“No, sir. I’ll do what you wish, of course.”
“That’s right. Shoo! the place smells like a well. We must get you out of it.”
So I donned a dress suit, and played the dutiful respectable, and took my place at my lord’s table—an odd new experience for me. I felt some natural awkwardness about it at first, and bungled a little over taking wine with my stepfather, for he held to the old-fashioned customs; but his cellar was good enough to be an education in itself; and, for the rest, the ladies did not embarrass me with their notice or attentions. Indeed, from the date of this my first step towards a social reformation, Miss Christmas ignored me entirely, and took pains to impress me with the fact. I was duly impressed—and amused. I supposed, quite correctly, no doubt, that his lordship had given her a hint as to the inadvisability of her visits to me, backed by a pretty literal quotation of my own expressed wishes in the matter, and that the insult by deputy had instantly effected what the insult direct had failed to do. Women, I fancy, have no objection to being bullied in an exclusive and complimentary sort of way; but the passion of brutality loses all its charms with them when it takes an agent into its confidence. Miss Christmas was deeply offended, and let me know by implication the raptures I had forgone. She literally sparkled o’ nights, frolicking like a will-o’-the-wisp before my hopelessly unravished eyes. Her dress, her jewels, her manner, her imperious caprices, all expressed, and were designed to express, the spoilt and whimsical child of fortune—leagues overhead a nameless pensioner on that same partial goddess’s bounty. She sang—not so badly on the accidental strength of a pure little contralto voice, which of all sorts finds it easiest to keep in tune; she displayed, in the childish abandonment of her caressings of dogs and cats, the passion of thin white arms, lures wickedly unattainable to my supposed swooning senses; she talked, sweetly serious, with Lady Skene, on the subject of the divine goodness in damning three-fourths of the world for the sake of the other quarter, and dropped texts from her lips as daintily as cherry stones. If it was all designed as a sharp lesson to me, it was all signally successful. “The girl is mother to the woman,” I thought. She is a humbug here as she was a humbug in my lodge. It is nothing but her puckish instinct to play a part to desire.
I never came to the house but of nights to dine, conforming only, in its strictly literal sense, with Lord Skene’s expressed wish; and then I would dawdle out an impatient hour in the drawing-room, and the moment the clock struck ten be off to my woods again. Lady Skene had accepted my reappearance with no comment but the briefest greeting; but I thought her manner to me was more chilling than ever. She seemed resolved upon disallowing my last claim to her consideration. As a child it had always been as if, coldly and softly, she had disengaged my fingers one by one from her skirts to which they clung. Now we were utterly dissevered; but I cried out still that I might not hate her. She did not hate me, I am sure. She only looked upon me as a brand, a thing foredoomed, whom it were useless to shape for a destiny which could never be his. Perhaps in her deepest heart there may have lurked a terror of herself, were she once to permit herself to think of me—a fear that after all, in some quick frenzy, she might be moved to disown the pietist for the mother. I will believe it. Such inhumanity as hers seems incomprehensible without.
As I held to my wild habits by day, playing only in the evenings up to polite convention, I was certain to encounter Miss Christmas about the grounds, and as a matter of fact I did, many times. On such occasions she would always pass me with a warble and a stare, or a cock to her kittenish nose, as if I were an odorous stable-boy, which as regularly tickled me, until one day I felt tired of it. I had run upon her at the head of the thicket path which opened into the “Baby’s Garden,” and I suddenly barred her way, so that she could not get round me right or left.
“Were you going down there?” I asked, signifying the lodge.
Fury flew into her eyes.
“How dare you—how dare you suggest it!” she cried.
“Why, it wouldn’t be for the first time, you know,” I said.
She looked in helpless anger about her a moment; then faced me like a young harpy.