Catharine Furze Part 6

"Now, Miss Catharine, don't say that; it's a bad thing to hate what we must put up with. You never heard, did you, as Bellamy had a sister a good bit older than myself? She _was_ a tartar, and no mistake. She lived with Bellamy and kept house for him, and when we married, Bellamy said she must stay with us. She used to put on him as you never saw, but he, somehow, seemed never to mind it; some men don't feel such things, and some do, but most on 'em don't when it's a woman, but I think a woman's worse. Well, what was I saying?--she put on me just in the same way and come between me and the servant-girl and the men, and when I told them to go and do one thing, went and told them to do another, and I was young, and I thought when I was married I was going to be mistress, and she called me 'a chit' to her brother, and I mind one day I went upstairs and fell on my knees and cried till I thought my heart would break, and I said, 'O my G.o.d, when will it please Thee to take that woman to Thyself!'

Now to wish anybody dead is bad enough, but to ask the Lord to take 'em is awful; but then it was so hard to bear 'cause I couldn't say nothing about it, and I'm one of them as can't keep myself bottled up like ginger- beer. You don't remember old Jacob? He had been at Chapel Farm in Bellamy's father's time, and always looked on Bellamy as his boy, and used to be very free with him, notwithstanding he was the best creature as ever lived. He took a liking to me, and I needn't say that, liking of me, he didn't like Bellamy's sister. Well, I came down, and I went out of doors to get a bit of fresh air--for I'm always better out of doors--and I went up by the cart-shed, and being faint a bit, sat down on the waggon shafts. Old Jacob, he came by; I can see him now; it was just about Michaelmas time, a-getting dark after tea, though I hadn't had any, and he said to me, 'Hullo, missus, what are here for? and you've been a- cryin',' for I had my face toward the sky and was looking at it. I never spoke. 'I know what's the matter with you,' says he; 'do you think I don't? Now if you go on chafing of yourself, you'll worrit yourself into your grave, that's all. Last week there was something the matter with that there dog, and she howled night after night, and I never slept a wink. The first morning after she'd been a-yelping I was in a temper, and had half a mind to kill her. I felt as if she'd got a spite against me; but it come to me as she'd got no spite against _me_, and then all my worriting went away. I don't say as I slept much till she was better, but I didn't _worrit_. Now Bellamy's sister don't mean nothing against you. That's the way G.o.d-a-mighty made her.' I've never forgot what Jacob said, and I know it made a difference, but the Lord took her not long afterwards."

"But I don't see what that has to do with me. It isn't the same thing."

"Yes, that's just what Bellamy says. He says I always go on with anything that comes into my head; but then it has nothing to do with anything he is saying, and maybe that's true, for one thing seems always to draw me on to another, and so I go round like, and I don't know myself where I am when I've finished. A little more tea, my dear, if you please. And yet," continued Mrs. Bellamy, when she had finished half of her third cup, "what I meant to say really has to do with you. It's all the same. You wouldn't hate the Terrace so much if you knew that n.o.body meant to spite you, as Jacob says. Suppose your father was driven to the Terrace and couldn't help it, and there wasn't another house for him, you wouldn't hate it so much then. It isn't the Terrace altogether. Now, Miss Catharine, you won't mind my speaking out to you. You know you are my girl," and Mrs. Bellamy turned and kissed her; "you mustn't, you really mustn't. I've seen what was coming for a long time. Your mother and you ain't alike, but you mustn't rebel. I'm a silly old fool, and I know I haven't got a head, and what is in it is all mixed up somehow, but you'll be ever so much better if you leave your mother out of it, and don't, as I've told you before, go on dreaming she came here because you didn't want to come, or that she set herself up on purpose against you.

And then you can always run over to Chapel Farm just whenever you like, my pet, and there's your own room always waiting for you."

An hour afterwards, when Mrs. Bellamy had left, Mr. Furze came home. Mrs.

Furze was still upstairs, but consented to be coaxed down to supper. She pa.s.sed the drawing-room; the door was wide open, and she reflected bitterly upon the new carpet, the oleographs, and the schemes erected thereon. To think on what she had spent and what she had done, and then that Mrs. Colston should be received by a charwoman with a pail, should be shown into the room downstairs, and find it like a public-house bar!

