The Maidens' Lodge Part 17

"Pretty well, Mrs Gatty," replied Phoebe, leaving the question of Molly undecided.

"Don't you like Molly?" demanded Rhoda, laughing. "Ah! I see. She's rather too clever to please you."

"I ask your pardon, but I don't see any cleverness in downright rudeness," timidly suggested Phoebe.

"Oh, n.o.body cares what Molly says," answered Rhoda. "They put up with all that,--she's so smart. You see, she's very, very ingenious, and everybody thinks so, and she knows people think so. She's a rep., you see, and she has to keep it up."

"I ask your pardon," said Phoebe again; "a _what_, if you please?"

"A rep., child," answered Rhoda, in her patronising style. "A reputation,--a character for smartness, you know. Don't you see?"

"Well, I would rather have a character for something better," said Phoebe.

"You may make yourself easy; you'll never get a character for smartness," responded her cousin with an unpleasant laugh. "Well, I say, Phoebe, while they are here I shall have Molly in my room, and you must sleep with Gatty. You can come in and dress me of a morning, you know, and help me into bed at night; but we can't do with three in one room."

Phoebe was inwardly thankful for it. What little she had seen of Gatty was rather negative than positive; but at least it had not, as in the case of Molly revealed anything actively disagreeable. Rhoda was heartily welcome to Molly's society so far as Phoebe was concerned. But it surprised and rather perplexed Phoebe to find that Rhoda actually liked this very objectionable maiden.

"Panem?" asked Molly, the next morning at breakfast. Her Latin, such as it was, was entirely unburdened with cases and declensions. "Thank you, I will take kakos."

"Fiddle-de-dee! what's that?" said Molly. Rhoda had completely forgotten what the word meant.

"Oh, 'tis the Greek for biscuit," said she, daringly.

Phoebe contrived to hide a portion of her face in her teacup, but Gatty saw her eyes, and read their meaning.

"The Greek!" cried Molly. "Who has taught you Greek, Ne'er-do-well?"

"A very learned person," said Rhoda, to whom it was delight to mystify Molly.

"Old Onslow?" demanded irreverent Molly, quite undeterred by the consideration that the chaplain sat at the table with her.

"You can ask him," said Rhoda.

"Did you, old ca.s.sock?" inquired Molly, who appeared to apply that adjective in a most impartial manner.

"Indeed, Mrs Molly, I did not--I never knew--" stammered the startled chaplain, quite shaken out of his propriety.

"Never knew any Greek? I thought so," responded audacious Molly, thereby evoking laughter all round the table, in which even Madam joined.

Phoebe, who had recovered herself, sat lost in wonder where the cleverness of all this was to be found. It simply disgusted her. Rhoda was not always pleasant to put up with, but Rhoda was sweetness and grace, compared with Molly. Gatty sat quietly, neither rebuking her sister's sallies, nor apparently amused by them. And Rhoda _liked_ this girl! It was a mystery to Phoebe.

When night came Phoebe found her belongings transferred to Gatty's room.

She a.s.sisted Rhoda to undress, herself silent, but a perpetual chatter being kept up between Rhoda and Molly on subjects not by any means interesting to Phoebe.

The latter was at length dismissed, and, with a sense of relief, she went slowly along the pa.s.sage to the room in which she and Gatty were to sleep.

Though it was getting very late, the clock being on the stroke of ten, yet Gatty was not in bed. She seemed to have half undressed herself, and then to have thrown a scarf over her shoulders and sat down by the window. It was a beautiful night, and a flood of silvery moonlight threw the trees into deep shadow and lit up the open s.p.a.ces almost like day. Phoebe came and stood at the window beside Gatty. Perhaps each was a little shy of the other; for some seconds pa.s.sed in silence, and Phoebe was the first to speak.

"You like it," she said timidly.

"Oh, yes. 'Tis so quiet," was Gatty's answer.

Phoebe was thinking what she should say next, when Gatty rose, took off her scarf, which she folded neatly and put away in the wardrobe, finished her undressing, and got into bed, without another word beyond "Good-night."

For three weeks of the month which the visit was to last this proved to be the usual state of matters. Gatty and Phoebe regularly exchanged greetings, night and morning; but beyond this their conversation was limited to remarks upon the weather, and an occasional request that Phoebe would inspect the neat and proper condition of some part of Gatty's dress which she could not conveniently see. And Phoebe began to come to the conclusion that Rhoda had judged rightly,--Gatty had nothing in her.

But one evening, when Molly had been surpa.s.singly "clever," keeping Rhoda in peals of laughter, and Phoebe in a state of annoyed disgust,-- on reaching their bedroom, Phoebe found Gatty, still dressed, and sitting by the bed, with her face bowed upon her hands.

"I ask your pardon, but are you not well?" said Phoebe, in a sympathising tone.

