Joan and Peter: The story of an education

by H. G. Wells

Lady Charlotte assumed an expression of pained protest, and lifted one black-gloved hand. Mr. Grimes hastily withdrew his thumbnail from his mouth. “I am saying, Lady Charlotte, that what you want to do is to assert your authority, if possible, without legal proceedings.”

He was trying to get the whole situation clear in his mind before he tendered any exact advice. Most children who are quarrelled over in this way gravitate very rapidly into the care of the Lord Chancellor; to that no doubt these children would come; but Lady Charlotte was a prosperous lady with a lot of fight in her and a knack of illegality, and before these children became Wards in Chancery she might, under suitable provocation, run up a very considerable little bill for expenses and special advice in extracting her from such holes as she got herself into. It is an unjust libel upon solicitors that they tempt their clients into litigation. So far is this unjust that the great majority will spare neither time nor expense in getting a case settled out of court.

Nor did Lady Charlotte want to litigate. Courts are uncertain, irritating places. She just wanted to get hold of her two wards, and to deal with them in such a way as to inflict the maximum of annoyance and humiliation upon those queer Stubland aunts. And to save the children from socialism, secularism, Catholicism, and all the wandering wolves of opinion that lie in wait for the improperly trained.

But also she went in fear of Oswald. Oswald was one of the few human beings of whom she went in awe. He was always rude and overbearing with her. From the very first moment when he had seen her as his uncle’s new wife, he had realized in a flash of boyish intuition that if he did not get in with an insult first, he would be her victim. So his first words to her had been an apparently involuntary “O God!” Then he had pretended to dissemble his contempt with a cold politeness. Those were the days of his good looks; he was as tall and big as he was ever to be, and she had expected a “little midshipmite,” whom she would treat like a child, and possibly even send early to bed. From the first she was at a disadvantage. He had a material hold on her too, now. He was his uncle’s heir and her Trustee; and she had the belief of all Victorian women in the unlimited power of Trustees to abuse their trust unless they are abjectly propitiated. He used to come and stay in her house as if it was already his own; the servants would take their orders from him. She was assuring Grimes as she had assured the Stubland aunts that he was on her side; “The Sydenhams are all sound churchmen.” But even as she said this she saw his grim, one-sided face and its one hard intent eye pinning her. “Acting without authority again, my good aunt,” he would say. “You’ll get yourself into trouble yet.”

That was one of his invariable stabs whenever he came to see her. Always he would ask, sooner or later, in that first meeting:

“Any one bagged you for libel yet? No! Or insulting behaviour? Some one will get you sooner or later.”

“Anything that I say about people,” she would reply with dignity, “is True, Oswald.”

“They’ll double the damages if you stick that out.”...

And she saw him now standing beside the irritating, necessary Grimes, sardonically ready to take part against her, prepared even to give those abominable aunts an unendurable triumph over her....

“I want no vulgar litigation,” she said. “Everything ought to be done as quietly as possible. There is no need to ventilate the family affairs of the Sydenhams, and particularly when I tell you that one of the children is——” She hesitated. “Irregular.”