If Mr. Furze had been there alone it would not so much have mattered, but the presence of wife and daughter sanctioned the vulgarity, not to say indecency. Mrs. Colston would naturally conclude they were accustomed to that sort of thing--that the pipe, Mrs. Bellamy and the sausages, the absence of Mr. Furze's coat and waistcoat, were the "atmosphere," as Mrs.

Furze put it, in which they lived.

"That's right; glad to see you are able to come down," said Mr. Furze.

"I must say that Catharine is partly the cause of my suffering. When Mrs. Colston called here Catharine sat like a statue and said not a word, but when her friend Mrs. Bellamy came she precipitated herself--yes, I say precipitated herself--into her arms. I've nothing to say against Mrs. Bellamy, but Catharine knows perfectly well that Mrs. Colston's intimacy is desired, and _that's_ the way she chose to behave. Mrs.

Bellamy was the last person I should have wished to see here this afternoon; an uneducated woman, a woman whom we could not pretend to know if we moved in Mrs. Colston's circle; and what we have done was all done for my child's benefit. She, I presume, would prefer decent society to that of peasants."

Catharine stopped eating.

"Mrs. Bellamy was the last person _I_ should have wished to see here."

"I don't know quite what you mean, but it is probably something disobedient and cruel," and Mrs. Furze became slightly hysterical again.

Catharine made no offer of any sympathy, but, leaving her supper unfinished, rose without saying good-night, and appeared no more that evening.

CHAPTER VI

"My dear," said Mrs. Furze to her husband the next night when they were alone, "I think Catharine would be much better if she were sent away from home for a time. Her education is very imperfect, and there are establishments where young ladies are taken at her age and finished. It would do her a world of good."

Mr. Furze was not quite sure about the finis.h.i.+ng. It savoured of a region outside the modest enclosure within which he was born and brought up.

"The expense, I am afraid, will be great, and I cannot afford it just now. There is no denying that business is no better; in fact, it is not so good as it was, notwithstanding the alterations."

"You cannot expect it to recover at once. Something must be done to put Catharine on a level with the young women in her position, and my notion is that everything which will help to introduce us into society will help you. Why does Mrs. Butcher go out so much? It is because she knows it is a good investment."

"An ironmonger is not a doctor."

"Who said he was?" replied Mrs. Furze, triumphant in the consciousness of mental superiority. "Furze," she once said to him, when it was proposed to elect him a guardian of the poor, "take my advice and refuse. Your _forte_ is not argument: you will never held your own in debate."

"I know an ironmonger is not a doctor," she continued. "_I_ of all people have reason to know it; but what I do say is, that the more we mix with superior people, the more likely you are to succeed, and that if you bury yourself in these days you will fail."

The italicised "I" was an allusion to a fiction that once Mrs. Furze might have married a doctor if she had liked, and thereby have secured the pre-eminence which the wife of a drug-dispenser a.s.sumes in a country town. The grades in Eastthorpe were very marked, and no caste distinctions could have been more rigid. The county folk near were by themselves. They a.s.sociated with none of the townsfolk, save with the rector, and even in that relations.h.i.+p there was a slight tinge of ex-officiosity. Next to the rector were the lawyer and the banker and the two maiden banker ladies in the Abbey Close. Looked at from a distance these might be supposed to stand level, but, on nearer approach, a difference was discernible. The banker and the ladies, although they visited the lawyer, were a shade beyond him. Then came the brewer. The days had not arrived when brewing--at least, on the large scale--is considered to be more respectable than a learned profession, and Mrs.

Colston, notwithstanding her wealth, was incessantly forced by the lawyer's wife to confess subordination. The brewer kept three or four horses for pleasure, and the lawyer kept only one; but "Colston's Entire"

was on a dozen boards in the town, and he supplied private families and sent in bills. The position of Mrs. Butcher was perhaps the most curious. She visited the rector, banker, lawyer, and brewer, and was always well received, for she was clever, smart, young, and well behaved.

