“Dearest Di,
“I suppose you are now settling down ‘by the sad sea waves’ with Pa and Ma! Oh, you poor thing! I can see you hard at it like a donkey at a well, trotting ‘in the common round, the daily task’ of keeping Pa as tolerable in temper as such an old curmudgeon can be, and Ma as reposeful under her burden of superfluous flesh as is at all possible. What a life for you, patient Grizel! Why don’t you throw it up? You are really clever, and you could do so much. This is Woman’s Day, and you are a woman of exceptional ability. You know I’ve asked you over and over again to retire from the whole domestic ‘show,’ and leave those most uninteresting and selfish old parents of yours to their own devices, with a paid housekeeper to look after their food, which is all they really care about. Come and live with me in London. We should be quite happy together, for I’m good-natured and sensible, and so are you, and we’re neither of us contending for a man, so we shouldn’t quarrel. And you’d wake up, Diana!—you’d wake to find that there are many more precious things in life than Pa and Ma! I could even find you a few men to entertain you, though most of them become bores after about an hour—especially the ones that think themselves vastly amusing. Like your Pa, you know!—who, when he tells a very ancient ‘good story,’ thinks that God Himself ought to give up everything else to listen to him! No, don’t be shocked! I’m not really irreverent—but you know it’s true. Woe betide the hapless wight, male or female, who dares utter a word while Pa Polydore is on the story trail! How I’ve longed to throw things at him! and have only refrained for your sake! Well! God a’ mercy on us, as Shakespeare’s Ophelia says, and defend us from the anecdotal men!
“You’ll perhaps be interested to hear that a proposal of marriage was made to me last night. The bold adventurer is rather like your Pa,—well ‘on’ in years, rich, with a prosperous ‘tum’—and a general aspect of assertive affluence. I said ‘No,’ of course, and he asked me if I knew what I was doing? Exactly as if he thought I might be drunk, or dreaming! I replied that I was quite aware of myself, of him, and the general locality. ‘And yet you say No?’ he almost whispered, in a kind of stupefied amazement. I repeated ‘No’—and ‘No,’—and clinched the matter by the additional remark that he was the last sort of man I would ever wish to marry. Then he smiled feebly, and said ‘Poor child!—you have been sadly led astray! These new ideas——’ I cut him short by ringing the bell and ordering tea, and fortunately just at the moment in came Jane Prowser—you know her!—the tall, bony woman who goes in for ‘Eugenics,’ and she did the scarecrow business quite effectively. As soon as she began to talk in her high, rasping voice he went! Then I had tea alone with the Prowser—rather a trying meal, as she would, she would describe in detail all the deformities and miseries of a child ‘wot ’adn’t no business to be born,’ as my housemaid once remarked of a certain domestic upset. However, I got rid of her after she had eaten all the cress and tomato sandwiches, and then I started to read a batch of letters from abroad. I’m so thankful for my foreign correspondents!—they write and spell so well, and always have something interesting to say. One of my great friends in Paris, Blanche de Rouailles, sent me a most curious advertisement, which she tells me is appearing in all the French papers—I enclose it for you, as you are so ‘scientific’ and it may interest you. It is rather curiously worded and sounds ‘uncanny!’ But it occupies nearly half a column in all the principal Paris papers and is repeated in five different languages,—French, Italian, Spanish, Russian and English. I suppose it’s a snare or a ‘do’ of some sort. The world is full of scoundrels, even in science! Now remember what I tell you! Come to me at once if Pa and Ma kick over the traces and allow their ingrained selfishness to break out of bounds. There’s plenty of room for you in my cosy little flat and we can have a real good time together. Don’t bother about money,—with your talent and knowledge of languages you can soon earn some, and I’ll put you in the way of it. You really must do something for your own advantage,—surely you don’t mean to waste your whole life in soothing Pa and massaging Ma? It may be dutiful but it must be dull! I don’t think all the massaging in the world will ever reduce Ma to normal proportions, and certainly nothing can ever cure Pa of his detestable humours which are always lurking in ambush below his surface ‘manner,’ ready to jump out like little black devils on the smallest provocation. We can never be really grateful enough, dear Di, for our single blessedness! Imagine what life would have been for us with husbands like Pa! Absolute misery!—for you and I could never have taken refuge in food and fat like Ma! We would have died sooner than concentrate our souls on peas and asparagus!—we would have gone to the stake like martyrs rather than have allowed our bosoms to swell with the interior joys of roast pork and stuffing! Oh yes!—there is much to be thankful for in our spinsterhood,—we can go to our little beds in peace, knowing that no pig-like snoring from the ‘superior’ brute will disturb the holy hours of the night!—and if we are clever enough to make a little money, we can spend it as we like, without being cross-examined as to why it is that the dress we wore four years ago is worn out, and why we must have another! I could run on for pages and pages concerning the blessings and privileges of unmarried women, but I’ll restrain my enthusiasm till we meet. Let that meeting be soon!—and remember that I am always at your service as a true friend and that I’ll do anything in the world to help you out of your domestic harness. For the old people who ‘drive’ you can’t and won’t see what a patient, kind, helpful clever daughter they’ve got, and they don’t deserve to keep you. Let them spend their spare cash on a housekeeper, who is sure to cheat them (and a good job too!) and take your freedom. Get away!—never mind how, or where, or when,—but don’t spend all your life in drudging. You’ve done enough of it—get away! This is the best of good advice from your loving friend,
“Sophy Lansing.”
