Roger was a bully; he bullied his sister, and would dearly have loved to bully Stephen; but Stephen nonplussed him, her arms were so strong, he could never wrench Stephen’s arms backwards like Violet’s; he could never make her cry or show any emotion when he pinched her, or tugged roughly at her new hair ribbon, and then Stephen would often beat him at games, a fact which he deeply resented. She could bowl at cricket much straighter than he could; she climbed trees with astonishing skill and prowess, and even if she did tear her skirts in the process it was obviously cheek for a girl to climb at all. Violet never climbed trees; she stood at the bottom admiring the courage of Roger. He grew to hate Stephen as a kind of rival, a kind of intruder into his especial province; he was always longing to take her down a peg, but being slow-witted he was foolish in his methods—no good daring Stephen, she responded at once, and usually went one better. As for Stephen, she loathed him, and her loathing was increased by a most humiliating consciousness of envy. Yes, despite his shortcomings she envied young Roger with his thick, clumping boots, his cropped hair and his Etons; envied his school and his masculine companions of whom he would speak grandly as: ‘all the other fellows!’; envied his right to climb trees and play cricket and football—his right to be perfectly natural; above all she envied his splendid conviction that being a boy constituted a privilege in life; she could well understand that conviction, but this only increased her envy.
Stephen found Violet intolerably silly, she cried quite as loudly when she bumped her own head as when Roger applied his most strenuous torments. But what irritated Stephen, was the fact that she suspected that Violet almost enjoyed those torments.
‘He’s so dreadfully strong!’ she had confided in Stephen, with something like pride in her voice.
Stephen had longed to shake her for that: ‘I can pinch quite as hard as he can!’ she had threatened, ‘If you think he’s stronger than I am, I’ll show you!’ At which Violet had rushed away screaming.
Violet was already full of feminine poses; she loved dolls, but not quite so much as she pretended. People said: ‘Look at Violet, she’s like a little mother; it’s so touching to see that instinct in a child!’ Then Violet would become still more touching. She was always thrusting her dolls upon Stephen, making her undress them and put them to bed. ‘Now you’re Nanny, Stephen, and I’m Gertrude’s mother, or you can be mother this time if you’d rather—Oh, be careful, you’ll break her! Now you’ve pulled off a button! I do think you might play more like I do!’ And then Violet knitted, or said that she knitted—Stephen had never seen anything but knots. ‘Can’t you knit?’ she would say, looking scornfully at Stephen, ‘I can—Mother called me a dear little housewife!’ Then Stephen would lose her temper and speak rudely: ‘You’re a dear little sop, that’s what you are!’ For hours she must play stupid doll-games with Violet, because Roger would not always play real games in the garden. He hated to be beaten, yet how could she help it? Could she help throwing straighter than Roger?
They had nothing whatever in common, these children, but the Antrims were neighbours, and even Sir Philip, indulgent though he was, insisted that Stephen should have friends of her own age to play with. He had spoken quite sharply on several occasions when the child had pleaded to be allowed to stay at home. Indeed he spoke sharply that very day at luncheon:
‘Eat your pudding please, Stephen; come now, finish it quickly! If all this fuss is about the little Antrims, then Father won’t have it, it’s ridiculous, darling.’
So Stephen had hastily swallowed her pudding, and escaped upstairs to the nursery.
2
The Antrims lived half a mile from Ledbury, on the other side of the hills. It was quite a long drive to their house from Morton—Stephen was driven over in the dog-cart. She sat beside Williams in gloomy silence, with the collar of her coat turned up to her ears. She was filled with a sense of bitter injustice; why should they insist on this stupid expedition? Even her father had been cross at luncheon because she preferred to stay at home with him. Why should she be forced to know other children? They didn’t want her nor she them. And above all the Antrims! That idiotic Violet—Violet who was learning to ride side-saddle—and Roger strutting about in his Etons, and bragging, always bragging because he was a boy—and their mother who was quite sure to patronize Stephen, because being grown-up made her put on a manner. Stephen could hear her infuriating voice, the voice she reserved for children ‘Ah, here you are, Stephen! Now then, little people, run along and have a good feed in the schoolroom. There’s plenty of cake; I knew Stephen was coming; we all know Stephen’s capacity for cake!’