She had established her position solely by her wits. She did not spend a quarter as much as Mrs. Colston, but she always looked better. She was well shaped, to begin with, and the fit of her garments was perfect. Not a wrinkle was to be seen in gown, gloves, or shoes. Mrs. Colston's fas.h.i.+on was that imposed on her by the dressmaker, but Ms. Butcher always had a style peculiarly her own. She knew the secret that a woman's attractiveness, so far as it is a matter of clothes, depends far more upon the manner in which they are made and worn than upon costliness. It was always thought that she ruled her husband and had just a spice of contempt for him. She gained thereby in Eastthorpe, at least with the men, for her superiority to him gave her an air which was slightly detached, free, and fascinating. She always drove when she went out with him, and it was really a sight worth seeing she bolt upright with her hands well down, her pretty figure showing to the best advantage the neat turn-out--for she was very particular on this point and understood horses thoroughly--and Butcher, leaning back, submissive but satisfied. She had made friends with the women too. She was much too shrewd to incur their hostility by openly courting the admiration of their husbands. She knew they did admire her, and that was enough. She was most deferential to Mrs. Colston, so much so that the brewer's wife openly expressed the opinion that she was evidently well bred, and wondered how Butcher managed to secure her. Furthermore she was useful, for her opinion, when anything had to be done, was always the one to be followed, and without her the church restoration would never have been such a success.

Eastthorpe, like Mrs. Colston, often marvelled that Butcher should have been so fortunate. It mostly knew everything about the antecedents of everybody in the town, but Mrs. Butcher's were not so well known. She came from Cornwall, she always said, and Cornwall was a long way off in those days. Her maiden name was Treherne, and Mrs. Colston had been told that Treherne was good Cornish. Moreover, soon after the marriage she found on the table, when she called on Mrs. Butcher, a letter which she could not help partly reading, for it lay wide open. All scruples were at once removed. It had a crest at the top, was dated from Helston, addressed Mrs. Butcher by a nickname, and was written in a most aristocratic hand--so Mrs. Colston averred to her intimate friends. She could not finish the perusal before Mrs. Butcher came into the room; but she had read enough, and the doctor's elect was admitted at once without reservation. Eastthorpe was slightly mistaken, but Mrs. Butcher's history cannot be told here.

So much by way of digression on Eastthorpe society. Mrs. Furze carried her point as usual. As for Catharine, she did not object, for there was nothing in Eastthorpe attractive to her. The Limes, Abchurch, was the "establishment" chosen. It was kept by the Misses Ponsonby, Abchurch being a large village five miles farther eastward. It was a peculiar inst.i.tution. It was a school for girls, but not for little girls, and it was also an educational home for young ladies up to one- or two-and-twenty whose training had been neglected or had to be completed beyond the usual limits. It was widely-known, and, as its purpose was special, it had little or no compet.i.tion, and consequently flourished.

Many parents who had become wealthy, and who hardily knew the manners and customs of the cla.s.s to which they aspired, sent their daughters to the Limes. The Misses Ponsonby--Mrs Ponsonby and Miss Adela Ponsonby--were of Irish extraction, and had some dim connection with the family of that name. They also preserved in their Calvinistic evangelicalism a trace of the Cromwellian Ponsonby, the founder of the race. There was a difference of two years in the age of the two ladies, but no perceptible difference in their characters. The same necessity to conceal or suppress all individuality on subjects disputable in their own sect had been imposed on each. Both had the same "views" on all matters religious and social, and both of them confessed that on many points their "views"

were "strict"--whatever that singular phrase may have meant.

Nevertheless, they displayed remarkable tact in reconciling parents with the defects and peculiarities of their children. There were always girls in the school of varying degrees of intelligence, from absolute stupidity to brilliancy, but the report at the end of the term was so fas.h.i.+oned that the father and mother of the idiot were not offended, and the idiocy was so handled that it appeared to have some advantages. If Miss Carter had been altogether unable to master the French verbs, or to draw the model vase until the teacher had put in nearly the whole of the outline, there was a most happy counterpoise, as a rule, in her moral conduct. In these days of effusive expression, when everybody thinks it his duty to deliver himself of everything in him--doubts, fears, pa.s.sions--no matter whether he does harm thereby or good, the Misses Ponsonby would be considered intolerably dull and limited. They did not walk about without their clothes--figuratively speaking--it was not then the fas.h.i.+on. They were, on the contrary, heavily draped from head to foot, but underneath the whalebone and padding, strange to say, were real live women's hearts.

