Penny Plain Part 10

"Pamela (she has asked me to call her that) trembles before her, and that makes Bella worse. She wants someone to stand up to her, to laugh at her grimness; she simply thinks when Pamela is charming to her that she is a poor creature.

"She is charming to everyone, this lodger of Bella's. Jock and Mhor and Mrs. M'Cosh are all at her feet. She brings us books and papers and chocolates and fruit, and makes us feel we are conferring the favour by accepting them. She is a real charmer, for when she speaks to you she makes you feel that no one matters to her but just you yourself.

And she is simple (or at least appears to be); she hasn't that Now-I-am-going-to-be-charming manner that is so difficult to bear. It is such fun talking to her, for she is very--pliable I think is the word I want. Accustomed to converse with people who constantly pull one up short with an 'Ah, now I don't agree,' or 'There, I think you are quite wrong,' it is wonderfully soothing to discuss things with someone who has the air of being convinced by one's arguments. It is weak, I know, but I'm afraid I agree with Mrs. M'Cosh, who described a friend as 'a rale nice buddy. She clinks wi' every word ye say.'

"I am thinking to myself how Great-aunt Alison would have dreaded Pamela's influence. She would have seen in her the personification of the World, the Flesh, and the Devil--albeit she would have been much impressed by her long descent: dear Aunt Alison.

"All the same, Davie, it is odd what an effect one's early training has.

D'you remember how discouraged G.-A. Alison was about our levity--especially mine? She once said bitterly that I was like the ell-woman--hollow--because I laughed in the middle of the Bible lesson.

And how antiquated and stuffy we thought her views, and took pleasure in a.s.suring ourselves that we had got far beyond them, and you spent an evening tea-less in your room because you said you would rather be a Buddhist than a Disruption Worthy--do you remember that?

"Yes, but Great-aunt Alison had builded better than she knew. When Pamela laughs 'How Biblical!' or says in her pretty, soft voice that our great-aunt's religion must have been a hard and ugly thing, I get hot with anger and feel I must stick unswervingly to the antiquated views. Is it because poor Great-aunt isn't here to make me? I don't know.

"Mhor is really surprisingly naughty. Yesterday I heard angry shouts from the road, and then I met Mhor sauntering in, on his face the seraphic expression he wears when some nefarious scheme has prospered, and in his hand the bra.s.s breakfast kettle. He had been pouring water on the pa.s.sers-by from the top of the wall. 'Only,' he explained to me, 'on the men who wore hard black hats, who could swear.'

"I told him the police would probably visit us in the course of the afternoon, and pointed out to him how ungentleman-like was his behaviour, and he said he was sorry; but I'm afraid he will soon think of some other wickedness.

"He thinks he can do anything he hasn't been told not to do, but how could I foresee that he would want to pour water on men with hard black hats, capable of swearing?

"I had almost forgotten to tell you, an old man came yesterday and wanted to see over the house. You can imagine what a scare I got--I made sure he wanted to buy it; but it turned out that he had lived at The Rigs as a boy, and had come back for old sake's sake. He looked ill and rather shabby, and I don't believe life had been very good to him. I did want to try and make up a little, but he was difficult. He was staying at the Temperance, and it seemed so forlorn that he should have no one of his own to come home to. He didn't look as if anybody had ever made a fuss of him. I asked him to stay with us for a week, but he wouldn't. I think he thought I was rather mad to ask him, and Pamela laughed at me about it.... She laughs at me a good deal and calls me a 'sentimentalist.' ...

"There is the luncheon bell.

"We are longing for your letter to-morrow to hear how you are settling down. Mrs. M'Cosh has baked some shortbread for you, which I shall post this afternoon.

"Love from each of us, and Peter.--Your

"JEAN."

CHAPTER VII

"Is this a world to hide virtues in?"

_Twelfth Night._

"You should never wear a short string of beads when you are wearing big earrings," Pamela said.

"But why?" asked Jean.

"Well, see for yourself. I am wearing big round earrings--right. I put on the beads that match--quite wrong. It's a question of line."

"I see," said Jean thoughtfully. "But how do you learn those things?"

"You don't learn them. You either know them, or you don't. A sort of instinct for dress, I suppose."

Jean was sitting in Pamela's bedroom. Pamela's bedroom it was now, certainly not Bella Bathgate's.

