The Third Miss Symons Part 5

Entirely without enthusiasm, and with a dreary fighting against her lot, she made inquiries among her acquaintances as to where she might find charitable work. At length somebody knew somebody, who knew somebody who was working in London under a clergyman. After further inquiries it was found that the somebody was a lady, who would be very glad if Henrietta would come and live with her, while she saw how she liked the work.

The clergyman, the lady, and all the other workers, were earnest, enthusiastic, high-minded, and full of common sense. Henrietta was not one of these things. She was also very inaccurate, unpunctual, and forgetful, and if her failings were pointed out to her in the gentlest way she took offence, not because she was conceited, but because at her age she was beyond having things pointed out. She stayed at the work six months, and during that time she was always offended with somebody, and sometimes with everybody.

The work was conducted more on charity organization lines than was usual in those days; money was not given without due consideration and consultation. This was difficult, and required more thinking than Henrietta cared for, so she saved herself trouble by bestowing five s.h.i.+llings whenever she wanted, feeling at the bottom of her heart that if she could not be liked for herself, she would buy liking rather than not be liked at all. The five s.h.i.+llings, however, did not buy either grat.i.tude or affection. She had always had a grudging way with people of a different cla.s.s from herself, and a conviction, in spite of indiscriminate alms, that she was being taken in. This infringement of the rules drove the Vicar to exasperation. His whole heart was in his work, and Henrietta's disloyalty hindered him at every turn.

"Can't she be asked to give up meddling in the parish?" he said to his wife.

"No dear, you know she can't, and she is very generous, even if she is tiresome. She has often been very helpful to you. You ought to be grateful."

"I'm not grateful," he said, striding about the room; "and then she is so petty, always these absurd squabbles. She hasn't got a spark of love for G.o.d or man. That's at the root of it all. We don't want a person of that sort here. If she cared about the people, even if she did pauperize them, I might think her a fool, but I could respect her; but you know she doesn't care for a soul but herself."

"I don't think it is that, but she's in great trouble, I'm sure she is.

When you were preaching about sorrow last Sunday, I saw her eyes were filled with tears."

"Were they?" he said, "I'm sorry. But look here, dear, I don't think this sort of work ought to be used as a soothing syrup, or as a rubbish-shoot for loafers, who don't know what else to do. If people aren't doing it because they think it's the greatest privilege in the world to be allowed to do it, I can't see that they do much good."

"I think you're too hard on her."

"Am I? I expect I am. I know I'm f.a.gged to death. She gives Mrs.

Wilkins pounds on the sly, which the old lady's been transforming into gin, and then when I explain the circ.u.mstances and implore her to leave well alone, she talks my head off with a torrent of incoherent statements, which have nothing whatever to do with the point."

It certainly was true that Henrietta did not do much good, and no one was more aware of this than herself. She stood outside the community, and looked in at them like a hungry beggar at a feast. How she envied their happiness, but she did not feel that she was, or ever could be, a partaker with them. As months pa.s.sed on, she drew no nearer to them.

They were all so busy, so strong in their union with one another, they did not seem to have time to stretch out a friendly hand to one who was at least as much in need of it as Mrs. Wilkins.

The lady she lived with found her trying. "A very trying person" was the phrase that went the round about her, "always criticizing small arrangements about the meals and the housekeeping," for Henrietta could not at first reconcile herself to having no authority to exert, and this jangling was not a good preparation for sisterly sympathy towards her.

The Vicar's wife might have become friends with her, but during the six months Henrietta was in the parish Mrs. Wharton was ill and hardly able to see anyone. Besides, she was shy, and the only time that Henrietta came to tea they never succeeded in getting beyond a comparison of foreign hotels.

Henrietta would have liked to confide her troubles, but as she grew older she had become a great deal more reserved, and also these troubles she was ashamed to speak of. To think that she had made her own sister, ill and miserable as she was, more ill and more miserable, she could not forgive herself; she was even harder on herself than Herbert had been.

As Mr. Wharton had said, it was useless engaging in this arduous work when her heart was elsewhere. When her six months of trial came to an end, it was clear that the only thing for her was to go. No one could pretend they were sorry, and as everyone imagined she was glad, there seemed no reason to disguise their feelings. They would have been surprised if they had known her thoughts as she sat at the evening service on her last Sunday. "Whatever I do, I fail; what is the use of my living? Why was I born?"

She said to Mr. Wharton in her farewell interview: "I know I have been very stupid at learning what was to be done, and I have not been willing to take advice. Now I look back, I see the mistakes I have made, and I have done harm instead of good. I want to give you"--she named a large sum considering the size of her income--"to spend as you think right, I hope that may help to make amends. I am very sorry."

He heard a quiver in her voice, and the dislike and irritation he had felt all the six months faded away.

"This is much too generous of you," he stammered. "It is my fault, all my fault. I have been so irritable, I haven't made allowances. My wife tells me of it constantly. I wish you would forgive me and give us another chance. Stay six months longer."