They knew what it was to hope and despair; they knew what it was to reflect that with each of them life might and ought to have been different; they even knew what it was sometimes to envy the beggar-women on the doorstep of the Limes who asked for a penny and clasped a child to her breast. We mistake our ancestors who read Pope and the _Spectator_.

They were very much like ourselves essentially, but they did not believe that there was nothing in us which should be smothered or strangled.

Perhaps some day we shall go back to them, and find that the "Rape of the Lock" is better worth reading and really more helpful than magazine metaphysics. Anyhow, it is certain that the training which the Misses Ponsonby had received, although it may have made them starched, prim, and even uninteresting, had an effect upon their character not altogether unwholesome, and prevented any public crying for the moon, or any public charge of injustice against its Maker because it is unattainable.

The number of girls was limited to thirty. The house was tall, four-square, built of white brick about the year 1780, had a row of little pillars running along the roof at the top, and a Grecian portico.

It was odd that there should be such a house in Abchurch, but there it was. It was erected by a Spitalfields silk manufacturer, whose family belonged to those parts. He thought to live in it after his retirement, but he came there to die. The studies of the pupils were superintended by the Misses Ponsonby and sundry teachers, all female, except the drawing-master and the music-master. The course embraced the usual branches of a superior English education, French, Italian, deportment, and the use of the globes, but, as the Misses Ponsonby truly stated in their prospectus, their sole aim was not the inculcation of knowledge, but such instruction as would enable the young ladies committed to their charge to move with ease in the best society, and, above everything, the impression of correct principles in morality and religion. In this impression much a.s.sistance was given by the Reverend Theophilus Cardew, the rector of the church in the village. The patronage was in the hands of the Simeonite trustees, and had been bought by them in the first fervour of the movement.

The thirty pupils occupied fifteen bedrooms, although each had a separate bed, and to Catharine was allotted Miss Julia Arden, a young woman with a pretty, pale face, and black hair worn in ringlets. Her head was not firmly fixed on her shoulders, and was always in motion, as if she had some difficulty in balancing it, the reason being, not any physical defect, but a wandering imagination, which never permitted her to look at any one thing steadily for an instant. Nine-tenths of what she said was nonsense, but her very shallowness gave occasionally a certain value and reality to her talk, for the simple reason that she was incapable of the effort necessary to conceal what she thought for the moment. In her studies she made not the slightest progress, for her memory was shocking.

She confounded all she was taught, and never could recollect whether the verb was conjugated and the noun declined, or whether it was the other way round, to use one of her favourite expressions, so that her preceptors were compelled to fall back, more exclusively than with her schoolfellows, on her moral conduct, which was outwardly respectable enough, but by the occupant of the other bed might perhaps have been reported on in terms not quite so satisfactory as those in the quarterly form signed by Miss Ponsonby.

Catharine's mother came with her on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, but left in the evening. At half-past eight there were prayers. The girls filed into the drawing-room, sat round in a ring, of which the Misses Ponsonby formed a part, but with a break of about two feet right and left, the servants sitting outside near the door: a chapter was read, a prayer also read, and then, after a suitable pause, the servants rose from their knees, the pupils rose next, and the Misses Ponsonby last; the time which each division, servants, pupils, and Ponsonbys, remained kneeling being graduated exactly in proportion to rank. A procession to the supper-room was then formed. Catharine found herself at table next to Miss Arden, with a spotless napkin before her, with silver forks and spoons, and a delicately served meal of stewed fruits, milk-puddings, bread-and-b.u.t.ter, and cold water. Everything was good, sweet, and beautifully clean, and there was enough. At half-past nine, in accordance with the usual practice, one of the girls read from a selected book. On Sat.u.r.day a book, not exactly religious, but related to religion as nearly as possible as Sat.u.r.day is related to Sunday, was invariably selected. On this particular Sat.u.r.day it was Clarke's "Travels in Palestine."

Precisely as the chock struck ten the volume was closed and the pupils went to bed.