The swinging looking-gla.s.s had been replaced by one which, according to Pamela, was at least truthful. "The other one," she complained, "made me look pale green and drowned."

A cloth of fine linen and lace covered the toilet-table which was spread with brushes and boxes in tortoisesh.e.l.l and gold, quaint-shaped bottles for scent, and roses in a tall gla.s.s.

A jewel-box stood open and Pamela was pulling out earrings and necklaces, rings and brooches for Jean's amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Most of my things are at the bank," Pamela was saying as she held up a pair of Spanish earrings made of rows of pearls. "They generally are there, for I don't care a bit about ordinary jewels. These are what I like--odd things, old things, things picked up in odd corners of the world, things that have a story and a meaning. Biddy got me these turquoises in Tibet: that is a devil charm: isn't that jade delicious? I think I like Chinese things best of all."

She threw a string of cloudy amber round Jean's neck and cried, "My dear, how it becomes you. It brings out all the golden lights in your hair and eyes."

Jean sat forward in her chair and looked at her reflection in the gla.s.s with a pleased smile.

"I do like dressing-up," she confessed. "Pretty things are a great temptation to me. I'm afraid if I had money I would spend a lot in adorning my vile body."

"I simply don't know," said Pamela, "how people who don't care for clothes get through their lives. Clothes are a joy to the prosperous, a solace to the unhappy, and an interest always--even to old age. I knew a dear old lady of ninety-four whose chief diversion was to buy a new bonnet. She would sit before the mirror discarding model after model because they were 'too old' for her. One would have thought it difficult to find anything too old for ninety-four."

Jean laughed, but shook her head.

"Doesn't it seem to you rather awful to care about bonnets at ninety-four?"

"Not a bit," said Pamela. She was powdering her face as she spoke. "I like to see old people holding on, not losing interest in their appearance, making a brave show to the end.... Did you never see anyone use powder before, Jean? Your eyes in the gla.s.s look so surprised."

"Oh, I beg your pardon," said Jean, in great confusion, "I didn't mean to stare--" She hastily averted her eyes.

Pamela looked at her with an amused smile.

"There's nothing actively immoral about powdering one's nose, you know, Jean. Did Great-aunt Alison tell you it was wrong?"

"Great-aunt Alison never talked about such things," Jean said, flus.h.i.+ng hotly. "I don't think it's wrong, but I don't see that it's an improvement. I couldn't take any pleasure in myself if my face were made up."

Pamela swung round on her chair and laid her hands on Jean's shoulders.

"Jean," she said, "you're within an ace of being a prig. It's only the freckles on your little unpowdered nose, and the yellow lights in your eyes, and the way your hair curls up at the ends that save you.

Remember, please, that three-and-twenty with a perfect complexion has no call to reprove her elders. Just wait till you come to forty years."

"Oh," said Jean, "it's absurd of you to talk like that. As if you didn't know that you are infinitely more attractive than any young girl. I never know why people talk so much about _youth_. What does being young matter if you're awkward and dull and shy as well? I'd far rather be middle-aged and interesting."

"That," said Pamela, as she laid her treasures back in the box, "is one of the minor tragedies of life. One begins by being bored with being young, and as we begin to realise what an a.s.set youth is, it flies.

Rejoice in your youth, little Jean-girl, for it's a stuff will not endure.... Now we'll go downstairs. It's too bad of me keeping you up here."

"How you have changed this room," said Jean. "It smells so nice."

"It is slightly less forbidding. I am quite attached to both my rooms, though when Mawson and I are both here together I sometimes feel I must poke my arms out of the window or thrust my head up the chimney like Bill the Lizard, in order to get room. It is a great disadvantage to be too large for one's surroundings."

The parlour was as much changed as the bedroom.

The round table with the red-and-green cover that filled up the middle of the room had been banished and a small card-table stood against the wall ready to be brought out for meals. A Persian carpet covered the linoleum and two comfortable wicker-chairs filled with cus.h.i.+ons stood by the fireside. The sideboard had been converted into a stand for books and flowers. The blue vases had gone from the mantelshelf and two tall candlesticks and a strip of embroidery took their place. A writing-table stood in the window, from which the hard muslin curtains had been removed; there were flowers wherever a place could be found for them, and new books and papers lay about.