‘It wasn’t a lovely place,’ said Gavin. ‘It was all houses and streets. And we always have Hatton and Mullet.’
‘But there had to be houses, or there wouldn’t have been one for you to stay in.’
‘There could have been just that one house.’
‘But how would you have got anything to eat, if there had been no shops?’
‘There could have been one like the one in the village, that sells most things.’
‘It sells string,’ said Nevill.
‘But you wanted things to eat like those you have at home. And they don’t come from the shop.’
‘We didn’t have them even as nice as that,’ said Honor.
‘You don’t know when you are well off,’ said Eleanor, laughing before she knew. ‘I suppose all children are the same.’
‘Well, the same and different,’ said Honor.
‘Hatton buy him a ball,’ said Nevill.
‘Why, you have one there,’ said Eleanor, looking at some toys on the ground.
‘No,’ said Nevill, in a tone of repulsing her words.
‘You don’t want another, do you?’
‘No,’ said Nevill, in the same manner, shaking his head and a moment later his body.
‘What does he want, Hatton?’
‘Ball of string,’ said Nevill, in a tone that suggested that the actual words were forced from him.
‘Oh, that is what you want. Well, I daresay you can have one.’
‘There is a kind that only costs a penny,’ said Gavin.
‘It costs a penny,’ said Nevill, in a grave tone. ‘But Hatton buy it for him.’
‘Well, Honor dear, tell me about the holiday. What did you like best?’
‘I think the beach,’ said Honor.
‘That was all there was,’ said Gavin. ‘The lodgings weren’t nice.’
‘Weren’t they? What was wrong with them? Were they not good ones, Hatton?’
‘Yes, madam, they were clean and pleasant. The children mean that the rooms were smaller than these.’
‘This home will be a disadvantage to them. It will teach them to expect too much. Now have you really nothing to tell me, but that the rooms here had spoiled you for others?’
‘We didn’t tell you that,’ said Gavin.
‘He found a little crab,’ said Nevill. ‘It was as small as a crumb.’
‘Well, that was something,’ said Eleanor. ‘You played on the beach, and found crabs, and found a lot of other interesting things, didn’t you?’
‘Not a lot,’ said Gavin. ‘We found an old net and a piece of wood from a ship.’
‘We weren’t sure it was from a ship,’ said his sister.
‘From a little boat,’ suggested Nevill.
‘And didn’t you find seaweed and shells, and wade in the sea and build castles and do things like that?’
‘We did when it was fine,’ said Honor.
‘And was it often wet?’
‘No – yes - two days,’ said Honor, meeting her mother’s eyes and averting her own.
‘Well, that was not much out of three weeks. They do not seem to appreciate things, Hatton. When I was a child, I should have remembered the holiday for years.’
‘They will do the same, madam. And it has done what we wanted of it. But the truth is that children are happier at home. And it is fortunate it is not the other way round.’
‘We found one shell that was not broken,’ said Nevill, in further reassurance.
‘So you love your home, my little ones,’ said Eleanor, making the best of her children’s attitude. ‘Of course you are glad to be back again. And you have Father and Mother to welcome you. You have been without them all the time. So it couldn’t be perfect, could it?’
‘We have Grandpa and Grandma too,’ said Nevill. ‘And Grandma wasn’t out, was she?’
‘Yes, you have Mother and Father and Grandma and Grandpa,’ said Eleanor, adjusting the order of these personalities. ‘And your brothers and sisters, and your new governess coming tomorrow.’
‘He has Hatton,’ said her youngest son.
‘It is the same nursery as Grandpa had, when he was a little boy like you.’
‘Not like him,’ said Nevill.
‘Well, when he was as small as you. He used to play in it, as you do.’
‘Not as small as him; as small as Gavin.’
‘Yes, as small as you, and even smaller. He was here when he was a baby. You like to think of that, don’t you?’
‘He couldn’t come in it now,’ said Nevill. ‘Hatton wouldn’t let him.’
