The Lark

  ‘My aunt, Miss Lucas, has a mine of them,’ said Lucilla, ‘and my taste is hers,’ and she began the charming old melody.

  It was a most successful evening, and when it was over Jane and Lucilla fell into each other’s arms in a passion of mutual congratulation.

  ‘Aren’t they dears? Even Miss Antrobus isn’t so bad. And don’t you think Mr Tombs really has a nice face?’

  ‘Nice face, nice voice, nice manners, nice straight back, nice hands.’

  ‘But did you notice Mr Thornton’s hands? Those long, delicate fingers? He’s an artist every inch.’

  ‘He’s the one who plays the violin. The others are ’cello and double bass. How frightfully lucky we are! What times we shall have!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jane pensively.

  ‘And they’re all fond of dancing.’

  ‘Yes.’ Jane had become still more pensive and was rolling and unrolling the ribbon of her girdle with a preoccupied little frown.

  ‘And they all like acting.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t keep saying “Yes”,’ said Lucilla, beginning to pull out hairpins. ‘What do you think of Miss Antrobus?’

  ‘I don’t know. She is the one I don’t feel sure about. She’s the fly in the amber, or the toad in the ointment, or whatever it is. She didn’t seem to fit in somehow.’

  ‘Mr Rochester seemed to like her.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jane, ‘but not desperately, do you think?’

  ‘No, it’s not a passionate affair. Friend of childhood’s hour, and so on, so Mamma Rochester said.’

  ‘What do you mean by “affair”?’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Lucilla asked, brushing vigorously. ‘Mamma Rochester hinted all sorts of things …’ Lucilla stopped. Through the double curtain of her hair she had seen, in the mirror, Jane’s face.

  Ought she to have gone on? To have told Jane all that Mrs Rochester had said? Anyhow, she didn’t. And anyhow, it did not matter, because Jane had heard every word through the library door. Why did not Jane tell Lucilla that she had listened to Mrs Rochester’s poisonous confidences? It was not that she was ashamed of listening. When she began to listen she pictured herself telling Lucilla afterwards and laughing over it with her. But she had not told her. And she did not tell her now. Instead she said: ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Oh, the usual stuff that sort of woman would hint: that we needn’t hope that my Lord Rochester would throw the handkerchief to either of us, because his mamma had other views for him.’

  ‘What did she say exactly?’

  ‘Oh, nothing exactly. But I gathered that Mama would be quite pleased if Mr Rochester didn’t admire Jane or Lucy.’

  ‘So Miss Antrobus is sent here to spy? I thought there was something of that sort. That must be what makes one feel uncomfortable with her.’

  ‘Oh, but I don’t think that,’ said Lucilla, forgetting that she had felt something very like it, and only remembering that Miss Antrobus had been nice to the unreal aunt. ‘I think she’s a kind girl really, and straight.’

  ‘She’s come to spy out the land,’ said Jane with conviction. ‘Well, she’s welcome to all she can find out. Good-night, Luce.’

  But she re-opened the door expressly to put her head round it and whisper: ‘I say, Luce, eight people! Enough for the Lancers. And four of them Pigs – beautiful, fat, profitable Pigs! Seventeen-guineas-a-week Pigs, Luce, my dear! Good-night!’

  There is no doubt that fortune smiles on the brave; at any rate, it smiled broadly from the first on Jane and Lucilla. Even their misfortunes were mitigated. Their trustee defaulted: but he left them a house and garden and a nest-egg. The house and garden was too small to make money out of: but at once, almost, Cedar Court loomed on a not distant horizon. Jane tumbled downstairs: but she, so to speak, tumbled into possession of the garden room.

  They could not afford an expert gardener and bailiff: and Destiny took them to Madame Tussauds, and behold, embodied in Mr Dix, the perfect bailiff and gardener. Old Mr Rochester threatened to become an embarrassment: and at once he retired to Thibet.

  They had no servant really attached to their interests: but before they had time to feel this deeply, behold Gladys. They desired competent servants: and Forbes and Stanley were added to their staff. Mrs Adela Dadd happened: but then so, directly afterwards, did Mrs Doveton. The three greedy sisters went away without paying: but they were succeeded by the Thorntons and by Mr Tombs, who did pay.

  This sort of luck does, beyond doubt, attend on some people, and it transcends all other blessings. That is why we say, ‘It is better to be lucky than rich.’ Cæsar had this sort of luck; Napoleon had it; Jane and Lucy had it. But this sort of luck is a bridge that sooner or later gives way. Napoleon met Blücher at Waterloo; Cæsar, even at the base of Pompey’s statue, met a greater than Blücher; and Jane and Lucy felt, almost from the first, that in Miss Antrobus they had met a personality that, as gipsies would say, ‘crossed their luck’.

