You Can Never Tell

my last sovereign on moving in; and I haven’t paid a shilling of rent yet. I’m eating and drinking on credit; my landlord is as rich as a Jew and as hard as nails; and I’ve made five shillings in six weeks. If I swerve by a hair’s breadth from the straight line of the most rigid respectability, I’m done for. Under such a circumstance, is it fair to ask me to lunch with you when you don’t know your own father? Dolly After all, our grandfather is a canon of Lincoln Cathedral. Valentine Like a castaway mariner who sees a sail on the horizon. What! Have you a grandfather? Dolly Only one. Valentine My dear, good young friends, why on earth didn’t you tell me that before? A cannon of Lincoln! That makes it all right, of course. Just excuse me while I change my coat. He reaches the door in a bound and vanishes. Dolly and Phil stare after him, and then stare at one another. Missing their audience, they droop and become commonplace at once. Philip Throwing away Dolly’s arm and coming ill-humoredly towards the operating chair. That wretched bankrupt ivory snatcher makes a compliment of allowing us to stand him a lunch⁠—probably the first square meal he has had for months. He gives the chair a kick, as if it were Valentine. Dolly It’s too beastly. I won’t stand it any longer, Phil. Here in England everybody asks whether you have a father the very first thing. Philip I won’t stand it either. Mamma must tell us who he was. Dolly Or who he is. He may be alive. Philip I hope not. No man alive shall father me. Dolly He might have a lot of money, though. Philip I doubt it. My knowledge of human nature leads me to believe that if he had a lot of money he wouldn’t have got rid of his affectionate family so easily. Anyhow, let’s look at the bright side of things. Depend on it, he’s dead. He goes to the hearth and stands with his back to the fireplace, spreading himself. The parlor maid appears. The twins, under observation, instantly shine out again with their former brilliancy. The Parlor Maid Two ladies for you, miss. Your mother and sister, miss, I think. Mrs. Clandon and Gloria come in. Mrs. Clandon is between forty and fifty, with a slight tendency to soft, sedentary fat, and a fair remainder of good looks, none the worse preserved because she has evidently followed the old tribal matronly fashion of making no pretension in that direction after her marriage, and might almost be suspected of wearing a cap at home. She carries herself artificially well, as women were taught to do as a part of good manners by dancing masters and reclining boards before these were superseded by the modern artistic cult of beauty and health. Her hair, a flaxen hazel fading into white, is crimped, and parted in the middle with the ends plaited and made into a knot, from which observant people of a certain age infer that Mrs. Clandon had sufficient individuality and good taste to stand out resolutely against the now forgotten chignon in her girlhood. In short, she is distinctly old fashioned for her age in dress and manners. But she belongs to the forefront of her own period (say 1860⁠–⁠80) in a jealously assertive attitude of character and intellect, and in being a woman of cultivated interests rather than passionately developed personal affections. Her voice and ways are entirely kindly and humane; and she lends herself conscientiously to the occasional demonstrations of fondness by which her children mark their esteem for her; but displays of personal sentiment secretly embarrass her: passion in her is humanitarian rather than human: she feels strongly about social questions and principles, not about persons. Only, one observes that this reasonableness and intense personal privacy, which leaves her relations with Gloria and Phil much as they might be between her and the children of any other woman, breaks down in the case of Dolly. Though almost every word she addresses to her is necessarily in the nature of a remonstrance for some breach of decorum, the tenderness in her voice is unmistakable; and it is not surprising that years of such remonstrance have left Dolly hopelessly spoiled. Gloria, who is hardly past twenty, is a much more formidable person than her mother. She is the incarnation of haughty highmindedness, raging with the impatience of an impetuous, dominative character paralyzed by the impotence of her youth, and unwillingly disciplined by the constant danger of ridicule from her lighter-handed juniors. Unlike her mother, she is all passion; and the conflict of her passion with her obstinate pride and intense fastidiousness results in a freezing coldness of manner. In an ugly woman all this would be repulsive; but Gloria is an attractive woman. Her deep chestnut hair, olive brown skin, long eyelashes, shaded grey eyes that often flash like stars, delicately turned full lips, and compact and supple, but muscularly plump figure appeal with disdainful frankness to the senses and imagination. A very dangerous girl, one would say, if the moral passions were not also marked, and even nobly marked, in a fine brow. Her tailor-made skirt-and-jacket dress of saffron brown cloth, seems conventional when her back is turned; but it displays in front a blouse of sea-green silk which upsets its conventionality with one stroke, and sets her apart as effectually as the twins from the ordinary run of fashionable seaside humanity. Mrs. Clandon comes a little way into the room, looking round to see who is present. Gloria, who studiously avoids encouraging the twins by betraying any interest in them, wanders to the window and looks out with her thoughts far away. The parlor maid, instead of withdrawing, shuts the door and waits at it. Mrs. Clandon Well, children? How is