More Bywords

Mrs. M.  There’s the School of Art at Holbrook.

C.  My dear mother, I am far past country schools of art!

Mrs. M.  It is not as if you intended to take up art as a profession.

C.  Mother! will nothing ever make you understand?  Nothing ought to be half-studied, merely to pass away the time as an accomplishment (uttered with infinite scorn, accentuated on the second syllable), just to do things to sell at bazaars.  No!  Art with me means work worthy of exhibition, with a market-price, and founded on a thorough knowledge of the secrets of the human frame.

Mrs. M.  Those classes!  I don’t like all I hear of them, or their attendants.

C.  If you will listen to all the gossip of all the old women of both sexes, I can’t help it!  Can’t you trust to innocence and earnestness?

Mrs. M.  I wish it was the Art College at Wimbledon.  Then I should be quite comfortable about you.

C.  Have not we gone into all that already?  You know I must go to the fountain-head, and not be put off with mere feminine, lady-like studies!  Pah!  Besides, in lodgings I can be useful.  I shall give two evenings in the week to the East End, to the Society for the Diversion and Civilisation of the Poor.

Mrs. M.  Surely there is room for usefulness here!  Think of the children!  And for diversion and civilisation, how glad we should be of your fresh life and brightness among poor people!

C.  Such poor!  Why, even if grandpapa would let me give a lecture on geology, or a reading from Dickens, old Prudence Blake would go about saying it hadn’t done nothing for her poor soul.

Mrs. M.  Grandpapa wanted last winter to have penny readings, only there was nobody to do it.  He would give you full scope for that, or for lectures.

C.  Yes; about vaccination and fresh air! or a reading of John Gilpin or the Pied Piper.  Mamsey, you know a model parish stifles me.  I can’t stand your prim school-children, drilled in the Catechism, and your old women who get out the Bible and the clean apron when they see you a quarter of a mile off.  Free air and open minds for me!  No, I won’t have you sighing, mother.  You have returned to your native element, and you must let me return to mine.

Mrs. M.  Very well, my dear.  Perhaps a year or two of study in town may be due to you, though this is a great disappointment to grandpapa and me.  I know Mrs. Payne will make a pleasant and safe home for you, if you must be boarded.

C.  Too late for that.  I always meant to be with Betty Thurston at Mrs. Kaye’s.  In fact, I have written to engage my room.  So there’s an end of it.  Come, come, don’t look vexed.  It is better to make an end of it at once.  There are things that one must decide for oneself.

V.  TWO FRIENDS

SCENE—Over the fire in Mrs. Kaye’s boarding-house.  Cecilia Moldwarp and Betty Thurston.

C.  So I settled the matter at once.

B.  Quite right, too, Cis.

C.  The dear woman was torn every way.  Grandpapa and Aunt Phrasie wanted her to pin me down into the native stodge; and Lucius, like a true man, went in for subjection: so there was nothing for it but to put my foot down.  And though little mother might moan a little to me, I knew she would stand up stoutly for me to all the rest, and vindicate my liberty.

B.  To keep you down there.  Such a place is very well to breathe in occasionally, like a whale; but as to living in them—

C.  Just hear how they spend the day.  First, 7.30, prayers in church.  The dear old man has hammered on at them these forty years, with a congregation averaging 4 to 2.5.

B.  You are surely not expected to attend at that primitive Christian hour!  Cruelty to animals!

C.  If I don’t, the absence of such an important unit hurts folks’ feelings, and I am driven to the fabrication of excuses.  After breakfast, whatever is available trots off to din the Catechism and Genesis into the school-children’s heads—the only things my respected forefather cares about teaching them.  Of course back again to the children’s lessons.

B.  What children?

C.  Didn’t I explain?  Three Indian orphans of my uncle’s, turned upon my grandfather—jolly little kids enough, as long as one hasn’t to teach them.

B.  Are governesses unknown in those parts?

C.  Too costly; and besides, my mother was designed by nature for a nursery-governess.  She has taught the two elder ones to be wonderfully good when she is called off.  ‘The butcher, ma’am’; or, ‘Mrs. Tyler wants to speak to you, ma’am’; or, ‘Jane Cox is come for a hospital paper, ma’am.’  Then early dinner, of all things detestable, succeeded by school needlework, mothers’ meeting, and children’s walk, combined with district visiting, or reading to old women.  Church again, high tea, and evenings again pleasingly varied by choir practices, night schools, or silence, while grandpapa concocts his sermon.

B.  Is this the easy life to which Mrs. Moldwarp has retired?

C.  It is her native element.  People of her generation think it their vocation to be ladies-of-all-work to the parish of Stickinthemud cum-Humdrum.

B.  All-work indeed!

C.  I did not include Sundays, which are one rush of meals, schools, and services, including harmonium.

B.  No society or rational conversation, of course?

C.  Adjacent clergy and clergy woman rather less capable of aught but shop than the natives themselves!  You see, even if I did offer myself as a victim, I couldn’t do the thing!  Fancy my going on about the six Mosaic days, and Jonah’s whale, and Jael’s nail, and doing their duty in that state of life where it has pleased Heaven to place them.

B.  Impossible, my dear!  Those things can’t be taught—if they are to be taught—except by those who accept them as entirely as ever; and it is absurd to think of keeping you where you would be totally devoid of all intellectual food!

SCENE.—Art Student and distinguished Professor a year later.  Soirée in a London drawing-room.  Professor Dunlop and Cecilia.

Prof. D.  Miss Moldwarp?  Is your mother here?

C.  No; she is not in town.

Prof. D.  Not living there?

C.  She lives with my grandfather at Darkglade.

Prof. D.  Indeed!  I hope Mr. and Mrs. Aveland are well?

C.  Thank you, he is well; but my grandmother is dead.

Prof. D.  Oh, I am sorry!  I had not heard of his loss.  How long ago did it happen?

C.  Last January twelvemonth.  My aunt is married, and my mother has taken her place at home.

Prof. D.  Then you are here on a visit.  Where are you staying?

C.  No, I live here.  I am studying in the Slade schools.

Prof. D.  This must have greatly changed my dear old friend’s life!

C.  I did not know that you were acquainted with my grandfather.

Prof. D.  I was one of his pupils.  I may say that I owe everything to him.  It is long since I have been at Darkglade, but it always seemed to me an ideal place.

C.  Rather out of the world.

Prof. D.  Of one sort of world perhaps; but what a beautiful combination is to be seen there of the highest powers with the lowliest work!  So entirely has he dedicated himself that he really feels the guidance of a ploughman’s soul a higher task than the grandest achievement in science or literature.  By the bye, I hope he will take up his pen again.  It is really wanted.  Will you give him a message from me?