My dear Louise,—I am sorry that you are getting out of breath with my experiences; but just think what it must be for me to have to go through them! If I had not a better-balanced mind and a more stable temperament than yours, I should probably have been returned dead on your hands a week ago, and you would have found that far more disturbing than reading my letters.
I am writing from the University, because the Merchants’ eldest child has got measles. The higher powers are so ingenious in devising these little bits of action to brighten up the plot of one’s life! Measles is not the sort of thing I should ever have thought of for myself, but it has varied my days here to an extent that I should have supposed to be quite out of the range of a few spots.
I have had measles myself, and was therefore quite prepared to go on with my work. I was even looking forward to brightening the monotonous pallor of the children’s complexions by painting in a pink rash, but I was not allowed to. Mrs. Merchant has a warm heart, and said that it would not be safe to trifle with illness. This means that instead of everything going on as usual, as it might quite well do, every one in the house has to run up and down stairs all day—except the hospital nurse, who stands just inside the child’s door and heads the runners downstairs again.
It was suggested at first that I should go home for three weeks and then come back here, but instead of that I am staying with Mrs. Cambridge. I have forgotten why she asked me to come to her, or why I accepted. The last week has been like a dream, where one begins by salmon-fishing, and then suddenly finds oneself in a motor accident on the top of the Alps. The connecting links have faded.
Most of the Dons, or whatever their local equivalent is, live in a square round the University, which is a big building like a cross between an office and a church. I have told you that the Merchants’ house is a mixed-looking erection; the whole town is like that. The offices are half hotels, the churches suggest schools or offices, the private houses have borrowed a feature or two from dovecots, mausoleums, and even castles on the Rhine. The Town Hall has a compromising resemblance to the Stock Exchange, which, in its turn, is tricked out in what looks like pink gingham trimmings from the seaside lodging-houses. The Cambridges’ house is designed for the greatest comfort of the few, and the greatest inconvenience of the many, the many being a large staff of maid-servants. All the rooms are beautifully large and airy, the stairs narrow and steep, the bedrooms infinitely removed from the apparatus by which they are kept clean. The kitchens are so remotely buried in the bowels of the earth that, even if the smell of boiled cabbage travelled as quickly as a ray of light, it would take, probably, some weeks to reach the noses of those fortunates engaged at meals in the dining-room.
I have already described the Cambridges to you. I should like to add that I am beginning to be very fond of the beetle-like Mr. Cambridge. As for her, it is a delight to see her handle the town. I never in my life saw such skill. Her “at-home” day makes me think of one of the days of creation—about the middle of the week—when huge lizards, giant toads, and queer-faced monstrosities of all sorts were being delivered by the million at the front door of Eden, and there was no one to show them what to do next. Mr. Cambridge would have made a bad Adam. He would have looked at them through his spectacles and said: “No, really, I can’t think of a name for that fellow. Let’s try this fat old girl. Let me see—h’m, ha!”—(he gives his little old—maidish cough)—“er—Pobblyomniba Jessica perhaps——”
“May I introduce Mrs. Blot?” Mrs. Cambridge would then have said in her quiet voice, and the matter would have been settled for all time, or until the Blots died out or were replaced by a more agile species, the Trots.
On her last Thursday I pinned myself into a corner behind the heaviest mammoth of the lot—a massive woman with a hairy face, and arms like a prize-fighter’s legs. I have never recovered from my first alarm sufficiently to ask her name, but I have since gathered that she lives alone with a widowed nephew, and is at once the terror and delight of the junior staff of the University. People of strong character are not afraid of her, but the younger and less definite individuals cower before her, although her mighty hands shower sugar-plums, excellent dinner-parties, and the kindest advice upon them.
I was resting for a moment on an ottoman near the window when she sat down upon me, and looked about her through a pair of lorgnettes. Then she began to fan herself, and the motion which this gave to her body caused me such acute agony in my knees that I gave a faint scream, and, I think, moved a little. She looked round. I can’t think how she did it—but, in fact, her face came quite close to the top of my head. I could feel her breath distinctly.