CHAPTER V
A LETTER FROM MISS FAIRBROTHER
Beyond the fact that I have received a letter from Miss Fairbrother, there seems to be nothing of any real importance to-day to enter in my "daily-round." I call my journal my "daily-round," though it isn't anything of the kind, for I only scribble in it when I have nothing else to do, and when I am waiting for Dimbie to come home. I always seem to be waiting for Dimbie to come home, and yet I don't always write in my "daily-round"; I wait for moods. Dimbie calls it my recipe book. He says it looks like one, with its ruled lines and mottled brawn stiff covers. He wants to read it, but this I won't permit. I say, "Dimbie, within those covers are the meanderings of a new wife, I mean a newly-made wife. It could be of no interest to you to read: 'I have ordered two pounds of steak for dinner. Amelia is unusually squeaky to-day,' but they are of vital interest to me." Journals can only be of interest to the people who write them. There are, of course, exceptions, such as Pepys and Evelyn—I have not read either of them, but they may have made notes of really important events. I don't, for I have none to note. Besides, I never know the date. Properly constructed journals have dates. I only know the month we are in. I have an idea whether it is the beginning or the end, but if anyone were to say to me, "What is the day of the month?" I should be extremely flurried. I always find, too, that people who ask you the date know it much better themselves. If you say it is the sixteenth they flatly contradict you and say they are sure it is the seventeenth. Peter was always like that. He would sit down at the writing-table in the library with a calendar hanging right in front of his nose, and would suddenly pounce upon poor mother with, "What is the date?" Mother, not knowing any more about dates than I, would gently refer him to the calendar. Peter would not be referred to calendars. Mother should know dates the same as other sensible people. Then there would be ructions. Peter would show mother and me what could be done with an ordinary pair of lungs. I used to think what splendid bellows Peter's lungs would make. One day I ventured upon this to him, I asked him to blow up the fire. I shall never forget the result. His facial contortions and the noise he made were out of the common.
I am wondering if he makes those noises now. Mother was always a little gentler and more yielding to him than I, so perhaps the house is quieter since I left. I don't see them very much. Not possessing a carriage, and the journey by train being a little cross country, we do not exchange many visits. Peter won't allow mother to come alone, and of course when he comes everything is spoilt. He does not believe in private confidential talks between women. He says that most of it is ill-natured gossip, and I have never heard mother say an unkind word of anybody in her life.
I did not mean to write of Peter this morning. My head was full of Miss Fairbrother.
Such a delightful letter from her. Dimbie was as much interested in it as I. She says—
"'I am thirty-five to-day. Yes, I have reached half the allotted age of man. The Psalmist was a little mean and skimpy, I think, to limit one's years to threescore and ten. Probably he was old for his age, having crowded a good deal into his life. And all those wives and sons of his were enough to make any man feel tired.'"
I looked up and laughed.
"Go on," said Dimbie.
"'Thirty-five will appear to twenty-three a great and mysterious age—mysterious in the way that death is mysterious; a state at which to arrive at some dim and future period—very dim, very far off when you are but twenty-three.
"'And yet my years sit lightly upon me. I can still run, though not so swiftly as of old. I can still laugh, though India is very hot and very sad in some of its aspects. I still wear cotton frocks—perhaps the last foolishly; but what is one to do in an Indian climate, and when one has to count up the pennies in readiness for the old age which must come? Muslin I eschew as being too airy and girlish for one of rounded proportions, but mercerised cotton is my salvation. Praised be the Lancashire cotton mills! Do you happen to have met with mercerised cotton? It is deceitful, for it tries to cheat you into believing that when you don it you straightway have a silken appearance. It may deceive you, but it certainly does not deceive the other women of the station. You read in their uplifted glance "six-three," which means sixpence three farthings. You don't care dreadfully, for are you not cool and most suitably attired as a governess?
"'You ask me, dear Marguerite, what I am doing. I am still existing in a pink bungalow endeavouring to teach two poor, hot, sticky children. Of course it is cool now, but the hot weather will return once more, and then they are going home to that cool, green garden whose other name is England, and my work will be finished. This makes the fourth batch of children who have left me during the years I have been here. And now that garden is calling me, calling me with a voice not to be resisted, and I too am "going home."
"'You, little old pupil, will be one of the first persons upon whom I shall leave cards. Marguerite married is a person of importance now. Her two fair pigtails went "up" long ago, but she will always remain the little old pupil to me.
"'Then, too, I badly want to see this wonderful husband of yours. He won't be nice to me. A young husband, I think, is rarely devoted to his wife's old friends. But I shan't mind. I shan't resent it. I shall understand.'"
I stopped again to laugh up at Dimbie, who was leaning over me.