‘Now, Honor dear,’ said Eleanor, turning from her son to her daughter, perhaps a natural step, ‘I hope you will try with this new governess, and not play and pay no attention, as you did with the last. You are old enough to begin to learn.’
‘I have been learning for a long time.’
‘It keeps Gavin back as well as you. And we should not do what is bad for someone else.’
‘It is only being with me, that makes Gavin learn at all.’
‘Well, well, dear, do your best. That is all we ask of you. But if you have such an opinion of yourself, we can expect a good deal of you.’
‘I only said I didn’t keep Gavin back, when you said I did.’
‘Dear me, Hatton, girls are even less easy than boys,’ said Eleanor, with a sigh.
‘It is the person you are talking to, that you don’t think is easy,’ said Gavin.
‘I daresay it sums up like that,’ said his mother.
‘Father likes girls better,’ said Honor.
‘He is a girlie,’ said Nevill, recalling his father’s attitude to his sisters. ‘He likes Father better too.’
‘You are a boy,’ said Gavin. ‘As much a boy as I am.’
‘No, not as much. He is a little boy.’
‘Yes, yes, a little boy,’ said Mullet, taking his hand and speaking for Eleanor’s ears. ‘And now the little boy has had his breakfast, he must come and put on his coat for the garden.’
‘Like a girlie,’ said Nevill, in a tone of making a condition.
‘Yes, like that. And when you come in, I will tell you a story about some children who had a new governess. You will all like that, won’t you?’
‘I would rather have one about a wrecker,’ said Gavin, who had hardly done justice to the influence of the sea.
Eleanor looked after Mullet and Nevill with a smile for Hatton.
‘You don’t give me much of a welcome,’ she said to the other children. ‘Do you think of me as an ordinary person, who may come in at any time?’
‘You do come in often,’ said Gavin.
‘You must remember I am your mother.’
‘A lot of people are mothers. Hatton’s sister is.’
‘My honest boy!’ said Eleanor, suddenly kissing her son. ‘Now what is it, Honor dear? You seem put out about something. Do you know what it is, Gavin?’
‘It is when you make me out better than she is.’
‘Well, she does not always think people just alike, herself.’
‘I do when they are,’ said Honor.
‘Well, I expect you are tired by your journey. Were they upset by the train, Hatton?’
‘Honor and Nevill were, madam. Gavin never is.’
‘I was sick almost the whole time,’ said Honor.
‘Dear, dear, poor Hatton and Mullet!’ said Eleanor, in a bracing tone. ‘Well, I must go and see if the others have anything that does not please them. We must not give all the attention to one part of the house.’
‘We didn’t say we were not pleased,’ said Gavin, when his mother had gone.
‘Neither did Mother,’ said Honor. ‘But she palpably was not.’
Hatton dispatched the three to the garden in the charge of Mullet, who walked up and down telling stories, with them all hanging on to her arms. When the time for exercise was over, she was the only one who had had any exercise, and she had had a good deal.
Eleanor went t
o the schoolroom to visit the next section of her family. She found two girls and a boy seated at the table with their governess, engaged in scanning an atlas, which could only be surveyed by them singly, and therefore lent itself to slow progress. This was their customary rate of advance, as Miss Mitford was a person of easy pace, and it was the family practice to economize in materials rather than in time. It seldom struck Eleanor or Regan that a few shillings might be well spent. Shillings were never well spent to them, only by necessity or compulsion. Two governesses came under the last head, and money was allotted to the purpose, but to do them justice in the smallest possible amount.
‘Well, my dears,’ said Eleanor, her tone rendered warm by her sense that these children probably differed from the others, ‘you have not been to the sea. You have been at home and been bright and happy all the time. I believe it never pays to do too much for children.’
‘No,’ said James, the youngest of the three, making an accommodating movement.
‘You would just as soon be at home, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wouldn’t you, Isabel?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wouldn’t you, my Venice?’
