“How many children have you?” The calm voice trickled over her consciousness like a stream of ice-cold water.
“Three,” she answered, hurriedly. “Althea’s five, and Sylvester’s nearly four—Besser, we call him, you know—and Baby, her name is really Eulalie, is two and a half and simply huge for her age. Have you any children?”
“No,” said Lady Denby, implying by her tone that the propagation of the species was, in her opinion, a degraded and vulgar performance.
Marjorie tried other topics; church work, conundrums, Sir Eric’s health and gastronomic peculiarities. She offered her favourite recipes, and patterns for crocheted lace, interrupted, thank Heaven, by the entrance of the snow-covered children and the consequent confusion that they caused.
In her domestic activities she was perfectly at ease, hanging damp garments on radiators to dry, wiping tear stains from ruddy cheeks, and even arranging a juvenile tea-party in a corner of the room.
She chattered happily all the while, never for a moment realising that in the Upper Social Circles, the last task in the world a woman should undertake cheerfully is the care of her children; that even allowing them to stay in the same room and breathe the rarified air with which the exalted adults have finished, is a confession of eccentricity, if not bourgeoisisme. She had no ideas that there were mothers, outside of books—or possibly New York—who not only considered their children a nuisance, but were ashamed to be surprised in any act of maternal solicitude.
Had Ottawa been Pinto Plains, and Lady Denby one of her neighbours there, she would have been helping to change the children’s clothing, then she would have joined the juvenile tea-party, and later, would have heard Althea count up to twenty, prompted Baby to recite “Hickory, Dickory, Dock,” and would have played “Pease Porridge Hot,” with Sylvester until her palms smarted painfully.
As it was, Lady Denby did none of these things. She sipped tea and nibbled toast as though vast distances separated her from the rest of them, distances that she had no wish to bridge. Marjorie came to the conclusion that she was not only deaf, but suffering the frailties of extreme age, her contradictory appearance notwithstanding. In this kindly way did she account for her guest’s indifference. That her visitor was a great and powerful lady, Marjorie well knew, but she had no idea that it was necessary for the great and powerful to assume this manner, as a means whereby they might display their superiority. According to her simple philosophy, the more exalted the person, the readier the graciousness. For what was greatness but goodness, and what was goodness but love of humanity? Was not Queen Victoria sociability itself, when she visited the humbler subjects of her Kingdom?
Other callers came; Mrs. Gullep, whose mission it was to visit newcomers to the church; Mrs. Haynes, whose husband was also a Member from the West, and two or three of the neighbours, with whose children Marjorie’s children played. She had a somewhat confused recollection of the late afternoon, but certain features of Lady Denby’s conversation recurred with disturbing vividness.
She was amazed to learn that opening her own door was, in future, quite out of the question. If she could not, or would not, engage the permanent services of a domestic, she must, at least, have someone on Wednesday afternoons to admit her callers. Furthermore, she must be relieved—relieved was Lady Denby’s word—of all bother—(also Lady Denby’s) with the children.