  A vague but undeniable sense of uneasiness persisted in and through and under and over the pleasant days that now followed each other at Cedar Court. It was not a strong feeling, not an overpowering discomfort; it did not destroy pleasure, but it leavened it. Quietly, persistently, unceasingly it bored its way into everything. It was like a slight toothache which the will may decide to ignore but which goes on all the same in that hinterland of the subconscious where the will has no sovereignty.

  The thing could not be put into words. It was as elusive as a bird’s song or a flower-scent. All you could say about it was that it was here, and that it was antagonistic. It not that Miss Antrobus withdrew herself from the gaieties of Cedar Court: on the contrary, she participated in every single one. She did not sing, but she could play accompaniments; she was a poor actress, but a good prompter and an excellent audience; her time was always at anyone’s disposal, and she had all the time there was. She had too much time – she was always there. She never went to London. She never walked out, except in the garden. She was always amiable and obliging – but she was always there. And she seemed to be always looking on.

  ‘And she looks on through a spy-glass,’ said Jane: ‘a tortoiseshell lorgnette or whatever it is, like Mrs Rochester had. Or perhaps she looks at us through a microscope, as if we were beetles or those things with legs that come out of pond-water.’

  ‘She doesn’t look at Miss Lucas like that,’ said Lucilla.

  ‘No,’ said Jane, ‘that’s the worst of it. She’s a great deal too nice to Miss Lucas. It’s not natural. She asks after her every morning. She offers to go and sit with her – to read to her – take her out for drives.’

  ‘That’s easy for you; you’ve only got to say I’m not strong enough. But when she comes and sits beside me in the evenings and offers to hold my wool, and tells me she’s sure I should enjoy a drive, and is so nice and kind – if it’s genuine she’s a dear, but if it’s only that she suspects that I’m not really an aunt, then – well …’

  ‘Yes, that’s it,’ said Jane. ‘That dreadful aunt is our weak point. She’s the dead secret, the skeleton in the cupboard. If it wasn’t for her we could defy fifty Miss Antrobuses.’

  ‘But as it is,’ Lucilla pointed out, ‘we can’t.’

  ‘What a name too! Antrobus! It makes me think of a mediaeval engine of war. Halberds and battering-rams and Antrobuses – I’m sure I’ve read that somewhere.’

  ‘I always thought all Antrobuses had big, hooky noses. You know, noses that snort at you, and say, “Ha, ha!” like the warhorse. But really I believe she’s all right. It’s only our guilty consciences. And Mr Rochester says she’s much jollier than she used to be.’

  ‘And as she was the friend of his childhood he must have thought her pretty nice then. So that by now …!’

  ‘I didn’t take it that way. What he said was that the war had been the making of her, and he’d never thought she had so much stuff in her. That doesn’t sound very – very …’

  ‘No
– does it? I don’t think the noble lord will throw the handkerchief to a girl he never thought had so much in her, do you?’

  ‘He’s very nice to her,’ said Jane.

  ‘Yes,’ said the diplomatic Lucilla, ‘too nice for it to mean anything.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jane. ‘It’s as if he was saying all the time, “I’ll be a brother to you – I really will.” If there was anything there’d be more ups and downs.’

  ‘I don’t know how you know,’ said Lucilla.

  ‘Perhaps I don’t. But you must remember I was adored once too, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek.’

  ‘Oh, when?’ cried Lucilla eagerly.

  ‘In a former state of existence,’ said Jane. ‘All girls must have been. That’s how they know so much about love-affairs before they ever have one. Look here – let’s do something new and different. Let’s have a prize competition.’

  ‘Like anagram teas?’

  ‘Yes, but not anagrams. We’ll have a prize for the best solution of the problem of how to get rid of Othello – he’s always getting out of the hutch and eating Mr Dix’s choicest fruits and flowers; and a prize for the best poem about Cedar Court; and for the best way of getting the silver out from behind that fireplace without taking the whole thing out, because the mantelpiece is built all round it. And another prize –’

  A discreet tap at the door stopped her.

  ‘Please, miss,’ said Mrs Doveton, ‘might I have a word with you? … No, don’t go, Miss Jane. I want to have –’

  ‘Not words with us?’ said Jane.

  ‘No, miss, far from it; but I do want to speak plainly.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Jane, ‘whatever has gone wrong now?’

