As a matter of fact, the Rendell girls had claim to one great distinction—promiscuous accomplishments had been discarded in their case, and each had been brought up to do some one thing well. Maud was musical, and practised scales two hours a day as a preliminary before settling down for another two or three hours of sonatas and fugues. Elsie locked herself in her bedroom for a like period, and the wails of her violin came floating downstairs like the lament of a lost soul. Nan appropriated a chilly attic, carved wood and her fingers at the same time, and clanged away at copper work, knocking her nails black and blue with ill-directed strokes of the hammer, as she
manufactured the panels which were fitted into her oak carving with such artistic effect. Lilias declared sweetly that she was too stupid to do anything, but privately reflected that at least she had mastered the art of looking charming; and what did it matter if she were useless, since with her beauty she would certainly marry a duke on the first opportunity, and be spirited away to a life of luxury! As for Agatha and Christabel, they were supposed to devote themselves to the study of languages and the domestic arts, but in private conclave they had already decided on their future career. They were to keep a select academy for young ladies, in which they would correct all those glaring errors of governess and mother under which they themselves had groaned.
“I can bear it better when I feel it is for a good end. Our girls shall never suffer as I am suffering!” said Chrissie, with an air of martyrdom, when she was ordered to bed at nine o’clock, and remorselessly roused from slumber at seven a.m. “If grown-ups were sensible, they would allow a child to follow its own instinct. Nature must surely know better than mothers; and my nature tells me to sit up at nights and have breakfast in bed. To be sent off as if one were a child in arms is really too horribly trying!”
“And when Mr Barr was there too! So degrading! Last night he was talking to me about books, and I’m sure he thought I was quite grown up. The table was between us, you know, so he couldn’t see my legs. I was enjoying myself so much, and saying that I thought Thackeray much over-rated, when mother came up and said, ‘Time for bed, Chickie! Run away!’ I assure you, I blushed with mortification.”
“Piteous!” said Christabel, bringing out her pet word with emphasis. “They never think of our feelings. I shall make it a rule to study the characters of our young ladies, and avoid wounding their susceptibilities. I know how it feels!”
In spite of their many sufferings, however, the Rendells would one and all have been ready to declare that there never had been, might, could, would, or should be, such another father and mother as they possessed. To have a son at college, and yourself carry off a prize at a tennis tournament, was surely a feat to be proud of on the part of a father; and what joy to have a tiny little scrap of a mother, who could be petted like a child and lifted up in the arms of the youngest daughter—a mother who had solved the problem of eternal youth, and looked so pretty and so meek, that it was a constant marvel where on earth she managed to stow that colossal will-power before which every member of the household bowed and trembled.
The Rendells’ house was at once the brightest, the airiest, and the noisiest in the neighbourhood. As there were only six daughters, it can truthfully be asserted that there were never more than half a dozen girls talking at the same moment. Strangers passing beneath the schoolroom window at a moment when the sisters were assembled together, had indeed been known to estimate the numbers present as from a dozen to twenty; but such a statement was obviously false, and tended to that painful habit of exaggeration which it is the duty of all good folk to deplore. They were girls of strong individuality, and each felt it a duty to state her own views on any given subject, which she proceeded to do, undaunted by the fact that her companions were too much engrossed in talking themselves to be able to listen to a word she said. Maud talked, pouring out tea and dropping sugar into the cups with tragic emphasis; Lilias prattled sweetly, waving her white hands to enforce a point which no one heard; Nan banged the table and upset her cup in violence of denunciation; Elsie squeaked away in melancholy treble; and Agatha’s “Too bad!” and Christabel’s “Horrid shame!” were heard uninterruptedly in every pause.
When the door of the Grange opened to admit a stranger, the wail of a violin, the jingle of the piano, and the clang of Nan’s hammer greeted him on the threshold, and from morn till night the echo of laughter and of happy voices never died away. There was only one occasion when the Rendell girls subsided into silence, and that was when Jim—the brother, the typical man of the race—came home on a visit and shed the lustre of his presence on his native village. Then the Miss Rendells sat in rows at his feet, paying obeisance, and, meekly opening their mouths, swallowed all he said, not even Nan herself daring to raise a question.