"I am sure I shall like you," observed Miss Arden, as they were undressing. "The girl who was here before was a brute, so dull and so vulgar. I hope you will like me."

"I hope so too."

"It's dreadful here: so different to my mother's house in Devons.h.i.+re. We have a large place there near Torquay--do you know Torquay? And I have a horse of my own, on which I tear about during the holidays, and there are boats and sailing matches, and my brothers have so many friends, and I have all sorts of little affairs. I suppose you've had your affairs. Of course you won't say. We never see a man here, except Mr. Cardew. Oh, isn't he handsome? He's only a parson, but he's such a dear; you'll see him to-morrow. I can't make him out: he's lovely, but he's queer, so solemn at times, like an owl in daylight. I'm sure he's well brought up.

I wonder why he went into the church: he ought to have been a gentleman."

"But is he not a gentleman?

"Oh, yes, of course he's a gentleman, but you know what I mean."

"No, I don't."

"There, now, you are one of those horrid creatures, I know you are, who never _will_ understand, and do it on purpose. It is so aggravating."

"Well, but you said he was not a gentleman, and yet that he was a gentleman."

"You _are_ provoking. I say he is a gentleman--but don't some gentlemen keep a carriage?--and his father is in business. Isn't that plain? You know all about it as well as I do."

"I still do not quite comprehend."

Catharine took a little pleasure in forcing people to be definite, and Miss Arden invariably fell back on "you understand" whenever she herself did not understand. In fact, in exact proportion to her own inability to make herself clear to herself, did she always insist that she was clear to other people.

"I cannot help it if you don't comprehend. He's lovely, and I adore him."

Next morning, being Sunday, the Limes was, if possible, still more irreproachable; the noise of the household was more subdued; the pa.s.sions appeared more utterly extinguished, and any indifferent observer would have said that from the Misses Ponsonby down to the scullery-maid, a big jug had been emptied on every spark of illegal fire, and blood was toast and water. Alas! it was not so. The boots were cleaned overnight to avoid Sunday labour, but when the milkman came, a handsome young fellow, anybody with ears near the window overhead might have detected a scuffling at the back door with some laughter and something like "Oh, don't!" and might have noticed that Elizabeth afterwards looked a little rumpled and adjusted her cap. Nor was she singular, for many of the young women who were supposed to be studying a brief abstract of the history of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, in parallel columns, as arranged by the Misses Ponsonby, were indulging in the naughtiest thoughts and using naughty words as they sat in their bedrooms before the time for departure to church. At a quarter-past ten the girls a.s.sembled in the dining-room, and were duly marshalled. They did not, however, walk two-and-two like ordinary schools. In the first place, many of them were not children, and, in the second place, the Misses Ponsonby held that even walking to church was a thing to be taught, and they desired to turn out their pupils so that they might distinguish themselves in this art also as well-bred people. It was one of the points on which the Misses Ponsonby grew even eloquent. How, they said, are girls to learn to carry themselves properly if they march in couples? They will not do it when they leave the Limes, and will be utterly at fault. There is no day in the week on which more general notice is taken than on Sunday; there is no day on which differences are more apparent. The pupils therefore walked irregularly, the irregularity being prescribed. The entering the church; the leaving the pews; the loitering and salutations in the churchyard; the show, superior saunter homewards were all the result of lecture, study, and even of practice on week-days.

"Deliberation, ease," said Miss Ponsonby, "are the key to this, as they are to so much in our behaviour, and surely on the Sabbath we ought more than on any other day to avoid indecorous hurry and vulgarity."

Catharine's curiosity, after what Miss Arden had said, was a little excited to know what kind of a man Mr. Cardew might be, and she imagined him a young dandy. She saw a man about thirty-five with dark brown hair, eyes set rather deeply in his head, a little too close together, a delicate, thin, very slightly aquiline nose, and a mouth with curved lips, which were, however, compressed as if with determination or downright resolution. There was not a trace of dandyism in him, and he reminded her immediately of a portrait she had seen of Edward Irving in a shop at Eastthorpe.

He stood straight up in the pulpit reading from a little Testament he held in his hand, and when he had given out his text he put the Testament down and preached without notes. His subject was a pa.s.sage in the life of Jesus taken from Luke xviii. 18--