A Fluttered Dovecote
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so many enemies? I suppose that it is caused by thegreat pressure of knowledge leaving room for nothing mild and amiable.Of course Patty Smith was very stupid; but it was enough to make thepoor, fat, pudgy thing ten times more stupid to hear how they scoldedher for not doing her exercises. I declare it was quite a charity to dothem for her, as it was not in her nature to have done them herself.There she would sit, with her forehead all wrinkled up, and her thickbrows quarrelling, while her poor eyes were nearly shut; and I'm sureher understanding was quite shut up, so that nothing could go either inor out.
Oh! I used to be so vexed, and could at any time have pulled off thathorrid Mrs Blunt's best cap when she used to bring in her visitors, andthen parade them through the place, displaying us all, and calling upfirst one and then another, as if to show off what papa would call ourpoints.
The vicar of Allsham used to be the principal and most constant visitor;and he always made a point of taking great interest in everything, andtalking to us, asking us Scripture questions; coming on a Monday--adreadful old creature--so as to ask us about the sermon which hepreached on the previous morning. They were all such terrible sermonsthat no one could understand--all about heresies, and ites, and saintswith hard names; and he had a bad habit of seeing how many parentheseshe could put inside one another, like the lemons from the bazaars, tillyou were really quite lost, and did not know which was the original, orwhat it all meant; and I'm sure sometimes he did not know where he hadgot to, and that was why he stopped for quite two minutes blowing hisnose so loudly. I'm afraid I told him very, very wicked storiessometimes when he questioned me; while if he asked me once whether I hadbeen confirmed, he asked me twenty times.
I'm sure I was not so very wicked before I went down to Allsham; but Iquite shudder now when I think of what a wretch I grew, nicknamingpeople and making fun of serious subjects; and oh, dear! I'm afraid totalk about them almost.
The vicar sat in his pew in the nave in the afternoon, and let thecurate do all the service; and I used to feel as if I could box hisears, for he would stand at the end of his seat, half facing round, andthen, in his little, fat, round, important way, go on gabbling throughthe service, as if he wasn't satisfied with the way the curate wasreading it, and must take it all out of his mouth. He upset the pooryoung man terribly, and the clerk too; so that the three of them used totie the service up in a knot, or make a clumsy trio of it, with theschool children tripping up their heels by way of chorus.
Then, too, the old gentleman would be so loud, and would not mind hispoints, and would read the responses in the same fierce, defiant way inwhich he said the Creed in the morning, just as if he was determinedthat everybody should hear how he believed. And when the curate waspreaching, he has folded his arms and stared at the poor young fellow,now shaking his head, and now blowing his nose; while the curate wouldturn hot, and keep looking down at him as much as to say, "May I advancethat?" or "Won't that do, sir?" till it was quite pitiful.
The vicar used to bring his two daughters with him to the Cedars, topat, and condescend, and patronise, and advise: two dreadful creaturesthat Clara called the giraffes, they were so tall and thin, andhook-nosed, and quite a pair in appearance. They dressed exactly alike,in white crape long shawls and lace bonnets in summer; and hooked on totheir father, one on each arm, as the fat, red-faced, little oldgentleman used to come up the gravel walk, he was just like a chubby oldangel, with a pair of tall, scraggy, half-open wings.
But though the two old frights were so much alike in appearance, theynever agreed upon any point; and the parishioners had a sad time of itwith first one and then the other. They were always leaving books forthe poor people's reading, and both had their peculiar ideas upon thesubject of what was suitable. They considered that they knew exactlywhat every one ought to read, and what every one else ought to read wasjust the very reverse of what they ought to read themselves. But there,they do not stand alone in that way, as publishers well know when theybring out so many works of a kind that they are sure customers willbuy--not to read, but to give away--very good books, of course.
