The Salisbury women made things as difficult as they could for me. Mrs Valetta and Miss Cleeve began to cultivate the acquaintance of the Fort George women, and the result became directly apparent to my mental skin, always extremely susceptible to change of atmosphere. Where I had before met pleasant southerly breezes I now encountered chilly winds and frost.
At first I felt rather bitterly about it, and inclined to resent this injustice on the part of the domesticated little Fort George bevy. But I lived that mood down. Having plenty of leisure and solitude in which to think things out, those first few weeks I got round in time to their point of view, and saw the situation through their eyes. From what they had been told by my recent chaperon and had observed for themselves on the sight of Anthony’s departure, they were bound to suppose that I was, to put it in the mildest way, lax about things conventional; and of course a woman who is that must expect to be looked upon as a sort of pirate, and the direct enemy of gentle, simple-hearted women who are devoting their lives to the task of being good wives and mothers.
In the homes of such women, who by quiet, ceaseless, uncomplaining toil and task were forming the backbone of the country in which they lived, patriotism is born, and fine ideals, and the love of everything that is “strong and quiet like the hills.” What right had I to hate them if, hearing that I was a traitor to their cause, they looked sideways at me? Naturally, if they believed it true that I loved a married man and gloried in it, they saw in me a conspirator against their own peace and happiness. What was to save their own husbands from my lures and wiles when they came back? Perhaps that was how they looked at it.
It was only by the aid of these reflections and my sure conviction of being in the right that I freed myself from bitterness against them. Later I grew quite tolerant; but it was some time before I could begin to think of offering my good gold for such silver as they grudged me. However, as the blank days went by and Anthony’s words and wishes came to be more than ever the only things in my world, I began to glance about me with hungry eyes for a little of the silver they were so greedy about. I had not far to look, once my eyes were opened. Everywhere about me were children; restless, constrained, confined, and hopelessly bored children. Some one once said (I think it was Kipling, who knows all about children as well as about everything else under the sun) that grown-up people do not always realise that boredom to children means acute and active misery.
Well, the Fort George children were bored, and acutely, actively miserable. They had nowhere to go and nothing to do. Their favourite haunt, a line of little low kopjes just outside the town, was out of bounds and forbidden. The shallow river with its pools and flat rocks and silver-sanded bottom, the scene of many old delights, was likewise beyond safe precincts. Everything was forbidden but to prowl about in the small town with never a rock or a tree to play on: only locked and silent huts, and their own homes from which they were constantly chased by busy mothers, who in the general dearth of servants had all the washing acid cooking to do.
Oh! the little sulky, dissatisfied faces that I met, not only sulky but peaked and pale; for when children do not get exercise that interests and amuses them they soon begin to look unhealthy. My duty seemed to be plainly marked out for me.
I thanked Heaven they were mostly boys. I don’t think I could have organised sewing classes and spelling bees.
But I love children and therefore I know something about them, so I did not go headlong into the business, looking for snubs. Snubs are not pleasant fare at the best of times, and I think children’s snubs are the most unswallowable; they are so sincere and to the point. I began my campaign by loafing about idly every morning just after breakfast, meeting them in the bypaths, and dropping a word here and there just to shew that I too was bored to madness. Gradually they recognised in me a fellow-martyr, and after a day or two they began to gravitate naturally in my direction as a centre where they could come and record their complaints. I allowed myself to be treated as a sort of slot-machine, where any one could come and drop a serious grievance instead of a penny, and sometimes get something back. However, I did not give much back. Children distrust grown-ups who give too much, or talk too much—especially in the first critical stages of friendship. They prefer to do all the talking themselves.
In time they wanted to know what they should call me. I told them “Goldie,” a pet name of mine, and somehow that clinched the matter. Afterwards they gave me their full confidence, and I took firm hold and immediately began to impose upon it. The transition from favourite to tyrant can be swift and very simple, and I soon had an Empire which I ruled over like a Caesar.
Games were the order of the day. First of all we took the tennis-court in hand—the tennis-court where I had dreamed bits of my beautiful dream and which lay now like a desolate and accursed spot covered with dead leaves, old papers, and rubbish! In one day it was swept and garnished, and in two it was rolled and marked to a degree of perfection it had never known before. On the third day I divided the children up into quartettes and taught them tennis in batches. They had never been allowed to so much as glance in the direction of the court before, it being considered solely and sacredly the property of the grown-ups. Now they bounced upon it like balls, and yells of delight and victory woke the dull echoes and rang through the town. We had some glorious days. But to all fine things an end must be, and just as everything had been got into splendid working order, with two clubs formed for the purpose of competition, a popular arrangement made for the scouting of balls, and an entertainment committee selected, down swooped the grown-ups, headed by Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, and wrested the court away from us.