A slight shadow of meditative gravity clouded Diana’s face as she finished reading this letter. She was troubled by her own thoughts; Sophy’s lively strictures on her parents were undoubtedly correct and deserved,—and yet—“father and mother” were “father and mother” after all! It is curious how these two words still keep their sentimental significance, despite “state” education! “Mother” in the lower classes is often a drab, and in the higher a frivolous wastrel; “father” in the slums may beat his children black and blue, and in Mayfair neglect them to the point of utmost indifference,—but “mother and father,” totally undeserving as they often are, still come in for a share of their offspring’s vague consideration and lingering respect. “Education” of the wrong sort, however, is doing its best to deprive them of this regard, and it appears likely that the younger generation will soon be so highly instructed as to be able to ignore “mother and father” as easily as full-fledged cygnets ignore the parent birds who drive them away from their nesting haunts. But Diana was “old-fashioned”; she had an affectionate nature, and she took pathetic pains to persuade herself that “Pa” and “Ma” meant to be kind, and must in their hearts love her, their only child. This was pure fallacy, but it was the only little bit of hope and trust left to her in a hard world, and she was loth to let it go. The smallest expression of tenderness from that ruffled old human terrier, her father, would have brought her to his feet, an even more willing slave to his moods than she already was,—a loving embrace from her mother would have moved her almost to tears of joy and gratitude, and would have doubly strengthened her unreasoning and unselfish devotion to the “bogey” of her duty. But she never received any such sign of affection or encouragement from year’s end to year’s end,—and it was like a strange dream to her now to recall that when she had been young, in the time of her “teens,” her father had called her his “beautiful girl,” and her mother had chosen pretty frocks for her “darling child!” Youth and the prospects of marriage had made this difference in the temperature of parental tenderness. Now that she was at that fatal stop-gap called “middle-age” and a hopeless spinster, the pretty frocks and the “beautiful-girl-darling-child” period had vanished with her matrimonial chances. There was no help for it.
At this point in her thoughts she gave a little half-unconscious sigh. Mechanically she folded up Sophy Lansing’s letter, and as she did so, noticed that a slip of printed paper had fallen out of it and lay on the floor. She turned herself on her reclining chair and stooped for it,—then as she picked it up realised that it must be the advertisement in the five different languages which her friend had mentioned. Glancing carelessly over it at first, but afterwards more attentively, her interest was aroused by its unusual wording, and then as she read it over and over again she found in it a singular attraction. It ran as follows:
“To ANY WOMAN who is alone in the world WITHOUT CLAIMS on HER TIME or HER AFFECTIONS.
“A SCIENTIST, engaged in very IMPORTANT and DIFFICULT WORK, requires the ASSISTANCE and CO-OPERATION of a Courageous and Determined Woman of mature years. She must have a fair knowledge of modern science, and must not shrink from dangerous experiments or be afraid to take risks in the pursuit of discoveries which may be beneficial to the human race. Every personal care, consideration and courtesy will be shown towards her, and she will be paid a handsome sum for her services and be provided with full board and lodging in an elegant suite of apartments placed freely at her disposal. She must be prepared to devote herself for one or two years entirely to the study of very intricate problems in chemistry, concerning which she will be expected to maintain the strictest confidence. She must be well educated, especially in languages and literature, and she must have no ties of any kind or business which can interrupt or distract her attention from the serious course of training which it will be necessary for her to pursue. This Advertisement cannot be answered by letter. Each applicant must present herself personally and alone between the hours of 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. on Tuesdays and Fridays only to
“DR. FÉODOR DIMITRIUS,
“Château Fragonard,
“Geneva.”
The more Diana studied this singular announcement, the more remarkable and fascinating did it seem. The very hours named as the only suitable ones for interviewing applicants, between six and eight in the morning, were unusual enough, and the whole wording of the advertisement implied something mysterious and out of the common.