It was quite true, Mrs. and Miss Arthuret had been duly called upon and invited about by the neighbourhood; but it was a scanty one, and they had not wealth and position enough to compensate for the girl's self-assertion and literary pretensions. It was not a superior or intellectual society, and, as the Rockstone Merrifields laughingly declared, it was fifty years behindhand, and where Bessie Merrifield, for the sake of the old stock and her meek bearing of her success-nay, her total ignoring of her literary honours-would be accepted. Arthurine, half her age, and a newcomer, was disliked for the pretensions which her mother innocently pressed on the world. Simplicity and complacency were taken for arrogance, and the mother and daughter were kept upon formal terms of civility by all but the Merrifields, who were driven into discussion and opposition by the young lady's attempts at reformations in the parish.
It was the less wonder that they made friends where their intimacy was sought and appreciated. There was nothing underbred about themselves; both were ladies ingrain, though Arthurine was abrupt and sometimes obtrusive, but they had not lived a life such as to render them sensitive to the lack of fine edges in others, and were quite ready to be courted by those who gave the meed of appreciation that both regarded as Arthurine's just portion.
Mr. Mytton had been in India, and had come back to look after an old relation; to whom he and his wife had paid assiduous attention, and had been so rewarded as to excite the suspicion and displeasure of the rest of the family. The prize had not been a great one, and the prosperity of the family was further diminished by the continual failures of the ne'er-do-well sons, so that they had to make the best of the dull, respectable old house they had inherited, in the dull, respectable old street of the dull, respectable old town. Daisy and Pansy Mytton were, however, bright girls, and to them Arthurine Arthuret was a sort of realised dream of romance, raised suddenly to the pinnacle of all to which they had ever durst aspire.
After meeting her at a great omnium gatherum garden party, the acquaintance flourished. Arthurine was delighted to give the intense pleasure that the freedom of a country visit afforded to the sisters, and found in them the contemporaries her girl nature had missed.
They were not stupid, though they had been poorly educated, and were quite willing to be instructed by her and to read all she told them. In fact, she was their idol, and a very gracious one. Deeply did they sympathise in all her sufferings from the impediments cast in her way at Stokesley.
Indeed, the ladies there did not meet her so often on their own ground for some time, and were principally disturbed by reports of her doings at Bonchamp, where she played at cricket, and at hockey, gave a course of lectures on physiology, presided at a fancy-dress bazaar for the schools as Lady Jane Grey, and was on two or three committees. She travelled by preference on her tricycle, though she had a carriage, chiefly for the sake of her mother, who was still in a state of fervent admiration, even though perhaps a little worried at times by being hurried past her sober paces.
The next shock that descended on Stokesley was that, in great indignation, a cousin sent the Merrifields one of those American magazines which are read and contributed to by a large proportion of English. It contained an article called 'The Bide-as-we-bes and parish of Stick-stodge-cum-Cadgerley,' and written with the same sort of clever, flippant irony as the description of the mixed company in the boarding-house on the Lago Maggiore.
There was the parish embowered, or rather choked, in trees, the orderly mechanical routine, the perfect self-satisfaction of all parties, and their imperviousness to progress,-the two squires, one a fox-hunter, the other a general reposing on his laurels,-the school where everything was subordinated to learning to behave oneself lowly and reverently to all one's betters, and to do one's duty in that state of life to which it has pleased Heaven to call one,-the horror at her tricycle, the impossibility of improvement, the predilection for farmyard odours, the adherence to tumbledown dwellings, the contempt of drinking fountains,-all had their meed of exaggeration not without drollery.
The two ancient spinsters, daughters to the general, with their pudding-baskets, buttonholes, and catechisms, had their full share-dragooning the parish into discipline,-the younger having so far marched with the century as to have indited a few little tracts of the Goody Two-Shoes order, and therefore being mentioned by her friends with bated breath as something formidable, 'who writes,' although, when brought to the test, her cultivation was of the vaguest, most discursive order. Finally, there was a sketch of the heavy dinner party which had welcomed the strangers, and of the ponderous county magnates and their wives who had been invited, and the awe that their broad and expansive ladies expected to impress, and how one set talked of their babies, and the other of G.F.S. girls, and the gentlemen seemed to be chiefly occupied in abusing their M.P. and his politics. Altogether, it was given as a lesson to Americans of the still feudal and stationary state of country districts in poor old England.
'What do you think of this, Bessie?' exclaimed Admiral Merrifield. 'We seem to have got a young firebrand in the midst of us.'
'Oh, papa! have you got that thing? What a pity!'
'You don't mean that you have seen it before?'
'Yes; one of my acquaintances in London sent it to me.'
'And you kept it to yourself?'
'I thought it would only vex you and mamma. Who sent it to you?'
'Anne did, with all the passages marked. What a horrid little treacherous baggage!'
'I daresay we are very tempting. For once we see ourselves as others see us! And you see 'tis American.'
'All the worse, holding us, who have done our best to welcome her hospitably, up to the derision of the Yankees!'
'But you won't take any notice.'
'Certainly not, ridiculous little puss, except to steer as clear of her as possible for fear she should be taking her observations. "Bide as we be"; why, 'tis the best we can do. She can't pick a hole in your mother though, Bess. It would have been hard to have forgiven her that! You're not such an aged spinster.'
'It is very funny, though,' said Bessie; 'just enough exaggeration to give it point! Here is her interview with James Hodd.'
Whereat the Admiral could not help laughing heartily, and then he picked himself out as the general, laughed again, and said: 'Naughty girl! Bess, I'm glad that is not your line. Little tracts-Goody Two-Shoes! Why, what did that paper say of your essay, Miss Bess? That it might stand a comparison with Helps, wasn't it?'
'And I wish I was likely to enjoy such lasting fame as Goody Two-Shoes,' laughed Bessie, in a state of secret exultation at this bit of testimony from her father.
Mrs. Merrifield, though unscathed, was much more hurt and annoyed than either her husband or her daughter, especially at Susan and Bessie being termed old maids. She did think it very ungrateful, and wondered how Mrs. Arthuret could have suffered such a thing to be done. Only the poor woman was quite foolish about her daughter-could have had no more authority than a cat. 'So much for modern education.'
But it was not pleasant to see the numbers of the magazine on the counters at Bonchamp, and to know there were extracts in the local papers, and still less to be indignantly condoled with by neighbours who expressed their intention of 'cutting' the impertinent girl. They were exactly the 'old fogies' Arthurine cared for the least, yet whose acquaintance was the most creditable, and the home party at Stokesley were unanimous in entreating others to ignore the whole and treat the newcomers as if nothing had happened.
They themselves shook hands, and exchanged casual remarks as if nothing were amiss, nor was the subject mentioned, except that Mrs. Arthuret contrived to get a private interview with Mrs. Merrifield.