  ‘It’s that Gladys,’ said Mrs Doveton; ‘so now you know.’

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  ‘That girl,’ said Mrs Doveton, ‘she’s an epidemic.’

  ‘?’ said Jane and Lucilla.

  ‘An epidemic, miss – she’s catching, like measles and whooping-cough. She catches every man she comes near, and the more the merrier, so she thinks.’ Mrs Doveton breathed heavily.

  ‘Sit down and tell us all about it,’ Lucilla said comfortably, and a green velvet armchair creaked to Mrs Doveton’s acceptance of the invitation.

  ‘There aren’t no bounds to her,’ Mrs Doveton went on. ‘There’s Mr Simmons, he’s hooked all right; and there’s the butcher’s young man – she was out with him Tuesday week; and the very boy that brings the daily papers, she stopped him in the shrubbery to ask him riddles.’

  ‘Well, there’s no harm in that,’ said Jane. ‘Some people think riddles amusing. I don’t myself, but some people do.’

  ‘Some riddles is all right, like “Why is Westminster Abbey like the fender?” and “Why is a hen crossing the road like Guy Fox?” But when it comes to asking him what animal falls down from the clouds – well!’

  ‘What animal does? I didn’t know any animal did,’ said Lucilla.

  ‘That’s what the young boy said, miss. And then that Gladys, she says, “Don’t know what animal falls from the clouds? Why, the reindeer.” See, miss? – the rain – Dear. Just an excuse for calling the very paper boy “Dear”. And chucks him under the chin, she does, and asks him whether he ain’t looking for a sweetheart.’

  ‘It’s very silly of Gladys,’ said Lucilla, trying not to smile. ‘I’ll speak to her.’

  But Jane laughed and said: ‘It’s very funny, don’t you think? But, dear Mrs Doveton, why should it upset you?’

  ‘It’s not respectable, miss, that’s why. I never see such a gell. Asks the postman what his young lady’s name is, just to find out if he’s got one, because, if not, here’s Gladys all ready and willing.’

  ‘I suppose the postman can take care of himself,’ said Lucilla.

  ‘Let’s hope so, I’m sure,’ said Mrs Doveton gloomily, beating the palm of her hand on the arm of her chair; ‘but there’s them as can’t. The girl’s like a raging lion going to and fro seeking who she may walk out with.’

  ‘I thought it was Simmons,’ said Jane.

  ‘So it was, and is, and ought to be,’ said Mrs Doveton earnestly. ‘He’s a sober, solid man that won’t hurt to have his head turned fora week or two, but, once married, he’ll be master. But meantime here’s the gell going this way and that, and bursting out here, there and everywhere like a November cracker. And there’s no knowing who’ll be hurt before she’s pinned down for good and the sauce knocked out of her.’

  ‘I don’t suppose the postman –’ Lucilla began, but Mrs Doveton went on unregarding.

  ‘Young gells like her ought to be put in homes, or labelled “Dangerous”. She doesn’t stick at anything. She’s been writing to my Herb. Yes, Miss Jane, well may you look! I thought it was his receipt from the Polytechnic and I opened it, little thinking. And it was to thank him ever so for the lovely chocs., and “Friday evening, same time and place”, and “So long, old dear”, and seventeen crosses in blue ink.’ Mrs Doveton sobbed and dabbed her eyes with a blue-chequered duster.

  ‘And I’ve got no hold over the girl. Herbert I can control, or could. But not Gladys. Nobody can. Show her a young man and she’s off like a spider after a fly – or more like a dog after a rabbit, for there’s no sitting quiet and watching about her.’

  ‘But if she’s fond of Herbert and he’s fond of her? …’

  ‘Bless you,’ said Mrs Doveton, “she ain’t fond of anybody. It amuses her to see ’em jigging on the end of a string. But my Herbert’s a serious young man, and he looks to better himself and rise in life, and then she butts in and spoils everything for him and does herself no good. It’s for all the world like a mouse falling into a pan of cream – no benefit to any of the parties concerned.’

  ‘All right,’ said Jane, ‘you speak to Herbert and I’ll speak to Gladys.’

  ‘I’ve spoke to Herb,’ said Herbert’s mother, ‘and he says not to interfere, and I don’t know what roseate hues of early dawn a true woman can cast over a young man’s life. Lor’,’ said Mrs Doveton in a burst of exasperation, ‘I wish all young gells could be married and put out of the way the minute they leave school. A gell ought to be married young. It’s best for her – keeps her out of mischief – and she soon gets two or three little weights hanging on to her apron-strings to keep her steady. Young gells is best married.’