"Oh, yes. Quite well," was Gatty's reply, in a constrained voice; but as she rose and moved her hands from her face, Phoebe saw that she had been crying.

"You are in trouble," said Phoebe, gently. "Don't tell me anything, unless you like; but I know what trouble is; and if I could help you--"

"You can't," said Gatty, shortly.

Phoebe was silent. Her sympathy had been repulsed--it was not wanted.

The undressing was, as usual, without a word.

But when the girls had lain down in bed, Phoebe was a little surprised to hear Gatty say suddenly,--

"Phoebe Latrobe!--does anybody love you?"

"G.o.d loves me," said Phoebe, simply. "I am not sure that any one else does."

"I like you," said Gatty. "You let me be. That's what n.o.body ever does."

"I am not sure that I understand you," responded Phoebe.

"I'll tell you," replied Gatty, "for I think you can hold your tongue, and not be always chatter, chatter, chatter, like--like some people.

You think there's only one Gatty Delawarr; and I'll be bound you think her a very dull, stupid creature. Well, you're about right there. But there are two: there's me, and there's the thing people want to make me.

Now, you haven't seen me,--you've only seen the woman into whom I am being pinched and pulled. This is me that talks to you to-night, and perhaps you'll never see me again,--only that other girl,--so you had better make the most of me now that you have me. I'm sure, if you dislike her as much as I do--! You see, Phoebe, there are three of us-- Betty, and me, and Molly: and Mother's set her heart on our all making a noise in the world. Well, perhaps we could have managed better if we might have made our own noise; but we have to make it to order, and we don't do it well at all. Betty's the best off, because Mother hit on something that went with her nature,--she's the notable housewife. So she plays her play well. But when she set up Molly for a wit, and me for a beauty, she made a great blunder. Molly hasn't a bit of wit, so she falls back on rude speeches, and they go through me just as if she ran a knife into me. You did not think so, did you?"

"No," said Phoebe, wonderingly; "I thought you did not seem to care."

"That's the other Gatty. She does not care. She's been told,--oh, a hundred times over!--to compose herself and keep her features calm, and not let her voice be ruffled; and move slowly, so that her elbows are not square, and all on in that way; and she has about learned it by this time. I know how to sit still and look unconcerned, if my heart be breaking. And it is breaking, Phoebe."

"Dear Mrs Gatty, what can I do for you?"

"You can't do anything but listen to me. Let me pour it out this once, and don't scold me. I don't mean anything wrong, Phoebe. I don't wish to complain of Mother, or Molly, or any one. I only want to tell somebody what I have to bear, and then I'll compose myself again to my part in the world's big theatre, and go away and bear it, like other girls do. And you are the only person I have acquaintance with, that I feel as if I could tell."

"Pray go on, Mrs Gatty; I can feel sorry, if I can do nothing else."

"Well,--at home somebody is at me from morning to night. There's a posture-master comes once a week; and Mother's maid looks to my carriage at all times, 'tis an endless round of--'Gatty, hold your head up,'--'Gatty, put that plate down, and take it up with your arm rounded,'--'Gatty, you must not laugh,'--'Gatty, you must not sneeze,'--'Gatty, walk slower,'--come, that's enough. Then there's Molly on the top of it. And there's Betty on the top of Molly,--who can't conceive why anybody should ruffle her mind about anything. And there's Mother above all, for ever telling me she looks to have me cut a dash, and make a good match; and if I had played my cards rightly I ought to have caught a husband ere I was seventeen,--'tis disgraceful that I should thus throw away my advantages. And, Phoebe, _I_ want nothing but to creep into some little, far-away corner, and _be me_, and throw away my patches and love-locks, and powder and pomatum, and never see that other Gatty any more. That's how it was up to last month."

Gatty paused a moment, and drew a long sigh.

"And then, there came another on the scene, and I suppose the play grew more entertaining to Mother, and Betty, and Molly, in the boxes. People don't think, you know, when they look down at the prima donna, painted, and smiling, and decked with flowers,--they don't think if she has a husband who ill-uses her, or a child dying at home. She has come there to make them sport. Well, there came an old lord,--a man of sixty or seventy,--who has led a wild rakish life all these years, and now he thinks 'tis time to settle down, and he wants me to help him to make people think he's become respectable. And they say I shall marry him.

Phoebe, they say I must,--there is to be no help for it. And I can't bear him to look at me. If he touches my glove, I want to fling it into the fire when it comes off. And this one month, here, at White-Ladies, is my last quiet time. When I go home--if Betty be recovered of her distemper--I am to be married to this old man in a week's time. I am tied hand and foot, like a captive or a slave; and I have not even the poor relief of tears. They make my eyes red, and I must not make, my eyes red, if it would save my life. But nothing will save me. The lambs that used to be led to the altar are not more helpless than I.