It was all very well to call them the giraffes, and that did very wellfor their height; but as soon as I found out how one was all for oneway, and the other immediately opposed to her sister, declaring she wasall wrong, I christened them--the Doxies--Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy. Itwas very dreadful--wasn't it?--and unladylike, and so on; but it didseem to fit, and all the girls took it up and enjoyed it; only thatodious Celia Blang must tell Miss Furness, and Miss Furness must tellMrs Blunt, and then of course there was a terrible hubbub, and I wastold that it was profane in one sense, bad taste in another, anddisgusting language in another; for the word "doxy" was one that no ladyshould ever bring her lips to utter. When if I did not make worse ofit--I mean in my own conscience--by telling a most outrageous story, andsaying I was sorry, when I wasn't a bit.
Oh, the visitors! I was sick of them; for it was just as if we girlswere kept to show. I used to call the place Mrs Blunt's Menagerie, andgot into a scrape about that; for everything I said was carried to theprincipal--not that I cared, only it made me tell those stories, and sayI was sorry when I was not.
The curate and his poor unfortunate wife came sometimes. Acurious-looking couple they were, too, who seemed as if they had foundmatrimony a mistake, and did not approve of it; for they always talkedin a quiet, subdued way, and walked as far apart from one another asthey could.
The curate had not much to say for himself; but he made the best hecould of it, and stretched his words out a tremendous length, sayingpa-a-ast and la-a-ast; so that when he said the word everlasting in theservice, it was perfectly terrible, and you stared at him in dismay, asif there really never would be an end to it.
We used to ask one another, when he had gone, what he had been talkingabout; but we never knew--only one had two or three long-stretched-outwords here, and a few more there. But it did not matter; and I think weliked him better than his master, the vicar. As for his wife, she had alittle lesson by heart, and she said it every time she came, with asickly smile, as she smoothed one side at a time of her golden locks,which always looked rough; and hers were really golden locks--abouteight-carat gold, I should say, like Patty Smith's trumpery locket; forthey showed the red coppery alloy very strongly--too strongly for mytaste, which favours pale gold.
Pray do not for a moment imagine that I mean any vulgar play upon words,and am alluding to any vegetable in connection with the redness of theMrs Curate's hair; for she was a very decent sort of woman, if shewould not always have asked me how I was, and how was mamma, and how waspapa, and how I liked Allsham, and whether I did not think Mrs deBlount a pattern of deportment. And then, as a matter of course, I wasobliged to tell another story; so what good could come to me from thevisits of our vicar and his followers?
CHAPTER FIVE.
MEMORY THE FIFTH--I GET INTO DIFFICULTIES.
I declare my progress with my narrative seems for all the world likepapa carving a pigeon-pie at a picnic: there were the claws sticking outall in a bunch at the top, as much as to say there were plenty ofpigeons inside; but when he cut into it, there was just the same resultas the readers must find with this work--nothing but disappointing bitsof steak, very hard and tiresome. But I can assure you, like our cookat home, that all the pigeons were put in, and if you persevere you willbe as successful as papa was at last, though I must own that pigeon israther an unsatisfactory thing for a hungry person.
Heigho! what a life did I live at the Cedars: sigh, sigh, sigh, morning,noon, and night. I don't know what I should have done if it had notbeen for the garden, which was very nice, and the gardener always verycivil. The place was well kept up--of course for an advertisement; andwhen I was alone in the garden, which was not often, I used to talk tothe old man or one of his underlings, while they told me of theirtroubles. It is very singular, but though I thought the place lookedparticularly nice, I learnt from the old man that it was like everygarden I had seen before, nothing to wh
at it might be if there werehands enough to keep it in order. I spoke to papa about that singularcoincidence, and he laughed, and said that it was a problem that hadnever yet been solved:--how many men it would take to keep a garden inthorough order.
There was one spot I always favoured during the early days of my stay.It was situated on the north side of the house, where there was a dense,shady horse-chestnut, and beneath it a fountain in the midst ofrockery--a fountain that never played, for the place was too oppressiveand dull; but a few tears would occasionally trickle over the stones,where the leaves grew long and pallid, and the blossoms of such flowersas bloomed here were mournful, and sad, and colourless. It seemed justthe spot to sit and sigh as I bent over the ferns growing from betweenthe lumps of stone; for you never could go, even on the hottest dayswithout finding some flower or another with a tear in its eye.
I hope no one will laugh at