‘I am not quite sure. No, I don’t think I would.’
‘You would like to go to the sea?’ said Eleanor, with a surprise that would have seemed more natural to a witness of the late scene. ‘We must see about it next year. What do you think, Miss Mitford?’
Miss Mitford looked up in response, but not in response of any particular nature. She was a short, rather odd-looking woman of fifty, looking older than her age, with calm, green eyes, features so indeterminate that they seemed to change, and hair and clothes disposed in a manner which appeared to be her own, but had really been everyone’s at the time when she grew up. It had seemed to her the mark of womanhood, and it still served that purpose. She was a person of reading and intelligence, but preferred a family to a school, and knew that by taking a post beneath her claims, she took her employers in her hand. She held them with unflinching calm and without giving any quarter, and criticism, after she had met it with surprise and had not bent to it, had not assailed her. Eleanor was hardly afraid of her, as she did not feel that kind of fear, but she hesitated to judge or advise her, and seldom inquired of her pupils’ progress except of the pupils behind her back.
James joined his sisters on such days as a recurring and undefined indisposition kept him from school, occasions which did not involve his dispensing with education. They were actually the only ones when he did not do so, as he was a boy who could only learn from a woman in his home. The stage at which he could learn, but only under certain conditions, had never received attention. He was a boy of twelve, with liquid, brown eyes like Nevill’s, features regarded as pretty and childish, and vaguely deprecated on that ground, and a responsive, innocent, sometimes suddenly sophisticated expression. His dependence on Hatton at Nevill’s age had exceeded his brother’s, and still went beyond anyone else’s. If Hatton could have betrayed a preference, it would have been for him; and it sent a ray of light through his rather shadowed life to remember that at heart she had one.
Isabel was a short, pale girl of fifteen, with a face that was a gentle edition of Fulbert’s, delicate hands like Honor’s, a humorous expression of her own, and near-sighted, penetrating eyes; and Venetia, known as Venice, was a large, dark, handsome child a year and a half younger, with a steady, high colour and fine, closely-set, hazel eyes, and an amiability covering a resolute self-esteem, which was beginning to show in her expression, though only Isabel was aware of it. The two sisters lived for each other, as did Honor and Gavin; and James lived to himself like Nevill, but with less support, so that his life had a certain pathos. He would remedy matters by repairing to the nursery, where Hat-ton’s welcome and Honor’s inclination to a senior brought Nevill to open, and Gavin to secret despair. The suffering of his brothers was pleasant to James, not because he was a malicious or hostile, but because the evidence of sadness in other lives made him feel a being less apart. He showed no aptitude for books, and this in his sex was condemned; and he carried a sense of guilt, which it did not occur to him was unmerited. It was a time when endeavour in children was rated below success, an error which in later years has hardly yet been corrected, so that childhood was a more accurate foretaste of life than it is now.
‘So you are not at school, my boy?’ said Eleanor.
‘No,’ said James, giving a little start and looking at Isabel.
‘He does not feel well,’ said the latter.
‘Doesn’t he?’ said Eleanor, with rather dubious sympathy, as if not quite sure of the authenticity of the condition. ‘The unwellness seems to come rather often. It is kind of Miss Mitford to let you be in here. Have you thanked her ?’
‘No.’
‘Then do it, my dear.’
‘Thank you,’ said James, without loss of composure, having no objection to being treated as a child, indeed finding it his natural treatment.
‘He is not much above the average, is he, Miss Mitford?’ said Eleanor, not entertaining the possibility of an absolutely ordinary child.
‘No, I don’t think he is.’
‘You think he is up to it at any rate?’
‘Well, I did not say so. Perhaps it was you who did.’
‘Do you think he would learn more with his sisters at home?’
‘You mean with their governess, don’t you? Well, a good many boys would.’
‘But I suppose we cannot arrange it?’
‘No, you must be the slave of convention.’
‘I suppose most boys are backward.’