"She seems a very sensible woman," he remarked.
"There never was anyone quite so sensible as Miss Fairbrother," I returned. "She could even manage Peter in a fashion, and mother was devoted to her. One of the very cleverest things mother ever did was to find Miss Fairbrother."
"Please finish," said Dimbie, "or I shall miss my train."
"'Your charming present, for which many thanks, has already raised me some inches in the eyes of the women out here. For long they have been trying to persuade me into wearing a hair-frame. You will probably know the thing I mean—a round, evil-looking, hairy bolster, over which unpleasantness you comb your own hair, hoping to delude mankind into the belief that you have come of parentage of Samsonian characteristics. Now this beautiful jewelled comb of yours adds somewhat to my stature when, with an attempt—somewhat feeble, I fear—at high coiffured hair, I swim, like Meredith's heroines, or try to swim, into dinner. They almost pardon my lack of a bolster when their eyes rest upon such modishness. A little less spinster-governess, they think. And I translate their thought and smile.
"'Always your most affectionate,
"'EGOIST.'"
"Egoist, indeed!" I said musingly, as I folded the letter and took a photograph out of my desk—a photograph of a strong, smiling face, with low, broad forehead, over which the hair was parted on one side, clear, unflinching eyes, and large mobile mouth.
"Why don't you put her into a frame somewhere about the room?" asked Dimbie. "It is a fine face."
"Because I promised her she should never be on view. She imagined she was plain. I think clever people are as sensitive about their looks as stupid."
"Perhaps so," said Dimbie, with a fine disregard of all trains. "Was she very clever?"
I was pleased at his interest in my much-loved governess.
"I don't know," I replied. "I am not clever enough to know. But whatever she said seemed to me intensely interesting. Mother and even Peter were inclined to hang on her words. She was so witty, so gay; she had such a sense of humour. You see, she was only twenty-eight when she left. She came to us when she was twenty, just after taking a most fearful degree. Mother says Peter most strongly objected to this degree; that he said women should only take things like measles and scarlet fever, and be feminine, remembering their place in nature, and not try to be clever; and that if only Miss Fairbrother would do her hair properly and wear white-lace petticoats, she even might get married—there was no telling. And mother argued that she did not wish Miss Fairbrother to be married till she had thoroughly grounded me and prepared me for that high-class boarding school, Lynton House.
"And I recollect Peter snorted at this, and said that if Miss Fairbrother could just manage to knock a little writing, reading, and arithmetic into my head and teach me to sew and knit, he, for one, would be satisfied. And he forbade anyone—man or woman—to instruct me in the art of painting flowers, afterwards to be framed and stuck on his walls. I cannot convey to you the scorn in his voice as he shouted the words 'painting flowers.'"
"I think he was right there," said Dimbie.
"So do I," I laughed; "but Peter had forgotten that the painting of still life was a product of a bygone age. To imagine Miss Fairbrother teaching me such an art would be to imagine her teaching me how to embroider wool-work pictures. Granny worked two fierce cats with spreading, startled whiskers, in Berlin wool. They adorn my old nursery walls to this day. Miss Fairbrother made up lovely, exciting tales about them and their habits, and for some little time, till I grew older, I was under the impression they left their frames at night and sported on the tiles. We called them Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Balfour."
"I must go," said Dimbie. "The cats are most interesting, and so is Miss Fairbrother, but I have our living to make. What do you say to asking her to visit us for a bit when she arrives?"
He spoke in a nonchalant way, and I looked up quickly. He had said he shouldn't have anyone to stay with us under twelve months. His back was turned to me, so I couldn't see his face.
"Do you want her?" I asked.
"I want her? Certainly not. But you sound so keen on her, and—she sounds lonely."
"Dear Dimbie," I said, "you are a pet. I appreciate your unselfishness, but——"
"Well, write and ask her before I change my mind. I dare say she'll have the sense to clear off and leave us alone in the evenings."
"But shall you care dreadfully?" I queried.
He laughed.
"Well, not dreadfully. No man hankers after a strange woman in the house, especially when he's already got a dear one like you. But I want you to be happy, Marg." His voice became very tender. "I don't want you to be lonely. I want your days to be a perpetual delight." He crossed the room and stroked the back of my head.
"And so they are," I replied, laying my cheek on his sleeve. "One long delight. Sometimes I wonder why God has given me so much happiness. I don't deserve it any more than anyone else. Peter, all my worries are behind me; in front of me is joy. I seem to have stepped on to a little green island of content, set in the midst of a sun-kissed ocean. The waves lap the shores lovingly; the breezes linger in our hair with a caress. You and I are alone, Dimbie."
And he laid his lips on mine for a moment, and then he left me.