“Girls are themselves,” said Lesbia, in a quiet, even voice. “Individual, variable, understanding and loyal in their own way”—she gave a faint smile, as though such things as mimicry did occur to her—“in need of supervision and training to bring out their best; and the best may be very good.”
“You can keep a girls’ school without any sense of guilt. But the best in anyone is good. How would you manage about the other things in them, if they came to the fore? We do not know what would be our problems, if we dared to face them.”
“The deduction may be simply that girls are more suited to school than boys. They are more responsive and receptive, more open to influence. Boys may sometimes be better at home; I have often thought it.”
“But do not strike at the foundations of our livelihood.”
“What do you think, Lucius?” said Maria.
“I am no advocate of sending young boys from home. I see it as unnatural and sometimes harmful. But we have to do our best with the system. It is established.”
“It must be,” said his wife. “One cannot help wondering how it came about.”
“It is no good to go back and consider the matter from the beginning,” said Maria.
“None,” said Oliver. “If it were, it would have been of good by now.”
“We are doing as Lucius said, my dear,” said Sir Roderick. “Making the best of the prevailing system. We are agreed that it is a bad one, even Lesbia in the case of boys.”
“I am surprised that Lesbia should aim at our establishment, and spare her own,” said Juliet.
“Grandpa looks as if he were thinking something,” said Oliver.
“I think that parents should do their own duty.”
“Why did you not say that before?” said Maria, with a note of despair.
“It was not such a strange thing to think, that people should need to be informed of it.”
“It would have made no difference, my dear,” said Sir Roderick. “It is what we thought ourselves, and it made none.”
“But I wish people would not keep their opinions until after a decision, and then air them.”
“They may not know them until then. Juliet was right in her account of the way they form them.”
“What is it, that you say of me?” said Mr. Firebrace.
Maria put her hands to her head.
“Come, my pretty, let us go downstairs. We have done our best, and must leave it. No one can do more.”
“We have done nothing,” said Maria.
“Well, that is usually people’s best,” said her stepson. “Their worst is something quite different.”
“Well, let us say good-night to the victims of our indecisions.”
“Dear, dear, is that still the word?” said Mr. Firebrace.
“So it is as bad as that, to be afforded ordinary advantages?” said Lesbia, turning to Clemence and using an almost friendly tone. “What do you think of the new prospect, Clemence?”
“We never know what to think of prospects, until they become something else.”
“We can use our imaginations,” said Lesbia, with quiet gravity, keeping her eyes from the parents.
“I don’t think I can. Or not in any way that would show me how things are to be. I have never been inside a school.”
“Well, then you have not much to build upon,” said Lesbia, meeting simple truthfulness with cordiality. “We cannot do quite without a foundation. So you will wait and let the new world break upon you in all its unexpectedness.”
“I shall not be able to prevent it.”
Lesbia laughed readily and followed the others from the room.
“Good-night, my little ones,” said Maria, folding her children in a close embrace.
Sir Roderick followed her example, and it was felt that a seal had been set upon the coming change.
“Well, it is good to be with my own flesh and blood,” said Mr. Firebrace, as he sat down amongst his family. “It may be that they will leave us for a spell.”
“We must not resent their presence in their own home,” said Lesbia.
“If I had such a thing myself, I should not need to do so.”
“Roderick has never filled Mary’s place. And I mean no disrespect to Maria, when I say so.”
“I call it gross disrespect,” said Oliver.
“Maria has a place of her own.”
“And Mary has the same by now,” said Juliet. “When things are people’s own, there is never much to be said for them. ‘A poor thing but mine own,’ was a natural saying to become established.”
“Poor Maria!” said Lucius, looking surprised at himself, and incurring looks of surprise.
“Yes, poor Maria!” said Lesbia. “I have often thought it.”
“It is terrible that we reveal our thoughts,” said Oliver.
“So have I,” said Juliet, “but I have never said it, because I knew it was insensitive to pity people.”
“Pity may be a healthy and natural feeling,” said her sister.
“It certainly flourishes,” said Oliver. “I pity most people. I mean, I think how dreadful it would be to be them.”
“Do you pity me?” said Juliet.
“Yes. You are a woman and older than I am. You have less of your life left.”
“Do you pity your father?”
“Yes, he is sixty-eight, and he loves the treacherous land with a man’s simplicity.”
“And the children?”
“They are always pitiful.”
“And me?” said Lesbia. “Am I subject to a woman’s subtlety?”
“There is no such thing.”
“But if you admit a man’s simplicity, you must admit a woman’s corresponding quality.”
“I do admit it.”
“And what is it?”
“Simplicity,” said Oliver. “But I do not pity you or Grandpa. I am not quite sure of the reasons, but they are the same for both.”
“And yourself, my boy?” said Mr. Firebrace.
“Well, self-pity is too deep a thing to be broached in words. I envy you for being able to do it. It shows how simple your causes for self-pity are. Mine are the knotted and tangled kind, that lie fallow in the day and rise up to torment people at night.”
“Mine do their business by day, it is true. And they are active at the moment,” said Mr. Firebrace, as steps sounded on the stairs.
“Well, we have left the two little martyrs,” said Maria.
“Come, that is too strong,” said Lesbia. “Thousands of children are martyrs, if that is the truth.”
“And is that impossible?” said her nephew.
“Yes, I think it is, Oliver. I think we may say so. The force of such a weight of suffering would react and end the cause.”
“Oliver takes a pride in taking a gloomy view of everything,” said Maria.
“Well, no one would be proud of looking at the bright side of things,” said Juliet. “It leads to saying that poverty is a blessing in disguise — as if a disguised thing ever served its purpose — or that sacrifice is its own reward, or even that we should not grieve at people’s death. It is simply a cover for what we are ashamed of.”
“I wonder if we should send the children to school, if we put ourselves in their place,” said Maria. “You will all forgive my harping on the same thing. It must fill my mind.”
“I hardly think they will forgive it much longer,” said her stepson. “Certainly not all of them.”
“Well, no one would do anything then,” said Sir Roderick. “A murderer would not kill, or a thief steal, if they did that. If we all formed the habit, the world could not go on. Of course we should not send them.”
“A pessimistic presentation of human activities,” said Lesbia, with a laugh.
The door opened and Sefton entered, holding his jacket together to cover an early stage of undress. He went to a bookcase and appeared to fumble for a book.