  ‘And young men?’ Jane asked.

  ‘Let ’em keep single as long as they can,’ said Mrs Doveton, ‘for a young man married is a young man marred.’

  ‘It would be a queer world if Mrs Doveton had the arranging of it,’ said Lucilla as the door closed behind the anxious mother. ‘Come on, let’s go and tell Gladys not to.’

  Gladys was in the shop; she was in the shop almost all the time now. Jane and Lucilla felt their hands to be full with the much more pleasant duty of entertaining their agreeable and punctually-paying guests.

  ‘Look here, Gladys,’ said Jane, sitting down between a sieve of apples and a pile of giant marrows, for it was now August, and the shop looked like a Harvest Thanksgiving, ‘what have you been doing to Herbert Doveton?’

  ‘I ain’t done nothing to him.’

  ‘Haven’t you kissed him?’ Jane asked severely.

  ‘Oh, that!’ said Gladys. ‘Oh yes, I kissed him,’ and she giggled reminiscently. ‘I thought it would do him good. He was so set up. He’s better now – gives you a kiss quite natural. You’ve no idea reely what he was like to begin with. You’ll hardly believe it, miss, I know, but I’m his first. I am reely.’

  ‘And are you fond of him?’

  ‘Me, miss? Fond of him? Why, he’s more like a dried haddock than a young man. I only tried to show him a bit of life and put him in the way of enjoying himself. For what’s life to a young man without a girl to go out with? Why, nothing!’

  ‘Now look here, Gladys,’ said Jane, very firmly and seriously. ‘This has got to stop, see? You mustn’t show that young man any more life, as you call it. You don’t want him
, and it worries Mrs Doveton.’

  ‘Mothers can’t have it all their own way,’ said Gladys mutinously.

  ‘Do you keep a list of your sweethearts?’ Lucilla asked suddenly.

  Gladys actually blushed.

  ‘Not to say sweethearts. I don’t like the word anyhow,’ she said. ‘But I do make a note of the names of them as I’ve walked out with – only initials, you know – in the end of me hymn-book. Nobody would know to look at it. Why, I forget myself what the letters stand for sometimes, I do assure you, miss.’

  ‘Well,’ said Lucilla, ‘you put down H.D., and then you give him up. Will you? To please me?’

  ‘Oh, to please you, miss,’ said Gladys gracefully. ‘I’d do more than give up a little thing like that. If you’ll lend me a stamp and a ongvelope I’ll drop him a line this very minute to tell him cruel fate has come betwixt and it can never, never be.’

  ‘And what about Mr Simmons?’

  A curious change came over the face of Gladys: she looked like a child who in the midst of make-believe is reminded of some real and treasured possession.

  ‘Oh, him!’ she said slowly.

  ‘Well, if you care anything about him you’d better be careful. Suppose he found out about the others?’

  ‘Oh, you don’t understand, miss. I tell him about all the others, every one of them, and what they say and all.’

  ‘And doesn’t he mind?’

  A look of elfish cunning puckered the face of Gladys.

  ‘He don’t believe me, miss! He thinks I make it all up to amuse him like. So that’s all right. Only if he did find anything out he couldn’t never say I hadn’t told him, see? So I’m all right whatever happens.’

  ‘Well, spare Herbert, anyhow,’ said Jane, and she and Lucilla escaped to the garden, the final words of Gladys pursuing them: ‘I’ll spare him by the very next post, miss, you may depend.’

  Looking back afterwards, it always seemed to Lucilla and Jane that that autumn was the merriest time of their lives. Money was coming in plentifully, both from the house and from the garden, whose resources Mr Dix was exploiting in a way that seemed to them simply masterly. The balance at the bank was rising like a tide, and the relations between the right and the left hand of the bank-book grew more and more such as we all wish to see. Life was simple and satisfying. Nor was it by pleasure only that it was so entirely filled. There was work. The shop a little; accounts a little; and a good deal of cutting-out and making of clothes – their own and not their own. Miss Antrobus had interests outside Cedar Court. She never spoke of them to Jane or Lucilla, but she poured them into the ear of Miss Lucas in that after-dinner hour which was Lucilla’s torture and Jane’s remorse. She told of children whose fathers had fallen in France and who now, in the land that was to be a land fit for heroes, lacked food and clothes and everything that makes life comfortable. Did Miss Lucas think her nieces would help? The stuff could be found – it wouldn’t cost them anything but time. Miss Lucas was sure they would, and they did.