His awkwardness and distress almost disarmed her, but she had felt his snubs, and at nearly forty she was not going to be encouraged like a child. So that though for many reasons she longed to stay, she answered: "Thank you, it was a purely temporary arrangement; I have other plans."

As she walked home she wondered what the other plans were.

When in doubt, go abroad. She went abroad again for three months. Her companion was picked up from nowhere in particular, an odd woman like herself.

They went to Italy. Neither of them cared in the smallest degree for sculpture, architecture, painting, archaeology, poetry, history, politics, scenery, languages, or foreigners. These last Henrietta regarded as inferior Anglo-Indians regard natives, referring to them always as "those wretches."

Like most women she loved certain aspects in her garden at home, which were connected with incidents in her life. There was a path bordered by roses, along which they had walked when Evelyn announced her engagement, and a special old apple-tree reminded her of the night her mother died.

But to go and admire what Baedeker called a magnificent _coup d'oeil_ was no sort of pleasure to her.

However, she and Miss Gurney had one unending amus.e.m.e.nt, which Italy is peculiarly able to supply. They could make short visits to different towns, and fit sights into their days, as one fits pieces into a puzzle.

Henrietta found this sport most satisfying.

CHAPTER VIII

Just as they were getting tired of tables d'hote dinners, there came to their hotel an enthusiast for learning. It was before the days of women's colleges; they were established, but frequented only by pioneers, in whose ranks no Henriettas are to be found. But courses of lectures were so ordinary that not even the most timid could look askance at them. As philanthropy had failed, and no one could pretend that art could be a resource for Henrietta,--her career of sketches and two part-songs had been phenomenally short (invaluable as it has proved itself for many Englishwomen suffering from her complaint)--everything pointed to study as the next solution on the list.

Study. Henrietta had not read a book which required any mental exertion since her dozen chapters of "I Promessi Sposi," fifteen years ago.

Still, the lectures sounded pleasant to her; they were a novelty, they were--she could not think of anything else they were--a novelty must be their claim to distinction.

She and the travelling friend found a boarding-house near the lecture-room. London and the lodgings both looked dismal after the brightness of abroad, but they were excited at the prospect of establis.h.i.+ng themselves on their own account. It was enterprising, but not too enterprising.

Henrietta found a band of enthusiasts at the lecture; it seemed her fate to run up against enthusiasm she could not share. Young ladies, middle-aged ladies, even old ladies, all listening spellbound--at least if not absolutely spellbound, spellbound compared to Henrietta--to an elderly gentleman discoursing on Aristotle. For most of them Aristotle, and the satisfaction of using their minds were sufficient, but a little knot of middle-aged women in the front, with hair inclined to be short, and eyes bursting with intelligence, used learning as a symbol of emanc.i.p.ation. Lectures were their vote. Now they would be in prison.

Henrietta listened for five minutes, then suddenly her thoughts darted to her portmanteau: she had lost the key at Dieppe. They went on to the incivility at the Custom-house, the incivility of the waiter at Bale, the incivility of the gardener at her old home, the geranium bed in the garden--would her stepmother attend to it?--her father, was his eyesight really failing? She came back with a jump to find that the lecture had moved on several pages. She listened with fair success for another five minutes, then her mind wandered to her landlady at the lodgings; was she perfectly honest, did her expression inspire confidence? There was that pearl brooch Louie had given her; it was Louie's birthday to-morrow, she must write, and hear also how Tom was getting on in this his second term at school, she must send him a hamper. She had settled the contents of the hamper when she found that someone was speaking to her. The lecturer was asking whether she felt she would care to write a paper. He hoped as many ladies as possible would make an attempt at the papers; it would be a great pleasure and interest to him to look through them, etc.

On the way back she found Miss Gurney entranced with everything; she seemed to have picked up a great deal more than Henrietta. They went at once to a library and a bookshop to get what they had been advised to read, and Miss Gurney bought reams of paper. She was hard at work the whole evening. Henrietta had one of the books open before her, but she found the same difficulty in concentrating herself that she had done at the lecture. Miss Gurney was rapidly filling an exercise book with an abstract, and was keeping up a conversation as well.

"Ah _that_ was the piece I couldn't quite understand this morning. Yes I see, now it is quite clear. Look, Miss Symons. Oh, I shall learn Greek, I certainly shall, as he said, it will make it twenty times more interesting."

What were they all so excited about? Henrietta had never cared about abstract questions, and she could not see that there was any object in discovering what the ancient Greeks thought about them more than two thousand years ago. The evening before, she and Miss Gurney had had an interesting conversation on the weekly averages of house-books. Then she felt comfortable and on the solid earth. Why then, was she attending lectures on Aristotle? Well, because Miss Gurney had a friend whose cousin had married the lecturer, Professor Amery, and in the difficult problem of choosing a subject, when there was nothing she really cared to know about, this was as good a reason as any other.

