AT WEYMOUTH
I
Only lookers-on at the human comedy can be consistently philosophical. The drama is too exciting, too distracting to the players. When a man is chasing his hat along a gusty thoroughfare, he takes little heed of the headgear of others. Till now Posy's outlook had been girlishly critical. Her ideas and ideals were coloured or discoloured by the persons with whom she came in contact, but she was modest and sensible enough to realize that her experience of the big things of life was negligible. She had never suffered sharp pain either of mind or body. The death of her grandmother affected her subjectively. A familiar figure had been removed from her small circle. A landmark had vanished for ever. It was awful to reflect that her own mother might have been taken. She remembered an incident at school, the summoning of a girl about her own age, a chum, to the presence of the headmistress. The girl, to the wonder of all, had not returned to the class-room, but Posy saw her an hour later putting her things together for a long journey. The girl's face had changed terribly. In answer to the first eager question, she had said, drearily: "My mother is dead."
Posy burst into tears; the girl's eyes were dry. Then Posy stammered out: "Did you love her very much?" and the other laughed, actually laughed, as she replied: "Love her? She was all I had in the world!" This glimpse of a grief beyond tears was a unique experience, something which transcended imagination, and something, therefore, not fully absorbed. For many nights Posy was haunted by the vision of that white, drawn face, with its hungry, despairing expression; then it slowly faded away. By this time, also, she had almost forgotten the Honeybun stories of the submerged tenth. Bexhill breezes had blown them out of her mind. Somewhere in festering slums and alleys, men and women and children were fighting desperately against disease, poverty, and vice. Teachers had pointed out, with kindly common sense, that it would be morbid and futile to allow the mind to dwell upon conditions which, for the moment, a schoolgirl was powerless to ameliorate. With relief, Posy had purged her thoughts of such horrors.
And now her father raised the question—What was to be done with this fancy piece?
Posy answered that question after her own fashion. The Chrysostom aforesaid—excellent, practical parson!—had indicated a task. Under his teaching and preaching Posy had returned gladly enough to the fold of the Church of England. She no longer thought of Omnipotence as a vague essence permeating the universe. The Deity had become personal. Chrysostom, however, was too sensible a man to fill the minds of schoolgirls with doctrinal problems. He preached practical Christianity with sincerity and eloquence. The nail he hammered home into youthful pates was this: "Make the world a pleasanter place for others, and you will find it more pleasant for yourselves." The girls at Posy's school indulged in mild chaff over this dictum. Sweet seventeen admonished blushing sixteen to "Be a sunbeam!" Another catchword in frequent use was: "Save a smile for mother!"
Fired by the conviction that the sunbeam business paid handsome dividends, Posy returned to Soho Square. She intended to brighten the lives of everybody in the house, including the tweenie. That, for the moment, was to be her "job." She described the process as "binging 'em up."
And the member of her father's household who seemed to be most in need of "binging" happened to be James Miggott.
II
In August—she had left school for good at the end of the summer term—Posy and her mother went to Weymouth. Quinney did not accompany them. He said, jocularly, that he got all the change he needed travelling about the kingdom in search of "stuff." Business being at a low ebb in August, he selected that month for a general stocktaking, balancing of accounts, and the planning of an active autumn campaign. Mabel Dredge remained with him, a most capable assistant; James Miggott was told that he might spend three weeks wherever he pleased.