“Mrs. Slammer!”
“Yes”—still more rapidly. “You know that she is a sort of connection of yours; and she has none of that unamiable feeling about—about the past which you told me your relations in general had shown, and she is rather lonely, poor woman. Entre nous, I do not think the marriage is a great success; she has taken an immense fancy to you, and she needs a—a”—“secretary” was on the edge of Lady Bletchley’s tongue, but a memory of Bonnybell’s hopelessly fancy spelling arrested it—“a nice girl to be a sort of daughter to her. I—I could not think of anything better for the moment. I do not see why it may not work pretty well; Colonel Slammer is a great deal away from home.”
Even the naïveté of the last implication failed to stir the least sense of merriment in Miss Ransome. With lips parted by horror and dismay, she sat staring stupidly at the author of the atrocious project thus revealed, while the near future unrolled itself before her mental vision in all its squalid terror; a future of abetting a second-rate fool in her chimerical efforts for the elevation of minds to whose raising or lowering Miss Ransome was and would remain absolutely indifferent; a future of conducting unwilling maid-servants by bus and tram and subterranean grimynesses to museums and libraries, which it was impossible that they could dislike more than she. The prospect was monstrous, unfaceable, and for a moment or two the idea of evading it by taking refuge with Flora, abandoning the struggle to be or seem “nice,” and returning to the old life, presented itself as the most endurable alternative. The old life and Charlie? No, Charlie was more to be shunned than any museum! That would not do....
It fell out, with an irony whose pungency Miss Ransome felt to the full, that the close of the day on which a second shipwreck had overtaken her light bark was dedicated to the last “Happy Evening” of the season. Through previous functions of the kind her gay insouciance and adaptability had carried her triumphantly. She had been a great success among the girls; had borne their affectionate horseplay with light, good humour, and had received with gratitude, tempered with regret that they should be so audible to her coadjutor, the expressions of their candidly uttered preference of her to Miss Sloggett. To-day she had no coadjutor, the secretary being confined to bed by one of those large outspoken colds which always made Lady Bletchley angry.
As Bonnybell drove along eastwards her heart felt depressed almost beyond the power of rebound. This was to be her life; this process of being bandied about from one set of unwilling benefactors to another, at every change sinking deeper into distasteful drudgery. This was all the good she was to gain from being extraordinarily pretty, and always ready to agree with everybody. If the figure of Charlie had not stood like a beacon warning her off, she would have gone back to the old life, to the petits diners at improper restaurants; to the loose talk and equivocal love-making.
Whether it were due to the want of spring in her own spirits, or simply to the agency of an unkind fate, the fact remained that the girls were more unruly than usual, and more difficult to amuse. It being Friday, dancing was not among the pastimes allowed, yet Miss Ransome must have been at her wits’ end before proposing the game of Consequences to which—as a last resource, when the clamour was getting beyond her control—she resorted.
“Had they ever played Consequences?”
One girl answered, “Ow yes, miss, I ’ave onst.”
Pencils and papers were produced, and the game began. Bonnybell herself was to read out the papers at the end.
The results were disastrously successful, as far as the entertainment of the players was concerned, but also in some cases unspeakable. The luckless initiator of the game was reduced to having to pretend an inability to read the handwritings submitted to her, floundering in efforts to suppress and substitute. What they were doing was invariably “kissing.” “He gave her a kiss, and she gave him a black eye.” “They met, as often as not, in a ditch.” “He said to her, ‘Give me a kiss,’ and she said to him, ‘Gow ’ome.’” The “consequences” were—— No one could call Bonnybell squeamish, yet the consequences bathed her in blushes.