“We cannot think of it. She will not fail us, while we do not fail her. But loyalty is a tender plant, not an everlasting one.”
“How much we know about virtue, when we practise it so little! Well, people get used to anything, though it would not often be to things like this. We will go upstairs and talk to her and the children. They will expect to discuss their day, and the ice must be broken.”
Miss Petticott was reading aloud to her pupils, a scene that recalled another, and Maria fulfilled her resolve to be simply herself.
“Not asleep this time?” she said, her brows contracting in uncertain recollection.
“Why, no, Lady Shelley. We have had too exciting a day. I am sure I have,” said Miss Petticott, flushing as she realised where her words might lead. “It has been nothing but pleasure from beginning to end, as someone said in a book. And the end was as good as the beginning, which can rarely be said. The interest did not flag; it gathered as the moments passed—”
“And how did the host and hostess enjoy it?”
“Very much,” said Clemence, “and so did they all. When you have been at school, you know what a change it is. Sometimes it seemed as if the term would never end.”
“Dear, dear, we did make a mistake,” said Sir Roderick.
“And the boys enjoyed it too,” said Sefton. “More than anything this term. We played at brigands in the park. Bacon was the chief. And, of course, they liked the things to eat.”
“And what did they think of your home?”
“We had told them about it. None of them has a home so near.”
“I am glad you had a pleasant day, Miss Petticoat,” said Sir Roderick.
“Very, Sir Roderick. I quite feel I have made friends. Miss James and Miss Tuke are extremely nice women. Miss Chancellor struck me as a slightly forbidding figure, but Lady Shelley acted as a bulwark and I basely sheltered behind it. So of her I am not qualified to speak.”
“A straightforward, professional woman,” said Maria. “I had not met one before, and was quite well entertained. I daresay she might become monotonous, if you saw her day by day.”
“She is certainly one of those people who are always themselves,” said Clemence.
“And that is not always such a compliment as it sounds,” said Miss Petticott. “Clemence has found that out.”
“What did you think of the girls, Miss Petticoat?”
“Well, Sir Roderick, I found myself feeling rather sorry for them. Nice, good-looking, well-cared for girls, but somehow with some lack about them. The lack that comes from a life lived too much on one line. Little conventions have too much meaning; little things loom too large. After all, the difference between their clothes and Clemence’s does not argue any difference in the soul within. I do not care to see young girls too conventionally dressed, myself. Of course, the lack can be put right, but it is hardly the object of education to create hiatuses to be filled later. It should be a preparation for life, not an interlude before it begins.”
“I thought Clemence was a favourite of Miss Chancellor’s,” said Maria.
“Well, perhaps I was. And I think Gwendolen was too.”
“I have the same favourites,” said Sir Roderick, “though I should not have expected it. That was a nice little girl, quite untouched by all that Miss Petticoat said.”
“She has been at school for years,” said Clemence. “It must have done its worst for her.”
“Or done its best,” said Maria. “We must be fair.”
“I don’t think it does anything for her. She does not seem to take any notice of it.”
“That is the explanation,” said Roderick. “She keeps herself apart. The others are sunk in the slough up to the neck. Miss Petticoat is right.”
“Really, Sir Roderick, your powers of observation! We shall be afraid to meet you.”
“We are all sunk in a slough of some kind,” said Maria.
“No, no, my pretty, you are not fair to yourself. Things are not as bad as that. We all do some little things — have something on the debit side.”
“Clemence is in spirits,” said Maria, looking at her daughter. “Is it the result of a day with her friends?”
“A sense of duty well done, Lady Shelley,” said Miss Petticott.
“Which is it, Clemence?”
“Well, I am glad it was all a success. But I don’t think I want it again just yet.”
“I should hope not, as it has to happen in the term,” said Miss Petticott.
“You do not wish you were back at school?” said Maria.
“I don’t think it is a good thing to live in two places,” said Clemence, with a note of truth. “And, of course, you must have your home.”
“You would not like to have the best of both worlds?”
“I don’t think you do have it. You can’t have the best of home in a few months. And the long terms do not seem the best of school. They are the worst of it.”
Sir Roderick and Miss Petticott laughed.
“You would never find another term so long,” said Maria.
“Do not confuse their minds, Maria. They are quite clear. Come and befog your own with your charity accounts. It will not rest while they are on it.”
“Can I be of any help, Lady Shelley?”
“Well, if it were not at the end of a long day, Miss Petticott, and you were not tired out and only fit for bed—” Maria hesitated to ignore these circumstances.
“A fig Miss Petticoat cares for any of that,” said Sir Roderick, prepared to support the disregard.
“Tired out and fit for fiddlesticks, Lady Shelley! I have had a day of pleasure. It is you who have had the duties, you and poor Clemence here. Those accounts have been on my mind. I have had a sense that they were accumulating.”
“You will soon have evidence of it,” said Sir Roderick. “The library table is like a haystack, except that it has no shape.”
“Well, it will not be so for long, Sir Roderick,” said Miss Petticott, leading the way from the room with a firm step.
Sefton looked at his sister, as the door closed.
“We never seem to be alone until the end of the day. We always talk about things when we are tired. But I think we know about them.”
“It may be the best time to see them. It is no good for the morning to bring fresh hope. There is not enough reason for it.”
“You said we could not live in two places, and that seems to be the whole thing. Places do not understand each other.”
“And some places could never be understood. Homes are one of them. To think there are thousands of them, all over the world! The girls did not understand this one, even when they saw it. And I don’t suppose the boys did either.”
“We did not really want them to. It is somehow a thing we could not bear. And yet there is not anything really to be ashamed of.”
“There are things they would be ashamed of; and that would make us ashamed. Little things that do not matter, but that they would think mattered. You can’t help seeing them with their eyes. And they all seem to see them with the same ones.”
“And then we are ashamed of being ashamed. We should not like Father and Mother to know.”
“It is really the people at school we are ashamed of, or should be, if we cared for them enough. I don’t think people can often make friendships at school that last for their lives. The friendships would end when school ended. It would be as it was with us today. And people are not often with people they knew at school. They are with people they have known later, and that is what you would expect.”
“I think I could have a friendship with Bacon, if we knew each other better. I don’t think that would end.”