travel, and rub up my languages. Of course, what I should like best would be to be headmistress of Girton, but I could not expect that to come for a good many years. I must be content to work my way up, and I shall be quite happy wherever I am, so long as I am teaching.”
“Poor old Esther! and she will wear spectacles, and black alpaca dresses, and woollen mittens on her hands! Can’t I see her!” cried Max, throwing back his head with one of the cheery bursts of laughter which brought his mother’s eyes upon him with a flash of adoring pride. “Now there’s none of that overweening ambition about me. I could bear up if I never saw an improving book again. What I would like would be for some benevolent old millionaire to take a fancy to me, and adopt me as his heir. I feel cut out to be a country gentleman, and march about in gaiters and knickerbockers, looking after the property, don’t you know, and interviewing my tenants. I’d be strict with them, but kind at the same time; look into all their grievances, and put them right whenever I could. I’d make it a model place before I’d done with it, and all the people would adore me. That’s my ambition, and a very good one it is too; I defy anyone to have a better.”
“I should like to marry a very rich man with a big moustache, and a beautiful house in London with a fireplace in the hall,” cried Mellicent fervently. “I should have carriages and horses, and a diamond necklace and three children: Valentine Roy—that should be the boy—and Hildegarde and Ermyntrude, the girls, and they should have golden hair like Rosalind, and blue eyes, and never wear anything but white, and big silk sashes. I’d have a housekeeper to look after the dinners and things, and a governess for the children, and never do anything myself except give orders and go out to parties. I’d be the happiest woman that ever lived.”
Lazy Oswald smiled in complacent fashion.
“And the fattest! Dearie me, wouldn’t you be a tub! I don’t know that I have any special ambition. I mean to get my degree if I can, and then persuade the governor to send me a tour round the world. I like moving about, and change and excitement, and travelling is good fun if you avoid the fag, and provide yourself with introductions to the right people. I know a fellow who went off for a year, and had no end of a time; people put him up at their houses, and got up balls and dinners for his benefit, and he never had to rough it a bit. I could put in a year or two in that way uncommonly well.”
Rob had been wriggling on his chair and scowling in his wild-bear fashion all the while Oswald was speaking, and at the conclusion he relieved his feelings by kicking out recklessly beneath the table, with the result that Peggy sat up suddenly with a “My foot, my friend! Curb your enthusiasm!” which made him laugh, despite his annoyance.
“But it’s such bosh!” he cried scornfully. “It makes me sick to hear a fellow talk such nonsense. Balls and dinners—faugh! If that’s your idea of happiness, why not settle down in London and be done with it! That’s the place for you! I’d give my ears to go round the world, but I wouldn’t thank you to go with a dress suit and a valet; I’d want to rough it, to get right out of the track of civilisation and taste a new life; to live with the Bedouin in their tents as some of those artist fellows have done, or make friends with a tribe of savages. Magnificent! I’d keep a notebook with an account of all I did, and all the strange plants and flowers and insects I came across, and write a book when I came home. I’d a lot rather rough it in Africa than lounge about Piccadilly in a frock coat and tall hat.” Robert sighed at the hard prospect which lay before him as the son of a noble house, then looked across the table with a smile: “And what says the fair Mariquita? What r?le in life is she going to patronise when she comes to years of discretion?”
Peggy nibbled the end of her pen and stared into space.
“I’ve not quite decided,” she said slowly. “I should like to be either an author or an orator, but I’m not sure which. I think, on the whole, an orator, because then you could watch the effect of your words. It is not possible, of course, but what I should like best would be to be the Archbishop of Canterbury, or some great dignitary of the Church. Oh, just imagine it! To stand up in the pulpit and see the dim cathedral before one, and the faces of the people looking up, white and solemn.—I’d stand waiting until the roll of the organ died away, and there was a great silence; then I would look at them, and say to myself—‘A thousand people, two thousand people, and for half an hour they are in my power. I can make them think as I will, see as I will, feel as I will. They are mine! I am their leader.’—I cannot imagine anything in the world more splendid than that! I should choose to be the most wonderful orator that was ever known, and people would come from all over the world to hear me, and I would say beautiful things in beautiful words, and see the answer in their faces, and meet the flash in the eyes looking up into mine. Oh–h! if it could only—only be true; but it can’t, you see. I am a girl, and if I try to do anything in public I am as nervous as a rabbit, and can only squeak, squeak, squeak in a tiny little voice that would not reach across the room. I had to recite at a prize-giving at school once, and, my dears, it was a lamentable failure! I was only audible to the first three rows, and when it was over I simply sat down and howled, and my knees shook. Oh dear, the very recollection unpowers me! So I think, on the whole, I shall be an authoress, and let my pen be my sceptre. From my quiet fireside,” cried Peggy, with a sudden assumption of the Mariquita manner, and a swing of the arms which upset a vase of chrysanthemums, and sent a stream of water flowing over the table—“from my quiet fireside I will sway the hearts of men—”
“My plush cloth! Oh, bad girl—my new plush cloth! You dreadful Peggy, what will I do with you?” Mrs Asplin rushed forward to mop with her handkerchief and lift the dripping flowers to a place of safety, while Peggy rolled up her eyes with an expression of roguish impenitence.
“Dear Mrs Asplin, it was not I, it was that authoress. She was evolving her plots... Pity the eccentricities of the great!”