It was the old, old story. Talking to me was the next most private thing to talking to herself; and I think she enjoyed for a while the company of so queer a confessor. Once, I remember, she confided to me the whole story of a girlish love affair, at least forty years old. I could hardly believe my eyes as I watched her; she looked so freshened and demure and spirited. It was as if she were her own twenties just dressed up. But she had a dry and acrid tongue, and spared nothing and nobody. To her and to Mrs. Bowater I owe nearly all my stock of worldly wisdom. And now I shall never have time, I suppose, to sort it out.
Mr. Monnerie, as Fleming confided in me one day—and the aristocracy was this extremely reticent and contemptuous creature’s favourite topic of conversation—Mr. Monnerie had been a banker, and had made a late and dazzling marriage; for Mrs. Monnerie’s blood was as blue as Caddis Bay on a cloudless morning. I asked Fleming if she had ever seen “Lord B.,” and what kind of man he was. She never had; but remarked obscurely that he must have lived mainly on porridge, he had sown so many wild oats.
This information reminded me of an old rhyme I had once learned as a child, and used to shout about the house:—
“Come all you young men, with your wicked ways;
Sow your wild, wild oats in your youthful days;
That we may live happy when we grow old—
Happy, and happy, when we grow old:
The day is far spent, the night’s coming on;
So give us your arm, and we’ll joggle along—joggle
and joggle and joggle along.”
Fleming herself, I learned, had come from Ash, and was therefore, I suppose, of an Anglo-Saxon family, though she was far from stupid and rather elegant in shape. Because, I suppose, I did not like her, I was rather aggrieved she had been born in Kent. Mr. and Mrs. Monnerie, she told me, had had no children. The fair young man, Percy Maudlen, with the tired smile and beautiful shoes, who came to tea or luncheon at No. 2 at least once a week, was Mrs. Monnerie’s only nephew by blood; and the still fairer Susan Monnerie, who used to float into my room ever and anon like a Zephyr, was the only one Mrs. Monnerie cared to see of her three nieces by marriage. And yet the other two, when they were invited to luncheon, were far more docile and considerate in the opinions and sentiments they expressed. That seemed so curious to me: there was no doubt that Mrs. Monnerie belonged to the aristocracy, and yet there always appeared to be quarrels going on in the family—apart, of course, from births, deaths, and marriages, which seemed of little consequence. She enjoyed relatives in every county in England and Scotland; while I had not one, now, so far as I knew, not even in Kent.
Marvell, the butler—he had formerly been Mr. Monnerie’s valet—was another familiar object of my speculations. His rather solemn, clean-shaven countenance and steady grey eyes suggested a severe critic of mankind. Yet he seemed bent only on giving pleasure and smoothing things over, and stooped my dish of sliced cherries or apricots over my shoulder with a gesture that was in itself the cream of flattery. It astonished me to hear that he had a grown-up son in India; and though I never met Mrs. Marvell, I felt a prodigious respect for her.
I would look up and see him standing so smooth and benevolent behind Mrs. Monnerie’s chair that he reminded me of my bishop, and I doubt if ever she crisply uttered his delightful name but it recalled the pleasant chime of a poem which my mother had taught me: “The Nymph Complaining of the Death of Her Fawn.” I should have liked to have a long talk with Mr. Marvell—any time of the day when he wasn’t a butler, I mean—but the opportunity never came.
One day, when he had left us to ourselves, I ventured to quote a stanza of this poem to Mrs. Monnerie:—
“With sweetest milk and sugar first
I it at my own fingers nursed;
And as it grew, so every day
It waxed more white and sweet than they—
It had so sweet a breath! and oft
I blushed to see its foot more soft
And white—shall I say?—than my hand,
Nay, any lady’s in the land. …”
“Charming, charming, Poppet,” she cooed, much amused, pushing in a nut for Chakka. “Many shades whiter than your wrinkled old claw, you old wretch. Another sagacious old bird, my dear, though past blushing, I fear, at any lady’s hand.”
Nothing would content her but that I must recite my bon mot again when her nephew Percy dandled in to tea that afternoon. He sneered down on me with his pale eyes, and with finger and thumb exposed yet another inch of his silk sock, but made no comment.
“Manners, my dear Percy, maketh man,” said his aunt. “Congratulate Miss M.”
If Percy Maudlen had had no manners at all, I think I should at that moment have seen the pink tip of his tongue; for if ever any human being detested my small person it was he. For very good reasons, probably, though I never troubled to inquire into them, I disliked him, too, beyond expression. He was, of course, a superior young man with a great many similar ancestors looking out of his face, yet he resembled a weasel. But Susan Monnerie—the very moment I saw her I loved her; just as one loves a field of buttercups or a bush of may. For some little time she seemed to regard me as I suppose a linnet regards a young cuckoo that has been hatched out in her nest (though, of course, a squab cuckoo is of much the same size as its foster-mother). But she gradually grew accustomed to me, and even realized at
