[208]
]CHAPTER XIX
GWENDOLEN TREVALLION AND A SOLDIER BRAVE AND TRUE
“Some blank verse and blanker prose,
And more of both than any one knows.”
So every one took up their usual evening employment. Clif and Mrs. Wise played chess in the drawing-room, and Ted in a quiet corner not far away buried himself in a book. In the dining-room Alf and Richie and Weenie, when it could no longer be postponed, got out their books to prepare their home-lessons, and the two latter, as a customary preliminary, played “French and English” on their slates, until Phyl heard the tell-tale sounds of “I’ve got a gun,” “Two tents now,” “Hurrah, all my men have legs!” “Shot—t—t,” and unkindly separated them.
Alf with his fingers in his ears wrestled with the onus of proving that “the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal,” and occasionally refreshed himself by telling Phyl interesting anecdotes about rat-catching fox-terriers. Dolly, with a great bundle [209] ]of books and papers, retreated up to her bedroom, for real work down-stairs was an impossibility. She put on a jacket against the spring cold, and she lifted the jug and basin and soap-dish off the wash-stand.
It was a very roomy old wash-stand with a marble top, necessarily concealed by a toilet-cover, for its whiteness was for ever seamed with irregular veins of ink. It bore also dabs of Prussian blue and sepia and vermilion, testifying to the fact that Dolly sometimes forsook the pen for the brush. Indeed Dolly’s energy from the age of sixteen to eighteen was a thing to wonder at. Phyl went on more quietly, reading, writing, helping in the house, teaching Freddie. But Dolly pursued everything. The Girls’ Own Paper was her stimulating friend at the time, and she was always anxious to try every experiment or suggestion it gave.
There was a time when ginger-jars and old bottles painted various colours and with strange excrescences upon them were foisted by her on the rest of the family as ornaments for the different rooms. That was when the articles on “Imitation Barbotine Pottery” were running. Even Freddie was interested in this craze of Dolly’s. It was pleasant to see her bring an old bottle into the house, after persuading Clif to knock half the neck off very neatly, and to watch it being painted in delightfully merging shades of blue. And the next day’s work was always absolutely fascinating. Putty was obtained from the glazier’s—Freddie [210] ]always went to buy it himself—threepence worth. Dolly used to knead this, roll it and make it smooth with water, and then with sharp bits of wood cut out strange leaves and flowers. Sometimes she made berries by squeezing little putty balls in mosquito-net; Freddie loved this. This vegetation was with much pains made to adhere to the blue bottles and ginger-jars, and then painted over. The effect was quite handsome—until a week or two’s time or Freddie’s itching fingers made the excrescent spiky leaves and sprays crumble off and leave white patches. When articles appeared on “The Difficulties of a Young Housekeeper, and How She Overcame Them,” Dolly was ever to be found in the kitchen labelling all the store bottles with immaculate labels, making “Fairy Butter,” “Dutch Scrambled Eggs,” and trying to persuade Mary to cook potatoes after a new method.
She started a museum, a collection of skeleton leaves, a bush house; she wheedled Clif into making her an easel, and she bought big sheets of Bristol board—canvases were too expensive—and painted away, with green and yellow pigment in dabs on her pink cheeks, at Red Riding Hoods and Cinderellas whose anatomy would have made an artist shriek, lurid sunsets, seascapes, with strangely-shaped boats sailing full in the wind’s eye.
She had a music craze, and in a month gave the piano more work than she usually did in a year. She decided to learn to sing, and when the boys were all [211] ]away, practised vocal exercises from a book of her mother’s until Phyl and Mrs. Wise took to sitting in the orchard to be out of the sound. Sometimes Mrs. Wise grew rather anxious. “Everything attempted and nothing done,” she said to her husband. “What sort of a training for her?”
But the doctor thought nothing of it. “It is only youthful effervescence,” he said; “more of it perhaps than most girls have. Before long she will settle down and put her whole heart into some one thing.”