"I told them," she repeated, "knowing Sir Charles as well as I do, I felt
I might safely assure them of that."
In Damaris, meanwhile, anger gradually gave place to far more complex emotions. She sat well back in her chair, and clasped her hands firmly in her flowered Pompadour-muslin lap. Her eyes looked enormous as she kept them fixed gravely and steadily upon the speaker. For extraordinary ideas and perceptions concerning the said speaker crowded into her young head. She did not like them at all. She shrank from dwelling upon or following them put. They, indeed, made her hot and uncomfortable all over. Had Theresa Bilson taken leave of her senses, or was she, Damaris, herself in fault—a harbourer of nasty thoughts? Consciously she felt to grow older, to grow up. And she did not like that either; for the grown-up world, to which Theresa acted just now as doorkeeper, struck her as an ugly and vulgar-minded place. She saw her ex-governess from a new angle—a more illuminating than agreeable one, at which she no longer figured as pitiful, her little assumptions and sillinesses calling for the chivalrous forbearance of persons more happily placed; but as actively impertinent, an usurper of authority and privileges altogether outside her office and her scope. She was greedy—not a pretty word yet a true one, covering both her manner of eating and her speech. Registering which facts Damaris was sensible of almost physical repulsion, as from something obscurely gross. Hence it followed that Theresa must, somehow, be stopped, made to see her own present unpleasantness, saved from herself in short—to which end it became Damaris' duty to unfurl the flag of revolt.
The young girl arrived at this conclusion in a spirit of rather pathetic seriousness. It is far from easy, at eighteen, to control tongue and temper to the extent of joining battle with your elders in calm and dignified sort. To lay about you in a rage is easy enough. But rage is tiresomely liable to defeat its own object and make you make a fool of yourself. Any unfurling of the flag would be useless, and worse than useless, unless it heralded victory sure and complete—Damaris realized this. So she kept a brave front, although her pulse quickened and she had a bad little empty feeling around her heart.
Fortunately, however, for her side of the campaign, Theresa—emboldened by recapitulation of her late boastings at the Miss Minetts' tea-table—hastened to put a gilded dome to her own indiscretion and offence. For nothing would do but Damaris must accompany her on this choir treat! She declared herself really compelled to press the point. It offered such an excellent opportunity of acquiring archaeological knowledge—had not the Dean most kindly promised to conduct the party round the Cathedral himself and deliver a short lecture en route?—and of friendly social intercourse, both of which would be very advantageous to Damaris. As she was without any engagement for the day clearly neither should be missed. Of course, everyone understood how unsuitable it would be to ask Sir Charles to patronize parish excursions and events.—Here Miss Bilson became lyrical, speaking with gasping breath and glowing face, of "a call to exalted spheres of action, of great Proconsuls, Empire Builders, Pillars of the State."—Naturally you hesitated to intrude on the time and attention of such a distinguished person—that in point of fact was her main reason for disposing of the matter of the carriage horses herself. How could she trouble Sir Charles with such a homely detail?—But Damaris' case, needless to remark, was very different. At her age it was invidious to be too exclusive. Miss Felicia Verity felt—so she, Theresa, was certain—that it was a pity Damaris did not make more friends in the village now she was out of the schoolroom. May and Doris Horniblow were sweet girls and highly educated. They, of course, were going. And Captain Taylor, she understood would bring his daughter, Louisa—who was home for a few days before the opening of term at the Tillingworth High School where she was second mistress.
"It is always well to realize the attainments of young people of your own age, even if they are not in quite the same social grade as yourself. Your going would give pleasure too. It will be taken as a compliment to the vicar and the Church—may really, in a sense, be called patriotic since an acknowledgment of the duty we owe, individually, to the local community of which we form part. And then," she added, naively giving herself away at the last, "of course, if you go over to the station in the brake Patch cannot make any difficulties about driving it."
Here Theresa stayed the torrent of her eloquence and looked up, to find
Damaris' eyes fixed upon her in incredulous wonder.
"Have you nothing to say, dear, in answer to my proposition?" she enquired, with a suddenly anxious, edgy little laugh.
"I am afraid I have a lot to say, some of which you won't like."
"How so?" Theresa cried, still playfully. "You must see how natural and reasonable my suggestion is." Then becoming admonitory. "You should learn to think a little more of others.—It is a bad habit to offer opposition simply for opposition's sake."
"I do not oppose you for the mere pleasure of opposing," Damaris began, determined her voice should not shake. "But I'm sorry to say, I can't agree to the horses being used to draw a loaded brake. I could not ask Patch. He would refuse and be quite right in refusing. It's not their work—nor his work either."