Then Henrietta remembered how she and Emily Mence years ago at school, had argued the whole of Sat.u.r.day afternoon about Mary Queen of Scots, and had not been on speaking terms the following day, because Emily had called Mary frivolous. Had she ever really been that queer little girl?

Still she was anxious to give the lecturer a chance, most anxious, for she had already had to suffer from Minna and Louie's sympathy that the parish work was a failure. She read three chapters and fell asleep in the middle of the fourth, and went to bed half an hour earlier than usual. Next morning she could not remember a word of what she had read, but for two dates and one sentence, which remained in her head. "Even now, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, in spite of an unparalleled advance in our knowledge of the natural sciences, the world has not yet produced a mind, which can equal that of Aristotle in its astounding versatility and profundity of learning." She determined to persevere, but was it her subconscious self which discovered a vast arrear of letters which it was inc.u.mbent on her to answer before she thought of anything else?

After the lecture there was a cla.s.s at which everyone talked. Even the dear old lady next to Henrietta was asking a quavering question. Yes, a little delicate old lady had energy to keep the current of the lecture in her head. She said that Aristotle's problem whether it was possible for slaves to have ordinary virtues, made her think of the difference in the Christian teaching of St. Paul's epistles. Had any of the other Greek philosophers been more humane in their views on slavery? Then another voice struck in, and compared the ancient idea of slavery with the slave code of the United States. The voice was rather strident, but not unpleasant. It had a great deal to say, and for some minutes seemed likely to take the lecture altogether from the mouth of the lecturer.

Henrietta looked in its direction, and saw a small apple-cheeked elderly lady. The voice and the face both set her thinking, and by the end of the lecture she was certain that the elderly lady was Miss Arundel. She spoke, and when Miss Arundel had recollected who she was (it took a little time), Henrietta received a most cordial invitation to tea.

Miss Arundel lived with a niece in a couple of rooms quite close to Henrietta. Mrs. Marston was dead, and Miss Arundel had retired from the school with just enough to live in decent comfort.

"So now, after teaching all my life, I am giving myself the treat of learning, and I can't tell you how I am enjoying it, Miss Symons. Ada and I both like Professor Amery so much." And she prosed on about the lecture and the books she was reading, and did not much care to talk over the old times, which were still very dear to Henrietta. It amazed Henrietta to think that she had once blushed and trembled at the look of this fussy, garrulous little governess.

She might be something of a bore, but there was no question of her happiness, her interest in life. She had been getting up at six the last three mornings that she might finish a book, a large book in two volumes with close print, that had to be returned to the library. Henrietta could imagine nothing in the world for which she would get up at six o'clock. Then her thoughts went like lightning to the morning when the telegram had come telling of little Madeline's death. The wound she had thought healed burst out afresh; for a few seconds she felt as if she could hardly breathe. Get up at six o'clock, of course she would have forfeited her sleep with joy, night after night. In the midst of envy, she felt something like contempt for Miss Arundel as a child running after shadows.

On her way home, she compared her past with Miss Arundel's. Miss Arundel could look back on busy, successful, happy years. Her room was filled with tributes from old pupils, they were continually writing to her and coming to see her, that Henrietta knew; she did not know how often they had thanked her, and told her what they owed her.

Then she envied Miss Arundel's powers of mind. After forty years of unceasing and exhausting work she seemed as fresh as a schoolgirl, and far more capable of learning, while Henrietta after twenty years of rest, had not merely lost all the qualities she had had as a child, but had gained none from age and experience to take their place. The realization of this fact startled and humiliated her. If her powers had already declined at forty, what was to happen in the twenty years of life that she might reasonably count upon as still before her?

She thought of Miss Arundel's words: "Etta Symons is a girl with possibilities; I shall be interested to see how she will turn out." Miss Arundel had long forgotten them, and now looked on Henrietta simply as a co-member of the lectures, but she said to her niece after Henrietta had been to tea, "What a very no-how person Miss Symons is; I should like to shake her."

Henrietta tried her hardest to work at the lectures, to recover if possible what she had lost, but it was no use. A person of more character and determination might have succeeded, in spite of the long years of mental self-indulgence, so might a person more ready to take advice. But at forty, as I have said, she felt she was beyond advice, so she would not notice Miss Gurney's hints. She chose to despise her numberings and brackets, though she was half-envious of them. And, however contemptible these aids may be to a real student, they were evidently the one hope for Henrietta's foggy mind.

She began a paper on the sly, and with much sweat of brow the following sentence emerged: "There are a number of celebrated writers in ancient Greece, and among the number we may notice Aristotle, who wrote a number of celebrated books, among which two called the 'Ethics' and 'Republic'

are very celebrated. He also wrote many other works, but none are so celebrated as the two above mentioned." She had not written a paper for twenty-three years, and she felt as helpless as if she were trying to express herself in French. Her essays had been well thought of at school.

As she was floundering along, up came Miss Gurney and looked over her shoulder. "Oh Miss Symons, I should have a margin if I were you; I know Professor Amery likes a margin for the corrections, he said so himself.