‘Well, some are forward.’
‘You must make Miss Mitford think better of you, James.’
‘I hope you do not think I take an ungenerous view,’ said Miss Mitford.
‘Do you never alter your opinions?’ said Eleanor, with a faint sting in her tone.
‘I seldom need to. My judgement is swift and strong,’ said Miss Mitford, with no loss of gravity.
‘Could you not help James, Isabel?’
‘Not as well as Miss Mitford.’
‘Could you, Venice? You are nearer his age.’
‘Is that a qualification?’ said Isabel.
‘It would help her to see his point of view.’
‘It might make her share it.’
‘You think the girls are intelligent at any rate, Miss Mitford?’ said Eleanor, seeking to turn this readiness to account.
‘It is a good sign that they think so.’
‘Do you never praise anyone?’
‘I am rather grudging in that way. It is a sort of shyness.’
Venice gave a giggle.
‘Are you not going to say a word to me, Venice?’ said Eleanor.
‘Yes,’ said Venice, in a bright, conscious tone, turning wide eyes on her mother. ‘I was thinking about the sea. I should like to go next year.’
‘And so you shall, my dear. I wish I had arranged it. I ought to have thought of a change for you. And I could have sent James with Hatton. It would have done him good. Don’t you think it would, Miss Mitford?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you did not suggest it.’
‘No.’
‘Miss Mitford knows that suggestions cost money,’ said Isabel.
‘They cost nothing, my child. I am always pleased to have them. It is carrying them out that costs.’
‘My suggestions are not any good, when they are not carried out,’ said Miss Mitford, in a faintly plaintive tone.
‘Well, I hope you will make them another time. Good-bye, my dears; I will come up again and see you. James, do you forget again to open the door?’
James could not deny it.
‘Does he generally, Miss Mitford?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does he not open the door for you?’
‘No.’
‘You must remember you are not a baby, mustn’t you, James?’
‘Yes,’ said James, who had little chance of thinking he was, as the family steadily combated the supposed conviction.
‘Could you remember to tell him, Miss Mitford?’
‘Well, my memory is no better than his.’
‘Then the girls must remember. Will you think of it, my dears? Now, my boy, if you are to be at home today, you must have tea in the nursery and go early to bed. When we are not well, we must not behave quite like well people, must we?’
‘No,’ said James, who had no great leaning towards the routine of the healthy, which he found a strain.
‘Why is he to have tea in the nursery?’ said Miss Mitford, as the door closed.
‘The tea there is earlier than ours,’ said Venice.
‘Mother hasn’t a favourite in this room,’ said Isabel.
‘I somehow feel it is not me,’ said Miss Mitford. ‘And my instinct is generally right in those ways.’
‘I don’t want to be one of her favoured ones,’ said Venice, who had a familiar sense of meeting too little esteem.
‘She only likes two people in the house, Daniel and Gavin,’ said Isabel.
‘And I like so many,’ said Miss Mitford. ‘I must have a more affectionate nature.’
‘She likes Father and Luce,’ said James, just looking up from his book.
‘That is true,’ said Miss Mitford, ‘I hope it is the history book that you are reading, James.’
‘Yes,’ said James, who was perusing a more human portion of this volume, indeed an intensely human one, as it dealt with the elaborate execution of a familiar character. When any trouble or constraint was over, he allowed it to drift from his mind.
‘What is the time?’ said Venice.
‘Two minutes to your break for luncheon,’ said Miss Mitford, in an encouraging tone.
‘You like your luncheon too, Mitta.’
‘You must not call me Mitta except in a spirit of affection. And it is not often affectionate to tell people they like their food.’
‘Here it comes!’ said James, throwing his book on the table and himself into a chair.
‘I am punctual today,’ said Mullet, entering in understanding of the life she interrupted, and viewed with sympathy as inferior to that of the nursery. ‘And Hatton says, if Master James has a headache, he may ask Miss Mitford to excuse his lessons this morning.’
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