I am big—taller than Lilian, and much broader. I have great limbs—I cannot help it if they are like a man’s, though mamma is always throwing it in my teeth. I like all sorts of exercise. The only form of exercise they really like is dancing. They dance exquisitely. My dancing is like an elephant’s—I am always having to apologise for getting on my partner’s toes. I should like to spend the whole of my life in the open air. I sometimes fancy that mamma thinks there is something improper in being out-of-doors. She is always exclaiming against what she calls masculine women—by which she means girls who golf, and row, and ride bicycles, and all that sort of thing. I should like to go in for everything athletic, but they won’t let me. They keep me fastened in a tight pair of corsets, which sometimes make me feel as if I were being held in a vice. I am in a dreadful condition—soft as putty, instead of hard as nails. I cannot walk a quarter of a mile, at anything like a decent pace, without perspiring. Then they laugh at me. If they would let me go in for some real hard work, like lots of other girls do, I would soon show them. By nature I am a sort of female Hercules; it is a shame that they insist on making me a jelly-fish.
I want to have plenty of room inside my clothes. I want my hair to do itself; it would not look so bad with just a touch or two, even if it ran a trifle wild. I want my boots and shoes to humour my feet, I do not want my feet to have to humour them; I am not ashamed of their being large. I do not want to be screwed into an imitation Paris costume, which is too tight everywhere, and bursts when I lift my arms. I know I look a gawk in it, and I always shall. If they would let me be natural—my own self—I do believe I should pass muster. Girls of my build are not meant to be made up in imitation of Dresden china, or Watteau drawings.
The result of such attempts was to be seen there in the mirror. A great picture hat, with the flowers all anyhow. Flowers never will look as they ought to on my big hats—flopping about in a lop-sided fashion, on the crest of a draggly handful of sandy-coloured hair. It does not look a handful; but that is because they make me wear pads and frames, and all sorts of horrors, which will show through; and they call it sandy, though it is my private opinion that it is a sort of light chestnut. If they would only let me do it up in a simple twist, and wear it on the top of my head, I am persuaded that it would not look half bad, though I am aware that the colour is unusual. Under the floppity hat, a good-sized face, with big grey eyes, a straight nose, largish mouth—it is a decent shape if it is large, and the lips are nice ones. The freckles I do not deny; but there are not more than twelve or thirteen altogether, and they are principally on the left side of my nose. But the perspiration I was in! It made me disgusted to see that my skin was positively greasy, and there were beads upon my forehead. The truth is, I am built for work, or, at any rate, for plenty of hard out-of-doors exercise; and if I cannot get it, I am bound to be a nuisance to myself, and an object to others. Mr Morgan, if one of his shoulders is a little higher than the other, is an all-round athlete, though he was so weak as a child. It is because he has gone in for everything that he is now as strong as a horse. If I went in for everything, I believe that inside twelve months I should be a different person.
I only wished that I had a chance of trying.
When I saw what a sight I looked in that glass, and how unfitted I was to fill the fashion-plate rôle for which they insisted on casting me, I did feel that some people had all the luck, while others had none. My chances for having a good time were slipping away—twenty-three is an age. The good marriage I was expected to make was a dream of the mater’s: as she was beginning bitterly to realise: unless I married Ben Morgan, which, of course, would be absurd. Compared with my sisters, I was not in it. Not a man would ever look at me when they were by, or even near. Considering that it was supposed to be my mission in life to attract men, it was really tragic what an awful failure I was. Among the dozens who were proud to call themselves my sisters’ friends, I doubt if there were many who even knew my Christian name. I was quite aware how they talked of me.
“You know that youngest O’Brady girl? Sort of understudy for a grenadier, who looks as if she got her clothes from a dealer in decayed wardrobes, and put them on inside out.”
“You don’t mean to say that that’s the youngest?”
“She’s the youngest in years and sense; but so far as looks and that sort of thing is concerned, she might have come out of the ark. Can’t think what they call the creature.”
“What does it matter what they call a girl like that?”
That was part of a conversation I once overheard at a dance. The first speaker had been recently entrapped into having a waltz with me, which I doubt if he had enjoyed. I know I hadn’t—a possible explanation of his exceeding bitterness. But that his remarks were typical of the kind of thing which was being said of me on all sides I had every reason to suppose.